“I shall certainly go mad, if I stay here!” cried Lizabetha Prokofievna. Now, since Totski had, of late, been upon terms of great cordiality with Epanchin, which excellent relations were intensified by the fact that they were, so to speak, partners in several financial enterprises, it so happened that the former now put in a friendly request to the general for counsel with regard to the important step he meditated. Might he suggest, for instance, such a thing as a marriage between himself and one of the general’s daughters?

“Yes, that’s the man!” said another voice.

“Yes, yes, so he does,” laughed the others.
His wife, Colia, and Ptitsin ran out after him.
“If he cared to kiss you, that is,” said Alexandra, whose cheeks were red with irritation and excitement.
Gania was right when he told his sister that Hippolyte was getting better; that he was better was clear at the first glance. He entered the room now last of all, deliberately, and with a disagreeable smile on his lips.
She next turned to General Epanchin and observed, most courteously, that she had long since known of his daughters, and that she had heard none but good report; that she had learned to think of them with deep and sincere respect. The idea alone that she could in any way serve them, would be to her both a pride and a source of real happiness.
“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...
“No, I have really an object in going... That is, I am going on business it is difficult to explain, but...”

“What do you know of my position, that you dare to judge me?” cried Nastasia, quivering with rage, and growing terribly white.

“Aha! do--by all means! if you tan my hide you won’t turn me away from your society. You’ll bind me to you, with your lash, for ever. Ha, ha! here we are at the station, though.”
“What have you done now?” said Varia to Gania. “He’ll probably be making off _there_ again! What a disgrace it all is!”
Evidently the quiet, pleasant current of the family life of the Epanchins was about to undergo a change.
“Of course, of course, not my affair. All right,” said Colia, and away he went.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said the prince, apparently in a deep reverie.
“Show it me, will you?”
“Don’t they heat them at all?”

“I think I have served you faithfully. I never even asked you what happiness you expected to find with Aglaya.”

“That is Lebedeff’s daughter--Vera Lukianovna.”

“Yes. We came to Lucerne, and I was taken out in a boat. I felt how lovely it was, but the loveliness weighed upon me somehow or other, and made me feel melancholy.”

Alexandra took it, and Adelaida came up, and both the girls examined the photograph. Just then Aglaya entered the room.
“Keller,” murmured the retired officer.

He soon heard that a messenger from the Epanchins’ had already been to inquire after him. At half-past eleven another arrived; and this pleased him.

“I really think I must request you to step into the next room!” he said, with all the insistence he could muster.

“Nastasia Philipovna!” began the general, reproachfully. He was beginning to put his own interpretation on the affair.

The prince tried to speak, but could not form his words; a great weight seemed to lie upon his breast and suffocate him.

So that if our readers were to ask an explanation, not of the wild reports about the prince’s Nihilistic opinions, but simply as to how such a marriage could possibly satisfy his real aspirations, or as to the spiritual condition of our hero at this time, we confess that we should have great difficulty in giving the required information.

“‘Tis he, ‘tis he!” he said at last, quietly, but with much solemnity. “As though he were alive once more. I heard the familiar name--the dear familiar name--and, oh! how it reminded me of the irrevocable past--Prince Muishkin, I believe?”
“Why should I?” asked Nastasia Philipovna, smiling slightly. “I knew it had been written, but I would not have advised its publication,” said Lebedeff’s nephew, “because it is premature.”