The Public Humiliation — The Idiot

I did not expect you. This is hardly the time. Friends as many as you please, Doktorenko says, but you kept us two hours. We are within our rights. Mrs Epanchin holds out a weekly comic paper Lebedeff has marked in pencil. Read it at once. Aloud. So that everyone may hear. Colia reads. A scion treated for idiocy in Switzerland, packed off in old gaiters, then showered with a merchant's millions. A celebrated demi-mondaine. Aristocrat, millionaire, and idiot. Then the son of P., giving lessons at ten copecks, with an invalid mother. Justice would have given him the fortune. The millionaire sent fifty roubles as charity. The money was flung back. The case belongs to public opinion. Colia hides his face. The girls are ashamed. Keller twists his moustaches as if in noble modesty. Every word is false, the prince says. Hippolyte did not know the article existed. Doktorenko knew and thought it premature. Burdovsky knew, and has a right.

Doktorenko will not be turned out. Legal law is not on their side. Human law is. The law of common-sense and conscience. We present no petition. We do not beseech. We demand. Give satisfaction without thanks. If you refuse we will deny you honour and conscience. Burdovsky goes red as a lobster and repeats the refrain. The prince says Doktorenko is right in at least half, and something is lacking. Then he offers ten thousand roubles, in front of everyone, to honour Pavlicheff's memory. Keller calls it noble. Mrs Epanchin says Good God. The general finds it intolerable. Burdovsky will not accept. Keller whispers that he should take it for the present.

The prince cannot stop. Tchebaroff was the moving spirit. He suspected fraud from the first visit. He thought Burdovsky simple, an easy tool. Pavlicheff was no sensualist. The father never gambled away company funds. A son does not spend his mother's honour in a newspaper. He has barely a tenth of the fortune in the article. Schneider was paid six hundred a year, and only for three years. There were no pretty governesses from Paris. Delicacy forbids offering more than the debt. And now he has seen the proof with his own eyes. Burdovsky is not Pavlicheff's son at all. The claim is a fraud if he knew, and a deception if he did not. The prince will pay anyway, in memory of a man who treated the boy almost as a son. Sit down. Gania will explain. The mother in Pskoff is not dead, whatever the article said.

He sits. For the last twenty minutes he has raised his voice. He knows he should have waited until tomorrow and offered the money when they were alone. He has compared Burdovsky to his own Swiss illness in front of witnesses. I am an idiot, an absolute idiot. Gania comes and stands by his side, and in a calm, clear voice begins to render his account.