Page 728 - the-idiot

nature—reveal what is often a diverting intellect.’
The prince’s tone was so natural and respectful that the
general could not possibly suspect him of any insincerity.
‘Oh, that he possesses good traits, I was the first to show,
when I very nearly made him a present of my friendship. I
am not dependent upon his hospitality, and upon his house;
I have my own family. I do not attempt to justify my own
weakness. I have drunk with this man, and perhaps I de-
plore the fact now, but I did not take him up for the sake of
drink alone (excuse the crudeness of the expression, prince);
I did not make friends with him for that alone. I was attract-
ed by his good qualities; but when the fellow declares that
he was a child in 1812, and had his left leg cut off, and buried
in the Vagarkoff cemetery, in Moscow, such a cock-and-bull
story amounts to disrespect, my dear sir, to—to impudent
exaggeration.’
‘Oh, he was very likely joking; he said it for fun.’
‘I quite understand you. You mean that an innocent lie
for the sake of a good joke is harmless, and does not offend
the human heart. Some people lie, if you like to put it so,
out of pure friendship, in order to amuse their fellows; but
when a man makes use of extravagance in order to show his
disrespect and to make clear how the intimacy bores him, it
is time for a man of honour to break off the said intimacy.,
and to teach the offender his place.’
The general flushed with indignation as he spoke.
‘Oh, but Lebedeff cannot have been in Moscow in 1812.
He is much too young; it is all nonsense.’
‘Very well, but even if we admit that he was alive in 1812,