Nastasya Filippovna

 Nastasya Filippovna snatched up the packet with both hands.

"Ganka, I've got an idea: I want to reward you, because why should you lose everything? Rogozhin, will he crawl to Vassilievsky Island for three roubles?"

"He will!"

"Well, then listen, Ganya, I want to look at your soul for the last time; you've been tormenting me for three long months; now it's my turn. Do you see this packet? There's a hundred thousand in it! I'm now going to throw it into the fireplace, onto the fire, before everyone, all these witnesses! As soon as it catches fire all over, go into the fireplace, only without gloves, with your bare hands, with your sleeves rolled up, and pull the packet out of the fire! If you pull it out, it's yours, the whole hundred thousand is yours! You'll only burn your fingers a little—but it's a hundred thousand, just think! It won't take long to snatch it out! And I'll admire your soul as you go into the fire after my money. They're all witnesses that the packet will be yours! And if you don't get it out, it will burn; I won't let anyone else touch it. Stand back! Everybody! It's my money! I got it for a night with Rogozhin. Is it my money, Rogozhin?"

"Yours, my joy! Yours, my queen!"

"Well, then everybody stand back, I do as I like! Don't interfere! Ferdyshchenko, stir up the fire."

"Nastasya Filippovna, my hands refuse to obey!" the flabbergasted Ferdyshchenko replied.

"Ahh!" Nastasya Filippovna cried, seized the fire tongs, separated two smoldering logs, and as soon as the fire blazed up, threw the packet into it.

A cry was heard all around; many even crossed themselves.

"She's lost her mind, she's lost her mind!" they cried all around.

"Maybe .. . maybe we should tie her up?" the general whispered to Ptitsyn. "Or send for...she's lost her mind, hasn't she? Lost her mind?"

"N-no, this may not be entirely madness," Ptitsyn whispered, pale as a sheet and trembling, unable to tear his eyes from the packet, which was beginning to smolder.

"She's mad, isn't she? Isn't she mad?" the general pestered Totsky.

"I told you she was a colorful woman," murmured Afanasy Ivanovich, also gone somewhat pale.

"But, after all, it's a hundred thousand!..."

"Lord, Lord!" was heard on all sides. Everyone crowded around the fireplace, everyone pushed in order to see, everyone exclaimed...Some even climbed onto chairs to look over the heads. Darya Alexeevna ran to the other room and exchanged frightened whispers with Katya and Pasha about something. The German beauty fled.

"Dearest lady! Queen! Almighty one!" Lebedev screamed, crawling on his knees before Nastasya Filippovna and reaching out towards the fireplace. "A hundred thousand! A hundred thousand! I saw it myself, I was there when they wrapped it! Dearest lady! Merciful one! Order me into the fireplace: I'll go all the way in, I'll put my whole gray head into the fire! ...A crippled wife, thirteen children—all orphaned, I buried my father last week, he sits there starving, Nastasya Filippovna!!" and, having screamed, he began crawling into the fireplace.

"Away!" cried Nastasya Filippovna, pushing him aside. "Step back, everybody! Ganya, what are you standing there for? Don't be ashamed! Go in! It's your lucky chance!"

But Ganya had already endured too much that day and that evening, and was not prepared for this last unexpected trial. The crowd parted into two halves before him, and he was left face to face with Nastasya Filippovna, three steps away from her. She stood right by the fireplace and waited, not tearing her burning, intent gaze from him. Ganya, in a tailcoat, his hat and gloves in his hand, stood silent and unresponding before her, his arms crossed, looking at the fire. An insane smile wandered over his face, which was pale as a sheet. True, he could not take his eyes off the fire, off the smoldering packet; but it seemed something new had arisen in his soul; it was as if he had sworn to endure the torture; he did not budge from the spot; in a few moments it became clear to everyone that he would not go after the packet, that he did not want to.

"Hey, it'll burn up, and they'll shame you," Nastasya Filippovna cried to him, "you'll hang yourself afterwards, I'm not joking!"

The fire that had flared up in the beginning between the two smoldering logs went out at first, when the packet fell on it and smothered it. But a small blue flame still clung from below to one corner of the lower log. Finally, a long, thin tongue of fire licked at the packet, the fire caught and raced along the edges of the paper, and suddenly the whole packet blazed in the fireplace and the bright flame shot upwards. Everyone gasped.

"Dearest lady!" Lebedev kept screaming, straining forward once more, but Rogozhin dragged him back and pushed him aside again.

Rogozhin himself had turned into one fixed gaze. He could not turn it from Nastasya Filippovna, he was reveling, he was in seventh heaven.

"There's a queen for you!" he repeated every moment, turning around to whoever was there. "That's the way to do it!" he cried out, forgetting himself. "Who among you rogues would pull such a stunt, eh?"

The prince watched ruefully and silently.

"I'll snatch it out with my teeth for just one thousand!" Ferdyshchenko offered.

"I could do it with my teeth, too!" the fist gentleman, who was standing behind them all, rasped in a fit of decided despair. "D-devil take it! It's burning, it'll burn up!" he cried, seeing the flame.

"It's burning, it's burning!" they all cried in one voice, almost all of them also straining towards the fireplace.

"Ganya, stop faking, I tell you for the last time!"

"Go in!" Ferdyshchenko bellowed, rushing to Ganya in a decided frenzy and pulling him by the sleeve. "Go in, you little swaggerer! It'll burn up! Oh, cur-r-rse you!"

Ganya shoved Ferdyshchenko aside forcefully, turned, and went towards the door; but before going two steps, he reeled and crashed to the floor.

"He fainted!" they cried all around.

"Dearest lady, it'll burn up!" Lebedev screamed.

"Burn up for nothing!" the roaring came from all sides.

"Katya, Pasha, fetch him water, spirits!" Nastasya Filippovna cried, seized the fire tongs and snatched the packet out.

The outer paper was nearly all charred and smoldering, but it could be seen at once that the inside was not damaged. The packet had been wrapped in three layers of newspaper, and the money was untouched. Everyone breathed more easily.

"Maybe just one little thousand is damaged a tiny bit, but the rest is untouched," Lebedev said tenderly.

"It's all his! The whole packet is his! Do you hear, gentlemen?" Nastasya Filippovna proclaimed, placing the packet beside Ganya. "He didn't go in after it, he held out! So his vanity is still greater than his lust for money. Never mind, he'll come to! Otherwise he might have killed me...There, he's already recovering. General, Ivan Petrovich, Darya Alexeevna, Katya, Pasha, Rogozhin, do you hear? The packet is his, Ganya's. I grant him full possession of it as a reward for...well, for whatever! Tell him that. Let it lie there beside him...Rogozhin, march! Farewell, Prince, I've seen a man for the first time! Farewell, Afanasy Ivanovich, merci!"

The whole of Rogozhin's crew, with noise, clatter, and shouting, raced through the rooms to the exit, following Rogozhin and Nastasya Filippovna. In the reception room the maids gave her her fur coat; the cook Marfa came running from the kitchen. Nastasya Filippovna kissed them all.

"Can it be, dearest lady, that you're leaving us for good? But where will you go? And on such a day, on your birthday!" the tearful maids asked, weeping and kissing her hands.

"I'll go to the street, Katya, you heard, that's the place for me, or else I'll become a washerwoman! Enough of Afanasy Ivanovich! Give him my regards, and don't think ill of me..."

The prince rushed headlong for the front gate, where they were all getting into four troikas with little bells. The general overtook him on the stairs.

"Good heavens, Prince, come to your senses!" he said, seizing him by the arm. "Drop it! You see what she's like! I'm speaking as a father..."

The prince looked at him, but, without saying a word, broke away and ran downstairs.

At the front gate, from which the troikas had just driven off, the general saw the prince catch the first cab and shout, "To Ekaterinhof, follow those troikas!" Then the general's little gray trotter pulled up and took the general home, along with his new hopes and calculations and the aforementioned pearls, which the general had all the same not forgotten to take with him. Amidst his calculations there also flashed once or twice the seductive image of Nastasya Filippovna; the general sighed:

"A pity! A real pity! A lost woman! A madwoman!...Well, sir, but what the prince needs now is not Nastasya Filippovna..."

A few moralizing and admonishing words of the same sort were also uttered by two other interlocutors from among Nastasya Filippovna's guests, who had decided to go a little way on foot.

"You know, Afanasy Ivanovich, they say something of the sort exists among the Japanese," Ivan Petrovich Ptitsyn was saying. "An offended man there supposedly goes to the offender and says to him: 'You have offended me, for that I have come to rip my belly open before your eyes,' and with those words he actually rips his belly open before his offender's eyes, no doubt feeling an extreme satisfaction, as if he had indeed revenged himself. There are strange characters in the world, Afanasy Ivanovich!"

"And you think it was something of that sort here, too?" replied Afanasy Ivanovich with a smile. "Hm! Anyhow, you've wittily...and the comparison is excellent. You saw for yourself, however, my dearest Ivan Petrovich, that I did all I could; I cannot do the impossible, wouldn't you agree? You must also agree, however, that there are some capital virtues in this woman...brilliant features. I even wanted to cry out to her just now, if only I could have allowed myself to do it in that bedlam, that she herself was my best defense against all her accusations. Well, who wouldn't be captivated by this woman on occasion to the point of forgetting all reason...and the rest? Look, that boor Rogozhin came lugging a hundred thousand to her! Let's say everything that happened there tonight was ephemeral, romantic, indecent, but, on the other hand, it was colorful, it was original, you must agree. God, what might have come from such a character and with such beauty! But, despite all my efforts, even education—all is lost! A diamond in the rough—I've said it many times..."

And Afanasy Ivanovich sighed deeply.

The Idiot

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky