“I give you my word that he shall come and see you—but he—he needs rest just now.” “General, they say you require rest,” said Nastasia Philipovna, with the melancholy face of a child whose toy is taken away. Ardalion Alexandrovitch immediately did his best to make his foolish position a great deal worse. “My dear, my dear!” he said, solemnly and reproachfully, looking at his wife, with one hand on his heart. “Won’t you leave the room, mamma?” asked Varia, aloud. “No, Varia, I shall sit it out to the end.” Nastasia must have overheard both question and reply, but her vivacity was not in the least damped. On the contrary, it seemed to increase. She immediately overwhelmed the general once more with questions, and within five minutes that gentleman was as happy as a king, and holding forth at the top of his voice, amid the laughter of almost all who heard him. Colia jogged the prince’s arm. “Can’t _you_ get him out of the room, somehow? _Do_, please,” and tears of annoyance stood in the boy’s eyes. “Curse that Gania!” he muttered, between his teeth. “Oh yes, I knew General Epanchin well,” General Ivolgin was saying at this moment; “he and Prince Nicolai Ivanovitch Muishkin—whose son I have this day embraced after an absence of twenty years—and I, were three inseparables. Alas one is in the grave, torn to pieces by calumnies and bullets; another is now before you, still battling with calumnies and bullets—” “Bullets?” cried Nastasia. “Yes, here in my chest. I received them at the siege of Kars, and I feel them in bad weather now. And as to the third of our trio, Epanchin, of course after that little affair with the poodle in the railway carriage, it was all _up_ between us.” “Poodle? What was that? And in a railway carriage? Dear me,” said Nastasia, thoughtfully, as though trying to recall something to mind. “Oh, just a silly, little occurrence, really not worth telling, about Princess Bielokonski’s governess, Miss Smith, and—oh, it is really not worth telling!” “No, no, we must have it!” cried Nastasia merrily. “Yes, of course,” said Ferdishenko. “C’est du nouveau.” “Ardalion,” said Nina Alexandrovitch, entreatingly. “Papa, you are wanted!” cried Colia. “Well, it is a silly little story, in a few words,” began the delighted general. “A couple of years ago, soon after the new railway was opened, I had to go somewhere or other on business. Well, I took a first-class ticket, sat down, and began to smoke, or rather _continued_ to smoke, for I had lighted up before. I was alone in the carriage. Smoking is not allowed, but is not prohibited either; it is half allowed—so to speak, winked at. I had the window open.”