Excellency!” the voice shouted again.
“What do you want?”
“How do you do!”
This time Ivan Ilyitch could not restrain himself. He broke off his speech and turned to the assailant who had disturbed the general harmony. He was a very young lad, still at school, who had taken more than a drop too much, and was an object of great suspicion to the general. He had been shouting for a long time past, and had even broken a glass and two plates, maintaining that this was the proper thing to do at a wedding. At the moment when Ivan Ilyitch turned towards him, the officer was beginning to pitch into the noisy youngster.
“What are you about? Why are you yelling? We shall turn you out, that’s what we shall do.”
“I don’t mean you, your Excellency, I don’t mean you. Continue!” cried the hilarious schoolboy, lolling back in his chair. “Continue, I am listening, and am very, ve-ry, ve-ry much pleased with you! Praiseworthy, praiseworthy!”
“The wretched boy is drunk,” said Pseldonimov in a whisper.
“I see that he is drunk, but….”
“I was just telling a very amusing anecdote, your Excellency!” began the officer, “about a lieutenant in our company who was talking just like that to his superior officers; so this young man is imitating him now. To every word of his superior officers he said ‘praiseworthy, praiseworthy!’ He was turned out of the army ten years ago on account of it.”
“Wha-at lieutenant was that?”
“In our company, your Excellency, he went out of his mind over the word praiseworthy. At first they tried gentle methods, then they put him under arrest…. His commanding officer admonished him in the most fatherly way, and he answered, ‘praiseworthy, praiseworthy!’ And strange to say, the officer was a fine-looking man, over six feet. They meant to court-martial him, but then they perceived that he was mad.”
“So … a schoolboy. A schoolboy’s prank need not be taken seriously. For my part I am ready to overlook it….”
“They held a medical inquiry, your Excellency.”
“Upon my word, but he was alive, wasn’t he?”
“What! Did they dissect him?”
A loud and almost universal roar of laughter resounded among the guests, who had till then behaved with decorum. Ivan Ilyitch was furious.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” he shouted, at first scarcely stammering, “I am fully capable of apprehending that a man is not dissected alive. I imagined that in his derangement he had ceased to be alive … that is, that he had died … that is, I mean to say … that you don’t like me … and yet I like you all … Yes, I like Por … Porfiry … I am lowering myself by speaking like this….”
At that moment Ivan Ilyitch spluttered so that a great dab of saliva flew on to the tablecloth in a most conspicuous place. Pseldonimov flew to wipe it off with a table-napkin. This last disaster crushed him completely.
“My friends, this is too much,” he cried in despair.
“The man is drunk, your Excellency,” Pseldonimov prompted him again.
“Porfiry, I see that you … all … yes! I say that I hope … yes, I call upon you all to tell me in what way have I lowered myself?”
Ivan Ilyitch was almost crying.
“Your Excellency, good heavens!”
“Porfiry, I appeal to you…. Tell me, when I came … yes … yes, to your wedding, I had an object. I was aiming at moral elevation…. I wanted it to be felt…. I appeal to all: am I greatly lowered in your eyes or not?”
A deathlike silence. That was just it, a deathlike silence, and to such a downright question. “They might at least shout at this minute!” flashed through his Excellency’s head. But the guests only looked at one another. Akim Petrovitch sat more dead than alive, while Pseldonimov, numb with terror, was repeating to himself the awful question which had occurred to him more than once already.
“What shall I have to pay for all this tomorrow?”
At this point the young man on the comic paper, who was very drunk but who had hitherto sat in morose silence, addressed Ivan Ilyitch directly, and with flashing eyes began answering in the name of the whole company.
“Yes,” he said in a loud voice, “yes, you have lowered yourself. Yes, you are a reactionary … re-ac-tionary!”
“Young man, you are forgetting yourself! To whom are you speaking, so to express it?” Ivan Ilyitch cried furiously, jumping up from his seat again.
“To you; and secondly, I am not a young man…. You’ve come to give yourself airs and try to win popularity.”
“Pseldonimov, what does this mean?” cried Ivan Ilyitch.
But Pseldonimov was reduced to such horror that he stood still like a post and was utterly at a loss what to do. The guests, too, sat mute in their seats. All but the artist and the schoolboy, who applauded and shouted, “Bravo, bravo!”
The young man on the comic paper went on shouting with unrestrained violence:
“Yes, you came to show off your humanity! You’ve hindered the enjoyment of every one. You’ve been drinking champagne without thinking that it is beyond the means of a clerk at ten roubles a month. And I suspect that you are one of those high officials who are a little too fond of the young wives of their clerks! What is more, I am convinced that you support State monopolies…. Yes, yes, yes!”
“Pseldonimov, Pseldonimov,” shouted Ivan Ilyitch, holding out his hands to him. He felt that every word uttered by the comic young man was a fresh dagger at his heart.
“Directly, your Excellency; please do not disturb yourself!” Pseldonimov cried energetically, rushing up to the comic young man, seizing him by the collar and dragging him away from the table. Such physical strength could indeed not have been expected from the weakly looking Pseldonimov. But the comic young man was very drunk, while Pseldonimov was perfectly sober. Then he gave him two or three cuffs in the back, and thrust him out of the door.
“You are all scoundrels!” roared the young man of the comic paper. “I will caricature you all tomorrow in the Firebrand.”
They all leapt up from their seats.
“Your Excellency, your Excellency!” cried Pseldonimov, his mother and several others, crowding round the general; “your Excellency, do not be disturbed!”
“No, no,” cried the general, “I am annihilated…. I came… I meant to bless you, so to speak. And this is how I am paid, for everything, everything!…”
He sank on to a chair as though unconscious, laid both his arms on the table, and bowed his head over them, straight into a plate of blancmange. There is no need to describe the general horror. A minute later he got up, evidently meaning to go out, gave a lurch, stumbled against the leg of a chair, fell full length on the floor and snored….
This is what is apt to happen
