Summary of the part
In a few hours of the same morning, the town's authority loses its footing on three sides. From Stepan Trofimovich, who has done nothing, the police take the papers, and he becomes convinced he will be taken to Petersburg and flogged. To the governor, seventy workers who only want to be heard look like a revolt, and he orders them to remove their caps, kneel and bring the rods, before even knowing that he will do so. And in the governor's wife's drawing room, where all this returns as drawing-room talk, the only sentence spoken without evasion is Stavrogin's, who, asked by Liza in front of her mother and a whole audience, declares that he is the husband of Captain Lebyadkin's sister. Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky hardly appears in the two chapters, and the town comes apart almost on its own, without his needing the force the conspiracy does not yet have. The question running through the chapters is what sustains an authority when it stops convincing: an old man's fear, a governor's vanity, a drawing room's flattery.
Chapter IX: The Search at Stepan Trofimovich's House
Chapter summary
At eight in the morning the maid Nastasya runs to the chronicler's house with the news that her master has been "inventoried": officials came, took the papers, and a soldier carried them off in a wheelbarrow. The chronicler goes to Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky and finds him distraught and, at the same time, with the air of triumph: in waistcoat and frock coat, which he never wears before his intimates, with the tea untouched on the table. In French and in fits and starts, Stepan tells him that at seven in the morning an official of the governor, Blum, asked him to let him "have a look" at his books and manuscripts; he opened all the drawers and handed over all the keys, dignified and calm, and Blum took away the foreign editions of Herzen, a bound copy of the "Kolokol," four copies of his poem, letters and sketches. Blum offered him the procedure and the customary guarantees, in the presence of the prosecutor, and Stepan declined to avoid a scandal; the official, who had only come to "look," agreed: if nothing were found, nothing would be. They ended, he says, "en amis." Stepan, who has never done anything, becomes convinced that the search comes from a telegram from Petersburg and that he will be taken away and flogged; more than prison, he fears that Varvara Petrovna will spend her life suspecting him. He has a lamp lit before the icon so as to look devout and, after twenty minutes lying down, decides to go to the governor and demand his rights, with the chronicler at his side.
Analysis
The chronicler has him lie down with a cloth soaked in vinegar on his head, and the maid climbs a chair to light the lamp before the icon, which had never been there before. Stepan explains the lamp, looking at him slyly:
Это я давеча распорядился, только что те ушли, — пробормотал Степан Трофимович, хитро посмотрев на меня, — quand on a de ces choses-là dans sa chambre et qu’on vient vous arrêter, то это внушает, и должны же они доложить, что видели
, I gave that order just now, as soon as they left, Stepan Trofimovich muttered, looking at me slyly, quand on a de ces choses-là dans sa chambre et qu'on vient vous arrêter, that makes an impression, and they will have to report what they saw.
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Chapter X: The Buccaneers
Chapter summary
An hour before Stepan and the chronicler set out, seventy workers from the Shpigulin factory, the chronicler does not know whether chosen or simply the most wronged, pass in orderly fashion and almost silently toward the governor's house. It is said the manager, when closing the factory, cheated them all in the final settlement, which he takes for certain; others speak of a riot and of pamphlets, and he finds it unlikely the workers read the proclamations, and even less likely that they understood them. He recalls that the Russian people have always liked to speak with "the general himself," and finds it natural that men whom the police refused to hear wanted to station themselves before the governor, take off their caps, and fall to their knees. He admits that Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky, Liputin and perhaps Fedka had spoken before with two, three, five of them, without result; the fire in the city, three days later, will count on two workers beside Fedka.
In the square, the workers line up in silence, and the police order them to disperse; they answer that they are going to see "the general himself" and do not move. The police chief, Ilya Ilyich, prefers to wait for the governor, who is not there, and sends a commissar to fetch him at Skvoreshniki. The chronicler denies the rumors that circulated afterward (soldiers with bayonets, artillery, fire pumps whose water supposedly soaked the people) and offers an explanation for the rest: Ilya Ilyich, the manager's crony, preferred to present the crowd as a riot so as to avoid an inquiry into the case, and it was Lembke himself who gave him the idea in two conversations on the preceding days, in which he had shown himself fixated on proclamations and on the workers being incited.
To understand Lembke, the chronicler goes back to the previous night, which he learned in part from Yulia Mikhailovna von Lembke herself. At three in the morning, Andrei Antonovich von Lembke woke his wife to hear her "ultimatum": he paces from one side to the other and pours out everything that boils within him, without order. He says they laugh at him and make a fool of him, that it was she who pulled him out of the state he had been living in, that he accepted the post for the sake of her ambition, and that two centers of power, his and that of her boudoir, cannot exist. He says that their life together has been her proving to him every hour that he was nothing, and him proving to her that he was not. He weeps, lets slip that he is jealous of Pyotr, and, furious, swears he will not allow God to be denied, that he will put an end to the faithless salon, that he will expel the first governess he finds. Yulia interrupts him: she has long known of the criminal plans and will find a harmonious outcome. On understanding that Pyotr told her more, and earlier, and that he may be the main instigator, Lembke explodes, threatens to have her lover arrested and chained up, or to throw himself out the window; she laughs, a long laugh, a Parisian actress's laugh, and he, fist raised, does not strike: he flees to the study, pulls the sheet over himself, and lies awake for two hours, remembering meaningless things.
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