Текст книги "The Brothers Karamazov"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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“You should stop deriding Poland,” Kalganov, who had also drunk more than his fill, remarked sententiously.
“Quiet, boy! If I call him a scoundrel, it doesn’t mean I’m calling all of Poland a scoundrel. One lajdakdoesn’t make a Poland. Keep quiet, pretty boy, eat your candy.”
“Ah, what people! As if they weren’t even human beings. Why won’t they make peace?” said Grushenka, and she stepped out to dance. The chorus broke into “Ah, hallway, my hallway!” [268]Grushenka threw back her head, half opened her lips, smiled, waved the handkerchief, and suddenly, swaying badly, stopped perplexed in the middle of the room.
“I feel weak ... ,” she said in a sort of exhausted voice. “Forgive me, I feel weak, I can’t ... I’m sorry...”
She bowed to the chorus, and then began bowing on all sides.
“I’m sorry ... Forgive me ...”
“She’s had a drop, the lady, the pretty lady’s had a drop,” voices were heard saying.
“She’s drunk,” Maximov explained, giggling, to the girls.
“Mitya, help me ... take me, Mitya,” Grushenka said weakly. Mitya rushed to her, picked her up, and ran behind the curtain with his precious booty. “Well, now I really shall leave,” thought Kalganov, and going out of the blue room, he closed both halves of the door behind him. But the feast in the main room went thundering on, and thundered all the more. Mitya laid Grushenka on the bed and pressed his lips to hers in a kiss.
“Don’t touch me,” she murmured to him in a pleading voice, “don’t touch me, I’m not yours yet ... I said I was yours, but don’t touch me ... spare me ... We mustn’t do it with them here, in the next room. He is here. It’s vile here ...”
“I obey! I wouldn’t dream ... I revere...!” Mitya muttered. “Yes, it’s vile here, oh, unspeakably.” And without letting her out of his embrace, he knelt on the floor by the bed.
“I know, though you’re a beast, you’re still noble,” Grushenka spoke with difficulty. “We should do it honestly ... from now on it will be honest ... and we should be honest, and we should be good, not beasts but good ... Take me away, take me far away, do you hear ... ? I don’t want to be here, I want to be far, far away ...”
“Oh, yes, yes, we must!” Mitya pressed her in his arms. “I’ll take you, we’ll fly away ... Oh, I’d give my whole life now for one year, if only I knew about that blood!”
“What blood?” Grushenka repeated in bewilderment.
“Nothing!” Mitya growled. “Grusha, you want it to be honest, but I am a thief. I stole money from Katka ... What shame, what shame!”
“From Katka? You mean the young lady? No, you didn’t steal anything. Give it back to her, take it from me ... Why are you shouting? All that’s mine is yours now. What do we care about money? We’ll just throw it away on a spree ... It’s bound to be so with the likes of us. And you and I had better go work on the land. I want to scrape the earth with my hands. We must work, do you hear? Alyosha said so. I won’t be a mistress to you, I’ll be faithful, I’ll be your slave, I’ll work for you. We’ll both go to the young lady, we’ll bow to her and ask her forgiveness, and go away. And if she doesn’t forgive us, we’ll go away anyway. And you can give her back her money, and love me ... And not love her. Do not love her any more. If you love her, I’ll strangle her ... I’ll put out both her eyes with a needle ...”
“I love you, you alone, I’ll love you in Siberia...”
“Why in Siberia? But why not, I’ll go to Siberia if you like, it’s all the same ... we’ll work ... there’s snow in Siberia ... I like driving over snow ... and there should be a little sleigh bell ... Do you hear a bell ringing ... ? Where is that little bell ringing? People are driving ... now it’s stopped.”
She closed her eyes helplessly, and suddenly seemed to fall asleep for a moment. A bell had indeed been ringing somewhere far away, and suddenly stopped ringing. Mitya lowered his head onto her breast. He did not notice how the bell stopped ringing, nor did he notice how the singing suddenly stopped as well, and instead of songs and drunken racket, a dead silence fell suddenly, as it were, over the whole house. Grushenka opened her eyes.
“What, was I asleep? Yes ... the bell ... I fell asleep and had a dream that I was driving over the snow ... a bell was ringing, and I was dozing. It seemed I was driving with someone very dear to me—with you. Far, far away ... I was embracing you and kissing you, pressing close to you, as if I were cold, and the snow was glistening ... You know how snow glistens at night, and there’s a new moon, and you feel as if you’re not on earth ... I woke up, and my dear was beside me—how good...”
“Beside you,” Mitya murmured, kissing her dress, her breast, her hands. And suddenly a strange fancy struck him: he fancied that she was looking straight ahead, not at him, not into his eyes, but over his head, intently and with a strange fixity. Surprise, almost fear, suddenly showed on her face.
“Mitya, who is that looking at us from there?” she whispered suddenly. Mitya turned and saw that someone had indeed parted the curtains and was apparently trying to make them out. More than one person, it seemed. He jumped up and quickly went towards the intruder.
“Here, come out here, please,” someone’s voice said to him, not loudly, but firmly and insistently.
Mitya stepped from behind the curtain and stood still. The whole room was full of people, not those who had been there before, but quite new ones. A momentary shiver ran down his spine, and he drew back. He recognized all these people instantly. The tall, plump old man in a coat and a service cap with a cockade was the district police commissioner, Mikhail Makarich. And the trim, “consumptive” fop, “always in such well-polished boots,” was the deputy prosecutor. “He has a chronometer worth four hundred roubles, he showed it to me.” And the short young man in spectacles ... Mitya simply could not remember his last name, but he knew him, too, he had seen him: he was an attorney, a district attorney “from the Jurisprudence,” [269]recently arrived. And that one—the deputy commissioner, Mavriky Mavrikich—he knew him, he was an acquaintance. And the ones with badges, what were they doing here? And the other two, peasants ... And Kalganov and Trifon Borisich there in the doorway . . .
“Gentlemen ... What is it, gentlemen?” Mitya started to say, but suddenly, as if beside himself, as if not of himself at all, he exclaimed loudly, at the top of his lungs:
“I un-der-stand!”
The young man in spectacles suddenly came forward and, stepping up to Mitya, began in a dignified manner, though a little hurriedly, as it were:
“We must have ... in short, would you kindly come over here, to the sofa ... It is of the utmost necessity that we have a word with you.”
“The old man!” Mitya cried in a frenzy, “the old man and his blood...! I un-der-stand!”
And as if cut down, he fell more than sat on a chair standing nearby.
“You understand? He understands! Parricide and monster, your old father’s blood cries out against you!” the old district police commissioner suddenly roared, going up to Mitya. He was beside himself, turned purple, and was shaking all over.
“But this is impossible!” cried the short young man. “Mikhail Makarich, Mikhail Makarich! Not like that, not like that, sir...! I ask you to allow me to speak alone ... I would never have expected such an episode from you...”
“But this is delirium, gentlemen, delirium!” the police commissioner kept exclaiming. “Look at him: in the middle of the night, with a disreputable wench, covered with his father’s blood ... Delirium! Delirium!”
“I beg you as strongly as I can, dear Mikhail Makarich, to restrain your feelings for the moment,” the deputy prosecutor whispered rapidly to the old man, “otherwise I shall have to resort to...”
But the short attorney did not let him finish; he turned to Mitya and firmly, loudly, and gravely declared:
“Retired Lieutenant Karamazov, sir, it is my duty to inform you that you are charged with the murder of your father, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, which took place this night ...”
He said something more, and the prosecutor, too, seemed to add something, but Mitya, though he listened, no longer understood them. With wild eyes he stared around at them all . . .
BOOK IX. THE PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION
Chapter 1: The Start of the Official Perkhotin’s Career
Pyotr Ilyich Perkhotin, whom we left knocking with all his might at the well-locked gates of the widow Morozov’s house, in the end, of course, was finally successful. Hearing such furious knocking at the gate, Fenya, who had been so frightened two hours before, and who was still too excited and “thinking” too much to dare go to bed, became frightened once more almost to the point of hysterics: she fancied that it was Dmitri Fyodorovich knocking again (though she herself had seen him drive off), because no one else but he would knock so ‘boldly.” She rushed to the awakened porter, who had heard the knocking and was already on his way to the gate, and began begging him not to open. But the porter made inquiries of the person who was knocking, and learning who he was, and that he wanted to see Fedosya Markovna on a very important matter, finally decided to open the gates for him. Going to the same kitchen with Fedosya Markovna—and she “on account of her doubts” prevailed upon Pyotr Ilyich to allow the porter to come with them—Pyotr Ilyich started questioning her and at once hit upon the most important fact: namely, that Dmitri Fyodorovich, as he ran off to look for Grushenka, had snatched the pestle from the mortar, and returned later without the pestle but with his hands covered with blood: “And the blood was still dripping, it kept dripping and dripping!” Fenya exclaimed, her distraught imagination apparently having invented this horrible detail. But Pyotr Ilyich had also seen those bloody hands himself, though the blood was not dripping, and had himself helped to wash them, and the question was not how soon the blood had dried, but where exactly Dmitri Fyodorovich had run with the pestle—that is, was it certain he had gone to Fyodor Pavlovich’s, and what might be the grounds for such a positive inference? Perkhotin thoroughly emphasized this point, and though he did not find out anything definite as a result, he still became almost convinced that Dmitri Fyodorovich could not have run anywhere else but to his parent’s house, and that, consequently, somethingmust have happened there. “And when he came back,” Fenya added excitedly, “and I told him everything, I began asking him: ‘Dmitri Fyodorovich, my dear, why are your hands covered with blood?’ and he answered me that it was human blood, and that he had just killed a man—he simply admitted it, he simply confessed it all to me, and suddenly ran out like a madman. I sat down and started thinking: where has he run off to like a madman? He’ll go to Mokroye, I was thinking, and kill my mistress there. So I ran out to go to his place and beg him not to kill my mistress, but at Plotnikov’s shop I saw that he was already leaving and that his hands weren’t covered with blood anymore.” (Fenya had noticed this and remembered it.) The old woman, Fenya’s grandmother, confirmed all her granddaughter’s statements as far as she could. Having asked a few more questions, Pyotr Ilyich left the house even more troubled and worried than when he had entered it.
One would think that the most immediate and direct thing for him to do now would be to go to Fyodor Pavlovich’s house and find out if anything had happened, and, if so, what exactly, and being convinced beyond any doubt, only then to go to the police commissioner, as Pyotr Ilyich had firmly resolved to do. But the night was dark, the gates of Fyodor Pavlovich’s house were strong, he would have to knock again, and he was only distantly acquainted with Fyodor Pavlovich—and so he would have to keep knocking until he was heard and the gates were opened, and what if suddenly nothing had happened at all, and a jeering Fyodor Pavlovich were to go all over town tomorrow telling jokes about how a stranger, the official Perkhotin, had forced his way into his house at midnight in order to find out if anyone had murdered him. A scandal! And there was nothing in the world Pyotr Ilyich feared more than a scandal. Nevertheless he was moved by so strong a feeling that, having angrily stamped his foot on the ground and given himself another scolding, he at once rushed on his way again, not to Fyodor Pavlovich’s now, but to Madame Khokhlakov’s. If she, he thought, would answer just one question: whether or not she had given Dmitri Fyodorovich three thousand at such and such a time, then, in case the answer was negative, he would go straight to the police commissioner, without going to Fyodor Pavlovich; otherwise he would put everything off until tomorrow and go back home. Here, of course, it is immediately obvious that the young man’s decision to go at night, at almost eleven o’clock, to the house of a society lady who was a complete stranger to him, and perhaps get her out of bed, in order to ask her an—under the circumstances—astonishing question, was perhaps much more likely to cause a scandal than going to Fyodor Pavlovich. But it sometimes happens that way—especially in such cases—with the decisions of the most precise and phlegmatic people. And at the moment Pyotr Ilyich was far from phlegmatic. He remembered afterwards all his life how the irresistible anxiety that gradually took possession of him finally became so painful that it carried him along even against his will. Naturally, he kept scolding himself all the way, in any case, for going to this lady, but “I’ll go through with it, I’ll go through with it!” he repeated for the tenth time, clenching his teeth, and he did as he intended—he went through with it.
It was exactly eleven o’clock when he came to Madame Khokhlakov’s house. He was promptly let into the yard, but to his question: “Is the lady asleep, or has she not gone to bed yet?” the porter could give no precise answer, beyond saying that at that hour people usually go to bed. “Ask to be announced upstairs; if the lady wants to receive you, she will; if she won’t—she won’t.” Pyotr Ilyich went up to the door, but there things became more difficult. The lackey did not want to announce him, and finally called the maid. Pyotr Ilyich politely but insistently asked her to inform the lady that a town official, Perkhotin, had come on special business, and were the business not so important, he would not have ventured to come—”inform her precisely, precisely in those words,” he asked the maid. She left. He stood waiting in the front hall. Madame Khokhlakov, though not yet asleep, had already retired to her bedroom. She had been upset since Mitya’s visit and now anticipated that she would not get through the night without the migraine that was usual for her in such cases. On hearing the maid’s report, she was surprised, and yet she irritably told her to refuse, though the unexpected visit at such an hour of a “town official” quite unknown to her greatly piqued her woman’s curiosity. But this time Pyotr Ilyich was stubborn as a mule: hearing the refusal, he once again asked the maid very insistently to inform her mistress and tell her precisely “in these very words” that he had come “on extremely important business, and that the lady herself might regret it later if she did not receive him now.” “It was like throwing myself off a mountain,” as he afterwards recounted. The maid, having looked him over in surprise, went to announce him again. Madame Khokhlakov was amazed, thought for a moment, inquired about his appearance, and learned that “he was very properly dressed, young, and so polite.” Let us note parenthetically and in passing that Pyotr Ilyich was quite a handsome young man, and was aware of it himself. Madame Khokhlakov decided to come out. She was already in her dressing gown and slippers, but she threw a black shawl over her shoulders. “The official” was shown into the drawing room, the very room where she had just recently received Mitya. The hostess came to meet her visitor with a sternly inquiring look and, without inviting him to sit down, began straight off with a question: “What is it you want?”
“I have ventured to trouble you, madame, in connection with our mutual acquaintance Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov,” Perkhotin began, but as soon as he spoke this name, his hostess’s face suddenly showed the greatest irritation. She all but shrieked and furiously interrupted him: “How long, how long must I be tormented by that awful man?” she cried in frenzy. “How dare you, my dear sir, how could you venture to disturb a lady not of your acquaintance, in her own house, and at such an hour ... and come to her to speak of a man who, right here, in this very drawing room, just three hours ago, came to murder me, stamped his feet, and walked out as no one walks out of a decent house. Let me tell you, my dear sir, that I will lodge a complaint against you, I will not stand for it, now kindly leave my house at once ... I am a mother, I shall ... I ... I...”
“Murder! So he wanted to murder you, too?”
“Why, did he already murder someone else?” Madame Khokhlakov asked impetuously.
“Be so good, madame, as to listen for only half a minute, and I shall explain everything in two words,” Perkhotin answered firmly. “Today, at five o’clock in the afternoon, Mr. Karamazov borrowed ten roubles from me as a friend, and I know for certain that he had no money, yet this same day, at nine o’clock, he walked into my rooms holding out for all to see a wad of hundred-rouble bills, approximately two or even three thousand roubles. His hands and face were all covered with blood, and it appeared as if he were mad. To my question as to where he got so much money, he replied with precision that he had just received it from you, and that you had loaned him the sum of three thousand roubles to go, he said, to the gold mines...”
Madame Khokhlakov’s face suddenly acquired a look of extraordinary and morbid excitement.
“Oh, God! He’s murdered his old father!” she cried out, clasping her hands. “I gave him no money, none! Oh, run, run...! Not a word more! Save the old man, run to his father, run!”
“I beg your pardon, madame, so you did not give him any money? You firmly recall that you did not give him any?”
“I did not! I did not! I refused him because he was unable to appreciate it. He walked out furious and stamped his feet. He rushed at me, but I jumped aside ... And I shall also tell you, as a man from whom I now have no intention of concealing anything, that he even spat at me, can you imagine it? But why are you standing? Ah, do sit down ... Forgive me, I ... Or, no, run, run, you must run and save the unfortunate old man from a horrible death!”
“But if he has already killed him?”
“Ah, my God, of course! What are we going to do now? What do you think we should do now?”
Meanwhile she sat Pyotr Ilyich down, and sat down herself facing him. Pyotr Ilyich gave her a brief but rather clear account of the affair, at least that part of the affair he himself had witnessed earlier; he also told her of his visit to Fenya, and mentioned the news of the pestle. All these details struck the agitated lady no end, so that she kept crying out and covering her eyes with her hands . . .
“Imagine, I foresaw it all! I am endowed with this property: whatever I imagine always happens. How often, how often have I looked at that terrible man and thought: here is a man who will end up by murdering me. And now it’s happened ... That is, if he hasn’t killed me now, but only his father, it is most likely because the hand of God is obviously protecting me, and, besides, he was ashamed to murder me because I myself, here on this very spot, put an icon around his neck with a relic of the great martyr Varvara ... How close I was to death at that moment! I went up to him, quite close, and he stretched out his neck to me! You know, Pyotr Ilyich (forgive me, you did say your name was Pyotr Ilyich?) ... you know, I do not believe in miracles, but this icon and this obvious miracle with me now—it astounds me, and I’m beginning to believe in anything again. Have you heard about the elder Zosima ... ? Ah, anyway, I don’t know what I’m saying ... And imagine, even with the icon on his neck, he still spat at me ... Of course, he only spat, he didn’t murder me, and ... and ... so that’s where he galloped off to! But what of us, where shall we go now, what do you think?”
Pyotr Ilyich stood up and announced that he would now go directly to the police commissioner and tell him everything, and let him do as he thinks best.
“Ah, he is a wonderful, wonderful man, I know Mikhail Makarovich. Of course, go precisely to him. How resourceful you are, Pyotr Ilyich, and what a good idea you’ve come up with; you know, in your place I’d never have been able to come up with that!”
“All the more so in that I, too, am well acquainted with the commissioner,” observed Pyotr Ilyich, still standing and evidently wishing somehow to tear himself away from the impetuous lady, who would not let him say good-bye to her and leave.
“And you know, you know,” she went on prattling, “you must come back and tell me what you see and learn ... and what they find out ... and what they will decide about him, and where they will condemn him to. Tell me, we don’t have capital punishment, do we? But you must come, even if it’s three o’clock in the morning, even if it’s four, even half past four ... Tell them to wake me up, to shake me if I don’t get up ... Oh, God, but I’ll never be able to fall asleep. You know, why don’t I go with you myself?”
“N-no, madame, but if you would now write three lines with your own hand, just in case, saying that you did not give Dmitri Fyodorovich any money, it might not be amiss ... just in case...”
“Certainly!” the delighted Madame Khokhlakov leaped to her bureau. “And you know, you amaze me, you simply astound me with your resourcefulness and your skill in these matters ... Are you in service here? I’m so pleased to know you’re in service here...”
And while she spoke, she quickly inscribed the following three lines in a large hand on a half sheet of writing paper:
Never in my life did I lend the unfortunate Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov (for he is unfortunate now, in any case) the sum of three thousand roubles today, or any other money, never, never! I swear to it by all that is holy in our world.
Khokhlakov
“Here is the note!” she turned quickly to Pyotr Ilyich. “Go now and save. It is a great deed on your part.”
And she crossed him three times. She even ran out to see him to the front hall.
“How grateful I am to you! You wouldn’t believe how grateful I am to you now, for having come to me first. How is it we’ve never met? I shall be flattered to receive you in my house in the future. And how pleased I am to know that you’re in service here ... and with your precision, your resourcefulness ... They must appreciate you, they must finally understand you, and whatever I can do for you, believe me ... Oh, I love young people so! I am in love with young people. Young people—they are the foundation for all of today’s suffering Russia, her only hope ... Oh, go, go...!”
But Pyotr Ilyich had already run out, otherwise she would not have let him go so soon. All the same, Madame Khokhlakov made quite a pleasant impression on him, which even somewhat softened his alarm at getting involved in such a bad affair. Tastes are extremely divergent, that is a known fact. “She’s not as old as all that,” he thought with pleasure. “On the contrary, I might have taken her for her own daughter.”
As for Madame Khokhlakov, she was simply enchanted with the young man. “Such skill, such exactitude, and in so young a man, in our time, and all that with such manners and appearance! And yet they say our modern young men cannot do anything, but here’s an example for you,” and so on and so forth. So that she simply forgot all about the “terrible incident,” and only on the point of going to bed did she suddenly recall again “how close she had been to death.” “Ah,” she said, “it’s terrible, terrible!” and at once fell into a sound and sweet sleep. By the way, I would not go into such petty and incidental details if the eccentric encounter I have just described, between a young official and a widow not all that old, had not afterwards served as the foundation for the whole life’s career of that precise and accurate young man, which is still recalled with astonishment in our town, and of which we, too, shall perhaps have a special word to say, once we have concluded our long story of the Karamazov brothers.
Chapter 2: The Alarm
Our district commissioner of police, Mikhail Makarovich Makarov, a retired lieutenant colonel, redesignated a state councillor, [270]was a widower and a good man. He had come to us only three years earlier, but had already won general sympathy, mainly because he “knew how to bring society together.” His house was never without guests, and it seemed he would have been unable to live without them. He had to have guests to dinner every day, even if only two, even if only one, but without guests he would not sit down to eat. He gave formal dinners, too, under all sorts of pretexts, sometimes even the most unexpected. The food he served, though not refined, was abundant, the cabbage pies were excellent, and the wines made up in quantity for what they lacked in quality. In the front room stood a billiard table, surrounded by quite decent furnishings; that is, there were even paintings of English racehorses in black frames on the walls, which, as everyone knows, constitute a necessary adornment of any billiard room in a bachelor’s house. Every evening there was a card game, even if only at one table. But quite often all the best society of our town, including mamas and young girls, would get together there for a dance. Mikhail Makarovich, though a widower, lived as a family man. with his already long-widowed daughter, who in turn was the mother of two girls, Mikhail Makarovich’s granddaughters. The girls were grown up by then and had finished their education; they were of not-unattractive appearance, of cheerful character, and though everyone knew that they would bring no dowries, they still drew our young men of society to their grandfather’s house. In his official capacity, Mikhail Makarovich was none too bright, but he did his job no worse than many others. To tell the truth, he was rather an uneducated man, and even a bit carefree with respect to a clear understanding of the limits of his administrative power. Not that he did not fully comprehend some of the reforms of the present reign, but he understood them with certain, sometimes quite conspicuous, mistakes, and not at all because he was somehow especially incapable, but simply because of his carefree nature, because he never got around to looking into them. “I have the soul of a military man, not a civilian,” he said of himself. He still did not seem to have acquired a firm and definite idea even of the exact principles of the peasant reform, and learned of them, so to speak, from year to year, increasing his knowledge practically and unwittingly, though, by the way, he himself was a landowner. Pyotr Ilyich knew with certainty that he was sure to meet some guests at Mikhail Makarovich’s that evening, only he did not know exactly whom. Meanwhile, at that very moment, the prosecutor and our district doctor Varvinsky, a young man who had just come to us from Petersburg, after brilliantly completing his studies at the Petersburg Medical Academy, were sitting there playing whist. The prosecutor, Ippolit Kirillovich—the deputy prosecutor, that is, but we all called him the prosecutor—was a special man among us, not old, still only about thirty-five, but much inclined to consumption, and married, besides, to a rather fat and childless lady; he was proud and irritable, and yet of quite considerable intelligence, and even a kind soul. It appeared the whole trouble with his character was that he had a somewhat higher opinion of himself than his real virtues warranted. And that was why he constantly seemed restless. Besides, there were in him certain lofty and even artistic pretensions—for example, to psychologism, to a special knowledge of the human soul, to a special gift of comprehending the criminal and his crime. In this sense he considered himself somewhat ill treated and passed over in his service, and was forever persuaded that they were unable to appreciate him in higher spheres and that he had enemies. In his gloomier moments he even threatened to desert to the defense side of criminal law. The unexpected case of the Karamazov parricide thoroughly shook him, as it were: “A case like this could become known all over Russia.” But I am getting ahead of myself.
In the next room, with the girls, there also sat our young district attorney, Nikolai Parfenovich Nelyudov, who had come to our town from Petersburg only two months earlier. Afterwards everyone talked of it and even marveled that all these persons should have come together as if on purpose, on the evening of the “crime,” in the house of the executive authority. Yet it was a perfectly simple thing and happened quite naturally: it was the second day that Ippolit Kirillovich’s wife had had a toothache, and he absolutely had to flee somewhere from her groaning; as for the doctor, by his very nature he could do nothing of an evening but play cards. And Nikolai Parfenovich Nelyudov had already been planning for three days to visit Mikhail Makarovich that evening, inadvertently, so to speak, in order suddenly and perfidiously to startle the older girl, Olga Mikhailovna, with the fact that he knew her secret, that he knew it was her birthday and that she had decided purposely to conceal it from our society, so as not to have to invite people for dancing. Much laughter was in store, much hinting at her age, that she was supposedly afraid to reveal it, that he, now being in possession of her secret, would tell everyone tomorrow, and so on and so forth. The dear young man was very naughty in this respect; our ladies in fact called him a naughty boy, and he seemed to like it very much. However, he was of quite good society, good family, good upbringing, and good feelings, a bon vivant but quite an innocent one, and always proper. Physically, he was short and of weak, delicate constitution. Several extremely large rings always flashed on his thin and pale fingers. When performing his duties, he became remarkably solemn, as though he conceived of his significance and responsibility as sacred. He was especially good at throwing murderers and other low-class criminals off guard in interrogations, and actually aroused in them, if not respect for himself, at least a certain astonishment.
