So you will admit that you are bound to appear at the ball to-night.
It's an important business. It was you put him on to the platform.
You must make it plain now to the public that you are not in league with him, that the fellow is in the hands of the police, and that you were in some inexplicable way deceived.
You ought to declare with indignation that you were the victim of a madman.
Because he is a madman and nothing more.
That's how you must put it about him.
I can't endure these people who bite.
I say worse things perhaps, but not from the platform, you know.
And they are talking about a senator too."
"What senator?
Who's talking?"
"I don't understand it myself, you know.
Do you know anything about a senator, Yulia Mihailovna?"
"A senator?"
"You see, they are convinced that a senator has been appointed to be governor here, and that you are being superseded from Petersburg.
I've heard it from lots of people."
"I've heard it too," I put in.
"Who said so?" asked Yulia Mihailovna, flushing all over.
"You mean, who said so first?
How can I tell?
But there it is, people say so.
Masses of people are saying so.
They were saying so yesterday particularly.
They are all very serious about it, though I can't make it out.
Of course the more intelligent and competent don't talk, but even some of those listen."
"How mean!
And... how stupid!"
"Well, that's just why you must make your appearance, to show these fools."
"I confess I feel myself that it's my duty, but... what if there's another disgrace in store for us?
What if people don't come?
No one will come, you know, no one!"
"How hot you are!
They not come!
What about the new clothes? What about the girls' dresses?
I give you up as a woman after that!
Is that your knowledge of human nature?"
"The marshal's wife won't come, she won't."
"But, after all, what has happened?
Why won't they come?" he cried at last with angry impatience.
"Ignominy, disgrace—that's what's happened.
I don't know what to call it, but after it I can't face people."
"Why?
How are you to blame for it, after all?
Why do you take the blame of it on yourself?
Isn't it rather the fault of the audience, of your respectable residents, your patresfamilias?
They ought to have controlled the roughs and the rowdies—for it was all the work of roughs and rowdies, nothing serious.
You can never manage things with the police alone in any society, anywhere.
Among us every one asks for a special policeman to protect him wherever he goes.
People don't understand that society must protect itself.
And what do our patresfamilias, the officials, the wives and daughters, do in such cases?