Your daughter Vera you may send right now, though, I like her very much."
"Why don't you tell him about those men?" Vera asked her father impatiently. "They'll come in by themselves if you don't: they're already making noise.
Lev Nikolaevich," she turned to the prince, who had already picked up his hat, "some people came to see you quite a while ago now, four men, they're waiting in our part and they're angry, but papa won't let them see you."
"What sort of visitors?" asked the prince.
"On business, they say, only they're the kind that, if you don't let them in now, they'll stop you on your way.
Better to let them in now, Lev Nikolaevich, and get them off your neck.
Gavrila Ardalionovich and Ptitsyn are trying to talk sense into them, but they won't listen."
"Pavlishchev's son!
Pavlishchev's son!
Not worth it, not worth it!" Lebedev waved his arms. "It's not worth listening to them, sir; and it's not proper for you, illustrious Prince, to trouble yourself for them.
That's right, sir.
They're not worth it . . ."
"Pavlishchev's son!
My God!" cried the prince in extreme embarrassment. "I know . . . but I ... I entrusted that affair to Gavrila Ardalionovich.
Gavrila Ardalionovich just told me . . ."
But Gavrila Ardalionovich had already come out to the terrace; Ptitsyn followed him.
In the nearest room noise could be heard, and the loud voice of General Ivolgin, as if he were trying to outshout several other voices.
Kolya ran at once to where the noise was.
"That's very interesting," Evgeny Pavlovich observed aloud.
"So he knows about it!" thought the prince.
"What Pavlishchev's son?
And . . . how can there be any Pavlishchev's son?" General Ivan Fyodorovich asked in perplexity, looking around curiously at all the faces and noticing with astonishment that this new story was unknown to him alone.
Indeed, the excitement and expectation were universal.
The prince was deeply astonished that an affair so completely personal to himself could manage to interest everyone there so strongly.
"It would be very good if you ended this affair at once and yourself," said Aglaya, going up to the prince with some sort of special seriousness, "and let us all be your witnesses.
They want to besmirch you, Prince, you must triumphantly vindicate yourself, and I'm terribly glad for you beforehand."
"I also want this vile claim to be ended finally," Mrs. Epanchin cried. "Give it to them good, Prince, don't spare them!
I've had my ears stuffed with this affair, and there's a lot of bad blood in me on account of you.
Besides, it will be curious to have a look.
Call them out, and we'll sit here.
Aglaya's idea was a good one.
Have you heard anything about this, Prince?" she turned to Prince Shch.
"Of course I have, in your own house.
But I'd especially like to have a look at these young men," Prince Shch. replied.
"These are those nihilists,33 aren't they?"
"No, ma'am, they're not really nihilists," Lebedev, who was also all but trembling with excitement, stepped forward. "They're different, ma'am, they're special, my nephew says they've gone further than the nihilists.
You mustn't think to embarrass them with your witnessing, Your Excellency; they won't be embarrassed.
Nihilists are still sometimes knowledgeable people, even learned ones, but these have gone further, ma'am, because first of all they're practical.
This is essentially a sort of consequence of nihilism, though not in a direct way, but by hearsay and indirectly, and they don't announce themselves in some sort of little newspaper article, but directly in practice, ma'am; it's no longer a matter, for instance, of the meaninglessness of some Pushkin or other, or, for instance, the necessity of dividing Russia up into parts; no, ma'am, it's now considered a man's right, if he wants something very much, not to stop at any obstacle, even if he has to do in eight persons to that end.
But all the same, Prince, I wouldn't advise you . . ."
But the prince was already going to open the door for his visitors.
"You slander them, Lebedev," he said, smiling. "Your nephew has upset you very much.
Don't believe him, Lizaveta Prokofyevna.
I assure you that the Gorskys and Danilovs34 are merely accidents, and these men are merely . . . mistaken . . . Only I wouldn't like it to be here, in front of everybody.
Excuse me, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, they'll come in, I'll show them to you and then take them away.
Come in, gentlemen!"
He was sooner troubled by another thought that tormented him. He wondered whether this whole affair now had not been arranged earlier, precisely for that time and hour, precisely with these witnesses, perhaps in anticipation of his disgrace and not his triumph.
But he was much too saddened by his "monstrous and wicked suspiciousness."
He would die, he thought, if anyone should learn that he had such thoughts in his mind, and at the moment when his new visitors came in, he was sincerely prepared to consider himself, among all those around him, the lowest of the low in the moral sense.
Five people came in, four of them new visitors and the fifth General Ivolgin, coming behind them, all flushed, in agitation and a most violent fit of eloquence.