Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (408 page)

“Had I been the editor, I would not have printed it; as for the descriptions of eye-witnesses in general, people are more ready to believe crude liars, who are amusing, than a man of worth who has seen service. I know some descriptions of the year 1812 which . . . I’ve come to a determination, prince, I am leaving this house ... the house of Mr. Lebedyev.”

The general looked significantly at Myshkin.

“You have your own rooms at Pavlovsk at ... at your daughter’s . . ,” said Myshkin, not knowing what to say.

He remembered that the general had come to ask his advice about a most important matter, on which his fate depended.

“At my wife’s; in other words, at home, in my daughter’s house.”

“I beg your pardon. I...”

“I am leaving Lebedyev’s house, because, dear prince, because I have broken with that man. I broke with him yesterday evening and regret I did not do so before. I insist on respect, prince, and I wish to receive it even from those, upon whom I bestow, so to speak, my heart. Prince, I often bestow my heart, and I am almost always deceived. That man is not worthy of what I gave him.”

“There’s a great deal in him that’s extravagant,” Myshkin observed discreetly, “and some traits . . . but in the midst of it all one can perceive a good heart, and a sly, and sometimes amusing intelligence.”

The nicety of the expressions and the respectfulness of the tone flattered the general, though he still looked at Myshkin sometimes with sudden mistrustfulness. But Myshkin’s tone was so natural and sincere that he could not suspect it.

“That he has good qualities,” the general assented, “I was the first to declare, when I almost bestowed my friendship on that individual. I have no need of his house and his hospitality, having a family of my own. I do not justify my failings. I am weak; I have drunk with him, and now perhaps I am weeping for it. But it was not for the sake of the drink alone (excuse, prince, the coarseness of candour in an irritated man), it was not for the sake of the drink alone I became friendly with him. What allured me was just, as you say, his qualities. But all only to a certain point, even his qualities; and if he suddenly has the impudence to declare to one’s face, that in 1812, when he was a little child he lost his left leg, and buried it in the Vagankovsky cemetery in Moscow, he is going beyond the limit, showing disrespect and being impertinent....”

“Perhaps it was only a joke to raise a laugh.”

“I understand. An innocent lie, however crude, to raise a laugh, does not wound a human heart. One man will tell a lie, if you like, simply from friendship, to please the man he is talking to; but if there’s a suspicion of disrespect, if he means to show just by such disrespect that he is weary of the friendship, there’s nothing left for a man of honour but to turn away and break off all connection, putting the offender in his proper place.”

The general positively flushed as he spoke.

“Why, Lebedyev could not have been in Moscow in 1812. He’s not old enough. It’s absurd.”

“That’s the first thing; but even supposing he could have been born then, how can he declare to one’s face that the French chasseur aimed a cannon at him and shot off his leg, just for fun; that he picked the leg up and carried it home, and afterwards buried it in the Vagankovsky cemetery; and he says that he put a monument over it with an inscription on one side: ‘Here lies the leg of the collegiate secretary, Lebedyev,’ and on the other: ‘Rest, beloved ashes, till the dawn of a happy resurrection,’ and that he had a service read over it every year (which is nothing short of blasphemy), and that he goes to Moscow every year for the occasion. To prove it he invites me to go to Moscow to show me the tomb, and even the very cannon taken from the French, now in the Kremlin. He declares it’s the eleventh from the gate, a French falconet of an old-fashioned pattern.”

“And besides, he has both his legs, uninjured, apparently,” laughed Myshkin. “I assure you it was harmless jest. Don’t be angry.”

“But allow me to have my own opinion; as for his appearing to have two legs, that’s not altogether improbable; he declares that he got his leg from Tchernosvitov....”

“Oh, yes, they say that people can dance with legs from that maker.”

“I’m perfectly aware of that; when Tchernosvitov invented his leg, the first thing he did was to run and show it to me. But his legs were invented much later.

. . . What’s more, he asserts that his late wife never knew, all the years they were married, that he, her husband, had a wooden leg. When I observed to him how foolish it all was, he said to me: ‘If you were a page of Napoleon’s in 1812, you might let me bury my leg in Vagankovsky.’”

“But did you really . . .” Myshkin began, and broke off embarrassed.

The general too seemed a shade embarrassed, but at the same instant he looked at Myshkin with distinct condescension, and even irony.

“Go on, prince, go on,” he drawled with peculiar suavity. “I can make allowances, speak out; confess that you are amused at the very thought of seeing before you a man in his present degradation and .. . uselessness, and to hear that that man was an eyewitness of . . . great events. Hasn’t he gossiped to you already?”

“No, I’ve heard nothing from Lebedyev, if it’s Lebedyev you are talking about....”

“Hm! ... I had supposed the contrary. The particular conversation took place between us yesterday apropos of that strange article in the Archives. I remarked on its absurdity, and since I

had myself been an eye-witness . . . you are smiling, prince, you are looking at myface?”

“N-no. I...”

“I am youngish looking,” the general drawled the words— “but I am somewhat older in years than I appear. In 1812 I was in my tenth or eleventh year. I don’t quite know my own age exactly. In my service list my age is less; it has been my weakness all my life to make myself out younger than I am.”

“I assure you, general, that I don’t think it strange that you should have been in Moscow in 1812, and .. . of course you could describe ... like everyone else who was there. One of our writers begins his autobiography by saying that, when he was a baby in arms, in Moscow, in 1812, he was fed with bread by the French soldiers.”

“There, you see,” the general condescendingly approved, “what happened to me was of course out of the ordinary, but there is nothing incredible in it. Truth very often seems impossible. Page! It sounds strange, of course. But the adventure of a ten-year-old boy may perhaps be explained just by his age. It wouldn’t have happened to a boy of fifteen, that’s certain; for at fifteen, I should not, on the day of Napoleon’s entry into Moscow, have run out of the wooden house in Old Bassmann Street, where I was living with my mother, who had not left the town in time and was terror-stricken. At fifteen I too should have been afraid, but at ten I feared nothing, and I forced my way through the crowd to the very steps of the palace just when Napoleon was dismounting from the horse.”

“Certainly, that’s a very true remark, that at ten years old one might not be afraid . . .” Myshkin assented, abashed and distressed byfeeling that he was just going to blush.

“Most certainly, and it all happened as simply and naturally as possible, in reality; set a novelist to work on the subject, he would weave in all sorts of incredible and improbable details.”

“Oh, that’s true!” cried Myshkin. “I was struck by the same idea, quite lately. I know a genuine case of murder for the sake of stealing a watch — it’s appearing in the newspapers now. If some author had invented it, critics and those who know the life of the people would have cried out at once that it was improbable; but reading it in the newspapers as a fact, you feel that in such facts you are studying the reality of Russian life. That’s an excellent observation of yours, general,” Myshkin concluded warmly, greatly relieved at finding a refuge from his blushes.

“Isn’t it? Isn’t it?” cried the general, his eyes sparkling with pleasure. “A boy, a child who knows nothing of fear, makes his way through the crowd to see the fine show, the uniforms, the suite, and the great man about whom he has heard such a lot. For at that time people had talked of nothing else for years. The world was full of that name. I drank it in with my milk, so to speak. Napoleon was two paces away when he chanced to catch my eye. I looked like a little nobleman, they dressed me well. There was no one like me in the crowd you may believe....”

“No doubt it must have struck him and have shown him that every one had not left Moscow, and that there were still some of the nobility there with their children.”

“Just so! Just so! He wanted to win over the boyars! When he bent his eagle glance upon me, my eye must have flashed in response, Vo/’/a un garcon bien eveille! Qui est ton pere?’ I answered him at once, almost breathless with excitement: ‘A general who died in the field for his country.”Le fils d’un boyard et d’un brave par-dessus le marche! J’aime les boyards. M’aimes tu, petit?’ To this rapid question I answered as rapidly: ‘A Russian heart can discern a great man even in the enemy of his country!’ That is, I don’t remember whether I literally used those words. ... I was a child . . . but that was certainly the drift of them! Napoleon was struck, he thought a moment and said to his suite: ‘I like the pride of that child! But if all Russians think like that child, then. . . .’ He said no more, but walked into the palace. I at once mingled with the suite and ran after him. They made way for me, and already looked upon me as a favourite. But all that was only for a moment. ... I only remember that when the Emperor went into the first room he stopped before the portrait of the Empress Catherine, looked at it a long time thoughtfully, and at last pronounced: That was a great woman!’ and passed by. Within two days every one knew me in the palace and the Kremlin and called me: ‘le petit boyard.’ I only went home to sleep. At home they were almost frantic about it. Two days later, one of Napoleon’s pages, Baron de Basencour, died, exhausted by the campaign. Napoleon remembered me; they took me, brought me to him without explanation; they tried on me the uniform of the dead page — a boy of twelve, and when they had brought me, wearing the uniform to the Emperor and he had nodded to me, they announced to me that I had been found worthy of favour and appointed a page-in-waiting to his Majesty. I was glad; I had, in fact, long felt warmly attracted by him . . . and besides, as you know very well, a brilliant uniform means a great deal to a child. ... I wore a dark green dress-coat, with long narrow tails, gold buttons, red edgings worked with gold on the sleeves, and with a high, erect, open-collar, worked in gold, and embroidery on the tails; tight white chamois leather breeches, a white silk waistcoat, silk stockings, and buckled shoes . . . and when the Emperor rode out, if I was one of the suite, I wore high top-boots. Although the situation was anything but promising, and there was a feeling of terrible catastrophe in the air, etiquette was kept up as far as possible, and in fact, the greater the foreboding of catastrophe, the more rigorous was the court punctilio.”

“Yes, of course . . ,” muttered Myshkin with an almost hopeless air. “\bur memoirs would be . . . extremely i nteresti ng.”

The general, of course, had been repeating the story he had already told Lebedyev the day before, and so he repeated it fluently; but at this point he stole a mistrustful glance at Myshkin again.

“My memoirs,” he brought out with redoubled dignity— “write my memoirs? That is not a temptation to me, prince! If you will have it, my memoirs are already written, but . . . they are lying in my desk. When my eyes are closed for ever in the grave, then they may be published, and no doubt they will be translated into foreign languages, not for the sake of their literary value, no, but from the importance of the tremendous events of which I have been the eyewitness, though as a child; the more for that indeed. As a child I had the entry into the private bedroom, so to speak, of the ‘Great Man.’ I heard at night the groans of that ‘Titan in agony,’ he could not feel ashamed to groan and weep before a child, though I understood even then, that the cause of his distress was the silence of the Emperor Alexander.”

“To be sure, he wrote letters . . . with overtures of peace ...” Myshkin assented timidly.

“We don’t know precisely with what overtures he wrote, but he wrote every day, every hour, letter after letter! He was fearfully agitated! One night, when we were alone, I flew to him weeping. (Oh, I loved him!) ‘Beg, beg forgiveness of the Emperor Alexander!’ I cried to him. Of course, I ought to have used the expression: ‘make peace with the Emperor Alexander,’ but, like a child, I naively expressed all I felt. ‘Oh, my child!’ he replied — he paced up and down the room. ‘Oh, my child!’ He did not seem to notice at that time that I was only ten, and liked to talk to me. ‘Oh, my child, lam ready to kiss the feet of the Emperor Alexander, but then the King of Prussia, and then the Austrian Emperor. Oh, for them my hatred is everlasting and ... at last. .. of course you know nothing of politics.’ He seemed suddenly to remember to whom he was speaking and ceased; but there were gleams of fire in his eyes long after. Well, say I describe all these facts — and I was the eye-witness of the greatest events — say I publish my memoirs now, and all the critics, the literary vanities, all the enw, the cliques ... no, vour humble servant!”

“As for cliques, no doubt your observation is a true one, and I agree with you,” Myshkin observed quietly after a moment’s silence. “I read not long ago a book by Charasse, about the Waterloo campaign. It is evidently a genuine book, and experts say that it is written with great knowledge. But on every page one detects glee at the humiliation of Napoleon; and if it had been possible to dispute Napoleon’s genius in every other campaign, Charasse would be extremely glad to do it. And that’s not right in such a serious work, because it’s the spirit of partisanship. Had you much to do in waiting on the Emperor?”

The general was delighted. The earnestness and simplicity of Myshkin’s question dissipated the last traces of his mistrustfulness.

“Charasse! Oh, I was indignant myself. I wrote to him myself, at the time, but ... I don’t remember now. . . . “Vbu ask if I had much to do in Napoleon’s service? Oh, no! I was called a page-in-waiting, but even at the time I did not take it seriously. Besides, Napoleon soon lost all hope of winning over the Russians, and no doubt he would have forgotten me, whom he had adopted from policy, if he had not. .. if he had not taken a personal fancy to me; I say that boldly now. My heart was drawn to him. My duties were not exacting; I had sometimes to be present in the palace and to . . . attend the Emperor when he rode out, that was all. I rode a horse fairly well. He used to drive out before dinner. Davoust, I, and a mameluke, Rouston, were generally in his suite....”