"Haven't I, haven't I just declared that the enthusiasm of the young generation is as pure and bright as it was, and that it is coming to grief through being deceived only in the forms of beauty!
Isn't that enough for you?
And if you consider that he who proclaims this is a father crushed and insulted, can one—oh, shallow hearts—can one rise to greater heights of impartiality and fairness?...
Ungrateful... unjust.... Why, why can't you be reconciled!"
And he burst into hysterical sobs.
He wiped away his dropping tears with his fingers.
His shoulders and breast were heaving with sobs. He was lost to everything in the world.
A perfect panic came over the audience, almost all got up from their seats.
Yulia Mihailovna, too, jumped up quickly, seizing her husband by the arm and pulling him up too.... The scene was beyond all belief.
"Stepan Trofimovitch!" the divinity student roared gleefully.
"There's Fedka the convict wandering about the town and the neighbourhood, escaped from prison.
He is a robber and has recently committed another murder.
Allow me to ask you: if you had not sold him as a recruit fifteen years ago to pay a gambling debt, that is, more simply, lost him at cards, tell me, would he have got into prison? Would he have cut men's throats now, in his struggle for existence?
What do you say, Mr. ?sthete?"
I decline to describe the scene that followed.
To begin with there was a furious volley of applause.
The applause did not come from all—probably from some fifth part of the audience—but they applauded furiously.
The rest of the public made for the exit, but as the applauding part of the audience kept pressing forward towards the platform, there was a regular block.
The ladies screamed, some of the girls began to cry and asked to go home.
Lembke, standing up by his chair, kept gazing wildly about him.
Yulia Mihailovna completely lost her head—for the first time during her career amongst us.
As for Stepan Trofimovitch, for the first moment he seemed literally crushed by the divinity student's words, but he suddenly raised his arms as though holding them out above the public and yelled:
"I shake the dust from off my feet and I curse you.... It's the end, the end...."
And turning, he ran behind the scenes, waving his hands menacingly.
"He has insulted the audience!...
Verhovensky!" the angry section roared.
They even wanted to rush in pursuit of him.
It was impossible to appease them, at the moment, any way, and—a final catastrophe broke like a bomb on the assembly and exploded in its midst: the third reader, the maniac who kept waving his fist behind the scenes, suddenly ran on to the platform.
He looked like a perfect madman.
With a broad, triumphant smile, full of boundless self-confidence, he looked round at the agitated hall and he seemed to be delighted at the disorder.
He was not in the least disconcerted at having to speak in such an uproar, on the contrary, he was obviously delighted.
This was so obvious that it attracted attention at once.
"What's this now?" people were heard asking. "Who is this?
Sh-h! What does he want to say?"
"Ladies and gentlemen," the maniac shouted with all his might, standing at the very edge of the platform and speaking with almost as shrill, feminine a voice as Karmazinov's, but without the aristocratic lisp.
"Ladies and gentlemen!
Twenty years ago, on the eve of war with half Europe, Russia was regarded as an ideal country by officials of all ranks!
Literature was in the service of the censorship; military drill was all that was taught at the universities; the troops were trained like a ballet, and the peasants paid the taxes and were mute under the lash of serfdom.
Patriotism meant the wringing of bribes from the quick and the dead.
Those who did not take bribes were looked upon as rebels because they disturbed the general harmony.
The birch copses were extirpated in support of discipline.
Europe trembled.... But never in the thousand years of its senseless existence had Russia sunk to such ignominy...."
He raised his fist, waved it ecstatically and menacingly over his head and suddenly brought it down furiously, as though pounding an adversary to powder.
A frantic yell rose from the whole hall, there was a deafening roar of applause; almost half the audience was applauding: their enthusiasm was excusable. Russia was being put to shame publicly, before every one. Who could fail to roar with delight?
"This is the real thing!
Come, this is something like!
Hurrah!
Yes, this is none of your ?sthetics!"
The maniac went on ecstatically:
"Twenty years have passed since then.