Page 611 - the-idiot

activity of any kind, in allotting me but three weeks of time,
that suicide is about the only thing left that I can begin and
end in the time of my own free will.
‘Perhaps then I am anxious to take advantage of my last
chance of doing something for myself. A protest is some-
times no small thing.’
The explanation was finished; Hippolyte paused at last.
There is, in extreme cases, a final stage of cynical can-
dour when a nervous man, excited, and beside himself with
emotion, will be afraid of nothing and ready for any sort
of scandal, nay, glad of it. The extraordinary, almost un-
natural, tension of the nerves which upheld Hippolyte up
to this point, had now arrived at this final stage. This poor
feeble boy of eighteen—exhausted by disease—looked for
all the world as weak and frail as a leaflet torn from its par-
ent tree and trembling in the breeze; but no sooner had his
eye swept over his audience, for the first time during the
whole of the last hour, than the most contemptuous, the
most haughty expression of repugnance lighted up his face.
He defied them all, as it were. But his hearers were indig-
nant, too; they rose to their feet with annoyance. Fatigue,
the wine consumed, the strain of listening so long, all add-
ed to the disagreeable impression which the reading had
made upon them.
Suddenly Hippolyte jumped up as though he had been
shot.
‘The sun is rising,’ he cried, seeing the gilded tops of the
trees, and pointing to them as to a miracle. ‘See, it is rising
now!’

10 The Idiot