But all these ignorant exclamations in the back rows (though they were confined to the back rows) were drowned in applause from the other half of the audience. They called for Karmazinov. Several ladies with Yulia Mihailovna and the marshal’s wife crowded round the platform. In Yulia Mihailovna’s hands was a gorgeous laurel wreath resting on another wreath of living roses on a white velvet cushion.
“Laurels!” Karmazinov pronounced with a subtle and rather sarcastic smile. “I am touched, of course, and accept with real emotion this wreath prepared beforehand, but still fresh and unwithered, but I assure you, mesdames, that I have suddenly become so realistic that I feel laurels would in this age be far more appropriate in the hands of a skilful cook than in mine.…”
“Well, a cook is more useful,” cried the divinity student, who had been at the “meeting” at Virginsky’s.
There was some disorder. In many rows people jumped up to get a better view of the presentation of the laurel wreath.
“I’d give another three roubles for a cook this minute,” another voice assented loudly, too loudly; insistently, in fact.
“So would I.”
“And I.”
“Is it possible there’s no buffet?…”
“Gentlemen, it’s simply a swindle.…”
It must be admitted, however, that all these unbridled gentlemen still stood in awe of our higher officials and of the police superintendent, who was present in the hall. Ten minutes later all had somehow got back into their places, but there was not the same good order as before. And it was into this incipient chaos that poor Stepan Trofimovitch was thrust.