“Your Highness! His excellency asks that you kindly come to her excellency’s rooms,” the lackey announced, appearing in the doorway. The prince followed the lackey out.
IV
ALL THREE EPANCHIN girls were healthy young ladies, tall, blossoming, with astonishing shoulders, powerful bosoms, strong, almost masculine arms, and, of course, owing to their strength and health, they liked to eat well on occasion, something they had no wish to conceal. Their mama, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, sometimes looked askance at the frankness of their appetite, but since some of her opinions, despite all the external deference with which her daughters received them, had in fact long lost their original and unquestionable authority among them, so much so that the harmonious conclave established by the three girls was beginning to gain the upper hand on most occasions, the general’s wife, mindful of her own dignity, found it more convenient not to argue but to yield. True, her character quite often did not heed and obey the decisions of her good sense; with every year Lizaveta Prokofyevna was becoming more and more capricious and impatient, she was even becoming somehow eccentric, but since in any case a submissive and well-trained husband remained at hand, all superfluous and accumulated things usually poured down on his head, and then the family harmony was restored again and everything went better than ever.
The general’s wife herself, however, never lost her own good appetite, and at half-past twelve usually partook, together with her daughters, of a copious lunch, which more resembled a dinner. Earlier, at exactly ten o’clock, while still in bed, at the moment of waking up, the young ladies had a cup of coffee. That was how they liked it and how it had always been arranged. At half-past twelve the table was laid in the small dining room, near the mother’s rooms, and occasionally the general himself, time permitting, joined them at this intimate family lunch. Besides tea, coffee, cheese, honey, butter, the special pancakes the lady herself was particularly fond of, the cutlets, and so on, they were even served a strong, hot bouillon. On the morning when our story begins, the whole family was gathered in the dining room in expectation of the general, who had promised to come by half-past twelve. If he had been even a minute late, he would have been sent for at once; but he arrived punctually. Going over to greet his spouse and kiss her hand, he noticed this time something all too peculiar in her face. And though he had anticipated even the day before that it would be precisely so, on account of a certain “anecdote” (as he was accustomed to put it), and had worried about it while falling asleep the previous night, all the same he now turned coward again. His daughters came up to kiss him; here there was no anger against him, but here, too, all the same there was also something peculiar, as it were. True, the general, owing to certain circumstances, had become overly suspicious; but as he was an experienced and adroit father and husband, he at once took his measures.
Perhaps we will do no great harm to the vividness of our narrative if we stop here and resort to the aid of a few clarifications in order to establish directly and more precisely the relations and circumstances in which we find General Epanchin’s family at the beginning of our story. We said just now that the general, though not a very educated but, on the contrary, as he himself put it, a “self-taught man,” was nevertheless an experienced husband and adroit father. Among other things, he had adopted a system of not rushing his daughters into marriage, that is, of not “hovering over” them and bothering them too much with his parental love’s longing for their happiness, as involuntarily and naturally happens all the time, even in the most intelligent families, where grown-up daughters accumulate. He even succeeded in winning Lizaveta Prokofyevna over to his system, though that was normally a difficult thing to do—difficult because it was also unnatural; but the general’s arguments were extremely weighty and based on tangible facts. Besides, left entirely to their own wishes and decisions, the brides would naturally be forced to see reason at last, and then things would take off, because they would do it eagerly, casting aside their caprices and excessive choosiness; all the parents would have to do would be to keep a watchful and, if possible, inconspicuous eye on them, lest some strange choice or unnatural deviation occur, and then, seizing the proper moment, step in with all their help and guide the affair with all their influence. Finally, the fact alone, for instance, that their fortune and social significance increased every year in geometrical progression meant that the more time that passed, the more advantageous it was to his daughters, even as brides. But among all these irrefutable facts another fact occurred: the eldest daughter, Alexandra, suddenly and almost quite unexpectedly (as always happens) turned twenty-five. And at almost the same time Afanasy Ivanovich Totsky, a man of high society, with high connections and extraordinary wealth, again showed his old desire to marry. He was a man of about fifty-five, of elegant character and with extraordinary refinement of taste. He wanted to marry well; he was an exceeding connoisseur of beauty. Since he had for some time maintained an extraordinary friendship with General Epanchin, especially strengthened by a joint participation in certain financial undertakings, he therefore asked the general—looking for friendly counsel and guidance, so to speak—whether it would or would not be possible to think of him marrying one of his daughters. In the quiet and beautiful flow of General Epanchin’s family life, an obvious upheaval was coming.
The undoubted beauty in the family, as has already been said, was the youngest, Aglaya. But even Totsky himself, a man of exceeding egoism, understood that he was not to seek there and that Aglaya was not destined for him. It may be that the somewhat blind love and all too ardent friendship of the sisters exaggerated the matter, but among them, in the most sincere way, they determined that Aglaya’s fate was to be not simply a fate, but the most ideal possible earthly paradise. Aglaya’s future husband would have to be endowed with all perfections and successes, to say nothing of wealth. The sisters even decided among themselves, and somehow without any special superfluous words, on the possibility, if need be, of making sacrifices on their own part in favor of Aglaya: the dowry allotted to Aglaya was colossal and quite out of the ordinary. The parents knew of this agreement between the two elder sisters, and therefore, when Totsky asked for advice, they had little doubt that one of the elder sisters would not refuse to crown their desires, the more so as Afanasy Ivanovich would make no difficulties over the dowry. As for Totsky’s offer, the general, with his particular knowledge of life, at once valued it extremely highly. Since Totsky himself, owing to certain special circumstances, had meanwhile to observe an extreme prudence in his steps and was still only probing into the matter, the parents, too, offered only the most remote suggestions for their daughters’ consideration. In response to which they received from them a reassuring, if not very definite, statement that the eldest, Alexandra, would perhaps not decline. Though of firm character, she was a kind, reasonable girl and extremely easy to get along with; she might even marry Totsky willingly, and if she gave her word, she would honestly keep it. She cared nothing for splendor, and not only threatened no fusses or abrupt upheavals, but might even sweeten and soothe one’s life. She was very good-looking, though not in a spectacular way. What could be better for Totsky?
And yet the matter still went ahead gropingly. It was mutually and amicably agreed between Totsky and the general that for the time being they would avoid any formal and irrevocable steps. The parents had still not even begun to speak quite openly with their daughters; some dissonance seemed to set in: Mrs. Epanchin, the mother of the family, was becoming displeased for some reason, and that was very grave. There was one circumstance here that hindered everything, one complex and troublesome occurrence, owing to which the whole matter might fall apart irrevocably.
This complex and troublesome “occurrence” (as Totsky himself put it) had begun very far back, about eighteen years ago. Next to one of Afanasy Ivanovich’s rich estates, in one of the central provinces, an impoverished petty landowner was living an impoverished life. This was a man remarkable for his ceaseless and anecdotal
misfortunes—a retired officer, from a good noble family, and in that respect even better than Totsky, a certain Filipp Alexandrovich Barashkov. Buried in debts and mortgages, he succeeded at last, after hard, almost peasant-like labors, in setting up his small estate more or less satisfactorily. The smallest success encouraged him extraordinarily. Encouraged and radiant with hopes, he went for a few days to his district town, to meet and, if possible, come to a final agreement with one of his chief creditors. On the third day after his arrival in town, his warden came from the village, on horseback, his cheek burned and his beard singed, and informed him that the “family estate burned down” the day before, at noon, and that “his wife burned with it, but the little children were left unharmed.” This surprise even Barashkov, accustomed as he was to the “bruises of fortune,” could not bear; he went mad and a month later died in delirium. The burned-down estate, with its peasants gone off begging, was sold for debts; and Barashkov’s children, two little girls aged six and seven, were taken out of magnanimity to be kept and brought up by Afanasy Ivanovich Totsky. They were brought up together with the children of Afanasy Ivanovich’s steward, a retired official with a large family and a German besides. Soon only one girl, Nastya, was left, the younger one having died of whooping cough. Totsky, who was living abroad, soon forgot all about them. One day, some five years later, Afanasy Ivanovich, passing by, decided to have a look at his estate and suddenly noticed in his country house, in the family of his German, a lovely child, a girl of about twelve, lively, sweet, clever, and promising to become a great beauty—in that regard Afanasy Ivanovich was an unerring connoisseur. That time he spent only a few days on his estate, but he had time to arrange things; a considerable change took place in the girl’s education: a respectable, elderly governess was called in, experienced in the higher upbringing of girls, an educated Swiss woman, who, along with French, taught various other subjects. She settled into the country house, and little Nastya’s upbringing acquired exceptional scope. Exactly four years later, this upbringing came to an end; the governess left, and a certain lady came to fetch Nastya, also a landowner of some sort, and also Mr. Totsky’s neighbor, but in another, distant province, and on the instructions and by the authority of Afanasy Ivanovich, took Nastya away with her. On this small estate there also turned out to be a small but newly constructed wooden house; it was decorated with particular elegance, and the little village, as if on purpose, was called “Delight.” The lady landowner brought Nastya straight to this quiet little house, and as she herself, a childless widow, lived less than a mile away, she settled in with Nastya. Around Nastya an old housekeeper and a young, experienced maid appeared. There were musical instruments in the house, an elegant library for girls, paintings, prints, pencils, brushes, paints, an astonishing greyhound, and two weeks later Afanasy Ivanovich himself arrived … After that he somehow became especially fond of this little village lost in the steppes, came every summer, stayed for two, even three months, and thus a rather long time, some four years, passed peacefully and happily, with taste and elegance.
Once it happened, at the beginning of winter, about four months after one of Afanasy Ivanovich’s summer visits to Delight, which this time had lasted only two weeks, that a rumor spread, or, rather, the rumor somehow reached Nastasya Filippovna, that in Petersburg, Afanasy Ivanovich was about to marry a beauty, a rich girl, from the nobility—in short, to make a respectable and brilliant match. Later it turned out that the rumor was not accurate in all details: the wedding was then only a project, and everything was still very uncertain, but all the same an extraordinary upheaval took place in Nastasya Filippovna’s life after that. She suddenly showed an extraordinary resolve and revealed a most unexpected character. Without further thought, she left her little country house and suddenly went to Petersburg, straight to Totsky, all on her own. He was amazed, tried to begin speaking; but it suddenly turned out, almost from the first phrase, that he had to change completely the style, the vocal range, the former topics of pleasant and elegant conversation, which till then had been used so successfully, the logic—everything, everything! Before him sat a totally different woman, not at all like the one he had known till then and had left only that July in the village of Delight.
This new woman, it turned out, first of all knew and understood an extraordinary amount—so much that it was a cause of profound wonder where she could have acquired such information, could have developed such precise notions in herself. (Could it have been from her girls’ library?) What’s more, she even understood an exceeding amount about legal matters and had a positive knowledge, if not of the world, then at least of how certain things went in the world; second of all, this was a completely different character from before, that is, not something timid, uncertain in a boardingschool way, sometimes charming in its original liveliness and naïvety, sometimes melancholy and pensive, astonished, mistrustful, weepy, and restless.
No: here before him an extraordinary and unexpected being laughed and stung him with a most poisonous sarcasm, telling him outright that she had never felt anything in her heart for him except the deepest contempt, contempt to the point of nausea, which had followed directly upon her initial astonishment. This new woman announced to him that in the fullest sense it would make no difference to her if he married any woman he liked right then and there, but that she had come to prevent this marriage of his, and to prevent it out of spite, solely because she wanted it that way, and consequently it must be that way—“well, so that now I can simply laugh at you to my heart’s content, because now I, too, finally feel like laughing.”
At least that was how she put it, though she may not have said everything she had in mind. But while the new Nastasya Filippovna was laughing and explaining all this, Afanasy Ivanovich was thinking the matter over to himself and, as far as possible, putting his somewhat shattered thoughts in order. This thinking went on for some time; for almost two weeks he grappled with it and tried to reach a final decision; but after two weeks his decision was taken. The thing was that Afanasy Ivanovich was about fifty at that time, and he was in the highest degree a respectable and settled man. His position in the world and in society had long been established on a most solid foundation. He loved and valued himself, his peace, and his comfort more than anything in the world, as befitted a man decent in the highest degree. Not the slightest disturbance, not the slightest wavering, could be tolerated in what had been established by his entire life and had acquired such a beautiful form. On the other hand, his experience and profound insight into things told Totsky very quickly and with extraordinary sureness that he now had to do with a being who was completely out of the ordinary, that this was precisely the sort of being who would not merely threaten, but would certainly act, and above all would decidedly stop at nothing, the more so as she valued decidedly nothing in the world, so that it was even impossible to tempt her. Here, obviously, was something else, implying some heartful and soulful swill—like some sort of romantic indignation, God knows against whom or why, some insatiable feeling of contempt that leaps completely beyond measure—in short, something highly ridiculous and inadmissible in decent society, something that was a sheer punishment from God for any decent man to encounter. To be sure, with Totsky’s wealth and connections, it was possible to produce some small and totally innocent villainy at once, so as to be rid of this trouble. On the other hand, it was obvious that Nastasya Filippovna herself was scarcely capable of doing any harm, for instance, in the legal sense; she could not even cause a significant scandal, because it would always be too easy to limit her. But all that was so only in case Nastasya Filippovna decided to act as everyone generally acts in such cases, without leaping too eccentrically beyond measure. But it was here that Totsky’s keen eye also proved useful: he was able to perceive that Nastasya Filippovna herself understood perfectly well how harmless she was in the legal sense, but that she had something quite different in mind and … in her flashing eyes. Valuing nothing, and least of all herself (it took gr
eat intelligence and perception to guess at that moment that she had long ceased to value herself and, skeptic and society cynic that he was, to believe in the seriousness of that feeling), Nastasya Filippovna was capable of ruining herself, irrevocably and outrageously, facing Siberia and hard labor, if only she could wreak havoc on the man for whom she felt such inhuman loathing. Afanasy Ivanovich had never concealed the fact that he was somewhat cowardly or, better to say, conservative in the highest degree. If he knew, for instance, that he would be killed at the foot of the altar, or that something of that sort would happen, extremely improper, ridiculous, and socially unacceptable, he would of course be frightened, but not so much at being killed or gravely wounded, or having his face publicly spat in, and so on and so forth, as at it happening to him in such an unnatural and unacceptable form. And this was precisely what Nastasya Filippovna foretold, though so far she had been silent about it; he knew that she understood and had studied him to the highest degree, and therefore knew how to strike at him. And since the wedding was indeed only an intention, Afanasy Ivanovich humbled himself and yielded to Nastasya Filippovna.
Another circumstance contributed to this decision: it was difficult to imagine how little this new Nastasya Filippovna resembled the former one in looks. Formerly she had been merely a very pretty girl, but now … For a long time Totsky could not forgive himself that he had looked for four years and not seen. True, it means much when an upheaval occurs on both sides, inwardly and unexpectedly. However, he recalled moments, even before, when strange thoughts had come to him, for instance, while looking into those eyes: it was as if he had sensed some deep and mysterious darkness in them. Those eyes had gazed at him—and seemed to pose a riddle. During the last two years he had often been surprised by the change in Nastasya Filippovna’s color; she was growing terribly pale and—strangely—was even becoming prettier because of it. Totsky, who, like all gentlemen who have had a bit of fun in their time, at first looked with scorn on this untried soul he had obtained for himself so cheaply, more recently had begun to doubt his view. In any case, he had already resolved that past spring to arrange a marriage for Nastasya Filippovna before too long, in an excellent and well-provided way, with some sensible and respectable gentleman serving in a different province. (Oh, how terribly and wickedly Nastasya Filippovna laughed at that now!) But now Afanasy Ivanovich, charmed by the novelty, even thought he might again make use of this woman. He decided to settle Nastasya Filippovna in Petersburg and surround her with luxurious comfort. If not the one thing, then the other: he could show Nastasya Filippovna off and even boast of her in a certain circle. And Afanasy Ivanovich cherished his reputation along that line.
The Idiot Page 7