| “Ready--keep your distance, all of you!” |
“Well, let me get my hat, at least.”
| “Why did you ask me?” |
| “_Au revoir_, then!” said Aglaya, holding out her hand to the prince. |
“But perhaps you may not have observed it, oh, you damned idiot, you!” he shouted, quite beside himself with fury. “You can’t even describe what went on.”
“Has my father asked you for money?” asked Gania, suddenly.
“Prince Muishkin? Lef Nicolaievitch? H’m! I don’t know, I’m sure! I may say I have never heard of such a person,” said the clerk, thoughtfully. “At least, the name, I admit, is historical. Karamsin must mention the family name, of course, in his history--but as an individual--one never hears of any Prince Muishkin nowadays.”“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!”
“Very well, what next?” said the latter, almost laughing in his face. As they went downstairs the general regretted repeatedly that he had failed to introduce the prince to his friends.It was now close on twelve o’clock.
| “Dear me! This is very unpleasant!” |
| As for Aglaya, she hardly said a word all the evening; but she listened with all her ears to Lef Nicolaievitch’s talk, and scarcely took her eyes off him. |
“On the contrary, he seems to be very well brought up. His manners are excellent--but here he is himself. Here you are, prince--let me introduce you, the last of the Muishkins, a relative of your own, my dear, or at least of the same name. Receive him kindly, please. They’ll bring in lunch directly, prince; you must stop and have some, but you must excuse me. I’m in a hurry, I must be off--”
| “It was impossible for me to go on living when life was full of such detestable, strange, tormenting forms. This ghost had humiliated me;--nor could I bear to be subordinate to that dark, horrible force which was embodied in the form of the loathsome insect. It was only towards evening, when I had quite made up my mind on this point, that I began to feel easier.” |
“Very happy to meet him, I’m sure,” remarked the latter. “I remember Lef Nicolaievitch well. When General Epanchin introduced us just now, I recognized you at once, prince. You are very little changed, though I saw you last as a child of some ten or eleven years old. There was something in your features, I suppose, that--”
The prince followed her. Arrived at the dining-room, she stopped.
| The prince approached Evgenie Pavlovitch last of all. The latter immediately took his arm. |
“Seriously? Then are you a coward?”
Both she and Aglaya stood and waited as though in expectation, and both looked at the prince like madwomen.
“Neither during my illness nor at any previous time had I ever seen an apparition;--but I had always thought, both when I was a little boy, and even now, that if I were to see one I should die on the spot--though I don’t believe in ghosts. And yet _now_, when the idea struck me that this was a ghost and not Rogojin at all, I was not in the least alarmed. Nay--the thought actually irritated me. Strangely enough, the decision of the question as to whether this were a ghost or Rogojin did not, for some reason or other, interest me nearly so much as it ought to have done;--I think I began to muse about something altogether different. For instance, I began to wonder why Rogojin, who had been in dressing-gown and slippers when I saw him at home, had now put on a dress-coat and white waistcoat and tie? I also thought to myself, I remember--‘if this is a ghost, and I am not afraid of it, why don’t I approach it and verify my suspicions? Perhaps I am afraid--’ And no sooner did this last idea enter my head than an icy blast blew over me; I felt a chill down my backbone and my knees shook.
“Yours. You forbade me yourself to mention it before you, most excellent prince,” murmured Lebedeff. Then, satisfied that he had worked up Muishkin’s curiosity to the highest pitch, he added abruptly: “She is afraid of 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.
But Dr. Schneider frowns ever more and more and shakes his head; he hints that the brain is fatally injured; he does not as yet declare that his patient is incurable, but he allows himself to express the gravest fears.The next day Keller came to visit the prince. He was in a high state of delight with the post of honour assigned to him at the wedding.
Hippolyte told the prince this last story, sending for him on purpose. When Muishkin heard about the candle and Gania’s finger he had laughed so that he had quite astonished Hippolyte,--and then shuddered and burst into tears. The prince’s condition during those days was strange and perturbed. Hippolyte plainly declared that he thought he was out of his mind;--this, however, was hardly to be relied upon.
| Poor Lizabetha Prokofievna was most anxious to get home, and, according to Evgenie’s account, she criticized everything foreign with much hostility. |