Page 872 - the-idiot

doctor, and carried the latter away to Pavlofsk to see the
prince, by way of viewing the ground, as it were, and to
give him (Lebedeff) counsel as to whether the thing was to
be done or not. The visit was not to be official, but merely
friendly.
Muishkin remembered the doctor’s visit quite well. He
remembered that Lebedeff had said that he looked ill, and
had better see a doctor; and although the prince scouted
the idea, Lebedeff had turned up almost immediately with
his old friend, explaining that they had just met at the bed-
side of Hippolyte, who was very ill, and that the doctor had
something to tell the prince about the sick man.
The prince had, of course, at once received him, and had
plunged into a conversation about Hippolyte. He had giv-
en the doctor an account of Hippolyte’s attempted suicide;
and had proceeded thereafter to talk of his own malady,—
of Switzerland, of Schneider, and so on; and so deeply was
the old man interested by the prince’s conversation and his
description of Schneider’s system, that he sat on for two
hours.
Muishkin gave him excellent cigars to smoke, and Leb-
edeff, for his part, regaled him with liqueurs, brought in by
Vera, to whom the doctor—a married man and the father of
a family—addressed such compliments that she was filled
with indignation. They parted friends, and, after leaving the
prince, the doctor said to Lebedeff: ‘If all such people were
put under restraint, there would be no one left for keepers.’
Lebedeff then, in tragic tones, told of the approaching mar-
riage, whereupon the other nodded his head and replied

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