Page 158 - the-idiot

‘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 Phil-
ipovna, 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 con-
trary, it seemed to increase. She immediately overwhelmed
the general once more with questions, and within five min-
utes 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 Ivano-
vitch 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 cal-
umnies and bullets—‘

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