and speak to her about his love, that, listening to him, Aglaya, despite all her anguish and tears, had suddenly burst out laughing and suddenly asked him a strange question: would he, in proof of his love, burn his finger right now in a candle? Gavrila Ardalionovich was, they say, dumbfounded by the suggestion and so much at a loss, showed such extreme perplexity on his face, that Aglaya laughed at him as if in hysterics and ran away from him upstairs to Nina Alexandrovna, where her parents found her. This anecdote reached the prince through Ippolit the next day. Bedridden by then, Ippolit purposely sent for the prince to tell him the story. How this rumor had reached Ippolit we do not know, but when the prince heard about the candle and the finger, he burst into such laughter that he even surprised Ippolit; then he suddenly trembled and dissolved in tears . . . Generally during those days he was in great anxiety and extraordinary confusion, vague and tormenting. Ippolit affirmed directly that the prince had lost his mind; but that could not yet be said affirmatively.

In presenting all these facts and declining to explain them, we by no means wish to justify our hero in our readers' eyes. What's more, we are fully prepared to share the same indignation he aroused in his friends. Even Vera Lebedev was indignant with him for a time; even Kolya was indignant; Keller was even indignant, up to the time when he was chosen as groomsman, to say nothing of Lebedev himself, who even began to intrigue against the prince, also out of indignation, which was even quite genuine. But we shall speak of that later. In general, we sympathize fully and in the highest degree with certain words, quite forceful and even profound in their psychology, which Evgeny Pavlovich said to the prince, directly and without ceremony, in a friendly talk on the sixth or seventh day after the event at Nastasya Filippovna's. We shall note, incidentally, that not only the Epanchins themselves, but everyone directly or indirectly affiliated with the house of the Epanchins, found it necessary to break off all relations with the prince entirely. Prince Shch., for instance, even looked away when he met the prince and did not return his bow. But Evgeny Pavlovich was not afraid of compromising himself by calling on the prince, though he had again begun visiting the Epanchins every day and was received even with an obviously increased cordiality. He went to see the prince exactly the day after all the Epanchins left Pavlovsk. He came in already knowing all the rumors spread among the public and having perhaps even contributed to them himself. The

prince was terribly glad to see him and at once spoke about the Epanchins; such a simple-hearted and direct opening completely unbound Evgeny Pavlovich as well, so that without preliminaries he, too, went straight to the point.

The prince did not know yet that the Epanchins had left; he was struck, turned pale; but a moment later he shook his head, embarrassed and pensive, and admitted that "it had to be so"; after which he quickly asked "where did they go?"

Evgeny Pavlovich meanwhile watched him intently, and all of it —that is, the quickness of the questions, their simple-heartedness, the embarrassment, and at the same time some strange frankness, anxiousness, and agitation—all of it surprised him not a little. He, however, told the prince about everything courteously and in detail: there were many things the prince still did not know, and this was his first news from that house. He confirmed that Aglaya had indeed been sick, in a fever, and had hardly slept for three nights; that she was better now and out of all danger, but in a nervous, hysterical condition . . . "It's already a good thing that there is perfect peace in the house! They try not to allude to what happened, even among themselves, not only in front of Aglaya. The parents have discussed between them the possibility of going abroad in the autumn, right after Adelaida's wedding; Aglaya received the first mention of it in silence." He, Evgeny Pavlovich, might also go abroad. Even Prince Shch. might decide to go, for a couple of months, with Adelaida, if his affairs permitted. The general himself would stay. They had now all moved to Kolmino, their estate, about twenty miles from Petersburg, where they had a roomy mansion. Princess Belokonsky had not yet gone to Moscow and, it seemed, was even staying on purpose. Lizaveta Prokofyevna had strongly insisted that it was impossible to remain in Pavlovsk after all that had happened; he, Evgeny Pavlovich, had informed her every day of the rumors going around town. They also had not found it possible to settle in their dacha on Elagin Island.

"Well, yes, and in fact," Evgeny Pavlovich added, "you'll agree yourself, how could they stand it . . . especially knowing all that goes on here every hour, in your house, Prince, and after your daily visits there, despite the refusals . . ."

"Yes, yes, yes, you're right, I wanted to see Aglaya Ivanovna . . ." The prince again began shaking his head.

"Ah, my dear Prince," Evgeny Pavlovich exclaimed suddenly, with animation and sadness, "how could you have allowed ... all

that to happen? Of course, of course, it was all so unexpected for you ... I agree that you were bound to be at a loss and . . . you couldn't have stopped the crazy girl, that was beyond your power! But you ought to have understood how serious and strong the girl's . . . attitude towards you was. She didn't want to share with the other one, and you . . . and you could abandon and break such a treasure!"

"Yes, yes, you're right; yes, I'm to blame," the prince said again in terrible anguish, "and you know: only she, only Aglaya, looked at Nastasya Filippovna that way . . . No one else looked at her that way."

"But that's what makes it so outrageous, that there was nothing serious in it!" cried Evgeny Pavlovich, decidedly carried away. "Forgive me, Prince, but . . . I . . . I've thought about it, Prince; I've thought a lot about it; I know everything that happened before, I know everything that happened half a year ago, everything, and— it was all not serious! It was all only a cerebral infatuation, a picture, a fantasy, smoke, and only the frightened jealousy of a totally inexperienced girl could have taken it for something serious!"

Here Evgeny Pavlovich, now completely without ceremony, gave free rein to all his indignation. Sensibly and clearly and, we repeat, even extremely psychologically, he unfolded before the prince the picture of all the prince's relations with Nastasya Filippovna. Evgeny Pavlovich had always had a gift for speaking; now he even attained to eloquence. "From the very beginning," he pronounced, "you began with a lie; what began with a lie was bound to end with a lie; that is a law of nature. I don't agree and even feel indignant when they—well, whoever—call you an idiot; you're too intelligent to be called that; but you're strange enough not to be like all other people, you'll agree. I've decided that the foundation of all that has happened was composed, first, of your, so to speak, innate inexperience (note that word, Prince: 'innate'), then of your extraordinary simple-heartedness; further, of a phenomenal lack of the sense of measure (which you've admitted several times)—and, finally, of an enormous, flooding mass of cerebral convictions, which you, with all your extraordinary honesty, have taken all along for genuine, natural, and immediate convictions! You yourself will agree, Prince, that your relations with Nastasya Filippovna from the very beginning had something conventionally democratic about them (I put it that way for the sake of brevity), the charm, so to speak, of the 'woman question' (to put it still more briefly). I know