go on! never mind me!" mocked the other. "Don't be afraid!"

"Excellency! Have you read that account of the murder of the Zemarin
family, in the newspaper?" cried Lebedeff, all of a sudden.

"Yes," said Muishkin, with some surprise.

"Well, that is the murderer! It is he--in fact--"

"What do you mean?" asked the visitor.

"I am speaking allegorically, of course; but he will be the murderer of
a Zemarin family in the future. He is getting ready. ..."

They all laughed, and the thought crossed the prince's mind that perhaps
Lebedeff was really trifling in this way because he foresaw inconvenient
questions, and wanted to gain time.

"He is a traitor! a conspirator!" shouted Lebedeff, who seemed to have
lost all control over himself. "A monster! a slanderer! Ought I to treat
him as a nephew, the son of my sister Anisia?"

"Oh! do be quiet! You must be drunk! He has taken it into his head to
play the lawyer, prince, and he practices speechifying, and is always
repeating his eloquent pleadings to his children. And who do you think
was his last client? An old woman who had been robbed of five hundred
roubles, her all, by some rogue of a usurer, besought him to take up
her case, instead of which he defended the usurer himself, a Jew named
Zeidler, because this Jew promised to give him fifty roubles...."

"It was to be fifty if I won the case, only five if I lost," interrupted
Lebedeff, speaking in a low tone, a great contrast to his earlier
manner.

"Well! naturally he came to grief: the law is not administered as it
used to be, and he only got laughed at for his pains. But he was much
pleased with himself in spite of that. 'Most learned judge!' said he,
'picture this unhappy man, crippled by age and infirmities, who gains
his living by honourable toil--picture him, I repeat, robbed of his all,
of his last mouthful; remember, I entreat you, the words of that learned
legislator, "Let mercy and justice alike rule the courts of law."' Now,
would you believe it, excellency, every morning he recites this
speech to us from beginning to end, exactly as he spoke it before the
magistrate. To-day we have heard it for the fifth time. He was just
starting again when you arrived, so much does he admire it. He is now
preparing to undertake another case. I think, by the way, that you are
Prince Muishkin? Colia tells me you are the cleverest man he has ever
known...."

"The cleverest in the world," interrupted his uncle hastily.