“Where does she live?”
“A long way from here, close to the Great Theatre, at Mitovtsov’s house, almost in the square, on the first floor…. It won’t be a large party, though it is her name-day, and it will break up early….”
It was getting on in the evening. Myshkin sat listening and waiting for the general, who began an extraordinary number of anecdotes and did not finish one of them. On Myshkin’s arrival he asked for another bottle, and it took him an hour to finish it; then he asked for a third, and finished it too. It may well be believed that by that time the general had narrated almost the whole of his history.
At last Myshkin got up and said he could not wait any longer. The general emptied the last drops out of the bottle, stood up, and walked out of the room very unsteadily. Myshkin was in despair. He could not understand how he could have believed in him so foolishly. As a matter of fact, he never had believed in him; he had simply reckoned on the general as a means of getting to Nastasya Filippovna, even at the cost of some impropriety. But he had not anticipated anything very scandalous. The general turned out to be thoroughly drunk; he was overwhelmingly eloquent and talked without ceasing, with feeling and on the verge of tears. He insisted continually that the misbehaviour of all the members of his family had brought about their ruin, and that it was high time to put a stop to it.
They reached Liteyny Street at last. It was still thawinq. A warm, muqqv, depressing wind whistled up and down the streets; carriages splashed through the mud. The horses’ hoofs struck the flags with a metallic ring. Crowds of wet and dejected people slouched along the pavements, here and there a drunken man among them.
“Do you see those first floors lighted up?” said the general. “My old comrades live all about here, and I — I who have seen more service and faced more hardships than any of them, I trudge on foot to the lodging of a woman of doubtful reputation! I, a man who has thirteen bullets in his breast! . . . “Vbu don’t believe it? And yet it was solely on my account Dr. Pirogov telegraphed to Paris and for a while abandoned Sevastopol at the time of the siege, and Nelaton, the Paris court doctor, succeeded in obtaining a free pass in the name of science and got into the besieged city on purpose to examine me. The highest authorities are cognisant of the fact. ‘Ah, that’s the Ivolgin who has thirteen bullets in him!’ . . . That’s how they speak of me. Do you see that house, prince? In the first floor there lives Sokolovitch, an old friend of mine, with his honourable and numerous family. That household and three families living in the Nevsky Prospect and two in Morskaya make up my present circle — that is, of my personal acquaintances. Nina Alexandrovna resigned herself to circumstances long ago. But I still remember the past . . . and still refresh myself, so to speak, in the cultured society of my old comrades and subordinates who worship me to this day. That General Sokolovitch (I haven’t been to call on him for some little time, by the way, and haven’t seen Anna Fyodorovna). . . . You know, dear prince, when one doesn’t entertain oneself, one is apt insensibly to drop out of visiting others. But yet . . . hm! . . . You don’t seem to believe me. . . . But why not introduce the son of the dearest friend of my youth and companion of my childhood into this delightful family? General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin! You will see an exquisite girl, not one indeed — two, even three ornaments of Petersburg and of society: beauty, culture, enlightenment … the woman question, poetry — all united in a happy varied combination, to say nothing of a dowry of eighty thousand roubles in hard cash for each of them, which is never a drawback in spite of any feminist or social questions. … In fact I must, I certainly must introduce you. General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin! A sensation, in fact.”
“At once? Now? But you’ve forgotten . . ,” began Myshkin.
“I’ve forgotten nothing — nothing. Come along! This way, up this magnificent staircase. I wonder why there’s no porter, but. . . it’s a holiday and the porter has taken himself off. They’ve not dismissed the drunken fellow yet. This Sokolovitch is indebted for the whole happiness of his life and career to me — to me and no one else. But here we are.”
Myshkin made no further protest and to avoid irritating the general he followed him submissively, confidently hoping that General Sokolovitch and all his family would gradually evaporate like a mirage and turn out to be non-existent, so that they could quietly retrace their steps downstairs. But to his horror this hope began to fail him: the general led him up the stairs like a man who really had friends living there, and every minute he put in some biographical or topographical detail with mathematical exactitude. At last, when they had reached the first floor and stopped on the right before the door of a luxurious flat and the general had hold of the bell, Myshkin made up his mind to make his escape; but one strange circumstance held him for a moment.
“You’ve made a mistake, general,” he said, “the name on the door is Kulakov, and you want Sokolovitch.”
“Kulakov . . . Kulakov means nothing. The flat is Sokolovitch’s, and it’s Sokolovitch I shall ask for. Hang Kulakov! … Here is some one coming.”
The door was opened indeed. A footman peeped out and announced that the master and mistress were not at home.
“What a pity — what a pity! Just how things always happen,” Ardalion Alexandrovitch repeated several times with profound regret. “Tell them, my boy, that General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin wished to present their respects in person and regret extremely, extremely…”
At that moment from an inner room another person peeped towards the open door, apparently a housekeeper, or perhaps a governess, a lady about forty in a dark dress. She approached inquisitively and mistrustfully, hearing the names of General Ivolqinand Prince Mvshkin.
“Marya Alexandrovna is not at home,” she pronounced, scrutinising the general carefully. “She has gone out with the young lady, Alexandra Mihailovna, to her grandmother’s.”
“Alexandra Mihailovna too! Good heavens, how unfortunate! Would you believe it, madam, that is always my luck! I humbly beg you to give my compliments, and beg Alexandrova Mihailovna to remember… in fact give her my earnest wishes for what she wished for herself on Thursday evening, listening to a Ballade of Chopin’s; she will remember. My earnest wishes! General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin!”
“I won’t forget,” said the lady with more confidence, as she bowed them out.
As they went downstairs, the general continued with undiminished warmth regretting that they had not found them in, and that Myshkin had missed making a delightful acquaintance.
“Do you know, my dear boy, I am something of a poet in soul. Have you noticed that? But… but I do believe we may have called at the wrong flat,” he concluded suddenly and quite unexpectedly. “The Sokolovitches, I remember now, live in a different house; and I fancy, too, they are in Moscow now. Yes, I made a slight mistake, but no matter.”
“There’s only one thing I want to know,” Myshkin observed disconsolately. “Must I give up reckoning on you altogether, and hadn’t I better go alone?”
“Give up? Reckoning? Alone? But whatever for, when this is for me a vital undertaking on which so much of the future of my family depends? No, my young friend, you don’t know Ivolgin. To say ‘Ivolgin’ is to say ‘a rock’; you can build on Ivolgin as you can on a rock, that’s what they used to say in the squadron in which I began my service. I have only just to call in for one minute on the way at the house where my soul has for years found consolation after my trials and anxieties….”
“You want to go home?”
“No! I want to go and see Madame Terentyev, the widow of Captain Terentyev, one of my subordinate officers . . . and a friend of mine, too. Here at Madame Terentyev’s I am refreshed in spirit, and here I bring my daily cares and my family troubles … and as to-day I am weighed down by a heavy moral burden, I…”
“I am afraid I was awfully stupid to have troubled you this evening,” murmured Myshkin. “Besides, you’re … Good-bye!”
“But I cannot, I really cannot let you go, my young friend,” cried the general. “A widow, a mother of a family, and she draws from her heart strings which re-echo through all my being. A visit to her is a matter of five minutes; I don’t stand on ceremony in the house, I almost live there. I will wash, make myself a little tidy, and then we’ll drive to the Great Theatre. I assure you I need you the whole evening. Here, in this house, here we are. Ah, Kolya, you here already! Is Marfa Borissovna at home, or have you onlyjust come?”
“Oh no,” answered Kolya, who had just met them in the gateway, “I’ve been here a long time, with Ippolit. He is
