the statement of the case. I am his nephew. That was not a lie, though he is always lying. I haven’t finished my studies, but I mean to, and I will, for I have character. Meanwhile I’ve taken a job on the railway at twenty-five roubles a month. I admit, moreover, that he has helped me two or three times. I had twenty roubles and I lost them. Would you believe it, prince, I was so low, so base, that I lost them gambling?”
“To a wretch — a wretch whom you ought not to have paid!” shouted Lebedyev.
“Yes, to a wretch, but whom I ought to have paid,” the young man went on. “That he is a wretch I’ll bear witness to, and not because he beat me. He is an officer who has been turned out of the army, prince — a discharged lieutenant, one of Rogozhin’s crew, and he teaches boxing. They all are scattered now since Rogozhin got rid of them. But the worst of it is that I knew he was a wretch, a scoundrel, and a thief, and yet I sat down to play with him, and when I had lost my last rouble (we were playing palki) I thought to myself, ‘If I lose, I’ll go to my uncle Lukyan and bow down to him; he won’t refuse me.’ That was low — yes, that really was low! That was conscious meanness!”
“Yes, that was certainly conscious meanness,” repeated Lebedyev.
“Well, don’t crow over me; wait a bit,” his nephew shouted testily. “He is only too pleased. I came here to him, prince, and owned up. I acted honourably, I did not spare myself. I abused myself before him all I could — all here are witnesses. In order to take that iob on the railway it is necessary for me to have some sort of a rig-out, for I am in absolute rags. Just look at my boots! I couldn’t turn up like that, and if I don’t turn up at the proper time, some one else will get the job, and then I shall be stranded again; and when should I get another chance? Now I am only asking him for fifteen roubles and I promise that I will never ask him for anything else again; and, what’s more, before the end of the first three months I’ll pay him back every farthing of it. I’ll keep my word. I can live on bread and kvas for months together, for I have plenty of will. I shall get seventy-five roubles for three months. With what I borrowed before, I shall owe him thirty-five, so I shall have enough to pay him. Let him fix what interest he likes, damn him! Doesn’t he know me? Ask him, prince, when he has helped me before, haven’t I paid him back? Why won’t he help me now? He is angry because I paid that lieutenant, there’s no other reason. You see what he is — a regular dog in the manger!”
“And he won’t go away!” cried Lebedyev. “He lies here and won’t go away.”
“I told you so. I won’t go till you give it me. \bu are smiling, prince. \bu seem to think I am in the wrong?”
“I am not smiling; but to my thinking you certainly are rather in the wrong,” Myshkin answered unwillingly.
“Say straight out that I am altogether wrong; don’t shuffle. What do you mean by ‘rather”?”
“If you like, you are altogether wrong.”
“If I like! That’s absurd! Do you suppose that I don’t know myself that it’s rather a doubtful line to take; that it’s his money, it’s for him to decide, and it’s an act of violence on my part? But you . . . know nothing much of life, prince. There’s no good in sparing men like him a lesson. They need a lesson. My conscience is clear. On my conscience, he will be none the worse for it; I shall pay him back with interest. He has got moral satisfaction out of it too: he has seen my humiliation. What more does he want? What’s the use of him if he doesn’t help people? Look at what he does himself! Ask him how he treats others and how he takes people in! How did he manage to buy this house? I’ll bet you anything he has cheated you before now, and is already scheming to cheat you again. “Vbu smile. Don’t you believe it?”
“It seems to me that all this hasn’t much to do with your business,” observed Myshkin.
“I’ve been lying here for the last three days, and what goings on I’ve seen!” cried the young man, not heeding. “Would you believe it, he suspects that angel, that motherless girl there, my cousin and his daughter, and every night he searches her room for lovers! He comes in here on the sly and peeps under my sofa too. He is crazy with suspiciousness; he sees thieves in every corner. He jumps up every minute in the night, looking at the windows to see if they are properly fastened, trying the doors, peeping into the oven; and he’ll do this half a dozen times in the night. At the court he defends robbers, but he gets up three times in the night to say his prayers on his knees here in the drawing-room, and bangs his forehead on the floor for half an hour at a time. And what prayers for everyone, what pious lamentations, when he is drunk! He prayed for the rest of the soul of the Countess du Barry; I’ve heard it with my own ears; Kolya heard it too. He is perfectly cracked!”
“Do you see, do you hear how he slanders me, prince?” cried Lebedyev, flushing and really angry. “And he doesn’t know that, drunken and degraded swindler and beggar though I may be, my one good deed was that I wrapt that grinning rascal in his swaddling clothes when he was a baby and washed him in his bath, and sat up without a wink of sleep for nights together with my widowed sister Anisya, when she was penniless and I was as poor as she; attended them when they were sick, stole wood from the porter downstairs, used to sing and crack my fingers at him with an empty belly — and this is what my nursing has come to! Here he lies, laughing at me now! What business is it of yours if I really did cross myself once for the soul of the Countess du Barry? Three days ago I read the story of her life for the first time in the dictionary. Do you know what she was, du Barry? Tell me, do you know or not?”
“Oh, of course, nobody knows but you,” the young man muttered sarcastically but unwillingly.
“She was a countess who rose from shame to a position like a queen’s, and to whom a great empress wrote in her own handwriting ‘ma cousine.’ A cardinal, a papal legate at a levee du roi (do you know what a levee du roi was?) himself offered to put the silk stockings on her bare legs, and even thought it an honour — a lofty and sacred personage like that! Do you know that? I see from your face you don’t. Well, and how did she die? Answer if you know.”
“Get away with you! Don’t pester me!”
“The way she died after such honours was that the hangman, Sampson, dragged this great lady, guiltless, to the guillotine for the diversion of Parisian poissardes, and she was in such terror she didn’t know what was happening to her. She saw he was bending her neck down under the knife and kicking her, while the people laughed, and she fell to screaming, ‘Encore un moment, monsieur le bourreau, encore un moment!’ which means ‘Wait one little minute, Mr. bourreau, only one!’ And perhaps for the sake of that prayer God will forgive her; for one cannot imagine a greater misere for a human soul than that. Do you know the meaning of the word misere? Well that’s what misere is. When I read about that countess’s cry for ‘one little minute,’ I felt as though my heart had been pinched with a pair of tongs. And what is it to a worm like you if I did, when I was going to bed, think of mentioning that sinful woman in my prayers? And perhaps the reason I mentioned her was that, ever since the beginning of the world, probably no one has crossed himself for her sake, or even thought of doing so. And it may be pleasant for her to feel in the other world that there is a sinner like herself who has uttered at least one prayer on earth for her. Why are you laughing? Don’t you believe, atheist? How do you know? And you told a lie if you did hear me. I didn’t only pray for the Countess du Barry; my prayer was this: ‘Lord, give rest to the soul of that great sinner the Countess du Barry and all like her.’ And that’s quite a different matter, for there are many such sinful women, examples of the mutability of fortune, who have suffered much and are storm-tossed yonder, moaning and waiting. And I prayed then for you and people like you, insolent and overbearing — since you troubled to listen to my prayers….”
“That’s enough, shut up! Pray for whom you like, damn you, only stop your screaming!” the nephew interrupted with vexation. “He is mightily well read, you see. “Vbu