Page 593 - the-idiot

a farewell dinner to the doctor and his wife before their de-
parture, a champagne dinner.
‘Bachmatoff saw me home after the dinner and we crossed
the Nicolai bridge. We were both a little drunk. He told me
of his joy, the joyful feeling of having done a good action;
he said that it was all thanks to myself that he could feel
this satisfaction; and held forth about the foolishness of the
theory that individual charity is useless
‘I, too, was burning to have my say!
‘In Moscow,’ I said, ‘there was an old state counsellor, a
civil general, who, all his life, had been in the habit of vis-
iting the prisons and speaking to criminals. Every party
of convicts on its way to Siberia knew beforehand that on
the Vorobeef Hills the ‘old general’ would pay them a visit.
He did all he undertook seriously and devotedly. He would
walk down the rows of the unfortunate prisoners, stop
before each individual and ask after his needs—he never
sermonized them; he spoke kindly to them—he gave them
money; he brought them all sorts of necessaries for the jour-
ney, and gave them devotional books, choosing those who
could read, under the firm conviction that they would read
to those who could not, as they went along.
‘He scarcely ever talked about the particular crimes of
any of them, but listened if any volunteered information on
that point. All the convicts were equal for him, and he made
no distinction. He spoke to all as to brothers, and every one
of them looked upon him as a father. When he observed
among the exiles some poor woman with a child, he would
always come forward and fondle the little one, and make

The Idiot