"That's clear, that's clear, sir," the clerk merrily agreed.

"And say, Prince, did you do any studying there at your professor's?" the swarthy man suddenly asked.

"Yes . . . I did . . ."

"And me, I never studied anything."

"Well, I only did a little of this and that," the prince added, almost apologetically. "They found it impossible to educate me systematically because of my illness."

"You know the Rogozhins?" the swarthy man asked quickly.

"No, not at all. I know very few people in Russia. Are you a Rogozhin?"

"Yes, I'm Parfyon Rogozhin."

"Parfyon? You're not from those same Rogozhins . . ." the clerk began with increased importance.

"Yes, the same, the very same," the swarthy man interrupted quickly and with impolite impatience; he had, incidentally, never once addressed the pimply clerk, but from the very beginning had talked only to the prince.

"But . . . can it be?" The clerk was astonished to the point of stupefaction, his eyes nearly popped out, and his whole face at once began to compose itself into something reverent and obsequious, even frightened. "Of that same Semyon Parfyonovich Rogozhin, the hereditary honorary citizen⁶ who died about a month ago and left two and a half million in capital?"

"And how do you know he left two and a half million in pure capital?" the swarthy man interrupted, this time also not deigning to glance at the clerk. "Just look!" he winked at the prince. "And what's the good of them toadying like that straight off? It's true my parent died, and I'm coming home from Pskov a month later all but bootless. Neither my brother, the scoundrel, nor my mother sent me any money or any notice—nothing! Like a dog! Spent the whole month in Pskov in delirium ..."

"And now you've got a nice little million or more coming, and that's at the least—oh, Lord!" the clerk clasped his hands.

"Well, what is it to him, pray tell me!" Rogozhin nodded towards him again irritably and spitefully. "I won't give you a kopeck, even if you walk upside down right here in front of me."

"And I will, I will."

"Look at that! No, I won't give you anything, not even if you dance a whole week for it!"

"Don't give me anything! Don't! It serves me right! But I will dance. I'll leave my wife, my little children, and dance before you. Be nice, be nice!"

"Pah!" the swarthy man spat. "Five weeks ago," he turned to the prince, "I ran away from my parent to my aunt in Pskov, like you, with nothing but a little bundle; I fell into delirium there, and while I was gone he up and died. Hit by a stroke. Memory eternal to the deceased,⁷ but he almost did me in before then! By God, Prince, believe me! If I hadn't run away, he'd have done me to death."

"Did you do something to make him angry?" the prince responded, studying the millionaire in the lambskin coat with some special curiosity. But though there might well have been something

noteworthy in the million itself and in receiving an inheritance, the prince was surprised and intrigued by something else; besides, Rogozhin himself, for some reason, was especially eager to make the prince his interlocutor, though the need for an interlocutor seemed more mechanical than moral; somehow more from distraction than from simple-heartedness; from anxiety, from agitation, just to look at someone and wag his tongue about something. It seemed he was still delirious, or at least in a fever. As for the clerk, the man simply hovered over Rogozhin, not daring to breathe, catching and weighing every word as if searching for diamonds.

"Angry, yes, he was angry, and maybe rightly," Rogozhin replied, "but it was my brother who really got me. About my mother there's nothing to say, she's an old woman, reads the Menaion,⁸ sits with the old crones, and whatever brother Senka decides, so it goes. But why didn't he let me know in time? We understand that, sir! True, I was unconscious at the time. They also say a telegram was sent. But the telegram happened to come to my aunt. And she's been widowed for thirty years and sits with the holy fools⁹ from morning till evening. A nun, or not a nun but worse still. She got scared of the telegram and took it to the police station without opening it, and so it's been lying there ever since. Only Konev, Vassily Vassilyich, rescued me. He wrote about everything. At night my brother cut the gold tassels off the brocade cover on the old man's coffin: 'They cost a whole lot of money,' he says. But for that alone he could go to Siberia if I want, because that's a blasphemy. Hey, you, scarecrow!" he turned to the clerk. "What's the law: is it a blasphemy?"

"A blasphemy! A blasphemy!" the clerk agreed at once.

"Meaning Siberia?"

"Siberia! Siberia! Straight off to Siberia!"

"They keep thinking I'm still sick," Rogozhin continued to the prince, "but without saying a word, secretly, I got on the train, still sick, and I'm coming. Open the gates, brother Semyon Semyonych! He said things to the old man about me, I know it. And it's true I really irritated the old man then, on account of Nastasya Filippovna. That's my own doing. Sin snared me."

"On account of Nastasya Filippovna?" the clerk said obsequiously, as if realizing something.

"You don't know her!" Rogozhin shouted at him impatiently.

"Or maybe I do!" the clerk replied triumphantly.

"Well, now! As if there's so few Nastasya Filippovnas! And what

a brazen creature you are, I tell you! I just knew some creature like him would cling to me at once!" he continued to the prince.

"Or maybe I do know her, sir!" the clerk fidgeted. "Lebedev knows! You, Your Highness, are pleased to reproach me, but what if I prove it? It's the same Nastasya Filippovna on account of whom your parent wanted to admonish you with a blackthorn stick, and Nastasya Filippovna is Barashkov, she's even a noble lady, so to speak, and also a sort of princess, and she keeps company with a certain Totsky, Afanasy Ivanovich, exclusively with him alone, a landowner and a big capitalist, a member of companies and societies, and great friends on that account with General Epanchin . . ."

"Aha, so that's how you are!" Rogozhin was really surprised at last. "Pah, the devil, so he does know."

"He knows everything! Lebedev knows everything! I, Your Highness, spent two months driving around with Alexashka Likhachev, and also after your parent's death, and I know everything, meaning every corner and back alley, and in the end not a step is taken without Lebedev. Nowadays he's abiding in debtor's prison, but before that I had occasion to know Armance, and Coralie, and Princess Patsky, and Nastasya Filippovna, and I had occasion to know a lot more besides."

"Nastasya Filippovna? Are she and Likhachev ..." Rogozhin looked at him spitefully, his lips even turned pale and trembled.

"N-nothing! N-n-nothing! Nothing at all!" the clerk caught himself and quickly hurried on. "That is, Likhachev couldn't get her for any amount of money! No, it's not like with Armance. There's only Totsky. And in the evening, at the Bolshoi or the French Theater,¹⁰ she sits in her own box. The officers say all kinds of things among themselves, but even they can't prove anything: 'There's that same Nastasya Filippovna,' they say, and that's all; but concerning the rest—nothing! Because there's nothing to say."