ew 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!"

"Oh, I don't know what this means" cried Ivan Fedorovitch, transported
with indignation.

"Leave off, Colia," begged the prince. Exclamations arose on all sides.

"Let him go on reading at all costs!" ordered Lizabetha Prokofievna,
evidently preserving her composure by a desperate effort. "Prince, if
the reading is stopped, you and I will quarrel."

Colia had no choice but to obey. With crimson cheeks he read on
unsteadily:

"But while our young millionaire dwelt as it were in the Empyrean,
something new occurred. One