Vera Lebedev, however, limited herself only to solitary tears and to staying home more and looking in on the prince less often than before. Kolya was burying his father at that time; the old man died of a second stroke eight days after the first.
The prince shared greatly in the family's grief and in the first days spent several hours a day at Nina Alexandrovna's; he attended the burial and the church service.
Many noticed that the public in the church met the prince and saw him off with involuntary whispers; the same thing happened in the streets and in the garden: when he walked or drove by, people talked, spoke his name, pointed at him, mentioned Nastasya Filippovna's name.
She was looked for at the burial, but she was not at the burial.
Neither was the captain's widow, whom Lebedev had managed to stop and cancel in time.
The burial service made a strong and painful impression on the prince; he whispered to Lebedev, still in church, in reply to some question, that it was the first time he had attended an Orthodox burial service and only from childhood did he remember one other burial in some village church.
"Yes, sir, it's as if it's not the same man lying there in the coffin, sir, as the one we set up so recently to preside over us, remember, sir?" Lebedev whispered to the prince. "Who are you looking for, sir?"
"Never mind, I just imagined . . ."
"Not Rogozhin?"
"Is he here?"
"In the church, sir."
"That's why it seemed I saw his eyes," the prince murmured in embarrassment. "And what . . . why is he here?
Was he invited?"
"Never thought of it, sir.
They don't know him at all, sir.
There are all sorts of people here, the public, sir.
Why are you so amazed?
I often meet him now; this past week I met him some four times here in Pavlovsk."
"I haven't seen him once . . . since that time," the prince murmured.
Because Nastasya Filippovna had also never once told him that she had met him "since that time," the prince now concluded that Rogozhin was deliberately keeping out of sight for some reason.
That whole day he was in great pensiveness; but Nastasya Filippovna was extraordinarily merry all day and all evening.
Kolya, who had made peace with the prince before his father's death, suggested (since it was an essential and urgent matter) inviting Keller and Burdovsky to be his groomsmen.
He guaranteed that Keller would behave properly and might even "be of use," and for Burdovsky it went without saying, he was a quiet and modest man.
Nina Alexandrovna and Lebedev pointed out to the prince that if the wedding was already decided on, why have it in Pavlovsk of all places, and during the fashionable summer season, why so publicly?
Would it not be better in Petersburg and even at home?
It was only too clear to the prince what all these fears were driving at; but he replied briefly and simply that such was the absolute wish of Nastasya Filippovna.
The next day Keller also came to see the prince, having been informed that he was a groomsman.
Before coming in, he stopped in the doorway and, as soon as he saw the prince, held up his right hand with the index finger extended and cried out by way of an oath:
"I don't drink!"
Then he went up to the prince, firmly pressed and shook both his hands, and declared that, of course, at first, when he heard, he was against it, which he announced over the billiard table, and for no other reason than that he had intentions for the prince and was waiting every day, with the impatience of a friend, to see him married to none other than the Princess de Rohan;47 but now he could see for himself that the prince was thinking at least ten times more nobly than all of them "taken together!"
For he wanted not brilliance, not riches, and not even honor, but only—truth!
The sympathies of exalted persons were all too well known, and the prince was too exalted by his education not to be an exalted person, generally speaking!
"But scum and all sorts of riffraff judge differently; in town, in the houses, at gatherings, in dachas, at concerts, in bars, over billiards, there was no other talk, no other cry than about the impending event.
I hear they even want to organize a charivari under your windows, and that, so to speak, on the first night!
If you need the pistol of an honest man, Prince, I'm ready to exchange a half-dozen noble shots, even before you get up the next morning from your honey bed."
He also advised having a fire hose ready in the yard, in anticipation of a big influx of thirsty people at the church door; but Lebedev objected: "They'll smash the house to splinters," he said, "if there's a fire hose."
"This Lebedev is intriguing against you, Prince, by God!
They want to put you into government custody, if you can imagine that, with everything, with your free will and your money, that is, with the two things that distinguish each of us from the quadrupeds!
I've heard it, indeed I have!
It's the real, whole truth!"
The prince remembered that he seemed to have heard something of the kind himself, but, naturally, he had paid no attention to it.
This time, too, he only laughed and forgot it again at once, Lebedev actually was bustling about for a time; the man's calculations were always conceived as if by inspiration and, from excessive zeal, grew more complex, branched out, and moved away from their starting point in all directions; that was why he had succeeded so little in life.
When afterwards, almost on the day of the wedding, he came to the prince with his repentance (he had an unfailing habit of always coming with his repentance to those he had intrigued against, especially if he had not succeeded), he announced to him that he was born a Talleyrand48 and in some unknown way had remained a mere Lebedev.
Then he laid out his whole game before him, which interested the prince enormously.
By his own admission, he began by seeking the protection of exalted persons, in whom he might find support in case of need, and went to General Ivan Fyodorovich.
General Ivan Fyodorovich was perplexed, very much wished the "young man" well, but declared that "for all his desire to save him, it was improper for him to act here."
Lizaveta Prokofyevna did not want either to see or to hear him; Evgeny Pavlovich and Prince Shch. only waved him away.
But he, Lebedev, did not lose heart and consulted a clever lawyer, a venerable old man, his great friend and almost his benefactor; the man concluded that the business was perfectly possible as long as there were competent witnesses to his derangement and total insanity, and with that, above all, the patronage of exalted persons.
Lebedev did not despond here either, and once even brought a doctor to see the prince, also a venerable old man, a summer person, with an Anna on his neck,49 solely in order to reconnoiter the terrain, so to speak, to get acquainted with the prince and, not yet officially but, so to speak, in a friendly way, to inform him of his conclusions.
The prince remembered the doctor calling on him; he remembered that the day before Lebedev had been nagging him about his being unwell, and when the prince resolutely rejected medicine, he suddenly showed up with the doctor, under the pretext that the two of them were just coming from Mr. Terentyev, who was very sick, and the doctor had something to tell the prince about the patient.