No More Learning

* * * * *

When two hours later I returned home I did not find Mme. M. Through some
sudden chance she had gone back to Moscow with her husband. I never saw
her again.




MR. PROHARTCHIN

A STORY


In the darkest and humblest corner of Ustinya Fyodorovna's flat lived
Semyon Ivanovitch Prohartchin, a well-meaning elderly man, who did not
drink. Since Mr. Prohartchin was of a very humble grade in the service,
and received a salary strictly proportionate to his official capacity,
Ustinya Fyodorovna could not get more than five roubles a month from him
for his lodging. Some people said that she had her own reasons for
accepting him as a lodger; but, be that as it may, as though in despite
of all his detractors, Mr. Prohartchin actually became her favourite, in
an honourable and virtuous sense, of course. It must be observed that
Ustinya Fyodorovna, a very respectable woman, who had a special
partiality for meat and coffee, and found it difficult to keep the
fasts, let rooms to several other boarders who paid twice as much as
Semyon Ivanovitch, yet not being quiet lodgers, but on the contrary all
of them "spiteful scoffers" at her feminine ways and her forlorn
helplessness, stood very low in her good opinion, so that if it had not
been for the rent they paid, she would not have cared to let them stay,
nor indeed to see them in her flat at all. Semyon Ivanovitch had become
her favourite from the day when a retired, or, perhaps more correctly
speaking, discharged clerk, with a weakness for strong drink, was
carried to his last resting-place in Volkovo. Though this gentleman had
only one eye, having had the other knocked out owing, in his own words,
to his valiant behaviour; and only one leg, the other having been broken
in the same way owing to his valour; yet he had succeeded in winning all
the kindly feeling of which Ustinya Fyodorovna was capable, and took the
fullest advantage of it, and would probably have gone on for years
living as her devoted satellite and toady if he had not finally drunk
himself to death in the most pitiable way. All this had happened at
Peski, where Ustinya Fyodorovna only had three lodgers, of whom, when
she moved into a new flat and set up on a larger scale, letting to about
a dozen new boarders, Mr. Prohartchin was the only one who remained.

Whether Mr. Prohartchin had certain incorrigible defects, or whether his
companions were, every one of them, to blame, there seemed to be
misunderstandings on both sides from the first. We must observe here
that all Ustinya Fyodorovna's new lodgers without exception got on
together like brothers; some of them were in the same office; each one
of them by turns lost all his money to the others at faro, preference
and _bixe_; they all liked in a merry hour to enjoy what they called the
fizzing moments of life in a crowd together; they were fond, too, at
times of discussing lofty subjects, and though in the end things rarely
passed off without a dispute, yet as all prejudices were banished from
the whole party the general harmony was not in the least disturbed
thereby. The most remarkable among the lodgers were Mark Ivanovitch, an
intelligent and well-read man; then Oplevaniev; then Prepolovenko, also
a nice and modest person; then there was a certain Zinovy Prokofyevitch,
whose object in life was to get into aristocratic society; then there
was Okeanov, the copying clerk, who had in his time almost wrested the
distinction of prime favourite from Semyon Ivanovitch; then another
copying clerk called Sudbin; the plebeian Kantarev; there were others
too. But to all these people Semyon Ivanovitch was, as it were, not one
of themselves. No one wished him harm, of course, for all had from the
very first done Prohartchin justice, and had decided in Mark
Ivanovitch's words that he, Prohartchin, was a good and harmless fellow,
though by no means a man of the world, trustworthy, and not a flatterer,
who had, of course, his failings; but that if he were sometimes unhappy
it was due to nothing else but lack of imagination. What is more, Mr.
Prohartchin, though deprived in this way of imagination, could never
have made a particularly favourable impression from his figure or
manners (upon which scoffers are fond of fastening), yet his figure did
not put people against him. Mark Ivanovitch, who was an intelligent
person, formally undertook Semyon Ivanovitch's defence, and declared in
rather happy and flowery language that Prohartchin was an elderly and
respectable man, who had long, long ago passed the age of romance. And
so, if Semyon Ivanovitch did not know how to get on with people, it must
have been entirely his own fault.

The first thing they noticed was the unmistakable parsimony and
niggardliness of Semyon Ivanovitch. That was at once observed and noted,
for Semyon Ivanovitch would never lend any one his teapot, even for a
moment; and that was the more unjust as he himself hardly ever drank
tea, but when he wanted anything drank, as a rule, rather a pleasant
decoction of wild flowers and certain medicinal herbs, of which he
always had a considerable store. His meals, too, were quite different
from the other lodgers'. He never, for instance, permitted himself to
partake of the whole dinner, provided daily by Ustinya Fyodorovna for
the other boarders. The dinner cost half a rouble; Semyon Ivanovitch
paid only twenty-five kopecks in copper, and never exceeded it, and so
took either a plate of soup with pie, or a plate of beef; most
frequently he ate neither soup nor beef, but he partook in moderation of
white bread with onion, curd, salted cucumber, or something similar,
which was a great deal cheaper, and he would only go back to his half
rouble dinner when he could stand it no longer. . . .

Here the biographer confesses that nothing would have induced him to
allude to such realistic and low details, positively shocking and
offensive to some lovers of the heroic style, if it were not that these
details exhibit one peculiarity, one characteristic, in the hero of this
story; for Mr. Prohartchin was by no means so poor as to be unable to
have regular and sufficient meals, though he sometimes made out that he
was. But he acted as he did regardless of obloquy and people's
prejudices, simply to satisfy his strange whims, and from frugality and
excessive carefulness: all this, however, will be much clearer later on.
But we will beware of boring the reader with the description of all
Semyon Ivanovitch's whims, and will omit, for instance, the curious and
very amusing description of his attire; and, in fact, if it were not for
Ustinya Fyodorovna's own reference to it we should hardly have alluded
even to the fact that Semyon Ivanovitch never could make up his mind to
send his linen to the wash, or if he ever did so it was so rarely that
in the intervals one might have completely forgotten the existence of
linen on Semyon Ivanovitch. From the landlady's evidence it appeared
that "Semyon Ivanovitch, bless his soul, poor lamb, for twenty years had
been tucked away in his corner, without caring what folks thought, for
all the days of his life on earth he was a stranger to socks,
handkerchiefs, and all such things," and what is more, Ustinya
Fyodorovna had seen with her own eyes, thanks to the decrepitude of the
screen, that the poor dear man sometimes had had nothing to cover his
bare skin.

Such were the rumours in circulation after Semyon Ivanovitch's death.
But in his lifetime (and this was one of the most frequent occasions of
dissension) he could not endure it if any one, even somebody on friendly
terms with him, poked his inquisitive nose uninvited into his corner,
even through an aperture in the decrepit screen. He was a taciturn man
difficult to deal with and prone to ill health. He did not like people
to give him advice, he did not care for people who put themselves
forward either, and if any one jeered at him or gave him advice unasked,
he would fall foul of him at once, put him to shame, and settle his
business. "You are a puppy, you are a featherhead, you are not one to
give advice, so there--you mind your own business, sir. You'd better
count the stitches in your own socks, sir, so there! "

Semyon Ivanovitch was a plain man, and never used the formal mode of
address to any one. He could not bear it either when some one who knew
his little ways would begin from pure sport pestering him with
questions, such as what he had in his little trunk. . . . Semyon Ivanovitch
had one little trunk. It stood under his bed, and was guarded like the
apple of his eye; and though every one knew that there was nothing in it
except old rags, two or three pairs of damaged boots and all sorts of
rubbish, yet Mr. Prohartchin prized his property very highly, and they
used even to hear him at one time express dissatisfaction with his old,
but still sound, lock, and talk of getting a new one of a special German
pattern with a secret spring and various complications. When on one
occasion Zinovy Prokofyevitch, carried away by the thoughtlessness of
youth, gave expression to the very coarse and unseemly idea, that Semyon
Ivanovitch was probably hiding and treasuring something in his box to
leave to his descendants, every one who happened to be by was stupefied
at the extraordinary effects of Zinovy Prokofyevitch's sally. At first
Mr. Prohartchin could not find suitable terms for such a crude and
coarse idea. For a long time words dropped from his lips quite
incoherently, and it was only after a while they made out that Semyon
Ivanovitch was reproaching Zinovy Prokofyevitch for some shabby action
in the remote past; then they realized that Semyon Ivanovitch was
predicting that Zinovy Prokofyevitch would never get into aristocratic
society, and that the tailor to whom he owed a bill for his suits would
beat him--would certainly beat him--because the puppy had not paid him
for so long; and finally, "You puppy, you," Semyon Ivanovitch added,
"here you want to get into the hussars, but you won't, I tell you,
you'll make a fool of yourself. And I tell you what, you puppy, when
your superiors know all about it they will take and make you a copying
clerk; so that will be the end of it! Do you hear, puppy? " Then Semyon
Ivanovitch subsided, but after lying down for five hours, to the intense
astonishment of every one he seemed to have reached a decision, and
began suddenly reproaching and abusing the young man again, at first to
himself and afterwards addressing Zinovy Prokofyevitch. But the matter
did not end there, and in the evening, when Mark Ivanovitch and
Prepolovenko made tea and asked Okeanov to drink it with them, Semyon
Ivanovitch got up from his bed, purposely joined them, subscribing his
fifteen or twenty kopecks, and on the pretext of a sudden desire for a
cup of tea began at great length going into the subject, and explaining
that he was a poor man, nothing but a poor man, and that a poor man like
him had nothing to save. Mr. Prohartchin confessed that he was a poor
man on this occasion, he said, simply because the subject had come up;
that the day before yesterday he had meant to borrow a rouble from that
impudent fellow, but now he should not borrow it for fear the puppy
should brag, that that was the fact of the matter, and that his salary
was such that one could not buy enough to eat, and that finally, a poor
man, as you see, he sent his sister-in-law in Tver five roubles every
month, that if he did not send his sister-in-law in Tver five roubles
every month his sister-in-law would die, and if his sister-in-law, who
was dependent on him, were dead, he, Semyon Ivanovitch, would long ago
have bought himself a new suit. . . . And Semyon Ivanovitch went on talking
in this way at great length about being a poor man, about his
sister-in-law and about roubles, and kept repeating the same thing over
and over again to impress it on his audience till he got into a regular
muddle and relapsed into silence. Only three days later, when they had
all forgotten about him, and no one was thinking of attacking him, he
added something in conclusion to the effect that when Zinovy
Prokofyevitch went into the hussars the impudent fellow would have his
leg cut off in the war, and then he would come with a wooden leg and
say; "Semyon Ivanovitch, kind friend, give me something to eat! " and
then Semyon Ivanovitch would not give him something to eat, and would
not look at the insolent fellow; and that's how it would be, and he
could just make the best of it.

All this naturally seemed very curious and at the same time fearfully
amusing. Without much reflection, all the lodgers joined together for
further investigation, and simply from curiosity determined to make a
final onslaught on Semyon Ivanovitch _en masse_. And as Mr. Prohartchin,
too, had of late--that is, ever since he had begun living in the same
flat with them--been very fond of finding out everything about them and
asking inquisitive questions, probably for private reasons of his own,
relations sprang up between the opposed parties without any preparation
or effort on either side, as it were by chance and of itself. To get
into relations Semyon Ivanovitch always had in reserve his peculiar,
rather sly, and very ingenuous manoeuvre, of which the reader has
learned something already. He would get off his bed about tea-time, and
if he saw the others gathered together in a group to make tea he would
go up to them like a quiet, sensible, and friendly person, hand over his
twenty kopecks, as he was entitled to do, and announce that he wished to
join them. Then the young men would wink at one another, and so
indicating that they were in league together against Semyon Ivanovitch,
would begin a conversation, at first strictly proper and decorous. Then
one of the wittier of the party would, _à propos_ of nothing, fall to
telling them news consisting most usually of entirely false and quite
incredible details. He would say, for instance, that some one had heard
His Excellency that day telling Demid Vassilyevitch that in his opinion
married clerks were more trustworthy than unmarried, and more suitable
for promotion; for they were steady, and that their capacities were
considerably improved by marriage, and that therefore he--that is, the
speaker--in order to improve and be better fitted for promotion, was
doing his utmost to enter the bonds of matrimony as soon as possible
with a certain Fevronya Prokofyevna. Or he would say that it had more
than once been remarked about certain of his colleagues that they were
entirely devoid of social graces and of well-bred, agreeable manners,
and consequently unable to please ladies in good society, and that,
therefore, to eradicate this defect it would be suitable to deduct
something from their salary, and with the sum so obtained, to hire a
hall, where they could learn to dance, acquire the outward signs of
gentlemanliness and good-breeding, courtesy, respect for their seniors,
strength of will, a good and grateful heart and various agreeable
qualities. Or he would say that it was being arranged that some of the
clerks, beginning with the most elderly, were to be put through an
examination in all sorts of subjects to raise their standard of culture,
and in that way, the speaker would add, all sorts of things would come
to light, and certain gentlemen would have to lay their cards on the
table--in short, thousands of similar very absurd rumours were
discussed. To keep it up, every one believed the story at once, showed
interest in it, asked questions, applied it to themselves; and some of
them, assuming a despondent air, began shaking their heads and asking
every one's advice, saying what were they to do if they were to come
under it? It need hardly be said that a man far less credulous and
simple-hearted than Mr. Prohartchin would have been puzzled and carried
away by a rumour so unanimously believed. Moreover, from all
appearances, it might be safely concluded that Semyon Ivanovitch was
exceedingly stupid and slow to grasp any new unusual idea, and that when
he heard anything new, he had always first, as it were, to chew it over
and digest it, to find out the meaning, and struggling with it in
bewilderment, at last perhaps to overcome it, though even then in a
quite special manner peculiar to himself alone. . . .

In this way curious and hitherto unexpected qualities began to show
themselves in Semyon Ivanovitch. . . . Talk and tittle-tattle followed, and
by devious ways it all reached the office at last, with additions. What
increased the sensation was the fact that Mr. Prohartchin, who had
looked almost exactly the same from time immemorial, suddenly, _à
propos_ of nothing, wore quite a different countenance. His face was
uneasy, his eyes were timid and had a scared and rather suspicious
expression. He took to walking softly, starting and listening, and to
put the finishing touch to his new characteristics developed a passion
for investigating the truth. He carried his love of truth at last to
such a pitch as to venture, on two occasions, to inquire of Demid
Vassilyevitch himself concerning the credibility of the strange rumours
that reached him daily by dozens, and if we say nothing here of the
consequence of the action of Semyon Ivanovitch, it is for no other
reason but a sensitive regard for his reputation. It was in this way
people came to consider him as misanthropic and regardless of the
proprieties. Then they began to discover that there was a great deal
that was fantastical about him, and in this they were not altogether
mistaken, for it was observed on more than one occasion that Semyon
Ivanovitch completely forgot himself, and sitting in his seat with his
mouth open and his pen in the air, as though frozen or petrified, looked
more like the shadow of a rational being than that rational being
itself. It sometimes happened that some innocently gaping gentleman, on
suddenly catching his straying, lustreless, questioning eyes, was scared
and all of a tremor, and at once inserted into some important document
either a smudge or some quite inappropriate word. The impropriety of
Semyon Ivanovitch's behaviour embarrassed and annoyed all really
well-bred people. . . . At last no one could feel any doubt of the
eccentricity of Semyon Ivanovitch's mind, when one fine morning the
rumour was all over the office that Mr. Prohartchin had actually
frightened Demid Vassilyevitch himself, for, meeting him in the
corridor, Semyon Ivanovitch had been so strange and peculiar that he had
forced his superior to beat a retreat. . . . The news of Semyon
Ivanovitch's behaviour reached him himself at last. Hearing of it he got
up at once, made his way carefully between the chairs and tables,
reached the entry, took down his overcoat with his own hand, put it on,
went out, and disappeared for an indefinite period. Whether he was led
into this by alarm or some other impulse we cannot say, but no trace was
seen of him for a time either at home or at the office. . . .

We will not attribute Semyon Ivanovitch's fate simply to his
eccentricity, yet we must observe to the reader that our hero was a very
retiring man, unaccustomed to society, and had, until he made the
acquaintance of the new lodgers, lived in complete unbroken solitude,
and had been marked by his quietness and even a certain mysteriousness;
for he had spent all the time that he lodged at Peski lying on his bed
behind the screen, without talking or having any sort of relations with
any one. Both his old fellow-lodgers lived exactly as he did: they, too
were, somehow mysterious people and spent fifteen years lying behind
their screens. The happy, drowsy hours and days trailed by, one after
the other, in patriarchal stagnation, and as everything around them went
its way in the same happy fashion, neither Semyon Ivanovitch nor Ustinya
Fyodorovna could remember exactly when fate had brought them together.

"It may be ten years, it may be twenty, it may be even twenty-five
altogether," she would say at times to her new lodgers, "since he
settled with me, poor dear man, bless his heart! " And so it was very
natural that the hero of our story, being so unaccustomed to society was
disagreeably surprised when, a year before, he, a respectable and modest
man, had found himself, suddenly in the midst of a noisy and boisterous
crew, consisting of a dozen young fellows, his colleagues at the office,
and his new house-mates.

The disappearance of Semyon Ivanovitch made no little stir in the
lodgings. One thing was that he was the favourite; another, that his
passport, which had been in the landlady's keeping, appeared to have
been accidentally mislaid. Ustinya Fyodorovna raised a howl, as was her
invariable habit on all critical occasions. She spent two days in
abusing and upbraiding the lodgers. She wailed that they had chased away
her lodger like a chicken, and all those spiteful scoffers had been the
ruin of him; and on the third day she sent them all out to hunt for the
fugitive and at all costs to bring him back, dead or alive. Towards
evening Sudbin first came back with the news that traces had been
discovered, that he had himself seen the runaway in Tolkutchy Market and
other places, had followed and stood close to him, but had not dared to
speak to him; he had been near him in a crowd watching a house on fire
in Crooked Lane. Half an hour later Okeanov and Kantarev came in and
confirmed Sudbin's story, word for word; they, too, had stood near, had
followed him quite close, had stood not more than ten paces from him,
but they also had not ventured to speak to him, but both observed that
Semyon Ivanovitch was walking with a drunken cadger. The other lodgers
were all back and together at last, and after listening attentively they
made up their minds that Prohartchin could not be far off and would not
be long in returning; but they said that they had all known beforehand
that he was about with a drunken cadger. This drunken cadger was a
thoroughly bad lot, insolent and cringing, and it seemed evident that he
had got round Semyon Ivanovitch in some way. He had turned up just a
week before Semyon Ivanovitch's disappearance in company with Remnev,
had spent a little time in the flat telling them that he had suffered in
the cause of justice, that he had formerly been in the service in the
provinces, that an inspector had come down on them, that he and his
associates had somehow suffered in a good cause, that he had come to
Petersburg and fallen at the feet of Porfiry Grigoryevitch, that he had
been got, by interest, into a department; but through the cruel
persecution of fate he had been discharged from there too, and that
afterwards through reorganization the office itself had ceased to exist,
and that he had not been included in the new revised staff of clerks
owing as much to direct incapacity for official work as to capacity for
something else quite irrelevant--all this mixed up with his passion for
justice and of course the trickery of his enemies. After finishing his
story, in the course of which Mr. Zimoveykin more than once kissed his
sullen and unshaven friend Remnev, he bowed down to all in the room in
turn, not forgetting Avdotya the servant, called them all his
benefactors, and explained that he was an undeserving, troublesome,
mean, insolent and stupid man, and that good people must not be hard on
his pitiful plight and simplicity. After begging for their kind
protection Mr. Zimoveykin showed his livelier side, grew very cheerful,
kissed Ustinya Fyodorovna's hands, in spite of her modest protests that
her hand was coarse and not like a lady's; and towards evening promised
to show the company his talent in a remarkable character dance. But next
day his visit ended in a lamentable _dénouement_. Either because there
had been too much character in the character-dance, or because he had,
in Ustinya Fyodorovna's own words, somehow "insulted her and treated her
as no lady, though she was on friendly terms with Yaroslav Ilyitch
himself, and if she liked might long ago have been an officer's wife,"
Zimoveykin had to steer for home next day. He went away, came back
again, was again turned out with ignominy, then wormed his way into
Semyon Ivanovitch's good graces, robbed him incidentally of his new
breeches, and now it appeared he had led Semyon Ivanovitch astray.

As soon as the landlady knew that Semyon Ivanovitch was alive and well,
and that there was no need to hunt for his passport, she promptly left
off grieving and was pacified. Meanwhile some of the lodgers determined
to give the runaway a triumphal reception; they broke the bolt and moved
away the screen from Mr. Prohartchin's bed, rumpled up the bed a little,
took the famous box, put it at the foot of the bed; and on the bed laid
the sister-in-law, that is, a dummy made up of an old kerchief, a cap
and a mantle of the landlady's, such an exact counterfeit of a
sister-in-law that it might have been mistaken for one. Having finished
their work they waited for Semyon Ivanovitch to return, meaning to tell
him that his sister-in-law had arrived from the country and was there
behind his screen, poor thing! But they waited and waited.

Already, while they waited, Mark Ivanovitch had staked and lost half a
month's salary to Prepolovenko and Kantarev; already Okeanov's nose had
grown red and swollen playing "flips on the nose" and "three cards;"
already Avdotya the servant had almost had her sleep out and had twice
been on the point of getting up to fetch the wood and light the stove,
and Zinovy Prokofyevitch, who kept running out every minute to see
whether Semyon Ivanovitch were coming, was wet to the skin; but there
was no sign of any one yet--neither Semyon Ivanovitch nor the drunken
cadger. At last every one went to bed, leaving the sister-in-law behind
the screen in readiness for any emergency; and it was not till four
o'clock that a knock was heard at the gate, but when it did come it was
so loud that it quite made up to the expectant lodgers for all the
wearisome trouble they had been through. It was he--he himself--Semyon
Ivanovitch, Mr. Prohartchin, but in such a condition that they all cried
out in dismay, and no one thought about the sister-in-law. The lost man
was unconscious. He was brought in, or more correctly carried in, by a
sopping and tattered night-cabman. To the landlady's question where the
poor dear man had got so groggy, the cabman answered: "Why, he is not
drunk and has not had a drop, that I can tell you, for sure; but
seemingly a faintness has come over him, or some sort of a fit, or maybe
he's been knocked down by a blow. "

They began examining him, propping the culprit against the stove to do
so more conveniently, and saw that it really was not a case of
drunkenness, nor had he had a blow, but that something else was wrong,
for Semyon Ivanovitch could not utter a word, but seemed twitching in a
sort of convulsion, and only blinked, fixing his eyes in bewilderment
first on one and then on another of the spectators, who were all attired
in night array. Then they began questioning the cabman, asking where he
had got him from. "Why, from folks out Kolomna way," he answered. "Deuce
knows what they are, not exactly gentry, but merry, rollicking
gentlemen; so he was like this when they gave him to me; whether they
had been fighting, or whether he was in some sort of a fit, goodness
knows what it was; but they were nice, jolly gentlemen! "

Semyon Ivanovitch was taken, lifted high on the shoulders of two or
three sturdy fellows, and carried to his bed. When Semyon Ivanovitch on
being put in bed felt the sister-in-law, and put his feet on his sacred
box, he cried out at the top of his voice, squatted up almost on his
heels, and trembling and shaking all over, with his hands and his body
he cleared a space as far as he could in his bed, while gazing with a
tremulous but strangely resolute look at those present, he seemed as it
were to protest that he would sooner die than give up the hundredth part
of his poor belongings to any one. . . .

Semyon Ivanovitch lay for two or three days closely barricaded by the
screen, and so cut off from all the world and all its vain anxieties.
Next morning, of course, every one had forgotten about him; time,
meanwhile, flew by as usual, hour followed hour and day followed day.
The sick man's heavy, feverish brain was plunged in something between
sleep and delirium; but he lay quietly and did not moan or complain; on
the contrary he kept still and silent and controlled himself, lying low
in his bed, just as the hare lies close to the earth when it hears the
hunter. At times a long depressing stillness prevailed in the flat, a
sign that the lodgers had all gone to the office, and Semyon Ivanovitch,
waking up, could relieve his depression by listening to the bustle in
the kitchen, where the landlady was busy close by; or to the regular
flop of Avdotya's down-trodden slippers as, sighing and moaning, she
cleared away, rubbed and polished, tidying all the rooms in the flat.
Whole hours passed by in that way, drowsy, languid, sleepy, wearisome,
like the water that dripped with a regular sound from the locker into
the basin in the kitchen. At last the lodgers would arrive, one by one
or in groups, and Semyon Ivanovitch could very conveniently hear them
abusing the weather, saying they were hungry, making a noise, smoking,
quarrelling, and making friends, playing cards, and clattering the cups
as they got ready for tea. Semyon Ivanovitch mechanically made an effort
to get up and join them, as he had a right to do at tea; but he at once
sank back into drowsiness, and dreamed that he had been sitting a long
time at the tea-table, having tea with them and talking, and that Zinovy
Prokofyevitch had already seized the opportunity to introduce into the
conversation some scheme concerning sisters-in-law and the moral
relation of various worthy people to them. At this point Semyon
Ivanovitch was in haste to defend himself and reply. But the mighty
formula that flew from every tongue--"It has more than once been
observed"--cut short all his objections, and Semyon Ivanovitch could do
nothing better than begin dreaming again that to-day was the first of
the month and that he was receiving money in his office.

Undoing the paper round it on the stairs, he looked about him quickly,
and made haste as fast as he could to subtract half of the lawful wages
he had received and conceal it in his boot. Then on the spot, on the
stairs, quite regardless of the fact that he was in bed and asleep, he
made up his mind when he reached home to give his landlady what was due
for board and lodging; then to buy certain necessities, and to show any
one it might concern, as it were casually and unintentionally, that some
of his salary had been deducted, that now he had nothing left to send
his sister-in-law; then to speak with commiseration of his
sister-in-law, to say a great deal about her the next day and the day
after, and ten days later to say something casually again about her
poverty, that his companions might not forget. Making this determination
he observed that Andrey Efimovitch, that everlastingly silent, bald
little man who sat in the office three rooms from where Semyon
Ivanovitch sat, and hadn't said a word to him for twenty years, was
standing on the stairs, that he, too, was counting his silver roubles,
and shaking his head, he said to him: "Money! " "If there's no money
there will be no porridge," he added grimly as he went down the stairs,
and just at the door he ended: "And I have seven children, sir. " Then
the little bald man, probably equally unconscious that he was acting as
a phantom and not as a substantial reality, held up his hand about
thirty inches from the floor, and waving it vertically, muttered that
the eldest was going to school, then glancing with indignation at Semyon
Ivanovitch, as though it were Mr. Prohartchin's fault that he was the
father of seven, pulled his old hat down over his eyes, and with a whisk
of his overcoat he turned to the left and disappeared. Semyon Ivanovitch
was quite frightened, and though he was fully convinced of his own
innocence in regard to the unpleasant accumulation of seven under one
roof, yet it seemed to appear that in fact no one else was to blame but
Semyon Ivanovitch. Panic-stricken he set off running, for it seemed to
him that the bald gentleman had turned back, was running after him, and
meant to search him and take away all his salary, insisting upon the
indisputable number seven, and resolutely denying any possible claim of
any sort of sisters-in-law upon Semyon Ivanovitch. Prohartchin ran and
ran, gasping for breath. . . . Beside him was running, too, an immense
number of people, and all of them were jingling their money in the
tailpockets of their skimpy little dress-coats; at last every one ran
up, there was the noise of fire engines, and whole masses of people
carried him almost on their shoulders up to that same house on fire
which he had watched last time in company with the drunken cadger. The
drunken cadger--alias Mr. Zimoveykin--was there now, too, he met Semyon
Ivanovitch, made a fearful fuss, took him by the arm, and led him into
the thickest part of the crowd. Just as then in reality, all about them
was the noise and uproar of an immense crowd of people, flooding the
whole of Fontanka Embankment between the two bridges, as well as all the
surrounding streets and alleys; just as then, Semyon Ivanovitch, in
company with the drunken cadger, was carried along behind a fence, where
they were squeezed as though in pincers in a huge timber-yard full of
spectators who had gathered from the street, from Tolkutchy Market and
from all the surrounding houses, taverns, and restaurants. Semyon
Ivanovitch saw all this and felt as he had done at the time; in the
whirl of fever and delirium all sorts of strange figures began flitting
before him. He remembered some of them. One of them was a gentleman who
had impressed every one extremely, a man seven feet high, with whiskers
half a yard long, who had been standing behind Semyon Ivanovitch's back
during the fire, and had given him encouragement from behind, when our
hero had felt something like ecstasy and had stamped as though intending
thereby to applaud the gallant work of the firemen, from which he had an
excellent view from his elevated position. Another was the sturdy lad
from whom our hero had received a shove by way of a lift on to another
fence, when he had been disposed to climb over it, possibly to save some
one. He had a glimpse, too, of the figure of the old man with a sickly
face, in an old wadded dressing-gown, tied round the waist, who had made
his appearance before the fire in a little shop buying sugar and tobacco
for his lodger, and who now, with a milk-can and a quart pot in his
hands, made his way through the crowd to the house in which his wife and
daughter were burning together with thirteen and a half roubles in the
corner under the bed. But most distinct of all was the poor, sinful
woman of whom he had dreamed more than once during his illness--she
stood before him now as she had done then, in wretched bark shoes and
rags, with a crutch and a wicker-basket on her back. She was shouting
more loudly than the firemen or the crowd, waving her crutch and her
arms, saying that her own children had turned her out and that she had
lost two coppers in consequence. The children and the coppers, the
coppers and the children, were mingled together in an utterly
incomprehensible muddle, from which every one withdrew baffled, after
vain efforts to understand. But the woman would not desist, she kept
wailing, shouting, and waving her arms, seeming to pay no attention
either to the fire up to which she had been carried by the crowd from
the street or to the people about her, or to the misfortune of
strangers, or even to the sparks and red-hot embers which were beginning
to fall in showers on the crowd standing near. At last Mr. Prohartchin
felt that a feeling of terror was coming upon him; for he saw clearly
that all this was not, so to say, an accident, and that he would not get
off scot-free. And, indeed, upon the woodstack, close to him, was a
peasant, in a torn smock that hung loose about him, with his hair and
beard singed, and he began stirring up all the people against Semyon
Ivanovitch. The crowd pressed closer and closer, the peasant shouted,
and foaming at the mouth with horror, Mr. Prohartchin suddenly realized
that this peasant was a cabman whom he had cheated five years before in
the most inhuman way, slipping away from him without paying through a
side gate and jerking up his heels as he ran as though he were barefoot
on hot bricks. In despair Mr. Prohartchin tried to speak, to scream, but
his voice failed him. He felt that the infuriated crowd was twining
round him like a many-coloured snake, strangling him, crushing him. He
made an incredible effort and awoke.
Then he saw that he was on fire,
that all his corner was on fire, that his screen was on fire, that the
whole flat was on fire, together with Ustinya Fyodorovna and all her
lodgers, that his bed was burning, his pillow, his quilt, his box, and
last of all, his precious mattress. Semyon Ivanovitch jumped up,
clutched at the mattress and ran dragging it after him. But in the
landlady's room into which, regardless of decorum, our hero ran just as
he was, barefoot and in his shirt, he was seized, held tight, and
triumphantly carried back behind the screen, which meanwhile was not on
fire--it seemed that it was rather Semyon Ivanovitch's head that was on
fire--and was put back to bed. It was just as some tattered, unshaven,
ill-humoured organ-grinder puts away in his travelling box the Punch who
has been making an upset, drubbing all the other puppets, selling his
soul to the devil, and who at last ends his existence, till the next
performance, in the same box with the devil, the negroes, the Pierrot,
and Mademoiselle Katerina with her fortunate lover, the captain.

Immediately every one, old and young, surrounded Semyon Ivanovitch,
standing in a row round his bed and fastening eyes full of expectation
on the invalid. Meantime he had come to himself, but from shame or some
other feeling, began pulling up the quilt over him, apparently wishing
to hide himself under it from the attention of his sympathetic friends.
At last Mark Ivanovitch was the first to break silence, and as a
sensible man he began saying in a very friendly way that Semyon
Ivanovitch must keep calm, that it was too bad and a shame to be ill,
that only little children behaved like that, that he must get well and
go to the office. Mark Ivanovitch ended by a little joke, saying that no
regular salary had yet been fixed for invalids, and as he knew for a
fact that their grade would be very low in the service, to his thinking
anyway, their calling or condition did not promise great and substantial
advantages. In fact, it was evident that they were all taking genuine
interest in Semyon Ivanovitch's fate and were very sympathetic. But with
incomprehensible rudeness, Semyon Ivanovitch persisted in lying in bed
in silence, and obstinately pulling the quilt higher and higher over his
head. Mark Ivanovitch, however, would not be gainsaid, and restraining
his feelings, said something very honeyed to Semyon Ivanovitch again,
knowing that that was how he ought to treat a sick man. But Semyon
Ivanovitch would not feel this: on the contrary he muttered something
between his teeth with the most distrustful air, and suddenly began
glancing askance from right to left in a hostile way, as though he would
have reduced his sympathetic friends to ashes with his eyes. It was no
use letting it stop there. Mark Ivanovitch lost patience, and seeing
that the man was offended and completely exasperated, and had simply
made up his mind to be obstinate, told him straight out, without any
softening suavity, that it was time to get up, that it was no use lying
there, that shouting day and night about houses on fire, sisters-in-law,
drunken cadgers, locks, boxes and goodness knows what, was all stupid,
improper, and degrading, for if Semyon Ivanovitch did not want to sleep
himself he should not hinder other people, and please would he bear it
in mind.

This speech produced its effects, for Semyon Ivanovitch, turning
promptly to the orator, articulated firmly, though in a hoarse voice,
"You hold your tongue, puppy! You idle speaker, you foul-mouthed man! Do
you hear, young dandy? Are you a prince, eh? Do you understand what I
say? "

Hearing such insults, Mark Ivanovitch fired up, but realizing that he
had to deal with a sick man, magnanimously overcame his resentment and
tried to shame him out of his humour, but was cut short in that too; for
Semyon Ivanovitch observed at once that he would not allow people to
play with him for all that Mark Ivanovitch wrote poetry. Then followed a
silence of two minutes; at last recovering from his amazement Mark
Ivanovitch, plainly, clearly, in well-chosen language, but with
firmness, declared that Semyon Ivanovitch ought to understand that he
was among gentlemen, and "you ought to understand, sir, how to behave
with gentlemen. "

Mark Ivanovitch could on occasion speak effectively and liked to impress
his hearers, but, probably from the habit of years of silence, Semyon
Ivanovitch talked and acted somewhat abruptly; and, moreover, when he
did on occasion begin a long sentence, as he got further into it every
word seemed to lead to another word, that other word to a third word,
that third to a fourth and so on, so that his mouth seemed brimming
over; he began stuttering, and the crowding words took to flying out in
picturesque disorder. That was why Semyon Ivanovitch, who was a sensible
man, sometimes talked terrible nonsense. "You are lying," he said now.
"You booby, you loose fellow! You'll come to want--you'll go begging,
you seditious fellow, you--you loafer. Take that, you poet! "

"Why, you are still raving, aren't you, Semyon Ivanovitch? "

"I tell you what," answered Semyon Ivanovitch, "fools rave, drunkards
rave, dogs rave, but a wise man acts sensibly. I tell you, you don't
know your own business, you loafer, you educated gentleman, you learned
book! Here, you'll get on fire and not notice your head's burning off.
What do you think of that? "

"Why . . . you mean. . . . How do you mean, burn my head off, Semyon
Ivanovitch? "

Mark Ivanovitch said no more, for every one saw clearly that Semyon
Ivanovitch was not yet in his sober senses, but delirious.

But the landlady could not resist remarking at this point that the house
in Crooked Lane had been burnt owing to a bald wench; that there was a
bald-headed wench living there, that she had lighted a candle and set
fire to the lumber room; but nothing would happen in her place, and
everything would be all right in the flats.

"But look here, Semyon Ivanovitch," cried Zinovy Prokofyevitch, losing
patience and interrupting the landlady, "you old fogey, you old crock,
you silly fellow--are they making jokes with you now about your
sister-in-law or examinations in dancing? Is that it? Is that what you
think? "

"Now, I tell you what," answered our hero, sitting up in bed and making
a last effort in a paroxysm of fury with his sympathetic friends. "Who's
the fool? You are the fool, a dog is a fool, you joking gentleman. But I
am not going to make jokes to please you, sir; do you hear, puppy? I am
not your servant, sir. "

Semyon Ivanovitch would have said something more, but he fell back in
bed helpless. His sympathetic friends were left gaping in perplexity,
for they understood now what was wrong with Semyon Ivanovitch and did
not know how to begin. Suddenly the kitchen door creaked and opened, and
the drunken cadger--alias Mr. Zimoveykin--timidly thrust in his head,
cautiously sniffing round the place as his habit was. It seemed as
though he had been expected, every one waved to him at once to come
quickly, and Zimoveykin, highly delighted, with the utmost readiness and
haste jostled his way to Semyon Ivanovitch's bedside.

It was evident that Zimoveykin had spent the whole night in vigil and in
great exertions of some sort. The right side of his face was plastered
up; his swollen eyelids were wet from his running eyes, his coat and all
his clothes were torn, while the whole left side of his attire was
bespattered with something extremely nasty, possibly mud from a puddle.
Under his arm was somebody's violin, which he had been taking somewhere
to sell. Apparently they had not made a mistake in summoning him to
their assistance, for seeing the position of affairs, he addressed the
delinquent at once, and with the air of a man who knows what he is about
and feels that he has the upper hand, said: "What are you thinking
about? Get up, Senka. What are you doing, a clever chap like you? Be
sensible, or I shall pull you out of bed if you are obstreperous. Don't
be obstreperous! "

This brief but forcible speech surprised them all; still more were they
surprised when they noticed that Semyon Ivanovitch, hearing all this and
seeing this person before him, was so flustered and reduced to such
confusion and dismay that he could scarcely mutter through his teeth in
a whisper the inevitable protest.

"Go away, you wretch," he said. "You are a wretched creature--you are a
thief! Do you hear? Do you understand? You are a great swell, my fine
gentleman, you regular swell. "

"No, my boy," Zimoveykin answered emphatically, retaining all his
presence of mind, "you're wrong there, you wise fellow, you regular
Prohartchin," Zimoveykin went on, parodying Semyon Ivanovitch and
looking round gleefully. "Don't be obstreperous! Behave yourself, Senka,
behave yourself, or I'll give you away, I'll tell them all about it, my
lad, do you understand? "

Apparently Semyon Ivanovitch did understand, for he started when he
heard the conclusion of the speech, and began looking rapidly about him
with an utterly desperate air.

Satisfied with the effect, Mr. Zimoveykin would have continued, but Mark
Ivanovitch checked his zeal, and waiting till Semyon Ivanovitch was
still and almost calm again began judiciously impressing on the uneasy
invalid at great length that, "to harbour ideas such as he now had in
his head was, first, useless, and secondly, not only useless, but
harmful; and, in fact, not so much harmful as positively immoral; and
the cause of it all was that Semyon Ivanovitch was not only a bad
example, but led them all into temptation. "

Every one expected satisfactory results from this speech. Moreover by
now Semyon Ivanovitch was quite quiet and replied in measured terms. A
quiet discussion followed. They appealed to him in a friendly way,
inquiring what he was so frightened of. Semyon Ivanovitch answered, but
his answers were irrelevant. They answered him, he answered them. There
were one or two more observations on both sides and then every one
rushed into discussion, for suddenly such a strange and amazing subject
cropped up, that they did not know how to express themselves. The
argument at last led to impatience, impatience led to shouting, and
shouting even to tears; and Mark Ivanovitch went away at last foaming at
the mouth and declaring that he had never known such a blockhead.
Oplevaniev spat in disgust, Okeanov was frightened, Zinovy Prokofyevitch
became tearful, while Ustinya Fyodorovna positively howled, wailing that
her lodger was leaving them and had gone off his head, that he would
die, poor dear man, without a passport and without telling any one,
while she was a lone, lorn woman and that she would be dragged from
pillar to post. In fact, they all saw clearly at last that the seed they
had sown had yielded a hundred-fold, that the soil had been too
productive, and that in their company, Semyon Ivanovitch had succeeded
in overstraining his wits completely and in the most irrevocable manner.
Every one subsided into silence, for though they saw that Semyon
Ivanovitch was frightened, the sympathetic friends were frightened too.

"What? " cried Mark Ivanovitch; "but what are you afraid of? What have
you gone off your head about? Who's thinking about you, my good sir?
Have you the right to be afraid? Who are you? What are you? Nothing,
sir. A round nought, sir, that is what you are. What are you making a
fuss about? A woman has been run over in the street, so are you going to
be run over? Some drunkard did not take care of his pocket, but is that
any reason why your coat-tails should be cut off? A house is burnt down,
so your head is to be burnt off, is it? Is that it, sir, is that it? "

"You . . . you . . . you stupid! " muttered Semyon Ivanovitch, "if your nose
were cut off you would eat it up with a bit of bread and not notice it. "

"I may be a dandy," shouted Mark Ivanovitch, not listening; "I may be a
regular dandy, but I have not to pass an examination to get married--to
learn dancing; the ground is firm under me, sir. Why, my good man,
haven't you room enough? Is the floor giving way under your feet, or
what? "

"Well, they won't ask you, will they? They'll shut one up and that will
be the end of it? "

"The end of it? That's what's up? What's your idea now, eh? "

"Why, they kicked out the drunken cadger. "

"Yes; but you see that was a drunkard, and you are a man, and so am I. "

"Yes, I am a man. It's there all right one day and then it's gone. "

"Gone! But what do you mean by it? "

"Why, the office! The off--off--ice! "

"Yes, you blessed man, but of course the office is wanted and
necessary. "

"It is wanted, I tell you; it's wanted to-day and it's wanted to-morrow,
but the day after to-morrow it will not be wanted. You have heard what
happened? "

"Why, but they'll pay you your salary for the year, you doubting Thomas,
you man of little faith. They'll put you into another job on account of
your age. "

"Salary? But what if I have spent my salary, if thieves come and take my
money? And I have a sister-in-law, do you hear? A sister-in-law! You
battering-ram. . . . "

"A sister-in-law! You are a man. . . . "

"Yes, I am; I am a man. But you are a well-read gentleman and a fool, do
you hear? --you battering-ram--you regular battering-ram! That's what you
are! I am not talking about your jokes; but there are jobs such that all
of a sudden they are done away with. And Demid--do you hear? --Demid
Vassilyevitch says that the post will be done away with. . . . "

"Ah, bless you, with your Demid! You sinner, why, you know. . . . "

"In a twinkling of an eye you'll be left without a post, then you'll
just have to make the best of it. "

"Why, you are simply raving, or clean off your head! Tell us plainly,
what have you done? Own up if you have done something wrong! It's no use
being ashamed! Are you off your head, my good man, eh? "

"He's off his head! He's gone off his head! " they all cried, and wrung
their hands in despair, while the landlady threw both her arms round
Mark Ivanovitch for fear he should tear Semyon Ivanovitch to pieces.

"You heathen, you heathenish soul, you wise man! " Zimoveykin besought
him. "Senka, you are not a man to take offence, you are a polite,
prepossessing man. You are simple, you are good . . . do you hear? It all
comes from your goodness. Here I am a ruffian and a fool, I am a beggar;
but good people haven't abandoned me, no fear; you see they treat me
with respect, I thank them and the landlady. Here, you see, I bow down
to the ground to them; here, see, see, I am paying what is due to you,
landlady! " At this point Zimoveykin swung off with pedantic dignity a
low bow right down to the ground.

After that Semyon Ivanovitch would have gone on talking; but this time
they would not let him, they all intervened, began entreating him,
assuring him, comforting him, and succeeded in making Semyon Ivanovitch
thoroughly ashamed of himself, and at last, in a faint voice, he asked
leave to explain himself.

"Very well, then," he said, "I am prepossessing, I am quiet, I am good,
faithful and devoted; to the last drop of my blood you know . . . do you
hear, you puppy, you swell? . . . granted the job is going on, but you see
I am poor. And what if they take it? do you hear, you swell? Hold your
tongue and try to understand! They'll take it and that's all about it
. . . it's going on, brother, and then not going on . . . do you understand?
And I shall go begging my bread, do you hear? "

"Senka," Zimoveykin bawled frantically, drowning the general hubbub with
his voice. "You are seditious! I'll inform against you! What are you
saying?