Shipulenko. “Want me to give you a lift?”

“Scoundrelly folk!” Mr. Pralinsky cried in rage. “The rascal asked me to let him go to some wedding here on the Petersburg side, some female crony was getting married, devil take her. I strictly forbade him to leave. And now I’ll bet he’s gone there!”

“Actually,” Varlaam observed, “he did go there, sir, and he promised to manage it in just one minute, that is, to be here right on time.”

“So there! I just knew it! He’ll catch it from me!”

“You’d better give him a couple of good whippings at the police station, then he’ll follow your orders,” Semyon Ivanych said, covering himself with a rug.

“Kindly don’t trouble yourself, Semyon Ivanych!”

“So you don’t want a lift?”

“Safe journey, merci.”

Semyon Ivanych drove off, and Ivan Ilyich went by foot along the wooden planks, feeling a rather strong irritation.

“No, you’ll catch it from me now, you rogue! I’ll go by foot on purpose so that you’ll feel it, so that you’ll get scared! He’ll come back and find out that the master went by foot… blackguard!”

Ivan Ilyich had never cursed like that before, but he was very furious, and besides there was a clamor in his head. He was not used to drinking and therefore some five or six glasses worked quickly. But the night was delightful. It was frosty, but unusually calm and windless. The sky was clear, starry. The full moon flooded the earth with a matted silver gleam. It was so good that Ivan Ilyich, having gone some fifty steps, almost forgot his troubles. He was beginning to feel somehow especially pleasant. Besides, tipsy people change impressions quickly. He was even starting to like the plain wooden houses on the deserted street.

“It’s really nice that I went by foot,” he thought to himself, “both a lesson to Trifon and a pleasure for me. Indeed, I must go by foot more often. So what? On Bolshoi Prospect I’ll find a cab at once. A nice night! What wretched little houses here. Must all be petty folk, clerks… merchants, maybe… that Stepan Nikiforovich! and what retrogrades they all are, the old nightcaps! Precisely nightcaps, c’est le mot!9 He’s an intelligent man, though; he has this bon sens10 a sober, practical understanding of things. No, but these old men, old men! They lack… what do you call it? Well, they lack something… We won’t hold out! What did he mean by that? He even fell to thinking when he said it. By the way, he didn’t understand me at all. But how could he not? It’s harder not to understand than to understand. Above all, I’m convinced, convinced in my soul. Humaneness… love of mankind. Restore man to himself… revive his personal dignity, and then… with this ready material get down to business. Seems clear! Yes, sir! I beg your pardon, Your Excellency, take the syllogism: we meet a clerk, for instance, a poor, downtrodden clerk. ‘Well… what are you?’ Answer: ‘A clerk.’ All right, so he’s a clerk; then: ‘What kind of a clerk?’ Answer: such-and-such kind. ‘You’re in the civil service?’ ‘I am!’ ‘Want to be happy?’ ‘I do.’ ‘What does one need for happiness?’ This and that. ‘Why?’ Because… And so the man understands me after a couple of words: the man is mine, the man is caught, so to speak, in the net, and I can do whatever I like with him—for his own good, that is. A nasty man, this Semyon Ivanych! And such a nasty mug… A whipping at the police station—he said it on purpose.