Page:Chernyshevsky - What's to be done? A romance.djvu/53

Rh "What? What do you say? Finish!"

"You do not let me. I meant to say that even this creature—do you understand? even this creature!—comprehended and appreciated my feelings, and, after learning from her mother that you had made a proposition for her hand, she sent her father to tell me that she would never rise against my will and would not dishonor our family with her degraded name."

"Mamma, you deceive me."

"Fortunately for you and for me, I tell only the exact truth. She says that"

But Mikhaïl Ivanytch was no longer in the room; he was putting on his cloak to go out.

"Hold him, Pœtre, hold him!" cried Anna Petrovna.

Pœtre opened his eyes wide at hearing so extraordinary an order. Meanwhile Mikhaïl Ivanytch rapidly descended the staircase.

"Well?" said Maria Alexevna, when her husband reëntered.

"All goes well, all goes well, little mother! She knew already, and said to me: 'How dare you?' and I told her; 'We do not dare, your excellency, and Vérotchka has already refused him.

"What? What? You were stupid enough to say that, ass that you are?"

"Maria Alexevna"

"Ass! Rascal! You have killed me, murdered me, you old stupid! There's one for you! [the husband received a blow.] And there's another! [the husband received a blow on the other cheek]. Wait. I will teach you, you old imbecile!" And she seized him by the hair and pulled him into the room. The lesson lasted sufficiently long, for Storechnikoff, reaching the room after the long pauses of his mother and the information which she gave him between them, found Maria Alexevna still actively engaged in her work of education.

"Why did you not close the door, you imbecile? A pretty state we are found in! Are you not ashamed, you old he-goat?" That was all that Maria Alexevna found to say.

"Where is Véra Pavlovna? I wish to see her directly. Is it true that she refuses me?" said Storechnikoff.

The circumstances were so embarrassing that Maria Alexevna could do nothing but desist. Precisely like Napoleon after the battle of Waterloo, when he believed himself lost through the incapacity of Marshal Grouchy, though really the fault was his own, so Maria Alexevna believed her husband the author of the evil. Napoleon, too, struggled with tenacity, did marvels, and ended only with these words: "I abdicate; do what you will."