‘Really, upon my word...’ Mr. Ratsch
was beginning; ’how dare you... such insolence...’
Susanna all at once drew herself up to her full height,
and still holding her elbows, squeezing them tight,
drumming on them with her fingers, she stood still
facing Ratsch. She seemed to challenge him to
conflict, to stand up to meet him. Her face was
changed; it became suddenly, in one instant, extraordinarily
beautiful, and terrible too; a sort of bright, cold
brilliance—the brilliance of steel—gleamed
in her lustreless eyes; the lips that had been quivering
were compressed in one straight, mercilessly stern
line. Susanna challenged Ratsch, but he gazed
blankly, and suddenly subsiding into silence, all of
a heap, so to say, drew his head in, even stepped
back a pace. The veteran of the year twelve was
afraid; there could be no mistake about that.
Susanna slowly turned her eyes from him to me, as
though calling upon me to witness her victory, and
the humiliation of her foe, and, smiling once more,
she walked out of the room.
The veteran remained a little while motionless in
his arm-chair; at last, as though recollecting a forgotten
part, he roused himself, got up, and, slapping me
on the shoulder, laughed his noisy guffaw.
’There, ’pon my soul! fancy now, it’s
over ten years I’ve been living with that young
lady, and yet she never can see when I’m joking,
and when I’m in earnest! And you too, my
young friend, are a little puzzled, I do believe....
Ha-ha-ha! That’s because you don’t
know old Ratsch!’
‘No.... I do know you now,’ I thought,
not without a feeling of some alarm and disgust.
‘You don’t know the old fellow, you don’t
know him,’ he repeated, stroking himself on
the stomach, as he accompanied me into the passage.
’I may be a tiresome person, knocked about by
life, ha-ha! But I’m a good-hearted fellow,
‘pon my soul, I am!’
I rushed headlong from the stairs into the street.
I longed with all speed to get away from that good-hearted
fellow.
‘They hate one another, that’s clear,’
I thought, as I returned homewards; ’there’s
no doubt either that he’s a wretch of a man,
and she’s a good girl. But what has there
been between them? What is the reason of this
continual exasperation? What was the meaning of
those hints? And how suddenly it broke out!
On such a trivial pretext!’
Next day Fustov and I had arranged to go to the theatre,
to see Shtchepkin in ‘Woe from Wit.’
Griboyedov’s comedy had only just been licensed
for performance after being first disfigured by the
censors’ mutilations. We warmly applauded
Famusov and Skalozub. I don’t remember
what actor took the part of Tchatsky, but I well remember
that he was indescribably bad. He made his first
appearance in a Hungarian jacket, and boots with tassels,
and came on later in a frockcoat of the colour ‘flamme
du punch,’ then in fashion, and the frockcoat
