t I'm not at all against it, since you were set on having
my opinion as quickly as possible; and if, indeed," he pattered on, "you
want to 'be saved,' as you wrote, beseeching my help in the same letter,
I am at your service again. Is it true that he is going to be married,
Varvara Petrovna?" He turned quickly to her. "I hope I'm not being
indiscreet; he writes himself that the whole town knows it and every
one's congratulating him, so that, to avoid it he only goes out at
night. I've got his letters in my pocket. But would you believe it,
Varvara Petrovna, I can't make head or tail of it? Just tell me one
thing, Stepan Trofimovitch, are you to be congratulated or are you to
be 'saved'? You wouldn't believe it; in one line he's despairing and in
the next he's most joyful. To begin with he begs my forgiveness; well,
of course, that's their way... though it must be said; fancy, the man's
only seen me twice in his life and then by accident. And suddenly now,
when he's going to be married for the third time, he imagines that
this is a breach of some sort of parental duty to me, and entreats me a
thousand miles away not to be angry and to allow him to. Please don't
be hurt, Stepan Trofimovitch. It's characteristic of your generation,
I take a broad view of it, and don't blame you. And let's admit it does
you honour and all the rest. But the point is again that I don't see the
point of it. There's something about some sort of 'sins in Switzerland.'
'I'm getting married,' he says, for my sins or on account of the 'sins'
of another,' or whatever it is--'sins' anyway. 'The girl,' says he, 'is
a pearl and a diamond,' and, well, of course, he's 'unworthy of her';
it's their way of talking; but on account of some sins or circumstances
'he is obliged to lead her to the altar, and go to Switzerland, and
therefore abandon everything and fly to save me.' Do you understand
anything of all that? However... however, I notice from the expression
of your faces"--(he turned about with the letter in his hand looking
with an innocent smile into the faces of the company)--"that, as usual,
I seem to have put my foot in it through my stupid way of being open,
or, as Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch says, 'being in a hurry.' I thought, of
course, that we were all friends here, that is, your friends, Stepan
Trofimovitch, your friends. I am really a stranger, and I see... and I
see that you all know something, and that just that something I don't
know." He st