"But you make God knows what out of a most ordinary matter!" cried Varya.

"I told you: 'a gossip and a little brat,' " said Ganya.

"If you please, Varvara Ardalionovna, I shall continue. Of course, I can neither love nor respect the prince, but he is decidedly a kind man, though ... a ridiculous one. But I have absolutely no reason to hate him; I remained impassive when your brother incited me against the prince; I precisely counted on having a good laugh at the denouement. I knew your brother would let things slip and miss the mark in the highest degree. And so it happened . . . I'm ready to spare him now, but solely out of respect for you, Varvara Ardalionovna. But, having explained to you that it is not so easy to catch me on a hook, I will also explain to you why I wanted so much to make a fool of your brother. Know that I did it out of hatred, I confess it frankly. In dying (because I shall die all the same, even though I've grown fatter, as you assure me), in dying, I have felt that I would go to paradise incomparably more peacefully if I managed to make a fool out of at least one of that numberless sort of people who have hounded me all my life, whom I have hated all my life, and of whom your much-esteemed brother serves as such a vivid representation. I hate you, Gavrila Ardalionovich, solely because—this may seem astonishing to you—solely because you are the type and embodiment, the personification and apex of the most impudent, the most self-satisfied, the most vulgar and vile ordinariness! You are a puffed-up ordinariness, an unquestioning and Olympianly calm ordinariness; you are the routine of routines! Not the least idea of your own will ever be embodied in your mind or in your heart. But you are infinitely envious; you are firmly convinced that you are the greatest of geniuses, but all the same, doubt visits you occasionally in your darkest moments, and you become angry and envious. Oh, there are still dark spots on your horizon; they will go away when you become definitively stupid, which is not far off; but all the same a long and diverse path lies ahead of you, I do not say a cheerful one, and I'm glad of that. First of all, I predict to you that you will not attain a certain person ..."

"No, this is unbearable!" Varya cried out. "Will you ever finish, you disgusting little stinker?"

Ganya was pale, trembling, and silent. Ippolit stopped, looked at him intently and with relish, shifted his gaze to Varya, grinned, bowed, and left without adding a single word.

Gavrila Ardalionovich could justly complain of his fate and ill luck. For some time Varya did not dare to address him, did not even glance at him, as he paced by her with big strides; finally, he went to the window and stood with his back to her. Varya was thinking about the proverb: every stick has two ends. There was noise again upstairs.

"Are you leaving?" Ganya suddenly turned, hearing her get up from her seat. "Wait. Look at this."

He went over to her and flung down on the chair before her a small piece of paper folded like a little note

"Lord!" Varya cried and clasped her hands.

There were exactly seven lines in the note:

Gavrila Ardalionovich! Being convinced that you are kindly disposed towards me, I venture to ask your advice in a matter that is of importance for me. I would like to meet you tomorrow, at exactly seven o'clock in the morning, by the green bench. It is not far from our dacha. Varvara Ardalionovna, who must accompany you without fail, knows the place very well. A.E.

"Try figuring her out after that!" Varvara Ardalionovna spread her arms.

Much as Ganya would have liked to swagger at that moment, he simply could not help showing his triumph, especially after such humiliating predictions from Ippolit. A self-satisfied smile shone openly on his face, and Varya herself became all radiant with joy.

"And that on the very day when they're announcing the engagement! Try figuring her out after that!"

"What do you think she's going to talk about tomorrow?" asked Ganya.

"That makes no difference, the main thing is that she wishes to see you for the first time after six months. Listen to me, Ganya: whatever there is to it, however it turns out, know that this is important! It's all too important! Don't swagger again, don't miss the mark again, but watch out you don't turn coward either! Could she have failed to grasp why I dragged myself there for half a year? And imagine: she didn't say a word to me today, didn't show a thing. I sneaked in to see them, the old woman didn't know I was sitting with them, otherwise she might have chased me out. I risked that for you, to find out at all costs ..."

Shouting and noise again came from overhead; several people were going down the stairs.

"Don't allow it now for anything!" Varya cried, frightened and all aflutter. "There mustn't be even the shadow of a scandal! Go and apologize!"

But the father of the family was already in the street. Kolya lugged his bag after him. Nina Alexandrovna stood on the porch and wept; she was about to run after him, but Ptitsyn held her back.

"You'll only egg him on more that way," he said to her. "He has nowhere to go, they'll bring him back in half an hour, I've already discussed it with Kolya; let him play the fool a little."

"What are you showing off for, where are you going!" Ganya shouted out the window. "You've got nowhere to go!"

"Come back, papa!" cried Varya. "The neighbors can hear."

The general stopped, turned around, stretched out his arm, and exclaimed:

"My curse upon this house!"

"And inevitably in a theatrical tone!" Ganya muttered, noisily shutting the window.

The neighbors were indeed listening. Varya rushed from the room.

When Varya was gone, Ganya took the note from the table, kissed it, clucked his tongue, and performed an entrechat.

III

At any other time the commotion with the general would have come to nothing. Before, too, there had been occasions of unexpected whimsicality of the same sort with him, though rather seldom, because generally speaking he was a very mild man and of almost kindly inclinations. A hundred times, perhaps, he had taken up the struggle with the disorder that had come over him in recent years. He would suddenly remember that he was the "father of the family," make peace with his wife, weep sincerely. He respected Nina Alexandrovna to the point of adoration for having silently forgiven him so much and loved him even in his clownishness and humiliation. But his magnanimous struggle with disorder usually did not last long; the general was also all too "impulsive" a man, though in his own way; he usually could not bear a repentant and idle life in his family and ended by rebelling;

he would fall into a fit of passion, perhaps reproaching himself for it at the same moment, but unable to control himself: he would quarrel, begin talking floridly and grandiloquently, demand a disproportionate and impossible respect for himself, and in the end disappear from the house, sometimes even for a long time. For the last two years, he had known about the affairs of his family only in general or by hearsay; he had stopped going into more detail, feeling not the slightest call for it.

But this time something unusual manifested itself in the "commotion with the general": everyone seemed to know about something and everyone seemed afraid to speak about something. The general had "formally" appeared in the family, that is, to Nina Alexandrovna, only three days ago, but somehow not humbly and not with repentance, as had always happened in his previous "appearances," but on the contrary—with extraordinary irritability. He was garrulous, agitated, talked heatedly with everyone he met, as if falling upon the person, but it was all about such diverse and unexpected subjects that it was in no way possible to get at what, in essence, he was now so worried about. At moments he was merry, but more often brooding, though he himself did not know about what; he would suddenly begin talking about something— the Epanchins, or the prince and Lebedev—and would suddenly break off and stop talking altogether, and respond to further questions only with a dull smile, though without even noticing that he had been asked something and had merely smiled. He had spent the last night moaning and groaning, and had worn out Nina Alexandrovna, who for some reason kept heating poultices for him all night; towards morning he had suddenly fallen asleep, slept for four hours, and woke up in a most violent and disorderly fit of hypochondria, which had ended in a quarrel with Ippolit and the "curse upon this house." It had also been noticed that during those three days he was constantly having the most violent fits of ambition, and consequently of extraordinary touchiness. But Kolya insisted, reassuring his mother, that it was all the longing for a drink, and perhaps also for Lebedev, with whom the general had become extraordinarily friendly in recent days. But three days ago he had suddenly quarreled with Lebedev and parted from him in a terrible rage; there had even been some sort of scene with the prince. Kolya had asked the prince for an explanation, and had finally begun to suspect that he, too, had something that he was apparently unwilling to tell him. If, as Ganya quite plausibly