A wet gentleman, restraining her, sucked his mustache and said irritably:
"Let him alone, you imbecile!"
Smouri, spreading out his hands, blinked with embarrassment, and asked me:
"What's the matter, eh? What does she want with me? This is nice, I must say! Why, I never saw her before in my life!"
And a peasant, with his nose bleeding, cried:
"Human beings, you call them? Robbers!"
Before the summer I had seen two panics on board the steamboat, and on both occasions they were caused not by real danger, but by the mere possibility of it. On a third occasion the passengers caught two thieves, one of them was dressed like a foreigner, beat them for almost an hour, unknown to the sailors, and when the latter took their victims away from them, the passengers abused them.
"Thieves shield thieves. That is plain. You are rogues yourselves, and you sympathize with rogues."
The thieves had been beaten into unconsciousness. They could not stand when they were handed over to the police at the next stopping-place.
There were many other occasions on which my feelings were aroused to a high pitch, and I could not make up my mind as to whether people were bad or good, peaceful or mischief-making, and why they were so peculiarly cruel, lusting to work malevolence, and ashamed of being kind.