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.
A couple of days later, however, Hippolyte’s mother
came with tears in her eyes, and begged the prince to
come back, ‘or HE would eat her up bodily.’ She added
that Hippolyte had a great secret to disclose. Of course the
prince went. There was no secret, however, unless we
reckon certain pantings and agitated glances around
(probably all put on) as the invalid begged his visitor to
‘beware of Rogojin.’
‘He is the sort of man,’ he continued,. ‘who won’t give
up his object, you know; he is not like you and me,
prince—he belongs to quite a different order of beings. If The Idiot
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he sets his heart on a thing he won’t be afraid of
anything—’ and so on.
Hippolyte was very ill, and looked as though he could
not long survive. He was tearful at first, but grew more
and more sarcastic and malicious as the interview
proceeded.
The prince questioned him in detail as to his hints
about Rogojin. He was anxious to seize upon some facts
which might confirm Hippolyte’s vague warnings; but
there were none; only Hippolyte’s own private
impressions and feelings.
However, the invalid—to his immense satisfaction—
ended by seriously alarming the prince.
At first Muishkin had not cared to make any reply to
his sundry questions, and only smiled in response to
Hippolyte’s advice to ‘run for his life—abroad, if
necessary. There are Russian priests everywhere, and one
can get married all over the world.’
But it was Hippolyte’s last idea which upset him.
‘What I am really alarmed about, though,’ he said, ‘is
Aglaya Ivanovna. Rogojin knows how you love her. Love
for love. You took Nastasia Philipovna from him. He will
murder Aglaya Ivanovna; for though she is not yours, of The Idiot
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course, now, still such an act would pain you,—wouldn’t
it?’
He had attained his end. The prince left the house
beside himself with terror.
These warnings about Rogojin were expressed on the
day before the wedding. That evening the prince saw
Nastasia Philipovna for the last time before they were to
meet at the altar; but Nastasia was not in a position to give
him any comfort or consolation. On the contrary, she
only added to his mental perturbation as the evening went
on. Up to this time she had invariably done her best to
cheer him—she was afraid of his looking melancholy; she
would try singing to him, and telling him every sort of
funny story or reminiscence that she could recall. The
prince nearly always pretended to be amused, whether he
were so actually or no; but often enough he laughed
sincerely, delighted by the brilliancy of her wit when she
was carried away by her narrative, as she very often was.
Nastasia would be wild with joy to see the impression she
had made, and to hear his laugh of real amusement; and
she would remain the whole evening in a state of pride
and happiness. But this evening her melancholy and
thoughtfulness grew with every hour. The Idiot
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The prince had told Evgenie Pavlovitch with perfect
sincerity that he loved Nastasia Philipovna with all his
soul. In his love for her there was the sort of tenderness
one feels for a sick, unhappy child which cannot be left
alone. He never spoke of his feelings for Nastasia to
anyone, not even to herself. When they were together
they never discussed their ‘feelings,’ and there was nothing
in their cheerful, animated conversation which an outsider
could not have heard. Daria Alexeyevna, with whom
Nastasia was staying, told afterwards how she had been
filled with joy and delight only to look at them, all this
time.
Thanks to the manner in which he regarded Nastasia’s
mental and moral condition, the prince was to some
extent freed from other perplexities. She was now quite
different from the woman he had known three months
before. He was not astonished, for instance, to see her
now so impatient to marry him—she who formerly had
wept with rage and hurled curses and reproaches at him if
he mentioned marriage! ‘It shows that she no longer fears,
as she did then, that she would make me unhappy by
marrying me,’ he thought. And he felt sure that so sudden
a change could not be a natural one. This rapid growth of
self-confidence could not be due only to her hatred for The Idiot
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Aglaya. To suppose that would be to suspect the depth of
her feelings. Nor could it arise from dread of the fate that
awaited her if she married Rogojin. These causes, indeed,
as well as others, might have played a part in it, but the
true reason, Muishkin decided, was the one he had long
suspected—that the poor sick soul had come to the end of
its forces. Yet this was an explanation that did not procure
him any peace of mind. At times he seemed to be making
violent efforts to think of nothing, and one would have
said that he looked on his marriage as an unimportant
formality, and on his future happiness as a thing not worth
considering. As to conversations such as the one held with
Evgenie Pavlovitch, he avoided them as far as possible,
feeling that there were certain objections to which he
could make no answer.
The prince had observed that Nastasia knew well
enough what Aglaya was to him. He never spoke of it, but
he had seen her face when she had caught him starting off
for the Epanchins’ house on several occasions. When the
Epanchins left Pavlofsk, she had beamed with radiance and
happiness. Unsuspicious and unobservant as he was, he
had feared at that time that Nastasia might have some
scheme in her mind for a scene or scandal which would
drive Aglaya out of Pavlofsk. She had encouraged the The Idiot
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rumours and excitement among the inhabitants of the
place as to her marriage with the prince, in order to annoy
her rival; and, finding it difficult to meet the Epanchins
anywhere, she had, on one occasion, taken him for a drive
past their house. He did not observe what was happening
until they were almost passing the windows, when it was
too late to do anything. He said nothing, but for two days
afterwards he was ill.
Nastasia did not try that particular experiment again. A
few days before that fixed for the wedding, she grew grave
and thoughtful. She always ended by getting the better of
her melancholy, and becoming merry and cheerful again,
but not quite so unaffectedly happy as she had been some
days earlier.
The prince redoubled his attentive study of her
symptoms. It was a most curious circumstance, in his
opinion, that she never spoke of Rogojin. But once, about
five days before the wedding, when the prince was at
home, a messenger arrived begging him to come at once,
as Nastasia Philipovna was very ill.
He had found her in a condition approaching to
absolute madness. She screamed, and trembled, and cried
out that Rogojin was hiding out there in the garden—that
she had seen him herself—and that he would murder her The Idiot
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in the night—that he would cut her throat. She was
terribly agitated all day. But it so happened that the prince
called at Hippolyte’s house later on, and heard from his
mother that she had been in town all day, and had there
received a visit from Rogojin, who had made inquiries
about Pavlofsk. On inquiry, it turned out that Rogojin
visited the old lady in town at almost the same moment
when Nastasia declared that she had seen him in the
garden; so that the whole thing turned out to be an
illusion on her part. Nastasia immediately went across to
Hippolyte’s to inquire more accurately, and returned
immensely relieved and comforted.
On the day before the wedding, the prince left Nastasia
in a state of great animation. Her wedding-dress and all
sorts of finery had just arrived from town. Muishkin had
not imagined that she would be so excited over it, but he
praised everything, and his praise rendered her doubly
happy.
But Nastasia could not hide the cause of her intense
interest in her wedding splendour. She had heard of the
indignation in the town, and knew that some of the
populace was getting up a sort of charivari with music,
that verses had been composed for the occasion, and that
the rest of Pavlofsk society more or less encouraged these The Idiot
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preparations. So, since attempts were being made to
humiliate her, she wanted to hold her head even higher
than usual, and to overwhelm them all with the beauty
and taste of her toilette. ‘Let them shout and whistle, if
they dare!’ Her eyes flashed at the thought. But,
underneath this, she had another motive, of which she did
not speak. She thought that possibly Aglaya, or at any rate
someone sent by her, would be present incognito at the
ceremony, or in the crowd, and she wished to be prepared
for this eventuality.
The prince left her at eleven, full of these thoughts, and
went home. But it was not twelve o’clock when a
messenger came to say that Nastasia was very bad, and he
must come at once.
On hurrying back he found his bride locked up in her
own room and could hear her hysterical cries and sobs. It
was some time before she could be made to hear that the
prince had come, and then she opened the door only just
sufficiently to let him in, and immediately locked it behind
him. She then fell on her knees at his feet. (So at least
Dana Alexeyevna reported.)
‘What am I doing? What am I doing to you?’ she
sobbed convulsively, embracing his knees. The Idiot
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The prince was a whole hour soothing and comforting
her, and left her, at length, pacified and composed. He
sent another messenger during the night to inquire after
her, and two more next morning. The last brought back a
message that Nastasia was surrounded by a whole army of
dressmakers and maids, and was as happy and as busy as
such a beauty should be on her wedding morning, and
that there was not a vestige of yesterday’s agitation
remaining. The message concluded with the news that at
the moment of the bearer’s departure there was a great
confabulation in progress as to which diamonds were to be
worn, and how.
This message entirely calmed the prince’s mind.
The following report of the proceedings on the
wedding day may be depended upon, as coming from eye-
witnesses.
The wedding was fixed for eight o’clock in the
evening. Nastasia Philipovna was ready at seven. From six
o’clock groups of people began to gather at Nastasia’s
house, at the prince’s, and at the church door, but more
especially at the former place. The church began to fill at
seven.
Colia and Vera Lebedeff were very anxious on the
prince’s account, but they were so busy over the The Idiot
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arrangements for receiving the guests after the wedding,
that they had not much time for the indulgence of
personal feelings.
There were to be very few guests besides the best men
and so on; only Dana Alexeyevna, the Ptitsins, Gania, and
the doctor. When the prince asked Lebedeff why he had
invited the doctor, who was almost a stranger, Lebedeff
replied:
‘Why, he wears an ‘order,’ and it looks so well!’
This idea amused the prince.
Keller and Burdovsky looked wonderfully correct in
their dress- coats and white kid gloves, although Keller
caused the bridegroom some alarm by his undisguisedly
hostile glances at the gathering crowd of sight-seers
outside.
At about half-past seven the prince started for the
church in his carriage.
We may remark here that he seemed anxious not to
omit a single one of the recognized customs and traditions
observed at weddings. He wished all to be done as openly
as possible, and ‘in due order.’
Arrived at the church, Muishkin, under Keller’s
guidance, passed through the crowd of spectators, amid
continuous whispering and excited exclamations. The The Idiot
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prince stayed near the altar, while Keller made off once
more to fetch the bride.
On reaching the gate of Daria Alexeyevna’s house,
Keller found a far denser crowd than he had encountered
at the prince’s. The remarks and exclamations of the
spectators here were of so irritating a nature that Keller
was very near making them a speech on the impropriety
of their conduct, but was luckily caught by Burdovsky, in
the act of turning to address them, and hurried indoors.
Nastasia Philipovna was ready. She rose from her seat,
looked into the glass and remarked, as Keller told the tale
afterwards, that she was ‘as pale as a corpse.’ She then bent
her head reverently, before the ikon in the corner, and left
the room.
A torrent of voices greeted her appearance at the front
door. The crowd whistled, clapped its hands, and laughed
and shouted; but in a moment or two isolated voices were
distinguishable.
‘What a beauty!’ cried one.
‘Well, she isn’t the first in the world, nor the last,’ said
another.
‘Marriage covers everything,’ observed a third.
‘I defy you to find another beauty like that,’ said a
fourth. The Idiot
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‘She’s a real princess! I’d sell my soul for such a princess
as that!’
Nastasia came out of the house looking as white as any
handkerchief; but her large dark eyes shone upon the
vulgar crowd like blazing coals. The spectators’ cries were
redoubled, and became more exultant and triumphant
every moment. The door of the carriage was open, and
Keller had given his hand to the bride to help her in,
when suddenly with a loud cry she rushed from him,
straight into the surging crowd. Her friends about her
