Page:Dostoevsky - The Idiot, Collected Edition, 1916.djvu/16

addressed the pimply gentleman indeed, but from the beginning had spoken only to Myshkin.

"But... how is that?" The official was petrified with amazement, and his eyes seemed almost starting out of his head. His whole face immediately assumed an expression of reverence and servility, almost of awe. "Related to the Semyon Parfenovitch Rogozhin, who died a month ago and left a fortune of two and a half million roubles?"

"And how do you know he left two and a half millions?" the dark man interrupted, not deigning even now to glance towards the official.

"Look at him!" he winked to Myshkin, indicating him, "What do they gain by cringing upon one at once? But it's true that my father has been dead a month, and here I am, coming home from Pskov almost without boots to my feet. My brother, the rascal, and my mother haven't sent me a penny nor a word--nothing! As if I were a dog! I've been lying ill with fever at Pskov for the last month."

"And now you are coming in for a tidy million, at the lowest reckoning, oh! Lord!" the official flung up his hands.

"What is it to him, tell me that?" said Rogozhin, nodding irritably and angrily towards him again. "Why, I am not going to give you a farthing of it, you may stand on your head before me, if you like."

"I will, I will."

"You see! But I won't give you anything, I won't, if you dance for a whole week."

"Well, don't! Why should you? Don't! But I shall dance, I shall leave my wife and little children and dance before you. I must do homage! I must!"

"Hang you!" the dark man spat. "Five weeks ago, like you with nothing but a bundle," he said, addressing the prince, "I ran away from my father to my aunt's at Pskov. And there I fell ill and he died while I was away. He kicked the bucket. Eternal memory to the deceased, but he almost killed me! Would you believe it, prince, yes, by God! If I hadn't run away then, he would have killed me on the spot."

"Did you make him very angry?" asked the prince, looking with special interest at the millionaire in the sheepskin. But though there may have been something remarkable in the million and in coming into an inheritance, Myshkin was surprised and interested at something else as well. And Rogozhin himself