Demons

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

He suddenly dropped a tiny bag that he had been holding in his left hand. Actually, it wasn’t a bag, but a box of some kind, or, more accurately, a small portfolio of some kind, or, rather, a small reticule,6 like an old-fashioned lady’s reticule. Actually, I don’t know what it was, but I do know that I seem to have rushed to pick it up. I am utterly convinced that I didn’t pick it up, but my initial movement was unmistakable; I could not conceal it, and I blushed like an idiot. The crafty fellow promptly extracted everything from the situation that he possibly could. ‘Don’t trouble yourself, I’ll get it myself,’ he said charmingly, that is, when he finally realized that I wouldn’t pick up his reticule for him, he picked it up, as if anticipating me, nodded his head again, and set out on his way, leaving me looking like an idiot. It was the same as if I had picked it up myself. For a good five minutes I thought I had been completely and permanently disgraced; but as I walked up to Stepan Trofimovich’s house, I suddenly burst out laughing. The encounter seemed so funny to me that I immediately decided to amuse Stepan Trofimovich with an account of it, and even act out the whole scene for him.