Page 381 - the-idiot

existence abroad, spending the summer at some spa, and
the winter in Paris, to the greater profit of the organizers
of public balls. It may safely be said that the manager of the
Chateau des Fleurs (lucky man!) pocketed at least a third
of the money paid by Russian peasants to their lords in the
days of serfdom. However this may be, the gay P— brought
up the orphan like a prince, provided him with tutors and
governesses (pretty, of course!) whom he chose himself in
Paris. But the little aristocrat, the last of his noble race, was
an idiot. The governesses, recruited at the Chateau des Fleu-
rs, laboured in vain; at twenty years of age their pupil could
not speak in any language, not even Russian. But ignorance
of the latter was still excusable. At last P— was seized with a
strange notion; he imagined that in Switzerland they could
change an idiot into a mail of sense. After all, the idea was
quite logical; a parasite and landowner naturally supposed
that intelligence was a marketable commodity like every-
thing else, and that in Switzerland especially it could be
bought for money. The case was entrusted to a celebrated
Swiss professor, and cost thousands of roubles; the treat-
ment lasted five years. Needless to say, the idiot did not
become intelligent, but it is alleged that he grew into some-
thing more or less resembling a man. At this stage P— died
suddenly, and, as usual, he had made no will and left his
affairs in disorder. A crowd of eager claimants arose, who
cared nothing about any last scion of a noble race undergo-
ing treatment in Switzerland, at the expense of the deceased,
as a congenital idiot. Idiot though he was, the noble scion
tried to cheat his professor, and they say he succeeded in

0 The Idiot