nd made her tell lies for so long. She never will admit
that she told lies of herself, but you'll catch it the more for that. I
can't make out how it was you didn't see that you'd have to have a day
of reckoning. For after all you had some sense. I advised her yesterday
to put you in an almshouse, a genteel one, don't disturb yourself;
there'll be nothing humiliating; I believe that's what she'll do. Do you
remember your last letter to me, three weeks ago?"

"Can you have shown her that?" cried Stepan Trofimovitch, leaping up in
horror.

"Rather! First thing. The one in which you told me she was exploiting
you, envious of your talent; oh, yes, and that about 'other men's sins.'
You have got a conceit though, my boy! How I did laugh. As a rule your
letters are very tedious. You write a horrible style. I often don't read
them at all, and I've one lying about to this day, unopened. I'll send
it to you to-morrow. But that one, that last letter of yours was the
tiptop of perfection! How I did laugh! Oh, how I laughed!"

"Monster, monster!" wailed Stepan Trofimovitch.

"Foo, damn it all, there's no talking to you. I say, you're getting
huffy again as you were last Thursday."

Stepan Trofimovitch drew himself up, menacingly.

"How dare you speak to me in such language?"

"What language? It's simple and clear."

"Tell me, you monster, are you my son or not?"

"You know that best. To be sure all fathers are disposed to be blind in
such cases."

"Silence! Silence!" cried Stepan Trofimovitch, shaking all over.

"You see you're screaming and swearing at me as you did last Thursday.
You tried to lift your stick against me, but you know, I found that
document. I was rummaging all the evening in my trunk from curiosity.
It's true there's nothing definite, you can take that comfort. It's only
a letter of my mother's to that Pole. But to judge from her
character..."

"Another word and I'll box your ears."

"What a set of people!" said Pyotr Stepanovitch, suddenly addressing
himself to me. "You see, this is how we've been ever since last
Thursday. I'm glad you're here this time, anyway, and can judge between
us. To begin with, a fact: he reproaches me for speaking like this of my
mother, but didn't he egg me on to it? In Petersburg before I left the
High School, didn't he wake me twice in the night, to embrace me, and
cry like a woman, and what do you suppose he talked to me about at night?
Why, the same modest anecdotes