"Why, are you a doctor, prince, or what?" he asked, as naturally as possible. "I declare you quite frightened me! Nastasia Philipovna, let me introduce this interesting character to youthough I have only known him myself since the morning."
Nastasia gazed at the prince in bewilderment. "Prince? He a Prince? Why, I took him for the footman, just now, and sent him in to announce me! Ha, ha, ha, isn't that good!"
"Not bad that, not bad at all!" put in Ferdishenko, "se non è vero"
"I rather think I pitched into you, too, didn't I? Forgive medo! Who is he, did you say? What prince? Muishkin?" she added, addressing Gania.
"He is a lodger of ours," explained the latter.
"An idiot!"the prince distinctly heard the word half whispered from behind him. This was Ferdishenko's voluntary information for Nastasia's benefit.
"Tell me, why didn't you put me right when I made such a dreadful mistake just now?" continued the latter, examining the prince from head to foot without the slightest ceremony. She awaited the answer as though convinced that it would be so foolish that she must inevitably fail to restrain her laughter over it.
"I was astonished, seeing you so suddenly" murmured the prince.
"How did you know who I was? Where had you seen me before? And why were you so struck dumb at the sight of me? What was there so overwhelming about me?"
"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, princego on!"
"So should I, in your place, I've no doubt!" laughed the prince to Ferdishenko; then continued, addressing Nastasia: "Your portrait struck me very forcibly this morning; then I was talking about you to the Epanchins; and then, in the train, before I reached Petersburg, Parfen Rogojin told me a good deal about you; and at the very moment that I opened the door to you I happened to be thinking of you, whenthere you stood before me!"
"And how did you recognize me?"
"From the portrait!"
"What else?"
"I seemed to imagine you exactly as you areI seemed to have seen you somewhere."
"Wherewhere?"
"I seem to have seen your eyes somewhere; but it cannot be! I have not seen youI never was here before. I may have dreamed of you, I don't know."
The prince said all this with manifest effortin broken sentences, and with many drawings of breath. He was evidently much agitated. Nastasia Philipovna looked at him inquisitively, but did not laugh.
"Bravo, prince!" cried Ferdishenko, delighted.
At this moment a loud voice from behind the group which hedged in the prince and Nastasia Philipovna, divided the crowd, as it were, and before them stood the head of the family, General Ivolgin. He was dressed in evening clothes; his moustache was dyed.
This apparition was too much for Gania. Vain and ambitious almost to morbidness, he had had much to put up with in the last two months, and was seeking feverishly for some means of enabling himself to lead a more presentable kind of existence. At home, he now adopted an attitude of absolute cynicism, but he could not keep this up before Nastasia Philipovna, although he had sworn to make her pay after marriage for all he suffered now. He was experiencing a last humiliation, the bitterest of all, at this momentthe humiliation of blushing for his own kindred in his own house. A question flashed through his mind as to whether the game was really worth the candle.
For that had happened at this moment, which for two months had been his nightmare; which had filled his soul with dread and shamethe meeting between his father and Nastasia Philipovna. He had often tried to imagine such an event, but had found the picture too mortifying and exasperating, and had quietly dropped it. Very likely he anticipated far worse things than was at all necessary; it is often so with vain persons. He had long since determined, therefore, to get his father out of the way, anywhere, before his marriage, in order to avoid such a meeting; but when Nastasia entered the room just now, he had been so overwhelmed with astonishment, that he had not thought of his father, and had made no arrangements to keep him out of the way. And now it was too latethere he was, and got up, too, in a dress coat and white tie, and Nastasia in the very humour to heap ridicule on him and his family circle; of this last fact, he felt quite persuaded. What else had she come for? There were his mother and his sister sitting before her, and she seemed to have forgotten their very existence already; and if she behaved like that, he thought, she must have some object in view.
Ferdishenko led the general up to Nastasia Philipovna.
"Ardalion Alexandrovitch Ivolgin," said the smiling general, with a low bow of great dignity, "an old soldier, unfortunate, and the father of this family; but happy in the hope of including in that family so exquisite"
Ferdishenko led the general up to Nastasia Philipovna.
"Ardalion Alexandrovitch Ivolgin," said the smiling general, with a low bow of great dignity, "an old soldier, unfortunate, and the father of this family; but happy in the hope of including in that family so exquisite"