Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (371 page)

“This is very interesting!” observed Yevgeny Pavlovitch aloud.

“So he knows about it!” thought Myshkin.

“What son of Pavlishtchev? . . . and what son of Pavlishtchev can there be?” General Epanchin asked, in amazement, looking at every one with curiosity, and observing with surprise from their faces that he was the only one who knew nothing about this new development.

The excitement and expectation was general indeed. Myshkin was profoundly astonished that such an entirely personal affair could already have roused so much interest in everyone here.

“It will be a very good thing if you put a stop to this at once and yourself!’ said Aglaia, going up to Myshkin with particular earnestness, “and allow us all to be your witnesses. They are trying to throw mud at you, prince, you must defend yourself triumphantly, and I am awfully glad for you.”

“I want this disgusting claim to be stopped at last, too,” cried Madame Epanchin. “Give it to them well,

prince, don’t spare them! My ears have been tingling with this business, and it’s been spoiling my temper on your account. Besides, it will be interesting to look at them. Call them in and we’ll sit down. It’s a good idea of Aglaia’s. “Vbu’ve heard something about it, prince?” she added addressing Prince S.

“Of course I have; in your house. But I am particularly anxious to have a look at these young people,” answered Prince S.

“These are what are meant by nihilists, aren’t they?”

“No! they are not to say nihilists,” said Lebedyev, stepping forward, and almost shaking with excitement. “They are different, a special sort. My nephew tells me they have gone far beyond the nihilists. “Vbu are wrong if you think you’ll abash them by your presence, your excellency, they won’t be abashed. Nihilists are sometimes well-informed people, anyway, even learned, but these have gone further because they are first of all men of business. This is a sort of sequel to nihilism, not in a direct line, but obliquely, by hearsay, and they don’t express themselves in newspaper articles, but directly in action. It’s not a question of the irrationality of Pushkin, or some one, for instance, nor the necessity of the breaking up of Russia into parts, no, now they claim as a right that if one wants anything very much, one is not to be checked by any obstacles, even though one might have to do for half a dozen people to gain one’s ends. But all the same, prince, I should not advise you ...”

But Myshkin had already gone to open the door to the visitors.

“You are slandering them, Lebedyev,” he said, smiling, “your nephew has hurt your feelings very much. Don’t believe him, Lizaveta Prokofyevna. I assure you that Gorskys and Danilovs are only exceptions, and these are only . . . mistaken. But I should have preferred not to see them here, before everyone. Excuse me, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, they’ll come in, I’ll show them to you and then take them away. Come in, gentlemen!”

He was more worried by another painful thought. He wondered: had not some one arranged this business beforehand for that time, for that hour, in the presence of those witnesses and perhaps in anticipation of his shame rather than his triumph? But he felt too sad at the thought of his “monstrous and wicked suspiciousness.” He felt that he would have died if anyone had known he had such an idea in his head, and at the moment when his guests walked in, he was genuinely ready to believe that he was lower in a moral sense than the lowest around him.

Five persons entered, four new arrivals followed by General Ivolgin in a state of heated agitation and violent loquacity. “He is on my side, no doubt,” thought Myshkin, with a smile. Kolya slipped in among them; he was talking hotly to Ippolit, who was one of the visitors. Ippolit listened grinning.

Myshkin made his visitors sit down. They all looked so young, hardly grown up indeed, that their visit and the attention paid them seemed strange. Ivan Fyodorovitch, for instance, who knew nothing about this “new development,” and could not make it out, was quite indignant at the sight of their youthfulness, and would certainly have made some sort of protest, had he not been checked by his wife’s unaccountable eagerness on behalf of Myshkin’s private affairs. He remained, however, partly out of curiosity, and partly from kind-heartedness, hoping to help, or at least to be of use by the exercise of his authority. But General Ivolgin’s bow to him, from the distance, roused his indignation again; he frowned and made up his mind to be consistently silent.

Of the four young men who came in, one, however, was a man of thirty, the retired lieutenant, who had been one of Rogozhin’s crew, the boxer, “who had in his time given as much as fifteen roubles each to beggars.” It could be guessed that he had come to stand by the others as a faithful friend, and if necessity arose, to support them. The foremost and most prominent of the others was the young man to whom the designation “the son of Pavlishtchev” had been given, though he introduced himself as Antip Burdovsky. He was a young man poorly and untidily dressed. The sleeves of his coat shone like a mirror; his greasy waistcoat was buttoned up to the neck; his linen had disappeared entirely; his incredibly dirty black silk scarf was twisted like a rope. His hands were unwashed, he was fair and his face, which was covered with pimples, had, if one may so express it, an air of innocent insolence. He was about twenty-two, thin and not short. There was not a trace of irony or introspection in his face, nothing but a complete blank conviction of his own rights; and, at the same time, something like a strange and incessant craving to be and feel insulted. He spoke with excitement, hurrying and stuttering, hardly articulating the words, as though he had an impediment in his speech, or even were a foreigner, though he was, as a fact, entirely Russian by birth. He was accompanied, first, by Lebedyev’s nephew, already known to the reader, and, secondly, by Ippolit. The latter was a very young man, seventeen or possibly eighteen, with an intelligent but always irritable expression, and terrible signs of illness in his face. He was thin as a skeleton, pale and yellow, his eyes gleamed and two hectic spots glowed on his cheeks. He coughed incessantly; every word, almost every breath, was followed by gasping. He was evidently in the last stage of consumption. He looked as though he could scarcely live for more than another two or three weeks. He was very tired and before anyone else he sank into a chair. The other visitors were rather ceremonious and even a little embarrassed on entering; they had an important air, however, and were obviously afraid of failing to keep up their dignity in some way, which was strangely out of harmony with their reputation for despising all useless worldly trivialities, conventions and almost everything in the world except their own interests.

“Antip Burdovsky,” said “the son of Pavlishtchev,” in a hurried stutter.

“Vladimir Doktorenko,” Lebedyev’s nephew introduced himself clearly, distinctly, as though boasting of the fact that his name was Doktorenko.

“Keller,” muttered the retired lieutenant.

“Ippolit Terentyev,” squeaked the last of the party in an unexpectedly shrill voice.

All of them were sitting at last on chairs facing Myshkin; they had all introduced themselves, frowned and shifted their caps from one hand to the other to keep themselves in countenance. All of them seemed on the point of speaking, but remained silent, waiting for something with a defiant air, which seemed to say, “no, my friend, you are wrong there, you won’t take us in.” One felt that some one had only to utter one word to start them, and they would all begin talking at once, interrupting and tripping each other up.

CHAPTER 8

Gentlemen, i did not expect any of you,” Myshkin began, “I’ve been ill to-day, and I asked Gavril Ardalionovitch Ivolgin to deal with your business (he turned to Antip Burdovsky) a month ago, as I informed you at the time. However, I have no objection to a personal explanation, but you must admit that such a time ... I suggest you should go with me into another room, if you won’t keep me long. . . . My friends are here now, and believe me . .

“As many friends as you like, but allow us,” Lebedyev’s nephew broke in, in a very reproving tone, though he did not raise his voice, “allow us to point out that you might have treated us more politely, and not have left us waiting two hours in your servants’ room ...”

“And of course ... I too . . . this is behaving like a prince . . . and this is ... I suppose you are the general! But I am not your servant! And I . . . I . . .” Antip Burdovsky muttered, spluttering with extraordinary excitement, with trembling lips and a voice broken with resentment. He seemed suddenly to burst or explode, but was at once in such a hurry that at the tenth word one could not follow him.

“It was like a prince!” Ippolit cried in a shrill cracked voice.

“If I were treated like that,” muttered the boxer, “that is, if it were my personal affair, as a man of honour, if I were in Burdovsky’s place ... I...”

“Gentlemen, I only heard this minute that you were here. I assure you.” Myshkin repeated again.

“We are not afraid of your friends, prince, whoever they may be, for we are within our rights,” Lebedyev’s nephew declared again.

“But what right had you, let me ask,” Ippolit squeaked again, by now extremely excited, “to submit Burdovsky’s case to the judgment of your friends; anyone can see what the judgment of your friends would be!”

“But if you don’t wish to speak here, Mr. Burdovsky,” Myshkin succeeded in interpellating at last, staggered by such an opening, “I tell you, let us go into another room at once, and I repeat that I only heard of you all this very minute ...”

“But you’ve no right to, you’ve no right, you’ve no right! Your friends. ... So there!” Burdovsky gabbled suddenly again, looking wildly and apprehensively about him, and the more shy and mistrustful he was, the more heated he became. “You have no right.”

And having uttered those words he stopped abruptly, as it were with a sudden snap, and fixing his short-sighted, extremely prominent and bloodshot eyes on Myshkin, he stared at him with dumb inquiry, his whole body bent forward. This time Myshkin was so surprised that he too was speechless, and gazed open-eyed, unable to utter a word.

“Lyov Nikolayevitch!” Lizaveta Prokofyevna called to him suddenly, “read this at once, this minute, it has to do with your business.”

She hurriedly held out to him a weekly comic paper, and pointed with her finger at the article. As soon as the visitors came in, Lebedyev had skipped sideways up to Lizaveta Prokofyevna, with whom he was trying to ingratiate himself, and without uttering a word he had pulled this paper out of his side-pocket and had put it just before her eyes, pointing to a marked passage. What Lizaveta Prokofyevna had had time to read had excited and upset her extremely.

“But wouldn’t it be better not aloud,” faltered Myshkin, very much embarrassed, “I could read it alone ... afterwards.”

“Then you had better read it, read it at once, aloud!” said Lizaveta Prokofyevna, addressing Kolya, impatiently snatching the paper from Myshkin, almost before he had time to touch it. “Read it aloud to all, so that everyone may hear.”

Lizaveta Prokofyevna was an excitable lady, and readily carried away, so that sometimes she would all of a sudden, without stopping to think, heave all anchors, and launch into the open sea regardless of the weather. Ivan Fyodorovitch moved uneasily. While all involuntarily stopped for the first minute and waited in perplexity, Kolya opened the newspaper and began aloud at the passage which Lebedyev darted up to point out to him:

“Proletarians and noble scions, an episode of daily and everyday robbery! Progress! Reform! Justice!

“Strange things happen in our so-called holy Russia, in our age of reforms and of joint-stock enterprises, the age of national movements and of hundreds of millions of roubles sent abroad every year, the age of encouraging commerce and of the paralysis of industry, and so on and so on, one cannot enumerate all, gentlemen, and so — straight to the point. Here is a strange anecdote about a scion of our decaying nobility (de profundis!), one of those scions whose grandfathers were ruined by roulette, whose fathers have to serve as lieutenants and ensigns in the army, and usually die charged with some innocent misuse of public money; while they themselves, like the hero of our story, either grow up idiots, or are mixed up in criminal cases, in which, however, they are acquitted by the jury in the hope of their reformation, or else they end by perpetrating one of those pranks which amaze the public and disgrace our already degraded age. Our scion, wearing gaiters like a foreigner, and shivering in an unlined cloak, arrived about six months ago in Russia from Switzerland, where he had been under treatment for idiocy (sic!). It must be confessed that he was a lucky fellow, so that — to say nothing of the interesting malady for which he was undergoing treatment in Switzerland (can there be a treatment for idiocy, just imagine!) — he may serve as an illustration of the truth of the Russian proverb that a certain class of persons are lucky. Only think. Left a baby at his father’s death — they say he was a lieutenant, who died while on his trial for a sudden disappearance at cards of all the company’s money, or possibly for an excessive use of the rod on some subordinate (you remember what it was like in old days, gentlemen), our baron was taken and brought up by the charity of a very rich Russian landowner. This Russian landowner — we will call him P. — was the owner in the old golden days of four thousand souls. (The owner of four thousand souls! Do you understand, gentlemen, such an expression? I don’t. One must consult an explanatory dictionary, ‘the tale is new, yet it’s hard to believe!’) He was apparently one of those drones and sluggards who spend their idle lives abroad, in summer at the waters, and in winter at the Parisian Chateau-de-Fleurs, where in the course of their lives they have left incredible sums. One may say with certainty that at least one third of the tribute paid in old days by the serfs went into the pockets of the proprietors of the Parisian Chateau-de-Fleurs (he must have been a fortunate man!). Be that as it may, the light-hearted P. brought up the noble orphan like a prince, engaged tutors and governesses for him (no doubt pretty ones) whom he brought himself by the way from Paris. But the last scion of the noble house was an idiot. The governesses from the Chateau-de-Fleurs were of no use, and up to his twentieth year our scion could not be taught to speak any language, not even his native Russian; though the latter, of course, is excusable. At last the happy whim entered the heart of the Russian serf-owner P. that the idiot might be taught sense in Switzerland — a logical whim, however: an idle capitalist might naturally suppose that for money one might buy even sense, especially in Switzerland. Five years were spent in Switzerland under the care of a celebrated doctor, and thousands were spent on it. The idiot, of course, did not become sensible, but still, thev sav, he became like a human beinq, no great shakes, of course. Suddenly P. died, leaving no will of course. His affairs were as usual in disorder. There was a crowd of greedy heirs, who took not the slightest interest in the last scions of noble families who are treated out of charity in Switzerland for congenital idiocy. The scion, though an idiot, made an effort to deceive his doctor, and succeeded in being treated gratis for two years, so we are told, concealing from him the death of his benefactor. But the doctor was a bit of a rogue himself. Alarmed at the absence of cash and still more at the appetite of his twenty-five-year-old do-nothing, he dressed him up in his old gaiters, made him a present of his worn-out cloak, and out of charity sent him third-class nach Russland — to get rid of him. Luck seemed to have turned its back on our hero. But not a bit of it: fortune, which kills off whole provinces with famine, showered all her gifts on this aristocrat, like the cloud in Krylov’s fable that passed over the parched fields to empty itself into the ocean. Almost at the very moment of his arrival in Petersburg, a relation of his mother’s (who had, of course, been of a merchant’s family) died in Moscow, a childless old bachelor, a merchant of the old school and an Old Believer. He left a good round fortune of several millions in hard cash (if it had only been for you and me, readers!) and it all came without dispute to our scion, our baron, who had been cured of idiocy in Switzerland! Well, it was a very different tune then. A crowd of friends and acquaintances gathered about our gaitered baron, who ran after a notorious beauty of easy virtue. He even picked up relations, and above all he was pursued by perfect crowds of young ladies, hungering and thirsting for lawful matrimony. And, indeed, what could be better? An aristocrat, a millionaire and an idiot — all the qualifications at once, a husband you couldn’t come across the like of if you searched for him with the lantern of Diogenes.”