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“With you and me there would have been a scene. We should have shouted and
fought, and called in the police. But he has simply made some new friends--and
such friends, too! I know them!”

If Hippolyte and Nina Alexandrovna had, as Gania suspected, had some special
conversation about the general’s actions, it was strange that the malicious
youth, whom Gania had called a scandal-monger to his face, had not allowed
himself a similar satisfaction with Colia.
“Is such a thing possible?”
“I really don’t quite know how to tell you,” replied the prince, “but it
certainly did seem to me that the man was full of passion, and not, perhaps,
quite healthy passion. He seemed to be still far from well. Very likely he will
be in bed again in a day or two, especially if he lives fast.”
Among all the incidents of the day, one recurred to his mind to the exclusion of
the rest; although now that his self-control was regained, and he was no longer
under the influence of a nightmare, he was able to think of it calmly. It
concerned the knife on Rogojin’s table. “Why should not Rogojin have as many
knives on his table as he chooses?” thought the prince, wondering at his
suspicions, as he had done when he found himself looking into the cutler’s
window. “What could it have to do with me?” he said to himself again, and
stopped as if rooted to the ground by a kind of paralysis of limb such as
attacks people under the stress of some humiliating recollection.

“Oh no; not at all.”

“H’m! I like to see that you know your manners; and you are by no means such a
person as the general thought fit to describe you. Come along; you sit here,
opposite to me,” she continued, “I wish to be able to see your face. Alexandra,
Adelaida, look after the prince! He doesn’t seem so very ill, does he? I don’t
think he requires a napkin under his chin, after all; are you accustomed to
having one on, prince?”

“When I observed that it was all the same whether one died among trees or in
front of a blank brick wall, as here, and that it was not worth making any fuss
over a fortnight, he agreed at once. But he insisted that the good air at
Pavlofsk and the greenness would certainly cause a physical change for the
better, and that my excitement, and my _dreams_, would be perhaps relieved. I
remarked to him, with a smile, that he spoke like a materialist, and he answered
that he had always been one. As he never tells a lie, there must be something in
his words. His smile is a pleasant one. I have had a good look at him. I don’t
know whether I like him or not; and I have no time to waste over the question.
The hatred which I felt for him for five months has become considerably
modified, I may say, during the last month. Who knows, perhaps I am going to
Pavlofsk on purpose to see him! But why do I leave my chamber? Those who are
sentenced to death should not leave their cells. If I had not formed a final
resolve, but had decided to wait until the last minute, I should not leave my
room, or accept his invitation to come and die at Pavlofsk. I must be quick and
finish this explanation before tomorrow. I shall have no time to read it over
and correct it, for I must read it tomorrow to the prince and two or three
witnesses whom I shall probably find there.

“Oh, but I do know, as it happens,” said the clerk in an aggravating manner.
“Lebedeff knows all about her. You are pleased to reproach me, your excellency,
but what if I prove that I am right after all? Nastasia Phillpovna’s family name
is Barashkoff--I know, you see--and she is a very well known lady, indeed, and
comes of a good family, too. She is connected with one Totski, Afanasy
Ivanovitch, a man of considerable property, a director of companies, and so on,
and a great friend of General Epanchin, who is interested in the same matters as
he is.”

Gania was silent and merely looked contemptuously at him.

“I know it is more or less a shamefaced thing to speak of one’s feelings before
others; and yet here am I talking like this to you, and am not a bit ashamed or
shy. I am an unsociable sort of fellow and shall very likely not come to see you
again for some time; but don’t think the worse of me for that. It is not that I
do not value your society; and you must never suppose that I have taken offence
at anything.

“No--never--nowhere! I’ve been at home all my life, corked up in a bottle; and
they expect me to be married straight out of it. What are you laughing at again?
I observe that you, too, have taken to laughing at me, and range yourself on
their side against me,” she added, frowning angrily. “Don’t irritate me--I’m bad
enough without that--I don’t know what I am doing sometimes. I am persuaded that
you came here today in the full belief that I am in love with you, and that I
arranged this meeting because of that,” she cried, with annoyance.

“At once? Now? You must have forgotten...” began the prince.
Even if there seems something strange about the match, the general and his wife
said to each other, the “world” will accept Aglaya’s fiance without any question
if he is under the patronage of the princess. In any case, the prince would have
to be “shown” sooner or later; that is, introduced into society, of which he
had, so far, not the least idea. Moreover, it was only a question of a small
gathering of a few intimate friends. Besides Princess Bielokonski, only one
other lady was expected, the wife of a high dignitary. Evgenie Pavlovitch, who
was to escort the princess, was the only young man.

There were a few seconds of dead silence.

But the old lady, before Parfen had time to touch her, raised her right hand,
and, with three fingers held up, devoutly made the sign of the cross three times
over the prince. She then nodded her head kindly at him once more.
There were several rumours afloat, before long, which upset Totski’s equanimity
a good deal, but we will not now stop to describe them; merely mentioning an
instance or two. One was that Nastasia had entered into close and secret
relations with the Epanchin girls--a most unlikely rumour; another was that
Nastasia had long satisfied herself of the fact that Gania was merely marrying
her for money, and that his nature was gloomy and greedy, impatient and selfish,
to an extraordinary degree; and that although he had been keen enough in his
desire to achieve a conquest before, yet since the two friends had agreed to
exploit his passion for their own purposes, it was clear enough that he had
begun to consider the whole thing a nuisance and a nightmare.

“‘What do you think of it yourself?” replied the prince, looking sadly at
Rogojin.

He passed under the gateway and into the street. The crowds of people walking
about--as is always the case at sunset in Petersburg, during the
summer--surprised him, but he walked on in the direction of Rogojin’s house.

“Well, they do heat them a little; but the houses and stoves are so different to
ours.”

The prince commended his aspirations with warmth.

“You say you have been happy, and that proves you have lived, not less, but more
than other people. Why make all these excuses?” interrupted Aglaya in a mocking
tone of voice. “Besides, you need not mind about lecturing us; you have nothing
to boast of. With your quietism, one could live happily for a hundred years at
least. One might show you the execution of a felon, or show you one’s little
finger. You could draw a moral from either, and be quite satisfied. That sort of
existence is easy enough.”

“Oh, Lebedeff, Lebedeff! Can a man really sink to such depths of meanness?” said
the prince, sadly.

The prince hurried down to the front gate where the party were settling into the
troikas, all the bells tinkling a merry accompaniment the while. The general
caught him up on the stairs:

“Sometimes, thinking over this, I became quite numb with the terror of it; and I
might well have deduced from this fact, that my ‘last conviction’ was eating
into my being too fast and too seriously, and would undoubtedly come to its
climax before long. And for the climax I needed greater determination than I yet
possessed.

“General, remember the siege of Kars! And you, gentlemen, I assure you my
anecdote is the naked truth. I may remark that reality, although it is governed
by invariable law, has at times a resemblance to falsehood. In fact, the truer a
thing is the less true it sounds.”

“What do I care if you are base or not? He thinks he has only to say, ‘I am
base,’ and there is an end of it. As to you, prince, are you not ashamed?--I
repeat, are you not ashamed, to mix with such riff-raff? I will never forgive
you!”

“We haven’t met for some time. Meanwhile I have heard things about you which I
should not have believed to be possible.”
Nastasia looked at the new arrivals with great curiosity. Gania recollected
himself at last.
“Aglaya, don’t! This is unfair,” cried the prince, deeply distressed.

“He has astonished me,” said Ivan Fedorovitch. “I nearly fell down with
surprise. I could hardly believe my eyes when I met him in Petersburg just now.
Why this haste? That’s what I want to know. He has always said himself that
there is no need to break windows.”

“That is your father, is it not?” asked the prince.

“My word! what a thing to be melancholy about! Why, do you think I should be any
happier if I were to feel disturbed about the excavations you tell me of?”

“Why, of course,” replied the clerk, gesticulating with his hands.

“She has promised to tell me tonight at her own house whether she consents or
not,” replied Gania.

He could not help observing the excited and agitated condition of all members of
the family, and from certain hints dropped in conversation he gathered that they
were all anxious as to the impression he should make upon the princess. But the
Epanchins, one and all, believed that Muishkin, in his simplicity of mind, was
quite incapable of realizing that they could be feeling any anxiety on his
account, and for this reason they all looked at him with dread and uneasiness.

“Surely not you?” cried the prince.

“A--a moral one?” asked the prince, involuntarily.

The huge vase swayed backwards and forwards; it seemed to be uncertain whether
or no to topple over on to the head of one of the old men, but eventually
determined to go the other way, and came crashing over towards the German poet,
who darted out of the way in terror.

“Ardalion Alexandrovitch Ivolgin,” said the smiling general, with a low bow of
great dignity, “an old soldier, unfortunate, and the father of this family; but
happy in the hope of including in that family so exquisite--” “No, I don’t--not
at all! I hardly know anyone in Russia. Why, is that your name?”

“Quick--come along!” she cried, breathless with agitation and impatience. “Come
along with me this moment!”

“Yes, sir--on that very spot.” The prince gazed strangely at Lebedeff. “And the
general?” he asked, abruptly.
“No, they did not cure me.”
“Then you think Aglaya Ivanovna herself intends to go to Nastasia Philipovna’s
tonight?” he asked, and bright hectic spots came out on his cheeks and forehead.
“Not those very words. She only just had time to whisper as she went by; but by
the way she looked at me I knew it was important. She looked at me in a way that
made my heart stop beating.”

“I do desire it,” murmured Gania, softly but firmly, lowering his eyes; and he
relapsed into gloomy silence.

“What a regular old woman I am today,” he had said to himself each time, with
annoyance. “I believe in every foolish presentiment that comes into my head.”

“Well, just listen, prince. I remained here last evening, partly because I have
a great admiration for the French archbishop Bourdaloue. I enjoyed a discussion
over him till three o’clock in the morning, with Lebedeff; and then... then--I
swear by all I hold sacred that I am telling you the truth--then I wished to
develop my soul in this frank and heartfelt confession to you. This was my
thought as I was sobbing myself to sleep at dawn. Just as I was losing
consciousness, tears in my soul, tears on my face (I remember how I lay there
sobbing), an idea from hell struck me. ‘Why not, after confessing, borrow money
from him?’ You see, this confession was a kind of masterstroke; I intended to
use it as a means to your good grace and favour--and then--then I meant to walk
off with a hundred and fifty roubles. Now, do you not call that base?”

“What an idea! Of course not. And what are you blushing for again? And there
comes that frown once more! You’ve taken to looking too gloomy sometimes,
Aglaya, much more than you used to. I know why it is.”

“Yes, straight from the train! Did not you intend to say, ‘Surely you are not
Prince Muishkin?’ just now, but refrained out of politeness?”
“Besides, he’s quite a child; we can entertain him with a little hide-and-seek,
in case of need,” said Adelaida.
(“N.B.--Let me remember to consider; am I mad at this moment, or not? or rather
at these moments? I have been told that consumptives sometimes do go out of
their minds for a while in the last stages of the malady. I can prove this
tomorrow when I read it out, by the impression it makes upon the audience. I
must settle this question once and for all, otherwise I can’t go on with
anything.)
Rogojin and Nastasia Philipovna reached the station just in time for the train.
As he jumped out of the carriage and was almost on the point of entering the
train, Rogojin accosted a young girl standing on the platform and wearing an
old-fashioned, but respectable-looking, black cloak and a silk handkerchief over
her head.

“But I didn’t sleep a wink all night. I walked and walked about, and went to
where the music was--”

“Oh! couldn’t you find out?” muttered Gania, trembling hysterically.

“He was terribly confused and did not seem able to collect his scattered senses;
the pocket-book was still in his left hand.

As for his own impression on entering the room and taking his seat, he instantly
remarked that the company was not in the least such as Aglaya’s words had led
him to fear, and as he had dreamed of--in nightmare form--all night.

Her acquaintances invited her to their “At Homes” because she was so decorative.
She was exhibited to their guests like a valuable picture, or vase, or statue,
or firescreen. As for the men, Ptitsin was one of Rogojin’s friends; Ferdishenko
was as much at home as a fish in the sea, Gania, not yet recovered from his
amazement, appeared to be chained to a pillory. The old professor did not in the
least understand what was happening; but when he noticed how extremely agitated
the mistress of the house, and her friends, seemed, he nearly wept, and trembled
with fright: but he would rather have died than leave Nastasia Philipovna at
such a crisis, for he loved her as if she were his own granddaughter. Afanasy
Ivanovitch greatly disliked having anything to do with the affair, but he was
too much interested to leave, in spite of the mad turn things had taken; and a
few words that had dropped from the lips of Nastasia puzzled him so much, that
he felt he could not go without an explanation. He resolved therefore, to see it
out, and to adopt the attitude of silent spectator, as most suited to his
dignity. General Epanchin alone determined to depart. He was annoyed at the
manner in which his gift had been returned, as though he had condescended, under
the influence of passion, to place himself on a level with Ptitsin and
Ferdishenko, his self-respect and sense of duty now returned together with a
consciousness of what was due to his social rank and official importance. In
short, he plainly showed his conviction that a man in his position could have
nothing to do with Rogojin and his companions. But Nastasia interrupted him at
his first words.

But at this moment something happened which put a most unexpected end to the
orator’s speech. All this heated tirade, this outflow of passionate words and
ecstatic ideas which seemed to hustle and tumble over each other as they fell
from his lips, bore evidence of some unusually disturbed mental condition in the
young fellow who had “boiled over” in such a remarkable manner, without any
apparent reason.

“No! Oh no! Not at all!” said Evgenie. “But--how is it, prince, that
you--(excuse the question, will you?)--if you are capable of observing and
seeing things as you evidently do, how is it that you saw nothing distorted or
perverted in that claim upon your property, which you acknowledged a day or two
since; and which was full of arguments founded upon the most distorted views of
right and wrong?”

They were in no hurry to marry. They liked good society, but were not too keen
about it. All this was the more remarkable, because everyone was well aware of
the hopes and aims of their parents.

“He is for me, undoubtedly!” thought the prince, with a smile. Colia also had
joined the party, and was talking with animation to Hippolyte, who listened with
a jeering smile on his lips.

The prince took the first opportunity of informing the Epanchin ladies that he
had intended to pay them a visit that day, if they had not themselves come this
afternoon, and Lizabetha Prokofievna replied that she hoped he would still do
so.

“You know,” Adelaida continued, “you owe us a description of the Basle picture;
but first I wish to hear how you fell in love. Don’t deny the fact, for you did,
of course. Besides, you stop philosophizing when you are telling about
anything.”

“How did you know who I was? Where had you seen me before? And why were you so
struck dumb at the sight of me? What was there so overwhelming about me?” The
prince rang the bell, and asked for Nastasia Philipovna. The lady of the house
came out, and stated that Nastasia had gone to stay with Daria Alexeyevna at
Pavlofsk, and might be there some days.

However, a week later she received another letter from the same source, and at
last resolved to speak.

“What, only ten thousand!” cried Hippolyte.

“Yes, he is a rogue, but I was obliged to pay him,” said the young man. “As to
his being a rogue, he is assuredly that, and I am not saying it because he beat
you. He is an ex-lieutenant, prince, dismissed from the service, a teacher of
boxing, and one of Rogojin’s followers. They are all lounging about the
pavements now that Rogojin has turned them off. Of course, the worst of it is
that, knowing he was a rascal, and a card-sharper, I none the less played palki
with him, and risked my last rouble. To tell the truth, I thought to myself, ‘If
I lose, I will go to my uncle, and I am sure he will not refuse to help me.’ Now
that was base--cowardly and base!”

“I will not accept ten thousand roubles,” said Burdovsky.

“She died a few months later, from a cold,” said the prince.

Everyone laughed at this.

“How can I? How can I?” cried Hippolyte, looking at him in amazement.
“Gentlemen! I was a fool! I won’t break off again. Listen, everyone who wants
to!”

“Perhaps, perhaps! I am not worthy of him, I know. But I think you are lying,
all the same. He cannot hate me, and he cannot have said so. I am ready to
forgive you, in consideration of your position; but I confess I thought better
of you. I thought you were wiser, and more beautiful, too; I did, indeed! Well,
take your treasure! See, he is gazing at you, he can’t recollect himself. Take
him, but on one condition; go away at once, this instant!”

“But if they were to, would you be dreadfully frightened?”

“Why do you look at me like that, prince?” she asked suddenly, breaking off her
merry conversation and laughter with those about her. “I’m afraid of you! You
look as though you were just going to put out your hand and touch my face to see
if it’s real! Doesn’t he, Evgenie Pavlovitch--doesn’t he look like that?”

Prince S. paused, as though unwilling to continue talking about Nastasia
Philipovna.

“‘And to think that you are to be cut off from life!’ remarked Bachmatoff, in a
tone of reproach, as though he would like to find someone to pitch into on my
account.

Ivan Fedorovitch held out his hand to Muishkin, but ran after his wife, who was
leaving with every sign of violent indignation, before he had time to shake it.
Adelaida, her fiance, and Alexandra, said good-bye to their host with sincere
friendliness. Evgenie Pavlovitch did the same, and he alone seemed in good
spirits.

“He jumped up, too.
Gania was silent and merely looked contemptuously at him.
IV.
He explained about himself in a few words, very much the same as he had told the
footman and Rogojin beforehand. “Lebedeff, you seem to be angry for some
reason!” said the prince. “Let’s see it.”

“Brought whom?” cried Muishkin.

“_What?_” cried Mrs. Epanchin, raising her hands in horror. “_What’s_ that?”

“I have said already that the moment she comes in I go out, and I shall keep my
word,” remarked Varia.

While Gania put this question, a new idea suddenly flashed into his brain, and
blazed out, impatiently, in his eyes. The general, who was really agitated and
disturbed, looked at the prince too, but did not seem to expect much from his
reply.

“Undoubtedly so; Siberia, of course!”

“She opened the parcel, looked at the earrings, and laughed.

As for his own impression on entering the room and taking his seat, he instantly
remarked that the company was not in the least such as Aglaya’s words had led
him to fear, and as he had dreamed of--in nightmare form--all night.

“I defy you to find another beauty like that,” said a fourth. “I have nearly
finished,” replied Evgenie Pavlovitch.

“And Hippolyte has come down here to stay,” said Colia, suddenly.

“He led up to this on purpose. He took the trouble of writing all that so that
people should come and grab him by the arm,” observed Rogojin. “Good-night,
prince. What a time we’ve sat here, my very bones ache!”