He had already had time anyway to make some disagreeable though valuable observations, and seemed very apprehensive alone without Varvara Petrovna.

He had an agitating suspicion that he had already been mentioned to the governor as a dangerous man.

He knew for a fact that some of our ladies meant to give up calling on Varvara Petrovna.

Of our governor's wife (who was only expected to arrive in the autumn) it was reported that though she was, so it was heard, proud, she was a real aristocrat, and "not like that poor Varvara Petrovna." Everybody seemed to know for a fact, and in the greatest detail, that our governor's wife and Varvara Petrovna had met already in society and had parted enemies, so that the mere mention of Madame von Lembke's name would, it was said, make a painful impression on Varvara Petrovna.
The confident and triumphant air of Varvara Petrovna, the contemptuous indifference with which she heard of the opinions of our provincial ladies and the agitation in local society, revived the flagging spirits of Stepan Trofimovitch and cheered him up at once.

With peculiar, gleefully-obsequious humour, he was beginning to describe the new governor's arrival.
"You are no doubt aware, _excellente amie_," he said, jauntily and coquettishly drawling his words, "what is meant by a Russian administrator, speaking generally, and what is meant by a new Russian administrator, that is the newly-baked, newly-established..._ces interminables mots Russes!_ But I don't think you can know in practice what is meant by administrative ardour, and what sort of thing that is." "Administrative ardour?
I don't know what that is." "Well...