I ran out to him behind the scenes once more, and had time to warn him
excitedly that in my opinion the game was up, that he had better not
appear at all, but had better go home at once on the excuse of his usual
ailment, for instance, and I would take off my badge and come with him.
At that instant he was on his way to the platform; he stopped suddenly,
and haughtily looking me up and down he pronounced solemnly:

"What grounds have you, sir, for thinking me capable of such baseness?"

I drew back. I was as sure as twice two make four that he would not get
off without a catastrophe. Meanwhile, as I stood utterly dejected, I saw
moving before me again the figure of the professor, whose turn it was to
appear after Stepan Trofimovitch, and who kept lifting up his fist
and bringing it down again with a swing. He kept walking up and down,
absorbed in himself and muttering something to himself with a diabolical
but triumphant smile. I somehow almost unintentionally went up to him.
I don't know what induced me to meddle again. "Do you know," I said,
"judging from many examples, if a lecturer keeps an audience for more
than twenty minutes it won't go on listening. No celebrity is able to
hold his own for half an hour."

He stopped short and seemed almost quivering with resentment. Infinite
disdain was expressed in his countenance.

"Don't trouble yourself," he muttered contemptuously and walked on. At
that moment Stepan Trofimovitch's voice rang out in the hall.

"Oh, hang you all," I thought, and ran to the hall.

Stepan Trofimovitch took his seat in the lecturer's chair in the midst
of the still persisting disorder. He was greeted by the first rows with
looks which were evidently not over-friendly. (Of late, at the club,
people almost seemed not to like him, and treated him with much less
respect than formerly.) But it was something to the good that he was not
hissed. I had had a strange idea in my head ever since the previous
day: I kept fancying that he would be received with hisses as soon as
he appeared. They scarcely noticed him, however, in the disorder. What
could that man hope for if Karmazinov was treated like this? He was
pale; it was ten years since he had appeared before an audience. From
his excitement and from all that I knew so well in him, it was clear to
me that he, too, regarded his present appearance on the platform as a
turning-point of his fate, or something of the kind. That was just what
I was