I should think I have grounds to be
interested, not merely for the sake of gossip. He shakes hands with
you one day, and next day, for no earthly reason, he returns your
hospitality by slapping you on the cheeks in the face of all decent
society, if the fancy takes him, out of sheer wantonness. And what's
more, the fair sex is everything for them, these butterflies and
mettlesome cocks! Grand gentlemen with little wings like the ancient
cupids, lady-killing Petchorins! It's all very well for you, Stepan
Trofimovitch, a confirmed bachelor, to talk like that, stick up for his
excellency and call me a slanderer. But if you married a pretty young
wife--as you're still such a fine fellow--then I dare say you'd bolt
your door against our prince, and throw up barricades in your house!
Why, if only that Mademoiselle Lebyadkin, who is thrashed with a whip,
were not mad and bandy-legged, by Jove, I should fancy she was the
victim of the passions of our general, and that it was from him that
Captain Lebyadkin had suffered 'in his family dignity,' as he expresses
it himself. Only perhaps that is inconsistent with his refined taste,
though, indeed, even that's no hindrance to him. Every berry is worth
picking if only he's in the mood for it. You talk of slander, but I'm
not crying this aloud though the whole town is ringing with it; I only
listen and assent. That's not prohibited."

"The town's ringing with it? What's the town ringing with?"

"That is, Captain Lebyadkin is shouting for all the town to hear, and
isn't that just the same as the market-place ringing with it? How am I
to blame? I interest myself in it only among friends, for, after all,
I consider myself among friends here." He looked at us with an innocent
air. "Something's happened, only consider: they say his excellency has
sent three hundred roubles from Switzerland by a most honourable young
lady, and, so to say, modest orphan, whom I have the honour of knowing,
to be handed over to Captain Lebyadkin. And Lebyadkin, a little later,
was told as an absolute fact also by a very honourable and therefore
trustworthy person, I won't say whom, that not three hundred but a
thousand roubles had been sent!... And so, Lebyadkin keeps crying out
'the young lady has grabbed seven hundred roubles belonging to me,' and
he's almost ready to call in the police; he threatens to, anyway, and
he's making an uproar all over the town."

"This is vile, vile of you!" cried the engineer,