positively had a fight with them. Then I began talking to them; I talked to them every day as much as I could. They sometimes stopped and listened, though they still abused me. I told them how unhappy Marie was; soon they left off abusing me and walked away in silence. Little by little, we began talking together. I concealed nothing from them, I told them the whole story. They listened with great interest and soon began to be sorry for Marie. Some of them greeted her in a friendly way when they met. It’s the custom there when you meet people, whether you know them or not, to bow and wish them good-morning. I can fancy how astonished Marie was. One day two little girls got some things to eat and gave them to her; they came and told me of it. They told me that Marie cried, and that now they loved her very much. Soon all of them began to love her, and at the same time they began to love me too. They took to coming to see me often, and always asked me to tell them stories. I think I must have told them well, for they were very fond of listening to me. And afterwards I read and studied simply to have things to tell them, and for the remaining three years I used to tell them stories. Later on, when everybody blamed me — and even Schneider — for talking to them like grown-up people and concealing nothing from them, I said that it was a shame to deceive them; that they understood everything anyway, however much things were concealed from them, and that they learnt it perhaps in a bad way; but not so from me. One need only remember one’s own childhood. They did not agree. ... I kissed Marie a fortnight before her mother died; by the time the pastor delivered his harangue, all the children had come over to my side. I at once told them of the pastor’s action and explained it to them. They were all angry with him, and some of them were so enraged that they threw stones and broke his windows. I stopped them, for that was wrong; but everyone in the village heard of it at once, and they began to accuse me of corrupting the children. Then they all realised that the children loved Marie, and were dreadfully horrified; but Marie was happy. The children were forbidden to meet her, but they ran out to where she kept the herds, nearly half a mile from the village. They carried her dainties, and some simply ran out to hug and kiss her, say ‘Je vous aime, Marie,’ and ran back as fast as their legs would carry them. Marie was almost beside herself at such unlooked-for happiness; she had never dreamed of the possibility of it. She was shamefaced and joyful. What the children liked doing most, especially the girls, was running to tell her that I loved her and had talked to them a great deal about her. They told her that I told them all about her, and that now they loved her and pitied her and always would feel the same. Then they would run to me, and with such joyful, busy faces tell me that they had just seen Marie and that Marie sent her greetings to me. In the evenings I used to walk to the waterfall; there was one spot there quite hidden from the village and surrounded by poplars. There they would gather round me in the evening, some even coming secretly. I think they got immense enjoyment out of my love for Marie, and that was the only point in which I deceived them. I didn’t tell them that they were mistaken, that I was not in love with Marie, but simply very sorry for her. I saw that they wanted to have it as they imagined and had settled among themselves, and so I said nothing and let it seem that they guessed right. And what delicacy and tenderness were shown by those little hearts! They couldn’t bear to think that while their dear Leon loved Marie she should be so badly dressed and without shoes. Would you believe it, they managed to get her shoes and stockings and linen, and even a dress of some sort. How they managed to do it I can’t make out. The whole troop worked. When I questioned them, they only laughed merrily, and the girls clapped their hands and kissed me. I sometimes went to see Marie secretly too. She was by that time very ill and could scarcely walk. In the end she gave up working for the herdsman, but yet she went out every morning with the cattle. She used to sit a little apart. There was a ledge jutting out in an overhanging, almost vertical rock there. She used to sit out of sight on the stone, right in the corner, and she sat there almost without moving all day, from early morning till the cattle went home. She was by then so weak from consumption that she sat most of the time with her eyes shut and her head leaning against the rock and dozed, breathing painfully. Her face was as thin as a skeleton’s, and the sweat stood out on her brow and temples. That was how I always found her. I used to come for a moment, and I too did not want to be seen. As soon as I appeared,
Marie would start, open her eyes and fall to kissing my hands. I no longer tried to take them away, for it was a happiness to her. All the while I sat with her she trembled and wept. She did indeed try sometimes to speak, but it was difficult to understand her. She seemed like a crazy creature in terrible excitement and delight. Sometimes the children came with me. At such times they generally stood a little way off and kept watch to protect us from any one or anything, and that was an extraordinary pleasure to them. When we went away, Marie was again left alone with her eyes shut and her head leaning against the rock, dreaming perhaps of something. One morning she could no longer go out with the cows and remained at home in her deserted cottage. The children heard of it at once, and almost all of them went to ask after her that day. She lay in bed, entirely alone. For two days she was tended only by the children, who ran in to her by turns; but when the news reached the village that Marie was really dying, the old women went to sit with her and look after her. I think the villagers had begun to pity Marie; anyway, they left off scolding the children and preventing them from seeing her, as they had done before. Marie was drowsy all the time, but her sleep was broken — she coughed terribly. The old women drove the children away, but they ran under the window sometimes only for a moment, just to say, ‘Bonjour, notre bonne Marie.’ And as soon as she caught sight of them or heard them, she seemed to revive and, regardless of the old women, she would try to raise herself on her elbow, nod to them and thank them. They used to bring her dainties as before, but she scarcely ate anything. I assure you that, thanks to them, she died almost happy. Thanks to them, she forgot her bitter trouble; they brought her, as it were, forgiveness, for up to the very end she looked upon herself as a great sinner. They were like birds beating their wings against her window and calling to her every morning, ‘Nous t’aimons, Marie.’ She died very soon. I had expected her to last much longer. The day before her death I went to her at sunset; I think she knew me, and I pressed her hand for the last time. How wasted it was! And next morning they came to me and said that Marie was dead. Then the children could not be restrained. They decked her coffin with flowers and put a wreath on her head. The pastor did no dishonour to the dead in the church. There were not many people at the funeral, only a few, attracted by curiosity; but when the coffin had to be carried out, the children all rushed forward to carry it themselves. Though they were not strong enough to bear the weight of it alone, they helped to carry it, and all ran after the coffin, crying. Marie’s grave has been kept by the children ever since; they planted roses round it and deck it with flowers every year.
“But it was after the funeral that I was most persecuted by the villagers on account of the children. The pastor and the schoolmaster were at the bottom of it. The children were strictly forbidden even to meet me, and Schneider made it his duty to see that this prohibition was effectual. But we did see each other all the same; we communicated from a distance by signs. They used to send me little notes. In the end things were smoothed over; but it was very nice at that time. This persecution brought me nearer to the children than ever. In the last year I was almost reconciled to Thibaut and the pastor. And Schneider argued a great deal with me about my pernicious ‘system’ with children. As though I had a system! At last Schneider uttered a very stranqe thought — it was just before I went away. He told me that he had come to the conclusion that I was a complete child myself, altogether a child; that it was only in face and figure that I was like a grown-up person, but that in development, in soul, in character, and perhaps in intelligence, I was not grown up, and that so I should remain, if I lived to be sixty. I laughed very much.
He was wrong, of course, for I am not a child. But in one thing he is right: I don’t like being with grown-up people. I’ve known that a long time. I don’t like it because I don’t know how to get on with them. Whatever they say to me, however kind they are to me, I always feel somehow oppressed with them, and I am awfully glad when I can get away to my companions; and my companions have always been children, not because I am a child myself, but simply because I always was attracted by children. When I was first in the village, at the time when I used to take melancholy walks in the mountains alone, when I sometimes, especially at midday, met the whole noisy troop running out of school with their satchels and slates, with shouts and games and laughter, my whole soul went out to them at once. I
don’t know how it was, but I had a sort of intense happy sensation at every meeting with them. I stood still and laughed with happiness, looking at their little legs for ever flying along, at the boys and girls running together, at their laughter and their tears (for many of them managed to fight, cry, make it up and begin playing again on the way home from school), and then I forgot all my mournful thoughts. Afterwards, for the last three years, I couldn’t even understand how and why people are sad. My whole life was centred on the children.
“I never reckoned on leaving the village, and it did not enter my mind that I should one day come back here to Russia. I thought I would always stay there. But I saw at last that Schneider couldn’t go on keeping me; and then something turned up, so important apparently that Schneider himself urged me to go, and answered for me that I was coming. I shall see into it and take advice. My life will perhaps be quite changed; but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that my whole life is already changed. I left a great deal there — too much. It’s all gone. As I sat in the train, I thought, ‘Now I am going among people. I know nothing, perhaps, but a new life has begun for me.’ I determined to do my work resolutely and honestly. I may find it dull and difficult among people. In the first place, I resolved to be courteous and open with every one. ‘No one will expect more than that of me. Perhaps here, too, they will look on me as a child; but no matter.’ Everyone looks on me as an idiot, too, for some reason. I was so ill at one time that I really was almost like an idiot. But can I be an idiot now, when I am able to see for myself that people look upon me as an idiot? As I come in, I think, ‘I see they look upon me as an idiot, and yet I am sensible and they don’t guess it.’ ... I often have that thought.
“It was only at Berlin, when I got some little letters which they had already managed to write me, I realised how I loved the children. It’s very painful getting the first letter! How distressed they were seeing me off! They’d been preparing for my going for a month beforehand. ‘Leon s’en va, Leon s’en va pour toujours!’ We met every evening as before at the waterfall and talked of our parting. Sometimes we were as merry as before; only when we separated at night, they kissed and hugged me warmly, which they had not done previously. Some of them ran in secret to see me by themselves, simply to kiss and hug me alone, not before all the others. When I was setting off, they all, the whole flock of them, went with me to the station. The railway station was about a mile from our village. They tried not to cry, but some of them could not control themselves and wailed aloud, especially the girls. We made haste so as not to be late, but every now and then one of them would rush out of the crowd to throw his little arms round me and kiss me, and would stop the whole procession simply for that. And although we were in a hurry, we all stopped and waited for him to say good-bye. When I’d taken my seat and the train had started, they all shouted ‘Hurrah!’ and stood waiting there till the train was out of sight. I gazed at them too. ... Do you know, when I came in here and looked at your sweet faces — I notice people’s faces very much now — and heard your first words, my heart felt light for the first time since then. I thought then that perhaps I really was a lucky person. I know that one doesn’t often meet people whom one likes from the first, yet here I’ve come straight from the railway station and I meet you. I know very well that one’s ashamed to talk of one’s feelinqs to every one, but I
talk to you without feeling ashamed. I am an unsociable person and very likely I may not come to you again for a long time. Don’t take that as a slight. I don’t say it because I don’t value your friendship, and please don’t think that I have taken offence at something. You asked me about your faces and what I noticed in them. I shall be delighted to tell you that. bu have a happy face, Adelaida Ivanovna, the most sympathetic of the three. Besides your being very good-looking, one feels when one looks at you, ‘She has the face of a kind sister.’ You approach one simply and gaily, but you are quick to see into the heart. That’s how your face strikes me. You, Alexandra Ivanovna, have a fine and very sweet face too; but perhaps you have some secret trouble. bur heart is certainly of the kindest, but you are not light-hearted. There’s a peculiar something in your face, such as we see in Holbein’s Madonna in Dresden. Well, so much for your face. Am I good at guessing? bu took me to be so yourselves. But from your face, Lizaveta Prokofyevna,” he turned suddenly to Madame Epanchin, “from your face I feel positively certain that you are a perfect child in everything,
everything, in good and bad alike, in spite of your age. You are not angry with me for saying so? You know what I think of children. And don’t think it’s from simplicity that I have spoken so openly about your faces. Oh no, not at all! Perhaps I have my own idea in doing it.”
CHAPTER 7
When myshkin ceased speaking, they were all looking at him gaily, even Aglaia, and particularly Lizaveta Prokofyevna.
“Well, they have put you through your examination,” she cried. “Well, young ladies, you thought you were going to patronise him as a poor relation, but he scarcely deigns to accept you, and only with the proviso that he won’t come often! It makes us look silly, especially Ivan Fyodorovitch, and I am glad of it. Bravo, prince! We were told to put you through an examination. And as for what you said about my face, it’s perfectly true: I am a child, and I know it. I knew that before you told me; you put my own thoughts into words for me. I believe your character’s like mine exactly, like two drops of water,
and I am glad of it. Only you are a man and I am a woman and haven’t been to Switzerland: that’s the only difference.”
“Don’t be in a hurry, maman,” cried Aglaia. “The prince admitted that he had a special motive in all he has confessed and was not speaking simply.”
“Yes, yes,” laughed the others.
“Don’t tease him, my dears, he is shrewder maybe than all the three of you together. You will see. But why do you say nothing about Aglaia, prince? Aglaia is waiting, and so am I.”
“I can’t say anything at once: I’ll speak later.”
“Why? I should have thought she couldn’t be overlooked.”
“Oh, no, she couldn’t. bu are exceedingly beautiful, Aglaia Ivanovna. bu are so beautiful that one is afraid to look at you.”
“Is that all? What about her qualities?” Madame Epanchin persisted.
“It’s difficult to judge beauty; I am not ready yet. Beauty is a riddle.”
“That’s as good as setting Aglaia a riddle,” said Adelaida. “Guess it, Aglaia. But she is beautiful, prince?”
“Extremely,” answered the prince with warmth, looking enthusiastically at Aglaia. “Almost as beautiful as Nastasya Filippovna, though her face is quite different.”
All looked at one another in surprise.
“As who-o-o?” gasped Madame Epanchin. “As Nastasya Filippovna? Where have you seen Nastasya Filippovna? What Nastasya Filippovna?”
“Gavril Ardalionovitch was showing her portrait to Ivan Fyodorovitch just now.”
“What! he brought Ivan Fydorovitch her portrait?”
“To show it to him. Nastasya Filippovna had given it to Gavril Ardalionovitch to-day, and he brought it to show.”
“I want to see it!” Madame Epanchin cried eagerly. “Where is the photograph? If it was
given him, he must have got it, and he must still be in the study. He always comes to work on Wednesdays and never leaves before four. Call him at once. No, I am not dying to see him. Do me a favor, dear prince. Go to the study, take the photograph from him and bring it here. Tell him we want to look at it, please.”
“He is nice, but too simple,” said Adelaida, when the prince had qone.
“Yes, somewhat too much so,” Alexandra agreed; “so that it makes him a little absurd, in fact.”
Neither of them seemed to be saying all she thought.
“He got out of it very well, though, over our faces,” said Aglaia. “He flattered us all, even mamma.”
“Don’t be witty, please,” cried her mother. “He did not flatter me, though I was flattered.”
“You think he was sly?” asked Adelaida.
“I fancy he is not so simple.”
“Get along with you,” said her mother, getting angry. “To my thinking you are more absurd than he is. He is simple, but he’s got all his wits about him, in the most honourable sense, of course. Exactly like me.”
“It was certainly a mistake to have spoken about the photograph,” Myshkin reflected as he went to the study, feeling a little conscience-stricken. “But perhaps it was a good thing I spoke of it....”
Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky Page 272