Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume XIV).djvu/56

Rh Nikolai Nikolaitch!' I looked round; Misha was standing in the doorway with a face that was fearful, black-looking and distorted. 'Nikolai Nikolaitch!' he repeated (not 'uncle' now).

'What do you want?'

'Let me go at once!'

'Why?'

'Let me go, or I shall do mischief, I shall set the house on fire or cut some one's throat.' Misha suddenly began trembling. 'Tell them to give me back my clothes, and let a cart take me to the highroad, and let me have some money, however little!'

'Are you displeased, then, at anything?'

'I can't live like this!' he shrieked at the top of his voice. 'I can't live in your respectable, thrice-accursed house! It makes me sick, and ashamed to live so quietly! How you manage to endure it!'

'That is,' I interrupted in my turn, 'you mean—you can't live without drink. '

'Well, yes! yes!' he shrieked again: 'only let me go to my brethren, my friends, to the beggars! Away from your respectable, loathsome species!'

I was about to remind him of his sworn promises, but Misha's frenzied look, his breaking voice, the convulsive tremor in his limbs,—it was all so awful, that I made haste to get rid of him; I said that his clothes should