"But who are you talking about? I also don't understand you!" I asked in surprise.

"Vingt ans! And she never once understood me—oh, this is cruel! Can she really think I'm getting married out of fear, out of need? Oh, shame! Auntie, auntie, it is for you that I... Oh, may she know, this auntie, that she is the only woman I have adored for these twenty years! She must know it, otherwise it will not be, otherwise they will have to drag me by force to this ce qu'on appelle le^[lxviii]altar!"

It was the first time I had heard this confession, and so energetically expressed. I will not conceal that I had a terrible urge to laugh. I was wrong.

"Alone, he alone is left to me, my only hope!" he clasped his hands all at once, as if suddenly struck by a new thought. "Now only he alone, my poor boy, can save me, and—oh, why does he not come! Oh, my son, oh, my Petrusha... and though I am not worthy to be called a father, but a tiger rather, still. . . laissez-moi, mon ami,^[lxix]I'll lie down for a while to collect my thoughts. I'm so tired, so tired, and I suppose it must be time for you to go to bed, voyez-vous,^[lxx] it's twelve o'clock..."

4: The Lame Girl

I

Shatov proved not to be stubborn and, following my note, came at noontime to call on Lizaveta Nikolaevna. We entered at almost the same time; I, too, was paying my first call. All of them—that is, Liza, maman, and Mavriky Nikolaevich—were sitting in the big drawing room, arguing. Maman had requested that Liza play some waltz for her on the piano, and when she began the requested waltz, started insisting that it was the wrong one. Mavriky Nikolaevich, in his simplicity, interceded for Liza and insisted that it was the right one; the old woman got so angry that she burst into tears. She was ill, and even had difficulty walking. Her legs were swollen, and already for several days she had done nothing but wax capricious and find fault with others, despite the fact that she had always been slightly afraid of Liza. They were glad that we came. Liza blushed with pleasure and, after saying merci to me, for Shatov of course, went up to him, looking at him curiously.

Shatov stopped clumsily in the doorway. Having thanked him for coming, she led him over to maman.

"This is Mr. Shatov, of whom I spoke to you, and this is Mr. G——v, a great friend of mine and of Stepan Trofimovich's. Mavriky Nikolaevich also made his acquaintance yesterday."

"And which one is the professor?"

"There isn't any professor, maman."

"Yes, there is, you were saying yourself there would be a professor; it must be this one," she pointed squeamishly at Shatov.

"I never told you there would be a professor. Mr. G——v is in the civil service, and Mr. Shatov is a former student."

"Student, professor, anyway it's from the university. You just want to argue. And the Swiss one had a moustache and a little beard."

"It's Stepan Trofimovich's son that maman keeps calling a professor," Liza said, and she led Shatov to a sofa at the other end of the drawing room.

"She's always like that when her legs are swollen—ill, you know," she whispered to Shatov, still studying him with the same extreme curiosity, especially his lock of hair.

"Are you military?" the old woman, to whom I had been so mercilessly abandoned by Liza, addressed me.

"No, madam, I am in the civil service..."

"Mr. G——v is a great friend of Stepan Trofimovich's," Liza echoed at once.

"You serve at Stepan Trofimovich's? But isn't he a professor, too?"

"Ah, maman, you must even dream about professors in your sleep," Liza cried in vexation.

"There are quite enough of them in reality. And you are eternally contradicting your mother. Were you here when Nikolai Vsevolodovich came four years ago?"

I replied that I was.

"And was there some Englishman here with you?"

"No, there wasn't."

Liza laughed.

"Ah, you see, there wasn't any Englishman, so it's all a pack of lies. Varvara Petrovna and Stepan Trofimovich are both lying. And everyone else is lying, too."

"That's because yesterday auntie and Stepan Trofimovich found some resemblance between Nikolai Vsevolodovich and Prince Harry from Shakespeare's Henry the Fourth, and in answer to that maman says there was no Englishman," Liza explained to us.

"If there was no Harry, then there was no Englishman either. Nikolai Vsevolodovich was playing pranks all by himself."

"I assure you that maman does it on purpose," Liza found it necessary to explain to Shatov, "she knows perfectly well about Shakespeare. I myself read her the first act of Othello; but she's suffering very much now. Maman, do you hear, it's striking twelve, time for you to take your medicine."

"The doctor is here," a chambermaid appeared in the doorway.

The old woman raised herself and began calling her dog: "Zemirka, Zemirka, you come with me at least."

The nasty little old dog Zemirka did not obey and hid under the sofa where Liza was sitting.

"You don't want to? Then I don't want you either. Good-bye, dearie, I don't know your name," she turned to me.

"Anton Lavrentievich..."

"Well, it makes no difference, it goes in one ear and out the other. Don't see me out, Mavriky Nikolaevich, I was only calling Zemirka. Thank God, I can still walk by myself, and tomorrow I shall go for a drive."

She angrily walked out of the drawing room.

"Anton Lavrentievich, talk for a while with Mavriky Nikolaevich. I assure you, you'll both gain from a closer acquaintance," Liza said, and she gave a friendly smile to Mavriky Nikolaevich, who simply beamed all over from her look. There was no help for it, I was left to talk with Mavriky Nikolaevich.

II

The business Lizaveta Nikolaevna had with Shatov turned out, to my surprise, to be indeed only literary. I don't know why, but I had been thinking that she had summoned him for something else. We—that is, Mavriky Nikolaevich and myself—seeing that they were not concealing anything from us and were talking quite loudly, began to listen; then we, too, were invited to join the council. The whole thing was that Lizaveta Nikolaevna had long since conceived of publishing a—in her opinion useful—book, but being completely inexperienced, she needed a collaborator. I was even amazed at the seriousness with which she began to explain her plan to Shatov. "Must be one of the new sort," I thought, "it's not for nothing she was in Switzerland." Shatov listened attentively, his eyes fixed on the ground, not surprised in the least that an idle society girl should undertake affairs seemingly so unsuitable for her.

The literary undertaking was of the following sort. A multitude of metropolitan and provincial newspapers and other journals is published in Russia, and these report daily on a multitude of events. The year goes by, the newspapers are everywhere stacked up in bookcases, or turned into litter, torn up, used for wrapping things or for hats. Many of the facts published produce an impression and remain in the public memory, but are then forgotten over the years. Many people would like to refer to them later, but what an effort it is to search through that sea of pages, often without knowing the day, or the place, or even the year when the event occurred. And yet, if all these facts for a whole year were brought together in one book, with a certain plan and a certain idea, with a table of contents, an index, a classification by month and day—such a combined totality could present a whole characterization of Russian life for that whole year, notwithstanding the extremely small portion of facts as compared with all that had happened.