Page 859 - the-idiot

I know all that had happened before; I know all that took
place six months since; and I know there was NOTHING
serious about the matter, it was but fancy, smoke, fantasy,
distorted by agitation, and only the alarmed jealousy of an
absolutely inexperienced girl could possibly have mistaken
it for serious reality.’
Here Evgenie Pavlovitch quite let himself go, and gave
the reins to his indignation.
Clearly and reasonably, and with great psychological in-
sight, he drew a picture of the prince’s past relations with
Nastasia Philipovna. Evgenie Pavlovitch always had a ready
tongue, but on this occasion his eloquence, surprised him-
self. ‘From the very beginning,’ he said, ‘you began with a
lie; what began with a lie was bound to end with a lie; such
is the law of nature. I do not agree, in fact I am angry, when
I hear you called an idiot; you are far too intelligent to de-
serve such an epithet; but you are so far STRANGE as to be
unlike others; that you must allow, yourself. Now, I have
come to the conclusion that the basis of all that has hap-
pened, has been first of all your innate inexperience (remark
the expression ‘innate,’ prince). Then follows your unheard-
of simplicity of heart; then comes your absolute want of
sense of proportion (to this want you have several times
confessed); and lastly, a mass, an accumulation, of intellec-
tual convictions which you, in your unexampled honesty of
soul, accept unquestionably as also innate and natural and
true. Admit, prince, that in your relations with Nastasia
Philipovna there has existed, from the very first, something
democratic, and the fascination, so to speak, of the ‘woman

The Idiot