to the man who answered.
‘Mamma!’ cried Alexandra, significantly.
‘I shall just say two words to him, that’s all,’ said her
mother, silencing all objection by her manner; she was
evidently seriously put out. ‘You see, prince, it is all
secrets with us, just now—all secrets. It seems to be the
etiquette of the house, for some reason or, other. Stupid
nonsense, and in a matter which ought to be approached
with all candour and open- heartedness. There is a
marriage being talked of, and I don’t like this marriage—‘ The Idiot
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‘Mamma, what are you saying?’ said Alexandra again,
hurriedly.
‘Well, what, my dear girl? As if you can possibly like it
yourself? The heart is the great thing, and the rest is all
rubbish—though one must have sense as well. Perhaps
sense is really the great thing. Don’t smile like that,
Aglaya. I don’t contradict myself. A fool with a heart and
no brains is just as unhappy as a fool with brains and no
heart. I am one and you are the other, and therefore both
of us suffer, both of us are unhappy.’
‘Why are you so unhappy, mother?’ asked Adelaida,
who alone of all the company seemed to have preserved
her good temper and spirits up to now.
‘In the first place, because of my carefully brought-up
daughters,’ said Mrs. Epanchin, cuttingly; ‘and as that is
the best reason I can give you we need not bother about
any other at present. Enough of words, now! We shall see
how both of you (I don’t count Aglaya) will manage your
business, and whether you, most revered Alexandra
Ivanovna, will be happy with your fine mate.’
‘Ah!’ she added, as Gania suddenly entered the room,
‘here’s another marrying subject. How do you do?’ she
continued, in response to Gania’s bow; but she did not
invite him to sit down. ‘You are going to be married?’ The Idiot
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‘Married? how—what marriage?’ murmured Gania,
overwhelmed with confusion.
‘Are you about to take a wife? I ask,—if you prefer that
expression.’
‘No, no I-I—no!’ said Gania, bringing out his lie with
a tell- tale blush of shame. He glanced keenly at Aglaya,
who was sitting some way off, and dropped his eyes
immediately.
Aglaya gazed coldly, intently, and composedly at him,
without taking her eyes off his face, and watched his
confusion.
‘No? You say no, do you?’ continued the pitiless Mrs.
General. ‘Very well, I shall remember that you told me
this Wednesday morning, in answer to my question, that
you are not going to be married. What day is it,
Wednesday, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, I think so!’ said Adelaida.
‘You never know the day of the week; what’s the day
of the month?’
‘Twenty-seventh!’ said Gania.
‘Twenty-seventh; very well. Good-bye now; you have
a good deal to do, I’m sure, and I must dress and go out.
Take your portrait. Give my respects to your unfortunate
mother, Nina Alexandrovna. Au revoir, dear prince, come The Idiot
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in and see us often, do; and I shall tell old Princess
Bielokonski about you. I shall go and see her on purpose.
And listen, my dear boy, I feel sure that God has sent you
to Petersburg from Switzerland on purpose for me. Maybe
you will have other things to do, besides, but you are sent
chiefly for my sake, I feel sure of it. God sent you to me!
Au revoir! Alexandra, come with me, my dear.’
Mrs. Epanchin left the room.
Gania—confused, annoyed, furious—took up his
portrait, and turned to the prince with a nasty smile on his
face.
‘Prince,’ he said, ‘I am just going home. If you have
not changed your mind as to living with us, perhaps you
would like to come with me. You don’t know the
address, I believe?’
‘Wait a minute, prince,’ said Aglaya, suddenly rising
from her seat, ‘do write something in my album first, will
you? Father says you are a most talented caligraphist; I’ll
bring you my book in a minute.’ She left the room.
‘Well, au revoir, prince,’ said Adelaida, ‘I must be
going too.’ She pressed the prince’s hand warmly, and
gave him a friendly smile as she left the room. She did not
so much as look at Gania. The Idiot
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‘This is your doing, prince,’ said Gania, turning on the
latter so soon as the others were all out of the room. ‘This
is your doing, sir! YOU have been telling them that I am
going to be married!’ He said this in a hurried whisper, his
eyes flashing with rage and his face ablaze. ‘You shameless
tattler!’
‘I assure you, you are under a delusion,’ said the prince,
calmly and politely. ‘I did not even know that you were to
be married.’
‘You heard me talking about it, the general and me.
You heard me say that everything was to be settled today
at Nastasia Philipovna’s, and you went and blurted it out
here. You lie if you deny it. Who else could have told
them Devil take it, sir, who could have told them except
yourself? Didn’t the old woman as good as hint as much to
me?’
‘If she hinted to you who told her you must know best,
of course; but I never said a word about it.’
‘Did you give my note? Is there an answer?’ interrupted
Gania, impatiently.
But at this moment Aglaya came back, and the prince
had no time to reply.
‘There, prince,’ said she, ‘there’s my album. Now
choose a page and write me something, will you? There’s The Idiot
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a pen, a new one; do you mind a steel one? I have heard
that you caligraphists don’t like steel pens.’
Conversing with the prince, Aglaya did not even seem
to notice that Gania was in the room. But while the
prince was getting his pen ready, finding a page, and
making his preparations to write, Gania came up to the
fireplace where Aglaya was standing, to the right of the
prince, and in trembling, broken accents said, almost in
her ear:
‘One word, just one word from you, and I’m saved.’
The prince turned sharply round and looked at both of
them. Gania’s face was full of real despair; he seemed to
have said the words almost unconsciously and on the
impulse of the moment.
Aglaya gazed at him for some seconds with precisely
the same composure and calm astonishment as she had
shown a little while before, when the prince handed her
the note, and it appeared that this calm surprise and
seemingly absolute incomprehension of what was said to
her, were more terribly overwhelming to Gania than even
the most plainly expressed disdain would have been.
‘What shall I write?’ asked the prince. The Idiot
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‘I’ll dictate to you,’ said Aglaya, coming up to the table.
‘Now then, are you ready? Write, ‘I never condescend to
bargain!’ Now put your name and the date. Let me see it.’
The prince handed her the album.
‘Capital! How beautifully you have written it! Thanks
so much. Au revoir, prince. Wait a minute,’; she added, ‘I
want to give you something for a keepsake. Come with
me this way, will you?’
The prince followed her. Arrived at the dining-room,
she stopped.
‘Read this,’ she said, handing him Gania’s note.
The prince took it from her hand, but gazed at her in
bewilderment.
‘Oh! I KNOW you haven’t read it, and that you could
never be that man’s accomplice. Read it, I wish you to
read it.’
The letter had evidently been written in a hurry:
‘My fate is to be decided today’ (it ran), ‘you know
how. This day I must give my word irrevocably. I have no
right to ask your help, and I dare not allow myself to
indulge in any hopes; but once you said just one word,
and that word lighted up the night of my life, and became
the beacon of my days. Say one more such word, and save
me from utter ruin. Only tell me, ‘break off the whole The Idiot
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thing!’ and I will do so this very day. Oh! what can it cost
you to say just this one word? In doing so you will but be
giving me a sign of your sympathy for me, and of your
pity; only this, only this; nothing more, NOTHING. I
dare not indulge in any hope, because I am unworthy of
it. But if you say but this word, I will take up my cross
again with joy, and return once more to my battle with
poverty. I shall meet the storm and be glad of it; I shall rise
up with renewed strength.
‘Send me back then this one word of sympathy, only
sympathy, I swear to you; and oh! do not be angry with
the audacity of despair, with the drowning man who has
dared to make this last effort to save himself from perishing
beneath the waters.
‘G.L.’
‘This man assures me,’ said Aglaya, scornfully, when
the prince had finished reading the letter, ‘that the words
‘break off everything’ do not commit me to anything
whatever; and himself gives me a written guarantee to that
effect, in this letter. Observe how ingenuously he
underlines certain words, and how crudely he glosses over
his hidden thoughts. He must know that if he ‘broke off
everything,’ FIRST, by himself, and without telling me a
word about it or having the slightest hope on my account, The Idiot
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that in that case I should perhaps be able to change my
opinion of him, and even accept his—friendship. He must
know that, but his soul is such a wretched thing. He
knows it and cannot make up his mind; he knows it and
yet asks for guarantees. He cannot bring himself to
TRUST, he wants me to give him hopes of myself before
he lets go of his hundred thousand roubles. As to the
‘former word’ which he declares ‘lighted up the night of
his life,’ he is simply an impudent liar; I merely pitied him
once. But he is audacious and shameless. He immediately
began to hope, at that very moment. I saw it. He has tried
to catch me ever since; he is still fishing for me. Well,
enough of this. Take the letter and give it back to him, as
soon as you have left our house; not before, of course.’
‘And what shall I tell him by way of answer?’
‘Nothing—of course! That’s the best answer. Is it the
case that you are going to live in his house?’
‘Yes, your father kindly recommended me to him.’
‘Then look out for him, I warn you! He won’t forgive
you easily, for taking back the letter.’
Aglaya pressed the prince’s hand and left the room. Her
face was serious and frowning; she did not even smile as
she nodded good- bye to him at the door. The Idiot
156 of 1149
‘I’ll just get my parcel and we’ll go,’ said the prince to
Gania, as he re-entered the drawing-room. Gania stamped
his foot with impatience. His face looked dark and gloomy
with rage.
At last they left the house behind them, the prince
carrying his bundle.
‘The answer—quick—the answer!’ said Gania, the
instant they were outside. ‘What did she say? Did you give
the letter?’ The prince silently held out the note. Gania
was struck motionless with amazement.
‘How, what? my letter?’ he cried. ‘He never delivered
it! I might have guessed it, oh! curse him! Of course she
did not understand what I meant, naturally! Why-why-
WHY didn’t you give her the note, you—‘
‘Excuse me; I was able to deliver it almost immediately
after receiving your commission, and I gave it, too, just as
you asked me to. It has come into my hands now because
Aglaya Ivanovna has just returned it to me.’
‘How? When?’
‘As soon as I finished writing in her album for her, and
when she asked me to come out of the room with her
(you heard?), we went into the dining-room, and she gave
me your letter to read, and then told me to return it.’ The Idiot
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‘To READ?’ cried Gania, almost at the top of his
voice; ‘to READ, and you read it?’
And again he stood like a log in the middle of the
pavement; so amazed that his mouth remained open after
the last word had left it.
‘Yes, I have just read it.’
‘And she gave it you to read herself—HERSELF?’
‘Yes, herself; and you may believe me when I tell you
that I would not have read it for anything without her
permission.’
Gania was silent for a minute or two, as though
thinking out some problem. Suddenly he cried:
‘It’s impossible, she cannot have given it to you to read!
You are lying. You read it yourself!’
‘I am telling you the truth,’ said the prince in his
former composed tone of voice; ‘and believe me, I am
extremely sorry that the circumstance should have made
such an unpleasant impression upon you!’
‘But, you wretched man, at least she must have said
something? There must be SOME answer from her!’
‘Yes, of course, she did say something!’
‘Out with it then, damn it! Out with it at once!’ and
Gania stamped his foot twice on the pavement. The Idiot
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‘As soon as I had finished reading it, she told me that
you were fishing for her; that you wished to compromise
her so far as to receive some hopes from her, trusting to
which hopes you might break with the prospect of
receiving a hundred thousand roubles. She said that if you
had done this without bargaining with her, if you had
broken with the money prospects without trying to force
a guarantee out of her first, she might have been your
friend. That’s all, I think. Oh no, when I asked her what I
was to say, as I took the letter, she replied that ‘no answer
is the best answer.’ I think that was it. Forgive me if I do
not use her exact expressions. I tell you the sense as I
understood it myself.’
Ungovernable rage and madness took entire possession
of Gania, and his fury burst out without the least attempt
at restraint.
‘Oh! that’s it, is it!’ he yelled. ‘She throws my letters
out of the window, does she! Oh! and she does not
condescend to bargain, while I DO, eh? We shall see, we
shall see! I shall pay her out for this.’
He twisted himself about with rage, and grew paler and
paler; he shook his fist. So the pair walked along a few
steps. Gania did not stand on ceremony with the prince;
he behaved just as though he were alone in his room. He The Idiot
