His presentiment came true. That evening he received a strange note, brief but resolute. The general informed him that he was also parting with him forever, that he respected him and was grateful to him, but that even from him he would not accept "tokens of compassion humiliating to the dignity of a man already unfortunate without that." When the prince heard that the old man had locked himself up at Nina Alexandrovna's, he almost stopped worrying about him. But we have already seen that the general had also caused some sort of trouble at Lizaveta Prokofyevna's. We cannot go into detail here, but will note briefly that the essence of their meeting consisted in the general's frightening Lizaveta Prokofyevna and driving her to indignation with his bitter allusions to Ganya. He had been led out in disgrace. That was why he had spent such a night and such a morning, had become definitively cracked and had rushed out to the street almost in a state of insanity.
Kolya did not fully understand the matter yet and even hoped to win out by severity.
"Well, where are we going to drag ourselves now, General?" he said. "You don't want to go to the prince, you've quarreled with Lebedev, you have no money, and I never have any: so here we are in the street without a shirt to our name."
"It's better than having a shirt and no name," the general murmured. "This pun of mine . . . was received with raptures . . . a company of officers ... in the year forty-four . . . Eighteen . . . hundred . . . and forty-four, yes! ... I don't remember . . . Oh, don't remind me, don't remind me! 'Where is my youth, where is my freshness!' So exclaimed . . . Who exclaimed that, Kolya?"
"It's from Gogol, in
Dead Souls,
21
"Dead souls! Oh, yes, dead! When you bury me, write on my tombstone: 'Here lies a dead soul!'
Disgrace pursues me!
Who said that, Kolya?"
"I don't know, papa."
"There was no Eropegov! No Eroshka Eropegov! . . ." he cried out in a frenzy, stopping in the street, "and that is my son, my own son! Eropegov, who for eleven months was like a brother to me, for whom I'd have gone to a duel . . . Prince Vygoretsky, our captain, says to him over a bottle: 'You, Grisha, where did you get your Anna, 22tell me that?' 'On the battlefields of my fatherland, that's where!' 'Bravo, Grisha!' I shout. Well, that led to a duel, and then he married . . . Marya Petrovna Su . . . Sutugin and was killed on the battlefield . . . The bullet ricocheted off the cross on my chest and hit him right in the forehead. 'I'll never forget!' he cried and fell on the spot. I ... I served honestly, Kolya; I served nobly, but disgrace—'disgrace pursues me'! You and Nina will come to my little grave . . . 'Poor Nina!' I used to call her that, Kolya, long ago, in the beginning, and she so loved . . . Nina, Nina! What have I done to your life! What can you love me for, patient soul! Your mother is an angelic soul, do you hear, Kolya, an angelic soul!"
"I know that, papa. Papa, dearest, let's go home to mama! She ran after us! Well, why are you standing there? As if you don't understand . . . What are you crying for?"
Kolya himself was crying and kissing his father's hands.
"You're kissing my hands, mine!"
"Yes, yours, yours. What's so surprising? Well, what are you doing howling in the middle of the street—and he calls himself a general, a military man! Well, come on!"
"God bless you, my dear boy, for showing respect to a disgraceful—yes! to a disgraceful old fellow, your father . . . may you also have such a son . . . le roi de Rome . . .Oh, 'a curse, a curse upon this house!' "
"But what is really going on here!" Kolya suddenly seethed. "What's the matter? Why don't you want to go back home now? What are you losing your mind for?"
"I'll explain, I'll explain it to you . . . I'll tell you everything;
don't shout, they'll hear you . . . le roi de Rome . . .Oh, I'm sick, I'm sad!
Nanny, where's your grave! 23
Who exclaimed that, Kolya?"
"I don't know, I don't know who exclaimed it! Let's go home right now, right now! I'll give Ganka a beating, if I have to . . . where are you going now?"
But the general was pulling him towards the porch of a nearby house.
"Where are you going? That's not our porch!"
The general sat down on the porch and kept pulling Kolya towards him by the hand.
"Bend down, bend down!" he murmured. "I'll tell you everything . . . disgrace . . . bend down . . . your ear, I'll tell it in your ear . . ."
"What's the matter!" Kolya was terribly frightened, but offered his ear anyway.
"Le roi de Rome . . ."the general whispered, also as if he were trembling all over.
"What? . . . What have you got to do with le roi de Rome?. . .Why?"
"I . . . I . . ." the general whispered again, clutching "his boy's" shoulder tighter and tighter, "I . . . want . . . I'll tell you . . . everything, Marya, Marya . . . Petrovna Su-su-su . . ."
Kolya tore himself free, seized the general by the shoulders, and looked at him like a crazy man. The old man turned purple, his lips became blue, small spasms kept passing over his face. Suddenly he bent over and quietly began to collapse onto Kolya's arm.
"A stroke!" the boy cried out for the whole street to hear, realizing at last what was wrong.
V
To tell the truth, Varvara Ardalionovna, in her conversation with her brother, had slightly exaggerated the accuracy of her information about the prince's proposal to Aglaya Epanchin. Perhaps, as a perspicacious woman, she had divined what was to happen in the near future; perhaps, being upset that her dream (which, in truth, she did not believe in herself) had been scattered like smoke, she, as a human being, could not deny herself the
pleasure of pouring more venom into her brother's heart by exaggerating the calamity, though, incidentally, she loved him sincerely and compassionately. In any case, she had not been able to get such accurate information from her friends, the Epanchin girls; there had been only hints, words unspoken, omissions, enigmas. And perhaps Aglaya's sisters had also let certain things slip on purpose, in order to find something out from Varvara Ardalionovna; and it might have been, finally, that they were unable to deny themselves the feminine pleasure of teasing a friend slightly, even a childhood one: it could not have been that in so long a time they had not glimpsed at least a small edge of her intentions.
On the other hand, the prince, too, though he was perfectly right in assuring Lebedev that there was nothing he could tell him and that precisely nothing special had happened to him, was also, perhaps, mistaken. In fact, something very strange seemed to have occurred with everyone: nothing had happened, and at the same time it was as if a great deal had happened. It was this last that Varvara Ardalionovna had divined with her sure feminine instinct.
How it happened, however, that everyone at the Epanchins' suddenly came up at once with one and the same notion that something major was occurring with Aglaya and that her fate was being decided—is very difficult to present in an orderly way. But this notion had no sooner flashed in everyone at once, than they all immediately insisted at once that they had perceived the whole thing long ago, and it had all been clearly foreseen; that it had all been clear since the "poor knight," and even before, only then they had not wanted to believe in such an absurdity. So the sisters insisted; and, of course, Lizaveta Prokofyevna had foreseen and known everything before everyone else, and she had long had "an aching heart," but—long or not—the notion of the prince now suddenly went too much against the grain, essentially because it disconcerted her. A question presented itself here that had to be resolved immediately; yet not only was it impossible to resolve it, but poor Lizaveta Prokofyevna could not even pose the question to herself with full clarity, try as she might. It was a difficult matter: "Was the prince good or not? Was the whole thing good or not? If it was not good (which was unquestionable), what precisely was not good about it? And if it was good (which was also possible), then, again, what was good about it?" The father of the family himself, Ivan Fyodorovich, was naturally the first to be surprised, but then suddenly confessed that "by God, he, too, had fancied