"Why, my dear sir, do you consider me capable of such baseness?"
I stepped back. I was as sure as two times two that he would not get out of there without a catastrophe. As I was standing in utter dejection, there again flashed before me the figure of the visiting professor, whose turn it was to go out after Stepan Trofimovich, and who earlier kept raising his fist and bringing it down with all his might. He was still pacing back and forth in the same way, absorbed in himself and muttering something under his nose with a wily but triumphant smile. Somehow almost without intending to (what on earth possessed me?), I went up to him as well.
"You know," I said, "based on many examples, if a reader keeps the public longer than twenty minutes, they cease to listen. Even a celebrity can't hold out for half an hour..."
He suddenly stopped and even seemed to tremble all over at the offense. A boundless haughtiness showed in his face.
"Don't worry," he muttered contemptuously, and walked by. At that moment came the sound of Stepan Trofimovich's voice in the hall.
"Eh, confound you all!" I thought, and ran to the hall.
Stepan Trofimovich sat down in the chair amid the still lingering disorder. He apparently met with ill-disposed looks from the front rows. (They had somehow stopped liking him in the club of late, and respected him much less than before.) However, it was good enough that they did not hiss. I had had this strange idea ever since yesterday: I kept thinking he would be hissed off at once, as soon as he appeared. Yet he was not even noticed right away, owing to the lingering disorder. And what could the man hope for, if even Karmazinov was treated in such a way? He was pale; it was ten years since he had appeared before the public. By his agitation and by all that I knew only too well in him, it was clear to me that he himself regarded his present appearance on the platform as the deciding of his fate, or something of the sort. That was what I was afraid of. So dear the man was to me. And what I felt when he opened his mouth and I heard his first phrase!
"Ladies and gentlemen!" he said suddenly, as if venturing all, and at the same time in an almost breaking voice. "Ladies and gentlemen! Only this morning there lay before me one of those lawless papers recently distributed here, and for the hundredth time I was asking myself the question: 'What is its mystery?’“
The entire hall instantly became hushed, all eyes turned to him, some in fear. Yes, indeed, he knew how to get their interest from the first word. Heads were even stuck out from backstage; Liputin and Lyamshin listened greedily. Yulia Mikhailovna waved her hand to me again:
"Stop him, at any cost, stop him!" she whispered in alarm. I merely shrugged; how was it possible to stop a man who has ventured all?Alas, I understood Stepan Trofimovich.
"Aha, it's about the tracts!" was whispered among the public; the whole hall stirred.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I have solved the whole mystery. The whole mystery of their effect lies—in their stupidity!" (His eyes began to flash.) "Yes, ladies and gentlemen, were it an intentional stupidity, counterfeited out of calculation—oh, that would even be a stroke of genius! But we must do them full justice: they have not counterfeited anything. This is the shortest, the barest, the most simplehearted stupidity— c'est la bêtise dans son essence la plus pure, quelque chose comme un simple chimique. [cxliv]Were it just a drop more intelligently expressed, everyone would see at once all the poverty of this short stupidity. But now everyone stands perplexed: no one believes it can be so elementally stupid. 'It can't be that there's nothing more to it,' everyone says to himself, and looks for a secret, sees a mystery, tries to read between the lines—the effect is achieved! Oh, never before has stupidity received so grand a reward, though it has so often deserved it... For, en parenthèse,stupidity, like the loftiest genius, is equally useful in the destinies of mankind..."
"Puns from the forties!" came someone's, incidentally quite modest, voice, but after it everything seemed to break loose; there was loud talking and squawking.
"Hurrah, ladies and gentlemen! I propose a toast to stupidity!" Stepan Trofimovich cried, now in a perfect frenzy, defying the hall.
I ran to him as if on the pretext of pouring him some water.
"Stepan Trofimovich, leave off, Yulia Mikhailovna begs..."
"No, you leave off with me, idle young man!" he fell upon me at the top of his voice. I ran away. "Messieurs!"he went on, "why the excitement, why the shouts of indignation that I hear? I have come with an olive branch. I have brought you the last word, for in this matter the last word is mine—and then we shall make peace."
"Away!" shouted some.
"Quiet, let him speak, let him have his say," another part yelled. Especially excited was the young teacher, who, having once dared to speak, seemed no longer able to stop.
"Messieurs,the last word in this matter is all-forgiveness. I, an obsolete old man, I solemnly declare that the spirit of life blows as ever and the life force is not exhausted in the younger generation. The enthusiasm of modern youth is as pure and bright as in our time. Only one thing has happened: the displacing of purposes, the replacing of one beauty by another! The whole perplexity lies in just what is more beautifuclass="underline" Shakespeare or boots, Raphael or petroleum?" [176]
"Is he an informer?" grumbled some.
"Compromising questions!"
"Agent provocateur!"
"And I proclaim," Stepan Trofimovich shrieked, in the last extremity of passion, "and I proclaim that Shakespeare and Raphael are higher than the emancipation of the serfs, higher than nationality, higher than socialism, higher than the younger generation, higher than chemistry, higher than almost all mankind, for they are already the fruit, the real fruit of all mankind, and maybe the highest fruit there ever may be! A form of beauty already achieved, without the achievement of which I might not even consent to live... Oh, God!" he clasped his hands, "ten years ago I cried out in the same way from a platform in Petersburg, exactly the same things and in the same words, and in exactly the same way they understood nothing, they laughed and hissed, as now; short people, what more do you need in order to understand? And do you know, do you know that mankind can live without the Englishman, it can live without Germany, it can live only too well without the Russian man, it can live without science, without bread, and it only cannot live without beauty, for then there would be nothing at all to do in the world! The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here! Science itself would not stand for a minute without beauty—are you aware of that, you who are laughing?—it would turn into boorishness, you couldn't invent the nail! ... I will not yield!" he cried absurdly in conclusion, and banged his fist on the table with all his might.
But while he was shrieking without sense or order, the order in the hall was also breaking up. Many jumped from their places, some surged forward, closer to the platform. Generally, it all happened much more quickly than I am describing, and there was no time to take measures. Perhaps there was no wish to, either.
"It's fine for you, with everything provided, spoiled brats!" the same seminarian bellowed, right by the platform, gleefully baring his teeth at Stepan Trofimovich. He noticed it and leaped up to the very edge:
"Was it not I, was it not I who just declared that the enthusiasm of the younger generation is as pure and bright as it ever was, and that it is perishing only for being mistaken about the forms of the beautiful? Is that not enough for you? And if you take it that this was proclaimed by a crushed, insulted father, how then—oh, you short ones—how then is it possible to stand higher in impartiality and tranquillity of vision?... Ungrateful... unjust... why, why do you not want to make peace! ..."