"And not I mastered the idea?
That's good.
You have a little sense.
Only you tease me and I am proud."
"That's a good thing, that's a good thing.
Just what you need, to be proud."
"Enough. You've drunk your tea; go away."
"Damn it all, I suppose I must"—Pyotr Stepanovitch got up—"though it's early.
Listen, Kirillov. Shall I find that man—you know whom I mean—at Myasnitchiha's?
Or has she too been lying?"
"You won't find him, because he is here and not there."
"Here! Damn it all, where?"
"Sitting in the kitchen, eating and drinking."
"How dared he?" cried Pyotr Stepanovitch, flushing angrily.
"It was his duty to wait... what nonsense!
He has no passport, no money!"
"I don't know.
He came to say good-bye; he is dressed and ready.
He is going away and won't come back.
He says you are a scoundrel and he doesn't want to wait for your money."
"Ha ha!
He is afraid that I'll... But even now I can... if... Where is he, in the kitchen?"
Kirillov opened a side door into a tiny dark room; from this room three steps led straight to the part of the kitchen where the cook's bed was usually put, behind the partition.
Here, in the corner under the ikons, Fedka was sitting now, at a bare deal table.
Before him stood a pint bottle, a plate of bread, and some cold beef and potatoes on an earthenware dish.
He was eating in a leisurely way and was already half drunk, but he was wearing his sheep-skin coat and was evidently ready for a journey.
A samovar was boiling the other side of the screen, but it was not for Fedka, who had every night for a week or more zealously blown it up and got it ready for
"Alexey Nilitch, for he's such a habit of drinking tea at nights."
I am strongly disposed to believe that, as Kirillov had not a cook, he had cooked the beef and potatoes that morning with his own hands for Fedka.
"What notion is this?" cried Pyotr Stepanovitch, whisking into the room.
"Why didn't you wait where you were ordered?"
And swinging his fist, he brought it down heavily on the table.
Fedka assumed an air of dignity.
"You wait a bit, Pyotr Stepanovitch, you wait a bit," he began, with a swaggering emphasis on each word, "it's your first duty to understand here that you are on a polite visit to Mr. Kirillov, Alexey Nilitch, whose boots you might clean any day, because beside you he is a man of culture and you are only—foo!"
And he made a jaunty show of spitting to one side.
Haughtiness and determination were evident in his manner, and a certain very threatening assumption of argumentative calm that suggested an outburst to follow.
But Pyotr Stepanovitch had no time to realise the danger, and it did not fit in with his preconceived ideas.
The incidents and disasters of the day had quite turned his head. Liputin, at the top of the three steps, stared inquisitively down from the little dark room.
"Do you or don't you want a trustworthy passport and good money to go where you've been told?
Yes or no?"
"D'you see, Pyotr Stepanovitch, you've been deceiving me from the first, and so you've been a regular scoundrel to me.
For all the world like a filthy human louse—that's how I look on you.
You've promised me a lot of money for shedding innocent blood and swore it was for Mr. Stavrogin, though it turns out to be nothing but your want of breeding.
I didn't get a farthing out of it, let alone fifteen hundred, and Mr. Stavrogin hit you in the face, which has come to our ears.
Now you are threatening me again and promising me money—what for, you don't say.
And I shouldn't wonder if you are sending me to Petersburg to plot some revenge in your spite against Mr. Stavrogin, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, reckoning on my simplicity.
And that proves you are the chief murderer.
And do you know what you deserve for the very fact that in the depravity of your heart you've given up believing in God Himself, the true Creator?
You are no better than an idolater and are on a level with the Tatar and the Mordva.
Alexey Nilitch, who is a philosopher, has expounded the true God, the Creator, many a time to you, as well as the creation of the world and the fate that's to come and the transformation of every sort of creature and every sort of beast out of the Apocalypse, but you've persisted like a senseless idol in your deafness and your dumbness and have brought Ensign Erkel to the same, like the veriest evil seducer and so-called atheist...."