II

Lembke suddenly came in with quick steps, accompanied by the police chief, glanced at us distractedly and, paying no attention,turned right to go to his study, but Stepan Trofimovich stood in front of him and blocked his way. The tall figure of Stepan Trofimovich, quite unlike any other, produced its impression; Lembke stopped.

"Who is this?" he muttered in perplexity, as if asking the police chief, not turning his head towards him in the least, however, but continuing to examine Stepan Trofimovich.

"Retired collegiate assessor Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky, Your Excellency," Stepan Trofimovich replied, augustly inclining his head. His Excellency continued to peer at him, though with a quite dumb look.

"What about?" And with the laconism of authority he squeamishly and impatiently turned his ear to Stepan Trofimovich, taking him finally for an ordinary petitioner with some written request.

"I was subjected today to a house search by an official acting on Your Excellency's behalf; therefore I wish..."

"Name? Name?" Lembke asked impatiently, as if suddenly realizing something. Stepan Trofimovich repeated his name still more augustly.

"Ahh! It's... it's that hotbed... My dear sir, you have presented yourself from such an angle... You're a professor? A professor?"

"I once had the honor of delivering several lectures to the youth of ——--- University."

"Yo-o-outh!" Lembke seemed to jump, though I wager he still had little understanding of what it was about, and even, perhaps, of whom he was talking with. "That, my very dear sir, I will not allow," he suddenly became terribly angry. "I do not allow youth. It's all these tracts. It's a swoop upon society, my dear sir, a seafaring swoop, filibusterism... What is your request, if you please?"

"On the contrary, your wife has requested of me that I read tomorrow at her fête. I myself have no requests, but have come seeking my rights ..."

"At the fête? There will be no fête. I will not allow your fête, sir! Lectures? Lectures?" he cried furiously.

"I wish very much that you would speak more politely with me, Your Excellency, and not stamp your feet or shout at me as at a boy."

"You understand, perhaps, with whom you are talking?" Lembke flushed.

"Perfectly well, Your Excellency."

"I shield society with myself, while you destroy it. Destroy it! You ... I remember about you, however: was it you who were tutor in the house of General Stavrogin's widow?"

"Yes, I was ... tutor ... in the house of General Stavrogin's widow."

"And in the course of twenty years you have been a hotbed of all that has now accumulated ... all the fruit ... I believe I saw you in the square just now. Beware, however, my dear sir, beware: the direction of your thinking is known. You may be sure I have it in mind. Your lectures, my dear sir, I cannot allow, I cannot, sir. Address no such requests to me."

He again made as if to pass by.

"I repeat, you are mistaken, Your Excellency: it is your wife who has requested that I read—not a lecture, but something literary, at tomorrow's fête. But I myself decline to read now. My humble request is that you explain to me, if possible, how, why, and wherefore I was subjected to today's search? Some books, papers, private letters quite dear to me, were taken from me and carted through town in a wheelbarrow..."

"Who did the search?" Lembke fluttered up, coming fully to his senses, and suddenly blushed all over. He turned quickly to the police chief. At that same moment the stooping, long, gawky figure of Blum appeared in the doorway.

"This very same official," Stepan Trofimovich pointed to him. Blum stepped forward with a guilty but by no means capitulating look.

"Vous ne faites que des bêtises,"^[cxxxix] Lembke hurled at him with vexation and spite, and was suddenly transformed, as it were, and all at once regained his consciousness. "Excuse me..." he babbled in extreme confusion and blushing for all he was worth, "this was all. . . this was probably all just simply a blunder, a misunderstanding... just simply a misunderstanding."

"Your Excellency," Stepan Trofimovich observed, "in my youth I witnessed a certain characteristic incident. Once, in a theater, in the corridor, a man quickly went up to another and, in front of the whole public, gave him a resounding slap. Perceiving immediately that the victim was not at all the person for whom the slap was intended, but someone completely different who merely resembled him slightly, the man said angrily and hurriedly, like one who cannot waste precious time, exactly what Your Excellency just said: 'I made a mistake... excuse me, it was a misunderstanding, nothing but a misunderstanding.' And when the offended man nevertheless went on shouting and feeling offended, he observed to him in extreme vexation: 'But I tell you it was a misunderstanding, why are you still shouting!’“

"That... that is, of course, very funny..." Lembke smiled crookedly, "but... but don't you see how unhappy I am myself?"

He almost cried out and... and, it seemed, wanted to hide his face in his hands.

This unexpected, painful outcry, almost a sob, was unbearable. It was probably his first moment since the previous day of full and vivid awareness of all that had been happening—and then at once of despair, full, humiliating, surrendering; who knows, another minute and he might have begun sobbing for the whole room to hear. Stepan Trofimovich first gazed wildly at him, then suddenly inclined his head and in a deeply moved voice said:

"Your Excellency, trouble yourself no more over my peevish complaint, and simply order my books and letters returned..."

He was interrupted. At that very moment, Yulia Mikhailovna and her whole attendant company noisily came in. But this I would like to describe in as much detail as possible.

III

First of all, everyone from all three carriages came crowding into the reception room at once. There was a separate entrance to Yulia Mikhailovna's rooms, straight from the porch to the left; but this time everyone made their way through the reception room—precisely, I suspect, because Stepan Trofimovich was there, and because everything that had happened to him, as well as everything to do with the Shpigulin men, had been announced to Yulia Mikhailovna as she drove back to town. Lyamshin, who had been left behind for some offense and had not taken part in the excursion, had thus learned everything before anyone else and was able to announce it to her. With malicious glee he raced down the road to Skvoreshniki on a hired Cossack nag to meet the returning cavalcade with the merry news. I suppose Yulia Mikhailovna, in spite of all her lofty resolution, was still a bit embarrassed on hearing such a surprising report; though probably only for a moment. The political side of the question, for instance, could not worry her: Pyotr Stepanovich had already impressed it upon her at least four times that the Shpigulin ruffians all ought to be flogged, and Pyotr Stepanovich had indeed some time since become a great authority for her. "But ... all the same I'll make him pay for it," she must have thought to herself, and the him referred, of course, to her husband. I will note in passing that this time, as if by design, Pyotr Stepanovich also did not take part in the general excursion, and no one had seen him anywhere since that morning. I will also mention, incidentally, that Varvara Petrovna, after receiving her visitors, returned with them to town (in the same carriage with Yulia Mikhailovna), in order to take part without fail in the final meeting of the committee for the next day's fête. She, too, must of course have been interested in the news conveyed by Lyamshin about Stepan Trofimovich, and may even have become worried.