The Brothers Karamazov

PART I

Book I. The History Of A Family

Chapter I.
Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov

Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov,
a land owner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered
among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years
ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. For the present I will
only say that this “landowner”—for so we used to call him,
although he hardly spent a day of his life on his own estate—was a
strange type, yet one pretty frequently to be met with, a type abject and
vicious and at the same time senseless. But he was one of those senseless
persons who are very well capable of looking after their worldly affairs, and,
apparently, after nothing else. Fyodor Pavlovitch, for instance, began with
next to nothing; his estate was of the smallest; he ran to dine at other
men’s tables, and fastened on them as a toady, yet at his death it
appeared that he had a hundred thousand roubles in hard cash. At the same time,
he was all his life one of the most senseless, fantastical fellows in the whole
district. I repeat, it was not stupidity—the majority of these
fantastical fellows are shrewd and intelligent enough—but just
senselessness, and a peculiar national form of it.

He was married twice, and had three sons, the eldest, Dmitri, by his first
wife, and two, Ivan and Alexey, by his second. Fyodor Pavlovitch’s first
wife, Adelaïda Ivanovna, belonged to a fairly rich and distinguished noble
family, also landowners in our district, the Miüsovs. How it came to pass that
an heiress, who was also a beauty, and moreover one of those vigorous,
intelligent girls, so common in this generation, but sometimes also to be found
in the last, could have married such a worthless, puny weakling, as we all
called him, I won’t attempt to explain. I knew a young lady of the last
“romantic” generation who after some years of an enigmatic passion
for a gentleman, whom she might quite easily have married at any moment,
invented insuperable obstacles to their union, and ended by throwing herself
one stormy night into a rather deep and rapid river from a high bank, almost a
precipice, and so perished, entirely to satisfy her own caprice, and to be like
Shakespeare’s Ophelia. Indeed, if this precipice, a chosen and favorite
spot of hers, had been less picturesque, if there had been a prosaic flat bank
in its place, most likely the suicide would never have taken place. This is a
fact, and probably there have been not a few similar instances in the last two
or three generations. Adelaïda Ivanovna Miüsov’s action was similarly, no
doubt, an echo of other people’s ideas, and was due to the irritation
caused by lack of mental freedom. She wanted, perhaps, to show her feminine
independence, to override class distinctions and the despotism of her family.
And a pliable imagination persuaded her, we must suppose, for a brief moment,
that Fyodor Pavlovitch, in spite of his parasitic position, was one of the bold
and ironical spirits of that progressive epoch, though he was, in fact, an
ill‐natured buffoon and nothing more. What gave the marriage piquancy was that
it was preceded by an elopement, and this greatly captivated Adelaïda
Ivanovna’s fancy. Fyodor Pavlovitch’s position at the time made him
specially eager for any such enterprise, for he was passionately anxious to
make a career in one way or another. To attach himself to a good family and
obtain a dowry was an alluring prospect. As for mutual love it did not exist
apparently, either in the bride or in him, in spite of Adelaïda
Ivanovna’s beauty. This was, perhaps, a unique case of the kind in the
life of Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was always of a voluptuous temper, and ready to
run after any petticoat on the slightest encouragement. She seems to have been
the only woman who made no particular appeal to his senses.

Immediately after the elopement Adelaïda Ivanovna discerned in a flash that she
had no feeling for her husband but contempt. The marriage accordingly showed
itself in its true colors with extraordinary rapidity. Although the family
accepted the event pretty quickly and apportioned the runaway bride her dowry,
the husband and wife began to lead a most disorderly life, and there were
everlasting scenes between them. It was said that the young wife showed
incomparably more generosity and dignity than Fyodor Pavlovitch, who, as is now
known, got hold of all her money up to twenty‐five thousand roubles as soon as
she received it, so that those thousands were lost to her for ever. The little
village and the rather fine town house which formed part of her dowry he did
his utmost for a long time to transfer to his name, by means of some deed of
conveyance. He would probably have succeeded, merely from her moral fatigue and
desire to get rid of him, and from the contempt and loathing he aroused by his
persistent and shameless importunity. But, fortunately, Adelaïda
Ivanovna’s family intervened and circumvented his greediness. It is known
for a fact that frequent fights took place between the husband and wife, but
rumor had it that Fyodor Pavlovitch did not beat his wife but was beaten by
her, for she was a hot‐tempered, bold, dark‐browed, impatient woman, possessed
of remarkable physical strength. Finally, she left the house and ran away from
Fyodor Pavlovitch with a destitute divinity student, leaving Mitya, a child of
three years old, in her husband’s hands. Immediately Fyodor Pavlovitch
introduced a regular harem into the house, and abandoned himself to orgies of
drunkenness. In the intervals he used to drive all over the province,
complaining tearfully to each and all of Adelaïda Ivanovna’s having left
him, going into details too disgraceful for a husband to mention in regard to
his own married life. What seemed to gratify him and flatter his self‐love most
was to play the ridiculous part of the injured husband, and to parade his woes
with embellishments.

“One would think that you’d got a promotion, Fyodor Pavlovitch, you
seem so pleased in spite of your sorrow,” scoffers said to him. Many even
added that he was glad of a new comic part in which to play the buffoon, and
that it was simply to make it funnier that he pretended to be unaware of his
ludicrous position. But, who knows, it may have been simplicity. At last he
succeeded in getting on the track of his runaway wife. The poor woman turned
out to be in Petersburg, where she had gone with her divinity student, and
where she had thrown herself into a life of complete emancipation. Fyodor
Pavlovitch at once began bustling about, making preparations to go to
Petersburg, with what object he could not himself have said. He would perhaps
have really gone; but having determined to do so he felt at once entitled to
fortify himself for the journey by another bout of reckless drinking. And just
at that time his wife’s family received the news of her death in
Petersburg. She had died quite suddenly in a garret, according to one story, of
typhus, or as another version had it, of starvation. Fyodor Pavlovitch was
drunk when he heard of his wife’s death, and the story is that he ran out
into the street and began shouting with joy, raising his hands to Heaven:
“Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace,” but others
say he wept without restraint like a little child, so much so that people were
sorry for him, in spite of the repulsion he inspired. It is quite possible that
both versions were true, that he rejoiced at his release, and at the same time
wept for her who released him. As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are
much more naïve and simple‐hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too.

Chapter II.
He Gets Rid Of His Eldest Son

You can easily imagine what a father such a man could be and how he would bring
up his children. His behavior as a father was exactly what might be expected.
He completely abandoned the child of his marriage with Adelaïda Ivanovna, not
from malice, nor because of his matrimonial grievances, but simply because he
forgot him. While he was wearying every one with his tears and complaints, and
turning his house into a sink of debauchery, a faithful servant of the family,
Grigory, took the three‐year‐old Mitya into his care. If he hadn’t looked
after him there would have been no one even to change the baby’s little
shirt.

It happened moreover that the child’s relations on his mother’s
side forgot him too at first. His grandfather was no longer living, his widow,
Mitya’s grandmother, had moved to Moscow, and was seriously ill, while
his daughters were married, so that Mitya remained for almost a whole year in
old Grigory’s charge and lived with him in the servant’s cottage.
But if his father had remembered him (he could not, indeed, have been
altogether unaware of his existence) he would have sent him back to the
cottage, as the child would only have been in the way of his debaucheries. But
a cousin of Mitya’s mother, Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miüsov, happened to
return from Paris. He lived for many years afterwards abroad, but was at that
time quite a young man, and distinguished among the Miüsovs as a man of
enlightened ideas and of European culture, who had been in the capitals and
abroad. Towards the end of his life he became a Liberal of the type common in
the forties and fifties. In the course of his career he had come into contact
with many of the most Liberal men of his epoch, both in Russia and abroad. He
had known Proudhon and Bakunin personally, and in his declining years was very
fond of describing the three days of the Paris Revolution of February 1848,
hinting that he himself had almost taken part in the fighting on the
barricades. This was one of the most grateful recollections of his youth. He
had an independent property of about a thousand souls, to reckon in the old
style. His splendid estate lay on the outskirts of our little town and bordered
on the lands of our famous monastery, with which Pyotr Alexandrovitch began an
endless lawsuit, almost as soon as he came into the estate, concerning the
rights of fishing in the river or wood‐cutting in the forest, I don’t
know exactly which. He regarded it as his duty as a citizen and a man of
culture to open an attack upon the “clericals.” Hearing all about
Adelaïda Ivanovna, whom he, of course, remembered, and in whom he had at one
time been interested, and learning of the existence of Mitya, he intervened, in
spite of all his youthful indignation and contempt for Fyodor Pavlovitch. He
made the latter’s acquaintance for the first time, and told him directly
that he wished to undertake the child’s education. He used long
afterwards to tell as a characteristic touch, that when he began to speak of
Mitya, Fyodor Pavlovitch looked for some time as though he did not understand
what child he was talking about, and even as though he was surprised to hear
that he had a little son in the house. The story may have been exaggerated, yet
it must have been something like the truth.

Fyodor Pavlovitch was all his life fond of acting, of suddenly playing an
unexpected part, sometimes without any motive for doing so, and even to his own
direct disadvantage, as, for instance, in the present case. This habit,
however, is characteristic of a very great number of people, some of them very
clever ones, not like Fyodor Pavlovitch. Pyotr Alexandrovitch carried the
business through vigorously, and was appointed, with Fyodor Pavlovitch, joint
guardian of the child, who had a small property, a house and land, left him by
his mother. Mitya did, in fact, pass into this cousin’s keeping, but as
the latter had no family of his own, and after securing the revenues of his
estates was in haste to return at once to Paris, he left the boy in charge of
one of his cousins, a lady living in Moscow. It came to pass that, settling
permanently in Paris he, too, forgot the child, especially when the Revolution
of February broke out, making an impression on his mind that he remembered all
the rest of his life. The Moscow lady died, and Mitya passed into the care of
one of her married daughters. I believe he changed his home a fourth time later
on. I won’t enlarge upon that now, as I shall have much to tell later of
Fyodor Pavlovitch’s firstborn, and must confine myself now to the most
essential facts about him, without which I could not begin my story.

In the first place, this Mitya, or rather Dmitri Fyodorovitch, was the only one
of Fyodor Pavlovitch’s three sons who grew up in the belief that he had
property, and that he would be independent on coming of age. He spent an
irregular boyhood and youth. He did not finish his studies at the gymnasium, he
got into a military school, then went to the Caucasus, was promoted, fought a
duel, and was degraded to the ranks, earned promotion again, led a wild life,
and spent a good deal of money. He did not begin to receive any income from
Fyodor Pavlovitch until he came of age, and until then got into debt. He saw
and knew his father, Fyodor Pavlovitch, for the first time on coming of age,
when he visited our neighborhood on purpose to settle with him about his
property. He seems not to have liked his father. He did not stay long with him,
and made haste to get away, having only succeeded in obtaining a sum of money,
and entering into an agreement for future payments from the estate, of the
revenues and value of which he was unable (a fact worthy of note), upon this
occasion, to get a statement from his father. Fyodor Pavlovitch remarked for
the first time then (this, too, should be noted) that Mitya had a vague and
exaggerated idea of his property. Fyodor Pavlovitch was very well satisfied
with this, as it fell in with his own designs. He gathered only that the young
man was frivolous, unruly, of violent passions, impatient, and dissipated, and
that if he could only obtain ready money he would be satisfied, although only,
of course, for a short time. So Fyodor Pavlovitch began to take advantage of
this fact, sending him from time to time small doles, installments. In the end,
when four years later, Mitya, losing patience, came a second time to our little
town to settle up once for all with his father, it turned out to his amazement
that he had nothing, that it was difficult to get an account even, that he had
received the whole value of his property in sums of money from Fyodor
Pavlovitch, and was perhaps even in debt to him, that by various agreements
into which he had, of his own desire, entered at various previous dates, he had
no right to expect anything more, and so on, and so on. The young man was
overwhelmed, suspected deceit and cheating, and was almost beside himself. And,
indeed, this circumstance led to the catastrophe, the account of which forms
the subject of my first introductory story, or rather the external side of it.
But before I pass to that story I must say a little of Fyodor
Pavlovitch’s other two sons, and of their origin.

Chapter III.
The Second Marriage And The Second Family

Very shortly after getting his four‐year‐old Mitya off his hands Fyodor
Pavlovitch married a second time. His second marriage lasted eight years. He
took this second wife, Sofya Ivanovna, also a very young girl, from another
province, where he had gone upon some small piece of business in company with a
Jew. Though Fyodor Pavlovitch was a drunkard and a vicious debauchee he never
neglected investing his capital, and managed his business affairs very
successfully, though, no doubt, not over‐ scrupulously. Sofya Ivanovna was the
daughter of an obscure deacon, and was left from childhood an orphan without
relations. She grew up in the house of a general’s widow, a wealthy old
lady of good position, who was at once her benefactress and tormentor. I do not
know the details, but I have only heard that the orphan girl, a meek and gentle
creature, was once cut down from a halter in which she was hanging from a nail
in the loft, so terrible were her sufferings from the caprice and everlasting
nagging of this old woman, who was apparently not bad‐hearted but had become an
insufferable tyrant through idleness.

Fyodor Pavlovitch made her an offer; inquiries were made about him and he was
refused. But again, as in his first marriage, he proposed an elopement to the
orphan girl. There is very little doubt that she would not on any account have
married him if she had known a little more about him in time. But she lived in
another province; besides, what could a little girl of sixteen know about it,
except that she would be better at the bottom of the river than remaining with
her benefactress. So the poor child exchanged a benefactress for a benefactor.
Fyodor Pavlovitch did not get a penny this time, for the general’s widow
was furious. She gave them nothing and cursed them both. But he had not
reckoned on a dowry; what allured him was the remarkable beauty of the innocent
girl, above all her innocent appearance, which had a peculiar attraction for a
vicious profligate, who had hitherto admired only the coarser types of feminine
beauty.

“Those innocent eyes slit my soul up like a razor,” he used to say
afterwards, with his loathsome snigger. In a man so depraved this might, of
course, mean no more than sensual attraction. As he had received no dowry with
his wife, and had, so to speak, taken her “from the halter,” he did
not stand on ceremony with her. Making her feel that she had
“wronged” him, he took advantage of her phenomenal meekness and
submissiveness to trample on the elementary decencies of marriage. He gathered
loose women into his house, and carried on orgies of debauchery in his
wife’s presence. To show what a pass things had come to, I may mention
that Grigory, the gloomy, stupid, obstinate, argumentative servant, who had
always hated his first mistress, Adelaïda Ivanovna, took the side of his new
mistress. He championed her cause, abusing Fyodor Pavlovitch in a manner little
befitting a servant, and on one occasion broke up the revels and drove all the
disorderly women out of the house. In the end this unhappy young woman, kept in
terror from her childhood, fell into that kind of nervous disease which is most
frequently found in peasant women who are said to be “possessed by
devils.” At times after terrible fits of hysterics she even lost her
reason. Yet she bore Fyodor Pavlovitch two sons, Ivan and Alexey, the eldest in
the first year of marriage and the second three years later. When she died,
little Alexey was in his fourth year, and, strange as it seems, I know that he
remembered his mother all his life, like a dream, of course. At her death
almost exactly the same thing happened to the two little boys as to their elder
brother, Mitya. They were completely forgotten and abandoned by their father.
They were looked after by the same Grigory and lived in his cottage, where they
were found by the tyrannical old lady who had brought up their mother. She was
still alive, and had not, all those eight years, forgotten the insult done her.
All that time she was obtaining exact information as to her Sofya’s
manner of life, and hearing of her illness and hideous surroundings she
declared aloud two or three times to her retainers:

“It serves her right. God has punished her for her ingratitude.”

Exactly three months after Sofya Ivanovna’s death the general’s
widow suddenly appeared in our town, and went straight to Fyodor
Pavlovitch’s house. She spent only half an hour in the town but she did a
great deal. It was evening. Fyodor Pavlovitch, whom she had not seen for those
eight years, came in to her drunk. The story is that instantly upon seeing him,
without any sort of explanation, she gave him two good, resounding slaps on the
face, seized him by a tuft of hair, and shook him three times up and down.
Then, without a word, she went straight to the cottage to the two boys. Seeing,
at the first glance, that they were unwashed and in dirty linen, she promptly
gave Grigory, too, a box on the ear, and announcing that she would carry off
both the children she wrapped them just as they were in a rug, put them in the
carriage, and drove off to her own town. Grigory accepted the blow like a
devoted slave, without a word, and when he escorted the old lady to her
carriage he made her a low bow and pronounced impressively that, “God
would repay her for the orphans.” “You are a blockhead all the
same,” the old lady shouted to him as she drove away.

Fyodor Pavlovitch, thinking it over, decided that it was a good thing, and did
not refuse the general’s widow his formal consent to any proposition in
regard to his children’s education. As for the slaps she had given him,
he drove all over the town telling the story.

It happened that the old lady died soon after this, but she left the boys in
her will a thousand roubles each “for their instruction, and so that all
be spent on them exclusively, with the condition that it be so portioned out as
to last till they are twenty‐one, for it is more than adequate provision for
such children. If other people think fit to throw away their money, let
them.” I have not read the will myself, but I heard there was something
queer of the sort, very whimsically expressed. The principal heir, Yefim
Petrovitch Polenov, the Marshal of Nobility of the province, turned out,
however, to be an honest man. Writing to Fyodor Pavlovitch, and discerning at
once that he could extract nothing from him for his children’s education
(though the latter never directly refused but only procrastinated as he always
did in such cases, and was, indeed, at times effusively sentimental), Yefim
Petrovitch took a personal interest in the orphans. He became especially fond
of the younger, Alexey, who lived for a long while as one of his family. I beg
the reader to note this from the beginning. And to Yefim Petrovitch, a man of a
generosity and humanity rarely to be met with, the young people were more
indebted for their education and bringing up than to any one. He kept the two
thousand roubles left to them by the general’s widow intact, so that by
the time they came of age their portions had been doubled by the accumulation
of interest. He educated them both at his own expense, and certainly spent far
more than a thousand roubles upon each of them. I won’t enter into a
detailed account of their boyhood and youth, but will only mention a few of the
most important events. Of the elder, Ivan, I will only say that he grew into a
somewhat morose and reserved, though far from timid boy. At ten years old he
had realized that they were living not in their own home but on other
people’s charity, and that their father was a man of whom it was
disgraceful to speak. This boy began very early, almost in his infancy (so they
say at least), to show a brilliant and unusual aptitude for learning. I
don’t know precisely why, but he left the family of Yefim Petrovitch when
he was hardly thirteen, entering a Moscow gymnasium, and boarding with an
experienced and celebrated teacher, an old friend of Yefim Petrovitch. Ivan
used to declare afterwards that this was all due to the “ardor for good
works” of Yefim Petrovitch, who was captivated by the idea that the
boy’s genius should be trained by a teacher of genius. But neither Yefim
Petrovitch nor this teacher was living when the young man finished at the
gymnasium and entered the university. As Yefim Petrovitch had made no provision
for the payment of the tyrannical old lady’s legacy, which had grown from
one thousand to two, it was delayed, owing to formalities inevitable in Russia,
and the young man was in great straits for the first two years at the
university, as he was forced to keep himself all the time he was studying. It
must be noted that he did not even attempt to communicate with his father,
perhaps from pride, from contempt for him, or perhaps from his cool common
sense, which told him that from such a father he would get no real assistance.
However that may have been, the young man was by no means despondent and
succeeded in getting work, at first giving sixpenny lessons and afterwards
getting paragraphs on street incidents into the newspapers under the signature
of “Eye‐Witness.” These paragraphs, it was said, were so
interesting and piquant that they were soon taken. This alone showed the young
man’s practical and intellectual superiority over the masses of needy and
unfortunate students of both sexes who hang about the offices of the newspapers
and journals, unable to think of anything better than everlasting entreaties
for copying and translations from the French. Having once got into touch with
the editors Ivan Fyodorovitch always kept up his connection with them, and in
his latter years at the university he published brilliant reviews of books upon
various special subjects, so that he became well known in literary circles. But
only in his last year he suddenly succeeded in attracting the attention of a
far wider circle of readers, so that a great many people noticed and remembered
him. It was rather a curious incident. When he had just left the university and
was preparing to go abroad upon his two thousand roubles, Ivan Fyodorovitch
published in one of the more important journals a strange article, which
attracted general notice, on a subject of which he might have been supposed to
know nothing, as he was a student of natural science. The article dealt with a
subject which was being debated everywhere at the time—the position of
the ecclesiastical courts. After discussing several opinions on the subject he
went on to explain his own view. What was most striking about the article was
its tone, and its unexpected conclusion. Many of the Church party regarded him
unquestioningly as on their side. And yet not only the secularists but even
atheists joined them in their applause. Finally some sagacious persons opined
that the article was nothing but an impudent satirical burlesque. I mention
this incident particularly because this article penetrated into the famous
monastery in our neighborhood, where the inmates, being particularly interested
in the question of the ecclesiastical courts, were completely bewildered by it.
Learning the author’s name, they were interested in his being a native of
the town and the son of “that Fyodor Pavlovitch.” And just then it
was that the author himself made his appearance among us.

Why Ivan Fyodorovitch had come amongst us I remember asking myself at the time
with a certain uneasiness. This fateful visit, which was the first step leading
to so many consequences, I never fully explained to myself. It seemed strange
on the face of it that a young man so learned, so proud, and apparently so
cautious, should suddenly visit such an infamous house and a father who had
ignored him all his life, hardly knew him, never thought of him, and would not
under any circumstances have given him money, though he was always afraid that
his sons Ivan and Alexey would also come to ask him for it. And here the young
man was staying in the house of such a father, had been living with him for two
months, and they were on the best possible terms. This last fact was a special
cause of wonder to many others as well as to me. Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miüsov,
of whom we have spoken already, the cousin of Fyodor Pavlovitch’s first
wife, happened to be in the neighborhood again on a visit to his estate. He had
come from Paris, which was his permanent home. I remember that he was more
surprised than any one when he made the acquaintance of the young man, who
interested him extremely, and with whom he sometimes argued and not without an
inner pang compared himself in acquirements.

“He is proud,” he used to say, “he will never be in want of
pence; he has got money enough to go abroad now. What does he want here? Every
one can see that he hasn’t come for money, for his father would never
give him any. He has no taste for drink and dissipation, and yet his father
can’t do without him. They get on so well together!”

That was the truth; the young man had an unmistakable influence over his
father, who positively appeared to be behaving more decently and even seemed at
times ready to obey his son, though often extremely and even spitefully
perverse.

It was only later that we learned that Ivan had come partly at the request of,
and in the interests of, his elder brother, Dmitri, whom he saw for the first
time on this very visit, though he had before leaving Moscow been in
correspondence with him about an important matter of more concern to Dmitri
than himself. What that business was the reader will learn fully in due time.
Yet even when I did know of this special circumstance I still felt Ivan
Fyodorovitch to be an enigmatic figure, and thought his visit rather
mysterious.

I may add that Ivan appeared at the time in the light of a mediator between his
father and his elder brother Dmitri, who was in open quarrel with his father
and even planning to bring an action against him.

The family, I repeat, was now united for the first time, and some of its
members met for the first time in their lives. The younger brother, Alexey, had
been a year already among us, having been the first of the three to arrive. It
is of that brother Alexey I find it most difficult to speak in this
introduction. Yet I must give some preliminary account of him, if only to
explain one queer fact, which is that I have to introduce my hero to the reader
wearing the cassock of a novice. Yes, he had been for the last year in our
monastery, and seemed willing to be cloistered there for the rest of his life.

Chapter IV.
The Third Son, Alyosha

He was only twenty, his brother Ivan was in his twenty‐fourth year at the time,
while their elder brother Dmitri was twenty‐seven. First of all, I must explain
that this young man, Alyosha, was not a fanatic, and, in my opinion at least,
was not even a mystic. I may as well give my full opinion from the beginning.
He was simply an early lover of humanity, and that he adopted the monastic life
was simply because at that time it struck him, so to say, as the ideal escape
for his soul struggling from the darkness of worldly wickedness to the light of
love. And the reason this life struck him in this way was that he found in it
at that time, as he thought, an extraordinary being, our celebrated elder,
Zossima, to whom he became attached with all the warm first love of his ardent
heart. But I do not dispute that he was very strange even at that time, and had
been so indeed from his cradle. I have mentioned already, by the way, that
though he lost his mother in his fourth year he remembered her all his
life—her face, her caresses, “as though she stood living before
me.” Such memories may persist, as every one knows, from an even earlier
age, even from two years old, but scarcely standing out through a whole
lifetime like spots of light out of darkness, like a corner torn out of a huge
picture, which has all faded and disappeared except that fragment. That is how
it was with him. He remembered one still summer evening, an open window, the
slanting rays of the setting sun (that he recalled most vividly of all); in a
corner of the room the holy image, before it a lighted lamp, and on her knees
before the image his mother, sobbing hysterically with cries and moans,
snatching him up in both arms, squeezing him close till it hurt, and praying
for him to the Mother of God, holding him out in both arms to the image as
though to put him under the Mother’s protection … and suddenly a nurse
runs in and snatches him from her in terror. That was the picture! And Alyosha
remembered his mother’s face at that minute. He used to say that it was
frenzied but beautiful as he remembered. But he rarely cared to speak of this
memory to any one. In his childhood and youth he was by no means expansive, and
talked little indeed, but not from shyness or a sullen unsociability; quite the
contrary, from something different, from a sort of inner preoccupation entirely
personal and unconcerned with other people, but so important to him that he
seemed, as it were, to forget others on account of it. But he was fond of
people: he seemed throughout his life to put implicit trust in people: yet no
one ever looked on him as a simpleton or naïve person. There was something
about him which made one feel at once (and it was so all his life afterwards)
that he did not care to be a judge of others—that he would never take it
upon himself to criticize and would never condemn any one for anything. He
seemed, indeed, to accept everything without the least condemnation though
often grieving bitterly: and this was so much so that no one could surprise or
frighten him even in his earliest youth. Coming at twenty to his father’s
house, which was a very sink of filthy debauchery, he, chaste and pure as he
was, simply withdrew in silence when to look on was unbearable, but without the
slightest sign of contempt or condemnation. His father, who had once been in a
dependent position, and so was sensitive and ready to take offense, met him at
first with distrust and sullenness. “He does not say much,” he used
to say, “and thinks the more.” But soon, within a fortnight indeed,
he took to embracing him and kissing him terribly often, with drunken tears,
with sottish sentimentality, yet he evidently felt a real and deep affection
for him, such as he had never been capable of feeling for any one before.

Every one, indeed, loved this young man wherever he went, and it was so from
his earliest childhood. When he entered the household of his patron and
benefactor, Yefim Petrovitch Polenov, he gained the hearts of all the family,
so that they looked on him quite as their own child. Yet he entered the house
at such a tender age that he could not have acted from design nor artfulness in
winning affection. So that the gift of making himself loved directly and
unconsciously was inherent in him, in his very nature, so to speak. It was the
same at school, though he seemed to be just one of those children who are
distrusted, sometimes ridiculed, and even disliked by their schoolfellows. He
was dreamy, for instance, and rather solitary. From his earliest childhood he
was fond of creeping into a corner to read, and yet he was a general favorite
all the while he was at school. He was rarely playful or merry, but any one
could see at the first glance that this was not from any sullenness. On the
contrary he was bright and good‐tempered. He never tried to show off among his
schoolfellows. Perhaps because of this, he was never afraid of any one, yet the
boys immediately understood that he was not proud of his fearlessness and
seemed to be unaware that he was bold and courageous. He never resented an
insult. It would happen that an hour after the offense he would address the
offender or answer some question with as trustful and candid an expression as
though nothing had happened between them. And it was not that he seemed to have
forgotten or intentionally forgiven the affront, but simply that he did not
regard it as an affront, and this completely conquered and captivated the boys.
He had one characteristic which made all his schoolfellows from the bottom
class to the top want to mock at him, not from malice but because it amused
them. This characteristic was a wild fanatical modesty and chastity. He could
not bear to hear certain words and certain conversations about women. There are
“certain” words and conversations unhappily impossible to eradicate
in schools. Boys pure in mind and heart, almost children, are fond of talking
in school among themselves, and even aloud, of things, pictures, and images of
which even soldiers would sometimes hesitate to speak. More than that, much
that soldiers have no knowledge or conception of is familiar to quite young
children of our intellectual and higher classes. There is no moral depravity,
no real corrupt inner cynicism in it, but there is the appearance of it, and it
is often looked upon among them as something refined, subtle, daring, and
worthy of imitation. Seeing that Alyosha Karamazov put his fingers in his ears
when they talked of “that,” they used sometimes to crowd round him,
pull his hands away, and shout nastiness into both ears, while he struggled,
slipped to the floor, tried to hide himself without uttering one word of abuse,
enduring their insults in silence. But at last they left him alone and gave up
taunting him with being a “regular girl,” and what’s more
they looked upon it with compassion as a weakness. He was always one of the
best in the class but was never first.

At the time of Yefim Petrovitch’s death Alyosha had two more years to
complete at the provincial gymnasium. The inconsolable widow went almost
immediately after his death for a long visit to Italy with her whole family,
which consisted only of women and girls. Alyosha went to live in the house of
two distant relations of Yefim Petrovitch, ladies whom he had never seen
before. On what terms he lived with them he did not know himself. It was very
characteristic of him, indeed, that he never cared at whose expense he was
living. In that respect he was a striking contrast to his elder brother Ivan,
who struggled with poverty for his first two years in the university,
maintained himself by his own efforts, and had from childhood been bitterly
conscious of living at the expense of his benefactor. But this strange trait in
Alyosha’s character must not, I think, be criticized too severely, for at
the slightest acquaintance with him any one would have perceived that Alyosha
was one of those youths, almost of the type of religious enthusiast, who, if
they were suddenly to come into possession of a large fortune, would not
hesitate to give it away for the asking, either for good works or perhaps to a
clever rogue. In general he seemed scarcely to know the value of money, not, of
course, in a literal sense. When he was given pocket‐money, which he never
asked for, he was either terribly careless of it so that it was gone in a
moment, or he kept it for weeks together, not knowing what to do with it.

In later years Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miüsov, a man very sensitive on the score
of money and bourgeois honesty, pronounced the following judgment, after
getting to know Alyosha:

“Here is perhaps the one man in the world whom you might leave alone
without a penny, in the center of an unknown town of a million inhabitants, and
he would not come to harm, he would not die of cold and hunger, for he would be
fed and sheltered at once; and if he were not, he would find a shelter for
himself, and it would cost him no effort or humiliation. And to shelter him
would be no burden, but, on the contrary, would probably be looked on as a
pleasure.”

He did not finish his studies at the gymnasium. A year before the end of the
course he suddenly announced to the ladies that he was going to see his father
about a plan which had occurred to him. They were sorry and unwilling to let
him go. The journey was not an expensive one, and the ladies would not let him
pawn his watch, a parting present from his benefactor’s family. They
provided him liberally with money and even fitted him out with new clothes and
linen. But he returned half the money they gave him, saying that he intended to
go third class. On his arrival in the town he made no answer to his
father’s first inquiry why he had come before completing his studies, and
seemed, so they say, unusually thoughtful. It soon became apparent that he was
looking for his mother’s tomb. He practically acknowledged at the time
that that was the only object of his visit. But it can hardly have been the
whole reason of it. It is more probable that he himself did not understand and
could not explain what had suddenly arisen in his soul, and drawn him
irresistibly into a new, unknown, but inevitable path. Fyodor Pavlovitch could
not show him where his second wife was buried, for he had never visited her
grave since he had thrown earth upon her coffin, and in the course of years had
entirely forgotten where she was buried.

Fyodor Pavlovitch, by the way, had for some time previously not been living in
our town. Three or four years after his wife’s death he had gone to the
south of Russia and finally turned up in Odessa, where he spent several years.
He made the acquaintance at first, in his own words, “of a lot of low
Jews, Jewesses, and Jewkins,” and ended by being received by “Jews
high and low alike.” It may be presumed that at this period he developed
a peculiar faculty for making and hoarding money. He finally returned to our
town only three years before Alyosha’s arrival. His former acquaintances
found him looking terribly aged, although he was by no means an old man. He
behaved not exactly with more dignity but with more effrontery. The former
buffoon showed an insolent propensity for making buffoons of others. His
depravity with women was not simply what it used to be, but even more
revolting. In a short time he opened a great number of new taverns in the
district. It was evident that he had perhaps a hundred thousand roubles or not
much less. Many of the inhabitants of the town and district were soon in his
debt, and, of course, had given good security. Of late, too, he looked somehow
bloated and seemed more irresponsible, more uneven, had sunk into a sort of
incoherence, used to begin one thing and go on with another, as though he were
letting himself go altogether. He was more and more frequently drunk. And, if
it had not been for the same servant Grigory, who by that time had aged
considerably too, and used to look after him sometimes almost like a tutor,
Fyodor Pavlovitch might have got into terrible scrapes. Alyosha’s arrival
seemed to affect even his moral side, as though something had awakened in this
prematurely old man which had long been dead in his soul.

“Do you know,” he used often to say, looking at Alyosha,
“that you are like her, ‘the crazy woman’ ”—that
was what he used to call his dead wife, Alyosha’s mother. Grigory it was
who pointed out the “crazy woman’s” grave to Alyosha. He took
him to our town cemetery and showed him in a remote corner a cast‐iron
tombstone, cheap but decently kept, on which were inscribed the name and age of
the deceased and the date of her death, and below a four‐lined verse, such as
are commonly used on old‐fashioned middle‐class tombs. To Alyosha’s
amazement this tomb turned out to be Grigory’s doing. He had put it up on
the poor “crazy woman’s” grave at his own expense, after
Fyodor Pavlovitch, whom he had often pestered about the grave, had gone to
Odessa, abandoning the grave and all his memories. Alyosha showed no particular
emotion at the sight of his mother’s grave. He only listened to
Grigory’s minute and solemn account of the erection of the tomb; he stood
with bowed head and walked away without uttering a word. It was perhaps a year
before he visited the cemetery again. But this little episode was not without
an influence upon Fyodor Pavlovitch—and a very original one. He suddenly
took a thousand roubles to our monastery to pay for requiems for the soul of
his wife; but not for the second, Alyosha’s mother, the “crazy
woman,” but for the first, Adelaïda Ivanovna, who used to thrash him. In
the evening of the same day he got drunk and abused the monks to Alyosha. He
himself was far from being religious; he had probably never put a penny candle
before the image of a saint. Strange impulses of sudden feeling and sudden
thought are common in such types.

I have mentioned already that he looked bloated. His countenance at this time
bore traces of something that testified unmistakably to the life he had led.
Besides the long fleshy bags under his little, always insolent, suspicious, and
ironical eyes; besides the multitude of deep wrinkles in his little fat face,
the Adam’s apple hung below his sharp chin like a great, fleshy goiter,
which gave him a peculiar, repulsive, sensual appearance; add to that a long
rapacious mouth with full lips, between which could be seen little stumps of
black decayed teeth. He slobbered every time he began to speak. He was fond
indeed of making fun of his own face, though, I believe, he was well satisfied
with it. He used particularly to point to his nose, which was not very large,
but very delicate and conspicuously aquiline. “A regular Roman
nose,” he used to say, “with my goiter I’ve quite the
countenance of an ancient Roman patrician of the decadent period.” He
seemed proud of it.

Not long after visiting his mother’s grave Alyosha suddenly announced
that he wanted to enter the monastery, and that the monks were willing to
receive him as a novice. He explained that this was his strong desire, and that
he was solemnly asking his consent as his father. The old man knew that the
elder Zossima, who was living in the monastery hermitage, had made a special
impression upon his “gentle boy.”

“That is the most honest monk among them, of course,” he observed,
after listening in thoughtful silence to Alyosha, and seeming scarcely
surprised at his request. “H’m!… So that’s where you want
to be, my gentle boy?”

He was half drunk, and suddenly he grinned his slow half‐drunken grin, which
was not without a certain cunning and tipsy slyness. “H’m!… I had
a presentiment that you would end in something like this. Would you believe it?
You were making straight for it. Well, to be sure you have your own two
thousand. That’s a dowry for you. And I’ll never desert you, my
angel. And I’ll pay what’s wanted for you there, if they ask for
it. But, of course, if they don’t ask, why should we worry them? What do
you say? You know, you spend money like a canary, two grains a week.
H’m!… Do you know that near one monastery there’s a place outside
the town where every baby knows there are none but ‘the monks’
wives’ living, as they are called. Thirty women, I believe. I have been
there myself. You know, it’s interesting in its own way, of course, as a
variety. The worst of it is it’s awfully Russian. There are no French
women there. Of course they could get them fast enough, they have plenty of
money. If they get to hear of it they’ll come along. Well, there’s
nothing of that sort here, no ‘monks’ wives,’ and two hundred
monks. They’re honest. They keep the fasts. I admit it…. H’m….
So you want to be a monk? And do you know I’m sorry to lose you, Alyosha;
would you believe it, I’ve really grown fond of you? Well, it’s a
good opportunity. You’ll pray for us sinners; we have sinned too much
here. I’ve always been thinking who would pray for me, and whether
there’s any one in the world to do it. My dear boy, I’m awfully
stupid about that. You wouldn’t believe it. Awfully. You see, however
stupid I am about it, I keep thinking, I keep thinking—from time to time,
of course, not all the while. It’s impossible, I think, for the devils to
forget to drag me down to hell with their hooks when I die. Then I
wonder—hooks? Where would they get them? What of? Iron hooks? Where do
they forge them? Have they a foundry there of some sort? The monks in the
monastery probably believe that there’s a ceiling in hell, for instance.
Now I’m ready to believe in hell, but without a ceiling. It makes it more
refined, more enlightened, more Lutheran that is. And, after all, what does it
matter whether it has a ceiling or hasn’t? But, do you know,
there’s a damnable question involved in it? If there’s no ceiling
there can be no hooks, and if there are no hooks it all breaks down, which is
unlikely again, for then there would be none to drag me down to hell, and if
they don’t drag me down what justice is there in the world? Il
faudrait les inventer, those hooks, on purpose for me alone, for, if you
only knew, Alyosha, what a blackguard I am.”

“But there are no hooks there,” said Alyosha, looking gently and
seriously at his father.

“Yes, yes, only the shadows of hooks, I know, I know. That’s how a
Frenchman described hell: ‘J’ai vu l’ombre d’un
cocher qui avec l’ombre d’une brosse frottait l’ombre
d’une carrosse.’ How do you know there are no hooks, darling?
When you’ve lived with the monks you’ll sing a different tune. But
go and get at the truth there, and then come and tell me. Anyway it’s
easier going to the other world if one knows what there is there. Besides, it
will be more seemly for you with the monks than here with me, with a drunken
old man and young harlots … though you’re like an angel, nothing
touches you. And I dare say nothing will touch you there. That’s why I
let you go, because I hope for that. You’ve got all your wits about you.
You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.
And I will wait for you. I feel that you’re the only creature in the
world who has not condemned me. My dear boy, I feel it, you know. I can’t
help feeling it.”

And he even began blubbering. He was sentimental. He was wicked and
sentimental.

Chapter V.
Elders

Some of my readers may imagine that my young man was a sickly, ecstatic, poorly
developed creature, a pale, consumptive dreamer. On the contrary, Alyosha was
at this time a well‐grown, red‐cheeked, clear‐eyed lad of nineteen, radiant
with health. He was very handsome, too, graceful, moderately tall, with hair of
a dark brown, with a regular, rather long, oval‐shaped face, and wide‐set dark
gray, shining eyes; he was very thoughtful, and apparently very serene. I shall
be told, perhaps, that red cheeks are not incompatible with fanaticism and
mysticism; but I fancy that Alyosha was more of a realist than any one. Oh! no
doubt, in the monastery he fully believed in miracles, but, to my thinking,
miracles are never a stumbling‐block to the realist. It is not miracles that
dispose realists to belief. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will
always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is
confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his
own senses than admit the fact. Even if he admits it, he admits it as a fact of
nature till then unrecognized by him. Faith does not, in the realist, spring
from the miracle but the miracle from faith. If the realist once believes, then
he is bound by his very realism to admit the miraculous also. The Apostle
Thomas said that he would not believe till he saw, but when he did see he said,
“My Lord and my God!” Was it the miracle forced him to believe?
Most likely not, but he believed solely because he desired to believe and
possibly he fully believed in his secret heart even when he said, “I do
not believe till I see.”

I shall be told, perhaps, that Alyosha was stupid, undeveloped, had not
finished his studies, and so on. That he did not finish his studies is true,
but to say that he was stupid or dull would be a great injustice. I’ll
simply repeat what I have said above. He entered upon this path only because,
at that time, it alone struck his imagination and presented itself to him as
offering an ideal means of escape for his soul from darkness to light. Add to
that that he was to some extent a youth of our last epoch—that is, honest
in nature, desiring the truth, seeking for it and believing in it, and seeking
to serve it at once with all the strength of his soul, seeking for immediate
action, and ready to sacrifice everything, life itself, for it. Though these
young men unhappily fail to understand that the sacrifice of life is, in many
cases, the easiest of all sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five
or six years of their seething youth to hard and tedious study, if only to
multiply tenfold their powers of serving the truth and the cause they have set
before them as their goal—such a sacrifice is utterly beyond the strength
of many of them. The path Alyosha chose was a path going in the opposite
direction, but he chose it with the same thirst for swift achievement. As soon
as he reflected seriously he was convinced of the existence of God and
immortality, and at once he instinctively said to himself: “I want to
live for immortality, and I will accept no compromise.” In the same way,
if he had decided that God and immortality did not exist, he would at once have
become an atheist and a socialist. For socialism is not merely the labor
question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the
form taken by atheism to‐day, the question of the tower of Babel built without
God, not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up heaven on earth. Alyosha
would have found it strange and impossible to go on living as before. It is
written: “Give all that thou hast to the poor and follow Me, if thou
wouldst be perfect.”

Alyosha said to himself: “I can’t give two roubles instead of
‘all,’ and only go to mass instead of ‘following Him.’
” Perhaps his memories of childhood brought back our monastery, to which
his mother may have taken him to mass. Perhaps the slanting sunlight and the
holy image to which his poor “crazy” mother had held him up still
acted upon his imagination. Brooding on these things he may have come to us
perhaps only to see whether here he could sacrifice all or only “two
roubles,” and in the monastery he met this elder. I must digress to
explain what an “elder” is in Russian monasteries, and I am sorry
that I do not feel very competent to do so. I will try, however, to give a
superficial account of it in a few words. Authorities on the subject assert
that the institution of “elders” is of recent date, not more than a
hundred years old in our monasteries, though in the orthodox East, especially
in Sinai and Athos, it has existed over a thousand years. It is maintained that
it existed in ancient times in Russia also, but through the calamities which
overtook Russia—the Tartars, civil war, the interruption of relations
with the East after the destruction of Constantinople—this institution
fell into oblivion. It was revived among us towards the end of last century by
one of the great “ascetics,” as they called him, Païssy
Velitchkovsky, and his disciples. But to this day it exists in few monasteries
only, and has sometimes been almost persecuted as an innovation in Russia. It
flourished especially in the celebrated Kozelski Optin Monastery. When and how
it was introduced into our monastery I cannot say. There had already been three
such elders and Zossima was the last of them. But he was almost dying of
weakness and disease, and they had no one to take his place. The question for
our monastery was an important one, for it had not been distinguished by
anything in particular till then: they had neither relics of saints, nor
wonder‐working ikons, nor glorious traditions, nor historical exploits. It had
flourished and been glorious all over Russia through its elders, to see and
hear whom pilgrims had flocked for thousands of miles from all parts.

What was such an elder? An elder was one who took your soul, your will, into
his soul and his will. When you choose an elder, you renounce your own will and
yield it to him in complete submission, complete self‐ abnegation. This
novitiate, this terrible school of abnegation, is undertaken voluntarily, in
the hope of self‐conquest, of self‐mastery, in order, after a life of
obedience, to attain perfect freedom, that is, from self; to escape the lot of
those who have lived their whole life without finding their true selves in
themselves. This institution of elders is not founded on theory, but was
established in the East from the practice of a thousand years. The obligations
due to an elder are not the ordinary “obedience” which has always
existed in our Russian monasteries. The obligation involves confession to the
elder by all who have submitted themselves to him, and to the indissoluble bond
between him and them.

The story is told, for instance, that in the early days of Christianity one
such novice, failing to fulfill some command laid upon him by his elder, left
his monastery in Syria and went to Egypt. There, after great exploits, he was
found worthy at last to suffer torture and a martyr’s death for the
faith. When the Church, regarding him as a saint, was burying him, suddenly, at
the deacon’s exhortation, “Depart all ye unbaptized,” the
coffin containing the martyr’s body left its place and was cast forth
from the church, and this took place three times. And only at last they learnt
that this holy man had broken his vow of obedience and left his elder, and,
therefore, could not be forgiven without the elder’s absolution in spite
of his great deeds. Only after this could the funeral take place. This, of
course, is only an old legend. But here is a recent instance.

A monk was suddenly commanded by his elder to quit Athos, which he loved as a
sacred place and a haven of refuge, and to go first to Jerusalem to do homage
to the Holy Places and then to go to the north to Siberia: “There is the
place for thee and not here.” The monk, overwhelmed with sorrow, went to
the Œcumenical Patriarch at Constantinople and besought him to release him from
his obedience. But the Patriarch replied that not only was he unable to release
him, but there was not and could not be on earth a power which could release
him except the elder who had himself laid that duty upon him. In this way the
elders are endowed in certain cases with unbounded and inexplicable authority.
That is why in many of our monasteries the institution was at first resisted
almost to persecution. Meantime the elders immediately began to be highly
esteemed among the people. Masses of the ignorant people as well as men of
distinction flocked, for instance, to the elders of our monastery to confess
their doubts, their sins, and their sufferings, and ask for counsel and
admonition. Seeing this, the opponents of the elders declared that the
sacrament of confession was being arbitrarily and frivolously degraded, though
the continual opening of the heart to the elder by the monk or the layman had
nothing of the character of the sacrament. In the end, however, the institution
of elders has been retained and is becoming established in Russian monasteries.
It is true, perhaps, that this instrument which had stood the test of a
thousand years for the moral regeneration of a man from slavery to freedom and
to moral perfectibility may be a two‐edged weapon and it may lead some not to
humility and complete self‐control but to the most Satanic pride, that is, to
bondage and not to freedom.

The elder Zossima was sixty‐five. He came of a family of landowners, had been
in the army in early youth, and served in the Caucasus as an officer. He had,
no doubt, impressed Alyosha by some peculiar quality of his soul. Alyosha lived
in the cell of the elder, who was very fond of him and let him wait upon him.
It must be noted that Alyosha was bound by no obligation and could go where he
pleased and be absent for whole days. Though he wore the monastic dress it was
voluntarily, not to be different from others. No doubt he liked to do so.
Possibly his youthful imagination was deeply stirred by the power and fame of
his elder. It was said that so many people had for years past come to confess
their sins to Father Zossima and to entreat him for words of advice and
healing, that he had acquired the keenest intuition and could tell from an
unknown face what a new‐comer wanted, and what was the suffering on his
conscience. He sometimes astounded and almost alarmed his visitors by his
knowledge of their secrets before they had spoken a word.

Alyosha noticed that many, almost all, went in to the elder for the first time
with apprehension and uneasiness, but came out with bright and happy faces.
Alyosha was particularly struck by the fact that Father Zossima was not at all
stern. On the contrary, he was always almost gay. The monks used to say that he
was more drawn to those who were more sinful, and the greater the sinner the
more he loved him. There were, no doubt, up to the end of his life, among the
monks some who hated and envied him, but they were few in number and they were
silent, though among them were some of great dignity in the monastery, one, for
instance, of the older monks distinguished for his strict keeping of fasts and
vows of silence. But the majority were on Father Zossima’s side and very
many of them loved him with all their hearts, warmly and sincerely. Some were
almost fanatically devoted to him, and declared, though not quite aloud, that
he was a saint, that there could be no doubt of it, and, seeing that his end
was near, they anticipated miracles and great glory to the monastery in the
immediate future from his relics. Alyosha had unquestioning faith in the
miraculous power of the elder, just as he had unquestioning faith in the story
of the coffin that flew out of the church. He saw many who came with sick
children or relatives and besought the elder to lay hands on them and to pray
over them, return shortly after—some the next day—and, falling in
tears at the elder’s feet, thank him for healing their sick.

Whether they had really been healed or were simply better in the natural course
of the disease was a question which did not exist for Alyosha, for he fully
believed in the spiritual power of his teacher and rejoiced in his fame, in his
glory, as though it were his own triumph. His heart throbbed, and he beamed, as
it were, all over when the elder came out to the gates of the hermitage into
the waiting crowd of pilgrims of the humbler class who had flocked from all
parts of Russia on purpose to see the elder and obtain his blessing. They fell
down before him, wept, kissed his feet, kissed the earth on which he stood, and
wailed, while the women held up their children to him and brought him the sick
“possessed with devils.” The elder spoke to them, read a brief
prayer over them, blessed them, and dismissed them. Of late he had become so
weak through attacks of illness that he was sometimes unable to leave his cell,
and the pilgrims waited for him to come out for several days. Alyosha did not
wonder why they loved him so, why they fell down before him and wept with
emotion merely at seeing his face. Oh! he understood that for the humble soul
of the Russian peasant, worn out by grief and toil, and still more by the
everlasting injustice and everlasting sin, his own and the world’s, it
was the greatest need and comfort to find some one or something holy to fall
down before and worship.

“Among us there is sin, injustice, and temptation, but yet, somewhere on
earth there is some one holy and exalted. He has the truth; he knows the truth;
so it is not dead upon the earth; so it will come one day to us, too, and rule
over all the earth according to the promise.”

Alyosha knew that this was just how the people felt and even reasoned. He
understood it, but that the elder Zossima was this saint and custodian of
God’s truth—of that he had no more doubt than the weeping peasants
and the sick women who held out their children to the elder. The conviction
that after his death the elder would bring extraordinary glory to the monastery
was even stronger in Alyosha than in any one there, and, of late, a kind of
deep flame of inner ecstasy burnt more and more strongly in his heart. He was
not at all troubled at this elder’s standing as a solitary example before
him.

“No matter. He is holy. He carries in his heart the secret of renewal for
all: that power which will, at last, establish truth on the earth, and all men
will be holy and love one another, and there will be no more rich nor poor, no
exalted nor humbled, but all will be as the children of God, and the true
Kingdom of Christ will come.” That was the dream in Alyosha’s
heart.

The arrival of his two brothers, whom he had not known till then, seemed to
make a great impression on Alyosha. He more quickly made friends with his
half‐brother Dmitri (though he arrived later) than with his own brother Ivan.
He was extremely interested in his brother Ivan, but when the latter had been
two months in the town, though they had met fairly often, they were still not
intimate. Alyosha was naturally silent, and he seemed to be expecting
something, ashamed about something, while his brother Ivan, though Alyosha
noticed at first that he looked long and curiously at him, seemed soon to have
left off thinking of him. Alyosha noticed it with some embarrassment. He
ascribed his brother’s indifference at first to the disparity of their
age and education. But he also wondered whether the absence of curiosity and
sympathy in Ivan might be due to some other cause entirely unknown to him. He
kept fancying that Ivan was absorbed in something—something inward and
important—that he was striving towards some goal, perhaps very hard to
attain, and that that was why he had no thought for him. Alyosha wondered, too,
whether there was not some contempt on the part of the learned atheist for
him—a foolish novice. He knew for certain that his brother was an
atheist. He could not take offense at this contempt, if it existed; yet, with
an uneasy embarrassment which he did not himself understand, he waited for his
brother to come nearer to him. Dmitri used to speak of Ivan with the deepest
respect and with a peculiar earnestness. From him Alyosha learnt all the
details of the important affair which had of late formed such a close and
remarkable bond between the two elder brothers. Dmitri’s enthusiastic
references to Ivan were the more striking in Alyosha’s eyes since Dmitri
was, compared with Ivan, almost uneducated, and the two brothers were such a
contrast in personality and character that it would be difficult to find two
men more unlike.

It was at this time that the meeting, or, rather gathering of the members of
this inharmonious family took place in the cell of the elder who had such an
extraordinary influence on Alyosha. The pretext for this gathering was a false
one. It was at this time that the discord between Dmitri and his father seemed
at its acutest stage and their relations had become insufferably strained.
Fyodor Pavlovitch seems to have been the first to suggest, apparently in joke,
that they should all meet in Father Zossima’s cell, and that, without
appealing to his direct intervention, they might more decently come to an
understanding under the conciliating influence of the elder’s presence.
Dmitri, who had never seen the elder, naturally supposed that his father was
trying to intimidate him, but, as he secretly blamed himself for his outbursts
of temper with his father on several recent occasions, he accepted the
challenge. It must be noted that he was not, like Ivan, staying with his
father, but living apart at the other end of the town. It happened that Pyotr
Alexandrovitch Miüsov, who was staying in the district at the time, caught
eagerly at the idea. A Liberal of the forties and fifties, a freethinker and
atheist, he may have been led on by boredom or the hope of frivolous diversion.
He was suddenly seized with the desire to see the monastery and the holy man.
As his lawsuit with the monastery still dragged on, he made it the pretext for
seeing the Superior, in order to attempt to settle it amicably. A visitor
coming with such laudable intentions might be received with more attention and
consideration than if he came from simple curiosity. Influences from within the
monastery were brought to bear on the elder, who of late had scarcely left his
cell, and had been forced by illness to deny even his ordinary visitors. In the
end he consented to see them, and the day was fixed.

“Who has made me a judge over them?” was all he said, smilingly, to
Alyosha.

Alyosha was much perturbed when he heard of the proposed visit. Of all the
wrangling, quarrelsome party, Dmitri was the only one who could regard the
interview seriously. All the others would come from frivolous motives, perhaps
insulting to the elder. Alyosha was well aware of that. Ivan and Miüsov would
come from curiosity, perhaps of the coarsest kind, while his father might be
contemplating some piece of buffoonery. Though he said nothing, Alyosha
thoroughly understood his father. The boy, I repeat, was far from being so
simple as every one thought him. He awaited the day with a heavy heart. No
doubt he was always pondering in his mind how the family discord could be
ended. But his chief anxiety concerned the elder. He trembled for him, for his
glory, and dreaded any affront to him, especially the refined, courteous irony
of Miüsov and the supercilious half‐utterances of the highly educated Ivan. He
even wanted to venture on warning the elder, telling him something about them,
but, on second thoughts, said nothing. He only sent word the day before,
through a friend, to his brother Dmitri, that he loved him and expected him to
keep his promise. Dmitri wondered, for he could not remember what he had
promised, but he answered by letter that he would do his utmost not to let
himself be provoked “by vileness,” but that, although he had a deep
respect for the elder and for his brother Ivan, he was convinced that the
meeting was either a trap for him or an unworthy farce.

“Nevertheless I would rather bite out my tongue than be lacking in
respect to the sainted man whom you reverence so highly,” he wrote in
conclusion. Alyosha was not greatly cheered by the letter.

Book II. An Unfortunate Gathering

Chapter I.
They Arrive At The Monastery

It was a warm, bright day at the end of August. The interview with the elder
had been fixed for half‐past eleven, immediately after late mass. Our visitors
did not take part in the service, but arrived just as it was over. First an
elegant open carriage, drawn by two valuable horses, drove up with Miüsov and a
distant relative of his, a young man of twenty, called Pyotr Fomitch Kalganov.
This young man was preparing to enter the university. Miüsov, with whom he was
staying for the time, was trying to persuade him to go abroad to the university
of Zurich or Jena. The young man was still undecided. He was thoughtful and
absent‐minded. He was nice‐ looking, strongly built, and rather tall. There was
a strange fixity in his gaze at times. Like all very absent‐minded people he
would sometimes stare at a person without seeing him. He was silent and rather
awkward, but sometimes, when he was alone with any one, he became talkative and
effusive, and would laugh at anything or nothing. But his animation vanished as
quickly as it appeared. He was always well and even elaborately dressed; he had
already some independent fortune and expectations of much more. He was a friend
of Alyosha’s.

In an ancient, jolting, but roomy, hired carriage, with a pair of old
pinkish‐gray horses, a long way behind Miüsov’s carriage, came Fyodor
Pavlovitch, with his son Ivan. Dmitri was late, though he had been informed of
the time the evening before. The visitors left their carriage at the hotel,
outside the precincts, and went to the gates of the monastery on foot. Except
Fyodor Pavlovitch, none of the party had ever seen the monastery, and Miüsov
had probably not even been to church for thirty years. He looked about him with
curiosity, together with assumed ease. But, except the church and the domestic
buildings, though these too were ordinary enough, he found nothing of interest
in the interior of the monastery. The last of the worshippers were coming out
of the church, bareheaded and crossing themselves. Among the humbler people
were a few of higher rank—two or three ladies and a very old general.
They were all staying at the hotel. Our visitors were at once surrounded by
beggars, but none of them gave them anything, except young Kalganov, who took a
ten‐ copeck piece out of his purse, and, nervous and embarrassed—God
knows why!—hurriedly gave it to an old woman, saying: “Divide it
equally.” None of his companions made any remark upon it, so that he had
no reason to be embarrassed; but, perceiving this, he was even more overcome.

It was strange that their arrival did not seem expected, and that they were not
received with special honor, though one of them had recently made a donation of
a thousand roubles, while another was a very wealthy and highly cultured
landowner, upon whom all in the monastery were in a sense dependent, as a
decision of the lawsuit might at any moment put their fishing rights in his
hands. Yet no official personage met them.

Miüsov looked absent‐mindedly at the tombstones round the church, and was on
the point of saying that the dead buried here must have paid a pretty penny for
the right of lying in this “holy place,” but refrained. His liberal
irony was rapidly changing almost into anger.

“Who the devil is there to ask in this imbecile place? We must find out,
for time is passing,” he observed suddenly, as though speaking to
himself.

All at once there came up a bald‐headed, elderly man with ingratiating little
eyes, wearing a full, summer overcoat. Lifting his hat, he introduced himself
with a honeyed lisp as Maximov, a landowner of Tula. He at once entered into
our visitors’ difficulty.

“Father Zossima lives in the hermitage, apart, four hundred paces from
the monastery, the other side of the copse.”

“I know it’s the other side of the copse,” observed Fyodor
Pavlovitch, “but we don’t remember the way. It is a long time since
we’ve been here.”

“This way, by this gate, and straight across the copse … the copse.
Come with me, won’t you? I’ll show you. I have to go…. I am going
myself. This way, this way.”

They came out of the gate and turned towards the copse. Maximov, a man of
sixty, ran rather than walked, turning sideways to stare at them all, with an
incredible degree of nervous curiosity. His eyes looked starting out of his
head.

“You see, we have come to the elder upon business of our own,”
observed Miüsov severely. “That personage has granted us an audience, so
to speak, and so, though we thank you for showing us the way, we cannot ask you
to accompany us.”

“I’ve been there. I’ve been already; un chevalier
parfait,” and Maximov snapped his fingers in the air.

“Who is a chevalier?” asked Miüsov.

“The elder, the splendid elder, the elder! The honor and glory of the
monastery, Zossima. Such an elder!”

But his incoherent talk was cut short by a very pale, wan‐looking monk of
medium height, wearing a monk’s cap, who overtook them. Fyodor Pavlovitch
and Miüsov stopped.

The monk, with an extremely courteous, profound bow, announced:

“The Father Superior invites all of you gentlemen to dine with him after
your visit to the hermitage. At one o’clock, not later. And you
also,” he added, addressing Maximov.

“That I certainly will, without fail,” cried Fyodor Pavlovitch,
hugely delighted at the invitation. “And, believe me, we’ve all
given our word to behave properly here…. And you, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, will
you go, too?”

“Yes, of course. What have I come for but to study all the customs here?
The only obstacle to me is your company….”

“Yes, Dmitri Fyodorovitch is non‐existent as yet.”

“It would be a capital thing if he didn’t turn up. Do you suppose I
like all this business, and in your company, too? So we will come to dinner.
Thank the Father Superior,” he said to the monk.

“No, it is my duty now to conduct you to the elder,” answered the
monk.

“If so I’ll go straight to the Father Superior—to the Father
Superior,” babbled Maximov.

“The Father Superior is engaged just now. But as you please—”
the monk hesitated.

“Impertinent old man!” Miüsov observed aloud, while Maximov ran
back to the monastery.

“He’s like von Sohn,” Fyodor Pavlovitch said suddenly.

“Is that all you can think of?… In what way is he like von Sohn? Have
you ever seen von Sohn?”

“I’ve seen his portrait. It’s not the features, but something
indefinable. He’s a second von Sohn. I can always tell from the
physiognomy.”

“Ah, I dare say you are a connoisseur in that. But, look here, Fyodor
Pavlovitch, you said just now that we had given our word to behave properly.
Remember it. I advise you to control yourself. But, if you begin to play the
fool I don’t intend to be associated with you here…. You see what a man
he is”—he turned to the monk—“I’m afraid to go
among decent people with him.” A fine smile, not without a certain
slyness, came on to the pale, bloodless lips of the monk, but he made no reply,
and was evidently silent from a sense of his own dignity. Miüsov frowned more
than ever.

“Oh, devil take them all! An outer show elaborated through centuries, and
nothing but charlatanism and nonsense underneath,” flashed through
Miüsov’s mind.

“Here’s the hermitage. We’ve arrived,” cried Fyodor
Pavlovitch. “The gates are shut.”

And he repeatedly made the sign of the cross to the saints painted above and on
the sides of the gates.

“When you go to Rome you must do as the Romans do. Here in this hermitage
there are twenty‐five saints being saved. They look at one another, and eat
cabbages. And not one woman goes in at this gate. That’s what is
remarkable. And that really is so. But I did hear that the elder receives
ladies,” he remarked suddenly to the monk.

“Women of the people are here too now, lying in the portico there
waiting. But for ladies of higher rank two rooms have been built adjoining the
portico, but outside the precincts—you can see the windows—and the
elder goes out to them by an inner passage when he is well enough. They are
always outside the precincts. There is a Harkov lady, Madame Hohlakov, waiting
there now with her sick daughter. Probably he has promised to come out to her,
though of late he has been so weak that he has hardly shown himself even to the
people.”

“So then there are loopholes, after all, to creep out of the hermitage to
the ladies. Don’t suppose, holy father, that I mean any harm. But do you
know that at Athos not only the visits of women are not allowed, but no
creature of the female sex—no hens, nor turkey‐hens, nor cows.”

“Fyodor Pavlovitch, I warn you I shall go back and leave you here.
They’ll turn you out when I’m gone.”

“But I’m not interfering with you, Pyotr Alexandrovitch.
Look,” he cried suddenly, stepping within the precincts, “what a
vale of roses they live in!”

Though there were no roses now, there were numbers of rare and beautiful autumn
flowers growing wherever there was space for them, and evidently tended by a
skillful hand; there were flower‐beds round the church, and between the tombs;
and the one‐storied wooden house where the elder lived was also surrounded with
flowers.

“And was it like this in the time of the last elder, Varsonofy? He
didn’t care for such elegance. They say he used to jump up and thrash
even ladies with a stick,” observed Fyodor Pavlovitch, as he went up the
steps.

“The elder Varsonofy did sometimes seem rather strange, but a great deal
that’s told is foolishness. He never thrashed any one,” answered
the monk. “Now, gentlemen, if you will wait a minute I will announce
you.”

“Fyodor Pavlovitch, for the last time, your compact, do you hear? Behave
properly or I will pay you out!” Miüsov had time to mutter again.

“I can’t think why you are so agitated,” Fyodor Pavlovitch
observed sarcastically. “Are you uneasy about your sins? They say he can
tell by one’s eyes what one has come about. And what a lot you think of
their opinion! you, a Parisian, and so advanced. I’m surprised at
you.”

But Miüsov had no time to reply to this sarcasm. They were asked to come in. He
walked in, somewhat irritated.

“Now, I know myself, I am annoyed, I shall lose my temper and begin to
quarrel—and lower myself and my ideas,” he reflected.

Chapter II.
The Old Buffoon

They entered the room almost at the same moment that the elder came in from his
bedroom. There were already in the cell, awaiting the elder, two monks of the
hermitage, one the Father Librarian, and the other Father Païssy, a very
learned man, so they said, in delicate health, though not old. There was also a
tall young man, who looked about two and twenty, standing in the corner
throughout the interview. He had a broad, fresh face, and clever, observant,
narrow brown eyes, and was wearing ordinary dress. He was a divinity student,
living under the protection of the monastery. His expression was one of
unquestioning, but self‐respecting, reverence. Being in a subordinate and
dependent position, and so not on an equality with the guests, he did not greet
them with a bow.

Father Zossima was accompanied by a novice, and by Alyosha. The two monks rose
and greeted him with a very deep bow, touching the ground with their fingers;
then kissed his hand. Blessing them, the elder replied with as deep a reverence
to them, and asked their blessing. The whole ceremony was performed very
seriously and with an appearance of feeling, not like an everyday rite. But
Miüsov fancied that it was all done with intentional impressiveness. He stood
in front of the other visitors. He ought—he had reflected upon it the
evening before—from simple politeness, since it was the custom here, to
have gone up to receive the elder’s blessing, even if he did not kiss his
hand. But when he saw all this bowing and kissing on the part of the monks he
instantly changed his mind. With dignified gravity he made a rather deep,
conventional bow, and moved away to a chair. Fyodor Pavlovitch did the same,
mimicking Miüsov like an ape. Ivan bowed with great dignity and courtesy, but
he too kept his hands at his sides, while Kalganov was so confused that he did
not bow at all. The elder let fall the hand raised to bless them, and bowing to
them again, asked them all to sit down. The blood rushed to Alyosha’s
cheeks. He was ashamed. His forebodings were coming true.

Father Zossima sat down on a very old‐fashioned mahogany sofa, covered with
leather, and made his visitors sit down in a row along the opposite wall on
four mahogany chairs, covered with shabby black leather. The monks sat, one at
the door and the other at the window. The divinity student, the novice, and
Alyosha remained standing. The cell was not very large and had a faded look. It
contained nothing but the most necessary furniture, of coarse and poor quality.
There were two pots of flowers in the window, and a number of holy pictures in
the corner. Before one huge ancient ikon of the Virgin a lamp was burning. Near
it were two other holy pictures in shining settings, and, next them, carved
cherubims, china eggs, a Catholic cross of ivory, with a Mater Dolorosa
embracing it, and several foreign engravings from the great Italian artists of
past centuries. Next to these costly and artistic engravings were several of
the roughest Russian prints of saints and martyrs, such as are sold for a few
farthings at all the fairs. On the other walls were portraits of Russian
bishops, past and present.

Miüsov took a cursory glance at all these “conventional”
surroundings and bent an intent look upon the elder. He had a high opinion of
his own insight, a weakness excusable in him as he was fifty, an age at which a
clever man of the world of established position can hardly help taking himself
rather seriously. At the first moment he did not like Zossima. There was,
indeed, something in the elder’s face which many people besides Miüsov
might not have liked. He was a short, bent, little man, with very weak legs,
and though he was only sixty‐five, he looked at least ten years older. His face
was very thin and covered with a network of fine wrinkles, particularly
numerous about his eyes, which were small, light‐colored, quick, and shining
like two bright points. He had a sprinkling of gray hair about his temples. His
pointed beard was small and scanty, and his lips, which smiled frequently, were
as thin as two threads. His nose was not long, but sharp, like a bird’s
beak.

“To all appearances a malicious soul, full of petty pride,” thought
Miüsov. He felt altogether dissatisfied with his position.

A cheap little clock on the wall struck twelve hurriedly, and served to begin
the conversation.

“Precisely to our time,” cried Fyodor Pavlovitch, “but no
sign of my son, Dmitri. I apologize for him, sacred elder!” (Alyosha
shuddered all over at “sacred elder.”) “I am always punctual
myself, minute for minute, remembering that punctuality is the courtesy of
kings….”

“But you are not a king, anyway,” Miüsov muttered, losing his self‐
restraint at once.

“Yes; that’s true. I’m not a king, and, would you believe it,
Pyotr Alexandrovitch, I was aware of that myself. But, there! I always say the
wrong thing. Your reverence,” he cried, with sudden pathos, “you
behold before you a buffoon in earnest! I introduce myself as such. It’s
an old habit, alas! And if I sometimes talk nonsense out of place it’s
with an object, with the object of amusing people and making myself agreeable.
One must be agreeable, mustn’t one? I was seven years ago in a little
town where I had business, and I made friends with some merchants there. We
went to the captain of police because we had to see him about something, and to
ask him to dine with us. He was a tall, fat, fair, sulky man, the most
dangerous type in such cases. It’s their liver. I went straight up to
him, and with the ease of a man of the world, you know, ‘Mr.
Ispravnik,’ said I, ‘be our Napravnik.’ ‘What do you
mean by Napravnik?’ said he. I saw, at the first half‐second, that it had
missed fire. He stood there so glum. ‘I wanted to make a joke,’
said I, ‘for the general diversion, as Mr. Napravnik is our well‐known
Russian orchestra conductor and what we need for the harmony of our undertaking
is some one of that sort.’ And I explained my comparison very reasonably,
didn’t I? ‘Excuse me,’ said he, ‘I am an Ispravnik, and
I do not allow puns to be made on my calling.’ He turned and walked away.
I followed him, shouting, ‘Yes, yes, you are an Ispravnik, not a
Napravnik.’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘since you called me a
Napravnik I am one.’ And would you believe it, it ruined our business!
And I’m always like that, always like that. Always injuring myself with
my politeness. Once, many years ago, I said to an influential person:
‘Your wife is a ticklish lady,’ in an honorable sense, of the moral
qualities, so to speak. But he asked me, ‘Why, have you tickled
her?’ I thought I’d be polite, so I couldn’t help saying,
‘Yes,’ and he gave me a fine tickling on the spot. Only that
happened long ago, so I’m not ashamed to tell the story. I’m always
injuring myself like that.”

“You’re doing it now,” muttered Miüsov, with disgust.

Father Zossima scrutinized them both in silence.

“Am I? Would you believe it, I was aware of that, too, Pyotr
Alexandrovitch, and let me tell you, indeed, I foresaw I should as soon as I
began to speak. And do you know I foresaw, too, that you’d be the first
to remark on it. The minute I see my joke isn’t coming off, your
reverence, both my cheeks feel as though they were drawn down to the lower jaw
and there is almost a spasm in them. That’s been so since I was young,
when I had to make jokes for my living in noblemen’s families. I am an
inveterate buffoon, and have been from birth up, your reverence, it’s as
though it were a craze in me. I dare say it’s a devil within me. But only
a little one. A more serious one would have chosen another lodging. But not
your soul, Pyotr Alexandrovitch; you’re not a lodging worth having
either. But I do believe—I believe in God, though I have had doubts of
late. But now I sit and await words of wisdom. I’m like the philosopher,
Diderot, your reverence. Did you ever hear, most Holy Father, how Diderot went
to see the Metropolitan Platon, in the time of the Empress Catherine? He went
in and said straight out, ‘There is no God.’ To which the great
bishop lifted up his finger and answered, ‘The fool hath said in his
heart there is no God.’ And he fell down at his feet on the spot.
‘I believe,’ he cried, ‘and will be christened.’ And so
he was. Princess Dashkov was his godmother, and Potyomkin his godfather.”

“Fyodor Pavlovitch, this is unbearable! You know you’re telling
lies and that that stupid anecdote isn’t true. Why are you playing the
fool?” cried Miüsov in a shaking voice.

“I suspected all my life that it wasn’t true,” Fyodor
Pavlovitch cried with conviction. “But I’ll tell you the whole
truth, gentlemen. Great elder! Forgive me, the last thing about Diderot’s
christening I made up just now. I never thought of it before. I made it up to
add piquancy. I play the fool, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, to make myself agreeable.
Though I really don’t know myself, sometimes, what I do it for. And as
for Diderot, I heard as far as ‘the fool hath said in his heart’
twenty times from the gentry about here when I was young. I heard your aunt,
Pyotr Alexandrovitch, tell the story. They all believe to this day that the
infidel Diderot came to dispute about God with the Metropolitan
Platon….”

Miüsov got up, forgetting himself in his impatience. He was furious, and
conscious of being ridiculous.

What was taking place in the cell was really incredible. For forty or fifty
years past, from the times of former elders, no visitors had entered that cell
without feelings of the profoundest veneration. Almost every one admitted to
the cell felt that a great favor was being shown him. Many remained kneeling
during the whole visit. Of those visitors, many had been men of high rank and
learning, some even freethinkers, attracted by curiosity, but all without
exception had shown the profoundest reverence and delicacy, for here there was
no question of money, but only, on the one side love and kindness, and on the
other penitence and eager desire to decide some spiritual problem or crisis. So
that such buffoonery amazed and bewildered the spectators, or at least some of
them. The monks, with unchanged countenances, waited, with earnest attention,
to hear what the elder would say, but seemed on the point of standing up, like
Miüsov. Alyosha stood, with hanging head, on the verge of tears. What seemed to
him strangest of all was that his brother Ivan, on whom alone he had rested his
hopes, and who alone had such influence on his father that he could have
stopped him, sat now quite unmoved, with downcast eyes, apparently waiting with
interest to see how it would end, as though he had nothing to do with it.
Alyosha did not dare to look at Rakitin, the divinity student, whom he knew
almost intimately. He alone in the monastery knew Rakitin’s thoughts.

“Forgive me,” began Miüsov, addressing Father Zossima, “for
perhaps I seem to be taking part in this shameful foolery. I made a mistake in
believing that even a man like Fyodor Pavlovitch would understand what was due
on a visit to so honored a personage. I did not suppose I should have to
apologize simply for having come with him….”

Pyotr Alexandrovitch could say no more, and was about to leave the room,
overwhelmed with confusion.

“Don’t distress yourself, I beg.” The elder got on to his
feeble legs, and taking Pyotr Alexandrovitch by both hands, made him sit down
again. “I beg you not to disturb yourself. I particularly beg you to be
my guest.” And with a bow he went back and sat down again on his little
sofa.

“Great elder, speak! Do I annoy you by my vivacity?” Fyodor
Pavlovitch cried suddenly, clutching the arms of his chair in both hands, as
though ready to leap up from it if the answer were unfavorable.

“I earnestly beg you, too, not to disturb yourself, and not to be
uneasy,” the elder said impressively. “Do not trouble. Make
yourself quite at home. And, above all, do not be so ashamed of yourself, for
that is at the root of it all.”

“Quite at home? To be my natural self? Oh, that is much too much, but I
accept it with grateful joy. Do you know, blessed Father, you’d better
not invite me to be my natural self. Don’t risk it…. I will not go so
far as that myself. I warn you for your own sake. Well, the rest is still
plunged in the mists of uncertainty, though there are people who’d be
pleased to describe me for you. I mean that for you, Pyotr Alexandrovitch. But
as for you, holy being, let me tell you, I am brimming over with
ecstasy.”

He got up, and throwing up his hands, declaimed, “Blessed be the womb
that bare thee, and the paps that gave thee suck—the paps especially.
When you said just now, ‘Don’t be so ashamed of yourself, for that
is at the root of it all,’ you pierced right through me by that remark,
and read me to the core. Indeed, I always feel when I meet people that I am
lower than all, and that they all take me for a buffoon. So I say, ‘Let
me really play the buffoon. I am not afraid of your opinion, for you are every
one of you worse than I am.’ That is why I am a buffoon. It is from
shame, great elder, from shame; it’s simply over‐sensitiveness that makes
me rowdy. If I had only been sure that every one would accept me as the kindest
and wisest of men, oh, Lord, what a good man I should have been then!
Teacher!” he fell suddenly on his knees, “what must I do to gain
eternal life?”

It was difficult even now to decide whether he was joking or really moved.

Father Zossima, lifting his eyes, looked at him, and said with a smile:

“You have known for a long time what you must do. You have sense enough:
don’t give way to drunkenness and incontinence of speech; don’t
give way to sensual lust; and, above all, to the love of money. And close your
taverns. If you can’t close all, at least two or three. And, above
all—don’t lie.”

“You mean about Diderot?”

“No, not about Diderot. Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man
who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he
cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all
respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love,
and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to
passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from
continual lying to other men and to himself. The man who lies to himself can be
more easily offended than any one. You know it is sometimes very pleasant to
take offense, isn’t it? A man may know that nobody has insulted him, but
that he has invented the insult for himself, has lied and exaggerated to make
it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a mountain out of a
molehill—he knows that himself, yet he will be the first to take offense,
and will revel in his resentment till he feels great pleasure in it, and so
pass to genuine vindictiveness. But get up, sit down, I beg you. All this, too,
is deceitful posturing….”

“Blessed man! Give me your hand to kiss.”

Fyodor Pavlovitch skipped up, and imprinted a rapid kiss on the elder’s
thin hand. “It is, it is pleasant to take offense. You said that so well,
as I never heard it before. Yes, I have been all my life taking offense, to
please myself, taking offense on esthetic grounds, for it is not so much
pleasant as distinguished sometimes to be insulted—that you had
forgotten, great elder, it is distinguished! I shall make a note of that. But I
have been lying, lying positively my whole life long, every day and hour of it.
Of a truth, I am a lie, and the father of lies. Though I believe I am not the
father of lies. I am getting mixed in my texts. Say, the son of lies, and that
will be enough. Only … my angel … I may sometimes talk about Diderot!
Diderot will do no harm, though sometimes a word will do harm. Great elder, by
the way, I was forgetting, though I had been meaning for the last two years to
come here on purpose to ask and to find out something. Only do tell Pyotr
Alexandrovitch not to interrupt me. Here is my question: Is it true, great
Father, that the story is told somewhere in the Lives of the Saints of a
holy saint martyred for his faith who, when his head was cut off at last, stood
up, picked up his head, and, ‘courteously kissing it,’ walked a
long way, carrying it in his hands. Is that true or not, honored Father?”

“No, it is untrue,” said the elder.

“There is nothing of the kind in all the lives of the saints. What saint
do you say the story is told of?” asked the Father Librarian.

“I do not know what saint. I do not know, and can’t tell. I was
deceived. I was told the story. I had heard it, and do you know who told it?
Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miüsov here, who was so angry just now about Diderot. He
it was who told the story.”

“I have never told it you, I never speak to you at all.”

“It is true you did not tell me, but you told it when I was present. It
was three years ago. I mentioned it because by that ridiculous story you shook
my faith, Pyotr Alexandrovitch. You knew nothing of it, but I went home with my
faith shaken, and I have been getting more and more shaken ever since. Yes,
Pyotr Alexandrovitch, you were the cause of a great fall. That was not a
Diderot!”

Fyodor Pavlovitch got excited and pathetic, though it was perfectly clear to
every one by now that he was playing a part again. Yet Miüsov was stung by his
words.

“What nonsense, and it is all nonsense,” he muttered. “I may
really have told it, some time or other … but not to you. I was told it
myself. I heard it in Paris from a Frenchman. He told me it was read at our
mass from the Lives of the Saints … he was a very learned man who had
made a special study of Russian statistics and had lived a long time in
Russia…. I have not read the Lives of the Saints myself, and I am not
going to read them … all sorts of things are said at dinner—we were
dining then.”

“Yes, you were dining then, and so I lost my faith!” said Fyodor
Pavlovitch, mimicking him.

“What do I care for your faith?” Miüsov was on the point of
shouting, but he suddenly checked himself, and said with contempt, “You
defile everything you touch.”

The elder suddenly rose from his seat. “Excuse me, gentlemen, for leaving
you a few minutes,” he said, addressing all his guests. “I have
visitors awaiting me who arrived before you. But don’t you tell lies all
the same,” he added, turning to Fyodor Pavlovitch with a good‐humored
face. He went out of the cell. Alyosha and the novice flew to escort him down
the steps. Alyosha was breathless: he was glad to get away, but he was glad,
too, that the elder was good‐humored and not offended. Father Zossima was going
towards the portico to bless the people waiting for him there. But Fyodor
Pavlovitch persisted in stopping him at the door of the cell.

“Blessed man!” he cried, with feeling. “Allow me to kiss your
hand once more. Yes, with you I could still talk, I could still get on. Do you
think I always lie and play the fool like this? Believe me, I have been acting
like this all the time on purpose to try you. I have been testing you all the
time to see whether I could get on with you. Is there room for my humility
beside your pride? I am ready to give you a testimonial that one can get on
with you! But now, I’ll be quiet; I will keep quiet all the time.
I’ll sit in a chair and hold my tongue. Now it is for you to speak, Pyotr
Alexandrovitch. You are the principal person left now—for ten
minutes.”

Chapter III.
Peasant Women Who Have Faith

Near the wooden portico below, built on to the outer wall of the precinct,
there was a crowd of about twenty peasant women. They had been told that the
elder was at last coming out, and they had gathered together in anticipation.
Two ladies, Madame Hohlakov and her daughter, had also come out into the
portico to wait for the elder, but in a separate part of it set aside for women
of rank.

Madame Hohlakov was a wealthy lady, still young and attractive, and always
dressed with taste. She was rather pale, and had lively black eyes. She was not
more than thirty‐three, and had been five years a widow. Her daughter, a girl
of fourteen, was partially paralyzed. The poor child had not been able to walk
for the last six months, and was wheeled about in a long reclining chair. She
had a charming little face, rather thin from illness, but full of gayety. There
was a gleam of mischief in her big dark eyes with their long lashes. Her mother
had been intending to take her abroad ever since the spring, but they had been
detained all the summer by business connected with their estate. They had been
staying a week in our town, where they had come more for purposes of business
than devotion, but had visited Father Zossima once already, three days before.
Though they knew that the elder scarcely saw any one, they had now suddenly
turned up again, and urgently entreated “the happiness of looking once
again on the great healer.”

The mother was sitting on a chair by the side of her daughter’s invalid
carriage, and two paces from her stood an old monk, not one of our monastery,
but a visitor from an obscure religious house in the far north. He too sought
the elder’s blessing.

But Father Zossima, on entering the portico, went first straight to the
peasants who were crowded at the foot of the three steps that led up into the
portico. Father Zossima stood on the top step, put on his stole, and began
blessing the women who thronged about him. One crazy woman was led up to him.
As soon as she caught sight of the elder she began shrieking and writhing as
though in the pains of childbirth. Laying the stole on her forehead, he read a
short prayer over her, and she was at once soothed and quieted.

I do not know how it may be now, but in my childhood I often happened to see
and hear these “possessed” women in the villages and monasteries.
They used to be brought to mass; they would squeal and bark like a dog so that
they were heard all over the church. But when the sacrament was carried in and
they were led up to it, at once the “possession” ceased, and the
sick women were always soothed for a time. I was greatly impressed and amazed
at this as a child; but then I heard from country neighbors and from my town
teachers that the whole illness was simulated to avoid work, and that it could
always be cured by suitable severity; various anecdotes were told to confirm
this. But later on I learnt with astonishment from medical specialists that
there is no pretense about it, that it is a terrible illness to which women are
subject, specially prevalent among us in Russia, and that it is due to the hard
lot of the peasant women. It is a disease, I was told, arising from exhausting
toil too soon after hard, abnormal and unassisted labor in childbirth, and from
the hopeless misery, from beatings, and so on, which some women were not able
to endure like others. The strange and instant healing of the frantic and
struggling woman as soon as she was led up to the holy sacrament, which had
been explained to me as due to malingering and the trickery of the
“clericals,” arose probably in the most natural manner. Both the
women who supported her and the invalid herself fully believed as a truth
beyond question that the evil spirit in possession of her could not hold out if
the sick woman were brought to the sacrament and made to bow down before it.
And so, with a nervous and psychically deranged woman, a sort of convulsion of
the whole organism always took place, and was bound to take place, at the
moment of bowing down to the sacrament, aroused by the expectation of the
miracle of healing and the implicit belief that it would come to pass; and it
did come to pass, though only for a moment. It was exactly the same now as soon
as the elder touched the sick woman with the stole.

Many of the women in the crowd were moved to tears of ecstasy by the effect of
the moment: some strove to kiss the hem of his garment, others cried out in
sing‐song voices.

He blessed them all and talked with some of them. The “possessed”
woman he knew already. She came from a village only six versts from the
monastery, and had been brought to him before.

“But here is one from afar.” He pointed to a woman by no means old
but very thin and wasted, with a face not merely sunburnt but almost blackened
by exposure. She was kneeling and gazing with a fixed stare at the elder; there
was something almost frenzied in her eyes.

“From afar off, Father, from afar off! From two hundred miles from here.
From afar off, Father, from afar off!” the woman began in a sing‐song
voice as though she were chanting a dirge, swaying her head from side to side
with her cheek resting in her hand.

There is silent and long‐suffering sorrow to be met with among the peasantry.
It withdraws into itself and is still. But there is a grief that breaks out,
and from that minute it bursts into tears and finds vent in wailing. This is
particularly common with women. But it is no lighter a grief than the silent.
Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more. Such grief does
not desire consolation. It feeds on the sense of its hopelessness. Lamentations
spring only from the constant craving to reopen the wound.

“You are of the tradesman class?” said Father Zossima, looking
curiously at her.

“Townfolk we are, Father, townfolk. Yet we are peasants though we live in
the town. I have come to see you, O Father! We heard of you, Father, we heard
of you. I have buried my little son, and I have come on a pilgrimage. I have
been in three monasteries, but they told me, ‘Go, Nastasya, go to
them’—that is to you. I have come; I was yesterday at the service,
and to‐day I have come to you.”

“What are you weeping for?”

“It’s my little son I’m grieving for, Father. He was three
years old—three years all but three months. For my little boy, Father,
I’m in anguish, for my little boy. He was the last one left. We had four,
my Nikita and I, and now we’ve no children, our dear ones have all gone.
I buried the first three without grieving overmuch, and now I have buried the
last I can’t forget him. He seems always standing before me. He never
leaves me. He has withered my heart. I look at his little clothes, his little
shirt, his little boots, and I wail. I lay out all that is left of him, all his
little things. I look at them and wail. I say to Nikita, my husband, ‘Let
me go on a pilgrimage, master.’ He is a driver. We’re not poor
people, Father, not poor; he drives our own horse. It’s all our own, the
horse and the carriage. And what good is it all to us now? My Nikita has begun
drinking while I am away. He’s sure to. It used to be so before. As soon
as I turn my back he gives way to it. But now I don’t think about him.
It’s three months since I left home. I’ve forgotten him. I’ve
forgotten everything. I don’t want to remember. And what would our life
be now together? I’ve done with him, I’ve done. I’ve done
with them all. I don’t care to look upon my house and my goods. I
don’t care to see anything at all!”

“Listen, mother,” said the elder. “Once in olden times a holy
saint saw in the Temple a mother like you weeping for her little one, her only
one, whom God had taken. ‘Knowest thou not,’ said the saint to her,
‘how bold these little ones are before the throne of God? Verily there
are none bolder than they in the Kingdom of Heaven. “Thou didst give us
life, O Lord,” they say, “and scarcely had we looked upon it when
Thou didst take it back again.” And so boldly they ask and ask again that
God gives them at once the rank of angels. Therefore,’ said the saint,
‘thou, too, O mother, rejoice and weep not, for thy little son is with
the Lord in the fellowship of the angels.’ That’s what the saint
said to the weeping mother of old. He was a great saint and he could not have
spoken falsely. Therefore you too, mother, know that your little one is surely
before the throne of God, is rejoicing and happy, and praying to God for you,
and therefore weep not, but rejoice.”

The woman listened to him, looking down with her cheek in her hand. She sighed
deeply.

“My Nikita tried to comfort me with the same words as you. ‘Foolish
one,’ he said, ‘why weep? Our son is no doubt singing with the
angels before God.’ He says that to me, but he weeps himself. I see that
he cries like me. ‘I know, Nikita,’ said I. ‘Where could he
be if not with the Lord God? Only, here with us now he is not as he used to sit
beside us before.’ And if only I could look upon him one little time, if
only I could peep at him one little time, without going up to him, without
speaking, if I could be hidden in a corner and only see him for one little
minute, hear him playing in the yard, calling in his little voice,
‘Mammy, where are you?’ If only I could hear him pattering with his
little feet about the room just once, only once; for so often, so often I
remember how he used to run to me and shout and laugh, if only I could hear his
little feet I should know him! But he’s gone, Father, he’s gone,
and I shall never hear him again. Here’s his little sash, but him I shall
never see or hear now.”

She drew out of her bosom her boy’s little embroidered sash, and as soon
as she looked at it she began shaking with sobs, hiding her eyes with her
fingers through which the tears flowed in a sudden stream.

“It is Rachel of old,” said the elder, “weeping for her
children, and will not be comforted because they are not. Such is the lot set
on earth for you mothers. Be not comforted. Consolation is not what you need.
Weep and be not consoled, but weep. Only every time that you weep be sure to
remember that your little son is one of the angels of God, that he looks down
from there at you and sees you, and rejoices at your tears, and points at them
to the Lord God; and a long while yet will you keep that great mother’s
grief. But it will turn in the end into quiet joy, and your bitter tears will
be only tears of tender sorrow that purifies the heart and delivers it from
sin. And I shall pray for the peace of your child’s soul. What was his
name?”

“Alexey, Father.”

“A sweet name. After Alexey, the man of God?”

“Yes, Father.”

“What a saint he was! I will remember him, mother, and your grief in my
prayers, and I will pray for your husband’s health. It is a sin for you
to leave him. Your little one will see from heaven that you have forsaken his
father, and will weep over you. Why do you trouble his happiness? He is living,
for the soul lives for ever, and though he is not in the house he is near you,
unseen. How can he go into the house when you say that the house is hateful to
you? To whom is he to go if he find you not together, his father and mother? He
comes to you in dreams now, and you grieve. But then he will send you gentle
dreams. Go to your husband, mother; go this very day.”

“I will go, Father, at your word. I will go. You’ve gone straight
to my heart. My Nikita, my Nikita, you are waiting for me,” the woman
began in a sing‐song voice; but the elder had already turned away to a very old
woman, dressed like a dweller in the town, not like a pilgrim. Her eyes showed
that she had come with an object, and in order to say something. She said she
was the widow of a non‐commissioned officer, and lived close by in the town.
Her son Vasenka was in the commissariat service, and had gone to Irkutsk in
Siberia. He had written twice from there, but now a year had passed since he
had written. She did inquire about him, but she did not know the proper place
to inquire.

“Only the other day Stepanida Ilyinishna—she’s a rich
merchant’s wife—said to me, ‘You go, Prohorovna, and put your
son’s name down for prayer in the church, and pray for the peace of his
soul as though he were dead. His soul will be troubled,’ she said,
‘and he will write you a letter.’ And Stepanida Ilyinishna told me
it was a certain thing which had been many times tried. Only I am in doubt….
Oh, you light of ours! is it true or false, and would it be right?”

“Don’t think of it. It’s shameful to ask the question. How is
it possible to pray for the peace of a living soul? And his own mother too!
It’s a great sin, akin to sorcery. Only for your ignorance it is forgiven
you. Better pray to the Queen of Heaven, our swift defense and help, for his
good health, and that she may forgive you for your error. And another thing I
will tell you, Prohorovna. Either he will soon come back to you, your son, or
he will be sure to send a letter. Go, and henceforward be in peace. Your son is
alive, I tell you.”

“Dear Father, God reward you, our benefactor, who prays for all of us and
for our sins!”

But the elder had already noticed in the crowd two glowing eyes fixed upon him.
An exhausted, consumptive‐looking, though young peasant woman was gazing at him
in silence. Her eyes besought him, but she seemed afraid to approach.

“What is it, my child?”

“Absolve my soul, Father,” she articulated softly, and slowly sank
on her knees and bowed down at his feet. “I have sinned, Father. I am
afraid of my sin.”

The elder sat down on the lower step. The woman crept closer to him, still on
her knees.

“I am a widow these three years,” she began in a half‐whisper, with
a sort of shudder. “I had a hard life with my husband. He was an old man.
He used to beat me cruelly. He lay ill; I thought looking at him, if he were to
get well, if he were to get up again, what then? And then the thought came to
me—”

“Stay!” said the elder, and he put his ear close to her lips.

The woman went on in a low whisper, so that it was almost impossible to catch
anything. She had soon done.

“Three years ago?” asked the elder.

“Three years. At first I didn’t think about it, but now I’ve
begun to be ill, and the thought never leaves me.”

“Have you come from far?”

“Over three hundred miles away.”

“Have you told it in confession?”

“I have confessed it. Twice I have confessed it.”

“Have you been admitted to Communion?”

“Yes. I am afraid. I am afraid to die.”

“Fear nothing and never be afraid; and don’t fret. If only your
penitence fail not, God will forgive all. There is no sin, and there can be no
sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant!
Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can
there be a sin which could exceed the love of God? Think only of repentance,
continual repentance, but dismiss fear altogether. Believe that God loves you
as you cannot conceive; that He loves you with your sin, in your sin. It has
been said of old that over one repentant sinner there is more joy in heaven
than over ten righteous men. Go, and fear not. Be not bitter against men. Be
not angry if you are wronged. Forgive the dead man in your heart what wrong he
did you. Be reconciled with him in truth. If you are penitent, you love. And if
you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by
love. If I, a sinner, even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you,
how much more will God. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem
the whole world by it, and expiate not only your own sins but the sins of
others.”

He signed her three times with the cross, took from his own neck a little ikon
and put it upon her. She bowed down to the earth without speaking.

He got up and looked cheerfully at a healthy peasant woman with a tiny baby in
her arms.

“From Vyshegorye, dear Father.”

“Five miles you have dragged yourself with the baby. What do you
want?”

“I’ve come to look at you. I have been to you before—or have
you forgotten? You’ve no great memory if you’ve forgotten me. They
told us you were ill. Thinks I, I’ll go and see him for myself. Now I see
you, and you’re not ill! You’ll live another twenty years. God
bless you! There are plenty to pray for you; how should you be ill?”

“I thank you for all, daughter.”

“By the way, I have a thing to ask, not a great one. Here are sixty
copecks. Give them, dear Father, to some one poorer than me. I thought as I
came along, better give through him. He’ll know whom to give to.”

“Thanks, my dear, thanks! You are a good woman. I love you. I will do so
certainly. Is that your little girl?”

“My little girl, Father, Lizaveta.”

“May the Lord bless you both, you and your babe Lizaveta! You have
gladdened my heart, mother. Farewell, dear children, farewell, dear
ones.”

He blessed them all and bowed low to them.

Chapter IV.
A Lady Of Little Faith

A visitor looking on the scene of his conversation with the peasants and his
blessing them shed silent tears and wiped them away with her handkerchief. She
was a sentimental society lady of genuinely good disposition in many respects.
When the elder went up to her at last she met him enthusiastically.

“Ah, what I have been feeling, looking on at this touching
scene!…” She could not go on for emotion. “Oh, I understand the
people’s love for you. I love the people myself. I want to love them. And
who could help loving them, our splendid Russian people, so simple in their
greatness!”

“How is your daughter’s health? You wanted to talk to me
again?”

“Oh, I have been urgently begging for it, I have prayed for it! I was
ready to fall on my knees and kneel for three days at your windows until you
let me in. We have come, great healer, to express our ardent gratitude. You
have healed my Lise, healed her completely, merely by praying over her last
Thursday and laying your hands upon her. We have hastened here to kiss those
hands, to pour out our feelings and our homage.”

“What do you mean by healed? But she is still lying down in her
chair.”

“But her night fevers have entirely ceased ever since Thursday,”
said the lady with nervous haste. “And that’s not all. Her legs are
stronger. This morning she got up well; she had slept all night. Look at her
rosy cheeks, her bright eyes! She used to be always crying, but now she laughs
and is gay and happy. This morning she insisted on my letting her stand up, and
she stood up for a whole minute without any support. She wagers that in a
fortnight she’ll be dancing a quadrille. I’ve called in Doctor
Herzenstube. He shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘I am amazed; I can make
nothing of it.’ And would you have us not come here to disturb you, not
fly here to thank you? Lise, thank him—thank him!”

Lise’s pretty little laughing face became suddenly serious. She rose in
her chair as far as she could and, looking at the elder, clasped her hands
before him, but could not restrain herself and broke into laughter.

“It’s at him,” she said, pointing to Alyosha, with childish
vexation at herself for not being able to repress her mirth.

If any one had looked at Alyosha standing a step behind the elder, he would
have caught a quick flush crimsoning his cheeks in an instant. His eyes shone
and he looked down.

“She has a message for you, Alexey Fyodorovitch. How are you?” the
mother went on, holding out her exquisitely gloved hand to Alyosha.

The elder turned round and all at once looked attentively at Alyosha. The
latter went nearer to Lise and, smiling in a strangely awkward way, held out
his hand to her too. Lise assumed an important air.

“Katerina Ivanovna has sent you this through me.” She handed him a
little note. “She particularly begs you to go and see her as soon as
possible; that you will not fail her, but will be sure to come.”

“She asks me to go and see her? Me? What for?” Alyosha muttered in
great astonishment. His face at once looked anxious. “Oh, it’s all
to do with Dmitri Fyodorovitch and—what has happened lately,” the
mother explained hurriedly. “Katerina Ivanovna has made up her mind, but
she must see you about it…. Why, of course, I can’t say. But she wants
to see you at once. And you will go to her, of course. It is a Christian
duty.”

“I have only seen her once,” Alyosha protested with the same
perplexity.

“Oh, she is such a lofty, incomparable creature! If only for her
suffering…. Think what she has gone through, what she is enduring now! Think
what awaits her! It’s all terrible, terrible!”

“Very well, I will come,” Alyosha decided, after rapidly scanning
the brief, enigmatic note, which consisted of an urgent entreaty that he would
come, without any sort of explanation.

“Oh, how sweet and generous that would be of you!” cried Lise with
sudden animation. “I told mamma you’d be sure not to go. I said you
were saving your soul. How splendid you are! I’ve always thought you were
splendid. How glad I am to tell you so!”

“Lise!” said her mother impressively, though she smiled after she
had said it.

“You have quite forgotten us, Alexey Fyodorovitch,” she said;
“you never come to see us. Yet Lise has told me twice that she is never
happy except with you.”

Alyosha raised his downcast eyes and again flushed, and again smiled without
knowing why. But the elder was no longer watching him. He had begun talking to
a monk who, as mentioned before, had been awaiting his entrance by Lise’s
chair. He was evidently a monk of the humblest, that is of the peasant, class,
of a narrow outlook, but a true believer, and, in his own way, a stubborn one.
He announced that he had come from the far north, from Obdorsk, from Saint
Sylvester, and was a member of a poor monastery, consisting of only ten monks.
The elder gave him his blessing and invited him to come to his cell whenever he
liked.

“How can you presume to do such deeds?” the monk asked suddenly,
pointing solemnly and significantly at Lise. He was referring to her
“healing.”

“It’s too early, of course, to speak of that. Relief is not
complete cure, and may proceed from different causes. But if there has been any
healing, it is by no power but God’s will. It’s all from God. Visit
me, Father,” he added to the monk. “It’s not often I can see
visitors. I am ill, and I know that my days are numbered.”

“Oh, no, no! God will not take you from us. You will live a long, long
time yet,” cried the lady. “And in what way are you ill? You look
so well, so gay and happy.”

“I am extraordinarily better to‐day. But I know that it’s only for
a moment. I understand my disease now thoroughly. If I seem so happy to you,
you could never say anything that would please me so much. For men are made for
happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right to say to himself,
‘I am doing God’s will on earth.’ All the righteous, all the
saints, all the holy martyrs were happy.”

“Oh, how you speak! What bold and lofty words!” cried the lady.
“You seem to pierce with your words. And yet—happiness,
happiness—where is it? Who can say of himself that he is happy? Oh, since
you have been so good as to let us see you once more to‐day, let me tell you
what I could not utter last time, what I dared not say, all I am suffering and
have been for so long! I am suffering! Forgive me! I am suffering!”

And in a rush of fervent feeling she clasped her hands before him.

“From what specially?”

“I suffer … from lack of faith.”

“Lack of faith in God?”

“Oh, no, no! I dare not even think of that. But the future life—it
is such an enigma! And no one, no one can solve it. Listen! You are a healer,
you are deeply versed in the human soul, and of course I dare not expect you to
believe me entirely, but I assure you on my word of honor that I am not
speaking lightly now. The thought of the life beyond the grave distracts me to
anguish, to terror. And I don’t know to whom to appeal, and have not
dared to all my life. And now I am so bold as to ask you. Oh, God! What will
you think of me now?”

She clasped her hands.

“Don’t distress yourself about my opinion of you,” said the
elder. “I quite believe in the sincerity of your suffering.”

“Oh, how thankful I am to you! You see, I shut my eyes and ask myself if
every one has faith, where did it come from? And then they do say that it all
comes from terror at the menacing phenomena of nature, and that none of
it’s real. And I say to myself, ‘What if I’ve been believing
all my life, and when I come to die there’s nothing but the burdocks
growing on my grave?’ as I read in some author. It’s awful!
How—how can I get back my faith? But I only believed when I was a little
child, mechanically, without thinking of anything. How, how is one to prove it?
I have come now to lay my soul before you and to ask you about it. If I let
this chance slip, no one all my life will answer me. How can I prove it? How
can I convince myself? Oh, how unhappy I am! I stand and look about me and see
that scarcely any one else cares; no one troubles his head about it, and
I’m the only one who can’t stand it. It’s
deadly—deadly!”

“No doubt. But there’s no proving it, though you can be convinced
of it.”

“How?”

“By the experience of active love. Strive to love your neighbor actively
and indefatigably. In as far as you advance in love you will grow surer of the
reality of God and of the immortality of your soul. If you attain to perfect
self‐forgetfulness in the love of your neighbor, then you will believe without
doubt, and no doubt can possibly enter your soul. This has been tried. This is
certain.”

“In active love? There’s another question—and such a
question! You see, I so love humanity that—would you believe it?—I
often dream of forsaking all that I have, leaving Lise, and becoming a sister
of mercy. I close my eyes and think and dream, and at that moment I feel full
of strength to overcome all obstacles. No wounds, no festering sores could at
that moment frighten me. I would bind them up and wash them with my own hands.
I would nurse the afflicted. I would be ready to kiss such wounds.”

“It is much, and well that your mind is full of such dreams and not
others. Sometime, unawares, you may do a good deed in reality.”

“Yes. But could I endure such a life for long?” the lady went on
fervently, almost frantically. “That’s the chief
question—that’s my most agonizing question. I shut my eyes and ask
myself, ‘Would you persevere long on that path? And if the patient whose
wounds you are washing did not meet you with gratitude, but worried you with
his whims, without valuing or remarking your charitable services, began abusing
you and rudely commanding you, and complaining to the superior authorities of
you (which often happens when people are in great suffering)—what then?
Would you persevere in your love, or not?’ And do you know, I came with
horror to the conclusion that, if anything could dissipate my love to humanity,
it would be ingratitude. In short, I am a hired servant, I expect my payment at
once—that is, praise, and the repayment of love with love. Otherwise I am
incapable of loving any one.”

She was in a very paroxysm of self‐castigation, and, concluding, she looked
with defiant resolution at the elder.

“It’s just the same story as a doctor once told me,” observed
the elder. “He was a man getting on in years, and undoubtedly clever. He
spoke as frankly as you, though in jest, in bitter jest. ‘I love
humanity,’ he said, ‘but I wonder at myself. The more I love
humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. In my dreams,’ he
said, ‘I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service
of humanity, and perhaps I might actually have faced crucifixion if it had been
suddenly necessary; and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with any
one for two days together, as I know by experience. As soon as any one is near
me, his personality disturbs my self‐complacency and restricts my freedom. In
twenty‐four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too
long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his
nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has
always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes
my love for humanity.’ ”

“But what’s to be done? What can one do in such a case? Must one
despair?”

“No. It is enough that you are distressed at it. Do what you can, and it
will be reckoned unto you. Much is done already in you since you can so deeply
and sincerely know yourself. If you have been talking to me so sincerely,
simply to gain approbation for your frankness, as you did from me just now,
then of course you will not attain to anything in the achievement of real love;
it will all get no further than dreams, and your whole life will slip away like
a phantom. In that case you will naturally cease to think of the future life
too, and will of yourself grow calmer after a fashion in the end.”

“You have crushed me! Only now, as you speak, I understand that I was
really only seeking your approbation for my sincerity when I told you I could
not endure ingratitude. You have revealed me to myself. You have seen through
me and explained me to myself!”

“Are you speaking the truth? Well, now, after such a confession, I
believe that you are sincere and good at heart. If you do not attain happiness,
always remember that you are on the right road, and try not to leave it. Above
all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to
yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every
minute. Avoid being scornful, both to others and to yourself. What seems to you
bad within you will grow purer from the very fact of your observing it in
yourself. Avoid fear, too, though fear is only the consequence of every sort of
falsehood. Never be frightened at your own faint‐heartedness in attaining love.
Don’t be frightened overmuch even at your evil actions. I am sorry I can
say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful
thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate
action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their
lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking
on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labor and
fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science. But I predict
that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are
getting farther from your goal instead of nearer to it—at that very
moment I predict that you will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power
of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you.
Forgive me for not being able to stay longer with you. They are waiting for me.
Good‐by.”

The lady was weeping.

“Lise, Lise! Bless her—bless her!” she cried, starting up
suddenly.

“She does not deserve to be loved. I have seen her naughtiness all
along,” the elder said jestingly. “Why have you been laughing at
Alexey?”

Lise had in fact been occupied in mocking at him all the time. She had noticed
before that Alyosha was shy and tried not to look at her, and she found this
extremely amusing. She waited intently to catch his eye. Alyosha, unable to
endure her persistent stare, was irresistibly and suddenly drawn to glance at
her, and at once she smiled triumphantly in his face. Alyosha was even more
disconcerted and vexed. At last he turned away from her altogether and hid
behind the elder’s back. After a few minutes, drawn by the same
irresistible force, he turned again to see whether he was being looked at or
not, and found Lise almost hanging out of her chair to peep sideways at him,
eagerly waiting for him to look. Catching his eye, she laughed so that the
elder could not help saying, “Why do you make fun of him like that,
naughty girl?”

Lise suddenly and quite unexpectedly blushed. Her eyes flashed and her face
became quite serious. She began speaking quickly and nervously in a warm and
resentful voice:

“Why has he forgotten everything, then? He used to carry me about when I
was little. We used to play together. He used to come to teach me to read, do
you know. Two years ago, when he went away, he said that he would never forget
me, that we were friends for ever, for ever, for ever! And now he’s
afraid of me all at once. Am I going to eat him? Why doesn’t he want to
come near me? Why doesn’t he talk? Why won’t he come and see us?
It’s not that you won’t let him. We know that he goes everywhere.
It’s not good manners for me to invite him. He ought to have thought of
it first, if he hasn’t forgotten me. No, now he’s saving his soul!
Why have you put that long gown on him? If he runs he’ll fall.”

And suddenly she hid her face in her hand and went off into irresistible,
prolonged, nervous, inaudible laughter. The elder listened to her with a smile,
and blessed her tenderly. As she kissed his hand she suddenly pressed it to her
eyes and began crying.

“Don’t be angry with me. I’m silly and good for nothing …
and perhaps Alyosha’s right, quite right, in not wanting to come and see
such a ridiculous girl.”

“I will certainly send him,” said the elder.

Chapter V.
So Be It! So Be It!

The elder’s absence from his cell had lasted for about twenty‐five
minutes. It was more than half‐past twelve, but Dmitri, on whose account they
had all met there, had still not appeared. But he seemed almost to be
forgotten, and when the elder entered the cell again, he found his guests
engaged in eager conversation. Ivan and the two monks took the leading share in
it. Miüsov, too, was trying to take a part, and apparently very eagerly, in the
conversation. But he was unsuccessful in this also. He was evidently in the
background, and his remarks were treated with neglect, which increased his
irritability. He had had intellectual encounters with Ivan before and he could
not endure a certain carelessness Ivan showed him.

“Hitherto at least I have stood in the front ranks of all that is
progressive in Europe, and here the new generation positively ignores
us,” he thought.

Fyodor Pavlovitch, who had given his word to sit still and be quiet, had
actually been quiet for some time, but he watched his neighbor Miüsov with an
ironical little smile, obviously enjoying his discomfiture. He had been waiting
for some time to pay off old scores, and now he could not let the opportunity
slip. Bending over his shoulder he began teasing him again in a whisper.

“Why didn’t you go away just now, after the ‘courteously
kissing’? Why did you consent to remain in such unseemly company? It was
because you felt insulted and aggrieved, and you remained to vindicate yourself
by showing off your intelligence. Now you won’t go till you’ve
displayed your intellect to them.”

“You again?… On the contrary, I’m just going.”

“You’ll be the last, the last of all to go!” Fyodor
Pavlovitch delivered him another thrust, almost at the moment of Father
Zossima’s return.

The discussion died down for a moment, but the elder, seating himself in his
former place, looked at them all as though cordially inviting them to go on.
Alyosha, who knew every expression of his face, saw that he was fearfully
exhausted and making a great effort. Of late he had been liable to fainting
fits from exhaustion. His face had the pallor that was common before such
attacks, and his lips were white. But he evidently did not want to break up the
party. He seemed to have some special object of his own in keeping them. What
object? Alyosha watched him intently.

“We are discussing this gentleman’s most interesting
article,” said Father Iosif, the librarian, addressing the elder, and
indicating Ivan. “He brings forward much that is new, but I think the
argument cuts both ways. It is an article written in answer to a book by an
ecclesiastical authority on the question of the ecclesiastical court, and the
scope of its jurisdiction.”

“I’m sorry I have not read your article, but I’ve heard of
it,” said the elder, looking keenly and intently at Ivan.

“He takes up a most interesting position,” continued the Father
Librarian. “As far as Church jurisdiction is concerned he is apparently
quite opposed to the separation of Church from State.”

“That’s interesting. But in what sense?” Father Zossima asked
Ivan.

The latter, at last, answered him, not condescendingly, as Alyosha had feared,
but with modesty and reserve, with evident goodwill and apparently without the
slightest arrière‐pensée.

“I start from the position that this confusion of elements, that is, of
the essential principles of Church and State, will, of course, go on for ever,
in spite of the fact that it is impossible for them to mingle, and that the
confusion of these elements cannot lead to any consistent or even normal
results, for there is falsity at the very foundation of it. Compromise between
the Church and State in such questions as, for instance, jurisdiction, is, to
my thinking, impossible in any real sense. My clerical opponent maintains that
the Church holds a precise and defined position in the State. I maintain, on
the contrary, that the Church ought to include the whole State, and not simply
to occupy a corner in it, and, if this is, for some reason, impossible at
present, then it ought, in reality, to be set up as the direct and chief aim of
the future development of Christian society!”

“Perfectly true,” Father Païssy, the silent and learned monk,
assented with fervor and decision.

“The purest Ultramontanism!” cried Miüsov impatiently, crossing and
recrossing his legs.

“Oh, well, we have no mountains,” cried Father Iosif, and turning
to the elder he continued: “Observe the answer he makes to the following
‘fundamental and essential’ propositions of his opponent, who is,
you must note, an ecclesiastic. First, that ‘no social organization can
or ought to arrogate to itself power to dispose of the civic and political
rights of its members.’ Secondly, that ‘criminal and civil
jurisdiction ought not to belong to the Church, and is inconsistent with its
nature, both as a divine institution and as an organization of men for
religious objects,’ and, finally, in the third place, ‘the Church
is a kingdom not of this world.’ ”

“A most unworthy play upon words for an ecclesiastic!” Father
Païssy could not refrain from breaking in again. “I have read the book
which you have answered,” he added, addressing Ivan, “and was
astounded at the words ‘the Church is a kingdom not of this world.’
If it is not of this world, then it cannot exist on earth at all. In the
Gospel, the words ‘not of this world’ are not used in that sense.
To play with such words is indefensible. Our Lord Jesus Christ came to set up
the Church upon earth. The Kingdom of Heaven, of course, is not of this world,
but in Heaven; but it is only entered through the Church which has been founded
and established upon earth. And so a frivolous play upon words in such a
connection is unpardonable and improper. The Church is, in truth, a kingdom and
ordained to rule, and in the end must undoubtedly become the kingdom ruling
over all the earth. For that we have the divine promise.”

He ceased speaking suddenly, as though checking himself. After listening
attentively and respectfully Ivan went on, addressing the elder with perfect
composure and as before with ready cordiality:

“The whole point of my article lies in the fact that during the first
three centuries Christianity only existed on earth in the Church and was
nothing but the Church. When the pagan Roman Empire desired to become
Christian, it inevitably happened that, by becoming Christian, it included the
Church but remained a pagan State in very many of its departments. In reality
this was bound to happen. But Rome as a State retained too much of the pagan
civilization and culture, as, for example, in the very objects and fundamental
principles of the State. The Christian Church entering into the State could, of
course, surrender no part of its fundamental principles—the rock on which
it stands—and could pursue no other aims than those which have been
ordained and revealed by God Himself, and among them that of drawing the whole
world, and therefore the ancient pagan State itself, into the Church. In that
way (that is, with a view to the future) it is not the Church that should seek
a definite position in the State, like ‘every social organization,’
or as ‘an organization of men for religious purposes’ (as my
opponent calls the Church), but, on the contrary, every earthly State should
be, in the end, completely transformed into the Church and should become
nothing else but a Church, rejecting every purpose incongruous with the aims of
the Church. All this will not degrade it in any way or take from its honor and
glory as a great State, nor from the glory of its rulers, but only turns it
from a false, still pagan, and mistaken path to the true and rightful path,
which alone leads to the eternal goal. This is why the author of the book On
the Foundations of Church Jurisdiction would have judged correctly if, in
seeking and laying down those foundations, he had looked upon them as a
temporary compromise inevitable in our sinful and imperfect days. But as soon
as the author ventures to declare that the foundations which he predicates now,
part of which Father Iosif just enumerated, are the permanent, essential, and
eternal foundations, he is going directly against the Church and its sacred and
eternal vocation. That is the gist of my article.”

“That is, in brief,” Father Païssy began again, laying stress on
each word, “according to certain theories only too clearly formulated in
the nineteenth century, the Church ought to be transformed into the State, as
though this would be an advance from a lower to a higher form, so as to
disappear into it, making way for science, for the spirit of the age, and
civilization. And if the Church resists and is unwilling, some corner will be
set apart for her in the State, and even that under control—and this will
be so everywhere in all modern European countries. But Russian hopes and
conceptions demand not that the Church should pass as from a lower into a
higher type into the State, but, on the contrary, that the State should end by
being worthy to become only the Church and nothing else. So be it! So be
it!”

“Well, I confess you’ve reassured me somewhat,” Miüsov said
smiling, again crossing his legs. “So far as I understand, then, the
realization of such an ideal is infinitely remote, at the second coming of
Christ. That’s as you please. It’s a beautiful Utopian dream of the
abolition of war, diplomacy, banks, and so on—something after the fashion
of socialism, indeed. But I imagined that it was all meant seriously, and that
the Church might be now going to try criminals, and sentence them to
beating, prison, and even death.”

“But if there were none but the ecclesiastical court, the Church would
not even now sentence a criminal to prison or to death. Crime and the way of
regarding it would inevitably change, not all at once of course, but fairly
soon,” Ivan replied calmly, without flinching.

“Are you serious?” Miüsov glanced keenly at him.

“If everything became the Church, the Church would exclude all the
criminal and disobedient, and would not cut off their heads,” Ivan went
on. “I ask you, what would become of the excluded? He would be cut off
then not only from men, as now, but from Christ. By his crime he would have
transgressed not only against men but against the Church of Christ. This is so
even now, of course, strictly speaking, but it is not clearly enunciated, and
very, very often the criminal of to‐day compromises with his conscience:
‘I steal,’ he says, ‘but I don’t go against the Church.
I’m not an enemy of Christ.’ That’s what the criminal of
to‐day is continually saying to himself, but when the Church takes the place of
the State it will be difficult for him, in opposition to the Church all over
the world, to say: ‘All men are mistaken, all in error, all mankind are
the false Church. I, a thief and murderer, am the only true Christian
Church.’ It will be very difficult to say this to himself; it requires a
rare combination of unusual circumstances. Now, on the other side, take the
Church’s own view of crime: is it not bound to renounce the present
almost pagan attitude, and to change from a mechanical cutting off of its
tainted member for the preservation of society, as at present, into completely
and honestly adopting the idea of the regeneration of the man, of his
reformation and salvation?”

“What do you mean? I fail to understand again,” Miüsov interrupted.
“Some sort of dream again. Something shapeless and even incomprehensible.
What is excommunication? What sort of exclusion? I suspect you are simply
amusing yourself, Ivan Fyodorovitch.”

“Yes, but you know, in reality it is so now,” said the elder
suddenly, and all turned to him at once. “If it were not for the Church
of Christ there would be nothing to restrain the criminal from evil‐doing, no
real chastisement for it afterwards; none, that is, but the mechanical
punishment spoken of just now, which in the majority of cases only embitters
the heart; and not the real punishment, the only effectual one, the only
deterrent and softening one, which lies in the recognition of sin by
conscience.”

“How is that, may one inquire?” asked Miüsov, with lively
curiosity.

“Why,” began the elder, “all these sentences to exile with
hard labor, and formerly with flogging also, reform no one, and what’s
more, deter hardly a single criminal, and the number of crimes does not
diminish but is continually on the increase. You must admit that. Consequently
the security of society is not preserved, for, although the obnoxious member is
mechanically cut off and sent far away out of sight, another criminal always
comes to take his place at once, and often two of them. If anything does
preserve society, even in our time, and does regenerate and transform the
criminal, it is only the law of Christ speaking in his conscience. It is only
by recognizing his wrong‐doing as a son of a Christian society—that is,
of the Church—that he recognizes his sin against society—that is,
against the Church. So that it is only against the Church, and not against the
State, that the criminal of to‐day can recognize that he has sinned. If
society, as a Church, had jurisdiction, then it would know when to bring back
from exclusion and to reunite to itself. Now the Church having no real
jurisdiction, but only the power of moral condemnation, withdraws of her own
accord from punishing the criminal actively. She does not excommunicate him but
simply persists in motherly exhortation of him. What is more, the Church even
tries to preserve all Christian communion with the criminal. She admits him to
church services, to the holy sacrament, gives him alms, and treats him more as
a captive than as a convict. And what would become of the criminal, O Lord, if
even the Christian society—that is, the Church—were to reject him
even as the civil law rejects him and cuts him off? What would become of him if
the Church punished him with her excommunication as the direct consequence of
the secular law? There could be no more terrible despair, at least for a
Russian criminal, for Russian criminals still have faith. Though, who knows,
perhaps then a fearful thing would happen, perhaps the despairing heart of the
criminal would lose its faith and then what would become of him? But the
Church, like a tender, loving mother, holds aloof from active punishment
herself, as the sinner is too severely punished already by the civil law, and
there must be at least some one to have pity on him. The Church holds aloof,
above all, because its judgment is the only one that contains the truth, and
therefore cannot practically and morally be united to any other judgment even
as a temporary compromise. She can enter into no compact about that. The
foreign criminal, they say, rarely repents, for the very doctrines of to‐day
confirm him in the idea that his crime is not a crime, but only a reaction
against an unjustly oppressive force. Society cuts him off completely by a
force that triumphs over him mechanically and (so at least they say of
themselves in Europe) accompanies this exclusion with hatred, forgetfulness,
and the most profound indifference as to the ultimate fate of the erring
brother. In this way, it all takes place without the compassionate intervention
of the Church, for in many cases there are no churches there at all, for though
ecclesiastics and splendid church buildings remain, the churches themselves
have long ago striven to pass from Church into State and to disappear in it
completely. So it seems at least in Lutheran countries. As for Rome, it was
proclaimed a State instead of a Church a thousand years ago. And so the
criminal is no longer conscious of being a member of the Church and sinks into
despair. If he returns to society, often it is with such hatred that society
itself instinctively cuts him off. You can judge for yourself how it must end.
In many cases it would seem to be the same with us, but the difference is that
besides the established law courts we have the Church too, which always keeps
up relations with the criminal as a dear and still precious son. And besides
that, there is still preserved, though only in thought, the judgment of the
Church, which though no longer existing in practice is still living as a dream
for the future, and is, no doubt, instinctively recognized by the criminal in
his soul. What was said here just now is true too, that is, that if the
jurisdiction of the Church were introduced in practice in its full force, that
is, if the whole of the society were changed into the Church, not only the
judgment of the Church would have influence on the reformation of the criminal
such as it never has now, but possibly also the crimes themselves would be
incredibly diminished. And there can be no doubt that the Church would look
upon the criminal and the crime of the future in many cases quite differently
and would succeed in restoring the excluded, in restraining those who plan
evil, and in regenerating the fallen. It is true,” said Father Zossima,
with a smile, “the Christian society now is not ready and is only resting
on some seven righteous men, but as they are never lacking, it will continue
still unshaken in expectation of its complete transformation from a society
almost heathen in character into a single universal and all‐powerful Church. So
be it, so be it! Even though at the end of the ages, for it is ordained to come
to pass! And there is no need to be troubled about times and seasons, for the
secret of the times and seasons is in the wisdom of God, in His foresight, and
His love. And what in human reckoning seems still afar off, may by the Divine
ordinance be close at hand, on the eve of its appearance. And so be it, so be
it!”

“So be it, so be it!” Father Païssy repeated austerely and
reverently.

“Strange, extremely strange!” Miüsov pronounced, not so much with
heat as with latent indignation.

“What strikes you as so strange?” Father Iosif inquired cautiously.

“Why, it’s beyond anything!” cried Miüsov, suddenly breaking
out; “the State is eliminated and the Church is raised to the position of
the State. It’s not simply Ultramontanism, it’s
arch‐Ultramontanism! It’s beyond the dreams of Pope Gregory the
Seventh!”

“You are completely misunderstanding it,” said Father Païssy
sternly. “Understand, the Church is not to be transformed into the State.
That is Rome and its dream. That is the third temptation of the devil. On the
contrary, the State is transformed into the Church, will ascend and become a
Church over the whole world—which is the complete opposite of
Ultramontanism and Rome, and your interpretation, and is only the glorious
destiny ordained for the Orthodox Church. This star will arise in the
east!”

Miüsov was significantly silent. His whole figure expressed extraordinary
personal dignity. A supercilious and condescending smile played on his lips.
Alyosha watched it all with a throbbing heart. The whole conversation stirred
him profoundly. He glanced casually at Rakitin, who was standing immovable in
his place by the door listening and watching intently though with downcast
eyes. But from the color in his cheeks Alyosha guessed that Rakitin was
probably no less excited, and he knew what caused his excitement.

“Allow me to tell you one little anecdote, gentlemen,” Miüsov said
impressively, with a peculiarly majestic air. “Some years ago, soon after
the coup d’état of December, I happened to be calling in Paris on
an extremely influential personage in the Government, and I met a very
interesting man in his house. This individual was not precisely a detective but
was a sort of superintendent of a whole regiment of political
detectives—a rather powerful position in its own way. I was prompted by
curiosity to seize the opportunity of conversation with him. And as he had not
come as a visitor but as a subordinate official bringing a special report, and
as he saw the reception given me by his chief, he deigned to speak with some
openness, to a certain extent only, of course. He was rather courteous than
open, as Frenchmen know how to be courteous, especially to a foreigner. But I
thoroughly understood him. The subject was the socialist revolutionaries who
were at that time persecuted. I will quote only one most curious remark dropped
by this person. ‘We are not particularly afraid,’ said he,
‘of all these socialists, anarchists, infidels, and revolutionists; we
keep watch on them and know all their goings on. But there are a few peculiar
men among them who believe in God and are Christians, but at the same time are
socialists. These are the people we are most afraid of. They are dreadful
people! The socialist who is a Christian is more to be dreaded than a socialist
who is an atheist.’ The words struck me at the time, and now they have
suddenly come back to me here, gentlemen.”

“You apply them to us, and look upon us as socialists?” Father
Païssy asked directly, without beating about the bush.

But before Pyotr Alexandrovitch could think what to answer, the door opened,
and the guest so long expected, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, came in. They had, in
fact, given up expecting him, and his sudden appearance caused some surprise
for a moment.

Chapter VI.
Why Is Such A Man Alive?

Dmitri Fyodorovitch, a young man of eight and twenty, of medium height and
agreeable countenance, looked older than his years. He was muscular, and showed
signs of considerable physical strength. Yet there was something not healthy in
his face. It was rather thin, his cheeks were hollow, and there was an
unhealthy sallowness in their color. His rather large, prominent, dark eyes had
an expression of firm determination, and yet there was a vague look in them,
too. Even when he was excited and talking irritably, his eyes somehow did not
follow his mood, but betrayed something else, sometimes quite incongruous with
what was passing. “It’s hard to tell what he’s
thinking,” those who talked to him sometimes declared. People who saw
something pensive and sullen in his eyes were startled by his sudden laugh,
which bore witness to mirthful and light‐ hearted thoughts at the very time
when his eyes were so gloomy. A certain strained look in his face was easy to
understand at this moment. Every one knew, or had heard of, the extremely
restless and dissipated life which he had been leading of late, as well as of
the violent anger to which he had been roused in his quarrels with his father.
There were several stories current in the town about it. It is true that he was
irascible by nature, “of an unstable and unbalanced mind,” as our
justice of the peace, Katchalnikov, happily described him.

He was stylishly and irreproachably dressed in a carefully buttoned frock‐
coat. He wore black gloves and carried a top‐hat. Having only lately left the
army, he still had mustaches and no beard. His dark brown hair was cropped
short, and combed forward on his temples. He had the long, determined stride of
a military man. He stood still for a moment on the threshold, and glancing at
the whole party went straight up to the elder, guessing him to be their host.
He made him a low bow, and asked his blessing. Father Zossima, rising in his
chair, blessed him. Dmitri kissed his hand respectfully, and with intense
feeling, almost anger, he said:

“Be so generous as to forgive me for having kept you waiting so long, but
Smerdyakov, the valet sent me by my father, in reply to my inquiries, told me
twice over that the appointment was for one. Now I suddenly learn—”

“Don’t disturb yourself,” interposed the elder. “No
matter. You are a little late. It’s of no consequence….”

“I’m extremely obliged to you, and expected no less from your
goodness.”

Saying this, Dmitri bowed once more. Then, turning suddenly towards his father,
made him, too, a similarly low and respectful bow. He had evidently considered
it beforehand, and made this bow in all seriousness, thinking it his duty to
show his respect and good intentions.

Although Fyodor Pavlovitch was taken unawares, he was equal to the occasion. In
response to Dmitri’s bow he jumped up from his chair and made his son a
bow as low in return. His face was suddenly solemn and impressive, which gave
him a positively malignant look. Dmitri bowed generally to all present, and
without a word walked to the window with his long, resolute stride, sat down on
the only empty chair, near Father Païssy, and, bending forward, prepared to
listen to the conversation he had interrupted.

Dmitri’s entrance had taken no more than two minutes, and the
conversation was resumed. But this time Miüsov thought it unnecessary to reply
to Father Païssy’s persistent and almost irritable question.

“Allow me to withdraw from this discussion,” he observed with a
certain well‐bred nonchalance. “It’s a subtle question, too. Here
Ivan Fyodorovitch is smiling at us. He must have something interesting to say
about that also. Ask him.”

“Nothing special, except one little remark,” Ivan replied at once.
“European Liberals in general, and even our liberal dilettanti, often mix
up the final results of socialism with those of Christianity. This wild notion
is, of course, a characteristic feature. But it’s not only Liberals and
dilettanti who mix up socialism and Christianity, but, in many cases, it
appears, the police—the foreign police, of course—do the same. Your
Paris anecdote is rather to the point, Pyotr Alexandrovitch.”

“I ask your permission to drop this subject altogether,” Miüsov
repeated. “I will tell you instead, gentlemen, another interesting and
rather characteristic anecdote of Ivan Fyodorovitch himself. Only five days
ago, in a gathering here, principally of ladies, he solemnly declared in
argument that there was nothing in the whole world to make men love their
neighbors. That there was no law of nature that man should love mankind, and
that, if there had been any love on earth hitherto, it was not owing to a
natural law, but simply because men have believed in immortality. Ivan
Fyodorovitch added in parenthesis that the whole natural law lies in that
faith, and that if you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality,
not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at
once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be
lawful, even cannibalism. That’s not all. He ended by asserting that for
every individual, like ourselves, who does not believe in God or immortality,
the moral law of nature must immediately be changed into the exact contrary of
the former religious law, and that egoism, even to crime, must become not only
lawful but even recognized as the inevitable, the most rational, even honorable
outcome of his position. From this paradox, gentlemen, you can judge of the
rest of our eccentric and paradoxical friend Ivan Fyodorovitch’s
theories.”

“Excuse me,” Dmitri cried suddenly; “if I’ve heard
aright, crime must not only be permitted but even recognized as the inevitable
and the most rational outcome of his position for every infidel! Is that so or
not?”

“Quite so,” said Father Païssy.

“I’ll remember it.”

Having uttered these words Dmitri ceased speaking as suddenly as he had begun.
Every one looked at him with curiosity.

“Is that really your conviction as to the consequences of the
disappearance of the faith in immortality?” the elder asked Ivan
suddenly.

“Yes. That was my contention. There is no virtue if there is no
immortality.”

“You are blessed in believing that, or else most unhappy.”

“Why unhappy?” Ivan asked smiling.

“Because, in all probability you don’t believe yourself in the
immortality of your soul, nor in what you have written yourself in your article
on Church jurisdiction.”

“Perhaps you are right! … But I wasn’t altogether joking,”
Ivan suddenly and strangely confessed, flushing quickly.

“You were not altogether joking. That’s true. The question is still
fretting your heart, and not answered. But the martyr likes sometimes to divert
himself with his despair, as it were driven to it by despair itself. Meanwhile,
in your despair, you, too, divert yourself with magazine articles, and
discussions in society, though you don’t believe your own arguments, and
with an aching heart mock at them inwardly…. That question you have not
answered, and it is your great grief, for it clamors for an answer.”

“But can it be answered by me? Answered in the affirmative?” Ivan
went on asking strangely, still looking at the elder with the same inexplicable
smile.

“If it can’t be decided in the affirmative, it will never be
decided in the negative. You know that that is the peculiarity of your heart,
and all its suffering is due to it. But thank the Creator who has given you a
lofty heart capable of such suffering; of thinking and seeking higher things,
for our dwelling is in the heavens. God grant that your heart will attain the
answer on earth, and may God bless your path.”

The elder raised his hand and would have made the sign of the cross over Ivan
from where he stood. But the latter rose from his seat, went up to him,
received his blessing, and kissing his hand went back to his place in silence.
His face looked firm and earnest. This action and all the preceding
conversation, which was so surprising from Ivan, impressed every one by its
strangeness and a certain solemnity, so that all were silent for a moment, and
there was a look almost of apprehension in Alyosha’s face. But Miüsov
suddenly shrugged his shoulders. And at the same moment Fyodor Pavlovitch
jumped up from his seat.

“Most pious and holy elder,” he cried, pointing to Ivan,
“that is my son, flesh of my flesh, the dearest of my flesh! He is my
most dutiful Karl Moor, so to speak, while this son who has just come in,
Dmitri, against whom I am seeking justice from you, is the undutiful Franz
Moor—they are both out of Schiller’s Robbers, and so I am
the reigning Count von Moor! Judge and save us! We need not only your prayers
but your prophecies!”

“Speak without buffoonery, and don’t begin by insulting the members
of your family,” answered the elder, in a faint, exhausted voice. He was
obviously getting more and more fatigued, and his strength was failing.

“An unseemly farce which I foresaw when I came here!” cried Dmitri
indignantly. He too leapt up. “Forgive it, reverend Father,” he
added, addressing the elder. “I am not a cultivated man, and I
don’t even know how to address you properly, but you have been deceived
and you have been too good‐natured in letting us meet here. All my father wants
is a scandal. Why he wants it only he can tell. He always has some motive. But
I believe I know why—”

“They all blame me, all of them!” cried Fyodor Pavlovitch in his
turn. “Pyotr Alexandrovitch here blames me too. You have been blaming me,
Pyotr Alexandrovitch, you have!” he turned suddenly to Miüsov, although
the latter was not dreaming of interrupting him. “They all accuse me of
having hidden the children’s money in my boots, and cheated them, but
isn’t there a court of law? There they will reckon out for you, Dmitri
Fyodorovitch, from your notes, your letters, and your agreements, how much
money you had, how much you have spent, and how much you have left. Why does
Pyotr Alexandrovitch refuse to pass judgment? Dmitri is not a stranger to him.
Because they are all against me, while Dmitri Fyodorovitch is in debt to me,
and not a little, but some thousands of which I have documentary proof. The
whole town is echoing with his debaucheries. And where he was stationed before,
he several times spent a thousand or two for the seduction of some respectable
girl; we know all about that, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, in its most secret details.
I’ll prove it…. Would you believe it, holy Father, he has captivated
the heart of the most honorable of young ladies of good family and fortune,
daughter of a gallant colonel, formerly his superior officer, who had received
many honors and had the Anna Order on his breast. He compromised the girl by
his promise of marriage, now she is an orphan and here; she is betrothed to
him, yet before her very eyes he is dancing attendance on a certain
enchantress. And although this enchantress has lived in, so to speak, civil
marriage with a respectable man, yet she is of an independent character, an
unapproachable fortress for everybody, just like a legal wife—for she is
virtuous, yes, holy Fathers, she is virtuous. Dmitri Fyodorovitch wants to open
this fortress with a golden key, and that’s why he is insolent to me now,
trying to get money from me, though he has wasted thousands on this enchantress
already. He’s continually borrowing money for the purpose. From whom do
you think? Shall I say, Mitya?”

“Be silent!” cried Dmitri, “wait till I’m gone.
Don’t dare in my presence to asperse the good name of an honorable girl!
That you should utter a word about her is an outrage, and I won’t permit
it!”

He was breathless.

“Mitya! Mitya!” cried Fyodor Pavlovitch hysterically, squeezing out
a tear. “And is your father’s blessing nothing to you? If I curse
you, what then?”

“Shameless hypocrite!” exclaimed Dmitri furiously.

“He says that to his father! his father! What would he be with others?
Gentlemen, only fancy; there’s a poor but honorable man living here,
burdened with a numerous family, a captain who got into trouble and was
discharged from the army, but not publicly, not by court‐martial, with no slur
on his honor. And three weeks ago, Dmitri seized him by the beard in a tavern,
dragged him out into the street and beat him publicly, and all because he is an
agent in a little business of mine.”

“It’s all a lie! Outwardly it’s the truth, but inwardly a
lie!” Dmitri was trembling with rage. “Father, I don’t
justify my action. Yes, I confess it publicly, I behaved like a brute to that
captain, and I regret it now, and I’m disgusted with myself for my brutal
rage. But this captain, this agent of yours, went to that lady whom you call an
enchantress, and suggested to her from you, that she should take I.O.U.’s
of mine which were in your possession, and should sue me for the money so as to
get me into prison by means of them, if I persisted in claiming an account from
you of my property. Now you reproach me for having a weakness for that lady
when you yourself incited her to captivate me! She told me so to my face….
She told me the story and laughed at you…. You wanted to put me in prison
because you are jealous of me with her, because you’d begun to force your
attentions upon her; and I know all about that, too; she laughed at you for
that as well—you hear—she laughed at you as she described it. So
here you have this man, this father who reproaches his profligate son!
Gentlemen, forgive my anger, but I foresaw that this crafty old man would only
bring you together to create a scandal. I had come to forgive him if he held
out his hand; to forgive him, and ask forgiveness! But as he has just this
minute insulted not only me, but an honorable young lady, for whom I feel such
reverence that I dare not take her name in vain, I have made up my mind to show
up his game, though he is my father….”

He could not go on. His eyes were glittering and he breathed with difficulty.
But every one in the cell was stirred. All except Father Zossima got up from
their seats uneasily. The monks looked austere but waited for guidance from the
elder. He sat still, pale, not from excitement but from the weakness of
disease. An imploring smile lighted up his face; from time to time he raised
his hand, as though to check the storm, and, of course, a gesture from him
would have been enough to end the scene; but he seemed to be waiting for
something and watched them intently as though trying to make out something
which was not perfectly clear to him. At last Miüsov felt completely humiliated
and disgraced.

“We are all to blame for this scandalous scene,” he said hotly.
“But I did not foresee it when I came, though I knew with whom I had to
deal. This must be stopped at once! Believe me, your reverence, I had no
precise knowledge of the details that have just come to light, I was unwilling
to believe them, and I learn for the first time…. A father is jealous of his
son’s relations with a woman of loose behavior and intrigues with the
creature to get his son into prison! This is the company in which I have been
forced to be present! I was deceived. I declare to you all that I was as much
deceived as any one.”

“Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” yelled Fyodor Pavlovitch suddenly, in an
unnatural voice, “if you were not my son I would challenge you this
instant to a duel … with pistols, at three paces … across a
handkerchief,” he ended, stamping with both feet.

With old liars who have been acting all their lives there are moments when they
enter so completely into their part that they tremble or shed tears of emotion
in earnest, although at that very moment, or a second later, they are able to
whisper to themselves, “You know you are lying, you shameless old sinner!
You’re acting now, in spite of your ‘holy’ wrath.”

Dmitri frowned painfully, and looked with unutterable contempt at his father.

“I thought … I thought,” he said, in a soft and, as it were,
controlled voice, “that I was coming to my native place with the angel of
my heart, my betrothed, to cherish his old age, and I find nothing but a
depraved profligate, a despicable clown!”

“A duel!” yelled the old wretch again, breathless and spluttering
at each syllable. “And you, Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miüsov, let me tell you
that there has never been in all your family a loftier, and more
honest—you hear—more honest woman than this ‘creature,’
as you have dared to call her! And you, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, have abandoned
your betrothed for that ‘creature,’ so you must yourself have
thought that your betrothed couldn’t hold a candle to her. That’s
the woman called a ‘creature’!”

“Shameful!” broke from Father Iosif.

“Shameful and disgraceful!” Kalganov, flushing crimson, cried in a
boyish voice, trembling with emotion. He had been silent till that moment.

“Why is such a man alive?” Dmitri, beside himself with rage,
growled in a hollow voice, hunching up his shoulders till he looked almost
deformed. “Tell me, can he be allowed to go on defiling the earth?”
He looked round at every one and pointed at the old man. He spoke evenly and
deliberately.

“Listen, listen, monks, to the parricide!” cried Fyodor Pavlovitch,
rushing up to Father Iosif. “That’s the answer to your
‘shameful!’ What is shameful? That ‘creature,’ that
‘woman of loose behavior’ is perhaps holier than you are
yourselves, you monks who are seeking salvation! She fell perhaps in her youth,
ruined by her environment. But she loved much, and Christ himself forgave the
woman ‘who loved much.’ ”

“It was not for such love Christ forgave her,” broke impatiently
from the gentle Father Iosif.

“Yes, it was for such, monks, it was! You save your souls here, eating
cabbage, and think you are the righteous. You eat a gudgeon a day, and you
think you bribe God with gudgeon.”

“This is unendurable!” was heard on all sides in the cell.

But this unseemly scene was cut short in a most unexpected way. Father Zossima
rose suddenly from his seat. Almost distracted with anxiety for the elder and
every one else, Alyosha succeeded, however, in supporting him by the arm.
Father Zossima moved towards Dmitri and reaching him sank on his knees before
him. Alyosha thought that he had fallen from weakness, but this was not so. The
elder distinctly and deliberately bowed down at Dmitri’s feet till his
forehead touched the floor. Alyosha was so astounded that he failed to assist
him when he got up again. There was a faint smile on his lips.

“Good‐by! Forgive me, all of you!” he said, bowing on all sides to
his guests.

Dmitri stood for a few moments in amazement. Bowing down to him—what did
it mean? Suddenly he cried aloud, “Oh, God!” hid his face in his
hands, and rushed out of the room. All the guests flocked out after him, in
their confusion not saying good‐by, or bowing to their host. Only the monks
went up to him again for a blessing.

“What did it mean, falling at his feet like that? Was it symbolic or
what?” said Fyodor Pavlovitch, suddenly quieted and trying to reopen
conversation without venturing to address anybody in particular. They were all
passing out of the precincts of the hermitage at the moment.

“I can’t answer for a madhouse and for madmen,” Miüsov
answered at once ill‐humoredly, “but I will spare myself your company,
Fyodor Pavlovitch, and, trust me, for ever. Where’s that monk?”

“That monk,” that is, the monk who had invited them to dine with
the Superior, did not keep them waiting. He met them as soon as they came down
the steps from the elder’s cell, as though he had been waiting for them
all the time.

“Reverend Father, kindly do me a favor. Convey my deepest respect to the
Father Superior, apologize for me, personally, Miüsov, to his reverence,
telling him that I deeply regret that owing to unforeseen circumstances I am
unable to have the honor of being present at his table, greatly as I should
desire to do so,” Miüsov said irritably to the monk.

“And that unforeseen circumstance, of course, is myself,” Fyodor
Pavlovitch cut in immediately. “Do you hear, Father; this gentleman
doesn’t want to remain in my company or else he’d come at once. And
you shall go, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, pray go to the Father Superior and good
appetite to you. I will decline, and not you. Home, home, I’ll eat at
home, I don’t feel equal to it here, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, my amiable
relative.”

“I am not your relative and never have been, you contemptible man!”

“I said it on purpose to madden you, because you always disclaim the
relationship, though you really are a relation in spite of your shuffling.
I’ll prove it by the church calendar. As for you, Ivan, stay if you like.
I’ll send the horses for you later. Propriety requires you to go to the
Father Superior, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, to apologize for the disturbance
we’ve been making….”

“Is it true that you are going home? Aren’t you lying?”

“Pyotr Alexandrovitch! How could I dare after what’s happened!
Forgive me, gentlemen, I was carried away! And upset besides! And, indeed, I am
ashamed. Gentlemen, one man has the heart of Alexander of Macedon and another
the heart of the little dog Fido. Mine is that of the little dog Fido. I am
ashamed! After such an escapade how can I go to dinner, to gobble up the
monastery’s sauces? I am ashamed, I can’t. You must excuse
me!”

“The devil only knows, what if he deceives us?” thought Miüsov,
still hesitating, and watching the retreating buffoon with distrustful eyes.
The latter turned round, and noticing that Miüsov was watching him, waved him a
kiss.

“Well, are you coming to the Superior?” Miüsov asked Ivan abruptly.

“Why not? I was especially invited yesterday.”

“Unfortunately I feel myself compelled to go to this confounded
dinner,” said Miüsov with the same irritability, regardless of the fact
that the monk was listening. “We ought, at least, to apologize for the
disturbance, and explain that it was not our doing. What do you think?”

“Yes, we must explain that it wasn’t our doing. Besides, father
won’t be there,” observed Ivan.

“Well, I should hope not! Confound this dinner!”

They all walked on, however. The monk listened in silence. On the road through
the copse he made one observation however—that the Father Superior had
been waiting a long time, and that they were more than half an hour late. He
received no answer. Miüsov looked with hatred at Ivan.

“Here he is, going to the dinner as though nothing had happened,”
he thought. “A brazen face, and the conscience of a Karamazov!”

Chapter VII.
A Young Man Bent On A Career

Alyosha helped Father Zossima to his bedroom and seated him on his bed. It was
a little room furnished with the bare necessities. There was a narrow iron
bedstead, with a strip of felt for a mattress. In the corner, under the ikons,
was a reading‐desk with a cross and the Gospel lying on it. The elder sank
exhausted on the bed. His eyes glittered and he breathed hard. He looked
intently at Alyosha, as though considering something.

“Go, my dear boy, go. Porfiry is enough for me. Make haste, you are
needed there, go and wait at the Father Superior’s table.”

“Let me stay here,” Alyosha entreated.

“You are more needed there. There is no peace there. You will wait, and
be of service. If evil spirits rise up, repeat a prayer. And remember, my
son”—the elder liked to call him that—“this is not the
place for you in the future. When it is God’s will to call me, leave the
monastery. Go away for good.”

Alyosha started.

“What is it? This is not your place for the time. I bless you for great
service in the world. Yours will be a long pilgrimage. And you will have to
take a wife, too. You will have to bear all before you come back. There
will be much to do. But I don’t doubt of you, and so I send you forth.
Christ is with you. Do not abandon Him and He will not abandon you. You will
see great sorrow, and in that sorrow you will be happy. This is my last message
to you: in sorrow seek happiness. Work, work unceasingly. Remember my words,
for although I shall talk with you again, not only my days but my hours are
numbered.”

Alyosha’s face again betrayed strong emotion. The corners of his mouth
quivered.

“What is it again?” Father Zossima asked, smiling gently.
“The worldly may follow the dead with tears, but here we rejoice over the
father who is departing. We rejoice and pray for him. Leave me, I must pray.
Go, and make haste. Be near your brothers. And not near one only, but near
both.”

Father Zossima raised his hand to bless him. Alyosha could make no protest,
though he had a great longing to remain. He longed, moreover, to ask the
significance of his bowing to Dmitri, the question was on the tip of his
tongue, but he dared not ask it. He knew that the elder would have explained it
unasked if he had thought fit. But evidently it was not his will. That action
had made a terrible impression on Alyosha; he believed blindly in its
mysterious significance. Mysterious, and perhaps awful.

As he hastened out of the hermitage precincts to reach the monastery in time to
serve at the Father Superior’s dinner, he felt a sudden pang at his
heart, and stopped short. He seemed to hear again Father Zossima’s words,
foretelling his approaching end. What he had foretold so exactly must
infallibly come to pass. Alyosha believed that implicitly. But how could he be
left without him? How could he live without seeing and hearing him? Where
should he go? He had told him not to weep, and to leave the monastery. Good
God! It was long since Alyosha had known such anguish. He hurried through the
copse that divided the monastery from the hermitage, and unable to bear the
burden of his thoughts, he gazed at the ancient pines beside the path. He had
not far to go—about five hundred paces. He expected to meet no one at
that hour, but at the first turn of the path he noticed Rakitin. He was waiting
for some one.

“Are you waiting for me?” asked Alyosha, overtaking him.

“Yes,” grinned Rakitin. “You are hurrying to the Father
Superior, I know; he has a banquet. There’s not been such a banquet since
the Superior entertained the Bishop and General Pahatov, do you remember? I
shan’t be there, but you go and hand the sauces. Tell me one thing,
Alexey, what does that vision mean? That’s what I want to ask you.”

“What vision?”

“That bowing to your brother, Dmitri. And didn’t he tap the ground
with his forehead, too!”

“You speak of Father Zossima?”

“Yes, of Father Zossima.”

“Tapped the ground?”

“Ah, an irreverent expression! Well, what of it? Anyway, what does that
vision mean?”

“I don’t know what it means, Misha.”

“I knew he wouldn’t explain it to you! There’s nothing
wonderful about it, of course, only the usual holy mummery. But there was an
object in the performance. All the pious people in the town will talk about it
and spread the story through the province, wondering what it meant. To my
thinking the old man really has a keen nose; he sniffed a crime. Your house
stinks of it.”

“What crime?”

Rakitin evidently had something he was eager to speak of.

“It’ll be in your family, this crime. Between your brothers and
your rich old father. So Father Zossima flopped down to be ready for what may
turn up. If something happens later on, it’ll be: ‘Ah, the holy man
foresaw it, prophesied it!’ though it’s a poor sort of prophecy,
flopping like that. ‘Ah, but it was symbolic,’ they’ll say,
‘an allegory,’ and the devil knows what all! It’ll be
remembered to his glory: ‘He predicted the crime and marked the
criminal!’ That’s always the way with these crazy fanatics; they
cross themselves at the tavern and throw stones at the temple. Like your elder,
he takes a stick to a just man and falls at the feet of a murderer.”

“What crime? What murderer? What do you mean?”

Alyosha stopped dead. Rakitin stopped, too.

“What murderer? As though you didn’t know! I’ll bet
you’ve thought of it before. That’s interesting, too, by the way.
Listen, Alyosha, you always speak the truth, though you’re always between
two stools. Have you thought of it or not? Answer.”

“I have,” answered Alyosha in a low voice. Even Rakitin was taken
aback.

“What? Have you really?” he cried.

“I … I’ve not exactly thought it,” muttered Alyosha,
“but directly you began speaking so strangely, I fancied I had thought of
it myself.”

“You see? (And how well you expressed it!) Looking at your father and
your brother Mitya to‐day you thought of a crime. Then I’m not
mistaken?”

“But wait, wait a minute,” Alyosha broke in uneasily. “What
has led you to see all this? Why does it interest you? That’s the first
question.”

“Two questions, disconnected, but natural. I’ll deal with them
separately. What led me to see it? I shouldn’t have seen it, if I
hadn’t suddenly understood your brother Dmitri, seen right into the very
heart of him all at once. I caught the whole man from one trait. These very
honest but passionate people have a line which mustn’t be crossed. If it
were, he’d run at your father with a knife. But your father’s a
drunken and abandoned old sinner, who can never draw the line—if they
both let themselves go, they’ll both come to grief.”

“No, Misha, no. If that’s all, you’ve reassured me. It
won’t come to that.”

“But why are you trembling? Let me tell you; he may be honest, our Mitya
(he is stupid, but honest), but he’s—a sensualist. That’s the
very definition and inner essence of him. It’s your father has handed him
on his low sensuality. Do you know, I simply wonder at you, Alyosha, how you
can have kept your purity. You’re a Karamazov too, you know! In your
family sensuality is carried to a disease. But now, these three sensualists are
watching one another, with their knives in their belts. The three of them are
knocking their heads together, and you may be the fourth.”

“You are mistaken about that woman. Dmitri—despises her,”
said Alyosha, with a sort of shudder.

“Grushenka? No, brother, he doesn’t despise her. Since he has
openly abandoned his betrothed for her, he doesn’t despise her.
There’s something here, my dear boy, that you don’t understand yet.
A man will fall in love with some beauty, with a woman’s body, or even
with a part of a woman’s body (a sensualist can understand that), and
he’ll abandon his own children for her, sell his father and mother, and
his country, Russia, too. If he’s honest, he’ll steal; if
he’s humane, he’ll murder; if he’s faithful, he’ll
deceive. Pushkin, the poet of women’s feet, sung of their feet in his
verse. Others don’t sing their praises, but they can’t look at
their feet without a thrill—and it’s not only their feet.
Contempt’s no help here, brother, even if he did despise Grushenka. He
does, but he can’t tear himself away.”

“I understand that,” Alyosha jerked out suddenly.

“Really? Well, I dare say you do understand, since you blurt it out at
the first word,” said Rakitin, malignantly. “That escaped you
unawares, and the confession’s the more precious. So it’s a
familiar subject; you’ve thought about it already, about sensuality, I
mean! Oh, you virgin soul! You’re a quiet one, Alyosha, you’re a
saint, I know, but the devil only knows what you’ve thought about, and
what you know already! You are pure, but you’ve been down into the
depths…. I’ve been watching you a long time. You’re a Karamazov
yourself; you’re a thorough Karamazov—no doubt birth and selection
have something to answer for. You’re a sensualist from your father, a
crazy saint from your mother. Why do you tremble? Is it true, then? Do you
know, Grushenka has been begging me to bring you along. ‘I’ll pull
off his cassock,’ she says. You can’t think how she keeps begging
me to bring you. I wondered why she took such an interest in you. Do you know,
she’s an extraordinary woman, too!”

“Thank her and say I’m not coming,” said Alyosha, with a
strained smile. “Finish what you were saying, Misha. I’ll tell you
my idea after.”

“There’s nothing to finish. It’s all clear. It’s the
same old tune, brother. If even you are a sensualist at heart, what of your
brother, Ivan? He’s a Karamazov, too. What is at the root of all you
Karamazovs is that you’re all sensual, grasping and crazy! Your brother
Ivan writes theological articles in joke, for some idiotic, unknown motive of
his own, though he’s an atheist, and he admits it’s a fraud
himself—that’s your brother Ivan. He’s trying to get
Mitya’s betrothed for himself, and I fancy he’ll succeed, too. And
what’s more, it’s with Mitya’s consent. For Mitya will
surrender his betrothed to him to be rid of her, and escape to Grushenka. And
he’s ready to do that in spite of all his nobility and disinterestedness.
Observe that. Those are the most fatal people! Who the devil can make you out?
He recognizes his vileness and goes on with it! Let me tell you, too, the old
man, your father, is standing in Mitya’s way now. He has suddenly gone
crazy over Grushenka. His mouth waters at the sight of her. It’s simply
on her account he made that scene in the cell just now, simply because Miüsov
called her an ‘abandoned creature.’ He’s worse than a tom‐cat
in love. At first she was only employed by him in connection with his taverns
and in some other shady business, but now he has suddenly realized all she is
and has gone wild about her. He keeps pestering her with his offers, not
honorable ones, of course. And they’ll come into collision, the precious
father and son, on that path! But Grushenka favors neither of them, she’s
still playing with them, and teasing them both, considering which she can get
most out of. For though she could filch a lot of money from the papa he
wouldn’t marry her, and maybe he’ll turn stingy in the end, and
keep his purse shut. That’s where Mitya’s value comes in; he has no
money, but he’s ready to marry her. Yes, ready to marry her! to abandon
his betrothed, a rare beauty, Katerina Ivanovna, who’s rich, and the
daughter of a colonel, and to marry Grushenka, who has been the mistress of a
dissolute old merchant, Samsonov, a coarse, uneducated, provincial mayor. Some
murderous conflict may well come to pass from all this, and that’s what
your brother Ivan is waiting for. It would suit him down to the ground.
He’ll carry off Katerina Ivanovna, for whom he is languishing, and pocket
her dowry of sixty thousand. That’s very alluring to start with, for a
man of no consequence and a beggar. And, take note, he won’t be wronging
Mitya, but doing him the greatest service. For I know as a fact that Mitya only
last week, when he was with some gypsy girls drunk in a tavern, cried out aloud
that he was unworthy of his betrothed, Katya, but that his brother Ivan, he was
the man who deserved her. And Katerina Ivanovna will not in the end refuse such
a fascinating man as Ivan. She’s hesitating between the two of them
already. And how has that Ivan won you all, so that you all worship him? He is
laughing at you, and enjoying himself at your expense.”

“How do you know? How can you speak so confidently?” Alyosha asked
sharply, frowning.

“Why do you ask, and are frightened at my answer? It shows that you know
I’m speaking the truth.”

“You don’t like Ivan. Ivan wouldn’t be tempted by
money.”

“Really? And the beauty of Katerina Ivanovna? It’s not only the
money, though a fortune of sixty thousand is an attraction.”

“Ivan is above that. He wouldn’t make up to any one for thousands.
It is not money, it’s not comfort Ivan is seeking. Perhaps it’s
suffering he is seeking.”

“What wild dream now? Oh, you—aristocrats!”

“Ah, Misha, he has a stormy spirit. His mind is in bondage. He is haunted
by a great, unsolved doubt. He is one of those who don’t want millions,
but an answer to their questions.”

“That’s plagiarism, Alyosha. You’re quoting your
elder’s phrases. Ah, Ivan has set you a problem!” cried Rakitin,
with undisguised malice. His face changed, and his lips twitched. “And
the problem’s a stupid one. It is no good guessing it. Rack your
brains—you’ll understand it. His article is absurd and ridiculous.
And did you hear his stupid theory just now: if there’s no immortality of
the soul, then there’s no virtue, and everything is lawful. (And by the
way, do you remember how your brother Mitya cried out: ‘I will
remember!’) An attractive theory for scoundrels!—(I’m being
abusive, that’s stupid.) Not for scoundrels, but for pedantic
poseurs, ‘haunted by profound, unsolved doubts.’ He’s
showing off, and what it all comes to is, ‘on the one hand we cannot but
admit’ and ‘on the other it must be confessed!’ His whole
theory is a fraud! Humanity will find in itself the power to live for virtue
even without believing in immortality. It will find it in love for freedom, for
equality, for fraternity.”

Rakitin could hardly restrain himself in his heat, but, suddenly, as though
remembering something, he stopped short.

“Well, that’s enough,” he said, with a still more crooked
smile. “Why are you laughing? Do you think I’m a vulgar
fool?”

“No, I never dreamed of thinking you a vulgar fool. You are clever but
… never mind, I was silly to smile. I understand your getting hot about it,
Misha. I guess from your warmth that you are not indifferent to Katerina
Ivanovna yourself; I’ve suspected that for a long time, brother,
that’s why you don’t like my brother Ivan. Are you jealous of
him?”

“And jealous of her money, too? Won’t you add that?”

“I’ll say nothing about money. I am not going to insult you.”

“I believe it, since you say so, but confound you, and your brother Ivan
with you. Don’t you understand that one might very well dislike him,
apart from Katerina Ivanovna. And why the devil should I like him? He
condescends to abuse me, you know. Why haven’t I a right to abuse
him?”

“I never heard of his saying anything about you, good or bad. He
doesn’t speak of you at all.”

“But I heard that the day before yesterday at Katerina Ivanovna’s
he was abusing me for all he was worth—you see what an interest he takes
in your humble servant. And which is the jealous one after that, brother, I
can’t say. He was so good as to express the opinion that, if I
don’t go in for the career of an archimandrite in the immediate future
and don’t become a monk, I shall be sure to go to Petersburg and get on
to some solid magazine as a reviewer, that I shall write for the next ten
years, and in the end become the owner of the magazine, and bring it out on the
liberal and atheistic side, with a socialistic tinge, with a tiny gloss of
socialism, but keeping a sharp look out all the time, that is, keeping in with
both sides and hoodwinking the fools. According to your brother’s
account, the tinge of socialism won’t hinder me from laying by the
proceeds and investing them under the guidance of some Jew, till at the end of
my career I build a great house in Petersburg and move my publishing offices to
it, and let out the upper stories to lodgers. He has even chosen the place for
it, near the new stone bridge across the Neva, which they say is to be built in
Petersburg.”

“Ah, Misha, that’s just what will really happen, every word of
it,” cried Alyosha, unable to restrain a good‐humored smile.

“You are pleased to be sarcastic, too, Alexey Fyodorovitch.”

“No, no, I’m joking, forgive me. I’ve something quite
different in my mind. But, excuse me, who can have told you all this? You
can’t have been at Katerina Ivanovna’s yourself when he was talking
about you?”

“I wasn’t there, but Dmitri Fyodorovitch was; and I heard him tell
it with my own ears; if you want to know, he didn’t tell me, but I
overheard him, unintentionally, of course, for I was sitting in
Grushenka’s bedroom and I couldn’t go away because Dmitri
Fyodorovitch was in the next room.”

“Oh, yes, I’d forgotten she was a relation of yours.”

“A relation! That Grushenka a relation of mine!” cried Rakitin,
turning crimson. “Are you mad? You’re out of your mind!”

“Why, isn’t she a relation of yours? I heard so.”

“Where can you have heard it? You Karamazovs brag of being an ancient,
noble family, though your father used to run about playing the buffoon at other
men’s tables, and was only admitted to the kitchen as a favor. I may be
only a priest’s son, and dirt in the eyes of noblemen like you, but
don’t insult me so lightly and wantonly. I have a sense of honor, too,
Alexey Fyodorovitch, I couldn’t be a relation of Grushenka, a common
harlot. I beg you to understand that!”

Rakitin was intensely irritated.

“Forgive me, for goodness’ sake, I had no idea … besides … how
can you call her a harlot? Is she … that sort of woman?” Alyosha
flushed suddenly. “I tell you again, I heard that she was a relation of
yours. You often go to see her, and you told me yourself you’re not her
lover. I never dreamed that you of all people had such contempt for her! Does
she really deserve it?”

“I may have reasons of my own for visiting her. That’s not your
business. But as for relationship, your brother, or even your father, is more
likely to make her yours than mine. Well, here we are. You’d better go to
the kitchen. Hullo! what’s wrong, what is it? Are we late? They
can’t have finished dinner so soon! Have the Karamazovs been making
trouble again? No doubt they have. Here’s your father and your brother
Ivan after him. They’ve broken out from the Father Superior’s. And
look, Father Isidor’s shouting out something after them from the steps.
And your father’s shouting and waving his arms. I expect he’s
swearing. Bah, and there goes Miüsov driving away in his carriage. You see,
he’s going. And there’s old Maximov running!—there must have
been a row. There can’t have been any dinner. Surely they’ve not
been beating the Father Superior! Or have they, perhaps, been beaten? It would
serve them right!”

There was reason for Rakitin’s exclamations. There had been a scandalous,
an unprecedented scene. It had all come from the impulse of a moment.

Chapter VIII.
The Scandalous Scene

Miüsov, as a man of breeding and delicacy, could not but feel some inward
qualms, when he reached the Father Superior’s with Ivan: he felt ashamed
of having lost his temper. He felt that he ought to have disdained that
despicable wretch, Fyodor Pavlovitch, too much to have been upset by him in
Father Zossima’s cell, and so to have forgotten himself. “The monks
were not to blame, in any case,” he reflected, on the steps. “And
if they’re decent people here (and the Father Superior, I understand, is
a nobleman) why not be friendly and courteous with them? I won’t argue,
I’ll fall in with everything, I’ll win them by politeness, and …
and … show them that I’ve nothing to do with that Æsop, that buffoon,
that Pierrot, and have merely been taken in over this affair, just as they
have.”

He determined to drop his litigation with the monastery, and relinquish his
claims to the wood‐cutting and fishery rights at once. He was the more ready to
do this because the rights had become much less valuable, and he had indeed the
vaguest idea where the wood and river in question were.

These excellent intentions were strengthened when he entered the Father
Superior’s dining‐room, though, strictly speaking, it was not a dining‐
room, for the Father Superior had only two rooms altogether; they were,
however, much larger and more comfortable than Father Zossima’s. But
there was no great luxury about the furnishing of these rooms either. The
furniture was of mahogany, covered with leather, in the old‐fashioned style of
1820; the floor was not even stained, but everything was shining with
cleanliness, and there were many choice flowers in the windows; the most
sumptuous thing in the room at the moment was, of course, the beautifully
decorated table. The cloth was clean, the service shone; there were three kinds
of well‐baked bread, two bottles of wine, two of excellent mead, and a large
glass jug of kvas—both the latter made in the monastery, and famous in
the neighborhood. There was no vodka. Rakitin related afterwards that there
were five dishes: fish‐soup made of sterlets, served with little fish patties;
then boiled fish served in a special way; then salmon cutlets, ice pudding and
compote, and finally, blanc‐mange. Rakitin found out about all these good
things, for he could not resist peeping into the kitchen, where he already had
a footing. He had a footing everywhere, and got information about everything.
He was of an uneasy and envious temper. He was well aware of his own
considerable abilities, and nervously exaggerated them in his self‐conceit. He
knew he would play a prominent part of some sort, but Alyosha, who was attached
to him, was distressed to see that his friend Rakitin was dishonorable, and
quite unconscious of being so himself, considering, on the contrary, that
because he would not steal money left on the table he was a man of the highest
integrity. Neither Alyosha nor any one else could have influenced him in that.

Rakitin, of course, was a person of too little consequence to be invited to the
dinner, to which Father Iosif, Father Païssy, and one other monk were the only
inmates of the monastery invited. They were already waiting when Miüsov,
Kalganov, and Ivan arrived. The other guest, Maximov, stood a little aside,
waiting also. The Father Superior stepped into the middle of the room to
receive his guests. He was a tall, thin, but still vigorous old man, with black
hair streaked with gray, and a long, grave, ascetic face. He bowed to his
guests in silence. But this time they approached to receive his blessing.
Miüsov even tried to kiss his hand, but the Father Superior drew it back in
time to avoid the salute. But Ivan and Kalganov went through the ceremony in
the most simple‐hearted and complete manner, kissing his hand as peasants do.

“We must apologize most humbly, your reverence,” began Miüsov,
simpering affably, and speaking in a dignified and respectful tone.
“Pardon us for having come alone without the gentleman you invited,
Fyodor Pavlovitch. He felt obliged to decline the honor of your hospitality,
and not without reason. In the reverend Father Zossima’s cell he was
carried away by the unhappy dissension with his son, and let fall words which
were quite out of keeping … in fact, quite unseemly … as”—he
glanced at the monks—“your reverence is, no doubt, already aware.
And therefore, recognizing that he had been to blame, he felt sincere regret
and shame, and begged me, and his son Ivan Fyodorovitch, to convey to you his
apologies and regrets. In brief, he hopes and desires to make amends later. He
asks your blessing, and begs you to forget what has taken place.”

As he uttered the last word of his tirade, Miüsov completely recovered his
self‐complacency, and all traces of his former irritation disappeared. He fully
and sincerely loved humanity again.

The Father Superior listened to him with dignity, and, with a slight bend of
the head, replied:

“I sincerely deplore his absence. Perhaps at our table he might have
learnt to like us, and we him. Pray be seated, gentlemen.”

He stood before the holy image, and began to say grace, aloud. All bent their
heads reverently, and Maximov clasped his hands before him, with peculiar
fervor.

It was at this moment that Fyodor Pavlovitch played his last prank. It must be
noted that he really had meant to go home, and really had felt the
impossibility of going to dine with the Father Superior as though nothing had
happened, after his disgraceful behavior in the elder’s cell. Not that he
was so very much ashamed of himself—quite the contrary perhaps. But still
he felt it would be unseemly to go to dinner. Yet his creaking carriage had
hardly been brought to the steps of the hotel, and he had hardly got into it,
when he suddenly stopped short. He remembered his own words at the
elder’s: “I always feel when I meet people that I am lower than
all, and that they all take me for a buffoon; so I say let me play the buffoon,
for you are, every one of you, stupider and lower than I.” He longed to
revenge himself on every one for his own unseemliness. He suddenly recalled how
he had once in the past been asked, “Why do you hate so and so, so
much?” And he had answered them, with his shameless impudence,
“I’ll tell you. He has done me no harm. But I played him a dirty
trick, and ever since I have hated him.”

Remembering that now, he smiled quietly and malignantly, hesitating for a
moment. His eyes gleamed, and his lips positively quivered. “Well, since
I have begun, I may as well go on,” he decided. His predominant sensation
at that moment might be expressed in the following words, “Well, there is
no rehabilitating myself now. So let me shame them for all I am worth. I will
show them I don’t care what they think—that’s all!”

He told the coachman to wait, while with rapid steps he returned to the
monastery and straight to the Father Superior’s. He had no clear idea
what he would do, but he knew that he could not control himself, and that a
touch might drive him to the utmost limits of obscenity, but only to obscenity,
to nothing criminal, nothing for which he could be legally punished. In the
last resort, he could always restrain himself, and had marveled indeed at
himself, on that score, sometimes. He appeared in the Father Superior’s
dining‐room, at the moment when the prayer was over, and all were moving to the
table. Standing in the doorway, he scanned the company, and laughing his
prolonged, impudent, malicious chuckle, looked them all boldly in the face.
“They thought I had gone, and here I am again,” he cried to the
whole room.

For one moment every one stared at him without a word; and at once every one
felt that something revolting, grotesque, positively scandalous, was about to
happen. Miüsov passed immediately from the most benevolent frame of mind to the
most savage. All the feelings that had subsided and died down in his heart
revived instantly.

“No! this I cannot endure!” he cried. “I absolutely cannot!
and … I certainly cannot!”

The blood rushed to his head. He positively stammered; but he was beyond
thinking of style, and he seized his hat.

“What is it he cannot?” cried Fyodor Pavlovitch, “that he
absolutely cannot and certainly cannot? Your reverence, am I to come in or not?
Will you receive me as your guest?”

“You are welcome with all my heart,” answered the Superior.
“Gentlemen!” he added, “I venture to beg you most earnestly
to lay aside your dissensions, and to be united in love and family
harmony—with prayer to the Lord at our humble table.”

“No, no, it is impossible!” cried Miüsov, beside himself.

“Well, if it is impossible for Pyotr Alexandrovitch, it is impossible for
me, and I won’t stop. That is why I came. I will keep with Pyotr
Alexandrovitch everywhere now. If you will go away, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, I
will go away too, if you remain, I will remain. You stung him by what you said
about family harmony, Father Superior, he does not admit he is my relation.
That’s right, isn’t it, von Sohn? Here’s von Sohn. How are
you, von Sohn?”

“Do you mean me?” muttered Maximov, puzzled.

“Of course I mean you,” cried Fyodor Pavlovitch. “Who else?
The Father Superior could not be von Sohn.”

“But I am not von Sohn either. I am Maximov.”

“No, you are von Sohn. Your reverence, do you know who von Sohn was? It
was a famous murder case. He was killed in a house of harlotry—I believe
that is what such places are called among you—he was killed and robbed,
and in spite of his venerable age, he was nailed up in a box and sent from
Petersburg to Moscow in the luggage van, and while they were nailing him up,
the harlots sang songs and played the harp, that is to say, the piano. So this
is that very von Sohn. He has risen from the dead, hasn’t he, von
Sohn?”

“What is happening? What’s this?” voices were heard in the
group of monks.

“Let us go,” cried Miüsov, addressing Kalganov.

“No, excuse me,” Fyodor Pavlovitch broke in shrilly, taking another
step into the room. “Allow me to finish. There in the cell you blamed me
for behaving disrespectfully just because I spoke of eating gudgeon, Pyotr
Alexandrovitch. Miüsov, my relation, prefers to have plus de noblesse que de
sincérité in his words, but I prefer in mine plus de sincérité que de
noblesse, and—damn the noblesse! That’s right,
isn’t it, von Sohn? Allow me, Father Superior, though I am a buffoon and
play the buffoon, yet I am the soul of honor, and I want to speak my mind. Yes,
I am the soul of honor, while in Pyotr Alexandrovitch there is wounded vanity
and nothing else. I came here perhaps to have a look and speak my mind. My son,
Alexey, is here, being saved. I am his father; I care for his welfare, and it
is my duty to care. While I’ve been playing the fool, I have been
listening and having a look on the sly; and now I want to give you the last act
of the performance. You know how things are with us? As a thing falls, so it
lies. As a thing once has fallen, so it must lie for ever. Not a bit of it! I
want to get up again. Holy Father, I am indignant with you. Confession is a
great sacrament, before which I am ready to bow down reverently; but there in
the cell, they all kneel down and confess aloud. Can it be right to confess
aloud? It was ordained by the holy Fathers to confess in secret: then only your
confession will be a mystery, and so it was of old. But how can I explain to
him before every one that I did this and that … well, you understand
what—sometimes it would not be proper to talk about it—so it is
really a scandal! No, Fathers, one might be carried along with you to the
Flagellants, I dare say … at the first opportunity I shall write to the
Synod, and I shall take my son, Alexey, home.”

We must note here that Fyodor Pavlovitch knew where to look for the weak spot.
There had been at one time malicious rumors which had even reached the
Archbishop (not only regarding our monastery, but in others where the
institution of elders existed) that too much respect was paid to the elders,
even to the detriment of the authority of the Superior, that the elders abused
the sacrament of confession and so on and so on—absurd charges which had
died away of themselves everywhere. But the spirit of folly, which had caught
up Fyodor Pavlovitch, and was bearing him on the current of his own nerves into
lower and lower depths of ignominy, prompted him with this old slander. Fyodor
Pavlovitch did not understand a word of it, and he could not even put it
sensibly, for on this occasion no one had been kneeling and confessing aloud in
the elder’s cell, so that he could not have seen anything of the kind. He
was only speaking from confused memory of old slanders. But as soon as he had
uttered his foolish tirade, he felt he had been talking absurd nonsense, and at
once longed to prove to his audience, and above all to himself, that he had not
been talking nonsense. And, though he knew perfectly well that with each word
he would be adding more and more absurdity, he could not restrain himself, and
plunged forward blindly.

“How disgraceful!” cried Pyotr Alexandrovitch.

“Pardon me!” said the Father Superior. “It was said of old,
‘Many have begun to speak against me and have uttered evil sayings about
me. And hearing it I have said to myself: it is the correction of the Lord and
He has sent it to heal my vain soul.’ And so we humbly thank you, honored
guest!” and he made Fyodor Pavlovitch a low bow.

“Tut—tut—tut—sanctimoniousness and stock phrases! Old
phrases and old gestures. The old lies and formal prostrations. We know all
about them. A kiss on the lips and a dagger in the heart, as in
Schiller’s Robbers. I don’t like falsehood, Fathers, I want
the truth. But the truth is not to be found in eating gudgeon and that I
proclaim aloud! Father monks, why do you fast? Why do you expect reward in
heaven for that? Why, for reward like that I will come and fast too! No,
saintly monk, you try being virtuous in the world, do good to society, without
shutting yourself up in a monastery at other people’s expense, and
without expecting a reward up aloft for it—you’ll find that a bit
harder. I can talk sense, too, Father Superior. What have they got here?”
He went up to the table. “Old port wine, mead brewed by the Eliseyev
Brothers. Fie, fie, fathers! That is something beyond gudgeon. Look at the
bottles the fathers have brought out, he he he! And who has provided it all?
The Russian peasant, the laborer, brings here the farthing earned by his horny
hand, wringing it from his family and the tax‐gatherer! You bleed the people,
you know, holy fathers.”

“This is too disgraceful!” said Father Iosif.

Father Païssy kept obstinately silent. Miüsov rushed from the room, and
Kalganov after him.

“Well, Father, I will follow Pyotr Alexandrovitch! I am not coming to see
you again. You may beg me on your knees, I shan’t come. I sent you a
thousand roubles, so you have begun to keep your eye on me. He he he! No,
I’ll say no more. I am taking my revenge for my youth, for all the
humiliation I endured.” He thumped the table with his fist in a paroxysm
of simulated feeling. “This monastery has played a great part in my life!
It has cost me many bitter tears. You used to set my wife, the crazy one,
against me. You cursed me with bell and book, you spread stories about me all
over the place. Enough, fathers! This is the age of Liberalism, the age of
steamers and railways. Neither a thousand, nor a hundred roubles, no, nor a
hundred farthings will you get out of me!”

It must be noted again that our monastery never had played any great part in
his life, and he never had shed a bitter tear owing to it. But he was so
carried away by his simulated emotion, that he was for one moment almost
believing it himself. He was so touched he was almost weeping. But at that very
instant, he felt that it was time to draw back.

The Father Superior bowed his head at his malicious lie, and again spoke
impressively:

“It is written again, ‘Bear circumspectly and gladly dishonor that
cometh upon thee by no act of thine own, be not confounded and hate not him who
hath dishonored thee.’ And so will we.”

“Tut, tut, tut! Bethinking thyself and the rest of the rigmarole. Bethink
yourselves, Fathers, I will go. But I will take my son, Alexey, away from here
for ever, on my parental authority. Ivan Fyodorovitch, my most dutiful son,
permit me to order you to follow me. Von Sohn, what have you to stay for? Come
and see me now in the town. It is fun there. It is only one short verst;
instead of lenten oil, I will give you sucking‐pig and kasha. We will have
dinner with some brandy and liqueur to it…. I’ve cloudberry wine. Hey,
von Sohn, don’t lose your chance.” He went out, shouting and
gesticulating.

It was at that moment Rakitin saw him and pointed him out to Alyosha.

“Alexey!” his father shouted, from far off, catching sight of him.
“You come home to me to‐day, for good, and bring your pillow and
mattress, and leave no trace behind.”

Alyosha stood rooted to the spot, watching the scene in silence. Meanwhile,
Fyodor Pavlovitch had got into the carriage, and Ivan was about to follow him
in grim silence without even turning to say good‐by to Alyosha. But at this
point another almost incredible scene of grotesque buffoonery gave the
finishing touch to the episode. Maximov suddenly appeared by the side of the
carriage. He ran up, panting, afraid of being too late. Rakitin and Alyosha saw
him running. He was in such a hurry that in his impatience he put his foot on
the step on which Ivan’s left foot was still resting, and clutching the
carriage he kept trying to jump in. “I am going with you!” he kept
shouting, laughing a thin mirthful laugh with a look of reckless glee in his
face. “Take me, too.”

“There!” cried Fyodor Pavlovitch, delighted. “Did I not say
he was von Sohn. It is von Sohn himself, risen from the dead. Why, how did you
tear yourself away? What did you vonsohn there? And how could you get
away from the dinner? You must be a brazen‐faced fellow! I am that myself, but
I am surprised at you, brother! Jump in, jump in! Let him pass, Ivan. It will
be fun. He can lie somewhere at our feet. Will you lie at our feet, von Sohn?
Or perch on the box with the coachman. Skip on to the box, von Sohn!”

But Ivan, who had by now taken his seat, without a word gave Maximov a violent
punch in the breast and sent him flying. It was quite by chance he did not
fall.

“Drive on!” Ivan shouted angrily to the coachman.

“Why, what are you doing, what are you about? Why did you do that?”
Fyodor Pavlovitch protested.

But the carriage had already driven away. Ivan made no reply.

“Well, you are a fellow,” Fyodor Pavlovitch said again.

After a pause of two minutes, looking askance at his son, “Why, it was
you got up all this monastery business. You urged it, you approved of it. Why
are you angry now?”

“You’ve talked rot enough. You might rest a bit now,” Ivan
snapped sullenly.

Fyodor Pavlovitch was silent again for two minutes.

“A drop of brandy would be nice now,” he observed sententiously,
but Ivan made no response.

“You shall have some, too, when we get home.”

Ivan was still silent.

Fyodor Pavlovitch waited another two minutes.

“But I shall take Alyosha away from the monastery, though you will
dislike it so much, most honored Karl von Moor.”

Ivan shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, and turning away stared at the
road. And they did not speak again all the way home.

Book III. The Sensualists

Chapter I.
In The Servants’ Quarters

The Karamazovs’ house was far from being in the center of the town, but
it was not quite outside it. It was a pleasant‐looking old house of two
stories, painted gray, with a red iron roof. It was roomy and snug, and might
still last many years. There were all sorts of unexpected little cupboards and
closets and staircases. There were rats in it, but Fyodor Pavlovitch did not
altogether dislike them. “One doesn’t feel so solitary when
one’s left alone in the evening,” he used to say. It was his habit
to send the servants away to the lodge for the night and to lock himself up
alone. The lodge was a roomy and solid building in the yard. Fyodor Pavlovitch
used to have the cooking done there, although there was a kitchen in the house;
he did not like the smell of cooking, and, winter and summer alike, the dishes
were carried in across the courtyard. The house was built for a large family;
there was room for five times as many, with their servants. But at the time of
our story there was no one living in the house but Fyodor Pavlovitch and his
son Ivan. And in the lodge there were only three servants: old Grigory, and his
old wife Marfa, and a young man called Smerdyakov. Of these three we must say a
few words. Of old Grigory we have said something already. He was firm and
determined and went blindly and obstinately for his object, if once he had been
brought by any reasons (and they were often very illogical ones) to believe
that it was immutably right. He was honest and incorruptible. His wife, Marfa
Ignatyevna, had obeyed her husband’s will implicitly all her life, yet
she had pestered him terribly after the emancipation of the serfs. She was set
on leaving Fyodor Pavlovitch and opening a little shop in Moscow with their
small savings. But Grigory decided then, once for all, that “the
woman’s talking nonsense, for every woman is dishonest,” and that
they ought not to leave their old master, whatever he might be, for “that
was now their duty.”

“Do you understand what duty is?” he asked Marfa Ignatyevna.

“I understand what duty means, Grigory Vassilyevitch, but why it’s
our duty to stay here I never shall understand,” Marfa answered firmly.

“Well, don’t understand then. But so it shall be. And you hold your
tongue.”

And so it was. They did not go away, and Fyodor Pavlovitch promised them a
small sum for wages, and paid it regularly. Grigory knew, too, that he had an
indisputable influence over his master. It was true, and he was aware of it.
Fyodor Pavlovitch was an obstinate and cunning buffoon, yet, though his will
was strong enough “in some of the affairs of life,” as he expressed
it, he found himself, to his surprise, extremely feeble in facing certain other
emergencies. He knew his weaknesses and was afraid of them. There are positions
in which one has to keep a sharp look out. And that’s not easy without a
trustworthy man, and Grigory was a most trustworthy man. Many times in the
course of his life Fyodor Pavlovitch had only just escaped a sound thrashing
through Grigory’s intervention, and on each occasion the old servant gave
him a good lecture. But it wasn’t only thrashings that Fyodor Pavlovitch
was afraid of. There were graver occasions, and very subtle and complicated
ones, when Fyodor Pavlovitch could not have explained the extraordinary craving
for some one faithful and devoted, which sometimes unaccountably came upon him
all in a moment. It was almost a morbid condition. Corrupt and often cruel in
his lust, like some noxious insect, Fyodor Pavlovitch was sometimes, in moments
of drunkenness, overcome by superstitious terror and a moral convulsion which
took an almost physical form. “My soul’s simply quaking in my
throat at those times,” he used to say. At such moments he liked to feel
that there was near at hand, in the lodge if not in the room, a strong,
faithful man, virtuous and unlike himself, who had seen all his debauchery and
knew all his secrets, but was ready in his devotion to overlook all that, not
to oppose him, above all, not to reproach him or threaten him with anything,
either in this world or in the next, and, in case of need, to defend
him—from whom? From somebody unknown, but terrible and dangerous. What he
needed was to feel that there was another man, an old and tried friend,
that he might call him in his sick moments merely to look at his face, or,
perhaps, exchange some quite irrelevant words with him. And if the old servant
were not angry, he felt comforted, and if he were angry, he was more dejected.
It happened even (very rarely however) that Fyodor Pavlovitch went at night to
the lodge to wake Grigory and fetch him for a moment. When the old man came,
Fyodor Pavlovitch would begin talking about the most trivial matters, and would
soon let him go again, sometimes even with a jest. And after he had gone,
Fyodor Pavlovitch would get into bed with a curse and sleep the sleep of the
just. Something of the same sort had happened to Fyodor Pavlovitch on
Alyosha’s arrival. Alyosha “pierced his heart” by
“living with him, seeing everything and blaming nothing.” Moreover,
Alyosha brought with him something his father had never known before: a
complete absence of contempt for him and an invariable kindness, a perfectly
natural unaffected devotion to the old man who deserved it so little. All this
was a complete surprise to the old profligate, who had dropped all family ties.
It was a new and surprising experience for him, who had till then loved nothing
but “evil.” When Alyosha had left him, he confessed to himself that
he had learnt something he had not till then been willing to learn.

I have mentioned already that Grigory had detested Adelaïda Ivanovna, the first
wife of Fyodor Pavlovitch and the mother of Dmitri, and that he had, on the
contrary, protected Sofya Ivanovna, the poor “crazy woman,” against
his master and any one who chanced to speak ill or lightly of her. His sympathy
for the unhappy wife had become something sacred to him, so that even now,
twenty years after, he could not bear a slighting allusion to her from any one,
and would at once check the offender. Externally, Grigory was cold, dignified
and taciturn, and spoke, weighing his words, without frivolity. It was
impossible to tell at first sight whether he loved his meek, obedient wife; but
he really did love her, and she knew it.

Marfa Ignatyevna was by no means foolish; she was probably, indeed, cleverer
than her husband, or, at least, more prudent than he in worldly affairs, and
yet she had given in to him in everything without question or complaint ever
since her marriage, and respected him for his spiritual superiority. It was
remarkable how little they spoke to one another in the course of their lives,
and only of the most necessary daily affairs. The grave and dignified Grigory
thought over all his cares and duties alone, so that Marfa Ignatyevna had long
grown used to knowing that he did not need her advice. She felt that her
husband respected her silence, and took it as a sign of her good sense. He had
never beaten her but once, and then only slightly. Once during the year after
Fyodor Pavlovitch’s marriage with Adelaïda Ivanovna, the village girls
and women—at that time serfs—were called together before the house
to sing and dance. They were beginning “In the Green Meadows,” when
Marfa, at that time a young woman, skipped forward and danced “the
Russian Dance,” not in the village fashion, but as she had danced it when
she was a servant in the service of the rich Miüsov family, in their private
theater, where the actors were taught to dance by a dancing master from Moscow.
Grigory saw how his wife danced, and, an hour later, at home in their cottage
he gave her a lesson, pulling her hair a little. But there it ended: the
beating was never repeated, and Marfa Ignatyevna gave up dancing.

God had not blessed them with children. One child was born but it died. Grigory
was fond of children, and was not ashamed of showing it. When Adelaïda Ivanovna
had run away, Grigory took Dmitri, then a child of three years old, combed his
hair and washed him in a tub with his own hands, and looked after him for
almost a year. Afterwards he had looked after Ivan and Alyosha, for which the
general’s widow had rewarded him with a slap in the face; but I have
already related all that. The only happiness his own child had brought him had
been in the anticipation of its birth. When it was born, he was overwhelmed
with grief and horror. The baby had six fingers. Grigory was so crushed by
this, that he was not only silent till the day of the christening, but kept
away in the garden. It was spring, and he spent three days digging the kitchen
garden. The third day was fixed for christening the baby: mean‐time Grigory had
reached a conclusion. Going into the cottage where the clergy were assembled
and the visitors had arrived, including Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was to stand
god‐ father, he suddenly announced that the baby “ought not to be
christened at all.” He announced this quietly, briefly, forcing out his
words, and gazing with dull intentness at the priest.

“Why not?” asked the priest with good‐humored surprise.

“Because it’s a dragon,” muttered Grigory.

“A dragon? What dragon?”

Grigory did not speak for some time. “It’s a confusion of
nature,” he muttered vaguely, but firmly, and obviously unwilling to say
more.

They laughed, and of course christened the poor baby. Grigory prayed earnestly
at the font, but his opinion of the new‐born child remained unchanged. Yet he
did not interfere in any way. As long as the sickly infant lived he scarcely
looked at it, tried indeed not to notice it, and for the most part kept out of
the cottage. But when, at the end of a fortnight, the baby died of thrush, he
himself laid the child in its little coffin, looked at it in profound grief,
and when they were filling up the shallow little grave he fell on his knees and
bowed down to the earth. He did not for years afterwards mention his child, nor
did Marfa speak of the baby before him, and, even if Grigory were not present,
she never spoke of it above a whisper. Marfa observed that, from the day of the
burial, he devoted himself to “religion,” and took to reading the
Lives of the Saints, for the most part sitting alone and in silence, and
always putting on his big, round, silver‐rimmed spectacles. He rarely read
aloud, only perhaps in Lent. He was fond of the Book of Job, and had somehow
got hold of a copy of the sayings and sermons of “the God‐fearing Father
Isaac the Syrian,” which he read persistently for years together,
understanding very little of it, but perhaps prizing and loving it the more for
that. Of late he had begun to listen to the doctrines of the sect of
Flagellants settled in the neighborhood. He was evidently shaken by them, but
judged it unfitting to go over to the new faith. His habit of theological
reading gave him an expression of still greater gravity.

He was perhaps predisposed to mysticism. And the birth of his deformed child,
and its death, had, as though by special design, been accompanied by another
strange and marvelous event, which, as he said later, had left a
“stamp” upon his soul. It happened that, on the very night after
the burial of his child, Marfa was awakened by the wail of a new‐born baby. She
was frightened and waked her husband. He listened and said he thought it was
more like some one groaning, “it might be a woman.” He got up and
dressed. It was a rather warm night in May. As he went down the steps, he
distinctly heard groans coming from the garden. But the gate from the yard into
the garden was locked at night, and there was no other way of entering it, for
it was enclosed all round by a strong, high fence. Going back into the house,
Grigory lighted a lantern, took the garden key, and taking no notice of the
hysterical fears of his wife, who was still persuaded that she heard a child
crying, and that it was her own baby crying and calling for her, went into the
garden in silence. There he heard at once that the groans came from the
bath‐house that stood near the garden gate, and that they were the groans of a
woman. Opening the door of the bath‐house, he saw a sight which petrified him.
An idiot girl, who wandered about the streets and was known to the whole town
by the nickname of Lizaveta Smerdyastchaya (Stinking Lizaveta), had got into
the bath‐ house and had just given birth to a child. She lay dying with the
baby beside her. She said nothing, for she had never been able to speak. But
her story needs a chapter to itself.

Chapter II.
Lizaveta

There was one circumstance which struck Grigory particularly, and confirmed a
very unpleasant and revolting suspicion. This Lizaveta was a dwarfish creature,
“not five foot within a wee bit,” as many of the pious old women
said pathetically about her, after her death. Her broad, healthy, red face had
a look of blank idiocy and the fixed stare in her eyes was unpleasant, in spite
of their meek expression. She wandered about, summer and winter alike,
barefooted, wearing nothing but a hempen smock. Her coarse, almost black hair
curled like lamb’s wool, and formed a sort of huge cap on her head. It
was always crusted with mud, and had leaves, bits of stick, and shavings
clinging to it, as she always slept on the ground and in the dirt. Her father,
a homeless, sickly drunkard, called Ilya, had lost everything and lived many
years as a workman with some well‐to‐do tradespeople. Her mother had long been
dead. Spiteful and diseased, Ilya used to beat Lizaveta inhumanly whenever she
returned to him. But she rarely did so, for every one in the town was ready to
look after her as being an idiot, and so specially dear to God. Ilya’s
employers, and many others in the town, especially of the tradespeople, tried
to clothe her better, and always rigged her out with high boots and sheepskin
coat for the winter. But, although she allowed them to dress her up without
resisting, she usually went away, preferably to the cathedral porch, and taking
off all that had been given her—kerchief, sheepskin, skirt or
boots—she left them there and walked away barefoot in her smock as
before. It happened on one occasion that a new governor of the province, making
a tour of inspection in our town, saw Lizaveta, and was wounded in his
tenderest susceptibilities. And though he was told she was an idiot, he
pronounced that for a young woman of twenty to wander about in nothing but a
smock was a breach of the proprieties, and must not occur again. But the
governor went his way, and Lizaveta was left as she was. At last her father
died, which made her even more acceptable in the eyes of the religious persons
of the town, as an orphan. In fact, every one seemed to like her; even the boys
did not tease her, and the boys of our town, especially the schoolboys, are a
mischievous set. She would walk into strange houses, and no one drove her away.
Every one was kind to her and gave her something. If she were given a copper,
she would take it, and at once drop it in the alms‐jug of the church or prison.
If she were given a roll or bun in the market, she would hand it to the first
child she met. Sometimes she would stop one of the richest ladies in the town
and give it to her, and the lady would be pleased to take it. She herself never
tasted anything but black bread and water. If she went into an expensive shop,
where there were costly goods or money lying about, no one kept watch on her,
for they knew that if she saw thousands of roubles overlooked by them, she
would not have touched a farthing. She scarcely ever went to church. She slept
either in the church porch or climbed over a hurdle (there are many hurdles
instead of fences to this day in our town) into a kitchen garden. She used at
least once a week to turn up “at home,” that is at the house of her
father’s former employers, and in the winter went there every night, and
slept either in the passage or the cowhouse. People were amazed that she could
stand such a life, but she was accustomed to it, and, although she was so tiny,
she was of a robust constitution. Some of the townspeople declared that she did
all this only from pride, but that is hardly credible. She could hardly speak,
and only from time to time uttered an inarticulate grunt. How could she have
been proud?

It happened one clear, warm, moonlight night in September (many years ago) five
or six drunken revelers were returning from the club at a very late hour,
according to our provincial notions. They passed through the “back‐
way,” which led between the back gardens of the houses, with hurdles on
either side. This way leads out on to the bridge over the long, stinking pool
which we were accustomed to call a river. Among the nettles and burdocks under
the hurdle our revelers saw Lizaveta asleep. They stopped to look at her,
laughing, and began jesting with unbridled licentiousness. It occurred to one
young gentleman to make the whimsical inquiry whether any one could possibly
look upon such an animal as a woman, and so forth…. They all pronounced with
lofty repugnance that it was impossible. But Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was among
them, sprang forward and declared that it was by no means impossible, and that,
indeed, there was a certain piquancy about it, and so on…. It is true that at
that time he was overdoing his part as a buffoon. He liked to put himself
forward and entertain the company, ostensibly on equal terms, of course, though
in reality he was on a servile footing with them. It was just at the time when
he had received the news of his first wife’s death in Petersburg, and,
with crape upon his hat, was drinking and behaving so shamelessly that even the
most reckless among us were shocked at the sight of him. The revelers, of
course, laughed at this unexpected opinion; and one of them even began
challenging him to act upon it. The others repelled the idea even more
emphatically, although still with the utmost hilarity, and at last they went on
their way. Later on, Fyodor Pavlovitch swore that he had gone with them, and
perhaps it was so, no one knows for certain, and no one ever knew. But five or
six months later, all the town was talking, with intense and sincere
indignation, of Lizaveta’s condition, and trying to find out who was the
miscreant who had wronged her. Then suddenly a terrible rumor was all over the
town that this miscreant was no other than Fyodor Pavlovitch. Who set the rumor
going? Of that drunken band five had left the town and the only one still among
us was an elderly and much respected civil councilor, the father of grown‐up
daughters, who could hardly have spread the tale, even if there had been any
foundation for it. But rumor pointed straight at Fyodor Pavlovitch, and
persisted in pointing at him. Of course this was no great grievance to him: he
would not have troubled to contradict a set of tradespeople. In those days he
was proud, and did not condescend to talk except in his own circle of the
officials and nobles, whom he entertained so well.

At the time, Grigory stood up for his master vigorously. He provoked quarrels
and altercations in defense of him and succeeded in bringing some people round
to his side. “It’s the wench’s own fault,” he asserted,
and the culprit was Karp, a dangerous convict, who had escaped from prison and
whose name was well known to us, as he had hidden in our town. This conjecture
sounded plausible, for it was remembered that Karp had been in the neighborhood
just at that time in the autumn, and had robbed three people. But this affair
and all the talk about it did not estrange popular sympathy from the poor
idiot. She was better looked after than ever. A well‐to‐do merchant’s
widow named Kondratyev arranged to take her into her house at the end of April,
meaning not to let her go out until after the confinement. They kept a constant
watch over her, but in spite of their vigilance she escaped on the very last
day, and made her way into Fyodor Pavlovitch’s garden. How, in her
condition, she managed to climb over the high, strong fence remained a mystery.
Some maintained that she must have been lifted over by somebody; others hinted
at something more uncanny. The most likely explanation is that it happened
naturally—that Lizaveta, accustomed to clambering over hurdles to sleep
in gardens, had somehow managed to climb this fence, in spite of her condition,
and had leapt down, injuring herself.

Grigory rushed to Marfa and sent her to Lizaveta, while he ran to fetch an old
midwife who lived close by. They saved the baby, but Lizaveta died at dawn.
Grigory took the baby, brought it home, and making his wife sit down, put it on
her lap. “A child of God—an orphan is akin to all,” he said,
“and to us above others. Our little lost one has sent us this, who has
come from the devil’s son and a holy innocent. Nurse him and weep no
more.”

So Marfa brought up the child. He was christened Pavel, to which people were
not slow in adding Fyodorovitch (son of Fyodor). Fyodor Pavlovitch did not
object to any of this, and thought it amusing, though he persisted vigorously
in denying his responsibility. The townspeople were pleased at his adopting the
foundling. Later on, Fyodor Pavlovitch invented a surname for the child,
calling him Smerdyakov, after his mother’s nickname.

So this Smerdyakov became Fyodor Pavlovitch’s second servant, and was
living in the lodge with Grigory and Marfa at the time our story begins. He was
employed as cook. I ought to say something of this Smerdyakov, but I am ashamed
of keeping my readers’ attention so long occupied with these common
menials, and I will go back to my story, hoping to say more of Smerdyakov in
the course of it.

Chapter III.
The Confession Of A Passionate Heart—In Verse

Alyosha remained for some time irresolute after hearing the command his father
shouted to him from the carriage. But in spite of his uneasiness he did not
stand still. That was not his way. He went at once to the kitchen to find out
what his father had been doing above. Then he set off, trusting that on the way
he would find some answer to the doubt tormenting him. I hasten to add that his
father’s shouts, commanding him to return home “with his mattress
and pillow” did not frighten him in the least. He understood perfectly
that those peremptory shouts were merely “a flourish” to produce an
effect. In the same way a tradesman in our town who was celebrating his
name‐day with a party of friends, getting angry at being refused more vodka,
smashed up his own crockery and furniture and tore his own and his wife’s
clothes, and finally broke his windows, all for the sake of effect. Next day,
of course, when he was sober, he regretted the broken cups and saucers. Alyosha
knew that his father would let him go back to the monastery next day, possibly
even that evening. Moreover, he was fully persuaded that his father might hurt
any one else, but would not hurt him. Alyosha was certain that no one in the
whole world ever would want to hurt him, and, what is more, he knew that no one
could hurt him. This was for him an axiom, assumed once for all without
question, and he went his way without hesitation, relying on it.

But at that moment an anxiety of a different sort disturbed him, and worried
him the more because he could not formulate it. It was the fear of a woman, of
Katerina Ivanovna, who had so urgently entreated him in the note handed to him
by Madame Hohlakov to come and see her about something. This request and the
necessity of going had at once aroused an uneasy feeling in his heart, and this
feeling had grown more and more painful all the morning in spite of the scenes
at the hermitage and at the Father Superior’s. He was not uneasy because
he did not know what she would speak of and what he must answer. And he was not
afraid of her simply as a woman. Though he knew little of women, he had spent
his life, from early childhood till he entered the monastery, entirely with
women. He was afraid of that woman, Katerina Ivanovna. He had been afraid of
her from the first time he saw her. He had only seen her two or three times,
and had only chanced to say a few words to her. He thought of her as a
beautiful, proud, imperious girl. It was not her beauty which troubled him, but
something else. And the vagueness of his apprehension increased the
apprehension itself. The girl’s aims were of the noblest, he knew that.
She was trying to save his brother Dmitri simply through generosity, though he
had already behaved badly to her. Yet, although Alyosha recognized and did
justice to all these fine and generous sentiments, a shiver began to run down
his back as soon as he drew near her house.

He reflected that he would not find Ivan, who was so intimate a friend, with
her, for Ivan was certainly now with his father. Dmitri he was even more
certain not to find there, and he had a foreboding of the reason. And so his
conversation would be with her alone. He had a great longing to run and see his
brother Dmitri before that fateful interview. Without showing him the letter,
he could talk to him about it. But Dmitri lived a long way off, and he was sure
to be away from home too. Standing still for a minute, he reached a final
decision. Crossing himself with a rapid and accustomed gesture, and at once
smiling, he turned resolutely in the direction of his terrible lady.

He knew her house. If he went by the High Street and then across the
market‐place, it was a long way round. Though our town is small, it is
scattered, and the houses are far apart. And meanwhile his father was expecting
him, and perhaps had not yet forgotten his command. He might be unreasonable,
and so he had to make haste to get there and back. So he decided to take a
short cut by the back‐way, for he knew every inch of the ground. This meant
skirting fences, climbing over hurdles, and crossing other people’s
back‐yards, where every one he met knew him and greeted him. In this way he
could reach the High Street in half the time.

He had to pass the garden adjoining his father’s, and belonging to a
little tumbledown house with four windows. The owner of this house, as Alyosha
knew, was a bedridden old woman, living with her daughter, who had been a
genteel maid‐servant in generals’ families in Petersburg. Now she had
been at home a year, looking after her sick mother. She always dressed up in
fine clothes, though her old mother and she had sunk into such poverty that
they went every day to Fyodor Pavlovitch’s kitchen for soup and bread,
which Marfa gave readily. Yet, though the young woman came up for soup, she had
never sold any of her dresses, and one of these even had a long train—a
fact which Alyosha had learned from Rakitin, who always knew everything that
was going on in the town. He had forgotten it as soon as he heard it, but now,
on reaching the garden, he remembered the dress with the train, raised his
head, which had been bowed in thought, and came upon something quite
unexpected.

Over the hurdle in the garden, Dmitri, mounted on something, was leaning
forward, gesticulating violently, beckoning to him, obviously afraid to utter a
word for fear of being overheard. Alyosha ran up to the hurdle.

“It’s a good thing you looked up. I was nearly shouting to
you,” Mitya said in a joyful, hurried whisper. “Climb in here
quickly! How splendid that you’ve come! I was just thinking of
you!”

Alyosha was delighted too, but he did not know how to get over the hurdle.
Mitya put his powerful hand under his elbow to help him jump. Tucking up his
cassock, Alyosha leapt over the hurdle with the agility of a bare‐ legged
street urchin.

“Well done! Now come along,” said Mitya in an enthusiastic whisper.

“Where?” whispered Alyosha, looking about him and finding himself
in a deserted garden with no one near but themselves. The garden was small, but
the house was at least fifty paces away.

“There’s no one here. Why do you whisper?” asked Alyosha.

“Why do I whisper? Deuce take it!” cried Dmitri at the top of his
voice. “You see what silly tricks nature plays one. I am here in secret,
and on the watch. I’ll explain later on, but, knowing it’s a
secret, I began whispering like a fool, when there’s no need. Let us go.
Over there. Till then be quiet. I want to kiss you.

Glory to God in the world,
Glory to God in me …

I was just repeating that, sitting here, before you came.”

The garden was about three acres in extent, and planted with trees only along
the fence at the four sides. There were apple‐trees, maples, limes and
birch‐trees. The middle of the garden was an empty grass space, from which
several hundredweight of hay was carried in the summer. The garden was let out
for a few roubles for the summer. There were also plantations of raspberries
and currants and gooseberries laid out along the sides; a kitchen garden had
been planted lately near the house.

Dmitri led his brother to the most secluded corner of the garden. There, in a
thicket of lime‐trees and old bushes of black currant, elder, snowball‐tree,
and lilac, there stood a tumble‐down green summer‐house, blackened with age.
Its walls were of lattice‐work, but there was still a roof which could give
shelter. God knows when this summer‐house was built. There was a tradition that
it had been put up some fifty years before by a retired colonel called von
Schmidt, who owned the house at that time. It was all in decay, the floor was
rotting, the planks were loose, the woodwork smelled musty. In the summer‐house
there was a green wooden table fixed in the ground, and round it were some
green benches upon which it was still possible to sit. Alyosha had at once
observed his brother’s exhilarated condition, and on entering the arbor
he saw half a bottle of brandy and a wineglass on the table.

“That’s brandy,” Mitya laughed. “I see your look:
‘He’s drinking again!’ Distrust the apparition.

Distrust the worthless, lying crowd,
And lay aside thy doubts.

I’m not drinking, I’m only ‘indulging,’ as that pig,
your Rakitin, says. He’ll be a civil councilor one day, but he’ll
always talk about ‘indulging.’ Sit down. I could take you in my
arms, Alyosha, and press you to my bosom till I crush you, for in the whole
world—in reality—in re‐al‐ i‐ty—(can you take it in?) I love
no one but you!”

He uttered the last words in a sort of exaltation.

“No one but you and one ‘jade’ I have fallen in love with, to
my ruin. But being in love doesn’t mean loving. You may be in love with a
woman and yet hate her. Remember that! I can talk about it gayly still. Sit
down here by the table and I’ll sit beside you and look at you, and go on
talking. You shall keep quiet and I’ll go on talking, for the time has
come. But on reflection, you know, I’d better speak quietly, for
here—here—you can never tell what ears are listening. I will
explain everything; as they say, ‘the story will be continued.’ Why
have I been longing for you? Why have I been thirsting for you all these days,
and just now? (It’s five days since I’ve cast anchor here.) Because
it’s only to you I can tell everything; because I must, because I need
you, because to‐morrow I shall fly from the clouds, because to‐morrow life is
ending and beginning. Have you ever felt, have you ever dreamt of falling down
a precipice into a pit? That’s just how I’m falling, but not in a
dream. And I’m not afraid, and don’t you be afraid. At least, I am
afraid, but I enjoy it. It’s not enjoyment though, but ecstasy. Damn it
all, whatever it is! A strong spirit, a weak spirit, a womanish
spirit—whatever it is! Let us praise nature: you see what sunshine, how
clear the sky is, the leaves are all green, it’s still summer; four
o’clock in the afternoon and the stillness! Where were you going?”

“I was going to father’s, but I meant to go to Katerina
Ivanovna’s first.”

“To her, and to father! Oo! what a coincidence! Why was I waiting for
you? Hungering and thirsting for you in every cranny of my soul and even in my
ribs? Why, to send you to father and to her, Katerina Ivanovna, so as to have
done with her and with father. To send an angel. I might have sent any one, but
I wanted to send an angel. And here you are on your way to see father and
her.”

“Did you really mean to send me?” cried Alyosha with a distressed
expression.

“Stay! You knew it! And I see you understand it all at once. But be
quiet, be quiet for a time. Don’t be sorry, and don’t cry.”

Dmitri stood up, thought a moment, and put his finger to his forehead.

“She’s asked you, written to you a letter or something,
that’s why you’re going to her? You wouldn’t be going except
for that?”

“Here is her note.” Alyosha took it out of his pocket. Mitya looked
through it quickly.

“And you were going the back‐way! Oh, gods, I thank you for sending him
by the back‐way, and he came to me like the golden fish to the silly old
fishermen in the fable! Listen, Alyosha, listen, brother! Now I mean to tell
you everything, for I must tell some one. An angel in heaven I’ve told
already; but I want to tell an angel on earth. You are an angel on earth. You
will hear and judge and forgive. And that’s what I need, that some one
above me should forgive. Listen! If two people break away from everything on
earth and fly off into the unknown, or at least one of them, and before flying
off or going to ruin he comes to some one else and says, ‘Do this for
me’—some favor never asked before that could only be asked on
one’s deathbed—would that other refuse, if he were a friend or a
brother?”

“I will do it, but tell me what it is, and make haste,” said
Alyosha.

“Make haste! H’m!… Don’t be in a hurry, Alyosha, you hurry
and worry yourself. There’s no need to hurry now. Now the world has taken
a new turning. Ah, Alyosha, what a pity you can’t understand ecstasy. But
what am I saying to him? As though you didn’t understand it. What an ass
I am! What am I saying? ‘Be noble, O man!’—who says
that?”

Alyosha made up his mind to wait. He felt that, perhaps, indeed, his work lay
here. Mitya sank into thought for a moment, with his elbow on the table and his
head in his hand. Both were silent.

“Alyosha,” said Mitya, “you’re the only one who
won’t laugh. I should like to begin—my confession—with
Schiller’s Hymn to Joy, An die Freude! I don’t know
German, I only know it’s called that. Don’t think I’m talking
nonsense because I’m drunk. I’m not a bit drunk. Brandy’s all
very well, but I need two bottles to make me drunk:

Silenus with his rosy phiz
Upon his stumbling ass.

But I’ve not drunk a quarter of a bottle, and I’m not Silenus.
I’m not Silenus, though I am strong,^[1]
for I’ve made a decision once for all. Forgive me the pun; you’ll
have to forgive me a lot more than puns to‐day. Don’t be uneasy.
I’m not spinning it out. I’m talking sense, and I’ll come to
the point in a minute. I won’t keep you in suspense. Stay, how does it
go?”

He raised his head, thought a minute, and began with enthusiasm:

“Wild and fearful in his cavern
Hid the naked troglodyte,
And the homeless nomad wandered
Laying waste the fertile plain.
Menacing with spear and arrow
In the woods the hunter strayed….
Woe to all poor wretches stranded
On those cruel and hostile shores!

“From the peak of high Olympus
Came the mother Ceres down,
Seeking in those savage regions
Her lost daughter Proserpine.
But the Goddess found no refuge,
Found no kindly welcome there,
And no temple bearing witness
To the worship of the gods.

“From the fields and from the vineyards
Came no fruits to deck the feasts,
Only flesh of bloodstained victims
Smoldered on the altar‐fires,
And where’er the grieving goddess
Turns her melancholy gaze,
Sunk in vilest degradation
Man his loathsomeness displays.”

Mitya broke into sobs and seized Alyosha’s hand.

“My dear, my dear, in degradation, in degradation now, too. There’s
a terrible amount of suffering for man on earth, a terrible lot of trouble.
Don’t think I’m only a brute in an officer’s uniform,
wallowing in dirt and drink. I hardly think of anything but of that degraded
man—if only I’m not lying. I pray God I’m not lying and
showing off. I think about that man because I am that man myself.

Would he purge his soul from vileness
And attain to light and worth,
He must turn and cling for ever
To his ancient Mother Earth.

But the difficulty is how am I to cling for ever to Mother Earth. I don’t
kiss her. I don’t cleave to her bosom. Am I to become a peasant or a
shepherd? I go on and I don’t know whether I’m going to shame or to
light and joy. That’s the trouble, for everything in the world is a
riddle! And whenever I’ve happened to sink into the vilest degradation
(and it’s always been happening) I always read that poem about Ceres and
man. Has it reformed me? Never! For I’m a Karamazov. For when I do leap
into the pit, I go headlong with my heels up, and am pleased to be falling in
that degrading attitude, and pride myself upon it. And in the very depths of
that degradation I begin a hymn of praise. Let me be accursed. Let me be vile
and base, only let me kiss the hem of the veil in which my God is shrouded.
Though I may be following the devil, I am Thy son, O Lord, and I love Thee, and
I feel the joy without which the world cannot stand.

Joy everlasting fostereth
The soul of all creation,
It is her secret ferment fires
The cup of life with flame.
’Tis at her beck the grass hath turned
Each blade towards the light
And solar systems have evolved
From chaos and dark night,
Filling the realms of boundless space
Beyond the sage’s sight.
At bounteous Nature’s kindly breast,
All things that breathe drink Joy,
And birds and beasts and creeping things
All follow where She leads.
Her gifts to man are friends in need,
The wreath, the foaming must,
To angels—vision of God’s throne,
To insects—sensual lust.

But enough poetry! I am in tears; let me cry. It may be foolishness that every
one would laugh at. But you won’t laugh. Your eyes are shining, too.
Enough poetry. I want to tell you now about the insects to whom God gave
“sensual lust.”

To insects—sensual lust.

I am that insect, brother, and it is said of me specially. All we Karamazovs
are such insects, and, angel as you are, that insect lives in you, too, and
will stir up a tempest in your blood. Tempests, because sensual lust is a
tempest—worse than a tempest! Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is
terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can be fathomed, for God
sets us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions
exist side by side. I am not a cultivated man, brother, but I’ve thought
a lot about this. It’s terrible what mysteries there are! Too many
riddles weigh men down on earth. We must solve them as we can, and try to keep
a dry skin in the water. Beauty! I can’t endure the thought that a man of
lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the
ideal of Sodom. What’s still more awful is that a man with the ideal of
Sodom in his soul does not renounce the ideal of the Madonna, and his heart may
be on fire with that ideal, genuinely on fire, just as in his days of youth and
innocence. Yes, man is broad, too broad, indeed. I’d have him narrower.
The devil only knows what to make of it! What to the mind is shameful is beauty
and nothing else to the heart. Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for
the immense mass of mankind beauty is found in Sodom. Did you know that secret?
The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the
devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man. But a man
always talks of his own ache. Listen, now to come to facts.”

Chapter IV.
The Confession Of A Passionate Heart—In Anecdote

“I was leading a wild life then. Father said just now that I spent
several thousand roubles in seducing young girls. That’s a swinish
invention, and there was nothing of the sort. And if there was, I didn’t
need money simply for that. With me money is an accessory, the overflow
of my heart, the framework. To‐day she would be my lady, to‐morrow a wench out
of the streets in her place. I entertained them both. I threw away money by the
handful on music, rioting, and gypsies. Sometimes I gave it to the ladies, too,
for they’ll take it greedily, that must be admitted, and be pleased and
thankful for it. Ladies used to be fond of me: not all of them, but it
happened, it happened. But I always liked side‐paths, little dark back‐alleys
behind the main road—there one finds adventures and surprises, and
precious metal in the dirt. I am speaking figuratively, brother. In the town I
was in, there were no such back‐alleys in the literal sense, but morally there
were. If you were like me, you’d know what that means. I loved vice, I
loved the ignominy of vice. I loved cruelty; am I not a bug, am I not a noxious
insect? In fact a Karamazov! Once we went, a whole lot of us, for a picnic, in
seven sledges. It was dark, it was winter, and I began squeezing a girl’s
hand, and forced her to kiss me. She was the daughter of an official, a sweet,
gentle, submissive creature. She allowed me, she allowed me much in the dark.
She thought, poor thing, that I should come next day to make her an offer (I
was looked upon as a good match, too). But I didn’t say a word to her for
five months. I used to see her in a corner at dances (we were always having
dances), her eyes watching me. I saw how they glowed with fire—a fire of
gentle indignation. This game only tickled that insect lust I cherished in my
soul. Five months later she married an official and left the town, still angry,
and still, perhaps, in love with me. Now they live happily. Observe that I told
no one. I didn’t boast of it. Though I’m full of low desires, and
love what’s low, I’m not dishonorable. You’re blushing; your
eyes flashed. Enough of this filth with you. And all this was nothing
much—wayside blossoms à la Paul de Kock—though the cruel
insect had already grown strong in my soul. I’ve a perfect album of
reminiscences, brother. God bless them, the darlings. I tried to break it off
without quarreling. And I never gave them away. I never bragged of one of them.
But that’s enough. You can’t suppose I brought you here simply to
talk of such nonsense. No, I’m going to tell you something more curious;
and don’t be surprised that I’m glad to tell you, instead of being
ashamed.”

“You say that because I blushed,” Alyosha said suddenly. “I
wasn’t blushing at what you were saying or at what you’ve done. I
blushed because I am the same as you are.”

“You? Come, that’s going a little too far!”

“No, it’s not too far,” said Alyosha warmly (obviously the
idea was not a new one). “The ladder’s the same. I’m at the
bottom step, and you’re above, somewhere about the thirteenth.
That’s how I see it. But it’s all the same. Absolutely the same in
kind. Any one on the bottom step is bound to go up to the top one.”

“Then one ought not to step on at all.”

“Any one who can help it had better not.”

“But can you?”

“I think not.”

“Hush, Alyosha, hush, darling! I could kiss your hand, you touch me so.
That rogue Grushenka has an eye for men. She told me once that she’d
devour you one day. There, there, I won’t! From this field of corruption
fouled by flies, let’s pass to my tragedy, also befouled by flies, that
is by every sort of vileness. Although the old man told lies about my seducing
innocence, there really was something of the sort in my tragedy, though it was
only once, and then it did not come off. The old man who has reproached me with
what never happened does not even know of this fact; I never told any one about
it. You’re the first, except Ivan, of course—Ivan knows everything.
He knew about it long before you. But Ivan’s a tomb.”

“Ivan’s a tomb?”

“Yes.”

Alyosha listened with great attention.

“I was lieutenant in a line regiment, but still I was under supervision,
like a kind of convict. Yet I was awfully well received in the little town. I
spent money right and left. I was thought to be rich; I thought so myself. But
I must have pleased them in other ways as well. Although they shook their heads
over me, they liked me. My colonel, who was an old man, took a sudden dislike
to me. He was always down upon me, but I had powerful friends, and, moreover,
all the town was on my side, so he couldn’t do me much harm. I was in
fault myself for refusing to treat him with proper respect. I was proud. This
obstinate old fellow, who was really a very good sort, kind‐hearted and
hospitable, had had two wives, both dead. His first wife, who was of a humble
family, left a daughter as unpretentious as herself. She was a young woman of
four and twenty when I was there, and was living with her father and an aunt,
her mother’s sister. The aunt was simple and illiterate; the niece was
simple but lively. I like to say nice things about people. I never knew a woman
of more charming character than Agafya—fancy, her name was Agafya
Ivanovna! And she wasn’t bad‐looking either, in the Russian style: tall,
stout, with a full figure, and beautiful eyes, though a rather coarse face. She
had not married, although she had had two suitors. She refused them, but was as
cheerful as ever. I was intimate with her, not in ‘that’ way, it
was pure friendship. I have often been friendly with women quite innocently. I
used to talk to her with shocking frankness, and she only laughed. Many women
like such freedom, and she was a girl too, which made it very amusing. Another
thing, one could never think of her as a young lady. She and her aunt lived in
her father’s house with a sort of voluntary humility, not putting
themselves on an equality with other people. She was a general favorite, and of
use to every one, for she was a clever dressmaker. She had a talent for it. She
gave her services freely without asking for payment, but if any one offered her
payment, she didn’t refuse. The colonel, of course, was a very different
matter. He was one of the chief personages in the district. He kept open house,
entertained the whole town, gave suppers and dances. At the time I arrived and
joined the battalion, all the town was talking of the expected return of the
colonel’s second daughter, a great beauty, who had just left a
fashionable school in the capital. This second daughter is Katerina Ivanovna,
and she was the child of the second wife, who belonged to a distinguished
general’s family; although, as I learnt on good authority, she too
brought the colonel no money. She had connections, and that was all. There may
have been expectations, but they had come to nothing.

“Yet, when the young lady came from boarding‐school on a visit, the whole
town revived. Our most distinguished ladies—two
‘Excellencies’ and a colonel’s wife—and all the rest
following their lead, at once took her up and gave entertainments in her honor.
She was the belle of the balls and picnics, and they got up tableaux
vivants in aid of distressed governesses. I took no notice, I went on as
wildly as before, and one of my exploits at the time set all the town talking.
I saw her eyes taking my measure one evening at the battery commander’s,
but I didn’t go up to her, as though I disdained her acquaintance. I did
go up and speak to her at an evening party not long after. She scarcely looked
at me, and compressed her lips scornfully. ‘Wait a bit. I’ll have
my revenge,’ thought I. I behaved like an awful fool on many occasions at
that time, and I was conscious of it myself. What made it worse was that I felt
that ‘Katenka’ was not an innocent boarding‐school miss, but a
person of character, proud and really high‐principled; above all, she had
education and intellect, and I had neither. You think I meant to make her an
offer? No, I simply wanted to revenge myself, because I was such a hero and she
didn’t seem to feel it.

“Meanwhile, I spent my time in drink and riot, till the
lieutenant‐colonel put me under arrest for three days. Just at that time father
sent me six thousand roubles in return for my sending him a deed giving up all
claims upon him—settling our accounts, so to speak, and saying that I
wouldn’t expect anything more. I didn’t understand a word of it at
the time. Until I came here, Alyosha, till the last few days, indeed, perhaps
even now, I haven’t been able to make head or tail of my money affairs
with father. But never mind that, we’ll talk of it later.

“Just as I received the money, I got a letter from a friend telling me
something that interested me immensely. The authorities, I learnt, were
dissatisfied with our lieutenant‐colonel. He was suspected of irregularities;
in fact, his enemies were preparing a surprise for him. And then the commander
of the division arrived, and kicked up the devil of a shindy. Shortly
afterwards he was ordered to retire. I won’t tell you how it all
happened. He had enemies certainly. Suddenly there was a marked coolness in the
town towards him and all his family. His friends all turned their backs on him.
Then I took my first step. I met Agafya Ivanovna, with whom I’d always
kept up a friendship, and said, ‘Do you know there’s a deficit of
4,500 roubles of government money in your father’s accounts?’

“ ‘What do you mean? What makes you say so? The general was here
not long ago, and everything was all right.’

“ ‘Then it was, but now it isn’t.’

“She was terribly scared.

“ ‘Don’t frighten me!’ she said. ‘Who told you
so?’

“ ‘Don’t be uneasy,’ I said, ‘I won’t tell
any one. You know I’m as silent as the tomb. I only wanted, in view of
“possibilities,” to add, that when they demand that 4,500 roubles
from your father, and he can’t produce it, he’ll be tried, and made
to serve as a common soldier in his old age, unless you like to send me your
young lady secretly. I’ve just had money paid me. I’ll give her
four thousand, if you like, and keep the secret religiously.’

“ ‘Ah, you scoundrel!’—that’s what she said.
‘You wicked scoundrel! How dare you!’

“She went away furiously indignant, while I shouted after her once more
that the secret should be kept sacred. Those two simple creatures, Agafya and
her aunt, I may as well say at once, behaved like perfect angels all through
this business. They genuinely adored their ‘Katya,’ thought her far
above them, and waited on her, hand and foot. But Agafya told her of our
conversation. I found that out afterwards. She didn’t keep it back, and
of course that was all I wanted.

“Suddenly the new major arrived to take command of the battalion. The old
lieutenant‐colonel was taken ill at once, couldn’t leave his room for two
days, and didn’t hand over the government money. Dr. Kravchenko declared
that he really was ill. But I knew for a fact, and had known for a long time,
that for the last four years the money had never been in his hands except when
the Commander made his visits of inspection. He used to lend it to a
trustworthy person, a merchant of our town called Trifonov, an old widower,
with a big beard and gold‐rimmed spectacles. He used to go to the fair, do a
profitable business with the money, and return the whole sum to the colonel,
bringing with it a present from the fair, as well as interest on the loan. But
this time (I heard all about it quite by chance from Trifonov’s son and
heir, a driveling youth and one of the most vicious in the world)—this
time, I say, Trifonov brought nothing back from the fair. The
lieutenant‐colonel flew to him. ‘I’ve never received any money from
you, and couldn’t possibly have received any.’ That was all the
answer he got. So now our lieutenant‐colonel is confined to the house, with a
towel round his head, while they’re all three busy putting ice on it. All
at once an orderly arrives on the scene with the book and the order to
‘hand over the battalion money immediately, within two hours.’ He
signed the book (I saw the signature in the book afterwards), stood up, saying
he would put on his uniform, ran to his bedroom, loaded his double‐barreled gun
with a service bullet, took the boot off his right foot, fixed the gun against
his chest, and began feeling for the trigger with his foot. But Agafya,
remembering what I had told her, had her suspicions. She stole up and peeped
into the room just in time. She rushed in, flung herself upon him from behind,
threw her arms round him, and the gun went off, hit the ceiling, but hurt no
one. The others ran in, took away the gun, and held him by the arms. I heard
all about this afterwards. I was at home, it was getting dusk, and I was just
preparing to go out. I had dressed, brushed my hair, scented my handkerchief,
and taken up my cap, when suddenly the door opened, and facing me in the room
stood Katerina Ivanovna.

“It’s strange how things happen sometimes. No one had seen her in
the street, so that no one knew of it in the town. I lodged with two decrepit
old ladies, who looked after me. They were most obliging old things, ready to
do anything for me, and at my request were as silent afterwards as two
cast‐iron posts. Of course I grasped the position at once. She walked in and
looked straight at me, her dark eyes determined, even defiant, but on her lips
and round her mouth I saw uncertainty.

“ ‘My sister told me,’ she began, ‘that you would give
me 4,500 roubles if I came to you for it—myself. I have come … give me
the money!’

“She couldn’t keep it up. She was breathless, frightened, her voice
failed her, and the corners of her mouth and the lines round it quivered.
Alyosha, are you listening, or are you asleep?”

“Mitya, I know you will tell the whole truth,” said Alyosha in
agitation.

“I am telling it. If I tell the whole truth just as it happened I
shan’t spare myself. My first idea was a—Karamazov one. Once I was
bitten by a centipede, brother, and laid up a fortnight with fever from it.
Well, I felt a centipede biting at my heart then—a noxious insect, you
understand? I looked her up and down. You’ve seen her? She’s a
beauty. But she was beautiful in another way then. At that moment she was
beautiful because she was noble, and I was a scoundrel; she in all the grandeur
of her generosity and sacrifice for her father, and I—a bug! And,
scoundrel as I was, she was altogether at my mercy, body and soul. She was
hemmed in. I tell you frankly, that thought, that venomous thought, so
possessed my heart that it almost swooned with suspense. It seemed as if there
could be no resisting it; as though I should act like a bug, like a venomous
spider, without a spark of pity. I could scarcely breathe. Understand, I should
have gone next day to ask for her hand, so that it might end honorably, so to
speak, and that nobody would or could know. For though I’m a man of base
desires, I’m honest. And at that very second some voice seemed to whisper
in my ear, ‘But when you come to‐morrow to make your proposal, that girl
won’t even see you; she’ll order her coachman to kick you out of
the yard. “Publish it through all the town,” she would say,
“I’m not afraid of you.” ’ I looked at the young lady,
my voice had not deceived me. That is how it would be, not a doubt of it. I
could see from her face now that I should be turned out of the house. My spite
was roused. I longed to play her the nastiest swinish cad’s trick: to
look at her with a sneer, and on the spot where she stood before me to stun her
with a tone of voice that only a shopman could use.

“ ‘Four thousand! What do you mean? I was joking. You’ve been
counting your chickens too easily, madam. Two hundred, if you like, with all my
heart. But four thousand is not a sum to throw away on such frivolity.
You’ve put yourself out to no purpose.’

“I should have lost the game, of course. She’d have run away. But
it would have been an infernal revenge. It would have been worth it all.
I’d have howled with regret all the rest of my life, only to have played
that trick. Would you believe it, it has never happened to me with any other
woman, not one, to look at her at such a moment with hatred. But, on my oath, I
looked at her for three seconds, or five perhaps, with fearful
hatred—that hate which is only a hair’s‐breadth from love, from the
maddest love!

“I went to the window, put my forehead against the frozen pane, and I
remember the ice burnt my forehead like fire. I did not keep her long,
don’t be afraid. I turned round, went up to the table, opened the drawer
and took out a banknote for five thousand roubles (it was lying in a French
dictionary). Then I showed it her in silence, folded it, handed it to her,
opened the door into the passage, and, stepping back, made her a deep bow, a
most respectful, a most impressive bow, believe me! She shuddered all over,
gazed at me for a second, turned horribly pale—white as a sheet, in
fact—and all at once, not impetuously but softly, gently, bowed down to
my feet—not a boarding‐school curtsey, but a Russian bow, with her
forehead to the floor. She jumped up and ran away. I was wearing my sword. I
drew it and nearly stabbed myself with it on the spot; why, I don’t know.
It would have been frightfully stupid, of course. I suppose it was from
delight. Can you understand that one might kill oneself from delight? But I
didn’t stab myself. I only kissed my sword and put it back in the
scabbard—which there was no need to have told you, by the way. And I
fancy that in telling you about my inner conflict I have laid it on rather
thick to glorify myself. But let it pass, and to hell with all who pry into the
human heart! Well, so much for that ‘adventure’ with Katerina
Ivanovna. So now Ivan knows of it, and you—no one else.”

Dmitri got up, took a step or two in his excitement, pulled out his
handkerchief and mopped his forehead, then sat down again, not in the same
place as before, but on the opposite side, so that Alyosha had to turn quite
round to face him.

Chapter V.
The Confession Of A Passionate Heart—“Heels Up”

“Now,” said Alyosha, “I understand the first half.”

“You understand the first half. That half is a drama, and it was played
out there. The second half is a tragedy, and it is being acted here.”

“And I understand nothing of that second half so far,” said
Alyosha.

“And I? Do you suppose I understand it?”

“Stop, Dmitri. There’s one important question. Tell me, you were
betrothed, you are betrothed still?”

“We weren’t betrothed at once, not for three months after that
adventure. The next day I told myself that the incident was closed, concluded,
that there would be no sequel. It seemed to me caddish to make her an offer. On
her side she gave no sign of life for the six weeks that she remained in the
town; except, indeed, for one action. The day after her visit the maid‐servant
slipped round with an envelope addressed to me. I tore it open: it contained
the change out of the banknote. Only four thousand five hundred roubles was
needed, but there was a discount of about two hundred on changing it. She only
sent me about two hundred and sixty. I don’t remember exactly, but not a
note, not a word of explanation. I searched the packet for a pencil
mark—n‐nothing! Well, I spent the rest of the money on such an orgy that
the new major was obliged to reprimand me.

“Well, the lieutenant‐colonel produced the battalion money, to the
astonishment of every one, for nobody believed that he had the money untouched.
He’d no sooner paid it than he fell ill, took to his bed, and, three
weeks later, softening of the brain set in, and he died five days afterwards.
He was buried with military honors, for he had not had time to receive his
discharge. Ten days after his funeral, Katerina Ivanovna, with her aunt and
sister, went to Moscow. And, behold, on the very day they went away (I
hadn’t seen them, didn’t see them off or take leave) I received a
tiny note, a sheet of thin blue paper, and on it only one line in pencil:
‘I will write to you. Wait. K.’ And that was all.

“I’ll explain the rest now, in two words. In Moscow their fortunes
changed with the swiftness of lightning and the unexpectedness of an Arabian
fairy‐tale. That general’s widow, their nearest relation, suddenly lost
the two nieces who were her heiresses and next‐of‐kin—both died in the
same week of small‐pox. The old lady, prostrated with grief, welcomed Katya as
a daughter, as her one hope, clutched at her, altered her will in Katya’s
favor. But that concerned the future. Meanwhile she gave her, for present use,
eighty thousand roubles, as a marriage portion, to do what she liked with. She
was an hysterical woman. I saw something of her in Moscow, later.

“Well, suddenly I received by post four thousand five hundred roubles. I
was speechless with surprise, as you may suppose. Three days later came the
promised letter. I have it with me now. You must read it. She offers to be my
wife, offers herself to me. ‘I love you madly,’ she says,
‘even if you don’t love me, never mind. Be my husband. Don’t
be afraid. I won’t hamper you in any way. I will be your chattel. I will
be the carpet under your feet. I want to love you for ever. I want to save you
from yourself.’ Alyosha, I am not worthy to repeat those lines in my
vulgar words and in my vulgar tone, my everlastingly vulgar tone, that I can
never cure myself of. That letter stabs me even now. Do you think I don’t
mind—that I don’t mind still? I wrote her an answer at once, as it
was impossible for me to go to Moscow. I wrote to her with tears. One thing I
shall be ashamed of for ever. I referred to her being rich and having a dowry
while I was only a stuck‐up beggar! I mentioned money! I ought to have borne it
in silence, but it slipped from my pen. Then I wrote at once to Ivan, and told
him all I could about it in a letter of six pages, and sent him to her. Why do
you look like that? Why are you staring at me? Yes, Ivan fell in love with her;
he’s in love with her still. I know that. I did a stupid thing, in the
world’s opinion; but perhaps that one stupid thing may be the saving of
us all now. Oo! Don’t you see what a lot she thinks of Ivan, how she
respects him? When she compares us, do you suppose she can love a man like me,
especially after all that has happened here?”

“But I am convinced that she does love a man like you, and not a man like
him.”

“She loves her own virtue, not me.” The words broke
involuntarily, and almost malignantly, from Dmitri. He laughed, but a minute
later his eyes gleamed, he flushed crimson and struck the table violently with
his fist.

“I swear, Alyosha,” he cried, with intense and genuine anger at
himself; “you may not believe me, but as God is holy, and as Christ is
God, I swear that though I smiled at her lofty sentiments just now, I know that
I am a million times baser in soul than she, and that these lofty sentiments of
hers are as sincere as a heavenly angel’s. That’s the tragedy of
it—that I know that for certain. What if any one does show off a bit?
Don’t I do it myself? And yet I’m sincere, I’m sincere. As
for Ivan, I can understand how he must be cursing nature now—with his
intellect, too! To see the preference given—to whom, to what? To a
monster who, though he is betrothed and all eyes are fixed on him, can’t
restrain his debaucheries—and before the very eyes of his betrothed! And
a man like me is preferred, while he is rejected. And why? Because a girl wants
to sacrifice her life and destiny out of gratitude. It’s ridiculous!
I’ve never said a word of this to Ivan, and Ivan of course has never
dropped a hint of the sort to me. But destiny will be accomplished, and the
best man will hold his ground while the undeserving one will vanish into his
back‐ alley for ever—his filthy back‐alley, his beloved back‐alley, where
he is at home and where he will sink in filth and stench at his own free will
and with enjoyment. I’ve been talking foolishly. I’ve no words
left. I use them at random, but it will be as I have said. I shall drown in the
back‐ alley, and she will marry Ivan.”

“Stop, Dmitri,” Alyosha interrupted again with great anxiety.
“There’s one thing you haven’t made clear yet: you are still
betrothed all the same, aren’t you? How can you break off the engagement
if she, your betrothed, doesn’t want to?”

“Yes, formally and solemnly betrothed. It was all done on my arrival in
Moscow, with great ceremony, with ikons, all in fine style. The general’s
wife blessed us, and—would you believe it?—congratulated Katya.
‘You’ve made a good choice,’ she said, ‘I see right
through him.’ And—would you believe it?—she didn’t like
Ivan, and hardly greeted him. I had a lot of talk with Katya in Moscow. I told
her about myself—sincerely, honorably. She listened to everything.

There was sweet confusion,
There were tender words.

Though there were proud words, too. She wrung out of me a mighty promise to
reform. I gave my promise, and here—”

“What?”

“Why, I called to you and brought you out here to‐day, this very
day—remember it—to send you—this very day again—to
Katerina Ivanovna, and—”

“What?”

“To tell her that I shall never come to see her again. Say, ‘He
sends you his compliments.’ ”

“But is that possible?”

“That’s just the reason I’m sending you, in my place, because
it’s impossible. And, how could I tell her myself?”

“And where are you going?”

“To the back‐alley.”

“To Grushenka, then!” Alyosha exclaimed mournfully, clasping his
hands. “Can Rakitin really have told the truth? I thought that you had
just visited her, and that was all.”

“Can a betrothed man pay such visits? Is such a thing possible and with
such a betrothed, and before the eyes of all the world? Confound it, I have
some honor! As soon as I began visiting Grushenka, I ceased to be betrothed,
and to be an honest man. I understand that. Why do you look at me? You see, I
went in the first place to beat her. I had heard, and I know for a fact now,
that that captain, father’s agent, had given Grushenka an I.O.U. of mine
for her to sue me for payment, so as to put an end to me. They wanted to scare
me. I went to beat her. I had had a glimpse of her before. She doesn’t
strike one at first sight. I knew about her old merchant, who’s lying ill
now, paralyzed; but he’s leaving her a decent little sum. I knew, too,
that she was fond of money, that she hoarded it, and lent it at a wicked rate
of interest, that she’s a merciless cheat and swindler. I went to beat
her, and I stayed. The storm broke—it struck me down like the plague.
I’m plague‐stricken still, and I know that everything is over, that there
will never be anything more for me. The cycle of the ages is accomplished.
That’s my position. And though I’m a beggar, as fate would have it,
I had three thousand just then in my pocket. I drove with Grushenka to Mokroe,
a place twenty‐five versts from here. I got gypsies there and champagne and
made all the peasants there drunk on it, and all the women and girls. I sent
the thousands flying. In three days’ time I was stripped bare, but a
hero. Do you suppose the hero had gained his end? Not a sign of it from her. I
tell you that rogue, Grushenka, has a supple curve all over her body. You can
see it in her little foot, even in her little toe. I saw it, and kissed it, but
that was all, I swear! ‘I’ll marry you if you like,’ she
said, ‘you’re a beggar, you know. Say that you won’t beat me,
and will let me do anything I choose, and perhaps I will marry you.’ She
laughed, and she’s laughing still!”

Dmitri leapt up with a sort of fury. He seemed all at once as though he were
drunk. His eyes became suddenly bloodshot.

“And do you really mean to marry her?”

“At once, if she will. And if she won’t, I shall stay all the same.
I’ll be the porter at her gate. Alyosha!” he cried. He stopped
short before him, and taking him by the shoulders began shaking him violently.
“Do you know, you innocent boy, that this is all delirium, senseless
delirium, for there’s a tragedy here. Let me tell you, Alexey, that I may
be a low man, with low and degraded passions, but a thief and a pickpocket
Dmitri Karamazov never can be. Well, then; let me tell you that I am a thief
and a pickpocket. That very morning, just before I went to beat Grushenka,
Katerina Ivanovna sent for me, and in strict secrecy (why I don’t know, I
suppose she had some reason) asked me to go to the chief town of the province
and to post three thousand roubles to Agafya Ivanovna in Moscow, so that
nothing should be known of it in the town here. So I had that three thousand
roubles in my pocket when I went to see Grushenka, and it was that money we
spent at Mokroe. Afterwards I pretended I had been to the town, but did not
show her the post office receipt. I said I had sent the money and would bring
the receipt, and so far I haven’t brought it. I’ve forgotten it.
Now what do you think you’re going to her to‐day to say? ‘He sends
his compliments,’ and she’ll ask you, ‘What about the
money?’ You might still have said to her, ‘He’s a degraded
sensualist, and a low creature, with uncontrolled passions. He didn’t
send your money then, but wasted it, because, like a low brute, he
couldn’t control himself.’ But still you might have added,
‘He isn’t a thief though. Here is your three thousand; he sends it
back. Send it yourself to Agafya Ivanovna. But he told me to say “he
sends his compliments.” ’ But, as it is, she will ask, ‘But
where is the money?’ ”

“Mitya, you are unhappy, yes! But not as unhappy as you think.
Don’t worry yourself to death with despair.”

“What, do you suppose I’d shoot myself because I can’t get
three thousand to pay back? That’s just it. I shan’t shoot myself.
I haven’t the strength now. Afterwards, perhaps. But now I’m going
to Grushenka. I don’t care what happens.”

“And what then?”

“I’ll be her husband if she deigns to have me, and when lovers
come, I’ll go into the next room. I’ll clean her friends’
goloshes, blow up their samovar, run their errands.”

“Katerina Ivanovna will understand it all,” Alyosha said solemnly.
“She’ll understand how great this trouble is and will forgive. She
has a lofty mind, and no one could be more unhappy than you. She’ll see
that for herself.”

“She won’t forgive everything,” said Dmitri, with a grin.
“There’s something in it, brother, that no woman could forgive. Do
you know what would be the best thing to do?”

“What?”

“Pay back the three thousand.”

“Where can we get it from? I say, I have two thousand. Ivan will give you
another thousand—that makes three. Take it and pay it back.”

“And when would you get it, your three thousand? You’re not of age,
besides, and you must—you absolutely must—take my farewell to her
to‐day, with the money or without it, for I can’t drag on any longer,
things have come to such a pass. To‐morrow is too late. I shall send you to
father.”

“To father?”

“Yes, to father first. Ask him for three thousand.”

“But, Mitya, he won’t give it.”

“As though he would! I know he won’t. Do you know the meaning of
despair, Alexey?”

“Yes.”

“Listen. Legally he owes me nothing. I’ve had it all from him, I
know that. But morally he owes me something, doesn’t he? You know he
started with twenty‐eight thousand of my mother’s money and made a
hundred thousand with it. Let him give me back only three out of the
twenty‐eight thousand, and he’ll draw my soul out of hell, and it will
atone for many of his sins. For that three thousand—I give you my solemn
word—I’ll make an end of everything, and he shall hear nothing more
of me. For the last time I give him the chance to be a father. Tell him God
Himself sends him this chance.”

“Mitya, he won’t give it for anything.”

“I know he won’t. I know it perfectly well. Now, especially.
That’s not all. I know something more. Now, only a few days ago, perhaps
only yesterday he found out for the first time in earnest (underline
in earnest) that Grushenka is really perhaps not joking, and really
means to marry me. He knows her nature; he knows the cat. And do you suppose
he’s going to give me money to help to bring that about when he’s
crazy about her himself? And that’s not all, either. I can tell you more
than that. I know that for the last five days he has had three thousand drawn
out of the bank, changed into notes of a hundred roubles, packed into a large
envelope, sealed with five seals, and tied across with red tape. You see how
well I know all about it! On the envelope is written: ‘To my angel,
Grushenka, when she will come to me.’ He scrawled it himself in silence
and in secret, and no one knows that the money’s there except the valet,
Smerdyakov, whom he trusts like himself. So now he has been expecting Grushenka
for the last three or four days; he hopes she’ll come for the money. He
has sent her word of it, and she has sent him word that perhaps she’ll
come. And if she does go to the old man, can I marry her after that? You
understand now why I’m here in secret and what I’m on the watch
for.”

“For her?”

“Yes, for her. Foma has a room in the house of these sluts here. Foma
comes from our parts; he was a soldier in our regiment. He does jobs for them.
He’s watchman at night and goes grouse‐shooting in the day‐time; and
that’s how he lives. I’ve established myself in his room. Neither
he nor the women of the house know the secret—that is, that I am on the
watch here.”

“No one but Smerdyakov knows, then?”

“No one else. He will let me know if she goes to the old man.”

“It was he told you about the money, then?”

“Yes. It’s a dead secret. Even Ivan doesn’t know about the
money, or anything. The old man is sending Ivan to Tchermashnya on a two or
three days’ journey. A purchaser has turned up for the copse: he’ll
give eight thousand for the timber. So the old man keeps asking Ivan to help
him by going to arrange it. It will take him two or three days. That’s
what the old man wants, so that Grushenka can come while he’s
away.”

“Then he’s expecting Grushenka to‐day?”

“No, she won’t come to‐day; there are signs. She’s certain
not to come,” cried Mitya suddenly. “Smerdyakov thinks so, too.
Father’s drinking now. He’s sitting at table with Ivan. Go to him,
Alyosha, and ask for the three thousand.”

“Mitya, dear, what’s the matter with you?” cried Alyosha,
jumping up from his place, and looking keenly at his brother’s frenzied
face. For one moment the thought struck him that Dmitri was mad.

“What is it? I’m not insane,” said Dmitri, looking intently
and earnestly at him. “No fear. I am sending you to father, and I know
what I’m saying. I believe in miracles.”

“In miracles?”

“In a miracle of Divine Providence. God knows my heart. He sees my
despair. He sees the whole picture. Surely He won’t let something awful
happen. Alyosha, I believe in miracles. Go!”

“I am going. Tell me, will you wait for me here?”

“Yes. I know it will take some time. You can’t go at him point
blank. He’s drunk now. I’ll wait three hours—four, five, six,
seven. Only remember you must go to Katerina Ivanovna to‐day, if it has to be
at midnight, with the money or without the money, and say, ‘He
sends his compliments to you.’ I want you to say that verse to her:
‘He sends his compliments to you.’ ”

“Mitya! And what if Grushenka comes to‐day—if not to‐day,
to‐morrow, or the next day?”

“Grushenka? I shall see her. I shall rush out and prevent it.”

“And if—”

“If there’s an if, it will be murder. I couldn’t endure
it.”

“Who will be murdered?”

“The old man. I shan’t kill her.”

“Brother, what are you saying?”

“Oh, I don’t know…. I don’t know. Perhaps I shan’t
kill, and perhaps I shall. I’m afraid that he will suddenly become so
loathsome to me with his face at that moment. I hate his ugly throat, his nose,
his eyes, his shameless snigger. I feel a physical repulsion. That’s what
I’m afraid of. That’s what may be too much for me.”

“I’ll go, Mitya. I believe that God will order things for the best,
that nothing awful may happen.”

“And I will sit and wait for the miracle. And if it doesn’t come to
pass—”

Alyosha went thoughtfully towards his father’s house.

Chapter VI.
Smerdyakov

He did in fact find his father still at table. Though there was a dining‐ room
in the house, the table was laid as usual in the drawing‐room, which was the
largest room, and furnished with old‐fashioned ostentation. The furniture was
white and very old, upholstered in old, red, silky material. In the spaces
between the windows there were mirrors in elaborate white and gilt frames, of
old‐fashioned carving. On the walls, covered with white paper, which was torn
in many places, there hung two large portraits—one of some prince who had
been governor of the district thirty years before, and the other of some
bishop, also long since dead. In the corner opposite the door there were
several ikons, before which a lamp was lighted at nightfall … not so much for
devotional purposes as to light the room. Fyodor Pavlovitch used to go to bed
very late, at three or four o’clock in the morning, and would wander
about the room at night or sit in an arm‐chair, thinking. This had become a
habit with him. He often slept quite alone in the house, sending his servants
to the lodge; but usually Smerdyakov remained, sleeping on a bench in the hall.

When Alyosha came in, dinner was over, but coffee and preserves had been
served. Fyodor Pavlovitch liked sweet things with brandy after dinner. Ivan was
also at table, sipping coffee. The servants, Grigory and Smerdyakov, were
standing by. Both the gentlemen and the servants seemed in singularly good
spirits. Fyodor Pavlovitch was roaring with laughter. Before he entered the
room, Alyosha heard the shrill laugh he knew so well, and could tell from the
sound of it that his father had only reached the good‐humored stage, and was
far from being completely drunk.

“Here he is! Here he is!” yelled Fyodor Pavlovitch, highly
delighted at seeing Alyosha. “Join us. Sit down. Coffee is a lenten dish,
but it’s hot and good. I don’t offer you brandy, you’re
keeping the fast. But would you like some? No; I’d better give you some
of our famous liqueur. Smerdyakov, go to the cupboard, the second shelf on the
right. Here are the keys. Look sharp!”

Alyosha began refusing the liqueur.

“Never mind. If you won’t have it, we will,” said Fyodor
Pavlovitch, beaming. “But stay—have you dined?”

“Yes,” answered Alyosha, who had in truth only eaten a piece of
bread and drunk a glass of kvas in the Father Superior’s kitchen.
“Though I should be pleased to have some hot coffee.”

“Bravo, my darling! He’ll have some coffee. Does it want warming?
No, it’s boiling. It’s capital coffee: Smerdyakov’s making.
My Smerdyakov’s an artist at coffee and at fish patties, and at fish
soup, too. You must come one day and have some fish soup. Let me know
beforehand…. But, stay; didn’t I tell you this morning to come home
with your mattress and pillow and all? Have you brought your mattress? He he
he!”

“No, I haven’t,” said Alyosha, smiling, too.

“Ah, but you were frightened, you were frightened this morning,
weren’t you? There, my darling, I couldn’t do anything to vex you.
Do you know, Ivan, I can’t resist the way he looks one straight in the
face and laughs? It makes me laugh all over. I’m so fond of him. Alyosha,
let me give you my blessing—a father’s blessing.”

Alyosha rose, but Fyodor Pavlovitch had already changed his mind.

“No, no,” he said. “I’ll just make the sign of the
cross over you, for now. Sit still. Now we’ve a treat for you, in your
own line, too. It’ll make you laugh. Balaam’s ass has begun talking
to us here—and how he talks! How he talks!”

Balaam’s ass, it appeared, was the valet, Smerdyakov. He was a young man
of about four and twenty, remarkably unsociable and taciturn. Not that he was
shy or bashful. On the contrary, he was conceited and seemed to despise
everybody.

But we must pause to say a few words about him now. He was brought up by
Grigory and Marfa, but the boy grew up “with no sense of
gratitude,” as Grigory expressed it; he was an unfriendly boy, and seemed
to look at the world mistrustfully. In his childhood he was very fond of
hanging cats, and burying them with great ceremony. He used to dress up in a
sheet as though it were a surplice, and sang, and waved some object over the
dead cat as though it were a censer. All this he did on the sly, with the
greatest secrecy. Grigory caught him once at this diversion and gave him a
sound beating. He shrank into a corner and sulked there for a week. “He
doesn’t care for you or me, the monster,” Grigory used to say to
Marfa, “and he doesn’t care for any one. Are you a human
being?” he said, addressing the boy directly. “You’re not a
human being. You grew from the mildew in the bath‐house.^[2]
That’s what you are.” Smerdyakov, it appeared afterwards, could
never forgive him those words. Grigory taught him to read and write, and when
he was twelve years old, began teaching him the Scriptures. But this teaching
came to nothing. At the second or third lesson the boy suddenly grinned.

“What’s that for?” asked Grigory, looking at him
threateningly from under his spectacles.

“Oh, nothing. God created light on the first day, and the sun, moon, and
stars on the fourth day. Where did the light come from on the first day?”

Grigory was thunderstruck. The boy looked sarcastically at his teacher. There
was something positively condescending in his expression. Grigory could not
restrain himself. “I’ll show you where!” he cried, and gave
the boy a violent slap on the cheek. The boy took the slap without a word, but
withdrew into his corner again for some days. A week later he had his first
attack of the disease to which he was subject all the rest of his
life—epilepsy. When Fyodor Pavlovitch heard of it, his attitude to the
boy seemed changed at once. Till then he had taken no notice of him, though he
never scolded him, and always gave him a copeck when he met him. Sometimes,
when he was in good humor, he would send the boy something sweet from his
table. But as soon as he heard of his illness, he showed an active interest in
him, sent for a doctor, and tried remedies, but the disease turned out to be
incurable. The fits occurred, on an average, once a month, but at various
intervals. The fits varied too, in violence: some were light and some were very
severe. Fyodor Pavlovitch strictly forbade Grigory to use corporal punishment
to the boy, and began allowing him to come upstairs to him. He forbade him to
be taught anything whatever for a time, too. One day when the boy was about
fifteen, Fyodor Pavlovitch noticed him lingering by the bookcase, and reading
the titles through the glass. Fyodor Pavlovitch had a fair number of
books—over a hundred—but no one ever saw him reading. He at once
gave Smerdyakov the key of the bookcase. “Come, read. You shall be my
librarian. You’ll be better sitting reading than hanging about the
courtyard. Come, read this,” and Fyodor Pavlovitch gave him Evenings
in a Cottage near Dikanka.

He read a little but didn’t like it. He did not once smile, and ended by
frowning.

“Why? Isn’t it funny?” asked Fyodor Pavlovitch.

Smerdyakov did not speak.

“Answer, stupid!”

“It’s all untrue,” mumbled the boy, with a grin.

“Then go to the devil! You have the soul of a lackey. Stay, here’s
Smaragdov’s Universal History. That’s all true. Read
that.”

But Smerdyakov did not get through ten pages of Smaragdov. He thought it dull.
So the bookcase was closed again.

Shortly afterwards Marfa and Grigory reported to Fyodor Pavlovitch that
Smerdyakov was gradually beginning to show an extraordinary fastidiousness. He
would sit before his soup, take up his spoon and look into the soup, bend over
it, examine it, take a spoonful and hold it to the light.

“What is it? A beetle?” Grigory would ask.

“A fly, perhaps,” observed Marfa.

The squeamish youth never answered, but he did the same with his bread, his
meat, and everything he ate. He would hold a piece on his fork to the light,
scrutinize it microscopically, and only after long deliberation decide to put
it in his mouth.

“Ach! What fine gentlemen’s airs!” Grigory muttered, looking
at him.

When Fyodor Pavlovitch heard of this development in Smerdyakov he determined to
make him his cook, and sent him to Moscow to be trained. He spent some years
there and came back remarkably changed in appearance. He looked extraordinarily
old for his age. His face had grown wrinkled, yellow, and strangely emasculate.
In character he seemed almost exactly the same as before he went away. He was
just as unsociable, and showed not the slightest inclination for any
companionship. In Moscow, too, as we heard afterwards, he had always been
silent. Moscow itself had little interest for him; he saw very little there,
and took scarcely any notice of anything. He went once to the theater, but
returned silent and displeased with it. On the other hand, he came back to us
from Moscow well dressed, in a clean coat and clean linen. He brushed his
clothes most scrupulously twice a day invariably, and was very fond of cleaning
his smart calf boots with a special English polish, so that they shone like
mirrors. He turned out a first‐rate cook. Fyodor Pavlovitch paid him a salary,
almost the whole of which Smerdyakov spent on clothes, pomade, perfumes, and
such things. But he seemed to have as much contempt for the female sex as for
men; he was discreet, almost unapproachable, with them. Fyodor Pavlovitch began
to regard him rather differently. His fits were becoming more frequent, and on
the days he was ill Marfa cooked, which did not suit Fyodor Pavlovitch at all.

“Why are your fits getting worse?” asked Fyodor Pavlovitch, looking
askance at his new cook. “Would you like to get married? Shall I find you
a wife?”

But Smerdyakov turned pale with anger, and made no reply. Fyodor Pavlovitch
left him with an impatient gesture. The great thing was that he had absolute
confidence in his honesty. It happened once, when Fyodor Pavlovitch was drunk,
that he dropped in the muddy courtyard three hundred‐rouble notes which he had
only just received. He only missed them next day, and was just hastening to
search his pockets when he saw the notes lying on the table. Where had they
come from? Smerdyakov had picked them up and brought them in the day before.

“Well, my lad, I’ve never met any one like you,” Fyodor
Pavlovitch said shortly, and gave him ten roubles. We may add that he not only
believed in his honesty, but had, for some reason, a liking for him, although
the young man looked as morosely at him as at every one and was always silent.
He rarely spoke. If it had occurred to any one to wonder at the time what the
young man was interested in, and what was in his mind, it would have been
impossible to tell by looking at him. Yet he used sometimes to stop suddenly in
the house, or even in the yard or street, and would stand still for ten
minutes, lost in thought. A physiognomist studying his face would have said
that there was no thought in it, no reflection, but only a sort of
contemplation. There is a remarkable picture by the painter Kramskoy, called
“Contemplation.” There is a forest in winter, and on a roadway
through the forest, in absolute solitude, stands a peasant in a torn kaftan and
bark shoes. He stands, as it were, lost in thought. Yet he is not thinking; he
is “contemplating.” If any one touched him he would start and look
at one as though awakening and bewildered. It’s true he would come to
himself immediately; but if he were asked what he had been thinking about, he
would remember nothing. Yet probably he has, hidden within himself, the
impression which had dominated him during the period of contemplation. Those
impressions are dear to him and no doubt he hoards them imperceptibly, and even
unconsciously. How and why, of course, he does not know either. He may
suddenly, after hoarding impressions for many years, abandon everything and go
off to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage for his soul’s salvation, or perhaps he
will suddenly set fire to his native village, and perhaps do both. There are a
good many “contemplatives” among the peasantry. Well, Smerdyakov
was probably one of them, and he probably was greedily hoarding up his
impressions, hardly knowing why.

Chapter VII.
The Controversy

But Balaam’s ass had suddenly spoken. The subject was a strange one.
Grigory had gone in the morning to make purchases, and had heard from the
shopkeeper Lukyanov the story of a Russian soldier which had appeared in the
newspaper of that day. This soldier had been taken prisoner in some remote part
of Asia, and was threatened with an immediate agonizing death if he did not
renounce Christianity and follow Islam. He refused to deny his faith, and was
tortured, flayed alive, and died, praising and glorifying Christ. Grigory had
related the story at table. Fyodor Pavlovitch always liked, over the dessert
after dinner, to laugh and talk, if only with Grigory. This afternoon he was in
a particularly good‐humored and expansive mood. Sipping his brandy and
listening to the story, he observed that they ought to make a saint of a
soldier like that, and to take his skin to some monastery. “That would
make the people flock, and bring the money in.”

Grigory frowned, seeing that Fyodor Pavlovitch was by no means touched, but, as
usual, was beginning to scoff. At that moment Smerdyakov, who was standing by
the door, smiled. Smerdyakov often waited at table towards the end of dinner,
and since Ivan’s arrival in our town he had done so every day.

“What are you grinning at?” asked Fyodor Pavlovitch, catching the
smile instantly, and knowing that it referred to Grigory.

“Well, my opinion is,” Smerdyakov began suddenly and unexpectedly
in a loud voice, “that if that laudable soldier’s exploit was so
very great there would have been, to my thinking, no sin in it if he had on
such an emergency renounced, so to speak, the name of Christ and his own
christening, to save by that same his life, for good deeds, by which, in the
course of years to expiate his cowardice.”

“How could it not be a sin? You’re talking nonsense. For that
you’ll go straight to hell and be roasted there like mutton,” put
in Fyodor Pavlovitch.

It was at this point that Alyosha came in, and Fyodor Pavlovitch, as we have
seen, was highly delighted at his appearance.

“We’re on your subject, your subject,” he chuckled gleefully,
making Alyosha sit down to listen.

“As for mutton, that’s not so, and there’ll be nothing there
for this, and there shouldn’t be either, if it’s according to
justice,” Smerdyakov maintained stoutly.

“How do you mean ‘according to justice’?” Fyodor
Pavlovitch cried still more gayly, nudging Alyosha with his knee.

“He’s a rascal, that’s what he is!” burst from Grigory.
He looked Smerdyakov wrathfully in the face.

“As for being a rascal, wait a little, Grigory Vassilyevitch,”
answered Smerdyakov with perfect composure. “You’d better consider
yourself that, once I am taken prisoner by the enemies of the Christian race,
and they demand from me to curse the name of God and to renounce my holy
christening, I am fully entitled to act by my own reason, since there would be
no sin in it.”

“But you’ve said that before. Don’t waste words. Prove
it,” cried Fyodor Pavlovitch.

“Soup‐maker!” muttered Grigory contemptuously.

“As for being a soup‐maker, wait a bit, too, and consider for yourself,
Grigory Vassilyevitch, without abusing me. For as soon as I say to those
enemies, ‘No, I’m not a Christian, and I curse my true God,’
then at once, by God’s high judgment, I become immediately and specially
anathema accursed, and am cut off from the Holy Church, exactly as though I
were a heathen, so that at that very instant, not only when I say it aloud, but
when I think of saying it, before a quarter of a second has passed, I am cut
off. Is that so or not, Grigory Vassilyevitch?”

He addressed Grigory with obvious satisfaction, though he was really answering
Fyodor Pavlovitch’s questions, and was well aware of it, and
intentionally pretending that Grigory had asked the questions.

“Ivan,” cried Fyodor Pavlovitch suddenly, “stoop down for me
to whisper. He’s got this all up for your benefit. He wants you to praise
him. Praise him.”

Ivan listened with perfect seriousness to his father’s excited whisper.

“Stay, Smerdyakov, be quiet a minute,” cried Fyodor Pavlovitch once
more. “Ivan, your ear again.”

Ivan bent down again with a perfectly grave face.

“I love you as I do Alyosha. Don’t think I don’t love you.
Some brandy?”

“Yes.—But you’re rather drunk yourself,” thought Ivan,
looking steadily at his father.

He was watching Smerdyakov with great curiosity.

“You’re anathema accursed, as it is,” Grigory suddenly burst
out, “and how dare you argue, you rascal, after that, if—”

“Don’t scold him, Grigory, don’t scold him,” Fyodor
Pavlovitch cut him short.

“You should wait, Grigory Vassilyevitch, if only a short time, and
listen, for I haven’t finished all I had to say. For at the very moment I
become accursed, at that same highest moment, I become exactly like a heathen,
and my christening is taken off me and becomes of no avail. Isn’t that
so?”

“Make haste and finish, my boy,” Fyodor Pavlovitch urged him,
sipping from his wine‐glass with relish.

“And if I’ve ceased to be a Christian, then I told no lie to the
enemy when they asked whether I was a Christian or not a Christian, seeing I
had already been relieved by God Himself of my Christianity by reason of the
thought alone, before I had time to utter a word to the enemy. And if I have
already been discharged, in what manner and with what sort of justice can I be
held responsible as a Christian in the other world for having denied Christ,
when, through the very thought alone, before denying Him I had been relieved
from my christening? If I’m no longer a Christian, then I can’t
renounce Christ, for I’ve nothing then to renounce. Who will hold an
unclean Tatar responsible, Grigory Vassilyevitch, even in heaven, for not
having been born a Christian? And who would punish him for that, considering
that you can’t take two skins off one ox? For God Almighty Himself, even
if He did make the Tatar responsible, when he dies would give him the smallest
possible punishment, I imagine (since he must be punished), judging that he is
not to blame if he has come into the world an unclean heathen, from heathen
parents. The Lord God can’t surely take a Tatar and say he was a
Christian? That would mean that the Almighty would tell a real untruth. And can
the Lord of Heaven and earth tell a lie, even in one word?”

Grigory was thunderstruck and looked at the orator, his eyes nearly starting
out of his head. Though he did not clearly understand what was said, he had
caught something in this rigmarole, and stood, looking like a man who has just
hit his head against a wall. Fyodor Pavlovitch emptied his glass and went off
into his shrill laugh.

“Alyosha! Alyosha! What do you say to that! Ah, you casuist! He must have
been with the Jesuits, somewhere, Ivan. Oh, you stinking Jesuit, who taught
you? But you’re talking nonsense, you casuist, nonsense, nonsense,
nonsense. Don’t cry, Grigory, we’ll reduce him to smoke and ashes
in a moment. Tell me this, O ass; you may be right before your enemies, but you
have renounced your faith all the same in your own heart, and you say yourself
that in that very hour you became anathema accursed. And if once you’re
anathema they won’t pat you on the head for it in hell. What do you say
to that, my fine Jesuit?”

“There is no doubt that I have renounced it in my own heart, but there
was no special sin in that. Or if there was sin, it was the most
ordinary.”

“How’s that the most ordinary?”

“You lie, accursed one!” hissed Grigory.

“Consider yourself, Grigory Vassilyevitch,” Smerdyakov went on,
staid and unruffled, conscious of his triumph, but, as it were, generous to the
vanquished foe. “Consider yourself, Grigory Vassilyevitch; it is said in
the Scripture that if you have faith, even as a mustard seed, and bid a
mountain move into the sea, it will move without the least delay at your
bidding. Well, Grigory Vassilyevitch, if I’m without faith and you have
so great a faith that you are continually swearing at me, you try yourself
telling this mountain, not to move into the sea for that’s a long way
off, but even to our stinking little river which runs at the bottom of the
garden. You’ll see for yourself that it won’t budge, but will
remain just where it is however much you shout at it, and that shows, Grigory
Vassilyevitch, that you haven’t faith in the proper manner, and only
abuse others about it. Again, taking into consideration that no one in our day,
not only you, but actually no one, from the highest person to the lowest
peasant, can shove mountains into the sea—except perhaps some one man in
the world, or, at most, two, and they most likely are saving their souls in
secret somewhere in the Egyptian desert, so you wouldn’t find
them—if so it be, if all the rest have no faith, will God curse all the
rest? that is, the population of the whole earth, except about two hermits in
the desert, and in His well‐known mercy will He not forgive one of them? And so
I’m persuaded that though I may once have doubted I shall be forgiven if
I shed tears of repentance.”

“Stay!” cried Fyodor Pavlovitch, in a transport of delight.
“So you do suppose there are two who can move mountains? Ivan, make a
note of it, write it down. There you have the Russian all over!”

“You’re quite right in saying it’s characteristic of the
people’s faith,” Ivan assented, with an approving smile.

“You agree. Then it must be so, if you agree. It’s true,
isn’t it, Alyosha? That’s the Russian faith all over, isn’t
it?”

“No, Smerdyakov has not the Russian faith at all,” said Alyosha
firmly and gravely.

“I’m not talking about his faith. I mean those two in the desert,
only that idea. Surely that’s Russian, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s purely Russian,” said Alyosha smiling.

“Your words are worth a gold piece, O ass, and I’ll give it to you
to‐day. But as to the rest you talk nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. Let me tell
you, stupid, that we here are all of little faith, only from carelessness,
because we haven’t time; things are too much for us, and, in the second
place, the Lord God has given us so little time, only twenty‐four hours in the
day, so that one hasn’t even time to get sleep enough, much less to
repent of one’s sins. While you have denied your faith to your enemies
when you’d nothing else to think about but to show your faith! So I
consider, brother, that it constitutes a sin.”

“Constitute a sin it may, but consider yourself, Grigory Vassilyevitch,
that it only extenuates it, if it does constitute. If I had believed then in
very truth, as I ought to have believed, then it really would have been sinful
if I had not faced tortures for my faith, and had gone over to the pagan
Mohammedan faith. But, of course, it wouldn’t have come to torture then,
because I should only have had to say at that instant to the mountain,
‘Move and crush the tormentor,’ and it would have moved and at the
very instant have crushed him like a black‐beetle, and I should have walked
away as though nothing had happened, praising and glorifying God. But, suppose
at that very moment I had tried all that, and cried to that mountain,
‘Crush these tormentors,’ and it hadn’t crushed them, how
could I have helped doubting, pray, at such a time, and at such a dread hour of
mortal terror? And apart from that, I should know already that I could not
attain to the fullness of the Kingdom of Heaven (for since the mountain had not
moved at my word, they could not think very much of my faith up aloft, and
there could be no very great reward awaiting me in the world to come). So why
should I let them flay the skin off me as well, and to no good purpose? For,
even though they had flayed my skin half off my back, even then the mountain
would not have moved at my word or at my cry. And at such a moment not only
doubt might come over one but one might lose one’s reason from fear, so
that one would not be able to think at all. And, therefore, how should I be
particularly to blame if not seeing my advantage or reward there or here, I
should, at least, save my skin. And so trusting fully in the grace of the Lord
I should cherish the hope that I might be altogether forgiven.”

Chapter VIII.
Over The Brandy

The controversy was over. But, strange to say, Fyodor Pavlovitch, who had been
so gay, suddenly began frowning. He frowned and gulped brandy, and it was
already a glass too much.

“Get along with you, Jesuits!” he cried to the servants. “Go
away, Smerdyakov. I’ll send you the gold piece I promised you to‐day, but
be off! Don’t cry, Grigory. Go to Marfa. She’ll comfort you and put
you to bed. The rascals won’t let us sit in peace after dinner,” he
snapped peevishly, as the servants promptly withdrew at his word.

“Smerdyakov always pokes himself in now, after dinner. It’s you
he’s so interested in. What have you done to fascinate him?” he
added to Ivan.

“Nothing whatever,” answered Ivan. “He’s pleased to
have a high opinion of me; he’s a lackey and a mean soul. Raw material
for revolution, however, when the time comes.”

“For revolution?”

“There will be others and better ones. But there will be some like him as
well. His kind will come first, and better ones after.”

“And when will the time come?”

“The rocket will go off and fizzle out, perhaps. The peasants are not
very fond of listening to these soup‐makers, so far.”

“Ah, brother, but a Balaam’s ass like that thinks and thinks, and
the devil knows where he gets to.”

“He’s storing up ideas,” said Ivan, smiling.

“You see, I know he can’t bear me, nor any one else, even you,
though you fancy that he has a high opinion of you. Worse still with Alyosha,
he despises Alyosha. But he doesn’t steal, that’s one thing, and
he’s not a gossip, he holds his tongue, and doesn’t wash our dirty
linen in public. He makes capital fish pasties too. But, damn him, is he worth
talking about so much?”

“Of course he isn’t.”

“And as for the ideas he may be hatching, the Russian peasant, generally
speaking, needs thrashing. That I’ve always maintained. Our peasants are
swindlers, and don’t deserve to be pitied, and it’s a good thing
they’re still flogged sometimes. Russia is rich in birches. If they
destroyed the forests, it would be the ruin of Russia. I stand up for the
clever people. We’ve left off thrashing the peasants, we’ve grown
so clever, but they go on thrashing themselves. And a good thing too.
‘For with what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again,’
or how does it go? Anyhow, it will be measured. But Russia’s all
swinishness. My dear, if you only knew how I hate Russia…. That is, not
Russia, but all this vice! But maybe I mean Russia. Tout cela c’est de
la cochonnerie…. Do you know what I like? I like wit.”

“You’ve had another glass. That’s enough.”

“Wait a bit. I’ll have one more, and then another, and then
I’ll stop. No, stay, you interrupted me. At Mokroe I was talking to an
old man, and he told me: ‘There’s nothing we like so much as
sentencing girls to be thrashed, and we always give the lads the job of
thrashing them. And the girl he has thrashed to‐day, the young man will ask in
marriage to‐morrow. So it quite suits the girls, too,’ he said.
There’s a set of de Sades for you! But it’s clever, anyway. Shall
we go over and have a look at it, eh? Alyosha, are you blushing? Don’t be
bashful, child. I’m sorry I didn’t stay to dinner at the
Superior’s and tell the monks about the girls at Mokroe. Alyosha,
don’t be angry that I offended your Superior this morning. I lost my
temper. If there is a God, if He exists, then, of course, I’m to blame,
and I shall have to answer for it. But if there isn’t a God at all, what
do they deserve, your fathers? It’s not enough to cut their heads off,
for they keep back progress. Would you believe it, Ivan, that that lacerates my
sentiments? No, you don’t believe it as I see from your eyes. You believe
what people say, that I’m nothing but a buffoon. Alyosha, do you believe
that I’m nothing but a buffoon?”

“No, I don’t believe it.”

“And I believe you don’t, and that you speak the truth. You look
sincere and you speak sincerely. But not Ivan. Ivan’s supercilious….
I’d make an end of your monks, though, all the same. I’d take all
that mystic stuff and suppress it, once for all, all over Russia, so as to
bring all the fools to reason. And the gold and the silver that would flow into
the mint!”

“But why suppress it?” asked Ivan.

“That Truth may prevail. That’s why.”

“Well, if Truth were to prevail, you know, you’d be the first to be
robbed and suppressed.”

“Ah! I dare say you’re right. Ah, I’m an ass!” burst
out Fyodor Pavlovitch, striking himself lightly on the forehead. “Well,
your monastery may stand then, Alyosha, if that’s how it is. And we
clever people will sit snug and enjoy our brandy. You know, Ivan, it must have
been so ordained by the Almighty Himself. Ivan, speak, is there a God or not?
Stay, speak the truth, speak seriously. Why are you laughing again?”

“I’m laughing that you should have made a clever remark just now
about Smerdyakov’s belief in the existence of two saints who could move
mountains.”

“Why, am I like him now, then?”

“Very much.”

“Well, that shows I’m a Russian, too, and I have a Russian
characteristic. And you may be caught in the same way, though you are a
philosopher. Shall I catch you? What do you bet that I’ll catch you
to‐morrow. Speak, all the same, is there a God, or not? Only, be serious. I
want you to be serious now.”

“No, there is no God.”

“Alyosha, is there a God?”

“There is.”

“Ivan, and is there immortality of some sort, just a little, just a tiny
bit?”

“There is no immortality either.”

“None at all?”

“None at all.”

“There’s absolute nothingness then. Perhaps there is just
something? Anything is better than nothing!”

“Absolute nothingness.”

“Alyosha, is there immortality?”

“There is.”

“God and immortality?”

“God and immortality. In God is immortality.”

“H’m! It’s more likely Ivan’s right. Good Lord! to
think what faith, what force of all kinds, man has lavished for nothing, on
that dream, and for how many thousand years. Who is it laughing at man? Ivan!
For the last time, once for all, is there a God or not? I ask for the last
time!”

“And for the last time there is not.”

“Who is laughing at mankind, Ivan?”

“It must be the devil,” said Ivan, smiling.

“And the devil? Does he exist?”

“No, there’s no devil either.”

“It’s a pity. Damn it all, what wouldn’t I do to the man who
first invented God! Hanging on a bitter aspen tree would be too good for
him.”

“There would have been no civilization if they hadn’t invented
God.”

“Wouldn’t there have been? Without God?”

“No. And there would have been no brandy either. But I must take your
brandy away from you, anyway.”

“Stop, stop, stop, dear boy, one more little glass. I’ve hurt
Alyosha’s feelings. You’re not angry with me, Alyosha? My dear
little Alexey!”

“No, I am not angry. I know your thoughts. Your heart is better than your
head.”

“My heart better than my head, is it? Oh, Lord! And that from you. Ivan,
do you love Alyosha?”

“Yes.”

“You must love him” (Fyodor Pavlovitch was by this time very
drunk). “Listen, Alyosha, I was rude to your elder this morning. But I
was excited. But there’s wit in that elder, don’t you think,
Ivan?”

“Very likely.”

“There is, there is. Il y a du Piron là‐dedans. He’s a
Jesuit, a Russian one, that is. As he’s an honorable person there’s
a hidden indignation boiling within him at having to pretend and affect
holiness.”

“But, of course, he believes in God.”

“Not a bit of it. Didn’t you know? Why, he tells every one so,
himself. That is, not every one, but all the clever people who come to him. He
said straight out to Governor Schultz not long ago: ‘Credo, but I
don’t know in what.’ ”

“Really?”

“He really did. But I respect him. There’s something of
Mephistopheles about him, or rather of ‘The hero of our time’ …
Arbenin, or what’s his name?… You see, he’s a sensualist.
He’s such a sensualist that I should be afraid for my daughter or my wife
if she went to confess to him. You know, when he begins telling stories…. The
year before last he invited us to tea, tea with liqueur (the ladies send him
liqueur), and began telling us about old times till we nearly split our
sides…. Especially how he once cured a paralyzed woman. ‘If my legs
were not bad I know a dance I could dance you,’ he said. What do you say
to that? ‘I’ve plenty of tricks in my time,’ said he. He did
Dernidov, the merchant, out of sixty thousand.”

“What, he stole it?”

“He brought him the money as a man he could trust, saying, ‘Take
care of it for me, friend, there’ll be a police search at my place
to‐morrow.’ And he kept it. ‘You have given it to the
Church,’ he declared. I said to him: ‘You’re a
scoundrel,’ I said. ‘No,’ said he, ‘I’m not a
scoundrel, but I’m broad‐minded.’ But that wasn’t he, that
was some one else. I’ve muddled him with some one else … without
noticing it. Come, another glass and that’s enough. Take away the bottle,
Ivan. I’ve been telling lies. Why didn’t you stop me, Ivan, and
tell me I was lying?”

“I knew you’d stop of yourself.”

“That’s a lie. You did it from spite, from simple spite against me.
You despise me. You have come to me and despised me in my own house.”

“Well, I’m going away. You’ve had too much brandy.”

“I’ve begged you for Christ’s sake to go to Tchermashnya for
a day or two, and you don’t go.”

“I’ll go to‐morrow if you’re so set upon it.”

“You won’t go. You want to keep an eye on me. That’s what you
want, spiteful fellow. That’s why you won’t go.”

The old man persisted. He had reached that state of drunkenness when the
drunkard who has till then been inoffensive tries to pick a quarrel and to
assert himself.

“Why are you looking at me? Why do you look like that? Your eyes look at
me and say, ‘You ugly drunkard!’ Your eyes are mistrustful.
They’re contemptuous…. You’ve come here with some design.
Alyosha, here, looks at me and his eyes shine. Alyosha doesn’t despise
me. Alexey, you mustn’t love Ivan.”

“Don’t be ill‐tempered with my brother. Leave off attacking
him,” Alyosha said emphatically.

“Oh, all right. Ugh, my head aches. Take away the brandy, Ivan.
It’s the third time I’ve told you.”

He mused, and suddenly a slow, cunning grin spread over his face.

“Don’t be angry with a feeble old man, Ivan. I know you don’t
love me, but don’t be angry all the same. You’ve nothing to love me
for. You go to Tchermashnya. I’ll come to you myself and bring you a
present. I’ll show you a little wench there. I’ve had my eye on her
a long time. She’s still running about bare‐foot. Don’t be afraid
of bare‐footed wenches—don’t despise them—they’re
pearls!”

And he kissed his hand with a smack.

“To my thinking,” he revived at once, seeming to grow sober the
instant he touched on his favorite topic. “To my thinking … Ah, you
boys! You children, little sucking‐pigs, to my thinking … I never thought a
woman ugly in my life—that’s been my rule! Can you understand that?
How could you understand it? You’ve milk in your veins, not blood.
You’re not out of your shells yet. My rule has been that you can always
find something devilishly interesting in every woman that you wouldn’t
find in any other. Only, one must know how to find it, that’s the point!
That’s a talent! To my mind there are no ugly women. The very fact that
she is a woman is half the battle … but how could you understand that? Even
in vieilles filles, even in them you may discover something that makes
you simply wonder that men have been such fools as to let them grow old without
noticing them. Bare‐footed girls or unattractive ones, you must take by
surprise. Didn’t you know that? You must astound them till they’re
fascinated, upset, ashamed that such a gentleman should fall in love with such
a little slut. It’s a jolly good thing that there always are and will be
masters and slaves in the world, so there always will be a little maid‐
of‐all‐work and her master, and you know, that’s all that’s needed
for happiness. Stay … listen, Alyosha, I always used to surprise your mother,
but in a different way. I paid no attention to her at all, but all at once,
when the minute came, I’d be all devotion to her, crawl on my knees, kiss
her feet, and I always, always—I remember it as though it were
to‐day—reduced her to that tinkling, quiet, nervous, queer little laugh.
It was peculiar to her. I knew her attacks always used to begin like that. The
next day she would begin shrieking hysterically, and this little laugh was not
a sign of delight, though it made a very good counterfeit. That’s the
great thing, to know how to take every one. Once Belyavsky—he was a
handsome fellow, and rich—used to like to come here and hang about
her—suddenly gave me a slap in the face in her presence. And
she—such a mild sheep—why, I thought she would have knocked me down
for that blow. How she set on me! ‘You’re beaten, beaten
now,’ she said. ‘You’ve taken a blow from him. You have been
trying to sell me to him,’ she said…. ‘And how dared he strike
you in my presence! Don’t dare come near me again, never, never! Run at
once, challenge him to a duel!’… I took her to the monastery then to
bring her to her senses. The holy Fathers prayed her back to reason. But I
swear, by God, Alyosha, I never insulted the poor crazy girl! Only once,
perhaps, in the first year; then she was very fond of praying. She used to keep
the feasts of Our Lady particularly and used to turn me out of her room then.
I’ll knock that mysticism out of her, thought I! ‘Here,’ said
I, ‘you see your holy image. Here it is. Here I take it down. You believe
it’s miraculous, but here, I’ll spit on it directly and nothing
will happen to me for it!’… When she saw it, good Lord! I thought she
would kill me. But she only jumped up, wrung her hands, then suddenly hid her
face in them, began trembling all over and fell on the floor … fell all of a
heap. Alyosha, Alyosha, what’s the matter?”

The old man jumped up in alarm. From the time he had begun speaking about his
mother, a change had gradually come over Alyosha’s face. He flushed
crimson, his eyes glowed, his lips quivered. The old sot had gone spluttering
on, noticing nothing, till the moment when something very strange happened to
Alyosha. Precisely what he was describing in the crazy woman was suddenly
repeated with Alyosha. He jumped up from his seat exactly as his mother was
said to have done, wrung his hands, hid his face in them, and fell back in his
chair, shaking all over in an hysterical paroxysm of sudden violent, silent
weeping. His extraordinary resemblance to his mother particularly impressed the
old man.

“Ivan, Ivan! Water, quickly! It’s like her, exactly as she used to
be then, his mother. Spurt some water on him from your mouth, that’s what
I used to do to her. He’s upset about his mother, his mother,” he
muttered to Ivan.

“But she was my mother, too, I believe, his mother. Was she not?”
said Ivan, with uncontrolled anger and contempt. The old man shrank before his
flashing eyes. But something very strange had happened, though only for a
second; it seemed really to have escaped the old man’s mind that
Alyosha’s mother actually was the mother of Ivan too.

“Your mother?” he muttered, not understanding. “What do you
mean? What mother are you talking about? Was she?… Why, damn it! of course
she was yours too! Damn it! My mind has never been so darkened before. Excuse
me, why, I was thinking, Ivan…. He he he!” He stopped. A broad,
drunken, half‐senseless grin overspread his face.

At that moment a fearful noise and clamor was heard in the hall, there were
violent shouts, the door was flung open, and Dmitri burst into the room. The
old man rushed to Ivan in terror.

“He’ll kill me! He’ll kill me! Don’t let him get at
me!” he screamed, clinging to the skirt of Ivan’s coat.

Chapter IX.
The Sensualists

Grigory and Smerdyakov ran into the room after Dmitri. They had been struggling
with him in the passage, refusing to admit him, acting on instructions given
them by Fyodor Pavlovitch some days before. Taking advantage of the fact that
Dmitri stopped a moment on entering the room to look about him, Grigory ran
round the table, closed the double doors on the opposite side of the room
leading to the inner apartments, and stood before the closed doors, stretching
wide his arms, prepared to defend the entrance, so to speak, with the last drop
of his blood. Seeing this, Dmitri uttered a scream rather than a shout and
rushed at Grigory.

“Then she’s there! She’s hidden there! Out of the way,
scoundrel!”

He tried to pull Grigory away, but the old servant pushed him back. Beside
himself with fury, Dmitri struck out, and hit Grigory with all his might. The
old man fell like a log, and Dmitri, leaping over him, broke in the door.
Smerdyakov remained pale and trembling at the other end of the room, huddling
close to Fyodor Pavlovitch.

“She’s here!” shouted Dmitri. “I saw her turn towards
the house just now, but I couldn’t catch her. Where is she? Where is
she?”

That shout, “She’s here!” produced an indescribable effect on
Fyodor Pavlovitch. All his terror left him.

“Hold him! Hold him!” he cried, and dashed after Dmitri. Meanwhile
Grigory had got up from the floor, but still seemed stunned. Ivan and Alyosha
ran after their father. In the third room something was heard to fall on the
floor with a ringing crash: it was a large glass vase—not an expensive
one—on a marble pedestal which Dmitri had upset as he ran past it.

“At him!” shouted the old man. “Help!”

Ivan and Alyosha caught the old man and were forcibly bringing him back.

“Why do you run after him? He’ll murder you outright,” Ivan
cried wrathfully at his father.

“Ivan! Alyosha! She must be here. Grushenka’s here. He said he saw
her himself, running.”

He was choking. He was not expecting Grushenka at the time, and the sudden news
that she was here made him beside himself. He was trembling all over. He seemed
frantic.

“But you’ve seen for yourself that she hasn’t come,”
cried Ivan.

“But she may have come by that other entrance.”

“You know that entrance is locked, and you have the key.”

Dmitri suddenly reappeared in the drawing‐room. He had, of course, found the
other entrance locked, and the key actually was in Fyodor Pavlovitch’s
pocket. The windows of all the rooms were also closed, so Grushenka could not
have come in anywhere nor have run out anywhere.

“Hold him!” shrieked Fyodor Pavlovitch, as soon as he saw him
again. “He’s been stealing money in my bedroom.” And tearing
himself from Ivan he rushed again at Dmitri. But Dmitri threw up both hands and
suddenly clutched the old man by the two tufts of hair that remained on his
temples, tugged at them, and flung him with a crash on the floor. He kicked him
two or three times with his heel in the face. The old man moaned shrilly. Ivan,
though not so strong as Dmitri, threw his arms round him, and with all his
might pulled him away. Alyosha helped him with his slender strength, holding
Dmitri in front.

“Madman! You’ve killed him!” cried Ivan.

“Serve him right!” shouted Dmitri breathlessly. “If I
haven’t killed him, I’ll come again and kill him. You can’t
protect him!”

“Dmitri! Go away at once!” cried Alyosha commandingly.

“Alexey! You tell me. It’s only you I can believe; was she here
just now, or not? I saw her myself creeping this way by the fence from the
lane. I shouted, she ran away.”

“I swear she’s not been here, and no one expected her.”

“But I saw her…. So she must … I’ll find out at once where she
is…. Good‐by, Alexey! Not a word to Æsop about the money now. But go to
Katerina Ivanovna at once and be sure to say, ‘He sends his compliments
to you!’ Compliments, his compliments! Just compliments and farewell!
Describe the scene to her.”

Meanwhile Ivan and Grigory had raised the old man and seated him in an
arm‐chair. His face was covered with blood, but he was conscious and listened
greedily to Dmitri’s cries. He was still fancying that Grushenka really
was somewhere in the house. Dmitri looked at him with hatred as he went out.

“I don’t repent shedding your blood!” he cried.
“Beware, old man, beware of your dream, for I have my dream, too. I curse
you, and disown you altogether.”

He ran out of the room.

“She’s here. She must be here. Smerdyakov! Smerdyakov!” the
old man wheezed, scarcely audibly, beckoning to him with his finger.

“No, she’s not here, you old lunatic!” Ivan shouted at him
angrily. “Here, he’s fainting! Water! A towel! Make haste,
Smerdyakov!”

Smerdyakov ran for water. At last they got the old man undressed, and put him
to bed. They wrapped a wet towel round his head. Exhausted by the brandy, by
his violent emotion, and the blows he had received, he shut his eyes and fell
asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow. Ivan and Alyosha went back to
the drawing‐room. Smerdyakov removed the fragments of the broken vase, while
Grigory stood by the table looking gloomily at the floor.

“Shouldn’t you put a wet bandage on your head and go to bed,
too?” Alyosha said to him. “We’ll look after him. My brother
gave you a terrible blow—on the head.”

“He’s insulted me!” Grigory articulated gloomily and
distinctly.

“He’s ‘insulted’ his father, not only you,”
observed Ivan with a forced smile.

“I used to wash him in his tub. He’s insulted me,” repeated
Grigory.

“Damn it all, if I hadn’t pulled him away perhaps he’d have
murdered him. It wouldn’t take much to do for Æsop, would it?”
whispered Ivan to Alyosha.

“God forbid!” cried Alyosha.

“Why should He forbid?” Ivan went on in the same whisper, with a
malignant grimace. “One reptile will devour the other. And serve them
both right, too.”

Alyosha shuddered.

“Of course I won’t let him be murdered as I didn’t just now.
Stay here, Alyosha, I’ll go for a turn in the yard. My head’s begun
to ache.”

Alyosha went to his father’s bedroom and sat by his bedside behind the
screen for about an hour. The old man suddenly opened his eyes and gazed for a
long while at Alyosha, evidently remembering and meditating. All at once his
face betrayed extraordinary excitement.

“Alyosha,” he whispered apprehensively, “where’s
Ivan?”

“In the yard. He’s got a headache. He’s on the watch.”

“Give me that looking‐glass. It stands over there. Give it me.”

Alyosha gave him a little round folding looking‐glass which stood on the chest
of drawers. The old man looked at himself in it; his nose was considerably
swollen, and on the left side of his forehead there was a rather large crimson
bruise.

“What does Ivan say? Alyosha, my dear, my only son, I’m afraid of
Ivan. I’m more afraid of Ivan than the other. You’re the only one
I’m not afraid of….”

“Don’t be afraid of Ivan either. He is angry, but he’ll
defend you.”

“Alyosha, and what of the other? He’s run to Grushenka. My angel,
tell me the truth, was she here just now or not?”

“No one has seen her. It was a mistake. She has not been here.”

“You know Mitya wants to marry her, to marry her.”

“She won’t marry him.”

“She won’t. She won’t. She won’t. She won’t on
any account!”

The old man fairly fluttered with joy, as though nothing more comforting could
have been said to him. In his delight he seized Alyosha’s hand and
pressed it warmly to his heart. Tears positively glittered in his eyes.

“That image of the Mother of God of which I was telling you just
now,” he said. “Take it home and keep it for yourself. And
I’ll let you go back to the monastery…. I was joking this morning,
don’t be angry with me. My head aches, Alyosha…. Alyosha, comfort my
heart. Be an angel and tell me the truth!”

“You’re still asking whether she has been here or not?”
Alyosha said sorrowfully.

“No, no, no. I believe you. I’ll tell you what it is: you go to
Grushenka yourself, or see her somehow; make haste and ask her; see for
yourself, which she means to choose, him or me. Eh? What? Can you?”

“If I see her I’ll ask her,” Alyosha muttered, embarrassed.

“No, she won’t tell you,” the old man interrupted,
“she’s a rogue. She’ll begin kissing you and say that
it’s you she wants. She’s a deceitful, shameless hussy. You
mustn’t go to her, you mustn’t!”

“No, father, and it wouldn’t be suitable, it wouldn’t be
right at all.”

“Where was he sending you just now? He shouted ‘Go’ as he ran
away.”

“To Katerina Ivanovna.”

“For money? To ask her for money?”

“No. Not for money.”

“He’s no money; not a farthing. I’ll settle down for the
night, and think things over, and you can go. Perhaps you’ll meet her….
Only be sure to come to me to‐morrow in the morning. Be sure to. I have a word
to say to you to‐morrow. Will you come?”

“Yes.”

“When you come, pretend you’ve come of your own accord to ask after
me. Don’t tell any one I told you to. Don’t say a word to
Ivan.”

“Very well.”

“Good‐by, my angel. You stood up for me, just now. I shall never forget
it. I’ve a word to say to you to‐morrow—but I must think about
it.”

“And how do you feel now?”

“I shall get up to‐morrow and go out, perfectly well, perfectly
well!”

Crossing the yard Alyosha found Ivan sitting on the bench at the gateway. He
was sitting writing something in pencil in his note‐book. Alyosha told Ivan
that their father had waked up, was conscious, and had let him go back to sleep
at the monastery.

“Alyosha, I should be very glad to meet you to‐morrow morning,”
said Ivan cordially, standing up. His cordiality was a complete surprise to
Alyosha.

“I shall be at the Hohlakovs’ to‐morrow,” answered Alyosha,
“I may be at Katerina Ivanovna’s, too, if I don’t find her
now.”

“But you’re going to her now, anyway? For that ‘compliments
and farewell,’ ” said Ivan smiling. Alyosha was disconcerted.

“I think I quite understand his exclamations just now, and part of what
went before. Dmitri has asked you to go to her and say that he—well, in
fact—takes his leave of her?”

“Brother, how will all this horror end between father and Dmitri?”
exclaimed Alyosha.

“One can’t tell for certain. Perhaps in nothing: it may all fizzle
out. That woman is a beast. In any case we must keep the old man indoors and
not let Dmitri in the house.”

“Brother, let me ask one thing more: has any man a right to look at other
men and decide which is worthy to live?”

“Why bring in the question of worth? The matter is most often decided in
men’s hearts on other grounds much more natural. And as for
rights—who has not the right to wish?”

“Not for another man’s death?”

“What even if for another man’s death? Why lie to oneself since all
men live so and perhaps cannot help living so. Are you referring to what I said
just now—that one reptile will devour the other? In that case let me ask
you, do you think me like Dmitri capable of shedding Æsop’s blood,
murdering him, eh?”

“What are you saying, Ivan? Such an idea never crossed my mind. I
don’t think Dmitri is capable of it, either.”

“Thanks, if only for that,” smiled Ivan. “Be sure, I should
always defend him. But in my wishes I reserve myself full latitude in this
case. Good‐by till to‐morrow. Don’t condemn me, and don’t look on
me as a villain,” he added with a smile.

They shook hands warmly as they had never done before. Alyosha felt that his
brother had taken the first step towards him, and that he had certainly done
this with some definite motive.

Chapter X.
Both Together

Alyosha left his father’s house feeling even more exhausted and dejected
in spirit than when he had entered it. His mind too seemed shattered and
unhinged, while he felt that he was afraid to put together the disjointed
fragments and form a general idea from all the agonizing and conflicting
experiences of the day. He felt something bordering upon despair, which he had
never known till then. Towering like a mountain above all the rest stood the
fatal, insoluble question: How would things end between his father and his
brother Dmitri with this terrible woman? Now he had himself been a witness of
it, he had been present and seen them face to face. Yet only his brother Dmitri
could be made unhappy, terribly, completely unhappy: there was trouble awaiting
him. It appeared too that there were other people concerned, far more so than
Alyosha could have supposed before. There was something positively mysterious
in it, too. Ivan had made a step towards him, which was what Alyosha had been
long desiring. Yet now he felt for some reason that he was frightened at it.
And these women? Strange to say, that morning he had set out for Katerina
Ivanovna’s in the greatest embarrassment; now he felt nothing of the
kind. On the contrary, he was hastening there as though expecting to find
guidance from her. Yet to give her this message was obviously more difficult
than before. The matter of the three thousand was decided irrevocably, and
Dmitri, feeling himself dishonored and losing his last hope, might sink to any
depth. He had, moreover, told him to describe to Katerina Ivanovna the scene
which had just taken place with his father.

It was by now seven o’clock, and it was getting dark as Alyosha entered
the very spacious and convenient house in the High Street occupied by Katerina
Ivanovna. Alyosha knew that she lived with two aunts. One of them, a woman of
little education, was that aunt of her half‐sister Agafya Ivanovna who had
looked after her in her father’s house when she came from
boarding‐school. The other aunt was a Moscow lady of style and consequence,
though in straitened circumstances. It was said that they both gave way in
everything to Katerina Ivanovna, and that she only kept them with her as
chaperons. Katerina Ivanovna herself gave way to no one but her benefactress,
the general’s widow, who had been kept by illness in Moscow, and to whom
she was obliged to write twice a week a full account of all her doings.

When Alyosha entered the hall and asked the maid who opened the door to him to
take his name up, it was evident that they were already aware of his arrival.
Possibly he had been noticed from the window. At least, Alyosha heard a noise,
caught the sound of flying footsteps and rustling skirts. Two or three women,
perhaps, had run out of the room.

Alyosha thought it strange that his arrival should cause such excitement. He
was conducted however to the drawing‐room at once. It was a large room,
elegantly and amply furnished, not at all in provincial style. There were many
sofas, lounges, settees, big and little tables. There were pictures on the
walls, vases and lamps on the tables, masses of flowers, and even an aquarium
in the window. It was twilight and rather dark. Alyosha made out a silk mantle
thrown down on the sofa, where people had evidently just been sitting; and on a
table in front of the sofa were two unfinished cups of chocolate, cakes, a
glass saucer with blue raisins, and another with sweetmeats. Alyosha saw that
he had interrupted visitors, and frowned. But at that instant the portière was
raised, and with rapid, hurrying footsteps Katerina Ivanovna came in, holding
out both hands to Alyosha with a radiant smile of delight. At the same instant
a servant brought in two lighted candles and set them on the table.

“Thank God! At last you have come too! I’ve been simply praying for
you all day! Sit down.”

Alyosha had been struck by Katerina Ivanovna’s beauty when, three weeks
before, Dmitri had first brought him, at Katerina Ivanovna’s special
request, to be introduced to her. There had been no conversation between them
at that interview, however. Supposing Alyosha to be very shy, Katerina Ivanovna
had talked all the time to Dmitri to spare him. Alyosha had been silent, but he
had seen a great deal very clearly. He was struck by the imperiousness, proud
ease, and self‐confidence of the haughty girl. And all that was certain,
Alyosha felt that he was not exaggerating it. He thought her great glowing
black eyes were very fine, especially with her pale, even rather sallow,
longish face. But in those eyes and in the lines of her exquisite lips there
was something with which his brother might well be passionately in love, but
which perhaps could not be loved for long. He expressed this thought almost
plainly to Dmitri when, after the visit, his brother besought and insisted that
he should not conceal his impressions on seeing his betrothed.

“You’ll be happy with her, but perhaps—not tranquilly
happy.”

“Quite so, brother. Such people remain always the same. They don’t
yield to fate. So you think I shan’t love her for ever.”

“No; perhaps you will love her for ever. But perhaps you won’t
always be happy with her.”

Alyosha had given his opinion at the time, blushing, and angry with himself for
having yielded to his brother’s entreaties and put such
“foolish” ideas into words. For his opinion had struck him as
awfully foolish immediately after he had uttered it. He felt ashamed too of
having given so confident an opinion about a woman. It was with the more
amazement that he felt now, at the first glance at Katerina Ivanovna as she ran
in to him, that he had perhaps been utterly mistaken. This time her face was
beaming with spontaneous good‐natured kindliness, and direct warm‐hearted
sincerity. The “pride and haughtiness,” which had struck Alyosha so
much before, was only betrayed now in a frank, generous energy and a sort of
bright, strong faith in herself. Alyosha realized at the first glance, at the
first word, that all the tragedy of her position in relation to the man she
loved so dearly was no secret to her; that she perhaps already knew everything,
positively everything. And yet, in spite of that, there was such brightness in
her face, such faith in the future. Alyosha felt at once that he had gravely
wronged her in his thoughts. He was conquered and captivated immediately.
Besides all this, he noticed at her first words that she was in great
excitement, an excitement perhaps quite exceptional and almost approaching
ecstasy.

“I was so eager to see you, because I can learn from you the whole
truth—from you and no one else.”

“I have come,” muttered Alyosha confusedly, “I—he sent
me.”

“Ah, he sent you! I foresaw that. Now I know
everything—everything!” cried Katerina Ivanovna, her eyes flashing.
“Wait a moment, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I’ll tell you why I’ve
been so longing to see you. You see, I know perhaps far more than you do
yourself, and there’s no need for you to tell me anything. I’ll
tell you what I want from you. I want to know your own last impression of him.
I want you to tell me most directly, plainly, coarsely even (oh, as coarsely as
you like!), what you thought of him just now and of his position after your
meeting with him to‐day. That will perhaps be better than if I had a personal
explanation with him, as he does not want to come to me. Do you understand what
I want from you? Now, tell me simply, tell me every word of the message he sent
you with (I knew he would send you).”

“He told me to give you his compliments—and to say that he would
never come again—but to give you his compliments.”

“His compliments? Was that what he said—his own expression?”

“Yes.”

“Accidentally perhaps he made a mistake in the word, perhaps he did not
use the right word?”

“No; he told me precisely to repeat that word. He begged me two or three
times not to forget to say so.”

Katerina Ivanovna flushed hotly.

“Help me now, Alexey Fyodorovitch. Now I really need your help.
I’ll tell you what I think, and you must simply say whether it’s
right or not. Listen! If he had sent me his compliments in passing, without
insisting on your repeating the words, without emphasizing them, that would be
the end of everything! But if he particularly insisted on those words, if he
particularly told you not to forget to repeat them to me, then perhaps he was
in excitement, beside himself. He had made his decision and was frightened at
it. He wasn’t walking away from me with a resolute step, but leaping
headlong. The emphasis on that phrase may have been simply bravado.”

“Yes, yes!” cried Alyosha warmly. “I believe that is
it.”

“And, if so, he’s not altogether lost. I can still save him. Stay!
Did he not tell you anything about money—about three thousand
roubles?”

“He did speak about it, and it’s that more than anything
that’s crushing him. He said he had lost his honor and that nothing
matters now,” Alyosha answered warmly, feeling a rush of hope in his
heart and believing that there really might be a way of escape and salvation
for his brother. “But do you know about the money?” he added, and
suddenly broke off.

“I’ve known of it a long time; I telegraphed to Moscow to inquire,
and heard long ago that the money had not arrived. He hadn’t sent the
money, but I said nothing. Last week I learnt that he was still in need of
money. My only object in all this was that he should know to whom to turn, and
who was his true friend. No, he won’t recognize that I am his truest
friend; he won’t know me, and looks on me merely as a woman. I’ve
been tormented all the week, trying to think how to prevent him from being
ashamed to face me because he spent that three thousand. Let him feel ashamed
of himself, let him be ashamed of other people’s knowing, but not of my
knowing. He can tell God everything without shame. Why is it he still does not
understand how much I am ready to bear for his sake? Why, why doesn’t he
know me? How dare he not know me after all that has happened? I want to save
him for ever. Let him forget me as his betrothed. And here he fears that he is
dishonored in my eyes. Why, he wasn’t afraid to be open with you, Alexey
Fyodorovitch. How is it that I don’t deserve the same?”

The last words she uttered in tears. Tears gushed from her eyes.

“I must tell you,” Alyosha began, his voice trembling too,
“what happened just now between him and my father.”

And he described the whole scene, how Dmitri had sent him to get the money, how
he had broken in, knocked his father down, and after that had again specially
and emphatically begged him to take his compliments and farewell. “He
went to that woman,” Alyosha added softly.

“And do you suppose that I can’t put up with that woman? Does he
think I can’t? But he won’t marry her,” she suddenly laughed
nervously. “Could such a passion last for ever in a Karamazov? It’s
passion, not love. He won’t marry her because she won’t marry
him.” Again Katerina Ivanovna laughed strangely.

“He may marry her,” said Alyosha mournfully, looking down.

“He won’t marry her, I tell you. That girl is an angel. Do you know
that? Do you know that?” Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed suddenly with
extraordinary warmth. “She is one of the most fantastic of fantastic
creatures. I know how bewitching she is, but I know too that she is kind, firm
and noble. Why do you look at me like that, Alexey Fyodorovitch? Perhaps you
are wondering at my words, perhaps you don’t believe me? Agrafena
Alexandrovna, my angel!” she cried suddenly to some one, peeping into the
next room, “come in to us. This is a friend. This is Alyosha. He knows
all about our affairs. Show yourself to him.”

“I’ve only been waiting behind the curtain for you to call
me,” said a soft, one might even say sugary, feminine voice.

The portière was raised and Grushenka herself, smiling and beaming, came up to
the table. A violent revulsion passed over Alyosha. He fixed his eyes on her
and could not take them off. Here she was, that awful woman, the
“beast,” as Ivan had called her half an hour before. And yet one
would have thought the creature standing before him most simple and ordinary, a
good‐natured, kind woman, handsome certainly, but so like other handsome
ordinary women! It is true she was very, very good‐looking with that Russian
beauty so passionately loved by many men. She was a rather tall woman, though a
little shorter than Katerina Ivanovna, who was exceptionally tall. She had a
full figure, with soft, as it were, noiseless, movements, softened to a
peculiar over‐sweetness, like her voice. She moved, not like Katerina Ivanovna,
with a vigorous, bold step, but noiselessly. Her feet made absolutely no sound
on the floor. She sank softly into a low chair, softly rustling her sumptuous
black silk dress, and delicately nestling her milk‐white neck and broad
shoulders in a costly cashmere shawl. She was twenty‐two years old, and her
face looked exactly that age. She was very white in the face, with a pale pink
tint on her cheeks. The modeling of her face might be said to be too broad, and
the lower jaw was set a trifle forward. Her upper lip was thin, but the
slightly prominent lower lip was at least twice as full, and looked pouting.
But her magnificent, abundant dark brown hair, her sable‐colored eyebrows and
charming gray‐blue eyes with their long lashes would have made the most
indifferent person, meeting her casually in a crowd in the street, stop at the
sight of her face and remember it long after. What struck Alyosha most in that
face was its expression of childlike good nature. There was a childlike look in
her eyes, a look of childish delight. She came up to the table, beaming with
delight and seeming to expect something with childish, impatient, and confiding
curiosity. The light in her eyes gladdened the soul—Alyosha felt that.
There was something else in her which he could not understand, or would not
have been able to define, and which yet perhaps unconsciously affected him. It
was that softness, that voluptuousness of her bodily movements, that catlike
noiselessness. Yet it was a vigorous, ample body. Under the shawl could be seen
full broad shoulders, a high, still quite girlish bosom. Her figure suggested
the lines of the Venus of Milo, though already in somewhat exaggerated
proportions. That could be divined. Connoisseurs of Russian beauty could have
foretold with certainty that this fresh, still youthful beauty would lose its
harmony by the age of thirty, would “spread”; that the face would
become puffy, and that wrinkles would very soon appear upon her forehead and
round the eyes; the complexion would grow coarse and red perhaps—in fact,
that it was the beauty of the moment, the fleeting beauty which is so often met
with in Russian women. Alyosha, of course, did not think of this; but though he
was fascinated, yet he wondered with an unpleasant sensation, and as it were
regretfully, why she drawled in that way and could not speak naturally. She did
so evidently feeling there was a charm in the exaggerated, honeyed modulation
of the syllables. It was, of course, only a bad, underbred habit that showed
bad education and a false idea of good manners. And yet this intonation and
manner of speaking impressed Alyosha as almost incredibly incongruous with the
childishly simple and happy expression of her face, the soft, babyish joy in
her eyes. Katerina Ivanovna at once made her sit down in an arm‐ chair facing
Alyosha, and ecstatically kissed her several times on her smiling lips. She
seemed quite in love with her.

“This is the first time we’ve met, Alexey Fyodorovitch,” she
said rapturously. “I wanted to know her, to see her. I wanted to go to
her, but I’d no sooner expressed the wish than she came to me. I knew we
should settle everything together—everything. My heart told me so—I
was begged not to take the step, but I foresaw it would be a way out of the
difficulty, and I was not mistaken. Grushenka has explained everything to me,
told me all she means to do. She flew here like an angel of goodness and
brought us peace and joy.”

“You did not disdain me, sweet, excellent young lady,” drawled
Grushenka in her sing‐song voice, still with the same charming smile of
delight.

“Don’t dare to speak to me like that, you sorceress, you witch!
Disdain you! Here, I must kiss your lower lip once more. It looks as though it
were swollen, and now it will be more so, and more and more. Look how she
laughs, Alexey Fyodorovitch! It does one’s heart good to see the
angel.”

Alyosha flushed, and faint, imperceptible shivers kept running down him.

“You make so much of me, dear young lady, and perhaps I am not at all
worthy of your kindness.”

“Not worthy! She’s not worthy of it!” Katerina Ivanovna cried
again with the same warmth. “You know, Alexey Fyodorovitch, we’re
fanciful, we’re self‐willed, but proudest of the proud in our little
heart. We’re noble, we’re generous, Alexey Fyodorovitch, let me
tell you. We have only been unfortunate. We were too ready to make every
sacrifice for an unworthy, perhaps, or fickle man. There was one man—one,
an officer too, we loved him, we sacrificed everything to him. That was long
ago, five years ago, and he has forgotten us, he has married. Now he is a
widower, he has written, he is coming here, and, do you know, we’ve loved
him, none but him, all this time, and we’ve loved him all our life! He
will come, and Grushenka will be happy again. For the last five years
she’s been wretched. But who can reproach her, who can boast of her
favor? Only that bedridden old merchant, but he is more like her father, her
friend, her protector. He found her then in despair, in agony, deserted by the
man she loved. She was ready to drown herself then, but the old merchant saved
her—saved her!”

“You defend me very kindly, dear young lady. You are in a great hurry
about everything,” Grushenka drawled again.

“Defend you! Is it for me to defend you? Should I dare to defend you?
Grushenka, angel, give me your hand. Look at that charming soft little hand,
Alexey Fyodorovitch! Look at it! It has brought me happiness and has lifted me
up, and I’m going to kiss it, outside and inside, here, here,
here!”

And three times she kissed the certainly charming, though rather fat, hand of
Grushenka in a sort of rapture. She held out her hand with a charming musical,
nervous little laugh, watched the “sweet young lady,” and obviously
liked having her hand kissed.

“Perhaps there’s rather too much rapture,” thought Alyosha.
He blushed. He felt a peculiar uneasiness at heart the whole time.

“You won’t make me blush, dear young lady, kissing my hand like
this before Alexey Fyodorovitch.”

“Do you think I meant to make you blush?” said Katerina Ivanovna,
somewhat surprised. “Ah, my dear, how little you understand me!”

“Yes, and you too perhaps quite misunderstand me, dear young lady. Maybe
I’m not so good as I seem to you. I’ve a bad heart; I will have my
own way. I fascinated poor Dmitri Fyodorovitch that day simply for fun.”

“But now you’ll save him. You’ve given me your word.
You’ll explain it all to him. You’ll break to him that you have
long loved another man, who is now offering you his hand.”

“Oh, no! I didn’t give you my word to do that. It was you kept
talking about that. I didn’t give you my word.”

“Then I didn’t quite understand you,” said Katerina Ivanovna
slowly, turning a little pale. “You promised—”

“Oh, no, angel lady, I’ve promised nothing,” Grushenka
interrupted softly and evenly, still with the same gay and simple expression.
“You see at once, dear young lady, what a willful wretch I am compared
with you. If I want to do a thing I do it. I may have made you some promise
just now. But now again I’m thinking: I may take to Mitya again. I liked
him very much once—liked him for almost a whole hour. Now maybe I shall
go and tell him to stay with me from this day forward. You see, I’m so
changeable.”

“Just now you said—something quite different,” Katerina
Ivanovna whispered faintly.

“Ah, just now! But, you know. I’m such a soft‐hearted, silly
creature. Only think what he’s gone through on my account! What if when I
go home I feel sorry for him? What then?”

“I never expected—”

“Ah, young lady, how good and generous you are compared with me! Now
perhaps you won’t care for a silly creature like me, now you know my
character. Give me your sweet little hand, angelic lady,” she said
tenderly, and with a sort of reverence took Katerina Ivanovna’s hand.

“Here, dear young lady, I’ll take your hand and kiss it as you did
mine. You kissed mine three times, but I ought to kiss yours three hundred
times to be even with you. Well, but let that pass. And then it shall be as God
wills. Perhaps I shall be your slave entirely and want to do your bidding like
a slave. Let it be as God wills, without any agreements and promises. What a
sweet hand—what a sweet hand you have! You sweet young lady, you
incredible beauty!”

She slowly raised the hands to her lips, with the strange object indeed of
“being even” with her in kisses.

Katerina Ivanovna did not take her hand away. She listened with timid hope to
the last words, though Grushenka’s promise to do her bidding like a slave
was very strangely expressed. She looked intently into her eyes; she still saw
in those eyes the same simple‐hearted, confiding expression, the same bright
gayety.

“She’s perhaps too naïve,” thought Katerina Ivanovna, with a
gleam of hope.

Grushenka meanwhile seemed enthusiastic over the “sweet hand.” She
raised it deliberately to her lips. But she held it for two or three minutes
near her lips, as though reconsidering something.

“Do you know, angel lady,” she suddenly drawled in an even more
soft and sugary voice, “do you know, after all, I think I won’t
kiss your hand?” And she laughed a little merry laugh.

“As you please. What’s the matter with you?” said Katerina
Ivanovna, starting suddenly.

“So that you may be left to remember that you kissed my hand, but I
didn’t kiss yours.”

There was a sudden gleam in her eyes. She looked with awful intentness at
Katerina Ivanovna.

“Insolent creature!” cried Katerina Ivanovna, as though suddenly
grasping something. She flushed all over and leapt up from her seat.

Grushenka too got up, but without haste.

“So I shall tell Mitya how you kissed my hand, but I didn’t kiss
yours at all. And how he will laugh!”

“Vile slut! Go away!”

“Ah, for shame, young lady! Ah, for shame! That’s unbecoming for
you, dear young lady, a word like that.”

“Go away! You’re a creature for sale!” screamed Katerina
Ivanovna. Every feature was working in her utterly distorted face.

“For sale indeed! You used to visit gentlemen in the dusk for money once;
you brought your beauty for sale. You see, I know.”

Katerina Ivanovna shrieked, and would have rushed at her, but Alyosha held her
with all his strength.

“Not a step, not a word! Don’t speak, don’t answer her.
She’ll go away—she’ll go at once.”

At that instant Katerina Ivanovna’s two aunts ran in at her cry, and with
them a maid‐servant. All hurried to her.

“I will go away,” said Grushenka, taking up her mantle from the
sofa. “Alyosha, darling, see me home!”

“Go away—go away, make haste!” cried Alyosha, clasping his
hands imploringly.

“Dear little Alyosha, see me home! I’ve got a pretty little story
to tell you on the way. I got up this scene for your benefit, Alyosha. See me
home, dear, you’ll be glad of it afterwards.”

Alyosha turned away, wringing his hands. Grushenka ran out of the house,
laughing musically.

Katerina Ivanovna went into a fit of hysterics. She sobbed, and was shaken with
convulsions. Every one fussed round her.

“I warned you,” said the elder of her aunts. “I tried to
prevent your doing this. You’re too impulsive. How could you do such a
thing? You don’t know these creatures, and they say she’s worse
than any of them. You are too self‐willed.”

“She’s a tigress!” yelled Katerina Ivanovna. “Why did
you hold me, Alexey Fyodorovitch? I’d have beaten her—beaten
her!”

She could not control herself before Alyosha; perhaps she did not care to,
indeed.

“She ought to be flogged in public on a scaffold!”

Alyosha withdrew towards the door.

“But, my God!” cried Katerina Ivanovna, clasping her hands.
“He! He! He could be so dishonorable, so inhuman! Why, he told that
creature what happened on that fatal, accursed day! ‘You brought your
beauty for sale, dear young lady.’ She knows it! Your brother’s a
scoundrel, Alexey Fyodorovitch.”

Alyosha wanted to say something, but he couldn’t find a word. His heart
ached.

“Go away, Alexey Fyodorovitch! It’s shameful, it’s awful for
me! To‐ morrow, I beg you on my knees, come to‐morrow. Don’t condemn me.
Forgive me. I don’t know what I shall do with myself now!”

Alyosha walked out into the street reeling. He could have wept as she did.
Suddenly he was overtaken by the maid.

“The young lady forgot to give you this letter from Madame Hohlakov;
it’s been left with us since dinner‐time.”

Alyosha took the little pink envelope mechanically and put it, almost
unconsciously, into his pocket.

Chapter XI.
Another Reputation Ruined

It was not much more than three‐quarters of a mile from the town to the
monastery. Alyosha walked quickly along the road, at that hour deserted. It was
almost night, and too dark to see anything clearly at thirty paces ahead. There
were cross‐roads half‐way. A figure came into sight under a solitary willow at
the cross‐roads. As soon as Alyosha reached the cross‐ roads the figure moved
out and rushed at him, shouting savagely:

“Your money or your life!”

“So it’s you, Mitya,” cried Alyosha, in surprise, violently
startled however.

“Ha ha ha! You didn’t expect me? I wondered where to wait for you.
By her house? There are three ways from it, and I might have missed you. At
last I thought of waiting here, for you had to pass here, there’s no
other way to the monastery. Come, tell me the truth. Crush me like a beetle.
But what’s the matter?”

“Nothing, brother—it’s the fright you gave me. Oh, Dmitri!
Father’s blood just now.” (Alyosha began to cry, he had been on the
verge of tears for a long time, and now something seemed to snap in his soul.)
“You almost killed him—cursed him—and
now—here—you’re making jokes—‘Your money or your
life!’ ”

“Well, what of that? It’s not seemly—is that it? Not suitable
in my position?”

“No—I only—”

“Stay. Look at the night. You see what a dark night, what clouds, what a
wind has risen. I hid here under the willow waiting for you. And as God’s
above, I suddenly thought, why go on in misery any longer, what is there to
wait for? Here I have a willow, a handkerchief, a shirt, I can twist them into
a rope in a minute, and braces besides, and why go on burdening the earth,
dishonoring it with my vile presence? And then I heard you
coming—Heavens, it was as though something flew down to me suddenly. So
there is a man, then, whom I love. Here he is, that man, my dear little
brother, whom I love more than any one in the world, the only one I love in the
world. And I loved you so much, so much at that moment that I thought,
‘I’ll fall on his neck at once.’ Then a stupid idea struck
me, to have a joke with you and scare you. I shouted, like a fool, ‘Your
money!’ Forgive my foolery—it was only nonsense, and there’s
nothing unseemly in my soul…. Damn it all, tell me what’s happened.
What did she say? Strike me, crush me, don’t spare me! Was she
furious?”

“No, not that…. There was nothing like that, Mitya. There—I found
them both there.”

“Both? Whom?”

“Grushenka at Katerina Ivanovna’s.”

Dmitri was struck dumb.

“Impossible!” he cried. “You’re raving! Grushenka with
her?”

Alyosha described all that had happened from the moment he went in to Katerina
Ivanovna’s. He was ten minutes telling his story. He can’t be said
to have told it fluently and consecutively, but he seemed to make it clear, not
omitting any word or action of significance, and vividly describing, often in
one word, his own sensations. Dmitri listened in silence, gazing at him with a
terrible fixed stare, but it was clear to Alyosha that he understood it all,
and had grasped every point. But as the story went on, his face became not
merely gloomy, but menacing. He scowled, he clenched his teeth, and his fixed
stare became still more rigid, more concentrated, more terrible, when suddenly,
with incredible rapidity, his wrathful, savage face changed, his tightly
compressed lips parted, and Dmitri Fyodorovitch broke into uncontrolled,
spontaneous laughter. He literally shook with laughter. For a long time he
could not speak.

“So she wouldn’t kiss her hand! So she didn’t kiss it; so she
ran away!” he kept exclaiming with hysterical delight; insolent delight
it might have been called, if it had not been so spontaneous. “So the
other one called her tigress! And a tigress she is! So she ought to be flogged
on a scaffold? Yes, yes, so she ought. That’s just what I think; she
ought to have been long ago. It’s like this, brother, let her be
punished, but I must get better first. I understand the queen of impudence.
That’s her all over! You saw her all over in that hand‐kissing, the
she‐devil! She’s magnificent in her own line! So she ran home? I’ll
go—ah—I’ll run to her! Alyosha, don’t blame me, I agree
that hanging is too good for her.”

“But Katerina Ivanovna!” exclaimed Alyosha sorrowfully.

“I see her, too! I see right through her, as I’ve never done
before! It’s a regular discovery of the four continents of the world,
that is, of the five! What a thing to do! That’s just like Katya, who was
not afraid to face a coarse, unmannerly officer and risk a deadly insult on a
generous impulse to save her father! But the pride, the recklessness, the
defiance of fate, the unbounded defiance! You say that aunt tried to stop her?
That aunt, you know, is overbearing, herself. She’s the sister of the
general’s widow in Moscow, and even more stuck‐up than she. But her
husband was caught stealing government money. He lost everything, his estate
and all, and the proud wife had to lower her colors, and hasn’t raised
them since. So she tried to prevent Katya, but she wouldn’t listen to
her! She thinks she can overcome everything, that everything will give way to
her. She thought she could bewitch Grushenka if she liked, and she believed it
herself: she plays a part to herself, and whose fault is it? Do you think she
kissed Grushenka’s hand first, on purpose, with a motive? No, she really
was fascinated by Grushenka, that’s to say, not by Grushenka, but by her
own dream, her own delusion—because it was her dream, her
delusion! Alyosha, darling, how did you escape from them, those women? Did you
pick up your cassock and run? Ha ha ha!”

“Brother, you don’t seem to have noticed how you’ve insulted
Katerina Ivanovna by telling Grushenka about that day. And she flung it in her
face just now that she had gone to gentlemen in secret to sell her beauty!
Brother, what could be worse than that insult?”

What worried Alyosha more than anything was that, incredible as it seemed, his
brother appeared pleased at Katerina Ivanovna’s humiliation.

“Bah!” Dmitri frowned fiercely, and struck his forehead with his
hand. He only now realized it, though Alyosha had just told him of the insult,
and Katerina Ivanovna’s cry: “Your brother is a scoundrel!”

“Yes, perhaps, I really did tell Grushenka about that ‘fatal
day,’ as Katya calls it. Yes, I did tell her, I remember! It was that
time at Mokroe. I was drunk, the gypsies were singing…. But I was sobbing. I
was sobbing then, kneeling and praying to Katya’s image, and Grushenka
understood it. She understood it all then. I remember, she cried herself….
Damn it all! But it’s bound to be so now…. Then she cried, but now
‘the dagger in the heart’! That’s how women are.”

He looked down and sank into thought.

“Yes, I am a scoundrel, a thorough scoundrel!” he said suddenly, in
a gloomy voice. “It doesn’t matter whether I cried or not,
I’m a scoundrel! Tell her I accept the name, if that’s any comfort.
Come, that’s enough. Good‐by. It’s no use talking! It’s not
amusing. You go your way and I mine. And I don’t want to see you again
except as a last resource. Good‐ by, Alexey!”

He warmly pressed Alyosha’s hand, and still looking down, without raising
his head, as though tearing himself away, turned rapidly towards the town.

Alyosha looked after him, unable to believe he would go away so abruptly.

“Stay, Alexey, one more confession to you alone!” cried Dmitri,
suddenly turning back. “Look at me. Look at me well. You see here,
here—there’s terrible disgrace in store for me.” (As he said
“here,” Dmitri struck his chest with his fist with a strange air,
as though the dishonor lay precisely on his chest, in some spot, in a pocket,
perhaps, or hanging round his neck.) “You know me now, a scoundrel, an
avowed scoundrel, but let me tell you that I’ve never done anything
before and never shall again, anything that can compare in baseness with the
dishonor which I bear now at this very minute on my breast, here, here, which
will come to pass, though I’m perfectly free to stop it. I can stop it or
carry it through, note that. Well, let me tell you, I shall carry it through. I
shan’t stop it. I told you everything just now, but I didn’t tell
you this, because even I had not brass enough for it. I can still pull up; if I
do, I can give back the full half of my lost honor to‐morrow. But I
shan’t pull up. I shall carry out my base plan, and you can bear witness
that I told you so beforehand. Darkness and destruction! No need to explain.
You’ll find out in due time. The filthy back‐alley and the she‐ devil.
Good‐by. Don’t pray for me, I’m not worth it. And there’s no
need, no need at all…. I don’t need it! Away!”

And he suddenly retreated, this time finally. Alyosha went towards the
monastery.

“What? I shall never see him again! What is he saying?” he wondered
wildly. “Why, I shall certainly see him to‐morrow. I shall look him up. I
shall make a point of it. What does he mean?”

He went round the monastery, and crossed the pine‐wood to the hermitage. The
door was opened to him, though no one was admitted at that hour. There was a
tremor in his heart as he went into Father Zossima’s cell.

“Why, why, had he gone forth? Why had he sent him into the world? Here
was peace. Here was holiness. But there was confusion, there was darkness in
which one lost one’s way and went astray at once….”

In the cell he found the novice Porfiry and Father Païssy, who came every hour
to inquire after Father Zossima. Alyosha learnt with alarm that he was getting
worse and worse. Even his usual discourse with the brothers could not take
place that day. As a rule every evening after service the monks flocked into
Father Zossima’s cell, and all confessed aloud their sins of the day,
their sinful thoughts and temptations; even their disputes, if there had been
any. Some confessed kneeling. The elder absolved, reconciled, exhorted, imposed
penance, blessed, and dismissed them. It was against this general
“confession” that the opponents of “elders” protested,
maintaining that it was a profanation of the sacrament of confession, almost a
sacrilege, though this was quite a different thing. They even represented to
the diocesan authorities that such confessions attained no good object, but
actually to a large extent led to sin and temptation. Many of the brothers
disliked going to the elder, and went against their own will because every one
went, and for fear they should be accused of pride and rebellious ideas. People
said that some of the monks agreed beforehand, saying, “I’ll
confess I lost my temper with you this morning, and you confirm it,”
simply in order to have something to say. Alyosha knew that this actually
happened sometimes. He knew, too, that there were among the monks some who
deeply resented the fact that letters from relations were habitually taken to
the elder, to be opened and read by him before those to whom they were
addressed.

It was assumed, of course, that all this was done freely, and in good faith, by
way of voluntary submission and salutary guidance. But, in fact, there was
sometimes no little insincerity, and much that was false and strained in this
practice. Yet the older and more experienced of the monks adhered to their
opinion, arguing that “for those who have come within these walls
sincerely seeking salvation, such obedience and sacrifice will certainly be
salutary and of great benefit; those, on the other hand, who find it irksome,
and repine, are no true monks, and have made a mistake in entering the
monastery—their proper place is in the world. Even in the temple one
cannot be safe from sin and the devil. So it was no good taking it too much
into account.”

“He is weaker, a drowsiness has come over him,” Father Païssy
whispered to Alyosha, as he blessed him. “It’s difficult to rouse
him. And he must not be roused. He waked up for five minutes, sent his blessing
to the brothers, and begged their prayers for him at night. He intends to take
the sacrament again in the morning. He remembered you, Alexey. He asked whether
you had gone away, and was told that you were in the town. ‘I blessed him
for that work,’ he said, ‘his place is there, not here, for
awhile.’ Those were his words about you. He remembered you lovingly, with
anxiety; do you understand how he honored you? But how is it that he has
decided that you shall spend some time in the world? He must have foreseen
something in your destiny! Understand, Alexey, that if you return to the world,
it must be to do the duty laid upon you by your elder, and not for frivolous
vanity and worldly pleasures.”

Father Païssy went out. Alyosha had no doubt that Father Zossima was dying,
though he might live another day or two. Alyosha firmly and ardently resolved
that in spite of his promises to his father, the Hohlakovs, and Katerina
Ivanovna, he would not leave the monastery next day, but would remain with his
elder to the end. His heart glowed with love, and he reproached himself
bitterly for having been able for one instant to forget him whom he had left in
the monastery on his deathbed, and whom he honored above every one in the
world. He went into Father Zossima’s bedroom, knelt down, and bowed to
the ground before the elder, who slept quietly without stirring, with regular,
hardly audible breathing and a peaceful face.

Alyosha returned to the other room, where Father Zossima had received his
guests in the morning. Taking off his boots, he lay down on the hard, narrow,
leathern sofa, which he had long used as a bed, bringing nothing but a pillow.
The mattress, about which his father had shouted to him that morning, he had
long forgotten to lie on. He took off his cassock, which he used as a covering.
But before going to bed, he fell on his knees and prayed a long time. In his
fervent prayer he did not beseech God to lighten his darkness but only thirsted
for the joyous emotion, which always visited his soul after the praise and
adoration, of which his evening prayer usually consisted. That joy always
brought him light untroubled sleep. As he was praying, he suddenly felt in his
pocket the little pink note the servant had handed him as he left Katerina
Ivanovna’s. He was disturbed, but finished his prayer. Then, after some
hesitation, he opened the envelope. In it was a letter to him, signed by Lise,
the young daughter of Madame Hohlakov, who had laughed at him before the elder
in the morning.

“Alexey Fyodorovitch,” she wrote, “I am writing to you
without any one’s knowledge, even mamma’s, and I know how wrong it
is. But I cannot live without telling you the feeling that has sprung up in my
heart, and this no one but us two must know for a time. But how am I to say
what I want so much to tell you? Paper, they say, does not blush, but I assure
you it’s not true and that it’s blushing just as I am now, all
over. Dear Alyosha, I love you, I’ve loved you from my childhood, since
our Moscow days, when you were very different from what you are now, and I
shall love you all my life. My heart has chosen you, to unite our lives, and
pass them together till our old age. Of course, on condition that you will
leave the monastery. As for our age we will wait for the time fixed by the law.
By that time I shall certainly be quite strong, I shall be walking and dancing.
There can be no doubt of that.

“You see how I’ve thought of everything. There’s only one
thing I can’t imagine: what you’ll think of me when you read this.
I’m always laughing and being naughty. I made you angry this morning, but
I assure you before I took up my pen, I prayed before the Image of the Mother
of God, and now I’m praying, and almost crying.

“My secret is in your hands. When you come to‐morrow, I don’t know
how I shall look at you. Ah, Alexey Fyodorovitch, what if I can’t
restrain myself like a silly and laugh when I look at you as I did to‐day.
You’ll think I’m a nasty girl making fun of you, and you
won’t believe my letter. And so I beg you, dear one, if you’ve any
pity for me, when you come to‐ morrow, don’t look me straight in the
face, for if I meet your eyes, it will be sure to make me laugh, especially as
you’ll be in that long gown. I feel cold all over when I think of it, so
when you come, don’t look at me at all for a time, look at mamma or at
the window….

“Here I’ve written you a love‐letter. Oh, dear, what have I done?
Alyosha, don’t despise me, and if I’ve done something very horrid
and wounded you, forgive me. Now the secret of my reputation, ruined perhaps
for ever, is in your hands.

“I shall certainly cry to‐day. Good‐by till our meeting, our awful
meeting.—LISE.

“P.S.—Alyosha! You must, must, must come!—LISE.”

Alyosha read the note in amazement, read it through twice, thought a little,
and suddenly laughed a soft, sweet laugh. He started. That laugh seemed to him
sinful. But a minute later he laughed again just as softly and happily. He
slowly replaced the note in the envelope, crossed himself and lay down. The
agitation in his heart passed at once. “God, have mercy upon all of them,
have all these unhappy and turbulent souls in Thy keeping, and set them in the
right path. All ways are Thine. Save them according to Thy wisdom. Thou art
love. Thou wilt send joy to all!” Alyosha murmured, crossing himself, and
falling into peaceful sleep.

PART II

Book IV. Lacerations

Chapter I.
Father Ferapont

Alyosha was roused early, before daybreak. Father Zossima woke up feeling very
weak, though he wanted to get out of bed and sit up in a chair. His mind was
quite clear; his face looked very tired, yet bright and almost joyful. It wore
an expression of gayety, kindness and cordiality. “Maybe I shall not live
through the coming day,” he said to Alyosha. Then he desired to confess
and take the sacrament at once. He always confessed to Father Païssy. After
taking the communion, the service of extreme unction followed. The monks
assembled and the cell was gradually filled up by the inmates of the hermitage.
Meantime it was daylight. People began coming from the monastery. After the
service was over the elder desired to kiss and take leave of every one. As the
cell was so small the earlier visitors withdrew to make room for others.
Alyosha stood beside the elder, who was seated again in his arm‐chair. He
talked as much as he could. Though his voice was weak, it was fairly steady.

“I’ve been teaching you so many years, and therefore I’ve
been talking aloud so many years, that I’ve got into the habit of
talking, and so much so that it’s almost more difficult for me to hold my
tongue than to talk, even now, in spite of my weakness, dear Fathers and
brothers,” he jested, looking with emotion at the group round him.

Alyosha remembered afterwards something of what he said to them. But though he
spoke out distinctly and his voice was fairly steady, his speech was somewhat
disconnected. He spoke of many things, he seemed anxious before the moment of
death to say everything he had not said in his life, and not simply for the
sake of instructing them, but as though thirsting to share with all men and all
creation his joy and ecstasy, and once more in his life to open his whole
heart.

“Love one another, Fathers,” said Father Zossima, as far as Alyosha
could remember afterwards. “Love God’s people. Because we have come
here and shut ourselves within these walls, we are no holier than those that
are outside, but on the contrary, from the very fact of coming here, each of us
has confessed to himself that he is worse than others, than all men on
earth…. And the longer the monk lives in his seclusion, the more keenly he
must recognize that. Else he would have had no reason to come here. When he
realizes that he is not only worse than others, but that he is responsible to
all men for all and everything, for all human sins, national and individual,
only then the aim of our seclusion is attained. For know, dear ones, that every
one of us is undoubtedly responsible for all men and everything on earth, not
merely through the general sinfulness of creation, but each one personally for
all mankind and every individual man. This knowledge is the crown of life for
the monk and for every man. For monks are not a special sort of men, but only
what all men ought to be. Only through that knowledge, our heart grows soft
with infinite, universal, inexhaustible love. Then every one of you will have
the power to win over the whole world by love and to wash away the sins of the
world with your tears…. Each of you keep watch over your heart and confess
your sins to yourself unceasingly. Be not afraid of your sins, even when
perceiving them, if only there be penitence, but make no conditions with God.
Again I say, Be not proud. Be proud neither to the little nor to the great.
Hate not those who reject you, who insult you, who abuse and slander you. Hate
not the atheists, the teachers of evil, the materialists—and I mean not
only the good ones—for there are many good ones among them, especially in
our day—hate not even the wicked ones. Remember them in your prayers
thus: Save, O Lord, all those who have none to pray for them, save too all
those who will not pray. And add: it is not in pride that I make this prayer, O
Lord, for I am lower than all men…. Love God’s people, let not
strangers draw away the flock, for if you slumber in your slothfulness and
disdainful pride, or worse still, in covetousness, they will come from all
sides and draw away your flock. Expound the Gospel to the people unceasingly
… be not extortionate…. Do not love gold and silver, do not hoard them….
Have faith. Cling to the banner and raise it on high.”

But the elder spoke more disconnectedly than Alyosha reported his words
afterwards. Sometimes he broke off altogether, as though to take breath, and
recover his strength, but he was in a sort of ecstasy. They heard him with
emotion, though many wondered at his words and found them obscure….
Afterwards all remembered those words.

When Alyosha happened for a moment to leave the cell, he was struck by the
general excitement and suspense in the monks who were crowding about it. This
anticipation showed itself in some by anxiety, in others by devout solemnity.
All were expecting that some marvel would happen immediately after the
elder’s death. Their suspense was, from one point of view, almost
frivolous, but even the most austere of the monks were affected by it. Father
Païssy’s face looked the gravest of all.

Alyosha was mysteriously summoned by a monk to see Rakitin, who had arrived
from town with a singular letter for him from Madame Hohlakov. In it she
informed Alyosha of a strange and very opportune incident. It appeared that
among the women who had come on the previous day to receive Father
Zossima’s blessing, there had been an old woman from the town, a
sergeant’s widow, called Prohorovna. She had inquired whether she might
pray for the rest of the soul of her son, Vassenka, who had gone to Irkutsk,
and had sent her no news for over a year. To which Father Zossima had answered
sternly, forbidding her to do so, and saying that to pray for the living as
though they were dead was a kind of sorcery. He afterwards forgave her on
account of her ignorance, and added, “as though reading the book of the
future” (this was Madame Hohlakov’s expression), words of comfort:
“that her son Vassya was certainly alive and he would either come himself
very shortly or send a letter, and that she was to go home and expect
him.” And “Would you believe it?” exclaimed Madame Hohlakov
enthusiastically, “the prophecy has been fulfilled literally indeed, and
more than that.” Scarcely had the old woman reached home when they gave
her a letter from Siberia which had been awaiting her. But that was not all; in
the letter written on the road from Ekaterinenburg, Vassya informed his mother
that he was returning to Russia with an official, and that three weeks after
her receiving the letter he hoped “to embrace his mother.”

Madame Hohlakov warmly entreated Alyosha to report this new “miracle of
prediction” to the Superior and all the brotherhood. “All, all,
ought to know of it!” she concluded. The letter had been written in
haste, the excitement of the writer was apparent in every line of it. But
Alyosha had no need to tell the monks, for all knew of it already. Rakitin had
commissioned the monk who brought his message “to inform most
respectfully his reverence Father Païssy, that he, Rakitin, has a matter to
speak of with him, of such gravity that he dare not defer it for a moment, and
humbly begs forgiveness for his presumption.” As the monk had given the
message to Father Païssy before that to Alyosha, the latter found after reading
the letter, there was nothing left for him to do but to hand it to Father
Païssy in confirmation of the story.

And even that austere and cautious man, though he frowned as he read the news
of the “miracle,” could not completely restrain some inner emotion.
His eyes gleamed, and a grave and solemn smile came into his lips.

“We shall see greater things!” broke from him.

“We shall see greater things, greater things yet!” the monks around
repeated.

But Father Païssy, frowning again, begged all of them, at least for a time, not
to speak of the matter “till it be more fully confirmed, seeing there is
so much credulity among those of this world, and indeed this might well have
chanced naturally,” he added, prudently, as it were to satisfy his
conscience, though scarcely believing his own disavowal, a fact his listeners
very clearly perceived.

Within the hour the “miracle” was of course known to the whole
monastery, and many visitors who had come for the mass. No one seemed more
impressed by it than the monk who had come the day before from St. Sylvester,
from the little monastery of Obdorsk in the far North. It was he who had been
standing near Madame Hohlakov the previous day and had asked Father Zossima
earnestly, referring to the “healing” of the lady’s daughter,
“How can you presume to do such things?”

He was now somewhat puzzled and did not know whom to believe. The evening
before he had visited Father Ferapont in his cell apart, behind the apiary, and
had been greatly impressed and overawed by the visit. This Father Ferapont was
that aged monk so devout in fasting and observing silence who has been
mentioned already, as antagonistic to Father Zossima and the whole institution
of “elders,” which he regarded as a pernicious and frivolous
innovation. He was a very formidable opponent, although from his practice of
silence he scarcely spoke a word to any one. What made him formidable was that
a number of monks fully shared his feeling, and many of the visitors looked
upon him as a great saint and ascetic, although they had no doubt that he was
crazy. But it was just his craziness attracted them.

Father Ferapont never went to see the elder. Though he lived in the hermitage
they did not worry him to keep its regulations, and this too because he behaved
as though he were crazy. He was seventy‐five or more, and he lived in a corner
beyond the apiary in an old decaying wooden cell which had been built long ago
for another great ascetic, Father Iona, who had lived to be a hundred and five,
and of whose saintly doings many curious stories were still extant in the
monastery and the neighborhood.

Father Ferapont had succeeded in getting himself installed in this same
solitary cell seven years previously. It was simply a peasant’s hut,
though it looked like a chapel, for it contained an extraordinary number of
ikons with lamps perpetually burning before them—which men brought to the
monastery as offerings to God. Father Ferapont had been appointed to look after
them and keep the lamps burning. It was said (and indeed it was true) that he
ate only two pounds of bread in three days. The beekeeper, who lived close by
the apiary, used to bring him the bread every three days, and even to this man
who waited upon him, Father Ferapont rarely uttered a word. The four pounds of
bread, together with the sacrament bread, regularly sent him on Sundays after
the late mass by the Father Superior, made up his weekly rations. The water in
his jug was changed every day. He rarely appeared at mass. Visitors who came to
do him homage saw him sometimes kneeling all day long at prayer without looking
round. If he addressed them, he was brief, abrupt, strange, and almost always
rude. On very rare occasions, however, he would talk to visitors, but for the
most part he would utter some one strange saying which was a complete riddle,
and no entreaties would induce him to pronounce a word in explanation. He was
not a priest, but a simple monk. There was a strange belief, chiefly however
among the most ignorant, that Father Ferapont had communication with heavenly
spirits and would only converse with them, and so was silent with men.

The monk from Obdorsk, having been directed to the apiary by the beekeeper, who
was also a very silent and surly monk, went to the corner where Father
Ferapont’s cell stood. “Maybe he will speak as you are a stranger
and maybe you’ll get nothing out of him,” the beekeeper had warned
him. The monk, as he related afterwards, approached in the utmost apprehension.
It was rather late in the evening. Father Ferapont was sitting at the door of
his cell on a low bench. A huge old elm was lightly rustling overhead. There
was an evening freshness in the air. The monk from Obdorsk bowed down before
the saint and asked his blessing.

“Do you want me to bow down to you, monk?” said Father Ferapont.
“Get up!”

The monk got up.

“Blessing, be blessed! Sit beside me. Where have you come from?”

What most struck the poor monk was the fact that in spite of his strict fasting
and great age, Father Ferapont still looked a vigorous old man. He was tall,
held himself erect, and had a thin, but fresh and healthy face. There was no
doubt he still had considerable strength. He was of athletic build. In spite of
his great age he was not even quite gray, and still had very thick hair and a
full beard, both of which had once been black. His eyes were gray, large and
luminous, but strikingly prominent. He spoke with a broad accent. He was
dressed in a peasant’s long reddish coat of coarse convict cloth (as it
used to be called) and had a stout rope round his waist. His throat and chest
were bare. Beneath his coat, his shirt of the coarsest linen showed almost
black with dirt, not having been changed for months. They said that he wore
irons weighing thirty pounds under his coat. His stockingless feet were thrust
in old slippers almost dropping to pieces.

“From the little Obdorsk monastery, from St. Sylvester,” the monk
answered humbly, whilst his keen and inquisitive, but rather frightened little
eyes kept watch on the hermit.

“I have been at your Sylvester’s. I used to stay there. Is
Sylvester well?”

The monk hesitated.

“You are a senseless lot! How do you keep the fasts?”

“Our dietary is according to the ancient conventual rules. During Lent
there are no meals provided for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. For Tuesday and
Thursday we have white bread, stewed fruit with honey, wild berries, or salt
cabbage and wholemeal stirabout. On Saturday white cabbage soup, noodles with
peas, kasha, all with hemp oil. On weekdays we have dried fish and kasha with
the cabbage soup. From Monday till Saturday evening, six whole days in Holy
Week, nothing is cooked, and we have only bread and water, and that sparingly;
if possible not taking food every day, just the same as is ordered for first
week in Lent. On Good Friday nothing is eaten. In the same way on the Saturday
we have to fast till three o’clock, and then take a little bread and
water and drink a single cup of wine. On Holy Thursday we drink wine and have
something cooked without oil or not cooked at all, inasmuch as the Laodicean
council lays down for Holy Thursday: ‘It is unseemly by remitting the
fast on the Holy Thursday to dishonor the whole of Lent!’ This is how we
keep the fast. But what is that compared with you, holy Father,” added
the monk, growing more confident, “for all the year round, even at
Easter, you take nothing but bread and water, and what we should eat in two
days lasts you full seven. It’s truly marvelous—your great
abstinence.”

“And mushrooms?” asked Father Ferapont, suddenly.

“Mushrooms?” repeated the surprised monk.

“Yes. I can give up their bread, not needing it at all, and go away into
the forest and live there on the mushrooms or the berries, but they can’t
give up their bread here, wherefore they are in bondage to the devil. Nowadays
the unclean deny that there is need of such fasting. Haughty and unclean is
their judgment.”

“Och, true,” sighed the monk.

“And have you seen devils among them?” asked Ferapont.

“Among them? Among whom?” asked the monk, timidly.

“I went to the Father Superior on Trinity Sunday last year, I
haven’t been since. I saw a devil sitting on one man’s chest hiding
under his cassock, only his horns poked out; another had one peeping out of his
pocket with such sharp eyes, he was afraid of me; another settled in the
unclean belly of one, another was hanging round a man’s neck, and so he
was carrying him about without seeing him.”

“You—can see spirits?” the monk inquired.

“I tell you I can see, I can see through them. When I was coming out from
the Superior’s I saw one hiding from me behind the door, and a big one, a
yard and a half or more high, with a thick long gray tail, and the tip of his
tail was in the crack of the door and I was quick and slammed the door,
pinching his tail in it. He squealed and began to struggle, and I made the sign
of the cross over him three times. And he died on the spot like a crushed
spider. He must have rotted there in the corner and be stinking, but they
don’t see, they don’t smell it. It’s a year since I have been
there. I reveal it to you, as you are a stranger.”

“Your words are terrible! But, holy and blessed Father,” said the
monk, growing bolder and bolder, “is it true, as they noise abroad even
to distant lands about you, that you are in continual communication with the
Holy Ghost?”

“He does fly down at times.”

“How does he fly down? In what form?”

“As a bird.”

“The Holy Ghost in the form of a dove?”

“There’s the Holy Ghost and there’s the Holy Spirit. The Holy
Spirit can appear as other birds—sometimes as a swallow, sometimes a
goldfinch and sometimes as a blue‐tit.”

“How do you know him from an ordinary tit?”

“He speaks.”

“How does he speak, in what language?”

“Human language.”

“And what does he tell you?”

“Why, to‐day he told me that a fool would visit me and would ask me
unseemly questions. You want to know too much, monk.”

“Terrible are your words, most holy and blessed Father,” the monk
shook his head. But there was a doubtful look in his frightened little eyes.

“Do you see this tree?” asked Father Ferapont, after a pause.

“I do, blessed Father.”

“You think it’s an elm, but for me it has another shape.”

“What sort of shape?” inquired the monk, after a pause of vain
expectation.

“It happens at night. You see those two branches? In the night it is
Christ holding out His arms to me and seeking me with those arms, I see it
clearly and tremble. It’s terrible, terrible!”

“What is there terrible if it’s Christ Himself?”

“Why, He’ll snatch me up and carry me away.”

“Alive?”

“In the spirit and glory of Elijah, haven’t you heard? He will take
me in His arms and bear me away.”

Though the monk returned to the cell he was sharing with one of the brothers,
in considerable perplexity of mind, he still cherished at heart a greater
reverence for Father Ferapont than for Father Zossima. He was strongly in favor
of fasting, and it was not strange that one who kept so rigid a fast as Father
Ferapont should “see marvels.” His words seemed certainly queer,
but God only could tell what was hidden in those words, and were not worse
words and acts commonly seen in those who have sacrificed their intellects for
the glory of God? The pinching of the devil’s tail he was ready and eager
to believe, and not only in the figurative sense. Besides he had, before
visiting the monastery, a strong prejudice against the institution of
“elders,” which he only knew of by hearsay and believed to be a
pernicious innovation. Before he had been long at the monastery, he had
detected the secret murmurings of some shallow brothers who disliked the
institution. He was, besides, a meddlesome, inquisitive man, who poked his nose
into everything. This was why the news of the fresh “miracle”
performed by Father Zossima reduced him to extreme perplexity. Alyosha
remembered afterwards how their inquisitive guest from Obdorsk had been
continually flitting to and fro from one group to another, listening and asking
questions among the monks that were crowding within and without the
elder’s cell. But he did not pay much attention to him at the time, and
only recollected it afterwards.

He had no thought to spare for it indeed, for when Father Zossima, feeling
tired again, had gone back to bed, he thought of Alyosha as he was closing his
eyes, and sent for him. Alyosha ran at once. There was no one else in the cell
but Father Païssy, Father Iosif, and the novice Porfiry. The elder, opening his
weary eyes and looking intently at Alyosha, asked him suddenly:

“Are your people expecting you, my son?”

Alyosha hesitated.

“Haven’t they need of you? Didn’t you promise some one
yesterday to see them to‐day?”

“I did promise—to my father—my brothers—others
too.”

“You see, you must go. Don’t grieve. Be sure I shall not die
without your being by to hear my last word. To you I will say that word, my
son, it will be my last gift to you. To you, dear son, because you love me. But
now go to keep your promise.”

Alyosha immediately obeyed, though it was hard to go. But the promise that he
should hear his last word on earth, that it should be the last gift to him,
Alyosha, sent a thrill of rapture through his soul. He made haste that he might
finish what he had to do in the town and return quickly. Father Païssy, too,
uttered some words of exhortation which moved and surprised him greatly. He
spoke as they left the cell together.

“Remember, young man, unceasingly,” Father Païssy began, without
preface, “that the science of this world, which has become a great power,
has, especially in the last century, analyzed everything divine handed down to
us in the holy books. After this cruel analysis the learned of this world have
nothing left of all that was sacred of old. But they have only analyzed the
parts and overlooked the whole, and indeed their blindness is marvelous. Yet
the whole still stands steadfast before their eyes, and the gates of hell shall
not prevail against it. Has it not lasted nineteen centuries, is it not still a
living, a moving power in the individual soul and in the masses of people? It
is still as strong and living even in the souls of atheists, who have destroyed
everything! For even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in
their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their
subtlety nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal
of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ of old. When it has been
attempted, the result has been only grotesque. Remember this especially, young
man, since you are being sent into the world by your departing elder. Maybe,
remembering this great day, you will not forget my words, uttered from the
heart for your guidance, seeing you are young, and the temptations of the world
are great and beyond your strength to endure. Well, now go, my orphan.”

With these words Father Païssy blessed him. As Alyosha left the monastery and
thought them over, he suddenly realized that he had met a new and unexpected
friend, a warmly loving teacher, in this austere monk who had hitherto treated
him sternly. It was as though Father Zossima had bequeathed him to him at his
death, and “perhaps that’s just what had passed between
them,” Alyosha thought suddenly. The philosophic reflections he had just
heard so unexpectedly testified to the warmth of Father Païssy’s heart.
He was in haste to arm the boy’s mind for conflict with temptation and to
guard the young soul left in his charge with the strongest defense he could
imagine.

Chapter II.
At His Father’s

First of all, Alyosha went to his father. On the way he remembered that his
father had insisted the day before that he should come without his brother Ivan
seeing him. “Why so?” Alyosha wondered suddenly. “Even if my
father has something to say to me alone, why should I go in unseen? Most likely
in his excitement yesterday he meant to say something different,” he
decided. Yet he was very glad when Marfa Ignatyevna, who opened the garden gate
to him (Grigory, it appeared, was ill in bed in the lodge), told him in answer
to his question that Ivan Fyodorovitch had gone out two hours ago.

“And my father?”

“He is up, taking his coffee,” Marfa answered somewhat dryly.

Alyosha went in. The old man was sitting alone at the table wearing slippers
and a little old overcoat. He was amusing himself by looking through some
accounts, rather inattentively however. He was quite alone in the house, for
Smerdyakov too had gone out marketing. Though he had got up early and was
trying to put a bold face on it, he looked tired and weak. His forehead, upon
which huge purple bruises had come out during the night, was bandaged with a
red handkerchief; his nose too had swollen terribly in the night, and some
smaller bruises covered it in patches, giving his whole face a peculiarly
spiteful and irritable look. The old man was aware of this, and turned a
hostile glance on Alyosha as he came in.

“The coffee is cold,” he cried harshly; “I won’t offer
you any. I’ve ordered nothing but a Lenten fish soup to‐day, and I
don’t invite any one to share it. Why have you come?”

“To find out how you are,” said Alyosha.

“Yes. Besides, I told you to come yesterday. It’s all of no
consequence. You need not have troubled. But I knew you’d come poking in
directly.”

He said this with almost hostile feeling. At the same time he got up and looked
anxiously in the looking‐glass (perhaps for the fortieth time that morning) at
his nose. He began, too, binding his red handkerchief more becomingly on his
forehead.

“Red’s better. It’s just like the hospital in a white
one,” he observed sententiously. “Well, how are things over there?
How is your elder?”

“He is very bad; he may die to‐day,” answered Alyosha. But his
father had not listened, and had forgotten his own question at once.

“Ivan’s gone out,” he said suddenly. “He is doing his
utmost to carry off Mitya’s betrothed. That’s what he is staying
here for,” he added maliciously, and, twisting his mouth, looked at
Alyosha.

“Surely he did not tell you so?” asked Alyosha.

“Yes, he did, long ago. Would you believe it, he told me three weeks ago?
You don’t suppose he too came to murder me, do you? He must have had some
object in coming.”

“What do you mean? Why do you say such things?” said Alyosha,
troubled.

“He doesn’t ask for money, it’s true, but yet he won’t
get a farthing from me. I intend living as long as possible, you may as well
know, my dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, and so I need every farthing, and the longer
I live, the more I shall need it,” he continued, pacing from one corner
of the room to the other, keeping his hands in the pockets of his loose greasy
overcoat made of yellow cotton material. “I can still pass for a man at
five and fifty, but I want to pass for one for another twenty years. As I get
older, you know, I shan’t be a pretty object. The wenches won’t
come to me of their own accord, so I shall want my money. So I am saving up
more and more, simply for myself, my dear son Alexey Fyodorovitch. You may as
well know. For I mean to go on in my sins to the end, let me tell you. For sin
is sweet; all abuse it, but all men live in it, only others do it on the sly,
and I openly. And so all the other sinners fall upon me for being so simple.
And your paradise, Alexey Fyodorovitch, is not to my taste, let me tell you
that; and it’s not the proper place for a gentleman, your paradise, even
if it exists. I believe that I fall asleep and don’t wake up again, and
that’s all. You can pray for my soul if you like. And if you don’t
want to, don’t, damn you! That’s my philosophy. Ivan talked well
here yesterday, though we were all drunk. Ivan is a conceited coxcomb, but he
has no particular learning … nor education either. He sits silent and smiles
at one without speaking—that’s what pulls him through.”

Alyosha listened to him in silence.

“Why won’t he talk to me? If he does speak, he gives himself airs.
Your Ivan is a scoundrel! And I’ll marry Grushenka in a minute if I want
to. For if you’ve money, Alexey Fyodorovitch, you have only to want a
thing and you can have it. That’s what Ivan is afraid of, he is on the
watch to prevent me getting married and that’s why he is egging on Mitya
to marry Grushenka himself. He hopes to keep me from Grushenka by that (as
though I should leave him my money if I don’t marry her!). Besides if
Mitya marries Grushenka, Ivan will carry off his rich betrothed, that’s
what he’s reckoning on! He is a scoundrel, your Ivan!”

“How cross you are! It’s because of yesterday; you had better lie
down,” said Alyosha.

“There! you say that,” the old man observed suddenly, as though it
had struck him for the first time, “and I am not angry with you. But if
Ivan said it, I should be angry with him. It is only with you I have good
moments, else you know I am an ill‐natured man.”

“You are not ill‐natured, but distorted,” said Alyosha with a
smile.

“Listen. I meant this morning to get that ruffian Mitya locked up and I
don’t know now what I shall decide about it. Of course in these
fashionable days fathers and mothers are looked upon as a prejudice, but even
now the law does not allow you to drag your old father about by the hair, to
kick him in the face in his own house, and brag of murdering him
outright—all in the presence of witnesses. If I liked, I could crush him
and could have him locked up at once for what he did yesterday.”

“Then you don’t mean to take proceedings?”

“Ivan has dissuaded me. I shouldn’t care about Ivan, but
there’s another thing.”

And bending down to Alyosha, he went on in a confidential half‐whisper.

“If I send the ruffian to prison, she’ll hear of it and run to see
him at once. But if she hears that he has beaten me, a weak old man, within an
inch of my life, she may give him up and come to me…. For that’s her
way, everything by contraries. I know her through and through! Won’t you
have a drop of brandy? Take some cold coffee and I’ll pour a quarter of a
glass of brandy into it, it’s delicious, my boy.”

“No, thank you. I’ll take that roll with me if I may,” said
Alyosha, and taking a halfpenny French roll he put it in the pocket of his
cassock. “And you’d better not have brandy, either,” he
suggested apprehensively, looking into the old man’s face.

“You are quite right, it irritates my nerves instead of soothing them.
Only one little glass. I’ll get it out of the cupboard.”

He unlocked the cupboard, poured out a glass, drank it, then locked the
cupboard and put the key back in his pocket.

“That’s enough. One glass won’t kill me.”

“You see you are in a better humor now,” said Alyosha, smiling.

“Um! I love you even without the brandy, but with scoundrels I am a
scoundrel. Ivan is not going to Tchermashnya—why is that? He wants to spy
how much I give Grushenka if she comes. They are all scoundrels! But I
don’t recognize Ivan, I don’t know him at all. Where does he come
from? He is not one of us in soul. As though I’d leave him anything! I
shan’t leave a will at all, you may as well know. And I’ll crush
Mitya like a beetle. I squash black‐beetles at night with my slipper; they
squelch when you tread on them. And your Mitya will squelch too. Your
Mitya, for you love him. Yes, you love him and I am not afraid of your loving
him. But if Ivan loved him I should be afraid for myself at his loving him. But
Ivan loves nobody. Ivan is not one of us. People like Ivan are not our sort, my
boy. They are like a cloud of dust. When the wind blows, the dust will be
gone…. I had a silly idea in my head when I told you to come to‐day; I wanted
to find out from you about Mitya. If I were to hand him over a thousand or
maybe two now, would the beggarly wretch agree to take himself off altogether
for five years or, better still, thirty‐five, and without Grushenka, and give
her up once for all, eh?”

“I—I’ll ask him,” muttered Alyosha. “If you would
give him three thousand, perhaps he—”

“That’s nonsense! You needn’t ask him now, no need!
I’ve changed my mind. It was a nonsensical idea of mine. I won’t
give him anything, not a penny, I want my money myself,” cried the old
man, waving his hand. “I’ll crush him like a beetle without it.
Don’t say anything to him or else he will begin hoping. There’s
nothing for you to do here, you needn’t stay. Is that betrothed of his,
Katerina Ivanovna, whom he has kept so carefully hidden from me all this time,
going to marry him or not? You went to see her yesterday, I believe?”

“Nothing will induce her to abandon him.”

“There you see how dearly these fine young ladies love a rake and a
scoundrel. They are poor creatures I tell you, those pale young ladies, very
different from—Ah, if I had his youth and the looks I had then (for I was
better‐looking than he at eight and twenty) I’d have been a conquering
hero just as he is. He is a low cad! But he shan’t have Grushenka,
anyway, he shan’t! I’ll crush him!”

His anger had returned with the last words.

“You can go. There’s nothing for you to do here to‐day,” he
snapped harshly.

Alyosha went up to say good‐by to him, and kissed him on the shoulder.

“What’s that for?” The old man was a little surprised.
“We shall see each other again, or do you think we shan’t?”

“Not at all, I didn’t mean anything.”

“Nor did I, I did not mean anything,” said the old man, looking at
him. “Listen, listen,” he shouted after him, “make haste and
come again and I’ll have a fish soup for you, a fine one, not like
to‐day. Be sure to come! Come to‐morrow, do you hear, to‐morrow!”

And as soon as Alyosha had gone out of the door, he went to the cupboard again
and poured out another half‐glass.

“I won’t have more!” he muttered, clearing his throat, and
again he locked the cupboard and put the key in his pocket. Then he went into
his bedroom, lay down on the bed, exhausted, and in one minute he was asleep.

Chapter III.
A Meeting With The Schoolboys

“Thank goodness he did not ask me about Grushenka,” thought
Alyosha, as he left his father’s house and turned towards Madame
Hohlakov’s, “or I might have to tell him of my meeting with
Grushenka yesterday.”

Alyosha felt painfully that since yesterday both combatants had renewed their
energies, and that their hearts had grown hard again. “Father is spiteful
and angry, he’s made some plan and will stick to it. And what of Dmitri?
He too will be harder than yesterday, he too must be spiteful and angry, and he
too, no doubt, has made some plan. Oh, I must succeed in finding him to‐day,
whatever happens.”

But Alyosha had not long to meditate. An incident occurred on the road, which,
though apparently of little consequence, made a great impression on him. Just
after he had crossed the square and turned the corner coming out into
Mihailovsky Street, which is divided by a small ditch from the High Street (our
whole town is intersected by ditches), he saw a group of schoolboys between the
ages of nine and twelve, at the bridge. They were going home from school, some
with their bags on their shoulders, others with leather satchels slung across
them, some in short jackets, others in little overcoats. Some even had those
high boots with creases round the ankles, such as little boys spoilt by rich
fathers love to wear. The whole group was talking eagerly about something,
apparently holding a council. Alyosha had never from his Moscow days been able
to pass children without taking notice of them, and although he was
particularly fond of children of three or thereabout, he liked schoolboys of
ten and eleven too. And so, anxious as he was to‐day, he wanted at once to turn
aside to talk to them. He looked into their excited rosy faces, and noticed at
once that all the boys had stones in their hands. Behind the ditch some thirty
paces away, there was another schoolboy standing by a fence. He too had a
satchel at his side. He was about ten years old, pale, delicate‐looking and
with sparkling black eyes. He kept an attentive and anxious watch on the other
six, obviously his schoolfellows with whom he had just come out of school, but
with whom he had evidently had a feud.

Alyosha went up and, addressing a fair, curly‐headed, rosy boy in a black
jacket, observed:

“When I used to wear a satchel like yours, I always used to carry it on
my left side, so as to have my right hand free, but you’ve got yours on
your right side. So it will be awkward for you to get at it.”

Alyosha had no art or premeditation in beginning with this practical remark.
But it is the only way for a grown‐up person to get at once into confidential
relations with a child, or still more with a group of children. One must begin
in a serious, businesslike way so as to be on a perfectly equal footing.
Alyosha understood it by instinct.

“But he is left‐handed,” another, a fine healthy‐looking boy of
eleven, answered promptly. All the others stared at Alyosha.

“He even throws stones with his left hand,” observed a third.

At that instant a stone flew into the group, but only just grazed the
left‐handed boy, though it was well and vigorously thrown by the boy standing
the other side of the ditch.

“Give it him, hit him back, Smurov,” they all shouted. But Smurov,
the left‐handed boy, needed no telling, and at once revenged himself; he threw
a stone, but it missed the boy and hit the ground. The boy the other side of
the ditch, the pocket of whose coat was visibly bulging with stones, flung
another stone at the group; this time it flew straight at Alyosha and hit him
painfully on the shoulder.

“He aimed it at you, he meant it for you. You are Karamazov,
Karamazov!” the boys shouted, laughing. “Come, all throw at him at
once!” and six stones flew at the boy. One struck the boy on the head and
he fell down, but at once leapt up and began ferociously returning their fire.
Both sides threw stones incessantly. Many of the group had their pockets full
too.

“What are you about! Aren’t you ashamed? Six against one! Why,
you’ll kill him,” cried Alyosha.

He ran forward and met the flying stones to screen the solitary boy. Three or
four ceased throwing for a minute.

“He began first!” cried a boy in a red shirt in an angry childish
voice. “He is a beast, he stabbed Krassotkin in class the other day with
a penknife. It bled. Krassotkin wouldn’t tell tales, but he must be
thrashed.”

“But what for? I suppose you tease him.”

“There, he sent a stone in your back again, he knows you,” cried
the children. “It’s you he is throwing at now, not us. Come, all of
you, at him again, don’t miss, Smurov!” and again a fire of stones,
and a very vicious one, began. The boy the other side of the ditch was hit in
the chest; he screamed, began to cry and ran away uphill towards Mihailovsky
Street. They all shouted: “Aha, he is funking, he is running away. Wisp
of tow!”

“You don’t know what a beast he is, Karamazov, killing is too good
for him,” said the boy in the jacket, with flashing eyes. He seemed to be
the eldest.

“What’s wrong with him?” asked Alyosha, “is he a
tell‐tale or what?”

The boys looked at one another as though derisively.

“Are you going that way, to Mihailovsky?” the same boy went on.
“Catch him up…. You see he’s stopped again, he is waiting and
looking at you.”

“He is looking at you,” the other boys chimed in.

“You ask him, does he like a disheveled wisp of tow. Do you hear, ask him
that!”

There was a general burst of laughter. Alyosha looked at them, and they at him.

“Don’t go near him, he’ll hurt you,” cried Smurov in a
warning voice.

“I shan’t ask him about the wisp of tow, for I expect you tease him
with that question somehow. But I’ll find out from him why you hate him
so.”

“Find out then, find out,” cried the boys, laughing.

Alyosha crossed the bridge and walked uphill by the fence, straight towards the
boy.

“You’d better look out,” the boys called after him; “he
won’t be afraid of you. He will stab you in a minute, on the sly, as he
did Krassotkin.”

The boy waited for him without budging. Coming up to him, Alyosha saw facing
him a child of about nine years old. He was an undersized weakly boy with a
thin pale face, with large dark eyes that gazed at him vindictively. He was
dressed in a rather shabby old overcoat, which he had monstrously outgrown. His
bare arms stuck out beyond his sleeves. There was a large patch on the right
knee of his trousers, and in his right boot just at the toe there was a big
hole in the leather, carefully blackened with ink. Both the pockets of his
great‐coat were weighed down with stones. Alyosha stopped two steps in front of
him, looking inquiringly at him. The boy, seeing at once from Alyosha’s
eyes that he wouldn’t beat him, became less defiant, and addressed him
first.

“I am alone, and there are six of them. I’ll beat them all,
alone!” he said suddenly, with flashing eyes.

“I think one of the stones must have hurt you badly,” observed
Alyosha.

“But I hit Smurov on the head!” cried the boy.

“They told me that you know me, and that you threw a stone at me on
purpose,” said Alyosha.

The boy looked darkly at him.

“I don’t know you. Do you know me?” Alyosha continued.

“Let me alone!” the boy cried irritably; but he did not move, as
though he were expecting something, and again there was a vindictive light in
his eyes.

“Very well, I am going,” said Alyosha; “only I don’t
know you and I don’t tease you. They told me how they tease you, but I
don’t want to tease you. Good‐by!”

“Monk in silk trousers!” cried the boy, following Alyosha with the
same vindictive and defiant expression, and he threw himself into an attitude
of defense, feeling sure that now Alyosha would fall upon him; but Alyosha
turned, looked at him, and walked away. He had not gone three steps before the
biggest stone the boy had in his pocket hit him a painful blow in the back.

“So you’ll hit a man from behind! They tell the truth, then, when
they say that you attack on the sly,” said Alyosha, turning round again.
This time the boy threw a stone savagely right into Alyosha’s face; but
Alyosha just had time to guard himself, and the stone struck him on the elbow.

“Aren’t you ashamed? What have I done to you?” he cried.

The boy waited in silent defiance, certain that now Alyosha would attack him.
Seeing that even now he would not, his rage was like a little wild
beast’s; he flew at Alyosha himself, and before Alyosha had time to move,
the spiteful child had seized his left hand with both of his and bit his middle
finger. He fixed his teeth in it and it was ten seconds before he let go.
Alyosha cried out with pain and pulled his finger away with all his might. The
child let go at last and retreated to his former distance. Alyosha’s
finger had been badly bitten to the bone, close to the nail; it began to bleed.
Alyosha took out his handkerchief and bound it tightly round his injured hand.
He was a full minute bandaging it. The boy stood waiting all the time. At last
Alyosha raised his gentle eyes and looked at him.

“Very well,” he said, “you see how badly you’ve bitten
me. That’s enough, isn’t it? Now tell me, what have I done to
you?”

The boy stared in amazement.

“Though I don’t know you and it’s the first time I’ve
seen you,” Alyosha went on with the same serenity, “yet I must have
done something to you—you wouldn’t have hurt me like this for
nothing. So what have I done? How have I wronged you, tell me?”

Instead of answering, the boy broke into a loud tearful wail and ran away.
Alyosha walked slowly after him towards Mihailovsky Street, and for a long time
he saw the child running in the distance as fast as ever, not turning his head,
and no doubt still keeping up his tearful wail. He made up his mind to find him
out as soon as he had time, and to solve this mystery. Just now he had not the
time.

Chapter IV.
At The Hohlakovs’

Alyosha soon reached Madame Hohlakov’s house, a handsome stone house of
two stories, one of the finest in our town. Though Madame Hohlakov spent most
of her time in another province where she had an estate, or in Moscow, where
she had a house of her own, yet she had a house in our town too, inherited from
her forefathers. The estate in our district was the largest of her three
estates, yet she had been very little in our province before this time. She ran
out to Alyosha in the hall.

“Did you get my letter about the new miracle?” She spoke rapidly
and nervously.

“Yes.”

“Did you show it to every one? He restored the son to his mother!”

“He is dying to‐day,” said Alyosha.

“I have heard, I know, oh, how I long to talk to you, to you or some one,
about all this. No, to you, to you! And how sorry I am I can’t see him!
The whole town is in excitement, they are all suspense. But now—do you
know Katerina Ivanovna is here now?”

“Ah, that’s lucky,” cried Alyosha. “Then I shall see
her here. She told me yesterday to be sure to come and see her to‐day.”

“I know, I know all. I’ve heard exactly what happened
yesterday—and the atrocious behavior of that—creature.
C’est tragique, and if I’d been in her place I don’t
know what I should have done. And your brother Dmitri Fyodorovitch, what do you
think of him?—my goodness! Alexey Fyodorovitch, I am forgetting, only
fancy; your brother is in there with her, not that dreadful brother who was so
shocking yesterday, but the other, Ivan Fyodorovitch, he is sitting with her
talking; they are having a serious conversation. If you could only imagine
what’s passing between them now—it’s awful, I tell you
it’s lacerating, it’s like some incredible tale of horror. They are
ruining their lives for no reason any one can see. They both recognize it and
revel in it. I’ve been watching for you! I’ve been thirsting for
you! It’s too much for me, that’s the worst of it. I’ll tell
you all about it presently, but now I must speak of something else, the most
important thing—I had quite forgotten what’s most important. Tell
me, why has Lise been in hysterics? As soon as she heard you were here, she
began to be hysterical!”

“Maman, it’s you who are hysterical now, not I,”
Lise’s voice caroled through a tiny crack of the door at the side. Her
voice sounded as though she wanted to laugh, but was doing her utmost to
control it. Alyosha at once noticed the crack, and no doubt Lise was peeping
through it, but that he could not see.

“And no wonder, Lise, no wonder … your caprices will make me hysterical
too. But she is so ill, Alexey Fyodorovitch, she has been so ill all night,
feverish and moaning! I could hardly wait for the morning and for Herzenstube
to come. He says that he can make nothing of it, that we must wait. Herzenstube
always comes and says that he can make nothing of it. As soon as you approached
the house, she screamed, fell into hysterics, and insisted on being wheeled
back into this room here.”

“Mamma, I didn’t know he had come. It wasn’t on his account I
wanted to be wheeled into this room.”

“That’s not true, Lise, Yulia ran to tell you that Alexey
Fyodorovitch was coming. She was on the look‐out for you.”

“My darling mamma, it’s not at all clever of you. But if you want
to make up for it and say something very clever, dear mamma, you’d better
tell our honored visitor, Alexey Fyodorovitch, that he has shown his want of
wit by venturing to us after what happened yesterday and although every one is
laughing at him.”

“Lise, you go too far. I declare I shall have to be severe. Who laughs at
him? I am so glad he has come, I need him, I can’t do without him. Oh,
Alexey Fyodorovitch, I am exceedingly unhappy!”

“But what’s the matter with you, mamma, darling?”

“Ah, your caprices, Lise, your fidgetiness, your illness, that awful
night of fever, that awful everlasting Herzenstube, everlasting, everlasting,
that’s the worst of it! Everything, in fact, everything…. Even that
miracle, too! Oh, how it has upset me, how it has shattered me, that miracle,
dear Alexey Fyodorovitch! And that tragedy in the drawing‐room, it’s more
than I can bear, I warn you. I can’t bear it. A comedy, perhaps, not a
tragedy. Tell me, will Father Zossima live till to‐morrow, will he? Oh, my God!
What is happening to me? Every minute I close my eyes and see that it’s
all nonsense, all nonsense.”

“I should be very grateful,” Alyosha interrupted suddenly,
“if you could give me a clean rag to bind up my finger with. I have hurt
it, and it’s very painful.”

Alyosha unbound his bitten finger. The handkerchief was soaked with blood.
Madame Hohlakov screamed and shut her eyes.

“Good heavens, what a wound, how awful!”

But as soon as Lise saw Alyosha’s finger through the crack, she flung the
door wide open.

“Come, come here,” she cried, imperiously. “No nonsense now!
Good heavens, why did you stand there saying nothing about it all this time? He
might have bled to death, mamma! How did you do it? Water, water! You must wash
it first of all, simply hold it in cold water to stop the pain, and keep it
there, keep it there…. Make haste, mamma, some water in a slop‐basin. But do
make haste,” she finished nervously. She was quite frightened at the
sight of Alyosha’s wound.

“Shouldn’t we send for Herzenstube?” cried Madame Hohlakov.

“Mamma, you’ll be the death of me. Your Herzenstube will come and
say that he can make nothing of it! Water, water! Mamma, for goodness’
sake go yourself and hurry Yulia, she is such a slowcoach and never can come
quickly! Make haste, mamma, or I shall die.”

“Why, it’s nothing much,” cried Alyosha, frightened at this
alarm.

Yulia ran in with water and Alyosha put his finger in it.

“Some lint, mamma, for mercy’s sake, bring some lint and that muddy
caustic lotion for wounds, what’s it called? We’ve got some. You
know where the bottle is, mamma; it’s in your bedroom in the right‐hand
cupboard, there’s a big bottle of it there with the lint.”

“I’ll bring everything in a minute, Lise, only don’t scream
and don’t fuss. You see how bravely Alexey Fyodorovitch bears it. Where
did you get such a dreadful wound, Alexey Fyodorovitch?”

Madame Hohlakov hastened away. This was all Lise was waiting for.

“First of all, answer the question, where did you get hurt like
this?” she asked Alyosha, quickly. “And then I’ll talk to you
about something quite different. Well?”

Instinctively feeling that the time of her mother’s absence was precious
for her, Alyosha hastened to tell her of his enigmatic meeting with the
schoolboys in the fewest words possible. Lise clasped her hands at his story.

“How can you, and in that dress too, associate with schoolboys?”
she cried angrily, as though she had a right to control him. “You are
nothing but a boy yourself if you can do that, a perfect boy! But you must find
out for me about that horrid boy and tell me all about it, for there’s
some mystery in it. Now for the second thing, but first a question: does the
pain prevent you talking about utterly unimportant things, but talking
sensibly?”

“Of course not, and I don’t feel much pain now.”

“That’s because your finger is in the water. It must be changed
directly, for it will get warm in a minute. Yulia, bring some ice from the
cellar and another basin of water. Now she is gone, I can speak; will you give
me the letter I sent you yesterday, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch—be quick,
for mamma will be back in a minute and I don’t want—”

“I haven’t got the letter.”

“That’s not true, you have. I knew you would say that. You’ve
got it in that pocket. I’ve been regretting that joke all night. Give me
back the letter at once, give it me.”

“I’ve left it at home.”

“But you can’t consider me as a child, a little girl, after that
silly joke! I beg your pardon for that silliness, but you must bring me the
letter, if you really haven’t got it—bring it to‐day, you must, you
must.”

“To‐day I can’t possibly, for I am going back to the monastery and
I shan’t come and see you for the next two days—three or four
perhaps—for Father Zossima—”

“Four days, what nonsense! Listen. Did you laugh at me very much?”

“I didn’t laugh at all.”

“Why not?”

“Because I believed all you said.”

“You are insulting me!”

“Not at all. As soon as I read it, I thought that all that would come to
pass, for as soon as Father Zossima dies, I am to leave the monastery. Then I
shall go back and finish my studies, and when you reach the legal age we will
be married. I shall love you. Though I haven’t had time to think about
it, I believe I couldn’t find a better wife than you, and Father Zossima
tells me I must marry.”

“But I am a cripple, wheeled about in a chair,” laughed Lise,
flushing crimson.

“I’ll wheel you about myself, but I’m sure you’ll get
well by then.”

“But you are mad,” said Lise, nervously, “to make all this
nonsense out of a joke! Here’s mamma, very à propos, perhaps.
Mamma, how slow you always are, how can you be so long! And here’s Yulia
with the ice!”

“Oh, Lise, don’t scream, above all things don’t scream. That
scream drives me … How can I help it when you put the lint in another place?
I’ve been hunting and hunting—I do believe you did it on
purpose.”

“But I couldn’t tell that he would come with a bad finger, or else
perhaps I might have done it on purpose. My darling mamma, you begin to say
really witty things.”

“Never mind my being witty, but I must say you show nice feeling for
Alexey Fyodorovitch’s sufferings! Oh, my dear Alexey Fyodorovitch,
what’s killing me is no one thing in particular, not Herzenstube, but
everything together, that’s what is too much for me.”

“That’s enough, mamma, enough about Herzenstube,” Lise
laughed gayly. “Make haste with the lint and the lotion, mamma.
That’s simply Goulard’s water, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I remember the
name now, but it’s a splendid lotion. Would you believe it, mamma, on the
way here he had a fight with the boys in the street, and it was a boy bit his
finger, isn’t he a child, a child himself? Is he fit to be married after
that? For only fancy, he wants to be married, mamma. Just think of him married,
wouldn’t it be funny, wouldn’t it be awful?”

And Lise kept laughing her thin hysterical giggle, looking slyly at Alyosha.

“But why married, Lise? What makes you talk of such a thing? It’s
quite out of place—and perhaps the boy was rabid.”

“Why, mamma! As though there were rabid boys!”

“Why not, Lise, as though I had said something stupid! Your boy might
have been bitten by a mad dog and he would become mad and bite any one near
him. How well she has bandaged it, Alexey Fyodorovitch! I couldn’t have
done it. Do you still feel the pain?”

“It’s nothing much now.”

“You don’t feel afraid of water?” asked Lise.

“Come, that’s enough, Lise, perhaps I really was rather too quick
talking of the boy being rabid, and you pounced upon it at once Katerina
Ivanovna has only just heard that you are here, Alexey Fyodorovitch, she simply
rushed at me, she’s dying to see you, dying!”

“Ach, mamma, go to them yourself. He can’t go just now, he is in
too much pain.”

“Not at all, I can go quite well,” said Alyosha.

“What! You are going away? Is that what you say?”

“Well, when I’ve seen them, I’ll come back here and we can
talk as much as you like. But I should like to see Katerina Ivanovna at once,
for I am very anxious to be back at the monastery as soon as I can.”

“Mamma, take him away quickly. Alexey Fyodorovitch, don’t trouble
to come and see me afterwards, but go straight back to your monastery and a
good riddance. I want to sleep, I didn’t sleep all night.”

“Ah, Lise, you are only making fun, but how I wish you would
sleep!” cried Madame Hohlakov.

“I don’t know what I’ve done…. I’ll stay another
three minutes, five if you like,” muttered Alyosha.

“Even five! Do take him away quickly, mamma, he is a monster.”

“Lise, you are crazy. Let us go, Alexey Fyodorovitch, she is too
capricious to‐day. I am afraid to cross her. Oh, the trouble one has with
nervous girls! Perhaps she really will be able to sleep after seeing you. How
quickly you have made her sleepy, and how fortunate it is!”

“Ah, mamma, how sweetly you talk! I must kiss you for it, mamma.”

“And I kiss you too, Lise. Listen, Alexey Fyodorovitch,” Madame
Hohlakov began mysteriously and importantly, speaking in a rapid whisper.
“I don’t want to suggest anything, I don’t want to lift the
veil, you will see for yourself what’s going on. It’s appalling.
It’s the most fantastic farce. She loves your brother, Ivan, and she is
doing her utmost to persuade herself she loves your brother, Dmitri. It’s
appalling! I’ll go in with you, and if they don’t turn me out,
I’ll stay to the end.”

Chapter V.
A Laceration In The Drawing‐Room

But in the drawing‐room the conversation was already over. Katerina Ivanovna
was greatly excited, though she looked resolute. At the moment Alyosha and
Madame Hohlakov entered, Ivan Fyodorovitch stood up to take leave. His face was
rather pale, and Alyosha looked at him anxiously. For this moment was to solve
a doubt, a harassing enigma which had for some time haunted Alyosha. During the
preceding month it had been several times suggested to him that his brother
Ivan was in love with Katerina Ivanovna, and, what was more, that he meant
“to carry her off” from Dmitri. Until quite lately the idea seemed
to Alyosha monstrous, though it worried him extremely. He loved both his
brothers, and dreaded such rivalry between them. Meantime, Dmitri had said
outright on the previous day that he was glad that Ivan was his rival, and that
it was a great assistance to him, Dmitri. In what way did it assist him? To
marry Grushenka? But that Alyosha considered the worst thing possible. Besides
all this, Alyosha had till the evening before implicitly believed that Katerina
Ivanovna had a steadfast and passionate love for Dmitri; but he had only
believed it till the evening before. He had fancied, too, that she was
incapable of loving a man like Ivan, and that she did love Dmitri, and loved
him just as he was, in spite of all the strangeness of such a passion.

But during yesterday’s scene with Grushenka another idea had struck him.
The word “lacerating,” which Madame Hohlakov had just uttered,
almost made him start, because half waking up towards daybreak that night he
had cried out “Laceration, laceration,” probably applying it to his
dream. He had been dreaming all night of the previous day’s scene at
Katerina Ivanovna’s. Now Alyosha was impressed by Madame Hohlakov’s
blunt and persistent assertion that Katerina Ivanovna was in love with Ivan,
and only deceived herself through some sort of pose, from
“self‐laceration,” and tortured herself by her pretended love for
Dmitri from some fancied duty of gratitude. “Yes,” he thought,
“perhaps the whole truth lies in those words.” But in that case
what was Ivan’s position? Alyosha felt instinctively that a character
like Katerina Ivanovna’s must dominate, and she could only dominate some
one like Dmitri, and never a man like Ivan. For Dmitri might at last submit to
her domination “to his own happiness” (which was what Alyosha would
have desired), but Ivan—no, Ivan could not submit to her, and such
submission would not give him happiness. Alyosha could not help believing that
of Ivan. And now all these doubts and reflections flitted through his mind as
he entered the drawing‐room. Another idea, too, forced itself upon him:
“What if she loved neither of them—neither Ivan nor Dmitri?”

It must be noted that Alyosha felt as it were ashamed of his own thoughts and
blamed himself when they kept recurring to him during the last month.
“What do I know about love and women and how can I decide such
questions?” he thought reproachfully, after such doubts and surmises. And
yet it was impossible not to think about it. He felt instinctively that this
rivalry was of immense importance in his brothers’ lives and that a great
deal depended upon it.

“One reptile will devour the other,” Ivan had pronounced the day
before, speaking in anger of his father and Dmitri. So Ivan looked upon Dmitri
as a reptile, and perhaps had long done so. Was it perhaps since he had known
Katerina Ivanovna? That phrase had, of course, escaped Ivan unawares yesterday,
but that only made it more important. If he felt like that, what chance was
there of peace? Were there not, on the contrary, new grounds for hatred and
hostility in their family? And with which of them was Alyosha to sympathize?
And what was he to wish for each of them? He loved them both, but what could he
desire for each in the midst of these conflicting interests? He might go quite
astray in this maze, and Alyosha’s heart could not endure uncertainty,
because his love was always of an active character. He was incapable of passive
love. If he loved any one, he set to work at once to help him. And to do so he
must know what he was aiming at; he must know for certain what was best for
each, and having ascertained this it was natural for him to help them both. But
instead of a definite aim, he found nothing but uncertainty and perplexity on
all sides. “It was lacerating,” as was said just now. But what
could he understand even in this “laceration”? He did not
understand the first word in this perplexing maze.

Seeing Alyosha, Katerina Ivanovna said quickly and joyfully to Ivan, who had
already got up to go, “A minute! Stay another minute! I want to hear the
opinion of this person here whom I trust absolutely. Don’t go
away,” she added, addressing Madame Hohlakov. She made Alyosha sit down
beside her, and Madame Hohlakov sat opposite, by Ivan.

“You are all my friends here, all I have in the world, my dear
friends,” she began warmly, in a voice which quivered with genuine tears
of suffering, and Alyosha’s heart warmed to her at once. “You,
Alexey Fyodorovitch, were witness yesterday of that abominable scene, and saw
what I did. You did not see it, Ivan Fyodorovitch, he did. What he thought of
me yesterday I don’t know. I only know one thing, that if it were
repeated to‐day, this minute, I should express the same feelings again as
yesterday—the same feelings, the same words, the same actions. You
remember my actions, Alexey Fyodorovitch; you checked me in one of them”
… (as she said that, she flushed and her eyes shone). “I must tell you
that I can’t get over it. Listen, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I don’t even
know whether I still love him. I feel pity for him, and that is a
poor sign of love. If I loved him, if I still loved him, perhaps I
shouldn’t be sorry for him now, but should hate him.”

Her voice quivered, and tears glittered on her eyelashes. Alyosha shuddered
inwardly. “That girl is truthful and sincere,” he thought,
“and she does not love Dmitri any more.”

“That’s true, that’s true,” cried Madame Hohlakov.

“Wait, dear. I haven’t told you the chief, the final decision I
came to during the night. I feel that perhaps my decision is a terrible
one—for me, but I foresee that nothing will induce me to change
it—nothing. It will be so all my life. My dear, kind, ever‐faithful and
generous adviser, the one friend I have in the world, Ivan Fyodorovitch, with
his deep insight into the heart, approves and commends my decision. He knows
it.”

“Yes, I approve of it,” Ivan assented, in a subdued but firm voice.

“But I should like Alyosha, too (Ah! Alexey Fyodorovitch, forgive my
calling you simply Alyosha), I should like Alexey Fyodorovitch, too, to tell me
before my two friends whether I am right. I feel instinctively that you,
Alyosha, my dear brother (for you are a dear brother to me),” she said
again ecstatically, taking his cold hand in her hot one, “I foresee that
your decision, your approval, will bring me peace, in spite of all my
sufferings, for, after your words, I shall be calm and submit—I feel
that.”

“I don’t know what you are asking me,” said Alyosha,
flushing. “I only know that I love you and at this moment wish for your
happiness more than my own!… But I know nothing about such affairs,”
something impelled him to add hurriedly.

“In such affairs, Alexey Fyodorovitch, in such affairs, the chief thing
is honor and duty and something higher—I don’t know what—but
higher perhaps even than duty. I am conscious of this irresistible feeling in
my heart, and it compels me irresistibly. But it may all be put in two words.
I’ve already decided, even if he marries that—creature,” she
began solemnly, “whom I never, never can forgive, even then I will not
abandon him. Henceforward I will never, never abandon him!” she
cried, breaking into a sort of pale, hysterical ecstasy. “Not that I
would run after him continually, get in his way and worry him. Oh, no! I will
go away to another town—where you like—but I will watch over him
all my life—I will watch over him all my life unceasingly. When he
becomes unhappy with that woman, and that is bound to happen quite soon, let
him come to me and he will find a friend, a sister…. Only a sister, of
course, and so for ever; but he will learn at least that that sister is really
his sister, who loves him and has sacrificed all her life to him. I will gain
my point. I will insist on his knowing me and confiding entirely in me, without
reserve,” she cried, in a sort of frenzy. “I will be a god to whom
he can pray—and that, at least, he owes me for his treachery and for what
I suffered yesterday through him. And let him see that all my life I will be
true to him and the promise I gave him, in spite of his being untrue and
betraying me. I will—I will become nothing but a means for his happiness,
or—how shall I say?—an instrument, a machine for his happiness, and
that for my whole life, my whole life, and that he may see that all his life!
That’s my decision. Ivan Fyodorovitch fully approves me.”

She was breathless. She had perhaps intended to express her idea with more
dignity, art and naturalness, but her speech was too hurried and crude. It was
full of youthful impulsiveness, it betrayed that she was still smarting from
yesterday’s insult, and that her pride craved satisfaction. She felt this
herself. Her face suddenly darkened, an unpleasant look came into her eyes.
Alyosha at once saw it and felt a pang of sympathy. His brother Ivan made it
worse by adding:

“I’ve only expressed my own view,” he said. “From any
one else, this would have been affected and overstrained, but from
you—no. Any other woman would have been wrong, but you are right. I
don’t know how to explain it, but I see that you are absolutely genuine
and, therefore, you are right.”

“But that’s only for the moment. And what does this moment stand
for? Nothing but yesterday’s insult.” Madame Hohlakov obviously had
not intended to interfere, but she could not refrain from this very just
comment.

“Quite so, quite so,” cried Ivan, with peculiar eagerness,
obviously annoyed at being interrupted, “in any one else this moment
would be only due to yesterday’s impression and would be only a moment.
But with Katerina Ivanovna’s character, that moment will last all her
life. What for any one else would be only a promise is for her an everlasting
burdensome, grim perhaps, but unflagging duty. And she will be sustained by the
feeling of this duty being fulfilled. Your life, Katerina Ivanovna, will
henceforth be spent in painful brooding over your own feelings, your own
heroism, and your own suffering; but in the end that suffering will be softened
and will pass into sweet contemplation of the fulfillment of a bold and proud
design. Yes, proud it certainly is, and desperate in any case, but a triumph
for you. And the consciousness of it will at last be a source of complete
satisfaction and will make you resigned to everything else.”

This was unmistakably said with some malice and obviously with intention; even
perhaps with no desire to conceal that he spoke ironically and with intention.

“Oh, dear, how mistaken it all is!” Madame Hohlakov cried again.

“Alexey Fyodorovitch, you speak. I want dreadfully to know what you will
say!” cried Katerina Ivanovna, and burst into tears. Alyosha got up from
the sofa.

“It’s nothing, nothing!” she went on through her tears.
“I’m upset, I didn’t sleep last night. But by the side of two
such friends as you and your brother I still feel strong—for I
know—you two will never desert me.”

“Unluckily I am obliged to return to Moscow—perhaps
to‐morrow—and to leave you for a long time—And, unluckily,
it’s unavoidable,” Ivan said suddenly.

“To‐morrow—to Moscow!” her face was suddenly contorted;
“but—but, dear me, how fortunate!” she cried in a voice
suddenly changed. In one instant there was no trace left of her tears. She
underwent an instantaneous transformation, which amazed Alyosha. Instead of a
poor, insulted girl, weeping in a sort of “laceration,” he saw a
woman completely self‐ possessed and even exceedingly pleased, as though
something agreeable had just happened.

“Oh, not fortunate that I am losing you, of course not,” she
corrected herself suddenly, with a charming society smile. “Such a friend
as you are could not suppose that. I am only too unhappy at losing you.”
She rushed impulsively at Ivan, and seizing both his hands, pressed them
warmly. “But what is fortunate is that you will be able in Moscow to see
auntie and Agafya and to tell them all the horror of my present position. You
can speak with complete openness to Agafya, but spare dear auntie. You will
know how to do that. You can’t think how wretched I was yesterday and
this morning, wondering how I could write them that dreadful letter—for
one can never tell such things in a letter…. Now it will be easy for me to
write, for you will see them and explain everything. Oh, how glad I am! But I
am only glad of that, believe me. Of course, no one can take your place…. I
will run at once to write the letter,” she finished suddenly, and took a
step as though to go out of the room.

“And what about Alyosha and his opinion, which you were so desperately
anxious to hear?” cried Madame Hohlakov. There was a sarcastic, angry
note in her voice.

“I had not forgotten that,” cried Katerina Ivanovna, coming to a
sudden standstill, “and why are you so antagonistic at such a
moment?” she added, with warm and bitter reproachfulness. “What I
said, I repeat. I must have his opinion. More than that, I must have his
decision! As he says, so it shall be. You see how anxious I am for your words,
Alexey Fyodorovitch…. But what’s the matter?”

“I couldn’t have believed it. I can’t understand it!”
Alyosha cried suddenly in distress.

“What? What?”

“He is going to Moscow, and you cry out that you are glad. You said that
on purpose! And you begin explaining that you are not glad of that but sorry to
be—losing a friend. But that was acting, too—you were playing a
part—as in a theater!”

“In a theater? What? What do you mean?” exclaimed Katerina
Ivanovna, profoundly astonished, flushing crimson, and frowning.

“Though you assure him you are sorry to lose a friend in him, you persist
in telling him to his face that it’s fortunate he is going,” said
Alyosha breathlessly. He was standing at the table and did not sit down.

“What are you talking about? I don’t understand.”

“I don’t understand myself…. I seemed to see in a flash … I
know I am not saying it properly, but I’ll say it all the same,”
Alyosha went on in the same shaking and broken voice. “What I see is that
perhaps you don’t love Dmitri at all … and never have, from the
beginning…. And Dmitri, too, has never loved you … and only esteems you….
I really don’t know how I dare to say all this, but somebody must tell
the truth … for nobody here will tell the truth.”

“What truth?” cried Katerina Ivanovna, and there was an hysterical
ring in her voice.

“I’ll tell you,” Alyosha went on with desperate haste, as
though he were jumping from the top of a house. “Call Dmitri; I will
fetch him—and let him come here and take your hand and take Ivan’s
and join your hands. For you’re torturing Ivan, simply because you love
him—and torturing him, because you love Dmitri through
‘self‐laceration’—with an unreal love—because
you’ve persuaded yourself.”

Alyosha broke off and was silent.

“You … you … you are a little religious idiot—that’s what
you are!” Katerina Ivanovna snapped. Her face was white and her lips were
moving with anger.

Ivan suddenly laughed and got up. His hat was in his hand.

“You are mistaken, my good Alyosha,” he said, with an expression
Alyosha had never seen in his face before—an expression of youthful
sincerity and strong, irresistibly frank feeling. “Katerina Ivanovna has
never cared for me! She has known all the time that I cared for
her—though I never said a word of my love to her—she knew, but she
didn’t care for me. I have never been her friend either, not for one
moment; she is too proud to need my friendship. She kept me at her side as a
means of revenge. She revenged with me and on me all the insults which she has
been continually receiving from Dmitri ever since their first meeting. For even
that first meeting has rankled in her heart as an insult—that’s
what her heart is like! She has talked to me of nothing but her love for him. I
am going now; but, believe me, Katerina Ivanovna, you really love him. And the
more he insults you, the more you love him—that’s your
‘laceration.’ You love him just as he is; you love him for
insulting you. If he reformed, you’d give him up at once and cease to
love him. But you need him so as to contemplate continually your heroic
fidelity and to reproach him for infidelity. And it all comes from your pride.
Oh, there’s a great deal of humiliation and self‐abasement about it, but
it all comes from pride…. I am too young and I’ve loved you too much. I
know that I ought not to say this, that it would be more dignified on my part
simply to leave you, and it would be less offensive for you. But I am going far
away, and shall never come back…. It is for ever. I don’t want to sit
beside a ‘laceration.’… But I don’t know how to speak now.
I’ve said everything…. Good‐by, Katerina Ivanovna; you can’t be
angry with me, for I am a hundred times more severely punished than you, if
only by the fact that I shall never see you again. Good‐by! I don’t want
your hand. You have tortured me too deliberately for me to be able to forgive
you at this moment. I shall forgive you later, but now I don’t want your
hand. ‘Den Dank, Dame, begehr ich nicht,’ ” he added, with a
forced smile, showing, however, that he could read Schiller, and read him till
he knew him by heart—which Alyosha would never have believed. He went out
of the room without saying good‐by even to his hostess, Madame Hohlakov.
Alyosha clasped his hands.

“Ivan!” he cried desperately after him. “Come back, Ivan! No,
nothing will induce him to come back now!” he cried again, regretfully
realizing it; “but it’s my fault, my fault. I began it! Ivan spoke
angrily, wrongly. Unjustly and angrily. He must come back here, come
back,” Alyosha kept exclaiming frantically.

Katerina Ivanovna went suddenly into the next room.

“You have done no harm. You behaved beautifully, like an angel,”
Madame Hohlakov whispered rapidly and ecstatically to Alyosha. “I will do
my utmost to prevent Ivan Fyodorovitch from going.”

Her face beamed with delight, to the great distress of Alyosha, but Katerina
Ivanovna suddenly returned. She had two hundred‐rouble notes in her hand.

“I have a great favor to ask of you, Alexey Fyodorovitch,” she
began, addressing Alyosha with an apparently calm and even voice, as though
nothing had happened. “A week—yes, I think it was a week
ago—Dmitri Fyodorovitch was guilty of a hasty and unjust action—a
very ugly action. There is a low tavern here, and in it he met that discharged
officer, that captain, whom your father used to employ in some business. Dmitri
Fyodorovitch somehow lost his temper with this captain, seized him by the beard
and dragged him out into the street and for some distance along it, in that
insulting fashion. And I am told that his son, a boy, quite a child, who is at
the school here, saw it and ran beside them crying and begging for his father,
appealing to every one to defend him, while every one laughed. You must forgive
me, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I cannot think without indignation of that disgraceful
action of his … one of those actions of which only Dmitri Fyodorovitch
would be capable in his anger … and in his passions! I can’t describe
it even…. I can’t find my words. I’ve made inquiries about his
victim, and find he is quite a poor man. His name is Snegiryov. He did
something wrong in the army and was discharged. I can’t tell you what.
And now he has sunk into terrible destitution, with his family—an unhappy
family of sick children, and, I believe, an insane wife. He has been living
here a long time; he used to work as a copying clerk, but now he is getting
nothing. I thought if you … that is I thought … I don’t know. I am so
confused. You see, I wanted to ask you, my dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, to go to
him, to find some excuse to go to them—I mean to that captain—oh,
goodness, how badly I explain it!—and delicately, carefully, as only you
know how to” (Alyosha blushed), “manage to give him this
assistance, these two hundred roubles. He will be sure to take it…. I mean,
persuade him to take it…. Or, rather, what do I mean? You see it’s not
by way of compensation to prevent him from taking proceedings (for I believe he
meant to), but simply a token of sympathy, of a desire to assist him from me,
Dmitri Fyodorovitch’s betrothed, not from himself…. But you know…. I
would go myself, but you’ll know how to do it ever so much better. He
lives in Lake Street, in the house of a woman called Kalmikov…. For
God’s sake, Alexey Fyodorovitch, do it for me, and now … now I am
rather … tired. Good‐ by!”

She turned and disappeared behind the portière so quickly that Alyosha had not
time to utter a word, though he wanted to speak. He longed to beg her pardon,
to blame himself, to say something, for his heart was full and he could not
bear to go out of the room without it. But Madame Hohlakov took him by the hand
and drew him along with her. In the hall she stopped him again as before.

“She is proud, she is struggling with herself; but kind, charming,
generous,” she exclaimed, in a half‐whisper. “Oh, how I love her,
especially sometimes, and how glad I am again of everything! Dear Alexey
Fyodorovitch, you didn’t know, but I must tell you, that we all,
all—both her aunts, I and all of us, Lise, even—have been hoping
and praying for nothing for the last month but that she may give up your
favorite Dmitri, who takes no notice of her and does not care for her, and may
marry Ivan Fyodorovitch—such an excellent and cultivated young man, who
loves her more than anything in the world. We are in a regular plot to bring it
about, and I am even staying on here perhaps on that account.”

“But she has been crying—she has been wounded again,” cried
Alyosha.

“Never trust a woman’s tears, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I am never for
the women in such cases. I am always on the side of the men.”

“Mamma, you are spoiling him,” Lise’s little voice cried from
behind the door.

“No, it was all my fault. I am horribly to blame,” Alyosha repeated
unconsoled, hiding his face in his hands in an agony of remorse for his
indiscretion.

“Quite the contrary; you behaved like an angel, like an angel. I am ready
to say so a thousand times over.”

“Mamma, how has he behaved like an angel?” Lise’s voice was
heard again.

“I somehow fancied all at once,” Alyosha went on as though he had
not heard Lise, “that she loved Ivan, and so I said that stupid thing….
What will happen now?”

“To whom, to whom?” cried Lise. “Mamma, you really want to be
the death of me. I ask you and you don’t answer.”

At the moment the maid ran in.

“Katerina Ivanovna is ill…. She is crying, struggling …
hysterics.”

“What is the matter?” cried Lise, in a tone of real anxiety.
“Mamma, I shall be having hysterics, and not she!”

“Lise, for mercy’s sake, don’t scream, don’t persecute
me. At your age one can’t know everything that grown‐up people know.
I’ll come and tell you everything you ought to know. Oh, mercy on us! I
am coming, I am coming…. Hysterics is a good sign, Alexey Fyodorovitch;
it’s an excellent thing that she is hysterical. That’s just as it
ought to be. In such cases I am always against the woman, against all these
feminine tears and hysterics. Run and say, Yulia, that I’ll fly to her.
As for Ivan Fyodorovitch’s going away like that, it’s her own
fault. But he won’t go away. Lise, for mercy’s sake, don’t
scream! Oh, yes; you are not screaming. It’s I am screaming. Forgive your
mamma; but I am delighted, delighted, delighted! Did you notice, Alexey
Fyodorovitch, how young, how young Ivan Fyodorovitch was just now when he went
out, when he said all that and went out? I thought he was so learned, such a
savant, and all of a sudden he behaved so warmly, openly, and
youthfully, with such youthful inexperience, and it was all so fine, like
you…. And the way he repeated that German verse, it was just like you! But I
must fly, I must fly! Alexey Fyodorovitch, make haste to carry out her
commission, and then make haste back. Lise, do you want anything now? For
mercy’s sake, don’t keep Alexey Fyodorovitch a minute. He will come
back to you at once.”

Madame Hohlakov at last ran off. Before leaving, Alyosha would have opened the
door to see Lise.

“On no account,” cried Lise. “On no account now. Speak
through the door. How have you come to be an angel? That’s the only thing
I want to know.”

“For an awful piece of stupidity, Lise! Good‐by!”

“Don’t dare to go away like that!” Lise was beginning.

“Lise, I have a real sorrow! I’ll be back directly, but I have a
great, great sorrow!”

And he ran out of the room.

Chapter VI.
A Laceration In The Cottage

He certainly was really grieved in a way he had seldom been before. He had
rushed in like a fool, and meddled in what? In a love‐affair. “But what
do I know about it? What can I tell about such things?” he repeated to
himself for the hundredth time, flushing crimson. “Oh, being ashamed
would be nothing; shame is only the punishment I deserve. The trouble is I
shall certainly have caused more unhappiness…. And Father Zossima sent me to
reconcile and bring them together. Is this the way to bring them
together?” Then he suddenly remembered how he had tried to join their
hands, and he felt fearfully ashamed again. “Though I acted quite
sincerely, I must be more sensible in the future,” he concluded suddenly,
and did not even smile at his conclusion.

Katerina Ivanovna’s commission took him to Lake Street, and his brother
Dmitri lived close by, in a turning out of Lake Street. Alyosha decided to go
to him in any case before going to the captain, though he had a presentiment
that he would not find his brother. He suspected that he would intentionally
keep out of his way now, but he must find him anyhow. Time was passing: the
thought of his dying elder had not left Alyosha for one minute from the time he
set off from the monastery.

There was one point which interested him particularly about Katerina
Ivanovna’s commission; when she had mentioned the captain’s son,
the little schoolboy who had run beside his father crying, the idea had at once
struck Alyosha that this must be the schoolboy who had bitten his finger when
he, Alyosha, asked him what he had done to hurt him. Now Alyosha felt
practically certain of this, though he could not have said why. Thinking of
another subject was a relief, and he resolved to think no more about the
“mischief” he had done, and not to torture himself with remorse,
but to do what he had to do, let come what would. At that thought he was
completely comforted. Turning to the street where Dmitri lodged, he felt
hungry, and taking out of his pocket the roll he had brought from his
father’s, he ate it. It made him feel stronger.

Dmitri was not at home. The people of the house, an old cabinet‐maker, his son,
and his old wife, looked with positive suspicion at Alyosha. “He
hasn’t slept here for the last three nights. Maybe he has gone
away,” the old man said in answer to Alyosha’s persistent
inquiries. Alyosha saw that he was answering in accordance with instructions.
When he asked whether he were not at Grushenka’s or in hiding at
Foma’s (Alyosha spoke so freely on purpose), all three looked at him in
alarm. “They are fond of him, they are doing their best for him,”
thought Alyosha. “That’s good.”

At last he found the house in Lake Street. It was a decrepit little house, sunk
on one side, with three windows looking into the street, and with a muddy yard,
in the middle of which stood a solitary cow. He crossed the yard and found the
door opening into the passage. On the left of the passage lived the old woman
of the house with her old daughter. Both seemed to be deaf. In answer to his
repeated inquiry for the captain, one of them at last understood that he was
asking for their lodgers, and pointed to a door across the passage. The
captain’s lodging turned out to be a simple cottage room. Alyosha had his
hand on the iron latch to open the door, when he was struck by the strange hush
within. Yet he knew from Katerina Ivanovna’s words that the man had a
family. “Either they are all asleep or perhaps they have heard me coming
and are waiting for me to open the door. I’d better knock first,”
and he knocked. An answer came, but not at once, after an interval of perhaps
ten seconds.

“Who’s there?” shouted some one in a loud and very angry
voice.

Then Alyosha opened the door and crossed the threshold. He found himself in a
regular peasant’s room. Though it was large, it was cumbered up with
domestic belongings of all sorts, and there were several people in it. On the
left was a large Russian stove. From the stove to the window on the left was a
string running across the room, and on it there were rags hanging. There was a
bedstead against the wall on each side, right and left, covered with knitted
quilts. On the one on the left was a pyramid of four print‐covered pillows,
each smaller than the one beneath. On the other there was only one very small
pillow. The opposite corner was screened off by a curtain or a sheet hung on a
string. Behind this curtain could be seen a bed made up on a bench and a chair.
The rough square table of plain wood had been moved into the middle window. The
three windows, which consisted each of four tiny greenish mildewy panes, gave
little light, and were close shut, so that the room was not very light and
rather stuffy. On the table was a frying‐pan with the remains of some fried
eggs, a half‐eaten piece of bread, and a small bottle with a few drops of
vodka.

A woman of genteel appearance, wearing a cotton gown, was sitting on a chair by
the bed on the left. Her face was thin and yellow, and her sunken cheeks
betrayed at the first glance that she was ill. But what struck Alyosha most was
the expression in the poor woman’s eyes—a look of surprised inquiry
and yet of haughty pride. And while he was talking to her husband, her big
brown eyes moved from one speaker to the other with the same haughty and
questioning expression. Beside her at the window stood a young girl, rather
plain, with scanty reddish hair, poorly but very neatly dressed. She looked
disdainfully at Alyosha as he came in. Beside the other bed was sitting another
female figure. She was a very sad sight, a young girl of about twenty, but
hunchback and crippled “with withered legs,” as Alyosha was told
afterwards. Her crutches stood in the corner close by. The strikingly beautiful
and gentle eyes of this poor girl looked with mild serenity at Alyosha. A man
of forty‐five was sitting at the table, finishing the fried eggs. He was spare,
small and weakly built. He had reddish hair and a scanty light‐colored beard,
very much like a wisp of tow (this comparison and the phrase “a wisp of
tow” flashed at once into Alyosha’s mind for some reason, he
remembered it afterwards). It was obviously this gentleman who had shouted to
him, as there was no other man in the room. But when Alyosha went in, he leapt
up from the bench on which he was sitting, and, hastily wiping his mouth with a
ragged napkin, darted up to Alyosha.

“It’s a monk come to beg for the monastery. A nice place to come
to!” the girl standing in the left corner said aloud. The man spun round
instantly towards her and answered her in an excited and breaking voice:

“No, Varvara, you are wrong. Allow me to ask,” he turned again to
Alyosha, “what has brought you to—our retreat?”

Alyosha looked attentively at him. It was the first time he had seen him. There
was something angular, flurried and irritable about him. Though he had
obviously just been drinking, he was not drunk. There was extraordinary
impudence in his expression, and yet, strange to say, at the same time there
was fear. He looked like a man who had long been kept in subjection and had
submitted to it, and now had suddenly turned and was trying to assert himself.
Or, better still, like a man who wants dreadfully to hit you but is horribly
afraid you will hit him. In his words and in the intonation of his shrill voice
there was a sort of crazy humor, at times spiteful and at times cringing, and
continually shifting from one tone to another. The question about “our
retreat” he had asked as it were quivering all over, rolling his eyes,
and skipping up so close to Alyosha that he instinctively drew back a step. He
was dressed in a very shabby dark cotton coat, patched and spotted. He wore
checked trousers of an extremely light color, long out of fashion, and of very
thin material. They were so crumpled and so short that he looked as though he
had grown out of them like a boy.

“I am Alexey Karamazov,” Alyosha began in reply.

“I quite understand that, sir,” the gentleman snapped out at once
to assure him that he knew who he was already. “I am Captain Snegiryov,
sir, but I am still desirous to know precisely what has led you—”

“Oh, I’ve come for nothing special. I wanted to have a word with
you—if only you allow me.”

“In that case, here is a chair, sir; kindly be seated. That’s what
they used to say in the old comedies, ‘kindly be seated,’ ”
and with a rapid gesture he seized an empty chair (it was a rough wooden chair,
not upholstered) and set it for him almost in the middle of the room; then,
taking another similar chair for himself, he sat down facing Alyosha, so close
to him that their knees almost touched.

“Nikolay Ilyitch Snegiryov, sir, formerly a captain in the Russian
infantry, put to shame for his vices, but still a captain. Though I might not
be one now for the way I talk; for the last half of my life I’ve learnt
to say ‘sir.’ It’s a word you use when you’ve come down
in the world.”

“That’s very true,” smiled Alyosha. “But is it used
involuntarily or on purpose?”

“As God’s above, it’s involuntary, and I usen’t to use
it! I didn’t use the word ‘sir’ all my life, but as soon as I
sank into low water I began to say ‘sir.’ It’s the work of a
higher power. I see you are interested in contemporary questions, but how can I
have excited your curiosity, living as I do in surroundings impossible for the
exercise of hospitality?”

“I’ve come—about that business.”

“About what business?” the captain interrupted impatiently.

“About your meeting with my brother Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” Alyosha
blurted out awkwardly.

“What meeting, sir? You don’t mean that meeting? About my
‘wisp of tow,’ then?” He moved closer so that his knees
positively knocked against Alyosha. His lips were strangely compressed like a
thread.

“What wisp of tow?” muttered Alyosha.

“He is come to complain of me, father!” cried a voice familiar to
Alyosha—the voice of the schoolboy—from behind the curtain.
“I bit his finger just now.” The curtain was pulled, and Alyosha
saw his assailant lying on a little bed made up on the bench and the chair in
the corner under the ikons. The boy lay covered by his coat and an old wadded
quilt. He was evidently unwell, and, judging by his glittering eyes, he was in
a fever. He looked at Alyosha without fear, as though he felt he was at home
and could not be touched.

“What! Did he bite your finger?” The captain jumped up from his
chair. “Was it your finger he bit?”

“Yes. He was throwing stones with other schoolboys. There were six of
them against him alone. I went up to him, and he threw a stone at me and then
another at my head. I asked him what I had done to him. And then he rushed at
me and bit my finger badly, I don’t know why.”

“I’ll thrash him, sir, at once—this minute!” The
captain jumped up from his seat.

“But I am not complaining at all, I am simply telling you … I
don’t want him to be thrashed. Besides, he seems to be ill.”

“And do you suppose I’d thrash him? That I’d take my Ilusha
and thrash him before you for your satisfaction? Would you like it done at
once, sir?” said the captain, suddenly turning to Alyosha, as though he
were going to attack him. “I am sorry about your finger, sir; but instead
of thrashing Ilusha, would you like me to chop off my four fingers with this
knife here before your eyes to satisfy your just wrath? I should think four
fingers would be enough to satisfy your thirst for vengeance. You won’t
ask for the fifth one too?” He stopped short with a catch in his throat.
Every feature in his face was twitching and working; he looked extremely
defiant. He was in a sort of frenzy.

“I think I understand it all now,” said Alyosha gently and
sorrowfully, still keeping his seat. “So your boy is a good boy, he loves
his father, and he attacked me as the brother of your assailant…. Now I
understand it,” he repeated thoughtfully. “But my brother Dmitri
Fyodorovitch regrets his action, I know that, and if only it is possible for
him to come to you, or better still, to meet you in that same place, he will
ask your forgiveness before every one—if you wish it.”

“After pulling out my beard, you mean, he will ask my forgiveness? And he
thinks that will be a satisfactory finish, doesn’t he?”

“Oh, no! On the contrary, he will do anything you like and in any way you
like.”

“So if I were to ask his highness to go down on his knees before me in
that very tavern—‘The Metropolis’ it’s called—or
in the market‐place, he would do it?”

“Yes, he would even go down on his knees.”

“You’ve pierced me to the heart, sir. Touched me to tears and
pierced me to the heart! I am only too sensible of your brother’s
generosity. Allow me to introduce my family, my two daughters and my
son—my litter. If I die, who will care for them, and while I live who but
they will care for a wretch like me? That’s a great thing the Lord has
ordained for every man of my sort, sir. For there must be some one able to love
even a man like me.”

“Ah, that’s perfectly true!” exclaimed Alyosha.

“Oh, do leave off playing the fool! Some idiot comes in, and you put us
to shame!” cried the girl by the window, suddenly turning to her father
with a disdainful and contemptuous air.

“Wait a little, Varvara!” cried her father, speaking peremptorily
but looking at her quite approvingly. “That’s her character,”
he said, addressing Alyosha again.

“And in all nature there was naught
That could find favor in his eyes—

or rather in the feminine: that could find favor in her eyes. But now let me
present you to my wife, Arina Petrovna. She is crippled, she is forty‐ three;
she can move, but very little. She is of humble origin. Arina Petrovna, compose
your countenance. This is Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov. Get up, Alexey
Fyodorovitch.” He took him by the hand and with unexpected force pulled
him up. “You must stand up to be introduced to a lady. It’s not the
Karamazov, mamma, who … h’m … etcetera, but his brother, radiant with
modest virtues. Come, Arina Petrovna, come, mamma, first your hand to be
kissed.”

And he kissed his wife’s hand respectfully and even tenderly. The girl at
the window turned her back indignantly on the scene; an expression of
extraordinary cordiality came over the haughtily inquiring face of the woman.

“Good morning! Sit down, Mr. Tchernomazov,” she said.

“Karamazov, mamma, Karamazov. We are of humble origin,” he
whispered again.

“Well, Karamazov, or whatever it is, but I always think of
Tchernomazov…. Sit down. Why has he pulled you up? He calls me crippled, but
I am not, only my legs are swollen like barrels, and I am shriveled up myself.
Once I used to be so fat, but now it’s as though I had swallowed a
needle.”

“We are of humble origin,” the captain muttered again.

“Oh, father, father!” the hunchback girl, who had till then been
silent on her chair, said suddenly, and she hid her eyes in her handkerchief.

“Buffoon!” blurted out the girl at the window.

“Have you heard our news?” said the mother, pointing at her
daughters. “It’s like clouds coming over; the clouds pass and we
have music again. When we were with the army, we used to have many such guests.
I don’t mean to make any comparisons; every one to their taste. The
deacon’s wife used to come then and say, ‘Alexandr Alexandrovitch
is a man of the noblest heart, but Nastasya Petrovna,’ she would say,
‘is of the brood of hell.’ ‘Well,’ I said,
‘that’s a matter of taste; but you are a little spitfire.’
‘And you want keeping in your place,’ says she. ‘You black
sword,’ said I, ‘who asked you to teach me?’ ‘But my
breath,’ says she, ‘is clean, and yours is unclean.’
‘You ask all the officers whether my breath is unclean.’ And ever
since then I had it in my mind. Not long ago I was sitting here as I am now,
when I saw that very general come in who came here for Easter, and I asked him:
‘Your Excellency,’ said I, ‘can a lady’s breath be
unpleasant?’ ‘Yes,’ he answered; ‘you ought to open a
window‐ pane or open the door, for the air is not fresh here.’ And they
all go on like that! And what is my breath to them? The dead smell worse still!
‘I won’t spoil the air,’ said I, ‘I’ll order some
slippers and go away.’ My darlings, don’t blame your own mother!
Nikolay Ilyitch, how is it I can’t please you? There’s only Ilusha
who comes home from school and loves me. Yesterday he brought me an apple.
Forgive your own mother—forgive a poor lonely creature! Why has my breath
become unpleasant to you?”

And the poor mad woman broke into sobs, and tears streamed down her cheeks. The
captain rushed up to her.

“Mamma, mamma, my dear, give over! You are not lonely. Every one loves
you, every one adores you.” He began kissing both her hands again and
tenderly stroking her face; taking the dinner‐napkin, he began wiping away her
tears. Alyosha fancied that he too had tears in his eyes. “There, you
see, you hear?” he turned with a sort of fury to Alyosha, pointing to the
poor imbecile.

“I see and hear,” muttered Alyosha.

“Father, father, how can you—with him! Let him alone!” cried
the boy, sitting up in his bed and gazing at his father with glowing eyes.

“Do give over fooling, showing off your silly antics which never lead to
anything!” shouted Varvara, stamping her foot with passion.

“Your anger is quite just this time, Varvara, and I’ll make haste
to satisfy you. Come, put on your cap, Alexey Fyodorovitch, and I’ll put
on mine. We will go out. I have a word to say to you in earnest, but not within
these walls. This girl sitting here is my daughter Nina; I forgot to introduce
her to you. She is a heavenly angel incarnate … who has flown down to us
mortals,… if you can understand.”

“There he is shaking all over, as though he is in convulsions!”
Varvara went on indignantly.

“And she there stamping her foot at me and calling me a fool just now,
she is a heavenly angel incarnate too, and she has good reason to call me so.
Come along, Alexey Fyodorovitch, we must make an end.”

And, snatching Alyosha’s hand, he drew him out of the room into the
street.

Chapter VII.
And In The Open Air

“The air is fresh, but in my apartment it is not so in any sense of the
word. Let us walk slowly, sir. I should be glad of your kind interest.”

“I too have something important to say to you,” observed Alyosha,
“only I don’t know how to begin.”

“To be sure you must have business with me. You would never have looked
in upon me without some object. Unless you come simply to complain of the boy,
and that’s hardly likely. And, by the way, about the boy: I could not
explain to you in there, but here I will describe that scene to you. My tow was
thicker a week ago—I mean my beard. That’s the nickname they give
to my beard, the schoolboys most of all. Well, your brother Dmitri Fyodorovitch
was pulling me by my beard, I’d done nothing, he was in a towering rage
and happened to come upon me. He dragged me out of the tavern into the
market‐place; at that moment the boys were coming out of school, and with them
Ilusha. As soon as he saw me in such a state he rushed up to me.
‘Father,’ he cried, ‘father!’ He caught hold of me,
hugged me, tried to pull me away, crying to my assailant, ‘Let go, let
go, it’s my father, forgive him!’—yes, he actually cried
‘forgive him.’ He clutched at that hand, that very hand, in his
little hands and kissed it…. I remember his little face at that moment, I
haven’t forgotten it and I never shall!”

“I swear,” cried Alyosha, “that my brother will express his
most deep and sincere regret, even if he has to go down on his knees in that
same market‐place…. I’ll make him or he is no brother of mine!”

“Aha, then it’s only a suggestion! And it does not come from him
but simply from the generosity of your own warm heart. You should have said so.
No, in that case allow me to tell you of your brother’s highly chivalrous
soldierly generosity, for he did give expression to it at the time. He left off
dragging me by my beard and released me: ‘You are an officer,’ he
said, ‘and I am an officer, if you can find a decent man to be your
second send me your challenge. I will give satisfaction, though you are a
scoundrel.’ That’s what he said. A chivalrous spirit indeed! I
retired with Ilusha, and that scene is a family record imprinted for ever on
Ilusha’s soul. No, it’s not for us to claim the privileges of
noblemen. Judge for yourself. You’ve just been in our mansion, what did
you see there? Three ladies, one a cripple and weak‐minded, another a cripple
and hunchback and the third not crippled but far too clever. She is a student,
dying to get back to Petersburg, to work for the emancipation of the Russian
woman on the banks of the Neva. I won’t speak of Ilusha, he is only nine.
I am alone in the world, and if I die, what will become of all of them? I
simply ask you that. And if I challenge him and he kills me on the spot, what
then? What will become of them? And worse still, if he doesn’t kill me
but only cripples me: I couldn’t work, but I should still be a mouth to
feed. Who would feed it and who would feed them all? Must I take Ilusha from
school and send him to beg in the streets? That’s what it means for me to
challenge him to a duel. It’s silly talk and nothing else.”