at Myshkin’s hand with his as though afraid to let him go.
“Ippolit, Ippolit, what is the matter with you?” cried Myshkin.
“Directly…. Enough…. I’m going to bed. I’ll have one drink to greet the sun. … I want to, I want to . . . let me be.”
He quickly caught up a glass from the table, sprang up from his seat, and in one instant he was at the verandah steps. Myshkin was about to run after him, but it happened, as though by design, that, at that moment “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch held out his hand to say good-bye to him. One second after, there was a general outcry on the verandah. Then followed a minute of extreme consternation.
This was what had happened. On reaching the verandah steps, Ippolit had stopped short, with his left hand holding the glass and his right hand in his coat pocket. Keller afterwards declared that Ippolit had that hand in his righthand pocket before, while he was talking to Myshkin, and clutching at his shoulder and his collar with his left hand, and that right hand in his pocket, so Keller declared, had first raised a faint suspicion in him. However that may have been, some uneasiness made him run after Ippolit. But he was too late. He only saw something suddenly shining in Ippolit’s right hand, and at the same second, a little pocket pistol was against his temple. Keller rushed to seize his hand, but, at that second, Ippolit pressed the trigger. There was the sound of the sharp, short click of the trigger, but no shot followed. When Keller seized Ippolit, the young man fell into his arms, apparently unconscious, perhaps really imagining that he was killed. The pistol was already in Keller’s hand. Ippolit was held up, a chair was brought. They sat him down on it, and all crowded round, shouting and asking questions. All had heard the click of the trigger, and saw the man alive without a scratch. Ippolit himself sat, not understanding what was going on, staring blankly at all around him. Lebedyev and Kolya ran up at that instant.
“Did it miss fire?” people were asking.
“Perhaps it was not loaded?” others surmised.
“It was loaded,” Keller pronounced, examining the pistol, “but…”
“Can it have missed fire?”
“There was no cap in it,” Keller announced.
It is hard to describe the piteous scene that followed. The general pause of the first moment was quickly succeeded by laughter. Some of the party positively roared, and seemed to find a malignant pleasure in the position. Ippolit sobbed as though he were in hysterics, wrung his hands, rushed up to every one, even to Ferdyshtchenko, whom he clutched with both hands, swearing that he had forgotten, “forgotten quite accidentally and not on purpose,” to put in the cap; that “he had all the caps here, in his waistcoat pocket, a dozen of them (he showed them to everyone about him). But he hadn’t put them in before, for fear of its going off by accident in his pocket; that he had counted on always having time to put a cap in, and he had suddenly forgotten it.” He rushed up to Myshkin, to “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch, besought Keller to give him back the pistol, that he miqht show them all that “his honour, his honour” . . . that he was now “dishonoured forever.”
He fell unconscious at last. He was carried into Myshkin’s study and Lebedyev, completely sobered, sent at once for a doctor, while he himself remained by the invalid’s bedside with his daughter, his son, Burdovsky, and the general. When Ippolit had been carried out unconscious, Keller stood in the middle of the room, and with positive inspiration pronounced, dwelling on every word, and emphasizing it so that all might hear.
“Gentlemen! If any one of you ever once insinuates in my presence that the cap was forgotten intentionally, and maintains that the unhappy young man was acting a farce, he will have to deal with me.”
But no one answered him. The guests were at last leaving in a crowd and in haste. Ptitsyn, Ganya, and Rogozhi n set off together.
Myshkin was much surprised that Yevgeny Pavlovitch had changed his mind and was going away without speaking to him.
“You wanted to speak to me when the others had gone, didn’t you?” he asked him.
“Just so,” said Yevgeny Pavlovitch, suddenly sitting down and making Myshkin sit beside him. “But now I have changed my mind for a time. I confess that I have had rather a shock, and so have you. My thoughts are in a tangle. Besides, what I want to discuss with you is too important a matter to me and to you too. “Vbu see, prince, for once in my life, I want to do something absolutely honest, that is, something absolutely without any ulterior motive; and, well, I think I’m not quite capable of doing anything perfectly honest at this moment, and you too perhaps . . . and so . . . well, we’ll discuss it later. Perhaps the matter will be made more plain later to both of us, if we wait another three days which I shall spend now in Petersburg.”
Then he got up from his chair again, so that it seemed strange he should have sat down. Myshkin fancied, too, that “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch was annoyed and irritated, that there was a hostile look in his eyes which had not been there before.
“By the way, are you going to the patient now?”
“Yes…. I’m afraid,” said Myshkin.
“Don’t be afraid. He’ll live another six weeks, and he may even get well here. But the best thing you can do is to get rid of him to-morrow.”
“Perhaps I really did egg him on by . . . not saying anything. He may have thought I didn’t believe he would shoot himself? What do you think, Yevgeny Pavlovitch?”
“Not at all. It’s too good-natured of you to worry about it. I’ve heard tell of such things, but I’ve never in real life seen a man shoot himself on purpose to win applause, or from spite because he was not applauded for it. And, what’s more, I wouldn’t have believed in such an open exhibition of feebleness. But you’d better get rid of him to-morrow all the same.”
“Do you think he’ll shoot himself again?”
“No, he won’t do it now. But be on your guard with these home-bred Lasseners of ours. I repeat, crime is only too often the refuge of these mediocre, impatient and greedy nonentities.”
“Is he a Lassener?”
“The essence is the same, though the emplois are different, perhaps. You’ll see whether this gentleman isn’t capable of murdering a dozen people simplv as a ‘feat,’ as he read us just now in his ‘Explanation.’ Those words of his won’t let me sleep now.”
“You are too anxious perhaps.”
“You’re a wonderful person, prince. You don’t believe he’s capable of killing a dozen persons now.”
“I’m afraid to answer you. It’s all very strange; but.
“Well, as you like, as you like!” Yevgeny Pavlovitch concluded irritably. “Besides, you’re such a valiant person. Don’t you be one of the dozen, that’s all!”
“It’s most likely he won’t kill anyone,” said Myshkin, looking dreamily at Yevgeny Pavlovitch.
The latter laughed angrily.
“Good-bye! It’s time I was off. Did you notice he bequeathed a copy of his ‘Explanation’ to Aglaia Ivanovna?”
“Yes, I did, and … lam thinking about it.”
“That’s right, in case of the ‘dozen,’” laughed Yevgeny Pavlovitch again, and he went out.
An hour later, when it was already past three o’clock, Myshkin went out into the park. He had tried to sleep, but was kept awake by the violent throbbing of his heart. Everything was quiet in the house, and,
as far as possible, tranquillity had been restored. The sick boy had fallen asleep, and the doctor declared that there was no special danger. Lebedyev, Kolya, and Burdovsky lay down in the invalid’s room, so as to take turns in watching him. There was nothing to be afraid of.
But Myshkin’s uneasiness grew from moment to moment. He wandered in the park, looking absently about him, and stopped in surprise when he reached the open space before the station, and saw the rows of seats, and the music-stands of the orchestra.
He was impressed by the scene, which struck him as horribly squalid. He turned back, and going by the path along which he had walked the day before with the Epanchins, he reached the green seat which had been fixed as the trysting place; sat down on it, and suddenly laughed out loud, which at once made him feel extremely indignant with himself. His dejection persisted; he longed to go away … he knew not where. In a tree overhead a bird was singing, and he began looking for it among the leaves. All at once the bird darted out of the tree, and at the same instant he recalled the “fly in the warm sunshine,” of which Ippolit had written, that “it knew its place and took part in the general chorus, but he alone was an outcast.” The phrase had struck him at the time; and he recalled it now. One long-forgotten memory stirred within him and suddenly rose up clear before him.
It was in Switzerland, during his first year, in the early part of it, in fact. Then he was almost like an idiot; he could not even speak properly — and sometimes could not understand what was wanted of him. He once went up into the mountain-side, on a bright, sunny day, and walked a long time, his mind possessed with an agonizing but unformulated idea. Before him was the brilliant sky, below, the