‘Ne mentez jamais!
Napoléon, votre ami sincère.’c
Such advice and at such a moment, you must agree, Prince!”
“Yes, it is portentous.”
“That page, in a gilded frame, under glass, hung in my sister’s drawing room all her life, in the most conspicuous place, right up to her death—she died in childbirth. Where it is now, I don’t know … but … ah, my God! It’s already two o’clock! I’ve kept you so long, Prince! It’s unforgivable!”
The general got up from his chair.
“Oh, on the contrary!” the prince mumbled. “You’ve diverted me and … finally … it’s so interesting; I’m so grateful to you!”
“Prince!” said the general, again pressing his hand painfully and looking at him intently, with flashing eyes, as if suddenly recollecting himself and stunned by some unexpected thought, “Prince! You are so kind, so simple-hearted, that I sometimes even feel sorry for you. I look upon you with tenderness; oh, God bless you! May your life begin and blossom … in love. Mine is over! Oh, forgive me, forgive me!”
He left quickly, covering his face with his hands. The prince could not doubt the sincerity of his emotion. He also realized that the old man had left intoxicated by his success; but all the same he had a presentiment that he was one of that category of liars who, though they lie to the point of sensuality and even self-forgetfulness, at the highest point of their intoxication suspect to themselves all the same that people do not and even cannot believe them. In his present state, the old man might recollect himself, become ashamed beyond measure, suspect the prince of an excessive compassion for him, feel insulted. “Didn’t I do worse by driving him to such inspiration?” the prince worried and suddenly could not help himself and laughed terribly, for about ten minutes. He was about to reproach himself for this laughter; but he understood at once that there was nothing to reproach himself for, because he felt a boundless pity for the general.
His presentiment came true. That evening he received a strange note, brief but resolute. The general informed him that he was also parting with him forever, that he respected him and was grateful to him, but that even from him he would not accept “tokens of compassion humiliating to the dignity of a man already unfortunate without that.” When the prince heard that the old man had locked himself up at Nina Alexandrovna’s, he almost stopped worrying about him. But we have already seen that the general had also caused some sort of trouble at Lizaveta Prokofyevna’s. We cannot go into detail here, but will note briefly that the essence of their meeting consisted in the general’s frightening Lizaveta Prokofyevna and driving her to indignation with his bitter allusions to Ganya. He had been led out in disgrace. That was why he had spent such a night and such a morning, had become definitively cracked and had rushed out to the street almost in a state of insanity.
Kolya did not fully understand the matter yet and even hoped to win out by severity.
“Well, where are we going to drag ourselves now, General?” he said. “You don’t want to go to the prince, you’ve quarreled with Lebedev, you have no money, and I never have any: so here we are in the street without a shirt to our name.”
“It’s better than having a shirt and no name,” the general murmured. “This pun of mine … was received with raptures … a company of officers … in the year forty-four … Eighteen … hundred … and forty-four, yes!… I don’t remember … Oh, don’t remind me, don’t remind me! ‘Where is my youth, where is my freshness!’ So exclaimed … Who exclaimed that, Kolya?”
“It’s from Gogol, in Dead Souls,21 papa,” Kolya replied and gave his father a frightened sidelong glance.
“Dead souls! Oh, yes, dead! When you bury me, write on my tombstone: ‘Here lies a dead soul!’
Disgrace pursues me!
Who said that, Kolya?”
“I don’t know, papa.”
“There was no Eropegov! No Eroshka Eropegov!…” he cried out in a frenzy, stopping in the street, “and that is my son, my own son! Eropegov, who for eleven months was like a brother to me, for whom I’d have gone to a duel … Prince Vygoretsky, our captain, says to him over a bottle: ‘You, Grisha, where did you get your Anna,22 tell me that?’ ‘On the battlefields of my fatherland, that’s where!’ ‘Bravo, Grisha!’ I shout. Well, that led to a duel, and then he married … Marya Petrovna Su … Sutugin and was killed on the battlefield … The bullet ricocheted off the cross on my chest and hit him right in the forehead. ‘I’ll never forget!’ he cried and fell on the spot. I … I served honestly, Kolya; I served nobly, but disgrace—‘disgrace pursues me’! You and Nina will come to my little grave … ‘Poor Nina!’ I used to call her that, Kolya, long ago, in the beginning, and she so loved … Nina, Nina! What have I done to your life! What can you love me for, patient soul! Your mother is an angelic soul, do you hear, Kolya, an angelic soul!”
“I know that, papa. Papa, dearest, let’s go home to mama! She ran after us! Well, why are you standing there? As if you don’t understand … What are you crying for?”
Kolya himself was crying and kissing his father’s hands.
“You’re kissing my hands, mine!”
“Yes, yours, yours. What’s so surprising? Well, what are you doing howling in the middle of the street—and he calls himself a general, a military man! Well, come on!”
“God bless you, my dear boy, for showing respect to a disgraceful—yes! to a disgraceful old fellow, your father … may you also have such a son … le roi de Rome … Oh, ‘a curse, a curse upon this house!’ ”
“But what is really going on here!” Kolya suddenly seethed. “What’s the matter? Why don’t you want to go back home now? What are you losing your mind for?”
“I’ll explain, I’ll explain it to you … I’ll tell you everything; don’t shout, they’ll hear you … le roi de Rome … Oh, I’m sick, I’m sad!
Nanny, where’s your grave!23
Who exclaimed that, Kolya?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know who exclaimed it! Let’s go home right now, right now! I’ll give Ganka a beating, if I have to … where are you going now?”
But the general was pulling him towards the porch of a nearby house.
“Where are you going? That’s not our porch!”
The general sat down on the porch and kept pulling Kolya towards him by the hand.
“Bend down, bend down!” he murmured. “I’ll tell you everything … disgrace … bend down … your ear, I’ll tell it in your ear …”
“What’s the matter!” Kolya was terribly frightened, but offered his ear anyway.
“Le roi de Rome …” the general whispered, also as if he were trembling all over.
“What?… What have you got to do with le roi de Rome? … Why?”
“I … I …” the general whispered again, clutching “his boy’s” shoulder tighter and tighter, “I … want … I’ll tell you … everything, Marya, Marya … Petrovna Su-su-su …”
Kolya tore himself free, seized the general by the shoulders, and looked at him like a crazy man. The old man turned purple, his lips became blue, small spasms kept passing over his face. Suddenly he bent over and quietly began to collapse onto Kolya’s arm.
“A stroke!” the boy cried out for the whole street to hear, realizing at last what was wrong.
V
TO TELL THE TRUTH, Varvara Ardalionovna, in her conversation with her brother, had slightly exaggerated the accuracy of her information about the prince’s proposal to Aglaya Epanchin. Perhaps, as a perspicacious woman, she had divined what was to happen in the near future; perhaps, being upset that her dream (which, in truth, she did not believe in herself) had been scattered like smoke, she, as a human being, could not deny herself the pleasure of pouring more venom into her brother’s heart by exaggerating the calamity, though, incidentally, she loved him sincerely and compassionately. In any case, she had not been able to get such accurate information from her friends, the Epanchin girls; there had been only hints, words un
spoken, omissions, enigmas. And perhaps Aglaya’s sisters had also let certain things slip on purpose, in order to find something out from Varvara Ardalionovna; and it might have been, finally, that they were unable to deny themselves the feminine pleasure of teasing a friend slightly, even a childhood one: it could not have been that in so long a time they had not glimpsed at least a small edge of her intentions.
On the other hand, the prince, too, though he was perfectly right in assuring Lebedev that there was nothing he could tell him and that precisely nothing special had happened to him, was also, perhaps, mistaken. In fact, something very strange seemed to have occurred with everyone: nothing had happened, and at the same time it was as if a great deal had happened. It was this last that Varvara Ardalionovna had divined with her sure feminine instinct.
How it happened, however, that everyone at the Epanchins’ suddenly came up at once with one and the same notion that something major was occurring with Aglaya and that her fate was being decided—is very difficult to present in an orderly way. But this notion had no sooner flashed in everyone at once, than they all immediately insisted at once that they had perceived the whole thing long ago, and it had all been clearly foreseen; that it had all been clear since the “poor knight,” and even before, only then they had not wanted to believe in such an absurdity. So the sisters insisted; and, of course, Lizaveta Prokofyevna had foreseen and known everything before everyone else, and she had long had “an aching heart,” but—long or not—the notion of the prince now suddenly went too much against the grain, essentially because it disconcerted her. A question presented itself here that had to be resolved immediately; yet not only was it impossible to resolve it, but poor Lizaveta Prokofyevna could not even pose the question to herself with full clarity, try as she might. It was a difficult matter: “Was the prince good or not? Was the whole thing good or not? If it was not good (which was unquestionable), what precisely was not good about it? And if it was good (which was also possible), then, again, what was good about it?” The father of the family himself, Ivan Fyodorovich, was naturally the first to be surprised, but then suddenly confessed that “by God, he, too, had fancied something of the sort all along; every now and then he suddenly seemed to fancy it!” He fell silent at once under the terrible gaze of his spouse, but he fell silent in the morning, while in the evening, alone with his spouse and forced to speak again, he suddenly and, as it were, with particular pertness, expressed several unexpected thoughts: “Though, essentially, what’s wrong?…” (Silence.) “Of course, this is all very strange, provided it’s true, and he doesn’t dispute it, but …” (Again silence.) “And on the other hand, if you look at things directly, the prince is a wonderful fellow, by God, and … and, and—well, finally, the name, our family name, all this will have the look, so to speak, of an upholding of the family name, which has been lowered in the eyes of society, because, looked at from this point of view, that is, because … of course, society; society is society; but still the prince is not without a fortune, even if it’s only so much. He also has … and … and … and …” (A prolonged silence and a decided misfire.) Having listened to her spouse, Lizaveta Prokofyevna went completely overboard.
In her opinion, everything that had happened was “unpardonable and even criminal nonsense, a fantastic picture, stupid and absurd!” First of all there was the fact that “this wretched princeling is a sick idiot, second of all he’s a fool, who neither knows society nor has any place in society: to whom can he be shown, where can he be tucked in? He’s some sort of unpardonable democrat, without even the least rank, and … and … what will old Belokonsky say? And is this, is this the sort of husband we imagined and intended for Aglaya?” The last argument was, naturally, the most important. The mother’s heart trembled at the thought, bled and wept, though at the same time something stirred in that heart which suddenly said to her: “And what makes the prince not the sort you want?” Well, it was these objections against her own heart that were most troublesome for Lizaveta Prokofyevna.
Aglaya’s sisters for some reason liked the notion of the prince; it did not even seem very strange to them; in short, they might even suddenly turn out to be completely on his side. But they both decided to keep silent. It had been noted once and for all in the family that the more stubborn and persistent Lizaveta Prokofyevna’s objections and retorts became, on some general and disputed family point, the more it could serve them all as a sign that she might be about to agree on that point. Alexandra Ivanovna, however, could never be completely silent. Having long since acknowledged her as her advisor, the mother constantly summoned her now and asked for her opinions, and above all her memories—that is: “How had it all happened? Why had no one seen it? Why had there been no talk then? What had this nasty ‘poor knight’ signified then? Why was it that she, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, was the only one doomed to worry about everyone, to notice and foresee everything, while all the rest were merely—woolgathering?” etc., etc. Alexandra Ivanovna was cautious at first and only observed that she thought her father’s idea was quite correct, that in the eyes of society the choice of Prince Myshkin as a husband for one of the Epanchin girls might appear very satisfactory. She gradually became excited and added that the prince was by no means a “little fool” and never had been, and as for his significance—God alone knew what the significance of a respectable man would consist of in our Russia a few years hence: success in the service, as used to be necessary, or something else? To all this the mother immediately rapped out that Alexandra was “a freethinker and that it was all their cursed woman question.” Half an hour later she went to the city, and from there to Kamenny Island, in order to catch Princess Belokonsky, who, as if on purpose, happened to be in Petersburg just then, though she would be leaving soon. The princess was Aglaya’s godmother.
“Old” Belokonsky listened to all the feverish and desperate confessions of Lizaveta Prokofyevna and was not touched in the least by the tears of the disconcerted mother of the family, but even looked at her mockingly. She was a terrible despot; in friendship, even an old friendship, she could not bear equality, and she decidedly looked upon Lizaveta Prokofyevna as her protégée, just as thirty-five years ago, and she simply could not be reconciled with the sharpness and independence of her character. She noticed, among other things, that “it seemed they had all rushed too far ahead there, as was their habit, and made a mountain out of a molehill; that listen as she might, she was not convinced that anything serious had actually happened; that it might be better to wait until something did; that the prince was, in her opinion, a respectable young man, though sick, strange, and much too insignificant. The worst thing was that he openly kept a woman.” Lizaveta Prokofyevna realized very well that Belokonsky was a bit cross about the unsuccess of Evgeny Pavlovich, whom she had recommended. She returned home to Pavlovsk still more irritated than when she had left, and everyone immediately got it from her, above all because they had “lost their minds,” because decidedly nobody else did things the way they did them; and “what’s the hurry? What has happened? However much I look at it, I can in no way conclude that anything has actually happened! Wait until something does! No matter what Ivan Fyodorovich may have fancied, are we going to make a mountain out of a molehill?” etc., etc.
The result, therefore, was that they needed to calm down, watch cool-headedly, and wait. But, alas, the calm did not hold out for even ten minutes. The first blow to cool-headedness came from the news of what had happened while the mother absented herself to Kamenny Island. (Lizaveta Prokofyevna’s trip took place the morning after the prince had come calling past midnight instead of before ten.) The sisters answered their mother’s impatient questioning in great detail, and said, first of all, that “precisely nothing, it seemed, had happened while she was away,” that the prince came, that Aglaya took a long time, half an hour, before coming out to him, and when she did come out, suggested at once that she and the prince play chess; that the prince did not know the first thing about chess, and Agl
aya beat him at once; she became very merry and shamed the prince terribly for his lack of skill, and laughed at him terribly, so that the prince was a pity to see. Then she suggested that they play cards, a game of “fools.” But here it turned out quite the opposite: the prince proved to be as good at “fools” as … as a professor; he played masterfully; Aglaya cheated, put cards back, stole his own tricks before his very eyes, and all the same he left her each time as the “fool”; five times in a row. Aglaya flew into a rage, even quite forgot herself; she said so many impudent and sarcastic things to the prince that he even stopped laughing, and he turned quite pale when she told him, finally, that “she would not set foot in this room while he was sitting there, and that it was even shameless on his part to call on them, and in the night at that, past midnight, after all that had happened.” She then slammed the door and left. The prince went out as if from a funeral, despite all their attempts to comfort him. Suddenly, fifteen minutes after the prince left, Aglaya came running down to the terrace from upstairs, and in such a hurry that she did not even wipe her eyes, which were wet with tears. She came running down because Kolya arrived and brought a hedgehog. They all started looking at the hedgehog; to their questions, Kolya explained that the hedgehog was not his, and that he was now walking with his comrade, another schoolboy, Kostya Lebedev, who had stayed outside and was embarrassed to come in because he was carrying an axe; that they had bought both the hedgehog and the axe from a peasant they had met. The peasant was selling the hedgehog and took fifty kopecks for it, and then they persuaded him to sell the axe as well, because it was an opportunity, and also a very good axe. Here Aglaya suddenly began pestering Kolya terribly to sell her the hedgehog at once, turned inside out, even called Kolya “dear.” Kolya would not agree for a long time, but finally gave in and called Kostya Lebedev, who indeed came in carrying the axe and feeling very embarrassed. But here it suddenly turned out that the hedgehog did not belong to them at all, but to a third boy, Petrov, who had given them money to buy Schlosser’s History24 from some fourth boy, who, being in need of money, was selling it at a bargain price; that they set out to buy Schlosser’s History, but could not help themselves and bought the hedgehog, and therefore both the hedgehog and the axe belonged to that third boy, to whom they were now taking them in place of Schlosser’s History. But Aglaya pestered them so much that they finally decided to sell her the hedgehog. As soon as Aglaya got the hedgehog, she put it into a wicker basket with Kolya’s help, covered it with a napkin, and started asking Kolya to go at once and, without stopping anywhere, take the hedgehog to the prince on her behalf, with the request that he accept it as “a token of her profoundest respect.” Kolya gladly agreed and promised to deliver it, but immediately began to pester her: “What was the meaning of the hedgehog and of such a present?” Aglaya replied that that was none of his business. He replied that he was sure it contained some allegory. Aglaya became angry and snapped at him that he was a little brat and nothing more. Kolya at once retorted that if it were not for his respect for the woman in her, and for his own convictions on top of it, he would immediately prove to her that he knew how to respond to such insults. It ended, however, with Kolya delightedly going all the same to deliver the hedgehog, and Kostya Lebedev running after him; Aglaya could not help herself and, seeing Kolya swinging the basket too hard, shouted behind him from the terrace: “Please, Kolya dearest, don’t drop it!”—as if she had not just quarreled with him; Kolya stopped and, also as if he had not just been quarreling, shouted with great readiness: “No, I won’t drop it, Aglaya Ivanovna. Be completely assured!” and ran on at breakneck speed. After that Aglaya laughed terribly and ran to her room extremely pleased, and then was very cheerful all day.
The Idiot (Vintage Classics) Page 65