ke looked intently at Pyotr Stepanovitch. Varvara Petrovna had been
right in saying that he had at times the expression of a sheep.

"You see, it's like this," Pyotr Stepanovitch burst out. "He wrote this
poem here six months ago, but he couldn't get it printed here, in a
secret printing press, and so he asks to have it printed abroad.... That
seems clear."

"Yes, that's clear, but to whom did he write? That's not clear yet,"
Lembke observed with the most subtle irony.

"Why, Kirillov, of course; the letter was written to Kirillov
abroad.... Surely you knew that? What's so annoying is that perhaps you
are only putting it on before me, and most likely you knew all about
this poem and everything long ago! How did it come to be on your table?
It found its way there somehow! Why are you torturing me, if so?"

He feverishly mopped his forehead with his handkerchief.

"I know something, perhaps." Lembke parried dexterously. "But who is
this Kirillov?"

"An engineer who has lately come to the town. He was Stavrogin's second,
a maniac, a madman; your sub-lieutenant may really only be
suffering from temporary delirium, but Kirillov is a thoroughgoing
madman--thoroughgoing, that I guarantee. Ah, Andrey Antonovitch, if the
government only knew what sort of people these conspirators all are,
they wouldn't have the heart to lay a finger on them. Every single
one of them ought to be in an asylum; I had a good look at them in
Switzerland and at the congresses."

"From which they direct the movement here?"

"Why, who directs it? Three men and a half. It makes one sick to think
of them. And what sort of movement is there here? Manifestoes! And what
recruits have they made? Sub-lieutenants in brain fever and two or three
students! You are a sensible man: answer this question. Why don't
people of consequence join their ranks? Why are they all students and
half-baked boys of twenty-two? And not many of those. I dare say there
are thousands of bloodhounds on their track, but have they tracked out
many of them? Seven! I tell you it makes one sick."

Lembke listened with attention but with an expression that seemed to
say, "You don't feed nightingales on fairy-tales."

"Excuse me, though. You asserted that the letter was sent abroad, but
there's no address on it; how do you come to know that it was addressed
to Mr. Kirillov and abroad too and... and... that it really was written
by Mr. Shatov?"

"Why, fetch some specimen of Shato