Alexey Nilitch, suddenly
raising his head, and looking at him with flashing eyes. "I wish to
contest your right to do this, Liputin. You've no right to drag me into
this. I did not give my whole opinion at all. Though I knew Nikolay
Stavrogin in Petersburg that was long ago, and though I've met him since
I know him very little. I beg you to leave me out and... All this is
something like scandal."

Liputin threw up his hands with an air of oppressed innocence.

"A scandal-monger! Why not say a spy while you're about it? It's all
very well for you, Alexey Nilitch, to criticise when you stand aloof
from everything. But you wouldn't believe it, Stepan Trofimovitch--take
Captain Lebyadkin, he is stupid enough, one may say... in fact, one's
ashamed to say how stupid he is; there is a Russian comparison, to
signify the degree of it; and do you know he considers himself injured
by Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, though he is full of admiration for his wit.
'I'm amazed,' said he, 'at that man. He's a subtle serpent.' His own
words. And I said to him (still under the influence of my conversation,
and after I had spoken to Alexey Nilitch), 'What do you think, captain,
is your subtle serpent mad or not?' Would you believe it, it was just as
if I'd given him a sudden lash from behind. He simply leapt up from his
seat. 'Yes,' said he, '... yes, only that,' he said, 'cannot affect...'
'Affect what?' He didn't finish. Yes, and then he fell to thinking so
bitterly, thinking so much, that his drunkenness dropped off him. We
were sitting in Filipov's restaurant. And it wasn't till half an hour
later that he suddenly struck the table with his fist. 'Yes,' said he,
'maybe he's mad, but that can't affect it....' Again he didn't say what
it couldn't affect. Of course I'm only giving you an extract of the
conversation, but one can understand the sense of it. You may ask whom
you like, they all have the same idea in their heads, though it never
entered anyone's head before. 'Yes,' they say, 'he's mad; he's very
clever, but perhaps he's mad too.'"

Stepan Trofimovitch sat pondering, and thought intently.

"And how does Lebyadkin know?"

"Do you mind inquiring about that of Alexey Nilitch, who has just called
me a spy? I'm a spy, yet I don't know, but Alexey Nilitch knows all the
ins and outs of it, and holds his tongue."

"I know nothing about it, or hardly anything," answered the engineer
with the same irritation. "You make Lebyadkin drank to fi