The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (grave mercy TXT) đ
- Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Performer: 014044792X
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âThe three or four hours went by, of course, in necessary preparationsâthe priest, breakfast, (coffee, meat, and some wine they gave him; doesnât it seem ridiculous?) And yet I believe these people give them a good breakfast out of pure kindness of heart, and believe that they are doing a good action. Then he is dressed, and then begins the procession through the town to the scaffold. I think he, too, must feel that he has an age to live still while they cart him along. Probably he thought, on the way, âOh, I have a long, long time yet. Three streets of life yet! When weâve passed this street thereâll be that other one; and then that one where the bakerâs shop is on the right; and when shall we get there? Itâs ages, ages!â Around him are crowds shouting, yellingâten thousand faces, twenty thousand eyes. All this has to be endured, and especially the thought: âHere are ten thousand men, and not one of them is going to be executed, and yet I am to die.â Well, all that is preparatory.
âAt the scaffold there is a ladder, and just there he burst into tearsâand this was a strong man, and a terribly wicked one, they say! There was a priest with him the whole time, talking; even in the cart as they drove along, he talked and talked. Probably the other heard nothing; he would begin to listen now and then, and at the third word or so he had forgotten all about it.
âAt last he began to mount the steps; his legs were tied, so that he had to take very small steps. The priest, who seemed to be a wise man, had stopped talking now, and only held the cross for the wretched fellow to kiss. At the foot of the ladder he had been pale enough; but when he set foot on the scaffold at the top, his face suddenly became the colour of paper, positively like white notepaper. His legs must have become suddenly feeble and helpless, and he felt a choking in his throatâyou know the sudden feeling one has in moments of terrible fear, when one does not lose oneâs wits, but is absolutely powerless to move? If some dreadful thing were suddenly to happen; if a house were just about to fall on one;âdonât you know how one would long to sit down and shut oneâs eyes and wait, and wait? Well, when this terrible feeling came over him, the priest quickly pressed the cross to his lips, without a wordâa little silver cross it was-and he kept on pressing it to the manâs lips every second. And whenever the cross touched his lips, the eyes would open for a moment, and the legs moved once, and he kissed the cross greedily, hurriedlyâjust as though he were anxious to catch hold of something in case of its being useful to him afterwards, though he could hardly have had any connected religious thoughts at the time. And so up to the very block.
âHow strange that criminals seldom swoon at such a moment! On the contrary, the brain is especially active, and works incessantlyâ probably hard, hard, hardâlike an engine at full pressure. I imagine that various thoughts must beat loud and fast through his headâall unfinished ones, and strange, funny thoughts, very likely!âlike this, for instance: âThat man is looking at me, and he has a wart on his forehead! and the executioner has burst one of his buttons, and the lowest one is all rusty!â And meanwhile he notices and remembers everything. There is one point that cannot be forgotten, round which everything else dances and turns about; and because of this point he cannot faint, and this lasts until the very final quarter of a second, when the wretched neck is on the block and the victim listens and waits and KNOWSâ thatâs the point, he KNOWS that he is just NOW about to die, and listens for the rasp of the iron over his head. If I lay there, I should certainly listen for that grating sound, and hear it, too! There would probably be but the tenth part of an instant left to hear it in, but one would certainly hear it. And imagine, some people declare that when the head flies off it is CONSCIOUS of having flown off! Just imagine what a thing to realize! Fancy if consciousness were to last for even five seconds!
âDraw the scaffold so that only the top step of the ladder comes in clearly. The criminal must be just stepping on to it, his face as white as notepaper. The priest is holding the cross to his blue lips, and the criminal kisses it, and knows and sees and understands everything. The cross and the headâthereâs your picture; the priest and the executioner, with his two assistants, and a few heads and eyes below. Those might come in as subordinate accessoriesâa sort of mist. Thereâs a picture for you.â The prince paused, and looked around.
âCertainly that isnât much like quietism,â murmured Alexandra, half to herself.
âNow tell us about your love affairs,â said Adelaida, after a momentâs pause.
The prince gazed at her in amazement.
âYou know,â Adelaida continued, âyou owe us a description of the Basle picture; but first I wish to hear how you fell in love. Donât deny the fact, for you did, of course. Besides, you stop philosophizing when you are telling about anything.â
âWhy are you ashamed of your stories the moment after you have told them?â asked Aglaya, suddenly.
âHow silly you are!â said Mrs. Epanchin, looking indignantly towards the last speaker.
âYes, that wasnât a clever remark,â said Alexandra.
âDonât listen to her, prince,â said Mrs. Epanchin; âshe says that sort of thing out of mischief. Donât think anything of their nonsense, it means nothing. They love to chaff, but they like you. I can see it in their facesâI know their faces.â
âI know their faces, too,â said the prince, with a peculiar stress on the words.
âHow so?â asked Adelaida, with curiosity.
âWhat do YOU know about our faces?â exclaimed the other two, in chorus.
But the prince was silent and serious. All awaited his reply.
âIâll tell you afterwards,â he said quietly.
âAh, you want to arouse our curiosity!â said Aglaya. âAnd how terribly solemn you are about it!â
âVery well,â interrupted Adelaida, âthen if you can read faces so well, you must have been in love. Come now; Iâve guessedâletâs have the secret!â
âI have not been in love,â said the prince, as quietly and seriously as before. âI have been happy in another way.â
âHow, how?â
âWell, Iâll tell you,â said the prince, apparently in a deep reverie.
VI.
âHere you all are,â began the prince, âsettling yourselves down to listen to me with so much curiosity, that if I do not satisfy you you will probably be angry with me. No, no! Iâm only joking!â he added, hastily, with a smile.
âWell, thenâthey were all children there, and I was always among children and only with children. They were the children of the village in which I lived, and they went to the school thereâall of them. I did not teach them, oh no; there was a master for that, one Jules Thibaut. I may have taught them some things, but I was among them just as an outsider, and I passed all four years of my life there among them. I wished for nothing better; I used to tell them everything and hid nothing from them. Their fathers and relations were very angry with me, because the children could do nothing without me at last, and used to throng after me at all times. The schoolmaster was my greatest enemy in the end! I had many enemies, and all because of the children. Even Schneider reproached me. What were they afraid of? One can tell a child everything, anything. I have often been struck by the fact that parents know their children so little. They should not conceal so much from them. How well even little children understand that their parents conceal things from them, because they consider them too young to understand! Children are capable of giving advice in the most important matters. How can one deceive these dear little birds, when they look at one so sweetly and confidingly? I call them birds because there is nothing in the world better than birds!
âHowever, most of the people were angry with me about one and the same thing; but Thibaut simply was jealous of me. At first he had wagged his head and wondered how it was that the children understood what I told them so well, and could not learn from him; and he laughed like anything when I replied that neither he nor I could teach them very much, but that THEY might teach us a good deal.
âHow he could hate me and tell scandalous stories about me, living among children as he did, is what I cannot understand. Children soothe and heal the wounded heart. I remember there was one poor fellow at our professorâs who was being treated for madness, and you have no idea what those children did for him, eventually. I donât think he was mad, but only terribly unhappy. But Iâll tell you all about him another day. Now I must get on with this story.
âThe children did not love me at first; I was such a sickly, awkward kind of a fellow thenâand I know I am ugly. Besides, I was a foreigner. The children used to laugh at me, at first; and they even went so far as to throw stones at me, when they saw me kiss Marie. I only kissed her once in my lifeâno, no, donât laugh!â The prince hastened to suppress the smiles of his audience at this point. âIt was not a matter of LOVE at all! If only you knew what a miserable creature she was, you would have pitied her, just as I did. She belonged to our village. Her mother was an old, old woman, and they used to sell string and thread, and soap and tobacco, out of the window of their little house, and lived on the pittance they gained by this trade. The old woman was ill and very old, and could hardly move. Marie was her daughter, a girl of twenty, weak and thin and consumptive; but still she did heavy work at the houses around, day by day. Well, one fine day a commercial traveller betrayed her and carried her off; and a week later he deserted her. She came home dirty, draggled, and shoeless; she had walked for a whole week without shoes; she had slept in the fields, and caught a terrible cold; her feet were swollen and sore, and her hands torn and scratched all over. She never had been pretty even before; but her eyes were quiet, innocent, kind eyes.
âShe was very quiet alwaysâand I remember once, when she had suddenly begun singing at her work, everyone said, âMarie tried to sing today!â and she got so chaffed that she was silent for ever after. She had been treated kindly in the place before; but when she came back nowâill and shunned and miserableânot one of them all had the slightest sympathy for her. Cruel people! Oh, what hazy understandings they have on such matters! Her mother was the first to show
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