was enough. For him there was always a doubtful element, something vague and not fully expressed, in
any sanction or permission. When a dramatic club or a reading-room or a tea-shop was licensed in the
town, he would shake his head and say softly:
"It is all right, of course; it is all very nice, but I hope it won't lead to anything!"
"Every sort of breach of order, deviation or departure from rule, depressed him, though one would have
thought it was no business of his. If one of his colleagues was late for church or if rumours reached him
of some prank of the high-school boys, or one of the mistresses was seen late in the evening in the
company of an officer, he was much disturbed, and said he hoped that nothing would come of it. At the
teachers' meetings he simply oppressed us with his caution, his circumspection, and his characteristic
reflection on the ill-behaviour of the young people in both male and female high-schools, the uproar in
the classes.
"Oh, he hoped it would not reach the ears of the authorities; oh, he hoped nothing would come of it;
and he thought it would be a very good thing if Petrov were expelled from the second class and
Yegorov from the fourth. And, do you know, by his sighs, his despondency, his black spectacles on his
pale little face, a little face like a pole-cat's, you know, he crushed us all, and we gave way, reduced
Petrov's and Yegorov's marks for conduct, kept them in, and in the end expelled them both. He had a
strange habit of visiting our lodgings. He would come to a teacher's, would sit down, and remain silent,
as though he were carefully inspecting something. He would sit like this in silence for an hour or two
and then go away. This he called 'maintaining good relations with his colleagues'; and it was obvious
that coming to see us and sitting there was tiresome to him, and that he came to see us simply because
he considered it his duty as our colleague. We teachers were afraid of him. And even the headmaster
was afraid of him. Would you believe it, our teachers were all intellectual, right-minded people,
brought up on Turgenev and Shtchedrin, yet this little chap, who always went about with goloshes and
an umbrella, had the whole high-school under his thumb for fifteen long years! High-school, indeed --
he had the whole town under his thumb! Our ladies did not get up private theatricals on Saturdays for
fear he should hear of it, and the clergy dared not eat meat or play cards in his presence. Under the
influence of people like Byelikov we have got into the way of being afraid of everything in our town for
the last ten or fifteen years. They are afraid to speak aloud, afraid to send letters, afraid to make
acquaintances, afraid to read books, afraid to help the poor, to teach people to read and write. . . ."
Ivan Ivanovitch cleared his throat, meaning to say something, but first lighted his pipe, gazed at the
moon, and then said, with pauses:
"Yes, intellectual, right minded people read Shtchedrin and Turgenev, Buckle, and all the rest of them,
yet they knocked under and put up with it. . . that's just how it is."
"Byelikov lived in the same house as I did," Burkin went on, "on the same storey, his door facing mine;
we often saw each other, and I knew how he lived when he was at home. And at home it was the same
story: dressing-gown, nightcap, blinds, bolts, a perfect succession of prohibitions and restrictions of all
sorts, and --'Oh, I hope nothing will come of it!' Lenten fare was bad for him, yet he could not eat meat,
as people might perhaps say Byelikov did not keep the fasts, and he ate freshwater fish with butter --
not a Lenten dish, yet one could not say that it was meat. He did not keep a female servant for fear
people might think evil of him, but had as cook an old man of sixty, called Afanasy, half-witted and
given to tippling, who had once been an officer's servant and could cook after a fashion. This Afanasy
was usually standing at the door with his arms folded; with a deep sigh, he would mutter always the
same thing: