The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Produktdetails

Verlag

Delphi Classics (Parts Edition)

Erschienen

2017

Sprache

English

Seiten

456

Infos

456 Seiten

ISBN

978-1-78656-551-8

Kurztext / Annotation

This eBook features the unabridged text of 'The Idiot' from the bestselling edition of 'The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky'.

Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Dostoyevsky includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

eBook features:
The complete unabridged text of 'The Idiot'
Beautifully illustrated with images related to Dostoyevsky's works
Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook
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Textauszug

CHAPTER 2

General EPANCHIN lived in a house of his own not far from Liteyny. Besides this magnificent house - five-sixths of its rooms were let in flats - he had another huge house in Sadovy Street, which was also a large source of revenue to him. He owned also a considerable and profitable estate close to Petersburg, and a factory of some sort in the district. In former days the general, as every one knew, had been a share-holder in government monopolies. Now he had shares and a considerable influence in the control of some well-established companies. He had the reputation of being a very busy man of large fortune and wide connexions. In certain positions he knew how to make himself indispensable; for instance, in his own department of the government.

Yfet it was known that Ivan Fyodorovitch Epanchin was a man of no education and the son of a simple soldier. The latter fact, of course, could only be to his credit; yet though the general was an intelligent man, he was not free from some very pardonable little weaknesses and disliked allusions to certain subjects. But he was unquestionably an intelligent and capable man. He made it a principle, for instance, not to put himself forward, to efface himself where necessary, and he was valued by many people just for his unpretentiousness, just because he always knew his place. But if only those who said this of him could have known what was passing sometimes in the soul of Ivan Fyodorovitch, who knew his place so well! Though he really had practical knowledge and experience and some very remarkable abilities, he preferred to appear to be carrying out the ideas of others rather than the promptings of his own intellect, to pose as a man "disinterestedly devoted" and - to fall in with the spirit of the age - a warm-hearted Russian. There were some amusing stories told about him in this connexion; but the general was never disconcerted by these stories. Besides, he was always successful, even at cards, and he played for very high stakes and far from attempting to conceal this little, as he called it, weakness, which was pecuniarily and in other ways profitable to him, he intentionally made a display of it. He mixed in very varied society, though only, of course, with people of consequence. But he had everything before him, he had plenty of time, plenty of time for everything, and everything was bound to come in its due time. And in years, too, the general was what is called in the prime of life, fifty-six, not more, and we know that that is the very flower of manhood; the age at which real life begins. His good health, his complexion, his sound though black teeth, his sturdy, solid figure, his preoccupied air at his office in the morning and his good-humoured countenance in the evening at cards or at "his grace's" - all contributed to his success in the present and in the future, and strewed his excellency's path with roses.

The general had a family of blooming children. All was not roses there, indeed, but there was much on which his excellency's fondest hopes and plans had long been earnestly and deeply concentrated. And, after all, what plans are graver and more sacred than a father's? What should a man cling to, if not to his family?

The general's family consisted of a wife and three grown-up daughters. The general had married many years before, when only a lieutenant, a girl of almost his own age, who was not distinguished either by beauty or education, and with whom he had received only a dowry of fifty souls, which served, however, as a stepping-stone to his fortune in later days. But the general never in after years complained of his early marriage, he never regarded it as the error of his luckless youth, and he so respected his wife, and at times so feared her, indeed, that he positively loved her. His wife was a Princess Myshkin, of an ancient though by no means brilliant family, and she had a great opinion of herself on account of he

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