The Idiot

Finally, at around half-past ten, the prince was left alone; he had a headache; the last to leave was Kolya, who helped him to change his wedding costume for house clothes. They parted warmly. Kolya did not talk about what had happened, but promised to come early the next day. He later testified that the prince had not warned him about anything at this last farewell, which meant that he had concealed his intentions even from him. Soon there was almost no one left in the whole house: Burdovsky went to Ippolit's, Keller and Lebedev also took themselves off somewhere. Only Vera Lebedev remained in the rooms for some time, hastily turning everything from a festive to its ordinary look. As she was leaving, she peeked into the prince's room. He was sitting at the table, both elbows resting on it and his head in his hands. She quietly went up to him and touched his shoulder; the prince looked at her in perplexity, and for almost a minute seemed as if he was trying to remember; but having remembered and realized everything, he suddenly became extremely excited. It all resolved itself, however, in a great and fervent request to Vera, that she knock at his door the next morning at seven o'clock, before the first train. Vera promised; the prince began asking her heatedly not to tell anyone about it; she promised that as well, and finally, when she had already opened the door to leave, the prince stopped her for a third time, took her hands, kissed them, then kissed her on the forehead, and with a certain "extraordinary" look, said: "Till tomorrow!" So at least Vera recounted afterwards. She left fearing greatly for him. In the morning she was heartened a little when she knocked at his door at seven o'clock, as arranged, and a

XI

An hour later he was in Petersburg, and after nine o'clock he was ringing at Rogozhin's. He came in by the front entrance and had to wait a long time. At last, the door of old Mrs. Rogozhin's apartment opened, and an elderly, decent-looking maid appeared.

"Parfyon Semyonovich is not at home," she a

"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 ski

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.