“It’s--it’s really--now could you have imagined anything like it, Lef Nicolaievitch?” cried the general. He was evidently so much agitated that he hardly knew what he wished to say. “Seriously now, seriously I mean--”
“It was Colia told me, and his father told _him_ at about six this morning. They met at the threshold, when Colia was leaving the room for something or other.” The prince told Lebedeff all that Colia had made known to himself, in detail.
| “I should like you,” she said, “not to come here tomorrow until evening, when the guests are all assembled. You know there are to be guests, don’t you?” |
Hippolyte had been waiting for the prince all this time, and had never ceased looking at him and Evgenie Pavlovitch as they conversed in the corner. He became much excited when they approached the table once more. He was disturbed in his mind, it seemed; perspiration stood in large drops on his forehead; in his gleaming eyes it was easy to read impatience and agitation; his gaze wandered from face to face of those present, and from object to object in the room, apparently without aim. He had taken a part, and an animated one, in the noisy conversation of the company; but his animation was clearly the outcome of fever. His talk was almost incoherent; he would break off in the middle of a sentence which he had begun with great interest, and forget what he had been saying. The prince discovered to his dismay that Hippolyte had been allowed to drink two large glasses of champagne; the one now standing by him being the third. All this he found out afterwards; at the moment he did not notice anything, very particularly.
The clerk, rather confused, tried to say something, hesitated, began to speak, and again stopped. The prince looked at him gravely.
“How annoying!” exclaimed the prince. “I thought... Tell me, is he...”
“It was Gogol, in Dead Souls, father,” cried Colia, glancing at him in some alarm.
“Oho! ho, ho, ho!” cried Ferdishenko. “_Now_ then, prince! My word, what things I would say if I had such a chance as that! My goodness, prince--go on!”
“Just about that time, that is, the middle of March, I suddenly felt very much better; this continued for a couple of weeks. I used to go out at dusk. I like the dusk, especially in March, when the night frost begins to harden the day’s puddles, and the gas is burning.
“Pafnute, yes. And who was he?”
“Tell me about it,” said Aglaya.
But the general only stood stupefied and gazed around in a dazed way. Gania’s speech had impressed him, with its terrible candour. For the first moment or two he could find no words to answer him, and it was only when Hippolyte burst out laughing, and said:
Observing the prince, whom she evidently did not expect to see there, alone in the corner, she smiled, and approached him:
The prince would never so much as suspect such a thing in the delight of his first impression.
“No--I don’t think I should run away,” replied the prince, laughing outright at last at Aglaya’s questions.
“Did no one awake me besides yourself? Was there no one else here? I thought there was another woman.”
“It was--about--you saw her--”
But the mother’s great and continual anxiety was Aglaya. “She is exactly like me--my image in everything,” said Mrs. Epanchin to herself. “A tyrant! A real little demon! A Nihilist! Eccentric, senseless and mischievous! Good Lord, how unhappy she will be!”
No, this was no apparition!
| “I am so glad you chanced to come here, prince.” |
“No, I don’t think so,” said the prince, thoughtfully; “it’s too late for that--that would be dangerous now. No, no! Better say nothing about it. Be nice with him, you know, but don’t show him--oh, _you_ know well enough--”
The prince handed her the album.
“Napoleon was walking up and down with folded arms. I could not take my eyes off his face--my heart beat loudly and painfully.
“They are Nihilists, are they not?”
He gasped as he spoke, and his strange agitation seemed to increase.
“No--Mr. Pavlicheff, who had been supporting me there, died a couple of years ago. I wrote to Mrs. General Epanchin at the time (she is a distant relative of mine), but she did not answer my letter. And so eventually I came back.”
When--late in the evening--the prince made his appearance in Lizabetha Prokofievna’s drawing-room, he found it full of guests. Mrs. Epanchin questioned him very fully about the general as soon as he appeared; and when old Princess Bielokonski wished to know “who this general was, and who was Nina Alexandrovna,” she proceeded to explain in a manner which pleased the prince very much.
“Is it really you?” muttered the prince, not quite himself as yet, and recognizing her with a start of amazement. “Oh yes, of course,” he added, “this is our rendezvous. I fell asleep here.”
Rogojin listened to the end, and then burst out laughing:
| “I’ll come tomorrow. Now I’m going home--are you coming to my house?” |
| “Oh yes!” cried the prince, starting. “Hippolyte’s suicide--” |