Page 577 - the-idiot

the same to me, now!
‘I remember now with what hungry interest I began to
watch the lives of other people—interest that I had never
felt before! I used to wait for Colia’s arrival impatiently, for
I was so ill myself, then, that I could not leave the house. I
so threw myself into every little detail of news, and took so
much interest in every report and rumour, that I believe
I became a regular gossip! I could not understand, among
other things, how all these people—with so much life in and
before them—do not become RICH— and I don’t under-
stand it now. I remember being told of a poor wretch I once
knew, who had died of hunger. I was almost beside myself
with rage! I believe if I could have resuscitated him I would
have done so for the sole purpose of murdering him!
‘Occasionally I was so much better that I could go out;
but the streets used to put me in such a rage that I would
lock myself up for days rather than go out, even if I were
well enough to do so! I could not bear to see all those pre-
occupied, anxious-looking creatures continuously surging
along the streets past me! Why are they always anxious?
What is the meaning of their eternal care and worry? It is
their wickedness, their perpetual detestable malice—that’s
what it is—they are all full of malice, malice!
‘Whose fault is it that they are all miserable, that they
don’t know how to live, though they have fifty or sixty years
of life before them? Why did that fool allow himself to die of
hunger with sixty years of unlived life before him?
‘And everyone of them shows his rags, his toil-worn
hands, and yells in his wrath: ‘Here are we, working like

The Idiot