I remember that at that time a rather wide circle had formed, somehow of itself, whose center may indeed have been in Yulia Mikhailovna's drawing room. In this intimate circle that crowded around her—among the young people, of course—all sorts of mischief was allowed and even accepted as a rule, some of it really quite free and easy. The circle included several even very charming ladies. The young people arranged picnics, parties, sometimes rode all around town, in a whole cavalcade, in carriages and on horseback. They sought adventures, even purposely invented some, concocting them themselves, solely for the sake of a merry joke. They treated our town as some sort of Foolsbury.[112] They were called sneerers and jeerers, because there was little they scorned to do. It so happened, for example, that one local lieutenant's wife, still a very young little brunette, though wasted from her husband's ill-keeping, thoughtlessly sat down at a party to play a high-staked hand of whist, hoping to win enough to buy a mantilla, but instead of winning, she lost fifteen roubles. Fearing her husband, and having no money to pay, she decided, recalling her former boldness, to borrow some money on the quiet, right there at the party, from our mayor's son, a very nasty boy, dissipated beyond his years. He not only refused her but also went guffawing to tell her husband. The lieutenant, who indeed lived poorly on nothing but his salary, took his wife home and gave her what for to his heart's content, though she screamed, yelled, and begged forgiveness on her knees. This outrageous story evoked only laughter everywhere in town, and though the poor woman did not belong to the society that surrounded Yulia Mikhailovna, one of the ladies of the "cavalcade," a perky and eccentric character who somehow knew the lieutenant's wife, stopped by her place and quite simply carried her off to her own house. There she was seized upon at once by our pranksters, who petted her, showered her with presents, and kept her for some four days without returning her to her husband. She lived in the perky lady's house, spending whole days driving around town with her and the rest of that frolicsome society, taking part in their merrymaking and dances. Everyone egged her on to haul her husband into court, to start a scandal. She was given assurances that they would all support her and appear as witnesses. The husband was silent, not daring to fight. The poor woman finally grasped that she was up to her ears in trouble, and on the fourth day, at nightfall, half dead with fear, she fled from her protectors to her lieutenant. It is not known precisely what took place between the spouses, but the two shutters of the low wooden house in which the lieutenant rented his lodgings did not open for two weeks. Yulia Mikhailovna was a bit angry with the pranksters when she learned about it all, and was quite displeased with the perky lady's behavior, though the lady had introduced the lieutenant's wife to her on the first day of the abduction. However, it was soon forgotten.
Another time a petty clerk, to all appearances a respectable family man, gave away his daughter, a girl of seventeen and a beauty known to the whole town, to a young man who came to town from another district. Word suddenly went around that on their wedding night the young man dealt rather uncivilly with the beauty, in revenge for his injured honor. Lyamshin, who all but witnessed the affair, because he got drunk at the wedding and stayed in the house overnight, ran around at first light bringing everyone the merry news. Instantly a company of about ten men was formed, all of them on horseback, some on hired Cossack horses, like Pyotr Stepanovich, for example, or Liputin, who, despite his gray hairs, took part at the time in almost all the scandalous adventures of our flighty youth. When the young couple appeared outside in a droshky-and-pair to go around paying calls, as our custom invariably demands on the day after a wedding, mishaps notwithstanding—the whole cavalcade surrounded the droshky, laughing merrily, and accompanied them around town all morning. True, they did not go into the houses, but waited on horseback at the gates; they refrained from any particular insults to the bride and groom, yet they still caused a scandal. The whole town began talking. Of course, everyone laughed heartily. But here von Lembke got angry and again had a lively scene with Yulia Mikhailovna. She, too, got extremely angry, and momentarily intended to deny her house to the pranksters. But the very next day she forgave everyone, after admonitions from Pyotr Stepanovich and a few words from Karmazinov. The latter found the "joke" quite witty.
"These are local ways," he said. "Anyhow it's characteristic and ... bold; and, look, everyone's laughing, you alone are indignant."
But there were some pranks that were intolerable, with a certain tinge.
An itinerant book-hawker appeared in town selling Gospels, a respectable woman, though of tradesman's rank. She was talked about, because the metropolitan newspapers had just published some curious reports on her kind.[113] Again that same rogue, Lyamshin, with the help of some seminarian who was loafing about waiting for a teaching post in the school, while pretending to buy books from her, quietly slipped into her bag a whole bundle of enticing, nasty photographs from abroad, specially donated for the occasion, as was found out later, by a quite venerable old man whose name I shall omit, who had an important decoration around his neck, and who loved, as he put it, "healthy laughter and a merry joke." When the poor woman began taking out her sacred books in the shopping arcade, the photographs spilled out with them. There was laughter, murmuring; the crowd closed in, there was swearing, it would have gone as far as blows if the police had not come in time. The book-hawker was put in the lockup, and only that evening, through the efforts of Mavriky Nikolaevich, who had learned with indignation the intimate details of this vile story, was she freed and sent out of town. This time Yulia Mikhailovna decidedly chased Lyamshin out, but that same evening our entire company brought him to her with the news that he had invented a special new trick on the piano, and talked her into hearing it at least. The trick indeed turned out to be amusing, with the funny title of "The Franco-Prussian War." It began with the fearsome sounds of the "Marseillaise":
Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons![xc]
A bombastic challenge was heard, the intoxication of future victories. But suddenly, together with masterfully varied measures from the anthem, somewhere from the side, down below, in a corner, but very close by, came the vile little strains of "Mein lieber Augustin."[114] The "Marseillaise" does not notice them, the "Marseillaise" is at the peak of her intoxication with her own grandeur; but "Augustin" is gaining strength, "Augustin" is turning insolent, and now the measures of "Augustin" somehow unexpectedly begin to fall in with the measures of the "Marseillaise." She begins to get angry, as it were; she finally notices "Augustin," she wants to shake him off, to chase him away like an importunate, worthless fly, but "Mein lieber Augustin" holds on tight; he is cheerful and confident; he is joyful and insolent; and the "Marseillaise" somehow suddenly becomes terribly stupid; she no longer conceals that she is annoyed and offended; these are cries of indignation, these are tears and oaths, with arms outstretched to providence:
Pas un pouce de notre terrain, pas une pierre de nos forteresses![xci]