| The next day Keller came to visit the prince. He was in a high state of delight with the post of honour assigned to him at the wedding. |
| “What brutes they all are!” he whispered to the prince. Whenever he addressed him he lowered his voice. |
The prince sat silent for a long while. His mind was filled with dread and horror.
“Not the railways, oh dear, no!” replied Lebedeff, with a mixture of violent anger and extreme enjoyment. “Considered alone, the railways will not pollute the springs of life, but as a whole they are accursed. The whole tendency of our latest centuries, in its scientific and materialistic aspect, is most probably accursed.”
“Oh, I’ve still got it, here!”The prince walked along, musing. He did not like his commission, and disliked the idea of Gania sending a note to Aglaya at all; but when he was two rooms distant from the drawing-room, where they all were, he stopped as though recalling something; went to the window, nearer the light, and began to examine the portrait in his hand.
| “Get out, keep your distance!” shouted Rogojin. |
| “My name really is Lukian Timofeyovitch,” acknowledged Lebedeff, lowering his eyes, and putting his hand on his heart. |
A maid opened the door for the prince (Nastasia’s servants were all females) and, to his surprise, received his request to announce him to her mistress without any astonishment. Neither his dirty boots, nor his wide-brimmed hat, nor his sleeveless cloak, nor his evident confusion of manner, produced the least impression upon her. She helped him off with his cloak, and begged him to wait a moment in the ante-room while she announced him.
“Nor heard him?”The prince said nothing, but entered the room, sat down silently, and stared at them, one after the other, with the air of a man who cannot understand what is being said to him. It was strange--one moment he seemed to be so observant, the next so absent; his behaviour struck all the family as most remarkable. At length he rose from his seat, and begged to be shown Nastasia’s rooms. The ladies reported afterwards how he had examined everything in the apartments. He observed an open book on the table, Madam Bovary, and requested the leave of the lady of the house to take it with him. He had turned down the leaf at the open page, and pocketed it before they could explain that it was a library book. He had then seated himself by the open window, and seeing a card-table, he asked who played cards.
“No, he has not.” He burst out laughing again, but it was the laughter of a madman. Lizabetha Prokofievna approached him anxiously and seized his arm. He stared at her for a moment, still laughing, but soon his face grew serious.“We have evidence. In the first place, his mysterious disappearance at seven o’clock, or even earlier.”
| “Do you know I am specially glad that today is your birthday!” cried Hippolyte. |
“Yes, I have,” and the prince stopped again.
“He entered, and shut the door behind him. Then he silently gazed at me and went quickly to the corner of the room where the lamp was burning and sat down underneath it. He was rushing hurriedly from the terrace, when Lebedeff’s nephew seized his arms, and said something to him in a low voice. Burdovsky turned quickly, and drawing an addressed but unsealed envelope from his pocket, he threw it down on a little table beside the prince.“This is your doing, prince,” said Gania, turning on the latter so soon as the others were all out of the room. “This is your doing, sir! _You_ have been telling them that I am going to be married!” He said this in a hurried whisper, his eyes flashing with rage and his face ablaze. “You shameless tattler!”
Nastasia Philipovna was waiting for them in the first room they went into. She was dressed very simply, in black.
“What, it’s still there then, is it? Ever since the day before yesterday?”
| “Oh, Mr. Lebedeff, I am told you lecture on the Apocalypse. Is it true?” asked Aglaya. |
| “I’m all right,” said Varia, in a tone that sounded as though she were all wrong. |
“But how brave you are!” said he. “You are laughing, and I--that man’s tale impressed me so much, that I dreamt of it afterwards; yes, I dreamt of those five minutes...”
“‘Here lies a Dead Soul, Shame pursues me.’
The prince replied that he saw it.
| All the Rogojin company were now collected in the drawing-room; some were drinking, some laughed and talked: all were in the highest and wildest spirits. Ferdishenko was doing his best to unite himself to them; the general and Totski again made an attempt to go. Gania, too stood hat in hand ready to go; but seemed to be unable to tear his eyes away from the scene before him. |
“Better to be of a mess than in a mess! I remember making a joke something like that at the mess in eighteen hundred and forty--forty--I forget. ‘Where is my youth, where is my golden youth?’ Who was it said that, Colia?”
| No, this was no apparition! |
| “Because I know all, all--and that is why I speak so. I know very well how you--half a year since--offered her your hand before everybody. Don’t interrupt me. You see, I am merely stating facts without any comment upon them. After that she ran away with Rogojin. Then you lived with her at some village or town, and she ran away from you.” (Aglaya blushed dreadfully.) “Then she returned to Rogojin again, who loves her like a madman. Then you--like a wise man as you are--came back here after her as soon as ever you heard that she had returned to Petersburg. Yesterday evening you sprang forward to protect her, and just now you dreamed about her. You see, I know all. You did come back here for her, for her--now didn’t you?” |
| “It was a dream, of course,” he said, musingly. “Strange that I should have a dream like that at such a moment. Sit down--” |
“It is a pity you have taken too much wine, Lebedeff I want to ask you something... but...”
| “But--why in the world--and the money? Was it all there?” |
| “Oh, it’s too horrible!” cried poor Colia, sobbing with shame and annoyance. |
| “Hippolyte, stop, please! It’s so dreadfully undignified,” said Varia. |
“And was it you looked out of the window under the blind this morning?”
“No? I thought you very much younger.”
“She has promised to tell me tonight at her own house whether she consents or not,” replied Gania. “_C’est très-curieux et c’est très-sérieux_,” he whispered across the table to Ivan Petrovitch, rather loudly. Probably the prince heard him.“Would you like some tea? I’ll order some,” she said, after a minute or two of silence.
| Evgenie Pavlovitch continued some apparently extremely funny and interesting anecdote to Alexandra, speaking quickly and with much animation. The prince remembered that at this moment Aglaya remarked in a half-whisper: |
“They showed me out with bows and every kind of respect; they seemed quite beside themselves. I shall never forget the expression of their faces!
“Oh, I assure you I’ve lots of time, my time is entirely my own!” And the prince immediately replaced his soft, round hat on the table. “I confess, I thought Elizabetha Prokofievna would very likely remember that I had written her a letter. Just now your servant--outside there--was dreadfully suspicious that I had come to beg of you. I noticed that! Probably he has very strict instructions on that score; but I assure you I did not come to beg. I came to make some friends. But I am rather bothered at having disturbed you; that’s all I care about.--”| “She’s a real princess! I’d sell my soul for such a princess as that!” |
| “Impossible!” cried the prince. |
“Oh well, as you like!” said Muishkin. “I will think it over. You shall lose nothing!”
| Mrs. Epanchin flushed up; some accumulation of spleen in her suddenly needed an outlet. She could not bear this General Ivolgin whom she had once known, long ago--in society. |
| “They drag each other about the place,” he said, “and get drunk together at the pub close by here, and quarrel in the street on the way home, and embrace one another after it, and don’t seem to part for a moment.” |
“Yes, a marriage is being arranged--a marriage between a questionable woman and a young fellow who might be a flunkey. They wish to bring this woman into the house where my wife and daughter reside, but while I live and breathe she shall never enter my doors. I shall lie at the threshold, and she shall trample me underfoot if she does. I hardly talk to Gania now, and avoid him as much as I can. I warn you of this beforehand, but you cannot fail to observe it. But you are the son of my old friend, and I hope--”
Mrs. Epanchin, long accustomed to her husband’s infidelities, had heard of the pearls, and the rumour excited her liveliest curiosity and interest. The general remarked her suspicions, and felt that a grand explanation must shortly take place--which fact alarmed him much.