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I SCRUTINISED this gentleman with intense curiosity.

Gavrila had been right in saying that he was an ugly little man. Foma was short, with light eyebrows and eyelashes and grizzled hair, with a hooked nose, and with little wrinkles all over his face. On his chin there was a big wart. He was about fifty. He came in softly with measured steps, with his eyes cast down. But yet the most insolent self-confidence was expressed in his face, and in the whole of his pedantic figure. To my astonishment, he made his appearance in a dressing-gown — of a foreign cut it is true, but still a dressing-gown — and he wore slippers too. The collar of his shirt unadorned by any cravat was a lay-down one a Venfant; this gave Foma Fomitch an extremely foolish look. He went up to an empty armchair, moved it to the table, and sat down in it without saying a word to anyone. All the hubbub, all the excitement that had been raging a minute before, vanished instantaneously. There was such a hush that one could have heard a pin drop. Madame la Générale became as meek as a lamb. The cringing infatuation of this poor imbecile for Foma Fomitch was apparent now. She fixed her eyes upon her idol as though gloating over the sight of him. Miss Perepelitsyn rubbed her hands with a simper, and poor Praskovya Ilyinitchna was visibly trembling with alarm. My uncle began bustling about at once.

“Tea, tea, sister! Only plenty of sugar in it, sister; Foma Fomitch likes plenty of sugar in his tea after his nap. You do like plenty of sugar, don’t you, Foma?”

“I don’t care for any tea just now!” Foma pronounced deliberately and with dignity, waving him off with a careworn air. “You always keep on about plenty of sugar.”

These words and Foma’s entrance, so incredibly ludicrous in its pedantic dignity, interested me extremely, i was curious to find out to what point, to what disregard of decency the insolence of this upstart little gentleman would go.

“Foma,” cried my uncle. “Let me introduce my nephew Sergey Alexandrovitch! He has just arrived.”

Foma Fomitch looked him up and down.

“I am surprised that you always seem to take pleasure in systematically interrupting me, Colonel,” he said after a significant silence, taking absolutely no notice of me. “One talks to you of something serious, and you … discourse … of goodness knows what… . Have you seen Falaley?”

“I have, Foma… .”

“Ah, you have seen him. Well, I will show you him again though you have seen him; you can admire your handiwork …ma moral sense. Come here, you idiot! come here, you Dutch-faced fool! Well, come along! Don’t be afraid!”

Falaley went up to him with his mouth open, sobbing and gulping back his tears. Foma Fomitch looked at him with relish.

“I called him a Dutch-faced fool with intention, Pavel Semyonitch,” he observed, lolling at his ease in his low chair and turning slightly towards Obnoskin, who was sitting next him. “And speaking generally, you know, I see no necessity for softening my expressions in any case. The truth should be the truth. And however you cover up filth it will still remain filth. Why trouble to soften it? It’s deceiving oneself and others. Only a silly worldly numskull can feel the need of such senseless conventions. Tell me — I submit it to your judgment — do you find anything lovely in that face? I mean, of course, anything noble, lovely, exalted, not just vulgar red cheeks.”

Foma Fomitch spoke quietly, evenly, and with a kind of majestic nonchalance.

“Anything lovely in him?” answered Obnoskin, with insolent carelessness. “I think that he is simply a good piece of roast beef — and nothing else.”

“Went up to the looking-glass and looked into it to-day,” Foma continued, pompously omitting the pronoun. “I am far from considering myself a beauty, but I could not help coming to the conclusion that there is something in these grey eyes which distinguished me from any Falaley. There is thought, there is life, there is intelligence in these eyes. It is not myself I am praising. I am speaking generally of our class. Now what do you think, can there be a scrap, a grain of soul in that living beefsteak? Yes, indeed, take note, Pavel Semyonitch, how these people, utterly devoid of thought and ideal, and living by meat alone, always have revoltingly fresh complexions, coarsely and stupidly fresh! Would you like to know the level of his intellectual faculties. Hey, you image! Come nearer, let us admire you. Why are you gaping? Do you want to swallow a whale? Are you handsome? Answer, are you handsome?”

“I a-am!” answered Falaley, with smothered sobs.

Obnoskin roared with laughter. I felt that I was beginning to tremble with anger.

“Do you hear?” Foma went on, turning to Obnoskin in triumph. “Would you like to hear something more? I have come to put him through an examination. You see, Pavel Semyonitch, there are people who are desirous of corrupting and ruining this poor idiot. Perhaps I am too severe in my judgment, perhaps I am mistaken; but I speak from love of humanity. He was just now dancing the most improper of dances. That is of no concern to anyone here. But now hear for yourself… . Answer: what were you doing just now? Answer, answer immediately — do you hear?”

“I was da-ancing,” said Falaley, mastering his sobs.

“What were you dancing? What dance? Speak!”

“The Komarinsky. …”

“The Komarinsky! And who was that Komarinsky? What was the Komarinsky? Do you suppose I can understand anything from that answer? Come, give us an idea. Who was your Komarinsky?”

“A pea-easant. …”

“A peasant, only a peasant! I am surprised! A remarkable peasant, then! Then was it some celebrated peasant, if poems and dances are made about him? Come, answer!”

Foma could not exist without tormenting people, he played with his victim like a cat with a mouse; but Falaley remained mute, whimpering and unable to understand the question.

“Answer,” Foma persisted. “You are asked what sort of peasant was it? Speak! … Was he a seignorial peasant, a crown peasant, free, bond, industrial? There are ever so many sorts of peasants. …”

“In-dus-tri-al. …”

“Ah, industrial! Do you hear, Pavel Semyonitch? A new historical fact: the Komarinsky peasant was industrial. H’m… . Well, what did that industrial peasant do? For what exploits is he celebrated in song … and dance?”

The question was a delicate one, and since it was put to Falaley, a risky one too.

“Come … Though …” Obnoskin began, glancing towards his mamma, who was beginning to wriggle on the sofa in a peculiar way.

But what was to be done? Foma Fomitch’s whims were respected as law.

“Upon my word, uncle, if you don’t suppress that fool he’ll … you see what he is working up to — Falaley will blurt out some nonsense, I assure you …” I whispered to my uncle, who was utterly distracted and did not know what line to take.

“You had really better, Foma ..,” he began. “Here, I want to introduce to you, Foma, my nephew, a young man who is studying mineralogy.”

“I “beg you, Colonel, not to interrupt me with your mineralogy, a subject of which, as far as I am aware, you know nothing, and others perhaps little more. I am not a baby. He will answer me that this peasant, instead of working for the welfare of his family, has been drinking till he is tipsy, has sold his coat for drink, and is running about the street in an inebriated condition. That is, as is well known, the subject of the poem that sings the praises of drink. Don’t be uneasy, he knows now what he has to answer. Come, answer: what did that peasant do? Come, I have prompted you, I have put the words into your mouth. What I want is to hear it from you yourself, what he did, for what he was famous, how he gained the immortal glory of being sung by the troubadours. Well?”

The luckless Falaley looked round him in misery and, not knowing what to say, opened and shut his mouth like a carp hauled out of the water on to the sand.

“I am ashamed to sa-ay!” he bellowed at last in utter despair.

“Ah, ashamed to say!” bellowed Foma in triumph. “See, that’s the answer I have wrung out of him, Colonel! Ashamed to say, but not ashamed to do. That’s the morality which you have sown, which has sprung up and which you are now … watering; but it is useless to waste words! Go to the kitchen now, Falaley. I’ll say nothing to you now, out of regard for my audience, but to-day, to-day you will be severely and rigorously punished. If not, if this time they put you before me, you may stay here and entertain your betters with the Komarinsky while I will leave this house to-day! That’s enough. I have spoken, you can go!”

“Come, I think you really are severe ..,” mumbled Obnoskin.

“Just so, just so, just so,” my uncle began crying out, but he broke off and subsided. Foma looked gloomily askance at him.

“I wonder, Pavel Semyonitch,” he went on, “what all our contemporary writers, poets, learned men and thinkers are about. How is it they pay no attention to what songs are being sung by the Russian people and to what songs they are dancing? What have the Pushkins, the Lermontovs, the Borozdins been about all this time? I wonder at them. The people dance the Komarinsky, the apotheosis of drunkenness, while they sing of forget-me-nots! Why don’t they write poems of a more moral tone for popular use, why don’t they fling aside their forget-me-nots? It’s a social question. Let them depict a peasant, but a peasant made genteel, so to say, a villager and not a peasant; let them paint me the village sage in his simplicity, maybe even in his bark shoes — I don’t object even to that — but brimming over with the virtues which — I make bold to say — some over-lauded Alexander of Macedon may envy. I know Russia and Russia knows me, that is why I say this. Let them portray that peasant, weighed down maybe with a family and grey hair, in a stuffy hut, hungry, too, maybe, but contented; not repining, but blessing his poverty, and indifferent to the rich man’s gold. Let the rich man at last with softened heart bring him his gold; let, indeed, in this the virtues of the peasant be united with the virtues of his master, perhaps a grand gentleman. The villager and the grand gentleman so widely sparatcd in social grade are made one at last in virtue — that is an exalted thought! But what do we see? On one side forget-me-nots, and on the other the peasant dashing out of the pothouse and running about the street in a dishevelled condition! What is there poetic in that? Tell me, pray, what is there to admire in that? Where is the wit? Where is the grace? Where is the morality? I am amazed at it!”

“I am ready to pay you a hundred roubles for such words,” said Yezhevikin, with an enthusiastic air. “And you know the bald devil will try and get it out of me,” he whispered on the sly. “Flatter away, flatter away!”

“H’m, yes … you’ve put that very well,” Obnoskin pronounced.

“Exactly so, exactly so,” cried my uncle, who had been listening with the deepest attention and looking at me with triumph. “What a subject has come up!” he whispered, rubbing his hands. “A topic of many aspects, dash it all! Foma Fomitch, here is my nephew,” he added, in the overflow of his feelings. “He is engaged in literary pursuits too, let me introduce him.”

As before, Foma Fomitch paid not the slightest attention to my uncle’s introduction.

“For God’s sake, don’t introduce me any more! I entreat you in earnest,” I whispered to my uncle, with a resolute air.

“Ivan Ivanitch!” Foma began, suddenly addressing Mizintchikov and looking intently at h’m, “we have just been talking. What is your opinion?”

“Mine? You are asking me?” Mizintchikov responded in surprise, looking as though he had only just woken up.

“Yes, you. I am asking you because I value the cfpinion of really clever people, and not the pioblematic wiseacres who are only clever because they are being continually introduced as clever people, as learned people, and are sometimes sent for expressly to be made a show ot or something of the sort.”

This thrust was aimed directly at me. And yet there was no doubt that though Foma Fomitch took no notice whatever of me, he had begun this whole conversation concerning literature entirely for my benefit, to dazzle, to annihilate, to crush at the first step the elever and learned young man from Petersburg. I at any rate had no doubt of it.

“If you want to know my opinion, I … I agree with your opinion,” answered Mizintchikov listlessly and reluctantly.

“You always agree with me! It’s positively wearisome,”

replied Foma. “I tell you frankly, Pavel Semyonitch,” he went on, after a brief silence again addressing Obnoskin, “if I respect the immortal Karamzin it is not for his history, not for Mar fa Posadnitsa, not for Old and New Russia, but just for having written Frol Silin; it is a noble epic! It is a purely national product, and will live for ages and ages! a most lofty epic!”

“Just so, just so! a lofty epoch! Frol Silin, a benevolent man! I remember, I have read it. He bought the freedom of two girls, too, and then looked towards heaven and wept. A very lofty trait,” my uncle chimed in, beaming with satisfaction.

My poor uncle! he never could resist taking part in an intellectual conversation. Foma gave a malicious smile, but he remained silent.

“They write very interestingly, though, even now,” Anfisa Petrovna intervened discreetly. “The Mysteries of Brussels, for instance.”

“I should not say so,” observed Foma, as it were regretfully. “I was lately reading one of the poems … not up to much! ‘Forget-me-nots’. Of contemporary writers, if you will, the one I like best of all is ‘Scribbler’, a light pen!”

“‘Scribbler’!” cried Anfisa Petrovna. “Is that the man who writes letters in the magazines? Ah, how enchanting it is, what playing with words!”

“Precisely, playing with words; he, so to speak, plays with his pen. An extraordinary lightness of style.”

“Yes, but he is a pedant!” Obnoskin observed carelessly.

“Yes, a pedant he is, I don’t dispute it; but a charming pedant, a graceful pedant! Of course, not one of his ideas would stand serious criticism, but one is carried away by his lightness! A babbler, I agree, but a charming babbler, a graceful babbler. Do you remember, for instance, in one of his articles he mentions that he has his own estates?”

“Estates!” my uncle caught up. “That’s good! In what province?”

Foma stopped, looking fixedly at my uncle, and went on in the same tone:

“Tell me in the name of common sense, of what interest is it to me, the reader, to know that he has his own estates? If he has — I congratulate him on it! But how charmingly, how jestingly, it is described! He sparkles with wit, he splashes with wit, he boils over? He is a Narzan of wit! Yes, that is the way to write! I fancy I should write just like that, if I were to consent to write for magazines. …”

“Perhaps you would do even better,” Yezhevikin observed respectfully.

“There is positively something musical in the language,” my uncle put in.

Foma Fomitch lost patience at last.

“Colonel,” he said, “is it not possible to ask you — with all conceivable delicacy of course — not to interfere with us, but to allow us to finish our conversation in peace. You cannot offer an opinion in our conversation! You cannot. Don’t disturb our agreeable literary chat. Look after your land, drink your tea, but … leave literature alone. It will lose nothing by it, I assure you — I assure you!”

This was surpassing the utmost limit of impudence! I did not know what to think.

“Why, you yourself, Foma, said it was musical,” my uncle brought out in confusion and distress.

“Quite so, but I spoke with a knowledge of the subject, I spoke appropriately; while you …”

“To be sure, but we spoke with intellect,” put in Yezhevikin, wriggling round Foma Fomitch. “We have just a little intelligence, though we may have to borrow some; just enough to run a couple of government departments and we might manage a third, if need be — that’s all we can boast of!”

“So it seems I have been talking nonsense again,” said my uncle in conclusion, and he smiled his goodnatured smile.

“You admit it, anyway,” observed Foma.

“It’s all right, it’s all right, Foma, I am not angry. I know that you pull me up like a friend, like a relation, like a brothei. I have myself allowed you to do it, begged you to, indeed. It’s a good thing. It’s for my benefit. I thank you for it and will profit by it.”

My patience was exhausted. All that I had hitherto heard about Foma Fomitch had seemed to me somewhat exaggerated. Now when I saw it all for myself, my astonishment was beyond all bounds. I could not believe my senses; I could not understand such impudence, such insolent domineering on one side and such voluntary slavery, such credulous good nature on the other. Though, indeed, my uncle himself was confused by such impudence. That was evident … I was burning with desire to come to grips with Foma, to do battle with him, to be rude to him in some way, in as startling a fashion as possible — and then let come what may! This idea excited me. I looked for an opportunity, and completely ruined the brim of my hat while I waited for it. But the opportunity did not present itself. Foma absolutely refused to notice me.

“You are right, perfectly right, Foma,” my uncle went on, doing his utmost to recover himself, and to smoothe over the unpleasantness of what had been said before. “What you say is true, Foma. I thank you for it. One must know the subject before one discusses it. I am sorry! It is not the first time I have been in the same predicament. Only fancy, Sergey, on one occasion I was an examiner … you laugh! But there it is! I really was an examiner, and that was all about it. I was invited to an institution, to be present at an examination, and they set me down together with the examiners, as a sign of respect, there was an empty seat. So, I will own to you, I was frightened, I was positively alarmed, I do not know a single science. What was I to do? I thought that in another minute they would drag me myself to the black board! Well, what then? Nothing happened, it went off all right, I even asked questions myself; who was Noah? On the whole they answered splendidly; then we had lunch and toasted enlightenment in champagne. It was a fine school!”

Foma Fomitch and Obnoskin burst into roars of laughter.

“Indeed, I laughed myself afterwards,” cried my uncle, laughing in a most goodnatured way and delighted that general cheerfulness was restored. “Yes, Foma, here goes! I will amuse you all by telling you how I put my foot in it once… . Only fancy, Sergey, we were staying at Krasnogorsk …”

“Allow me to inquire, Colonel, will you be long in telling your story?” Foma interposed.

“Oh, Foma! Why, it is the most delightful story, enough to make one split with laughter; you only listen, it is good, it really is good. I’ll tell you how I put my foot in it.”

“I always listen with pleasure to your stories when they are of that sort,” Obnoskin pronounced, yawning.

“There is no help for it, we must listen,” Foma decided.

“But upon my word it is good, Foma, it really is. I want to tell you how I put my foot into it on one occasion, Anfisa Petrovna. You listen too, Sergey, it is an edifying story indeed. We were staying at Krasnogorsk,” my uncle began, beaming with pleasure, talking with nervous haste, and falling into innumerable parentheses as he always did when he was beginning to tell some story for the pleasure of his audience. “As soon as we arrived, the same evening we went to the theatre. There was a first-rate actress, Kuropatkina; she afterwards ran away with the cavalry captain Zvyerkov and did not finish the play she was acting: so they let down the curtain… . This Zvyerkov was a beast, both for drinking and playing cards, and not that he was a drunkard, but simply ready to join his comrades at festive moments. But when he did get really drunk then he forgot everything, where he lived, in what country, and what his name was. Absolutely everything, in fact: but he was a very fine fellow really… . Well, I was sitting in the theatre. In the interval I got up, and I ran across a comrade called Kornouhov. … A unique fellow, I assure you. We had not see each other for six years, it is true. Well, he had stayed in the company and was covered with crosses. I have heard lately — he’s an actual civil councillor; he transferred to the civil service and worked his way up to a high grade… . Well, of course, we were delighted. One thing and another. In the box next to us were three ladies; the one on the left was the ugliest woman in the world… . Afterwards I found out that she was a splendid woman, the mother of a family, and the happiness of her husband… . Well, so I like a fool blurt out to Komouhov: T say, old man, can you tell me who that scarecrow is?”Who do you mean?”Why, that one.”That’s my cousin.’ Tfoo, the devil! judge of my position! To put myself right: ‘Not that one,’ I said. ‘What eyes you’ve got! I mean the one who is sitting there, who is that?”That’s my sister.’ Tfoo, plague take it all! And his sister, as luck would have it, was a regular rosebud, a sweet little thing; dressed up like anything — brooches, gloves, bracelets, in fact a perfect cherub. Afterwards she married a very fine fellow called Pyhtin; she eloped with him, it was a runaway match; but now it is all right, and they are very well off; their parents are only too delighted! Well, so I cried out, ‘Oh, no!’ not knowing how to get out of it, ‘not that one, the one in the middle, who is she?’ Tn the middle? Well, my boy, that’s my wife.’ … And she, between ourselves, was a perfect sugarplum. I felt that I could have eaten her up at one mouthful, I was so delighted with her… . ‘Well,’ I said, ‘have you ever seen a fool? Here is one facing you, and here’s his head; cut it off, don’t spare itl’ He laughed. Afterwards he introduced them to me and must have told them, the rascal. They were in fits of laughter over something! And I must say I never spent an evening more merrily. So you see, Foma, old man, how one can put one’s foot in it! Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

But it was no use my poor uncle laughing; in vain he looked round the company with his kind and goodhumoured eyes; a dead silence was the response that greeted his lighthearted story. Foma Fomitch sat in gloomy dumbness and all the others followed his example; only Obnoskin gave a faint smile, foreseeing the baiting my uncle would get. My uncle was embarrassed and flushed crimson. This was what Foma desired.

“Have you finished?” he asked at last, turning with dignity to the embarrassed storyteller.

“Yes, Foma.”

“And are you satisfied?”

“How do you mean, satisfied?” asked my poor uncle miserably.

“Are you happier now? Are you pleased at having broken up the pleasant literary conversation of your friends by interrupting them and so satisfying your petty vanity?”

“Oh, come, Foma, I wanted to amuse you all, and you …”

“Amuse!” cried Foma, suddenly becoming extraordinarily heated; “but you are only able to depress us, not amuse us. Amuse! but do you know that your story was almost immoral! I say nothing of its impropriety, that is self-evident… . You informed us just now with rare coarseness of feeling that you laughed at innocence, at an honourable lady, simply because she had not the honour to please you, and you wanted to make us, us laugh, that is applaud you, that is applaud a coarse and improper action, and all because you are the master of this house! You can do as you like, Colonel, you can seek out toadies, flatterers, sycophants, you can even send for them from distant parts and so increase your retinue to the detriment of straightforwardness and frank nobility of soul, but never will Foma Opiskin be your toady, your flatterer, your sycophant! I can assure you of that, if of anything. …”

“Oh, Foma! You misunderstand me, Foma.”

“No, Colonel; I have seen through you for a long time, I know you through and through. You are devoured by boundless vanity. You have pretensions to an incomparable keenness of wit, and forget that wit is blunted by pretension. You …”

“Oh, stop, Foma, for God’s sake! Have some shame, if only before people!”

“It’s sad, you know, to see all this, Colonel, and it’s im-

possible to be silent when one sees it. I am poor, I am living at the expense of your mother. It may be expected, perhaps, that I should flatter you by my silence, and I don’t care for any milksop to take me for your toady! Possibly when I came into this room just now I intentionally accentuated my truthful candour, was forced to be intentionally rude, just because you yourself put me into such a position. You are too haughty with me, Colonel, I may be taken for your slave, your toady. Your pleasure is to humiliate me before strangers, while I am really your equal — your equal in every respect. Perhaps I am doing you a favour in living with you, and not you doing me one. I am insulted, so I am forced to sing my own praises — that’s natural I I cannot help speaking, I must speak, I am bound at once to protest, and that is why I tell you straight out that you are phenomenally envious. You see, for instance, someone in a simple friendly conversation unconsciously reveals his knowledge, his reading, his taste, and so you are annoyed, you can’t sit still. ‘Let me display my knowledge and my taste,’ you think! And what taste have you, if you will allow me to ask? You know as much about art — if you will excuse my saying so, Colonel — as a bull about beef! That’s harsh and rude, I admit; anyway it is straightforward and just. You won’t hear that from your flatterers, Colonel.’

“Oh, Foma! …”

“It is ‘Oh, Foma,’ to be sure. The truth is not a feather bed, it seems. Very well, then, we will speak later about this, but now let me entertain the company a little. You can’t be the only one to distinguish yourself all the time. Pavel Semyonitch, have you seen this sea monster in human form? I have been observing him for a long time. Look well at him; why, he would like to devour me whole, at one gulp.”

He was speaking of Gavrila. The old servant was standing at the door, and certainly was looking on with distress at the scolding of his master.

“I want to entertain you, too, with a performance, Pavel Semyonitch. Come here, you scarecrow, come here! Condescend to approach us a little nearer, Gavrila Ignatitch! Here you see, Pavel Semyonitch, is Gavrila; as a punishment for rudeness he is studying the French dialect. Like Orpheus, I soften the manners of these parts not only with songs but with the French dialect. Come, Mossoo Frenchy — he can’t bear to be called Mossoo — do you know your lesson?”

“I have learnt it,” said Gavrila, hanging his head.

‘‘Well, Parlay — voo — fransay?’’

“Vee, moossyu, zhe — le — pari — on — peu. …”

I don’t know whether it was Gavrila’s mournful face as he uttered the French phrase, or whether they were all aware of Foma’s desire that they should laugh, but anyway they all burst into a roar of laughter as soon as Gavrila opened his lips. Even Madame la Générale deigned to be amused. Anfisa Petrovna, sinking back on the sofa, shrieked, hiding her face behind her fan. What seemed most ludicrous was that Gavrila, seeing what his examination was being turned into, could not restrain himself from spitting and commenting reproachfully: “To think of having lived to such disgrace in my old age!”

Foma Fomitch was startled.

“What? What did you say? So you think fit to be rude?”

“No, Foma Fomitch,” Gavnla replied with dignity. “My words were no rudeness, and it’s not for me, a serf, to be rude to you, a gentleman born. But every man bears the image of God upon him, His image and semblance. I am sixty-three years old. My father remembers Pugatchev, the monster, and my grandfather helped his master, Matvey Nikititch — God grant him the kingdom of heaven — to hang Pugatchev on an aspen tree, for which my father was honoured beyond all others by our late master, Afanasy Matveyitch: he was his valet, and ended his life as butler. As for me, Foma Fomitch, sir, though I am my master’s bondman, I have never known such a shame done me from my birth upward till now.”

And at the last word Gavrila spread out his hands and hung his head. My uncle was watching him uneasily.

“Come, that’s enough, Gavrila,” he cried. “No need to say more, that’s enough!”

“Never mind, never mind,” said Foma, turning a little pale and giving a forced smile. “Let him speak, these are the fruits of your …”

“I will tell you everything,” said Gavrila with extraordinary fervour, “I will conceal nothing! You may bind the hands, but there is no binding the tongue. Though I may seem beside you, Foma Fomitch, a low man, in fact a slave, yet I can feel insulted! Service and obedience I am always bound to give you, because I am born a slave and must do my duty in fear and trembling. You sit writing a book, it’s my duty not to let you be interrupted — that is my real duty. Any service that is needed I am pleased to do. But in my old age to bleat in some outlandish way and be put to shame before folk! Why, I can’t go into the servants’ room now: ‘You are a Frenchyl’ they say, ‘a Frenchy!’ No, Foma Fomitch, sir, it’s not only a fool like me, but all good folks have begun to say the same: that you have become now a wicked man and that our master is nothing but a little child before you, that though you are a gentleman by birth and a general’s son, and yourself may be near being a general too, yet you are as wicked as a real fury must be.”

Gavrila had finished. I was beside myself with delight. Foma Fomitch sat pale with rage in the midst of the general discomfiture and seemed unable to recover from Gavrila’s sudden attack upon him; he seemed at that moment to be deliberating how far his wrath should carry him. At last the outburst followed.

“What, he dares to be rude to me — me! but this is mutiny!” shrieked Foma, and he leapt up from his chair.

Madame la Générale followed his example, clasping her hands. There was a general commotion, my uncle rushed to turn the culprit out, “Put him in fetters, put him in fetters!” cried Madame la G£nerale. “Take him to the town at once and send him for a soldier, Yegorushka, or you shall not have my blessing. Fix the fetters on him at once, and send him for a soldier.”

“What!” cried Foma. “Slave! Lout! Hamlet! He dares to be rude to me! He, he, a rag to wipe my boots! He dares to call me a fury!”

I slipped forward with unusual determination.

“I must confess that in this affair I am completely of Gavrila’s opinion,” I said, looking Foma Fomitch straight in the face and trembling with excitement.

He was so taken aback by this onslaught that for the first minute he seemed unable to believe his ears.

“What’s this now?” he cried out at last, pouncing upon me in a frenzy, and fixing his little bloodshot eyes upon me. “Why, who are you?”

“Foma Fomitch ..,” my uncle, utterly distracted, began, “this is Seryozha, my nephew… .”

“The learned gentleman!” yelled Foma. “So he’s the learned gentleman! Liberie — egahte — fratermte. Journal des Debuts! No, my friend, you won’t take me in! I am not such a fool. This isn’t Petersburg, you won’t impose upon us. And I spit on your des Debats. You have your des Debats, but to us that’s all fiddlesticks, young man! Learned! You know as much as I have forgotten seven times over. So much for your learning!”

If they had not held him back I believe he would have fallen upon me with his fists.

“Why, he is drunk,” I said, looking about me in bewilderment.

“Who, I?” cried Foma, in a voice unlike his own.

“Yes, you!”

“Drunk?”

“Yes, drunk.”

This was more than Foma could endure. He uttered a screech as though he were being murdered and rushed out of the room. Madame la Générale seemed desirous of falling into a swoon, but reflected that it would be better to run after Foma Fomitch. She was followed by all the others, and last of all by my uncle. When I recovered myself and looked round I saw in the room no one but Yezhevikin. He was smiling and rubbing his hands.

“You promised just now to tell me about the Jesuits,” he said in an insinuating voice.

“What?” I asked, not understanding what he was talking about.

“About the Jesuits, you promised just now to tell me … some little anecdote. …”

I ran out into the veranda and from there into the garden. My head was going round… .