fellow, it is such a surprise—such a blow—that... You see,
it is not your financial position (though I should not object
if you were a bit richer)—I am thinking of my daughter’s The Idiot
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happiness, of course, and the thing is—are you able to give
her the happiness she deserves? And then—is all this a joke
on her part, or is she in earnest? I don’t mean on your
side, but on hers.’
At this moment Alexandra’s voice was heard outside
the door, calling out ‘Papa!’
‘Wait for me here, my boy—will you? Just wait and
think it all over, and I’ll come back directly,’ he said
hurriedly, and made off with what looked like the rapidity
of alarm in response to Alexandra’s call.
He found the mother and daughter locked in one
another’s arms, mingling their tears.
These were the tears of joy and peace and
reconciliation. Aglaya was kissing her mother’s lips and
cheeks and hands; they were hugging each other in the
most ardent way.
‘There, look at her now—Ivan Fedorovitch! Here she
is—all of her! This is our REAL Aglaya at last!’ said
Lizabetha Prokofievna.
Aglaya raised her happy, tearful face from her mother’s
breast, glanced at her father, and burst out laughing. She
sprang at him and hugged him too, and kissed him over
and over again. She then rushed back to her mother and
hid her face in the maternal bosom, and there indulged in The Idiot
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more tears. Her mother covered her with a corner of her
shawl.
‘Oh, you cruel little girl! How will you treat us all
next, I wonder?’ she said, but she spoke with a ring of joy
in her voice, and as though she breathed at last without
the oppression which she had felt so long.
‘Cruel?’ sobbed Aglaya. ‘Yes, I AM cruel, and
worthless, and spoiled—tell father so,—oh, here he is—I
forgot Father, listen!’ She laughed through her tears.
‘My darling, my little idol,’ cried the general, kissing
and fondling her hands (Aglaya did not draw them away);
‘so you love this young man, do you?’
‘No, no, no, can’t BEAR him, I can’t BEAR your
young man!’ cried Aglaya, raising her head. ‘And if you
dare say that ONCE more, papa—I’m serious, you know,
I’m,—do you hear me—I’m serious!’
She certainly did seem to be serious enough. She had
flushed up all over and her eyes were blazing.
The general felt troubled and remained silent, while
Lizabetha Prokofievna telegraphed to him from behind
Aglaya to ask no questions.
‘If that’s the case, darling—then, of course, you shall do
exactly as you like. He is waiting alone downstairs. Hadn’t The Idiot
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I better hint to him gently that he can go?’ The general
telegraphed to Lizabetha Prokofievna in his turn.
‘No, no, you needn’t do anything of the sort; you
mustn’t hint gently at all. I’ll go down myself directly. I
wish to apologize to this young man, because I hurt his
feelings.’
‘Yes, SERIOUSLY,’ said the general, gravely.
‘Well, you’d better stay here, all of you, for a little, and
I’ll go down to him alone to begin with. I’ll just go in and
then you can follow me almost at once. That’s the best
way.’
She had almost reached the door when she turned
round again.
‘I shall laugh—I know I shall; I shall die of laughing,’
she said, lugubriously.
However, she turned and ran down to the prince as fast
as her feet could carry her.
‘Well, what does it all mean? What do you make of it?’
asked the general of his spouse, hurriedly.
‘I hardly dare say,’ said Lizabetha, as hurriedly, ‘but I
think it’s as plain as anything can be.’
‘I think so too, as clear as day; she loves him.’
‘Loves him? She is head over ears in love, that’s what
she is,’ put in Alexandra. The Idiot
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‘Well, God bless her, God bless her, if such is her
destiny,’ said Lizabetha, crossing herself devoutly.
‘H’m destiny it is,’ said the general, ‘and there’s no
getting out of destiny.’
With these words they all moved off towards the
drawing-room, where another surprise awaited them.
Aglaya had not only not laughed, as she had feared, but
had gone to the prince rather timidly, and said to him:
‘Forgive a silly, horrid, spoilt girl’—(she took his hand
here)— ‘and be quite assured that we all of us esteem you
beyond all words. And if I dared to turn your beautiful,
admirable simplicity to ridicule, forgive me as you would a
little child its mischief. Forgive me all my absurdity of just
now, which, of course, meant nothing, and could not
have the slightest consequence.’ She spoke these words
with great emphasis.
Her father, mother, and sisters came into the room and
were much struck with the last words, which they just
caught as they entered—‘absurdity which of course meant
nothing’—and still more so with the emphasis with which
Aglaya had spoken.
They exchanged glances questioningly, but the prince
did not seem to have understood the meaning of Aglaya’s
words; he was in the highest heaven of delight. The Idiot
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‘Why do you speak so?’ he murmured. ‘Why do you
ask my forgiveness?’
He wished to add that he was unworthy of being asked
for forgiveness by her, but paused. Perhaps he did
understand Aglaya’s sentence about ‘absurdity which
meant nothing,’ and like the strange fellow that he was,
rejoiced in the words.
Undoubtedly the fact that he might now come and see
Aglaya as much as he pleased again was quite enough to
make him perfectly happy; that he might come and speak
to her, and see her, and sit by her, and walk with her—
who knows, but that all this was quite enough to satisfy
him for the whole of his life, and that he would desire no
more to the end of time?
(Lizabetha Prokofievna felt that this might be the case,
and she didn’t like it; though very probably she could not
have put the idea into words.)
It would be difficult to describe the animation and high
spirits which distinguished the prince for the rest of the
evening.
He was so happy that ‘it made one feel happy to look at
him,’ as Aglaya’s sisters expressed it afterwards. He talked,
and told stories just as he had done once before, and never
since, namely on the very first morning of his The Idiot
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acquaintance with the Epanchins, six months ago. Since
his return to Petersburg from Moscow, he had been
remarkably silent, and had told Prince S. on one occasion,
before everyone, that he did not think himself justified in
degrading any thought by his unworthy words.
But this evening he did nearly all the talking himself,
and told stories by the dozen, while he answered all
questions put to him clearly, gladly, and with any amount
of detail.
There was nothing, however, of love-making in his
talk. His ideas were all of the most serious kind; some
were even mystical and profound.
He aired his own views on various matters, some of his
most private opinions and observations, many of which
would have seemed rather funny, so his hearers agreed
afterwards, had they not been so well expressed.
The general liked serious subjects of conversation; but
both he and Lizabetha Prokofievna felt that they were
having a little too much of a good thing tonight, and as
the evening advanced, they both grew more or less
melancholy; but towards night, the prince fell to telling
funny stories, and was always the first to burst out laughing
himself, which he invariably did so joyously and simply
that the rest laughed just as much at him as at his stories. The Idiot
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As for Aglaya, she hardly said a word all the evening;
but she listened with all her ears to Lef Nicolaievitch’s
talk, and scarcely took her eyes off him.
‘She looked at him, and stared and stared, and hung on
every word he said,’ said Lizabetha afterwards, to her
husband, ‘and yet, tell her that she loves him, and she is
furious!’
‘What’s to be done? It’s fate,’ said the general,
shrugging his shoulders, and, for a long while after, he
continued to repeat: ‘It’s fate, it’s fate!’
We may add that to a business man like General
Epanchin the present position of affairs was most
unsatisfactory. He hated the uncertainty in which they had
been, perforce, left. However, he decided to say no more
about it, and merely to look on, and take his time and
tune from Lizabetha Prokofievna.
The happy state in which the family had spent the
evening, as just recorded, was not of very long duration.
Next day Aglaya quarrelled with the prince again, and so
she continued to behave for the next few days. For whole
hours at a time she ridiculed and chaffed the wretched
man, and made him almost a laughing- stock.
It is true that they used to sit in the little summer-house
together for an hour or two at a time, very often, but it The Idiot
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was observed that on these occasions the prince would
read the paper, or some book, aloud to Aglaya.
‘Do you know,’ Aglaya said to him once, interrupting
the reading, ‘I’ve remarked that you are dreadfully badly
educated. You never know anything thoroughly, if one
asks you; neither anyone’s name, nor dates, nor about
treaties and so on. It’s a great pity, you know!’
‘I told you I had not had much of an education,’
replied the prince.
‘How am I to respect you, if that’s the case? Read on
now. No— don’t! Stop reading!’
And once more, that same evening, Aglaya mystified
them all. Prince S. had returned, and Aglaya was
particularly amiable to him, and asked a great deal after
Evgenie Pavlovitch. (Muishkin had not come in as yet.)
Suddenly Prince S. hinted something about ‘a new and
approaching change in the family.’ He was led to this
remark by a communication inadvertently made to him by
Lizabetha Prokofievna, that Adelaida’s marriage must be
postponed a little longer, in order that the two weddings
might come off together.
It is impossible to describe Aglaya’s irritation. She flared
up, and said some indignant words about ‘all these silly The Idiot
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insinuations.’ She added that ‘she had no intentions as yet
of replacing anybody’s mistress.’
These words painfully impressed the whole party; but
especially her parents. Lizabetha Prokofievna summoned a
secret council of two, and insisted upon the general’s
demanding from the prince a full explanation of his
relations with Nastasia Philipovna. The general argued that
it was only a whim of Aglaya’s; and that, had not Prince S.
unfortunately made that remark, which had confused the
child and made her blush, she never would have said what
she did; and that he was sure Aglaya knew well that
anything she might have heard of the prince and Nastasia
Philipovna was merely the fabrication of malicious
tongues, and that the woman was going to marry Rogojin.
He insisted that the prince had nothing whatever to do
with Nastasia Philipovna, so far as any liaison was
concerned; and, if the truth were to be told about it, he
added, never had had.
Meanwhile nothing put the prince out, and he
continued to be in the seventh heaven of bliss. Of course
he could not fail to observe some impatience and ill-
temper in Aglaya now and then; but he believed in
something else, and nothing could now shake his The Idiot
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conviction. Besides, Aglaya’s frowns never lasted long;
they disappeared of themselves.
Perhaps he was too easy in his mind. So thought
Hippolyte, at all events, who met him in the park one day.
‘Didn’t I tell you the truth now, when I said you were
in love?’ he said, coming up to Muishkin of his own
accord, and stopping him.
The prince gave him his hand and congratulated him
upon ‘looking so well.’
Hippolyte himself seemed to be hopeful about his state
of health, as is often the case with consumptives.
He had approached the prince with the intention of
talking sarcastically about his happy expression of face, but
very soon forgot his intention and began to talk about
himself. He began complaining about everything,
disconnectedly and endlessly, as was his wont.
‘You wouldn’t believe,’ he concluded, ‘how irritating
they all are there. They are such wretchedly small, vain,
egotistical, COMMONPLACE people! Would you
believe it, they invited me there under the express
condition that I should die quickly, and they are all as wild
as possible with me for not having died yet, and for being,
on the contrary, a good deal better! Isn’t it a comedy? I
don’t mind betting that you don’t believe me!’ The Idiot
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The prince said nothing.
‘I sometimes think of coming over to you again,’ said
Hippolyte, carelessly. ‘So you DON’T think them capable
of inviting a man on the condition that he is to look sharp
and die?’
‘I certainly thought they invited you with quite other
views.’
‘Ho, ho! you are not nearly so simple as they try to
make you out! This is not the time for it, or I would tell
you a thing or two about that beauty, Gania, and his
hopes. You are being undermined, pitilessly undermined,
and—and it is really melancholy to see you so calm about
it. But alas! it’s your nature—you can’t help it!’
‘My word! what a thing to be melancholy about! Why,
do you think I should be any happier if I were to feel
disturbed about the excavations you tell me of?’
‘It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to
be happy in a fool’s paradise! I suppose you don’t believe
that you have a rival in that quarter?’
‘Your insinuations as to rivalry are rather cynical,
Hippolyte. I’m sorry to say I have no right to answer you!
As for Gania, I put it to you, CAN any man have a happy
mind after passing through what he has had to suffer? I
think that is the best way to look at it. He will change yet, The Idiot
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he has lots of time before him, and life is rich; besides—
