“What sort of worries? Surely not these trifles?” He nodded towards the manifesto. “I can bring you as many of them as you like; I made their acquaintance in X province.”
“You mean at the time you were staying there?”
“Of course, it was not in my absence. I remember there was a hatchet printed at the top of it. Allow me.” (He took up the manifesto.) “Yes, there’s the hatchet here too; that’s it, the very same.”
“Yes, here’s a hatchet. You see, a hatchet.”
“Well, is it the hatchet that scares you?”
“No, it’s not … and I am not scared; but this business … it is a business; there are circumstances.”
“What sort? That it’s come from the factory? He he! But do you know, at that factory the workpeople will soon be writing manifestoes for themselves.”
“What do you mean?” Von Lembke stared at him severely.
“What I say. You’ve only to look at them. You are too soft, Andrey Antonovitch; you write novels. But this has to be handled in the good old way.”
“What do you mean by the good old way? What do you mean by advising me? The factory has been cleaned; I gave the order and they’ve cleaned it.”
“And the workmen are in rebellion. They ought to be flogged, every one of them; that would be the end of it.”
“In rebellion? That’s nonsense; I gave the order and they’ve cleaned it.”
“Ech, you are soft, Andrey Antonovitch!”
“In the first place, I am not so soft as you think, and in the second place …” Von Lembke was piqued again. He had exerted himself to keep up the conversation with the young man from curiosity, wondering if he would tell him anything new.
“Ha ha, an old acquaintance again,” Pyotr Stepanovitch interrupted, pouncing on another document that lay under a paper-weight, something like a manifesto, obviously printed abroad and in verse. “Oh, come, I know this one by heart, ‘A Noble Personality.’ Let me have a look at it—yes, ‘A Noble Personality’ it is. I made acquaintance with that personality abroad. Where did you unearth it?”
“You say you’ve seen it abroad?” Von Lembke said eagerly.
“I should think so, four months ago, or may be five.”
“You seem to have seen a great deal abroad.” Von Lembke looked at him subtly.
Pyotr Stepanovitch, not heeding him, unfolded the document and read the poem aloud: