The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

when shesaw my father’s portrait. It’s remarkable how entirely you and she areat one now-a-days.”

  “What, has she been here?” asked the prince with curiosity.

  “Yes! She looked long at the portrait and asked all about my father.‘You’d be just such another,’ she said at last, and laughed. ‘You havesuch strong passions, Parfen,’ she said, ‘that they’d have taken you toSiberia in no time if you had not, luckily, intelligence as well. Foryou have a good deal of intelligence.’ (She said this--believe it ornot. The first time I ever heard anything of that sort from her.) ‘You’dsoon have thrown up all this rowdyism that you indulge in now, and you’dhave settled down to quiet, steady money-making, because you have littleeducation; and here you’d have stayed just like your father before you.And you’d have loved your money so that you’d amass not two million,like him, but ten million; and you’d have died of hunger on your moneybags to finish up with, for you carry everything to extremes.’ There,that’s exactly word for word as she said it to me. She never talked tome like that before. She always talks nonsense and laughs when she’swith me. We went all over this old house together. ‘I shall change allthis,’ I said, ‘or else I’ll buy a new house for the wedding.’ ‘No, no!’she said, ‘don’t touch anything; leave it all as it is; I shall livewith your mother when I marry you.’

  “I took her to see my mother, and she was as respectful and kind asthough she were her own daughter. Mother has been almost demented eversince father died--she’s an old woman. She sits and bows from her chairto everyone she sees. If you left her alone and didn’t feed her forthree days, I don’t believe she would notice it. Well, I took her hand,and I said, ‘Give your blessing to this lady, mother, she’s going to bemy wife.’ So Nastasia kissed mother’s hand with great feeling. ‘She musthave suffered terribly, hasn’t she?’ she said. She saw this book herelying before me. ‘What! have you begun to read Russian history?’ sheasked. She told me once in Moscow, you know, that I had better getSolovieff’s Russian History and read it, because I knew nothing. ‘That’sgood,’ she said, ‘you go on like that, reading books. I’ll make youa list myself of the books you ought to read first--shall I?’ She hadnever once spoken to me like this before; it was the first time I felt Icould breathe before her like a living creature.”

  “I’m very, very glad to hear of this, Parfen,” said the prince, withreal feeling. “Who knows? Maybe God will yet bring you near to oneanother.”

  “Never, never!” cried Rogojin, excitedly.

  “Look here, Parfen; if you love her so much, surely you must be anxiousto earn her respect? And if you do so wish, surely you may hope to? Isaid just now that I considered it extraordinary that she could still beready to marry you. Well, though I cannot yet understand it, I feel sureshe must have some good reason, or she wouldn’t do it. She is sureof your love; but besides that, she must attribute _something_ else toyou--some good qualities, otherwise the thing would not be. What youhave just said confirms my words. You say yourself that she found itpossible to speak to you quite differently from her usual manner. Youare suspicious, you know, and jealous, therefore when anything annoyinghappens to you, you exaggerate its significance. Of course, of course,she does not think so ill of you as you say. Why, if she did, she wouldsimply be walking to death by drowning or by the knife, with her eyeswide open, when she married you. It is impossible! As if anybody wouldgo to their death deliberately!”

  Rogojin listened to the prince’s excited words with a bitter smile. Hisconviction was, apparently, unalterable.

  “How dreadfully you look at me, Parfen!” said the prince, with a feelingof dread.

  “Water or the knife?” said the latter, at last. “Ha, ha--that’s exactlywhy she is going to marry me, because she knows for certain that theknife awaits her. Prince, can it be that you don’t even yet see what’sat the root of it all?”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “Perhaps he really doesn’t understand me! They do say that you area--you know what! She loves another--there, you can understand thatmuch! Just as I love her, exactly so she loves another man. And thatother man is--do you know who? It’s you. There--you didn’t know that,eh?”

  “I?”

  “You, you! She has loved you ever since that day, her birthday! Onlyshe thinks she cannot marry you, because it would be the ruin of you.‘Everybody knows what sort of a woman I am,’ she says. She told me allthis herself, to my very face! She’s afraid of disgracing and ruiningyou, she says, but it doesn’t matter about me. She can marry me allright! Notice how much consideration she shows for me!”

  “But why did she run away to me, and then again from me to--”

  “From you to me? Ha, ha! that’s nothing! Why, she always acts as thoughshe were in a delirium now-a-days! Either she says, ‘Come on, I’ll marryyou! Let’s have the wedding quickly!’ and fixes the day, and seems in ahurry for it, and when it begins to come near she feels frightened; orelse some other idea gets into her head--goodness knows! you’ve seenher--you know how she goes on--laughing and crying and raving! There’snothing extraordinary about her having run away from you! She ran awaybecause she found out how dearly she loved you. She could not bear to benear you. You said just now that I had found her at Moscow, when she ranaway from you. I didn’t do anything of the sort; she came to me herself,straight from you. ‘Name the day--I’m ready!’ she said. ‘Let’s havesome champagne, and go and hear the gipsies sing!’ I tell you she’dhave thrown herself into the water long ago if it were not for me! Shedoesn’t do it because I am, perhaps, even more dreadful to her than thewater! She’s marrying me out of spite; if she marries me, I tell you, itwill be for spite!”

  “But how do you, how can you--” began the prince, gazing with dread andhorror at Rogojin.

  “Why don’t you finish your sentence? Shall I tell you what you werethinking to yourself just then? You were thinking, ‘How can she marryhim after this? How can it possibly be permitted?’ Oh, I know what youwere thinking about!”

  “I didn’t come here for that purpose, Parfen. That was not in my mind--”

  “That may be! Perhaps you didn’t _come_ with the idea, but the idea iscertainly there _now!_ Ha, ha! well, that’s enough! What are you upsetabout? Didn’t you really know it all before? You astonish me!”

  “All this is mere jealousy--it is some malady of yours, Parfen! Youexaggerate everything,” said the prince, excessively agitated. “What areyou doing?”

  “Let go of it!” said Parfen, seizing from the prince’s hand a knifewhich the latter had at that moment taken up from the table, where itlay beside the history. Parfen replaced it where it had been.

  “I seemed to know it--I felt it, when I was coming back to Petersburg,” continued the prince, “I did not want to come, I wished to forget allthis, to uproot it from my memory altogether! Well, good-bye--what isthe matter?”

  He had absently taken up the knife a second time, and again Rogojinsnatched it from his hand, and threw it down on the table. It was aplain looking knife, with a bone handle, a blade about eight inches long,and broad in proportion, it did not clasp.

  Seeing that the prince was considerably struck by the fact that he hadtwice seized this knife out of his hand, Rogojin caught it up withsome irritation, put it inside the book, and threw the latter across toanother table.

  “Do you cut your pages with it, or what?” asked Muishkin, still ratherabsently, as though unable to throw off a deep preoccupation into whichthe conversation had thrown him.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a garden knife, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Can’t one cut pages with a garden knife?”

  “It’s quite new.”

  “Well, what of that? Can’t I buy a new knife if I like?” shouted Rogojinfuriously, his irritation growing with every word.

  The prince shuddered, and gazed fixedly at Parfen. Suddenly he burst outlaughing.

  “Why, what an idea!” he said. “I didn’t mean to ask you any of thesequestions; I wa
s thinking of something quite different! But my head isheavy, and I seem so absent-minded nowadays! Well, good-bye--I can’tremember what I wanted to say--good-bye!”

  “Not that way,” said Rogojin.

  “There, I’ve forgotten that too!”

  “This way--come along--I’ll show you.”

  IV.

  They passed through the same rooms which the prince had traversed on hisarrival. In the largest there were pictures on the walls, portraits andlandscapes of little interest. Over the door, however, there was one ofstrange and rather striking shape; it was six or seven feet in length,and not more than a foot in height. It represented the Saviour justtaken from the cross.

  The prince glanced at it, but took no further notice. He moved onhastily, as though anxious to get out of the house. But Rogojin suddenlystopped underneath the picture.

  “My father picked up all these pictures very cheap at auctions, and soon,” he said; “they are all rubbish, except the one over the door, andthat is valuable. A man offered five hundred roubles for it last week.”

  “Yes--that’s a copy of a