Page 660 - the-idiot

head for him! Yes, and walk through the fire for him, too.
There,’ says I, ‘that’s how I’d answer for you, general!’ Then
he embraced me, in the middle of the street, and hugged
me so tight (crying over me all the while) that I coughed
fit to choke! ‘You are the one friend left to me amid all my
misfortunes,’ says he. Oh, he’s a man of sentiment, that! He
went on to tell me a story of how he had been accused, or
suspected, of stealing five hundred thousand roubles once,
as a young man; and how, the very next day, he had rushed
into a burning, blazing house and saved the very count who
suspected him, and Nina Alexandrovna (who was then a
young girl), from a fiery death. The count embraced him,
and that was how he came to marry Nina Alexandrovna,
he said. As for the money, it was found among the ruins
next day in an English iron box with a secret lock; it had
got under the floor somehow, and if it had not been for the
fire it would never have been found! The whole thing is, of
course, an absolute fabrication, though when he spoke of
Nina Alexandrovna he wept! She’s a grand woman, is Nina
Alexandrovna, though she is very angry with me!’
‘Are you acquainted with her?’
‘Well, hardly at all. I wish I were, if only for the sake of jus-
tifying myself in her eyes. Nina Alexandrovna has a grudge
against me for, as she thinks, encouraging her husband in
drinking; whereas in reality I not only do not encourage
him, but I actually keep him out of harm’s way, and out of
bad company. Besides, he’s my friend, prince, so that I shall
not lose sight of him, again. Where he goes, I go. He’s quite
given up visiting the captain’s widow, though sometimes he