. "If you are really very anxious for a smoke," he remarked,
"I think it might possibly be managed, if you are very quick about it.
You see they might come out and inquire for you, and you wouldn't be on
the spot. You see that door there? Go in there and you'll find a little
room on the right; you can smoke there, only open the window, because I
ought not to allow it really, and--." But there was no time, after all.

A young fellow entered the ante-room at this moment, with a bundle
of papers in his hand. The footman hastened to help him take off his
overcoat. The new arrival glanced at the prince out of the corners of
his eyes.

"This gentleman declares, Gavrila Ardalionovitch," began the man,
confidentially and almost familiarly, "that he is Prince Muishkin and
a relative of Madame Epanchin's. He has just arrived from abroad, with
nothing but a bundle by way of luggage--."

The prince did not hear the rest, because at this point the servant
continued his communication in a whisper.

Gavrila Ardalionovitch listened attentively, and gazed at the prince
with great curiosity. At last he motioned the man aside and stepped
hurriedly towards the prince.

"Are you Prince Muishkin?" he asked, with the greatest courtesy and
amiability.

He was a remarkably handsome young fellow of some twenty-eight summers,
fair and of middle height; he wore a small beard, and his face was most
intelligent. Yet his smile, in spite of its sweetness, was a little
thin, if I may so call it, and showed his teeth too evenly; his
gaze though decidedly good-humoured and ingenuous, was a trifle too
inquisitive and intent to be altogether agreeable.

"Probably when he is alone he looks quite different, and hardly smiles
at all!" thought the prince.

He explained about himself in a few words, very much the same as he had
told the footman and Rogojin beforehand.

Gavrila Ardalionovitch meanwhile seemed to be trying to recall
something.

"Was it not you, then, who sent a letter a year or less ago--from
Switzerland, I think it was--to Elizabetha Prokofievna (Mrs. Epanchin)?"

"It was."

"Oh, then, of course they will remember who you are. You wish to see
the general? I'll tell him at once--he will be free in a minute; but
you--you had better wait in the ante-chamber,--hadn't you? Why is he
here?" he added, severely, to the man.

"I tell you, sir, he wished it himself!"

At this moment the study door opened, and a military man, with a
port