order, deviation or departure from rule,
depressed him, though one would have thought it was no business of his.
If one of his colleagues was late for church or if rumours reached him
of some prank of the high-school boys, or one of the mistresses was seen
late in the evening in the company of an officer, he was much disturbed,
and said he hoped that nothing would come of it. At the teachers'
meetings he simply oppressed us with his caution, his circumspection,
and his characteristic reflection on the ill-behaviour of the young
people in both male and female high-schools, the uproar in the classes.

"Oh, he hoped it would not reach the ears of the authorities; oh, he
hoped nothing would come of it; and he thought it would be a very good
thing if Petrov were expelled from the second class and Yegorov from
the fourth. And, do you know, by his sighs, his despondency, his black
spectacles on his pale little face, a little face like a pole-cat's, you
know, he crushed us all, and we gave way, reduced Petrov's and Yegorov's
marks for conduct, kept them in, and in the end expelled them both.
He had a strange habit of visiting our lodgings. He would come to
a teacher's, would sit down, and remain silent, as though he were
carefully inspecting something. He would sit like this in silence for an
hour or two and then go away. This he called 'maintaining good relations
with his colleagues'; and it was obvious that coming to see us and
sitting there was tiresome to him, and that he came to see us simply
because he considered it his duty as our colleague. We teachers were
afraid of him. And even the headmaster was afraid of him. Would you
believe it, our teachers were all intellectual, right-minded people,
brought up on Turgenev and Shtchedrin, yet this little chap, who always
went about with goloshes and an umbrella, had the whole high-school
under his thumb for fifteen long years! High-school, indeed--he had
the whole town under his thumb! Our ladies did not get up private
theatricals on Saturdays for fear he should hear of it, and the clergy
dared not eat meat or play cards in his presence. Under the influence
of people like Byelikov we have got into the way of being afraid of
everything in our town for the last ten or fifteen years. They
are afraid to speak aloud, afraid to send letters, afraid to make
acquaintances, afraid to read books, afraid to help the poor, to teach
people to read and write...."

Ivan Ivanovitch cleared his