The possessed or, The devils
own ambition, and he suddenly began making a toy church: the pastor came
out to preach the sermon, the congregation listened with their hands
before them, one lady was drying her tears with her handkerchief, one
old gentleman was blowing his nose; finally the organ pealed forth. It
had been ordered from Switzerland, and made expressly in spite of all
expense. Yulia Mihailovna, in positive alarm, carried off the whole
structure as soon as she knew about it, and locked it up in a box in
her own room. To make up for it she allowed him to write a novel on
condition of its being kept secret. From that time she began to reckon
only upon herself. Unhappily there was a good deal of shallowness and
lack of judgment in her attitude. Destiny had kept her too long an old
maid. Now one idea after another fluttered through her ambitious and
rather over-excited brain. She cherished designs, she positively desired
to rule the province, dreamed of becoming at once the centre of a
circle, adopted political sympathies. Von Lembke was actually a little
alarmed, though, with his official tact, he quickly divined that he had
no need at all to be uneasy about the government of the province itself.
The first two or three months passed indeed very satisfactorily. But now
Pyotr Stepanovitch had turned up, and something queer began to happen.
The fact was that young Verhovensky, from the first step, had displayed
a flagrant lack of respect for Andrey Antonovitch, and had assumed a
strange right to dictate to him; while Yulia Mihailovna, who had always
till then been so jealous of her husband's dignity, absolutely refused
to notice it; or, at any rate, attached no consequence to it. The young
man became a favourite, ate, drank, and almost slept in the house. Von
Lembke tried to defend himself, called him "young man" before other
people, and slapped him patronisingly on the shoulder, but made no
impression. Pyotr Stepanovitch always seemed to be laughing in his face
even when he appeared on the surface to be talking seriously to him, and
he would say the most startling things to him before company. Returning
home one day he found the young man had installed himself in his study
and was asleep on the sofa there, uninvited. He explained that he had
come in, and finding no one at home had "had a good sleep."
Von Lembke was offended and again complained to his wife. Laughing at
his irritability she observed tartly that he evidently did not know how
to keep up his own dignity; and that with her, anyway, "the boy" had
never permitted himself any undue familiarity, "he was naïve and fresh
indeed, though not regardful of the conventions of society." Von Lembke
sulked. This time she made peace between them. Pyotr Stepanovitch did
not go so far as to apologise, but got out of it with a coarse jest,
which might at another time have been taken for a fresh offence, but
was accepted on this occasion as a token of repentance. The weak spot
in Andrey Antonovitch's position was that he had blundered in the first
instance by divulging the secret of his novel to him. Imagining him
to be an ardent young man of poetic feeling and having long dreamed
of securing a listener, he had, during the early days of their
acquaintance, on one occasion read aloud two chapters to him. The young
man had listened without disguising his boredom, had rudely yawned,
had vouchsafed no word of praise; but on leaving had asked for the
manuscript that he might form an opinion of it at his leisure, and
Andrey Antonovitch had given it him. He had not returned the manuscript
since, though he dropped in every day, and had turned off all inquiries
with a laugh. Afterwards he declared that he had lost it in the street.
At the time Yulia Mihailovna was terribly angry with her husband when
she heard of it.
"Perhaps you told him about the church too?" she burst out almost in
dismay.
Von Lembke unmistakably began to brood, and brooding was bad for him,
and had been forbidden by the doctors. Apart from the fact that there
were signs of trouble in the province, of which we will speak later, he
had private reasons for brooding, his heart was wounded, not merely his
official dignity. When Andrey Antonovitch had entered upon married life,
he had never conceived the possibility of conjugal strife, or dissension
in the future. It was inconsistent with the dreams he had cherished
all his life of his Minna or Ernestine. He felt that he was unequal to
enduring domestic storms. Yulia Mihailovna had an open explanation with
him at last.
"You can't be angry at this," she said, "if only because you've still as
much sense as he has, and are immeasurably higher in the social scale.
The boy still preserves many traces of his old free-thinking habits;
I believe it's simply mischief; but one can do nothing suddenly, in a
hurry; you must do things by degrees. We must make much of our young
people; I treat them with affection and hold them back from the brink."
"But he says such dreadful things," Von Lembke objected. "I can't behave
tolerantly when he maintains in my presence and before other people
that the government purposely drenches the people with vodka in order to
brutalise them, and so keep them from revolution. Fancy my position when
I'm forced to listen to that before every one."
As he said this, Von Lembke recalled a conversation he had recently
had with Pyotr Stepanovitch. With the innocent object of displaying his
Liberal tendencies he had shown him his own private collection of every
possible kind of manifesto, Russian and foreign, which he had carefully
collected since the year 1859, not simply from a love of collecting but
from a laudable interest in them. Pyotr Stepanovitch, seeing his object,
expressed the opinion that there was more sense in one line of some
manifestoes than in a whole government department, "not even excluding
yours, maybe."
Lembke winced.
"But this is premature among us, premature," he pronounced almost
imploringly, pointing to the manifestoes.
"No, it's not premature; you see you're afraid, so it's not premature."
"But here, for instance, is an incitement to destroy churches."
"And why not? You're a sensible man, and of course you don't believe
in it yourself, but you know perfectly well that you need religion to
brutalise the people. Truth is honester than falsehood...."
"I agree, I agree, I quite agree with you, but it is premature,
premature in this country..." said Von Lembke, frowning.
"And how can you be an official of the government after that, when you
agree to demolishing churches, and marching on Petersburg armed with
staves, and make it all simply a question of date?"
Lembke was greatly put out at being so crudely caught.
"It's not so, not so at all," he cried, carried away and more and more
mortified in his amour-propre. "You're young, and know nothing of
our aims, and that's why you're mistaken. You see, my dear Pyotr
Stepanovitch, you call us officials of the government, don't you?
Independent officials, don't you? But let me ask you, how are we acting?
Ours is the responsibility, but in the long run we serve the cause of
progress just as you do. We only hold together what you are unsettling,
and what, but for us, would go to pieces in all directions. We are not
your enemies, not a bit of it. We say to you, go forward, progress, you
may even unsettle things, that is, things that are antiquated and in
need of reform. But we will keep you, when need be, within necessary
limits, and so save you from yourselves, for without us you would set
Russia tottering, robbing her of all external decency, while our task is
to preserve external decency. Understand that we are mutually essential
to one another. In England the Whigs and Tories are in the same way
mutually essential to one another. Well, you're Whigs and we're Tories.
That's how I look at it."
Andrey Antonovitch rose to positive eloquence. He had been fond of
talking in a Liberal and intellectual style even in Petersburg, and the
great thing here was that there was no one to play the spy on him.
Pyotr Stepanovitch was silent, and maintained an unusually grave air.
This excited the orator more than ever.
"Do you know that I, the 'person responsible for the province,'" he went
on, walking about the study, "do you know I have so many duties I can't
perform one of them, and, on the other hand, I can say just as truly
that there's nothing for me to do here. The whole secret of it is,
that everything depends upon the views of the government. Suppose the
government were ever to found a republic, from policy, or to pacify
public excitement, and at the same time to increase the power of the
governors, then we governors would swallow up the republic; and not the
republic only. Anything you like we'll swallow up. I, at least, feel
that I am ready. In one word, if the government dictates to me by
telegram, _activité dévorante_, I'll supply _activité dévorante_. I've
told them here straight in their faces: 'Dear sirs, to maintain the
equilibrium and to develop all the provincial institutions one thing
is essential; the increase of the power of the governor.' You see it's
necessary that all these institutions, the zemstvos, the law-courts,
should have a two-fold existence, that is, on the one hand, it's
necessary they should exist (I agree that it is necessary), on the other
hand, it's necessary that they shouldn't. It's all according to the
views of the government. If the mood takes them so that institutions
seem suddenly necessary, I shall have them at once in readiness. The
necessity passes and no one will find them under my rule. That's what
I understand by _activité dévorante_, and you can't have it without an
increase of the governor's power. We're talking _tête-à-tête_. You know
I've already laid before the government in Petersburg the necessity of a
special sentinel before the governor's house. I'm awaiting an answer."
"You ought to have two," Pyotr Stepanovitch commented.
"Why two?" said Von Lembke, stopping short before him.
"One's not enough to create respect for you. You certainly ought to have
two."
Andrey Antonovitch made a wry face.
"You... there's no limit to the liberties you take, Pyotr Stepanovitch.
You take advantage of my good-nature, you say cutting things, and play
the part of a _bourru bienfaisant_...."
"Well, that's as you please," muttered Pyotr Stepanovitch; "anyway you
pave the way for us and prepare for our success."
"Now, who are 'we,' and what success?" said Von Lembke, staring at him
in surprise. But he got no answer.
Yulia Mihailovna, receiving a report of the conversation, was greatly
displeased.
"But I can't exercise my official authority upon your favourite,"
Andrey Antonovitch protested in self-defence, "especially when we're
_tête-à-tête_.... I may say too much... in the goodness of my heart."
"From too much goodness of heart. I didn't know you'd got a collection
of manifestoes. Be so good as to show them to me."
"But... he asked to have them for one day."
"And you've let him have them, again!" cried Yulia Mihailovna getting
angry. "How tactless!"
"I'll send someone to him at once to get them."
"He won't give them up."
"I'll insist on it," cried Von Lembke, boiling over, and he jumped up
from his seat. "Who's he that we should be so afraid of him, and who am
I that I shouldn't dare to do any thing?"
"Sit down and calm yourself," said Yulia Mihailovna, checking him.
"I will answer your first question. He came to me with the highest
recommendations. He's talented, and sometimes says extremely clever
things. Karmazinov tells me that he has connections almost everywhere,
and extraordinary influence over the younger generation in Petersburg