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‘Why should you imagine you cannot rely upon me?’

‘Well, you are in the government service–you are an official.’

‘Well, what of that?’

‘You are, consequently, loyal to the government.’

I marvelled inwardly … at Musa’s innocence. ‘As to my attitude to the government, which is not even aware of my existence, I won’t enlarge upon that,’ I observed; ‘but you may set your mind at rest. I will make no bad use of your confidence. I sympathise with your husband’s ideas … more than you suppose.’

Musa shook her head.

‘Yes; that’s all so,’ she began, not without hesitation; ‘but you see it’s like this. Paramon Semyonitch’s ideas will shortly, it may be, find expression in action. They can no longer be hidden under a bushel. There are comrades whom we cannot now abandon …’

Musa suddenly ceased speaking, as though she had bitten her tongue. Her last words had amazed and a little alarmed me. Most likely my face showed what I was feeling–and Musa noticed it.

As I have said already, our interview took place in the year 1849. Many people still remember what a disturbed and difficult time that was, and by what incidents it was signalised in St. Petersburg. I had been struck myself by certain peculiarities in Baburin’s behaviour, in his whole demeanour. Twice he had referred to governmental action, to personages in high authority, with such intense bitterness and hatred, with such loathing, that I had been dumbfoundered….

‘Well?’ he asked me suddenly: ‘did you set your peasants free?’

I was obliged to confess I had not.

‘Why, I suppose your granny’s dead, isn’t she?’

I was obliged to admit that she was.

‘To be sure, you noble gentlemen,’ Baburin muttered between his teeth, ‘… use other men’s hands … to poke up your fire … that’s what you like.’

In the most conspicuous place in his room hung the well-known lithograph portrait of Belinsky; on the table lay a volume of the old Polar Star, edited by Bestuzhev.

A long time passed, and Baburin did not come back after the cook had called him away. Musa looked several times uneasily towards the door by which he had gone out. At last she could bear it no longer; she got up, and with an apology she too went out by the same door. A quarter of an hour later she came back with her husband; the faces of both, so at least I thought, looked troubled. But all of a sudden Baburin’s face assumed a different, an intensely bitter, almost frenzied expression.

‘What will be the end of it?’ he began all at once in a jerky, sobbing voice, utterly unlike him, while his wild eyes shifted restlessly about him. ‘One goes on living and living, and hoping that maybe it’ll be better, that one will breathe more freely; but it’s quite the other way–everything gets worse and worse! They have squeezed us right up to the wall! In my youth I bore all with patience; they … maybe … beat me … even … yes!’ he added, turning sharply round on his heels and swooping down as it were, upon me: ‘I, a man of full age, was subjected to corporal punishment … yes;–of other wrongs I will not speak…. But is there really nothing before us but to go back to those old times again? The way they are treating the young people now! … Yes, it breaks down all endurance at last…. It breaks it down! Yes! Wait a bit!’

I had never seen Baburin in such a condition. Musa turned positively white…. Baburin suddenly cleared his throat, and sank down into a seat. Not wishing to constrain either him or Musa by my presence, I decided to go, and was just saying good-bye to them, when the door into the next room suddenly opened, and a head appeared…. It was not the cook’s head, but the dishevelled and terrified-looking head of a young man.

‘Something’s wrong, Baburin, something’s wrong!’ he faltered hurriedly, then vanished at once on perceiving my unfamiliar figure.