Aglaya alone was somehow sad; but her face still burned, perhaps with indignation.

"He really is very nice," the little old man again murmured to Ivan Petrovich.

"I came here with pain in my heart," the prince went on, with a somehow ever-increasing perturbation, speaking faster and faster, more strangely and animatedly, "I ... I was afraid of you, afraid of myself as well. Most of all of myself. Returning here to Petersburg, I promised myself to be sure and see our foremost people, the elders, the ancient stock, to whom I myself belong, among whom I am one of the first by birth. For I am now sitting with princes like myself, am I not? I wanted to know you, that was necessary; very, very necessary! I've always heard so much more

bad than good about you, about the pettiness and exclusiveness of your interests, about your backwardness, your shallow education, your ridiculous habits—oh, so much has been written and said about you! It was with curiosity that I came here today, with perturbation: I had to see for myself and become personally convinced: is it actually so that this whole upper stratum of the Russian people is good for nothing, has outlived its time, has exhausted its ancient life, and is only capable of dying out, but in a petty, envious struggle with people ... of the future, hindering them, not noticing that it is dying itself? Before, too, I never fully believed this opinion, because we've never had any higher estate, except perhaps at court, according to the uniform, or ... by chance, and now it has quite vanished, isn't it so, isn't it so?"

"Well, no, that's not so at all," Ivan Petrovich laughed sarcastically.

"Well, he's yammering away again!" Belokonsky could not help saying.

"Laissez-le dire,* he's even trembling all over," the little old man warned again in a half whisper.

The prince was decidedly beside himself.

"And what then? I saw gracious, simple-hearted, intelligent people; I saw an old man who was gentle and heard out a boy like me; I see people capable of understanding and forgiveness, people who are Russian and kind, people almost as kind and cordial as I met there, almost no worse. You can judge how joyfully surprised I was! Oh, allow me to speak this out! I had heard a lot and believed very much myself that in society everything is a manner, everything is a decrepit form, while the essence is exhausted; but I can see for myself now that among us that cannot be; anywhere else, but not among us. Can it be that you are all now Jesuits and swindlers? I heard Prince N. tell a story tonight: wasn't it all artless, inspired humor, wasn't it genuinely good-natured? Can such words come from the lips of a . . . dead man, with a dried-up heart and talent? Could dead people have treated me the way you have treated me? Is this not material . . . for the future, for hopes? Can such people fail to understand and lag behind?"

"Once more I beg you, calm yourself, my dear, we'll come back to it all another time, and it will be my pleasure . . ." the "dignitary" smiled.

*Let him speak.

Ivan Petrovich grunted and shifted in his chair; Ivan Fyodorovich stirred; the general-superior was talking with the dignitary's wife, no longer paying the slightest attention to the prince; but the dignitary's wife kept listening and glancing at him.

"No, you know, it's better that I talk!" the prince went on with a new feverish impulse, addressing the little old man somehow especially trustfully and even confidentially. "Yesterday Aglaya Ivanovna forbade me to talk, and even mentioned the topics I shouldn't talk about; she knows I'm ridiculous at them. I'm going on twenty-seven, but I know I'm like a child. I don't have the right to express my thoughts, I said so long ago; I only spoke candidly in Moscow, with Rogozhin . . . He and I read Pushkin together, we read all of him; he knew nothing, not even Pushkin's name . . . I'm always afraid of compromising the thought and the main idea by my ridiculous look. I lack the gesture. My gesture is always the opposite, and that provokes laughter and humiliates the idea. I have no sense of measure either, and that's the main thing; that's even the most main thing ... I know it's better for me to sit and be silent. When I persist in being silent, I even seem very reasonable, and what's more I can think things over. But now it's better that I speak. I started speaking because you looked at me so wonderfully; you have a wonderful face! Yesterday I gave Aglaya Ivanovna my word that I'd keep silent all evening."

"Vraiment?"* smiled the little old man.

"But I have moments when I think that I'm wrong to think that way: sincerity is worth a gesture, isn't it so? Isn't it so?"

"Sometimes."

"I want to explain everything, everything, everything! Oh, yes! Do you think I'm a Utopian? An ideologist? Oh, no, by God, my thoughts are all so simple . . . You don't believe it? You smile? You know, I'm sometimes mean, because I lose my faith; today I was walking here and thinking: 'Well, how shall I start speaking to them? What word should I begin with, so that they understand at least something?' I was so afraid, but I was more afraid for you, terribly, terribly afraid! And yet how could I be afraid, wasn't it shameful to be afraid? What of it, if for one advanced person there are such myriads of backward and unkind ones? This is precisely my joy, that I'm now convinced that it's not so at all, and that there is living material! Nor is there any embarrassment in the fact that

*Really?

we're ridiculous, isn't that true? For it's actually so, we are ridiculous, light-minded, with bad habits, we're bored, we don't know how to look, how to understand, we're all like that, all, you, and I, and they! Now, you're not offended when I tell you to your face that you're ridiculous? And if so, aren't you material? You know, in my opinion it's sometimes even good to be ridiculous, if not better: we can the sooner forgive each other, the sooner humble ourselves; we can't understand everything at once, we can't start right out with perfection! To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well. This I tell you, you, who have already been able to understand . . . and not understand ... so much. I'm not afraid for you now; surely you're not angry that such a boy is saying such things to you? You're laughing, Ivan Petrovich. You thought I was afraid for them, that I was their advocate, a democrat, a speaker for equality?" he laughed hysterically (he laughed every other minute in short, ecstatic bursts). "I'm afraid for you, for all of you, for all of us together. For I myself am a prince of ancient stock, and I am sitting with princes. It is to save us all that I speak, to keep our estate from vanishing for nothing, in the darkness, having realized nothing, squabbling over everything and losing everything. Why vanish and yield our place to others, when we can remain the vanguard and the elders? Let us be the vanguard, then we shall be the elders. Let us become servants, in order to be elders."⁴⁰

He kept trying to get up from his chair, but the little old man kept holding him back, looking at him, however, with growing uneasiness.

"Listen! I know that talking is wrong: it's better simply to set an example, better simply to begin ... I have already begun . . . and—and is it really possible to be unhappy? Oh, what are my grief and my trouble, if I am able to be happy? You know, I don't understand how it's possible to pass by a tree and not be happy to see it. To talk with a man and not be happy that you love him! Oh, I only don't know how to say it . . . but there are so many things at every step that are so beautiful, that even the most confused person finds beautiful. Look at a child, look at God's sunrise, look at the grass growing, look into the eyes that are looking at you and love you . . ."