“I did not say you were Rogozhin’s kind of woman, you’re not Rogozhin’s kind!” the prince uttered in a trembling voice.
“Nastasya Filippovna, enough, darling, enough, dear heart,” Darya Alexeevna suddenly could not stand it. “If they pain you so much, why even look at them? And do you really want to go off with this one, for all his hundred thousand? True, it’s a hundred thousand—there it sits! Just take the hundred thousand and throw him out, that’s how you ought to deal with them! Ah, if I were in your place, I’d have them all … no, really!”
Darya Alexeevna even became wrathful. She was a kind woman and a highly impressionable one.
“Don’t be angry, Darya Alexeevna,” Nastasya Filippovna smiled at her, “I wasn’t speaking angrily to him. I didn’t reproach him, did I? I really can’t understand how this foolishness came over me, that I should have wanted to enter an honest family. I saw his mother, I kissed her hand. And if I jeered at you today, Ganechka, it was because I purposely wanted to see for the last time myself how far you would go. Well, you surprised me, truly. I expected a lot, but not that! Could you possibly marry me, knowing that this one here had given me such pearls, almost on the eve of the wedding, and that I had taken them? And what about Rogozhin? In your own house, in front of your mother and sister, he bargained for me, and after that you came as a fiancé all the same and almost brought your sister? Can it be true what Rogozhin said about you, that for three roubles you’d crawl on all fours to Vassilievsky Island?”
“He would,” Rogozhin suddenly said quietly but with a look of great conviction.
“It would be one thing if you were starving to death, but they say you earn a good salary! And on top of it all, besides the disgrace, to bring a wife you hate into the house! (Because you do hate me, I know it!) No, I believe now that such a man could kill for money! They’re all so possessed by this lust now, they’re so worked up about money, it’s as if they’d lost their minds. Still a child, and he’s already trying to become a usurer. Or the one who wraps silk around a razor, fixes it tight, sneaks up behind his friend, and cuts his throat like a sheep, as I read recently.44 Well, you’re a shameless one! I’m shameless, but you’re worse. I’ll say nothing about this bouquet man …”
“Is this you, is this you, Nastasya Filippovna?” the general clasped his hands in genuine grief. “You, so delicate, with such refined notions, and all at once! Such language! Such style!”
“I’m tipsy now, General,” Nastasya Filippovna suddenly laughed. “I want to carouse now! Today is my day, my red-letter day, my leap day, I’ve waited a long time for it. Darya Alexeevna, do you see this bouquet man, this monsieur aux camélias, he’s sitting there and laughing at us …”
“I’m not laughing, Nastasya Filippovna, I’m merely listening with the greatest attention,” Totsky parried with dignity.
“Well, then, why did I torment him for a whole five years and not let him leave me? As if he was worth it! He’s simply the way he has to be … He’s still going to consider me guilty before him: he brought me up, he kept me like a countess, money, so much money, went on me, he found me an honest husband there, and Ganechka here, and what do you think: I didn’t live with him for five years, but I took his money and thought I was right! I really got myself quite confused! Now you say take the hundred thousand and throw him out, if it’s so loathsome. It’s true that it’s loathsome … I could have married long ago, and not just some Ganechka, only that’s also pretty loathsome. Why did I waste my five years in this spite! But, would you believe it, some four years ago I had moments when I thought: shouldn’t I really marry my Afanasy Ivanovich? I thought it then out of spite; all sorts of things came into my head then; but I could have made him do it! He asked for it himself, can you believe that? True, he was lying, but he’s so susceptible, he can’t control himself. And then, thank God, I thought: as if he’s worth such spite! And then I suddenly felt such loathing for him that, even if he had proposed to me, I wouldn’t have accepted him. And for a whole five years I’ve been showing off like this! No, it’s better in the street where I belong! Either carouse with Rogozhin or go tomorrow and become a washerwoman! Because nothing on me is my own; if I leave, I’ll abandon everything to him, I’ll leave every last rag, and who will take me without anything? Ask Ganya here, will he? Even Ferdyshchenko won’t take me!…”
“Maybe Ferdyshchenko won’t take you, Nastasya Filippovna, I’m a candid man,” Ferdyshchenko interrupted, “but the prince will! You’re sitting here lamenting, but look at the prince! I’ve been watching him for a long time …”
Nastasya Filippovna turned to the prince with curiosity.
“Is it true?” she asked.
“It’s true,” whispered the prince.
“You’ll take me just as I am, with nothing?”
“I will, Nastasya Filippovna …”
“Here’s a new anecdote!” muttered the general. “Might have expected it.”
The prince, with a sorrowful, stern, and penetrating gaze, looked into the face of Nastasya Filippovna, who went on studying him.
“Here’s another one!” she said suddenly, turning to Darya Alexeevna again. “And he really does it out of the kindness of his heart, I know him. I’ve found a benefactor! Though maybe what they say about him is true, that he’s … like that. How are you going to live, if you’re so in love that you’ll take Rogozhin’s kind of woman—you, a prince?…”
“I’ll take you as an honest woman, Nastasya Filippovna, not as Rogozhin’s kind,” said the prince.
“Me, an honest woman?”
“You.”
“Well, that’s … out of some novel! That, my darling prince, is old gibberish, the world’s grown smarter now, and that’s all nonsense! And how can you go getting married, when you still need a nursemaid to look after you!”
The prince stood up and said in a trembling voice, but with a look of deep conviction:
“I don’t know anything, Nastasya Filippovna, I haven’t seen anything, you’re right, but I … I will consider that you are doing me an honor, and not I you. I am nothing, but you have suffered and have emerged pure from such a hell, and that is a lot. Why do you feel ashamed and want to go with Rogozhin? It’s your fever … You’ve given Mr. Totsky back his seventy thousand and say you will abandon everything you have here, which no one else here would do. I … love you … Nastasya Filippovna. I will die for you, Nastasya Filippovna. I won’t let anyone say a bad word about you, Nastasya Filippovna … If we’re poor, I’ll work, Nastasya Filippovna …”
At these last words a tittering came from Ferdyshchenko and Lebedev, and even the general produced some sort of grunt to himself in great displeasure. Ptitsyn and Totsky could not help smiling, but restrained themselves. The rest simply gaped in amazement.
“… But maybe we won’t be poor, but very rich, Nastasya Filippovna,” the prince went on in the same timid voice. “I don’t know for certain, however, and it’s too bad that up to now I haven’t been able to find anything out for the whole day, but in Switzerland I received a letter from Moscow, from a certain Mr. Salazkin, and he informs me that I may have inherited a very large fortune. Here is the letter …”
The prince actually took a letter from his pocket.
“Maybe he’s raving?” muttered the general. “This is a real madhouse!”
“I believe you said, Prince, that this letter to you is from Salazkin?” asked Ptitsyn. “He is a very well-known man in his circle, a very well-known solicitor, and if it is indeed he who has informed you, you may fully believe it. Fortunately, I know his handwriting, because I’ve recently had dealings with him … If you will let me have a look, I may be able to tell you something.”
With a trembling hand, the prince silently gave him the letter.
“But what is it, what is it?” the general roused himself up, looking at them all like a half-wit. “Can it be an inheritance?”
They all turned their eyes to Ptitsyn, who was reading the letter. Th
e general curiosity received a new and extraordinary jolt. Ferdyshchenko could not sit still; Rogozhin looked perplexed and, in terrible anxiety, turned his gaze now to the prince, now to Ptitsyn. Darya Alexeevna sat in expectation as if on pins and needles. Even Lebedev could not help himself, left his corner, and, bending double, began peering at the letter over Ptitsyn’s shoulder, with the look of a man who is afraid he may get a whack for it.
XVI
“IT’S A SURE THING,” Ptitsyn announced at last, folding the letter and handing it back to the prince. “Without any trouble, according to the incontestable will of your aunt, you have come into an extremely large fortune.”
“It can’t be!” the general exclaimed, as if firing a shot.
Again everyone gaped.
Ptitsyn explained, mainly addressing Ivan Fyodorovich, that the prince’s aunt, whom he had never known personally, had died five months ago. She was the older sister of the prince’s mother, the daughter of a Moscow merchant of the third guild, Papushin, who had died in poverty and bankruptcy. But the older brother of this Papushin, also recently deceased, was a well-known rich merchant. About a year ago, his only two sons died almost in the same month. This so shocked the old man that soon afterwards he himself fell ill and died. He was a widower and had no heirs at all except for the prince’s aunt, his niece, a very poor woman, who lived as a sponger in someone else’s house. When she received the inheritance, this aunt was already nearly dead from dropsy, but she at once began searching for the prince, charging Salazkin with the task, and managed to have her will drawn up. Apparently, neither the prince nor the doctor he lived with in Switzerland wanted to wait for any official announcements or make inquiries, and the prince, with Salazkin’s letter in his pocket, decided to set off in person …
“I can tell you only one thing,” Ptitsyn concluded, addressing the prince, “that all this must be incontestable and correct, and all that Salazkin writes to you about the incontestability and legality of your case you may take as pure money in your pocket. Congratulations, Prince! You, too, may get a million and a half, or possibly even more. Papushin was a very rich merchant.”
“That’s the last Prince Myshkin for you!” shouted Ferdyshchenko.
“Hurrah!” Lebedev wheezed in a drunken little voice.
“And there I go lending the poor fellow twenty-five roubles today, ha, ha, ha! It’s a phantasmagoria, and nothing else!” said the general, all but stunned with amazement. “Well, congratulations, congratulations!” and, getting up from his seat, he went over to embrace the prince. After him, the others began to get up and also made for the prince. Even those who had retreated behind the door curtain began to emerge in the drawing room. Muffled talk, exclamations, even calls for champagne arose; all began pushing, jostling. For a moment they nearly forgot Nastasya Filippovna and that she was after all the hostess of her party. But it graduallly dawned on everyone at almost the same time that the prince had just proposed to her. The matter thus looked three times more mad and extraordinary than before. Deeply amazed, Totsky shrugged his shoulders; he was almost the only one to remain seated, while the rest crowded around the table in disorder. Everyone asserted afterwards that it was also from this moment that Nastasya Filippovna went crazy. She sat there and for some time looked around at them all with a sort of strange, astonished gaze, as if she could not understand and was trying to figure something out. Then she suddenly turned to the prince and, with a menacing scowl, studied him intently; but this lasted only a moment; perhaps it had suddenly occurred to her that it might all be a joke, a mockery; but the prince’s look reassured her at once. She became pensive, then smiled again, as if not clearly realizing why …
“So I really am a princess!” she whispered to herself as if mockingly and, happening to glance at Darya Alexeevna, she laughed. “An unexpected denouement … I … was expecting something else. But why are you all standing, ladies and gentlemen, please be seated, congratulate me and the prince! I think someone asked for champagne; Ferdyshchenko, go and order some. Katya, Pasha,” she suddenly saw her maids at the door, “come here, I’m getting married, have you heard? The prince, he’s come into a million and a half, he’s Prince Myshkin, and he’s taking me!”
“And God be with you, darling, it’s high time! Don’t miss it!” cried Darya Alexeevna, deeply shaken by what had happened.
“Sit down beside me, Prince,” Nastasya Filippovna went on, “that’s right, and here comes the wine, congratulate us, ladies and gentlemen!”
“Hurrah!” cried a multitude of voices. Many crowded around the wine, among them almost all of Rogozhin’s people. But though they shouted and were ready to shout, many of them, despite all the strangeness of the circumstances and the surroundings, sensed that the décor was changing. Others were perplexed and waited mistrustfully. And many whispered among themselves that it was a most ordinary affair, that princes marry all kinds of women, and even take gypsy women from their camps. Rogozhin himself stood and stared, his face twisted into a fixed, bewildered smile.
“Prince, dear heart, come to your senses!” the general whispered in horror, approaching from the side and tugging at the prince’s sleeve.
Nastasya Filippovna noticed it and laughed loudly.
“No, General! I’m a princess myself now, you heard it—the prince won’t let anyone offend me! Afanasy Ivanovich, congratulate me; now I’ll be able to sit next to your wife anywhere; it’s useful to have such a husband, don’t you think? A million and a half, and a prince, and, they say, an idiot to boot, what could be better? Only now does real life begin! You’re too late, Rogozhin! Take your packet away, I’m marrying the prince, and I’m richer than you are!”
But Rogozhin grasped what was going on. Inexpressible suffering was reflected in his face. He clasped his hands and a groan burst from his breast.
“Give her up!” he cried to the prince.
There was laughter all around.
“Give her up to you?” Darya Alexeevna triumphantly joined in. “See, he dumps money on the table, the boor! The prince is marrying her, and you show up with your outrages!”
“I’ll marry her, too! Right now, this minute! I’ll give her everything …”
“Look at him, drunk from the pot-house—you should be thrown out!” Darya Alexeevna repeated indignantly.
More laughter.
“Do you hear, Prince?” Nastasya Filippovna turned to him. “That’s how the boor bargains for your bride.”
“He’s drunk,” said the prince. “He loves you very much.”
“And won’t you be ashamed afterwards that your bride almost went off with Rogozhin?”
“It’s because you were in a fever; and you’re in a fever now, as if you’re delirious.”
“And won’t it shame you when they tell you afterwards that your wife was Totsky’s kept woman?”
“No, it won’t … You were not with Totsky by your own will.”
“And you’ll never reproach me?”
“Never.”
“Well, watch out, don’t vouch for your whole life!”
“Nastasya Filippovna,” the prince said quietly and as if with compassion, “I told you just now that I will take your consent as an honor, and that you are doing me an honor, and not I you. You smiled at those words, and I also heard laughter around me. Perhaps I expressed myself in a funny way, and was funny myself, but I still think that I … understand what honor is, and I’m sure that what I said was the truth. You were just going to ruin yourself irretrievably, because you would never forgive yourself for that: but you’re not guilty of anything. It can’t be that your life is already completely ruined. So what if Rogozhin came to you, and Gavrila Ardalionovich wanted to swindle you? Why do you constantly mention that? Very few people are capable of doing what you have done, I repeat it to you, and as for wanting to go off with Rogozhin, you decided that in a fit of illness. You’re still in a fit, and it would be better if you went to bed. You’d get yourself hired as a washerwoman tomorrow a
nd not stay with Rogozhin. You’re proud, Nastasya Filippovna, but you may be so unhappy that you actually consider yourself guilty. You need much good care, Nastasya Filippovna. I will take care of you. I saw your portrait today, and it was as if I recognized a familiar face. It seemed to me at once as if you had already called me. I … I shall respect you all my life, Nastasya Filippovna,” the prince suddenly concluded, as if coming to his senses, blushing and realizing the sort of people before whom he had said these things.
Ptitsyn even bowed his head out of chastity and looked at the ground. Totsky thought to himself: “He’s an idiot, but he knows that flattery succeeds best: it’s second nature!” The prince also noticed Ganya’s eyes flashing from the corner, as if he wanted to reduce him to ashes.
“What a kind man!” Darya Alexeevna proclaimed tender-heartedly.
“A cultivated man, but a lost one!” the general whispered in a low voice.
Totsky took his hat and prepared to get up and quietly disappear. He and the general exchanged glances so as to leave together.
“Thank you, Prince, no one has ever spoken to me like that,” said Nastasya Filippovna. “They all bargained for me, but no decent person ever asked me to marry him. Did you hear, Afanasy Ivanych? How do you like what the prince said? It’s almost indecent … Rogozhin! Don’t leave yet. And you won’t, I can see that. Maybe I’ll still go with you. Where did you want to take me?”
“To Ekaterinhof,”45 Lebedev reported from the corner, but Rogozhin only gave a start and became all eyes, as if unable to believe himself. He was completely stupefied, like someone who has received a terrible blow on the head.
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