‘I knew yesterday that you didn’t love me.’
‘Why so? why so? Because I envy you, eh? You always
think that, I know. But do you know why I am saying all
this? Look here! I must have some more champagne—
pour me out some, Keller, will you?’ The Idiot
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‘No, you’re not to drink any more, Hippolyte. I won’t
let you.’ The prince moved the glass away.
‘Well perhaps you’re right,’ said Hippolyte, musing.
They might say—yet, devil take them! what does it
matter?—prince, what can it matter what people will say
of us THEN, eh? I believe I’m half asleep. I’ve had such a
dreadful dream—I’ve only just remembered it. Prince, I
don’t wish you such dreams as that, though sure enough,
perhaps, I DON’T love you. Why wish a man evil,
though you do not love him, eh? Give me your hand—let
me press it sincerely. There—you’ve given me your
hand—you must feel that I DO press it sincerely, don’t
you? I don’t think I shall drink any more. What time is it?
Never mind, I know the time. The time has come, at all
events. What! they are laying supper over there, are they?
Then this table is free? Capital, gentlemen! I—hem! these
gentlemen are not listening. Prince, I will just read over an
article I have here. Supper is more interesting, of course,
but—‘
Here Hippolyte suddenly, and most unexpectedly,
pulled out of his breast-pocket a large sealed paper. This
imposing-looking document he placed upon the table
before him. The Idiot
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The effect of this sudden action upon the company was
instantaneous. Evgenie Pavlovitch almost bounded off his
chair in excitement. Rogojin drew nearer to the table
with a look on his face as if he knew what was coming.
Gania came nearer too; so did Lebedeff and the others—
the paper seemed to be an object of great interest to the
company in general.
‘What have you got there?’ asked the prince, with
some anxiety.
‘At the first glimpse of the rising sun, prince, I will go
to bed. I told you I would, word of honour! You shall
see!’ cried Hippolyte. ‘You think I’m not capable of
opening this packet, do you?’ He glared defiantly round at
the audience in general.
The prince observed that he was trembling all over.
‘None of us ever thought such a thing!’ Muishkin
replied for all. ‘Why should you suppose it of us? And
what are you going to read, Hippolyte? What is it?’
‘Yes, what is it?’ asked others. The packet sealed with
red wax seemed to attract everyone, as though it were a
magnet.
‘I wrote this yesterday, myself, just after I saw you,
prince, and told you I would come down here. I wrote all The Idiot
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day and all night, and finished it this morning early.
Afterwards I had a dream.’
‘Hadn’t we better hear it tomorrow?’ asked the prince
timidly.
‘Tomorrow ‘there will be no more time!’’ laughed
Hippolyte, hysterically. ‘You needn’t be afraid; I shall get
through the whole thing in forty minutes, at most an
hour! Look how interested everybody is! Everybody has
drawn near. Look! look at them all staring at my sealed
packet! If I hadn’t sealed it up it wouldn’t have been half
so effective! Ha, ha! that’s mystery, that is! Now then,
gentlemen, shall I break the seal or not? Say the word; it’s
a mystery, I tell you—a secret! Prince, you know who said
there would be ‘no more time’? It was the great and
powerful angel in the Apocalypse.’
‘Better not read it now,’ said the prince, putting his
hand on the packet.
‘No, don’t read it!’ cried Evgenie suddenly. He
appeared so strangely disturbed that many of those present
could not help wondering.
‘Reading? None of your reading now!’ said somebody;
‘it’s supper- time.’ ‘What sort of an article is it? For a
paper? Probably it’s very dull,’ said another. But the
prince’s timid gesture had impressed even Hippolyte. The Idiot
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‘Then I’m not to read it?’ he whispered, nervously.
‘Am I not to read it?’ he repeated, gazing around at each
face in turn. ‘What are you afraid of, prince?’ he turned
and asked the latter suddenly.
‘What should I be afraid of?’
‘Has anyone a coin about them? Give me a twenty-
copeck piece, somebody!’ And Hippolyte leapt from his
chair.
‘Here you are,’ said Lebedeff, handing him one; he
thought the boy had gone mad.
‘Vera Lukianovna,’ said Hippolyte, ‘toss it, will you?
Heads, I read, tails, I don’t.’
Vera Lebedeff tossed the coin into the air and let it fall
on the table.
It was ‘heads.’
‘Then I read it,’ said Hippolyte, in the tone of one
bowing to the fiat of destiny. He could not have grown
paler if a verdict of death had suddenly been presented to
him.
‘But after all, what is it? Is it possible that I should have
just risked my fate by tossing up?’ he went on, shuddering;
and looked round him again. His eyes had a curious
expression of sincerity. ‘That is an astonishing
psychological fact,’ he cried, suddenly addressing the The Idiot
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prince, in a tone of the most intense surprise. ‘It is ... it is
something quite inconceivable, prince,’ he repeated with
growing animation, like a man regaining consciousness.
‘Take note of it, prince, remember it; you collect, I am
told, facts concerning capital punishment... They told me
so. Ha, ha! My God, how absurd!’ He sat down on the
sofa, put his elbows on the table, and laid his head on his
hands. ‘It is shameful—though what does it matter to me
if it is shameful?
‘Gentlemen, gentlemen! I am about to break the seal,’
he continued, with determination. ‘I-I—of course I don’t
insist upon anyone listening if they do not wish to.’
With trembling fingers he broke the seal and drew out
several sheets of paper, smoothed them out before him,
and began sorting them.
‘What on earth does all this mean? What’s he going to
read?’ muttered several voices. Others said nothing; but
one and all sat down and watched with curiosity. They
began to think something strange might really be about to
happen. Vera stood and trembled behind her father’s chair,
almost in tears with fright; Colia was nearly as much
alarmed as she was. Lebedeff jumped up and put a couple
of candles nearer to Hippolyte, so that he might see better. The Idiot
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‘Gentlemen, this—you’ll soon see what this is,’ began
Hippolyte, and suddenly commenced his reading.
‘It’s headed, ‘A Necessary Explanation,’ with the
motto, ‘Apres moi le deluge!’ Oh, deuce take it all! Surely
I can never have seriously written such a silly motto as
that? Look here, gentlemen, I beg to give notice that all
this is very likely terrible nonsense. It is only a few ideas of
mine. If you think that there is anything mysterious
coming—or in a word—‘
‘Better read on without any more beating about the
bush,’ said Gania.
‘Affectation!’ remarked someone else.
‘Too much talk,’ said Rogojin, breaking the silence for
the first time.
Hippolyte glanced at him suddenly, and when their
eye, met Rogojin showed his teeth in a disagreeable smile,
and said the following strange words: ‘That’s not the way
to settle this business, my friend; that’s not the way at all.’
Of course nobody knew what Rogojin meant by this;
but his words made a deep impression upon all. Everyone
seemed to see in a flash the same idea.
As for Hippolyte, their effect upon him was
astounding. He trembled so that the prince was obliged to
support him, and would certainly have cried out, but that The Idiot
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his voice seemed to have entirely left him for the moment.
For a minute or two he could not speak at all, but panted
and stared at Rogojin. At last he managed to ejaculate:
‘Then it was YOU who came—YOU—YOU?’
‘Came where? What do you mean?’ asked Rogojin,
amazed. But Hippolyte, panting and choking with
excitement, interrupted him violently.
‘YOU came to me last week, in the night, at two
o’clock, the day I was with you in the morning! Confess it
was you!’
‘Last week? In the night? Have you gone cracked, my
good friend?’
Hippolyte paused and considered a moment. Then a
smile of cunning—almost triumph—crossed his lips.
‘It was you,’ he murmured, almost in a whisper, but
with absolute conviction. ‘Yes, it was you who came to
my room and sat silently on a chair at my window for a
whole hour—more! It was between one and two at night;
you rose and went out at about three. It was you, you!
Why you should have frightened me so, why you should
have wished to torment me like that, I cannot tell—but
you it was.’
There was absolute hatred in his eyes as he said this, but
his look of fear and his trembling had not left him. The Idiot
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‘You shall hear all this directly, gentlemen. I-I—listen!’
He seized his paper in a desperate hurry; he fidgeted
with it, and tried to sort it, but for a long while his
trembling hands could not collect the sheets together.
‘He’s either mad or delirious,’ murmured Rogojin. At last
he began.
For the first five minutes the reader’s voice continued
to tremble, and he read disconnectedly and unevenly; but
gradually his voice strengthened. Occasionally a violent fit
of coughing stopped him, but his animation grew with the
progress of the reading—as did also the disagreeable
impression which it made upon his audience,—until it
reached the highest pitch of excitement.
Here is the article.
MY NECESSARY EXPLANATION.
‘Apres moi le deluge.
‘Yesterday morning the prince came to see me. Among
other things he asked me to come down to his villa. I
knew he would come and persuade me to this step, and
that he would adduce the argument that it would be easier
for me to die’ among people and green trees,’—as he
expressed it. But today he did not say ‘die,’ he said ‘live.’
It is pretty much the same to me, in my position, which
he says. When I asked him why he made such a point of The Idiot
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his ‘green trees,’ he told me, to my astonishment, that he
had heard that last time I was in Pavlofsk I had said that I
had come ‘to have a last look at the trees.’
‘When I observed that it was all the same whether one
died among trees or in front of a blank brick wall, as here,
and that it was not worth making any fuss over a fortnight,
he agreed at once. But he insisted that the good air at
Pavlofsk and the greenness would certainly cause a
physical change for the better, and that my excitement,
and my DREAMS, would be perhaps relieved. I remarked
to him, with a smile, that he spoke like a materialist, and
he answered that he had always been one. As he never
tells a lie, there must be something in his words. His smile
is a pleasant one. I have had a good look at him. I don’t
know whether I like him or not; and I have no time to
waste over the question. The hatred which I felt for him
for five months has become considerably modified, I may
say, during the last month. Who knows, perhaps I am
going to Pavlofsk on purpose to see him! But why do I
leave my chamber? Those who are sentenced to death
should not leave their cells. If I had not formed a final
resolve, but had decided to wait until the last minute, I
should not leave my room, or accept his invitation to
come and die at Pavlofsk. I must be quick and finish this The Idiot
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explanation before tomorrow. I shall have no time to read
it over and correct it, for I must read it tomorrow to the
prince and two or three witnesses whom I shall probably
find there.
‘As it will be absolutely true, without a touch of
falsehood, I am curious to see what impression it will
make upon me myself at the moment when I read it out.
This is my ‘last and solemn’—but why need I call it that?
There is no question about the truth of it, for it is not
worthwhile lying for a fortnight; a fortnight of life is not
itself worth having, which is a proof that I write nothing
here but pure truth.
("N.B.—Let me remember to consider; am I mad at
this moment, or not? or rather at these moments? I have
been told that consumptives sometimes do go out of their
minds for a while in the last stages of the malady. I can
prove this tomorrow when I read it out, by the impression
it makes upon the audience. I must settle this question
once and for all, otherwise I can’t go on with anything.)
‘I believe I have just written dreadful nonsense; but
there’s no time for correcting, as I said before. Besides
that, I have made myself a promise not to alter a single
word of what I write in this paper, even though I find that
I am contradicting myself every five lines. I wish to verify The Idiot
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the working of the natural logic of my ideas tomorrow
during the reading—whether I am capable of detecting
logical errors, and whether all that I have meditated over
during the last six months be true, or nothing but
delirium.
‘If two months since I had been called upon to leave
my room and the view of Meyer’s wall opposite, I verily
believe I should have been sorry. But now I have no such
feeling, and yet I am leaving this room and Meyer’s brick
wall FOR EVER. So that my conclusion, that it is not
worth while indulging in grief, or any other emotion, for
a fortnight, has proved stronger than my very nature, and
has taken over the direction of my feelings. But is it so? Is
it the case that my nature is conquered entirely? If I were
to be put on the rack now, I should certainly cry out. I
should not say that it is not worth while to yell and feel
pain because I have but a fortnight to live.
‘But is it true that I have but a fortnight of life left to
me? I know I told some of my friends that Doctor B. had
informed me that this was the case; but I now confess that
I lied; B. has not even seen me. However, a week ago, I
