even saying good-bye to any one. He had a foreboding that if he remained here even a few days longer he would be drawn into this world irrevocably and that his life would be bound up with it for ever. But he did not consider it for ten minutes; he decided at once that it would be “impossible” to run away, that it would be almost cowardice, that he was faced with such difficulties that it was his duty now to solve them, or at least to do his utmost to solve them. Absorbed in such thoughts, he returned home after a walk of less than a quarter of an hour. He was utterly unhappy at that moment.
Lebedyev was still away from home, so that towards evening Keller succeeded in bursting in on Myshkin, brimming over with confidences and confessions, though he was not drunk. He openly declared that he had come to tell Myshkin the whole story of his life, and that it was to do so that he had remained in Pavlovsk. There was not the faintest possibility of getting rid of him; nothing would have induced him to go. Keller had come prepared to talk at great length and with great incoherence. But suddenly, almost at the first word, he skipped to the conclusion and announced that he had so completely lost “every trace of morality” (solely through lack of faith in the Almighty) that he had positively become a thief.
“Can you fancy that!”
“Listen, Keller. If I were in your place I wouldn’t confess that without special need,” Myshkin began. “But perhaps you make things up against yourself on purpose?”
“To you, to you alone, and solely to promote my own development. To no one else. I shall die and bear my secret to the coffin! But, prince, if you knew, if only you knew how hard it is to get money nowadays! How is one to get it, allow me to ask you? The answer is always the same: ‘Bring gold or diamonds and we’ll give you something for them.’ That’s just what I haven’t got. Can you fancy that? I lost my temper at last, after waiting and waiting. ‘Will you give me something for emeralds?’ said I. ‘\fes, for emeralds too,’ said he. ‘Well, that’s all right,’ said I, and I put on my hat and walked out. ‘\bu’re a set of scoundrels, damn you! Yes, by Jove!’”
“Had you any emeralds, then?”
“A likely story! Oh, prince, what a sweet and innocent, pastoral, one may say, idea of life you have!”
Myshkin began at last to feel not exactly sorry for him, but, as it were, vaguely ill at ease on his account. It occurred to him to wonder, indeed, whether anything could be made of the man by any good influence. His own influence he considered for various reasons quite unsuitable; and this was not due to self-depreciation, but to a peculiar way of looking at things. By degrees they got into talk, so much so that they did not want to part. Keller, with extraordinary readiness, confessed to actions of which it seemed inconceivable any one could be willing to speak. At every fresh story he asserted positively that he was penitent and “full of tears”; yet he told it as though he were proud of his action, and sometimes too so absurdly that he and Myshkin laughed at last like madmen.
“The great thing is that you have a sort of childlike trustfulness and extraordinary truthfulness,” said Myshkin at last. “Do you know that by that alone you make up for a very great deal?”
“Generous, chivalrously generous!” Keller assented, much touched. “But you know, prince, it is all in dreams and, so to say, in bravado; it never comes to anything in action! And why is it? I can’t understand.”
“Don’t despair. Now, one can say positively that you have given me a full account of everything. I fancy anyway that it’s impossible to add anything more to what you’ve told me, isn’t it?”
“Impossible?” Keller exclaimed, almost compassionately. “Oh, prince, how completely a la Suisse, if I may say so, you still interpret human nature!”
“Can you really have more to add?” Myshkin brought out, with timid wonder. “Then tell me, please, what did you expect of me, Keller, and why have you come to me with your confession?”
“From you? What did I expect? In the first place, it is pleasant to watch your simplicity; it’s nice to sit and talk to you. I know there is a really virtuous person before me, anyway; and, secondly . . . secondly…” He was confused.
“Perhaps you wanted to borrow money?” Myshkin prompted very gravely and simply, and even rather shyly.
Keller positively started. He glanced quickly with the same wonder straight into Myshkin’s face, and brought his fist down violently on the table.
“Well, that’s how you knock a fellow out completely! Upon my word, prince, such simplicity, such innocence, as was never seen in the Golden Age — yet all at once you pierce right through a fellow like an arrow with such psychological depth of observation. But allow me, prince. This requires explanation, for I’m . . . simply bowled over! Of course, in the long run my object was to borrow money; but you ask me about it as if you saw nothing reprehensible in that, as though it were just as it should be.”
“Yes … from you it is just as it should be.”
“And you’re not indignant?”
“No…. Why?”
“Listen, prince. I’ve been staying here since yesterday evening: first, from a special respect for the French archbishop Bourdaloue (we were pulling corks in Lebedyev’s room till three in the morning); and secondly, and chiefly (and here I’ll take my oath I am speaking the holy truth!), I stayed because I wanted, by making you a full, heartfelt confession, so to speak, to promote my own development. With that idea I fell asleep, bathed in tears, towards four o’clock. Would you believe on the word of a man of honour, now at the very minute I fell asleep, genuinely filled with inward and, so to say, outward tears (for I really was sobbing, I remember), a hellish thought occurred to me: ‘Why not, when all’s said and done, borrow money of him after my confession?’ So that I prepared my confession, so to say, as though it were a sort of ‘fricassee with tears for sauce,’ to pave the way with those tears so that you might be softened and fork out one hundred and fifty roubles. Don’t you think that was base?”
“But most likely that’s not true; it’s simply both things came at once. The two thoughts came together; that often happens. It’s constantly so with me. I think it’s not a good thing, though; and, do you know, Keller, I reproach myself most of all for it. You might have been telling me about myself just now. I have sometimes even fancied,” Myshkin went on very earnestly, genuinely and profoundly interested, “that all people are like that; so that I was even beginning to excuse myself because it is awfully difficult to struggle against these double thoughts; I’ve tried. God knows how they arise and come into one’s mind. But you call it simply baseness! Now, I’m beginning to be afraid of those thoughts again. Anyway, I am not your judge. “Vfet to my mind one can’t call it simply baseness. What do you think? You were acting deceitfully to obtain my money by your tears; but you swear yourself that there was another motive too for your confession — an honourable motive as well as a mercenary one. As for the money, you want it for riotous living, don’t you? And after such a confession, that’s feebleness, of course. But yet how are you to give up riotous living all in a minute? That’s impossible, I know. What’s to be done? It had better be left to your own conscience,
don’t you think?”
Myshkin looked with great interest at Keller. The problem of double ideas had evidently occupied his mind for some time.
“Well, I don’t understand why they call you an idiot after that!” cried Keller.
Myshkin flushed a little.
“Even the preacher, Bourdaloue, would not have spared a man; but you’ve spared one, and judged me humanely! To punish myself and to show that I am touched, I won’t take a hundred and fifty roubles; give me only twenty-five, and it will be enough! That’s all I want, for a fortnight, at any rate. I won’t come for money within a fortnight. I did mean to treat Agashka; but she’s not worth it. Oh, God bless you, dear prince!”
Lebedyev came in at last immediately on his return from town. Noticing the twenty-five-rouble note in Keller’s hand, he frowned. But the latter was in a hurry to get away as soon as he was provided with funds, and promptly took his departure. Lebedyev at once began to speak ill of him.
“You’re unjust, he really was genuinely penitent,” Myshkin observed at last.
“What does his penitence amount to? It’s just like me saying, ‘I am abject, I am abject!’ yesterday. You know it’s only words.”
“So that was only words? I thought you …”
“Well, to you, only to you, I will tell the truth, because you see through a man. Words and deeds and lies and truth are all mixed up in me and are perfectly sincere. Deeds and truth come out in my genuine penitence, I swear it, whether you believe it or not; and words and lies in the hellish (and always present) craving to get the better of a man, to