th warmth."

"This morning? It was funny this morning," he answered with a smile. "I
don't like scolding, and I never laugh," he added mournfully.

"Yes, you don't spend your nights very cheerfully over your tea."

I got up and took my cap.

"You think not?" he smiled with some surprise. "Why? No, I... I don't
know." He was suddenly confused. "I know not how it is with the others,
and I feel that I cannot do as others. Everybody thinks and then at once
thinks of something else. I can't think of something else. I think all
my life of one thing. God has tormented me all my life," he ended up
suddenly with astonishing expansiveness.

"And tell me, if I may ask, why is it you speak Russian not quite
correctly? Surely you haven't forgotten it after five years abroad?"

"Don't I speak correctly? I don't know. No, it's not because of abroad.
I have talked like that all my life... it's no matter to me."

"Another question, a more delicate one. I quite believe you that you're
disinclined to meet people and talk very little. Why have you talked to
me now?"

"To you? This morning you sat so nicely and you... but it's all no
matter... you are like my brother, very much, extremely," he added,
flushing. "He has been dead seven years. He was older, very, very much."

"I suppose he had a great influence on your way of thinking?"

"N-no. He said little; he said nothing. I'll give your note."

He saw me to the gate with a lantern, to lock it after me. "Of course
he's mad," I decided. In the gateway I met with another encounter.

IX

I had only just lifted my leg over the high barrier across the bottom of
the gateway, when suddenly a strong hand clutched at my chest.

"Who's this?" roared a voice, "a friend or an enemy? Own up!"

"He's one of us; one of us!" Liputin's voice squealed near by. "It's Mr.
G----v, a young man of classical education, in touch with the highest
society."

"I love him if he's in society, clas-si... that means he's high-ly
ed-u-cated. The retired Captain Ignat Lebyadkin, at the service of the
world and his friends... if they're true ones, if they're true ones, the
scoundrels."

Captain Lebyadkin, a stout, fleshy man over six feet in height, with
curly hair and a red face, was so extremely drunk that he could scarcely
stand up before me, and articulated with difficulty. I had seen him
before, however, in the distance.

"And this one!" he roared again, noticing Kirillov, who was still
standing