Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Idiot

PART IV 5. CHAPTER V. (continued)

"And imagine how that Gania annoys me! He has developed the idea --or pretends to believe--that in all probability three or four others who heard my confession will die before I do. There's an idea for you--and all this by way of CONSOLING me! Ha! ha! ha! In the first place they haven't died yet; and in the second, if they DID die--all of them--what would be the satisfaction to me in that? He judges me by himself. But he goes further, he actually pitches into me because, as he declares, 'any decent fellow' would die quietly, and that 'all this' is mere egotism on my part. He doesn't see what refinement of egotism it is on his own part--and at the same time, what ox-like coarseness! Have you ever read of the death of one Stepan Gleboff, in the eighteenth century? I read of it yesterday by chance."

"Who was he?"

He was impaled on a stake in the time of Peter."

"I know, I know! He lay there fifteen hours in the hard frost, and died with the most extraordinary fortitude--I know--what of him?"

"Only that God gives that sort of dying to some, and not to others. Perhaps you think, though, that I could not die like Gleboff?"

"Not at all!" said the prince, blushing. "I was only going to say that you--not that you could not be like Gleboff--but that you would have been more like @

"I guess what you mean--I should be an Osterman, not a Gleboff-- eh? Is that what you meant?"

"What Osterman?" asked the prince in some surprise.

"Why, Osterman--the diplomatist. Peter's Osterman," muttered Hippolyte, confused. There was a moment's pause of mutual confusion.

Oh, no, no!" said the prince at last, "that was not what I was going to say--oh no! I don't think you would ever have been like Osterman."