As though through a fog, Laevsky saw Von Koren get up and, putting his hands in his trouser-pockets, stand still in an attitude of expectancy, as though waiting to see what would happen.  This calm attitude struck Laevsky as insolent and insulting to the last degree.

“Kindly take back your words,” shouted Samoylenko.

Laevsky, who did not by now remember what his words were, answered: 

“Leave me alone!  I ask for nothing.  All I ask is that you and German upstarts of Jewish origin should let me alone!  Or I shall take steps to make you!  I will fight you!”

“Now we understand,” said Von Koren, coming from behind the table.  “Mr. Laevsky wants to amuse himself with a duel before he goes away.  I can give him that pleasure.  Mr. Laevsky, I accept your challenge.”

“A challenge,” said Laevsky, in a low voice, going up to the zoologist and looking with hatred at his swarthy brow and curly hair.  “A challenge?  By all means!  I hate you!  I hate you!”

“Delighted.  To-morrow morning early near Kerbalay’s.  I leave all details to your taste.  And now, clear out!”

“I hate you,” Laevsky said softly, breathing hard.  “I have hated you a long while!  A duel!  Yes!”

“Get rid of him, Alexandr Daviditch, or else I’m going,” said Von Koren.  “He’ll bite me.”

Von Koren’s cool tone calmed the doctor; he seemed suddenly to come to himself, to recover his reason; he put both arms round Laevsky’s waist, and, leading him away from the zoologist, muttered in a friendly voice that shook with emotion: 

“My friends . . . dear, good . . . you’ve lost your tempers and that’s enough . . . and that’s enough, my friends.”

Hearing his soft, friendly voice, Laevsky felt that something unheard of, monstrous, had just happened to him, as though he had been nearly run over by a train; he almost burst into tears, waved his hand, and ran out of the room.

“To feel that one is hated, to expose oneself before the man who hates one, in the most pitiful, contemptible, helpless state.  My God, how hard it is!” he thought a little while afterwards as he sat in the pavilion, feeling as though his body were scarred by the hatred of which he had just been the object.

“How coarse it is, my God!”

Cold water with brandy in it revived him.  He vividly pictured Von Koren’s calm, haughty face; his eyes the day before, his shirt like a rug, his voice, his white hand; and heavy, passionate, hungry hatred rankled in his breast and clamoured for satisfaction.  In his thoughts he felled Von Koren to the ground, and trampled him underfoot.  He remembered to the minutest detail all that had happened, and wondered how he could have smiled ingratiatingly to that insignificant man, and how he could care for the opinion of wretched petty people whom nobody knew, living in a miserable little town which was not, it seemed, even on the map, and of which not one decent person in Petersburg