“But, after all, what has happened? Why won’t they come?” he cried at last with angry impatience.
“Ignominy, disgrace—that’s what’s happened. I don’t know what to call it, but after it I can’t face people.”
“Why? How are you to blame for it, after all? Why do you take the blame of it on yourself? Isn’t it rather the fault of the audience, of your respectable residents, your patresfamilias? They ought to have controlled the roughs and the rowdies—for it was all the work of roughs and rowdies, nothing serious. You can never manage things with the police alone in any society, anywhere. Among us every one asks for a special policeman to protect him wherever he goes. People don’t understand that society must protect itself. And what do our patresfamilias, the officials, the wives and daughters, do in such cases? They sit quiet and sulk. In fact there’s not enough social initiative to keep the disorderly in check.”
“Ah, that’s the simple truth! They sit quiet, sulk and … gaze about them.”
“And if it’s the truth, you ought to say so aloud, proudly, sternly, just to show that you are not defeated, to those respectable residents and mothers of families. Oh, you can do it; you have the gift when your head is clear. You will gather them round you and say it aloud. And then a paragraph in the Voice and the Financial News. Wait a bit, I’ll undertake it myself, I’ll arrange it all for you. Of course there must be more superintendence: you must look after the buffet; you must ask the prince, you must ask Mr.… You must not desert us, monsieur, just when we have to begin all over again. And finally, you must appear arm-in-arm with Andrey Antonovitch.… How is Andrey Antonovitch?”
“Oh, how unjustly, how untruly, how cruelly you have always judged that angelic man!” Yulia Mihailovna cried in a sudden, outburst, almost with tears, putting her handkerchief to her eyes.
Pyotr Stepanovitch was positively taken aback for the moment. “Good heavens! I.… What have I said? I’ve always …”
“You never have, never! You have never done him justice.”
“There’s no understanding a woman,” grumbled Pyotr Stepanovitch, with a wry smile.
“He is the most sincere, the most delicate, the most angelic of men! The most kind-hearted of men!”