Afterwards, when we were married, after the wedding, that very evening, she confessed, and very touchingly asked forgiveness.'I once jumped over a puddle when I was a child,' she said, 'and injured my leg.' He he!"Kalgonov went off into the most childish laughter, almost falling on the sofa.Grushenka, too, laughed.Mitya was at the pinnacle of happiness.
"Do you know, that's the truth, he's not lying now," exclaimed Kalganov, turning to Mitya; "and do you know, he's been married twice;it's his first wife he's talking about.But his second wife, do you know, ran away, and is alive now.""Is it possible?" said Mitya, turning quickly to Maximov with an expression of the utmost astonishment.
"Yes.She did run away.I've had that unpleasant experience,"Maximov modestly assented, "with a monsieur.And what was worse, she'd had all my little property transferred to her beforehand.'You're an educated man,' she said to me.'You can always get your living.' She settled my business with that.A venerable bishop once said to me:
'One of your wives was lame, but the other was too light-footed.' He he!
"Listen, listen!" cried Kalganov, bubbling over, "if he's telling lies- and he often is- he's only doing it to amuse us all.
There's no harm in that, is there? You know, I sometimes like him.
He's awfully low, but it's natural to him, eh? Don't you think so?
Some people are low from self-interest, but he's simply so, from nature.Only fancy, he claims (he was arguing about it all the way yesterday) that Gogol wrote Dead Souls about him.Do you remember, there's a landowner called Maximov in it, whom Nozdryov thrashed.He was charged, do you remember, 'for inflicting bodily injury with rods on the landowner Maximov in a drunken condition.' Would you believe it, he claims that he was that Maximov and that he was beaten!
Now can it be so? Tchitchikov made his journey, at the very latest, at the beginning of the twenties, so that the dates don't fit.He couldn't have been thrashed then, he couldn't, could he?"It was diffcult to imagine what Kalgonov was excited about, but his excitement was genuine.Mitya followed his lead without protest.
"Well, but if they did thrash him!" he cried, laughing.
"It's not that they thrashed me exactly, but what I mean is- " put in Maximov.
"What do you mean? Either they thrashed you or they didn't.""What o'clock is it, panie?" the Pole, with the pipe, asked his tall friend, with a bored expression.The other shrugged his shoulders in reply.Neither of them had a watch.
"Why not talk? Let other people talk.Mustn't other people talk because you're bored?" Grushenka flew at him with evident intention of finding fault.Something seemed for the first time to flash upon Mitya's mind.This time the Pole answered with unmistakable irritability.
"Pani, I didn't oppose it.I didn't say anything.""All right then.Come, tell us your story," Grushenka cried to Maximov."Why are you all silent?""There's nothing to tell, it's all so foolish," answered Maximov at once, with evident satisfaction, mincing a little."Besides, all that's by way of allegory in Gogol, for he's made all the names have a meaning.Nozdryov was really called Nosov, and Kuvshinikov had quite a different name, he was called Shkvornev.Fenardi really was called Fenardi, only he wasn't an Italian but a Russian, and Mamsel Fenardi was a pretty girl with her pretty little legs in tights, and she had a little short skirt with spangles, and she kept turning round and round, only not for four hours but for four minutes only, and she bewitched everyone...""But what were you beaten for?" cried Kalganov.
"For Piron!" answered Maximov.
"What Piron?" cried Mitya.
"The famous French writer, Piron.We were all drinking then, a big party of us, in a tavern at that very fair.They'd invited me, and first of all I began quoting epigrams.'Is that you, Boileau? What a funny get-up!' and Boileau answers that he's going to a masquerade, that is to the baths, he he! And they took it to themselves, so I made haste to repeat another, very sarcastic, well known to all educated people:
Yes, Sappho and Phaon are we!
But one grief is weighing on me.
You don't know your way to the sea!
"They were still more offended and began abusing me in the most unseemly way for it.And as ill-luck would have it, to set things right, I began telling a very cultivated anecdote about Piron, how he was not accepted into the French Academy, and to revenge himself wrote his own epitaph:
Ci-git Piron qui ne fut rien, Pas meme academicien,** Here lies Piron, who was nothing, not even an Academician.
They seized me and thrashed me."
"But what for? What for?"
"For my education.People can thrash a man for anything,"Maximov concluded, briefly and sententiously.
"Eh, that's enough! That's all stupid, I don't want to listen.Ithought it would be amusing," Grushenka cut them short, suddenly.
Mitya started, and at once left off laughing.The tall Pole rose upon his feet, and with the haughty air of a man, bored and out of his element, began pacing from corner to corner of the room, his hands behind his back.
"Ah, he can't sit still," said Grushenka, looking at him contemptuously.Mitya began to feel anxious.He noticed besides, that the Pole on the sofa was looking at him with an irritable expression.
"Panie!" cried Mitya, "Let's drink! and the other pan, too! Let us drink."In a flash he had pulled three glasses towards him, and filled them with champagne.
"To Poland, Panovie, I drink to your Poland!" cried Mitya.
"I shall be delighted, panie," said the Pole on the sofa, with dignity and affable condescension, and he took his glass.
"And the other pan, what's his name? Drink, most illustrious, take your glass!" Mitya urged.
"Pan Vrublevsky," put in the Pole on the sofa.
Pan Vrublevsky came up to the table, swaying as he walked.
"To Poland, Panovie!" cried Mitya, raisin, his glass."Hurrah!"All three drank.Mitya seized the bottle and again poured out three glasses.