“No, I tell you I did _not_.”
The doorway was dark and gloomy at any time; but just at this moment it was rendered doubly so by the fact that the thunder-storm had just broken, and the rain was coming down in torrents.
“One moment, my dear prince, just one. I must absolutely speak to you about something which is most grave,” said Lebedeff, mysteriously and solemnly, entering the room with a bow and looking extremely important. He had but just returned, and carried his hat in his hand. He looked preoccupied and most unusually dignified.
“Antip Burdovsky,” stuttered the son of Pavlicheff.
“Come, sir, that will do; you weary me,” said Lizabetha Prokofievna suddenly to Evgenie Pavlovitch. “How he could hate me and tell scandalous stories about me, living among children as he did, is what I cannot understand. Children soothe and heal the wounded heart. I remember there was one poor fellow at our professor’s who was being treated for madness, and you have no idea what those children did for him, eventually. I don’t think he was mad, but only terribly unhappy. But I’ll tell you all about him another day. Now I must get on with this story.
The prince, returning home from the interview with Aglaya, had sat gloomy and depressed for half an hour. He was almost in despair when Colia arrived with the hedgehog.

A man, whose face it was difficult to see in the gloom, approached the bench, and sat down beside him. The prince peered into his face, and recognized the livid features of Rogojin.

“No?”

“He was terribly confused and did not seem able to collect his scattered senses; the pocket-book was still in his left hand.

“You are quite wrong...” began the prince.

“Very well--afterwards. You are always interrupting me. What woman was it you were dreaming about?”
“Just so! just so! He wanted to win over the aristocracy! When his eagle eye fell on me, mine probably flashed back in response. ‘_Voilà un garçon bien éveillé! Qui est ton père?_’ I immediately replied, almost panting with excitement, ‘A general, who died on the battle-fields of his country!’ ‘_Le fils d’un boyard et d’un brave, pardessus le marché. J’aime les boyards. M’aimes-tu, petit?_’

But here he was back at his hotel.

“It seems to me that all this has nothing to do with your affairs,” remarked the prince.
“What should I be afraid of?”
“No--I don’t think I should run away,” replied the prince, laughing outright at last at Aglaya’s questions.

“Last week? In the night? Have you gone cracked, my good friend?”

“Get out of this, you drunken beast!” cried Gania, who was red and white by turns.

Nina Alexandrovna started, and examined the photograph intently, gazing at it long and sadly. At last she looked up inquiringly at Varia.

“Yes, but the sort of scandal I referred to may happen at any moment. It may be this very evening,” remarked Gania to the general, with a smile.
“Are you Prince Muishkin?” he asked, with the greatest courtesy and amiability.

There was absolute hatred in his eyes as he said this, but his look of fear and his trembling had not left him.

“Better to be of a mess than in a mess! I remember making a joke something like that at the mess in eighteen hundred and forty--forty--I forget. ‘Where is my youth, where is my golden youth?’ Who was it said that, Colia?”

So saying, she had left the room, banging the door after her, and the prince went off, looking as though he were on his way to a funeral, in spite of all their attempts at consolation.

“He is boring us!”
“Well, sir, I suppose you wanted to make me look ridiculous?”
“Not as a present, not as a present! I should not have taken the liberty,” said Lebedeff, appearing suddenly from behind his daughter. “It is our own Pushkin, our family copy, Annenkoff’s edition; it could not be bought now. I beg to suggest, with great respect, that your excellency should buy it, and thus quench the noble literary thirst which is consuming you at this moment,” he concluded grandiloquently.
“Listen, prince,” said Gania, as though an idea had just struck him, “I wish to ask you a great favour, and yet I really don’t know--”
“My dear, ‘_se trompe_’ is easily said. Do you remember any case at all like it? Everybody was at their wits’ end. I should be the first to say ‘_qu’on se trompe_,’ but unfortunately I was an eye-witness, and was also on the commission of inquiry. Everything proved that it was really he, the very same soldier Kolpakoff who had been given the usual military funeral to the sound of the drum. It is of course a most curious case--nearly an impossible one. I recognize that... but--”
“Who said that, Colia?”
“Why don’t you say something?” cried Lizabetha Prokofievna, stamping her foot. “Certainly that isn’t much like quietism,” murmured Alexandra, half to herself.
“What sort of a face was I to draw? I couldn’t draw a mask.”
“Yes, my dear, it was an old abbot of that name--I must be off to see the count, he’s waiting for me, I’m late--Good-bye! _Au revoir_, prince!”--and the general bolted at full speed. “I see you are shuddering, Lef Nicolaievitch,” said the latter, at length, “almost as you did once in Moscow, before your fit; don’t you remember? I don’t know what I shall do with you--” “Upon my word, I didn’t! To this moment I don’t know how it all happened. I--I ran after Aglaya Ivanovna, but Nastasia Philipovna fell down in a faint; and since that day they won’t let me see Aglaya--that’s all I know.”
“Yes, I’ve been looking for you. I waited for you at the Epanchins’ house, but of course I could not come in. I dogged you from behind as you walked along with the general. Well, prince, here is Keller, absolutely at your service--command him!--ready to sacrifice himself--even to die in case of need.”

And once more, that same evening, Aglaya mystified them all. Prince S. had returned, and Aglaya was particularly amiable to him, and asked a great deal after Evgenie Pavlovitch. (Muishkin had not come in as yet.)

“I like looking at that picture,” muttered Rogojin, not noticing, apparently, that the prince had not answered his question.

“Come!”

But the new guests at least somewhat eased his strained and uncomfortable position. Seeing them approaching, he rose from his chair, and nodding amicably to the general, signed to him not to interrupt the recitation. He then got behind his chair, and stood there with his left hand resting on the back of it. Thanks to this change of position, he was able to listen to the ballad with far less embarrassment than before. Mrs. Epanchin had also twice motioned to the new arrivals to be quiet, and stay where they were.

In another corner was the general, holding forth to a group of hearers, among them Ptitsin, whom he had buttonholed. “I have known,” said he, “a real interpreter of the Apocalypse, the late Gregory Semeonovitch Burmistroff, and he--he pierced the heart like a fiery flash! He began by putting on his spectacles, then he opened a large black book; his white beard, and his two medals on his breast, recalling acts of charity, all added to his impressiveness. He began in a stern voice, and before him generals, hard men of the world, bowed down, and ladies fell to the ground fainting. But this one here--he ends by announcing a banquet! That is not the real thing!”

“Where’s your brother?”

“What’s that got to do with it?” asked the general, who loathed Ferdishenko. But this was too much for the general.

“All I’m afraid of is--mother. I’m afraid this scandal about father may come to her ears; perhaps it has already. I am dreadfully afraid.”

Nastasia smiled amiably at him; but evidently her depression and irritability were increasing with every moment. Totski was dreadfully alarmed to hear her promise a revelation out of her own life.