d in ignoring his insults, but what his
son told him made a more and more overwhelming impression upon him.

"And she, she herself sent me this message through you?" he asked,
turning pale.

"Well, you see, she means to fix a time and place for a mutual
explanation, the relics of your sentimentalising. You've been coquetting
with her for twenty years and have trained her to the most ridiculous
habits. But don't trouble yourself, it's quite different now. She keeps
saying herself that she's only beginning now to 'have her eyes opened.'
I told her in so many words that all this friendship of yours is nothing
but a mutual pouring forth of sloppiness. She told me lots, my boy. Foo!
what a flunkey's place you've been filling all this time. I positively
blushed for you."

"I filling a flunkey's place?" cried Stepan Trofimovitch, unable to
restrain himself.

"Worse, you've been a parasite, that is, a voluntary flunkey too lazy to
work, while you've an appetite for money. She, too, understands all that
now. It's awful the things she's been telling me about you, anyway. I
did laugh, my boy, over your letters to her; shameful and disgusting.
But you're all so depraved, so depraved! There's always something
depraving in charity--you're a good example of it!"

"She showed you my letters!"

"All; though, of course, one couldn't read them all. Foo, what a lot of
paper you've covered! I believe there are more than two thousand letters
there. And do you know, old chap, I believe there was one moment when
she'd have been ready to marry you. You let slip your chance in the
silliest way. Of course, I'm speaking from your point of view, though,
anyway, it would have been better than now when you've almost been
married to 'cover another man's sins,' like a buffoon, for a jest, for
money."

"For money! She, she says it was for money!" Stepan Trofimovitch wailed
in anguish.

"What else, then? But, of course, I stood up for you. That's your only
line of defence, you know. She sees for herself that you needed money
like every one else, and that from that point of view maybe you were
right. I proved to her as clear as twice two makes four that it was a
mutual bargain. She was a capitalist and you were a sentimental buffoon
in her service. She's not angry about the money, though you have milked
her like a goat. She's only in a rage at having believed in you
for twenty years, at your having so taken her in over these noble
sentiments, a