latest, at the
beginning of the twenties, so that the dates don't fit. He couldn't have
been thrashed then, he couldn't, could he?"

It was difficult to imagine what Kalganov was excited about, but his
excitement was genuine. Mitya followed his lead without protest.

"Well, but if they did thrash him!" he cried, laughing.

"It's not that they thrashed me exactly, but what I mean is--" put in
Maximov.

"What do you mean? Either they thrashed you or they didn't."

"What o'clock is it, _panie_?" the Pole, with the pipe, asked his tall
friend, with a bored expression. The other shrugged his shoulders in
reply. Neither of them had a watch.

"Why not talk? Let other people talk. Mustn't other people talk because
you're bored?" Grushenka flew at him with evident intention of finding
fault. Something seemed for the first time to flash upon Mitya's mind.
This time the Pole answered with unmistakable irritability.

"_Pani_, I didn't oppose it. I didn't say anything."

"All right then. Come, tell us your story," Grushenka cried to Maximov.
"Why are you all silent?"

"There's nothing to tell, it's all so foolish," answered Maximov at once,
with evident satisfaction, mincing a little. "Besides, all that's by way
of allegory in Gogol, for he's made all the names have a meaning. Nozdryov
was really called Nosov, and Kuvshinikov had quite a different name, he
was called Shkvornev. Fenardi really was called Fenardi, only he wasn't an
Italian but a Russian, and Mamsel Fenardi was a pretty girl with her
pretty little legs in tights, and she had a little short skirt with
spangles, and she kept turning round and round, only not for four hours
but for four minutes only, and she bewitched every one..."

"But what were you beaten for?" cried Kalganov.

"For Piron!" answered Maximov.

"What Piron?" cried Mitya.

"The famous French writer, Piron. We were all drinking then, a big party
of us, in a tavern at that very fair. They'd invited me, and first of all
I began quoting epigrams. 'Is that you, Boileau? What a funny get-up!' and
Boileau answers that he's going to a masquerade, that is to the baths, he
he! And they took it to themselves, so I made haste to repeat another,
very sarcastic, well known to all educated people:

Yes, Sappho and Phaon are we!
But one grief is weighing on me.
You don't know your way to the sea!

They were still more offended and began abusing me in the most unseemly
way for it. And a