“In spite of his lack of amiability, I could not help seeing, in Rogojin a man of intellect and sense; and although, perhaps, there was little in the outside world which was of interest to him, still he was clearly a man with eyes to see.
VI. “‘From his face he never lifted That eternal mask of steel.’”“Mamma is not very well, nor is Aglaya. Adelaida has gone to bed, and I am just going. We were alone the whole evening. Father and Prince S. have gone to town.”
“We have just used the expression ‘accidental case.’ This is a significant phrase; we often hear it. Well, not long since everyone was talking and reading about that terrible murder of six people on the part of a--young fellow, and of the extraordinary speech of the counsel for the defence, who observed that in the poverty-stricken condition of the criminal it must have come _naturally_ into his head to kill these six people. I do not quote his words, but that is the sense of them, or something very like it. Now, in my opinion, the barrister who put forward this extraordinary plea was probably absolutely convinced that he was stating the most liberal, the most humane, the most enlightened view of the case that could possibly be brought forward in these days. Now, was this distortion, this capacity for a perverted way of viewing things, a special or accidental case, or is such a general rule?”| The president joined in the general outcry. |
“I only see that Aglaya Ivanovna is laughing at me,” said the poor prince, sadly.
All present stood rooted to the earth with amazement at this unexpected and apparently uncalled-for outbreak; but the poor prince’s painful and rambling speech gave rise to a strange episode. “The gentle Abbot Pafnute signed this.”| “It is very distressing, because _who_--? That’s the question!” |
| “Here,” laughed Lebedeff, at last, rising to his full height and looking pleasantly at the prince, “here, in the lining of my coat. Look, you can feel it for yourself, if you like!” |
Lebedeff began to grin again, rubbed his hands, sneezed, but spoke not a word in reply.
“I asked how it came about that the tureen had been left. Nikifor explained that the old lady refused to give it up, because, she said, we had broken her bowl, and she must have our tureen in place of it; she had declared that I had so arranged the matter with herself.
“No? You say no, do you?” continued the pitiless Mrs. General. “Very well, I shall remember that you told me this Wednesday morning, in answer to my question, that you are not going to be married. What day is it, Wednesday, isn’t it?”
“Accidental case!” said Evgenie Pavlovitch. “Do you consider it an accidental case, prince?”“Not the least bit in the world, esteemed and revered prince! Not the least bit in the world!” cried Lebedeff, solemnly, with his hand upon his heart. “On the contrary, I am too painfully aware that neither by my position in the world, nor by my gifts of intellect and heart, nor by my riches, nor by any former conduct of mine, have I in any way deserved your confidence, which is far above my highest aspirations and hopes. Oh no, prince; I may serve you, but only as your humble slave! I am not angry, oh no! Not angry; pained perhaps, but nothing more.”
“And what shall I tell him by way of answer?”“I am not laughing, Nastasia Philipovna; I am only listening with all my attention,” said Totski, with dignity.
“‘Maybe sad Love upon his setting smiles, And with vain hopes his farewell hour beguiles.’
Lebedeff, who was slightly intoxicated, answered with a sigh:
| “I gave him all the information he needed, and he very soon took his departure; so that, since he only came for the purpose of gaining the information, the matter might have been expected to end there. |
Every time that Aglaya showed temper (and this was very often), there was so much childish pouting, such “school-girlishness,” as it were, in her apparent wrath, that it was impossible to avoid smiling at her, to her own unutterable indignation. On these occasions she would say, “How can they, how _dare_ they laugh at me?”
| “What! Did you write all that yourself? Is it possible?” asked the prince, regarding Burdovsky with curiosity. |
“I don’t know--I dreamed last night that I was being suffocated with a wet cloth by--somebody. I’ll tell you who it was--Rogojin! What do you think, can a man be suffocated with a wet cloth?”
| “What do you think about it?” said the general in a low voice to Totski. “Is she mad? I mean mad in the medical sense of the word .... eh?” |
| “I give you my word that he shall come and see you--but he--he needs rest just now.” |
“Lvovitch,” repeated the general without the slightest haste, and with perfect confidence, just as though he had not committed himself the least in the world, but merely made a little slip of the tongue. He sat down, and taking the prince’s hand, drew him to a seat next to himself.
“What--what sort of opinion, Aglaya Ivanovna?”
“I hinted nothing to him about my ‘final conviction,’ but it appeared to me that he had guessed it from my words. He remained silent--he is a terribly silent man. I remarked to him, as I rose to depart, that, in spite of the contrast and the wide differences between us two, les extremites se touchent [‘extremes meet,’ as I explained to him in Russian); so that maybe he was not so far from my final conviction as appeared.
| “You call him a monster so often that it makes me suspicious.” |
The prince was rather alarmed at all this, and was obliged to end by appointing the same hour of the following day for the interview desired. The general left him much comforted and far less agitated than when he had arrived.
| Gania gazed after him uneasily, but said nothing. |
“What best wishes?”
| The warning was certainly unnecessary; for the prince would not have said a word all the rest of the time whether forbidden to speak or not. His heart beat loud and painfully when Aglaya spoke of the bench; could she--but no! he banished the thought, after an instant’s deliberation. |
“No--in anger, perhaps. Oh yes! she reproached me dreadfully in anger; and suffered herself, too! But afterwards--oh! don’t remind me--don’t remind me of that!”
And as to her face, could it inspire nothing but passion? Could her face inspire passion at all now? Oh, it inspired suffering, grief, overwhelming grief of the soul! A poignant, agonizing memory swept over the prince’s heart.
“Oh, father’s curse be hanged--you don’t frighten me that way!” said Gania. “Whose fault is it that you have been as mad as a March hare all this week? It is just a week--you see, I count the days. Take care now; don’t provoke me too much, or I’ll tell all. Why did you go to the Epanchins’ yesterday--tell me that? And you call yourself an old man, too, with grey hair, and father of a family! H’m--nice sort of a father.”
| “You think, then, that you could live more wisely than other people?” said Aglaya. |
| “He may not be home for a week.” |
| Muishkin himself came in very timidly. He seemed to feel his way, and looked in each person’s eyes in a questioning way,--for Aglaya was absent, which fact alarmed him at once. |
| “You are very unfair to me, and to that unfortunate woman of whom you spoke just now in such dreadful terms, Aglaya.” |
“Ah! here he is, the Judas!” cried a voice which the prince recognized at once. “How d’ye do, Gania, you old blackguard?”
“What’s that got to do with it?” asked the general, who loathed Ferdishenko.| “I am well enough; but is it really possible?--” |
He lifted the curtain, paused--and turned to the prince. “Go in,” he said, motioning him to pass behind the curtain. Muishkin went in.
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.| He stopped for a moment at the door; a great flush of shame came over him. “I am a coward, a wretched coward,” he said, and moved forward again; but once more he paused. |
| “My dear Lebedeff, I--” |
| “He’s got a stroke!” cried Colia, loudly, realizing what was the matter at last. |
The prince had heard himself referred to as “idiot,” and had shuddered at the moment; but his shudder, it so happened, was not caused by the word applied to him. The fact was that in the crowd, not far from where he was sitting, a pale familiar face, with curly black hair, and a well-known smile and expression, had flashed across his vision for a moment, and disappeared again. Very likely he had imagined it! There only remained to him the impression of a strange smile, two eyes, and a bright green tie. Whether the man had disappeared among the crowd, or whether he had turned towards the Vauxhall, the prince could not say.
| Hippolyte, too, was a source of some distraction to the prince at this time; he would send for him at any and every hour of the day. They lived,--Hippolyte and his mother and the children,--in a small house not far off, and the little ones were happy, if only because they were able to escape from the invalid into the garden. The prince had enough to do in keeping the peace between the irritable Hippolyte and his mother, and eventually the former became so malicious and sarcastic on the subject of the approaching wedding, that Muishkin took offence at last, and refused to continue his visits. |
“Perhaps then I am anxious to take advantage of my last chance of doing something for myself. A protest is sometimes no small thing.”
| Keller, for instance, had run into the house three times of late, “just for a moment,” and each time with the air of desiring to offer his congratulations. Colia, too, in spite of his melancholy, had once or twice begun sentences in much the same strain of suggestion or insinuation. |
“Look here, once for all,” cried Aglaya, boiling over, “if I hear you talking about capital punishment, or the economical condition of Russia, or about Beauty redeeming the world, or anything of that sort, I’ll--well, of course I shall laugh and seem very pleased, but I warn you beforehand, don’t look me in the face again! I’m serious now, mind, this time I _am really_ serious.” She certainly did say this very seriously, so much so, that she looked quite different from what she usually was, and the prince could not help noticing the fact. She did not seem to be joking in the slightest degree.
“A refined man, but--lost,” murmured the general.| “Yes, I do! I have only been one day in Russia, but I have heard of the great beauty!” And the prince proceeded to narrate his meeting with Rogojin in the train and the whole of the latter’s story. |
| Keller suddenly left his seat, and approached Lizabetha Prokofievna. |
| “It cannot be moved; you would have to pull the wall down, it is so firmly fixed.” |
“My father went into the army, too. He was a sub-lieutenant in the Vasiliefsky regiment.”
“Screw!” laughed Hippolyte.
“Oh general, spare Ferdishenko!” replied the other, smiling. “I have special privileges.”
“I was much surprised, and looked at him expectantly.
“What on earth does all this mean? What’s he going to read?” muttered several voices. Others said nothing; but one and all sat down and watched with curiosity. They began to think something strange might really be about to happen. Vera stood and trembled behind her father’s chair, almost in tears with fright; Colia was nearly as much alarmed as she was. Lebedeff jumped up and put a couple of candles nearer to Hippolyte, so that he might see better.“It’s abominable dishonesty, you know!”
“‘Dead Souls,’ yes, of course, dead. When I die, Colia, you must engrave on my tomb:
“That is so,” observed Lebedeff quietly; “cowardly and base.”
But here he was back at his hotel.
And as to her face, could it inspire nothing but passion? Could her face inspire passion at all now? Oh, it inspired suffering, grief, overwhelming grief of the soul! A poignant, agonizing memory swept over the prince’s heart.
| “Yes, that wasn’t a clever remark,” said Alexandra. |
“I’ll just get my parcel and we’ll go,” said the prince to Gania, as he re-entered the drawing-room. Gania stamped his foot with impatience. His face looked dark and gloomy with rage.
| “Dear me, what a philosopher you are!” laughed the prince. |
“Yes--no--half a candle--an end, you know--no, it was a whole candle; it’s all the same. Be quiet, can’t you! He brought a box of matches too, if you like, and then lighted the candle and held his finger in it for half an hour and more!--There! Can’t that be?”