is my great friend,Prince Muishkin; we have exchanged crosses; he was like a real brotherto me at Moscow at one time, and did a great deal for me. Bless him,mother, as you would bless your own son. Wait a moment, let me arrangeyour hands for you.”
But the old lady, before Parfen had time to touch her, raised her righthand, and, with three fingers held up, devoutly made the sign of thecross three times over the prince. She then nodded her head kindly athim once more.
“There, come along, Lef Nicolaievitch; that’s all I brought you herefor,” said Rogojin.
When they reached the stairs again he added:
“She understood nothing of what I said to her, and did not know what Iwanted her to do, and yet she blessed you; that shows she wished to doso herself. Well, goodbye; it’s time you went, and I must go too.”
He opened his own door.
“Well, let me at least embrace you and say goodbye, you strange fellow!” cried the prince, looking with gentle reproach at Rogojin, and advancingtowards him. But the latter had hardly raised his arms when he droppedthem again. He could not make up his mind to it; he turned away from theprince in order to avoid looking at him. He could not embrace him.
“Don’t be afraid,” he muttered, indistinctly, “though I have taken yourcross, I shall not murder you for your watch.” So saying, he laughedsuddenly, and strangely. Then in a moment his face became transfigured;he grew deadly white, his lips trembled, his eyes burned like fire. Hestretched out his arms and held the prince tightly to him, and said in astrangled voice:
“Well, take her! It’s Fate! She’s yours. I surrender her.... RememberRogojin!” And pushing the prince from him, without looking back at him,he hurriedly entered his own flat, and banged the door.
V.
It was late now, nearly half-past two, and the prince did not findGeneral Epanchin at home. He left a card, and determined to look upColia, who had a room at a small hotel near. Colia was not in, but hewas informed that he might be back shortly, and had left word that if hewere not in by half-past three it was to be understood that he had goneto Pavlofsk to General Epanchin’s, and would dine there. The princedecided to wait till half-past three, and ordered some dinner. Athalf-past three there was no sign of Colia. The prince waited until fouro’clock, and then strolled off mechanically wherever his feet shouldcarry him.
In early summer there are often magnificent days in St.Petersburg--bright, hot and still. This happened to be such a day.
For some time the prince wandered about without aim or object. He didnot know the town well. He stopped to look about him on bridges, atstreet corners. He entered a confectioner’s shop to rest, once. He wasin a state of nervous excitement and perturbation; he noticed nothingand no one; and he felt a craving for solitude, to be alone with histhoughts and his emotions, and to give himself up to them passively. Heloathed the idea of trying to answer the questions that would rise upin his heart and mind. “I am not to blame for all this,” he thought tohimself, half unconsciously.
Towards six o’clock he found himself at the station of theTsarsko-Selski railway.
He was tired of solitude now; a new rush of feeling took hold of him,and a flood of light chased away the gloom, for a moment, from his soul.He took a ticket to Pavlofsk, and determined to get there as fast as hecould, but something stopped him; a reality, and not a fantasy, as hewas inclined to think it. He was about to take his place in a carriage,when he suddenly threw away his ticket and came out again, disturbed andthoughtful. A few moments later, in the street, he recalled somethingthat had bothered him all the afternoon. He caught himself engaged ina strange occupation which he now recollected he had taken up at oddmoments for the last few hours--it was looking about all around him forsomething, he did not know what. He had forgotten it for a while, halfan hour or so, and now, suddenly, the uneasy search had recommenced.
But he had hardly become conscious of this curious phenomenon, whenanother recollection suddenly swam through his brain, interesting himfor the moment, exceedingly. He remembered that the last time he hadbeen engaged in looking around him for the unknown something, he wasstanding before a cutler’s shop, in the window of which were exposedcertain goods for sale. He was extremely anxious now to discover whetherthis shop and these goods really existed, or whether the whole thing hadbeen a hallucination.
He felt in a very curious condition today, a condition similar to thatwhich had preceded his fits in bygone years.
He remembered that at such times he had been particularly absentminded,and could not discriminate between objects and persons unless heconcentrated special attention upon them.
He remembered seeing something in the window marked at sixty copecks.Therefore, if the shop existed and if this object were really inthe window, it would prove that he had been able to concentrate hisattention on this article at a moment when, as a general rule,his absence of mind would have been too great to admit of any suchconcentration; in fact, very shortly after he had left the railwaystation in such a state of agitation.
So he walked back looking about him for the shop, and his heart beatwith intolerable impatience. Ah! here was the very shop, and there wasthe article marked “60 cop.” Of course, it’s sixty copecks, he thought,and certainly worth no more. This idea amused him and he laughed.
But it was a hysterical laugh; he was feeling terribly oppressed. Heremembered clearly that just here, standing before this window, he hadsuddenly turned round, just as earlier in the day he had turned andfound the dreadful eyes of Rogojin fixed upon him. Convinced, therefore,that in this respect at all events he had been under no delusion, heleft the shop and went on.
This must be thought out; it was clear that there had been nohallucination at the station then, either; something had actuallyhappened to him, on both occasions; there was no doubt of it. But againa loathing for all mental exertion overmastered him; he would notthink it out now, he would put it off and think of something else.He remembered that during his epileptic fits, or rather immediatelypreceding them, he had always experienced a moment or two when his wholeheart, and mind, and body seemed to wake up to vigour and light; whenhe became filled with joy and hope, and all his anxieties seemed to beswept away for ever; these moments were but presentiments, as it were,of the one final second (it was never more than a second) in which thefit came upon him. That second, of course, was inexpressible. When hisattack was over, and the prince reflected on his symptoms, he used tosay to himself: “These moments, short as they are, when I feel suchextreme consciousness of myself, and consequently more of life thanat other times, are due only to the disease--to the sudden rupture ofnormal conditions. Therefore they are not really a higher kind of life,but a lower.” This reasoning, however, seemed to end in a paradox,and lead to the further consideration:--“What matter though it be onlydisease, an abnormal tension of the brain, if when I recall and analyzethe moment, it seems to have been one of harmony and beauty in thehighest degree--an instant of deepest sensation, overflowing withunbounded joy and rapture, ecstatic devotion, and completest life?” Vague though this sounds, it was perfectly comprehensible to Muishkin,though he knew that it was but a feeble expression of his sensations.
That there was, indeed, beauty and harmony in those abnormal moments,that they really contained the highest synthesis of life, he could notdoubt, nor even admit the possibility of doubt. He felt that they werenot analogous to the fantastic and unreal dreams due to intoxicationby hashish, opium or wine. Of that he could judge, when the attack wasover. These instants were characterized--to define it in a word--byan intense quickening of the sense of personality. Since, in the lastconscious moment preceding the attack, he could say to himself, withfull understanding of his words: “I would give my whole life for thisone instant,” then doubtless to him it really was worth a lifetime.For the rest, he thought the dialectical part of his argument of littleworth; he saw only too clearly that the result of these ecstatic momentswas stupefaction, mental darkness, idiocy. No argument was possibleon that point. His concl
usion, his estimate of the “moment,” doubtlesscontained some error, yet the reality of the sensation troubled him.What’s more unanswerable than a fact? And this fact had occurred. Theprince had confessed unreservedly to himself that the feeling of intensebeatitude in that crowded moment made the moment worth a lifetime. “Ifeel then,” he said one day to Rogojin in Moscow, “I feel then as if Iunderstood those amazing words--‘There shall be no more time.’” And headded with a smile: “No doubt the epileptic Mahomet refers to that samemoment when he says that he visited all the dwellings of Allah, in lesstime than was needed to empty his pitcher of water.” Yes, he had oftenmet Rogojin in Moscow, and many were the subjects they discussed. “Hetold me I had been a brother to him,” thought the prince. “He said sotoday, for the first time.”
He was sitting in the Summer Garden on a seat under a tree, and hismind dwelt on the matter. It was about seven o’clock, and the place wasempty. The stifling atmosphere foretold a storm, and the prince felt acertain charm in the contemplative