Something along those lines, only very amusing."
"Enough!" Lizaveta Prokofyevna suddenly announced, almost trembling with wrath. "It's time to break off this galimatias! . . ."
She was in the most terrible agitation; she threw her head back menacingly and, with haughty, burning, and impatient defiance, passed her flashing gaze over the whole company, scarcely distinguishing at that moment her friends from her enemies.
This was the point of a long-suppressed but finally unleashed wrath, when the main impulse is immediate battle, the immediate need to fall upon someone as soon as possible.
Those who knew Lizaveta Prokofyevna sensed at once that something peculiar was happening with her.
Ivan Fyodorovich said the next day to Prince Shch. that "it happens with her, but even with her it rarely happens to such a degree as yesterday, perhaps once in three years, but never more often! never more often!" he added in clarification.
"Enough, Ivan Fyodorovich! Let me be!" exclaimed Lizaveta Prokofyevna. "Why do you offer me your arm now?
You weren't able to take me away earlier; you're a husband, you're the head of the family; you should have led me out by the ear, fool that I am, if I didn't obey you and leave.
You should have done it at least for your daughters' sake!
But now we'll find our way without you, this is shame enough for a whole year . . . Wait, I still want to thank the prince! . . .
Thank you, Prince, for the treat!
Here I sat, listening to our young people . . . How base, how base!
It's chaos, outrage, you don't even dream of such things!
Are there many like them? . . .
Silence, Aglaya!
Silence, Alexandra!
It's none of your business! . . .
Don't fuss around me, Evgeny Pavlych, I'm tired of you! ...
So you, my dearest, are asking their forgiveness," she picked up again, turning to the prince. "'I'm sorry,' you say, 'that I dared to offer you capital' . . . and what are you laughing at, you little fanfaron!" she suddenly fell upon Lebedev's nephew. "'We refuse the capital,' he says, 'we demand, and do not ask!'
As if he doesn't know that tomorrow this idiot will again drag himself to them offering his friendship and capital!
Will you go?
Will you go or not?"
"I will," said the prince in a quiet and humble voice.
"You've heard it!
And that is what you were counting on," she turned to Doktorenko again. "The money's as good as in your pocket, that's why you're playing the fanfaron, blowing smoke in our eyes . . . No, my dear, find yourself some other fools, I can see through you ... I see your whole game!"
"Lizaveta Prokofyevna!" exclaimed the prince.
"Let's go home, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, it's high time, and we'll take the prince with us," Prince Shch., smiling, said as calmly as he could.
The girls stood to one side, almost frightened, and the general was frightened in earnest; the whole company was astonished.
Some, those who stood a little further away, smiled slyly and exchanged whispers; Lebedev's face displayed the utmost degree of rapture.
"You can find outrage and chaos everywhere, ma'am," Lebedev's nephew said, though significantly puzzled.
"But not like that!
Not like yours just now, dear boys, not like that!" Lizaveta Prokofyevna picked up gleefully, as if in hysterics.
"Oh, do let me be," she shouted at those who were persuading her, "no, since even you yourself, Evgeny Pavlych, told us just now that even the defense lawyer himself said in court that there was nothing more natural than doing in six people out of poverty, then the last times have really come.
I've never yet heard of such a thing.
Now it's all clear to me!
Wouldn't this tongue-tied one here put a knife in somebody?" (She pointed to Burdovsky, who was looking at her in extreme perplexity.)
"I bet he would!
Your money, your ten thousand, perhaps he won't take, perhaps in good conscience he won't, but he'll come in the night and put a knife in you, and take it from the strongbox.
Take it in good conscience!
He doesn't find it dishonest!
It's 'a noble impulse of despair,' it's 'negation,' or devil knows what it is . . . Pah! Everything's inside out, everybody's topsy-turvy.
A girl grows up at home, suddenly in the middle of the street she jumps into a droshky: 'Mummy dear, the other day I got married to somebody-or-other Karlych or Ivanych, good- bye!'
Is that a good way to behave, in your opinion?
Is it natural, is it worthy of respect?
The woman question?
This boy here" (she pointed to Kolya), "even he insisted the other day that that is what the 'woman question' means.
The mother may be a fool, but still you must treat her humanly! . . .
And you, walking in earlier with your heads thrown back?
'Out of the way: we're coming.
Give us all the rights, and don't you dare make a peep before us.