The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “Well, you’ve made it so that now I’ll be sure to ‘start talking’ and even … maybe … break the vase as well. I wasn’t afraid of anything before, but now I’m afraid of everything. I’m sure to flunk.”

  “Then keep quiet. Sit there and keep quiet.”

  “It won’t be possible; I’m sure to start talking from fear and to break the vase from fear. Maybe I’ll trip on the smooth floor, or something else like that will happen, because it’s happened before; I’ll dream about it all night; why did you speak of it!”

  Aglaya gave him a dark look.

  “You know what: I’d better not come at all tomorrow! I’ll report myself sick and be done with it!” he decided at last.

  Aglaya stamped her foot and even turned pale with wrath.

  “Lord! Have you ever seen the like! He won’t come when it’s purposely for him and … oh, God! What a pleasure to deal with such a … senseless man as you!”

  “Well, I’ll come, I’ll come!” the prince hastily interrupted. “And I give you my word of honor that I’ll sit all evening without saying a word. That’s what I’ll do.”

  “Splendid. You just said you’d ‘report yourself sick.’ Where indeed do you get these expressions? What makes you speak with me in such words? Are you teasing me or something?”

  “I’m sorry; that’s also a school phrase; I’ll stop. I realize very well that you’re … afraid for me … (no, don’t be angry!), and I’m terribly glad of it. You won’t believe how afraid I am now and—how glad I am of your words. But all this fear, I swear to you, it’s all pettiness and nonsense. By God, Aglaya! And the joy will remain. I like it terribly that you’re such a child, such a good and kind child! Ah, how beautiful you can be, Aglaya!”

  Aglaya would of course have become angry, and was just about to, but suddenly some completely unexpected feeling seized her whole soul in an instant.

  “And you won’t reproach me for these rude words … sometime … afterwards?” she suddenly asked.

  “How can you, how can you! And why have you blushed again? And again you have this dark look! You sometimes have this dark look, Aglaya, which you never had before. I know why …”

  “Be quiet, be quiet!”

  “No, it’s better to say it. I’ve long wanted to say it; I already have, but … it wasn’t enough, because you didn’t believe me. Between us a certain being still stands …”

  “Quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet!” Aglaya suddenly interrupted, seizing him firmly by the hand and looking at him in all but horror. At that moment someone called her; as if glad of it, she left him and ran off.

  The prince was in a fever all night. Strangely, for several nights in a row he had been in a fever. This time, in half-delirium, the thought came to him: what if he should have a fit tomorrow in front of everybody? Had he not had fits in a waking state? The thought petrified him; all night he imagined himself in some odd and unheard-of company, among some strange people. The main thing was that he “started talking”; he knew that he should not be talking, yet he talked all the time, trying to convince them of something. Evgeny Pavlovich and Ippolit were also among the guests and seemed to be on extremely friendly terms.

  He woke up past eight o’clock with a headache, with disordered thoughts, with strange impressions. For some reason he wanted terribly to see Rogozhin, to see him and talk a great deal with him—about what he did not know himself; then he became fully resolved to go for some reason to see Ippolit. There was something vague in his heart, so much so that the adventures that befell him that morning made an impression on him which, while extremely strong, was still somehow incomplete. One of those adventures was a visit from Lebedev.

  Lebedev appeared quite early, just after nine, and almost completely drunk. Though the prince had not been observant of late, it had somehow struck his eye that, ever since General Ivolgin moved out of his house three days ago, Lebedev had begun to behave very badly. He had suddenly become somehow very dirty and greasy, his necktie was all askew, and the collar of his frock coat was torn. At home he even raged, and it could be heard across the little yard; Vera had come once in tears and told him something about it. Having appeared now, he began speaking very strangely, beating his breast and confessing something.

  “I got … I got my requital for my treason and my meanness … I got a slap in the face!” he finally concluded tragically.

  “A slap in the face? From whom?… And at such an early hour?”

  “Early?” Lebedev smiled sarcastically. “Time means nothing here … even for a physical requital … but I got a moral … a moral slap, not a physical one!”

  He suddenly sat down unceremoniously and began telling the story. It was very incoherent; the prince frowned and wanted to leave, but suddenly a few words struck him. He was struck dumb with astonishment … Mr. Lebedev had strange things to tell.

  To begin with, the matter apparently had to do with some letter; the name of Aglaya Ivanovna was spoken. Then suddenly Lebedev started bitterly accusing the prince himself; it was clear that he had been offended by the prince. First, he said, the prince had honored him with his trust in dealing with a certain “personage” (Nastasya Filippovna); but then had broken with him completely and driven him away in disgrace, and even to such an offensive degree that last time he was supposed to have rudely dismissed his “innocent question about imminent changes in the house.” With drunken tears Lebedev confessed that “after that he could no longer endure, the less so as he knew a great deal … a very great deal … both from Rogozhin and from Nastasya Filippovna, and from Nastasya Filippovna’s friend, and from Varvara Ardalionovna … herself, sir … and from … and even from Aglaya Ivanovna herself, if you can imagine, sir, through Vera, sir, through my beloved daughter Vera, my only-begotten29 … yes, sir … though not my only-begotten, for I have three. And who informed Lizaveta Prokofyevna by letters, and that in the deepest secret, sir, heh, heh! Who reported to her on all the relations and … on the movements of the personage Nastasya Filippovna, heh, heh, heh! Who, who is this anonymous person, may I ask?”

  “Can it be you?” cried the prince.

  “Precisely,” the drunkard replied with dignity, “and it was today at half-past eight, only half an hour, no, already three-quarters of an hour ago, that I notified the noblest of mothers that I had an adventure to tell her of … an important one. I sent her a note, by a maid, at the back door, sir. She received it.”

  “You’ve just seen Lizaveta Prokofyevna?” the prince asked, scarcely believing his ears.

  “I just saw her and got a slap in the face … a moral one. She gave me back my letter, even flung it at me, unopened … and threw me out on my ear … though only morally, not physically … though almost physically even, just short of it!”

  “What letter did she fling at you unopened?”

  “Didn’t I … heh, heh, heh! So I haven’t told you yet! And I thought I had … There’s this little letter I received, to be passed on, sir …”

  “From whom? To whom?”

  But certain of Lebedev’s “explanations” were extremely difficult to make out and even partially understand. The prince nevertheless realized, as far as he could, that the letter had been given to Vera Lebedev early in the morning, through a maid, to be delivered to the address … “the same as before … the same as before, to a certain personage and from the same person, sir … (for one of them I designate by the name of ‘person,’ sir, and the other only as ‘personage,’ for humiliation and for distinction; for there is a great difference between the innocent and highly noble daughter of a general and a … kept woman, sir), and so, the letter was from a ‘person,’ sir, beginning with the letter A …”

  “How can it be? To Nastasya Filippovna? Nonsense!” cried the prince.

  “It was, it was, sir, and if not to her, then to Rogozhin, sir, it’s all the same, to Rogozhin, sir … and once there was even one to be passed on to Mr. Terentyev, sir, from the person with the letter A,” Lebedev winked and smiled
.

  Since he often jumped from one thing to another and forgot what he had begun to say, the prince kept still so as to let him speak everything out. But all the same it was extremely unclear whether the letters had gone through him or through Vera. If he himself insisted that “to Rogozhin was all the same as to Nastasya Filippovna,” it meant that most likely they had not gone through him, if there were any letters at all. And how it happened that the letter now ended up with him, remained decidedly unexplained; most likely of all would be to suppose that he had somehow stolen it from Vera … carried it off on the sly and taken it with some sort of intention to Lizaveta Prokofyevna. So the prince finally figured it out and understood it.

  “You’ve lost your mind!” he cried, extremely disconcerted.

  “Not entirely, my much-esteemed Prince,” Lebedev answered, not without anger. “True, I was going to give it to you, into your own hands, so as to be of service … but I chose rather to be of service there and tell the most noble mother about everything … just as I had informed her once before in an anonymous letter; and when I wrote a note today, asking beforehand to be received at twenty past eight, I also signed it: ‘your secret correspondent’; I was admitted at once, immediately, even with great haste, by the back door … to see the most noble mother.”

  “Well?”

  “And you know the rest, sir. She nearly gave me a beating, sir; that is, very nearly, sir, so that one might consider that she all but gave me a beating, sir. And she flung the letter at me. True, she wanted to keep it—I could see that, I noticed it—but she changed her mind and flung it at me: ‘If you, such as you are, were entrusted with delivering it, then go and deliver it …’ She even got offended. If she didn’t feel ashamed to say it in front of me, it means she got offended. A hot-tempered lady!”

  “And where is the letter now?”

  “Still here with me, sir.”

  And he handed the prince the note from Aglaya to Gavrila Ardalionovich, which the latter triumphantly showed to his sister that same morning, two hours later.

  “This letter cannot remain with you.”

  “For you, for you! I brought it for you, sir,” Lebedev picked up hotly. “Now I’m yours again, entirely, from head to heart, your servant, sir, after a fleeting betrayal, sir! Punish my heart, spare my beard, as Thomas Morus30 said … in England and in Great Britain, sir. Mea culpa, mea culpa,d31 so says the Roman papa … that is, he’s the pope of Rome, but I call him the ‘Roman papa.’ ”

  “This letter must be sent at once,” the prince bustled, “I’ll deliver it.”

  “But wouldn’t it be better, wouldn’t it be better, my most well-mannered Prince, wouldn’t it be better, sir … sort of, sir!”

  Lebedev made a strange, ingratiating grimace; he suddenly fidgeted terribly in his chair, as if he had suddenly been pricked by a needle, and, winking slyly, gestured and indicated something with his hands.

  “What do you mean?” the prince asked menacingly.

  “Open it beforehand, sir!” he whispered ingratiatingly and as if confidentially.

  The prince jumped up in such fury that Lebedev was about to run away, but having reached the door, he stopped, waiting to see if he would be pardoned.

  “Eh, Lebedev! Is it possible, is it possible to reach such mean disorder as you have?” the prince cried ruefully. Lebedev’s features brightened.

  “I’m mean, mean!” he approached at once, with tears, beating his breast.

  “That’s loathsome!”

  “Precisely loathsome, sir. That’s the word, sir!”

  “And what is this way you have … of acting so strangely? You’re … simply a spy! Why did you write an anonymous letter and trouble … that most noble and kind woman? Why, finally, does Aglaya Ivanovna have no right to correspond with whomever she likes? Why did you go there today, to make a complaint? What did you hope to gain? What moved you to turn informer?”

  “Only pleasant curiosity and … an obligingly noble soul, yes, sir!” Lebedev murmured. “But now I’m all yours, all yours again! You can hang me!”

  “Did you go to Lizaveta Prokofyevna’s the way you are now?” the prince inquired with repugnance.

  “No, sir … fresher … and even more decent, sir; it was after my humiliation that I achieved … this look, sir.”

  “Very well, leave me.”

  However, this request had to be repeated several times before the visitor finally decided to leave. Having already opened the door, he came back again, tiptoed to the middle of the room, and again began to make signs with his hands, showing how to open a letter; he did not dare to put this advice into words; then he went out, smiling quietly and sweetly.

  All this was extremely painful to hear. One chief and extraordinary fact stood out amidst it all: that Aglaya was in great anxiety, in great indecision, in great torment for some reason (“from jealousy,” the prince whispered to himself). It was also clear, of course, that unkind people were confusing her, and it was all the more strange that she trusted them so much. Of course, some special plans were ripening in that inexperienced but hot and proud little head, ruinous plans, perhaps … and like nothing else. The prince was extremely alarmed and in his confusion did not know what to decide. He absolutely had to prevent something, he could feel it. Once again he looked at the address on the sealed letter: oh, there was no doubt or anxiety for him here, because he trusted her; something else troubled him in this letter: he did not trust Gavrila Ardalionovich. And, nevertheless, he decided to give him the letter himself, personally, and had already left the house in order to do so, but on his way he changed his mind. As if on purpose, almost at Ptitsyn’s house, the prince ran into Kolya and charged him with putting the letter into his brother’s hands, as if directly from Aglaya Ivanovna herself. Kolya asked no questions and delivered it, so that Ganya never even imagined the letter had gone through so many stations. On returning home, the prince asked to see Vera Lukyanovna, told her as much as was necessary, and calmed her down, because she had been searching for the letter and weeping all the while. She was horrified when she learned that her father had taken the letter. (The prince later learned from her that she had secretly served Rogozhin and Aglaya Ivanovna more than once; it had never occurred to her that it might be something harmful to the prince …)

  And the prince finally became so upset that when, two hours later, a messenger came running to him from Kolya with news of his father’s illness, he could scarely understand at first what it was all about. But this same incident restored him, because it distracted him greatly. He stayed at Nina Alexandrovna’s (where, of course, the sick man had been transported) almost till evening. He was of almost no use, but there are people whom, for some reason, it is pleasant to see around one at certain difficult moments. Kolya was terribly struck, wept hysterically, but nevertheless ran errands all the time: ran to fetch a doctor and found three, ran to the pharmacy, to the barber.32 The general was revived, but he did not come to his senses; as the doctors put it, “in any case the patient is in danger.” Varya and Nina Alexandrovna never left the sick man’s side; Ganya was confused and shaken, but did not want to go upstairs and was even afraid to see the sick man; he wrung his hands and in an incoherent conversation with the prince managed to say, “just look, such a misfortune, and, as if on purpose, at such a time!” The prince thought he understood precisely what time he was talking about. The prince found that Ippolit was no longer in Ptitsyn’s house. Towards evening Lebedev, who had slept uninterruptedly since their morning “talk,” came running. He was almost sober now and wept real tears over the sick man, as if over his own brother. He loudly blamed himself, though without explaining what for, and pestered Nina Alexandrovna, assuring her every moment that “he, he himself was the cause, and no one but he … solely out of pleasant curiosity … and that the ‘deceased’ ” (as he stubbornly called the still-living general for some reason) “was even a man of great genius!” He insisted especially seriously on his genius, as if some extraordin
ary benefit could be derived from it at that moment. Nina Alexandrovna, seeing his genuine tears, finally said to him, without any reproach and even almost with tenderness: “Well, God be with you, don’t weep now, God will forgive you!” Lebedev was so struck by these words and their tone that he would not leave Nina Alexandrovna’s side all evening (and in all the following days, till the general’s death, he stayed in their house almost from morning till night). Twice in the course of the day a messenger came to Nina Alexandrovna from Lizaveta Prokofyevna to ask after the sick man’s health. When, at nine o’clock that evening, the prince appeared in the Epanchins’ drawing room, which was already filled with guests, Lizaveta Prokofyevna at once began questioning him about the sick man, with sympathy and in detail, and responded gravely to Belokonsky’s question: “Who is this sick man and who is Nina Alexandrovna?” The prince liked that very much. He himself, in talking with Lizaveta Prokofyevna, spoke “beautifully,” as Aglaya’s sisters explained afterwards: “modestly, softly, without unnecessary words, without gestures, with dignity; he entered beautifully, was excellently dressed,” and not only did not “trip on the smooth floor,” but obviously even made a pleasant impression on everyone.

  For his part, having sat down and looked around, he noticed at once that this whole gathering bore no resemblance to the specters Aglaya had frightened him with yesterday, or to the nightmares he had had during the night. For the first time in his life he saw a small corner of what is known by the terrible name of “society.” For a long time now, owing to certain special intentions, considerations, and yearnings of his own, he had desired to penetrate this magic circle of people and was therefore greatly interested in his first impression. This first impression of his was even delightful. It appeared to him somehow at once and suddenly that all these people had, as it were, been born to be together; that there was no “evening” at the Epanchins’ that evening and no invited guests, that these were all “our people,” and it was as if he himself had long been their devoted and like-minded friend, who had now returned to them after a recent separation. The charm of elegant manners, the simplicity and seeming candor were almost magical. It would never have occurred to him that all this simple-heartedness and nobility, sharp wit and lofty dignity might only be a splendid artistic contrivance. The majority of the guests, despite their imposing appearance, were even rather empty people, who, incidentally, in their self-satisfaction did not know themselves that much of what was good in them was only a contrivance, for which, moreover, they were not to blame, for they had acquired it unconsciously and by inheritance. This the prince did not even want to suspect, under the spell of his lovely first impression. He saw, for instance, that this old man, this important dignitary, who by his age might have been his grandfather, even interrupted his own conversation in order to listen to such a young and inexperienced man as he, and not only listened to him but clearly valued his opinion, was so gentle with him, so sincerely good-natured, and yet they were strangers and were seeing each other for the first time. Perhaps in his ardent susceptibility the prince was most affected by the refinement of this politeness. Perhaps he had been all too disposed beforehand and even won over to a happy impression.