answer to her inquiry she said that Rogozhin had called on her at the very time when he was supposed to have been seen in the garden by Nastasya Filippovna. It was explained as pure imagination. Nastasya Filippovna went to the captain’s widow herself to question her more minutely, and was greatly relieved.
On the day before the wedding Myshkin left Nastasya Filippovna in a state of great excitement. Her wedding finery arrived from the dressmaker’s in Petersburg — her wedding dress, the bridal veil, and so on. Myshkin had not expected that she would be so much excited over her dress. He praised everything, and his praises made her happier than ever. But she let slip what was in her mind. She had heard that there was indignation in the town; that the madcaps of the place were getting up some sort of charivari with music, and possibly verses composed for the occasion; and that this was more or less with the approval of the rest of Pavlovsk society. And so she wanted to hold up her head higher than ever before them, to outshine them all with the taste and richness of her attire. “Let them shout, let them whistle if they dare!” Her eyes flashed at the very thought of it. She had another secret thought, but she did not utter that aloud. She hoped that Aglaia, or at any rate some one sent by her, would also be in the crowd incognito, in the church, would look and see, and she secretly prepared herself for it. She parted from Myshkin at eleven o’clock in the evening, absorbed in these ideas, but before it had struck midnight a messenger came running to Myshkin from Darya Alexeyevna begging him to “come at once, she’s very bad.”
Myshkin found his bride shut up in her bedroom, weeping, in despair, in hysterics. For a long time she would hear nothing that was said to her through the closed door. At last she opened it, letting no one in but Myshkin, shut the door, and fell on her knees before him. (So at least Darya Alexeyevna, who managed to get a peep, reported afterwards.)
“What am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing to you?” she cried, embracing his feet convulsively.
Myshkin spent a whole hour with her; we do not know what they talked about. Darya Alexeyevna said that they parted peaceably and happily an hour later. Myshkin sent once more that night to inquire, but Nastasya Filippovna had dropped asleep.
In the morning before she waked, two more messengers were sent by Myshkin to Darya Alexeyevna, and it was a third messenger who was charged to report that “there was a perfect swarm of dressmakers and hairdressers from Petersburg round Nastasya Filippovna now; that there was no trace of yesterday’s upset; that she was busy, as such a beauty might well be, over dressing before her wedding; and that now, that very minute, there was an important consultation which of her diamonds to put on and how to put them on.”
Myshkin was completely reassured.
The account of what followed at the wedding was given me by people who saw it all, and I think it is correct.
The wedding was fixed for eight o’clock in the evening; Nastasya Filippovna was quite ready by seven. From six o’clock onwards a gaping crowd began gathering round Lebedyev’s villa, and a still larger one round Darya Alexeyevna’s. The church began filling up by seven o’clock. Vera Lebedyev and Kolya were in great alarm on Myshkin’s account. But they had a great deal to do in the house. They were arranging for a reception and refreshments in the prince’s rooms, though they hardly expected much of a gathering after the wedding. Besides the necessary persons who had to be present at the wedding, Lebedyev, the Ptitsyns, Ganya, the doctor with the Anna on his breast, and Darya Alexeyevna had been invited. When Myshkin asked Lebedyev why he had invited the doctor, “a man he hardly knew,” the latter replied complacently:
“An order on his breast, a man who is respected, for the style of the thing.”
And Myshkin laughed. Keller and Burdovsky, in evening suits, with gloves, looked quite correct, only Keller still troubled Myshkin and his supporters by a certain undisguised inclination for combat and cast very hostile looks at the sightseers who were gathering round the house. At last, at half-past seven, Myshkin set off for the church in a coach. We may observe, by the way, that he particularly wished not to omit any of the usual ceremonies. Everything was done openly, publicly, and “in due order.” Makinq his wav somehow or other throuqh the crowd in the church, escorted by Keller, who cast menacing looks to right and left of him, and followed by a continual fire of whispers and exclamations, Myshkin disappeared for a time into the altar end of the church, — and Keller went off to fetch the bride from Darya Alexeyevna’s, where he found at the entrance a crowd two or three times as large and fully three times as free and easy as at the prince’s. As he mounted the steps, he heard exclamations that were beyond endurance, and had already turned round to address an appropriate harangue to the crowd when he was luckily stopped by Burdovsky and by Darya Alexeyevna, who ran out at the door. They seized him and drew him indoors by force. Keller was irritated and hurried. Nastasya Filippovna got up, looked once more into the looking-glass, observed with a wry smile, as Keller reported afterwards, that she was “as pale as death,” bowed devoutly to the ikon, and went out on to the steps.
A hum of voices greeted her appearance. For the first moment, it is true, there were sounds of laughter, applause, even perhaps hisses, but within a moment another note was heard.
“What a beauty!” they exclaimed in the crowd.
“She’s not the first and she won’t be the last.”
“She’ll cover it all up with the wedding ring.”
“You won’t find a beauty like that again in a hurry. Hurrah!” cried those standing nearest.
“A princess! For a princess like that I’d sell my soul,” cried a clerk. ‘“One night at the price of a life!’” he quoted.
Nastasya Filippovna certainly was as white as a handkerchief when she came out, but her great black eyes glowed upon the crowd like burning coals. The crowd could not stand against them. Indignation was transformed into cries of enthusiasm. The door of the carriage was already open, Keller had already offered the bride his arm, when suddenly she uttered a cry and rushed straight into the crowd. All who were accompanying her were petrified with amazement. The crowd parted to make way for her, and five or six paces from the steps Rogozhin suddenly appeared. Nastasya Filippovna had caught his eyes in the crowd. She rushed at him like a mad creature and seized him by both arms.
“Save me! Take me away! Where you will, at once!”
Rogozhin seized her in his arms and almost carried her to the carriage. Then in a flash he pulled out a hundred-rouble note and gave it to the driver.
“To the railway station, and if you catch the train, there’s another hundred for you.”
And he leapt into the carriage after Nastasya Filippovna and closed the door. The coachman did not hesitate for one moment and whipped up his horses. Keller pleaded afterwards that he was taken by surprise: “Another second and I should have come to, and I wouldn’t have let them go!” he explained, describing the adventure. He and Burdovsky would have taken another carriage that stood by and have rushed off in pursuit, but reflected as he was starting that “it was in any case too late, and one couldn’t bring her back by force!”
“And the prince won’t wish it!” decided Burdovsky, greatly agitated.
Rogozhin and Nastasya Filippovna galloped to the station in time. After they had got out of the carriage, and when Rogozhin was on the point of stepping into the train he had time to stop a girl who was wearing an old but decent dark mantle and a silk kerchief on her head.
“Would you like fifty roubles for your mantle?” he cried, suddenly holding out the money to the girl. While she was still lost in amazement and trying to take it in, he had already thrust the fifty-rouble note into her hand, pulled off the mantle and kerchief, and flung them on the shoulders and head of Nastasya Filippovna. Her gorgeous array was too conspicuous, would have attracted attention on the journey, and it was only afterwards that the girl understood why her old and worthless mantle had been bought at so much profit to herself.
A rumour of what had happened reached the church with astounding rapidity. When Keller hurried to the prince, numbers of people whom he did not know rushed up to question him. There was loud talking, shaking of heads, and even laughter. No one left the church. Every one waited to see how the bridegroom would take the news. He turned pale, but received the news quietly, saying hardly anything.
“I was afraid, but yet I didn’t think this would happen. . . .”And then, after a brief silence, he added: “However… in her condition . . . this is the natural order of things.” This comment even Keller spoke of afterwards as “unexampled philosophy”
Myshkin came out of the church apparently calm and confident, so at least many people noticed and said afterwards. He seemed very anxious to get home and to be alone, but