Текст книги "The Idiot"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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turned out. Remorse gnawed at him; he abandoned his work and sank into anguish and dejection. He lived in Ptitsyn's house and at his expense, with his father and mother, and despised Ptitsyn openly, though at the same time he listened to his advice and was almost always sensible enough to ask for it. Gavrila Ardalionovich was angry, for instance, at the fact that Ptitsyn did not aim to become a Rothschild and had not set himself that goal. "If you're a usurer, go through with it, squeeze people dry, coin money out of them, become a character, become the king of the Jews!" 4Ptitsyn was modest and quiet; he only smiled, but once he even found it necessary to have a serious talk with Ganya and even did it with a certain dignity. He proved to Ganya that he was not doing anything dishonest and that he should not go calling him a Jew; that if money had so much value, it was not his fault; that he acted truthfully and honestly, and that in reality he was only an agent in "these" affairs, and, finally, that thanks to his accuracy in business he was already known from quite a good standpoint to some most excellent people, and that his business was expanding. "Rothschild I won't be, and why should I," he added, laughing, "but I'll have a house on Liteinaya, maybe even two, and that will be the end of it." "And, who knows, maybe three!" he thought to himself, but never said it aloud and kept his dream hidden. Nature loves and coddles such people: she will certainly reward Ptitsyn not with three but with four houses, and that precisely because he has known since childhood that he would never be a Rothschild. But beyond four houses nature will not go for anything, and with Ptitsyn matters will end there.
Gavrila Ardalionovich's little sister was an entirely different person. She also had strong desires, but more persistent than impulsive. There was a good deal of reasonableness in her, when things reached the final limit, but it did not abandon her before the limit either. True, she was also one of the "usual" people, who dream of originality, but she very quickly managed to realize that she did not have a drop of any particular originality, and she did not grieve over it all that much—who knows, maybe from a peculiar sort of pride. She had made her first practical step with extreme resoluteness by marrying Mr. Ptitsyn; but in marrying him she did not say to herself: "If I'm to be mean, I'll be mean, so long as I reach my goal"—something Gavrila Ardalionovich would not have failed to say on such an occasion (and even almost did say in her presence, when approving of her decision as an older brother).
Quite the contrary even: Varvara Ardalionovna got married after solidly convincing herself that her future husband was a modest, agreeable man, almost educated, who would never commit any great meanness. Varvara Ardalionovna did not look into small meannesses, as too trifling; and where are there not such trifles? No one's looking for ideals! Besides, she knew that by marrying, she was providing a corner for her mother, her father, her brothers. Seeing her brother in misfortune, she wanted to help him, in spite of all previous family misunderstandings. Ptitsyn sometimes urged Ganya—in a friendly way, naturally—to find a job. "You despise generals and generalship," he sometimes said to him jokingly, "but look, all of 'them' will end up as generals in their turn; if you live long enough, you'll see it." "What made them decide that I despise generals and generalship?" Ganya thought to himself sarcastically. To help her brother, Varvara Ardalionovna decided to widen the circle of her activities; she wormed her way in with the Epanchins, childhood memories contributing much to that end: both she and her brother had played with the Epanchin girls in childhood. We shall note here that if, in her visits to the Epanchins, Varvara Ardalionovna had been pursuing some extraordinary dream, she might at once have left the category of people in which she had confined herself; but she was not pursuing a dream; there was even a rather well-founded calculation here on her part: it was founded on the character of this family. Aglaya's character she studied tirelessly. She had set herself the task of turning the two of them, her brother and Aglaya, to each other again. It may be that she actually achieved something; it may be that she fell into error, in counting too much on her brother, for instance, and expecting something from him that he could never and in no way give. In any case, she acted rather skillfully at the Epanchins': for weeks at a time she made no mention of her brother, was always extremely truthful and candid, bore herself simply but with dignity. As for the depths of her conscience, she was not afraid of looking there and did not reproach herself for anything at all. It was this that gave her strength. There was only one thing that she sometimes noticed in herself—that she, too, was perhaps angry, that in her, too, there was a great deal of self-love and even all but pinched vanity; she noticed it especially at certain moments, almost every time she left the Epanchins'.
And now she was returning from them and, as we have already said, in rueful pensiveness. Something bitterly mocking could also
be glimpsed in this ruefulness. Ptitsyn lived in Pavlovsk in an unattractive but roomy wooden house that stood on a dusty street and which would soon come into his full possession, so that he in turn was already beginning to sell it to someone. Going up to the porch, Varvara Ardalionovna heard an extremely loud noise upstairs and could make out the voices of her brother and father shouting. Going into the drawing room and seeing Ganya, who was running up and down the room, pale with fury and almost tearing his hair out, she winced and, with a weary air, lowered herself onto the sofa without taking off her hat. Knowing very well that if she kept silent for another minute and did not ask her brother why he was running like that, he would unfailingly become angry, Varya hastened, finally, to say, in the guise of a question:
"Same as ever?"
"As ever, hah!" exclaimed Ganya. "As ever! No, the devil knows what's going on here now, and not as ever! The old man's getting rabid . . . mother's howling ... By God, Varya, say what you will, I'll throw him out of the house or ... or leave myself," he added, probably recalling that he really could not throw people out of a house that was not his.
"You must be tolerant," Varya murmured.
"Tolerant of what? Of whom?" Ganya flared up. "Of his abominations? No, say what you will, it's impossible like this! Impossible, impossible, impossible! And such a manner: he's to blame and yet he swaggers even more! 'If it won't fit through the gate, knock the fence down! . . .' Why are you sitting there like that? You don't look yourself!"
"I look as I look," Varya answered with displeasure.
Ganya studied her more intently.
"You've been there?" he asked suddenly.
"Yes."
"Wait, they're shouting again! What a shame, and at such a time!"
"Why such a time? It's no special time."
Ganya looked still more intently at his sister.
"Did you find out anything?" he asked.
"Nothing unexpected, at least. I found out that it's all true. My husband was more right than either of us; he predicted it from the very beginning, and so it's turned out. Where is he?" "Not at home. What's turned out?"
"The prince is formally her fiancé, the matter's settled. The older
girls told me. Aglaya has agreed; they've even stopped hiding it. (It was all so mysterious there till now.) Adelaida's wedding will be postponed again, so as to celebrate both weddings together, on the same day—how poetic! Like verse! Why don't you go and write some verses for the nuptials instead of running up and down the room for nothing? Tonight they'll be having old Belokonsky; she arrived just in time; there will be guests. He'll be introduced to Belokonsky, though he's already met her; it seems they're going to announce it publicly. They're only afraid he'll drop and break something as he comes into the room in front of the guests, or just fall down himself; that would be like him."
Ganya listened very attentively, but, to his sister's surprise, this striking news did not seem to make any striking effect on him.
"Well, that was clear," he said after some thought, "so, it's over!" he added with a strange smile, peeking slyly into his sister's face and still pacing up and down the room, but much more slowly now.
"It's good that you can take it philosophically; I'm truly glad," said Varya.
"It's off our backs; off yours, at least."
"I believe I served you sincerely, without arguing and pestering; I never asked you what sort of happiness you wanted to look for with Aglaya."
"But was I . . . looking for happiness with Aglaya?"
"Well, kindly don't go getting into philosophy! Of course you were. It's over, and enough for us—two fools. I must confess to you, I never could look seriously on this affair; I took it up 'just in case,' counting on her funny character, and above all to humor you; there was a ninety percent chance it would be a flop. Even now I don't know myself what you were after."
"Now you and your husband will start urging me to get a job; give me lectures on persistence and willpower, on not scorning small things, and so on—I know it by heart," Ganya laughed loudly.
"There's something new on his mind!" thought Varya.
"So, what—are they glad there, the parents?" Ganya asked suddenly.
"N-no, it seems not. However, you can judge for yourself; Ivan Fyodorovich is pleased; the mother's afraid; before, too, she loathed seeing him as a suitor; you know why."
"That's not what I mean; the suitor is impossible and
unthinkable, that's clear. I'm asking about now, how are things there now? Has she formally accepted him?"
"She hasn't said 'no' yet—that's all, but then it couldn't be otherwise with her. You know how preposterously shy and modest she's been all along: as a child she used to get into the wardrobe and sit there for two or three hours, only so as not to come out to the guests; she's grown into such a big thing, but it's the same now. You know, for some reason I think there's actually something serious in it, even on her part. They say she keeps laughing her head off at the prince, from morning till night, so as not to let anything show, but she must certainly manage to say something to him on the quiet every day, because he looks as though he's walking on air, beaming . . . They say he's terribly funny. I heard it from them. It also seemed to me that they were laughing in my face—the older ones, I mean."
Ganya finally started to scowl; maybe Varya had deliberately gone deeper into the subject in order to penetrate to his real thoughts. But again a shout came from upstairs.
"I'll throw him out!" Ganya simply roared, as if glad to vent his vexation.
"And then he'll go and disgrace us again everywhere, like yesterday."
"How—like yesterday? What do you mean like yesterday? Did he . . ." Ganya suddenly became terribly alarmed.
"Ah, my God, don't you know?" Varya recollected herself.
"How ... so it's really true that he was there?" Ganya exclaimed, flushing with shame and fury. "My God, you were just there! Did you find anything out? Was the old man there? Was he or wasn't he?"
And Ganya rushed to the door; Varya dashed to him and seized him with both arms.
"What is it? Where are you going?" she said. "If you let him out now, he'll do something worse, he'll go to everybody! . . ."
"What did he do there? What did he say?"
"They weren't able to tell and didn't understand themselves; he just frightened them all. He came to see Ivan Fyodorovich—he wasn't there; he demanded to see Lizaveta Prokofyevna. First he asked her for a job, to enter the service, then he started complaining about me, my husband, and you especially . . . said all kinds of things."
"You couldn't find out?" Ganya was trembling as if in hysterics.
"Oh, come now! He himself barely understood what he was saying, and maybe they didn't tell me all of it."
Ganya clutched his head and ran to the window; Varya sat down by the other window.
"Aglaya's funny," she suddenly observed, "she stops me and says: 'Convey my particular personal respects to your parents; one of these days I shall probably find an occasion to see your father.' And she says it so seriously. It's terribly odd . . ."
"Not mockingly? Not mockingly?"
"Precisely not; that's the odd thing."
"Does she know about the old man or doesn't she, what do you think?"
"It's not known to them in the house, I have no doubt of that; but you've given me an idea: maybe Aglaya does know. She alone knows, because the sisters were also surprised that she sent her greetings to father so seriously. Why on earth precisely to him? If she knows, then it's the prince who told her!"
"It takes no cleverness to find out who told her! A thief! Just what we needed. A thief in our family, 'the head of the family'!"
"Oh, nonsense!" cried Varya, becoming quite angry. "A drunken incident, nothing more. And who came up with it? Lebedev, the prince . . . fine ones they are; palatial minds. I don't care a whit about it."
"The old man's a thief and a drunkard," Ganya went on biliously, "I'm a pauper, my sister's husband is a usurer—Aglaya had something to covet! Pretty, I must say!"
"That sister's husband, the usurer, is your ..."
"Feeder, is that it? Kindly don't mince words."
"Why are you angry?" Varya recollected herself. "You don't understand anything, just like a schoolboy. Do you think all that could harm you in Aglaya's eyes? You don't know her character; she'd turn her back on the foremost suitor, but she'd be pleased to run to some student in a garret and starve to death—that's her dream! You've never been able to understand how interesting you'd become in her eyes if you could endure our circumstances with firmness and pride. The prince caught her on his hook, first of all, because he never tried to catch her and, second, because in everybody's eyes he's an idiot. This one thing alone, that she'll muddle up the whole family because of him—that's what she likes now. Ah, none of you understands anything!"
"Well, we've yet to see whether we understand or not," Ganya
muttered mysteriously, "only all the same I wouldn't want her to find out about the old man. I thought the prince would keep it to himself and not tell. He kept Lebedev from telling, and he didn't want to tell me everything either, when I badgered him . . ."
"So you can see for yourself that everything's known already even without him. But what is it to you now? What is there to hope for? And if there were any hope left, it would only give you a look of suffering in her eyes."
"Well, in the face of a scandal even she would turn coward, despite all her love of novels. Everything up to a certain limit, and everybody up to a certain limit—you're all the same."
"Aglaya would turn coward?" Varya flared up, looking contemptuously at her brother. "You really have a mean little soul, though! None of you is worth anything. She may be funny and eccentric, but she's a thousand times nobler than any of us."
"Well, never mind, never mind, don't be angry," Ganya again muttered smugly.
"I'm only sorry for mother," Varya went on. "I'm afraid this story with father may get to her, oh, I'm afraid!"
"And it surely has," Ganya observed.
Varya got up to go upstairs to Nina Alexandrovna, but stopped and looked intently at her brother.
"Who could have told her?"
"Ippolit, it must be. I suppose he considered it his prime pleasure to report it to mother, as soon as he moved in with us."
"But how does he know, pray tell? The prince and Lebedev decided not to tell anyone, even Kolya doesn't know."
"Ippolit? He found it out himself. You can't imagine what a cunning creature he is; what a gossip he is; what a nose he's got for smelling out everything bad, everything scandalous. Well, believe it or not, but I'm convinced that he's already got Aglaya in his hands! And if he hasn't, he will. Rogozhin has also entered into relations with him. How does the prince not notice it! And how he wants to do me a bad turn now! He considers me his personal enemy, I saw through him long ago, and why, what is it to him, he'll die anyway—I can't understand it! But I'll fool him; I'll do him a bad turn, and not he me, you'll see."
"Why did you lure him here, then, if you hate him so much? And is it worth it to do him a bad turn?"
"It was you who advised me to lure him here."
"I thought he'd be useful; and do you know that he has now
fallen in love with Aglaya himself and has written to her? They questioned me . . . it's just possible that he's written to Lizaveta Prokofyevna, too."
"He's no danger in that sense!" Ganya said with a spiteful laugh. "However, there's probably something else in it. He may very well be in love, because he's a boy! But... he wouldn't write anonymous letters to the old lady. He's such a spiteful, worthless, self-satisfied mediocrity! . . . I'm convinced, I know for certain, that he represented me to her as an intriguer, and began with that. I confess that like a fool I let things slip to him at first; I thought he'd take up my interests just to be revenged on the prince; he's such a cunning creature! Oh, now I've seen through him completely. And the theft he heard about from his own mother, the captain's widow. If the old man ventured to do that, it was for her sake. Suddenly, out of the blue, he tells me that 'the general' has promised his mother four hundred roubles, and he does it just like that, out of the blue, without any ceremony. Then I understood everything. And he just peeks into my eyes with some kind of relish; he probably also told mother solely for the pleasure of breaking her heart. And why doesn't he die, pray tell? He promised to die in three weeks, but he's even grown fatter here! He doesn't cough any more; yesterday evening he said himself that he hadn't coughed up blood for two days."
"Throw him out."
"I don't hate him, I despise him," Ganya said proudly. "Well, yes, yes, I do hate him, I do!" he suddenly cried with extraordinary fury. "And I'll say it right to his face, even when he's about to die, on his pillow! If you'd only read his 'Confession'—God, what naivety of impudence! It's Lieutenant Pirogov, it's Nozdryov 5in a tragedy, and above all—a little brat! Oh, with what relish I'd have given him a whipping then, precisely to astonish him. He's taking revenge on everybody now, because it didn't come off then . . . But what's that? More noise there? No, what is it, finally? I won't put up with it, finally! Ptitsyn!" he shouted to Ptitsyn, who was coming into the room. "What is this, what are things here coming to, finally? It's . . . it's . . ."
But the noise was quickly approaching, the door was suddenly flung open, and old man Ivolgin, in wrath, purple, shaken, beside himself, also fell upon Ptitsyn. The old man was followed by Nina Alexandrovna, Kolya, and, last of all, Ippolit.
II
It was already five days since Ippolit had moved to the Ptitsyns' house. It had happened somehow naturally, without any special words or any falling-out between him and the prince; not only had they not quarreled, but it seemed they had even parted friends. Gavrila Ardalionovich, so hostile to Ippolit on that earlier evening, had come to see him himself, though only three days after the event, probably guided by some sudden thought. For some reason Rogozhin also began to visit the sick boy. At first it seemed to the prince that it would even be better for the "poor boy" if he moved out of his house. But at the time of moving, Ippolit kept saying that he was moving to Ptitsyn's, "who had been so kind as to give him a corner," and, as if on purpose, never once said that he was moving to Ganya's, though it was Ganya who had insisted that he be taken into the house. Ganya noticed it then and touchily laid it up in his heart.
He was right when he said to his sister that the sick boy had improved. Indeed, Ippolit felt slightly better than before, which could be noticed from the first glance at him. He came into the room unhurriedly, after everyone else, with a mocking and unkindly smile. Nina Alexandrovna came in very frightened. (She had changed greatly during these six months, had grown thinner; having married off her daughter and moved to live with her, she had almost ceased to interfere externally in her children's affairs.) Kolya was preoccupied and as if perplexed; there was much that he did not understand in "the general's madness," as he put it, not knowing, of course, the main reasons for this new turmoil in the house. But it was clear to him that his father was quarreling so much, everywhere and always, and had suddenly changed so much, that it was as if he were quite a different man than before. It also worried him that in the last three days the old man had even stopped drinking entirely. He knew that he had broken and even quarreled with Lebedev and the prince. Kolya had just come home with a bottle of vodka, which he had purchased with his own money.
"Really, mother," he had assured Nina Alexandrovna while still upstairs, "really, it's better to let him have a drink. He hasn't touched a drop in three days now; from anguish, it means. Really, it's better! I used to bring it to him in debtors' prison . . ."
The general flung the door wide open and stood on the sill as if trembling with indignation.
"My dear sir!" he cried out to Ptitsyn in a thundering voice, "if you have indeed decided to sacrifice a venerable old man, your father, that is, your wife's father at least, honored by his sovereign, to a milksop and an atheist, I shall never set foot in your house again from this very hour. Choose, sir, choose immediately: either me, or this . . . screw! Yes, screw! I said it by accident, but he is a screw! Because he bores into my soul like a screw, and without any respect . . . like a screw!"
"Or a corkscrew?" Ippolit put in.
"No, not a corkscrew, because I'm a general to you, not a bottle. I have medals, medals of honor . . . and you've got a fig. Either him or me! Decide, sir, this minute, this very minute!" he again cried in frenzy to Ptitsyn. Here Kolya moved a chair for him, and he sank onto it almost in exhaustion.
"Really, it would be better for you ... to go to sleep," the dumbfounded Ptitsyn murmured.
"And what's more, he threatens!" Ganya said in a low voice to his sister.
"To sleep!" cried the general. "I am not drunk, my dear sir, and you offend me. I see," he went on, standing up again, "I see that everything is against me here, everything and everyone. Enough! I am leaving . . . But know, my dear sir, know . . ."
They did not let him finish and sat him down again; they began begging him to calm himself. Ganya, in fury, went to the far corner. Nina Alexandrovna trembled and wept.
"But what have I done to him? What is he complaining about?" cried Ippolit, baring his teeth.
"So you did nothing?" Nina Alexandrovna suddenly observed. "You especially should be ashamed and ... to torment an old man so inhumanly . . . and that in your position."
"First of all, what is this position of mine, madam! I respect you very much, precisely you, personally, but . . ."
"He's a screw!" the general shouted. "He bores into my soul and heart! He wants me to believe in atheism! Know, milksop, that you weren't even born yet when I was already showered with honors; and you are merely an envious worm, torn in two, coughing . . . and dying of spite and unbelief . . . And why did Gavrila bring you here? Everybody's against me, from strangers to my own son!
"Enough, you're starting a tragedy!" cried Ganya. "It would be better if you didn't go disgracing us all over town!"
"How have I disgraced you, milksop! You? I can only bring you honor, and not dishonor!"
He jumped up and they could no longer restrain him; but Gavrila Ardalionovich, too, had obviously broken loose.
"Look who's talking about honor!" he cried spitefully.
"What did you say?" the general thundered, turning pale and taking a step towards him.
"I need only open my mouth in order to . . ." Ganya screamed suddenly and did not finish. The two stood facing each other, shaken beyond measure, especially Ganya.
"Ganya, how can you!" cried Nina Alexandrovna, rushing to stop her son.
"What nonsense all around!" Varya snapped indignantly. "Enough, mother," she seized her.
"I spare you only for mother's sake," Ganya said tragically.
"Speak!" the general bellowed, totally beside himself. "Speak for fear of a father's curse . . . speak!"
"As if I'm afraid of your curse! Whose fault is it if you've been like a crazy man for the past eight days? Eight days, you see, I know it by the dates . . . Watch out, don't drive me to the limit: I'll tell everything . .. Why did you drag yourself to the Epanchins' yesterday? Calling yourself an old man, gray-haired, the father of a family! A fine one!"
"Shut up, Ganka!" cried Kolya. "Shut up, you fool!"
"But I, how have I insulted him?" Ippolit insisted, in what seemed like the same mocking tone. "Why does he call me a screw? Did you hear? He pesters me himself; just now he came and started talking about some Captain Eropegov. I have no wish for your company, General; I avoided you before, you know that. I have nothing to do with Captain Eropegov, don't you agree? I did not move here for the sake of Captain Eropegov. I merely voiced my opinion that this Captain Eropegov may never have existed at all. And he started kicking up dust."
"He undoubtedly never existed!" snapped Ganya.
But the general stood as if stunned and only looked around senselessly. His son's phrase struck him by its extreme frankness. For the first moment he was even at a loss for words. And at last, only when Ippolit burst out laughing at Ganya's reply and shouted: "Well, do you hear, your own son also says there was
no Captain Eropegov," did the old man babble, completely confounded:
"Kapiton Eropegov, not Captain . . . Kapiton ... a retired lieutenant-colonel, Eropegov . . . Kapiton."
"There was no Kapiton either!" Ganya was now thoroughly angry.
"Wh . . . why wasn't there?" mumbled the general, and color rose to his face.
"Well, enough!" Ptitsyn and Varya tried to pacify him.
"Shut up, Ganka!" Kolya cried again.
But the intercession seemed to have brought the general to his senses.
"How wasn't there? Why didn't he exist?" he menacingly turned on his son.
"There just wasn't. There wasn't, that's all, and there simply cannot be! So there. Leave me alone, I tell you."
"And this is my son . . . my own son, whom I . . . oh, God! Eropegov, Eroshka Eropegov never lived!"
"Well, so, now it's Eroshka, now it's Kapitoshka!" Ippolit put in.
"Kapitoshka, sir, Kapitoshka, not Eroshka! Kapiton, Captain Alexeevich, that is, Kapiton ... a lieutenant-colonel . . . retired . . . married to Marya . . . Marya Petrovna Su ... Su ... a friend and comrade . . . Sutugov, even as a junker. 6For him I shed ... I shielded him . . . killed. No Kapitoshka Eropegov! Never existed!"
The general was shouting in excitement, but in such a way that one might have thought the point went one way and the shouting another. True, at another time he would have borne something much more offensive than the news about the total non-existence of Kapiton Eropegov, would have shouted a little, started a scandal, lost his temper, but all the same in the end he would have withdrawn to his room upstairs and gone to bed. But now, owing to the extraordinary strangeness of the human heart, it so happened that precisely such an offense as the doubt of Eropegov made the cup run over. The old man turned purple, raised his arms, and shouted:
"Enough! My curse . . . away from this house! Nikolai, bring my bag, I'm going . . . away!"
He went out, hurrying and in extreme wrath. Nina Alexandrovna, Kolya, and Ptitsyn rushed after him.
"Well, what have you done now!" Varya said to her brother. "He may drag himself there again. Ah, what shame, what shame!"
"So don't go stealing!" Ganya cried, all but choking with spite; suddenly his glance met with Ippolit; Ganya almost began to shake. "And you, my dear sir," he cried, "ought to remember that you are not, after all, in your own house and ... are enjoying hospitality, instead of vexing an old man who has obviously lost his mind ..."
Ippolit also seemed to wince, but he immediately checked himself.
"I don't quite agree with you that your father has lost his mind," he replied calmly. "It seems to me, on the contrary, that his mind has been working much better lately, by God; don't you believe so? He has become so cautious, suspicious, keeps asking questions, weighs every word . . . He started talking with me about that Kapitoshka with some aim; imagine, he wanted to suggest to me . . ."
"Eh, the devil I care what he wanted to suggest to you! I ask you, sir, not to be clever and try to dodge with me!" Ganya shrieked. "If you also know the real reason why the old man is in such a state (and you've been spying so much in these five days here that you surely do know it), then you ought never to have vexed . . . the unfortunate man and tormented my mother by exaggerating the affair, because the whole affair is nonsense, just a drunken incident, nothing more, not even proved in any way, and I don't care a whit about it . . . But you have to go taunting and spying, because you're . . . you're . . ."
"A screw," Ippolit grinned.
"Because you're trash, you tormented people for half an hour, thinking you'd frighten them that you were going to shoot yourself with your unloaded pistol, with which you bungled it so shamefully, you failed suicide, you . . . walking bile. I showed you hospitality, you've grown fatter, stopped coughing, and you repay me . . ."
"Just a couple of words, if you please, sir; I am staying with Varvara Ardalionovna, not with you; you have not offered me any hospitality, and I even think that you yourself are enjoying the hospitality of Mr. Ptitsyn. Four days ago I asked my mother to find lodgings for me in Pavlovsk and to move here herself, because I actually do feel better here, though I haven't grown fatter and I still cough. Yesterday evening my mother informed me that the apartment is ready, and I hasten to inform you for my part that, after thanking your dear mother and sister, I will move to my own place today, as I already decided to do last evening. Excuse me, I interrupted you; it seems you had much more to say."
