notebook
in consternation, but Liputin, Virginsky, and the lame teacher seemed
pleased.

"I ask leave to address the meeting," Shigalov pronounced sullenly but
resolutely.

"You have leave." Virginsky gave his sanction.

The orator sat down, was silent for half a minute, and pronounced in a
solemn voice,

"Gentlemen!"

"Here's the brandy," the sister who had been pouring out tea and had
gone to fetch brandy rapped out, contemptuously and disdainfully putting
the bottle before Verhovensky, together with the wineglass which she
brought in her fingers without a tray or a plate.

The interrupted orator made a dignified pause.

"Never mind, go on, I am not listening," cried Verhovensky, pouring
himself out a glass.

"Gentlemen, asking your attention and, as you will see later, soliciting
your aid in a matter of the first importance," Shigalov began again, "I
must make some prefatory remarks."

"Arina Prohorovna, haven't you some scissors?" Pyotr Stepanovitch asked
suddenly.

"What do you want scissors for?" she asked, with wide-open eyes.

"I've forgotten to cut my nails; I've been meaning to for the last three
days," he observed, scrutinising his long and dirty nails with unruffled
composure.

Arina Prohorovna crimsoned, but Miss Virginsky seemed pleased.

"I believe I saw them just now on the window." She got up from the
table, went and found the scissors, and at once brought them. Pyotr
Stepanovitch did not even look at her, took the scissors, and set to
work with them. Arina Prohorovna grasped that these were realistic
manners, and was ashamed of her sensitiveness. People looked at one
another in silence. The lame teacher looked vindictively and enviously
at Verhovensky. Shigalov went on.

"Dedicating my energies to the study of the social organisation which is
in the future to replace the present condition of things, I've come to
the conviction that all makers of social systems from ancient times up
to the present year, 187-, have been dreamers, tellers of fairy-tales,
fools who contradicted themselves, who understood nothing of natural
science and the strange animal called man. Plato, Rousseau, Fourier,
columns of aluminium, are only fit for sparrows and not for human
society. But, now that we are all at last preparing to act, a new
form of social organisation is essential. In order to avoid further
uncertainty, I propose my own system of world-organisation. Here it is."
He tapped the notebook. "I w