The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “This is finally unbearable!” Lebedev’s nephew suddenly declared loudly and impatiently. “Why this whole novel?”

  “Disgustingly indecent!” Ippolit stirred violently. But Burdovsky noticed nothing and did not even budge.

  “Why? How so?” Gavrila Ardalionovich said in sly astonishment, venomously preparing to set forth his conclusion. “First, Mr. Burdovsky can now be fully certain that Mr. Pavlishchev loved him out of magnanimity and not as a son. It was necessary that Mr. Burdovsky learn at least this one fact, since he confirmed and approved of Mr. Keller after the reading of the article. I say this, Mr. Burdovsky, because I consider you a noble man. Second, it turns out that there was no thievery or crookedness here even on Chebarov’s part; this is an important point even for me, because just now the prince, being overexcited, mentioned that I was supposedly of the same opinion about the thievery and crookedness in this unfortunate affair. Here, on the contrary, there was full conviction on all sides, and though Chebarov may be a great crook, in this affair he comes out as no more than a pettifogger, a scrivener, a speculator. He hoped to make big money as a lawyer, and his calculation was not only subtle and masterful, but also most certain: he based it on the ease with which the prince gives money away and on his gratefully respectful feeling for the late Pavlishchev; he based it, finally (which is most important), on certain chivalrous views the prince holds concerning the duties of honor and conscience. As far as Mr. Burdovsky himself is concerned, it may even be said that, owing to certain convictions of his, he was so set up by Chebarov and the company around him that he started the affair almost not out of self-interest at all, but almost in the service of truth, progress, and mankind. Now that these facts have been made known, it must be clear to everyone that Mr. Burdovsky is a pure man, despite all appearances, and now the prince can, the sooner and all the more willingly than before, offer him both his friendly assistance and the active help which he mentioned earlier, speaking about schools and Pavlishchev.”

  “Stop, Gavrila Ardalionovich, stop!” the prince cried in genuine alarm, but it was too late.

  “I’ve said, I’ve already said three times,” Burdovsky cried irritably, “that I don’t want any money! I won’t accept … what for … I don’t want … away!”

  And he nearly rushed off the terrace. But Lebedev’s nephew seized him by the arm and whispered something to him. The man quickly came back and, taking a large unsealed envelope from his pocket, threw it down on a little table near the prince.

  “Here’s the money!… You shouldn’t have dared … you shouldn’t have!… Money!…”

  “The two hundred and fifty roubles that you dared to send him as charity through Chebarov,” Doktorenko explained.

  “The article said fifty!” cried Kolya.

  “I’m to blame!” said the prince, going up to Burdovsky. “I’m very much to blame before you, Burdovsky, but, believe me, I didn’t send it as charity. I’m to blame now … I was to blame earlier.” (The prince was very upset, he looked tired and weak, and his words were incoherent.) “I said that about crookedness … but it wasn’t about you, I was mistaken. I said that you … are like me—a sick man. But you’re not like me, you … give lessons, you support your mother. I said you had disgraced your mother, but you love her; she says so herself … I didn’t know … Gavrila Ardalionovich didn’t finish telling me … I’m to blame. I dared to offer you ten thousand, but I’m to blame, I ought to have done it differently, and now … it’s impossible, because you despise me …”

  “This is a madhouse!” Lizaveta Prokofyevna cried out.

  “Of course, a house full of madmen!” Aglaya lost patience and spoke sharply, but her words were drowned in the general noise; everyone was talking loudly, everyone was arguing, some disputing, some laughing. Ivan Fyodorovich Epanchin was in the utmost degree of indignation, and, with an air of offended dignity, was waiting for Lizaveta Prokofyevna. Lebedev’s nephew put in a last little word:

  “Yes, Prince, you must be given credit, you’re so good at exploiting your … hm, sickness (to put it decently); you managed to offer your friendship and money in such a clever form that it is now quite impossible for a noble man to accept them. It’s either all too innocent, or all too clever … you, however, know which.”

  “If you please, gentlemen,” cried Gavrila Ardalionovich, who had meanwhile opened the envelope with the money, “there are not two hundred and fifty roubles here, but only a hundred. I say it, Prince, so that there will be no misunderstandings.”

  “Let it be, let it be,” the prince waved his arms at Gavrila Ardalionovich.

  “No, don’t ‘let it be’!” Lebedev’s nephew immediately latched on to it. “Your ‘let it be’ is insulting to us, Prince. We’re not hiding, we declare openly: yes, there’s only a hundred roubles here, and not the whole two hundred and fifty, but isn’t it all the same …”

  “N-no, it’s not all the same,” Gavrila Ardalionovich managed to put in, with a look of naïve perplexity.

  “Don’t interrupt me, we’re not such fools as you think, mister lawyer,” Lebedev’s nephew exclaimed with spiteful vexation. “Of course, a hundred roubles aren’t two hundred and fifty, and it’s not all the same, but what’s important is the principle; it’s the initiative that’s important and the fact of the missing hundred and fifty roubles is merely a detail. What’s important is that Burdovsky does not accept charity from you, Your Highness, that he throws it in your face, and in this sense a hundred is the same as two hundred and fifty. Burdovsky did not accept the ten thousand, you saw that; he wouldn’t have brought the hundred roubles if he were dishonest! Those hundred and fifty roubles were Chebarov’s expenses for traveling to see the prince. Sooner laugh at our clumsiness and our inexperience in handling the affair; you’ve already done all you could to make us look ridiculous; but do not dare to say we’re dishonest. All of us together will pay the prince back these hundred and fifty roubles, my dear sir; we will pay it back even if it’s rouble by rouble, and we will pay it back with interest. Burdovsky is poor, Burdovsky has no millions, and Chebarov presented the bill after his trip. We hoped to win … Who would have acted differently in his place?”

  “What do you mean who?” exclaimed Prince Shch.

  “I’ll go out of my mind here!” cried Lizaveta Prokofyevna.

  “This reminds me,” laughed Evgeny Pavlovich, who had long been standing and watching, “of a famous defense made recently by a lawyer, who, presenting poverty as an excuse for his client, who had murdered six people at one go in order to rob them, suddenly concluded along these lines: ‘It is natural,’ he says, ‘that my client, out of poverty, should have taken it into his head to commit this murder of six people, and who in his place would not have taken it into his head?’ Something along those lines, only very amusing.”

  “Enough!” Lizaveta Prokofyevna suddenly announced, almost trembling with wrath. “It’s time to break off this galimatias!…”

  She was in the most terrible agitation; she threw her head back menacingly and, with haughty, burning, and impatient defiance, passed her flashing gaze over the whole company, scarcely distinguishing at that moment her friends from her enemies. This was the point of a long-suppressed but finally unleashed wrath, when the main impulse is immediate battle, the immediate need to fall upon someone as soon as possible. Those who knew Lizaveta Prokofyevna sensed at once that something peculiar was happening with her. Ivan Fyodorovich said the next day to Prince Shch. that “it happens with her, but even with her it rarely happens to such a degree as yesterday, perhaps once in three years, but never more often! never more often!” he added in clarification.

  “Enough, Ivan Fyodorovich! Let me be!” exclaimed Lizaveta Prokofyevna. “Why do you offer me your arm now? You weren’t able to take me away earlier; you’re a husband, you’re the head of the family; you should have led me out by the ear, fool that I am, if I didn’t obey you and leave. You should have done it at least for your daughters’ sake! But now we’
ll find our way without you, this is shame enough for a whole year … Wait, I still want to thank the prince!… Thank you, Prince, for the treat! Here I sat, listening to our young people … How base, how base! It’s chaos, outrage, you don’t even dream of such things! Are there many like them?… Silence, Aglaya! Silence, Alexandra! It’s none of your business!… Don’t fuss around me, Evgeny Pavlych, I’m tired of you!… So you, my dearest, are asking their forgiveness,” she picked up again, turning to the prince. “ ‘I’m sorry,’ you say, ‘that I dared to offer you capital’ … and what are you laughing at, you little fanfaron!” she suddenly fell upon Lebedev’s nephew. “ ‘We refuse the capital,’ he says, ‘we demand, and do not ask!’ As if he doesn’t know that tomorrow this idiot will again drag himself to them offering his friendship and capital! Will you go? Will you go or not?”

  “I will,” said the prince in a quiet and humble voice.

  “You’ve heard it! And that is what you were counting on,” she turned to Doktorenko again. “The money’s as good as in your pocket, that’s why you’re playing the fanfaron, blowing smoke in our eyes … No, my dear, find yourself some other fools, I can see through you … I see your whole game!”

  “Lizaveta Prokofyevna!” exclaimed the prince.

  “Let’s go home, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, it’s high time, and we’ll take the prince with us,” Prince Shch., smiling, said as calmly as he could.

  The girls stood to one side, almost frightened, and the general was frightened in earnest; the whole company was astonished. Some, those who stood a little further away, smiled slyly and exchanged whispers; Lebedev’s face displayed the utmost degree of rapture.

  “You can find outrage and chaos everywhere, ma’am,” Lebedev’s nephew said, though significantly puzzled.

  “But not like that! Not like yours just now, dear boys, not like that!” Lizaveta Prokofyevna picked up gleefully, as if in hysterics. “Oh, do let me be,” she shouted at those who were persuading her, “no, since even you yourself, Evgeny Pavlych, told us just now that even the defense lawyer himself said in court that there was nothing more natural than doing in six people out of poverty, then the last times have really come. I’ve never yet heard of such a thing. Now it’s all clear to me! Wouldn’t this tongue-tied one here put a knife in somebody?” (She pointed to Burdovsky, who was looking at her in extreme perplexity.) “I bet he would! Your money, your ten thousand, perhaps he won’t take, perhaps in good conscience he won’t, but he’ll come in the night and put a knife in you, and take it from the strongbox. Take it in good conscience! He doesn’t find it dishonest! It’s ‘a noble impulse of despair,’ it’s ‘negation,’ or devil knows what it is … Pah! Everything’s inside out, everybody’s topsy-turvy. A girl grows up at home, suddenly in the middle of the street she jumps into a droshky: ‘Mummy dear, the other day I got married to somebody-or-other Karlych or Ivanych, good-bye!’39 Is that a good way to behave, in your opinion? Is it natural, is it worthy of respect? The woman question? This boy here” (she pointed to Kolya), “even he insisted the other day that that is what the ‘woman question’ means. The mother may be a fool, but still you must treat her humanly!… And you, walking in earlier with your heads thrown back? ‘Out of the way: we’re coming. Give us all the rights, and don’t you dare make a peep before us. Show us all respect, even such as doesn’t exist, and we’ll treat you worse than the lowest lackey!’ They seek truth, they insist on their rights, yet they themselves slander him up and down like heathens in their article. ‘We demand, and do not ask, and you’ll get no gratitude from us, because you do it for the satisfaction of your own conscience!’ Nice morality! But if there’ll be no gratitude from you, then the prince can also say in answer to you that he feels no gratitude towards Pavlishchev, because Pavlishchev did good for the satisfaction of his own conscience. And this gratitude towards Pavlishchev was the only thing you were counting on: he didn’t borrow money from you, he doesn’t owe you anything, what were you counting on if not gratitude? How, then, can you renounce it yourselves? Madmen! You acknowledge that society is savage and inhuman because it disgraces a seduced girl. But if you acknowledge that society is inhuman, it means you acknowledge that this girl has been hurt by this society. But if she’s been hurt, why, then, do you yourselves bring her out in front of that same society in your newspapers and demand that it not hurt her? Mad! Vainglorious! They don’t believe in God, they don’t believe in Christ! You’re so eaten up by vanity and pride that you’ll end by eating each other, that I foretell to you. Isn’t this havoc, isn’t it chaos, isn’t it an outrage? And after that this disgraceful creature goes asking their forgiveness! Are there many like you? What are you grinning at: that I’ve disgraced myself with you? Well, so I’m disgraced, there’s no help for it now!… And take that grin off your face, you stinker!” (she suddenly fell on Ippolit). “He can barely breathe, yet he corrupts others. You’ve corrupted this boy for me” (she pointed to Kolya again). “He raves about you only, you teach him atheism, you don’t believe in God, but you could do with a good whipping, my dear sir! Ah, I spit on you all!… So you’ll go to them, Prince Lev Nikolaevich, you’ll go to them tomorrow?” she asked the prince again, almost breathless.

  “I will.”

  “Then I don’t want to know you!” She quickly turned to leave, but suddenly turned back again. “And you’ll go to this atheist?” she pointed to Ippolit. “Why are you grinning at me!” she exclaimed somehow unnaturally and suddenly rushed at Ippolit, unable to bear his sarcastic grin.

  “Lizaveta Prokofyevna! Lizaveta Prokofyevna! Lizaveta Prokofyevna!” came from all sides at once.

  “Maman, it’s shameful!” Aglaya cried loudly.

  “Don’t worry, Aglaya Ivanovna,” Ippolit replied calmly. Lizaveta Prokofyevna, who had run up to him, seized him and for some unknown reason held him tightly by the arm; she stood before him, her furious gaze as if riveted to him. “Don’t worry, your maman will realize that one cannot fall upon a dying man … I’m prepared to explain why I laughed … I’d be very glad to be permitted …”

  Here he suddenly began coughing terribly and for a whole minute could not calm the cough.

  “He’s dying, and he goes on orating!” exclaimed Lizaveta Prokofyevna, letting go of his arm and watching almost with horror as he wiped the blood from his lips. “What are you talking for! You should simply go to bed …”

  “So it will be,” Ippolit replied quietly, hoarsely, and almost in a whisper. “As soon as I go home tonight, I’ll lie down at once … in two weeks I’ll be dead, I know that … Last week B—–n40 told me himself … So, with your permission, I would like to say a couple of words to you in farewell.”

  “Are you out of your mind, or what? Nonsense! You must be treated, this is no time for talking! Go, go, lie down!…” Lizaveta Prokofyevna cried in fright.

  “If I lie down, then I won’t get up till I die,” Ippolit smiled. “Yesterday I wanted to lie down like that and not get up till I die, but I decided to postpone it for two days, while I can still use my legs … in order to come here with them today … only I’m very tired …”

  “Sit down, sit down, don’t stand there! Here’s a chair for you,” Lizaveta Prokofyevna roused herself and moved a chair for him.

  “Thank you,” Ippolit continued quietly, “and you sit down opposite me, and we’ll talk … we’ll certainly talk, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, I insist on it now …” He smiled at her again. “Think of it, today I’m outside and with people for the last time, and in two weeks I’ll probably be under the ground. So this will be a sort of farewell both to people and to nature. Though I’m not very sentimental, you can imagine how glad I am that it all happened here in Pavlovsk: at least you can look at a tree in leaf.”

  “What’s this talk now,” Lizaveta Prokofyevna was becoming more and more frightened, “you’re all feverish. You were just shrieking and squealing, and now you’re out of breath, suffocating!”

  “I’ll rest presently. Why do you want to
deny me my last wish?… You know … I’ve long been dreaming of somehow getting to know you, Lizaveta Prokofyevna; I’ve heard a lot about you … from Kolya; he’s almost the only one who hasn’t abandoned me … You’re an original woman, an eccentric woman, now I’ve seen it myself … you know, I even loved you a little.”

  “Lord, and I was really about to hit him.”

  “It was Aglaya Ivanovna who held you back. I’m not mistaken? This is your daughter Aglaya Ivanovna? She’s so pretty that I guessed it was her at first sight earlier, though I’d never seen her before. Grant me at least to look at a beautiful girl for the last time in my life,” Ippolit smiled a sort of awkward, crooked smile. “The prince is here, and your husband, and the whole company. Why would you deny me my last wish?”

  “A chair!” cried Lizaveta Prokofyevna, but she seized one herself and sat down facing Ippolit. “Kolya,” she ordered, “go with him at once, take him home, and tomorrow I myself will be sure to …”

  “If you’ll permit me, I’d like to ask the prince for a cup of tea … I’m very tired. You know, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, it seems you wanted to take the prince home with you for tea; stay here instead, we can spend some time together, and the prince will surely give us all tea. Excuse me for giving orders like that … But I know you, you’re kind, so is the prince … we’re all so kind it’s comical …”

  The prince got into a flutter, Lebedev rushed headlong out of the room, and Vera ran after him.

  “That’s true, too,” Mrs. Epanchin decided abruptly. “Talk, then, only more softly, and don’t get carried away. You’ve made me all pitiful … Prince! You’re not worthy of my having tea with you, but so be it, I’m staying, though I ask nobody’s forgiveness! Nobody’s! Nonsense!… Forgive me, though, if I scolded you, Prince—though only if you want to. Though I’m not keeping anybody,” she suddenly turned to her husband and daughters with a look of extraordinary wrath, as if it were they who were terribly guilty before her for something, “I can find my way home by myself …”