‘What? What can you have heard?’ said the prince,
stammering.
Rogojin continued to laugh loudly. He had listened to
the prince’s speech with curiosity and some satisfaction.
The speaker’s impulsive warmth had surprised and even
comforted him.
‘Why, I’ve not only heard of it; I see it for myself,’ he
said. ‘When have you ever spoken like that before? It
wasn’t like yourself, prince. Why, if I hadn’t heard this
report about you, I should never have come all this way
into the park—at midnight, too!’
‘I don’t understand you in the least, Parfen.’
‘Oh, SHE told me all about it long ago, and tonight I
saw for myself. I saw you at the music, you know, and
whom you were sitting with. She swore to me yesterday,
and again today, that you are madly in love with Aglaya The Idiot
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Ivanovna. But that’s all the same to me, prince, and it’s
not my affair at all; for if you have ceased to love HER,
SHE has not ceased to love YOU. You know, of course,
that she wants to marry you to that girl? She’s sworn to it!
Ha, ha! She says to me, ‘Until then I won’t marry you.
When they go to church, we’ll go too-and not before.’
What on earth does she mean by it? I don’t know, and I
never did. Either she loves you without limits or—yet, if
she loves you, why does she wish to marry you to another
girl? She says, ‘I want to see him happy,’ which is to say—
she loves you.’
‘I wrote, and I say to you once more, that she is not in
her right mind,’ said the prince, who had listened with
anguish to what Rogojin said.
‘Goodness knows—you may be wrong there! At all
events, she named the day this evening, as we left the
gardens. ‘In three weeks,’ says she, ‘and perhaps sooner,
we shall be married.’ She swore to it, took off her cross
and kissed it. So it all depends upon you now, prince, You
see! Ha, ha!’
‘That’s all madness. What you say about me, Parfen,
never can and never will be. Tomorrow, I shall come and
see you—‘ The Idiot
670 of 1149
‘How can she be mad,’ Rogojin interrupted, ‘when she
is sane enough for other people and only mad for you?
How can she write letters to HER, if she’s mad? If she
were insane they would observe it in her letters.’
‘What letters?’ said the prince, alarmed.
‘She writes to HER—and the girl reads the letters.
Haven’t you heard?—You are sure to hear; she’s sure to
show you the letters herself.’
‘I won’t believe this!’ cried the prince.
‘Why, prince, you’ve only gone a few steps along this
road, I perceive. You are evidently a mere beginner. Wait
a bit! Before long, you’ll have your own detectives, you’ll
watch day and night, and you’ll know every little thing
that goes on there— that is, if—‘
‘Drop that subject, Rogojin, and never mention it
again. And listen: as I have sat here, and talked, and
listened, it has suddenly struck me that tomorrow is my
birthday. It must be about twelve o’clock, now; come
home with me—do, and we’ll see the day in! We’ll have
some wine, and you shall wish me—I don’t know what—
but you, especially you, must wish me a good wish, and I
shall wish you full happiness in return. Otherwise, hand
me my cross back again. You didn’t return it to me next
day. Haven’t you got it on now?’ The Idiot
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‘Yes, I have,’ said Rogojin.
‘Come along, then. I don’t wish to meet my new year
without you— my new life, I should say, for a new life is
beginning for me. Did you know, Parfen, that a new life
had begun for me?’
‘I see for myself that it is so—and I shall tell HER. But
you are not quite yourself, Lef Nicolaievitch.’ The Idiot
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IV
THE prince observed with great surprise, as he
approached his villa, accompanied by Rogojin, that a large
number of people were assembled on his verandah, which
was brilliantly lighted up. The company seemed merry and
were noisily laughing and talking—even quarrelling, to
judge from the sounds. At all events they were clearly
enjoying themselves, and the prince observed further on
closer investigation—that all had been drinking
champagne. To judge from the lively condition of some of
the party, it was to be supposed that a considerable
quantity of champagne had been consumed already.
All the guests were known to the prince; but the
curious part of the matter was that they had all arrived on
the same evening, as though with one accord, although he
had only himself recollected the fact that it was his
birthday a few moments since.
‘You must have told somebody you were going to trot
out the champagne, and that’s why they are all come!’
muttered Rogojin, as the two entered the verandah. ‘We
know all about that! You’ve only to whistle and they
come up in shoals!’ he continued, almost angrily. He was The Idiot
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doubtless thinking of his own late experiences with his
boon companions.
All surrounded the prince with exclamations of
welcome, and, on hearing that it was his birthday, with
cries of congratulation and delight; many of them were
very noisy.
The presence of certain of those in the room surprised
the prince vastly, but the guest whose advent filled him
with the greatest wonder—almost amounting to alarm—
was Evgenie Pavlovitch. The prince could not believe his
eyes when he beheld the latter, and could not help
thinking that something was wrong.
Lebedeff ran up promptly to explain the arrival of all
these gentlemen. He was himself somewhat intoxicated,
but the prince gathered from his long-winded periods that
the party had assembled quite naturally, and accidentally.
First of all Hippolyte had arrived, early in the evening,
and feeling decidedly better, had determined to await the
prince on the verandah. There Lebedeff had joined him,
and his household had followed—that is, his daughters and
General Ivolgin. Burdovsky had brought Hippolyte, and
stayed on with him. Gania and Ptitsin had dropped in
accidentally later on; then came Keller, and he and Colia
insisted on having champagne. Evgenie Pavlovitch had The Idiot
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only dropped in half an hour or so ago. Lebedeff had
served the champagne readily.
‘My own though, prince, my own, mind,’ he said, ‘and
there’ll be some supper later on; my daughter is getting it
ready now. Come and sit down, prince, we are all waiting
for you, we want you with us. Fancy what we have been
discussing! You know the question, ‘to be or not to be,’—
out of Hamlet! A contemporary theme! Quite up-to-date!
Mr. Hippolyte has been eloquent to a degree. He won’t
go to bed, but he has only drunk a little champagne, and
that can’t do him any harm. Come along, prince, and
settle the question. Everyone is waiting for you, sighing
for the light of your luminous intelligence...’
The prince noticed the sweet, welcoming look on Vera
Lebedeff’s face, as she made her way towards him through
the crowd. He held out his hand to her. She took it,
blushing with delight, and wished him ‘a happy life from
that day forward.’ Then she ran off to the kitchen, where.
her presence was necessary to help in the preparations for
supper. Before the prince’s arrival she had spent some time
on the terrace, listening eagerly to the conversation,
though the visitors, mostly under the influence of wine,
were discussing abstract subjects far beyond her
comprehension. In the next room her younger sister lay The Idiot
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on a wooden chest, sound asleep, with her mouth wide
open; but the boy, Lebedeff’s son, had taken up his
position close beside Colia and Hippolyte, his face lit up
with interest in the conversation of his father and the rest,
to which he would willingly have listened for ten hours at
a stretch.
‘I have waited for you on purpose, and am very glad to
see you arrive so happy,’ said Hippolyte, when the prince
came forward to press his hand, immediately after greeting
Vera.
‘And how do you know that I am ‘so happy’?
‘I can see it by your face! Say ‘how do you do’ to the
others, and come and sit down here, quick—I’ve been
waiting for you!’ he added, accentuating the fact that he
had waited. On the prince’s asking, ‘Will it not be
injurious to you to sit out so late?’ he replied that he could
not believe that he had thought himself dying three days
or so ago, for he never had felt better than this evening.
Burdovsky next jumped up and explained that he had
come in by accident, having escorted Hippolyte from
town. He murmured that he was glad he had ‘written
nonsense’ in his letter, and then pressed the prince’s hand
warmly and sat down again. The Idiot
676 of 1149
The prince approached Evgenie Pavlovitch last of all.
The latter immediately took his arm.
‘I have a couple of words to say to you,’ he began, ‘and
those on a very important matter; let’s go aside for a
minute or two.’
‘Just a couple of words!’ whispered another voice in the
prince’s other ear, and another hand took his other arm.
Muishkin turned, and to his great surprise observed a red,
flushed face and a droll-looking figure which he
recognized at once as that of Ferdishenko. Goodness
knows where he had turned up from!
‘Do you remember Ferdishenko?’ he asked.
‘Where have you dropped from?’ cried the prince.
‘He is sorry for his sins now, prince,’ cried Keller. ‘He
did not want to let you know he was here; he was hidden
over there in the corner,—but he repents now, he feels his
guilt.’
‘Why, what has he done?’
‘I met him outside and brought him in—he’s a
gentleman who doesn’t often allow his friends to see him,
of late—but he’s sorry now.’
‘Delighted, I’m sure!—I’ll come back directly,
gentlemen,—sit down there with the others, please,—The Idiot
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excuse me one moment,’ said the host, getting away with
difficulty in order to follow Evgenie.
‘You are very gay here,’ began the latter, ‘and I have
had quite a pleasant half-hour while I waited for you.
Now then, my dear Lef Nicolaievitch, this is what’s the
matter. I’ve arranged it all with Moloftsoff, and have just
come in to relieve your mind on that score. You need be
under no apprehensions. He was very sensible, as he
should be, of course, for I think he was entirely to blame
himself.’
‘What Moloftsoff?’
‘The young fellow whose arms you held, don’t you
know? He was so wild with you that he was going to send
a friend to you tomorrow morning.’
‘What nonsense!’
‘Of course it is nonsense, and in nonsense it would
have ended, doubtless; but you know these fellows,
they—‘
‘Excuse me, but I think you must have something else
that you wished to speak about, Evgenie Pavlovitch?’
‘Of course, I have!’ said the other, laughing. ‘You see,
my dear fellow, tomorrow, very early in the morning, I
must be off to town about this unfortunate business(my
uncle, you know!). Just imagine, my dear sir, it is all The Idiot
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true—word for word—and, of course, everybody knew it
excepting myself. All this has been such a blow to me that
I have not managed to call in at the Epanchins’.
Tomorrow I shall not see them either, because I shall be in
town. I may not be here for three days or more; in a
word, my affairs are a little out of gear. But though my
town business is, of course, most pressing, still I
determined not to go away until I had seen you, and had a
clear understanding with you upon certain points; and that
without loss of time. I will wait now, if you will allow me,
until the company departs; I may just as well, for I have
nowhere else to go to, and I shall certainly not do any
sleeping tonight; I’m far too excited. And finally, I must
confess that, though I know it is bad form to pursue a man
in this way, I have come to beg your friendship, my dear
prince. You are an unusual sort of a person; you don’t lie
at every step, as some men do; in fact, you don’t lie at all,
and there is a matter in which I need a true and sincere
friend, for I really may claim to be among the number of
bona fide unfortunates just now.’
He laughed again.
‘But the trouble is,’ said the prince, after a slight pause
for reflection, ‘that goodness only knows when this party The Idiot
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will break up. Hadn’t we better stroll into the park? I’ll
excuse myself, there’s no danger of their going away.’
‘No, no! I have my reasons for wishing them not to
suspect us of being engaged in any specially important
conversation. There are gentry present who are a little too
much interested in us. You are not aware of that perhaps,
prince? It will be a great deal better if they see that we are
friendly just in an ordinary way. They’ll all go in a couple
of hours, and then I’ll ask you to give me twenty minutes-
half an hour at most.’
‘By all means! I assure you I am delighted—you need
not have entered into all these explanations. As for your
remarks about friendship with me—thanks, very much
indeed. You must excuse my being a little absent this
evening. Do you know, I cannot somehow be attentive to
anything just now?’
‘I see, I see,’ said Evgenie, smiling gently. His mirth
seemed very near the surface this evening.
‘What do you see?’ said the prince, startled.
‘I don’t want you to suspect that I have simply come
here to deceive you and pump information out of you!’
said Evgenie, still smiling, and without making any direct
reply to the question. The Idiot
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‘Oh, but I haven’t the slightest doubt that you did
come to pump me,’ said the prince, laughing himself, at
last; ‘and I dare say you are quite prepared to deceive me
too, so far as that goes. But what of that? I’m not afraid of
you; besides, you’ll hardly believe it, I feel as though I
really didn’t care a scrap one way or the other, just
