The Prince's Story of Marie — The Idiot

He kissed her once, and the room already wants to laugh. He says it was not a matter of love at all. In Switzerland he lived among children and hid nothing from them. Their fathers were angry. The schoolmaster Thibaut was jealous. Even Schneider reproached him. What were they afraid of? Parents conceal because they think a child is too young, and the child already knows the concealment. He will tell them about a madman another day. He must get on with this story.

Marie sold thread from a window, quiet, consumptive, teased into silence the one day she sang. A commercial traveller took her off and left her. She walked home a week without shoes. Her mother was the first to show the way: you have disgraced me. The village crowded in, greedy, and she hid her face in her hair on the floor. They looked at her as dirt off the road. The mother never spoke forgiveness, even dying. Marie nursed her and thought the contempt was right. Men threw pennies into the mud on Sundays. The young parson pointed at her from the coffin's head and called her the cause of her mother's death, which was a lie. The infamy pleased them, nearly all.

He had not a farthing. He sold a diamond pin for eight francs and kissed her on the hillside, to say she was unfortunate, not guilty. She kissed his hand and would not let him kiss hers. The children had been watching. They threw stones, and her position became worse. He spoke to them every day. Then some of them said Good-morning, the greeting the village already owed anyone they met. Two little girls took her food. She burst into tears. They bought her shoes together. They stood guard at the waterfall. When she was dying they fluttered at the window like birds: we love you, Marie. She took their love as a sort of pardon and still called herself a sinner. Few adults came to the funeral. The children covered the coffin with flowers and planted roses.

Schneider called it a pernicious system, then said the prince had the face of an adult and the soul of a child, and always would. He laughed. He prefers children. He is not an idiot now. How can he be, when he knows he is considered one? Something important made Schneider urge him to leave; he does not name it here. He came into the world of men meaning to be polite and sincere. Their faces are the first that have felt light since the platform at the village station. Adelaida has the face of a kind sister. Alexandra has a shadow, like Holbein's Madonna. Lizabetha Prokofievna is an absolute child, good and bad, in spite of her years. He has read three faces. He has not read the fourth. Do not suppose this is simplicity. Perhaps he has his own very profound object in view.