Page 256 - the-idiot

The Rogojin gang followed their leader and Nastasia
Philipovna to the entrance-hall, laughing and shouting and
whistling.
In the hall the servants were waiting, and handed her her
fur cloak. Martha, the cook, ran in from the kitchen. Nasta-
sia kissed them all round.
‘Are you really throwing us all over, little mother? Where,
where are you going to? And on your birthday, too!’ cried
the four girls, crying over her and kissing her hands.
‘I am going out into the world, Katia; perhaps I shall be
a laundress. I don’t know. No more of Afanasy Ivanovitch,
anyhow. Give him my respects. Don’t think badly of me,
girls.’
The prince hurried down to the front gate where the
party were settling into the troikas, all the bells tinkling a
merry accompaniment the while. The general caught him
up on the stairs:
‘Prince, prince!’ he cried, seizing hold of his arm, ‘rec-
ollect yourself! Drop her, prince! You see what sort of a
woman she is. I am speaking to you like a father.’
The prince glanced at him, but said nothing. He shook
himself free, and rushed on downstairs.
The general was just in time to see the prince take the
first sledge he could get, and, giving the order to Ekater-
inhof, start off in pursuit of the troikas. Then the general’s
fine grey horse dragged that worthy home, with some new
thoughts, and some new hopes and calculations developing
in his brain, and with the pearls in his pocket, for he had
not forgotten to bring them along with him, being a man