VII. The First and Indisputable One

With his long, quick strides Mitya walked right up to the table.

“Gentlemen,” he began loudly, almost shouting, but stammering at every word, “I… I’m nothing! Don’t be afraid,” he exclaimed, “I’m nothing, really, nothing,” he turned suddenly to Grushenka, who had leaned away in her armchair toward Kalganov and was clutching his hand tight. “I… I’m traveling too. I’ll stay till morning. Gentlemen, a traveler passing through… may I stay with you until morning? Just until morning, one last time, in this very room?”

This last he finished addressing the plump little man who sat on the sofa with the pipe. The man gravely took the pipe from his lips and pronounced sternly:

“Panie, sir, we are here in private. There are other rooms.”

“Why, it’s you, Dmitri Fyodorovich, what are you saying?” Kalganov responded suddenly. “Sit down with us, hello!”

“Hello, my dear man… my priceless man! I’ve always respected you…” Mitya responded joyfully and impetuously, at once holding out his hand to him across the table.

“Ow, what a grip you have! You’ve quite broken my fingers,” laughed Kalganov.

“That’s how he always squeezes, always like that!” Grushenka responded gaily, still smiling timidly; it seems she had suddenly become convinced by Mitya’s look that he was not going to make a row, and she was peering at him with terrible curiosity and still with uneasiness. There was something in him that struck her extraordinarily, and she had not at all expected that at such a moment he would come in like this and speak like this.

“How do you do, sir,” the landowner Maximov too responded sweetly from the left. Mitya rushed over to him as well:

“How do you do, you’re here too, how glad I am that you’re here too! Gentlemen, gentlemen, I…” He turned again to the pan with the pipe, evidently taking him for the chief person here. “I came flying… I wanted to spend my last day and my last hour in this room, in this very room… where I, too, worshiped… my queen!… Forgive me, panie!” he cried ecstatically. “I came flying and I took a vow… Oh, don’t be afraid, it’s my last night! Let’s drink to peace, panie! They’ll bring the wine in a moment… I’ve brought this…” For some reason he suddenly pulled out his wad of banknotes. “Allow me, panie! I want music, thunder, racket, everything like before… But the worm, the useless worm, will crawl across the earth, and will be no more! I’ll remember my day of joy on my last night!…”

He was almost choking; he wanted to say much, much, but only strange exclamations came leaping out. The pan looked at him without moving, at his wad of banknotes, looked at Grushenka, and was in visible perplexity.

“If my królowa will permit…” he was about to begin.

“What’s this królowa, is that a queen, or what?” Grushenka suddenly interrupted. “It makes me laugh, the way you all talk. Sit down, Mitya, and what’s that you’re saying? Don’t scare us, please. You won’t scare us, will you? If you won’t, then I’m glad to see you…”

“Me, me scare you?” Mitya suddenly cried, flinging up his hands. “Oh, go your way, pass by, I won’t hinder you!…” And suddenly, quite unexpectedly for everyone and, of course, for himself, he threw himself onto a chair and burst into tears, turning his head away toward the opposite wall and clasping the back of the chair tight in his arms, as if embracing it.

“Well now, well now, what a man you are!” Grushenka exclaimed reproachfully. “That’s exactly how he used to come to see me: he’ll suddenly start talking, and I don’t understand a thing. And once he cried just like that, and now here’s a second time—what a shame! What are you crying for? As if there were anything to cry for!” she added suddenly, enigmatically, and with a kind of irritation pressing on her little phrase.

“I… I’m not crying… Well, hello!” He turned around on the chair in an instant and suddenly laughed, but not his wooden, abrupt laugh; it was some sort of inaudible, long, nervous, shaking laughter.

“There, again… Come, cheer up, cheer up!” Grushenka coaxed him. “I’m so glad you came, so glad, Mitya, do you hear, I’m so glad? I want him to sit here with us,” she addressed everyone, as it were, imperiously, though her words were evidently meant for the man sitting on the sofa. “I want it, I want it! And if he leaves, I’ll leave too, so there!” she added, her eyes suddenly blazing.

“What my queen wishes is law!” pronounced the pan, gallantly kissing Grushenka’s little hand. “I invite the pan to our company!” he turned courteously to Mitya. Mitya again half jumped up, with the visible intention of bursting into another tirade, but something else came out.

“Let’s drink, panie!” he broke off suddenly instead of a speech. Everyone laughed.

“Lord! And I thought he wanted to make a speech again,” Grushenka exclaimed nervously. “Listen, Mitya,” she added insistently, “don’t jump up anymore, and it’s splendid that you brought champagne. I’ll drink some myself, I can’t stand the liqueur. And best of all is that you rolled up yourself, it was so dreary otherwise… But have you come to go on a spree again, or what? Put that money away in your pocket! Where did you get so much?”

Mitya, in whose hand the banknotes were still crumpled, very much noticed by everyone and especially by the panowie, quickly and in confusion thrust them into his pocket. He blushed. At that very moment the innkeeper brought in an uncorked bottle of champagne on a tray, and glasses. Mitya grabbed the bottle, but was so flustered that he forgot what had to be done with it. It was Kalganov who took it from him and poured out the wine for him.

“Another, another bottle!” Mitya shouted to the innkeeper and, forgetting to clink glasses with the pan whom he had so solemnly invited to drink to peace with him, he suddenly drank off his whole glass alone, without waiting for anyone. His whole face suddenly changed. Instead of the solemn and tragic expression with which he had come in, something almost babyish appeared in it. He suddenly seemed to grow all humble and small. He looked at everyone timidly and joyfully, giggling often and nervously, with the grateful look of a guilty little dog that has been petted again and let in again. He seemed to have forgotten everything and looked around at everyone with delight, with a child’s smile. He kept looking at Grushenka, laughing incessantly, and moved his chair right up against her armchair. Little by little he made out both panowie as well, though without yet much grasping what they were. The pan on the sofa struck him by his bearing, his Polish accent, and, above all, his pipe. “Well, what of it, it’s fine that he smokes a pipe,” Mitya contemplated. The pan’s somewhat flabby face, the face of a man nearly forty, with a very small little nose, under which could be seen two extremely thin, pointed little mustaches, waxed and insolent, likewise did not arouse the slightest questions in Mitya for the time being. Even the pan’s very shabby little wig, made in Siberia, with its sidelocks combed forward most stupidly, did not particularly strike Mitya: “So that’s how it should be, if it’s a wig,” he went on contemplating blissfully. The other pan, though, who sat by the wall, younger than the pan on the sofa, who looked at the whole company insolently and defiantly and listened to the general conversation with silent contempt, again struck Mitya only by his very great height, terribly out of proportion with the pan sitting on the sofa. “If he stands up, he’ll be eleven vershoks over the two arshins, well over six feet,” flashed through Mitya’s head. It flashed through his mind too that this tall pan was probably the friend and henchman of the pan on the sofa, his “bodyguard,” so to speak, and that the little pan with the pipe was of course in command of the tall pan. But all this too seemed to Mitya terribly fine and indisputable. In the little dog all rivalry had died away. In Grushenka and in the enigmatic tone of several of her phrases he had as yet understood nothing; he understood only, trembling with his whole heart, that she was kind to him, that she had “forgiven” him and seated him beside her. He was beside himself with delight on seeing her take a sip of wine from her glass. The silence of the company, however, suddenly seemed to strike him, and he began looking around at everyone with eyes that expected something: “But why are we just sitting here, why aren’t you starting anything, gentlemen?” his grinning gaze seemed to say.

“Why, he keeps telling lies, and we’ve been laughing all along,” Kalganov began suddenly, as though he had guessed his thought, and pointed at Maximov.

Mitya impetuously stared at Kalganov and then at once at Maximov.

“Lies?” he laughed his short wooden laugh, at once delighted by something. “Ha-ha!”

“Yes. Imagine, he claims that supposedly our whole cavalry in the twenties married Polish women; but that’s terrible nonsense, isn’t it?”

“Polish women?” Mitya took up again, by now in positive delight.

Kalganov understood very well how matters stood between Mitya and Grushenka, and he guessed about the pan too, but all this did not interest him very much, perhaps even did not interest him at all; what interested him most of all was Maximov. He had landed here with Maximov by chance and it was here at the inn that he had met the panowie, for the first time in his life. Grushenka, though, he had known before and had even been at her house once with someone; she had not liked him then. But here she kept glancing at him very kindly; before Mitya’s arrival she had even been caressing him, but he had somehow remained unmoved. He was a young man of no more than twenty, dressed like a dandy, with a very sweet, fair little face and beautiful thick light-brown hair. But in that fair little face were lovely light-blue eyes whose expression was intelligent and at times even deep, deeper even than his years, although the young man sometimes spoke and looked just like a child and was not in the least embarrassed by it, even being aware of it himself. On the whole he was a great original, even capricious, though always kind. At times something fixed and stubborn flashed in the expression of his face: he would look at you, listen, and yet seem to be stubbornly dreaming of something of his own. Now he would grow listless and lazy, now he would suddenly begin to get excited, sometimes, apparently, for the emptiest of reasons.

“Imagine, I’ve been taking him around with me for four days now,” he went on, drawing out his words a little lazily, as it were, but without any foppishness, quite naturally. “Remember, ever since your brother pushed him out of the carriage that time and he went flying. He interested me very much by that at the time, and I took him to the country, but now he keeps telling lies, so that it’s embarrassing to be with him. I’m taking him back…”

“The pan has not seen Polish pani and says what could not have been,” the pan with the pipe remarked to Maximov.

The pan with the pipe spoke Russian passably, at least much better than he made out. Russian words, when he did use them, he twisted after the Polish fashion.

“Why, I was married to a Polish pani myself, sir,” Maximov tittered in reply.

“Well, so did you serve in the cavalry, then? It was the cavalry you were talking about. So are you a cavalryman?” Kalganov at once joined in.

“Yes, of course, is he a cavalryman? Ha-ha!” cried Mitya, who was listening greedily and quickly shifting his questioning look to whoever spoke, as though God knows what he expected to hear from each.

“No, sir, you see, sir,” Maximov turned to him, “what I mean, sir, is that those young panienki there… pretty ones, sir… once they’ve danced the mazurka with one of our uhlans… once she’s danced the mazurka with him, she jumps right up on his knees, like a little kitten, sir… a little white one, sir… and the pan-father and the pani-mother see it and allow it… and allow it, sir… and the uhlan, the next day, he goes and offers his hand… there, sir… and he offers his hand, hee-hee!” Maximov tittered as he finished.

“The pan is a łajdak!” the tall pan on the chair growled suddenly, and crossed his legs. All that caught Mitya’s eye was his huge greased boot with its thick and dirty sole. And in general both panowie were dressed rather greasily.

“Well, now, a łajdak! What’s he swearing for?” Grushenka suddenly got angry.

“Pani Agrippina, the pan saw in the Polish land peasant wenches, not ladies of the gentry,” the pan with the pipe remarked to Grushenka.

“You may count on that!” the tall pan on the chair snapped contemptuously.

“Well, I never! Let him talk! People are talking, why interfere? It’s fun with them,” Grushenka retorted.

“I do not interfere, pani,” the pan in the little wig remarked significantly, with a prolonged look at Grushenka, and, falling gravely silent, began sucking his pipe again.

“No, no, the pan has told the truth now,” Kalganov got heated again, as though God knows what were at stake. “He’s never been in Poland, so how can he talk about Poland? You didn’t get married in Poland, did you, now?”

“No, sir, in Smolensk province, sir. Only an uhlan had carried her off before that, sir, my spouse, sir, my future one, sir, along with her pani-mother, and her tante, and another relation with a grown son, this was from Poland itself, from Poland itself… and he passed her on to me. He was one of our lieutenants, a very fine young man. At first he wanted to marry her himself, but he didn’t, because she turned out to be lame…”

“So you married a lame woman?” exclaimed Kalganov.

“A lame one, sir. The two of them deceived me a little bit then and concealed it. I thought she was skipping… she kept skipping, and I thought she was doing it out of gaiety…”

“Out of joy that she was marrying you?” Kalganov yelled in a kind of childishly ringing voice.

“Yes, sir, out of joy, sir. But it turned out to be from quite another cause, sir. Afterward, when we were married, after the wedding, that same evening, she confessed it to me and begged my forgiveness very feelingly; once in her young days, she says, she jumped over a puddle and hurt her little foot doing it, hee-hee!”

Kalganov simply dissolved in the most childish laughter and almost fell over on the sofa. Grushenka laughed too. And Mitya was at the height of happiness.

“You know, you know, this time he’s telling the truth, now he isn’t lying!” Kalganov kept exclaiming, turning to Mitya. “And, you know, he was married twice—this is his first wife he’s talking about—and his second wife, you know, ran away and is alive to this day, did you know that?”

“Really?” Mitya turned quickly to Maximov, expressing extraordinary astonishment in his face.

“Yes, sir, she ran away, sir, I had that unpleasantness,” Maximov confirmed modestly. “With a certain monsieur, sir. And the main thing was, first of all she had my whole little estate signed over to herself alone beforehand. You’re an educated man, she says, you’ll find a crust for yourself. And with that she left me sitting there. A venerable bishop once remarked to me: one of your spouses was lame, and the other altogether too light on her feet, hee-hee!”

“Listen, listen!” Kalganov was simply boiling over. “If he lies—and he lies often—then he lies solely to give everyone pleasure: that isn’t base, is it, not base? You know, I love him sometimes. He’s very base, but he’s naturally base, eh? What do you think? Another man acts basely for some reason, to get some profit, but he simply, he does it by nature… Imagine, for instance, he claims (he argued about it the whole way yesterday) that Gogol wrote about him in Dead Souls. Remember, there’s a landowner Maximov there, whom Nozdryov flogged and was brought to trial ‘for inflicting a personal insult on the landowner Maximov with birch rods while in a drunken state’—well, do you remember? Well, what do you think, imagine, he claims that it was him, and that it was he who was flogged! Now can that be? Chichikov was traveling about in the twenties at the latest, at the beginning, so the years don’t match at all. They couldn’t have flogged him then. They couldn’t have, could they, could they?”

It was hard to imagine what Kalganov was getting so heated about, but he was heated sincerely. Mitya entered into his interests without reserve.

“Well, but if they did flog him!” he cried, roaring with laughter.

“Not that they flogged me exactly, sir, but just so,” Maximov suddenly put in.

“Just so how? Either they flogged you or they didn’t.”

“Która godzina, panie? (What time is it?)” the pan with the pipe turned with a bored look to the tall pan on the chair. The other answered with a shrug: neither of them had a watch.

“Why not talk? Let other people talk too. If you’re bored, that doesn’t mean the others mustn’t talk,” Grushenka flared up again, evidently picking a quarrel on purpose. Something seemed to flash through Mitya’s mind for the first time. This time the pan answered with visible irritability:

“Pani, ja nic nie mówię przeciw, nic nie powiedziałem. (I am not contradicting, I said nothing.)”

“Well, all right, and you go on with your story,” Grushenka cried to Maximov. “Why have you all gone quiet?”

“Why, there’s nothing really to tell, sir, because it’s all just foolishness,” Maximov took up at once with visible pleasure and a tiny bit of affectation, “and in Gogol it’s all only in an allegorical form, because he made all the names allegorical: Nozdryov, you know, wasn’t Nozdryov, he was Nosov, and Kuvshinnikov, that isn’t even anything like it, because he was Shkvornev. And Fenardi really was Fenardi, only not an Italian but a Russian, Petrov, sir, and Mamzelle Fenardi was a pretty one, sir, and pretty little legs in tights, sir, a short little skirt with spangles, and she was the one who did the spinning, only not for four hours, but only for four little minutes, sir… and she bewitched everyone…”

“But what were you flogged for, what were you flogged for?” yelled Kalganov.

“For Piron, sir,” answered Maximov.

“What Piron?” cried Mitya.

“The famous French writer, Piron, sir. We were all drinking wine then in a big company, in a tavern, at that very same fair. They invited me, and first of all I started reciting epigrams: ‘Is that you, Boileau, what a funny getup.’ And Boileau answers that he’s getting ready to go to a masquerade, that is, to the bathhouse, sir, hee-hee, and they took it as meant for them. And I quickly recited another one, very well known to all educated people, a caustic one, sir:

You are Sappho, I am Phaon, I don’t dispute it,
But, to my sorrow, you
Do not know the way to the sea.

They took still greater offense and began abusing me indecently for it, and I, just then, to my misfortune, to set matters right, went and told a very educated anecdote about Piron, how they didn’t accept him into the French Academy, and how, for revenge, he wrote his own epitaph for his tombstone:

Ci-gît Piron qui ne fut rien,
Pas même académicien. (Here lies Piron, who was nothing, not even an academician.)

And they went and flogged me.”

“But what for, what for?”

“For my education. People can flog a man for all sorts of reasons,” Maximov concluded meekly and sententiously.

“Eh, enough, it’s all nasty, I don’t want to listen, I thought it was going to be something cheerful,” Grushenka broke off suddenly. Mitya started in alarm and at once stopped laughing. The tall pan got up from his seat and, with the haughty air of a man bored in company not his own, began pacing the room from corner to corner, his hands clasped behind his back.

“Look at him pacing!” Grushenka glanced at him contemptuously. Mitya grew uneasy; besides, he noticed that the pan on the sofa was glancing at him with an irritable air.

“Pan,” cried Mitya, “let’s drink, panie! And with the other pan too: let’s drink, panowie!” In a flash he pushed three glasses together and poured champagne into them.

“To Poland, panowie, I drink to your Poland, to the Polish land!” exclaimed Mitya.

“Bardzo mi to miło, panie, wypijemy (That is very pleasant to me, panie, we shall drink),” the pan on the sofa said gravely and graciously, and took his glass.

“And the other pan, what’s his name, hey, jaśniewielmożny, take a glass!” Mitya bustled.

“Pan Vrublevsky,” the pan on the sofa prompted.

Pan Vrublevsky, swaying, came up to the table and, standing, received his glass.

“To Poland, panowie, hurrah!” Mitya shouted, raising his glass.

All three drank. Mitya seized the bottle and at once poured three glasses again.

“Now to Russia, panowie, and let’s be brothers!”

“Pour some for us too,” said Grushenka. “I want to drink to Russia too.”

“So do I,” said Kalganov.

“And I would too, sir… to dear little Rasseya, the dear old granny,” Maximov tittered.

“Everyone, everyone!” Mitya kept exclaiming. “Innkeeper, more bottles!”

They brought all three remaining bottles of the ones Mitya had brought. Mitya poured.

“To Russia, hurrah!” he proclaimed again. Everyone except the panowie drank, and Grushenka drank off her whole glass at once. The panowie, though, did not even touch theirs.

“What’s this, panowie?” exclaimed Mitya. “So that’s how you are?”

Pan Vrublevsky took his glass, raised it, and said in a booming voice:

“To Russia within her borders before seventeen seventy-two!”¹

“Oto bardzo piękne! (Now that is fine!)” cried the other pan, and both at once drained their glasses.

“What fools you are, panowie!” suddenly broke from Mitya.

“Pa-nie!!” both panowie shouted menacingly, squaring up to Mitya like roosters. Pan Vrublevsky especially boiled over.

“Ale nie można nie mieć słabości do swego kraju?” he declared. (Can one not love one’s own land?)

“Silence! No quarreling! I won’t have any quarrels!” Grushenka cried imperiously and stamped her little foot on the floor. Her face flushed, her eyes flashed. The glass she had just drunk was telling. Mitya was terribly frightened.

“Panowie, forgive me! It’s my fault, I won’t do it again. Vrublevsky, Pan Vrublevsky, I won’t do it again!…”

“Oh, you at least be quiet, sit down, you silly thing!” Grushenka snapped at him with spiteful vexation.

Everyone sat down, everyone fell silent, everyone looked at one another.

“Gentlemen, I’m the cause of it all!” Mitya began again, having understood nothing of Grushenka’s exclamation. “Well, why are we sitting here? Well, what shall we do… so that it’s cheerful, cheerful again?”

“Ah, it really is terribly uncheerful,” Kalganov mumbled lazily.

“A little game of faro, sir, maybe, sir, like before…” Maximov tittered suddenly.

“Faro? Magnificent!” Mitya took up. “If only the panowie…”

“Późno, panie!” the pan on the sofa responded, as if reluctantly…

“That is true,” Pan Vrublevsky chimed in.

“Późno? What is this późno?” asked Grushenka.

“That means late, pani, late, the hour is late,” the pan on the sofa explained.

“It’s always too late for them, and nothing is ever allowed!” Grushenka almost shrieked in vexation. “They sit there being dull themselves, so others have to be bored too. Before you came, Mitya, they were silent like this the whole time, and puffing themselves up at me…”

“My goddess!” cried the pan on the sofa. “What you say shall come to pass. Widzę niełaskę, i jestem smutny. (I see disfavor, that is why I am sad.) Jestem gotów (I am ready), panie,” he finished, turning to Mitya.

“Start, panie!” Mitya took up, snatching his banknotes out of his pocket and laying two of the hundred-ruble notes on the table.

“I want to lose a lot to you, pan. Take the cards, set up the bank!”

“The cards must be from the innkeeper, panie,” the little pan said insistently and seriously.

“To najlepszy sposób (the very best way),” Pan Vrublevsky chimed in.

“From the innkeeper? All right, I understand, let them be from the innkeeper, that’s good of you, panowie! Cards!” Mitya commanded the innkeeper.

The innkeeper brought an unopened pack of cards and announced to Mitya that the girls were already gathering, that the Yids with the cimbaloms would also probably arrive soon, but that the troika with the provisions had not yet managed to arrive. Mitya leaped up from the table and dashed into the next room to give his orders at once. But only three girls had come in all, and Marya was not there yet. And he himself did not know what orders to give or why he had run out: he only told them to take presents out of the crate, fruit drops and toffees, and hand them round to the girls. “And vodka for Andrei, vodka for Andrei!” he ordered hastily. “I hurt Andrei!” Here he was suddenly touched on the shoulder by Maximov, who had run after him.

“Give me five rubles,” he whispered to Mitya. “I’d like to risk a little at faro too, hee-hee!”

“Excellent, magnificent! Take ten, here!” He again pulled all the banknotes out of his pocket and found ten rubles. “And if you lose, come again, come again…”

“Very well, sir,” Maximov whispered joyfully and ran off into the main room. Mitya too came back at once and apologized for having kept them waiting. The panowie had already taken their seats and unsealed the pack. They looked much more amiable, almost kindly. The pan on the sofa lit a new pipe and prepared to deal; a certain solemnity even showed in his face.

“To your places, panowie!” proclaimed Pan Vrublevsky.

“No, I won’t play anymore,” Kalganov responded. “I already lost fifty rubles to them earlier.”

“The pan was unlucky, the pan may be lucky again,” the pan on the sofa remarked in his direction.

“How much is in the bank? Unlimited?” Mitya got heated.

“As you say, panie: perhaps a hundred, perhaps two hundred, however much you will stake.”

“A million!” Mitya roared with laughter.

“The pan captain has perhaps heard of Pan Podvysotsky?”

“What Podvysotsky?”

“In Warsaw a bank is set up unlimited for whoever comes. Podvysotsky comes, sees a thousand zlotys, stakes: va-banque. The banker says: ‘Panie Podvysotsky, do you stake gold, or on honor?’ ‘On honor, panie,’ says Podvysotsky. ‘So much the better, panie.’ The banker deals, Podvysotsky takes the thousand zlotys. ‘Wait, panie,’ says the banker, takes out a box and gives him a million, ‘take it, panie, oto jest twój rachunek’ (here is your account)! The bank had been a million. ‘I did not know that,’ says Podvysotsky. ‘Panie Podvysotsky,’ says the banker, ‘you staked on honor, and we on honor.’ Podvysotsky took the million.”

“That isn’t true,” said Kalganov.

“Panie Kalganov, w szlacheckiej kompanii tak mówić nie przystoi (in decent society one does not speak so).”

“As if a Polish gambler would hand you a million!” exclaimed Mitya, but at once caught himself. “Forgive me, panie, guilty, guilty again, he would, he would hand over a million, on honor, on Polish honor! See how I speak Polish, ha-ha! Here, I stake ten rubles, on the jack.”

“And I a little ruble on the little queen, the queen of hearts, the pretty one, on the little panienka, hee-hee!” Maximov tittered, pushing out his queen, and as if wishing to hide it from everyone, he moved right up against the table and hastily crossed himself under the table. Mitya won. The little ruble won too.

“A corner!” cried Mitya.

“And I another little ruble, I’ll go a simple one, a little one, a little simple stake,” Maximov muttered blissfully, in terrible joy at having won a little ruble.

“Beaten!” cried Mitya. “The seven on pe!”

It was beaten on pe too.

“Stop it,” Kalganov said suddenly.

“On pe, on pe,” Mitya kept doubling his stakes, and whatever he staked on pe, it was all beaten. But the little rubles kept winning.

“On pe!” Mitya bellowed in a fury.

“Two hundred you have lost, panie. You stake another two hundred?” the pan on the sofa inquired.

“What, I’ve lost two hundred already? Then another two hundred! All two hundred on pe!” And snatching the money out of his pocket, Mitya was about to throw two hundred rubles on the queen, when suddenly Kalganov covered it with his hand.

“Enough!” he cried in his ringing voice.

“What’s the matter with you?” Mitya stared at him.

“Enough, I won’t have it! You’re not going to play anymore.”

“Why?”

“Just because. Spit on it and walk away, that’s why. I won’t let you play anymore!”

Mitya looked at him in amazement.

“Drop it, Mitya, maybe he’s telling the truth; you’ve lost a lot as it is,” Grushenka too said, with a strange note in her voice. Both panowie suddenly rose from their seats with a terribly offended air.

“Żartujesz (you are joking), panie?” said the little pan, sternly looking Kalganov over.

“Jak się poważasz to robić, panie! (How dare you do this!)” Pan Vrublevsky too bellowed at Kalganov.

“Don’t you dare, don’t you dare shout!” cried Grushenka. “Ah, you turkey-cocks!”

Mitya looked at them all in turn; but something suddenly struck him in Grushenka’s face, and in the same instant something quite new flashed through his mind as well—a strange new thought!

“Pani Agrippina!” the little pan was about to begin, all red with pugnacity, when suddenly Mitya went up to him and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Jaśniewielmożny, a couple of words.”

“Czego chcesz, panie? (What do you wish?)”

“In that room, in that chamber, I’ll say two little words to you, good ones, the very best, you’ll be pleased.”

The little pan was surprised and looked warily at Mitya. He agreed at once, however, but on the absolute condition that Pan Vrublevsky should go with him.

“The bodyguard? Let him come too, we need him too! We positively must have him!” exclaimed Mitya. “March, panowie!”

“Where are you going?” Grushenka asked anxiously.

“We’ll be back in an instant,” answered Mitya. A kind of boldness, a kind of unexpected cheerfulness sparkled in his face; it was not at all with this face that he had come into the room an hour before. He led the panowie into a little room to the right, not the big one where the girls’ chorus was gathering and the table was being laid, but a bedroom, which held trunks and boxes and two large beds with calico pillows piled up like a mountain on each. Here, on a little deal table in the very corner, a candle was burning. The pan and Mitya took their places at this little table opposite each other, and the enormous Pan Vrublevsky at their side, his hands behind his back. The panowie looked stern, but with visible curiosity.

“How can I serve the pan?” the little pan lisped.

“Here’s how, panie, I won’t talk much: here’s money for you,” he pulled out his banknotes. “If you want three thousand, take it and go away wherever you like.”

The pan looked searchingly, with all his eyes, simply fastened his gaze on Mitya’s face.

“Trzy tysiące, panie?” He exchanged glances with Vrublevsky.

“Trzy, panowie, trzy! Listen, panie, I see you’re a reasonable man. Take three thousand and clear off to all the devils, and take Vrublevsky with you—do you hear? But right away, this very minute, and it’s forever, you understand, panie, forever, out through this very door you go. What have you got out there, an overcoat, a fur coat? I’ll bring it out to you. They’ll harness a troika for you this very second, and—do widzenia, panie! Eh?”

Mitya waited confidently for the answer. He had no doubt. Something extraordinarily decisive flashed in the pan’s face.

“And the rubles, panie?”

“The rubles, panie, here’s how: five hundred rubles this minute for the coachman and as a deposit, and two thousand five hundred tomorrow in town—I swear on my honor, you’ll have them, I’ll get them from under the ground!” cried Mitya.

The Poles exchanged glances again. The pan’s face began to change for the worse.

“Seven hundred, seven hundred, not five hundred, now, this minute, into your hands!” Mitya raised the offer, sensing something wrong. “What’s the matter, pan? Don’t you believe me? I can’t hand you the whole three thousand at once, can I? I’ll give it, and you’ll go back to her tomorrow… Besides, I haven’t got the whole three thousand on me now, I’ve got it in town, at home,” Mitya babbled, losing his nerve and his spirits sinking with every word, “by God, I have, hidden away…”

In an instant a feeling of extraordinary personal dignity shone forth in the little pan’s face:

“Would you not require something more?” he asked ironically. “Pfe! A pfe! (Shame, disgrace!)” And he spat. Pan Vrublevsky spat too.

“You’re spitting, panie,” said Mitya, like a desperate man, understanding that it was all over, “because you think you’ll grab more from Grushenka. Capons, the pair of you, that’s what you are!”

“Jestem do żywego dotknięty! (I am offended to the last degree.)” The little pan suddenly turned as red as a crayfish and briskly, in terrible indignation, as if not wishing to hear anything more, walked out of the room. After him, swaying, followed Vrublevsky, and after them Mitya too, abashed and taken aback. He was afraid of Grushenka; he had a presentiment that the pan would start shouting at once. And so it happened. The pan went into the main room and stood theatrically before Grushenka.

“Pani Agrippina, jestem do żywego dotknięty!” he was about to exclaim, but Grushenka seemed suddenly to lose all patience, as though she had been touched on her sorest spot.

“In Russian, speak in Russian, not a single word of Polish!” she shouted at him. “You used to speak Russian before, can you have forgotten it in five years?” She went all red with anger.

“Pani Agrippina…”

“I’m Agrafena, I’m Grushenka, speak Russian, or I won’t listen!” The pan puffed with honor and, mangling the Russian speech, pronounced quickly and pompously:

“Pani Agrafena, I have come to forget the old and to forgive it, to forget what was before today…”

“Forgive? You’ve come to forgive me?” Grushenka interrupted, and jumped up from her seat.

“Tak jest, pani (just so, pani), I am not small-souled, I am great-souled. But byłem zdziwiony (I was surprised) when I saw your lovers. Pan Mitya in that room offered me three thousand so that I should leave. I spat in the pan’s physiognomy.”

“What? He offered you money for me?” Grushenka cried hysterically. “Is that true, Mitya? How could you dare! Am I something for sale?”

“Panie, panie,” Mitya wailed, “she is pure and shining, and I was never her lover! That’s a lie you’ve told…”

“How dare you defend me before him?” Grushenka was wailing. “It wasn’t out of virtue that I kept pure, and not because I was afraid of Kuzma, but so as to be proud before him and to have the right to call him a scoundrel when I met him. But do you mean he didn’t take money from you?”

“But he did take it, he did!” exclaimed Mitya. “Only he wanted the whole three thousand at once, and I was only offering a deposit of seven hundred.”

“Well, it’s clear enough: he heard I had money, and that’s why he came to get married!”

“Pani Agrippina,” shouted the pan, “I am a knight, I am a nobleman, and not a łajdak! I have come to take you as a wife, and I see a new pani, not the one that was before, but upartą i bez wstydu (willful and shameless).”

“Then clear off back where you came from! I’ll have you thrown out this minute, and they’ll throw you out!” Grushenka cried in a frenzy. “A fool, a fool I was, to torment myself for five years! And it wasn’t even for him I tormented myself at all, I tormented myself out of spite! And it isn’t even him at all! Was he like this? This is his father or somebody! Where did you get that wig made? That one was a falcon, and this is a drake. That one laughed and sang songs to me… And I, I drowned myself in tears for five years, I’m a damned fool, I’m low, I’m shameless!”

She fell into her armchair and covered her face with her palms. At that moment, in the next room on the left, the chorus of the Mokroye girls, gathered at last, suddenly struck up—a rollicking dance song.

“This is Sodom!” Pan Vrublevsky suddenly roared. “Innkeeper, drive out the shameless ones!”

The innkeeper, who had long since been peering in at the door with curiosity, hearing the shouting and sensing that the guests had quarreled, at once appeared in the room.

“What are you shouting for, tearing your throat?” he addressed Vrublevsky with a sort of incomprehensible rudeness even.

“Swine!” Pan Vrublevsky started to bawl.

“Swine? And what cards were you playing with just now? I gave you a pack, and you hid mine! You were playing with false cards! For false cards I can have you put away in Siberia, do you know that, because it’s all the same as false banknotes…” And stepping over to the sofa, he pushed his fingers in between the back and the cushion of the sofa and pulled out from there an unopened pack of cards.

“Here it is, my pack, unopened!” He held it up and showed it to everyone around. “I saw from over there how he shoved my pack into the crack and switched his own for it—a sharper is what you are, not a pan!”

“And I saw that pan cheat twice,” cried Kalganov.

“Ah, how shameful, ah, how shameful!” exclaimed Grushenka, throwing up her hands, and truly blushed with shame. “Lord, what, what a man he’s become!”

“I thought so too,” cried Mitya. But before he had time to get it out, Pan Vrublevsky, abashed and enraged, turning to Grushenka and shaking his fist at her, shouted:

“Public strumpet!” But before he had even finished the cry, Mitya rushed at him, seized him in both arms, lifted him into the air, and in an instant carried him out of the main room into the room on the right, where he had just taken them both.

“I laid him on the floor in there!” he announced, returning at once and gasping with agitation. “He’s fighting, the rascal; he won’t come out of there, I bet!…” He shut one half of the double door and, holding the other wide open, exclaimed to the little pan:

“Jaśniewielmożny, would you care to go in there too? Przepraszam!”

“Mitri Fyodorovich, my dear sir,” Trifon Borisych proclaimed, “take back the money from them, what you lost to them! It’s the same as if they’d stolen it from you.”

“I don’t want my fifty rubles back,” Kalganov responded suddenly.

“And I don’t want my two hundred either!” exclaimed Mitya. “Not for anything will I take it back; let him keep it for his consolation.”

“Splendid, Mitya! Good for you, Mitya!” cried Grushenka, and a terribly spiteful note rang in her exclamation. The little pan, crimson with rage but not in the least losing his dignity, started toward the door, but stopped and suddenly said, turning to Grushenka:

“Pani, jeżeli chcesz iść za mną, idźmy, jeśli nie—bywaj zdrowa! (Pani, if you want to go with me, let us go, and if not—farewell!)”

And gravely, puffing with indignation and self-esteem, he walked through the door. He was a man of character: even after all that had happened he did not lose hope that the pani would follow him—so highly did he value himself. Mitya slammed the door after him.

“Lock them in,” said Kalganov. But the lock clicked on their side; they had locked themselves in.

“Splendid!” Grushenka cried again, spitefully and mercilessly. “Splendid! Good riddance!”

Notes

1. 1. In 1772 Russia, Prussia, and Austria made the first partition of Poland; a toast to Russia “before 1772” is a toast to a Russia without the Polish lands.