It may be that you have completely forgotten me now.
How is it that I am writing to you?
I do not know; but I have an irrepressible desire to remind you of myself, and you precisely.
Many's the time I have needed all three of you very much, but of all three I could see only you.
I need you, I need you very much.
I have nothing to write to you about myself, I have nothing to tell you about.
That is not what I wanted; I wish terribly much that you should be happy.
Are you happy?
That is the only thing I wanted to tell you.
Your brother, Pr.
L.
Myshkin.
Having read this brief and rather muddle-headed note, Aglaya suddenly flushed all over and became pensive.
It would be hard for us to convey the course of her thoughts.
Among other things, she asked herself: "Should I show it to anyone?"
She felt somehow ashamed.
She ended, however, by smiling a mocking and strange smile and dropping the letter into her desk drawer.
The next day she took it out again and put it into a thick, sturdily bound book (as she always did with her papers, so as to find them quickly when she needed them).
And only a week later did she happen to notice what book it was.
It was Don Quixote de La Mancha.
Aglaya laughed terribly—no one knew why.
Nor did anyone know whether she showed her acquisition to any of her sisters.
But as she was reading this letter, the thought suddenly crossed her mind: could it be that the prince had chosen this presumptuous little brat and show-off as his correspondent and, for all she knew, his only correspondent in Petersburg?
And, though with a look of extraordinary disdain, all the same she put Kolya to the question.
But the "brat," ordinarily touchy, this time did not pay the slightest attention to the disdain; he explained to Aglaya quite briefly and rather drily that he had given the prince his permanent address, just in case, before the prince left Petersburg, and had offered to be of service, that this was the first errand he had been entrusted with and the first note he had received, and in proof of his words he produced the letter he had himself received.
Aglaya read it without any qualms.
The letter to Kolya read:
Dear Kolya, be so good as to convey the enclosed and sealed note to Aglaya Ivanovna.
Be well.
Lovingly yours, Pr.
L.
Myshkin.
"All the same, it's ridiculous to confide in such a pipsqueak," Aglaya said touchily, handing Kolya's note back, and she scornfully walked past him.
Now that Kolya could not bear: he had asked Ganya, purposely for that occasion, without explaining the reason why, to let him wear his still quite new green scarf.
He was bitterly offended.
II
It was the first days of June, and the weather in Petersburg had been unusually fine for a whole week.
The Epanchins had their own wealthy dacha in Pavlovsk.6 Lizaveta Prokofyevna suddenly roused herself and went into action: before not quite two days of bustling were over, they moved.
A day or two after the Epanchins moved to the country, Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin arrived from Moscow on the morning train.
No one met him at the station; but as he was getting off the train, the prince suddenly thought he caught the gaze of two strange, burning eyes in the crowd surrounding the arriving people.
When he looked more attentively, he could no longer see them.
Of course, he had only imagined it; but it left an unpleasant impression.
Besides, the prince was sad and pensive to begin with and seemed preoccupied with something.
The cabby brought him to a hotel not far from Liteinaya Street.
It was a wretched little hotel.
The prince took two small rooms, dark and poorly furnished, washed, dressed, asked for nothing, and left hastily, as if afraid of wasting time or of not finding someone at home.
If anyone who had known him six months ago, when he first came to Petersburg, had looked at him now, he might have concluded that his appearance had changed greatly for the better.
But that was hardly so.
There was merely a complete change in his clothes: they were all different, made in Moscow, and by a good tailor; but there was a flaw in them as well: they were much too fashionably made (as always with conscientious but not very talented tailors), and moreover for a man not the least bit interested in fashion, so that, taking a close look at the prince, someone much given to laughter might have found good reason to smile.
But people laugh at all sorts of things.