INSANE CHARACTERS IN FICTION. 55 



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 abso- 

 lute 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 com- 

 mission of an offense. N^early 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. 



lleasoning 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 uncon- 

 sciously 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 won- 

 dered 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 peni- 

 tence 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 myslf 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. 



