Muishkin went in.
It’s so dark,’ he said.
‘You can see quite enough,’ muttered Rogojin.
‘I can just see there’s a bed—‘
‘Go nearer,’ suggested Rogojin, softly.
The prince took a step forward—then another—and
paused. He stood and stared for a minute or two.
Neither of the men spoke a word while at the bedside.
The prince’s heart beat so loud that its knocking seemed
to be distinctly audible in the deathly silence.
But now his eyes had become so far accustomed to the
darkness that he could distinguish the whole of the bed.
Someone was asleep upon it—in an absolutely motionless
sleep. Not the slightest movement was perceptible, not the
faintest breathing could be heard. The sleeper was covered
with a white sheet; the outline of the limbs was hardly The Idiot
1133 of 1149
distinguishable. He could only just make out that a human
being lay outstretched there.
All around, on the bed, on a chair beside it, on the
floor, were scattered the different portions of a magnificent
white silk dress, bits of lace, ribbons and flowers. On a
small table at the bedside glittered a mass of diamonds,
torn off and thrown down anyhow. From under a heap of
lace at the end of the bed peeped a small white foot,
which looked as though it had been chiselled out of
marble; it was terribly still.
The prince gazed and gazed, and felt that the more he
gazed the more death-like became the silence. Suddenly a
fly awoke somewhere, buzzed across the room, and settled
on the pillow. The prince shuddered.
‘Let’s go,’ said Rogojin, touching his shoulder. They
left the alcove and sat down in the two chairs they had
occupied before, opposite to one another. The prince
trembled more and more violently, and never took his
questioning eyes off Rogojin’s face.
‘I see you are shuddering, Lef Nicolaievitch,’ said the
latter, at length, ‘almost as you did once in Moscow,
before your fit; don’t you remember? I don’t know what I
shall do with you—‘ The Idiot
1134 of 1149
The prince bent forward to listen, putting all the strain
he could muster upon his understanding in order to take
in what Rogojin said, and continuing to gaze at the latter’s
face.
‘Was it you?’ he muttered, at last, motioning with his
head towards the curtain.
‘Yes, it was I,’ whispered Rogojin, looking down.
Neither spoke for five minutes.
‘Because, you know,’ Rogojin recommenced, as
though continuing a former sentence, ‘if you were ill
now, or had a fit, or screamed, or anything, they might
hear it in the yard, or even in the street, and guess that
someone was passing the night in the house. They would
all come and knock and want to come in, because they
know I am not at home. I didn’t light a candle for the
same reason. When I am not here—for two or three days
at a time, now and then—no one comes in to tidy the
house or anything; those are my orders. So that I want
them to not know we are spending the night here—‘
‘Wait,’ interrupted the prince. ‘I asked both the porter
and the woman whether Nastasia Philipovna had spent last
night in the house; so they knew—‘
‘I know you asked. I told them that she had called in
for ten minutes, and then gone straight back to Pavlofsk. The Idiot
1135 of 1149
No one knows she slept here. Last night we came in just
as carefully as you and I did today. I thought as I came
along with her that she would not like to creep in so
secretly, but I was quite wrong. She whispered, and
walked on tip-toe; she carried her skirt over her arm, so
that it shouldn’t rustle, and she held up her finger at me on
the stairs, so that I shouldn’t make a noise—it was you she
was afraid of. She was mad with terror in the train, and she
begged me to bring her to this house. I thought of taking
her to her rooms at the Ismailofsky barracks first; but she
wouldn’t hear of it. She said, ‘No—not there; he’ll find
me out at once there. Take me to your own house, where
you can hide me, and tomorrow we’ll set off for Moscow.’
Thence she would go to Orel, she said. When she went to
bed, she was still talking about going to Orel.’
‘Wait! What do you intend to do now, Parfen?’
‘Well, I’m afraid of you. You shudder and tremble so.
We’ll pass the night here together. There are no other
beds besides that one; but I’ve thought how we’ll manage.
I’ll take the cushions off all the sofas, and lay them down
on the floor, up against the curtain here—for you and
me—so that we shall be together. For if they come in and
look about now, you know, they’ll find her, and carry her
away, and they’ll be asking me questions, and I shall say I The Idiot
1136 of 1149
did it, and then they’ll take me away, too, don’t you see?
So let her lie close to us—close to you and me.
‘Yes, yes,’ agreed the prince, warmly.
‘So we will not say anything about it, or let them take
her away?’
‘Not for anything!’ cried the other; ‘no, no, no!’
‘So I had decided, my friend; not to give her up to
anyone,’ continued Rogojin. ‘We’ll be very quiet. I have
only been out of the house one hour all day, all the rest of
the time I have been with her. I dare say the air is very
bad here. It is so hot. Do you find it bad?’
‘I don’t know—perhaps—by morning it will be.’
‘I’ve covered her with oil-cloth—best American
oilcloth, and put the sheet over that, and four jars of
disinfectant, on account of the smell—as they did at
Moscow—you remember? And she’s lying so still; you
shall see, in the morning, when it’s light. What! can’t you
get up?’ asked Rogojin, seeing the other was trembling so
that he could not rise from his seat.
‘My legs won’t move,’ said the prince; ‘it’s fear, I
know. When my fear is over, I’ll get up—‘
‘Wait a bit—I’ll make the bed, and you can lie down.
I’ll lie down, too, and we’ll listen and watch, for I don’t The Idiot
1137 of 1149
know yet what I shall do... I tell you beforehand, so that
you may be ready in case I—‘
Muttering these disconnected words, Rogojin began to
make up the beds. It was clear that he had devised these
beds long before; last night he slept on the sofa. But there
was no room for two on the sofa, and he seemed anxious
that he and the prince should be close to one another;
therefore, he now dragged cushions of all sizes and shapes
from the sofas, and made a sort of bed of them close by
the curtain. He then approached the prince, and gently
helped him to rise, and led him towards the bed. But the
prince could now walk by himself, so that his fear must
have passed; for all that, however, he continued to
shudder.
‘It’s hot weather, you see,’ continued Rogojin, as he
lay down on the cushions beside Muishkin, ‘and, naturally,
there will be a smell. I daren’t open the window. My
mother has some beautiful flowers in pots; they have a
delicious scent; I thought of fetching them in, but that old
servant will find out, she’s very inquisitive.
‘Yes, she is inquisitive,’ assented the prince.
‘I thought of buying flowers, and putting them all
round her; but I was afraid it would make us sad to see her
with flowers round her.’ The Idiot
1138 of 1149
‘Look here,’ said the prince; he was bewildered, and his
brain wandered. He seemed to be continually groping for
the questions he wished to ask, and then losing them.
‘Listen—tell me—how did you—with a knife?—That
same one?’
‘Yes, that same one.’
‘Wait a minute, I want to ask you something else,
Parfen; all sorts of things; but tell me first, did you intend
to kill her before my wedding, at the church door, with
your knife?’
‘I don’t know whether I did or not,’ said Rogojin,
drily, seeming to be a little astonished at the question, and
not quite taking it in.
‘Did you never take your knife to Pavlofsk with you?’
‘No. As to the knife,’ he added, ‘this is all I can tell you
about it.’ He was silent for a moment, and then said, ‘I
took it out of the locked drawer this morning about three,
for it was in the early morning all this—happened. It has
been inside the book ever since—and—and—this is what
is such a marvel to me, the knife only went in a couple of
inches at most, just under her left breast, and there wasn’t
more than half a tablespoonful of blood altogether, not
more.’ The Idiot
1139 of 1149
‘Yes—yes—yes—’ The prince jumped up in
extraordinary agitation. ‘I know, I know, I’ve read of that
sort of thing—it’s internal haemorrhage, you know.
Sometimes there isn’t a drop—if the blow goes straight to
the heart—‘
‘Wait—listen!’ cried Rogojin, suddenly, starting up.
‘Somebody’s walking about, do you hear? In the hall.’
Both sat up to listen.
‘I hear,’ said the prince in a whisper, his eyes fixed on
Rogojin.
‘Footsteps?’
‘Yes.’
‘Shall we shut the door, and lock it, or not?’
‘Yes, lock it.’
They locked the door, and both lay down again. There
was a long silence.
‘Yes, by-the-by,’ whispered the prince, hurriedly and
excitedly as before, as though he had just seized hold of an
idea and was afraid of losing it again. ‘I—I wanted those
cards! They say you played cards with her?’
‘Yes, I played with her,’ said Rogojin, after a short
silence.
‘Where are the cards?’
‘Here they are,’ said Rogojin, after a still longer pause. The Idiot
1140 of 1149
He pulled out a pack of cards, wrapped in a bit of
paper, from his pocket, and handed them to the prince.
The latter took them, with a sort of perplexity. A new,
sad, helpless feeling weighed on his heart; he had suddenly
realized that not only at this moment, but for a long while,
he had not been saying what he wanted to say, had not
been acting as he wanted to act; and that these cards which
he held in his hand, and which he had been so delighted
to have at first, were now of no use—no use... He rose,
and wrung his hands. Rogojin lay motionless, and seemed
neither to hear nor see his movements; but his eyes blazed
in the darkness, and were fixed in a wild stare.
The prince sat down on a chair, and watched him in
alarm. Half an hour went by.
Suddenly Rogojin burst into a loud abrupt laugh, as
though he had quite forgotten that they must speak in
whispers.
‘That officer, eh!—that young officer—don’t you
remember that fellow at the band? Eh? Ha, ha, ha! Didn’t
she whip him smartly, eh?’
The prince jumped up from his seat in renewed terror.
When Rogojin quieted down (which he did at once) the
prince bent over him, sat down beside him, and with
painfully beating heart and still more painful breath, The Idiot
1141 of 1149
watched his face intently. Rogojin never turned his head,
and seemed to have forgotten all about him. The prince
watched and waited. Time went on—it began to grow
light.
Rogojin began to wander—muttering disconnectedly;
then he took to shouting and laughing. The prince
stretched out a trembling hand and gently stroked his hair
and his cheeks—he could do nothing more. His legs
trembled again and he seemed to have lost the use of
them. A new sensation came over him, filling his heart
and soul with infinite anguish.
Meanwhile the daylight grew full and strong; and at last
the prince lay down, as though overcome by despair, and
laid his face against the white, motionless face of Rogojin.
His tears flowed on to Rogojin’s cheek, though he was
perhaps not aware of them himself.
At all events when, after many hours, the door was
opened and people thronged in, they found the murderer
unconscious and in a raging fever. The prince was sitting
by him, motionless, and each time that the sick man gave
a laugh, or a shout, he hastened to pass his own trembling
hand over his companion’s hair and cheeks, as though
trying to soothe and quiet him. But alas I he understood The Idiot
1142 of 1149
nothing of what was said to him, and recognized none of
those who surrounded him.
If Schneider himself had arrived then and seen his
former pupil and patient, remembering the prince’s
condition during the first year in Switzerland, he would
have flung up his hands, despairingly, and cried, as he did
then:
‘An idiot!’ The Idiot
1143 of 1149
XII
WHEN the widow hurried away to Pavlofsk, she went
straight to Daria Alexeyevna’s house, and telling all she
knew, threw her into a state of great alarm. Both ladies
decided to communicate at once with Lebedeff, who, as
the friend and landlord of the prince, was also much
agitated. Vera Lebedeff told all she knew, and by
Lebedeff’s advice it was decided that all three should go to
Petersburg as quickly as possible, in order to avert ‘what
might so easily happen.’
This is how it came about that at eleven o’clock next
morning Rogojin’s flat was opened by the police in the
presence of Lebedeff, the two ladies, and Rogojin’s own
brother, who lived in the wing.
The evidence of the porter went further than anything
else towards the success of Lebedeff in gaining the
assistance of the police. He declared that he had seen
Rogojin return to the house last night, accompanied by a
friend, and that both had gone upstairs very secretly and
cautiously. After this there was no hesitation about
breaking open the door, since it could not be got open in
any other way. The Idiot
1144 of 1149
Rogojin suffered from brain fever for two months.
When he recovered from the attack he was at once
brought up on trial for murder.
He gave full, satisfactory, and direct evidence on every
point; and the prince’s name was, thanks to this, not
brought into the proceedings. Rogojin was very quiet
during the progress of the trial. He did not contradict his
clever and eloquent counsel, who argued that the brain
fever, or inflammation of the brain, was the cause of the
