n Trofimovitch,
shaking hands with him heartily and without haste. "I understand that,
if as you say you have lived so long abroad, cutting yourself off
from people for objects of your own and forgetting Russia, you must
inevitably look with wonder on us who are Russians to the backbone, and
we must feel the same about you. _Mais cela passera._ I'm only puzzled at
one thing: you want to build our bridge and at the same time you declare
that you hold with the principle of universal destruction. They won't
let you build our bridge."

"What! What's that you said? Ach, I say!" Kirillov cried, much struck,
and he suddenly broke into the most frank and good-humoured laughter.
For a moment his face took a quite childlike expression, which I thought
suited him particularly. Liputin rubbed his hand with delight at Stepan
Trofimovitch's witty remark. I kept wondering to myself why Stepan
Trofimovitch was so frightened of Liputin, and why he had cried out "I
am lost" when he heard him coming.

V

We were all standing in the doorway. It was the moment when hosts and
guests hurriedly exchange the last and most cordial words, and then
part to their mutual gratification.

"The reason he's so cross to-day," Liputin dropped all at once, as it
were casually, when he was just going out of the room, "is because he
had a disturbance to-day with Captain Lebyadkin over his sister. Captain
Lebyadkin thrashes that precious sister of his, the mad girl, every day
with a whip, a real Cossack whip, every morning and evening. So Alexey
Nilitch has positively taken the lodge so as not to be present. Well,
good-bye."

"A sister? An invalid? With a whip?" Stepan Trofimovitch cried out, as
though he had suddenly been lashed with a whip himself. "What sister?
What Lebyadkin?" All his former terror came back in an instant.
"Lebyadkin! Oh, that's the retired captain; he used only to call himself
a lieutenant before...."

"Oh, what is his rank to me? What sister? Good heavens!... You say
Lebyadkin? But there used to be a Lebyadkin here...."

"That's the very man. 'Our' Lebyadkin, at Virginsky's, you remember?"

"But he was caught with forged papers?"

"Well, now he's come back. He's been here almost three weeks and under
the most peculiar circumstances."

"Why, but he's a scoundrel?"

"As though no one could be a scoundrel among us," Liputin grinned
suddenly, his knavish little eyes seeming to peer into Stepan
Trofimovitch's soul.

"Good