men—more honest and upright than any other man; and if
anybody says that your mind is—is sometimes affected,
you know—it is unfair. I always say so and uphold it,
because even if your surface mind be a little affected (of
course you will not feel angry with me for talking so—I
am speaking from a higher point of view) yet your real
mind is far better than all theirs put together. Such a mind
as they have never even DREAMED of; because really, The Idiot
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there are TWO minds— the kind that matters, and the
kind that doesn’t matter. Isn’t it so?’
‘May be! may be so!’ said the prince, faintly; his heart
was beating painfully.
‘I knew you would not misunderstand me,’ she said,
triumphantly. ‘Prince S. and Evgenie Pavlovitch and
Alexandra don’t understand anything about these two
kinds of mind, but, just fancy, mamma does!’
‘You are very like Lizabetha Prokofievna.’
‘What! surely not?’ said Aglaya.
‘Yes, you are, indeed.’
‘Thank you; I am glad to be like mamma,’ she said,
thoughtfully. ‘You respect her very much, don’t you?’ she
added, quite unconscious of the naiveness of the question.
‘VERY much; and I am so glad that you have realized
the fact.’
‘I am very glad, too, because she is often laughed at by
people. But listen to the chief point. I have long thought
over the matter, and at last I have chosen you. I don’t
wish people to laugh at me; I don’t wish people to think
me a ‘little fool.’ I don’t want to be chaffed. I felt all this
of a sudden, and I refused Evgenie Pavlovitch flatly,
because I am not going to be forever thrown at people’s
heads to be married. I want—I want— well, I’ll tell you, I The Idiot
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wish to run away from home, and I have chosen you to
help me.’
‘Run away from home?’ cried the prince.
‘Yes—yes—yes! Run away from home!’ she repeated,
in a transport of rage. ‘I won’t, I won’t be made to blush
every minute by them all! I don’t want to blush before
Prince S. or Evgenie Pavlovitch, or anyone, and therefore
I have chosen you. I shall tell you everything,
EVERYTHING, even the most important things of all,
whenever I like, and you are to hide nothing from me on
your side. I want to speak to at least one person, as I
would to myself. They have suddenly begun to say that I
am waiting for you, and in love with you. They began this
before you arrived here, and so I didn’t show them the
letter, and now they all say it, every one of them. I want
to be brave, and be afraid of nobody. I don’t want to go to
their balls and things—I want to do good. I have long
desired to run away, for I have been kept shut up for
twenty years, and they are always trying to marry me off. I
wanted to run away when I was fourteen years old—I was
a little fool then, I know—but now I have worked it all
out, and I have waited for you to tell me about foreign
countries. I have never seen a single Gothic cathedral. I
must go to Rome; I must see all the museums; I must The Idiot
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study in Paris. All this last year I have been preparing and
reading forbidden books. Alexandra and Adelaida are
allowed to read anything they like, but I mayn’t. I don’t
want to quarrel with my sisters, but I told my parents long
ago that I wish to change my social position. I have
decided to take up teaching, and I count on you because
you said you loved children. Can we go in for education
together—if not at once, then afterwards? We could do
good together. I won’t be a general’s daughter any more!
Tell me, are you a very learned man?’
‘Oh no; not at all.’
‘Oh-h-h! I’m sorry for that. I thought you were. I
wonder why I always thought so—but at all events you’ll
help me, won’t you? Because I’ve chosen you, you know.’
‘Aglaya Ivanovna, it’s absurd.’
But I will, I WILL run away!’ she cried—and her eyes
flashed again with anger—‘and if you don’t agree I shall go
and marry Gavrila Ardalionovitch! I won’t be considered a
horrible girl, and accused of goodness knows what.’
‘Are you out of your mind?’ cried the prince, almost
starting from his seat. ‘What do they accuse you of? Who
accuses you?’
‘At home, everybody, mother, my sisters, Prince S.,
even that detestable Colia! If they don’t say it, they think The Idiot
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it. I told them all so to their faces. I told mother and father
and everybody. Mamma was ill all the day after it, and
next day father and Alexandra told me that I didn’t
understand what nonsense I was talking. I informed them
that they little knew me— I was not a small child—I
understood every word in the language— that I had read a
couple of Paul de Kok’s novels two years since on
purpose, so as to know all about everything. No sooner
did mamma hear me say this than she nearly fainted!’
A strange thought passed through the prince’s brain; he
gazed intently at Aglaya and smiled.
He could not believe that this was the same haughty
young girl who had once so proudly shown him Gania’s
letter. He could not understand how that proud and
austere beauty could show herself to be such an utter
child—a child who probably did not even now understand
some words.
‘Have you always lived at home, Aglaya Ivanovna?’ he
asked. ‘I mean, have you never been to school, or college,
or anything?’
‘No—never—nowhere! I’ve been at home all my life,
corked up in a bottle; and they expect me to be married
straight out of it. What are you laughing at again? I
observe that you, too, have taken to laughing at me, and The Idiot
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range yourself on their side against me,’ she added,
frowning angrily. ‘Don’t irritate me—I’m bad enough
without that—I don’t know what I am doing sometimes. I
am persuaded that you came here today in the full belief
that I am in love with you, and that I arranged this
meeting because of that,’ she cried, with annoyance.
‘I admit I was afraid that that was the case, yesterday,’
blundered the prince (he was rather confused), ‘but today I
am quite convinced that ‘
‘How?’ cried Aglaya—and her lower lip trembled
violently. ‘You were AFRAID that I—you dared to think
that I—good gracious! you suspected, perhaps, that I sent
for you to come here in order to catch you in a trap, so
that they should find us here together, and make you
marry me—‘
‘Aglaya Ivanovna, aren’t you ashamed of saying such a
thing? How could such a horrible idea enter your sweet,
innocent heart? I am certain you don’t believe a word of
what you say, and probably you don’t even know what
you are talking about.’
Aglaya sat with her eyes on the ground; she seemed to
have alarmed even herself by what she had said. The Idiot
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‘No, I’m not; I’m not a bit ashamed!’ she murmured.
‘And how do you know my heart is innocent? And how
dared you send me a love— letter that time?’
‘LOVE-LETTER? My letter a love-letter? That letter
was the most respectful of letters; it went straight from my
heart, at what was perhaps the most painful moment of my
life! I thought of you at the time as a kind of light. I—‘
‘Well, very well, very well!’ she said, but quite in a
different tone. She was remorseful now, and bent forward
to touch his shoulder, though still trying not to look him
in the face, as if the more persuasively to beg him not to
be angry with her. ‘Very well,’ she continued, looking
thoroughly ashamed of herself, ‘I feel that I said a very
foolish thing. I only did it just to try you. Take it as
unsaid, and if I offended you, forgive me. Don’t look
straight at me like that, please; turn your head away. You
called it a ‘horrible idea’; I only said it to shock you. Very
often I am myself afraid of saying what I intend to say, and
out it comes all the same. You have just told me that you
wrote that letter at the most painful moment of your life. I
know what moment that was!’ she added softly, looking at
the ground again.
‘Oh, if you could know all!’ The Idiot
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‘I DO know all!’ she cried, with another burst of
indignation. ‘You were living in the same house as that
horrible woman with whom you ran away.’ She did not
blush as she said this; on the contrary, she grew pale, and
started from her seat, apparently oblivious of what she did,
and immediately sat down again. Her lip continued to
tremble for a long time.
There was silence for a moment. The prince was taken
aback by the suddenness of this last reply, and did not
know to what he should attribute it.
‘I don’t love you a bit!’ she said suddenly, just as
though the words had exploded from her mouth.
The prince did not answer, and there was silence again.
‘I love Gavrila Ardalionovitch,’ she said, quickly; but
hardly audibly, and with her head bent lower than ever.
‘That is NOT true,’ said the prince, in an equally low
voice.
‘What! I tell stories, do I? It is true! I gave him my
promise a couple of days ago on this very seat.’
The prince was startled, and reflected for a moment.
‘It is not true,’ he repeated, decidedly; ‘you have just
invented it!’
‘You are wonderfully polite. You know he is greatly
improved. He loves me better than his life. He let his hand The Idiot
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burn before my very eyes in order to prove to me that he
loved me better than his life!’
‘He burned his hand!’
‘Yes, believe it or not! It’s all the same to me!’
The prince sat silent once more. Aglaya did not seem
to be joking; she was too angry for that.
‘What! he brought a candle with him to this place?
That is, if the episode happened here; otherwise I can’t ‘
‘Yes, a candle! What’s there improbable about that?’
‘A whole one, and in a candlestick?’
‘Yes—no-half a candle—an end, you know—no, it was
a whole candle; it’s all the same. Be quiet, can’t you! He
brought a box of matches too, if you like, and then lighted
the candle and held his finger in it for half an hour and
more!—There! Can’t that be?’
‘I saw him yesterday, and his fingers were all right!’
Aglaya suddenly burst out laughing, as simply as a child.
‘Do you know why I have just told you these lies?’ She
appealed to the prince, of a sudden, with the most
childlike candour, and with the laugh still trembling on
her lips. ‘Because when one tells a lie, if one insists on
something unusual and eccentric— something too ‘out of
the way’’ for anything, you know—the more impossible
the thing is, the more plausible does the lie sound. I’ve The Idiot
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noticed this. But I managed it badly; I didn’t know how
to work it.’ She suddenly frowned again at this point as
though at some sudden unpleasant recollection.
‘If’—she began, looking seriously and even sadly at
him— ‘if when I read you all that about the ‘poor knight,’
I wished to-to praise you for one thing—I also wished to
show you that I knew all—and did not approve of your
conduct.’
‘You are very unfair to me, and to that unfortunate
woman of whom you spoke just now in such dreadful
terms, Aglaya.’
‘Because I know all, all—and that is why I speak so. I
know very well how you—half a year since—offered her
your hand before everybody. Don’t interrupt me. You
see, I am merely stating facts without any comment upon
them. After that she ran away with Rogojin. Then you
lived with her at some village or town, and she ran away
from you.’ (Aglaya blushed dreadfully.) ‘Then she returned
to Rogojin again, who loves her like a madman. Then
you —like a wise man as you are—came back here after
her as soon as ever you heard that she had returned to
Petersburg. Yesterday evening you sprang forward to
protect her, and just now you dreamed about her. You The Idiot
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see, I know all. You did come back here for her, for her—
now didn’t you?’
‘Yes—for her!’ said the prince softly and sadly, and
bending his head down, quite unconscious of the fact that
Aglaya was gazing at him with eyes which burned like live
coals. ‘I came to find out something—I don’t believe in
her future happiness as Rogojin’s wife, although—in a
word, I did not know how to help her or what to do for
her—but I came, on the chance.’
He glanced at Aglaya, who was listening with a look of
hatred on her face.
‘If you came without knowing why, I suppose you
love her very much indeed!’ she said at last.
‘No,’ said the prince, ‘no, I do not love her. Oh! if you
only knew with what horror I recall the time I spent with
her!’
A shudder seemed to sweep over his whole body at the
recollection.
‘Tell me about it,’ said Aglaya.
‘There is nothing which you might not hear. Why I
should wish to tell you, and only you, this experience of
mine, I really cannot say; perhaps it really is because I love
you very much. This unhappy woman is persuaded that
she is the most hopeless, fallen creature in the world. Oh, The Idiot
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do not condemn her! Do not cast stones at her! She has
suffered too much already in the consciousness of her own
undeserved shame.
‘And she is not guilty—oh God!—Every moment she
bemoans and bewails herself, and cries out that she does
not admit any guilt, that she is the victim of
circumstances—the victim of a wicked libertine.
‘But whatever she may say, remember that she does not
believe it herself,—remember that she will believe nothing
but that she is a guilty creature.
‘When I tried to rid her soul of this gloomy fallacy, she
suffered so terribly that my heart will never be quite at
peace so long as I can remember that dreadful time!—Do
you know why she left me? Simply to prove to me what is
not true—that she is base. But the worst of it is, she did
not realize herself that that was all she wanted to prove by
her departure! She went away in response to some inner
prompting to do something disgraceful, in order that she
