937.30
And in his enthusiasm Mr. Feddle came too close. The book was snatched from under his arm and he fluttered here helplessly, listening to the laughter, and an instant’s more hope that it might not be opened, that the dust wrapper he had made so carefully, lettering his name with such meticulous clarity on the front, pasting a picture of himself taken forty years before on the back, might yet sustain it. Then pages flashed, the laughter broke. —The Idiot? That’s the title of your book? The Idiot . . . the laughter came on, —by Feodor Feddle . . . ?
NOTE:Â Dostoevski's 1869 novel concerns Prince Myshkin, an epileptic and a good, guileless man. The lives of a number of singular characters become involved with his, and although they all admire Myshkin's personal qualities, they consider him, for all practical purposes, an "idiot." Ippolit, a tortured consumptive who fails in his attempt to commit suicide, asks, "Did you imagine that I did not foresee all this hatred!" shortly before the attempt when he receives a negative reaction to a long confession he has just read (3.7). The quotation about Europe is from the last page of the novel and is spoken by Lizaveta Prokofyevna, the eccentric matriarch of the novel. The final exchange is again between Ippolit and Myshkin and concludes 4.5; Ippolit has asked, "What do you think would be the best way for me to die?" and Myshkin answers as quoted
