Page:Dostoevsky - The Idiot, Collected Edition, 1916.djvu/33

be no talk of relationship between us, though it would of course be very flattering for me, there's nothing but..."

"Nothing but to get up and go?" Myshkin got up, laughing with positive mirthfulness, in spite of all the apparent difficulty of his position. "And would you believe it, general, although I know nothing of practical life, nor of the customs here, yet I felt sure that this was how it was bound to be. Perhaps it is better so. And you didn't answer my letter, then.... Well, good-bye, and forgive me for troubling you."

Myshkin's face was so cordial at that moment, and his smile so free from the slightest shade of anything like concealed ill-will, that the general was suddenly arrested and seemed suddenly to look at his visitor from a different point of view; the change of attitude took place all in a minute.

"But do you know, prince," he said in a quite different voice, "I don't know you, after all, and Lizaveta Prokofyevna will perhaps like to have a look at one who bears her name.... Stay a little, if you will, and if you have time."

"Oh, I've plenty of time, my time is entirely my own." And Myshkin at once laid his soft round hat on the table. "I confess I was expecting that Lizaveta Prokofyevna might remember that I had written to her. Your servant, while I was waiting just now, suspected I'd come to beg for assistance. I noticed that, and no doubt you've given strict orders on the subject. But I've really not come for that, I've really only come to get to know people. But I am only afraid I am in your way, and that worries me."

"Well, prince," said the general, with a good-humoured smile, "if you really are the sort of person you seem to be, it will be pleasant to make your acquaintance, only I am a busy man, you see, and I'll sit down again directly to look through and sign some things, and then I'm going to his grace's and then to the office, so though I am glad to see people... nice ones, that is, but... I am so sure, however, that you are a man of very good breeding, that... And how old are you prince?"

"Twenty-six."

"Oh, I supposed you were much younger."

"Yes, I am told I look younger than my age. I shall soon learn not to be in your way, for I very much dislike being in the way. And I fancy, besides, that we cannot perhaps have many points in common. But yet I don't believe in that