he dragged almost into the middle of the room, so as to be at an equal distance between his host and the visitor, who had installed themselves on sofas on opposite sides of the room. His sharp eyes darted inquisitively from one corner of the room to another.
"It's.... a long while since I've seen Petrusha.... You met abroad?" Stepan Trofimovitch managed to mutter to the visitor.
"Both here and abroad."
"Alexey Nilitch has only just returned himself after living four years abroad," put in Liputin. "He has been travelling to perfect himself in his speciality and has come to us because he has good reasons to expect a job on the building of our railway bridge, and he's now waiting for an answer about it. He knows the Drozdovs and Lizaveta Nikolaevna, through Pyotr Stepanovitch."
The engineer sat, as it were, with a ruffled air, and listened with awkward impatience. It seemed to me that he was angry about something.
"He knows Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch too."
"Do you know Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch?" inquired Stepan Trofimovitch.
"I know him too."
"It's... it's a very long time since I've seen Petrusha, and... I feel I have so little right to call myself a father... c'est le mot; I... how did you leave him?"
"Oh, yes, I left him... he comes himself," replied Mr. Kirillov, in haste to be rid of the question again. He certainly was angry.
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"He's coming! At last I... you see, it's very long since I've see Petrusha!" Stepan Trofimovitch could not get away from this phrase. "Now I expect my poor boy to whom... to whom I have been so much to blame! That is, I mean to say, when I left him in Petersburg, I... in short, I looked on him as a nonentity, quelque chose dans ce genre. He was a very nervous boy, you know, emotional, and... very timid. When he said his prayers going to bed he used to bow down to the ground, and make the sign of the cross on his pillow that he might not die in the night.... Je m'en souviens. Enfin, no artistic feeling whatever, not a sign of anything higher, of anything fundamental, no embryo of a future ideal...c'etait comme un petit idiot, but I'm afraid I am incoherent; excuse me... you came upon me..."
"You say seriously that he crossed his pillow?" the engineer asked suddenly with marked curiosity. "Yes, he used to..."
"All right. I just asked. Go on."
Stepan Trofimovitch looked interrogatively at Liputin.
"I'm very grateful to you for your visit. But I must confess I'm... not in a condition... just now... But allow me to ask where you are lodging."
"At Filipov's, in Bogoyavlensky Street."
"Ach, that's where Shatov lives," I observed involuntarily.
"Just so, in the very same house," cried Liputin, "only Shatov lodges above, in the attic, while he's down below, at Captain Lebyadkin's. He knows Shatov too, and he knows Shatov's wife. He was very intimate with her, abroad."
"Comment! Do you really know anything about that unhappy marriage de ce pauvre ami and that woman," cried Stepan Trofimov-
itch, carried away by sudden feeling. "You are the first man I've met who has known her personally; and if only..."
"What nonsense!" the engineer snapped out, flushing all over. "How you add to things, Liputin! I've not seen Shatov's wife; I've only
once seen her in the distance and not at all close.... I know Shatov. Why do you add things of all sorts?"
He turned round sharply on the sofa, clutched his hat, then laid it down again, and settling himself down once more as before, fixed his angry black eyes on Stepan Trofimovitch with a sort of defiance. I was at a loss to understand such strange irritability.
"Excuse me," Stepan Trofimovitch observed impressively. "I understand that it may be a very delicate subject...."
"No sort of delicate subject in it, and indeed it's shameful, and I didn't shout at you that it's nonsense, but at Liputin, because he adds things. Excuse me if you took it to yourself. I know Shatov, but I don't know his wife at all... I don't know her at all!"
"I understand. I understand. And if I insisted, it's only because I'm very fond of our poor friend, notre irascible ami, and have always taken an interest in him.... In my opinion that man changed his former, possibly over-youthful but yet sound ideas, too abruptly. And now he says all sorts of things about notre Sainte Russie to such a degree that I've long explained this upheaval in his whole constitution, I can only call it that, to some violent shock in his family life, and, in fact, to his unsuccessful marriage. I, who know my poor Russia like the fingers on my hand, and have devoted my whole life to the Russian people, I can assure you that he does not know
the Russian people, and what's more..."
"I don't know the Russian people at all, either, and I haven't time to study them," the engineer snapped out again, and again he
turned sharply on the sofa. Stepan Trofimovitch was pulled up in the middle of his speech.
"He is studying them, he is studying them," interposed Liputin. "He has already begun the study of them, and is writing a very interesting article dealing with the causes of the increase of suicide in Russia, and, generally speaking, the causes that lead to the increase or decrease of suicide in society. He has reached amazing results."
The engineer became dreadfully excited. "You have no right at all," he muttered wrathfully. "I'm not writing an article. I'm not going to do silly things. I asked you confidentially, quite by chance. There's no article at all. I'm not publishing, and you haven't the right..." Liputin was obviously enjoying himself.
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"I beg your pardon, perhaps I made a mistake in calling your literary work an article. He is only collecting observations, and the essence of the question, or, so to say, its moral aspect he is not touching at all. And, indeed, he rejects morality itself altogether, and holds with the last new principle of general destruction for the sake of ultimate good. He demands already more than a hundred million heads for the establishment of common sense in Europe; many more than they demanded at the last Peace Congress. Alexey Nilitch goes further than anyone in that sense." The engineer listened with a pale and contemptuous smile. For half a minute every one was silent.
"All this is stupid, Liputin," Mr. Kirillov observed at last, with a certain dignity. "If I by chance had said some things to you, and you caught them up again, as you like. But you have no right, for I never speak to anyone. I scorn to talk.... If one has a conviction then it's clear to me.... But you're doing foolishly. I don't argue about things when everything's settled. I can't bear arguing. I never want to argue...."
"And perhaps you are very wise," Stepan Trofimovitch could not resist saying.
"I apologise to you, but I am not angry with anyone here," the visitor went on, speaking hotly and rapidly. "I have seen few people for four years. For four years I have talked little and have tried to see no one, for my own objects which do not concern anyone else, for four years. Liputin found this out and is laughing. I understand and don't mind. I'm not ready to take offence, only annoyed at his liberty. And if I don't explain my ideas to you," he concluded unexpectedly, scanning us all with resolute eyes, "it's not at all that I'm afraid of your giving information to the government; that's not so; please do not imagine nonsense of that sort."
No one made any reply to these words. We only looked at each other. Even Liputin forgot to snigger.
"Gentlemen, I'm very sorry"--Stepan Trofimovitch got up resolutely from the sofa--"but I feel ill and upset. Excuse me."
"Ach, that's for us to go." Mr. Kirillov started, snatching up his cap. "It's a good thing you told us. I'm so forgetful."
He rose, and with a good-natured air went up to Stepan Trofimovitch, holding out his hand.
"I'm sorry you're not well, and I came."
"I wish you every success among us," answered Stepan Trofimovitch, shaking hands with him heartily and without