"And he brought me a cardboard helmet and a wooden sword then, and I remember it!" Adelaida cried out.

"I remember it, too," Alexandra confirmed. "You all quarreled then over the wounded pigeon and were made to stand in the corner; Adelaida stood like this in the helmet and with the sword."

The general, in announcing to Aglaya that he had carried her in his arms, had said it just so, only in order to start a conversation, and solely because he almost always started a conversation with young people in that way, if he found it necessary to make their acquaintance. But this time it so happened, as if by design, that he had told the truth and, as if by design, had forgotten that truth himself. So that now, when Aglaya suddenly confirmed that the two of them had shot a pigeon together, his memory suddenly lit up, and he remembered it all himself, to the last detail, as an old person often remembers something from the distant past. It is hard

*Intruder, outsider, or impostor.

to say what in this memory could have had such a strong effect on the poor and, as usual, slightly tipsy general; but he was suddenly extraordinarily moved.

"I remember, I remember it all!" he cried. "I was a staff-captain then. You were such a tiny, pretty little girl. Nina Alexandrovna . . . Ganya ... I was received ... in your house. Ivan Fyodorovich . . ."

"And see what you've come to now!" Mrs. Epanchin picked up. "Which means that all the same you haven't drunk up your noble feelings, since it affects you so! But you've worn out your wife. Instead of looking after your children, you've been sitting in debtors' prison. Leave us, my dear, go somewhere, stand in a corner behind a door and have a good cry, remembering your former innocence, and perhaps God will forgive you. Go, go, I'm telling you seriously. There's nothing better for mending your ways than recalling the past in repentance."

But there was no need to repeat that she was speaking seriously: the general, like all constantly tippling people, was very sentimental, and, like all tippling people who have sunk too low, he could not easily bear memories from the happy past. He got up and humbly walked to the door, so that Lizaveta Prokofyevna felt sorry for him at once.

"Ardalion Alexandrych, my dear!" she called out behind him. "Wait a minute! We're all sinners; when you're feeling less remorse of conscience, come and see me, we'll sit and talk about old times. I myself may well be fifty times more of a sinner than you are; well, good-bye now, go, there's no point in your . . ." She was suddenly afraid that he might come back.

"Don't follow him for now," the prince stopped Kolya, who had made as if to run after his father. "Or else he'll get vexed after a moment, and the whole moment will be spoiled."

"That's true, let him be; go in half an hour," Lizaveta Prokofyevna decided.

"That's what it means to tell the truth for once in your life— it moved him to tears!" Lebedev ventured to paste in.

"Well, and you must be a fine one, too, my dear, if what I've heard is true," Lizaveta Prokofyevna pulled him up short at once.

The mutual position of all the guests gathered at the prince's gradually defined itself. The prince, naturally, was able to appreciate and did appreciate the full extent of the concern shown for him by Mrs. Epanchin and her daughters and, of course, told them frankly that he himself, before their visit, had intended to call on them

today without fail, despite his illness and the late hour. Lizaveta Prokofyevna, glancing at his guests, replied that this wish could be realized even now. Ptitsyn, a courteous and extremely accommodating young man, very soon got up and withdrew to Lebedev's wing, hoping very much to take Lebedev himself along with him. The latter promised to follow him soon; meanwhile Varya fell to talking with the girls and stayed. She and Ganya were very glad of the general's departure; Ganya himself also soon followed Ptitsyn out. During the few minutes he had spent on the terrace with the Epanchins, he had behaved modestly, with dignity, and had not been taken aback in the least by the determined glances of Lizaveta Prokofyevna, who had twice looked him up and down. Actually, those who had known him before might have thought him quite changed. That pleased Aglaya very much.

"Was it Gavrila Ardalionovich who just left?" she suddenly asked, as she sometimes liked to do, loudly, sharply, interrupting other people's conversation with her question, and not addressing anyone personally.

"Yes, it was," replied the prince.

"I barely recognized him. He's quite changed and . . . greatly for the better."

"I'm very glad for him," said the prince.

"He was very ill," Varya added with joyful sympathy.

"How is he changed for the better?" Lizaveta Prokofyevna asked in irascible perplexity and all but frightened. "Where do you get that? There's nothing better. What precisely seems better to you?"

"There's nothing better than 'the poor knight'!" proclaimed Kolya, who had been standing all the while by Lizaveta Prokofyevna's chair.

"I think the same myself," Prince Shch. said and laughed.

"I'm of exactly the same opinion," Adelaida proclaimed solemnly.

"What 'poor knight'?" Mrs. Epanchin asked, looking around in perplexity and vexation at all the speakers, but, seeing that Aglaya had blushed, she added testily: "Some sort of nonsense! What is this 'poor knight'?"

"As if it's the first time this brat, your favorite, has twisted other people's words!" Aglaya replied with haughty indignation.

In each of Aglaya's wrathful outbursts (and she was often wrathful), almost each time, despite all her ostensible seriousness and implacability, there showed so much that was still childish, impatiently schoolgirlish and poorly concealed, that it was sometimes

quite impossible to look at her without laughing, to the great vexation of Aglaya, incidentally, who could not understand why they laughed and "how could they, how dared they laugh." Now, too, the sisters laughed, as did Prince Shch., and even Prince Lev Nikolaevich himself smiled, and for some reason also blushed. Kolya laughed loudly and triumphantly. Aglaya turned seriously angry and became twice as pretty. Her embarrassment, and her vexation with herself for this embarrassment, were extremely becoming to her.

"As if he hasn't twisted enough words of yours," she added.

"I base myself on your own exclamation!" Kolya cried. "A month ago you were looking through Don Quixote and exclaimed those words, that there is nothing better than the 'poor knight.' I don't know who you were talking about then—Don Quixote, Evgeny Pavlych, or some other person—but only that you were speaking about someone, and the conversation went on for a long time . . ."

"I see, dear boy, that you allow yourself too much with your guesses," Lizaveta Prokofyevna stopped him with vexation.

"Am I the only one?" Kolya would not keep still. "Everybody was talking then, and they still do; just now Prince Shch. and Adelaida Ivanovna, and everybody said they were for the 'poor knight,' which means that this 'poor knight' exists and is completely real, and in my opinion, if it weren't for Adelaida Ivanovna, we'd all have known long ago who the 'poor knight' is."

"What did I do wrong?" Adelaida laughed.

"You didn't want to draw his portrait—that's what! Aglaya Ivanovna asked you then to draw a portrait of the 'poor knight' and even told you the whole subject for a painting she had thought up, don't you remember the subject? You didn't want to . . ."