and trackers of your own in reserve, ha ha!" Pyotr
Stepanovitch blurted out with the gaiety and irresponsibility of youth.

"Not quite so." Lembke parried amiably. "Young people are apt to suppose
that there is a great deal in the background.... But, by the way, allow
me one little word: if this Kirillov was Stavrogin's second, then Mr.
Stavrogin too..."

"What about Stavrogin?"

"I mean, if they are such friends?"

"Oh, no, no, no! There you are quite out of it, though you are cunning.
You really surprise me. I thought that you had some information about
it.... H'm... Stavrogin--it's quite the opposite, quite.... _Avis au
lecteur."_

"Do you mean it? And can it be so?" Lembke articulated mistrustfully.
"Yulia Mihailovna told me that from what she heard from Petersburg he is
a man acting on some sort of instructions, so to speak...."

"I know nothing about it; I know nothing, absolutely nothing. _Adieu.
Avis au lecteur!_" Abruptly and obviously Pyotr Stepanovitch declined to
discuss it.

He hurried to the door.

"Stay, Pyotr Stepanovitch, stay," cried Lembke. "One other tiny matter
and I won't detain you."

He drew an envelope out of a table drawer.

"Here is a little specimen of the same kind of thing, and I let you see
it to show how completely I trust you. Here, and tell me your opinion."

In the envelope was a letter, a strange anonymous letter addressed to
Lembke and only received by him the day before. With intense vexation
Pyotr Stepanovitch read as follows:

"Your excellency,--For such you are by rank. Herewith I make known that
there is an attempt to be made on the life of personages of general's
rank and on the Fatherland. For it's working up straight for that.
I myself have been disseminating unceasingly for a number of years.
There's infidelity too. There's a rebellion being got up and there are
some thousands of manifestoes, and for every one of them there will be
a hundred running with their tongues out, unless they've been taken
away beforehand by the police. For they've been promised a mighty lot of
benefits, and the simple people are foolish, and there's vodka too. The
people will attack one after another, taking them to be guilty, and,
fearing both sides, I repent of what I had no share in, my circumstances
being what they are. If you want information to save the Fatherland,
and also the Church and the ikons, I am the only one that can do it. But
only on condition that I get a pardon fro