Some of my books and papers, private letters to me, were taken from me and wheeled through the town in a barrow."
"Who searched you?" said Lembke, starting and returning to full consciousness of the position.
He suddenly flushed all over.
He turned quickly to the chief of police. At that moment the long, stooping, and awkward figure of Blum appeared in the doorway.
"Why, this official here," said Stepan Trofimovitch, indicating him.
Blum came forward with a face that admitted his responsibility but showed no contrition.
"Vous ne faites que des betises," Lembke threw at him in a tone of vexation and anger, and suddenly he was transformed and completely himself again.
"Excuse me," he muttered, utterly disconcerted and turning absolutely crimson, "all this... all this was probably a mere blunder, a misunderstanding... nothing but a misunderstanding."
"Your Excellency," observed Stepan Trofimovitch, "once when I was young I saw a characteristic incident.
In the corridor of a theatre a man ran up to another and gave him a sounding smack in the face before the whole public.
Perceiving at once that his victim was not the person whom he had intended to chastise but someone quite different who only slightly resembled him, he pronounced angrily, with the haste of one whose moments are precious—as your Excellency did just now—'I've made a mistake... excuse me, it was a misunderstanding, nothing but a misunderstanding.'
And when the offended man remained resentful and cried out, he observed to him, with extreme annoyance:
'Why, I tell you it was a misunderstanding. What are you crying out about?'"
"That's... that's very amusing, of course"—Lembke gave a wry smile—"but... but can't you see how unhappy I am myself?"
He almost screamed, and seemed about to hide his face in his hands.
This unexpected and piteous exclamation, almost a sob, was almost more than one could bear.
It was probably the first moment since the previous day that he had full, vivid consciousness of all that had happened—and it was followed by complete, humiliating despair that could not be disguised—who knows, in another minute he might have sobbed aloud.
For the first moment Stepan Trofimovitch looked wildly at him; then he suddenly bowed his head and in a voice pregnant with feeling pronounced:
"Your Excellency, don't trouble yourself with my petulant complaint, and only give orders for my books and letters to be restored to me...."
He was interrupted.
At that very instant Yulia Mihailovna returned and entered noisily with all the party which had accompanied her.
But at this point I should like to tell my story in as much detail as possible.
III
In the first place, the whole company who had filled three carriages crowded into the waiting-room.
There was a special entrance to Yulia Mihailovna's apartments on the left as one entered the house; but on this occasion they all went through the waiting-room—and I imagine just because Stepan Trofimovitch was there, and because all that had happened to him as well as the Shpigulin affair had reached Yulia Mihailovna's ears as she drove into the town.
Lyamshin, who for some misdemeanour had not been invited to join the party and so knew all that had been happening in the town before anyone else, brought her the news.
With spiteful glee he hired a wretched Cossack nag and hastened on the way to Skvoreshniki to meet the returning cavalcade with the diverting intelligence.
I fancy that, in spite of her lofty determination, Yulia Mihailovna was a little disconcerted on hearing such surprising news, but probably only for an instant.
The political aspect of the affair, for instance, could not cause her uneasiness; Pyotr Stepanovitch had impressed upon her three or four times that the Shpigulin ruffians ought to be flogged, and Pyotr Stepanovitch certainly had for some time past been a great authority in her eyes.
"But... anyway, I shall make him pay for it," she doubtless reflected, the "he," of course, referring to her spouse.
I must observe in passing that on this occasion, as though purposely, Pyotr Stepanovitch had taken no part in the expedition, and no one had seen him all day.
I must mention too, by the way, that Varvara Petrovna had come back to the town with her guests (in the same carriage with Yulia Mihailovna) in order to be present at the last meeting of the committee which was arranging the fete for the next day.
She too must have been interested, and perhaps even agitated, by the news about Stepan Trofimovitch communicated by Lyamshin.
The hour of reckoning for Andrey Antonovitch followed at once.
Alas! he felt that from the first glance at his admirable wife.
With an open air and an enchanting smile she went quickly up to Stepan Trofimovitch, held out her exquisitely gloved hand, and greeted him with a perfect shower of flattering phrases—as though the only thing she cared about that morning was to make haste to be charming to Stepan Trofimovitch because at last she saw him in her house.
There was not one hint of the search that morning; it was as though she knew nothing of it.
There was not one word to her husband, not one glance in his direction—as though he had not been in the room.
What's more, she promptly confiscated Stepan Trofimovitch and carried him off to the drawing-room—as though he had had no interview with Lembke, or as though it was not worth prolonging if he had.
I repeat again, I think that in this, Yulia Mihailovna, in spite of her aristocratic tone, made another great mistake.
And Karmazinov particularly did much to aggravate this. (He had taken part in the expedition at Yulia Mihailovna's special request, and in that way had, incidentally, paid his visit to Varvara Petrovna, and she was so poor-spirited as to be perfectly delighted at it.) On seeing Stepan Trofimovitch, he called out from the doorway (he came in behind the rest) and pressed forward to embrace him, even interrupting Yulia Mihailovna.
"What years, what ages!
At last...excellent ami."
He made as though to kiss him, offering his cheek, of course, and Stepan Trofimovitch was so fluttered that he could not avoid saluting it.
"Cher," he said to me that evening, recalling all the events of that day, "I wondered at that moment which of us was the most contemptible: he, embracing me only to humiliate me, or I, despising him and his face and kissing it on the spot, though I might have turned away.... Foo!"
"Come, tell me about yourself, tell me everything," Karmazinov drawled and lisped, as though it were possible for him on the spur of the moment to give an account of twenty-five years of his life.
But this foolish trifling was the height of "chic."
"Remember that the last time we met was at the Granovsky dinner in Moscow, and that twenty-four years have passed since then..." Stepan Trofimovitch began very reasonably (and consequently not at all in the same "chic" style).
"Ce cher homme," Karmazinov interrupted with shrill familiarity, squeezing his shoulder with exaggerated friendliness. "Make haste and take us to your room, Yulia Mihailovna; there he'll sit down and tell us everything."
"And yet I was never at all intimate with that peevish old woman," Stepan Trofimovitch went on complaining to me that same evening, shaking with anger; "we were almost boys, and I'd begun to detest him even then... just as he had me, of course."