The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Page A

negotiations began; the point on which the entire manoeuvre of the two friends was based, namely the possibility that Nastasya Filippovna was in love with Ganya, gradually started to become clear and to find its justification, so that even Totsky sometimes began to believe in the possibility of success. Meanwhile, Nastasya Filippovna had a confrontation with Ganya: very few words were spoken, as though her modesty experienced pain during the course of it. But she acknowledged and allowed his love, insistently declaring, however, that she was not willing to restrict herself in any way; that until the day of the wedding (if there was to be a wedding) she reserved to herself the right to say ‘no’, even at the very last moment; she offered Ganya that entire same right. Soon Ganya learned for a fact, through a stroke of chance, that the whole extent of his family’s ill-will towards this marriage and towards Nastasya Filippovna personally, something that had been revealed in domestic scenes, was already known to Nastasya Filippovna; she herself had not broached the subject with him, though he expected it daily. As a matter of fact, one might tell much of all the stories and circumstances that came to light apropos of this matchmaking and the negotiations; but as it is, we have run on ahead, especially as some of the circumstances appeared in the form of extremely vague rumours. For example, Totsky was supposed to have learned from somewhere that Nastasya Filippovna had entered into some kind of vague and secret relations with the Yepanchin girls - a quite unlikely rumour. On the other hand, there was another rumour which he believed in spite of himself, and which he feared to the point of nightmare: he had heard for a fact that Nastasya Filippovna was perfectly aware that Ganya was marrying only for money, that Ganya’s soul was dark, grasping, impatient, envious and immensely, out of all proportion, self-proud; that although Ganya had indeed passionately tried to achieve victory over Nastasya Filippovna earlier, when the two friends decided to exploit this passion, which had begun on both sides, to their advantage and buy Ganya by selling him Nastasya Filippovna as his lawful wife, he began to hate her like the nightmare he had had. In his soul there seemed to be a strange fusion of passion and hatred, and although at last, after agonizing hesitations, he agreed to marry the ‘vile woman’, he swore in his soul to take a bitter revenge on her for it and to ‘harry her to death’ later on, as he apparently expressed it. Nastasya Filippovna apparently knew all this and was preparing something in secret. By this time Totsky was in such a state of funk that he even stopped telling Yepanchin about his worries; but there were moments when, like the weak man he was, he decidedly took heart again and swiftly regained his spirits: he took heart exceedingly, for example, when Nastasya Filippovna at last promised the two friends that on the evening of her birthday she would deliver her final word. On the other hand, a most strange and most unlikely rumour concerning the respected Ivan Fyodorovich turned out - alas! - to be more and more correct.

    At first glance the whole thing seemed the purest rubbish. It was hard to believe that Ivan Fyodorovich, at his venerable age, with his splendid intellect and positive knowledge of life, etcetera, etcetera, could ever be seduced by Nastasya Filippovna - but such, apparently, was the case and, it was said, to such a degree that this caprice almost resembled passion. What his hopes were in this instance it was hard to imagine; perhaps he was even relying on Ganya’s assistance. Totsky at least suspected something of this kind, suspected the existence of some almost tacit concordat, founded upon mutual discernment, between the general and Ganya. As a matter of fact, it is well known that a man excessively carried away by passion, especially if he is getting on in years, becomes completely