"Why do you hate so and so, so much?"
And he had answered them, with his shameless impudence,
"I'll tell you. He has done me no harm. But I played him a dirty trick, and ever since I have hated him."
Remembering that now, he smiled quietly and malignantly, hesitating for a moment.
His eyes gleamed, and his lips positively quivered.
"Well, since I have begun, I may as well go on," he decided.
His predominant sensation at that moment might be expressed in the following words,
"Well, there is no rehabilitating myself now. So let me shame them for all I am worth. I will show them I don't care what they think- that's all!"
He told the coachman to wait, while with rapid steps he returned to the monastery and straight to the Father Superior's.
He had no clear idea what he would do, but he knew that he could not control himself, and that a touch might drive him to the utmost limits of obscenity, but only to obscenity, to nothing criminal, nothing for which he could be legally punished.
In the last resort, he could always restrain himself, and had marvelled indeed at himself, on that score, sometimes.
He appeared in the Father Superior's dining-room, at the moment when the prayer was over, and all were moving to the table.
Standing in the doorway, he scanned the company, and laughing his prolonged, impudent, malicious chuckle, looked them all boldly in the face.
"They thought I had gone, and here I am again," he cried to the whole room.
For one moment everyone stared at him without a word; and at once everyone felt that something revolting, grotesque, positively scandalous, was about to happen.
Miusov passed immediately from the most benevolent frame of mind to the most savage.
All the feelings that had subsided and died down in his heart revived instantly.
"No! this I cannot endure!" he cried. "I absolutely cannot! and... I certainly cannot!"
The blood rushed to his head.
He positively stammered; but he was beyond thinking of style, and he seized his hat.
"What is it he cannot?" cried Fyodor Pavlovitch, "that he absolutely cannot and certainly cannot?
Your reverence, am I to come in or not?
Will you receive me as your guest?"
"You are welcome with all my heart," answered the Superior. "Gentlemen!" he added,
"I venture to beg you most earnestly to lay aside your dissensions, and to be united in love and family harmony- with prayer to the Lord at our humble table."
"No, no, it is impossible!" cried Miusov, beside himself.
"Well, if it is impossible for Pyotr Alexandrovitch, it is impossible for me, and I won't stop.
That is why I came.
I will keep with Pyotr Alexandrovitch everywhere now. If you will go away, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, I will go away too, if you remain, I will remain.
You stung him by what you said about family harmony, Father Superior, he does not admit he is my relation.
That's right, isn't it, von Sohn?
Here's von Sohn.
How are you, von Sohn?"
"Do you mean me?" muttered Maximov, puzzled.
"Of course I mean you," cried Fyodor Pavlovitch. "Who else?
The Father Superior could not be von Sohn."
"But I am not von Sohn either. I am Maximov."
"No, you are von Sohn.
Your reverence, do you know who von Sohn was?
It was a famous murder case. He was killed in a house of harlotry- I believe that is what such places are called among you- he was killed and robbed, and in spite of his venerable age, he was nailed up in a box and sent from Petersburg to Moscow in the luggage van, and while they were nailing him up, the harlots sang songs and played the harp, that is to say, the piano.
So this is that very von Solin.
He has risen from the dead, hasn't he, von Sohn?"
"What is happening?
What's this?" voices were heard in the group of monks.
"Let us go," cried Miusov, addressing Kalganov.
"No, excuse me," Fyodor Pavlovitch broke in shrilly, taking another step into the room. "Allow me to finish.
There in the cell you blamed me for behaving disrespectfully just because I spoke of eating gudgeon, Pyotr Alexandrovitch.
Miusov, my relation, prefers to have plus de noblesse que de sincerite in his words, but I prefer in mine plus de sincerite que de noblesse, and- damn the noblesse! That's right, isn't it, von Sohn?
Allow me, Father Superior, though I am a buffoon and play the buffoon, yet I am the soul of honour, and I want to speak my mind.
Yes, I am the soul of honour, while in Pyotr Alexandrovitch there is wounded vanity and nothing else.