But possibly he is not lying and is only genuinely stupid.

I like a genius to be rather stupid.

Mayn't he be a sort of genius among them?
Devil take the fellow!" He got up from the sofa and began pacing from one end of the room to the other for the sake of exercise, as he always did after lunch.
"Leaving here soon ?" asked Pyotr Stepanovitch from his easy chair, lighting a cigarette.
"I really came to sell an estate and I am in the hands of my bailiff." "You left, I believe, because they expected an epidemic out there after the war ?" "N-no, not entirely for that reason," Mr.Karmazinov went on, uttering his phrases with an affable intonation, and each time he turned round in pacing the corner there was a faint but jaunty quiver of his right leg.
"I certainly intend to live as long as I can." He laughed, not without venom.

"There is something in our Russian nobility that makes them wear out very quickly, from every point of view.

But I wish to wear out as late as possible, and now I am going abroad for good; there the climate is better, the houses are of stone, and everything stronger.