"Strange things are going on in our so-called Holy Russia in this
age of reform and great enterprises; this age of patriotism in
which hundreds of millions are yearly sent abroad; in which
industry is encouraged, and the hands of Labour paralyzed, etc.;
there is no end to this, gentlemen, so let us come to the point.
A strange thing has happened to a scion of our defunct
aristocracy. (DE PROFUNDIS!) The grandfathers of these scions
ruined themselves at the gaming-tables; their fathers were forced
to serve as officers or subalterns; some have died just as they
were about to be tried for innocent thoughtlessness in the
handling of public funds. Their children are sometimes congenital
idiots, like the hero of our story; sometimes they are found in
the dock at the Assizes, where they are generally acquitted by
the jury for edifying motives; sometimes they distinguish
themselves by one of those burning scandals that amaze the public
and add another blot to the stained record of our age. Six months
ago--that is, last winter--this particular scion returned to
Russia, wearing gaiters like a foreigner, and shivering with cold
in an old scantily-lined cloak. He had come from Switzerland,
where he had just undergone a successful course of treatment for
idiocy (SIC!). Certainly Fortune favoured him, for, apart from
the interesting malady of which he was cured in Switzerland (can
there be a cure for idiocy?) his story proves the truth of the
Russian proverb that 'happiness is the right of certain classes!'
Judge for yourselves. Our subject was an infant in arms when he
lost his father, an officer who died just as he was about to be
court-martialled for gambling away the funds of his company, and
perhaps also for flogging a subordinate to excess (remember the
good old days, gentlemen). The orphan was brought up by the
charity of a very rich Russian landowner. In the good old days,
this man, whom we will call P--, owned four thousand souls as
serfs (souls as serfs!--can you understand such an expression,
gentlemen? I cannot; it must be looked up in a dictionary before
one can understand it; these things of a bygone day are already
unintelligible to us). He appears to have been one of those
Russian parasites who lead an idle existence abroad, spending the
summer at some spa, and the winter in Paris, to the greater
profit of the organizers of public balls. It may safely be said
that the manager of the Chateau des Fleurs (lucky man!) pocketed
at least a third of the money paid by Russian peasants to their
lords in the days of serfdom. However this may be, the gay P--
brought up the orphan like a prince, provided him with tutors and
governesses (pretty, of course!) whom he chose himself in Paris.
But the little aristocrat, the last of his noble race, was an
idiot. The governesses, recruited at the Chateau des Fleurs,
laboured in vain; at twenty years of age their pupil could not
speak in any language, not even Russian. But ignorance of the
latter was still excusable. At last P-- was seized with a strange
notion; he imagined that in Switzerland they could change an
idiot into a mail of sense. After all, the idea was quite
logical; a parasite and landowner naturally supposed that
intelligence was a marketable commodity like everything else,
and that in Switzerland especially it could be bought for money.
The case was entrusted to a celebrated Swiss professor, and cost
thousands of roubles; the treatment lasted five years. Needless
to say, the idiot did not become intelligent, but it is alleged
that he grew into something more or less resembling a man. At
this stage P-- died suddenly, and, as usual, he had made no will
and left his affairs in disorder. A crowd of eager claimants
arose, who cared nothing about any last scion of a noble race
undergoing treatment in Switzerland, at the expense of the
deceased, as a congenital idiot. Idiot though he was, the noble
scion tried to cheat his professor, and they say he succeeded in
getting him to continue the treatment gratis for two years, by
concealing the death of his benefactor. But the professor himself
was a charlatan. Getting anxious at last when no money was
forthcoming, and alarmed above all by his patient's appetite, he
presented him with a pair of old gaiters and a shabby cloak and
packed him off to Russia, third class. It would seem that Fortune
had turned her back upon our hero. Not at all; Fortune, who lets
whole populations die of hunger, showered all her gifts at once
upon the little aristocrat, like Kryloff's Cloud which passes
over an arid plain and empties itself into the sea. He had
scarcely arrived in St. Petersburg, when a relation of his
mother's (who was of bourgeois origin, of course), died at
Moscow. He was a merchant, an Old Believer, and he had no
children. He left a fortune of several millions in good current
coin, and everything came to our noble scion, our gaitered baron,
formerly treated for idiocy in a Swiss lunatic asylum. Instantly
the scene changed, crowds of friends gathered round our baron,
who meanwhile had lost his head over a celebrated demi-mondaine;
he even discovered some relations; moreover a number of young
girls of high birth burned to be united to him in lawful
matrimony. Could anyone possibly imagine a better match?
Aristocrat, millionaire, and idiot, he has every advantage! One
might hunt in vain for his equal, even with the lantern of
Diogenes; his like is not to be had even by getting it made to
order!"