graces. Once he translated from the German some important work by some important German poet, was able to write a verse dedication for his translation, was able to boast of his friendship with a certain famous but dead Russian poet (there is a whole stratum of writers who are extremely fond of appointing themselves in print as friends of great but dead writers), and had been introduced to the Epanchins very recently by the wife of the "little old dignitary." This lady passed for being a patroness of writers and scholars, and had actually obtained pensions for one or two writers, through highly placed persons for whom she had importance. And she did have her own sort of importance. She was a lady of about forty-five (and therefore quite a young wife for such an old man as her husband), a former beauty, who even now, from a mania peculiar to many forty-five-year-old women, liked to dress all too magnificently; she did not have much of a mind, and her knowledge of literature was rather dubious. But patronizing writers was the same sort of mania with her as dressing magnificently. Many writings and translations had been dedicated to her; two or three writers, with her permission, had published their letters to her on extremely important subjects . . . And it was this entire company that the prince took at face value, for pure, unalloyed gold. However, that evening all these people, as if on purpose, were in the happiest spirits and very pleased with themselves. Every last one of them knew that they were doing the Epanchins a great honor by visiting them. But, alas, the prince had no suspicion of such subtleties. He did not suspect, for instance, that the Epanchins, having in mind such an important step as the deciding of their daughter's fate, would not have dared not to show him, Prince Lev Nikolaevich, to the little old dignitary, the acknowledged benefactor of their family. And the little old dignitary, who, for his part, would have borne quite calmly the news of even the most terrible misfortune of the Epanchins, would certainly have been offended if the Epanchins got their daughter engaged without asking his advice and, so to speak, permission. Prince N., that charming, that unquestionably witty and so loftily pure-hearted man, was convinced in the highest degree that he was something like a sun, risen that night over the Epanchins' drawing room. He considered them infinitely beneath him, and it was precisely this simple-hearted and noble thought that produced in him his wonderfully charming casualness and friendliness towards these same Epanchins. He knew very well that he absolutely had to tell some
story that evening to charm the company, and he was preparing for it even with a certain inspiration. Prince Lev Nikolaevich, listening to this story later, realized that he had never heard anything like such brilliant humor and such wonderful gaiety and naivety, which was almost touching on the lips of such a Don Juan as Prince N. And yet, if he had only known how old and worn out this same story was, how everyone knew it by heart and was sick and tired of it in all drawing rooms, and only at the innocent Epanchins' did it appear again as news, as the sudden, sincere, and brilliant recollection of a brilliant and excellent man! Finally, even the little German poeticule, though he behaved himself with extraordinary courtesy and modesty, almost considered that he, too, was doing this house an honor by visiting it. But the prince did not notice the reverse side, did not notice any lining. This disaster Aglaya had not foreseen. She herself was remarkably beautiful that evening. All three girls were dressed up, though not too magnificently, and even had their hair done in some special way. Aglaya sat with Evgeny Pavlovich, talking and joking with him in an extraordinarily friendly way. Evgeny Pavlovich behaved himself somewhat more solidly, as it were, than at other times, also, perhaps, out of respect for the dignitaries. However, he had long been known in society; he was a familiar man there, though a young man. That evening he came to the Epanchins' with crape on his hat, and Belokonsky praised him for this crape: another society nephew, under the circumstances, might not have worn crape after such an uncle. Lizaveta Prokofyevna was also pleased by it, but generally she seemed somehow too preoccupied. The prince noticed that Aglaya looked at him attentively a couple of times and, it seemed, remained pleased with him. Little by little he was becoming terribly happy. His former "fantastic" thoughts and apprehensions (after his conversation with Lebedev) now seemed to him, in sudden but frequent recollections, such an unrealizable, impossible, and even ridiculous dream! (Even without that, his first, though unconscious, desire and longing all that day had been somehow to make it so as not to believe in that dream!) He spoke little and then only to answer questions, and finally became quite silent, sat and listened, but was clearly drowning in delight. Little by little something like inspiration prepared itself in him, ready to blaze up when the chance came . . . He began speaking by chance, also in answer to a question, and apparently without any special intention . . .
VII
While he gazed delightedly at Aglaya, who was talking gaily with Prince N. and Evgeny Pavlovich, the elderly gentleman Anglophile, who was entertaining the "dignitary" in another corner, animatedly telling him about something, suddenly spoke the name of Nikolai Andreevich Pavlishchev. The prince quickly turned in their direction and began to listen.
The matter had to do with present-day regulations and some sort of irregularities in the landowners' estates in -------province.
There must also have been something funny in the Anglophile's stories, because the little old man finally began to laugh at the acrimonious verve of the storyteller. Speaking smoothly, drawing out his words somehow peevishly, with a tender emphasis on the vowels, the man told why he had been forced, precisely owing to today's regulations, to sell a magnificent estate of his in ------- province, and even, not being in great need of money, at half price, and at the same time to keep a ruined estate, money-losing and in litigation, and even to spend more on it. "I fled from them to avoid further litigation over Pavlishchev's land. Another one or two inheritances like that and I'm a ruined man. Though I had about ten thousand acres of excellent land coming to me there!"
"You see . . . Ivan Petrovich is a relation of the late Nikolai Andreevich Pavlishchev . . . you were looking for relations, I believe," Ivan Fyodorovich, who suddenly turned up beside the prince and noticed his extreme attention to the conversation, said to him in a half-whisper. Till then he had been entertaining his superior, the general, but he had long since noticed the exceptional solitude of Lev Nikolaevich and had begun to worry; he wanted to draw him into the conversation to some degree, and thus to show and recommend him for a second time to the "higher persons."