He finally stopped weeping, got up from the sofa, and began pacing the room again, continuing our conversation, but glancing out the window every moment and listening towards the entryway. Our conversation continued disjointedly. All my assurances and reassurances were like sand against the wind. He scarcely listened, and yet he needed terribly for me to reassure him, and talked nonstop to that end. I saw that he could no longer do without me, and would not let me go for anything in the world. I stayed, and we sat for something over two hours. In the course of the conversation, he recalled that Blum had taken with him two tracts he had found.

"What tracts!" I was fool enough to get scared. "Did you really ..."

"Eh, ten copies were passed off on me," he replied vexedly (he spoke with me now vexedly and haughtily, now terribly plaintively and humbly), "but I had already taken care of eight, so Blum got hold of only two..."

And he suddenly flushed with indignation.

"Vous me mettez avec ces gens-là!^[cxxv]Do you really suppose I could be in with those scoundrels, with tract-mongers, with my boy Pyotr Stepanovich, avec ces esprits-forts de la lâcheté!^[cxxvi]Oh, God!"

"Hah, haven't they somehow mixed you up with... Nonsense, though, it can't be!" I observed.

"Savez-vous," suddenly escaped him, "I feel at moments que je ferai là-bas quelque esclandre.^[cxxvii]Oh, don't go away, don't leave me alone! Macarrière est finie aujourd'hui, je le sens.^[cxxviii]I, you know, I will perhaps rush at someone there and bite him, like that sub-lieutenant..."

He gave me a strange look—frightened and at the same time as if wishing to frighten. He was indeed growing more and more vexed at someone and at something as time went by and the "kibitkas" failed to come; he was even angry. Suddenly Nastasya, who had gone from the kitchen to the entryway for something, brushed against the coat-rack there and knocked it over. Stepan Trofimovich trembled and went dead on the spot; but when the matter was clarified, he all but shrieked at Nastasya and, stamping his feet, chased her back into the kitchen. A minute later he said, looking at me in despair:

"I'm lost! Cher,” he suddenly sat down by me and gazed pitifully, so pitifully, into my eyes, "cher, it's not Siberia I'm afraid of, I swear to you, oh, je vous jure"^[cxxix](tears even came to his eyes), "I am afraid of something else..."

I could tell from his look alone that he wished finally to tell me something extraordinary, meaning something he had refrained from telling me so far.

"I am afraid of disgrace," he whispered mysteriously.

"What disgrace? But quite the contrary! Believe me, Stepan Trofimovich, it will all be explained this very day and will end in your favor..."

"You're so certain I'll be pardoned?"

"But what is this 'pardoned'! Such words! What is it you've done? I assure you you haven't done anything!"

"Qu 'en savez-vous;^[cxxx]all my life has been... cher... They'll recall everything... and even if they find nothing, so much the worse," he suddenly added unexpectedly.

"How, so much the worse?"

"Worse."

"I don't understand."

"My friend, my friend, so, let it be Siberia, Arkhangelsk, stripping of rights—if I'm lost, I'm lost! But... I'm afraid of something else" (again a whisper, a frightened look, and mysteriousness).

"But of what, of what?"

"Flogging," he uttered, and gave me a helpless look.

"Who is going to flog you? Where? Why?" I cried out, afraid he was losing his mind.

"Where? Why, there... where it's done."

"And where is it done?"

"Eh, cher," he whispered almost into my ear, "the floor suddenly opens under you, and you're lowered in up to the middle... Everybody knows that."

"Fables!" I cried, once I understood. "Old fables! And can it be that you've believed them all along?" I burst out laughing.

"Fables! But they must have started somewhere, these fables; a flogged man doesn't talk. I've pictured it ten thousand times in my imagination!"

"But you, why you? If you haven't done anything?"

"So much the worse, they'll see I haven't done anything, and they'll flog me."

"And you're convinced you'll be taken to Petersburg for that?"

"My friend, I've already said I do not regret anything, ma carrière est finie. From that hour in Skvoreshniki when she said farewell to me, I've had no regret for my life... but the disgrace, the disgrace, que dira-t-elle,^[cxxxi]if she finds out?"

He glanced at me despairingly, poor man, and blushed all over. I, too, looked down.

"She'll find out nothing, because nothing's going to happen to you. It's as if I were talking to you for the first time in my life, Stepan Trofimovich, you've surprised me so much this morning."

"But, my friend, this is not fear. Let them even pardon me, let them even bring me back here and do nothing—it's here that I am lost. Elle me soupçonnera toute sa vie^[cxxxii] ... me, me, the poet, the thinker, the man she worshiped for twenty-two years!"

"It won't even occur to her."

"It will," he whispered with profound conviction. "She and I talked of it several times in Petersburg, during the Great Lent, before we left,when we were both afraid... Elle me soupçonnera toute sa vie ... and how undeceive her? It will come out as improbable. And who in this paltry town will believe it, c'est invraisemblable... et puis les femmes^[cxxxiii] ... She'll be glad. She'll be very upset, very, genuinely, like a true friend, but secretly—she'll be glad... I'll have given her a weapon against me for my whole life. Oh, my life is lost! Twenty years of such complete happiness with her... and now!"

He covered his face with his hands.

"Stepan Trofimovich, why don't you let Varvara Petrovna know at once?" I suggested.

"God forbid!" he gave a start and jumped up from his place. "Not for anything, never, after what was said at our farewell in Skvoreshniki, never!"

His eyes began to flash.

We sat there, I think, for another hour or more, still waiting for something—anyway, that was the idea. He lay down again, even closed his eyes, and lay for about twenty minutes without saying a word, so that I even thought he was asleep or oblivious. Suddenly he rose up impetuously, tore the towel from his head, sprang from the sofa, dashed to the mirror, with trembling fingers tied his tie, and in a thundering voice summoned Nastasya, ordering her to bring him his coat, his new hat, and his stick.

"I can bear it no longer," he said, in a breaking voice, "I cannot, I cannot! ... I am going myself."

"Where?" I, too, jumped up.

"To Lembke. Cher, I must, I am obliged to. It is my duty. I am a citizen and a human being, not a chip of wood, I have rights, I want my rights... For twenty years I never demanded my rights, all my life I've criminally forgotten them... but now I will demand them. He must tell me everything, everything. He received a telegram. He dare not torment me, otherwise arrest me, arrest me, arrest me!"