The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “He was a most excellent man, you’re right about that,” Ivan Petrovich said imposingly and now without a smile, “yes, yes … he was a wonderful man! Wonderful and worthy,” he added after a pause. “Worthy, one might even say, of all respect,” he added still more imposingly after a third pause, “and … and it’s even very agreeable that you, for your part, show …”

  “Was it with this Pavlishchev that some story happened … a strange story … with the abbot … the abbot … I forget which abbot, only everybody was talking about it then,” the “dignitary” said, as if recollecting.

  “With the abbot Gouraud, a Jesuit,” Ivan Petrovich reminded him. “Yes, sir, that’s our most excellent and worthy people for you! Because after all he was a man of good family, with a fortune, a gentleman-in-waiting, and if he … had continued in the service … And then suddenly he abandons his service and all in order to embrace Catholicism and become a Jesuit, and that almost openly, with a sort of ecstasy. Really, he died just in time … yes, everybody said so then …”

  The prince was beside himself.

  “Pavlishchev … Pavlishchev embraced Catholicism? That can’t be!” he cried in horror.

  “Well, ‘that can’t be,’ ” Ivan Petrovich maundered imposingly, “is saying too much, and you will agree yourself, my dear Prince … However, you value the deceased man so … indeed, the man was very kind, to which I ascribe, for the main part, the success of that trickster Gouraud. But just ask me, ask me, how much hustle and bustle I had afterwards over this affair … and precisely with that same Gouraud! Imagine,” he suddenly turned to the little old man, “they even wanted to present claims for the inheritance, and I had to resort to the most energetic measures then … to bring them to reason … because they’re masters at it! As-ton-ishing! But, thank God, it happened in Moscow, I went straight to the count, and we … brought them to reason …”

  “You wouldn’t believe how you’ve upset and shocked me!” the prince cried again.

  “I’m sorry; but, as a matter of fact, all this, essentially speaking, was trifles and would have ended in trifles, as always; I’m sure of it. Last summer,” he again turned to the little old man, “they say Countess K. also joined some Catholic convent abroad; our people somehow can’t resist, once they give in to those … finaglers … especially abroad.”

  “It all comes, I think, from our … fatigue,” the little old man mumbled with authority, “well, and the manner they have of preaching … elegant, their own … and they know how to frighten. In the year thirty-two they frightened me in Vienna, I can assure you; only I didn’t give in, I fled from them, ha, ha!”

  “I heard, my dear man, that you abandoned your post and fled from Vienna to Paris that time with the beautiful Countess Levitsky, and not from a Jesuit,” Belokonsky suddenly put in.

  “Well, but it was from a Jesuit, all the same it comes out that it was from a Jesuit!” the little old man picked up, laughing at the pleasant memory. “You seem to be very religious, something rarely to be met with nowadays in a young man,” he benignly addressed Prince Lev Nikolaevich, who listened open-mouthed and was still shocked; the little old man obviously wanted to get to know the prince more closely; for some reason he had begun to interest him very much.

  “Pavlishchev was a bright mind and a Christian, a true Christian,” the prince suddenly said, “how could he submit to … an unchristian faith?… Catholicism is the same as an unchristian faith!” he added suddenly, his eyes flashing and staring straight ahead, his gaze somehow taking in everyone at once.

  “Well, that’s too much,” the little old man murmured and looked at Ivan Fyodorovich with astonishment.

  “How is it that Catholicism is an unchristian religion?” Ivan Petrovich turned on his chair. “What is it, then?”

  “An unchristian faith, first of all!” the prince began speaking again, in extreme agitation and much too sharply. “That’s first, and second, Roman Catholicism is even worse than atheism itself, that’s my opinion! Yes, that’s my opinion! Atheism only preaches a zero, but Catholicism goes further: it preaches a distorted Christ, a Christ it has slandered and blasphemed, a counter Christ! It preaches the Antichrist, I swear to you, I assure you! That is my personal and longstanding conviction, and it has tormented me … Roman Catholicism believes that without universal state power the Church on earth cannot stand, and it shouts: Non possumus!e33 In my opinion, Roman Catholicism is not even a faith, but decidedly the continuation of the Western Roman empire, and everything in it is subject to that idea, beginning with faith. The pope seized land, an earthly throne, and took up the sword; since then everything has gone on that way, only to the sword they added lies, trickery, deceit, fanaticism, superstition, villainy; they played upon the most holy, truthful, simple-hearted, ardent feelings of the people; they traded everything, everything, for money, for base earthly power. Isn’t that the teaching of the Antichrist?! How could atheism not come out of them? Atheism came out of them, out of Roman Catholicism itself! Atheism began, before all else, with them themselves: could they believe in themselves? It grew stronger through repugnance against them; it is a product of their lies and spiritual impotence! Atheism! In Russia so far only exceptional classes of society do not believe, those who have lost their roots, as Evgeny Pavlovich put it so splendidly the other day; while there, in Europe, awful masses of the people themselves are beginning not to believe—formerly from darkness and deceit, but now from fanaticism, from hatred of the Church and of Christianity!”

  The prince paused to catch his breath. He was speaking terribly quickly. He was pale and breathless. Everyone exchanged glances; but at last the little old man laughed openly. Prince N. took out his lorgnette and studied the prince, not taking his eyes away. The German poeticule crept out of the corner and moved closer to the table, smiling a sinister smile.

  “You greatly ex-ag-ge-rate,” Ivan Petrovich drew out with some boredom and even as if embarrassed at something. “In their Church there are also representatives who are worthy of all respect and vir-tu-ous men …”

  “I never spoke of individual representatives of the Church. I was speaking of Roman Catholicism in its essence, I was speaking of Rome. The Church cannot disappear entirely. I never said that!”

  “Agreed, but this is all well known and even—unnecessary and … belongs to theology …”

  “Oh, no, no! Not only to theology, I assure you! It concerns us much more closely than you think. That is our whole mistake, that we’re still unable to see that this is not only an exclusively theological matter! For socialism is also a product of Catholicism and the Catholic essence! It, too, like its brother atheism, came from despair, opposing Catholicism in a moral sense, in order to replace the lost moral force of religion with itself, in order to quench the spiritual thirst of thirsting mankind and save it not through Christ, but also through violence! It is also freedom through violence, it is also unity through blood and the sword! ‘Do not dare to believe in God, do not dare to have property, do not dare to have personality, fraternité ou la mort,f two million heads!’f You shall know them by their deeds,35 it is said! And don’t think that it’s all so innocent and unthreatening for us; oh, we must respond, and swiftly, swiftly! Our Christ, whom we have preserved and they have never known, must shine forth as a response to the West! Not by being slavishly caught on the Jesuits’ hook, but by bringing them our Russian civilization, we must now confront them, and let it not be said among us that their preaching is elegant, as someone just said …”

  “But excuse me, excuse me,” Ivan Petrovich became terribly worried, looking around and even beginning to get frightened, “your thoughts are all, of course, praiseworthy and full of patriotism, but it’s all exaggerated in the highest degree and … it’s even better if we drop it …”

  “No, it’s not exaggerated, but rather understated; precisely understated, because I’m not able to express it, but …”

  “Ex-cuse me!”

  The prince fell silent. H
e was sitting upright on his chair and looking at Ivan Petrovich with fixed, burning eyes.

  “It seems to me that you’ve been too greatly shocked by the incident with your benefactor,” the little old man observed gently and without losing his equanimity. “You’re inflamed … perhaps from solitude. If you live more with people, and I hope society will welcome you as a remarkable young man, your animation will, of course, subside, and you will see that it’s all much simpler … and besides, such rare cases … come, in my view, partly from our satiety, and partly from … boredom …”

  “Precisely, precisely so,” the prince cried, “a splendid thought! Precisely ‘from our boredom,’ not from satiety, but, on the contrary, from thirst … not from satiety, there you’re mistaken! Not only from thirst, but even from inflammation, from feverish thirst! And … and don’t think it’s all on such a small scale that one can simply laugh; forgive me, but one must be able to foresee! The Russian people, as soon as they reach the shore, as soon as they believe it’s the shore, are so glad of it that they immediately go to the ultimate pillars.36 Why is that? You marvel at Pavlishchev, you ascribe everything to his madness or to his kindness, but that’s not so! And not only we but the whole of Europe marvels, on such occasions, at our Russian passion: if one of us embraces Catholicism, then he’s bound to become a Jesuit, and of the most underground sort at that;37 if he becomes an atheist, he is bound to start demanding the eradication of belief in God by force, which means by the sword! Why is that, why is there such frenzy all at once? You really don’t know? Because he has found his fatherland, which he had missed here, and he rejoices; he has found the shore, the land, and he rushes to kiss it! It’s not only from vainglory, not only from nasty, vainglorious feelings that Russian atheists and Russian Jesuits proceed, but from spiritual pain, spiritual thirst, from the longing for a lofty cause, a firm shore, a native land, in which we’ve ceased to believe because we’ve never known it! It’s so easy for a Russian man to become an atheist, easier than for anyone else in the whole world! And our people don’t simply become atheists, but they must believe in atheism, as in a new faith, without ever noticing that they are believing in a zero. Such is our thirst! ‘Whoever has no ground under his feet also has no God.’ That is not my phrase. It is the phrase of a merchant, an Old Believer,38 I met on my travels. True, he didn’t put it that way, he said: ‘Whoever has renounced his native land, has also renounced his God.’ Only think that some of our most educated people got themselves into flagellantism39 … And in that case, incidentally, what makes flagellantism worse than nihilism, Jesuitism, atheism? It may even be a little more profound! But that is how far their anguish went!… Open to the thirsting and inflamed companions of Columbus the shores of the New World, open to the Russian man the Russian World, let him find the gold, the treasure, hidden from him in the ground! Show him the future renewal of all mankind and its resurrection, perhaps by Russian thought alone, by the Russian God and Christ, and you’ll see what a mighty and righteous, wise and meek giant will rise up before the astonished world, astonished and frightened, because they expect nothing from us but the sword, the sword and violence, because, judging by themselves, they cannot imagine us without barbarism. And that is so to this day, and the more so the further it goes! And …”

  But here an incident suddenly occurred, and the orator’s speech was interrupted in the most unexpected way.

  This whole feverish tirade, this whole flow of passionate and agitated words and ecstatic thoughts, as if thronging in some sort of turmoil and leaping over each other, all this foreboded something dangerous, something peculiar in the mood of the young man, who had boiled up so suddenly for no apparent reason. Of those present in the drawing room, all who knew the prince marveled fearfully (and some also with shame) at his outburst, which so disagreed with his usual and even timid restraint, with the rare and particular tact he showed on certain occasions and his instinctive sense of higher propriety. They could not understand where it came from: the news about Pavlishchev could not have been the cause of it. In the ladies’ corner they looked at him as at one gone mad, and Belokonsky later confessed that “another moment and she would have run for her life.” The “little old men” were nearly at a loss from their initial amazement; the general-superior gazed, displeased and stern, from his chair. The engineer-colonel sat perfectly motionless. The little German even turned pale, but was still smiling his false smile, glancing at the others to see how they would react. However, all this and “the whole scandal” could have been resolved in the most ordinary and natural way, perhaps, even a minute later; Ivan Fyodorovich was extremely surprised but, having collected his thoughts sooner than the others, had already tried several times to stop the prince; failing in that, he was now making his way towards him with firm and resolute purposes. Another moment and, if it had really been necessary, he might have decided to take the prince out amicably, under the pretext of his illness, which might actually have been true and of which Ivan Fyodorovich was very much convinced in himself … But things turned out otherwise.

  From the very beginning, as soon as the prince entered the drawing room, he sat down as far as possible from the Chinese vase, with which Aglaya had frightened him so. Can one possibly believe that, after Aglaya’s words the day before, some sort of indelible conviction settled in him, some sort of astonishing and impossible premonition that the next day he would unfailingly break that vase, however far away he kept from it, however much he avoided the disaster? But it was so. In the course of the evening other strong but bright impressions began to flow into his soul; we have already spoken of that. He forgot his premonition. When he heard about Pavlishchev, and Ivan Fyodorovich brought him and introduced him again to Ivan Petrovich, he moved closer to the table and ended up right in the armchair next to the enormous, beautiful Chinese vase, which stood on a pedestal almost at his elbow, slightly behind him.

  With his last words he suddenly got up from his place, carelessly waved his arm, somehow moved his shoulder—and … a general cry rang out! The vase rocked, as if undecided at first whether it might not fall on the head of one of the little old men, but suddenly it leaned in the opposite direction, towards the little German, who barely managed to jump aside in terror, and toppled onto the floor. Noise, shouts, precious pieces scattered over the rug, fear, amazement—oh, it is difficult and almost unnecessary to depict how it was for the prince! But we cannot omit mention of one strange sensation that struck him precisely at that very moment and suddenly made itself distinct in the crowd of all the other vague and strange sensations: it was not the shame, not the scandal, not the fear, not the unexpectedness that struck him most of all, but the fulfilled prophecy! Precisely what was so thrilling in this thought he would have been unable to explain to himself; he felt only that he was struck to the heart, and he stood in a fear that was almost mystical. Another moment and everything before him seemed to expand, instead of horror there was light, joy, rapture; his breath was taken away, and … but the moment passed. Thank God, it was not that! He caught his breath and looked around.

  For a long time he seemed not to understand the turmoil seething around him, that is, he understood it perfectly well and saw everything, but stood as if he were a special person, not taking part in anything, like the invisible man in a fairy tale, who has gotten into a room and is observing people who are strangers but who interest him. He saw the broken pieces being removed, heard rapid talk, saw Aglaya, pale and looking at him strangely, very strangely: there was no hatred in her eyes at all, nor any wrath; she looked at him with frightened but such sympathetic eyes, and at the others with such flashing eyes … his heart suddenly ached sweetly. Finally he saw with strange amazement that everyone was sitting down and even laughing, as if nothing had happened! Another moment and the laughter grew louder; they laughed looking at him, at his stunned speechlessness, but they laughed amicably, merrily; many addressed him and spoke so gently, above all Lizaveta Prokofyevna: she was laughing and saying somethi
ng very, very kind. Suddenly he felt Ivan Fyodorovich giving him a friendly pat on the shoulder; Ivan Petrovich was also laughing; but still better, still more attractive and sympathetic was the little old man; he took the prince by the hand and, pressing it lightly, patting it lightly with the palm of his other hand, was persuading him to recollect himself, as if he were a frightened little boy, which the prince liked terribly much, and finally sat him down next to him. The prince peered into his face with delight and for some reason was still unable to speak; he was breathless; he liked the old man’s face so much.

  “What?” he finally murmured. “So you really forgive me? And … you, too, Lizaveta Prokofyevna?”

  The laughter increased; tears welled up in the prince’s eyes; he could not believe it and was enchanted.

  “Of course, it was a beautiful vase. I remember it being here for all of fifteen years, yes … fifteen …” Ivan Petrovich began.

  “Well, it’s no disaster! A man, too, comes to an end, and this was just a clay pot!” Lizaveta Prokofyevna said loudly. “You’re not so frightened, are you, Lev Nikolaich?” she added even with fear. “Enough, dear boy, enough; you really frighten me.”

  “And you forgive me for everything? For everything besides the vase?” the prince suddenly began to get up from his place, but the little old man at once pulled him down again by the hand. He did not want to let him go.

  “C’est très curieux, et c’est très sérieux!”g he whispered across the table to Ivan Petrovich, though quite loudly; the prince may have heard it.

  “So I didn’t offend any of you? You wouldn’t believe how happy that thought makes me; but so it should be! How could I have offended anyone here? I’d offend you again by thinking so.”