Hippolyte, too, was a source of some distraction to the prince at this time; he would send for him at any and ev-ery hour of the day. They lived,—Hippolyte and his mother and the children,—in a small house not far off, and the little ones were happy, if only because they were able to escape from the invalid into the garden. The prince had enough to do in keeping the peace between the irritable Hippolyte and his mother, and eventually the former became so malicious and sarcastic on the subject of the approaching wedding, that Muishkin took offence at last, and refused to continue his visits.
A couple of days later, however, Hippolyte’s mother came with tears in her eyes, and begged the prince to come back, ‘or HE would eat her up bodily.’ She added that Hippolyte had a great secret to disclose. Of course the prince went. There was no secret, however, unless we reckon certain
pantings and agitated glances around (probably all put on) as the invalid begged his visitor to ‘beware of Rogojin.’
‘He is the sort of man,’ he continued,. ‘who won’t give up his object, you know; he is not like you and me, prince—he belongs to quite a different order of beings. If he sets his heart on a thing he won’t be afraid of anything—‘ and so on.
Hippolyte was very ill, and looked as though he could not long survive. He was tearful at first, but grew more and more sarcastic and malicious as the interview proceeded.
The prince questioned him in detail as to his hints about Rogojin. He was anxious to seize upon some facts which might confirm Hippolyte’s vague warnings; but there were none; only Hippolyte’s own private impressions and feel-ings.
However, the invalid—to his immense satisfaction— ended by seriously alarming the prince.
At first Muishkin had not cared to make any reply to his sundry questions, and only smiled in response to Hip-polyte’s advice to ‘run for his life—abroad, if necessary. There are Russian priests everywhere, and one can get mar-ried all over the world.’
But it was Hippolyte’s last idea which upset him.
‘What I am really alarmed about, though,’ he said, ‘is Aglaya Ivanovna. Rogojin knows how you love her. Love for love. You took Nastasia Philipovna from him. He will mur-der Aglaya Ivanovna; for though she is not yours, of course, now, still such an act would pain you,—wouldn’t it?’
He had attained his end. The prince left the house beside
himself with terror.
These warnings about Rogojin were expressed on the day before the wedding. That evening the prince saw Nastasia Philipovna for the last time before they were to meet at the altar; but Nastasia was not in a position to give him any comfort or consolation. On the contrary, she only added to his mental perturbation as the evening went on. Up to this time she had invariably done her best to cheer him—she was afraid of his looking melancholy; she would try singing to him, and telling him every sort of funny story or rem-iniscence that she could recall. The prince nearly always pretended to be amused, whether he were so actually or no; but often enough he laughed sincerely, delighted by the bril-liancy of her wit when she was carried away by her narrative, as she very often was. Nastasia would be wild with joy to see the impression she had made, and to hear his laugh of real amusement; and she would remain the whole evening in a state of pride and happiness. But this evening her melan-choly and thoughtfulness grew with every hour.
The prince had told Evgenie Pavlovitch with perfect sin-cerity that he loved Nastasia Philipovna with all his soul. In his love for her there was the sort of tenderness one feels for a sick, unhappy child which cannot be left alone. He never spoke of his feelings for Nastasia to anyone, not even to herself. When they were together they never discussed their ‘feelings,’ and there was nothing in their cheerful, ani-mated conversation which an outsider could not have heard. Daria Alexeyevna, with whom Nastasia was staying, told af-terwards how she had been filled with joy and delight only
to look at them, all this time.
Thanks to the manner in which he regarded Nastasia’s mental and moral condition, the prince was to some extent freed from other perplexities. She was now quite different from the woman he had known three months before. He was not astonished, for instance, to see her now so impa-tient to marry him—she who formerly had wept with rage and hurled curses and reproaches at him if he mentioned marriage! ‘It shows that she no longer fears, as she did then, that she would make me unhappy by marrying me,’ he thought. And he felt sure that so sudden a change could not be a natural one. This rapid growth of self-confidence could not be due only to her hatred for Aglaya. To suppose that would be to suspect the depth of her feelings. Nor could it arise from dread of the fate that awaited her if she married Rogojin. These causes, indeed, as well as others, might have played a part in it, but the true reason, Muishkin decided, was the one he had long suspected—that the poor sick soul had come to the end of its forces. Yet this was an explana-tion that did not procure him any peace of mind. At times he seemed to be making violent efforts to think of nothing, and one would have said that he looked on his marriage as an unimportant formality, and on his future happiness as a thing not worth considering. As to conversations such as the one held with Evgenie Pavlovitch, he avoided them as far as possible, feeling that there were certain objections to which he could make no answer.
The prince had observed that Nastasia knew well enough what Aglaya was to him. He never spoke of it, but he had
seen her face when she had caught him starting off for the Epanchins’ house on several occasions. When the Ep-anchins left Pavlofsk, she had beamed with radiance and happiness. Unsuspicious and unobservant as he was, he had feared at that time that Nastasia might have some scheme in her mind for a scene or scandal which would drive Agla-ya out of Pavlofsk. She had encouraged the rumours and excitement among the inhabitants of the place as to her marriage with the prince, in order to annoy her rival; and, finding it dificult to meet the Epanchins anywhere, she had, on one occasion, taken him for a drive past their house. He did not observe what was happening until they were almost passing the windows, when it was too late to do anything. He said nothing, but for two days afterwards he was ill.
Nastasia did not try that particular experiment again. A few days before that fixed for the wedding, she grew grave and thoughtful. She always ended by getting the better of her melancholy, and becoming merry and cheerful again, but not quite so unaffectedly happy as she had been some days earlier.
The prince redoubled his attentive study of her symp-toms. It was a most curious circumstance, in his opinion, that she never spoke of Rogojin. But once, about five days before the wedding, when the prince was at home, a mes-senger arrived begging him to come at once, as Nastasia Philipovna was very ill.
He had found her in a condition approaching to abso-lute madness. She screamed, and trembled, and cried out that Rogojin was hiding out there in the garden—that she
had seen him herself—and that he would murder her in the night—that he would cut her throat. She was terribly agi-tated all day. But it so happened that the prince called at Hippolyte’s house later on, and heard from his mother that she had been in town all day, and had there received a visit from Rogojin, who had made inquiries about Pavlofsk. On inquiry, it turned out that Rogojin visited the old lady in town at almost the same moment when Nastasia declared that she had seen him in the garden; so that the whole thing turned out to be an illusion on her part. Nastasia immedi-ately went across to Hippolyte’s to inquire more accurately, and returned immensely relieved and comforted.
On the day before the wedding, the prince left Nasta-sia in a state of great animation. Her wedding-dress and all sorts of finery had just arrived from town. Muishkin had not imagined that she would be so excited over it, but he praised everything, and his praise rendered her doubly hap-py.
But Nastasia could not hide the cause of her intense interest in her wedding splendour. She had heard of the in-dignation in the town, and knew that some of the populace was getting up a sort of charivari with music, that verses had been composed for the occasion, and that the rest of Pavlofsk society more or less encouraged these prepara-tions. So, since attempts were being
