PART I - IX

The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Translated by Eva Martin

PART I - IX, THE IDIOT by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
An eText from LiteratureClassics.com.

Please see the eText readme for important copyright information (available from the options menu above if you are browsing online or as a separate file in the archive if you are browsing offline.)



Silence immediately fell on the room; all looked at the prince as
though they neither understood, nor hoped to understand. Gania
was motionless with horror.

Nastasia's arrival was a most unexpected and overwhelming event
to all parties. In the first place, she had never been before. Up
to now she had been so haughty that she had never even asked
Gania to introduce her to his parents. Of late she had not so
much as mentioned them. Gania was partly glad of this; but still
he had put it to her debit in the account to be settled after
marriage.

He would have borne anything from her rather than this visit. But
one thing seemed to him quite clear-her visit now, and the
present of her portrait on this particular day, pointed out
plainly enough which way she intended to make her decision!

The incredulous amazement with which all regarded the prince did
not last long, for Nastasia herself appeared at the door and
passed in, pushing by the prince again.

"At last I've stormed the citadel! Why do you tie up your bell?"
she said, merrily, as she pressed Gania's hand, the latter having
rushed up to her as soon as she made her appearance. "What are
you looking so upset about? Introduce me, please!"

The bewildered Gania introduced her first to Varia, and both
women, before shaking hands, exchanged looks of strange import.
Nastasia, however, smiled amiably; but Varia did not try to look
amiable, and kept her gloomy expression. She did not even
vouchsafe the usual courteous smile of etiquette. Gania darted a
terrible glance of wrath at her for this, but Nina Alexandrovna,
mended matters a little when Gania introduced her at last.
Hardly, however, had the old lady begun about her " highly
gratified feelings," and so on, when Nastasia left her, and
flounced into a chair by Gania's side in the corner by the
window, and cried: "Where's your study? and where are the--the
lodgers? You do take in lodgers, don't you?"

Gania looked dreadfully put out, and tried to say something in
reply, but Nastasia interrupted him:

"Why, where are you going to squeeze lodgers in here? Don't you
use a study? Does this sort of thing pay?" she added, turning to
Nina Alexandrovna.

"Well, it is troublesome, rather," said the latter; "but I
suppose it will 'pay' pretty well. We have only just begun,
however--"

Again Nastasia Philipovna did not hear the sentence out. She
glanced at Gania, and cried, laughing, "What a face! My goodness,
what a face you have on at this moment!"

Indeed, Gania did not look in the least like himself. His
bewilderment and his alarmed perplexity passed off, however, and
his lips now twitched with rage as he continued to stare evilly
at his laughing guest, while his countenance became absolutely
livid.

There was another witness, who, though standing at the door
motionless and bewildered himself, still managed to remark
Gania's death-like pallor, and the dreadful change that had come
over his face. This witness was the prince, who now advanced in
alarm and muttered to Gania:

"Drink some water, and don't look like that!"

It was clear that he came out with these words quite
spontaneously, on the spur of the moment. But his speech was
productive of much--for it appeared that all. Gania's rage now
overflowed upon the prince. He seized him by the shoulder and
gazed with an intensity of loathing and revenge at him, but said
nothing--as though his feelings were too strong to permit of
words.

General agitation prevailed. Nina Alexandrovna gave a little cry
of anxiety; Ptitsin took a step forward in alarm; Colia and
Ferdishenko stood stock still at the door in amazement;--only
Varia remained coolly watching the scene from under her
eyelashes. She did not sit down, but stood by her mother with
folded hands. However, Gania recollected himself almost
immediately. He let go of the prince and burst out laughing.

"Why, are you a doctor, prince, or what?" he asked, as naturally
as possible. "I declare you quite frightened me! Nastasia
Philipovna, let me introduce this interesting character to you--
though I have only known him myself since the morning."

Nastasia gazed at the prince in bewilderment. "Prince? He a
Prince? Why, I took him for the footman, just now, and sent him
in to announce me! Ha, ha, ha, isn't that good!"

"Not bad that, not bad at all!" put in Ferdishenko, "se non e
vero--"

"I rather think I pitched into you, too, didn't I? Forgive me--do!
Who is he, did you say? What prince? Muishkin?" she added,
addressing Gania.

"He is a lodger of ours," explained the latter.

"An idiot!"--the prince distinctly heard the word half whispered
from behind him. This was Ferdishenko's voluntary information for
Nastasia's benefit.

"Tell me, why didn't you put me right when I made such a dreadful
mistake just now?" continued the latter, examining the prince
from head to foot without the slightest ceremony. She awaited the
answer as though convinced that it would be so foolish that she
must inevitably fail to restrain her laughter over it.

"I was astonished, seeing you so suddenly--" murmured the prince.

"How did you know who I was? Where had you seen me before? And
why were you so struck dumb at the sight of me? What was there so
overwhelming about me?"

"Oho! ho, ho, ho!" cried Ferdishenko. "NOW then, prince! My
word, what things I would say if I had such a chance as that! My
goodness, prince--go on!"

"So should I, in your place, I've no doubt!" laughed the prince
to Ferdishenko; then continued, addressing Nastasia: "Your
portrait struck me very forcibly this morning; then I was talking
about you to the Epanchins; and then, in the train, before I
reached Petersburg, Parfen Rogojin told me a good deal about you;
and at the very moment that I opened the door to you I happened
to be thinking of you, when--there you stood before me!"

"And how did you recognize me?"

"From the portrait!"

"What else?"

"I seemed to imagine you exactly as you are--I seemed to have
seen you somewhere."

"Where--where?"

"I seem to have seen your eyes somewhere; but it cannot be! I
have not seen you--I never was here before. I may have dreamed of
you, I don't know."

The prince said all this with manifest effort--in broken
sentences, and with many drawings of breath. He was evidently
much agitated. Nastasia Philipovna looked at him inquisitively,
but did not laugh.

"Bravo, prince!" cried Ferdishenko, delighted.

At this moment a loud voice from behind the group which hedged in
the prince and Nastasia Philipovna, divided the crowd, as it
were, and before them stood the head of the family, General
Ivolgin. He was dressed in evening clothes; his moustache was
dyed.

This apparition was too much for Gania. Vain and ambitious almost
to morbidness, he had had much to put up with in the last two
months, and was seeking feverishly for some means of enabling
himself to lead a more presentable kind of existence. At home, he
now adopted an attitude of absolute cynicism, but he could not
keep this up before Nastasia Philipovna, although he had sworn to
make her pay after marriage for all he suffered now. He was
experiencing a last humiliation, the bitterest of all, at this
moment--the humiliation of blushing for his own kindred in his own
house. A question flashed through his mind as to whether the game
was really worth the candle.

For that had happened at this moment, which for two months had
been his nightmare; which had filled his soul with dread and
shame--the meeting between his father and Nastasia Philipovna. He
had often tried to imagine such an event, but had found the
picture too mortifying and exasperating, and had quietly dropped
it. Very likely he anticipated far worse things than was at all
necessary; it is often so with vain persons. He had long since
determined, therefore, to get his father out of the way,
anywhere, before his marriage, in order to avoid such a meeting;
but when Nastasia entered the room just now, he had been so
overwhelmed with astonishment, that he had not thought of his
father, and had made no arrangements to keep him out of the way.
And now it was too late--there he was, and got up, too, in a dress
coat and white tie, and Nastasia in the very humour to heap
ridicule on him and his family circle; of this last fact, he felt
quite persuaded. What else had she come for? There were his
mother and his sister sitting before her, and she seemed to have
forgotten their very existence already; and if she behaved like
that, he thought, she must have some object in view.

Ferdishenko led the general up to Nastasia Philipovna.

"Ardalion Alexandrovitch Ivolgin," said the smiling general, with
a low bow of great dignity, "an old soldier, unfortunate, and the
father of this family; but happy in the hope of including in that
family so exquisite--"

He did not finish his sentence, for at this moment Ferdishenko
pushed a chair up from behind, and the general, not very firm on
his legs, at this post-prandial hour, flopped into it backwards.
It was always a difficult thing to put this warrior to confusion,
and his sudden descent left him as composed as before. He had sat
down just opposite to Nastasia, whose fingers he now took, and
raised to his lips with great elegance, and much courtesy. The
general had once belonged to a very select circle of society, but
he had been turned out of it two or three years since on account
of certain weaknesses, in which he now indulged with all the less
restraint; but his good manners remained with him to this day, in
spite of all.

Nastasia Philipovna seemed delighted at the appearance of this
latest arrival, of whom she had of course heard a good deal by
report.

"I have heard that my son--" began Ardalion Alexandrovitch.

"Your son, indeed! A nice papa you are! YOU might have come to
see me anyhow, without compromising anyone. Do you hide yourself,
or does your son hide you?"

"The children of the nineteenth century, and their parents--"
began the general, again.

"Nastasia Philipovna, will you excuse the general for a moment?
Someone is inquiring for him," said Nina Alexandrovna in a loud
voice, interrupting the conversation.

"Excuse him? Oh no, I have wished to see him too long for that.
Why, what business can he have? He has retired, hasn't he? You
won't leave me, general, will you?"

"I give you my word that he shall come and see you--but he--he
needs rest just now."

"General, they say you require rest," said Nastasia Philipovna,
with the melancholy face of a child whose toy is taken away.

Ardalion Alexandrovitch immediately did his best to make his
foolish position a great deal worse.

"My dear, my dear!" he said, solemnly and reproachfully, looking
at his wife, with one hand on his heart.

"Won't you leave the room, mamma?" asked Varia, aloud.

"No, Varia, I shall sit it out to the end."

Nastasia must have overheard both question and reply, but her
vivacity was not in the least damped. On the contrary, it seemed
to increase. She immediately overwhelmed the general once more
with questions, and within five minutes that gentleman was as
happy as a king, and holding forth at the top of his voice, amid
the laughter of almost all who heard him.

Colia jogged the prince's arm.

"Can't YOU get him out of the room, somehow? DO, please," and
tears of annoyance stood in the boy's eyes. "Curse that Gania!"
he muttered, between his teeth.

"Oh yes, I knew General Epanchin well," General Ivolgin was
saying at this moment; "he and Prince Nicolai Ivanovitch
Muishkin--whose son I have this day embraced after an absence of
twenty years--and I, were three inseparables. Alas one is in the
grave, torn to pieces by calumnies and bullets; another is now
before you, still battling with calumnies and bullets--"

"Bullets?" cried Nastasia.

"Yes, here in my chest. I received them at the siege of Kars, and
I feel them in bad weather now. And as to the third of our trio,
Epanchin, of course after that little affair with the poodle in
the railway carriage, it was all UP between us."

"Poodle? What was that? And in a railway carriage? Dear me," said
Nastasia, thoughtfully, as though trying to recall something to
mind.

"Oh, just a silly, little occurrence, really not worth telling,
about Princess Bielokonski's governess, Miss Smith, and--oh, it
is really not worth telling!"

"No, no, we must have it!" cried Nastasia merrily.

"Yes, of course," said Ferdishenko. "C'est du nouveau."

"Ardalion," said Nina Alexandrovitch, entreatingly.

"Papa, you are wanted!" cried Colia.

"Well, it is a silly little story, in a few words," began the
delighted general. "A couple of years ago, soon after the new
railway was opened, I had to go somewhere or other on business.
Well, I took a first-class ticket, sat down, and began to smoke,
or rather CONTINUED to smoke, for I had lighted up before. I was
alone in the carriage. Smoking is not allowed, but is not
prohibited either; it is half allowed--so to speak, winked at. I
had the window open."

"Suddenly, just before the whistle, in came two ladies with a
little poodle, and sat down opposite to me; not bad-looking
women; one was in light blue, the other in black silk. The
poodle, a beauty with a silver collar, lay on light blue's knee.
They looked haughtily about, and talked English together. I took
no notice, just went on smoking. I observed that the ladies were
getting angry--over my cigar, doubtless. One looked at me through
her tortoise-shell eyeglass.

"I took no notice, because they never said a word. If they didn't
like the cigar, why couldn't they say so? Not a word, not a hint!
Suddenly, and without the very slightest suspicion of warning,
'light blue' seizes my cigar from between my fingers, and,
wheugh! out of the window with it! Well, on flew the train, and I
sat bewildered, and the young woman, tall and fair, and rather
red in the face, too red, glared at me with flashing eyes.

"I didn't say a word, but with extreme courtesy, I may say with
most refined courtesy, I reached my finger and thumb over towards
the poodle, took it up delicately by the nape of the neck, and
chucked it out of the window, after the cigar. The train went
flying on, and the poodle's yells were lost in the distance."

"Oh, you naughty man!" cried Nastasia, laughing and clapping her
hands like a child.

"Bravo!" said Ferdishenko. Ptitsin laughed too, though he had
been very sorry to see the general appear. Even Colia laughed and
said, "Bravo!"

"And I was right, truly right," cried the general, with warmth
and solemnity, "for if cigars are forbidden in railway carriages,
poodles are much more so."

"Well, and what did the lady do?" asked Nastasia, impatiently.

" She--ah, that's where all the mischief of it lies!" replied
Ivolgin, frowning. "Without a word, as it were, of warning, she
slapped me on the cheek! An extraordinary woman!"

"And you?"

The general dropped his eyes, and elevated his brows; shrugged
his shoulders, tightened his lips, spread his hands, and remained
silent. At last he blurted out:

"I lost my head!"

"Did you hit her?"

"No, oh no!--there was a great flare-up, but I didn't hit her! I
had to struggle a little, purely to defend myself; but the very
devil was in the business. It turned out that 'light blue' was an
Englishwoman, governess or something, at Princess Bielokonski's,
and the other woman was one of the old-maid princesses
Bielokonski. Well, everybody knows what great friends the
princess and Mrs. Epanchin are, so there was a pretty kettle of
fish. All the Bielokonskis went into mourning for the poodle. Six
princesses in tears, and the Englishwoman shrieking!

"Of course I wrote an apology, and called, but they would not
receive either me or my apology, and the Epanchins cut me, too!"

"But wait," said Nastasia. "How is it that, five or six days
since, I read exactly the same story in the paper, as happening
between a Frenchman and an English girl? The cigar was snatched
away exactly as you describe, and the poodle was chucked out of
the window after it. The slapping came off, too, as in your case;
and the girl's dress was light blue!"

The general blushed dreadfully; Colia blushed too; and Ptitsin
turned hastily away. Ferdishenko was the only one who laughed as
gaily as before. As to Gania, I need not say that he was
miserable; he stood dumb and wretched and took no notice of
anybody.

"I assure you," said the general, "that exactly the same thing
happened to myself!"

"I remembered there was some quarrel between father and Miss
Smith, the Bielokonski's governess," said Colia.

"How very curious, point for point the same anecdote, and
happening at different ends of Europe! Even the light blue dress
the same," continued the pitiless Nastasia. "I must really send
you the paper."

"You must observe," insisted the general, "that my experience was
two years earlier."

"Ah! that's it, no doubt!"

Nastasia Philipovna laughed hysterically.

"Father, will you hear a word from me outside!" said Gania, his
voice shaking with agitation, as he seized his father by the
shoulder. His eyes shone with a blaze of hatred.

At this moment there was a terrific bang at the front door,
almost enough to break it down. Some most unusual visitor must
have arrived. Colia ran to open.