n who picks it up. Let them
remember my sister!"

"I cannot allow that," Varvara Petrovna brought out hurriedly, even with
some alarm.

"In that case..."

He bent down, picked it up, flushing crimson, and suddenly going up to
Varvara Petrovna held out the notes he had counted.

"What's this?" she cried, really alarmed at last, and positively
shrinking back in her chair.

Mavriky Nikolaevitch, Stepan Trofimovitch, and I all stepped forward.

"Don't be alarmed, don't be alarmed; I'm not mad, by God, I'm not mad,"
the captain kept asseverating excitedly.

"Yes, sir, you're out of your senses."

"Madam, she's not at all as you suppose. I am an insignificant link.
Oh, madam, wealthy are your mansions, but poor is the dwelling of Marya
Anonyma, my sister, whose maiden name was Lebyadkin, but whom we'll call
Anonyma for the time, only for _the time,_ madam, for God Himself will
not suffer it for ever. Madam, you gave her ten roubles and she took it,
because it was from _you,_ madam! Do you hear, madam? From no one else
in the world would this Marya Anonyma take it, or her grandfather, the
officer killed in the Caucasus before the very eyes of Yermolov, would
turn in his grave. But from you, madam, from you she will take anything.
But with one hand she takes it, and with the other she holds out to
you twenty roubles by way of subscription to one of the benevolent
committees in Petersburg and Moscow, of which you are a member... for
you published yourself, madam, in the _Moscow News,_ that you are ready to
receive subscriptions in our town, and that any one may subscribe...."

The captain suddenly broke off; he breathed hard as though after some
difficult achievement. All he said about the benevolent society had
probably been prepared beforehand, perhaps under Liputin's supervision.
He perspired more than ever; drops literally trickled down his temples.
Varvara Petrovna looked searchingly at him.

"The subscription list," she said severely, "is always downstairs in
charge of my porter. There you can enter your subscriptions if you wish
to. And so I beg you to put your notes away and not to wave them in the
air. That's right. I beg you also to go back to your seat. That's right.
I am very sorry, sir, that I made a mistake about your sister, and gave
her something as though she were poor when she is so rich. There's only
one thing I don't understand, why she can only take from me, and no one
else. You so insisted upon