Page 278 - the-idiot

ter Vera, in mourning, as you see; and this, this, oh, this
pointing to the young man on the divan …
‘Well, go on! never mind me!’ mocked the other. ‘Don’t
be afraid!’
‘Excellency! Have you read that account of the murder of
the Zemarin family, in the newspaper?’ cried Lebedeff, all
of a sudden.
‘Yes,’ said Muishkin, with some surprise.
‘Well, that is the murderer! It is he—in fact—‘
‘What do you mean?’ asked the visitor.
‘I am speaking allegorically, of course; but he will be the
murderer of a Zemarin family in the future. He is getting
ready . .. .’
They all laughed, and the thought crossed the prince’s
mind that perhaps Lebedeff was really trifling in this way
because he foresaw inconvenient questions, and wanted to
gain time.
‘He is a traitor! a conspirator!’ shouted Lebedeff, who
seemed to have lost all control over himself. ‘ A monster! a
slanderer! Ought I to treat him as a nephew, the son of my
sister Anisia?’
‘Oh! do be quiet! You must be drunk! He has taken it into
his head to play the lawyer, prince, and he practices speech-
ifying, and is always repeating his eloquent pleadings to his
children. And who do you think was his last client? An old
woman who had been robbed of five hundred roubles, her
all, by some rogue of a usurer, besought him to take up her
case, instead of which he defended the usurer himself, a Jew
named Zeidler, because this Jew promised to give him fifty