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 gr