shaven chin, then suddenly stepped back a pace, flung up his hands
and opened his eyes wide. "My dear girl, how long is this going
on?" he said rapidly, spluttering. "I ask you: is there no limit
to it? I say nothing of the demoralizing effect of his martinet
views on all around him, of the way he insults all that is sacred
and best in me and in every honest thinking man--I will say nothing
about that, but he might at least behave decently! Why, he shouts,
he bellows, gives himself airs, poses as a sort of Bonaparte, does
not let one say a word. . . . I don't know what the devil's the
matter with him! These lordly gestures, this condescending tone;
and laughing like a general! Who is he, allow me to ask you? I ask
you, who is he? The husband of his wife, with a few paltry acres
and the rank of a titular who has had the luck to marry an heiress!
An upstart and a _junker_, like so many others! A type out of
Shtchedrin! Upon my word, it's either that he's suffering from
megalomania, or that old rat in his dotage, Count Alexey Petrovitch,
is right when he says that children and young people are a long
time growing up nowadays, and go on playing they are cabmen and
generals till they are forty!"

"That's true, that's true," Olga Mihalovna assented. "Let me pass."

"Now just consider: what is it leading to?" her uncle went on,
barring her way. "How will this playing at being a general and a
Conservative end? Already he has got into trouble! Yes, to stand
his trial! I am very glad of it! That's what his noise and shouting
has brought him to--to stand in the prisoner's dock. And it's not
as though it were the Circuit Court or something: it's the Central
Court! Nothing worse could be imagined, I think! And then he has
quarrelled with every one! He is celebrating his name-day, and look,