Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (339 page)

“You amaze me!” Madame Epanchin went on as before. “Hungry and fits! What sort of fits?”

“Oh, they don’t occur so frequently; and, besides, he is like a child, but well educated. I should like to ask you, mesdames” — he addressed his daughters again— “to put him through an examination; it would be as well to know what he is fit for.”

“An ex-am-in-a-tion?” drawled his wife, and in the utmost astonishment she rolled her eyes from her husband to her daughters and back again.

“Oh, my dear, don’t take it in that sense ... but of course it’s just as you please. I was meaning to be friendly to him and introduce him to the family, because it’s almost an act of charity.”

“Introduce him to the family? From Switzerland?”

“That’s no drawback; but, I repeat again, it’s as you like. I thought of it because, in the first place, he is of the same name, and perhaps a relation; and besides, he’s nowhere to lay his head. I supposed it would be rather interesting to you to see him, in fact, because after all he belongs to the same family.”

“Of course, maman, if one needn’t stand on ceremony with him. Besides he must be hungry after the journey; why not give him something to eat, if he has nowhere to go?” said the eldest girl, Alexandra.

“And if he is a perfect child, too. We could have a game of blind man’s buff with him.”

“Blind man’s buff! What do you mean?”

“Oh, maman, please leave off pretending!” Aglaia interrupted in vexation.

The second daughter, Adelaida, who was of mirthful disposition, could not restrain herself and burst out laughing.

“Send for him, papa, maman gives you leave,” Aglaia decided.

The general rang, and told the servant to call the prince.

“But on condition he has a napkin tied round his neck when he sits at the table,” his wife insisted. “Call Fyodor or Mavra ... to stand behind his chair and look after him while he eats. I only trust he is quiet when he has a fit. Does he wave his arms?”

“Oh, quite the opposite, he is very well bred and has charming manners; he is just a little simple sometimes. But here he is. Come, let me introduce Prince Myshkin, the last of the name, your namesake and perhaps your kinsman; make him welcome and be kind to him. Lunch will be served directly, prince,

so do us the honour. . . . But excuse me, I must hurry off, I am late.”

“We know where you are hurrying off to,” observed his wife majestically.

“I am in a hurry — I am in a hurry, my dear; I am late. Give him your albums, mesdames; let him write something there for you, his handwriting is something exquisite. You should see how he wrote out for me in the old-world characters, The Abbot Pafnuty put his hand thereto.’ ... Well, good-bye.”

“Pafnuty? The abbot? Stop a minute — stop a minute. Where are you off to, and who is this Pafnuty?” his wife called with distinct annoyance and almost agitation after her escaping spouse.

“Yes, yes, my dear, it was an abbot who lived in old days. . . . But I am off to the count’s, I ought to have been there long ago; he fixed the hour himself.. .. Good-bye for the present, prince.”

The general retired with rapid steps.

“I know what count he is going to see,” Lizaveta Prokofyevna pronounced sharply, and she turned her eyes irritably to the prince. “What was it?” she began peevishly and grumpily, trying to remember. “Well,

what was it? Ah, yes, what about? ...”

“Maman,” Alexandra was beginning; and Aglaia even stamped her foot.

“Don’t interfere with me, Alexandra Ivanovna,” snapped the mother. “I want to know too. Sit here, prince, here on this easy-chair, opposite me; no, here. Move into the sun, nearer the light, so that I may see you. Well, what abbot?”

“The Abbot Pafnuty,” answered Myshkin attentively and seriously.

“Pafnuty? That’s interesting. Well, what about him?”

The lady asked her questions impatiently, rapidly, sharply, keeping her eyes fixed on the prince; and when Myshkin answered, she nodded her head at every word.

“The Abbot Pafnuty of the fourteenth century,” began Myshkin. “He was at the head of a monastery on the Volga in what is now the province of Kostroma. He was famous for his holy life. He visited the Tatars, helped in the management of public affairs, and signed some document. I’ve seen a copy of the signature. I liked the handwriting and I imitated it. When the general wanted to see my writing just now so as to find me a job, I wrote several phrases in different handwritings, and among others I wrote ‘the Abbot Pafnuty put his hand thereto’ in the abbot’s own handwriting. The general liked it very much, and so he spoke of it just now.”

“Aglaia,” said Madame Epanchin, “remember Pafnuty, or better write it down, else I always forget. But I thought it would be more interesting. Where is this signature?”

“I think it was left in the general’s study, on the table.”

“Send at once and fetch it.”

“Hadn’t I betterwrite it again for you, if you like?”

“Of course, maman,” said Alexandra. “But nowwe had better have lunch, we are hungry.”

“Quite so,” assented her mother. “Come along, prince. Are you very hungry?”

“Yes, I’ve begun to be very hungry now, and I am very grateful to you.”

“It’s a very good thing that you are polite, and I notice you are not nearly such a . . . queer creature as you were described. Come along. Sit here, facing me.” She insisted on making Myshkin sit down when they went into the dining-room. “I want to look at you. Alexandra, Adelaida, help the prince to something. He is really not such an . . . invalid, is he? Perhaps the table-napkin is not necessary. . . . Used you to have a napkin tied round your neck at mealtimes, prince?”

“Long ago, when I was seven, I believe I did, but now I usually have my napkin on my knee at mealtimes.”

“Quite right. And your fits?”

“Fits?” The prince was a little surprised. “My fits don’t happen very often now. But I don’t know; I am told the climate here will make me worse.”

“He speaks well,” said the lady, turning to her daughters; she still nodded her head at every word Myshkin uttered. “I didn’t expect it. So it was all stuff and nonsense, as usual. Help yourself, prince, and tell me where you were born and where you’ve been brought up? I want to know all about you; you interest me extremely.”

Myshkin thanked her, and while eating with excellent appetite began again repeating the story he had repeated several times that morning. The lady was more and more pleased with him; the girls too listened rather attentively. They worked out the relationship; it turned out that Myshkin knew his family-tree fairly well. But in spite of their efforts they could make out scarcely any connexion between him and Madame Epanchin. Among the grandfathers and the grandmothers a distant kinship might be discovered. The lady was particularly delighted with this dry subject, for she scarcely ever had a chance of indulging her tastes by discussing her pedigree. So she got up from table quite excited.

“Come, all of you, into our assembly-room,” she said, “and we’ll have coffee there. We have a room where we all meet,” she said to Myshkin, as she led him there. “My little drawing-room, where we assemble and sit when we are alone and each of us does her work. Alexandra, my eldest daughter here, plays the piano or reads or sews; Adelaida paints landscapes and portraits (and can never finish anything); and Aglaia sits doing nothing. I am not much good at work either; I can never get anything done. Well, here we are. Sit here, prince, by the fire and tell me something. I want to know how you tell a story. I want to be fully convinced, and when I see old Princess Byelokonsky, I shall tell her all about you. I

want them all to be interested in you too. Come, tell me something.”

“But, maman, it’s very queer to tell a story like that,” observed Adelaida, who had by now set up her easel, taken out her brushes and palette, and was setting to work copying from an engraving a landscape she had begun long ago.

Alexandra and Aglaia sat down on a little sofa and, folding their arms, prepared to listen to the conversation. Myshkin observed that he was a centre of attention on all sides.

“I would never say anything if I were told to like that,” observed Aglaia.

“Why not? What is there queer about it? Why shouldn’t he tell me something? He has a tongue. I want to know how he can describe things. Come, anything. Tell us how you liked Switzerland, your first impression of it. You will see, he’ll begin directly, and begin well too.”

“It was a strong impression” . . . Myshkin was beginning.

“There, you see,” the eager lady broke in, addressing her daughters, “he has begun.”

“Do let him speak at least, maman,” said Alexandra, checking her. “This prince may be a great rogue and not an idiot at all,” she whispered to Aglaia.

“No doubt of it; I’ve seen that a long while,” answered Aglaia. “And it’s horrid of him to play a part. Is he trying to gain something by it?”

“My first impression was a very strong one,” Myshkin repeated. “When I was brought from Russia through various German towns, I simply looked about in silence and, I remember, asked no questions. That was after a long series of violent and painful attacks of my illness, and when my complaint was at its worst and my fits frequent, I always sank into complete stupefaction. I lost my memory, and though my brain worked, the logical sequence of ideas seemed broken. I couldn’t connect more than two or three ideas together. That’s how it seems to me. When the fits became less frequent and violent, I became strong and healthy again as I am now. I remember I was insufferably sad; I wanted to cry. I was all the while lost in wonder and uneasiness. What affected me most was that everything was strange; I realised that. I was crushed bv the strangeness of it. I was finally roused from this gloomy state, I remember, one evening on reaching Switzerland at Bale, and I was roused by the bray of an ass in the market-place. I was immensely struck with the ass, and for some reason extraordinarily pleased with it, and suddenly everything seemed to clear up in my head.”

“An ass? That’s odd,” observed Lizaveta Prokofyevna. “Yet there’s nothing odd about it; one of us may even fall in love with an ass,” she observed, looking wrathfully at the laughing girls. “It’s happened in mythology. Go on, prince.”

“I’ve been awfully fond of asses ever since; they have a special attraction for me. I began to ask about them because I’d never seen one before, and I understood at once what a useful creature it was — industrious, strong, patient, cheap, long-suffering. And so, through the ass, all Switzerland began to attract me, so that my melancholy passed completely.”

“That’s all very strange, but you can pass over the ass; let’s come to something else. Why do you keep laughing, Aglaia? And you, Adelaida? The prince told us splendidly about the ass. He has seen it himself, but what have you seen? “Vbu’ve never been abroad.”

“I have seen an ass, maman,” said Adelaida.

“And I’ve even heard one,” asserted Aglaia.

The three girls laughed again. Myshkin laughed with them.

“That’s too bad of you,” observed the lady. “\bu must excuse them, prince, they are good-natured. I am always quarrelling with them, but I love them. They are flighty, thoughtless madcaps.”

“Why?” laughed Myshkin. “I should have done the same in their place. But still I stand up for the ass; the ass is a good-natured and useful creature.”

“And are you good-natured, prince? I ask from curiosity,” inquired Madame Epanchin.

Theyall laughed again.

“That hateful ass again! I wasn’t thinking about it,” cried the lady. “Believe me, prince, I spoke without any...”

“Hint? Oh, I believe you certainly.” And Myshkin went on laughing.

“I am glad you are laughing. I see you are a very good-natured young man,” said Lizaveta Prokofyevna.

“Sometimes not good-natured,” answered Myshkin.

“I am good-natured,” the lady put in unexpectedly, “and if you like I am always good-natured, you may say; it’s my one failing, for one oughtn’t to be always good-natured. I get angry often with these girls, and still more with Ivan Fyodorovitch; but the worst of it is that I am always more good-natured when I am angry. Just before you came in I was angry and pretended that I didn’t and couldn’t understand anything. I am like that sometimes; like a child. Aglaia pulled me up. Thank you for the lesson, Aglaia. But it’s all nonsense. I am not quite such a fool as I seem and as my daughters would like to make me out. I have a will of my own and am not easily put to shame. But I say this without malice. Come here, Aglaia, give me a kiss, there . . . that’s fondling enough,” she observed, when Aglaia had with real feeling kissed her on the lips and on the hand. “Go on, prince. Perhaps you will remember something more interesting than an ass.”

“I don’t understand how any one can describe straiqht off like that,” Adelaida observed aqain. “I

couldn’t think of anything.”

“But the prince will think of something, for he is extremely clever — at least ten times as clever as you are, very likely twelve times. I hope you will feel it after this. Prove it to them, prince, go on. \bu really can pass over the ass now. What did you see abroad besides the ass?”

“It was clever about the ass too,” observed Alexandra. “It was interesting what the prince told us of his invalid condition and how one external shock made everything pleasant to him. I’ve always been interested to know how people go out of their minds and recover again. Especially when it happens all of a sudden.”

“Yes, yes,” cried her mother eagerly. “I see that you can be clever sometimes too. Well, come, stop laughing. You were speaking of Swiss scenery, prince, I think. Well?”

“We reached Lucerne and I was taken to the lake. I felt how beautiful it was, but I felt dreadfully depressed by it,” said Myshkin.

“Why?” asked Alexandra.

“I don’t know why. I always feel depressed and uneasy at the sight of such a landscape for the first time; I feel both happy and uneasy. But that was all while I was still ill.”

“I should awfully like to see it,” said Adelaida. “I can’t understand why we don’t go abroad. I haven’t been able to find subjects for painting for the last two years. The East and the South have been painted long ago. Find me a subject for a picture, prince.”