Page 585 - the-idiot

took up nearly all the room. Besides the bed there were
only three common chairs, and a wretched old kitchen-ta-
ble standing before a small sofa. One could hardly squeeze
through between the table and the bed.
‘On the table, as in the other room, burned a tallow can-
dle-end in an iron candlestick; and on the bed there whined
a baby of scarcely three weeks old. A pale-looking woman
was dressing the child, probably the mother; she looked as
though she had not as yet got over the trouble of childbirth,
she seemed so weak and was so carelessly dressed. Another
child, a little girl of about three years old, lay on the sofa,
covered over with what looked like a man’s old dress-coat.
‘At the table stood a man in his shirt sleeves; he had
thrown off his coat; it lay upon the bed; and he was unfold-
ing a blue paper parcel in which were a couple of pounds of
bread, and some little sausages.
‘On the table along with these things were a few old bits
of black bread, and some tea in a pot. From under the bed
there protruded an open portmanteau full of bundles of
rags. In a word, the confusion and untidiness of the room
were indescribable.
‘It appeared to me, at the first glance, that both the man
and the woman were respectable people, but brought to that
pitch of poverty where untidiness seems to get the better
of every effort to cope with it, till at last they take a sort of
bitter satisfaction in it. When I entered the room, the man,
who had entered but a moment before me, and was still un-
packing his parcels, was saying something to his wife in an
excited manner. The news was apparently bad, as usual, for

The Idiot