pted with shrill familiarity,
squeezing his shoulder with exaggerated friendliness. "Make haste and
take us to your room, Yulia Mihailovna; there he'll sit down and tell us
everything."

"And yet I was never at all intimate with that peevish old woman,"
Stepan Trofimovitch went on complaining to me that same evening, shaking
with anger; "we were almost boys, and I'd begun to detest him even
then... just as he had me, of course."

Yulia Mihailovna's drawing-room filled up quickly. Varvara Petrovna
was particularly excited, though she tried to appear indifferent, but
I caught her once or twice glancing with hatred at Karmazinov and with
wrath at Stepan Trofimovitch--the wrath of anticipation, the wrath of
jealousy and love: if Stepan Trofimovitch had blundered this time and
had let Karmazinov make him look small before every one, I believe she
would have leapt up and beaten him. I have forgotten to say that
Liza too was there, and I had never seen her more radiant, carelessly
light-hearted, and happy. Mavriky Nikolaevitch was there too, of course.
In the crowd of young ladies and rather vulgar young men who made up
Yulia Mihailovna's usual retinue, and among whom this vulgarity was
taken for sprightliness, and cheap cynicism for wit, I noticed two or
three new faces: a very obsequious Pole who was on a visit in the town;
a German doctor, a sturdy old fellow who kept loudly laughing with great
zest at his own wit; and lastly, a very young princeling from Petersburg
like an automaton figure, with the deportment of a state dignitary and
a fearfully high collar. But it was evident that Yulia Mihailovna had a
very high opinion of this visitor, and was even a little anxious of the
impression her salon was making on him.

_"Cher M. Karmazinov,"_ said Stepan Trofimovitch, sitting in a picturesque
pose on the sofa and suddenly beginning to lisp as daintily as
Karmazinov himself, "_cher M. Karmazinov,_ the life of a man of our time
and of certain convictions, even after an interval of twenty-five years,
is bound to seem monotonous..."

The German went off into a loud abrupt guffaw like a neigh, evidently
imagining that Stepan Trofimovitch had said something exceedingly funny.
The latter gazed at him with studied amazement but produced no effect
on him whatever. The prince, too, looked at the German, turning head,
collar and all, towards him and putting up his pince-nez, though without
the slightest curiosity.

"... Is bound t