Текст книги "The Idiot"

Автор книги: Федор Достоевский

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"Oh, stop it, you drunkard! Would you believe, Prince, he's now decided to become a lawyer, to plead in the courts; he waxes

eloquent and talks in high-flown style with his children at home. Five days ago he spoke before the justices of the peace. And who do you think he defended? Not the old woman who implored, who begged him, because she'd been fleeced by a scoundrel of a moneylender who took five hundred roubles from her, everything she had, but the moneylender himself, some Zeidler or other, a Yid, because he promised him fifty roubles for it . . ."

"Fifty roubles if I win and only five if I lose," Lebedev suddenly explained in a completely different voice than before, as if he had never been shouting.

"Well, it was a washout, of course, the old rules have been changed, they only laughed at him there. But he remained terribly pleased with himself. Remember, he said, impartial gentlemen of the court, that an old man of sorrows, a cripple, who lives by honest labor, is being deprived of his last crust of bread. Remember the wise words of the lawgiver: 'Let mercy reign in the courts.' ⁸And believe me: every morning he repeats this speech for us here, exactly as he said it there; this is the fifth day; he was reciting it just before you came, he likes it so much. He drools over himself. And he's getting ready to defend somebody else. You're Prince Myshkin, I believe? Kolya told me about you. He says he's never met anyone in the world more intelligent than you ..."

"And there is no one! No one! No one more intelligent in the world!" Lebedev picked up at once.

"Well, I suppose this one's just babbling. The one loves you, and the other fawns on you; but I have no intention of flattering you, let that be known to you. You must have some sense, so decide between him and me. Well, do you want the prince to decide between us?" he said to his uncle. "I'm even glad you've turned up, Prince."

"Let him!" Lebedev cried resolutely, looking around involuntarily at his audience, which had again begun to advance upon him.

"What's going on with you here?" the prince said, making a wry face.

He really had a headache, and besides, he was becoming more and more convinced that Lebedev was duping him and was glad that the business could be put off.

"Here's how things stand. I am his nephew, he wasn't lying about that, though everything he says is a lie. I haven't finished my studies, but I want to finish them, and I'll get my way because I have character. And meanwhile, in order to exist, I'm taking a job

with the railways that pays twenty-five roubles. I'll admit, besides, that he has already helped me two or three times. I had twenty roubles and lost them gambling. Would you believe it, Prince, I was so mean, so low, that I gambled them away!"

"To a blackguard, a blackguard, who shouldn't have been paid!" cried Lebedev.

"Yes, to a blackguard, but who still had to be paid," the young man went on. "And that he's a blackguard, I, too, will testify, not only because he gave you a beating. He's a rejected officer, Prince, a retired lieutenant from Rogozhin's former band, who teaches boxing. They're all wandering about now, since Rogozhin scattered them. But the worst thing is that I knew he was a blackguard, a scoundrel, and a petty thief, and I still sat down to play with him, and that, as I bet my last rouble (we were playing cribbage), I thought to myself: I'll lose, go to Uncle Lukyan, bow to him—he won't refuse. That was meanness, that was real meanness! That was conscious baseness!"

"Yes, there you have conscious baseness!" repeated Lebedev.

"Well, don't triumph, wait a moment," the touchy nephew cried, "don't be so glad. I came to see him, Prince, and admitted everything; I acted nobly, I didn't spare myself; I denounced myself before him as much as I could, everybody here is a witness. To take this job with the railways, I absolutely must outfit myself at least somehow, because I'm all in rags. Here, look at my boots! Otherwise I can't show up for work, and if I don't show up at the appointed time, somebody else will take the job, and I'll be left hanging again, and who knows when I'll find another job? Now I'm asking him for only fifteen roubles, and I promise that I'll never ask again, and on top of that I'll repay the whole debt to the last kopeck during the first three months. I'll keep my word. I can live on bread and kvass for months at a time, because I have a strong character. For three months I'll get seventy-five roubles. With the previous debt, I'll owe him only thirty-five roubles, so I'll have enough to pay him. Well, he can ask as much interest as he likes, devil take it! Doesn't he know me? Ask him, Prince: when he helped me out before, did I pay him back or not? Why doesn't he want to now? He's angry that I paid that lieutenant; there's no other reason! That's how this man is—doesn't eat himself and won't let others!"

"And he won't go away," Lebedev cried, "he lies here and won't go away!"

"That's what I told you. I won't go away till you give it to me.

You're smiling at something, Prince? Apparently you think I'm in the wrong?"

"I'm not smiling, but in my opinion you actually are somewhat in the wrong," the prince answered reluctantly.

"No, just say outright that I'm totally wrong, don't dodge! What is this 'somewhat'?"

"If you wish, you're totally wrong."

"If I wish! Ridiculous! Can you possibly think I don't know that it's ticklish to act this way, that the money's his, the will is his, and it comes out as violence on my part? But you, Prince . . . you don't know life. If you don't teach them, they'll be of no use. They have to be taught. My conscience is clear; in all conscience, I won't cause him any loss, I'll pay him back with interest. He's already received moral satisfaction as well: he has seen my humiliation. What more does he want? What good is he, if he can't be useful? For pity's sake, what does he do himself? Ask him what he does to others and how he dupes people. How did he pay for this house? I'll bet my life that he has already duped you and has already made plans for how to dupe you further! You're smiling. You don't believe me?"

"It seems to me that all this is quite unconnected with your affair," observed the prince.

"I've been lying here for three days, and the things I've seen!" the young man went on shouting without listening. "Imagine, he suspects this angel, this young girl, now an orphan, my cousin, his own daughter; every night he searches for her sweethearts! He comes here on the sly and also searches for something under my sofa. He's gone crazy from suspiciousness; he sees thieves in every corner. All night he keeps popping out of bed to see whether the windows are well latched, to check the doors, to peek into the stove, as much as seven times a night. He defends swindlers in court, and he gets up three times in the night to pray, here in the living room, on his knees, pounding his head on the floor for half an hour, and who doesn't he pray for, what doesn't he pray for, the drunken mumbler! He prayed for the repose of the soul of the countess Du Barry, ⁹I heard it with my own ears; Kolya also heard it: he's gone quite crazy!"

"You see, you hear, how he disgraces me, Prince!" Lebedev cried out, turning red and really getting furious. "And he doesn't know that I, drunkard and profligate, robber and evil-doer, may only be standing on this one thing, that when this scoffer was still an infant, my destitute, widowed sister Anisya's son, I, as destitute as

she was, swaddled him, washed him in a tub, sat up with them for whole nights without sleeping, when both of them were sick, stole firewood from the caretaker downstairs, sang him songs, snapped my fingers, hungry belly that I was, and so I nursed him, and see how he laughs at me now! What business is it of yours if I did cross my forehead once for the repose of the soul of the countess Du Barry? Because three days ago, Prince, I read her biography for the first time in an encyclopedia. And do you know what she was, this Du Barry? Tell me, do you know or not?"

"So, what, are you the only one who knows?" the young man muttered mockingly but reluctantly.

"She was a countess who, having risen from a life of shame, ran things in the queen's place, and a great empress wrote her a letter with her own hand, addressing her as ma cousine.A cardinal, a papal nuncio, at the levay dew rwah (do you know what the levay dew rwah was?), ¹⁰volunteered personally to put silk stockings on her bare legs, and considered it an honor—such an exalted and holy person! Do you know that? I can see by your face that you don't! Well, how did she die? Answer, if you know!"

"Get out! What a pest."

"The way she died was that, after such honors, this former ruling lady was dragged guiltless to the guillotine by the executioner Samson, for the amusement of the Parisian fishwives, and she was so frightened that she didn't understand what was happening to her. She saw that he was bending her neck down under the knife and kicking her from behind—with the rest all laughing—and she began to cry out: 'Encore un moment, monsieur le bourreau, encore un moment!'Which means: 'Wait one more little minute, mister boorow, just one!' And maybe the Lord will forgive her for that little minute, because it's impossible to imagine a human soul in worse mizair than that. Do you know what the word mizair means? Well, this is that same mizair. When I read about this countess's cry of one little moment, it was as if my heart was in pincers. And what do you care, worm, if I decided on going to bed at night to remember her, a great sinner, in my prayers? Maybe I remembered her precisely because, as long as this world has stood, probably nobody has ever crossed his forehead for her, or even thought of it. And so, she'll feel good in the other world that another sinner like her has been found, who has prayed for her at least once on earth. What are you laughing at? You don't believe, you atheist. But how do you know? And you also lied, if you did eavesdrop on

me; I didn't pray only for the countess Du Barry; what I prayed was: 'Give rest, O Lord, to the soul of the great sinner, the countess Du Barry, and all those like her'—and that's a very different thing; for there are many such great women sinners and examples of the change of fortune, who suffered, and who now find no peace there, and groan, and wait; and I also prayed then for you and those like you, of your kind, impudent offenders, since you decided to eavesdrop on my prayers . . ."

"Well, all right, enough, pray for whoever you like, devil take you, quit shouting!" the nephew interrupted vexedly. "He's very well read, Prince, didn't you know?" he added with a sort of awkward grin. "He's reading all sorts of books and memoirs these days."

"All the same your uncle ... is not a heartless man," the prince observed reluctantly. He was beginning to find this young man quite repulsive.

"You'll spoil him on us, praising him like that! See, he puts his hand to his heart and purses his lips, relishing it no end. Maybe he's not heartless, but he's a rogue, that's the trouble; what's more, he's drunk, he's all unhinged, like anybody who's been drinking for several years, and everything in him creaks. Granted he loves the children, he respected my deceased aunt. . . He even loves me, by God, and has left me something in his will . . ."

"N-nothing is what you'll get!" Lebedev cried out bitterly.

"Listen, Lebedev," the prince said firmly, turning away from the young man, "I know from experience that you can be businesslike when you want to be ... I have very little time now, and if you . . . Excuse me, I've forgotten your name."

"Ti-Ti-Timofei."

"And?"

"Lukyanovich."

Everybody in the room burst out laughing.

"A lie!" cried the nephew. "That, too, is a lie! His name isn't Timofei Lukyanovich at all, Prince, it's Lukyan Timofeevich! Tell us, now, why did you lie? Isn't it all the same, Lukyan or Timofei, and what does the prince care? He only lies out of habit, I assure you!"

"Can it be true?" the prince asked impatiently.

"Actually, I'm Lukyan Timofeevich," Lebedev confirmed abashedly, humbly looking down and again putting his hand to his heart.

"Ah, my God, but why did you do it?"

"For self-belittlement," whispered Lebedev, hanging his head more and more humbly.

"Eh, who needs your self-belittlement! If only I knew where to find Kolya now!" said the prince, and he turned to leave.

"I can tell you where Kolya is," the young man volunteered again.

"No, no, no!" Lebedev roused himself, all in a flutter.

"Kolya spent the night here, but in the morning he went to look for his general, whom you, Prince, redeemed from prison, God knows why. The general had promised yesterday to come here and spend the night, but he didn't. Most likely he spent the night in the Scales Hotel, very near here. Which means that Kolya is either there or in Pavlovsk with the Epanchins. He had some money, he wanted to go yesterday. So he's either in the Scales or in Pavlovsk."

"In Pavlovsk, in Pavlovsk! . . . And we'll go this way, this way, to the garden, and . . . have a little coffee ..."

And Lebedev pulled the prince by the arm. They left the room, walked across the courtyard, and went through the gate. Here there actually was a very small and very sweet little garden, in which, thanks to the fine weather, the trees were already covered with leaves. Lebedev sat the prince down on a green wooden bench, at a green table fixed in the ground, and placed himself opposite him. A minute later coffee actually arrived. The prince did not refuse. Lebedev went on glancing obsequiously and greedily into his eyes.

"I didn't know you had such a homestead," said the prince, with the look of a man who is thinking of something else.

"Or-orphans," Lebedev began, cringing, but stopped: the prince looked ahead of him distractedly and had quite certainly forgotten his question. Another minute passed; Lebedev kept glancing and waiting.

"Well, so?" said the prince, as if coming to his senses. "Ah, yes! You yourself know what our business is, Lebedev: I've come in response to your letter. Speak."

Lebedev became embarrassed, tried to say something, but only stammered: nothing came out. The prince waited and smiled sadly.

"I think I understand you very well, Lukyan Timofeevich: you probably weren't expecting me. You thought I wouldn't emerge from my backwoods at your first indication, and you wrote to clear your own conscience. But I up and came. Well, leave off, don't deceive me. Leave off serving two masters. Rogozhin has been here for three weeks now, I know everything. Did you manage to sell her to him like the other time, or not? Tell me the truth."

"The monster found out himself, himself."

"Don't abuse him. Of course, he treated you badly . . ."

"He beat me, he beat me!" Lebedev chimed in with terrible fervor. "And he chased me with a dog through Moscow, chased me down the street with a borzoi bitch. A horrible bitch."

"You take me for a little boy, Lebedev. Tell me, did she seriously abandon him this time, in Moscow?"

"Seriously, seriously, again right at the foot of the altar. The man was already counting the minutes, and she dashed off here to Petersburg and straight to me: 'Save me, protect me, Lukyan, and don't tell the prince . . .' She's afraid of you, Prince, even more than of him, and that's—most wise!"

And Lebedev slyly put his finger to his forehead.

"But now you've brought them together again?"

"Illustrious Prince, how . . . how could I prevent it?"

"Well, enough, I'll find everything out myself. Only tell me, where is she now? At his place?"

"Oh, no! Never! She's still on her own. I'm free, she says, and, you know, Prince, she stands firm on it, she says, I'm still completely free! She's still on the Petersburg side, at my sister-in-law's, as I wrote to you."

"And she's there now?"

"Yes, unless she's in Pavlovsk, what with the fine weather, at Darya Alexeevna's dacha. I'm completely free, she says; just yesterday she kept boasting to Nikolai Ardalionovich about her freedom. A bad sign, sir!"

And Lebedev grinned.

"Does Kolya see much of her?"

"Light-minded, and incomprehensible, and not secretive."

"Were you there long ago?"

"Every day, every day."

"Meaning yesterday?"

"N-no, three days ago, sir."

"Too bad you're slightly drunk, Lebedev! Otherwise I'd ask you something."

"No, no, no, stone sober!"

Lebedev was all agog.

"Tell me, how was she when you left?"

"S-searching . . ."

"Searching?"

"As if she was searching all over for something, as if she'd lost

something. Even the thought of the forthcoming marriage is loathsome to her, and she takes offense at it. Of himshe thinks as much as of an orange peel, not more, or else more, but with fear and horror, she even forbids all mention of him, and they see each other only by necessity . . . and he feels it all too well! But there's no avoiding it, sir! . . . She's restless, sarcastic, double-tongued, explosive . . ."

"Double-tongued and explosive?"

"Explosive—because she all but seized me by the hair last time for one of my conversations. I was reprimanding her with the Apocalypse." ¹¹

"How's that?" asked the prince, thinking he had not heard right.

"I was reading the Apocalypse. A lady with a restless imagination, heh, heh! And, besides, I've come to the conclusion that she's much inclined towards serious topics, even unrelated ones. She likes them, likes them, and even takes it as a sign of special respect for her. Yes, sir. And I'm strong on interpreting the Apocalypse and have been doing it for fifteen years. She agreed with me that we live in the time of the third horse, the black one, and the rider with a balance in his hand, because in our time everything is in balances and contracts, and people are all only seeking their rights: A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny . . .' And with all that they want to preserve a free spirit, and a pure heart, and a healthy body, and all of God's gifts. But they can't do it with rights alone, and there will follow a pale horse and him whose name is Death, and after him Hell ¹². . . We get together and interpret it and—she's strongly affected."

"You believe that yourself?" asked the prince, giving Lebedev a strange look.

"Believe it and interpret it. For I'm poor and naked, and an atom in the whirl of people. Who will honor Lebedev? They all sharpen their wit on him, and accompany him by all but kicks. But here, in this interpreting, I'm the equal of a courtier. The mind! And a courtier trembled once ... in his chair, feeling it with his mind. His excellency, Nil Alexeevich, two years ago, before Easter, heard about me—when I still worked in their department—and had Pyotr Zakharych summon me specially from my duty to his office, and asked me, when we were alone: 'Is it true that you're a professor of the Antichrist?' And I didn't hide it: 'I am,' I said, and I explained it, and presented it, and didn't soften the fear, but mentally increased it as I unrolled the allegorical scroll and quoted the

numbers. And he was smiling, but at the numbers and likenesses he began to tremble, and asked me to close the book, and to leave, and awarded me a bonus for Easter, and on St. Thomas's ¹³he gave up his soul to God."

"Come now, Lebedev!"

"It's a fact. He fell out of his carriage after dinner . . . struck his temple on the hitching post and passed away right there, like a baby, like a little baby. He was seventy-three years old according to his papers; a red-faced, gray-haired little fellow, all sprayed with perfume, and he used to smile, to smile all the time, just like a baby. Pyotr Zakharych remembered then: 'You foretold it,' he said."

The prince began to get up. Lebedev was surprised and even puzzled that the prince was already getting up.

"You've grown awfully indifferent, sir, heh, heh!" he ventured to observe obsequiously.

"I really feel unwell—my head is heavy after the journey," the prince replied, frowning.

"You could do with a bit of dacha life, sir," Lebedev hinted timidly.

The prince stood thinking.

"And I myself, after a three-day wait, will be going to my dacha with the whole household, so as to look after the newborn nestling and meanwhile fix up the little house here. And that's also in Pavlovsk."

"You're also going to Pavlovsk?" the prince asked suddenly. "How is it everyone here goes to Pavlovsk? And you say you have a dacha there?"

"Not everyone goes to Pavlovsk. Ivan Petrovich Ptitsyn is letting me have one of the dachas he came by cheaply. It's nice, and sublime, and green, and cheap, and bon ton, and musical, and that's why we all go to Pavlovsk. I, incidentally, will be in a little wing, while the house itself ..."

"You've rented it out?"

"N-n-no. Not . . . not quite, sir."

"Rent it to me," the prince suddenly suggested.

It seems that this was just what Lebedev had been driving at. The idea had flashed through his mind three minutes earlier. And yet he no longer needed a tenant; he already had a candidate who had informed him that he might take the dacha. Lebedev knew positively, however, that there was no "might" and that he would certainly take it. Yet the thought had suddenly flashed through his

mind, a very fruitful one by his reckoning, of renting the dacha to the prince, under the pretext that the other tenant had not expressed himself definitively. "A whole collision and a whole new turn of affairs" suddenly presented itself to his imagination. He received the prince's suggestion almost with rapture, so that he even waved his hands at the direct question of the price.

"Well, as you wish. I'll ask. You won't come out the loser."

They were both leaving the garden.

"I could ... I could ... if you like, I could tell you something quite interesting, most esteemed Prince, concerning the same matter," Lebedev muttered, joyfully twining himself about at the prince's side.

The prince stopped.

"Darya Alexeevna also has a little dacha in Pavlovsk, sir."

"Well?"

"And a certain person is friends with her and apparently intends to visit her often in Pavlovsk. With a purpose."

"Well?"

"Aglaya Ivanovna ..."

"Ah, enough, Lebedev!" the prince interrupted with some unpleasant feeling, as if he had been touched on his sore spot. "It's all . . . not like that. Better tell me, when are you moving? The sooner the better for me, because I'm staying in a hotel . . ."

While talking, they left the garden and, without going inside, crossed the courtyard and reached the gate.

"It would be best," Lebedev finally decided, "if you moved here straight from the hotel today, and the day after tomorrow we can all go to Pavlovsk together."

"I'll have to see," the prince said pensively and went out of the gate.

Lebedev followed him with his eyes. He was struck by the prince's sudden absentmindedness. He had even forgotten to say "good-bye" as he left, had not even nodded his head, which was incompatible with what Lebedev knew of the prince's courtesy and attentiveness.

III

It was getting towards noon. The prince knew that of all the Epanchins the only one he might find in town now was the

general, because of his official duties, and that, too, was unlikely. It occurred to him that the general would perhaps just take him and drive straight to Pavlovsk, and he wanted very much to make one visit before that. At the risk of coming late to the Epanchins' and delaying his trip to Pavlovsk till tomorrow, the prince decided to go and look for the house he had wanted so much to call at.

This visit, however, was risky for him in a certain sense. He debated and hesitated. He knew that the house was on Gorokhovaya Street, near Sadovaya, and decided to go there, hoping that before he reached the place he would finally manage to make up his mind.

As he neared the intersection of Gorokhovaya and Sadovaya, he himself was surprised at his extraordinary agitation; he had never expected that his heart could pound so painfully. One house, probably because of its peculiar physiognomy, began to attract his attention from far away, and the prince later recalled saying to himself: "That's probably the very house." He approached with extraordinary curiosity to verify his guess; he felt that for some reason it would be particularly unpleasant if he had guessed right. The house was big, grim, three-storied, without any architecture, of a dirty green color. Some, though very few, houses of this sort, built at the end of the last century, have survived precisely on these Petersburg streets (where everything changes so quickly) almost without change. They are sturdily built, with thick walls and extremely few windows; the ground-floor windows sometimes have grilles. Most often there is a moneychanger's shop downstairs. The castrate ¹⁴who sits in the shop rents an apartment upstairs. Both outside and inside, everything is somehow inhospitable and dry, everything seems to hide and conceal itself, and why it should seem so simply from the physiognomy of the house—would be hard to explain. Architectural combinations of lines, of course, have their own secret. These houses are inhabited almost exclusively by commercial folk. Going up to the gates and looking at the inscription, the prince read: "House of the Hereditary Honorary Citizen Rogozhin."

No longer hesitant, he opened the glass door, which slammed noisily behind him, and started up the front stairway to the second floor. The stairway was dark, made of stone, crudely constructed, and its walls were painted red. He knew that Rogozhin with his mother and brother occupied the entire second floor of this dreary house. The servant who opened the door for the prince led him

without announcing him and led him a long way; they passed through one reception hall with faux-marbrewalls, an oak parquet floor, and furniture from the twenties, crude and heavy, passed through some tiny rooms, turning and zigzagging, going up two or three steps and then down the same number, and finally knocked at some door. The door was opened by Parfyon Semyonych himself; seeing the prince, he went pale and froze on the spot, so that for some time he looked like a stone idol, staring with fixed and frightened eyes and twisting his mouth into a sort of smile perplexed in the highest degree—as if he found something impossible and almost miraculous in the prince's visit. The prince, though he had expected something of the sort, was even surprised.

"Parfyon, perhaps I've come at the wrong time. I'll go, then," he finally said in embarrassment.

"The right time! The right time!" Parfyon finally recollected himself. "Please come in."

They addressed each other as familiars. In Moscow they had often happened to spend long hours together, and there had even been several moments during their meetings that had left an all too memorable imprint on both their hearts. Now it was over three months since they had seen each other.

The paleness and, as it were, the quick, fleeting spasm still had not left Rogozhin's face. Though he had invited his guest in, his extraordinary embarrassment persisted. As he was showing the prince to a chair and seating him at the table, the prince chanced to turn to him and stopped under the impression of his extremely strange and heavy gaze. It was as if something pierced the prince and as if at the same time he remembered something—recent, heavy, gloomy. Not sitting down and standing motionless, he looked for some time straight into Rogozhin's eyes; they seemed to flash more intensely in the first moment. Finally Rogozhin smiled, but with some embarrassment and as if at a loss.

"Why are you staring like that?" he muttered. "Sit down!"

The prince sat down.

"Parfyon," he said, "tell me straight out, did you know I would come to Petersburg today, or not?"

"That you would come, I did think, and as you see I wasn't mistaken," the man said, smiling caustically, "but how should I know you'd come today?"

The harsh abruptness and strange irritation of the question contained in the answer struck the prince still more.

"But even if you had known I'd come today,why get so irritated?" the prince said softly in embarrassment.

"But why do you ask?"

"This morning, as I was getting off the train, I saw a pair of eyes looking at me exactly the way you were just looking at me from behind."

"Aha! Whose eyes were they?" Rogozhin muttered suspiciously. It seemed to the prince that he gave a start.

"I don't know, in the crowd—it even seems to me that I imagined it; I've somehow begun to imagine things all the time. You know, brother Parfyon, I feel almost the way I did five years ago, when I was still having my fits."

"So, maybe you did imagine it, I don't know ..." Parfyon went on muttering.

The affectionate smile on his face did not suit it at that moment, as if something had been broken in this smile and, try as he might, Parfyon was unable to glue it back together.

"So you're going abroad again, are you?" he asked and suddenly added: "And do you remember us on the train, in the autumn, coming from Pskov, me here, and you ... in a cloak, remember, and those gaiters?"

And Rogozhin suddenly laughed, this time with a sort of overt malice and as if delighted that he had managed to express it at least in some way.

"You've settled here for good?" the prince asked, looking around the study.

"Yes, I'm at home here. Where else should I be?"

"We haven't seen each other for a long time. I've heard such things about you, it's as if it were not you."

"People say all kinds of things," Rogozhin observed drily.

"You've scattered your whole company, though; you sit here in the parental house, doing no mischief. So, that's good. Is it your house or all the family's?"

"The house is my mother's. She lives there down the corridor."

"And where does your brother live?"

"Brother Semyon Semyonych is in the wing."

"Does he have a family?"

"He's a widower. Why do you ask?"

The prince looked at him and did not answer; he suddenly became pensive and seemed not to hear the question. Rogozhin did not insist and waited. Silence fell.