Page 752 - the-idiot

‘No, I will not drop him! Don’t be afraid, Aglaya Ivanovna!’
After which he went on his way. Aglaya burst out laughing
and ran up to her room, highly delighted. Her good spirits
lasted the whole day.
All this filled poor Lizabetha’s mind with chaotic confu-
sion. What on earth did it all mean? The most disturbing
feature was the hedgehog. What was the symbolic significa-
tion of a hedgehog? What did they understand by it? What
underlay it? Was it a cryptic message?
Poor General Epanchin ‘put his foot in it’ by answering
the above questions in his own way. He said there was no
cryptic message at all. As for the hedgehog, it was just a
hedgehog, which meant nothing—unless, indeed, it was a
pledge of friendship,—the sign of forgetting of offences and
so on. At all events, it was a joke, and, of course, a most par-
donable and innocent one.
We may as well remark that the general had guessed per-
fectly accurately.
The prince, returning home from the interview with
Aglaya, had sat gloomy and depressed for half an hour. He
was almost in despair when Colia arrived with the hedge-
hog.
Then the sky cleared in a moment. The prince seemed to
arise from the dead; he asked Colia all about it, made him
repeat the story over and over again, and laughed and shook
hands with the boys in his delight.
It seemed clear to the prince that Aglaya forgave him,
and that he might go there again this very evening; and in
his eyes that was not only the main thing, but everything

1