II
Verkhovensky sprawled himself with remarkable casualness on a chair at the upper corner of the table, greeting almost no one. His look was squeamish, and even arrogant. Stavrogin politely made his bows, but, despite the fact that everyone had been waiting only for them, everyone, as if on command, pretended that they had scarcely noticed them. The hostess sternly addressed Stavrogin as soon as he sat down.
"Stavrogin, you want tea?"
"Thanks," he replied.
"Tea for Stavrogin," she commanded the pouring woman, "and what about you?" (this was now to Verkhovensky).
"Of course I do, what a thing to ask a guest! And give me cream, too. You always serve such vileness instead of tea—and for a name-day party at that."
"What, you also recognize name days?" the girl student suddenly laughed. "We were just talking about that."
"It's old hat," the high-school boy grumbled from the other end of the table.
"What is old hat? To forget prejudices, innocent though they may be, isn't old hat but, on the contrary, to everyone's shame, is so far still new," the girl student instantly declared, simply lunging forward from her chair. "Besides, there are no innocent prejudices," she added bitterly.
"I just wanted to state," the high-school boy became terribly excited, "that although prejudices are, of course, old and need to be wiped out, yet concerning name days everybody already knows they're stupid and too old hat to waste precious time on, which has been wasted by the whole world even without that, so as to use one's wits for some object more in need of..."
"Too dragged out, can't understand a thing," the girl student shouted.
"It seems to me that everybody has the right to speak equally with everybody else, and if I wish to state my opinion, like anybody else, then..."
"No one is taking away your right to speak," the hostess herself now cut in sharply, "you are simply being invited to stop maundering, because no one can understand you."
"Allow me to observe, however, that you do not respect me; if I was unable to finish my thought, it's not from having no thoughts, but rather from an excess of thoughts..." the high-school boy muttered, all but in despair, and became finally confused.
"If you don't know how to talk, shut up," the girl student swatted.
The high-school boy even jumped on his chair.
"I just wished to state," he shouted, all burning with shame, and afraid to look around, "that you just wanted to pop up with your cleverness because Mr. Stavrogin came in—that's what!"
"Your thought is dirty and immoral, and indicates the utter insignificance of your development. I beg you not to advert to me again," the girl student rattled out.
"Stavrogin," the hostess began, "they were shouting about family rights just before you came—this officer here" (she nodded at her relative, the major). "And I'm most certainly not going to be the one to bother you with such old, long-disposed-of nonsense. All the same, where on earth could family rights and duties have come from, in the sense of the prejudice in which they now appear? That's the question. Your opinion?"
"What do you mean, where on earth?" Stavrogin asked in turn.
"That is, we know, for instance, that the prejudice about God originated in thunder and lightning," the girl student suddenly ripped out again, all but leaping on Stavrogin with her eyes. "It is known only too well that original mankind, being scared of thunder and lightning, deified the invisible enemy, feeling their weakness before him. But how did the prejudice about the family arise? Where on earth could the family itself have come from?"
"That is not quite the same..." the hostess tried to stop her.
"I suppose the answer to such a question would be immodest," Stavrogin answered.
"How's that?" the girl student lunged forward.
But a tittering came from the teachers' group, echoed at once from the other end by Lyamshin and the high-school boy, and followed by the husky guffaw of the major-relative.
"You should write vaudevilles," the hostess remarked to Stavrogin.
"That adverts all too little to your honor, whatever your name is," the girl student cut off in decided indignation.
"And you shouldn't pop up!" the major blurted out. "You are a young lady, you should behave modestly, and it's as if you're sitting on pins."