mmediately did his best to make his foolish
position a great deal worse.

"My dear, my dear!" he said, solemnly and reproachfully, looking at his
wife, with one hand on his heart.

"Won't you leave the room, mamma?" asked Varia, aloud.

"No, Varia, I shall sit it out to the end."

Nastasia must have overheard both question and reply, but her vivacity
was not in the least damped. On the contrary, it seemed to increase. She
immediately overwhelmed the general once more with questions, and within
five minutes that gentleman was as happy as a king, and holding forth at
the top of his voice, amid the laughter of almost all who heard him.

Colia jogged the prince's arm.

"Can't YOU get him out of the room, somehow? DO, please," and tears
of annoyance stood in the boy's eyes. "Curse that Gania!" he muttered,
between his teeth.

"Oh yes, I knew General Epanchin well," General Ivolgin was saying at
this moment; "he and Prince Nicolai Ivanovitch Muishkin--whose son I
have this day embraced after an absence of twenty years--and I,
were three inseparables. Alas one is in the grave, torn to pieces by
calumnies and bullets; another is now before you, still battling with
calumnies and bullets--"

"Bullets?" cried Nastasia.

"Yes, here in my chest. I received them at the siege of Kars, and I feel
them in bad weather now. And as to the third of our trio, Epanchin, of
course after that little affair with the poodle in the railway carriage,
it was all UP between us."

"Poodle? What was that? And in a railway carriage? Dear me," said
Nastasia, thoughtfully, as though trying to recall something to mind.

"Oh, just a silly, little occurrence, really not worth telling, about
Princess Bielokonski's governess, Miss Smith, and--oh, it is really not
worth telling!"

"No, no, we must have it!" cried Nastasia merrily.

"Yes, of course," said Ferdishenko. "C'est du nouveau."

"Ardalion," said Nina Alexandrovitch, entreatingly.

"Papa, you are wanted!" cried Colia.

"Well, it is a silly little story, in a few words," began the delighted
general. "A couple of years ago, soon after the new railway was opened,
I had to go somewhere or other on business. Well, I took a first-class
ticket, sat down, and began to smoke, or rather CONTINUED to smoke, for
I had lighted up before. I was alone in the carriage. Smoking is not
allowed, but is not prohibited either; it is half allowed--so to speak,
winked at. I had the window open."

"Sudden