“Her own position?” Ganya prompted the embarrassed general. “She does understand it; don’t be angry with her. But I did give her a good lesson not to meddle in other people’s affairs. Yet the only thing that keeps them quiet at home is that the final word has not yet been said, but there’s a storm brewing. If it’s finally settled to-day, it will be sure to break out.”
Myshkin heard all this conversation sitting in the corner writing his specimen copy. He finished, went to the table and presented his page.
“So that’s Nastasya Filippovna!” he observed, looking attentively and curiously at the photograph. “Wonderfully beautiful,” he added warmly at once.
The portrait was indeed that of a wonderfully beautiful woman. She had been photographed in a black silk dress of an extremely simple and elegant cut; her hair, which looked as though it were dark brown, was arranged in a simple homely style; her eyes were dark and deep, her brow was pensive; her expression was passionate, and, as it were, disdainful. She was rather thin in the face and perhaps pale.
Ganya and the general stared at Myshkin in surprise.
“Nastasya Filippovna? Surely you don’t know Nastasya Filippovna already?” queried the general.
“Yes, I’ve only been twenty-four hours in Russia, and already I know a beauty like that,” answered Myshkin.
And then he described his meetinq with Roqozhin,
and repeated the story he had told him.
“Here’s something new!” said the general, uneasy again. He had listened to the story with the greatest attention and looked searchingly at Ganya.
“Most likely nothing but vulgar fooling,” muttered Ganya, who was also somewhat disconcerted. “A young merchant’s spree. I’ve heard something about him before.”
“And so have I, my boy,” put in the general. “Nastasya Filippovna told the whole story of the earrings at the time. But now it’s a different matter. It may really mean millions and … a passion. A low passion, perhaps, but still there’s the note of passion about it, and we know what these gentlemen are capable of when they are infatuated… . Hm! … I only hope nothing sensational will come of it,” the general concluded thoughtfully.
“You are afraid of his millions?” asked Ganya with a smirk.
“And you are not, of course?”
“How did he strike you, prince,” asked Ganya, turning suddenly to him. “Is he a serious person or simply a silly fool? What is your opinion?”
There was something peculiar taking place in Ganya as he was asking his question. It was as though a new and peculiar idea was kindled in his brain, and flashed impatiently in his eyes. The general, who was simply and genuinely uneasy, also looked askance at the prince, but did not seem to expect much from his answers.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” answered Myshkin, “only I fancied that there was a great deal of passion in him, and even a sort of morbid passion. And he seems still quite ill, too. It’s quite possible that he’ll be laid up in a day or two again, especially if he begins carousing.”
“What? You fancied that?” the general caught at this idea.
“Yes.”
“Yet something sensational may well happen, not in a day or two, but before tonight, something may turn up perhaps to-day,” said Ganya to the general, with a grin.
“Hm! … Of course… . Very likely, and then it will all depend on how it strikes her,” said the general.
“And you know what she is like sometimes?”
“Like what, do you mean?” the general pounced at him, roused to extreme perturbation. “Listen, Ganya, please don’t contradict her much to-day… and try to be, you know … in fact, to please her… Hm! … Why are you grinning like that? Listen, Gavril Ardalionovitch, it won’t be out of place, not at all so, to ask now what are we working for? \bu understand that as regards any personal advantage to me in the matter, I am quite at rest; in one way or another I shall settle it. Totsky has made up his mind once for all, so I am perfectly secure, and therefore all I desire now is simply your advantage. \bu can see that for yourself. Can you mistrust me? Besides, you are a man … a man … in fact a man of sense, and I was relying upon you … since in the present case … that… that…”
“That’s the chief thing,” put in Ganya again, coming to the assistance of the hesitating general, and twisting his lips into a malignant smile, which he did not even try to conceal. He looked the general straight in the face with his feverish eyes, as though he wanted him to read in his eyes all that was in his mind. The general crimsoned and was angry.
“Quite so, sense is the chief thing!” he assented, looking sharply at Ganya. “You are a funny person,
Gavril Ardalionovitch! “Vbu seem pleased about this young merchant, I observe, as though he might be a way out of it for you. But in this affair it’s just by your sense you ought to have been guided from the first. In this affair you ought to understand and to act honestly and straightforwardly with both sides, or else to have given warning beforehand, to avoid compromising others, especially as you’ve had plenty of time to do so, and there’s still time, indeed, now,” (the general raised his eyebrows significantly) “although there are only a few hours left. Do you understand? Do you understand? Will you or won’t you? If you won’t, say so — and please yourself. Nobody is coercing you, Gavril Ardalionovitch, nobody is dragging you into a trap, that is, if you look on it as a trap.”
“I will,” said Ganya in a low voice, but firmly. He dropped his eyes and sank into gloomy silence.
The general was satisfied. He had been carried away by anger, but he evidently regretted that he had gone so far. He turned suddenly to Myshkin, and his face seemed to betray an uneasy consciousness that the prince had been there and had at least heard what was said. But he was instantly reassured; a glance at Myshkin was enough to reassure anyone.
“Oho!” cried the general, looking at the specimen of the handwriting presented him by Myshkin. “That’s a prize copy! And a splendid one! Look, Ganya, what skill!”
On the thick sheet of vellum the prince had written in mediaeval Russian characters the sentence, “The humble Abbot Pafnuty has put his hand thereto.”
“That,” Myshkin explained with extraordinary pleasure and eagerness, “that’s the precise signature of the Abbot Pafnuty, copied from a fourteenth-century manuscript. Our old abbots and bishops used to sign their names beautifully, and sometimes with what taste, with what exactitude! Haven’t you Pogodin’s collection, general? And here I’ve written in another style; this is the large round French writing of last century, some letters were quite different. It was the writing of the marketplace, the writing of professional scribes imitated from their samples. I had one. You’ll admit that it has points. Look at those round o’s and a’s. I have adapted the French writing to the Russian alphabet, which was very difficult, but the result is successful. There’s another splendid and original writing — see the phrase ‘Perseverance overcomes all obstacles’ — that’s Russian handwriting, a professional or perhaps military scribe’s; that’s how government instructions to an important person are written. That’s a round handwriting, too, a splendid black writing, written thick but with remarkable taste. A specialist in penmanship would disapprove of those flourishes, or rather those attempts at flourishes, those unfinished tails — you see them — but yet you know they give it a character, and you really see the very soul of the military scribe peeping out in them, the longing to break out in some way and