Chapter 2 — Chapter 2<br>

“What—you’re a relation then, are you?” asked the
servant, so bewildered that he began to feel quite alarmed.

“Well, hardly so. If you stretch a point, we are relations, of course,
but so distant that one cannot really take cognizance of it. I once wrote to
your mistress from abroad, but she did not reply. However, I have thought it
right to make acquaintance with her on my arrival. I am telling you all this in
order to ease your mind, for I see you are still far from comfortable on my
account. All you have to do is to announce me as Prince Muishkin, and the
object of my visit will be plain enough. If I am received—very good; if
not, well, very good again. But they are sure to receive me, I should think;
Madame Epanchin will naturally be curious to see the only remaining
representative of her family. She values her Muishkin descent very highly, if I
am rightly informed.”

The prince’s conversation was artless and confiding to a degree, and the
servant could not help feeling that as from visitor to common serving-man this
state of things was highly improper. His conclusion was that one of two things
must be the explanation—either that this was a begging impostor, or that
the prince, if prince he were, was simply a fool, without the slightest
ambition; for a sensible prince with any ambition would certainly not wait
about in ante-rooms with servants, and talk of his own private affairs like
this. In either case, how was he to announce this singular visitor?

“I really think I must request you to step into the next room!” he
said, with all the insistence he could muster.

“Why? If I had been sitting there now, I should not have had the
opportunity of making these personal explanations. I see you are still uneasy
about me and keep eyeing my cloak and bundle. Don’t you think you might
go in yourself now, without waiting for the secretary to come out?”

“No, no! I can’t announce a visitor like yourself without the
secretary. Besides the general said he was not to be disturbed—he is with
the Colonel C—. Gavrila Ardalionovitch goes in without announcing.”

“Who may that be? a clerk?”

“What? Gavrila Ardalionovitch? Oh no; he belongs to one of the companies.
Look here, at all events put your bundle down, here.”

“Yes, I will if I may; and—can I take off my cloak”

“Of course; you can’t go in there with it on, anyhow.”

there

The prince rose and took off his mantle, revealing a neat enough morning
costume—a little worn, but well made. He wore a steel watch chain and
from this chain there hung a silver Geneva watch. Fool the prince might be,
still, the general’s servant felt that it was not correct for him to
continue to converse thus with a visitor, in spite of the fact that the prince
pleased him somehow.

“And what time of day does the lady receive?” the latter asked,
reseating himself in his old place.

“Oh, that’s not in my province! I believe she receives at
any time; it depends upon the visitors. The dressmaker goes in at eleven.
Gavrila Ardalionovitch is allowed much earlier than other people, too; he is
even admitted to early lunch now and then.”

my

“It is much warmer in the rooms here than it is abroad at this
season,” observed the prince; “but it is much warmer there out of
doors. As for the houses—a Russian can’t live in them in the winter
until he gets accustomed to them.”

“Don’t they heat them at all?”

“Well, they do heat them a little; but the houses and stoves are so
different to ours.”

“H’m! were you long away?”

“Four years! and I was in the same place nearly all the time,—in
one village.”

“You must have forgotten Russia, hadn’t you?”

“Yes, indeed I had—a good deal; and, would you believe it, I often
wonder at myself for not having forgotten how to speak Russian? Even now, as I
talk to you, I keep saying to myself ‘how well I am speaking it.’
Perhaps that is partly why I am so talkative this morning. I assure you, ever
since yesterday evening I have had the strongest desire to go on and on talking
Russian.”

“H’m! yes; did you live in Petersburg in former years?”

This good flunkey, in spite of his conscientious scruples, really could not
resist continuing such a very genteel and agreeable conversation.

“In Petersburg? Oh no! hardly at all, and now they say so much is changed
in the place that even those who did know it well are obliged to relearn what
they knew. They talk a good deal about the new law courts, and changes there,
don’t they?”

“H’m! yes, that’s true enough. Well now, how is the law over
there, do they administer it more justly than here?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that! I’ve heard much that is good
about our legal administration, too. There is no capital punishment here for
one thing.”

“Is there over there?”

“Yes—I saw an execution in France—at Lyons. Schneider took me
over with him to see it.”

“What, did they hang the fellow?”

“No, they cut off people’s heads in France.”

“What did the fellow do?—yell?”

“Oh no—it’s the work of an instant. They put a man inside a
frame and a sort of broad knife falls by machinery—they call the thing a
guillotine—it falls with fearful force and weight—the head springs
off so quickly that you can’t wink your eye in between. But all the
preparations are so dreadful. When they announce the sentence, you know, and
prepare the criminal and tie his hands, and cart him off to the
scaffold—that’s the fearful part of the business. The people all
crowd round—even women—though they don’t at all approve of
women looking on.”

“No, it’s not a thing for women.”

“Of course not—of course not!—bah! The criminal was a fine
intelligent fearless man; Le Gros was his name; and I may tell
you—believe it or not, as you like—that when that man stepped upon
the scaffold he cried, he did indeed,—he was as white as a bit of
paper. Isn’t it a dreadful idea that he should have cried—cried!
Whoever heard of a grown man crying from fear—not a child, but a man who
never had cried before—a grown man of forty-five years. Imagine what must
have been going on in that man’s mind at such a moment; what dreadful
convulsions his whole spirit must have endured; it is an outrage on the soul
that’s what it is. Because it is said ‘thou shalt not kill,’
is he to be killed because he murdered some one else? No, it is not right,
it’s an impossible theory. I assure you, I saw the sight a month ago and
it’s dancing before my eyes to this moment. I dream of it, often.”

cried

The prince had grown animated as he spoke, and a tinge of colour suffused his
pale face, though his way of talking was as quiet as ever. The servant followed
his words with sympathetic interest. Clearly he was not at all anxious to bring
the conversation to an end. Who knows? Perhaps he too was a man of imagination
and with some capacity for thought.

“Well, at all events it is a good thing that there’s no pain when
the poor fellow’s head flies off,” he remarked.

“Do you know, though,” cried the prince warmly, “you made
that remark now, and everyone says the same thing, and the machine is designed
with the purpose of avoiding pain, this guillotine I mean; but a thought came
into my head then: what if it be a bad plan after all? You may laugh at my
idea, perhaps—but I could not help its occurring to me all the same. Now
with the rack and tortures and so on—you suffer terrible pain of course;
but then your torture is bodily pain only (although no doubt you have plenty of
that) until you die. But here I should imagine the most terrible part of
the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at all—but the certain
knowledge that in an hour,—then in ten minutes, then in half a minute,
then now—this very instant—your soul must quit your body and
that you will no longer be a man—and that this is certain,
certain! That’s the point—the certainty of it. Just that
instant when you place your head on the block and hear the iron grate over your
head—then—that quarter of a second is the most awful of all.

here

instant

certain!

“This is not my own fantastical opinion—many people have thought
the same; but I feel it so deeply that I’ll tell you what I think. I
believe that to execute a man for murder is to punish him immeasurably more
dreadfully than is equivalent to his crime. A murder by sentence is far more
dreadful than a murder committed by a criminal. The man who is attacked by
robbers at night, in a dark wood, or anywhere, undoubtedly hopes and hopes that
he may yet escape until the very moment of his death. There are plenty of
instances of a man running away, or imploring for mercy—at all events
hoping on in some degree—even after his throat was cut. But in the case
of an execution, that last hope—having which it is so immeasurably less
dreadful to die,—is taken away from the wretch and certainty
substituted in its place! There is his sentence, and with it that terrible
certainty that he cannot possibly escape death—which, I consider, must be
the most dreadful anguish in the world. You may place a soldier before a
cannon’s mouth in battle, and fire upon him—and he will still hope.
But read to that same soldier his death-sentence, and he will either go mad or
burst into tears. Who dares to say that any man can suffer this without going
mad? No, no! it is an abuse, a shame, it is unnecessary—why should such a
thing exist? Doubtless there may be men who have been sentenced, who have
suffered this mental anguish for a while and then have been reprieved; perhaps
such men may have been able to relate their feelings afterwards. Our Lord
Christ spoke of this anguish and dread. No! no! no! No man should be treated
so, no man, no man!”

certainty

The servant, though of course he could not have expressed all this as the
prince did, still clearly entered into it and was greatly conciliated, as was
evident from the increased amiability of his expression. “If you are
really very anxious for a smoke,” he remarked, “I think it might
possibly be managed, if you are very quick about it. You see they might come
out and inquire for you, and you wouldn’t be on the spot. You see that
door there? Go in there and you’ll find a little room on the right; you
can smoke there, only open the window, because I ought not to allow it really,
and—.” But there was no time, after all.

A young fellow entered the ante-room at this moment, with a bundle of papers in
his hand. The footman hastened to help him take off his overcoat. The new
arrival glanced at the prince out of the corners of his eyes.

“This gentleman declares, Gavrila Ardalionovitch,” began the man,
confidentially and almost familiarly, “that he is Prince Muishkin and a
relative of Madame Epanchin’s. He has just arrived from abroad, with
nothing but a bundle by way of luggage—.”

The prince did not hear the rest, because at this point the servant continued
his communication in a whisper.

Gavrila Ardalionovitch listened attentively, and gazed at the prince with great
curiosity. At last he motioned the man aside and stepped hurriedly towards the
prince.

“Are you Prince Muishkin?” he asked, with the greatest courtesy and
amiability.

He was a remarkably handsome young fellow of some twenty-eight summers, fair
and of middle height; he wore a small beard, and his face was most intelligent.
Yet his smile, in spite of its sweetness, was a little thin, if I may so call
it, and showed his teeth too evenly; his gaze though decidedly good-humoured
and ingenuous, was a trifle too inquisitive and intent to be altogether
agreeable.

“Probably when he is alone he looks quite different, and hardly smiles at
all!” thought the prince.

He explained about himself in a few words, very much the same as he had told
the footman and Rogojin beforehand.

Gavrila Ardalionovitch meanwhile seemed to be trying to recall something.

“Was it not you, then, who sent a letter a year or less ago—from
Switzerland, I think it was—to Elizabetha Prokofievna (Mrs.
Epanchin)?”

“It was.”

“Oh, then, of course they will remember who you are. You wish to see the
general? I’ll tell him at once—he will be free in a minute; but
you—you had better wait in the ante-chamber,—hadn’t you? Why
is he here?” he added, severely, to the man.

“I tell you, sir, he wished it himself!”

At this moment the study door opened, and a military man, with a portfolio
under his arm, came out talking loudly, and after bidding good-bye to someone
inside, took his departure.

“You there, Gania?” cried a voice from the study, “come in
here, will you?”

Gavrila Ardalionovitch nodded to the prince and entered the room hastily.

A couple of minutes later the door opened again and the affable voice of Gania
cried:

“Come in please, prince!”

General Ivan Fedorovitch Epanchin was standing in the middle of the room, and
gazed with great curiosity at the prince as he entered. He even advanced a
couple of steps to meet him.

The prince came forward and introduced himself.

“Quite so,” replied the general, “and what can I do for
you?”

“Oh, I have no special business; my principal object was to make your
acquaintance. I should not like to disturb you. I do not know your times and
arrangements here, you see, but I have only just arrived. I came straight from
the station. I am come direct from Switzerland.”

The general very nearly smiled, but thought better of it and kept his smile
back. Then he reflected, blinked his eyes, stared at his guest once more from
head to foot; then abruptly motioned him to a chair, sat down himself, and
waited with some impatience for the prince to speak.

Gania stood at his table in the far corner of the room, turning over papers.

“I have not much time for making acquaintances, as a rule,” said
the general, “but as, of course, you have your object in coming,
I—”