Historical fiction; Russia -- Social conditions -- 1801-1917 -- Fiction
Madame Filisoff was a little woman of forty, with a cunning face, and
crafty, piercing eyes. When, with an air of mystery, she asked her
visitor’s name, he refused at first to answer, but in a moment he
changed his mind, and left strict instructions that it should be given
to Nastasia Philipovna. The urgency of his request seemed to impress
Madame Filisoff, and she put on a knowing expression, as if to say,
“You need not be afraid, I quite understand.” The prince’s name
evidently was a great surprise to her. He stood and looked absently at
her for a moment, then turned, and took the road back to his hotel. But
he went away not as he came. A great change had suddenly come over him.
He went blindly forward; his knees shook under him; he was tormented by
“ideas”; his lips were blue, and trembled with a feeble, meaningless
smile. His demon was upon him once more.
What had happened to him? Why was his brow clammy with drops of
moisture, his knees shaking beneath him, and his soul oppressed with a
cold gloom? Was it because he had just seen these dreadful eyes again?
Why, he had left the Summer Garden on purpose to see them; that had
been his “idea.” He had wished to assure himself that he would see them
once more at that house. Then why was he so overwhelmed now, having
seen them as he expected? just as though he had not expected to see
them! Yes, they were the very same eyes; and no doubt about it. The
same that he had seen in the crowd that morning at the station, the
same that he had surprised in Rogojin’s rooms some hours later, when
the latter had replied to his inquiry with a sneering laugh, “Well,
whose eyes were they?” Then for the third time they had appeared just
as he was getting into the train on his way to see Aglaya. He had had a
strong impulse to rush up to Rogojin, and repeat his words of the
morning “Whose eyes are they?” Instead he had fled from the station,
and knew nothing more, until he found himself gazing into the window of
a cutler’s shop, and wondering if a knife with a staghorn handle would
cost more than sixty copecks. And as the prince sat dreaming in the
Summer Garden under a lime-tree, a wicked demon had come and whispered
in his car: “Rogojin has been spying upon you and watching you all the
morning in a frenzy of desperation. When he finds you have not gone to
Pavlofsk—a terrible discovery for him—he will surely go at once to that
house in Petersburg Side, and watch for you there, although only this
morning you gave your word of honour not to see _her_, and swore that
you had not come to Petersburg for that purpose.” And thereupon the
prince had hastened off to that house, and what was there in the fact
that he had met Rogojin there? He had only seen a wretched, suffering
creature, whose state of mind was gloomy and miserable, but most
comprehensible. In the morning Rogojin had seemed to be trying to keep
out of the way; but at the station this afternoon he had stood out, he
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