“Remember that the last time we met was at the Granovsky dinner in Moscow, and that twenty-four years have passed since then⁠ ⁠…” Stepan Trofimovitch began very reasonably (and consequently not at all in the same “chic” style).

“ Ce cher homme ,” Karmazinov interrupted with shrill familiarity, squeezing his shoulder with exaggerated friendliness. “Make haste and take us to your room, Yulia Mihailovna; there he’ll sit down and tell us everything.”

“And yet I was never at all intimate with that peevish old woman,” Stepan Trofimovitch went on complaining to me that same evening, shaking with anger; “we were almost boys, and I’d begun to detest him even then⁠ ⁠… just as he had me, of course.”