brings a clever man to despair. (As a rule, however,
nothing tragic happens;--his liver becomes a little damaged in the
course of time, nothing more serious. Such men do not give up their
aspirations after originality without a severe struggle,--and there have
been men who, though good fellows in themselves, and even benefactors
to humanity, have sunk to the level of base criminals for the sake of
originality).

Gania was a beginner, as it were, upon this road. A deep and
unchangeable consciousness of his own lack of talent, combined with a
vast longing to be able to persuade himself that he was original, had
rankled in his heart, even from childhood.

He seemed to have been born with overwrought nerves, and in his
passionate desire to excel, he was often led to the brink of some
rash step; and yet, having resolved upon such a step, when the moment
arrived, he invariably proved too sensible to take it. He was ready,
in the same way, to do a base action in order to obtain his wished-for
object; and yet, when the moment came to do it, he found that he was too
honest for any great baseness. (Not that he objected to acts of petty
meanness--he was always ready for THEM.) He looked with hate and
loathing on the poverty and downfall of his family, and treated his
mother with haughty contempt, although he knew that his whole future
depended on her character and reputation.

Aglaya had simply frightened him; yet he did not give up all thoughts of
her--though he never seriously hoped that she would condescend to him.
At the time of his "adventure" with Nastasia Philipovna he had come to
the conclusion that money was his only hope--money should do all for
him.

At the moment when he lost Aglaya, and after the scene with Nastasia, he
had felt so low in his own eyes that he actually brought the money back
to the prince. Of this returning of the money given to him by a madwoman
who had received it from a madman, he had often repented since--though
he never ceased to be proud of his action. During the short time that
Muishkin remained in Petersburg Gania had had time to come to hate him
for his sympathy, though the prince told him that it was "not everyone
who would have acted so nobly" as to return the money. He had long
pondered, too, over his relations with Aglaya, and had persuaded himself
that with such a strange, childish, innocent character as hers, things
might have ended very differently. Remorse then seized him; he thre