"My friend, now I am utterly alone. _Enfin, c'est ridicule._ Would you believe it, the place is positively packed with mysteries there too. They simply flew at me about those ears and noses, and some mysteries in Petersburg too. You know they hadn't heard till they came about the tricks Nicolas played here four years ago. 'You were here, you saw it, is it true that he is mad?' Where they got the idea I can't make out. Why is it that Praskovya is so anxious Nicolas should be mad? The woman will have it so, she will. _Ce Maurice,_ or what's his name, Mavriky Nikolaevitch, _brave homme tout de même..._ but can it be for his sake, and after she wrote herself from Paris to _cette pauvre amie?... Enfin,_ this Praskovya, as _cette chère amie_ calls her, is a type. She's Gogol's Madame Box, of immortal memory, only she's a spiteful Madame Box, a malignant Box, and in an immensely exaggerated form." "That's making her out a regular packing-case if it's an exaggerated form." "Well, perhaps it's the opposite; it's all the same, only don't interrupt me, for I'm all in a whirl. They are all at loggerheads, except Lise, she keeps on with her 'Auntie, auntie!' but Lise's sly, and there's something behind it too. Secrets. She has quarrelled with the old lady. _Cette pauvre_ auntie tyrannises over every one it's true, and then there's the governor's wife, and the rudeness of local society, and Karmazinov's 'rudeness'; and then this idea of madness, _ce Lipoutine, ce que je ne comprends pas..._ and... and they say she's been putting vinegar on her head, and here are we with our complaints and letters.... Oh, how I have tormented her and at such a time! _Je suis un ingrat!_ Only imagine, I come back and find a letter from her; read it, read it! Oh, how ungrateful it was of me!" He gave me a letter he had just received from Varvara Petrovna. She seemed to have repented of her "stay at home." The letter was amiable but decided in tone, and brief. She invited Stepan Trofimovitch to come to her the day after to-morrow, which was Sunday, at twelve o'clock, and advised him to bring one of his friends with him. (My name was mentioned in parenthesis). She promised on her side to invite Shatov, as the brother of Darya Pavlovna. "You can obtain a final answer from her: will that be enough for you? Is this the formality you were so anxious for?" "Observe that irritable phrase about formality. Poor thing, poor thing, the friend of my whole life! I confess the sudden determination of my whole future almost crushed me.... I confess I still had hopes, but now _tout est dit._ I know now that all is over. _C'est terrible!_ Oh, that that Sunday would never come and everything would go on in the old way. You would have gone on coming and I'd have gone on here...." "You've been upset by all those nasty things Liputin said, those slanders."