The Stalker in the Shadows — The Idiot

The shop is there. Sixty copecks in the cutler's window. He had turned from this glass earlier and found Rogozhin's eyes on him. So the eyes were not a hallucination, and neither was the station. He had bought a ticket to Pavlofsk and thrown it away. He laughs. It is a hysterical laugh. He is feeling terribly oppressed.

He sits under a lime in the Summer Garden at seven. The air is close. Thunder somewhere. Those seconds before a fit feel like a lifetime. I would give my whole life for this one instant. There shall be no more time. He told Rogozhin so in Moscow. Today Rogozhin called him brother for the first time. A knife made to a special pattern keeps returning. Compassion is the chief law of human existence. Rogozhin has a large heart. He is fighting for a dying faith. He needs to look at that Holbein. When he learns she is injured and half-insane he will become her slave, her brother, her friend. They will go to her together. No more passionate renouncements. He rings at house sixteen on the Petersburg Side. Nastasia has gone to Pavlofsk, to Daria Alexeyevna, for some days. Across the road a man stands with folded hands, fifty yards off, plainly in view, as if he wished to be seen. Like an accuser. Like a judge. Their eyes meet. The prince turns away as if he had seen nothing.

He walks back in shame. A demon had whispered him toward that house. He wants to go to Rogozhin, wait, embrace him with tears, and finish with the distrust. Then he is at the hotel he has loathed all day. Why should Rogozhin not have as many knives on his table as he chooses? Thunder. Rain in torrents. A man in the dark doorway. The same two eyes in the niche of the stone column. Something glitters in the raised right hand. Parfen. I will not believe it. A wonderful inner light. A wail no will can stop. He falls head foremost. Rogozhin does not know it is a fit. He skirts the body and flings himself into the street. A pool of blood on the steps. Colia finds him. Three days later they are all at Pavlofsk.