t'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 insa