She heard footsteps, and she opened her eyes.  Uncle Nikolay Nikolaitch was coming rapidly towards her.

“It’s you, dear?  I am very glad . . .” he began, breathless.  “A couple of words. . . .”  He mopped with his handkerchief his red shaven chin, then suddenly stepped back a pace, flung up his hands and opened his eyes wide.  “My dear girl, how long is this going on?” he said rapidly, spluttering.  “I ask you:  is there no limit to it?  I say nothing of the demoralizing effect of his martinet views on all around him, of the way he insults all that is sacred and best in me and in every honest thinking man—­I will say nothing about that, but he might at least behave decently!  Why, he shouts, he bellows, gives himself airs, poses as a sort of Bonaparte, does not let one say a word. . . .  I don’t know what the devil’s the matter with him!  These lordly gestures, this condescending tone; and laughing like a general!  Who is he, allow me to ask you?  I ask you, who is he?  The husband of his wife, with a few paltry acres and the rank of a titular who has had the luck to marry an heiress!  An upstart and a junker, like so many others!  A type out of Shtchedrin!  Upon my word, it’s either that he’s suffering from megalomania, or that old rat in his dotage, Count Alexey Petrovitch, is right when he says that children and young people are a long time growing up nowadays, and go on playing they are cabmen and generals till they are forty!”

“That’s true, that’s true,” Olga Mihalovna assented.  “Let me pass.”

“Now just consider:  what is it leading to?” her uncle went on, barring her way.  “How will this playing at being a general and a Conservative end?  Already he has got into trouble!  Yes, to stand his trial!  I am very glad of it!  That’s what his noise and shouting has brought him to—­to stand in the prisoner’s dock.  And it’s not as though it were the Circuit Court or something:  it’s the Central Court!  Nothing worse could be imagined, I think!  And then he has quarrelled with every one!  He is celebrating his name-day, and look, Vostryakov’s not here, nor Yahontov, nor Vladimirov, nor Shevud, nor the Count. . . .  There is no one, I imagine, more Conservative than Count Alexey Petrovitch, yet even he has not come.  And he never will come again.  He won’t come, you will see!”

“My God! but what has it to do with me?” asked Olga Mihalovna.

“What has it to do with you?  Why, you are his wife!  You are clever, you have had a university education, and it was in your power to make him an honest worker!”

“At the lectures I went to they did not teach us how to influence tiresome people.  It seems as though I should have to apologize to all of you for having been at the University,” said Olga Mihalovna sharply.  “Listen, uncle.  If people played the same scales over and over again the whole day long in your hearing, you wouldn’t be able to sit still and listen, but would run away.  I hear the same thing over again for days together all the year round.  You must have pity on me at last.”