with those scoundrels, those anonymous libellers, with my son Pyotr
Stepanovitch, _avec ces esprits forts de lachete?_ Oh, heavens!"

"Bah! haven't they mixed you up perhaps?... But it's nonsense, it can't
be so," I observed.

_"Savez-vous,"_ broke from him suddenly, "I feel at moments _que je ferai
la-bas quelque esclandre._ Oh, don't go away, don't leave me alone! _Ma
carriere est finie aujourd'hui, je le sens._ Do you know, I might fall on
somebody there and bite him, like that lieutenant."

He looked at me with a strange expression--alarmed, and at the same time
anxious to alarm me. He certainly was getting more and more exasperated
with somebody and about something as time went on and the police-cart
did not appear; he was positively wrathful. Suddenly Nastasya, who
had come from the kitchen into the passage for some reason, upset a
clothes-horse there. Stepan Trofimovitch trembled and turned numb with
terror as he sat; but when the noise was explained, he almost shrieked
at Nastasya and, stamping, drove her back to the kitchen. A minute later
he said, looking at me in despair: "I am ruined! _Cher_"--he sat down
suddenly beside me and looked piteously into my face--"_cher,_ it's not
Siberia I am afraid of, I swear. _Oh, je vous jure!_" (Tears positively
stood in his eyes.) "It's something else I fear."

I saw from his expression that he wanted at last to tell me something of
great importance which he had till now refrained from telling.

"I am afraid of disgrace," he whispered mysteriously.

"What disgrace? On the contrary! Believe me, Stepan Trofimovitch, that all
this will be explained to-day and will end to your advantage...."

"Are you so sure that they will pardon me?"

"Pardon you? What! What a word! What have you done? I assure you you've
done nothing."

"_Qu'en savez-vous;_ all my life has been... _cher_... They'll remember
everything... and if they find nothing, it will be _worse still_," he
added all of a sudden, unexpectedly.

"How do you mean it will be worse?"

"It will be worse."

"I don't understand."

"My friend, let it be Siberia, Archangel, loss of rights--if I must
perish, let me perish! But... I am afraid of something else." (Again
whispering, a scared face, mystery.)

"But of what? Of what?"

"They'll flog me," he pronounced, looking at me with a face of despair.

"Who'll flog you? What for? Where?" I cried, feeling alarmed that he was
going out of his mind.

"Where? Why th