beauties of nature for the first time; but then, I was ill at
that time, of course!’
‘Oh, but I should like to see it!’ said Adelaida; ‘and I
don’t know WHEN we shall ever go abroad. I’ve been
two years looking out for a good subject for a picture. I’ve
done all I know. ‘The North and South I know by heart,’
as our poet observes. Do help me to a subject, prince.’
‘Oh, but I know nothing about painting. It seems to
me one only has to look, and paint what one sees.’
‘But I don’t know HOW to see!’
‘Nonsense, what rubbish you talk!’ the mother struck
in. ‘Not know how to see! Open your eyes and look! If
you can’t see here, you won’t see abroad either. Tell us
what you saw yourself, prince!’
‘Yes, that’s better,’ said Adelaida; ‘the prince learned to
see abroad.’
‘Oh, I hardly know! You see, I only went to restore
my health. I don’t know whether I learned to see, exactly.
I was very happy, however, nearly all the time.’
‘Happy! you can be happy?’ cried Aglaya. ‘Then how
can you say you did not learn to see? I should think you
could teach us to see!’
‘Oh! DO teach us,’ laughed Adelaida. The Idiot
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‘Oh! I can’t do that,’ said the prince, laughing too. ‘I
lived almost all the while in one little Swiss village; what
can I teach you? At first I was only just not absolutely dull;
then my health began to improve—then every day
became dearer and more precious to me, and the longer I
stayed, the dearer became the time to me; so much so that
I could not help observing it; but why this was so, it
would be difficult to say.’
‘So that you didn’t care to go away anywhere else?’
‘Well, at first I did; I was restless; I didn’t know
however I should manage to support life—you know
there are such moments, especially in solitude. There was
a waterfall near us, such a lovely thin streak of water, like a
thread but white and moving. It fell from a great height,
but it looked quite low, and it was half a mile away,
though it did not seem fifty paces. I loved to listen to it at
night, but it was then that I became so restless. Sometimes
I went and climbed the mountain and stood there in the
midst of the tall pines, all alone in the terrible silence, with
our little village in the distance, and the sky so blue, and
the sun so bright, and an old ruined castle on the
mountain-side, far away. I used to watch the line where
earth and sky met, and longed to go and seek there the
key of all mysteries, thinking that I might find there a new The Idiot
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life, perhaps some great city where life should be grander
and richer—and then it struck me that life may be grand
enough even in a prison.’
‘I read that last most praiseworthy thought in my
manual, when I was twelve years old,’ said Aglaya.
‘All this is pure philosophy,’ said Adelaida. ‘You are a
philosopher, prince, and have come here to instruct us in
your views.’
‘Perhaps you are right,’ said the prince, smiling. ‘I think
I am a philosopher, perhaps, and who knows, perhaps I do
wish to teach my views of things to those I meet with?’
‘Your philosophy is rather like that of an old woman
we know, who is rich and yet does nothing but try how
little she can spend. She talks of nothing but money all
day. Your great philosophical idea of a grand life in a
prison and your four happy years in that Swiss village are
like this, rather,’ said Aglaya.
‘As to life in a prison, of course there may be two
opinions,’ said the prince. ‘I once heard the story of a man
who lived twelve years in a prison—I heard it from the
man himself. He was one of the persons under treatment
with my professor; he had fits, and attacks of melancholy,
then he would weep, and once he tried to commit suicide.
HIS life in prison was sad enough; his only acquaintances The Idiot
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were spiders and a tree that grew outside his grating-but I
think I had better tell you of another man I met last year.
There was a very strange feature in this case, strange
because of its extremely rare occurrence. This man had
once been brought to the scaffold in company with several
others, and had had the sentence of death by shooting
passed upon him for some political crime. Twenty minutes
later he had been reprieved and some other punishment
substituted; but the interval between the two sentences,
twenty minutes, or at least a quarter of an hour, had been
passed in the certainty that within a few minutes he must
die. I was very anxious to hear him speak of his
impressions during that dreadful time, and I several times
inquired of him as to what he thought and felt. He
remembered everything with the most accurate and
extraordinary distinctness, and declared that he would
never forget a single iota of the experience.
‘About twenty paces from the scaffold, where he had
stood to hear the sentence, were three posts, fixed in the
ground, to which to fasten the criminals (of whom there
were several). The first three criminals were taken to the
posts, dressed in long white tunics, with white caps drawn
over their faces, so that they could not see the rifles
pointed at them. Then a group of soldiers took their stand The Idiot
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opposite to each post. My friend was the eighth on the
list, and therefore he would have been among the third lot
to go up. A priest went about among them with a cross:
and there was about five minutes of time left for him to
live.
‘He said that those five minutes seemed to him to be a
most interminable period, an enormous wealth of time; he
seemed to be living, in these minutes, so many lives that
there was no need as yet to think of that last moment, so
that he made several arrangements, dividing up the time
into portions—one for saying farewell to his companions,
two minutes for that; then a couple more for thinking
over his own life and career and all about himself; and
another minute for a last look around. He remembered
having divided his time like this quite well. While saying
good- bye to his friends he recollected asking one of them
some very usual everyday question, and being much
interested in the answer. Then having bade farewell, he
embarked upon those two minutes which he had allotted
to looking into himself; he knew beforehand what he was
going to think about. He wished to put it to himself as
quickly and clearly as possible, that here was he, a living,
thinking man, and that in three minutes he would be
nobody; or if somebody or something, then what and The Idiot
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where? He thought he would decide this question once
for all in these last three minutes. A little way off there
stood a church, and its gilded spire glittered in the sun. He
remembered staring stubbornly at this spire, and at the rays
of light sparkling from it. He could not tear his eyes from
these rays of light; he got the idea that these rays were his
new nature, and that in three minutes he would become
one of them, amalgamated somehow with them.
‘The repugnance to what must ensue almost
immediately, and the uncertainty, were dreadful, he said;
but worst of all was the idea, ‘What should I do if I were
not to die now? What if I were to return to life again?
What an eternity of days, and all mine! How I should
grudge and count up every minute of it, so as to waste not
a single instant!’ He said that this thought weighed so
upon him and became such a terrible burden upon his
brain that he could not bear it, and wished they would
shoot him quickly and have done with it.’
The prince paused and all waited, expecting him to go
on again and finish the story.
‘Is that all?’ asked Aglaya.
‘All? Yes,’ said the prince, emerging from a momentary
reverie.
‘And why did you tell us this?’ The Idiot
109 of 1149
‘Oh, I happened to recall it, that’s all! It fitted into the
conversation—‘
‘You probably wish to deduce, prince,’ said Alexandra,
‘that moments of time cannot be reckoned by money
value, and that sometimes five minutes are worth priceless
treasures. All this is very praiseworthy; but may I ask about
this friend of yours, who told you the terrible experience
of his life? He was reprieved, you say; in other words, they
did restore to him that ‘eternity of days.’ What did he do
with these riches of time? Did he keep careful account of
his minutes?’
‘Oh no, he didn’t! I asked him myself. He said that he
had not lived a bit as he had intended, and had wasted
many, and many a minute.’
‘Very well, then there’s an experiment, and the thing is
proved; one cannot live and count each moment; say what
you like, but one CANNOT.’
‘That is true,’ said the prince, ‘I have thought so myself.
And yet, why shouldn’t one do it?’
‘You think, then, that you could live more wisely than
other people?’ said Aglaya.
‘I have had that idea.’
‘And you have it still?’
‘Yes—I have it still,’ the prince replied. The Idiot
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He had contemplated Aglaya until now, with a pleasant
though rather timid smile, but as the last words fell from
his lips he began to laugh, and looked at her merrily.
‘You are not very modest!’ said she.
‘But how brave you are!’ said he. ‘You are laughing,
and I— that man’s tale impressed me so much, that I
dreamt of it afterwards; yes, I dreamt of those five minutes
…’
He looked at his listeners again with that same serious,
searching expression.
‘You are not angry with me?’ he asked suddenly, and
with a kind of nervous hurry, although he looked them
straight in the face.
‘Why should we be angry?’ they cried.
‘Only because I seem to be giving you a lecture, all the
time!’
At this they laughed heartily.
‘Please don’t be angry with me,’ continued the prince.
‘I know very well that I have seen less of life than other
people, and have less knowledge of it. I must appear to
speak strangely sometimes …’
He said the last words nervously.
‘You say you have been happy, and that proves you
have lived, not less, but more than other people. Why The Idiot
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make all these excuses?’ interrupted Aglaya in a mocking
tone of voice. ‘Besides, you need not mind about lecturing
us; you have nothing to boast of. With your quietism, one
could live happily for a hundred years at least. One might
show you the execution of a felon, or show you one’s
little finger. You could draw a moral from either, and be
quite satisfied. That sort of existence is easy enough.’
‘I can’t understand why you always fly into a temper,’
said Mrs. Epanchin, who had been listening to the
conversation and examining the faces of the speakers in
turn. ‘I do not understand what you mean. What has your
little finger to do with it? The prince talks well, though he
is not amusing. He began all right, but now he seems sad.’
‘Never mind, mamma! Prince, I wish you had seen an
execution,’ said Aglaya. ‘I should like to ask you a
question about that, if you had.’
‘I have seen an execution,’ said the prince.
‘You have!’ cried Aglaya. ‘I might have guessed it.
That’s a fitting crown to the rest of the story. If you have
seen an execution, how can you say you lived happily all
the while?’
‘But is there capital punishment where you were?’
asked Adelaida. The Idiot
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‘I saw it at Lyons. Schneider took us there, and as soon
as we arrived we came in for that.’
‘Well, and did you like it very much? Was it very
edifying and instructive?’ asked Aglaya.
‘No, I didn’t like it at all, and was ill after seeing it; but
I confess I stared as though my eyes were fixed to the
sight. I could not tear them away.’
‘I, too, should have been unable to tear my eyes away,’
said Aglaya.
‘They do not at all approve of women going to see an
execution there. The women who do go are condemned
for it afterwards in the newspapers.’
‘That is, by contending that it is not a sight for women
they admit that it is a sight for men. I congratulate them
on the deduction. I suppose you quite agree with them,
prince?’
‘Tell us about the execution,’ put in Adelaida.
‘I would much rather not, just now,’ said the prince, a
little disturbed and frowning slightly;
’ You don’t seem to want to tell us,’ said Aglaya, with a
mocking air.
’ No,—the thing is, I was telling all about the
execution a little while ago, and—‘
‘Whom did you tell about it?’ The Idiot
113 of 1149
‘The man-servant, while I was waiting to see the
general.’
‘Our man-servant?’ exclaimed several voices at once.
‘Yes, the one who waits in the entrance hall, a greyish,
red- faced man—‘
‘The prince is clearly a democrat,’ remarked Aglaya.
‘Well, if you could tell Aleksey about it, surely you can
tell us too.’
‘I do so want to hear about it,’ repeated Adelaida.
‘Just now, I confess,’ began the prince, with more
animation, ‘when you asked me for a subject for a picture,
I confess I had serious thoughts of giving you one. I
thought of asking you to draw the face of a criminal, one
minute before the fall of the guillotine, while the
wretched man is still standing on the scaffold, preparatory
to placing his neck on the block.’
‘What, his face? only his face?’ asked Adelaida. ‘That
would be a strange subject indeed. And what sort of a
picture would that make?’
‘Oh, why not?’ the prince insisted, with some warmth.
‘When I was in Basle I saw a picture very much in that
style—I should like to tell you about it; I will some time
or other; it struck me very forcibly.’ The Idiot
114 of 1149
‘Oh, you shall tell us about the Basle picture another
time; now we must have all about the execution,’ said
Adelaida. ‘Tell us about that face as; it appeared to your
imagination-how should it be drawn?—just the face alone,
