"Parfyon Semyonovich is not at home," she announced from the doorway. "Whom do you want?"
"Parfyon Semyonovich."
"He's not at home, sir."
The maid looked the prince over with wild curiosity.
"At least tell me, did he spend the night at home? And . . . did he come back alone yesterday?"
The maid went on looking, but did not reply.
"Didn't he come here yesterday ... in the evening . . . with Nastasya Filippovna?"
"And may I ask who you are pleased to be yourself?"
"Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin, we're very well acquainted."
"He's not at home, sir."
The maid dropped her eyes.
"And Nastasya Filippovna?"
"I know nothing about that, sir."
"Wait, wait! When will he be back?"
"We don't know that either, sir."
The door closed.
The prince decided to come back in an hour. Looking into the courtyard, he met the caretaker.
"Is Parfyon Semyonovich at home?"
"He is, sir."
"How is it I was just told he's not at home?"
"Did somebody at his place tell you?"
"No, the maid at his mother's, but when I rang at Parfyon Semyonovich's nobody answered."
"Maybe he went out," the caretaker decided. "He doesn't always say. And sometimes he takes the key with him and the rooms stay locked for three days."
"Are you sure he was at home yesterday?"
"He was. Sometimes he comes in the front entrance, so I don't see him."
"And wasn't Nastasya Filippovna with him yesterday?"
"That I don't know, sir. She doesn't care to come often; seems we'd know if she did."
The prince went out and for some time walked up and down the sidewalk, pondering. The windows of the rooms occupied by Rogozhin were all shut; the windows of the half occupied by his mother were almost all open; it was a hot, clear day; the prince went across the street to the opposite sidewalk and stopped to look once more at the windows; not only were they shut, but in almost all of them the white blinds were drawn.
He stood there for a minute and—strangely—it suddenly seemed to him that the edge of one blind was raised and Rogozhin's face flashed, flashed and disappeared in the same instant. He waited a little longer and decided to go and ring again, but changed his mind and put it off for an hour: "Who knows, maybe I only imagined it . . ."
Above all, he now hurried to the Izmailovsky quarter, where Nastasya Filippovna recently had an apartment. He knew that, having moved out of Pavlovsk three weeks earlier at his request, she had settled in the Izmailovsky quarter with one of her good acquaintances, a teacher's widow, a respectable and family lady, who sublet a good furnished apartment in her house, which was almost her whole subsistence. It was very likely that Nastasya Filippovna had kept the apartment when she went back to Pavlovsk; at least it was quite possible that she had spent the night in this apartment, where Rogozhin would surely have brought her yesterday. The prince took a cab. On the way it occurred to him that he ought to have started there, because it was incredible that she would have gone at night straight to Rogozhin's. Here he also recalled the caretaker's words, that Nastasya Filippovna did not care to come often. If she had never come often anyway, then why on earth would she now be staying at Rogozhin's? Encouraging himself with such consolations, the prince finally arrived at the Izmailovsky quarter more dead than alive.
To his utter astonishment, not only had no one heard of Nastasya Filippovna at the teacher's widow's either yesterday or today, but they ran out to look at him as at some sort of wonder. The whole numerous family of the teacher's widow—all girls with a year's difference, from fifteen down to seven years old—poured out after their mother and surrounded him, their mouths gaping. After them came their skinny yellow aunt in a black kerchief, and, finally, the
grandmother of the family appeared, a little old lady in spectacles. The teacher's widow urged him to come in and sit down, which the prince did. He realized at once that they were well informed about who he was, and knew perfectly well that his wedding was to have taken place yesterday, and were dying to ask about both the wedding and the wonder that he was there asking them about the woman who should have been nowhere else but with him in Pavlovsk, but they were too delicate to ask. In a brief outline, he satisfied their curiosity about the wedding. There was amazement, gasps and cries, so that he was forced to tell almost all the rest, in broad outline, of course. Finally, the council of wise and worried ladies decided that they absolutely had to go first of all and knock at Rogozhin's till he opened, and find out everything positively from him. And if he was not at home (which was to be ascertained) or did not want to tell, they would drive to the Semyonovsky quarter, to a certain German lady, Nastasya Filippovna's acquaintance, who lived with her mother: perhaps Nastasya Filippovna, in her agitation and wishing to hide, had spent the night with them. The prince got up completely crushed; they reported afterwards that he "turned terribly pale"; indeed, his legs nearly gave way under him. Finally, through the terrible jabber of voices, he discerned that they were arranging to act in concert with him and were asking for his town address. He turned out to have no address; they advised him to put up somewhere in a hotel. The prince thought and gave the address of his former hotel, the one where he had had a fit some five weeks earlier. Then he went back to Rogozhin's.
This time not only Rogozhin's door but even the one to the old lady's apartment did not open. The prince went for the caretaker and had great difficulty finding him in the courtyard; the caretaker was busy with something and barely answered, even barely looked at him, but all the same declared positively that Parfyon Semyonovich "left very early in the morning, went to Pavlovsk, and wouldn't be home today."
"I'll wait; maybe he'll come towards evening?"
"And he may not be home for a week, who knows about him."
"So he did spend the night here?"
"The night, yes, he spent the night . . ."
All this was suspicious and shady. The caretaker might very well have had time, during that interval, to receive new instructions: earlier he had even been talkative, while now he simply turned his back. But the prince decided to come by once more in about two
hours, and even to stand watch by the house, if need be, while now there was still hope for the German woman, and he drove to the Semyonovsky quarter.
But at the German woman's they did not even understand him. From certain fleeting remarks, he was even able to guess that the German beauty had quarreled with Nastasya Filippovna some two weeks ago, so that she had not even heard of her in all those days, and tried as hard as she could to make it clear that she was not interested in hearing anything now, "even if she's married all the princes in the world." The prince hastened to leave. It occurred to him, among other things, that she might have left for Moscow, as she did the other time, and Rogozhin, naturally, would have followed her, or perhaps had gone with her. "At least let me find some trace!" He remembered, however, that he had to stop at the inn, and he hurried to Liteinaya; there he was given a room at once. The floorboy asked if he wanted a bite to eat; he answered absent-mindedly that he did, and on second thought was furious with himself, because eating would take an extra half hour, and only later did he realize that nothing prevented him from leaving the food uneaten on the table. A strange sensation came over him in this dim and stifling corridor, a sensation that strove painfully to realize itself in some thought; but he was quite unable to tell what this new importunate thought was. He finally left the inn, no longer himself; his head was spinning, but—anyhow, where to go? He raced to Rogozhin's again.