Page 597 - the-idiot

‘Rogojin was evidently by no means pleased to see me,
and hinted, delicately, that he saw no reason why our ac-
quaintance should continue. For all that, however, I spent a
very interesting hour, and so, I dare say, did he. There was
so great a contrast between us that I am sure we must both
have felt it; anyhow, I felt it acutely. Here was I, with my
days numbered, and he, a man in the full vigour of life, liv-
ing in the present, without the slightest thought for ‘final
convictions,’ or numbers, or days, or, in fact, for anything
but that which-which—well, which he was mad about, if he
will excuse me the expression—as a feeble author who can-
not express his ideas properly.
‘In spite of his lack of amiability, I could not help see-
ing, in Rogojin a man of intellect and sense; and although,
perhaps, there was little in the outside world which was of.
interest to him, still he was clearly a man with eyes to see.
‘I hinted nothing to him about my ‘final conviction,’ but
it appeared to me that he had guessed it from my words. He
remained silent—he is a terribly silent man. I remarked to
him, as I rose to depart, that, in spite of the contrast and the
wide differences between us two, les extremites se touchent
(’extremes meet,’ as I explained to him in Russian); so that
maybe he was not so far from my final conviction as ap-
peared.
‘His only reply to this was a sour grimace. He rose and
looked for my cap, and placed it in my hand, and led me out
of the house—that dreadful gloomy house of his—to all ap-
pearances, of course, as though I were leaving of my own
accord, and he were simply seeing me to the door out of

The Idiot