Ganya, what are you standing there for?
Don't be ashamed!
Go in!
It's your lucky chance!"
But Ganya had already endured too much that day and that evening, and was not prepared for this last unexpected trial.
The crowd parted into two halves before him, and he was left face to face with Nastasya Filippovna, three steps away from her.
She stood right by the fireplace and waited, not tearing her burning, intent gaze from him.
Ganya, in a tailcoat, his hat and gloves in his hand, stood silent and unresponding before her, his arms crossed, looking at the fire. An insane smile wandered over his face, which was pale as a sheet.
True, he could not take his eyes off the fire, off the smoldering packet; but it seemed something new had arisen in his soul; it was as if he had sworn to endure the torture; he did not budge from the spot; in a few moments it became clear to everyone that he would not go after the packet, that he did not want to.
"Hey, it'll burn up, and they'll shame you," Nastasya Filippovna cried to him, "you'll hang yourself afterwards, I'm not joking!"
The fire that had flared up in the beginning between the two smoldering logs went out at first, when the packet fell on it and smothered it.
But a small blue flame still clung from below to one corner of the lower log.
Finally, a long, thin tongue of fire licked at the packet, the fire caught and raced along the edges of the paper, and suddenly the whole packet blazed in the fireplace and the bright flame shot upwards.
Everyone gasped.
"Dearest lady!" Lebedev kept screaming, straining forward once more, but Rogozhin dragged him back and pushed him aside again.
Rogozhin himself had turned into one fixed gaze.
He could not turn it from Nastasya Filippovna, he was reveling, he was in seventh heaven.
"There's a queen for you!" he repeated every moment, turning around to whoever was there. "That's the way to do it!" he cried out, forgetting himself.
"Who among you rogues would pull such a stunt, eh?"
The prince watched ruefully and silently.
"I'll snatch it out with my teeth for just one thousand!" Ferdyshchenko offered.
"I could do it with my teeth, too!" the fist gentleman, who was standing behind them all, rasped in a fit of decided despair.
"D-devil take it!
It's burning, it'll burn up!" he cried, seeing the flame.
"It's burning, it's burning!" they all cried in one voice, almost all of them also straining towards the fireplace.
"Ganya, stop faking, I tell you for the last time!"
"Go in!" Ferdyshchenko bellowed, rushing to Ganya in a decided frenzy and pulling him by the sleeve. "Go in, you little swaggerer!
It'll burn up!
Oh, cur-r-rse you!"
Ganya shoved Ferdyshchenko aside forcefully, turned, and went towards the door; but before going two steps, he reeled and crashed to the floor.
"He fainted!" they cried all around.
"Dearest lady, it'll burn up!" Lebedev screamed.
"Burn up for nothing!" the roaring came from all sides.
"Katya, Pasha, fetch him water, spirits!" Nastasya Filippovna cried, seized the fire tongs and snatched the packet out.
The outer paper was nearly all charred and smoldering, but it could be seen at once that the inside was not damaged.
The packet had been wrapped in three layers of newspaper, and the money was untouched.
Everyone breathed more easily.
"Maybe just one little thousand is damaged a tiny bit, but the rest is untouched," Lebedev said tenderly.
"It's all his!
The whole packet is his!
Do you hear, gentlemen?" Nastasya Filippovna proclaimed, placing the packet beside Ganya. "He didn't go in after it, he held out!
So his vanity is still greater than his lust for money.
Never mind, he'll come to!
Otherwise he might have killed me . . . There, he's already recovering.
General, Ivan Petrovich, Darya Alexeevna, Katya, Pasha, Rogozhin, do you hear?
The packet is his, Ganya's. I grant him full possession of it as a reward for . . . well, for whatever!
Tell him that.
Let it lie there beside him . . . Rogozhin, march!
Farewell, Prince, I've seen a man for the first time!
Farewell, Afanasy Ivanovich, merci!"