If anyone who had known him six months before, on his first arrival in Petersburg, had seen him now, he might well have thought him greatly changed for the better in appearance. Yet this was scarcely true. It was only his dress that was quite different; his clothes were all new and had been cut by a good Moscow tailor. But there was something wrong even with his clothes: they were rather too fashionable (as clothes always are from conscientious but not very talented tailors), yet worn by a man who was obviously indifferent to his appearance; so that anyone too prone to laughter might perhaps have found something to smile at in Myshkin’s appearance. But people will laugh at all sorts of things.
Myshkin took a cab and drove to Peski. He had no difficulty in finding a small wooden house in one of the streets there. To his surprise it turned out to be a pretty little house, clean, kept in excellent order, and with a front garden full of flowers. The windows on the street were open, and from them came the continuous sound of a harsh voice, as though some one were reading aloud or making a speech; the voice was sometimes interrupted by a chorus of ringing laughter. Myshkin went into the yard, mounted the steps and asked for Mr. Lebedyev.
“He is in there,” answered the cook who opened the door to him, with her sleeves tucked up to her elbows. She pointed to the “drawing-room.”
The drawing-room had walls covered with dark blue paper and was furnished neatly with some effort at smartness — that is, it contained a sofa and a round table, a bronze clock under a glass case, a narrow looking-glass on the wall, and a small old-fashioned chandelier hanging by a bronze chain from the ceiling and adorned with lustres. In the middle of the room, with his back to the door, stood Mr. Lebedyev himself. He was wearing a waistcoat, but had discarded his coat in deference to the weather, and, striking himself on the chest, he was declaiming bitterly on some subject. His audience consisted of a boy of fifteen with a merry and intelligent face and a book in his hands; a young girl about twenty, dressed in mourning and carrying a baby in her arms; a girl of thirteen, also in mourning, who was laughing violently with her mouth wide open; and another very strange-looking figure lying on the sofa, a rather handsome, dark lad of twenty with thick long hair, large black eyes, and with just a hint of beard and whiskers on his face. He seemed to be frequently interrupting Lebedyev in his harangue and arguing with him; and this no doubt was what provoked the laughter of the others.
“Lukyan Timofeyitch! Lukyan Timofeyitch, I say! Look here! … Well, botheration take you!”
And, waving her hands, the cook went out red with anger.
Lebedyev looked round, and seeing Myshkin, stood for some time as though thunderstruck. Then he rushed to him with an ingratiating smile, but before he reached him he stood still again, murmuring:
“ll-il-illustrious prince!”
But suddenly, as though unable to rise to the position, he turned round and, apropos of nothinq,
rushed first at the girl in mourning with the baby in her arms, so that she was startled and drew back; but he left her at once and flew at the younger girl, who was standing in the doorway leading into the next room with traces of laughter still on her smiling lips. She was scared by his shout and bolted to the kitchen. Lebedyev stamped his feet at her to add to her alarm, but meeting the eye of Myshkin, who looked on embarrassed, he brought out in explanation:
“To show… respect. He-he-he!”
“There’s no need of all this . . .” Myshkin was beginning.
“One minute — one minute — one minute … like a hurricane!”
And Lebedyev vanished quickly from the room. Myshkin looked with surprise at the girl, at the boy, and at the figure on the sofa; they were all laughing. Myshkin laughed too.
“He’s gone to put his coat on,” said the boy.
“How annoying!” Myshkin began, “and I expected . .. Tell me, is he …”
“You think he is drunk?” cried a voice from the sofa. “Not a bit of it! Three or four glasses, five perhaps; but what’s that? — the regular thing.”
Myshkin turned to the voice from the sofa, but the girl began speaking, and, with a most candid air on her charming face, she said:
“He never drinks much in the morning. If you have come to see him on business, you had better speak to him now, it’s the best time. When he comes back in the evening, he is sometimes drunk; though now he more often cries in the evening and reads the Bible to us, for it’s only five weeks since mother died.”
“He ran away because it was hard for him to answer you,” laughed the young man on the sofa. “I’ll bet anything that he is cheating you already and is hatching something now.”
“Only five weeks! Only five weeks!” Lebedyev said, coming back with his coat on, blinking and pulling his handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe his tears. “We are alone in the world!”
“But why have you come in all in rags?” said the girl. “Why, behind the door there lies your new coat. Didn’t you see it?”
“Hold your tongue, dragon-fly!” Lebedyev shouted at her. “Oo, you!” He stamped his feet at her.
But this time she only laughed.
“Why are you trying to frighten me? I am not Tanya. I shall not run away. But you will wake Lubotchka and frighten her into convulsions. . . . What’s the use of shouting?”
“God forbid! Don’t say such a thing!” Lebedyev was terribly alarmed all at once, and flying up to the baby, who was asleep in his daughter’s arms, made the sign of the cross over it several times with a frightened face. “God save and preserve her! That’s my baby-daughter, Lubov,” he added, addressing Myshkin, “born in most lawful wedlock of my newly departed wife Elena, who died in childbirth. And this is my daughter Vera in mourning. And that — that — oh, that…”
“What! he can’t go on?” cried the young man. “Go on, don’t be shy!”
“Your excellency,” Lebedyev cried with a sort of rush, “have you read in the papers of the murder of the Zhemarin family?”
“Yes,” answered Myshkin with some surprise.
“Well, that’s the actual murderer of the Zhemarin family, there he is!”
“What do you mean?” said Myshkin.
“That is, allegorically speaking, the future second murderer of a future Zhemarin family, if such there be. He is preparing himself for it….”
Everybody laughed. It occurred to Myshkin that Lebedyev really might be playing the fool because he foresaw the questions he would ask, and, not knowing what answer to make, was trying to gain time.
“He is a rebel! He is plotting!” shouted Lebedyev, as though unable to restrain himself. “Tell me, can I, have I the right to recognise such a foul-mouthed fellow, such a strumpet, so to speak, and monster, as my own nephew, the only son of my deceased sister Anisya?”
“Oh, shut up, you drunken fellow! Would you believe it, prince, he’s going in for being a lawyer now — pleads cases in the court. He’s become so eloquent, he talks in high-flown language to his children at home. He made a speech before the justices of peace five days ago, and whom do you think he defended? Not a poor woman who begged and besought him to, who had been robbed by a rascally moneylender of five hundred roubles, all she had in the world, but that very moneylender, a Jew called Zaidler, just because he promised him fifty roubles….”
“Fifty roubles if I won the case, only five if I lost it,” Lebedyev explained suddenly in quite a different tone, as though he had not been shouting at all.
“Well, he made a fool of himself, of course. Things are different nowadays; they only laughed at him. But he was awfully pleased with himself. ‘Remember, O judges who are no respecters of persons,’ says he, ‘that a sorrowful, bedridden old man living by his honest toil is losing his last crust of bread. Remember the wise words of the lawgiver: “Let mercy prevail in the court.”’ And, would you believe it, he says over that very speech to us here every morning, word for word, just as he spoke it? Just before you came in, he was reading it for the fifth time, he was so pleased with it. He is licking his lips over it. And now he wants to defend some one else. \bu are Prince Myshkin, I believe? Kolya told me he had never met any one cleverer than you in the world.
“Yes, yes, and there is no one cleverer in the world,” Lebedyev chimed in at once.
“Well, he is lying, we know. Kolya loves you, but this man wants to make up to you. But I don’t intend to flatter you at all, let me assure you. You have some sense — judge between him and me. Would you like the prince to judge between us?” He addressed himself to his uncle. “I am glad you’ve turned up, prince, indeed.”
“Yes,” cried Lebedyev resolutely; and he unconsciously looked round at the audience, which began to gather about him again.
“Why, what is it?” asked Myshkin, frowning a little.
His head ached and he felt more and more convinced that Lebedyev was cheating him and glad to gain time.
“This is
