These Mr. Know-it-alls are occasionally, even quite frequently, to be met with in a certain social stratum. They know everything, all the restless inquisitiveness of their minds and all their abilities are turned irresistibly in one direction, certainly for lack of more important life interests and perspectives, as a modern thinker would say. The phrase "they know all" implies, however, a rather limited sphere: where so-and-so works, who he is acquainted with, how much he is worth, where he was governor, who he is married to, how much his wife brought him, who his cousins are, who his cousins twice removed are, etc., etc., all in the same vein. For the most part these know-it-alls go about with holes at the elbows and earn a salary of seventeen roubles a month. The people whose innermost secrets they know would, of course, be unable to understand what interests guide them, and yet many of them are positively consoled by this knowledge that amounts to a whole science; they achieve self-respect and even the highest spiritual satisfaction. Besides, it is a seductive science. I have known scholars, writers, poets, political activists who sought and found their highest peace and purpose in this science, who positively made their careers by it alone. During this whole conversation the swarthy young man kept yawning, looking aimlessly out of the window and waiting
impatiently for the end of the journey. He seemed somehow distracted, very distracted, all but alarmed, was even becoming somehow strange: sometimes he listened without listening, looked without looking, laughed without always knowing or understanding himself why he was laughing.
"But, excuse me, with whom do I have the honor . . ." the pimply gentleman suddenly addressed the blond young man with the bundle.
"Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin," the other replied with full and immediate readiness.
"Prince Myshkin? Lev Nikolaevich? Don't know it, sir. Never even so much as heard it, sir," the clerk replied, pondering. "I don't mean the name, the name's historical, it can and should be found in Karamzin's
History,
4
"Oh, that's certain!" the prince answered at once. "There are no Prince Myshkins at all now except me; it seems I'm the last one. And as for our fathers and grandfathers, we've even had some farmers among them. My father, however, was a second lieutenant in the army, from the junkers. 5But I don't know in what way Mrs. Epanchin also turns out to be Princess Myshkin, also the last in her line . . ."
"Heh, heh, heh! The last in her line. Heh, heh! What a way to put it," the clerk tittered.
The swarthy man also smiled. The blond man was slightly surprised that he had managed to make a pun, though a rather bad one.
"And imagine, I never thought what I was saying," he finally explained in surprise.
"That's clear, that's clear, sir," the clerk merrily agreed.
"And say, Prince, did you do any studying there at your professor's?" the swarthy man suddenly asked.
"Yes . . . I did . . ."
"And me, I never studied anything."
"Well, I only did a little of this and that," the prince added, almost apologetically. "They found it impossible to educate me systematically because of my illness."
"You know the Rogozhins?" the swarthy man asked quickly.
"No, not at all. I know very few people in Russia. Are you a Rogozhin?"
"Yes, I'm Parfyon Rogozhin."
"Parfyon? You're not from those same Rogozhins . . ." the clerk began with increased importance.
"Yes, the same, the very same," the swarthy man interrupted quickly and with impolite impatience; he had, incidentally, never once addressed the pimply clerk, but from the very beginning had talked only to the prince.
"But . . . can it be?" The clerk was astonished to the point of stupefaction, his eyes nearly popped out, and his whole face at once began to compose itself into something reverent and obsequious, even frightened. "Of that same Semyon Parfyonovich Rogozhin, the hereditary honorary citizen 6who died about a month ago and left two and a half million in capital?"
"And how do you know he left two and a half million in pure capital?" the swarthy man interrupted, this time also not deigning to glance at the clerk. "Just look!" he winked at the prince. "And what's the good of them toadying like that straight off? It's true my parent died, and I'm coming home from Pskov a month later all but bootless. Neither my brother, the scoundrel, nor my mother sent me any money or any notice—nothing! Like a dog! Spent the whole month in Pskov in delirium ..."
"And now you've got a nice little million or more coming, and that's at the least—oh, Lord!" the clerk clasped his hands.
"Well, what is it to him, pray tell me!" Rogozhin nodded towards him again irritably and spitefully. "I won't give you a kopeck, even if you walk upside down right here in front of me."
"And I will, I will."
"Look at that! No, I won't give you anything, not even if you dance a whole week for it!"
"Don't give me anything! Don't! It serves me right! But I will dance. I'll leave my wife, my little children, and dance before you. Be nice, be nice!"
"Pah!" the swarthy man spat. "Five weeks ago," he turned to the prince, "I ran away from my parent to my aunt in Pskov, like you, with nothing but a little bundle; I fell into delirium there, and while I was gone he up and died. Hit by a stroke. Memory eternal to the deceased, 7but he almost did me in before then! By God, Prince, believe me! If I hadn't run away, he'd have done me to death."
"Did you do something to make him angry?" the prince responded, studying the millionaire in the lambskin coat with some special curiosity. But though there might well have been something
noteworthy in the million itself and in receiving an inheritance, the prince was surprised and intrigued by something else; besides, Rogozhin himself, for some reason, was especially eager to make the prince his interlocutor, though the need for an interlocutor seemed more mechanical than moral; somehow more from distraction than from simple-heartedness; from anxiety, from agitation, just to look at someone and wag his tongue about something. It seemed he was still delirious, or at least in a fever. As for the clerk, the man simply hovered over Rogozhin, not daring to breathe, catching and weighing every word as if searching for diamonds.
"Angry, yes, he was angry, and maybe rightly," Rogozhin replied, "but it was my brother who really got me. About my mother there's nothing to say, she's an old woman, reads the Menaion, 8sits with the old crones, and whatever brother Senka decides, so it goes. But why didn't he let me know in time? We understand that, sir! True, I was unconscious at the time. They also say a telegram was sent. But the telegram happened to come to my aunt. And she's been widowed for thirty years and sits with the holy fools 9from morning till evening. A nun, or not a nun but worse still. She got scared of the telegram and took it to the police station without opening it, and so it's been lying there ever since. Only Konev, Vassily Vassilyich, rescued me. He wrote about everything. At night my brother cut the gold tassels off the brocade cover on the old man's coffin: 'They cost a whole lot of money,' he says. But for that alone he could go to Siberia if I want, because that's a blasphemy. Hey, you, scarecrow!" he turned to the clerk. "What's the law: is it a blasphemy?"
"A blasphemy! A blasphemy!" the clerk agreed at once.
"Meaning Siberia?"
"Siberia! Siberia! Straight off to Siberia!"