The Idiot | Page 7

a tinker. 'Don't flatter yourself, my
boy,' said he; 'she's not for such as you; she's a princess, she is, and her
name is Nastasia Philipovna Barashkoff, and she lives with Totski, who
wishes to get rid of her because he's growing rather old--fifty- five or
so--and wants to marry a certain beauty, the loveliest woman in all
Petersburg.' And then he told me that I could see Nastasia Philipovna at
the opera-house that evening, if I liked, and described which was her
box. Well, I'd like to see my father allowing any of us to go to the
theatre; he'd sooner have killed us, any day. However, I went for an
hour or so and saw Nastasia Philipovna, and I never slept a wink all
night after. Next morning my father happened to give me two
government loan bonds to sell, worth nearly five thousand roubles each.
'Sell them,' said he, 'and then take seven thousand five hundred roubles
to the office, give them to the cashier, and bring me back the rest of the
ten thousand, without looking in anywhere on the way; look sharp, I

shall be waiting for you.' Well, I sold the bonds, but I didn't take the
seven thousand roubles to the office; I went straight to the English shop
and chose a pair of earrings, with a diamond the size of a nut in each.
They cost four hundred roubles more than I had, so I gave my name,
and they trusted me. With the earrings I went at once to Zaleshoff's.
'Come on!' I said, 'come on to Nastasia Philipovna's,' and off we went
without more ado. I tell you I hadn't a notion of what was about me or
before me or below my feet all the way; I saw nothing whatever. We
went straight into her drawing-room, and then she came out to us.
"I didn't say right out who I was, but Zaleshoff said: 'From Parfen
Rogojin, in memory of his first meeting with you yesterday; be so kind
as to accept these!'
"She opened the parcel, looked at the earrings, and laughed.
"'Thank your friend Mr. Rogojin for his kind attention,' says she, and
bowed and went off. Why didn't I die there on the spot? The worst of it
all was, though, that the beast Zaleshoff got all the credit of it! I was
short and abominably dressed, and stood and stared in her face and
never said a word, because I was shy, like an ass! And there was he all
in the fashion, pomaded and dressed out, with a smart tie on, bowing
and scraping; and I bet anything she took him for me all the while!
"'Look here now,' I said, when we came out, 'none of your interference
here after this-do you understand?' He laughed: 'And how are you
going to settle up with your father?' says he. I thought I might as well
jump into the Neva at once without going home first; but it struck me
that I wouldn't, after all, and I went home feeling like one of the
damned."
"My goodness!" shivered the clerk. "And his father," he added, for the
prince's instruction, "and his father would have given a man a ticket to
the other world for ten roubles any day--not to speak of ten thousand!"
The prince observed Rogojin with great curiosity; he seemed paler than
ever at this moment.

"What do you know about it?" cried the latter. "Well, my father learned
the whole story at once, and Zaleshoff blabbed it all over the town
besides. So he took me upstairs and locked me up, and swore at me for
an hour. 'This is only a foretaste,' says he; 'wait a bit till night comes,
and I'll come back and talk to you again.'
"Well, what do you think? The old fellow went straight off to Nastasia
Philipovna, touched the floor with his forehead, and began blubbering
and beseeching her on his knees to give him back the diamonds. So
after awhile she brought the box and flew out at him. 'There,' she says,
'take your earrings, you wretched old miser; although they are ten times
dearer than their value to me now that I know what it must have cost
Parfen to get them! Give Parfen my compliments,' she says, 'and thank
him very much!' Well, I meanwhile had borrowed twenty-five roubles
from a friend, and off I went to Pskoff to my aunt's. The old woman
there lectured me so that I left the house and went on a drinking tour
round the public-houses of the place. I was in a high fever when I got to
Pskoff, and by nightfall I was lying delirious in the streets somewhere
or other!"
"Oho! we'll make Nastasia Philipovna