te councillor in your presence and
spoil his daughter's dress with his tarred boots? Now, can you wonder
that the public is set against you?"

"But that's all your doing, yours! Oh, my goodness!"

"No, I warned you. We quarrelled. Do you hear, we quarrelled?"

"Why, you are lying to my face!"

"Of course it's easy for you to say that. You need a victim to vent your
wrath on. Well, vent it on me as I've said already. I'd better appeal to
you, Mr...." (He was still unable to recall my name.) "We'll reckon
on our fingers. I maintain that, apart from Liputin, there was nothing
preconcerted, nothing! I will prove it, but first let us analyse
Liputin. He came forward with that fool Lebyadkin's verses. Do you
maintain that that was a plot? But do you know it might simply have
struck Liputin as a clever thing to do. Seriously, seriously. He simply
came forward with the idea of making every one laugh and entertaining
them--his protectress Yulia Mihailovna first of all. That was all. Don't
you believe it? Isn't that in keeping with all that has been going
on here for the last month? Do you want me to tell the whole truth? I
declare that under other circumstances it might have gone off all right.
It was a coarse joke--well, a bit strong, perhaps; but it was amusing,
you know, wasn't it?"

"What! You think what Liputin did was clever?" Yulia Mihailovna cried
in intense indignation. "Such stupidity, such tactlessness, so
contemptible, so mean! It was intentional! Oh, you are saying it on
purpose! I believe after that you are in the plot with them yourself."

"Of course I was behind the scenes, I was in hiding, I set it all going.
But if I were in the plot--understand that, anyway--it wouldn't have
ended with Liputin. So according to you I had arranged with my papa too
that he should cause such a scene on purpose? Well, whose fault is it
that my papa was allowed to read? Who tried only yesterday to prevent
you from allowing it, only yesterday?"

"_Oh, hier il avait tant d'esprit,_ I was so reckoning on him; and then he
has such manners. I thought with him and Karmazinov... Only think!

"Yes, only think. But in spite of _tant d'esprit_ papa has made things
worse, and if I'd known beforehand that he'd make such a mess of it, I
should certainly not have persuaded you yesterday to keep the goat
out of the kitchen garden, should I--since I am taking part in this
conspiracy against your fete that you are so positive about? And yet