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Updated: October 6, 2025
The incident was a trivial one, but it set Andrey Antonovitch pondering deeply. The position presented itself to him in an unpleasantly complicated light. In this factory the famous "Shpigulin scandal" was just then brewing, which made so much talk among us and got into the Petersburg and Moscow papers with all sorts of variations.
Be kind to him and he will tell you everything, but I must have six days.... And, above all, above all, not a word to Yulia Mihailovna. It's a secret. May it be a secret?" "What?" cried Lembke, opening wide his eyes. "Do you mean to say you said nothing of this to Yulia Mihailovna?" "To her? Heaven forbid! Ech, Andrey Antonovitch!
A few days after the reception at Prince Shadursky's Baroness von Doring was installed in a handsome apartment on Mokhovoi Street, at which her "brother," Ian Karozitch, or, to give him his former name, Bodlevski, was a frequent visitor. By a "lucky accident" he had met on the day following the reception our old friend Sergei Antonovitch Kovroff, the "captain of the Golden Band."
"Why two?" said Von Lembke, stopping short before him. "One's not enough to create respect for you. You certainly ought to have two." Andrey Antonovitch made a wry face. "You... there's no limit to the liberties you take, Pyotr Stepanovitch. You take advantage of my good-nature, you say cutting things, and play the part of a bourru bienfaisant...."
But all this, of course, would have been perfectly ordinary had there been no other and more weighty reasons to disturb the equanimity of Audrey Antonovitch, who had till then been in good spirits. What struck Yulia Mihailovna most of all was that he became more silent and, strange to say, more secretive every day. Yet it was hard to imagine what he had to hide.
Still it was essential that Andrey Antonovitch should be in rather better spirits before the festival. He must be cheered up and reassured. For this purpose she sent Pyotr Stepanovitch to him in the hope that he would relieve his depression by some means of consolation best known to himself, perhaps by giving him some information, so to speak, first hand. She put implicit faith in his dexterity.
A lad began crossing himself; three or four men actually did try to kneel down, but the whole mass moved three steps forward, and suddenly all began talking at once: "Your Excellency... we were hired for a term... the manager... you mustn't say," and so on and so on. It was impossible to distinguish anything. Alas! Andrey Antonovitch could distinguish nothing: the flowers were still in his hands.
The fact was that young Verhovensky, from the first step, had displayed a flagrant lack of respect for Andrey Antonovitch, and had assumed a strange right to dictate to him; while Yulia Mihailovna, who had always till then been so jealous of her husband's dignity, absolutely refused to notice it; or, at any rate, attached no consequence to it.
I could get rid of it in Geneva or Paris," he went on in a jesting tone. "What do you think? Of course!" Sergei Antonovitch took him up, but in a serious tone. "You or some one else in any case it would be a good bargain. For my acquaintance has to go back to Asia, and has only a few days to spare.
Steps were immediately taken, of course, and Andrey Antonovitch vigorously insisted on their being carried out without delay within three weeks. The factory was cleansed, but the Shpigulins, for some unknown reason, closed it. One of the Shpigulin brothers always lived in Petersburg and the other went away to Moscow when the order was given for cleansing the factory.
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