suspect that among the guests of Virginsky's that
evening some were members of other groups, unknown to them, belonging
to the same secret organisation and founded in the town by the same
Verhovensky; so that in fact all present were suspecting one another,
and posed in various ways to one another, which gave the whole party a
very perplexing and even romantic air. Yet there were persons present
who were beyond all suspicion. For instance, a major in the service, a
near relation of Virginsky, a perfectly innocent person who had not been
invited but had come of himself for the name-day celebration, so that it
was impossible not to receive him. But Virginsky was quite unperturbed,
as the major was "incapable of betraying them"; for in spite of his
stupidity he had all his life been fond of dropping in wherever extreme
Radicals met; he did not sympathise with their ideas himself, but
was very fond of listening to them. What's more, he had even been
compromised indeed. It had happened in his youth that whole bundles of
manifestoes and of numbers of _The Bell_ had passed through his hands,
and although he had been afraid even to open them, yet he would have
considered it absolutely contemptible to refuse to distribute them--and
there are such people in Russia even to this day.

The rest of the guests were either types of honourable amour-propre
crushed and embittered, or types of the generous impulsiveness of ardent
youth. There were two or three teachers, of whom one, a lame man of
forty-five, a master in the high school, was a very malicious and
strikingly vain person; and two or three officers. Of the latter, one
very young artillery officer who had only just come from a military
training school, a silent lad who had not yet made friends with anyone,
turned up now at Virginsky's with a pencil in his hand, and, scarcely
taking any part in the conversation, continually made notes in his
notebook. Everybody saw this, but every one pretended not to. There was,
too, an idle divinity student who had helped Lyamshin to put indecent
photographs into the gospel-woman's pack. He was a solid youth with a
free-and-easy though mistrustful manner, with an unchangeably satirical
smile, together with a calm air of triumphant faith in his own
perfection. There was also present, I don't know why, the mayor's son,
that unpleasant and prematurely exhausted youth to whom I have referred
already in telling the story of the lieutenant's little