" Vraiment?"* smiled the little old man.
"But I have moments when I think that I'm wrong to think that way: sincerity is worth a gesture, isn't it so? Isn't it so?"
"Sometimes."
"I want to explain everything, everything, everything! Oh, yes! Do you think I'm a Utopian? An ideologist? Oh, no, by God, my thoughts are all so simple . . . You don't believe it? You smile? You know, I'm sometimes mean, because I lose my faith; today I was walking here and thinking: 'Well, how shall I start speaking to them? What word should I begin with, so that they understand at least something?' I was so afraid, but I was more afraid for you, terribly, terribly afraid! And yet how could I be afraid, wasn't it shameful to be afraid? What of it, if for one advanced person there are such myriads of backward and unkind ones? This is precisely my joy, that I'm now convinced that it's not so at all, and that there is living material! Nor is there any embarrassment in the fact that
*Really?
we're ridiculous, isn't that true? For it's actually so, we are ridiculous, light-minded, with bad habits, we're bored, we don't know how to look, how to understand, we're all like that, all, you, and I, and they! Now, you're not offended when I tell you to your face that you're ridiculous? And if so, aren't you material? You know, in my opinion it's sometimes even good to be ridiculous, if not better: we can the sooner forgive each other, the sooner humble ourselves; we can't understand everything at once, we can't start right out with perfection! To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well. This I tell you, you, who have already been able to understand . . . and not understand ... so much. I'm not afraid for you now; surely you're not angry that such a boy is saying such things to you? You're laughing, Ivan Petrovich. You thought I was afraid for them,that I was theiradvocate, a democrat, a speaker for equality?" he laughed hysterically (he laughed every other minute in short, ecstatic bursts). "I'm afraid for you, for all of you, for all of us together. For I myself am a prince of ancient stock, and I am sitting with princes. It is to save us all that I speak, to keep our estate from vanishing for nothing, in the darkness, having realized nothing, squabbling over everything and losing everything. Why vanish and yield our place to others, when we can remain the vanguard and the elders? Let us be the vanguard, then we shall be the elders. Let us become servants, in order to be elders." 40
He kept trying to get up from his chair, but the little old man kept holding him back, looking at him, however, with growing uneasiness.
"Listen! I know that talking is wrong: it's better simply to set an example, better simply to begin ... I have already begun . . . and—and is it really possible to be unhappy? Oh, what are my grief and my trouble, if I am able to be happy? You know, I don't understand how it's possible to pass by a tree and not be happy to see it. To talk with a man and not be happy that you love him! Oh, I only don't know how to say it . . . but there are so many things at every step that are so beautiful, that even the most confused person finds beautiful. Look at a child, look at God's sunrise, look at the grass growing, look into the eyes that are looking at you and love you . . ."
He had long been standing, speaking. The little old man now looked at him fearfully. Lizaveta Prokofyevna cried: "Oh, my God!"
realizing before anyone else, and clasped her hands. Aglaya quickly rushed to him, had time to receive him into her arms, and with horror, her face distorted by pain, heard the wild shout of the "spirit that convulsed and dashed down" 41the unfortunate man. The sick man lay on the carpet. Someone managed quickly to put a pillow under his head.
No one had expected this. A quarter of an hour later Prince N., Evgeny Pavlovich, and the little old man tried to revive the party, but in another half an hour everybody had gone. There were many words of sympathy uttered, many laments, a few opinions. Ivan Petrovich, among other things, declared that "the young man is a Slav-o-phile, 42or something of the sort, but anyhow it's not dangerous." The little old man did not come out with anything. True, afterwards, for the next couple of days, everyone was a bit cross; Ivan Petrovich was even offended, but not greatly. The general-superior was somewhat cold to Ivan Fyodorovich for a while. The "patron" of the family, the dignitary, for his part, also mumbled some admonition to the father of the family, and said flatteringly that he was very, very interested in Aglaya's fate. He was in fact a rather kind man; but among the reasons for his curiosity about the prince, in the course of the evening, had also been the old story between the prince and Nastasya Filippovna; he had heard something about this story and was even very interested; he would even have liked to ask about it.
Belokonsky, on leaving the party, said to Lizaveta Prokofyevna:
"Well, he's both good and bad; and if you want to know my opinion, he's more bad. You can see for yourself what sort of man— a sick man!"
Lizaveta Prokofyevna decided definitively to herself that the fiancé was "impossible," and promised herself during the night that "as long as she lived, the prince was not going to be Aglaya's husband." With that she got up in the morning. But that same day, between noon and one, at lunch, she fell into surprising contradiction with herself.
To one question, though an extremely cautious one, from her sisters, Aglaya suddenly answered coldly but haughtily, as if cutting them off:
"I've never given him any sort of promise, and never in my life considered him my fiancé. He's as much a stranger to me as anyone else."
Lizaveta Prokofyevna suddenly flared up.
"That I did not expect of you," she said bitterly. "As a fiancé he's impossible, I know, and thank God it all worked out this way; but I did not expect such words from you! I thought there would be something else from you. I'd throw out all those people from yesterday and keep him, that's what kind of man he is! . . ."
Here she suddenly stopped, frightened herself at what she had said. But if she had known how unjust she was being at that moment towards her daughter? Everything was already decided in Aglaya's head; she was also waiting for her hour, which was to decide everything, and every hint, every careless touch made a deep wound in her heart.
VIII
For the prince, too, that morning began under the influence of painful forebodings; they might have been explained by his sickly condition, but he was too indefinitely sad, and that was the most tormenting thing for him. True, the facts stood before him, vivid, painful, and biting, but his sadness went beyond anything he recalled and realized; he understood that he could not calm down by himself. The expectation gradually took root in him that something special and definitive was going to happen to him that same day. His fit of the evening before had been a mild one; besides hypochondria, some heaviness in the head and pain in his limbs, he did not feel upset in any other way. His head worked quite distinctly, though his soul was sick. He got up rather late and at once clearly recalled the previous evening; though not quite distinctly, he recalled all the same that about half an hour after the fit he had been brought home. He learned that a messenger had already come from the Epanchins to inquire after his health. Another came at half-past eleven; this pleased him. Vera Lebedev was one of the first who came to visit him and look after him. The moment she saw him, she suddenly burst into tears, but the prince at once calmed her down, and she laughed. He was somehow suddenly struck by the strong compassion this girl felt for him; he seized her hand and kissed it. Vera blushed.