how involuntarily stop visiting others as well. And yet . . . hm . . . it seems you don't believe . . . Though why shouldn't I introduce the son of my best friend and childhood companion to this charming family? General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin! You'll meet an amazing girl, and not just one but two, even three, the ornaments of our capital and society: beauty, cultivation, tendency . . . the woman question, poetry—all this united in a happy, diversified mixture, not counting the dowry of at least eighty thousand in cash that each girl comes with, which never hurts, whatever the woman and social questions ... in short, I absolutely, absolutely must and am duty-bound to introduce you. General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin!"

"At once? Now? But you've forgotten," the prince began.

"I've forgotten nothing, nothing, come along! This way, to this magnificent stairway. Surprising there's no doorkeeper, but . . . it's a holiday, and the doorkeeper is away. They haven't dismissed the drunkard yet. This Sokolovich owes all the happiness of his life and career to me, to me alone and no one else, but. . . here we are."

The prince no longer objected to the visit and obediently followed the general, so as not to vex him, in the firm hope that General Sokolovich and his whole family would gradually evaporate like a mirage and turn out to be nonexistent, and they could calmly go back down the stairs. But, to his horror, he began to lose this hope: the general was taking him up the stairs like someone who really had acquaintances there, and kept putting in biographical and topographical details full of mathematical precision. Finally, when they reached the second floor and stopped outside the door of a wealthy apartment, and the general took hold of the bellpull, the prince decided to flee definitively; but one odd circumstance stopped him for a moment.

"You're mistaken, General," he said. "The name on the door is Kulakov, and you're ringing for Sokolovich."

"Kulakov . . . Kulakov doesn't prove anything. It's Sokolovich's apartment, and I'm ringing for Sokolovich. I spit on Kulakov . . . And, you see, they're opening."

The door indeed opened. A footman peeped out and announced that "the masters aren't at home, sir."

"Too bad, too bad, as if on purpose," Ardalion Alexandrovich repeated several times with the deepest regret. "Tell them, my dear fellow, that General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin wished to pay their personal respects and were extremely, extremely sorry . . ."

At that moment another face peeped from inside through the open door, the housekeeper's by the look of it, perhaps even the governess's, a lady of about forty, wearing a dark dress. She approached with curiosity and mistrust on hearing the names of General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin.

"Marya Alexandrovna is not at home," she said, studying the general in particular, "she took the young lady, Alexandra Mikhailovna, to visit her grandmother."

"And Alexandra Mikhailovna went with her—oh, God, what bad luck! And imagine, madam, I always have such bad luck! I humbly ask you to give her my greetings, and to remind Alexandra Mikhailovna ... in short, convey to her my heartfelt wish for that which she herself wished for on Thursday, in the evening, to the strains of Chopin's ballade; she'll remember . . . My heartfelt wish! General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin!"

"I won't forget, sir," the lady bowed out, having become more trustful.

Going downstairs, the general, his fervor not yet cooled, continued to regret the failure of the visit and that the prince had been deprived of such a charming acquaintance.

"You know, my dear, I'm something of a poet in my soul, have you noticed that? But anyhow . . . anyhow, it seems we didn't go to exactly the right place," he suddenly concluded quite unexpectedly. "The Sokoloviches, I now recall, live in another house, and it seems they're even in Moscow now. Yes, I was slightly mistaken, but that's ... no matter."

"I'd only like to know one thing," the prince remarked dejectedly, "am I to stop counting on you entirely and go ahead on my own?

"To stop? Counting? On your own? But why on earth, when for me it's a capital undertaking, upon which so much in the life of my whole family depends? No, my young friend, you don't know Ivolgin yet. Whoever says 'Ivolgin' says 'a wall': trust in Ivolgin as in a wall, that's what I used to say in the squadron where I began my service. It's just that I'd like to stop on the way at a certain house, where my soul has found repose these several years now, after anxieties and trials . . ."

"You want to stop at home?"

"No! I want ... to see Mrs. Terentyev, the widow of Captain Terentyev, my former subordinate . . . and even friend . . . There, in her house, I am reborn in spirit and there I bring the sorrows

of my personal and domestic life . . . And since today I precisely bear a great moral burden, I . . ."

"It seems to me that I did a very foolish thing anyway," the prince murmured, "in troubling you earlier. And besides that, you're now . . . Good-bye!"

"But I cannot, I cannot let you go, my young friend!" the general roused himself. "A widow, the mother of a family, and from her heart she produces chords to which my whole being responds. The visit to her is a matter of five minutes, in that house I behave without ceremony, I almost live there; I'll wash, do the most necessary brushing up, and then we'll take a cab to the Bolshoi Theater. You can be sure I shall have need of you for the whole evening . . . Here's the house, we've arrived . . . Ah, Kolya, you're already here? Well, is Marfa Borisovna at home, or have you only just arrived?"

"Oh, no," replied Kolya, who had run right into them in the gateway, "I've been here for a long time, with Ippolit, he's worse, he stayed in bed this morning. I went down to the grocer's just now for a deck of cards. Marfa Borisovna's expecting you. Only, papa, you're so . . . !" Kolya broke off, studying the general's gait and bearing. "Oh, well, come on!"

The meeting with Kolya induced the prince to accompany the general to Marfa Borisovna's as well, but only for a minute. The prince needed Kolya; as for the general, he decided to abandon him in any case, and could not forgive himself for venturing to trust him earlier. They climbed up for a long time, to the fourth floor, and by the back stairs.

"You want to introduce the prince?" Kolya asked on the way.

"Yes, my friend, I want to introduce him: General Ivolgin and Prince Myshkin, but what . . . how . . . Marfa Borisovna . . ."

"You know, papa, it would be better if you didn't go in. She'll eat you up! It's the third day you haven't poked your nose in there, and she's been waiting for money. Why did you promise her money? You're always like that! Now you'll have to deal with it."

On the fourth floor they stopped outside a low door. The general was visibly timid and shoved the prince forward.

"And I'll stay here," he murmured. "I want it to be a surprise . . ."

Kolya went in first. Some lady, in heavy red and white makeup, wearing slippers and a jerkin, her hair plaited in little braids, about forty years old, looked out the door, and the general's surprise unexpectedly blew up. The moment the lady saw him, she shouted:

"There he is, that low and insidious man, my heart was expecting it!"

"Let's go in, it's all right," the general murmured to the prince, still innocently laughing it off.