opes
on your excellency. I speak to you, sir, as to my father, or my own
brother; for Pyotr Stepanovitch will never learn that from me, and not
a soul in the world. So won't your excellency spare me three roubles in
your kindness? You might set my mind at rest, so that I might know the
real truth; for we can't get on without assistance."

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch laughed aloud, and taking out his purse, in
which he had as much as fifty roubles, in small notes, threw him one
note out of the bundle, then a second, a third, a fourth. Fedka flew to
catch them in the air. The notes dropped into the mud, and he snatched
them up crying, "Ech! ech!" Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch finished by flinging
the whole bundle at him, and, still laughing, went on down the street,
this time alone. The tramp remained crawling on his knees in the mud,
looking for the notes which were blown about by the wind and soaking in
the puddles, and for an hour after his spasmodic cries of "Ech! ech!"
were still to be heard in the darkness.

CHAPTER III. THE DUEL

THE NEXT DAY, at two o'clock in the afternoon, the duel took place as
arranged. Things were hastened forward by Gaganov's obstinate desire to
fight at all costs. He did not understand his adversary's conduct,
and was in a fury. For a whole month he had been insulting him with
impunity, and had so far been unable to make him lose patience. What he
wanted was a challenge on the part of Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, as he had
not himself any direct pretext for challenging him. His secret motive
for it, that is, his almost morbid hatred of Stavrogin for the insult to
his family four years before, he was for some reason ashamed to confess.
And indeed he regarded this himself as an impossible pretext for a
challenge, especially in view of the humble apology offered by Nikolay
Stavrogin twice already. He privately made up his mind that Stavrogin
was a shameless coward; and could not understand how he could have
accepted Shatov's blow. So he made up his mind at last to send him
the extraordinarily rude letter that had finally roused Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch himself to propose a meeting. Having dispatched this
letter the day before, he awaited a challenge with feverish impatience,
and while morbidly reckoning the chances at one moment with hope and
at the next with despair, he got ready for any emergency by securing a
second, to wit, Mavriky Nikolaevitch Drozdov, who was a friend of his,
an old schoolfell