Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume XIV).djvu/188

Rh in that of the fourteenth of December, that's what you meant to say.'

'In that case, what do you complain of now?' almost broke from my lips, but I restrained myself. 'Do you consider that the result of the fourteenth of December was such as to encourage other such attempts?' I said aloud.

Musa frowned. 'It is no good talking to you about it,' was what I read in her downcast face.

'Is Paramon Semyonitch very seriously compromised?' I ventured to ask her. Musa made no reply. A hungry, savage mewing was heard from the attic.

Musa started. 'Ah, it is a good thing Nikander Vavilitch did not see all this!' she moaned almost despairingly. 'He did not see how violently in the night they seized his benefactor, our benefactor—maybe, the best and truest man in the whole world,—he did not see how they treated that noble man at his age, how rudely they addressed him, how they threatened him, and the threats they used to him!—only because he was a working man! That young officer, too, was no doubt just such an unprincipled, heartless wretch as I have known in my life'

Musa's voice broke. She was quivering all over like a leaf.

Her long-suppressed indignation broke out at last; old memories stirred up, brought to