I don’t know how it was, but I had a sort of intense happy sensation at every meeting with them. I stood still and laughed with happiness, looking at their little legs for ever flying along, at the boys and girls running together, at their laughter and their tears (for many of them managed to fight, cry, make it up and begin playing again on the way home from school), and then I forgot all my mournful thoughts. Afterwards, for the last three years, I couldn’t even understand how and why people are sad. My whole life was centred on the children.
“I never reckoned on leaving the village, and it did not enter my mind that I should one day come back here to Russia. I thought I would always stay there. But I saw at last that Schneider couldn’t go on keeping me; and then something turned up, so important apparently that Schneider himself urged me to go, and answered for me that I was coming. I shall see into it and take advice. My life will perhaps be quite changed; but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that my whole life is already changed. I left a great deal there — too much. It’s all gone. As I sat in the train, I thought, ‘Now I am going among people. I know nothing, perhaps, but a new life has begun for me.’ I determined to do my work resolutely and honestly. I may find it dull and difficult among people. In the first place, I resolved to be courteous and open with every one. ‘No one will expect more than that of me. Perhaps here, too, they will look on me as a child; but no matter.’ Everyone looks on me as an idiot, too, for some reason. I was so ill at one time that I really was almost like an idiot. But can I be an idiot now, when I am able to see for myself that people look upon me as an idiot? As I come in, I think, ‘I see they look upon me as an idiot, and yet I am sensible and they don’t guess it.’ … I often have that thought.
“It was only at Berlin, when I got some little letters which they had already managed to write me, I realised how I loved the children. It’s very painful getting the first letter! How distressed they were seeing me off! They’d been preparing for my going for a month beforehand. ‘Leon s’en va, Leon s’en va pour toujours!’ We met every evening as before at the waterfall and talked of our parting. Sometimes we were as merry as before; only when we separated at night, they kissed and hugged me warmly, which they had not done previously. Some of them ran in secret to see me by themselves, simply to kiss and hug me alone, not before all the others. When I was setting off, they all, the whole flock of them, went with me to the station. The railway station was about a mile from our village.
They tried not to cry, but some of them could not control themselves and wailed aloud, especially the girls. We made haste so as not to be late, but every now and then one of them would rush out of the crowd to throw his little arms round me and kiss me, and would stop the whole procession simply for that. And although we were in a hurry, we all stopped and waited for him to say good-bye. When I’d taken my seat and the train had started, they all shouted ‘Hurrah!’ and stood waiting there till the train was out of sight. I gazed at them too. … Do you know, when I came in here and looked at your sweet faces — I notice people’s faces very much now — and heard your first words, my heart felt light for the first time since then. I thought then that perhaps I really was a lucky person. I know that one doesn’t often meet people whom one likes from the first, yet here I’ve come straight from the railway station and I meet you.
I know very well that one’s ashamed to talk of one’s feelinqs to every one, but I talk to you without feeling ashamed. I am an unsociable person and very likely I may not come to you again for a long time. Don’t take that as a slight. I don’t say it because I don’t value your friendship, and please don’t think that I have taken offence at something. You asked me about your faces and what I noticed in them. I shall be delighted to tell you that. \bu have a happy face, Adelaida Ivanovna, the most sympathetic of the three. Besides your being very good-looking, one feels when one looks at you, ‘She has the face of a kind sister.’
You approach one simply and gaily, but you are quick to see into the heart. That’s how your face strikes me. You, Alexandra Ivanovna, have a fine and very sweet face too; but perhaps you have some secret trouble. \bur heart is certainly of the kindest, but you are not light-hearted. There’s a peculiar something in your face, such as we see in Holbein’s Madonna in Dresden. Well, so much for your face. Am I good at guessing? \bu took me to be so yourselves. But from your face, Lizaveta Prokofyevna,” he turned suddenly to Madame Epanchin, “from your face I feel positively certain that you are a perfect child in everything,
everything, in good and bad alike, in spite of your age. You are not angry with me for saying so? You know what I think of children. And don’t think it’s from simplicity that I have spoken so openly about your faces. Oh no, not at all! Perhaps I have my own idea in doing it.”
Chapter 7
When myshkin ceased speaking, they were all looking at him gaily, even Aglaia, and particularly Lizaveta Prokofyevna.
“Well, they have put you through your examination,” she cried. “Well, young ladies, you thought you were going to patronise him as a poor relation, but he scarcely deigns to accept you, and only with the proviso that he won’t come often! It makes us look silly, especially Ivan Fyodorovitch, and I am glad of it. Bravo, prince! We were told to put you through an examination. And as for what you said about my face, it’s perfectly true: I am a child, and I know it. I knew that before you told me; you put my own thoughts into words for me. I believe your character’s like mine exactly, like two drops of water, and I am glad of it. Only you are a man and I am a woman and haven’t been to Switzerland: that’s the only difference.”
“Don’t be in a hurry, maman,” cried Aglaia. “The prince admitted that he had a special motive in all he has confessed and was not speaking simply.”
“Yes, yes,” laughed the others.
“Don’t tease him, my dears, he is shrewder maybe than all the three of you together. You will see. But why do you say nothing about Aglaia, prince? Aglaia is waiting, and so am I.”
“I can’t say anything at once: I’ll speak later.”
“Why? I should have thought she couldn’t be overlooked.”
“Oh, no, she couldn’t. \bu are exceedingly beautiful, Aglaia Ivanovna. \bu are so beautiful that one is afraid to look at you.”
“Is that all? What about her qualities?” Madame Epanchin persisted.
“It’s difficult to judge beauty; I am not ready yet. Beauty is a riddle.”
“That’s as good as setting Aglaia a riddle,” said Adelaida. “Guess it, Aglaia. But she is beautiful, prince?”
“Extremely,” answered the prince with warmth, looking enthusiastically at Aglaia. “Almost as beautiful as Nastasya Filippovna, though her face is quite different.”
All looked at one another in surprise.
“As who-o-o?” gasped Madame Epanchin. “As Nastasya Filippovna? Where have you seen Nastasya Filippovna? What Nastasya Filippovna?”
“Gavril Ardalionovitch was showing her portrait to Ivan Fyodorovitch just now.”
“What! he brought Ivan Fydorovitch her portrait?”
“To show it to him. Nastasya Filippovna had given it to Gavril Ardalionovitch to-day, and he brought it to show.”
“I want to see it!” Madame Epanchin cried eagerly. “Where is the photograph? If it was given him, he must have got it, and he must still be in the study. He always comes to work on Wednesdays and never leaves before four. Call him at once. No, I am not dying to see him. Do me a favor, dear prince. Go to the study, take the photograph from him and bring it here. Tell him we want to look at it, please.”
“He is nice, but too simple,” said Adelaida, when the prince had qone.
“Yes, somewhat too much so,” Alexandra agreed; “so that it makes him a little absurd, in fact.”
Neither of them seemed to be saying
