"Do you know anything about Gavrila Ivolgin?"

"That is ... I know a lot."

"Do you or do you not know that he is in touch with Aglaya?"

"I had no idea," the prince was surprised and even gave a start. "So you say Gavrila Ardalionovich is in touch with Aglaya Ivanovna? It can't be!"

"Very recently. His sister spent all winter gnawing a path for him, working like a rat."

"I don't believe it," the prince repeated firmly after some reflection and agitation. "If it was so, I would certainly have known."

"No fear he'd come himself and confess it in tears on your breast! Ah, you simpleton, simpleton! Everybody deceives you like . . . like . . . Aren't you ashamed to trust him? Do you really not see that he's duped you all around?"

"I know very well that he occasionally deceives me," the prince said reluctantly in a low voice, "and he knows that I know it . . ." he added and did not finish.

"To know and to trust him! Just what you need! However, with you that's as it should be. And what am I surprised at? Lord! Has there ever been another man like this? Pah! And do you know that this Ganka or this Varka has put her in touch with Nastasya Filippovna?"

"Whom?!" exclaimed the prince.

"Aglaya."

"I don't believe it! It can't be! With what purpose?"

He jumped up from the chair.

"I don't believe it either, though there's evidence. She's a willful girl, a fantastic girl, a crazy girl! A wicked, wicked, wicked girl! For a thousand years I'll go on insisting that she's wicked! They're all that way now, even that wet hen Alexandra, but this one has already gotten completely out of hand. But I also don't believe it! Maybe because I don't want to believe it," she added as if to herself. "Why didn't you come?" she suddenly turned to the prince again. "Why didn't you come for all these three days?" she impatiently cried to him a second time.

The prince was beginning to give his reasons, but she interrupted him again.

"Everyone considers you a fool and deceives you! You went to town yesterday; I'll bet you got on your knees and begged that scoundrel to accept the ten thousand!"

"Not at all, I never thought of it. I didn't even see him, and, besides, he's not a scoundrel. I received a letter from him."

"Show me the letter!"

The prince took a note from his briefcase and handed it to Lizaveta Prokofyevna. The note read:

My dear sir,

I, of course, do not have the least right in people's eyes to have any self-love. In people's opinion, I am too insignificant for that. But that is in people's eyes, not in yours. I am only too convinced that you, my dear sir, are perhaps better than the others. I disagree with Doktorenko and part ways with him in this conviction. I will never take a single kopeck from you, but you have helped my mother, and for that I owe you gratitude, even though it comes from weakness. In any case, I look upon you differently and consider it necessary to let you know. And with that I assume there can be no further contacts between us.

Antip Burdovsky.

P.S. The rest of the two hundred roubles will be faithfully paid back to you in time.

"What a muddle!" Lizaveta Prokofyevna concluded, tossing the note back. "Not worth reading. What are you grinning at?"

"You must agree that you enjoyed reading it."

"What! This vanity-eaten galimatias! But don't you see they've all lost their minds from pride and vanity?"

"Yes, but all the same he apologized, he's broken with

Doktorenko, and the vainer he is, the dearer the cost to his vanity. Oh, what a little child you are, Lizaveta Prokofyevna!"

"Are you intent on getting a slap in the face from me finally, or what?"

"No, not at all. It's because you're glad of the note, but you conceal it. Why are you ashamed of your feelings? You're like that in everything."

"Don't you dare set foot in my house now," Lizaveta Prokofyevna jumped up, turning pale with wrath, "from now on I don't want to hear a peep from you ever again!"

"But in three days you'll come yourself and invite me . . . Well, aren't you ashamed? These are your best feelings, why be ashamed of them? You only torment yourself."

"I'll die before I ever invite you! I'll forget your name! I have forgotten it!"

She rushed for the door.

"I've already been forbidden to visit you anyway!" the prince called after her.

"Wha-a-at? Who has forbidden you?"

She instantly turned around, as if pricked by a needle. The prince hesitated before answering; he felt he had made an accidental but serious slip.

"Who forbade you?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna cried furiously.

"Aglaya Ivanovna did . . ."

"When? Well, spe-e-eak!!!"

"This morning she sent to tell me that I must never dare come to see you."

Lizaveta Prokofyevna stood like a post, but she was thinking it through.

"What did she send? Whom did she send? Through that brat? Verbally?" she suddenly exclaimed again.

"I received a note," said the prince.

"Where? Give it to me! At once!"

The prince thought for a moment, but nevertheless took from his waistcoat pocket a careless scrap of paper on which was written:

Prince Lev Nikolaevich!

If, after all that has happened, you intend to surprise me by visiting our dacha, then you may be assured that you will not find me among the delighted.

Aglaya Epanchin.

Lizaveta Prokofyevna thought for a moment; then she suddenly rushed to the prince, seized him by the arm, and dragged him with her.

"Now! Go! On purpose, now, this minute!" she cried out in a fit of extraordinary excitement and impatience.

"But you're subjecting me to . . ."

"To what? Innocent simpleton! As if he's not even a man! Well, now I'll see it all for myself, with my own eyes . . ."

"Let me at least take my hat . . ."

"Here's your wretched little hat, let's go! He couldn't even choose the fashion tastefully! . . . She did it . . . She did it after today's . . . it's delirium," Lizaveta Prokofyevna was muttering, dragging the prince with her and not letting go of his arm even for a moment. "Earlier today I defended you, I said aloud that you were a fool, because you didn't come . . . otherwise she wouldn't have written such a witless note! An improper note! Improper for a noble, educated, intelligent, intelligent girl! . . . Hm," she went on, "of course, she herself was vexed that you didn't come, only she didn't reckon that she ought not to write like that to an idiot, because he'd take it literally, which is what happened. What are you doing eavesdropping?" she cried, catching herself in a slip. "She needs a buffoon like you, it's long since she's seen one, that's why she wants you! And I'm glad, glad that she's now going to sharpen her teeth on you! You deserve it. And she knows how, oh, she does know how! ..."

PART THREE

I

They constantly complain that in our country there are no practical people; that of political people, for example, there are many; of generals there are also many; of various managers, however many you need, you can at once find any sort you like—but of practical people there are none. At least everybody complains that there are none. They say that on certain railway lines there are even no decent attendants; to set up a more or less passable administration for some steamship company is, they say, quite impossible. In one place you hear that on some newly opened line the trains collided or fell off a bridge; in another they write that a train nearly spent the winter in a snowy field: people went on a few hours' journey and got stuck for five days in the snow. In another they tell about many tons of goods rotting in one place for two or three months, waiting to be transported, and in yet another they claim (though this is even hard to believe) that an administrator, that is, some supervisor, when pestered by some merchant's agent about transporting his goods, instead of transporting the goods, administered one to the agent's teeth, and proceeded to explain his administrative act as the result of "hot temper." It seems there are so many offices in the government service that it is frightening to think of it; everybody has served, everybody is serving, everybody intends to serve—given such material, you wonder, how can they not make up some sort of decent administration for a steamship company?