Page 382 - the-idiot

getting him to continue the treatment gratis for two years,
by concealing the death of his benefactor. But the profes-
sor himself was a charlatan. Getting anxious at last when
no money was forthcoming, and alarmed above all by his
patient’s appetite, he presented him with a pair of old gai-
ters and a shabby cloak and packed him off to Russia, third
class. It would seem that Fortune had turned her back upon
our hero. Not at all; Fortune, who lets whole populations
die of hunger, showered all her gifts at once upon the little
aristocrat, like Kryloff’s Cloud which passes over an arid
plain and empties itself into the sea. He had scarcely arrived
in St. Petersburg, when a relation of his mother’s (who was
of bourgeois origin, of course), died at Moscow. He was a
merchant, an Old Believer, and he had no children. He left a
fortune of several millions in good current coin, and every-
thing came to our noble scion, our gaitered baron, formerly
treated for idiocy in a Swiss lunatic asylum. Instantly the
scene changed, crowds of friends gathered round our baron,
who meanwhile had lost his head over a celebrated demi-
mondaine; he even discovered some relations; moreover a
number of young girls of high birth burned to be united to
him in lawful matrimony. Could anyone possibly imagine a
better match? Aristocrat, millionaire, and idiot, he has ev-
ery advantage! One might hunt in vain for his equal, even
with the lantern of Diogenes; his like is not to be had even
by getting it made to order!’
‘Oh, I don’t know what this means’ cried Ivan Fedoro-
vitch, transported with indignation.
‘Leave off, Colia,’ begged the prince. Exclamations arose

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