"Eh... mais je crois que c'est l'Évangile;[clxxv] with the greatest pleasure... Ah, I understand now... Vous êtes ce qu 'on appelle a book-hawker;[clxxvi] I've read of it more than once... Fifty kopecks?"
"Thirty-five kopecks each," the book-hawker answered.
"With the greatest pleasure. Je n 'ai rien contre l'Évangile, et[clxxvii] .... I've long wanted to reread ..."
It flitted through him at that moment that he had not read the Gospel for at least thirty years, and had merely recalled a bit of it perhaps seven years ago only from reading Renan's book, La Vie de Jésus.[199] As he had no change, he pulled out his four ten-rouble bills—all he had. The mistress undertook to break one, and only now did he take a better look and notice that a good many people had gathered in the cottage and had all been watching him for some time and seemed to be talking about him. They also discussed the fire in town, the owner of the cart with the cow most of all, since he had just come from there. They were talking about arson, about the Shpigulin men.
"He never said a word to me about the fire while he was driving me, and yet he talked about everything," it somehow occurred to Stepan Trofimovich.
"Good sir, Stepan Trofimovich, is it you I see? I really never dreamed! ... Don't you recognize me?" exclaimed an elderly fellow, an old-time household serf by the looks, with a shaven beard and wearing a greatcoat with long, turned-back lapels.
Stepan Trofimovich was frightened at hearing his own name.
"Excuse me," he muttered, "I don't quite remember you..."
"No recollection! But I'm Anisim, Anisim Ivanov. I served the late Mr. Gaganov, and saw you, sir, many a time with Varvara Petrovna at the late Avdotya Sergevna's. I used to come to you from her with books, and twice brought Petersburg candy she sent to you..."
"Ah, yes, I remember you, Anisim," Stepan Trofimovich smiled. "So you live here?"
"Near Spasov, sir, by the V—— monastery, on Marfa Sergevna's estate, that's Avdotya Sergevna's sister, you may be pleased to remember her, she broke her leg jumping out of a carriage on her way to a ball. She now lives near the monastery, and me with her, sir; and now, if you please, I'm on my way to the provincial capital, to visit my family..."
"Ah, yes, yes."
"I saw you and it made me glad, you were ever kind to me, sir," Anisim was smiling rapturously. "And where is it you're going like this, sir, it seems you're all alone... Seems you never used to go out alone, sir?"
Stepan Trofimovich looked at him timorously.
"It mightn't be to our Spasov, sir?" "Yes, to Spasov. Il me semble que tout le monde va à Spassof . . ."[clxxviii]
"It mightn't be to Fyodor Matveevich's? Won't he be glad of you. He had such respect for you in the old days; even now he often remembers you..."
"Yes, yes, to Fyodor Matveevich's."
"Must be so, sir, must be so. You've got the peasants here marveling; they let on, sir, that they supposedly met you on foot on the high road. Foolish folk, sir."
"I... It's... You know, Anisim, I made a wager, as Englishmen do, that I could get there on foot, and I..."
Sweat stood out on his forehead and temples.
"Must be so, sir, must be so..." Anisim listened with merciless curiosity. But Stepan Trofimovich could not bear it any longer. He was so abashed that he wanted to get up and leave the cottage. But the samovar was brought in, and at the same moment the book-hawker, who had stepped out somewhere, came back. He turned to her with the gesture of a man saving his own life, and offered her tea. Anisim yielded and walked away.
Indeed, perplexity had been emerging among the peasants.
"Who is this man? Found walking down the road, says he's a teacher, dressed like a foreigner, reasons like a little child, answers nonsensically, as if he'd run away from somebody, and he's got money!" There was beginning to be some thought of reporting to the authorities—"since anyway things are not so quiet in town." But Anisim settled it all that same minute. Stepping out to the front hall, he told everyone who cared to listen that Stepan Trofimovich was not really a teacher, but was "himself a great scholar and occupied with great studies, and was a local landowner himself and had lived for the past twenty-two years with the full general's widow Stavrogin, in place of the chiefest man in the house, and had great respect from everyone in town. He used to leave fifty or a hundred roubles of an evening in the gentlemen's club, and in rank he was a councillor, which is the same as a lieutenant colonel in the army, just one step lower than full colonel. And that he's got money is because through the full general's widow Stavrogin he has more money than you could count," and so on and so forth.
"Mais c'est une dame, et très comme il faut,"[clxxix] Stepan Trofimovich was resting from Anisim's attack, observing with pleasant curiosity his neighbor, the book-hawker, who, however, was drinking her tea from the saucer with sugar on the side.[200] "Ce petit morceau de sucre ce n'est rien[clxxx]... There is in her something noble and independent and at the same time—quiet. Le comme il faut tout pur,[clxxxi] only of a somewhat different sort."
He soon learned from her that she was Sofya Matveevna Ulitin, and actually lived in ——, where she had a widowed sister, a tradeswoman; she herself was also a widow, and her husband, a sublieutenant who had risen to that rank from sergeant major, had been killed at Sebastopol.[201]
"But you're so young, vous n'avez pas trente ans. "[clxxxii]
"Thirty-four, sir," Sofya Matveevna smiled.
"So, you also understand French?"
"A little, sir; I lived in a noble house for four years after that and picked it up from the children there."
She told him that being left after her husband at the age of eighteen, she had stayed for a while in Sebastopol "as a sister of mercy," and had then lived in various places, sir, and now here she was going around selling the Gospel.
"Mais mon Dieu, it wasn't you who were involved in that strange, even very strange, story in our town?"
She blushed; it turned out to have been she.
"Ces vauriens, ces malheureux![clxxxiii] . . ." he tried to begin, in a voice trembling with indignation; a painful and hateful recollection echoed tormentingly in his heart. For a moment he became as if oblivious.
"Hah, she's gone again," he suddenly came to himself, noticing that she was no longer beside him. "She steps out frequently and is preoccupied with something, I notice she's even worried... Bah, je deviens égoïste . . ."[clxxxiv]
He looked up and again saw Anisim, this time in the most threatening circumstances. The whole cottage was filled with peasants, all apparently dragged there by Anisim. The proprietor was there, and the peasant with the cow, and another two peasants (they turned out to be coachmen), and some other half-drunk little man, dressed like a peasant but clean-shaven, who resembled a besotted tradesman and was talking more than anyone else. And they were all discussing him, Stepan Trofimovich. The peasant with the cow stood his ground, insisting that along the shore would be about a thirty-mile detour, and that it had to be by steamer-boat. The half-drunk tradesman and the proprietor hotly objected: