Suddenly in a back row a solitary but loud voice was heard:
"Good Lord, what nonsense!"
The exclamation escaped involuntarily, and I am sure was not intended as a demonstration.
The man was simply worn out.
But Mr. Karmazinov stopped, looked sarcastically at the audience, and suddenly lisped with the deportment of an aggrieved kammerherr.
"I'm afraid I've been boring you dreadfully, gentlemen?"
That was his blunder, that he was the first to speak; for provoking an answer in this way he gave an opening for the rabble to speak, too, and even legitimately, so to say, while if he had restrained himself, people would have gone on blowing their noses and it would have passed off somehow. Perhaps he expected applause in response to his question, but there was no sound of applause; on the contrary, every one seemed to subside and shrink back in dismay.
"You never did see Ancus Marcius, that's all brag," cried a voice that sounded full of irritation and even nervous exhaustion.
"Just so," another voice agreed at once. "There are no such things as ghosts nowadays, nothing but natural science.
Look it up in a scientific book."
"Gentlemen, there was nothing I expected less than such objections," said Karmazinov, extremely surprised.
The great genius had completely lost touch with his Fatherland in Karlsruhe.
"Nowadays it's outrageous to say that the world stands on three fishes," a young lady snapped out suddenly.
"You can't have gone down to the hermit's cave, Karmazinov.
And who talks about hermits nowadays?"
"Gentlemen, what surprises me most of all is that you take it all so seriously.
However... however, you are perfectly right.
No one has greater respect for truth and realism than I have...."
Though he smiled ironically he was tremendously overcome.
His face seemed to express:
"I am not the sort of man you think, I am on your side, only praise me, praise me more, as much as possible, I like it extremely...."
"Gentlemen," he cried, completely mortified at last, "I see that my poor poem is quite out of place here.
And, indeed, I am out of place here myself, I think."
"You threw at the crow and you hit the cow," some fool, probably drunk, shouted at the top of his voice, and of course no notice ought to have been taken of him.
It is true there was a sound of disrespectful laughter.
"A cow, you say?" Karmazinov caught it up at once, his voice grew shriller and shriller.
"As for crows and cows, gentlemen, I will refrain.
I've too much respect for any audience to permit myself comparisons, however harmless; but I did think..."
"You'd better be careful, sir," someone shouted from a back row.
"But I had supposed that laying aside my pen and saying farewell to my readers, I should be heard..."
"No, no, we want to hear you, we want to," a few voices from the front row plucked up spirit to exclaim at last.
"Read, read!" several enthusiastic ladies' voices chimed in, and at last there was an outburst of applause, sparse and feeble, it is true.
"Believe me, Karmazinov, every one looks on it as an honour..." the marshal's wife herself could not resist saying.
"Mr. Karmazinov!" cried a fresh young voice in the back of the hall suddenly.
It was the voice of a very young teacher from the district school who had only lately come among us, an excellent young man, quiet and gentlemanly.
He stood up in his place.
"Mr. Karmazinov, if I had the happiness to fall in love as you have described to us, I really shouldn't refer to my love in an article intended for public reading...."
He flushed red all over.
"Ladies and gentlemen," cried Karmazinov, "I have finished.
I will omit the end and withdraw.
Only allow me to read the six last lines:
"Yes, dear reader, farewell!" he began at once from the manuscript without sitting down again in his chair.
"Farewell, reader; I do not greatly insist on our parting friends; what need to trouble you, indeed.
You may abuse me, abuse me as you will if it affords you any satisfaction.
But best of all if we forget one another forever.
And if you all, readers, were suddenly so kind as to fall on your knees and begin begging me with tears, 'Write, oh, write for us, Karmazinov—for the sake of Russia, for the sake of posterity, to win laurels,' even then I would answer you, thanking you, of course, with every courtesy, 'No, we've had enough of one another, dear fellow-countrymen, merci!
It's time we took our separate ways!'
Merci, merci, merci!"
Karmazinov bowed ceremoniously, and, as red as though he had been cooked, retired behind the scenes.
"Nobody would go down on their knees; a wild idea!"