"He's coming! At last I... you see, it's very long since I've seen Petrusha!" Stepan Trofimovitch could not get away from this phrase. "Now I expect my poor boy to whom... to whom I have been so much to blame! That is, I mean to say, when I left him in Petersburg, I... in short, I looked on him as a nonentity, _quelque chose dans ce genre._ He was a very nervous boy, you know, emotional, and... very timid. When he said his prayers going to bed he used to bow down to the ground, and make the sign of the cross on his pillow that he might not die in the night.... _Je m'en souviens. Enfin,_ no artistic feeling whatever, not a sign of anything higher, of anything fundamental, no embryo of a future ideal..._c'était comme un petit idiot,_ but I'm afraid I am incoherent; excuse me... you came upon me..." "You say seriously that he crossed his pillow?" the engineer asked suddenly with marked curiosity. "Yes, he used to..." "All right. I just asked. Go on." Stepan Trofimovitch looked interrogatively at Liputin. "I'm very grateful to you for your visit. But I must confess I'm... not in a condition... just now... But allow me to ask where you are lodging." "At Filipov's, in Bogoyavlensky Street." "Ach, that's where Shatov lives," I observed involuntarily. "Just so, in the very same house," cried Liputin, "only Shatov lodges above, in the attic, while he's down below, at Captain Lebyadkin's. He knows Shatov too, and he knows Shatov's wife. He was very intimate with her, abroad." "_Comment!_ Do you really know anything about that unhappy marriage _de ce pauvre ami_ and that woman," cried Stepan Trofimovitch, carried away by sudden feeling. "You are the first man I've met who has known her personally; and if only..." "What nonsense!" the engineer snapped out, flushing all over. "How you add to things, Liputin! I've not seen Shatov's wife; I've only once seen her in the distance and not at all close.... I know Shatov. Why do you add things of all sorts?" He turned round sharply on the sofa, clutched his hat, then laid it down again, and settling himself down once more as before, fixed his angry black eyes on Stepan Trofimovitch with a sort of defiance. I was at a loss to understand such strange irritability. "Excuse me," Stepan Trofimovitch observed impressively. "I understand that it may be a very delicate subject...." "No sort of delicate subject in it, and indeed it's shameful, and I didn't shout at you that it's nonsense, but at Liputin, because he adds things. Excuse me if you took it to yourself. I know Shatov, but I don't know his wife at all... I don't know her at all!"