PART III

I.

The Epanchin family, or at least the more serious members of it, were

sometimes grieved because they seemed so unlike the rest of the world.

They were not quite certain, but had at times a strong suspicion that

things did not happen to them as they did to other people. Others led a

quiet, uneventful life, while they were subject to continual upheavals.

Others kept on the rails without difficulty; they ran off at the

slightest obstacle. Other houses were governed by a timid routine;

theirs was somehow different. Perhaps Lizabetha Prokofievna was alone

in making these fretful observations; the girls, though not wanting in

intelligence, were still young; the general was intelligent, too, but

narrow, and in any difficulty he was content to say, “H’m!” and leave

the matter to his wife. Consequently, on her fell the responsibility.

It was not that they distinguished themselves as a family by any

particular originality, or that their excursions off the track led to

any breach of the proprieties. Oh no.

There was nothing premeditated, there was not even any conscious

purpose in it all, and yet, in spite of everything, the family,

although highly respected, was not quite what every highly respected

family ought to be. For a long time now Lizabetha Prokofievna had had

it in her mind that all the trouble was owing to her “unfortunate

character,” and this added to her distress. She blamed her own stupid

unconventional “eccentricity.” Always restless, always on the go, she

constantly seemed to lose her way, and to get into trouble over the

simplest and more ordinary affairs of life.

We said at the beginning of our story, that the Epanchins were liked

and esteemed by their neighbours. In spite of his humble origin, Ivan

Fedorovitch himself was received everywhere with respect. He deserved

this, partly on account of his wealth and position, partly because,

though limited, he was really a very good fellow. But a certain

limitation of mind seems to be an indispensable asset, if not to all

public personages, at least to all serious financiers. Added to this,

his manner was modest and unassuming; he knew when to be silent, yet

never allowed himself to be trampled upon. Also—and this was more

important than all—he had the advantage of being under exalted

patronage.

As to Lizabetha Prokofievna, she, as the reader knows, belonged to an

aristocratic family. True, Russians think more of influential friends

than of birth, but she had both. She was esteemed and even loved by

people of consequence in society, whose example in receiving her was

therefore followed by others. It seems hardly necessary to remark that

her family worries and anxieties had little or no foundation, or that

her imagination increased them to an absurd degree; but if you have a

wart on your forehead or nose, you imagine that all the world is

looking at it, and that people would make fun of you because of it,

even if you had discovered America! Doubtless Lizabetha Prokofievna was

considered “eccentric” in society, but she was none the less esteemed:

the pity was that she was ceasing to believe in that esteem. When she

thought of her daughters, she said to herself sorrowfully that she was

a hindrance rather than a help to their future, that her character and

temper were absurd, ridiculous, insupportable. Naturally, she put the

blame on her surroundings, and from morning to night was quarrelling

with her husband and children, whom she really loved to the point of

self-sacrifice, even, one might say, of passion.

She was, above all distressed by the idea that her daughters might grow

up “eccentric,” like herself; she believed that no other society girls

were like them. “They are growing into Nihilists!” she repeated over

and over again. For years she had tormented herself with this idea, and

with the question: “Why don’t they get married?”

“It is to annoy their mother; that is their one aim in life; it can be

nothing else. The fact is it is all of a piece with these modern ideas,

that wretched woman’s question! Six months ago Aglaya took a fancy to

cut off her magnificent hair. Why, even I, when I was young, had

nothing like it! The scissors were in her hand, and I had to go down on

my knees and implore her... She did it, I know, from sheer mischief, to

spite her mother, for she is a naughty, capricious girl, a real spoiled

child spiteful and mischievous to a degree! And then Alexandra wanted

to shave her head, not from caprice or mischief, but, like a little

fool, simply because Aglaya persuaded her she would sleep better

without her hair, and not suffer from headache! And how many suitors

have they not had during the last five years! Excellent offers, too!

What more do they want? Why don’t they get married? For no other reason

than to vex their mother—none—none!”

But Lizabetha Prokofievna felt somewhat consoled when she could say

that one of her girls, Adelaida, was settled at last. “It will be one

off our hands!” she declared aloud, though in private she expressed

herself with greater tenderness. The engagement was both happy and

suitable, and was therefore approved in society. Prince S. was a

distinguished man, he had money, and his future wife was devoted to

him; what more could be desired? Lizabetha Prokofievna had felt less

anxious about this daughter, however, although she considered her

artistic tastes suspicious. But to make up for them she was, as her

mother expressed it, “merry,” and had plenty of “common-sense.” It was

Aglaya’s future which disturbed her most. With regard to her eldest

daughter, Alexandra, the mother never quite knew whether there was

cause for anxiety or not. Sometimes she felt as if there was nothing to

be expected from her. She was twenty-five now, and must be fated to be

an old maid, and “with such beauty, too!” The mother spent whole nights

in weeping and lamenting, while all the time the cause of her grief

slumbered peacefully. “What is the matter with her? Is she a Nihilist,

or simply a fool?”

But Lizabetha Prokofievna knew perfectly well how unnecessary was the

last question. She set a high value on Alexandra Ivanovna’s judgment,

and often consulted her in difficulties; but that she was a ‘wet hen’

she never for a moment doubted. “She is so calm; nothing rouses

her—though wet hens are not always calm! Oh! I can’t understand it!”

Her eldest daughter inspired Lizabetha with a kind of puzzled

compassion. She did not feel this in Aglaya’s case, though the latter

was her idol. It may be said that these outbursts and epithets, such as

“wet hen” (in which the maternal solicitude usually showed itself),

only made Alexandra laugh. Sometimes the most trivial thing annoyed

Mrs. Epanchin, and drove her into a frenzy. For instance, Alexandra

Ivanovna liked to sleep late, and was always dreaming, though her

dreams had the peculiarity of being as innocent and naive as those of a

child of seven; and the very innocence of her dreams annoyed her

mother. Once she dreamt of nine hens, and this was the cause of quite a

serious quarrel—no one knew why. Another time she had—it was most

unusual—a dream with a spark of originality in it. She dreamt of a monk

in a dark room, into which she was too frightened to go. Adelaida and

Aglaya rushed off with shrieks of laughter to relate this to their

mother, but she was quite angry, and said her daughters were all fools.

“H’m! she is as stupid as a fool! A veritable ‘wet hen’! Nothing

excites her; and yet she is not happy; some days it makes one miserable

only to look at her! Why is she unhappy, I wonder?” At times Lizabetha

Prokofievna put this question to her husband, and as usual she spoke in

the threatening tone of one who demands an immediate answer. Ivan

Fedorovitch would frown, shrug his shoulders, and at last give his

opinion: “She needs a husband!”

“God forbid that he should share your ideas, Ivan Fedorovitch!” his

wife flashed back. “Or that he should be as gross and churlish as you!”

The general promptly made his escape, and Lizabetha Prokofievna after a

while grew calm again. That evening, of course, she would be unusually

attentive, gentle, and respectful to her “gross and churlish” husband,

her “dear, kind Ivan Fedorovitch,” for she had never left off loving

him. She was even still “in love” with him. He knew it well, and for

his part held her in the greatest esteem.

But the mother’s great and continual anxiety was Aglaya. “She is

exactly like me—my image in everything,” said Mrs. Epanchin to herself.

“A tyrant! A real little demon! A Nihilist! Eccentric, senseless and

mischievous! Good Lord, how unhappy she will be!”

But as we said before, the fact of Adelaida’s approaching marriage was

balm to the mother. For a whole month she forgot her fears and worries.

Adelaida’s fate was settled; and with her name that of Aglaya’s was

linked, in society gossip. People whispered that Aglaya, too, was “as

good as engaged;” and Aglaya always looked so sweet and behaved so well

(during this period), that the mother’s heart was full of joy. Of

course, Evgenie Pavlovitch must be thoroughly studied first, before the

final step should be taken; but, really, how lovely dear Aglaya had

become—she actually grew more beautiful every day! And then—Yes, and

then—this abominable prince showed his face again, and everything went

topsy-turvy at once, and everyone seemed as mad as March hares.

What had really happened?

If it had been any other family than the Epanchins’, nothing particular

would have happened. But, thanks to Mrs. Epanchin’s invariable

fussiness and anxiety, there could not be the slightest hitch in the

simplest matters of everyday life, but she immediately foresaw the most

dreadful and alarming consequences, and suffered accordingly.

What then must have been her condition, when, among all the imaginary

anxieties and calamities which so constantly beset her, she now saw

looming ahead a serious cause for annoyance—something really likely to

arouse doubts and suspicions!

“How dared they, how _dared_ they write that hateful anonymous letter

informing me that Aglaya is in communication with Nastasia Philipovna?”

she thought, as she dragged the prince along towards her own house, and

again when she sat him down at the round table where the family was

already assembled. “How dared they so much as _think_ of such a thing?

I should _die_ with shame if I thought there was a particle of truth in

it, or if I were to show the letter to Aglaya herself! Who dares play

these jokes upon _us_, the Epanchins? _Why_ didn’t we go to the Yelagin

instead of coming down here? I _told_ you we had better go to the

Yelagin this summer, Ivan Fedorovitch. It’s all your fault. I dare say

it was that Varia who sent the letter. It’s all Ivan Fedorovitch.

_That_ woman is doing it all for him, I know she is, to show she can

make a fool of him now just as she did when he used to give her pearls.

“But after all is said, we are mixed up in it. Your daughters are mixed

up in it, Ivan Fedorovitch; young ladies in society, young ladies at an

age to be married; they were present, they heard everything there was

to hear. They were mixed up with that other scene, too, with those

dreadful youths. You must be pleased to remember they heard it all. I

cannot forgive that wretched prince. I never shall forgive him! And

why, if you please, has Aglaya had an attack of nerves for these last

three days? Why has she all but quarrelled with her sisters, even with

Alexandra—whom she respects so much that she always kisses her hands as

though she were her mother? What are all these riddles of hers that we

have to guess? What has Gavrila Ardalionovitch to do with it? Why did

she take upon herself to champion him this morning, and burst into

tears over it? Why is there an allusion to that cursed ‘poor knight’ in

the anonymous letter? And why did I rush off to him just now like a

lunatic, and drag him back here? I do believe I’ve gone mad at last.

What on earth have I done now? To talk to a young man about my

daughter’s secrets—and secrets having to do with himself, too! Thank

goodness, he’s an idiot, and a friend of the house! Surely Aglaya

hasn’t fallen in love with such a gaby! What an idea! Pfu! we ought all

to be put under glass cases—myself first of all—and be shown off as

curiosities, at ten copecks a peep!”

“I shall never forgive you for all this, Ivan Fedorovitch—never! Look

at her now. Why doesn’t she make fun of him? She said she would, and

she doesn’t. Look there! She stares at him with all her eyes, and

doesn’t move; and yet she told him not to come. He looks pale enough;

and that abominable chatterbox, Evgenie Pavlovitch, monopolizes the

whole of the conversation. Nobody else can get a word in. I could soon

find out all about everything if I could only change the subject.”

The prince certainly was very pale. He sat at the table and seemed to

be feeling, by turns, sensations of alarm and rapture.

Oh, how frightened he was of looking to one side—one particular

corner—whence he knew very well that a pair of dark eyes were watching

him intently, and how happy he was to think that he was once more among

them, and occasionally hearing that well-known voice, although she had

written and forbidden him to come again!

“What on earth will she say to me, I wonder?” he thought to himself.

He had not said a word yet; he sat silent and listened to Evgenie

Pavlovitch’s eloquence. The latter had never appeared so happy and

excited as on this evening. The prince listened to him, but for a long

time did not take in a word he said.

Excepting Ivan Fedorovitch, who had not as yet returned from town, the

whole family was present. Prince S. was there; and they all intended to

go out to hear the band very soon.

Colia arrived presently and joined the circle. “So he is received as

usual, after all,” thought the prince.

The Epanchins’ country-house was a charming building, built after the

model of a Swiss chalet, and covered with creepers. It was surrounded

on all sides by a flower garden, and the family sat, as a rule, on the

open verandah as at the prince’s house.

The subject under discussion did not appear to be very popular with the

assembly, and some would have been delighted to change it; but Evgenie

would not stop holding forth, and the prince’s arrival seemed to spur

him on to still further oratorical efforts.

Lizabetha Prokofievna frowned, but had not as yet grasped the subject,

which seemed to have arisen out of a heated argument. Aglaya sat apart,

almost in the corner, listening in stubborn silence.

“Excuse me,” continued Evgenie Pavlovitch hotly, “I don’t say a word

against liberalism. Liberalism is not a sin, it is a necessary part of

a great whole, which whole would collapse and fall to pieces without

it. Liberalism has just as much right to exist as has the most moral

conservatism; but I am attacking _Russian_ liberalism; and I attack it

for the simple reason that a Russian liberal is not a Russian liberal,

he is a non-Russian liberal. Show me a real Russian liberal, and I’ll

kiss him before you all, with pleasure.”

“If he cared to kiss you, that is,” said Alexandra, whose cheeks were

red with irritation and excitement.

“Look at that, now,” thought the mother to herself, “she does nothing

but sleep and eat for a year at a time, and then suddenly flies out in

the most incomprehensible way!”

The prince observed that Alexandra appeared to be angry with Evgenie,

because he spoke on a serious subject in a frivolous manner, pretending

to be in earnest, but with an under-current of irony.

“I was saying just now, before you came in, prince, that there has been

nothing national up to now, about our liberalism, and nothing the

liberals do, or have done, is in the least degree national. They are

drawn from two classes only, the old landowning class, and clerical

families—”

“How, nothing that they have done is Russian?” asked Prince S.

“It may be Russian, but it is not national. Our liberals are not

Russian, nor are our conservatives, and you may be sure that the nation

does not recognize anything that has been done by the landed gentry, or

by the seminarists, or what is to be done either.”

“Come, that’s good! How can you maintain such a paradox? If you are

serious, that is. I cannot allow such a statement about the landed

proprietors to pass unchallenged. Why, you are a landed proprietor

yourself!” cried Prince S. hotly.

“I suppose you’ll say there is nothing national about our literature

either?” said Alexandra.

“Well, I am not a great authority on literary questions, but I

certainly do hold that Russian literature is not Russian, except

perhaps Lomonosoff, Pouschkin and Gogol.”

“In the first place, that is a considerable admission, and in the

second place, one of the above was a peasant, and the other two were

both landed proprietors!”

“Quite so, but don’t be in such a hurry! For since it has been the part

of these three men, and only these three, to say something absolutely

their own, not borrowed, so by this very fact these three men become

really national. If any Russian shall have done or said anything really

and absolutely original, he is to be called national from that moment,

though he may not be able to talk the Russian language; still he is a

national Russian. I consider that an axiom. But we were not speaking of

literature; we began by discussing the socialists. Very well then, I

insist that there does not exist one single Russian socialist. There

does not, and there has never existed such a one, because all

socialists are derived from the two classes—the landed proprietors, and

the seminarists. All our eminent socialists are merely old liberals of

the class of landed proprietors, men who were liberals in the days of

serfdom. Why do you laugh? Give me their books, give me their studies,

their memoirs, and though I am not a literary critic, yet I will prove

as clear as day that every chapter and every word of their writings has

been the work of a former landed proprietor of the old school. You’ll

find that all their raptures, all their generous transports are

proprietary, all their woes and their tears, proprietary; all

proprietary or seminarist! You are laughing again, and you, prince, are

smiling too. Don’t you agree with me?”

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

“I cannot tell you on the instant whether I agree with you or not,”

said the latter, suddenly stopping his laughter, and starting like a

schoolboy caught at mischief. “But, I assure you, I am listening to you

with extreme gratification.”

So saying, he almost panted with agitation, and a cold sweat stood upon

his forehead. These were his first words since he had entered the

house; he tried to lift his eyes, and look around, but dared not;

Evgenie Pavlovitch noticed his confusion, and smiled.

“I’ll just tell you one fact, ladies and gentlemen,” continued the

latter, with apparent seriousness and even exaltation of manner, but

with a suggestion of “chaff” behind every word, as though he were

laughing in his sleeve at his own nonsense—“a fact, the discovery of

which, I believe, I may claim to have made by myself alone. At all

events, no other has ever said or written a word about it; and in this

fact is expressed the whole essence of Russian liberalism of the sort

which I am now considering.

“In the first place, what is liberalism, speaking generally, but an

attack (whether mistaken or reasonable, is quite another question) upon

the existing order of things? Is this so? Yes. Very well. Then my

‘fact’ consists in this, that _Russian_ liberalism is not an attack

upon the existing order of things, but an attack upon the very essence

of things themselves—indeed, on the things themselves; not an attack on

the Russian order of things, but on Russia itself. My Russian liberal

goes so far as to reject Russia; that is, he hates and strikes his own

mother. Every misfortune and mishap of the mother-country fills him

with mirth, and even with ecstasy. He hates the national customs,

Russian history, and everything. If he has a justification, it is that

he does not know what he is doing, and believes that his hatred of

Russia is the grandest and most profitable kind of liberalism. (You

will often find a liberal who is applauded and esteemed by his fellows,

but who is in reality the dreariest, blindest, dullest of

conservatives, and is not aware of the fact.) This hatred for Russia

has been mistaken by some of our ‘Russian liberals’ for sincere love of

their country, and they boast that they see better than their

neighbours what real love of one’s country should consist in. But of

late they have grown, more candid and are ashamed of the expression

‘love of country,’ and have annihilated the very spirit of the words as

something injurious and petty and undignified. This is the truth, and I

hold by it; but at the same time it is a phenomenon which has not been

repeated at any other time or place; and therefore, though I hold to it

as a fact, yet I recognize that it is an accidental phenomenon, and may

likely enough pass away. There can be no such thing anywhere else as a

liberal who really hates his country; and how is this fact to be

explained among _us?_ By my original statement that a Russian liberal

is _not_ a _Russian_ liberal—that’s the only explanation that I can

see.”

“I take all that you have said as a joke,” said Prince S. seriously.

“I have not seen all kinds of liberals, and cannot, therefore, set

myself up as a judge,” said Alexandra, “but I have heard all you have

said with indignation. You have taken some accidental case and twisted

it into a universal law, which is unjust.”

“Accidental case!” said Evgenie Pavlovitch. “Do you consider it an

accidental case, prince?”

“I must also admit,” said the prince, “that I have not seen much, or

been very far into the question; but I cannot help thinking that you

are more or less right, and that Russian liberalism—that phase of it

which you are considering, at least—really is sometimes inclined to

hate Russia itself, and not only its existing order of things in

general. Of course this is only _partially_ the truth; you cannot lay

down the law for all...”

The prince blushed and broke off, without finishing what he meant to

say.

In spite of his shyness and agitation, he could not help being greatly

interested in the conversation. A special characteristic of his was the

naive candour with which he always listened to arguments which

interested him, and with which he answered any questions put to him on

the subject at issue. In the very expression of his face this naivete

was unmistakably evident, this disbelief in the insincerity of others,

and unsuspecting disregard of irony or humour in their words.

But though Evgenie Pavlovitch had put his questions to the prince with

no other purpose but to enjoy the joke of his simple-minded

seriousness, yet now, at his answer, he was surprised into some

seriousness himself, and looked gravely at Muishkin as though he had

not expected that sort of answer at all.

“Why, how strange!” he ejaculated. “You didn’t answer me seriously,

surely, did you?”

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

amazement.

Everybody laughed.

“Oh, trust _him_ for that!” said Adelaida. “Evgenie Pavlovitch turns

everything and everybody he can lay hold of to ridicule. You should

hear the things he says sometimes, apparently in perfect seriousness.”

“In my opinion the conversation has been a painful one throughout, and

we ought never to have begun it,” said Alexandra. “We were all going

for a walk—”

“Come along then,” said Evgenie; “it’s a glorious evening. But, to

prove that this time I was speaking absolutely seriously, and

especially to prove this to the prince (for you, prince, have

interested me exceedingly, and I swear to you that I am not quite such

an ass as I like to appear sometimes, although I am rather an ass, I

admit), and—well, ladies and gentlemen, will you allow me to put just

one more question to the prince, out of pure curiosity? It shall be the

last. This question came into my mind a couple of hours since (you see,

prince, I do think seriously at times), and I made my own decision upon

it; now I wish to hear what the prince will say to it.”

“We have just used the expression ‘accidental case.’ This is a

significant phrase; we often hear it. Well, not long since everyone was

talking and reading about that terrible murder of six people on the

part of a—young fellow, and of the extraordinary speech of the counsel

for the defence, who observed that in the poverty-stricken condition of

the criminal it must have come _naturally_ into his head to kill these

six people. I do not quote his words, but that is the sense of them, or

something very like it. Now, in my opinion, the barrister who put

forward this extraordinary plea was probably absolutely convinced that

he was stating the most liberal, the most humane, the most enlightened

view of the case that could possibly be brought forward in these days.

Now, was this distortion, this capacity for a perverted way of viewing

things, a special or accidental case, or is such a general rule?”

Everyone laughed at this.

“A special case—accidental, of course!” cried Alexandra and Adelaida.

“Let me remind you once more, Evgenie,” said Prince S., “that your joke

is getting a little threadbare.”

“What do you think about it, prince?” asked Evgenie, taking no notice

of the last remark, and observing Muishkin’s serious eyes fixed upon

his face. “What do you think—was it a special or a usual case—the rule,

or an exception? I confess I put the question especially for you.”

“No, I don’t think it was a special case,” said the prince, quietly,

but firmly.

“My dear fellow!” cried Prince S., with some annoyance, “don’t you see

that he is chaffing you? He is simply laughing at you, and wants to

make game of you.”

“I thought Evgenie Pavlovitch was talking seriously,” said the prince,

blushing and dropping his eyes.

“My dear prince,” continued Prince S. “remember what you and I were

saying two or three months ago. We spoke of the fact that in our newly

opened Law Courts one could already lay one’s finger upon so many

talented and remarkable young barristers. How pleased you were with the

state of things as we found it, and how glad I was to observe your

delight! We both said it was a matter to be proud of; but this clumsy

defence that Evgenie mentions, this strange argument _can_, of course,

only be an accidental case—one in a thousand!”

The prince reflected a little, but very soon he replied, with absolute

conviction in his tone, though he still spoke somewhat shyly and

timidly:

“I only wished to say that this ‘distortion,’ as Evgenie Pavlovitch

expressed it, is met with very often, and is far more the general rule

than the exception, unfortunately for Russia. So much so, that if this

distortion were not the general rule, perhaps these dreadful crimes

would be less frequent.”

“Dreadful crimes? But I can assure you that crimes just as dreadful,

and probably more horrible, have occurred before our times, and at all

times, and not only here in Russia, but everywhere else as well. And in

my opinion it is not at all likely that such murders will cease to

occur for a very long time to come. The only difference is that in

former times there was less publicity, while now everyone talks and

writes freely about such things—which fact gives the impression that

such crimes have only now sprung into existence. That is where your

mistake lies—an extremely natural mistake, I assure you, my dear

fellow!” said Prince S.

“I know that there were just as many, and just as terrible, crimes

before our times. Not long since I visited a convict prison and made

acquaintance with some of the criminals. There were some even more

dreadful criminals than this one we have been speaking of—men who have

murdered a dozen of their fellow-creatures, and feel no remorse

whatever. But what I especially noticed was this, that the very most

hopeless and remorseless murderer—however hardened a criminal he may

be—still _knows that he is a criminal_; that is, he is conscious that

he has acted wickedly, though he may feel no remorse whatever. And they

were all like this. Those of whom Evgenie Pavlovitch has spoken, do not

admit that they are criminals at all; they think they had a right to do

what they did, and that they were even doing a good deed, perhaps. I

consider there is the greatest difference between the two cases. And

recollect—it was a _youth_, at the particular age which is most

helplessly susceptible to the distortion of ideas!”

Prince S. was now no longer smiling; he gazed at the prince in

bewilderment.

Alexandra, who had seemed to wish to put in her word when the prince

began, now sat silent, as though some sudden thought had caused her to

change her mind about speaking.

Evgenie Pavlovitch gazed at him in real surprise, and this time his

expression of face had no mockery in it whatever.

“What are you looking so surprised about, my friend?” asked Mrs.

Epanchin, suddenly. “Did you suppose he was stupider than yourself, and

was incapable of forming his own opinions, or what?”

“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?”

“I’ll tell you what, my friend,” cried Mrs. Epanchin, of a sudden,

“here are we all sitting here and imagining we are very clever, and

perhaps laughing at the prince, some of us, and meanwhile he has

received a letter this very day in which that same claimant renounces

his claim, and begs the prince’s pardon. There! _we_ don’t often get

that sort of letter; and yet we are not ashamed to walk with our noses

in the air before him.”

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

“What! has he arrived?” said the prince, starting up.

“Yes, I brought him down from town just after you had left the house.”

“There now! It’s just like him,” cried Lizabetha Prokofievna, boiling

over once more, and entirely oblivious of the fact that she had just

taken the prince’s part. “I dare swear that you went up to town

yesterday on purpose to get the little wretch to do you the great

honour of coming to stay at your house. You did go up to town, you know

you did—you said so yourself! Now then, did you, or did you not, go

down on your knees and beg him to come, confess!”

“No, he didn’t, for I saw it all myself,” said Colia. “On the contrary,

Hippolyte kissed his hand twice and thanked him; and all the prince

said was that he thought Hippolyte might feel better here in the

country!”

“Don’t, Colia,—what is the use of saying all that?” cried the prince,

rising and taking his hat.

“Where are you going to now?” cried Mrs. Epanchin.

“Never mind about him now, prince,” said Colia. “He is all right and

taking a nap after the journey. He is very happy to be here; but I

think perhaps it would be better if you let him alone for today,—he is

very sensitive now that he is so ill—and he might be embarrassed if you

show him too much attention at first. He is decidedly better today, and

says he has not felt so well for the last six months, and has coughed

much less, too.”

The prince observed that Aglaya came out of her corner and approached

the table at this point.

He did not dare look at her, but he was conscious, to the very tips of

his fingers, that she was gazing at him, perhaps angrily; and that she

had probably flushed up with a look of fiery indignation in her black

eyes.

“It seems to me, Mr. Colia, that you were very foolish to bring your

young friend down—if he is the same consumptive boy who wept so

profusely, and invited us all to his own funeral,” remarked Evgenie

Pavlovitch. “He talked so eloquently about the blank wall outside his

bedroom window, that I’m sure he will never support life here without

it.”

“I think so too,” said Mrs. Epanchin; “he will quarrel with you, and be

off,” and she drew her workbox towards her with an air of dignity,

quite oblivious of the fact that the family was about to start for a

walk in the park.

“Yes, I remember he boasted about the blank wall in an extraordinary

way,” continued Evgenie, “and I feel that without that blank wall he

will never be able to die eloquently; and he does so long to die

eloquently!”

“Oh, you must forgive him the blank wall,” said the prince, quietly.

“He has come down to see a few trees now, poor fellow.”

“Oh, I forgive him with all my heart; you may tell him so if you like,”

laughed Evgenie.

“I don’t think you should take it quite like that,” said the prince,

quietly, and without removing his eyes from the carpet. “I think it is

more a case of his forgiving you.”

“Forgiving me! why so? What have I done to need his forgiveness?”

“If you don’t understand, then—but of course, you do understand. He

wished—he wished to bless you all round and to have your

blessing—before he died—that’s all.”

“My dear prince,” began Prince S., hurriedly, exchanging glances with

some of those present, “you will not easily find heaven on earth, and

yet you seem to expect to. Heaven is a difficult thing to find

anywhere, prince; far more difficult than appears to that good heart of

yours. Better stop this conversation, or we shall all be growing quite

disturbed in our minds, and—”

“Let’s go and hear the band, then,” said Lizabetha Prokofievna, angrily

rising from her place.

The rest of the company followed her example.

II.

The prince suddenly approached Evgenie Pavlovitch.

“Evgenie Pavlovitch,” he said, with strange excitement and seizing the

latter’s hand in his own, “be assured that I esteem you as a generous

and honourable man, in spite of everything. Be assured of that.”

Evgenie Pavlovitch fell back a step in astonishment. For one moment it

was all he could do to restrain himself from bursting out laughing;

but, looking closer, he observed that the prince did not seem to be

quite himself; at all events, he was in a very curious state.

“I wouldn’t mind betting, prince,” he cried, “that you did not in the

least mean to say that, and very likely you meant to address someone

else altogether. What is it? Are you feeling unwell or anything?”

“Very likely, extremely likely, and you must be a very close observer

to detect the fact that perhaps I did not intend to come up to _you_ at

all.”

So saying he smiled strangely; but suddenly and excitedly he began

again:

“Don’t remind me of what I have done or said. Don’t! I am very much

ashamed of myself, I—”

“Why, what have you done? I don’t understand you.”

“I see you are ashamed of me, Evgenie Pavlovitch; you are blushing for

me; that’s a sign of a good heart. Don’t be afraid; I shall go away

directly.”

“What’s the matter with him? Do his fits begin like that?” said

Lizabetha Prokofievna, in a high state of alarm, addressing Colia.

“No, no, Lizabetha Prokofievna, take no notice of me. I am not going to

have a fit. I will go away directly; but I know I am afflicted. I was

twenty-four years an invalid, you see—the first twenty-four years of my

life—so take all I do and say as the sayings and actions of an invalid.

I’m going away directly, I really am—don’t be afraid. I am not

blushing, for I don’t think I need blush about it, need I? But I see

that I am out of place in society—society is better without me. It’s

not vanity, I assure you. I have thought over it all these last three

days, and I have made up my mind that I ought to unbosom myself

candidly before you at the first opportunity. There are certain things,

certain great ideas, which I must not so much as approach, as Prince S.

has just reminded me, or I shall make you all laugh. I have no sense of

proportion, I know; my words and gestures do not express my ideas—they

are a humiliation and abasement of the ideas, and therefore, I have no

right—and I am too sensitive. Still, I believe I am beloved in this

household, and esteemed far more than I deserve. But I can’t help

knowing that after twenty-four years of illness there must be some

trace left, so that it is impossible for people to refrain from

laughing at me sometimes; don’t you think so?”

He seemed to pause for a reply, for some verdict, as it were, and

looked humbly around him.

All present stood rooted to the earth with amazement at this unexpected

and apparently uncalled-for outbreak; but the poor prince’s painful and

rambling speech gave rise to a strange episode.

“Why do you say all this here?” cried Aglaya, suddenly. “Why do you

talk like this to _them?_”

She appeared to be in the last stages of wrath and irritation; her eyes

flashed. The prince stood dumbly and blindly before her, and suddenly

grew pale.

“There is not one of them all who is worthy of these words of yours,”

continued Aglaya. “Not one of them is worth your little finger, not one

of them has heart or head to compare with yours! You are more honest

than all, and better, nobler, kinder, wiser than all. There are some

here who are unworthy to bend and pick up the handkerchief you have

just dropped. Why do you humiliate yourself like this, and place

yourself lower than these people? Why do you debase yourself before

them? Why have you no pride?”

“My God! Who would ever have believed this?” cried Mrs. Epanchin,

wringing her hands.

“Hurrah for the ‘poor knight’!” cried Colia.

“Be quiet! How dare they laugh at me in your house?” said Aglaya,

turning sharply on her mother in that hysterical frame of mind that

rides recklessly over every obstacle and plunges blindly through

proprieties. “Why does everyone, everyone worry and torment me? Why

have they all been bullying me these three days about you, prince? I

will not marry you—never, and under no circumstances! Know that once

and for all; as if anyone could marry an absurd creature like you! Just

look in the glass and see what you look like, this very moment! Why,

_why_ do they torment me and say I am going to marry you? You must know

it; you are in the plot with them!”

“No one ever tormented you on the subject,” murmured Adelaida, aghast.

“No one ever thought of such a thing! There has never been a word said

about it!” cried Alexandra.

“Who has been annoying her? Who has been tormenting the child? Who

could have said such a thing to her? Is she raving?” cried Lizabetha

Prokofievna, trembling with rage, to the company in general.

“Every one of them has been saying it—every one of them—all these three

days! And I will never, never marry him!”

So saying, Aglaya burst into bitter tears, and, hiding her face in her

handkerchief, sank back into a chair.

“But he has never even—”

“I have never asked you to marry me, Aglaya Ivanovna!” said the prince,

of a sudden.

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

that?”

She could not believe her ears.

“I meant to say—I only meant to say,” said the prince, faltering, “I

merely meant to explain to Aglaya Ivanovna—to have the honour to

explain, as it were—that I had no intention—never had—to ask the honour

of her hand. I assure you I am not guilty, Aglaya Ivanovna, I am not,

indeed. I never did wish to—I never thought of it at all—and never

shall—you’ll see it yourself—you may be quite assured of it. Some

wicked person has been maligning me to you; but it’s all right. Don’t

worry about it.”

So saying, the prince approached Aglaya.

She took the handkerchief from her face, glanced keenly at him, took in

what he had said, and burst out laughing—such a merry, unrestrained

laugh, so hearty and gay, that Adelaida could not contain herself. She,

too, glanced at the prince’s panic-stricken countenance, then rushed at

her sister, threw her arms round her neck, and burst into as merry a

fit of laughter as Aglaya’s own. They laughed together like a couple of

school-girls. Hearing and seeing this, the prince smiled happily, and

in accents of relief and joy, he exclaimed “Well, thank God—thank God!”

Alexandra now joined in, and it looked as though the three sisters were

going to laugh on for ever.

“They are insane,” muttered Lizabetha Prokofievna. “Either they

frighten one out of one’s wits, or else—”

But Prince S. was laughing now, too, so was Evgenie Pavlovitch, so was

Colia, and so was the prince himself, who caught the infection as he

looked round radiantly upon the others.

“Come along, let’s go out for a walk!” cried Adelaida. “We’ll all go

together, and the prince must absolutely go with us. You needn’t go

away, you dear good fellow! _Isn’t_ he a dear, Aglaya? Isn’t he,

mother? I must really give him a kiss for—for his explanation to Aglaya

just now. Mother, dear, I may kiss him, mayn’t I? Aglaya, may I kiss

_your_ prince?” cried the young rogue, and sure enough she skipped up

to the prince and kissed his forehead.

He seized her hands, and pressed them so hard that Adelaida nearly

cried out; he then gazed with delight into her eyes, and raising her

right hand to his lips with enthusiasm, kissed it three times.

“Come along,” said Aglaya. “Prince, you must walk with me. May he,

mother? This young cavalier, who won’t have me? You said you would

_never_ have me, didn’t you, prince? No—no, not like that; _that’s_ not

the way to give your arm. Don’t you know how to give your arm to a lady

yet? There—so. Now, come along, you and I will lead the way. Would you

like to lead the way with me alone, tête-à-tête?”

She went on talking and chatting without a pause, with occasional

little bursts of laughter between.

“Thank God—thank God!” said Lizabetha Prokofievna to herself, without

quite knowing why she felt so relieved.

“What extraordinary people they are!” thought Prince S., for perhaps

the hundredth time since he had entered into intimate relations with

the family; but—he liked these “extraordinary people,” all the same. As

for Prince Lef Nicolaievitch himself, Prince S. did not seem quite to

like him, somehow. He was decidedly preoccupied and a little disturbed

as they all started off.

Evgenie Pavlovitch seemed to be in a lively humour. He made Adelaida

and Alexandra laugh all the way to the Vauxhall; but they both laughed

so very readily and promptly that the worthy Evgenie began at last to

suspect that they were not listening to him at all.

At this idea, he burst out laughing all at once, in quite unaffected

mirth, and without giving any explanation.

The sisters, who also appeared to be in high spirits, never tired of

glancing at Aglaya and the prince, who were walking in front. It was

evident that their younger sister was a thorough puzzle to them both.

Prince S. tried hard to get up a conversation with Mrs. Epanchin upon

outside subjects, probably with the good intention of distracting and

amusing her; but he bored her dreadfully. She was absent-minded to a

degree, and answered at cross purposes, and sometimes not at all.

But the puzzle and mystery of Aglaya was not yet over for the evening.

The last exhibition fell to the lot of the prince alone. When they had

proceeded some hundred paces or so from the house, Aglaya said to her

obstinately silent cavalier in a quick half-whisper:

“Look to the right!”

The prince glanced in the direction indicated.

“Look closer. Do you see that bench, in the park there, just by those

three big trees—that green bench?”

The prince replied that he saw it.

“Do you like the position of it? Sometimes of a morning early, at seven

o’clock, when all the rest are still asleep, I come out and sit there

alone.”

The prince muttered that the spot was a lovely one.

“Now, go away, I don’t wish to have your arm any longer; or perhaps,

better, continue to give me your arm, and walk along beside me, but

don’t speak a word to me. I wish to think by myself.”

The warning was certainly unnecessary; for the prince would not have

said a word all the rest of the time whether forbidden to speak or not.

His heart beat loud and painfully when Aglaya spoke of the bench; could

she—but no! he banished the thought, after an instant’s deliberation.

At Pavlofsk, on weekdays, the public is more select than it is on

Sundays and Saturdays, when the townsfolk come down to walk about and

enjoy the park.

The ladies dress elegantly, on these days, and it is the fashion to

gather round the band, which is probably the best of our

pleasure-garden bands, and plays the newest pieces. The behaviour of

the public is most correct and proper, and there is an appearance of

friendly intimacy among the usual frequenters. Many come for nothing

but to look at their acquaintances, but there are others who come for

the sake of the music. It is very seldom that anything happens to break

the harmony of the proceedings, though, of course, accidents will

happen everywhere.

On this particular evening the weather was lovely, and there were a

large number of people present. All the places anywhere near the

orchestra were occupied.

Our friends took chairs near the side exit. The crowd and the music

cheered Mrs. Epanchin a little, and amused the girls; they bowed and

shook hands with some of their friends and nodded at a distance to

others; they examined the ladies’ dresses, noticed comicalities and

eccentricities among the people, and laughed and talked among

themselves. Evgenie Pavlovitch, too, found plenty of friends to bow to.

Several people noticed Aglaya and the prince, who were still together.

Before very long two or three young men had come up, and one or two

remained to talk; all of these young men appeared to be on intimate

terms with Evgenie Pavlovitch. Among them was a young officer, a

remarkably handsome fellow—very good-natured and a great chatterbox. He

tried to get up a conversation with Aglaya, and did his best to secure

her attention. Aglaya behaved very graciously to him, and chatted and

laughed merrily. Evgenie Pavlovitch begged the prince’s leave to

introduce their friend to him. The prince hardly realized what was

wanted of him, but the introduction came off; the two men bowed and

shook hands.

Evgenie Pavlovitch’s friend asked the prince some question, but the

latter did not reply, or if he did, he muttered something so strangely

indistinct that there was nothing to be made of it. The officer stared

intently at him, then glanced at Evgenie, divined why the latter had

introduced him, and gave his undivided attention to Aglaya again. Only

Evgenie Pavlovitch observed that Aglaya flushed up for a moment at

this.

The prince did not notice that others were talking and making

themselves agreeable to Aglaya; in fact, at moments, he almost forgot

that he was sitting by her himself. At other moments he felt a longing

to go away somewhere and be alone with his thoughts, and to feel that

no one knew where he was.

Or if that were impossible he would like to be alone at home, on the

terrace—without either Lebedeff or his children, or anyone else about

him, and to lie there and think—a day and night and another day again!

He thought of the mountains—and especially of a certain spot which he

used to frequent, whence he would look down upon the distant valleys

and fields, and see the waterfall, far off, like a little silver

thread, and the old ruined castle in the distance. Oh! how he longed to

be there now—alone with his thoughts—to think of one thing all his

life—one thing! A thousand years would not be too much time! And let

everyone here forget him—forget him utterly! How much better it would

have been if they had never known him—if all this could but prove to be

a dream. Perhaps it was a dream!

Now and then he looked at Aglaya for five minutes at a time, without

taking his eyes off her face; but his expression was very strange; he

would gaze at her as though she were an object a couple of miles

distant, or as though he were looking at her portrait and not at

herself at all.

“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?”

The prince seemed surprised that he should have been addressed at all;

he reflected a moment, but did not seem to take in what had been said

to him; at all events, he did not answer. But observing that she and

the others had begun to laugh, he too opened his mouth and laughed with

them.

The laughter became general, and the young officer, who seemed a

particularly lively sort of person, simply shook with mirth.

Aglaya suddenly whispered angrily to herself the word—

“Idiot!”

“My goodness—surely she is not in love with such a—surely she isn’t

mad!” groaned Mrs. Epanchin, under her breath.

“It’s all a joke, mamma; it’s just a joke like the ‘poor

knight’—nothing more whatever, I assure you!” Alexandra whispered in

her ear. “She is chaffing him—making a fool of him, after her own

private fashion, that’s all! But she carries it just a little too

far—she is a regular little actress. How she frightened us just

now—didn’t she?—and all for a lark!”

“Well, it’s lucky she has happened upon an idiot, then, that’s all I

can say!” whispered Lizabetha Prokofievna, who was somewhat comforted,

however, by her daughter’s remark.

The prince had heard himself referred to as “idiot,” and had shuddered

at the moment; but his shudder, it so happened, was not caused by the

word applied to him. The fact was that in the crowd, not far from where

he was sitting, a pale familiar face, with curly black hair, and a

well-known smile and expression, had flashed across his vision for a

moment, and disappeared again. Very likely he had imagined it! There

only remained to him the impression of a strange smile, two eyes, and a

bright green tie. Whether the man had disappeared among the crowd, or

whether he had turned towards the Vauxhall, the prince could not say.

But a moment or two afterwards he began to glance keenly about him.

That first vision might only too likely be the forerunner of a second;

it was almost certain to be so. Surely he had not forgotten the

possibility of such a meeting when he came to the Vauxhall? True

enough, he had not remarked where he was coming to when he set out with

Aglaya; he had not been in a condition to remark anything at all.

Had he been more careful to observe his companion, he would have seen

that for the last quarter of an hour Aglaya had also been glancing

around in apparent anxiety, as though she expected to see someone, or

something particular, among the crowd of people. Now, at the moment

when his own anxiety became so marked, her excitement also increased

visibly, and when he looked about him, she did the same.

The reason for their anxiety soon became apparent. From that very side

entrance to the Vauxhall, near which the prince and all the Epanchin

party were seated, there suddenly appeared quite a large knot of

persons, at least a dozen.

Heading this little band walked three ladies, two of whom were

remarkably lovely; and there was nothing surprising in the fact that

they should have had a large troop of admirers following in their wake.

But there was something in the appearance of both the ladies and their

admirers which was peculiar, quite different for that of the rest of

the public assembled around the orchestra.

Nearly everyone observed the little band advancing, and all pretended

not to see or notice them, except a few young fellows who exchanged

glances and smiled, saying something to one another in whispers.

It was impossible to avoid noticing them, however, in reality, for they

made their presence only too conspicuous by laughing and talking

loudly. It was to be supposed that some of them were more than half

drunk, although they were well enough dressed, some even particularly

well. There were one or two, however, who were very strange-looking

creatures, with flushed faces and extraordinary clothes; some were

military men; not all were quite young; one or two were middle-aged

gentlemen of decidedly disagreeable appearance, men who are avoided in

society like the plague, decked out in large gold studs and rings, and

magnificently “got up,” generally.

Among our suburban resorts there are some which enjoy a specially high

reputation for respectability and fashion; but the most careful

individual is not absolutely exempt from the danger of a tile falling

suddenly upon his head from his neighbour’s roof.

Such a tile was about to descend upon the elegant and decorous public

now assembled to hear the music.

In order to pass from the Vauxhall to the band-stand, the visitor has

to descend two or three steps. Just at these steps the group paused, as

though it feared to proceed further; but very quickly one of the three

ladies, who formed its apex, stepped forward into the charmed circle,

followed by two members of her suite.

One of these was a middle-aged man of very respectable appearance, but

with the stamp of parvenu upon him, a man whom nobody knew, and who

evidently knew nobody. The other follower was younger and far less

respectable-looking.

No one else followed the eccentric lady; but as she descended the steps

she did not even look behind her, as though it were absolutely the same

to her whether anyone were following or not. She laughed and talked

loudly, however, just as before. She was dressed with great taste, but

with rather more magnificence than was needed for the occasion,

perhaps.

She walked past the orchestra, to where an open carriage was waiting,

near the road.

The prince had not seen _her_ for more than three months. All these

days since his arrival from Petersburg he had intended to pay her a

visit, but some mysterious presentiment had restrained him. He could

not picture to himself what impression this meeting with her would make

upon him, though he had often tried to imagine it, with fear and

trembling. One fact was quite certain, and that was that the meeting

would be painful.

Several times during the last six months he had recalled the effect

which the first sight of this face had had upon him, when he only saw

its portrait. He recollected well that even the portrait face had left

but too painful an impression.

That month in the provinces, when he had seen this woman nearly every

day, had affected him so deeply that he could not now look back upon it

calmly. In the very look of this woman there was something which

tortured him. In conversation with Rogojin he had attributed this

sensation to pity—immeasurable pity, and this was the truth. The sight

of the portrait face alone had filled his heart full of the agony of

real sympathy; and this feeling of sympathy, nay, of actual

_suffering_, for her, had never left his heart since that hour, and was

still in full force. Oh yes, and more powerful than ever!

But the prince was not satisfied with what he had said to Rogojin. Only

at this moment, when she suddenly made her appearance before him, did

he realize to the full the exact emotion which she called up in him,

and which he had not described correctly to Rogojin.

And, indeed, there were no words in which he could have expressed his

horror, yes, _horror_, for he was now fully convinced from his own

private knowledge of her, that the woman was mad.

If, loving a woman above everything in the world, or at least having a

foretaste of the possibility of such love for her, one were suddenly to

behold her on a chain, behind bars and under the lash of a keeper, one

would feel something like what the poor prince now felt.

“What’s the matter?” asked Aglaya, in a whisper, giving his sleeve a

little tug.

He turned his head towards her and glanced at her black and (for some

reason) flashing eyes, tried to smile, and then, apparently forgetting

her in an instant, turned to the right once more, and continued to

watch the startling apparition before him.

Nastasia Philipovna was at this moment passing the young ladies’

chairs.

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:

“_What_ a—”

She did not finish her indefinite sentence; she restrained herself in a

moment; but it was enough.

Nastasia Philipovna, who up to now had been walking along as though she

had not noticed the Epanchin party, suddenly turned her head in their

direction, as though she had just observed Evgenie Pavlovitch sitting

there for the first time.

“Why, I declare, here he is!” she cried, stopping suddenly. “The man

one can’t find with all one’s messengers sent about the place, sitting

just under one’s nose, exactly where one never thought of looking! I

thought you were sure to be at your uncle’s by this time.”

Evgenie Pavlovitch flushed up and looked angrily at Nastasia

Philipovna, then turned his back on her.

“What! don’t you know about it yet? He doesn’t know—imagine that! Why,

he’s shot himself. Your uncle shot himself this very morning. I was

told at two this afternoon. Half the town must know it by now. They say

there are three hundred and fifty thousand roubles, government money,

missing; some say five hundred thousand. And I was under the impression

that he would leave you a fortune! He’s whistled it all away. A most

depraved old gentleman, really! Well, ta, ta!—bonne chance! Surely you

intend to be off there, don’t you? Ha, ha! You’ve retired from the army

in good time, I see! Plain clothes! Well done, sly rogue! Nonsense! I

see—you knew it all before—I dare say you knew all about it yesterday-”

Although the impudence of this attack, this public proclamation of

intimacy, as it were, was doubtless premeditated, and had its special

object, yet Evgenie Pavlovitch at first seemed to intend to make no

show of observing either his tormentor or her words. But Nastasia’s

communication struck him with the force of a thunderclap. On hearing of

his uncle’s death he suddenly grew as white as a sheet, and turned

towards his informant.

At this moment, Lizabetha Prokofievna rose swiftly from her seat,

beckoned her companions, and left the place almost at a run.

Only the prince stopped behind for a moment, as though in indecision;

and Evgenie Pavlovitch lingered too, for he had not collected his

scattered wits. But the Epanchins had not had time to get more than

twenty paces away when a scandalous episode occurred. The young

officer, Evgenie Pavlovitch’s friend who had been conversing with

Aglaya, said aloud in a great state of indignation:

“She ought to be whipped—that’s the only way to deal with creatures

like that—she ought to be whipped!”

This gentleman was a confidant of Evgenie’s, and had doubtless heard of

the carriage episode.

Nastasia turned to him. Her eyes flashed; she rushed up to a young man

standing near, whom she did not know in the least, but who happened to

have in his hand a thin cane. Seizing this from him, she brought it

with all her force across the face of her insulter.

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

The young officer, forgetting himself, sprang towards her. Nastasia’s

followers were not by her at the moment (the elderly gentleman having

disappeared altogether, and the younger man simply standing aside and

roaring with laughter).

In another moment, of course, the police would have been on the spot,

and it would have gone hard with Nastasia Philipovna had not unexpected

aid appeared.

Muishkin, who was but a couple of steps away, had time to spring

forward and seize the officer’s arms from behind.

The officer, tearing himself from the prince’s grasp, pushed him so

violently backwards that he staggered a few steps and then subsided

into a chair.

But there were other defenders for Nastasia on the spot by this time.

The gentleman known as the “boxer” now confronted the enraged officer.

“Keller is my name, sir; ex-lieutenant,” he said, very loud. “If you

will accept me as champion of the fair sex, I am at your disposal.

English boxing has no secrets from me. I sympathize with you for the

insult you have received, but I can’t permit you to raise your hand

against a woman in public. If you prefer to meet me—as would be more

fitting to your rank—in some other manner, of course you understand me,

captain.”

But the young officer had recovered himself, and was no longer

listening. At this moment Rogojin appeared, elbowing through the crowd;

he took Nastasia’s hand, drew it through his arm, and quickly led her

away. He appeared to be terribly excited; he was trembling all over,

and was as pale as a corpse. As he carried Nastasia off, he turned and

grinned horribly in the officer’s face, and with low malice observed:

“Tfu! look what the fellow got! Look at the blood on his cheek! Ha,

ha!”

Recollecting himself, however, and seeing at a glance the sort of

people he had to deal with, the officer turned his back on both his

opponents, and courteously, but concealing his face with his

handkerchief, approached the prince, who was now rising from the chair

into which he had fallen.

“Prince Muishkin, I believe? The gentleman to whom I had the honour of

being introduced?”

“She is mad, insane—I assure you, she is mad,” replied the prince in

trembling tones, holding out both his hands mechanically towards the

officer.

“I cannot boast of any such knowledge, of course, but I wished to know

your name.”

He bowed and retired without waiting for an answer.

Five seconds after the disappearance of the last actor in this scene,

the police arrived. The whole episode had not lasted more than a couple

of minutes. Some of the spectators had risen from their places, and

departed altogether; some merely exchanged their seats for others a

little further off; some were delighted with the occurrence, and talked

and laughed over it for a long time.

In a word, the incident closed as such incidents do, and the band began

to play again. The prince walked away after the Epanchin party. Had he

thought of looking round to the left after he had been pushed so

unceremoniously into the chair, he would have observed Aglaya standing

some twenty yards away. She had stayed to watch the scandalous scene in

spite of her mother’s and sisters’ anxious cries to her to come away.

Prince S. ran up to her and persuaded her, at last, to come home with

them.

Lizabetha Prokofievna saw that she returned in such a state of

agitation that it was doubtful whether she had even heard their calls.

But only a couple of minutes later, when they had reached the park,

Aglaya suddenly remarked, in her usual calm, indifferent voice:

“I wanted to see how the farce would end.”

III.

The occurrence at the Vauxhall had filled both mother and daughters

with something like horror. In their excitement Lizabetha Prokofievna

and the girls were nearly running all the way home.

In her opinion there was so much disclosed and laid bare by the

episode, that, in spite of the chaotic condition of her mind, she was

able to feel more or less decided on certain points which, up to now,

had been in a cloudy condition.

However, one and all of the party realized that something important had

happened, and that, perhaps fortunately enough, something which had

hitherto been enveloped in the obscurity of guess-work had now begun to

come forth a little from the mists. In spite of Prince S.‘s assurances

and explanations, Evgenie Pavlovitch’s real character and position were

at last coming to light. He was publicly convicted of intimacy with

“that creature.” So thought Lizabetha Prokofievna and her two elder

daughters.

But the real upshot of the business was that the number of riddles to

be solved was augmented. The two girls, though rather irritated at

their mother’s exaggerated alarm and haste to depart from the scene,

had been unwilling to worry her at first with questions.

Besides, they could not help thinking that their sister Aglaya probably

knew more about the whole matter than both they and their mother put

together.

Prince S. looked as black as night, and was silent and moody. Mrs.

Epanchin did not say a word to him all the way home, and he did not

seem to observe the fact. Adelaida tried to pump him a little by

asking, “who was the uncle they were talking about, and what was it

that had happened in Petersburg?” But he had merely muttered something

disconnected about “making inquiries,” and that “of course it was all

nonsense.” “Oh, of course,” replied Adelaida, and asked no more

questions. Aglaya, too, was very quiet; and the only remark she made on

the way home was that they were “walking much too fast to be pleasant.”

Once she turned and observed the prince hurrying after them. Noticing

his anxiety to catch them up, she smiled ironically, and then looked

back no more. At length, just as they neared the house, General

Epanchin came out and met them; he had only just arrived from town.

His first word was to inquire after Evgenie Pavlovitch. But Lizabetha

stalked past him, and neither looked at him nor answered his question.

He immediately judged from the faces of his daughters and Prince S.

that there was a thunderstorm brewing, and he himself already bore

evidences of unusual perturbation of mind.

He immediately button-holed Prince S., and standing at the front door,

engaged in a whispered conversation with him. By the troubled aspect of

both of them, when they entered the house, and approached Mrs.

Epanchin, it was evident that they had been discussing very disturbing

news.

Little by little the family gathered together upstairs in Lizabetha

Prokofievna’s apartments, and Prince Muishkin found himself alone on

the verandah when he arrived. He settled himself in a corner and sat

waiting, though he knew not what he expected. It never struck him that

he had better go away, with all this disturbance in the house. He

seemed to have forgotten all the world, and to be ready to sit on where

he was for years on end. From upstairs he caught sounds of excited

conversation every now and then.

He could not say how long he sat there. It grew late and became quite

dark.

Suddenly Aglaya entered the verandah. She seemed to be quite calm,

though a little pale.

Observing the prince, whom she evidently did not expect to see there,

alone in the corner, she smiled, and approached him:

“What are you doing there?” she asked.

The prince muttered something, blushed, and jumped up; but Aglaya

immediately sat down beside him; so he reseated himself.

She looked suddenly, but attentively into his face, then at the window,

as though thinking of something else, and then again at him.

“Perhaps she wants to laugh at me,” thought the prince, “but no; for if

she did she certainly would do so.”

“Would you like some tea? I’ll order some,” she said, after a minute or

two of silence.

“N-no thanks, I don’t know—”

“Don’t know! How can you not know? By-the-by, look here—if someone were

to challenge you to a duel, what should you do? I wished to ask you

this—some time ago—”

“Why? Nobody would ever challenge me to a duel!”

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

“I dare say I should be—much alarmed!”

“Seriously? Then are you a coward?”

“N-no!—I don’t think so. A coward is a man who is afraid and runs away;

the man who is frightened but does not run away, is not quite a

coward,” said the prince with a smile, after a moment’s thought.

“And you wouldn’t run away?”

“No—I don’t think I should run away,” replied the prince, laughing

outright at last at Aglaya’s questions.

“Though I am a woman, I should certainly not run away for anything,”

said Aglaya, in a slightly pained voice. “However, I see you are

laughing at me and twisting your face up as usual in order to make

yourself look more interesting. Now tell me, they generally shoot at

twenty paces, don’t they? At ten, sometimes? I suppose if at ten they

must be either wounded or killed, mustn’t they?”

“I don’t think they often kill each other at duels.”

“They killed Pushkin that way.”

“That may have been an accident.”

“Not a bit of it; it was a duel to the death, and he was killed.”

“The bullet struck so low down that probably his antagonist would never

have aimed at that part of him—people never do; he would have aimed at

his chest or head; so that probably the bullet hit him accidentally. I

have been told this by competent authorities.”

“Well, a soldier once told me that they were always ordered to aim at

the middle of the body. So you see they don’t aim at the chest or head;

they aim lower on purpose. I asked some officer about this afterwards,

and he said it was perfectly true.”

“That is probably when they fire from a long distance.”

“Can you shoot at all?”

“No, I have never shot in my life.”

“Can’t you even load a pistol?”

“No! That is, I understand how it’s done, of course, but I have never

done it.”

“Then, you don’t know how, for it is a matter that needs practice. Now

listen and learn; in the first place buy good powder, not damp (they

say it mustn’t be at all damp, but very dry), some fine kind it is—you

must ask for _pistol_ powder, not the stuff they load cannons with.

They say one makes the bullets oneself, somehow or other. Have you got

a pistol?”

“No—and I don’t want one,” said the prince, laughing.

“Oh, what _nonsense!_ You must buy one. French or English are the best,

they say. Then take a little powder, about a thimbleful, or perhaps

two, and pour it into the barrel. Better put plenty. Then push in a bit

of felt (it _must_ be felt, for some reason or other); you can easily

get a bit off some old mattress, or off a door; it’s used to keep the

cold out. Well, when you have pushed the felt down, put the bullet in;

do you hear now? The bullet last and the powder first, not the other

way, or the pistol won’t shoot. What are you laughing at? I wish you to

buy a pistol and practise every day, and you must learn to hit a mark

for _certain_; will you?”

The prince only laughed. Aglaya stamped her foot with annoyance.

Her serious air, however, during this conversation had surprised him

considerably. He had a feeling that he ought to be asking her

something, that there was something he wanted to find out far more

important than how to load a pistol; but his thoughts had all

scattered, and he was only aware that she was sitting by him, and

talking to him, and that he was looking at her; as to what she happened

to be saying to him, that did not matter in the least.

The general now appeared on the verandah, coming from upstairs. He was

on his way out, with an expression of determination on his face, and of

preoccupation and worry also.

“Ah! Lef Nicolaievitch, it’s you, is it? Where are you off to now?” he

asked, oblivious of the fact that the prince had not showed the least

sign of moving. “Come along with me; I want to say a word or two to

you.”

“_Au revoir_, then!” said Aglaya, holding out her hand to the prince.

It was quite dark now, and Muishkin could not see her face clearly, but

a minute or two later, when he and the general had left the villa, he

suddenly flushed up, and squeezed his right hand tightly.

It appeared that he and the general were going in the same direction.

In spite of the lateness of the hour, the general was hurrying away to

talk to someone upon some important subject. Meanwhile he talked

incessantly but disconnectedly to the prince, and continually brought

in the name of Lizabetha Prokofievna.

If the prince had been in a condition to pay more attention to what the

general was saying, he would have discovered that the latter was

desirous of drawing some information out of him, or indeed of asking

him some question outright; but that he could not make up his mind to

come to the point.

Muishkin was so absent, that from the very first he could not attend to

a word the other was saying; and when the general suddenly stopped

before him with some excited question, he was obliged to confess,

ignominiously, that he did not know in the least what he had been

talking about.

The general shrugged his shoulders.

“How strange everyone, yourself included, has become of late,” said he.

“I was telling you that I cannot in the least understand Lizabetha

Prokofievna’s ideas and agitations. She is in hysterics up there, and

moans and says that we have been ‘shamed and disgraced.’ How? Why?

When? By whom? I confess that I am very much to blame myself; I do not

conceal the fact; but the conduct, the outrageous behaviour of this

woman, must really be kept within limits, by the police if necessary,

and I am just on my way now to talk the question over and make some

arrangements. It can all be managed quietly and gently, even kindly,

and without the slightest fuss or scandal. I foresee that the future is

pregnant with events, and that there is much that needs explanation.

There is intrigue in the wind; but if on one side nothing is known, on

the other side nothing will be explained. If I have heard nothing about

it, nor have _you_, nor _he_, nor _she_—who _has_ heard about it, I

should like to know? How _can_ all this be explained except by the fact

that half of it is mirage or moonshine, or some hallucination of that

sort?”

“_She_ is insane,” muttered the prince, suddenly recollecting all that

had passed, with a spasm of pain at his heart.

“I too had that idea, and I slept in peace. But now I see that their

opinion is more correct. I do not believe in the theory of madness! The

woman has no common sense; but she is not only not insane, she is

artful to a degree. Her outburst of this evening about Evgenie’s uncle

proves that conclusively. It was _villainous_, simply jesuitical, and

it was all for some special purpose.”

“What about Evgenie’s uncle?”

“My goodness, Lef Nicolaievitch, why, you can’t have heard a single

word I said! Look at me, I’m still trembling all over with the dreadful

shock! It is that that kept me in town so late. Evgenie Pavlovitch’s

uncle—”

“Well?” cried the prince.

“Shot himself this morning, at seven o’clock. A respected, eminent old

man of seventy; and exactly point for point as she described it; a sum

of money, a considerable sum of government money, missing!”

“Why, how could she—”

“What, know of it? Ha, ha, ha! Why, there was a whole crowd round her

the moment she appeared on the scenes here. You know what sort of

people surround her nowadays, and solicit the honour of her

‘acquaintance.’ Of course she might easily have heard the news from

someone coming from town. All Petersburg, if not all Pavlofsk, knows it

by now. Look at the slyness of her observation about Evgenie’s uniform!

I mean, her remark that he had retired just in time! There’s a venomous

hint for you, if you like! No, no! there’s no insanity there! Of course

I refuse to believe that Evgenie Pavlovitch could have known beforehand

of the catastrophe; that is, that at such and such a day at seven

o’clock, and all that; but he might well have had a presentiment of the

truth. And I—all of us—Prince S. and everybody, believed that he was to

inherit a large fortune from this uncle. It’s dreadful, horrible! Mind,

I don’t suspect Evgenie of anything, be quite clear on that point; but

the thing is a little suspicious, nevertheless. Prince S. can’t get

over it. Altogether it is a very extraordinary combination of

circumstances.”

“What suspicion attaches to Evgenie Pavlovitch?”

“Oh, none at all! He has behaved very well indeed. I didn’t mean to

drop any sort of hint. His own fortune is intact, I believe. Lizabetha

Prokofievna, of course, refuses to listen to anything. That’s the worst

of it all, these family catastrophes or quarrels, or whatever you like

to call them. You know, prince, you are a friend of the family, so I

don’t mind telling you; it now appears that Evgenie Pavlovitch proposed

to Aglaya a month ago, and was refused.”

“Impossible!” cried the prince.

“Why? Do you know anything about it? Look here,” continued the general,

more agitated than ever, and trembling with excitement, “maybe I have

been letting the cat out of the bag too freely with you, if so, it is

because you are—that sort of man, you know! Perhaps you have some

special information?”

“I know nothing about Evgenie Pavlovitch!” said the prince.

“Nor do I! They always try to bury me underground when there’s anything

going on; they don’t seem to reflect that it is unpleasant to a man to

be treated so! I won’t stand it! We have just had a terrible

scene!—mind, I speak to you as I would to my own son! Aglaya laughs at

her mother. Her sisters guessed about Evgenie having proposed and been

rejected, and told Lizabetha.

“I tell you, my dear fellow, Aglaya is such an extraordinary, such a

self-willed, fantastical little creature, you wouldn’t believe it!

Every high quality, every brilliant trait of heart and mind, are to be

found in her, and, with it all, so much caprice and mockery, such wild

fancies—indeed, a little devil! She has just been laughing at her

mother to her very face, and at her sisters, and at Prince S., and

everybody—and of course she always laughs at me! You know I love the

child—I love her even when she laughs at me, and I believe the wild

little creature has a special fondness for me for that very reason. She

is fonder of me than any of the others. I dare swear she has had a good

laugh at _you_ before now! You were having a quiet talk just now, I

observed, after all the thunder and lightning upstairs. She was sitting

with you just as though there had been no row at all.”

The prince blushed painfully in the darkness, and closed his right hand

tightly, but he said nothing.

“My dear good Prince Lef Nicolaievitch,” began the general again,

suddenly, “both I and Lizabetha Prokofievna—(who has begun to respect

you once more, and me through you, goodness knows why!)—we both love

you very sincerely, and esteem you, in spite of any appearances to the

contrary. But you’ll admit what a riddle it must have been for us when

that calm, cold, little spitfire, Aglaya—(for she stood up to her

mother and answered her questions with inexpressible contempt, and mine

still more so, because, like a fool, I thought it my duty to assert

myself as head of the family)—when Aglaya stood up of a sudden and

informed us that ‘that madwoman’ (strangely enough, she used exactly

the same expression as you did) ‘has taken it into her head to marry me

to Prince Lef Nicolaievitch, and therefore is doing her best to choke

Evgenie Pavlovitch off, and rid the house of him.’ That’s what she

said. She would not give the slightest explanation; she burst out

laughing, banged the door, and went away. We all stood there with our

mouths open. Well, I was told afterwards of your little passage with

Aglaya this afternoon, and—and—dear prince—you are a good, sensible

fellow, don’t be angry if I speak out—she is laughing at you, my boy!

She is enjoying herself like a child, at your expense, and therefore,

since she is a child, don’t be angry with her, and don’t think anything

of it. I assure you, she is simply making a fool of you, just as she

does with one and all of us out of pure lack of something better to do.

Well—good-bye! You know our feelings, don’t you—our sincere feelings

for yourself? They are unalterable, you know, dear boy, under all

circumstances, but—Well, here we part; I must go down to the right.

Rarely have I sat so uncomfortably in my saddle, as they say, as I now

sit. And people talk of the charms of a country holiday!”

Left to himself at the cross-roads, the prince glanced around him,

quickly crossed the road towards the lighted window of a neighbouring

house, and unfolded a tiny scrap of paper which he had held clasped in

his right hand during the whole of his conversation with the general.

He read the note in the uncertain rays that fell from the window. It

was as follows:

“Tomorrow morning, I shall be at the green bench in the park at seven,

and shall wait there for you. I have made up my mind to speak to you

about a most important matter which closely concerns yourself.

“P.S.—I trust that you will not show this note to anyone. Though I am

ashamed of giving you such instructions, I feel that I must do so,

considering what you are. I therefore write the words, and blush for

your simple character.

“P.P.S.—It is the same green bench that I showed you before. There!

aren’t you ashamed of yourself? I felt that it was necessary to repeat

even that information.”

The note was written and folded anyhow, evidently in a great hurry, and

probably just before Aglaya had come down to the verandah.

In inexpressible agitation, amounting almost to fear, the prince

slipped quickly away from the window, away from the light, like a

frightened thief, but as he did so he collided violently with some

gentleman who seemed to spring from the earth at his feet.

“I was watching for you, prince,” said the individual.

“Is that you, Keller?” said the prince, in surprise.

“Yes, I’ve been looking for you. I waited for you at the Epanchins’

house, but of course I could not come in. I dogged you from behind as

you walked along with the general. Well, prince, here is Keller,

absolutely at your service—command him!—ready to sacrifice himself—even

to die in case of need.”

“But—why?”

“Oh, why?—Of course you’ll be challenged! That was young Lieutenant

Moloftsoff. I know him, or rather of him; he won’t pass an insult. He

will take no notice of Rogojin and myself, and, therefore, you are the

only one left to account for. You’ll have to pay the piper, prince. He

has been asking about you, and undoubtedly his friend will call on you

tomorrow—perhaps he is at your house already. If you would do me the

honour to have me for a second, prince, I should be happy. That’s why I

have been looking for you now.”

“Duel! You’ve come to talk about a duel, too!” The prince burst out

laughing, to the great astonishment of Keller. He laughed

unrestrainedly, and Keller, who had been on pins and needles, and in a

fever of excitement to offer himself as “second,” was very near being

offended.

“You caught him by the arms, you know, prince. No man of proper pride

can stand that sort of treatment in public.”

“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?”

“As much as usual, prince—why?”

“Pleasant dreams then—ha, ha!”

The prince crossed the road, and disappeared into the park, leaving the

astonished Keller in a state of ludicrous wonder. He had never before

seen the prince in such a strange condition of mind, and could not have

imagined the possibility of it.

“Fever, probably,” he said to himself, “for the man is all nerves, and

this business has been a little too much for him. He is not _afraid_,

that’s clear; that sort never funks! H’m! champagne! That was an

interesting item of news, at all events!—Twelve bottles! Dear me,

that’s a very respectable little stock indeed! I bet anything Lebedeff

lent somebody money on deposit of this dozen of champagne. Hum! he’s a

nice fellow, is this prince! I like this sort of man. Well, I needn’t

be wasting time here, and if it’s a case of champagne, why—there’s no

time like the present!”

That the prince was almost in a fever was no more than the truth. He

wandered about the park for a long while, and at last came to himself

in a lonely avenue. He was vaguely conscious that he had already paced

this particular walk—from that large, dark tree to the bench at the

other end—about a hundred yards altogether—at least thirty times

backwards and forwards.

As to recollecting what he had been thinking of all that time, he could

not. He caught himself, however, indulging in one thought which made

him roar with laughter, though there was nothing really to laugh at in

it; but he felt that he must laugh, and go on laughing.

It struck him that the idea of the duel might not have occurred to

Keller alone, but that his lesson in the art of pistol-loading might

have been not altogether accidental! “Pooh! nonsense!” he said to

himself, struck by another thought, of a sudden. “Why, she was

immensely surprised to find me there on the verandah, and laughed and

talked about _tea!_ And yet she had this little note in her hand,

therefore she must have known that I was sitting there. So why was she

surprised? Ha, ha, ha!”

He pulled the note out and kissed it; then paused and reflected. “How

strange it all is! how strange!” he muttered, melancholy enough now. In

moments of great joy, he invariably felt a sensation of melancholy come

over him—he could not tell why.

He looked intently around him, and wondered why he had come here; he

was very tired, so he approached the bench and sat down on it. Around

him was profound silence; the music in the Vauxhall was over. The park

seemed quite empty, though it was not, in reality, later than half-past

eleven. It was a quiet, warm, clear night—a real Petersburg night of

early June; but in the dense avenue, where he was sitting, it was

almost pitch dark.

If anyone had come up at this moment and told him that he was in love,

passionately in love, he would have rejected the idea with

astonishment, and, perhaps, with irritation. And if anyone had added

that Aglaya’s note was a love-letter, and that it contained an

appointment to a lover’s rendezvous, he would have blushed with shame

for the speaker, and, probably, have challenged him to a duel.

All this would have been perfectly sincere on his part. He had never

for a moment entertained the idea of the possibility of this girl

loving him, or even of such a thing as himself falling in love with

her. The possibility of being loved himself, “a man like me,” as he put

it, he ranked among ridiculous suppositions. It appeared to him that it

was simply a joke on Aglaya’s part, if there really were anything in it

at all; but that seemed to him quite natural. His preoccupation was

caused by something different.

As to the few words which the general had let slip about Aglaya

laughing at everybody, and at himself most of all—he entirely believed

them. He did not feel the slightest sensation of offence; on the

contrary, he was quite certain that it was as it should be.

His whole thoughts were now as to next morning early; he would see her;

he would sit by her on that little green bench, and listen to how

pistols were loaded, and look at her. He wanted nothing more.

The question as to what she might have to say of special interest to

himself occurred to him once or twice. He did not doubt, for a moment,

that she really had some such subject of conversation in store, but so

very little interested in the matter was he that it did not strike him

to wonder what it could be. The crunch of gravel on the path suddenly

caused him to raise his head.

A man, whose face it was difficult to see in the gloom, approached the

bench, and sat down beside him. The prince peered into his face, and

recognized the livid features of Rogojin.

“I knew you’d be wandering about somewhere here. I didn’t have to look

for you very long,” muttered the latter between his teeth.

It was the first time they had met since the encounter on the staircase

at the hotel.

Painfully surprised as he was at this sudden apparition of Rogojin, the

prince, for some little while, was unable to collect his thoughts.

Rogojin, evidently, saw and understood the impression he had made; and

though he seemed more or less confused at first, yet he began talking

with what looked like assumed ease and freedom. However, the prince

soon changed his mind on this score, and thought that there was not

only no affectation of indifference, but that Rogojin was not even

particularly agitated. If there were a little apparent awkwardness, it

was only in his words and gestures. The man could not change his heart.

“How did you—find me here?” asked the prince for the sake of saying

something.

“Keller told me (I found him at your place) that you were in the park.

‘Of course he is!’ I thought.”

“Why so?” asked the prince uneasily.

Rogojin smiled, but did not explain.

“I received your letter, Lef Nicolaievitch—what’s the good of all

that?—It’s no use, you know. I’ve come to you from _her_,—she bade me

tell you that she must see you, she has something to say to you. She

told me to find you today.”

“I’ll come tomorrow. Now I’m going home—are you coming to my house?”

“Why should I? I’ve given you the message.—Goodbye!”

“Won’t you come?” asked the prince in a gentle voice.

“What an extraordinary man you are! I wonder at you!” Rogojin laughed

sarcastically.

“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?”

“You don’t know what anger is!” laughed Rogojin, in reply to the

prince’s heated words.

He had moved a pace or two away, and was hiding his hands behind him.

“No, it is impossible for me to come to your house again,” he added

slowly.

“Why? Do you hate me so much as all that?”

“I don’t love you, Lef Nicolaievitch, and, therefore, what would be the

use of my coming to see you? You are just like a child—you want a

plaything, and it must be taken out and given you—and then you don’t

know how to work it. You are simply repeating all you said in your

letter, and what’s the use? Of course I believe every word you say, and

I know perfectly well that you neither did or ever can deceive me in

any way, and yet, I don’t love you. You write that you’ve forgotten

everything, and only remember your brother Parfen, with whom you

exchanged crosses, and that you don’t remember anything about the

Rogojin who aimed a knife at your throat. What do you know about my

feelings, eh?” (Rogojin laughed disagreeably.) “Here you are holding

out your brotherly forgiveness to me for a thing that I have perhaps

never repented of in the slightest degree. I did not think of it again

all that evening; all my thoughts were centred on something else—”

“Not think of it again? Of course you didn’t!” cried the prince. “And I

dare swear that you came straight away down here to Pavlofsk to listen

to the music and dog her about in the crowd, and stare at her, just as

you did today. There’s nothing surprising in that! If you hadn’t been

in that condition of mind that you could think of nothing but one

subject, you would, probably, never have raised your knife against me.

I had a presentiment of what you would do, that day, ever since I saw

you first in the morning. Do you know yourself what you looked like? I

knew you would try to murder me even at the very moment when we

exchanged crosses. What did you take me to your mother for? Did you

think to stay your hand by doing so? Perhaps you did not put your

thoughts into words, but you and I were thinking the same thing, or

feeling the same thing looming over us, at the same moment. What should

you think of me now if you had not raised your knife to me—the knife

which God averted from my throat? I would have been guilty of

suspecting you all the same—and you would have intended the murder all

the same; therefore we should have been mutually guilty in any case.

Come, don’t frown; you needn’t laugh at me, either. You say you haven’t

‘repented.’ Repented! You probably couldn’t, if you were to try; you

dislike me too much for that. Why, if I were an angel of light, and as

innocent before you as a babe, you would still loathe me if you

believed that _she_ loved me, instead of loving yourself. That’s

jealousy—that is the real jealousy.

“But do you know what I have been thinking out during this last week,

Parfen? I’ll tell you. What if she loves you now better than anyone?

And what if she torments you _because_ she loves you, and in proportion

to her love for you, so she torments you the more? She won’t tell you

this, of course; you must have eyes to see. Why do you suppose she

consents to marry you? She must have a reason, and that reason she will

tell you some day. Some women desire the kind of love you give her, and

she is probably one of these. Your love and your wild nature impress

her. Do you know that a woman is capable of driving a man crazy almost,

with her cruelties and mockeries, and feels not one single pang of

regret, because she looks at him and says to herself, ‘There! I’ll

torment this man nearly into his grave, and then, oh! how I’ll

compensate him for it all with my love!’”

Rogojin listened to the end, and then burst out laughing:

“Why, prince, I declare you must have had a taste of this sort of thing

yourself—haven’t you? I have heard tell of something of the kind, you

know; is it true?”

“What? What can you have heard?” said the prince, stammering.

Rogojin continued to laugh loudly. He had listened to the prince’s

speech with curiosity and some satisfaction. The speaker’s impulsive

warmth had surprised and even comforted him.

“Why, I’ve not only heard of it; I see it for myself,” he said. “When

have you ever spoken like that before? It wasn’t like yourself, prince.

Why, if I hadn’t heard this report about you, I should never have come

all this way into the park—at midnight, too!”

“I don’t understand you in the least, Parfen.”

“Oh, _she_ told me all about it long ago, and tonight I saw for myself.

I saw you at the music, you know, and whom you were sitting with. She

swore to me yesterday, and again today, that you are madly in love with

Aglaya Ivanovna. But that’s all the same to me, prince, and it’s not my

affair at all; for if you have ceased to love _her_, _she_ has not

ceased to love _you_. You know, of course, that she wants to marry you

to that girl? She’s sworn to it! Ha, ha! She says to me, ‘Until then I

won’t marry you. When they go to church, we’ll go too—and not before.’

What on earth does she mean by it? I don’t know, and I never did.

Either she loves you without limits or—yet, if she loves you, why does

she wish to marry you to another girl? She says, ‘I want to see him

happy,’ which is to say—she loves you.”

“I wrote, and I say to you once more, that she is not in her right

mind,” said the prince, who had listened with anguish to what Rogojin

said.

“Goodness knows—you may be wrong there! At all events, she named the

day this evening, as we left the gardens. ‘In three weeks,’ says she,

‘and perhaps sooner, we shall be married.’ She swore to it, took off

her cross and kissed it. So it all depends upon you now, prince, You

see! Ha, ha!”

“That’s all madness. What you say about me, Parfen, never can and never

will be. Tomorrow, I shall come and see you—”

“How can she be mad,” Rogojin interrupted, “when she is sane enough for

other people and only mad for you? How can she write letters to _her_,

if she’s mad? If she were insane they would observe it in her letters.”

“What letters?” said the prince, alarmed.

“She writes to _her_—and the girl reads the letters. Haven’t you

heard?—You are sure to hear; she’s sure to show you the letters

herself.”

“I won’t believe this!” cried the prince.

“Why, prince, you’ve only gone a few steps along this road, I perceive.

You are evidently a mere beginner. Wait a bit! Before long, you’ll have

your own detectives, you’ll watch day and night, and you’ll know every

little thing that goes on there—that is, if—”

“Drop that subject, Rogojin, and never mention it again. And listen: as

I have sat here, and talked, and listened, it has suddenly struck me

that tomorrow is my birthday. It must be about twelve o’clock, now;

come home with me—do, and we’ll see the day in! We’ll have some wine,

and you shall wish me—I don’t know what—but you, especially you, must

wish me a good wish, and I shall wish you full happiness in return.

Otherwise, hand me my cross back again. You didn’t return it to me next

day. Haven’t you got it on now?”

“Yes, I have,” said Rogojin.

“Come along, then. I don’t wish to meet my new year without you—my new

life, I should say, for a new life is beginning for me. Did you know,

Parfen, that a new life had begun for me?”

“I see for myself that it is so—and I shall tell _her_. But you are not

quite yourself, Lef Nicolaievitch.”

IV.

The prince observed with great surprise, as he approached his villa,

accompanied by Rogojin, that a large number of people were assembled on

his verandah, which was brilliantly lighted up. The company seemed

merry and were noisily laughing and talking—even quarrelling, to judge

from the sounds. At all events they were clearly enjoying themselves,

and the prince observed further on closer investigation—that all had

been drinking champagne. To judge from the lively condition of some of

the party, it was to be supposed that a considerable quantity of

champagne had been consumed already.

All the guests were known to the prince; but the curious part of the

matter was that they had all arrived on the same evening, as though

with one accord, although he had only himself recollected the fact that

it was his birthday a few moments since.

“You must have told somebody you were going to trot out the champagne,

and that’s why they are all come!” muttered Rogojin, as the two entered

the verandah. “We know all about that! You’ve only to whistle and they

come up in shoals!” he continued, almost angrily. He was doubtless

thinking of his own late experiences with his boon companions.

All surrounded the prince with exclamations of welcome, and, on hearing

that it was his birthday, with cries of congratulation and delight;

many of them were very noisy.

The presence of certain of those in the room surprised the prince

vastly, but the guest whose advent filled him with the greatest

wonder—almost amounting to alarm—was Evgenie Pavlovitch. The prince

could not believe his eyes when he beheld the latter, and could not

help thinking that something was wrong.

Lebedeff ran up promptly to explain the arrival of all these gentlemen.

He was himself somewhat intoxicated, but the prince gathered from his

long-winded periods that the party had assembled quite naturally, and

accidentally.

First of all Hippolyte had arrived, early in the evening, and feeling

decidedly better, had determined to await the prince on the verandah.

There Lebedeff had joined him, and his household had followed—that is,

his daughters and General Ivolgin. Burdovsky had brought Hippolyte, and

stayed on with him. Gania and Ptitsin had dropped in accidentally later

on; then came Keller, and he and Colia insisted on having champagne.

Evgenie Pavlovitch had only dropped in half an hour or so ago. Lebedeff

had served the champagne readily.

“My own though, prince, my own, mind,” he said, “and there’ll be some

supper later on; my daughter is getting it ready now. Come and sit

down, prince, we are all waiting for you, we want you with us. Fancy

what we have been discussing! You know the question, ‘to be or not to

be,’—out of Hamlet! A contemporary theme! Quite up-to-date! Mr.

Hippolyte has been eloquent to a degree. He won’t go to bed, but he has

only drunk a little champagne, and that can’t do him any harm. Come

along, prince, and settle the question. Everyone is waiting for you,

sighing for the light of your luminous intelligence...”

The prince noticed the sweet, welcoming look on Vera Lebedeff’s face,

as she made her way towards him through the crowd. He held out his hand

to her. She took it, blushing with delight, and wished him “a happy

life from that day forward.” Then she ran off to the kitchen, where her

presence was necessary to help in the preparations for supper. Before

the prince’s arrival she had spent some time on the terrace, listening

eagerly to the conversation, though the visitors, mostly under the

influence of wine, were discussing abstract subjects far beyond her

comprehension. In the next room her younger sister lay on a wooden

chest, sound asleep, with her mouth wide open; but the boy, Lebedeff’s

son, had taken up his position close beside Colia and Hippolyte, his

face lit up with interest in the conversation of his father and the

rest, to which he would willingly have listened for ten hours at a

stretch.

“I have waited for you on purpose, and am very glad to see you arrive

so happy,” said Hippolyte, when the prince came forward to press his

hand, immediately after greeting Vera.

“And how do you know that I am ‘so happy’?”

“I can see it by your face! Say ‘how do you do’ to the others, and come

and sit down here, quick—I’ve been waiting for you!” he added,

accentuating the fact that he had waited. On the prince’s asking, “Will

it not be injurious to you to sit out so late?” he replied that he

could not believe that he had thought himself dying three days or so

ago, for he never had felt better than this evening.

Burdovsky next jumped up and explained that he had come in by accident,

having escorted Hippolyte from town. He murmured that he was glad he

had “written nonsense” in his letter, and then pressed the prince’s

hand warmly and sat down again.

The prince approached Evgenie Pavlovitch last of all. The latter

immediately took his arm.

“I have a couple of words to say to you,” he began, “and those on a

very important matter; let’s go aside for a minute or two.”

“Just a couple of words!” whispered another voice in the prince’s other

ear, and another hand took his other arm. Muishkin turned, and to his

great surprise observed a red, flushed face and a droll-looking figure

which he recognized at once as that of Ferdishenko. Goodness knows

where he had turned up from!

“Do you remember Ferdishenko?” he asked.

“Where have you dropped from?” cried the prince.

“He is sorry for his sins now, prince,” cried Keller. “He did not want

to let you know he was here; he was hidden over there in the

corner,—but he repents now, he feels his guilt.”

“Why, what has he done?”

“I met him outside and brought him in—he’s a gentleman who doesn’t

often allow his friends to see him, of late—but he’s sorry now.”

“Delighted, I’m sure!—I’ll come back directly, gentlemen,—sit down

there with the others, please,—excuse me one moment,” said the host,

getting away with difficulty in order to follow Evgenie.

“You are very gay here,” began the latter, “and I have had quite a

pleasant half-hour while I waited for you. Now then, my dear Lef

Nicolaievitch, this is what’s the matter. I’ve arranged it all with

Moloftsoff, and have just come in to relieve your mind on that score.

You need be under no apprehensions. He was very sensible, as he should

be, of course, for I think he was entirely to blame himself.”

“What Moloftsoff?”

“The young fellow whose arms you held, don’t you know? He was so wild

with you that he was going to send a friend to you tomorrow morning.”

“What nonsense!”

“Of course it is nonsense, and in nonsense it would have ended,

doubtless; but you know these fellows, they—”

“Excuse me, but I think you must have something else that you wished to

speak about, Evgenie Pavlovitch?”

“Of course, I have!” said the other, laughing. “You see, my dear

fellow, tomorrow, very early in the morning, I must be off to town

about this unfortunate business (my uncle, you know!). Just imagine, my

dear sir, it is all true—word for word—and, of course, everybody knew

it excepting myself. All this has been such a blow to me that I have

not managed to call in at the Epanchins’. Tomorrow I shall not see them

either, because I shall be in town. I may not be here for three days or

more; in a word, my affairs are a little out of gear. But though my

town business is, of course, most pressing, still I determined not to

go away until I had seen you, and had a clear understanding with you

upon certain points; and that without loss of time. I will wait now, if

you will allow me, until the company departs; I may just as well, for I

have nowhere else to go to, and I shall certainly not do any sleeping

tonight; I’m far too excited. And finally, I must confess that, though

I know it is bad form to pursue a man in this way, I have come to beg

your friendship, my dear prince. You are an unusual sort of a person;

you don’t lie at every step, as some men do; in fact, you don’t lie at

all, and there is a matter in which I need a true and sincere friend,

for I really may claim to be among the number of bona fide unfortunates

just now.”

He laughed again.

“But the trouble is,” said the prince, after a slight pause for

reflection, “that goodness only knows when this party will break up.

Hadn’t we better stroll into the park? I’ll excuse myself, there’s no

danger of their going away.”

“No, no! I have my reasons for wishing them not to suspect us of being

engaged in any specially important conversation. There are gentry

present who are a little too much interested in us. You are not aware

of that perhaps, prince? It will be a great deal better if they see

that we are friendly just in an ordinary way. They’ll all go in a

couple of hours, and then I’ll ask you to give me twenty minutes—half

an hour at most.”

“By all means! I assure you I am delighted—you need not have entered

into all these explanations. As for your remarks about friendship with

me—thanks, very much indeed. You must excuse my being a little absent

this evening. Do you know, I cannot somehow be attentive to anything

just now?”

“I see, I see,” said Evgenie, smiling gently. His mirth seemed very

near the surface this evening.

“What do you see?” said the prince, startled.

“I don’t want you to suspect that I have simply come here to deceive

you and pump information out of you!” said Evgenie, still smiling, and

without making any direct reply to the question.

“Oh, but I haven’t the slightest doubt that you did come to pump me,”

said the prince, laughing himself, at last; “and I dare say you are

quite prepared to deceive me too, so far as that goes. But what of

that? I’m not afraid of you; besides, you’ll hardly believe it, I feel

as though I really didn’t care a scrap one way or the other, just

now!—And—and—and as you are a capital fellow, I am convinced of that, I

dare say we really shall end by being good friends. I like you very

much Evgenie Pavlovitch; I consider you a very good fellow indeed.”

“Well, in any case, you are a most delightful man to have to deal with,

be the business what it may,” concluded Evgenie. “Come along now, I’ll

drink a glass to your health. I’m charmed to have entered into alliance

with you. By-the-by,” he added suddenly, “has this young Hippolyte come

down to stay with you?”

“Yes.”

“He’s not going to die at once, I should think, is he?”

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been half an hour here with him, and he—”

Hippolyte had been waiting for the prince all this time, and had never

ceased looking at him and Evgenie Pavlovitch as they conversed in the

corner. He became much excited when they approached the table once

more. He was disturbed in his mind, it seemed; perspiration stood in

large drops on his forehead; in his gleaming eyes it was easy to read

impatience and agitation; his gaze wandered from face to face of those

present, and from object to object in the room, apparently without aim.

He had taken a part, and an animated one, in the noisy conversation of

the company; but his animation was clearly the outcome of fever. His

talk was almost incoherent; he would break off in the middle of a

sentence which he had begun with great interest, and forget what he had

been saying. The prince discovered to his dismay that Hippolyte had

been allowed to drink two large glasses of champagne; the one now

standing by him being the third. All this he found out afterwards; at

the moment he did not notice anything, very particularly.

“Do you know I am specially glad that today is your birthday!” cried

Hippolyte.

“Why?”

“You’ll soon see. D’you know I had a feeling that there would be a lot

of people here tonight? It’s not the first time that my presentiments

have been fulfilled. I wish I had known it was your birthday, I’d have

brought you a present—perhaps I have got a present for you! Who knows?

Ha, ha! How long is it now before daylight?”

“Not a couple of hours,” said Ptitsin, looking at his watch. “What’s

the good of daylight now? One can read all night in the open air

without it,” said someone.

“The good of it! Well, I want just to see a ray of the sun,” said

Hippolyte. “Can one drink to the sun’s health, do you think, prince?”

“Oh, I dare say one can; but you had better be calm and lie down,

Hippolyte—that’s much more important.”

“You are always preaching about resting; you are a regular nurse to me,

prince. As soon as the sun begins to ‘resound’ in the sky—what poet

said that? ‘The sun resounded in the sky.’ It is beautiful, though

there’s no sense in it!—then we will go to bed. Lebedeff, tell me, is

the sun the source of life? What does the source, or ‘spring,’ of life

really mean in the Apocalypse? You have heard of the ‘Star that is

called Wormwood,’ prince?”

“I have heard that Lebedeff explains it as the railroads that cover

Europe like a net.”

Everybody laughed, and Lebedeff got up abruptly.

“No! Allow me, that is not what we are discussing!” he cried, waving

his hand to impose silence. “Allow me! With these gentlemen... all

these gentlemen,” he added, suddenly addressing the prince, “on certain

points... that is...” He thumped the table repeatedly, and the laughter

increased. Lebedeff was in his usual evening condition, and had just

ended a long and scientific argument, which had left him excited and

irritable. On such occasions he was apt to evince a supreme contempt

for his opponents.

“It is not right! Half an hour ago, prince, it was agreed among us that

no one should interrupt, no one should laugh, that each person was to

express his thoughts freely; and then at the end, when everyone had

spoken, objections might be made, even by the atheists. We chose the

general as president. Now without some such rule and order, anyone

might be shouted down, even in the loftiest and most profound

thought....”

“Go on! Go on! Nobody is going to interrupt you!” cried several voices.

“Speak, but keep to the point!”

“What is this ‘star’?” asked another.

“I have no idea,” replied General Ivolgin, who presided with much

gravity.

“I love these arguments, prince,” said Keller, also more than half

intoxicated, moving restlessly in his chair. “Scientific and

political.” Then, turning suddenly towards Evgenie Pavlovitch, who was

seated near him: “Do you know, I simply adore reading the accounts of

the debates in the English parliament. Not that the discussions

themselves interest me; I am not a politician, you know; but it

delights me to see how they address each other ‘the noble lord who

agrees with me,’ ‘my honourable opponent who astonished Europe with his

proposal,’ ‘the noble viscount sitting opposite’—all these expressions,

all this parliamentarism of a free people, has an enormous attraction

for me. It fascinates me, prince. I have always been an artist in the

depths of my soul, I assure you, Evgenie Pavlovitch.”

“Do you mean to say,” cried Gania, from the other corner, “do you mean

to say that railways are accursed inventions, that they are a source of

ruin to humanity, a poison poured upon the earth to corrupt the springs

of life?”

Gavrila Ardalionovitch was in high spirits that evening, and it seemed

to the prince that his gaiety was mingled with triumph. Of course he

was only joking with Lebedeff, meaning to egg him on, but he grew

excited himself at the same time.

“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.”

“Is it certainly accursed?... or do you only mean it might be? That is

an important point,” said Evgenie Pavlovitch.

“It is accursed, certainly accursed!” replied the clerk, vehemently.

“Don’t go so fast, Lebedeff; you are much milder in the morning,” said

Ptitsin, smiling.

“But, on the other hand, more frank in the evening! In the evening

sincere and frank,” repeated Lebedeff, earnestly. “More candid, more

exact, more honest, more honourable, and... although I may show you my

weak side, I challenge you all; you atheists, for instance! How are you

going to save the world? How find a straight road of progress, you men

of science, of industry, of cooperation, of trades unions, and all the

rest? How are you going to save it, I say? By what? By credit? What is

credit? To what will credit lead you?”

“You are too inquisitive,” remarked Evgenie Pavlovitch.

“Well, anyone who does not interest himself in questions such as this

is, in my opinion, a mere fashionable dummy.”

“But it will lead at least to solidarity, and balance of interests,”

said Ptitsin.

“You will reach that with nothing to help you but credit? Without

recourse to any moral principle, having for your foundation only

individual selfishness, and the satisfaction of material desires?

Universal peace, and the happiness of mankind as a whole, being the

result! Is it really so that I may understand you, sir?”

“But the universal necessity of living, of drinking, of eating—in

short, the whole scientific conviction that this necessity can only be

satisfied by universal co-operation and the solidarity of interests—is,

it seems to me, a strong enough idea to serve as a basis, so to speak,

and a ‘spring of life,’ for humanity in future centuries,” said Gavrila

Ardalionovitch, now thoroughly roused.

“The necessity of eating and drinking, that is to say, solely the

instinct of self-preservation...”

“Is not that enough? The instinct of self-preservation is the normal

law of humanity...”

“Who told you that?” broke in Evgenie Pavlovitch.

“It is a law, doubtless, but a law neither more nor less normal than

that of destruction, even self-destruction. Is it possible that the

whole normal law of humanity is contained in this sentiment of

self-preservation?”

“Ah!” cried Hippolyte, turning towards Evgenie Pavlovitch, and looking

at him with a queer sort of curiosity.

Then seeing that Radomski was laughing, he began to laugh himself,

nudged Colia, who was sitting beside him, with his elbow, and again

asked what time it was. He even pulled Colia’s silver watch out of his

hand, and looked at it eagerly. Then, as if he had forgotten

everything, he stretched himself out on the sofa, put his hands behind

his head, and looked up at the sky. After a minute or two he got up and

came back to the table to listen to Lebedeff’s outpourings, as the

latter passionately commentated on Evgenie Pavlovitch’s paradox.

“That is an artful and traitorous idea. A smart notion,” vociferated

the clerk, “thrown out as an apple of discord. But it is just. You are

a scoffer, a man of the world, a cavalry officer, and, though not

without brains, you do not realize how profound is your thought, nor

how true. Yes, the laws of self-preservation and of self-destruction

are equally powerful in this world. The devil will hold his empire over

humanity until a limit of time which is still unknown. You laugh? You

do not believe in the devil? Scepticism as to the devil is a French

idea, and it is also a frivolous idea. Do you know who the devil is? Do

you know his name? Although you don’t know his name you make a mockery

of his form, following the example of Voltaire. You sneer at his hoofs,

at his tail, at his horns—all of them the produce of your imagination!

In reality the devil is a great and terrible spirit, with neither

hoofs, nor tail, nor horns; it is you who have endowed him with these

attributes! But... he is not the question just now!”

“How do you know he is not the question now?” cried Hippolyte, laughing

hysterically.

“Another excellent idea, and worth considering!” replied Lebedeff.

“But, again, that is not the question. The question at this moment is

whether we have not weakened ‘the springs of life’ by the extension...”

“Of railways?” put in Colia eagerly.

“Not railways, properly speaking, presumptuous youth, but the general

tendency of which railways may be considered as the outward expression

and symbol. We hurry and push and hustle, for the good of humanity!

‘The world is becoming too noisy, too commercial!’ groans some solitary

thinker. ‘Undoubtedly it is, but the noise of waggons bearing bread to

starving humanity is of more value than tranquillity of soul,’ replies

another triumphantly, and passes on with an air of pride. As for me, I

don’t believe in these waggons bringing bread to humanity. For, founded

on no moral principle, these may well, even in the act of carrying

bread to humanity, coldly exclude a considerable portion of humanity

from enjoying it; that has been seen more than once.”

“What, these waggons may coldly exclude?” repeated someone.

“That has been seen already,” continued Lebedeff, not deigning to

notice the interruption. “Malthus was a friend of humanity, but, with

ill-founded moral principles, the friend of humanity is the devourer of

humanity, without mentioning his pride; for, touch the vanity of one of

these numberless philanthropists, and to avenge his self-esteem, he

will be ready at once to set fire to the whole globe; and to tell the

truth, we are all more or less like that. I, perhaps, might be the

first to set a light to the fuel, and then run away. But, again, I must

repeat, that is not the question.”

“What is it then, for goodness’ sake?”

“He is boring us!”

“The question is connected with the following anecdote of past times;

for I am obliged to relate a story. In our times, and in our country,

which I hope you love as much as I do, for as far as I am concerned, I

am ready to shed the last drop of my blood...

“Go on! Go on!”

“In our dear country, as indeed in the whole of Europe, a famine visits

humanity about four times a century, as far as I can remember; once in

every twenty-five years. I won’t swear to this being the exact figure,

but anyhow they have become comparatively rare.”

“Comparatively to what?”

“To the twelfth century, and those immediately preceding and following

it. We are told by historians that widespread famines occurred in those

days every two or three years, and such was the condition of things

that men actually had recourse to cannibalism, in secret, of course.

One of these cannibals, who had reached a good age, declared of his own

free will that during the course of his long and miserable life he had

personally killed and eaten, in the most profound secrecy, sixty monks,

not to mention several children; the number of the latter he thought

was about six, an insignificant total when compared with the enormous

mass of ecclesiastics consumed by him. As to adults, laymen that is to

say, he had never touched them.”

The president joined in the general outcry.

“That’s impossible!” said he in an aggrieved tone. “I am often

discussing subjects of this nature with him, gentlemen, but for the

most part he talks nonsense enough to make one deaf: this story has no

pretence of being true.”

“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.”

“But could anyone possibly eat sixty monks?” objected the scoffing

listeners.

“It is quite clear that he did not eat them all at once, but in a space

of fifteen or twenty years: from that point of view the thing is

comprehensible and natural...”

“Natural?”

“And natural,” repeated Lebedeff with pedantic obstinacy. “Besides, a

Catholic monk is by nature excessively curious; it would be quite easy

therefore to entice him into a wood, or some secret place, on false

pretences, and there to deal with him as said. But I do not dispute in

the least that the number of persons consumed appears to denote a spice

of greediness.”

“It is perhaps true, gentlemen,” said the prince, quietly. He had been

listening in silence up to that moment without taking part in the

conversation, but laughing heartily with the others from time to time.

Evidently he was delighted to see that everybody was amused, that

everybody was talking at once, and even that everybody was drinking. It

seemed as if he were not intending to speak at all, when suddenly he

intervened in such a serious voice that everyone looked at him with

interest.

“It is true that there were frequent famines at that time, gentlemen. I

have often heard of them, though I do not know much history. But it

seems to me that it must have been so. When I was in Switzerland I used

to look with astonishment at the many ruins of feudal castles perched

on the top of steep and rocky heights, half a mile at least above

sea-level, so that to reach them one had to climb many miles of stony

tracks. A castle, as you know, is, a kind of mountain of stones—a

dreadful, almost an impossible, labour! Doubtless the builders were all

poor men, vassals, and had to pay heavy taxes, and to keep up the

priesthood. How, then, could they provide for themselves, and when had

they time to plough and sow their fields? The greater number must,

literally, have died of starvation. I have sometimes asked myself how

it was that these communities were not utterly swept off the face of

the earth, and how they could possibly survive. Lebedeff is not

mistaken, in my opinion, when he says that there were cannibals in

those days, perhaps in considerable numbers; but I do not understand

why he should have dragged in the monks, nor what he means by that.”

“It is undoubtedly because, in the twelfth century, monks were the only

people one could eat; they were the fat, among many lean,” said Gavrila

Ardalionovitch.

“A brilliant idea, and most true!” cried Lebedeff, “for he never even

touched the laity. Sixty monks, and not a single layman! It is a

terrible idea, but it is historic, it is statistic; it is indeed one of

those facts which enables an intelligent historian to reconstruct the

physiognomy of a special epoch, for it brings out this further point

with mathematical accuracy, that the clergy were in those days sixty

times richer and more flourishing than the rest of humanity and perhaps

sixty times fatter also...”

“You are exaggerating, you are exaggerating, Lebedeff!” cried his

hearers, amid laughter.

“I admit that it is an historic thought, but what is your conclusion?”

asked the prince.

He spoke so seriously in addressing Lebedeff, that his tone contrasted

quite comically with that of the others. They were very nearly laughing

at him, too, but he did not notice it.

“Don’t you see he is a lunatic, prince?” whispered Evgenie Pavlovitch

in his ear. “Someone told me just now that he is a bit touched on the

subject of lawyers, that he has a mania for making speeches and intends

to pass the examinations. I am expecting a splendid burlesque now.”

“My conclusion is vast,” replied Lebedeff, in a voice like thunder.

“Let us examine first the psychological and legal position of the

criminal. We see that in spite of the difficulty of finding other food,

the accused, or, as we may say, my client, has often during his

peculiar life exhibited signs of repentance, and of wishing to give up

this clerical diet. Incontrovertible facts prove this assertion. He has

eaten five or six children, a relatively insignificant number, no

doubt, but remarkable enough from another point of view. It is manifest

that, pricked by remorse—for my client is religious, in his way, and

has a conscience, as I shall prove later—and desiring to extenuate his

sin as far as possible, he has tried six times at least to substitute

lay nourishment for clerical. That this was merely an experiment we can

hardly doubt: for if it had been only a question of gastronomic

variety, six would have been too few; why only six? Why not thirty? But

if we regard it as an experiment, inspired by the fear of committing

new sacrilege, then this number six becomes intelligible. Six attempts

to calm his remorse, and the pricking of his conscience, would amply

suffice, for these attempts could scarcely have been happy ones. In my

humble opinion, a child is too small; I should say, not sufficient;

which would result in four or five times more lay children than monks

being required in a given time. The sin, lessened on the one hand,

would therefore be increased on the other, in quantity, not in quality.

Please understand, gentlemen, that in reasoning thus, I am taking the

point of view which might have been taken by a criminal of the middle

ages. As for myself, a man of the late nineteenth century, I, of

course, should reason differently; I say so plainly, and therefore you

need not jeer at me nor mock me, gentlemen. As for you, general, it is

still more unbecoming on your part. In the second place, and giving my

own personal opinion, a child’s flesh is not a satisfying diet; it is

too insipid, too sweet; and the criminal, in making these experiments,

could have satisfied neither his conscience nor his appetite. I am

about to conclude, gentlemen; and my conclusion contains a reply to one

of the most important questions of that day and of our own! This

criminal ended at last by denouncing himself to the clergy, and giving

himself up to justice. We cannot but ask, remembering the penal system

of that day, and the tortures that awaited him—the wheel, the stake,

the fire!—we cannot but ask, I repeat, what induced him to accuse

himself of this crime? Why did he not simply stop short at the number

sixty, and keep his secret until his last breath? Why could he not

simply leave the monks alone, and go into the desert to repent? Or why

not become a monk himself? That is where the puzzle comes in! There

must have been something stronger than the stake or the fire, or even

than the habits of twenty years! There must have been an idea more

powerful than all the calamities and sorrows of this world, famine or

torture, leprosy or plague—an idea which entered into the heart,

directed and enlarged the springs of life, and made even that hell

supportable to humanity! Show me a force, a power like that, in this

our century of vices and railways! I might say, perhaps, in our century

of steamboats and railways, but I repeat in our century of vices and

railways, because I am drunk but truthful! Show me a single idea which

unites men nowadays with half the strength that it had in those

centuries, and dare to maintain that the ‘springs of life’ have not

been polluted and weakened beneath this ‘star,’ beneath this network in

which men are entangled! Don’t talk to me about your prosperity, your

riches, the rarity of famine, the rapidity of the means of transport!

There is more of riches, but less of force. The idea uniting heart and

soul to heart and soul exists no more. All is loose, soft, limp—we are

all of us limp.... Enough, gentlemen! I have done. That is not the

question. No, the question is now, excellency, I believe, to sit down

to the banquet you are about to provide for us!”

Lebedeff had roused great indignation in some of his auditors (it

should be remarked that the bottles were constantly uncorked during his

speech); but this unexpected conclusion calmed even the most turbulent

spirits. “That’s how a clever barrister makes a good point!” said he,

when speaking of his peroration later on. The visitors began to laugh

and chatter once again; the committee left their seats, and stretched

their legs on the terrace. Keller alone was still disgusted with

Lebedeff and his speech; he turned from one to another, saying in a

loud voice:

“He attacks education, he boasts of the fanaticism of the twelfth

century, he makes absurd grimaces, and added to that he is by no means

the innocent he makes himself out to be. How did he get the money to

buy this house, allow me to ask?”

In another corner was the general, holding forth to a group of hearers,

among them Ptitsin, whom he had buttonholed. “I have known,” said he,

“a real interpreter of the Apocalypse, the late Gregory Semeonovitch

Burmistroff, and he—he pierced the heart like a fiery flash! He began

by putting on his spectacles, then he opened a large black book; his

white beard, and his two medals on his breast, recalling acts of

charity, all added to his impressiveness. He began in a stern voice,

and before him generals, hard men of the world, bowed down, and ladies

fell to the ground fainting. But this one here—he ends by announcing a

banquet! That is not the real thing!”

Ptitsin listened and smiled, then turned as if to get his hat; but if

he had intended to leave, he changed his mind. Before the others had

risen from the table, Gania had suddenly left off drinking, and pushed

away his glass, a dark shadow seemed to come over his face. When they

all rose, he went and sat down by Rogojin. It might have been believed

that quite friendly relations existed between them. Rogojin, who had

also seemed on the point of going away now sat motionless, his head

bent, seeming to have forgotten his intention. He had drunk no wine,

and appeared absorbed in reflection. From time to time he raised his

eyes, and examined everyone present; one might have imagined that he

was expecting something very important to himself, and that he had

decided to wait for it. The prince had taken two or three glasses of

champagne, and seemed cheerful. As he rose he noticed Evgenie

Pavlovitch, and, remembering the appointment he had made with him,

smiled pleasantly. Evgenie Pavlovitch made a sign with his head towards

Hippolyte, whom he was attentively watching. The invalid was fast

asleep, stretched out on the sofa.

“Tell me, prince, why on earth did this boy intrude himself upon you?”

he asked, with such annoyance and irritation in his voice that the

prince was quite surprised. “I wouldn’t mind laying odds that he is up

to some mischief.”

“I have observed,” said the prince, “that he seems to be an object of

very singular interest to you, Evgenie Pavlovitch. Why is it?”

“You may add that I have surely enough to think of, on my own account,

without him; and therefore it is all the more surprising that I cannot

tear my eyes and thoughts away from his detestable physiognomy.”

“Oh, come! He has a handsome face.”

“Why, look at him—look at him now!”

The prince glanced again at Evgenie Pavlovitch with considerable

surprise.

V.

Hippolyte, who had fallen asleep during Lebedeff’s discourse, now

suddenly woke up, just as though someone had jogged him in the side. He

shuddered, raised himself on his arm, gazed around, and grew very pale.

A look almost of terror crossed his face as he recollected.

“What! are they all off? Is it all over? Is the sun up?” He trembled,

and caught at the prince’s hand. “What time is it? Tell me, quick, for

goodness’ sake! How long have I slept?” he added, almost in despair,

just as though he had overslept something upon which his whole fate

depended.

“You have slept seven or perhaps eight minutes,” said Evgenie

Pavlovitch.

Hippolyte gazed eagerly at the latter, and mused for a few moments.

“Oh, is that all?” he said at last. “Then I—”

He drew a long, deep breath of relief, as it seemed. He realized that

all was not over as yet, that the sun had not risen, and that the

guests had merely gone to supper. He smiled, and two hectic spots

appeared on his cheeks.

“So you counted the minutes while I slept, did you, Evgenie

Pavlovitch?” he said, ironically. “You have not taken your eyes off me

all the evening—I have noticed that much, you see! Ah, Rogojin! I’ve

just been dreaming about him, prince,” he added, frowning. “Yes, by the

by,” starting up, “where’s the orator? Where’s Lebedeff? Has he

finished? What did he talk about? Is it true, prince, that you once

declared that ‘beauty would save the world’? Great Heaven! The prince

says that beauty saves the world! And I declare that he only has such

playful ideas because he’s in love! Gentlemen, the prince is in love. I

guessed it the moment he came in. Don’t blush, prince; you make me

sorry for you. What beauty saves the world? Colia told me that you are

a zealous Christian; is it so? Colia says you call yourself a

Christian.”

The prince regarded him attentively, but said nothing.

“You don’t answer me; perhaps you think I am very fond of you?” added

Hippolyte, as though the words had been drawn from him.

“No, I don’t think that. I know you don’t love me.”

“What, after yesterday? Wasn’t I honest with you?”

“I knew yesterday that you didn’t love me.”

“Why so? why so? Because I envy you, eh? You always think that, I know.

But do you know why I am saying all this? Look here! I must have some

more champagne—pour me out some, Keller, will you?”

“No, you’re not to drink any more, Hippolyte. I won’t let you.” The

prince moved the glass away.

“Well perhaps you’re right,” said Hippolyte, musing. “They might

say—yet, devil take them! what does it matter?—prince, what can it

matter what people will say of us _then_, eh? I believe I’m half

asleep. I’ve had such a dreadful dream—I’ve only just remembered it.

Prince, I don’t wish you such dreams as that, though sure enough,

perhaps, I _don’t_ love you. Why wish a man evil, though you do not

love him, eh? Give me your hand—let me press it sincerely. There—you’ve

given me your hand—you must feel that I _do_ press it sincerely, don’t

you? I don’t think I shall drink any more. What time is it? Never mind,

I know the time. The time has come, at all events. What! they are

laying supper over there, are they? Then this table is free? Capital,

gentlemen! I—hem! these gentlemen are not listening. Prince, I will

just read over an article I have here. Supper is more interesting, of

course, but—”

Here Hippolyte suddenly, and most unexpectedly, pulled out of his

breast-pocket a large sealed paper. This imposing-looking document he

placed upon the table before him.

The effect of this sudden action upon the company was instantaneous.

Evgenie Pavlovitch almost bounded off his chair in excitement. Rogojin

drew nearer to the table with a look on his face as if he knew what was

coming. Gania came nearer too; so did Lebedeff and the others—the paper

seemed to be an object of great interest to the company in general.

“What have you got there?” asked the prince, with some anxiety.

“At the first glimpse of the rising sun, prince, I will go to bed. I

told you I would, word of honour! You shall see!” cried Hippolyte. “You

think I’m not capable of opening this packet, do you?” He glared

defiantly round at the audience in general.

The prince observed that he was trembling all over.

“None of us ever thought such a thing!” Muishkin replied for all. “Why

should you suppose it of us? And what are you going to read, Hippolyte?

What is it?”

“Yes, what is it?” asked others. The packet sealed with red wax seemed

to attract everyone, as though it were a magnet.

“I wrote this yesterday, myself, just after I saw you, prince, and told

you I would come down here. I wrote all day and all night, and finished

it this morning early. Afterwards I had a dream.”

“Hadn’t we better hear it tomorrow?” asked the prince timidly.

“Tomorrow ‘there will be no more time!’” laughed Hippolyte,

hysterically. “You needn’t be afraid; I shall get through the whole

thing in forty minutes, at most an hour! Look how interested everybody

is! Everybody has drawn near. Look! look at them all staring at my

sealed packet! If I hadn’t sealed it up it wouldn’t have been half so

effective! Ha, ha! that’s mystery, that is! Now then, gentlemen, shall

I break the seal or not? Say the word; it’s a mystery, I tell you—a

secret! Prince, you know who said there would be ‘no more time’? It was

the great and powerful angel in the Apocalypse.”

“Better not read it now,” said the prince, putting his hand on the

packet.

“No, don’t read it!” cried Evgenie suddenly. He appeared so strangely

disturbed that many of those present could not help wondering.

“Reading? None of your reading now!” said somebody; “it’s supper-time.”

“What sort of an article is it? For a paper? Probably it’s very dull,”

said another. But the prince’s timid gesture had impressed even

Hippolyte.

“Then I’m not to read it?” he whispered, nervously. “Am I not to read

it?” he repeated, gazing around at each face in turn. “What are you

afraid of, prince?” he turned and asked the latter suddenly.

“What should I be afraid of?”

“Has anyone a coin about them? Give me a twenty-copeck piece,

somebody!” And Hippolyte leapt from his chair.

“Here you are,” said Lebedeff, handing him one; he thought the boy had

gone mad.

“Vera Lukianovna,” said Hippolyte, “toss it, will you? Heads, I read,

tails, I don’t.”

Vera Lebedeff tossed the coin into the air and let it fall on the

table.

It was “heads.”

“Then I read it,” said Hippolyte, in the tone of one bowing to the fiat

of destiny. He could not have grown paler if a verdict of death had

suddenly been presented to him.

“But after all, what is it? Is it possible that I should have just

risked my fate by tossing up?” he went on, shuddering; and looked round

him again. His eyes had a curious expression of sincerity. “That is an

astonishing psychological fact,” he cried, suddenly addressing the

prince, in a tone of the most intense surprise. “It is... it is

something quite inconceivable, prince,” he repeated with growing

animation, like a man regaining consciousness. “Take note of it,

prince, remember it; you collect, I am told, facts concerning capital

punishment... They told me so. Ha, ha! My God, how absurd!” He sat down

on the sofa, put his elbows on the table, and laid his head on his

hands. “It is shameful—though what does it matter to me if it is

shameful?

“Gentlemen, gentlemen! I am about to break the seal,” he continued,

with determination. “I—I—of course I don’t insist upon anyone listening

if they do not wish to.”

With trembling fingers he broke the seal and drew out several sheets of

paper, smoothed them out before him, and began sorting them.

“What on earth does all this mean? What’s he going to read?” muttered

several voices. Others said nothing; but one and all sat down and

watched with curiosity. They began to think something strange might

really be about to happen. Vera stood and trembled behind her father’s

chair, almost in tears with fright; Colia was nearly as much alarmed as

she was. Lebedeff jumped up and put a couple of candles nearer to

Hippolyte, so that he might see better.

“Gentlemen, this—you’ll soon see what this is,” began Hippolyte, and

suddenly commenced his reading.

“It’s headed, ‘A Necessary Explanation,’ with the motto, ‘_Après moi le

déluge!_’ Oh, deuce take it all! Surely I can never have seriously

written such a silly motto as that? Look here, gentlemen, I beg to give

notice that all this is very likely terrible nonsense. It is only a few

ideas of mine. If you think that there is anything mysterious coming—or

in a word—”

“Better read on without any more beating about the bush,” said Gania.

“Affectation!” remarked someone else.

“Too much talk,” said Rogojin, breaking the silence for the first time.

Hippolyte glanced at him suddenly, and when their eyes met Rogojin

showed his teeth in a disagreeable smile, and said the following

strange words: “That’s not the way to settle this business, my friend;

that’s not the way at all.”

Of course nobody knew what Rogojin meant by this; but his words made a

deep impression upon all. Everyone seemed to see in a flash the same

idea.

As for Hippolyte, their effect upon him was astounding. He trembled so

that the prince was obliged to support him, and would certainly have

cried out, but that his voice seemed to have entirely left him for the

moment. For a minute or two he could not speak at all, but panted and

stared at Rogojin. At last he managed to ejaculate:

“Then it was _you_ who came—_you_—_you?_”

“Came where? What do you mean?” asked Rogojin, amazed. But Hippolyte,

panting and choking with excitement, interrupted him violently.

“_You_ came to me last week, in the night, at two o’clock, the day I

was with you in the morning! Confess it was you!”

“Last week? In the night? Have you gone cracked, my good friend?”

Hippolyte paused and considered a moment. Then a smile of

cunning—almost triumph—crossed his lips.

“It was you,” he murmured, almost in a whisper, but with absolute

conviction. “Yes, it was you who came to my room and sat silently on a

chair at my window for a whole hour—more! It was between one and two at

night; you rose and went out at about three. It was you, you! Why you

should have frightened me so, why you should have wished to torment me

like that, I cannot tell—but you it was.”

There was absolute hatred in his eyes as he said this, but his look of

fear and his trembling had not left him.

“You shall hear all this directly, gentlemen. I—I—listen!”

He seized his paper in a desperate hurry; he fidgeted with it, and

tried to sort it, but for a long while his trembling hands could not

collect the sheets together. “He’s either mad or delirious,” murmured

Rogojin. At last he began.

For the first five minutes the reader’s voice continued to tremble, and

he read disconnectedly and unevenly; but gradually his voice

strengthened. Occasionally a violent fit of coughing stopped him, but

his animation grew with the progress of the reading—as did also the

disagreeable impression which it made upon his audience,—until it

reached the highest pitch of excitement.

Here is the article.

MY NECESSARY EXPLANATION.

“_Après moi le déluge._

“Yesterday morning the prince came to see me. Among other things he

asked me to come down to his villa. I knew he would come and persuade

me to this step, and that he would adduce the argument that it would be

easier for me to die ‘among people and green trees,’—as he expressed

it. But today he did not say ‘die,’ he said ‘live.’ It is pretty much

the same to me, in my position, which he says. When I asked him why he

made such a point of his ‘green trees,’ he told me, to my astonishment,

that he had heard that last time I was in Pavlofsk I had said that I

had come ‘to have a last look at the trees.’

“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.

“As it will be absolutely true, without a touch of falsehood, I am

curious to see what impression it will make upon me myself at the

moment when I read it out. This is my ‘last and solemn’—but why need I

call it that? There is no question about the truth of it, for it is not

worthwhile lying for a fortnight; a fortnight of life is not itself

worth having, which is a proof that I write nothing here but pure

truth.

(“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.)

“I believe I have just written dreadful nonsense; but there’s no time

for correcting, as I said before. Besides that, I have made myself a

promise not to alter a single word of what I write in this paper, even

though I find that I am contradicting myself every five lines. I wish

to verify the working of the natural logic of my ideas tomorrow during

the reading—whether I am capable of detecting logical errors, and

whether all that I have meditated over during the last six months be

true, or nothing but delirium.

“If two months since I had been called upon to leave my room and the

view of Meyer’s wall opposite, I verily believe I should have been

sorry. But now I have no such feeling, and yet I am leaving this room

and Meyer’s brick wall _for ever_. So that my conclusion, that it is

not worth while indulging in grief, or any other emotion, for a

fortnight, has proved stronger than my very nature, and has taken over

the direction of my feelings. But is it so? Is it the case that my

nature is conquered entirely? If I were to be put on the rack now, I

should certainly cry out. I should not say that it is not worth while

to yell and feel pain because I have but a fortnight to live.

“But is it true that I have but a fortnight of life left to me? I know

I told some of my friends that Doctor B. had informed me that this was

the case; but I now confess that I lied; B. has not even seen me.

However, a week ago, I called in a medical student, Kislorodoff, who is

a Nationalist, an Atheist, and a Nihilist, by conviction, and that is

why I had him. I needed a man who would tell me the bare truth without

any humbug or ceremony—and so he did—indeed, almost with pleasure

(which I thought was going a little too far).

“Well, he plumped out that I had about a month left me; it might be a

little more, he said, under favourable circumstances, but it might also

be considerably less. According to his opinion I might die quite

suddenly—tomorrow, for instance—there had been such cases. Only a day

or two since a young lady at Colomna who suffered from consumption, and

was about on a par with myself in the march of the disease, was going

out to market to buy provisions, when she suddenly felt faint, lay down

on the sofa, gasped once, and died.

“Kislorodoff told me all this with a sort of exaggerated devil-may-care

negligence, and as though he did me great honour by talking to me so,

because it showed that he considered me the same sort of exalted

Nihilistic being as himself, to whom death was a matter of no

consequence whatever, either way.

“At all events, the fact remained—a month of life and no more! That he

is right in his estimation I am absolutely persuaded.

“It puzzles me much to think how on earth the prince guessed yesterday

that I have had bad dreams. He said to me, ‘Your excitement and dreams

will find relief at Pavlofsk.’ Why did he say ‘dreams’? Either he is a

doctor, or else he is a man of exceptional intelligence and wonderful

powers of observation. (But that he is an ‘idiot,’ at bottom there can

be no doubt whatever.) It so happened that just before he arrived I had

a delightful little dream; one of a kind that I have hundreds of just

now. I had fallen asleep about an hour before he came in, and dreamed

that I was in some room, not my own. It was a large room, well

furnished, with a cupboard, chest of drawers, sofa, and my bed, a fine

wide bed covered with a silken counterpane. But I observed in the room

a dreadful-looking creature, a sort of monster. It was a little like a

scorpion, but was not a scorpion, but far more horrible, and especially

so, because there are no creatures anything like it in nature, and

because it had appeared to me for a purpose, and bore some mysterious

signification. I looked at the beast well; it was brown in colour and

had a shell; it was a crawling kind of reptile, about eight inches

long, and narrowed down from the head, which was about a couple of

fingers in width, to the end of the tail, which came to a fine point.

Out of its trunk, about a couple of inches below its head, came two

legs at an angle of forty-five degrees, each about three inches long,

so that the beast looked like a trident from above. It had eight hard

needle-like whiskers coming out from different parts of its body; it

went along like a snake, bending its body about in spite of the shell

it wore, and its motion was very quick and very horrible to look at. I

was dreadfully afraid it would sting me; somebody had told me, I

thought, that it was venomous; but what tormented me most of all was

the wondering and wondering as to who had sent it into my room, and

what was the mystery which I felt it contained.

“It hid itself under the cupboard and under the chest of drawers, and

crawled into the corners. I sat on a chair and kept my legs tucked

under me. Then the beast crawled quietly across the room and

disappeared somewhere near my chair. I looked about for it in terror,

but I still hoped that as my feet were safely tucked away it would not

be able to touch me.

“Suddenly I heard behind me, and about on a level with my head, a sort

of rattling sound. I turned sharp round and saw that the brute had

crawled up the wall as high as the level of my face, and that its

horrible tail, which was moving incredibly fast from side to side, was

actually touching my hair! I jumped up—and it disappeared. I did not

dare lie down on my bed for fear it should creep under my pillow. My

mother came into the room, and some friends of hers. They began to hunt

for the reptile and were more composed than I was; they did not seem to

be afraid of it. But they did not understand as I did.

“Suddenly the monster reappeared; it crawled slowly across the room and

made for the door, as though with some fixed intention, and with a slow

movement that was more horrible than ever.

“Then my mother opened the door and called my dog, Norma. Norma was a

great Newfoundland, and died five years ago.

“She sprang forward and stood still in front of the reptile as if she

had been turned to stone. The beast stopped too, but its tail and claws

still moved about. I believe animals are incapable of feeling

supernatural fright—if I have been rightly informed,—but at this moment

there appeared to me to be something more than ordinary about Norma’s

terror, as though it must be supernatural; and as though she felt, just

as I did myself, that this reptile was connected with some mysterious

secret, some fatal omen.

“Norma backed slowly and carefully away from the brute, which followed

her, creeping deliberately after her as though it intended to make a

sudden dart and sting her.

“In spite of Norma’s terror she looked furious, though she trembled in

all her limbs. At length she slowly bared her terrible teeth, opened

her great red jaws, hesitated—took courage, and seized the beast in her

mouth. It seemed to try to dart out of her jaws twice, but Norma caught

at it and half swallowed it as it was escaping. The shell cracked in

her teeth; and the tail and legs stuck out of her mouth and shook about

in a horrible manner. Suddenly Norma gave a piteous whine; the reptile

had bitten her tongue. She opened her mouth wide with the pain, and I

saw the beast lying across her tongue, and out of its body, which was

almost bitten in two, came a hideous white-looking substance, oozing

out into Norma’s mouth; it was of the consistency of a crushed

black-beetle. Just then I awoke and the prince entered the room.”

“Gentlemen!” said Hippolyte, breaking off here, “I have not done yet,

but it seems to me that I have written down a great deal here that is

unnecessary,—this dream—”

“You have indeed!” said Gania.

“There is too much about myself, I know, but—” As Hippolyte said this

his face wore a tired, pained look, and he wiped the sweat off his

brow.

“Yes,” said Lebedeff, “you certainly think a great deal too much about

yourself.”

“Well—gentlemen—I do not force anyone to listen! If any of you are

unwilling to sit it out, please go away, by all means!”

“He turns people out of a house that isn’t his own,” muttered Rogojin.

“Suppose we all go away?” said Ferdishenko suddenly.

Hippolyte clutched his manuscript, and gazing at the last speaker with

glittering eyes, said: “You don’t like me at all!” A few laughed at

this, but not all.

“Hippolyte,” said the prince, “give me the papers, and go to bed like a

sensible fellow. We’ll have a good talk tomorrow, but you really

mustn’t go on with this reading; it is not good for you!”

“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!”

He gulped down some water out of a glass standing near, bent over the

table, in order to hide his face from the audience, and recommenced.

“The idea that it is not worth while living for a few weeks took

possession of me a month ago, when I was told that I had four weeks to

live, but only partially so at that time. The idea quite overmastered

me three days since, that evening at Pavlofsk. The first time that I

felt really impressed with this thought was on the terrace at the

prince’s, at the very moment when I had taken it into my head to make a

last trial of life. I wanted to see people and trees (I believe I said

so myself), I got excited, I maintained Burdovsky’s rights, ‘my

neighbour!’—I dreamt that one and all would open their arms, and

embrace me, that there would be an indescribable exchange of

forgiveness between us all! In a word, I behaved like a fool, and then,

at that very same instant, I felt my ‘last conviction.’ I ask myself

now how I could have waited six months for that conviction! I knew that

I had a disease that spares no one, and I really had no illusions; but

the more I realized my condition, the more I clung to life; I wanted to

live at any price. I confess I might well have resented that blind,

deaf fate, which, with no apparent reason, seemed to have decided to

crush me like a fly; but why did I not stop at resentment? Why did I

begin to live, knowing that it was not worthwhile to begin? Why did I

attempt to do what I knew to be an impossibility? And yet I could not

even read a book to the end; I had given up reading. What is the good

of reading, what is the good of learning anything, for just six months?

That thought has made me throw aside a book more than once.

“Yes, that wall of Meyer’s could tell a tale if it liked. There was no

spot on its dirty surface that I did not know by heart. Accursed wall!

and yet it is dearer to me than all the Pavlofsk trees!—That is—it

_would_ be dearer if it were not all the same to me, now!

“I remember now with what hungry interest I began to watch the lives of

other people—interest that I had never felt before! I used to wait for

Colia’s arrival impatiently, for I was so ill myself, then, that I

could not leave the house. I so threw myself into every little detail

of news, and took so much interest in every report and rumour, that I

believe I became a regular gossip! I could not understand, among other

things, how all these people—with so much life in and before them—do

not become _rich_—and I don’t understand it now. I remember being told

of a poor wretch I once knew, who had died of hunger. I was almost

beside myself with rage! I believe if I could have resuscitated him I

would have done so for the sole purpose of murdering him!

“Occasionally I was so much better that I could go out; but the streets

used to put me in such a rage that I would lock myself up for days

rather than go out, even if I were well enough to do so! I could not

bear to see all those preoccupied, anxious-looking creatures

continuously surging along the streets past me! Why are they always

anxious? What is the meaning of their eternal care and worry? It is

their wickedness, their perpetual detestable malice—that’s what it

is—they are all full of malice, malice!

“Whose fault is it that they are all miserable, that they don’t know

how to live, though they have fifty or sixty years of life before them?

Why did that fool allow himself to die of hunger with sixty years of

unlived life before him?

“And everyone of them shows his rags, his toil-worn hands, and yells in

his wrath: ‘Here are we, working like cattle all our lives, and always

as hungry as dogs, and there are others who do not work, and are fat

and rich!’ The eternal refrain! And side by side with them trots along

some wretched fellow who has known better days, doing light porter’s

work from morn to night for a living, always blubbering and saying that

‘his wife died because he had no money to buy medicine with,’ and his

children dying of cold and hunger, and his eldest daughter gone to the

bad, and so on. Oh! I have no pity and no patience for these fools of

people. Why can’t they be Rothschilds? Whose fault is it that a man has

not got millions of money like Rothschild? If he has life, all this

must be in his power! Whose fault is it that he does not know how to

live his life?

“Oh! it’s all the same to me now—_now!_ But at that time I would soak

my pillow at night with tears of mortification, and tear at my blanket

in my rage and fury. Oh, how I longed at that time to be turned

out—_me_, eighteen years old, poor, half-clothed, turned out into the

street, quite alone, without lodging, without work, without a crust of

bread, without relations, without a single acquaintance, in some large

town—hungry, beaten (if you like), but in good health—and _then_ I

would show them—

“What would I show them?

“Oh, don’t think that I have no sense of my own humiliation! I have

suffered already in reading so far. Which of you all does not think me

a fool at this moment—a young fool who knows nothing of life—forgetting

that to live as I have lived these last six months is to live longer

than grey-haired old men. Well, let them laugh, and say it is all

nonsense, if they please. They may say it is all fairy-tales, if they

like; and I have spent whole nights telling myself fairy-tales. I

remember them all. But how can I tell fairy-tales now? The time for

them is over. They amused me when I found that there was not even time

for me to learn the Greek grammar, as I wanted to do. ‘I shall die

before I get to the syntax,’ I thought at the first page—and threw the

book under the table. It is there still, for I forbade anyone to pick

it up.

“If this ‘Explanation’ gets into anybody’s hands, and they have

patience to read it through, they may consider me a madman, or a

schoolboy, or, more likely, a man condemned to die, who thought it only

natural to conclude that all men, excepting himself, esteem life far

too lightly, live it far too carelessly and lazily, and are, therefore,

one and all, unworthy of it. Well, I affirm that my reader is wrong

again, for my convictions have nothing to do with my sentence of death.

Ask them, ask any one of them, or all of them, what they mean by

happiness! Oh, you may be perfectly sure that if Columbus was happy, it

was not after he had discovered America, but when he was discovering

it! You may be quite sure that he reached the culminating point of his

happiness three days before he saw the New World with his actual eyes,

when his mutinous sailors wanted to tack about, and return to Europe!

What did the New World matter after all? Columbus had hardly seen it

when he died, and in reality he was entirely ignorant of what he had

discovered. The important thing is life—life and nothing else! What is

any ‘discovery’ whatever compared with the incessant, eternal discovery

of life?

“But what is the use of talking? I’m afraid all this is so commonplace

that my confession will be taken for a schoolboy exercise—the work of

some ambitious lad writing in the hope of his work ‘seeing the light’;

or perhaps my readers will say that ‘I had perhaps something to say,

but did not know how to express it.’

“Let me add to this that in every idea emanating from genius, or even

in every serious human idea—born in the human brain—there always

remains something—some sediment—which cannot be expressed to others,

though one wrote volumes and lectured upon it for five-and-thirty

years. There is always a something, a remnant, which will never come

out from your brain, but will remain there with you, and you alone, for

ever and ever, and you will die, perhaps, without having imparted what

may be the very essence of your idea to a single living soul.

“So that if I cannot now impart all that has tormented me for the last

six months, at all events you will understand that, having reached my

‘last convictions,’ I must have paid a very dear price for them. That

is what I wished, for reasons of my own, to make a point of in this my

‘Explanation.’

“But let me resume.”

VI.

“I will not deceive you. ‘Reality’ got me so entrapped in its meshes

now and again during the past six months, that I forgot my ‘sentence’

(or perhaps I did not wish to think of it), and actually busied myself

with affairs.

“A word as to my circumstances. When, eight months since, I became very

ill, I threw up all my old connections and dropped all my old

companions. As I was always a gloomy, morose sort of individual, my

friends easily forgot me; of course, they would have forgotten me all

the same, without that excuse. My position at home was solitary enough.

Five months ago I separated myself entirely from the family, and no one

dared enter my room except at stated times, to clean and tidy it, and

so on, and to bring me my meals. My mother dared not disobey me; she

kept the children quiet, for my sake, and beat them if they dared to

make any noise and disturb me. I so often complained of them that I

should think they must be very fond, indeed, of me by this time. I

think I must have tormented ‘my faithful Colia’ (as I called him) a

good deal too. He tormented me of late; I could see that he always bore

my tempers as though he had determined to ‘spare the poor invalid.’

This annoyed me, naturally. He seemed to have taken it into his head to

imitate the prince in Christian meekness! Surikoff, who lived above us,

annoyed me, too. He was so miserably poor, and I used to prove to him

that he had no one to blame but himself for his poverty. I used to be

so angry that I think I frightened him eventually, for he stopped

coming to see me. He was a most meek and humble fellow, was Surikoff.

(N.B.—They say that meekness is a great power. I must ask the prince

about this, for the expression is his.) But I remember one day in

March, when I went up to his lodgings to see whether it was true that

one of his children had been starved and frozen to death, I began to

hold forth to him about his poverty being his own fault, and, in the

course of my remarks, I accidentally smiled at the corpse of his child.

Well, the poor wretch’s lips began to tremble, and he caught me by the

shoulder, and pushed me to the door. ‘Go out,’ he said, in a whisper. I

went out, of course, and I declare I _liked_ it. I liked it at the very

moment when I was turned out. But his words filled me with a strange

sort of feeling of disdainful pity for him whenever I thought of them—a

feeling which I did not in the least desire to entertain. At the very

moment of the insult (for I admit that I did insult him, though I did

not mean to), this man could not lose his temper. His lips had

trembled, but I swear it was not with rage. He had taken me by the arm,

and said, ‘Go out,’ without the least anger. There was dignity, a great

deal of dignity, about him, and it was so inconsistent with the look of

him that, I assure you, it was quite comical. But there was no anger.

Perhaps he merely began to despise me at that moment.

“Since that time he has always taken off his hat to me on the stairs,

whenever I met him, which is a thing he never did before; but he always

gets away from me as quickly as he can, as though he felt confused. If

he did despise me, he despised me ‘meekly,’ after his own fashion.

“I dare say he only took his hat off out of fear, as it were, to the

son of his creditor; for he always owed my mother money. I thought of

having an explanation with him, but I knew that if I did, he would

begin to apologize in a minute or two, so I decided to let him alone.

“Just about that time, that is, the middle of March, I suddenly felt

very much better; this continued for a couple of weeks. I used to go

out at dusk. I like the dusk, especially in March, when the night frost

begins to harden the day’s puddles, and the gas is burning.

“Well, one night in the Shestilavochnaya, a man passed me with a paper

parcel under his arm. I did not take stock of him very carefully, but

he seemed to be dressed in some shabby summer dust-coat, much too light

for the season. When he was opposite the lamp-post, some ten yards

away, I observed something fall out of his pocket. I hurried forward to

pick it up, just in time, for an old wretch in a long kaftan rushed up

too. He did not dispute the matter, but glanced at what was in my hand

and disappeared.

“It was a large old-fashioned pocket-book, stuffed full; but I guessed,

at a glance, that it had anything in the world inside it, except money.

“The owner was now some forty yards ahead of me, and was very soon lost

in the crowd. I ran after him, and began calling out; but as I knew

nothing to say excepting ‘hey!’ he did not turn round. Suddenly he

turned into the gate of a house to the left; and when I darted in after

him, the gateway was so dark that I could see nothing whatever. It was

one of those large houses built in small tenements, of which there must

have been at least a hundred.

“When I entered the yard I thought I saw a man going along on the far

side of it; but it was so dark I could not make out his figure.

“I crossed to that corner and found a dirty dark staircase. I heard a

man mounting up above me, some way higher than I was, and thinking I

should catch him before his door would be opened to him, I rushed after

him. I heard a door open and shut on the fifth storey, as I panted

along; the stairs were narrow, and the steps innumerable, but at last I

reached the door I thought the right one. Some moments passed before I

found the bell and got it to ring.

“An old peasant woman opened the door; she was busy lighting the

‘samovar’ in a tiny kitchen. She listened silently to my questions, did

not understand a word, of course, and opened another door leading into

a little bit of a room, low and scarcely furnished at all, but with a

large, wide bed in it, hung with curtains. On this bed lay one

Terentich, as the woman called him, drunk, it appeared to me. On the

table was an end of candle in an iron candlestick, and a half-bottle of

vodka, nearly finished. Terentich muttered something to me, and signed

towards the next room. The old woman had disappeared, so there was

nothing for me to do but to open the door indicated. I did so, and

entered the next room.

“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.

“On the table, as in the other room, burned a tallow candle-end in an

iron candlestick; and on the bed there whined a baby of scarcely three

weeks old. A pale-looking woman was dressing the child, probably the

mother; she looked as though she had not as yet got over the trouble of

childbirth, she seemed so weak and was so carelessly dressed. Another

child, a little girl of about three years old, lay on the sofa, covered

over with what looked like a man’s old dress-coat.

“At the table stood a man in his shirt sleeves; he had thrown off his

coat; it lay upon the bed; and he was unfolding a blue paper parcel in

which were a couple of pounds of bread, and some little sausages.

“On the table along with these things were a few old bits of black

bread, and some tea in a pot. From under the bed there protruded an

open portmanteau full of bundles of rags. In a word, the confusion and

untidiness of the room were indescribable.

“It appeared to me, at the first glance, that both the man and the

woman were respectable people, but brought to that pitch of poverty

where untidiness seems to get the better of every effort to cope with

it, till at last they take a sort of bitter satisfaction in it. When I

entered the room, the man, who had entered but a moment before me, and

was still unpacking his parcels, was saying something to his wife in an

excited manner. The news was apparently bad, as usual, for the woman

began whimpering. The man’s face seemed to me to be refined and even

pleasant. He was dark-complexioned, and about twenty-eight years of

age; he wore black whiskers, and his lip and chin were shaved. He

looked morose, but with a sort of pride of expression. A curious scene

followed.

“There are people who find satisfaction in their own touchy feelings,

especially when they have just taken the deepest offence; at such

moments they feel that they would rather be offended than not. These

easily-ignited natures, if they are wise, are always full of remorse

afterwards, when they reflect that they have been ten times as angry as

they need have been.

“The gentleman before me gazed at me for some seconds in amazement, and

his wife in terror; as though there was something alarmingly

extraordinary in the fact that anyone could come to see them. But

suddenly he fell upon me almost with fury; I had had no time to mutter

more than a couple of words; but he had doubtless observed that I was

decently dressed and, therefore, took deep offence because I had dared

enter his den so unceremoniously, and spy out the squalor and

untidiness of it.

“Of course he was delighted to get hold of someone upon whom to vent

his rage against things in general.

“For a moment I thought he would assault me; he grew so pale that he

looked like a woman about to have hysterics; his wife was dreadfully

alarmed.

“‘How dare you come in so? Be off!’ he shouted, trembling all over with

rage and scarcely able to articulate the words. Suddenly, however, he

observed his pocketbook in my hand.

“‘I think you dropped this,’ I remarked, as quietly and drily as I

could. (I thought it best to treat him so.) For some while he stood

before me in downright terror, and seemed unable to understand. He then

suddenly grabbed at his side-pocket, opened his mouth in alarm, and

beat his forehead with his hand.

“‘My God!’ he cried, ‘where did you find it? How?’ I explained in as

few words as I could, and as drily as possible, how I had seen it and

picked it up; how I had run after him, and called out to him, and how I

had followed him upstairs and groped my way to his door.

“‘Gracious Heaven!’ he cried, ‘all our papers are in it! My dear sir,

you little know what you have done for us. I should have been

lost—lost!’

“I had taken hold of the door-handle meanwhile, intending to leave the

room without reply; but I was panting with my run upstairs, and my

exhaustion came to a climax in a violent fit of coughing, so bad that I

could hardly stand.

“I saw how the man dashed about the room to find me an empty chair, how

he kicked the rags off a chair which was covered up by them, brought it

to me, and helped me to sit down; but my cough went on for another

three minutes or so. When I came to myself he was sitting by me on

another chair, which he had also cleared of the rubbish by throwing it

all over the floor, and was watching me intently.

“‘I’m afraid you are ill?’ he remarked, in the tone which doctors use

when they address a patient. ‘I am myself a medical man’ (he did not

say ‘doctor’), with which words he waved his hands towards the room and

its contents as though in protest at his present condition. ‘I see that

you—’

“‘I’m in consumption,’ I said laconically, rising from my seat.

“He jumped up, too.

“‘Perhaps you are exaggerating—if you were to take proper measures

perhaps—”

“He was terribly confused and did not seem able to collect his

scattered senses; the pocket-book was still in his left hand.

“‘Oh, don’t mind me,’ I said. ‘Dr. B—— saw me last week’ (I lugged him

in again), ‘and my hash is quite settled; pardon me—’ I took hold of

the door-handle again. I was on the point of opening the door and

leaving my grateful but confused medical friend to himself and his

shame, when my damnable cough got hold of me again.

“My doctor insisted on my sitting down again to get my breath. He now

said something to his wife who, without leaving her place, addressed a

few words of gratitude and courtesy to me. She seemed very shy over it,

and her sickly face flushed up with confusion. I remained, but with the

air of a man who knows he is intruding and is anxious to get away. The

doctor’s remorse at last seemed to need a vent, I could see.

“‘If I—’ he began, breaking off abruptly every other moment, and

starting another sentence. ‘I—I am so very grateful to you, and I am so

much to blame in your eyes, I feel sure, I—you see—’ (he pointed to the

room again) ‘at this moment I am in such a position—’

“‘Oh!’ I said, ‘there’s nothing to see; it’s quite a clear case—you’ve

lost your post and have come up to make explanations and get another,

if you can!’

“‘How do you know that?’ he asked in amazement.

“‘Oh, it was evident at the first glance,’ I said ironically, but not

intentionally so. ‘There are lots of people who come up from the

provinces full of hope, and run about town, and have to live as best

they can.’

“He began to talk at once excitedly and with trembling lips; he began

complaining and telling me his story. He interested me, I confess; I

sat there nearly an hour. His story was a very ordinary one. He had

been a provincial doctor; he had a civil appointment, and had no sooner

taken it up than intrigues began. Even his wife was dragged into these.

He was proud, and flew into a passion; there was a change of local

government which acted in favour of his opponents; his position was

undermined, complaints were made against him; he lost his post and came

up to Petersburg with his last remaining money, in order to appeal to

higher authorities. Of course nobody would listen to him for a long

time; he would come and tell his story one day and be refused promptly;

another day he would be fed on false promises; again he would be

treated harshly; then he would be told to sign some documents; then he

would sign the paper and hand it in, and they would refuse to receive

it, and tell him to file a formal petition. In a word he had been

driven about from office to office for five months and had spent every

farthing he had; his wife’s last rags had just been pawned; and

meanwhile a child had been born to them and—and today I have a final

refusal to my petition, and I have hardly a crumb of bread left—I have

nothing left; my wife has had a baby lately—and I—I—’

“He sprang up from his chair and turned away. His wife was crying in

the corner; the child had begun to moan again. I pulled out my

note-book and began writing in it. When I had finished and rose from my

chair he was standing before me with an expression of alarmed

curiosity.

“‘I have jotted down your name,’ I told him, ‘and all the rest of

it—the place you served at, the district, the date, and all. I have a

friend, Bachmatoff, whose uncle is a councillor of state and has to do

with these matters, one Peter Matveyevitch Bachmatoff.’

“‘Peter Matveyevitch Bachmatoff!’ he cried, trembling all over with

excitement. ‘Why, nearly everything depends on that very man!’

“It is very curious, this story of the medical man, and my visit, and

the happy termination to which I contributed by accident! Everything

fitted in, as in a novel. I told the poor people not to put much hope

in me, because I was but a poor schoolboy myself—(I am not really, but

I humiliated myself as much as possible in order to make them less

hopeful)—but that I would go at once to the Vassili Ostroff and see my

friend; and that as I knew for certain that his uncle adored him, and

was absolutely devoted to him as the last hope and branch of the

family, perhaps the old man might do something to oblige his nephew.

“‘If only they would allow me to explain all to his excellency! If I

could but be permitted to tell my tale to him!” he cried, trembling

with feverish agitation, and his eyes flashing with excitement. I

repeated once more that I could not hold out much hope—that it would

probably end in smoke, and if I did not turn up next morning they must

make up their minds that there was no more to be done in the matter.

“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!

“I took a droshky and drove over to the Vassili Ostroff at once. For

some years I had been at enmity with this young Bachmatoff, at school.

We considered him an aristocrat; at all events I called him one. He

used to dress smartly, and always drove to school in a private trap. He

was a good companion, and was always merry and jolly, sometimes even

witty, though he was not very intellectual, in spite of the fact that

he was always top of the class; I myself was never top in anything! All

his companions were very fond of him, excepting myself. He had several

times during those years come up to me and tried to make friends; but I

had always turned sulkily away and refused to have anything to do with

him. I had not seen him for a whole year now; he was at the university.

When, at nine o’clock, or so, this evening, I arrived and was shown up

to him with great ceremony, he first received me with astonishment, and

not too affably, but he soon cheered up, and suddenly gazed intently at

me and burst out laughing.

“‘Why, what on earth can have possessed you to come and see _me_,

Terentieff?’ he cried, with his usual pleasant, sometimes audacious,

but never offensive familiarity, which I liked in reality, but for

which I also detested him. ‘Why what’s the matter?’ he cried in alarm.

‘Are you ill?’

“That confounded cough of mine had come on again; I fell into a chair,

and with difficulty recovered my breath. ‘It’s all right, it’s only

consumption’ I said. ‘I have come to you with a petition!’

“He sat down in amazement, and I lost no time in telling him the

medical man’s history; and explained that he, with the influence which

he possessed over his uncle, might do some good to the poor fellow.

“‘I’ll do it—I’ll do it, of course!’ he said. ‘I shall attack my uncle

about it tomorrow morning, and I’m very glad you told me the story. But

how was it that you thought of coming to me about it, Terentieff?’

“‘So much depends upon your uncle,’ I said. ‘And besides we have always

been enemies, Bachmatoff; and as you are a generous sort of fellow, I

thought you would not refuse my request because I was your enemy!’ I

added with irony.

“‘Like Napoleon going to England, eh?’ cried he, laughing. ‘I’ll do it

though—of course, and at once, if I can!’ he added, seeing that I rose

seriously from my chair at this point.

“And sure enough the matter ended as satisfactorily as possible. A

month or so later my medical friend was appointed to another post. He

got his travelling expenses paid, and something to help him to start

life with once more. I think Bachmatoff must have persuaded the doctor

to accept a loan from himself. I saw Bachmatoff two or three times,

about this period, the third time being when he gave a farewell dinner

to the doctor and his wife before their departure, a champagne dinner.

“Bachmatoff saw me home after the dinner and we crossed the Nicolai

bridge. We were both a little drunk. He told me of his joy, the joyful

feeling of having done a good action; he said that it was all thanks to

myself that he could feel this satisfaction; and held forth about the

foolishness of the theory that individual charity is useless.

“I, too, was burning to have my say!

“‘In Moscow,’ I said, ‘there was an old state counsellor, a civil

general, who, all his life, had been in the habit of visiting the

prisons and speaking to criminals. Every party of convicts on its way

to Siberia knew beforehand that on the Vorobeef Hills the “old general”

would pay them a visit. He did all he undertook seriously and

devotedly. He would walk down the rows of the unfortunate prisoners,

stop before each individual and ask after his needs—he never sermonized

them; he spoke kindly to them—he gave them money; he brought them all

sorts of necessaries for the journey, and gave them devotional books,

choosing those who could read, under the firm conviction that they

would read to those who could not, as they went along.

“‘He scarcely ever talked about the particular crimes of any of them,

but listened if any volunteered information on that point. All the

convicts were equal for him, and he made no distinction. He spoke to

all as to brothers, and every one of them looked upon him as a father.

When he observed among the exiles some poor woman with a child, he

would always come forward and fondle the little one, and make it laugh.

He continued these acts of mercy up to his very death; and by that time

all the criminals, all over Russia and Siberia, knew him!

“‘A man I knew who had been to Siberia and returned, told me that he

himself had been a witness of how the very most hardened criminals

remembered the old general, though, in point of fact, he could never,

of course, have distributed more than a few pence to each member of a

party. Their recollection of him was not sentimental or particularly

devoted. Some wretch, for instance, who had been a murderer—cutting the

throat of a dozen fellow-creatures, for instance; or stabbing six

little children for his own amusement (there have been such men!)—would

perhaps, without rhyme or reason, suddenly give a sigh and say, “I

wonder whether that old general is alive still!” Although perhaps he

had not thought of mentioning him for a dozen years before! How can one

say what seed of good may have been dropped into his soul, never to

die?’

“I continued in that strain for a long while, pointing out to

Bachmatoff how impossible it is to follow up the effects of any

isolated good deed one may do, in all its influences and subtle

workings upon the heart and after-actions of others.

“‘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.

“We were leaning over the balustrade of the bridge, looking into the

Neva at this moment.

“‘Do you know what has suddenly come into my head?’ said I,

suddenly—leaning further and further over the rail.

“‘Surely not to throw yourself into the river?’ cried Bachmatoff in

alarm. Perhaps he read my thought in my face.

“‘No, not yet. At present nothing but the following consideration. You

see I have some two or three months left me to live—perhaps four; well,

supposing that when I have but a month or two more, I take a fancy for

some “good deed” that needs both trouble and time, like this business

of our doctor friend, for instance: why, I shall have to give up the

idea of it and take to something else—some _little_ good deed, _more

within my means_, eh? Isn’t that an amusing idea!’

“Poor Bachmatoff was much impressed—painfully so. He took me all the

way home; not attempting to console me, but behaving with the greatest

delicacy. On taking leave he pressed my hand warmly and asked

permission to come and see me. I replied that if he came to me as a

‘comforter,’ so to speak (for he would be in that capacity whether he

spoke to me in a soothing manner or only kept silence, as I pointed out

to him), he would but remind me each time of my approaching death! He

shrugged his shoulders, but quite agreed with me; and we parted better

friends than I had expected.

“But that evening and that night were sown the first seeds of my ‘last

conviction.’ I seized greedily on my new idea; I thirstily drank in all

its different aspects (I did not sleep a wink that night!), and the

deeper I went into it the more my being seemed to merge itself in it,

and the more alarmed I became. A dreadful terror came over me at last,

and did not leave me all next day.

“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.

“However, within three weeks my determination was taken, owing to a

very strange circumstance.

“Here on my paper, I make a note of all the figures and dates that come

into my explanation. Of course, it is all the same to me, but just

now—and perhaps only at this moment—I desire that all those who are to

judge of my action should see clearly out of how logical a sequence of

deductions has at length proceeded my ‘last conviction.’

“I have said above that the determination needed by me for the

accomplishment of my final resolve, came to hand not through any

sequence of causes, but thanks to a certain strange circumstance which

had perhaps no connection whatever with the matter at issue. Ten days

ago Rogojin called upon me about certain business of his own with which

I have nothing to do at present. I had never seen Rogojin before, but

had often heard about him.

“I gave him all the information he needed, and he very soon took his

departure; so that, since he only came for the purpose of gaining the

information, the matter might have been expected to end there.

“But he interested me too much, and all that day I was under the

influence of strange thoughts connected with him, and I determined to

return his visit the next day.

“Rogojin was evidently by no means pleased to see me, and hinted,

delicately, that he saw no reason why our acquaintance should continue.

For all that, however, I spent a very interesting hour, and so, I dare

say, did he. There was so great a contrast between us that I am sure we

must both have felt it; anyhow, I felt it acutely. Here was I, with my

days numbered, and he, a man in the full vigour of life, living in the

present, without the slightest thought for ‘final convictions,’ or

numbers, or days, or, in fact, for anything but that which-which—well,

which he was mad about, if he will excuse me the expression—as a feeble

author who cannot express his ideas properly.

“In spite of his lack of amiability, I could not help seeing, in

Rogojin a man of intellect and sense; and although, perhaps, there was

little in the outside world which was of interest to him, still he was

clearly a man with eyes to see.

“I hinted nothing to him about my ‘final conviction,’ but it appeared

to me that he had guessed it from my words. He remained silent—he is a

terribly silent man. I remarked to him, as I rose to depart, that, in

spite of the contrast and the wide differences between us two, les

extremites se touchent (‘extremes meet,’ as I explained to him in

Russian); so that maybe he was not so far from my final conviction as

appeared.

“His only reply to this was a sour grimace. He rose and looked for my

cap, and placed it in my hand, and led me out of the house—that

dreadful gloomy house of his—to all appearances, of course, as though I

were leaving of my own accord, and he were simply seeing me to the door

out of politeness. His house impressed me much; it is like a

burial-ground, he seems to like it, which is, however, quite natural.

Such a full life as he leads is so overflowing with absorbing interests

that he has little need of assistance from his surroundings.

“The visit to Rogojin exhausted me terribly. Besides, I had felt ill

since the morning; and by evening I was so weak that I took to my bed,

and was in high fever at intervals, and even delirious. Colia sat with

me until eleven o’clock.

“Yet I remember all he talked about, and every word we said, though

whenever my eyes closed for a moment I could picture nothing but the

image of Surikoff just in the act of finding a million roubles. He

could not make up his mind what to do with the money, and tore his hair

over it. He trembled with fear that somebody would rob him, and at last

he decided to bury it in the ground. I persuaded him that, instead of

putting it all away uselessly underground, he had better melt it down

and make a golden coffin out of it for his starved child, and then dig

up the little one and put her into the golden coffin. Surikoff accepted

this suggestion, I thought, with tears of gratitude, and immediately

commenced to carry out my design.

“I thought I spat on the ground and left him in disgust. Colia told me,

when I quite recovered my senses, that I had not been asleep for a

moment, but that I had spoken to him about Surikoff the whole while.

“At moments I was in a state of dreadful weakness and misery, so that

Colia was greatly disturbed when he left me.

“When I arose to lock the door after him, I suddenly called to mind a

picture I had noticed at Rogojin’s in one of his gloomiest rooms, over

the door. He had pointed it out to me himself as we walked past it, and

I believe I must have stood a good five minutes in front of it. There

was nothing artistic about it, but the picture made me feel strangely

uncomfortable. It represented Christ just taken down from the cross. It

seems to me that painters as a rule represent the Saviour, both on the

cross and taken down from it, with great beauty still upon His face.

This marvellous beauty they strive to preserve even in His moments of

deepest agony and passion. But there was no such beauty in Rogojin’s

picture. This was the presentment of a poor mangled body which had

evidently suffered unbearable anguish even before its crucifixion, full

of wounds and bruises, marks of the violence of soldiers and people,

and of the bitterness of the moment when He had fallen with the

cross—all this combined with the anguish of the actual crucifixion.

“The face was depicted as though still suffering; as though the body,

only just dead, was still almost quivering with agony. The picture was

one of pure nature, for the face was not beautified by the artist, but

was left as it would naturally be, whosoever the sufferer, after such

anguish.

“I know that the earliest Christian faith taught that the Saviour

suffered actually and not figuratively, and that nature was allowed her

own way even while His body was on the cross.

“It is strange to look on this dreadful picture of the mangled corpse

of the Saviour, and to put this question to oneself: ‘Supposing that

the disciples, the future apostles, the women who had followed Him and

stood by the cross, all of whom believed in and worshipped

Him—supposing that they saw this tortured body, this face so mangled

and bleeding and bruised (and they _must_ have so seen it)—how could

they have gazed upon the dreadful sight and yet have believed that He

would rise again?’

“The thought steps in, whether one likes it or no, that death is so

terrible and so powerful, that even He who conquered it in His miracles

during life was unable to triumph over it at the last. He who called to

Lazarus, ‘Lazarus, come forth!’ and the dead man lived—He was now

Himself a prey to nature and death. Nature appears to one, looking at

this picture, as some huge, implacable, dumb monster; or still better—a

stranger simile—some enormous mechanical engine of modern days which

has seized and crushed and swallowed up a great and invaluable Being, a

Being worth nature and all her laws, worth the whole earth, which was

perhaps created merely for the sake of the advent of that Being.

“This blind, dumb, implacable, eternal, unreasoning force is well shown

in the picture, and the absolute subordination of all men and things to

it is so well expressed that the idea unconsciously arises in the mind

of anyone who looks at it. All those faithful people who were gazing at

the cross and its mutilated occupant must have suffered agony of mind

that evening; for they must have felt that all their hopes and almost

all their faith had been shattered at a blow. They must have separated

in terror and dread that night, though each perhaps carried away with

him one great thought which was never eradicated from his mind for ever

afterwards. If this great Teacher of theirs could have seen Himself

after the Crucifixion, how could He have consented to mount the Cross

and to die as He did? This thought also comes into the mind of the man

who gazes at this picture. I thought of all this by snatches probably

between my attacks of delirium—for an hour and a half or so before

Colia’s departure.

“Can there be an appearance of that which has no form? And yet it

seemed to me, at certain moments, that I beheld in some strange and

impossible form, that dark, dumb, irresistibly powerful, eternal force.

“I thought someone led me by the hand and showed me, by the light of a

candle, a huge, loathsome insect, which he assured me was that very

force, that very almighty, dumb, irresistible Power, and laughed at the

indignation with which I received this information. In my room they

always light the little lamp before my icon for the night; it gives a

feeble flicker of light, but it is strong enough to see by dimly, and

if you sit just under it you can even read by it. I think it was about

twelve or a little past that night. I had not slept a wink, and was

lying with my eyes wide open, when suddenly the door opened, and in

came Rogojin.

“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.

“I was much surprised, and looked at him expectantly.

“Rogojin only leaned his elbow on the table and silently stared at me.

So passed two or three minutes, and I recollect that his silence hurt

and offended me very much. Why did he not speak?

“That his arrival at this time of night struck me as more or less

strange may possibly be the case; but I remember I was by no means

amazed at it. On the contrary, though I had not actually told him my

thought in the morning, yet I know he understood it; and this thought

was of such a character that it would not be anything very remarkable,

if one were to come for further talk about it at any hour of night,

however late.

“I thought he must have come for this purpose.

“In the morning we had parted not the best of friends; I remember he

looked at me with disagreeable sarcasm once or twice; and this same

look I observed in his eyes now—which was the cause of the annoyance I

felt.

“I did not for a moment suspect that I was delirious and that this

Rogojin was but the result of fever and excitement. I had not the

slightest idea of such a theory at first.

“Meanwhile he continued to sit and stare jeeringly at me.

“I angrily turned round in bed and made up my mind that I would not say

a word unless he did; so I rested silently on my pillow determined to

remain dumb, if it were to last till morning. I felt resolved that he

should speak first. Probably twenty minutes or so passed in this way.

Suddenly the idea struck me—what if this is an apparition and not

Rogojin himself?

“Neither during my illness nor at any previous time had I ever seen an

apparition;—but I had always thought, both when I was a little boy, and

even now, that if I were to see one I should die on the spot—though I

don’t believe in ghosts. And yet _now_, when the idea struck me that

this was a ghost and not Rogojin at all, I was not in the least

alarmed. Nay—the thought actually irritated me. Strangely enough, the

decision of the question as to whether this were a ghost or Rogojin did

not, for some reason or other, interest me nearly so much as it ought

to have done;—I think I began to muse about something altogether

different. For instance, I began to wonder why Rogojin, who had been in

dressing-gown and slippers when I saw him at home, had now put on a

dress-coat and white waistcoat and tie? I also thought to myself, I

remember—‘if this is a ghost, and I am not afraid of it, why don’t I

approach it and verify my suspicions? Perhaps I am afraid—’ And no

sooner did this last idea enter my head than an icy blast blew over me;

I felt a chill down my backbone and my knees shook.

“At this very moment, as though divining my thoughts, Rogojin raised

his head from his arm and began to part his lips as though he were

going to laugh—but he continued to stare at me as persistently as

before.

“I felt so furious with him at this moment that I longed to rush at

him; but as I had sworn that he should speak first, I continued to lie

still—and the more willingly, as I was still by no means satisfied as

to whether it really was Rogojin or not.

“I cannot remember how long this lasted; I cannot recollect, either,

whether consciousness forsook me at intervals, or not. But at last

Rogojin rose, staring at me as intently as ever, but not smiling any

longer,—and walking very softly, almost on tip-toes, to the door, he

opened it, went out, and shut it behind him.

“I did not rise from my bed, and I don’t know how long I lay with my

eyes open, thinking. I don’t know what I thought about, nor how I fell

asleep or became insensible; but I awoke next morning after nine

o’clock when they knocked at my door. My general orders are that if I

don’t open the door and call, by nine o’clock, Matreona is to come and

bring my tea. When I now opened the door to her, the thought suddenly

struck me—how could he have come in, since the door was locked? I made

inquiries and found that Rogojin himself could not possibly have come

in, because all our doors were locked for the night.

“Well, this strange circumstance—which I have described with so much

detail—was the ultimate cause which led me to taking my final

determination. So that no logic, or logical deductions, had anything to

do with my resolve;—it was simply a matter of disgust.

“It was impossible for me to go on living when life was full of such

detestable, strange, tormenting forms. This ghost had humiliated

me;—nor could I bear to be subordinate to that dark, horrible force

which was embodied in the form of the loathsome insect. It was only

towards evening, when I had quite made up my mind on this point, that I

began to feel easier.”

VII.

“I had a small pocket pistol. I had procured it while still a boy, at

that droll age when the stories of duels and highwaymen begin to

delight one, and when one imagines oneself nobly standing fire at some

future day, in a duel.

“There were a couple of old bullets in the bag which contained the

pistol, and powder enough in an old flask for two or three charges.

“The pistol was a wretched thing, very crooked and wouldn’t carry

farther than fifteen paces at the most. However, it would send your

skull flying well enough if you pressed the muzzle of it against your

temple.

“I determined to die at Pavlofsk at sunrise, in the park—so as to make

no commotion in the house.

“This ‘explanation’ will make the matter clear enough to the police.

Students of psychology, and anyone else who likes, may make what they

please of it. I should not like this paper, however, to be made public.

I request the prince to keep a copy himself, and to give a copy to

Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchin. This is my last will and testament. As for my

skeleton, I bequeath it to the Medical Academy for the benefit of

science.

“I recognize no jurisdiction over myself, and I know that I am now

beyond the power of laws and judges.

“A little while ago a very amusing idea struck me. What if I were now

to commit some terrible crime—murder ten fellow-creatures, for

instance, or anything else that is thought most shocking and dreadful

in this world—what a dilemma my judges would be in, with a criminal who

only has a fortnight to live in any case, now that the rack and other

forms of torture are abolished! Why, I should die comfortably in their

own hospital—in a warm, clean room, with an attentive doctor—probably

much more comfortably than I should at home.

“I don’t understand why people in my position do not oftener indulge in

such ideas—if only for a joke! Perhaps they do! Who knows! There are

plenty of merry souls among us!

“But though I do not recognize any jurisdiction over myself, still I

know that I shall be judged, when I am nothing but a voiceless lump of

clay; therefore I do not wish to go before I have left a word of

reply—the reply of a free man—not one forced to justify himself—oh no!

I have no need to ask forgiveness of anyone. I wish to say a word

merely because I happen to desire it of my own free will.

“Here, in the first place, comes a strange thought!

“Who, in the name of what Law, would think of disputing my full

personal right over the fortnight of life left to me? What jurisdiction

can be brought to bear upon the case? Who would wish me, not only to be

sentenced, but to endure the sentence to the end? Surely there exists

no man who would wish such a thing—why should anyone desire it? For the

sake of morality? Well, I can understand that if I were to make an

attempt upon my own life while in the enjoyment of full health and

vigour—my life which might have been ‘useful,’ etc., etc.—morality

might reproach me, according to the old routine, for disposing of my

life without permission—or whatever its tenet may be. But now, _now_,

when my sentence is out and my days numbered! How can morality have

need of my last breaths, and why should I die listening to the

consolations offered by the prince, who, without doubt, would not omit

to demonstrate that death is actually a benefactor to me? (Christians

like him always end up with that—it is their pet theory.) And what do

they want with their ridiculous ‘Pavlofsk trees’? To sweeten my last

hours? Cannot they understand that the more I forget myself, the more I

let myself become attached to these last illusions of life and love, by

means of which they try to hide from me Meyer’s wall, and all that is

so plainly written on it—the more unhappy they make me? What is the use

of all your nature to me—all your parks and trees, your sunsets and

sunrises, your blue skies and your self-satisfied faces—when all this

wealth of beauty and happiness begins with the fact that it accounts

me—only me—one too many! What is the good of all this beauty and glory

to me, when every second, every moment, I cannot but be aware that this

little fly which buzzes around my head in the sun’s rays—even this

little fly is a sharer and participator in all the glory of the

universe, and knows its place and is happy in it;—while I—only I, am an

outcast, and have been blind to the fact hitherto, thanks to my

simplicity! Oh! I know well how the prince and others would like me,

instead of indulging in all these wicked words of my own, to sing, to

the glory and triumph of morality, that well-known verse of Gilbert’s:

“‘O, puissent voir longtemps votre beauté sacrée

Tant d’amis, sourds à mes adieux!

Qu’ils meurent pleins de jours, que leur mort soit pleurée,

Qu’un ami leur ferme les yeux!’

“But believe me, believe me, my simple-hearted friends, that in this

highly moral verse, in this academical blessing to the world in general

in the French language, is hidden the intensest gall and bitterness;

but so well concealed is the venom, that I dare say the poet actually

persuaded himself that his words were full of the tears of pardon and

peace, instead of the bitterness of disappointment and malice, and so

died in the delusion.

“Do you know there is a limit of ignominy, beyond which man’s

consciousness of shame cannot go, and after which begins satisfaction

in shame? Well, of course humility is a great force in that sense, I

admit that—though not in the sense in which religion accounts humility

to be strength!

“Religion!—I admit eternal life—and perhaps I always did admit it.

“Admitted that consciousness is called into existence by the will of a

Higher Power; admitted that this consciousness looks out upon the world

and says ‘I am;’ and admitted that the Higher Power wills that the

consciousness so called into existence, be suddenly extinguished (for

so—for some unexplained reason—it is and must be)—still there comes the

eternal question—why must I be humble through all this? Is it not

enough that I am devoured, without my being expected to bless the power

that devours me? Surely—surely I need not suppose that

Somebody—there—will be offended because I do not wish to live out the

fortnight allowed me? I don’t believe it.

“It is much simpler, and far more likely, to believe that my death is

needed—the death of an insignificant atom—in order to fulfil the

general harmony of the universe—in order to make even some plus or

minus in the sum of existence. Just as every day the death of numbers

of beings is necessary because without their annihilation the rest

cannot live on—(although we must admit that the idea is not a

particularly grand one in itself!)

“However—admit the fact! Admit that without such perpetual devouring of

one another the world cannot continue to exist, or could never have

been organized—I am ever ready to confess that I cannot understand why

this is so—but I’ll tell you what I _do_ know, for certain. If I have

once been given to understand and realize that I _am_—what does it

matter to me that the world is organized on a system full of errors and

that otherwise it cannot be organized at all? Who will or can judge me

after this? Say what you like—the thing is impossible and unjust!

“And meanwhile I have never been able, in spite of my great desire to

do so, to persuade myself that there is no future existence, and no

Providence.

“The fact of the matter is that all this _does_ exist, but that we know

absolutely nothing about the future life and its laws!

“But it is so difficult, and even impossible to understand, that surely

I am not to be blamed because I could not fathom the incomprehensible?

“Of course I know they say that one must be obedient, and of course,

too, the prince is one of those who say so: that one must be obedient

without questions, out of pure goodness of heart, and that for my

worthy conduct in this matter I shall meet with reward in another

world. We degrade God when we attribute our own ideas to Him, out of

annoyance that we cannot fathom His ways.

“Again, I repeat, I cannot be blamed because I am unable to understand

that which it is not given to mankind to fathom. Why am I to be judged

because I could not comprehend the Will and Laws of Providence? No, we

had better drop religion.

“And enough of this. By the time I have got so far in the reading of my

document the sun will be up and the huge force of his rays will be

acting upon the living world. So be it. I shall die gazing straight at

the great Fountain of life and power; I do not want this life!

“If I had had the power to prevent my own birth I should certainly

never have consented to accept existence under such ridiculous

conditions. However, I have the power to end my existence, although I

do but give back days that are already numbered. It is an insignificant

gift, and my revolt is equally insignificant.

“Final explanation: I die, not in the least because I am unable to

support these next three weeks. Oh no, I should find strength enough,

and if I wished it I could obtain consolation from the thought of the

injury that is done me. But I am not a French poet, and I do not desire

such consolation. And finally, nature has so limited my capacity for

work or activity of any kind, in allotting me but three weeks of time,

that suicide is about the only thing left that I can begin and end in

the time of my own free will.

“Perhaps then I am anxious to take advantage of my last chance of doing

something for myself. A protest is sometimes no small thing.”

The explanation was finished; Hippolyte paused at last.

There is, in extreme cases, a final stage of cynical candour when a

nervous man, excited, and beside himself with emotion, will be afraid

of nothing and ready for any sort of scandal, nay, glad of it. The

extraordinary, almost unnatural, tension of the nerves which upheld

Hippolyte up to this point, had now arrived at this final stage. This

poor feeble boy of eighteen—exhausted by disease—looked for all the

world as weak and frail as a leaflet torn from its parent tree and

trembling in the breeze; but no sooner had his eye swept over his

audience, for the first time during the whole of the last hour, than

the most contemptuous, the most haughty expression of repugnance

lighted up his face. He defied them all, as it were. But his hearers

were indignant, too; they rose to their feet with annoyance. Fatigue,

the wine consumed, the strain of listening so long, all added to the

disagreeable impression which the reading had made upon them.

Suddenly Hippolyte jumped up as though he had been shot.

“The sun is rising,” he cried, seeing the gilded tops of the trees, and

pointing to them as to a miracle. “See, it is rising now!”

“Well, what then? Did you suppose it wasn’t going to rise?” asked

Ferdishenko.

“It’s going to be atrociously hot again all day,” said Gania, with an

air of annoyance, taking his hat. “A month of this... Are you coming

home, Ptitsin?” Hippolyte listened to this in amazement, almost

amounting to stupefaction. Suddenly he became deadly pale and

shuddered.

“You manage your composure too awkwardly. I see you wish to insult me,”

he cried to Gania. “You—you are a cur!” He looked at Gania with an

expression of malice.

“What on earth is the matter with the boy? What phenomenal

feeble-mindedness!” exclaimed Ferdishenko.

“Oh, he’s simply a fool,” said Gania.

Hippolyte braced himself up a little.

“I understand, gentlemen,” he began, trembling as before, and stumbling

over every word, “that I have deserved your resentment, and—and am

sorry that I should have troubled you with this raving nonsense”

(pointing to his article), “or rather, I am sorry that I have not

troubled you enough.” He smiled feebly. “Have I troubled you, Evgenie

Pavlovitch?” He suddenly turned on Evgenie with this question. “Tell me

now, have I troubled you or not?”

“Well, it was a little drawn out, perhaps; but—”

“Come, speak out! Don’t lie, for once in your life—speak out!”

continued Hippolyte, quivering with agitation.

“Oh, my good sir, I assure you it’s entirely the same to me. Please

leave me in peace,” said Evgenie, angrily, turning his back on him.

“Good-night, prince,” said Ptitsin, approaching his host.

“What are you thinking of? Don’t go, he’ll blow his brains out in a

minute!” cried Vera Lebedeff, rushing up to Hippolyte and catching hold

of his hands in a torment of alarm. “What are you thinking of? He said

he would blow his brains out at sunrise.”

“Oh, he won’t shoot himself!” cried several voices, sarcastically.

“Gentlemen, you’d better look out,” cried Colia, also seizing Hippolyte

by the hand. “Just look at him! Prince, what are you thinking of?” Vera

and Colia, and Keller, and Burdovsky were all crowding round Hippolyte

now and holding him down.

“He has the right—the right—” murmured Burdovsky. “Excuse me, prince,

but what are your arrangements?” asked Lebedeff, tipsy and exasperated,

going up to Muishkin.

“What do you mean by ‘arrangements’?”

“No, no, excuse me! I’m master of this house, though I do not wish to

lack respect towards you. You are master of the house too, in a way;

but I can’t allow this sort of thing—”

“He won’t shoot himself; the boy is only playing the fool,” said

General Ivolgin, suddenly and unexpectedly, with indignation.

“I know he won’t, I know he won’t, general; but I—I’m master here!”

“Listen, Mr. Terentieff,” said Ptitsin, who had bidden the prince

good-night, and was now holding out his hand to Hippolyte; “I think you

remark in that manuscript of yours, that you bequeath your skeleton to

the Academy. Are you referring to your own skeleton—I mean, your very

bones?”

“Yes, my bones, I—”

“Quite so, I see; because, you know, little mistakes have occurred now

and then. There was a case—”

“Why do you tease him?” cried the prince, suddenly.

“You’ve moved him to tears,” added Ferdishenko. But Hippolyte was by no

means weeping. He was about to move from his place, when his four

guards rushed at him and seized him once more. There was a laugh at

this.

“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!”

“If you really intended to shoot yourself, Terentieff,” said Evgenie

Pavlovitch, laughing, “if I were you, after all these compliments, I

should just not shoot myself in order to vex them all.”

“They are very anxious to see me blow my brains out,” said Hippolyte,

bitterly.

“Yes, they’ll be awfully annoyed if they don’t see it.”

“Then you think they won’t see it?”

“I am not trying to egg you on. On the contrary, I think it very likely

that you may shoot yourself; but the principal thing is to keep cool,”

said Evgenie with a drawl, and with great condescension.

“I only now perceive what a terrible mistake I made in reading this

article to them,” said Hippolyte, suddenly, addressing Evgenie, and

looking at him with an expression of trust and confidence, as though he

were applying to a friend for counsel.

“Yes, it’s a droll situation; I really don’t know what advice to give

you,” replied Evgenie, laughing. Hippolyte gazed steadfastly at him,

but said nothing. To look at him one might have supposed that he was

unconscious at intervals.

“Excuse me,” said Lebedeff, “but did you observe the young gentleman’s

style? ‘I’ll go and blow my brains out in the park,’ says he, ‘so as

not to disturb anyone.’ He thinks he won’t disturb anybody if he goes

three yards away, into the park, and blows his brains out there.”

“Gentlemen—” began the prince.

“No, no, excuse me, most revered prince,” Lebedeff interrupted,

excitedly. “Since you must have observed yourself that this is no joke,

and since at least half your guests must also have concluded that after

all that has been said this youth _must_ blow his brains out for

honour’s sake—I—as master of this house, and before these witnesses,

now call upon you to take steps.”

“Yes, but what am I to do, Lebedeff? What steps am I to take? I am

ready.”

“I’ll tell you. In the first place he must immediately deliver up the

pistol which he boasted of, with all its appurtenances. If he does this

I shall consent to his being allowed to spend the night in this

house—considering his feeble state of health, and of course

conditionally upon his being under proper supervision. But tomorrow he

must go elsewhere. Excuse me, prince! Should he refuse to deliver up

his weapon, then I shall instantly seize one of his arms and General

Ivolgin the other, and we shall hold him until the police arrive and

take the matter into their own hands. Mr. Ferdishenko will kindly fetch

them.”

At this there was a dreadful noise; Lebedeff danced about in his

excitement; Ferdishenko prepared to go for the police; Gania

frantically insisted that it was all nonsense, “for nobody was going to

shoot themselves.” Evgenie Pavlovitch said nothing.

“Prince,” whispered Hippolyte, suddenly, his eyes all ablaze, “you

don’t suppose that I did not foresee all this hatred?” He looked at the

prince as though he expected him to reply, for a moment. “Enough!” he

added at length, and addressing the whole company, he cried: “It’s all

my fault, gentlemen! Lebedeff, here’s the key,” (he took out a small

bunch of keys); “this one, the last but one—Colia will show you—Colia,

where’s Colia?” he cried, looking straight at Colia and not seeing him.

“Yes, he’ll show you; he packed the bag with me this morning. Take him

up, Colia; my bag is upstairs in the prince’s study, under the table.

Here’s the key, and in the little case you’ll find my pistol and the

powder, and all. Colia packed it himself, Mr. Lebedeff; he’ll show you;

but it’s on condition that tomorrow morning, when I leave for

Petersburg, you will give me back my pistol, do you hear? I do this for

the prince’s sake, not yours.”

“Capital, that’s much better!” cried Lebedeff, and seizing the key he

made off in haste.

Colia stopped a moment as though he wished to say something; but

Lebedeff dragged him away.

Hippolyte looked around at the laughing guests. The prince observed

that his teeth were chattering as though in a violent attack of ague.

“What brutes they all are!” he whispered to the prince. Whenever he

addressed him he lowered his voice.

“Let them alone, you’re too weak now—”

“Yes, directly; I’ll go away directly. I’ll—”

Suddenly he embraced Muishkin.

“Perhaps you think I am mad, eh?” he asked him, laughing very

strangely.

“No, but you—”

“Directly, directly! Stand still a moment, I wish to look in your eyes;

don’t speak—stand so—let me look at you! I am bidding farewell to

mankind.”

He stood so for ten seconds, gazing at the prince, motionless, deadly

pale, his temples wet with perspiration; he held the prince’s hand in a

strange grip, as though afraid to let him go.

“Hippolyte, Hippolyte, what is the matter with you?” cried Muishkin.

“Directly! There, that’s enough. I’ll lie down directly. I must drink

to the sun’s health. I wish to—I insist upon it! Let go!”

He seized a glass from the table, broke away from the prince, and in a

moment had reached the terrace steps.

The prince made after him, but it so happened that at this moment

Evgenie Pavlovitch stretched out his hand to say good-night. The next

instant there was a general outcry, and then followed a few moments of

indescribable excitement.

Reaching the steps, Hippolyte had paused, holding the glass in his left

hand while he put his right hand into his coat pocket.

Keller insisted afterwards that he had held his right hand in his

pocket all the while, when he was speaking to the prince, and that he

had held the latter’s shoulder with his left hand only. This

circumstance, Keller affirmed, had led him to feel some suspicion from

the first. However this may be, Keller ran after Hippolyte, but he was

too late.

He caught sight of something flashing in Hippolyte’s right hand, and

saw that it was a pistol. He rushed at him, but at that very instant

Hippolyte raised the pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger. There

followed a sharp metallic click, but no report.

When Keller seized the would-be suicide, the latter fell forward into

his arms, probably actually believing that he was shot. Keller had hold

of the pistol now. Hippolyte was immediately placed in a chair, while

the whole company thronged around excitedly, talking and asking each

other questions. Every one of them had heard the snap of the trigger,

and yet they saw a live and apparently unharmed man before them.

Hippolyte himself sat quite unconscious of what was going on, and gazed

around with a senseless expression.

Lebedeff and Colia came rushing up at this moment.

“What is it?” someone asked, breathlessly—“A misfire?”

“Perhaps it wasn’t loaded,” said several voices.

“It’s loaded all right,” said Keller, examining the pistol, “but—”

“What! did it miss fire?”

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

It would be difficult to describe the pitiable scene that now followed.

The first sensation of alarm soon gave place to amusement; some burst

out laughing loud and heartily, and seemed to find a malicious

satisfaction in the joke. Poor Hippolyte sobbed hysterically; he wrung

his hands; he approached everyone in turn—even Ferdishenko—and took

them by both hands, and swore solemnly that he had forgotten—absolutely

forgotten—“accidentally, and not on purpose,”—to put a cap in—that he

“had ten of them, at least, in his pocket.” He pulled them out and

showed them to everyone; he protested that he had not liked to put one

in beforehand for fear of an accidental explosion in his pocket. That

he had thought he would have lots of time to put it in afterwards—when

required—and, that, in the heat of the moment, he had forgotten all

about it. He threw himself upon the prince, then on Evgenie Pavlovitch.

He entreated Keller to give him back the pistol, and he’d soon show

them all that “his honour—his honour,”—but he was “dishonoured, now,

for ever!”

He fell senseless at last—and was carried into the prince’s study.

Lebedeff, now quite sobered down, sent for a doctor; and he and his

daughter, with Burdovsky and General Ivolgin, remained by the sick

man’s couch.

When he was carried away unconscious, Keller stood in the middle of the

room, and made the following declaration to the company in general, in

a loud tone of voice, with emphasis upon each word.

“Gentlemen, if any one of you casts any doubt again, before me, upon

Hippolyte’s good faith, or hints that the cap was forgotten

intentionally, or suggests that this unhappy boy was acting a part

before us, I beg to announce that the person so speaking shall account

to me for his words.”

No one replied.

The company departed very quickly, in a mass. Ptitsin, Gania, and

Rogojin went away together.

The prince was much astonished that Evgenie Pavlovitch changed his

mind, and took his departure without the conversation he had requested.

“Why, you wished to have a talk with me when the others left?” he said.

“Quite so,” said Evgenie, sitting down suddenly beside him, “but I have

changed my mind for the time being. I confess, I am too disturbed, and

so, I think, are you; and the matter as to which I wished to consult

you is too serious to tackle with one’s mind even a little disturbed;

too serious both for myself and for you. You see, prince, for once in

my life I wish to perform an absolutely honest action, that is, an

action with no ulterior motive; and I think I am hardly in a condition

to talk of it just at this moment, and—and—well, we’ll discuss it

another time. Perhaps the matter may gain in clearness if we wait for

two or three days—just the two or three days which I must spend in

Petersburg.”

Here he rose again from his chair, so that it seemed strange that he

should have thought it worth while to sit down at all.

The prince thought, too, that he looked vexed and annoyed, and not

nearly so friendly towards himself as he had been earlier in the night.

“I suppose you will go to the sufferer’s bedside now?” he added.

“Yes, I am afraid...” began the prince.

“Oh, you needn’t fear! He’ll live another six weeks all right. Very

likely he will recover altogether; but I strongly advise you to pack

him off tomorrow.”

“I think I may have offended him by saying nothing just now. I am

afraid he may suspect that I doubted his good faith,—about shooting

himself, you know. What do you think, Evgenie Pavlovitch?”

“Not a bit of it! You are much too good to him; you shouldn’t care a

hang about what he thinks. I have heard of such things before, but

never came across, till tonight, a man who would actually shoot himself

in order to gain a vulgar notoriety, or blow out his brains for spite,

if he finds that people don’t care to pat him on the back for his

sanguinary intentions. But what astonishes me more than anything is the

fellow’s candid confession of weakness. You’d better get rid of him

tomorrow, in any case.”

“Do you think he will make another attempt?”

“Oh no, not he, not now! But you have to be very careful with this sort

of gentleman. Crime is too often the last resource of these petty

nonentities. This young fellow is quite capable of cutting the throats

of ten people, simply for a lark, as he told us in his ‘explanation.’ I

assure you those confounded words of his will not let me sleep.”

“I think you disturb yourself too much.”

“What an extraordinary person you are, prince! Do you mean to say that

you doubt the fact that he is capable of murdering ten men?”

“I daren’t say, one way or the other; all this is very strange—but—”

“Well, as you like, just as you like,” said Evgenie Pavlovitch,

irritably. “Only you are such a plucky fellow, take care you don’t get

included among the ten victims!”

“Oh, he is much more likely not to kill anyone at all,” said the

prince, gazing thoughtfully at Evgenie. The latter laughed

disagreeably.

“Well, _au revoir!_ Did you observe that he ‘willed’ a copy of his

confession to Aglaya Ivanovna?”

“Yes, I did; I am thinking of it.”

“In connection with ‘the ten,’ eh?” laughed Evgenie, as he left the

room.

An hour later, towards four o’clock, the prince went into the park. He

had endeavoured to fall asleep, but could not, owing to the painful

beating of his heart.

He had left things quiet and peaceful; the invalid was fast asleep, and

the doctor, who had been called in, had stated that there was no

special danger. Lebedeff, Colia, and Burdovsky were lying down in the

sick-room, ready to take it in turns to watch. There was nothing to

fear, therefore, at home.

But the prince’s mental perturbation increased every moment. He

wandered about the park, looking absently around him, and paused in

astonishment when he suddenly found himself in the empty space with the

rows of chairs round it, near the Vauxhall. The look of the place

struck him as dreadful now: so he turned round and went by the path

which he had followed with the Epanchins on the way to the band, until

he reached the green bench which Aglaya had pointed out for their

rendezvous. He sat down on it and suddenly burst into a loud fit of

laughter, immediately followed by a feeling of irritation. His

disturbance of mind continued; he felt that he must go away somewhere,

anywhere.

Above his head some little bird sang out, of a sudden; he began to peer

about for it among the leaves. Suddenly the bird darted out of the tree

and away, and instantly he thought of the “fly buzzing about in the

sun’s rays” that Hippolyte had talked of; how that it knew its place

and was a participator in the universal life, while he alone was an

“outcast.” This picture had impressed him at the time, and he meditated

upon it now. An old, forgotten memory awoke in his brain, and suddenly

burst into clearness and light. It was a recollection of Switzerland,

during the first year of his cure, the very first months. At that time

he had been pretty nearly an idiot still; he could not speak properly,

and had difficulty in understanding when others spoke to him. He

climbed the mountain-side, one sunny morning, and wandered long and

aimlessly with a certain thought in his brain, which would not become

clear. Above him was the blazing sky, below, the lake; all around was

the horizon, clear and infinite. He looked out upon this, long and

anxiously. He remembered how he had stretched out his arms towards the

beautiful, boundless blue of the horizon, and wept, and wept. What had

so tormented him was the idea that he was a stranger to all this, that

he was outside this glorious festival.

What was this universe? What was this grand, eternal pageant to which

he had yearned from his childhood up, and in which he could never take

part? Every morning the same magnificent sun; every morning the same

rainbow in the waterfall; every evening the same glow on the

snow-mountains.

Every little fly that buzzed in the sun’s rays was a singer in the

universal chorus, “knew its place, and was happy in it.” Every blade of

grass grew and was happy. Everything knew its path and loved it, went

forth with a song and returned with a song; only he knew nothing,

understood nothing, neither men nor words, nor any of nature’s voices;

he was a stranger and an outcast.

Oh, he could not then speak these words, or express all he felt! He had

been tormented dumbly; but now it appeared to him that he must have

said these very words—even then—and that Hippolyte must have taken his

picture of the little fly from his tears and words of that time.

He was sure of it, and his heart beat excitedly at the thought, he knew

not why.

He fell asleep on the bench; but his mental disquiet continued through

his slumbers.

Just before he dozed off, the idea of Hippolyte murdering ten men

flitted through his brain, and he smiled at the absurdity of such a

thought.

Around him all was quiet; only the flutter and whisper of the leaves

broke the silence, but broke it only to cause it to appear yet more

deep and still.

He dreamed many dreams as he sat there, and all were full of disquiet,

so that he shuddered every moment.

At length a woman seemed to approach him. He knew her, oh! he knew her

only too well. He could always name her and recognize her anywhere;

but, strange, she seemed to have quite a different face from hers, as

he had known it, and he felt a tormenting desire to be able to say she

was not the same woman. In the face before him there was such dreadful

remorse and horror that he thought she must be a criminal, that she

must have just committed some awful crime.

Tears were trembling on her white cheek. She beckoned him, but placed

her finger on her lip as though to warn him that he must follow her

very quietly. His heart froze within him. He wouldn’t, he _couldn’t_

confess her to be a criminal, and yet he felt that something dreadful

would happen the next moment, something which would blast his whole

life.

She seemed to wish to show him something, not far off, in the park.

He rose from his seat in order to follow her, when a bright, clear peal

of laughter rang out by his side. He felt somebody’s hand suddenly in

his own, seized it, pressed it hard, and awoke. Before him stood

Aglaya, laughing aloud.

VIII.

She laughed, but she was rather angry too.

“He’s asleep! You were asleep,” she said, with contemptuous surprise.

“Is it really you?” muttered the prince, not quite himself as yet, and

recognizing her with a start of amazement. “Oh yes, of course,” he

added, “this is our rendezvous. I fell asleep here.”

“So I saw.”

“Did no one awake me besides yourself? Was there no one else here? I

thought there was another woman.”

“There was another woman here?”

At last he was wide awake.

“It was a dream, of course,” he said, musingly. “Strange that I should

have a dream like that at such a moment. Sit down—”

He took her hand and seated her on the bench; then sat down beside her

and reflected.

Aglaya did not begin the conversation, but contented herself with

watching her companion intently.

He looked back at her, but at times it was clear that he did not see

her and was not thinking of her.

Aglaya began to flush up.

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

“What? At your house?” she asked, but without much surprise. “He was

alive yesterday evening, wasn’t he? How could you sleep here after

that?” she cried, growing suddenly animated.

“Oh, but he didn’t kill himself; the pistol didn’t go off.” Aglaya

insisted on hearing the whole story. She hurried the prince along, but

interrupted him with all sorts of questions, nearly all of which were

irrelevant. Among other things, she seemed greatly interested in every

word that Evgenie Pavlovitch had said, and made the prince repeat that

part of the story over and over again.

“Well, that’ll do; we must be quick,” she concluded, after hearing all.

“We have only an hour here, till eight; I must be home by then without

fail, so that they may not find out that I came and sat here with you;

but I’ve come on business. I have a great deal to say to you. But you

have bowled me over considerably with your news. As to Hippolyte, I

think his pistol was bound not to go off; it was more consistent with

the whole affair. Are you sure he really wished to blow his brains out,

and that there was no humbug about the matter?”

“No humbug at all.”

“Very likely. So he wrote that you were to bring me a copy of his

confession, did he? Why didn’t you bring it?”

“Why, he didn’t die! I’ll ask him for it, if you like.”

“Bring it by all means; you needn’t ask him. He will be delighted, you

may be sure; for, in all probability, he shot at himself simply in

order that I might read his confession. Don’t laugh at what I say,

please, Lef Nicolaievitch, because it may very well be the case.”

“I’m not laughing. I am convinced, myself, that that may have been

partly the reason.”

“You are convinced? You don’t really mean to say you think that

honestly?” asked Aglaya, extremely surprised.

She put her questions very quickly and talked fast, every now and then

forgetting what she had begun to say, and not finishing her sentence.

She seemed to be impatient to warn the prince about something or other.

She was in a state of unusual excitement, and though she put on a brave

and even defiant air, she seemed to be rather alarmed. She was dressed

very simply, but this suited her well. She continually trembled and

blushed, and she sat on the very edge of the seat.

The fact that the prince confirmed her idea, about Hippolyte shooting

himself that she might read his confession, surprised her greatly.

“Of course,” added the prince, “he wished us all to applaud his

conduct—besides yourself.”

“How do you mean—applaud?”

“Well—how am I to explain? He was very anxious that we should all come

around him, and say we were so sorry for him, and that we loved him

very much, and all that; and that we hoped he wouldn’t kill himself,

but remain alive. Very likely he thought more of you than the rest of

us, because he mentioned you at such a moment, though perhaps he did

not know himself that he had you in his mind’s eye.”

“I don’t understand you. How could he have me in view, and not be aware

of it himself? And yet, I don’t know—perhaps I do. Do you know I have

intended to poison myself at least thirty times—ever since I was

thirteen or so—and to write to my parents before I did it? I used to

think how nice it would be to lie in my coffin, and have them all

weeping over me and saying it was all their fault for being so cruel,

and all that—what are you smiling at?” she added, knitting her brow.

“What do _you_ think of when you go mooning about alone? I suppose you

imagine yourself a field-marshal, and think you have conquered

Napoleon?”

“Well, I really have thought something of the sort now and then,

especially when just dozing off,” laughed the prince. “Only it is the

Austrians whom I conquer—not Napoleon.”

“I don’t wish to joke with you, Lef Nicolaievitch. I shall see

Hippolyte myself. Tell him so. As for you, I think you are behaving

very badly, because it is not right to judge a man’s soul as you are

judging Hippolyte’s. You have no gentleness, but only justice—so you

are unjust.”

The prince reflected.

“I think you are unfair towards me,” he said. “There is nothing wrong

in the thoughts I ascribe to Hippolyte; they are only natural. But of

course I don’t know for certain what he thought. Perhaps he thought

nothing, but simply longed to see human faces once more, and to hear

human praise and feel human affection. Who knows? Only it all came out

wrong, somehow. Some people have luck, and everything comes out right

with them; others have none, and never a thing turns out fortunately.”

“I suppose you have felt that in your own case,” said Aglaya.

“Yes, I have,” replied the prince, quite unsuspicious of any irony in

the remark.

“H’m—well, at all events, I shouldn’t have fallen asleep here, in your

place. It wasn’t nice of you, that. I suppose you fall asleep wherever

you sit down?”

“But I didn’t sleep a wink all night. I walked and walked about, and

went to where the music was—”

“What music?”

“Where they played last night. Then I found this bench and sat down,

and thought and thought—and at last I fell fast asleep.”

“Oh, is that it? That makes a difference, perhaps. What did you go to

the bandstand for?”

“I don’t know; I—”

“Very well—afterwards. You are always interrupting me. What woman was

it you were dreaming about?”

“It was—about—you saw her—”

“Quite so; I understand. I understand quite well. You are very—Well,

how did she appear to you? What did she look like? No, I don’t want to

know anything about her,” said Aglaya, angrily; “don’t interrupt me—”

She paused a moment as though getting breath, or trying to master her

feeling of annoyance.

“Look here; this is what I called you here for. I wish to make you a—to

ask you to be my friend. What do you stare at me like that for?” she

added, almost angrily.

The prince certainly had darted a rather piercing look at her, and now

observed that she had begun to blush violently. At such moments, the

more Aglaya blushed, the angrier she grew with herself; and this was

clearly expressed in her eyes, which flashed like fire. As a rule, she

vented her wrath on her unfortunate companion, be it who it might. She

was very conscious of her own shyness, and was not nearly so talkative

as her sisters for this reason—in fact, at times she was much too

quiet. When, therefore, she was bound to talk, especially at such

delicate moments as this, she invariably did so with an air of haughty

defiance. She always knew beforehand when she was going to blush, long

before the blush came.

“Perhaps you do not wish to accept my proposition?” she asked, gazing

haughtily at the prince.

“Oh yes, I do; but it is so unnecessary. I mean, I did not think you

need make such a proposition,” said the prince, looking confused.

“What did you suppose, then? Why did you think I invited you out here?

I suppose you think me a ‘little fool,’ as they all call me at home?”

“I didn’t know they called you a fool. I certainly don’t think you

one.”

“You don’t think me one! Oh, dear me!—that’s very clever of you; you

put it so neatly, too.”

“In my opinion, you are far from a fool sometimes—in fact, you are very

intelligent. You said a very clever thing just now about my being

unjust because I had _only_ justice. I shall remember that, and think

about it.”

Aglaya blushed with pleasure. All these changes in her expression came

about so naturally and so rapidly—they delighted the prince; he watched

her, and laughed.

“Listen,” she began again; “I have long waited to tell you all this,

ever since the time when you sent me that letter—even before that. Half

of what I have to say you heard yesterday. I consider you the most

honest and upright of men—more honest and upright than any other man;

and if anybody says that your mind is—is sometimes affected, you

know—it is unfair. I always say so and uphold it, because even if your

surface mind be a little affected (of course you will not feel angry

with me for talking so—I am speaking from a higher point of view) yet

your real mind is far better than all theirs put together. Such a mind

as they have never even _dreamed_ of; because really, there are _two_

minds—the kind that matters, and the kind that doesn’t matter. Isn’t it

so?”

“May be! may be so!” said the prince, faintly; his heart was beating

painfully.

“I knew you would not misunderstand me,” she said, triumphantly.

“Prince S. and Evgenie Pavlovitch and Alexandra don’t understand

anything about these two kinds of mind, but, just fancy, mamma does!”

“You are very like Lizabetha Prokofievna.”

“What! surely not?” said Aglaya.

“Yes, you are, indeed.”

“Thank you; I am glad to be like mamma,” she said, thoughtfully. “You

respect her very much, don’t you?” she added, quite unconscious of the

naiveness of the question.

“_Very_ much; and I am so glad that you have realized the fact.”

“I am very glad, too, because she is often laughed at by people. But

listen to the chief point. I have long thought over the matter, and at

last I have chosen you. I don’t wish people to laugh at me; I don’t

wish people to think me a ‘little fool.’ I don’t want to be chaffed. I

felt all this of a sudden, and I refused Evgenie Pavlovitch flatly,

because I am not going to be forever thrown at people’s heads to be

married. I want—I want—well, I’ll tell you, I wish to run away from

home, and I have chosen you to help me.”

“Run away from home?” cried the prince.

“Yes—yes—yes! Run away from home!” she repeated, in a transport of

rage. “I won’t, I won’t be made to blush every minute by them all! I

don’t want to blush before Prince S. or Evgenie Pavlovitch, or anyone,

and therefore I have chosen you. I shall tell you everything,

_everything_, even the most important things of all, whenever I like,

and you are to hide nothing from me on your side. I want to speak to at

least one person, as I would to myself. They have suddenly begun to say

that I am waiting for you, and in love with you. They began this before

you arrived here, and so I didn’t show them the letter, and now they

all say it, every one of them. I want to be brave, and be afraid of

nobody. I don’t want to go to their balls and things—I want to do good.

I have long desired to run away, for I have been kept shut up for

twenty years, and they are always trying to marry me off. I wanted to

run away when I was fourteen years old—I was a little fool then, I

know—but now I have worked it all out, and I have waited for you to

tell me about foreign countries. I have never seen a single Gothic

cathedral. I must go to Rome; I must see all the museums; I must study

in Paris. All this last year I have been preparing and reading

forbidden books. Alexandra and Adelaida are allowed to read anything

they like, but I mayn’t. I don’t want to quarrel with my sisters, but I

told my parents long ago that I wish to change my social position. I

have decided to take up teaching, and I count on you because you said

you loved children. Can we go in for education together—if not at once,

then afterwards? We could do good together. I won’t be a general’s

daughter any more! Tell me, are you a very learned man?”

“Oh no; not at all.”

“Oh-h-h! I’m sorry for that. I thought you were. I wonder why I always

thought so—but at all events you’ll help me, won’t you? Because I’ve

chosen you, you know.”

“Aglaya Ivanovna, it’s absurd.”

“But I will, I _will_ run away!” she cried—and her eyes flashed again

with anger—“and if you don’t agree I shall go and marry Gavrila

Ardalionovitch! I won’t be considered a horrible girl, and accused of

goodness knows what.”

“Are you out of your mind?” cried the prince, almost starting from his

seat. “What do they accuse you of? Who accuses you?”

“At home, everybody, mother, my sisters, Prince S., even that

detestable Colia! If they don’t say it, they think it. I told them all

so to their faces. I told mother and father and everybody. Mamma was

ill all the day after it, and next day father and Alexandra told me

that I didn’t understand what nonsense I was talking. I informed them

that they little knew me—I was not a small child—I understood every

word in the language—that I had read a couple of Paul de Kok’s novels

two years since on purpose, so as to know all about everything. No

sooner did mamma hear me say this than she nearly fainted!”

A strange thought passed through the prince’s brain; he gazed intently

at Aglaya and smiled.

He could not believe that this was the same haughty young girl who had

once so proudly shown him Gania’s letter. He could not understand how

that proud and austere beauty could show herself to be such an utter

child—a child who probably did not even now understand some words.

“Have you always lived at home, Aglaya Ivanovna?” he asked. “I mean,

have you never been to school, or college, or 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.

“I admit I was afraid that that was the case, yesterday,” blundered the

prince (he was rather confused), “but today I am quite convinced that—”

“How?” cried Aglaya—and her lower lip trembled violently. “You were

_afraid_ that I—you dared to think that I—good gracious! you suspected,

perhaps, that I sent for you to come here in order to catch you in a

trap, so that they should find us here together, and make you marry

me—”

“Aglaya Ivanovna, aren’t you ashamed of saying such a thing? How could

such a horrible idea enter your sweet, innocent heart? I am certain you

don’t believe a word of what you say, and probably you don’t even know

what you are talking about.”

Aglaya sat with her eyes on the ground; she seemed to have alarmed even

herself by what she had said.

“No, I’m not; I’m not a bit ashamed!” she murmured. “And how do you

know my heart is innocent? And how dared you send me a love-letter that

time?”

“_Love-letter?_ My letter a love-letter? That letter was the most

respectful of letters; it went straight from my heart, at what was

perhaps the most painful moment of my life! I thought of you at the

time as a kind of light. I—”

“Well, very well, very well!” she said, but quite in a different tone.

She was remorseful now, and bent forward to touch his shoulder, though

still trying not to look him in the face, as if the more persuasively

to beg him not to be angry with her. “Very well,” she continued,

looking thoroughly ashamed of herself, “I feel that I said a very

foolish thing. I only did it just to try you. Take it as unsaid, and if

I offended you, forgive me. Don’t look straight at me like that,

please; turn your head away. You called it a ‘horrible idea’; I only

said it to shock you. Very often I am myself afraid of saying what I

intend to say, and out it comes all the same. You have just told me

that you wrote that letter at the most painful moment of your life. I

know what moment that was!” she added softly, looking at the ground

again.

“Oh, if you could know all!”

“I _do_ know all!” she cried, with another burst of indignation. “You

were living in the same house as that horrible woman with whom you ran

away.” She did not blush as she said this; on the contrary, she grew

pale, and started from her seat, apparently oblivious of what she did,

and immediately sat down again. Her lip continued to tremble for a long

time.

There was silence for a moment. The prince was taken aback by the

suddenness of this last reply, and did not know to what he should

attribute it.

“I don’t love you a bit!” she said suddenly, just as though the words

had exploded from her mouth.

The prince did not answer, and there was silence again. “I love Gavrila

Ardalionovitch,” she said, quickly; but hardly audibly, and with her

head bent lower than ever.

“That is _not_ true,” said the prince, in an equally low voice.

“What! I tell stories, do I? It is true! I gave him my promise a couple

of days ago on this very seat.”

The prince was startled, and reflected for a moment.

“It is not true,” he repeated, decidedly; “you have just invented it!”

“You are wonderfully polite. You know he is greatly improved. He loves

me better than his life. He let his hand burn before my very eyes in

order to prove to me that he loved me better than his life!”

“He burned his hand!”

“Yes, believe it or not! It’s all the same to me!”

The prince sat silent once more. Aglaya did not seem to be joking; she

was too angry for that.

“What! he brought a candle with him to this place? That is, if the

episode happened here; otherwise I can’t.”

“Yes, a candle! What’s there improbable about that?”

“A whole one, and in a candlestick?”

“Yes—no—half a candle—an end, you know—no, it was a whole candle; it’s

all the same. Be quiet, can’t you! He brought a box of matches too, if

you like, and then lighted the candle and held his finger in it for

half an hour and more!—There! Can’t that be?”

“I saw him yesterday, and his fingers were all right!”

Aglaya suddenly burst out laughing, as simply as a child.

“Do you know why I have just told you these lies?” She appealed to the

prince, of a sudden, with the most childlike candour, and with the

laugh still trembling on her lips. “Because when one tells a lie, if

one insists on something unusual and eccentric—something too ‘out of

the way’ for anything, you know—the more impossible the thing is, the

more plausible does the lie sound. I’ve noticed this. But I managed it

badly; I didn’t know how to work it.” She suddenly frowned again at

this point as though at some sudden unpleasant recollection.

“If”—she began, looking seriously and even sadly at him—“if when I read

you all that about the ‘poor knight,’ I wished to-to praise you for one

thing—I also wished to show you that I knew all—and did not approve of

your conduct.”

“You are very unfair to me, and to that unfortunate woman of whom you

spoke just now in such dreadful terms, Aglaya.”

“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?”

“Yes—for her!” said the prince softly and sadly, and bending his head

down, quite unconscious of the fact that Aglaya was gazing at him with

eyes which burned like live coals. “I came to find out something—I

don’t believe in her future happiness as Rogojin’s wife, although—in a

word, I did not know how to help her or what to do for her—but I came,

on the chance.”

He glanced at Aglaya, who was listening with a look of hatred on her

face.

“If you came without knowing why, I suppose you love her very much

indeed!” she said at last.

“No,” said the prince, “no, I do not love her. Oh! if you only knew

with what horror I recall the time I spent with her!”

A shudder seemed to sweep over his whole body at the recollection.

“Tell me about it,” said Aglaya.

“There is nothing which you might not hear. Why I should wish to tell

you, and only you, this experience of mine, I really cannot say;

perhaps it really is because I love you very much. This unhappy woman

is persuaded that she is the most hopeless, fallen creature in the

world. Oh, do not condemn her! Do not cast stones at her! She has

suffered too much already in the consciousness of her own undeserved

shame.

“And she is not guilty—oh God!—Every moment she bemoans and bewails

herself, and cries out that she does not admit any guilt, that she is

the victim of circumstances—the victim of a wicked libertine.

“But whatever she may say, remember that she does not believe it

herself,—remember that she will believe nothing but that she is a

guilty creature.

“When I tried to rid her soul of this gloomy fallacy, she suffered so

terribly that my heart will never be quite at peace so long as I can

remember that dreadful time!—Do you know why she left me? Simply to

prove to me what is not true—that she is base. But the worst of it is,

she did not realize herself that that was all she wanted to prove by

her departure! She went away in response to some inner prompting to do

something disgraceful, in order that she might say to

herself—‘There—you’ve done a new act of shame—you degraded creature!’

“Oh, Aglaya—perhaps you cannot understand all this. Try to realize that

in the perpetual admission of guilt she probably finds some dreadful

unnatural satisfaction—as though she were revenging herself upon

someone.

“Now and then I was able to persuade her almost to see light around her

again; but she would soon fall, once more, into her old tormenting

delusions, and would go so far as to reproach me for placing myself on

a pedestal above her (I never had an idea of such a thing!), and

informed me, in reply to my proposal of marriage, that she ‘did not

want condescending sympathy or help from anybody.’ You saw her last

night. You don’t suppose she can be happy among such people as

those—you cannot suppose that such society is fit for her? You have no

idea how well-educated she is, and what an intellect she has! She

astonished me sometimes.”

“And you preached her sermons there, did you?”

“Oh no,” continued the prince thoughtfully, not noticing Aglaya’s

mocking tone, “I was almost always silent there. I often wished to

speak, but I really did not know what to say. In some cases it is best

to say nothing, I think. I loved her, yes, I loved her very much

indeed; but afterwards—afterwards she guessed all.”

“What did she guess?”

“That I only _pitied_ her—and—and loved her no longer!”

“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?”

“Oh no! I know she only laughs at him; she has made a fool of him all

along.”

“Has she never laughed at you?”

“No—in anger, perhaps. Oh yes! she reproached me dreadfully in anger;

and suffered herself, too! But afterwards—oh! don’t remind me—don’t

remind me of that!”

He hid his face in his hands.

“Are you aware that she writes to me almost every day?”

“So that is true, is it?” cried the prince, greatly agitated. “I had

heard a report of it, but would not believe it.”

“Whom did you hear it from?” asked Aglaya, alarmed. “Rogojin said

something about it yesterday, but nothing definite.”

“Yesterday! Morning or evening? Before the music or after?”

“After—it was about twelve o’clock.”

“Ah! Well, if it was Rogojin—but do you know what she writes to me

about?”

“I should not be surprised by anything. She is mad!”

“There are the letters.” (Aglaya took three letters out of her pocket

and threw them down before the prince.) “For a whole week she has been

entreating and worrying and persuading me to marry you. She—well, she

is clever, though she may be mad—much cleverer than I am, as you say.

Well, she writes that she is in love with me herself, and tries to see

me every day, if only from a distance. She writes that you love me, and

that she has long known it and seen it, and that you and she talked

about me—there. She wishes to see you happy, and she says that she is

certain only I can ensure you the happiness you deserve. She writes

such strange, wild letters—I haven’t shown them to anyone. Now, do you

know what all this means? Can you guess anything?”

“It is madness—it is merely another proof of her insanity!” said the

prince, and his lips trembled.

“You are crying, aren’t you?”

“No, Aglaya. No, I’m not crying.” The prince looked at her.

“Well, what am I to do? What do you advise me? I cannot go on receiving

these letters, you know.”

“Oh, let her alone, I entreat you!” cried the prince. “What can you do

in this dark, gloomy mystery? Let her alone, and I’ll use all my power

to prevent her writing you any more letters.”

“If so, you are a heartless man!” cried Aglaya. “As if you can’t see

that it is not myself she loves, but you, you, and only you! Surely you

have not remarked everything else in her, and only not _this?_ Do you

know what these letters mean? They mean jealousy, sir—nothing but pure

jealousy! She—do you think she will ever really marry this Rogojin, as

she says here she will? She would take her own life the day after you

and I were married.”

The prince shuddered; his heart seemed to freeze within him. He gazed

at Aglaya in wonderment; it was difficult for him to realize that this

child was also a woman.

“God knows, Aglaya, that to restore her peace of mind and make her

happy I would willingly give up my life. But I cannot love her, and she

knows that.”

“Oh, make a sacrifice of yourself! That sort of thing becomes you well,

you know. Why not do it? And don’t call me ‘Aglaya’; you have done it

several times lately. You are bound, it is your _duty_ to ‘raise’ her;

you must go off somewhere again to soothe and pacify her. Why, you love

her, you know!”

“I cannot sacrifice myself so, though I admit I did wish to do so once.

Who knows, perhaps I still wish to! But I know for _certain_, that if

she married me it would be her ruin; I know this and therefore I leave

her alone. I ought to go to see her today; now I shall probably not go.

She is proud, she would never forgive me the nature of the love I bear

her, and we should both be ruined. This may be unnatural, I don’t know;

but everything seems unnatural. You say she loves me, as if this were

_love!_ As if she could love _me_, after what I have been through! No,

no, it is not love.”

“How pale you have grown!” cried Aglaya in alarm.

“Oh, it’s nothing. I haven’t slept, that’s all, and I’m rather tired.

I—we certainly did talk about you, Aglaya.”

“Oh, indeed, it is true then! _You could actually talk about me with

her_; and—and how could you have been fond of me when you had only seen

me once?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps it was that I seemed to come upon light in the

midst of my gloom. I told you the truth when I said I did not know why

I thought of you before all others. Of course it was all a sort of

dream, a dream amidst the horrors of reality. Afterwards I began to

work. I did not intend to come back here for two or three years—”

“Then you came for her sake?” Aglaya’s voice trembled.

“Yes, I came for her sake.”

There was a moment or two of gloomy silence. Aglaya rose from her seat.

“If you say,” she began in shaky tones, “if you say that this woman of

yours is mad—at all events I have nothing to do with her insane

fancies. Kindly take these three letters, Lef Nicolaievitch, and throw

them back to her, from me. And if she dares,” cried Aglaya suddenly,

much louder than before, “if she dares so much as write me one word

again, tell her I shall tell my father, and that she shall be taken to

a lunatic asylum.”

The prince jumped up in alarm at Aglaya’s sudden wrath, and a mist

seemed to come before his eyes.

“You cannot really feel like that! You don’t mean what you say. It is

not true,” he murmured.

“It _is_ true, it _is_ true,” cried Aglaya, almost beside herself with

rage.

“What’s true? What’s all this? What’s true?” said an alarmed voice just

beside them.

Before them stood Lizabetha Prokofievna.

“Why, it’s true that I am going to marry Gavrila Ardalionovitch, that I

love him and intend to elope with him tomorrow,” cried Aglaya, turning

upon her mother. “Do you hear? Is your curiosity satisfied? Are you

pleased with what you have heard?”

Aglaya rushed away homewards with these words.

“H’m! well, _you_ are not going away just yet, my friend, at all

events,” said Lizabetha, stopping the prince. “Kindly step home with

me, and let me have a little explanation of the mystery. Nice goings

on, these! I haven’t slept a wink all night as it is.”

The prince followed her.

IX.

Arrived at her house, Lizabetha Prokofievna paused in the first room.

She could go no farther, and subsided on to a couch quite exhausted;

too feeble to remember so much as to ask the prince to take a seat.

This was a large reception-room, full of flowers, and with a glass door

leading into the garden.

Alexandra and Adelaida came in almost immediately, and looked

inquiringly at the prince and their mother.

The girls generally rose at about nine in the morning in the country;

Aglaya, of late, had been in the habit of getting up rather earlier and

having a walk in the garden, but not at seven o’clock; about eight or a

little later was her usual time.

Lizabetha Prokofievna, who really had not slept all night, rose at

about eight on purpose to meet Aglaya in the garden and walk with her;

but she could not find her either in the garden or in her own room.

This agitated the old lady considerably; and she awoke her other

daughters. Next, she learned from the maid that Aglaya had gone into

the park before seven o’clock. The sisters made a joke of Aglaya’s last

freak, and told their mother that if she went into the park to look for

her, Aglaya would probably be very angry with her, and that she was

pretty sure to be sitting reading on the green bench that she had

talked of two or three days since, and about which she had nearly

quarrelled with Prince S., who did not see anything particularly lovely

in it.

Arrived at the rendezvous of the prince and her daughter, and hearing

the strange words of the latter, Lizabetha Prokofievna had been

dreadfully alarmed, for many reasons. However, now that she had dragged

the prince home with her, she began to feel a little frightened at what

she had undertaken. Why should not Aglaya meet the prince in the park

and have a talk with him, even if such a meeting should be by

appointment?

“Don’t suppose, prince,” she began, bracing herself up for the effort,

“don’t suppose that I have brought you here to ask questions. After

last night, I assure you, I am not so exceedingly anxious to see you at

all; I could have postponed the pleasure for a long while.” She paused.

“But at the same time you would be very glad to know how I happened to

meet Aglaya Ivanovna this morning?” The prince finished her speech for

her with the utmost composure.

“Well, what then? Supposing I should like to know?” cried Lizabetha

Prokofievna, blushing. “I’m sure I am not afraid of plain speaking. I’m

not offending anyone, and I never wish to, and—”

“Pardon me, it is no offence to wish to know this; you are her mother.

We met at the green bench this morning, punctually at seven

o’clock,—according to an agreement made by Aglaya Ivanovna with myself

yesterday. She said that she wished to see me and speak to me about

something important. We met and conversed for an hour about matters

concerning Aglaya Ivanovna herself, and that’s all.”

“Of course it is all, my friend. I don’t doubt you for a moment,” said

Lizabetha Prokofievna with dignity.

“Well done, prince, capital!” cried Aglaya, who entered the room at

this moment. “Thank you for assuming that I would not demean myself

with lies. Come, is that enough, mamma, or do you intend to put any

more questions?”

“You know I have never needed to blush before you, up to this day,

though perhaps you would have been glad enough to make me,” said

Lizabetha Prokofievna,—with majesty. “Good-bye, prince; forgive me for

bothering you. I trust you will rest assured of my unalterable esteem

for you.”

The prince made his bows and retired at once. Alexandra and Adelaida

smiled and whispered to each other, while Lizabetha Prokofievna glared

severely at them. “We are only laughing at the prince’s beautiful bows,

mamma,” said Adelaida. “Sometimes he bows just like a meal-sack, but

to-day he was like—like Evgenie Pavlovitch!”

“It is the _heart_ which is the best teacher of refinement and dignity,

not the dancing-master,” said her mother, sententiously, and departed

upstairs to her own room, not so much as glancing at Aglaya.

When the prince reached home, about nine o’clock, he found Vera

Lebedeff and the maid on the verandah. They were both busy trying to

tidy up the place after last night’s disorderly party.

“Thank goodness, we’ve just managed to finish it before you came in!”

said Vera, joyfully.

“Good-morning! My head whirls so; I didn’t sleep all night. I should

like to have a nap now.”

“Here, on the verandah? Very well, I’ll tell them all not to come and

wake you. Papa has gone out somewhere.”

The servant left the room. Vera was about to follow her, but returned

and approached the prince with a preoccupied air.

“Prince!” she said, “have pity on that poor boy; don’t turn him out

today.”

“Not for the world; he shall do just as he likes.”

“He won’t do any harm now; and—and don’t be too severe with him.”

“Oh dear no! Why—”

“And—and you won’t _laugh_ at him? That’s the chief thing.”

“Oh no! Never.”

“How foolish I am to speak of such things to a man like you,” said

Vera, blushing. “Though you _do_ look tired,” she added, half turning

away, “your eyes are so splendid at this moment—so full of happiness.”

“Really?” asked the prince, gleefully, and he laughed in delight.

But Vera, simple-minded little girl that she was (just like a boy, in

fact), here became dreadfully confused, of a sudden, and ran hastily

out of the room, laughing and blushing.

“What a dear little thing she is,” thought the prince, and immediately

forgot all about her.

He walked to the far end of the verandah, where the sofa stood, with a

table in front of it. Here he sat down and covered his face with his

hands, and so remained for ten minutes. Suddenly he put his hand in his

coat-pocket and hurriedly produced three letters.

But the door opened again, and out came Colia.

The prince actually felt glad that he had been interrupted,—and might

return the letters to his pocket. He was glad of the respite.

“Well,” said Colia, plunging _in medias res_, as he always did, “here’s

a go! What do you think of Hippolyte now? Don’t respect him any longer,

eh?”

“Why not? But look here, Colia, I’m tired; besides, the subject is too

melancholy to begin upon again. How is he, though?”

“Asleep—he’ll sleep for a couple of hours yet. I quite understand—you

haven’t slept—you walked about the park, I know.

Agitation—excitement—all that sort of thing—quite natural, too!”

“How do you know I walked in the park and didn’t sleep at home?”

“Vera just told me. She tried to persuade me not to come, but I

couldn’t help myself, just for one minute. I have been having my turn

at the bedside for the last two hours; Kostia Lebedeff is there now.

Burdovsky has gone. Now, lie down, prince, make yourself comfortable,

and sleep well! I’m awfully impressed, you know.”

“Naturally, all this—”

“No, no, I mean with the ‘explanation,’ especially that part of it

where he talks about Providence and a future life. There is a gigantic

thought there.”

The prince gazed affectionately at Colia, who, of course, had come in

solely for the purpose of talking about this “gigantic thought.”

“But it is not any one particular thought, only; it is the general

circumstances of the case. If Voltaire had written this now, or

Rousseau, I should have just read it and thought it remarkable, but

should not have been so _impressed_ by it. But a man who knows for

certain that he has but ten minutes to live and can talk like

that—why—it’s—it’s _pride_, that is! It is really a most extraordinary,

exalted assertion of personal dignity, it’s—it’s _defiant!_ What a

_gigantic_ strength of will, eh? And to accuse a fellow like that of

not putting in the cap on purpose; it’s base and mean! You know he

deceived us last night, the cunning rascal. I never packed his bag for

him, and I never saw his pistol. He packed it himself. But he put me

off my guard like that, you see. Vera says you are going to let him

stay on; I swear there’s no danger, especially as we are always with

him.”

“Who was by him at night?”

“I, and Burdovsky, and Kostia Lebedeff. Keller stayed a little while,

and then went over to Lebedeff’s to sleep. Ferdishenko slept at

Lebedeff’s, too; but he went away at seven o’clock. My father is always

at Lebedeff’s; but he has gone out just now. I dare say Lebedeff will

be coming in here directly; he has been looking for you; I don’t know

what he wants. Shall we let him in or not, if you are asleep? I’m going

to have a nap, too. By-the-by, such a curious thing happened. Burdovsky

woke me at seven, and I met my father just outside the room, so drunk,

he didn’t even know me. He stood before me like a log, and when he

recovered himself, asked hurriedly how Hippolyte was. ‘Yes,’ he said,

when I told him, ‘that’s all very well, but I _really_ came to warn you

that you must be very careful what you say before Ferdishenko.’ Do you

follow me, prince?”

“Yes. Is it really so? However, it’s all the same to us, of course.”

“Of course it is; we are not a secret society; and that being the case,

it is all the more curious that the general should have been on his way

to wake me up in order to tell me this.”

“Ferdishenko has gone, you say?”

“Yes, he went at seven o’clock. He came into the room on his way out; I

was watching just then. He said he was going to spend ‘the rest of the

night’ at Wilkin’s; there’s a tipsy fellow, a friend of his, of that

name. Well, I’m off. Oh, here’s Lebedeff himself! The prince wants to

go to sleep, Lukian Timofeyovitch, so you may just go away again.”

“One moment, my dear prince, just one. I must absolutely speak to you

about something which is most grave,” said Lebedeff, mysteriously and

solemnly, entering the room with a bow and looking extremely important.

He had but just returned, and carried his hat in his hand. He looked

preoccupied and most unusually dignified.

The prince begged him to take a chair.

“I hear you have called twice; I suppose you are still worried about

yesterday’s affair.”

“What, about that boy, you mean? Oh dear no, yesterday my ideas were a

little—well—mixed. Today, I assure you, I shall not oppose in the

slightest degree any suggestions it may please you to make.”

“What’s up with you this morning, Lebedeff? You look so important and

dignified, and you choose your words so carefully,” said the prince,

smiling.

“Nicolai Ardalionovitch!” said Lebedeff, in a most amiable tone of

voice, addressing the boy. “As I have a communication to make to the

prince which concerns only myself—”

“Of course, of course, not my affair. All right,” said Colia, and away

he went.

“I love that boy for his perception,” said Lebedeff, looking after him.

“My dear prince,” he continued, “I have had a terrible misfortune,

either last night or early this morning. I cannot tell the exact time.”

“What is it?”

“I have lost four hundred roubles out of my side pocket! They’re gone!”

said Lebedeff, with a sour smile.

“You’ve lost four hundred roubles? Oh! I’m sorry for that.”

“Yes, it is serious for a poor man who lives by his toil.”

“Of course, of course! How was it?”

“Oh, the wine is to blame, of course. I confess to you, prince, as I

would to Providence itself. Yesterday I received four hundred roubles

from a debtor at about five in the afternoon, and came down here by

train. I had my purse in my pocket. When I changed, I put the money

into the pocket of my plain clothes, intending to keep it by me, as I

expected to have an applicant for it in the evening.”

“It’s true then, Lebedeff, that you advertise to lend money on gold or

silver articles?”

“Yes, through an agent. My own name doesn’t appear. I have a large

family, you see, and at a small percentage—”

“Quite so, quite so. I only asked for information—excuse the question.

Go on.”

“Well, meanwhile that sick boy was brought here, and those guests came

in, and we had tea, and—well, we made merry—to my ruin! Hearing of your

birthday afterwards, and excited with the circumstances of the evening,

I ran upstairs and changed my plain clothes once more for my uniform

[Civil Service clerks in Russia wear uniform.]—you must have noticed I

had my uniform on all the evening? Well, I forgot the money in the

pocket of my old coat—you know when God will ruin a man he first of all

bereaves him of his senses—and it was only this morning at half-past

seven that I woke up and grabbed at my coat pocket, first thing. The

pocket was empty—the purse gone, and not a trace to be found!”

“Dear me! This is very unpleasant!”

“Unpleasant! Indeed it is. You have found a very appropriate

expression,” said Lebedeff, politely, but with sarcasm.

“But what’s to be done? It’s a serious matter,” said the prince,

thoughtfully. “Don’t you think you may have dropped it out of your

pocket whilst intoxicated?”

“Certainly. Anything is possible when one is intoxicated, as you neatly

express it, prince. But consider—if I, intoxicated or not, dropped an

object out of my pocket on to the ground, that object ought to remain

on the ground. Where is the object, then?”

“Didn’t you put it away in some drawer, perhaps?”

“I’ve looked everywhere, and turned out everything.”

“I confess this disturbs me a good deal. Someone must have picked it

up, then.”

“Or taken it out of my pocket—two alternatives.”

“It is very distressing, because _who_—? That’s the question!”

“Most undoubtedly, excellent prince, you have hit it—that is the very

question. How wonderfully you express the exact situation in a few

words!”

“Come, come, Lebedeff, no sarcasm! It’s a serious—”

“Sarcasm!” cried Lebedeff, wringing his hands. “All right, all right,

I’m not angry. I’m only put out about this. Whom do you suspect?”

“That is a very difficult and complicated question. I cannot suspect

the servant, for she was in the kitchen the whole evening, nor do I

suspect any of my children.”

“I should think not. Go on.”

“Then it must be one of the guests.”

“Is such a thing possible?”

“Absolutely and utterly impossible—and yet, so it must be. But one

thing I am sure of, if it be a theft, it was committed, not in the

evening when we were all together, but either at night or early in the

morning; therefore, by one of those who slept here. Burdovsky and Colia

I except, of course. They did not even come into my room.”

“Yes, or even if they had! But who did sleep with you?”

“Four of us, including myself, in two rooms. The general, myself,

Keller, and Ferdishenko. One of us four it must have been. I don’t

suspect myself, though such cases have been known.”

“Oh! _do_ go on, Lebedeff! Don’t drag it out so.”

“Well, there are three left, then—Keller firstly. He is a drunkard to

begin with, and a liberal (in the sense of other people’s pockets),

otherwise with more of the ancient knight about him than of the modern

liberal. He was with the sick man at first, but came over afterwards

because there was no place to lie down in the room and the floor was so

hard.”

“You suspect him?”

“I _did_ suspect him. When I woke up at half-past seven and tore my

hair in despair for my loss and carelessness, I awoke the general, who

was sleeping the sleep of innocence near me. Taking into consideration

the sudden disappearance of Ferdishenko, which was suspicious in

itself, we decided to search Keller, who was lying there sleeping like

a top. Well, we searched his clothes thoroughly, and not a farthing did

we find; in fact, his pockets all had holes in them. We found a dirty

handkerchief, and a love-letter from some scullery-maid. The general

decided that he was innocent. We awoke him for further inquiries, and

had the greatest difficulty in making him understand what was up. He

opened his mouth and stared—he looked so stupid and so absurdly

innocent. It wasn’t Keller.”

“Oh, I’m so glad!” said the prince, joyfully. “I was so afraid.”

“Afraid! Then you had some grounds for supposing he might be the

culprit?” said Lebedeff, frowning.

“Oh no—not a bit! It was foolish of me to say I was afraid! Don’t

repeat it please, Lebedeff, don’t tell anyone I said that!”

“My dear prince! your words lie in the lowest depth of my heart—it is

their tomb!” said Lebedeff, solemnly, pressing his hat to the region of

his heart.

“Thanks; very well. Then I suppose it’s Ferdishenko; that is, I mean,

you suspect Ferdishenko?”

“Whom else?” said Lebedeff, softly, gazing intently into the prince s

face.

“Of course—quite so, whom else? But what are the proofs?”

“We have evidence. In the first place, his mysterious disappearance at

seven o’clock, or even earlier.”

“I know, Colia told me that he had said he was off to—I forget the

name, some friend of his, to finish the night.”

“H’m! then Colia has spoken to you already?”

“Not about the theft.”

“He does not know of it; I have kept it a secret. Very well,

Ferdishenko went off to Wilkin’s. That is not so curious in itself, but

here the evidence opens out further. He left his address, you see, when

he went. Now prince, consider, why did he leave his address? Why do you

suppose he went out of his way to tell Colia that he had gone to

Wilkin’s? Who cared to know that he was going to Wilkin’s? No, no!

prince, this is finesse, thieves’ finesse! This is as good as saying,

‘There, how can I be a thief when I leave my address? I’m not

concealing my movements as a thief would.’ Do you understand, prince?”

“Oh yes, but that is not enough.”

“Second proof. The scent turns out to be false, and the address given

is a sham. An hour after—that is at about eight, I went to Wilkin’s

myself, and there was no trace of Ferdishenko. The maid did tell me,

certainly, that an hour or so since someone had been hammering at the

door, and had smashed the bell; she said she would not open the door

because she didn’t want to wake her master; probably she was too lazy

to get up herself. Such phenomena are met with occasionally!”

“But is that all your evidence? It is not enough!”

“Well, prince, whom are we to suspect, then? Consider!” said Lebedeff

with almost servile amiability, smiling at the prince. There was a look

of cunning in his eyes, however.

“You should search your room and all the cupboards again,” said the

prince, after a moment or two of silent reflection.

“But I have done so, my dear prince!” said Lebedeff, more sweetly than

ever.

“H’m! why must you needs go up and change your coat like that?” asked

the prince, banging the table with his fist, in annoyance.

“Oh, don’t be so worried on my account, prince! I assure you I am not

worth it! At least, not I alone. But I see you are suffering on behalf

of the criminal too, for wretched Ferdishenko, in fact!”

“Of course you have given me a disagreeable enough thing to think

about,” said the prince, irritably, “but what are you going to do,

since you are so sure it was Ferdishenko?”

“But who else _could_ it be, my very dear prince?” repeated Lebedeff,

as sweet as sugar again. “If you don’t wish me to suspect Mr.

Burdovsky?”

“Of course not.”

“Nor the general? Ha, ha, ha!”

“Nonsense!” said the prince, angrily, turning round upon him.

“Quite so, nonsense! Ha, ha, ha! dear me! He did amuse me, did the

general! We went off on the hot scent to Wilkin’s together, you know;

but I must first observe that the general was even more thunderstruck

than I myself this morning, when I awoke him after discovering the

theft; so much so that his very face changed—he grew red and then pale,

and at length flew into a paroxysm of such noble wrath that I assure

you I was quite surprised! He is a most generous-hearted man! He tells

lies by the thousands, I know, but it is merely a weakness; he is a man

of the highest feelings; a simple-minded man too, and a man who carries

the conviction of innocence in his very appearance. I love that man,

sir; I may have told you so before; it is a weakness of mine. Well—he

suddenly stopped in the middle of the road, opened out his coat and

bared his breast. ‘Search me,’ he says, ‘you searched Keller; why don’t

you search me too? It is only fair!’ says he. And all the while his

legs and hands were trembling with anger, and he as white as a sheet

all over! So I said to him, ‘Nonsense, general; if anybody but yourself

had said that to me, I’d have taken my head, my own head, and put it on

a large dish and carried it round to anyone who suspected you; and I

should have said: “There, you see that head? It’s my head, and I’ll go

bail with that head for him! Yes, and walk through the fire for him,

too.” There,’ says I, ‘that’s how I’d answer for you, general!’ Then he

embraced me, in the middle of the street, and hugged me so tight

(crying over me all the while) that I coughed fit to choke! ‘You are

the one friend left to me amid all my misfortunes,’ says he. Oh, he’s a

man of sentiment, that! He went on to tell me a story of how he had

been accused, or suspected, of stealing five hundred thousand roubles

once, as a young man; and how, the very next day, he had rushed into a

burning, blazing house and saved the very count who suspected him, and

Nina Alexandrovna (who was then a young girl), from a fiery death. The

count embraced him, and that was how he came to marry Nina

Alexandrovna, he said. As for the money, it was found among the ruins

next day in an English iron box with a secret lock; it had got under

the floor somehow, and if it had not been for the fire it would never

have been found! The whole thing is, of course, an absolute

fabrication, though when he spoke of Nina Alexandrovna he wept! She’s a

grand woman, is Nina Alexandrovna, though she is very angry with me!”

“Are you acquainted with her?”

“Well, hardly at all. I wish I were, if only for the sake of justifying

myself in her eyes. Nina Alexandrovna has a grudge against me for, as

she thinks, encouraging her husband in drinking; whereas in reality I

not only do not encourage him, but I actually keep him out of harm’s

way, and out of bad company. Besides, he’s my friend, prince, so that I

shall not lose sight of him, again. Where he goes, I go. He’s quite

given up visiting the captain’s widow, though sometimes he thinks sadly

of her, especially in the morning, when he’s putting on his boots. I

don’t know why it’s at that time. But he has no money, and it’s no use

his going to see her without. Has he borrowed any money from you,

prince?”

“No, he has not.”

“Ah, he’s ashamed to! He _meant_ to ask you, I know, for he said so. I

suppose he thinks that as you gave him some once (you remember), you

would probably refuse if he asked you again.”

“Do you ever give him money?”

“Prince! Money! Why I would give that man not only my money, but my

very life, if he wanted it. Well, perhaps that’s exaggeration; not

life, we’ll say, but some illness, a boil or a bad cough, or anything

of that sort, I would stand with pleasure, for his sake; for I consider

him a great man fallen—money, indeed!”

“H’m, then you _do_ give him money?”

“N-no, I have never given him money, and he knows well that I will

never give him any; because I am anxious to keep him out of intemperate

ways. He is going to town with me now; for you must know I am off to

Petersburg after Ferdishenko, while the scent is hot; I’m certain he is

there. I shall let the general go one way, while I go the other; we

have so arranged matters in order to pop out upon Ferdishenko, you see,

from different sides. But I am going to follow that naughty old general

and catch him, I know where, at a certain widow’s house; for I think it

will be a good lesson, to put him to shame by catching him with the

widow.”

“Oh, Lebedeff, don’t, don’t make any scandal about it!” said the

prince, much agitated, and speaking in a low voice.

“Not for the world, not for the world! I merely wish to make him

ashamed of himself. Oh, prince, great though this misfortune be to

myself, I cannot help thinking of his morals! I have a great favour to

ask of you, esteemed prince; I confess that it is the chief object of

my visit. You know the Ivolgins, you have even lived in their house; so

if you would lend me your help, honoured prince, in the general’s own

interest and for his good.”

Lebedeff clasped his hands in supplication.

“What help do you want from me? You may be certain that I am most

anxious to understand you, Lebedeff.”

“I felt sure of that, or I should not have come to you. We might manage

it with the help of Nina Alexandrovna, so that he might be closely

watched in his own house. Unfortunately I am not on terms...

otherwise... but Nicolai Ardalionovitch, who adores you with all his

youthful soul, might help, too.”

“No, no! Heaven forbid that we should bring Nina Alexandrovna into this

business! Or Colia, either. But perhaps I have not yet quite understood

you, Lebedeff?”

Lebedeff made an impatient movement.

“But there is nothing to understand! Sympathy and tenderness, that is

all—that is all our poor invalid requires! You will permit me to

consider him an invalid?”

“Yes, it shows delicacy and intelligence on your part.”

“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.”

“I am, of course, quite ready to add my efforts to yours in such a

case,” said the prince, rising; “but I confess, Lebedeff, that I am

terribly perplexed. Tell me, do you still think... plainly, you say

yourself that you suspect Mr. Ferdishenko?”

Lebedeff clasped his hands once more.

“Why, who else could I possibly suspect? Who else, most outspoken

prince?” he replied, with an unctuous smile.

Muishkin frowned, and rose from his seat.

“You see, Lebedeff, a mistake here would be a dreadful thing. This

Ferdishenko, I would not say a word against him, of course; but, who

knows? Perhaps it really was he? I mean he really does seem to be a

more likely man than... than any other.”

Lebedeff strained his eyes and ears to take in what the prince was

saying. The latter was frowning more and more, and walking excitedly up

and down, trying not to look at Lebedeff.

“You see,” he said, “I was given to understand that Ferdishenko was

that sort of man,—that one can’t say everything before him. One has to

take care not to say too much, you understand? I say this to prove that

he really is, so to speak, more likely to have done this than anyone

else, eh? You understand? The important thing is, not to make a

mistake.”

“And who told you this about Ferdishenko?”

“Oh, I was told. Of course I don’t altogether believe it. I am very

sorry that I should have had to say this, because I assure you I don’t

believe it myself; it is all nonsense, of course. It was stupid of me

to say anything about it.”

“You see, it is very important, it is most important to know where you

got this report from,” said Lebedeff, excitedly. He had risen from his

seat, and was trying to keep step with the prince, running after him,

up and down. “Because look here, prince, I don’t mind telling you now

that as we were going along to Wilkin’s this morning, after telling me

what you know about the fire, and saving the count and all that, the

general was pleased to drop certain hints to the same effect about

Ferdishenko, but so vaguely and clumsily that I thought better to put a

few questions to him on the matter, with the result that I found the

whole thing was an invention of his excellency’s own mind. Of course,

he only lies with the best intentions; still, he lies. But, such being

the case, where could you have heard the same report? It was the

inspiration of the moment with him, you understand, so who could have

told _you?_ It is an important question, you see!”

“It was Colia told me, and his father told _him_ at about six this

morning. They met at the threshold, when Colia was leaving the room for

something or other.” The prince told Lebedeff all that Colia had made

known to himself, in detail.

“There now, that’s what we may call _scent!_” said Lebedeff, rubbing

his hands and laughing silently. “I thought it must be so, you see. The

general interrupted his innocent slumbers, at six o’clock, in order to

go and wake his beloved son, and warn him of the dreadful danger of

companionship with Ferdishenko. Dear me! what a dreadfully dangerous

man Ferdishenko must be, and what touching paternal solicitude, on the

part of his excellency, ha! ha! ha!”

“Listen, Lebedeff,” began the prince, quite overwhelmed; “_do_ act

quietly—don’t make a scandal, Lebedeff, I ask you—I entreat you! No one

must know—_no one_, mind! In that case only, I will help you.”

“Be assured, most honourable, most worthy of princes—be assured that

the whole matter shall be buried within my heart!” cried Lebedeff, in a

paroxysm of exaltation. “I’d give every drop of my blood... Illustrious

prince, I am a poor wretch in soul and spirit, but ask the veriest

scoundrel whether he would prefer to deal with one like himself, or

with a noble-hearted man like you, and there is no doubt as to his

choice! He’ll answer that he prefers the noble-hearted man—and there

you have the triumph of virtue! _Au revoir_, honoured prince! You and I

together—softly! softly!”

X.

The prince understood at last why he shivered with dread every time he

thought of the three letters in his pocket, and why he had put off

reading them until the evening.

When he fell into a heavy sleep on the sofa on the verandah, without

having had the courage to open a single one of the three envelopes, he

again dreamed a painful dream, and once more that poor, “sinful” woman

appeared to him. Again she gazed at him with tears sparkling on her

long lashes, and beckoned him after her; and again he awoke, as before,

with the picture of her face haunting him.

He longed to get up and go to her at once—but he _could not_. At

length, almost in despair, he unfolded the letters, and began to read

them.

These letters, too, were like a dream. We sometimes have strange,

impossible dreams, contrary to all the laws of nature. When we awake we

remember them and wonder at their strangeness. You remember, perhaps,

that you were in full possession of your reason during this succession

of fantastic images; even that you acted with extraordinary logic and

cunning while surrounded by murderers who hid their intentions and made

great demonstrations of friendship, while waiting for an opportunity to

cut your throat. You remember how you escaped them by some ingenious

stratagem; then you doubted if they were really deceived, or whether

they were only pretending not to know your hiding-place; then you

thought of another plan and hoodwinked them once again. You remember

all this quite clearly, but how is it that your reason calmly accepted

all the manifest absurdities and impossibilities that crowded into your

dream? One of the murderers suddenly changed into a woman before your

very eyes; then the woman was transformed into a hideous, cunning

little dwarf; and you believed it, and accepted it all almost as a

matter of course—while at the same time your intelligence seemed

unusually keen, and accomplished miracles of cunning, sagacity, and

logic! Why is it that when you awake to the world of realities you

nearly always feel, sometimes very vividly, that the vanished dream has

carried with it some enigma which you have failed to solve? You smile

at the extravagance of your dream, and yet you feel that this tissue of

absurdity contained some real idea, something that belongs to your true

life,—something that exists, and has always existed, in your heart. You

search your dream for some prophecy that you were expecting. It has

left a deep impression upon you, joyful or cruel, but what it means, or

what has been predicted to you in it, you can neither understand nor

remember.

The reading of these letters produced some such effect upon the prince.

He felt, before he even opened the envelopes, that the very fact of

their existence was like a nightmare. How could she ever have made up

her mind to write to her? he asked himself. How could she write about

that at all? And how could such a wild idea have entered her head? And

yet, the strangest part of the matter was, that while he read the

letters, he himself almost believed in the possibility, and even in the

justification, of the idea he had thought so wild. Of course it was a

mad dream, a nightmare, and yet there was something cruelly real about

it. For hours he was haunted by what he had read. Several passages

returned again and again to his mind, and as he brooded over them, he

felt inclined to say to himself that he had foreseen and known all that

was written here; it even seemed to him that he had read the whole of

this some time or other, long, long ago; and all that had tormented and

grieved him up to now was to be found in these old, long since read,

letters.

“When you open this letter” (so the first began), “look first at the

signature. The signature will tell you all, so that I need explain

nothing, nor attempt to justify myself. Were I in any way on a footing

with you, you might be offended at my audacity; but who am I, and who

are you? We are at such extremes, and I am so far removed from you,

that I could not offend you if I wished to do so.”

Farther on, in another place, she wrote: “Do not consider my words as

the sickly ecstasies of a diseased mind, but you are, in my

opinion—perfection! I have seen you—I see you every day. I do not judge

you; I have not weighed you in the scales of Reason and found you

Perfection—it is simply an article of faith. But I must confess one sin

against you—I love you. One should not love perfection. One should only

look on it as perfection—yet I am in love with you. Though love

equalizes, do not fear. I have not lowered you to my level, even in my

most secret thoughts. I have written ‘Do not fear,’ as if you could

fear. I would kiss your footprints if I could; but, oh! I am not

putting myself on a level with you!—Look at the signature—quick, look

at the signature!”

“However, observe” (she wrote in another of the letters), “that

although I couple you with him, yet I have not once asked you whether

you love him. He fell in love with you, though he saw you but once. He

spoke of you as of ‘the light.’ These are his own words—I heard him use

them. But I understood without his saying it that you were all that

light is to him. I lived near him for a whole month, and I understood

then that you, too, must love him. I think of you and him as one.”

“What was the matter yesterday?” (she wrote on another sheet). “I

passed by you, and you seemed to me to _blush_. Perhaps it was only my

fancy. If I were to bring you to the most loathsome den, and show you

the revelation of undisguised vice—you should not blush. You can never

feel the sense of personal affront. You may hate all who are mean, or

base, or unworthy—but not for yourself—only for those whom they wrong.

No one can wrong _you_. Do you know, I think you ought to love me—for

you are the same in my eyes as in his—you are as light. An angel cannot

hate, perhaps cannot love, either. I often ask myself—is it possible to

love everybody? Indeed it is not; it is not in nature. Abstract love of

humanity is nearly always love of self. But you are different. You

cannot help loving all, since you can compare with none, and are above

all personal offence or anger. Oh! how bitter it would be to me to know

that you felt anger or shame on my account, for that would be your

fall—you would become comparable at once with such as me.

“Yesterday, after seeing you, I went home and thought out a picture.

“Artists always draw the Saviour as an actor in one of the Gospel

stories. I should do differently. I should represent Christ alone—the

disciples did leave Him alone occasionally. I should paint one little

child left with Him. This child has been playing about near Him, and

had probably just been telling the Saviour something in its pretty baby

prattle. Christ had listened to it, but was now musing—one hand

reposing on the child’s bright head. His eyes have a far-away

expression. Thought, great as the Universe, is in them—His face is sad.

The little one leans its elbow upon Christ’s knee, and with its cheek

resting on its hand, gazes up at Him, pondering as children sometimes

do ponder. The sun is setting. There you have my picture.

“You are innocent—and in your innocence lies all your perfection—oh,

remember that! What is my passion to you?—you are mine now; I shall be

near you all my life—I shall not live long!”

At length, in the last letter of all, he found:

“For Heaven’s sake, don’t misunderstand me! Do not think that I

humiliate myself by writing thus to you, or that I belong to that class

of people who take a satisfaction in humiliating themselves—from pride.

I have my consolation, though it would be difficult to explain it—but I

do not humiliate myself.

“Why do I wish to unite you two? For your sakes or my own? For my own

sake, naturally. All the problems of my life would thus be solved; I

have thought so for a long time. I know that once when your sister

Adelaida saw my portrait she said that such beauty could overthrow the

world. But I have renounced the world. You think it strange that I

should say so, for you saw me decked with lace and diamonds, in the

company of drunkards and wastrels. Take no notice of that; I know that

I have almost ceased to exist. God knows what it is dwelling within me

now—it is not myself. I can see it every day in two dreadful eyes which

are always looking at me, even when not present. These eyes are silent

now, they say nothing; but I know their secret. His house is gloomy,

and there is a secret in it. I am convinced that in some box he has a

razor hidden, tied round with silk, just like the one that Moscow

murderer had. This man also lived with his mother, and had a razor

hidden away, tied round with white silk, and with this razor he

intended to cut a throat.

“All the while I was in their house I felt sure that somewhere beneath

the floor there was hidden away some dreadful corpse, wrapped in

oil-cloth, perhaps buried there by his father, who knows? Just as in

the Moscow case. I could have shown you the very spot!

“He is always silent, but I know well that he loves me so much that he

must hate me. My wedding and yours are to be on the same day; so I have

arranged with him. I have no secrets from him. I would kill him from

very fright, but he will kill me first. He has just burst out laughing,

and says that I am raving. He knows I am writing to you.”

There was much more of this delirious wandering in the letters—one of

them was very long.

At last the prince came out of the dark, gloomy park, in which he had

wandered about for hours just as yesterday. The bright night seemed to

him to be lighter than ever. “It must be quite early,” he thought. (He

had forgotten his watch.) There was a sound of distant music somewhere.

“Ah,” he thought, “the Vauxhall! They won’t be there today, of course!”

At this moment he noticed that he was close to their house; he had felt

that he must gravitate to this spot eventually, and, with a beating

heart, he mounted the verandah steps.

No one met him; the verandah was empty, and nearly pitch dark. He

opened the door into the room, but it, too, was dark and empty. He

stood in the middle of the room in perplexity. Suddenly the door

opened, and in came Alexandra, candle in hand. Seeing the prince she

stopped before him in surprise, looking at him questioningly.

It was clear that she had been merely passing through the room from

door to door, and had not had the remotest notion that she would meet

anyone.

“How did you come here?” she asked, at last.

“I—I—came in—”

“Mamma is not very well, nor is Aglaya. Adelaida has gone to bed, and I

am just going. We were alone the whole evening. Father and Prince S.

have gone to town.”

“I have come to you—now—to—”

“Do you know what time it is?”

“N—no!”

“Half-past twelve. We are always in bed by one.”

“I—I thought it was half-past nine!”

“Never mind!” she laughed, “but why didn’t you come earlier? Perhaps

you were expected!”

“I thought” he stammered, making for the door.

“_Au revoir!_ I shall amuse them all with this story tomorrow!”

He walked along the road towards his own house. His heart was beating,

his thoughts were confused, everything around seemed to be part of a

dream.

And suddenly, just as twice already he had awaked from sleep with the

same vision, that very apparition now seemed to rise up before him. The

woman appeared to step out from the park, and stand in the path in

front of him, as though she had been waiting for him there.

He shuddered and stopped; she seized his hand and pressed it

frenziedly.

No, this was no apparition!

There she stood at last, face to face with him, for the first time

since their parting.

She said something, but he looked silently back at her. His heart ached

with anguish. Oh! never would he banish the recollection of this

meeting with her, and he never remembered it but with the same pain and

agony of mind.

She went on her knees before him—there in the open road—like a

madwoman. He retreated a step, but she caught his hand and kissed it,

and, just as in his dream, the tears were sparkling on her long,

beautiful lashes.

“Get up!” he said, in a frightened whisper, raising her. “Get up at

once!”

“Are you happy—are you happy?” she asked. “Say this one word. Are you

happy now? Today, this moment? Have you just been with her? What did

she say?”

She did not rise from her knees; she would not listen to him; she put

her questions hurriedly, as though she were pursued.

“I am going away tomorrow, as you bade me—I won’t write—so that this is

the last time I shall see you, the last time! This is really the _last

time!_”

“Oh, be calm—be calm! Get up!” he entreated, in despair.

She gazed thirstily at him and clutched his hands.

“Good-bye!” she said at last, and rose and left him, very quickly.

The prince noticed that Rogojin had suddenly appeared at her side, and

had taken her arm and was leading her away.

“Wait a minute, prince,” shouted the latter, as he went. “I shall be

back in five minutes.”

He reappeared in five minutes as he had said. The prince was waiting

for him.

“I’ve put her in the carriage,” he said; “it has been waiting round the

corner there since ten o’clock. She expected that you would be with

_them_ all the evening. I told her exactly what you wrote me. She won’t

write to the girl any more, she promises; and tomorrow she will be off,

as you wish. She desired to see you for the last time, although you

refused, so we’ve been sitting and waiting on that bench till you

should pass on your way home.”

“Did she bring you with her of her own accord?”

“Of course she did!” said Rogojin, showing his teeth; “and I saw for

myself what I knew before. You’ve read her letters, I suppose?”

“Did you read them?” asked the prince, struck by the thought.

“Of course—she showed them to me herself. You are thinking of the

razor, eh? Ha, ha, ha!”

“Oh, she is mad!” cried the prince, wringing his hands.

“Who knows? Perhaps she is not so mad after all,” said Rogojin, softly,

as though thinking aloud.

The prince made no reply.

“Well, good-bye,” said Rogojin. “I’m off tomorrow too, you know.

Remember me kindly! By-the-by,” he added, turning round sharply again,

“did you answer her question just now? Are you happy, or not?”

“No, no, no!” cried the prince, with unspeakable sadness.

“Ha, ha! I never supposed you would say ‘yes,’” cried Rogojin, laughing

sardonically.

And he disappeared, without looking round again.