more composed than I was; they did not seem tobe afraid of it. But they did not understand as I did.
“Suddenly the monster reappeared; it crawled slowly across the room andmade for the door, as though with some fixed intention, and with a slowmovement that was more horrible than ever.
“Then my mother opened the door and called my dog, Norma. Norma was agreat Newfoundland, and died five years ago.
“She sprang forward and stood still in front of the reptile as if shehad been turned to stone. The beast stopped too, but its tail andclaws still moved about. I believe animals are incapable of feelingsupernatural fright--if I have been rightly informed,--but at thismoment there appeared to me to be something more than ordinary aboutNorma’s terror, as though it must be supernatural; and as though shefelt, just as I did myself, that this reptile was connected with somemysterious secret, some fatal omen.
“Norma backed slowly and carefully away from the brute, which followedher, creeping deliberately after her as though it intended to make asudden dart and sting her.
“In spite of Norma’s terror she looked furious, though she trembled inall her limbs. At length she slowly bared her terrible teeth, openedher great red jaws, hesitated--took courage, and seized the beast in hermouth. It seemed to try to dart out of her jaws twice, but Norma caughtat it and half swallowed it as it was escaping. The shell cracked in herteeth; and the tail and legs stuck out of her mouth and shook about ina horrible manner. Suddenly Norma gave a piteous whine; the reptile hadbitten her tongue. She opened her mouth wide with the pain, and I sawthe beast lying across her tongue, and out of its body, which was almostbitten in two, came a hideous white-looking substance, oozing out intoNorma’s mouth; it was of the consistency of a crushed black-beetle. Justthen I awoke and the prince entered the room.”
“Gentlemen!” said Hippolyte, breaking off here, “I have not done yet,but it seems to me that I have written down a great deal here that isunnecessary,--this dream--”
“You have indeed!” said Gania.
“There is too much about myself, I know, but--” As Hippolyte said thishis face wore a tired, pained look, and he wiped the sweat off his brow.
“Yes,” said Lebedeff, “you certainly think a great deal too much aboutyourself.”
“Well--gentlemen--I do not force anyone to listen! If any of you areunwilling to sit it out, please go away, by all means!”
“He turns people out of a house that isn’t his own,” muttered Rogojin.
“Suppose we all go away?” said Ferdishenko suddenly.
Hippolyte clutched his manuscript, and gazing at the last speaker withglittering eyes, said: “You don’t like me at all!” A few laughed atthis, but not all.
“Hippolyte,” said the prince, “give me the papers, and go to bed like asensible fellow. We’ll have a good talk tomorrow, but you really mustn’tgo on with this reading; it is not good for you!”
“How can I? How can I?” cried Hippolyte, looking at him in amazement.“Gentlemen! I was a fool! I won’t break off again. Listen, everyone whowants to!”
He gulped down some water out of a glass standing near, bent over thetable, in order to hide his face from the audience, and recommenced.
“The idea that it is not worth while living for a few weeks tookpossession of me a month ago, when I was told that I had four weeks tolive, but only partially so at that time. The idea quite overmastered methree days since, that evening at Pavlofsk. The first time that I feltreally impressed with this thought was on the terrace at the prince’s,at the very moment when I had taken it into my head to make a last trialof life. I wanted to see people and trees (I believe I said so myself),I got excited, I maintained Burdovsky’s rights, ‘my neighbour!’--Idreamt that one and all would open their arms, and embrace me, thatthere would be an indescribable exchange of forgiveness between us all!In a word, I behaved like a fool, and then, at that very same instant, Ifelt my ‘last conviction.’ I ask myself now how I could have waited sixmonths for that conviction! I knew that I had a disease that sparesno one, and I really had no illusions; but the more I realized mycondition, the more I clung to life; I wanted to live at any price. Iconfess I might well have resented that blind, deaf fate, which, with noapparent reason, seemed to have decided to crush me like a fly; but whydid I not stop at resentment? Why did I begin to live, knowing that itwas not worthwhile to begin? Why did I attempt to do what I knew to bean impossibility? And yet I could not even read a book to the end; Ihad given up reading. What is the good of reading, what is the good oflearning anything, for just six months? That thought has made me throwaside a book more than once.
“Yes, that wall of Meyer’s could tell a tale if it liked. There was nospot on its dirty surface that I did not know by heart. Accursed wall!and yet it is dearer to me than all the Pavlofsk trees!--That is--it_would_ be dearer if it were not all the same to me, now!
“I remember now with what hungry interest I began to watch the lives ofother people--interest that I had never felt before! I used to wait forColia’s arrival impatiently, for I was so ill myself, then, that I couldnot leave the house. I so threw myself into every little detail of news,and took so much interest in every report and rumour, that I believe Ibecame a regular gossip! I could not understand, among other things, howall these people--with so much life in and before them--do not become_rich_--and I don’t understand it now. I remember being told of a poorwretch I once knew, who had died of hunger. I was almost beside myselfwith rage! I believe if I could have resuscitated him I would have doneso for the sole purpose of murdering him!
“Occasionally I was so much better that I could go out; but the streetsused to put me in such a rage that I would lock myself up for daysrather than go out, even if I were well enough to do so! I couldnot bear to see all those preoccupied, anxious-looking creaturescontinuously surging along the streets past me! Why are they alwaysanxious? What is the meaning of their eternal care and worry? It istheir wickedness, their perpetual detestable malice--that’s what itis--they are all full of malice, malice!
“Whose fault is it that they are all miserable, that they don’t know howto live, though they have fifty or sixty years of life before them? Whydid that fool allow himself to die of hunger with sixty years of unlivedlife before him?
“And everyone of them shows his rags, his toil-worn hands, and yells inhis wrath: ‘Here are we, working like cattle all our lives, and alwaysas hungry as dogs, and there are others who do not work, and are fat andrich!’ The eternal refrain! And side by side with them trots along somewretched fellow who has known better days, doing light porter’s workfrom morn to night for a living, always blubbering and saying that‘his wife died because he had no money to buy medicine with,’ and hischildren dying of cold and hunger, and his eldest daughter gone to thebad, and so on. Oh! I have no pity and no patience for these fools ofpeople. Why can’t they be Rothschilds? Whose fault is it that a man hasnot got millions of money like Rothschild? If he has life, all this mustbe in his power! Whose fault is it that he does not know how to live hislife?
“Oh! it’s all the same to me now--_now!_ But at that time I would soak mypillow at night with tears of mortification, and tear at my blanket inmy rage and fury. Oh, how I longed at that time to be turned out--_me_,eighteen years old, poor, half-clothed, turned out into the street,quite alone, without lodging, without work, without a crust of bread,without relations, without a single acquaintance, in some largetown--hungry, beaten (if you like), but in good health--and _then_ I wouldshow them--
“What would I show them?
“Oh, don’t think that I have no sense of my own humiliation! I havesuffered already in reading so far. Which of you all does not think me afool at this moment--a young fool who knows nothing of life--forgettingthat to live as I have lived these last six months is to live longerthan grey-haired old men. Well, let them laugh, and say it is allnonsense, if they please. They may say it is all fairy-tales, if theylike; and I have spent whole nights telling myself fairy-tales. Iremember them all. Bu
t how can I tell fairy-tales now? The time for themis over. They amused me when I found that there was not even time for meto learn the Greek grammar, as I wanted to do. ‘I shall die before I getto the syntax,’ I thought at the first page--and threw the book underthe table. It is there still, for I forbade anyone to pick it up.
“If this ‘Explanation’ gets into anybody’s hands, and they have patienceto read it through, they may consider me a madman, or a schoolboy, or,more likely, a man condemned to die, who thought it only natural toconclude that all men, excepting himself, esteem life far too lightly,live it far too carelessly and lazily, and are, therefore, one and all,unworthy of it. Well, I affirm that my reader is wrong again, for myconvictions have nothing to do with my sentence of death. Ask them, askany one of them, or all of them, what they mean by happiness! Oh, youmay be perfectly sure that if Columbus was happy, it was not after hehad discovered America, but when he was discovering it! You may be quitesure that he reached the culminating point of his happiness three daysbefore he saw the New
The Idiot Page 85