Lizaveta Prokofyevna turned with dignity to her husband. “I believe he is in a fever and simply delirious; I am sure of it from his eyes; he can’t be left like this. Lyov Nikolayevitch, could he stay the night with you, that he needn’t be dragged to Petersburg to-night? Cher prince, I hope you are not bored,” she added, for some reason suddenly addressing Prince S. “Come here, Alexandra; put your hairtidy, my dear.”
She did something to Alexandra’s hair, which was already perfectly tidy, and kissed her; that was all she had called her for.
“I thought you were capable of development,”
Ippolit began again, coming out of his reverie. “Yes, this was what I meant to say.” He was delighted, as though suddenly remembering something. “Burdovsky here genuinely wants to protect his mother, doesn’t he? And it turns out that he has disgraced her. The prince here wants to help Burdovsky, and in all sincerity offers him his tender friendship and a fortune, and perhaps he is the only one of us who does not feel an aversion for him, and yet they stand facing one another like actual enemies. Ha ha ha! You all hate Burdovsky because to your thinking he has behaved in an ugly and unseemly way to his mother; isn’t that so? Isn’t it? Isn’t it? You are all awfully fond of external beauty and seemliness, and that’s all you care for; that’s true, isn’t it? I’ve suspected that was all you care for, for a long time. Well, let me tell you that very likely not one of you has loved his mother as Burdovsky has! I know, prince, you’ve sent money to Burdovsky’s mother on the sly, through Ganya, and I’ll bet, he he he!” — he laughed hysterically— “I’ll bet that now Burdovsky will accuse you of indelicacy and disrespect to his mother. I swear that’s how it will be. Ha ha ha!”
At this point he choked again and coughed.
“Well, is that all? That’s all now; you’ve said everything? Well, now go to bed; you are in a fever,” Lizaveta Prokofyevna interrupted impatiently, keeping her eyes fixed anxiously on him. “Good heavens, he is speaking again!”
“I think you are laughing. Why do you keep laughing at me? I notice that you are laughing at me all the time,” he said, turning with a sudden and uneasy irritation to Yevgeny Pavlovitch.
The latter really was laughing. “I only wanted to ask you, Mr. . . . Ippolit. . . excuse me, I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Mr. Terentyev,” said Myshkin.
“Yes, Terentyev. Thank you, prince. It was mentioned before, but it escaped my memory. … I wanted to ask you, Mr. Terentyev, is it true what I’ve heard, that you believe that you have only to talk to the peasants out of the window for a quarter of an hour and they’ll agree with you and follow you at once?”
“It’s quite possible I’ve said so,” answered Ippolit, seeming to recall something. “I certainly did say so,” he added suddenly, growing eager again and looking at Yevgeny Pavlovitch. “What of it?”
“Absolutely nothing; I simply wanted to know, to put the finishing touch.”
“Vfevgeny Pavlovitch was silent, but Ippolit still looked at him in impatient expectation.
“Well, have you finished?” Lizaveta Prokofyevna asked “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch. “Make haste and finish, my friends; he ought to be in bed. Or don’t you know how to?”
She was in terrible vexation.
“I am very much tempted to add,” Yevgeny Pavlovitch went on, smiling, “that everything I’ve heard from your companions, Mr. Terentyev, and everything you’ve said just now, and with such unmistakable talent, amounts in my opinion to the theory of the triumph of right before everything and setting everything aside, and even to the exclusion of everything else, and perhaps even before finding out what that right consists in. Perhaps I am mistaken.”
“Of course you are mistaken; I don’t even understand you…. Further?”
There was a murmur in the corner, too. Lebedyev’s nephew was muttering something in an undertone.
“Why, scarcely anything further,” Yevgeny Pavlovitch went on. “I only meant to observe that from that position one may easily make a jump to the right of might, that is, to the right of the individual fist and of personal caprice, as indeed has often happened in the history of the world. Proudhon arrived at the right of might. In the American War, many of the most advanced Liberals declared themselves on the side of the planters on the ground that Negroes are Negroes, lower than the white race, and therefore that right of might was on the side of the white men..
“Well?”
“So then you don’t deny that might is right?”
“Further?”
“I must say you are logical. I only wanted to observe that from the right of might to the right of tigers and crocodiles, and even to the right of Danilovs and Gorskys, is not a long step.”
“I don’t know. Further?”
Ippolit scarcely heard what “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch said, and asked “Well?” and “Further?” more from a habit he had formed in arguments than from attention or curiosity.
“Nothing more … that’s all.”
“I am not angry with you, though,” Ippolit concluded suddenly and quite unexpectedly, and, hardly knowing what he was doing, he held out his hand, even smiling.
“Vfevgeny Pavlovitch was surprised at first, but with a most serious air touched the hand which was offered to him as though accepting forgiveness.
“I must add,” he said in the same equivocally respectful tone, “my gratitude to you for the attention with which you have listened to me, for, from my numerous observations, our Liberals are never capable of letting anyone else have a conviction of his own without at once meeting their opponent with abuse or even something worse.”
“You are perfectly right there,” observed General Epanchin, and, folding his hands behind his back, he retreated with a bored air to the steps of the verandah, where he yawned with vexation.
“Well, that’s enough of you, my friend,” Lizaveta Prokofyevna announced suddenly to Yevgeny Pavlovitch, “I am tired of you.”
“It’s late!” Ippolit suddenly got up, looked preoccupied and almost alarmed, gazing about him in perplexity. “I’ve kept you; I wanted to tell you everything. … I thought that every one for the last time … that was fancy….”
It was evident that he revived by fits and starts. He would suddenly come to himself from actual delirium for a few minutes; he would remember and talk with complete consciousness, chiefly in disconnected phrases which he had perhaps thought out and learnt by heart in the long weary hours of his illness, in his bed, in sleepless solitude.
“Well, good-bye,” he said suddenly and abruptly. “Do you think it’s easy for me to say good-bye to you? Ha ha!” He laughed angrily at his awkwerd question, and, seeming suddenly to grow furious at continually failing to say what he wanted to say, he said loudly and irritably: “\bur excellency, I have the honour of inviting you to my funeral if only you think me worthy of such an honour, and … all of you, ladies and gentlemen, in the wake of the general!”
He laughed again, but it was the laugh of a madman. Lizaveta Prokofyevna moved towards him in alarm and took him by the arm. He looked at her intently with the same lauqh which seemed to have stopped short and frozen on his face.
“Do you know I came here to see the trees? These here” — he pointed to the trees in the park— “that’s not ridiculous, is it? There is nothing ridiculous in it?” he asked Lizaveta Prokofyevna seriously, and suddenly he sank into thought; then a minute later raised his head and began inquisitively looking about in the company. He was looking for “Vfevgeny Pavlovitch, who was standing quite near on the right of him in the same place as before, but he had already forgotten and looked round. “Ah, you’ve not gone away!” He found him at last. “\bu were laughing just now at my wanting to talk out of the window for a quarter of an hour. . . . But do you know I am not eighteen? I’ve lain so much on that pillow and looked out of that window and thought so much . . . about every one . . . that… a dead man has no age, you know. I thought that last week when I woke up in the night. . . . And do you know what you are more afraid of than anything? You are more afraid of our sincerity than of anything, though you do despise us! I thought that too, lying on my pillow, that night…. \bu think I meant to laugh at you, Lizaveta Prokofyevna? No, I was not laughing at you, I only wanted to praise you. Kolya told me the prince said you were a child . . . that’s good. . . . “Vfes, what was it? … I was going to say something more. . . .” He hid his face in his hands and pondered. “Oh, yes, when you were saying ‘Good-bye’ just now I suddenly thought: these people here, there never will be any more of them, never! And the trees too . . . there will be nothing but the red-brick wall, the wall of Meyer’s house . .. opposite my window. .. . Well, tell them about all that… try to tell them; here’s a beauty . . . you are dead, you know. Introduce yourself as a dead man; tell them that the dead may say anything and that the Princess Marya Alexeyevna — . . . won’t find fault. Ha ha! \bu don’t