help Viéra Pavlovna in undoing the things. Any one in Rakhmétof's place would have been asked to do it, or would have offered his services. But he did not offer, and he was not asked. Viéra Pavlovna only pressed his hand, and, with sincere feeling said that she was very grateful to him for his attention.
"I shall remain in the library," he said. "If anything is needed, call me, and if anybody comes, I will open the door. Don't you trouble yourself."
With these words he went into the library; took from his pocket a big piece of ham and a hunk of black rye bread—all of which must have weighed four pounds; he sat down and ate it to the last crumb, striving to chew it all very fine; he drank half a pitcher of water; then he went to the book-shelves and began to pick out something to read. "I know that; not original, not original, not original, not original." This criticism, "not original," referred to such books as Macaulay, Guizot, Thiers, Ranke, Gervinus.
"Ah! but here's something good!"
This he said, after reading on the back of several huge tomes, "Complete works of Newton." He began hastily to turn over the pages; finally he found what he was looking for, and with a lovely smile cried: "Here it is, here it is!—Observations on the Prophesies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John.[1] Yes, this side of knowledge has, till now, remained with me without any real foundation. Newton wrote this commentary when he was old, when he was half sane and half crazy. It is the classical fountain when one is on the question of the mixture of sense and insanity. Here is a question of world-wide historical interest; this mixture which is in almost all occurrences, in almost all books, and in almost all brains. But here it must be in a model form: in the first place, the most ingenious and normal brain that ever was known; in the second place, the acknowledged, undisputed insanity which was superinduced upon this brain. And so the book is capital in its way. The most obscure features of the general phenomenon must appear here more distinctly than anywhere else, and no one can have the least doubt that here you find these very features of this phenomenon, to which the features of the mixture of sanity and insanity are related. The book is worth studying."
- ↑ This title is given in English in the original.
