The idiot / Идиот

“I was passionately in love with her when she was engaged – engaged to my friend. The prince noticed the fact and was furious. He came and woke me at seven o’clock one morning. I rise and dress in amazement; silence on both sides. I understand it all. He takes a couple of pistols out of his pocket – across a handkerchief – without witnesses. Why invite witnesses when both of us would be walking in eternity in a couple of minutes? The pistols are loaded;

we stretch the handkerchief and stand opposite one another.

We aim the pistols at each other’s hearts. Suddenly tears start to our eyes, our hands shake; we weep, we embrace – the battle is one of self-sacrifice now! The prince shouts, �she is yours;’ I cry, �she is yours – ’ in a word, in a word – You’ve come to live with us, hey?”

“Yes – yes – for a while, I think,” stammered the prince.

“Prince, mother begs you to come to her,” said Colia, appearing at the door.

The prince rose to go, but the general once more laid his hand in a friendly manner on his shoulder, and dragged him down on to the sofa.

“As the true friend of your father, I wish to say a few words to you,” he began. “I have suffered – there was a catastrophe. I suffered without a trial; I had no trial. Nina Alexandrovna my wife, is an excellent woman, so is my daughter Varvara. We have to let lodgings because we are poor – a dreadful, unheard-of comedown for us – for me, who should have been a governor-general; but we are very glad to have YOU, at all events.

Meanwhile there is a tragedy in the house.”

The prince looked inquiringly at the other.

“Yes, a marriage is being arranged – a marriage between a questionable woman and a young fellow who might be a flunkey. They wish to bring this woman into the house where my wife and daughter reside, but while I live and breathe she shall never enter my doors. I shall lie at the threshold, and she shall trample me underfoot if she does.

I hardly talk to Gania now, and avoid him as much as I can. I warn you of this beforehand, but you cannot fail to observe it. But you are the son of my old friend, and I hope —”

“Prince, be so kind as to come to me for a moment in the drawing- room,” said Nina Alexandrovna herself, appearing at the door.

“Imagine, my dear,” cried the general, “it turns out that I have nursed the prince on my knee in the old days.