Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/65

Rh egotistical son deserts the mother who adores him to go to the south with the wealthy Amasia, daughter of his father's enemy.

In Dostoievski, madmen, especially epileptics, constitute the absolute majority of the characters; or else they are born criminals, such as my school has attempted to identify by the figures on the hand.

"This strange family," he writes in The House of the Dead, "had an air which attracted notice at the first glance." All the prisoners were melancholy, envious, terribly vain, presumptuous, susceptible, and formal in the highest degree. Vanity ruled always, without the least sign of shame or repentance or the least sorrow over the commission of an offense. Nearly all the convicts dreamed aloud or raved during sleep. Most usually they spoke words of abuse and slang, talked of knife and axe. "We are a ruined people," they said; "we have no bowels; therefore we cry out in the night."

This impossibility of feeling remorse or penitence, along with vanity and exaggerated love of pomp, are characteristics well known to all observers. But other traits were manifested perhaps more conspicuous, and such as are common to children. On feast days the more elegant ones dressed gorgeously, and could be seen parading themselves through the barracks. Pleasure in being well dressed amounted to childishness in them.

Reasoning has no power upon men like Petroff, because they have not any decisive will. If they have, there are no longer obstacles to it. Such persons are born with an idea that moves them unconsciously all their lives hither and thither. They are quiet till they have found some object that strongly arouses their desire; then they no longer spare even their heads. "More than once have I wondered to see how Petroff robbed me in spite of the affection he had for me. This happened to him at intervals, when he had a strong desire to drink. A person like him is capable of assassinating a man for twenty-five soldi, only to drink a litre; on other occasions he would scorn thousands of rubles. He often confessed his thefts to me, lamenting that I no longer had the objects, but showed no penitence for having stolen them; bore reproofs because he thought they were inevitable, or because he deserved to receive them; because I ought to punish him to compensate myslfmyself [sic] for the things I had lost, but thought within himself that they were trifles that one ought to be above speaking of."

Further on the novelist speaks of the smuggler by profession, a pleasant fellow, condemned for life for his offenses, who could not lose the instinct for smuggling brandy into the prison. He received only a ridiculous profit, was greatly afraid of the rod, although he had rarely passed under it, wept, swore that he would not offend any more, and then fell down.