Page 796 - the-idiot

The general, who had been talking to his chief up to this
moment, had observed the prince’s solitude and silence,
and was anxious to draw him into the conversation, and so
introduce him again to the notice of some of the important
personages.
‘Lef Nicolaievitch was a ward of Nicolai Andreevitch
Pavlicheff, after the death of his own parents,’ he remarked,
meeting Ivan Petrovitch’s eye.
‘Very happy to meet him, I’m sure,’ remarked the latter. ‘I
remember Lef Nicolaievitch well. When General Epanchin
introduced us just now, I recognized you at once, prince.
You are very little changed, though I saw you last as a child
of some ten or eleven years old. There was something in
your features, I suppose, that—‘
‘You saw me as a child!’ exclaimed the prince, with sur-
prise.
‘Oh! yes, long ago,’ continued Ivan Petrovitch, ‘while you
were living with my cousin at Zlatoverhoff. You don’t re-
member me? No, I dare say you don’t; you had some malady
at the time, I remember. It was so serious that I was sur-
prised—‘
‘No; I remember nothing!’ said the prince. A few more
words of explanation followed, words which were spoken
without the smallest excitement by his companion, but
which evoked the greatest agitation in the prince; and it was
discovered that two old ladies to whose care the prince had
been left by Pavlicheff, and who lived at Zlatoverhoff, were
also relations of Ivan Petrovitch.
The latter had no idea and could give no information as