"No, no. The Polish gentleman spoke the truth." Kalgonov got excited again, as though it were a question of vast import. "He's never been in Poland, so how can he talk about it?
I suppose you weren't married in Poland, were you?"
"No, in the Province of Smolensk.
Only, a Uhlan had brought her to Russia before that, my future wife, with her mamma and her aunt, and another female relation with a grown-up son. He brought her straight from Poland and gave her up to me.
He was a lieutenant in our regiment, a very nice young man.
At first he meant to marry her himself. But he didn't marry her, because she turned out to be lame."
"So you married a lame woman?" cried Kalganov.
"Yes.
They both deceived me a little bit at the time, and concealed it.
I thought she was hopping; she kept hopping.... I thought it was for fun."
"So pleased she was going to marry you!" yelled Kalganov, in a ringing, childish voice.
"Yes, so pleased.
But it turned out to be quite a different cause.
Afterwards, when we were married, after the wedding, that very evening, she confessed, and very touchingly asked forgiveness. 'I once jumped over a puddle when I was a child,' she said, 'and injured my leg.' He he!"
Kalgonov went off into the most childish laughter, almost falling on the sofa.
Grushenka, too, laughed.
Mitya was at the pinnacle of happiness.
"Do you know, that's the truth, he's not lying now," exclaimed Kalganov, turning to Mitya; "and do you know, he's been married twice; it's his first wife he's talking about. But his second wife, do you know, ran away, and is alive now."
"Is it possible?" said Mitya, turning quickly to Maximov with an expression of the utmost astonishment.
"Yes. She did run away. I've had that unpleasant experience," Maximov modestly assented, "with a monsieur.
And what was worse, she'd had all my little property transferred to her beforehand.
'You're an educated man,' she said to me. 'You can always get your living.'
She settled my business with that.
A venerable bishop once said to me: 'One of your wives was lame, but the other was too light-footed.' He he!
"Listen, listen!" cried Kalganov, bubbling over, "if he's telling lies- and he often is- he's only doing it to amuse us all. There's no harm in that, is there?
You know, I sometimes like him.
He's awfully low, but it's natural to him, eh?
Don't you think so?
Some people are low from self-interest, but he's simply so, from nature. Only fancy, he claims (he was arguing about it all the way yesterday) that Gogol wrote Dead Souls about him.
Do you remember, there's a landowner called Maximov in it, whom Nozdryov thrashed. He was charged, do you remember, 'for inflicting bodily injury with rods on the landowner Maximov in a drunken condition.'
Would you believe it, he claims that he was that Maximov and that he was beaten!
Now can it be so?
Tchitchikov made his journey, at the very latest, at the beginning of the twenties, so that the dates don't fit.
He couldn't have been thrashed then, he couldn't, could he?"
It was diffcult to imagine what Kalgonov was excited about, but his excitement was genuine.
Mitya followed his lead without protest.
"Well, but if they did thrash him!" he cried, laughing.
"It's not that they thrashed me exactly, but what I mean is- " put in Maximov.
"What do you mean?
Either they thrashed you or they didn't."
"What o'clock is it, panie?" the Pole, with the pipe, asked his tall friend, with a bored expression.
The other shrugged his shoulders in reply. Neither of them had a watch.
"Why not talk?
Let other people talk.
Mustn't other people talk because you're bored?" Grushenka flew at him with evident intention of finding fault.
Something seemed for the first time to flash upon Mitya's mind.
This time the Pole answered with unmistakable irritability.
"Pani, I didn't oppose it. I didn't say anything."
"All right then. Come, tell us your story," Grushenka cried to Maximov. "Why are you all silent?"
"There's nothing to tell, it's all so foolish," answered Maximov at once, with evident satisfaction, mincing a little. "Besides, all that's by way of allegory in Gogol, for he's made all the names have a meaning. Nozdryov was really called Nosov, and Kuvshinikov had quite a different name, he was called Shkvornev.