Page 429 - the-idiot

surprise, but with the utmost gravity he touched the hand
that was offered him in token of forgiveness.
‘I can but thank you,’ he said, in a tone too respectful to
be sincere, ‘for your kindness in letting me speak, for I have
often noticed that our Liberals never allow other people to
have an opinion of their own, and immediately answer their
opponents with abuse, if they do not have recourse to argu-
ments of a still more unpleasant nature.’
‘What you say is quite true,’ observed General Epanchin;
then, clasping his hands behind his back, he returned to his
place on the terrace steps, where he yawned with an air of
boredom.
‘Come, sir, that will do; you weary me,’ said Lizabetha
Prokofievna suddenly to Evgenie Pavlovitch.
Hippolyte rose all at once, looking troubled and almost
frightened.
‘It is time for me to go,’ he said, glancing round in perplex-
ity. ‘I have detained you... I wanted to tell you everything... I
thought you all ... for the last time ... it was a whim...’
He evidently had sudden fits of returning animation,
when he awoke from his semi-delirium; then, recovering
full selfpossession for a few moments, he would speak, in
disconnected phrases which had perhaps haunted him for
a long while on his bed of suffering, during weary, sleepless
nights.
‘Well, good-bye,’ he said abruptly. ‘You think it is easy for
me to say good-bye to you? Ha, ha!’
Feeling that his question was somewhat gauche, he smiled
angrily. Then as if vexed that he could not ever express what

The Idiot