Page 595 - the-idiot

‘Surely not to throw yourself into the river?’ cried Bach-
matoff in alarm. Perhaps he read my thought in my face.
‘No, not yet. At present nothing but the following consid-
eration. You see I have some two or three months left me to
live—perhaps four; well, supposing that when I have but a
month or two more, I take a fancy for some ‘good deed’ that
needs both trouble and time, like this business of our doc-
tor friend, for instance: why, I shall have to give up the idea
of it and take to something else—some LITTLE good deed,
MORE WITHIN MY MEANS, eh? Isn’t that an amusing
idea!’
‘Poor Bachmatoff was much impressed—painfully so. He
took me all the way home; not attempting to console me,
but behaving with the greatest delicacy. On taking leave he
pressed my hand warmly and asked permission to come
and see me. I replied that if he came to me as a ‘comforter,’
so to speak (for he would be in that capacity whether he
spoke to me in a soothing manner or only kept silence, as
I pointed out to him), he would but remind me each time
of my approaching death! He shrugged his shoulders, but
quite agreed with me; and we parted better friends than I
had expected.
‘But that evening and that night were sown the first seeds
of my ‘last conviction.’ I seized greedily on my new idea; I
thirstily drank in all its different aspects (I did not sleep a
wink that night!), and the deeper I went into it the more my
being seemed to merge itself in it, and the more alarmed I
became. A dreadful terror came over me at last, and did not
leave me all next day.

The Idiot