But the captain had already recovered himself and was no longer listening to him. At that moment Rogozhin emerged from the crowd, quickly took Nastasya Filippovna by the arm, and led her away with him. For his part, Rogozhin seemed terribly shaken, was pale and trembling. As he led Nastasya Filippovna away, he still had time to laugh maliciously in the officer's face and say, with the look of a triumphant shopkeeper:
"Nyah! Take that! Your mug's all bloody! Nyah!"
Having recovered and realizing perfectly well whom he was dealing with, the officer politely (though covering his face with a handkerchief) addressed the prince, who had gotten up from the chair:
"Prince Myshkin, whose acquaintance I had the pleasure of making?"
"She's crazy! Mad! I assure you!" the prince replied in a trembling voice, reaching his trembling hands out to him for some reason.
"I, of course, cannot boast of being so well informed; but I do need to know your name."
He bowed his head and walked off. The police arrived exactly five seconds after the last of the participants had gone. However, the scandal had lasted no more than two minutes. Some of the public got up from their chairs and left, others merely changed places; a third group was very glad of the scandal; a fourth began intensely talking and questioning. In short, the matter ended as usual. The orchestra started playing again. The prince followed after the Epanchins. If it had occurred to him or he had managed to look to the left, as he sat on the chair after being shoved away, he would have seen Aglaya, who had stopped some twenty paces from him to watch the scandalous scene and did not heed the calls
of her mother and sisters, who had already moved further off. Prince Shch., running up to her, finally persuaded her to leave quickly. Lizaveta Prokofyevna remembered that Aglaya rejoined them in such agitation that she could hardly have heard their calls. But exactly two minutes later, just as they entered the park, Aglaya said in her usual indifferent and capricious voice: "I wanted to see how the comedy would end."
III
The incident at the vauxhall struck both mother and daughters almost with terror. Alarmed and agitated, Lizaveta Prokofyevna literally all but ran with her daughters the whole way home from the vauxhall. In her view and understanding, all too much had occurred and been revealed in this incident, so that in her head, despite all the disorder and fear, resolute thoughts were already germinating. But everyone else also understood that something special had happened and that, perhaps fortunately, some extraordinary mystery was beginning to be revealed. Despite the earlier assurances of Prince Shch., Evgeny Pavlovich had now been "brought into the open," exposed, uncovered, and "formally revealed as having connections with that creature." So thought Lizaveta Prokofyevna and even her two elder daughters. The profit of this conclusion was that still more riddles accumulated. The girls, though inwardly somewhat indignant at their mother's exaggerated alarm and so obvious flight, did not dare to trouble her with questions in the first moments of the turmoil. Besides that, for some reason it seemed to them that their little sister, Aglaya Ivanovna, might know more about this affair than the three of them, including the mother. Prince Shch. was also dark as night and also very pensive. Lizaveta Prokofyevna did not say a word to him all the way, but he seemed not to notice it. Adelaida tried to ask him who this uncle was who had just been spoken of and what had happened in Petersburg. But he mumbled in reply to her, with a very sour face, something very vague about some inquiries and that it was all, of course, an absurdity. "There's no doubt of that!" Adelaida replied and did not ask him anything more. Aglaya was somehow extraordinarily calm and only observed, on the way, that they were running much too quickly. Once she turned and saw the prince, who was trying to catch up with them. Noticing his
efforts, she smiled mockingly and did not turn to look at him anymore.
Finally, almost at their dacha, they met Ivan Fyodorovich walking towards them; he had just come from Petersburg. At once, with the first word, he inquired about Evgeny Pavlovich. But his spouse walked past him menacingly, without answering and without even glancing at him. By the looks of his daughters and Prince Shch., he immediately guessed that there was a storm in the house. But even without that, his own face reflected some extraordinary anxiety. He at once took Prince Shch. by the arm, stopped him at the entrance, and exchanged a few words with him almost in a whisper. By the alarmed look of the two men as they went up onto the terrace afterwards and went to Lizaveta Prokofyevna's side, one might have thought they had both heard some extraordinary news. Gradually they all gathered in Lizaveta Prokofyevna's drawing room upstairs, and only the prince was left on the terrace. He was sitting in the corner as if waiting for something, though he did not know why himself; it did not even occur to him to leave, seeing the turmoil in the house; it seemed he had forgotten the whole universe and was prepared to sit it out for two years in a row, wherever he might be sitting. From time to time echoes of anxious conversation came to his ears. He himself would have been unable to say how long he had been sitting there. It was getting late and quite dark. Suddenly Aglaya came out on the terrace; she looked calm, though somewhat pale. Seeing the prince, whom she "obviously wasn't expecting" to meet there, sitting on a chair in the corner, Aglaya smiled as if in perplexity.
"What are you doing here?" she went over to him.
The prince murmured something in embarrassment and jumped up from his chair; but Aglaya at once sat down next to him, and he sat down again. She looked him over, suddenly but attentively, then looked out the window, as if without any thought, then again at him. "Maybe she wants to laugh," it occurred to the prince, "but no, she'd just laugh then."
"Maybe you'd like some tea. I'll tell them," she said after some silence.
"N-no ... I don't know . . ."
"Well, how can you not know that! Ah, yes, listen: if someone challenged you to a duel, what would you do? I meant to ask you earlier."
"But . . . who ... no one is going to challenge me to a duel."
"Well, but if someone did? Would you be very afraid?"
"I think I'd be very . . . afraid."
"Seriously? So you're a coward?"
"N-no, maybe not. A coward is someone who is afraid and runs away; but someone who is afraid but doesn't run away is not a coward yet," the prince smiled after pondering a little.
"And you wouldn't run away?"
"Maybe I wouldn't," he finally laughed at Aglaya's questions.
"I'm a woman, but I wouldn't run away for anything," she observed, almost touchily. "And, anyhow, you're clowning and making fun of me in your usual way, to make yourself more interesting. Tell me: don't they usually shoot from twelve paces? Sometimes even from ten? Doesn't that mean you're sure to be killed or wounded?"
"People must rarely be hit at duels."
"Rarely? Pushkin was killed." 5
"That may have been accidental."
"Not accidental at all. They fought to kill and he was killed."
"The bullet struck so low that d'Anthès must have been aiming somewhere higher, at his chest or head; no one aims to hit a man where he did, so the bullet most likely hit Pushkin accidentally, from a bad shot. Competent people have told me so."
"But I was told by a soldier I once talked with that, according to regulations, when they open ranks, they're ordered to aim on purpose at the half-man; that's how they say it: 'at the half-man.' That means not at the chest, not at the head, but they're ordered to aim on purpose at the half-man. Later I asked an officer, and he said that was exactly right."