Nevertheless, he drew himself up, raised his hand, and began:

"The beauty of beauties broke her member And twice more intriguing she became, And twice more burning was love's ember In him who already felt the same."

"Well, enough," Nikolai Vsevolodovich waved his hand.

"I dream of Petersburg," Lebyadkin skipped quickly on, as if there never had been any poem, "I dream of regeneration... Benefactor! Can I count on not being denied the means for the journey? I've been waiting for you all week as for the sun."

"Ah, no, sorry, I have almost no means left, and, besides, why should I give you money?..."

It was as if Nikolai Vsevolodovich suddenly became angry. Dryly and briefly he listed all the captain's crimes: drinking, lying, spending money intended for Marya Timofeevna, taking her from the convent, insolent letters with threats to make the secret public, his conduct with Darya Pavlovna, and so on and so forth. The captain heaved, gesticulated, tried to object, but each time Nikolai Vsevolodovich imperiously stopped him.

"And, I beg your pardon," he finally observed, "but you keep writing about a 'family disgrace.' Why is it so disgraceful for you that your sister is legally married to Stavrogin?"

"But the marriage is kept covered up, Nikolai Vsevolodovich, covered up, a fatal secret. I get money from you, and suddenly I'm asked the question: What is this money for? My hands are tied, I can't answer, to the detriment of my sister, to the detriment of my family dignity."

The captain raised his tone: he loved this theme and was counting firmly on it. Alas, he in no way anticipated how dashed he was going to be. Calmly and precisely, as if it were a matter of the most ordinary household instructions, Nikolai Vsevolodovich informed him that one of those days, perhaps even the next day or the day after, he intended to make his marriage known everywhere, "to the police as well as to society," and, consequently, the question of family dignity would end of itself, and along with it the question of subsidies. The captain goggled his eyes; he did not even understand; he had to have it explained to him.

"But isn't she a... half-wit?"

"I'll make certain arrangements."

"But... what about your mother?"

"Well, that's as she likes."

"But won't you have to bring your wife into your house?"

"Perhaps so. That, however, is in the fullest sense none of your business and does not concern you at all."

"How does it not concern me!" cried the captain. "And what am I to do?"

"Well, you certainly will not enter the house."

"But am I not a relation?"

"One flees such relations. Consider for yourself, then, why should I give you any money?"

"Nikolai Vsevolodovich, Nikolai Vsevolodovich, this cannot be, perhaps you'll still consider, you don't want to lay hands on... what will the world think, what will it say?"

"Much I fear your world. Didn't I marry your sister then, when I wanted to, after a drunken dinner, on a bet for wine, and why shouldn't I now proclaim it aloud ... if it now amuses me?"

He uttered this somehow especially irritably, so that Lebyadkin, with horror, began to believe it.

"But me, what about me, I'm the main thing here! ... Perhaps you're joking, Nikolai Vsevolodovich, sir?"

"No, I am not joking."

"Be it as you will, Nikolai Vsevolodovich, but I don't believe you... I'll file a petition then."

"You are terribly stupid, Captain."

"Maybe so, but this is all I've got left!" the captain was totally muddled. "Before, we were at least given lodging for the work she did in those corners, but now what will happen if you drop me altogether?"

"But don't you want to go to Petersburg and change your career?

Incidentally, is it true what I've heard, that you intended to go and make a denunciation, hoping to obtain a pardon by naming all the others?"

The captain gaped, goggle-eyed, and did not reply.

"Listen, Captain," Stavrogin suddenly began to speak with extreme seriousness, leaning slightly across the table. Up to then he had spoken somehow ambiguously, so that Lebyadkin, experienced in the role of buffoon, remained a bit uncertain until the last moment whether his master was really angry or was only teasing, whether he really had the wild idea of announcing his marriage or was only playing. But now the unusually stern look of Nikolai Vsevolodovich was so convincing that a chill even ran down the captain's spine. "Listen and tell the truth, Lebyadkin: have you made any denunciation yet, or not? Have you managed to really do anything? Did you send some letter out of foolishness?"

"No, sir, I haven't managed... and wasn't thinking of it," the captain stared.

"Well, that you weren't thinking of it is a lie. That's why you were begging to go to Petersburg. If you haven't written, you must have blabbed something to somebody. Tell the truth, I've heard a thing or two."

"To Liputin, while drunk. Liputin is a traitor. I opened my heart to him," the poor captain whispered.

"Heart or not, there's no need to be a tomfool. If you had a notion, you should have kept it to yourself; smart people are silent nowadays, they don't talk."

"Nikolai Vsevolodovich!" the captain started to tremble. "You had no part in anything, it's not you that I..."

"Of course, you wouldn't dare denounce your milch cow."

"Nikolai Vsevolodovich, consider, consider! ..." and in despair, in tears, the captain began hurriedly telling his story over all those four years. This was a most stupid story of a fool who had been drawn into something that was not his business, and the importance of which he scarcely understood until the very last minute, being occupied with drinking and carousing. He told how, while still in Petersburg, he "firstly got carried away just out of friendship, like a loyal student, though not being a student," and, knowing nothing, "guilty of nothing," was spreading various papers in stairways, leaving them by the dozens in doorways, behind bellpulls, sticking them in instead of newspapers, bringing them to theaters, tucking them into hats, slipping them into pockets. And later he had started taking money from them, "for my means, just think of my means, sir!" He had spread "all sorts of rubbish" over the districts of two provinces. "Oh, Nikolai Vsevolodovich," he went on exclaiming, "what made me most indignant was its being completely against all civic and predominantly fatherland laws! It would suddenly be printed to go out with pitchforks, and remember that he who goes out poor in the morning may come home rich in the evening—just think, sir! I myself used to get the shudders, but I kept spreading them around. Or else suddenly, five or six lines, to the whole of Russia, out of the blue: 'Quick, lock the churches, destroy God, break up marriages, destroy the rights of inheritance, grab your knives'—that's all, and God knows what next. It was with that piece, the one with the five lines, sir, that I almost got caught; the officers of the regiment gave me a beating, but, God bless them, they let me go. And then last year they almost got me when I gave French counterfeit fifty-rouble bills to Korovaev; but, thank God, just then Korovaev drowned in the pond while drunk, and they didn't have time to expose me. Here at Virginsky's I proclaimed the freedom of the social wife. In June I again did some spreading around the ——--- district. They say they'll make me do more of it... Pyotr Stepanovich suddenly let me know that I have to obey; he's been threatening me for a long time. And how he treated me on that Sunday, really! Nikolai Vsevolodovich, I am a slave, I am a worm, but not a god—that is my only difference from Derzhavin.^[101] But my means, just think of my means!"