Page 719 - the-idiot

at your naive ways, Lebedeff! Don’t he angry with me—not
only yours, everybody else’s also! You are waiting to hear
something from me at this very moment with such simplic-
ity that I declare I feel quite ashamed of myself for having
nothing whatever to tell you. I swear to you solemnly, that
there is nothing to tell. There! Can you take that in?’ The
prince laughed again.
Lebedeff assumed an air of dignity. It was true enough
that he was sometimes naive to a degree in his curiosity;
but he was also an excessively cunning gentleman, and the
prince was almost converting him into an enemy by his re-
peated rebuffs. The prince did not snub Lebedeff’s curiosity,
however, because he felt any contempt for him; but simply
because the subject was too delicate to talk about. Only a
few days before he had looked upon his own dreams almost
as crimes. But Lebedeff considered the refusal as caused
by personal dislike to himself, and was hurt accordingly.
Indeed, there was at this moment a piece of news, most in-
teresting to the prince, which Lebedeff knew and even had
wished to tell him, but which he now kept obstinately to
himself.
‘And what can I do for you, esteemed prince? Since I am
told you sent for me just now,’ he said, after a few moments’
silence.
‘Oh, it was about the general,’ began the prince, waking
abruptly from the fit of musing which he too had indulged
in ‘and-and about the theft you told me of.’
‘That is—er—about—what theft?’
‘Oh come! just as if you didn’t understand, Lukian

1 The Idiot