are you doing, my dear?’ (I was always asking questions in those days.) ‘God has just such gladness every time he sees from heaven that a sinner is praying to Him with all his heart, as a mother has when she sees the first smile on her baby’s face.’ That was what the woman said to me almost in those words, this deep, subtle and truly religious thought — a thought in which all the essence of Christianity finds expression; that is the whole conception of God as our Father and of God’s gladness in man, like a father’s in his own child — the fundamental idea of Christ! A simple peasant woman! It’s true she was a mother . . . and who knows, very likely that woman was the wife of that soldier. Listen, Parfyon. “Vbu asked me a question just now; here is my answer. The essence of religious feeling does not come under any sort of reasoning or atheism, and has nothing to do with any crimes or misdemeanours. There is somethinq else here, and there will always be something else — something that the atheists will for ever slur over; they will always be talking of something else. But the chief thing is that you will notice it more clearly and quickly in the Russian heart than anywhere else. And this is my conclusion. It’s one of the chief convictions which I have gathered from our Russia. There is work to be done, Parfyon! There is work to be done in our Russian world, believe me! Remember how we used to meet in Moscow and talk at one time . . . and I didn’t mean to come back here now, and I thought to meet you not at all like this! Oh, well! . . . Good-bye till we meet! May God be with you!”
He turned and went down the stairs.
“Lyov Nikolayevitch!” Parfyon shouted from above when Myshkin had reached the first half-landing. “Have you that cross you bought from that soldier on you?”
“Yes,” and Myshkin stopped again.
“Show me.”
Something strange again! He thought a moment, went upstairs again, and pulled out the cross to show him without taking it off his neck.
“Give it me,” said Rogozhin.
“Why? Would you …” Myshkin did not want to part with the cross.
“I’ll wear it, and give you mine for you to wear.”
“You want to change crosses? Certainly, Parfyon, I am delighted. We will be brothers!”
Myshkin took off his tin cross, Parfyon his gold one, and they changed. Parfyon did not speak. With painful surprise Myshkin noticed that the same mistrustfulness, the same bitter, almost ironical smile still lingered on the face of his adopted brother; at moments, anyway, it was plainly to be seen. In silence at last Rogozhin took Myshkin’s hand and stood for some time as though unable to make up his mind. At last he suddenly drew him after him, saying in a scarcely audible voice, “Come along.” They crossed the landing of the first floor and rang at the door facing the one they had come out of. It was soon opened to them. A bent old woman, wearing a black knitted kerchief, bowed low to Rogozhin without speaking. He quickly asked her some question, and, without waiting for an answer, led Myshkin through the rooms. Again they went through dark rooms of an extraordinary chilly cleanliness,
coldly and severely furnished with old-fashioned furniture under clean white covers. Without announcing their arrival, Rogozhin led Myshkin into a small room like a drawing-room, divided in two by a polished mahogany wall with doors at each end, probably leading to a bedroom. In the corner of the drawing-room by the stove a little old woman was sitting in an armchair. She did not look very old; she had a fairly healthy, pleasant round face, but she was quite grey, and it could be seen from the first glance that she had become quite childish. She was wearing a black woollen dress, a large black kerchief on her shoulders, and a clean white cap with black ribbons. Her feet were resting on a footstool. Another clean little old woman, rather older, was with her. She too was in mourning, and she too wore a white cap; she was silent, knitting a stocking, and was probably some sort of a companion. It might be fancied that they were both always silent. The first old woman, seeing Rogozhin and Myshkin, smiled to them, and nodded her head several times to them as a sign of satisfaction.
“Mother,” said Rogozhin, kissing her hand, “this is my great friend, Prince Lyov Nikolayevitch Myshkin.
I’ve exchanged crosses with him. He was like a brother to me at one time in Moscow; he did a great deal for me. Bless him, mother, as though it were your own son you were blessing. Nay, old mother, like this. Let me put your fingers right….”
But before Parfyon had time to touch her, the old woman had raised her right hand, put her two fingers against her thumb, and three times devoutly made the sign of the cross over Myshkin. Then she nodded kindly, affectionately to him again.
“Come along, Lyov Nikolayevitch,” said Parfyon, “I only brought you here for that….”
When they came out on to the staircase again, he added:
“You know she understands nothing that’s said to her, and she didn’t understand a word I said, but she blessed you; so she wanted to do it of herself. . . . Well, good-bye, it’s time you were going, and I too.”
And he opened his door.
“At least let me embrace you at parting, you strange fellow,” cried Myshkin, looking at him with tender reproach; and he would have embraced him.
But Parfyon had scarcely raised his arms when he let them fall aqain. He could not brinq himself to it.
He turned away so as not to look at Myshkin; he didn’t want to embrace him.
“Don’t be afraid! Though I’ve taken your cross, I won’t murder you for your watch!” he muttered indistinctly, with a sudden strange laugh.
But all at once his whole face changed; he turned horribly pale, his lips trembled, his eyes glowed. He raised his arms, embraced Myshkin warmly, and said breathlessly:
“Well, take her then, since it’s fated! She is yours! I give in to you! … Remember Rogozhin!”
And turning from Myshkin without looking at him, he went hurriedly in and slammed the door after him.

Chapter 5

It WAS by now late, almost half-past two, and Myshkin did not find General Epanchin at home. Leaving a card, he made up his mind to go to the hotel “The Scales,” and inquire for Kolya, and if he were not there, to leave a note for him. At “The Scales” they told him that Nikolay Ardalionovitch “had gone out in the morning, but as he went out he left word that if anyone should ask for him, they were to say that he might be back at three o’clock. But if he were not back by half-past three, it would mean that he had taken the train to Pavlovsk to Madame Epanchin’s villa and would dine there.” Myshkin sat down to wait for him, and as he was there, asked for dinner.

Kolya had not made his appearance at half-past three, nor even at four. Myshkin went out and walked away mechanically. At the beginning of summer in Petersburg there are sometimes exquisite days — bright, still and hot. By good fortune this day was one of those rare days. For some time Myshkin wandered aimlessly. He knew the town very little. He stood still sometimes in squares, on bridges, or at cross roads facing certain houses; once he went into a confectioner’s to rest. Sometimes he began watching the passers-by with great interest; but most of the time he scarcely noticed the people in the street, nor where he was going. He was painfully strained and restless, and at the same time he felt an extraordinary craving for solitude. He longed to be alone and to give himself up quite passively to this agonising emotion without seeking to escape from it. He loathed the thought of facing the questions that were surging in his heart and his mind. “Am I to blame for all this?” he muttered to himself, almost unconscious of his own words.

Towards six o’clock he found himself at the railway station of the Tsarskoe Syelo line. Solitude had soon become unbearable; a new warm impulse seized upon his heart, and for one moment the darkness in which his soul was steeped was lighted up by a ray of brightness. He took a ticket to Pavlovsk and was in impatient haste to get off; but, of course, he was pursued by something, and that something was a reality and not a fancy, as he was perhaps inclined to imagine. He had almost taken his seat in the train, when he suddenly flung the ticket he had only just taken on the floor and went back out of the station, pondering and confused. Some time later in the street he seemed suddenly to recall something; he seemed suddenly to grasp something very strange, something that had long worried him. He suddenly realised that he had been doing something which he had been doing for a long time, though he had not been aware of it till that minute. For some hours previously, even at “The Scales,” and even before he went there, he had at intervals begun suddenly looking for something. He would forget it for a long while, half an hour at a time, and then begin looking about him