Page 359 - the-idiot

‘He’s always twisting round what one says,’ she cried.
‘I am only repeating your own exclamation!’ said Colia.
‘A month ago you were turning over the pages of your Don
Quixote, and suddenly called out ‘there is nothing better
than the poor knight.’ I don’t know whom you were re-
ferring to, of course, whether to Don Quixote, or Evgenie
Pavlovitch, or someone else, but you certainly said these
words, and afterwards there was a long conversation … ‘
‘You are inclined to go a little too far, my good boy, with
your guesses,’ said Mrs. Epanchin, with some show of an-
noyance.
‘But it’s not I alone,’ cried Colia. ‘They all talked about
it, and they do still. Why, just now Prince S. and Adelaida
Ivanovna declared that they upheld ‘the poor knight’; so ev-
idently there does exist a ‘poor knight’; and if it were not for
Adelaida Ivanovna, we should have known long ago who
the ‘poor knight’ was.’
‘Why, how am I to blame?’ asked Adelaida, smiling.
‘You wouldn’t draw his portrait for us, that’s why you are
to blame! Aglaya Ivanovna asked you to draw his portrait,
and gave you the whole subject of the picture. She invented
it herself; and you wouldn’t.’
‘What was I to draw? According to the lines she quoted:
‘From his face he never lifted That eternal mask of steel.’’
‘What sort of a face was I to draw? I couldn’t draw a
mask.’
‘I don’t know what you are driving at; what mask do you
mean?’ said Mrs. Epanchin, irritably. She began to see pret-
ty clearly though what it meant, and whom they referred

The Idiot