Gentlemen, now I propose the contrary. Those who want a meeting, sit still and do nothing; those who don't, hold up their right hands."
"Those who don't want it?" inquired the schoolboy.
"Are you doing it on purpose?" cried Madame Virginsky wrathfully.
"No. Excuse me, those who want it, or those who don't want it? For one must know that definitely," cried two or three voices.
"Those who don't want it—those who don't want it."
"Yes, but what is one to do, hold up one's hand or not hold it up if one doesn't want it?" cried an officer.
"Ech, we are not accustomed to constitutional methods yet!" remarked the major.
"Mr. Lyamshin, excuse me, but you are thumping so that no one can hear anything," observed the lame teacher.
"But, upon my word, Arina Prohorovna, nobody is listening, really!" cried Lyamshin, jumping up.
"I won't play!
I've come to you as a visitor, not as a drummer!"
"Gentlemen," Virginsky went on, "answer verbally, are we a meeting or not?"
"We are! We are!" was heard on all sides.
"If so, there's no need to vote, that's enough.
Are you satisfied, gentlemen? Is there any need to put it to the vote?"
"No need—no need, we understand."
"Perhaps someone doesn't want it to be a meeting?"
"No, no; we all want it."
"But what does 'meeting' mean?" cried a voice.
No one answered.
"We must choose a chairman," people cried from different parts of the room.
"Our host, of course, our host!"
"Gentlemen, if so," Virginsky, the chosen chairman, began, "I propose my original motion. If anyone wants to say anything more relevant to the subject, or has some statement to make, let him bring it forward without loss of time."
There was a general silence.
The eyes of all were turned again on Verhovensky and Stavrogin.
"Verhovensky, have you no statement to make?" Madame Virginsky asked him directly.
"Nothing whatever," he answered, yawning and stretching on his chair.
"But I should like a glass of brandy."
"Stavrogin, don't you want to?"
"Thank you, I don't drink."
"I mean don't you want to speak, not don't you want brandy."
"To speak, what about?
No, I don't want to."
"They'll bring you some brandy," she answered Verhovensky.
The girl-student got up.
She had darted up several times already.
"I have come to make a statement about the sufferings of poor students and the means of rousing them to protest."
But she broke off. At the other end of the table a rival had risen, and all eyes turned to him.
Shigalov, the man with the long ears, slowly rose from his seat with a gloomy and sullen air and mournfully laid on the table a thick notebook filled with extremely small handwriting.
He remained standing in silence.
Many people looked at the notebook in consternation, but Liputin, Virginsky, and the lame teacher seemed pleased.
"I ask leave to address the meeting," Shigalov pronounced sullenly but resolutely.
"You have leave." Virginsky gave his sanction.
The orator sat down, was silent for half a minute, and pronounced in a solemn voice,
"Gentlemen!"
"Here's the brandy," the sister who had been pouring out tea and had gone to fetch brandy rapped out, contemptuously and disdainfully putting the bottle before Verhovensky, together with the wineglass which she brought in her fingers without a tray or a plate.
The interrupted orator made a dignified pause.
"Never mind, go on, I am not listening," cried Verhovensky, pouring himself out a glass.
"Gentlemen, asking your attention and, as you will see later, soliciting your aid in a matter of the first importance," Shigalov began again, "I must make some prefatory remarks."
"Arina Prohorovna, haven't you some scissors?" Pyotr Stepanovitch asked suddenly.