ta, ta!--bonne chance! Surely you intend
to be off there, don't you? Ha, ha! You've retired from the army in good
time, I see! Plain clothes! Well done, sly rogue! Nonsense! I see--you
knew it all before--I dare say you knew all about it yesterday-"

Although the impudence of this attack, this public proclamation of
intimacy, as it were, was doubtless premeditated, and had its special
object, yet Evgenie Pavlovitch at first seemed to intend to make no
show of observing either his tormentor or her words. But Nastasia's
communication struck him with the force of a thunderclap. On hearing
of his uncle's death he suddenly grew as white as a sheet, and turned
towards his informant.

At this moment, Lizabetha Prokofievna rose swiftly from her seat,
beckoned her companions, and left the place almost at a run.

Only the prince stopped behind for a moment, as though in indecision;
and Evgenie Pavlovitch lingered too, for he had not collected his
scattered wits. But the Epanchins had not had time to get more than
twenty paces away when a scandalous episode occurred. The young officer,
Evgenie Pavlovitch's friend who had been conversing with Aglaya, said
aloud in a great state of indignation:

"She ought to be whipped--that's the only way to deal with creatures
like that--she ought to be whipped!"

This gentleman was a confidant of Evgenie's, and had doubtless heard of
the carriage episode.

Nastasia turned to him. Her eyes flashed; she rushed up to a young man
standing near, whom she did not know in the least, but who happened to
have in his hand a thin cane. Seizing this from him, she brought it with
all her force across the face of her insulter.

All this occurred, of course, in one instant of time.

The young officer, forgetting himself, sprang towards her. Nastasia's
followers were not by her at the moment (the elderly gentleman having
disappeared altogether, and the younger man simply standing aside and
roaring with laughter).

In another moment, of course, the police would have been on the spot,
and it would have gone hard with Nastasia Philipovna had not unexpected
aid appeared.

Muishkin, who was but a couple of steps away, had time to spring forward
and seize the officer's arms from behind.

The officer, tearing himself from the prince's grasp, pushed him so
violently backwards that he staggered a few steps and then subsided into
a chair.

But there were other defenders for Nastasia on the spot by this ti