“Excuse me, excuse me, your excellency,” Paklin cried, “and you, Mr. Sipiagin, I never ... never—”
“Did you say the merchant Falyaeva?” the governor asked, turning to Sipiagin and merely shaking his fingers in Paklin’s direction, as much as to say, “Gently, my good man, gently.” “What is coming over our respectable, bearded merchants? Only yesterday one was arrested in connection with this affair. You may have heard of him—Golushkin, a very rich man. But he’s harmless enough. He won’t make revolutions; he’s grovelling on his knees already.”
“The merchant Falyaeva has nothing whatever to do with it,” Sipiagin began; “I know nothing of his ideas; I was only talking of his factory where Mr. Nejdanov is to be found at this very moment, as Mr. Paklin says—”
“I said nothing of the kind!” Paklin cried; “you said it yourself!”
“Excuse me, Mr. Paklin,” Sipiagin pronounced with the same relentless precision, “I admire that feeling of friendship which prompts you to deny it.” (“A regular Guizot, upon my word!” the governor thought to himself.) “But take example by me. Do you suppose that the feeling of kinship is less strong in me than your feeling of friendship? But there is another feeling, my dear sir, yet stronger still, which guides all our deeds and actions, and that is duty!”
“Le sentiment du devoir,” Kollomietzev explained.
Markelov took both the speakers in at a glance.
“Your excellency!” he exclaimed, “I ask you a second time; please have me removed out of sight of these babblers.”
But there the governor lost patience a little.
“Mr. Markelov!” he pronounced severely, “I would advise you, in your present position, to be a little more careful of your tongue, and to show a little more respect to your elders, especially when they give expression to such patriotic sentiments as those you have just heard from the lips of your beau-frère! I shall be delighted, my dear Boris,” he added, turning to Sipiagin, “to tell the minister of your noble action. But with whom is this Nejdanov staying at the factory?”