The speaker suddenly broke off and was turning to Lebyadkin. But Varvara Petrovna checked him. She was in a state of extreme exaltation.
“Have you finished?” she asked.
“Not yet; to complete my story I should have to ask this gentleman one or two questions if you'll allow me . . . you'll see the point in a minute, Varvara Petrovna.”
“Enough, afterwards, leave it for the moment I beg you. Oh, I was quite right to let you speak!”
“And note this, Varvara Petrovna,” Pyotr Stepanovitch said hastily. “Could Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch have explained all this just now in answer to your question, which was perhaps too peremptory?”
“Oh, yes, it was.”
“And wasn't I right in saying that in some cases it's much easier for a third person to explain things than for the person interested?”
“Yes, yes . . . but in one thing you were mistaken, and, I see with regret, are still mistaken.”
“Really, what's that?”
“You see. . . . But won't you sit down, Pyotr Stepanovitch?”
“Oh, as you please. I am tired indeed. Thank you.” He instantly moved up an easy chair and turned it so that he had Varvara Petrovna on one side and Praskovya Ivanovna at the table on the other, while he faced Lebyadkin, from whom he did not take his eyes for one minute.
“You are mistaken in calling this eccentricity. . . .”
“Oh, if it's only that. . . .”
“No, no, no, wait a little,” said Varvara Petrovna, who was obviously about to say a good deal and to speak with enthusiasm. As soon as Pyotr Stepanovitch noticed it, he was all attention.
“No, it was something higher than eccentricity, and I assure you, something sacred even! A proud man who has suffered humiliation early in life and reached the stage of 'mockery' as you so subtly called it — Prince Harry, in fact, to use the capital nickname Stepan Trofimovitch gave him then, which would have been perfectly correct if it were not that he is more like Hamlet, to my thinking at least.”
“Et vous avez raison, ” Stepan Trofimovitch pronounced, impressively and with feeling.
“Thank you, Stepan Trofimovitch. I thank you particularly too for your unvarying faith in Nicolas, in the loftiness of his soul and of his destiny. That faith you have even strengthened in me when I was losing heart.”
“Chere, chere. ” Stepan Trofimovitch was stepping forward, when he checked himself, reflecting that it was dangerous to interrupt.
“And if Nicolas had always had at his side” (Varvara Petrovna almost shouted) “a gentle Horatio, great in his humility — another excellent expression of yours, Stepan Trofimovitch —-he might long ago have been saved from the sad and 'sudden demon of irony,' which has tormented him all his life. (' The demon of irony' was a wonderful expression of yours again, Stepan Trofimovitch.) But Nicolas has never had an Horatio or an Ophelia. He had no one but his mother, and what can a mother do alone, and in such circumstances? Do you know, Pyotr Stepanovitch, it's perfectly comprehensible to me now that a being like Nicolas could be found even in such filthy haunts as you have described. I can so clearly picture now that 'mockery' of life. (A wonderfully subtle expression of yours!) That insatiable thirst of contrast, that gloomy background against which he stands out like a diamond, to use your comparison again, Pyotr Stepanovitch. And then he meets there a creature ill-treated by every one, crippled, half insane, and at the same time perhaps filled with noble feelings.”
“H'm. . . . Yes, perhaps.”
“And after that you don't understand that he's not laughing at her like every one. Oh, you people! You can't understand his defending her from insult, treating her with respect 'like a marquise' (this Kirillov must have an exceptionally deep understanding of men, though he didn't understand Nicolas). It was just this contrast, if you like, that led to the trouble. If the unhappy creature had been in different surroundings, perhaps she would never have been brought to entertain such a frantic delusion. Only a woman can understand it, Pyotr Stepanovitch, only a woman. How sorry I am that you . . . not that you're not a woman, but that you can't be one just for the moment so as to understand.”
“You mean in the sense that the worse things are the better it is. I understand, I understand, Varvara Petrovna. It's rather as it is in religion; the harder life is for a man or the more crushed and poor the people are, the more obstinately they dream of compensation in heaven; and if a hundred thousand priests are at work at it too, inflaming their delusion, and speculating on it, then ... I understand you, Varvara Petrovna, I assure you.”
“That's not quite it; but tell me, ought Nicolas to have laughed at her and have treated her as the other clerks, in order to extinguish the delusion in this unhappy organism.” (Why Varvara Petrovna used the word organism I couldn't understand.) “Can you really refuse to recognise the lofty compassion, the noble tremor of the whole organism with which Nicolas answered Kirillov: 'I do not laugh at her.' A noble, sacred answer!”
“Sublime, ” muttered Stepan Trofimovitch.
“And observe, too, that he is by no means so rich as you suppose. The money is mine and not his, and he would take next to nothing from me then.”
“I understand, I understand all that, Varvara Petrovna,” said Pyotr Stepanovitch, with a movement of some impatience.
“Oh, it's my character! I recognise myself in Nicolas. I recognise that youthfulness, that liability to violent, tempestuous impulses. And if we ever come to be friends, Pyotr Stepanovitch, and, for my part, I sincerely hope we may, especially as I am so deeply indebted to you, then, perhaps you'll understand. . . .”
“Oh, I assure you, I hope for it too,” Pyotr Stepanovitch muttered jerkily.
“You'll understand then the impulse which leads one in the blindness of generous feeling to take up a man who is unworthy of one in every respect, a man who utterly fails to understand one, who is ready to torture one at every opportunity and, in contradiction to everything, to exalt such a man into a sort of ideal, into a dream. To concentrate in him all one's hopes, to bow down before him; to love him all one's life, absolutely without knowing why — perhaps just because he was unworthy of it. ... Oh, how I've suffered all my life, Pyotr Stepanovitch!”
Stepan Trofimovitch, with a look of suffering on his face, began trying to catch my eye, but I turned away in time.