now!—And-and-and as you are a capital fellow, I am
convinced of that, I dare say we really shall end by being
good friends. I like you very much Evgenie Pavlovitch; I
consider you a very good fellow indeed.’
‘Well, in any case, you are a most delightful man to
have to deal with, be the business what it may,’ concluded
Evgenie. ‘Come along now, I’ll drink a glass to your
health. I’m charmed to have entered into alliance with
you. By-the-by,’ he added suddenly, has this young
Hippolyte come down to stay with you
‘Yes.’
‘He’s not going to die at once, I should think, is he?’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been half an hour here with
him, and he—‘
Hippolyte had been waiting for the prince all this time,
and had never ceased looking at him and Evgenie
Pavlovitch as they conversed in the corner. He became The Idiot
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much excited when they approached the table once more.
He was disturbed in his mind, it seemed; perspiration
stood in large drops on his forehead; in his gleaming eyes
it was easy to read impatience and agitation; his gaze
wandered from face to face of those present, and from
object to object in the room, apparently without aim. He
had taken a part, and an animated one, in the noisy
conversation of the company; but his animation was
clearly the outcome of fever. His talk was almost
incoherent; he would break off in the middle of a sentence
which he had begun with great interest, and forget what
he had been saying. The prince discovered to his dismay
that Hippolyte had been allowed to drink two large glasses
of champagne; the one now standing by him being the
third. All this he found out afterwards; at the moment he
did not notice anything, very particularly.
‘Do you know I am specially glad that today is your
birthday!’ cried Hippolyte.
‘Why?’
‘You’ll soon see. D’you know I had a feeling that there
would be a lot of people here tonight? It’s not the first
time that my presentiments have been fulfilled. I wish I
had known it was your birthday, I’d have brought you a The Idiot
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present—perhaps I have got a present for you! Who
knows? Ha, ha! How long is it now before daylight?’
‘Not a couple of hours,’ said Ptitsin, looking at his
watch. What’s the good of daylight now? One can read all
night in the open air without it,’ said someone.
‘The good of it! Well, I want just to see a ray of the
sun,’ said Hippolyte. Can one drink to the sun’s health, do
you think, prince?’
‘Oh, I dare say one can; but you had better be calm and
lie down, Hippolyte—that’s much more important.
‘You are always preaching about resting; you are a
regular nurse to me, prince. As soon as the sun begins to
‘resound’ in the sky —what poet said that? ‘The sun
resounded in the sky.’ It is beautiful, though there’s no
sense in it!—then we will go to bed. Lebedeff, tell me, is
the sun the source of life? What does the source, or
‘spring,’ of life really mean in the Apocalypse? You have
heard of the ‘Star that is called Wormwood,’ prince?’
‘I have heard that Lebedeff explains it as the railroads
that cover Europe like a net.’
Everybody laughed, and Lebedeff got up abruptly.
‘No! Allow me, that is not what we are discussing!’ he
cried, waving his hand to impose silence. ‘Allow me! With
these gentlemen ... all these gentlemen,’ he added, The Idiot
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suddenly addressing the prince, ‘on certain points ... that is
...’ He thumped the table repeatedly, and the laughter
increased. Lebedeff was in his usual evening condition,
and had just ended a long and scientific argument, which
had left him excited and irritable. On such occasions he
was apt to evince a supreme contempt for his opponents.
‘It is not right! Half an hour ago, prince, it was agreed
among us that no one should interrupt, no one should
laugh, that each person was to express his thoughts freely;
and then at the end, when everyone had spoken,
objections might be made, even by the atheists. We chose
the general as president. Now without some such rule and
order, anyone might be shouted down, even in the loftiest
and most profound thought….’
‘Go on! Go on! Nobody is going to interrupt you!’
cried several voices.
‘Speak, but keep to the point!’
‘What is this ‘star’?’ asked another.
I have no idea,’ replied General Ivolgin, who presided
with much gravity.
‘I love these arguments, prince,’ said Keller, also more
than half intoxicated, moving restlessly in his chair.
‘Scientific and political.’ Then, turning suddenly towards
Evgenie Pavlovitch, who was seated near him: ‘Do you The Idiot
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know, I simply adore reading the accounts of the debates
in the English parliament. Not that the discussions
themselves interest me; I am not a politician, you know;
but it delights me to see how they address each other ‘the
noble lord who agrees with me,’ ‘my honourable
opponent who astonished Europe with his proposal,’ ‘the
noble viscount sitting opposite’—all these expressions, all
this parliamentarism of a free people, has an enormous
attraction for me. It fascinates me, prince. I have always
been an artist in the depths of my soul, I assure you,
Evgenie Pavlovitch.’
‘Do you mean to say,’ cried Gania, from the other
corner, ‘do you mean to say that railways are accursed
inventions, that they are a source of ruin to humanity, a
poison poured upon the earth to corrupt the springs of
life?’
Gavrila Ardalionovitch was in high spirits that evening,
and it seemed to the prince that his gaiety was mingled
with triumph. Of course he was only joking with
Lebedeff, meaning to egg him on, but he grew excited
himself at the same time.
‘Not the railways, oh dear, no!’ replied Lebedeff, with a
mixture of violent anger and extreme enjoyment.
‘Considered alone, the railways will not pollute the springs The Idiot
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of life, but as a whole they are accursed. The whole
tendency of our latest centuries, in its scientific and
materialistic aspect, is most probably accursed.’
‘Is it certainly accursed? ... or do you only mean it
might be? That is an important point,’ said Evgenie
Pavlovitch.
‘It is accursed, certainly accursed!’ replied the clerk,
vehemently.
‘Don’t go so fast, Lebedeff; you are much milder in the
morning,’ said Ptitsin, smiling.
‘But, on the other hand, more frank in the evening! In
the evening sincere and frank,’ repeated Lebedeff,
earnestly. ‘More candid, more exact, more honest, more
honourable, and ... although I may show you my weak
side, I challenge you all; you atheists, for instance! How
are you going to save the world? How find a straight road
of progress, you men of science, of industry, of
cooperation, of trades unions, and all the rest? How are
you going to save it, I say? By what? By credit? What is
credit? To what will credit lead you?’
‘You are too inquisitive,’ remarked Evgenie Pavlovitch.
‘Well, anyone who does not interest himself in
questions such as this is, in my opinion, a mere fashionable
dummy.’ The Idiot
686 of 1149
‘But it will lead at least to solidarity, and balance of
interests,’ said Ptitsin.
‘You will reach that with nothing to help you but
credit? Without recourse to any moral principle, having
for your foundation only individual selfishness, and the
satisfaction of material desires? Universal peace, and the
happiness of mankind as a whole, being the result! Is it
really so that I may understand you, sir?’
‘But the universal necessity of living, of drinking, of
eating— in short, the whole scientific conviction that this
necessity can only be satisfied by universal co-operation
and the solidarity of interests—is, it seems to me, a strong
enough idea to serve as a basis, so to speak, and a ‘spring of
life,’ for humanity in future centuries,’ said Gavrila
Ardalionovitch, now thoroughly roused.
‘The necessity of eating and drinking, that is to say,
solely the instinct of self-preservation...’
‘Is not that enough? The instinct of self-preservation is
the normal law of humanity...’
‘Who told you that?’ broke in Evgenie Pavlovitch.
‘It is a law, doubtless, but a law neither more nor less
normal than that of destruction, even self-destruction. Is it
possible that the whole normal law of humanity is
contained in this sentiment of self-preservation?’ The Idiot
687 of 1149
‘Ah!’ cried Hippolyte, turning towards Evgenie
Pavlovitch, and looking at him with a queer sort of
curiosity.
Then seeing that Radomski was laughing, he began to
laugh himself, nudged Colia, who was sitting beside him,
with his elbow, and again asked what time it was. He even
pulled Colia’s silver watch out of his hand, and looked at
it eagerly. Then, as if he had forgotten everything, he
stretched himself out on the sofa, put his hands behind his
head, and looked up at the sky. After a minute or two he
got up and came back to the table to listen to Lebedeff’s
outpourings, as the latter passionately commentated on
Evgenie Pavlovitch’s paradox.
‘That is an artful and traitorous idea. A smart notion,’
vociferated the clerk, ‘thrown out as an apple of discord.
But it is just. You are a scoffer, a man of the world, a
cavalry officer, and, though not without brains, you do
not realize how profound is your thought, nor how true.
Yes, the laws of self- preservation and of self-destruction
are equally powerful in this world. The devil will hold his
empire over humanity until a limit of time which is still
unknown. You laugh? You do not believe in the devil?
Scepticism as to the devil is a French idea, and it is also a
frivolous idea. Do you know who the devil is? Do you The Idiot
688 of 1149
know his name? Although you don’t know his name you
make a mockery of his form, following the example of
Voltaire. You sneer at his hoofs, at his tail, at his horns—
all of them the produce of your imagination! In reality the
devil is a great and terrible spirit, with neither hoofs, nor
tail, nor horns; it is you who have endowed him with
these attributes! But ... he is not the question just now!’
‘How do you know he is not the question now?’ cried
Hippolyte, laughing hysterically.
‘Another excellent idea, and worth considering!’
replied Lebedeff. ‘But, again, that is not the question. The
question at this moment is whether we have not
weakened ‘the springs of life’ by the extension ...’
‘Of railways?’ put in Colia eagerly.
‘Not railways, properly speaking, presumptuous youth,
but the general tendency of which railways may be
considered as the outward expression and symbol. We
hurry and push and hustle, for the good of humanity! ‘The
world is becoming too noisy, too commercial!’ groans
some solitary thinker. ‘Undoubtedly it is, but the noise of
waggons bearing bread to starving humanity is of more
value than tranquillity of soul,’ replies another
triumphantly, and passes on with an air of pride. As for
me, I don’t believe in these waggons bringing bread to The Idiot
689 of 1149
humanity. For, founded on no moral principle, these may
well, even in the act of carrying bread to humanity, coldly
exclude a considerable portion of humanity from enjoying
it; that has been seen more than once.
‘What, these waggons may coldly exclude?’ repeated
someone.
‘That has been seen already,’ continued Lebedeff, not
deigning to notice the interruption. ‘Malthus was a friend
of humanity, but, with ill-founded moral principles, the
friend of humanity is the devourer of humanity, without
mentioning his pride; for, touch the vanity of one of these
numberless philanthropists, and to avenge his self-esteem,
he will be ready at once to set fire to the whole globe; and
to tell the truth, we are all more or less like that. I,
perhaps, might be the first to set a light to the fuel, and
then run away. But, again, I must repeat, that is not the
question.’
‘What is it then, for goodness’ sake?’
‘He is boring us!’
‘The question is connected with the following
anecdote of past times; for I am obliged to relate a story.
In our times, and in our country, which I hope you love
as much as I do, for as far as I am concerned, I am ready to
shed the last drop of my blood... The Idiot
690 of 1149
‘Go on! Go on!’
‘In our dear country, as indeed in the whole of Europe,
a famine visits humanity about four times a century, as far
as I can remember; once in every twenty-five years. I
won’t swear to this being the exact figure, but anyhow
they have become comparatively rare.’
‘Comparatively to what?’
‘To the twelfth century, and those immediately
preceding and following it. We are told by historians that
widespread famines occurred in those days every two or
three years, and such was the condition of things that men
actually had recourse to cannibalism, in secret, of course.
One of these cannibals, who had reached a good age,
declared of his own free will that during the course of his
long and miserable life he had personally killed and eaten,
in the most profound secrecy, sixty monks, not to
mention several children; the number of the latter he
thought was about six, an insignificant total when
compared with the enormous mass of ecclesiastics
consumed by him. As to adults, laymen that is to say, he
had never touched them.’
The president joined in the general outcry.
‘That’s impossible!’ said he in an aggrieved tone. ‘I am
often discussing subjects of this nature with him, The Idiot
691 of 1149
gentlemen, but for the most part he talks nonsense enough
to make one deaf: this story has no pretence of being true.’
‘General, remember the siege of Kars! And you,
gentlemen, I assure you my anecdote is the naked truth. I
