‘I?’
‘You, you! She has loved you ever since that day, her birthday! Only she thinks she cannot marry you, because
it would be the ruin of you. ‘Everybody knows what sort of a woman I am,’ she says. She told me all this herself, to my very face! She’s afraid of disgracing and ruining you, she says, but it doesn’t matter about me. She can marry me all right! Notice how much consideration she shows for me!’
‘But why did she run away to me, and then again from me to—‘
‘From you to me? Ha, ha! that’s nothing! Why, she always acts as though she were in a delirium now-a-days! Either she says, ‘Come on, I’ll marry you! Let’s have the wed-ding quickly!’ and fixes the day, and seems in a hurry for it, and when it begins to come near she feels frightened; or else some other idea gets into her head—goodness knows! you’ve seen her—you know how she goes on— laughing and crying and raving! There’s nothing extraordinary about her having run away from you! She ran away because she found out how dearly she loved you. She could not bear to be near you. You said just now that I had found her at Moscow, when she ran away from you. I didn’t do anything of the sort; she came to me herself, straight from you. ‘Name the day—I’m ready!’ she said. ‘Let’s have some champagne, and go and hear the gipsies sing!’ I tell you she’d have thrown herself into the water long ago if it were not for me! She doesn’t do it because I am, perhaps, even more dreadful to her than the water! She’s marrying me out of spite; if she marries me, I tell you, it will be for spite!’
‘But how do you, how can you—‘ began the prince, gaz-ing with dread and horror at Rogojin.
‘Why don’t you finish your sentence? Shall I tell you what
you were thinking to yourself just then? You were thinking, ‘How can she marry him after this? How can it possibly be
permitted?’ Oh, I know what you were thinking about!’
‘I didn’t come here for that purpose, Parfen. That was not in my mind—‘
‘That may be! Perhaps you didn’t COME with the idea, but the idea is certainly there NOW! Ha, ha! well, that’s enough! What are you upset about? Didn’t you really know it all before? You astonish me!’
‘All this is mere jealousy—it is some malady of yours, Parfen! You exaggerate everything,’ said the prince, exces-sively agitated. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Let go of it!’ said Parfen, seizing from the prince’s hand a knife which the latter had at that moment taken up from the table, where it lay beside the history. Parfen replaced it where it had been.
‘I seemed to know it—I felt it, when I was coming back to Petersburg,’ continued the prince, ‘I did not want to come, I wished to forget all this, to uproot it from my memory alto-gether! Well, good-bye—what is the matter?’
He had absently taken up the knife a second time, and again Rogojin snatched it from his hand, and threw it down on the table. It was a plainlooking knife, with a bone handle, a blade about eight inches long, and broad in proportion, it did not clasp.
Seeing that the prince was considerably struck by the fact that he had twice seized this knife out of his hand, Rogojin caught it up with some irritation, put it inside the book, and threw the latter across to another table.
‘Do you cut your pages with it, or what?’ asked Muishkin, still rather absently, as though unable to throw off a deep preoccupation into which the conversation had thrown him.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a garden knife, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Can’t one cut pages with a garden knife?’ ‘It’s quite new.’
‘Well, what of that? Can’t I buy a new knife if I like?’ shouted Rogojin furiously, his irritation growing with ev-ery word.
The prince shuddered, and gazed fixedly at Parfen. Sud-denly he burst out laughing.
‘Why, what an idea!’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to ask you any of these questions; I was thinking of something quite dif-ferent! But my head is heavy, and I seem so absent-minded nowadays! Well, good-bye—I can’t remember what I want-ed to say—good-bye!’
‘Not that way,’ said Rogojin. ‘There, I’ve forgotten that too!’
‘This way—come along—I’ll show you.’
IV
THEY passed through the same rooms which the prince had traversed on his arrival. In the largest there were
pictures on the walls, portraits and landscapes of little in-terest. Over the door, however, there was one of strange and rather striking shape; it was six or seven feet in length, and not more than a foot in height. It represented the Saviour just taken from the cross.
The prince glanced at it, but took no further notice. He moved on hastily, as though anxious to get out of the house. But Rogojin suddenly stopped underneath the picture.
‘My father picked up all these pictures very cheap at auc-tions, and so on,’ he said; ‘they are all rubbish, except the one over the door, and that is valuable. A man offered five hundred roubles for it last week.’
‘Yes—that’s a copy of a Holbein,’ said the prince, looking at it again, ‘and a good copy, too, so far as I am able to judge. I saw the picture abroad, and could not forget it—what’s the matter?’
Rogojin had dropped the subject of the picture and walked on. Of course his strange frame of mind was suf-ficient to account for his conduct; but, still, it seemed queer to the prince that he should so abruptly drop a conversation commenced by himself. Rogojin did not take any notice of his question.
‘Lef Nicolaievitch,’ said Rogojin, after a pause, during which the two walked along a little further, ‘I have long wished to ask you, do you believe in God?’
‘How strangely you speak, and how odd you look!’ said the other, involuntarily.
‘I like looking at that picture,’ muttered Rogojin, not no-ticing, apparently, that the prince had not answered his question.
‘That picture! That picture!’ cried Muishkin, struck by a sudden idea. ‘Why, a man’s faith might be ruined by look-ing at that picture!’
‘So it is!’ said Rogojin, unexpectedly. They had now reached the front door.
The prince stopped.
‘How?’ he said. ‘What do you mean? I was half joking, and you took me up quite seriously! Why do you ask me whether I believe in God
‘Oh, no particular reason. I meant to ask you before— many people are unbelievers nowadays, especially Russians, I have been told. You ought to know—you’ve lived abroad.’
Rogojin laughed bitterly as he said these words, and opening the door, held it for the prince to pass out. Muish-kin looked surprised, but went out. The other followed him as far as the landing of the outer stairs, and shut the door behind him. They both now stood facing one another, as though oblivious of where they were, or what they had to do next.
‘Well, good-bye!’ said the prince, holding out his hand. ‘Good-bye,’ said Rogojin, pressing it hard, but quite me-
chanically.
The prince made one step forward, and then turned round.
‘As to faith,’ he said, smiling, and evidently unwilling to leave Rogojin in this state—‘as to faith, I had four curious conversations in two days, a week or so ago. One morning I met a man in the train, and made acquaintance with him at once. I had often heard of him as a very learned man, but an atheist; and I was very glad of the opportunity of conversing with so eminent and clever a person. He doesn’t believe in God, and he talked a good deal about it, but all the while it appeared to me that he was speaking OUTSIDE THE SUBJECT. And it has always struck me, both in speak-ing to such men and in reading their books, that they do not seem really to be touching on that at all, though on the surface they may appear to do so. I told him this, but I dare say I did not clearly express what I meant, for he could not understand me.
‘That same evening I stopped at a small provincial hotel, and it so happened that a dreadful murder had been com-mitted there the night before, and everybody was talking about it. Two peasants— elderly men and old friends—had had tea together there the night before, and were to occupy the same bedroom. They were not drunk but one of them had noticed for the first time that his friend possessed a sil-ver watch which he was wearing on a chain. He was by no means a thief, and was, as peasants go, a rich man; but this watch so fascinated him that he could not restrain himself. He took a knife, and when his friend turned his back, he
came up softly behind, raised his eyes to heaven, crossed himself, and saying earnestly—‘God forgive me, for Christ’s sake!’ he cut his friend’s throat like a sheep, and took the watch.’
Rogojin roared with laughter. He laughed as though he were in a sort of fit. It was strange to see him laughing so af-ter the sombre mood he had been in just before.
‘Oh, I like that! That beats anything!’ he cried convul-sively, panting for breath. ‘One is an absolute unbeliever; the other is such a thorough—going believer that he mur-ders his friend to the tune of a prayer! Oh, prince, prince, that’s too good for anything! You can’t have invented it. It’s the best thing I’ve heard!’
‘Next morning I went out for a stroll through the town,’ continued the prince, so
