If you want to arrive at any result, don't disturb them for six days and I can kill all the birds with one stone for you; but if you flutter them before, the birds will fly away.
But spare me Shatov.
I speak for Shatov.... The best plan would be to fetch him here secretly, in a friendly way, to your study and question him without disguising the facts.... I have no doubt he'll throw himself at your feet and burst into tears!
He is a highly strung and unfortunate fellow; his wife is carrying on with Stavrogin.
Be kind to him and he will tell you everything, but I must have six days.... And, above all, above all, not a word to Yulia Mihailovna.
It's a secret.
May it be a secret?"
"What?" cried Lembke, opening wide his eyes. "Do you mean to say you said nothing of this to Yulia Mihailovna?"
"To her?
Heaven forbid!
Ech, Andrey Antonovitch!
You see, I value her friendship and I have the highest respect for her... and all the rest of it... but I couldn't make such a blunder.
I don't contradict her, for, as you know yourself, it's dangerous to contradict her.
I may have dropped a word to her, for I know she likes that, but to suppose that I mentioned names to her as I have to you or anything of that sort! My good sir!
Why am I appealing to you?
Because you are a man, anyway, a serious person with old-fashioned firmness and experience in the service.
You've seen life.
You must know by heart every detail of such affairs, I expect, from what you've seen in Petersburg.
But if I were to mention those two names, for instance, to her, she'd stir up such a hubbub.... You know, she would like to astonish Petersburg.
No, she's too hot-headed, she really is."
"Yes, she has something of that fougue," Andrey Antonovitch muttered with some satisfaction, though at the same time he resented this unmannerly fellow's daring to express himself rather freely about Yulia Mihailovna.
But Pyotr Stepanovitch probably imagined that he had not gone far enough and that he must exert himself further to flatter Lembke and make a complete conquest of him.
"Fougue is just it," he assented. "She may be a woman of genius, a literary woman, but she would scare our sparrows.
She wouldn't be able to keep quiet for six hours, let alone six days.
Ech, Andrey Antonovitch, don't attempt to tie a woman down for six days!
You do admit that I have some experience—in this sort of thing, I mean; I know something about it, and you know that I may very well know something about it.
I am not asking for six days for fun but with an object."
"I have heard..." (Lembke hesitated to utter his thought) "I have heard that on your return from abroad you made some expression... as it were of repentance, in the proper quarter?"
"Well, that's as it may be."
"And, of course, I don't want to go into it.... But it has seemed to me all along that you've talked in quite a different style—about the Christian faith, for instance, about social institutions, about the government even...."
"I've said lots of things, no doubt, I am saying them still; but such ideas mustn't be applied as those fools do it, that's the point.
What's the good of biting his superior's shoulder!
You agreed with me yourself, only you said it was premature."
"I didn't mean that when I agreed and said it was premature."
"You weigh every word you utter, though. He he! You are a careful man!" Pyotr Stepanovitch observed gaily all of a sudden.
"Listen, old friend. I had to get to know you; that's why I talked in my own style.
You are not the only one I get to know like that.
Maybe I needed to find out your character."
"What's my character to you?"
"How can I tell what it may be to me?" He laughed again.
"You see, my dear and highly respected Andrey Antonovitch, you are cunning, but it's not come to that yet and it certainly never will come to it, you understand?
Perhaps you do understand.
Though I did make an explanation in the proper quarter when I came back from abroad, and I really don't know why a man of certain convictions should not be able to work for the advancement of his sincere convictions... but nobody there has yet instructed me to investigate your character and I've not undertaken any such job from them.
Consider: I need not have given those two names to you. I might have gone straight there; that is where I made my first explanations. And if I'd been acting with a view to financial profit or my own interest in any way, it would have been a bad speculation on my part, for now they'll be grateful to you and not to me at headquarters.
I've done it solely for Shatov's sake," Pyotr Stepanovitch added generously, "for Shatov's sake, because of our old friendship.... But when you take up your pen to write to headquarters, you may put in a word for me, if you like.... I'll make no objection, he he!
Adieu, though; I've stayed too long and there was no need to gossip so much!" he added with some amiability, and he got up from the sofa.
"On the contrary, I am very glad that the position has been defined, so to speak." Von Lembke too got up and he too looked pleasant, obviously affected by the last words.
"I accept your services and acknowledge my obligation, and you may be sure that anything I can do by way of reporting your zeal..."
"Six days—the great thing is to put it off for six days, and that you shouldn't stir for those six days, that's what I want."
"So be it."