"And how can she be stopped?
It's absolutely impossible to stop her if she's sure of her goal!"
That the prince already knew from experience.
"A madwoman.
A madwoman."
But there were far, far too many other insoluble circumstances that had come together that morning, all at the same time, and all demanding immediate resolution, so that the prince felt very sad.
He was slightly distracted by Vera Lebedev, who came with Lyubochka and, laughing, spent a long time telling him something.
She was followed by her sister, the one who kept opening her mouth wide, then by the high-school boy, Lebedev's son, who assured him that the "star Wormwood" in the Apocalypse, which fell to earth on the fountains of water,44 was, in his father's interpretation, the railway network spread across Europe.
The prince did not believe that Lebedev interpreted it that way, and they decided to check it with him at the first opportunity.
From Vera Lebedev the prince learned that Keller had migrated over to them the day before and, by all tokens, would not be leaving for a long time, because he had found the company of and made friends with General Ivolgin; however, he declared that he was staying with them solely in order to complete his education.
The prince was beginning to like Lebedev's children more and more every day.
Kolya was away the whole day: he left for Petersburg very early. (Lebedev also left at daybreak on some little business of his own.) But the prince was waiting impatiently for a visit from Gavrila Ardalionovich, who was bound to call on him that same day.
He arrived past six in the evening, just after dinner.
With the first glance at him, it occurred to the prince that this gentleman at least must unmistakably know all the innermost secrets—and how could he not, having such helpers as Varvara Ardalionovna and her husband?
But the prince's relations with Ganya were somehow special.
The prince, for instance, had entrusted him with the handling of the Burdovsky affair and had asked him especially to do it; but, despite this trust and some things that had gone before, there always remained between them certain points on which it was as if they had mutually decided to say nothing.
It sometimes seemed to the prince that Ganya, for his part, might be wishing for the fullest and friendliest sincerity; now, for instance, as soon as he came in, it immediately seemed to the prince that Ganya was convinced in the highest degree that the time had come to break the ice between them on all points. (Gavrila Ardalionovich was in a hurry, however; his sister was waiting for him at Lebedev's; the two were hastening about some business.) But if Ganya was indeed expecting a whole series of impatient questions, inadvertent communications, friendly outpourings, then, of course, he was very much mistaken.
For all the twenty minutes of his visit, the prince was even very pensive, almost absentminded.
The expected questions or, better to say, the one main question that Ganya expected, could not be asked.
Then Ganya, too, decided to speak with great restraint.
He spent all twenty minutes talking without pause, laughing, indulging in the most light, charming, and rapid babble, but never touching on the main thing.
Ganya told him, incidentally, that Nastasya Filippovna had been there in Pavlovsk for only four days and was already attracting general attention.
She was living somewhere, in some Matrosskaya Street, in a gawky little house, with Darya Alexeevna, but her carriage was just about the best in Pavlovsk.
Around her a whole crowd of old and young suitors had already gathered; her carriage was sometimes accompanied by men on horseback.
Nastasya Filippovna, as before, was very discriminating, admitting only choice people to her company.
But all the same a whole troop had formed around her, to stand for her in case of need.
One previously engaged man from among the summer people had already quarreled with his fiancee over her; one little old general had almost cursed his son.
She often took with her on her rides a lovely girl, just turned sixteen, a distant relation of Darya Alexeevna's; the girl was a good singer—so that in the evenings their little house attracted attention.
Nastasya Filippovna, however, behaved extremely properly, dressed not magnificently but with extraordinary taste, and all the ladies envied "her taste, her beauty, and her carriage."
"Yesterday's eccentric incident," Ganya allowed, "was, of course, premeditated and, of course, should not count.
To find any sort of fault with her, one would have to hunt for it on purpose or else use slander, which, however, would not be slow in coming," Ganya concluded, expecting that here the prince would not fail to ask: "Why did he call yesterday's incident a premeditated incident?
And why would it not be slow in coming?"
But the prince did not ask.
About Evgeny Pavlovich, Ganya again expatiated on his own, without being specially asked, which was very strange, because he inserted him into the conversation with no real pretext.
In Gavrila Ardalionovich's view, Evgeny Pavlovich had not known Nastasya Filippovna, and now also knew her only a little, and that because he had been introduced to her some four days ago during a promenade, and it was unlikely that he had been to her house even once along with the others.
As for the promissory notes, that was also possible (Ganya even knew it for certain); Evgeny Pavlovich's fortune was big, of course, but "certain affairs to do with the estate were indeed in a certain disorder."
On this curious matter Ganya suddenly broke off.
About Nastasya Filippovna's escapade yesterday he did not say a single word, beyond what he had said earlier in passing.
Varvara Ardalionovna finally came to fetch Ganya, stayed for a moment, announced (also unasked) that Evgeny Pavlovich would be in Petersburg today and maybe tomorrow, that her husband (Ivan Petrovich Ptitsyn) was also in Petersburg, and almost on Evgeny Pavlovich's business as well, because something had actually happened there.
As she was leaving, she added that Lizaveta Prokofyevna was in an infernal mood today, but the strangest thing was that Aglaya had quarreled with the whole family, not only with her father and mother but even with both sisters, and "that it was not nice at all."
Having imparted as if in passing this last bit of news (extremely meaningful for the prince), the brother and sister left.
Ganechka also did not mention a word about the affair of "Pavlishchev's son," perhaps out of false modesty, perhaps "sparing the prince's feelings," but all the same the prince thanked him again for having diligently concluded the affair.
The prince was very glad to be left alone at last; he went down from the terrace, crossed the road, and entered the park; he wanted to think over and decide about a certain step.
Yet this "step" was not one of those that can be thought over, but one of those that precisely cannot be thought over, but simply resolved upon: he suddenly wanted terribly to leave all this here and go back where he came from, to some far-off, forsaken place, to go at once and even without saying good-bye to anyone.
He had the feeling that if he remained here just a few more days, he would certainly be drawn into this world irretrievably, and this world would henceforth be his lot.
But he did not even reason for ten minutes and decided at once that to flee was "impossible," that it would be almost pusillanimous, that such tasks stood before him that he now did not even have any right not to resolve them, or at least not to give all his strength to their resolution.
In such thoughts he returned home after barely a quarter of an hour's walk.
He was utterly unhappy at that moment.
Lebedev was still not at home, so that towards nightfall Keller managed to barge in on the prince, not drunk, but full of outpourings and confessions.
He declared straight out that he had come to tell the prince his whole life's story and that he had stayed in Pavlovsk just for that.