“Oui, oui,” she agreed with me, “c’est une honte! Une dame . . . Oh,vous êtes généreux, vous! Soyez tranquille, je ferai voir raison à Lambert . . .”⁹⁹

So that even at that moment I should have been thrown into perplexity, seeing such an unexpected turnabout in her feelings, which meant, perhaps, in Lambert’s as well. I went out silently, however; my soul was troubled and I wasn’t reasoning well. Oh, afterwards I considered it all, but by then it was too late! Oh, what an infernal machination came out here! I’ll stop and explain everything beforehand; otherwise it will be impossible for the reader to understand.

The thing was that, back at my first meeting with Lambert, while I was thawing out in his apartment, I had murmured to him, like a fool, that the document was sewn up in my pocket. Then I had suddenly fallen asleep for a while on the sofa in the corner, and Lambert had immediately felt my pocket then and made sure that a piece of paper was actually sewn up in it. Several times later he had made sure that the paper was still there: so, for instance, during our dinner at the Tartars’, I remember he purposely put his arm around my waist several times. Realizing, finally, how important this paper was, he put together his own totally particular plan, which I never supposed he had. Like a fool, I imagined all the while that he was so persistently inviting me to his place solely to persuade me to join company with him and not act otherwise than together. But, alas! he invited me for something quite different! He invited me in order to get me dead drunk and, when I was sprawled out there, unconscious and snoring, to cut my pocket open and take possession of the document. That’s just what he and Alphonsinka did that night; it was Alphonsinka who cut open the pocket. Having taken out the letter, her letter, my Moscow document, they took a simple sheet of note paper of the same size, put it into the cut pocket, and sewed it up again as if nothing had happened, so that I wouldn’t notice anything. Alphonsinka also did the sewing up. And I, almost to the very end, I—for a whole day and a half—went on thinking that I was in possession of the secret, and that Katerina Nikolaevna’s destiny was still in my hands!

A last word: this theft of the document was the cause of it all, all the remaining misfortunes!

II

NOW COME THE last twenty-four hours of my notes, and I’m at the final end!

It was, I think, around half-past ten when, agitated and, as far as I remember, somehow strangely distracted, but with a definitive resolve in my heart, I came trudging to my apartment. I was not in a hurry, I already knew how I was going to act. And suddenly, just as I entered our corridor, I understood at once that a new calamity had befallen and an extraordinary complication of matters had occurred: the old prince, having just been brought from Tsarskoe Selo, was in our apartment, and Anna Andreevna was with him!

He had been put not in my room, but in the two rooms next to mine, which belonged to the landlord. The day before, as it turned out, certain changes and embellishments, though of a minimal sort, had been carried out in these rooms. The landlord and his wife had moved to the tiny closet occupied by the fussy pockmarked tenant whom I have mentioned before, and the pockmarked tenant had been confiscated for the time being—I don’t know where to.

I was met by the landlord, who at once darted into my room. He did not have the same resolute air as the day before, but he was in an extraordinarily agitated state, equal, so to speak, to the event. I said nothing to him, but went to the corner and, clutching my head with my hands, stood there for about a minute. At first he thought I was “putting it on,” but in the end he couldn’t stand it and became alarmed.

“Is anything wrong?” he murmured. “I’ve been waiting to ask you,” he added, seeing that I didn’t answer, “whether you wouldn’t like to open this door, for direct communication with the prince’s rooms . . . rather than through the corridor?” He was pointing to the side door, which was always locked, and which communicated with his own rooms and now, therefore, with the prince’s quarters.

“Look here, Pyotr Ippolitovich,” I addressed him with a stern air, “I humbly beg you to go and invite Anna Andreevna here to my room for a talk. Have they been here long?”

“Must be nearly an hour.”

“So go.”

He went and brought back the strange reply that Anna Andreevna and Prince Nikolai Ivanovich were impatiently awaiting me in their rooms—meaning that Anna Andreevna did not wish to come. I straightened and cleaned my frock coat, which had become wrinkled during the night, washed, combed my hair, all of that unhurriedly, and, aware of how necessary it was to be cautious, went to see the old man.

The prince was sitting on the sofa at a round table, and Anna Andreevna was preparing tea for him in another corner, at another table covered with a tablecloth, on which the landlord’s samovar, polished as it had never been before, was boiling. I came in with the same stern look on my face, and the old man, instantly noticing it, gave a start, and the smile on his face quickly gave way to decided alarm. But I couldn’t keep it up, laughed at once, and held out my arms to him. The poor man simply threw himself into my embrace.

Unquestionably, I realized at once whom I was dealing with. First of all, it became as clear to me as two times two that, during the time since I last saw him, they had made the old man, who had even been almost hale and still at least somewhat sensible and with a certain character, into a sort of mummy, a sort of perfect child, fearful and mistrustful. I will add that he knew perfectly well why he had been brought here, and that everything had happened exactly as I explained above, when I ran ahead of myself. He was suddenly struck, broken, crushed by the news of his daughter’s betrayal and of the madhouse. He had allowed himself to be brought, so frightened that he scarcely knew what he was doing. He had been told that I was in possession of the secret, and held the key to the ultimate solution. I’ll say beforehand: it was this ultimate solution and key that he feared more than anything in the world. He expected that I’d just walk in there with some sort of sentence on my forehead and a paper in my hand, and he was awfully glad that I was prepared meanwhile to laugh and chatter about other things. When we embraced, he wept. I confess, I wept a bit, too. But I suddenly felt very sorry for him . . . Alphonsinka’s little dog went off into a high, bell-like barking and strained towards me from the sofa. He hadn’t parted from this tiny dog since the day he acquired it, and even slept with it.

“Oh, je disais qu’il a du coeur!”¹⁰⁰ he exclaimed, pointing at me to Anna Andreevna.

“But how you’ve improved, Prince, what a fine, fresh, healthy look you have!” I observed. Alas! it was all quite the opposite: this was a mummy, and I only said it to encourage him.

“N’est-cepas, n’est-cepas?”¹⁰¹ he repeated joyfully. “Oh, my health has improved astonishingly.”

“Anyhow, have your tea, and if you offer me a cup, I’ll drink with you.”

“Marvelous! ‘Let us drink and enjoy . . .’ or how does the poem go? Anna Andreevna, give him tea, il prend toujours par les sentiments¹⁰² . . . give us tea, my dear.”

Anna Andreevna served us tea, but suddenly turned to me and began with extreme solemnity:

“Arkady Makarovich, both of us, I and my benefactor, Prince Nikolai Ivanovich, have taken refuge with you. I consider that we have come to you, to you alone, and we are both asking you for shelter. Remember that almost the whole destiny of this saintly, this most noble and offended man is in your hands . . . We await the decision of your truthful heart!”