The Breaking Point — The Idiot

While he feasted his eyes upon Aglaya, suddenly the old anglomaniac pronounced the name of Nicolai Andreevitch Pavlicheff aloud. That gentleman, Ivan Petrovitch, is a relation of your late friend. You wanted to find some of his relations, did you not. I remember Lef Nicolaievitch well. I recognised you at once. You are very little changed, though I saw you last as a child of some ten or eleven years old. You saw me as a child. Then the rest of the news, said casually. Pavlicheff turned Roman Catholic. He was on the point of becoming a Jesuit. Impossible, he cried, in horror. H'm, impossible is rather a strong word. The prince is beside himself. If one of us goes over to Roman Catholicism, he is sure to become a Jesuit at once, and a rabid one into the bargain. If one of us becomes an Atheist, he must needs begin to insist on the prohibition of faith in God by force. Why does he then exceed all bounds at once. Because he has found land at last. Your ideas are most praiseworthy, and in the highest degree patriotic, but you exaggerate the matter terribly. It would be better if we dropped the subject. Good Lord, he's off again, said Princess Bielokonski. Laissez-le dire. He is trembling all over.

He had sat down as far as possible from the Chinese vase. An ineradicable conviction had taken possession of his mind that, however he might try to avoid it, he must certainly break it. He forgot his presentiment. Then, as he rose with a wave of his arm, there was a general cry of horror. The huge vase swayed, seemed uncertain whether to topple onto the head of one of the old men, and came crashing over towards the German poet, who darted out of the way. The crash, the cry, the fragments of valuable china covering the carpet. All the shame was less powerful than the almost supernatural truth of his premonition. Thank God it was not that. Kindness returns. One gives you a halfpenny, and you are as grateful as though one had saved your life. You are a good fellow, but very silly. Aglaya alone seemed sad and depressed.

Then the awful, wild cry. Aglaya rushed quickly up to him, and was just in time to receive him in her arms as he fell writhing to the ground. There he lay on the carpet, and someone quickly placed a cushion under his head. No one had expected this. The guests soon separated. Princess Bielokonski, as she drove away, took occasion to say: Well, he's a good match, and a bad one, and if you want my opinion, more bad than good. You can see for yourself the man is an invalid. Lizabetha decided that the prince was impossible as a husband for Aglaya, and in the night she made a vow that never while she lived should he marry her. Next morning Aglaya answered her sisters coldly. I have never given him my word at all, nor have I ever counted him as my future husband. He is just as little to me as all the rest. Lizabetha flared up. I did not expect that of you. I would have turned out everyone who was in the room last night and kept him. That's the sort of man he is, in my opinion. She paused, afraid of what she had just said. She little knew how unfair she was to her daughter. It was all settled in Aglaya's mind. She was only waiting for the hour that would bring the matter to a final climax.