"Which you overcame, however! Oh, you Bismarck!"[41]
"Bismarck or not, I'm still able to see through falseness and stupidity when I meet them. Lembke is falseness, and Praskovya—stupidity. I've rarely met a more flaccid woman, and moreover her legs are swollen, and moreover she's kind. What could be stupider than someone who is stupid and kind?"
"The wicked kind, ma bonne amie, the wicked kind are even stupider," Stepan Trofimovich parried nobly.
"Perhaps you're right, but do you remember Liza?"
"Charmante enfant!"[xix]
"And no longer an enfant now, but a woman, and a woman of character. Noble and passionate, and what I love in her is that she stands up to her gullible fool of a mother. The whole story took place because of that cousin."
"Hah, but in fact he's not related to Lizaveta Nikolaevna at all... Does he have intentions or something?"
"You see, he's a young officer, very taciturn, even modest. I wish always to be just. It seems to me that he's against the whole intrigue himself and doesn't want anything, and the only finagler was Lembke. He had great respect for Nicolas. You understand, it all depends on Liza, but I left her on excellent terms with Nicolas, and he himself promised me that he would certainly come to us in November. So Lembke alone is intriguing here, and Praskovya is simply a blind woman. She suddenly told me that my suspicions were all a fantasy, and I told her to her face that she was a fool. I'm ready to repeat it at the Last Judgment. And if it weren't for Nicolas, who asked me to let it be for a while, I would never have gone away without exposing that false woman. She paid court to Count K. through Nicolas, she tried to come between a mother and her son. But Liza is on our side, and I came to an understanding with Praskovya. You know she's related to Karmazinov."
"Who? Madame von Lembke?"
"Why, yes. Distantly."
"Karmazinov, the novelist?"
"The writer, yes—why are you surprised? Of course, he considers himself great. A puffed-up creature! She'll bring him with her, and now she's fussing over him there. She intends to introduce something here, some sort of literary gatherings. He'll come for a month, he wants to sell his last estate here. I very nearly met him in Switzerland, not that I really wanted to. However, I hope he will deign to recognize me. In the old days he used to write me letters, he used to visit our house. I wish you were better dressed, Stepan Trofimovich; you're getting more slovenly by the day ... Oh, how you torment me! What are you reading now?"
"I... I..."
"I understand. Friends, drinking parties, club and cards, as usual— and the reputation of an atheist. I don't like this reputation, Stepan Trofimovich. I'd rather you weren't called an atheist, especially now. I've never liked it, in fact, because it's all just empty talk. It must finally be said."
"Mais, ma chère ..."
"Listen, Stepan Trofimovich, compared with you I am, of course, an ignoramus in all matters of learning, but on the way here I was thinking a lot about you. I've arrived at a conviction."
"And what is it?"
"It is that you and I alone are not smarter than everyone else in the world, but that some people are smarter than we are."
"Witty and apt. Some are smarter, meaning some are more right than we are, and therefore we, too, can be mistaken, isn't that so? Mais, ma bonne amie, suppose I am mistaken, but do I not have my all-human, all-time, and supreme right of free conscience? Do I not have the right not to be a bigot and a fanatic if I choose? And for that I shall naturally be hated by various gentlemen till the end of time. Et puis, comme on trouve toujours plus de moines que de raison,[xx] and since I am in perfect agreement with that..."
"What? What did you say?"
"I said: on trouve toujours plus de moines que de raison, and since I am in..."
"That can't be yours; you must have gotten it somewhere."
"Pascal said it."[42]
"Just as I thought ... it wasn't you! Why don't you ever say anything like that, so brief and so apt, instead of dragging it all out so? It's much better than what you said earlier about administrative rapture ..."
"Ma foi, chère[xxi] ... why? First, probably, because I'm not Pascal, after all, et puis... second, we Russians cannot say anything in our own language ... At least we haven't yet..."
"Hm. Perhaps that's not quite true. You ought at least to write down such words and remember them, you know, in the event of a conversation ... Ah, Stepan Trofimovich, on my way I thought of talking with you seriously, seriously!"
"Chère, chère amie!"
"Now that all these Lembkes, all these Karmazinovs... Oh, God, how you've gone to seed! Oh, how you torment me! ... I wished these people to feel respect for you, because they're not worth your finger, your little finger, and look how you carry yourself! What will they see? What am I going to show them? Instead of standing nobly as a witness, of continuing to be an example, you've surrounded yourself with some riffraff, you've acquired some impossible habits, you've grown decrepit, you cannot live without wine and cards, you read nothing but Paul de Kock, and you write nothing, while there they all write; you waste all your time on chatter. Is it possible, is it permissible to be friends with such riffraff as your inseparable Liputin?"
"But why my and why inseparable?" Stepan Trofimovich timidly protested.
"Where is he now?" Varvara Petrovna went on, sternly and sharply.
"He ... he has boundless respect for you, and has gone to S——k to collect his inheritance from his mother."
"Getting money seems to be the only thing he does. What about Shatov? Same as ever?"
"Irascible, mais bon.”
"I can't bear your Shatov; he's angry and thinks too much of himself!"
"How is Darya Pavlovna's health?"
"You mean Dasha? Why her all of a sudden?" Varvara Petrovna looked at him curiously. "She's well, I left her with the Drozdovs ... I heard something about your son in Switzerland, something bad, not good."
"Oh, c'est une histoire bien bête! Je vous attendais, ma bonne amie, pour vous raconter..."[xxii]
"Enough, Stepan Trofimovich, let me rest; I'm exhausted. We'll have time to talk our fill, especially about bad things. You're beginning to splutter when you laugh—there's decrepitude for you! And how strangely you laugh now... God, you're so full of bad habits! Karmazinov will never come to call on you! And they're gleeful over everything here even without that... You've revealed yourself completely now. Well, enough, enough, I'm tired! You might finally spare a person!"
Stepan Trofimovich "spared a person," but he withdrew in perplexity.
V
Our friend had indeed acquired not a few bad habits, especially of late. He had visibly and rapidly gone to seed, and it was true that he had become slovenly. He drank more, grew more tearful and nervous; became overly sensitive to refinement. His face acquired a strange ability to change remarkably quickly, for instance, from the most solemn expression to the most ridiculous and even silly. He could not endure solitude and constantly longed for someone to entertain him at once. He had an absolute need for gossip, for some local anecdote, and it had to be new each day. If no one came for a long time, he wandered dejectedly about his rooms, went up to the windows, pensively chewed his lips, sighed deeply, and finally all but whimpered. He kept having presentiments of something, being afraid of something unexpected, inevitable; he became timorous; began paying great attention to his dreams.