Don't you insult her, I tell
you."

"Silence!"

"Don't you dare--"

"Silence!"

"Don't you dare to insult the woman I am going to marry, my future
wife," cried David with all his might.

"Going to marry! your wife!" repeated my father, his eyes rolling.
"Your wife! ho! ho! ho!" ("Ha! ha! ha!" echoed my aunt outside the
door.) "How old are you? A year less one week has he been in this
world--he's hardly weaned yet--and he wants to get married! I shall--"

"Let me go! let me go!" whispered Raissa, turning to the door.

"I shall not ask your permission," shouted David, supporting himself
on his hands, "but my own father's, who will be back to-day or
to-morrow. He can command me, not you; and as for my age, both Raissa
and I can wait. You can say what you please: we shall wait."

"David, think a moment," interrupted my father: "take care what you
say. You are beside yourself: you have forgotten all respect."

David grasped his shirt where it lay across his breast. "Whatever you
may say," he repeated.

"Stop his mouth, Porphyr Petrovitch--silence him!" hissed my aunt from
the door; "and as for this baggage, this--"

But something strange cut my aunt's eloquence short: her voice became
suddenly silent, and in its place was heard another, weak and hoarse
from age. "Brother!" exclaimed this weak voice--"Christian souls!"

XXIII.

We all turned round. Before us, in the same dress in which I had just
seen him, stood Latkin, looking like a ghost, thin, haggard and sad.
"God," he said in a somewhat childish way, raising his trembling, bent
figure and gazing feebly at my father--"God has punished, and I have
come for Wa--for Ra--yes, yes, for Raissa. What--choo--what ails
me? Soon I shall be laid--what do you call that thing? a
staff--straight--and that other thing?--a prop. That's all I need, and
you, brother jeweler, see: I too am a man."

Raissa crossed the room without a word, and while she supported her
father she buttoned his jacket.

"Let us go, Wassilievna," he said. "All here are saints: don't go near
them; and he who lies there in a case," pointing to David, "is also
a saint. But we, brother, you and I, are sinners. Choo, gentlemen:
excuse an old, broken-down man. We have stolen together," he cried
suddenly--"stolen together, stolen together," he repeated with evident
joy: at last he had control of his tongue.

All of us in the room were silent. "But where is your picture of the
saints?" he