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‘You don’t know what I mean? Your memory’s so bad!’

Mr. Ratsch seemed utterly taken aback.

‘I… I…’ he repeated, ‘I…’

‘Yes, you, Mr. Ratsch.’

There followed a brief silence.

‘Really, upon my word…’ Mr. Ratsch was beginning; ‘how dare you… such insolence…’

Susanna all at once drew herself up to her full height, and still holding her elbows, squeezing them tight, drumming on them with her fingers, she stood still facing Ratsch. She seemed to challenge him to conflict, to stand up to meet him. Her face was changed; it became suddenly, in one instant, extraordinarily beautiful, and terrible too; a sort of bright, cold brilliance–the brilliance of steel–gleamed in her lustreless eyes; the lips that had been quivering were compressed in one straight, mercilessly stern line. Susanna challenged Ratsch, but he gazed blankly, and suddenly subsiding into silence, all of a heap, so to say, drew his head in, even stepped back a pace. The veteran of the year twelve was afraid; there could be no mistake about that.

Susanna slowly turned her eyes from him to me, as though calling upon me to witness her victory, and the humiliation of her foe, and, smiling once more, she walked out of the room.

The veteran remained a little while motionless in his arm-chair; at last, as though recollecting a forgotten part, he roused himself, got up, and, slapping me on the shoulder, laughed his noisy guffaw.

‘There, ‘pon my soul! fancy now, it’s over ten years I’ve been living with that young lady, and yet she never can see when I’m joking, and when I’m in earnest! And you too, my young friend, are a little puzzled, I do believe…. Ha-ha-ha! That’s because you don’t know old Ratsch!’

‘No…. I do know you now,’ I thought, not without a feeling of some alarm and disgust.

‘You don’t know the old fellow, you don’t know him,’ he repeated, stroking himself on the stomach, as he accompanied me into the passage. ‘I may be a tiresome person, knocked about by life, ha-ha! But I’m a good-hearted fellow, ‘pon my soul, I am!’

I rushed headlong from the stairs into the street. I longed with all speed to get away from that good-hearted fellow.

XIV

‘They hate one another, that’s clear,’ I thought, as I returned homewards; ‘there’s no doubt either that he’s a wretch of a man, and she’s a good girl. But what has there been between them? What is the reason of this continual exasperation? What was the meaning of those hints? And how suddenly it broke out! On such a trivial pretext!’

Next day Fustov and I had arranged to go to the theatre, to see Shtchepkin in ‘Woe from Wit.’ Griboyedov’s comedy had only just been licensed for performance after being first disfigured by the censors’ mutilations. We warmly applauded Famusov and Skalozub. I don’t remember what actor took the part of Tchatsky, but I well remember that he was indescribably bad. He made his first appearance in a Hungarian jacket, and boots with tassels, and came on later in a frockcoat of the colour ‘flamme du punch,’ then in fashion, and the frockcoat looked about as suitable as it would have done on our old butler. I recollect too that we were all in ecstasies over the ball in the third act. Though, probably, no one ever executed such steps in reality, it was accepted as correct and I believe it is acted in just the same way to-day. One of the guests hopped excessively high, while his wig flew from side to side, and the public roared with laughter. As we were coming out of the theatre, we jostled against Viktor in a corridor.

‘You were in the theatre!’ he cried, flinging his arms about. ‘How was it I didn’t see you? I’m awfully glad I met you. You must come and have supper with me. Come on; I’ll stand the supper!’

Young Ratsch seemed in an excited, almost ecstatic, frame of mind. His little eyes darted to and fro; he was grinning, and there were spots of red on his face.