"What on earth is this?" muttered a buffet person in one group.
"Some sort of silliness."
"Literature of some sort. They're criticizing the Voice.”
"What do I care."
From another group:
"Asses!"
"No, they're not asses, we're asses."
"Why are you an ass?"
"I'm not an ass."
"If you're not an ass, I'm certainly not either."
From a third group:
"Give them all a good pasting and to hell with them!"
"Shake the whole hall up!"
From a fourth:
"Aren't the Lembkas ashamed to look?"
"Why should they be ashamed? You're not ashamed, are you?"
"I am, too, ashamed, and he's the governor."
"And you are a swine."
"Never in my life have I seen such an utterly ordinary ball," one lady said venomously right beside Yulia Mikhailovna, obviously wishing to be heard. The lady was about forty, thick-set and rouged, wearing a bright silk dress; almost everyone in town knew her, but no one received her. She was the widow of a state councillor, who had left her a wooden house and a scanty pension, but she lived well and kept horses. About two months earlier she had paid a first call on Yulia Mikhailovna, but she did not receive her.
"Exactly what one might have foreseen," she added, insolently peeking into Yulia Mikhailovna's eyes.
"If you could foresee it, why then were you so good as to come?" Yulia Mikhailovna could not help saying.
"Why, out of naivety," the perky lady snapped at once, getting all fluttered up (she wished terribly to have a fight); but the general stepped between them.
"Chère dame, " he bent towards Yulia Mikhailovna, "you really ought to leave. We are only hindering them, and without us they will have excellent fun. You have fulfilled everything, you have opened the ball for them, so now let them be... Besides, it seems Andrei Antonovich is not feeling quite sa-tis-fac-torily... To avoid trouble?"
But it was too late.
Throughout the quadrille, Andrei Antonovich gazed at the dancers in some wrathful perplexity, and when the public began to comment, he began to look around uneasily. Here, for the first time, certain of the buffet personages caught his attention; his eyes expressed extraordinary surprise. Suddenly there was loud laughter over one antic of the quadrille: the publisher of the "formidable non-Petersburg publication," who was dancing with a club in his hands, feeling finally that he could no longer endure the spectacles of "honest Russian thought" fixed on him, and not knowing where to hide, suddenly, during the last figure, went to meet the spectacles walking upside down—which, incidentally, was to signify the constant turning upside down of common sense in the "formidable non-Petersburg publication." Since Lyamshin was the only one who knew how to walk upside down, he had undertaken to represent the publisher with the club. Yulia Mikhailovna was decidedly unaware that there was going to be any walking upside down. "They concealed it from me, they concealed it," she repeated to me afterwards, in despair and indignation. The guffawing of the crowd greeted, of course, not the allegory, which nobody cared about, but simply the walking upside down in a coat with tails. Lembke boiled over and started shaking.
"Scoundrel!" he cried, pointing to Lyamshin. "Seize the blackguard, turn him... turn his legs ... his head ... so his head is up... up!"
Lyamshin jumped back to his feet. The guffawing was getting louder.
"Throw out all the scoundrels who are laughing!" Lembke suddenly prescribed. The crowd began to buzz and rumble.
"That's not right, Your Excellency."
"Shouldn't abuse the public, sir."
"A fool yourself!" came a voice from somewhere in a corner.
"Filibusters!" someone shouted from the other end.
Lembke quickly turned at the shout and went all pale. A dull smile appeared on his lips—as if he had suddenly understood and remembered something.
"Gentlemen," Yulia Mikhailovna addressed the oncoming crowd, at the same time drawing her husband away with her, "gentlemen, excuse Andrei Antonovich, Andrei Antonovich is unwell... excuse... forgive him, gentlemen!"
I precisely heard her say "forgive." The scene went very quickly. But I decidedly remember that part of the public rushed from the hall at that same moment, as if in fright, precisely after these words of Yulia Mikhailovna's. I even remember one hysterical woman's tearful cry:
"Ah, again like before!"
And suddenly, into what was already the beginnings of a crush, a bomb struck, precisely "again like before":
"Fire! All of Zarechye's in flames!"
I only do not remember where this terrible cry first arose—whether it was in the hall, or, as it now seems, someone ran in from the front steps—but it was followed by such alarm as I cannot even begin to describe. More than half of the public assembled at the ball came from Zarechye—owners of wooden houses there, or inhabitants of them. People rushed to the windows, instantly pulled open the curtains, tore down the blinds. Zarechye was ablaze. True, the fire was still just beginning, but it was blazing in three completely different places—and that was what was frightening.
"Arson! The Shpigulin men!" came screams from the crowd.
I remember several rather characteristic exclamations:
"I just felt in my heart that they'd set fire to it, all these days I've been feeling it!"
"It's the Shpigulin men, the Shpigulin men, and no one else!"
"And they gathered us here on purpose so they could set fires over there!"
This last, most astonishing cry came from a woman—the inadvertent, involuntary cry of a burnt-out Korobochka.[182] All surged towards the exit. I will not describe the crush in the entryway as people hunted for their fur coats, shawls, and cloaks, the shrieks of frightened women, the weeping of young girls. There was hardly any theft, but it was not surprising that in such disorder some people simply left without their warm clothes, unable to find them, of which there was talk in town for a long time afterwards, with legends and embellishments. Lembke and Yulia Mikhailovna were nearly crushed by the crowd in the doorway.
"Stop them all! Let no one leave!" Lembke screamed, holding out a menacing arm to meet the crowding people. "The strictest search of every last man of them, at once!"
Strong oaths poured from the hall.
"Andrei Antonovich! Andrei Antonovich!" Yulia Mikhailovna cried out in complete despair.
"Arrest her first!" the man shouted, pointing a menacing finger at her. "Search her first! The ball was organized with the intent of arson..."
She gave a cry and fainted (oh, it was most assuredly a real faint). The prince, the general, and I rushed to help her; there were others who helped us in this difficult moment, even from among the ladies. We carried the unfortunate woman out of that hell and into her carriage; but she came to her senses only as we neared her house, and her first cry was again about Andrei Antonovich. With the destruction of all her fantasies, Andrei Antonovich alone remained before her. A doctor was sent for. I spent a whole hour waiting at her place, as did the prince; the general, in a fit of magnanimity (though very frightened himself), wanted not to leave "the unfortunate woman's bedside" all night, but in ten minutes had fallen asleep in the drawing room while waiting for the doctor, and we simply left him there in his armchair.
The police chief, hastening from the ball to the fire, managed to lead Andrei Antonovich out behind us and tried to put him into Yulia Mikhailovna's carriage, persuading His Excellency with all his might to "take repose." I do not understand why, but he did not prevail. Of course, Andrei Antonovich would not even hear of repose and was straining to get to the fire; but this was no reason. It ended with the police chief taking him to the fire in his droshky. He told later that Lembke kept gesticulating all the way and "was shouting out such ideas as, being extraordinary, were impossible to obey." Afterwards it was reported that in those moments His Excellency was already in a state of brain fever owing to "a suddenness of fright."