“Name? Name?” Lembke asked impatiently, seeming suddenly to have an inkling of something. Stepan Trofimovitch repeated his name still more majestically.
“A-a-ah! It’s … that hotbed … You have shown yourself, sir, in such a light.… Are you a professor? a professor?”
“I once had the honour of giving some lectures to the young men of the X university.”
“The young men!” Lembke seemed to start, though I am ready to bet that he grasped very little of what was going on or even, perhaps, did not know with whom he was talking.
“That, sir, I won’t allow,” he cried, suddenly getting terribly angry. “I won’t allow young men! It’s all these manifestoes? It’s an assault on society, sir, a piratical attack, filibustering.… What is your request?”
“On the contrary, your wife requested me to read something to-morrow at her fête. I’ve not come to make a request but to ask for my rights….”
“At the fête? There’ll be no fête. I won’t allow your fête. A lecture? A lecture?” he screamed furiously.
“I should be very glad if you would speak to me rather more politely, your Excellency, without stamping or shouting at me as though I were a boy.”
“Perhaps you understand whom you are speaking to?” said Lembke, turning crimson.
“Perfectly, your Excellency.”