Book three begins on Prince Myshkin's birthday. He is at the Yepanchin's summer house in Pavlovsk with the Yepachins (Mrs. Yepanchin and her three daughters), Prince Myshkin, Prince Sh. and Radomsky discussing Russian liberalism.

Radomsky maintains that liberalism goes contrary to what Russia and Russians are. He says that a Russian liberal is an un-Russian Liberal. Liberalism, as we the readers get the sense out of Radomsky's speech, is something imported from EuropeÑ a by product of post enlightenment era. His view is that only the landowners and the priestly class who can be called the intellectual (in a western sense) mass of Russia have just adopted, with some modification the western doctrines and therefore the concept is not something that belongs to the Russian soil. If there is no originality, for instance an expression that is uniquely RussianÑ conceived and fostered in Russian soil by Russian people, it is not Russian. The Russian liberals he goes on to say are not for the betterment of the country that exists but rather an attack on the very foundation on which the country stands. Therefore Russian liberals, since they deny the country as it exists and has been existing, are not Russians and are thus un-Russian liberals.

The controversy wells up when Prince Myshkin tries to excuse his behavior, in this particular meeting, as a result of his illness. This candid confession is taken as nothing more than another outburst of idiocy by everyone except for Aglaya who is in love with the prince. She loves the prince for his compassionate and good character (this love, at this point in the story, is of course only alluded to). Aglaya despises the Prince for his naive confessions like this one. She despises him for people making fun of him and the Prince just taking it like a meek child. She tries to uplift the prince and seeing the futility again despises him not more than to show that she has dignity than to be an idiot's suitor. What she does not see is the subtle sense of dignity that the Prince maintains even though it appears that he is easily submitting.

They all go to see the bands in the pleasure garden. Aglaya, walking with the Prince hand in hand, points out a green bench in the park where she goes to every morning. The prince doesn't grasp that her is alluding a rendezvous. When the Prince gets a note form Aglaya that evening she expresses her disgust in having to tell him everything. At the bandstand an interesting incident takes place, Nastasya Fillipnova appears there in flesh. The Yepanchin group is flabbergasted to see before them the woman who has been acting on their fate. Nastasya has already planted the shadow of doubt in the Yepanchin's mind, concerning Radomsky's character, by associating herself with him. She is looked upon as a disgrace to the high society and a fallen creature. This time too she approaches him and mocks him with the news of his uncle's suicide in St. Petersburg. Nastasya's reasons for pestering Radomsky in such a manner is to cast him down from the eyes of the Yapanchins. He is a perspective suitor to Aglaya and therefore is regarded with high esteem by the Yepanchins. If she is successful in blemishing his character he will not get to marry Aglaya which will leave Prince Myshkin as her suitor. Nastasya, as she confesses, simply cannot marry the Prince. If the Prince married Aglaya, whom he loves as he confessed to Nastasya, he will be happy. Nastasya wants the Prince to be happy and this marriage, if it took place, will give her liberty to do anything. This freedom, of course, is an illusion for she herself loves the Prince dearly. Prince Myshkin is disconcerted at having Aglaya and Nastasya at the same place for the very first time.

A scandal follows Nastasya's conversation with Radomsky. A friend of Radomsky's friend can't help insulting Nastasya, who in turn strikes him across the face with a riding crop. The young officer about pounce on her except is held by the Prince from behind and Keller comes to the rescue. The Prince gets involved in the incident thus at the risk of a duel with the officer. On the same evening the Prince receives a note form Aglaya telling him to meet her at the green bench, in the pleasure gardens, the following morning at seven o'clock. At night in the same park the Prince, to his disbelief, learns from Rogozhin that Nastasya and Aglaya have been corresponding through letters.

He returns with Rogozhin to his lodging at Lebedev's house. There is a party to celebrate his birthday at the house, where a lot of people, including his well-wishers and drunks lured by champagne have gathered. The highlights of this gathering are:

Lebedev takes the railway tracks running all over Europe as the Wormwood star as a metaphoric allusion. The scientific rationality of things and human beings turning to the preservation of self interest with growing apathy towards humanity is in his view that wormwood star. People getting too commercial and weighing everything against self interest and self preservation is the age of the last horseman with the scales before destruction, as prophesied in the Apocalypse. The destruction is the weakening and finally the breakdown of humanity, an idea so strong that it has held together human beings for centuries.

Ippolit's confession and his attempted suicide.

Ippolit reads an open letter (an epigraph ) to all his friends viz. all humanity, regarding his approaching death and what it means to live long to a person approaching death. The letter is full of delusions and despair of a dying man. Yet on his treatment regarding life, he is an existentialist. His existentialism excludes the foreboding and the gloom that is naturally felt by people in their lifetimes. Ippolit is one of the few persons in the novel who is greatly influenced by Holbein's painting of the dead Christ. It shakes down his belief on the eternal life and God. By the end of his confession, at least for a man in his circumstance, convinces the readers that existence as being ludicrous if one is to posit a higher being as the sustainer yet give a life like his to a man.

In the letter Ippolit reveals his plans to kill himself in the morning as soon as the sun rises.

Suicide is a recurring theme in Dostoevsky's novel. It is the proof that someone has attained the status of a superman. One has such control over oneself that he/she is able to kill his/her own self. Suicide signifies the epitome of one's disbelief in God. Ippolit at this point is certainly one who has no conviction in God, being a young man swayed into different ideas and since he is waiting to die in a few days.

The people gathered at the house persuade Ippolit not to commit suicide. Ippolit appears to consent but when the time comes he runs out of the house pulls out his pistol and putting it against his head pulls the trigger. The gun doesn't go off because there is no firing cap in the bullet. Ippolit's friends are left to formulate their opinion about him. Some criticize him and jeer him while the prince and some other people believe and sympathize him. Basically for the majority of the people around him he just remains as some one who boasted and didn't back up his word.

The second most important event in book three occurs after the melodrama involving Ippolit. The Prince goes to see Aglaya in the morning. The bizarre love triangle between Aglaya, the prince and Nastasya is elucidated better in this meeting. Aglaya vaguely confesses her love to the Prince by proposing to run away from Pavlovsk. He declines. Then Aglaya gives the Prince all the letters Nastasya had written to her. She knows that Nastasya loves the Prince and the proposal that she sends to Aglaya that she should marry Myshkin is not what Nastasya really wants. Aglaya loves the Prince but wants him in his own accord and not as a present from his other woman. The prince on the contrary is bent on being Nastasya's savior. He believes that Nastasya is bent on proving that she is bad to him when the only wrong in her is just that she has suffered a lot. This rendezvous between the Prince and Aglaya is intercepted by Mrs. Yepanchin.

When the Prince reads the letters that Aglaya gave him he finds out that they are mostly about praising Aglaya and about how the Prince loves her. Nastasya maintains throughout that she is merely trying to make a person happy, who knew how unhappy she was and had tried to understand that position. The Nastasya of these letters, beseeching and in her humble form is not the Nastasya we have seen elsewhere in the book.

The problem, of course isn't solved that easily for the 'idiot' insists on saving Nastasya. Nastasya knows that she cannot love anyone but Myshkin. Myshkin is vague on the issue concerning love between a man and a woman. He is all about compassion, pity and the ideal Christian. Aglaya is in love with Myshkin but cannot stand the blatant presence of this other woman to whom Myshkin splurges his loyalty. When Nastasya meets the Prince she asks him whether he is happy or not, he gives his answer to Rogozhin that he is not.

Look up!

The Book of Revelation

An Interpretation of The Four Horsemen of Apocalypse