The Idiot: Translated by Henry and Olga Carlisle (Signet)

Author:Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Henry; Olga Carlisle
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Classics
ISBN: 9781101433058
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Published: 2010-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

It was seven o’clock in the evening. The prince was about to take a walk in the park. Suddenly Lizaveta Prokofyevna, alone, came up onto his veranda.

“In the first place,” she began, “don’t get the idea I’ve come to apologize to you. Nonsense! It was entirely your fault.”

The prince said nothing.

“Was it your fault or not?”

“As much mine as yours. However, neither you or I did anything wrong intentionally. Three days ago I did think I was to blame, but now I have come to the conclusion that is not so.”

“So that’s the way you are! Very well, listen to me and sit down, for I don’t intend to stand up.”

They both sat.

“In the second place, not one word about those wicked young boys! I shall sit and talk with you for ten minutes. I’ve come to you for some information (Heaven knows what you thought I might be here for!), and if you say a single word about certain insolent boys I shall get up and leave and be through with you forever.”

“Very well,” replied the prince.

“Now let me ask you: about two or two and a half months ago, around Eastertime, did you write a letter to Aglaya?”

“I—I did.”

“For what purpose? What was in the letter? Show it to me.”

Lizaveta Prokofyevna’s eyes were blazing, she was fairly trembling with impatience.

“I don’t have the letter,” said the prince, surprised and terribly ill-at-ease. “If it still exists intact, Aglaya Ivanovna has it.”

“Don’t trick your way out of it! What did you write about?”

“I’m not tricking my way out of it, and I’m not afraid of anything. I see no reason why I shouldn’t write.”

“Hold your tongue! You shall speak afterward. What was in the letter? Why are you turning red?”

The prince thought for a moment.

“I don’t know what you have in mind, Lizaveta Prokofyevna. I only see that this letter is displeasing to you. You must admit that I might refuse to answer such a question, but to show you I have no fears about this letter, and don’t regret having written it, and am certainly not blushing on account of it,” (here the prince blushed twice as hard as before), “I shall repeat that letter to you because I think I remember it by heart.”

Having said this, the prince recited the letter almost word for word as he had written it.

“What a lot of nonsense! What is the meaning of such nonsense according to you?” demanded Lizaveta Prokofyevna sharply, having listened with the closest attention.

“I don’t completely know myself. I know that my feeling was sincere. There were moments then when I was intensely alive and full of extraordinary hopes.”

“What hopes?”

“It’s hard to explain, but not the kind you are undoubtedly thinking of now. Hopes—well, in a word, hopes for the future and joy that there I was perhaps not a stranger, not a foreigner. I was suddenly very glad to be in my own country. One sunny morning I took up a pen and wrote the letter to her—why to her, I don’t know.

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