“Your name?” someone cried to me.
“Dolgoruky,” I roared.
“Prince Dolgoruky?”
Beside myself, I responded with quite a nasty curse word, and then . . . and then I remember they dragged me to some dark little room “for sobering up.” Oh, I’m not protesting. The public all read in the newspapers not long ago the complaint of some gentleman who sat all night under arrest, bound, and also in a sobering-up room, but he, it seems, wasn’t even guilty; while I was guilty. I collapsed on a bunk in the company of some two unconsciously sleeping people. My head ached, there was a throbbing in my temples, a throbbing in my heart. It must be that I became oblivious and, it seems, I raved. I remember only that I woke up in the middle of the deep night and sat up on the bunk. All at once I remembered everything and grasped everything, and, putting my elbows on my knees, propping my head in my hands, I sank into deep thought.
Oh! I’m not going to describe my feelings, and I also have no time, but I will note just one thing: maybe never have I experienced more delightful moments in my soul than in those minutes of reflection in the depths of the night, on the bunk, under arrest. This may seem strange to the reader, a sort of ink-slinging, a wish to shine with originality—and yet it was all just as I say. It was one of those minutes that, perhaps, occur with everyone, but that come only once in a lifetime. In such moments you decide your fate, determine your worldview, and say to yourself once and for all your life: “Here is where the truth lies, and here is where I should go to reach it.” Yes, those moments were the light of my soul. Insulted by the arrogant Bjoring, and hoping to be insulted by that high-society woman tomorrow, I knew only too well that I could take terrible revenge on them, but I decided that I would not take revenge. I decided, despite all temptation, that I would not reveal the document, would not make it known to the whole world (as had already spun round in my mind); I repeated to myself that tomorrow I would place the letter before her and, if necessary, even endure a mocking smile from her instead of gratitude, but still I would not say a word and would leave her forever . . . However, there’s no point in expanding on it. Of all that would happen to me here tomorrow, of how I’d be brought before the authorities and what would be done to me, I almost forgot to think. I crossed myself lovingly, lay down on the bunk, and fell into a serene, childlike sleep.
I awoke late, when it was already light. I was now the only one in the room. I sat up and began silently waiting, a long time, about an hour; it must have been about nine o’clock when I was suddenly summoned. I could go into greater detail, but it’s not worth it, for it’s all extraneous now; all I want to do is finish telling the main thing. I’ll only point out that, to my greatest amazement, I was treated with unexpected politeness: they asked me something, I answered something, and I was at once let go. I went out silently, and it was with pleasure that I read in their looks even a certain surprise at a man who, even in such a position, was capable of not losing his dignity. If I hadn’t noticed it, I wouldn’t have written it down. At the exit, Tatyana Pavlovna was waiting for me. I’ll explain in two words why I got off so easily then.
Early in the morning, maybe at eight o’clock, Tatyana Pavlovna came flying to my apartment, that is, to Pyotr Ippolitovich’s, still hoping to find the prince there, and suddenly learned about all of yesterday’s horrors, and above all that I had been arrested. She instantly rushed to Katerina Nikolaevna (who, the evening before, on returning from the theater, had met with her father, who had been brought to her), woke her up, frightened her, and demanded that I be released immediately. With a note from her, she flew at once to Bjoring and immediately obtained another note from him, to “the proper person,” with an urgent request from Bjoring himself that I be released, “having been arrested through a misunderstanding.” With this note she arrived at the precinct, and his request was honored.
III
NOW I’LL GO on with the main thing.
Tatyana Pavlovna, having picked me up, put me in a cab, brought me to her place, immediately ordered the samovar, and washed me and scrubbed me in the kitchen herself. Also in the kitchen, she loudly told me that at half-past eleven Katerina Nikolaevna herself would come—as the two had already arranged earlier—in order to meet me. And this Marya also heard. After a few minutes she brought the samovar, but after another two minutes, when Tatyana Pavlovna suddenly summoned her, she did not respond. It turned out that she had gone somewhere. I ask the reader to note that very well; it was then, I suppose, about a quarter to ten. Though Tatyana Pavlovna was angry at her disappearing without asking, she merely thought she had gone to the shop, and at once forgot about it for a while. And we couldn’t be bothered with that; we talked nonstop, because we had things to discuss, so that I, for instance, paid almost no attention to Marya’s disappearance; I ask the reader to remember that as well.
Needless to say, I was as if in a daze; I was explaining my feelings, and above all—we were waiting for Katerina Nikolaevna, and the thought that in an hour I would finally meet with her, and at such a decisive moment of my life, made me tremble and quake. Finally, when I had drunk two cups, Tatyana Pavlovna suddenly got up, took a pair of scissors from the table, and said:
“Give me your pocket, we must take out the letter—we can’t cut it with her here!”
“Right!” I exclaimed, and unbuttoned my frock coat.
“What’s all this tangle here? Who did the sewing?”
“I did, I did, Tatyana Pavlovna.”
“That’s obvious. Well, here it is . . .”
The letter was taken out; it was the same old envelope, but with a blank piece of paper stuck into it.
“What’s this? . . .” Tatyana Pavlovna exclaimed, turning it over. “What’s got into you?”
But I stood there speechless, pale . . . and suddenly sank strengthlessly onto the chair; truly, I almost fainted away.
“What on earth is this?” Tatyana Pavlovna yelled. “Where is your note?”
“Lambert!” I jumped up suddenly, realizing and slapping myself on the forehead.
Hurrying and breathless, I explained everything to her—the night at Lambert’s, and our conspiracy at the time; however, I had already confessed this conspiracy to her the day before.
“They stole it! They stole it!” I cried, stamping the floor and seizing myself by the hair.
“Trouble!” Tatyana Pavlovna suddenly decided, grasping what it meant. “What time is it?”
It was about eleven.
“Eh, Marya’s not here! . . . Marya, Marya!”
“What is it, ma’am?” Marya suddenly responded from the kitchen.
“You’re here? So what are we to do now? I’ll fly to her . . . Ah, you dodderer, you dodderer!”
“And I’ll go to Lambert!” I yelled. “And I’ll strangle him, if need be!”
“Ma’am!” Marya suddenly squeaked from the kitchen. “There’s some woman here asking for you very much . . .”
But before she finished speaking, the “some woman” herself burst precipitously from the kitchen with cries and screams. It was Alphonsinka. I won’t describe the scene in full detail; the scene was a trick and a fake, but it should be noted that Alphonsinka played it splendidly. With tears of repentance and with violent gestures, she rattled out (in French, naturally) that she herself had cut out the letter then, that it was now with Lambert, and that Lambert, with “that brigand,” cet homme noir,116 wanted to lure madame la générale117 and shoot her, right now, in an hour . . . that she had learned it all from them and had suddenly become terribly frightened, because she saw they had a pistol, le pistolet, and had now rushed to us, so that we could go, save, prevent . . . Cet homme noir . . .