She wanted to see you to-day.”
“I’ll go to-morrow. I’m going home directly. Are you … coming to me?”
“Why should I? I’ve said all I had to say. Goodbye.”
“Won’t you come?” Myshkin asked gently.
“You’re a strange fellow, Lyov Nikolayevitch. One can’t help wondering at you.”
Rogozhin laughed malignantly.
“Why so? Why are you so bitter against me now?” asked Myshkin, sadly and warmly. “\bu know yourself now that all you thought was untrue. But yet I fancy that you are still angry with me. And do you know why? You’re still angry because you attacked me. I tell you I only remember that Parfyon Rogozhin, with whom I exchanged crosses that day. I wrote to you last night to forget all that madness and not to speak of it again. Why do you turn away from me? Why do you hide your hand? I tell you, I look upon all that happened then simply as madness. I understand what you were feeling, that day, as though it were myself. What you fancied did not exist and could not exist. Why should there be anger between us?”
“As though you could feel anger!” Rogozhin laughed again, in response to Myshkin’s sudden and heated speech.
He had moved two steps away, and was actually standing with his face averted from Myshkin and his hands hidden behind him.
“It’s not the thing for me to come and see you now, Lyov Nikolayevitch,” he added, slowly and sententiously in conclusion.
“You still hate me so?”
“I don’t like you, Lyov Nikolayevitch, so why should I come and see you! Ah, prince, you’re like a child; you want a plaything, and you must have it at once, but you don’t understand things. \bu are saying just what you wrote in your letter. Do you suppose I don’t believe you? I believe every word — you never have deceived me, and never will in the future. But I don’t like you all the same. You wrote that you’ve forgotten everything and you only remember the brother Rogozhin with whom you exchanged crosses, and not that Rogozhin who raised his knife against you. But how do you know my feelings?” (Rogozhin smiled again.) “Why, perhaps I’ve never once repented of it, while you’ve already sent me your brotherly forgiveness. Perhaps I was already thinking of something else that evening, but about that….”
“You had forgotten to think!” Myshkin put in. “I should think so! I bet that you went straight then to the train, and flew off here to Pavlovsk, to the bandstand to follow her about in the crowd and watch her as you did to-day. That doesn’t surprise me! If you hadn’t been in such a state at that time, that you could think of nothing else, perhaps you wouldn’t have attacked me with the knife. I had a presentiment from the first, looking at you; do you know what you were like then? When we changed crosses, that idea may have been already at the back of my mind. Why did you take me to your mother then? Did you think to put a check on yourself by that? That no, you cannot have thought of it, but you felt it just as I did. . . . We were feeling just the same. If you had not made that attack (which God averted), what should I have been then? I did suspect you of it, our sin was the same, in fact. (\fes, don’t frown. And why do you laugh?) You’ve ‘not repented’! Perhaps even if you wanted to, you couldn’t regret it, because you don’t like me, besides. And if I were like an innocent angel to you, you’d still detest me so long as you think she loves me and not you. That must be jealousy. But I’ve thought something about that this week, Parfyon, and I’ll tell it you. Do you know that she may love you now more than anyone, and in such a way that the more she torments you, the more she loves you? She won’t tell you so, but you must know how to see it. When all’s said and done, why else is she going to marry you? Some day she will tell you so herself. Some women want to be loved like that, and that’s just her character. And your love and your character must impress her! Do you know that a woman is capable of torturing a man with her cruelty and mockery without the faintest twinge of conscience, because she’ll think every time she looks at vou: ‘I’m tormentinq him to death now, but I’ll make up for it with my love, later.’”
Rogozhin laughed, as he listened to Myshkin.
“But, I say, prince, have you come in for the same treatment? I’ve heard something of the sort about you, if it’s true.”
“What, what could you have heard?” Myshkin started, and stopped in extreme confusion.
Rogozhin went on laughing. He had listened with curiosity and perhaps with some pleasure to Myshkin, whose joyful and impulsive warmth had greatly impressed and encouraged him.
“And I’ve not merely heard it; I see now it’s true,” he added. “When have you talked like this before? I never heard you say such things before. If I hadn’t heard something of the sort about you, I shouldn’t have come here: to a park, too, and at midnight.”
“I don’t understand you at all, Parfyon Semyonitch.”
“She told me about it a long time ago, and I saw it for myself to-day as you sat listening to the band this afternoon with the young lady. She’s been vowing, she swore to me to-day and yesterday, that you were head over ears in love with Aglaia Epanchin. That’s nothing to me, prince, and it’s no business of mine. If you have left off loving her, she still loves you. \bu know that she’s set on marrying you to her. She has sworn to do it, ha-ha! She says to me: Tell them I won’t marry you without that. When they’ve gone to church, we’ll go to church.’ I can’t make out what it means, and I never have understood: she either loves you beyond all reckoning, or … if she does love you, why does she want to marry you to some one else? She says, ‘I want to see him happy,’ so she must love you.”
“I’ve told you and written to you that she’s … out of her mind,” said Myshkin, who had listened to Rogozhin with distress.
“The Lord knows! You may be mistaken. . . . But to-day she fixed the wedding-day when I brought her home from the gardens: in three weeks’ time or perhaps sooner, she said, we will certainly be married; she swore it, and kissed the ikon. It all rests with you now, it seems, prince. Ha-ha!”
“That’s all madness. What you’ve said about me will never be! I’ll come and see you to-morrow.”
“How can you call her mad?” observed Rogozhin. “How is it she seems sane to every one else, and only mad to you? How could she write letters to her? If she had been mad, they’d have noticed it in her letters!”
“What letters?” asked Myshkin in alarm.
“Why, to her, to the young lady, and she reads them. Don’t you know? Well, then, you’ll find out. Of course she’ll show you them herself.”
“I can’t believe that!” cried Myshkin.
“Ach! Lyov Nikolayevitch! You’ve only gone a little way along that path, as far as I can see. You’re only beginning. Wait a bit: you’ll keep your own detectives yet and be on the watch day and night too; and know of every step she takes, if only….”
“Stop, and never speak of that again!” cried Myshkin. “Listen, Parfyon, just before you appeared I came here and suddenly began laughing — I don’t know what about. The only reason was that I remembered it was my birthday to-morrow. It seems to have come on purpose. It’s almost twelve o’clock. Come, let us meet the day! I’ve got some wine. Let’s drink some. Wish for me what I don’t know how to wish for myself. \bu wish it, and I’ll wish all happiness to you. If not, give back the cross. You didn’t send the cross back to me next dav! You’ve got it on now, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” said Rogozhin.
“Well, then, come along. I don’t want to meet my new life without you, for my new life has begun. You don’t know, Parfyon, that my new life has begun today.”
“I see for myself now, and know that it has begun, and I’ll tell her so. \bu’re not like yourself at all, Lyov Nikolayevitch!”

Chapter 4

As HE drew near his villa, Myshkin noticed with great surprise that his verandah was brightly lighted up, and that a large and noisy company was assembled there. The party was a merry one, laughing and shouting; they seemed to be arguing at the top of their voices; the first glance suggested that they were having an hilarious time. And when he mounted to the verandah he found that in fact they had all been drinking, and drinking champagne, and apparently had been drinking for some time, so that many of the revellers had become very agreeably exhilarated by now. They were all people he knew, but it was strange that they should all have come together at once, as though by invitation, though Myshkin had not invited them, and had only by chance recollected that it was his birthday.

“No doubt you told some one you’d uncork the champagne, and so they’ve all run in,” muttered Rogozhin, following Myshkin to the verandah. “We know their ways. You’ve only to