covered with a minute white rash and towards evening she died, gazing at me with her big black eyes as though she understood already. I don’t know why I never thought to take a photograph of the dead baby. But will it be believed that I cried that evening, and, in fact, I howled as I had never let myself do before, and Marie Ivanovna had to try to comfort me, again without the least mockery either on her part or on Nikolay Semyonovitch’s. The carpenter made a little coffin, and Marie Ivanovna finished it with a frill and a pretty little pillow, while I bought flowers and strewed them on the baby. So they carried away my poor little blossom, whom it will hardly be believed I can’t forget even now. A little afterwards, however, this sudden adventure made me reflect seriously. Little Arina had not cost me much, of course, the coffin, the burial, the doctor, the flowers, and the payment of the carpenter’s wife came altogether to thirty roubles. As I was going to Petersburg I made up this sum from the forty roubles sent to me by Versilov for the journey and from the sale of various articles before my departure, so that my capital remained intact. But I thought: ‘If I am going to be turned aside like this, I shan’t get far.’ The affair with the student showed that the ‘_idea_’ might absorb me till it blurred my impressions and drew me away from the realities of life. The incident with little Arina proved, on the contrary, that no ‘_idea_’ was strong enough to absorb me, at least so completely that I should not stop short in the face of an overwhelming fact and sacrifice to it at once all that I had done for the ‘idea’ by years of labour. Both conclusions were nevertheless true.”[139] II “‘In what way can I be of use to you, honoured prince, since anyway you ... called me just now,’ he said at last after a brief silence. “‘Why, I asked you about the general,’ Myshkin, who had been musing for a moment, answered hurriedly, ‘and ... in regard to that theft you told me about.’ “‘In regard to what?’ “‘Why, as though you don’t understand me now! Oh dear, Lukyan Timofeyitch, you’re always acting a part! The money, the money, the four hundred roubles you lost, that day in your pocket-book, and about which you came to tell me in the morning, as you were setting off for Petersburg. Do you understand at last?’ “‘Ah, you’re talking about that four hundred roubles!’ drawled Lebedyev, as though he had only just guessed. ‘I thank you, prince, for your sincere sympathy: it is too flattering for me, but ... I’ve found it some time since.’ “‘Found it? Ah, thank God!’ “‘That exclamation is most generous on your part, for four hundred roubles is no small matter for a poor man who lives by his hard work, with a large family of motherless children....’ “‘But I didn’t mean that! Of course, I am glad you found the money,’ Myshkin corrected himself quickly, ‘but how did you find it?’