Myshkin listened to this with eyes shining with delight and emotion. With great warmth he declared that he should never forgive himself for not having seized an opportunity to seek out and visit the ladies who had brought him up, though he had been for six months in the central provinces. He had been meaning to set off every day, but had been continually occupied with other matters. . . . But that now he was determined ... he would certainly . . . even though it were to X Province. . . . “So you know Natalya Nikitishna? What a fine, what a saintly nature! But, Marfa Nikitishna, too . . . forgive me . . . but I think you are mistaken about Marfa Nikitishna! She was severe, but . . . how could she help losing patience . . . with such an idiot as I was then. Ha-ha! “Vbu know I was a complete idiot. Ha-ha! Though . . . you saw me then, and . . . how is it that I don’t remember you, tell me please? So you ... my God! are you really a relation of Nikolay Andreyevitch Pavlishtchev?”
“I as-sure you I am,” said Ivan Petrovitch, with a smile, scrutinising Myshkin.
“Oh, I didn’t say that because I . . . doubted it. . . and, in fact, how could I doubt it. . . Ha-ha! ... in the least? But I only mean that Nikolay Andreyevitch Pavlishtchev was such a splendid man! A most noble-hearted man, I assure you!”
Myshkin was not exactly breathless but “choking with good-heartedness,” as Adelaida expressed it next day to her betrothed, Prince S.
“Mercy on us,” laughed Ivan Petrovitch. “Why shouldn’t I be a relation of a noble-hearted man, even?”
“Oh, my goodness!” cried Myshkin, overcome with confusion and growing more and more hurried and eager. “I... I’ve said something stupid again, but. .. that’s bound to happen because I ... I ... I ... but that’s out of place again! And of what consequence am I, pray, beside such interests, such vast interests? And by comparison with such a noble-hearted man! For you know, he really was a noble man, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he?”
Myshkin was positively trembling all over. Why he was suddenly so agitated, why he was in such a state of ecstasy and emotion quite irrelevant and as it seemed out of all proportion with the subject of conversation, it was difficult to decide. He was in such a state of mind and he almost seemed to feel the warmest and liveliest gratitude to some one for something, perhaps to Ivan Petrovitch himself, if not to the whole company. He was “bubbling over” with happiness. Ivan Petrovitch began at last staring at him more fixedly, the “dignitary” too began looking at him with great intentness. Princess Byelokonsky looked wrathfully at Myshkin and tightened her lips. Prince N. Yevgeny Pavlovitch, Prince S. the young ladies, all broke off their conversation and listened. Aglaia seemed frightened, Lizaveta Prokofyevna’s heart failed her. They, too, the mother and daughters, had behaved strangely: they had foreseen and decided that it would be better for Myshkin to sit still and be silent the whole evening. But as soon as they saw him sitting in complete solitude, perfectly satisfied with his position, they were at once dreadfully upset. Alexandra had been on the point of going to him across the room and tactfully joining the company, that is Prince N.’s group, near Princess Byelokonsky. And now that Myshkin had begun talking of his own accord they were even more perturbed.
“You are right in saying that he was a most excellent man,” Ivan Petrovitch pronounced impressively, with no smile now. “Yes, yes, he was an excellent man! Excellent, and worthy,” he added, after a pause. “Worthy one may say, of all respect,” he added more impressively, after a third pause. “And ... and it is very agreeable to see on your part.
“Wasn’t it that Pavlishtchev that there was a queer story about . . . with the abbe ... the abbe . . . I’ve forgotten which abbe . . . only everybody was talking about it at one time,” the “dignitary” brought out as though recollecting something.
“With the Abbe Goureau, a Jesuit,” Ivan Petrovitch recalled. “fes, there you have our most excellent and worthy people. Because he was after all a man of family and fortune, a kammerherr, if he had . . . chosen to remain in the service. . . . And then he suddenly threw up the service to go over to the Roman Church and become a Jesuit, and almost openly, with a sort of enthusiasm. It’s true, he died in the nick of time ... everybody said so....”
Myshkin was beside himself.
“Pavlishtchev . . . Pavlishtchev, went over to the Roman Church? Impossible!” he cried in horror.
“‘Impossible,’ indeed!” Ivan Petrovitch drawled solidly.
“That’s saying a good deal, and you must admit, dear prince . . . However you have such a high opinion of the deceased. ... He certainly was a most good-natured man, and to that I chiefly attribute the success of that rascal Goureau. But ask me what a fuss and bother I had afterwards over that affair. .. especially with that very Goureau. Only fancy,” he turned suddenly to the old man, “they even tried to put in a claim under the will, and I was forced to have recourse to the most, that is, to vigorous measures . . . to bring them to their senses ... for they’re first-rate at that kind of thing. Won-der-ful people! But, thank goodness! it all happened in Moscow. I went straight to the court, and we soon ... brought them to their senses.”
“You wouldn’t believe how you grieve and astonish me,” cried Myshkin.
“I am sorry. But as a matter of fact, all this was after all a trifling business and would have ended in smoke as such things always do: I’m convinced of it. Last summer,” he went on, turning to the old man, “Countess K. I am told, went into some Catholic convent abroad. Russians never can hold out if once they come under the influence of those . . . rogues . . . especially abroad.”
“It all comes from our . . . weariness,” the old dignitary mumbled authoritatively. “And their manner of proselytising is . . . skilful and peculiar to them. . .. They know how to scare people. They gave me a good scare, too, I assure you, in Vienna in 1832. But I wouldn’t surrender, I ran away from them. Ha-ha! I really did run away from them ...”
“I heard, my dear sir, that you ran away from Vienna to Paris with the beauty, Countess Levitzky, and that was why you flung up your post, not to escape from the Jesuits,” Princess Byelokonsky put in suddenly.
“Well, you see, it was from a Jesuit; it turns out after all that it was from a Jesuit,” the old dignitary retorted, laughing at the agreeable recollection. “You seem to be very religious, which one doesn’t often meet with nowadays in a young man,” he added, turning genially to Prince Lyov Nikolayevitch, who was listening open-mouthed and still amazed.
The old man evidently wanted to study Myshkin more closely. He had for some reason become an object of interest to him.
“Pavlishtchev was a clear-headed man and a Christian, a genuine Christian,” Myshkin brought out suddenly. “How could he have accepted a faith . . . that’s unchristian? Catholicism is as good as an unchristian religion!” he added, suddenly, looking about him with flashing eyes as though scanning the whole company.
“Come, that’s too much!” muttered the old man, and he looked with surprise at General Epanchin.
“How do you mean Catholicism is an unchristian religion,” said Ivan Petrovitch, turning round in his chair. “What is it then?”
“An unchristian religion in the first place!” Myshkin began, in extreme agitation and with excessive abruptness. “And in the second place Roman Catholicism is even worse than atheism itself, in my opinion! “Vfes, that’s my opinion! Atheism only preaches a negation, but Catholicism goes further: it preaches a distorted Christ, a Christ calumniated and defamed by themselves, the opposite of Christ! It preaches the Antichrist, I declare it does, I assure you it does! This is the conviction I have long held, and it has distressed me, mvself. . . . Roman Catholicism cannot hold its position without universal political supremacy, and cries: ‘Non possumus!’ To my thinking Roman Catholicism is not even a religion, but simply the continuation of the Western Roman Empire, and everything in it is subordinated to that idea, faith to begin with. The Pope seized the earth, an earthly throne, and grasped the sword; everything has gone on in the same way since, only they have added
to the sword lying, fraud, deceit, fanaticism, superstition, villainy. They have trifled with the most holy, truthful, sincere, fervent feelings of the people; they have bartered it all, all for money, for base earthly power. And isn’t that the teaching of Antichrist? How could atheism fail to come from them? Atheism has sprung from Roman Catholicism itself. It originated with them themselves. Can they have believed themselves? It has been strengthened by revulsion from them; it is begotten by their lying and their spiritual impotence. Atheism! Among us it is only the exceptional classes who don’t believe, those who, as Yevgeny Pavlovitch splendidly expressed it the other day, have lost their roots. But over there, in Europe, a terrible mass of the people themselves are beginning to lose their faith — at first from darkness and lying, and now from fanaticism and hatred of the church and Christianity.”
Myshkin paused to take breath. He had been talking fearfully fast. He was pale and breathless. They all glanced at one another, and at last the old dignitary simply burst out laughing. Prince N. drew out his lorgnette, and took a prolonged stare at Myshkin. The German poet crept out of his corner, and moved nearer to the table, with a spiteful smile on his face.
“You are exaggerating very much,” Ivan Petrovitch drawled with an air of being bored, and even rather ashamed of something. “There are representatives of that Church who are virtuous and worthy of all respect....”
“I have said nothing about individual representatives of the Church. I was speaking of Roman Catholicism in its essence. I am speaking of Rome. Can a Church disappear altogether? I never said that!”
“I agree. But all that’s well known and — irrelevant, indeed, and ... it’s a theological question ...”
“Oh, no, no! It’s not only a theological question, I
assure you it’s not! It concerns us much more closely than you think. That’s our whole mistake, that we can’t see that this is not exclusively a theological question! Why, socialism too springs from Catholicism and the Catholic idea! Like its brother atheism, it comes from despair in opposition to Catholicism on the moral side, to replace the lost moral power of religion, to quench the spiritual thirst of parched humanity, and to save them not by Christ but also by violence. That, too, is freedom through violence, that, too, is union through sword and blood. ‘Don’t dare to believe in God, don’t dare to have property and individuality, fratemite ou la mort, two millions of heads!’ By their works ye shall know them — as it is said. And don’t imagine that all this is so harmless and without danger for us. Oh, we need to make resistance at once, at once! Our Christ whom we have kept and they have never known must shine forth and vanquish the West. Not letting ourselves be slavishly caught by the wiles of the Jesuits, but carrying our Russian civilisation to them, we ought to stand before them and not let it be said among us, as it was just now, that their preaching is skilful.”
“But allow me, allow me!” said Ivan Petrovitch,
growing dreadfully uneasy, looking about him, and positively beginning to be terrified. “All your ideas, of course, are very praiseworthy and full of patriotism, but all this is exaggerated in the extreme, and ... in fact, we had better drop the subject....”
“No, it’s not exaggerated; it’s even understated, positively understated, because I am not capable of expressing ...”
“Al-low me!”
Myshkin ceased speaking, and sitting upright in his chair gazed with a fixed and fervent look at Ivan Petrovitch.
“I fancy you have been too much affected by what happened to your benefactor,” the old dignitary indulgently observed, with unruffled composure. “You have grown over-ardent. . . perhaps from solitude. If you were to live more among people and to see more of the world, I expect you would be welcomed as a remarkable young man; then, of course, you would grow less excitable and you would see that it is all much simpler . . . and besides, such exceptional cases are due in my opinion partly to our being blase, partly to our being ... bored.”
“Just so, just so!” cried Myshkin. “A splendid idea! It’s just from dullness, from our dullness. Not from being blase. On the contrary, from unsatisfied yearning ... not from being blase. There you’re mistaken. Not simply from unsatisfied yearnings, but from feverishness, from burning thirst. And . . . and don’t think that it’s to such a slight extent that one can afford to laugh at it. Excuse me, one needs to look ahead in these things. As soon as Russians feel the ground under their feet and are confident that they have reached firm ground, they are so delighted at reaching it that they rush at once to the furthest limit. Why is that? You are surprised at Pavlishtchev, and you put it down to madness on his part, or to simplicity. But it’s not that! And Russian intensity in such cases is a surprise not to us only but to all Europe. If one of us turns Catholic, he is bound to become a Jesuit, and one of the most underground. If he becomes an atheist, he’s sure to clamour for the extirpation of belief in God by force, that is, by the sword. Why is this, why such frenzy? bu must surely know! Because he has found the fatherland which he has missed here. He has reached the shore, he has found the land and he rushes to kiss it. Russian atheists and Russian Jesuits are the outcome not only of vanity, not only of a bad, vain feeling, but also of spiritual agony, spiritual thirst, a craving for something higher, for a firm footing, for a fatherland in which they have ceased to believe, because they have never even known it! It’s easier for a Russian to become an atheist than for anyone else in the world. And Russians do not merely become atheists, but they invariably believe in atheism, as though it were a new religion without noticing that they are putting faith in a negation. So great is our craving! ‘He who has no roots beneath him has no god.’ That’s not my own saying. It was said by a merchant and Old Believer, whom I met when I was travelling. It’s true he did not use those words. He said: ‘The man who has renounced his fatherland has renounced his god.’ Only think that among us, even highly educated people join the sect of Flagellants. Though why is that worse than nihilism, Jesuitism, or atheism? It may even be rather more profound! But that’s what their agony has brought them to. Reveal to the yearning and feverish companions of Columbus the ‘New World,’ reveal to the Russian the ‘world’ of Russia, let him find the gold, the treasure hidden from him in the earth! Show him the whole of humanity, rising again, and renewed by Russian thought alone, perhaps by the Russian God and Christ, and you will see into what a mighty and truthful, what a wise and gentle giant he will grow, before the eyes of the astounded world, astounded and dismayed, because it expects of us nothing but the sword, nothing but the sword and violence, because, judging us by themselves, the other peoples cannot picture us free from barbarism. That has always been so hitherto and goes on getting more so! And ...”
But at this point an incident took place, and the speaker’s eloquence was cut short in the most unexpected manner.
This wild tirade, this rush of strange and agitated words and confused, enthusiastic ideas, which seemed tripping each other up and tumbling over one another in confusion, all seemed suggestive of something ominous in the mental condition of the young man who had broken out so suddenly, apropos of nothing. Those present who knew Myshkin wondered apprehensively (and some of them with shame) at this outbreak, which was so out of keeping with his habitual diffidence and restraint, with his rare and peculiar tact in some cases, and his instinctive feeling for real propriety. They could not understand what it was due to. What had been told him about Pavlishtchev could not have been the cause of it. The ladies gazed at him from their corner, as though he had taken leave of his senses, and Princess Byelokonsky confessed afterwards that in another minute she would have taken to her heels. The old gentlemen were almost disconcerted in their first amazement; the chief of the department looked sternly and with displeasure at him from his place. The colonel of engineers sat in absolute immobility. The German positively turned pale, but still smiled his artificial smile, looking at the rest of the company to see how they were taking it. But all this and the whole “scandal” might have e
nded in the most ordinary and natural way in another minute. General Epanchin, who was extremely astonished, though he grasped the situation sooner than the rest, had made several attempts to stop Myshkin already. But failing in his efforts, he was making his way towards him, with a firm and resolute design. In another minute, he would perhaps, had it been necessary, have taken the extreme step of leading Myshkin out of the room in a friendly way on the pretext of his being ill, which would, perhaps, have been the truth, and which the general fully believed himself. . . . But the scene had a very different conclusion.
At the beginning, when Myshkin at first entered the drawing-room, he had seated himself as far as possible from the china vase about which Aglaia had so scared him. It seems almost beyond belief, but after Aglaia’s words the day before a haunting conviction, a prodigious and incredible presentiment obsessed him that he would be sure to break the vase next day, however carefully he kept away from it and tried to avoid the disaster. But so it was. In the course of the evening other and brighter impressions had flowed into his soul: we have spoken of that already. He forgot his presentiment. When he had heard Pavlishtchev’s name mentioned, and General Epanchin had brought him forward and introduced him again to Ivan Petrovitch, he moved nearer to the table and sat down in the very armchair nearest to the huqe and handsome china vase, which stood on a pedestal almost at his elbow and a little behind him.
Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky Page 331