and falls in love with her, at no time is he influenced by this idealisation or by any of her other misguided opinions. Aglaya's illusions and the Prince's real motivations are juxtaposed in a number of scenes or consecutive scenes. For example, in a scene from Part II Aglaya reads aloud Pushkin's poem "The Poor Knight", unambiguously indicating to the assembled company that she is identifying the Prince with the poem's subject, a noble Knight who goes off to fight heroically in the Crusades. When this scene is interrupted by the arrival of the group of Nihilists who are seeking to slander the Prince and exploit his wealth, Aglaya is ecstatic that he will have the opportunity to "defend himself triumphantly". Instead the Prince humbly tries to make peace with the young men and calmly absorbs their insults and provocations, even sympathising with them and offering assistance. In the dinner party scene at the Epanchins' house in Part IV of the novel, Myshkin delivers a passionate denunciation of Catholicism, describing it as an unchristian religion because it has been dominated by the desire for political supremacy. He is thus denouncing "the very confusion of the temporal and the spiritual that, on the personal level, Aglaya wishes him to incarnate." As with the other characters, Myshkin's persistently gentle and insightful voice is able at various times to affect Aglaya's interior dialogue in a way that enables her to find her true voice, but she too is unable to sustain the change it produces. In their longest and most significant dialogue, during their secret rendezvous at 'the green seat', her speech alternates between a spontaneous humour and innocence prompted by Myshkin's sincere love for her, and angry outbursts prompted by a misinterpretation of his devotion to Nastasya Filippovna and his failure to embody her romantic ideal. Ippolit Terentyev The character of Ippolit only has a relatively peripheral role in the plot, but he is of vital importance because he represents an antithetical orientation to Myshkin in relation to the problems of life and death, God and morality, that form the thematic basis of the novel. Like Myshkin, Ippolit lives in the shadow of illness and death, but his tormented nihilistic worldview excludes the vision of harmony, joy and compassion that is so essential to Myshkin. Consequently, he is impelled to increasing extremes of rebellion—against society, against nature and against God, as he