"Ah! Oh!" the clerk went all awry and was even trembling. "And the deceased would have hounded you into the next world for ten roubles, let alone ten thousand," he nodded to the prince. The
prince studied Rogozhin with curiosity; the man seemed still paler at that moment.
"Hounded!" Rogozhin repeated. "What do you know? He found out all about it at once," he continued to the prince, "and Zalyozhev also went blabbing to everybody he met. The old man took me and locked me upstairs, and admonished me for a whole hour. 'I'm just getting you prepared now,' he said. 'I'll come back later to say good night.' And what do you think? The old gray fellow went to Nastasya Filippovna, bowed to the ground before her, pleaded and wept. She finally brought the box and threw it at him: 'Here are your earrings for you, graybeard, and now they're worth ten times more to me, since Parfyon got them under such a menace. Give my regards to Parfyon Semyonych,' she says, 'and thank him for me.' Well, and meanwhile, with my mother's blessing, I got twenty roubles from Seryozhka Protushin and went by train to Pskov, and arrived there in a fever. The old women started reading prayers at me, and I sat there drunk, then went and spent my last money in the pot-houses, lay unconscious in the street all night, and by morning was delirious, and the dogs bit me all over during the night. I had a hard time recovering."
"Well, well, sir, now our Nastasya Filippovna's going to start singing!" the clerk tittered, rubbing his hands. "Now, my good sir, it's not just pendants! Now we'll produce such pendants . . ."
"If you say anything even once about Nastasya Filippovna, by God, I'll give you a whipping, even if you did go around with Likhachev!" cried Rogozhin, seizing him firmly by the arm.
"If you whip me, it means you don't reject me! Whip me! Do it and you put your mark on me . . . But here we are!"
Indeed, they were entering the station. Though Rogozhin said he had left secretly, there were several people waiting for him. They shouted and waved their hats.
"Hah, Zalyozhev's here, too!" Rogozhin muttered, looking at them with a triumphant and even as if spiteful smile, and he suddenly turned to the prince. "Prince, I don't know why I've come to love you. Maybe because I met you at such a moment, though I met him, too" (he pointed to Lebedev), "and don't love him. Come and see me, Prince. We'll take those wretched gaiters off you; I'll dress you in a top-notch marten coat; I'll have the best of tailcoats made for you, a white waistcoat, or whatever you like; I'll stuff your pockets with money, and . . . we'll go to see Nastasya Filippovna! Will you come or not?"
"Hearken, Prince Lev Nikolaevich!" Lebedev picked up imposingly and solemnly. "Ah, don't let it slip away! Don't let it slip away!"
Prince Myshkin rose a little, courteously offered Rogozhin his hand, and said affably:
"I'll come with the greatest pleasure, and I thank you very much for loving me. I may even come today, if I have time. Because, I'll tell you frankly, I like you very much, and I especially liked you when you were telling about the diamond pendants. Even before the pendants I liked you, despite your gloomy face. I also thank you for promising me the clothes and a fur coat, because in fact I'll need some clothes and a fur coat soon. And I have almost no money at the present moment."
"There'll be money towards evening—come!"
"There will be, there will be," the clerk picked up, "towards evening, before sundown, there will be."
"And are you a great fancier of the female sex, Prince? Tell me beforehand!"
"N-n-no! I'm . . . Maybe you don't know, but because of my inborn illness, I don't know women at all."
"Well, in that case," Rogozhin exclaimed, "you come out as a holy fool, Prince, and God loves your kind!"
"The Lord God loves your kind," the clerk picked up.
"And you come with me, pencil pusher," Rogozhin said to Lebedev, and they all got off the train.
Lebedev ended up with what he wanted. Soon the noisy band withdrew in the direction of Voznesensky Prospect. The prince had to turn towards Liteinaya Street. It was damp and wet; the prince inquired of passersby—to reach the end of his route he had to go some two miles, and he decided to hire a cab.
II
General Epanchin lived in his own house off Liteinaya, towards the Cathedral of the Transfiguration. Besides this (excellent) house, five-sixths of which was rented out, General Epanchin owned another enormous house on Sadovaya Street, which also brought him a large income. Besides these two houses, he had quite a profitable and considerable estate just outside Petersburg; and there was also some factory in the Petersburg district. In the old days General Epanchin, as everyone knew, had
participated in tax farming.11 Now he participated and had quite a considerable voice in several important joint-stock companies. He had the reputation of a man with big money, big doings, and big connections. He had managed to make himself absolutely necessary in certain quarters, his own department among others. And yet it was also known that Ivan Fyodorovich Epanchin was a man of no education and the son of a common soldier; this last, to be sure, could only do him credit, but the general, though an intelligent man, was also not without his little, quite forgivable weaknesses and disliked certain allusions. But he was unquestionably an intelligent and adroit man. He had a system, for instance, of not putting himself forward, of effacing himself wherever necessary, and many valued him precisely for his simplicity, precisely for always knowing his place. And yet, if these judges only knew what sometimes went on in the soul of Ivan Fyodorovich, who knew his place so well! Though he did indeed have practical sense, and experience in worldly matters, and certain very remarkable abilities, he liked to present himself more as the executor of someone else's idea than as being his own master, as a man "loyal without fawning,"12 and— what does not happen nowadays?—even Russian and warmhearted. In this last respect several amusing misadventures even happened to him; but the general was never downcast, even at the most amusing misadventures; besides, luck was with him, even at cards, and he played for extremely high stakes, and not only did not want to conceal this little weakness of his for a bit of cardplaying, which came in handy for him so essentially and on many occasions, but even deliberately flaunted it. He belonged to a mixed society, though naturally of a "trumpish" sort. But everything was before him, there was time enough for everything, and everything would come in time and in due course. As for his years, General Epanchin was still, as they say, in the prime of life, that is, fifty-six and not a whit more, which in any case is a flourishing age, the age when true life really begins. His health, his complexion, his strong though blackened teeth, his stocky, sturdy build, the preoccupied expression on his physiognomy at work in the morning, the merry one in the evening over cards or at his highness's— everything contributed to his present and future successes and strewed his excellency's path with roses.