"Ladies and gentlemen!" he said suddenly, as if venturing all, and at the same time in an almost breaking voice. "Ladies and gentlemen! Only this morning there lay before me one of those lawless papers recently distributed here, and for the hundredth time I was asking myself the question: 'What is its mystery?’“
The entire hall instantly became hushed, all eyes turned to him, some in fear. Yes, indeed, he knew how to get their interest from the first word. Heads were even stuck out from backstage; Liputin and Lyamshin listened greedily. Yulia Mikhailovna waved her hand to me again:
"Stop him, at any cost, stop him!" she whispered in alarm. I merely shrugged; how was it possible to stop a man who has ventured all? Alas, I understood Stepan Trofimovich.
"Aha, it's about the tracts!" was whispered among the public; the whole hall stirred.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I have solved the whole mystery. The whole mystery of their effect lies—in their stupidity!" (His eyes began to flash.) "Yes, ladies and gentlemen, were it an intentional stupidity, counterfeited out of calculation—oh, that would even be a stroke of genius! But we must do them full justice: they have not counterfeited anything. This is the shortest, the barest, the most simplehearted stupidity—c'est la bêtise dans son essence la plus pure, quelque chose comme un simple chimique.[cxliv] Were it just a drop more intelligently expressed, everyone would see at once all the poverty of this short stupidity. But now everyone stands perplexed: no one believes it can be so elementally stupid. 'It can't be that there's nothing more to it,' everyone says to himself, and looks for a secret, sees a mystery, tries to read between the lines—the effect is achieved! Oh, never before has stupidity received so grand a reward, though it has so often deserved it... For, en parenthèse, stupidity, like the loftiest genius, is equally useful in the destinies of mankind..."
"Puns from the forties!" came someone's, incidentally quite modest, voice, but after it everything seemed to break loose; there was loud talking and squawking.
"Hurrah, ladies and gentlemen! I propose a toast to stupidity!" Stepan Trofimovich cried, now in a perfect frenzy, defying the hall.
I ran to him as if on the pretext of pouring him some water.
"Stepan Trofimovich, leave off, Yulia Mikhailovna begs..."
"No, you leave off with me, idle young man!" he fell upon me at the top of his voice. I ran away. "Messieurs!" he went on, "why the excitement, why the shouts of indignation that I hear? I have come with an olive branch. I have brought you the last word, for in this matter the last word is mine—and then we shall make peace."
"Away!" shouted some.
"Quiet, let him speak, let him have his say," another part yelled. Especially excited was the young teacher, who, having once dared to speak, seemed no longer able to stop.
"Messieurs, the last word in this matter is all-forgiveness. I, an obsolete old man, I solemnly declare that the spirit of life blows as ever and the life force is not exhausted in the younger generation. The enthusiasm of modern youth is as pure and bright as in our time. Only one thing has happened: the displacing of purposes, the replacing of one beauty by another! The whole perplexity lies in just what is more beautifuclass="underline" Shakespeare or boots, Raphael or petroleum?"[176]
"Is he an informer?" grumbled some.
"Compromising questions!"
"Agent provocateur!"
"And I proclaim," Stepan Trofimovich shrieked, in the last extremity of passion, "and I proclaim that Shakespeare and Raphael are higher than the emancipation of the serfs, higher than nationality, higher than socialism, higher than the younger generation, higher than chemistry, higher than almost all mankind, for they are already the fruit, the real fruit of all mankind, and maybe the highest fruit there ever may be! A form of beauty already achieved, without the achievement of which I might not even consent to live... Oh, God!" he clasped his hands, "ten years ago I cried out in the same way from a platform in Petersburg, exactly the same things and in the same words, and in exactly the same way they understood nothing, they laughed and hissed, as now; short people, what more do you need in order to understand? And do you know, do you know that mankind can live without the Englishman, it can live without Germany, it can live only too well without the Russian man, it can live without science, without bread, and it only cannot live without beauty, for then there would be nothing at all to do in the world! The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here! Science itself would not stand for a minute without beauty—are you aware of that, you who are laughing?—it would turn into boorishness, you couldn't invent the nail! ... I will not yield!" he cried absurdly in conclusion, and banged his fist on the table with all his might.
But while he was shrieking without sense or order, the order in the hall was also breaking up. Many jumped from their places, some surged forward, closer to the platform. Generally, it all happened much more quickly than I am describing, and there was no time to take measures. Perhaps there was no wish to, either.
"It's fine for you, with everything provided, spoiled brats!" the same seminarian bellowed, right by the platform, gleefully baring his teeth at Stepan Trofimovich. He noticed it and leaped up to the very edge:
"Was it not I, was it not I who just declared that the enthusiasm of the younger generation is as pure and bright as it ever was, and that it is perishing only for being mistaken about the forms of the beautiful? Is that not enough for you? And if you take it that this was proclaimed by a crushed, insulted father, how then—oh, you short ones—how then is it possible to stand higher in impartiality and tranquillity of vision?... Ungrateful... unjust... why, why do you not want to make peace! ..."
And he suddenly burst into hysterical sobs. He wiped away the flood of tears with his fingers. His shoulders and chest were shaking with sobs... He forgot everything in the world.
The public was decidedly seized with fright, almost everyone rose from their places. Yulia Mikhailovna also jumped up quickly, seized her husband's arm, and pulled him from the chair... The scandal was going beyond bounds.
"Stepan Trofimovich!" the seminarian bellowed joyfully. "Here in town and in the vicinity we've now got Fedka the Convict, an escaped convict, wandering around. He robs people, and just recently committed a new murder. Allow me to ask: if you had not sent him to the army fifteen years ago to pay off a debt at cards—that is, if you had not quite simply lost him in a card game—tell me, would he have wound up at hard labor? Would he go around putting a knife in people, as he does now, in his struggle for existence? What have you got to say, mister aesthete?"
I refuse to describe the ensuing scene. First, there was furious applause. Not everyone applauded, only some fifth part of the hall, but they applauded furiously. The rest of the public surged towards the exit, but since the applauding part of the public was still crowding towards the platform, there was general confusion. Ladies cried out, some young girls started weeping and begged to be taken home. Lembke, standing by his seat, kept glancing around wildly and quickly. Yulia Mikhailovna was quite lost—for the first time during her career among us. As for Stepan Trofimovich, for the first moment he was, it seemed, literally crushed by the seminarian's words; but suddenly he raised both arms, as if stretching them out over the public, and screamed:
"I shake off the dust from my feet[177] and curse you... The end... the end..."