Page 406 - the-idiot

or named Burdovsky when she reached the age of twenty.
I can even say definitely that it was a marriage of affection.
After his wedding your father gave up his occupation as
landsurveyor, and with his wife’s dowry of fifteen thousand
roubles went in for commercial speculations. As he had
had no experience, he was cheated on all sides, and took to
drink in order to forget his troubles. He shortened his life
by his excesses, and eight years after his marriage he died.
Your mother says herself that she was left in the direst pov-
erty, and would have died of starvation had it not been for
Pavlicheff, who generously allowed her a yearly pension of
six hundred roubles. Many people recall his extreme fond-
ness for you as a little boy. Your mother confirms this, and
agrees with others in thinking that he loved you the more
because you were a sickly child, stammering in your speech,
and almost deformed—for it is known that all his life Nico-
lai Andreevitch had a partiality for unfortunates of every
kind, especially children. In my opinion this is most impor-
tant. I may add that I discovered yet another fact, the last
on which I employed my detective powers. Seeing how fond
Pavlicheff was of you,—it was thanks to him you went to
school, and also had the advantage of special teachers—his
relations and servants grew to believe that you were his son,
and that your father had been betrayed by his wife. I may
point out that this idea was only accredited generally dur-
ing the last years of Pavlicheff’s life, when his next-of-kin
were trembling about the succession, when the earlier story
was quite forgotten, and when all opportunity for discov-
ering the truth had seemingly passed away. No doubt you,

0