Of course, the end was none too good; but the bad thing was that everything started with it. Long since there had begun the shuffling, nose-blowing, coughing, and all else that occurs at a literary reading when the writer, whoever he may be, keeps the public longer than twenty minutes. But the writer of genius did not notice any of it. He went on lisping and mumbling, totally oblivious of the public, so that everyone began to be perplexed. Then suddenly, in the back rows, a lonely but loud voice was heard:
"Lord, what rubbish!"
This popped out inadvertently and, I am sure, without any demonstrativeness. The man simply got tired. But Mr. Karmazinov paused, looked mockingly at the public, and suddenly lisped with the bearing of an offended court chamberlain:
"It seems, ladies and gentlemen, that you are rather bored with me?"
And here is where he was at fault, in having spoken first; for in thus provoking a response, he gave all sorts of scum an opportunity to speak as well, and even legitimately, as it were, while if he had refrained, they would have blown their noses a little longer, and it would all have gone over somehow... Perhaps he expected applause in response to his question; but there was no applause; on the contrary, everyone became as if frightened, shrank down, and kept still.
"You never saw any Ancus Marcius, that's all just style," came one irritated, even as if pained, voice.
"Precisely," another voice picked up at once, "there are no ghosts nowadays, only natural science. Look it up in natural science."
"Ladies and gentlemen, such objections were the last thing I expected," Karmazinov was terribly surprised. The great genius had grown totally unaccustomed to his fatherland in Karlsruhe.
"In our age it's shameful to read that the world stands on three fishes," a young girl suddenly rattled out. "You couldn't have gone down to some hermit in a cave, Karmazinov. Who even talks about hermits nowadays?"
"What surprises me most, ladies and gentlemen, is that it's all so serious. However... however, you are perfectly right. No one respects real truth more than I do..."
Though he was smiling ironically, all the same he was greatly struck. His face simply said: "I'm not the way you think, I'm for you, only praise me, praise me more, as much as possible, I like it terribly..."
"Ladies and gentlemen," he cried at last, now completely wounded, "I see that my poor little poem got to the wrong place. And I think I myself got to the wrong place."
"Aimed at a crow and got a cow," some fool, undoubtedly drunk, shouted at the top of his lungs, and of course he ought to have been ignored. True, there was irreverent laughter.
"A cow, you say?" Karmazinov picked up at once. His voice was becoming more and more shrill. "Concerning crows and cows, ladies and gentlemen, I shall allow myself to refrain. I have too much respect even for any sort of public to allow myself comparisons, however innocent; but I thought..."
"Anyhow, dear sir, you'd better not be so..." someone shouted from the back rows.
"But I supposed that, as I was putting down my pen and saying farewell to the reader, I would be heard..."
"No, no, we want to listen, we do," several voices, emboldened at last, came from the front row.
"Read, read!" several rapturous ladies' voices picked up, and at last some applause broke through, though scant and thin, it's true. Karmazinov smiled wryly and rose from his place.
"Believe me, Karmazinov, everyone even regards it as an honor..." even the marshal's wife could not restrain herself.
"Mr. Karmazinov," a fresh, youthful voice suddenly came from the depths of the hall. It was the voice of a very young teacher from the district high school, an excellent young man, quiet and noble, still a recent arrival in town. He even rose slightly from his place. "Mr. Karmazinov, if I had the good fortune to love as you have described to us, I really wouldn't put anything about my love into an article intended for public reading..."
He even blushed all over...
"Ladies and gentlemen," Karmazinov cried, "I have ended. I omit the ending and I withdraw. But permit me to read just the six concluding lines.
"Yes, friend and reader, farewell!" he began at once from the manuscript and now without sitting down in his chair. "Farewell, reader; I do not even much insist that we should part friends: why, indeed, trouble you? Abuse me even, oh, abuse me as much as you like, if it gives you any pleasure. But it will be best of all if we forget each other forever. And if all of you, readers, should suddenly be so good as to fall on your knees and entreat me with tears: 'Write, oh, write for us, Karmazinov—for the fatherland, for posterity, for the wreaths of laurel—even then I would answer you, having thanked you, of course, with all courtesy: 'Ah, no, we have had enough of bothering each other, my dear compatriots, merci! It is time we parted ways! Merci, merci, merci.‘“
Karmazinov bowed ceremoniously and, all red as though he had been boiled, made for backstage.
"Nobody's going down on his knees—a wild fancy."
"What conceit!"
"It's just humor!" someone a bit more sensible corrected.
"No, spare us your humor!"
"This is impudence, anyhow, gentlemen."
"He's finished now, at least."
"What a heap of boredom!"
But all these ignorant exclamations from the back rows (though not only from the back rows) were drowned by the applause of the other part of the public. Karmazinov was called back. Several ladies, Yulia Mikhailovna and the marshal's wife at their head, crowded up to the platform. In Yulia Mikhailovna's hands there appeared a magnificent wreath of laurel, on a white velvet cushion, inside another wreath of live roses.
"Laurels!" Karmazinov said with a subtle and somewhat caustic grin. "I am moved, of course, and accept this wreath, prepared beforehand but as yet unwithered, with lively emotion; but I assure you, mesdames,I have suddenly become so much of a realist that I consider laurels in our age rather more fitting in the hands of a skillful cook than in mine..."
"Except that cooks are more useful," cried that same seminarian who had attended the "meeting" at Virginsky's. The order was somewhat disrupted. People from many rows jumped up to see the ceremony with the laurel wreath.
"I'd add three more roubles for a cook," another voice picked up loudly, even too loudly, insistently loudly.
"So would I."
"So would I."
"But do they really have no buffet here?"
"Gentlemen, it's sheer deception..."
However, it must be admitted that all these unbridled gentlemen were still very afraid of our dignitaries, and also of the police officer who was there in the hall. After about ten minutes everyone settled down again anyhow, but the former order was not restored. And it was into this burgeoning chaos that poor Stepan Trofimovich stepped...
IV
I ran to him backstage one last time, however, and managed to warn him, beside myself as I was, that in my opinion it had all blown up and he had better not come out at all, but go home at once, excusing himself with his cholerine if need be, and that I, too, would tear off my bow and come with him. At this moment he was already heading for the platform, suddenly stopped, haughtily looked me up and down, and solemnly pronounced: