I drank up those three roubles in a restaurant that same evening.
I went in and asked for a bottle of Lafite; never before had I asked for a bottle just like that, with nothing; I wanted to spend it quickly.
Neither then nor later did I feel any particular remorse.
I probably wouldn't do it again; you may believe that or not as you like, it's of no interest to me.
Well, sirs, that's all."
"Only, of course, that's not the worst thing you've done," Darya Alexeevna said with loathing.
"It's a psychological case, not a deed," observed Afanasy Ivanovich.
"And the maid?" asked Nastasya Filippovna, not concealing the most squeamish loathing.
"The maid was dismissed the next day, naturally.
It was a strict household."
"And you allowed it?"
"Oh, that's wonderful!
Should I have gone and denounced myself?" Ferdyshchenko tittered, though somewhat astounded by the generally much too unpleasant impression his story had made.
"How dirty!" cried Nastasya Filippovna.
"Bah!
You want to hear a man's nastiest deed and with that you ask him to shine!
The nastiest deeds are always very dirty, we'll hear that presently from Ivan Petrovich; and there are all sorts of things that shine externally and want to look like virtue, because they have their own carriage.
There are all sorts that have their own carriage . . . And by what means . . ."
In short, Ferdyshchenko was quite unable to stand it and suddenly became angry, even to the point of forgetting himself, going beyond measure; his face even went all awry.
Strange as it might seem, it is quite possible that he had anticipated a completely different success for his story.
These "blunders" of bad tone and a "peculiar sort of boasting," as Totsky put it, occurred quite frequently with Ferdyshchenko and were completely in character.
Nastasya Filippovna even shook with wrath and stared intently at Ferdyshchenko; the man instantly became cowed and fell silent, all but cold with fright: he had gone much too far.
"Shouldn't we end it altogether?" Afanasy Ivanovich asked slyly.
"It's my turn, but I shall exercise my privilege and not tell anything," Ptitsyn said resolutely.
"You don't want to?"
"I can't, Nastasya Filippovna; and generally I consider such a petit jeu impossible."
"General, I believe it's your turn next," Nastasya Filippovna turned to him. "If you decline, too, then everything will go to pieces after you, and I'll be very sorry, because I was counting on telling a deed 'from my own life' at the end, only I wanted to do it after you and Afanasy Ivanovich, because you should encourage me," she ended, laughing.
"Oh, if you promise, too," the general cried warmly, "then I'm ready to tell you my whole life; but, I confess, while waiting for my turn I've already prepared my anecdote . . ."
"And by the mere look of his excellency, one can tell with what special literary pleasure he has polished his little anecdote," Ferdyshchenko, still somewhat abashed, ventured to observe with a venomous smile.
Nastasya Filippovna glanced fleetingly at the general and also smiled to herself.
But it was obvious that anguish and irritation were growing stronger and stronger in her.
Afanasy Ivanovich became doubly frightened, hearing her promise of a story.
"It has happened to me, ladies and gentlemen, as to everyone, to do certain not entirely elegant deeds in my life," the general began, "but the strangest thing of all is that I consider the short anecdote I'm about to tell you the nastiest anecdote in my whole life.
Meanwhile some thirty-five years have passed; but I have never been able, in recalling it, to break free of a certain, so to speak, gnawing impression in my heart.
The affair itself, however, was extremely stupid: at that time I had just been made a lieutenant and was pulling my load in the army.
Well, everybody knows what a lieutenant is: blood boiling and just pennies to live on. I had an orderly then, Nikifor, who was terribly solicitous of my livelihood: he saved, mended, cleaned and scrubbed, and even pilfered everywhere, whatever he could to add to the household. He was a most trustworthy and honest man.
I, of course, was strict but fair.
At some point we were stationed in a little town.
I was quartered on the outskirts, with a retired lieutenant's wife, and a widow at that.
The old hag was eighty or thereabouts.
Her little house was decrepit, wretched, wooden, and she didn't even have a serving woman, so poor she was.
But the main thing about her was that she had once had the most numerous family and relations; but some had died in the course of her life, others had gone away, still others had forgotten the old woman, and her husband she had buried forty-five years earlier.
A few years before then her niece had lived with her, hunchbacked and wicked as a witch, people said, and once she had even bitten the old woman's finger, but she had died, too, so that for some three years the old woman had been getting along all by herself.
My life with her was terribly boring, and she herself was so empty I couldn't get anywhere with her.
In the end she stole a rooster from me.
The affair has remained cloudy to this day, but no one else could have done it.
We quarreled over that rooster, and considerably, but here it so happened that, at my first request, I was transferred to other quarters on the opposite side of town, with the numerous family of a merchant with a great big beard—I remember him as if it were yesterday.
Nikifor and I are joyfully moving out, we're indignantly leaving the old woman.
About three days go by, I come back from drill, Nikifor tells me, 'You shouldn't have left our bowl with the former landlady, Your Honor, we have nothing to serve soup in.'
I, naturally, am amazed: