at the manifestoes were brought to Andrey
Antonovitch by the overseer.

Pyotr Stepanovitch popped into the study unannounced, like an intimate
friend and one of the family; besides, he had a message from Yulia
Mihailovna. Seeing him, Lembke frowned grimly and stood still at the
table without welcoming him. Till that moment he had been pacing up and
down the study and had been discussing something _tete-a-tete_ with his
clerk Blum, a very clumsy and surly German whom he had brought with him
from Petersburg, in spite of the violent opposition of Yulia Mihailovna.
On Pyotr Stepanovitch's entrance the clerk had moved to the door, but
had not gone out. Pyotr Stepanovitch even fancied that he exchanged
significant glances with his chief.

"Aha, I've caught you at last, you secretive monarch of the town!" Pyotr
Stepanovitch cried out laughing, and laid his hand over the manifesto on
the table. "This increases your collection, eh?"

Andrey Antonovitch flushed crimson; his face seemed to twitch.

"Leave off, leave off at once!" he cried, trembling with rage. "And
don't you dare... sir..."

"What's the matter with you? You seem to be angry!"

"Allow me to inform you, sir, that I've no intention of putting up with
your _sans facon_ henceforward, and I beg you to remember..."

"Why, damn it all, he is in earnest!"

"Hold your tongue, hold your tongue"--Von Lembke stamped on the
carpet--"and don't dare..."

God knows what it might have come to. Alas, there was one circumstance
involved in the matter of which neither Pyotr Stepanovitch nor even
Yulia Mihailovna herself had any idea. The luckless Andrey Antonovitch
had been so greatly upset during the last few days that he had begun
to be secretly jealous of his wife and Pyotr Stepanovitch. In solitude,
especially at night, he spent some very disagreeable moments.

"Well, I imagined that if a man reads you his novel two days running
till after midnight and wants to hear your opinion of it, he has of his
own act discarded official relations, anyway.... Yulia Mihailovna treats
me as a friend; there's no making you out," Pyotr Stepanovitch brought
out, with a certain dignity indeed. "Here is your novel, by the way." He
laid on the table a large heavy manuscript rolled up in blue paper.

Lembke turned red and looked embarrassed.

"Where did you find it?" he asked discreetly, with a rush of joy which
he was unable to suppress, though he did his utmost to conceal it.

"Only f