had suddenly begun to expect something of him, that every one looked at him, as though wanting to congratulate him with hints, smiles, and winks. Keller had run in two or three times for a minute already, also with an evident desire to congratulate him; each time he began vaguely and enthusiastically but did not finish, and quickly disappeared again. (He had been drinking particularly heavily of late, and making a sensation in some billiard-room.)
Even Kolya, in spite of his sadness, had also attempted once or twice to begin upon some subject with Myshkin.
Myshkin asked Lebedyev directly and somewhat irritably what he thought of General Ivolgin’s state of mind, and why the latter seemed so uneasy. In a few words he told him of the scene that morning.
“Every one has his own reasons for uneasiness, prince . . . and . . . especially in our strange and uneasy age, you know,” Lebedyev answered with a certain dryness, and relapsed into offended silence, with the air of a man deeply deceived in his expectations.
“What philosophy!” said Myshkin smiling.
“Philosophy would be useful, very useful in our age in its practical application, but it’s despised, that’s how it is. For my part, honoured prince, though I have respected your confidence to me on a certain point you know of, yet only to a certain degree, and no further than circumstances relating to that point especially . . . that I understand, and I don’t in the least complain.”
“Lebedyev, you seem to be angry about something?”
“Not at all, not in the least, honoured and resplendent prince … not in the least!” Lebedeyev cried passionately, laying his hand upon his heart. “On the contrary, I realised at once that, neither by my position in the world, nor by the qualities of my mind or my heart, nor the amount of my fortune, nor my former behaviour, nor my knowledge — in no way do I deserve the confidence with which you honour me, so far above my hopes, and that if I can serve you it is as a slave and hireling. Nothing else. I am not angry, but I’m sad.”
“Come, come, Lukyan Timofeyitch!”
“Nothing else! So it is in the present case. Meeting you, fixing my heart and thought upon you, I said to myself: ‘I am unworthy of your confidence as a friend, but as the landlord of your house perhaps I may receive at the fitting time, before the anticipated event, so to speak, a warning, or at least an intimation in view of certain changes expected in the future.
As he uttered this, Lebedyev positively fastened his sharp little eyes on Myshkin, who was looking at him in astonishment. He was still in hopes of satisfying his curiosity.
“I don’t understand a word!” cried Myshkin, almost with anger, “and . . . you’re an awful intriguer!” he suddenly broke into a most genuine laugh. Instantly Lebedyev laughed too, and his beaming face showed clearly that his hopes were confirmed, and even redoubled.
“And do you know what I have to tell you, Lukyan Timofeyitch? Don’t be angry with me, but I wonder at your simplicity, and not only yours! You are expecting something of me with such simplicity now, at this very moment, that I feel positively ashamed and conscience-stricken at having nothing to satisfy you with; but I swear that I really have nothing. Can you fancy that?”
Myshkin laughed again.
Lebedyev put on a dignified air. It was true that he was sometimes too naive and intrusive in his curiosity, but at the same time he was a rather cunning and wily man, and in some cases even too artfully silent. Myshkin had almost made an enemy of him by continually putting him off. But Myshkin put him off, not because he despised him, but because the subject of his curiosity was a delicate one. Myshkin had only a few days before looked on some of his own dreams as a crime, while Lukyan Timofeyitch took Myshkin’s rebuffs simply as a proof of personal aversion and mistrust, withdrew, cut to the heart and jealous not only of Kolya and of Keller, but even of his own daughter, Vera. Even at that very moment, he could, perhaps, have told Myshkin a piece of news of the greatest interest to him, and perhaps sincerely desired to do so, but he remained gloomily silent and did not tell him.
“In what way can I be of use to you, honoured prince, since anyway you . . . called me just now,” he said at last after a brief silence.
“Why, I asked you about the general,” Myshkin, who had been musing for a moment, too, answered hurriedly, “and … in regard to that theft you told me about.”
“In regard to what?”
“Why, as though you don’t understand me now! Oh, dear, Lukyan Timofeyitch, you’re always acting a part! The money, the money, the four hundred roubles you lost that day in your pocket-book, and about which you came to tell me in the morning, as you were setting off for Petersburg. Do you understand at last?”
“Ah, you’re talking about that four hundred roubles!” drawled Lebedyev, as though he had only just guessed. “I thank you, prince, for your sincere sympathy; it is too flattering to me, but. . . I’ve found it some time since.”
“Found it! Ah, thank God!”
“That exclamation is most generous on your part, for four hundred roubles is no small matter for a poor man who lives by his hard work, with a large family of motherless children….”
“But I didn’t mean that! Of course, I am glad you found the money,” Myshkin corrected himself quickly, “but how did you find it?”
“Very simply. Ifound it under the chair on which my coat had been hunq, so that the pocket-book must have slipped out of the pocket on to the floor!”
“Under a chair? It’s impossible! Why, you told me yourself you had hunted in every corner. How was it you came to overlook the most obvious place?”
“I should think I did look! I remember only too well how I looked! I crawled on all fours, felt the place with my hands, moving back the chairs because I couldn’t trust my own eyes: I saw there was nothing there for the place was as smooth and empty as my hands, and yet I went on fumbling. \bu always see that weakness in anyone who is very anxious to find anything, when anything serious and important has been lost. A man sees there’s nothing there, the place is empty, and yet he peeps into it a dozen times.”
“Yes, I daresay; only, how was it seen? … I still don’t understand,” muttered Myshkin, disconcerted. “You told me before it wasn’t there, and you had looked in that place, and then it suddenly turned up!”
“And then it suddenly turned up.”
Myshkin looked strangely at Lebedyev.
“And the general?” he asked suddenly.
“What about the general? . . .” Lebedyev seemed at a loss again.
“Oh, dear! I ask you what did the general say when you found the pocket-book under the chair? You looked for it together, you know.”
“We did look together before. But that time, I confess, I held my tongue, and preferred not to tell him that the pocket-book had been found by me and alone.”
“But… why? And the money? Was it all there?”
“I opened the pocket-book. The money was untouched, every rouble of it.”
“You might have come to tell me,” Myshkin observed thoughtfully.
“I was afraid to disturb you, prince, in your personal, and so to say, absorbing interests, and besides, I made as though I had found nothing. I opened the pocket-book and looked at it, then I shut it and put it back under the chair.”
“But what for?”
“Oh, n-nothing, from curiosity,” chuckled Lebedyev, rubbing his hands.
“Then it has been lying there since the day before yesterday?”
“Oh, no; it only lay there for a day and a night. You see, it was partly that I wanted the general to find it. For since I had found it, why should not the general notice the object, which lay conspicuous under the chair, so to speak, catching the eye. I lifted that chair several times and put it so that the pocket-book was completely in view, but the general simply didn’t notice it, and so it went on for twenty-four hours. He seems to be extraordinarily unobservant now, and there’s no making him out. He talks, tells stories, laughs, chuckles, and then flies into a violent temper with me. I don’t know why. At last, as we were going out of the room, I left the door open on purpose; he hesitated, would have said something, most likely he was uneasy about the pocket-book with such a sum of money in it, but suddenly flew into an awful rage and said nothing. Before we had gone two steps in the street, he left me and walked away in the other direction. We only met in the evening in the tavern.”
“But in the end you did take the pocket-book from under the chair?”
“No, it vanished from under the chair that same night.”
“Then where is it now?”
“Oh, here,” cried Lebedyev, laughing suddenly,
drawing himself up to his full height and looking amiably at Myshkin. “It suddenly turned up, here, in the lappet of my coat. Here; won’t you look, feel.”
The left lappet of the coat had indeed been formed into something like a bag in front, in the most conspicuous place, and it was clear at once to the touch that there was a leather pocket-book there that had fallen down from a torn pocket.
“I took it out and