have shared with him his ‘sultry prison isle,’ but alas! — fate severed us! We were parted, he to the ‘sultry prison isle,’ where, who knows, he may have recalled in hours of tragic tribulation the tears of the poor boy who embraced him and forgave him Moscow. I was sent to the cadets’ corps, where I found nothing but strict discipline, the roughness of comrades, and . . . alas! all turned to dust and ashes! ‘I don’t want to part you from your mother, and take you with me,’ he said to me on the day of the retreat, ‘but I should like to do something for you.’ He had already mounted his horse. ‘Write something as a souvenir for me in my sister’s album,’ said I, timidly, for he was very troubled and gloomy. He turned, asked for a pen, took the album. ‘How old is your sister?’ he asked me. ‘Three years old,’ I answered. ‘Une petite fille a/ors/’And he wrote in the album.
7Ve mentezjamais.’
‘Napoleon, votre ami sincere.’
Such advice and in such a moment, prince, you can imagine!”
“Yes, that was remarkable.”
“That page was framed in gold under glass and always used to hang on the wall in my sister’s drawing-room, in the most conspicuous place, it hung there till her death; she died in childbirth; where it is now — I don’t know . . . but. . . Ach, Heaven! It’s two o’clock already! How I have kept you, prince! It’s unpardonable!”
The general got up from his chair.
“Oh, on the contrary,” mumbled Myshkin. “\bu have so entertained me, and … in fact, it’s so interesting; I am so grateful to you!”
“Prince!” said the general again, squeezing his hand till it hurt, gazing at him with sparkling eyes, as though suddenly thunderstruck at some thought he had recollected. “Prince! you are so kind, so good-hearted, that I’m sometimes positively sorry for you. I am touched when I look at you. Oh, God bless you! May a new life begin for you, blossoming . . . with love. Mine is over! Oh, forgive me. Good-bye!”
He went out quickly, covering his face with his hands. Myshkin could not doubt the genuineness of his emotion. He realised too that the old man had gone away enraptured at his success; yet he had a misgiving that he was one of that class of liars with whom lying has become a blinding passion, though at the very acme of their intoxication they secretly suspect that they are not believed, and that they cannot be believed. In his present position the old man might be overwhelmed with shame when he returned to the reality of things. He might suspect Myshkin of too great a compassion for him and feel insulted. “Haven’t I made it worse by leading him on to such flights?” Myshkin wondered uneasily, and suddenly he could not restrain himself, and laughed violently for ten minutes. He was nearly beginning to reproach himself for his laughter, but at once realised that he had nothing to reproach himself with, since he had an infinite pity for the general.
His misgiving proved true. In the evening he received a strange letter, brief but resolute. The general informed him that he was parting from him, too, for ever, that he respected him, and was grateful to him, but that even from him he could not accept “proofs of compassion which were derogatory to the dignity of a man who was unhappy enough without that.” When Myshkin heard that the old man had taken refuge with Nina Alexandrovna, he felt almost at ease about him. But we have seen already that the general had caused some sort of trouble at Lizaveta Prokofyevna’s too. Here we cannot go into the details, but we will mention briefly that the upshot of the interview was that the general scared Lizaveta Prokofyevna, and by his bitter insinuations against Ganya had roused her to indignation. He was led out in disgrace. That was why he had spent such a night and such a morning, was completely unhinged and had run out into the street almost in a state of frenzy.
Kolya had not yet fully grasped the position, and even hoped to bring him round by severity.
“Well, where are we off to now, do you suppose, general?” he said. “\bu don’t want to go to the prince’s. You’ve quarrelled with Lebedyev, you’ve no money, and I never have any. We are in a nice mess in the street!”
‘“It’s better to be of a mess than in a mess!’ I made that . . . pun to the admiration of the officers’ mess … in forty-four. … In eighteen . . . forty-four, yes! … I don’t remember… oh, don’t remind me, don’t remind me! ‘Where is my youth, where is my freshness!’ as exclaimed . . . who exclaimed it, Kolya?”
“Gogol, father, in ‘Dead Souls,’” answered Kolya, and he stole a timid glance at his father.
‘“Dead Souls’! Oh, yes, dead! When you bury me, write on the tombstone: ‘Here lies a dead soul!”Disqrace pursues me!’ Who said that, Kolva?”
“I don’t know, father.”
“There was no such person as Eropyegov? Eroshka. Eropyegov . . ,” he cried frantically, stopping short in the street. “And that was said by my son, my own son! Eropyegov, who for eleven months took the place to me of a brother, for whom I fought a duel. . . . Prince Vygoryetsky, our captain said to him over a bottle: ‘Grisha, where did you get your Anna ribbon, tell me that?”On the battlefield of my country, that’s where I got it!’ I shouted: ‘Bravo, Grisha!’ And that led to a duel, and afterwards he was married to Marya Petrovna Su .. . Sutugin, and was killed in the field. … A bullet glanced off the cross on my breast and hit him straight in the brow. ‘I shall never forget!’ he cried, and fell on the spot. I . . . I’ve served with honour, Kolya; I’ve served nobly, but disgrace—’disgrace pursues me!’ You and Nina will come to my grave. ‘Poor Nina!’ I used to call her so in old days, Kolya, long ago in our early days, and how she loved. . . . Nina, Nina! What have I made of your life! For what can you love me, long-suffering soul! \bur mother has the soul of an angel, Kolya, do you hear, of an angel!”
“I know that, father. Father, darling, let’s go back home to mother! She was running after us! Come, why are you standing still? As though you don’t understand … Whyare you crying?”
Kolya shed tears himself, and kissed his father’s hands.
“You’re kissing my hands, mine!”
“Yes, yours, yours. What is there to wonder at? Come, why are you crying in the middle of the street? And you call yourself a general, an army man; come, let’s go!”
“May God bless you, dear boy, for having been respectful to a wretched, disgraceful old man. Yes, to a wretched, disgraceful old man, your father. .. . May you, too, have such a boy . . . le roi de Rome. O, ‘a curse a curse on this house!’”
“But why on earth are you going on like this?” cried Kolya, boiling over suddenly, “what has happened? Why won’t you go home now? Why have you gone out of your mind?”
“I’ll explain, I’ll explain to you. . . . I’ll tell you everything; don’t shout, people will hear. . . le roi de Rome. . . . Oh, I’m sick, I’m sad. ‘Nurse, where is thy tomb?’ Who was it cried that, Kolya?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know who cried it! Let’s go home, at once, at once! I’ll give Ganya a hiding if necessary… but where are you off to again?”
But the general drew him to the steps of a house close by.
“Where are you going? That’s a stranger’s house!”
The general sat down on the step, still holding Kolya’s hand, and drawing him to him.
“Bend down, bend down!” he muttered. “I’ll tell you everything . . . disgrace . . . bend down . . . your ear, your ear; I’ll tell you in your ear…”
“But what is it?” cried Kolya, terribly alarmed, yet stooping down to listen.
“Le roi de Rome . . .”whispered the general. He, too, seemed trembling all over.
“What? Why do you keep harping on le roi de Rome? … What?”
“I . . . I . . ,” whispered the general again, clinging more and more tightly to “his boy’s” shoulder. “I . . . want.. . I’ll tell. .. you everything, Marya . .. Marya .. . Petrovna Su-su-su …”
Kolya tore himself away, seized the general by the shoulders, and looked at him frantically. The old man flushed crimson, his lips turned blue, faint spasms ran over his face. Suddenly he lurched forward and began slowly sinking into Kolya’s arms.
“A stroke!” the boy shouted aloud in the street, seeing at last what was the matter.

Chapter 5

In REALITY Varvara Ardalionovna had in her conversation with her brother somewhat exaggerated the certainty of her news concerning Myshkin’s engagement to Aglaia Epanchin.
Perhaps, like a sharp-sighted woman, she had divined what was bound to come to pass in the immediate future; perhaps, disappointed at her dream (in which, however, she had never really believed) passing off in smoke, she was too human to be able to deny herself the gratification of instilling added bitterness into her brother’s heart, by exaggerating the calamity, even though she loved him sincerely and felt sorry for him. In any case, she could not have received such exact information from her friends,