Two words, so as not to forget: the prince was living in the same apartment then, but occupied almost all of it; the owner of the apartment, Mrs. Stolbeev, had stayed for only a month and gone off somewhere again.
II
THEY WERE TALKING about the nobility. I’ll note that this idea sometimes troubled the prince very much, despite all his air of progressism, and I even suspect that much that was bad in his life came and originated from this idea; valuing his princehood and being destitute, he squandered money all his life out of false pride and got entangled in debts. Versilov hinted to him several times that this was not what made for princehood, and wanted to implant a higher notion in his heart; but in the end it was as if the prince began to be offended at being taught. Evidently there had been something of the sort that morning, but I didn’t catch the beginning. Versilov’s words seemed retrograde to me at first, but then he got better.
“The word ‘honor’ means duty,” he said (I’m conveying only the sense, as far as I remember it). “When the state is ruled by a dominant estate, the land stands firm. The dominant estate always has its honor and its profession of honor, which may also be wrong, but which almost always serves to bind and strengthen the land; it is useful morally, but more so politically. But the slaves suffer, that is, all who do not belong to that estate. So that they won’t suffer, they are granted equal rights. That has been done with us as well, and it’s splendid. But by all experience, everywhere so far (in Europe, that is), with the equalizing of rights has come a lowering of the sense of honor and therefore of duty. Egoism has replaced the former binding idea, and everything has broken down into the freedom of persons. Set free, left without a binding thought, they have finally lost all higher connection to such a degree that they have even stopped defending the freedom they obtained. But the Russian type of nobility has never resembled the European. Even now our nobility, having lost its rights, could remain a higher estate as the guardian of honor, light, science, and the higher idea, and, above all, without shutting itself up in a separate caste, which would be the death of the idea. On the contrary, the gateway to this estate was thrown open with us all too long ago; and now the time has come to open it definitively. Let every deed of honor, science, and valor give anyone the right to join the higher category of people. In this way the estate turns by itself into what is merely a gathering of the best people, in the literal and true sense, and not in the former sense of a privileged caste. In this new or, better, renewed form, the estate might hold out.”
The prince bared his teeth:
“What kind of nobility would it be then? That’s some sort of Masonic lodge you’re planning, not a nobility.”
I repeat, the prince was terribly uneducated. I even swung around on the sofa in vexation, though I did not quite agree with Versilov. Versilov understood only too well that the prince was showing his teeth.
“I don’t know in what sense you spoke of Masonry,” he replied, “however, if even a Russian prince rejects such an idea, then, naturally, its time hasn’t come yet. The idea of honor and enlightenment as the covenant of each one who wants to join the estate, which is open and continually renewed, is of course a utopia, but why is it impossible? If this thought still lives, though only in a few heads, it’s not lost yet, but shines like a fiery spot in the deep darkness.”
“You love to use the words ‘higher thought,’ ‘great thought,’ ‘binding idea,’ and so on. I’d like to know, what essentially do you mean by the words ‘a great thought’?”
“I really don’t know how to answer you on that, my dear prince.” Versilov smiled subtly. “If I confess to you that I’m unable to answer it myself, that would be more accurate. A great thought is most often a feeling that sometimes goes without definition for too long. I know only that it was always that from which living life flowed—that is, not mental and contrived, but, on the contrary, amusing and gay; so that the higher idea from which it flows is decidedly necessary, to the general vexation, of course.”
“Why vexation?”
“Because it’s boring to live with ideas, and without ideas it’s always fun.”
The prince ate the pill.
“And what, in your opinion, is this living life?” (He was obviously angry.)
“I don’t know that either, Prince; I only know that it must be something terribly simple, most ordinary, staring us in the face every day and every minute, and so simple that we just can’t believe it could be so simple, and naturally we’ve been passing it by for many thousands of years now without noticing or recognizing it.”
“I only wanted to say that your idea of the nobility is at the same time a denial of the nobility,” said the prince.
“Well, since you’re so insistent, maybe the nobility never existed among us.”
