"That... that is, of course, very funny..." Lembke smiled crookedly, "but... but don't you see how unhappy I am myself?"
He almost cried out and... and, it seemed, wanted to hide his face in his hands.
This unexpected, painful outcry, almost a sob, was unbearable. It was probably his first moment since the previous day of full and vivid awareness of all that had been happening—and then at once of despair, full, humiliating, surrendering; who knows, another minute and he might have begun sobbing for the whole room to hear. Stepan Trofimovich first gazed wildly at him, then suddenly inclined his head and in a deeply moved voice said:
"Your Excellency, trouble yourself no more over my peevish complaint, and simply order my books and letters returned..."
He was interrupted. At that very moment, Yulia Mikhailovna and her whole attendant company noisily came in. But this I would like to describe in as much detail as possible.
III
First of all, everyone from all three carriages came crowding into the reception room at once. There was a separate entrance to Yulia Mikhailovna's rooms, straight from the porch to the left; but this time everyone made their way through the reception room—precisely, I suspect, because Stepan Trofimovich was there, and because everything that had happened to him, as well as everything to do with the Shpigulin men, had been announced to Yulia Mikhailovna as she drove back to town. Lyamshin, who had been left behind for some offense and had not taken part in the excursion, had thus learned everything before anyone else and was able to announce it to her. With malicious glee he raced down the road to Skvoreshniki on a hired Cossack nag to meet the returning cavalcade with the merry news. I suppose Yulia Mikhailovna, in spite of all her lofty resolution, was still a bit embarrassed on hearing such a surprising report; though probably only for a moment. The political side of the question, for instance, could not worry her: Pyotr Stepanovich had already impressed it upon her at least four times that the Shpigulin ruffians all ought to be flogged, and Pyotr Stepanovich had indeed some time since become a great authority for her. "But ... all the same I'll make him pay for it," she must have thought to herself, and the him referred, of course, to her husband. I will note in passing that this time, as if by design, Pyotr Stepanovich also did not take part in the general excursion, and no one had seen him anywhere since that morning. I will also mention, incidentally, that Varvara Petrovna, after receiving her visitors, returned with them to town (in the same carriage with Yulia Mikhailovna), in order to take part without fail in the final meeting of the committee for the next day's fête. She, too, must of course have been interested in the news conveyed by Lyamshin about Stepan Trofimovich, and may even have become worried.
The reckoning with Andrei Antonovich began at once. Alas, he felt it from the first glance at his lovely spouse. With a candid air, with a bewitching smile, she quickly approached Stepan Trofimovich, offered him her charmingly begloved hand, and showered him with the most flattering greetings-—as if her only care that whole morning had been to hasten to rush up and shower kindnesses upon Stepan Trofimovich for seeing him at last in her house. Not a single hint at the morning search; just as though she still knew nothing. Not a single word to her husband, not a single glance in his direction—as though he were not even in the room. Moreover, she at once imperiously confiscated Stepan Trofimovich and led him off to the drawing room—just as if he had not been discussing anything with Lembke, or, if he had been, it was not worth continuing. Again I repeat: it seems to me that despite all her high tone, Yulia Mikhailovna here again made a great blunder. In this she was helped especially by Karmazinov (who had taken part in the excursion at Yulia Mikhailovna's special request, and who thus, albeit indirectly, did finally pay a visit to Varvara Petrovna, by which she, in her faintheartedness, was perfectly delighted). While still in the doorway (he came in later than the others), he cried out on seeing Stepan Trofimovich and made for him with his embraces, even getting in the way of Yulia Mikhailovna.
"It's been ages, ages! At last... Excellent ami.”
He set about kissing and, of course, offered his cheek. The flustered Stepan Trofimovich was obliged to plant a kiss on it.
"Cher," he said to me that evening, recalling everything from the past day, "at that moment I thought: which of us is the meaner? He who is embracing me so as to humiliate me right there, or I who despise him and his cheek and yet kiss it right there, though I could turn away... pah!"
"So, tell me, tell me everything," Karmazinov mumbled and lisped, as though it were possible just to up and tell him one's whole life over twenty-five years. But this silly frivolity was in "high" tone.
"Remember, you and I last saw each other in Moscow, at a dinner in honor of Granovsky,[161] and twenty-four years have passed since then..." Stepan Trofimovich began, quite reasonably (and therefore not at all in high tone).
"Ce cher homme," Karmazinov interrupted shrilly and familiarly, squeezing his shoulder much too amiably with his hand, "but do take us quickly to your rooms, Yulia Mikhailovna, he'll sit down there and tell us everything."
"And yet I've never been on close terms with that irritable old woman," Stepan Trofimovich went on complaining the same evening, shaking with anger. "We were still almost boys, and even then I was beginning to hate him... and he me, of course..."[162]
Yulia Mikhailovna's salon filled up quickly. Varvara Petrovna was in an especially excited state, though she tried to appear indifferent; two or three times I caught her glancing hatefully at Karmazinov or wrathfully at Stepan Trofimovich—wrathful beforehand, wrathful out of jealousy, out of love: if Stepan Trofimovich were somehow to muff it this time and allow Karmazinov to cut him down in front of everyone, it seemed to me she would jump up at once and give him a thrashing. I forgot to mention that Liza was also there, and I had never seen her more joyful, carelessly gay, and happy. Of course, Mavriky Nikolaevich was there, too. Then, in the crowd of young ladies and half-licentious young men who constituted Yulia Mikhailovna's usual retinue, among whom this licentiousness was taken for gaiety and a pennyworth cynicism for intelligence, I noticed two or three new faces: some visiting and much mincing Pole; some German doctor, a hale old fellow who kept laughing loudly and with pleasure at his own witzes;[163] and, finally, some very young princeling from Petersburg, a mechanical figure, with the bearing of a statesman and a terribly long collar. But one could see that Yulia Mikhailovna greatly valued this visitor and was even anxious for her salon...
"Cher monsieur Karmazinoff," Stepan Trofimovich began to speak, sitting himself down picturesquely on the sofa, and suddenly beginning to lisp no worse than Karmazinov, "cher monsieur Karmazinoff, the life of a man of our former time and of certain convictions, even over a span of twenty-five years, must appear monotonous ..."
The German burst into a loud and abrupt guffaw, like a whinny, apparently thinking that Stepan Trofimovich had said something terribly funny. The latter looked at him with affected amazement, which failed, however, to produce any effect. The prince also looked, turning with all his collar towards the German and aiming his pince-nez at him, though without the least curiosity.
". . . Must appear monotonous," Stepan Trofimovich deliberately repeated, drawing each word out as lengthily and unceremoniously as possible. "Such, too, has my life been for this whole quarter of a century, et comme on trouve partout plus de moines que de raison,[cxl] and since I fully agree with that,[164] the result is that for this whole quarter of a century I..."