"Let's all go to our gathering room," she said, "and have coffee served there.
We have this common room here," she said to the prince, leading him out. "It's simply my small drawing room, where we gather when we're by ourselves, and each of us does her own thing: Alexandra, this one, my eldest daughter, plays the piano, or reads, or sews; Adelaida paints landscapes and portraits (and never can finish anything); and Aglaya sits and does nothing.
I'm also hopeless at handwork: nothing comes out right.
Well, here we are; sit down there, Prince, by the fireplace, and tell us something.
I want to know how you tell a story.
I want to make completely sure, so that when I see old Princess Belokonsky, I can tell her all about you.
I want them all to become interested in you, too.
Well, speak then."
"But, maman, it's very strange to tell anything that way," observed Adelaida, who meanwhile had straightened her easel, taken her brushes and palette, and started working on a landscape begun long ago, copied from a print.
Alexandra and Aglaya sat down together on a small sofa, folded their arms, and prepared to listen to the conversation.
The prince noticed that special attention was turned on him from all sides.
"I wouldn't tell anything, if I were ordered to like that," observed Aglaya.
"Why?
What's so strange about it?
Why shouldn't he tell a story?
He has a tongue.
I want to see if he knows how to speak.
Well, about anything.
Tell me how you liked Switzerland, your first impressions.
You'll see, he's going to begin now, and begin beautifully."
"The impression was a strong one . . ." the prince began.
"There," the impatient Lizaveta Prokofyevna picked up, turning to her daughters, "he's begun."
"Give him a chance to speak at least, maman" Alexandra stopped her.
"This prince may be a great rogue and not an idiot at all," she whispered to Aglaya.
"He surely is, I saw it long ago," answered Aglaya.
"And it's mean of him to play a role.
What does he want to gain by it?"
"The first impression was a very strong one," the prince repeated.
"When they brought me from Russia, through various German towns, I only looked on silently and, I remember, I didn't even ask about anything.
That was after a series of strong and painful fits of my illness, and whenever my illness worsened and I had several fits in a row, I always lapsed into a total stupor, lost my memory completely, and though my mind worked, the logical flow of thought was as if broken.
I couldn't put more than two or three ideas together coherently.
So it seems to me.
But when the fits subsided, I became healthy and strong again, as I am now.
I remember a feeling of unbearable sadness; I even wanted to weep; I was surprised and anxious all the time: it affected me terribly that it was all foreign—that much I understood.
The foreign was killing me.
I was completely awakened from that darkness, I remember, in the evening, in Basel, as we drove into Switzerland, and what roused me was the braying of an ass in the town market.
The ass struck me terribly and for some reason I took an extraordinary liking to it, and at the same time it was as if everything cleared up in my head."
"An ass?
That's strange," observed Mrs. Epanchin.
"And yet there's nothing strange about it, some one of us may yet fall in love with an ass," she observed, looking wrathfully at the laughing girls.
"It has happened in mythology.21 Go on, Prince."
"Since then I've had a terrible fondness for asses.
It's even some sort of sympathy in me.
I began inquiring about them, because I'd never seen them before, and I became convinced at once that they're most useful animals, hardworking, strong, patient, cheap, enduring; and because of that ass I suddenly took a liking to the whole of Switzerland, so that my former sadness went away entirely."
"That's all very strange, but we can skip the ass; let's go on to some other subject.
Why are you laughing, Aglaya?
And you, Adelaida?
The prince spoke beautifully about the ass.
He saw it himself, and what have you ever seen?
You haven't been abroad."