silver.’ I looked, and there he held a cross, just taken off
his own neck, evidently, a large tin one, made after the
Byzantine pattern. I fished out fourpence, and put his cross
on my own neck, and I could see by his face that he was
as pleased as he could be at the thought that he had
succeeded in cheating a foolish gentleman, and away he
went to drink the value of his cross. At that time
everything that I saw made a tremendous impression upon
me. I had understood nothing about Russia before, and
had only vague and fantastic memories of it. So I thought,
‘I will wait awhile before I condemn this Judas. Only God
knows what may be hidden in the hearts of drunkards.’ The Idiot
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‘Well, I went homewards, and near the hotel I came
across a poor woman, carrying a child—a baby of some six
weeks old. The mother was quite a girl herself. The baby
was smiling up at her, for the first time in its life, just at
that moment; and while I watched the woman she
suddenly crossed herself, oh, so devoutly! ‘What is it, my
good woman I asked her. (I was never but asking
questions then!) Exactly as is a mother’s joy when her
baby smiles for the first time into her eyes, so is God’s joy
when one of His children turns and prays to Him for the
first time, with all his heart!’ This is what that poor
woman said to me, almost word for word; and such a
deep, refined, truly religious thought it was—a thought in
which the whole essence of Christianity was expressed in
one flash—that is, the recognition of God as our Father,
and of God’s joy in men as His own children, which is the
chief idea of Christ. She was a simple country-woman—a
mother, it’s true— and perhaps, who knows, she may
have been the wife of the drunken soldier!
‘Listen, Parfen; you put a question to me just now.
This is my reply. The essence of religious feeling has
nothing to do with reason, or atheism, or crime, or acts of
any kind—it has nothing to do with these things—and
never had. There is something besides all this, something The Idiot
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which the arguments of the atheists can never touch. But
the principal thing, and the conclusion of my argument, is
that this is most clearly seen in the heart of a Russian. This
is a conviction which I have gained while I have been in
this Russia of ours. Yes, Parfen! there is work to be done;
there is work to be done in this Russian world!
Remember what talks we used to have in Moscow! And I
never wished to come here at all; and I never thought to
meet you like this, Parfen! Well, well—good-bye—good-
bye! God be with you!’
He turned and went downstairs.
‘Lef Nicolaievitch!’ cried Parfen, before he had reached
the next landing. ‘Have you got that cross you bought
from the soldier with you?’
‘Yes, I have,’ and the prince stopped again.
‘Show it me, will you?’
A new fancy! The prince reflected, and then mounted
the stairs once more. He pulled out the cross without
taking it off his neck.
‘Give it to me,’ said Parfen.
‘Why? do you—‘
The prince would rather have kept this particular cross.
‘I’ll wear it; and you shall have mine. I’ll take it off at
once.’ The Idiot
401 of 1149
‘You wish to exchange crosses? Very well, Parfen, if
that’s the case, I’m glad enough—that makes us brothers,
you know.’
The prince took off his tin cross, Parfen his gold one,
and the exchange was made.
Parfen was silent. With sad surprise the prince observed
that the look of distrust, the bitter, ironical smile, had still
not altogether left his newly-adopted brother’s face. At
moments, at all events, it showed itself but too plainly,
At last Rogojin took the prince’s hand, and stood so for
some moments, as though he could not make up his mind.
Then he drew him along, murmuring almost inaudibly,
‘Come!’
They stopped on the landing, and rang the bell at a
door opposite to Parfen’s own lodging.
An old woman opened to them and bowed low to
Parfen, who asked her some questions hurriedly, but did
not wait to hear her answer. He led the prince on through
several dark, cold-looking rooms, spotlessly clean, with
white covers over all the furniture.
Without the ceremony of knocking, Parfen entered a
small apartment, furnished like a drawing-room, but with
a polished mahogany partition dividing one half of it from
what was probably a bedroom. In one corner of this room The Idiot
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sat an old woman in an arm- chair, close to the stove. She
did not look very old, and her face was a pleasant, round
one; but she was white-haired and, as one could detect at
the first glance, quite in her second childhood. She wore a
black woollen dress, with a black handkerchief round her
neck and shoulders, and a white cap with black ribbons.
Her feet were raised on a footstool. Beside her sat another
old woman, also dressed in mourning, and silently knitting
a stocking; this was evidently a companion. They both
looked as though they never broke the silence. The first
old woman, so soon as she saw Rogojin and the prince,
smiled and bowed courteously several times, in token of
her gratification at their visit.
‘Mother,’ said Rogojin, kissing her hand, ‘here is my
great friend, Prince Muishkin; we have exchanged crosses;
he was like a real brother to me at Moscow at one time,
and did a great deal for me. Bless him, mother, as you
would bless your own son. Wait a moment, let me arrange
your hands for you.’
But the old lady, before Parfen had time to touch her,
raised her right hand, and, with three fingers held up,
devoutly made the sign of the cross three times over the
prince. She then nodded her head kindly at him once
more. The Idiot
403 of 1149
‘There, come along, Lef Nicolaievitch; that’s all I
brought you here for,’ said Rogojin.
When they reached the stairs again he added:
‘She understood nothing of what I said to her, and did
not know what I wanted her to do, and yet she blessed
you; that shows she wished to do so herself. Well,
goodbye; it’s time you went, and I must go too.’
He opened his own door.
‘Well, let me at least embrace you and say goodbye,
you strange fellow!’ cried the prince, looking with gentle
reproach at Rogojin, and advancing towards him. But the
latter had hardly raised his arms when he dropped them
again. He could not make up his mind to it; he turned
away from the prince in order to avoid looking at him. He
could not embrace him.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ he muttered, indistinctly, ‘though I
have taken your cross, I shall not murder you for your
watch.’ So saying, he laughed suddenly, and strangely.
Then in a moment his face became transfigured; he grew
deadly white, his lips trembled, his eves burned like fire.
He stretched out his arms and held the prince tightly to
him, and said in a strangled voice:
‘Well, take her! It’s Fate! She’s yours. I surrender her....
Remember Rogojin!’ And pushing the prince from him, The Idiot
404 of 1149
without looking back at him, he hurriedly entered his
own flat, and banged the door. The Idiot
405 of 1149
V
IT was late now, nearly half-past two, and the prince
did not find General Epanchin at home. He left a card,
and determined to look up Colia, who had a room at a
small hotel near. Colia was not in, but he was informed
that he might be back shortly, and had left word that if he
were not in by half-past three it was to be understood that
he had gone to Pavlofsk to General Epanchin’s, and would
dine there. The prince decided to wait till half-past three,
and ordered some dinner. At half-past three there was no
sign of Colia. The prince waited until four o’clock, and
then strolled off mechanically wherever his feet should
carry him.
In early summer there are often magnificent days in St.
Petersburg—bright, hot and still. This happened to be
such a day.
For some time the prince wandered about without aim
or object. He did not know the town well. He stopped to
look about him on bridges, at street corners. He entered a
confectioner’s shop to rest, once. He was in a state of
nervous excitement and perturbation; he noticed nothing
and no one; and he felt a craving for solitude, to be alone The Idiot
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with his thoughts and his emotions, and to give himself up
to them passively. He loathed the idea of trying to answer
the questions that would rise up in his heart and mind. ‘I
am not to blame for all this,’ he thought to himself, half
unconsciously.
Towards six o’clock he found himself at the station of
the Tsarsko-Selski railway.
He was tired of solitude now; a new rush of feeling
took hold of him, and a flood of light chased away the
gloom, for a moment, from his soul. He took a ticket to
Pavlofsk, and determined to get there as fast as he could,
but something stopped him; a reality, and not a fantasy, as
he was inclined to think it. He was about to take his place
in a carriage, when he suddenly threw away his ticket and
came out again, disturbed and thoughtful. A few moments
later, in the street, he recalled something that had bothered
him all the afternoon. He caught himself engaged in a
strange occupation which he now recollected he had taken
up at odd moments for the last few hours—it was looking
about all around him for something, he did not know
what. He had forgotten it for a while, half an hour or so,
and now, suddenly, the uneasy search had recommenced.
But he had hardly become conscious of this curious
phenomenon, when another recollection suddenly swam The Idiot
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through his brain, interesting him for the moment,
exceedingly. He remembered that the last time he had
been engaged in looking around him for the unknown
something, he was standing before a cutler’s shop, in the
window of which were exposed certain goods for sale. He
was extremely anxious now to discover whether this shop
and these goods really existed, or whether the whole thing
had been a hallucination.
He felt in a very curious condition today, a condition
similar to that which had preceded his fits in bygone years.
He remembered that at such times he had been
particularly absentminded, and could not discriminate
between objects and persons unless he concentrated special
attention upon them.
He remembered seeing something in the window
marked at sixty copecks. Therefore, if the shop existed and
if this object were really in the window, it would prove
that he had been able to concentrate his attention on this
article at a moment when, as a general rule, his absence of
mind would have been too great to admit of any such
concentration; in fact, very shortly after he had left the
railway station in such a state of agitation.
So he walked back looking about him for the shop, and
his heart beat with intolerable impatience. Ah! here was The Idiot
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the very shop, and there was the article marked 60 cop.’
‘Of course, it’s sixty copecks,’ he thought, and certainly
worth no more.’ This idea amused him and he laughed.
But it was a hysterical laugh; he was feeling terribly
oppressed. He remembered clearly that just here, standing
before this window, he had suddenly turned round, just as
earlier in the day he had turned and found the dreadful
eyes of Rogojin fixed upon him. Convinced, therefore,
that in this respect at all events he had been under no
delusion, he left the shop and went on.
This must be thought out; it was clear that there had
been no hallucination at the station then, either;
something had actually happened to him, on both
occasions; there was no doubt of it. But again a loathing
for all mental exertion overmastered him; he would not
think it out now, he would put it off and think of
something else. He remembered that during his epileptic
fits, or rather immediately preceding them, he had always
experienced a moment or two when his whole heart, and
mind, and body seemed to wake up to vigour and light;
when he became filled with joy and hope, and all his
anxieties seemed to be swept away for ever; these
moments were but presentiments, as it were, of the one
final second (it was never more than a second) in which The Idiot
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the fit came upon him. That second, of course, was
inexpressible. When his attack was over, and the prince
reflected on his symptoms, he used to say to himself:
‘These moments, short as they are, when I feel such
extreme consciousness of myself, and consequently more
of life than at other times, are due only to the disease—to
the sudden rupture of normal conditions. Therefore they
are not really a higher kind of life, but a lower.’ This
reasoning, however, seemed to end in a paradox, and lead
to the further consideration:—‘What matter though it be
only disease, an abnormal tension of the brain, if when I
recall and analyze the moment, it seems to have been one
of harmony and beauty in the highest degree—an instant
of deepest sensation, overflowing with unbounded joy and
rapture, ecstatic devotion, and completest life?’ Vague
though this sounds, it was perfectly comprehensible to
Muishkin, though he knew that it was but a feeble
expression of his sensations.
That there was, indeed, beauty and harmony in those
abnormal moments, that they really contained the highest
synthesis of life, he could not doubt, nor even admit the
possibility of doubt. He felt that they were not analogous
to the fantastic and unreal dreams due to intoxication by
hashish, opium or wine. Of that he could judge, when the The Idiot
410 of 1149
attack was over. These instants were characterized—to
define it in a word—by an intense quickening of the sense
of personality. Since, in the last conscious moment
preceding the attack, he could say to himself, with full
