Page 332 - the-idiot

fusing things ... how strange it all is.... My head goes round...
And Lebedeff’s daughter—how sympathetic and charming
her face was as she held the child in her arms! What an in-
nocent look and child-like laugh she had! It is curious that I
had forgotten her until now. I expect Lebedeff adores her—
and I really believe, when I think of it, that as sure as two
and two make four, he is fond of that nephew, too!’
Well, why should he judge them so hastily! Could he re-
ally say what they were, after one short visit? Even Lebedeff
seemed an enigma today. Did he expect to find him so? He
had never seen him like that before. Lebedeff and the Com-
tesse du Barry! Good Heavens! If Rogojin should really kill
someone, it would not, at any rate, be such a senseless, cha-
otic affair. A knife made to a special pattern, and six people
killed in a kind of delirium. But Rogojin also had a knife
made to a special pattern. Can it be that Rogojin wishes to
murder anyone? The prince began to tremble violently. ‘It
is a crime on my part to imagine anything so base, with
such cynical frankness.’ His face reddened with shame at
the thought; and then there came across him as in a flash
the memory of the incidents at the Pavlofsk station, and at
the other station in the morning; and the question asked
him by Rogojin about THE EYES and Rogojin’s cross, that
he was even now wearing; and the benediction of Rogojin’s
mother; and his embrace on the darkened staircase—that
last supreme renunciation—and now, to find himself full
of this new ‘idea,’ staring into shop-windows, and looking
round for things—how base he was!
Despair overmastered his soul; he would not go on, he

1