s honour himself." He had a
very bad headache, but he went out. Varvara Petrovna succeeded in being
present when the message was given.

"Sergay Vassilyevitch" (Liputin's name), Agafya rattled off briskly,
"bade me first of all give you his respectful greetings and ask after
your health, what sort of night your honour spent after yesterday's
doings, and how your honour feels now after yesterday's doings?"

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch smiled.

"Give him my greetings and thank him, and tell your master from me,
Agafya, that he's the most sensible man in the town."

"And he told me to answer that," Agafya caught him up still more
briskly, "that he knows that without your telling him, and wishes you
the same."

"Really! But how could he tell what I should say to you?"

"I can't say in what way he could tell, but when I had set off and had
gone right down the street, I heard something, and there he was, running
after me without his cap. 'I say, Agafya, if by any chance he says to
you, "Tell your master that he has more sense than all the town," you
tell him at once, don't forget, "The master himself knows that very
well, and wishes you the same."'"

III

At last the interview with the governor took place too. Our dear, mild,
Ivan Ossipovitch had only just returned and only just had time to hear
the angry complaint from the club. There was no doubt that something
must be done, but he was troubled. The hospitable old man seemed also
rather afraid of his young kinsman. He made up his mind, however, to
induce him to apologise to the club and to his victim in satisfactory
form, and, if required, by letter, and then to persuade him to leave us
for a time, travelling, for instance, to improve hie mind, in Italy, or
in fact anywhere abroad. In the waiting-room in which on this occasion
he received Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch (who had been at other times
privileged as a relation to wander all over the house unchecked),
Alyosha Telyatnikov, a clerk of refined manners, who was also a member
of the governor's household, was sitting in a corner opening envelopes
at a table, and in the next room, at the window nearest to the door, a
stout and sturdy colonel, a former friend and colleague of the governor,
was sitting alone reading the Golos, paying no attention, of course,
to what was taking place in the waiting-room; in fact, he had his back
turned. Ivan Ossipovitch approached the subject in a roundabout way,
almost in a "whisper, but