The Idiot

more so as, even if I am at fault, it's not so completely: why did she decide to die precisely at that moment? Naturally, there's some excuse here—that the deed was in a certain sense psychological— but all the same I never felt at peace until I began, about fifteen years ago, to keep two permanent sick old women at my expense in the almshouse, with the purpose of easing their last days of earthly life by decent maintenance. I intend to leave capital for it in perpetuity. Well, sirs, that's all. I repeat that I may be to blame for many things in life, but I consider this occasion, in all conscience, the nastiest deed of my whole life."

"And instead of the nastiest, Your Excellency has told us one of the good deeds of your life. You've hoodwinked Ferdyshchenko!" concluded Ferdyshchenko.

"Indeed, General, I never imagined that you had a good heart after all; it's even a pity," Nastasya Filippovna said casually.

"A pity? Why is that?" asked the general, laughing amiably and sipping, not without self-satisfaction, from his champagne.

But now it was Afanasy Ivanovich's turn, and he, too, was prepared. They could all tell beforehand that he would not decline like Ivan Petrovich, and, for certain reasons, they awaited his story with particular curiosity and at the same time with occasional glances at Nastasya Filippovna. With extraordinary dignity, which fully corresponded to his stately appearance, in a quiet, amiable voice, Afanasy Ivanovich began one of his "charming stories." (Incidentally speaking, he was an impressive, stately man, tall, slightly bald, slightly gray-haired, and rather corpulent, with soft, ruddy, and somewhat flabby cheeks and false teeth. He wore loose and elegant clothes, and his linen was of astonishing quality. One could not have enough of gazing at his plump white hands. On the index finger of his right hand there was an expensive diamond ring.) All the while he was telling his story, Nastasya Filippovna intently studied the lace on the ruffle of her sleeve and kept plucking at it with two fingers of her left hand, so that she managed not to glance at the storyteller even once.

"What facilitates my task most of all," Afanasy Ivanovich began, "is that I am duty-bound to tell nothing other than the worst thing I've done in my whole life. In that case, naturally, there can be no hesitation: conscience and the heart's memory straightaway prompt one with what must be told. I confess with bitterness that numbered among all the numberless, perhaps light-minded and . . . flighty deeds of my life, there is one the impression of which

weighs all too heavily on my memory. It happened about twenty years ago. I had gone then to visit Platon Ordyntsev on his estate. He had just been elected marshal⁴⁰ and had come there with his young wife for the winter holidays. Anfisa Alexeevna's birthday also fell just then, and two balls were planned. At that time an enchanting novel by Dumas fils had just become terribly fashionable and made a great deal of noise in high society—La Dame aux camélias,⁴¹ a poem which, in my opinion, will never die or grow old. In the provinces all the ladies admired it to the point of rapture, those at least who had read it. The enchanting story, the originality with which the main character is portrayed, that enticing world, so subtly analyzed, and, finally, all those charming details scattered through the book (for instance, about the way bouquets of white and pink camellias are used in turn), in short, all those enchanting details, and everything together, produced almost a shock. The flowers of the camellia became extraordinarily fashionable. Everyone demanded camellias, everyone sought them. I ask you: can one get many camellias in the provinces, when everyone demands them for balls, even though the balls are few? Petya Vorkhovskoy, poor fellow, was then pining away for Anfisa Alexeevna. I really don't know if there was anything between them, that is, I mean to say, whether he could have had any serious hopes. The poor man lost his mind over getting camellias for Anfisa Alexeevna by the evening of the ball. Countess Sotsky, from Petersburg, a guest of the governor's wife, and Sofya Bespalov, as became known, were certain to come with bouquets of white ones. Anfisa Alexeevna, for the sake of some special effect, wanted red ones. Poor Platon nearly broke down; a husband, you know; he promised to get the bouquet, and—what then? It was snapped up the day before by Mytishchev, Katerina Alexandrovna, a fierce rival of Anfisa Alexeevna's in everything. They were at daggers drawn. Naturally, there were hysterics, fainting fits. Platon was lost. It was clear that if Petya could, at this interesting moment, procure a bouquet somewhere, his affairs would improve greatly; a woman's gratitude on such occasions knows no bounds. He rushes about like crazy; but it's an impossible thing, no use talking about it. Suddenly I run into him at eleven in the evening, the night before the birthday and the ball, at Marya Petrovna Zubkov's, a neighbor of the Ordyntsevs. He's beaming. 'What's with you?' 'I found it. Eureka!' 'Well, brother, you surprise me! Where? How?' 'In Ekshaisk' (a little town there, only fifteen miles away, and not in our district),

'there's a merchant named Trepalov there, bearded and rich, lives with his old wife, and no children, just canaries. They both have a passion for flowers, and he's got camellias.' 'Good heavens, there's no certainty there, what if he doesn't give you any?' 'I'll kneel down and grovel at his feet until he does, otherwise I won't leave!' 'When are you going?' 'Tomorrow at daybreak, five o'clock.' 'Well, God be with you!' And I'm so glad for him, you know; I go back to Ordyntsev's; finally, it's past one in the morning and I'm still like this, you know, in a reverie. I was about to go to bed when a most original idea suddenly occurred to me! I immediately make my way to the kitchen, wake up the coachman Savely, give him fifteen roubles, 'have the horses ready in half an hour!' Half an hour later, naturally, the dogcart is at the gate; Anfisa Alexeevna, I'm told, has migraine, fever, and delirium—I get in and go. Before five o'clock I'm in Ekshaisk, at the inn; I wait till daybreak, but only till daybreak; just past six I'm at Trepalov's. 'Thus and so, have you got any camellias? My dear, my heart and soul, help me, save me, I bow down at your feet!' The old man, I see, is tall, gray-haired, stern—a fearsome old man. 'No, no, never! I won't.' I flop down at his feet! I sprawl there like that! 'What's wrong, my dear man, what's wrong?' He even got frightened. 'It's a matter of a human life!' I shout to him. 'Take them, then, and God be with you.' What a lot of red camellias I cut! Wonderful, lovely—he had a whole little hothouse there. The old man sighs. I take out a hundred roubles. 'No, my dear man, kindly do not offend me in this manner.' 'In that case, my esteemed sir,' I say, 'give the hundred roubles to the local hospital, for the improvement of conditions and food.' 'Now that, my dear man, is another matter,' he says, 'good, noble, and pleasing to God. I'll give it for the sake of your health.' And, you know, I liked him, this Russian old man, Russian to the root, so to speak, de la vraie souche* Delighted with my success, I immediately set out on the way back; we made a detour to avoid meeting Petya. As soon as I arrived, I sent the bouquet in to Anfisa Alexeevna, who was just waking up. You can imagine the rapture, the gratitude, the tears of gratitude! Platon, yesterday's crushed and dead Platon, sobs on my breast. Alas! All husbands have been like that since the creation ... of lawful wedlock! I won't venture to add anything, except that Petya's affairs collapsed definitively after this episode. At first I thought he'd put a knife in me when he

*Of the true stock.

found out, I even prepared myself to face him, but what happened was something I wouldn't even have believed: a fainting fit, delirium towards evening, fever the next morning; he cried like a baby, had convulsions. A month later, having only just recovered, he asked to be sent to the Caucasus: decidedly out of a novel! He ended up by being killed in the Crimea. At that time his brother, Stepan Vorkhovskoy, commanded the regiment, distinguished himself. I confess, even many years later I suffered from remorse: why, for what reason, had I given him this blow? It would be another thing if I myself had been in love then. But it was a simple prank, out of simple dalliance, and nothing more. And if I hadn't snatched that bouquet from him, who knows, the man might be alive today, happy, successful, and it might never have entered his head to go and get himself shot at by the Turks."

Afanasy Ivanovich fell silent with the same solid dignity with which he had embarked on his story. It was noticed that Nastasya Filippovna's eyes flashed somehow peculiarly and her lips even twitched when Afanasy Ivanovich finished. Everyone glanced with curiosity at them both.

"Ferdyshchenko's been hoodwinked! Really hoodwinked! No, I mean really hoodwinked!" Ferdyshchenko cried out in a tearful voice, seeing that he could and should put in a word.

"And who told you not to understand things? Learn your lesson now from intelligent people!" Darya Alexeevna (an old and trusty friend and accomplice of Totsky's) snapped out to him all but triumphantly.

"You're right, Afanasy Ivanovich, this petit jeu is very boring, and we must end it quickly," Nastasya Filippovna offered casually. "I'll tell what I promised, and then let's all play cards."

"But the promised anecdote before all!" the general warmly approved.

"Prince," Nastasya Filippovna suddenly addressed him sharply and unexpectedly, "these old friends of mine, the general and Afanasy Ivanovich, keep wanting to get me married. Tell me what you think: should I get married or not? I'll do as you say."

Afanasy Ivanovich turned pale, the general was dumbfounded; everyone stared and thrust their heads forward. Ganya froze in his place.

"To ... to whom?" asked the prince in a sinking voice.

"To Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin," Nastasya Filippovna went on as sharply, firmly, and distinctly as before.

Several moments passed in silence; the prince seemed to be trying hard but could not utter a word, as if a terrible weight were pressing on his chest.

"N-no . . . don't!" he whispered at last and tensely drew his breath.

"And so it will be! Gavrila Ardalionovich!" she addressed him imperiously and as if solemnly, "did you hear what the prince decided? Well, so that is my answer; and let this business be concluded once and for all!"

"Nastasya Filippovna!" Afanasy Ivanovich said in a trembling voice.

"Nastasya Filippovna!" the general uttered in a persuading and startled voice.

Everyone stirred and started.

"What's wrong, gentlemen?" she went on, peering at her guests as if in amazement. "Why are you all so aflutter? And what faces you all have!"

"But . . . remember, Nastasya Filippovna," Totsky murmured, faltering, "you gave your promise, quite voluntarily, and you might be a little sparing . . . I'm at a loss and . . . certainly embarrassed, but ... In short, now, at such a moment, and in front ... in front of people, just like that ... to end a serious matter with this petit jeu, a matter of honor and of the heart ... on which depends . . ."

"I don't understand you, Afanasy Ivanovich; you're really quite confused. In the first place, what is this 'in front of people'? Aren't we in wonderfully intimate company? And why a petit jeu? I really wanted to tell my anecdote, and so I told it; is it no good? And why do you say it's 'not serious'? Isn't it serious? You heard me say to the prince: 'It will be as you say.' If he had said 'yes,' I would have consented at once; but he said 'no,' and I refused. My whole life was hanging by a hair—what could be more serious?"

"But the prince, why involve the prince? And what, finally, is the prince?" muttered the general, now almost unable to hold back his indignation at such even offensive authority granted to the prince.

"The prince is this for me, that I believe in him as the first truly devoted man in my whole life. He believed in me from the first glance, and I trust him."

"It only remains for me to thank Nastasya Filippovna for the extreme delicacy with which she has . . . treated me," the pale Ganya finally uttered in a trembling voice and with twisted lips.

"This is, of course, as it ought to be . . . But . . . the prince ... In this affair, the prince . . ."

"Is trying to get at the seventy-five thousand, is that it?" Nastasya Filippovna suddenly cut him off. "Is that what you wanted to say? Don't deny it, you certainly wanted to say that! Afanasy Ivanovich, I forgot to add: you can keep the seventy-five thousand for yourself and know that I've set you free gratis. Enough! You, too, need to breathe! Nine years and three months! Tomorrow—all anew, but today is my birthday and I'm on my own for the first time in my whole life! General, you can also take your pearls and give them to your wife—here they are; and tomorrow I'll vacate this apartment entirely. And there will be no more evenings, ladies and gentlemen!"

Having said this, she suddenly stood up as if wishing to leave.

"Nastasya Filippovna! Nastasya Filippovna!" came from all sides. Everyone stirred, everyone got up from their chairs; everyone surrounded her, everyone listened uneasily to these impulsive, feverish, frenzied words; everyone sensed some disorder, no one could make any sense of it, no one could understand anything. At that moment the doorbell rang loudly, strongly, just as earlier that day in Ganechka's apartment.

"Ahh! Here's the denouement! At last! It's half-past eleven!" Nastasya Filippovna cried. "Please be seated, ladies and gentlemen, this is the denouement!"

Having said this, she sat down herself. Strange laughter trembled on her lips. She sat silently, in feverish expectation, looking at the door.

"Rogozhin and the hundred thousand, no doubt," Ptitsyn murmured to himself.

XV

The maid Katya came in, badly frightened. "God knows what it is, Nastasya Filippovna, about a dozen men barged in, and they're all drunk, they want to come here, they say it's Rogozhin and that you know."

"That's right, Katya, let them all in at once." "You mean . . . all, Nastasya Filippovna? They're quite outrageous. Frightful!"

"All, let them all in, Katya, don't be afraid, all of them to a man,

or else they'll come in without you. Hear how noisy they are, just like the other time. Ladies and gentlemen, perhaps you're offended," she addressed her guests, "that I should receive such company in your presence? I'm very sorry and beg your pardon, but it must be so, and I wish very, very much that you will agree to be my witnesses in this denouement, though, incidentally, you may do as you please . . ."

The guests went on being amazed, whispering and exchanging glances, but it became perfectly clear that it had all been calculated and arranged beforehand, and that now Nastasya Filippovna— though she was, of course, out of her mind—would not be thrown off. They all suffered terribly from curiosity. Besides, there was really no one to be frightened. There were only two ladies: Darya Alexeevna, the sprightly lady, who had seen everything and whom it would have been very hard to put out, and the beautiful but silent stranger. But the silent stranger was scarcely able to understand anything: she was a traveling German lady and did not know a word of Russian; besides that, it seems she was as stupid as she was beautiful. She was a novelty, and it was an accepted thing to invite her to certain evenings, in magnificent costume, her hair done up as if for an exhibition, and to sit her there like a lovely picture to adorn the evening, just as some people, for their evenings, borrow some painting, vase, statue, or screen from their friends for one time only. As far as the men were concerned, Ptitsyn, for instance, was friends with Rogozhin; Ferdyshchenko was like a fish in water; Ganechka had not yet come to his senses, but felt vaguely yet irresistibly the feverish need to stand in this pillory to the end; the old schoolteacher, who had little grasp of what was going on, all but wept and literally trembled with fear, noticing some sort of extraordinary alarm around him and in Nastasya Filippovna, whom he doted on like a granddaughter; but he would sooner have died than abandon her at such a moment. As for Afanasy Ivanovich, he, of course, could not compromise himself in such adventures; but he was much too interested in the affair, even if it had taken such a crazy turn; then, too, Nastasya Filippovna had dropped two or three such little phrases on his account, that he could by no means leave without clarifying the matter definitively. He resolved to sit it out to the end and now to be completely silent and remain only as an observer, which, of course, his dignity demanded. General Epanchin alone, thoroughly offended as he had just been by such an unceremonious and ridicu-

lous return of his present, could, of course, be still more offended now by all these extraordinary eccentricities or, for instance, by the appearance of Rogozhin; then, too, even without that, a man like him had already condescended too much by resolving to sit down beside Ptitsyn and Ferdyshchenko; but what the power of passion could do, could also be overcome in the end by a feeling of responsibility, a sense of duty, rank, and importance, and generally of self-respect, so that Rogozhin and his company, in his excellency's presence at any rate, were impossible.

"Ah, General," Nastasya Filippovna interrupted him as soon as he turned to her with this announcement, "I forgot! But you may be sure that I foresaw your reaction. If it's offensive to you, I won't insist on keeping you, though I'd like very much to see precisely you at my side now. In any case, I thank you very much for your acquaintance and flattering attention, but if you're afraid . . ."

"Excuse me, Nastasya Filippovna," the general cried in a fit of chivalrous magnanimity, "to whom are you talking? I'll stay beside you now out of devotion alone, and if, for instance, there is any danger . . . What's more, I confess, I'm extremely curious. My only concern was that they might ruin the rugs or break something . . . And we could do very well without them, in my opinion, Nastasya Filippovna!"

"Rogozhin himself!" announced Ferdyshchenko.

"What do you think, Afanasy Ivanovich," the general managed to whisper quickly, "hasn't she gone out of her mind? Without any allegory, that is, in a real, medical sense, eh?"

"I told you, she has always been inclined to it," Afanasy Ivanovich slyly whispered back.

"And the fever along with it . . ."

Rogozhin's company was almost the same as earlier that day; the only additions were some little old libertine, once the editor of a disreputable scandal sheet, of whom the anecdote went around that he had pawned and drunk up his gold teeth, and a retired lieutenant—decidedly the rival and competitor, in his trade and purpose, of the gentleman with the fists earlier—who was totally unknown to any of Rogozhin's people, but who had been picked up in the street, on the sunny side of Nevsky Prospect, where he was stopping passersby and asking, in Marlinsky's style,⁴² for financial assistance, under the perfidious pretext that "in his time he himself used to give petitioners fifteen roubles." The two competitors had immediately become hostile to each other. The earlier gentleman

with the fists even considered himself offended, once the "petitioner" was accepted into the company and, being taciturn by nature, merely growled now and then like a bear and looked with profound scorn upon the fawning and facetiousness of the "petitioner," who turned out to be a worldly and politic man. By the looks of him, the lieutenant promised to succeed in "the business" more by adroitness and dodging than by strength, being also of smaller stature than the fist gentleman. Delicately, without getting into an obvious argument, but boasting terribly, he had already hinted more than once at the advantages of English boxing; in short, he turned out to be a pure Westernizer.⁴³ At the word "boxing," the fist gentleman merely smiled scornfully and touchily, and without condescending, for his part, to an obvious debate with his rival, displayed now and then, silently, as if accidentally, or, better to say, exposed to view now and then, a perfectly national thing—a huge fist, sinewy, gnarled, overgrown with a sort of reddish fuzz—and everyone could see clearly that if this profoundly national thing were aptly brought down on some object, there would be nothing left but a wet spot.

Again, as earlier, none of them was "loaded" to the utmost degree, thanks to the efforts of Rogozhin himself, who all day had kept in view his visit to Nastasya Filippovna. He himself had managed to sober up almost completely, but on the other hand he was nearly befuddled from all the impressions he had endured on that outrageous day, unlike any other day in his life. Only one thing remained constantly in view for him, in his memory and in his heart, every minute, every moment. For this one thing he had spent the whole time from five o'clock in the afternoon till eleven, in boundless anguish and anxiety, dealing with the Kinders and Biskups, who also nearly went out of their minds, rushing about like mad on his business. And yet, all the same, they had managed to raise the hundred thousand in cash, which Nastasya Filippovna had hinted at in passing, mockingly and quite vaguely, at an interest which even Biskup himself, out of modesty, discussed with Kinder not aloud but only in a whisper.

As earlier, Rogozhin marched in ahead of them all, the rest advancing behind him, fully aware of their advantages, but still somewhat cowardly. Above all, and God knows why, they felt cowardly towards Nastasya Filippovna. Some of them even thought they would immediately be "chucked down the stairs." Among those who thought so, incidentally, was that fop and heartbreaker

Zalyozhev. But the others, and most of all the fist gentleman, not aloud but in their hearts, regarded Nastasya Filippovna with the profoundest contempt and even hatred, and went to her as to a siege. But the magnificent décor of the first two rooms, things they had never seen or heard of, rare furniture, paintings, an enormous statue of Venus—all this produced in them an irresistible impression of respect and even almost of fear. This, of course, prevented none of them from squeezing gradually and with insolent curiosity, despite their fear, into the drawing room behind Rogozhin; but when the fist gentleman, the "petitioner," and some of the others noticed General Epanchin among the guests, they were at first so taken aback that they even began retreating slowly into the first room. Lebedev alone was among the most emboldened and convinced, and marched in almost on a par with Rogozhin, having grasped the actual meaning of one million four hundred thousand in capital and of a hundred thousand now, right here, in the hand. It must be noted, however, that none of them, not even the all-knowing Lebedev, were quite certain in their knowledge of the extent and limits of their power and whether indeed everything was now permitted them or not. There were moments when Lebedev could have sworn it was everything, but at other moments he felt an uneasy need to remind himself, just in case, of certain encouraging and reassuring articles of the legal code.

On Rogozhin himself Nastasya Filippovna's drawing room made the opposite impression from that of all his companions. As soon as the door curtain was raised and he saw Nastasya Filippovna— all the rest ceased to exist for him, as it had in the afternoon, even more powerfully than in the afternoon. He turned pale and stopped for a moment; one could surmise that his heart was pounding terribly. Timidly and like a lost man he gazed at Nastasya Filippovna for several seconds, not taking his eyes off her. Suddenly, as if he had lost all reason and nearly staggering, he went up to the table; on his way he bumped into Ptitsyn's chair and stepped with his huge, dirty boots on the lace trimming of the silent German beauty's magnificent light blue dress; he did not apologize and did not notice. Having gone up to the table, he placed on it a strange object, with which he had also entered the drawing room, holding it out in front of him with both hands. It was a big stack of paper, about five inches high and seven inches long, wrapped firmly and closely in The Stock Market Gazette, and tied very tightly on all sides and twice crisscross with the kind of string used for tying

sugar loaves. Then he stood without saying a word, his arms hanging down, as if awaiting his sentence. He was dressed exactly as earlier, except for the brand-new silk scarf on his neck, bright green and red, with an enormous diamond pin shaped like a beetle, and the huge diamond ring on the dirty finger of his right hand. Lebedev stopped within three steps of the table; the rest, as was said, gradually accumulated in the drawing room. Katya and Pasha, Nastasya Filippovna's maids, also came running and watched from under the raised door curtain with deep amazement and fear.

"What is this?" asked Nastasya Filippovna, looking Rogozhin over intently and curiously, and indicating the "object" with her eyes.

"The hundred thousand!" he replied almost in a whisper.

"Ah, so he's kept his word, just look! Sit down, please, here, right here on this chair; I'll tell you something later. Who is with you? The whole company from before? Well, let them come and sit down; there on the sofa is fine, and on the other sofa. The two armchairs there . . . what's the matter with them, don't they want to?"

Indeed, some were positively abashed, retreated, and sat down to wait in the other room, but others stayed and seated themselves as they were invited to do, only further away from the table, more in the corners, some still wishing to efface themselves somewhat, others taking heart somehow unnaturally quickly, and the more so the further it went. Rogozhin also sat down on the chair shown him, but did not sit for long; he soon stood up and did not sit down again. He gradually began to make out the guests and look around at them. Seeing Ganya, he smiled venomously and whispered to himself: "So there!" He looked without embarrassment and even without any special curiosity at the general and Afanasy Ivanovich, but when he noticed the prince beside Nastasya Filippovna, he could not tear his eyes from him for a long time, being extremely astonished and as if unable to explain this encounter to himself. One might have suspected that there were moments when he was actually delirious. Besides the shocks of that day, he had spent the whole previous night on the train and had not slept for almost two days.

"This, ladies and gentlemen, is a hundred thousand," said Nastasya Filippovna, addressing them all with some sort of feverishly impatient defiance, "here in this dirty packet. Earlier today he shouted like a madman that he would bring me a hundred thousand

in the evening, and I've been waiting for him. He was bargaining for me: he started at eighteen thousand, then suddenly jumped to forty, and then to this hundred here. He has kept his word! Pah, how pale he is! . . . It happened at Ganechka's today: I went to call on his mother, on my future family, and there his sister shouted right in my face: 'Why don't they throw this shameless woman out of here!' and spat in her brother Ganechka's face. A hot-tempered girl!"

"Nastasya Filippovna!" the general said reproachfully. He was beginning to take his own view of the situation.

"What is it, General? Indecent or something? Enough of this showing off! So I sat like some sort of dress-circle virtue in a box at the French Theater, and fled like a wild thing from all the men who chased after me in these five years, and had the look of proud innocence, all because my foolishness ran away with me! Look, right in front of you he has come and put a hundred thousand on the table, after these five years of innocence, and they probably have troikas standing out there waiting for me. He's priced me at a hundred thousand! Ganechka, I see you're still angry with me? Did you really want to take me into your family? Me, Rogozhin's kind of woman! What was it the prince said earlier?"

"I did not say you were Rogozhin's kind of woman, you're not Rogozhin's kind!" the prince uttered in a trembling voice.

"Nastasya Filippovna, enough, darling, enough, dear heart," Darya Alexeevna suddenly could not stand it. "If they pain you so much, why even look at them? And do you really want to go off with this one, for all his hundred thousand? True, it's a hundred thousand—there it sits! Just take the hundred thousand and throw him out, that's how you ought to deal with them! Ah, if I were in your place, I'd have them all . . . no, really!"

Darya Alexeevna even became wrathful. She was a kind woman and a highly impressionable one.

"Don't be angry, Darya Alexeevna," Nastasya Filippovna smiled at her, "I wasn't speaking angrily to him. I didn't reproach him, did I? I really can't understand how this foolishness came over me, that I should have wanted to enter an honest family. I saw his mother, I kissed her hand. And if I jeered at you today, Ganechka, it was because I purposely wanted to see for the last time myself how far you would go. Well, you surprised me, truly. I expected a lot, but not that! Could you possibly marry me, knowing that this one here had given me such pearls, almost on the eve of the

wedding, and that I had taken them? And what about Rogozhin? In your own house, in front of your mother and sister, he bargained for me, and after that you came as a fiancé all the same and almost brought your sister? Can it be true what Rogozhin said about you, that for three roubles you'd crawl on all fours to Vassilievsky Island?"

"He would," Rogozhin suddenly said quietly but with a look of great conviction.

"It would be one thing if you were starving to death, but they say you earn a good salary! And on top of it all, besides the disgrace, to bring a wife you hate into the house! (Because you do hate me, I know it!) No, I believe now that such a man could kill for money! They're all so possessed by this lust now, they're so worked up about money, it's as if they'd lost their minds. Still a child, and he's already trying to become a usurer. Or the one who wraps silk around a razor, fixes it tight, sneaks up behind his friend, and cuts his throat like a sheep, as I read recently.⁴⁴ Well, you're a shameless one! I'm shameless, but you're worse. I'll say nothing about this bouquet man ..."

"Is this you, is this you, Nastasya Filippovna?" the general clasped his hands in genuine grief. "You, so delicate, with such refined notions, and all at once! Such language! Such style!"

"I'm tipsy now, General," Nastasya Filippovna suddenly laughed. "I want to carouse now! Today is my day, my red-letter day, my leap day, I've waited a long time for it. Darya Alexeevna, do you see this bouquet man, this monsieur aux camélias, he's sitting there and laughing at us . . ."

"I'm not laughing, Nastasya Filippovna, I'm merely listening with the greatest attention," Totsky parried with dignity.

"Well, then, why did I torment him for a whole five years and not let him leave me? As if he was worth it! He's simply the way he has to be . . . He's still going to consider me guilty before him: he brought me up, he kept me like a countess, money, so much money, went on me, he found me an honest husband there, and Ganechka here, and what do you think: I didn't live with him for five years, but I took his money and thought I was right! I really got myself quite confused! Now you say take the hundred thousand and throw him out, if it's so loathsome. It's true that it's loathsome ... I could have married long ago, and not just some Ganechka, only that's also pretty loathsome. Why did I waste my five years in this spite! But, would you believe it, some four years ago I had

moments when I thought: shouldn't I really marry my Afanasy Ivanovich? I thought it then out of spite; all sorts of things came into my head then; but I could have made him do it! He asked for it himself, can you believe that? True, he was lying, but he's so susceptible, he can't control himself. And then, thank God, I thought: as if he's worth such spite! And then I suddenly felt such loathing for him that, even if he had proposed to me, I wouldn't have accepted him. And for a whole five years I've been showing off like this! No, it's better in the street where I belong! Either carouse with Rogozhin or go tomorrow and become a washerwoman! Because nothing on me is my own; if I leave, I'll abandon everything to him, I'll leave every last rag, and who will take me without anything? Ask Ganya here, will he? Even Ferdyshchenko won't take me! . . ."

"Maybe Ferdyshchenko won't take you, Nastasya Filippovna, I'm a candid man," Ferdyshchenko interrupted, "but the prince will! You're sitting here lamenting, but look at the prince! I've been watching him for a long time . . ."

Nastasya Filippovna turned to the prince with curiosity.

"Is it true?" she asked.

"It's true," whispered the prince.

"You'll take me just as I am, with nothing?"

"I will, Nastasya Filippovna ..."

"Here's a new anecdote!" muttered the general. "Might have expected it."

The prince, with a sorrowful, stern, and penetrating gaze, looked into the face of Nastasya Filippovna, who went on studying him.

"Here's another one!" she said suddenly, turning to Darya Alexeevna again. "And he really does it out of the kindness of his heart, I know him. I've found a benefactor! Though maybe what they say about him is true, that he's . . . like that. How are you going to live, if you're so in love that you'll take Rogozhin's kind of woman—you, a prince? . . ."

"I'll take you as an honest woman, Nastasya Filippovna, not as Rogozhin's kind," said the prince.

"Me, an honest woman?"

"You."

"Well, that's . . . out of some novel! That, my darling prince, is old gibberish, the world's grown smarter now, and that's all nonsense! And how can you go getting married, when you still need a nursemaid to look after you!"

The prince stood up and said in a trembling voice, but with a look of deep conviction:

"I don't know anything, Nastasya Filippovna, I haven't seen anything, you're right, but I ... I will consider that you are doing me an honor, and not I you. I am nothing, but you have suffered and have emerged pure from such a hell, and that is a lot. Why do you feel ashamed and want to go with Rogozhin? It's your fever . . . You've given Mr. Totsky back his seventy thousand and say you will abandon everything you have here, which no one else here would do. I . . . love you . . . Nastasya Filippovna. I will die for you, Nastasya Filippovna. I won't let anyone say a bad word about you, Nastasya Filippovna... If we're poor, I'll work, Nastasya Filippovna . . ."

At these last words a tittering came from Ferdyshchenko and Lebedev, and even the general produced some sort of grunt to himself in great displeasure. Ptitsyn and Totsky could not help smiling, but restrained themselves. The rest simply gaped in amazement.

"... But maybe we won't be poor, but very rich, Nastasya Filippovna," the prince went on in the same timid voice. "I don't know for certain, however, and it's too bad that up to now I haven't been able to find anything out for the whole day, but in Switzerland I received a letter from Moscow, from a certain Mr. Salazkin, and he informs me that I may have inherited a very large fortune. Here is the letter . . ."

The prince actually took a letter from his pocket.

"Maybe he's raving?" muttered the general. "This is a real madhouse!"

"I believe you said, Prince, that this letter to you is from Salazkin?" asked Ptitsyn. "He is a very well-known man in his circle, a very well-known solicitor, and if it is indeed he who has informed you, you may fully believe it. Fortunately, I know his handwriting, because I've recently had dealings with him ... If you will let me have a look, I may be able to tell you something."

With a trembling hand, the prince silently gave him the letter.

"But what is it, what is it?" the general roused himself up, looking at them all like a half-wit. "Can it be an inheritance?"

They all turned their eyes to Ptitsyn, who was reading the letter. The general curiosity received a new and extraordinary jolt. Ferdyshchenko could not sit still; Rogozhin looked perplexed and, in terrible anxiety, turned his gaze now to the prince, now to Ptitsyn.

Darya Alexeevna sat in expectation as if on pins and needles. Even Lebedev could not help himself, left his corner, and, bending double, began peering at the letter over Ptitsyn's shoulder, with the look of a man who is afraid he may get a whack for it.

XVI

It's a sure thing," Ptitsyn announced at last, folding the letter and handing it back to the prince. "Without any trouble, according to the incontestable will of your aunt, you have come into an extremely large fortune."

"It can't be!" the general exclaimed, as if firing a shot.

Again everyone gaped.

Ptitsyn explained, mainly addressing Ivan Fyodorovich, that the prince's aunt, whom he had never known personally, had died five months ago. She was the older sister of the prince's mother, the daughter of a Moscow merchant of the third guild, Papushin, who had died in poverty and bankruptcy. But the older brother of this Papushin, also recently deceased, was a well-known rich merchant. About a year ago, his only two sons died almost in the same month. This so shocked the old man that soon afterwards he himself fell ill and died. He was a widower and had no heirs at all except for the prince's aunt, his niece, a very poor woman, who lived as a sponger in someone else's house. When she received the inheritance, this aunt was already nearly dead from dropsy, but she at once began searching for the prince, charging Salazkin with the task, and managed to have her will drawn up. Apparently, neither the prince nor the doctor he lived with in Switzerland wanted to wait for any official announcements or make inquiries, and the prince, with Salazkin's letter in his pocket, decided to set off in person . . .

"I can tell you only one thing," Ptitsyn concluded, addressing the prince, "that all this must be incontestable and correct, and all that Salazkin writes to you about the incontestability and legality of your case you may take as pure money in your pocket. Congratulations, Prince! You, too, may get a million and a half, or possibly even more. Papushin was a very rich merchant."

"That's the last Prince Myshkin for you!" shouted Ferdyshchenko.

"Hurrah!" Lebedev wheezed in a drunken little voice.

"And there I go lending the poor fellow twenty-five roubles today, ha, ha, ha! It's a phantasmagoria, and nothing else!" said the general, all but stunned with amazement. "Well, congratulations, congratulations!" and, getting up from his seat, he went over to embrace the prince. After him, the others began to get up and also made for the prince. Even those who had retreated behind the door curtain began to emerge in the drawing room. Muffled talk, exclamations, even calls for champagne arose; all began pushing, jostling. For a moment they nearly forgot Nastasya Filippovna and that she was after all the hostess of her party. But it graduallly dawned on everyone at almost the same time that the prince had just proposed to her. The matter thus looked three times more mad and extraordinary than before. Deeply amazed, Totsky shrugged his shoulders; he was almost the only one to remain seated, while the rest crowded around the table in disorder. Everyone asserted afterwards that it was also from this moment that Nastasya Filippovna went crazy. She sat there and for some time looked around at them all with a sort of strange, astonished gaze, as if she could not understand and was trying to figure something out. Then she suddenly turned to the prince and, with a menacing scowl, studied him intently; but this lasted only a moment; perhaps it had suddenly occurred to her that it might all be a joke, a mockery; but the prince's look reassured her at once. She became pensive, then smiled again, as if not clearly realizing why . . .

"So I really am a princess!" she whispered to herself as if mockingly and, happening to glance at Darya Alexeevna, she laughed. "An unexpected denouement . . . I . . . was expecting something else. But why are you all standing, ladies and gentlemen, please be seated, congratulate me and the prince! I think someone asked for champagne; Ferdyshchenko, go and order some. Katya, Pasha," she suddenly saw her maids at the door, "come here, I'm getting married, have you heard? The prince, he's come into a million and a half, he's Prince Myshkin, and he's taking me!"

"And God be with you, darling, it's high time! Don't miss it!" cried Darya Alexeevna, deeply shaken by what had happened.

"Sit down beside me, Prince," Nastasya Filippovna went on, "that's right, and here comes the wine, congratulate us, ladies and gentlemen!"

"Hurrah!" cried a multitude of voices. Many crowded around the wine, among them almost all of Rogozhin's people. But though they shouted and were ready to shout, many of them, despite all

the strangeness of the circumstances and the surroundings, sensed that the décor was changing. Others were perplexed and waited mistrustfully. And many whispered among themselves that it was a most ordinary affair, that princes marry all kinds of women, and even take gypsy women from their camps. Rogozhin himself stood and stared, his face twisted into a fixed, bewildered smile.

"Prince, dear heart, come to your senses!" the general whispered in horror, approaching from the side and tugging at the prince's sleeve.

Nastasya Filippovna noticed it and laughed loudly.

"No, General! I'm a princess myself now, you heard it—the prince won't let anyone offend me! Afanasy Ivanovich, congratulate me; now I'll be able to sit next to your wife anywhere; it's useful to have such a husband, don't you think? A million and a half, and a prince, and, they say, an idiot to boot, what could be better? Only now does real life begin! You're too late, Rogozhin! Take your packet away, I'm marrying the prince, and I'm richer than you are!"

But Rogozhin grasped what was going on. Inexpressible suffering was reflected in his face. He clasped his hands and a groan burst from his breast.

"Give her up!" he cried to the prince.

There was laughter all around.

"Give her up to you?" Darya Alexeevna triumphantly joined in. "See, he dumps money on the table, the boor! The prince is marrying her, and you show up with your outrages!"

"I'll marry her, too! Right now, this minute! I'll give her everything ..."

"Look at him, drunk from the pot-house—you should be thrown out!" Darya Alexeevna repeated indignantly.

More laughter.

"Do you hear, Prince?" Nastasya Filippovna turned to him. "That's how the boor bargains for your bride."

"He's drunk," said the prince. "He loves you very much."

"And won't you be ashamed afterwards that your bride almost went off with Rogozhin?"

"It's because you were in a fever; and you're in a fever now, as if you're delirious."

"And won't it shame you when they tell you afterwards that your wife was Totsky's kept woman?"

"No, it won't. . . You were not with Totsky by your own will."

"And you'll never reproach me?"

"Never."

"Well, watch out, don't vouch for your whole life!"

"Nastasya Filippovna," the prince said quietly and as if with compassion, "I told you just now that I will take your consent as an honor, and that you are doing me an honor, and not I you. You smiled at those words, and I also heard laughter around me. Perhaps I expressed myself in a funny way, and was funny myself, but I still think that I . . . understand what honor is, and I'm sure that what I said was the truth. You were just going to ruin yourself irretrievably, because you would never forgive yourself for that: but you're not guilty of anything. It can't be that your life is already completely ruined. So what if Rogozhin came to you, and Gavrila Ardalionovich wanted to swindle you? Why do you constantly mention that? Very few people are capable of doing what you have done, I repeat it to you, and as for wanting to go off with Rogozhin, you decided that in a fit of illness. You're still in a fit, and it would be better if you went to bed. You'd get yourself hired as a washerwoman tomorrow and not stay with Rogozhin. You're proud, Nastasya Filippovna, but you may be so unhappy that you actually consider yourself guilty. You need much good care, Nastasya Filippovna. I will take care of you. I saw your portrait today, and it was as if I recognized a familiar face. It seemed to me at once as if you had already called me. I ... I shall respect you all my life, Nastasya Filippovna," the prince suddenly concluded, as if coming to his senses, blushing and realizing the sort of people before whom he had said these things.

Ptitsyn even bowed his head out of chastity and looked at the ground. Totsky thought to himself: "He's an idiot, but he knows that flattery succeeds best: it's second nature!" The prince also noticed Ganya's eyes flashing from the corner, as if he wanted to reduce him to ashes.

"What a kind man!" Darya Alexeevna proclaimed tenderheartedly.

"A cultivated man, but a lost one!" the general whispered in a low voice.

Totsky took his hat and prepared to get up and quietly disappear. He and the general exchanged glances so as to leave together.

"Thank you, Prince, no one has ever spoken to me like that," said Nastasya Filippovna. "They all bargained for me, but no decent person ever asked me to marry him. Did you hear, Afanasy Ivanych? How do you like what the prince said? It's almost indecent

. . . Rogozhin! Don't leave yet. And you won't, I can see that. Maybe I'll still go with you. Where did you want to take me?"

"To Ekaterinhof,"⁴⁵ Lebedev reported from the corner, but Rogozhin only gave a start and became all eyes, as if unable to believe himself. He was completely stupefied, like someone who has received a terrible blow on the head.

"Oh, come now, come now, darling! You certainly are in a fit: have you lost your mind?" the frightened Darya Alexeevna roused herself up.

"And you thought it could really be?" Nastasya Filippovna jumped up from the sofa with a loud laugh. "That I could ruin such a baby? That's just the right thing for Afanasy Ivanych: he's the one who loves babies! Let's go, Rogozhin! Get your packet ready! Never mind that you want to marry me, give me the money anyway. Maybe I still won't marry you. You thought, since you want to marry me, you'd get to keep the packet? Ah, no! I'm shameless myself! I was Totsky's concubine . . . Prince! you need Aglaya Epanchin now, not Nastasya Filippovna—otherwise Ferdyshchenko will point the finger at you! You're not afraid, but I'd be afraid to ruin you and have you reproach me afterwards! And as for your declarations that I'd be doing you an honor, Totsky knows all about that. And you, Ganechka, you've missed Aglaya Epanchin; did you know that? If you hadn't bargained with her, she would certainly have married you! That's how you all are: keep company with dishonorable women, or with honorable women— there's only one choice! Otherwise you're sure to get confused . . . Hah, look at the general staring openmouthed . . ."

"It's bedlam, bedlam!" the general repeated, heaving his shoulders. He, too, got up from the sofa; they were all on their feet again. Nastasya Filippovna seemed to be in a frenzy.

"It can't be!" the prince groaned, wringing his hands.

"You think not? Maybe I'm proud myself, even if I am shameless. You just called me perfection; a fine perfection, if just for the sake of boasting that I've trampled on a million and a princely title, I go off to a thieves' den! What kind of wife am I for you after that? Afanasy Ivanych, I've really thrown a million out the window! How could you think I'd consider myself lucky to marry Ganechka and your seventy-five thousand? Keep the seventy-five thousand, Afanasy Ivanych (you didn't even get up to a hundred, Rogozhin outdid you!); as for Ganechka, I'll comfort him myself, I've got an idea. And now I want to carouse, I'm a streetwalker! I sat in prison

for ten years, now comes happiness! What's wrong, Rogozhin? Get ready, let's go!"

"Let's go!" bellowed Rogozhin, nearly beside himself with joy. "Hey, you . . . whoever . . . wine! Ohh! . . ."

"Lay in more wine, I'm going to drink. And will there be music?"

"There will, there will! Keep away!" Rogozhin screamed in frenzy, seeing Darya Alexeevna approaching Nastasya Filippovna. "She's mine! It's all mine! A queen! The end!"

He was breathless with joy; he circled around Nastasya Filippovna and cried out to everyone: "Keep away!" His whole company had already crowded into the drawing room. Some were drinking, others were shouting and guffawing, they were all in a most excited and uninhibited state. Ferdyshchenko began trying to sidle up to them. The general and Totsky made another move to disappear quickly. Ganya also had his hat in his hand, but he stood silently and still seemed unable to tear himself away from the picture that was developing before him.

"Keep away!" cried Rogozhin.

"What are you yelling for?" Nastasya Filippovna laughed loudly at him. "I'm still the mistress here; if I want, I can have you thrown out. I haven't taken your money yet, it's right there; give it to me, the whole packet! So there's a hundred thousand in this packet? Pah, how loathsome! What's wrong, Darya Alexeevna? Should I have ruined him?" (She pointed to the prince.) "How can he get married, he still needs a nursemaid himself; so the general will be his nursemaid—look how he dangles after him! See, Prince, your fiancée took the money because she's dissolute, and you wanted to marry her! Why are you crying? Bitter, is it? No, but laugh, as I do!" Nastasya Filippovna went on, with two big tears glistening on her own cheeks. "Trust in time—everything will pass! Better to change your mind now than later . . . But why are you all crying— here's Katya crying! What's wrong, Katya, dear? I've left a lot to you and Pasha, I've already made the arrangements, and now goodbye! I've made an honest girl like you wait on a dissolute one like me . . . It's better this way, Prince, truly better, you'd start despising me tomorrow, and there'd be no happiness for us! Don't swear, I won't believe you! And it would be so stupid . . . No, better let's part nicely, because I'm a dreamer myself, there'd be no use! As if I haven't dreamed of you myself? You're right about that, I dreamed for a long time, still in the country, where he kept me for five years, completely alone, I used to think and think, dream and dream—

and I kept imagining someone like you, kind, honest, good, and as silly as you are, who would suddenly come and say, 'You're not guilty, Nastasya Filippovna, and I adore you!' And I sometimes dreamed so much that I'd go out of my mind . . . And then this one would come: he'd stay for two months a year, dishonor me, offend me, inflame me, debauch me, leave me—a thousand times I wanted to drown myself in the pond, but I was base, I had no courage—well, but now . . . Rogozhin, are you ready?"

"Ready! Keep away!"

"Ready!" several voices rang out.

"The troikas are waiting with their little bells!"

Nastasya Filippovna snatched up the packet with both hands.

"Ganka, I've got an idea: I want to reward you, because why should you lose everything? Rogozhin, will he crawl to Vassilievsky Island for three roubles?"

"He will!"

"Well, then listen, Ganya, I want to look at your soul for the last time; you've been tormenting me for three long months; now it's my turn. Do you see this packet? There's a hundred thousand in it! I'm now going to throw it into the fireplace, onto the fire, before everyone, all these witnesses! As soon as it catches fire all over, go into the fireplace, only without gloves, with your bare hands, with your sleeves rolled up, and pull the packet out of the fire! If you pull it out, it's yours, the whole hundred thousand is yours! You'll only burn your fingers a little—but it's a hundred thousand, just think! It won't take long to snatch it out! And I'll admire your soul as you go into the fire after my money. They're all witnesses that the packet will be yours! And if you don't get it out, it will burn; I won't let anyone else touch it. Stand back! Everybody! It's my money! I got it for a night with Rogozhin. Is it my money, Rogozhin?"

"Yours, my joy! Yours, my queen!"

"Well, then everybody stand back, I do as I like! Don't interfere! Ferdyshchenko, stir up the fire."

"Nastasya Filippovna, my hands refuse to obey!" the flabbergasted Ferdyshchenko replied.

"Ahh!" Nastasya Filippovna cried, seized the fire tongs, separated two smoldering logs, and as soon as the fire blazed up, threw the packet into it.

A cry was heard all around; many even crossed themselves.

"She's lost her mind, she's lost her mind!" they cried all around.

"Maybe .. . maybe we should tie her up?" the general whispered to Ptitsyn. "Or send for . . . she's lost her mind, hasn't she? Lost her mind?"

"N-no, this may not be entirely madness," Ptitsyn whispered, pale as a sheet and trembling, unable to tear his eyes from the packet, which was beginning to smolder.

"She's mad, isn't she? Isn't she mad?" the general pestered Totsky.

"I told you she was a colorful woman," murmured Afanasy Ivanovich, also gone somewhat pale.

"But, after all, it's a hundred thousand! . . ."

"Lord, Lord!" was heard on all sides. Everyone crowded around the fireplace, everyone pushed in order to see, everyone exclaimed . . . Some even climbed onto chairs to look over the heads. Darya Alexeevna ran to the other room and exchanged frightened whispers with Katya and Pasha about something. The German beauty fled.

"Dearest lady! Queen! Almighty one!" Lebedev screamed, crawling on his knees before Nastasya Filippovna and reaching out towards the fireplace. "A hundred thousand! A hundred thousand! I saw it myself, I was there when they wrapped it! Dearest lady! Merciful one! Order me into the fireplace: I'll go all the way in, I'll put my whole gray head into the fire! ... A crippled wife, thirteen children—all orphaned, I buried my father last week, he sits there starving, Nastasya Filippovna!!" and, having screamed, he began crawling into the fireplace.

"Away!" cried Nastasya Filippovna, pushing him aside. "Step back, everybody! Ganya, what are you standing there for? Don't be ashamed! Go in! It's your lucky chance!"

But Ganya had already endured too much that day and that evening, and was not prepared for this last unexpected trial. The crowd parted into two halves before him, and he was left face to face with Nastasya Filippovna, three steps away from her. She stood right by the fireplace and waited, not tearing her burning, intent gaze from him. Ganya, in a tailcoat, his hat and gloves in his hand, stood silent and unresponding before her, his arms crossed, looking at the fire. An insane smile wandered over his face, which was pale as a sheet. True, he could not take his eyes off the fire, off the smoldering packet; but it seemed something new had arisen in his soul; it was as if he had sworn to endure the torture; he did not budge from the spot; in a few moments it became clear to everyone that he would not go after the packet, that he did not want to.

"Hey, it'll burn up, and they'll shame you," Nastasya Filippovna cried to him, "you'll hang yourself afterwards, I'm not joking!"

The fire that had flared up in the beginning between the two smoldering logs went out at first, when the packet fell on it and smothered it. But a small blue flame still clung from below to one corner of the lower log. Finally, a long, thin tongue of fire licked at the packet, the fire caught and raced along the edges of the paper, and suddenly the whole packet blazed in the fireplace and the bright flame shot upwards. Everyone gasped.

"Dearest lady!" Lebedev kept screaming, straining forward once more, but Rogozhin dragged him back and pushed him aside again.

Rogozhin himself had turned into one fixed gaze. He could not turn it from Nastasya Filippovna, he was reveling, he was in seventh heaven.

"There's a queen for you!" he repeated every moment, turning around to whoever was there. "That's the way to do it!" he cried out, forgetting himself. "Who among you rogues would pull such a stunt, eh?"

The prince watched ruefully and silently.

"I'll snatch it out with my teeth for just one thousand!" Ferdyshchenko offered.

"I could do it with my teeth, too!" the fist gentleman, who was standing behind them all, rasped in a fit of decided despair. "D-devil take it! It's burning, it'll burn up!" he cried, seeing the flame.

"It's burning, it's burning!" they all cried in one voice, almost all of them also straining towards the fireplace.

"Ganya, stop faking, I tell you for the last time!"

"Go in!" Ferdyshchenko bellowed, rushing to Ganya in a decided frenzy and pulling him by the sleeve. "Go in, you little swaggerer! It'll burn up! Oh, cur-r-rse you!"

Ganya shoved Ferdyshchenko aside forcefully, turned, and went towards the door; but before going two steps, he reeled and crashed to the floor.

"He fainted!" they cried all around.

"Dearest lady, it'll burn up!" Lebedev screamed.

"Burn up for nothing!" the roaring came from all sides.

"Katya, Pasha, fetch him water, spirits!" Nastasya Filippovna cried, seized the fire tongs and snatched the packet out.

The outer paper was nearly all charred and smoldering, but it could be seen at once that the inside was not damaged. The packet

had been wrapped in three layers of newspaper, and the money was untouched. Everyone breathed more easily.

"Maybe just one little thousand is damaged a tiny bit, but the rest is untouched," Lebedev said tenderly.

"It's all his! The whole packet is his! Do you hear, gentlemen?" Nastasya Filippovna proclaimed, placing the packet beside Ganya. "He didn't go in after it, he held out! So his vanity is still greater than his lust for money. Never mind, he'll come to! Otherwise he might have killed me . . . There, he's already recovering. General, Ivan Petrovich, Darya Alexeevna, Katya, Pasha, Rogozhin, do you hear? The packet is his, Ganya's. I grant him full possession of it as a reward for . . . well, for whatever! Tell him that. Let it lie there beside him . . . Rogozhin, march! Farewell, Prince, I've seen a man for the first time! Farewell, Afanasy Ivanovich, merci!"

The whole of Rogozhin's crew, with noise, clatter, and shouting, raced through the rooms to the exit, following Rogozhin and Nastasya Filippovna. In the reception room the maids gave her her fur coat; the cook Marfa came running from the kitchen. Nastasya Filippovna kissed them all.

"Can it be, dearest lady, that you're leaving us for good? But where will you go? And on such a day, on your birthday!" the tearful maids asked, weeping and kissing her hands.

"I'll go to the street, Katya, you heard, that's the place for me, or else I'll become a washerwoman! Enough of Afanasy Ivanovich! Give him my regards, and don't think ill of me . . ."

The prince rushed headlong for the front gate, where they were all getting into four troikas with little bells. The general overtook him on the stairs.

"Good heavens, Prince, come to your senses!" he said, seizing him by the arm. "Drop it! You see what she's like! I'm speaking as a father . . ."

The prince looked at him, but, without saying a word, broke away and ran downstairs.

At the front gate, from which the troikas had just driven off, the general saw the prince catch the first cab and shout, "To Ekaterinhof, follow those troikas!" Then the general's little gray trotter pulled up and took the general home, along with his new hopes and calculations and the aforementioned pearls, which the general had all the same not forgotten to take with him. Amidst his calculations there also flashed once or twice the seductive image of Nastasya Filippovna; the general sighed:

"A pity! A real pity! A lost woman! A madwoman! . . . Well, sir, but what the prince needs now is not Nastasya Filippovna . . ."

A few moralizing and admonishing words of the same sort were also uttered by two other interlocutors from among Nastasya Filippovna's guests, who had decided to go a little way on foot.

"You know, Afanasy Ivanovich, they say something of the sort exists among the Japanese," Ivan Petrovich Ptitsyn was saying. "An offended man there supposedly goes to the offender and says to him: 'You have offended me, for that I have come to rip my belly open before your eyes,' and with those words he actually rips his belly open before his offender's eyes, no doubt feeling an extreme satisfaction, as if he had indeed revenged himself. There are strange characters in the world, Afanasy Ivanovich!"

"And you think it was something of that sort here, too?" replied Afanasy Ivanovich with a smile. "Hm! Anyhow, you've wittily . . . and the comparison is excellent. You saw for yourself, however, my dearest Ivan Petrovich, that I did all I could; I cannot do the impossible, wouldn't you agree? You must also agree, however, that there are some capital virtues in this woman . . . brilliant features. I even wanted to cry out to her just now, if only I could have allowed myself to do it in that bedlam, that she herself was my best defense against all her accusations. Well, who wouldn't be captivated by this woman on occasion to the point of forgetting all reason . . . and the rest? Look, that boor Rogozhin came lugging a hundred thousand to her! Let's say everything that happened there tonight was ephemeral, romantic, indecent, but, on the other hand, it was colorful, it was original, you must agree. God, what might have come from such a character and with such beauty! But, despite all my efforts, even education—all is lost! A diamond in the rough—I've said it many times . . ."

And Afanasy Ivanovich sighed deeply.

PART TWO

I

A couple of days after the strange adventure at Nastasya Filippovna's party, with which we ended the first part of our story, Prince Myshkin hastened to leave for Moscow on the business of receiving his unexpected inheritance. It was said then that there might have been other reasons for such a hasty departure; but of that, as well as of the prince's adventures in Moscow and generally in the course of his absence from Petersburg, we can supply very little information. The prince was away for exactly six months, and even those who had certain reasons to be interested in his fate could find out very little about him during all that time. True, some sort of rumors reached some of them, though very rarely, but these were mostly strange and almost always contradicted each other. The greatest interest in the prince was shown, of course, in the house of the Epanchins, to whom he had even had no time to say good-bye as he was leaving. The general, however, had seen him then, even two or three times; they had discussed something seriously. But if Epanchin himself had seen him, he had not informed his family of it. And, generally, at first, that is, for nearly a whole month after the prince's departure, talk of him was avoided in the Epanchins' house. Only the general's wife, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, voiced her opinion at the very beginning, "that she had been sadly mistaken about the prince." Then after two or three days she added, though without mentioning the prince now, but vaguely, that "the chiefest feature of her life was to be constantly mistaken about people." And finally, ten days later, being vexed with her daughters over something, she concluded with the utterance: "Enough mistakes! There will be no more of them!" We cannot help noting here that for a long time a certain unpleasant mood existed in their house. There was something heavy, strained, unspoken, quarrelsome; everyone scowled. The general was busy day and night, taken up with his affairs; rarely had anyone seen him so busy and active—especially with official work. The family hardly managed to catch a glimpse of him. As for the Epanchin girls, they, of course, said nothing openly. It may

be that they said very little even when they were by themselves. They were proud girls, arrogant, and sometimes bashful even among themselves, but nevertheless they understood each other not only from the first word but even from the first glance, so that sometimes there was no need to say much.

An outside observer, if there had happened to be one, could have come to only one conclusion: that, judging by all the aforementioned facts, few as they were, the prince had managed in any case to leave a certain impression in the Epanchins' house, though he had appeared there only once, and that fleetingly. It may have been an impression of simple curiosity, explainable by some of the prince's extraordinary adventures. Be that as it may, the impression remained.

Gradually the rumors that had begun to spread around town also managed to be shrouded in the darkness of ignorance. True, tales were told of some little fool of a prince (no one could name him for certain), who had suddenly inherited an enormous fortune and married some traveling Frenchwoman, a famous cancan dancer from the Château des Fleurs in Paris. But others said that the inheritance had gone to some general, and the one who had married the traveling Frenchwoman and famous cancan dancer was a Russian merchant, an enormously wealthy man, who, at the wedding, drunk, merely to show off, had burned up in a candle exactly seven hundred thousand worth of the latest lottery tickets. But all these rumors died down very quickly, a result to which circumstances contributed greatly. For instance, Rogozhin's entire company, many of whom could have told a thing or two, set off in its whole bulk, with Rogozhin himself at its head, for Moscow, almost exactly a week after a terrible orgy in the Ekaterinhof vauxhall,¹ at which Nastasya Filippovna had also been present. Some people, the very few who were interested, learned from other rumors that Nastasya Filippovna had fled the day after Ekaterinhof, had vanished, and had finally been traced, having gone off to Moscow; so that Rogozhin's departure for Moscow came out as being somewhat coincident with this rumor.

A rumor also went around concerning Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin himself, who was also quite well known in his circle. But with him, too, a circumstance occurred which soon quickly cooled and ultimately stopped entirely all unkind stories concerning him: he became very ill and was unable to appear not only anywhere in society but also at his work. After a month of illness, he recovered,

but for some reason gave up his job in the stock company, and his place was taken by someone else. He also did not appear even once in General Epanchin's house, so that the general, too, had to hire another clerk. Gavrila Ardalionovich's enemies might have supposed that he was so embarrassed by everything that had happened to him that he was even ashamed to go out; but he was indeed a bit unwell; he even fell into hypochondria, became pensive, irritable. That same winter Varvara Ardalionovna married Ptitsyn; everybody who knew them ascribed this marriage directly to the circumstance that Ganya refused to go back to work and not only stopped supporting his family but even began to need help and almost to be looked after himself.

Let us note parenthetically that Gavrila Ardalionovich was never even mentioned in the Epanchins' house—as if there had been no such person in the world, let alone in their house. And yet they all learned (and even quite soon) a very remarkable circumstance about him, namely: on that same night that was so fatal for him, after the unpleasant adventure at Nastasya Filippovna's, Ganya, having returned home, did not go to bed, but began waiting with feverish impatience for the prince to come back. The prince, who had gone to Ekaterinhof, came back after five in the morning. Then Ganya went to his room and placed before him on the table the charred packet of money, given to him by Nastasya Filippovna while he lay in a swoon. He insistently begged the prince to return this gift to Nastasya Filippovna at the first opportunity. When Ganya entered the prince's room, he was in a hostile and nearly desperate mood; but it seemed some words were exchanged between him and the prince, after which Ganya sat with him for two hours and spent the whole time weeping bitterly. The two parted on friendly terms.

This news, which reached all the Epanchins, was, as later events confirmed, perfectly accurate. Of course, it was strange that news of this sort could travel and become known so quickly; for instance, everything that had happened at Nastasya Filippovna's became known at the Epanchins' almost the next day and even in quite accurate detail. Concerning the news about Gavrila Ardalionovich, it might be supposed that it was brought to the Epanchins by Varvara Ardalionovna, who somehow suddenly appeared among the Epanchin girls and very soon was even on a very intimate footing with them, which for Lizaveta Prokofyevna was extremely surprising. But though Varvara Ardalionovna for some reason found it necessary to become so close with the Epanchins, she

surely would not have talked with them about her brother. She, too, was a very proud woman, in her own way, despite the fact that she had struck up a friendship there, where her brother had almost been thrown out. Before then, though she had been acquainted with the Epanchin girls, she had seen them rarely. Even now, however, she almost never appeared in the drawing room, and came in, or rather, dropped in, by the back door. Lizaveta Prokofyevna had never been disposed towards her, either before or now, though she greatly respected Nina Alexandrovna, Varvara Arda-lionovna's mother. She was astonished, became angry, ascribed the acquaintance with Varya to the capricious and power-loving character of her daughters, who "invent all kinds of things just to be contrary to her," yet Varvara Ardalionovna went on visiting them all the same, both before and after her marriage.

But a month passed after the prince's departure, and Mrs. Epanchin received a letter from the old Princess Belokonsky, who had left for Moscow some two weeks earlier to stay with her married elder daughter, and this letter produced a visible effect on her. Though she said nothing about what was in it either to her daughters or to Ivan Fyodorovich, the family noticed by many signs that she was somehow especially agitated, even excited. She kept starting somehow especially strange conversations with her daughters, and all on such extraordinary subjects; she obviously wanted to speak her mind, but for some reason she held back. The day she received the letter, she was nice to everyone, even kissed Aglaya and Adelaida, confessed something particular to them, but precisely what they could not tell. She suddenly became indulgent even to Ivan Fyodorovich, whom she had kept in disgrace for a whole month. Naturally, the next day she became extremely angry over her sentimentality of the day before and by dinnertime managed to quarrel with everyone, but towards evening the horizon cleared again. Generally, for the whole week she continued to be in very bright spirits, something that had not happened for a long time.

But after another week, another letter came from Princess Belokonsky, and this time Mrs. Epanchin decided to speak out. She solemnly announced that "old Belokonsky" (she never referred to the princess otherwise, when speaking in her absence) had told her some very comforting news about this . . . "odd bird, well, that is, about this prince!" The old woman had sought him out in Moscow, made inquiries about him, and learned something very good; the

prince had finally called on her in person and made an almost extraordinary impression on her. "That's clear from the fact that she invited him to come every day from one till two, and the man drags himself there every day, and she's still not sick of him," Mrs. Epanchin concluded, adding that through "the old woman" the prince was now received in two or three good houses. "It's good that he doesn't sit in his corner feeling bashful like a fool." The girls, to whom all this was imparted, noticed at once that their dear mama had concealed a great deal of her letter from them. They might have known it from Varvara Ardalionovna, who could and certainly did know everything that Ptitsyn knew about the prince and his stay in Moscow. And Ptitsyn might have been even better informed than anyone else. But he was a man of extreme reticence in business matters, though he certainly shared things with Varya. Mrs. Epanchin at once began to dislike Varvara Ardalionovna still more for it.

But be that as it may, the ice was broken, and it suddenly became possible to talk openly about the prince. Besides that, the extraordinary impression and the exceedingly great interest that the prince had aroused and left behind him in the Epanchins' house once more clearly showed itself. Mrs. Epanchin even marveled at the impression made on her daughters by the news from Moscow. And the daughters also marveled at their mother, who had so solemnly announced to them that it was "the chiefest feature of her life to be constantly mistaken about people," and at the same time had recommended the prince to the attention of the "powerful" old Princess Belokonsky in Moscow, having, of course, to beg for her attention in the name of Christ and God, because on certain occasions the "old woman" was hard to get going.

But once the ice was broken and a fresh wind blew, the general also hastened to speak his mind. It turned out that he, too, was extraordinarily interested. He informed them, however, only of "the business side of the subject." It turned out that, in the interests of the prince, he had charged a couple of gentlemen, highly reliable and of a certain sort of influence in Moscow, to keep an eye on him and especially on his guide Salazkin. Everything that had been said about the inheritance, "about the fact of the inheritance, so to speak," turned out to be true, but the inheritance itself turned out in the end to be by no means as significant as had originally been spread about. The fortune was half entangled; there turned out to be debts; there turned out to be some sort of claimants, and the

prince, in spite of all guidance, behaved in a most unbusinesslike way, "Of course, God be with him": now that the "ice of silence" was broken, the general was glad to declare this "in all the sincerity" of his soul, because, "though the fellow's a bit like that," all the same he deserved it. But meanwhile, all the same, he had made some blunders here: for instance, some of the dead merchant's creditors had appeared, with disputable, worthless papers, and some, having heard about the prince, even came without any papers—and what then? The prince satisfied almost all of them, though his friends pointed out to him that all these petty folk and petty creditors were completely without rights; and he had only satisfied them because it actually turned out that a few of them had indeed suffered.

To this Mrs. Epanchin responded that Belokonsky had written something of the same sort to her and that "this is stupid, very stupid; but there's no curing a fool"—she added sharply, but one could see from her face how glad she was of what this "fool" had done. In conclusion to all this the general noticed that his wife was as concerned for the prince as if he were her own son and that she had also begun to be terribly affectionate to Aglaya; seeing which, Ivan Fyodorovich assumed a very businesslike air for a time.

But once again all this pleasant mood did not exist for long. Only two weeks went by and something suddenly changed again, Mrs. Epanchin scowled, and the general, after shrugging his shoulders a few times, again submitted to the "ice of silence." The thing was that just two weeks earlier he had received undercover information, brief and therefore not quite clear, but reliable, that Nastasya Filippovna, who had first disappeared in Moscow, had then been found in Moscow by Rogozhin, had then disappeared again somewhere and had again been found by him, had finally given him an almost certain promise that she would marry him. And now, only two weeks later, his excellency had suddenly received information that Nastasya Filippovna had run away for a third time, almost from the foot of the altar, and this time had disappeared somewhere in the provinces, and meanwhile Prince Myshkin had also vanished from Moscow, leaving Salazkin in charge of all his affairs, "together with her, or simply rushing after her, no one knows, but there's something in it," the general concluded. Lizaveta Prokofyevna, for her part, also received some unpleasant information. In the end, two months after the prince's departure, almost all the rumors about him in Petersburg had

definitively died out, and in the Epanchins' house the "ice of silence" was not broken again. Varvara Ardalionovna, however, still visited the girls.

To have done with all these rumors and reports, let us also add that a great many upheavals had taken place at the Epanchins' by spring, so that it was hard not to forget about the prince, who for his part never sent, and perhaps did not wish to send, any news of himself. Gradually, in the course of the winter, they finally decided to go abroad for the summer—that is, Lizaveta Prokofyevna and her daughters; the general, naturally, could not spend time on "empty entertainment." The decision was taken at the extreme and persistent urging of the girls, who had become completely convinced that their parents did not want to take them abroad because they were constantly concerned with getting them married and finding suitors for them. It may be that the parents also finally became convinced that suitors could be met abroad as well, and that one summer trip not only could not upset anything, but perhaps "might even contribute." Here it would be appropriate to mention that the intended marriage between Afanasy Ivanovich Totsky and the eldest Epanchin girl broke up altogether, and no formal proposal ever took place. It happened somehow by itself, without long discussions and without any family struggles. Since the time of the prince's departure, everything had suddenly quieted down on both sides. This circumstance was one of the causes of the then heavy mood in the Epanchin family, though Mrs. Epanchin said at the time that she would gladly "cross herself with both hands." The general, though in disgrace and aware that it was his own fault, pouted for a long time all the same; he was sorry to lose Afanasy Ivanovich: "such a fortune, and such a dexterous man!" Not long afterwards the general learned that Afanasy Ivanovich had been captivated by a traveling high-society Frenchwoman, a marquise and a légitimiste,² that a marriage was to take place, after which Afanasy Ivanovich would be taken to Paris and then somewhere in Brittany. "Well, the Frenchwoman will be the end of him," the general decided.

But the Epanchins were preparing to leave by summer. And suddenly a circumstance occurred which again changed everything in a new way, and the trip was again postponed, to the greatest joy of the general and his wife. A certain prince arrived in Petersburg from Moscow, Prince Shch., a well-known man, incidentally, and known from a quite, quite good point. He was one of those people,

or, one might even say, activists of recent times, honest, modest, who sincerely and consciously wish to be useful, are always working, and are distinguished by this rare and happy quality of always finding work. Without putting himself forward, avoiding the bitterness and idle talk of parties, not counting himself among the foremost, the prince nevertheless had a quite substantial understanding of much that was happening in recent times. Formerly he had been in government service, then he began to participate in zemstvo³ activity. Besides that, he was a useful corresponding member of several Russian learned societies. Together with an engineer acquaintance, he contributed, by gathering information and research, to correcting the planned itinerary of one of the most important railways. He was about thirty-five years old. He was a man "of the highest society" and, besides that, had a fortune that was "good, serious, incontestable," as the general put it, having met and become acquainted with the prince on the occasion of some rather serious business at the office of the count, his superior. The prince, out of some special curiosity, never avoided making the acquaintance of Russia's "businesspeople." It so happened that the prince also became acquainted with the general's family. Adelaida Ivanovna, the middle sister, made a very strong impression on him. By spring the prince had proposed. Adelaida liked him very much, and so did Lizaveta Prokofyevna. The general was very glad. Needless to say, the trip was postponed. A spring wedding was planned.

The trip, however, might have taken place by the middle or the end of summer, if only in the form of a one- or two-month excursion of Lizaveta Prokofyevna and her two remaining daughters, in order to dispel the sadness of Adelaida's leaving them. But again something new happened: at the end of spring (Adelaida's wedding had been delayed somewhat and was postponed till the middle of summer) Prince Shch. introduced into the Epanchins' house a distant relation of his, with whom, however, he was rather well acquainted. This was a certain Evgeny Pavlovich R., still a young man, about twenty-eight, an imperial aide-de-camp, strikingly handsome, "of a noble family," a witty, brilliant "new" man, "exceedingly educated," and—somehow much too fabulously wealthy. With regard to this last point the general was always careful. He made inquiries: "There is actually something of the sort—though, in any case, it must be verified." This young and "promising" imperial aide-de-camp was given a strong boost by

the opinion of the old Princess Belokonsky from Moscow. In one respect only was his reputation somewhat ticklish: there had been several liaisons and, as it was maintained, "victories" over certain unfortunate hearts. Having seen Aglaya, he became extraordinarily sedentary in the Epanchins' house. True, nothing had been said yet, nor had any allusions been made, but all the same the parents thought that there was no need even to think about a trip abroad that summer. Aglaya herself was perhaps of a different opinion.

This happened just before our hero's second appearance on the scene of our story. By that time, judging from appearances, poor Prince Myshkin had been totally forgotten in Petersburg. If he had suddenly appeared now among those who had known him, it would have been as if he had dropped from the moon. And yet we still have one more fact to report, and with that we shall end our introduction.

Kolya Ivolgin, on the prince's departure, at first went on with his former life, that is, went to school, visited his friend Ippolit, looked after the general, and helped Varya around the house, that is, ran errands for her. But the tenants quickly vanished: Ferdy-shchenko moved somewhere three days after the adventure at Nastasya Filippovna's and quite soon disappeared, so that even all rumors about him died out; he was said to be drinking somewhere, but nothing was certain. The prince left for Moscow; that was the end of the tenants. Afterwards, when Varya was already married, Nina Alexandrovna and Ganya moved with her to Ptitsyn's, in the Ismailovsky quarter; as for General Ivolgin, a quite unforeseen circumstance occurred with him at almost that same time: he went to debtors' prison. He was dispatched there by his lady friend, the captain's widow, on the strength of documents he had given her at various times, worth about two thousand. All this came as a total surprise to him, and the poor general was "decidedly the victim of his boundless faith in the nobility of the human heart, broadly speaking." Having adopted the soothing habit of signing vouchers and promissory notes, he never supposed the possibility of their effect, at least at some point, always thinking it was just so. It turned to be not so. "Trust people after that, show them your noble trustfulness!" he exclaimed ruefully, sitting with his new friends in Tarasov House⁴ over a bottle of wine and telling them anecdotes about the siege of Kars and a resurrected soldier. His life there, however, was excellent. Ptitsyn and Varya used to say it was the right place for him; Ganya agreed completely. Only poor Nina

Alexandrovna wept bitterly on the quiet (which even surprised her household) and, though eternally ill, dragged herself as often as she could to see her husband in Tarasov House.

But since the "incident with the general," as Kolya put it, or, more broadly, since his sister's marriage, Kolya had gotten completely out of hand, so much so that lately he even rarely came to spend the night with the family. According to rumor, he had made many new acquaintances; besides that, he had become all too well known in the debtors' prison. Nina Alexandrovna could not do without him there; and at home now no one pestered him even out of curiosity. Varya, who had treated him so sternly before, did not subject him now to the least inquiry about his wanderings; and Ganya, to the great astonishment of the household, talked and even got together with him occasionally on perfectly friendly terms, despite all his hypochondria, something that had never happened before, because the twenty-seven-year-old Ganya, naturally, had never paid the slightest friendly attention to his fifteen-year-old brother, had treated him rudely, had demanded that the whole household treat him with sternness only, and had constantly threatened to "go for his ears," which drove Kolya "beyond the final limits of human patience." One might have thought that Kolya was now sometimes even necessary to Ganya. He had been very struck that Ganya had returned the money then; he was prepared to forgive him a lot for that.

Three months went by after the prince's departure, and the Ivolgin family heard that Kolya had suddenly become acquainted with the Epanchins and was received very nicely by the girls. Varya soon learned of it; Kolya, incidentally, had become acquainted not through Varya but "on his own." The Epanchins gradually grew to love him. At first the general's wife was very displeased with him, but soon she began to treat him kindly "for his candor and for the fact that he doesn't flatter." That Kolya did not flatter was perfectly right; he managed to put himself on a completely equal and independent footing with them, though he did sometimes read books or newspapers to Mrs. Epanchin—but he had always been obliging. A couple of times, however, he quarreled bitterly with Lizaveta Prokofyevna, told her that she was a despot and that he would not set foot in the house again. The first time was over the "woman question," the second time over what season of the year was best for catching siskins. Incredible as it might seem, on the third day after the quarrel, Mrs. Epanchin sent him a footman with a note

asking him to come without fail; Kolya did not put on airs and went at once. Only Aglaya was constantly ill-disposed towards him for some reason and treated him haughtily. Yet it was her that he was to surprise somewhat. Once—it was during Holy Week⁵— finding a moment when they were alone, Kolya handed Aglaya a letter, adding only that he had been told to give it to her alone. Aglaya gave the "presumptuous brat" a terrible look, but Kolya did not wait and left. She opened the note and read:

Once you honored me with your confidence. It may be that you have completely forgotten me now. How is it that I am writing to you? I do not know; but I have an irrepressible desire to remind you of myself, and you precisely. Many's the time I have needed all three of you very much, but of all three I could see only you. I need you, I need you very much. I have nothing to write to you about myself, I have nothing to tell you about. That is not what I wanted; I wish terribly much that you should be happy. Are you happy? That is the only thing I wanted to tell you.

Your brother, Pr. L. Myshkin.

Having read this brief and rather muddle-headed note, Aglaya suddenly flushed all over and became pensive. It would be hard for us to convey the course of her thoughts. Among other things, she asked herself: "Should I show it to anyone?" She felt somehow ashamed. She ended, however, by smiling a mocking and strange smile and dropping the letter into her desk drawer. The next day she took it out again and put it into a thick, sturdily bound book (as she always did with her papers, so as to find them quickly when she needed them). And only a week later did she happen to notice what book it was. It was Don Quixote de La Mancha. Aglaya laughed terribly—no one knew why.

Nor did anyone know whether she showed her acquisition to any of her sisters.

But as she was reading this letter, the thought suddenly crossed her mind: could it be that the prince had chosen this presumptuous little brat and show-off as his correspondent and, for all she knew, his only correspondent in Petersburg? And, though with a look of extraordinary disdain, all the same she put Kolya to the question. But the "brat," ordinarily touchy, this time did not pay the slightest attention to the disdain; he explained to Aglaya quite briefly and rather drily that he had given the prince his permanent address,

just in case, before the prince left Petersburg, and had offered to be of service, that this was the first errand he had been entrusted with and the first note he had received, and in proof of his words he produced the letter he had himself received. Aglaya read it without any qualms. The letter to Kolya read:

Dear Kolya, be so good as to convey the enclosed and sealed note to Aglaya Ivanovna. Be well.

Lovingly yours, Pr. L. Myshkin.

"All the same, it's ridiculous to confide in such a pipsqueak," Aglaya said touchily, handing Kolya's note back, and she scornfully walked past him.

Now that Kolya could not bear: he had asked Ganya, purposely for that occasion, without explaining the reason why, to let him wear his still quite new green scarf. He was bitterly offended.

II

It was the first days of June, and the weather in Petersburg had been unusually fine for a whole week. The Epanchins had their own wealthy dacha in Pavlovsk.⁶ Lizaveta Prokofyevna suddenly roused herself and went into action: before not quite two days of bustling were over, they moved.

A day or two after the Epanchins moved to the country, Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin arrived from Moscow on the morning train. No one met him at the station; but as he was getting off the train, the prince suddenly thought he caught the gaze of two strange, burning eyes in the crowd surrounding the arriving people. When he looked more attentively, he could no longer see them. Of course, he had only imagined it; but it left an unpleasant impression. Besides, the prince was sad and pensive to begin with and seemed preoccupied with something.

The cabby brought him to a hotel not far from Liteinaya Street. It was a wretched little hotel. The prince took two small rooms, dark and poorly furnished, washed, dressed, asked for nothing, and left hastily, as if afraid of wasting time or of not finding someone at home.

If anyone who had known him six months ago, when he first came to Petersburg, had looked at him now, he might have

concluded that his appearance had changed greatly for the better. But that was hardly so. There was merely a complete change in his clothes: they were all different, made in Moscow, and by a good tailor; but there was a flaw in them as well: they were much too fashionably made (as always with conscientious but not very talented tailors), and moreover for a man not the least bit interested in fashion, so that, taking a close look at the prince, someone much given to laughter might have found good reason to smile. But people laugh at all sorts of things.

The prince took a cab and went to Peski. On one of the Rozhdestvensky streets he soon located a rather small wooden house. To his surprise, this house turned out to be attractive, clean, very well kept, with a front garden in which flowers were growing. The windows facing the street were open and from them came the sound of shrill, ceaseless talking, almost shouting, as if someone was reading aloud or even delivering a speech; the voice was interrupted now and then by the laughter of several resounding voices. The prince entered the yard, went up the front steps, and asked for Mr. Lebedev.

"Mister's in there," the cook replied, opening the door, her sleeves rolled up to the elbows, jabbing her finger towards the "drawing room."

In this drawing room, the walls of which were covered with blue wallpaper, and which was decorated neatly and with some pretense—that is, with a round table and a sofa, a bronze clock under a glass bell, a narrow mirror between the two windows, and a very old crystal chandelier, not big, suspended from the ceiling on a bronze chain—in the middle of the room stood Mr. Lebedev himself, his back turned to the entering prince, in a waistcoat but with nothing over it, summer-fashion, beating himself on the breast and delivering a bitter harangue on some subject. The listeners were: a boy of about fifteen with a rather merry and far from stupid face and with a book in his hand, a young girl of about twenty dressed in mourning and with a nursing baby in her arms, a thirteen-year-old girl, also in mourning, who was laughing loudly and opening her mouth terribly widely as she did so, and, finally, an extremely strange listener, a fellow of about twenty, lying on the sofa, rather handsome, dark, with long, thick hair, big, dark eyes, and a small pretense to side-whiskers and a little beard. This listener, it seemed, often interrupted and argued with the haranguing Lebedev; that was probably what made the rest of the audience laugh.

"Lukyan Timofeich, hey, Lukyan Timofeich! No, really! Look here! . . . Well, drat you all!"

And the cook left, waving her arms and getting so angry that she even became all red.

Lebedev turned around and, seeing the prince, stood for a time as if thunderstruck, then rushed to him with an obsequious smile, but froze again on the way, nevertheless having uttered:

"Il-il-illustrious Prince!"

But suddenly, as if still unable to recover his countenance, he turned around and, for no reason at all, first fell upon the girl in mourning with the baby in her arms, so that she even recoiled a little from the unexpectedness of it, then immediately abandoned her and fell upon the thirteen-year-old girl, who hovered in the doorway to the other room and went on smiling with the remnants of her recent laughter. She could not bear his shouting and immediately darted off to the kitchen; Lebedev even stamped his feet behind her, for greater intimidation, but, meeting the prince's eyes, staring in bewilderment, said by way of explanation:

"For . . . respectfulness, heh, heh, heh!"

"There's no need for all this . . ." the prince tried to begin.

"At once, at once, at once . . . like lightning!"

And Lebedev quickly vanished from the room. The prince looked in surprise at the young girl, at the boy, at the one lying on the sofa; they were all laughing. The prince laughed, too.

"He went to put on his tailcoat," said the boy.

"This is all so vexing," the prince began, "and I'd have thought . . . tell me, is he . . ."

"Drunk, you think?" cried the voice from the sofa. "Stone sober! Maybe three or four glasses, well, or make it five, but that's just for discipline."

The prince was about to address the voice from the sofa, but the young girl began to speak and, with a most candid look on her pretty face, said:

"He never drinks much in the mornings; if you've come on business, talk to him now. It's the right time. When he comes home in the evening, he's drunk; and now he mostly weeps at night and reads aloud to us from the Holy Scriptures, because our mother died five weeks ago."

"He ran away because he probably had a hard time answering you," the young man laughed from the sofa. "I'll bet he's about to dupe you and is thinking it over right now."

"Just five weeks! Just five weeks!" Lebedev picked up, coming back in wearing his tailcoat, blinking his eyes and pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his tears. "Orphans!"

"Why have you come out all in holes?" said the young girl. "You've got a brand-new frock coat lying there behind the door, didn't you see it?"

"Quiet, you fidget!" Lebedev shouted at her. "Ah, you!" he began to stamp his feet at her. But this time she only laughed.

"Don't try to frighten me, I'm not Tanya, I won't run away. But you may wake up Lyubochka, and she'll get into a fit . . . what's all this shouting!"

"No, no, no! Bite your tongue . . ." Lebedev suddenly became terribly frightened and, rushing to the baby asleep in his daughter's arms, with a frightened look made a cross over it several times. "Lord save us, Lord protect us! This is my own nursing baby, my daughter Lyubov," he turned to the prince, "born in the most lawful wedlock of the newly departed Elena, my wife, who died in childbed. And this wee thing is my daughter Vera, in mourning . . . And this, this, oh, this . . ."

"Why do you stop short?" cried the young man. "Go on, don't be embarrassed."

"Your Highness!" Lebedev suddenly exclaimed in a sort of transport, "have you been following the murder of the Zhemarin family⁷ in the newspapers?"

"I have," the prince said in some surprise.

"Well, this is the true murderer of the Zhemarin family, the man himself!"

"What do you mean?" said the prince.

"That is, allegorically speaking, the future second murderer of the future second Zhemarin family, if one turns up. He's headed for that ..."

Everybody laughed. It occurred to the prince that Lebedev might indeed be squirming and clowning only because, anticipating his questions, he did not know how to answer them and was gaining time.

"He's a rebel! A conspirator!" Lebedev shouted, as if no longer able to control himself. "Well, and can I, do I have the right to regard such a slanderer, such a harlot, one might say, and monster, as my own nephew, the only son of my late sister Anisya?"

"Oh, stop it, you drunkard! Would you believe, Prince, he's now decided to become a lawyer, to plead in the courts; he waxes

eloquent and talks in high-flown style with his children at home. Five days ago he spoke before the justices of the peace. And who do you think he defended? Not the old woman who implored, who begged him, because she'd been fleeced by a scoundrel of a moneylender who took five hundred roubles from her, everything she had, but the moneylender himself, some Zeidler or other, a Yid, because he promised him fifty roubles for it . . ."

"Fifty roubles if I win and only five if I lose," Lebedev suddenly explained in a completely different voice than before, as if he had never been shouting.

"Well, it was a washout, of course, the old rules have been changed, they only laughed at him there. But he remained terribly pleased with himself. Remember, he said, impartial gentlemen of the court, that an old man of sorrows, a cripple, who lives by honest labor, is being deprived of his last crust of bread. Remember the wise words of the lawgiver: 'Let mercy reign in the courts.'⁸ And believe me: every morning he repeats this speech for us here, exactly as he said it there; this is the fifth day; he was reciting it just before you came, he likes it so much. He drools over himself. And he's getting ready to defend somebody else. You're Prince Myshkin, I believe? Kolya told me about you. He says he's never met anyone in the world more intelligent than you ..."

"And there is no one! No one! No one more intelligent in the world!" Lebedev picked up at once.

"Well, I suppose this one's just babbling. The one loves you, and the other fawns on you; but I have no intention of flattering you, let that be known to you. You must have some sense, so decide between him and me. Well, do you want the prince to decide between us?" he said to his uncle. "I'm even glad you've turned up, Prince."

"Let him!" Lebedev cried resolutely, looking around involuntarily at his audience, which had again begun to advance upon him.

"What's going on with you here?" the prince said, making a wry face.

He really had a headache, and besides, he was becoming more and more convinced that Lebedev was duping him and was glad that the business could be put off.

"Here's how things stand. I am his nephew, he wasn't lying about that, though everything he says is a lie. I haven't finished my studies, but I want to finish them, and I'll get my way because I have character. And meanwhile, in order to exist, I'm taking a job

with the railways that pays twenty-five roubles. I'll admit, besides, that he has already helped me two or three times. I had twenty roubles and lost them gambling. Would you believe it, Prince, I was so mean, so low, that I gambled them away!"

"To a blackguard, a blackguard, who shouldn't have been paid!" cried Lebedev.

"Yes, to a blackguard, but who still had to be paid," the young man went on. "And that he's a blackguard, I, too, will testify, not only because he gave you a beating. He's a rejected officer, Prince, a retired lieutenant from Rogozhin's former band, who teaches boxing. They're all wandering about now, since Rogozhin scattered them. But the worst thing is that I knew he was a blackguard, a scoundrel, and a petty thief, and I still sat down to play with him, and that, as I bet my last rouble (we were playing cribbage), I thought to myself: I'll lose, go to Uncle Lukyan, bow to him—he won't refuse. That was meanness, that was real meanness! That was conscious baseness!"

"Yes, there you have conscious baseness!" repeated Lebedev.

"Well, don't triumph, wait a moment," the touchy nephew cried, "don't be so glad. I came to see him, Prince, and admitted everything; I acted nobly, I didn't spare myself; I denounced myself before him as much as I could, everybody here is a witness. To take this job with the railways, I absolutely must outfit myself at least somehow, because I'm all in rags. Here, look at my boots! Otherwise I can't show up for work, and if I don't show up at the appointed time, somebody else will take the job, and I'll be left hanging again, and who knows when I'll find another job? Now I'm asking him for only fifteen roubles, and I promise that I'll never ask again, and on top of that I'll repay the whole debt to the last kopeck during the first three months. I'll keep my word. I can live on bread and kvass for months at a time, because I have a strong character. For three months I'll get seventy-five roubles. With the previous debt, I'll owe him only thirty-five roubles, so I'll have enough to pay him. Well, he can ask as much interest as he likes, devil take it! Doesn't he know me? Ask him, Prince: when he helped me out before, did I pay him back or not? Why doesn't he want to now? He's angry that I paid that lieutenant; there's no other reason! That's how this man is—doesn't eat himself and won't let others!"

"And he won't go away," Lebedev cried, "he lies here and won't go away!"

"That's what I told you. I won't go away till you give it to me.

You're smiling at something, Prince? Apparently you think I'm in the wrong?"

"I'm not smiling, but in my opinion you actually are somewhat in the wrong," the prince answered reluctantly.

"No, just say outright that I'm totally wrong, don't dodge! What is this 'somewhat'?"

"If you wish, you're totally wrong."

"If I wish! Ridiculous! Can you possibly think I don't know that it's ticklish to act this way, that the money's his, the will is his, and it comes out as violence on my part? But you, Prince . . . you don't know life. If you don't teach them, they'll be of no use. They have to be taught. My conscience is clear; in all conscience, I won't cause him any loss, I'll pay him back with interest. He's already received moral satisfaction as well: he has seen my humiliation. What more does he want? What good is he, if he can't be useful? For pity's sake, what does he do himself? Ask him what he does to others and how he dupes people. How did he pay for this house? I'll bet my life that he has already duped you and has already made plans for how to dupe you further! You're smiling. You don't believe me?"

"It seems to me that all this is quite unconnected with your affair," observed the prince.

"I've been lying here for three days, and the things I've seen!" the young man went on shouting without listening. "Imagine, he suspects this angel, this young girl, now an orphan, my cousin, his own daughter; every night he searches for her sweethearts! He comes here on the sly and also searches for something under my sofa. He's gone crazy from suspiciousness; he sees thieves in every corner. All night he keeps popping out of bed to see whether the windows are well latched, to check the doors, to peek into the stove, as much as seven times a night. He defends swindlers in court, and he gets up three times in the night to pray, here in the living room, on his knees, pounding his head on the floor for half an hour, and who doesn't he pray for, what doesn't he pray for, the drunken mumbler! He prayed for the repose of the soul of the countess Du Barry,⁹ I heard it with my own ears; Kolya also heard it: he's gone quite crazy!"

"You see, you hear, how he disgraces me, Prince!" Lebedev cried out, turning red and really getting furious. "And he doesn't know that I, drunkard and profligate, robber and evil-doer, may only be standing on this one thing, that when this scoffer was still an infant, my destitute, widowed sister Anisya's son, I, as destitute as

she was, swaddled him, washed him in a tub, sat up with them for whole nights without sleeping, when both of them were sick, stole firewood from the caretaker downstairs, sang him songs, snapped my fingers, hungry belly that I was, and so I nursed him, and see how he laughs at me now! What business is it of yours if I did cross my forehead once for the repose of the soul of the countess Du Barry? Because three days ago, Prince, I read her biography for the first time in an encyclopedia. And do you know what she was, this Du Barry? Tell me, do you know or not?"

"So, what, are you the only one who knows?" the young man muttered mockingly but reluctantly.

"She was a countess who, having risen from a life of shame, ran things in the queen's place, and a great empress wrote her a letter with her own hand, addressing her as ma cousine. A cardinal, a papal nuncio, at the levay dew rwah (do you know what the levay dew rwah was?),¹⁰ volunteered personally to put silk stockings on her bare legs, and considered it an honor—such an exalted and holy person! Do you know that? I can see by your face that you don't! Well, how did she die? Answer, if you know!"

"Get out! What a pest."

"The way she died was that, after such honors, this former ruling lady was dragged guiltless to the guillotine by the executioner Samson, for the amusement of the Parisian fishwives, and she was so frightened that she didn't understand what was happening to her. She saw that he was bending her neck down under the knife and kicking her from behind—with the rest all laughing—and she began to cry out: 'Encore un moment, monsieur le bourreau, encore un moment!' Which means: 'Wait one more little minute, mister boorow, just one!' And maybe the Lord will forgive her for that little minute, because it's impossible to imagine a human soul in worse mizair than that. Do you know what the word mizair means? Well, this is that same mizair. When I read about this countess's cry of one little moment, it was as if my heart was in pincers. And what do you care, worm, if I decided on going to bed at night to remember her, a great sinner, in my prayers? Maybe I remembered her precisely because, as long as this world has stood, probably nobody has ever crossed his forehead for her, or even thought of it. And so, she'll feel good in the other world that another sinner like her has been found, who has prayed for her at least once on earth. What are you laughing at? You don't believe, you atheist. But how do you know? And you also lied, if you did eavesdrop on

me; I didn't pray only for the countess Du Barry; what I prayed was: 'Give rest, O Lord, to the soul of the great sinner, the countess Du Barry, and all those like her'—and that's a very different thing; for there are many such great women sinners and examples of the change of fortune, who suffered, and who now find no peace there, and groan, and wait; and I also prayed then for you and those like you, of your kind, impudent offenders, since you decided to eavesdrop on my prayers . . ."

"Well, all right, enough, pray for whoever you like, devil take you, quit shouting!" the nephew interrupted vexedly. "He's very well read, Prince, didn't you know?" he added with a sort of awkward grin. "He's reading all sorts of books and memoirs these days."

"All the same your uncle ... is not a heartless man," the prince observed reluctantly. He was beginning to find this young man quite repulsive.

"You'll spoil him on us, praising him like that! See, he puts his hand to his heart and purses his lips, relishing it no end. Maybe he's not heartless, but he's a rogue, that's the trouble; what's more, he's drunk, he's all unhinged, like anybody who's been drinking for several years, and everything in him creaks. Granted he loves the children, he respected my deceased aunt. . . He even loves me, by God, and has left me something in his will . . ."

"N-nothing is what you'll get!" Lebedev cried out bitterly.

"Listen, Lebedev," the prince said firmly, turning away from the young man, "I know from experience that you can be businesslike when you want to be ... I have very little time now, and if you . . . Excuse me, I've forgotten your name."

"Ti-Ti-Timofei."

"And?"

"Lukyanovich."

Everybody in the room burst out laughing.

"A lie!" cried the nephew. "That, too, is a lie! His name isn't Timofei Lukyanovich at all, Prince, it's Lukyan Timofeevich! Tell us, now, why did you lie? Isn't it all the same, Lukyan or Timofei, and what does the prince care? He only lies out of habit, I assure you!"

"Can it be true?" the prince asked impatiently.

"Actually, I'm Lukyan Timofeevich," Lebedev confirmed abashedly, humbly looking down and again putting his hand to his heart.

"Ah, my God, but why did you do it?"

"For self-belittlement," whispered Lebedev, hanging his head more and more humbly.

"Eh, who needs your self-belittlement! If only I knew where to find Kolya now!" said the prince, and he turned to leave.

"I can tell you where Kolya is," the young man volunteered again.

"No, no, no!" Lebedev roused himself, all in a flutter.

"Kolya spent the night here, but in the morning he went to look for his general, whom you, Prince, redeemed from prison, God knows why. The general had promised yesterday to come here and spend the night, but he didn't. Most likely he spent the night in the Scales Hotel, very near here. Which means that Kolya is either there or in Pavlovsk with the Epanchins. He had some money, he wanted to go yesterday. So he's either in the Scales or in Pavlovsk."

"In Pavlovsk, in Pavlovsk! . . . And we'll go this way, this way, to the garden, and . . . have a little coffee ..."

And Lebedev pulled the prince by the arm. They left the room, walked across the courtyard, and went through the gate. Here there actually was a very small and very sweet little garden, in which, thanks to the fine weather, the trees were already covered with leaves. Lebedev sat the prince down on a green wooden bench, at a green table fixed in the ground, and placed himself opposite him. A minute later coffee actually arrived. The prince did not refuse. Lebedev went on glancing obsequiously and greedily into his eyes.

"I didn't know you had such a homestead," said the prince, with the look of a man who is thinking of something else.

"Or-orphans," Lebedev began, cringing, but stopped: the prince looked ahead of him distractedly and had quite certainly forgotten his question. Another minute passed; Lebedev kept glancing and waiting.

"Well, so?" said the prince, as if coming to his senses. "Ah, yes! You yourself know what our business is, Lebedev: I've come in response to your letter. Speak."

Lebedev became embarrassed, tried to say something, but only stammered: nothing came out. The prince waited and smiled sadly.

"I think I understand you very well, Lukyan Timofeevich: you probably weren't expecting me. You thought I wouldn't emerge from my backwoods at your first indication, and you wrote to clear your own conscience. But I up and came. Well, leave off, don't deceive me. Leave off serving two masters. Rogozhin has been here for three weeks now, I know everything. Did you manage to sell her to him like the other time, or not? Tell me the truth."

"The monster found out himself, himself."

"Don't abuse him. Of course, he treated you badly . . ."

"He beat me, he beat me!" Lebedev chimed in with terrible fervor. "And he chased me with a dog through Moscow, chased me down the street with a borzoi bitch. A horrible bitch."

"You take me for a little boy, Lebedev. Tell me, did she seriously abandon him this time, in Moscow?"

"Seriously, seriously, again right at the foot of the altar. The man was already counting the minutes, and she dashed off here to Petersburg and straight to me: 'Save me, protect me, Lukyan, and don't tell the prince . . .' She's afraid of you, Prince, even more than of him, and that's—most wise!"

And Lebedev slyly put his finger to his forehead.

"But now you've brought them together again?"

"Illustrious Prince, how . . . how could I prevent it?"

"Well, enough, I'll find everything out myself. Only tell me, where is she now? At his place?"

"Oh, no! Never! She's still on her own. I'm free, she says, and, you know, Prince, she stands firm on it, she says, I'm still completely free! She's still on the Petersburg side, at my sister-in-law's, as I wrote to you."

"And she's there now?"

"Yes, unless she's in Pavlovsk, what with the fine weather, at Darya Alexeevna's dacha. I'm completely free, she says; just yesterday she kept boasting to Nikolai Ardalionovich about her freedom. A bad sign, sir!"

And Lebedev grinned.

"Does Kolya see much of her?"

"Light-minded, and incomprehensible, and not secretive."

"Were you there long ago?"

"Every day, every day."

"Meaning yesterday?"

"N-no, three days ago, sir."

"Too bad you're slightly drunk, Lebedev! Otherwise I'd ask you something."

"No, no, no, stone sober!"

Lebedev was all agog.

"Tell me, how was she when you left?"

"S-searching . . ."

"Searching?"

"As if she was searching all over for something, as if she'd lost

something. Even the thought of the forthcoming marriage is loathsome to her, and she takes offense at it. Of him she thinks as much as of an orange peel, not more, or else more, but with fear and horror, she even forbids all mention of him, and they see each other only by necessity . . . and he feels it all too well! But there's no avoiding it, sir! . . . She's restless, sarcastic, double-tongued, explosive . . ."

"Double-tongued and explosive?"

"Explosive—because she all but seized me by the hair last time for one of my conversations. I was reprimanding her with the Apocalypse."¹¹

"How's that?" asked the prince, thinking he had not heard right.

"I was reading the Apocalypse. A lady with a restless imagination, heh, heh! And, besides, I've come to the conclusion that she's much inclined towards serious topics, even unrelated ones. She likes them, likes them, and even takes it as a sign of special respect for her. Yes, sir. And I'm strong on interpreting the Apocalypse and have been doing it for fifteen years. She agreed with me that we live in the time of the third horse, the black one, and the rider with a balance in his hand, because in our time everything is in balances and contracts, and people are all only seeking their rights: A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny . . .' And with all that they want to preserve a free spirit, and a pure heart, and a healthy body, and all of God's gifts. But they can't do it with rights alone, and there will follow a pale horse and him whose name is Death, and after him Hell¹² . . . We get together and interpret it and—she's strongly affected."

"You believe that yourself?" asked the prince, giving Lebedev a strange look.

"Believe it and interpret it. For I'm poor and naked, and an atom in the whirl of people. Who will honor Lebedev? They all sharpen their wit on him, and accompany him by all but kicks. But here, in this interpreting, I'm the equal of a courtier. The mind! And a courtier trembled once ... in his chair, feeling it with his mind. His excellency, Nil Alexeevich, two years ago, before Easter, heard about me—when I still worked in their department—and had Pyotr Zakharych summon me specially from my duty to his office, and asked me, when we were alone: 'Is it true that you're a professor of the Antichrist?' And I didn't hide it: 'I am,' I said, and I explained it, and presented it, and didn't soften the fear, but mentally increased it as I unrolled the allegorical scroll and quoted the

numbers. And he was smiling, but at the numbers and likenesses he began to tremble, and asked me to close the book, and to leave, and awarded me a bonus for Easter, and on St. Thomas's¹³ he gave up his soul to God."

"Come now, Lebedev!"

"It's a fact. He fell out of his carriage after dinner . . . struck his temple on the hitching post and passed away right there, like a baby, like a little baby. He was seventy-three years old according to his papers; a red-faced, gray-haired little fellow, all sprayed with perfume, and he used to smile, to smile all the time, just like a baby. Pyotr Zakharych remembered then: 'You foretold it,' he said."

The prince began to get up. Lebedev was surprised and even puzzled that the prince was already getting up.

"You've grown awfully indifferent, sir, heh, heh!" he ventured to observe obsequiously.

"I really feel unwell—my head is heavy after the journey," the prince replied, frowning.

"You could do with a bit of dacha life, sir," Lebedev hinted timidly.

The prince stood thinking.

"And I myself, after a three-day wait, will be going to my dacha with the whole household, so as to look after the newborn nestling and meanwhile fix up the little house here. And that's also in Pavlovsk."

"You're also going to Pavlovsk?" the prince asked suddenly. "How is it everyone here goes to Pavlovsk? And you say you have a dacha there?"

"Not everyone goes to Pavlovsk. Ivan Petrovich Ptitsyn is letting me have one of the dachas he came by cheaply. It's nice, and sublime, and green, and cheap, and bon ton, and musical, and that's why we all go to Pavlovsk. I, incidentally, will be in a little wing, while the house itself ..."

"You've rented it out?"

"N-n-no. Not . . . not quite, sir."

"Rent it to me," the prince suddenly suggested.

It seems that this was just what Lebedev had been driving at. The idea had flashed through his mind three minutes earlier. And yet he no longer needed a tenant; he already had a candidate who had informed him that he might take the dacha. Lebedev knew positively, however, that there was no "might" and that he would certainly take it. Yet the thought had suddenly flashed through his

mind, a very fruitful one by his reckoning, of renting the dacha to the prince, under the pretext that the other tenant had not expressed himself definitively. "A whole collision and a whole new turn of affairs" suddenly presented itself to his imagination. He received the prince's suggestion almost with rapture, so that he even waved his hands at the direct question of the price.

"Well, as you wish. I'll ask. You won't come out the loser."

They were both leaving the garden.

"I could ... I could ... if you like, I could tell you something quite interesting, most esteemed Prince, concerning the same matter," Lebedev muttered, joyfully twining himself about at the prince's side.

The prince stopped.

"Darya Alexeevna also has a little dacha in Pavlovsk, sir."

"Well?"

"And a certain person is friends with her and apparently intends to visit her often in Pavlovsk. With a purpose."

"Well?"

"Aglaya Ivanovna ..."

"Ah, enough, Lebedev!" the prince interrupted with some unpleasant feeling, as if he had been touched on his sore spot. "It's all . . . not like that. Better tell me, when are you moving? The sooner the better for me, because I'm staying in a hotel . . ."

While talking, they left the garden and, without going inside, crossed the courtyard and reached the gate.

"It would be best," Lebedev finally decided, "if you moved here straight from the hotel today, and the day after tomorrow we can all go to Pavlovsk together."

"I'll have to see," the prince said pensively and went out of the gate.

Lebedev followed him with his eyes. He was struck by the prince's sudden absentmindedness. He had even forgotten to say "good-bye" as he left, had not even nodded his head, which was incompatible with what Lebedev knew of the prince's courtesy and attentiveness.

III

It was getting towards noon. The prince knew that of all the Epanchins the only one he might find in town now was the

general, because of his official duties, and that, too, was unlikely. It occurred to him that the general would perhaps just take him and drive straight to Pavlovsk, and he wanted very much to make one visit before that. At the risk of coming late to the Epanchins' and delaying his trip to Pavlovsk till tomorrow, the prince decided to go and look for the house he had wanted so much to call at.

This visit, however, was risky for him in a certain sense. He debated and hesitated. He knew that the house was on Gorokhovaya Street, near Sadovaya, and decided to go there, hoping that before he reached the place he would finally manage to make up his mind.

As he neared the intersection of Gorokhovaya and Sadovaya, he himself was surprised at his extraordinary agitation; he had never expected that his heart could pound so painfully. One house, probably because of its peculiar physiognomy, began to attract his attention from far away, and the prince later recalled saying to himself: "That's probably the very house." He approached with extraordinary curiosity to verify his guess; he felt that for some reason it would be particularly unpleasant if he had guessed right. The house was big, grim, three-storied, without any architecture, of a dirty green color. Some, though very few, houses of this sort, built at the end of the last century, have survived precisely on these Petersburg streets (where everything changes so quickly) almost without change. They are sturdily built, with thick walls and extremely few windows; the ground-floor windows sometimes have grilles. Most often there is a moneychanger's shop downstairs. The castrate¹⁴ who sits in the shop rents an apartment upstairs. Both outside and inside, everything is somehow inhospitable and dry, everything seems to hide and conceal itself, and why it should seem so simply from the physiognomy of the house—would be hard to explain. Architectural combinations of lines, of course, have their own secret. These houses are inhabited almost exclusively by commercial folk. Going up to the gates and looking at the inscription, the prince read: "House of the Hereditary Honorary Citizen Rogozhin."

No longer hesitant, he opened the glass door, which slammed noisily behind him, and started up the front stairway to the second floor. The stairway was dark, made of stone, crudely constructed, and its walls were painted red. He knew that Rogozhin with his mother and brother occupied the entire second floor of this dreary house. The servant who opened the door for the prince led him

without announcing him and led him a long way; they passed through one reception hall with faux-marbre walls, an oak parquet floor, and furniture from the twenties, crude and heavy, passed through some tiny rooms, turning and zigzagging, going up two or three steps and then down the same number, and finally knocked at some door. The door was opened by Parfyon Semyonych himself; seeing the prince, he went pale and froze on the spot, so that for some time he looked like a stone idol, staring with fixed and frightened eyes and twisting his mouth into a sort of smile perplexed in the highest degree—as if he found something impossible and almost miraculous in the prince's visit. The prince, though he had expected something of the sort, was even surprised.

"Parfyon, perhaps I've come at the wrong time. I'll go, then," he finally said in embarrassment.

"The right time! The right time!" Parfyon finally recollected himself. "Please come in."

They addressed each other as familiars. In Moscow they had often happened to spend long hours together, and there had even been several moments during their meetings that had left an all too memorable imprint on both their hearts. Now it was over three months since they had seen each other.

The paleness and, as it were, the quick, fleeting spasm still had not left Rogozhin's face. Though he had invited his guest in, his extraordinary embarrassment persisted. As he was showing the prince to a chair and seating him at the table, the prince chanced to turn to him and stopped under the impression of his extremely strange and heavy gaze. It was as if something pierced the prince and as if at the same time he remembered something—recent, heavy, gloomy. Not sitting down and standing motionless, he looked for some time straight into Rogozhin's eyes; they seemed to flash more intensely in the first moment. Finally Rogozhin smiled, but with some embarrassment and as if at a loss.

"Why are you staring like that?" he muttered. "Sit down!"

The prince sat down.

"Parfyon," he said, "tell me straight out, did you know I would come to Petersburg today, or not?"

"That you would come, I did think, and as you see I wasn't mistaken," the man said, smiling caustically, "but how should I know you'd come today?"

The harsh abruptness and strange irritation of the question contained in the answer struck the prince still more.

"But even if you had known I'd come today, why get so irritated?" the prince said softly in embarrassment.

"But why do you ask?"

"This morning, as I was getting off the train, I saw a pair of eyes looking at me exactly the way you were just looking at me from behind."

"Aha! Whose eyes were they?" Rogozhin muttered suspiciously. It seemed to the prince that he gave a start.

"I don't know, in the crowd—it even seems to me that I imagined it; I've somehow begun to imagine things all the time. You know, brother Parfyon, I feel almost the way I did five years ago, when I was still having my fits."

"So, maybe you did imagine it, I don't know ..." Parfyon went on muttering.

The affectionate smile on his face did not suit it at that moment, as if something had been broken in this smile and, try as he might, Parfyon was unable to glue it back together.

"So you're going abroad again, are you?" he asked and suddenly added: "And do you remember us on the train, in the autumn, coming from Pskov, me here, and you ... in a cloak, remember, and those gaiters?"

And Rogozhin suddenly laughed, this time with a sort of overt malice and as if delighted that he had managed to express it at least in some way.

"You've settled here for good?" the prince asked, looking around the study.

"Yes, I'm at home here. Where else should I be?"

"We haven't seen each other for a long time. I've heard such things about you, it's as if it were not you."

"People say all kinds of things," Rogozhin observed drily.

"You've scattered your whole company, though; you sit here in the parental house, doing no mischief. So, that's good. Is it your house or all the family's?"

"The house is my mother's. She lives there down the corridor."

"And where does your brother live?"

"Brother Semyon Semyonych is in the wing."

"Does he have a family?"

"He's a widower. Why do you ask?"

The prince looked at him and did not answer; he suddenly became pensive and seemed not to hear the question. Rogozhin did not insist and waited. Silence fell.

"I recognized your house just now from a hundred paces away, as I was approaching," said the prince.

"Why so?"

"I have no idea. Your house has the physiognomy of your whole family and of your whole Rogozhin life, but ask me why I think that—and I can't explain it. Nonsense, of course. I'm even afraid of how much it disturbs me. It never occurred to me before that this would be the sort of house you lived in, but when I saw it, I thought at once: 'Yes, that's exactly the kind of house he had to have!' "

"See!" Rogozhin smiled vaguely, not quite understanding the prince's unclear thought. "This house was built by my grandfather," he observed. "Castrates used to live here, the Khludiakovs, they rent from us even now."

"So gloomy. You sit in such gloom," said the prince, looking around the study.

It was a big room, high, darkish, cluttered with all sorts of furniture—mostly big desks, bureaus, bookcases in which ledgers and papers were kept. A wide red morocco couch apparently served Rogozhin as a bed. On the table at which Rogozhin had seated him, the prince noticed two or three books; one of them, Solovyov's History,¹⁵ was open and had a bookmark in it. On the walls, in dull gilt frames, hung several oil paintings, dark, sooty, on which it was hard to make anything out. One full-length portrait drew the prince's attention: it depicted a man of about fifty, in a frock coat of German cut but with long skirts, with two medals on his neck, a very sparse and short, grayish beard, a wrinkled and yellow face, and a suspicious, secretive, and somewhat doleful gaze.

"That wouldn't be your father?" asked the prince.

"The man himself," Rogozhin replied with an unpleasant smile, as if readying himself for some immediate, unceremonious joke about his deceased parent.

"He wasn't an Old Believer, was he?"¹⁶

"No, he went to church, but it's true he used to say the old belief was more correct. He also had great respect for the castrates. This was his study. Why did you ask about the old belief?"

"Will you celebrate the wedding here?"

"Y-yes, here," replied Rogozhin, almost starting at the sudden question.

"Soon?"

"You know yourself it doesn't depend on me!"

"Parfyon, I'm not your enemy and have no intention of hindering you in anything. I repeat it to you now just as I told it to you once before, in a moment almost like this. When your wedding was under way in Moscow, I didn't hinder you, you know that. The first time it was she who came rushing to me, almost from the foot of the altar, begging me to 'save' her from you. I'm repeating her own words. Then she ran away from me, too, and you found her again and led her to the altar, and now they say she ran away from you again and came here. Is that true? Lebedev informed me and that's why I came. And that you've made it up again here, I learned for the first time only yesterday on the train, from one of your former friends, Zalyozhev, if you want to know. I had a purpose in coming here: I wanted finally to persuade her to go abroad, to restore her health; she's very upset in body and in soul, in her head especially, and, in my opinion, she has great need to be cared for. I didn't want to go abroad with her myself, but I had a view to arranging it without myself. I'm telling you the real truth. If it's completely true that things have been made up again between you, I won't even allow her a glimpse of me, and I'll never come to see you either. You know I'm not deceiving you, because I've always been candid with you. I've never concealed my thoughts about it from you, and I've always said that marrying you means inevitable ruin for her. It also means ruin for you . . . perhaps even more than for her. If you parted again, I would be very glad; but I have no intention of intruding or interfering with you. So be at peace and don't suspect me. And you know for yourself whether I was ever your real rival, even when she ran away from you to me. You're laughing now—I know at what. Yes, we lived separately there, and in different towns, and you know it all for certain. I explained to you before that I love her 'not with love, but with pity.' I think I defined it precisely. You told me then that you understood these words of mine; is it true? did you understand? See how hatefully you look at me! I've come to bring you peace, because you, too, are dear to me. I love you very much, Parfyon. And now I'll go and never come again. Farewell."

The prince stood up.

"Stay with me a little," Parfyon said quietly, without getting up from his place and leaning his head on his right hand, "I haven't seen you for a long time."

The prince sat down. They both fell silent again. "When you're not in front of me, I immediately feel spite for

you, Lev Nikolaevich. In these three months that I haven't seen you, I've felt spiteful towards you every minute, by God. So that I could have up and poisoned you with something! That's how it is. Now you haven't sat with me a quarter of an hour, and all my spite is gone, and I love you again like before. Stay with me a little ..."

"When I'm with you, you trust me, and when I'm gone, you immediately stop trusting me and suspect me again. You're like your father!" the prince said with a friendly smile, trying to conceal his emotion.

"I trust your voice when I'm with you. I know we'll never be equals, you and me . . ."

"Why did you add that? And now you're irritated again," said the prince, marveling at Rogozhin.

"But here, brother, nobody's asking our opinion," the other replied, "it got decided without us. And we love differently, too, I mean there's difference in everything," he went on quietly, after a pause. "You say you love her with pity. I've got no such pity for her in me. And she hates me more than anything. I dream about her every night now: that she's laughing at me with another man. So it is, brother. She's going to marry me, and yet she forgets even to think about me, as if she's changing a shoe. Believe it or not, I haven't seen her for five days, because I don't dare go to her. She'll ask, 'To what do I owe the honor?' She's disgraced me enough . . ."

"Disgraced you? How so?"

"As if he doesn't know! She ran away with you 'from the foot of the altar,' you just said it yourself."

"But you don't believe that she ..."

"Didn't she disgrace me in Moscow, with that officer, that Zemtiuzhnikov? I know for sure she did, and that's after she set the date for the wedding herself."

"It can't be!" cried the prince.

"I know for sure," Rogozhin said with conviction. "What, she's not like that, or something? There's no point, brother, in saying she's not like that. It's pure nonsense. With you she wouldn't be like that, and might be horrified at such a thing herself, but with me that's just what she's like. So it is. She looks at me like the worst scum. The thing with Keller, that officer, the one who boxes, I know for sure, she made it up just to laugh at me . . . But you don't know yet what she pulled on me in Moscow! And the money, the money I spent ..."

"But . . . how can you marry her now! . . . How will it be afterwards?" the prince asked in horror.

Rogozhin gave the prince a heavy and terrible look and made no reply.

"For five days now I haven't gone to her," he went on, after a moment's silence. "I keep being afraid she'll drive me away. 'I'm still my own mistress,' she says, 'if I like, I'll drive you away for good and go abroad' (it was she who told me she'd go abroad," he observed as if in parenthesis and looked somehow peculiarly into the prince's eyes); "sometimes, it's true, she's just scaring me, she keeps laughing at me for some reason. But at other times she really scowls, pouts, doesn't say a word; and that's what I'm afraid of. The other day I thought: I shouldn't come empty-handed—but I just made her laugh and then she even got angry. She gave her maid Katka such a shawl of mine that, even if she lived in luxury before, she maybe never saw the like. And I can't make a peep about the time of the wedding. What kind of bridegroom am I, if I'm afraid even to come for a visit? So I sit here, and when I can't stand it any longer, I go on the sly and slink past her house or hide around the corner. The other day I stood watch by her gates almost till daylight—I imagined something then. And she must have spied me through the window: 'What would you do to me,' she says, 'if you saw me deceive you?' I couldn't stand it and said, 'You know what.'"

"What does she know?"

"How should I know!" Rogozhin laughed spitefully. "In Moscow then I couldn't catch her with anybody, though I tried a long time. I confronted her once and said: 'You promised to marry me, you're entering an honest family, and do you know what you are now? Here's what you are!' "

"You said it to her?"

"Yes."

"Well?"

" 'I might not even take you as my lackey now,' she says, 'much less be your wife.' 'And I,' I say, 'am not leaving like that, once and for all.' 'And I,' she says, 'will now call Keller and tell him to throw you out the gate.' I fell on her and beat her black and blue."

"It can't be!" cried the prince.

"I tell you: it happened," Rogozhin confirmed quietly, but with flashing eyes. "For exactly a day and a half I didn't sleep, didn't eat, didn't drink, didn't leave her room, stood on my knees before her:

'I'll die,' I said, 'but I won't leave until you forgive me, and if you order me taken away, I'll drown myself; because what will I be now without you?' She was like a crazy woman all that day, she wept, she wanted to stab me with a knife, she abused me. She called Zalyozhev, Keller, Zemtiuzhnikov, and everybody, pointed at me, disgraced me. 'Gentlemen, let's all go to the theater tonight, let him stay here, since he doesn't want to leave, I'm not tied to him. And you, Parfyon Semyonovich, will be served tea here without me, you must have gotten hungry today.' She came back from the theater alone: 'They're little cowards and scoundrels,' she says, 'they're afraid of you, and they try to frighten me: he won't leave you like that, he may put a knife in you. But I'm going to my bedroom and I won't lock the door: that's how afraid of you I am! So that you know it and see it! Did you have tea?' 'No,' I say, 'and I won't.' 'You had the honor of being offered, but this doesn't suit you at all.' And she did what she said, she didn't lock her bedroom. In the morning she came out—laughing. 'Have you gone crazy, or what?' she says. 'You'll starve to death like this.' 'Forgive me,' I say. 'I don't want to forgive you, and I won't marry you, you've been told. Did you really spend the whole night sitting in that chair, you didn't sleep?' 'No,' I say, 'I didn't sleep.' 'Such a clever one! And you won't have tea and won't eat dinner again?' 'I told you I won't—forgive me!' 'This really doesn't suit you,' she says, 'if only you knew, it's like a saddle on a cow. You're not trying to frighten me, are you? A lot I care if you go hungry; I'm not afraid!' She got angry, but not for long; she began nagging me again. And I marveled at her then, that she felt no spite towards me. Because she does remember evil, with others she remembers evil a long time! Then it occurred to me that she considered me so low that she couldn't even be very angry with me. And that's the truth. 'Do you know,' she says, 'what the pope of Rome is?' 'I've heard of him,' I say. 'Parfyon Semyonych,' she says, 'you never studied world history.' 'I never studied anything,' I say. 'Here, then,' she says, 'I'll give you something to read: there was this one pope who got angry with some emperor, and this emperor spent three days without eating or drinking, barefoot, on his knees, in front of his palace, until the pope forgave him; what do you think this emperor thought to himself for those three days, standing on his knees, and what kind of vows did he make? . . . Wait,' she says, 'I'll read it to you myself!' She jumped up, brought a book: 'It's poetry,' she says, and begins reading verses to me about this emperor swearing to

take revenge on this pope during those three days.¹⁷ 'Can it be,' she says, 'that you don't like it, Parfyon Semyonych?' 'That's all true,' I say, 'what you read.' 'Aha, you yourself say it's true, that means you, too, may be making vows that "if she marries me, then I'll remember everything she's done, then I'll have fun at her expense!" ' 'I don't know,' I say, 'maybe that's what I'm thinking.' 'How is it you don't know?' 'I just don't,' I say, 'that's not what I'm thinking about now.' 'And what are you thinking about now?' 'About how you get up from your place, go past me, and I look at you and watch you; your dress rustles, and my heart sinks, and if you leave the room, I remember every little word you've said, and in what voice, and what it was; and this whole night I wasn't thinking about anything, but I kept listening to how you breathed in your sleep, and how you stirred a couple of times ...' 'And perhaps,' she laughed, 'you don't think about or remember how you beat me?' And maybe I do,' I say, 'I don't know.' 'But what if I don't forgive you and don't marry you?' 'I told you, I'll drown myself.' 'Perhaps you'll still kill me before that. . .' She said it and fell to thinking. Then she got angry and left. An hour later she comes out to me so gloomy. 'I'll marry you, Parfyon Semyonovich,' she says, 'and not because I'm afraid of you, but because I'll perish all the same. And which way is better, eh? Sit down,' she says, 'dinner will be served now. And if I marry you,' she added, 'I'll be your faithful wife, don't doubt it and don't worry.' She was silent a minute, then said: 'You're not a lackey after all. Before I used to think you were as complete a lackey as they come.' Then she set a date for the wedding, and a week later she ran away from me here to Lebedev. When I arrived, she said: 'I don't reject you altogether; I only want to wait a little more, as long as I like, because I'm still my own mistress. You wait, too, if you want.' That's how we are now . . . What do you think of all that, Lev Nikolaevich?"

"What do you think yourself?" the prince asked back, looking sadly at Rogozhin.

"As if I think!" escaped him. He was going to add something, but kept silent in inconsolable anguish.

The prince stood up and was again about to leave.

"All the same I won't hinder you," he said quietly, almost pensively, as if responding to some inner, hidden thought of his own.

"You know what I'll tell you?" Rogozhin suddenly became animated and his eyes flashed. "How can you give her up to me

like that? I don't understand. Have you stopped loving her altogether? Before you were in anguish anyway; I could see that. So why have you come galloping here headlong? Out of pity?" (And his face twisted in spiteful mockery.) "Heh, heh!"

"Do you think I'm deceiving you?" asked the prince.

"No, I believe you, only I don't understand any of it. The surest thing of all is that your pity is maybe still worse than my love!"

Something spiteful lit up in his face, wanting to speak itself out at once.

"Well, your love is indistinguishable from spite," smiled the prince, "and when it passes, there may be still worse trouble. This I tell you, brother Parfyon ..."

"That I'll put a knife in her?"

The prince gave a start.

"You'll hate her very much for this present love, for all this torment that you're suffering now. For me the strangest thing is how she could again decide to marry you. When I heard it yesterday—I could scarcely believe it, and it pained me so. She has already renounced you twice and run away from the altar, which means she has a foreboding! . . . What does she want with you now? Can it be your money? That's nonsense. And you must have spent quite a bit of it by now. Can it be only to have a husband? She could find someone besides you. Anyone would be better than you, because you may put a knife in her, and maybe she knows that only too well now. Because you love her so much? True, that could be . . . I've heard there are women who seek precisely that kind of love . . . only ..."

The prince paused and pondered.

"Why did you smile again at my father's portrait?" asked Rogozhin, who was observing very closely every change, every fleeting expression of his face.

"Why did I smile? It occurred to me that, if it hadn't been for this calamity, if this love hadn't befallen you, you might have become exactly like your father, and in a very short time at that. Lodged silently alone in this house with your obedient and uncomplaining wife, speaking rarely and sternly, trusting no one, and having no need at all for that, but only making money silently and sullenly. At most you'd occasionally praise some old books or get interested in the two-fingered sign of the cross,¹⁸ and that probably only in old age ..."

"Go on, jeer. And she said exactly the same thing not long ago,

when she was looking at that portrait! Funny how the two of you agree in everything now . . ."

"So she's already been at your place?" the prince asked with curiosity.

"She has. She looked at the portrait for a long time, asked questions about the deceased. 'You'd be exactly like that,' she smiled at me in the end. 'You have strong passions, Parfyon Semyonovich, such passions as would have sent you flying to Siberia, to hard labor, if you weren't also intelligent, because you are very intelligent,' she said (that's what she said, can you believe it? First time I heard such a thing from her!). 'You'd soon drop all this mischief you do now. And since you're a completely uneducated man, you'd start saving money, and you'd sit like your father in this house with his castrates; perhaps you'd adopt their beliefs in the end, and you'd love your money so much that you'd save up not two but ten million, and you'd starve to death on your moneybags, because you're passionate in everything, you carry everything to the point of passion.' That's just how she talked, in almost exactly those words. She'd never spoken with me like that before! Because she always talks about trifles with me, or makes fun of me; and this time, too, she began laughingly, but then turned so grim; she went around looking the whole house over, and seemed to be frightened by something. 'I'll change it all,' I say, 'and do it up, or maybe I'll buy another house for the wedding.' 'No, no,' she says, 'don't change anything here, we'll live in it as it is. When I'm your wife,' she says, 'I want to live near your mother.' I took her to see my mother—she was respectful to her, like her own daughter. Even before, already two years ago, my mother didn't seem quite right in the head (she's sick), but since my father's death she's become like a total infant, doesn't talk, doesn't walk, just sits there and bows to whoever she sees; seems like if you didn't feed her, she wouldn't realize it for three days. I took my mother's right hand, put her fingers together: 'Bless us, mother,' I say, 'this woman is going to marry me.' Then she kissed my mother's hand with feeling: 'Your mother,' she says, 'must have borne a lot of grief.' She saw this book on the table: 'Ah, so you've started reading Russian History?' (And she herself told me once in Moscow: 'You ought to edify yourself at least somehow, at least read Solovyov's Russian History, you don't know anything at all.') 'That's good,' she said, 'that's what you ought to do, start reading. I'll make a little list for you of which books you should read first; want me

to, or not?' And never, never before did she talk to me like that, so that she even surprised me; for the first time I breathed like a living person."

"I'm very glad of it, Parfyon," the prince said with sincere feeling, "very glad. Who knows, maybe God will make things right for you together."

"That will never be!" Rogozhin cried hotly.

"Listen, Parfyon, if you love her so much, how can you not want to deserve her respect? And if you do want to, how can you have no hope? I just said it was a strange riddle for me why she's marrying you. But though I can't answer it, all the same I don't doubt that there's certainly a sufficient, rational reason for it. She's convinced of your love; but she's surely convinced that there are virtues in you as well. It cannot be otherwise! What you just said confirms it. You say yourself that she found it possible to speak to you in a language quite different from her former treatment and way of speaking. You're suspicious and jealous, and so you've exaggerated everything bad you've noticed. Of course, she doesn't think as badly of you as you say. Otherwise it would mean that she was consciously throwing herself into the water or onto the knife by marrying you. Is that possible? Who consciously throws himself into the water or onto the knife?"

Parfyon heard out the prince's ardent words with a bitter smile. His conviction, it seems, was already firmly established.

"How heavily you're looking at me now, Parfyon!" escaped the prince with a heavy feeling.

"Into the water or onto the knife!" the other said at last. "Heh! But that's why she's marrying me, because she probably expects to get the knife from me! But can it be, Prince, that you still haven't grasped what the whole thing is about?"

"I don't understand you."

"Well, maybe he really doesn't understand, heh, heh! They do say you're a bit. . . like that! She loves somebody else—understand? Just the way I love her now, she now loves somebody else. And do you know who that somebody else is? It's you!What, didn't you know?"

"Me!"

"You. She fell in love with you then, ever since that time, that birthday party. Only she thinks it's impossible for her to marry you, because she'd supposedly disgrace you and ruin your whole life. 'I'm you-know-what,' she says. To this day she maintains it

herself. She says it all right in my face. She's afraid to ruin and disgrace you, but me she can marry, meaning it doesn't matter— that's how she considers me, note that as well!"

"But why, then, did she run away from you to me, and . . . from me . . .

"And from you to me! Heh! All sorts of things suddenly come into her head! She's all like in a fever now. One day she shouts to me: 'I'll marry you like drowning myself. Be quick with the wedding!' She hurries herself, fixes the date, and when the time is near—she gets frightened, or has other ideas—God knows, but you've seen her: she cries, laughs, thrashes around feverishly. What's so strange that she ran away from you, too? She ran away from you then, because she suddenly realized how much she loves you. It was beyond her to be with you. You just said I sought her out then in Moscow; that's not so—she came running to me herself: 'Fix the day,' she says, 'I'm ready! Pour the champagne! We'll go to the gypsies!' she shouts! ... If it wasn't for me, she'd have drowned herself long ago; it's right what I'm saying. The reason she doesn't do it is maybe because I'm even scarier than the water. So she wants to marry me out of spite ... If she does it, believe me, she'll be doing it out of spite."

"But how can you . . . how can you! . . ." the prince cried and did not finish. He looked at Rogozhin with horror.

"Why don't you finish?" the other added with a grin. "But if you like, I'll tell you how you're reasoning at this very moment: 'So how can she be with him now? How can she be allowed to do it?' I know what you think . . ."

"I didn't come for that, Parfyon, I'm telling you, that's not what I had in mind . . ."

"Maybe it wasn't for that and that wasn't on your mind, only now it's certainly become that, heh, heh! Well, enough! Why are you all overturned like that? You mean you really didn't know? You amaze me!"

"This is all jealousy, Parfyon, it's all illness, you exaggerate it beyond all measure . . ." the prince murmured in great agitation. "What's the matter?"

"Let it alone," Parfyon said and quickly snatched from the prince's hand the little knife he had picked up from the table, next to the book, and put it back where it had been.

"It's as if I knew, when I was coming to Petersburg, as if I had a foreboding . . ." the prince went on. "I didn't want to come here!

I wanted to forget everything here, to tear it out of my heart! Well, good-bye . . . But what's the matter?"

As he was talking, the prince had again absentmindedly picked up the same knife from the table, and again Rogozhin had taken it from him and dropped it on the table. It was a knife of a rather simple form, with a staghorn handle, not a folding one, with a blade six inches long and of a corresponding width.

Seeing that the prince paid particular attention to the fact that this knife had twice been snatched away from him, Rogozhin seized it in angry vexation, put it in the book, and flung the book onto the other table.

"Do you cut the pages with it?" asked the prince, but somehow absentmindedly, still as if under the pressure of a deep pensiveness.

"Yes, the pages . . ."

"Isn't it a garden knife?"

"Yes, it is. Can't you cut pages with a garden knife?"

"But it's . . . brand-new."

"Well, what if it is new? So now I can't buy a new knife?" Rogozhin, who was getting more and more vexed with every word, finally cried out in a sort of frenzy.

The prince gave a start and gazed intently at Rogozhin.

"Look at us!" he suddenly laughed, recovering himself completely. "Forgive me, brother, when my head's as heavy as it is now, and this illness . . . I've become quite absentminded and ridiculous. This is not at all what I wanted to ask about ... I don't remember what it was. Good-bye . . ."

"Not that way," said Rogozhin.

"I forget!"

"This way, this way, come on, I'll show you."

IV

They went through the same rooms the prince had already passed through; Rogozhin walked a little ahead, the prince followed. They came to a big reception room. Here there were several paintings on the walls, all portraits of bishops or landscapes in which nothing could be made out. Over the door to the next room hung a painting rather strange in form, around six feet wide and no more than ten inches high. It portrayed the Savior just taken down from the cross. The prince glanced fleetingly at it, as

if recalling something, not stopping, however, wanting to go on through the door. He felt very oppressed and wanted to be out of this house quickly. But Rogozhin suddenly stopped in front of the painting.

"All these paintings here," he said, "my deceased father bought at auctions for a rouble or two. He liked that. One man who's a connoisseur looked at them all: trash, he said, but that one—the painting over the door, also bought for two roubles—he said, isn't trash. In my father's time somebody showed up offering three hundred and fifty roubles for it, and Savelyev, Ivan Dmitrich, a merchant, a great amateur, went up to four hundred, and last week he offered my brother Semyon Semyonych as much as five hundred. I kept it for myself."

"Yes, it's . . . it's a copy from Hans Holbein," said the prince, having managed to take a look at the painting, "and, though I'm no great expert, it seems to be an excellent copy. I saw the painting abroad and cannot forget it.¹⁹ But . . . what's the matter . . ."

Rogozhin suddenly abandoned the painting and went further on his way. Of course, absentmindedness and the special, strangely irritated mood that had appeared so unexpectedly in Rogozhin might have explained this abruptness; but even so the prince thought it somehow odd that a conversation not initiated by him should be so suddenly broken off, and that Rogozhin did not even answer him.

"But I've long wanted to ask you something, Lev Nikolaich: do you believe in God or not?" Rogozhin suddenly began speaking again, after going several steps.

"How strangely you ask and . . . stare!" the prince observed involuntarily.

"But I like looking at that painting," Rogozhin muttered after a silence, as if again forgetting his question.

"At that painting!" the prince suddenly cried out, under the impression of an unexpected thought. "At that painting! A man could even lose his faith from that painting!"

"Lose it he does," Rogozhin suddenly agreed unexpectedly. They had already reached the front door.

"What?" the prince suddenly stopped. "How can you! I was almost joking, and you're so serious! And why did you ask me whether I believe in God?"

"Never mind, I just did. I wanted to ask you before. Many people don't believe nowadays. And is it true (because you've lived abroad)

what one drunk man told me, that in our Russia, people don't believe in God even more than in other countries? 'It's easier for us than for them,' he said, 'because we've gone further than they have . . .' "

Rogozhin smiled sarcastically; having uttered his question, he suddenly opened the door and, keeping hold of the handle, waited for the prince to go out. The prince was surprised, but went out. Rogozhin followed him out to the landing and closed the door behind him. The two men stood facing each other, looking as if they had forgotten where they had come to and what they were to do next.

"Good-bye, then," said the prince, holding out his hand.

"Good-bye," said Rogozhin, shaking the extended hand firmly but quite mechanically.

The prince went down one step and turned.

"But with regard to belief," he began, smiling (evidently unwilling to leave Rogozhin like that), and also becoming animated under the impression of an unexpected memory, "with regard to belief, I had four different encounters in two days last week. One morning I was traveling on a new railway line and spent four hours talking on the train with a certain S., having only just made his acquaintance. I had heard a good deal about him before and, among other things, that he was an atheist. He's really a very learned man, and I was glad to be talking with a true scholar. Moreover, he's a man of rare courtesy, and he talked with me as if I were perfectly equal to him in knowledge and ideas. He doesn't believe in God. Only one thing struck me: it was as if that was not at all what he was talking about all the while, and it struck me precisely because before, too, however many unbelievers I've met, however many books I've read on the subject, it has always seemed to me that they were talking or writing books that were not at all about that, though it looked as if it was about that. I said this to him right then, but it must be I didn't speak clearly, or didn't know how to express it, because he didn't understand anything ... In the evening I stopped to spend the night in a provincial hotel where a murder had taken place the night before, so that everyone was talking about it when I arrived. Two peasants, getting on in years, and not drunk, friends who had known each other a long time, had had tea and were both about to go to bed in the same little room. But, during the last two days, one of them had spied the silver watch that the other wore on a yellow bead string, which he had evidently

never noticed before. The man was not a thief, he was even honest, and not all that poor as peasant life goes. But he liked the watch so much and was so tempted by it that he finally couldn't stand it: he pulled out a knife and, while his friend was looking the other way, went up to him cautiously from behind, took aim, raised his eyes to heaven, crossed himself and, after praying bitterly to himself: 'Lord, forgive me for Christ's sake!'—killed his friend with one blow, like a sheep, and took his watch."²⁰

Rogozhin rocked with laughter. He guffawed as if he was in some sort of fit. It was even strange to look at this laughter coming right after such a gloomy mood.

"Now that I like! No, that's the best yet!" he cried out spasmodically, nearly breathless. "The one doesn't believe in God at all, and the other believes so much that he even stabs people with a prayer . . . No, that, brother Prince, couldn't have been made up! Ha, ha, ha! No, that's the best yet! . . ."

"The next morning I went out for a stroll about town," the prince went on, as soon as Rogozhin paused, though laughter still twitched spasmodically and fitfully on his lips, "and I saw a drunken soldier staggering along the wooden sidewalk, all in tatters. He comes up to me: 'Buy a silver cross, master. I'm asking only twenty kopecks. It's silver!' I see a cross in his hand—he must have just taken it off—on a worn light blue ribbon, only it's a real tin one, you could see it at first glance, big, eight-pointed, of the full Byzantine design. I took out twenty kopecks, gave them to him, and put the cross on at once—and I could see by his face how pleased he was to have duped the foolish gentleman, and he went at once to drink up his cross, there's no doubt of that. Just then, brother, I was under the strongest impression of all that had flooded over me in Russia; before I understood nothing of it, as if I'd grown up a dumb brute, and I had somehow fantastic memories of it during those five years I spent abroad. So I went along and thought: no, I'll wait before condemning this Christ-seller. God knows what's locked away in these drunken and weak hearts. An hour later, going back to my hotel, I ran into a peasant woman with a nursing baby. She was a young woman, and the baby was about six weeks old. And the baby smiled at her, as far as she'd noticed, for the first time since it was born. I saw her suddenly cross herself very, very piously. 'What is it, young woman?' I say. (I was asking questions all the time then.) 'It's just that a mother rejoices,' she says, 'when she notices her baby's first smile, the same as God

rejoices each time he looks down from heaven and sees a sinner standing before him and praying with all his heart.' The woman said that to me, in almost those words, and it was such a deep, such a subtle and truly religious thought, a thought that all at once expressed the whole essence of Christianity, that is, the whole idea of God as our own father, and that God rejoices over man as a father over his own child—the main thought of Christ! A simple peasant woman! True, she's a mother . . . and, who knows, maybe this woman was that soldier's wife. Listen, Parfyon, you asked me earlier, here is my answer: the essence of religious feeling doesn't fit in with any reasoning, with any crimes and trespasses, or with any atheisms; there's something else here that's not that, and it will eternally be not that; there's something in it that atheisms will eternally glance off, and they will eternally be talking not about that. But the main thing is that one can observe it sooner and more clearly in a Russian heart, and that is my conclusion! That is one of the first convictions I've formed about our Russia. There are things to be done, Parfyon! There are things to be done in our Russian world, believe me! Remember, there was a time in Moscow when we used to get together and talk . . . And I didn't want to come back here at all now! And this is not at all, not at all how I thought of meeting you! . . . Well, no matter! . . . Farewell, goodbye! God be with you!"

He turned and went down the stairs.

"Lev Nikolaevich!" Parfyon cried from above, when the prince had reached the first landing. "That cross you bought from the soldier, are you wearing it?"

"Yes."

And the prince stopped again.

"Show me."

Again a new oddity! The prince thought a little, went back up, and showed him the cross without taking it from his neck.

"Give it to me," said Rogozhin.

"Why? Or do you ..."

The prince seemed unwilling to part with this cross.

"I'll wear it, and you can wear mine, I'll give it to you."

"You want to exchange crosses? Very well, Parfyon, if so, I'm glad; we'll be brothers!"²¹

The prince took off his tin cross, Parfyon his gold one, and they exchanged them. Parfyon was silent. With painful astonishment the prince noticed that the former mistrust, the former bitter and

almost derisive smile still did not seem to leave the face of his adopted brother—at least it showed very strongly at moments. Finally Rogozhin silently took the prince's hand and stood for a while, as if undecided about something; in the end he suddenly drew the prince after him, saying in a barely audible voice: "Come on." They crossed the first-floor landing and rang at the door facing the one they had just come out of. It was promptly opened. An old woman, all bent over and dressed in black, a kerchief on her head, bowed silently and deeply to Rogozhin. He quickly asked her something and, not waiting for an answer, led the prince further through the rooms. Again there were dark rooms, of some extraordinary, cold cleanness, coldly and severely furnished with old furniture in clean white covers. Without announcing himself, Rogozhin led the prince into a small room that looked like a drawing room, divided by a gleaming mahogany partition with doors at either end, behind which there was probably a bedroom. In the corner of the drawing room, near the stove, in an armchair, sat a little old woman, who did not really look so very old, even had a quite healthy, pleasant, and round face, but was already completely gray-haired and (one could tell at first sight) had fallen into complete senility. She was wearing a black woolen dress, a big black kerchief around her neck, and a clean white cap with black ribbons. Her feet rested on a footstool. Next to her was another clean little old woman, a bit older, also in mourning and also in a white cap, apparently some companion, who was silently knitting a stocking. The two looked as if they were always silent. The first old woman, seeing Rogozhin and the prince, smiled at them and inclined her head affectionately several times as a sign of pleasure.

"Mama," said Rogozhin, kissing her hand, "this is my great friend, Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin; he and I have exchanged crosses; he was like a brother to me in Moscow for a time, and did a lot for me. Bless him, mama, as you would your own son. Wait, old girl, like this, let me put your hand the right way . . ."

But before Parfyon had time to do anything, the old woman raised her right hand, put three fingers together, and piously crossed the prince three times. Then once more she nodded her head gently and tenderly.

"Well, let's go, Lev Nikolaevich," said Parfyon, "I only brought you for that..."

When they came back out to the stairs, he added:

"See, she doesn't understand anything people say, and she didn't

understand any of my words, yet she blessed you. That means she wanted to herself. . . Well, good-bye, it's time for us both."

And he opened his door.

"But let me at least embrace you as we part, you strange man!" cried the prince, looking at him with tender reproach and trying to embrace him. But Parfyon no sooner raised his arms than he lowered them again at once. He could not resolve to do it; he turned away so as not to look at the prince. He did not want to embrace him.

"Never fear! Maybe I did take your cross, but I won't kill you for your watch!" he muttered unintelligibly, suddenly laughing somehow strangely. But suddenly his whole face was transformed: he turned terribly pale, his lips quivered, his eyes lit up. He raised his arms, embraced the prince tightly, and said breathlessly:

"Take her, then, if it's fate! She's yours! I give her up to you! . . . Remember Rogozhin!"

And, leaving the prince, not even looking at him, he hastily went to his rooms and slammed the door behind him.

V

It was late, almost half-past two, and the prince did not find Epanchin at home. Having left his card, he decided to go to the Scales Hotel and ask there for Kolya; if he was not there, he would leave him a note. At the Scales he was told that Nikolai Ardalionovich "had left in the morning, sir, but on his way out had alerted them that, if someone should ask for him, they should tell him that he might be back at three o'clock, sir. And if he was not there by half-past three, it would mean that he had taken the train to Pavlovsk, to Mrs. Epanchin's dacha, sir, and would be having dinner there." The prince sat down to wait and meanwhile ordered dinner for himself.

Kolya did not come back either by half-past three or even by four o'clock. The prince went out and walked mechanically wherever his eyes took him. At the beginning of summer in Petersburg there occasionally occur lovely days—bright, hot, still. As if on purpose, this day was one of those rare days. For some time the prince strolled about aimlessly. He was little acquainted with the city. He stopped occasionally at street corners in front of some houses, on the squares, on the bridges; once he stopped at a pastry shop to

rest. Occasionally he would start peering at passersby with great curiosity; but most often he did not notice either the passersby or precisely where he was going. He was tormentingly tense and uneasy, and at the same time felt an extraordinary need for solitude. He wanted to be alone and to give himself over to all this suffering tension completely passively, without looking for the least way out. He was loath to resolve the questions that overflowed his soul and heart. "What, then, am I to blame for it all?" he murmured to himself, almost unaware of his words.

By six o'clock he found himself on the platform of the Tsarskoe Selo railway. Solitude quickly became unbearable to him; a new impulse ardently seized his heart, and for a moment a bright light lit up the darkness in which his soul anguished. He took a ticket for Pavlovsk and was in an impatient hurry to leave; but something was certainly pursuing him, and this was a reality and not a fantasy, as he had perhaps been inclined to think. He was about to get on the train when he suddenly flung the just-purchased ticket to the floor and left the station again, confused and pensive. A short time later, in the street, it was as if he suddenly remembered, suddenly realized, something very strange, something that had long been bothering him. He was suddenly forced to catch himself consciously doing something that had been going on for a long time, but which he had not noticed till that minute: several hours ago, even in the Scales, and perhaps even before the Scales, he had begun now and then suddenly searching for something around him. And he would forget it, even for a long time, half an hour, and then suddenly turn again uneasily and search for something.

But he had only just noted to himself this morbid and till then quite unconscious movement, which had come over him so long ago, when there suddenly flashed before him another recollection that interested him extremely: he recalled that at the moment when he noticed that he kept searching around for something, he was standing on the sidewalk outside a shopwindow and looking with great curiosity at the goods displayed in the window. He now wanted to make absolutely sure: had he really been standing in front of that shopwindow just now, perhaps only five minutes ago, had he not imagined it or confused something? Did that shop and those goods really exist? For indeed he felt himself in an especially morbid mood that day, almost as he had felt formerly at the onset of the fits of his former illness. He knew that during this time before a fit he used to be extraordinarily absentminded and often

even confused objects and persons, unless he looked at them with especially strained attention. But there was also a special reason why he wanted very much to make sure that he had been standing in front of the shop: among the things displayed in the shopwindow there had been one that he had looked at and that he had even evaluated at sixty kopecks, he remembered that despite all his absentmindedness and anxiety. Consequently, if that shop existed and that thing was actually displayed among the goods for sale, it meant he had in fact stopped for that thing. Which meant that the thing had held such strong interest for him that it had attracted his attention even at the very time when he had left the railway station and had been so painfully confused. He walked along, looking to the right almost in anguish, his heart pounding with uneasy impatience. But here was the shop, he had found it at last! He had been five hundred paces away from it when he decided to go back. And here was that object worth sixty kopecks. "Of course, sixty kopecks, it's not worth more!" he repeated now and laughed. But he laughed hysterically; he felt very oppressed. He clearly recalled now that precisely here, standing in front of this window, he had suddenly turned, as he had earlier, when he had caught Rogozhin's eyes fixed on him. Having made sure that he was not mistaken (which, incidentally, he had been quite sure of even before checking), he abandoned the shop and quickly walked away from it. All this he absolutely had to think over quickly; it was now clear that he had not imagined anything at the station either, and that something absolutely real had happened to him, which was absolutely connected with all his earlier uneasiness. But some invincible inner loathing again got the upper hand: he did not want to think anything over, he did not think anything over; he fell to thinking about something quite different.

He fell to thinking, among other things, about his epileptic condition, that there was a stage in it just before the fit itself (if the fit occurred while he was awake), when suddenly, amidst the sadness, the darkness of soul, the pressure, his brain would momentarily catch fire, as it were, and all his life's forces would be strained at once in an extraordinary impulse. The sense of life, of self-awareness, increased nearly tenfold in these moments, which flashed by like lightning. His mind, his heart were lit up with an extraordinary light; all his agitation, all his doubts, all his worries were as if placated at once, resolved in a sort of sublime tranquillity, filled with serene, harmonious joy, and hope, filled with reason and

ultimate cause. But these moments, these glimpses were still only a presentiment of that ultimate second (never more than a second) from which the fit itself began. That second was, of course, unbearable. Reflecting on that moment afterwards, in a healthy state, he had often said to himself that all those flashes and glimpses of a higher self-sense and self-awareness, and therefore of the "highest being," were nothing but an illness, a violation of the normal state, and if so, then this was not the highest being at all but, on the contrary, should be counted as the very lowest. And yet he finally arrived at an extremely paradoxical conclusion: "So what if it is an illness?" he finally decided. "Who cares that it's an abnormal strain, if the result itself, if the moment of the sensation, remembered and examined in a healthy state, turns out to be the highest degree of harmony, beauty, gives a hitherto unheard-of and unknown feeling of fullness, measure, reconciliation, and an ecstatic, prayerful merging with the highest synthesis of life?" These vague expressions seemed quite comprehensible to him, though still too weak. That it was indeed "beauty and prayer," that it was indeed "the highest synthesis of life," he could not doubt, nor could he admit of any doubts. Was he dreaming some sort of abnormal and nonexistent visions at that moment, as from hashish, opium, or wine, which humiliate the reason and distort the soul? He could reason about it sensibly once his morbid state was over. Those moments were precisely only an extraordinary intensification of self-awareness— if there was a need to express this condition in a single word— self-awareness and at the same time a self-sense immediate in the highest degree. If in that second, that is, in the very last conscious moment before the fit, he had happened to succeed in saying clearly and consciously to himself: "Yes, for this moment one could give one's whole life!"—then surely this moment in itself was worth a whole life.²² However, he did not insist on the dialectical part of his reasoning: dullness, darkness of soul, idiocy stood before him as the clear consequence of these "highest moments." Naturally, he was not about to argue in earnest. His reasoning, that is, his evaluation of this moment, undoubtedly contained an error, but all the same he was somewhat perplexed by the actuality of the sensation. What, in fact, was he to do with this actuality? Because it had happened, he had succeeded in saying to himself in that very second, that this second, in its boundless happiness, which he fully experienced, might perhaps be worth his whole life. "At that moment," as he had once said to Rogozhin in Moscow, when

they got together there, "at that moment I was somehow able to understand the extraordinary phrase that time shall be no more.²³ Probably," he had added, smiling, "it's the same second in which the jug of water overturned by the epileptic Muhammad did not have time to spill, while he had time during the same second to survey all the dwellings of Allah."²⁴ Yes, in Moscow he and Rogozhin had often gotten together and talked not only about that. "Rogozhin just said I was like a brother to him then; he said it today for the first time," the prince thought to himself.

He thought about that, sitting on a bench under a tree in the Summer Garden. It was around seven o'clock. The garden was deserted; something dark veiled the setting sun for a moment. It was sultry; it was like the distant foreboding of a thunderstorm. There was a sort of lure in his contemplative state right then. His memories and reason clung to every external object, and he liked that: he kept wanting to forget something present, essential, but with the first glance around him he at once recognized his dark thought again, the thought he had wanted so much to be rid of. He remembered talking earlier with a waiter in the hotel restaurant, over dinner, about an extremely strange recent murder, which had caused much noise and talk. But as soon as he remembered it, something peculiar suddenly happened to him again.

An extraordinary, irrepressible desire, almost a temptation, suddenly gripped his whole will. He got up from the bench and walked out of the garden straight to the Petersburg side. Earlier, on the Neva embankment, he had asked some passerby to point out to him the Petersburg side across the river. It had been pointed out to him, but he had not gone there then. And in any case there was no point in going today; he knew that. He had long known the address; he could easily find the house of Lebedev's relation; but he knew almost certainly that he would not find her at home. "She must have gone to Pavlovsk; otherwise Kolya would have left something at the Scales, as we arranged." And so, if he set off now, it was not, of course, in order to see her. A different, dark, tormenting curiosity tempted him. A new, sudden idea had come into his head . . .

But for him it was all too sufficient that he had set off and knew where he was going: a moment later he was walking along again, almost without noticing the way. It at once became terribly disgusting and almost impossible for him to think further about his "sudden idea." With tormentingly strained attention, he peered into

everything his eyes lighted upon, he looked at the sky, at the Neva. He addressed a little child he met. It may have been that his epileptic state was intensifying more and more. The thunderstorm, it seemed, was actually approaching, though slowly. Distant thunder had already begun. It was becoming very sultry . . .

For some reason, just as one sometimes recalls an importunate musical tune, tiresome to the point of silliness, he now kept recalling Lebedev's nephew, whom he had seen earlier. The strange thing was that he kept coming to his mind as the murderer Lebedev had mentioned when introducing the nephew to him. Yes, he had read about that murderer very recently. He had read and heard a great deal about such things since his arrival in Russia; he followed them persistently. And earlier he had even become much too interested in his conversation with the waiter about that murder of the Zhemarins. The waiter had agreed with him, he remembered that. He remembered the waiter, too. He was by no means a stupid fellow, grave and cautious, but "anyhow, God knows what he is. It's hard to figure out new people in a new land." He was beginning, however, to believe passionately in the Russian soul. Oh, he had endured so much, so much that was quite new to him in those six months, and unlooked-for, and unheard-of, and unexpected! But another man's soul is murky, and the Russian soul is murky; it is so for many. Here he had long been getting together with Rogozhin, close together, together in a "brotherly" way—but did he know Rogozhin? And anyhow, what chaos, what turmoil, what ugliness there sometimes is in all that! But even so, what a nasty and all-satisfied little pimple that nephew of Lebedev's is! But, anyhow, what am I saying? (the prince went on in his reverie). Was it he who killed those six beings, those six people? I seem to be mixing things up . . . how strange it is! My head is spinning . . . But what a sympathetic, what a sweet face Lebedev's elder daughter has, the one who stood there with the baby, what an innocent, what an almost childlike expression, and what almost childlike laughter! Strange that he had almost forgotten that face and remembered it only now. Lebedev, who stamps his feet at them, probably adores them all. But what is surest of all, like two times two, is that Lebedev also adores his nephew!

But anyhow, what was he doing making such a final judgment of them—he who had come only that day, what was he doing passing such verdicts? Lebedev himself had set him a problem today: had he expected such a Lebedev? Had he known such a

Lebedev before? Lebedev and Du Barry—oh, Lord! Anyhow, if Rogozhin kills, at least he won't kill in such a disorderly way. There won't be this chaos. A tool made to order from a sketch and six people laid out in complete delirium!²⁵ Does Rogozhin have a tool made from a sketch . . . does he have . . . but . . . has it been decided that Rogozhin will kill?! The prince gave a sudden start. "Isn't it a crime, isn't it mean on my part to make such a supposition with such cynical frankness?" he cried out, and a flush of shame all at once flooded his face. He was amazed, he stood as if rooted to the road. He remembered all at once the Pavlovsk station earlier, and the Nikolaevsk station earlier, and his direct question to Rogozhin about the eyes, and Rogozhin's cross that he was now wearing, and the blessing of his mother, to whom Rogozhin himself had brought him, and that last convulsive embrace, Rogozhin's last renunciation earlier on the stairs—and after all that to catch himself constantly searching for something around him, and that shopwindow, and that object. . . what meanness! And after all that he was now going with a "special goal," with a specific "sudden idea"! Despair and suffering seized his whole soul. The prince immediately wanted to go back to his hotel; he even turned around and set off; but a minute later he stopped, pondered, and went back the way he had been going.

Yes, and now he was on the Petersburg side, he was near the house; it was not with the former goal that he was going there now, not with any "special idea"! And how could it be! Yes, his illness was coming back, that was unquestionable; the fit might certainly come on him today. It was from the fit that all this darkness came, from the fit that the "idea" came as well! Now the darkness was dispersed, the demon was driven away, doubts did not exist, there was joy in his heart! And—it was so long since he had seen her, he had to see her, and . . . yes, he wished he could meet Rogozhin now, he would take him by the hand, and they would walk together . . . His heart was pure; was he any rival of Rogozhin? Tomorrow he would go himself and tell Rogozhin he had seen her; had he not flown here, as Rogozhin put it earlier, only in order to see her? Maybe he would find her at home, it was not certain that she was in Pavlovsk!

Yes, all this had to be clearly set down now, so that they could all clearly read in each other, so that there would be none of these dark and passionate renunciations, like Rogozhin's renunciation earlier, and let it all come about freely and . . . brightly. Is Rogozhin

not capable of brightness? He says he loves her in a different way, that there is no compassion in him, "no such pity." True, he added later that "your pity is maybe still worse than my love"—but he was slandering himself. Hm, Rogozhin over a book—isn't that already "pity," the beginning of "pity"? Isn't the very presence of this book a proof that he is fully conscious of his relations with her? And his story today? No, that's deeper than mere passion. Does her face inspire mere passion? And is that face even capable of inspiring passion now? It inspires suffering, it seizes the whole soul, it . . . and a burning, tormenting memory suddenly passed through the prince's heart.

Yes, tormenting. He remembered how he had been tormented recently, when for the first time he began to notice signs of insanity in her. What he experienced then was nearly despair. And how could he abandon her, when she then ran away from him to Rogozhin? He ought to have run after her himself, and not waited for news. But . . . can it be that Rogozhin still hasn't noticed any insanity in her? . . . Hm . . . Rogozhin sees other reasons for everything, passionate reasons! And what insane jealousy! What did he mean to say by his suggestion today? (The prince suddenly blushed and something shook, as it were, in his heart.)

Anyhow, why recall it? There was insanity on both sides here. And for him, the prince, to love this woman passionately—was almost unthinkable, would almost be cruelty, inhumanity. Yes, yes! No, Rogozhin was slandering himself; he has an immense heart, which is capable of passion and compassion. When he learns the whole truth and when he becomes convinced of what a pathetic creature this deranged, half-witted woman is—won't he then forgive her all the past, all his suffering? Won't he become her servant, her brother, friend, providence? Compassion will give meaning and understanding to Rogozhin himself. Compassion is the chief and perhaps the only law of being for all mankind. Oh, how unpardonably and dishonorably guilty he was before Rogozhin! No, it's not that "the Russian soul is murky," but the murkiness was in his own soul, if he could imagine such a horror. For a few warm and heartfelt words in Moscow, Rogozhin called him brother, while he . . . But this is illness and delirium! It will all be resolved! . . . How gloomily Rogozhin said today that he was "losing his faith"! The man must be suffering greatly. He says he "likes looking at that painting"; he doesn't like it, it means he feels a need. Rogozhin is not only a passionate soul; he's a fighter after all: he wants to

recover his lost faith by force. He needs it now to the point of torment. . . Yes! to believe in something! to believe in somebody! But still, how strange that Holbein painting is . . . Ah, this is the street! And this should be the house, yes, it is, No. 16, "house of Mrs. Filissov, collegiate secretary's widow." Here! The prince rang and asked for Nastasya Filippovna.

The woman of the house herself told him that Nastasya Filippovna had left for Darya Alexeevna's place in Pavlovsk that morning "and it may even happen, sir, that the lady will stay there for several days." Mrs. Filissov was a small, sharp-eyed, and sharp-faced woman of about forty, with a sly and intent gaze. To her question as to his name—a question to which she seemed intentionally to give a tinge of mysteriousness—the prince at first did not want to reply; but he came back at once and insisted that his name be given to Nastasya Filippovna. Mrs. Filissov received this insistence with increased attention and with an extraordinarily secretive air, which was evidently intended to indicate that "you needn't worry, I've understood, sir." The prince's name obviously impressed her greatly. The prince looked at her distractedly, turned, and went back to his hotel. But he left looking not at all the same as when he had rung at Mrs. Filissov's door. Again, and as if in one instant, an extraordinary change came over him: again he walked along pale, weak, suffering, agitated; his knees trembled, and a vague, lost smile wandered over his blue lips: his "sudden idea" had suddenly been confirmed and justified, and—again he believed in his demon!

But had it been confirmed? Had it been justified? Why this trembling again, this cold sweat, this gloom and inner cold? Was it because he had just seen those eyes again? But had he not left the Summer Garden with the sole purpose of seeing them? That was what his "sudden idea" consisted in. He insistently wanted to see "today's eyes," so as to be ultimately certain that he would meet them there without fail, near that house. That had been his convulsive desire, and why, then, was he so crushed and astounded now, when he really saw them? As if he had not expected it! Yes, they were those same eyes (and there was no longer any doubt that they were the same!)that had flashed at him that morning, in the crowd, as he was getting off the train at the Nikolaevsk station; the same eyes (perfectly the same!) whose flashing gaze he had caught later that day behind his back, as he was sitting in a chair at Rogozhin's. Rogozhin had denied it; he had asked with a twisted,

icy smile: "Whose eyes were they?" And a short time ago, at the Tsarskoe Selo station, when he was getting on the train to go to Aglaya and suddenly saw those eyes again, now for the third time that day—the prince had wanted terribly to go up to Rogozhin and tell him "whose eyes they were"! But he had run out of the station and recovered himself only in front of the cutler's shop at the moment when he was standing and evaluating at sixty kopecks the cost of a certain object with a staghorn handle. A strange and terrible demon had fastened on to him definitively, and would no longer let him go. This demon had whispered to him in the Summer Garden, as he sat oblivious under a linden tree, that if Rogozhin had needed so much to keep watch on him ever since morning and catch him at every step, then, learning that he was not going to Pavlovsk (which, of course, was fatal news for Rogozhin), Rogozhin would unfailingly go there, to that house on the Petersburg side, and would unfailingly keep watch there for him, the prince, who had given him his word of honor that morning that he "would not see her" and that "he had not come to Petersburg for that." And then the prince rushes convulsively to that house, and what if he actually does meet Rogozhin there? He saw only an unhappy man whose inner state was dark but quite comprehensible. This unhappy man was not even hiding now. Yes, earlier for some reason Rogozhin had denied it and lied, but at the station he had stood almost without hiding. It was even sooner he, the prince, who was hiding, than Rogozhin. And now, at the house, he stood on the other side of the street, some fifty steps away, at an angle, on the opposite sidewalk, his arms crossed, and waited. This time he was in full view and it seemed that he deliberately wanted to be in view. He stood like an accuser and a judge, and not like . . . And not like who?

And why had he, the prince, not gone up to him now, but turned away from him as if noticing nothing, though their eyes had met? (Yes, their eyes had met! and they had looked at each other.) Hadn't he wanted to take him by the hand and go there with him? Hadn't he wanted to go to him tomorrow and tell him that he had called on her? Hadn't he renounced his demon as he went there, halfway there, when joy had suddenly filled his soul? Or was there in fact something in Rogozhin, that is, in todays whole image of the man, in the totality of his words, movements, actions, glances, something that might justify the prince's terrible foreboding and the disturbing whisperings of his demon? Something visible in itself,

but difficult to analyze and speak about, impossible to justify by sufficient reasons, but which nevertheless produced, despite all this difficulty and impossibility, a perfectly whole and irrefutable impression, which involuntarily turned into the fullest conviction? . . .

Conviction—of what? (Oh, how tormented the prince was by the monstrosity, the "humiliation" of this conviction, of "this base foreboding," and how he blamed himself!) "Say then, if you dare, of what?" he said ceaselessly to himself, in reproach and defiance. "Formulate, dare to express your whole thought, clearly, precisely, without hesitation! Oh, I am dishonorable!" he repeated with indignation and with a red face. "With what eyes am I to look at this man now all my life! Oh, what a day! Oh, God, what a nightmare!"