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Updated: June 11, 2025
"You shall have an old woman, but not directly, perhaps... If you like I'll come instead...." "Oh, impossible; I am running to Madame Virginsky, the midwife, now." "A horrid woman!" "Oh, yes, Kirillov, yes, but she is the best of them all.
Some held them up and then put them down again and then held them up again. "Poo! I don't understand it at all," one officer shouted. "I don't either," cried the other. "Oh, I understand," cried a third. "If it's yes, you hold your hand up." "But what does 'yes' mean?" "Means a meeting." "No, it means not a meeting." "I voted for a meeting," cried the schoolboy to Madame Virginsky.
Madame Virginsky was a midwife by profession and by that very fact was on the lowest rung of the social ladder, lower even than the priest's wife in spite of her husband's rank as an officer. But she was conspicuously lacking in the humility befitting her position.
He was continually thrusting himself forward to whisper fussily to him, but the latter scarcely answered him, or muttered something irritably to get rid of him. Shigalov and Virginsky had arrived rather before Pyotr Stepanovitch, and as soon as he came they drew a little apart in profound and obviously intentional silence.
"I've forgotten to cut my nails; I've been meaning to for the last three days," he observed, scrutinising his long and dirty nails with unruffled composure. Arina Prohorovna crimsoned, but Miss Virginsky seemed pleased. "I believe I saw them just now on the window." She got up from the table, went and found the scissors, and at once brought them.
People looked at each other, every one expecting some one else to answer, and suddenly all, as though at a word of command, turned their eyes to Verhovensky and Stavrogin. "I suggest our voting on the answer to the question whether we are a meeting or not," said Madame Virginsky. "I entirely agree with the suggestion," Liputin chimed in, "though the question is rather vague." "I agree too."
Virginsky himself was rather unwell that evening, but he came in and sat in an easy chair by the tea-table. All the guests were sitting down too, and the orderly way in which they were ranged on chairs suggested a meeting. Evidently all were expecting something and were filling up the interval with loud but irrelevant conversation. When Stavrogin and Verhovensky appeared there was a sudden hush.
Liputin, Shigalov, and the authority on the peasantry supported this plan; Lyamshin said nothing, though he looked approving. Virginsky hesitated and wanted to hear Pyotr Stepanovitch first. It was decided to hear Pyotr Stepanovitch, but still he did not come; such casualness added fuel to the flames.
"If Stavrogin and you are caught, we shall be caught too," added the authority on the peasantry. "And to no good purpose for the common cause," Virginsky concluded despondently. "What nonsense! The murder is a chance crime; it was committed by Fedka for the sake of robbery." "H'm! Strange coincidence, though," said Liputin, wriggling. "And if you will have it, it's all through you." "Through us?"
"Let them hear from the street that we have music and a name-day party." "Hang it all!" Lyamshin swore, and sitting down to the piano, began strumming a valse, banging on the keys almost with his fists, at random. "I propose that those who want it to be a meeting should put up their right hands," Madame Virginsky proposed. Some put them up, others did not.
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