Page 327 - the-idiot

similar to that which had preceded his fits in bygone years.
He remembered that at such times he had been partic-
ularly absentminded, and could not discriminate between
objects and persons unless he concentrated special atten-
tion upon them.
He remembered seeing something in the window
marked at sixty copecks. Therefore, if the shop existed and
if this object were really in the window, it would prove that
he had been able to concentrate his attention on this article
at a moment when, as a general rule, his absence of mind
would have been too great to admit of any such concentra-
tion; in fact, very shortly after he had left the railway station
in such a state of agitation.
So he walked back looking about him for the shop, and
his heart beat with intolerable impatience. Ah! here was
the very shop, and there was the article marked 60 cop.’ ‘Of
course, it’s sixty copecks,’ he thought, and certainly worth
no more.’ This idea amused him and he laughed.
But it was a hysterical laugh; he was feeling terribly op-
pressed. He remembered clearly that just here, standing
before this window, he had suddenly turned round, just
as earlier in the day he had turned and found the dreadful
eyes of Rogojin fixed upon him. Convinced, therefore, that
in this respect at all events he had been under no delusion,
he left the shop and went on.
This must be thought out; it was clear that there had been
no hallucination at the station then, either; something had
actually happened to him, on both occasions; there was
no doubt of it. But again a loathing for all mental exertion

The Idiot