this officer here"--she nodded
towards her relation, the major--"and, of course, I am not going to
worry you with such stale nonsense, which has been dealt with long
ago. But how have the rights and duties of the family come about in the
superstitious form in which they exist at present? That's the question.
What's your opinion?"

"What do you mean by 'come about'?" Stavrogin asked in his turn.

"We know, for instance, that the superstition about God came from
thunder and lightning." The girl-student rushed into the fray again,
staring at Stavrogin with her eyes almost jumping out of her head. "It's
well known that primitive man, scared by thunder and lightning, made a
god of the unseen enemy, feeling their weakness before it. But how did
the superstition of the family arise? How did the family itself arise?"

"That's not quite the same thing...." Madame Virginsky tried to check
her.

"I think the answer to this question wouldn't be quite discreet,"
answered Stavrogin.

"How so?" said the girl-student, craning forward suddenly. But there was
an audible titter in the group of teachers, which was at once caught up
at the other end by Lyamshin and the schoolboy and followed by a hoarse
chuckle from the major.

"You ought to write vaudevilles," Madame Virginsky observed to
Stavrogin.

"It does you no credit, I don't know what your name is," the girl rapped
out with positive indignation.

"And don't you be too forward," boomed the major. "You are a young lady
and you ought to behave modestly, and you keep jumping about as though
you were sitting on a needle."

"Kindly hold your tongue and don't address me familiarly with your
nasty comparisons. I've never seen you before and I don't recognise the
relationship."

"But I am your uncle; I used to carry you about when you %were a baby!"

"I don't care what babies you used to carry about. I didn't ask you
to carry me. It must have been a pleasure to you to do so, you
rude officer. And allow me to observe, don't dare to address me so
familiarly, unless it's as a fellow-citizen. I forbid you to do it, once
for all."

"There, they are all like that!" cried the major, banging the table with
his fist and addressing Stavrogin, who was sitting opposite. "But, allow
me, I am fond of Liberalism and modern ideas, and I am fond of listening
to clever conversation; masculine conversation, though, I warn you. But
to listen to these women, these nightly windmills--no, that make