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Anna Filippovna, amazed and wrathful, was sitting as before, her tear-stained eyes fixed on the baby.... "There! there!" Miguev muttered with a pale face, twisting his lips into a smile. "It was a joke.... It's not my baby,... it's the washer-woman's!... I... I was joking.... Take it to the porter."
"I'll go at once, fall on my knees, and say: 'Anna Filippovna! Anna is a good sort, she'll understand.... And we'll bring him up.... If it's a boy we'll call him Vladimir, and if it's a girl we'll call her Anna! Anyway, it will be a comfort in our old age." And he did as he determined.
"I have been trying with the cards whether it will be fine to-morrow, and whether our Alexey Stepanovitch will come," she said. "It is five days since he was here. . . . The weather is a chastisement from God." Nadyezhda Filippovna looked indifferently at her mother, got up, and began walking up and down the room.
The middle window of the bungalow was open and he could distinctly hear his wife, Anna Filippovna, laying the table for supper; in the yard close to the gate Yermolay, the porter, was plaintively strumming on the balalaika. The baby had only to wake up and begin to cry, and the secret would be discovered. Miguev was conscious of an overwhelming desire to make haste.
"The Heavenly Mother save and preserve him. But the rain, the rain!" In the morning the rain was not pattering on the panes, but the sky was still grey. The trees stood looking mournful, and at every gust of wind they scattered drops. The footprints on the muddy path, the ditches and the ruts were full of water. Nadyezhda Filippovna made up her mind to go.
On two opposite pages of The Idiot one finds the following characters brought in by name: General Epanchin, Prince S., Adelaïda Ivanovna, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, Yevgeny Pavlovitch Radomsky, Princess Byelokonsky, Aglaia, Prince Myshkin, Kolya Ivolgin, Ippolit, Varya, Ferdyshchenko, Nastasya Filippovna, Nina Alexandrovna, Ganya, Ptitsyn, and General Ivolgin.
All the way to the Myelkins' villa social questions were swarming in his brain and conscience was gnawing in his bosom. "If I were a decent, honest man," he thought, "I should damn everything, go with this baby to Anna Filippovna, fall on my knees before her, and say: 'Forgive me! I have sinned! Torture me, but we won't ruin an innocent child.
The mother-in-law of a lawyer, called Kvashin, and his wife, Nadyezhda Filippovna, dressed in waterproofs and shawls, were sitting over the dinner table in the dining-room.
Both looked at the cards and imagined how their Alexey Stepanovitch, utterly forlorn, was sitting now in the town in his gloomy, empty study and working, hungry, exhausted, yearning for his family. . . . "Do you know what, mamma?" said Nadyezhda Filippovna suddenly, and her eyes began to shine. "If the weather is the same to-morrow I'll go by the first train and see him in town!
Where is Alexey Stepanovitch?" Nadyezhda Filippovna raised her head and gazed at her mother with dry, imploring eyes. "He is deceiving us, mamma," she said. "What are you saying? Christ be with you!" cried the old lady in alarm, and her cap slipped off her head. "Who is going to deceive us? Lord, have mercy on us!" "He is deceiving us, mamma!" repeated her daughter, and her chin began to quiver.
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