The possessed or, The devils

would, it was said, make a painful impression on Varvara Petrovna. The confident and triumphant air of Varvara Petrovna, the contemptuous indifference with which she heard of the opinions of our provincial ladies and the agitation in local society, revived the flagging spirits of Stepan Trofimovitch and cheered him up at once. With peculiar, gleefully-obsequious humour, he was beginning to describe the new governor's arrival. "You are no doubt aware, _excellente amie_," he said, jauntily and coquettishly drawling his words, "what is meant by a Russian administrator, speaking generally, and what is meant by a new Russian administrator, that is the newly-baked, newly-established... _ces interminables mots Russes!_ But I don't think you can know in practice what is meant by administrative ardour, and what sort of thing that is." "Administrative ardour? I don't know what that is." "Well... _Vous savez chez nous... En un mot,_ set the most insignificant nonentity to sell miserable tickets at a railway station, and the nonentity will at once feel privileged to look down on you like a Jupiter, _pour montrer son pouvoir_ when you go to take a ticket. 'Now then,' he says, 'I shall show you my power'... and in them it comes to a genuine, administrative ardour. _En un mot,_ I've read that some verger in one of our Russian churches abroad--_mais c'est très curieux_--drove, literally drove a distinguished English family, _les dames charmantes_, out of the church before the beginning of the Lenten service... _vous savez ces chants et le livre de Job_... on the simple pretext that 'foreigners are not allowed to loaf about a Russian church, and that they must come at the time fixed....' And he sent them into fainting fits.... That verger was suffering from an attack of administrative ardour, _et il a montré son pouvoir_." "Cut it short if you can, Stepan Trofimovitch." "Mr. von Lembke is making a tour of the province now. _En un mot,_ this Andrey Antonovitch, though he is a russified German and of the Orthodox persuasion, and even--I will say that for him--a remarkably handsome man of about forty..." "What makes you think he's a handsome man? He has eyes like a sheep's." "Precisely so. But in this I yield, of course, to the opinion of our ladies." "Let's get on, Stepan Trofimovitch, I beg you! By the way, you're wearing a red neck-tie. Is it long since you've taken to it?" "I've... I've only put it on to-day." "And do you take your constitutional? Do you go for a four-mile walk every day as the doctor told you to?" "N-not... always." "I knew you didn't! I felt sure of that when I was in Switzerland!" she cried irritably. "Now you must go not four but six miles a day! You've grown terribly slack, terribly, terribly! You're not simply getting old, you're getting decrepit.... You shocked me when I first saw you just now, in spite of your red tie, _quelle idee rouge_! Go on about Von Lembke if you've really something to tell me, and do finish some time, I entreat you, I'm tired." "_En un mot,_ I only wanted to say that he is one of those administrators who begin to have power at forty, who, till they're forty, have been stagnating in insignificance and then suddenly come to the front through suddenly acquiring a wife, or some other equally desperate means.... That is, he has gone away now... that is, I mean to say, it was at once whispered in both his ears that I am a corrupter of youth, and a hot-bed of provincial atheism.... He began making inquiries at once." "Is that true?" "I took steps about it, in fact. When he was 'informed' that you 'ruled the province,' _vous savez,_ he allowed himself to use the expression that 'there shall be nothing of that sort in the future.'" "Did he say that?" "That 'there shall be nothing of the sort in future,' and, _avec cette morgue_.... His wife, Yulia Mihailovna, we shall behold at the end of August, she's coming straight from Petersburg." "From abroad. We met there." _"Vraiment?"_ "In Paris and in Switzerland. She's related to the Drozdovs." "Related! What an extraordinary coincidence! They say she is ambitious and... supposed to have great connections." "Nonsense! Connections indeed! She was an old maid without a farthing till she was five-and-forty. But now she's hooked her Von Lembke, and, of course, her whole object is to push him forward. They're both intriguers." "And they say she's two years older than he is?" "Five. Her mother used to wear out her skirts on my doorsteps in Moscow; she used to beg for an invitation to our balls as a favour when my husband was living. And this creature used to sit all night alone in a corner without dancing, with her turquoise fly on her forehead, so that simply from pity I used to have to send her her first partner at two o'clock in the morning. She was five-and-twenty then, and they used to rig her out in short skirts like a little girl. It was improper to have them about at last." "I seem to see that fly." "I tell you, as soon as I arrived I was in the thick of an intrigue. You read Madame Drozdov's letter, of course. What could be clearer? What did I find? That fool Praskovya herself--she always was a fool--looked at me as much as to ask why I'd come. You can fancy how surprised I was. I looked round, and there was that Lembke woman at her tricks, and that cousin of hers--old Drozdov's nephew--it was all clear. You may be sure I changed all that in a twinkling, and Praskovya is on my side again, but what an intrigue!" "In which you came off victor, however. Bismarck!" "Without being a Bismarck I'm equal to falseness and stupidity wherever I meet it, falseness, and Praskovya's folly. I don't know when I've met such a flabby woman, and what's more her legs are swollen, and she's a good-natured simpleton, too. What can be more foolish than a good-natured simpleton?" "A spiteful fool, _ma bonne amie,_ a spiteful fool is still more foolish," Stepan Trofimovitch protested magnanimously. "You're right, perhaps. Do you remember Liza?" _"Charmante enfant!"_ "But she's not an _enfant_ now, but a woman, and a woman of character. She's a generous, passionate creature, and what I like about her, she stands up to that confiding fool, her mother. There was almost a row over that cousin." "Bah, and of course he's no relation of Lizaveta Nikolaevna's at all.... Has he designs on her?" "You see, he's a young officer, not by any means talkative, modest in fact. I always want to be just. I fancy he is opposed to the intrigue himself, and isn't aiming at anything, and it was only the Von Lembke's tricks. He had a great respect for Nicolas. You understand, it all depends on Liza. But I left her on the best of terms with Nicolas, and he promised he would come to us in November. So it's only the Von Lembke who is intriguing, and Praskovya is a blind woman. She suddenly tells me that all my suspicions are fancy. I told her to her face she was a fool. I am ready to repeat it at the day of judgment. And if it hadn't been for Nicolas begging me to leave it for a time, I wouldn't have come away without unmasking that false woman. She's been trying to ingratiate herself with Count K. through Nicolas. She wants to come between mother and son. But Liza's on our side, and I came to an understanding with Praskovya. Do you know that Karmazinov is a relation of hers?" "What? A relation of Madame von Lembke?" "Yes, of hers. Distant." "Karmazinov, the novelist?" "Yes, the writer. Why does it surprise you? Of course he considers himself a great man. Stuck-up creature! She's coming here with him. Now she's making a fuss of him out there. She's got a notion of setting up a sort of literary society here. He's coming for a month, he wants to sell his last piece of property here. I very nearly met him in Switzerland, and was very anxious not to. Though I hope he will deign to recognise me. He wrote letters to me in the old days, he has been in my house. I should like you to dress better, Stepan Trofimovitch; you're growing more slovenly every day.... Oh, how you torment me! What are you reading now?" "I... I..." "I understand. The same as ever, friends and drinking, the club and cards, and the reputation of an atheist. I don't like that reputation, Stepan Trofimovitch; I don't care for you to be called an atheist, particularly now. I didn't care for it in old days, for it's all nothing but empty chatter. It must be said at last." _"Mais, ma chère..."_ "Listen, Stepan Trofimovitch, of course I'm ignorant compared with you on all learned subjects, but as I was travelling here I thought a great deal about you. I've come to one conclusion." "What conclusion?" "That you and I are not the wisest people in the world, but that there are people wiser than we are." "Witty and apt. If there are people wiser than we are, then there are people more right than we are, and we may be mistaken, you mean? _Mais, ma bonne amie,_ granted that I may make a mistake, yet have I not the common, human, eternal, supreme right of freedom of conscience? I have the right not to be bigoted or superstitious if I don't wish to, and for that I shall naturally be hated by certain persons to the end of time. _Et puis, comme on trouve toujours plus de moines que de raison,_ and as I thoroughly agree with that..." "What, what did you say?" "I said, _on trouve toujours plus de moines que de raison,_ and as I thoroughly..." "I'm sure that's not your saying. You must have taken it from somewhere." "It was Pascal said that." "Just as I thought...it's not your own. Why don't you ever say anything like that yourself, so shortly and to the point, instead of dragging things out to such a length? That's much better than what you said just now about administrative ardour..." _"Ma foi, chère..." _why? In the first place probably because I'm not a Pascal after all, _et puis_... secondly, we Russians never can say anything in our own language.... We never have said anything hitherto, at any rate...." "H'm! That's not true, perhaps. Anyway, you'd better make a note of such phrases, and remember them, you know, in case you have to talk.... Ach, Stephan Trofimovitch. I have come to talk to you seriously, quite seriously." _"Chère, chère amie!"_ "Now that all these Von Lembkes and Karmazinovs.... Oh, my goodness, how you have deteriorated!... Oh, my goodness, how you do torment me!... I should have liked these people to feel a respect for you, for they're not worth your little finger--but the way you behave!... What will they see? What shall I have to show them? Instead of nobly standing as an example, keeping up the tradition of the past, you surround yourself with a wretched rabble, you have picked up impossible habits, you've grown feeble, you can't do without wine and cards, you read nothing but Paul de Kock, and write nothing, while all of them write; all your time's wasted in gossip. How can you bring yourself to be friends with a wretched creature like your inseparable Liputin?" "Why is he _mine_ and _inseparable_?" Stepan Trofimovitch protested timidly. "Where is he now?" Varvara Petrovna went on, sharply and sternly. "He... he has an infinite respect for you, and he's gone to S----k, to receive an inheritance left him by his mother." "He seems to do nothing but get money. And how's Shatov? Is he just the same?" _"Irascible, mais bon."_ "I can't endure your Shatov. He's spiteful and he thinks too much of himself." "How is Darya Pavlovna?" "You mean Dasha? What made you think of her?" Varvara Petrovna looked at him inquisitively. "She's quite well. I left her with the Drozdovs. I heard something about your son in Switzerland. Nothing good."