Of course it did not end without trouble; but the worst of it was that it was his own doing. People had for some time begun shuffling their feet, blowing their noses, coughing, and doing everything that people do when a lecturer, whoever he may be, keeps an audience for longer than twenty minutes at a literary matinée. But the genius noticed nothing of all this. He went on lisping and mumbling, without giving a thought to the audience, so that every one began to wonder. Suddenly in a back row a solitary but loud voice was heard:
“Good Lord, what nonsense!”
The exclamation escaped involuntarily, and I am sure was not intended as a demonstration. The man was simply worn out. But Mr. Karmazinov stopped, looked sarcastically at the audience, and suddenly lisped with the deportment of an aggrieved kammerherr.
“I’m afraid I’ve been boring you dreadfully, gentlemen?”
That was his blunder, that he was the first to speak; for provoking an answer in this way he gave an opening for the rabble to speak, too, and even legitimately, so to say, while if he had restrained himself, people would have gone on blowing their noses and it would have passed off somehow. Perhaps he expected applause in response to his question, but there was no sound of applause; on the contrary, every one seemed to subside and shrink back in dismay.
“You never did see Ancus Marcius, that’s all brag,” cried a voice that sounded full of irritation and even nervous exhaustion.
“Just so,” another voice agreed at once. “There are no such things as ghosts nowadays, nothing but natural science. Look it up in a scientific book.”
“Gentlemen, there was nothing I expected less than such objections,” said Karmazinov, extremely surprised. The great genius had completely lost touch with his Fatherland in Karlsruhe.
“Nowadays it’s outrageous to say that the world stands on three fishes,” a young lady snapped out suddenly. “You can’t have gone down to the hermit’s cave, Karmazinov. And who talks about hermits nowadays?”
“Gentlemen, what surprises me most of all is that you take it all so seriously. However … however, you are perfectly right. No one has greater respect for truth and realism than I have.…”