The Idiot

"First of all, my dear Prince, don't be angry with me, and if there was anything on my part—forget it. I'd have called on you yesterday, but I didn't know how Lizaveta Prokofyevna would ... At home . . . it's simply hell, a riddling sphinx has settled in with us, and I go about understanding nothing. As for you, I think you're the least to blame, though, of course, much of it came about through you. You see, Prince, to be a philanthropist is nice, but not very. You've probably tasted the fruits of it by now. I, of course, love kindness, and I respect Lizaveta Prokofyevna, but . . ."

The general went on for a long time in this vein, but his words were surprisingly incoherent. It was obvious that he had been shaken and greatly confused by something he found incomprehensible in the extreme.

"For me there's no doubt that you have nothing to do with it," he finally spoke more clearly, "but don't visit us for a while, I ask you as a friend, wait till the wind changes. As regards Evgeny Pavlych," he cried with extraordinary vehemence, "it's all senseless slander, a slander of slanders! It's calumny, there's some intrigue, a wish to destroy everything and make us quarrel. You see, Prince, I'm saying it in your ear: not a word has been said yet between us

and Evgeny Pavlych, understand? We're not bound by anything— but that word may be spoken, and even soon, perhaps even very soon! So this was done to harm that! But why, what for—I don't understand! An astonishing woman, an eccentric woman, I'm so afraid of her I can hardly sleep. And what a carriage, white horses, that's chic, that's precisely what the French call chic! Who from? By God, I sinned, I thought the other day it was Evgeny Pavlych. But it turns out that it can't be, and if it can't be, then why does she want to upset things? That's the puzzle! In order to keep Evgeny Pavlych for herself? But I repeat to you, cross my heart, that he's not acquainted with her, and those promissory notes are a fiction! And what impudence to shout 'dear' to him across the street! Sheer conspiracy! It's clear that we must reject it with contempt and double our respect for Evgeny Pavlych. That is what I told Lizaveta Prokofyevna. Now I'll tell you my most intimate thought: I'm stubbornly convinced that she's doing it to take personal revenge on me, remember, for former things, though I was never in any way guilty before her. I blush at the very recollection. Now she has reappeared again, and I thought she had vanished completely. Where's this Rogozhin sitting, pray tell? I thought she had long been Mrs. Rogozhin . . ."

In short, the man was greatly bewildered. During the whole nearly hour-long trip he talked alone, asked questions, answered them himself, pressed the prince's hand, and convinced him of at least this one thing, that he had never thought of suspecting him of anything. For the prince that was important. He ended by telling about Evgeny Pavlych's uncle, the head of some office in Petersburg—"a prominent fellow, seventy years old, a viveur, a gastronome, and generally a whimsical old codger . . . Ha, ha! I know he heard about Nastasya Filippovna and even sought after her. I called on him yesterday, he didn't receive me, was unwell, but he's rich, rich and important, and . . . God grant him a long life, but all the same Evgeny Pavlych will get everything . . . Yes, yes . . . but even so I'm afraid! I don't know why, but I'm afraid ... As if something's hovering in the air, trouble flitting about like a bat, and I'm afraid, afraid! . . ."

And finally, only after three days, as we have already written above, came the formal reconciliation of the Epanchins with Prince Lev Nikolaevich.

XII

It was seven o'clock in the evening; the prince was about to go to the park. Suddenly Lizaveta Prokofyevna came to him on the terrace alone.

"First, don't you dare think," she began, "that I've come to ask your forgiveness. Nonsense! You're to blame all around."

The prince was silent.

"Are you to blame or not?"

"As much as you are. However, neither I, nor you, neither of us is to blame for anything deliberate. Two days ago I thought I was to blame, but now I've decided that it's not so."

"So that's how you are! Well, all right; listen then and sit down, because I have no intention of standing."

They both sat down.

"Second: not a word about those spiteful brats! I'll sit and talk with you for ten minutes; I've come to you with an inquiry (and you thought for God knows what?), and if you utter so much as a single word about those impudent brats, I'll get up and leave, and break with you altogether."

"Very well," replied the prince.

"Kindly allow me to ask you: about two and a half months ago, around Eastertime, did you send Aglaya a letter?"

"Y-yes."

"With what purpose? What was in the letter? Show me the letter!"

Lizaveta Prokofyevna's eyes were burning, she was almost shaking with impatience.

"I don't have the letter," the prince was terribly surprised and grew timid. "If it still exists, Aglaya Ivanovna has it."

"Don't dodge! What did you write about?"

"I'm not dodging, and I'm not afraid of anything. I see no reason why I shouldn't write . . ."

"Quiet! You can talk later. What was in the letter? Why are you blushing?"

The prince reflected.

"I don't know what you're thinking, Lizaveta Prokofyevna. I can only see that you dislike this letter very much. You must agree that I could refuse to answer such a question; but in order to show you

that I have no fear of this letter, and do not regret having written it, and am by no means blushing at it" (the prince blushed nearly twice as much as before), "I'll recite the letter for you, because I believe I know it by heart."

Having said this, the prince recited the letter almost word for word as it was written.

"Sheer galimatias! What might this nonsense mean, in your opinion?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna said sharply, listening to the letter with extraordinary attention.

"I don't quite know myself; I know that my feeling was sincere. I had moments of full life there and the greatest hopes."

"What hopes?"

"It's hard to explain, but they were not the hopes you may be thinking of now . . . well, they were hopes for the future and joy that there I might not be a stranger, a foreigner. I suddenly liked my native land very much. One sunny morning I took up a pen and wrote a letter to her; why to her—I don't know. Sometimes one wants to have a friend nearby; I, too, evidently wanted to have a friend ..." the prince added after a pause.

"Are you in love, or what?"

"N-no. I ... I wrote as to a sister; I signed it as a brother."

"Hm. On purpose. I understand."

"I find it very painful to answer these questions for you, Lizaveta Prokofyevna."

"I know it's painful, but it's none of my affair that you find it painful. Listen, tell me the truth as before God: are you lying to me or not?"

"I'm not lying."

"It's true what you say, that you're not in love?"

"Perfectly true, it seems."

"Ah, you and your 'it seems'! Did that brat deliver it?"

"I asked Nikolai Ardalionovich . . ."

"The brat! The brat!" Lizaveta Prokofyevna interrupted with passion. "I don't know any Nikolai Ardalionovich! The brat!"

"Nikolai Ardalionovich . . ."

"The brat, I tell you!"

"No, not the brat, but Nikolai Ardalionovich," the prince finally answered, firmly though rather quietly.

"Well, all right, my dear, all right! I shall add that to your account."

For a moment she mastered her excitement and rested.

"And what is this 'poor knight'?"

"I have no idea; I wasn't there; it must be some kind of joke."

"Nice to find out all of a sudden! Only is it possible that she could become interested in you? She herself called you a 'little freak' and an 'idiot.'"

"You might have not told me that," the prince observed reproachfully, almost in a whisper.

"Don't be angry. She's a despotic, crazy, spoiled girl—if she falls in love, she'll certainly abuse the man out loud and scoff in his face; I was just the same. Only please don't be triumphant, dear boy, she's not yours; I won't believe it, and it will never be! I tell you so that you can take measures now. Listen, swear to me you're not married to that one."

"Lizaveta Prokofyevna, how can you, for pity's sake?" the prince almost jumped up in amazement.

"But you almost married her?"

"I almost did," the prince whispered and hung his head.

"So you're in love with her, is that it? You've come for her now? For that one?"

"I haven't come to get married," replied the prince.

"Is there anything you hold sacred in this world?"

"There is."

"Swear to me that you haven't come to marry that one."

"I swear by whatever you like!"

"I believe you. Kiss me. At last I can breathe freely; but know this: Aglaya doesn't love you, take measures, and she won't be your wife as long as I live! Do you hear?"

"I hear."

The prince was blushing so much that he could not even look directly at Lizaveta Prokofyevna.

"Tie a string round your finger, then. I've been waiting for you as for Providence (you weren't worth it!), I drenched my pillow with tears at night—not over you, dear boy, don't worry, I have another grief of my own, eternal and ever the same. But here is why I waited for you so impatiently: I still believe that God himself sent you to me as a friend and a true brother. I have no one around me, except old Princess Belokonsky, and she, too, has flown away, and besides she's grown stupid as a sheep in her old age. Now answer me simply yes or no: do you know why she shouted from her carriage two days ago?"

"On my word of honor, I had no part in it and know nothing!"

"Enough, I believe you. Now I also have different thoughts about it, but still yesterday, in the morning, I blamed Evgeny Pavlych for everything. Yesterday morning and the whole day before. Now, of course, I can't help agreeing with them: it's obvious that he was being laughed at like a fool for some reason, with some purpose, to some end (that in itself is suspicious! and also unseemly!)—but Aglaya won't be his wife, I can tell you that! Maybe he's a good man, but that's how it will be. I hesitated before, but now I've decided for certain: 'First put me in a coffin and bury me in the earth, then marry off my daughter,' that's what I spelled out to Ivan Fyodorovich today. You see that I trust you, don't you?"

"I see and I understand."

Lizaveta Prokofyevna gazed piercingly at the prince; it may be that she wanted very much to know what impression the news about Evgeny Pavlych had made on him.

"Do you know anything about Gavrila Ivolgin?"

"That is ... I know a lot."

"Do you or do you not know that he is in touch with Aglaya?"

"I had no idea," the prince was surprised and even gave a start. "So you say Gavrila Ardalionovich is in touch with Aglaya Ivanovna? It can't be!"

"Very recently. His sister spent all winter gnawing a path for him, working like a rat."

"I don't believe it," the prince repeated firmly after some reflection and agitation. "If it was so, I would certainly have known."

"No fear he'd come himself and confess it in tears on your breast! Ah, you simpleton, simpleton! Everybody deceives you like . . . like . . . Aren't you ashamed to trust him? Do you really not see that he's duped you all around?"

"I know very well that he occasionally deceives me," the prince said reluctantly in a low voice, "and he knows that I know it . . ." he added and did not finish.

"To know and to trust him! Just what you need! However, with you that's as it should be. And what am I surprised at? Lord! Has there ever been another man like this? Pah! And do you know that this Ganka or this Varka has put her in touch with Nastasya Filippovna?"

"Whom?!" exclaimed the prince.

"Aglaya."

"I don't believe it! It can't be! With what purpose?"

He jumped up from the chair.

"I don't believe it either, though there's evidence. She's a willful girl, a fantastic girl, a crazy girl! A wicked, wicked, wicked girl! For a thousand years I'll go on insisting that she's wicked! They're all that way now, even that wet hen Alexandra, but this one has already gotten completely out of hand. But I also don't believe it! Maybe because I don't want to believe it," she added as if to herself. "Why didn't you come?" she suddenly turned to the prince again. "Why didn't you come for all these three days?" she impatiently cried to him a second time.

The prince was beginning to give his reasons, but she interrupted him again.

"Everyone considers you a fool and deceives you! You went to town yesterday; I'll bet you got on your knees and begged that scoundrel to accept the ten thousand!"

"Not at all, I never thought of it. I didn't even see him, and, besides, he's not a scoundrel. I received a letter from him."

"Show me the letter!"

The prince took a note from his briefcase and handed it to Lizaveta Prokofyevna. The note read:

My dear sir,

I, of course, do not have the least right in people's eyes to have any self-love. In people's opinion, I am too insignificant for that. But that is in people's eyes, not in yours. I am only too convinced that you, my dear sir, are perhaps better than the others. I disagree with Doktorenko and part ways with him in this conviction. I will never take a single kopeck from you, but you have helped my mother, and for that I owe you gratitude, even though it comes from weakness. In any case, I look upon you differently and consider it necessary to let you know. And with that I assume there can be no further contacts between us.

Antip Burdovsky.

P.S. The rest of the two hundred roubles will be faithfully paid back to you in time.

"What a muddle!" Lizaveta Prokofyevna concluded, tossing the note back. "Not worth reading. What are you grinning at?"

"You must agree that you enjoyed reading it."

"What! This vanity-eaten galimatias! But don't you see they've all lost their minds from pride and vanity?"

"Yes, but all the same he apologized, he's broken with

Doktorenko, and the vainer he is, the dearer the cost to his vanity. Oh, what a little child you are, Lizaveta Prokofyevna!"

"Are you intent on getting a slap in the face from me finally, or what?"

"No, not at all. It's because you're glad of the note, but you conceal it. Why are you ashamed of your feelings? You're like that in everything."

"Don't you dare set foot in my house now," Lizaveta Prokofyevna jumped up, turning pale with wrath, "from now on I don't want to hear a peep from you ever again!"

"But in three days you'll come yourself and invite me . . . Well, aren't you ashamed? These are your best feelings, why be ashamed of them? You only torment yourself."

"I'll die before I ever invite you! I'll forget your name! I have forgotten it!"

She rushed for the door.

"I've already been forbidden to visit you anyway!" the prince called after her.

"Wha-a-at? Who has forbidden you?"

She instantly turned around, as if pricked by a needle. The prince hesitated before answering; he felt he had made an accidental but serious slip.

"Who forbade you?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna cried furiously.

"Aglaya Ivanovna did . . ."

"When? Well, spe-e-eak!!!"

"This morning she sent to tell me that I must never dare come to see you."

Lizaveta Prokofyevna stood like a post, but she was thinking it through.

"What did she send? Whom did she send? Through that brat? Verbally?" she suddenly exclaimed again.

"I received a note," said the prince.

"Where? Give it to me! At once!"

The prince thought for a moment, but nevertheless took from his waistcoat pocket a careless scrap of paper on which was written:

Prince Lev Nikolaevich!

If, after all that has happened, you intend to surprise me by visiting our dacha, then you may be assured that you will not find me among the delighted.

Aglaya Epanchin.

Lizaveta Prokofyevna thought for a moment; then she suddenly rushed to the prince, seized him by the arm, and dragged him with her.

"Now! Go! On purpose, now, this minute!" she cried out in a fit of extraordinary excitement and impatience.

"But you're subjecting me to . . ."

"To what? Innocent simpleton! As if he's not even a man! Well, now I'll see it all for myself, with my own eyes . . ."

"Let me at least take my hat . . ."

"Here's your wretched little hat, let's go! He couldn't even choose the fashion tastefully! . . . She did it . . . She did it after today's . . . it's delirium," Lizaveta Prokofyevna was muttering, dragging the prince with her and not letting go of his arm even for a moment. "Earlier today I defended you, I said aloud that you were a fool, because you didn't come . . . otherwise she wouldn't have written such a witless note! An improper note! Improper for a noble, educated, intelligent, intelligent girl! . . . Hm," she went on, "of course, she herself was vexed that you didn't come, only she didn't reckon that she ought not to write like that to an idiot, because he'd take it literally, which is what happened. What are you doing eavesdropping?" she cried, catching herself in a slip. "She needs a buffoon like you, it's long since she's seen one, that's why she wants you! And I'm glad, glad that she's now going to sharpen her teeth on you! You deserve it. And she knows how, oh, she does know how! ..."

PART THREE

I

They constantly complain that in our country there are no practical people; that of political people, for example, there are many; of generals there are also many; of various managers, however many you need, you can at once find any sort you like—but of practical people there are none. At least everybody complains that there are none. They say that on certain railway lines there are even no decent attendants; to set up a more or less passable administration for some steamship company is, they say, quite impossible. In one place you hear that on some newly opened line the trains collided or fell off a bridge; in another they write that a train nearly spent the winter in a snowy field: people went on a few hours' journey and got stuck for five days in the snow. In another they tell about many tons of goods rotting in one place for two or three months, waiting to be transported, and in yet another they claim (though this is even hard to believe) that an administrator, that is, some supervisor, when pestered by some merchant's agent about transporting his goods, instead of transporting the goods, administered one to the agent's teeth, and proceeded to explain his administrative act as the result of "hot temper." It seems there are so many offices in the government service that it is frightening to think of it; everybody has served, everybody is serving, everybody intends to serve—given such material, you wonder, how can they not make up some sort of decent administration for a steamship company?

To this an extremely simple reply is sometimes given—so simple that it is even hard to believe such an explanation. True, they say, in our country everybody has served or is serving, and for two hundred years now this has been going on in the best German fashion, from forefathers to great-grandchildren—but it is the serving people who are the most impractical, and it has gone so far that abstractness and lack of practical knowledge were regarded even among civil servants themselves, still recently, as almost the greatest virtues and recommendations. However, we are wrong to have begun talking about civil servants; in fact, we wanted to talk

about practical people. Here there is no doubt that timidity and a total lack of personal initiative have always been regarded among us as the chiefest and best sign of the practical man—and are so regarded even now. But why blame only ourselves—if this opinion can be considered an accusation? Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the best recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man, and at least ninety-nine out of a hundred people (at least that) have always held to that notion, and only perhaps one out of a hundred people has constantly looked and still looks at it differently.

Inventors and geniuses, at the beginning of their careers (and very often at the end as well), have almost always been regarded in society as no more than fools—that is a most routine observation, well known to everyone. If, for instance, in the course of decades everyone dragged his money to the Lombard and piled up billions there at four percent, then, naturally, when the Lombards ceased to exist and everyone was left to his own initiative, the greater part of those millions ought certainly to have perished in stock-market fever and in the hands of swindlers—decency and decorum even demanded it. Precisely decorum; if decorous timidity and a decent lack of originality have constituted among us up to now, according to a generally accepted conviction, the inalienable quality of the sensible and respectable man, it would be all too unrespectable and even indecent to change quite so suddenly. What mother, for instance, tenderly loving her child, would not become frightened and sick with fear if her son or daughter went slightly off the rails: "No, better let him be happy and live in prosperity without originality," every mother thinks as she rocks her baby to sleep. And our nannies, rocking babies to sleep, from time immemorial have cooed and crooned: "You shall go all dressed in gold, you shall be a general bold!" And so, even among our nannies, the rank of general was considered the limit of Russian happiness and, therefore, was the most popular national ideal of beautiful, peaceful felicity. And, indeed, who among us, having done a mediocre job on his exams and served for thirty-five years, could not finally make a general of himself and squirrel away a certain sum with a Lombard? Thus the Russian man, almost without any effort, finally attained the title of a sensible and practical man. In essence, the only one among us who cannot make a general of himself is the original—in other words, the troublesome—man. Perhaps there is

some misunderstanding here, but, generally speaking, that seems to be so, and our society has been fully just in defining its ideal of the practical man. Nevertheless, we have still said much that is superfluous; we wanted, in fact, to say a few clarifying words about our acquaintances the Epanchins. These people, or at least the more reasoning members of the family, constantly suffered from one nearly general family quality, the direct opposite of those virtues we have discussed above. Without fully understanding the fact (because it is very difficult to understand), they occasionally suspected all the same that in their family somehow nothing went the way it did with everyone else. With everyone else things went smoothly, with them unevenly; everyone else rolled along the rails—they constantly went off the rails. Everyone else became constantly and decorously timid, but they did not. True, Lizaveta Prokofyevna could even become too frightened, but all the same this was not that decorous social timidity they longed for. However, perhaps only Lizaveta Prokofyevna was worried: the girls were still young—though very perspicacious and ironic folk—and the general, though he could perspicate (not without effort, however), in difficult cases only said "Hm!" and in the end placed all his hopes in Lizaveta Prokofyevna. Therefore the responsibility lay with her. And it was not, for instance, that the family was distinguished by some initiative of their own, or went off the rails by a conscious inclination for originality, which would have been quite improper. Oh, no! There was, in reality, nothing of the sort, that is, no consciously set goal, but all the same it came out in the end that the Epanchin family, though very respectable, was still not quite the way all respectable families in general ought to be. Recently Lizaveta Prokofyevna had begun to find only herself and her "unfortunate" character to blame for everything—which added to her suffering. She constantly scolded herself with being a "foolish, indecent eccentric" and suffered from insecurity, was continually at a loss, could not find her way out of some most ordinary concurrence of things, and constantly exaggerated her trouble.

We already mentioned at the beginning of our story that the Epanchins enjoyed universal and genuine respect. Even General Ivan Fyodorovich himself, a man of obscure origin, was received everywhere indisputably and with respect. And this respect he deserved, first, as a wealthy man and "not one of the least" and, second, as a fully respectable man, though none too bright. But a certain dullness of mind, it seems, is almost a necessary quality, if

not of every active man, at least of every serious maker of money. Finally, the general had respectable manners, was modest, could keep his mouth shut and at the same time not let anyone step on his foot—and not only because of his generalship, but also as an honest and noble man. Most important of all, he was a man with powerful connections. As for Lizaveta Prokofyevna, she, as has been explained above, was of good family, though with us origin is not so highly regarded if it does not come with the necessary connections. But it turned out in the end that she also had connections; she was respected and, in the end, loved by such persons that, after them, naturally, everyone had to respect and receive her. There is no doubt that her family sufferings were groundless, had negligible cause, and were ridiculously exaggerated; but if you have a wart on your nose or forehead, it seems to you that all anyone in the world does and has ever done is to look at your wart, laugh at it, and denounce you for it, though for all that you may have discovered America. Nor is there any doubt that in society Lizaveta Prokofyevna was indeed considered an "eccentric"; but for all that she was indisputably respected; yet Lizaveta Prokofyevna began in the end not to believe that she was respected—that was her whole trouble. Looking at her daughters, she was tormented by the suspicion that she was continually hindering their careers in some way, that her character was ridiculous, indecent, and unbearable—for which, naturally, she continually accused her daughters and Ivan Fyodorovich, and spent whole days quarreling with them and at the same time loving them to distraction and almost to the point of passion.

Most of all she was tormented by the suspicion that her daughters were becoming the same sort of "eccentrics" as she, and that no such girls existed in the world, or ought to exist. "They're growing up into nihilists, that's what!" she constantly repeated to herself. Over the last year and especially most recently this sad thought had grown stronger and stronger in her. "First of all, why don't they get married?" she constantly asked herself. "So as to torment their mother—in that they see the whole purpose of their life, and that is so, of course, because there are all these new ideas, this whole cursed woman question! Didn't Aglaya decide half a year ago to cut off her magnificent hair? (Lord, even I never had such hair in my day!) She already had the scissors in her hand, I had to go on my knees and beg her! . . . Well, I suppose she did it out of wickedness, to torment her mother, because she's a wicked,

willful, spoiled girl, but above all wicked, wicked, wicked! But didn't this fat Alexandra also follow her to cut off that mop of hers, and not out of wickedness, not out of caprice, but sincerely, like a fool, because Aglaya convinced her that she'd sleep more peacefully and her head wouldn't ache? And they've had so many suitors—it's five years now—so many, so many! And really, there were some good, even some excellent people among them! What are they waiting for? Why don't they get married? Only so as to vex their mother—there's no other reason! None! None!"

Finally, the sun also rose for her maternal heart; at least one daughter, at least Adelaida, would finally be settled. "That's at least one off my back," Lizaveta Prokofyevna used to say, when she had to express herself aloud (to herself she expressed it much more tenderly). And how nicely, how decently the whole thing got done; even in society it was spoken of respectfully. A known man, a prince, with a fortune, a nice man, and on top of that one pleasing to her heart: what, it seemed, could be better? But she had feared less for Adelaida than for her other daughters even before, though the girl's artistic inclinations sometimes greatly troubled Lizaveta Prokofyevna's ceaselessly doubting heart. "But, then, she's of cheerful character and has much good sense to go with it—which means that the girl won't be lost," she used to comfort herself in the end. She feared most of all for Aglaya. Incidentally, with regard to the eldest, Alexandra, Lizaveta Prokofyevna did not know whether to fear for her or not. Sometimes it seemed to her that "the girl was completely lost"; twenty-five years old—meaning she would be left an old maid. And "with such beauty! ..." Lizaveta Prokofyevna even wept for her at night, while Alexandra Ivanovna spent those same nights sleeping the most peaceful sleep. "But what is she—a nihilist, or simply a fool?" That she was not a fool—of that, incidentally, Lizaveta Prokofyevna had no doubt: she had extreme respect for Alexandra Ivanovna's opinions and liked to consult her. But that she was a "wet hen"—of that there was no doubt: "So placid, there's no shaking her up!" However, "wet hens aren't placid either—pah! They've got me totally confused!" Lizaveta Prokofyevna had some inexplicable commiserating sympathy with Alexandra Ivanovna, more even than with Aglaya, who was her idol. But her acrimonious outbursts (in which her maternal care and sympathy chiefly expressed itself), her taunts, such names as "wet hen," only made Alexandra laugh. It would reach the point where the most trifling things would anger Lizaveta Prokofyevna terribly

and put her beside herself. Alexandra Ivanovna liked, for instance, to sleep long hours and usually had many dreams; but her dreams were always distinguished by a sort of extraordinary emptiness and innocence—suitable for a seven-year-old child; and so even this innocence of her dreams began for some reason to annoy her mother. Once Alexandra Ivanovna saw nine hens in a dream, and this caused a formal quarrel between her and her mother—why?— it is difficult to explain. Once, and only once, she managed to have a dream about something that seemed original—she dreamed of a monk, alone, in some dark room, which she was afraid to enter. The dream was at once conveyed triumphantly to Lizaveta Prokofyevna by her two laughing sisters; but the mother again became angry and called all three of them fools. "Hm! She's placid as a fool, and really a perfect 'wet hen,' there's no shaking her up, yet she's sad, there are times when she looks so sad. What, what is she grieving about?" Sometimes she put this question to Ivan Fyodorovich, hysterically, as was usual with her, threateningly, expecting an immediate answer. Ivan Fyodorovich would hem, frown, shrug his shoulders, and, spreading his arms, finally decide:

"She needs a husband!"

"Only God grant he's not one like you, Ivan Fyodorych," Lizaveta Prokofyevna would finally explode like a bomb, "not like you in his opinions and verdicts, Ivan Fyodorych; not such a boorish boor as you, Ivan Fyodorych . . ."

Ivan Fyodorovich would immediately run for his life, and Lizaveta Prokofyevna, after her explosion, would calm down. Naturally, towards evening that same day she would inevitably become extraordinarily attentive, quiet, affectionate, and respectful towards Ivan Fyodorovich, towards her "boorish boor" Ivan Fyodorovich, her kind, dear, and adored Ivan Fyodorovich, because all her life she had loved and had even been in love with her Ivan Fyodorovich, which Ivan Fyodorovich himself knew excellently well and for which he infinitely respected his Lizaveta Prokofyevna.

But her chief and constant torment was Aglaya.

"Exactly, exactly like me, my portrait in all respects," Lizaveta Prokofyevna said to herself, "a willful, nasty little demon! Nihilistic, eccentric, crazy, wicked, wicked, wicked! Oh, Lord, how unhappy she's going to be!"

But, as we have already said, the risen sun softened and brightened everything for a moment. There was nearly a month in Lizaveta Prokofyevna's life when she rested completely from all

her worries. On the occasion of Adelaida's impending wedding there was also talk in society about Aglaya, while Aglaya everywhere bore herself so beautifully, so equably, so intelligently, so victoriously, a little proudly, but that was so becoming to her! She was so affectionate, so affable to her mother for the whole month! ("True, this Evgeny Pavlovich must still be very closely scrutinized, plumbed to the depths, and besides, Aglaya doesn't seem to favor him much more than the others!") All the same she had suddenly become such a nice girl—and how pretty she is, God, how pretty she is, and getting better day by day! And then . . .

And then that nasty little prince, that worthless little idiot, appeared and everything immediately got stirred up, everything in the house turned upside down!

What had happened, though?

For other people, probably, nothing would have happened. But this was what made Lizaveta Prokofyevna different, that in a combination and confusion of the most ordinary things, she always managed, through her ever-present worry, to discern something that inspired in her, sometimes to the point of morbidity, a most insecure, most inexplicable, and therefore most oppressive, fear. How must it have been for her now, when suddenly, through that whole muddle of ridiculous and groundless worries, there actually came a glimpse of something that indeed seemed important, something that indeed seemed worthy of alarms, doubts, and suspicions.

"And how dared they, how dared they write me that cursed anonymous letter about that creature being in touch with Aglaya?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna thought all the way, as she dragged the prince with her, and at home, when she sat him at the round table where the whole family was gathered. "How dared they even think of it? But I'd die of shame if I believed the smallest drop of it or showed the letter to Aglaya! Such mockery of us, the Epanchins! And all, all through Ivan Fyodorych, all through you, Ivan Fyodorych! Ah, why didn't we move to Elagin: I told them we should move to Elagin! Maybe it was Varka who wrote the letter, I know, or maybe . . . it's all, all Ivan Fyodorych's fault! That creature pulled that stunt on him in memory of their former connections, to show him what a fool he is, just as she laughed at him before, the foolish man, and led him by the nose when he brought her those pearls . .. And in the end we're mixed up in it all the same, your daughters are, Ivan Fyodorych, girls, young ladies, young ladies of the best society, marriageable; they were right there, stood there, heard

everything, and also got mixed up in the story with the nasty boys, be glad that they were there as well and listening! I won't forgive him, I won't forgive that wretched princeling, I'll never forgive him! And why has Aglaya been in hysterics for three days, why has she nearly quarreled with her sisters, even Alexandra, whose hands she always used to kiss like her mother's—she respected her so much? Why has she been setting everyone riddles for three days? What has Gavrila Ivolgin got to do with it? Why did she take to praising Gavrila Ivolgin yesterday and today and then burst into tears? Why does that anonymous letter mention that cursed 'poor knight,' when she never even showed the prince's letter to her sisters? And why . . . what, what made me go running to him like a singed cat and drag him here myself? Lord, I've lost my mind, what have I done now! To talk with a young man about my daughter's secrets, and what's more . . . what's more, about secrets that all but concern him! Lord, it's a good thing at least that he's an idiot and . . . and ... a friend of the house! Only, can it be that Aglaya got tempted by such a little freak? Lord, what drivel I'm spouting! Pah! We're originals . . . they should put us all under glass and show us to people, me first, ten kopecks for admission. I won't forgive you that, Ivan Fyodorych, I'll never forgive you! And why doesn't she give him a dressing-down now? She promised to give him a dressing-down and yet she doesn't do it! There, there, she's looking at him all eyes, says nothing, doesn't go away, stays, and it was she who told him not to come . . . He sits there all pale. And that cursed, cursed babbler Evgeny Pavlych keeps up the whole conversation by himself! Look at him talking away, not letting anybody put a word in. I'd have learned everything, if only I could have turned it the right way . . ."

The prince indeed sat, all but pale, at the round table and, it seemed, was at one and the same time extremely frightened and, for moments, in an incomprehensible, exhilarating ecstasy. Oh, how afraid he was to look in that direction, into that corner from which two familiar dark eyes gazed intently at him, and at the same time how seized with happiness he was to be sitting among them again, to hear the familiar voice—after what she had written to him. "Lord, what will she say now!" He himself had not yet uttered a single word and listened tensely to the "talking-away" Evgeny Pavlovich, who was rarely in such a pleased and excited state of mind as now, that evening. The prince listened to him and for a long time hardly understood a single word. Except for Ivan

Fyodorovich, who had not yet come from Petersburg, everyone was gathered. Prince Shch. was also there. It seemed they were going to go and listen to music a little later, before tea. The present conversation had evidently started before the prince's arrival. Soon Kolya, appearing from somewhere, slipped on to the terrace. "So he's received here as before," the prince thought to himself.

The Epanchins' dacha was a luxurious place, in the style of a Swiss chalet, gracefully adorned on all sides with flowers and leaves. It was surrounded on all sides by a small but beautiful flower garden. Everyone was sitting on the terrace as at the prince's; only the terrace was somewhat more spacious and decorated more smartly.

The theme of the conversation they were having seemed not to everyone's liking; the conversation, as could be guessed, had begun as the result of an impatient argument, and, of course, everyone would have liked to change the subject, but Evgeny Pavlovich seemed to persist all the more and regardless of the impression; the prince's arrival aroused him still more, as it were. Lizaveta Prokofyevna scowled, though she did not understand it all. Aglaya, who was sitting apart from everyone, almost in the corner, would not leave, listened, and remained stubbornly silent.

"Excuse me," Evgeny Pavlovich protested hotly, "but I am not saying anything against liberalism. Liberalism is not a sin; it is a necessary part of the whole, which without it would fall apart or atrophy; liberalism has the same right to exist as the most well-mannered conservatism; what I am attacking is Russian liberalism, and I repeat again that I attack it essentially because a Russian liberal is not a Russian liberal, but is a non-Russian liberal. Give me a Russian liberal and I'll kiss him at once right in front of you."

"Provided he wants to kiss you," said Alexandra Ivanovna, who was extraordinarily excited. Her cheeks even reddened more than usual.

"Just look," Lizaveta Prokofyevna thought to herself, "she sleeps and eats and there's no shaking her up, and then suddenly once a year she goes and starts talking so that you can only spread your arms in wonder."

The prince fleetingly noted that Alexandra Ivanovna seemed very displeased because Evgeny Pavlovich was talking too cheerfully, talking about a serious subject and as if excitedly, and at the same time as if he were joking.

"I was maintaining a moment ago, just before your arrival,

Prince," Evgeny Pavlovich went on, "that up to now our liberals have come from only two strata, the former landowners (abolished) and the seminarians.¹ And as the two estates have finally turned into absolute castes, into something absolutely cut off from the nation, and the more so the further it goes, from generation to generation, it means that all they have done and are doing is absolutely not national . . ."

"How's that? You mean all that's been done—it's all not Russian?" Prince Shch. objected.

"Not national; though it's in Russian, it's not national; our liberals aren't national, our conservatives aren't national, none of them . . . And you may be sure that our nation will recognize nothing of what's been done by landowners and seminarians, either now or later . . ."

"That's a good one! How can you maintain such a paradox, if it's serious? I cannot allow such outbursts concerning Russian landowners, you're a Russian landowner yourself," Prince Shch. objected heatedly.

"But I'm not speaking of the Russian landowner in the sense in which you're taking it. It's a respectable estate, if only for the fact that I myself belong to it; especially now, when it has ceased to exist ..."

"Can it be that there was nothing national in literature either?" Alexandra Ivanovna interrupted.

"I'm not an expert in literature, but Russian literature, in my opinion, is all non-Russian, except perhaps for Lomonosov, Pushkin, and Gogol."²

"First, that's not so little, and second, one of them is from the people and the other two are landowners," laughed Adelaida.

"Quite right, but don't be triumphant. Since up to now only those three of all Russian writers have each managed to say something that is actually his, his own, not borrowed from anyone, those same three thereby immediately became national. Whoever of the Russian people says, writes, or does something of his own, his own, inalienable and unborrowed, inevitably becomes national, even if he speaks Russian poorly. For me that is an axiom. But it wasn't literature that we started talking about, we were talking about socialists, and the conversation started from them. Well, so I maintain that we don't have a single Russian socialist; we don't have and never had any, because all our socialists also come from the landowners or the seminarians. All our inveterate, much-advertised

socialists, here as well as abroad, are nothing more than liberals who come from landowners from the time of serfdom. Why do you laugh? Give me their books, give me their tracts, their memoirs, and I undertake, without being a literary critic, to write a most persuasive literary critique, in which I shall make it clear as day that every page of their books, pamphlets, and memoirs has been written first of all by a former Russian landowner. Their spite, indignation, and wit are a landowner's (even pre-Famusovian!³); their rapture, their tears—real, perhaps even genuine tears, but— they're a landowner's! A landowner's or a seminarian's . . . Again you laugh, and you're laughing, too, Prince? You also disagree?"

Indeed, they were all laughing, and the prince smiled, too.

"I can't say so directly yet whether I agree or disagree," the prince said, suddenly ceasing to smile and giving a start, like a caught schoolboy, "but I can assure you that I'm listening to you with extreme pleasure ..."

He was all but breathless as he said this, and a cold sweat even broke out on his forehead. These were the first words he had uttered since he sat down. He was about to try looking around, but did not dare; Evgeny Pavlovich caught his movement and smiled.

"I'll tell you one fact, ladies and gentlemen," he went on in the same tone, that is, with extraordinary enthusiasm and warmth and at the same time almost laughing, perhaps at his own words, "a fact, the observation and even the discovery of which I have the honor of ascribing to myself, and even to myself alone; at least it has not been spoken of or written about anywhere. This fact expresses the whole essence of Russian liberalism of the sort I'm talking about. First of all, what is liberalism, generally speaking, if not an attack (whether reasonable or mistaken is another question) on the existing order of things? Isn't that so? Well, so my fact consists in this, that Russian liberalism is not an attack on the existing order of things, but is an attack on the very essence of our things, on the things themselves and not merely on their order, not on Russian order, but on Russia itself. My liberal has reached the point where he denies Russia itself, that is, he hates and beats his own mother. Every unfortunate and unsuccessful Russian fact evokes laughter in him and all but delight. He hates Russian customs, Russian history, everything. If there's any vindication for him, it is perhaps only that he doesn't understand what he's doing and takes his hatred of Russia for the most fruitful liberalism (oh,

among us you will often meet a liberal whom all the rest applaud and who perhaps is in essence the most absurd, the most obtuse and dangerous conservative, without knowing it himself!). Some of our liberals, still not long ago, took this hatred of Russia for all but a genuine love of the fatherland and boasted of seeing better than others what it should consist of; but by now they've become more candid, and have even begun to be ashamed of the words 'love of the fatherland,' have even banished and removed the very notion as harmful and worthless. That is a true fact, I'll stand behind it and . . . some day the truth had to be spoken out fully, simply, and candidly; but at the same time it is a fact such as has never been or occurred anywhere, in all the ages, among any people, and therefore it is an accidental fact and may go away, I agree. There could be no such liberal anywhere as would hate his own fatherland. How, then, can all this be explained in our country? In the same way as before—that the Russian liberal is so far not a Russian liberal; there's no other way, in my opinion."

"I take all you've said as a joke, Evgeny Pavlych," Prince Shch. objected seriously.

"I haven't seen all the liberals and will not venture to judge," said Alexandra Ivanovna, "but I have listened to your thought with indignation: you've taken a particular case and made it a general rule, and that means slander."

"A particular case? Ahh! The word has been spoken," Evgeny Pavlovich picked up. "What do you think, Prince, is it a particular case or not?"

"I also must say that I've seen little of and have spent little time . . . with liberals," said the prince, "but it seems to me that you may be somewhat right and that the Russian liberalism you spoke of is indeed partly inclined to hate Russia itself and not only its order of things. Of course, that's only in part ... of course, it wouldn't be fair to say of all . . ."

He faltered and did not finish. Despite all his agitation, he was extremely interested in the conversation. There was a special feature in the prince, consisting of the extraordinary naivety of the attention with which he always listened to something that interested him, and of the replies he gave when he was addressed with questions about it. His face and even the attitude of his body somehow reflected this naivety, this faith, suspecting neither mockery nor humor. But although Evgeny Pavlovich had long been addressing him not otherwise than with a certain peculiar smile, now, at the

prince's response, he looked at him somehow very seriously, as if he had never expected such a response from him.

"So . . . that's strange, though, on your part," he said, "and you really have answered me seriously, Prince?"

"Why, weren't you asking seriously?" the other retorted in surprise.

Everyone laughed.

"Trust him," said Adelaida, "Evgeny Pavlych always makes fools of everyone! If you only knew what stories he tells sometimes in the most serious way!"

"In my opinion, this is a painful conversation, and should never have been started at all," Alexandra observed sharply. "We wanted to go for a walk ..."

"Let's go, it's a lovely evening!" cried Evgeny Pavlovich. "But, to prove to you that this time I was speaking quite seriously, and, above all, to prove it to the prince (I'm extremely interested in you, Prince, and I swear to you that I'm not at all such an empty man as I must certainly seem—though, in fact, I am an empty man!), and ... if you will permit me, ladies and gentlemen, I will ask the prince one last question, out of personal curiosity, and we'll end there. This question occurred to me, as if on purpose, two hours ago (you see, Prince, I also sometimes think about serious things); I've answered it, but let's see what the prince says. Mention has just been made of a 'particular case.' This has become a very portentous little phrase among us, one hears it often. Recently everyone was talking and writing about that terrible murder of six people by that . . . young man, and of a strange speech by his defense attorney, in which he said that, given the destitute condition of the criminal, it naturally had to occur to him to kill those six people. That's not literal, but the meaning, I think, was that or something approaching it. In my personal opinion, the defense attorney, in voicing such a strange thought, was fully convinced that what he was saying was the most liberal, the most humane and progressive thing that could possibly be said in our time. Well, what would you say: is this perversion of notions and convictions, this possibility of such a warped and extraordinary view of things, a particular case or a general one?"

Everyone burst out laughing.

"A particular one, naturally, a particular one," laughed Alexandra and Adelaida.

"And allow me to remind you again, Evgeny Pavlych," added Prince Shch., "that by now your joke has worn too thin."

"What do you think, Prince?" Evgeny Pavlovich did not listen, having caught the curious and grave gaze of Prince Lev Nikolaevich upon him. "How does it seem to you: is this a particular case or a general one? I confess, it was for you that I thought up this question."

"No, not particular," the prince said quietly but firmly.

"For pity's sake, Lev Nikolaevich," Prince Shch. cried with some vexation, "don't you see that he's trying to trap you; he's decidedly laughing, and it's precisely you that he intends to sharpen his teeth on."

"I thought Evgeny Pavlych was speaking seriously," the prince blushed and lowered his eyes.

"My dear Prince," Prince Shch. went on, "remember what you and I talked about once, about three months ago; we precisely talked about the fact that, in our newly opened young courts,⁴ one can already point to so many remarkable and talented defense attorneys! And how many decisions remarkable in the highest degree have been handed down by the juries? How glad you were, and how glad I was then of your gladness ... we said we could be proud . . . And this clumsy defense, this strange argument, is, of course, an accident, one in a thousand."

Prince Lev Nikolaevich pondered a little, but with the most convinced air, though speaking softly and even as if timidly, replied:

"I only wanted to say that the distortion of ideas and notions (as Evgeny Pavlych put it) occurs very often, and is unfortunately much more of a general than a particular case. And to the point that, if this distortion were not such a general case, there might not be such impossible crimes as these . . ."

"Impossible crimes? But I assure you that exactly the same crimes, and perhaps still more terrible ones, existed before, and have always existed, not only here but everywhere, and, in my opinion, will occur for a very long time to come. The difference is that before we had less publicity, while now we've begun to speak aloud and even to write about them, which is why it seems as if these criminals have appeared only now. That's your mistake, an extremely naïve mistake, Prince, I assure you," Prince Shch. smiled mockingly.

"I myself know that there were very many crimes before, and just as terrible; I was in some prisons not long ago and managed to become acquainted with certain criminals and accused men. There are even more horrible criminals than this one, who have

killed ten people and do not repent at all. But at the same time I noticed this: the most inveterate and unrepentant murderer still knows that he is a criminal, that is, in all conscience he considers that he has done wrong, though without any repentance. And every one of them is the same; but those whom Evgeny Pavlych has begun speaking about do not even want to consider themselves criminals and think to themselves that they had the right and . . . even did a good thing, or almost. That, in my opinion, is what makes the terrible difference. And note that they're all young people, that is, precisely of an age when they can most easily and defenselessly fall under the influence of perverse ideas."

Prince Shch. was no longer laughing and listened to the prince with perplexity. Alexandra Ivanovna, who had long been wanting to make some remark, kept silent, as if some special thought stopped her. But Evgeny Pavlovich looked at the prince in decided astonishment and this time without any smile.

"Why are you so astonished at him, my dear sir?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna stepped in unexpectedly. "What, is he stupider than you or something, can't he reason as well as you?"

"No, ma'am, it's not that," said Evgeny Pavlovich, "but how is it, Prince (forgive the question), if that's the way you see and observe it, then how is it (again, forgive me) that in that strange affair . . . the other day . . . with Burdovsky, I believe . . . how is it that you didn't notice the same perversion of ideas and moral convictions? Exactly the same! It seemed to me then that you didn't notice it at all."

"But the thing is, my dear," Lizaveta Prokofyevna was very excited, "that we noticed everything, we sit here and boast before him, and yet he received a letter today from one of them, the main one, with the blackheads, remember, Alexandra? He apologizes in his letter, though in his own manner, and says he has dropped that friend of his, the one who egged him on then—remember, Alexandra?—and that he now believes more in the prince. Well, and we haven't received such a letter yet, though we know well enough how to turn up our noses at him."

"And Ippolit also just moved to our dacha!" cried Kolya.

"What? He's already here?" the prince became alarmed.

"You had only just left with Lizaveta Prokofyevna when he came. I brought him!"

"Well, I'll bet," Lizaveta Prokofyevna suddenly boiled over, completely forgetting that she had just praised the prince, "I'll bet he

went to his attic yesterday and begged his forgiveness on his knees, so that the spiteful little stinker would deign to come here. Did you go yesterday? You admitted it yourself earlier. Is it so or not? Did you get on your knees or not?"

"That's quite wrong," cried Kolya, "and it was quite the contrary: Ippolit seized the prince's hand yesterday and kissed it twice, I saw it myself, and that was the end of all the explanations, except that the prince simply said it would be better for him at the dacha, and he instantly agreed to come as soon as he felt better."

"You shouldn't, Kolya . . ." the prince murmured, getting up and taking his hat, "why are you telling them about that, I . . ."

"Where now?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna stopped him.

"Don't worry, Prince," the inflamed Kolya went on, "don't go and don't trouble him, he's fallen asleep after the trip; he's very glad; and you know, Prince, in my opinion it will be much better if you don't meet today, even put it off till tomorrow, otherwise he'll get embarrassed again. This morning he said it was a whole six months since he'd felt so well and so strong; he even coughs three times less."

The prince noticed that Aglaya suddenly left her place and came over to the table. He did not dare to look at her, but he felt with his whole being that she was looking at him at that moment, and perhaps looking menacingly, that there was certainly indignation in her dark eyes and her face was flushed.

"But it seems to me, Nikolai Ardalionovich, that you shouldn't have brought him here, if it's that same consumptive boy who wept the other time and invited us to his funeral," Evgeny Pavlovich observed. "He spoke so eloquently then about the wall of the neighboring house that he's bound to feel sad without it, you may be sure."

"What he says is true: he'll quarrel and fight with you and then leave, that's what I say!"

And Lizaveta Prokofyevna moved her sewing basket towards her with dignity, forgetting that they were all getting up to go for a walk.

"I remember him boasting a great deal about that wall," Evgeny Pavlovich picked up again. "Without that wall he won't be able to die eloquently, and he wants very much to die eloquently."

"What of it?" murmured the prince. "If you don't want to forgive him, he'll die without it . . . He moved now for the sake of the trees.

"Oh, for my part I forgive him everything; you can tell him that."

"That's not how it should be understood," the prince replied quietly and as if reluctantly, continuing to look at one spot on the floor and not raising his eyes. "It should be that you, too, agree to accept his forgiveness."

"What is it to me? How am I guilty before him?" "If you don't understand, then . . . but, no, you do understand. He wanted then ... to bless you all and to receive your blessing, that's all."

"My dear Prince," Prince Shch. hastened to pick up somehow warily, exchanging glances with some of those present, "paradise on earth is not easily achieved; but all the same you are counting on paradise in a way; paradise is a difficult thing, Prince, much more difficult than it seems to your wonderful heart. We'd better stop, otherwise we may all get embarrassed again, and then . . ."

"Let's go and listen to the music," Lizaveta Prokofyevna said sharply, getting up angrily from her seat.

They all stood up after her.

II

The prince suddenly went over to Evgeny Pavlovich. "Evgeny Pavlych," he said with a strange ardor, seizing him by the arm, "you may be sure that I consider you the noblest and best of men, in spite of everything; you may be sure of that . . ."

Evgeny Pavlovich even stepped back in surprise. For a moment he tried to suppress an unbearable fit of laughter; but, on looking closer, he noticed that the prince was as if not himself, or at least in some sort of peculiar state.

"I'll bet," he cried, "that you were going to say something quite different, Prince, and maybe not to me at all . . . But what's the matter? Do you feel bad?"

"That may be, that may well be, and it was a very subtle observation that I may have wanted to approach someone else!"

Having said this, he smiled somehow strangely and even ridiculously, but suddenly, as if becoming excited, he exclaimed:

"Don't remind me of what I did three days ago! I've been feeling very ashamed these three days ... I know I'm to blame . . ."

"But. . . but what did you do that was so terrible?"

"I can see that you are perhaps more ashamed for me than

anyone else, Evgeny Pavlovich; you're blushing, that's the sign of a beautiful heart. I'll leave presently, you may be sure."

"What's the matter with him? Is this how his fits begin?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna turned fearfully to Kolya.

"Never mind, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, I'm not having a fit; I'll leave right now. I know I've been . . . mistreated by nature. I've been ill for twenty-four years, from birth to the age of twenty-four. Take it from me now as from a sick man. I'll leave right now, right now, you may be sure. I'm not blushing—because it would be strange to blush at that, isn't it so?—but I'm superfluous in society ... I don't say it out of vanity ... I was thinking it over during these three days and decided that I should inform you candidly and nobly at the first opportunity. There are certain ideas, there are lofty ideas, which I ought not to start talking about, because I'll certainly make everyone laugh; Prince Shch. has just reminded me of that very thing . . . My gestures are inappropriate, I have no sense of measure; my words are wrong, they don't correspond to my thoughts, and that is humiliating for the thoughts. And therefore I have no right . . . then, too, I'm insecure, I . . . I'm convinced that I cannot be offended in this house, that I am loved more than I'm worth, but I know (I know for certain) that after twenty years of illness there must surely be some trace left, so that it's impossible not to laugh at me . . . sometimes ... is that so?"

He looked around as if waiting for a response and a decision. Everyone stood in painful perplexity from this unexpected, morbid, and, as it seemed, in any case groundless outburst. But this outburst gave occasion to a strange episode.

"Why do you say that here?" Aglaya suddenly cried. "Why do you say it to them? To them! To them!"

She seemed to be in the ultimate degree of indignation: her eyes flashed fire. The prince stood dumb and speechless before her and suddenly turned pale.

"There's no one here who is worth such words!" Aglaya burst out. "No one, no one here is worth your little finger, or your intelligence, or your heart! You're more honest than all of them, nobler than all of them, better than all of them, kinder than all of them, more intelligent than all of them! There are people here who aren't worthy of bending down to pick up the handkerchief you've just dropped . . . Why do you humiliate yourself and place yourself lower than everyone else? Why have you twisted everything in yourself, why is there no pride in you?"

"Lord, who'd have thought it?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna clasped her hands.

"The poor knight! Hurrah!" Kolya shouted in delight.

"Quiet! . . . How do they dare offend me here in your house!" Aglaya suddenly fell upon Lizaveta Prokofyevna, now in that hysterical state in which one disregards all limits and overcomes all obstacles. "Why do they all torment me, every last one of them! Why do they all badger me on account of you, Prince? I won't marry you for anything! Know that, never and not for anything! Can one marry such a ridiculous man as you? Look at yourself in the mirror now, see how you're standing there! . . . Why, why do they tease me, saying that I should marry you? You must know it! You're also in conspiracy with them!"

"No one ever teased her!" Adelaida murmured in fright.

"It never entered anyone's mind, no one ever said a word about it!" cried Alexandra Ivanovna.

"Who teased her? When? Who could have told her that? Is she raving?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna, trembling with wrath, turned to them all.

"You all said it, all of you, all these three days! I'll never, never marry him!"

Having shouted that, Aglaya dissolved in bitter tears, covered her face with a handkerchief, and collapsed into a chair.

"But he hasn't asked you yet . . ."

"I haven't asked you, Aglaya Ivanovna," suddenly escaped from the prince.

"Wha-a-at?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna suddenly drew out in astonishment, indignation, and horror. "What's tha-a-at?"

She refused to believe her ears.

"I meant to say ... I meant to say," the prince was trembling, "I only meant to explain to Aglaya Ivanovna ... to have the honor of explaining to her that I never had any intention ... to have the honor of asking for her hand . . . even once . . . I'm not to blame for any of it, by God, I'm not, Aglaya Ivanovna! I never meant to, it never entered my mind and never will, you'll see for yourself: you may be sure! Some wicked man has slandered me before you! You may rest assured!"

Saying this, he approached Aglaya. She took away the handkerchief with which she had covered her face, quickly glanced at him and his whole frightened figure, realized what he had just said, and suddenly burst out laughing right in his face—such merry,

irrepressible laughter, such funny and mocking laughter, that Adelaida was the first to succumb, especially when she also looked at the prince, rushed to her sister, embraced her, and laughed the same irrepressible, merry schoolgirl's laughter as Aglaya. Looking at them, the prince suddenly began to smile, too, and to repeat with a joyful and happy expression:

"Well, thank God, thank God!"

At this point Alexandra also could not help herself and laughed wholeheartedly. It seemed there would be no end to this laughter of the three of them.

"Ah, crazy girls!" Lizaveta Prokofyevna muttered. "First they frighten you, then . . ."

But Prince Shch., too, was laughing now, Evgeny Pavlovich was laughing, Kolya was guffawing nonstop, and, looking at them all, the prince also guffawed.

"Let's go for a walk, let's go for a walk!" cried Adelaida. "All of us together, and certainly the prince with us. There's no need for you to leave, you dear man! What a dear man he is, Aglaya! Isn't it so, mama? Besides, I must certainly, certainly kiss him and embrace him for . . . for what he just said to Aglaya. Maman, dear, will you allow me to kiss him? Aglaya, allow me to kiss your prince!" cried the mischievous girl, and she indeed ran over to the prince and kissed him on the forehead. He seized her hands, squeezed them so hard that Adelaida nearly cried out, looked at her with infinite joy, and suddenly brought her hand quickly to his lips and kissed it three times.

"Let's go, then!" Aglaya called. "Prince, you'll escort me. Can he, maman? A suitor who has rejected me? You have rejected me forever, haven't you, Prince? No, you don't offer a lady your arm like that, don't you know how to take a lady's arm? Like this, come on, we'll go ahead of them all; do you want to go ahead of them, tête-à-tête?"

She talked nonstop, still with bursts of laughter.

"Thank God! Thank God!" Lizaveta Prokofyevna kept repeating, not knowing herself what she was glad about.

"Extremely strange people!" thought Prince Shch., maybe for the hundredth time since he had become close with them, but . . . he liked these strange people. As for the prince, maybe he did not like him so much; Prince Shch. was a bit glum and as if preoccupied as they all went out for a walk.

Evgeny Pavlovich seemed to be in the merriest spirits; he made

Alexandra and Adelaida laugh all the way to the vauxhall, and they laughed somehow especially readily at his jokes, so much so that he began to have a sneaking suspicion that they might not be listening to him at all. At this thought, suddenly and without explaining the reason, he burst at last into extremely and absolutely sincere laughter (such was his character!). The sisters, though they were in a most festive mood, glanced constantly at Aglaya and the prince, who were walking ahead of them; it was clear that their little sister had set them a great riddle. Prince Shch. kept trying to strike up a conversation with Lizaveta Prokofyevna about unrelated things, perhaps in order to distract her, but she found him terribly tiresome. Her thoughts seemed quite scattered, she gave inappropriate answers and sometimes did not answer at all. But Aglaya Ivanovna's riddles were not yet ended for that evening. The last one fell to the prince's lot. When they had gone about a hundred steps from the dacha, Aglaya said in a rapid half whisper to her stubbornly silent escort:

"Look to the right."

The prince looked.

"Look closer. Do you see the bench in the park, where those three big trees are . . . the green bench?"

The prince answered that he did.

"Do you like the setting? Sometimes I come early, at seven o'clock, when everyone is still asleep, to sit there by myself."

The prince murmured that it was a wonderful setting.

"And now go away from me, I don't want to walk arm in arm with you anymore. Or better, let's walk arm in arm, but don't say a word to me. I want to think alone to myself. . ."

The warning was in any case unnecessary: the prince would certainly not have uttered a single word all the way even without orders. His heart began to pound terribly when he heard about the bench. After a moment he thought better of it and, in shame, drove away his absurd notion.

As is known and as everyone at least affirms, the public that gathers at the Pavlovsk vauxhall on weekdays is "more select" than on Sundays and holidays, when "all sorts of people" arrive from the city. The dresses are not festive but elegant. The custom is to get together and listen to music. The orchestra, which may indeed be one of our best garden orchestras, plays new things. The decency and decorum are extreme, in spite of a certain generally familial and even intimate air. The acquaintances, all of them dacha people,

get together to look each other over. Many do it with genuine pleasure and come only for that; but there are also those who come just for the music. Scandals are extraordinarily rare, though, incidentally, they do occur even on weekdays. But, then, there's no doing without them.

This time the evening was lovely, and there was a good-sized audience. All the places near the orchestra were taken. Our company sat down in chairs a little to one side, close to the far left-hand door of the vauxhall. The crowd and the music revived Lizaveta Prokofyevna somewhat and distracted the young ladies; they managed to exchange glances with some of their acquaintances and to nod their heads amiably to others from afar; managed to look over the dresses, to notice some oddities, discuss them, and smile mockingly. Evgeny Pavlovich also bowed rather often. People already paid attention to Aglaya and the prince, who were still together. Soon some young men of their acquaintance came over to the mama and the young ladies; two or three stayed to talk; they were all friends of Evgeny Pavlovich. Among them was one young and very handsome officer, very gay, very talkative; he hastened to strike up a conversation with Aglaya and tried as hard as he could to attract her attention. Aglaya was very gracious with him and laughed easily. Evgeny Pavlovich asked the prince's permission to introduce him to this friend; the prince barely understood what they wanted to do with him, but the introductions were made, the two men bowed and shook hands with each other. Evgeny Pavlovich's friend asked a question, but the prince seemed not to answer it, or muttered something to himself so strangely that the officer gave him a very intent look, then glanced at Evgeny Pavlovich, realized at once why he had thought up this acquaintance, smiled faintly, and turned again to Aglaya. Evgeny Pavlovich alone noticed that Aglaya unexpectedly blushed at that.

The prince did not even notice that other people were talking and paying court to Aglaya; he even all but forgot at moments that he was sitting next to her. Sometimes he wanted to go away somewhere, to disappear from there completely, and he would even have liked some dark, deserted place, only so that he could be alone with his thoughts and no one would know where he was. Or at least to be in his own home, on the terrace, but so that nobody else was there, neither Lebedev nor his children; to throw himself on his sofa, bury his face in his pillow, and lie there like that for a day, a night, another day. At moments he imagined the mountains,

and precisely one familiar spot in the mountains that he always liked to remember and where he had liked to walk when he still lived there, and to look down from there on the village, on the white thread of the waterfall barely glittering below, on the white clouds, on the abandoned old castle. Oh, how he wanted to be there now and to think about one thing—oh! all his life only about that—it would be enough for a thousand years! And let them, let them forget all about him here. Oh, it was even necessary, even better, that they not know him at all, and that this whole vision be nothing but a dream. And wasn't it all the same whether it was a dream or a reality? Sometimes he would suddenly begin studying Aglaya and for five minutes could not tear his gaze from her face; but his gaze was all too strange: it seemed he was looking at her as if at an object a mile away, or as if at her portrait and not at herself.

"Why are you looking at me like that, Prince?" she said suddenly, interrupting her merry conversation and laughter with those around her. "I'm afraid of you; I keep thinking you want to reach your hand out and touch my face with your finger, in order to feel it. Isn't it true, Evgeny Pavlych, that he looks like that?"

The prince listened, seeming to be surprised that he was being addressed, realized it, though he may not quite have understood, did not reply, but, seeing that she and all the others were laughing, suddenly extended his mouth and began to laugh himself. The laughter increased around him; the officer, who must have been a man who laughed easily, simply burst with laughter. Aglaya suddenly whispered wrathfully to herself:

"Idiot!"

"Lord! Can she really . . . such a ... is she going completely crazy?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna rasped to herself.

"It's a joke. It's the same kind of joke as with the 'poor knight,' " Alexandra whispered firmly in her ear, "and nothing more! She's poking fun at him again, in her own way. Only the joke has gone too far; it must be stopped, maman! Earlier she was clowning like an actress, frightening us for the fun of it . . ."

"It's a good thing she landed on such an idiot," Lizaveta Prokofyevna whispered to her. Her daughter's observation made her feel better all the same.

The prince, however, heard that he had been called an idiot, and gave a start, but not because he had been called an idiot. The "idiot" he forgot at once. But in the crowd, not far from where he

was sitting, somewhere to the side—he would not have been able to show in what precise place and in what spot—a face flashed, a pale face with dark, curly hair, with a familiar, a very familiar, smile and gaze—flashed and disappeared. It might well have been that he only imagined it; of the whole apparition he was left with the impression of the crooked smile, the eyes, and the pale green, foppish tie that the gentleman who flashed was wearing. Whether this gentleman disappeared in the crowd or slipped into the vaux-hall, the prince also could not have determined.

But a moment later he suddenly began looking quickly and uneasily around him; this first apparition might be the herald and forerunner of a second. That was surely the case. Could he have forgotten the possibility of a meeting when they set out for the vauxhall? True, as he walked to the vauxhall, he seemed not at all aware that he was going there—he was in such a state. If he had been or could have been more attentive, he might have noticed a quarter of an hour ago that Aglaya, every so often and also as if uneasily, glanced furtively about, as though looking for something around her. Now, when his uneasiness had become quite noticeable, Aglaya's agitation and uneasiness also grew, and each time he looked behind him, she almost at once looked around as well. The resolution of their anxiety soon followed.

From the same side door to the vauxhall near which the prince and all the Epanchin company had placed themselves, a whole crowd, at least ten people, suddenly emerged. At the head of the crowd were three women; two of them were remarkably good-looking, and there was nothing strange in so many admirers following after them. But both the admirers and the women—all this was something peculiar, something quite unlike the rest of the public gathered for the music. Nearly everyone noticed them at once, but the greater part tried to pretend that they had not seen them at all, and perhaps only some of the young people smiled at them, commenting to each other in low voices. Not to see them at all was impossible; they made themselves conspicuous, talked loudly, laughed. One might suppose that many of them were drunk, though by the look of it some were smartly and elegantly dressed; but alongside them there were rather strange-looking people, in strange clothes, with strangely inflamed faces; there were several military men among them; not all of them were young; some were dressed comfortably in loose and elegantly made clothes, with signet rings and cuff links, in magnificent, pitch-black wigs and

side-whiskers, and with a particularly noble, though somewhat squeamish, expression on their faces—the sort of people, however, who are avoided like the plague in society. Among our suburban societies, of course, there are some that are distinguished by an extraordinary decorum and enjoy a particularly good reputation; but even the most cautious person cannot protect himself at every moment against a brick falling from a neighboring house. This brick was now preparing to fall upon the decorous public that had gathered for the music.

To pass from the vauxhall to the green where the orchestra was playing, one had to go down three steps. The crowd stopped just at these steps; they did not venture to go down, but one of the women stepped forward; only two of her retinue dared to follow her. One was a rather modest-looking middle-aged man, of decent appearance in all respects, but having the air of a confirmed old bachelor, that is, one of those who never know anybody and whom nobody knows. The other one not to lag behind his lady was a complete ragamuffin of the most ambiguous appearance. No one else followed the eccentric lady; but, going down, she did not even turn to look back, as if it decidedly made no difference to her whether she was followed or not. She laughed and talked as loudly as before; she was dressed extremely tastefully and expensively, but somewhat more magnificently than she ought to have been. She went past the orchestra to the other side of the green, near the road, where somebody's carriage was waiting for someone.

The prince had not seen her for more than three months. All those days since his arrival in Petersburg, he had been preparing to call on her; but perhaps a secret foreboding had held him back. At least he could in no way anticipate what impression awaited him on meeting her, but sometimes he fearfully tried to imagine it. One thing was clear to him—that the meeting would be painful. Several times during those six months he had recalled the first sensation that the face of this woman had produced in him, when he had only seen it in a portrait; but even in the impression of the portrait, he recalled, there was a great deal of pain. That month in the provinces, when he had seen her almost every day, had had a terrible effect on him, so much so that the prince drove away even the memory of that still-recent time. For him there was something tormenting in the very face of this woman; the prince, talking with Rogozhin, had translated this feeling as one of infinite pity, and that was true: this face, ever since the portrait, had evoked in his

heart all the suffering of pity; the impression of compassion and even of suffering for this being never left his heart and had not left it now. Oh, no, it was even stronger. Yet the prince remained dissatisfied with what he had said to Rogozhin; and only now, at this moment of her unexpected appearance, did he understand, perhaps through immediate sensation, what had been lacking in his words to Rogozhin. Words had been lacking expressive of horror—yes, horror! Now, at this moment, he felt it fully; he was sure, he was fully convinced, for his own special reasons, that this woman was mad. If a man, loving a woman more than anything in the world, or anticipating the possibility of such a love, were suddenly to see her on a chain, behind iron bars, under a warden's stick—the impression would be somewhat similar to what the prince was feeling now.

"What's the matter?" Aglaya whispered quickly, glancing at him and naively tugging at his arm.

He turned his head to her, looked at her, looked into her dark eyes, whose flashing was incomprehensible to him at that moment, tried to smile at her, but suddenly, as if instantly forgetting her, again turned his eyes to the right and again began to watch his extraordinary apparition. At that moment Nastasya Filippovna was just walking past the young ladies' chairs. Evgeny Pavlovich went on telling Alexandra Ivanovna something that must have been very funny and interesting, speaking quickly and animatedly. The prince remembered Aglaya suddenly saying in a half-whisper: "What a . . ."

The phrase was uncertain and unfinished; she instantly checked herself and did not add anything more, but that was already enough. Nastasya Filippovna, who was walking along as if not noticing anyone in particular, suddenly turned in their direction, and seemed only now to recognize Evgeny Pavlovich.

"Hah! Here he is!" she exclaimed, suddenly stopping. "First there's no finding him with any messengers, then, as if on purpose, he sits here where you'd never imagine . . . And I thought you were there, darling ... at your uncle's!"

Evgeny Pavlovich flushed, looked furiously at Nastasya Filippovna, but quickly turned away again.

"What?! Don't you know? He doesn't know yet, imagine! He shot himself! Your uncle shot himself this morning! They told me earlier, at two o'clock; half the city knows by now; they say three hundred and fifty thousand in government funds are missing,

others say five hundred thousand. And here I was counting on him leaving you an inheritance; he blew it all. A most depraved old fellow he was . . . Well, good-bye, bonne chance!* So you really won't go? That's why you resigned in good time, smart boy! Oh, nonsense, you knew, you knew beforehand; maybe even yesterday . . ."

Though there was certainly some purpose in this impudent pestering, this advertising of an acquaintance and an intimacy that did not exist, and there could now be no doubt of it—Evgeny Pavlovich had thought first to get rid of her somehow or other, and did his best to ignore the offender. But Nastasya Filippovna's words struck him like a thunderbolt; hearing of his uncle's death, he went pale as a sheet and turned to the bearer of the news. At that moment Lizaveta Prokofyevna quickly got up from her seat, got everyone up with her, and all but rushed out. Only Prince Lev Nikolaevich stayed where he was for a second, as if undecided, and Evgeny Pavlovich went on standing there, not having come to his senses. But the Epanchins had not managed to go twenty steps before a frightful scandal broke out.

The officer, a great friend of Evgeny Pavlovich's, who had been talking with Aglaya, was indignant in the highest degree.

"Here you simply need a whip, there's no other way with this creature!" he said almost aloud. (It seems he had been Evgeny Pavlovich's confidant even before.)

Nastasya Filippovna instantly turned to him. Her eyes flashed; she rushed to a young man completely unknown to her who was standing two steps away and holding a thin, braided riding crop, tore it out of his hand, and struck her offender across the face as hard as she could. All this occurred in a second . . . The officer, forgetting himself, rushed at her; Nastasya Filippovna's retinue was no longer around her; the decent middle-aged gentleman had already managed to efface himself completely, and the tipsy gentle man stood to one side and guffawed with all his might. In a minute, of course, the police would arrive, but for that minute things would have gone badly for Nastasya Filippovna if unexpected help had not come in time: the prince, who had also stopped two paces away, managed to seize the officer by the arms from behind. Pulling his arm free, the officer shoved him hard in the chest; the prince was sent flying about three paces and fell on a chair. But by then

*Good luck.

two more defenders had turned up for Nastasya Filippovna. Before the attacking officer stood the boxer, author of the article already familiar to the reader and an active member of Rogozhin's former band.

"Keller! Retired lieutenant," he introduced himself with swagger. "If you'd like to fight hand to hand, Captain, I'm at your service, to replace the weaker sex; I've gone through the whole of English boxing. Don't push, Captain; I sympathize with the bloody offense, but I cannot allow for the right of fists with a woman before the eyes of the public. But if, as befits a no-o-oble person, you'd prefer it in a different manner, then—naturally, you must understand me, Captain . . ."

But the captain had already recovered himself and was no longer listening to him. At that moment Rogozhin emerged from the crowd, quickly took Nastasya Filippovna by the arm, and led her away with him. For his part, Rogozhin seemed terribly shaken, was pale and trembling. As he led Nastasya Filippovna away, he still had time to laugh maliciously in the officer's face and say, with the look of a triumphant shopkeeper:

"Nyah! Take that! Your mug's all bloody! Nyah!"

Having recovered and realizing perfectly well whom he was dealing with, the officer politely (though covering his face with a handkerchief) addressed the prince, who had gotten up from the chair:

"Prince Myshkin, whose acquaintance I had the pleasure of making?"

"She's crazy! Mad! I assure you!" the prince replied in a trembling voice, reaching his trembling hands out to him for some reason.

"I, of course, cannot boast of being so well informed; but I do need to know your name."

He bowed his head and walked off. The police arrived exactly five seconds after the last of the participants had gone. However, the scandal had lasted no more than two minutes. Some of the public got up from their chairs and left, others merely changed places; a third group was very glad of the scandal; a fourth began intensely talking and questioning. In short, the matter ended as usual. The orchestra started playing again. The prince followed after the Epanchins. If it had occurred to him or he had managed to look to the left, as he sat on the chair after being shoved away, he would have seen Aglaya, who had stopped some twenty paces from him to watch the scandalous scene and did not heed the calls

of her mother and sisters, who had already moved further off. Prince Shch., running up to her, finally persuaded her to leave quickly. Lizaveta Prokofyevna remembered that Aglaya rejoined them in such agitation that she could hardly have heard their calls. But exactly two minutes later, just as they entered the park, Aglaya said in her usual indifferent and capricious voice: "I wanted to see how the comedy would end."

III

The incident at the vauxhall struck both mother and daughters almost with terror. Alarmed and agitated, Lizaveta Prokofyevna literally all but ran with her daughters the whole way home from the vauxhall. In her view and understanding, all too much had occurred and been revealed in this incident, so that in her head, despite all the disorder and fear, resolute thoughts were already germinating. But everyone else also understood that something special had happened and that, perhaps fortunately, some extraordinary mystery was beginning to be revealed. Despite the earlier assurances of Prince Shch., Evgeny Pavlovich had now been "brought into the open," exposed, uncovered, and "formally revealed as having connections with that creature." So thought Lizaveta Prokofyevna and even her two elder daughters. The profit of this conclusion was that still more riddles accumulated. The girls, though inwardly somewhat indignant at their mother's exaggerated alarm and so obvious flight, did not dare to trouble her with questions in the first moments of the turmoil. Besides that, for some reason it seemed to them that their little sister, Aglaya Ivanovna, might know more about this affair than the three of them, including the mother. Prince Shch. was also dark as night and also very pensive. Lizaveta Prokofyevna did not say a word to him all the way, but he seemed not to notice it. Adelaida tried to ask him who this uncle was who had just been spoken of and what had happened in Petersburg. But he mumbled in reply to her, with a very sour face, something very vague about some inquiries and that it was all, of course, an absurdity. "There's no doubt of that!" Adelaida replied and did not ask him anything more. Aglaya was somehow extraordinarily calm and only observed, on the way, that they were running much too quickly. Once she turned and saw the prince, who was trying to catch up with them. Noticing his

efforts, she smiled mockingly and did not turn to look at him anymore.

Finally, almost at their dacha, they met Ivan Fyodorovich walking towards them; he had just come from Petersburg. At once, with the first word, he inquired about Evgeny Pavlovich. But his spouse walked past him menacingly, without answering and without even glancing at him. By the looks of his daughters and Prince Shch., he immediately guessed that there was a storm in the house. But even without that, his own face reflected some extraordinary anxiety. He at once took Prince Shch. by the arm, stopped him at the entrance, and exchanged a few words with him almost in a whisper. By the alarmed look of the two men as they went up onto the terrace afterwards and went to Lizaveta Prokofyevna's side, one might have thought they had both heard some extraordinary news. Gradually they all gathered in Lizaveta Prokofyevna's drawing room upstairs, and only the prince was left on the terrace. He was sitting in the corner as if waiting for something, though he did not know why himself; it did not even occur to him to leave, seeing the turmoil in the house; it seemed he had forgotten the whole universe and was prepared to sit it out for two years in a row, wherever he might be sitting. From time to time echoes of anxious conversation came to his ears. He himself would have been unable to say how long he had been sitting there. It was getting late and quite dark. Suddenly Aglaya came out on the terrace; she looked calm, though somewhat pale. Seeing the prince, whom she "obviously wasn't expecting" to meet there, sitting on a chair in the corner, Aglaya smiled as if in perplexity.

"What are you doing here?" she went over to him.

The prince murmured something in embarrassment and jumped up from his chair; but Aglaya at once sat down next to him, and he sat down again. She looked him over, suddenly but attentively, then looked out the window, as if without any thought, then again at him. "Maybe she wants to laugh," it occurred to the prince, "but no, she'd just laugh then."

"Maybe you'd like some tea. I'll tell them," she said after some silence.

"N-no ... I don't know . . ."

"Well, how can you not know that! Ah, yes, listen: if someone challenged you to a duel, what would you do? I meant to ask you earlier."

"But . . . who ... no one is going to challenge me to a duel."

"Well, but if someone did? Would you be very afraid?"

"I think I'd be very . . . afraid."

"Seriously? So you're a coward?"

"N-no, maybe not. A coward is someone who is afraid and runs away; but someone who is afraid but doesn't run away is not a coward yet," the prince smiled after pondering a little.

"And you wouldn't run away?"

"Maybe I wouldn't," he finally laughed at Aglaya's questions.

"I'm a woman, but I wouldn't run away for anything," she observed, almost touchily. "And, anyhow, you're clowning and making fun of me in your usual way, to make yourself more interesting. Tell me: don't they usually shoot from twelve paces? Sometimes even from ten? Doesn't that mean you're sure to be killed or wounded?"

"People must rarely be hit at duels."

"Rarely? Pushkin was killed."⁵

"That may have been accidental."

"Not accidental at all. They fought to kill and he was killed."

"The bullet struck so low that d'Anthès must have been aiming somewhere higher, at his chest or head; no one aims to hit a man where he did, so the bullet most likely hit Pushkin accidentally, from a bad shot. Competent people have told me so."

"But I was told by a soldier I once talked with that, according to regulations, when they open ranks, they're ordered to aim on purpose at the half-man; that's how they say it: 'at the half-man.' That means not at the chest, not at the head, but they're ordered to aim on purpose at the half-man. Later I asked an officer, and he said that was exactly right."

"It's right because they shoot from a great distance."

"And do you know how to shoot?"

"I've never done it."

"Do you at least know how to load a pistol?"

"No, I don't. That is, I understand how it's done, but I've never loaded one myself."

"Well, that means you don't know how, because it takes practice! Listen now and learn well: first, buy good gunpowder, not damp (they say it mustn't be damp, but very dry), the fine sort, you can ask about it, but not the kind used for cannons. They say you have to mold the bullet yourself. Do you have pistols?"

"No, and I don't need any," the prince suddenly laughed.

"Ah, what nonsense! You must certainly buy one, a good one,

French or English, they say they're the best. Then take some powder, a thimbleful or maybe two thimblefuls, and pour it in. Better put in more. Ram it down with felt (they say it absolutely must be felt for some reason), you can get that somewhere, from some mattress, or doors are sometimes upholstered with felt. Then, when you've stuffed the felt in, you put in the bullet—do you hear, the bullet after, and the felt before, otherwise it won't fire. Why are you laughing? I want you to shoot several times a day and learn to hit the mark without fail. Will you do it?"

The prince laughed; Aglaya stamped her foot in vexation. Her serious air, in such a conversation, surprised the prince a little. He partly felt that he had to find out about something, to ask about something—in any case about something more serious than how to load a pistol. But everything flew out of his mind, except for the one fact that she was sitting before him, and he was looking at her, and what she talked about at that moment made scarcely any difference to him.

Finally Ivan Fyodorovich himself came down to the terrace from upstairs; he was headed somewhere with a frowning, preoccupied, and determined look.

"Ah, Lev Nikolaich, it's you . . . Where to now?" he asked, though Lev Nikolaevich had not thought of moving from his place. "Come along, I'll tell you a little something."

"Good-bye," said Aglaya, and she gave the prince her hand.

It was already rather dark on the terrace; the prince could not make out her face quite clearly at that moment. A minute later, as he and the general were leaving the dacha, he suddenly turned terribly red and clenched his right hand tightly.

It turned out that Ivan Fyodorovich was going the same way he was; despite the late hour, Ivan Fyodorovich was hurrying to speak with someone about something. But meanwhile he suddenly began talking with the prince, quickly, anxiously, rather incoherently, often mentioning Lizaveta Prokofyevna. If the prince could have been more attentive at that moment, he might have guessed that Ivan Fyodorovich wanted among other things to find out something from him as well, or, better, to ask him directly and openly about something, but never managed to touch on the chiefest point. To his shame, the prince was so distracted that at the very beginning he did not even hear anything, and when the general stopped in front of him with some burning question, he was forced to confess that he understood nothing.

The general shrugged his shoulders.

"You've all become some sort of strange people, in all respects," he started talking again. "I tell you, I utterly fail to understand Lizaveta Prokofyevna's ideas and anxieties. She's in hysterics, she weeps and says we've been covered with shame and disgrace. By whom? How? With whom? When and why? I confess I'm to blame (I admit it), greatly to blame, but the importunities of this . . . troublesome woman (and ill-behaved besides) can finally be restricted by the police, and even tonight I intend to see a certain person and give warning. Everything can be arranged quietly, meekly, affectionately even, through connections and without any scandal. I also agree that the future is fraught with events and much is unexplained; there's some intrigue involved; but if they don't know anything here, they can't explain anything there either; if I haven't heard, you haven't heard, this one hasn't heard, that one hasn't heard, then who, finally, has heard, I ask you? What can explain it, in your opinion, except that the affair is half a mirage, doesn't exist, like moonlight, for instance ... or other phantoms."

"She is a madwoman," the prince murmured, suddenly remembering, with pain, all that had happened earlier.

"That's the word, if you mean her. Somewhat the same idea used to visit me, and then I'd sleep peacefully. But now I see that others think more correctly, and I don't believe it's madness. She's a cantankerous woman, granted, but with that also a subtle one, anything but crazy. Today's escapade to do with Kapiton Alexeich proves it only too well. It's a crooked business on her part, Jesuitical at the very least, for her own purposes."

"What Kapiton Alexeich?"

"Ah, my God, Lev Nikolaich, you're not listening at all. I began by telling you about Kapiton Alexeich; I'm so struck that even now I'm trembling from head to foot. That's why I came late from the city today. Kapiton Alexeich Radomsky, Evgeny Pavlych's uncle . . ."

"What!" cried the prince.

"Shot himself this morning at dawn, at seven o'clock. A venerable man, seventy years old, an Epicurean—and it's just as she said about the government funds, a mighty sum!"

"How did she ..."

"Find out, you mean? Ha, ha! As soon as she appeared here, a whole staff formed around her. You know what sort of persons visit her now and seek the 'honor of her acquaintance.' Naturally, she

could have heard something earlier from her visitors, because the whole of Petersburg knows already and half, if not the whole, of Pavlovsk. But what a subtle observation she made about the uniform, as I've been told, that is, about Evgeny Pavlych managing to resign from the army in good time! What an infernal allusion! No, that doesn't suggest insanity. I, of course, refuse to believe that Evgeny Pavlych could have known about the catastrophe beforehand, that is, on such-and-such a day, at seven o'clock, and so on. But he might have anticipated it all. And here I am, here we all are, including Prince Shch., counting on the old man leaving him an inheritance! Terrible! Terrible! Understand, however, that I'm not accusing Evgeny Pavlych of anything, and I hasten to make that clear to you, but all the same it's suspicious. Prince Shch. is extremely struck. It's all fallen out so strangely."

"But what is suspicious in Evgeny Pavlych's behavior?"

"Nothing! He behaved in the noblest fashion. I wasn't hinting at anything. His own fortune, I think, is intact. Lizaveta Prokofyevna, naturally, won't hear anything . . . But the main thing is all these family catastrophes, or, better, all these squabbles, one doesn't even know what to call them . . . You, truly speaking, are a friend of the house, Lev Nikolaich, and imagine, it now turns out—though, by the way, not precisely—that Evgeny Pavlych supposedly proposed to Aglaya more than a month ago and supposedly received a formal rejection from her."

"That can't be!" the prince cried hotly.

"Perhaps you know something? You see, my dearest," the general roused himself in surprise, stopping as if rooted to the spot, "maybe I spilled it out to you needlessly and improperly, but it's because you're . . . you're . . . one might say, that sort of man. Maybe you know something particular?"

"I know nothing . . . about Evgeny Pavlych," the prince murmured.

"Neither do I! They . . . they decidedly want to dig a hole in the ground and bury me, brother, and they refuse to understand that it's hard on a man and that I won't survive it. There was such a terrible scene just now! I'm telling you like my own son. The main thing is that Aglaya seems to be laughing at her mother. That she apparently rejected Evgeny Pavlych about a month ago, and that they had a rather formal talk, her sisters told us, as a guess ... a firm guess, however. But she's such a willful and fantastic being, it's impossible to describe! All those magnanimities, all those

brilliant qualities of heart and mind—all that, perhaps, is there in her, but along with such caprices and mockeries—in short, a demoniacal character, and with fantasies on top of it. She just laughed in her mother's face, at her sisters, at Prince Shch.; to say nothing of me, it's rare that she doesn't laugh at me, but what am I, you know, I love her, love it even that she laughs at me—and the little demon seems to love me especially for that, that is, more than the others, it seems. I'll bet she's already laughed at you for something. I just found the two of you talking, after the storm upstairs; she was sitting with you as if nothing had happened."

The prince turned terribly red and clenched his right hand, but said nothing.

"My dear, kind Lev Nikolaich!" the general suddenly said with feeling and warmth, "I . . . and even Lizaveta Prokofyevna herself (who, incidentally, began railing at you again, and at me along with you and on account of you, only I don't understand what for), we love you all the same, sincerely love you and respect you, even in spite of everything, that is, all appearances. But you must agree, dear friend, you yourself must agree, what a riddle it is suddenly, and how vexing to hear, when suddenly this cold-blooded little demon (because she stood before her mother with an air of the profoundest contempt for all our questions, and mostly for mine, because, devil take me, I got foolish, I decided to show my severity, since I'm the head of the family—well, and got foolish), this coldblooded little demon suddenly up and announced with a grin that this 'madwoman' (that was how she put it, and I find it strange that she used the same word as you: 'Couldn't you have figured it out by now?' she says), that this madwoman 'has taken it into her head to marry me off at all costs to Prince Lev Nikolaich, and that's why she's trying to drive Evgeny Pavlych out of our house . . .' That's all she said; she gave no further explanation, just laughed loudly, while we stood there gaping, slammed the door, and was gone. Then they told me about the incident today between her and you . . . and . . . and . . . listen, my dear Prince, you're a very reasonable man, not about to take offense, I've noticed that in you, but . . . don't be angry: by God, she's making fun of you. She does it like a child, so don't be angry with her, but it's decidedly so. Don't think anything—she simply makes fools of you and us, out of idleness. Well, good-bye! You do know our feelings? Our sincere feelings for you? They haven't changed, never, not in anything . . . but ... I go that way now, good-bye! I've rarely sat so

poorly in my plate (or how does it go?) than I'm sitting now⁶ . . . Dacha life!"

Left alone at the intersection, the prince looked around, quickly crossed the road, went up to the lighted window of a dacha, unfolded a small piece of paper he had been clenching tightly in his right hand during the whole conversation with Ivan Fyodorovich, and read, catching a faint beam of light:

Tomorrow at seven o'clock in the morning I will be on the green bench in the park, waiting for you. I have decided to talk with you about an extremely important matter that concerns you directly.

P.S. I hope you won't show this note to anyone. Though I'm ashamed to write such instructions to you, I consider that you deserve it, and so I've written it—blushing with shame at your ridiculous character.

P.P.S. It is that same green bench I showed you today. Shame on you! I was forced to add that as well.

The note had been written hastily and folded anyhow, most likely just before Aglaya came out to the terrace. In inexpressible agitation, resembling fear, the prince again clenched the paper tightly in his hand and quickly jumped away from the window, from the light, like a frightened thief; but in making this movement he suddenly ran smack into a gentleman who turned up right at his shoulder.

"I've been watching you, Prince," said the gentleman.

"Is that you, Keller?" the prince cried in surprise.

"I've been looking for you, Prince. I waited by the Epanchins' dacha—naturally, I couldn't go in. I followed you as you walked with the general. I'm at your service, Prince, you may dispose of Keller. Ready to sacrifice myself and even to die, if necessary."

"But . . . what for?"

"Well, there's sure to be a challenge. This Lieutenant Molovtsov, I know him, that is, not personally ... he won't suffer an insult. Our sort, that is, me and Rogozhin, he's naturally inclined to consider riffraff, and maybe deservedly—so you turn out to be the only one answerable. You'll have to pay the piper, Prince. He's made inquiries about you, I've heard, and a friend of his is sure to call on you tomorrow, or maybe he's waiting for you now. If you grant me the honor of choosing me as a second, I'm ready to accept the red cap for you;' that's why I was waiting for you, Prince."

"So you're also talking about a duel!" the prince suddenly burst out laughing, to the great astonishment of Keller. He laughed his head off. Keller, who had indeed been on pins and needles, waiting until he had the satisfaction of offering himself as a second, was almost offended, seeing how merrily the prince laughed.

"Nevertheless, Prince, you seized him by the arms. For a noble person, it's hard to suffer that in public."

"And he shoved me in the chest!" the prince exclaimed, laughing. "We have nothing to fight about! I'll apologize to him and that's that. But if it's a fight, it's a fight. Let him shoot; I even want it. Ha, ha! I know how to load a pistol now! Do you know how to load a pistol, Keller? First you have to buy powder, gunpowder, not damp and not the coarse kind used for cannons; and then you start by putting in some powder, you get felt from a door somewhere, and only then drop in the bullet, not the bullet before the powder, because it won't fire. Do you hear, Keller: because it won't fire. Ha, ha! Isn't that a splendid reason, friend Keller? Ah, Keller, you know, I'm going to embrace you and kiss you now. Ha, ha, ha! How was it that you so suddenly turned up in front of him today? Call on me sometime soon and we'll have champagne. We'll all get drunk! Do you know that I have twelve bottles of champagne in Lebedev's cellar? Lebedev offered it to me as a 'bargain' two days ago, the day after I moved to his place, so I bought it all! I'll get the whole company together! And you, are you going to sleep this night?"

"Like every other, Prince."

"Well, sweet dreams then! Ha, ha!"

The prince crossed the road and disappeared into the park, leaving the somewhat puzzled Keller pondering. He had never seen the prince in such a strange mood, and could not have imagined it till then.

"A fever, maybe, because he's a nervous man, and all this has affected him, but he certainly won't turn coward. His kind doesn't turn coward, by God!" Keller thought to himself. "Hm, champagne! Interesting news, by the way. Twelve bottles, sir, a tidy dozen; that's a decent stock. I'll bet Lebedev took it in pledge from somebody. Hm . . . he's a sweet enough fellow, though, this prince; I really like that sort; there's no time to waste, though, and ... if there's champagne, then this is the moment . . ."

That the prince was as if in a fever was certainly correct.

For a long time he wandered through the dark park and finally

"found himself" pacing along a certain alley. His consciousness retained the memory that he had already walked along that alley, from the bench to a certain old tree, tall and conspicuous, about a hundred steps, some thirty or forty times up and down. He would have been quite unable to remember what he had thought about during that whole hour, at least, in the park, even if he had wanted to. He caught himself, however, in a certain thought, which made him suddenly rock with laughter; though there was nothing to laugh at, he still wanted to laugh. He imagined that the supposition of a duel might not have been born in Keller's head alone, and that, therefore, the story about loading a pistol might not have been accidental . . . "Hah!" he stopped suddenly, as another idea dawned on him, "she came down to the terrace tonight when I was sitting in the corner, and was terribly surprised to find me there, and—laughed so . . . talked about tea; but at that time she already had this note in her hand, which means she must have known I was sitting on the terrace, so why was she surprised? Ha, ha, ha!"

He snatched the note from his pocket and kissed it, but at once stopped and pondered.

"How strange! How strange!" he said after a moment, even with a sort of sadness: he always felt sad at moments of great joy, he did not know why himself. He looked around intently and was surprised that he had come there. He was very tired, went over to the bench and sat down. It was extremely quiet all around. The music in the vauxhall was over. There was probably no one in the park now; it was certainly at least half-past eleven. The night was quiet, warm, bright—a Petersburg night at the beginning of the month of June—but in the thick, shady park, in the alley where he was, it was almost completely dark.

If anyone had told him at that moment that he had fallen in love, that he was passionately in love, he would have rejected the idea with astonishment and perhaps even with indignation. And if anyone had added that Aglaya's note was a love letter, setting up a lovers' tryst, he would have burned with shame for that man and might have challenged him to a duel. All this was perfectly sincere, and he never once doubted it or allowed for the slightest "second" thought about the possibility of this girl loving him or even the possibility of him loving this girl. The possibility of loving him, "a man like him," he would have considered a monstrous thing. He vaguely thought that it was simply a prank on her part, if there

indeed was anything to it; but he was somehow all too indifferent to the prank itself and found it all too much in the order of things; he himself was concerned and preoccupied with something completely different. He fully believed the words that had escaped the agitated general earlier, that she was laughing at everyone and especially at him, the prince. He had not felt insulted by it in the least; in his opinion, it had to be so. The main thing for him was that tomorrow he would see her again, early in the morning, would sit beside her on the green bench, listen to how a pistol is loaded, and look at her. He needed nothing more. The question of what it was that she intended to tell him, and what the important matter was that concerned him directly, also flashed once or twice in his head. Besides, he had never doubted even for a minute the actual existence of this "important matter" for which he had been summoned, but he almost did not think of this important matter now, to the point that he even did not feel the slightest urge to think about it.

The crunch of quiet steps on the sand of the alley made him raise his head. A man, whose face it was difficult to make out in the darkness, came up to the bench and sat down beside him. The prince quickly moved close to him, almost touching him, and made out the pale face of Rogozhin.

"I just knew you'd be wandering about here somewhere, I didn't have to look long," Rogozhin muttered through his teeth.

It was the first time they had come together since their meeting in the corridor of the inn. Struck by Rogozhin's sudden appearance, the prince was unable to collect his thoughts for some time, and a painful sensation rose again in his heart. Rogozhin evidently understood the impression he had made; but though at first he kept getting confused, spoke as if with the air of a sort of studied casualness, it soon seemed to the prince that there was nothing studied in him and not even any particular embarrassment; if there was any awkwardness in his gestures and conversation, it was only on the outside; in his soul this man could not change.

"How . . . did you find me here?" asked the prince, in order to say something.

"I heard from Keller (I went by your place) that 'he went to the park.' Well, I thought, so there it is."

"There what is?" the prince anxiously picked up the escaped remark.

Rogozhin grinned, but gave no explanation.

"I got your letter, Lev Nikolaich; you don't need all that . . . what do you care! . . . And now I'm coming to you from her: she told me to be sure and invite you; she needs very much to tell you something. She asks you to come tonight."

"I'll come tomorrow. Right now I'm going home; will you . . . come with me?"

"Why? I've told you everything. Good-bye."

"You won't come?" the prince asked softly.

"You're a queer one, Lev Nikolaich, you really amaze me."

Rogozhin grinned sarcastically.

"Why? What makes you so spiteful towards me now?" the prince picked up sadly and ardently. "You know now that everything you were thinking was not true. I did think, however, that your spite towards me had still not gone away, and do you know why? Because you raised your hand against me, that's why your spite won't go away. I tell you that I remember only the Parfyon Rogozhin with whom I exchanged crosses that day as a brother; I wrote that to you in my letter yesterday, so that you'd forget to think about all that delirium and not start talking with me about it. Why are you backing away from me? Why are you hiding your hand from me? I tell you, I consider all that happened then as nothing but delirium: all that you went through that day I now know as well as I know my own self. What you were imagining did not and could not exist. Why, then, should our spite exist?"

"What spite could you have!" Rogozhin laughed again in response to the prince's ardent, unexpected speech. He was indeed standing back from him, two steps to the side, and hiding his hands.

"It's not a right thing for me to come to you at all now, Lev Nikolaich," he added in conclusion, slowly and sententiously.

"Do you really hate me so much?"

"I don't like you, Lev Nikolaich, so why should I come to you? Eh, Prince, you're just like some child, you want a toy, you've got to have it right now, but you don't understand what it's about. Everything you're saying now is just like what you wrote in your letter, and do you think I don't believe you? I believe every word of yours, and I know you've never deceived me and never will in the future; but I still don't like you. You write that you've forgotten everything and only remember your brother Rogozhin that you exchanged crosses with, and not the Rogozhin who raised a knife against you that time. But how should you know my feelings?"

(Rogozhin grinned again.) "Maybe I never once repented of it afterwards, and you've gone and sent me your brotherly forgiveness. Maybe that evening I was already thinking about something completely different, and ..."

"Forgot all about it!" the prince picked up. "What else! And I'll bet you went straight to the train that time, and here in Pavlovsk to the music, and watched and searched for her in the crowd just as you did today. Some surprise! But if you hadn't been in such a state then that you could only think of one particular thing, maybe you wouldn't have raised a knife at me. I had a presentiment that morning, as I looked at you; do you know how you were then? When we were exchanging crosses, this thought began to stir in me. Why did you take me to see the old woman then? Did you want to restrain your hand that way? But it can't be that you thought of it, you just sensed it, as I did . . . We sensed it word for word then. If you hadn't raised your hand against me (which God warded off), how would I come out before you now? Since I suspected you of it anyway, our sin is the same, word for word! (And don't make a wry face! Well, and what are you laughing for?) 'I've never repented!' But even if you wanted to, maybe you wouldn't be able to repent, because on top of it all you don't like me. And if I were as innocent as an angel before you, you still wouldn't be able to stand me, as long as you think it's not you but me that she loves. That's jealousy for you. Only I was thinking about it this week, Parfyon, and I'll tell you: do you know that she may now love you most of all, and so much, even, that the more she torments you, the more she loves you? She won't tell you that, but you must be able to see it. Why in the end is she going to marry you all the same? Someday she'll tell you herself. There are women who even want to be loved in that way, and that's precisely her character! And your character and your love had to strike her! Do you know that a woman is capable of torturing a man with her cruelties and mockeries, and will not feel remorse even once, because she thinks to herself each time she looks at you: 'Now I'll torture him to death, but later I'll make up for it with my love . . .'"

Rogozhin, having listened to the prince, burst out laughing.

"And have you happened upon such a woman yourself, Prince? I've heard a little something about you, if it's true!"

"What, what could you have heard?" the prince suddenly shook and stopped in extreme embarrassment.

Rogozhin went on laughing. He had listened to the prince not

without curiosity and perhaps not without pleasure; the prince's joyful and ardent enthusiasm greatly struck and encouraged him.

"I've not only heard it, but I see now that it's true," he added. "Well, when did you ever talk the way you do now? That kind of talk doesn't seem to come from you at all. If I hadn't heard as much about you, I wouldn't have come here; and to the park, at midnight, besides."

"I don't understand you at all, Parfyon Semyonych."

"She explained to me about you long ago, and now today I saw it myself, the way you were sitting at the music with the other one. She swore to me by God, yesterday and today, that you're in love like a tomcat with Aglaya Epanchin. It makes no difference to me, Prince, and it's none of my business: even if you don't love her anymore, she still loves you. You know, she absolutely wants you to marry that girl, she gave me her word on it, heh, heh! She says to me: 'Without that I won't marry you, they go to church, and we go to church.' What it's all about, I can't understand and never could: either she loves you no end, or . . . but if she loves you, why does she want you to marry another woman? She says: 'I want to see him happy'—so that means she loves you."

"I told you and wrote to you that she's . . . not in her right mind," said the prince, having listened to Rogozhin with suffering.

"Lord knows! You may be mistaken about that . . . anyhow, today she set the date for me, when I brought her home from the music: in three weeks, and maybe sooner, she says, we'll certainly get married; she swore to me, took down an icon, kissed it. So, Prince, now it's up to you, heh, heh!"

"That's all raving! What you're saying about me will never, never happen! I'll come to you tomorrow . . ."

"What kind of madwoman is she?" observed Rogozhin. "How is it she's in her right mind for everybody else, and for you alone she's crazy? How is it she writes letters there? If she's a madwoman, it would have been noticed there from her letters."

"What letters?" the prince asked in alarm.

"She writes there, to that one, and she reads them. Don't you know? Well, then you will; she's sure to show you herself."

"That's impossible to believe!" cried the prince.

"Eh, Lev Nikolaich, it must be you haven't gone very far down that path yet, as far as I can see, you're just at the beginning. Wait a while: you'll hire your own police, you'll keep watch yourself day and night, and know every step they make there, if only . . ."

"Drop it and never speak of it again!" cried the prince. "Listen, Parfyon, I was walking here just now before you came and suddenly began to laugh, I didn't know what about, but the reason was that I remembered that tomorrow, as if on purpose, is my birthday. It's nearly midnight now. Let's go and meet the day! I have some wine, we'll drink wine, you must wish me something I myself don't know how to wish for now, and it's precisely you who must wish it, and I'll wish you your fullest happiness. Or else give me back my cross! You didn't send it back to me the next day! You're wearing it? Wearing it even now?"

"I am," said Rogozhin.

"Come on, then. I don't want to meet my new life without you, because my new life has begun! Don't you know, Parfyon, that my new life begins today?"

"Now I myself see and know that it's begun; and I'll report it to her. You're not yourself at all, Lev Nikolaich!"

IV

As he approached his dacha with Rogozhin, the prince noticed with extreme astonishment that a noisy and numerous society had gathered on his brightly lit terrace. The merry company was laughing, shouting; it seemed they were even arguing loudly; one would have suspected at first glance that they were having quite a joyful time of it. And indeed, going up onto the terrace, he saw that they were all drinking, and drinking champagne, and it seemed they had been at it for quite a while, so that many of the revelers had managed to become quite pleasantly animated. The guests were all acquaintances of the prince, but it was strange that they had all gathered at once, as if they had been invited, though the prince had not invited anyone, and he himself had only just chanced to remember about his birthday.

"You must have told somebody you'd stand them to champagne, so they came running," Rogozhin muttered, following the prince up onto the terrace. "That point we know; just whistle to them . . ." he added almost with spite, remembering, of course, his recent past.

They all met the prince with shouts and good wishes, and surrounded him. Some were very noisy, others much quieter, but they all hastened to congratulate him, having heard about his birthday,

and each one waited his turn. The prince found the presence of some persons curious, Burdovsky's, for instance; but the most astonishing thing was that amidst this company Evgeny Pavlovich suddenly turned up. The prince could hardly believe his eyes and was almost frightened when he saw him.

Meanwhile Lebedev, flushed and nearly ecstatic, ran up to him with explanations; he was rather well loaded. From his babble it turned out that they had all gathered quite naturally and even accidentally. First of all, towards evening, Ippolit had come and, feeling much better, had wanted to wait for the prince on the terrace. He had settled himself on the sofa; then Lebedev had come down to see him, and then his whole family, that is, his daughters and General Ivolgin. Burdovsky had come with Ippolit as his escort. Ganya and Ptitsyn, it seemed, had dropped in not long ago, while passing by (their appearance coincided with the incident in the vauxhall); then Keller had turned up, told them about the birthday, and asked for champagne. Evgeny Pavlovich had come only about half an hour ago. Kolya had also insisted with all his might on champagne and that a celebration be arranged. Lebedev readily served the wine.

"But my own, my own!" he babbled to the prince. "At my own expense, to glorify and celebrate, and there'll be food, a little snack, my daughter will see to that; but if you only knew, Prince, what a theme we've got going. Remember in Hamlet: 'To be or not to be'? A modern theme, sir, modern! Questions and answers . . . And Mr. Terentyev is in the highest degree . . . unwilling to sleep! He had just a sip of champagne, a sip, nothing harmful . . . Come closer, Prince, and decide! Everybody's been waiting for you, everybody's only been waiting for your happy wit . . ."

The prince noticed the sweet, tender eyes of Vera Lebedev, who was also hurriedly making her way to him through the crowd. He reached past them all and gave her his hand first; she blushed with pleasure and wished him "a happy life starting this very day." Then she rushed off to the kitchen; she was preparing the snack there; but before the prince's arrival—the moment she could tear herself away from her work—she would come to the terrace and listen as hard as she could to the heated arguments constantly going on among the tipsy guests about things that were most abstract and strange to her. Her younger sister, the one who opened her mouth, fell asleep on a trunk in the next room, but the boy, Lebedev's son, stood beside Kolya and Ippolit, and the very look on his animated

face showed that he was prepared to stand there in the same spot, relishing and listening, for another ten hours on end.

"I've been especially waiting for you, and I'm terribly glad you've come so happy," Ippolit said, when the prince went over to shake hands with him immediately after Vera.

"And how do you know that I'm 'so happy'?"

"By the look on your face. Greet the gentlemen, and then quickly come to sit with us. I've been waiting especially for you," he added, significantly stressing the fact that he had been waiting. To the prince's remark that it might be bad for him to stay up so late, he replied that he was surprised at his wanting to die three days ago and that he had never felt better than that evening.

Burdovsky jumped up and murmured that he had come "just so . . . ," that he was with Ippolit "as an escort," and that he was also glad; that he had "written nonsense" in his letter, and that now he was "simply glad . . ." He did not finish, pressed the prince's hand firmly, and sat down on a chair.

After everyone else, the prince went over to Evgeny Pavlovich. The latter immediately took him by the arm.

"I have only a couple of words to say to you," he whispered in a low voice, "and about an extremely important circumstance. Let's step aside for a moment."

"A couple of words," another voice whispered into the prince's other ear, and another hand took him by the arm from the other side. The prince was surprised to see a terribly disheveled, flushed, winking and laughing face, in which he instantly recognized Ferdyshchenko, who had appeared from God knows where.

"Remember Ferdyshchenko?" the man asked.

"Where did you come from?" cried the prince.

"He repents!" cried Keller, running up. "He was hiding, he didn't want to come out to you, he was hiding there in the corner, he repents, Prince, he feels guilty."

"But of what, of what?"

"It was I who met him, Prince, I met him just now and brought him along; he's a rare one among my friends; but he repents."

"I'm very glad, gentlemen. Go and sit there with everyone, I'll be back presently." The prince finally got rid of them and hurried to Evgeny Pavlovich.

"It's amusing here," Evgeny Pavlovich observed, "and it was with pleasure that I waited half an hour for you. The thing is, my most gentle Lev Nikolaevich, that I've settled everything with

Kurmyshev and have come to put you at ease; there's nothing to worry about, he took the matter very, very reasonably, the more so because, in my opinion, it was sooner his fault."

"What Kurmyshev?"

"The one you seized by the arms today . . . He was so infuriated that he wanted to send someone to you tomorrow for explanations."

"Come, come, what nonsense!"

"Naturally it's nonsense and would probably have ended in nonsense; but these people . . ."

"Perhaps you've come for something else, Evgeny Pavlovich?"

"Oh, naturally there's something else," the man laughed. "Tomorrow at daybreak, my dear Prince, I'm going to Petersburg on this unfortunate business (I mean, about my uncle). Imagine to yourself: it's all true and everybody already knows it except me. I was so struck that I haven't had time to go there (to the Epanchins'); I won't see them tomorrow either, because I'll be in Petersburg, you understand? I may not be back for three days—in short, my affairs are in poor shape. Though the matter is not of infinite importance, I reasoned that I ought to have a most candid talk with you about certain things, and without losing time, that is, before my departure. I'll sit here now and wait, if you tell me to, till the company disperses; besides, I have nothing else to do with myself: I'm so agitated that I won't be able to sleep. Finally, though it's shameless and improper to pursue a person so directly, I'll tell you directly: I've come to seek your friendship, my dear Prince. You are a most incomparable man, that is, you don't lie at every step, and maybe not at all, and there's one matter in which I need a friend and an advisor, because I now decidedly find myself among the unfortunate . . ."

He laughed again.

"The trouble is," the prince reflected for a moment, "that you want to wait till they disperse, but God knows when that will be. Wouldn't it be better to go down to the park now? They'll wait, really; I'll apologize."

"No, no, I have my reasons for not arousing the suspicion that we are having an urgent conversation with some purpose; there are people here who are very interested in our relations—don't you know that, Prince? And it will be much better if they see that they are the most friendly relations, and not merely urgent ones—you understand? They'll leave in a couple of hours; I'll take about twenty minutes of your time—maybe half an hour . . ."

"You're most welcome, please stay. I'm very glad even without explanations; and thank you very much for your kind words about our friendly relations. You must forgive me for being absentminded tonight; you know, I simply cannot be attentive at the moment."

"I see, I see," Evgeny Pavlovich murmured with a slight smile. He laughed very easily that evening.

"What do you see?" the prince roused himself up.

"And don't you suspect, dear Prince," Evgeny Pavlovich went on smiling, without answering the direct question, "don't you suspect that I've simply come to hoodwink you and, incidentally, to worm something out of you, eh?"

"There's no doubt at all that you've come to worm something out of me," the prince finally laughed, too, "and it may even be that you've decided to deceive me a bit. But so what? I'm not afraid of you; what's more, it somehow makes no difference to me now, can you believe that? And . . . and . . . and since I'm convinced before all that you are still an excellent person, we may indeed end by becoming friends. I like you very much, Evgeny Pavlych; in my opinion, you're ... a very, very decent man!"

"Well, in any case it's very nice dealing with you, even in whatever it may be," Evgeny Pavlovich concluded. "Come, I'll drink a glass to your health; I'm terribly pleased to have joined you here. Ah!" he suddenly stopped, "has this gentleman Ippolit come to live with you?"

"Yes."

"He's not going to die at once, I suppose?"

"Why?"

"No, nothing; I spent half an hour with him here . . ."

All this time Ippolit was waiting for the prince and constantly glancing at him and Evgeny Pavlovich, while they stood aside talking. He became feverishly animated as they approached the table. He was restless and agitated; sweat broke out on his forehead. His eyes, along with a sort of roving, continual restlessness, also showed a certain vague impatience; his gaze moved aimlessly from object to object, from person to person. Though up to then he had taken great part in the general noisy conversation, his animation was only feverish; he paid no attention to the conversation itself; his arguments were incoherent, ironic, and carelessly paradoxical; he did not finish and dropped something he himself had begun saying a moment earlier with feverish ardor. The prince learned with surprise and regret that he had been allowed, unhindered, to

drink two full glasses of champagne that evening, and that the glass he had started on, which stood before him, was already the third. But he learned it only later; at the present moment he was not very observant.

"You know, I'm terribly glad that precisely today is your birthday!" cried Ippolit.

"Why?"

"You'll see. Sit down quickly. First of all, because all these . . . your people have gathered. I reckoned there would be people; for the first time in my life my reckoning came out right! Too bad I didn't know about your birthday, or I'd have come with a present . . . Ha, ha! Maybe I did come with a present! Is it long before daylight?"

"It's less than two hours till dawn," Ptitsyn said, looking at his watch.

"Who needs the dawn, if you can read outside as it is?" someone observed.

"It's because I need to see the rim of the sun. Can one drink the sun's health, Prince, what do you think?"

Ippolit asked abruptly, addressing everyone without ceremony, as if he were in command, but he seemed not to notice it himself.

"Perhaps so; only you ought to calm down, eh, Ippolit?"

"You're always talking about sleep; you're my nanny, Prince! As soon as the sun appears and 'resounds' in the sky (who said that in a poem: 'the sun resounded in the sky'?⁸ It's meaningless, but good!)—we'll go to bed. Lebedev! Is the sun the wellspring of life? What are the 'wellsprings of life' in the Apocalypse? Have you heard of 'the star Wormwood,'⁹ Prince?"

"I've heard that Lebedev thinks this 'star Wormwood' is the network of railways spread over Europe."

"No, excuse me, sir, that's not it, sir!" Lebedev cried, jumping up and waving his arms, as if wishing to stop the general laughter that was beginning. "Excuse me, sir! With these gentlemen ... all these gentlemen," he suddenly turned to the prince, "in certain points, it's like this, sir . . ." and he unceremoniously rapped the table twice, which increased the laughter still more.

Lebedev, though in his usual "evening" state, was much too agitated and irritated this time by the preceding long "learned" argument, and on such occasions his attitude towards his opponents was one of boundless and highly candid contempt.

"That's not it, sir! Half an hour ago, Prince, we made an

agreement not to interrupt; not to laugh while someone is talking; to allow him to say everything freely, and then let the atheists object if they want to; we made the general our chairman, so we did, sir! Or else what, sir? Or else anybody can get thrown off, even with the highest idea, sir, even with the deepest idea . . ."

"Well, speak, speak: nobody's throwing you off!" voices rang out.

"Speak, but not through your hat."

"What is this 'star Wormwood'?" somebody asked.

"I have no idea!" General Ivolgin answered, taking his recently appointed place as chairman with an air of importance.

"I have a remarkable fondness for all these arguments and irritations, Prince—learned ones, naturally," murmured Keller, meanwhile stirring on his chair in decided rapture and impatience, "learned and political ones," he turned suddenly and unexpectedly to Evgeny Pavlovich, who was sitting almost next to him. "You know, I'm terribly fond of reading about the English Parliaments in the newspapers, that is, not in the sense of what they discuss (I'm no politician, you know), but of the way they discuss things together, and behave, so to speak, like politicians: 'the noble viscount sitting opposite me,' 'the noble earl, who shares my thinking,' 'my noble opponent, who has astonished Europe with his proposal,' that is, all those little expressions, all that parliamentarianism of a free nation—that's what our sort finds attractive! I'm captivated, Prince. I've always been an artist in the depths of my soul, I swear to you, Evgeny Pavlych."

"So then," Ganya was seething in another corner, "it turns out, in your opinion, that the railways are cursed, that they're the bane of mankind, a plague that has fallen upon the earth to muddy the 'wellsprings of life'?"¹⁰

Gavrila Ardalionovich was in a particularly agitated mood that evening, a merry, almost triumphant mood, as it seemed to the prince. He was, of course, joking with Lebedev, egging him on, but soon he became excited himself.

"Not the railways, no, sir!" Lebedev protested, beside himself and at the same time enjoying himself tremendously. "By themselves the railways won't muddy the wellsprings of life, but the thing as a whole is cursed, sir, all this mood of our last few centuries, as a general whole, scientific and practical, is maybe indeed cursed, sir."

"Certainly cursed or only maybe? It's important in this case," inquired Evgeny Pavlovich.

"Cursed, cursed, certainly cursed!" Lebedev confirmed with passion.

"Don't rush, Lebedev, you're much kinder in the mornings," Ptitsyn observed, smiling.

"But more candid in the evenings! More heartfelt and more candid in the evenings!" Lebedev turned to him heatedly. "More simple-hearted and more definite, more honest and more honorable, and though I expose myself to you in this way, I spit on it, sir. I challenge you all now, all you atheists: how are you going to save the world, and what is the normal path you've found for it— you men of science, industry, associations, salaries, and the rest? What is it? Credit? What is credit? What will credit lead you to?"

"Aren't you a curious one!" observed Evgeny Pavlovich.

"My opinion is that whoever isn't interested in such questions is a high-society chenapan,* sir!"

"At least it will lead to general solidarity and the balance of interests," observed Ptitsyn.

"And that's all, that's all! Without recognizing any moral foundations except the satisfaction of personal egoism and material necessity? Universal peace, universal happiness—from necessity! May I venture to ask if I understand you correctly, my dear sir?"

"But the universal necessity to live, eat, and drink, and the full, finally scientific, conviction that you will never satisfy that necessity without universal association and solidarity of interests is, it seems, a strong enough thought to serve as a foothold and a 'wellspring of life' for the future ages of mankind," observed the now seriously excited Ganya.

"The necessity to eat and drink, that is, the mere sense of self-preservation . . ."

"But isn't the sense of self-preservation enough? The sense of self-preservation is the normal law of mankind ..."

"Who told you that?" Evgeny Pavlovich cried suddenly. "A law it is, true, but no more normal than the law of destruction, and perhaps also of self-destruction. Can self-preservation be the only normal law of mankind?"

"Aha!" cried Ippolit, turning quickly to Evgeny Pavlovich and looking him over with wild curiosity; but seeing that the man was laughing, he laughed himself, nudged Kolya, who was standing

*Rascal or good-for-nothing.

beside him, and again asked him what time it was, even pulling Kolya's silver watch towards him and greedily looking at the dial. Then, as if forgetting everything, he stretched out on the sofa, put his hands behind his head, and began staring at the ceiling; half a minute later he was sitting at the table again, straight-backed and listening attentively to the babble of the thoroughly excited Lebedev.

"A perfidious and derisive thought, a goading thought," Lebedev eagerly picked up Evgeny Pavlovich's paradox, "a thought uttered with the purpose of inciting the adversaries to fight—but a correct thought! Because, worldly scoffer and cavalier that you are (though not without ability!), you don't know yourself to what degree your thought is a profound and correct thought! Yes, sir. The law of self-destruction and the law of self-preservation are equally strong in mankind! The devil rules equally over mankind until a limit in time still unknown to us. You laugh? You don't believe in the devil? Disbelief in the devil is a French notion, a frivolous notion. Do you know who the devil is? Do you know what his name is? And without even knowing his name, you laugh at his form, following Voltaire's example,¹¹ at his hoofs, his tail, and his horns, which you yourselves have invented; for the unclean spirit is a great and terrible spirit, and not with the hoofs and horns you have invented for him. But he's not the point now! . . ."

"How do you know he's not the point now?" Ippolit suddenly cried, and guffawed as if in a fit.

"A clever and suggestive thought!" Lebedev praised. "But, again, that's not the point, but the question is whether the 'wellsprings of life' have not weakened with the increase . . ."

"Of railroads?" cried Kolya.

"Not of railway communications, my young but passionate adolescent, but of that whole tendency, of which railways may serve as an image, so to speak, an artistic expression. Hurrying, clanging, banging, and speeding, they say, for the happiness of mankind! 'It's getting much too noisy and industrial in mankind, there is too little spiritual peace,' complains a secluded thinker. 'Yes, but the banging of carts delivering bread for hungry mankind may be better than spiritual peace,' triumphantly replies another, a widely traveled thinker, and walks off vaingloriously. I, the vile Lebedev, do not believe in the carts that deliver bread to mankind! For carts that deliver bread to all mankind, without any moral foundations for their action, may quite cold-bloodedly exclude a

considerable part of mankind from enjoying what they deliver, as has already happened . . ."

"So carts may quite cold-bloodedly exclude?" someone picked up.

"As has already happened," Lebedev repeated, not deigning to notice the question. "There has already been Malthus, the friend of mankind.¹² But a friend of mankind with shaky moral foundations is a cannibal of mankind, to say nothing of his vainglory; insult the vainglory of one of these numberless friends of mankind, and he is ready at once to set fire to the four corners of the world out of petty vengeance—the same, however, as any one of us, to speak fairly, as myself, the vilest of all, for I might be the first to bring wood and then run away. But again, that's not the point!"

"Then what is it, finally?"

"How tiresome!"

"The point is in the following anecdote from olden times, for it's necessary that I tell you this anecdote from olden times. In our day, in our fatherland, which I hope you love as much as I do, gentlemen, because for my part I'm even ready to spill all my blood . . ."

"Go on! Go on!"

"In our fatherland, as well as in Europe, mankind is visited by universal, ubiquitous, and terrible famines, by possible reckonings and as far as I can remember, not more often now than once in a quarter century, in other words, once every twenty-five years. I won't argue about the precise number, but comparatively quite rarely."

"Comparatively to what?"

"To the twelfth century and its neighboring centuries on either side. For at that time, as writers write and maintain, universal famines visited mankind once every two or three years at least, so that in such a state of affairs man even resorted to anthropophagy, though he kept it a secret. One of these parasites, approaching old age, announced on his own and without being forced, that in the course of a long and meager life he had personally killed and eaten in deepest secrecy sixty monks and several lay babies—about six, not more, that is, remarkably few compared with the quantity of clergy he had eaten. Of lay adults, as it turned out, he had never touched any with that purpose."

"That cannot be!" cried the chairman himself, the general, in an all but offended voice. "I often discuss and argue with him, always

about similar thoughts, gentlemen; but most often he produces such absurdities that one's ears fall off, not a groatsworth of plausibility!"

"General! Remember the siege of Kars, and you, gentlemen, should know that my anecdote is the naked truth. For my own part, I will observe that almost every actuality, though it has its immutable laws, is almost always incredible and implausible. And the more actual it is, the more implausible it sometimes seems."

"But how can one eat sixty monks?" they laughed all around.

"Though he didn't eat them all at once, which is obvious, but maybe over the course of fifteen or twenty years, which is quite understandable and natural ..."

"And natural?"

"And natural!" Lebedev snapped at them with pedantic persistence. "And besides all that, a Catholic monk is prying and curious by his very nature, and it's quite easy to lure him into a forest or some other secluded place and deal with him in the above-mentioned way—but all the same I don't deny that the quantity of persons eaten comes out as extraordinary, even to the point of intemperance."

"Maybe it's true, gentlemen," the prince suddenly observed.

Up to then he had listened silently to the arguers and had not entered the conversation; he had often laughed heartily following the general outbursts of laughter. It was obvious that he was terribly glad that it was so merry, so noisy; even that they were drinking so much. Perhaps he would not have said a word the whole evening, but suddenly he somehow decided to speak. He spoke with extreme seriousness, so that everyone suddenly turned to him with curiosity.

"Essentially, gentlemen, what I want to say is that there were such frequent famines back then. I've heard about it, too, though I have a poor knowledge of history. But it seems it must have been so. When I found myself in the Swiss mountains, I was terribly astonished by the ruins of the ancient knightly castles, built on the sides of the mountains, on steep cliffs, and at least half a mile straight up (meaning several miles by little paths). We know what a castle is: it's a whole mountain of stones. Terrible, impossible labor! And, of course, they were built by all those poor people, the vassals. Besides that, they had to pay all sorts of taxes and support the clergy. How could they feed themselves and work the land? There were few of them then, they must have been terribly starved, and there may have been literally nothing to eat. I even used to

think sometimes: how is it that these people did not cease altogether then and that nothing happened to them, how could they hold out and endure? Lebedev is undoubtedly right that there were cannibals, and perhaps a great many of them; only what I don't know is why precisely he mixed monks into it and what does he mean to say by that?"

"Probably that in the twelfth century only monks could be eaten, because only monks were fat," observed Gavrila Ardalionovich.

"A most splendid and correct thought!" cried Lebedev. "For he never even touched a layman. Not a single layman to sixty head of clergy, and this is a horrible thought, a historical thought, a statistical thought, finally, and it is from such facts that the knowing man constructs history; for it is asserted with numerical exactitude that the clergy lived at least sixty times more happily and freely than the rest of mankind at that time. And were, perhaps, at least sixty times fatter than the rest of mankind . . ."

"An exaggeration, an exaggeration, Lebedev!" they guffawed all around.

"I agree that it's a historical thought, but what are you getting at?" the prince went on asking. (He spoke with such seriousness and such an absence of any joking or mockery of Lebedev, whom everyone laughed at, that his tone, amidst the general tone of the whole company, involuntarily became comical; a little more and they would have started making fun of him as well, but he did not notice it.)

"Don't you see he's crazy, Prince?" Evgeny Pavlovich leaned towards him. "I was told here earlier that he went crazy over being a lawyer and making speeches, and that he wants to pass an examination. I'm expecting an excellent parody."

"I'm getting at a tremendous conclusion," Lebedev meanwhile thundered. "But first of all let us analyze the psychological and juridical condition of the criminal. We see that the criminal, or, so to speak, my client, despite all the impossibility of finding other eatables, shows more than once, in the course of his peculiar career, a desire to repent, and avoids clergymen. We see it clearly from the facts: it is mentioned that he did, after all, eat five or six babies—a comparatively insignificant number, but portentous in another respect. It is obvious that, suffering from terrible remorse (for my client is a religious and conscientious man, as I shall prove), and in order to diminish his sin as far as possible, six times, by way of experiment, he changed monastic food for lay food. That it was

by way of experiment is, again, unquestionable; for if it was only for gastronomic variety, the number six would be too insignificant: why only six and not thirty? (I'm considering a fifty-fifty proportion.) But if it was only an experiment, only out of despair before the fear of blaspheming and insulting the Church, then the number six becomes all too comprehensible; for six experiments, to satisfy the remorse of conscience, are quite sufficient, because the experiments could not have been successful. And, first of all, in my opinion, a baby is too small, that is, not of large size, so that for a given period of time he would need three or five times the number of lay babies as of clergymen, so that the sin, while diminishing on the one hand, would in the final end be increased on the other, if not in quality, then in quantity. In reasoning this way, gentlemen, I am, of course, descending into the heart of the twelfth-century criminal. For my own part, as a nineteenth-century man, I might have reasoned differently, of which I inform you, so there's no need to go grinning at me, gentlemen, and for you, General, it is quite unsuitable. Second, a baby, in my personal opinion, is not nourishing, is perhaps even too sweet and cloying, so that, while not satisfying the need, it leaves one with nothing but remorse of conscience. Now for the conclusion, the finale, gentlemen, the finale which contains the answer to one of the greatest questions of that time and ours! The criminal ends by going and denouncing himself to the clergy, and surrenders to the hands of the authorities. One may ask, what tortures did he face, considering the time, what wheels, fires, and flames? Who prompted him to go and denounce himself? Why not simply stop at the number sixty, keeping your secret till your last breath? Why not simply give up monks and live in penitence as a recluse? Why, finally, not become a monk himself? Now here is the answer! It means there was something stronger than fire and flame and even than a twenty-year habit! It means there was a thought stronger than all calamities, crop failures, torture, plague, leprosy, and all that hell, which mankind would have been unable to endure without that thought which binds men together, guides their hearts, and makes fruitful the wellsprings of the life of thought! Show me something resembling such a force in our age of crime and railways . . . that is, I should have said: our age of steam and railways, but I say: in our age of crime and railways, because I'm drunk, but just! Show me a thought binding present-day mankind together that is half as strong as in those centuries. And dare to say, finally, that the wellsprings of life have

not weakened, have not turned muddy under this 'star,' under this network that ensnares people. And don't try to frighten me with your prosperity, your wealth, the rarity of famines, and the speed of communication! There is greater wealth, but less force; the binding idea is gone; everything has turned soft, everything is overstewed, everyone is overstewed! We're all, all, all overstewed! . . . But enough, that's not the point now; the point is, shouldn't we give orders, my highly esteemed Prince, about the little snack prepared for our guests?"

Lebedev, who had almost driven some of his listeners to real indignation (the bottles, it should be noted, did not cease to be uncorked all the while), immediately won over all his opponents by unexpectedly concluding his speech with a little snack. He himself called such a conclusion a "clever, advocatory rounding off of the case." Merry laughter arose again, the guests became animated; they all got up from the table to stretch and stroll about the terrace. Only Keller remained displeased with Lebedev's speech and was in extreme agitation.

"The man attacks enlightenment, preaches rabid twelfth-century fanaticism, clowns, and even without any innocence of heart: how did he pay for this house, may I ask?" he said aloud, stopping all and sundry.

"I've seen a real interpreter of the Apocalypse," the general said in another corner to other listeners, among them Ptitsyn, whom he seized by a button, "the late Grigory Semyonovich Burmistrov: he burned through your heart, so to speak. First, he put on his spectacles, opened a big old book bound in black leather, well, and a gray beard along with it, two medals for his donations. He'd begin sternly and severely, generals bowed down to him, and ladies swooned—well, and this one ends with a snack. I've never seen the like!"

Ptitsyn listened to the general, smiled, and seemed about to take his hat, but could not quite make up his mind or else kept forgetting his intention. Ganya, before the moment when they all got up from the table, had suddenly stopped drinking and pushed his glass away; something dark had passed over his face. When they got up from the table, he went over to Rogozhin and sat down next to him. One might have thought they were on the most friendly terms. Rogozhin, who at first also made as if to leave quietly several times, now sat motionless, his head bowed, and also seemed to have forgotten that he wanted to leave. He did not drink a single

drop of wine all evening and was very pensive; only from time to time he raised his eyes and looked them all over. Now one might have thought he was waiting there for something extremely important for him and was resolved not to leave till the time came.

The prince drank only two or three glasses and was merely merry. Getting up from the table, he met Evgeny Pavlovich's gaze, remembered about their forthcoming talk, and smiled affably. Evgeny Pavlovich nodded to him and suddenly pointed to Ippolit, whom he was observing intently at that moment. Ippolit was asleep, stretched out on the sofa.

"Tell me, Prince, why has this boy foisted himself on you?" he said suddenly, with such obvious vexation and even spite that the prince was surprised. "I'll bet he's got something wicked in mind!"

"I've noticed," said the prince, "or at least it seems to me, that he interests you very much today, Evgeny Pavlych. Is it true?"

"And add that in my circumstances I have a lot to think about, so that I'm surprised myself that I've been unable to tear myself away from that repulsive physiognomy all evening!"

"He has a handsome face . . ."

"There, there, look!" cried Evgeny Pavlovich, pulling the prince's arm. "There! . . ."

The prince again looked Evgeny Pavlovich over with surprise.

V

Ippolit, who towards the end of Lebedev's dissertation had suddenly fallen asleep on the sofa, now suddenly woke up, as if someone had nudged him in the side, gave a start, sat up, looked around, and turned pale; he looked around even in a sort of fright; but horror almost showed in his face when he recalled and understood everything.

"What, they're going home? Is it over? Is it all over? Has the sun risen?" he asked in alarm, seizing the prince's hand. "What time is it? For God's sake, what time? I've overslept. Did I sleep long?" he added with an almost desperate look, as if he had slept through something on which at least his whole destiny depended.

"You slept for seven or eight minutes," Evgeny Pavlovich replied.

Ippolit looked at him greedily and pondered for a few moments.

"Ah . . . that's all! So, I . . ."

And he drew his breath deeply and greedily, as if throwing off

an immense burden. He finally realized that nothing was "over," that it was not dawn yet, that the guests had gotten up from the table only to have a snack, and that the only thing that was over was Lebedev's babble. He smiled, and a consumptive flush in the form of two bright spots played on his cheeks.

"So you've been counting the minutes while I slept, Evgeny Pavlych," he picked up mockingly. "You haven't torn yourself away from me all evening, I saw . . . Ah! Rogozhin! I just saw him in a dream," he whispered to the prince, frowning and nodding towards Rogozhin, who was sitting by the table. "Ah, yes," he again skipped on suddenly, "where is the orator, where is Lebedev? So Lebedev's finished? What was he talking about? Is it true, Prince, that you once said 'beauty' would save the world? Gentlemen," he cried loudly to them all, "the prince insists that beauty will save the world! And I insist that he has such playful thoughts because he's in love now. Gentlemen, the prince is in love; as soon as he came in today, I was convinced of it. Don't blush, Prince, or I'll feel sorry for you. What beauty will save the world? Kolya told me what you said . . . Are you a zealous Christian? Kolya says you call yourself a Christian."

The prince studied him attentively and did not answer.

"You don't answer me? Maybe you think I love you very much?" Ippolit suddenly added, as if breaking off.

"No, I don't think so. I know you don't love me."

"What? Even after yesterday? Wasn't I sincere with you yesterday?"

"Yesterday, too, I knew you didn't love me."

"Because I envy you, envy you, is that it? You've always thought so and you think so now, but . . . but why am I telling you that? I want more champagne; pour me some, Keller."

"You shouldn't drink more, Ippolit, I won't let you . . ."

And the prince moved the glass away from him.

"In fact. . ." he agreed at once, as if pondering, "they might say . . . ah, what the devil do I care what they say! Isn't it true, isn't it true? Let them talk afterwards, right, Prince? As if it's any of our business what happens afterwards! . . . Anyhow, I'm still not quite awake. I had a terrible dream. I've just remembered it ... I don't wish you such dreams, Prince, though maybe I actually don't love you. Anyhow, if you don't love someone, why wish him ill, isn't it true? See how I keep asking, asking all the time! Give me your hand; I'll press it firmly, like this . . . You do still give me your

hand, though? Does that mean you know I'm sincere? . . . Maybe I won't drink anymore. What time is it? Never mind, though, I know what time it is. The hour has come! It's just the right time. What, they've put out the food in the corner? So this table is free? Excellent! Gentlemen, I . . . however, these gentlemen are not all listening . ., I intend to read an article, Prince; food is, of course, more interesting, but . . ."

And suddenly, quite unexpectedly, he pulled from his upper side pocket a big, official-sized envelope, sealed with a big red seal. He placed it on the table in front of him.

This unexpectedness had an effect on the company, which was unprepared for it, or, better, was prepared, but not for that. Evgeny Pavlovich even jumped in his chair; Ganya quickly moved to the table; Rogozhin did the same, but with a sort of gruff vexation, as if he knew what it was about. Lebedev, who happened to be near by, came closer with his curious little eyes and gazed at the envelope, trying to guess what it was about.

"What have you got there?" the prince asked uneasily.

"With the first little rim of the sun, I'll lie down, Prince, I told you that; on my word of honor: you'll see!" cried Ippolit. "But . . . but . . . can you possibly think I'm not capable of opening this envelope?" he added, passing his gaze over them all with a sort of defiance, and as if addressing them all indiscriminately. The prince noticed that he was trembling all over.

"None of us thinks that," the prince answered for everyone, "and why do you think that anyone has such an idea, and what. . . what has given you this strange idea of reading? What is it you've got there, Ippolit?"

"What is it? Has something happened to him again?" they asked all around. Everyone came closer, some still eating; the envelope with the red seal attracted them all like a magnet.

"I wrote it myself yesterday, right after I gave you my word that I'd come and live with you, Prince. I spent all day yesterday writing it, then last night, and finished it this morning. Last night, towards morning, I had a dream ..."

"Wouldn't it be better tomorrow?" the prince interrupted timidly.

"Tomorrow 'there will be no more time!'"¹³ Ippolit chuckled hysterically. "Don't worry, however, I can read it through in forty minutes . . . well, in an hour . . . And you can see how interested everyone is; everyone came over; everyone is looking at my seal; if I hadn't sealed the article in an envelope, there would have been

no effect! Ha, ha! That's what mysteriousness means! Shall I open it, gentlemen, or not?" he cried, laughing his strange laugh and flashing his eyes. "A mystery! A mystery! And do you remember, Prince, who it was who announced that 'there will be no more time'? A huge and powerful angel in the Apocalypse announces it."

"Better not read it!" Evgeny Pavlovich suddenly exclaimed, but with an air of uneasiness so unexpected in him that many found it strange.

"Don't read it!" the prince, too, cried, putting his hand on the envelope.

"What's this about reading? Right now we're eating," somebody observed.

"An article? For a magazine, or what?" inquired another.

"Maybe it's boring?" added a third.

"What have you got?" inquired the rest. But the prince's frightened gesture seemed to frighten Ippolit himself.

"So ... I shouldn't read it?" he whispered somehow fearfully to the prince, with a crooked smile on his blue lips. "I shouldn't read it?" he murmured, passing his gaze over all the public, all the eyes and faces, and as if again snatching at everything with his former, almost aggressive expansiveness. "Are you . . . afraid?" he turned to the prince again.

"Of what?" the latter asked, changing countenance more and more.

"Does anybody have a twenty-kopeck piece?" Ippolit suddenly jumped up from his chair as if he had been pulled from it. "A coin of any kind?"

"Here!" Lebedev offered at once; the thought flashed in him that the sick Ippolit had gone crazy.

"Vera Lukyanovna!" Ippolit hastily invited, "take it and toss it on the table: heads or tails? Heads I read!"

Vera looked fearfully at the coin, at Ippolit, then at her father, and, somehow awkwardly, her head thrown back, as if convinced that she herself should not look at the coin, tossed it on the table. It came up heads.

"I read!" whispered Ippolit, as if crushed by the decision of fate; he could not have turned more pale if a death sentence had been read to him. "But anyhow," he suddenly gave a start after pausing half a minute, "what is it? Have I just cast the die?" and with the same aggressive frankness he looked at everyone around him. "But this is an astonishing psychological feature!" he suddenly cried,

turning to the prince in genuine amazement. "This . . . this is an inconceivable feature, Prince!" he confirmed, growing animated and as if coming to his senses. "Write this down, Prince, remember it, I believe you collect materials about capital punishment ... so I was told, ha, ha! Oh, God, what senseless absurdity!" He sat down on the sofa, leaned both elbows on the table, and clutched his head with his hands. "It's even shameful! . . . The devil I care if it's shameful," he raised his head almost at once. "Gentlemen! Gentlemen, I am opening the envelope," he announced with a sort of unexpected resolve, "I . . . however, I'm not forcing you to listen! . . ."

His hands trembling with excitement, he opened the envelope, took out several sheets of paper covered with small writing, placed them in front of him, and began smoothing them out.

"But what is it? What have you got there? What are you going to read?" some muttered gloomily; others kept silent. But they all sat down and watched curiously. Perhaps they indeed expected something extraordinary. Vera gripped her father's chair and all but wept from fear; Kolya was almost as frightened. Lebedev, who had already settled down, suddenly got up, seized the candles, and moved them closer to Ippolit, so that there would be enough light to read by.

"Gentlemen, you . . . you'll presently see what it is," Ippolit added for some reason and suddenly began his reading: " 'A Necessary Explanation'! Epigraph: Après moi le deluge* . . . Pah, devil take it!" he cried as if burned. "Could I have seriously set down such a stupid epigraph? . . . Listen, gentlemen! ... I assure you that in the final end this may all be the most terrible trifles! It's just some of my thoughts ... If you think it's . . . something mysterious or . . . forbidden ... in short . . ."

"Read without any prefaces," Ganya interrupted.

"He's dodging!" somebody added.

"Too much talk," put in Rogozhin, who had been silent the whole time.

Ippolit suddenly looked at him, and when their eyes met, Rogozhin grinned bitterly and sarcastically, and slowly pronounced some strange words:

"That's not how the thing should be handled, man, that's not . . ."

* After me the great flood.

What Rogozhin meant to say, no one, of course, understood, but his words made a rather strange impression on them all; it was as if they had all brushed up against a common thought. But the impression these words made on Ippolit was terrible; he trembled so much that the prince reached out to support him, and he would probably have cried out, if his voice had not suddenly failed him. For a whole minute he was unable to utter a word and, breathing heavily, stared at Rogozhin. At last, breathlessly and with great effort he spoke:

"So that . . . that was you . . . you?"

"What? What about me?" Rogozhin answered in perplexity, but Ippolit, flushed, and suddenly seized almost by rage, cried sharply and loudly:

"You were in my room last week, at night, past one o'clock, the same day I went to see you in the morning! You! Admit it was you!"

"Last week, at night? You must have gone clean out of your mind, man."

The "man" was silent again for a minute, putting his forefinger to his forehead and as if thinking hard; but in his pale smile, still twisted with fear, there suddenly flashed something cunning, as it were, and even triumphant.

"It was you!" he repeated at last, almost in a whisper, but with extraordinary conviction. "You came to my room and sat silently on my chair, by the window, for a whole hour; more; from one till past two in the morning; then you got up and left after two ... It was you, you! Why you frightened me, why you came to torment me—I don't understand, but it was you!"

And in his eyes there suddenly flashed a boundless hatred, in spite of his frightened trembling, which had still not subsided.

"You'll find out all about it presently, gentlemen, I . . . I . . . listen . . ."

Again, and in terrible haste, he seized his pages; they had spilled and scattered, he tried to gather them up; they trembled in his trembling hands; for a long time he could not settle down.

The reading finally began. At first, for about five minutes, the author of the unexpected article was still breathless and read dis-jointedly and unevenly; but then his voice grew firm and began to express fully the meaning of what he read. Only occasionally a very strong cough interrupted him; by the middle of the article his voice became very hoarse; the extraordinary animation that came over him more and more as he read, in the end reached the highest

pitch, as did its painful impression on his listeners. Here is the whole of this "article."

My Necessary Explanation

Après moi le déluge!

Yesterday morning the prince came to see me; incidentally, he talked me into moving to his dacha. I knew he would certainly insist on that, and I was sure he would blurt right out to me that it would be "easier for me to die among people and trees," as he puts it. But this time he did not say to die, but said "it would be easier to live," which, however, makes almost no difference for me in my situation. I asked him what he meant by his incessant "trees," and why he was foisting these "trees" on me—and was surprised to learn from him that I myself supposedly said the other evening that I had come to Pavlovsk to look at the trees for the last time. When I observed to him that it made no difference whether I died under the trees or looking out the window at my bricks, and that there was no point in making a fuss over two weeks, he agreed at once; but greenery and clean air, in his opinion, are bound to produce some physical change in me, and my agitation and my dreams will change and perhaps become lighter. I again observed to him laughingly that he spoke like a materialist. He replied with his smile that he had always been a materialist. Since he never lies, these words must mean something. His smile is nice; I've looked at him more attentively now. I do not know whether I love him or not now; I have no time to bother with that now. My five-month hatred of him, it should be noted, has begun to abate in this last month. Who knows, maybe I went to Pavlovsk mainly to see him. But . . . why did I leave my room then? A man condemned to death should not leave his corner; and if I had not taken a final decision now, but had decided, on the contrary, to wait till the last hour, then, of course, I would not have left my room for anything and would not have accepted the suggestion of moving out "to die" in his place in Pavlovsk.

I must hurry and finish all this "explanation" by tomorrow without fail. Which means I will not have time to reread and correct it; I will reread it tomorrow when I read it to the prince and the two or three witnesses I intend to find there. Since there will not be a single lying word in it, but only the whole truth, ultimate and solemn, I am curious beforehand what sort of impression it will

make on me at that hour and that moment when I start to reread it. However, I need not have written the words "ultimate and solemn truth"; there is no need to lie for the sake of two weeks anyway, because it is not worth living for two weeks; that is the best proof that I will write nothing but the truth. (NB. Do not forget the thought: am I not mad at this moment, that is, at moments? I have been told positively that people in the last stages of consumption sometimes lose their minds temporarily. Check this tomorrow during the reading by the impression made on the listeners. This question must be resolved with the utmost precision; otherwise it is impossible to set about anything.)

It seems to me that I have just written something terribly stupid, but I have no time to correct it, as I said; besides, I give myself my word purposely not to correct a single line in this manuscript, even if I notice that I am contradicting myself every five lines. I precisely want to determine tomorrow during the reading whether the logical course of my thought is correct; whether I notice my own mistakes, and thus whether everything I have thought through during these six months in this room is true or mere raving.

If, just two months ago, I had had to leave my room, as I am doing now, and say good-bye to Meyer's wall, I'm sure I would have felt sad. But now I do not feel anything, and yet tomorrow I am leaving both my room and the wall forever! Thus my conviction that for the sake of two weeks it is not worth regretting anything or giving oneself up to any sort of emotions, has overcome my nature and can now command all my feelings. But is that true? Is it true that my nature is now utterly defeated? If I were to be tortured now, I would surely start shouting, and would not say that it is not worth shouting and feeling pain because I have only two weeks left to live.

But is it true that I have only two weeks left to live, and no more? I lied that time in Pavlovsk: —n never told me anything and never saw me; but about a week ago the student Oxigenov was brought to me; in his convictions he is a materialist, an atheist, and a nihilist, which is precisely why I invited him; I needed somebody who would finally tell me the naked truth, without mawkishness or ceremony. That is what he did, and not only readily and without ceremony, but even with obvious pleasure (which, in my opinion, was unnecessary). He blurted right out to me that I had about a month left; maybe a little more, if the conditions are good; but I may even die much sooner. In his opinion, I may die unexpectedly, even, for

instance, tomorrow: such facts have occurred, and only two days ago a young lady, a consumptive and in a state resembling mine, in Kolomna, was about to go to the market for provisions, but suddenly felt ill, lay down on the sofa, sighed, and died. Oxigenov told me all this, even flaunting his unfeelingness and carelessness somewhat, as if thereby doing me honor, that is, showing that he took me to be just such an all-denying higher being as himself, for whom dying, naturally, amounts to nothing. In the end, all the same, the fact is determined: a month and no more! I am perfectly convinced that he is not mistaken about it.

It surprised me very much how the prince guessed the other day that I have "bad dreams"; he said literally that in Pavlovsk "my agitation and dreams" would change. And why dreams? He is either a doctor or indeed of an extraordinary intelligence and able to guess a great many things. (But that he is ultimately an "idiot" there can be no doubt at all.) As if on purpose, just before he came I had a nice little dream (of a kind, however, that I now have by the hundred). I fell asleep—an hour before he came, I think—and saw myself in a room (but not mine). The room was bigger and higher than mine, better furnished, bright; a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a sofa, and my bed, big and wide and covered with a green silk quilt. But in this room I noticed a terrible animal, a sort of monster. It resembled a scorpion, but it was not a scorpion, it was more vile and much more terrible, and precisely, it seemed, in that there are no such creatures in nature and that it had come to me on purpose, and that very fact presumably contained some sort of mystery. I made it out very well: it was brown and had a shell, a creeping reptile, about seven inches long, about two fingers thick at the head, gradually tapering towards the tail, so that the very tip of the tail was no more than one-fifth of an inch thick. About two inches from the head, a pair of legs came out of the body, at a forty-five-degree angle, one on each side, about three and a half inches long, so that the whole animal, if seen from above, looked like a trident. I could not make out the head very well, but I saw two feelers, not long, like two strong needles, also brown. Two identical feelers at the tip of the tail and at the tip of each foot, making eight feelers in all. The animal ran about the room very quickly, supported on its legs and tail, and when it ran, its body and legs wriggled like little snakes, with extraordinary rapidity, despite its shell, and this was very repulsive to look at. I was terribly afraid it would sting me; I had been told it was venomous, but I

was most tormented by who could have sent it to my room, what did they want to do to me, and what was the secret of it? It hid under the chest of drawers, under the wardrobe, crawled into the corners. I sat on a chair with my legs tucked under me. It quickly ran diagonally across the room and disappeared somewhere near my chair. I looked around in fear, but as I was sitting with my legs tucked under me, I hoped it would not crawl up the chair. Suddenly I heard a sort of crackling rustle behind me, almost by my head. I turned and saw that the reptile was crawling up the wall and was already level with my head and even touching my hair with its tail, which was turning and twisting with extreme rapidity. I jumped up, and the animal disappeared. I was afraid to lie down in bed, lest it crawl under the pillow. My mother and an acquaintance of hers came into the room. They tried to catch the reptile, but were calmer than I, and not even afraid. But they understood nothing. Suddenly the reptile crawled out again; this time it crawled very quietly, and as if with some particular intention, twisting slowly, which was still more repulsive, again diagonally across the room, towards the door. Here my mother opened the door and called Norma, our dog—an enormous Newfoundland, black and shaggy; she died some five years ago. She rushed into the room and stopped over the reptile as if rooted to the spot. The reptile also stopped, but was still twisting and flicking the tips of its legs and tail against the floor. Animals cannot feel mystical fear, if I am not mistaken; but at that moment it seemed to me that in Norma's fear there was something as if very extraordinary, as if almost mystical, which meant that she also sensed, as I did, that there was something fatal and some sort of mystery in the beast. She slowly backed away from the reptile, which was quietly and cautiously crawling towards her; it seemed that it wanted to rush at her suddenly and sting her. But, despite all her fear, Norma's gaze was terribly angry, though she was trembling all over. Suddenly she slowly bared her terrible teeth, opened her entire red maw, took aim, readied herself, resolved, and suddenly seized the reptile with her teeth. The reptile must have made a strong movement to escape, because Norma caught it once more, this time in the air, and twice got her whole mouth around it, still in the air, as if gulping it down. The shell cracked in her teeth; the animal's tail and legs stuck out of her mouth, moving with terrible rapidity. Suddenly Norma squealed pitifully: the reptile had managed after all to sting her on the tongue. Squealing and howling with pain, she opened her mouth,

and I saw that the bitten reptile was still stirring as it lay across her mouth, its half-crushed body oozing a large quantity of white juice onto her tongue, resembling the juice of a crushed black cockroach . . . Here I woke up, and the prince came in.

"Gentlemen," said Ippolit, suddenly tearing himself away from his reading and even almost shamefacedly, "I didn't reread it, but it seems I indeed wrote a lot that's superfluous. This dream . . ."

"Is that," Ganya hastened to put in.

"There's too much of the personal, I agree, that is, about me myself..."

As he said this, Ippolit looked weary and faint and wiped the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief.

"Yes, sir, you're much too interested in yourself," hissed Lebedev.

"Again, gentlemen, I'm not forcing anyone: whoever doesn't want to listen can leave."

"Throws us . .. out of somebody else's house," Rogozhin growled barely audibly.

"And what if we all suddenly get up and leave?" Ferdyshchenko, who until then, incidentally, had not dared to speak aloud, said unexpectedly.

Ippolit suddenly dropped his eyes and clutched his manuscript; but in that same second he raised his head again and, his eyes flashing, with two red spots on his cheeks, said, looking point-blank at Ferdyshchenko:

"You don't love me at all!"

There was laughter; however, the majority did not laugh. Ippolit blushed terribly.

"Ippolit," said the prince, "close your manuscript and give it to me, and go to bed here in my room. We can talk before we sleep and tomorrow; but on condition that you never open these pages again. Do you want that?"

"Is this possible?" Ippolit looked at him in decided astonishment. "Gentlemen!" he cried, again growing feverishly animated, "a stupid episode, in which I was unable to behave myself. There will be no further interruptions of the reading. Whoever wants to listen, can listen ..."

He hurriedly gulped some water from a glass, hurriedly leaned his elbow on the table, in order to shield himself from others' eyes, and stubbornly went on with his reading. The shame, however, soon left him . . .

The idea (he went on reading) that it was not worth living for a few weeks began to take possession of me in a real sense about a month ago, I think, when I still had four weeks left to live, but it overcame me completely only three days ago, when I returned from that evening in Pavlovsk. The first moment of my being fully, directly pervaded by this thought occurred on the prince's terrace, precisely at the moment when I had decided to make a last test of life, wanted to see people and trees (I said so myself), became excited, insisted on Burdovsky's—"my neighbor's"—rights, and dreamed that they would all suddenly splay their arms wide and take me into their embrace, and ask my forgiveness for something, and I theirs; in short, I ended up as a giftless fool. And it was during those hours that "the ultimate conviction" flared up in me. I am astonished now at how I could have lived for a whole six months without this "conviction"! I knew positively that I had consumption and it was incurable; I did not deceive myself and understood the matter clearly. But the more clearly I understood it, the more convulsively I wanted to live; I clung to life and wanted to live whatever the cost. I agree that I could have become angry then at the dark and blank fate which had decreed that I be squashed like a fly, and, of course, without knowing why; but why did I not end just with anger? Why did I actually begin to live, knowing that it was no longer possible for me to begin; why did I try, knowing that there was no longer anything to try? And meanwhile I could not even read through a book and gave up reading; why read, why learn for six months? This thought made me drop a book more than once.

Yes, that wall of Meyer's can tell a lot! I have written a lot on it! There is not a spot on that dirty wall that I have not learned by heart. That cursed wall! But all the same it is dearer to me than all of Pavlovsk's trees, that is, it should be dearer, if it were not all the same to me now.

I recall now with what greedy interest I began to follow their life; there was no such interest before. Sometimes, when I was so ill that I could not leave the room, I waited for Kolya with impatience and abuse. I went so much into all the little details, was so interested in every sort of rumor, that it seemed I turned into a gossip. I could not understand, for instance, how it was that these people, having so much life, were not able to become rich (however, I don't understand it now either). I knew one poor fellow of whom I was told later that he starved to death, and, I remember, that

made me furious: if it had been possible to revive the poor fellow, I think I would have executed him. Sometimes I felt better for whole weeks and was able to go out in the street; but the street finally began to produce such bitterness in me that I would spend whole days inside on purpose, though I could have gone out like everybody else. I could not bear those scurrying, bustling, eternally worried, gloomy, and anxious people who shuttled around me on the sidewalks. Why their eternal sorrow, their eternal anxiety and bustle; their eternal gloomy spite (for they are spiteful, spiteful, spiteful)? Whose fault is it that they are unhappy and do not know how to live, though they have sixty years of life ahead of them? Why did Zarnitsyn allow himself to die, having sixty years ahead of him? And each of them displays his tatters, his hardworking hands, gets angry and cries: "We work like oxen, we toil, we are hungry as dogs, and poor! The others do not work, do not toil, yet they are rich!" (The eternal refrain!) Alongside them some luckless runt "of the gentlefolk" runs and bustles about from morning till night—Ivan Fomich Surikov, he lives over us, in our house— eternally with holes in his elbows, with torn-off buttons, running errands for various people, delivering messages, and that from morning till night. Go and start a conversation with him: "Poor, destitute, and wretched, the wife died, there was no money for medicine, and in the winter the baby froze to death; the older daughter has become a kept woman . .." he's eternally whimpering, eternally complaining! Oh, never, never have I felt any pity for these fools, not now, not before—I say it with pride! Why isn't he a Rothschild himself? Whose fault is it that he has no millions, as Rothschild has, that he has no mountain of gold imperials and napoleondors,¹⁴ a mountain as high as the ice mountains for sliding during carnival week with all its booths! If he's alive, everything is in his power! Whose fault is it that he doesn't understand that?

Oh, now it's all one to me, now I have no time to be angry, but then, then, I repeat, I literally chewed my pillow at night and tore my blanket with rage. Oh, how I dreamed then, how I wished, how I purposely wished, that I, eighteen years old, barely clothed, barely covered, could suddenly be thrown out in the street and left completely alone, with no lodgings, no work, no crust of bread, no relations, not a single acquaintance in the enormous city, hungry, beaten (so much the better!), but healthy, and then I'd show them ...

Show them what?

Oh, can you possibly suppose that I do not know how I have humiliated myself as it is with my "Explanation"! Well, who is not going to consider me a runt who knows nothing of life, forgetting that I am no longer eighteen years old; forgetting that to live as I have lived for these six months means to live till you're gray-haired! But let them laugh and say that it is all tall tales. I did really tell myself tall tales. I filled whole nights with them; I remember them all now.

But do I really have to tell them again now—now, when the time for tall tales is past for me as well? And to whom! For I delighted in them then, when I saw clearly that I was forbidden even to study Greek grammar, as I once conceived of doing: "I won't get as far as the syntax before I die"—I thought at the first page and threw the book under the table. It is still lying there; I forbade Matryona to pick it up.

Let him into whose hands my "Explanation" falls and who has enough patience to read it, consider me a crazy person or even a schoolboy, or most likely of all, a man condemned to death, to whom it naturally seemed that all people except himself value their life too little, are accustomed to spending it too cheaply, too lazily, use it much too shamelessly, and are therefore unworthy of it one and all! And what then? I declare that my reader will be mistaken, and that my conviction is completely independent of my death sentence. Ask them, only ask them one and all, what they understand by happiness? Oh, you may be sure that Columbus was happy not when he had discovered America, but when he was discovering it; you may be sure that the highest moment of his happiness was, perhaps, exactly three days before the discovery of the New World, when the mutinous crew in their despair almost turned the ship back to Europe, right around! The New World is not the point here, it can just as well perish. Columbus died having seen very little of it and in fact not knowing what he had discovered. The point is in life, in life alone—in discovering it, constantly and eternally, and not at all in the discovery itself! But why talk! I suspect that everything I am saying now sounds so much like the most common phrases that I will probably be taken for a student in the lowest grade presenting his essay on "the sunrise," or they will say that I may have wanted to speak something out, but despite all my wishes I was unable to . . . "develop." But, nevertheless, I will add that in any ingenious or new human thought, or even simply in any serious human thought born in someone's head, there

always remains something which it is quite impossible to convey to other people, though you may fill whole volumes with writing and spend thirty-five years trying to explain your thought; there always remains something that absolutely refuses to leave your skull and will stay with you forever; you will die with it, not having conveyed to anyone what is perhaps most important in your idea. But if I also fail now to convey all that has been tormenting me for these six months, people will at least understand that, having reached my present "ultimate conviction," I may have paid too dearly for it; it is this that I have considered it necessary, for my own purposes, to set forth in my "Explanation." However, I continue.

VI

I do not want to lie: reality kept catching me on its hook for these six months, and I sometimes got so carried away that I forgot about my sentence or, better, did not want to think about it and even started doing things. Incidentally, about my situation then. When I became very ill about eight months ago, I broke off all my former relations and dropped all my former comrades. As I had always been a rather sullen man, my comrades easily forgot me; of course, they would have forgotten me even without this circumstance. My situation at home, that is, "in the family," was also solitary. Some five months before, I had locked myself in once and for all and separated myself completely from the family rooms. I was always obeyed, and no one dared to enter my room except at a certain hour to tidy up and bring me my dinner. My mother trembled before my orders and did not even dare to whimper in my presence, when I occasionally decided to let her in. She constantly beat the children on my account, for fear they would make noise and bother me; I often complained about their shouting; I can imagine how they must love me now! I think I also tormented "faithful Kolya," as I called him, quite a bit. Lately he has tormented me as well: all that is quite natural, people are created to torment each other. But I noticed that he put up with my irritability as if he had promised himself beforehand to spare the sick man. Naturally, that irritated me; but it seems he had decided to imitate the prince in his "Christian humility," which was slightly ridiculous. He is a young and ardent boy and, of course, imitates every-

body; but it sometimes seems to me that it is time he lived by his own reason. I love him very much. I also tormented Surikov, who lived over us and ran around from morning till night on other people's errands; I was constantly proving to him that he himself was to blame for his poverty, so that he finally got frightened and stopped coming to see me. He is a very humble man, the humblest of beings (NB. They say that humility is an awesome force; I must ask the prince about that, it's his expression); but when, in the month of March, I went up to his place, to see how, in his words, they had "frozen" the baby, and unintentionally smiled over his infant's body, because I again began explaining to Surikov that "he himself was to blame," the runt's lips suddenly trembled and, seizing me by the shoulder with one hand, he showed me the door with the other, and softly, that is, almost in a whisper, said to me: "Go, sir!" I went out, and I liked it very much, liked it right then, even at the very moment when he was leading me out; but for a long time afterwards, in my memory, his words made the painful impression of a sort of strange, contemptuous pity for him, which I did not want to feel at all. Even at the moment of such an insult (I do feel that I insulted him, though I had no intention of doing so), even at such a moment the man could not get angry! His lips quivered then not at all out of anger, I will swear to that: he seized me by the arm and uttered his splendid "Go, sir!" decidedly without being angry. There was dignity, even a great deal of it, even quite unsuited to him (so that, in truth, it was quite comical), but there was no anger. Maybe he simply began suddenly to despise me. Two or three times after that, when I met him on the stairs, he suddenly started taking his hat off to me, something he never did before, but he no longer stopped as before, but ran past me in embarrassment. If he despised me, he did it in his own way: he "humbly despised" me. But maybe he took his hat off simply out of fear of me, as his creditor's son, because he was constantly in debt to my mother and was never able to get out of it. And that is even the most likely thing of all. I wanted to have a talk with him, and I know for certain that in ten minutes he would have started asking my forgiveness; but I reasoned that it was better not to touch him.

At that same time, that is, around the time when Surikov "froze" his baby, around the middle of March, I felt much better for some reason, and that lasted for about two weeks. I started going out, most often at twilight. I loved the March twilight, when it turned

frosty and the gaslights were lit; I sometimes walked far. Once, in Shestilavochnaya Street, someone of the "gentlefolk" sort overtook me in the dark; I did not make him out very well; he was carrying something wrapped in paper and was dressed in a short and ugly coat—too light for the season. When he came to a streetlight, some ten steps ahead of me, I noticed that something fell out of his pocket. I hastened to pick it up—just in time, because someone in a long kaftan had already rushed for it, but, seeing the object in my hands, did not argue, took a fleeting glance at my hands, and slipped past. The object was a big morocco wallet of old-fashioned design and tightly stuffed; but for some reason I guessed at first glance that there was anything you like in it, except money. The passerby who had lost it was already some forty steps ahead of me and soon dropped from sight in the crowd. I ran and started shouting to him; but as I could only shout "Hey!" he did not turn around. Suddenly he darted to the left into the gateway of some house. When I ran into this gateway, where it was very dark, there was no one there. The house was enormously big, one of those huge things entrepreneurs build to make into little apartments; some of these buildings have as many as a hundred apartments in them. When I ran through the gateway, I thought I saw a man walking in the far right-hand corner of the enormous courtyard, though I could barely make out anything in the darkness. I ran to that corner and saw the entrance to a stairway; the stairway was narrow, extremely dirty, and quite unlighted; but I could hear a man running up the stairs above me, and I raced after him, hoping that while the door was being opened for him, I could catch up with him. And so it happened. The flights were very short, and there was no end of them, so that I was terribly out of breath; a door opened and closed again on the fifth floor, I guessed that from three flights down. Before I ran up, caught my breath on the landing, and found the doorbell, several minutes passed. The door was finally opened for me by a woman who was lighting a samovar in a tiny kitchen; she listened silently to my questions, understood nothing, of course, and silently opened for me the door to the next room, also small, terribly low, with vile necessary furniture and a huge, wide bed under a canopy, on which lay "Terentyich" (as the woman called to him), drunk, as it seemed to me. On the table stood an iron night-light with a candle burning down in it and a nearly empty bottle. Terentyich grunted something to me lying down and waved towards the next door, while the woman left, so