The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  But since the “incident with the general,” as Kolya put it, or, more broadly, since his sister’s marriage, Kolya had gotten completely out of hand, so much so that lately he even rarely came to spend the night with the family. According to rumor, he had made many new acquaintances; besides that, he had become all too well known in the debtors’ prison. Nina Alexandrovna could not do without him there; and at home now no one pestered him even out of curiosity. Varya, who had treated him so sternly before, did not subject him now to the least inquiry about his wanderings; and Ganya, to the great astonishment of the household, talked and even got together with him occasionally on perfectly friendly terms, despite all his hypochondria, something that had never happened before, because the twenty-seven-year-old Ganya, naturally, had never paid the slightest friendly attention to his fifteen-year-old brother, had treated him rudely, had demanded that the whole household treat him with sternness only, and had constantly threatened to “go for his ears,” which drove Kolya “beyond the final limits of human patience.” One might have thought that Kolya was now sometimes even necessary to Ganya. He had been very struck that Ganya had returned the money then; he was prepared to forgive him a lot for that.

  Three months went by after the prince’s departure, and the Ivolgin family heard that Kolya had suddenly become acquainted with the Epanchins and was received very nicely by the girls. Varya soon learned of it; Kolya, incidentally, had become acquainted not through Varya but “on his own.” The Epanchins gradually grew to love him. At first the general’s wife was very displeased with him, but soon she began to treat him kindly “for his candor and for the fact that he doesn’t flatter.” That Kolya did not flatter was perfectly right; he managed to put himself on a completely equal and independent footing with them, though he did sometimes read books or newspapers to Mrs. Epanchin—but he had always been obliging. A couple of times, however, he quarreled bitterly with Lizaveta Prokofyevna, told her that she was a despot and that he would not set foot in the house again. The first time was over the “woman question,” the second time over what season of the year was best for catching siskins. Incredible as it might seem, on the third day after the quarrel, Mrs. Epanchin sent him a footman with a note asking him to come without fail; Kolya did not put on airs and went at once. Only Aglaya was constantly ill-disposed towards him for some reason and treated him haughtily. Yet it was her that he was to surprise somewhat. Once—it was during Holy Week5—finding a moment when they were alone, Kolya handed Aglaya a letter, adding only that he had been told to give it to her alone. Aglaya gave the “presumptuous brat” a terrible look, but Kolya did not wait and left. She opened the note and read:

  Once you honored me with your confidence. It may be that you have completely forgotten me now. How is it that I am writing to you? I do not know; but I have an irrepressible desire to remind you of myself, and you precisely. Many’s the time I have needed all three of you very much, but of all three I could see only you. I need you, I need you very much. I have nothing to write to you about myself, I have nothing to tell you about. That is not what I wanted; I wish terribly much that you should be happy. Are you happy? That is the only thing I wanted to tell you.

  Your brother, Pr. L. Myshkin.

  Having read this brief and rather muddle-headed note, Aglaya suddenly flushed all over and became pensive. It would be hard for us to convey the course of her thoughts. Among other things, she asked herself: “Should I show it to anyone?” She felt somehow ashamed. She ended, however, by smiling a mocking and strange smile and dropping the letter into her desk drawer. The next day she took it out again and put it into a thick, sturdily bound book (as she always did with her papers, so as to find them quickly when she needed them). And only a week later did she happen to notice what book it was. It was Don Quixote de La Mancha. Aglaya laughed terribly—no one knew why.

  Nor did anyone know whether she showed her acquisition to any of her sisters.

  But as she was reading this letter, the thought suddenly crossed her mind: could it be that the prince had chosen this presumptuous little brat and show-off as his correspondent and, for all she knew, his only correspondent in Petersburg? And, though with a look of extraordinary disdain, all the same she put Kolya to the question. But the “brat,” ordinarily touchy, this time did not pay the slightest attention to the disdain; he explained to Aglaya quite briefly and rather drily that he had given the prince his permanent address, just in case, before the prince left Petersburg, and had offered to be of service, that this was the first errand he had been entrusted with and the first note he had received, and in proof of his words he produced the letter he had himself received. Aglaya read it without any qualms. The letter to Kolya read:

  Dear Kolya, be so good as to convey the enclosed and sealed note to Aglaya Ivanovna. Be well.

  Lovingly yours, Pr. L. Myshkin.

  “All the same, it’s ridiculous to confide in such a pipsqueak,” Aglaya said touchily, handing Kolya’s note back, and she scornfully walked past him.

  Now that Kolya could not bear: he had asked Ganya, purposely for that occasion, without explaining the reason why, to let him wear his still quite new green scarf. He was bitterly offended.

  II

  IT WAS THE first days of June, and the weather in Petersburg had been unusually fine for a whole week. The Epanchins had their own wealthy dacha in Pavlovsk.6 Lizaveta Prokofyevna suddenly roused herself and went into action: before not quite two days of bustling were over, they moved.

  A day or two after the Epanchins moved to the country, Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin arrived from Moscow on the morning train. No one met him at the station; but as he was getting off the train, the prince suddenly thought he caught the gaze of two strange, burning eyes in the crowd surrounding the arriving people. When he looked more attentively, he could no longer see them. Of course, he had only imagined it; but it left an unpleasant impression. Besides, the prince was sad and pensive to begin with and seemed preoccupied with something.

  The cabby brought him to a hotel not far from Liteinaya Street. It was a wretched little hotel. The prince took two small rooms, dark and poorly furnished, washed, dressed, asked for nothing, and left hastily, as if afraid of wasting time or of not finding someone at home.

  If anyone who had known him six months ago, when he first came to Petersburg, had looked at him now, he might have concluded that his appearance had changed greatly for the better. But that was hardly so. There was merely a complete change in his clothes: they were all different, made in Moscow, and by a good tailor; but there was a flaw in them as well: they were much too fashionably made (as always with conscientious but not very talented tailors), and moreover for a man not the least bit interested in fashion, so that, taking a close look at the prince, someone much given to laughter might have found good reason to smile. But people laugh at all sorts of things.

  The prince took a cab and went to Peski. On one of the Rozhdestvensky streets he soon located a rather small wooden house. To his surprise, this house turned out to be attractive, clean, very well kept, with a front garden in which flowers were growing. The windows facing the street were open and from them came the sound of shrill, ceaseless talking, almost shouting, as if someone was reading aloud or even delivering a speech; the voice was interrupted now and then by the laughter of several resounding voices. The prince entered the yard, went up the front steps, and asked for Mr. Lebedev.

  “Mister’s in there,” the cook replied, opening the door, her sleeves rolled up to the elbows, jabbing her finger towards the “drawing room.”

  In this drawing room, the walls of which were covered with blue wallpaper, and which was decorated neatly and with some pretense—that is, with a round table and a sofa, a bronze clock under a glass bell, a narrow mirror between the two windows, and a very old crystal chandelier, not big, suspended from the ceiling on abronze chain—in the middle of the room stood Mr. Lebedev himself, his back turned to the entering prince, in a waistcoat but with nothing
over it, summer-fashion, beating himself on the breast and delivering a bitter harangue on some subject. The listeners were: a boy of about fifteen with a rather merry and far from stupid face and with a book in his hand, a young girl of about twenty dressed in mourning and with a nursing baby in her arms, a thirteen-year-old girl, also in mourning, who was laughing loudly and opening her mouth terribly widely as she did so, and, finally, an extremely strange listener, a fellow of about twenty, lying on the sofa, rather handsome, dark, with long, thick hair, big, dark eyes, and a small pretense to side-whiskers and a little beard. This listener, it seemed, often interrupted and argued with the haranguing Lebedev; that was probably what made the rest of the audience laugh.

  “Lukyan Timofeich, hey, Lukyan Timofeich! No, really! Look here!… Well, drat you all!”

  And the cook left, waving her arms and getting so angry that she even became all red.

  Lebedev turned around and, seeing the prince, stood for a time as if thunderstruck, then rushed to him with an obsequious smile, but froze again on the way, nevertheless having uttered:

  “Il-il-illustrious Prince!”

  But suddenly, as if still unable to recover his countenance, he turned around and, for no reason at all, first fell upon the girl in mourning with the baby in her arms, so that she even recoiled a little from the unexpectedness of it, then immediately abandoned her and fell upon the thirteen-year-old girl, who hovered in the doorway to the other room and went on smiling with the remnants of her recent laughter. She could not bear his shouting and immediately darted off to the kitchen; Lebedev even stamped his feet behind her, for greater intimidation, but, meeting the prince’s eyes, staring in bewilderment, said by way of explanation:

  “For … respectfulness, heh, heh, heh!”

  “There’s no need for all this …” the prince tried to begin.

  “At once, at once, at once … like lightning!”

  And Lebedev quickly vanished from the room. The prince looked in surprise at the young girl, at the boy, at the one lying on the sofa; they were all laughing. The prince laughed, too.

  “He went to put on his tailcoat,” said the boy.

  “This is all so vexing,” the prince began, “and I’d have thought … tell me, is he …”

  “Drunk, you think?” cried the voice from the sofa. “Stone sober! Maybe three or four glasses, well, or make it five, but that’s just for discipline.”

  The prince was about to address the voice from the sofa, but the young girl began to speak and, with a most candid look on her pretty face, said:

  “He never drinks much in the mornings; if you’ve come on business, talk to him now. It’s the right time. When he comes home in the evening, he’s drunk; and now he mostly weeps at night and reads aloud to us from the Holy Scriptures, because our mother died five weeks ago.”

  “He ran away because he probably had a hard time answering you,” the young man laughed from the sofa. “I’ll bet he’s about to dupe you and is thinking it over right now.”

  “Just five weeks! Just five weeks!” Lebedev picked up, coming back in wearing his tailcoat, blinking his eyes and pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his tears. “Orphans!”

  “Why have you come out all in holes?” said the young girl. “You’ve got a brand-new frock coat lying there behind the door, didn’t you see it?”

  “Quiet, you fidget!” Lebedev shouted at her. “Ah, you!” he began to stamp his feet at her. But this time she only laughed.

  “Don’t try to frighten me, I’m not Tanya, I won’t run away. But you may wake up Lyubochka, and she’ll get into a fit … what’s all this shouting!”

  “No, no, no! Bite your tongue …” Lebedev suddenly became terribly frightened and, rushing to the baby asleep in his daughter’s arms, with a frightened look made a cross over it several times. “Lord save us, Lord protect us! This is my own nursing baby, my daughter Lyubov,” he turned to the prince, “born in the most lawful wedlock of the newly departed Elena, my wife, who died in childbed. And this wee thing is my daughter Vera, in mourning … And this, this, oh, this …”

  “Why do you stop short?” cried the young man. “Go on, don’t be embarrassed.”

  “Your Highness!” Lebedev suddenly exclaimed in a sort of transport, “have you been following the murder of the Zhemarin family7 in the newspapers?”

  “I have,” the prince said in some surprise.

  “Well, this is the true murderer of the Zhemarin family, the man himself!”

  “What do you mean?” said the prince.

  “That is, allegorically speaking, the future second murderer of the future second Zhemarin family, if one turns up. He’s headed for that …”

  Everybody laughed. It occurred to the prince that Lebedev might indeed be squirming and clowning only because, anticipating his questions, he did not know how to answer them and was gaining time.

  “He’s a rebel! A conspirator!” Lebedev shouted, as if no longer able to control himself. “Well, and can I, do I have the right to regard such a slanderer, such a harlot, one might say, and monster, as my own nephew, the only son of my late sister Anisya?”

  “Oh, stop it, you drunkard! Would you believe, Prince, he’s now decided to become a lawyer, to plead in the courts; he waxes eloquent and talks in high-flown style with his children at home. Five days ago he spoke before the justices of the peace. And who do you think he defended? Not the old woman who implored, who begged him, because she’d been fleeced by a scoundrel of a moneylender who took five hundred roubles from her, everything she had, but the moneylender himself, some Zeidler or other, a Yid, because he promised him fifty roubles for it …”

  “Fifty roubles if I win and only five if I lose,” Lebedev suddenly explained in a completely different voice than before, as if he had never been shouting.

  “Well, it was a washout, of course, the old rules have been changed, they only laughed at him there. But he remained terribly pleased with himself. Remember, he said, impartial gentlemen of the court, that an old man of sorrows, a cripple, who lives by honest labor, is being deprived of his last crust of bread. Remember the wise words of the lawgiver: ‘Let mercy reign in the courts.’8 And believe me: every morning he repeats this speech for us here, exactly as he said it there; this is the fifth day; he was reciting it just before you came, he likes it so much. He drools over himself. And he’s getting ready to defend somebody else. You’re Prince Myshkin, I believe? Kolya told me about you. He says he’s never met anyone in the world more intelligent than you …”

  “And there is no one! No one! No one more intelligent in the world!” Lebedev picked up at once.

  “Well, I suppose this one’s just babbling. The one loves you, and the other fawns on you; but I have no intention of flattering you, let that be known to you. You must have some sense, so decide between him and me. Well, do you want the prince to decide between us?” he said to his uncle. “I’m even glad you’ve turned up, Prince.”

  “Let him!” Lebedev cried resolutely, looking around involuntarily at his audience, which had again begun to advance upon him.

  “What’s going on with you here?” the prince said, making a wry face.

  He really had a headache, and besides, he was becoming more and more convinced that Lebedev was duping him and was glad that the business could be put off.

  “Here’s how things stand. I am his nephew, he wasn’t lying about that, though everything he says is a lie. I haven’t finished my studies, but I want to finish them, and I’ll get my way because I have character. And meanwhile, in order to exist, I’m taking a job with the railways that pays twenty-five roubles. I’ll admit, besides, that he has already helped me two or three times. I had twenty roubles and lost them gambling. Would you believe it, Prince, I was so mean, so low, that I gambled them away!”

  “To a blackguard, a blackguard, who shouldn’t have been paid!” cried Lebedev.

  “Yes, to a blackguard, but who still had to be paid,” the young man went on.
“And that he’s a blackguard, I, too, will testify, not only because he gave you a beating. He’s a rejected officer, Prince, a retired lieutenant from Rogozhin’s former band, who teaches boxing. They’re all wandering about now, since Rogozhin scattered them. But the worst thing is that I knew he was a blackguard, a scoundrel, and a petty thief, and I still sat down to play with him, and that, as I bet my last rouble (we were playing cribbage), I thought to myself: I’ll lose, go to Uncle Lukyan, bow to him—he won’t refuse. That was meanness, that was real meanness! That was conscious baseness!”