The Idiot

In my opinion, he wasn't insane, he just suffered terribly—that was the whole of his illness. And if you knew what our children became for him in the end . . . But I'd better tell you about the patient later; now I'll tell you how it all started. The children disliked me at first. I was so big, I'm always so clumsy; I know I'm also bad-looking . . . finally, there was the fact that I was a foreigner. The children laughed at me at first, and then even began throwing stones at me, when they spied me kissing Marie. And I only kissed her once . . . No, don't laugh," the prince hastened to stop the smiles of his listeners. "There wasn't any love here. If you knew what an unfortunate being she was, you'd pity her as I did. She was from our village. Her mother was an old woman, and in her tiny, completely decrepit house, one of the two windows was partitioned off, with the permission of the village authorities she was allowed to sell laces, thread, tobacco, and soap from this window, all at the lowest prices, and that was her subsistence. She was ill, her legs were swollen, so she always sat in her place. Marie was her daughter, about twenty, weak and thin; she had been consumptive for a long time, but she kept going from house to house, hiring herself out by the day to do heavy work—scrubbing floors, washing laundry, sweeping yards, tending cattle. A French traveling salesman seduced her and took her away, but after a week he abandoned her on the road alone and quietly left. She came home, begging on the way, all dirty, ragged, her shoes torn; she had walked for a week, slept in the fields, and caught a bad cold; her feet were covered with sores, her hands swollen and chapped. She had never been pretty anyway; only her eyes were gentle, kind, innocent. She was terribly taciturn. Once, before then, she suddenly began to sing over her work, and I remember that everybody was surprised and started laughing: 'Marie's begun to sing! What? Marie's begun to sing!' And she was terribly abashed and kept silent forever after. People were still nice to her then, but when she came back sick and worn out, there was no compassion for her in anyone! How cruel they are about that! What harsh notions they have of it all! Her mother was the first to greet her with spite and contempt: 'You've dishonored me now.' She was the first to hold her up to disgrace: when they heard in the village that Marie had come back, everybody ran to look at her, and nearly the whole village came running to the old woman's cottage: old men, children, women, girls, everybody, in such a hustling, greedy crowd. Marie was lying on the floor at the old woman's feet, hungry,

ragged, weeping. When they all rushed in, she covered herself with her disheveled hair and lay facedown on the floor like that. Everybody around looked on her as if she were vermin; the old men denounced and abused her, the young ones even laughed, the women abused her, denounced her, looked at her with contempt, as at some sort of spider. Her mother allowed it all; she herself sat there nodding her head and approving. Her mother was already very sick then and nearly dying; in fact, two months later she did die; she knew she was dying, but even so she never thought of being reconciled with her daughter till her dying day, never spoke a single word to her, chased her out to sleep in the front hall, gave her almost nothing to eat. She often had to soak her ailing legs in warm water; Marie washed her legs every day and took care of her; the woman accepted all her services silently and never said a kind word to her. Marie endured it all, and later, when I became acquainted with her, I noticed that she approved of it herself and considered herself the lowest sort of creature. When the old woman took to her bed, the old women of the village took turns looking after her, as they do there. Then Marie was no longer given anything to eat; everybody in the village chased her away and nobody even wanted to give her work as they used to. It was as if they all spat on her, and the men even stopped considering her a woman, such vile things they said to her. At times, very rarely, when they got drunk on Sundays, they amused themselves by tossing coins to her, like that, right on the ground; Marie silently picked them up. She had begun to cough up blood by then. Finally her ragged clothes turned into real shreds, so that she was ashamed to show herself in the village; and she had gone barefoot ever since she came back. It was then that the schoolchildren, the whole band— there were over forty of them—began especially to mock her and even threw mud at her. She had asked the cowherd to let her tend the cows, but the cowherd had chased her away. Then she herself, without permission, began going out with the herd for the whole day, away from the house. As she was very useful to the cowherd and he noticed it, he no longer chased her away and sometimes even gave her the leftovers from his dinner, some cheese and bread. He considered it great charity on his part. When her mother died, the pastor saw no shame in disgracing Marie before all the people in church. Marie stood behind the coffin, as she was, in her rags, and wept. Many people came to see how she would weep and walk behind the coffin; then the pastor—he was still a young man and

his whole ambition was to become a great preacher—turned to them all and pointed at Marie. 'Here is the one who caused this respected woman's death' (which wasn't true, because she had been sick for two years), 'here she stands before you and dares not look up, because she is marked by the finger of God; here she is, barefoot and in rags—an example to those who lose their virtue! Who is she? She is her own daughter!' and more in the same vein. And imagine, almost everyone there liked this meanness, but . . . here a peculiar thing occurred; here the children stepped in, because by then the children were all on my side and had begun to love Marie. This is how it happened. I wanted to do something for Marie; she badly needed money, but I never had a penny while I was there. I had a small diamond pin, and I sold it to a certain peddler: he went from village to village trading in old clothes. He gave me eight francs, though it was worth a good forty. I spent a long time trying to meet Marie alone; we finally met outside the village, by a hedge, on a side path to the mountain, behind a tree. There I gave her the eight francs and told her to be sparing of them, because I wouldn't have more, and then I kissed her and said she shouldn't think I had any bad intentions, and that I had kissed her not because I was in love with her but because I felt very sorry for her, and that from the very start I had never regarded her as guilty but only as unfortunate. I wanted very much to comfort her right then and to assure her that she shouldn't regard herself as so low before everyone, but she didn't seem to understand. I noticed it at once, though she was silent almost all the while and stood before me looking down and terribly embarrassed. When I finished, she kissed my hand, and I took her hand at once and wanted to kiss it, but she quickly pulled it back. Just then the children suddenly spied us, a whole crowd of them; I learned later that they had been spying on me for a long time. They began to whistle, clap their hands, and laugh, and Marie ran away. I wanted to speak to them, but they started throwing stones at me. That same day everybody knew about it, the entire village; it all fell on Marie again: they now disliked her still more. I even heard that they wanted to condemn her and punish her, but, thank God, it blew over. The children, however, wouldn't let her alone, teased her worse than before, threw mud at her; they chased her, she ran away from them with her weak chest, gasping for breath; they kept at it, shouting, abusing her. Once I even picked a fight with them. Then I started talking with them, talking every day, whenever I had a chance.

They sometimes stood and listened, though they kept up their abuse. I told them how unfortunate Marie was; soon they stopped abusing me and would silently walk away. We gradually began to talk. I didn't hide anything from them, I told them everything. They listened very curiously and soon started to feel sorry for Marie. Some started greeting her kindly when they met; the custom there, when you met someone, whether you knew them or not, was to bow and say: 'Good day.' I can imagine how surprised Marie was. Once two girls got some food and brought it to her, gave it to her, then came and told me. They said Marie burst into tears and now they loved her very much. Soon they all began to love her, and at the same time they began to love me as well. They started coming to see me often, asking me to tell them stories; it seems I did it well, because they liked listening to me very much. And later I studied and read everything only so as to tell them afterwards, and for three years after that I told them all sorts of things. When everybody accused me afterwards—Schneider, too— of talking to them like grown-ups, without hiding anything, I replied that it was shameful to lie to them, they knew everything anyway, no matter how you hid it, and might learn it in a bad way, while from me it wouldn't be in a bad way. You only had to remember yourself as a child. They didn't agree ... I kissed Marie two weeks before her mother died; when the pastor gave his sermon, all the children were already on my side. I told them about it at once and explained the pastor's action; they all became angry with him, some so much that they sent stones through the pastor's windows. I stopped them, because that was a bad thing; but everyone in the village learned all about it at once, and here they began to accuse me of having corrupted the children. Then they found out that the children loved Marie and became terribly frightened; but Marie was happy now. The children were even forbidden to meet her, but they ran in secret to see her with her herd, quite far, almost half a mile from the village; they brought her treats, and some simply ran there to embrace her and kiss her, saying: 'Je vous aime, Marie!' and then rushed headlong home. Marie almost lost her mind from this sudden happiness; she had never dreamed of anything like it; she was embarrassed and joyful, and the children, especially the girls, wanted above all to run to her and tell her that I loved her and had told them a lot about her. They told her that they knew everything from me, and that now they loved and pitied her and always would. Then they came running to me and with

such joyful, concerned little faces told me that they had just seen Marie and that Marie sent her greetings. In the evenings I used to go to the waterfall; there was one place completely screened off on the village side, with poplars growing around it; that was where they would gather with me in the evening, some even in secret. It seemed to me that my love for Marie delighted them terribly, and that was the one thing, during all my life there, in which I deceived them. I didn't disappoint them by confessing that I did not love Marie at all—that is, was not in love with her—but only pitied her; everything told me that they preferred it the way they had imagined and decided it among themselves, and so I said nothing and pretended they had guessed right. And those little hearts were so delicate and tender: among other things, it seemed impossible to them that their good Léon should love Marie so much, while Marie was so poorly dressed and had no shoes. Imagine, they even got shoes and stockings and linen for her, and even some sort of dress. How they managed it I don't know; the whole band worked on it. When I asked them, they only laughed merrily, and the little girls clapped their hands and kissed me. I, too, occasionally went in secret to see Marie. She was becoming very ill and could barely walk; in the end she stopped helping the cowherd altogether; but even so she left with the herd each morning. She sat to one side. There was a sheer, almost vertical cliff there, with a ledge; she would sit on a stone in a corner that was shielded from everyone and spend the whole day almost without moving, from morning till it was time for the herd to go. By then she was so weak from consumption that she mostly sat with her eyes closed, leaning her head against the rock, and dozed, breathing heavily; her face was thin as a skeleton's, and sweat stood out on her forehead and temples. That was how I always found her. I'd come for a minute, and I also didn't want to be seen. As soon as I appeared, Marie would give a start, open her eyes, and rush to kiss my hands. I no longer withdrew them, because for her it was happiness; all the while I sat there, she trembled and wept; true, she tried several times to speak, but it was hard to understand her. She was like a crazy person, in terrible agitation and rapture. Sometimes the children came with me. On those occasions, they usually stood not far away and set about guarding us from something or someone, and they were extraordinarily pleased with that. When we left, Marie again remained alone, motionless as before, her eyes closed and her head leaning against the rock; she may have been dreaming of

something. One morning she was unable to go out with the herd and stayed in her empty house. The children learned of it at once and almost all of them went to visit her that day; she lay in her bed all alone. For two days only the children looked after her, taking turns in coming, but afterwards, when they learned in the village that Marie really was dying, the old women of the village began coming in turns to sit by her bedside. It seemed they started to feel sorry for Marie in the village, at least they no longer stopped or scolded the children as before. Marie dozed all the time, her sleep was restless: she coughed terribly. The old women chased the children away, but they came to the window, sometimes just for a moment, only to say: 'Bonjour, notre bonne Marie.' And as soon as she saw or heard them, she would become all animated and, not listening to the old women, would at once try to prop herself on her elbow, nod to them, and thank them. They went on bringing her treats, but she ate almost nothing. Because of them, I can assure you, she died almost happy. Because of them, she forgot her black woe, as if she had received forgiveness from them, because till the very end she considered herself a great criminal. Like little birds, they fluttered with their wings against her window and called to her every morning: 'Nous t'aimons, Marie! She died very soon. I thought she would live much longer. On the eve of her death, before sunset, I stopped to see her; she seemed to recognize me, and I pressed her hand for the last time—how emaciated her hand was! Then suddenly in the morning they come and tell me that Marie is dead. Here there was no holding the children back: they decorated the whole coffin with flowers and put a wreath on her head. In church this time the pastor did not heap shame on the dead girl, and anyway there were very few people at the funeral, only some who came out of curiosity. But when it was time to carry the coffin, the children all rushed to do it themselves. As they couldn't really carry it, they helped, they ran after the coffin, all of them crying. Since then Marie's little grave has been constantly venerated by the children; every year they decorate it with flowers, and they've planted roses all around it. But with this funeral also began my great persecution by the whole village on account of the children. The main instigators were the pastor and the schoolmaster. The children were absolutely forbidden even to meet me, and Schneider even undertook to see to it. But we met all the same, we exchanged signs from a distance. They sent me their little notes. Later on it all settled down, but at the time it was very nice: I

became even closer to the children because of this persecution. During my last year I even almost made peace with Thibaut and the pastor. But Schneider talked to me a lot and argued with me about my harmful 'system' with the children. What system did I have! Finally Schneider told me one very strange thought of his. This was just before my departure. He told me he was fully convinced that I was a perfect child myself, that is, fully a child, that I resembled an adult only in size and looks, but in development, soul, character, and perhaps even mind, I was not an adult, and I would stay that way even if I lived to be sixty. I laughed very much: he wasn't right, of course, because what's little about me? But one thing is true, that I really don't like being with adults, with people, with grown-ups—and I noticed that long ago—I don't like it because I don't know how. Whatever they say to me, however kind they are to me, still I'm always oppressed with them for some reason, and I'm terribly glad when I can go quickly to my comrades, and my comrades have always been children—not because I'm a child myself, but simply because I'm drawn to children. When I'd meet them, back at the beginning of my life in the village—it was when I used to go and be sad alone in the mountains—when I'd be wandering alone and sometimes met the whole band of them, especially at noontime, when they were out of school, noisy, running, with their satchels and slates, shouting, laughing, playing— my whole soul would suddenly begin to yearn for them. I don't know, but I began to feel some extremely strong and happy feeling each time I met them. I'd stop and laugh with happiness, looking at their flashing and eternally running little feet, at the boys and girls running together, at their laughter and tears (because many of them had managed to have a fight, to cry, and to make peace again and play together on their way home from school), and then I'd forget all my sadness. Afterwards, for all those three remaining years, I was unable to understand how people can be sad and what makes them sad. My whole destiny went to them. I never intended to leave the village, and it never occurred to me that I might someday return here, to Russia. It seemed to me that I would always be there, but I saw, finally, that it was impossible for Schneider to keep me, and then something turned up which seemed so important that Schneider himself hurried me on my way and wrote a reply for me here. I'll have to see what it is and consult with someone. Maybe my fate will change completely, but that's all not it and not the main thing. The main thing is that my whole life has changed

already. I left a lot there, too much. It's all vanished. I sat on the train thinking: 'Now I'm going to be with people; maybe I don't know anything, but the new life has come.' I decided to do my duty honestly and firmly. Maybe it will be boring and painful for me to be with people. In the first place I decided to be polite and candid with everybody; no one can ask more of me. Maybe I'll be considered a child here, too—so be it! Everybody also considers me an idiot for some reason, and in fact I was once so ill that I was like an idiot; but what sort of idiot am I now, when I myself understand that I'm considered an idiot? I come in and think: 'They consider me an idiot, but I'm intelligent all the same, and they don't even suspect it . . .' I often have that thought. When I was in Berlin and received several little letters they had already managed to write to me, it was only then that I realized how much I loved them. Receiving the first letter was very hard! How sad they were as they saw me off! They began a month ahead: 'Léon s'en va, Léon s'en va pour toujours.'* Every evening we gathered by the waterfall as before and kept talking about our parting. Sometimes it was as joyful as before; only when we broke up for the night, they started hugging me tightly and warmly, which they never did before. Some came running to see me in secret from the rest, singly, only in order to hug me and kiss me alone, not in front of everybody. When I was setting out, all of them, the whole swarm, saw me off to the station. The railway station was about half a mile from the village. They tried to keep from crying, but many failed and cried loudly, especially the girls. We hurried so as not to be late, but one or another of the crowd would suddenly rush to me in the middle of the road, put his little arms around me, and kiss me, for which the whole crowd also had to stop; and though we were in a hurry, everybody stopped and waited for him to say good-bye to me. When I got on the train and it started off, they all shouted 'Hurrah!' to me and stood there for a long time, until the train was quite gone. I kept looking, too . . . Listen, when I came in here earlier and looked at your dear faces—I'm very attentive to faces now—and heard your first words, I felt light at heart for the first time since then. I thought maybe I really am one of the lucky ones: I know it's not easy to meet people you can love at once, yet I met you as soon as I got off the train. I know very well that it's shameful to talk about your feelings with everyone,

* Léon is going away, Léon is going away forever!

yet here I am talking with you, and with you I'm not ashamed. I'm unsociable and may not visit you for a long time. Don't take it as thinking ill: I'm not saying it because I don't value you, and you also mustn't think I've been offended in any way. You asked me about your faces and what I observe in them. I'll tell you with great pleasure. Yours, Adelaida Ivanovna, is a happy face, the most sympathetic of the three. Not only are you very pretty, but one looks at you and says: 'She has the face of a kind sister.' You approach things simply and cheerfully, but you are also quick to know hearts. That's what I think about your face. Yours, Alexandra Ivanovna, is also a beautiful and very sweet face, but you may have some secret sorrow; your soul is no doubt very kind, but you are not joyful. There is some special nuance in your face that reminds me of Holbein's Madonna in Dresden.²⁶ Well, that's for your face— am I a good guesser? You yourselves consider me one. But about your face, Lizaveta Prokofyevna," he suddenly turned to Mrs. Epanchin, "about your face I not only think but I'm certain that you are a perfect child, in everything, in everything, in everything good and in everything bad, despite your age. You're not angry that I say it? You do know my regard for children? And don't think it's out of simplicity that I've just spoken so candidly about your faces; oh, no, not at all! Maybe I, too, have something in mind."

VII

When the prince fell silent, they all looked at him gaily, even Aglaya, but especially Lizaveta Prokofyevna.

"Quite an examination!" she cried. "So, my dear ladies, you thought you were going to patronize him like a poor little thing, and he barely deigned to accept you, and that with the reservation that he would come only rarely. We've been made fools of—Ivan Fyodorovich most of all—and I'm glad. Bravo, Prince, we were told earlier to put you through an examination. And what you said about my face is all completely true: I am a child, and I know it. I knew it even before you said it; you precisely expressed my own thought in a single word. I think your character is completely identical to mine, and I'm very glad; like two drops of water. Only you're a man and I'm a woman, and I've never been to Switzerland, that's all the difference."

"Don't be in a hurry, maman" cried Aglaya, "the prince said he

had something special in mind in all his confessions, and he wasn't simply saying it."

"Yes, oh, yes," the others laughed.

"Don't tease him, my dears, he may be cleverer than all three of you put together. You'll see. Only why have you said nothing about Aglaya, Prince? Aglaya's waiting, and I am, too."

"I can't say anything now. I'll say it later."

"Why? She's noticeable, I believe?"

"Oh, yes, she's noticeable. You're an extraordinary beauty, Aglaya Ivanovna. You're so good-looking that one is afraid to look at you."

"That's all? And her qualities?" Mrs. Epanchin persisted.

"Beauty is difficult to judge; I'm not prepared yet. Beauty is a riddle."

"That means you've set Aglaya a riddle," said Adelaida. "Solve it, Aglaya. But she is good-looking, isn't she, Prince?"

"Extremely!" the prince replied warmly, with an enthusiastic glance at Aglaya. "Almost like Nastasya Filippovna, though her face is quite different ..."

They all exchanged astonished looks.

"Like who-o-om?" Mrs. Epanchin drew out. "Like Nastasya Filippovna? Where have you seen Nastasya Filippovna? What Nastasya Filippovna?"

"Gavrila Ardalionovich was just showing Ivan Fyodorovich her portrait."

"What? He brought Ivan Fyodorovich her portrait?"

"To show him. Today Nastasya Filippovna presented Gavrila Ardalionovich with her portrait, and he brought it to show."

"I want to see it!" Mrs. Epanchin heaved herself up. "Where is this portrait? If she gave it to him, he must have it, and, of course, he's still in the office! He always comes to work on Wednesdays and never leaves before four. Send for Gavrila Ardalionovich at once! No, I'm hardly dying to see him. Do me a favor, my dear Prince, go to the office, take the portrait from him, and bring it here. Tell him we want to look at it. Please."

"He's nice, but much too simple," said Adelaida, when the prince had gone.

"Yes, much too much," agreed Alexandra, "so that he's even slightly ridiculous."

It was as if neither had spoken her whole mind.

"However, with our faces he got out of it nicely," said Aglaya. "He flattered everyone, even maman."

"Don't be witty, please!" cried Mrs. Epanchin. "It was not he who flattered me, but I who was flattered."

"Do you think he was trying to get out of it?" asked Adelaida.

"I don't think he's so simple."

"Well, there she goes!" Mrs. Epanchin became angry. "And in my opinion you're even more ridiculous than he is. He's a bit simple, but he keeps his own counsel, in the most noble fashion, to be sure. Just as I do."

"Of course, it was bad of me to let on about the portrait," the prince reflected to himself on his way to the office, feeling some remorse. "But . . . maybe it's a good thing I let on ..." A strange idea was beginning to flash in his head, though not a very clear one as yet.

Gavrila Ardalionovich was still sitting in the office and was immersed in his papers. Evidently he did not get his salary from the joint-stock company for nothing. He became terribly embarrassed when the prince asked about the portrait and told him how they had found out about it.

"A-a-ah! Why did you have to blab!" he shouted in angry vexation. "You don't know anything . . . Idiot!" he muttered to himself.

"I'm sorry, I said it quite unthinkingly, just by the way. I said that Aglaya was almost as good-looking as Nastasya Filippovna."

Ganya asked for more detail. The prince complied. Ganya again gave him a mocking look.

"You do go on about Nastasya Filippovna . . ." he muttered, but lapsed into thought without finishing.

He was obviously alarmed. The prince reminded him about the portrait.

"Listen, Prince," Ganya said suddenly, as if an unexpected thought had dawned on him. "I have a huge request to make of you . . . But I really don't know . . ."

He became embarrassed and did not finish; he was venturing upon something and seemed to be struggling with himself. The prince waited silently. Ganya studied him once more with intent, searching eyes.

"Prince," he began again, "right now they're . . . owing to a completely strange circumstance . . . ridiculous . . . and for which I'm not to blame . . . well, in short, it's irrelevant—they're a bit angry with me in there, it seems, so for the time being I'd rather not go there without being sent for. I need terribly to talk with Aglaya Ivanovna now. I've written a few words just in case" (a

small, folded note appeared in his hand), "and I don't know how to deliver it. Would you take it upon yourself, Prince, to deliver it to Aglaya Ivanovna, right now, but only to Aglaya Ivanovna, that is, so that nobody sees—understand? It's not such a great secret, God knows, there's nothing to it, but . . . will you do it?"

"It's not altogether pleasant for me," said the prince.

"Ah, Prince, it's of the utmost necessity for me!" Ganya began to plead. "Maybe she'll answer . . . Believe me, only in the utmost, the very utmost case, would I turn to . . . Who else can I send it with? . . . It's very important. . . It's terribly important for me . . ."

Ganya was terribly afraid that the prince would not agree and kept peering into his eyes with cowardly entreaty.

"Very well, I'll deliver it."

"But only so that nobody notices," the now joyful Ganya pleaded. "And another thing, Prince, I'm relying on your word of honor, eh?"

"I won't show it to anybody," said the prince.

"The note isn't sealed, but . . ." the much too flustered Ganya let slip and stopped in embarrassment.

"Oh, I won't read it," the prince replied with perfect simplicity, took the portrait, and walked out of the office.

Ganya, left alone, clutched his head. "One word from her, and I . . . and I really may break it off! . . ."

He started pacing up and down the office, too excited and expectant to sit down to his papers again.

The prince pondered as he went; he was unpleasantly struck by the errand, and unpleasantly struck by the thought of Ganya's note to Aglaya. But two rooms away from the drawing room he suddenly stopped, seemed to remember something, looked around, went over to the window, closer to the light, and began to look at Nastasya Filippovna's portrait.

It was as if he wanted to unriddle something hidden in that face which had also struck him earlier. The earlier impression had scarcely left him, and now it was as if he were hastening to verify something. That face, extraordinary for its beauty and for something else, now struck him still more. There seemed to be a boundless pride and contempt, almost hatred, in that face, and at the same time something trusting, something surprisingly simple-hearted; the contrast even seemed to awaken some sort of compassion as one looked at those features. That dazzling beauty was even unbearable, the beauty of the pale face, the nearly hollow

cheeks and burning eyes—strange beauty! The prince gazed for a moment, then suddenly roused himself, looked around, hastily put the portrait to his lips and kissed it. When he entered the drawing room a minute later, his face was completely calm.

But as he was going into the dining room (one room away from the drawing room), in the doorway he almost ran into Aglaya, who was coming out. She was alone.

"Gavrila Ardalionovich asked me to give you this," said the prince, handing her the note.

Aglaya stopped, took the note, and looked at the prince somehow strangely. There was not the least embarrassment in her look, perhaps only a glimpse of a certain surprise, and even that seemed to refer only to the prince. With her look Aglaya seemed to demand an accounting from him—in what way had he ended up in this affair together with Ganya?—and to demand it calmly and haughtily. For two or three moments they stood facing each other; finally something mocking barely showed in her face; she smiled slightly and walked past him.

Mrs. Epanchin studied the portrait of Nastasya Filippovna for some time silently and with a certain tinge of scorn, holding it out in front of her at an extreme and ostentatious distance from her eyes.

"Yes, good-looking," she said at last, "even very. I've seen her twice, only from a distance. So that's the sort of beauty you appreciate?" she suddenly turned to the prince.

"Yes . . . that sort . . ." the prince replied with some effort.

"Meaning precisely that sort?"

"Precisely that sort."

"Why so?"

"There's so much suffering ... in that face . .." the prince said, as if inadvertently, as if he were talking to himself and not answering a question.

"You may be raving, however," Mrs. Epanchin decided, and with an arrogant gesture she flung the portrait down on the table.

Alexandra picked it up, Adelaida came over to her, and they both began to study it. Just then Aglaya came back to the drawing room.

"Such power!" Adelaida cried all at once, peering greedily at the portrait over her sister's shoulder.

"Where? What power?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna asked sharply.

"Such beauty has power," Adelaida said hotly. "You can overturn the world with such beauty."

She went pensively to her easel. Aglaya gave the portrait only a fleeting look, narrowed her eyes, thrust out her lower lip, and sat down to one side, her arms folded.

Mrs. Epanchin rang.

"Send Gavrila Ardalionovich here, he's in the office," she ordered the entering servant.

"Maman!" Alexandra exclaimed significantly.

"I want to say a couple of words to him—and enough!" Mrs. Epanchin snapped quickly, stopping the objection. She was visibly irritated. "You see, Prince, we now have all these secrets here. All these secrets! It's required, it's some sort of etiquette, a stupid thing. And that in a matter which requires the greatest openness, clarity, and honesty. Marriages are in the works, I don't like these marriages . . ."

"Maman, what are you saying?" Alexandra again tried to stop her.

"What's wrong, daughter dear? Do you like it yourself? And so what if the prince can hear, since we're friends. I am his, at least. God seeks people, good people, of course, he doesn't need the wicked and capricious—especially the capricious, who decide one thing today and say something else tomorrow. You understand, Alexandra Ivanovna? They say I'm odd, Prince, but I have discernment. Because the heart is the main thing, the rest is nonsense. Brains are also necessary, of course . . . maybe brains are the main thing. Don't smile, Aglaya, I'm not contradicting myself: a fool with a heart and no brains is as unhappy a fool as a fool with brains but no heart. An old truth. I am a fool with a heart but no brains, and you are a fool with brains but no heart; and we're both unhappy, and we both suffer."

"What are you so unhappy about, maman?" Adelaida, who alone of the whole company seemed not to have lost her cheerful disposition, could not help asking.

"First of all, about my learned daughters," Mrs. Epanchin snapped, "and since that is enough in itself, there's no point in expatiating on the rest. There's been enough verbosity. We'll see how the two of you (I don't count Aglaya), with your brains and verbosity, are going to find your way and whether you, my much esteemed Alexandra Ivanovna, are going to be happy with your honorable gentleman . . . Ah! ..." she exclaimed, seeing the entering Ganya. "Here comes one more matrimony. How do you do!" she responded to Ganya's bow without inviting him to sit down. "Are you embarking upon matrimony?"

"Matrimony?... How? ... What matrimony? ..." Gavrila Ardalionovich murmured in stupefaction. He was terribly bewildered.

"Are you getting married, I'm asking, if you like that phrasing better?"

"N-no . . . I'm . . . n-not," Gavrila Ardalionovich lied, and a flush of shame spread over his face. He glanced fleetingly at Aglaya, who was sitting to one side, and quickly looked away. Aglaya was looking at him coldly, intently, calmly, not taking her eyes off him, and observing his confusion.

"No? Did you say no?" the implacable Lizaveta Prokofyevna persistently interrogated him. "Enough! I'll remember that today, Wednesday afternoon, you said 'No' to my question. Is today Wednesday?"

"I think so, maman," replied Adelaida.

"They never know what day it is. What's the date?"

"The twenty-seventh," replied Ganya.

"The twenty-seventh? That's good, for certain considerations. Good-bye. I suppose you have many things to do, and for me it's time to dress and be on my way. Take your portrait. Give my respects to the unfortunate Nina Alexandrovna. Good-bye, Prince, my dear boy! Come more often, and I'll be sure to call on old Belokonsky and tell her about you. And listen, my dear: I believe God brought you to Petersburg from Switzerland precisely for me. Maybe you'll have other things to do, but it was mainly for me. That's precisely how God reckoned. Good-bye, my dears. Alexandra, stop by for a minute."

Mrs. Epanchin left. Ganya, overturned, confused, spiteful, took the portrait from the table and turned to the prince with a crooked smile:

"Prince, I'm going home now. If you haven't changed your intention of living with us, I'll take you there, since you don't know the address."

"Wait, Prince," said Aglaya, suddenly getting up from her chair, "you still have to write something in my album. Papa said you're a calligrapher. I'll bring it to you right now . . ."

And she left.

"Good-bye, Prince, I'm going, too," said Adelaida.

She firmly shook the prince's hand, smiled at him affably and tenderly, and left. She did not look at Ganya.

"It was you," Ganya rasped, suddenly falling upon the prince once everyone had gone, "you blabbed to them that I'm getting

married!" he muttered in a quick half whisper, with a furious face, flashing his eyes spitefully. "You shameless babbler!"

"I assure you that you are mistaken," the prince replied calmly and politely, "I didn't even know you were getting married."

"You heard Ivan Fyodorovich say earlier that everything would be decided tonight at Nastasya Filippovna's, and you told it to them! You're lying! How could they have found out? Devil take it, who could have told them besides you? Didn't the old lady hint to me?"

"You ought to know better who told them, if you really think she was hinting to you. I didn't say a word about it."

"Did you deliver my note? Any answer?" Ganya interrupted him with feverish impatience. But at that very moment Aglaya came back, and the prince had no time to reply.

"Here, Prince," said Aglaya, putting her album on the little table. "Choose a page and write something for me. Here's a pen, a new one. Does it matter if it's steel? I've heard calligraphers don't write with steel pens."

Talking with the prince, she seemed not to notice that Ganya was right there. But while the prince was testing the pen, selecting a page, and preparing himself, Ganya went over to the fireplace where Aglaya was standing, to the right of the prince, and in a trembling, faltering voice said almost in her ear:

"One word, only one word from you—and I'm saved."

The prince turned quickly and looked at the two. There was genuine despair in Ganya's face; it seemed he had uttered these words somehow without thinking, as if headlong. Aglaya looked at him for a few seconds with exactly the same calm astonishment as she had looked at the prince earlier, and it seemed that this calm astonishment of hers, this perplexity, as if she totally failed to understand what had been said to her, was more terrible for Ganya at that moment than the strongest contempt.

"What am I to write?" asked the prince.

"I'll dictate to you right now," said Aglaya, turning to him. "Are you ready? Write: 'I don't negotiate.' Now put the day and the month. Show me."

The prince handed her the album.

"Excellent! You've written it amazingly well; you have a wonderful hand! Thank you. Good-bye, Prince . . . Wait," she added, as if suddenly remembering something. "Come, I want to give you something as a memento."

The prince followed her; but having entered the dining room, Aglaya stopped.

"Read this," she said, handing him Ganya's note.

The prince took the note and looked at Aglaya in perplexity.

"I know you haven't read it and you cannot be in this man's confidence. Read it, I want you to."

The note had obviously been written in haste.

Today my fate will be decided, you know in what manner. Today I will have to give my word irrevocably. I have no right to your sympathy, I dare not have any hopes; but you once uttered a word, just one word, and that word lit up the whole dark night of my life and became a beacon for me. Say another such word to me now—and you will save me from disaster! Only say to me: break it all off, and I will break it all off today. Oh, what will it cost you to say it! I am asking for this word only as a sign of your sympathy and compassion for me—only, only! And nothing more, nothing. I dare not think of any hope, because I am not worthy of it. But after your word I will accept my poverty again, I will joyfully endure my desperate situation. I will meet the struggle, I will be glad of it, I will resurrect in it with new strength!

Send me this word of compassion (of compassion only, I swear to you!). Do not be angry at the boldness of a desperate man, at a drowning man, for daring to make a last effort to save himself from disaster.

"This man assures me," Aglaya said sharply, when the prince had finished reading, "that the words break it all off will not compromise me or commit me in any way, and, as you see, he gives me a written guarantee of it by this very note. See how naively he hastened to underline certain words and how crudely his secret thought shows through. He knows, however, that if he broke it all off, but by himself, alone, not waiting for a word from me, and even not telling me about it, without any hope in me, I would then change my feelings for him and would probably become his friend. He knows that for certain! But his soul is dirty: he knows and yet hesitates; he knows and still asks for a guarantee. He's unable to make a decision on faith. Instead of a hundred thousand, he wants me to give him hope in me. As for the previous word he talks about in his letter and which supposedly lit up his whole life, there he's lying brazenly. I simply felt sorry for him once. But he's bold

and shameless: the thought of a possible hope immediately flashed in him; I realized it at once. After that he began trying to trap me; he does it still. But enough. Take the note and give it back to him, right now, when you've left our house, naturally, not before."

"And what shall I tell him in reply?"

"Nothing, of course. That's the best reply. So you intend to live in his house?"

"Ivan Fyodorovich himself recommended it to me earlier," said the prince.

"Beware of him, I'm warning you; he won't forgive you for giving him back the note."

Aglaya pressed the prince's hand lightly and left. Her face was serious and frowning, she did not even smile as she nodded goodbye to the prince.

"One moment, I'll just fetch my bundle," the prince said to Ganya, "and we can go."

Ganya stamped his foot in impatience. His face even darkened with rage. Finally the two men went outside, the prince carrying his bundle.

"The reply? The reply?" Ganya fell upon him. "What did she say to you? Did you give her the letter?"

The prince silently handed him his note. Ganya was dumbfounded.

"What? My note?" he cried. "He didn't give it to her! Oh, I should have guessed! Oh, cur-r-rse it ... I see why she didn't understand anything just now! But why, why, why didn't you give it to her, oh, cur-r-rse it . . ."

"Excuse me, but, on the contrary, I managed to deliver your note at once, the moment you gave it to me and exactly as you asked me to. It ended up with me again, because Aglaya Ivanovna gave it back to me just now."

"When? When?"

"As soon as I finished writing in the album and she asked me to go with her. (Didn't you hear?) We went to the dining room, she gave me the note, told me to read it, and then told me to give it back to you."

"To re-e-ead it!" Ganya shouted almost at the top of his lungs. "To read it! You read it?"

And he again stood petrified in the middle of the sidewalk, so astonished that he even opened his mouth wide.

"Yes, I read it just now."

"And she, she herself gave it to you to read? She herself?"

"She herself, and, believe me, I wouldn't have read it without her invitation."

Ganya was silent for a moment, making painful efforts to figure something out, but suddenly he exclaimed:

"That can't be! She couldn't have told you to read it. You're lying! You read it yourself!"

"I'm telling you the truth," the prince replied in the same completely imperturbable tone, "and, believe me, I'm very sorry that it makes such an unpleasant impression on you."

"But, you wretch, did she at least say anything as she did it? Did she respond in any way?"

"Yes, of course."

"Speak then, speak—ah, the devil! . . ."

And Ganya stamped his right foot, shod in a galosh, twice on the sidewalk.

"As soon as I finished reading it, she told me that you were trying to trap her; that you wished to compromise her, in order to obtain some hope from her and then, on the basis of that hope, to break without losses from the other hope for a hundred thousand. That if you had done it without negotiating with her, had broken it off by yourself without asking her for a guarantee beforehand, she might perhaps have become your friend. That's all, I think. Ah, one more thing: when I had already taken the note and asked what the reply would be, she said that no reply would be the best reply—I think that was it; forgive me if I've forgotten her exact expression, but I'm conveying it as I understood it myself."

Boundless spite came over Ganya, and his rage exploded without restraint.

"Ahh! So that's how it is!" he rasped. "She throws my notes out the window! Ahh! She doesn't negotiate—then I will! We'll see! There's a lot about me ... we'll see!... I'll tie them in little knots!..."

He grimaced, turned pale, frothed, shook his fist. They went a few steps like that. He was not embarrassed in the least by the prince's presence, as if he were alone in his room, because he regarded him as nothing in the highest degree. But he suddenly realized something and came to his senses.

"How did it happen," he suddenly turned to the prince, "how did it happen that you"—"an idiot!" he added to himself—"have suddenly been taken into such confidence, after being acquainted for two hours? How is it?"

With all his torments he only lacked envy. It suddenly stung him to the very heart.

"I'm unable to explain it to you," replied the prince.

Ganya looked at him spitefully:

"Was it her confidence she wanted to give you when she called you to the dining room? Wasn't she going to give you something?"

"I can't understand it in any other way than precisely that."

"But why, devil take it! What did you do there? What was it they liked? Listen," he was fussing with all his might (just then everything in him was somehow scattered and seething in disorder, so that he was unable to collect his thoughts), "listen, can't you somehow recall and put in order precisely what you were talking about, all the words, from the very beginning? Didn't you notice anything, can't you recall?"

"Oh, I recall very well," the prince replied. "From the very beginning, when I went in and was introduced, we started talking about Switzerland."

"Well, to hell with Switzerland!"

"Then about capital punishment ..."

"About capital punishment?"

"Yes, apropos of something . . . then I told them how I'd lived there for three years, and also the story of a poor village girl . . ."

"To hell with the poor village girl! Go on!" Ganya tore ahead impatiently.

"Then how Schneider gave me his opinion of my character and urged me ..."

"Blast Schneider and spit on his opinion! Go on!"

"Then, apropos of something, I started talking about faces— that is, about facial expressions, and I said that Aglaya Ivanovna was almost as good-looking as Nastasya Filippovna. It was here that I let slip about the portrait ..."

"But you didn't repeat, you surely didn't repeat everything you'd heard earlier in the office? Did you? Did you?"

"I tell you again that I didn't."

"Then how the devil . . . Bah! Maybe Aglaya showed the note to the old lady?"

"About that I can fully guarantee you that she did not show it to her. I was there all the while; and she also didn't have time."

"Or maybe you didn't notice something . . . Oh! cur-r-rsed idiot," he exclaimed, now completely beside himself, "he can't even tell anything!"

Once he began to swear and met no resistance, Ganya gradually lost all restraint, as always happens with certain people. A little more and he might have started spitting, so enraged he was. But, precisely because of that rage, he was blind; otherwise he would long since have paid attention to the fact that this "idiot," whom he mistreated so, was sometimes capable of understanding everything all too quickly and subtly, and of giving an extremely satisfactory account of it. But suddenly something unexpected happened.

"I must point out to you, Gavrila Ardalionovich," the prince suddenly said, "that formerly I was indeed unwell, so that in fact I was almost an idiot; but I have been well for a long time now, and therefore I find it somewhat unpleasant when I'm called an idiot to my face. Though you might be excused, considering your misfortunes, in your vexation you have even abused me a couple of times. I dislike that very much, especially the way you do it, suddenly, from the start. And since we're now standing at an intersection, it might be better if we parted: you go home to the right, and I'll go left. I have twenty-five roubles, and I'm sure I'll find furnished rooms."

Ganya was terribly embarrassed and even blushed with shame.

"Forgive me, Prince," he cried hotly, suddenly changing his abusive tone to extreme politeness, "for God's sake, forgive me! You see what trouble I'm in! You know almost nothing yet, but if you knew everything, you would probably excuse me at least a little; though, naturally, I'm inexcusable . . ."

"Oh, but I don't need such big excuses," the prince hastened to reply. "I do understand that you're very displeased and that's why you're abusive. Well, let's go to your place. It's my pleasure . . ."

"No, it's impossible to let him go like that," Ganya thought to himself, glancing spitefully at the prince as they went. "The rogue got it all out of me and then suddenly took off his mask . . . That means something. We'll see! Everything will be resolved, everything, everything! Today!"

They were already standing outside his house.

VIII

Ganechka's apartment was on the third floor, up a rather clean, bright, and spacious stairway, and consisted of six or seven rooms, large and small, quite ordinary, incidentally, but in any case not at all what the pocket of an official with a family, even on a salary of two thousand roubles, could afford. But it was intended for keeping tenants with board and services, and had been taken by Ganya and his family no more than two months earlier, to the greatest displeasure of Ganya himself, on the insistent demand of Nina Alexandrovna and Varvara Ardalionovna, who wished to be useful in their turn and to increase the family income at least a little. Ganya scowled and called keeping tenants an outrage; after that it was as if he began to be ashamed in society, where he was in the habit of appearing as a young man of a certain brilliance and with prospects. All these concessions to fate and all this vexatious crowding—all of it deeply wounded his soul. For some time now, every little thing had begun to annoy him beyond measure or proportion, and if he still agreed for a time to yield and endure, it was only because he had already resolved to change and alter it all within the shortest space of time. And yet this very change, this way out that he had settled on, was no small task— a task the imminent solution of which threatened to be more troublesome and tormenting than all that had gone before it.

The apartment was divided by a corridor that started right from the front hall. On one side of the corridor were the three rooms that were to be let to "specially recommended" tenants; besides that, on the same side of the corridor, at the very end of it, near the kitchen, was a fourth room, smaller than the others, which housed the retired General Ivolgin himself, the father of the family, who slept on a wide couch and was obliged to go in and out of the apartment through the kitchen and the back door. The same little room also housed Gavrila Ardalionovich's thirteen-year-old brother, the schoolboy Kolya. He, too, was destined to be cramped, to study and sleep there on another very old, narrow, and short couch, covered with a torn sheet, and, above all, to tend to and look after his father, who was more and more unable to do without that. The prince was given the middle one of the three rooms; the first, to the right, was occupied by Ferdyshchenko, and the third,

to the left, was still vacant. But first of all Ganya took the prince to the family side. This family side consisted of a large room that was turned, when needed, into a dining room, of a drawing room, which was, however, a drawing room only during the daytime, but in the evening turned into Ganya's study and bedroom, and, finally, of a third room, small and always closed: this was the bedroom of Nina Alexandrovna and Varvara Ardalionovna. In short, everything in this apartment was cramped and squeezed; Ganya only gritted his teeth to himself; though he may have wished to be respectful to his mother, it was evident the moment one stepped into the place that he was the great tyrant of the family.

Nina Alexandrovna was not alone in the drawing room, Varvara Ardalionovna was sitting with her; they were both busy knitting as they talked with a visitor, Ivan Petrovich Ptitsyn. Nina Alexandrovna seemed to be about fifty, with a thin, pinched face and a deep darkness under her eyes. She looked sickly and somewhat woebegone, but her face and gaze were quite pleasant; her first words betokened a serious character and one filled with genuine dignity. Despite her woebegone look, one could sense firmness and even resolution in her. She was dressed extremely modestly, in something dark and quite old-womanish, but her ways, her conversation, her whole manner betrayed a woman who had seen better society.

Varvara Ardalionovna was a young lady of about twenty-three, of average height, rather thin, with a face which, while not really beautiful, contained in itself the mystery of being likable without beauty and of attracting to the point of passion. She resembled her mother very much, and was even dressed almost like her mother, from a total indifference to dressing up. The look of her gray eyes could on occasion be very gay and tender, though it was most often grave and pensive, sometimes even too much so, especially of late. Firmness and resolution could be seen in her face, too, but one sensed that this firmness could be even more energetic and enterprising than in her mother. Varvara Ardalionovna was rather hot-tempered, and her brother sometimes even feared that hot-temperedness. Ivan Petrovich Ptitsyn, the visitor who was now sitting with them, also feared it. He was still a rather young man, under thirty, modestly but finely dressed, with pleasant but somehow much too staid manners. His dark blond beard indicated that he was not in government service.²⁷ He was capable of intelligent and interesting conversation, but was more often silent. Generally

he even made an agreeable impression. He was clearly not indifferent to Varvara Ardalionovna and did not hide his feelings. Varvara Ardalionovna treated him amiably, but delayed in answering some of his questions, and even disliked them; Ptitsyn, however, was far from discouraged. Nina Alexandrovna was affectionate with him, and lately had even begun to trust him in many things. It was known, however, that his specific occupation was making money by giving short-term loans at interest on more or less sure pledges. He and Ganya were great friends.

After a thorough but curt introduction from Ganya (who greeted his mother rather drily, did not greet his sister at all, and immediately took Ptitsyn somewhere out of the room), Nina Alexandrovna said a few kind words to the prince and told Kolya, who peeped in at the door, to take him to the middle room. Kolya was a boy with a merry and rather sweet face, and a trustful and simple-hearted manner.

"Where's your luggage?" he asked, leading the prince into his room.

"I have a little bundle; I left it in the front hall."

"I'll bring it right away. All we have for servants are the cook and Matryona, so I have to help, too. Varya supervises everything and gets angry. Ganya says you came today from Switzerland?"

"Yes."

"Is it nice in Switzerland?"

"Very."

"Mountains?" Yes.

"I'll lug your bundles here right away."

Varvara Ardalionovna came in.

"Matryona will make your bed now. Do you have a suitcase?"

"No, a bundle. Your brother went to get it; it's in the front hall."

"There's no bundle there except this little one; where did you put it?" asked Kolya, coming back into the room.

"But there's nothing except that," announced the prince, taking his bundle.

"Aha! And I thought Ferdyshchenko might have filched it."

"Don't blather," Varya said sternly. She also spoke quite drily with the prince and was barely polite with him.

"Chère Babette, you might treat me a little more gently, I'm not Ptitsyn."

"You still ought to be whipped, Kolya, you're so stupid. You may

address all your needs to Matryona. Dinner is at half-past four. You may dine with us or in your room, whichever you prefer. Let's go, Kolya, stop bothering him."

"Let's go, decisive character!"

On their way out they ran into Ganya.

"Is father at home?" Ganya asked Kolya and, on receiving an affirmative reply, whispered something in his ear.

Kolya nodded and went out after Varvara Ardalionovna.

"A couple of words, Prince, I forgot to tell you, what with all these . . . doings. A request: do me a favor—if it's not too much of a strain for you—don't babble here about what just went on between me and Aglaya, or there about what you find here; because there's also enough ugliness here. To hell with it, though . . . But control yourself, at least for today."

"I assure you that I babbled much less than you think," said the prince, somewhat annoyed at Ganya's reproaches. Their relations were obviously becoming worse and worse.

"Well, I've already suffered enough on account of you today. In short, I beg you."

"Note this, too, Gavrila Ardalionovich, that I was not bound in any way earlier and had no reason not to mention the portrait. You didn't ask me not to."

"Pah, what a vile room," Ganya observed, looking around disdainfully, "dark and windows on the courtyard. You've come to us inopportunely in all respects . . . Well, that's none of my business; I don't let rooms."

Ptitsyn looked in and called Ganya. He hastily abandoned the prince and went out, though he had wanted to say something more, but was obviously hesitant and as if ashamed to begin; and he had also denounced the room as if from embarrassment.

The prince had just managed to wash and to straighten his clothes a bit when the door opened again and a new figure appeared in it.

This was a gentleman of about thirty, rather tall, broad-shouldered, with an enormous, curly, red-haired head. His face was fleshy and ruddy, his lips thick, his nose broad and flattened, his eyes small, puffy, and jeering, as if constantly winking. The whole of it made a rather insolent picture. His clothes were on the dirty side.

At first he opened the door just enough to thrust his head in. This thrust-in head surveyed the room for about five seconds, then the door slowly began to open, the whole figure was outlined on

the threshold, but the visitor did not come in yet, but squinted and went on studying the prince from the threshold. Finally he closed the door behind him, approached, sat down on a chair, took the prince firmly by the hand and seated him at an angle to himself on the sofa.

"Ferdyshchenko," he said, peering intently and questioningly into the prince's face.

"What about it?" the prince replied, almost bursting into laughter.

"A tenant," Ferdyshchenko spoke again, peering in the same way.

"You want to become acquainted?"

"Ehh!" said the visitor, ruffling up his hair and sighing, and he started looking into the opposite corner. "Do you have any money?" he asked suddenly, turning to the prince.

"A little."

"How much, precisely?"

"Twenty-five roubles."

"Show me."

The prince took a twenty-five-rouble note from his waistcoat pocket and handed it to Ferdyshchenko. The man unfolded it, looked at it, turned it over, then held it up to the light.

"Quite strange," he said, as if pondering. "Why do they turn brown? These twenty-fivers sometimes get terribly brown, while others, on the contrary, fade completely. Take it."

The prince took the note from him. Ferdyshchenko got up from the chair.

"I came to warn you: first of all, don't lend me any money, because I'm sure to ask."

"Very well."

"Do you intend to pay here?"

"I do."

"Well, I don't, thank you. Mine's the first door to your right, did you see? Try not to visit me too often; I'll come to you, don't worry about that. Have you seen the general?"

"No."

"Heard him?"

"Of course not."

"Well, you will see and hear him. Besides, he even asks me to lend him money! Avis au lecteur*Good-bye. Is it possible to live with a name like Ferdyshchenko? Eh?"

*Warning to the reader.

"Why not?"

"Good-bye."

And he went to the door. The prince learned later that this gentleman, as if out of duty, had taken upon himself the task of amazing everyone by his originality and merriment, but it somehow never came off. He even made an unpleasant impression on some people, which caused him genuine grief, but all the same he would not abandon his task. In the doorway he managed to set things right, as it were, by bumping into a gentleman coming in; after letting this new gentleman, who was unknown to the prince, enter the room, he obligingly winked several times behind his back by way of warning, and thus left not without a certain aplomb.

This new gentleman was tall, about fifty-five years old or even a little more, rather corpulent, with a purple-red, fleshy and flabby face framed by thick gray side-whiskers, with a moustache and large, rather protruding eyes. His figure would have been rather imposing if there had not been something seedy, shabby, even soiled about it. He was dressed in an old frock coat with nearly worn-through elbows; his shirt was also dirty—in a homey way. There was a slight smell of vodka in his vicinity; but his manner was showy, somewhat studied, and with an obvious wish to impress by its dignity. The gentleman approached the prince unhurriedly, with an affable smile, silently took his hand and, holding it in his own, peered into his face for some time, as if recognizing familiar features.

"Him! Him!" he said softly but solemnly. "As if alive! I heard them repeating the familiar and dear name and recalled the irretrievable past . . . Prince Myshkin?"

"That's right, sir."

"General Ivolgin, retired and unfortunate. Your name and patronymic, if I dare ask?"

"Lev Nikolaevich."

"So, so! The son of my friend, one might say my childhood friend, Nikolai Petrovich?"

"My father's name was Nikolai Lvovich."

"Lvovich," the general corrected himself, but unhurriedly and with perfect assurance, as if he had not forgotten in the least but had only made an accidental slip. He sat down and, also taking the prince's hand, sat him down beside him. "I used to carry you about in my arms, sir."

"Really?" asked the prince. "My father has been dead for twenty years now."

"Yes, twenty years, twenty years and three months. We studied together. I went straight into the military ..."

"My father was also in the military, a second lieutenant in the Vasilkovsky regiment."

"The Belomirsky. His transfer to the Belomirsky came almost on the eve of his death. I stood there and blessed him into eternity. Your mother ..."

The general paused as if in sad remembrance.

"Yes, she also died six months later, of a chill," said the prince.

"Not of a chill, not of a chill, believe an old man. I was there, I buried her, too. Of grief over the prince, and not of a chill. Yes, sir, I have memories of the princess, too! Youth! Because of her, the prince and I, childhood friends, nearly killed each other."

The prince began listening with a certain mistrust.

"I was passionately in love with your mother while she was still a fiancée—my friend's fiancée. The prince noticed it and was shocked. He comes to me in the morning, before seven o'clock, wakes me up. I get dressed in amazement; there is silence on both sides; I understand everything. He takes two pistols from his pocket. Across a handkerchief.²⁸ Without witnesses. Why witnesses, if we'll be sending each other into eternity in five minutes? We loaded the pistols, stretched out the handkerchief, put the pistols to each other's hearts, and looked into each other's faces. Suddenly tears burst from our eyes, our hands trembled. Both of us, both of us, at once! Well, naturally, then came embraces and a contest in mutual magnanimity. The prince cries: 'She's yours!' I cry: 'She's yours!' In short... in short . . . you've come ... to live with us?"

"Yes, for a while, perhaps," said the prince, as if stammering slightly.

"Prince, mama wants to see you," cried Kolya, looking in at the door. The prince got up to leave, but the general placed his right hand on his shoulder and amiably forced him back down on the couch.

"As a true friend of your father's I wish to warn you," said the general, "I have suffered, as you can see yourself, owing to a tragic catastrophe—but without a trial! Without a trial! Nina Alexandrovna is a rare woman. Varvara Ardalionovna, my daughter, is a rare daughter! Owing to certain circumstances, we let rooms—an unheard-of degradation! I, for whom it only remained to become a governor-general! . . . But we're always glad to have you. And meanwhile there's a tragedy in my house!"

The prince looked at him questioningly and with great curiosity.

"A marriage is being prepared, a rare marriage. A marriage between an ambiguous woman and a young man who could be a kammerjunker.²⁹ This woman will be introduced into the house in which my daughter and wife live! But as long as there is breath in me, she will not enter it! I'll lie down on the threshold, and just let her step over me! ... I almost don't speak with Ganya now, I even avoid meeting him. I'm warning you on purpose, though if you live with us you'll witness it anyway without that. But you are my friend's son, and I have the right to hope . . ."

"Prince, be so kind as to come to me in the drawing room," Nina Alexandrovna called, appearing in the doorway herself.

"Imagine, my friend;" cried the general, "it appears I dandled the prince in my arms!"

Nina Alexandrovna looked reproachfully at the general and searchingly at the prince, but did not say a word. The prince followed her; but they had only just come to the drawing room and sat down, and Nina Alexandrovna had only just begun telling the prince something hastily and in a half-whisper, when the general himself suddenly arrived in the drawing room. Nina Alexandrovna fell silent at once and bent over her knitting with obvious vexation. The general may have noticed her vexation, but he continued to be in the most excellent spirits.

"My friend's son!" he cried, addressing Nina Alexandrovna. "And so unexpectedly! I'd long ceased imagining. But, my dear, don't you remember the late Nikolai Lvovich? Wasn't he still in Tver . . . when you ... ?"

"I don't remember Nikolai Lvovich. Is that your father?" she asked the prince.

"Yes. But I believe he died in Elisavetgrad, not in Tver," the prince observed timidly to the general. "I heard it from Pavlishchev . . ."

"In Tver," the general confirmed. "Just before his death he was transferred to Tver, and even before the illness developed. You were still too little and wouldn't remember either the transfer or the trip. And Pavlishchev could have made a mistake, though he was a most excellent man."

"You knew Pavlishchev, too?"

"He was a rare man, but I was a personal witness. I blessed him on his deathbed . . ."

"My father died while he was on trial," the prince observed

again, "though I could never find out precisely for what. He died in the hospital."

"Oh, it was that case to do with Private Kolpakov, and without doubt the prince would have been vindicated."

"Really? You know for certain?" the prince asked with particular curiosity.

"What else?" cried the general. "The court recessed without any decision. An impossible case! A mysterious case, one might say: Staff-captain Larionov, the commander of the detachment, dies; the prince is assigned to perform his duties temporarily. Good. Private Kolpakov commits a theft—of footgear from a comrade— and drinks it up. Good. The prince—and, mark you, this was in the presence of a sergeant-major and a corporal—reprimands Kolpakov and threatens him with a birching. Very good. Kolpakov goes to the barracks, lies down on his bunk, and a quarter of an hour later he dies. Splendid, but it's an unexpected, almost impossible case. Thus and so, Kolpakov is buried; the prince makes a report, after which Kolpakov is struck from the rolls. What could be better, you might think? But exactly six months later, at a brigade review, Private Kolpakov turns up, as if nothing had happened, in the third detachment of the second battalion of the Novozemlyansky infantry regiment,³⁰ same brigade and same division!"

"How's that?" cried the prince, beside himself with astonishment.

"It's not so, it's a mistake!" Nina Alexandrovna turned to him suddenly, looking at him almost in anguish. "Mon mari se trompe."*

"But, my dear, se trompe is easy to say, but try and decide such a case yourself! They were all deadlocked. I'd be the first to say qu'on se trompe. But, to my misfortune, I was a witness and served personally on the commission. All the confrontations showed that this was the very same, absolutely the very same Private Kolpakov who had been buried six months earlier with the routine ceremony and to the roll of drums. The case is indeed a rare one, almost impossible, I agree, but . . ."

"Papa, your dinner is ready," Varvara Ardalionovna announced, coming into the room.

"Ah, that's splendid, excellent! I'm really hungry . . . But this case, you might say, is even psychological ..."

"The soup will get cold again," Varya said impatiently.

*My husband is mistaken.

"Coming, coming," the general muttered, leaving the room. "And despite all inquiries . . ." could still be heard in the corridor.

"You'll have to excuse Ardalion Alexandrovich a great deal if you stay with us," Nina Alexandrovna said to the prince, "though he won't bother you very much; and he dines by himself. You must agree, each of us has his own shortcomings and his own . .. special features—some, perhaps, still more than those at whom fingers are habitually pointed. There's one thing I want very much to ask you: if my husband ever addresses you concerning the payment of the rent, tell him you have given it to me. That is, whatever you might give to Ardalion Alexandrovich would go on your account in any case, but I ask you only for the sake of accuracy . . . What is it, Varya?"

Varya came back into the room and silently handed her mother the portrait of Nastasya Filippovna. Nina Alexandrovna gave a start and began studying it as if in fright, but then with an overwhelmingly bitter feeling. In the end she looked questioningly at Varya.

"She made him a present of it herself today," said Varya, "and this evening everything is to be decided."

"This evening!" Nina Alexandrovna repeated in a half-whisper, as if in despair. "So, then? There are no more doubts here, nor any hopes: she has announced it all by the portrait . . . And what, did he show it to you himself?" she added in surprise.

"You know we've hardly said a word to each other for a whole month now. Ptitsyn told me about it all, and the portrait was lying there on the floor by the table. I picked it up."

"Prince," Nina Alexandrovna suddenly turned to him, "I wanted to ask you—in fact, that's why I invited you here—have you known my son for a long time? He told me, I believe, that you arrived from somewhere only today?"

The prince explained briefly about himself, omitting the greater part. Nina Alexandrovna and Varya heard him out.

"I'm not trying to ferret out anything about Gavrila Ardalionovich in asking you," observed Nina Alexandrovna, "you must make no mistake on that account. If there is anything that he cannot tell me himself, I have no wish to try and find it out behind his back. What I mean, in fact, is that earlier, in your presence and after you left, Ganya said in answer to my question about you: 'He knows everything, no need for ceremony!' Now, what does that mean? That is, I'd like to know to what extent . . ."

Suddenly Ganya and Ptitsyn came in; Nina Alexandrovna at once fell silent. The prince remained in the chair next to her, and Varya stepped aside; the portrait of Nastasya Filippovna lay most conspicuously on Nina Alexandrovna's worktable, directly in front of her. Ganya saw it, frowned, vexedly took it from the table, and flung it onto his desk, which was at the other end of the room.

"Today, Ganya?" Nina Alexandrovna suddenly asked.

"Today what?" Ganya gave a start and suddenly fell upon the prince. "Ah, I understand, you're into it here, too! . . . What is it with you, some sort of illness or something? Can't help yourself? But understand, finally, Your Highness ..."

"I'm to blame here, Ganya, and nobody else," Ptitsyn interrupted.

Ganya looked at him questioningly.

"But it's better, Ganya, the more so as the matter's concluded on one side," Ptitsyn murmured and, stepping away, sat down at the table, took some sort of scribbled-over paper from his pocket, and began studying it intently. Ganya stood in gloom, waiting uneasily for a family scene. He did not even think of apologizing to the prince.

"If it's all concluded, then, of course, Ivan Petrovich is right," said Nina Alexandrovna. "Don't frown, please, and don't be vexed, Ganya, I won't ask about anything that you don't want to talk about yourself, and I assure you that I am completely resigned, kindly don't worry."

She said this without taking her eyes from her work and, as it seemed, quite calmly. Ganya was surprised, but remained warily silent and looked at his mother, waiting for her to speak her mind more clearly. Family scenes had already cost him much too dearly. Nina Alexandrovna noticed this wariness and added, with a bitter smile:

"You still doubt and don't believe me. You needn't worry, there will be no tears or entreaties, as before, at least not on my part. All I want is for you to be happy and you know that; I am resigned to fate, but my heart will always be with you, whether we stay together or must part. Of course, I can only answer for myself; you cannot ask the same of your sister ..."

"Ah, her again!" cried Ganya, looking mockingly and hatefully at his sister. "Mama! Again I swear to you something on which you have my word already: no one will ever dare to mistreat you while I am here, while I am alive. Whoever it may concern, I shall insist on the fullest respect, whoever crosses our threshold ..."

Ganya was so overjoyed that he looked at his mother almost conciliatingly, almost tenderly.

"I wasn't afraid for myself, Ganya, you know that. It's not myself I've worried and suffered over all this time. They say it will all be concluded tonight? What will be concluded?"

"Tonight, at her place, she has promised to announce whether she gives me her consent or not," replied Ganya.

"For almost three weeks we've avoided speaking of it, and it was better. Now, when everything's already concluded, I will allow myself to ask just one thing: how could she give you her consent and even present you with her portrait, when you don't love her? Can it be that she, being so . . . so . . ."

"Experienced, you mean?"

"That's not how I wanted to put it. Can it be that you could blind her eyes to such a degree?"

Extraordinary irritation suddenly rang in this question. Ganya stood, reflected for a moment, and, not concealing his derision, said:

"You've gotten carried away, mama, and again could not restrain yourself, and that's how everything always starts and flares up with us. You said there wouldn't be any questions or reproaches, yet they've already started! We'd better drop it, really, we'd better; at least you had the intention ... I will never leave you, not for anything; another man would flee from such a sister at least—see how she's looking at me now! Let's leave it at that! I was already rejoicing so . . . And how do you know I'm deceiving Nastasya Filippovna? But, as for Varya, it's as she wishes and—enough! Well, now it's quite enough!"

Ganya was getting more and more excited with every word and paced the room aimlessly. Such conversations instantly became a sore spot in all members of the family.

"I said, if she comes in here, then I go out of here—and I'll also keep my word," said Varya.

"Out of stubbornness!" cried Ganya. "And it's out of stubbornness that you don't get married! What are you doing snorting at me! I spit on it all, Varvara Ardalionovna; if you like, you can carry out your intention right now. I'm quite sick of you. So! You've finally decided to leave us, Prince!" he shouted at the prince, seeing him get up from his place.

In Ganya's voice that degree of irritation could be heard in which a man almost enjoys his irritation, gives himself over to it without

restraint and almost with increasing pleasure, whatever may come of it. The prince turned around at the door in order to make some reply, but, seeing from the pained expression on his offender's face that with one more drop the vessel would overflow, he turned again and silently went out. A few minutes later he heard, by the noises coming from the drawing room, that in his absence the conversation had become more noisy and frank.

He went through the large room to the front hall, in order to get to the corridor and from there to his room. Passing by the door to the stairs, he heard and saw that someone outside the door was trying very hard to ring the bell; but something must have been wrong with the bell: it only jiggled slightly but made no sound. The prince lifted the bar, opened the door, and—stepped back in amazement, even shuddered all over: before him stood Nastasya Filippovna. He recognized her at once from the portrait. Her eyes flashed with a burst of vexation when she saw him; she quickly came into the front hall, pushed him aside with her shoulder, and said wrathfully, flinging off her fur coat:

"If you're too lazy to fix the doorbell, you should at least be sitting in the front hall when people knock. Well, there, now he's dropped my coat, the oaf!"

The coat was indeed lying on the floor; Nastasya Filippovna, not waiting for the prince to help her out of it, had flung it off into his arms without looking, but the prince had not managed to catch it.

"You ought to be dismissed. Go and announce me."

The prince wanted to say something, but he was so much at a loss that nothing came out, and, holding the coat, which he had picked up from the floor, he went towards the drawing room.

"Well, so now he goes with the coat! Why are you taking the coat? Ha, ha, ha! Are you crazy or something?"

The prince came back and stood like a stone idol looking at her; when she laughed, he also smiled, but he was still unable to move his tongue. In the first moment, as he opened the door for her, he was pale; now color suddenly suffused his face.

"Ah, what an idiot!" Nastasya Filippovna cried indignantly, stamping her foot at him. "Well, what are you doing? Who are you going to announce?"

"Nastasya Filippovna," murmured the prince.

"How do you know me?" she asked quickly. "I've never seen you before! Go and announce . . . What's that shouting?"

"They're quarreling," the prince replied and went to the drawing room.

He came in at a rather decisive moment: Nina Alexandrovna was ready to forget entirely that she was "resigned to everything"; she was, however, defending Varya. Ptitsyn, too, was standing beside Varya, having abandoned his scribbled-over paper. Varya herself was not intimidated, nor was she the timid sort; but her brother's rudeness was becoming more and more impolite and insufferable. On such occasions she usually stopped talking and merely looked at her brother silently, mockingly, not taking her eyes off him. This maneuver, as she knew, was apt to drive him to the utmost limits. At that very moment the prince stepped into the room and said loudly:

"Nastasya Filippovna!"

IX

A general hush fell: everyone looked at the prince as if they did not understand him and—did not wish to understand. Ganya went numb with fright.

Nastasya Filippovna's arrival, especially at the present moment, was a most strange and bothersome surprise for them all. There was the fact alone that Nastasya Filippovna was visiting for the first time; until then she had behaved so haughtily that, in her conversations with Ganya, she had not even expressed any wish to meet his relations, and lately had not even mentioned them at all, as if they did not exist. Though he was partly glad that such a bothersome conversation had been put off, in his heart Ganya had laid this haughtiness to her account. In any case, he had expected sneers and barbs at his family from her sooner than a visit; he knew for certain that she was informed of all that went on in his home to do with his marital plans and what views his relations had of her. Her visit now, after giving him her portrait and on her birthday, the day when she had promised to decide his fate, almost signified the decision itself.

The perplexity with which everyone gazed at the prince did not last long: Nastasya Filippovna herself appeared in the doorway of the drawing room and again, as she came in, pushed the prince slightly aside.

"I finally managed to get in . . . why did you tie up the bell?"

she asked gaily, holding out her hand to Ganya, who rushed to meet her. "What is this overturned look on your face? Introduce me, please ..."

Completely at a loss, Ganya introduced her to Varya first, and the two women exchanged strange looks before offering each other their hands. Nastasya Filippovna laughed, however, and put on a mask of gaiety; while Varya had no wish to put on a mask and looked at her sullenly and intently; not even the shade of a smile, something required by simple politeness, appeared on her face. Ganya went dead; there was nothing to ask and no time to ask, and he shot such a menacing glance at Varya that she understood, from the force of it, what this moment meant for her brother. Here, it seems, she decided to yield to him and smiled faintly at Nastasya Filippovna. (They all still loved each other very much in the family.) Things were improved somewhat by Nina Alexandrovna, whom Ganya, utterly thrown off, introduced after his sister and even led up to Nastasya Filippovna. But Nina Alexandrovna had only just managed to start something about her "particular pleasure" when Nastasya Filippovna, without listening to the end, quickly turned to Ganya and, sitting down (though she had not yet been invited to) on a small sofa in the corner by the window, said loudly:

"Where's your study? And . . . and where are the tenants? Don't you keep tenants?"

Ganya blushed terribly and tried to mutter some reply, but Nastasya Filippovna immediately added:

"Where can you keep tenants here? You don't even have a study. Is it profitable?" she suddenly asked Nina Alexandrovna.

"It's a bit of a bother," Nina Alexandrovna began. "Of course, there should be some profit. Though we've just ..."

But again Nastasya Filippovna was no longer listening: she was looking at Ganya, laughing and saying loudly to him:

"What's that face? Oh, my God, what a face you've got right now!

This laughter continued for several moments, and Ganya's face indeed became very distorted: his stupor, his comical, cowardly bewilderment suddenly left him; but he turned terribly pale; his lips twisted convulsively; silently, with a fixed and nasty look, not tearing his eyes away, he stared into the face of his visitor, who went on laughing.

There was yet another observer who also had not yet rid himself

of his near stupefaction at the sight of Nastasya Filippovna; but though he stood "like a post" in his former place, in the doorway to the drawing room, he nevertheless managed to notice Ganya's pallor and the malignant change in his face. This observer was the prince. All but frightened, he suddenly stepped forward mechanically.

"Drink some water," he whispered to Ganya, "and don't stare like that . . ."

It was evident that he had said it without any calculation, without any particular design, just so, on the first impulse; but his words produced an extraordinary effect. It seemed that all of Ganya's spite suddenly poured out on the prince; he seized him by the shoulder and looked at him silently, vengefully, and hatefully, as if unable to utter a word. There was general agitation. Nina Alexandrovna even gave a little cry. Ptitsyn took a step forward in alarm, Kolya and Ferdyshchenko appeared in the doorway and stopped in amazement, Varya alone watched as sullenly as before, but observed attentively. She did not sit down, but stood to one side, next to her mother, her arms folded on her breast.

But Ganya came to his senses at once, almost at the moment of his reaction, and laughed nervously. He recovered completely.

"What are you, Prince, a doctor or something?" he cried as gaily and simple-heartedly as he could. "He even frightened me. Nastasya Filippovna, allow me to introduce this precious specimen to you, though I myself met him only this morning."

Nastasya Filippovna looked at the prince in perplexity.

"Prince? He's a prince? Imagine, and just now, in the front hall, I took him for a lackey and sent him to announce me! Ha, ha, ha!"

"No harm, no harm!" Ferdyshchenko picked up, approaching hastily and delighted that they had begun to laugh. "No harm: se non è vero . . ."*³²

"And I all but scolded you, Prince. Forgive me, please. Ferdyshchenko, what are you doing here at such an hour? I thought I'd at least not find you here. Who? Prince what? Myshkin?" she repeated to Ganya, who, still holding the prince by the shoulder, meanwhile managed to introduce him.

"Our tenant," repeated Ganya.

Obviously, the prince was being presented as something rare (and useful to them all as a way out of a false situation), he was

*If it's not true . . .

almost shoved at Nastasya Filippovna; the prince even clearly heard the word "idiot" whispered behind him, probably by Ferdyshchenko, in explanation to Nastasya Filippovna.

"Tell me, why didn't you undeceive me just now, when I made such a terrible . . . mistake about you?" Nastasya Filippovna went on, scrutinizing the prince from head to foot in a most unceremonious manner. She impatiently awaited the answer, as if fully convinced that the answer was bound to be so stupid that it would be impossible not to laugh.

"I was astonished, seeing you so suddenly . . ." the prince murmured.

"And how did you know it was me? Where have you seen me before? In fact, it's as if I have seen him somewhere—why is that? And, allow me to ask you, why did you stand there so dumbstruck just now? What's so dumbstriking about me?"

"Well, so? so?" Ferdyshchenko kept clowning. "Well, and so? Oh, Lord, what things I'd say to such a question! Well, so . . . What a booby you are, Prince, after this!"

"And what things I'd say, too, in your place!" the prince laughed to Ferdyshchenko. "I was very struck by your portrait today," he went on to Nastasya Filippovna. "Then I talked about you with the Epanchins . . . and early in the morning, still on the train, before I arrived in Petersburg, Parfyon Rogozhin told me a lot about you . . . And at the very moment when I opened the door, I was also thinking about you, and suddenly there you were."

"But how did you recognize me?"

"From the portrait and ..."

"And?"

"And also because that was precisely how I imagined you . . . It's as if I've also seen you somewhere."

"Where? Where?"

"As if I've seen your eyes somewhere . . . but that can't be! I'm just . . . I've never even been here before. Maybe in a dream . . ."

"Bravo, Prince!" cried Ferdyshchenko. "No, I take back my se non è vero . . . But anyhow, anyhow, it's all just his innocence!" he added with regret.

The prince had spoken his few phrases in an uneasy voice, faltering and stopping frequently to catch his breath. Everything about him betrayed extreme agitation. Nastasya Filippovna looked at him with curiosity, but was no longer laughing. Just then a loud new voice was suddenly heard from behind the crowd that closely

surrounded the prince and Nastasya Filippovna, parting the crowd, as it were, and dividing it in two. Before Nastasya Filippovna stood the father of the family, General Ivolgin himself. He was wearing a tailcoat and a clean shirtfront; his moustache was dyed . . .

This was more than Ganya could bear.

Proud and vainglorious to the point of insecurity, of hypochondria; seeking all those two months for at least some point on which he could rest with a certain dignity and show himself nobly; feeling himself still a novice on the chosen path, who might fail to keep to it; finally, in despair, having resolved to become totally insolent in his own house, where he was a despot, but not daring to show the same resolve before Nastasya Filippovna, who went on confusing him until the last moment and mercilessly kept the upper hand; "an impatient pauper," in Nastasya Filippovna's own phrase, of which he had been informed; having sworn with all possible oaths to exact painful recompense for it later, and at the same time occasionally dreaming childishly to himself of making all ends meet and reconciling all opposites—he now had to drink this terrible cup as well and, above all, at such a moment! One more unforeseen but most awful torture for a vainglorious man—the torment of blushing for his own family in his own house—fell to his lot. "Is the reward finally worth it?" flashed in Ganya's head at that moment.

What, for those two months, he had dreamed of only at night, as a nightmare which had made him freeze with horror and burn with shame, was taking place at that very moment: a family meeting was finally taking place between his father and Nastasya Filippovna. Occasionally, teasing and chafing himself, he had tried to imagine the general during the wedding ceremony, but he had never been able to finish the painful picture and had hastily abandoned it. Perhaps he had exaggerated the disaster beyond measure; but that is what always happens with vainglorious people. In those two months he had had time to think it over and decide, promising himself that he would try at all costs to cancel his father at least for a time, and even to efface him from Petersburg, if possible, whether his mother agreed to it or not. Ten minutes ago, when Nastasya Filippovna came in, he had been so stricken, so stunned, that he had completely forgotten the possibility of Ardalion Alexandrovich's appearance on the scene, and had not made any arrangements. And so, here was the general, before them all, solemnly prepared and in a tailcoat besides, precisely at the moment

when Nastasya Filippovna "was only seeking a chance to shower him and his household with mockery." (Of that he was convinced.) And what, in fact, did her present visit mean if not that? Had she come to make friends with his mother and sister, or to insult them in his own house? But by the way both sides placed themselves, there could no longer be any doubt: his mother and sister sat to one side as if spat upon, while Nastasya Filippovna seemed to have forgotten they were even in the same room with her . . . And if she behaved like that, she certainly had her purpose!

Ferdyshchenko rushed to support the general and led him forward.

"Ardalion Alexandrovich Ivolgin," the bowing and smiling general said with dignity, "an old and unfortunate soldier, and the father of a family happy in the hope of receiving into itself such a lovely ..."

He did not finish. Ferdyshchenko quickly offered him a chair from behind, and the general, somewhat weak in the legs after dinner, simply flopped or, better to say, collapsed into it; however, that did not embarrass him. He sat directly facing Nastasya Filippovna and, with a pleasant little grimace, slowly and dramatically brought her fingers to his lips. On the whole, it was rather difficult to embarrass the general. His appearance, apart from a certain slovenliness, was still quite decent, as he knew very well himself. In the past he had occasionally been received in very good society, from which he had been definitively excluded only two or three years ago. It was then that he gave himself over all too unrestrainedly to some of his weaknesses; but he still retained his adroit and pleasant manner. Nastasya Filippovna, it seemed, was exceedingly delighted by the appearance of Ardalion Alexandrovich, of whom she knew, of course, by hearsay.

"I've heard that this son of mine . . ." Ardalion Alexandrovich began.

"Yes, this son of yours! And you're a fine one, too, papa dear! Why don't I ever see you at my place? What, are you hiding, or is your son hiding you? You, at least, can come to me without compromising anybody."

"Nineteenth-century children and their parents . . ." the general tried to begin again.

"Nastasya Filippovna! Please let Ardalion Alexandrovich go for a moment, someone is asking for him," Nina Alexandrovna said loudly.

"Let him go! Good heavens, I've heard so much, I've wanted to see him for so long! And what sort of business can he have? Isn't he retired? You won't leave me, General, you won't go?"

"I give you my word that he'll come and see you himself, but now he's in need of rest."

"Ardalion Alexandrovich, they say you're in need of rest!" Nastasya Filippovna cried, making a wry and displeased face, like a flighty, foolish little girl whose toy is being taken away. The general did his best to make his own position all the more foolish.

"My friend! My friend!" he said reproachfully, turning solemnly to his wife and putting his hand to his heart.

"Won't you leave here, mama?" Varya asked loudly.

"No, Varya, I'll sit it out to the end."

Nastasya Filippovna could not help hearing both the question and the answer, but it seemed to increase her gaiety still more. She immediately showered the general with questions again, and after five minutes the general was in a most triumphant mood and was oratorizing to the loud laughter of those present.

Kolya pulled the prince's coattail.

"You at least take him away somehow! Can't you? Please!" Tears of indignation even scalded the poor boy's eyes. "Oh, damn you, Ganka!" he added to himself.

"Ivan Fyodorovich Epanchin and I were actually great friends," the general effused to Nastasya Filippovna's questions. "He and I, and the late Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin, whose son I embraced today after a twenty-year separation, the three of us were inseparable, a cavalcade, so to speak: Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.³² But, alas, one lies in his grave, struck down by slander and a bullet, another stands before you now and is still fighting against slander and bullets ..."

"Bullets!" cried Nastasya Filippovna.

"They're here, in my breast, received at Kars,³³ and in bad weather I feel them. In all other respects I live like a philosopher, go about, stroll, play checkers in my café, like a bourgeois retired from business, and read the Independence.³⁴ But since that story of the lapdog on the train three years ago, my relations with our Porthos, Epanchin, have been definitively terminated."

"A lapdog? What was that?" Nastasya Filippovna asked with particular curiosity. "With a lapdog? And on the train, if you please! . . ." She seemed to be remembering something.

"Oh, a stupid story, not even worth repeating: because of Mrs.

Schmidt, Princess Belokonsky's governess, but . . . it's not worth repeating."

"No, you absolutely must tell it!" Nastasya Filippovna exclaimed gaily.

"I haven't heard it either!" observed Ferdyshchenko. "C'est du nouveau"*

"Ardalion Alexandrovich!" Nina Alexandrovna's pleading voice rang out again.

"Papa, somebody's asking for you!" cried Kolya.

"A stupid story, and briefly told," the general began selfcontentedly. "Two years ago, yes! or a bit less, just when the new -------railway line was opened, I (already in civilian dress), seeing to some extremely important matters to do with handing over my job, bought myself a first-class ticket: I got in, sat down, smoked. That is, I went on smoking, because I had lit up earlier. I was alone in the compartment. Smoking was not prohibited, but neither was it permitted; sort of half permitted, as usual; well, and depending on the person. The window's open. Suddenly, just before the whistle, two ladies with a lapdog place themselves just opposite me; latecomers; one is most magnificently dressed in light blue; the other more modestly, in black silk with a pelerine. They're not bad-looking, have a haughty air, talk in English. I, of course, just sit there smoking. That is, I did have a thought, but nevertheless, since the window's open, I go on smoking out the window. The dog reposes in the light blue lady's lap, a little thing, the size of my fist, black with white paws—even a rarity. Silver collar with a motto. I just sit there. Only I notice that the ladies seem to be angry, about the cigar, of course. One glares through a lorgnette, tortoiseshell. Again I just sit there: because they don't say anything! If they spoke, warned, asked—for there is, finally, such a thing as human speech! But they're silent . . . suddenly—without any warning, I tell you, without the slightest warning, as if she'd taken leave of her senses—the light blue one snatches the cigar from my hand and throws it out the window. The train flies on, I stare like a half-wit. A wild woman; a wild woman, as if in a totally wild state; a hefty one, though, tall, full, blond, ruddy (even much too ruddy), her eyes flashing at me. Without saying a word, with extraordinary politeness, with the most perfect politeness, with the most, so to speak, refined politeness, I reach out for the dog with two fingers, take it delicately by the scruff

*It's something new.

of the neck, and whisk it out the window in the wake of my cigar! It let out a little squeal! The train goes flying on . . ."

"You're a monster!" cried Nastasya Filippovna, laughing and clapping her hands like a little girl.

"Bravo, bravo!" shouted Ferdyshchenko. Ptitsyn, for whom the general's appearance was also extremely disagreeable, smiled as well; even Kolya laughed and also shouted, "Bravo!"

"And I'm right, I'm right, three times right!" the triumphant general went on heatedly. "Because if cigars are prohibited on trains, dogs are all the more so."

"Bravo, papa!" Kolya cried delightedly. "Splendid! I would certainly, certainly have done the same thing!"

"And what about the lady?" Nastasya Filippovna went on questioning impatiently.

"Her? Well, there's where the whole unpleasantness lies," the general continued, frowning. "Without saying a word and without the slightest warning, she whacked me on the cheek! A wild woman, in a totally wild state!"

"And you?"

The general lowered his eyes, raised his eyebrows, raised his shoulders, pressed his lips together, spread his arms, paused, and suddenly said:

"I got carried away!"

"And painfully? Painfully?"

"Not painfully, by God! There was a scandal, but it wasn't painful. I only waved my arm once, merely in order to wave her away. But Satan himself threw a twist into it: the light blue one turned out to be an Englishwoman, a governess or even some sort of friend of the house of Princess Belokonsky, and the one in the black dress was the princess's eldest daughter, an old maid of about thirty-five. And we all know the relations between Mrs. Epanchin and the house of the Belokonskys. All the young princesses swoon, tears, mourning for their favorite lapdog, the six princesses shrieking, the Englishwoman shrieking—the end of the world! Well, of course, I went with my repentance, asked forgiveness, wrote a letter, was not received—neither me nor my letter—then a quarrel with Epanchin, expulsion, banishment!"

"But, excuse me, how it it possible?" Nastasya Filippovna suddenly asked. "Five or six days ago in the Independence—I always read the Independence—I read exactly the same story! But decidedly exactly the same! It happened on one of the Rhine railways, in a

passenger car, between a Frenchman and an Englishwoman: the cigar was snatched in exactly the same way, the lapdog was tossed out the window in exactly the same way, and, finally, it ended in exactly the same way as with you. The dress was even light blue!"

The general blushed terribly; Kolya also blushed and clutched his head with his hands; Ptitsyn quickly turned away. Ferdyshchenko was the only one who went on laughing. There is no need to mention Ganya: he stood all the while enduring mute and unbearable torment.

"I assure you," the general mumbled, "that exactly the same thing happened to me . . ."

"Papa did actually have some unpleasantness with Mrs. Schmidt, the Belokonskys' governess," cried Kolya, "I remember."

"So! The very same? One and the same story at two ends of Europe and the very same in all details, including the light blue dress!" the merciless Nastasya Filippovna insisted. "I'll send you the Independence Belge!"

"But notice," the general still insisted, "that to me it happened two years earlier . . ."

"Ah, maybe that's it!"

Nastasya Filippovna laughed as if in hysterics.

"Papa, I beg you to step out for a word or two," Ganya said in a trembling, tormented voice, mechanically seizing his father by the shoulder. Boundless hatred seethed in his eyes.

At that very moment an extremely loud ringing came from the doorbell in the front hall. Such ringing might have torn the bell off. It heralded an extraordinary visit. Kolya ran to open the door.

X

The front hall suddenly became noisy and crowded; the impression from the drawing room was as if several people had come in from outside and others were still coming in. Several voices talked and exclaimed at the same time; there was also talking and exclaiming on the stairs, the door to which, from the sound of it, had not been closed. The visit turned out to be extremely strange. Everyone exchanged glances; Ganya rushed to the large room, but several people had already entered it.

"Ah, here he is, the Judas!" cried a voice the prince knew. "Greetings, Ganka, you scoundrel!"

"Yes, it's him himself!" another voice confirmed.

The prince could have no doubt: one voice was Rogozhin's, the other Lebedev's.

Ganya stood as if stupefied on the threshold of the drawing room and gazed silently, allowing some ten or twelve people to enter the room one after another unhindered, following Parfyon Rogozhin. The company was extremely motley, and was distinguished not only by its motleyness but also by its unsightliness. Some came in just as they were, in overcoats and fur coats. None of them, incidentally, was very drunk; but they all seemed quite tipsy. They all seemed to need each other in order to come in; not one of them had courage enough by himself, but they all urged each other on, as it were. Even Rogozhin stepped warily at the head of the crowd, but he had some sort of intention, and he looked gloomily and irritably preoccupied. The rest only made up a chorus, or, better, a claque of supporters. Besides Lebedev, there was also the freshly curled Zalyozhev, who flung his coat off in the front hall and walked in casually and foppishly with two or three similar gentlemen, obviously of the shopkeeper sort. Someone in a half military coat; some small and extremely fat man, ceaselessly laughing; some enormous gentleman, well over six feet tall, also remarkably fat, extremely gloomy and taciturn, who obviously put great trust in his fists. There was a medical student; there was an obsequious little Pole. Some two ladies peeped into the front hall from the stairs, hesitating to come in. Kolya slammed the door in their noses and hooked the latch.

"Greetings, Ganka, you scoundrel! What, you weren't expecting Parfyon Rogozhin?" Rogozhin repeated, having reached the drawing room and stopped in the doorway facing Ganya. But at that moment, in the drawing room, directly facing him, he suddenly caught sight of Nastasya Filippovna. Obviously he had never thought to meet her here, because the sight of her made an extraordinary impression on him; he turned so pale that his lips even became blue. "So it's true!" he said quietly and as if to himself, with a completely lost look. "The end! . . . Well . . . You'll answer to me now!" he suddenly rasped, looking at Ganya with furious spite. "Well . . . ah! . . ."

He even gasped for air, he even had difficulty speaking. He was advancing mechanically into the drawing room, but, having crossed the threshold, he suddenly saw Nina Alexandrovna and Varya and stopped, slightly embarrassed, despite all his agitation. After him

came Lebedev, who followed him like a shadow and was already quite drunk, then the student, the gentleman with the fists, Zalyozhev, who was bowing to right and left, and, finally, the short, fat one squeezed in. The presence of the ladies still restrained them all somewhat, and obviously hindered them greatly, only until it began, of course, until the first pretext to give a shout and begin . . . Then no ladies would hinder them.

"What? You're here, too, Prince?" Rogozhin asked distractedly, somewhat surprised to meet the prince. "Still in your gaiters, ehh!" he sighed, now forgetting the prince and turning his eyes to Nastasya Filippovna, moving as if drawn to her by a magnet.

Nastasya Filippovna also looked at the visitors with uneasy curiosity.

Ganya finally came to his senses.

"Excuse me, but what, finally, is the meaning of this?" he began loudly, looking around sternly at the people coming in and mainly addressing Rogozhin. "It seems you haven't come to a cow-barn, gentlemen, my mother and sister are here . . ."

"We see it's your mother and sister," Rogozhin said through his teeth.

"It's clear they're your mother and sister," Lebedev picked up to lend it countenance.

The gentleman with the fists, probably thinking the moment had come, also began grumbling something.

"But anyhow!" Ganya raised his voice suddenly and explosively, somehow beyond measure. "First, I ask you all to go to the other room, and then I'd like to know . . ."

"See, he doesn't know," Rogozhin grinned spitefully, not budging from where he stood. "You don't know Rogozhin?"

"I suppose I met you somewhere, but . . ."

"See, he met me somewhere! Only three months ago I lost two hundred roubles of my father's money to you. The old man died and had no time to find out. You got me into it, and Kniff cheated. You don't know me? Ptitsyn is my witness! If I was to show you three roubles, to take them out of my pocket right now, you'd crawl after them on all fours to Vassilievsky Island—that's how you are! That's how your soul is! I've come now to buy you out for money, never mind that I'm wearing these boots, I've got a lot of money, brother, I'll buy you out with all you've got here ... if I want, I'll buy you all! Everything!" Rogozhin grew excited and as if more and more drunk. "Ehh!" he cried, "Nastasya Filippovna!

Don't throw me out, tell me one thing: are you going to marry him or not?"

Rogozhin asked his question like a lost man, as if addressing some sort of divinity, but with the boldness of a man condemned to death, who has nothing more to lose. In deathly anguish he waited for the answer.

Nastasya Filippovna looked him up and down with a mocking and haughty glance, but after glancing at Varya and Nina Alexandrovna, she looked at Ganya and suddenly changed her tone.

"Absolutely not, what's the matter with you? And what on earth made you think of asking?" she replied softly and seriously and as if with some surprise.

"No? No!!" cried Rogozhin, all but beside himself with joy. "So it's no?! And they told me . . . Ah! Well! . . . Nastasya Filippovna! They say you're engaged to Ganka! To him? No, how is it possible? (I tell them all!) No, I'll buy him out for a hundred roubles, I'll give him a thousand, say, or three thousand, to renounce her, he'll run away on the eve of the wedding and leave his bride all to me. So it is, Ganka, you scoundrel! You'll take three thousand. Here it is, here! This is what I came with, to get a receipt from you. I said I'd buy you—and so I will!"

"Get out of here, you're drunk!" cried Ganya, blushing and blanching by turns.

His exclamation was followed by a sudden explosion of several voices; Rogozhin's whole crew had long been waiting for the first challenge. Lebedev whispered something extremely assiduously into Rogozhin's ear.

"That's true, clerk," replied Rogozhin. "It's true, you drunken soul! Eh, come what may. Nastasya Filippovna!" he cried, looking at her like a half-wit, timid and suddenly taking heart to the point of insolence, "here's eighteen thousand!" And he slapped down on the table in front of her a packet wrapped in white paper, tied crisscross with string. "There! And . . . and there'll be more!"

He did not dare to finish what he was going to say.

"No, no, no!" Lebedev began whispering to him with a terribly frightened look; it was clear that he was frightened by the enormity of the sum and had suggested starting with incomparably less.

"No, brother, in this you're a fool, you don't know where you've got to . . . and I, too, must be a fool along with you!" Rogozhin caught himself and gave a sudden start under the flashing eyes of

Nastasya Filippovna. "Ehh! I fouled it up, listening to you," he added with profound regret.

Nastasya Filippovna, peering into Rogozhin's overturned face, suddenly laughed.

"Eighteen thousand, for me? You can tell a boor at once!" she added suddenly, with brazen familiarity, and got up from the sofa as if preparing to leave. Ganya watched the whole scene with a sinking heart.

"Forty thousand then, forty, not eighteen!" cried Rogozhin. "Vanka Ptitsyn and Biskup promised to produce forty thousand by seven o'clock. Forty thousand! All on the table."

The scene was becoming extremely ugly, but Nastasya Filippovna went on laughing and did not go away, as if she were intentionally drawing it out. Nina Alexandrovna and Varya also got up from their places and waited fearfully, silently, for what it would lead to; Varya's eyes flashed, but Nina Alexandrovna was morbidly affected; she trembled and seemed about to faint.

"In that case—a hundred! Today I'll produce a hundred thousand! Ptitsyn, help me out, you'll line your own pockets!"

"You're out of your mind!" Ptitsyn suddenly whispered, going up to him quickly and seizing him by the arm. "You're drunk, they'll send for the police. Do you know where you are?"

"Drunken lies," Nastasya Filippovna said, as if taunting him.

"I'm not lying, I'll have it! By evening I'll have it. Ptitsyn, help me out, you percentage soul, charge whatever you like, get me a hundred thousand by evening: I tell you, I won't stint!" Rogozhin's animation suddenly reached ecstasy.

"What is all this, however?" Ardalion Alexandrovich exclaimed unexpectedly and menacingly, getting angry and approaching Rogozhin. The unexpectedness of the hitherto silent old man's outburst made it very comical. Laughter was heard.

"Where did this one come from?" Rogozhin laughed. "Come with us, old man, you'll get good and drunk!"

"That's mean!" cried Kolya, all in tears from shame and vexation.

"Isn't there at least someone among you who will take this shameless woman out of here?" Varya suddenly cried out, trembling with wrath.

"It's me they call shameless!" Nastasya Filippovna retorted with scornful gaiety. "And here I came like a fool to invite them to my party! This is how your dear sister treats me, Gavrila Ardalionovich!"

For a short while Ganya stood as if thunderstruck by his sister's outburst; but seeing that Nastasya Filippovna was really leaving this time, he fell upon Varya like a man beside himself and furiously seized her by the hand.

"What have you done?" he cried out, looking at her as if he wished to reduce her to ashes on the spot. He was decidedly lost and not thinking well.

"What have I done? Where are you dragging me? Not to ask her forgiveness for having insulted your mother and come to disgrace your home, you low man!" Varya cried again, triumphant, and looking defiantly at her brother.

For a few moments they stood facing each other like that. Ganya was still holding her hand in his. Varya pulled it once or twice with all her might, but could no longer hold back and suddenly, beside herself, spat in her brother's face.

"That's the girl!" cried Nastasya Filippovna. "Bravo, Ptitsyn, I congratulate you!"

Ganya's eyes went dim and, forgetting himself entirely, he swung at his sister with all his might. The blow would certainly have landed on her face. But suddenly another hand stopped his arm in midair.

The prince stepped between him and his sister.

"Enough, no more of that!" he said insistently, but also trembling all over, as if from an extremely strong shock.

"What, are you always going to stand in my way!" Ganya bellowed, dropping Varya's hand, and, having freed his arm, in the utmost degree of rage, he swung roundly and slapped the prince in the face.

"Ah!" Kolya clasped his hands, "ah, my God!"

There were exclamations on all sides. The prince turned pale. With a strange and reproachful gaze, he looked straight into Ganya's eyes; his lips trembled and attempted to say something; they were twisted by a strange and completely inappropriate smile.

"Well, let that be for me . . . but her ... I still won't let you! . . ." he said quietly at last; but suddenly unable to control himself, he left Ganya, covered his face with his hands, went to the corner, stood facing the wall, and said in a faltering voice:

"Oh, how ashamed you'll be of what you've done!"

Ganya indeed stood as if annihilated. Kolya rushed to the prince and began embracing him and kissing him; after him crowded

Rogozhin, Varya, Ptitsyn, Nina Alexandrovna, everyone, even old Ardalion Alexandrovich.

"Never mind, never mind!" the prince murmured in all directions, with the same inappropriate smile.

"He'll be sorry!" shouted Rogozhin. "You'll be ashamed, Ganka, to have offended such a . . . sheep!" (He was unable to find any other word.) "Prince, my dear soul, drop them all, spit on them, and let's go! You'll learn how Rogozhin loves!"

Nastasya Filippovna was also very struck both by Ganya's act and by the prince's response. Her usually pale and pensive face, which all this while had been so out of harmony with her affected laughter, was now visibly animated by a new feeling; and yet she still seemed unwilling to show it, and the mockery remained as if forcedly on her face.

"Really, I've seen his face somewhere!" she said unexpectedly, seriously now, suddenly remembering her question earlier.

"And you're not even ashamed! You can't be the way you pretended to be just now. It's not possible!" the prince suddenly cried out in deeply felt reproach.

Nastasya Filippovna was surprised, smiled, but, as if keeping something behind her smile, slightly embarrassed, she glanced at Ganya and left the drawing room. But before she reached the front hall, she suddenly came back, quickly went up to Nina Alexandrovna, took her hand, and brought it to her lips.

"He guessed right, in fact, I'm not like that," she whispered quickly, fervently, suddenly flushing and becoming all red, and, turning around, she went out so quickly this time that no one managed to figure out why she had come back. They only saw that she whispered something to Nina Alexandrovna and seemed to kiss her hand. But Varya saw and heard everything, and in astonishment followed her with her eyes.

Ganya came to his senses and rushed to see Nastasya Filippovna off, but she had already gone out. He caught up with her on the stairs.

"Don't see me off!" she called to him. "Good-bye, till this evening! Without fail, you hear!"

He came back confused, pensive; a heavy riddle lay on his soul, still heavier than before. The prince, too, was on his mind . . . He was so oblivious that he barely noticed how the whole Rogozhin crowd poured past him and even jostled him in the doorway, quickly making their way out of the apartment after Rogozhin.

They were all discussing something in loud voices. Rogozhin himself walked with Ptitsyn, insistently repeating something very important and apparently urgent.

"The game's up, Ganka!" he cried, passing by. Ganya anxiously watched him leave.

XI

The prince left the drawing room and shut himself up in his room. Kolya immediately came running to comfort him. It seemed the poor boy was no longer able to leave him alone.

"It's a good thing you left," he said. "There'll be worse turmoil there than before, and it's like that every day, and it all started because of this Nastasya Filippovna."

"You've got many different hurts accumulated here, Kolya," the prince observed.

"Hurts, yes. There's no point talking about us, though. It's our own fault. But I have a great friend here who's even more unhappy. Would you like to meet him?"

"Very much. A comrade of yours?"

"Yes, almost like a comrade. I'll explain it all to you later . . . And Nastasya Filippovna is beautiful, don't you think? I never even saw her till today, though I tried hard to. Really dazzling. I'd forgive Ganka everything if he loved her; but why he's taking money, that's the trouble!"

"Yes, I don't much like your brother."

"Well, what else! For you, after . . . But you know, I can't stand these different opinions. Some madman, or fool, or villain in a mad state, gives a slap in the face, and the man is dishonored for the rest of his life and can't wash it off except with blood, or if the other one begs forgiveness on his knees. I think it's absurd and despotism. Lermontov's play The Masquerade³⁵ is based on it and— stupidly so, in my opinion. That is, I mean to say, it's unnatural. But he wrote it when he was almost still a child."

"I like your sister very much."

"How she spat in Ganka's mug! Brave Varka! But you didn't spit, and I'm sure it's not from lack of courage. Ah, here she is herself, speak of the devil. I knew she'd come: she's noble, though she has some shortcomings."

"You have no business here," Varya fell upon him first of all. "Go to your father. Is he bothering you, Prince?"

"Not at all, on the contrary."

"Well, big sister's off again! That's the bad thing about her. And, by the way, I thought father would be sure to go with Rogozhin. He's probably sorry now. In fact, I should go and see how he is," Kolya added, going out.

"Thank God, I took mama away and put her to bed, and there are no new developments. Ganya is confused and very pensive. And he has reason to be. What a lesson! . . . I've come to thank you once again, Prince, and to ask you: did you know Nastasya Filippovna before?"

"No, I didn't."

"Then what made you tell her to her face that she was 'not like that'? And it seems you guessed right. It appears that she may indeed not be like that. However, I can't make her out! Of course, her aim was to insult us, that's clear. I heard a great many strange things about her even before. But if she came to invite us, why did she start treating mama that way? Ptitsyn knows her very well; he says he couldn't figure her out just now. And with Rogozhin? A woman can't speak like that, if she has any self-respect, in the house of her . . . Mama is also very worried about you."

"It's nothing!" the prince said and waved his hand.

"And how is it she listened to you . . ."

"Listened to what?"

"You told her she was ashamed, and she suddenly changed completely. You have influence over her, Prince," Varya added with a slight smile.

The door opened, and quite unexpectedly Ganya came in.

He did not even hesitate on seeing Varya; for a moment he stood on the threshold and with sudden resoluteness went up to the prince.

"Prince, I acted meanly, forgive me, dear heart," he said suddenly, with strong emotion. The features of his face expressed strong pain. The prince stared in amazement and did not respond at once. "Well, so, forgive me, forgive me!" Ganya insisted impatiently. "Well, if you want, I'll kiss your hand right now."

The prince was extremely surprised and silently embraced Ganya with both arms. The two men kissed each other with sincere feeling.

"I never, never thought you were like this," the prince said at last, barely catching his breath. "I thought you were . . . incapable."

"Of apologizing? . . . And what made me think earlier that you were an idiot? You notice things that other people never notice. One could talk with you, but . . . better not to talk!"

"There's someone else here that you should apologize to," the prince said, pointing to Varya.

"No, they're all my enemies. Rest assured, Prince, I've tried many times; they don't forgive sincerely here!" Ganya burst out hotly and turned away from Varya.

"No, I will forgive you!" Varya said suddenly.

"And go to Nastasya Filippovna's tonight?"

"I will if you tell me to, only you'd better judge for yourself: is it at all possible for me to go now?"

"But she's not like that. See what riddles she sets! Tricks!" And Ganya laughed spitefully.

"I know myself she's not like that and has her tricks, but what tricks? And besides, look, how does she consider you yourself, Ganya? So she kissed mama's hand. So it's some kind of tricks— but she did laugh at you! By God, brother, that's not worth seventy-five thousand! You're still capable of noble feelings, that's why I'm telling you. No, don't go there! Be careful! It can't come to any good!"

Having said this, Varya quickly left the room in great agitation.

"That's how they always are!" said Ganya, smiling. "Can they possibly think I don't know it myself? I know much more than they do."

Having said this, Ganya sat down on the sofa, obviously wishing to prolong his visit.

"If you know it yourself," the prince asked rather timidly, "why have you chosen such a torment, knowing that it's really not worth seventy-five thousand?"

"I wasn't talking about that," Ganya muttered, "but, incidentally, tell me what you think, I precisely want to know your opinion: is this 'torment' worth seventy-five thousand or is it not?"

"To my mind, it's not."

"Well, no news there. And it's shameful to marry like that?"

"Very shameful."

"Well, be it known to you, then, that I am getting married, and it's now quite certain. Earlier today I was still hesitating, but not anymore! Be quiet! I know what you want to say . . ."

"It's not what you think, but I'm very surprised at your extreme assurance. . ."

"About what? Which assurance?"

"That Nastasya Filippovna is certain to accept you, and that it's all concluded, and, second, even if she does, that the seventy-five thousand will go straight into your pocket. Though, of course, there's much here that I don't know."

Ganya made a strong movement towards the prince.

"Of course you don't know everything," he said. "And what would make me take all this burden on myself?"

"It seems to me that it happens all the time: a man marries for money, and the money stays with the wife."

"No, no, it won't be like that with us . . . Here . . . here there are certain circumstances . . ." Ganya murmured in anxious pensiveness. "And as for her answer, there's no doubt about it now," he added quickly. "What makes you conclude that she'll reject me?"

"I know nothing except what I've seen. And Varvara Ardalionovna also said just now . . ."

"Eh! That's nothing, they just don't know what else to say. And she was making fun of Rogozhin, rest assured, that I could see. It was obvious. I was frightened earlier, but now I can see it. Or maybe you mean the way she treated my mother, and my father, and Varya?"

"And you."

"Perhaps. But here it's the age-old woman's revenge and nothing more. She's a terribly irritable, suspicious, and vain woman. Like an official overlooked for promotion! She wanted to show herself and all her contempt for us . . . well, and for me, too—it's true, I don't deny it . . . But she'll marry me all the same. You don't even suspect what tricks human vanity is capable of. Here she considers me a scoundrel because I'm taking her, another man's mistress, so openly for her money, but she doesn't know that another man could dupe her in a more scoundrelly way: he'd get at her and start pouring out liberal and progressive stuff, all drawn from various women's questions, and he'd have the whole of her slip right through the needle's eye like a thread. He'd convince the vain fool (and so easily!) that he's taking her only 'for the nobility of her heart and her misfortunes,' and marry her for her money all the same. She doesn't like me, because I don't want to shuffle; it would be fine if I did. And what's she doing herself? Isn't it the same? Why, then, does she go scorning me and playing all these games? Because I show my pride and don't give in. Well, we'll see!"

"Did you really love her before this?"

"In the beginning I loved her. Well, enough . . . There are women who are only fit to be mistresses and nothing else. I'm not saying she was my mistress. If she wants to live quietly, I'll live quietly, too. If she rebels, I'll drop her at once and take the money with me. I don't want to be ridiculous; above all I don't want to be ridiculous."

"I keep thinking," the prince observed cautiously, "that Nastasya Filippovna is intelligent. If she anticipates such torment, why should she walk into the trap? She could marry somebody else. That's what surprises me."

"But there's the calculation! You don't know everything, Prince . . . here . . . and, besides, she's convinced that I'm madly in love with her, I swear to you, and, you know, I strongly suspect that she also loves me, in her own way, that is, as the saying goes: 'The one I treat, I also beat.' She'll consider me a varlet all her life (that may be what she wants) and love me in her own way even so; she's preparing herself for that, it's her character. She's an extremely Russian woman, I tell you. Well, but I'm preparing my own surprise for her. That scene earlier with Varya happened accidentally, but it was to my profit: now she's seen and been convinced of my devotion and that I'll break all connections for her sake. Meaning we're no fools, rest assured. Incidentally, I hope you don't think I'm such a babbler? Indeed, my dear Prince, perhaps it's a bad thing that I'm confiding in you. I fell upon you precisely because you're the first noble person I've met—I mean, 'fell upon' with no pun intended. You're not angry because of what happened, eh? I'm speaking from the heart maybe for the first time in a whole two years. There are very few honest people here. Ptitsyn's the most honest. It seems you're laughing, or aren't you? Scoundrels love honest people—did you know that? And I'm . . . However, in what way am I a scoundrel? Tell me in all conscience. Why do they repeat after her that I'm a scoundrel? And, you know, I also repeat after them and her that I'm a scoundrel! That's the most scoundrelly thing of all!"

"I'll never consider you a scoundrel now," said the prince. "Earlier I took you altogether for a villain, and suddenly you overjoyed me so—it's a real lesson: not to judge without experience. Now I see that you not only cannot be considered a villain, but that you haven't even gone all that bad. To my mind, you're simply the most ordinary man that could be, only very weak and not the least bit original."

Ganya smiled sarcastically to himself but said nothing. The prince saw that his opinion was not liked, became embarrassed, and also fell silent.

"Did father ask you for money?" Ganya asked suddenly.

"No."

"He will. Don't give him any. And he even used to be a decent man, I remember. He was received by good people. How quickly they all come to an end, all these decent old people! Circumstances need only change, and there's nothing left of the former, it's gone up like a flash of powder. He didn't lie like that before, I assure you; he was just a much too rapturous man before, and—this is what it's come to! Drink's to blame, of course. Do you know that he keeps a mistress? He hasn't stayed simply an innocent little liar. I can't understand my mother's long-suffering. Did he tell you about the siege of Kars? Or how his gray outrunner began to talk? He even goes that far."

And Ganya suddenly rocked with laughter.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" he asked the prince.

"It surprises me that you laugh so genuinely. You really have a childlike laugh. When you came in to make peace with me and said: 'If you want, I'll kiss your hand,' it was like children making peace. Which means you're still capable of such words and gestures. Then suddenly you start reading a whole lecture about all this darkness and the seventy-five thousand. Really, it's all somehow absurd and cannot be."

"What do you want to conclude from that?"

"Mightn't it be that you're acting too light-mindedly, that you ought to look around first? Varvara Ardalionovna may have spoken rightly."

"Ah, morality! That I'm still a little boy, I know myself," Ganya interrupted him hotly, "if only in that I've started such a conversation with you. I'm not going into this darkness out of calculation, Prince," he went on, giving himself away like a young man whose vanity has been wounded. "Out of calculation I'd surely make a mistake, because my head and character aren't strong yet. I'm going out of passion, out of inclination, because I have a major goal. You must think I'll get the seventy-five thousand and right away buy a carriage and pair. No, sir, I'll go on wearing my two-year-old frock coat and drop all my club acquaintances. There are few people of self-control among us, and they're all usurers, but I want to show self-control. The main thing here is to carry it through to

the end—that's the whole task! When he was seventeen, Ptitsyn slept in the street, peddled penknives, and started with a kopeck; now he's got sixty thousand, but after what gymnastics! Well, I'm going to leap over all the gymnastics and start straight off with capital; in fifteen years people will say: 'There goes Ivolgin, the king of the Jews.'³⁶ You tell me I'm an unoriginal man. Note for yourself, dear Prince, that nothing offends a man of our time and tribe more than to be told that he's unoriginal, weak of character, with no special talents, and an ordinary man. You didn't even deign to consider me a good scoundrel, and, you know, I wanted to eat you for that just now! You insulted me more than Epanchin, who considers me (and without any discussion, without any provocation, in the simplicity of his soul, note that) capable of selling him my wife! That, my dear, has long infuriated me, and I want money. Having made money, be it known to you—I'll become an original man in the highest degree. The meanest and most hateful thing about money is that it even gives one talent. And so it will be till the world ends. You'll say it's all childish or maybe poetry—so what, it's the more fun for me, but the main thing will be done all the same. I'll carry it through to the end and show self-control. Rira bien qui rira le dernier* Why does Epanchin offend me so? Out of spite, is it? Never, sir. Simply because I'm so insignificant. Well, sir, but then .. . Enough, however, it's late. Kolya has already poked his nose in twice: he's calling you to dinner. And I'm clearing out. I'll wander in to see you some time. It'll be nice for you here; they'll take you as one of the family now. Watch out, don't give me away. I have a feeling that you and I will either be friends or enemies. And what do you think, Prince, if I had kissed your hand earlier (as I sincerely offered to do), would it have made me your enemy afterwards?"

"It certainly would have, only not forever, later you would have been unable to keep from forgiving me," the prince decided after some reflection, and laughed.

"Aha! One must be more careful with you. Devil knows, you poured in some poison there, too. And, who knows, maybe you are my enemy? Incidentally—ha, ha, ha! I forgot to ask: is my impression right, that you like Nastasya Filippovna a bit too much, eh?"

"Yes ... I like her."

* He who laughs last laughs best.

"In love?"

"N-no!"

"But he turns all red and suffers. Well, all right, all right, I won't laugh. Good-bye. And, you know, she's a virtuous woman, can you believe that? You think she lives with that one, with Totsky? No, no! Not for a long time. And did you notice that she's terribly awkward and was even abashed for a few moments today? Really. There's the kind that loves domination. Well, good-bye!"

Ganechka went out much more casually than he came in, and in good spirits. For about ten minutes the prince remained motionless and pondered.

Kolya again stuck his head in at the door.

"I don't want any dinner, Kolya. I had a good lunch at the Epanchins'."

Kolya came all the way in the door and handed the prince a note. It was from the general, folded and sealed. By Kolya's face it could be seen that it was painful for him to deliver it. The prince read it, got up, and took his hat.

"It's two steps from here," Kolya became embarrassed. "He's sitting there now over a bottle. How he got them to give him credit I can't understand. Prince, dear heart, please don't tell them later that I brought you the note! I've sworn a thousand times not to do it, but I feel sorry for him. Oh, and please don't be ceremonious with him: give him a little something, and there's an end to it."

"I had a thought myself, Kolya. I need to see your father ... on a certain matter . . . Let's go . . ."

XII

Kolya led the prince not far away, to Liteinaya, to a café and billiard parlor on the ground floor, with an entrance from the street. There, to the right, in the corner, in a private little room, Ardalion Alexandrovich had settled like an old-time habitué, a bottle on the table in front of him and, in fact, with the Independence Belge in his hands. He was expecting the prince. As soon as he saw him, he put the newspaper aside and began an ardent and verbose explanation, of which, however, the prince understood almost nothing, because the general was already nearly loaded. "I haven't got ten roubles," the prince interrupted, "but here's

twenty-five, have it broken for you and give me back fifteen, otherwise I'll be left without a penny myself."

"Oh, no question; and rest assured that this very hour . . ."

"Besides, I have something to ask you, General. Have you ever been to Nastasya Filippovna's?"

"I? Have I ever been? You say this to me? Several times, my dear, several times!" the general cried in a fit of self-satisfied and triumphant irony. "But I finally stopped it myself, because I did not wish to encourage an improper union. You saw it yourself, you were a witness this afternoon: I've done everything a father could do—but a meek and indulgent father; now a father of a different sort will come onstage, and then—we shall see whether the honored old soldier will gain the upper hand in this intrigue, or a shameless adventuress will get into the noblest of families."

"But I precisely wanted to ask you whether, as an acquaintance, you might not get me into Nastasya Filippovna's this evening? I absolutely must be there tonight; I have business; but I have no idea how to get in. I was introduced to her today, but all the same I wasn't invited: she's giving a party this evening. I'm prepared to overlook certain proprieties, however, and they can even laugh at me, if only I get in somehow."

"And you've hit squarely, squarely upon my own idea, my young friend," the general exclaimed rapturously. "I didn't summon you for a trifle!" he went on, picking up the money, however, and dispatching it into his pocket. "I summoned you precisely to invite you to accompany me on the march to Nastasya Filippovna, or, better, on the march against Nastasya Filippovna! General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin! How will that seem to her! And I, in the guise of birthday courtesies, will finally pronounce my will—in a roundabout way, not directly, but it will be as if directly. Then Ganya himself will see what he must do: either an honored father and ... so to speak . . . the rest of it, or . . . But what will be, will be! Your idea is highly fruitful. At nine o'clock we'll set out, we still have time."

"Where does she live?"

"Far from here: by the Bolshoi Theater, Mrs. Mytovtsev's house, almost there in the square, on the second floor . . . She won't have a big gathering, despite the birthday, and they'll go home early..."

It had long been evening; the prince was still sitting, listening, and waiting for the general, who had started on an endless number of anecotes and never finished a single one of them. On the prince's

arrival, he had called for a new bottle and finished it only an hour later, then called for one more and finished that one. It must be supposed that in the meantime the general had managed to tell almost the whole of his story. Finally the prince got up and said he could not wait any longer. The general finished the last dregs of his bottle, got up, and started out of the room with very unsteady steps. The prince was in despair. He could not understand how he could have been so foolishly trusting. In fact, he had never trusted the general; he had counted on him only so as to get into Nastasya Filippovna's somehow, even if with a certain scandal, but he had not counted on an excessive scandal: the general turned out to be decidedly drunk, extremely eloquent, and talked nonstop, with feeling, with a tear in his soul. Things constantly came round to the fact that, owing to the bad behavior of all the members of his family, everything was about to collapse, and it was time finally to put a stop to it. They finally came out to Liteinaya. The thaw was still going on; a dismal, warm, noxious wind whistled along the streets, carriages splashed through the mud, iron-shod trotters and nags struck the pavement ringingly. A dismal and wet crowd of pedestrians wandered along the sidewalks. Some were drunk.

"Do you see these lighted second floors?" said the general. "That is where all my comrades live, while I, I, who served and suffered more than all of them, I trudge on foot to the Bolshoi Theater, to the apartments of a dubious woman! A man with thirteen bullets in his chest . . . you don't believe me? And yet it was solely for me that Pirogov telegraphed to Paris and left besieged Sevastopol for a time, and Nélaton, the court physician in Paris, obtained a safe conduct in the name of science and came to besieged Sevastopol to examine me.³⁷ The highest authorities know of it: Ah, it's that Ivolgin, the one with thirteen bullets! . . .' That's what they say, sir! Do you see this house, Prince? Here on the second floor lives my old comrade, General Sokolovich, with his most noble and numerous family. This house, with three more on Nevsky Prospect and two on Morskaya—that is the whole present circle of my acquaintance, that is, my own personal acquaintance. Nina Alexandrovna has long since resigned herself to circumstances. But I still go on remembering . . . and, so to speak, find repose in the cultivated circle of my former comrades and subordinates, who adore me to this day. This General Sokolovich (it's a rather long time, however, since I've been to see him and Anna Fyodorovna) . . . you know, my dear Prince, when you don't receive, you some-

how involuntarily stop visiting others as well. And yet . . . hm . . . it seems you don't believe . . . Though why shouldn't I introduce the son of my best friend and childhood companion to this charming family? General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin! You'll meet an amazing girl, and not just one but two, even three, the ornaments of our capital and society: beauty, cultivation, tendency . . . the woman question, poetry—all this united in a happy, diversified mixture, not counting the dowry of at least eighty thousand in cash that each girl comes with, which never hurts, whatever the woman and social questions ... in short, I absolutely, absolutely must and am duty-bound to introduce you. General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin!"

"At once? Now? But you've forgotten," the prince began.

"I've forgotten nothing, nothing, come along! This way, to this magnificent stairway. Surprising there's no doorkeeper, but . . . it's a holiday, and the doorkeeper is away. They haven't dismissed the drunkard yet. This Sokolovich owes all the happiness of his life and career to me, to me alone and no one else, but. . . here we are."

The prince no longer objected to the visit and obediently followed the general, so as not to vex him, in the firm hope that General Sokolovich and his whole family would gradually evaporate like a mirage and turn out to be nonexistent, and they could calmly go back down the stairs. But, to his horror, he began to lose this hope: the general was taking him up the stairs like someone who really had acquaintances there, and kept putting in biographical and topographical details full of mathematical precision. Finally, when they reached the second floor and stopped outside the door of a wealthy apartment, and the general took hold of the bellpull, the prince decided to flee definitively; but one odd circumstance stopped him for a moment.

"You're mistaken, General," he said. "The name on the door is Kulakov, and you're ringing for Sokolovich."

"Kulakov . . . Kulakov doesn't prove anything. It's Sokolovich's apartment, and I'm ringing for Sokolovich. I spit on Kulakov . . . And, you see, they're opening."

The door indeed opened. A footman peeped out and announced that "the masters aren't at home, sir."

"Too bad, too bad, as if on purpose," Ardalion Alexandrovich repeated several times with the deepest regret. "Tell them, my dear fellow, that General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin wished to pay their personal respects and were extremely, extremely sorry . . ."

At that moment another face peeped from inside through the open door, the housekeeper's by the look of it, perhaps even the governess's, a lady of about forty, wearing a dark dress. She approached with curiosity and mistrust on hearing the names of General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin.

"Marya Alexandrovna is not at home," she said, studying the general in particular, "she took the young lady, Alexandra Mikhailovna, to visit her grandmother."

"And Alexandra Mikhailovna went with her—oh, God, what bad luck! And imagine, madam, I always have such bad luck! I humbly ask you to give her my greetings, and to remind Alexandra Mikhailovna ... in short, convey to her my heartfelt wish for that which she herself wished for on Thursday, in the evening, to the strains of Chopin's ballade; she'll remember . . . My heartfelt wish! General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin!"

"I won't forget, sir," the lady bowed out, having become more trustful.

Going downstairs, the general, his fervor not yet cooled, continued to regret the failure of the visit and that the prince had been deprived of such a charming acquaintance.

"You know, my dear, I'm something of a poet in my soul, have you noticed that? But anyhow . . . anyhow, it seems we didn't go to exactly the right place," he suddenly concluded quite unexpectedly. "The Sokoloviches, I now recall, live in another house, and it seems they're even in Moscow now. Yes, I was slightly mistaken, but that's ... no matter."

"I'd only like to know one thing," the prince remarked dejectedly, "am I to stop counting on you entirely and go ahead on my own?

"To stop? Counting? On your own? But why on earth, when for me it's a capital undertaking, upon which so much in the life of my whole family depends? No, my young friend, you don't know Ivolgin yet. Whoever says 'Ivolgin' says 'a wall': trust in Ivolgin as in a wall, that's what I used to say in the squadron where I began my service. It's just that I'd like to stop on the way at a certain house, where my soul has found repose these several years now, after anxieties and trials . . ."

"You want to stop at home?"

"No! I want ... to see Mrs. Terentyev, the widow of Captain Terentyev, my former subordinate . . . and even friend . . . There, in her house, I am reborn in spirit and there I bring the sorrows

of my personal and domestic life . . . And since today I precisely bear a great moral burden, I . . ."

"It seems to me that I did a very foolish thing anyway," the prince murmured, "in troubling you earlier. And besides that, you're now . . . Good-bye!"

"But I cannot, I cannot let you go, my young friend!" the general roused himself. "A widow, the mother of a family, and from her heart she produces chords to which my whole being responds. The visit to her is a matter of five minutes, in that house I behave without ceremony, I almost live there; I'll wash, do the most necessary brushing up, and then we'll take a cab to the Bolshoi Theater. You can be sure I shall have need of you for the whole evening . . . Here's the house, we've arrived . . . Ah, Kolya, you're already here? Well, is Marfa Borisovna at home, or have you only just arrived?"

"Oh, no," replied Kolya, who had run right into them in the gateway, "I've been here for a long time, with Ippolit, he's worse, he stayed in bed this morning. I went down to the grocer's just now for a deck of cards. Marfa Borisovna's expecting you. Only, papa, you're so . . . !" Kolya broke off, studying the general's gait and bearing. "Oh, well, come on!"

The meeting with Kolya induced the prince to accompany the general to Marfa Borisovna's as well, but only for a minute. The prince needed Kolya; as for the general, he decided to abandon him in any case, and could not forgive himself for venturing to trust him earlier. They climbed up for a long time, to the fourth floor, and by the back stairs.

"You want to introduce the prince?" Kolya asked on the way.

"Yes, my friend, I want to introduce him: General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin, but what . . . how . . . Marfa Borisovna . . ."

"You know, papa, it would be better if you didn't go in. She'll eat you up! It's the third day you haven't poked your nose in there, and she's been waiting for money. Why did you promise her money? You're always like that! Now you'll have to deal with it."

On the fourth floor they stopped outside a low door. The general was visibly timid and shoved the prince forward.

"And I'll stay here," he murmured. "I want it to be a surprise . . ."

Kolya went in first. Some lady, in heavy red and white makeup, wearing slippers and a jerkin, her hair plaited in little braids, about forty years old, looked out the door, and the general's surprise unexpectedly blew up. The moment the lady saw him, she shouted:

"There he is, that low and insidious man, my heart was expecting it!"

"Let's go in, it's all right," the general murmured to the prince, still innocently laughing it off.

But it was not all right. As soon as they went through the dark and low front hall into the narrow drawing room, furnished with a half-dozen wicker chairs and two card tables, the hostess immediately started carrying on as if by rote in a sort of lamenting and habitual voice:

"And aren't you ashamed, aren't you ashamed of yourself, barbarian and tyrant of my family, barbarian and fiend! He's robbed me clean, sucked me dry, and he's still not content! How long will I put up with you, you shameless and worthless man!"

"Marfa Borisovna, Marfa Borisovna! This... is Prince Myshkin. General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin," the general murmured, trembling and at a loss.

"Would you believe," the captain's widow suddenly turned to the prince, "would you believe that this shameless man hasn't spared my orphaned children! He's stolen everything, filched everything, sold and pawned everything, left nothing. What am I to do with your promissory notes, you cunning and shameless man? Answer, you sly fox, answer me, you insatiable heart: with what, with what am I to feed my orphaned children? Here he shows up drunk, can't stand on his feet . . . How have I angered the Lord God, you vile and outrageous villain, answer me?"

But the general had other things on his mind.

"Marfa Borisovna, twenty-five roubles ... all I can do, with the help of a most noble friend. Prince! I was cruelly mistaken! Such is . . . life . . . And now . . . forgive me, I feel weak," the general went on, standing in the middle of the room and bowing on all sides, "I feel weak, forgive me! Lenochka! a pillow . . . dear!"

Lenochka, an eight-year-old girl, immediately ran to fetch a pillow and put it on the hard and ragged oilcloth sofa. The general sat down on it with the intention of saying much more, but the moment he touched the sofa, he drooped sideways, turned to the wall, and fell into a blissful sleep. Marfa Borisovna ceremoniously and ruefully showed the prince to a chair by a card table, sat down facing him, propped her right cheek in her hand, and silently began to sigh, looking at the prince. The three small children, two girls and a boy, of whom Lenochka was the oldest, came up to the table; all three put their hands on the table, and all three

also began to gaze intently at the prince. Kolya appeared from the other room.

"I'm very glad to have met you here, Kolya," the prince turned to him. "Couldn't you help me? I absolutely must be at Nastasya Filippovna's. I asked Ardalion Alexandrovich earlier, but he's fallen asleep. Take me there, because I don't know the streets or the way. I have the address, though: near the Bolshoi Theater, Mrs. Mytovtsev's house."

"Nastasya Filippovna? But she's never lived near the Bolshoi Theater, and my father has never been to Nastasya Filippovna's, if you want to know. It's strange that you expected anything from him. She lives off Vladimirskaya, near the Five Corners, it's much nearer here. Do you want to go now? It's nine-thirty. I'll take you there, if you like."

The prince and Kolya left at once. Alas! The prince had no way to pay for a cab, and they had to go on foot.

"I wanted to introduce you to Ippolit," said Kolya. "He's the oldest son of this jerkined captain's widow and was in the other room; he's unwell and stayed in bed all day today. But he's so strange; he's terribly touchy, and it seemed to me that you might make him ashamed, coming at such a moment . . . I'm not as ashamed as he is, because it's my father, after all, not my mother, there's still a difference, because in such cases the male sex isn't dishonored. Though maybe that's a prejudice about the predominance of the sexes in such cases. Ippolit is a splendid fellow, but he's the slave of certain prejudices."

"You say he has consumption?"

"Yes, I think it would be better if he died sooner. In his place I'd certainly want to die. He feels sorry for his brother and sisters, those little ones. If it was possible, if only we had the money, he and I would rent an apartment and renounce our families. That's our dream. And, you know, when I told him about that incident with you, he even got angry, he says that anyone who ignores a slap and doesn't challenge the man to a duel is a scoundrel. Anyhow, he was terribly irritated, and I stopped arguing with him. So it means that Nastasya Filippovna invited you to her place straight off?"

"The thing is that she didn't."

"How can you be going, then?" Kolya exclaimed and even stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. "And . . . and dressed like that, and to a formal party?"

"By God, I really don't know how I'm going to get in. If they receive me—good; if not—then my business is lost. And as for my clothes, what can I do about that?"

"You have business there? Or is it just so, pour passer le temps* in 'noble society'?"

"No, essentially I . . . that is, I do have business . . . it's hard for me to explain it, but . . ."

"Well, as for what precisely, that can be as you like, but the main thing for me is that you're not simply inviting yourself to a party, to be in the charming company of loose women, generals, and usurers. If that were so, excuse me, Prince, but I'd laugh at you and start despising you. There are terribly few honest people here, so that there's nobody at all to respect. You can't help looking down on them, while they all demand respect—Varya first of all. And have you noticed, Prince, in our age they're all adventurers! And precisely here, in Russia, in our dear fatherland. And how it has all come about, I can't comprehend. It seemed to stand so firmly, and what is it now? Everybody talks and writes about it everywhere. They expose. With us everybody exposes. The parents are the first to retreat and are ashamed themselves at their former morals. There, in Moscow, a father kept telling his son to stop at nothing in getting money; it got into print.³⁸ Look at my general. What's become of him? But, anyhow, you know, it seems to me that my general is an honest man; by God, it's so! All that is just disorder and drink. By God, it's so! It's even a pity; only I'm afraid to say it, because everybody laughs; but by God, it's a pity. And what about them, the smart ones? They're all usurers, every last one. Ippolit justifies usury; he says that's how it has to be, there's economic upheaval, some sort of influxes and refluxes, devil take them. It vexes me terribly to have it come from him, but he's angry. Imagine, his mother, the captain's widow, takes money from the general and then gives him quick loans on interest. It's terribly shameful! And, you know, mother, I mean my mother, Nina Alexandrovna, the general's wife, helps Ippolit with money, clothes, linen, and everything, and sometimes the children, too, through Ippolit, because the woman neglects them. And Varya does the same."

"You see, you say there are no honest and strong people, that there are only usurers; but then strong people turn up, your mother

*To pass the time.

and Varya. Isn't it a sign of moral strength to help here and in such circumstances?"

"Varka does it out of vanity, out of boastfulness, so as not to lag behind her mother. Well, but mama actually ... I respect it. Yes, I respect it and justify it. Even Ippolit feels it, though he's almost totally embittered. At first he made fun of it, called it baseness on my mother's part; but now he's beginning to feel it sometimes. Hm! So you call it strength? I'll make note of that. Ganya doesn't know about it, or he'd call it connivance."

"And Ganya doesn't know? It seems there's still a lot that Ganya doesn't know," escaped the prince, who lapsed into thought.

"You know, Prince, I like you very much. I can't stop thinking about what happened to you today."

"And I like you very much, Kolya."

"Listen, how do you intend to live here? I'll soon find myself work and earn a little something. Let's take an apartment and live together, you, me, and Ippolit, the three of us; and we can invite the general to visit."

"With the greatest pleasure. We'll see, though. Right now I'm very . . . very upset. What? We're there already? In this house . . . what a magnificent entrance! And a doorkeeper! Well, Kolya, I don't know what will come of it."

The prince stood there like a lost man.

"You'll tell me about it tomorrow! Don't be too shy. God grant you success, because I share your convictions in everything! Goodbye. I'll go back now and tell Ippolit about it. And you'll be received, there's no doubt of that, don't worry! She's terribly original. This stairway, second floor, the doorkeeper will show you!"

XIII

The prince was very worried as he went upstairs and tried as hard as he could to encourage himself. "The worst thing," he thought, "will be if they don't receive me and think something bad about me, or perhaps receive me and start laughing in my face . . . Ah, never mind!" And, in fact, it was not very frightening; but the question: "What would he do there and why was he going?"— to this question he was decidedly unable to find a reassuring answer. Even if it should be possible in some way to seize an opportunity and tell Nastasya Filippovna: "Don't marry this man and don't ruin

yourself, he doesn't love you, he loves your money, he told me so himself, and Aglaya Epanchin told me, and I've come to tell you"— it would hardly come out right in all respects. Yet another unresolved question emerged, and such a major one that the prince was even afraid to think about it, could not and dared not even admit it, did not know how to formulate it, and blushed and trembled at the very thought of it. But in the end, despite all these anxieties and doubts, he still went in and asked for Nastasya Filippovna.

Nastasya Filippovna occupied a not very large but indeed magnificently decorated apartment. There had been a time, at the beginning of those five years of her Petersburg life, when Afanasy Ivanovich had been particularly unstinting of money for her; he was then still counting on her love and thought he could seduce her mainly by comfort and luxury, knowing how easily the habits of luxury take root and how hard it is to give them up later, when luxury has gradually turned into necessity. In this case Totsky remained true to the good old traditions, changing nothing in them, and showing a boundless respect for the invincible power of sensual influences. Nastasya Filippovna did not reject the luxury, even liked it, but—and this seemed extremely strange—never succumbed to it, as if she could always do without it; she even tried several times to declare as much, which always struck Totsky unpleasantly. However, there was much in Nastasya Filippovna that struck Afanasy Ivanovich unpleasantly (later even to the point of scorn). Not to mention the inelegance of the sort of people she occasionally received, and was therefore inclined to receive, into her intimate circle, there could also be glimpsed in her certain utterly strange inclinations: there appeared a sort of barbaric mixture of two tastes, an ability to get along and be satisfied with things and ways the very existence of which, it seemed, would be unthinkable for a decent and finely cultivated person. Indeed, to give an example, if Nastasya Filippovna had suddenly displayed some charming and graceful ignorance, such as, for instance, that peasant women could not wear cambric undergarments such as she wore, Afanasy Ivanovich would probably have been extremely pleased with it. This was the result towards which Nastasya Filippovna's entire education had originally been aimed, according to Totsky's program, for he was a great connoisseur in that line; but alas! the results turned out to be strange. In spite of that, there nevertheless was and remained in Nastasya Filippovna something that occasionally struck even Afanasy Ivanovich himself by its

extraordinary and fascinating originality, by some sort of power, and enchanted him on occasion even now, when all his former expectations with regard to Nastasya Filippovna had fallen through.

The prince was received by a maid (Nastasya Filippovna always kept female servants), who, to his surprise, listened to his request to be announced without any perplexity. Neither his dirty boots, nor his broad-brimmed hat, nor his sleeveless cloak, nor his embarrassed look caused the slightest hesitation in her. She helped him off with his cloak, asked him to wait in the front hall, and went at once to announce him.

The company that had gathered at Nastasya Filippovna's consisted of her most usual and habitual acquaintances. There were even rather few people compared with previous years' gatherings on the same day. Present first and foremost were Afanasy Ivanovich Totsky and Ivan Fyodorovich Epanchin; both were amiable, but both were in some repressed anxiety on account of the poorly concealed expectation of the promised announcement about Ganya. Besides them, naturally, there was Ganya as well—also very gloomy, very pensive, and even almost totally "unamiable"—who for the most part stood to one side, separately, and kept silent. He had not ventured to bring Varya, but Nastasya Filippovna made no mention of her; instead, as soon as she greeted Ganya, she reminded him of the scene with the prince. The general, who had not heard about it yet, began to show interest. Then Ganya drily, restrainedly, but with perfect frankness, told everything that had happened earlier, and how he had already gone to the prince to apologize. With that he warmly voiced his opinion that the prince, quite strangely and for God knows what reason, was called an idiot, that he thought completely the opposite of him, and that he was most certainly a man who kept his own counsel. Nastasya Filippovna listened to this opinion with great attention and followed Ganya curiously, but the conversation immediately switched to Rogozhin, who had taken such a major part in that day's story and in whom Afanasy Ivanovich and Ivan Fyodorovich also began to take an extremely curious interest. It turned out that specific information about Rogozhin could be supplied by Ptitsyn, who had been hard at work on his business until nearly nine o'clock that evening. Rogozhin had insisted with all his might that he should get hold of a hundred thousand roubles that same day. "True, he was drunk," Ptitsyn observed with that, "but, difficult as it is, it seems he'll get the hundred thousand, only I don't know if

it will be today and the whole of it. Many people are working on it—Kinder, Trepalov, Biskup; he's offering any interest they like, though, of course, it's all from drink and in his initial joy . . ." Ptitsyn concluded. All this news was received with a somewhat gloomy interest. Nastasya Filippovna was silent, obviously unwilling to speak her mind; Ganya also. General Epanchin was almost more worried than anyone else: the pearls he had already presented earlier in the day had been received with a much too cool politeness, and even with a sort of special smile. Ferdyshchenko alone of all the guests was in jolly and festive spirits, and guffawed loudly, sometimes for no known reason, only because he had adopted for himself the role of buffoon. Afanasy Ivanovich himself, reputed to be a fine and elegant talker, who on previous occasions had presided over the conversation at these parties, was obviously in low spirits and even in some sort of perplexity that was quite unlike him. The remainder of the guests, of whom, incidentally, there were not many (one pathetic little old schoolteacher, invited for God knows what purpose, some unknown and very young man, who was terribly timid and kept silent all the time, a sprightly lady of about forty, an actress, and one extremely beautiful, extremely well and expensively dressed, and extraordinarily taciturn young lady), were not only unable to enliven the conversation especially, but sometimes simply did not know what to talk about.

Thus, the prince's appearance was even opportune. When he was announced, it caused bewilderment and a few strange smiles, especially as it was evident from Nastasya Filippovna's surprised look that she had never thought of inviting him. But after her surprise, Nastasya Filippovna suddenly showed such pleasure that the majority prepared at once to meet the unexpected guest with laughter and merriment.

"I suppose it comes of his innocence," Ivan Fyodorovich Epanchin concluded, "and to encourage such inclinations is in any case rather dangerous, but at the present moment it's really not bad that he has decided to come, though in such an original manner. He may even amuse us a bit, at least so far as I can judge about him."

"The more so as he's invited himself!" Ferdyshchenko put in at once.

"So what of it?" the general, who hated Ferdyshchenko, asked drily.

"So he'll have to pay at the door," the latter explained.

"Well, all the same, sir, Prince Myshkin isn't Ferdyshchenko,"

the general could not help himself, having been so far unable to accept the thought of being in the same company and on an equal footing with Ferdyshchenko.

"Hey, General, spare Ferdyshchenko," the latter said, grinning. "I'm here under special dispensation."

"What is this special dispensation of yours?"

"Last time I had the honor of explaining it to the company in detail; I'll repeat it once more for Your Excellency. Kindly note, Your Excellency: everybody else is witty, but I am not. To make up for it, I asked permission to speak the truth, since everybody knows that only those who are not witty speak the truth. Besides, I'm a very vindictive man, and that's also because I'm not witty. I humbly bear with every offense, until the offender's first misstep; at his first misstep I remember at once and at once take my revenge in some way—I kick, as Ivan Petrovich Ptitsyn said of me, a man who, of course, never kicks anybody. Do you know Krylov's fable, Your Excellency: 'The Lion and the Ass'?³⁹ Well, that's you and me both, it was written about us."

"It seems you're running off at the mouth again, Ferdyshchenko," the general boiled over.

"What's that to you, Your Excellency?" Ferdyshchenko picked up. He was counting on being able to pick it up and embroider on it still more. "Don't worry, Your Excellency, I know my place: if I said you and I were the Lion and the Ass from Krylov's fable, I was, of course, taking the Ass's role on myself, and you, Your Excellency, are the Lion, as it says in Krylov's fable:

The mighty Lion, terror of the forest, In old age saw his strength begin to fail.

And I, Your Excellency, am the Ass."

"With that last bit I agree," the general imprudently let slip.

All this was, of course, crude and deliberately affected, but there was a general agreement that Ferdyshchenko was allowed to play the role of buffoon.

"But I'm kept and let in here," Ferdyshchenko once exclaimed, "only so that I can talk precisely in this spirit. I mean, is it really possible to receive somebody like me? I do understand that. I mean, is it possible to sit me, such a Ferdyshchenko, next to a refined gentleman like Afanasy Ivanovich? We're left willy-nilly with only one explanation: they do it precisely because it's impossible to imagine."

But though it was crude, all the same it could be biting, sometimes even very much so, and that, it seems, was what Nastasya Filippovna liked. Those who wished absolutely to call on her had no choice but to put up with Ferdyshchenko. It may be that he had guessed the whole truth in supposing that the reason he was received was that from the first his presence had become impossible for Totsky. Ganya, for his part, had endured a whole infinity of torments from him, and in that sense Ferdyshchenko had managed to be very useful to Nastasya Filippovna.

"And I'll have the prince start by singing a fashionable romance," Ferdyshchenko concluded, watching out for what Nastasya Filippovna would say.

"I think not, Ferdyshchenko, and please don't get excited," she observed drily.

"Ahh! If he's under special patronage, then I, too, will ease up .. ."

But Nastasya Filippovna rose without listening and went herself to meet her guest.

"I regretted," she said, appearing suddenly before the prince, "that earlier today, being in a flurry, I forgot to invite you here, and I'm very glad that you have now given me the chance to thank you and to praise you for your determination."

Saying this, she peered intently at the prince, trying at least somehow to interpret his action to herself.

The prince might have made some reply to her amiable words, but he was so dazzled and struck that he could not even get a word out. Nastasya Filippovna noticed it with pleasure. This evening she was in full array and made an extraordinary impression. She took him by the arm and brought him to her guests. Just before entering the reception room, the prince suddenly stopped and, with extraordinary excitement, hurriedly whispered to her:

"Everything in you is perfection . . . even the fact that you're so thin and pale . . . one has no wish to imagine you otherwise ... I wanted so much to come to you . . . I . . . forgive me ..."

"Don't ask forgiveness," Nastasya Filippovna laughed. "That will ruin all the strangeness and originality. And it's true, then, what they say about you, that you're a strange man. So you consider me perfection, do you?"

"I do."

"Though you're a master at guessing, you're nevertheless mistaken. I'll remind you of it tonight . . ."

She introduced the prince to the guests, the majority of whom

already knew him. Totsky at once said something amiable. Everyone seemed to cheer up a little, everyone immediately began talking and laughing. Nastasya Filippovna sat the prince down beside her.

"But anyhow, what's so astonishing in the prince's appearance?" Ferdyshchenko shouted louder than everyone else. "The matter's clear, it speaks for itself!"

"The matter's all too clear and speaks all too much for itself," the silent Ganya suddenly picked up. "I've been observing the prince almost uninterruptedly today, from the moment he first looked at Nastasya Filippovna's portrait on Ivan Fyodorovich's desk this morning. I remember very well that already this morning I thought of something which I'm now perfectly convinced of, and which, let it be said in passing, the prince himself has confessed to me."

Ganya uttered this whole phrase very gravely, without the slightest jocularity, even gloomily, which seemed somewhat strange.

"I didn't make any confessions to you," the prince replied, blushing, "I merely answered your question."

"Bravo, bravo!" cried Ferdyshchenko. "At least it's candid—both clever and candid!"

Everyone laughed loudly.

"Don't shout, Ferdyshchenko," Ptitsyn observed to him disgustedly in a half-whisper.

"I didn't expect such prouesse* from you, Prince," said Ivan Fyodorovich. "Do you know what sort of man that suits? And I considered you a philosopher! Oh, the quiet one!"

"And judging by the way the prince blushes at an innocent joke like an innocent young girl, I conclude that, like a noble youth, he is nurturing the most praiseworthy intentions in his heart," the toothless and hitherto perfectly silent seventy-year-old schoolteacher, whom no one would have expected to make a peep all evening, suddenly said, or, better, maundered. Everyone laughed still more. The little old man, probably thinking they were laughing at his witticism, looked at them all and started laughing all the harder, which brought on so terrible a fit of coughing that Nastasya Filippovna, who for some reason was extremely fond of all such original little old men and women, and even of holy fools, at once began making a fuss over him, kissed him on both cheeks, and

*Prowess.

ordered more tea for him. When the maid came in, she asked for her mantilla, which she wrapped around herself, and told her to put more wood on the fire. Asked what time it was, the maid said it was already half-past ten.

"Ladies and gentlemen, would you care for champagne?" Nastasya Filippovna suddenly invited. "I have it ready. Maybe it will make you merrier. Please don't stand on ceremony."

The invitation to drink, especially in such naïve terms, seemed very strange coming from Nastasya Filippovna. Everyone knew the extraordinary decorum of her previous parties. Generally, the evening was growing merrier, but not in the usual way. The wine, however, was not refused, first, by the general himself, second, by the sprightly lady, the little old man, Ferdyshchenko, and the rest after him. Totsky also took his glass, hoping to harmonize the new tone that was setting in, possibly giving it the character of a charming joke. Ganya alone drank nothing. In the strange, sometimes very abrupt and quick outbursts of Nastasya Filippovna, who also took wine and announced that she would drink three glasses that evening, in her hysterical and pointless laughter, which alternated suddenly with a silent and even sullen pensiveness, it was hard to make anything out. Some suspected she was in a fever; they finally began to notice that she seemed to be waiting for something, glanced frequently at her watch, was growing impatient, distracted.

"You seem to have a little fever?" asked the sprightly lady.

"A big one even, not a little one—that's why I've wrapped myself in a mantilla," replied Nastasya Filippovna, who indeed had turned paler and at moments seemed to suppress a violent shiver.

They all started and stirred.

"Shouldn't we allow our hostess some rest?" Totsky suggested, glancing at Ivan Fyodorovich.

"Certainly not, gentlemen! I precisely ask you to stay. Your presence is particularly necessary for me tonight," Nastasya Filippovna suddenly said insistently and significantly. And as almost all the guests now knew that a very important decision was to be announced that evening, these words seemed extremely weighty. Totsky and the general exchanged glances once again; Ganya stirred convulsively.

"It would be nice to play some petit jeu,"* said the sprightly lady.

"I know an excellent and new petit jeu," Ferdyshchenko picked

*Parlor game.

up, "at least one that happened only once in the world, and even then it didn't succeed."

"What was it?" the sprightly lady asked.

"A company of us got together once, and we drank a bit, it's true, and suddenly somebody suggested that each of us, without leaving the table, tell something about himself, but something that he himself, in good conscience, considered the worst of all the bad things he'd done in the course of his whole life; and that it should be frank, above all, that it should be frank, no lying!"

"A strange notion!" said the general.

"Strange as could be, Your Excellency, but that's what was good about it."

"A ridiculous idea," said Totsky, "though understandable: a peculiar sort of boasting."

"Maybe that's just what they wanted, Afanasy Ivanovich."

"One is more likely to cry than laugh at such a petit jeu," the sprightly lady observed.

"An utterly impossible and absurd thing," echoed Ptitsyn.

"And was it a success?" asked Nastasya Filippovna.

"The fact is that it wasn't, it turned out badly, people actually told all sorts of things, many told the truth, and, imagine, many even enjoyed the telling, but then they all felt ashamed, they couldn't stand it! On the whole, though, it was quite amusing—in its own way, that is."

"But that would be really nice!" observed Nastasya Filippovna, suddenly quite animated. "Really, why don't we try it, gentlemen! In fact, we're not very cheerful. If each of us agreed to tell something . . . of that sort.. . naturally, if one agrees, because it's totally voluntary, eh? Maybe we can stand it? At least it's terribly original..."

"A brilliant idea!" Ferdyshchenko picked up. "The ladies are excluded, however, the men will begin. We'll arrange it by drawing lots as we did then! Absolutely, absolutely! If anyone is very reluctant, he needn't tell anything, of course, but that would be particularly unfriendly! Give us your lots here in the hat, gentlemen, the prince will do the drawing. It's the simplest of tasks, to tell the worst thing you've done in your life—it's terribly easy, gentlemen! You'll see! If anyone happens to forget, I'll remind him!"

Nobody liked the idea. Some frowned, others smiled slyly. Some objected, but not very much—Ivan Fyodorovich, for example, who did not want to contradict Nastasya Filippovna and saw how carried away she was by this strange notion. In her desires Nastasya

Filippovna was always irrepressible and merciless, once she decided to voice them, capricious and even useless for her as those desires might be. And now it was as if she was in hysterics, fussing about, laughing convulsively, fitfully, especially in response to the objections of the worried Totsky. Her dark eyes flashed, two red spots appeared on her pale cheeks. The sullen and squeamish tinge on some of her guests' physiognomies perhaps inflamed her mocking desire still more; perhaps she precisely liked the cynicism and cruelty of the idea. Some were even certain that she had some special calculation here. However, they began to agree: in any case it was curious, and for many of them very enticing. Ferdyshchenko fussed about most of all.

"And if it's something that can't be told ... in front of ladies," the silent young man observed timidly.

"Then don't tell it. As if there weren't enough nasty deeds without that," Ferdyshchenko replied. "Ah, young man!"

"But I don't know which to consider the worst thing I've done," the sprightly lady contributed.

"The ladies are exempt from the obligation of telling anything," Ferdyshchenko repeated, "but that is merely an exemption. The personally inspired will be gratefully admitted. The men, if they're very reluctant, are also exempt."

"How can it be proved here that I'm not lying?" asked Ganya. "And if I lie, the whole notion of the game is lost. And who isn't going to lie? Everybody's bound to start lying."

"But that's what's so enticing, to see how the person's going to lie. As for you, Ganechka, you needn't be especially worried about lying, because everybody knows your nastiest deed without that. Just think, ladies and gentlemen," Ferdyshchenko suddenly exclaimed in some sort of inspiration, "just think with what eyes we'll look at each other later, tomorrow, for instance, after our stories!"

"But is this possible? Can this indeed be serious, Nastasya Filippovna?" Totsky asked with dignity.

"He who fears wolves should stay out of the forest!" Nastasya Filippovna observed with a little smile.

"But excuse me, Mr. Ferdyshchenko, is it possible to make a petit jeu out of this?" Totsky went on, growing more and more worried. "I assure you that such things never succeed—you said yourself that it failed once."

"What do you mean, failed! Why, last time I told how I stole three roubles, just up and told it!"

"Granted. But it's surely not possible that you told it so that it resembled the truth and people believed you? And Gavrila Ardalionovich observed very correctly that it only needs to ring slightly false and the whole notion of the game is lost. Truth is then possible only accidentally, through a special sort of boasting mood in the very worst tone, which is unthinkable and quite improper here."

"Ah, what an extraordinarily subtle man you are, Afanasy Ivanovich! I even marvel at it!" cried Ferdyshchenko. "Just imagine, ladies and gentlemen, with his observation that I couldn't tell the story of my theft so that it resembled the truth, Afanasy Ivanovich has hinted in the subtlest fashion that in reality I also couldn't have stolen (because it's indecent to speak of it publicly), though it may be that in himself he's quite certain that Ferdyshchenko might very well steal! But to business, gentlemen, to business, the lots are all here, and even you, Afanasy Ivanovich, have put yours in, so nobody has refused. Draw the lots, Prince!"

The prince silently put his hand into the hat and took out the first lot—Ferdyshchenko's, the second—Ptitsyn's, the third— the general's, the fourth—Afanasy Ivanovich's, the fifth—his own, the sixth—Ganya's, and so on. The ladies had not put in any lots.

"Oh, God, how unlucky!" cried Ferdyshchenko. "And I thought the first turn would go to the prince and the second to the general. But, thank God, at least Ivan Petrovich comes after me, and I'll be rewarded. Well, ladies and gentlemen, of course it's my duty to set a noble example, but I regret most of all at the present moment that I'm so insignificant and in no way remarkable; even my rank is the lowest of the low. Well, what indeed is so interesting about Ferdyshchenko's having done something nasty? And what is the worst thing I've done? Here we have an embarras de richesse* Maybe I should tell about that same theft again, to convince Afanasy Ivanovich that one can steal without being a thief."

"You also convince me, Mr. Ferdyshchenko, that it is indeed possible to feel an intoxicating pleasure in recounting one's foul deeds, though one has not even been asked about them . . . But anyhow . . . Excuse me, Mr. Ferdyshchenko."

"Begin, Ferdyshchenko, you produce a terrible amount of superfluous babble and can never finish!" Nastasya Filippovna ordered irritably and impatiently.

* Embarrassment of riches.

They all noticed that, after her latest fit of laughter, she had suddenly become sullen, peevish, and irritable; nevertheless she insisted stubbornly and despotically on her impossible whim. Afanasy Ivanovich was suffering terribly. He was also furious with Ivan Fyodorovich: the man sat over his champagne as if nothing was happening, and was perhaps even planning to tell something when his turn came.

XIV

"I'm not witty, Nastasya Filippovna, that's why I babble superfluously!" Ferdyshchenko cried, beginning his story. "If I were as witty as Afanasy Ivanovich or Ivan Petrovich, I'd be sitting quietly this evening like Afanasy Ivanovich and Ivan Petrovich. Prince, allow me to ask what you think, because it seems to me that there are many more thieves than nonthieves in the world, and that there does not even exist such an honest man as has not stolen something at least once in his life. That is my thought, from which, however, I by no means conclude that everyone to a man is a thief, though, by God, I'd sometimes like terribly much to draw that conclusion. What do you think?"

"Pah, what stupid talk," responded Darya Alexeevna, "and what nonsense! It can't be that everyone has stolen something. I've never stolen anything."

"You've never stolen anything, Darya Alexeevna; but what will the prince say, who has so suddenly blushed all over?"

"It seems to me that what you say is true, only it's greatly exaggerated," said the prince, who was indeed blushing for some reason.

"And you yourself, Prince, have you ever stolen anything?"

"Pah! how ridiculous! Come to your senses, Mr. Ferdyshchenko," the general stepped in.

"It's quite simply that you're ashamed, now that you have to tell your story, and you want to drag the prince in with you because he's so unprotesting," Darya Alexeevna declared.

"Ferdyshchenko, either tell your story or be quiet and mind your own business. You exhaust all my patience," Nastasya Filippovna said sharply and vexedly.

"This minute, Nastasya Filippovna; but if even the prince admits it, for I maintain that what the prince has said is tantamount to

an admission, then what, for instance, would someone else say (naming no names) if he ever wanted to tell the truth? As far as I'm concerned, ladies and gentlemen, there isn't much more to tell: it's very simple, and stupid, and nasty. But I assure you that I'm not a thief; I stole who knows how. It was two years ago, in Semyon Ivanovich Ishchenko's country house, on a Sunday. He had guests for dinner. After dinner the men sat over the wine. I had the idea of asking Marya Semyonovna, his daughter, a young lady, to play something on the piano. I passed through the corner room, there was a green three-rouble note lying on Marya Ivanovna's worktable: she had taken it out to pay some household expenses. Not a living soul in the room. I took the note and put it in my pocket, why— I don't know. I don't understand what came over me. Only I quickly went back and sat down at the table. I sat and waited in rather great excitement; I talked nonstop, told jokes, laughed; then I went to sit with the ladies. About half an hour later they found it missing and began questioning the maidservants. Suspicion fell on the maid Darya. I showed extraordinary curiosity and concern, and I even remember that, when Darya was completely at a loss, I began persuading her to confess her guilt, betting my life on Marya Ivanovna's kindness—and that aloud, in front of everybody. Everybody was looking, and I felt an extraordinary pleasure precisely because I was preaching while the note was in my pocket. I drank up those three roubles in a restaurant that same evening. I went in and asked for a bottle of Lafite; never before had I asked for a bottle just like that, with nothing; I wanted to spend it quickly. Neither then nor later did I feel any particular remorse. I probably wouldn't do it again; you may believe that or not as you like, it's of no interest to me. Well, sirs, that's all."

"Only, of course, that's not the worst thing you've done," Darya Alexeevna said with loathing.

"It's a psychological case, not a deed," observed Afanasy Ivanovich.

"And the maid?" asked Nastasya Filippovna, not concealing the most squeamish loathing.

"The maid was dismissed the next day, naturally. It was a strict household."

"And you allowed it?"

"Oh, that's wonderful! Should I have gone and denounced myself?" Ferdyshchenko tittered, though somewhat astounded by the generally much too unpleasant impression his story had made.

"How dirty!" cried Nastasya Filippovna.

"Bah! You want to hear a man's nastiest deed and with that you ask him to shine! The nastiest deeds are always very dirty, we'll hear that presently from Ivan Petrovich; and there are all sorts of things that shine externally and want to look like virtue, because they have their own carriage. There are all sorts that have their own carriage . . . And by what means . . ."

In short, Ferdyshchenko was quite unable to stand it and suddenly became angry, even to the point of forgetting himself, going beyond measure; his face even went all awry. Strange as it might seem, it is quite possible that he had anticipated a completely different success for his story. These "blunders" of bad tone and a "peculiar sort of boasting," as Totsky put it, occurred quite frequently with Ferdyshchenko and were completely in character.

Nastasya Filippovna even shook with wrath and stared intently at Ferdyshchenko; the man instantly became cowed and fell silent, all but cold with fright: he had gone much too far.

"Shouldn't we end it altogether?" Afanasy Ivanovich asked slyly.

"It's my turn, but I shall exercise my privilege and not tell anything," Ptitsyn said resolutely.

"You don't want to?"

"I can't, Nastasya Filippovna; and generally I consider such a petit jeu impossible."

"General, I believe it's your turn next," Nastasya Filippovna turned to him. "If you decline, too, then everything will go to pieces after you, and I'll be very sorry, because I was counting on telling a deed 'from my own life' at the end, only I wanted to do it after you and Afanasy Ivanovich, because you should encourage me," she ended, laughing.

"Oh, if you promise, too," the general cried warmly, "then I'm ready to tell you my whole life; but, I confess, while waiting for my turn I've already prepared my anecdote . . ."

"And by the mere look of his excellency, one can tell with what special literary pleasure he has polished his little anecdote," Ferdyshchenko, still somewhat abashed, ventured to observe with a venomous smile.

Nastasya Filippovna glanced fleetingly at the general and also smiled to herself. But it was obvious that anguish and irritation were growing stronger and stronger in her. Afanasy Ivanovich became doubly frightened, hearing her promise of a story.

"It has happened to me, ladies and gentlemen, as to everyone,

to do certain not entirely elegant deeds in my life," the general began, "but the strangest thing of all is that I consider the short anecdote I'm about to tell you the nastiest anecdote in my whole life. Meanwhile some thirty-five years have passed; but I have never been able, in recalling it, to break free of a certain, so to speak, gnawing impression in my heart. The affair itself, however, was extremely stupid: at that time I had just been made a lieutenant and was pulling my load in the army. Well, everybody knows what a lieutenant is: blood boiling and just pennies to live on. I had an orderly then, Nikifor, who was terribly solicitous of my livelihood: he saved, mended, cleaned and scrubbed, and even pilfered everywhere, whatever he could to add to the household. He was a most trustworthy and honest man. I, of course, was strict but fair. At some point we were stationed in a little town. I was quartered on the outskirts, with a retired lieutenant's wife, and a widow at that. The old hag was eighty or thereabouts. Her little house was decrepit, wretched, wooden, and she didn't even have a serving woman, so poor she was. But the main thing about her was that she had once had the most numerous family and relations; but some had died in the course of her life, others had gone away, still others had forgotten the old woman, and her husband she had buried forty-five years earlier. A few years before then her niece had lived with her, hunchbacked and wicked as a witch, people said, and once she had even bitten the old woman's finger, but she had died, too, so that for some three years the old woman had been getting along all by herself. My life with her was terribly boring, and she herself was so empty I couldn't get anywhere with her. In the end she stole a rooster from me. The affair has remained cloudy to this day, but no one else could have done it. We quarreled over that rooster, and considerably, but here it so happened that, at my first request, I was transferred to other quarters on the opposite side of town, with the numerous family of a merchant with a great big beard—I remember him as if it were yesterday. Nikifor and I are joyfully moving out, we're indignantly leaving the old woman. About three days go by, I come back from drill, Nikifor tells me, 'You shouldn't have left our bowl with the former landlady, Your Honor, we have nothing to serve soup in.' I, naturally, am amazed: 'How's that? Why would our bowl have stayed with the landlady?' The astonished Nikifor goes on to report that the landlady hadn't given him our bowl when we were moving because, since I had broken a pot of hers, she was keeping our

bowl in exchange for her pot, and I had supposedly suggested doing it that way. Such baseness on her part naturally drove me beyond the final limits; my blood boiled, I jumped up and flew to her. By the time I reach the old woman I'm, so to speak, already beside myself; I see her sitting all alone in the corner of the front hall, as if hiding from the sun, resting her cheek on her hand. I immediately loosed a whole thunderstorm on her: 'You're this,' I said, 'and you're that!'—you know, in the best Russian way. Only I see something strange is happening: she sits, her face is turned to me, her eyes are popping out, and she says not a word in reply, and she looks at me so strangely, strangely, as if she's swaying back and forth. I finally calm down, look closely at her, ask her something—not a word in reply. I stand there irresolutely; flies are buzzing, the sun is setting, silence; completely bewildered, I finally leave. Before I reached home I was summoned to the major's, then I had to pass by my company, so that I got home quite late. Nikifor's first words: 'You know, Your Honor, our landlady died.' 'When?' 'This evening, an hour and a half ago.' Which meant that, just at the time when I was abusing her, she was departing. I was so struck, I must tell you, that I had a hard time recovering. It even made its way into my thoughts, you know, even into my dreams at night. I, of course, have no prejudices, but on the third day I went to church for the funeral. In short, the more time passed, the more I thought about her. Nothing special, only I pictured it occasionally and felt rather bad. The main thing is, how did I reason in the end? First, the woman was, so to speak, a personal being, what's known in our time as a human; she lived, lived a long time, too long finally. She once had children, a husband, a family, relations, everything around her was at the boil, there were all these smiles, so to speak, and suddenly—total zero, everything's gone smash, she's left alone, like . . . some sort of fly bearing a curse from time immemorial. And then, finally, God brings her to an end. At sunset, on a quiet summer evening, my old woman also flies away—of course, this is not without its moralizing idea; and at that very moment, instead of, so to speak, a farewell tear, this desperate young lieutenant, jaunty and arms akimbo, sees her off the face of the earth with the Russian element of riotous abuse over a lost bowl! No doubt I was at fault, and though, owing to the distance in time and to changes in my character, I've long regarded my deed as someone else's, I nevertheless continue to regret it. So that, I repeat, I find it strange, the