The Overprotective Host and Social Tensions — The Idiot

The day after Rogojin's attack, Prince Myshkin reaches Lebedeff's Pavlofsk villa still exhausted while the household hovers over him like nurses and spies. Lebedeff peeks through doors, shoos his daughters away, and even blocks General Ivolgin, claiming too much hospitality would harm the patient. When the prince protests, Lebedeff confesses he is vile, then warns that someone wants a secret interview and is afraid not of Rogojin but of Aglaya Ivanovna. Colia arrives with Mrs. Epanchin and her daughters, who expected an invalid and are annoyed to find a man well enough to sit on the terrace. The visit becomes a social battlefield: Lebedeff performs orphan tragedy with Vera and the baby, Aglaya asks about his Apocalypse lectures, and General Ivolgin's drunken boasting collides with Mrs. Epanchin's memory. Then Aglaya and Adelaida recall how he once carried the girls in Tver and made them bows and cardboard helmets, and the general breaks down in tears. Mrs. Epanchin scolds him fiercely, then softens enough to offer repentance later. Talk turns to a coded joke about the poor knight from Pushkin, and Aglaya grows flushed while the prince looks trapped. The chapter exposes how protective control, class comedy, and romantic allegory collide on one summer terrace.