"But why do you ask?"

"This morning, as I was getting off the train, I saw a pair of eyes looking at me exactly the way you were just looking at me from behind."

"Aha! Whose eyes were they?" Rogozhin muttered suspiciously. It seemed to the prince that he gave a start.

"I don't know, in the crowd—it even seems to me that I imagined it; I've somehow begun to imagine things all the time. You know, brother Parfyon, I feel almost the way I did five years ago, when I was still having my fits."

"So, maybe you did imagine it, I don't know ..." Parfyon went on muttering.

The affectionate smile on his face did not suit it at that moment, as if something had been broken in this smile and, try as he might, Parfyon was unable to glue it back together.

"So you're going abroad again, are you?" he asked and suddenly added: "And do you remember us on the train, in the autumn, coming from Pskov, me here, and you ... in a cloak, remember, and those gaiters?"

And Rogozhin suddenly laughed, this time with a sort of overt malice and as if delighted that he had managed to express it at least in some way.

"You've settled here for good?" the prince asked, looking around the study.

"Yes, I'm at home here. Where else should I be?"

"We haven't seen each other for a long time. I've heard such things about you, it's as if it were not you."

"People say all kinds of things," Rogozhin observed drily.

"You've scattered your whole company, though; you sit here in the parental house, doing no mischief. So, that's good. Is it your house or all the family's?"

"The house is my mother's. She lives there down the corridor."

"And where does your brother live?"

"Brother Semyon Semyonych is in the wing."

"Does he have a family?"

"He's a widower. Why do you ask?"

The prince looked at him and did not answer; he suddenly became pensive and seemed not to hear the question. Rogozhin did not insist and waited. Silence fell.

"I recognized your house just now from a hundred paces away, as I was approaching," said the prince.

"Why so?"

"I have no idea. Your house has the physiognomy of your whole family and of your whole Rogozhin life, but ask me why I think that—and I can't explain it. Nonsense, of course. I'm even afraid of how much it disturbs me. It never occurred to me before that this would be the sort of house you lived in, but when I saw it, I thought at once: 'Yes, that's exactly the kind of house he had to have!' "

"See!" Rogozhin smiled vaguely, not quite understanding the prince's unclear thought. "This house was built by my grandfather," he observed. "Castrates used to live here, the Khludiakovs, they rent from us even now."

"So gloomy. You sit in such gloom," said the prince, looking around the study.

It was a big room, high, darkish, cluttered with all sorts of furniture—mostly big desks, bureaus, bookcases in which ledgers and papers were kept. A wide red morocco couch apparently served Rogozhin as a bed. On the table at which Rogozhin had seated him, the prince noticed two or three books; one of them, Solovyov's History,¹⁵ was open and had a bookmark in it. On the walls, in dull gilt frames, hung several oil paintings, dark, sooty, on which it was hard to make anything out. One full-length portrait drew the prince's attention: it depicted a man of about fifty, in a frock coat of German cut but with long skirts, with two medals on his neck, a very sparse and short, grayish beard, a wrinkled and yellow face, and a suspicious, secretive, and somewhat doleful gaze.

"That wouldn't be your father?" asked the prince.

"The man himself," Rogozhin replied with an unpleasant smile, as if readying himself for some immediate, unceremonious joke about his deceased parent.

"He wasn't an Old Believer, was he?"¹⁶

"No, he went to church, but it's true he used to say the old belief was more correct. He also had great respect for the castrates. This was his study. Why did you ask about the old belief?"

"Will you celebrate the wedding here?"

"Y-yes, here," replied Rogozhin, almost starting at the sudden question.

"Soon?"

"You know yourself it doesn't depend on me!"

"Parfyon, I'm not your enemy and have no intention of hindering you in anything. I repeat it to you now just as I told it to you once before, in a moment almost like this. When your wedding was under way in Moscow, I didn't hinder you, you know that. The first time it was she who came rushing to me, almost from the foot of the altar, begging me to 'save' her from you. I'm repeating her own words. Then she ran away from me, too, and you found her again and led her to the altar, and now they say she ran away from you again and came here. Is that true? Lebedev informed me and that's why I came. And that you've made it up again here, I learned for the first time only yesterday on the train, from one of your former friends, Zalyozhev, if you want to know. I had a purpose in coming here: I wanted finally to persuade her to go abroad, to restore her health; she's very upset in body and in soul, in her head especially, and, in my opinion, she has great need to be cared for. I didn't want to go abroad with her myself, but I had a view to arranging it without myself. I'm telling you the real truth. If it's completely true that things have been made up again between you, I won't even allow her a glimpse of me, and I'll never come to see you either. You know I'm not deceiving you, because I've always been candid with you. I've never concealed my thoughts about it from you, and I've always said that marrying you means inevitable ruin for her. It also means ruin for you . . . perhaps even more than for her. If you parted again, I would be very glad; but I have no intention of intruding or interfering with you. So be at peace and don't suspect me. And you know for yourself whether I was ever your real rival, even when she ran away from you to me. You're laughing now—I know at what. Yes, we lived separately there, and in different towns, and you know it all for certain. I explained to you before that I love her 'not with love, but with pity.' I think I defined it precisely. You told me then that you understood these words of mine; is it true? did you understand? See how hatefully you look at me! I've come to bring you peace, because you, too, are dear to me. I love you very much, Parfyon. And now I'll go and never come again. Farewell."

The prince stood up.

"Stay with me a little," Parfyon said quietly, without getting up from his place and leaning his head on his right hand, "I haven't seen you for a long time."

The prince sat down. They both fell silent again. "When you're not in front of me, I immediately feel spite for

you, Lev Nikolaevich. In these three months that I haven't seen you, I've felt spiteful towards you every minute, by God. So that I could have up and poisoned you with something! That's how it is. Now you haven't sat with me a quarter of an hour, and all my spite is gone, and I love you again like before. Stay with me a little ..."

"When I'm with you, you trust me, and when I'm gone, you immediately stop trusting me and suspect me again. You're like your father!" the prince said with a friendly smile, trying to conceal his emotion.

"I trust your voice when I'm with you. I know we'll never be equals, you and me . . ."