as simply shaking with terror, though, I believe she really
did not quite understand what it was about. Stepan Trofimovitch was
trembling too, but that was, on the contrary, because he was disposed to
understand everything, and exaggerate it. Mavriky Nikolaevitch stood in
the attitude of one ready to defend all present; Liza was pale, and she
gazed fixedly with wide-open eyes at the wild captain. Shatov sat in
the same position as before, but, what was strangest of all, Marya
Timofyevna had not only ceased laughing, but had become terribly sad.
She leaned her right elbow on the table, and with a prolonged, mournful
gaze watched her brother declaiming. Darya Pavlovna alone seemed to me
calm.

"All that is nonsensical allegory," said Varvara Petrovna, getting angry
at last. "You haven't answered my question, why? I insist on an answer."

"I haven't answered, why? You insist on an answer, why?" repeated
the captain, winking. "That little word 'why' has run through all the
universe from the first day of creation, and all nature cries every
minute to it's Creator, 'why?' And for seven thousand years it has had
no answer, and must Captain Lebyadkin alone answer? And is that justice,
madam?"

"That's all nonsense and not to the point!" cried Varvara Petrovna,
getting angry and losing patience. "That's allegory; besides, you
express yourself too sensationally, sir, which I consider impertinence."

"Madam," the captain went on, not hearing, "I should have liked perhaps
to be called Ernest, yet I am forced to bear the vulgar name Ignat--why
is that do you suppose? I should have liked to be called Prince de
Monbart, yet I am only Lebyadkin, derived from a swan.* Why is that?
I am a poet, madam, a poet in soul, and might be getting a thousand
roubles at a time from a publisher, yet I am forced to live in a pig
pail. Why? Why, madam? To my mind Russia is a freak of nature and
nothing else."

"Can you really say nothing more definite?"

"I can read you the poem, 'The Cockroach,' madam."

"Wha-a-t?"

"Madam, I'm not mad yet! I shall be mad, no doubt I shall be, but I'm
not so yet. Madam, a friend of mine--a most honourable man--has written
a Krylov's fable, called 'The Cockroach.' May I read it?"

"You want to read some fable of Krylov's?"

"No, it's not a fable of Krylov's I want to read. It's my fable, my own
composition. Believe me, madam, without offence I'm not so uneducated
and depraved as not to understand that Russ