Mitya asks Madame Khokhlakov to lend him three thousand roubles

Mitya asks Madame Khokhlakov to lend him three thousand roubles in a scene where urgent need meets a promise that sounds like rescue but cannot provide the money he seeks. He comes in despair, hoping to secure a specific loan; she interprets saving him as directing him toward gold mines. When she finally admits she has no money, the apparent offer is revealed as a misunderstanding, and his frustration breaks out in a blow against the table.

The Urgent Request

Before going to Madame Khokhlakov, Mitya flies home, washes, combs his hair, brushes his clothes, and dresses. The careful preparation marks the importance he attaches to the visit: he has built his hopes on her and resolved to borrow three thousand roubles. His purpose is practical and immediate, not speculative. He needs the sum, and the brief sequence of grooming precedes a direct appeal to someone he believes may help.

When he reaches her, Mitya says he has come in despair and begs her to lend him three thousand roubles, offering what he describes as the safest security and most trustworthy guarantees. He tries to explain his plan, but he is also in a fearful hurry. His request is framed as a loan with assurances, not a plea for an open-ended rescue. The difference matters: he expects an answer about money he can obtain and use, while Madame Khokhlakov is already preparing to answer a broader, imagined need.

A Promise Misunderstood

Madame Khokhlakov cuts across his explanation and insists that she already knows what he needs. She says she will save him, recalling that she saved Belmesov, and asks what he thinks of the gold mines. Mitya answers that he has never thought about them. Their exchange makes the scene turn on two incompatible meanings of help: he is asking for a definite sum, while she presents a project that she regards as a form of salvation.

Mitya tries to return the conversation to his proposed plan and the security he can provide. Madame Khokhlakov again interrupts, declaring the matter settled: she has promised to save him and will do so. Her confidence gives the promise the force of a commitment, even though she has not agreed to lend the requested money. The gold mines recur as the center of her answer, while Mitya remains focused on the three thousand roubles that could meet his immediate need.

The Offer Collapses

At last, Mitya asks plainly whether he can have the sum she promised that day, or, if not, when he may come for it. Madame Khokhlakov responds with serene amazement: she does not have three thousand roubles. The certainty with which she has spoken of saving him gives way to an account of her own financial limitations. She says she has not a penny and has herself just borrowed five hundred roubles from Miusov while quarrelling with her steward.

She explains that she never lends money because lending it means losing friends, and says she would not give it to Mitya in particular because she likes him and wants to save him. Yet her proposed means of salvation remains the gold mines, repeated insistently instead of the loan he requested. What had sounded to Mitya like a promise of financial aid proves to be neither a cash offer nor a timetable for one. His hopes have been raised by the language of rescue and then left without the material support he came to obtain.

Frustration and Significance

Mitya’s final response is physical: he roars an exclamation and brings his fist down on the table with all his might. The gesture registers the collision between his desperate urgency and Madame Khokhlakov’s composed but misplaced confidence. The scene’s reversal is sharp: he enters believing that her words may secure three thousand roubles, only to learn that she has no money and understands his request as an occasion to recommend an entirely different course.

The episode is consequential as a failed attempt to raise the specific sum Mitya seeks, but its immediate force lies in the distance between intention and interpretation. Madame Khokhlakov means to help, yet her promise does not answer the conditions Mitya has laid out: a loan, a sum, and a need for speed. The repeated reference to the gold mines prolongs the mismatch rather than resolving it. By ending not with agreement but with Mitya’s fist striking the table, the scene makes visible the anger produced when benevolence promises rescue without grasping what rescue requires.