week? In the night? Have you gone cracked, my good friend?”
Hippolyte paused and considered a moment. Then a smile ofcunning--almost triumph--crossed his lips.
“It was you,” he murmured, almost in a whisper, but with absoluteconviction. “Yes, it was you who came to my room and sat silently on achair at my window for a whole hour--more! It was between one and twoat night; you rose and went out at about three. It was you, you! Why youshould have frightened me so, why you should have wished to torment melike that, I cannot tell--but you it was.”
There was absolute hatred in his eyes as he said this, but his look offear and his trembling had not left him.
“You shall hear all this directly, gentlemen. I--I--listen!”
He seized his paper in a desperate hurry; he fidgeted with it, and triedto sort it, but for a long while his trembling hands could not collectthe sheets together. “He’s either mad or delirious,” murmured Rogojin.At last he began.
For the first five minutes the reader’s voice continued to tremble,and he read disconnectedly and unevenly; but gradually his voicestrengthened. Occasionally a violent fit of coughing stopped him, buthis animation grew with the progress of the reading--as did also thedisagreeable impression which it made upon his audience,--until itreached the highest pitch of excitement.
Here is the article.
MY NECESSARY EXPLANATION.
“_Après moi le déluge._
“Yesterday morning the prince came to see me. Among other things heasked me to come down to his villa. I knew he would come and persuademe to this step, and that he would adduce the argument that it would beeasier for me to die ‘among people and green trees,’--as he expressedit. But today he did not say ‘die,’ he said ‘live.’ It is pretty muchthe same to me, in my position, which he says. When I asked him why hemade such a point of his ‘green trees,’ he told me, to my astonishment,that he had heard that last time I was in Pavlofsk I had said that I hadcome ‘to have a last look at the trees.’
“When I observed that it was all the same whether one died among treesor in front of a blank brick wall, as here, and that it was not worthmaking any fuss over a fortnight, he agreed at once. But he insistedthat the good air at Pavlofsk and the greenness would certainly cause aphysical change for the better, and that my excitement, and my _dreams_,would be perhaps relieved. I remarked to him, with a smile, that hespoke like a materialist, and he answered that he had always been one.As he never tells a lie, there must be something in his words. His smileis a pleasant one. I have had a good look at him. I don’t know whetherI like him or not; and I have no time to waste over the question. Thehatred which I felt for him for five months has become considerablymodified, I may say, during the last month. Who knows, perhaps I amgoing to Pavlofsk on purpose to see him! But why do I leave my chamber?Those who are sentenced to death should not leave their cells. If Ihad not formed a final resolve, but had decided to wait until the lastminute, I should not leave my room, or accept his invitation to comeand die at Pavlofsk. I must be quick and finish this explanation beforetomorrow. I shall have no time to read it over and correct it, for Imust read it tomorrow to the prince and two or three witnesses whom Ishall probably find there.
“As it will be absolutely true, without a touch of falsehood, I amcurious to see what impression it will make upon me myself at the momentwhen I read it out. This is my ‘last and solemn’--but why need I callit that? There is no question about the truth of it, for it is notworthwhile lying for a fortnight; a fortnight of life is not itselfworth having, which is a proof that I write nothing here but pure truth.
(“N.B.--Let me remember to consider; am I mad at this moment, or not? orrather at these moments? I have been told that consumptives sometimesdo go out of their minds for a while in the last stages of the malady.I can prove this tomorrow when I read it out, by the impression itmakes upon the audience. I must settle this question once and for all,otherwise I can’t go on with anything.)
“I believe I have just written dreadful nonsense; but there’s no timefor correcting, as I said before. Besides that, I have made myself apromise not to alter a single word of what I write in this paper, eventhough I find that I am contradicting myself every five lines. I wish toverify the working of the natural logic of my ideas tomorrow during thereading--whether I am capable of detecting logical errors, and whetherall that I have meditated over during the last six months be true, ornothing but delirium.
“If two months since I had been called upon to leave my room and theview of Meyer’s wall opposite, I verily believe I should have beensorry. But now I have no such feeling, and yet I am leaving this roomand Meyer’s brick wall _for ever_. So that my conclusion, that it is notworth while indulging in grief, or any other emotion, for a fortnight,has proved stronger than my very nature, and has taken over thedirection of my feelings. But is it so? Is it the case that my natureis conquered entirely? If I were to be put on the rack now, I shouldcertainly cry out. I should not say that it is not worth while to yelland feel pain because I have but a fortnight to live.
“But is it true that I have but a fortnight of life left to me? I know Itold some of my friends that Doctor B. had informed me that this was thecase; but I now confess that I lied; B. has not even seen me. However,a week ago, I called in a medical student, Kislorodoff, who is aNationalist, an Atheist, and a Nihilist, by conviction, and that is whyI had him. I needed a man who would tell me the bare truth without anyhumbug or ceremony--and so he did--indeed, almost with pleasure (which Ithought was going a little too far).
“Well, he plumped out that I had about a month left me; it might be alittle more, he said, under favourable circumstances, but it mightalso be considerably less. According to his opinion I might die quitesuddenly--tomorrow, for instance--there had been such cases. Only a dayor two since a young lady at Colomna who suffered from consumption, andwas about on a par with myself in the march of the disease, was goingout to market to buy provisions, when she suddenly felt faint, lay downon the sofa, gasped once, and died.
“Kislorodoff told me all this with a sort of exaggerated devil-may-carenegligence, and as though he did me great honour by talking to meso, because it showed that he considered me the same sort of exaltedNihilistic being as himself, to whom death was a matter of noconsequence whatever, either way.
“At all events, the fact remained--a month of life and no more! That heis right in his estimation I am absolutely persuaded.
“It puzzles me much to think how on earth the prince guessed yesterdaythat I have had bad dreams. He said to me, ‘Your excitement and dreamswill find relief at Pavlofsk.’ Why did he say ‘dreams’? Either he is adoctor, or else he is a man of exceptional intelligence and wonderfulpowers of observation. (But that he is an ‘idiot,’ at bottom there canbe no doubt whatever.) It so happened that just before he arrived I hada delightful little dream; one of a kind that I have hundreds of justnow. I had fallen asleep about an hour before he came in, and dreamedthat I was in some room, not my own. It was a large room, wellfurnished, with a cupboard, chest of drawers, sofa, and my bed, a finewide bed covered with a silken counterpane. But I observed in the rooma dreadful-looking creature, a sort of monster. It was a little like ascorpion, but was not a scorpion, but far more horrible, and especiallyso, because there are no creatures anything like it in nature, andbecause it had appeared to me for a purpose, and bore some mysterioussignification. I looked at the beast well; it was brown in colour andhad a shell; it was a crawling kind of reptile, about eight inches long,and narrowed down from the head, which was about a couple of fingers inwidth, to the end of the tail, which came to a fine point. Out of itstrunk, about a couple of inches below its head, came two legs at anangle of forty-five degrees, each about three inches long, so that thebeast looked like a trident from above. It had eight hard needle-likewhiskers coming out from different parts of its body; it went along likea snake, bending its body about in spite of the shell it wore, and itsmotion was very quick and very horrible to look at. I was dreadfully
afraid it would sting me; somebody had told me, I thought, that itwas venomous; but what tormented me most of all was the wondering andwondering as to who had sent it into my room, and what was the mysterywhich I felt it contained.
“It hid itself under the cupboard and under the chest of drawers, andcrawled into the corners. I sat on a chair and kept my legs tuckedunder me. Then the beast crawled quietly across the room and disappearedsomewhere near my chair. I looked about for it in terror, but I stillhoped that as my feet were safely tucked away it would not be able totouch me.
“Suddenly I heard behind me, and about on a level with my head, a sortof rattling sound. I turned sharp round and saw that the brute hadcrawled up the wall as high as the level of my face, and that itshorrible tail, which was moving incredibly fast from side to side, wasactually touching my hair! I jumped up--and it disappeared. I did notdare lie down on my bed for fear it should creep under my pillow. Mymother came into the room, and some friends of hers. They began to huntfor the reptile and were
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