"Lord! Have you ever seen the like! He won't come when it's purposely for him and . . . oh, God! What a pleasure to deal with such a . . . senseless man as you!"
"Well, I'll come, I'll come!" the prince hastily interrupted. "And
I give you my word of honor that I'll sit all evening without saying a word. That's what I'll do."
"Splendid. You just said you'd 'report yourself sick.' Where indeed do you get these expressions? What makes you speak with me in such words? Are you teasing me or something?"
"I'm sorry; that's also a school phrase; I'll stop. I realize very well that you're . . . afraid for me . . . (no, don't be angry!), and I'm terribly glad of it. You won't believe how afraid I am now and— how glad I am of your words. But all this fear, I swear to you, it's all pettiness and nonsense. By God, Aglaya! And the joy will remain. I like it terribly that you're such a child, such a good and kind child! Ah, how beautiful you can be, Aglaya!"
Aglaya would of course have become angry, and was just about to, but suddenly some completely unexpected feeling seized her whole soul in an instant.
"And you won't reproach me for these rude words . . . sometime . . . afterwards?" she suddenly asked.
"How can you, how can you! And why have you blushed again? And again you have this dark look! You sometimes have this dark look, Aglaya, which you never had before. I know why . . ."
"Be quiet, be quiet!"
"No, it's better to say it. I've long wanted to say it; I already have, but ... it wasn't enough, because you didn't believe me. Between us a certain being still stands . . ."
"Quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet!" Aglaya suddenly interrupted, seizing him firmly by the hand and looking at him in all but horror. At that moment someone called her; as if glad of it, she left him and ran off.
The prince was in a fever all night. Strangely, for several nights in a row he had been in a fever. This time, in half-delirium, the thought came to him: what if he should have a fit tomorrow in front of everybody? Had he not had fits in a waking state? The thought petrified him; all night he imagined himself in some odd and unheard-of company, among some strange people. The main thing was that he "started talking"; he knew that he should not be talking, yet he talked all the time, trying to convince them of something. Evgeny Pavlovich and Ippolit were also among the guests and seemed to be on extremely friendly terms.
He woke up past eight o'clock with a headache, with disordered thoughts, with strange impressions. For some reason he wanted terribly to see Rogozhin, to see him and talk a great deal with
him—about what he did not know himself; then he became fully resolved to go for some reason to see Ippolit. There was something vague in his heart, so much so that the adventures that befell him that morning made an impression on him which, while extremely strong, was still somehow incomplete. One of those adventures was a visit from Lebedev.
Lebedev appeared quite early, just after nine, and almost completely drunk. Though the prince had not been observant of late, it had somehow struck his eye that, ever since General Ivolgin moved out of his house three days ago, Lebedev had begun to behave very badly. He had suddenly become somehow very dirty and greasy, his necktie was all askew, and the collar of his frock coat was torn. At home he even raged, and it could be heard across the little yard; Vera had come once in tears and told him something about it. Having appeared now, he began speaking very strangely, beating his breast and confessing something.
"I got ... I got my requital for my treason and my meanness ... I got a slap in the face!" he finally concluded tragically.
"A slap in the face? From whom? . . . And at such an early hour?"
"Early?" Lebedev smiled sarcastically. "Time means nothing here . . . even for a physical requital . . . but I got a moral ... a moral slap, not a physical one!"
He suddenly sat down unceremoniously and began telling the story. It was very incoherent; the prince frowned and wanted to leave, but suddenly a few words struck him. He was struck dumb with astonishment . . . Mr. Lebedev had strange things to tell.
To begin with, the matter apparently had to do with some letter; the name of Aglaya Ivanovna was spoken. Then suddenly Lebedev started bitterly accusing the prince himself; it was clear that he had been offended by the prince. First, he said, the prince had honored him with his trust in dealing with a certain "personage" (Nastasya Filippovna); but then had broken with him completely and driven him away in disgrace, and even to such an offensive degree that last time he was supposed to have rudely dismissed his "innocent question about imminent changes in the house." With drunken tears Lebedev confessed that "after that he could no longer endure, the less so as he knew a great deal ... a very great deal . . . both from Rogozhin and from Nastasya Filippovna, and from Nastasya Filippovna's friend, and from Varvara Ardalionovna . . . herself, sir . . . and from . . . and even from Aglaya Ivanovna
herself, if you can imagine, sir, through Vera, sir, through my beloved daughter Vera, my only-begotten 29. . . yes, sir . . . though not my only-begotten, for I have three. And who informed Lizaveta Prokofyevna by letters, and that in the deepest secret, sir, heh, heh! Who reported to her on all the relations and ... on the movements of the personage Nastasya Filippovna, heh, heh, heh! Who, who is this anonymous person, may I ask?"
"Can it be you?" cried the prince.
"Precisely," the drunkard replied with dignity, "and it was today at half-past eight, only half an hour, no, already three-quarters of an hour ago, that I notified the noblest of mothers that I had an adventure to tell her of... an important one. I sent her a note, by a maid, at the back door, sir. She received it."
"You've just seen Lizaveta Prokofyevna?" the prince asked, scarcely believing his ears.
"I just saw her and got a slap in the face ... a moral one. She gave me back my letter, even flung it at me, unopened . . . and threw me out on my ear . . . though only morally, not physically . . . though almost physically even, just short of it!"
"What letter did she fling at you unopened?"
"Didn't I . . . heh, heh, heh! So I haven't told you yet! And I thought I had . . . There's this little letter I received, to be passed on, sir ..."
"From whom? To whom?"
But certain of Lebedev's "explanations" were extremely difficult to make out and even partially understand. The prince nevertheless realized, as far as he could, that the letter had been given to Vera Lebedev early in the morning, through a maid, to be delivered to the address . . . "the same as before . . . the same as before, to a certain personage and from the same person, sir . . . (for one of them I designate by the name of 'person,' sir, and the other only as 'personage,' for humiliation and for distinction; for there is a great difference between the innocent and highly noble daughter of a general and a . . . kept woman, sir), and so, the letter was from a 'person,' sir, beginning with the letter A . . ."
"How can it be? To Nastasya Filippovna? Nonsense!" cried the prince.
"It was, it was, sir, and if not to her, then to Rogozhin, sir, it's all the same, to Rogozhin, sir . . . and once there was even one to be passed on to Mr. Terentyev, sir, from the person with the letter A,"Lebedev winked and smiled.
Since he often jumped from one thing to another and forgot what he had begun to say, the prince kept still so as to let him speak everything out. But all the same it was extremely unclear whether the letters had gone through him or through Vera. If he himself insisted that "to Rogozhin was all the same as to Nastasya Filippovna," it meant that most likely they had not gone through him, if there were any letters at all. And how it happened that the letter now ended up with him, remained decidedly unexplained; most likely of all would be to suppose that he had somehow stolen it from Vera . . . carried it off on the sly and taken it with some sort of intention to Lizaveta Prokofyevna. So the prince finally figured it out and understood it.