"Oh, no, I love her with all my soul! She's ... a child; now she's a child, a complete child! Oh, you don't know anything!"

"And at the same time you assured Aglaya Ivanovna of your love?"

"Oh, yes, yes!"

"How's that? So you want to love them both?"

"Oh, yes, yes!"

"Good heavens, Prince, what are you saying? Come to your senses!"

"Without Aglaya I ... I absolutely must see her! I . . . I'll soon die in my sleep; I thought last night that I was going to die in my sleep. Oh, if Aglaya knew, knew everything . . . that is, absolutely everything. Because here you have to know everything, that's the first thing! Why can we never know everything about another person when it's necessary, when the person is to blame! . . . However, I don't know what I'm saying, I'm confused; you struck me terribly . . . Can she really still have the same face as when she ran out? Oh, yes, I'm to blame! Most likely I'm to blame for everything! I still don't know precisely for what, but I'm to blame . . . There's something in it that I can't explain to you, Evgeny Pavlych, I lack the words, but.. . Aglaya Ivanovna will understand! Oh, I've always believed she would understand."

"No, Prince, she won't understand! Aglaya Ivanovna loved as a woman, as a human being, not as ... an abstract spirit. You know, my poor Prince: most likely you never loved either of them!"

"I don't know. .. maybe, maybe; you're right about many things, Evgeny Pavlych. You're extremely intelligent, Evgeny Pavlych; ah, my head's beginning to ache again, let's go to her! For God's sake, for God's sake!"

"I tell you, she's not in Pavlovsk, she's in Kolmino."

"Let's go to Kolmino, let's go now!"

"That is im-pos-sible!" Evgeny Pavlovich drew out, getting up.

"Listen, I'll write a letter; take a letter to her!"

"No, Prince, no! Spare me such errands, I cannot!"

They parted. Evgeny Pavlovich left with some strange convictions: and, in his opinion, it came out that the prince was slightly out of his mind. And what was the meaning of this face that he

was afraid of and that he loved so much! And at the same time he might actually die without Aglaya, so that Aglaya might never know he loved her so much! Ha, ha! And what was this about loving two women? With two different loves of some sort? That's interesting . . . the poor idiot! And what will become of him now?

X

The prince, however, did not die before his wedding, either awake or "in his sleep," as he had predicted to Evgeny Pavlovich. He may indeed have slept poorly and had bad dreams, but in the daytime, with people, he seemed kind and even content, only sometimes very pensive, but that was when he was alone. They were hurrying the wedding; it was to take place about a week after Evgeny Pavlovich's call. Given such haste, even the prince's best friends, if he had any, were bound to be disappointed in their efforts to "save" the unfortunate madcap. There was a rumor that General Ivan Fyodorovich and his wife Lizaveta Prokofyevna were partly responsible for Evgeny Pavlovich's visit. But even if the two of them, in the immeasurable goodness of their hearts, might have wanted to save the pathetic madman from the abyss, they had, of course, to limit themselves to this one feeble attempt; neither their position, nor even, perhaps, the disposition of their hearts (as was natural) could correspond to more serious efforts. We have mentioned that even those around the prince partly rose up against him. Vera Lebedev, however, limited herself only to solitary tears and to staying home more and looking in on the prince less often than before. Kolya was burying his father at that time; the old man died of a second stroke eight days after the first. The prince shared greatly in the family's grief and in the first days spent several hours a day at Nina Alexandrovna's; he attended the burial and the church service. Many noticed that the public in the church met the prince and saw him off with involuntary whispers; the same thing happened in the streets and in the garden: when he walked or drove by, people talked, spoke his name, pointed at him, mentioned Nastasya Filippovna's name. She was looked for at the burial, but she was not at the burial. Neither was the captain's widow, whom Lebedev had managed to stop and cancel in time. The burial service made a strong and painful impression on the prince; he whispered to Lebedev, still in church, in reply to some

question, that it was the first time he had attended an Orthodox burial service and only from childhood did he remember one other burial in some village church.

"Yes, sir, it's as if it's not the same man lying there in the coffin, sir, as the one we set up so recently to preside over us, remember, sir?" Lebedev whispered to the prince. "Who are you looking for, sir?"

"Never mind, I just imagined . . ."

"Not Rogozhin?"

"Is he here?"

"In the church, sir."

"That's why it seemed I saw his eyes," the prince murmured in embarrassment. "And what . . . why is he here? Was he invited?"

"Never thought of it, sir. They don't know him at all, sir. There are all sorts of people here, the public, sir. Why are you so amazed? I often meet him now; this past week I met him some four times here in Pavlovsk."

"I haven't seen him once . . . since that time," the prince murmured.

Because Nastasya Filippovna had also never once told him that she had met him "since that time," the prince now concluded that Rogozhin was deliberately keeping out of sight for some reason. That whole day he was in great pensiveness; but Nastasya Filippovna was extraordinarily merry all day and all evening.

Kolya, who had made peace with the prince before his father's death, suggested (since it was an essential and urgent matter) inviting Keller and Burdovsky to be his groomsmen. He guaranteed that Keller would behave properly and might even "be of use," and for Burdovsky it went without saying, he was a quiet and modest man. Nina Alexandrovna and Lebedev pointed out to the prince that if the wedding was already decided on, why have it in Pavlovsk of all places, and during the fashionable summer season, why so publicly? Would it not be better in Petersburg and even at home? It was only too clear to the prince what all these fears were driving at; but he replied briefly and simply that such was the absolute wish of Nastasya Filippovna.

The next day Keller also came to see the prince, having been informed that he was a groomsman. Before coming in, he stopped in the doorway and, as soon as he saw the prince, held up his right hand with the index finger extended and cried out by way of an oath:

"I don't drink!"

Then he went up to the prince, firmly pressed and shook both his hands, and declared that, of course, at first, when he heard, he was against it, which he announced over the billiard table, and for no other reason than that he had intentions for the prince and was waiting every day, with the impatience of a friend, to see him married to none other than the Princess de Rohan;⁴⁷ but now he could see for himself that the prince was thinking at least ten times more nobly than all of them "taken together!" For he wanted not brilliance, not riches, and not even honor, but only—truth! The sympathies of exalted persons were all too well known, and the prince was too exalted by his education not to be an exalted person, generally speaking! "But scum and all sorts of riffraff judge differently; in town, in the houses, at gatherings, in dachas, at concerts, in bars, over billiards, there was no other talk, no other cry than about the impending event. I hear they even want to organize a charivari under your windows, and that, so to speak, on the first night! If you need the pistol of an honest man, Prince, I'm ready to exchange a half-dozen noble shots, even before you get up the next morning from your honey bed." He also advised having a fire hose ready in the yard, in anticipation of a big influx of thirsty people at the church door; but Lebedev objected: "They'll smash the house to splinters," he said, "if there's a fire hose."