Page 799 - the-idiot

attention; Princess Bielokonski glared at him angrily, and
compressed her lips. Prince N., Evgenie, Prince S., and the
girls, all broke off their own conversations and listened.
Aglaya seemed a little startled; as for Lizabetha Prokofievna,
her heart sank within her.
This was odd of Lizabetha Prokofievna and her daugh-
ters. They had themselves decided that it would be better
if the prince did not talk all the evening. Yet seeing him
sitting silent and alone, but perfectly happy, they had been
on the point of exerting themselves to draw him into one
of the groups of talkers around the room. Now that he was
in the midst of a talk they became more than ever anxious
and perturbed.
‘That he was a splendid man is perfectly true; you are
quite right,’ repeated Ivan Petrovitch, but seriously this
time. ‘He was a fine and a worthy fellow—worthy, one may
say, of the highest respect,’ he added, more and more seri-
ously at each pause; ‘ and it is agreeable to see, on your part,
such—‘
‘Wasn’t it this same Pavlicheff about whom there was a
strange story in connection with some abbot? I don’t re-
member who the abbot was, but I remember at one time
everybody was talking about it,’ remarked the old digni-
tary.
‘Yes—Abbot Gurot, a Jesuit,’ said Ivan Petrovitch. ‘Yes,
that’s the sort of thing our best men are apt to do. A man
of rank, too, and rich—a man who, if he had continued to
serve, might have done anything; and then to throw up the
service and everything else in order to go over to Roman

The Idiot