Page 301 - the-idiot

question.
‘Soon?’
‘You know yourself it does not depend on me.’
‘Parfen, I am not your enemy, and I do not intend to op-
pose your intentions in any way. I repeat this to you now
just as I said it to you once before on a very similar occasion.
When you were arranging for your projected marriage in
Moscow, I did not interfere with you—you know I did not.
That first time she fled to me from you, from the very altar
almost, and begged me to ‘save her from you.’ Afterwards
she ran away from me again, and you found her and ar-
ranged your marriage with her once more; and now, I hear,
she has run away from you and come to Petersburg. Is it
true? Lebedeff wrote me to this effect, and that’s why I came
here. That you had once more arranged matters with Nas-
tasia Philipovna I only learned last night in the train from a
friend of yours, Zaleshoff—if you wish to know.
‘I confess I came here with an object. I wished to per-
suade Nastasia to go abroad for her health; she requires it.
Both mind and body need a change badly. I did not intend
to take her abroad myself. I was going to arrange for her to
go without me. Now I tell you honestly, Parfen, if it is true
that all is made up between you, I will not so much as set
eyes upon her, and I will never even come to see you again.
‘You know quite well that I am telling the truth, because I
have always been frank with you. I have never concealed my
own opinion from you. I have always told you that I con-
sider a marriage between you and her would be ruin to her.
You would also be ruined, and perhaps even more hopeless-

00 The Idiot