Because I show my pride and don't give in.
Well, we'll see!"
"Did you really love her before this?"
"In the beginning I loved her.
Well, enough . . . There are women who are only fit to be mistresses and nothing else.
I'm not saying she was my mistress.
If she wants to live quietly, I'll live quietly, too. If she rebels, I'll drop her at once and take the money with me.
I don't want to be ridiculous; above all I don't want to be ridiculous."
"I keep thinking," the prince observed cautiously, "that Nastasya Filippovna is intelligent.
If she anticipates such torment, why should she walk into the trap?
She could marry somebody else.
That's what surprises me."
"But there's the calculation!
You don't know everything, Prince . . . here . . . and, besides, she's convinced that I'm madly in love with her, I swear to you, and, you know, I strongly suspect that she also loves me, in her own way, that is, as the saying goes:
'The one I treat, I also beat.'
She'll consider me a varlet all her life (that may be what she wants) and love me in her own way even so; she's preparing herself for that, it's her character.
She's an extremely Russian woman, I tell you. Well, but I'm preparing my own surprise for her.
That scene earlier with Varya happened accidentally, but it was to my profit: now she's seen and been convinced of my devotion and that I'll break all connections for her sake.
Meaning we're no fools, rest assured.
Incidentally, I hope you don't think I'm such a babbler?
Indeed, my dear Prince, perhaps it's a bad thing that I'm confiding in you.
I fell upon you precisely because you're the first noble person I've met—I mean, 'fell upon' with no pun intended.
You're not angry because of what happened, eh?
I'm speaking from the heart maybe for the first time in a whole two years.
There are very few honest people here. Ptitsyn's the most honest.
It seems you're laughing, or aren't you?
Scoundrels love honest people—did you know that?
And I'm . . . However, in what way am I a scoundrel? Tell me in all conscience.
Why do they repeat after her that I'm a scoundrel?
And, you know, I also repeat after them and her that I'm a scoundrel!
That's the most scoundrelly thing of all!"
"I'll never consider you a scoundrel now," said the prince.
"Earlier I took you altogether for a villain, and suddenly you overjoyed me so—it's a real lesson: not to judge without experience.
Now I see that you not only cannot be considered a villain, but that you haven't even gone all that bad.
To my mind, you're simply the most ordinary man that could be, only very weak and not the least bit original."
Ganya smiled sarcastically to himself but said nothing.
The prince saw that his opinion was not liked, became embarrassed, and also fell silent.
"Did father ask you for money?" Ganya asked suddenly.
"No."
"He will. Don't give him any.
And he even used to be a decent man, I remember.
He was received by good people.
How quickly they all come to an end, all these decent old people!
Circumstances need only change, and there's nothing left of the former, it's gone up like a flash of powder.
He didn't lie like that before, I assure you; he was just a much too rapturous man before, and—this is what it's come to!
Drink's to blame, of course.
Do you know that he keeps a mistress?
He hasn't stayed simply an innocent little liar.
I can't understand my mother's long-suffering.
Did he tell you about the siege of Kars?