“All that is extremely interesting,” Myshkin murmured in a very low voice, “if it really was so. ... I mean to say..,” he hastened to correct himself.
“Oh, prince,” cried the general, so carried away by his own story that perhaps he could not stop short even of the most flagrant indiscretion, “you say, ‘if it really was so’! But there was more, I assure you, far more! These are only paltry political facts. But I repeat I was the witness of the tears and groans of that great man at night; and that no one saw but I! Towards the end, indeed, he ceased to weep, there were no more tears, he only moaned at times; but his face was more and more overcast, as it were, with darkness. As though eternity had already cast its dark wings about it. Sometimes at night we spent whole hours alone together, in silence — the mameluke Roustan would be snoring in the next room, the fellow slept fearfully soundly. ‘But he is devoted to me and to the dynasty,’ Napoleon used to say about him. Once I was dreadfully grieved; and suddenly he noticed tears in my eyes. He looked at me tenderly. ‘bu feel for me!’ he cried, ‘you, a child, and perhaps another boy will feel for me — my son, le roi de Rome; all the rest, all, all hate me, and mv brothers would be the first to betray me in misfortune!’ I began to sob and flew to him. Then he broke down, he threw his arms round me, and our tears flowed together. ‘Do, do write a letter to the Empress Josephine!’ I sobbed to him. Napoleon started, pondered, and said to me: ‘You remind me of the one other heart that loves me; I thank you, my dear!’ He sat down on the spot, and wrote the letter to the Empress Josephine, which was taken by Constant next day.”
“You did splendidly,” said Myshkin. “In the midst of his evil thoughts you led him to good feelings.”
“Just so, prince, and how well you put it! How like your own good heart!” cried the general rapturously, and, strange to say, genuine tears stood in his eyes. “Yes, prince, yes, that was a magnificent spectacle. And do you know I very nearly went back with him to Paris, and should no doubt have shared with him his ‘sultry prison isle,’ but alas! — fate severed us! We were parted, he to the ‘sultry prison isle,’ where, who knows, he may have recalled in hours of tragic tribulation the tears of the poor boy who embraced him and forgave him Moscow. I was sent to the cadets’ corps, where I found nothing but strict discipline, the roughness of comrades, and . . . alas! all turned to dust and ashes! ‘I don’t want to part you from your mother, and take you with me,’ he said to me on the day of the retreat, ‘but I should like to do something for you.’ He had already mounted his horse. ‘Write something as a souvenir for me in my sister’s album,’ said I, timidly, for he was very troubled and gloomy. He turned, asked for a pen, took the album. ‘How old is your sister?’ he asked me. ‘Three years old,’ I answered. ‘Une petite fille a/ors/’And he wrote in the album.
7Ve mentezjamais.’
‘Napoleon, votre ami sincere.’
Such advice and in such a moment, prince, you can imagine!”
“Yes, that was remarkable.”
“That page was framed in gold under glass and always used to hang on the wall in my sister’s drawing-room, in the most conspicuous place, it hung there till her death; she died in childbirth; where it is now — I don’t know . . . but. . . Ach, Heaven! It’s two o’clock already! How I have kept you, prince! It’s unpardonable!”
The general got up from his chair.
“Oh, on the contrary,” mumbled Myshkin. “bu have so entertained me, and ... in fact, it’s so interesting; I am so grateful to you!”
“Prince!” said the general again, squeezing his hand till it hurt, gazing at him with sparkling eyes, as though suddenly thunderstruck at some thought he had recollected. “Prince! you are so kind, so good-hearted, that I’m sometimes positively sorry for you. I am touched when I look at you. Oh, God bless you! May a new life begin for you, blossoming . . . with love. Mine is over! Oh, forgive me. Good-bye!”
He went out quickly, covering his face with his hands. Myshkin could not doubt the genuineness of his emotion. He realised too that the old man had gone away enraptured at his success; yet he had a misgiving that he was one of that class of liars with whom lying has become a blinding passion, though at the very acme of their intoxication they secretly suspect that they are not believed, and that they cannot be believed. In his present position the old man might be overwhelmed with shame when he returned to the reality of things. He might suspect Myshkin of too great a compassion for him and feel insulted. “Haven’t I made it worse by leading him on to such flights?” Myshkin wondered uneasily, and suddenly he could not restrain himself, and laughed violently for ten minutes. He was nearly beginning to reproach himself for his laughter, but at once realised that he had nothing to reproach himself with, since he had an infinite pity for the general.
His misgiving proved true. In the evening he received a strange letter, brief but resolute. The general informed him that he was parting from him, too, for ever, that he respected him, and was grateful to him, but that even from him he could not accept “proofs of compassion which were derogatory to the dignity of a man who was unhappy enough without that.” When Myshkin heard that the old man had taken refuge with Nina Alexandrovna, he felt almost at ease about him. But we have seen already that the general had caused some sort of trouble at Lizaveta Prokofyevna’s too. Here we cannot go into the details, but we will mention briefly that the upshot of the interview was that the general scared Lizaveta Prokofyevna, and by his bitter insinuations against Ganya had roused her to indignation. He was led out in disgrace. That was why he had spent such a night and such a morning, was completely unhinged and had run out into the street almost in a state of frenzy.
Kolya had not yet fully grasped the position, and even hoped to bring him round by severity.
“Well, where are we off to now, do you suppose, general?” he said. “bu don’t want to go to the prince’s. You’ve quarrelled with Lebedyev, you’ve no money, and I never have any. We are in a nice mess in the street!”
‘“It’s better to be of a mess than in a mess!’ I made that . . . pun to the admiration of the officers’ mess ... in forty-four. ... In eighteen . . . forty-four, yes! ... I don’t remember... oh, don’t remind me, don’t remind me! ‘Where is my youth, where is my freshness!’ as exclaimed . . . who exclaimed it, Kolya?”
“Gogol, father, in ‘Dead Souls,’” answered Kolya, and he stole a timid glance at his father.
‘“Dead Souls’! Oh, yes, dead! When you bury me, write on the tombstone: ‘Here lies a dead soul!”Disqrace pursues me!’ Who said that, Kolva?”
“I don’t know, father.”
“There was no such person as Eropyegov? Eroshka. Eropyegov . . ,” he cried frantically, stopping short in the street. “And that was said by my son, my own son! Eropyegov, who for eleven months took the place to me of a brother, for whom I fought a duel. . . . Prince Vygoryetsky, our captain said to him over a bottle: ‘Grisha, where did you get your Anna ribbon, tell me that?”On the battlefield of my country, that’s where I got it!’ I shouted: ‘Bravo, Grisha!’ And that led to a duel, and afterwards he was married to Marya Petrovna Su .. . Sutugin, and was killed in the field. ... A bullet glanced off the cross on my breast and hit him straight in the brow. ‘I shall never forget!’ he cried, and fell on the spot. I . . . I’ve served with honour, Kolya; I’ve served nobly, but disgrace—’disgrace pursues me!’ You and Nina will come to my grave. ‘Poor Nina!’ I used to call her so in old days, Kolya, long ago in our early days, and how she loved. . . . Nina, Nina! What have I made of your life! For what can you love me, long-suffering soul! bur mother has the soul of an angel, Kolya, do you hear, of an angel!”
“I know that, father. Father, darling, let’s go back home to mother! She was running after us! Come, why are you standing still? As though you don’t understand ... Whyare you crying?”
Kolya shed tears himself, and kissed his father’s hands.
“You’re kissing my hands, mine!”
“Yes, yours, yours. W
hat is there to wonder at? Come, why are you crying in the middle of the street? And you call yourself a general, an army man; come, let’s go!”
“May God bless you, dear boy, for having been respectful to a wretched, disgraceful old man. Yes, to a wretched, disgraceful old man, your father. .. . May you, too, have such a boy . . . le roi de Rome. O, ‘a curse a curse on this house!’”
“But why on earth are you going on like this?” cried Kolya, boiling over suddenly, “what has happened? Why won’t you go home now? Why have you gone out of your mind?”
“I’ll explain, I’ll explain to you. . . . I’ll tell you everything; don’t shout, people will hear. . . le roi de Rome. . . . Oh, I’m sick, I’m sad. ‘Nurse, where is thy tomb?’ Who was it cried that, Kolya?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know who cried it! Let’s go home, at once, at once! I’ll give Ganya a hiding if necessary... but where are you off to again?”
But the general drew him to the steps of a house close by.
“Where are you going? That’s a stranger’s house!”
The general sat down on the step, still holding Kolya’s hand, and drawing him to him.
“Bend down, bend down!” he muttered. “I’ll tell you everything . . . disgrace . . . bend down . . . your ear, your ear; I’ll tell you in your ear...”
“But what is it?” cried Kolya, terribly alarmed, yet stooping down to listen.
“Le roi de Rome . . .”whispered the general. He, too, seemed trembling all over.
“What? Why do you keep harping on le roi de Rome? ... What?”
“I . . . I . . ,” whispered the general again, clinging more and more tightly to “his boy’s” shoulder. “I . . . want.. . I’ll tell. .. you everything, Marya . .. Marya .. . Petrovna Su-su-su ...”
Kolya tore himself away, seized the general by the shoulders, and looked at him frantically. The old man flushed crimson, his lips turned blue, faint spasms ran over his face. Suddenly he lurched forward and began slowly sinking into Kolya’s arms.
“A stroke!” the boy shouted aloud in the street, seeing at last what was the matter.
CHAPTER 5
In REALITY Varvara Ardalionovna had in her conversation with her brother somewhat exaggerated the certainty of her news concerning Myshkin’s engagement to Aglaia Epanchin.
Perhaps, like a sharp-sighted woman, she had divined what was bound to come to pass in the immediate future; perhaps, disappointed at her dream (in which, however, she had never really believed) passing off in smoke, she was too human to be able to deny herself the gratification of instilling added bitterness into her brother’s heart, by exaggerating the calamity, even though she loved him sincerely and felt sorry for him. In any case, she could not have received such exact information from her friends, the Epanchins; there were only hints,
half-uttered words, meaningful silences, and surmises. Though, perhaps, Aglaia’s sisters gossiped a little with design, so that they might themselves find out something from Varvara Ardalionovna. It may have been that they, too, could not forgo the feminine pleasure of teasing a friend a little, though they had known her from childhood; they could not in so long a time have failed to get at least a glimpse of what she was aiming at.
On the other hand, Myshkin, too, though he was perfectly right in assuring Lebedyev that he had nothing to tell him, and that nothing special had happened to him, may have been mistaken. Something very strange certainly was happening to all of them; nothing had happened, and yet, at the same time, a great deal had happened. Varvara Ardalionova, with her unfailing feminine instinct, had guessed this last fact.
It is very difficult, however, to explain in proper orderly fashion how it came to pass that every one in the Epanchins’ house was struck at once by the same idea, that something vital had happened to Aglaia, and that her fate was being decided. But as soon as this idea had flashed upon all of them, at once all insisted that they had felt misgivings about it and foreseen it long ago; that it had been clear since the episode of the “poor knight,” and even before, only, at that time, they were unwilling to believe in anything so absurd. So the sisters declared; Lizaveta Prokofyevna, of course, had foreseen and known everything long before anyone, and her “heart had ached about it” long ago; but, whether she had known it long ago or not, the thought of the prince suddenly became very distasteful to her, because it threw her so completely out of her reckoning. Here was a question which required an immediate answer; but not only was it impossible to answer it, but poor Lizaveta Prokofyevna, however much she struggled, could not even see the question quite clearly. It was a difficult matter. “Was the prince a good match, or not? Was it all a good thing, or not? If it were not a good thing (and undoubtedly it was not) in what way was it not good? And if, perhaps, it were good (and that was also possible) in what way was it good, again?” The head of the family himself, Ivan Fyodorovitch, was of course first of all surprised, but immediately afterwards made the confession that, “By Jove, he’d had an inkling of it all this time, now and again, he seemed to fancy something of the sort.” He relapsed into silence at the threatening glance of his wife; he was silent in the morning, but, in the evening, alone with his wife and compelled to speak, suddenly and, as it were, with unwonted boldness he gave vent to some unexpected opinions. “I say, after all, what did it amount to?” (Silence.) “All this was very strange of course if it were true, and he didn’t dispute it, but. . . .” (Silence again.) “And, on the other hand, if one looked at the thing without prejudice, the prince was a most charming fellow, upon my word, and . . . and, and — well, the name, our family name, all that would have the air, so to say, of keeping up the family name which had fallen low in the eyes of the world, that was, looking at it from that point of view, because they knew what the world was; the world was the world, but still the prince was not without fortune if it was only a middling one; he had . . . and, and, and” (prolonged silence, and a complete collapse). When Lizaveta Prokofyevna heard her husband’s words, her anger was beyond all bounds.
In her opinion all that had happened was “unpardonable and criminal follv, a sort of fantastic vision, stupid and absurd!” In the first place, “this little prince was a sickly idiot, and in the second place — a fool; he knew nothing of the world and had no place in it. To whom could one present him, where was one to put him? He was an impossible sort of democrat; he hadn’t even got a post. . . and . . . and what would Princess Byelokonsky say? And was this, was this the sort of husband they had imagined and planned for Aglaia?” The last argument, of course, was the chief one. At this reflection the mother’s heart shuddered, bleeding and weeping, though, at the same time, something quivered within it, whispering to her, “In what way is the prince not what is wanted?” And that protest of her own heart was what gave Lizaveta Prokofyevna more trouble than anything.
Aglaia’s sisters were for some reason pleased at the thought of Myshkin. It didn’t even strike them as very strange; in short, they might at any moment have gone over to his side completely. But they both made up their minds to keep quiet. It had been noticed as an invariable rule in the family that the more obstinate and emphatic Lizaveta Prokofyevna’s opposition and objection were on any matter of dispute, the surer sign it was for all of them that she was already almost on the point of agreeing about it. But Alexandra did not find it possible to be perfectly silent. Her mother, who had chosen her long ago as her adviser, was calling for her every minute now, and asking for her opinions and still more for her recollections; that is, “How it had all come to pass? How was it nobody saw it? Why did no one say anything? What was the meaning of that horrid ‘poor knight’? Why was she alone, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, doomed to worry about everything, to notice and foresee everything, while the others did nothing but count the crows,” and so on, and so on. Alexandra was on her guard at first, and confined herself to remarking that she thought her father’s idea rather true, that in the eyes of the world the choice of Prince Myshkin as the husband of one of the Epanchins
might seem very satisfactory. Gradually getting warmer, she even added that the prince was by no means “a fool,” and never had been; and as for his consequence — there was no knowing what a decent man’s consequence would depend upon in a few years’ time among us in Russia; whether on the successes in the service that were once essential, or on something else. To all this her mamma promptly retorted that Alexandra was “a Nihilist, and this was all their hateful ‘woman-question.’” Half an hour later she set off for town and from there to Kamenny Island to find Princess Byelokonsky, who happened, fortunately, to be in Petersburg at the time, though she was soon going away. Princess Byelokonsky was Aglaia’s godmother.
Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky Page 326