Page 729 - the-idiot

can one believe that a French chasseur pointed a cannon at
him for a lark, and shot his left leg off? He says he picked his
own leg up and took it away and buried it in the cemetery.
He swore he had a stone put up over it with the inscription:
‘Here lies the leg of Collegiate Secretary Lebedeff,’ and on
the other side, ‘Rest, beloved ashes, till the morn of joy,’ and
that he has a service read over it every year (which is simply
sacrilege), and goes to Moscow once a year on purpose. He
invites me to Moscow in order to prove his assertion, and
show me his leg’s tomb, and the very cannon that shot him;
he says it’s the eleventh from the gate of the Kremlin, an old-
fashioned falconet taken from the French afterwards.’
‘And, meanwhile both his legs are still on his body,’ said
the prince, laughing. ‘I assure you, it is only an innocent
joke, and you need not be angry about it.’
‘Excuse me—wait a minute—he says that the leg we see is
a wooden one, made by Tchernosvitoff.’
‘They do say one can dance with those!’
‘Quite so, quite so; and he swears that his wife never
found out that one of his legs was wooden all the while they
were married. When I showed him the ridiculousness of all
this, he said, ‘Well, if you were one of Napoleon’s pages in
1812, you might let me bury my leg in the Moscow cem-
etery.’
‘Why, did you say—‘ began the prince, and paused in
confusion.
The general gazed at his host disdainfully.
‘Oh, go on,’ he said, ‘finish your sentence, by all means.
Say how odd it appears to you that a man fallen to such a

The Idiot