«Wha-at lieutenant was that?»
«In our company, your Excellency, he went out of his mind over the word praiseworthy. At first they tried gentle methods, then they put him under arrest…. His commanding officer admonished him in the most fatherly way, and he answered, ‘praiseworthy, praiseworthy!’ And strange to say, the officer was a fine-looking man, over six feet. They meant to court-martial him, but then they perceived that he was mad.»
«So … a schoolboy. A schoolboy’s prank need not be taken seriously. For my part I am ready to overlook it….»
«They held a medical inquiry, your Excellency.»
«Upon my word, but he was alive, wasn’t he?»
«What! Did they dissect him?»
A loud and almost universal roar of laughter resounded among the guests, who had till then behaved with decorum. Ivan Ilyitch was furious.
«Ladies and gentlemen!» he shouted, at first scarcely stammering, «I am fully capable of apprehending that a man is not dissected alive. I imagined that in his derangement he had ceased to be alive … that is, that he had died … that is, I mean to say … that you don’t like me … and yet I like you all … Yes, I like Por … Porfiry … I am lowering myself by speaking like this….»
At that moment Ivan Ilyitch spluttered so that a great dab of saliva flew on to the tablecloth in a most conspicuous place. Pseldonimov flew to wipe it off with a table-napkin. This last disaster crushed him completely.
«My friends, this is too much,» he cried in despair.
«The man is drunk, your Excellency,» Pseldonimov prompted him again.
«Porfiry, I see that you … all … yes! I say that I hope … yes, I call upon you all to tell me in what way have I lowered myself?»
Ivan Ilyitch was almost crying.
«Your Excellency, good heavens!»
«Porfiry, I appeal to you…. Tell me, when I came … yes … yes, to your wedding, I had an object. I was aiming at moral elevation…. I wanted it to be felt…. I appeal to all: am I greatly lowered in your eyes or not?»
A deathlike silence. That was just it, a deathlike silence, and to such a downright question. «They might at least shout at this minute!» flashed through his Excellency’s head. But the guests only looked at one another. Akim Petrovitch sat more dead than alive, while Pseldonimov, numb with terror, was repeating to himself the awful question which had occurred to him more than once already.
«What shall I have to pay for all this to-morrow?»
At this point the young man on the comic paper, who was very drunk but who had hitherto sat in morose silence, addressed Ivan Ilyitch directly, and with flashing eyes began answering in the name of the whole company.
«Yes,» he said in a loud voice, «yes, you have lowered yourself. Yes, you are a reactionary … re-ac-tion-ary!»
«Young man, you are forgetting yourself! To whom are you speaking, so to express it?» Ivan Ilyitch cried furiously, jumping up from his seat again.
«To you; and secondly, I am not a young man…. You’ve come to give yourself airs and try to win popularity.»
«Pseldonimov, what does this mean?» cried Ivan Ilyitch.
But Pseldonimov was reduced to such horror that he stood still like a post and was utterly at a loss what to do. The guests, too, sat mute in their seats. All but the artist and the schoolboy, who applauded and shouted, «Bravo, bravo!»
The young man on the comic paper went on shouting with unrestrained violence:
«Yes, you came to show off your humanity! You’ve hindered the enjoyment of every one. You’ve been drinking champagne without thinking that it is beyond the means of a clerk at ten roubles a month. And I suspect that you are one of those high officials who are a little too fond of the young wives of their clerks! What is more, I am convinced that you support State monopolies…. Yes, yes, yes!»
«Pseldonimov, Pseldonimov,» shouted Ivan Ilyitch, holding out his hands to him. He felt that every word uttered by the comic young man was a fresh dagger at his heart.
«Directly, your Excellency; please do not disturb yourself!» Pseldonimov cried energetically, rushing up to the comic young man, seizing him by the collar and dragging him away from the table. Such physical strength could indeed not have been expected from the weakly looking Pseldonimov. But the comic young man was very drunk, while Pseldonimov was perfectly sober. Then he gave him two or three cuffs in the back, and thrust him out of the door.
«You are all scoundrels!» roared the young man of the comic paper. «I will caricature you all to-morrow in the Firebrand.»
They all leapt up from their seats.
«Your Excellency, your Excellency!» cried Pseldonimov, his mother and several others, crowding round the general; «your Excellency, do not be disturbed!»
«No, no,» cried the general, «I am annihilated…. I came… I meant to bless you, so to speak. And this is how I am paid, for everything, everything!…»
He sank on to a chair as though unconscious, laid both his arms on the table, and bowed his head over them, straight into a plate of blancmange. There is no need to describe the general horror. A minute later he got up, evidently meaning to go out, gave a lurch, stumbled against the leg of a chair, fell full length on the floor and snored….
This is what is apt to happen to men who don’t drink when they accidentally take a glass too much. They preserve their consciousness to the last point, to the last minute, and then fall to the ground as though struck down. Ivan Ilyitch lay on the floor absolutely unconscious. Pseldonimov clutched at his hair and sat as though petrified in that position. The guests made haste to depart, commenting each in his own way on the incident. It was about three o’clock in the morning.
The worst of it was that Pseldonimov’s circumstances were far worse than could have been imagined, in spite of the unattractiveness of his present surroundings. And while Ivan Ilyitch is lying on the floor and Pseldonimov is standing over him tearing his hair in despair, we will break off the thread of our story and say a few explanatory words about Porfiry Petrovitch Pseldonimov.
Not more than a month before his wedding he was in a state of hopeless destitution. He came from a province where his father had served in some department and where he had died while awaiting his trial on some charge. When five months before his wedding, Pseldonimov, who had been in hopeless misery in Petersburg for a whole year before, got his berth at ten roubles a month, he revived both physically and mentally, but he was soon crushed by circumstances again. There were only two Pseldonimovs left in the world, himself and his mother, who had left the province after her husband’s death. The mother and son barely existed in the freezing cold, and sustained life on the most dubious substances. There were days when Pseldonimov himself went with a jug to the Fontanka for water to drink. When he got his place he succeeded in settling with his mother in a «corner.» She took in washing, while for four months he scraped together every farthing to get himself boots and an overcoat. And what troubles he had to endure at his office; his superiors approached him with the question: «How long was it since he had had a bath?» There was a rumour about him that under the collar of his uniform there were nests of bugs.
But Pseldonimov was a man of strong character. On the surface he was mild and meek; he had the merest smattering of education, he was practically never heard to talk of anything. I do not know for certain whether he thought, made plans and theories, had dreams. But on the other hand there was being formed within him an instinctive, furtive, unconscious determination to fight his way out of his wretched circumstances. He had the persistence of an ant. Destroy an ants’ nest, and they will begin at once re-erecting it; destroy it again, and they will begin again without wearying. He was a constructive house-building animal.
One could see from his brow that he would make his way, would build his nest, and perhaps even save for a rainy day. His mother was the only creature in the world who loved him, and she loved him beyond everything. She was a woman of resolute character, hard-working and indefatigable, and at the same time good-natured. So perhaps they might have lived in their corner for five or six years till their circumstances changed, if they had not come across the retired titular councillor Mlekopitaev, who had been a clerk in the treasury and had served at one time in the provinces, but had latterly settled in Petersburg and had established himself there with his family. He knew Pseldonimov, and had at one time been under some obligation to his father. He had a little money, not a large sum, of course, but there it was; how much it was no one knew, not his wife, nor his elder daughter, nor his relations.
He had two daughters, and as he was an awful bully, a drunkard, a domestic tyrant, and in addition to that an invalid, he took it into his head one day to marry one of his daughters to Pseldonimov: «I knew his father,» he would say, «he was a good fellow and his son will be a good fellow.» Mlekopitaev did exactly as he liked, his
