cret at the bottom of it, which they were trying to hide from him
alone, and as soon as I left him he would set to work to make inquiries
and gossip all over the town. While I was picturing all this to myself
I happened to run across him in the street. It turned out that he had
heard all about it from our friends, whom I had only just informed. But,
strange to say, instead of being inquisitive and asking questions about
Stepan Trofimovitch, he interrupted me, when I began apologising for not
having come to him before, and at once passed to other subjects. It is
true that he had a great deal stored up to tell me. He was in a state
of great excitement, and was delighted to have got hold of me for a
listener. He began talking of the news of the town, of the arrival
of the governor's wife, "with new topics of conversation," of an
opposition party already formed in the club, of how they were all in a
hubbub over the new ideas, and how charmingly this suited him, and so
on. He talked for a quarter of an hour and so amusingly that I could not
tear myself away. Though I could not endure him, yet I must admit he had
the gift of making one listen to him, especially when he was very angry
at something. This man was, in my opinion, a regular spy from his very
nature. At every moment he knew the very latest gossip and all the
trifling incidents of our town, especially the unpleasant ones, and it
was surprising to me how he took things to heart that were sometimes
absolutely no concern of his. It always seemed to me that the leading
feature of his character was envy. When I told Stepan Trofimovitch the
same evening of my meeting Liputin that morning and our conversation,
the latter to my amazement became greatly agitated, and asked me the
wild question: "Does Liputin know or not?"

I began trying to prove that there was no possibility of his finding it
out so soon, and that there was nobody from whom he could hear it. But
Stepan Trofimovitch was not to be shaken. "Well, you may believe it or
not," he concluded unexpectedly at last, "but I'm convinced that he not
only knows every detail of 'our' position, but that he knows something
else besides, something neither you nor I know yet, and perhaps never
shall, or shall only know when it's too late, when there's no turning
back!..."

I said nothing, but these words suggested a great deal. For five whole
days after that we did not say one word about Liputin; it was clear to
me that Stepa