We have seen, however, that the general paid a visit to Lizabetha Prokofievna and caused trouble there, the final upshot being that he frightened Mrs. Epanchin, and angered her by bitter hints as to his son Gania.
He had been turned out in disgrace, eventually, and this was the cause of his bad night and quarrelsome day, which ended in his sudden departure into the street in a condition approaching insanity, as recorded before.
Colia did not understand the position. He tried severity with his father, as they stood in the street after the latter had cursed the household, hoping to bring him round that way.
“Well, where are we to go to now, father?” he asked. “You don’t want to go to the prince’s; you have quarrelled with Lebedeff; you have no money; I never have any; and here we are in the middle of the road, in a nice sort of mess.”
“Better to be of a mess than in a mess! I remember making a joke something like that at the mess in eighteen hundred and forty—forty—I forget. ‘Where is my youth, where is my golden youth?’ Who was it said that, Colia?”
“It was Gogol, in Dead Souls, father,” cried Colia, glancing at him in some alarm.
“‘Dead Souls,’ yes, of course, dead. When I die, Colia, you must engrave on my tomb:
“‘Here lies a Dead Soul,
Shame pursues me.’
“Who said that, Colia?”
“I don’t know, father.”