“What next?” he asked ironically. “For shame!” and he spat on the floor. Pan Vrublevsky spat too.
“You do that, panie,” said Mitya, recognizing with despair that all was over, “because you hope to make more out of Grushenka? You’re a couple of capons, that’s what you are!”
“This is a mortal insult!” The little Pole turned as red as a crab, and he went out of the room, briskly, as though unwilling to hear another word. Vrublevsky swung out after him, and Mitya followed, confused and crestfallen. He was afraid of Grushenka, afraid that the pan would at once raise an outcry. And so indeed he did. The Pole walked into the room and threw himself in a theatrical attitude before Grushenka.
“Pani Agrippina, I have received a mortal insult!” he exclaimed. But Grushenka suddenly lost all patience, as though they had wounded her in the tenderest spot.
“Speak Russian! Speak Russian!” she cried, “not another word of Polish! You used to talk Russian. You can’t have forgotten it in five years.”
She was red with passion.
“Pani Agrippina—”
“My name’s Agrafena, Grushenka, speak Russian or I won’t listen!”
The Pole gasped with offended dignity, and quickly and pompously delivered himself in broken Russian:
“Pani Agrafena, I came here to forget the past and forgive it, to forget all that has happened till to‐day—”