'Don't worry, Alexei Yegorych.'
'God bless you, sir, but only setting out upon good deeds.'
'How's that?' Nikolai Vsevolodovich paused with one foot already in the lane.
Alexei Yegorovich firmly repeated his wish; never before would he have ventured to express it in such words, aloud, to his master.
Nikolai Vsevolodovich locked the door, put the key in his pocket, and went off down the lane, sinking several inches into the mud at every step. He finally came out onto a paved street, long and deserted. He knew the town like the back of his hand; but Bogoyavlensky Street was still a long way off. It was past ten o'clock when he finally stopped before the locked gate of Filippov's dark old house. Now that the Lebyadkins had moved out, the ground floor was left completely empty, with the windows boarded up, but there was light in Shatov's garret. As there was no bell, he began rapping on the gate with his fist. The little window opened and Shatov peeked out; it was pitch- dark, and hard to distinguish anything; Shatov peered for a long time, about a minute.
'Is it you?' he asked suddenly.
'Yes,' the uninvited guest replied.
Shatov slammed the window, went down, and unlocked the gate. Nikolai Vsevolodovich stepped across the high sill and, without saying a word, walked past him straight to Kirillov's wing.
V
Here nothing was locked, or even closed. The entry way and the first two rooms were dark, but in the last room, where Kirillov lived and took his tea, light was shining and laughter could be heard, along with some strange little cries. Nikolai Vsevolodovich went towards the light, but stopped on the threshold without going in. Tea was on the table. In the middle of the room stood the old woman, the landlord's relative, bareheaded, wearing only a skirt, a rabbit-skin jacket, and shoes over her bare feet. She was holding in her arms a one-and-a-half-year-old baby, dressed only in a little shirt, with bare legs, flushed cheeks, tousled white hair, fresh from the crib. It must have been crying; tears still clung to its eyes; but at that moment it was reaching out its arms, clapping its hands, and laughing, as little children do, with a choke in its voice. Kirillov was bouncing a big, red rubber ball on the floor in front of it; the ball bounced up to the ceiling, came down again, the baby shouted: 'Ba, ba!' Kirillov caught the 'ba' and gave it to the baby, the baby threw the ball itself with its clumsy little hands, and Kirillov ran to pick it up again. Finally, the 'ba' rolled under the wardrobe. 'Ba, ba!' shouted the baby. Kirillov bent down to the floor and reached out, trying to get the 'ba' from under the wardrobe with his hand. Nikolai Vsevolodovich entered the room; the baby, seeing him, clutched at the old woman and dissolved in a long, infantile cry; she carried it out at once.
'Stavrogin?' said Kirillov, raising himself from the floor a little, the ball in his hands, without the least surprise at the unexpected visit. 'Want some tea?'
He stood up all the way.
'Very much, I won't refuse, if it's warm,' said Nikolai Vsevolodovich. 'I'm soaked through.'
'Warm, even hot,' Kirillov confirmed with pleasure. 'Sit down: you're muddy; never mind; I'll mop later with a wet rag.'
Nikolai Vsevolodovich sat down and drank the full cup almost at one gulp.
'More?' asked Kirillov.
'No thanks.'
Kirillov, who had not sat down yet, at once seated himself across from him and asked:
'What have you come for?'
'Business. Here, read this letter, from Gaganov—remember, I told you in Petersburg.'
Kirillov took the letter, read it, put it on the table, and looked up expectantly.
'As you know,' Nikolai Vsevolodovich began to explain, 'I met this Gaganov a month ago in Petersburg, for the first time in my life. We ran into each other about three times in public. Without making my acquaintance or speaking with me, he still found an opportunity for being very impudent. I told you at the time; but here is something you don't know: at that time, leaving Petersburg before I did, he suddenly sent me a letter which, though unlike this one, was still improper in the highest degree, and strange if only in that it contained no explanation of why it had been written. I replied to him at once, also with a letter, in which I stated quite frankly that he was probably angry with me for the incident with his father four years earlier, here at the club, and that for my part I was prepared to give him every possible apology, on the grounds that my action had been unintentional and caused by illness. I asked him to take my apologies into consideration. He did not reply, and left; and now I find him here completely enraged. I've been told of his several public comments about me, utterly abusive and with astounding accusations. Finally, today comes this letter—such as no one, surely, has ever received, with curses and such expressions as: 'your beaten mug.' I've come in hopes that you will not refuse to be my second.'
'You say a letter no one received,' Kirillov remarked. 'In rage it's possible; written more than once. Pushkin wrote to Heeckeren.[86] All right, I'll go. Tell me how.'
Nikolai Vsevolodovich explained that he wanted it to be tomorrow, and that he would certainly begin with the renewal of his apologies, and even with the promise of a second letter of apology, but with the understanding that Gaganov, for his part, should also promise not to write any more letters. The letter in hand would be regarded as never having existed.
'Too many concessions; he won't agree,' Kirillov said.
'I've come primarily to find out whether you will agree to take these conditions to him.'
'I will. It's your affair. But he won't agree.'
'I know he won't.'
'He wants to fight. Tell how you'll fight.'
'The point is that I'd like to finish it all tomorrow for certain. You'll be at his place around nine in the morning. He'll listen and not agree, but he'll get you together with his second—say at around eleven. You'll arrange things, and by one or two everyone should be on the spot. Please try to do it that way. The weapon is pistols, of course, and I especially ask you to arrange it like this: the barriers should be ten paces apart; then you place each of us ten paces from the barrier, and at a sign we start walking towards each other. Each must be sure to reach his barrier,
