Maybe Aglaya showed the note to the old lady?"
"About that I can fully guarantee you that she did not show it to her.
I was there all the while; and she also didn't have time."
"Or maybe you didn't notice something . . . Oh! cur-r-rsed idiot," he exclaimed, now completely beside himself, "he can't even tell anything!"
Once he began to swear and met no resistance, Ganya gradually lost all restraint, as always happens with certain people.
A little more and he might have started spitting, so enraged he was.
But, precisely because of that rage, he was blind; otherwise he would long since have paid attention to the fact that this "idiot," whom he mistreated so, was sometimes capable of understanding everything all too quickly and subtly, and of giving an extremely satisfactory account of it.
But suddenly something unexpected happened.
"I must point out to you, Gavrila Ardalionovich," the prince suddenly said, "that formerly I was indeed unwell, so that in fact I was almost an idiot; but I have been well for a long time now, and therefore I find it somewhat unpleasant when I'm called an idiot to my face.
Though you might be excused, considering your misfortunes, in your vexation you have even abused me a couple of times.
I dislike that very much, especially the way you do it, suddenly, from the start. And since we're now standing at an intersection, it might be better if we parted: you go home to the right, and I'll go left.
I have twenty-five roubles, and I'm sure I'll find furnished rooms."
Ganya was terribly embarrassed and even blushed with shame.
"Forgive me, Prince," he cried hotly, suddenly changing his abusive tone to extreme politeness, "for God's sake, forgive me!
You see what trouble I'm in!
You know almost nothing yet, but if you knew everything, you would probably excuse me at least a little; though, naturally, I'm inexcusable . . ."
"Oh, but I don't need such big excuses," the prince hastened to reply.
"I do understand that you're very displeased and that's why you're abusive.
Well, let's go to your place.
It's my pleasure . . ."
"No, it's impossible to let him go like that," Ganya thought to himself, glancing spitefully at the prince as they went. "The rogue got it all out of me and then suddenly took off his mask . . . That means something.
We'll see! Everything will be resolved, everything, everything! Today!"
They were already standing outside his house.
VIII
Ganechka's apartment was on the third floor, up a rather clean, bright, and spacious stairway, and consisted of six or seven rooms, large and small, quite ordinary, incidentally, but in any case not at all what the pocket of an official with a family, even on a salary of two thousand roubles, could afford.
But it was intended for keeping tenants with board and services, and had been taken by Ganya and his family no more than two months earlier, to the greatest displeasure of Ganya himself, on the insistent demand of Nina Alexandrovna and Varvara Ardalionovna, who wished to be useful in their turn and to increase the family income at least a little.
Ganya scowled and called keeping tenants an outrage; after that it was as if he began to be ashamed in society, where he was in the habit of appearing as a young man of a certain brilliance and with prospects.
All these concessions to fate and all this vexatious crowding—all of it deeply wounded his soul.
For some time now, every little thing had begun to annoy him beyond measure or proportion, and if he still agreed for a time to yield and endure, it was only because he had already resolved to change and alter it all within the shortest space of time.
And yet this very change, this way out that he had settled on, was no small task— a task the imminent solution of which threatened to be more troublesome and tormenting than all that had gone before it.
The apartment was divided by a corridor that started right from the front hall.
On one side of the corridor were the three rooms that were to be let to "specially recommended" tenants; besides that, on the same side of the corridor, at the very end of it, near the kitchen, was a fourth room, smaller than the others, which housed the retired General Ivolgin himself, the father of the family, who slept on a wide couch and was obliged to go in and out of the apartment through the kitchen and the back door.
The same little room also housed Gavrila Ardalionovich's thirteen-year-old brother, the schoolboy Kolya. He, too, was destined to be cramped, to study and sleep there on another very old, narrow, and short couch, covered with a torn sheet, and, above all, to tend to and look after his father, who was more and more unable to do without that.
The prince was given the middle one of the three rooms; the first, to the right, was occupied by Ferdyshchenko, and the third, to the left, was still vacant.
But first of all Ganya took the prince to the family side.
This family side consisted of a large room that was turned, when needed, into a dining room, of a drawing room, which was, however, a drawing room only during the daytime, but in the evening turned into Ganya's study and bedroom, and, finally, of a third room, small and always closed: this was the bedroom of Nina Alexandrovna and Varvara Ardalionovna.
In short, everything in this apartment was cramped and squeezed; Ganya only gritted his teeth to himself; though he may have wished to be respectful to his mother, it was evident the moment one stepped into the place that he was the great tyrant of the family.
"Where's your luggage?" he asked, leading the prince into his room.
"I have a little bundle; I left it in the front hall."
"I'll bring it right away.
All we have for servants are the cook and Matryona, so I have to help, too.
Varya supervises everything and gets angry.
Ganya says you came today from Switzerland?"
"Yes."
"Is it nice in Switzerland?"
"Very."
"Mountains?"
Yes.
"I'll lug your bundles here right away."
Varvara Ardalionovna came in.