It struck her as strange and unsuitable that he should dare to compare himself with Nezhdanov; but she thought, 'Let him brag now.' (Though he was not bragging at all, but rather, to his own ideas, humbling himself.)
'A fellow called Silin found me out here,' Paklin continued. 'Nezhdanov had written to him too just before his death. And he, this Silin, was inquiring whether one couldn't get hold of any of his papers. But Alyosha's things had been put under seal . . . and besides, there were no papers among them; he burned everything, he burned his poems too. You didn't know perhaps that he wrote poetry? I am so sorry about them; I am sure some of them must have been very good. All that has vanished with him, all lost in the common vortex, and dead for ever! Nothing's left but the memories of his friends till they pass away in their turn!'
Paklin paused.
'The Sipyagins,' he went on again: 'do you remember those condescending, dignified, loathsome swells? They're at the tip-top of power and glory by now!'
Mashurina did not 'remember' the Sipyagins in the least; but Paklin hated them both, especially Mr. Sipyagin, to such a degree that he could not deny himself the pleasure of
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