The general had a family of blooming children. All was not roses there, indeed, but there was much on which his excellency’s fondest hopes and plans had long been earnestly and deeply concentrated. And, after all, what plans are graver and more sacred than a father’s? What should a man cling to, if not to his family?
The general’s family consisted of a wife and three grown-up daughters. The general had married many years before, when only a lieutenant, a girl of almost his own age, who was not distinguished either by beauty or education, and with whom he had received only a dowry of fifty souls, which served, however, as a stepping-stone to his fortune in later days. But the general never in after years complained of his early marriage, he never regarded it as the error of his luckless youth, and he so respected his wife, and at times so feared her, indeed, that he positively loved her. His wife was a Princess Myshkin, of an ancient though by no means brilliant family, and she had a great opinion of herself on account of her birth. An influential person, one of those patrons whose patronage costs them nothing, had consented to interest himself in the young princess’s marriage. He had opened a way for the young officer and had given him a helping hand along it, though indeed no hand was needed, a glance was enough and would not have been thrown away! With few exceptions the husband and wife had spent their whole life in harmony together. At an early age Madame Epanchin, as a princess by birth, the last of her family, possibly, too, through her personal qualities, had succeeded in finding influential friends in the highest circles. In later years, through her husband’s wealth and consequence in the service, she began to feel almost at home in those exalted regions.
It was during these years that the general’s three daughters — Alexandra, Adelaida and Aglaia — had grown up. They were only Epanchins, it’s true, but of noble rank on their mother’s side, with considerable dowries and a father who was expected to rise to a very high position sooner or later, and what was also an important matter, they were all three remarkably good-looking, even the eldest, Alexandra, who was already turned twenty-five. The second was twenty-three and the youngest, Aglaia, was only just twenty. This youngest one was quite a beauty and was beginning to attract much attention in society. But that was not everything; all three were distinguished by education, cleverness and talent. Every one knew that they were remarkably fond of one another and always hung together. People even talked of sacrifices made by the two elder sisters for the sake of the youngest, who was the idol of the house. They were not fond of showing themselves off in society and were modest to a fault. No one could reproach them with haughtiness or conceit, yet they were known to be proud and to understand their own value. The eldest was a musician, the second painted remarkably well, but this had not been generally known till lately and had only come out accidentally. In a word, a great deal was said in praise of them. But there were hostile critics. People talked with horror of the number of books they had read. They were in no hurry to get married; they valued belonging to a certain circle in society, yet not to excess. This was the more remarkable as every one knew the attitude, the character, the aims and the desi res of thei r father.
It was about eleven o’clock when Myshkin rang at the general’s flat, which was on the first floor, and was a modest one considering his position. A liveried servant opened the door and Myshkin had much ado to explain his appearance to the man who, from the first, looked suspiciously at him and his bundle. At last, on his repeated and definite assertion that he really was Prince Myshkin and that he absolutely must see the general on urgent business, the wondering servant conducted him into a little anteroom leading to the waiting-room that adjoined the general’s study, and handed him over to another servant, whose duty it was to wait in the morning in the anteroom and to announce visitors to the general. This second servant, who wore a tailcoat, was a man over forty, with an anxious countenanance. He was his excellency’s special attendant who ushered visitors into the study and so knew his own importance.
“Step into the waiting-room and leave your bundle here,” he said, seating himself in his armchair with deliberation and dignity, and looking with stern surprise at Myshkin, who had sat down on a chair beside him with his bundle in his hands.
“If you’ll allow me,” said Myshkin, “I’d rather wait here with you; what am I to do in there alone?”
“You can’t stay in the anteroom, for you are a visitor, in other words a guest. Do you want to see the general himself?”
The servant obviously found it difficult to bring himself to admit such a visitor and decided to question him once more.
“Yes, I have business . . .” Myshkin began.
“I don’t ask you what business — my duty is only to announce you. But I’ve told you already, without the secretary’s leave I am not going to announce you.”
The man’s suspicion grew more and more marked: the prince was too unlike the ordinary run of visitors. Though at a certain hour the general used often, almost every day in fact, to receive visitors of the most varied description, especially on business, yet in spite of the latitude of his instructions the attendant felt great hesitation; the secretary’s opinion was essential before he showed him in.
“Are you really . . . from abroad?” he asked, almost in spite of himself, and was confused.
He had been about perhaps to ask, “Are you really Prince Myshkin?”
“Yes, I have only just come from the station. I think you were going to ask, ‘am I really Prince Myshkin?’ but you didn’t ask for politeness.”
“Hm!” grunted the astounded servant.
“I assure you that I haven’t told you a lie and you won’t get into trouble on my account. And you need not be surprised at my looking like this and having a bundle; I am not in very flourishing circumstances just now.”
“Hm! I have no apprehension on that score, you know. It’s my duty to announce you, and the secretary will see you, unless you . . . that’s just the difficulty. . . . You are not asking the general for assistance, if I may make bold to inquire?”
“Oh no, you can rest assured of that. My business is different.”
“You must excuse me, but I asked looking at you. Wait for the secretary; his excellency is engaged with the colonel at present and then the secretary . . . from the company . . . is coming.”
“Then, if I have to wait a long while, I should like to ask you if there is anywhere I could smoke? I’ve got a pipe and tobacco.”
“Smoke?” repeated the attendant, glancing at him with scornful surprise as though he could scarcely believe his ears. “Smoke? No, you can’t smoke here; you ought to be ashamed to think of such a thing. He-he! It’s a queer business.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean in this room; I know that, I would have gone anywhere else you showed me, for I
haven’t had a smoke for three hours. I am used to it. But it’s as you please, there’s a saying, you know, ‘At Rome one must . . .’”
“Well, how am I going to announce a fellow like you?” the attendant could not help muttering. “In the first place you have no business to be here, you ought to be sitting in the waiting-room, for you are a visitor, in other words a guest, and I shall be blamed for it. . . . You are not thinking of staying with the family?” he added, glancing once more at the bundle, which evidently disturbed him.
“No, I don’t think so. Even if they invite me, I shan’t stay. I’ve simply come to make their acquaintance, that’s all.”
“What? to make their acquaintance?” the attendant repeated with amazement and redoubled suspiciousness. “Why, you said at first you’d come on business?”
“Oh, it’s hardly business. Though I have business, if you like, but only to ask advice; I’ve come chiefly to introduce myself, because I am Prince Myshkin and Madame Epanchin is a Princess Myshkin, the last of them, and there are no Myshkins left but she and I.”
“Then you are a relation?” the startled lackey was positively alarmed.
“Hardly that either. Still, to stretch a p
oint, I am a relation, but so distant that it’s not worth counting. I wrote to Madame Epanchin from abroad, but she didn’t answer me. Yet I thought I must make her acquaintance on my return. I tell you all this that you may have no doubt about me, for I see you are still uneasy. Announce Prince Myshkin, and the name itself will be a sufficient reason for my visit. If I am received — well and good, if not, it’s perhaps just as well. But I don’t think they can refuse to see me. Madame Epanchin will surely want to see the last representative of the elder branch of her family. She thinks a great deal of her family, as I have heard on good authority!”
The prince’s conversation seemed simple enough, yet its very simplicity only made it more inappropriate in the present case, and the experienced attendant could not but feel that what was perfectly suitable from man to man was utterly unsuitable from a visitor to a manservant. And since servants are far more intelligent than their masters usually suppose, it struck the man that there were two explanations: either the prince was some sort of impostor who had come to beg of the general, or he was simply a little bit soft and had no sense of dignity, for a prince with his wits about him and a sense of his own dignity, would not sit in an anteroom and talk to a servant about his affairs. So in either case he might get into trouble over him.
“Anyway, it would be better if you’d walk into the waiting-room,” he observed, as impressively as possible.
“But if I had been there, I wouldn’t have explained it all to you,” said Myshkin, laughing good-humouredly, “and you would still have been anxious, looking at my cloak and bundle. Now, perhaps, you needn’t wait for the secretary, but can go and announce me to the general.”
“I can’t announce a visitor like you without the secretary; besides, his excellency gave special orders just now that he was not to be disturbed for anyone while he is with the colonel. Gavril Ardalionovitch goes in without being announced.”
“An official?”
“Gavril Ardalionovitch? No. He is in the service of the company. You might put your bundle here.”
“I was meaning to, if I may. And I think I’ll take off my cloak too.”
“Of course, you couldn’t go in in your cloak.”
Myshkin stood up and hurriedly took off his cloak, remaining in a fairly decent, well-cut, though worn, short jacket. A steel chain was visible on his waistcoat, and on the chain was a silver Geneva watch.
Though the prince was a bit soft — the footman had made up his mind that he was so — yet he felt it unseemly to keep up a conversation with a visitor. Moreover, he could not help feeling a sort of liking for the prince, though from another point of view he aroused in him a feeling of strong and coarse indignation.
“And Madame Epanchin, when does she see visitors?” asked Myshkin, sitting down again in the same place.
“That’s not my business. She sees visitors at different times according to who they are. The dressmaker is admitted at eleven even, Gavril Ardalionovitch is admitted earlier than other people, even to early lunch.”
“Your rooms here are kept warmer than abroad,”
observed Myshkin, “but it’s warmer out of doors there than here. A Russian who is not used to it can hardly live in their houses in the winter.”
“Don’t they heat them?”
“No, and the houses are differently built, that is to say the stoves and windows are different.”
“Hm! Have you been away long?”
“Four years. But I was almost all the time at the same place in the country.”
“You’ve grown strange to our ways?”
“Yes, that’s true. Would you believe it, I am surprised to find I haven’t forgotten how to speak Russian. As I talk to you, I keep thinking ‘Why, I am speaking Russian nicely.’ Perhaps that’s why I talk so much. Ever since yesterday I keep longing to talk Russian.”
“Hm! Ha! Used you to live in Petersburg?” In spite of his efforts the lackey could not resist being drawn into such a polite and affable conversation.
“In Petersburg? I’ve scarcely been there at all, only on my way to other places. I knew nothing of the town before, and now I hear there’s so much new in it that anyone who knew it would have to get to know it afresh. People talk a great deal about the new Courts of Justice now.”
“Hm! . . . Courts of Justice. . . . It’s true there are Courts of Justice. And how is it abroad, are their courts better than ours?”
“I don’t know. I’ve heard a great deal that’s good about ours. We’ve no capital punishment, you know.”
“Why, do they execute people there then?”
“Yes. I saw it in France, at Lyons. Dr. Schneider took me with him.”
“Do they hang them?”
“No, in France they always cut off their heads.”
“Do they scream?”
“How could they? It’s done in an instant. They make the man lie down and then a great knife is brought down by a heavy, powerful machine, called the guillotine. . . . The head falls off before one has time to wink. The preparations are horrible. When they read the sentence, get the man ready, bind him, lead him to the scaffold — that’s what’s awful! Crowds assemble, even women, though they don’t like women to look on. . . .”
“It’s not a thing for them!”
“Of course not, of course not! Such a horrible thing! . . . The criminal was an intelligent, middle-
aged man, strong and courageous, called Legros. But I assure you, though you may not believe me, when he mounted the scaffold he was weeping and was as white as paper. Isn’t it incredible? Isn’t it awful? Who cries for fear? I’d no idea that a grown man, not a child, a man who never cried, a man of forty-five, could cry for fear! What must be passing in the soul at such a moment; to what anguish it must be brought! It’s an outrage on the soul, that’s what it is! It is written ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ so because he has killed, are we to kill him? No, that’s impossible. It’s a month since I saw that, but I seem to see it before my eyes still. I’ve dreamt of it half a dozen times.”
Myshkin was quite moved as he spoke, a faint colour came into his pale face, though his voice was still gentle. The footman followed him with sympathetic interest, so that he seemed sorry for him to stop. He, too, was perhaps a man of imagination and strainings after thought.
“It’s a good thing at least that there is not much pain,” he observed, “when the head falls off.”
“Do you know,” Myshkin answered warmly, “you’ve just made that observation and every one says the same, and the guillotine was invented with that object. But the idea occurred to me at the time that perhaps it made it worse. That will seem to you an absurd and wild idea, but if one has some imagination, one may suppose even that. Think! if there were torture, for instance, there would be suffering and wounds, bodily agony, and so all that would distract the mind from spiritual suffering, so that one would only be tortured by wounds till one died. But the chief and worst pain may not be in the bodily suffering but in one’s knowing for certain that in an hour, and then in ten minutes, and then in half a minute, and then now, at the very moment, the soul will leave the body and that one will cease to be a man and that that’s bound to happen; the worst part of it is that it’s certain. When you lay your head down under the knife and hear the knife slide over your head, that quarter of a second is the most terrible of all. You know this is not only my fancy, many people have said the same. I believe that so thoroughly that I’ll tell you what I think. To kill for murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands. Anyone murdered by brigands, whose throat is cut at night in a wood, or something of that sort, must surely hope to escape till the very last minute. There have been instances when a man has still hoped for escape, running or begging for mercy after his throat was cut. But in the other case all that last hope, which makes dying ten times as easy, is taken away for certain. There is the sentence, and the whole awful torture lies in the fact that
there is certainly no escape, and there is no torture in the world more terrible. You may lead a soldier out and set him facing the cannon in battle and fire at him and he’ll still hope; but read a sentence of certain death over that same soldier, and he will go out of his mind or burst into tears. Who can tell whether human nature is able to bear this without madness? Why this hideous, useless, unnecessary outrage? Perhaps there is some man who has been sentenced to death, been exposed to this torture and has then been told ‘you can go, you are pardoned.’ Perhaps such a man could tell us. It was of this torture and of this agony that Christ spoke, too. No, you can’t treat a man like that!”
Though the footman would not have been able to express himself like Myshkin, he understood most, if not all, of the speech; that was evident from the softened expression of his face.
“If you are so desirous of smoking,” he observed, “you might be able to, perhaps, only you would have to make haste about it. For his excellency might ask for you all of a sudden and you wouldn’t be here. You see the door under the stairs, go in there and there’s a little room on the right; you can smoke there, only you must open the window, for it’s against the rules. .
But Myshkin had not time to go and smoke. A young man with papers in his hands suddenly appeared in the anteroom. The footman began helping him off with his coat. The young man looked askance at Myshkin.
“This gentleman, Gavril Ardalionovitch,” the footman began confidentially and almost familiarly, “announces himself as Prince Myshkin and a relation of the mistress; he has just arrived from abroad with the bundle in his hand, only. . . .”
Myshkin could not catch the rest. As the footman began to whisper, Gavril Ardalionovitch listened attentively and looked with great interest at the prince. He ceased listening at last and approached him impatiently.
Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky Page 265