“Better to be of a mess than in a mess! I remember making a joke something like that at the mess in eighteen hundred and forty--forty--I forget. ‘Where is my youth, where is my golden youth?’ Who was it said that, Colia?”

“What is the good of repentance like that? It is the same exactly as mine yesterday, when I said, ‘I am base, I am base,’--words, and nothing more!”

“Yes, it is,” replied Rogojin with an unpleasant smile, as if he had expected his guest to ask the question, and then to make some disagreeable remark.
Everyone seemed to be speaking prophetically, hinting at some misfortune or sorrow to come; they had all looked at him as though they knew something which he did not know. Lebedeff had asked questions, Colia had hinted, and Vera had shed tears. What was it?
“I quite understand you. You mean that an innocent lie for the sake of a good joke is harmless, and does not offend the human heart. Some people lie, if you like to put it so, out of pure friendship, in order to amuse their fellows; but when a man makes use of extravagance in order to show his disrespect and to make clear how the intimacy bores him, it is time for a man of honour to break off the said intimacy, and to teach the offender his place.”
Lizabetha Prokofievna was about to rise, when she saw Hippolyte laughing, and turned upon him with irritation.
“Yes--I have business--” began the prince.
“Yes, very much. Is he one of your school-fellows?”
Gania stood before her, in his evening clothes, holding his white gloves and hat in his hand, speechless and motionless, with arms folded and eyes fixed on the fire.

“I didn’t mean that; at least, of course, I’m glad for your sake, too,” added the prince, correcting himself, “but--how did you find it?”

“Listen,” she began again; “I have long waited to tell you all this, ever since the time when you sent me that letter--even before that. Half of what I have to say you heard yesterday. I consider you the most honest and upright of men--more honest and upright than any other man; and if anybody says that your mind is--is sometimes affected, you know--it is unfair. I always say so and uphold it, because even if your surface mind be a little affected (of course you will not feel angry with me for talking so--I am speaking from a higher point of view) yet your real mind is far better than all theirs put together. Such a mind as they have never even _dreamed_ of; because really, there are _two_ minds--the kind that matters, and the kind that doesn’t matter. Isn’t it so?”

“Come, let us go in--it’s all right,” he whispered in the prince’s ear.
It was true enough that everybody was laughing, the prince among them.

“You call him a monster so often that it makes me suspicious.”

***** “Yes, he told me,” said the prince, feeling only half alive.
XIII.

“Excuse me, but I think you must have something else that you wished to speak about, Evgenie Pavlovitch?”

Seeing that the prince was considerably struck by the fact that he had twice seized this knife out of his hand, Rogojin caught it up with some irritation, put it inside the book, and threw the latter across to another table.
“What, it’s still there then, is it? Ever since the day before yesterday?”
“Very well! Tell me the truth,” he said, dejectedly.
The prince looked inquiringly at the other.

“Would you believe,” said the mistress of the house, suddenly addressing the prince, “would you believe that that man has not even spared my orphan children? He has stolen everything I possessed, sold everything, pawned everything; he has left me nothing--nothing! What am I to do with your IOU’s, you cunning, unscrupulous rogue? Answer, devourer! answer, heart of stone! How shall I feed my orphans? with what shall I nourish them? And now he has come, he is drunk! He can scarcely stand. How, oh how, have I offended the Almighty, that He should bring this curse upon me! Answer, you worthless villain, answer!”

He could bear it no longer, and with a look of entreaty, mingled with reproach, he addressed Aglaya, pointing to Nastasia the while:
“I know nothing about it.”

“Oh! _do_ go on, Lebedeff! Don’t drag it out so.”

“Come, speak out! Don’t lie, for once in your life--speak out!” continued Hippolyte, quivering with agitation.
“Don’t suppose, prince,” she began, bracing herself up for the effort, “don’t suppose that I have brought you here to ask questions. After last night, I assure you, I am not so exceedingly anxious to see you at all; I could have postponed the pleasure for a long while.” She paused.
“Oh dear no! Why--”

Meanwhile the daylight grew full and strong; and at last the prince lay down, as though overcome by despair, and laid his face against the white, motionless face of Rogojin. His tears flowed on to Rogojin’s cheek, though he was perhaps not aware of them himself.

“Whose fault is it that they are all miserable, that they don’t know how to live, though they have fifty or sixty years of life before them? Why did that fool allow himself to die of hunger with sixty years of unlived life before him?