Noise broke out; Lebedev was excited and already overstepping the limits; Ferdyshchenko was preparing to go to the police; Ganya furiously insisted that no one was going to shoot himself.
Evgeny Pavlovich was silent.
"Prince, have you ever leaped from a belfry?" Ippolit suddenly whispered to him.
"N-no . . ." the prince answered naively.
"Do you really think I didn't foresee all this hatred?" Ippolit whispered again, flashing his eyes, and looking at the prince as if he indeed expected an answer from him.
"Enough!" he cried suddenly to the whole public. "I'm to blame . . . most of all!
Lebedev, here's the key" (he took out his wallet and from it a steel ring with three or four little keys on it), "this one, the next to last . . . Kolya will show you . . . Kolya!
Where's Kolya?" he cried, looking at Kolya and not seeing him, "yes . . . he'll show you; he and I packed my bag yesterday.
Take him, Kolya; in the prince's study, under the table . . . my bag . . . with this key, at the bottom, in the little box . . . my pistol and the powder horn.
He packed it himself yesterday, Mr. Lebedev, he'll show you; so long as you give me back the pistol early tomorrow, when I go to Petersburg.
Do you hear?
I'm doing it for the prince, not for you."
"Well, that's better!" Lebedev snatched the key and, smiling venomously, ran to the other room.
Kolya stopped, was about to say something, but Lebedev pulled him after him.
Ippolit was looking at the laughing guests.
The prince noticed that his teeth were chattering as if in a most violent chill.
"What scoundrels they all are!" Ippolit again whispered frenziedly to the prince.
When he spoke to the prince, he kept leaning towards him and whispering.
"Let them be; you're very weak ..."
"One moment, one moment . . . I'll go in a moment."
He suddenly embraced the prince.
"Maybe you find me crazy?" He looked at him, laughing strangely.
"No, but you ..."
"One moment, one moment, be quiet; don't say anything; stand there ... I want to look in your eyes . . . Stand like that, let me look.
Let me say good-bye to Man."
He stood and looked at the prince motionlessly and silently for about ten seconds, very pale, his temples moist with sweat, and somehow clutching at the prince strangely with his hand, as if afraid to let him go.
"Ippolit, Ippolit, what's the matter?" cried the prince.
"One moment . . . enough . . . I'll lie down.
I'll drink one gulp , to the sun's health ... I want to, I want to, let me be!"
He quickly snatched a glass from the table, tore from the spot, and an instant later was on the steps of the terrace.
The prince was about to run after him, but it so happened that, as if on purpose, at that same moment Evgeny Pavlovich held out his hand to say good-bye.
A second passed, and suddenly a general cry arose on the terrace.
Then came a moment of extreme disarray.
Here is what happened:
Having gone right to the steps of the terrace, Ippolit stopped, holding the glass in his left hand, his right hand thrust into the right side pocket of his coat.
Keller insisted later that Ippolit had kept that hand in his right pocket before as well, while he was talking with the prince and clutching at his shoulder and collar with his left hand, and this right hand in the pocket, Keller insisted, had supposedly aroused a first suspicion in him.
Be that as it may, a certain uneasiness made him also run after Ippolit.
But he, too, was late.
He saw only how something suddenly flashed in Ippolit's right hand, and in that same second the small pocket pistol was pressed to his temple.
Keller rushed to seize his hand, but in that same second Ippolit pulled the trigger.
The sharp, dry click of the trigger rang out, but no shot followed.
As Keller put his arms around Ippolit, the latter collapsed as if unconscious, perhaps indeed imagining that he was killed.
The pistol was already in Keller's hand.
Ippolit was picked up, a chair was brought, he was seated, and everyone crowded around, everyone shouted, everyone asked questions.
Everyone had heard the click of the trigger and now saw the man alive, not even scratched.
Ippolit himself sat, not understanding what was happening, and looked at everyone around him with senseless eyes.
Lebedev and Kolya came running at that moment.
"A misfire?" some asked.
"Maybe it's not loaded?" others tried to guess.
"It is loaded!" Keller announced, examining the pistol, "but. . ."