PART I - II

The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Translated by Eva Martin

PART I - II, THE IDIOT by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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General Epanchin lived in his own house near the Litaynaya.
Besides this large residence--five-sixths of which was let in
flats and lodgings-the general was owner of another enormous
house in the Sadovaya bringing in even more rent than the first.
Besides these houses he had a delightful little estate just out
of town, and some sort of factory in another part of the city.
General Epanchin, as everyone knew, had a good deal to do with
certain government monopolies; he was also a voice, and an
important one, in many rich public companies of various
descriptions; in fact, he enjoyed the reputation of being a well-
to-do man of busy habits, many ties, and affluent means. He had
made himself indispensable in several quarters, amongst others in
his department of the government; and yet it was a known fact
that Fedor Ivanovitch Epanchin was a man of no education
whatever, and had absolutely risen from the ranks.

This last fact could, of course, reflect nothing but credit upon
the general; and yet, though unquestionably a sagacious man, he
had his own little weaknesses-very excusable ones,--one of which
was a dislike to any allusion to the above circumstance. He was
undoubtedly clever. For instance, he made a point of never
asserting himself when he would gain more by keeping in the
background; and in consequence many exalted personages valued him
principally for his humility and simplicity, and because "he knew
his place." And yet if these good people could only have had a
peep into the mind of this excellent fellow who "knew his place"
so well! The fact is that, in spite of his knowledge of the world
and his really remarkable abilities, he always liked to appear to
be carrying out other people's ideas rather than his own. And
also, his luck seldom failed him, even at cards, for which he had
a passion that he did not attempt to conceal. He played for high
stakes, and moved, altogether, in very varied society.

As to age, General Epanchin was in the very prime of life; that
is, about fifty-five years of age,--the flowering time of
existence, when real enjoyment of life begins. His healthy
appearance, good colour, sound, though discoloured teeth, sturdy
figure, preoccupied air during business hours, and jolly good
humour during his game at cards in the evening, all bore witness
to his success in life, and combined to make existence a bed of
roses to his excellency. The general was lord of a flourishing
family, consisting of his wife and three grown-up daughters. He
had married young, while still a lieutenant, his wife being a
girl of about his own age, who possessed neither beauty nor
education, and who brought him no more than fifty souls of landed
property, which little estate served, however, as a nest-egg for
far more important accumulations. The general never regretted his
early marriage, or regarded it as a foolish youthful escapade;
and he so respected and feared his wife that he was very near
loving her. Mrs. Epanchin came of the princely stock of Muishkin,
which if not a brilliant, was, at all events, a decidedly ancient
family; and she was extremely proud of her descent.

With a few exceptions, the worthy couple had lived through their
long union very happily. While still young the wife had been able
to make important friends among the aristocracy, partly by virtue
of her family descent, and partly by her own exertions; while, in
after life, thanks to their wealth and to the position of her
husband in the service, she took her place among the higher
circles as by right.

During these last few years all three of the general's daughters-
Alexandra, Adelaida, and Aglaya--had grown up and matured. Of
course they were only Epanchins, but their mother's family was
noble; they might expect considerable fortunes; their father had
hopes of attaining to very high rank indeed in his country's
service-all of which was satisfactory. All three of the girls
were decidedly pretty, even the eldest, Alexandra, who was just
twenty-five years old. The middle daughter was now twenty-three,
while the youngest, Aglaya, was twenty. This youngest girl was
absolutely a beauty, and had begun of late to attract
considerable attention in society. But this was not all, for every
one of the three was clever, well educated, and accomplished.

It was a matter of general knowledge that the three girls were
very fond of one another, and supported each other in every way;
it was even said that the two elder ones had made certain
sacrifices for the sake of the idol of the household, Aglaya. In
society they not only disliked asserting themselves, but were
actually retiring. Certainly no one could blame them for being
too arrogant or haughty, and yet everybody was well aware that
they were proud and quite understood their own value. The eldest
was musical, while the second was a clever artist, which fact she
had concealed until lately. In a word, the world spoke well of
the girls; but they were not without their enemies, and
occasionally people talked with horror of the number of books
they had read.

They were in no hurry to marry. They liked good society, but were
not too keen about it. All this was the more remarkable, because
everyone was well aware of the hopes and aims of their parents.

It was about eleven o'clock in the forenoon when the prince rang
the bell at General Epanchin's door. The general lived on the
first floor or flat of the house, as modest a lodging as his
position permitted. A liveried servant opened the door, and the
prince was obliged to enter into long explanations with this
gentleman, who, from the first glance, looked at him and his
bundle with grave suspicion. At last, however, on the repeated
positive assurance that he really was Prince Muishkin, and must
absolutely see the general on business, the bewildered domestic
showed him into a little ante-chamber leading to a waiting-room
that adjoined the general's study, there handing him over to
another servant, whose duty it was to be in this ante-chamber
all the morning, and announce visitors to the general. This
second individual wore a dress coat, and was some forty years of
age; he was the general's special study servant, and well aware
of his own importance.

"Wait in the next room, please; and leave your bundle here," said
the door-keeper, as he sat down comfortably in his own easy-chair
in the ante-chamber. He looked at the prince in severe surprise
as the latter settled himself in another chair alongside, with
his bundle on his knees.

"If you don't mind, I would rather sit here with you," said the
prince; "I should prefer it to sitting in there."

"Oh, but you can't stay here. You are a visitor--a guest, so to
speak. Is it the general himself you wish to see?"

The man evidently could not take in the idea of such a shabby-
looking visitor, and had decided to ask once more.

"Yes--I have business--" began the prince.

"I do not ask you what your business may be, all I have to do is
to announce you; and unless the secretary comes in here I cannot
do that."

The man's suspicions seemed to increase more and more. The prince
was too unlike the usual run of daily visitors; and although the
general certainly did receive, on business, all sorts and
conditions of men, yet in spite of this fact the servant felt
great doubts on the subject of this particular visitor. The
presence of the secretary as an intermediary was, he judged,
essential in this case.

"Surely you--are from abroad?" he inquired at last, in a confused
sort of way. He had begun his sentence intending to say, "Surely
you are not Prince Muishkin, are you?"

"Yes, straight from the train! Did not you intend to say, 'Surely
you are not Prince Muishkin?' just now, but refrained out of
politeness ?"

"H'm!" grunted the astonished servant.

"I assure you I am not deceiving you; you shall not have to
answer for me. As to my being dressed like this, and carrying a
bundle, there's nothing surprising in that--the fact is, my
circumstances are not particularly rosy at this moment."

"H'm!--no, I'm not afraid of that, you see; I have to announce
you, that's all. The secretary will be out directly-that is,
unless you--yes, that's the rub--unless you--come, you must allow
me to ask you--you've not come to beg, have you?"

"Oh dear no, you can be perfectly easy on that score. I have
quite another matter on hand."

"You must excuse my asking, you know. Your appearance led me to
think--but just wait for the secretary; the general is busy now,
but the secretary is sure to come out."

"Oh--well, look here, if I have some time to wait, would you mind
telling me, is there any place about where I could have a smoke?
I have my pipe and tobacco with me."

"SMOKE?" said the man, in shocked but disdainful surprise,
blinking his eyes at the prince as though he could not believe
his senses." No, sir, you cannot smoke here, and I wonder you
are not ashamed of the very suggestion. Ha, ha! a cool idea that,
I declare!"

"Oh, I didn't mean in this room! I know I can't smoke here, of
course. I'd adjourn to some other room, wherever you like to show
me to. You see, I'm used to smoking a good deal, and now I
haven't had a puff for three hours; however, just as you like."

"Now how on earth am I to announce a man like that?" muttered the
servant. "In the first place, you've no right in here at all; you
ought to be in the waiting-room, because you're a sort of
visitor--a guest, in fact--and I shall catch it for this. Look
here, do you intend to take up you abode with us?" he added,
glancing once more at the prince's bundle, which evidently gave
him no peace.

"No, I don't think so. I don't think I should stay even if they
were to invite me. I've simply come to make their acquaintance,
and nothing more."

"Make their acquaintance?" asked the man, in amazement, and with
redoubled suspicion. "Then why did you say you had business with
the general?"

"Oh well, very little business. There is one little matter--some
advice I am going to ask him for; but my principal object is
simply to introduce myself, because I am Prince Muishkin, and
Madame Epanchin is the last of her branch of the house, and
besides herself and me there are no other Muishkins left."

"What--you're a relation then, are you?" asked the servant, so
bewildered that he began to feel quite alarmed.

"Well, hardly so. If you stretch a point, we are relations, of
course, but so distant that one cannot really take cognizance of
it. I once wrote to your mistress from abroad, but she did not
reply. However, I have thought it right to make acquaintance with
her on my arrival. I am telling you all this in order to ease
your mind, for I see you are still far from comfortable on my
account. All you have to do is to announce me as Prince Muishkin,
and the object of my visit will be plain enough. If I am
received--very good; if not, well, very good again. But they are
sure to receive me, I should think; Madame Epanchin will
naturally be curious to see the only remaining representative of
her family. She values her Muishkin descent very highly, if I am
rightly informed."

The prince's conversation was artless and confiding to a degree,
and the servant could not help feeling that as from visitor to
common serving-man this state of things was highly improper. His
conclusion was that one of two things must be the explanation--
either that this was a begging impostor, or that the prince, if
prince he were, was simply a fool, without the slightest
ambition; for a sensible prince with any ambition would certainly
not wait about in ante-rooms with servants, and talk of his own
private affairs like this. In either case, how was he to announce
this singular visitor?

"I really think I must request you to step into the next room!"
he said, with all the insistence he could muster.

"Why? If I had been sitting there now, I should not have had the
opportunity of making these personal explanations. I see you are
still uneasy about me and keep eyeing my cloak and bundle. Don't
you think you might go in yourself now, without waiting for the
secretary to come out?"

"No, no! I can't announce a visitor like yourself without the
secretary. Besides the general said he was not to be disturbed--
he is with the Colonel C--. Gavrila Ardalionovitch goes in
without announcing."

"Who may that be? a clerk?"

"What? Gavrila Ardalionovitch? Oh no; he belongs to one of the
companies. Look here, at all events put your bundle down, here."

"Yes, I will if I may; and--can I take off my cloak"

"Of course; you can't go in THERE with it on, anyhow."

The prince rose and took off his mantle, revealing a neat enough
morning costume--a little worn, but well made. He wore a steel
watch chain and from this chain there hung a silver Geneva watch.
Fool the prince might be, still, the general's servant felt that
it was not correct for him to continue to converse thus with a
visitor, in spite of the fact that the prince pleased him
somehow.

"And what time of day does the lady receive?" the latter asked,
reseating himself in his old place.

"Oh, that's not in my province! I believe she receives at any
time; it depends upon the visitors. The dressmaker goes in at
eleven. Gavrila Ardalionovitch is allowed much earlier than other
people, too; he is even admitted to early lunch now and then."

"It is much warmer in the rooms here than it is abroad at this
season," observed the prince; " but it is much warmer there out
of doors. As for the houses--a Russian can't live in them in the
winter until he gets accustomed to them."

"Don't they heat them at all?"

"Well, they do heat them a little; but the houses and stoves are
so different to ours."

"H'm! were you long away?"

"Four years! and I was in the same place nearly all the time,--in
one village."

"You must have forgotten Russia, hadn't you?"

"Yes, indeed I had--a good deal; and, would you believe it, I
often wonder at myself for not having forgotten how to speak
Russian? Even now, as I talk to you, I keep saying to myself 'how
well I am speaking it.' Perhaps that is partly why I am so
talkative this morning. I assure you, ever since yesterday
evening I have had the strongest desire to go on and on talking
Russian."

"H'm! yes; did you live in Petersburg in former years?"

This good flunkey, in spite of his conscientious scruples, really
could not resist continuing such a very genteel and agreeable
conversation.

"In Petersburg? Oh no! hardly at all, and now they say so much
is changed in the place that even those who did know it well are
obliged to relearn what they knew. They talk a good deal about
the new law courts, and changes there, don't they?"

"H'm! yes, that's true enough. Well now, how is the law over
there, do they administer it more justly than here?"

"Oh, I don't know about that! I've heard much that is good about
our legal administration, too. There is no capital punishment
here for one thing."

"Is there over there?"

"Yes--I saw an execution in France--at Lyons. Schneider took me
over with him to see it."

"What, did they hang the fellow?"

"No, they cut off people's heads in France."

"What did the fellow do?--yell?"

"Oh no--it's the work of an instant. They put a man inside a
frame and a sort of broad knife falls by machinery -they call the
thing a guillotine-it falls with fearful force and weight-the
head springs off so quickly that you can't wink your eye in
between. But all the preparations are so dreadful. When they
announce the sentence, you know, and prepare the criminal and tie
his hands, and cart him off to the scaffold--that's the fearful
part of the business. The people all crowd round--even women-
though they don't at all approve of women looking on."

"No, it's not a thing for women."

"Of course not--of course not!--bah! The criminal was a fine
intelligent fearless man; Le Gros was his name; and I may tell
you--believe it or not, as you like--that when that man stepped
upon the scaffold he CRIED, he did indeed,--he was as white as a
bit of paper. Isn't it a dreadful idea that he should have cried
--cried! Whoever heard of a grown man crying from fear--not a
child, but a man who never had cried before--a grown man of
forty-five years. Imagine what must have been going on in that
man's mind at such a moment; what dreadful convulsions his whole
spirit must have endured; it is an outrage on the soul that's
what it is. Because it is said 'thou shalt not kill,' is he to be
killed because he murdered some one else? No, it is not right,
it's an impossible theory. I assure you, I saw the sight a month
ago and it's dancing before my eyes to this moment. I dream of
it, often."

The prince had grown animated as he spoke, and a tinge of colour
suffused his pale face, though his way of talking was as quiet as
ever. The servant followed his words with sympathetic interest.
Clearly he was not at all anxious to bring the conversation to an
end. Who knows? Perhaps he too was a man of imagination and with
some capacity for thought.

"Well, at all events it is a good thing that there's no pain when
the poor fellow's head flies off," he remarked.

"Do you know, though," cried the prince warmly, "you made that
remark now, and everyone says the same thing, and the machine is
designed with the purpose of avoiding pain, this guillotine I
mean; but a thought came into my head then: what if it be a bad
plan after all? You may laugh at my idea, perhaps--but I could
not help its occurring to me all the same. Now with the rack and
tortures and so on--you suffer terrible pain of course; but then
your torture is bodily pain only (although no doubt you have
plenty of that) until you die. But HERE I should imagine the most
terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at
all--but the certain knowledge that in an hour,--then in ten
minutes, then in half a minute, then now--this very INSTANT--your
soul must quit your body and that you will no longer be a man--
and that this is certain, CERTAIN! That's the point--the
certainty of it. Just that instant when you place your head on
the block and hear the iron grate over your head--then--that
quarter of a second is the most awful of all.

"This is not my own fantastical opinion--many people have thought
the same; but I feel it so deeply that I'll tell you what I
think. I believe that to execute a man for murder is to punish
him immeasurably more dreadfully than is equivalent to his crime.
A murder by sentence is far more dreadful than a murder committed
by a criminal. The man who is attacked by robbers at night, in a
dark wood, or anywhere, undoubtedly hopes and hopes that he may
yet escape until the very moment of his death. There are plenty
of instances of a man running away, or imploring for mercy--at
all events hoping on in some degree--even after his throat was
cut. But in the case of an execution, that last hope--having
which it is so immeasurably less dreadful to die,--is taken away
from the wretch and CERTAINTY substituted in its place! There is
his sentence, and with it that terrible certainty that he cannot
possibly escape death--which, I consider, must be the most
dreadful anguish in the world. You may place a soldier before a
cannon's mouth in battle, and fire upon him--and he will still
hope. But read to that same soldier his death-sentence, and he
will either go mad or burst into tears. Who dares to say that any
man can suffer this without going mad? No, no! it is an abuse, a
shame, it is unnecessary--why should such a thing exist?
Doubtless there may be men who have been sentenced, who have
suffered this mental anguish for a while and then have been
reprieved; perhaps such men may have been able to relate their
feelings afterwards. Our Lord Christ spoke of this anguish and
dread. No! no! no! No man should be treated so, no man, no man!"

The servant, though of course he could not have expressed all
this as the prince did, still clearly entered into it and was
greatly conciliated, as was evident from the increased amiability
of his expression. "If you are really very anxious for a smoke,"
he remarked, "I think it might possibly be managed, if you are
very quick about it. You see they might come out and inquire for
you, and you wouldn't be on the spot. You see that door there? Go
in there and you'll find a little room on the right; you can
smoke there, only open the window, because I ought not to allow
it really, and--." But there was no time, after all.

A young fellow entered the ante-room at this moment, with a
bundle of papers in his hand. The footman hastened to help him
take off his overcoat. The new arrival glanced at the prince out
of the corners of his eyes.

"This gentleman declares, Gavrila Ardalionovitch," began the man,
confidentially and almost familiarly, "that he is Prince Muishkin
and a relative of Madame Epanchin's. He has just arrived from
abroad, with nothing but a bundle by way of luggage--."

The prince did not hear the rest, because at this point the
servant continued his communication in a whisper.

Gavrila Ardalionovitch listened attentively, and gazed at the
prince with great curiosity. At last he motioned the man aside
and stepped hurriedly towards the prince.

"Are you Prince Muishkin?" he asked, with the greatest courtesy
and amiability.

He was a remarkably handsome young fellow of some twenty-eight
summers, fair and of middle height; he wore a small beard, and
his face was most intelligent. Yet his smile, in spite of its
sweetness, was a little thin, if I may so call it, and showed his
teeth too evenly; his gaze though decidedly good-humoured and
ingenuous, was a trifle too inquisitive and intent to be
altogether agreeable.

"Probably when he is alone he looks quite different, and hardly
smiles at all!" thought the prince.

He explained about himself in a few words, very much the same as
he had told the footman and Rogojin beforehand.

Gavrila Ardalionovitch meanwhile seemed to be trying to recall
something.

"Was it not you, then, who sent a letter a year or less ago--from
Switzerland, I think it was--to Elizabetha Prokofievna (Mrs.
Epanchin)?"

"It was."

"Oh, then, of course they will remember who you are. You wish to
see the general? I'll tell him at once--he will be free in a
minute; but you--you had better wait in the ante-chamber,--hadn't
you? Why is he here?" he added, severely, to the man.

"I tell you, sir, he wished it himself!"

At this moment the study door opened, and a military man, with a
portfolio under his arm, came out talking loudly, and after
bidding good-bye to someone inside, took his departure.

"You there, Gania? cried a voice from the study, "come in here,
will you?"

Gavrila Ardalionovitch nodded to the prince and entered the room
hastily.

A couple of minutes later the door opened again and the affable
voice of Gania cried:

"Come in please, prince!"