‘Why so?’
‘Why, we are dreadfully scared with him.... He’s not a man, he’s a wolf,—nothing better than a wolf. He keeps moving and moving about, and doesn’t speak—and looks so wild.... He almost gnashes his teeth at me. My Katia, you know, is so nervous.... She was so struck with him the first day.... I’m in terror for her, and indeed for myself too.’ ... I didn’t know what to say to my aunt. I couldn’t, anyway, turn Misha out, after inviting him.
He relieved me himself from my difficult position. The same day,—I was still sitting in my own room,—suddenly I heard behind me a husky and angry voice: ‘Nikolai Nikolaitch, Nikolai Nikolaitch!’ I looked round; Misha was standing in the doorway with a face that was fearful, black-looking and distorted. ‘Nikolai Nikolaitch!’ he repeated ... (not ‘uncle’ now).
‘What do you want?’
‘Let me go ... at once!’
‘Why?’
‘Let me go, or I shall do mischief, I shall set the house on fire or cut some one’s throat.’ Misha suddenly began trembling. ‘Tell them to give me back my clothes, and let a cart take me to the highroad, and let me have some money, however little!’
‘Are you displeased, then, at anything?’
‘I can’t live like this!’ he shrieked at the top of his voice. ‘I can’t live in your respectable, thrice-accursed house! It makes me sick, and ashamed to live so quietly! ... How you manage to endure it!’
‘That is,’ I interrupted in my turn, ‘you mean—you can’t live without drink....’