Текст книги "Demons"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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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 happinessand 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.
But, even so, it was necessary that Andrei Antonovich be a bit brighter for the fête. He absolutely had to be cheered up and reassured. She sent Pyotr Stepanovich to him on this mission, in hopes that he might influence his despondency in some reassuring way known only to himself. Perhaps even with some information delivered, so to speak, at first mouth. She trusted entirely to his adroitness. It was long since Pyotr Stepanovich had been in Mr. von Lembke's study. He flew in precisely at a moment when the patient was in a particularly tense mood.
II
A certain combination had occurred which Mr. von Lembke was simply unable to resolve. In one district (the same one in which Pyotr Stepanovich had recently been feasting) a certain sub-lieutenant had been subjected to a verbal reprimand by his immediate commander. This had happened in front of the whole company. The sub-lieutenant was still a young man, recently come from Petersburg, always sullen and taciturn, with an air of importance, but at the same time short, fat, red-cheeked. He could not endure the reprimand and suddenly charged at his commander with some sort of unexpected shriek that astonished the whole company, his head somehow savagely lowered; struck him and bit him on the shoulder as hard as he could; they were barely able to pull him away. There was no doubt that he had lost his mind; in any case it was discovered that he had been noted lately for the most impossible oddities. For example, he had thrown two icons belonging to his landlord out of his apartment, and chopped one of them up with an axe; and in his room he had placed the works of Vogt, Moleschott, and Buchner [129]on stands like three lecterns, and before each lectern kept wax church candles burning. From the number of books found in his place it could be concluded that he was a well-read man. If he had had fifty thousand francs, he might have sailed off to the Marquesas Islands like that "cadet" mentioned with such merry humor by Mr. Herzen in one of his works. [130]When he was taken, a whole bundle of the most desperate tracts was found in his pockets and in his lodgings.
Tracts are an empty affair of themselves, and in my opinion not at all worrisome. As if we haven't seen enough of them. Besides, these were not even new tracts: exactly the same ones, it was said later, had been spread recently in Kh– province, and Liputin, who had been in the district capital and the neighboring province about a month and a half earlier, insisted that he had already seen exactly the same leaflets there. But what chiefly struck Andrei Antonovich was that just at the same time the manager of the Shpigulin factory turned in to the police two or three bundles of exactly the same leaflets as the sublieutenant's, which had been left at the factory during the night. The bundles had not even been undone yet, and none of the workers had had time to read even one. The fact was silly, but Andrei Antonovich fell to pondering strenuously. The affair appeared unpleasantly complicated to him.
In this factory of the Shpigulins there was just beginning that very "Shpigulin story" which caused so much shouting among us and was then passed on with such variations to the metropolitan newspapers. About three weeks previously a worker there had fallen ill and died of Asian cholera; then several more people fell ill. Everyone in town got scared, because cholera was approaching from the neighboring province. I will note that all possibly satisfactory sanitary measures were taken in our town to meet the uninvited guest. But the factory of the Shpigulins, who were millionaires and people with connections, was somehow overlooked. And so everyone suddenly started screaming that it was there that the root and hotbed of disease lay and that the uncleanliness of the factory itself, and especially of the workers' quarters, was so inveterate that even if there had been no cholera, it would have generated there of itself. Naturally, measures were taken at once, and Andrei Antonovich vigorously insisted that they be carried out immediately. The factory was cleaned up in about three weeks, but then for some reason the Shpigulins closed it. One of the Shpigulin brothers resided permanently in Petersburg, and the other, after the order from the authorities about the cleaning, left for Moscow. The manager began paying off the workers and, as it now turns out, was brazenly cheating them. The workers began to murmur, wanted their rightful pay, were foolish enough to go to the police, though without making a great noise or really causing much trouble. It was just at this time that the tracts were turned in to Andrei Antonovich by the manager.
Pyotr Stepanovich flew into the study unannounced, like a good friend and familiar, and with an errand from Yulia Mikhailovna besides. Seeing him, von Lembke scowled sullenly and stopped inimically by his desk. Before then he had been pacing the study, discussing something in private with his chancery official Blum, an extremely awkward and sullen German whom he had brought from Petersburg over the most strenuous opposition of Yulia Mikhailovna. When Pyotr Stepanovich entered, the official retreated to the door, but did not leave. It even seemed to Pyotr Stepanovich that he somehow exchanged significant looks with his superior.
"Oho, caught you this time, you cagey burgomaster!" Pyotr Stepanovich cried out, laughing, and he placed the flat of his hand over the tract lying on the table. "Adding to your collection, eh?"
Andrei Antonovich flared up. Something suddenly became as if distorted in his face.
"Leave off, leave off at once!" he cried, starting with wrath, "and do not dare ... sir..."
"What's the matter with you? You seem angry?"
"Allow me to tell you, my dear sir, that henceforth I by no means intend to suffer your sans-façon, [xciv]and I ask you to recall..."
"Pah, the devil, he really means it!"
"Be still, be still!" von Lembke stamped his feet on the carpet, "and do not dare..."
God knows what it might have come to. Alas, there was one further circumstance here, besides all the rest, which was quite unknown both to Pyotr Stepanovich and even to Yulia Mikhailovna herself. The unhappy Andrei Antonovich had reached a point of such distress that lately he had begun to be secretly jealous about his wife and Pyotr Stepanovich. Alone, especially at night, he had endured some most unpleasant moments.
"And I thought that if a man reads you his novel for two days running, in private, past midnight, and wants your opinion, then he's at least beyond these officialities... Yulia Mikhailovna receives me on a friendly footing; who can figure you out?" Pyotr Stepanovich pronounced, even with some dignity. "Here's your novel, by the way," he placed on the desk a large, weighty notebook, rolled into a tube and entirely wrapped in dark blue paper.
Lembke blushed and faltered.
"Where did you find it?" he asked cautiously, with a flood of joy that he could not contain and that he tried nevertheless to contain with all his might.
"Imagine, it fell behind the chest of drawers, rolled up just as it was. I must have tossed it carelessly on the chest as I came in. It was found only two days ago, when they were scrubbing the floors—and what a job you gave me, really!"
Lembke sternly lowered his eyes.
"Thanks to you I haven't slept for two nights running. They found it two days ago, but I kept it, I've been reading it, I have no time during the day, so I did it at night. Well, sir, and—I'm not pleased: can't warm up to the idea. Spit on it, however, I've never been a critic, but—I couldn't tear myself away, my dear, even though I'm not pleased! The fourth and fifth chapters are ... are ... are ... the devil knows what! And so crammed with humor, I laughed out loud. No, you really know how to poke fun sans que cela paraisse! [xcv] Well, but the ninth, the tenth, it's all about love, not my thing; makes an effect, however; and I almost started blubbering over Igrenev's letter, though you present him so subtly... You know, there's feeling there, and at the same time you want to present him as if with a false side, right? Have I guessed, or not? Well, and for the ending I'd simply thrash you. What is it you're pushing there? Why, it's the same old deification of family happiness, of the multiplying of children, and capital, and they lived happily ever after, for pity's sake! You'll charm the reader, because even I couldn't tear myself away, but so much the worse. Readers are as stupid as ever, intelligent people ought to shake them up, while you... But enough, though. Good-bye. Next time don't be angry; I had a couple of important little words to say to you; but you seem somehow..."
Andrei Antonovich meanwhile took his novel and locked it up in the oak bookcase, having managed in the meantime to wink at Blum to efface himself. The latter vanished with a long and sad face.
"I do not seem somehow,I'm simply... nothing but troubles," he muttered, scowling, though no longer wrathfully, and sitting down at the desk. "Sit down and tell me your two little words. I haven't seen you for a long time, Pyotr Stepanovich, only in future don't come flying in with that manner of yours... sometimes, when one is busy, it's..."
"I always have the same manners..."
"I know, sir, and I believe it is unintentional, but sometimes, amidst all this bustle ... Sit down now."
Pyotr Stepanovich sprawled on the sofa and immediately tucked his legs up.
III
"And what is all this bustle—you can't mean these trifles?" he nodded towards the tract. "I can drag in as many of these leaflets as you like, I already made their acquaintance in Kh– province."
"You mean, when you were living there?"
"Well, naturally, not when I wasn't. There's a vignette, a drawing of an axe, at the top. [131]Excuse me" (he picked up the tract), "ah, yes, here's the axe; it's the same one, exactly."
"Yes, an axe. See—an axe."
"And what, are you afraid of the axe?"
"Not of the axe... and not afraid, sir, but this matter is... such a matter, there are circumstances here."
"Which? That they were turned in from the factory? Heh, heh. You know, you'll soon have the workers at that factory writing tracts themselves."
"How's that?" von Lembke stared sternly.
"Just so. With you looking on. You're too soft, Andrei Antonovich; you write novels. What's needed here are the old methods."
"What do you mean, the old methods, what sort of advice is that? The factory has been cleaned up; I gave orders, it was cleaned up."
"Yet there's rioting among the workers. They all ought to be whipped, and there's an end to it."
"Rioting? Nonsense, I gave orders and it was cleaned up."
"Eh, what a soft man you are, Andrei Antonovich!"
"In the first place, I am by no means so soft, and in the second ..." von Lembke felt stung again. He forced himself to talk with the young man out of curiosity, on the chance that he might tell him a little something new.
"Ahh, again an old acquaintance!" Pyotr Stepanovich interrupted, sighting another sheet of paper under the paperweight, also looking like a tract, apparently of foreign imprint, but in verse. "Why, this one I know by heart, it's 'The Shining Light.' Let me see: yes, so it is, 'The Shining Light.' I've been acquainted with this light ever since I was abroad. Where did you dig it up?"
"You say you saw it abroad?" von Lembke roused himself.
"Sure thing, about four months ago, or even five."
"You saw quite a lot abroad, however," von Lembke glanced at him subtly. Pyotr Stepanovich, without listening, unfolded the paper and read the poem aloud:
The Shining Light
A man of high birth he was not, Among the people he cast his lot.
Hounded by the wrath of tsars, The jealous malice of boyars, He from suffering drew not back, From torment, torture, nor the rack, But firm before the people stood, For liberty, equality, and brotherhood.
And when rebellion once was sparked, He then for foreign lands embarked, Escaping thus the tsar's redoubt, The tongs, the hangman, and the knout, While the people, cursing empty skies, Against harsh fate prepared to rise, And from Smolensk to far Tashkent Awaited only the student.
All were awaiting his return So they could go without concern To rid themselves of cruel boyars, To rid themselves of greedy tsars, To hold all property as one, And take their just revenge upon Marriage, church, and family ties– Evils in which the old world lies. [132]
"You must have taken it from that officer, eh?" Pyotr Stepanovich asked.
"So you have the honor of knowing that officer as well?"
"Sure thing. I feasted with them there for two days. He was bound to lose his mind."
"Perhaps he never did lose his mind."
"You mean since he started biting?"
"But, I beg your pardon, if you saw this poem abroad, and then, it turns out, here at this officer's..."
"What, intricate? I see, so you're examining me, Andrei Antonovich? You see, sir," he began suddenly, with unusual importance, "of what I saw abroad I already gave my explanations to certain persons on my return, and my explanations were found satisfactory, otherwise I would not have bestowed the happiness of my presence upon this town. I think that my affairs in that sense are done with, and that I do not owe any reports. Done with, not because I am an informer, but because I was unable to act otherwise. Those who wrote to Yulia Mikhailovna, knowing the situation, said I was an honest man... Well, and that's all, devil take it, because I came to tell you something serious, and it's a good thing you sent that chimney sweep of yours away. The matter is important for me, Andrei Antonovich; I have an extraordinary request to make of you."
"A request? Hm, please do, I'm waiting, and, I confess, with curiosity. And generally I will add that you rather surprise me, Pyotr Stepanovich."
Von Lembke was in some agitation. Pyotr Stepanovich crossed his legs.
"In Petersburg," he began, "I spoke candidly about many things, but certain other things—this, for instance" (he tapped "The Shining Light" with his finger), "I passed over in silence, first, because it wasn't worth speaking about, and second, because I answered only what I was asked. I don't like getting ahead of myself in that sense; here I see the difference between a scoundrel and an honest man, who quite simply was overtaken by circumstances... Well, in short, let's set that aside. Well, sir, and now... now that these fools... well, now that this has come out and is in your hands and, I see, will not be concealed from you—because you are a man with eyes, and you can't be second-guessed, whereas these fools are still going on with it—I... I... well, yes, in short, I've come to ask you to save one man, one more fool, a madman perhaps, in the name of his youth, his misfortunes, in the name of your own humaneness ... It can't be that you're so humane only in novels of your own fabrication!" he suddenly broke off his speech impatiently and with rude sarcasm.
In short, one beheld a direct man, but an awkward and impolitic one, owing to an excess of humane feeling and a perhaps unnecessary ticklishness—above all, a none-too-bright man, as von Lembke judged at once with extreme subtlety, and as he had long supposed him to be, especially during the last week, alone in his study, especially at night, when he privately cursed him with all his might for his inexplicable successes with Yulia Mikhailovna.
"For whom do you make this request, and what does it all signify?" he inquired imposingly, trying to conceal his curiosity.
"It's... it's ... ah, the devil... Am I to blame for believing in you? Am I really to blame for considering you a most noble man and, above all, a sensible one... that is, capable of understanding ... ah, the devil..."
The poor fellow was apparently unable to control himself.
"Do finally understand," he went on, "do understand that by giving you his name, I'm really betraying him to you; I'm betraying him, right? Right?"
"But how am I to guess, however, if you can't bring yourself to say it?"
"That's just it, you always chop it down with that logic of yours, the devil ... so, the devil... this 'shining light,' this 'student'—it's Shatov ... so, there it is!"
"Shatov? That is, how is it Shatov?"
"Shatov, he's the 'student,' the one that's mentioned. He lives here, the former serf, well, the one who gave that slap."
"I know, I know!" Lembke narrowed his eyes. "But, excuse me, what in fact is he accused of, and, most chiefly, what are you interceding for?"
"I'm asking you to save him, do you understand! I've known him since eight years ago, you might say we used to be friends," Pyotr Stepanovich was turning himself inside out. "Well, I really don't owe you any reports on my former life," he waved his hand. "It's all insignificant, all just three men and a half, and with the ones abroad it wouldn't even make ten, and the main thing is that I was counting on your humaneness, your intelligence. You'll understand and you yourself will show the matter in the right way, not as God knows what, but as the foolish dream of a madcap... from misfortunes, mind you, from long misfortunes, and not as devil knows what sort of unprecedented state conspiracy! ..."
He was almost breathless.
"Hm. I see he's to blame for the tracts with the axe," Lembke concluded almost majestically, "but, excuse me, if he's alone, how could he have spread them both here and in other districts, and even in Kh– province, and ... and, finally, the main thing is– Where'd he get them?"
"But I'm telling you there are apparently five of them in all, or maybe ten, how should I know?"
"You don't know?"
"But how should I know, devil take it?"
"You did know, however, that Shatov was one of the accomplices?"
"Ehh!" Pyotr Stepanovich waved his arm, as if warding off the overwhelming perspicacity of the inquirer. "Well, listen, I'll tell you the whole truth: I know nothing about the tracts, I mean nothing whatsoever, devil take it, do you understand what nothing means? ... Well, of course, that sub-lieutenant, and someone else besides, and someone else here... well, and maybe Shatov, well, and someone else besides, well, that's all, trash and measliness... but I came to plead for Shatov, he must be saved, because this poem is his, he wrote it, and it was published abroad through him; that much I know for sure, but I know nothing whatsoever about the tracts."
"If the verses are his, then most likely the tracts are, too. On what grounds, however, do you suspect Mr. Shatov?"
Pyotr Stepanovich, with the air of a man who has finally lost all patience, snatched his wallet from his pocket, and from it took a note.
"Here are the grounds!" he cried, throwing it on the desk. Lembke unfolded it; the note, as it turned out, had been written about half a year before, from here to somewhere abroad; it was a short note, a couple of words:
Am unable to print "The Shining Light" here; that or anything else; print it abroad.
IV: Shatov
Lembke stared fixedly at Pyotr Stepanovich. Varvara Petrovna correctly referred to his having something of a sheep's gaze, especially at times.
"I mean, this is what it is," Pyotr Stepanovich lurched ahead. "That he wrote these verses here, half a year ago, but couldn't print them here, well, on some secret press—and so he asks for them to be printed abroad... that seems clear?"
"Yes, it's clear, sir, but whom is he asking?—that still isn't clear," Lembke remarked, with the most cunning irony.
"But, Kirillov, finally; the note was written to Kirillov abroad... Didn't you know? What's annoying is that you may only be pretending with me, and knew about these verses a long, long time ago, that's the thing! How else would they turn up on your desk? They did get there somehow! So why are you tormenting me?"
He convulsively wiped the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief.
"I am perhaps informed about certain things..." Lembke dodged adroitly, "but who is this Kirillov?"
"Well, so, he's this visiting engineer, acted as Stavrogin's second, a maniac, a madman; your sub-lieutenant may indeed just have brain fever, but this one is totally mad—totally, I guarantee it. Ehh, Andrei Antonovich, if the government only knew what sort of people they are, the lot of them, they wouldn't raise a hand against them. They're all ripe for Bedlam as it is; I saw enough of them in Switzerland and at congresses."
"From where they direct the movement here?"
"Yes, and who is directing it?—three men and another half. One just gets bored looking at them. And what is this movement here? These tracts, or what? And look who they've recruited—brain-sick sublieutenants and two or three students! You're an intelligent man, here's a question for you: Why don't they recruit more significant people, why is it always students and twenty-two-year-old dunces? And how many are there? They must have a million bloodhounds out searching, and how many have they found in all? Seven men. I'm telling you, one gets bored."
Lembke listened attentively, but with an air that seemed to say: "You can't catch an old bird with chaff."
"Excuse me, however, you were pleased to insist just now that the note was addressed abroad; but there's no address here; how is it known to you that the note was addressed to Mr. Kirillov, and, finally, abroad, and... and... that it was in fact written by Mr. Shatov?"
"But just get Shatov's handwriting and check. Some signature of his is bound to turn up in your chancery. And as for its being to Kirillov, it was Kirillov himself who showed it to me right then."
"So you yourself..."
"Well, yes, of course, so I myself. They showed me all kinds of things there. And about these verses, it was supposedly the late Herzen who wrote them for Shatov while he was still wandering abroad, supposedly in memory of their meeting, as praise, as a recommendation—ah, well, the devil... so Shatov is spreading it among the young people. Herzen's own opinion of me, he says."
"Tsk, tsk, tsk," Lembke finally figured it all out, "and here I was thinking: the tracts I understand, but why the verses?"
"But how could you not understand? And devil knows why I'm spilling it all out to you! Listen, you give me Shatov, and the devil take all the rest, even with Kirillov, who has now locked himself up in Filippov's house, where Shatov also lives, and is lying low. They don't like me, because I've gone back... but promise me Shatov and I'll bring you all the rest of them on a platter. I'll prove useful, Andrei Antonovich! I reckon the whole pitiful crew numbers nine—maybe ten—people. I'm keeping an eye on them myself, for my own part, sir. Three are already known to us: Shatov, Kirillov, and that sublieutenant. The rest I'm still making out...not that I'm all that nearsighted. It's like it was in Kh– province; two students, one high-school boy, two twenty-year-old noblemen, one teacher, and one retired major of about sixty, stupefied with drink, were seized there with tracts—that's all, and believe me, that was all; they were even surprised that that was all. But I'll need six days. I've already worked it out on the abacus; six days, and not before. If you want to get any results, don't stir them up for another six days, and I'll tie them all into a single knot for you; stir them up before then, and the nest will scatter. But give me Shatov. I'm for Shatov... And best of all would be to summon him secretly and amiably, why not here to this study, and examine him, after lifting the veil for him ... And he'll probably throw himself at your feet and weep! He's a nervous man, an unhappy man; his wife goes about with Stavrogin. Coddle him a bit and he'll reveal everything himself, but I need six days... And the main thing, the main thing—not even half a word to Yulia Mikhailovna. A secret. Can we keep it a secret?"
"What?" Lembke goggled his eyes. "You actually haven't ... revealed anything to Yulia Mikhailovna?"
"To her? Save me and have mercy on me! Ehh, Andrei Antonovich! You see, sir: I greatly value her friendship and highly respect. . . well, and all that... but I wouldn't make such a blunder. I don't contradict her, because to contradict her, you know yourself, is dangerous. It's possible I did drop a hint or two, because she likes that, but to give away names or anything to her, as I just did to you—ehh, my dear! And why am I turning to you now? Because you are, after all, a man, a serious person, with solid, old-style experience in the service. You've seen it all. I suppose you already know every step in such matters by heart from Petersburg cases. And if I were to tell her these two names, for example, she'd just start banging the drums ... Because she'd really love to astonish Petersburg from here. No, she's too hot-headed, that's the thing, sir."
