t lout is not a simple
captain now but a landowner of our province, and rather an important
one, too, for Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch sold him all his estate the other
day, formerly of two hundred serfs; and as God's above, I'm not lying.
I've only just heard it, but it was from a most reliable source. And now
you can ferret it out for yourself; I'll say nothing more; good-bye."

X

Stepan Trofimovitch was awaiting me with hysterical impatience. It
was an hour since he had returned. I found him in a state resembling
intoxication; for the first five minutes at least I thought he was
drunk. Alas, the visit to the Drozdovs had been the finishing-stroke.

"_Mon ami!_ I have completely lost the thread... Lise... I love and
respect that angel as before; just as before; but it seems to me they
both asked me simply to find out something from me, that is more simply
to get something out of me, and then to get rid of me.... That's how it
is."

"You ought to be ashamed!" I couldn't help exclaiming. "My friend, now I
am utterly alone. _Enfin, c'est ridicule._ Would you believe it, the place
is positively packed with mysteries there too. They simply flew at me
about those ears and noses, and some mysteries in Petersburg too. You
know they hadn't heard till they came about the tricks Nicolas played
here four years ago. 'You were here, you saw it, is it true that he is
mad?' Where they got the idea I can't make out. Why is it that Praskovya
is so anxious Nicolas should be mad? The woman will have it so, she
will. _Ce Maurice,_ or what's his name, Mavriky Nikolaevitch, _brave homme
tout de meme..._ but can it be for his sake, and after she wrote herself
from Paris to _cette pauvre amie?... Enfin,_ this Praskovya, as _cette
chere amie_ calls her, is a type. She's Gogol's Madame Box, of immortal
memory, only she's a spiteful Madame Box, a malignant Box, and in an
immensely exaggerated form."

"That's making her out a regular packing-case if it's an exaggerated
form."

"Well, perhaps it's the opposite; it's all the same, only don't
interrupt me, for I'm all in a whirl. They are all at loggerheads,
except Lise, she keeps on with her 'Auntie, auntie!' but Lise's sly, and
there's something behind it too. Secrets. She has quarrelled with the
old lady. _Cette pauvre_ auntie tyrannises over every one it's true, and
then there's the governor's wife, and the rudeness of local society, and
Karmazinov's 'rudeness'; and then this idea of ma