| 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. |
All this would have been perfectly sincere on his part. He had never for a moment entertained the idea of the possibility of this girl loving him, or even of such a thing as himself falling in love with her. The possibility of being loved himself, “a man like me,” as he put it, he ranked among ridiculous suppositions. It appeared to him that it was simply a joke on Aglaya’s part, if there really were anything in it at all; but that seemed to him quite natural. His preoccupation was caused by something different.
| Rogojin looked intently at him again, as before. |
“How extremely stupid!” cried Mrs. Epanchin, giving back the letter abruptly. “It was not worth the trouble of reading. Why are you smiling?”
| Gania asked for further details; and the prince once more repeated the conversation. Gania looked at him with ironical contempt the while. |
“Is that all? What about her character?” persisted Mrs. Epanchin.
“Chaos and scandal are to be found everywhere, madame,” remarked Doktorenko, who was considerably put out of countenance.
“Yes, _seriously_,” said the general, gravely.
“To the station, quick! If you catch the train you shall have another. Quick!”
“I have heard many things of the kind about you...they delighted me... I have learned to hold you in the highest esteem,” continued Hippolyte.
“It’s my turn, but I plead exemption,” said Ptitsin.
Hippolyte rose all at once, looking troubled and almost frightened.
| Nastasia gazed at the prince in bewilderment. “Prince? He a Prince? Why, I took him for the footman, just now, and sent him in to announce me! Ha, ha, ha, isn’t that good!” |
“Fits?” asked the prince, slightly surprised. “I very seldom have fits nowadays. I don’t know how it may be here, though; they say the climate may be bad for me.”
| “And, meanwhile both his legs are still on his body,” said the prince, laughing. “I assure you, it is only an innocent joke, and you need not be angry about it.” |
“This is not the place for you,” said she. “Go to father. Is he plaguing you, prince?”
| The prince sat silent for a long while. His mind was filled with dread and horror. |
“Hadn’t you better--better--take a nap?” murmured the stupefied Ptitsin.
“Yes, they’ll be awfully annoyed if they don’t see it.”
“So that I have not offended any of you? You will not believe how happy I am to be able to think so. It is as it should be. As if I _could_ offend anyone here! I should offend you again by even suggesting such a thing.”
“The man-servant, while I was waiting to see the general.”
| Aglaya merely glanced at the portrait--frowned, and put out her underlip; then went and sat down on the sofa with folded hands. Mrs. Epanchin rang the bell. |
“Not for the world; he shall do just as he likes.”
“Oh, I’m a mean wretch--a mean wretch!” he said, approaching the prince once more, and beating his breast, with tears in his eyes.
“Parfen Semionovitch is not at home,” she announced from the doorway. “Whom do you want?”
“Well, and did you like it very much? Was it very edifying and instructive?” asked Aglaya.
| So saying he smiled strangely; but suddenly and excitedly he began again: |
“Oh, _curse_ Schneider and his dirty opinions! Go on.”
“Whom did you tell about it?”
Lebedeff could restrain himself no longer; he made his way through the row of chairs.
“Wait! What do you intend to do now, Parfen?”
“Burning for nothing,” shouted others.
| “In the first place, my dear prince, don’t be angry with me. I would have come to see you yesterday, but I didn’t know how Lizabetha Prokofievna would take it. My dear fellow, my house is simply a hell just now, a sort of sphinx has taken up its abode there. We live in an atmosphere of riddles; I can’t make head or tail of anything. As for you, I feel sure you are the least to blame of any of us, though you certainly have been the cause of a good deal of trouble. You see, it’s all very pleasant to be a philanthropist; but it can be carried too far. Of course I admire kind-heartedness, and I esteem my wife, but--” |
Prince S. tried hard to get up a conversation with Mrs. Epanchin upon outside subjects, probably with the good intention of distracting and amusing her; but he bored her dreadfully. She was absent-minded to a degree, and answered at cross purposes, and sometimes not at all.
| It never struck him that all this refined simplicity and nobility and wit and personal dignity might possibly be no more than an exquisite artistic polish. The majority of the guests--who were somewhat empty-headed, after all, in spite of their aristocratic bearing--never guessed, in their self-satisfied composure, that much of their superiority was mere veneer, which indeed they had adopted unconsciously and by inheritance. |
Mrs. Epanchin could bear her suspense no longer, and in spite of the opposition of husband and daughters, she sent for Aglaya, determined to get a straightforward answer out of her, once for all.
“Ah, you want to arouse our curiosity!” said Aglaya. “And how terribly solemn you are about it!”
“You say, take the hundred thousand and kick that man out. It is true, it is an abominable business, as you say. I might have married long ago, not Gania--Oh, no!--but that would have been abominable too.
“I have nearly finished,” replied Evgenie Pavlovitch.
“It is strange to look on this dreadful picture of the mangled corpse of the Saviour, and to put this question to oneself: ‘Supposing that the disciples, the future apostles, the women who had followed Him and stood by the cross, all of whom believed in and worshipped Him--supposing that they saw this tortured body, this face so mangled and bleeding and bruised (and they _must_ have so seen it)--how could they have gazed upon the dreadful sight and yet have believed that He would rise again?’
The prince did not hear the rest, because at this point the servant continued his communication in a whisper.
Meanwhile nothing put the prince out, and he continued to be in the seventh heaven of bliss. Of course he could not fail to observe some impatience and ill-temper in Aglaya now and then; but he believed in something else, and nothing could now shake his conviction. Besides, Aglaya’s frowns never lasted long; they disappeared of themselves.
“Yes _all_, Katia, all--every one of them. Let them in, or they’ll come in whether you like or no. Listen! what a noise they are making! Perhaps you are offended, gentlemen, that I should receive such guests in your presence? I am very sorry, and ask your forgiveness, but it cannot be helped--and I should be very grateful if you could all stay and witness this climax. However, just as you please, of course.”
“Do you admire that sort of woman, prince?” he asked, looking intently at him. He seemed to have some special object in the question.
| “It’s simply that there is a Russian poem,” began Prince S., evidently anxious to change the conversation, “a strange thing, without beginning or end, and all about a ‘poor knight.’ A month or so ago, we were all talking and laughing, and looking up a subject for one of Adelaida’s pictures--you know it is the principal business of this family to find subjects for Adelaida’s pictures. Well, we happened upon this ‘poor knight.’ I don’t remember who thought of it first--” |
| But at this moment something happened which put a most unexpected end to the orator’s speech. All this heated tirade, this outflow of passionate words and ecstatic ideas which seemed to hustle and tumble over each other as they fell from his lips, bore evidence of some unusually disturbed mental condition in the young fellow who had “boiled over” in such a remarkable manner, without any apparent reason. |