The prince suddenly fell silent; everyone waited for him to go on and arrive at a conclusion.
“Have you finished?” asked Aglaya.
“What? Yes,” said the prince, coming out of a momentary pensiveness.
“Why did you tell us about that?”
“Just … I remembered … to make conversation …”
“You’re very fragmentary,” observed Alexandra. “You probably wanted to conclude, Prince, that there’s not a single moment that can be valued in kopecks, and that five minutes are sometimes dearer than a treasure. That is all very praiseworthy, but, forgive me, what ever happened to the friend who told you all those horrors … his punishment was changed, which means he was granted that ‘infinite life.’ Well, what did he do with so much wealth afterwards? Did he live ‘reckoning up’ every minute?”
“Oh, no, he told me himself—I asked him about it—he didn’t live that way at all and lost many, many minutes.”
“Well, so, there’s experience for you, so it’s impossible to live really ‘keeping a reckoning.’ There’s always some reason why it’s impossible.”
“Yes, for some reason it’s impossible,” the prince repeated. “I thought so myself … But still it’s somehow hard to believe …”
“That is, you think you can live more intelligently than everyone else?” asked Aglaya.
“Yes, I’ve sometimes thought so.”
“And you still do?”
“And … I still do,” the prince replied, looking at Aglaya, as before, with a quiet and even timid smile; but he immediately laughed again and looked at her merrily.
“How modest!” said Aglaya, almost vexed.
“But how brave you all are, though. You’re laughing, but I was so struck by everything in his story that I dreamed about it later, precisely about those five minutes …”
Once again he looked around keenly and gravely at his listeners.
“You’re not angry with me for something?” he asked suddenly, as if in perplexity, and yet looking straight into their eyes.
“For what?” the three girls cried in astonishment.
“That it’s as if I keep teaching …”
They all laughed.
“If you’re angry, don’t be,” he said. “I myself know that I’ve lived less than others and understand less about life than anyone. Maybe I sometimes speak very strangely …”
And he became decidedly embarrassed.
“Since you say you were happy, it means you lived more, not less; why do you pretend and apologize?” Aglaya began sternly and carpingly. “And please don’t worry about lecturing us, there’s nothing there to make you triumphant. With your quietism23 one could fill a hundred years of life with happiness. Show you an execution or show you a little finger, you’ll draw an equally praiseworthy idea from both and be left feeling pleased besides. It’s a way to live.”
“Why you’re so angry I don’t understand,” picked up Mrs. Epanchin, who had long been watching the faces of the speakers, “and what you’re talking about I also cannot understand. What little finger, what is this nonsense? The prince speaks beautifully, only a little sadly. Why do you discourage him? He laughed at the beginning, but now he’s quite crestfallen.”
“Never mind, maman. But it’s a pity you haven’t seen an execution, there’s one thing I’d ask you.”
“I have seen an execution,” the prince replied.
“You have?” cried Aglaya. “I must have guessed it! That crowns the whole thing. If you have, how can you say you lived happily the whole time? Well, isn’t it true what I told you?”
“Were there executions in your village?” asked Adelaida.
“I saw it in Lyons, I went there with Schneider, he took me. I arrived and happened right on to it.”
“So, what, did you like it very much? Was it very instructive? Useful?” Aglaya went on asking.
“I didn’t like it at all, and I was a bit ill afterwards, but I confess I watched as if I was riveted to it, I couldn’t tear my eyes away.”
“I, too, would be unable to tear my eyes away,” said Aglaya.
“They dislike it very much there when women come to watch, and even write about these women afterwards in the newspapers.”
“Meaning that, since they find it’s no business for women, they want to say by that (and thus justify) that it is a business for men. I congratulate them for their logic. And you think the same way, of course?”
“Tell us about the execution,” Adelaida interrupted.
“I’d be very reluctant to now …” the prince became confused and seemed to frown.
“It looks as if you begrudge telling us,” Aglaya needled him.
“No, it’s because I already told about that same execution earlier.”
“Whom did you tell?”
“Your valet, while I was waiting …”
“What valet?” came from all sides.
“The one who sits in the anteroom, with gray hair and a reddish face. I was sitting in the anteroom waiting to see Ivan Fyodorovich.”
“That’s odd,” observed Mrs. Epanchin.
“The prince is a democrat,” Aglaya snapped. “Well, if you told it to Alexei, you can’t refuse us.”
“I absolutely want to hear it,” repeated Adelaida.
“Earlier, in fact,” the prince turned to her, becoming somewhat animated again (it seemed he became animated very quickly and trustingly), “in fact it occurred to me, when you asked me for a subject for a picture, to give you this subject: to portray the face of a condemned man a minute before the stroke of the guillotine, when he’s still standing on the scaffold, before he lies down on the plank.”
“What? Just the face?” asked Adelaida. “That would be a strange subject, and what sort of picture would it make?”
“I don’t know, why not?” the prince insisted warmly. “I recently saw a picture like that in Basel.24 I’d like very much to tell you … Someday I’ll tell you about it … it struck me greatly.”
“Be sure to tell us about the Basel picture later,” said Adelaida, “but now explain to me about the picture of this execution. Can you say how you imagine it yourself? How should the face be portrayed? As just a face? What sort of face?”
“It was exactly one minute before his death,” the prince began with perfect readiness, carried away by his recollection, and apparently forgetting at once about everything else, “the very moment when he had climbed the little stairway and just stepped onto the scaffold. He glanced in my direction; I looked at his face and understood everything … But how can one talk about it! I’d be terribly, terribly glad if you or someone else could portray that! Better if it were you! I thought then that it would be a useful painting. You know, here you have to imagine everything that went before, everything, everything. He lived in prison and expected it would be at least another week till the execution; he somehow calculated the time for the usual formalities, that the paper still had to go somewhere and would only be ready in a week. And then suddenly for some reason the procedure was shortened. At five o’clock in the morning he was asleep. It was the end of October; at five o’clock it’s still cold and dark. The prison warden came in quietly, with some guards, and cautiously touched his shoulder. The man sat up, leaned on his elbow—saw a light: ‘What’s this?’ ‘The execution’s at ten.’ Still sleepy, he didn’t believe it, started objecting that the paper would be ready in a week, but when he woke up completely, he stopped arguing and fell silent—so they described it—then said: ‘All the same, it’s hard so suddenly …’ and fell silent again, and wouldn’t say anything after that. Then three or four hours were spent on the well-known things: the priest, breakfast, for which he was given wine, coffee, and beef (now, isn’t that a mockery? You’d think it was very cruel, yet, on the other hand, by God, these innocent people do it in purity of heart and are sure of their loving kindness), then the toilette (do you know what a criminal’s toilette is?), and finally they drive him through the city to
the scaffold … I think that here, too, while they’re driving him, it seems to him that he still has an endless time to live. I imagine he probably thought on the way: ‘It’s still long, there are still three streets left to live; I’ll get to the end of this one, then there’s still that one, and the one after it, with the bakery on the right … it’s still a long way to the bakery!’ People, shouting, noise all around him, ten thousand faces, ten thousand pairs of eyes—all that must be endured, and above all the thought: ‘There are ten thousand of them, and none of them is being executed, it’s me they’re executing!’ Well, that’s all the preliminaries. A little stairway leads up to the scaffold; there, facing the stairway, he suddenly burst into tears, and yet he was a strong and manly fellow and was said to be a great villain. A priest was with him all the time, rode in the cart with him, and kept talking—the man scarcely heard him: he’d begin to listen and after three words lose all understanding. That’s how it must have been. Finally, he started up the stairway; his legs were bound, so he could only take small steps. The priest, who must have been an intelligent man, stopped talking and kept giving him the cross to kiss. At the foot of the stairway he was very pale, but when he went up and stood on the scaffold, he suddenly turned white as paper, absolutely white as a sheet of writing paper. Probably his legs went weak and numb, and he felt nauseous—as if something was pressing his throat, and it was like a tickling—have you ever felt that when you were frightened, or in very terrible moments, when you keep your reason but it no longer has any power? It seems to me, for instance, that if disaster is imminent, if the house is collapsing on you, you want terribly much just to sit down, close your eyes, and wait—let come what may!… It was here, when this weakness set in, that the priest hurriedly and silently, with such a quick gesture, put the cross suddenly right to his lips—a small silver cross with four points25—and did it frequently, every minute. And the moment the cross touched his lips, he opened his eyes and seemed to revive for a few seconds, and his legs moved. He kissed the cross greedily, hurried to kiss it, as if hurrying to grasp something extra, just in case, but he was hardly conscious of anything religious at that moment. And so it went till he reached the plank … It’s strange that people rarely faint in those last seconds! On the contrary, the head is terribly alive and must be working hard, hard, hard, like an engine running; I imagine various thoughts throbbing in it, all of them incomplete, maybe even ridiculous, quite irrelevant thoughts: ‘That gaping one has a wart on his forehead … the executioner’s bottom button is rusty …’ and meanwhile you know everything and remember everything; there is this one point that can never be forgotten, and you can’t faint, and around it, around that point, everything goes and turns. And to think that it will be so till the last quarter of a second, when his head is already lying on the block, and he waits, and … knows, and suddenly above him he hears the iron screech! You’re bound to hear it! If I were lying there, I’d listen on purpose and hear it! It may be only one tenth of an instant, but you’re bound to hear it! And imagine, to this day they still argue that, as the head is being cut off, it may know for a second that it has been cut off—quite a notion! And what if it’s five seconds! Portray the scaffold so that only the last step is seen closely and clearly; the criminal has stepped onto it: his head, his face white as paper, the priest offering him the cross, he greedily puts it to his blue lips and stares, and—knows everything. The cross and the head—there’s the picture. The priest’s face, the executioner, his two assistants, and a few heads and eyes below—all that could be painted as background, in a mist, as accessory … That’s the sort of picture.”
The prince fell silent and looked at them all.
“That, of course, is nothing like quietism,” Alexandra said to herself.
“Well, now tell us how you were in love,” said Adelaida.
The prince looked at her in surprise.
“Listen,” Adelaida seemed to be hurrying, “you owe us the story about the Basel picture, but now I want to hear how you were in love. You were, don’t deny it. Besides, as soon as you start telling about something, you stop being a philosopher.”
“When you finish a story, you immediately feel ashamed of having told it,” Aglaya suddenly observed. “Why is that?”
“This is quite stupid, finally,” Mrs. Epanchin snapped, looking indignantly at Aglaya.
“Not clever,” Alexandra agreed.
“Don’t believe her, Prince,” Mrs. Epanchin turned to him, “she does it on purpose out of some sort of spite; she hasn’t been brought up so stupidly; don’t think anything of their pestering you like this. They probably have something in mind, but they already love you. I know their faces.”
“I know their faces, too,” said the prince, giving special emphasis to his words.
“How is that?” Adelaida asked curiously.
“What do you know about our faces?” the other two also became curious.
But the prince was silent and serious; they all waited for his reply.
“I’ll tell you later,” he said quietly and seriously.
“You decidedly want to intrigue us,” cried Aglaya. “And what solemnity!”
“Well, all right,” Adelaida again began to hurry, “but if you’re such an expert in faces, then surely you were also in love, which means I guessed right. Tell us about it.”
“I wasn’t in love,” the prince replied as quietly and seriously, “I … was happy in a different way.”
“How? In what way?”
“Very well, I’ll tell you,” the prince said, as if pondering deeply.
VI
“HERE YOU ALL ARE NOW,” the prince began, “looking at me with such curiosity that if I don’t satisfy it, you may well get angry with me. No, I’m joking,” he quickly added with a smile. “There … there it was all children, and I was with children all the time, only with children. They were the children of that village, a whole band, who went to school. It wasn’t I who taught them; oh, no, they had a schoolmaster there for that—Jules Thibaut; or perhaps I did teach them, but more just by being with them, and I spent all my four years that way. I didn’t need anything else. I told them everything, I didn’t hide anything from them. Their fathers and relations all got angry with me, because the children finally couldn’t do without me and kept gathering around me, and the schoolmaster finally even became my worst enemy. I acquired many enemies there, and all because of the children. Even Schneider scolded me. And what were they so afraid of? A child can be told everything—everything. I was always struck by the thought of how poorly grown-ups know children, even fathers and mothers their own children. Nothing should be concealed from children on the pretext that they’re little and it’s too early for them to know. What a sad and unfortunate idea! And how well children themselves can see that their fathers consider them too little and unable to understand anything, while they understand everything. Grown-ups don’t know that a child can give extremely important advice even in the most difficult matters. Oh, God! when this pretty little bird looks at you trustingly and happily, it’s a shame for you to deceive it! I call them little birds because nothing in the world is better than a little bird. However, they all got angry with me in the village mainly for a certain occurrence … and Thibaut simply envied me. At first he kept shaking his head and wondering how it was that with me the children understood everything and with him almost nothing, and then he started laughing at me when I told him that neither of us would teach them anything, but they might still teach us. And how could he be jealous of me and slander me, when he himself lived with children! The soul is cured through children … There was a patient at Schneider’s institution, a very unhappy man. His unhappiness was so terrible, there could hardly be the like of it. He was placed there to be treated for insanity. In my opinion, he wasn’t insane, he just suffered terribly—that was the whole of his illness. And if you knew what our children became for him in the end … But I’d better tell you about the patient later; now I’ll tell you h
ow it all started. The children disliked me at first. I was so big, I’m always so clumsy; I know I’m also bad-looking … finally, there was the fact that I was a foreigner. The children laughed at me at first, and then even began throwing stones at me, when they spied me kissing Marie. And I only kissed her once … No, don’t laugh,” the prince hastened to stop the smiles of his listeners. “There wasn’t any love here. If you knew what an unfortunate being she was, you’d pity her as I did. She was from our village. Her mother was an old woman, and in her tiny, completely decrepit house, one of the two windows was partitioned off, with the permission of the village authorities she was allowed to sell laces, thread, tobacco, and soap from this window, all at the lowest prices, and that was her subsistence. She was ill, her legs were swollen, so she always sat in her place. Marie was her daughter, about twenty, weak and thin; she had been consumptive for a long time, but she kept going from house to house, hiring herself out by the day to do heavy work—scrubbing floors, washing laundry, sweeping yards, tending cattle. A French traveling salesman seduced her and took her away, but after a week he abandoned her on the road alone and quietly left. She came home, begging on the way, all dirty, ragged, her shoes torn; she had walked for a week, slept in the fields, and caught a bad cold; her feet were covered with sores, her hands swollen and chapped. She had never been pretty anyway; only her eyes were gentle, kind, innocent. She was terribly taciturn. Once, before then, she suddenly began to sing over her work, and I remember that everybody was surprised and started laughing: ‘Marie’s begun to sing! What? Marie’s begun to sing!’ And she was terribly abashed and kept silent forever after. People were still nice to her then, but when she came back sick and worn out, there was no compassion for her in anyone! How cruel they are about that! What harsh notions they have of it all! Her mother was the first to greet her with spite and contempt: ‘You’ve dishonored me now.’ She was the first to hold her up to disgrace: when they heard in the village that Marie had come back, everybody ran to look at her, and nearly the whole village came running to the old woman’s cottage: old men, children, women, girls, everybody, in such a hustling, greedy crowd. Marie was lying on the floor at the old woman’s feet, hungry, ragged, weeping. When they all rushed in, she covered herself with her disheveled hair and lay facedown on the floor like that. Everybody around looked on her as if she were vermin; the old men denounced and abused her, the young ones even laughed, the women abused her, denounced her, looked at her with contempt, as at some sort of spider. Her mother allowed it all; she herself sat there nodding her head and approving. Her mother was already very sick then and nearly dying; in fact, two months later she did die; she knew she was dying, but even so she never thought of being reconciled with her daughter till her dying day, never spoke a single word to her, chased her out to sleep in the front hall, gave her almost nothing to eat. She often had to soak her ailing legs in warm water; Marie washed her legs every day and took care of her; the woman accepted all her services silently and never said a kind word to her. Marie endured it all, and later, when I became acquainted with her, I noticed that she approved of it herself and considered herself the lowest sort of creature. When the old woman took to her bed, the old women of the village took turns looking after her, as they do there. Then Marie was no longer given anything to eat; everybody in the village chased her away and nobody even wanted to give her work as they used to. It was as if they all spat on her, and the men even stopped considering her a woman, such vile things they said to her. At times, very rarely, when they got drunk on Sundays, they amused themselves by tossing coins to her, like that, right on the ground; Marie silently picked them up. She had begun to cough up blood by then. Finally her ragged clothes turned into real shreds, so that she was ashamed to show herself in the village; and she had gone barefoot ever since she came back. It was then that the schoolchildren, the whole band—there were over forty of them—began especially to mock her and even threw mud at her. She had asked the cowherd to let her tend the cows, but the cowherd had chased her away. Then she herself, without permission, began going out with the herd for the whole day, away from the house. As she was very useful to the cowherd and he noticed it, he no longer chased her away and sometimes even gave her the leftovers from his dinner, some cheese and bread. He considered it great charity on his part. When her mother died, the pastor saw no shame in disgracing Marie before all the people in church. Marie stood behind the coffin, as she was, in her rags, and wept. Many people came to see how she would weep and walk behind the coffin; then the pastor—he was still a young man and his whole ambition was to become a great preacher—turned to them all and pointed at Marie. ‘Here is the one who caused this respected woman’s death’ (which wasn’t true, because she had been sick for two years), ‘here she stands before you and dares not look up, because she is marked by the finger of God; here she is, barefoot and in rags—an example to those who lose their virtue! Who is she? She is her own daughter!’ and more in the same vein. And imagine, almost everyone there liked this meanness, but … here a peculiar thing occurred; here the children stepped in, because by then the children were all on my side and had begun to love Marie. This is how it happened. I wanted to do something for Marie; she badly needed money, but I never had a penny while I was there. I had a small diamond pin, and I sold it to a certain peddler: he went from village to village trading in old clothes. He gave me eight francs, though it was worth a good forty. I spent a long time trying to meet Marie alone; we finally met outside the village, by a hedge, on a side path to the mountain, behind a tree. There I gave her the eight francs and told her to be sparing of them, because I wouldn’t have more, and then I kissed her and said she shouldn’t think I had any bad intentions, and that I had kissed her not because I was in love with her but because I felt very sorry for her, and that from the very start I had never regarded her as guilty but only as unfortunate. I wanted very much to comfort her right then and to assure her that she shouldn’t regard herself as so low before everyone, but she didn’t seem to understand. I noticed it at once, though she was silent almost all the while and stood before me looking down and terribly embarrassed. When I finished, she kissed my hand, and I took her hand at once and wanted to kiss it, but she quickly pulled it back. Just then the children suddenly spied us, a whole crowd of them; I learned later that they had been spying on me for a long time. They began to whistle, clap their hands, and laugh, and Marie ran away. I wanted to speak to them, but they started throwing stones at me. That same day everybody knew about it, the entire village; it all fell on Marie again: they now disliked her still more. I even heard that they wanted to condemn her and punish her, but, thank God, it blew over. The children, however, wouldn’t let her alone, teased her worse than before, threw mud at her; they chased her, she ran away from them with her weak chest, gasping for breath; they kept at it, shouting, abusing her. Once I even picked a fight with them. Then I started talking with them, talking every day, whenever I had a chance. They sometimes stood and listened, though they kept up their abuse. I told them how unfortunate Marie was; soon they stopped abusing me and would silently walk away. We gradually began to talk. I didn’t hide anything from them, I told them everything. They listened very curiously and soon started to feel sorry for Marie. Some started greeting her kindly when they met; the custom there, when you met someone, whether you knew them or not, was to bow and say: ‘Good day.’ I can imagine how surprised Marie was. Once two girls got some food and brought it to her, gave it to her, then came and told me. They said Marie burst into tears and now they loved her very much. Soon they all began to love her, and at the same time they began to love me as well. They started coming to see me often, asking me to tell them stories; it seems I did it well, because they liked listening to me very much. And later I studied and read everything only so as to tell them afterwards, and for three years after that I told them all sorts of things. When everybody accused me afterwards—Schneider, too—of talking to them like grown-ups, without hiding anyt
hing, I replied that it was shameful to lie to them, they knew everything anyway, no matter how you hid it, and might learn it in a bad way, while from me it wouldn’t be in a bad way. You only had to remember yourself as a child. They didn’t agree … I kissed Marie two weeks before her mother died; when the pastor gave his sermon, all the children were already on my side. I told them about it at once and explained the pastor’s action; they all became angry with him, some so much that they sent stones through the pastor’s windows. I stopped them, because that was a bad thing; but everyone in the village learned all about it at once, and here they began to accuse me of having corrupted the children. Then they found out that the children loved Marie and became terribly frightened; but Marie was happy now. The children were even forbidden to meet her, but they ran in secret to see her with her herd, quite far, almost half a mile from the village; they brought her treats, and some simply ran there to embrace her and kiss her, saying: ‘Je vous aime, Marie!’ and then rushed headlong home. Marie almost lost her mind from this sudden happiness; she had never dreamed of anything like it; she was embarrassed and joyful, and the children, especially the girls, wanted above all to run to her and tell her that I loved her and had told them a lot about her. They told her that they knew everything from me, and that now they loved and pitied her and always would. Then they came running to me and with such joyful, concerned little faces told me that they had just seen Marie and that Marie sent her greetings. In the evenings I used to go to the waterfall; there was one place completely screened off on the village side, with poplars growing around it; that was where they would gather with me in the evening, some even in secret. It seemed to me that my love for Marie delighted them terribly, and that was the one thing, during all my life there, in which I deceived them. I didn’t disappoint them by confessing that I did not love Marie at all—that is, was not in love with her—but only pitied her; everything told me that they preferred it the way they had imagined and decided it among themselves, and so I said nothing and pretended they had guessed right. And those little hearts were so delicate and tender: among other things, it seemed impossible to them that their good Léon should love Marie so much, while Marie was so poorly dressed and had no shoes. Imagine, they even got shoes and stockings and linen for her, and even some sort of dress. How they managed it I don’t know; the whole band worked on it. When I asked them, they only laughed merrily, and the little girls clapped their hands and kissed me. I, too, occasionally went in secret to see Marie. She was becoming very ill and could barely walk; in the end she stopped helping the cowherd altogether; but even so she left with the herd each morning. She sat to one side. There was a sheer, almost vertical cliff there, with a ledge; she would sit on a stone in a corner that was shielded from everyone and spend the whole day almost without moving, from morning till it was time for the herd to go. By then she was so weak from consumption that she mostly sat with her eyes closed, leaning her head against the rock, and dozed, breathing heavily; her face was thin as a skeleton’s, and sweat stood out on her forehead and temples. That was how I always found her. I’d come for a minute, and I also didn’t want to be seen. As soon as I appeared, Marie would give a start, open her eyes, and rush to kiss my hands. I no longer withdrew them, because for her it was happiness; all the while I sat there, she trembled and wept; true, she tried several times to speak, but it was hard to understand her. She was like a crazy person, in terrible agitation and rapture. Sometimes the children came with me. On those occasions, they usually stood not far away and set about guarding us from something or someone, and they were extraordinarily pleased with that. When we left, Marie again remained alone, motionless as before, her eyes closed and her head leaning against the rock; she may have been dreaming of something. One morning she was unable to go out with the herd and stayed in her empty house. The children learned of it at once and almost all of them went to visit her that day; she lay in her bed all alone. For two days only the children looked after her, taking turns in coming, but afterwards, when they learned in the village that Marie really was dying, the old women of the village began coming in turns to sit by her bedside. It seemed they started to feel sorry for Marie in the village, at least they no longer stopped or scolded the children as before. Marie dozed all the time, her sleep was restless: she coughed terribly. The old women chased the children away, but they came to the window, sometimes just for a moment, only to say: ‘Bonjour, notre bonne Marie.’ And as soon as she saw or heard them, she would become all animated and, not listening to the old women, would at once try to prop herself on her elbow, nod to them, and thank them. They went on bringing her treats, but she ate almost nothing. Because of them, I can assure you, she died almost happy. Because of them, she forgot her black woe, as if she had received forgiveness from them, because till the very end she considered herself a great criminal. Like little birds, they fluttered with their wings against her window and called to her every morning: ‘Nous t’aimons, Marie.’ She died very soon. I thought she would live much longer. On the eve of her death, before sunset, I stopped to see her; she seemed to recognize me, and I pressed her hand for the last time—how emaciated her hand was! Then suddenly in the morning they come and tell me that Marie is dead. Here there was no holding the children back: they decorated the whole coffin with flowers and put a wreath on her head. In church this time the pastor did not heap shame on the dead girl, and anyway there were very few people at the funeral, only some who came out of curiosity. But when it was time to carry the coffin, the children all rushed to do it themselves. As they couldn’t really carry it, they helped, they ran after the coffin, all of them crying. Since then Marie’s little grave has been constantly venerated by the children; every year they decorate it with flowers, and they’ve planted roses all around it. But with this funeral also began my great persecution by the whole village on account of the children. The main instigators were the pastor and the schoolmaster. The children were absolutely forbidden even to meet me, and Schneider even undertook to see to it. But we met all the same, we exchanged signs from a distance. They sent me their little notes. Later on it all settled down, but at the time it was very nice: I became even closer to the children because of this persecution. During my last year I even almost made peace with Thibaut and the pastor. But Schneider talked to me a lot and argued with me about my harmful ‘system’ with the children. What system did I have! Finally Schneider told me one very strange thought of his. This was just before my departure. He told me he was fully convinced that I was a perfect child myself, that is, fully a child, that I resembled an adult only in size and looks, but in development, soul, character, and perhaps even mind, I was not an adult, and I would stay that way even if I lived to be sixty. I laughed very much: he wasn’t right, of course, because what’s little about me? But one thing is true, that I really don’t like being with adults, with people, with grown-ups—and I noticed that long ago—I don’t like it because I don’t know how. Whatever they say to me, however kind they are to me, still I’m always oppressed with them for some reason, and I’m terribly glad when I can go quickly to my comrades, and my comrades have always been children—not because I’m a child myself, but simply because I’m drawn to children. When I’d meet them, back at the beginning of my life in the village—it was when I used to go and be sad alone in the mountains—when I’d be wandering alone and sometimes met the whole band of them, especially at noontime, when they were out of school, noisy, running, with their satchels and slates, shouting, laughing, playing—my whole soul would suddenly begin to yearn for them. I don’t know, but I began to feel some extremely strong and happy feeling each time I met them. I’d stop and laugh with happiness, looking at their flashing and eternally running little feet, at the boys and girls running together, at their laughter and tears (because many of them had managed to have a fight, to cry, and to make peace again and play together on their way home from school), and then I’d forget all my sadness. Afterwards, for all those three remaining years, I was unabl
e to understand how people can be sad and what makes them sad. My whole destiny went to them. I never intended to leave the village, and it never occurred to me that I might someday return here, to Russia. It seemed to me that I would always be there, but I saw, finally, that it was impossible for Schneider to keep me, and then something turned up which seemed so important that Schneider himself hurried me on my way and wrote a reply for me here. I’ll have to see what it is and consult with someone. Maybe my fate will change completely, but that’s all not it and not the main thing. The main thing is that my whole life has changed already. I left a lot there, too much. It’s all vanished. I sat on the train thinking: ‘Now I’m going to be with people; maybe I don’t know anything, but the new life has come.’ I decided to do my duty honestly and firmly. Maybe it will be boring and painful for me to be with people. In the first place I decided to be polite and candid with everybody; no one can ask more of me. Maybe I’ll be considered a child here, too—so be it! Everybody also considers me an idiot for some reason, and in fact I was once so ill that I was like an idiot; but what sort of idiot am I now, when I myself understand that I’m considered an idiot? I come in and think: ‘They consider me an idiot, but I’m intelligent all the same, and they don’t even suspect it …’ I often have that thought. When I was in Berlin and received several little letters they had already managed to write to me, it was only then that I realized how much I loved them. Receiving the first letter was very hard! How sad they were as they saw me off! They began a month ahead: ‘Léon s’en va, Léon s’en va pour toujours.’* Every evening we gathered by the waterfall as before and kept talking about our parting. Sometimes it was as joyful as before; only when we broke up for the night, they started hugging me tightly and warmly, which they never did before. Some came running to see me in secret from the rest, singly, only in order to hug me and kiss me alone, not in front of everybody. When I was setting out, all of them, the whole swarm, saw me off to the station. The railway station was about half a mile from the village. They tried to keep from crying, but many failed and cried loudly, especially the girls. We hurried so as not to be late, but one or another of the crowd would suddenly rush to me in the middle of the road, put his little arms around me, and kiss me, for which the whole crowd also had to stop; and though we were in a hurry, everybody stopped and waited for him to say good-bye to me. When I got on the train and it started off, they all shouted ‘Hurrah!’ to me and stood there for a long time, until the train was quite gone. I kept looking, too … Listen, when I came in here earlier and looked at your dear faces—I’m very attentive to faces now—and heard your first words, I felt light at heart for the first time since then. I thought maybe I really am one of the lucky ones: I know it’s not easy to meet people you can love at once, yet I met you as soon as I got off the train. I know very well that it’s shameful to talk about your feelings with everyone, yet here I am talking with you, and with you I’m not ashamed. I’m unsociable and may not visit you for a long time. Don’t take it as thinking ill: I’m not saying it because I don’t value you, and you also mustn’t think I’ve been offended in any way. You asked me about your faces and what I observe in them. I’ll tell you with great pleasure. Yours, Adelaida Ivanovna, is a happy face, the most sympathetic of the three. Not only are you very pretty, but one looks at you and says: ‘She has the face of a kind sister.’ You approach things simply and cheerfully, but you are also quick to know hearts. That’s what I think about your face. Yours, Alexandra Ivanovna, is also a beautiful and very sweet face, but you may have some secret sorrow; your soul is no doubt very kind, but you are not joyful. There is some special nuance in your face that reminds me of Holbein’s Madonna in Dresden.26 Well, that’s for your face—am I a good guesser? You yourselves consider me one. But about your face, Lizaveta Prokofyevna,” he suddenly turned to Mrs. Epanchin, “about your face I not only think but I’m certain that you are a perfect child, in everything, in everything, in everything good and in everything bad, despite your age. You’re not angry that I say it? You do know my regard for children? And don’t think it’s out of simplicity that I’ve just spoken so candidly about your faces; oh, no, not at all! Maybe I, too, have something in mind.”
The Idiot Page 10
