“I ... guessed it,”[[23]] Tikhon replied in a whisper, looking down.
Nikolai Vsevolodovich was rather pale; his hands shook a little. For a few seconds he looked motionlessly and silently, as though coming to a final decision. At last he took out of the side pocket of his coat a few printed sheets and put them on the table.
“These sheets are meant for circulation,” he said in a tremulous voice. “If only one man reads them, then understand that I shall keep them back no longer, and they will be read by every one. That is settled. I don’t need you at all, for I have settled it. But read them ... while you are reading them, say nothing; but after you have read them—say everything....”
“Shall I read them?” Tikhon asked irresolutely.
“Do; I am calm.”
“No; I shall not be able to read them without glasses; the printing is pale, foreign.”
“Here are your glasses.” Stavrogin took them from the table and handed them to him, and leant on the back of the sofa. Tikhon did not look at him, and plunged straight into the reading.
II
The printing was in fact foreign: three little sheets of ordinary small-sized writing-paper printed and stitched together. It must have been printed secretly at a Russian press abroad, and the sheets at the first glance looked very much like a political pamphlet. The title read: “From Stavrogin.”
I insert the document literally in my chronicle.[[24]] I have allowed myself to correct the spelling, for the mistakes are rather numerous and have surprised me a little, considering after all that the author was a man of education and even well-read (of course, relatively speaking). But in the style I have made no alterations whatever, in spite of its irregularities. It is at any rate clear that the writer was above all not a man of letters.[[25]]