you may put complete trust in it. Fortunately I know his handwriting, for I had business with him lately. .. . If you would let me have a look at it, I might tell you.”
With a shaking hand Myshkin held out the letter without a word.
“What now? What now?” the general cried, looking at everybody like one possessed. “Can it really be an inheritance?”
Every one fixed their eyes on Ptitsyn as he read the letter. The general curiosity had received a new and violent stimulus. Ferdyshtchenko could not keep still; Rogozhin looked on with amazement and great anxiety, turning his eyes from Myshkin to Ptitsyn. Darya Alexeyevna seemed on tenter-hooks of expectation. Even Lebedyev could not help coming out of his corner and bending himself into a triangle, peeped at the letter over Ptitsyn’s shoulder with the airofa man expecting a blow for doing so.
Chapter 16
Irs a genuine thing,” Ptitsyn announced at last, folding up the letter and handing it to Myshkin. “By the uncontested will of your aunt you will come into a very large fortune without any difficulty.”
“Impossible!” the general fired off like a pistol-shot.
Everyone was agape with astonishment again.
Ptitsyn explained, addressing his remarks chiefly to General Epanchin, that Myshkin had five months previously lost an aunt, whom he had never known personally, the elder sister of his mother and the daughter of a Moscow merchant of the third guild, called Papushin, who had died bankrupt and in poverty. But the elder brother of this Papushin, who had also died lately, had been a well-known rich merchant. His two only sons had both died in the same month a year before. The shock of their loss had led to the old man’s illness and death shortly after. He was a widower and had no heirs in the world but his niece, Myshkin’s aunt, who was quite a poor woman without a home of her own. At the time she inherited the fortune she was almost dying of dropsy, but she had at once tried to find Myshkin, putting the matter into Salazkin’s hands, and she had had time to make her will. Apparently neither Myshkin nor the doctor in whose charge he was in Switzerland had cared to wait for an official notification or to make inquiries, and the prince, with Salazkin’s letter in his pocket, had decided to set off himself.
“However, I can only tell you,” Ptitsyn concluded, addressing Myshkin, “that this is certainly true and incontestable, and everything Salazkin says to you as to the authenticity and certainly of your fortune you may take as equal to hard cash in your pocket. I congratulate you, prince! “Vbu too will perhaps come in for a million and a half — possibly more. Papushin was a very rich merchant.”
“Bravo! the last of the Myshkins!” yelled Ferdyshtchenko.
“Hurrah!” croaked Lebedyev in a drunken voice.
“And I lent him twenty-five roubles this morning, poor fellow! Ha, ha, ha! It’s a fairy tale, that’s what it is,” said the general, almost stupefied with astonishment. “Well, I congratulate you — I congratulate you.”
And he got up and went to embrace Myshkin. The others too rose and also pressed round Myshkin. Even those who had retreated behind the curtain came into the drawing-room. There was a confused hubbub of talk and exclamations, there were even clamours for champagne; every one was in fuss and excitement. For an instant they almost forgot Nastasya Filippovna and that she was, anyway, the hostess. But gradually and almost simultaneously the thought occurred to all that Myshkin had just made her an offer of marriage. So that the position struck them as three times as mad and extraordinary as before. Greatly astonished, Totsky shrugged his shoulders; he was almost the only person still sitting, the rest of the company were crowding round the table in disorder.
People asserted afterwards that it was at this moment Nastasya Filippovna went mad. She was still sitting down, and for some time looked about her with a strange and wondering gaze, as though she could not take it in and were trying to grasp what had happened. Then she suddenly turned to Myshkin and with a menacing frown stared intently at him; but that was only for a moment; perhaps she suddenly fancied that it was all a joke, a mockery. But Myshkin’s face reassured her. She pondered, then smiled again vaguely, as though not knowing why.
“Then I am really a princess,” she whispered to herself, as it were mockingly, and, chancing to look at Darya Alexeyevna, she laughed. “It’s a surprising ending. . . . I. . . didn’t expect it. . . . But why are you all standing, friends? Please sit down. Congratulate me and the prince! I think some one asked for champagne, Ferdyshtchenko, go and order it. Katya, Pasha” — she suddenly caught sight of her maids in the doorway— “come here. I am going to be married. Did you hear? To the prince. He has a million and a half; he is Prince Myshkin, and is marrying me.”
“And a good thing too, my dear; it’s high time! It’s not a chance to miss,” cried Darya Alexeyevna, tremendously moved by what had passed.
“Sit down beside me, prince,” Nastasya Filippovna went on. “That’s right. And here they are bringing the wine. Congratulate us, friends!”
“Hurrah!” shouted a number of voices.
Many of them were crowding round the wine, and among these were almost all Rogozhin’s followers. But though they shouted and were prepared to shout, yet many of them, in spite of the strangeness of the circumstances and the surroundings, realised that the situation had changed. Others were bewildered and waited mistrustfully. Many whispered to one another that this was quite an ordinary affair, that princes marry all sorts of women, even girls out of gipsy camps. Rogozhin himself stood staring, his face twisted into a fixed and puzzled smile.
“Prince, my dear fellow, think what you are doing,” General Epanchin whispered with horror, coming up sideways and pulling Myshkin by his sleeve.
Nastasya Filippovna noticed this and laughed.
“No, general! I am a princess myself now, do you hear? The prince won’t let me be insulted. Afanasy Ivanovitch, you too congratulate me. I can sit down beside your wife now everywhere. What do you think,
it’s a good bargain a husband like that? A million and a half, and a prince and an idiot into the bargain, they say. What could be better? Real life is only just beginning for me now. You are too late, Rogozhin! Take away your money; I am marrying the prince, and I am richer than you are!”
But Rogozhin had grasped the situation. There was a look of unspeakable suffering in his face. He clasped his hands and a groan broke from his breast.
“Give her up!” he shouted to Myshkin.
There was laughter.
“Give her up for you?” Darya Alexeyevna pronounced triumphantly. “He plumped the money down on the table, the lout! The prince is marrying her, but you only came in to make an upset!”
“I’ll marry her too! I’ll marry her at once, this minute! I’ll give up everything….”
“Get along! \bu’re a drunkard out of a tavern. You ought to be turned out,” Darya Alexeyevna repeated indignantly.
The laughter was louder than before.
“Do you hear, prince?” said Nastasya Filippovna, turning to him. “That’s how a peasant bids for your bride!”
“He is drunk,” said Myshkin. “He loves you very much.”
“And won’t you feel ashamed afterwards that your bride almost went off with Rogozhin?”
“You were in a fever, you are in a fever now, almost delirious.”
“And won’t you feel ashamed when people tell you afterwards that your wife used to live with Totsky as his kept mistress?”
“No, I shan’t be ashamed. … It wasn’t your doing that you were with Totsky.”
“And you will never reproach me with it?”
“Never.”
“Be careful; don’t answer for your whole life!”
“Nastasya Filippovna,” said Myshkin softly and as it were with compassion, “I told you just now that I would take your consent as an honour, and that you are doing me an honour, not I you. \bu smiled at those words, and I heard people laughing about us. I may have expressed myself very absurdly and have been absurd myself, but I thought all the time that I. . . understood the meaning of honour, and I am sure I spoke the truth. You wanted to ruin yourself just now irrevocably; for you’d never have forgiven yourself for it afterwards. But you are not to blame for anything. \bur life cannot be altogether ruined. What does it matter that Rogozhin did come to you and Gavril Ardalionovitch tried to deceive you? Why will you go on dwelling on it? Few people would do what you have done, I tell you that again. As for your meaning to go with Rogozhin, you were ill when you meant to do it. “Vbu are ill now, and you had much better go to bed. \bu would have gone off to be a washerwoman next day; you wouldn’t have stayed with Rogozhin. “Vbu are proud, Nastasya Filippovna; but perhaps you are so unhappy as really to think yourself to blame. “Vbu want a lot of looking after, Nastasya Filippovna. I will look after you. I saw your portrait this morning and I felt as though I recognized a face that I knew. I felt as though you had called to me already. . . . I shall respect you all
