The Idiot

But this view he had of the state of Nastasya Filippovna's soul and mind delivered him in part from many other perplexities. This was now a completely different woman from the one he had known some three months earlier. He did not brood, for instance, on why

she had run away from marrying him then, with tears, curses, and reproaches, but now insisted herself on a speedy marriage. "It means she's not afraid, as she was then, that marrying her would be his unhappiness," thought the prince. Such quickly reborn self-assurance could not, in his view, be natural to her. Nor, again, could this assurance come only from hatred of Aglaya: Nastasya Filippovna was capable of somewhat deeper feelings. Nor from fear of facing her life with Rogozhin. In short, all these reasons, together with the rest, might have had a share in it; but the clearest thing of all for him was that it was precisely what he had long suspected, and that the poor, sick soul had been unable to endure. All this, though it delivered him, in a way, from perplexities, could not give him either peace or rest all that time. Sometimes he tried not to think about anything; it did seem, in fact, that he looked upon marriage as some sort of unimportant formality; he valued his own fate much too cheaply. With regard to objections, to conversations, such as the one with Evgeny Pavlovich, here he could say decidedly nothing in reply and felt himself totally incompetent, and therefore he avoided all conversations of that sort.

He noticed, however, that Nastasya Filippovna knew and understood only too well what Aglaya meant to him. She did not say anything, but he saw her "face" at those times when she occasionally caught him, in the begi

him about Rogozhin. Only once, some five days before the wedding, Darya Alexeevna suddenly sent for him to come immediately, because Nastasya Filippovna was very unwell. He found her in a state resembling total madness: she was exclaiming, trembling, crying that Rogozhin was hiding in the garden, in their own house, that she had just seen him, that he was going to kill her in the night . . . put a knife in her! She could not calm down the whole day. But that same evening, when the prince stopped at Ippolit's for a moment, the captain's widow, who had just come back from town, where she had gone on some little errands of her own, told them that Rogozhin had called on her that day in her apartment in Petersburg and questioned her about Pavlovsk. When the prince asked precisely when Rogozhin had called, the captain's widow named almost the same hour when Nastasya Filippovna had supposedly seen him that day in her garden. The matter was explained as a simple mirage; Nastasya Filippovna herself went to the captain's widow for more detail and was extremely comforted. On the eve of the wedding the prince left Nastasya Filippovna in great animation: the next day's finery had arrived from the dressmaker in Petersburg, the wedding dress, the headpiece, etc., etc. The prince had not expected that she would be so excited over the finery; he praised everything himself, and his praise made her still happier. But she let something slip: she had heard that there was indignation in town and that some scapegraces were indeed arranging a charivari, with music and all but with verses written specially for the occasion, and that it was all but approved of by the rest of society. And so now she precisely wanted to hold her head still higher before them, to outshine them all with the taste and wealth of her finery—"let them shout, let them whistle, if they dare!" The mere thought of it made her eyes flash. She had yet another secret thought, but she did not voice it aloud: she dreamed that Aglaya, or at least someone sent by her, would also be in the crowd, incognito, in the church, would look and see, and she was inwardly preparing herself for that. She parted from the prince, all taken up with these thoughts, at about eleven o'clock in the evening; but before it struck midnight, a messenger came ru

on her knees before him. (So, at least, Darya Alexeevna reported afterwards, having managed to spy out a thing or two.)

"What am I doing! What am I doing! What am I doing to you!" she kept exclaiming, convulsively embracing his legs.

The prince stayed for a whole hour with her; we do not know what they talked about. According to Darya Alexeevna, they parted after an hour, reconciled and happy. The prince sent once more that night to inquire, but Nastasya Filippovna was already asleep. In the morning, before she woke up, two more messengers came to Darya Alexeevna's from the prince, and a third was instructed to tell him that "Nastasya Filippovna is now surrounded by a whole swarm of dressmakers and hairdressers from Petersburg, that there was no trace of yesterday's mood, that she was occupied as only such a beauty could be occupied with dressing for her wedding, and that now, precisely at that moment, an extraordinary congress was being held about precisely which of the diamonds to wear and how to wear them." The prince was completely set at ease.

The whole following story about this wedding was told by knowledgeable people in the following way and seems to be correct:

The wedding was set for eight o'clock in the evening; Nastasya Filippovna was ready by seven. From six o'clock on, crowds of idlers gradually began to gather around Lebedev's dacha, but more especially near Darya Alexeevna's house; after seven o'clock the church also began to fill up. Vera Lebedev and Kolya were terribly afraid for the prince; however, they were very busy at home: they were responsible for the reception and refreshments in the prince's rooms. However, almost no real gathering was pla