My father then went to his room, slamming the door behind him.  David and I did not at first understand what his last words referred to:  we found out later that my father was at that time much vexed with Nastasa, who had snapped up some paying piece of business which had belonged to him.  So my aunt had to withdraw with a long face.  She was nearly bursting with rage, but there was nothing to do, and she was obliged to content herself with whispering hoarsely, “Rascal! rascal! jailbird! thief!” whenever she passed me.  My aunt’s reproaches were a great delight to me, and it was also very pleasant whenever we went by the garden fence to throw an apparently indifferent glance at the spot beneath the apple tree where the watch rested, and also, if David was by, to exchange with him a knowing wink.

My aunt first tried to set Trankwillitatin against me, but I made David help me.  He spoke up to the tall student, and told him he’d cut him open with a knife if he didn’t leave me alone.  Trankwillitatin was frightened, for, although my aunt called him a grenadier and a cavalier, he was not remarkable for bravery.

But you don’t suppose I have come to the end of my story yet?  No, it’s not yet finished; only, in order to continue it, I must introduce a new person, and to introduce this new person I must go back a little.

XI.

My father was for a long time on very friendly and even intimate terms with a former official, named Latkin, a poor man, slightly lame, with shy, queer manners—­one of those beings of whom people say the hand of God is upon them.  He had the same business as my father and Nastasa:  he was also a private “agent” and commissioner, but as he had neither an imposing exterior nor a fluent tongue, nor much self-confidence, he could not make up his mind to act independently, and so formed a partnership with my father.  His handwriting was wonderful, he had a thorough knowledge of law, and was perfectly at home in all the ins and outs of lawsuits and office-practice.  He was connected with my father in several business operations, and they shared their gains and losses, so that it seemed as if nothing could impair their friendship.  But one day it was brought to an abrupt conclusion once for all:  my father quarreled irreconcilably with his former associate.  If Latkin had snapped a profitable bit of my father’s business, as Nastasa did afterward, he would have been no more angry with him than he was with Nastasa, perhaps even less.  But Latkin, under the influence of some unexplained, incomprehensible feeling of envy or greed, and perhaps also moved by a momentary feeling of honesty, had played him false in exposing him to their patron, a rich young merchant, by opening the careless young man’s eyes to some sharp practice by which my father expected to make a very pretty sum.  It was not the loss of the money, however much it may have been—­no, it was the treachery—­which embittered and enraged my father.  He could not forgive swindling.