Mark André ’s Reviews > The Insulted and the Injured > Status Update

I looked at her and waited. Her face was sad. I would have asked her, but sometimes she particularly disliked being questioned.

I investigated a little affair for a prince not long ago, an affair, I tell you, one wouldn’t have ex­pected from that prince. Or would you care to hear another story about a married woman? You come and see me, old man, and I’ve got a wealth of such plots ready for you that people will never believe they’re true if you write about them.”

Among the Rus­sians there are many such men. They often have great abilities, but everything seems tangled up in them, and what’s more they are quite capable of knowingly acting against their conscience in certain cases through weak­ness, and not only come to inevitable ruin, but know beforehand that they are on the road to ruin. Masloboyev, for one, was drowning himself in vodka.

The expression on his face was malicious and sensual. His evil, spiteful and mis­trustful little eyes were lost in fat ...

To be sure, you're a general, a literary one that is, eh!

Speak, you gypsy, you foreign mask! Speak!

My curiosity was roused to the utmost. Though I had made up m y mind not to follow her in, I felt I had to find out which house she lived in, just in case. I wias overcome by a strange, oppressive sensiation, not unlike the impres­ sion her grandfather had made on me when Azorka died in the restaurant.

And, indeed, it would be difficult to find a creature stranger or more original—in appearance, at least. Small of stature, with flashing black eyes, which looked somehow foreign, with a mass of thick, dishevelled black hair, and a mute, fixed, enigmatic gaze, she would have attracted the notice of anyone who passed her in the street. The expression in her eyes was particularly striking! There was a light of intellect

But how a certain man must have been laughing at us just then as he fell asleep in his comfortable bed— that is, if he thought us worth laughing at! Probably he didn’t!

... he seemed to be artificially assuming the air of an eccentric man struggling to con­ceal an overwhelming feeling under a show of humour, carelessness and jest. But all this only occurred to me afterwards; at the time the effect was different.