Page 114 - the-idiot

long to see HIM so much. Look here, dear prince, BE so
kind, will you? Just step to the study and fetch this portrait!
Say we want to look at it. Please do this for me, will you?’
‘He is a nice fellow, but a little too simple,’ said Adelaida,
as the prince left the room.
‘He is, indeed,’ said Alexandra; ‘almost laughably so at
times.’
Neither one nor the other seemed to give expression to
her full thoughts.
‘He got out of it very neatly about our faces, though,’ said
Aglaya. He flattered us all round, even mamma.’
‘Nonsense’ cried the latter. ‘He did not flatter me. It was
I who found his appreciation flattering. I think you are a
great deal more foolish than he is. He is simple, of course,
but also very knowing. Just like myself.’
‘How stupid of me to speak of the portrait,’ thought the
prince as he entered the study, with a feeling of guilt at his
heart, ‘and yet, perhaps I was right after all.’ He had an idea,
unformed as yet, but a strange idea.
Gavrila Ardalionovitch was still sitting in the study, bur-
ied in a mass of papers. He looked as though he did not take
his salary from the public company, whose servant he was,
for a sinecure.
He grew very wroth and confused when the prince asked
for the portrait, and explained how it came about that he
had spoken of it.
‘Oh, curse it all,’ he said; ‘what on earth must you go blab-
bing for? You know nothing about the thing, and yet—idiot!’
he added, muttering the last word to himself in irrepress-

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