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“Oh, I dare say one can; but you had better be calm and lie down,
Hippolyte--that’s much more important.”

At last they reached the Litaynaya. The thaw increased steadily, a warm,
unhealthy wind blew through the streets, vehicles splashed through the mud, and
the iron shoes of horses and mules rang on the paving stones. Crowds of
melancholy people plodded wearily along the footpaths, with here and there a
drunken man among them.

Gania stood before her, in his evening clothes, holding his white gloves and hat
in his hand, speechless and motionless, with arms folded and eyes fixed on the
fire.

“General, you must take your pearls back, too--give them to your wife--here they
are! Tomorrow I shall leave this flat altogether, and then there’ll be no more
of these pleasant little social gatherings, ladies and gentlemen.”
“Yes, it was I,” whispered Rogojin, looking down.

“Yes? Do you know that for a fact?” asked the prince, whose curiosity was
aroused by the general’s words.

“And would you marry a woman like that, now?” continued Gania, never taking his
excited eyes off the prince’s face.

“Do you remember Ferdishenko?” he asked.

“How do you know that? How do you know that she is not really in love with
that--that rich cad--the man she eloped with?”

The old woman continued to stare at him, but said nothing.

Her dress was modest and simple to a degree, dark and elderly in style; but both
her face and appearance gave evidence that she had seen better days.

“Silence!” cried Nastasia Philipovna. “You are about as fit to understand me as
the housemaid here, who bore witness against her lover in court the other day.
She would understand me better than you do.”

“I will explain my idea by a practical example, to make it clearer. You know the
sort of man he is. At present his only failing is that he is crazy about that
captain’s widow, and he cannot go to her without money, and I mean to catch him
at her house today--for his own good; but supposing it was not only the widow,
but that he had committed a real crime, or at least some very dishonourable
action (of which he is, of course, incapable), I repeat that even in that case,
if he were treated with what I may call generous tenderness, one could get at
the whole truth, for he is very soft-hearted! Believe me, he would betray
himself before five days were out; he would burst into tears, and make a clean
breast of the matter; especially if managed with tact, and if you and his family
watched his every step, so to speak. Oh, my dear prince,” Lebedeff added most
emphatically, “I do not positively assert that he has... I am ready, as the
saying is, to shed my last drop of blood for him this instant; but you will
admit that debauchery, drunkenness, and the captain’s widow, all these together
may lead him very far.”

“Lvovitch,” repeated the general without the slightest haste, and with perfect
confidence, just as though he had not committed himself the least in the world,
but merely made a little slip of the tongue. He sat down, and taking the
prince’s hand, drew him to a seat next to himself.
“The three or four hours went by, of course, in necessary preparations--the
priest, breakfast, (coffee, meat, and some wine they gave him; doesn’t it seem
ridiculous?) And yet I believe these people give them a good breakfast out of
pure kindness of heart, and believe that they are doing a good action. Then he
is dressed, and then begins the procession through the town to the scaffold. I
think he, too, must feel that he has an age to live still while they cart him
along. Probably he thought, on the way, ‘Oh, I have a long, long time yet. Three
streets of life yet! When we’ve passed this street there’ll be that other one;
and then that one where the baker’s shop is on the right; and when shall we get
there? It’s ages, ages!’ Around him are crowds shouting, yelling--ten thousand
faces, twenty thousand eyes. All this has to be endured, and especially the
thought: ‘Here are ten thousand men, and not one of them is going to be
executed, and yet I am to die.’ Well, all that is preparatory.

“But--recollect, Nastasia Philipovna,” stammered Totski, “you gave a promise,
quite a free one, and--and you might have spared us this. I am confused and
bewildered, I know; but, in a word, at such a moment, and before company, and
all so-so-irregular, finishing off a game with a serious matter like this, a
matter of honour, and of heart, and--”

The general, who had been talking to his chief up to this moment, had observed
the prince’s solitude and silence, and was anxious to draw him into the
conversation, and so introduce him again to the notice of some of the important
personages.

He longed to solve the mystery of something in the face of Nastasia Philipovna,
something which had struck him as he looked at the portrait for the first time;
the impression had not left him. It was partly the fact of her marvellous beauty
that struck him, and partly something else. There was a suggestion of immense
pride and disdain in the face almost of hatred, and at the same time something
confiding and very full of simplicity. The contrast aroused a deep sympathy in
his heart as he looked at the lovely face. The blinding loveliness of it was
almost intolerable, this pale thin face with its flaming eyes; it was a strange
beauty.
“Oh, yes--I know what count you’re going to see!” remarked his wife in a cutting
manner, as she turned her angry eyes on the prince. “Now then, what’s all this
about?--What abbot--Who’s Pafnute?” she added, brusquely.
“Oh yes, I know a good deal.”

“Married? how--what marriage?” murmured Gania, overwhelmed with confusion.

Lizabetha Prokofievna went to bed and only rose again in time for tea, when the
prince might be expected.

“Mamma, what are you saying?” said Alexandra again, hurriedly.

“Why do you hate me so?” asked the prince, sadly. “You know yourself that all
you suspected is quite unfounded. I felt you were still angry with me, though.
Do you know why? Because you tried to kill me--that’s why you can’t shake off
your wrath against me. I tell you that I only remember the Parfen Rogojin with
whom I exchanged crosses, and vowed brotherhood. I wrote you this in yesterday’s
letter, in order that you might forget all that madness on your part, and that
you might not feel called to talk about it when we met. Why do you avoid me? Why
do you hold your hand back from me? I tell you again, I consider all that has
passed a delirium, an insane dream. I can understand all you did, and all you
felt that day, as if it were myself. What you were then imagining was not the
case, and could never be the case. Why, then, should there be anger between us?”

“Did not you ask me the question seriously” inquired the prince, in amazement.

She fell senseless into his arms.
The news of what had happened reached the church with extraordinary rapidity.
When Keller arrived, a host of people whom he did not know thronged around to
ask him questions. There was much excited talking, and shaking of heads, even
some laughter; but no one left the church, all being anxious to observe how the
now celebrated bridegroom would take the news. He grew very pale upon hearing
it, but took it quite quietly.

It was clear that he came out with these words quite spontaneously, on the spur
of the moment. But his speech was productive of much--for it appeared that all
Gania’s rage now overflowed upon the prince. He seized him by the shoulder and
gazed with an intensity of loathing and revenge at him, but said nothing--as
though his feelings were too strong to permit of words.

“Yes.”
The prince held out the letter silently, but with a shaking hand.
The individual who corresponds thus with Evgenie Pavlovitch, and who engages so
much of his attention and respect, is Vera Lebedeff. We have never been able to
discover clearly how such relations sprang up. Of course the root of them was in
the events which we have already recorded, and which so filled Vera with grief
on the prince’s account that she fell seriously ill. But exactly how the
acquaintance and friendship came about, we cannot say.

“I don’t understand your condescension,” said Hippolyte. “As for me, I promised
myself, on the first day of my arrival in this house, that I would have the
satisfaction of settling accounts with you in a very thorough manner before I
said good-bye to you. I intend to perform this operation now, if you like; after
you, though, of course.”

Muishkin himself came in very timidly. He seemed to feel his way, and looked in
each person’s eyes in a questioning way,--for Aglaya was absent, which fact
alarmed him at once.

“What have I done wrong now?” cried Colia. “What was the good of telling you
that the prince was nearly well again? You would not have believed me; it was so
much more interesting to picture him on his death-bed.”

It was true enough that everybody was laughing, the prince among them.

“Yes, I am invited,” he replied.

“And the man who won it is a rogue, a rogue whom you ought not to have paid!”
cried Lebedeff.

As before, he crossed the street and watched the windows from the other side,
walking up and down in anguish of soul for half an hour or so in the stifling
heat. Nothing stirred; the blinds were motionless; indeed, the prince began to
think that the apparition of Rogojin’s face could have been nothing but fancy.
Soothed by this thought, he drove off once more to his friends at the
Ismailofsky barracks. He was expected there. The mother had already been to
three or four places to look for Nastasia, but had not found a trace of any
kind.

“What’s to be done? It’s fate,” said the general, shrugging his shoulders, and,
for a long while after, he continued to repeat: “It’s fate, it’s fate!”

“Why do you hate me so?” asked the prince, sadly. “You know yourself that all
you suspected is quite unfounded. I felt you were still angry with me, though.
Do you know why? Because you tried to kill me--that’s why you can’t shake off
your wrath against me. I tell you that I only remember the Parfen Rogojin with
whom I exchanged crosses, and vowed brotherhood. I wrote you this in yesterday’s
letter, in order that you might forget all that madness on your part, and that
you might not feel called to talk about it when we met. Why do you avoid me? Why
do you hold your hand back from me? I tell you again, I consider all that has
passed a delirium, an insane dream. I can understand all you did, and all you
felt that day, as if it were myself. What you were then imagining was not the
case, and could never be the case. Why, then, should there be anger between us?”

“H’m! and he receives a good salary, I’m told. Well, what should you get but
disgrace and misery if you took a wife you hated into your family (for I know
very well that you do hate me)? No, no! I believe now that a man like you would
murder anyone for money--sharpen a razor and come up behind his best friend and
cut his throat like a sheep--I’ve read of such people. Everyone seems money-mad
nowadays. No, no! I may be shameless, but you are far worse. I don’t say a word
about that other--”

“Oh, I’ve still got it, here!”

“Immediately, immediately! As for my story, gentlemen, it is too stupid and
absurd to tell you.

The prince rose and took off his mantle, revealing a neat enough morning
costume--a little worn, but well made. He wore a steel watch chain and from this
chain there hung a silver Geneva watch. Fool the prince might be, still, the
general’s servant felt that it was not correct for him to continue to converse
thus with a visitor, in spite of the fact that the prince pleased him somehow.

“You are altogether perfection; even your pallor and thinness are perfect; one
could not wish you otherwise. I did so wish to come and see you. I--forgive me,
please--”
“I’ve--I’ve had a reward for my meanness--I’ve had a slap in the face,” he
concluded, tragically.
“As a curiosity,” suggested Evgenie Pavlovitch, seeing his excellency involved
in a comparison which he could not complete.

“Impossible!” cried the prince, aghast.

The girls could see that their mother concealed a great deal from them, and left
out large pieces of the letter in reading it to them.

“I don’t know, I don’t know who said it. Come home at once; come on! I’ll punch
Gania’s head myself, if you like--only come. Oh, where _are_ you off to again?”
The general was dragging him away towards the door of a house nearby. He sat
down on the step, still holding Colia by the hand.
“So would I,” said another, from behind, “with pleasure. Devil take the thing!”
he added, in a tempest of despair, “it will all be burnt up in a minute--It’s
burning, it’s burning!”

“But he has never even--”

“There was no cap in it,” Keller announced.

“As to life in a prison, of course there may be two opinions,” said the prince.
“I once heard the story of a man who lived twelve years in a prison--I heard it
from the man himself. He was one of the persons under treatment with my
professor; he had fits, and attacks of melancholy, then he would weep, and once
he tried to commit suicide. _His_ life in prison was sad enough; his only
acquaintances were spiders and a tree that grew outside his grating--but I think
I had better tell you of another man I met last year. There was a very strange
feature in this case, strange because of its extremely rare occurrence. This man
had once been brought to the scaffold in company with several others, and had
had the sentence of death by shooting passed upon him for some political crime.
Twenty minutes later he had been reprieved and some other punishment
substituted; but the interval between the two sentences, twenty minutes, or at
least a quarter of an hour, had been passed in the certainty that within a few
minutes he must die. I was very anxious to hear him speak of his impressions
during that dreadful time, and I several times inquired of him as to what he
thought and felt. He remembered everything with the most accurate and
extraordinary distinctness, and declared that he would never forget a single
iota of the experience.

“Oh yes!” cried the prince, starting. “Hippolyte’s suicide--”

He broke off abruptly, and could not add another word. This was his one attempt
to stop the mad child, and, after he had made it, he followed her as though he
had no will of his own. Confused as his thoughts were, he was, nevertheless,
capable of realizing the fact that if he did not go with her, she would go
alone, and so he must go with her at all hazards. He guessed the strength of her
determination; it was beyond him to check it.

“How?” he said. “What do you mean? I was half joking, and you took me up quite
seriously! Why do you ask me whether I believe in God?”

The Epanchins heard about this, as well as about the episode at Nastasia
Philipovna’s. It was strange, perhaps, that the facts should become so quickly,
and fairly accurately, known. As far as Gania was concerned, it might have been
supposed that the news had come through Varvara Ardalionovna, who had suddenly
become a frequent visitor of the Epanchin girls, greatly to their mother’s
surprise. But though Varvara had seen fit, for some reason, to make friends with
them, it was not likely that she would have talked to them about her brother.
She had plenty of pride, in spite of the fact that in thus acting she was
seeking intimacy with people who had practically shown her brother the door. She
and the Epanchin girls had been acquainted in childhood, although of late they
had met but rarely. Even now Varvara hardly ever appeared in the drawing-room,
but would slip in by a back way. Lizabetha Prokofievna, who disliked Varvara,
although she had a great respect for her mother, was much annoyed by this sudden
intimacy, and put it down to the general “contrariness” of her daughters, who
were “always on the lookout for some new way of opposing her.” Nevertheless,
Varvara continued her visits.

“Ferdishenko.”

“Pavlicheff’s son! It is not worth while!” cried Lebedeff. “There is no
necessity to see them, and it would be most unpleasant for your excellency. They
do not deserve...”

“Loves him? She is head over ears in love, that’s what she is,” put in
Alexandra.

“This was still smaller than the other, so cramped that I could scarcely turn
round; a narrow single bed at one side took up nearly all the room. Besides the
bed there were only three common chairs, and a wretched old kitchen-table
standing before a small sofa. One could hardly squeeze through between the table
and the bed.

It was “heads.”

“That is true,” said the prince, “I have thought so myself. And yet, why
shouldn’t one do it?”
“H’m! then Colia has spoken to you already?”
“I will come with the greatest pleasure, and thank you very much for taking a
fancy to me. I dare say I may even come today if I have time, for I tell you
frankly that I like you very much too. I liked you especially when you told us
about the diamond earrings; but I liked you before that as well, though you have
such a dark-clouded sort of face. Thanks very much for the offer of clothes and
a fur coat; I certainly shall require both clothes and coat very soon. As for
money, I have hardly a copeck about me at this moment.”
“But what a pretty girl! Who is she?”

All this occurred, of course, in one instant of time.

V.

“The pleasure is, of course, mutual; but life is not all pleasure, as you are
aware. There is such a thing as business, and I really do not see what possible
reason there can be, or what we have in common to--”

“Oh well; I caught it quite hot enough today, thanks to you. However, I forgive
you.”
Lebedeff, who was slightly intoxicated, answered with a sigh:
“It is plain to me, that _you_ are not in it at all,” he continued, at last, a
little less vaguely, “but perhaps you had better not come to our house for a
little while. I ask you in the friendliest manner, mind; just till the wind
changes again. As for Evgenie Pavlovitch,” he continued with some excitement,
“the whole thing is a calumny, a dirty calumny. It is simply a plot, an
intrigue, to upset our plans and to stir up a quarrel. You see, prince, I’ll
tell you privately, Evgenie and ourselves have not said a word yet, we have no
formal understanding, we are in no way bound on either side, but the word may be
said very soon, don’t you see, _very_ soon, and all this is most injurious, and
is meant to be so. Why? I’m sure I can’t tell you. She’s an extraordinary woman,
you see, an eccentric woman; I tell you I am so frightened of that woman that I
can’t sleep. What a carriage that was, and where did it come from, eh? I
declare, I was base enough to suspect Evgenie at first; but it seems certain
that that cannot be the case, and if so, why is she interfering here? That’s the
riddle, what does she want? Is it to keep Evgenie to herself? But, my dear
fellow, I swear to you, I swear he doesn’t even _know_ her, and as for those
bills, why, the whole thing is an invention! And the familiarity of the woman!
It’s quite clear we must treat the impudent creature’s attempt with disdain, and
redouble our courtesy towards Evgenie. I told my wife so.

Ptitsin was quiet and not easily offended--he only laughed. But on one occasion
he explained seriously to Gania that he was no Jew, that he did nothing
dishonest, that he could not help the market price of money, that, thanks to his
accurate habits, he had already a good footing and was respected, and that his
business was flourishing.

Suddenly, to the astonishment of all, Keller went quickly up to the general.

“Yes, and he gave me a fearful dig in the chest,” cried the prince, still
laughing. “What are we to fight about? I shall beg his pardon, that’s all. But
if we must fight--we’ll fight! Let him have a shot at me, by all means; I should
rather like it. Ha, ha, ha! I know how to load a pistol now; do you know how to
load a pistol, Keller? First, you have to buy the powder, you know; it mustn’t
be wet, and it mustn’t be that coarse stuff that they load cannons with--it must
be pistol powder. Then you pour the powder in, and get hold of a bit of felt
from some door, and then shove the bullet in. But don’t shove the bullet in
before the powder, because the thing wouldn’t go off--do you hear, Keller, the
thing wouldn’t go off! Ha, ha, ha! Isn’t that a grand reason, Keller, my friend,
eh? Do you know, my dear fellow, I really must kiss you, and embrace you, this
very moment. Ha, ha! How was it you so suddenly popped up in front of me as you
did? Come to my house as soon as you can, and we’ll have some champagne. We’ll
all get drunk! Do you know I have a dozen of champagne in Lebedeff’s cellar?
Lebedeff sold them to me the day after I arrived. I took the lot. We’ll invite
everybody! Are you going to do any sleeping tonight?”
“Do you remember Ferdishenko?” he asked.
Suddenly Gania approached our hero who was at the moment standing over Nastasia
Philipovna’s portrait, gazing at it.
“Five weeks!” said he, wiping his eyes. “Only five weeks! Poor orphans!”
“Hadn’t we better hear it tomorrow?” asked the prince timidly.

“Your soup’ll be cold; do come.”

“No.”

“_Smoke?_” said the man, in shocked but disdainful surprise, blinking his eyes
at the prince as though he could not believe his senses. “No, sir, you cannot
smoke here, and I wonder you are not ashamed of the very suggestion. Ha, ha! a
cool idea that, I declare!”

The prince’s body slipped convulsively down the steps till it rested at the
bottom. Very soon, in five minutes or so, he was discovered, and a crowd
collected around him.

He aired his own views on various matters, some of his most private opinions and
observations, many of which would have seemed rather funny, so his hearers
agreed afterwards, had they not been so well expressed.

“But, you wretched man, at least she must have said something? There must be
_some_ answer from her!”

Totski grew white as a sheet. The general was struck dumb. All present started
and listened intently. Gania sat rooted to his chair.

Besides this, before they had been married half a year, the count and his friend
the priest managed to bring about a quarrel between Aglaya and her family, so
that it was now several months since they had seen her. In a word, there was a
great deal to say; but Mrs. Epanchin, and her daughters, and even Prince S.,
were still so much distressed by Aglaya’s latest infatuations and adventures,
that they did not care to talk of them, though they must have known that Evgenie
knew much of the story already.
“I trust your voice, when I hear you speak. I quite understand that you and I
cannot be put on a level, of course.”
“H’m! and you take no notice of it?”
He laughed again.

“Forgive a silly, horrid, spoilt girl”--(she took his hand here)--“and be quite
assured that we all of us esteem you beyond all words. And if I dared to turn
your beautiful, admirable simplicity to ridicule, forgive me as you would a
little child its mischief. Forgive me all my absurdity of just now, which, of
course, meant nothing, and could not have the slightest consequence.” She spoke
these words with great emphasis.

The general very nearly smiled, but thought better of it and kept his smile
back. Then he reflected, blinked his eyes, stared at his guest once more from
head to foot; then abruptly motioned him to a chair, sat down himself, and
waited with some impatience for the prince to speak.

She rose at their entrance, but did not smile or give her hand, even to the
prince. Her anxious eyes were fixed upon Aglaya. Both sat down, at a little
distance from one another--Aglaya on the sofa, in the corner of the room,
Nastasia by the window. The prince and Rogojin remained standing, and were not
invited to sit.

Well, why should he judge them so hastily! Could he really say what they were,
after one short visit? Even Lebedeff seemed an enigma today. Did he expect to
find him so? He had never seen him like that before. Lebedeff and the Comtesse
du Barry! Good Heavens! If Rogojin should really kill someone, it would not, at
any rate, be such a senseless, chaotic affair. A knife made to a special
pattern, and six people killed in a kind of delirium. But Rogojin also had a
knife made to a special pattern. Can it be that Rogojin wishes to murder anyone?
The prince began to tremble violently. “It is a crime on my part to imagine
anything so base, with such cynical frankness.” His face reddened with shame at
the thought; and then there came across him as in a flash the memory of the
incidents at the Pavlofsk station, and at the other station in the morning; and
the question asked him by Rogojin about _the eyes_ and Rogojin’s cross, that he
was even now wearing; and the benediction of Rogojin’s mother; and his embrace
on the darkened staircase--that last supreme renunciation--and now, to find
himself full of this new “idea,” staring into shop-windows, and looking round
for things--how base he was!

“Listen to me, Lebedeff,” said the prince in a decided voice, turning his back
on the young man. “I know by experience that when you choose, you can be
business-like... I have very little time to spare, and if you... By the
way--excuse me--what is your Christian name? I have forgotten it.”