Page 529 - the-idiot

reflected. ‘How strange it all is! how strange!’ he muttered,
melancholy enough now. In moments of great joy, he in-
variably felt a sensation of melancholy come over him—he
could not tell why.
He looked intently around him, and wondered why he
had come here; he was very tired, so he approached the
bench and sat down on it. Around him was profound si-
lence; the music in the Vauxhall was over. The park seemed
quite empty, though it was not, in reality, later than half-past
eleven. It was a quiet, warm, clear night—a real Petersburg
night of early June; but in the dense avenue, where he was
sitting, it was almost pitch dark.
If anyone had come up at this moment and told him that
he was in love, passionately in love, he would have rejected
the idea with astonishment, and, perhaps, with irritation.
And if anyone had added that Aglaya’s note was a love-letter,
and that it contained an appointment to a lover’s rendez-
vous, he would have blushed with shame for the speaker,
and, probably, have challenged him to a duel.
All this would have been perfectly sincere on his part.
He had never for a moment entertained the idea of the pos-
sibility of this girl loving him, or even of such a thing as
himself falling in love with her. The possibility of being
loved himself, ‘a man like me,’ as he put it, he ranked among
ridiculous suppositions. It appeared to him that it was sim-
ply a joke on Aglaya’s part, if there really were anything in it
at all; but that seemed to him quite natural. His preoccupa-
tion was caused by something different.
As to the few words which the general had let slip about

The Idiot