fool as I look, and that I have to be fished for with a rod
and line for a good long while before I am caught, I will
proceed to explain why I specially wished to make your
brother look a fool. That my motive power is hate, I do
not attempt to conceal. I have felt that before dying (and I The Idiot
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am dying, however much fatter I may appear to you), I
must absolutely make a fool of, at least, one of that class of
men which has dogged me all my life, which I hate so
cordially, and which is so prominently represented by your
much esteemed brother. I should not enjoy paradise nearly
so much without having done this first. I hate you, Gavrila
Ardalionovitch, solely (this may seem curious to you, but I
repeat)—solely because you are the type, and incarnation,
and head, and crown of the most impudent, the most self-
satisfied, the most vulgar and detestable form of
commonplaceness. You are ordinary of the ordinary; you
have no chance of ever fathering the pettiest idea of your
own. And yet you are as jealous and conceited as you can
possibly be; you consider yourself a great genius; of this
you are persuaded, although there are dark moments of
doubt and rage, when even this fact seems uncertain.
There are spots of darkness on your horizon, though they
will disappear when you become completely stupid. But a
long and chequered path lies before you, and of this I am
glad. In the first place you will never gain a certain
person.’
‘Come, come! This is intolerable! You had better stop,
you little mischief-making wretch!’ cried Varia. Gania had
grown very pale; he trembled, but said nothing. The Idiot
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Hippolyte paused, and looked at him intently and with
great gratification. He then turned his gaze upon Varia,
bowed, and went out, without adding another word.
Gania might justly complain of the hardness with
which fate treated him. Varia dared not speak to him for a
long while, as he strode past her, backwards and forwards.
At last he went and stood at the window, looking out,
with his back turned towards her. There was a fearful row
going on upstairs again.
‘Are you off?’ said Gania, suddenly, remarking that she
had risen and was about to leave the room. ‘Wait a
moment—look at this.’
He approached the table and laid a small sheet of paper
before her. It looked like a little note.
‘Good heavens!’ cried Varia, raising her hands.
This was the note:
‘GAVRILA ARDOLIONOVITCH,—persuaded of
your kindness of heart, I have determined to ask your
advice on a matter of great importance to myself. I should
like to meet you tomorrow morning at seven o’clock by
the green bench in the park. It is not far from our house.
Varvara Ardalionovna, who must accompany you, knows
the place well.
‘A. E.’ The Idiot
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‘What on earth is one to make of a girl like that?’ said
Varia.
Gania, little as he felt inclined for swagger at this
moment, could not avoid showing his triumph, especially
just after such humiliating remarks as those of Hippolyte.
A smile of self- satisfaction beamed on his face, and Varia
too was brimming over with delight.
‘And this is the very day that they were to announce
the engagement! What will she do next?’
‘What do you suppose she wants to talk about
tomorrow?’ asked Gania.
‘Oh, THAT’S all the same! The chief thing is that she
wants to see you after six months’ absence. Look here,
Gania, this is a SERIOUS business. Don’t swagger again
and lose the game—play carefully, but don’t funk, do you
understand? As if she could possibly avoid seeing what I
have been working for all this last six months! And just
imagine, I was there this morning and not a word of this! I
was there, you know, on the sly. The old lady did not
know, or she would have kicked me out. I ran some risk
for you, you see. I did so want to find out, at all hazards.’
Here there was a frantic noise upstairs once more;
several people seemed to be rushing downstairs at once. The Idiot
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‘Now, Gania,’ cried Varia, frightened, ‘we can’t let him
go out! We can’t afford to have a breath of scandal about
the town at this moment. Run after him and beg his
pardon—quick.’
But the father of the family was out in the road already.
Colia was carrying his bag for him; Nina Alexandrovna
stood and cried on the doorstep; she wanted to run after
the general, but Ptitsin kept her back.
‘You will only excite him more,’ he said. ‘He has
nowhere else to go to—he’ll be back here in half an hour.
I’ve talked it all over with Colia; let him play the fool a
bit, it will do him good.’
‘What are you up to? Where are you off to? You’ve
nowhere to go to, you know,’ cried Gania, out of the
window.
‘Come back, father; the neighbours will hear!’ cried
Varia.
The general stopped, turned round, raised his hands
and remarked: ‘My curse be upon this house!’
‘Which observation should always be made in as
theatrical a tone as possible,’ muttered Gania, shutting the
window with a bang.
The neighbours undoubtedly did hear. Varia rushed
out of the room. The Idiot
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No sooner had his sister left him alone, than Gania
took the note out of his pocket, kissed it, and pirouetted
around. The Idiot
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III
As a general rule, old General Ivolgin’s paroxysms
ended in smoke. He had before this experienced fits of
sudden fury, but not very often, because he was really a
man of peaceful and kindly disposition. He had tried
hundreds of times to overcome the dissolute habits which
he had contracted of late years. He would suddenly
remember that he was ‘a father,’ would be reconciled with
his wife, and shed genuine tears. His feeling for Nina
Alexandrovna amounted almost to adoration; she had
pardoned so much in silence, and loved him still in spite of
the state of degradation into which he had fallen. But the
general’s struggles with his own weakness never lasted very
long. He was, in his way, an impetuous man, and a quiet
life of repentance in the bosom of his family soon became
insupportable to him. In the end he rebelled, and flew into
rages which he regretted, perhaps, even as he gave way to
them, but which were beyond his control. He picked
quarrels with everyone, began to hold forth eloquently,
exacted unlimited respect, and at last disappeared from the
house, and sometimes did not return for a long time. He
had given up interfering in the affairs of his family for two The Idiot
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years now, and knew nothing about them but what he
gathered from hearsay.
But on this occasion there was something more serious
than usual. Everyone seemed to know something, but to
be afraid to talk about it.
The general had turned up in the bosom of his family
two or three days before, but not, as usual, with the olive
branch of peace in his hand, not in the garb of
penitence—in which he was usually clad on such
occasions—but, on the contrary, in an uncommonly bad
temper. He had arrived in a quarrelsome mood, pitching
into everyone he came across, and talking about all sorts
and kinds of subjects in the most unexpected manner, so
that it was impossible to discover what it was that was
really putting him out. At moments he would be
apparently quite bright and happy; but as a rule he would
sit moody and thoughtful. He would abruptly commence
to hold forth about the Epanchins, about Lebedeff, or the
prince, and equally abruptly would stop short and refuse to
speak another word, answering all further questions with a
stupid smile, unconscious that he was smiling, or that he
had been asked a question. The whole of the previous
night he had spent tossing about and groaning, and poor
Nina Alexandrovna had been busy making cold The Idiot
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compresses and warm fomentations and so on, without
being very clear how to apply them. He had fallen asleep
after a while, but not for long, and had awaked in a state
of violent hypochondria which had ended in his quarrel
with Hippolyte, and the solemn cursing of Ptitsin’s
establishment generally. It was also observed during those
two or three days that he was in a state of morbid self-
esteem, and was specially touchy on all points of honour.
Colia insisted, in discussing the matter with his mother,
that all this was but the outcome of abstinence from drink,
or perhaps of pining after Lebedeff, with whom up to this
time the general had been upon terms of the greatest
friendship; but with whom, for some reason or other, he
had quarrelled a few days since, parting from him in great
wrath. There had also been a scene with the prince. Colia
had asked an explanation of the latter, but had been forced
to conclude that he was not told the whole truth.
If Hippolyte and Nina Alexandrovna had, as Gania
suspected, had some special conversation about the
general’s actions, it was strange that the malicious youth,
whom Gania had called a scandal-monger to his face, had
not allowed himself a similar satisfaction with Colia.
The fact is that probably Hippolyte was not quite so
black as Gania painted him; and it was hardly likely that he The Idiot
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had informed Nina Alexandrovna of certain events, of
which we know, for the mere pleasure of giving her pain.
We must never forget that human motives are generally
far more complicated than we are apt to suppose, and that
we can very rarely accurately describe the motives of
another. It is much better for the writer, as a rule, to
content himself with the bare statement of events; and we
shall take this line with regard to the catastrophe recorded
above, and shall state the remaining events connected with
the general’s trouble shortly, because we feel that we have
already given to this secondary character in our story more
attention than we originally intended.
The course of events had marched in the following
order. When Lebedeff returned, in company with the
general, after their expedition to town a few days since,
for the purpose of investigation, he brought the prince no
information whatever. If the latter had not himself been
occupied with other thoughts and impressions at the time,
he must have observed that Lebedeff not only was very
uncommunicative, but even appeared anxious to avoid
him.
When the prince did give the matter a little attention,
he recalled the fact that during these days he had always
found Lebedeff to be in radiantly good spirits, when they The Idiot
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happened to meet; and further, that the general and
Lebedeff were always together. The two friends did not
seem ever to be parted for a moment.
Occasionally the prince heard loud talking and laughing
upstairs, and once he detected the sound of a jolly soldier’s
song going on above, and recognized the unmistakable
bass of the general’s voice. But the sudden outbreak of
song did not last; and for an hour afterwards the animated
sound of apparently drunken conversation continued to be
heard from above. At length there was the clearest
evidence of a grand mutual embracing, and someone burst
into tears. Shortly after this, however, there was a violent
but short-lived quarrel, with loud talking on both sides.
All these days Colia had been in a state of great mental
preoccupation. Muishkin was usually out all day, and only
came home late at night. On his return he was invariably
informed that Colia had been looking for him. However,
when they did meet, Colia never had anything particular
to tell him, excepting that he was highly dissatisfied with
the general and his present condition of mind and
behaviour.
‘They drag each other about the place,’ he said, and get
drunk together at the pub close by here, and quarrel in the The Idiot
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street on the way home, and embrace one another after it,
and don’t seem to part for a moment.’
When the prince pointed out that there was nothing
new about that, for that they had always behaved in this
manner together, Colia did not know what to say; in fact
he could not explain what it was that specially worried
him, just now, about his father.
On the morning following the bacchanalian songs and
quarrels recorded above, as the prince stepped out of the
house at about eleven o’clock, the general suddenly
appeared before him, much agitated.
‘I have long sought the honour and opportunity of
meeting you— much-esteemed Lef Nicolaievitch,’ he
murmured, pressing the prince’s hand very hard, almost
painfully so; ‘long—very long.’
The prince begged him to step in and sit down.
‘No—I will not sit down,—I am keeping you, I see,—
another time!—I think I may be permitted to congratulate
you upon the realization of your heart’s best wishes, is it
not so?’
‘What best wishes?’
The prince blushed. He thought, as so many in his
position do, that nobody had seen, heard, noticed, or
understood anything. The Idiot
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‘Oh—be easy, sir, be easy! I shall not wound your
tenderest feelings. I’ve been through it all myself, and I
know well how unpleasant it is when an outsider sticks his
nose in where he is not wanted. I experience this every
morning. I came to speak to you about another matter,
though, an important matter. A very important matter,
prince.’
The latter requested him to take a seat once more, and
sat down himself.
‘Well—just for one second, then. The fact is, I came
for advice. Of course I live now without any very practical
objects in life; but, being full of self-respect, in which
quality the ordinary Russian is so deficient as a rule, and of
activity, I am desirous, in a word, prince, of placing myself
and my wife and children in a position of—in fact, I want
