“I don’t share that attitude. No doubt we three here will keep the secret, but I’m afraid of the fourth, you, and wouldn’t trust you in anything.…”
“What do you mean by that? Why it’s more to my interest than anyone’s, seeing I was promised eternal gratitude! What I wanted was to point out in this connection one extremely strange incident, rather to say, psychological than simply strange. Yesterday evening, under the influence of my conversation with Varvara Petrovna—you can fancy yourself what an impression it made on me—I approached Alexey Nilitch with a discreet question: ‘You knew Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch abroad,’ said I, ‘and used to know him before in Petersburg too. What do you think of his mind and his abilities?’ said I. He answered laconically, as his way is, that he was a man of subtle intellect and sound judgment. ‘And have you never noticed in the course of years,’ said I, ‘any turn of ideas or peculiar way of looking at things, or any, so to say, insanity?’ In fact, I repeated Varvara Petrovna’s own question. And would you believe it, Alexey Nilitch suddenly grew thoughtful, and scowled, just as he’s doing now. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘I have sometimes thought there was something strange.’ Take note, too, that if anything could have seemed strange even to Alexey Nilitch, it must really have been something, mustn’t it?”
“Is that true?” said Stepan Trofimovitch, turning to Alexey Nilitch.
“I should prefer not to speak of it,” answered Alexey Nilitch, suddenly raising his head, and looking at him with flashing eyes. “I wish to contest your right to do this, Liputin. You’ve no right to drag me into this. I did not give my whole opinion at all. Though I knew Nikolay Stavrogin in Petersburg that was long ago, and though I’ve met him since I know him very little. I beg you to leave me out and … All this is something like scandal.”
Liputin threw up his hands with an air of oppressed innocence.
“A scandal-monger! Why not say a spy while you’re about it? It’s all very well for you, Alexey Nilitch, to criticise when you stand aloof from everything. But you wouldn’t believe it, Stepan Trofimovitch—take Captain Lebyadkin, he is stupid enough, one may say … in fact, one’s ashamed to say how stupid he is; there is a Russian comparison, to signify the degree of it; and do you know he considers himself injured by Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, though he is full of admiration for his wit. ‘I’m amazed,’ said he, ‘at that man. He’s a subtle serpent.’ His own words. And I said to him (still under the influence of my conversation, and after I had spoken to Alexey Nilitch), ‘What do you think, captain, is your subtle serpent mad or not?’ Would you believe it, it was just as if I’d given him a sudden lash from behind. He simply leapt up from his seat. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘ … yes, only that,’ he said, ‘cannot affect …’ ‘Affect what?’ He didn’t finish. Yes, and then he fell to thinking so bitterly, thinking so much, that his drunkenness dropped off him. We were sitting in Filipov’s restaurant. And it wasn’t till half an hour later that he suddenly struck the table with his fist. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘maybe he’s mad, but that can’t affect it.…’ Again he didn’t say what it couldn’t affect. Of course I’m only giving you an extract of the conversation, but one can understand the sense of it. You may ask whom you like, they all have the same idea in their heads, though it never entered anyone’s head before. ‘Yes,’ they say, ‘he’s mad; he’s very clever, but perhaps he’s mad too.’”
Stepan Trofimovitch sat pondering, and thought intently.
“And how does Lebyadkin know?”
“Do you mind inquiring about that of Alexey Nilitch, who has just called me a spy? I’m a spy, yet I don’t know, but Alexey Nilitch knows all the ins and outs of it, and holds his tongue.”
“I know nothing about it, or hardly anything,” answered the engineer with the same irritation. “You make Lebyadkin drunk to find out. You brought me here to find out and to make me say. And so you must be a spy.”