I.
Two days after the strange conclusion to Nastasia Philipovna’s birthday
party, with the record of which we concluded the first part of this
story, Prince Muishkin hurriedly left St. Petersburg for Moscow, in
order to see after some business connected with the receipt of his
unexpected fortune.
It was said that there were other reasons for his hurried departure;
but as to this, and as to his movements in Moscow, and as to his
prolonged absence from St. Petersburg, we are able to give very little
information.
The prince was away for six months, and even those who were most
interested in his destiny were able to pick up very little news about
him all that while. True, certain rumours did reach his friends, but
these were both strange and rare, and each one contradicted the last.
Of course the Epanchin family was much interested in his movements,
though he had not had time to bid them farewell before his departure.
The general, however, had had an opportunity of seeing him once or
twice since the eventful evening, and had spoken very seriously with
him; but though he had seen the prince, as I say, he told his family
nothing about the circumstance. In fact, for a month or so after his
departure it was considered not the thing to mention the prince’s name
in the Epanchin household. Only Mrs. Epanchin, at the commencement of
this period, had announced that she had been “cruelly mistaken in the
prince!” and a day or two after, she had added, evidently alluding to
him, but not mentioning his name, that it was an unalterable
characteristic of hers to be mistaken in people. Then once more, ten
days later, after some passage of arms with one of her daughters, she
had remarked sententiously. “We have had enough of mistakes. I shall be
more careful in future!” However, it was impossible to avoid remarking
that there was some sense of oppression in the household—something
unspoken, but felt; something strained. All the members of the family
wore frowning looks. The general was unusually busy; his family hardly
ever saw him.
As to the girls, nothing was said openly, at all events; and probably
very little in private. They were proud damsels, and were not always
perfectly confidential even among themselves. But they understood each
other thoroughly at the first word on all occasions; very often at the
first glance, so that there was no need of much talking as a rule.
One fact, at least, would have been perfectly plain to an outsider, had
any such person been on the spot; and that was, that the prince had
made a very considerable impression upon the family, in spite of the
fact that he had but once been inside the house, and then only for a
short time. Of course, if analyzed, this impression might have proved
to be nothing more than a feeling of curiosity; but be it what it
might, there it undoubtedly was.
Little by little, the rumours spread about town became lost in a maze
of uncertainty. It was said that some foolish young prince, name
unknown, had suddenly come into possession of a gigantic fortune, and
had married a French ballet dancer. This was contradicted, and the
rumour circulated that it was a young merchant who had come into the
enormous fortune and married the great ballet dancer, and that at the
wedding the drunken young fool had burned seventy thousand roubles at a
candle out of pure bravado.
However, all these rumours soon died down, to which circumstance
certain facts largely contributed. For instance, the whole of the
Rogojin troop had departed, with him at their head, for Moscow. This
was exactly a week after a dreadful orgy at the Ekaterinhof gardens,
where Nastasia Philipovna had been present. It became known that after
this orgy Nastasia Philipovna had entirely disappeared, and that she
had since been traced to Moscow; so that the exodus of the Rogojin band
was found consistent with this report.
There were rumours current as to Gania, too; but circumstances soon
contradicted these. He had fallen seriously ill, and his illness
precluded his appearance in society, and even at business, for over a
month. As soon as he had recovered, however, he threw up his situation
in the public company under General Epanchin’s direction, for some
unknown reason, and the post was given to another. He never went near
the Epanchins’ house at all, and was exceedingly irritable and
depressed.
Varvara Ardalionovna married Ptitsin this winter, and it was said that
the fact of Gania’s retirement from business was the ultimate cause of
the marriage, since Gania was now not only unable to support his
family, but even required help himself.
We may mention that Gania was no longer mentioned in the Epanchin
household any more than the prince was; but that a certain circumstance
in connection with the fatal evening at Nastasia’s house became known
to the general, and, in fact, to all the family the very next day. This
fact was that Gania had come home that night, but had refused to go to
bed. He had awaited the prince’s return from Ekaterinhof with feverish
impatience.
On the latter’s arrival, at six in the morning, Gania had gone to him
in his room, bringing with him the singed packet of money, which he had
insisted that the prince should return to Nastasia Philipovna without
delay. It was said that when Gania entered the prince’s room, he came
with anything but friendly feelings, and in a condition of despair and
misery; but that after a short conversation, he had stayed on for a
couple of hours with him, sobbing continuously and bitterly the whole
time. They had parted upon terms of cordial friendship.
The Epanchins heard about this, as well as about the episode at
Nastasia Philipovna’s. It was strange, perhaps, that the facts should
become so quickly, and fairly accurately, known. As far as Gania was
concerned, it might have been supposed that the news had come through
Varvara Ardalionovna, who had suddenly become a frequent visitor of the
Epanchin girls, greatly to their mother’s surprise. But though Varvara
had seen fit, for some reason, to make friends with them, it was not
likely that she would have talked to them about her brother. She had
plenty of pride, in spite of the fact that in thus acting she was
seeking intimacy with people who had practically shown her brother the
door. She and the Epanchin girls had been acquainted in childhood,
although of late they had met but rarely. Even now Varvara hardly ever
appeared in the drawing-room, but would slip in by a back way.
Lizabetha Prokofievna, who disliked Varvara, although she had a great
respect for her mother, was much annoyed by this sudden intimacy, and
put it down to the general “contrariness” of her daughters, who were
“always on the lookout for some new way of opposing her.” Nevertheless,
Varvara continued her visits.
A month after Muishkin’s departure, Mrs. Epanchin received a letter
from her old friend Princess Bielokonski (who had lately left for
Moscow), which letter put her into the greatest good humour. She did
not divulge its contents either to her daughters or the general, but
her conduct towards the former became affectionate in the extreme. She
even made some sort of confession to them, but they were unable to
understand what it was about. She actually relaxed towards the general
a little—he had been long disgraced—and though she managed to quarrel
with them all the next day, yet she soon came round, and from her
general behaviour it was to be concluded that she had had good news of
some sort, which she would like, but could not make up her mind, to
disclose.
However, a week later she received another letter from the same source,
and at last resolved to speak.
She solemnly announced that she had heard from old Princess
Bielokonski, who had given her most comforting news about “that queer
young prince.” Her friend had hunted him up, and found that all was
going well with him. He had since called in person upon her, making an
extremely favourable impression, for the princess had received him each
day since, and had introduced him into several good houses.
The girls could see that their mother concealed a great deal from them,
and left out large pieces of the letter in reading it to them.
However, the ice was broken, and it suddenly became possible to mention
the prince’s name again. And again it became evident how very strong
was the impression the young man had made in the household by his one
visit there. Mrs. Epanchin was surprised at the effect which the news
from Moscow had upon the girls, and they were no less surprised that
after solemnly remarking that her most striking characteristic was
“being mistaken in people” she should have troubled to obtain for the
prince the favour and protection of so powerful an old lady as the
Princess Bielokonski. As soon as the ice was thus broken, the general
lost no time in showing that he, too, took the greatest interest in the
subject. He admitted that he was interested, but said that it was
merely in the business side of the question. It appeared that, in the
interests of the prince, he had made arrangements in Moscow for a
careful watch to be kept upon the prince’s business affairs, and
especially upon Salaskin. All that had been said as to the prince being
an undoubted heir to a fortune turned out to be perfectly true; but the
fortune proved to be much smaller than was at first reported. The
estate was considerably encumbered with debts; creditors turned up on
all sides, and the prince, in spite of all advice and entreaty,
insisted upon managing all matters of claim himself—which, of course,
meant satisfying everybody all round, although half the claims were
absolutely fraudulent.
Mrs. Epanchin confirmed all this. She said the princess had written to
much the same effect, and added that there was no curing a fool. But it
was plain, from her expression of face, how strongly she approved of
this particular young fool’s doings. In conclusion, the general
observed that his wife took as great an interest in the prince as
though he were her own son; and that she had commenced to be especially
affectionate towards Aglaya was a self-evident fact.
All this caused the general to look grave and important. But, alas!
this agreeable state of affairs very soon changed once more.
A couple of weeks went by, and suddenly the general and his wife were
once more gloomy and silent, and the ice was as firm as ever. The fact
was, the general, who had heard first, how Nastasia Philipovna had fled
to Moscow and had been discovered there by Rogojin; that she had then
disappeared once more, and been found again by Rogojin, and how after
that she had almost promised to marry him, now received news that she
had once more disappeared, almost on the very day fixed for her
wedding, flying somewhere into the interior of Russia this time, and
that Prince Muishkin had left all his affairs in the hands of Salaskin
and disappeared also—but whether he was with Nastasia, or had only set
off in search of her, was unknown.
Lizabetha Prokofievna received confirmatory news from the princess—and
alas, two months after the prince’s first departure from St.
Petersburg, darkness and mystery once more enveloped his whereabouts
and actions, and in the Epanchin family the ice of silence once more
formed over the subject. Varia, however, informed the girls of what had
happened, she having received the news from Ptitsin, who generally knew
more than most people.
To make an end, we may say that there were many changes in the Epanchin
household in the spring, so that it was not difficult to forget the
prince, who sent no news of himself.
The Epanchin family had at last made up their minds to spend the summer
abroad, all except the general, who could not waste time in “travelling
for enjoyment,” of course. This arrangement was brought about by the
persistence of the girls, who insisted that they were never allowed to
go abroad because their parents were too anxious to marry them off.
Perhaps their parents had at last come to the conclusion that husbands
might be found abroad, and that a summer’s travel might bear fruit. The
marriage between Alexandra and Totski had been broken off. Since the
prince’s departure from St. Petersburg no more had been said about it;
the subject had been dropped without ceremony, much to the joy of Mrs.
General, who, announced that she was “ready to cross herself with both
hands” in gratitude for the escape. The general, however, regretted
Totski for a long while. “Such a fortune!” he sighed, “and such a good,
easy-going fellow!”
After a time it became known that Totski had married a French marquise,
and was to be carried off by her to Paris, and then to Brittany.
“Oh, well,” thought the general, “he’s lost to us for good, now.”
So the Epanchins prepared to depart for the summer.
But now another circumstance occurred, which changed all the plans once
more, and again the intended journey was put off, much to the delight
of the general and his spouse.
A certain Prince S—— arrived in St. Petersburg from Moscow, an eminent
and honourable young man. He was one of those active persons who always
find some good work with which to employ themselves. Without forcing
himself upon the public notice, modest and unobtrusive, this young
prince was concerned with much that happened in the world in general.
He had served, at first, in one of the civil departments, had then
attended to matters connected with the local government of provincial
towns, and had of late been a corresponding member of several important
scientific societies. He was a man of excellent family and solid means,
about thirty-five years of age.
Prince S—— made the acquaintance of the general’s family, and Adelaida,
the second girl, made a great impression upon him. Towards the spring
he proposed to her, and she accepted him. The general and his wife were
delighted. The journey abroad was put off, and the wedding was fixed
for a day not very distant.
The trip abroad might have been enjoyed later on by Mrs. Epanchin and
her two remaining daughters, but for another circumstance.
It so happened that Prince S—— introduced a distant relation of his own
into the Epanchin family—one Evgenie Pavlovitch, a young officer of
about twenty-eight years of age, whose conquests among the ladies in
Moscow had been proverbial. This young gentleman no sooner set eyes on
Aglaya than he became a frequent visitor at the house. He was witty,
well-educated, and extremely wealthy, as the general very soon
discovered. His past reputation was the only thing against him.
Nothing was said; there were not even any hints dropped; but still, it
seemed better to the parents to say nothing more about going abroad
this season, at all events. Aglaya herself perhaps was of a different
opinion.
All this happened just before the second appearance of our hero upon
the scene.
By this time, to judge from appearances, poor Prince Muishkin had been
quite forgotten in St. Petersburg. If he had appeared suddenly among
his acquaintances, he would have been received as one from the skies;
but we must just glance at one more fact before we conclude this
preface.
Colia Ivolgin, for some time after the prince’s departure, continued
his old life. That is, he went to school, looked after his father,
helped Varia in the house, and ran her errands, and went frequently to
see his friend, Hippolyte.
The lodgers had disappeared very quickly—Ferdishenko soon after the
events at Nastasia Philipovna’s, while the prince went to Moscow, as we
know. Gania and his mother went to live with Varia and Ptitsin
immediately after the latter’s wedding, while the general was housed in
a debtor’s prison by reason of certain IOU’s given to the captain’s
widow under the impression that they would never be formally used
against him. This unkind action much surprised poor Ardalion
Alexandrovitch, the victim, as he called himself, of an “unbounded
trust in the nobility of the human heart.”
When he signed those notes of hand he never dreamt that they would be a
source of future trouble. The event showed that he was mistaken. “Trust
in anyone after this! Have the least confidence in man or woman!” he
cried in bitter tones, as he sat with his new friends in prison, and
recounted to them his favourite stories of the siege of Kars, and the
resuscitated soldier. On the whole, he accommodated himself very well
to his new position. Ptitsin and Varia declared that he was in the
right place, and Gania was of the same opinion. The only person who
deplored his fate was poor Nina Alexandrovna, who wept bitter tears
over him, to the great surprise of her household, and, though always in
feeble health, made a point of going to see him as often as possible.
Since the general’s “mishap,” as Colia called it, and the marriage of
his sister, the boy had quietly possessed himself of far more freedom.
His relations saw little of him, for he rarely slept at home. He made
many new friends; and was moreover, a frequent visitor at the debtor’s
prison, to which he invariably accompanied his mother. Varia, who used
to be always correcting him, never spoke to him now on the subject of
his frequent absences, and the whole household was surprised to see
Gania, in spite of his depression, on quite friendly terms with his
brother. This was something new, for Gania had been wont to look upon
Colia as a kind of errand-boy, treating him with contempt, threatening
to “pull his ears,” and in general driving him almost wild with
irritation. It seemed now that Gania really needed his brother, and the
latter, for his part, felt as if he could forgive Gania much since he
had returned the hundred thousand roubles offered to him by Nastasia
Philipovna. Three months after the departure of the prince, the Ivolgin
family discovered that Colia had made acquaintance with the Epanchins,
and was on very friendly terms with the daughters. Varia heard of it
first, though Colia had not asked her to introduce him. Little by
little the family grew quite fond of him. Madame Epanchin at first
looked on him with disdain, and received him coldly, but in a short
time he grew to please her, because, as she said, he “was candid and no
flatterer”—a very true description. From the first he put himself on an
equality with his new friends, and though he sometimes read newspapers
and books to the mistress of the house, it was simply because he liked
to be useful.
One day, however, he and Lizabetha Prokofievna quarrelled seriously
about the “woman question,” in the course of a lively discussion on
that burning subject. He told her that she was a tyrant, and that he
would never set foot in her house again. It may seem incredible, but a
day or two after, Madame Epanchin sent a servant with a note begging
him to return, and Colia, without standing on his dignity, did so at
once.
Aglaya was the only one of the family whose good graces he could not
gain, and who always spoke to him haughtily, but it so happened that
the boy one day succeeded in giving the proud maiden a surprise.
It was about Easter, when, taking advantage of a momentary tête-à-tête
Colia handed Aglaya a letter, remarking that he “had orders to deliver
it to her privately.” She stared at him in amazement, but he did not
wait to hear what she had to say, and went out. Aglaya broke the seal,
and read as follows:
“Once you did me the honour of giving me your confidence. Perhaps you
have quite forgotten me now! How is it that I am writing to you? I do
not know; but I am conscious of an irresistible desire to remind you of
my existence, especially you. How many times I have needed all three of
you; but only you have dwelt always in my mind’s eye. I need you—I need
you very much. I will not write about myself. I have nothing to tell
you. But I long for you to be happy. _Are_ you happy? That is all I
wished to say to you—Your brother,
“Pr. L. Muishkin.”
On reading this short and disconnected note, Aglaya suddenly blushed
all over, and became very thoughtful.
It would be difficult to describe her thoughts at that moment. One of
them was, “Shall I show it to anyone?” But she was ashamed to show it.
So she ended by hiding it in her table drawer, with a very strange,
ironical smile upon her lips.
Next day, she took it out, and put it into a large book, as she usually
did with papers which she wanted to be able to find easily. She laughed
when, about a week later, she happened to notice the name of the book,
and saw that it was Don Quixote, but it would be difficult to say
exactly why.
I cannot say, either, whether she showed the letter to her sisters.
But when she had read it herself once more, it suddenly struck her that
surely that conceited boy, Colia, had not been the one chosen
correspondent of the prince all this while. She determined to ask him,
and did so with an exaggerated show of carelessness. He informed her
haughtily that though he had given the prince his permanent address
when the latter left town, and had offered his services, the prince had
never before given him any commission to perform, nor had he written
until the following lines arrived, with Aglaya’s letter. Aglaya took
the note, and read it.
“DEAR COLIA,—Please be so kind as to give the enclosed sealed letter to
Aglaya Ivanovna. Keep well—Ever your loving,
“Pr. L. Muishkin.”
“It seems absurd to trust a little pepper-box like you,” said Aglaya,
as she returned the note, and walked past the “pepper-box” with an
expression of great contempt.
This was more than Colia could bear. He had actually borrowed Gania’s
new green tie for the occasion, without saying why he wanted it, in
order to impress her. He was very deeply mortified.
II.
It was the beginning of June, and for a whole week the weather in St.
Petersburg had been magnificent. The Epanchins had a luxurious
country-house at Pavlofsk, [One of the fashionable summer resorts near
St. Petersburg.] and to this spot Mrs. Epanchin determined to proceed
without further delay. In a couple of days all was ready, and the
family had left town. A day or two after this removal to Pavlofsk,
Prince Muishkin arrived in St. Petersburg by the morning train from
Moscow. No one met him; but, as he stepped out of the carriage, he
suddenly became aware of two strangely glowing eyes fixed upon him from
among the crowd that met the train. On endeavouring to re-discover the
eyes, and see to whom they belonged, he could find nothing to guide
him. It must have been a hallucination. But the disagreeable impression
remained, and without this, the prince was sad and thoughtful already,
and seemed to be much preoccupied.
His cab took him to a small and bad hotel near the Litaynaya. Here he
engaged a couple of rooms, dark and badly furnished. He washed and
changed, and hurriedly left the hotel again, as though anxious to waste
no time. Anyone who now saw him for the first time since he left
Petersburg would judge that he had improved vastly so far as his
exterior was concerned. His clothes certainly were very different; they
were more fashionable, perhaps even too much so, and anyone inclined to
mockery might have found something to smile at in his appearance. But
what is there that people will not smile at?
The prince took a cab and drove to a street near the Nativity, where he
soon discovered the house he was seeking. It was a small wooden villa,
and he was struck by its attractive and clean appearance; it stood in a
pleasant little garden, full of flowers. The windows looking on the
street were open, and the sound of a voice, reading aloud or making a
speech, came through them. It rose at times to a shout, and was
interrupted occasionally by bursts of laughter.
Prince Muishkin entered the court-yard, and ascended the steps. A cook
with her sleeves turned up to the elbows opened the door. The visitor
asked if Mr. Lebedeff were at home.
“He is in there,” said she, pointing to the salon.
The room had a blue wall-paper, and was well, almost pretentiously,
furnished, with its round table, its divan, and its bronze clock under
a glass shade. There was a narrow pier-glass against the wall, and a
chandelier adorned with lustres hung by a bronze chain from the
ceiling.
When the prince entered, Lebedeff was standing in the middle of the
room, his back to the door. He was in his shirt-sleeves, on account of
the extreme heat, and he seemed to have just reached the peroration of
his speech, and was impressively beating his breast.
His audience consisted of a youth of about fifteen years of age with a
clever face, who had a book in his hand, though he was not reading; a
young lady of twenty, in deep mourning, stood near him with an infant
in her arms; another girl of thirteen, also in black, was laughing
loudly, her mouth wide open; and on the sofa lay a handsome young man,
with black hair and eyes, and a suspicion of beard and whiskers. He
frequently interrupted the speaker and argued with him, to the great
delight of the others.
“Lukian Timofeyovitch! Lukian Timofeyovitch! Here’s someone to see you!
Look here!... a gentleman to speak to you!... Well, it’s not my fault!”
and the cook turned and went away red with anger.
Lebedeff started, and at sight of the prince stood like a statue for a
moment. Then he moved up to him with an ingratiating smile, but stopped
short again.
“Prince! ex-ex-excellency!” he stammered. Then suddenly he ran towards
the girl with the infant, a movement so unexpected by her that she
staggered and fell back, but next moment he was threatening the other
child, who was standing, still laughing, in the doorway. She screamed,
and ran towards the kitchen. Lebedeff stamped his foot angrily; then,
seeing the prince regarding him with amazement, he murmured
apologetically—“Pardon to show respect!... he-he!”
“You are quite wrong...” began the prince.
“At once... at once... in one moment!”
He rushed like a whirlwind from the room, and Muishkin looked
inquiringly at the others.
They were all laughing, and the guest joined in the chorus.
“He has gone to get his coat,” said the boy.
“How annoying!” exclaimed the prince. “I thought... Tell me, is he...”
“You think he is drunk?” cried the young man on the sofa. “Not in the
least. He’s only had three or four small glasses, perhaps five; but
what is that? The usual thing!”
As the prince opened his mouth to answer, he was interrupted by the
girl, whose sweet face wore an expression of absolute frankness.
“He never drinks much in the morning; if you have come to talk business
with him, do it now. It is the best time. He sometimes comes back drunk
in the evening; but just now he passes the greater part of the evening
in tears, and reads passages of Holy Scripture aloud, because our
mother died five weeks ago.”
“No doubt he ran off because he did not know what to say to you,” said
the youth on the divan. “I bet he is trying to cheat you, and is
thinking how best to do it.”
Just then Lebedeff returned, having put on his coat.
“Five weeks!” said he, wiping his eyes. “Only five weeks! Poor
orphans!”
“But why wear a coat in holes,” asked the girl, “when your new one is
hanging behind the door? Did you not see it?”
“Hold your tongue, dragon-fly!” he scolded. “What a plague you are!” He
stamped his foot irritably, but she only laughed, and answered:
“Are you trying to frighten me? I am not Tania, you know, and I don’t
intend to run away. Look, you are waking Lubotchka, and she will have
convulsions again. Why do you shout like that?”
“Well, well! I won’t again,” said the master of the house, his anxiety
getting the better of his temper. He went up to his daughter, and
looked at the child in her arms, anxiously making the sign of the cross
over her three times. “God bless her! God bless her!” he cried with
emotion. “This little creature is my daughter Luboff,” addressing the
prince. “My wife, Helena, died—at her birth; and this is my big
daughter Vera, in mourning, as you see; and this, this, oh, this,”
pointing to the young man on the divan...
“Well, go on! never mind me!” mocked the other. “Don’t be afraid!”
“Excellency! Have you read that account of the murder of the Zemarin
family, in the newspaper?” cried Lebedeff, all of a sudden.
“Yes,” said Muishkin, with some surprise.
“Well, that is the murderer! It is he—in fact—”
“What do you mean?” asked the visitor.
“I am speaking allegorically, of course; but he will be the murderer of
a Zemarin family in the future. He is getting ready. ...”
They all laughed, and the thought crossed the prince’s mind that
perhaps Lebedeff was really trifling in this way because he foresaw
inconvenient questions, and wanted to gain time.
“He is a traitor! a conspirator!” shouted Lebedeff, who seemed to have
lost all control over himself. “A monster! a slanderer! Ought I to
treat him as a nephew, the son of my sister Anisia?”
“Oh! do be quiet! You must be drunk! He has taken it into his head to
play the lawyer, prince, and he practices speechifying, and is always
repeating his eloquent pleadings to his children. And who do you think
was his last client? An old woman who had been robbed of five hundred
roubles, her all, by some rogue of a usurer, besought him to take up
her case, instead of which he defended the usurer himself, a Jew named
Zeidler, because this Jew promised to give him fifty roubles....”
“It was to be fifty if I won the case, only five if I lost,”
interrupted Lebedeff, speaking in a low tone, a great contrast to his
earlier manner.
“Well! naturally he came to grief: the law is not administered as it
used to be, and he only got laughed at for his pains. But he was much
pleased with himself in spite of that. ‘Most learned judge!’ said he,
‘picture this unhappy man, crippled by age and infirmities, who gains
his living by honourable toil—picture him, I repeat, robbed of his all,
of his last mouthful; remember, I entreat you, the words of that
learned legislator, “Let mercy and justice alike rule the courts of
law.”’ Now, would you believe it, excellency, every morning he recites
this speech to us from beginning to end, exactly as he spoke it before
the magistrate. To-day we have heard it for the fifth time. He was just
starting again when you arrived, so much does he admire it. He is now
preparing to undertake another case. I think, by the way, that you are
Prince Muishkin? Colia tells me you are the cleverest man he has ever
known....”
“The cleverest in the world,” interrupted his uncle hastily.
“I do not pay much attention to that opinion,” continued the young man
calmly. “Colia is very fond of you, but he,” pointing to Lebedeff, “is
flattering you. I can assure you I have no intention of flattering you,
or anyone else, but at least you have some common-sense. Well, will you
judge between us? Shall we ask the prince to act as arbitrator?” he
went on, addressing his uncle.
“I am so glad you chanced to come here, prince.”
“I agree,” said Lebedeff, firmly, looking round involuntarily at his
daughter, who had come nearer, and was listening attentively to the
conversation.
“What is it all about?” asked the prince, frowning. His head ached, and
he felt sure that Lebedeff was trying to cheat him in some way, and
only talking to put off the explanation that he had come for.
“I will tell you all the story. I am his nephew; he did speak the truth
there, although he is generally telling lies. I am at the University,
and have not yet finished my course. I mean to do so, and I shall, for
I have a determined character. I must, however, find something to do
for the present, and therefore I have got employment on the railway at
twenty-four roubles a month. I admit that my uncle has helped me once
or twice before. Well, I had twenty roubles in my pocket, and I gambled
them away. Can you believe that I should be so low, so base, as to lose
money in that way?”
“And the man who won it is a rogue, a rogue whom you ought not to have
paid!” cried Lebedeff.
“Yes, he is a rogue, but I was obliged to pay him,” said the young man.
“As to his being a rogue, he is assuredly that, and I am not saying it
because he beat you. He is an ex-lieutenant, prince, dismissed from the
service, a teacher of boxing, and one of Rogojin’s followers. They are
all lounging about the pavements now that Rogojin has turned them off.
Of course, the worst of it is that, knowing he was a rascal, and a
card-sharper, I none the less played palki with him, and risked my last
rouble. To tell the truth, I thought to myself, ‘If I lose, I will go
to my uncle, and I am sure he will not refuse to help me.’ Now that was
base—cowardly and base!”
“That is so,” observed Lebedeff quietly; “cowardly and base.”
“Well, wait a bit, before you begin to triumph,” said the nephew
viciously; for the words seemed to irritate him. “He is delighted! I
came to him here and told him everything: I acted honourably, for I did
not excuse myself. I spoke most severely of my conduct, as everyone
here can witness. But I must smarten myself up before I take up my new
post, for I am really like a tramp. Just look at my boots! I cannot
possibly appear like this, and if I am not at the bureau at the time
appointed, the job will be given to someone else; and I shall have to
try for another. Now I only beg for fifteen roubles, and I give my word
that I will never ask him for anything again. I am also ready to
promise to repay my debt in three months’ time, and I will keep my
word, even if I have to live on bread and water. My salary will amount
to seventy-five roubles in three months. The sum I now ask, added to
what I have borrowed already, will make a total of about thirty-five
roubles, so you see I shall have enough to pay him and confound him! if
he wants interest, he shall have that, too! Haven’t I always paid back
the money he lent me before? Why should he be so mean now? He grudges
my having paid that lieutenant; there can be no other reason! That’s
the kind he is—a dog in the manger!”
“And he won’t go away!” cried Lebedeff. “He has installed himself here,
and here he remains!”
“I have told you already, that I will not go away until I have got what
I ask. Why are you smiling, prince? You look as if you disapproved of
me.”
“I am not smiling, but I really think you are in the wrong, somewhat,”
replied Muishkin, reluctantly.
“Don’t shuffle! Say plainly that you think that I am quite wrong,
without any ‘somewhat’! Why ‘somewhat’?”
“I will say you are quite wrong, if you wish.”
“If I wish! That’s good, I must say! Do you think I am deceived as to
the flagrant impropriety of my conduct? I am quite aware that his money
is his own, and that my action—is much like an attempt at extortion.
But you-you don’t know what life is! If people don’t learn by
experience, they never understand. They must be taught. My intentions
are perfectly honest; on my conscience he will lose nothing, and I will
pay back the money with interest. Added to which he has had the moral
satisfaction of seeing me disgraced. What does he want more? and what
is he good for if he never helps anyone? Look what he does himself!
just ask him about his dealings with others, how he deceives people!
How did he manage to buy this house? You may cut off my head if he has
not let you in for something—and if he is not trying to cheat you
again. You are smiling. You don’t believe me?”
“It seems to me that all this has nothing to do with your affairs,”
remarked the prince.
“I have lain here now for three days,” cried the young man without
noticing, “and I have seen a lot! Fancy! he suspects his daughter, that
angel, that orphan, my cousin—he suspects her, and every evening he
searches her room, to see if she has a lover hidden in it! He comes
here too on tiptoe, creeping softly—oh, so softly—and looks under the
sofa—my bed, you know. He is mad with suspicion, and sees a thief in
every corner. He runs about all night long; he was up at least seven
times last night, to satisfy himself that the windows and doors were
barred, and to peep into the oven. That man who appears in court for
scoundrels, rushes in here in the night and prays, lying prostrate,
banging his head on the ground by the half-hour—and for whom do you
think he prays? Who are the sinners figuring in his drunken petitions?
I have heard him with my own ears praying for the repose of the soul of
the Countess du Barry! Colia heard it too. He is as mad as a March
hare!”
“You hear how he slanders me, prince,” said Lebedeff, almost beside
himself with rage. “I may be a drunkard, an evil-doer, a thief, but at
least I can say one thing for myself. He does not know—how should he,
mocker that he is?—that when he came into the world it was I who washed
him, and dressed him in his swathing-bands, for my sister Anisia had
lost her husband, and was in great poverty. I was very little better
off than she, but I sat up night after night with her, and nursed both
mother and child; I used to go downstairs and steal wood for them from
the house-porter. How often did I sing him to sleep when I was half
dead with hunger! In short, I was more than a father to him, and
now—now he jeers at me! Even if I did cross myself, and pray for the
repose of the soul of the Comtesse du Barry, what does it matter? Three
days ago, for the first time in my life, I read her biography in an
historical dictionary. Do you know who she was? You there!” addressing
his nephew. “Speak! do you know?”
“Of course no one knows anything about her but you,” muttered the young
man in a would-be jeering tone.
“She was a Countess who rose from shame to reign like a Queen. An
Empress wrote to her, with her own hand, as ‘_Ma chère cousine_.’ At a
_lever-du-roi_ one morning (do you know what a _lever-du-roi_ was?)—a
Cardinal, a Papal legate, offered to put on her stockings; a high and
holy person like that looked on it as an honour! Did you know this? I
see by your expression that you did not! Well, how did she die?
Answer!”
“Oh! do stop—you are too absurd!”
“This is how she died. After all this honour and glory, after having
been almost a Queen, she was guillotined by that butcher, Samson. She
was quite innocent, but it had to be done, for the satisfaction of the
fishwives of Paris. She was so terrified, that she did not understand
what was happening. But when Samson seized her head, and pushed her
under the knife with his foot, she cried out: ‘Wait a moment! wait a
moment, monsieur!’ Well, because of that moment of bitter suffering,
perhaps the Saviour will pardon her other faults, for one cannot
imagine a greater agony. As I read the story my heart bled for her. And
what does it matter to you, little worm, if I implored the Divine mercy
for her, great sinner as she was, as I said my evening prayer? I might
have done it because I doubted if anyone had ever crossed himself for
her sake before. It may be that in the other world she will rejoice to
think that a sinner like herself has cried to heaven for the salvation
of her soul. Why are you laughing? You believe nothing, atheist! And
your story was not even correct! If you had listened to what I was
saying, you would have heard that I did not only pray for the Comtesse
du Barry. I said, ‘Oh Lord! give rest to the soul of that great sinner,
the Comtesse du Barry, and to all unhappy ones like her.’ You see that
is quite a different thing, for how many sinners there are, how many
women, who have passed through the trials of this life, are now
suffering and groaning in purgatory! I prayed for you, too, in spite of
your insolence and impudence, also for your fellows, as it seems that
you claim to know how I pray...”
“Oh! that’s enough in all conscience! Pray for whom you choose, and the
devil take them and you! We have a scholar here; you did not know that,
prince?” he continued, with a sneer. “He reads all sorts of books and
memoirs now.”
“At any rate, your uncle has a kind heart,” remarked the prince, who
really had to force himself to speak to the nephew, so much did he
dislike him.
“Oh, now you are going to praise him! He will be set up! He puts his
hand on his heart, and he is delighted! I never said he was a man
without heart, but he is a rascal—that’s the pity of it. And then, he
is addicted to drink, and his mind is unhinged, like that of most
people who have taken more than is good for them for years. He loves
his children—oh, I know that well enough! He respected my aunt, his
late wife... and he even has a sort of affection for me. He has
remembered me in his will.”
“I shall leave you nothing!” exclaimed his uncle angrily.
“Listen to me, Lebedeff,” said the prince in a decided voice, turning
his back on the young man. “I know by experience that when you choose,
you can be business-like... I have very little time to spare, and if
you... By the way—excuse me—what is your Christian name? I have
forgotten it.”
“Ti-Ti-Timofey.”
“And?”
“Lukianovitch.”
Everyone in the room began to laugh.
“He is telling lies!” cried the nephew. “Even now he cannot speak the
truth. He is not called Timofey Lukianovitch, prince, but Lukian
Timofeyovitch. Now do tell us why you must needs lie about it? Lukian
or Timofey, it is all the same to you, and what difference can it make
to the prince? He tells lies without the least necessity, simply by
force of habit, I assure you.”
“Is that true?” said the prince impatiently.
“My name really is Lukian Timofeyovitch,” acknowledged Lebedeff,
lowering his eyes, and putting his hand on his heart.
“Well, for God’s sake, what made you say the other?”
“To humble myself,” murmured Lebedeff.
“What on earth do you mean? Oh I if only I knew where Colia was at this
moment!” cried the prince, standing up, as if to go.
“I can tell you all about Colia,” said the young man
“Oh! no, no!” said Lebedeff, hurriedly.
“Colia spent the night here, and this morning went after his father,
whom you let out of prison by paying his debts—Heaven only knows why!
Yesterday the general promised to come and lodge here, but he did not
appear. Most probably he slept at the hotel close by. No doubt Colia is
there, unless he has gone to Pavlofsk to see the Epanchins. He had a
little money, and was intending to go there yesterday. He must be
either at the hotel or at Pavlofsk.”
“At Pavlofsk! He is at Pavlofsk, undoubtedly!” interrupted Lebedeff....
“But come—let us go into the garden—we will have coffee there....” And
Lebedeff seized the prince’s arm, and led him from the room. They went
across the yard, and found themselves in a delightful little garden
with the trees already in their summer dress of green, thanks to the
unusually fine weather. Lebedeff invited his guest to sit down on a
green seat before a table of the same colour fixed in the earth, and
took a seat facing him. In a few minutes the coffee appeared, and the
prince did not refuse it. The host kept his eyes fixed on Muishkin,
with an expression of passionate servility.
“I knew nothing about your home before,” said the prince absently, as
if he were thinking of something else.
“Poor orphans,” began Lebedeff, his face assuming a mournful air, but
he stopped short, for the other looked at him inattentively, as if he
had already forgotten his own remark. They waited a few minutes in
silence, while Lebedeff sat with his eyes fixed mournfully on the young
man’s face.
“Well!” said the latter, at last rousing himself. “Ah! yes! You know
why I came, Lebedeff. Your letter brought me. Speak! Tell me all about
it.”
The clerk, rather confused, tried to say something, hesitated, began to
speak, and again stopped. The prince looked at him gravely.
“I think I understand, Lukian Timofeyovitch: you were not sure that I
should come. You did not think I should start at the first word from
you, and you merely wrote to relieve your conscience. However, you see
now that I have come, and I have had enough of trickery. Give up
serving, or trying to serve, two masters. Rogojin has been here these
three weeks. Have you managed to sell her to him as you did before?
Tell me the truth.”
“He discovered everything, the monster... himself......”
“Don’t abuse him; though I dare say you have something to complain
of....”
“He beat me, he thrashed me unmercifully!” replied Lebedeff vehemently.
“He set a dog on me in Moscow, a bloodhound, a terrible beast that
chased me all down the street.”
“You seem to take me for a child, Lebedeff. Tell me, is it a fact that
she left him while they were in Moscow?”
“Yes, it is a fact, and this time, let me tell you, on the very eve of
their marriage! It was a question of minutes when she slipped off to
Petersburg. She came to me directly she arrived—‘Save me, Lukian! find
me some refuge, and say nothing to the prince!’ She is afraid of you,
even more than she is of him, and in that she shows her wisdom!” And
Lebedeff slily put his finger to his brow as he said the last words.
“And now it is you who have brought them together again?”
“Excellency, how could I, how could I prevent it?”
“That will do. I can find out for myself. Only tell me, where is she
now? At his house? With him?”
“Oh no! Certainly not! ‘I am free,’ she says; you know how she insists
on that point. ‘I am entirely free.’ She repeats it over and over
again. She is living in Petersburgskaia, with my sister-in-law, as I
told you in my letter.”
“She is there at this moment?”
“Yes, unless she has gone to Pavlofsk: the fine weather may have
tempted her, perhaps, into the country, with Daria Alexeyevna. ‘I am
quite free,’ she says. Only yesterday she boasted of her freedom to
Nicolai Ardalionovitch—a bad sign,” added Lebedeff, smiling.
“Colia goes to see her often, does he not?”
“He is a strange boy, thoughtless, and inclined to be indiscreet.”
“Is it long since you saw her?”
“I go to see her every day, every day.”
“Then you were there yesterday?”
“N-no: I have not been these three last days.”
“It is a pity you have taken too much wine, Lebedeff I want to ask you
something... but...”
“All right! all right! I am not drunk,” replied the clerk, preparing to
listen.
“Tell me, how was she when you left her?”
“She is a woman who is seeking...”
“Seeking?”
“She seems always to be searching about, as if she had lost something.
The mere idea of her coming marriage disgusts her; she looks on it as
an insult. She cares as much for _him_ as for a piece of
orange-peel—not more. Yet I am much mistaken if she does not look on
him with fear and trembling. She forbids his name to be mentioned
before her, and they only meet when unavoidable. He understands, well
enough! But it must be gone through. She is restless, mocking,
deceitful, violent....”
“Deceitful and violent?”
“Yes, violent. I can give you a proof of it. A few days ago she tried
to pull my hair because I said something that annoyed her. I tried to
soothe her by reading the Apocalypse aloud.”
“What?” exclaimed the prince, thinking he had not heard aright.
“By reading the Apocalypse. The lady has a restless imagination, he-he!
She has a liking for conversation on serious subjects, of any kind; in
fact they please her so much, that it flatters her to discuss them. Now
for fifteen years at least I have studied the Apocalypse, and she
agrees with me in thinking that the present is the epoch represented by
the third horse, the black one whose rider holds a measure in his hand.
It seems to me that everything is ruled by measure in our century; all
men are clamouring for their rights; ‘a measure of wheat for a penny,
and three measures of barley for a penny.’ But, added to this, men
desire freedom of mind and body, a pure heart, a healthy life, and all
God’s good gifts. Now by pleading their rights alone, they will never
attain all this, so the white horse, with his rider Death, comes next,
and is followed by Hell. We talked about this matter when we met, and
it impressed her very much.”
“Do you believe all this?” asked Muishkin, looking curiously at his
companion.
“I both believe it and explain it. I am but a poor creature, a beggar,
an atom in the scale of humanity. Who has the least respect for
Lebedeff? He is a target for all the world, the butt of any fool who
chooses to kick him. But in interpreting revelation I am the equal of
anyone, great as he may be! Such is the power of the mind and the
spirit. I have made a lordly personage tremble, as he sat in his
armchair... only by talking to him of things concerning the spirit. Two
years ago, on Easter Eve, His Excellency Nil Alexeyovitch, whose
subordinate I was then, wished to hear what I had to say, and sent a
message by Peter Zakkaritch to ask me to go to his private room. ‘They
tell me you expound the prophecies relating to Antichrist,’ said he,
when we were alone. ‘Is that so?’ ‘Yes,’ I answered unhesitatingly, and
I began to give some comments on the Apostle’s allegorical vision. At
first he smiled, but when we reached the numerical computations and
correspondences, he trembled, and turned pale. Then he begged me to
close the book, and sent me away, promising to put my name on the
reward list. That took place as I said on the eve of Easter, and eight
days later his soul returned to God.”
“What?”
“It is the truth. One evening after dinner he stumbled as he stepped
out of his carriage. He fell, and struck his head on the curb, and died
immediately. He was seventy-three years of age, and had a red face, and
white hair; he deluged himself with scent, and was always smiling like
a child. Peter Zakkaritch recalled my interview with him, and said,
‘_you foretold his death._’”
The prince rose from his seat, and Lebedeff, surprised to see his guest
preparing to go so soon, remarked: “You are not interested?” in a
respectful tone.
“I am not very well, and my head aches. Doubtless the effect of the
journey,” replied the prince, frowning.
“You should go into the country,” said Lebedeff timidly.
The prince seemed to be considering the suggestion.
“You see, I am going into the country myself in three days, with my
children and belongings. The little one is delicate; she needs change
of air; and during our absence this house will be done up. I am going
to Pavlofsk.”
“You are going to Pavlofsk too?” asked the prince sharply. “Everybody
seems to be going there. Have you a house in that neighbourhood?”
“I don’t know of many people going to Pavlofsk, and as for the house,
Ivan Ptitsin has let me one of his villas rather cheaply. It is a
pleasant place, lying on a hill surrounded by trees, and one can live
there for a mere song. There is good music to be heard, so no wonder it
is popular. I shall stay in the lodge. As to the villa itself...”
“Have you let it?”
“N-no—not exactly.”
“Let it to me,” said the prince.
Now this was precisely what Lebedeff had made up his mind to do in the
last three minutes. Not that he had any difficulty in finding a tenant;
in fact the house was occupied at present by a chance visitor, who had
told Lebedeff that he would perhaps take it for the summer months. The
clerk knew very well that this “_perhaps_” meant “_certainly_,” but as
he thought he could make more out of a tenant like the prince, he felt
justified in speaking vaguely about the present inhabitant’s
intentions. “This is quite a coincidence,” thought he, and when the
subject of price was mentioned, he made a gesture with his hand, as if
to waive away a question of so little importance.
“Oh well, as you like!” said Muishkin. “I will think it over. You shall
lose nothing!”
They were walking slowly across the garden.
“But if you... I could...” stammered Lebedeff, “if... if you please,
prince, tell you something on the subject which would interest you, I
am sure.” He spoke in wheedling tones, and wriggled as he walked along.
Muishkin stopped short.
“Daria Alexeyevna also has a villa at Pavlofsk.”
“Well?”
“A certain person is very friendly with her, and intends to visit her
pretty often.”
“Well?”
“Aglaya Ivanovna...”
“Oh stop, Lebedeff!” interposed Muishkin, feeling as if he had been
touched on an open wound. “That... that has nothing to do with me. I
should like to know when you are going to start. The sooner the better
as far as I am concerned, for I am at an hotel.”
They had left the garden now, and were crossing the yard on their way
to the gate.
“Well, leave your hotel at once and come here; then we can all go
together to Pavlofsk the day after tomorrow.”
“I will think about it,” said the prince dreamily, and went off.
The clerk stood looking after his guest, struck by his sudden
absent-mindedness. He had not even remembered to say goodbye, and
Lebedeff was the more surprised at the omission, as he knew by
experience how courteous the prince usually was.
III.
It was now close on twelve o’clock.
The prince knew that if he called at the Epanchins’ now he would only
find the general, and that the latter might probably carry him straight
off to Pavlofsk with him; whereas there was one visit he was most
anxious to make without delay.
So at the risk of missing General Epanchin altogether, and thus
postponing his visit to Pavlofsk for a day, at least, the prince
decided to go and look for the house he desired to find.
The visit he was about to pay was, in some respects, a risky one. He
was in two minds about it, but knowing that the house was in the
Gorohovaya, not far from the Sadovaya, he determined to go in that
direction, and to try to make up his mind on the way.
Arrived at the point where the Gorohovaya crosses the Sadovaya, he was
surprised to find how excessively agitated he was. He had no idea that
his heart could beat so painfully.
One house in the Gorohovaya began to attract his attention long before
he reached it, and the prince remembered afterwards that he had said to
himself: “That is the house, I’m sure of it.” He came up to it quite
curious to discover whether he had guessed right, and felt that he
would be disagreeably impressed to find that he had actually done so.
The house was a large gloomy-looking structure, without the slightest
claim to architectural beauty, in colour a dirty green. There are a few
of these old houses, built towards the end of the last century, still
standing in that part of St. Petersburg, and showing little change from
their original form and colour. They are solidly built, and are
remarkable for the thickness of their walls, and for the fewness of
their windows, many of which are covered by gratings. On the
ground-floor there is usually a money-changer’s shop, and the owner
lives over it. Without as well as within, the houses seem inhospitable
and mysterious—an impression which is difficult to explain, unless it
has something to do with the actual architectural style. These houses
are almost exclusively inhabited by the merchant class.
Arrived at the gate, the prince looked up at the legend over it, which
ran:
“House of Rogojin, hereditary and honourable citizen.”
He hesitated no longer; but opened the glazed door at the bottom of the
outer stairs and made his way up to the second storey. The place was
dark and gloomy-looking; the walls of the stone staircase were painted
a dull red. Rogojin and his mother and brother occupied the whole of
the second floor. The servant who opened the door to Muishkin led him,
without taking his name, through several rooms and up and down many
steps until they arrived at a door, where he knocked.
Parfen Rogojin opened the door himself.
On seeing the prince he became deadly white, and apparently fixed to
the ground, so that he was more like a marble statue than a human
being. The prince had expected some surprise, but Rogojin evidently
considered his visit an impossible and miraculous event. He stared with
an expression almost of terror, and his lips twisted into a bewildered
smile.
“Parfen! perhaps my visit is ill-timed. I—I can go away again if you
like,” said Muishkin at last, rather embarrassed.
“No, no; it’s all right, come in,” said Parfen, recollecting himself.
They were evidently on quite familiar terms. In Moscow they had had
many occasions of meeting; indeed, some few of those meetings were but
too vividly impressed upon their memories. They had not met now,
however, for three months.
The deathlike pallor, and a sort of slight convulsion about the lips,
had not left Rogojin’s face. Though he welcomed his guest, he was still
obviously much disturbed. As he invited the prince to sit down near the
table, the latter happened to turn towards him, and was startled by the
strange expression on his face. A painful recollection flashed into his
mind. He stood for a time, looking straight at Rogojin, whose eyes
seemed to blaze like fire. At last Rogojin smiled, though he still
looked agitated and shaken.
“What are you staring at me like that for?” he muttered. “Sit down.”
The prince took a chair.
“Parfen,” he said, “tell me honestly, did you know that I was coming to
Petersburg or no?”
“Oh, I supposed you were coming,” the other replied, smiling
sarcastically, “and I was right in my supposition, you see; but how was
I to know that you would come _today?_”
A certain strangeness and impatience in his manner impressed the prince
very forcibly.
“And if you had known that I was coming today, why be so irritated
about it?” he asked, in quiet surprise.
“Why did you ask me?”
“Because when I jumped out of the train this morning, two eyes glared
at me just as yours did a moment since.”
“Ha! and whose eyes may they have been?” said Rogojin, suspiciously. It
seemed to the prince that he was trembling.
“I don’t know; I thought it was a hallucination. I often have
hallucinations nowadays. I feel just as I did five years ago when my
fits were about to come on.”
“Well, perhaps it was a hallucination, I don’t know,” said Parfen.
He tried to give the prince an affectionate smile, and it seemed to the
latter as though in this smile of his something had broken, and that he
could not mend it, try as he would.
“Shall you go abroad again then?” he asked, and suddenly added, “Do you
remember how we came up in the train from Pskoff together? You and your
cloak and leggings, eh?”
And Rogojin burst out laughing, this time with unconcealed malice, as
though he were glad that he had been able to find an opportunity for
giving vent to it.
“Have you quite taken up your quarters here?” asked the prince
“Yes, I’m at home. Where else should I go to?”
“We haven’t met for some time. Meanwhile I have heard things about you
which I should not have believed to be possible.”
“What of that? People will say anything,” said Rogojin drily.
“At all events, you’ve disbanded your troop—and you are living in your
own house instead of being fast and loose about the place; that’s all
very good. Is this house all yours, or joint property?”
“It is my mother’s. You get to her apartments by that passage.”
“Where’s your brother?”
“In the other wing.”
“Is he married?”
“Widower. Why do you want to know all this?”
The prince looked at him, but said nothing. He had suddenly relapsed
into musing, and had probably not heard the question at all. Rogojin
did not insist upon an answer, and there was silence for a few moments.
“I guessed which was your house from a hundred yards off,” said the
prince at last.
“Why so?”
“I don’t quite know. Your house has the aspect of yourself and all your
family; it bears the stamp of the Rogojin life; but ask me why I think
so, and I can tell you nothing. It is nonsense, of course. I am nervous
about this kind of thing troubling me so much. I had never before
imagined what sort of a house you would live in, and yet no sooner did
I set eyes on this one than I said to myself that it must be yours.”
“Really!” said Rogojin vaguely, not taking in what the prince meant by
his rather obscure remarks.
The room they were now sitting in was a large one, lofty but dark, well
furnished, principally with writing-tables and desks covered with
papers and books. A wide sofa covered with red morocco evidently served
Rogojin for a bed. On the table beside which the prince had been
invited to seat himself lay some books; one containing a marker where
the reader had left off, was a volume of Solovieff’s History. Some
oil-paintings in worn gilded frames hung on the walls, but it was
impossible to make out what subjects they represented, so blackened
were they by smoke and age. One, a life-sized portrait, attracted the
prince’s attention. It showed a man of about fifty, wearing a long
riding-coat of German cut. He had two medals on his breast; his beard
was white, short and thin; his face yellow and wrinkled, with a sly,
suspicious expression in the eyes.
“That is your father, is it not?” asked the prince.
“Yes, it is,” replied Rogojin with an unpleasant smile, as if he had
expected his guest to ask the question, and then to make some
disagreeable remark.
“Was he one of the Old Believers?”
“No, he went to church, but to tell the truth he really preferred the
old religion. This was his study and is now mine. Why did you ask if he
were an Old Believer?”
“Are you going to be married here?”
“Ye-yes!” replied Rogojin, starting at the unexpected question.
“Soon?”
“You know yourself it does not depend on me.”
“Parfen, I am not your enemy, and I do not intend to oppose your
intentions in any way. I repeat this to you now just as I said it to
you once before on a very similar occasion. When you were arranging for
your projected marriage in Moscow, I did not interfere with you—you
know I did not. That first time she fled to me from you, from the very
altar almost, and begged me to ‘save her from you.’ Afterwards she ran
away from me again, and you found her and arranged your marriage with
her once more; and now, I hear, she has run away from you and come to
Petersburg. Is it true? Lebedeff wrote me to this effect, and that’s
why I came here. That you had once more arranged matters with Nastasia
Philipovna I only learned last night in the train from a friend of
yours, Zaleshoff—if you wish to know.
“I confess I came here with an object. I wished to persuade Nastasia to
go abroad for her health; she requires it. Both mind and body need a
change badly. I did not intend to take her abroad myself. I was going
to arrange for her to go without me. Now I tell you honestly, Parfen,
if it is true that all is made up between you, I will not so much as
set eyes upon her, and I will never even come to see you again.
“You know quite well that I am telling the truth, because I have always
been frank with you. I have never concealed my own opinion from you. I
have always told you that I consider a marriage between you and her
would be ruin to her. You would also be ruined, and perhaps even more
hopelessly. If this marriage were to be broken off again, I admit I
should be greatly pleased; but at the same time I have not the
slightest intention of trying to part you. You may be quite easy in
your mind, and you need not suspect me. You know yourself whether I was
ever really your rival or not, even when she ran away and came to me.
“There, you are laughing at me—I know why you laugh. It is perfectly
true that we lived apart from one another all the time, in different
towns. I told you before that I did not love her with love, but with
pity! You said then that you understood me; did you really understand
me or not? What hatred there is in your eyes at this moment! I came to
relieve your mind, because you are dear to me also. I love you very
much, Parfen; and now I shall go away and never come back again.
Goodbye.”
The prince rose.
“Stay a little,” said Parfen, not leaving his chair and resting his
head on his right hand. “I haven’t seen you for a long time.”
The prince sat down again. Both were silent for a few moments.
“When you are not with me I hate you, Lef Nicolaievitch. I have loathed
you every day of these three months since I last saw you. By heaven I
have!” said Rogojin. “I could have poisoned you at any minute. Now, you
have been with me but a quarter of an hour, and all my malice seems to
have melted away, and you are as dear to me as ever. Stay here a little
longer.”
“When I am with you you trust me; but as soon as my back is turned you
suspect me,” said the prince, smiling, and trying to hide his emotion.
“I trust your voice, when I hear you speak. I quite understand that you
and I cannot be put on a level, of course.”
“Why did you add that?—There! Now you are cross again,” said the
prince, wondering.
“We were not asked, you see. We were made different, with different
tastes and feelings, without being consulted. You say you love her with
pity. I have no pity for her. She hates me—that’s the plain truth of
the matter. I dream of her every night, and always that she is laughing
at me with another man. And so she does laugh at me. She thinks no more
of marrying me than if she were changing her shoe. Would you believe
it, I haven’t seen her for five days, and I daren’t go near her. She
asks me what I come for, as if she were not content with having
disgraced me—”
“Disgraced you! How?”
“Just as though you didn’t know! Why, she ran away from me, and went to
you. You admitted it yourself, just now.”
“But surely you do not believe that she...”
“That she did not disgrace me at Moscow with that officer,
Zemtuznikoff? I know for certain she did, after having fixed our
marriage-day herself!”
“Impossible!” cried the prince.
“I know it for a fact,” replied Rogojin, with conviction.
“It is not like her, you say? My friend, that’s absurd. Perhaps such an
act would horrify her, if she were with you, but it is quite different
where I am concerned. She looks on me as vermin. Her affair with Keller
was simply to make a laughing-stock of me. You don’t know what a fool
she made of me in Moscow; and the money I spent over her! The money!
the money!”
“And you can marry her now, Parfen! What will come of it all?” said the
prince, with dread in his voice.
Rogojin gazed back gloomily, and with a terrible expression in his
eyes, but said nothing.
“I haven’t been to see her for five days,” he repeated, after a slight
pause. “I’m afraid of being turned out. She says she’s still her own
mistress, and may turn me off altogether, and go abroad. She told me
this herself,” he said, with a peculiar glance at Muishkin. “I think
she often does it merely to frighten me. She is always laughing at me,
for some reason or other; but at other times she’s angry, and won’t say
a word, and that’s what I’m afraid of. I took her a shawl one day, the
like of which she might never have seen, although she did live in
luxury and she gave it away to her maid, Katia. Sometimes when I can
keep away no longer, I steal past the house on the sly, and once I
watched at the gate till dawn—I thought something was going on—and she
saw me from the window. She asked me what I should do if I found she
had deceived me. I said, ‘You know well enough.’”
“What did she know?” cried the prince.
“How was I to tell?” replied Rogojin, with an angry laugh. “I did my
best to catch her tripping in Moscow, but did not succeed. However, I
caught hold of her one day, and said: ‘You are engaged to be married
into a respectable family, and do you know what sort of a woman you
are? _That’s_ the sort of woman you are,’ I said.”
“You told her that?”
“Yes.”
“Well, go on.”
“She said, ‘I wouldn’t even have you for a footman now, much less for a
husband.’ ‘I shan’t leave the house,’ I said, ‘so it doesn’t matter.’
‘Then I shall call somebody and have you kicked out,’ she cried. So
then I rushed at her, and beat her till she was bruised all over.”
“Impossible!” cried the prince, aghast.
“I tell you it’s true,” said Rogojin quietly, but with eyes ablaze with
passion.
“Then for a day and a half I neither slept, nor ate, nor drank, and
would not leave her. I knelt at her feet: ‘I shall die here,’ I said,
‘if you don’t forgive me; and if you have me turned out, I shall drown
myself; because, what should I be without you now?’ She was like a
madwoman all that day; now she would cry; now she would threaten me
with a knife; now she would abuse me. She called in Zaleshoff and
Keller, and showed me to them, shamed me in their presence. ‘Let’s all
go to the theatre,’ she says, ‘and leave him here if he won’t go—it’s
not my business. They’ll give you some tea, Parfen Semeonovitch, while
I am away, for you must be hungry.’ She came back from the theatre
alone. ‘Those cowards wouldn’t come,’ she said. ‘They are afraid of
you, and tried to frighten me, too. “He won’t go away as he came,” they
said, “he’ll cut your throat—see if he doesn’t.” Now, I shall go to my
bedroom, and I shall not even lock my door, just to show you how much I
am afraid of you. You must be shown that once for all. Did you have
tea?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘and I don’t intend to.’ ‘Ha, ha! you are playing
off your pride against your stomach! That sort of heroism doesn’t sit
well on you,’ she said.
“With that she did as she had said she would; she went to bed, and did
not lock her door. In the morning she came out. ‘Are you quite mad?’
she said, sharply. ‘Why, you’ll die of hunger like this.’ ‘Forgive me,’
I said. ‘No, I won’t, and I won’t marry you. I’ve said it. Surely you
haven’t sat in this chair all night without sleeping?’ ‘I didn’t
sleep,’ I said. ‘H’m! how sensible of you. And are you going to have no
breakfast or dinner today?’ ‘I told you I wouldn’t. Forgive me!’
‘You’ve no idea how unbecoming this sort of thing is to you,’ she said,
‘it’s like putting a saddle on a cow’s back. Do you think you are
frightening me? My word, what a dreadful thing that you should sit here
and eat no food! How terribly frightened I am!’ She wasn’t angry long,
and didn’t seem to remember my offence at all. I was surprised, for she
is a vindictive, resentful woman—but then I thought that perhaps she
despised me too much to feel any resentment against me. And that’s the
truth.
“She came up to me and said, ‘Do you know who the Pope of Rome is?’
‘I’ve heard of him,’ I said. ‘I suppose you’ve read the Universal
History, Parfen Semeonovitch, haven’t you?’ she asked. ‘I’ve learned
nothing at all,’ I said. ‘Then I’ll lend it to you to read. You must
know there was a Roman Pope once, and he was very angry with a certain
Emperor; so the Emperor came and neither ate nor drank, but knelt
before the Pope’s palace till he should be forgiven. And what sort of
vows do you think that Emperor was making during all those days on his
knees? Stop, I’ll read it to you!’ Then she read me a lot of verses,
where it said that the Emperor spent all the time vowing vengeance
against the Pope. ‘You don’t mean to say you don’t approve of the poem,
Parfen Semeonovitch,’ she says. ‘All you have read out is perfectly
true,’ say I. ‘Aha!’ says she, ‘you admit it’s true, do you? And you
are making vows to yourself that if I marry you, you will remind me of
all this, and take it out of me.’ ‘I don’t know,’ I say, ‘perhaps I was
thinking like that, and perhaps I was not. I’m not thinking of anything
just now.’ ‘What are your thoughts, then?’ ‘I’m thinking that when you
rise from your chair and go past me, I watch you, and follow you with
my eyes; if your dress does but rustle, my heart sinks; if you leave
the room, I remember every little word and action, and what your voice
sounded like, and what you said. I thought of nothing all last night,
but sat here listening to your sleeping breath, and heard you move a
little, twice.’ ‘And as for your attack upon me,’ she says, ‘I suppose
you never once thought of _that?_’ ‘Perhaps I did think of it, and
perhaps not,’ I say. ‘And what if I don’t either forgive you or marry,
you?’ ‘I tell you I shall go and drown myself.’ ‘H’m!’ she said, and
then relapsed into silence. Then she got angry, and went out. ‘I
suppose you’d murder me before you drowned yourself, though!’ she cried
as she left the room.
“An hour later, she came to me again, looking melancholy. ‘I will marry
you, Parfen Semeonovitch,’ she says, not because I’m frightened of you,
but because it’s all the same to me how I ruin myself. And how can I do
it better? Sit down; they’ll bring you some dinner directly. And if I
do marry you, I’ll be a faithful wife to you—you need not doubt that.’
Then she thought a bit, and said, ‘At all events, you are not a
flunkey; at first, I thought you were no better than a flunkey.’ And
she arranged the wedding and fixed the day straight away on the spot.
“Then, in another week, she had run away again, and came here to
Lebedeff’s; and when I found her here, she said to me, ‘I’m not going
to renounce you altogether, but I wish to put off the wedding a bit
longer yet—just as long as I like—for I am still my own mistress; so
you may wait, if you like.’ That’s how the matter stands between us
now. What do you think of all this, Lef Nicolaievitch?”
“‘What do you think of it yourself?” replied the prince, looking sadly
at Rogojin.
“As if I can think anything about it! I—” He was about to say more, but
stopped in despair.
The prince rose again, as if he would leave.
“At all events, I shall not interfere with you!” he murmured, as though
making answer to some secret thought of his own.
“I’ll tell you what!” cried Rogojin, and his eyes flashed fire. “I
can’t understand your yielding her to me like this; I don’t understand
it. Have you given up loving her altogether? At first you suffered
badly—I know it—I saw it. Besides, why did you come post-haste after
us? Out of pity, eh? He, he, he!” His mouth curved in a mocking smile.
“Do you think I am deceiving you?” asked the prince.
“No! I trust you—but I can’t understand. It seems to me that your pity
is greater than my love.” A hungry longing to speak his mind out seemed
to flash in the man’s eyes, combined with an intense anger.
“Your love is mingled with hatred, and therefore, when your love
passes, there will be the greater misery,” said the prince. “I tell you
this, Parfen—”
“What! that I’ll cut her throat, you mean?”
The prince shuddered.
“You’ll hate her afterwards for all your present love, and for all the
torment you are suffering on her account now. What seems to me the most
extraordinary thing is, that she can again consent to marry you, after
all that has passed between you. When I heard the news yesterday, I
could hardly bring myself to believe it. Why, she has run twice from
you, from the very altar rails, as it were. She must have some
presentiment of evil. What can she want with you now? Your money?
Nonsense! Besides, I should think you must have made a fairly large
hole in your fortune already. Surely it is not because she is so very
anxious to find a husband? She could find many a one besides yourself.
Anyone would be better than you, because you will murder her, and I
feel sure she must know that but too well by now. Is it because you
love her so passionately? Indeed, that may be it. I have heard that
there are women who want just that kind of love... but still...” The
prince paused, reflectively.
“What are you grinning at my father’s portrait again for?” asked
Rogojin, suddenly. He was carefully observing every change in the
expression of the prince’s face.
“I smiled because the idea came into my head that if it were not for
this unhappy passion of yours you might have, and would have, become
just such a man as your father, and that very quickly, too. You’d have
settled down in this house of yours with some silent and obedient wife.
You would have spoken rarely, trusted no one, heeded no one, and
thought of nothing but making money.”
“Laugh away! She said exactly the same, almost word for word, when she
saw my father’s portrait. It’s remarkable how entirely you and she are
at one now-a-days.”
“What, has she been here?” asked the prince with curiosity.
“Yes! She looked long at the portrait and asked all about my father.
‘You’d be just such another,’ she said at last, and laughed. ‘You have
such strong passions, Parfen,’ she said, ‘that they’d have taken you to
Siberia in no time if you had not, luckily, intelligence as well. For
you have a good deal of intelligence.’ (She said this—believe it or
not. The first time I ever heard anything of that sort from her.)
‘You’d soon have thrown up all this rowdyism that you indulge in now,
and you’d have settled down to quiet, steady money-making, because you
have little education; and here you’d have stayed just like your father
before you. And you’d have loved your money so that you’d amass not two
million, like him, but ten million; and you’d have died of hunger on
your money bags to finish up with, for you carry everything to
extremes.’ There, that’s exactly word for word as she said it to me.
She never talked to me like that before. She always talks nonsense and
laughs when she’s with me. We went all over this old house together. ‘I
shall change all this,’ I said, ‘or else I’ll buy a new house for the
wedding.’ ‘No, no!’ she said, ‘don’t touch anything; leave it all as it
is; I shall live with your mother when I marry you.’
“I took her to see my mother, and she was as respectful and kind as
though she were her own daughter. Mother has been almost demented ever
since father died—she’s an old woman. She sits and bows from her chair
to everyone she sees. If you left her alone and didn’t feed her for
three days, I don’t believe she would notice it. Well, I took her hand,
and I said, ‘Give your blessing to this lady, mother, she’s going to be
my wife.’ So Nastasia kissed mother’s hand with great feeling. ‘She
must have suffered terribly, hasn’t she?’ she said. She saw this book
here lying before me. ‘What! have you begun to read Russian history?’
she asked. She told me once in Moscow, you know, that I had better get
Solovieff’s Russian History and read it, because I knew nothing.
‘That’s good,’ she said, ‘you go on like that, reading books. I’ll make
you a list myself of the books you ought to read first—shall I?’ She
had never once spoken to me like this before; it was the first time I
felt I could breathe before her like a living creature.”
“I’m very, very glad to hear of this, Parfen,” said the prince, with
real feeling. “Who knows? Maybe God will yet bring you near to one
another.”
“Never, never!” cried Rogojin, excitedly.
“Look here, Parfen; if you love her so much, surely you must be anxious
to earn her respect? And if you do so wish, surely you may hope to? I
said just now that I considered it extraordinary that she could still
be ready to marry you. Well, though I cannot yet understand it, I feel
sure she must have some good reason, or she wouldn’t do it. She is sure
of your love; but besides that, she must attribute _something_ else to
you—some good qualities, otherwise the thing would not be. What you
have just said confirms my words. You say yourself that she found it
possible to speak to you quite differently from her usual manner. You
are suspicious, you know, and jealous, therefore when anything annoying
happens to you, you exaggerate its significance. Of course, of course,
she does not think so ill of you as you say. Why, if she did, she would
simply be walking to death by drowning or by the knife, with her eyes
wide open, when she married you. It is impossible! As if anybody would
go to their death deliberately!”
Rogojin listened to the prince’s excited words with a bitter smile. His
conviction was, apparently, unalterable.
“How dreadfully you look at me, Parfen!” said the prince, with a
feeling of dread.
“Water or the knife?” said the latter, at last. “Ha, ha—that’s exactly
why she is going to marry me, because she knows for certain that the
knife awaits her. Prince, can it be that you don’t even yet see what’s
at the root of it all?”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Perhaps he really doesn’t understand me! They do say that you are
a—you know what! She loves another—there, you can understand that much!
Just as I love her, exactly so she loves another man. And that other
man is—do you know who? It’s you. There—you didn’t know that, eh?”
“I?”
“You, you! She has loved you ever since that day, her birthday! Only
she thinks she cannot marry you, because it would be the ruin of you.
‘Everybody knows what sort of a woman I am,’ she says. She told me all
this herself, to my very face! She’s afraid of disgracing and ruining
you, she says, but it doesn’t matter about me. She can marry me all
right! Notice how much consideration she shows for me!”
“But why did she run away to me, and then again from me to—”
“From you to me? Ha, ha! that’s nothing! Why, she always acts as though
she were in a delirium now-a-days! Either she says, ‘Come on, I’ll
marry you! Let’s have the wedding quickly!’ and fixes the day, and
seems in a hurry for it, and when it begins to come near she feels
frightened; or else some other idea gets into her head—goodness knows!
you’ve seen her—you know how she goes on—laughing and crying and
raving! There’s nothing extraordinary about her having run away from
you! She ran away because she found out how dearly she loved you. She
could not bear to be near you. You said just now that I had found her
at Moscow, when she ran away from you. I didn’t do anything of the
sort; she came to me herself, straight from you. ‘Name the day—I’m
ready!’ she said. ‘Let’s have some champagne, and go and hear the
gipsies sing!’ I tell you she’d have thrown herself into the water long
ago if it were not for me! She doesn’t do it because I am, perhaps,
even more dreadful to her than the water! She’s marrying me out of
spite; if she marries me, I tell you, it will be for spite!”
“But how do you, how can you—” began the prince, gazing with dread and
horror at Rogojin.
“Why don’t you finish your sentence? Shall I tell you what you were
thinking to yourself just then? You were thinking, ‘How can she marry
him after this? How can it possibly be permitted?’ Oh, I know what you
were thinking about!”
“I didn’t come here for that purpose, Parfen. That was not in my mind—”
“That may be! Perhaps you didn’t _come_ with the idea, but the idea is
certainly there _now!_ Ha, ha! well, that’s enough! What are you upset
about? Didn’t you really know it all before? You astonish me!”
“All this is mere jealousy—it is some malady of yours, Parfen! You
exaggerate everything,” said the prince, excessively agitated. “What
are you doing?”
“Let go of it!” said Parfen, seizing from the prince’s hand a knife
which the latter had at that moment taken up from the table, where it
lay beside the history. Parfen replaced it where it had been.
“I seemed to know it—I felt it, when I was coming back to Petersburg,”
continued the prince, “I did not want to come, I wished to forget all
this, to uproot it from my memory altogether! Well, good-bye—what is
the matter?”
He had absently taken up the knife a second time, and again Rogojin
snatched it from his hand, and threw it down on the table. It was a
plain looking knife, with a bone handle, a blade about eight inches
long, and broad in proportion, it did not clasp.
Seeing that the prince was considerably struck by the fact that he had
twice seized this knife out of his hand, Rogojin caught it up with some
irritation, put it inside the book, and threw the latter across to
another table.
“Do you cut your pages with it, or what?” asked Muishkin, still rather
absently, as though unable to throw off a deep preoccupation into which
the conversation had thrown him.
“Yes.”
“It’s a garden knife, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Can’t one cut pages with a garden knife?”
“It’s quite new.”
“Well, what of that? Can’t I buy a new knife if I like?” shouted
Rogojin furiously, his irritation growing with every word.
The prince shuddered, and gazed fixedly at Parfen. Suddenly he burst
out laughing.
“Why, what an idea!” he said. “I didn’t mean to ask you any of these
questions; I was thinking of something quite different! But my head is
heavy, and I seem so absent-minded nowadays! Well, good-bye—I can’t
remember what I wanted to say—good-bye!”
“Not that way,” said Rogojin.
“There, I’ve forgotten that too!”
“This way—come along—I’ll show you.”
IV.
They passed through the same rooms which the prince had traversed on
his arrival. In the largest there were pictures on the walls, portraits
and landscapes of little interest. Over the door, however, there was
one of strange and rather striking shape; it was six or seven feet in
length, and not more than a foot in height. It represented the Saviour
just taken from the cross.
The prince glanced at it, but took no further notice. He moved on
hastily, as though anxious to get out of the house. But Rogojin
suddenly stopped underneath the picture.
“My father picked up all these pictures very cheap at auctions, and so
on,” he said; “they are all rubbish, except the one over the door, and
that is valuable. A man offered five hundred roubles for it last week.”
“Yes—that’s a copy of a Holbein,” said the prince, looking at it again,
“and a good copy, too, so far as I am able to judge. I saw the picture
abroad, and could not forget it—what’s the matter?”
Rogojin had dropped the subject of the picture and walked on. Of course
his strange frame of mind was sufficient to account for his conduct;
but, still, it seemed queer to the prince that he should so abruptly
drop a conversation commenced by himself. Rogojin did not take any
notice of his question.
“Lef Nicolaievitch,” said Rogojin, after a pause, during which the two
walked along a little further, “I have long wished to ask you, do you
believe in God?”
“How strangely you speak, and how odd you look!” said the other,
involuntarily.
“I like looking at that picture,” muttered Rogojin, not noticing,
apparently, that the prince had not answered his question.
“That picture! That picture!” cried Muishkin, struck by a sudden idea.
“Why, a man’s faith might be ruined by looking at that picture!”
“So it is!” said Rogojin, unexpectedly. They had now reached the front
door.
The prince stopped.
“How?” he said. “What do you mean? I was half joking, and you took me
up quite seriously! Why do you ask me whether I believe in God?”
“Oh, no particular reason. I meant to ask you before—many people are
unbelievers nowadays, especially Russians, I have been told. You ought
to know—you’ve lived abroad.”
Rogojin laughed bitterly as he said these words, and opening the door,
held it for the prince to pass out. Muishkin looked surprised, but went
out. The other followed him as far as the landing of the outer stairs,
and shut the door behind him. They both now stood facing one another,
as though oblivious of where they were, or what they had to do next.
“Well, good-bye!” said the prince, holding out his hand.
“Good-bye,” said Rogojin, pressing it hard, but quite mechanically.
The prince made one step forward, and then turned round.
“As to faith,” he said, smiling, and evidently unwilling to leave
Rogojin in this state—“as to faith, I had four curious conversations in
two days, a week or so ago. One morning I met a man in the train, and
made acquaintance with him at once. I had often heard of him as a very
learned man, but an atheist; and I was very glad of the opportunity of
conversing with so eminent and clever a person. He doesn’t believe in
God, and he talked a good deal about it, but all the while it appeared
to me that he was speaking _outside the subject_. And it has always
struck me, both in speaking to such men and in reading their books,
that they do not seem really to be touching on that at all, though on
the surface they may appear to do so. I told him this, but I dare say I
did not clearly express what I meant, for he could not understand me.
“That same evening I stopped at a small provincial hotel, and it so
happened that a dreadful murder had been committed there the night
before, and everybody was talking about it. Two peasants—elderly men
and old friends—had had tea together there the night before, and were
to occupy the same bedroom. They were not drunk but one of them had
noticed for the first time that his friend possessed a silver watch
which he was wearing on a chain. He was by no means a thief, and was,
as peasants go, a rich man; but this watch so fascinated him that he
could not restrain himself. He took a knife, and when his friend turned
his back, he came up softly behind, raised his eyes to heaven, crossed
himself, and saying earnestly—‘God forgive me, for Christ’s sake!’ he
cut his friend’s throat like a sheep, and took the watch.”
Rogojin roared with laughter. He laughed as though he were in a sort of
fit. It was strange to see him laughing so after the sombre mood he had
been in just before.
“Oh, I like that! That beats anything!” he cried convulsively, panting
for breath. “One is an absolute unbeliever; the other is such a
thorough-going believer that he murders his friend to the tune of a
prayer! Oh, prince, prince, that’s too good for anything! You can’t
have invented it. It’s the best thing I’ve heard!”
“Next morning I went out for a stroll through the town,” continued the
prince, so soon as Rogojin was a little quieter, though his laughter
still burst out at intervals, “and soon observed a drunken-looking
soldier staggering about the pavement. He came up to me and said, ‘Buy
my silver cross, sir! You shall have it for fourpence—it’s real
silver.’ I looked, and there he held a cross, just taken off his own
neck, evidently, a large tin one, made after the Byzantine pattern. I
fished out fourpence, and put his cross on my own neck, and I could see
by his face that he was as pleased as he could be at the thought that
he had succeeded in cheating a foolish gentleman, and away he went to
drink the value of his cross. At that time everything that I saw made a
tremendous impression upon me. I had understood nothing about Russia
before, and had only vague and fantastic memories of it. So I thought,
‘I will wait awhile before I condemn this Judas. Only God knows what
may be hidden in the hearts of drunkards.’
“Well, I went homewards, and near the hotel I came across a poor woman,
carrying a child—a baby of some six weeks old. The mother was quite a
girl herself. The baby was smiling up at her, for the first time in its
life, just at that moment; and while I watched the woman she suddenly
crossed herself, oh, so devoutly! ‘What is it, my good woman?’ I asked
her. (I was never but asking questions then!) ‘Exactly as is a mother’s
joy when her baby smiles for the first time into her eyes, so is God’s
joy when one of His children turns and prays to Him for the first time,
with all his heart!’ This is what that poor woman said to me, almost
word for word; and such a deep, refined, truly religious thought it
was—a thought in which the whole essence of Christianity was expressed
in one flash—that is, the recognition of God as our Father, and of
God’s joy in men as His own children, which is the chief idea of
Christ. She was a simple country-woman—a mother, it’s true—and perhaps,
who knows, she may have been the wife of the drunken soldier!
“Listen, Parfen; you put a question to me just now. This is my reply.
The essence of religious feeling has nothing to do with reason, or
atheism, or crime, or acts of any kind—it has nothing to do with these
things—and never had. There is something besides all this, something
which the arguments of the atheists can never touch. But the principal
thing, and the conclusion of my argument, is that this is most clearly
seen in the heart of a Russian. This is a conviction which I have
gained while I have been in this Russia of ours. Yes, Parfen! there is
work to be done; there is work to be done in this Russian world!
Remember what talks we used to have in Moscow! And I never wished to
come here at all; and I never thought to meet you like this, Parfen!
Well, well—good-bye—good-bye! God be with you!”
He turned and went downstairs.
“Lef Nicolaievitch!” cried Parfen, before he had reached the next
landing. “Have you got that cross you bought from the soldier with
you?”
“Yes, I have,” and the prince stopped again.
“Show it me, will you?”
A new fancy! The prince reflected, and then mounted the stairs once
more. He pulled out the cross without taking it off his neck.
“Give it to me,” said Parfen.
“Why? do you—”
The prince would rather have kept this particular cross.
“I’ll wear it; and you shall have mine. I’ll take it off at once.”
“You wish to exchange crosses? Very well, Parfen, if that’s the case,
I’m glad enough—that makes us brothers, you know.”
The prince took off his tin cross, Parfen his gold one, and the
exchange was made.
Parfen was silent. With sad surprise the prince observed that the look
of distrust, the bitter, ironical smile, had still not altogether left
his newly-adopted brother’s face. At moments, at all events, it showed
itself but too plainly,
At last Rogojin took the prince’s hand, and stood so for some moments,
as though he could not make up his mind. Then he drew him along,
murmuring almost inaudibly,
“Come!”
They stopped on the landing, and rang the bell at a door opposite to
Parfen’s own lodging.
An old woman opened to them and bowed low to Parfen, who asked her some
questions hurriedly, but did not wait to hear her answer. He led the
prince on through several dark, cold-looking rooms, spotlessly clean,
with white covers over all the furniture.
Without the ceremony of knocking, Parfen entered a small apartment,
furnished like a drawing-room, but with a polished mahogany partition
dividing one half of it from what was probably a bedroom. In one corner
of this room sat an old woman in an arm-chair, close to the stove. She
did not look very old, and her face was a pleasant, round one; but she
was white-haired and, as one could detect at the first glance, quite in
her second childhood. She wore a black woollen dress, with a black
handkerchief round her neck and shoulders, and a white cap with black
ribbons. Her feet were raised on a footstool. Beside her sat another
old woman, also dressed in mourning, and silently knitting a stocking;
this was evidently a companion. They both looked as though they never
broke the silence. The first old woman, so soon as she saw Rogojin and
the prince, smiled and bowed courteously several times, in token of her
gratification at their visit.
“Mother,” said Rogojin, kissing her hand, “here is my great friend,
Prince Muishkin; we have exchanged crosses; he was like a real brother
to me at Moscow at one time, and did a great deal for me. Bless him,
mother, as you would bless your own son. Wait a moment, let me arrange
your hands for you.”
But the old lady, before Parfen had time to touch her, raised her right
hand, and, with three fingers held up, devoutly made the sign of the
cross three times over the prince. She then nodded her head kindly at
him once more.
“There, come along, Lef Nicolaievitch; that’s all I brought you here
for,” said Rogojin.
When they reached the stairs again he added:
“She understood nothing of what I said to her, and did not know what I
wanted her to do, and yet she blessed you; that shows she wished to do
so herself. Well, goodbye; it’s time you went, and I must go too.”
He opened his own door.
“Well, let me at least embrace you and say goodbye, you strange
fellow!” cried the prince, looking with gentle reproach at Rogojin, and
advancing towards him. But the latter had hardly raised his arms when
he dropped them again. He could not make up his mind to it; he turned
away from the prince in order to avoid looking at him. He could not
embrace him.
“Don’t be afraid,” he muttered, indistinctly, “though I have taken your
cross, I shall not murder you for your watch.” So saying, he laughed
suddenly, and strangely. Then in a moment his face became transfigured;
he grew deadly white, his lips trembled, his eyes burned like fire. He
stretched out his arms and held the prince tightly to him, and said in
a strangled voice:
“Well, take her! It’s Fate! She’s yours. I surrender her.... Remember
Rogojin!” And pushing the prince from him, without looking back at him,
he hurriedly entered his own flat, and banged the door.
V.
It was late now, nearly half-past two, and the prince did not find
General Epanchin at home. He left a card, and determined to look up
Colia, who had a room at a small hotel near. Colia was not in, but he
was informed that he might be back shortly, and had left word that if
he were not in by half-past three it was to be understood that he had
gone to Pavlofsk to General Epanchin’s, and would dine there. The
prince decided to wait till half-past three, and ordered some dinner.
At half-past three there was no sign of Colia. The prince waited until
four o’clock, and then strolled off mechanically wherever his feet
should carry him.
In early summer there are often magnificent days in St.
Petersburg—bright, hot and still. This happened to be such a day.
For some time the prince wandered about without aim or object. He did
not know the town well. He stopped to look about him on bridges, at
street corners. He entered a confectioner’s shop to rest, once. He was
in a state of nervous excitement and perturbation; he noticed nothing
and no one; and he felt a craving for solitude, to be alone with his
thoughts and his emotions, and to give himself up to them passively. He
loathed the idea of trying to answer the questions that would rise up
in his heart and mind. “I am not to blame for all this,” he thought to
himself, half unconsciously.
Towards six o’clock he found himself at the station of the
Tsarsko-Selski railway.
He was tired of solitude now; a new rush of feeling took hold of him,
and a flood of light chased away the gloom, for a moment, from his
soul. He took a ticket to Pavlofsk, and determined to get there as fast
as he could, but something stopped him; a reality, and not a fantasy,
as he was inclined to think it. He was about to take his place in a
carriage, when he suddenly threw away his ticket and came out again,
disturbed and thoughtful. A few moments later, in the street, he
recalled something that had bothered him all the afternoon. He caught
himself engaged in a strange occupation which he now recollected he had
taken up at odd moments for the last few hours—it was looking about all
around him for something, he did not know what. He had forgotten it for
a while, half an hour or so, and now, suddenly, the uneasy search had
recommenced.
But he had hardly become conscious of this curious phenomenon, when
another recollection suddenly swam through his brain, interesting him
for the moment, exceedingly. He remembered that the last time he had
been engaged in looking around him for the unknown something, he was
standing before a cutler’s shop, in the window of which were exposed
certain goods for sale. He was extremely anxious now to discover
whether this shop and these goods really existed, or whether the whole
thing had been a hallucination.
He felt in a very curious condition today, a condition similar to that
which had preceded his fits in bygone years.
He remembered that at such times he had been particularly absentminded,
and could not discriminate between objects and persons unless he
concentrated special attention upon them.
He remembered seeing something in the window marked at sixty copecks.
Therefore, if the shop existed and if this object were really in the
window, it would prove that he had been able to concentrate his
attention on this article at a moment when, as a general rule, his
absence of mind would have been too great to admit of any such
concentration; in fact, very shortly after he had left the railway
station in such a state of agitation.
So he walked back looking about him for the shop, and his heart beat
with intolerable impatience. Ah! here was the very shop, and there was
the article marked “60 cop.” Of course, it’s sixty copecks, he thought,
and certainly worth no more. This idea amused him and he laughed.
But it was a hysterical laugh; he was feeling terribly oppressed. He
remembered clearly that just here, standing before this window, he had
suddenly turned round, just as earlier in the day he had turned and
found the dreadful eyes of Rogojin fixed upon him. Convinced,
therefore, that in this respect at all events he had been under no
delusion, he left the shop and went on.
This must be thought out; it was clear that there had been no
hallucination at the station then, either; something had actually
happened to him, on both occasions; there was no doubt of it. But again
a loathing for all mental exertion overmastered him; he would not think
it out now, he would put it off and think of something else. He
remembered that during his epileptic fits, or rather immediately
preceding them, he had always experienced a moment or two when his
whole heart, and mind, and body seemed to wake up to vigour and light;
when he became filled with joy and hope, and all his anxieties seemed
to be swept away for ever; these moments were but presentiments, as it
were, of the one final second (it was never more than a second) in
which the fit came upon him. That second, of course, was inexpressible.
When his attack was over, and the prince reflected on his symptoms, he
used to say to himself: “These moments, short as they are, when I feel
such extreme consciousness of myself, and consequently more of life
than at other times, are due only to the disease—to the sudden rupture
of normal conditions. Therefore they are not really a higher kind of
life, but a lower.” This reasoning, however, seemed to end in a
paradox, and lead to the further consideration:—“What matter though it
be only disease, an abnormal tension of the brain, if when I recall and
analyze the moment, it seems to have been one of harmony and beauty in
the highest degree—an instant of deepest sensation, overflowing with
unbounded joy and rapture, ecstatic devotion, and completest life?”
Vague though this sounds, it was perfectly comprehensible to Muishkin,
though he knew that it was but a feeble expression of his sensations.