. .
though it was almost physical too, not far off it!”
“What letter was it she flung at you unopened?”
“Why . . . he-he-he! Haven’t I told you? I thought I’d said that already. … It was a letter I had received on purpose to give to …”
“From whom? From whom?”
It was difficult to make head or tail of some “explanations” of Lebedyev’s, or to understand anything from them. But as far as he could make out, Myshkin gathered that the letter had been brought in the early morning to Vera Lebedyev by the servant girl, to be delivered to the person to whom it was addressed . . . “just as before . . . just as before to a certain personage, and from the same person. (For I designate one of them a ‘person’ and the other only a ‘personage,’ as derogatory and distinguishing; for there is a great distinction between an innocent and high-born young lady of a general’s family . . . and a lady of the other sort.) And so the letter was from that ‘person’ beginning with the letter ‘A’ …”
“How can that be? To Nastasya Filippovna? Nonsense!” cried Myshkin.
“It was, it was. Or if not to her, to Rogozhin; it’s all the same, to Rogozhin . . . and there was even one to Mr. Terentyev, to be handed on from the person beginning with ‘A,’” said Lebedyev, smiling and winking.
As he was continually mixing one thing up with another and forgetting what he had begun to speak about, Myshkin held his peace to let him speak out. “Vfet it still remained far from clear whether the correspondence had been carried on through him or through Vera. Since he himself declared that “it was just the same whether the letters were for Rogozhin or for Nastasya Filippovna,” it seemed more likely that the letters had not passed through his hands, if there actually had been letters. How this letter had come into his hands remained absolutely inexplicable. The most probable explanation was that he had somehow snatched them from Vera . . . stolen them on the sly and carried them for some object to Lizaveta Prokofyevna. That was what Myshkin gathered and understood at last.
“You’re out of your mind!” he cried in extreme agitation.
“Not quite, honoured prince,” Lebedyev replied, not without malice. “It’s true, I meant to hand it to you, to put it into vour own hands; to do vou a service . . .
but I reflected that it was better to be of use in that quarter by revealing everything to the noble-hearted mother… as I had communicated with her before by letter anonymously; and when I wrote to her just now a preliminary note asking her to see me at twenty minutes past eight I signed myself again ‘your secret correspondent.’ I was admitted promptly with the utmost haste by the back door… to the presence of the illustrious lady.”
“Well?”
“And there, as you know already, she nearly beat me; very nearly, so that one might almost say she practically did beat me. And she threw the letter in my face. It’s true she wanted to keep it — I saw it, I noticed it; but she thought better of it and flung it in my face: ‘Since a fellow like you has been entrusted with it, give it!’ . . . She was positively offended. Since she wasn’t ashamed to say so before me, she must have been offended. She’s a hot-tempered lady!”
“Where is the letter now?”
“Why, I’ve got it still. Here it is.”
And he handed Myshkin Aglaia’s note to Gavril Ardalionovitch, which the latter two hours later showed to his sister with such triumph.
“That letter can’t remain with you.”
“It’s for you, for you. It’s to you I am bringing it,” Lebedyev hastened to declare with warmth. “Now I’m yours again, entirely yours, from head to heart, your servant after my momentary treachery. ‘Punish the heart, spare the beard,’ as Thomas More said … in England and in Great Britain. ‘Mea culpa, mea culpa,’ as the Romish Pope says — that is, I mean the Pope of Rome, though I call him the Romish Pope.”
“This letter must be sent off at once,” said Myshkin anxiously. “I’ll give it.”
“But wouldn’t it be better, wouldn’t it be better, most highly bred prince,… to do this?”
Lebedyev made a strange, expressive grimace. He fidgeted violently in his place, as though he had been suddenly pricked by a needle, and, winking slyly, made a significant gesture with his hands.
“What do you mean?” Myshkin asked severely.
“Wouldn’t it be better to open it?” he whispered ingratiatinglyand, as it were, confidentially.
Myshkin leapt up with such passion that Lebedyev took to his heels, but he stopped short at the door to see whether he could hope for pardon.
“Ech! Lebedyev, is it possible to sink to such abject degradation as this?” cried Myshkin bitterly.
Lebedyev’s face brightened.
“I’m abject, abject!” he approached at once, with tears, beating himself on the breast.
“You know this is abominable!”
“Abominable it is! That’s the word for it!”
“What a horrid habit it is to behave … in this queer way! You . . . are simply a spy! Why do you write anonymously and worry such a noble and kind-hearted woman? And why has not Aglaia Ivanovna a right to write to whom she pleases? Did you go to complain of it to-day? Did you hope to receive a reward? What induced you to tell tales?”
“Simply agreeable curiosity and the desire of a generous heart to be of use! Now I am yours again, all yours! You may hang me!”
“Did you go to Lizaveta Prokofyevna in the condition you’re in now?” Myshkin inquired with disgust.
“No, I was fresher, more decent. It was only after my humiliation that I got… into this state.”
“Well, that’s enough. Leave me.”
But he had to repeat this request several times before he could induce his visitor to go. Even after he had opened the door, he came back on tip-toe into the middle of the room and gesticulated with his hands to show how to open the letter. He did not venture to put his advice into words. Then he went out with a suave and amiable smile.
All this had been extremely painful to hear. What was most evident was one striking fact: that Aglaia was in great trouble, great uncertainty, in great distress about something. (“From jealousy,” Myshkin whispered to himself.) It was evident also that she was being worried by ill-intentioned people, and what was very strange was that she trusted them in this way. No doubt that inexperienced but hot and proud little head was hatching some special schemes, perhaps ruinous, and utterly wild. Myshkin was greatly alarmed, and in his perturbation did not know what to decide upon. There was no doubt he must do something, he felt that. He looked once more at the address on the sealed letter. Oh, he had no doubt and no uneasiness on that side, for he trusted her. What made him uneasy about that letter was somethinq different. He did not trust Gavril Ardalionovitch. And yet he was on the point of deciding to restore him the letter himself, and he even left the house with that object, but he changed his mind on the way. Almost at Ptitsyn’s door, by good fortune he met Kolya, and charged him to put the letter into his brother’s hands as though it had come straight from Aglaia Ivanovna. Kolya asked no questions and delivered it, so that Ganya had no suspicion that the letter had halted so many times upon its journey. Returning home, Myshkin asked Vera Lebedyev to come to him, told her what was necessary, and set her mind at rest, for she had been all this time hunting for the letter, and was in tears. She was horrified when she learned that her father had carried off the letter. (Myshkin found out from her afterwards that she had more than once helped Rogozhin and Aglaia Ivanovna in secret, and it had never occurred to her that she could be injuring Myshkin in doing so.)
And Myshkin was at last so upset that when, two hours later, a messenger from Kolya ran in with the news of his father’s illness, for the first minute the prince could not grasp what was the matter. But this event restored him by completely distracting his attention. He stayed at Nina Alexandrovna’s (where the invalid, of course, had been carried) right up to the evening. He was scarcely of any use, but there are people whom one is, for some reason, glad to have about one in times of grief. Kolya was terribly distressed, he cried hysterically, but was continually being sent on errands: he ran for a doctor and hunted up three; ran to the chemist’s and to the barber’s. They succeeded in resuscitating the general, but he did not regain his senses. The doctors opined that the patient was in any case in danger. Varya and Nina Alexandrovna never left the sick man’s side. Ganya was disconcerted and overcome, but would not go upstairs, and seemed afraid to see the invalid; he wrung his hands, and in incoherent and disconnected talk with Myshkin he let drop the phrase, “What a calamity, and to come at such a moment!”
Myshkin fancied he understood what he meant by “such a moment.” Myshkin did not find Ippolit at Ptitsyn’s. Lebedyev, who after the morning’s “explanation” had slept all day without waking, ran in towards evening. Now he was almost sober and shed genuine tears over the sick man, as though