One day, however, he and Lizabetha Prokofievna quar-relled seriously about the ‘woman question,’ in the course of a lively discussion on that burning subject. He told her that she was a tyrant, and that he would never set foot in her house again. It may seem incredible, but a day or two after, Madame Epanchin sent a servant with a note begging him to return, and Colia, without standing on his dignity,
did so at once.
Aglaya was the only one of the family whose good graces he could not gain, and who always spoke to him haughtily, but it so happened that the boy one day succeeded in giving the proud maiden a surprise.
It was about Easter, when, taking advantage of a momen-tary tetea-tete Colia handed Aglaya a letter, remarking that he ‘had orders to deliver it to her privately.’ She stared at him in amazement, but he did not wait to hear what she had to say, and went out. Aglaya broke the seal, and read as follows:
‘Once you did me the honour of giving me your confi-dence. Perhaps you have quite forgotten me now! How is it that I am writing to you? I do not know; but I am conscious of an irresistible desire to remind you of my existence, espe-cially you. How many times I have needed all three of you; but only you have dwelt always in my mind’s eye. I need you—I need you very much. I will not write about myself. I have nothing to tell you. But I long for you to be happy. ARE you happy? That is all I wished to say to you—Your brother,
‘PR. L. MUISHKIN.’
On reading this short and disconnected note, Aglaya suddenly blushed all over, and became very thoughtful.
It would be dificult to describe her thoughts at that mo-ment. One of them was, ‘Shall I show it to anyone?’ But she was ashamed to show it. So she ended by hiding it in her table drawer, with a very strange, ironical smile upon her lips.
Next day, she took it out, and put it into a large book, as
she usually did with papers which she wanted to be able to find easily. She laughed when, about a week later, she hap-pened to notice the name of the book, and saw that it was Don Quixote, but it would be dificult to say exactly why.
I cannot say, either, whether she showed the letter to her sisters.
But when she had read it herself once more, it sudden-ly struck her that surely that conceited boy, Colia, had not been the one chosen correspondent of the prince all this while. She determined to ask him, and did so with an ex-aggerated show of carelessness. He informed her haughtily that though he had given the prince his permanent address when the latter left town, and had offered his services, the prince had never before given him any commission to per-form, nor had he written until the following lines arrived, with Aglaya’s letter. Aglaya took the note, and read it.
‘DEAR COLIA,—Please be so kind as to give the enclosed sealed letter to Aglaya Ivanovna. Keep well—Ever your lov-ing, “PR. L. MUISHKIN.’
‘It seems absurd to trust a little pepper-box like you,’ said Aglaya, as she returned the note, and walked past the ‘pep-perbox’ with an expression of great contempt.
This was more than Colia could bear. He had actually borrowed Gania’s new green tie for the occasion, without saying why he wanted it, in order to impress her. He was very deeply mortified.
IT was the beginning of June, and for a whole week the weather in St. Petersburg had been magnificent. The Ep-anchins had a luxurious country-house at Pavlofsk, [One
of the fashionable summer resorts near St. Petersburg.] and to this spot Mrs. Epanchin determined to proceed without further delay. In a couple of days all was ready, and the fam-ily had left town. A day or two after this removal to Pavlofsk, Prince Muishkin arrived in St. Petersburg by the morning train from Moscow. No one met him; but, as he stepped out of the carriage, he suddenly became aware of two strangely glowing eyes fixed upon him from among the crowd that met the train. On endeavouring to re-discover the eyes, and see to whom they belonged, he could find nothing to guide him. It must have been a hallucination. But the disagree-able impression remained, and without this, the prince was sad and thoughtful already, and seemed to be much preoc-cupied.
His cab took him to a small and bad hotel near the Lit-aynaya. Here he engaged a couple of rooms, dark and badly furnished. He washed and changed, and hurriedly left the hotel again, as though anxious to waste no time. Anyone who now saw him for the first time since he left Petersburg would judge that he had improved vastly so far as his exteri-or was concerned. His clothes certainly were very different; they were more fashionable, perhaps even too much so, and anyone inclined to mockery might have found something to smile at in his appearance. But what is there that people will not smile at?
The prince took a cab and drove to a street near the Na-tivity, where he soon discovered the house he was seeking. It was a small wooden villa, and he was struck by its at-tractive and clean appearance; it stood in a pleasant little
garden, full of flowers. The windows looking on the street were open, and the sound of a voice, reading aloud or mak-ing a speech, came through them. It rose at times to a shout, and was interrupted occasionally by bursts of laughter.
Prince Muishkin entered the court-yard, and ascended the steps. A cook with her sleeves turned up to the elbows opened the door. The visitor asked if Mr. Lebedeff were at home.
‘He is in there,’ said she, pointing to the salon.
The room had a blue wall-paper, and was well, almost pretentiously, furnished, with its round table, its divan, and its bronze clock under a glass shade. There was a narrow pierglass against the wall, and a chandelier adorned with lustres hung by a bronze chain from the ceiling.
When the prince entered, Lebedeff was standing in the middle of the room, his back to the door. He was in his shirt-sleeves, on account of the extreme heat, and he seemed to have just reached the peroration of his speech, and was im-pressively beating his breast.
His audience consisted of a youth of about fifteen years of age with a clever face, who had a book in his hand, though he was not reading; a young lady of twenty, in deep mourn-ing, stood near him with an infant in her arms; another girl of thirteen, also in black, was laughing loudly, her mouth wide open; and on the sofa lay a handsome young man, with black hair and eyes, and a suspicion of beard and whiskers. He frequently interrupted the speaker and argued with him, to the great delight of the others.
‘Lukian Timofeyovitch! Lukian Timofeyovitch! Here’s
someone to see you! Look here! … a gentleman to speak to you! … Well, it’s not my fault!’ and the cook turned and went away red with anger.
Lebedeff started, and at sight of the prince stood like a statue for a moment. Then he moved up to him with an in-gratiating smile, but stopped short again.
‘Prince! ex-ex-excellency!’ he stammered. Then sud-denly he ran towards the girl with the infant, a movement so unexpected by her that she staggered and fell back, but next moment he was threatening the other child, who was standing, still laughing, in the doorway. She screamed, and ran towards the kitchen. Lebedeff stamped his foot angrily; then, seeing the prince regarding him with amazement, he murmured apologetically—‘Pardon to show respect! … he-he!’
‘ You are quite wrong …’ began the prince. ‘At once … at once … in one moment!’
He rushed like a whirlwind from the room, and Muish-kin looked inquiringly at the others.
They were all laughing, and the guest joined in the cho-rus.
‘He has gone to get his coat,’ said the boy.
‘How annoying!’ exclaimed the prince. ‘I thought … Tell me, is he …’
‘You think he is drunk?’ cried the young man on the sofa. ‘ Not in the least. He’s only had three or four small glasses,
perhaps five; but what is that? The usual thing!’
As the prince opened his mouth to answer, he was inter-rupted by the girl, whose sweet face wore an expression of
absolute frankness.
‘He never drinks much in the morning; if you have come to talk business with him, do it now. It is the best time. He sometimes comes back drunk in the evening; but just now he passes the greater part of the evening in tears, and reads passages of Holy Scripture aloud, because our mother died five weeks ago.’
‘No doubt he ran off because he did not know what to say to you,’ said the youth on the divan. ‘I bet he is trying to cheat you, and is thinking how best to do it.’
Just then Lebedeff returned, having put on his
