didn’t know it, did you, prince?” he added with an awkward grin. “He is always reading books and memoirs of that sort.”
“Your uncle is anyway not … a heartless man,” Myshkin observed reluctantly.
He was beginning to feel a great aversion for the young man.
“Why, he’ll be quite puffed up if you praise him like that. Look, he’s licking his lips already with his hand on his heart and his mouth pursed up! He is not heartless perhaps, but he is a rogue, that’s the trouble; and he is a drunkard besides. He is all to pieces, as a man who has been drinking a good many years always is; that’s why nothing goes smoothly with him. He loves his children, I admit; he respected my late aunt . . . even loves me and has left me a share in his will, you know.”
“I won’t leave you anything!” cried Lebedyev furiously.
“Listen, Lebedyev,” said Myshkin, firmly, turning away from the young man. “I know by experience that you can be a businesslike man when you choose. . . . I have very little time now, and if you .. . Excuse me, what is your name and your patronymic? I have forgotten.”
“Ti-ti-timofey.”
“And?”
“Lukyanovitch.”
Everyone in the room laughed again.
“A lie!” cried the nephew. “He is lying even about that! His name is not Timofey Lukyanovitch, prince, but Lukyan Timofeyevitch. Come, why did you tell a lie? Isn’t it just the same to you if it’s Lukyan or Timofey? And what does it matter to the prince? He tells lies simply from habit, I assure you.”
“Can that be true?” asked Myshkin impatiently.
“Lukyan Timofeyevitch it really is,” Lebedyev admitted, overcome with confusion, dropping his eyes humblyand again putting his hand on his heart.
“But why on earth, then, did you say that?”
“To humble myself,” whispered Lebedyev, bending his head lower and more humbly.
“Ech, what nonsense! If only I knew where to find Kolya now,” said Myshkin, and turned to go away.
“I’ll tell you where Kolya is.” The young man put himself forward again.
“No, no, no!” Lebedyev flared up and flew into great excitement.
“Kolya slept here, but in the morning he went out to look for his father, whom vou, prince, have brouqht out of prison — God only knows why! The general promised yesterday to come here to sleep, but he hasn’t come. Most likely he slept in the hotel, The Pair of Scales,’ close by. Kolya is probably there, or in Pavlovsk at the Epanchins’. He had the money, he meant to go yesterday; so he is probably at the ‘Scales’ or at Pavlovsk.”
“He is at Pavlovsk — at Pavlovsk! … Let us go this way — this way, into the garden and . . . have some coffee.”
And Lebedyev took Myshkin’s hand and led him away. They went out of the room, crossed the little yard, and went through a gate. Here there was a very tiny and charming garden in which, owing to the fine season, all the trees were already in leaf. Lebedyev made Myshkin sit down on a green wooden seat by a green table fixed in the ground, and seated himself facing him. A minute later coffee was brought. Myshkin did not refuse it. Lebedyev still looked eagerly and obsequiously into his face.
“I didn’t know you had such an establishment,” said Myshkin with the air of a man thinking of something quite different.
“We are orphans . . .” Lebedyev began, wriggling, but he stopped short.
Myshkin looked absently before him and had no doubt forgotten his remark. A minute passed; Lebedyev watched him and waited.
“Well?” said Myshkin, seeming to wake up. “Ah, yes! You know yourself, Lebedyev, what our business is. I have come in response to your letter. Speak.”
Lebedyev was confused, tried to say something, but only stuttered, no words came. Myshkin waited and smiled mournfully.
“I think I understand you perfectly, Lukyan Timofeyevitch. \bu probably did not expect me, and you thought I shouldn’t come back from the wilds at your first message, and you wrote to clear your conscience. And here I’ve come. Come, give it up, don’t deceive me! Give up serving two masters. Rogozhin has been here for three weeks. I know everything. Have you succeeded in selling her to him, as you did last time? Tell me the truth.”
“The monster found out of himself — of himself.”
“Don’t abuse him. He has treated you badly, of course …”
“He beat me; he nearly did for me!” Lebedyev interrupted with tremendous heat. “He set his dog on me in Moscow; it was after me the whole length of the street — a hunting bitch, a fearsome beast!”
“You take me for a child, Lebedyev. Tell me seriously, has she left him now, in Moscow?”
“Seriously, seriously, gave him the slip on the very day of the wedding again. He was counting the minutes while she made off here to Petersburg and straight to me: ‘Save me, protect me, Lukyan, and don’t tell the prince!’ . . . She is even more afraid of you, prince; there’s something mysterious about it!”
And Lebedyev slyly put his finger to his forehead.
“And now you have brought them together again?”
“Most illustrious prince, how could I. .. how could I prevent it?”
“Well, that’s enough; I’ll find out for myself. Only tell me, where is she now? With him?”
“Oh, no, not at all! She is still by herself. ‘I am free,’ she says; and you know, prince, she insists strongly on that. ‘I am still perfectly free!’ she says. She is still living at my sister-in-law’s, as I wrote to you.”
“And is she there now?”
“Yes, unless she is at Pavlovsk, as the weather is so fine, at Darya Aiexeyevna’s villa. ‘I am still perfectly free,’ she says. She was boasting only yesterday of her freedom to Nikolay Ardalionovitch.-A bad sign!”
And Lebedyev grinned.
“Is Kolya often with her?”
“He is a heedless, unaccountable fellow; he doesn’t keep things secret.”
“Is it long since you have been there?”
“Every day — every day.”
“Then you were there yesterday?”
“N-no, three days ago.”
“What a pity you’ve been drinking, Lebedyev. Or I might have asked you something.”
“No, no, no, not a bit of it!” Lebedyev positively pricked up his ears.
“Tell me, how did you leave her?”
“S-searching.”
“Searching?”
“As though she were always searching for something, as though she had lost something. She is sick at the thought of the marriage and looks upon it as an insult. She thinks no more of him than of a bit of orange peel. “Vfes, she does though, for she thinks of him with fear and trembling; she won’t hear his name, even, and they don’t meet if it can be helped . . . and he feels it only too well. But there’s no getting out of it. She is restless, sarcastic, double-tongued, violent….
“Yes, violent; for she almost pulled my hair last time over one conversation. I tried to bring her round with the Apocalypse.”
“What do you say?” Myshkin asked, thinking he had not heard him rightly.
“By reading the Apocalypse. She is a lady with a restless imagination. He-he! And I’ve noticed too that she has a great partiality for serious subjects, however remote they may be. She likes such talk — she likes it and takes it as a mark of special respect. “Vfes, I am a great hand at interpreting the Apocalypse; I’ve been interpreting it for the last fifteen years. She agreed with me that we are living in the age of the third horse, the black one, and the rider who has the balance in his hand, seeing that everything in the present age is weighed in the scales and by agreement, and people are seeking for nothing but their rights—’a measure of wheat for a penny and three measures of barley for a penny”; and yet they want to keep a free spirit and a pure heart and a sound body and all the gifts of God. But by rights alone they won’t keep them, and afterwards will follow the pale horse and he whose name was Death and with whom hell followed. . . . We talk about that when we meet and … it has had a great effect on her.”
“Do you believe that yourself?” asked Myshkin, scanning Lebedyev with a strange expression.
“I believe it and explain it so. I am naked and a beggar and an atom in the vortex of humanity. No one respects Lebedyev; he is fair game for every one’s wit, and they are all ready to give him a kick. But in interpreting revelation I am equal to the foremost in the land, for I am clever at it. And a grand gentleman trembled before me, sitting in his armchair, as he took it in. His illustrious Excellency Nil Alexeyevitch sent for me the year before last, just before Easter — when I was serving in his department — and purposely sent Pyotr Zaharitch to fetch me from the office to his study. And he asked me when we were alone, ‘Is it true that you expound Anti-christ?’ And I made no secret of it. ‘I do,’ said 1.1
explained and interpreted, and did not soften down the horror, but intentionally increased it, as I unfolded the allegory and fitted dates to it. And he laughed, but he began trembling at the dates and correspondences, and asked me to close the book and go away. He rewarded me at Easter, but the week after he gave up his soul to God.”
“How so, Lebedyev?”
“He did. He fell out of his carriage after dinner. . . knocked his head against a post, and on the spot he passed away like a babe — a