"Is this you, is this you, Nastasya Filippovna?" the general clasped his hands in genuine grief. "You, so delicate, with such refined notions, and all at once!
Such language!
Such style!"
"I'm tipsy now, General," Nastasya Filippovna suddenly laughed. "I want to carouse now!
Today is my day, my red-letter day, my leap day, I've waited a long time for it.
Darya Alexeevna, do you see this bouquet man, this monsieur aux camelias, he's sitting there and laughing at us . . ."
"I'm not laughing, Nastasya Filippovna, I'm merely listening with the greatest attention," Totsky parried with dignity.
"Well, then, why did I torment him for a whole five years and not let him leave me?
As if he was worth it!
He's simply the way he has to be . . . He's still going to consider me guilty before him: he brought me up, he kept me like a countess, money, so much money, went on me, he found me an honest husband there, and Ganechka here, and what do you think: I didn't live with him for five years, but I took his money and thought I was right!
I really got myself quite confused!
Now you say take the hundred thousand and throw him out, if it's so loathsome.
It's true that it's loathsome ... I could have married long ago, and not just some Ganechka, only that's also pretty loathsome.
Why did I waste my five years in this spite!
But, would you believe it, some four years ago I had moments when I thought: shouldn't I really marry my Afanasy Ivanovich?
I thought it then out of spite; all sorts of things came into my head then; but I could have made him do it!
He asked for it himself, can you believe that?
True, he was lying, but he's so susceptible, he can't control himself.
And then, thank God, I thought: as if he's worth such spite!
And then I suddenly felt such loathing for him that, even if he had proposed to me, I wouldn't have accepted him.
And for a whole five years I've been showing off like this! No, it's better in the street where I belong!
Either carouse with Rogozhin or go tomorrow and become a washerwoman!
Because nothing on me is my own; if I leave, I'll abandon everything to him, I'll leave every last rag, and who will take me without anything? Ask Ganya here, will he?
Even Ferdyshchenko won't take me! . . ."
"Maybe Ferdyshchenko won't take you, Nastasya Filippovna, I'm a candid man," Ferdyshchenko interrupted, "but the prince will!
You're sitting here lamenting, but look at the prince!
I've been watching him for a long time . . ."
Nastasya Filippovna turned to the prince with curiosity.
"Is it true?" she asked.
"It's true," whispered the prince.
"You'll take me just as I am, with nothing?"
"I will, Nastasya Filippovna ..."
"Here's a new anecdote!" muttered the general. "Might have expected it."
The prince, with a sorrowful, stern, and penetrating gaze, looked into the face of Nastasya Filippovna, who went on studying him.
"Here's another one!" she said suddenly, turning to Darya Alexeevna again. "And he really does it out of the kindness of his heart, I know him.
I've found a benefactor!
Though maybe what they say about him is true, that he's . . . like that.
How are you going to live, if you're so in love that you'll take Rogozhin's kind of woman—you, a prince? . . ."
"I'll take you as an honest woman, Nastasya Filippovna, not as Rogozhin's kind," said the prince.
"Me, an honest woman?"
"You."
"Well, that's . . . out of some novel!
That, my darling prince, is old gibberish, the world's grown smarter now, and that's all nonsense!
And how can you go getting married, when you still need a nursemaid to look after you!"
The prince stood up and said in a trembling voice, but with a look of deep conviction:
"I don't know anything, Nastasya Filippovna, I haven't seen anything, you're right, but I ... I will consider that you are doing me an honor, and not I you.
I am nothing, but you have suffered and have emerged pure from such a hell, and that is a lot.
Why do you feel ashamed and want to go with Rogozhin?
It's your fever . . . You've given Mr. Totsky back his seventy thousand and say you will abandon everything you have here, which no one else here would do.
I . . . love you . . . Nastasya Filippovna.