the opinion of the old Princess Belokonsky from Moscow. In one respect only was his reputation somewhat ticklish: there had been several liaisons and, as it was maintained, "victories" over certain unfortunate hearts. Having seen Aglaya, he became extraordinarily sedentary in the Epanchins' house. True, nothing had been said yet, nor had any allusions been made, but all the same the parents thought that there was no need even to think about a trip abroad that summer. Aglaya herself was perhaps of a different opinion.
This happened just before our hero's second appearance on the scene of our story. By that time, judging from appearances, poor Prince Myshkin had been totally forgotten in Petersburg. If he had suddenly appeared now among those who had known him, it would have been as if he had dropped from the moon. And yet we still have one more fact to report, and with that we shall end our introduction.
Kolya Ivolgin, on the prince's departure, at first went on with his former life, that is, went to school, visited his friend Ippolit, looked after the general, and helped Varya around the house, that is, ran errands for her. But the tenants quickly vanished: Ferdy-shchenko moved somewhere three days after the adventure at Nastasya Filippovna's and quite soon disappeared, so that even all rumors about him died out; he was said to be drinking somewhere, but nothing was certain. The prince left for Moscow; that was the end of the tenants. Afterwards, when Varya was already married, Nina Alexandrovna and Ganya moved with her to Ptitsyn's, in the Ismailovsky quarter; as for General Ivolgin, a quite unforeseen circumstance occurred with him at almost that same time: he went to debtors' prison. He was dispatched there by his lady friend, the captain's widow, on the strength of documents he had given her at various times, worth about two thousand. All this came as a total surprise to him, and the poor general was "decidedly the victim of his boundless faith in the nobility of the human heart, broadly speaking." Having adopted the soothing habit of signing vouchers and promissory notes, he never supposed the possibility of their effect, at least at some point, always thinking it was just so.It turned to be not so. "Trust people after that, show them your noble trustfulness!" he exclaimed ruefully, sitting with his new friends in Tarasov House 4over a bottle of wine and telling them anecdotes about the siege of Kars and a resurrected soldier. His life there, however, was excellent. Ptitsyn and Varya used to say it was the right place for him; Ganya agreed completely. Only poor Nina
Alexandrovna wept bitterly on the quiet (which even surprised her household) and, though eternally ill, dragged herself as often as she could to see her husband in Tarasov House.
But since the "incident with the general," as Kolya put it, or, more broadly, since his sister's marriage, Kolya had gotten completely out of hand, so much so that lately he even rarely came to spend the night with the family. According to rumor, he had made many new acquaintances; besides that, he had become all too well known in the debtors' prison. Nina Alexandrovna could not do without him there; and at home now no one pestered him even out of curiosity. Varya, who had treated him so sternly before, did not subject him now to the least inquiry about his wanderings; and Ganya, to the great astonishment of the household, talked and even got together with him occasionally on perfectly friendly terms, despite all his hypochondria, something that had never happened before, because the twenty-seven-year-old Ganya, naturally, had never paid the slightest friendly attention to his fifteen-year-old brother, had treated him rudely, had demanded that the whole household treat him with sternness only, and had constantly threatened to "go for his ears," which drove Kolya "beyond the final limits of human patience." One might have thought that Kolya was now sometimes even necessary to Ganya. He had been very struck that Ganya had returned the money then; he was prepared to forgive him a lot for that.
Three months went by after the prince's departure, and the Ivolgin family heard that Kolya had suddenly become acquainted with the Epanchins and was received very nicely by the girls. Varya soon learned of it; Kolya, incidentally, had become acquainted not through Varya but "on his own." The Epanchins gradually grew to love him. At first the general's wife was very displeased with him, but soon she began to treat him kindly "for his candor and for the fact that he doesn't flatter." That Kolya did not flatter was perfectly right; he managed to put himself on a completely equal and independent footing with them, though he did sometimes read books or newspapers to Mrs. Epanchin—but he had always been obliging. A couple of times, however, he quarreled bitterly with Lizaveta Prokofyevna, told her that she was a despot and that he would not set foot in the house again. The first time was over the "woman question," the second time over what season of the year was best for catching siskins. Incredible as it might seem, on the third day after the quarrel, Mrs. Epanchin sent him a footman with a note
asking him to come without fail; Kolya did not put on airs and went at once. Only Aglaya was constantly ill-disposed towards him for some reason and treated him haughtily. Yet it was her that he was to surprise somewhat. Once—it was during Holy Week 5— finding a moment when they were alone, Kolya handed Aglaya a letter, adding only that he had been told to give it to her alone. Aglaya gave the "presumptuous brat" a terrible look, but Kolya did not wait and left. She opened the note and read:
Once you honored me with your confidence. It may be that you have completely forgotten me now. How is it that I am writing to you? I do not know; but I have an irrepressible desire to remind you of myself, and you precisely. Many's the time I have needed all three of you very much, but of all three I could see only you. I need you, I need you very much. I have nothing to write to you about myself, I have nothing to tell you about. That is not what I wanted; I wish terribly much that you should be happy. Are you happy? That is the only thing I wanted to tell you.
Your brother, Pr. L. Myshkin.
Having read this brief and rather muddle-headed note, Aglaya suddenly flushed all over and became pensive. It would be hard for us to convey the course of her thoughts. Among other things, she asked herself: "Should I show it to anyone?" She felt somehow ashamed. She ended, however, by smiling a mocking and strange smile and dropping the letter into her desk drawer. The next day she took it out again and put it into a thick, sturdily bound book (as she always did with her papers, so as to find them quickly when she needed them). And only a week later did she happen to notice what book it was. It was Don Quixote de La Mancha.Aglaya laughed terribly—no one knew why.
Nor did anyone know whether she showed her acquisition to any of her sisters.
But as she was reading this letter, the thought suddenly crossed her mind: could it be that the prince had chosen this presumptuous little brat and show-off as his correspondent and, for all she knew, his only correspondent in Petersburg? And, though with a look of extraordinary disdain, all the same she put Kolya to the question. But the "brat," ordinarily touchy, this time did not pay the slightest attention to the disdain; he explained to Aglaya quite briefly and rather drily that he had given the prince his permanent address,