Page 565 - the-idiot

gesture had impressed even Hippolyte.
‘Then I’m not to read it?’ he whispered, nervously. ‘Am
I not to read it?’ he repeated, gazing around at each face in
turn. ‘What are you afraid of, prince?’ he turned and asked
the latter suddenly.
‘What should I be afraid of?’
‘Has anyone a coin about them? Give me a twenty-copeck
piece, somebody!’ And Hippolyte leapt from his chair.
‘Here you are,’ said Lebedeff, handing him one; he
thought the boy had gone mad.
‘Vera Lukianovna,’ said Hippolyte, ‘toss it, will you?
Heads, I read, tails, I don’t.’
Vera Lebedeff tossed the coin into the air and let it fall
on the table.
It was ‘heads.’
‘Then I read it,’ said Hippolyte, in the tone of one bowing
to the fiat of destiny. He could not have grown paler if a ver-
dict of death had suddenly been presented to him.
‘But after all, what is it? Is it possible that I should have
just risked my fate by tossing up?’ he went on, shuddering;
and looked round him again. His eyes had a curious ex-
pression of sincerity. ‘That is an astonishing psychological
fact,’ he cried, suddenly addressing the prince, in a tone of
the most intense surprise. ‘It is ... it is something quite in-
conceivable, prince,’ he repeated with growing animation,
like a man regaining consciousness. ‘Take note of it, prince,
remember it; you collect, I am told, facts concerning capi-
tal punishment... They told me so. Ha, ha! My God, how
absurd!’ He sat down on the sofa, put his elbows on the ta-

The Idiot