"Chère, enough! Don't beg me, I cannot. I will read about the Madonna, but I will raise a storm that will either crush them all, or strike me alone."
"Most likely you alone, Stepan Trofimovich."
"Such is my lot. I will tell of that mean slave, that stinking and depraved lackey, who will be the first to clamber up a ladder with scissors in his hand and slash the divine face of the great ideal in the name of equality, envy, and... digestion. Let my curse thunder out, and then, then..."
"To the madhouse?"
"Perhaps. But in any case, whether I emerge defeated or victorious, that same evening I shall take my bag, my beggar's bag, leave all my belongings, all your presents, all pensions and promises of boons to come, and go off on foot to end my life as a merchant's tutor, or die of hunger somewhere in a ditch. I have spoken. Alea jacta est!"[126]
He again rose slightly.
"I've been sure," Varvara Petrovna rose, flashing her eyes, "for years I've been sure that you lived precisely so that in the end you might disgrace me and my house with slander! What do you mean to say by this tutoring in a merchant's house or dying in a ditch? Spite, slander, and nothing more!"
"You have always despised me; but I will end as a knight faithful to his lady, for your opinion has always been dearest of all to me. From this minute I shall accept nothing, but revere disinterestedly."
"How stupid that is!"
"You have always not respected me. I may have had a myriad of weaknesses. Yes, I was grubbing off you—I speak the language of nihilism—but grubbing was never the highest principle of my actions. It happened just so, of itself, I don't know how ... I always thought that something else remained between us, higher than food, and— never, never have I been a scoundrel! And so, on our way, to set things right! A late way, for it is late autumn outside, mist lies over the fields, the chill hoarfrost of old age covers my future path, and wind howls about the imminent grave... But on our way, our new way:
Filled with love that's pure
And true to the sweet dream...[127]
Oh, my dreams, farewell! Twenty years! Alea jacta est!"
His face was splashed with the tears that suddenly burst through; he took his hat.
"I don't understand Latin," said Varvara Petrovna, holding herself back with all her might.
Who knows, perhaps she also wanted to cry, but indignation and caprice once again got the upper hand.
"I know only one thing, that this is all pranks. You will never be able to carry out your threats, so filled with egoism. You will not go anywhere, not to any merchant, but will end up quite contentedly on my hands, getting a pension and holding Tuesday gatherings of your friends, who bear no resemblance to anything. Farewell, Stepan Trofimovich."
"Alea jacta est!" he bowed deeply to her and returned home half dead with agitation.
6: Pyotr Stepanovich Bustles About
I
The day of the fête had been finally fixed, yet von Lembke was growing more and more sad and pensive. He was full of strange and sinister forebodings, and this worried Yulia Mikhailovna greatly. True, all was not well. Our soft former governor had left the administration in some disorder; at the present moment cholera was approaching; there had been a great loss of cattle in some parts; fires had raged all summer in towns and villages, and among the people a foolish murmuring about arson was more and more taking root. Robbery had increased twice over the previous scale. All of this would, of course, have been more than ordinary had there not been other, weightier reasons which disrupted the peace of the hitherto happy Andrei Antonovich.
What struck Yulia Mikhailovna most was that he was becoming taciturn and, strangely, more secretive every day. And what, she wondered, did he have to be secretive about? True, he rarely opposed her, and for the most part was perfectly obedient. On her insistence, for example, two or three highly risky and all but illegal measures were passed with a view to strengthening the governor's power. Several sinister connivances took place with the same aim; people deserving of the courts and Siberia, for example, were put up for awards solely at her insistence. It was decided to leave certain complaints and inquiries systematically unanswered. All this was found out afterwards. Lembke not only signed everything, but did not even discuss the question of the extent of his wife's participation in the fulfillment of his duties. Instead, at times he would suddenly bridle at "perfect trifles," which surprised Yulia Mikhailovna. Naturally, he felt a need to reward himself for days of obedience with little moments of rebellion. Unfortunately, Yulia Mikhailovna, for all her perspicacity, was unable to understand this noble refinement of a noble character. Alas! she could not be bothered, and that was the cause of many misunderstandings.
It is not for me to tell of certain things, nor would I be able to. To discuss administrative errors is not my business either, and so I shall also omit entirely the whole administrative side. In beginning this chronicle, I set myself other tasks. Besides, much will be uncovered by the investigation that has now been ordered in our province, one need only wait a bit. However, we still cannot avoid certain explanations.
But to continue with Yulia Mikhailovna. The poor lady (I feel very sorry for her) might have attained all that so attracted and beckoned to her (fame and the rest) quite without such strong and eccentric moves as she set herself from the very first. But either from an excess of poetry, or from the long, sad failures of her early youth, she felt suddenly, with the change in her lot, that she was somehow even all too especially called, almost anointed, one "o'er whom this tongue of flame blazed up,"[128] and it was in this tongue that the trouble consisted; after all, it is not a chignon that can go on any woman's head. But there is nothing more difficult than to convince a woman of this truth; on the contrary, anyone who chooses to yes her will succeed, and they all vied with one another in yessing her. The poor woman suddenly found herself the plaything of the most various influences, at the same time fully imagining herself to be original. Many artful dodgers feathered their own nests and took advantage of her simpleheartedness during the brief term of her governorship. And what a hash came of it, under the guise of independence! At the same time she liked large-scale landholding, and the aristocratic element, and the strengthening of the governor's power, and the democratic element, and the new institutions, and order, and freethinking, and little social ideas, and the strict tone of an aristocratic salon, and the all but pot-house casualness of the young people that surrounded her. She dreamed of giving happiness and reconciling the irreconcilable, or, more exactly, of uniting all and sundry in the adoration of her own person. She also had her favorites; she was very fond of Pyotr Stepanovich, who acted, incidentally, through the crudest flattery. But she also liked him for another reason, a most wondrous one and most characteristically revealing of the poor lady: she kept hoping he would point her to a whole state conspiracy! Difficult as it is to imagine, this was so. It seemed to her, for some reason, that there must be a state conspiracy lurking in the province. Pyotr Stepanovich, by his silence in some cases and his hints in others, contributed to the rooting of her strange idea. Whereas she imagined him to be connected with everything revolutionary in Russia, yet at the same time devoted to her to the point of adoration. Uncovering a conspiracy, earning the gratitude of Petersburg, furthering one's career, influencing the youth by "indulgence" so as to keep them on the brink—all this got along quite well in her fantastic head. After all, she had saved, she had won over Pyotr Stepanovich (of this she was for some reason irrefutably certain), and so she would save others. Not a one, not a one of them would perish, she would save them all; she would sort them out; and thus she would report on them; she would act with a view to higher justice, and even history and all of Russian liberalism would perhaps bless her name; and the conspiracy would be uncovered even so. All profits at once.