ce,
and with dignity.

On the table lay an open book. It was the novel, "What's to be done?"
Alas, I must confess one strange weakness in my friend; the fantasy that
he ought to come forth from his solitude and fight a last battle was
getting more and more hold upon his deluded imagination. I guessed that
he had got the novel and was _studying_ it solely in order that when the
inevitable conflict with the "shriekers" came about he might know their
methods and arguments beforehand, from their very "catechism," and in
that way be prepared to confute them all triumphantly, _before her eyes._
Oh, how that book tortured him! He sometimes flung it aside in despair,
and leaping up, paced about the room almost in a frenzy.

"I agree that the author's fundamental idea is a true one," he said to
me feverishly, "but that only makes it more awful. It's just our idea,
exactly ours; we first sowed the seed, nurtured it, prepared the way,
and, indeed, what could they say new, after us? But, heavens! How it's
all expressed, distorted, mutilated!" he exclaimed, tapping the book
with his fingers. "Were these the conclusions we were striving for? Who
can understand the original idea in this?"

"Improving your mind?" sniggered Pyotr Stepanovitch, taking the book
from the table and reading the title. "It's high time. I'll bring you
better, if you like."

Stepan Trofimovitch again preserved a dignified silence. I was sitting
on a sofa in the corner.

Pyotr Stepanovitch quickly explained the reason of his coming. Of
course, Stepan Trofimovitch was absolutely staggered, and he listened in
alarm, which was mixed with extreme indignation.

"And that Yulia Mihailovna counts on my coming to read for her!"

"Well, they're by no means in such need of you. On the contrary, it's by
way of an attention to you, so as to make up to Varvara Petrovna. But,
of course, you won't dare to refuse, and I expect you want to yourself,"
he added with a grin. "You old fogies are all so devilishly ambitious.
But, I say though, you must look out that it's not too boring. What have
you got? Spanish history, or what is it? You'd better let me look at it
three days beforehand, or else you'll put us to sleep perhaps."

The hurried and too barefaced coarseness of these thrusts was obviously
premeditated. He affected to behave as though it were impossible to talk
to Stepan Trofimovitch in different and more delicate language. Stepan
Trofimovitch resolutely persiste