For five minutes I considered myself utterly disgraced for ever, but as I reached Stepan Trofimovitch's house I suddenly burst out laughing; the meeting struck me as so amusing that I immediately resolved to entertain Stepan Trofimovitch with an account of it, and even to act the whole scene to him.
III But this time to my surprise I found an extraordinary change in him.

He pounced on me with a sort of avidity, it is true, as soon as I went in, and began listening to me, but with such a distracted air that at first he evidently did not take in my words.

But as soon as I pronounced the name of Karmazinov he suddenly flew into a frenzy.
"Don't speak of him! Don't pronounce that name!" he exclaimed, almost in a fury.

"Here, look, read it! Read it!" He opened the drawer and threw on the table three small sheets of paper, covered with a hurried pencil scrawl, all from Varvara Petrovna.

The first letter was dated the day before yesterday, the second had come yesterday, and the last that day, an hour before.