The General's Household — The Idiot

The house praises General Epanchin because he knows his place. He rose from the ranks, holds rents and monopolies, and likes to seem to carry out other people's ideas. Nobody is invited to look into the mind that performs that humility. He so respects and fears his wife that he is very near loving her. She is proud of the old Muishkin line. Their three daughters are clever, pretty, in no hurry to marry, and spoken of with horror for the number of books they have read.

At eleven the prince rings and sits in the ante-chamber with the bundle on his knees. The study servant tells him to wait next door and leave the bag. He would rather sit here. The man begins a sentence that means this shabby visitor cannot be Prince Muishkin, and asks if he is from abroad instead. The prince says the swallowed line for him, admits his circumstances are not rosy, and says he has not come to beg. He wants an acquaintance, a little advice, and to be announced by his name. If he is received, very good; if not, very good again. The servant can only sort him as a beggar or a fool. A sensible prince would not sit here talking about his private affairs.

The cloak comes off. Under it is a worn but decent coat and a silver Geneva watch. The talk turns to Russian stoves, then to Lyons, then to a man named Le Gros who cried on the scaffold, white as paper. The servant says at least there is no pain. The prince says the machine's mercy is the worst part: not the cut, but the certain knowledge that in an hour, then ten minutes, then this instant, the soul must leave. A soldier before a cannon can still hope. A man who has heard his sentence cannot. The servant cannot say it that way, but he enters into it. He offers a smoke he had called shameful. There is no time.

Gania comes in with papers. The servant whispers the bundle. Gania's smile is sweet and a little thin, the teeth too even; the prince thinks that alone he hardly smiles at all. Then Gania remembers the unanswered letter from Switzerland. That memory, not the talk, opens the study. A voice calls him in. Gania nods, goes, and two minutes later the door opens on the words come in, please, prince.