Demons

"Yes, I have the misfortune to be this man's relation. I am the husband of his sister, née Lebyadkin, soon now it will be for five years. Rest assured that I will convey your demands to him in the nearest future, and I will answer for his not troubling you anymore."

I will never forget the horror that was expressed on Varvara Petrovna's face. With an insane look she rose from her chair, holding her right hand up in front of her as if to defend herself. Nikolai Vsevolodovich looked at her, at Liza, at the spectators, and suddenly smiled with boundless haughtiness; unhurriedly, he walked out of the room. Everyone saw how Liza jumped up from the sofa as soon as Nikolai Vsevolodovich turned to leave and made an obvious move to run after him, but caught hold of herself and did not run but walked out quietly, also without saying a word to anyone or looking at anyone, accompanied, of course, by Mavriky Nikolaevich, who rushed after her...

Of the uproar and talk in town that evening I will not even make mention. Varvara Petrovna locked herself in her town house, and Nikolai Vsevolodovich, it was said, drove straight to Skvoreshniki without seeing his mother. Stepan Trofimovich sent me to "cette chère amie" in the evening to beg permission for him to come to her, but I was not received. He was terribly struck; he wept. "Such a marriage!

Such a marriage! Such horror in the family," he repeated all the time. However, he also kept recalling Karmazinov and abused him terribly. He was preparing energetically for the next day's reading and—the artistic nature!—preparing in front of the mirror, recalling all his witticisms and little puns over the course of his life, specially written down in a notebook, so as to introduce them into the next day's reading.

"My friend, this is for the sake of a great idea," he said to me, apparently justifying himself. "Cher ami, I have moved from my place of twenty-five years and suddenly set out—where, I do not know, but I have set out..."

Part Three

1: The Fête. First Part

I

The fête took place, all the perplexities of the previous "Shpigulin" day notwithstanding. I think that even if Lembke had died that same night, the fête would still have taken place in the morning—so much of some special significance did Yulia Mikhailovna co

I have already hinted at the fact that various trashy sorts of people had appeared among us. Always and everywhere, in a troubled time of hesitation or transition, various trashy sorts appear. I am not speaking of the so-called "vanguard," who always rush ahead of everyone else (their chief concern) and whose goal, though very often quite stupid, is still more or less definite. No, I am speaking only of scum. This scum, which exists in every society, rises to the surface in any transitional time, and not only has no goal, but has not even the inkling of an idea, and itself merely expresses anxiety and impatience with all its might. And yet this scum, without knowing it, almost always falls under the command of that small group of the "vanguard" which acts with a definite goal, and which directs all this rabble wherever it pleases, provided it does not consist of perfect idiots itself—which, incidentally, also happens. It is said among us now, when everything is already over, that Pyotr Stepanovich was controlled by the Internationale,[165] that Pyotr Stepanovich controlled Yulia Mikhailovna, and that she, at his command, directed all sorts of scum. Our most solid minds are now marveling at themselves: how could they suddenly have gone so amiss then? What our troubled time consisted of, and from what to what our transition was—I do not know, and no one, I think, knows—except perhaps certain visitors from outside. And yet the trashiest people suddenly gained predominance and began loudly criticizing all that's holy, whereas earlier they had not dared to open their mouths, and the foremost people, who until then had so happily kept the upper hand, suddenly began listening to them, and became silent themselves; and some even chuckled along in a most disgraceful way. Some sort of Lyamshins, Telyatnikovs, landowner Tentetnikovs, homegrown milksop Radishchevs,[166] little Jews with mournful but haughty smiles, jolly passing travelers, poets with a tendency from the capital, poets who in place of a tendency and talent had peasant coats and tarred boots, majors and colonels who laughed at the meaninglessness of their rank and were ready, for an extra rouble, to take off their swords at once and slink away to become railroad clerks; generals defecting to the lawyers; developed dealers, developing little merchants, countless seminarians, women who embodied in themselves the woman question—all this suddenly and fully gained the upper hand among us, and over whom? Over the club, over venerable dignitaries, over generals on wooden legs, over our most strict and inaccessible ladies' society. If even Varvara Petrovna, right up to the catastrophe with her boy, was all but ru

I will repeat once again. Among us there was also preserved a small group of prudent persons who had secluded themselves at the very begi