The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “They don’t heat them?”

  “No, and the houses are also built differently—the stoves and windows, that is.”

  “Hm! Have you been traveling long?”

  “Four years. Though I sat in the same place almost the whole time, in the country.”

  “You’re unaccustomed to things here?”

  “That’s true, too. Would you believe, I marvel at myself that I haven’t forgotten how to speak Russian. Here I’m talking to you now and thinking to myself: ‘I speak well enough after all.’ That may be why I’m talking so much. Really, since yesterday all I’ve wanted to do is speak Russian.”

  “Hm! Heh! And did you live in Petersburg before?” (Try as he might, the lackey could not help keeping up such a courteous and polite conversation.)

  “In Petersburg? Hardly at all, just in passing. And before I didn’t know anything here, but now I’ve heard so much is new that they say anyone who knew it has to learn to know it all over again. There’s a lot of talk about the courts.”13

  “Hm!… The courts. The courts, it’s true, there’s the courts. And do the courts there judge more fairly or not?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve heard a lot of good about ours. Then, again, we have no capital punishment.”14

  “And they have it there?”

  “Yes. I saw it in France, in Lyons. Schneider took me there with him.”

  “By hanging?”

  “No, in France they always cut their heads off.”

  “And what, do they scream?”

  “Hardly! It’s instantaneous. The man is laid down, and a broad knife drops, it’s a special machine called the guillotine, heavy, powerful … The head bounces off before you can blink an eye. The preparations are the bad part. When they read out the sentence, get everything ready, tie him up, lead him to the scaffold, then it’s terrible! People gather, even women, though they don’t like it when women watch.”

  “It’s not their business.”

  “Of course not! Of course not! Such suffering!… The criminal was an intelligent man, fearless, strong, mature, his name was Legros. And I tell you, believe it or not, he wept as he climbed the scaffold, he was white as paper. Is it possible? Isn’t it terrible? Do people weep from fear? I never thought it was possible for a man who has never wept, for a man of forty-five, not a child, to weep from fear! What happens at that moment with the soul, what convulsions is it driven to? It’s an outrage on the soul, and nothing more! It’s said, ‘Do not kill.’ So he killed, and then they kill him? No, that’s impossible. I saw it a month ago, and it’s as if it were still there before my eyes. I’ve dreamed about it five times.”

  The prince even grew animated as he spoke, a slight flush came to his pale face, though his speech was as quiet as before. The valet watched him with sympathetic interest and seemed unwilling to tear himself away; perhaps he, too, was a man with imagination and an inclination to thinking.

  “It’s a good thing there’s not much suffering,” he observed, “when the head flies off.”

  “You know what?” the prince picked up hotly. “You’ve just observed that, and everybody makes the same observation as you, and this machine, the guillotine, was invented for that. But a thought occurred to me then: what if it’s even worse? To you it seems ridiculous, to you it seems wild, but with some imagination even a thought like that can pop into your head. Think: if there’s torture, for instance, then there’s suffering, wounds, bodily pain, and it means that all that distracts you from inner torment, so that you only suffer from the wounds until you die. And yet the chief, the strongest pain may not be in the wounds, but in knowing for certain that in an hour, then in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then now, this second—your soul will fly out of your body and you’ll no longer be a man, and it’s for certain—the main thing is that it’s for certain. When you put your head under that knife and hear it come screeching down on you, that one quarter of a second is the most horrible of all. Do you know that this isn’t my fantasy, but that many people have said so? I believe it so much that I’ll tell you my opinion outright. To kill for killing is an immeasurably greater punishment than the crime itself. To be killed by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than to be killed by robbers. A man killed by robbers, stabbed at night, in the forest or however, certainly still hopes he’ll be saved till the very last minute. There have been examples when a man’s throat has already been cut, and he still hopes, or flees, or pleads. But here all this last hope, which makes it ten times easier to die, is taken away for certain; here there’s the sentence, and the whole torment lies in the certainty that there’s no escape, and there’s no greater torment in the world than that. Take a soldier, put him right in front of a cannon during a battle, and shoot at him, and he’ll still keep hoping, but read that same soldier a sentence for certain, and he’ll lose his mind or start weeping. Who ever said human nature could bear it without going mad? Why such an ugly, vain, unnecessary violation? Maybe there’s a man who has had the sentence read to him, has been allowed to suffer, and has then been told, ‘Go, you’re forgiven.’ That man might be able to tell us something. Christ spoke of this suffering and horror. No, you can’t treat a man like that!”15

  The valet, though of course he could not have expressed it all like the prince, nevertheless understood, if not all, at least the main thing, as could be seen by his softened expression.

  “If you have such a wish to smoke,” he said, “it might be possible, if you do it quickly. Because he may ask for you suddenly, and you won’t be here. There, under the stairway, you see, there’s a door. As you go through the door, there’s a little room to the right: you can smoke there, only open the vent window, because it’s against the rules …”

  But the prince had no time to go and smoke. A young man suddenly came into the anteroom with papers in his hands. The valet began to help him out of his fur coat. The young man cocked an eye at the prince.

  “Gavrila Ardalionych,” the valet began confidentially and almost familiarly, “this gentleman here presents himself as Prince Myshkin and the lady’s relation, come by train from abroad with a bundle in his hands, only …”

  The prince did not hear the rest, because the valet started whispering. Gavrila Ardalionovich listened attentively and kept glancing at the prince with great curiosity. Finally he stopped listening and approached him impatiently.

  “You are Prince Myshkin?” he asked extremely amiably and politely. He was a very handsome young man, also of about twenty-eight, a trim blond, of above average height, with a small imperial, and an intelligent and very handsome face. Only his smile, for all its amiability, was somewhat too subtle; it revealed his somewhat too pearly and even teeth; his gaze, for all its cheerfulness and ostensible simple-heartedness, was somewhat too intent and searching.

  “When he’s alone he probably doesn’t look that way, and maybe never laughs,” the prince somehow felt.

  The prince explained all he could, hurriedly, almost in the same way as he had explained to the valet earlier, and to Rogozhin earlier still. Gavrila Ardalionovich meanwhile seemed to be recalling something.

  “Was it you,” he asked, “who sent a letter to Elizaveta Prokofyevna about a year ago, from Switzerland, I believe?”

  “Exactly so.”

  “In that case they know you here and certainly remember. You wish to see his excellency? I’ll announce you presently … He’ll be free presently. Only you … you must kindly wait in the reception room … Why is the gentleman here?” he sternly addressed the valet.

  “I tell you, he didn’t want to …”

  At that moment the door of the office suddenly opened and some military man with a portfolio in his hand came through it, speaking loudly and bowing his way out.

  “Are you there, Ganya?” a voice called from the office. “Come in, please!”

  Gavrila Ardalionovich nodded to the prince and hastily went into the office.

  About two minutes later the door opened again and t
he affable voice of Gavrila Ardalionovich rang out:

  “Please come in, Prince!”

  III

  GENERAL IVAN FYODOROVICH EPANCHIN was standing in the middle of his office, looking with extreme curiosity at the entering prince, and even took two steps towards him. The prince approached and introduced himself.

  “So, sir,” replied the general, “what can I do for you?”

  “I don’t have any pressing business; my purpose was simply to make your acquaintance. I wouldn’t want to disturb you, since I don’t know anything about your day or your arrangements … But I just got off the train … I’ve come from Switzerland …”

  The general was about to smile, but thought better of it and stopped; then he thought more, narrowed his eyes, looked his guest over once again from head to foot, after which he quickly motioned him to a chair, sat down himself somewhat obliquely, and turned to the prince in impatient expectation. Ganya stood in the corner of the office, by the desk, sorting papers.

  “In fact, I have little time for making acquaintances,” said the general, “but since you, of course, have some purpose of your own …”

  “I did anticipate,” the prince interrupted, “that you would not fail to see some special purpose in my visit. But, by God, apart from the pleasure of making your acquaintance, I have no particular purpose at all.”

  “For me, too, of course, it is certainly an extreme pleasure, but amusement isn’t all, you know, one sometimes happens to be busy … Besides, so far I’m unable to see between us any common … any, so to speak, reason …”

  “There’s no reason, indisputably, and, of course, very little in common. Because if I am Prince Myshkin and your spouse is from our family, that, naturally, is no reason. I understand that very well. But nevertheless, my whole pretext consists only in that. I haven’t been in Russia for four years or so; and what was I when I left—all but out of my mind! I knew nothing then, and know still less now. I’m in need of good people; there’s even one piece of business I have, and I don’t know who to turn to. When I was in Berlin, I thought: ‘They’re almost my relations, I’ll start with them; we might be useful to each other—they to me, and I to them—if they’re good people.’ And I’d heard you were good people.”

  “Much obliged, sir,” the general was surprised. “Allow me to inquire where you’re staying.”

  “I’m not staying anywhere yet.”

  “So you came to me straight from the train? And … with your luggage?”

  “All the luggage I have is a little bundle of linen, and nothing else; I usually carry it with me. I’ll have time to take a room in the evening.”

  “Then you still intend to take a room?”

  “Oh, yes, of course.”

  “Judging by your words, I was of a mind that you had come straight to me.”

  “That could be, but not otherwise than by your invitation. Though, I confess, I wouldn’t stay even then, not that there’s any reason, but just … by character.”

  “Well, that makes it opportune that I did not and do not invite you. Excuse me, Prince, but to clarify it all at once: since you and I have just concluded that there can be no talk between us of being related—though, naturally, I’d find it very flattering—it means that …”

  “It means that I can get up and leave?” the prince rose slightly, laughing even somehow merrily, despite all the apparent embarrassment of his situation. “There, by God, General, though I have absolutely no practical knowledge either of local customs or of how people normally live here, things went with us just now as I thought they were certain to go. Well, maybe that’s how it should be … And you also didn’t answer my letter then … Well, good-bye and forgive me for bothering you.”

  The prince’s gaze was so gentle at that moment, and his smile was so free of the least shade of any concealed hostility, that the general suddenly stopped and somehow suddenly looked at his visitor in a different way; the whole change of view occurred in a single instant.

  “But you know, Prince,” he said in an almost totally different voice, “after all, I don’t know you, and Elizaveta Prokofyevna might want to have a look at her namesake … Perhaps you’d like to wait, if your time will keep.”

  “Oh, my time will keep; my time is all my own” (and the prince immediately put his round, soft-brimmed hat on the table). “I confess, I counted on Elizaveta Prokofyevna maybe remembering that I had written to her. Your servant, when I was waiting for you earlier, suspected that I had come to beg from you out of poverty; I noticed it, and you must have given him strict instructions about that; but I really didn’t come for that, I really came only so as to get to know people. Only I have a slight suspicion that I’ve disturbed you, and that troubles me.”

  “I’ll tell you what, Prince,” the general said with a cheerful smile, “if you are indeed the way you seem to be, it might very well be pleasant to become acquainted with you; only, you see, I’m a busy man and presently I’ll sit down again to look something over and sign it, and then I’ll go to see his highness, and then to my department, and the result is that though I’m glad to meet people … I mean, good people … still … However, I’m so convinced of your perfect upbringing that … And how old are you, Prince?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “Hah! And I thought you were much younger.”

  “Yes, people say I have a youthful face. But I’ll learn not to disturb you and figure it out quickly, because I myself don’t like to disturb … And, finally, it seems to me that we’re such different people, by the look of it … in many ways, that we perhaps cannot have many points in common, only, you know, I personally don’t believe in that last notion, because it often only seems that there are no points in common, when there really are a lot … it comes from people’s laziness, that they sort themselves out by looks and can’t find anything … But, anyhow, maybe I’ve begun to bore you? It’s as if you …”

  “A couple of words, sir: do you have some property at least? Or perhaps you intend to take something up? I apologize for being so …”

  “Good heavens, I understand your question and appreciate it very much. So far I have no property, nor any occupation either, and I should have, sir. And the money I now have isn’t mine, it was given to me by Schneider, the professor who treated me and taught me in Switzerland, for the trip, and he gave me just enough, so that now, for instance, I have only a few kopecks left. I have one bit of business, it’s true, and I’m in need of advice, but …”

  “Tell me, how do you intend to subsist meanwhile, and what were your intentions?” the general interrupted.

  “I wanted to do some sort of work.”

  “Oh, so you’re a philosopher! But still … are you aware of having any talents, any abilities, at least of some sort, that could earn you your daily bread? Again, I apologize …”

  “Oh, don’t apologize. No, sir, I don’t think I have any talents or special abilities; even the contrary, because I’m a sick man and have had no regular education. As for daily bread, it seems to me …”

  The general interrupted again, and again began to ask questions. The prince told him once more all that has already been told. It turned out that the general had heard of the late Pavlishchev and had even known him personally. Why Pavlishchev had concerned himself with his upbringing, the prince himself was unable to explain—however, it might simply have been out of old friendship for his late father. The prince, at his parents’ death, was left still a little child; all his life he lived and grew up in the country, since his health also called for village air. Pavlishchev entrusted him to some old lady landowners, his relations; first a governess was hired for him, then a tutor; he said, however, that though he remembered everything, he was hardly capable of giving a satisfactory account of it, because he had been unaware of many things. The frequent attacks of his illness had made almost an idiot of him (the prince actually said “idiot”). He told, finally, how one day in Berlin, Pavlishchev met Professor Schneider, a Swiss, who stu
died precisely such illnesses, had an institution in Switzerland, in canton Valais, used his own method of treatment by cold water and gymnastics, treated idiotism, insanity, also provided education, and generally attended to spiritual development; that Pavlishchev had sent him to Schneider in Switzerland about five years ago, and had died himself two years ago, suddenly, without making any arrangements; that Schneider had kept him and gone on with his treatment for another two years; that he had not cured him but had helped him very much; and that, finally, by his own wish and owing to a certain new circumstance, he had now sent him to Russia.

  The general was very surprised.

  “And you have no one in Russia, decidedly no one?” he asked.

  “No one right now, but I hope … besides, I received a letter …”

  “At least,” the general interrupted, not hearing about the letter, “you have some sort of education, and your illness won’t hinder you from occupying, for example, some undemanding post in some branch of the service?”

  “Oh, certainly not. And concerning a post, I’d even like that very much, because I want to see for myself what I’m able to do. I studied constantly for four years, though not quite in a regular way but by his special system, and I also managed to read a great many Russian books.”

  “Russian books? So you’re literate and can write without mistakes?”

  “Oh, indeed I can.”

  “Splendid, sir. And your handwriting?”

  “My handwriting is excellent. That’s perhaps where my talent lies; I’m a real calligrapher. Let me write something for you now as a sample,” the prince said warmly.

  “Kindly do. And there’s even a need for it … And I like this readiness of yours, Prince, you’re really very nice.”

  “You have such fine handwriting accessories, and so many pencils, pens, such fine, thick paper … And it’s such a fine office you have! I know that landscape, it’s a view of Switzerland. I’m sure the artist painted it from nature, and I’m sure I’ve seen that spot: it’s in canton Uri …”