"Pushkin," said Vera. "Our Pushkin. Papa told me to offer it to you."
"How so? How is it possible?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna was surprised.
"Not as a gift, not as a gift! I wouldn't dare!" Lebedev popped out from behind his daughter's shoulder. "For what it cost, ma'am. It's our family Pushkin, Annenkov's edition, 32which is even impossible to find now—for what it cost, ma'am. I offer it to you with reverence, wishing to sell it and thereby satisfy the noble impatience of Your Excellency's most noble literary feelings."
"Ah, you're selling it, then I thank you. No fear of you not getting your own back. Only please do stop clowning, my dear. I've heard about you, they say you're very well read, we must have a talk some day; will you bring them home for me yourself?"
"With reverence and . . . deference!" Lebedev, extraordinarily pleased, went on clowning, snatching the books from his daughter.
"Well, just don't lose them on me, bring them without deference if you like, but only on one condition," she added, looking him over intently. "I'll let you come as far as the threshold, but I have no intention of receiving you today. Your daughter Vera you may send right now, though, I like her very much."
"Why don't you tell him about those men?" Vera asked her father impatiently. "They'll come in by themselves if you don't: they're already making noise. Lev Nikolaevich," she turned to the
prince, who had already picked up his hat, "some people came to see you quite a while ago now, four men, they're waiting in our part and they're angry, but papa won't let them see you."
"What sort of visitors?" asked the prince.
"On business, they say, only they're the kind that, if you don't let them in now, they'll stop you on your way. Better to let them in now, Lev Nikolaevich, and get them off your neck. Gavrila Ardalionovich and Ptitsyn are trying to talk sense into them, but they won't listen."
"Pavlishchev's son! Pavlishchev's son! Not worth it, not worth it!" Lebedev waved his arms. "It's not worth listening to them, sir; and it's not proper for you, illustrious Prince, to trouble yourself for them. That's right, sir. They're not worth it . . ."
"Pavlishchev's son! My God!" cried the prince in extreme embarrassment. "I know . . . but I ... I entrusted that affair to Gavrila Ardalionovich. Gavrila Ardalionovich just told me . . ."
But Gavrila Ardalionovich had already come out to the terrace; Ptitsyn followed him. In the nearest room noise could be heard, and the loud voice of General Ivolgin, as if he were trying to outshout several other voices. Kolya ran at once to where the noise was.
"That's very interesting," Evgeny Pavlovich observed aloud.
"So he knows about it!" thought the prince.
"What Pavlishchev's son? And . . . how can there be any Pavlishchev's son?" General Ivan Fyodorovich asked in perplexity, looking around curiously at all the faces and noticing with astonishment that this new story was unknown to him alone.
Indeed, the excitement and expectation were universal. The prince was deeply astonished that an affair so completely personal to himself could manage to interest everyone there so strongly.
"It would be very good if you ended this affair at once and yourself,"said Aglaya, going up to the prince with some sort of special seriousness, "and let us all be your witnesses. They want to besmirch you, Prince, you must triumphantly vindicate yourself, and I'm terribly glad for you beforehand."
"I also want this vile claim to be ended finally," Mrs. Epanchin cried. "Give it to them good, Prince, don't spare them! I've had my ears stuffed with this affair, and there's a lot of bad blood in me on account of you. Besides, it will be curious to have a look. Call them out, and we'll sit here. Aglaya's idea was a good one. Have you heard anything about this, Prince?" she turned to Prince Shch.
"Of course I have, in your own house. But I'd especially like to have a look at these young men," Prince Shch. replied.
"These are those nihilists, 33aren't they?"
"No, ma'am, they're not really nihilists," Lebedev, who was also all but trembling with excitement, stepped forward. "They're different, ma'am, they're special, my nephew says they've gone further than the nihilists. You mustn't think to embarrass them with your witnessing, Your Excellency; they won't be embarrassed. Nihilists are still sometimes knowledgeable people, even learned ones, but these have gone further, ma'am, because first of all they're practical. This is essentially a sort of consequence of nihilism, though not in a direct way, but by hearsay and indirectly, and they don't announce themselves in some sort of little newspaper article, but directly in practice, ma'am; it's no longer a matter, for instance, of the meaninglessness of some Pushkin or other, or, for instance, the necessity of dividing Russia up into parts; no, ma'am, it's now considered a man's right, if he wants something very much, not to stop at any obstacle, even if he has to do in eight persons to that end. But all the same, Prince, I wouldn't advise you . . ."
But the prince was already going to open the door for his visitors.
"You slander them, Lebedev," he said, smiling. "Your nephew has upset you very much. Don't believe him, Lizaveta Prokofyevna. I assure you that the Gorskys and Danilovs 34are merely accidents, and these men are merely . . . mistaken . . . Only I wouldn't like it to be here, in front of everybody. Excuse me, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, they'll come in, I'll show them to you and then take them away. Come in, gentlemen!"
He was sooner troubled by another thought that tormented him. He wondered whether this whole affair now had not been arranged earlier, precisely for that time and hour, precisely with these witnesses, perhaps in anticipation of his disgrace and not his triumph. But he was much too saddened by his "monstrous and wicked suspiciousness." He would die, he thought, if anyone should learn that he had such thoughts in his mind, and at the moment when his new visitors came in, he was sincerely prepared to consider himself, among all those around him, the lowest of the low in the moral sense.
Five people came in, four of them new visitors and the fifth General Ivolgin, coming behind them, all flushed, in agitation and a most violent fit of eloquence. "That one's certainly on my side!" the prince thought with a smile. Kolya slipped in with everyone
else: he was talking heatedly with Ippolit, who was one of the visitors. Ippolit listened and grinned.
The prince seated his visitors. They were all such young, even such underage people, that one could marvel both at the occasion and at the whole ceremony that proceeded from it. Ivan Fyodorovich Epanchin, for instance, who neither knew nor understood anything in this "new affair," even waxed indignant seeing such youth, and probably would have protested in some way, had he not been stopped by what for him was the strange ardor of his spouse for the prince's private interests. He stayed, however, partly out of curiosity, partly out of the goodness of his heart, even hoping to be of help and in any case to be on hand with his authority; but the entering General Ivolgin's bow to him from afar made him indignant again; he frowned and resolved to remain stubbornly silent.
Of the four young visitors, however, one was about thirty years old, the retired "lieutenant from Rogozhin's band, a boxer, who himself used to give fifteen roubles to petitioners." It could be guessed that he had accompanied the others out of bravado, in the capacity of a good friend and, if need be, for support. Among the rest, the first place and the first role was filled by the one to whom the name of "Pavlishchev's son" was attributed, though he introduced himself as Antip Burdovsky. This was a young man, poorly and shabbily dressed, in a frock coat with sleeves so greasy they gleamed like a mirror, in a greasy waistcoat buttoned to the top, in a shirt that had disappeared somewhere, in an impossibly greasy black silk scarf twisted into a plait, his hands unwashed, his face all covered with blackheads, fair-haired, and, if one may put it so, with an innocently impudent gaze. He was of medium height, thin, about twenty-two years old. Not the least irony, not the least reflection showed in his face; on the contrary, there was a full, dull intoxication with his own rights and, at the same time, something that amounted to a strange and permanent need to be and feel constantly offended. He spoke with agitation, hurriedly and falteringly, as if not quite enunciating the words, as if he had a speech defect or was a foreigner, though he was, incidentally, of totally Russian origin.