"Lev Nikolaevich!" Lizaveta Prokofyevna suddenly called out, "read this now, this very moment, it is directly concerned with your affair."

She hastily handed him a weekly newspaper of the humoristic sort and pointed her finger at an article. While the visitors were still coming in, Lebedev had jumped over to the side of Lizaveta Prokofyevna, whose favor he was currying, and, without saying a word, had taken the newspaper from his side pocket and put it right under her eyes, pointing to a marked-off column. What Lizaveta Prokofyevna had managed to read had astounded and excited her terribly.

"Wouldn't it be better, however, not to read it aloud?" the prince babbled, very embarrassed. "I'll read it by myself. . . later . . ."

"Then you'd better read it, read it right now, aloud! aloud!" Lizaveta Prokofyevna turned to Kolya, snatching the newspaper, which the prince had barely managed to touch, out of his hands. "Read it aloud so that everybody can hear."

Lizaveta Prokofyevna was a hotheaded and passionate lady, so that suddenly and at once, without thinking long, she would sometimes raise all anchors and set out for the open sea without checking the weather. Ivan Fyodorovich stirred anxiously. But meanwhile everyone involuntarily paused at first and waited in perplexity. Kolya unfolded the newspaper and began reading aloud from the place that Lebedev, who had jumped over to him, pointed out:

"Proletarians and Scions, an Episode from Daily and Everyday Robberies! Progress! Reform! Justice!

"Strange things happen in our so-called Holy Russia, in our age of reforms and corporate initiative, an age of nationality and hundreds of millions exported abroad every year, an age of the encouragement of industry and the paralysis of working hands! etc., etc., it cannot all be enumerated, gentlemen, and so straight to business. A strange incident occurred with one of the scions of our former landowning gentry (de profundis!),³⁵ the sort of scion, incidentally, whose grandfathers already lost everything definitively at roulette, whose fathers were forced to serve as junkers and lieutenants and usually died under investigation for some innocent error to do with state funds, and whose children, like the hero of our account, either grow up idiots or even get caught in criminal dealings, for which, however, the jury acquits them with a view to their admonition and correction; or, finally, they end by pulling off one of those anecdotes which astonish the public and disgrace our already sufficiently disgraced time. About six months ago our scion,

shod foreign-style in gaiters and shivering in his unlined little overcoat, returned during the winter to Russia from Switzerland, where he was being treated for idiocy (sic!). It must be admitted that he was fortunately lucky, so that, to say nothing of his interesting illness, for which he was being treated in Switzerland (can one really be treated for idiocy, who could imagine it?!!), he might prove in himself the truthfulness of the Russian saying: a certain category of people is lucky! Consider for yourselves: left a nursing infant after the death of his father, said to have been a lieutenant who died under investigation for the unexpected disappearance of all the company funds during a card game, or perhaps for administering an overdose of birching to a subordinate (remember the old days, gentlemen!), our baron was taken out of charity to be brought up by a certain very rich Russian landowner. This Russian landowner—let's call him P.—in the former golden age the owner of four thousand bonded souls (bonded souls! do you understand this expression, gentlemen? I don't. I must consult a dictionary: 'The memory is fresh, but it's hard to believe'³⁶), was apparently one of those Russian lie-a-beds and parasites who spend their idle lives abroad, at spas in the summer, and in the Parisian Château des Fleurs in the winter, where they left boundless sums in their time. One may state positively that at least a third of the quittent from all former bonded estates went to the owner of the Parisian Château des Fleurs (there was a lucky man!). Be that as it may, the carefree P. raised the orphaned young gentleman in a princely way, hired tutors for him, and governesses (pretty ones, no doubt), whom, incidentally, he brought from Paris himself. But this last scion of a noble family was an idiot. The Château des Fleurs governesses were no help, and till the age of twenty our boy never learned to speak any language, not excluding Russian. This last fact, incidentally, is forgivable. In the end, the fantasy came into P.'s Russian serf-owning head that the idiot could be taught reason in Switzerland—a logical fantasy, incidentally: as a parasite and proprietor, he would naturally imagine that even reason could be bought in the market for money, all the more so in Switzerland. Five years passed under treatment in Switzerland with some well-known professor, and the money spent was in the thousands: the idiot, naturally, did not become intelligent, but they say in any case he began to resemble a human being—only just, no doubt. Suddenly P. up and dies. There's no will, naturally; his affairs are, as usual, in disorder; there's a heap of greedy heirs, who don't care

a straw about the last scion of any family being treated for family idiocy in Switzerland out of charity. The scion, though an idiot, tried all the same to cheat his professor, and they say he went on being treated gratis for two years, concealing the death of his benefactor from him. But the professor was quite a charlatan himself; at last, fearing the insolvency and, worse still, the appetite of his twenty-five-year-old parasite, he shod him in his old gaiters, gave him a bedraggled overcoat, and charitably sent him, third-class, nach Russland*—off his hands and out of Switzerland. It would seem luck had turned its back on our hero. Not a whit, sir: fortune, who starves whole provinces to death, showers all her gifts at once on the little aristocrat, like Krylov's 'Stormcloud'³⁷ that passed over the parched field and drenched the ocean. At almost the same moment as his arrival in Petersburg from Switzerland, a relation of his mother (who, naturally, was of merchant stock), a childless old bachelor, a merchant, bearded and an Old Believer, dies, leaving an inheritance of several million, indisputable, round, in ready cash—and (oh, if only it were you and me, dear reader!) it all goes to our scion, it all goes to our baron, who was treated for idiocy in Switzerland! Well, now they started playing a different tune. Around our baron in gaiters, who was chasing after a certain kept woman and beauty, a whole crowd of friends and intimates gathered, some relations even turned up, and most of all whole crowds of noble maidens, hungering and thirsting after lawful wedlock, and what could be better: an aristocrat, a millionaire, and an idiot—all qualities at once, you wouldn't find such a husband with a lamp in broad daylight, not even made to order! . . ."

"This . . . this I do not understand!" cried Ivan Fyodorovich in the highest degree of indignation.

"Stop it, Kolya!" the prince cried in a pleading voice. Exclamations came from all sides.

"Read it! Read it despite all!" snapped Lizaveta Prokofyevna, obviously making an extreme effort to control herself. "Prince! if the reading is stopped, we shall quarrel."

There was nothing to be done. Kolya, all worked up, red-faced, in agitation, went on reading in an agitated voice:

"But while our fresh-baked millionaire was soaring, so to speak, in the empyrean, a completely extraneous circumstance occurred. One fine morning a visitor comes to him with a calm and stern face,