m marked insult to the bride
or bridegroom, but still they caused a scandal. The whole town began
talking of it. Every one laughed, of course. But at this Von Lembke was
angry, and again had a lively scene with Yulia Mihailovna. She, too, was
extremely angry, and formed the intention of turning the scapegraces out
of her house. But next day she forgave them all after persuasions from
Pyotr Stepanovitch and some words from Karmazinov, who considered the
affair rather amusing.

"It's in harmony with the traditions of the place," he said. "Anyway
it's characteristic and... bold; and look, every one's laughing, you're
the only person indignant."

But there were pranks of a certain character that were absolutely past
endurance.

A respectable woman of the artisan class, who went about selling
gospels, came into the town. People talked about her, because some
interesting references to these gospel women had just appeared in the
Petersburg papers. Again the same buffoon, Lyamshin, with the help of a
divinity student, who was taking a holiday while waiting for a post in
the school, succeeded, on the pretence of buying books from the gospel
woman, in thrusting into her bag a whole bundle of indecent and obscene
photographs from abroad, sacrificed expressly for the purpose, as we
learned afterwards, by a highly respectable old gentleman (I will omit
his name) with an order on his breast, who, to use his own words, loved
"a healthy laugh and a merry jest." When the poor woman went to take out
the holy books in the bazaar, the photographs were scattered about the
place. There were roars of laughter and murmurs of indignation. A crowd
collected, began abusing her, and would have come to blows if the police
had not arrived in the nick of time. The gospel woman was taken to
the lock-up, and only in the evening, thanks to the efforts of Mavriky
Nikolaevitch, who had learned with indignation the secret details of
this loathsome affair, she was released and escorted out of the town. At
this point Yulia Mihailovna would certainly have forbidden Lyamshin her
house, but that very evening the whole circle brought him to her with
the intelligence that he had just composed a new piece for the piano,
and persuaded her at least to hear it. The piece turned out to be really
amusing, and bore the comic title of "The Franco-Prussian War." It began
with the menacing strains of the "Marseillaise ":

_"Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons."_

Th