"I suppose I met you somewhere, but . . ."
"See, he met me somewhere!
Only three months ago I lost two hundred roubles of my father's money to you. The old man died and had no time to find out. You got me into it, and Kniff cheated.
You don't know me?
Ptitsyn is my witness!
If I was to show you three roubles, to take them out of my pocket right now, you'd crawl after them on all fours to Vassilievsky Island—that's how you are!
That's how your soul is!
I've come now to buy you out for money, never mind that I'm wearing these boots, I've got a lot of money, brother, I'll buy you out with all you've got here ... if I want, I'll buy you all! Everything!" Rogozhin grew excited and as if more and more drunk.
"Ehh!" he cried, "Nastasya Filippovna!
Don't throw me out, tell me one thing: are you going to marry him or not?"
Rogozhin asked his question like a lost man, as if addressing some sort of divinity, but with the boldness of a man condemned to death, who has nothing more to lose.
In deathly anguish he waited for the answer.
Nastasya Filippovna looked him up and down with a mocking and haughty glance, but after glancing at Varya and Nina Alexandrovna, she looked at Ganya and suddenly changed her tone.
"Absolutely not, what's the matter with you?
And what on earth made you think of asking?" she replied softly and seriously and as if with some surprise.
"No?
No!!" cried Rogozhin, all but beside himself with joy. "So it's no?!
And they told me . . . Ah!
Well! . . .
Nastasya Filippovna!
They say you're engaged to Ganka!
To him?
No, how is it possible? (I tell them all!) No, I'll buy him out for a hundred roubles, I'll give him a thousand, say, or three thousand, to renounce her, he'll run away on the eve of the wedding and leave his bride all to me.
So it is, Ganka, you scoundrel!
You'll take three thousand.
Here it is, here!
This is what I came with, to get a receipt from you. I said I'd buy you—and so I will!"
"Get out of here, you're drunk!" cried Ganya, blushing and blanching by turns.
His exclamation was followed by a sudden explosion of several voices; Rogozhin's whole crew had long been waiting for the first challenge.
Lebedev whispered something extremely assiduously into Rogozhin's ear.
"That's true, clerk," replied Rogozhin. "It's true, you drunken soul!
Eh, come what may.
Nastasya Filippovna!" he cried, looking at her like a half-wit, timid and suddenly taking heart to the point of insolence, "here's eighteen thousand!" And he slapped down on the table in front of her a packet wrapped in white paper, tied crisscross with string. "There!
And . . . and there'll be more!"
He did not dare to finish what he was going to say.
"No, no, no!" Lebedev began whispering to him with a terribly frightened look; it was clear that he was frightened by the enormity of the sum and had suggested starting with incomparably less.
"No, brother, in this you're a fool, you don't know where you've got to . . . and I, too, must be a fool along with you!" Rogozhin caught himself and gave a sudden start under the flashing eyes of Nastasya Filippovna.
"Ehh! I fouled it up, listening to you," he added with profound regret.
Nastasya Filippovna, peering into Rogozhin's overturned face, suddenly laughed.
"Eighteen thousand, for me?
You can tell a boor at once!" she added suddenly, with brazen familiarity, and got up from the sofa as if preparing to leave.
Ganya watched the whole scene with a sinking heart.
"Forty thousand then, forty, not eighteen!" cried Rogozhin. "Vanka Ptitsyn and Biskup promised to produce forty thousand by seven o'clock.
Forty thousand!
All on the table."
The scene was becoming extremely ugly, but Nastasya Filippovna went on laughing and did not go away, as if she were intentionally drawing it out.
Nina Alexandrovna and Varya also got up from their places and waited fearfully, silently, for what it would lead to; Varya's eyes flashed, but Nina Alexandrovna was morbidly affected; she trembled and seemed about to faint.
"In that case—a hundred!
Today I'll produce a hundred thousand!
Ptitsyn, help me out, you'll line your own pockets!"