Page 131 - the-idiot

VIII

he flat occupied by Gania and his family was on the
Tthird floor of the house. It was reached by a clean light
staircase, and consisted of seven rooms, a nice enough lodg-
ing, and one would have thought a little too good for a clerk
on two thousand roubles a year. But it was designed to ac-
commodate a few lodgers on board terms, and had beer)
taken a few months since, much to the disgust of Gania, at
the urgent request of his mother and his sister, Varvara Ar-
dalionovna, who longed to do something to increase the
family income a little, and fixed their hopes upon letting
lodgings. Gania frowned upon the idea. He thought it infra
dig, and did not quite like appearing in society afterwards—
that society in which he had been accustomed to pose up to
now as a young man of rather brilliant prospects. All these
concessions and rebuffs of fortune, of late, had wounded his
spirit severely, and his temper had become extremely irrita-
ble, his wrath being generally quite out of proportion to the
cause. But if he had made up his mind to put up with this
sort of life for a while, it was only on the plain understand-
ing with his inner self that he would very soon change it all,
and have things as he chose again. Yet the very means by
which he hoped to make this change threatened to involve
him in even greater difficulties than he had had before.
The flat was divided by a passage which led straight out

1 0 The Idiot