"You still ought to be whipped, Kolya, you're so stupid. You may
address all your needs to Matryona. Dinner is at half-past four. You may dine with us or in your room, whichever you prefer. Let's go, Kolya, stop bothering him."
"Let's go, decisive character!"
On their way out they ran into Ganya.
"Is father at home?" Ganya asked Kolya and, on receiving an affirmative reply, whispered something in his ear.
Kolya nodded and went out after Varvara Ardalionovna.
"A couple of words, Prince, I forgot to tell you, what with all these . . . doings. A request: do me a favor—if it's not too much of a strain for you—don't babble here about what just went on between me and Aglaya, or thereabout what you find here; because there's also enough ugliness here. To hell with it, though . . . But control yourself, at least for today."
"I assure you that I babbled much less than you think," said the prince, somewhat annoyed at Ganya's reproaches. Their relations were obviously becoming worse and worse.
"Well, I've already suffered enough on account of you today. In short, I beg you."
"Note this, too, Gavrila Ardalionovich, that I was not bound in any way earlier and had no reason not to mention the portrait. You didn't ask me not to."
"Pah, what a vile room," Ganya observed, looking around disdainfully, "dark and windows on the courtyard. You've come to us inopportunely in all respects . . . Well, that's none of my business; I don't let rooms."
Ptitsyn looked in and called Ganya. He hastily abandoned the prince and went out, though he had wanted to say something more, but was obviously hesitant and as if ashamed to begin; and he had also denounced the room as if from embarrassment.
The prince had just managed to wash and to straighten his clothes a bit when the door opened again and a new figure appeared in it.
This was a gentleman of about thirty, rather tall, broad-shouldered, with an enormous, curly, red-haired head. His face was fleshy and ruddy, his lips thick, his nose broad and flattened, his eyes small, puffy, and jeering, as if constantly winking. The whole of it made a rather insolent picture. His clothes were on the dirty side.
At first he opened the door just enough to thrust his head in. This thrust-in head surveyed the room for about five seconds, then the door slowly began to open, the whole figure was outlined on
the threshold, but the visitor did not come in yet, but squinted and went on studying the prince from the threshold. Finally he closed the door behind him, approached, sat down on a chair, took the prince firmly by the hand and seated him at an angle to himself on the sofa.
"Ferdyshchenko," he said, peering intently and questioningly into the prince's face.
"What about it?" the prince replied, almost bursting into laughter.
"A tenant," Ferdyshchenko spoke again, peering in the same way.
"You want to become acquainted?"
"Ehh!" said the visitor, ruffling up his hair and sighing, and he started looking into the opposite corner. "Do you have any money?" he asked suddenly, turning to the prince.
"A little."
"How much, precisely?"
"Twenty-five roubles."
"Show me."
The prince took a twenty-five-rouble note from his waistcoat pocket and handed it to Ferdyshchenko. The man unfolded it, looked at it, turned it over, then held it up to the light.
"Quite strange," he said, as if pondering. "Why do they turn brown? These twenty-fivers sometimes get terribly brown, while others, on the contrary, fade completely. Take it."
The prince took the note from him. Ferdyshchenko got up from the chair.
"I came to warn you: first of all, don't lend me any money, because I'm sure to ask."
"Very well."
"Do you intend to pay here?"
"I do."
"Well, I don't, thank you. Mine's the first door to your right, did you see? Try not to visit me too often; I'll come to you, don't worry about that. Have you seen the general?"
"No."
"Heard him?"
"Of course not."
"Well, you will see and hear him. Besides, he even asks me to lend him money! Avis au lecteur*Good-bye. Is it possible to live with a name like Ferdyshchenko? Eh?"
*Warning to the reader.
"Why not?"
"Good-bye."
And he went to the door. The prince learned later that this gentleman, as if out of duty, had taken upon himself the task of amazing everyone by his originality and merriment, but it somehow never came off. He even made an unpleasant impression on some people, which caused him genuine grief, but all the same he would not abandon his task. In the doorway he managed to set things right, as it were, by bumping into a gentleman coming in; after letting this new gentleman, who was unknown to the prince, enter the room, he obligingly winked several times behind his back by way of warning, and thus left not without a certain aplomb.
This new gentleman was tall, about fifty-five years old or even a little more, rather corpulent, with a purple-red, fleshy and flabby face framed by thick gray side-whiskers, with a moustache and large, rather protruding eyes. His figure would have been rather imposing if there had not been something seedy, shabby, even soiled about it. He was dressed in an old frock coat with nearly worn-through elbows; his shirt was also dirty—in a homey way. There was a slight smell of vodka in his vicinity; but his manner was showy, somewhat studied, and with an obvious wish to impress by its dignity. The gentleman approached the prince unhurriedly, with an affable smile, silently took his hand and, holding it in his own, peered into his face for some time, as if recognizing familiar features.
"Him! Him!" he said softly but solemnly. "As if alive! I heard them repeating the familiar and dear name and recalled the irretrievable past . . . Prince Myshkin?"
"That's right, sir."
"General Ivolgin, retired and unfortunate. Your name and patronymic, if I dare ask?"
"Lev Nikolaevich."
"So, so! The son of my friend, one might say my childhood friend, Nikolai Petrovich?"
"My father's name was Nikolai Lvovich."
"Lvovich," the general corrected himself, but unhurriedly and with perfect assurance, as if he had not forgotten in the least but had only made an accidental slip. He sat down and, also taking the prince's hand, sat him down beside him. "I used to carry you about in my arms, sir."
"Really?" asked the prince. "My father has been dead for twenty years now."
"Yes, twenty years, twenty years and three months. We studied together. I went straight into the military ..."
"My father was also in the military, a second lieutenant in the Vasilkovsky regiment."
"The Belomirsky. His transfer to the Belomirsky came almost on the eve of his death. I stood there and blessed him into eternity. Your mother ..."
The general paused as if in sad remembrance.
"Yes, she also died six months later, of a chill," said the prince.
"Not of a chill, not of a chill, believe an old man. I was there, I buried her, too. Of grief over the prince, and not of a chill. Yes, sir, I have memories of the princess, too! Youth! Because of her, the prince and I, childhood friends, nearly killed each other."
The prince began listening with a certain mistrust.
"I was passionately in love with your mother while she was still a fiancée—my friend's fiancée. The prince noticed it and was shocked. He comes to me in the morning, before seven o'clock, wakes me up. I get dressed in amazement; there is silence on both sides; I understand everything. He takes two pistols from his pocket. Across a handkerchief. 28Without witnesses. Why witnesses, if we'll be sending each other into eternity in five minutes? We loaded the pistols, stretched out the handkerchief, put the pistols to each other's hearts, and looked into each other's faces. Suddenly tears burst from our eyes, our hands trembled. Both of us, both of us, at once! Well, naturally, then came embraces and a contest in mutual magnanimity. The prince cries: 'She's yours!' I cry: 'She's yours!' In short... in short . . . you've come ... to live with us?"