“Prince!” she said, “have pity on that poor boy; don’t turn him out today.”

The general dropped his eyes, and elevated his brows; shrugged his shoulders, tightened his lips, spread his hands, and remained silent. At last he blurted out:

“‘Surely not to throw yourself into the river?’ cried Bachmatoff in alarm. Perhaps he read my thought in my face.

“Well?”
The prince actually felt glad that he had been interrupted,--and might return the letters to his pocket. He was glad of the respite.
“The prince is clearly a democrat,” remarked Aglaya.
Hippolyte himself seemed to be hopeful about his state of health, as is often the case with consumptives. “I have one that is even better, much better; that is really why I bought this house.”
“Because,” replied Aglaya gravely, “in the poem the knight is described as a man capable of living up to an ideal all his life. That sort of thing is not to be found every day among the men of our times. In the poem it is not stated exactly what the ideal was, but it was evidently some vision, some revelation of pure Beauty, and the knight wore round his neck, instead of a scarf, a rosary. A device--A. N. B.--the meaning of which is not explained, was inscribed on his shield--”
“I agree,” said Lebedeff, firmly, looking round involuntarily at his daughter, who had come nearer, and was listening attentively to the conversation.

The prince gave him his hand and congratulated him upon “looking so well.”

“Asleep--he’ll sleep for a couple of hours yet. I quite understand--you haven’t slept--you walked about the park, I know. Agitation--excitement--all that sort of thing--quite natural, too!”

“N-no, I have never given him money, and he knows well that I will never give him any; because I am anxious to keep him out of intemperate ways. He is going to town with me now; for you must know I am off to Petersburg after Ferdishenko, while the scent is hot; I’m certain he is there. I shall let the general go one way, while I go the other; we have so arranged matters in order to pop out upon Ferdishenko, you see, from different sides. But I am going to follow that naughty old general and catch him, I know where, at a certain widow’s house; for I think it will be a good lesson, to put him to shame by catching him with the widow.”

The prince muttered that the spot was a lovely one.
He jumped up from his chair in a fit of uncontrollable rage. Gania was very angry too.
And in the semi-darkness the prince distinguished a man standing close to the stairs, apparently waiting.
“Well?” said Mrs. Epanchin angrily, surprised at his tone; “well, what more?” “I leave Lebedeff’s house, my dear prince, because I have quarrelled with this person. I broke with him last night, and am very sorry that I did not do so before. I expect respect, prince, even from those to whom I give my heart, so to speak. Prince, I have often given away my heart, and am nearly always deceived. This person was quite unworthy of the gift.”
“Oh, you cruel little girl! How will you treat us all next, I wonder?” she said, but she spoke with a ring of joy in her voice, and as though she breathed at last without the oppression which she had felt so long.
“Her relations had all died off--her husband was dead and buried forty years since; and a niece, who had lived with her and bullied her up to three years ago, was dead too; so that she was quite alone.

He opened the door just enough to let his head in. His head remained so placed for a few seconds while he quietly scrutinized the room; the door then opened enough to admit his body; but still he did not enter. He stood on the threshold and examined the prince carefully. At last he gave the door a final shove, entered, approached the prince, took his hand and seated himself and the owner of the room on two chairs side by side.

“Show it me!”

Vera Lebedeff was one of the first to come to see him and offer her services. No sooner did she catch sight of him than she burst into tears; but when he tried to soothe her she began to laugh. He was quite struck by the girl’s deep sympathy for him; he seized her hand and kissed it. Vera flushed crimson.
“Oh, no; I love her with all my soul. Why, she is a child! She’s a child now--a real child. Oh! you know nothing about it at all, I see.”

“There, prince,” said she, “there’s my album. Now choose a page and write me something, will you? There’s a pen, a new one; do you mind a steel one? I have heard that you caligraphists don’t like steel pens.”

He ran off and left the prince more dejected than ever.

“Oh-h-h! I’m sorry for that. I thought you were. I wonder why I always thought so--but at all events you’ll help me, won’t you? Because I’ve chosen you, you know.”

Aglaya left without saying good-bye. But the evening was not to end without a last adventure. An unexpected meeting was yet in store for Lizabetha Prokofievna.

“Indeed, you must not go away like that, young man, you must not!” cried the general. “My friend here is a widow, the mother of a family; her words come straight from her heart, and find an echo in mine. A visit to her is merely an affair of a few minutes; I am quite at home in her house. I will have a wash, and dress, and then we can drive to the Grand Theatre. Make up your mind to spend the evening with me.... We are just there--that’s the house... Why, Colia! you here! Well, is Marfa Borisovna at home or have you only just come?”

“You will not deny, I am sure,” said Gavrila Ardalionovitch, turning to Burdovsky, who sat looking at him with wide-open eyes, perplexed and astonished. “You will not deny, seriously, that you were born just two years after your mother’s legal marriage to Mr. Burdovsky, your father. Nothing would be easier than to prove the date of your birth from well-known facts; we can only look on Mr. Keller’s version as a work of imagination, and one, moreover, extremely offensive both to you and your mother. Of course he distorted the truth in order to strengthen your claim, and to serve your interests. Mr. Keller said that he previously consulted you about his article in the paper, but did not read it to you as a whole. Certainly he could not have read that passage. ....”
The prince’s expression was so good-natured at this moment, and so entirely free from even a suspicion of unpleasant feeling was the smile with which he looked at the general as he spoke, that the latter suddenly paused, and appeared to gaze at his guest from quite a new point of view, all in an instant. “You are unjust; I found him sincerely repentant,” observed the prince, after listening for a time. “I don’t know; I always feel like that when I look at the beauties of nature for the first time; but then, I was ill at that time, of course!”

“How did he strike you, prince?” asked Gania, suddenly. “Did he seem to be a serious sort of a man, or just a common rowdy fellow? What was your own opinion about the matter?”

“Of course, of course! How was it?”
“What have you done, indeed?” put in Nina Alexandrovna. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, teasing an old man like that--and in your position, too.”
“Your exclamation proves the generous sympathy of your nature, prince; for four hundred roubles--to a struggling family man like myself--is no small matter!”
“Bourdaloue, the archbishop, would not have spared a man like me,” Keller continued, “but you, you have judged me with humanity. To show how grateful I am, and as a punishment, I will not accept a hundred and fifty roubles. Give me twenty-five--that will be enough; it is all I really need, for a fortnight at least. I will not ask you for more for a fortnight. I should like to have given Agatha a present, but she does not really deserve it. Oh, my dear prince, God bless you!”
“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.’”
“I dare say it is; but that’s no affair of mine. Now then, assure me truly as before Heaven, are you lying to me or not?”

“What, what?” said the general, much agitated.

“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.”
“A little while ago a very amusing idea struck me. What if I were now to commit some terrible crime--murder ten fellow-creatures, for instance, or anything else that is thought most shocking and dreadful in this world--what a dilemma my judges would be in, with a criminal who only has a fortnight to live in any case, now that the rack and other forms of torture are abolished! Why, I should die comfortably in their own hospital--in a warm, clean room, with an attentive doctor--probably much more comfortably than I should at home.

“Vladimir Doktorenko,” said Lebedeff’s nephew briskly, and with a certain pride, as if he boasted of his name.

The prince came forward and introduced himself.

“Directly! There, that’s enough. I’ll lie down directly. I must drink to the sun’s health. I wish to--I insist upon it! Let go!”

“‘Here lies a Dead Soul, Shame pursues me.’

“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.

“This baseness on her part of course aroused my young blood to fever heat; I jumped up, and away I flew.

“Why did you not ask for me at my room if you were in the hotel?” asked the prince, suddenly.
“Well, I was glad enough, for I had long felt the greatest sympathy for this man; and then the pretty uniform and all that--only a child, you know--and so on. It was a dark green dress coat with gold buttons--red facings, white trousers, and a white silk waistcoat--silk stockings, shoes with buckles, and top-boots if I were riding out with his majesty or with the suite.
His attack of yesterday had been a slight one. Excepting some little heaviness in the head and pain in the limbs, he did not feel any particular effects. His brain worked all right, though his soul was heavy within him.
Prince Muishkin rose and stretched out his hand courteously, while he replied with some cordiality:
“Most undoubtedly, excellent prince, you have hit it--that is the very question. How wonderfully you express the exact situation in a few words!” “Well, go on.”
“You seem to be very religious,” he continued, kindly, addressing the prince, “which is a thing one meets so seldom nowadays among young people.”
“I assure you I did not mean to reckon up debits and credits,” he began, “and if you--”
“Certainly that isn’t much like quietism,” murmured Alexandra, half to herself. “I am surprised to see you laugh in that way, like a child. You came to make friends with me again just now, and you said, ‘I will kiss your hand, if you like,’ just as a child would have said it. And then, all at once you are talking of this mad project--of these seventy-five thousand roubles! It all seems so absurd and impossible.”
“What, receive him! Now, at once?” asked Mrs. Epanchin, gazing vaguely at her husband as he stood fidgeting before her.

“Oh yes, and in three days you’ll come and invite me yourself. Aren’t you ashamed now? These are your best feelings; you are only tormenting yourself.”

“And I also wish for justice to be done, once for all,” cried Madame Epanchin, “about this impudent claim. Deal with them promptly, prince, and don’t spare them! I am sick of hearing about the affair, and many a quarrel I have had in your cause. But I confess I am anxious to see what happens, so do make them come out here, and we will remain. You have heard people talking about it, no doubt?” she added, turning to Prince S. “They showed me out with bows and every kind of respect; they seemed quite beside themselves. I shall never forget the expression of their faces!
“Oh yes, and in three days you’ll come and invite me yourself. Aren’t you ashamed now? These are your best feelings; you are only tormenting yourself.”
The prince replied that he saw it.

“My dear young friend, you have hit on my very idea. It was not for this rubbish I asked you to come over here” (he pocketed the money, however, at this point), “it was to invite your alliance in the campaign against Nastasia Philipovna tonight. How well it sounds, ‘General Ivolgin and Prince Muishkin.’ That’ll fetch her, I think, eh? Capital! We’ll go at nine; there’s time yet.”

“Especially as you know all, eh?”
“Asleep?” whispered the prince.

“Very well, then there’s an experiment, and the thing is proved; one cannot live and count each moment; say what you like, but one _cannot_.”

“In a word, you are a wretched little scandal-monger,” cried Gania, “and you cannot go away without a scandal!”
Aglaya did not begin the conversation, but contented herself with watching her companion intently.
“I’ll swear it by whatever you please.”