"Home, home," I insisted; "it was certainly thanks to Lembke that we were not beaten."
"Go, my friend; I am to blame for exposing you to this.
You have a future and a career of a sort before you, while I—mon heure est sonnee."
He resolutely mounted the governor's steps.
The hall-porter knew me; I said that we both wanted to see Yulia Mihailovna.
We sat down in the waiting-room and waited.
I was unwilling to leave my friend, but I thought it unnecessary to say anything more to him.
He had the air of a man who had consecrated himself to certain death for the sake of his country.
We sat down, not side by side, but in different corners—I nearer to the entrance, he at some distance facing me, with his head bent in thought, leaning lightly on his stick.
He held his wide-brimmed hat in his left hand.
We sat like that for ten minutes.
II
Lembke suddenly came in with rapid steps, accompanied by the chief of police, looked absent-mindedly at us and, taking no notice of us, was about to pass into his study on the right, but Stepan Trofimovitch stood before him blocking his way.
The tall figure of Stepan Trofimovitch, so unlike other people, made an impression. Lembke stopped.
"Who is this?" he muttered, puzzled, as if he were questioning the chief of police, though he did not turn his head towards him, and was all the time gazing at Stepan Trofimovitch.
"Retired college assessor, Stepan Trofimovitch Verhovensky, your Excellency," answered Stepan Trofimovitch, bowing majestically.
His Excellency went on staring at him with a very blank expression, however.
"What is it?" And with the curtness of a great official he turned his ear to Stepan Trofimovitch with disdainful impatience, taking him for an ordinary person with a written petition of some sort.
"I was visited and my house was searched to-day by an official acting in your Excellency's name; therefore I am desirous..."
"Name? Name?" Lembke asked impatiently, seeming suddenly to have an inkling of something.
Stepan Trofimovitch repeated his name still more majestically.
"A-a-ah!
It's... that hotbed... You have shown yourself, sir, in such a light.... Are you a professor? a professor?"
"I once had the honour of giving some lectures to the young men of the X university."
"The young men!" Lembke seemed to start, though I am ready to bet that he grasped very little of what was going on or even, perhaps, did not know with whom he was talking.
"That, sir, I won't allow," he cried, suddenly getting terribly angry.
"I won't allow young men!
It's all these manifestoes?
It's an assault on society, sir, a piratical attack, filibustering.... What is your request?"
"On the contrary, your wife requested me to read something to-morrow at her fete.
I've not come to make a request but to ask for my rights... ."
"At the fete?
There'll be no fete.
I won't allow your fete.
A lecture? A lecture?" he screamed furiously.
"I should be very glad if you would speak to me rather more politely, your Excellency, without stamping or shouting at me as though I were a boy."
"Perhaps you understand whom you are speaking to?" said Lembke, turning crimson.
"Perfectly, your Excellency."
"I am protecting society while you are destroying it!...
You... I remember about you, though: you used to be a tutor in the house of Madame Stavrogin?"
"Yes, I was in the position... of tutor... in the house of Madame Stavrogin."
"And have been for twenty years the hotbed of all that has now accumulated... all the fruits.... I believe I saw you just now in the square.
You'd better look out, sir, you'd better look out; your way of thinking is well known.
You may be sure that I keep my eye on you.
I cannot allow your lectures, sir, I cannot.
Don't come with such requests to me."
He would have passed on again.
"I repeat that your Excellency is mistaken; it was your wife who asked me to give, not a lecture, but a literary reading at the fete to-morrow.
But I decline to do so in any case now.
I humbly request that you will explain to me if possible how, why, and for what reason I was subjected to an official search to-day?