Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  “Was that Gavril Ardalionovitch who went out?” she asked suddenly, as she was fond of doing sometimes, interrupting the general conversation by her loud abrupt question, and addressing no one in particular.

  “Yes,” answered Myshkin.

  “I hardly knew him. He is very much changed and . .. greatly for the better.”

  “I am very glad,” said Myshkin.

  “He has been very ill,” added Varya, in a tone of glad commiseration.

  “How has he changed for the better?” Lizaveta Prokofyevna asked with angry perplexity and almost in dismay. “What an idea! There’s nothing better. What improvement do you see?”

  “There is nothing better than the ‘poor knight,’”

  Kolya, who had been standing by Madame Epanchin’s chair, brought out suddenly.

  “That’s exactly what I think,” said Prince S. and he laughed.

  “I am precisely of the same opinion,” Adelaida declared solemnly.

  “What poor knight?” asked Madame Epanchin, staring at all who had spoken, with perplexity and vexation, but seeing that Aglaia flushed hotly, she added angrily, “Some nonsense, of course! Who is this ‘poor knight’?”

  “It’s not the first time that urchin, your favourite, has twisted other people’s words awry!” answered Aglaia, with haughty indignation.

  In every outburst of anger from Aglaia (and she was very often angry) there was apparent, in spite of her evident seriousness and severity, something childish and impatiently schoolgirlish, so naively disguised that it was sometimes impossible not to laugh when one looked at her, though this was the cause of extreme indignation to Aglaia, who could not understand what people were laughing at, and “how they could, how they dared, laugh.” Her sisters and Prince S. lauqhed now, and even Mvshkin smiled, though he, too, flushed at something. Kolya roared with laughter, and was triumphant. Aglaia was angry in earnest, and looked twice as pretty. Her confusion was very becoming to her, and so was her vexation at her own confusion.

  “He has twisted so many of your words awry, too!” she added.

  “I based it on your own exclamation!” cried Kolya. “A month ago you were looking through ‘Don Quixote,’ and you cried out those very words, that there was nothing better than the ‘poor knight.’ I don’t know whom you were talking of, whether it was Don Quixote or Yevgeny Pavlovitch or some other person; but you were talking of some one and the conversation lasted a long while.”

  “I see you allow yourself to go too far, young man, with your conjectures,” Lizaveta Prokofyevna checked him with vexation.

  “But am I the only one?” Kolya persisted. “Everybody said so, and they are saying so still. Why, Prince S. and Adelaida Ivanovna and every one declared just now that they stood up for the ‘poor knight.’ So there must be a ‘poor knight,’ and he does exist, and I believe if it were not for Adelaida Ivanovna, we should have known long ago who the ‘poor knight’ was.”

  “What have I done?” laughed Adelaida.

  “You wouldn’t draw his portrait, that’s what you did! Aglaia Ivanovna begged you then to draw the portrait of the ‘poor knight,’ and described the whole subject of the picture. She made the subject up herself, you remember. You wouldn’t.”

  “But how could I draw it? According to the poem, that ‘poor knight’

  ‘no more in sight of any Raised the visor from his face.’

  How could I draw the face then? What was I to draw — the visor? — the anonymous hero?”

  “I don’t understand what you mean by the visor,” said Madame Epanchin angrily, though she was beginning to have a very clear idea who was meant by the nickname (probably agreed upon long ago) of the “poor knight.” But what specially angered her was that Prince Lyov Nikolayevitch was also disconcerted, and at last quite abashed like a bovof ten.

  “Well, will you put a stop to this foolishness or not? Will they explain to me this ‘poor knight’? Is it such an awful secret that one can’t approach it?”

  But they only went on laughing.

  “The fact is, there is a strange Russian poem about a poor knight,” Prince S. began at last, obviously anxious to suppress the subject and change the conversation, “a fragment without a beginning or an end. About a month ago we were all laughing after dinner and trying as usual to find a subject for Adelaida Ivanovna’s next picture. “Vbu know that the whole family is always trying to find subjects for Adelaida Ivanovna’s pictures. Then we hit on the ‘poor knight,’ which of us first I don’t remember.”

  “Aglaia Ivanovna!” cried Kolya.

  “Perhaps, I dare say, only I don’t remember,” Prince S. went on. “Some of us laughed at the subject, others declared that nothing could be better, but that to paint the ‘poor knight’ we must find a face for him. We began to go over the faces of all our friends. Not one was suitable, and there we left it,

  that was all. I don’t know why Nikolay Ardalionovitch thought fit to recall it all and bring it up again. What was amusing and appropriate at the time is quite uninteresting now.”

  “Because some fresh foolishness is meant, mischievous and offensive,” Lizaveta Prokofyevna snapped out.

  “There’s no foolishness in it, nothing but the deepest respect,” Aglaia suddenly brought out, quite unexpectedly, in a grave and earnest voice.

  She had mastered her confusion by now and completely recovered from it. What’s more, one might, looking at her, have supposed from certain signs that she was positively glad that the jest was going so far; and this revulsion of feeling took place in her at the very moment when Myshkin’s increasing and overwhelming embarrassment had become unmistakably evident to every one.

  “At one time they are laughing like mad things, and then they talk of the deepest respect! Crazy creatures! Why respect? Tell me at once, what makes you drag in deepest respect when it’s neither here nor there? ...”

  “Deepest respect,” Aglaia went on as gravely and earnestly in response to her mother’s almost spiteful questions, “because that poem simply describes a man who is capable of an ideal, and what’s more, a man who having once set an ideal before him has faith in it, and having faith in it gives up his life blindly to it. This does not always happen in our day. We are not told in that poem exactly what the ‘poor knight’s’ ideal was, but one can see it was some vision, some image of ‘pure beauty,’ and the knight in his loving devotion has put a rosary round his neck instead of a scarf. It’s true that there is some obscure device of which we are not told in full, the letters A.N.B. inscribed on his shield ...”

  “A.M.D.” Kolya corrected her.

  “But I say A.N.B. and that’s what I want to say,” Aglaia interrupted with vexation. “Anyway, it’s clear that that poor knight did not care what his lady was, or what she did. It was enough for him that he had chosen her and put faith in her ‘pure beauty and then did homage to her for ever. That’s just his merit, that if she became a thief afterwards, he would still be bound to believe in her and be ready to break a spear for her pure beauty. The poet seems to have meant to unite in one striking figure the grand conception of the piatonic love of mediaeval chivalry, as it was felt by a pure and lofty knight. Of course all that’s an ideal. In the ‘poor knight’ that feeling reaches its utmost limit in asceticism. It must be admitted that to be capable of such a feeling means a great deal, and that such feelings leave behind a profound impression, very, from one point of view, laudable, as with Don Quixote, for instance. The ‘poor knight’ is the same Don Quixote, only serious and not comic. I didn’t understand him at first, and laughed, but now I love the ‘poor knight,’ and what’s more, respect his exploits.”

  This was how Aglaia concluded, and, looking at her, it was difficult to tell whether she was in earnest or laughing.

  “Well, he must have been a fool anyway, he and his exploits,” was her mother’s comment. “And you are talking nonsense, my girl, a regular tirade. It’s not quite nice of you, to my thinking. In any case, it’s not good manners. What po
em? Read it; no doubt you know it! I must hear it. I’ve always disliked poetry; I knew no good would come of it. For goodness’ sake, put up with it, prince! “Vbu and I have got to put up with thinqs toqether, it seems,” she added,

  addressing Myshkin.

  She was very much annoyed. Myshkin tried to say something, but was still too embarrassed to speak. But Aglaia, who had taken such liberties in her tirade, was not in the least confused, but seemed pleased indeed. She got up at once, still grave and earnest as before, looking as though she had prepared herself and was only waiting to be asked, stepped into the middle of the verandah, and stood facing Myshkin, who was still sitting in his armchair. Every one stared at her with some surprise, and almost all of them, Prince S. her sisters and her mother, looked with an uncomfortable feeling at this new prank, which had already gone too far. But it was evident that what delighted Aglaia was just the affectation with which she was beginning the ceremony of reading. Her mother was on the point of sending her back to her seat, but at the very instant when Aglaia began to recite the well-known ballad, two more visitors entered the verandah from the street, talking loudly. These visitors were General Epanchin and a young man who followed him. Their entrance caused a slight commotion.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE YOUNG man, accompanying the general, was about twenty-eight, tall and well built, with a fine and intelligent face and a humorous and mocking look in his big shining black eyes. Aglaia did not even look round at him. She went on reciting the verses, still affecting to look at no one but Myshkin and addressing him only. He realised that she was doing it all with some object. But the new arrivals did, at any rate, somewhat lessen the awkwardness of his position. Seeing them, he stood up, nodded cordially to the general from a distance, signed to them not to interrupt the recitation, and succeeded in retreating behind his armchair. Then leaning with his arm on the back of it, he was able to listen to the ballad in a more convenient and less “absurd” position than before. Lizaveta Prokofyevna for her part motioned twice peremptorily to the visitors to stand still. Myshkin was much interested in his new visitor, the young man who was with General Epanchin. He knew he must be Yevgeny Pavlovitch Radomsky, of whom he had heard a good deal already, and thought more than once. He was only perplexed at his civilian dress; he had heard that Yevgeny Pavlovitch was a military man. A mocking smile played about the young man’s lips all the time the poem was being recited, as though he too had heard something about the “poor knight.”

  “Perhaps it was his idea,” thought Myshkin to himself.

  But it was quite different with Aglaia. The affectation and pompousness with which she began the recitation was replaced by earnestness and a deep consciousness of the spirit and meaning of the poem. She spoke the lines with such noble simplicity that by the end of the recitation she not only held the attention of all, but, by her interpretation of the lofty spirit of the ballad, she had, as it were, to some extent justified the exaggerated, affected gravity with which she had so solemnly stepped into the middle of the verandah. That gravity might now be taken to have been only due to the depth, and perhaps even simplicity, of her respect for the poem she had undertaken to interpret. Her eyes shone and a faint, scarcely perceptible shiver of inspiration and ecstasy passed twice over her handsome face. She recited:

  Lived a knight once, poor and simple, Pale of face vuth glance austere, Spare of speech, but with a spirit Proud, intolerant of fear. He had had a wondrous vision: Ne’er could feeble human art Gauge its deep, mysterious meaning, It was graven on his heart. And since then his soul had quivered With an all-consuming fire, Nevermore he looked on women, Speech with them did not desire. But he dropped his scarf thenceforward, Wore a chaplet in its place, And no more in sight of any Raised the visor from his face. Filled vuth purest love and fervour, Faith which his sweet dream did yield, In his blood he traced the letters N.F.B. upon his shield. When the Paladins proclaiming Ladies’ names as true love’s sign, Hurled themselves into the battle On the plains of Palestine, Lumen coeli, Sancta Rosa! Shouted he with flaming glance, And the fury of his menace Checked the Mussulman’s advance. Then returning to his castle In far distant country side, Silent, sad, bereft of reason, In his solitude he died.

  Recalling that moment later, Myshkin was long after greatly perplexed and tormented by a question to which he could find no answer: how could such a genuine and noble feeling be associated with such unmistakable malice and mockery? Of the existence of the mockery he had no doubt; he understood that clearly and had grounds for it. In the course of the recitation Aglaia had taken the liberty of changing the letters A.M.D. into N.F.B. That he had not misunderstood or mis-heard this he could have no doubt (it was proved to him afterwards). In any case Aglaia’s performance — a joke of course, though too ruthless and thoughtless — was premeditated. Every one had been talking (and “laughing”) about the “poor knight” for the last month. And yet as Myshkin recalled afterwards, Aglaia had pronounced those letters without any trace of jest or sneer, without indeed any special emphasis on those letters to suggest their hidden significance. On the contrary, she had uttered those letters with such unchanged gravity, with such innocent and naive simplicity that one might have supposed that those very letters were in the ballad and printed in the book. Myshkin felt a pang of discomfort and depression.

  Lizaveta Prokofyevna, of course, did not notice or understand the change in the letters, nor the allusion in it. General Epanchin understood nothing more than that a poem was being recited. Many of the other listeners understood and were surprised at the boldness of the performance, and also at the motive underlying it, but they were silent and tried to conceal it. But Myshkin was ready to wager that Yevgeny Pavlovitch had not only understood, but was even trying to show he had understood: he smiled with too mocking an air.

  “How splendid!” cried Madame Epanchin in genuine enthusiasm, as soon as the recitation was over. “Whose poem is it?”

  “Pushkin’s, maman, don’t put us to shame, it’s disgraceful!” cried Adelaida.

  “It’s a wonder I am no sillier with such daughters!” Lizaveta Prokofyevna responded bitterly. “It’s a disgrace! Give me that poem of Pushkin’s, as soon as we get home.”

  “But I don’t believe we’ve got a Pushkin!”

  “There have been two untidy volumes lying about ever since I can remember,” added Alexandra.

  “We must send some one, Fyodor or Alexey, by the first train to town to buy one — Alexey would be best. Aglaia, come here! Kiss me, you recited it splendidly, but if you recited it sincerely,” she added almost in a whisper, “lam sorry for you; if you did it to make fun of him, I can’t help blaminq vour feelinqs,

  so that in any case it would have been better not to recite it at all. Do you understand? Go along, miss, I shall have something to say to you presently, we’ve stayed too long.”

  Meanwhile Myshkin greeted General Epanchin, and the general was introducing “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch Radomsky to him.

  “I picked him up on the way here, he was coming from the station, he heard that I was coming here and all the rest were here ...”

  “I heard that you were here too,” Yevgeny Pavlovitch interrupted, “and as I had long meant to try and gain not only your acquaintance but your friendship, I didn’t want to lose time. bu are unwell? I have onlyjust heard ...”

  “I am perfectly well and very glad to make your acquaintance. I’ve heard a great deal about you, and even talked about you to Prince S,” answered Myshkin, holding out his hand.

  Mutual courtesies were exchanged, they pressed each other’s hands and looked intently into each other’s eyes. At once the conversation became general. Myshkin noticed (and he was noticing everything now, rapidly and eagerly, and possibly noticed what was not there at all) that Yevgeny Pavlovitch’s civilian dress excited general and very marked surprise, so much so, that for a time all other impressions were effaced and forgotten. It might be conjectured that this change implied something of great consequence.
Adelaida and Alexandra questioned Yevgeny Pavlovitch in perplexity, Prince S. his relation, even with great uneasiness, and General Epanchin spoke almost with emotion. Aglaia was the only one who looked with perfect composure though with curiosity at Yevgeny Pavlovitch for a moment, as though she were simply trying to decide whether the civilian dress or the military suited him best, but a minute later she turned away and did not look at him again. Lizaveta Prokofyevna, too, did not care to ask any questions, though perhaps she too was rather uneasy. Myshkin fancied that Yevgeny Pavlovitch was not in her good books.

  “He has surprised me, amazed me,” Ivan Fyodorovitch repeated in answer to all inquiries. “I wouldn’t believe him when I met him a little while ago in Petersburg. And why so suddenly, that’s the puzzle! He is always saying himself there’s no need to break the furniture.”

  From the conversation that followed, it appeared that Yevgeny Pavlovitch had long ago announced his intention of resigning his commission, but had always spoken of it so flippantly that it had been impossible to take his words seriously. He always talked, indeed, with such a jesting air of serious things that it was impossible to make him out, especially if he didn’t want to be made out.

  “It’s only for a time, for some months. A year at most, that I shall be on the retired list,” laughed Radomsky.

  “But there is no need of it whatever, as far as I understand your position, at least,” General Epanchin kept urging hotly.

  “But to visit my estates? bu advised it yourself; besides, I want to go abroad....”

  But the subject was soon changed; though the over-prominent and still persistent uneasiness seemed excessive to Myshkin, as he watched it and he divined that there was some special reason for it.

  “So the ‘poor knight’ is on the scene again,” Yevgeny Pavlovitch queried, approaching Aglaia.

  To Myshkin’s surprise she looked at him perplexed and questioning, as though to give him to understand that the “poor knight” was a subject which she could not possibly touch upon with him, and that she did not even comprehend his question.