The peasants certainly had begun to feel perplexed: “What sort of person is he? He was found walking on the high road, he says he is a teacher, he is dressed like a foreigner, and has no more sense than a little child; he answers queerly as though he had run away from someone, and he’s got money!” An idea was beginning to gain ground that information must be given to the authorities, “especially as things weren’t quite right in the town.” But Anisim set all that right in a minute. Going into the passage he explained to every one who cared to listen that Stepan Trofimovitch was not exactly a teacher but “a very learned man and busy with very learned studies, and was a landowner of the district himself, and had been living for twenty-two years with her excellency, the general’s widow, the stout Madame Stavrogin, and was by way of being the most important person in her house, and was held in the greatest respect by every one in the town. He used to lose by fifties and hundreds in an evening at the club of the nobility, and in rank he was a councillor, which was equal to a lieutenant-colonel in the army, which was next door to being a colonel. As for his having money, he had so much from the stout Madame Stavrogin that there was no reckoning it”—and so on and so on.
“Mais c’est une dame et très comme il faut,” thought Stepan Trofimovitch, as he recovered from Anisim’s attack, gazing with agreeable curiosity at his neighbour, the gospel pedlar, who was, however, drinking the tea from a saucer and nibbling at a piece of sugar. “Ce petit morceau de sucre, ce n’est rien.… There is something noble and independent about her, and at the same time—gentle. Le comme il faut tout pur, but rather in a different style.”
He soon learned from her that her name was Sofya Matveyevna Ulitin and she lived at K——, that she had a sister there, a widow; that she was a widow too, and that her husband, who was a sub-lieutenant risen from the ranks, had been killed at Sevastopol.
“But you are still so young, vous n’avez pas trente ans.”
“Thirty-four,” said Sofya Matveyevna, smiling.
“What, you understand French?”
“A little. I lived for four years after that in a gentleman’s family, and there I picked it up from the children.”
She told him that being left a widow at eighteen she was for some time in Sevastopol as a nurse, and had afterwards lived in various places, and now she travelled about selling the gospel.
“Mais, mon Dieu, wasn’t it you who had a strange adventure in our town, a very strange adventure?”
She flushed; it turned out that it had been she.
“Ces vauriens, ces malheureux,” he began in a voice quivering with indignation; miserable and hateful recollections stirred painfully in his heart. For a minute he seemed to sink into oblivion.
“Bah, but she’s gone away again,” he thought, with a start, noticing that she was not by his side. “She keeps going out and is busy about something; I notice that she seems upset too.… Bah, je deviens egoiste!”
He raised his eyes and saw Anisim again, but this time in the most menacing surroundings. The whole cottage was full of peasants, and it was evidently Anisim who had brought them all in. Among them were the master of the house, and the peasant with the cow, two other peasants (they turned out to be cab-drivers), another little man, half drunk, dressed like a peasant but clean-shaven, who seemed like a townsman ruined by drink and talked more than any of them. And they were all discussing him, Stepan Trofimovitch. The peasant with the cow insisted on his point that to go round by the lake would be thirty-five miles out of the way, and that he certainly must go by steamer. The half-drunken man and the man of the house warmly retorted:
“Seeing that, though of course it will be nearer for his honour on the steamer over the lake; that’s true enough, but maybe according to present arrangements the steamer doesn’t go there, brother.”
“It does go, it does, it will go for another week,” cried Anisim, more excited than any of them.
“That’s true enough, but it doesn’t arrive punctually, seeing it’s late in the season, and sometimes it’ll stay three days together at Ustyevo.”
“It’ll be there to-morrow at two o’clock punctually. You’ll be at Spasov punctually by the evening,” cried Anisim, eager to do his best for Stepan Trofimovitch.
“Mais qu’est-ce qu’il a cet homme,” thought Stepan Trofimovitch, trembling and waiting in terror for what was in store for him.
The cab-drivers, too, came forward and began bargaining with him; they asked three roubles to Ustyevo. The others shouted that that was not too much, that that was the fare, and that they had been driving from here to Ustyevo all the summer for that fare.
“But … it’s nice here too.… And I don’t want …” Stepan Trofimovitch mumbled in protest.
“Nice it is, sir, you are right there, it’s wonderfully nice at Spasov now and Fyodor Matveyevitch will be so pleased to see you.”
“Mon Dieu, mes amis, all this is such a surprise to me.”
At last Sofya Matveyevna came back. But she sat down on the bench looking dejected and mournful.
“I can’t get to Spasov!” she said to the woman of the cottage.
“Why, you are bound to Spasov, too, then?” cried Stepan Trofimovitch, starting.
It appeared that a lady had the day before told her to wait at Hatovo and had promised to take her to Spasov, and now this lady had not turned up after all.
“What am I to do now?” repeated Sofya Matveyevna.
“Mais, ma chère et nouvelle amie, I can take you just as well as the lady to that village, whatever it is, to which I’ve hired horses, and to-morrow—well, to-morrow, we’ll go on together to Spasov.”
“Why, are you going to Spasov too?”
“Mais que faire, et je suis enchanté! I shall take you with the greatest pleasure; you see they want to take me, I’ve engaged them already. Which of you did I engage?” Stepan Trofimovitch suddenly felt an intense desire to go to Spasov.
Within a quarter of an hour they were getting into a covered trap, he very lively and quite satisfied, she with her pack beside him, with a grateful smile on her face. Anisim helped them in.
“A good journey to you, sir,” said he, bustling officiously round the trap, “it has been a treat to see you.”
“Good-bye, good-bye, my friend, good-bye.”
“You’ll see Fyodor Matveyevitch, sir …”
“Yes, my friend, yes … Fyodor Petrovitch … only good-bye.”
II
“You see, my friend … you’ll allow me to call myself your friend, n’est-ce pas?” Stepan Trofimovitch began hurriedly as soon as the trap started. “You see I … J’aime le peuple, c’est indispensable, mais il me semble que je ne m’avais jamais vu de près. Stasie … cela va sans dire qu’elle est aussi du peuple, mais le vrai peuple, that is, the real ones, who are on the high road, it seems to me they care for nothing, but where exactly I am going … But let bygones be bygones. I fancy I am talking at random, but I believe it’s from being flustered.”
“You don’t seem quite well.” Sofya Matveyevna watched him keenly though respectfully.
“No, no, I must only wrap myself up, besides there’s a fresh wind, very fresh in fact, but … let us forget that. That’s not what I really meant to say. Chère et incomparable amie, I feel that I am almost happy, and it’s your doing. Happiness is not good for me for it makes me rush to forgive all my enemies at once.…”
“Why, that’s a very good thing, sir.”
“Not always, chère innocente. L’Evangile … voyez-vous, désormais nous prêcherons ensemble and I will gladly sell your beautiful little books. Yes, I feel that that perhaps is an idea, quelque chose de très nouveau dans ce genre. The peasants are religious, c’est admis, but they don’t yet know the gospel. I will expound it to them.… By verbal explanation one might correct the mistakes in that remarkable book, which I am of course prepared to treat with the utmost respect. I will be of service even on the high road. I’ve always been of use, I always told them so et à cette chère ingrate.… Oh, we will forgive, we will forgive, first of all we will forgive all and always.… We will hope that we too shall be forgiven. Yes, for all, every one of us, have wronged one another, all are guilty!”
“That’s a very good saying, I think, sir.”
“Yes, yes.… I feel that I am speaking well. I shall speak to them very well, but what was the chief thing I meant to say? I keep losing the thread and forgetting.… Will you allow me to remain with you? I feel that the look in your eyes and … I am surprised in fact at your manners. You are simple-hearted, you call me ‘sir,’ and turn your cup upside down on your saucer … and that horrid lump of sugar; but there’s something
