The napkin is already waiting under his chin, and nobody has looked at his face yet. Mrs. Epanchin hears that the last of her line has arrived in beggar's clothes, an idiot, a case for charity, and she holds herself very straight. The general wants her interest stolen at the first swoop, so her thoughts will not stay on matters nearer home. He calls the prince a child, hungry, dressed like a German, and asks the girls to put him through his paces. Alexandra says they must feed him. Adelaida offers hide-and-seek. Aglaya stamps and tells them to stop pretending. Send him up. The general rings, then bolts for a count everyone in the room already knows. She turns the leftover anger on the guest. Who is this abbot? Who is Pafnute?
He sits nearer the light because she wants a look. Abbot Pafnute lived in the fourteenth century, signed an edict, and the prince copied the hand because it struck him. She orders the signature sent for and then forgets it, because lunch is ready. He is pretty hungry, thanks very much. She likes the manners and drops the napkin. He holds it on his knee, as he has done since he was seven. The pedigree talk finds almost no blood between them, and that pleases her more than a real claim would have. In the boudoir she orders a story so she can judge whether he is a good storyteller. Anything he likes. Aglaya says she would refuse. Alexandra whispers that this prince is a great humbug and by no means an idiot. Aglaya saw that at once, and wonders what he wishes to gain by the part. He begins with a donkey in the market at Basle. The bray woke him from the fog after a run of fits. He came to like the useful, patient animal, and then the country, and then the melancholy passed. The girls laugh. He laughs with them and sticks up for the donkey all the same.
She asks if he is a patient man. The joke turns. He is not always kind. She is always kind, she says, and that is her chief fault: she is kindest when she is cross. Adelaida wants a subject for a picture and says she does not know how to see. He lived in one Swiss village and grew happy there, restless only at night by a thin white waterfall, thinking life might be grand even in a prison. Aglaya has read that thought in a manual. He tells of a man who stood twenty minutes under a death sentence, then was reprieved. Five minutes seemed an enormous wealth of time. The man divided them: farewell, a look at his own life, a last look around, and the thought of an eternity of days if he were not to die now. That thought became so heavy he wished they would shoot him and have done. Alexandra asks what he did with the riches of time when they were restored. He wasted many a minute. Very well, she says, the experiment is proved. One cannot live and count each moment. That is true, the prince says. And yet, why shouldn't one do it? He has had that idea. He has it still.
Aglaya wants a question about an execution. He has seen one, at Lyons, and was ill after, and could not tear his eyes away. He had already told the man-servant in the hall. The daughters insist. He gives Adelaida the face he wanted painted: white as notepaper, one minute before the blade, the priest pressing a little silver cross to blue lips, the man kissing it as if it might be useful afterwards. Draw the scaffold so only the top step is clear. The cross and the head. Alexandra murmurs that this is not much like quietism. Adelaida asks for his love affairs. Aglaya asks why he is ashamed of his stories the moment after he has told them. He knows their faces, he says, and will tell them afterwards. Then, as quietly as before, he has not been in love. He has been happy in another way. How, how? Well, he will tell them. He is already in a deep reverie, and the other happiness has not started yet.
