have paid very little attention to so unimportant an affair; but he
had long nursed a grudge against his son, and he was delighted to have
an opportunity of disgracing the philosophical exquisite from St.
Petersburg. There ensued a storm, attended by noise and outcry.
Malania was locked up in the store-room.[A] Ivan Petrovich was
summoned into his father's presence. Anna Pavlovna also came running
to the scene of confusion, and tried to appease her husband; but he
would not listen to a word she said. Like a hawk, he pounced upon his
son charging him with immorality, atheism, and hypocrisy. He eagerly
availed himself of so good an opportunity of discharging on him all
his long-gathered spite against the Princess Kubensky, and overwhelmed
him with insulting expressions.

[Footnote A: A sort of closet under the stairs.]

At first Ivan Petrovich kept silence, and maintained his hold over
himself; but when his father thought fit to threaten him with a
disgraceful punishment, he could bear it no longer. "Ah!" he thought,
"the infidel Diderot is going to be brought forward again. Well, then,
I will put his teaching in action." And so with a quiet and even
voice, although with a secret shuddering in all his limbs, he told his
father that it was a mistake to accuse him of immorality; that he had
no intention of justifying his fault, but that he was ready to make
amends for it, and that all the more willingly, inasmuch as he felt
himself superior to all prejudices; and, in fact--that he was ready
to marry Malania. In uttering these words Ivan Petrovich undoubtedly
attained the end he had in view. Peter Andreich was so confounded that
he opened his eyes wide, and for a moment was struck dumb; but he
immediately recovered his senses, and then and there, just as he was,
wrapped in a dressing-gown trimmed with squirrels' fur, and with