fifteen — ran out after their mother and surrounded Myshkin, gaping. They were followed by a lean, yellow-faced aunt, and last of all the grandmother, a very aged lady in spectacles. The lady of the house earnestly begged him to go in and sit down, which Myshkin did. He saw at once that they knew quite well who he was and that his wedding was to have taken place the day before, and that they were dying to ask about the wedding and about the marvellous fact that he was inquiring of them for the woman, who should have been at that moment with him at Pavlovsk, but had too much delicacy to ask. In brief outlines he satisfied their curiosity about the wedding. Cries and exclamations of wonder and dismay followed, so that he was obliged to tell almost the whole story, in outline only, of course. Finally, the council of the sage and agitated ladies determined that the first thing certainly was to knock at Rogozhin’s till he got an answer and to find out positively from him about everything. If he were not at home (and that he must ascertain for certain), or if he were unwilling to say, the prince should go to a German lady living with her mother at Semyonovsky Polk, who was a friend of Nastasya Filippovna’s; possibly Nastasya Filippovna, in her excitement and desire to conceal herself, might have passed the night with them.
Myshkin got up completely crushed; they said afterwards that he had turned fearfully pale; indeed, his legs were almost giving way under him. At last, through the terrible shrill patter of their voices, he made out that they were arranging to act with him and were asking for his address in town. He had no address, it appeared; they advised him to put up at some hotel. Myshkin thought a moment and gave the address of the hotel he had stayed at before, the one where he had had a fit five weeks before. Then he set off again to Rogozhin’s. This time he failed to get an answer, not only from Rogozhin’s, but even from his mother’s flat. Myshkin went in search of the porter and with some difficulty found him in the yard; the porter was busy and hardly answered him, hardly looked at him in fact. “Vfet he asserted positively that Parfyon Semyonovitch had gone out very early in the morning, had gone to Pavlovsk, and would not be home that day.
“I will wait; perhaps he will be back in the evening?”
“But he mayn’t be back for a week. There’s no telling.”
“So he had anyway been at home that night?”
“That he had, to be sure.”
All this was suspicious, and there was something queer about it. It was quite possible that the porter might have received fresh instructions in the interval: he had been quite talkative the first time, but now he simply turned his back on him. But Myshkin made up his mind to come back once more, two hours later, and even to keep watch on the house if necessary; but now there was still hope in the German lady and he drove off to Semyonovsky Polk.
But at the German lady’s they did not even understand what he wanted. From some words they let slip, he was able to guess that the German beauty had quarrelled with Nastasya Filippovna about a fortnight before, so that she had heard nothing of her of late and exerted herself to the utmost now to make him understand that she did not care to hear anything “if she had married all the princes in the world.” Myshkin made haste to get away. It occurred to him among other conjectures that she might have gone to Moscow as she had done before, and Rogozhin of course had gone after her or perhaps with her. “If I could only find any traces!” He remembered, however, that he must stop at a hotel and he hurried to Liteyny; there he was at once given a room. The waiter asked him if he would not have something to eat; he answered absent-mindedly that he would. Then, realising, was furious with himself at wasting half an hour over lunch; and only later on grasped the fact that he was not obliged to remain to eat the lunch that was served to him. A strange sensation gained possession of him in that dingy and stuffy corridor, a sensation that strove painfully to become a thought; but he still could not guess what that new struggling thought was. He went out of the hotel at last, hardly knowing what he was doing; his head was in a whirl. But where was he to go? He rushed off to Roqozhin’s aqain.
Rogozhin had not come back; there was no answer to his ring; he rang at old Madame Rogozhin’s; the door was opened and he was told that Parfyon Semyonovitch was not at home and might be away for three days. Myshkin was disconcerted at being looked at as before with such wild curiosity. This time he could not find the porter at all. He crossed over to the opposite pavement as before, gazed up at the windows and walked up and down in the stifling heat for half an hour, possibly more. This time nothing was stirring; the windows did not open, the white curtains were motionless. He made up his mind that he certainly had been mistaken before, that it was his fancy; that the windows in fact were so opaque and dirty that it would have been difficult to see, even if anyone had peeped out. Relieved by this reflection he set off to the widow lady’s at Izmailovsky Polk.
There they were already expecting him. The lady herself had already been to three or four places and had even been to Rogozhin’s; nothing was to be seen or heard there. Myshkin listened in silence, went into the room, sat down on the sofa and gazed at them all, as though he did not understand what they were talking about. Strange to say, he was at one moment keenly observant, at the rest absent-minded to an incredible degree. All the family declared afterwards that he was an extraordinarily strange person that day, so that “perhaps even then the end was clear.” At last he got up and asked them to show him the rooms which had been Nastasya Filippovna’s. They were two large, light, lofty rooms, very nicely furnished and let at a high rent. All the ladies described afterwards how Myshkin had scrutinised every object in the room, had seen on the table a French book from the library, “Madame Bovary,” lying opened, turned down the corner of the page at which the book was open, asked permission to take it with him, and not heeding the objection that it was a library book, put it in his pocket. He sat down at the open window and seeing a card-table marked with chalk, he asked who played. They told him that Nastasya Filippovna used to play every evening with Rogozhin at Fools, Preference, Millers, Whist, \bur own Trumps — all sorts of games, and that they had only taken to playing cards lately, after she came back from Pavlovsk, because Nastasya Filippovna was always complaining that she was bored, that Rogozhin would sit silent all the evening and did not know how to say a word, and she would often cry; and suddenly the next evening Rogozhin had taken a pack of cards out of his pocket; then Nastasya Filippovna had laughed, and they began playing. Myshkin asked where were the cards they used to play with? But the cards were not forthcoming; Rogozhin used to bring a new pack everyday in his pocket and took it away again with him.
The ladies advised him to go once more to Rogozhin’s and to knock loudly once more, and to go not at once but in the evening, “perhaps something will turn up.” The widow herself offered meanwhile to go to Pavlovsk, to Darya Alexeyevna’s, to find out whether anything was known of her there. They asked Myshkin to come again in any case at ten o’clock that evening, that they might agree on the plans for next day.
In spite of all their attempts to comfort and reassure him, Myshkin’s soul was overwhelmed with absolute despair. In unutterable dejection he walked to his hotel. The dusty, stifling atmosphere of Petersburg weighed on him like a press; he was jostled by morose or drunken people, stared aimlessly at the faces, and perhaps walked much farther than he need have done; it was almost evening when he went into his room. He decided to rest a little and then to go to Rogozhin’s again, as he had been advised. He sat down on the sofa, leaned his elbows on the table and sank into thought.
God knows how long and of what he thought. There were many things he dreaded and he felt painfully, agonisingly, that he was in terrible dread. Vera Lebedyev came into his mind; then the thought struck him that Lebedyev perhaps knew something about it, or, if he did not, might find out more quickly and easily than he could. Then he remembered Ippolit, and that Rogozhin used to visit Ippolit. Then he thought of Rogozhin, as he was lately at the funeral, then in the park, then suddenly as he was here in the corridor, when he hid and waited for him with a knife. He recalled his eyes now, his eyes as they looked