| But this was too much for the general. |
“Soon?”
“I saw how the man dashed about the room to find me an empty chair, how he kicked the rags off a chair which was covered up by them, brought it to me, and helped me to sit down; but my cough went on for another three minutes or so. When I came to myself he was sitting by me on another chair, which he had also cleared of the rubbish by throwing it all over the floor, and was watching me intently.
“May be! may be so!” said the prince, faintly; his heart was beating painfully.
“It seems to me,” interrupted the prince, “that I was foolish to trouble you just now. However, at present you... Good-bye!”
| The general blushed dreadfully; Colia blushed too; and Ptitsin turned hastily away. Ferdishenko was the only one who laughed as gaily as before. As to Gania, I need not say that he was miserable; he stood dumb and wretched and took no notice of anybody. |
Suddenly Aglaya entered the verandah. She seemed to be quite calm, though a little pale.
“What do you suppose she wants to talk about tomorrow?” asked Gania.
“Come, you know nothing about _her_,” said Rogojin, impatiently.
“Yes, your brother does not attract me much.”
“It’s not the first time this urchin, your favourite, has shown his impudence by twisting other people’s words,” said Aglaya, haughtily.
“Was Nastasia Philipovna with him?”
A young fellow entered the ante-room at this moment, with a bundle of papers in his hand. The footman hastened to help him take off his overcoat. The new arrival glanced at the prince out of the corners of his eyes.
He burst out laughing again, but it was the laughter of a madman. Lizabetha Prokofievna approached him anxiously and seized his arm. He stared at her for a moment, still laughing, but soon his face grew serious.
“I have come to you--now--to--”
“Look here--I’ll write a letter--take a letter for me!”
In response to this challenge all the others chimed in and re-echoed mamma’s sentiments.
| “Yes, indeed, and it is all our own fault. But I have a great friend who is much worse off even than we are. Would you like to know him?” |
| “Yes--yes--yes! Run away from home!” she repeated, in a transport of rage. “I won’t, I won’t be made to blush every minute by them all! I don’t want to blush before Prince S. or Evgenie Pavlovitch, or anyone, and therefore I have chosen you. I shall tell you everything, _everything_, even the most important things of all, whenever I like, and you are to hide nothing from me on your side. I want to speak to at least one person, as I would to myself. They have suddenly begun to say that I am waiting for you, and in love with you. They began this before you arrived here, and so I didn’t show them the letter, and now they all say it, every one of them. I want to be brave, and be afraid of nobody. I don’t want to go to their balls and things--I want to do good. I have long desired to run away, for I have been kept shut up for twenty years, and they are always trying to marry me off. I wanted to run away when I was fourteen years old--I was a little fool then, I know--but now I have worked it all out, and I have waited for you to tell me about foreign countries. I have never seen a single Gothic cathedral. I must go to Rome; I must see all the museums; I must study in Paris. All this last year I have been preparing and reading forbidden books. Alexandra and Adelaida are allowed to read anything they like, but I mayn’t. I don’t want to quarrel with my sisters, but I told my parents long ago that I wish to change my social position. I have decided to take up teaching, and I count on you because you said you loved children. Can we go in for education together--if not at once, then afterwards? We could do good together. I won’t be a general’s daughter any more! Tell me, are you a very learned man?” |
“It is difficult to explain, but certainly not the hopes you have in your mind. Hopes--well, in a word, hopes for the future, and a feeling of joy that _there_, at all events, I was not entirely a stranger and a foreigner. I felt an ecstasy in being in my native land once more; and one sunny morning I took up a pen and wrote her that letter, but why to _her_, I don’t quite know. Sometimes one longs to have a friend near, and I evidently felt the need of one then,” added the prince, and paused.
And he disappeared, without looking round again.
“Don’t suppose, prince,” she began, bracing herself up for the effort, “don’t suppose that I have brought you here to ask questions. After last night, I assure you, I am not so exceedingly anxious to see you at all; I could have postponed the pleasure for a long while.” She paused.
“Mamma, what are you saying?” said Alexandra again, hurriedly.
What was this universe? What was this grand, eternal pageant to which he had yearned from his childhood up, and in which he could never take part? Every morning the same magnificent sun; every morning the same rainbow in the waterfall; every evening the same glow on the snow-mountains.
“No, I know nothing whatever about it. I assure you I had nothing at all to do with it.”
“And would you marry a woman like that, now?” continued Gania, never taking his excited eyes off the prince’s face.
“Are you telling the truth when you say you are not in love?”
“Perhaps you do not wish to accept my proposition?” she asked, gazing haughtily at the prince.
“Very simply indeed! I found it under the chair upon which my coat had hung; so that it is clear the purse simply fell out of the pocket and on to the floor!”
“You can stay with him if you like,” said Muishkin.
“Why, prince, I declare you must have had a taste of this sort of thing yourself--haven’t you? I have heard tell of something of the kind, you know; is it true?”
“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.”
Every little fly that buzzed in the sun’s rays was a singer in the universal chorus, “knew its place, and was happy in it.” Every blade of grass grew and was happy. Everything knew its path and loved it, went forth with a song and returned with a song; only he knew nothing, understood nothing, neither men nor words, nor any of nature’s voices; he was a stranger and an outcast.
“What nonsense!” Lebedeff’s nephew interrupted violently.
| “Dear me, there’s nothing so very curious about the prince dropping in, after all,” remarked Ferdishenko. |
“You’d better speak out. You’ll be sorry afterwards if you don’t.”
“Pfu! what a wretched room this is--dark, and the window looking into the yard. Your coming to our house is, in no respect, opportune. However, it’s not _my_ affair. I don’t keep the lodgings.”
“I shan’t ever be a Rothschild, and there is no reason why I should,” he added, smiling; “but I shall have a house in the Liteynaya, perhaps two, and that will be enough for me.” “Who knows but what I may have three!” he concluded to himself; but this dream, cherished inwardly, he never confided to a soul.
“I said, and I have repeated it over and over again,” shouted Burdovsky furiously, “that I did not want the money. I will not take it... why...I will not... I am going away!”
“I’ll come tomorrow. Now I’m going home--are you coming to my house?”
| “Well, good-bye,” he said abruptly. “You think it is easy for me to say good-bye to you? Ha, ha!” |
He approached the table and laid a small sheet of paper before her. It looked like a little note.
“The prince will forgive me!” said Lebedeff with emotional conviction.
“There he is!” she shrieked again, pointing to the prince and addressing Aglaya. “There he is! and if he does not approach me at once and take _me_ and throw you over, then have him for your own--I give him up to you! I don’t want him!”
“Perhaps you do not wish to accept my proposition?” she asked, gazing haughtily at the prince.
“Napoleon was walking up and down with folded arms. I could not take my eyes off his face--my heart beat loudly and painfully.
| “P.P.S.--It is the same green bench that I showed you before. There! aren’t you ashamed of yourself? I felt that it was necessary to repeat even that information.” |
| “Then you must see that he is not responsible. What does it matter to you now, in any case? What are you hoping for still? If you _have_ a hope left, it is that your suffering air may soften her heart towards you.” |
| “Fortune--money--do you mean?” asked the prince in some surprise. |
“Oh, you get those ideas out of novels, you know. Times are changed now, dear prince; the world sees things as they really are. That’s all nonsense. Besides, how can you marry? You need a nurse, not a wife.”
“Then about executions.”
| “Yes--I have business--” began the prince. |