Demons

But, I confess, an unresolved question still remains for me: how did it come about that a mere, that is, an ordinary crowd of petitioners— seventy men, it's true—should be turned, right from the first go, from the first step, into a riot that threatened to shake the foundations? Why did Lembke himself seize on this idea when he arrived twenty minutes later, following the messenger? I would suppose (but again this is a personal opinion) that Ilya Ilyich, who was chummy with the manager, even found it profitable to present the crowd to von Lembke in this light, precisely so as not to bring on a real investigation into the matter; and it was Lembke himself who had given him this idea. Over the past two days he had had two mysterious and exceptional talks with him—quite confused talks, incidentally—from which Ilya Ilyich had nevertheless made out that the front office was firmly set on the idea of the tracts, and of the Shpigulin workers being incited by someone to social rioting, and set on it to such a degree that they themselves might regret it if this inciting turned out to be nonsense. "He wants to distinguish himself somehow in Petersburg," thought our cu

But I am convinced that poor Andrei Antonovich would not have wished for a riot even for the sake of distinguishing himself. He was an extremely responsible official, who until his marriage had dwelt in i