Universities have been opened and multiplied.
Military drill has passed into a legend; officers are too few by thousands, the railways have eaten up all the capital and have covered Russia as with a spider's web, so that in another fifteen years one will perhaps get somewhere.
Bridges are rarely on fire, and fires in towns occur only at regular intervals, in turn, at the proper season.
In the law courts judgments are as wise as Solomon's, and the jury only take bribes through the struggle for existence, to escape starvation.
The serfs are free, and flog one another instead of being flogged by the land-owners.
Seas and oceans of vodka are consumed to support the budget, and in Novgorod, opposite the ancient and useless St. Sophia, there has been solemnly put up a colossal bronze globe to celebrate a thousand years of disorder and confusion; Europe scowls and begins to be uneasy again.... Fifteen years of reforms!
And yet never even in the most grotesque periods of its madness has Russia sunk..."
The last words could not be heard in the roar of the crowd.
One could see him again raise his arm and bring it down triumphantly again.
Enthusiasm was beyond all bounds: people yelled, clapped their hands, even some of the ladies shouted:
"Enough, you can't beat that!"
Some might have been drunk.
The orator scanned them all and seemed revelling in his own triumph.
I caught a glimpse of Lembke in indescribable excitement, pointing something out to somebody.
Yulia Mihailovna, with a pale face, said something in haste to the prince, who had run up to her. But at that moment a group of six men, officials more or less, burst on to the platform, seized the orator and dragged him behind the scenes.
I can't understand how he managed to tear himself away from them, but he did escape, darted up to the edge of the platform again and succeeded in shouting again, at the top of his voice, waving his fist:
"But never has Russia sunk..."
But he was dragged away again.
I saw some fifteen men dash behind the scenes to rescue him, not crossing the platform but breaking down the light screen at the side of it.... I saw afterwards, though I could hardly believe my eyes, the girl student (Virginsky's sister) leap on to the platform with the same roll under her arm, dressed as before, as plump and rosy as ever, surrounded by two or three women and two or three men, and accompanied by her mortal enemy, the schoolboy.
I even caught the phrase:
"Ladies and gentlemen, I've come to call attention to the I sufferings of poor students and to rouse them to a general protest..."
But I ran away.
Hiding my badge in my pocket I made my way from the house into the street by back passages which I knew of.
First of all, of course, I went to Stepan Trofimovitch's.
CHAPTER II. THE END OF THE FETE
HE WOULD NOT SEE ME.
He had shut himself up and was writing.
At my repeated knocks and appeals he answered through the door:
"My friend, I have finished everything. Who can ask anything more of me?"
"You haven't finished anything, you've only helped to make a mess of the whole thing.
For God's sake, no epigrams, Stepan Trofimovitch! Open the door.
We must take steps; they may still come and insult you...."
I thought myself entitled to be particularly severe and even rigorous.
I was afraid he might be going to do something still more mad.
But to my surprise I met an extraordinary firmness.
"Don't be the first to insult me then.
I thank you for the past, but I repeat I've done with all men, good and bad.
I am writing to Darya Pavlovna, whom I've forgotten so unpardonably till now.
You may take it to her to-morrow, if you like, now merci."
"Stepan Trofimovitch, I assure you that the matter is more serious than you think.
Do you think that you've crushed someone there?
You've pulverised no one, but have broken yourself to pieces like an empty bottle." (Oh, I was coarse and discourteous, I remember it with regret.)
"You've absolutely no reason to write to Darya Pavlovna... and what will you do with yourself without me?
What do you understand about practical life?
I expect you are plotting something else?
You'll simply come to grief again if you go plotting something more...."
He rose and came close up to the door.
"You've not been long with them, but you've caught the infection of their tone and language. Dieu vous pardonne, mon ami, et Dieu vous garde.
But I've always seen in you the germs of delicate feeling, and you will get over it perhaps—apres le temps, of course, like all of us Russians.
As for what you say about my impracticability, I'll remind you of a recent idea of mine: a whole mass of people in Russia do nothing whatever but attack other people's impracticability with the utmost fury and with the tiresome persistence of flies in the summer, accusing every one of it except themselves.