The Brothers Karamazov

Translated from the Russian of

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

by Constance Garnett

The Lowell Press

New York


Contents

 Part I
 Book I. The History Of A Family
 Chapter I. Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov
 Chapter II. He Gets Rid Of His Eldest Son
 Chapter III. The Second Marriage And The Second Family
 Chapter IV. The Third Son, Alyosha
 Chapter V. Elders
 Book II. An Unfortunate Gathering
 Chapter I. They Arrive At The Monastery
 Chapter II. The Old Buffoon
 Chapter III. Peasant Women Who Have Faith
 Chapter IV. A Lady Of Little Faith
 Chapter V. So Be It! So Be It!
 Chapter VI. Why Is Such A Man Alive?
 Chapter VII. A Young Man Bent On A Career
 Chapter VIII. The Scandalous Scene
 Book III. The Sensualists
 Chapter I. In The Servants’ Quarters
 Chapter II. Lizaveta
 Chapter III. The Confession Of A Passionate Heart—In Verse
 Chapter IV. The Confession Of A Passionate Heart—In Anecdote
 Chapter V. The Confession Of A Passionate Heart—“Heels Up”
 Chapter VI. Smerdyakov
 Chapter VII. The Controversy
 Chapter VIII. Over The Brandy
 Chapter IX. The Sensualists
 Chapter X. Both Together
 Chapter XI. Another Reputation Ruined

 Part II
 Book IV. Lacerations
 Chapter I. Father Ferapont
 Chapter II. At His Father’s
 Chapter III. A Meeting With The Schoolboys
 Chapter IV. At The Hohlakovs’
 Chapter V. A Laceration In The Drawing‐Room
 Chapter VI. A Laceration In The Cottage
 Chapter VII. And In The Open Air
 Book V. Pro And Contra
 Chapter I. The Engagement
 Chapter II. Smerdyakov With A Guitar
 Chapter III. The Brothers Make Friends
 Chapter IV. Rebellion
 Chapter V. The Grand Inquisitor
 Chapter VI. For Awhile A Very Obscure One
 Chapter VII. “It’s Always Worth While Speaking To A Clever Man”
 Book VI. The Russian Monk
 Chapter I. Father Zossima And His Visitors
 Chapter II. The Duel
 Chapter III. Conversations And Exhortations Of Father Zossima

 Part III
 Book VII. Alyosha
 Chapter I. The Breath Of Corruption
 Chapter II. A Critical Moment
 Chapter III. An Onion
 Chapter IV. Cana Of Galilee
 Book VIII. Mitya
 Chapter I. Kuzma Samsonov
 Chapter II. Lyagavy
 Chapter III. Gold‐Mines
 Chapter IV. In The Dark
 Chapter V. A Sudden Resolution
 Chapter VI. “I Am Coming, Too!”
 Chapter VII. The First And Rightful Lover
 Chapter VIII. Delirium
 Book IX. The Preliminary Investigation
 Chapter I. The Beginning Of Perhotin’s Official Career
 Chapter II. The Alarm
 Chapter III. The Sufferings Of A Soul, The First Ordeal
 Chapter IV. The Second Ordeal
 Chapter V. The Third Ordeal
 Chapter VI. The Prosecutor Catches Mitya
 Chapter VII. Mitya’s Great Secret. Received With Hisses
 Chapter VIII. The Evidence Of The Witnesses. The Babe
 Chapter IX. They Carry Mitya Away

 Part IV
 Book X. The Boys
 Chapter I. Kolya Krassotkin
 Chapter II. Children
 Chapter III. The Schoolboy
 Chapter IV. The Lost Dog
 Chapter V. By Ilusha’s Bedside
 Chapter VI. Precocity
 Chapter VII. Ilusha
 Book XI. Ivan
 Chapter I. At Grushenka’s
 Chapter II. The Injured Foot
 Chapter III. A Little Demon
 Chapter IV. A Hymn And A Secret
 Chapter V. Not You, Not You!
 Chapter VI. The First Interview With Smerdyakov
 Chapter VII. The Second Visit To Smerdyakov
 Chapter VIII. The Third And Last Interview With Smerdyakov
 Chapter IX. The Devil. Ivan’s Nightmare
 Chapter X. “It Was He Who Said That”
 Book XII. A Judicial Error
 Chapter I. The Fatal Day
 Chapter II. Dangerous Witnesses
 Chapter III. The Medical Experts And A Pound Of Nuts
 Chapter IV. Fortune Smiles On Mitya
 Chapter V. A Sudden Catastrophe
 Chapter VI. The Prosecutor’s Speech. Sketches Of Character
 Chapter VII. An Historical Survey
 Chapter VIII. A Treatise On Smerdyakov
 Chapter IX. The Galloping Troika. The End Of The Prosecutor’s Speech.
 Chapter X. The Speech For The Defense. An Argument That Cuts Both Ways
 Chapter XI. There Was No Money. There Was No Robbery
 Chapter XII. And There Was No Murder Either
 Chapter XIII. A Corrupter Of Thought
 Chapter XIV. The Peasants Stand Firm

 Epilogue
 Chapter I. Plans For Mitya’s Escape
 Chapter II. For A Moment The Lie Becomes Truth
 Chapter III. Ilusha’s Funeral. The Speech At The Stone

 Footnotes




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.”

“He will beg your forgiveness, he will bow down at your feet in the
middle of the market‐place,” cried Alyosha again, with glowing eyes.

“I did think of prosecuting him,” the captain went on, “but look in our
code, could I get much compensation for a personal injury? And then
Agrafena Alexandrovna[3] sent for me and shouted at me: ‘Don’t dare to
dream of it! If you proceed against him, I’ll publish it to all the
world that he beat you for your dishonesty, and then you will be
prosecuted.’ I call God to witness whose was the dishonesty and by
whose commands I acted, wasn’t it by her own and Fyodor Pavlovitch’s?
‘And what’s more,’ she went on, ‘I’ll dismiss you for good and you’ll
never earn another penny from me. I’ll speak to my merchant too’
(that’s what she calls her old man) ‘and he will dismiss you!’ And if
he dismisses me, what can I earn then from any one? Those two are all I
have to look to, for your Fyodor Pavlovitch has not only given over
employing me, for another reason, but he means to make use of papers
I’ve signed to go to law against me. And so I kept quiet, and you have
seen our retreat. But now let me ask you: did Ilusha hurt your finger
much? I didn’t like to go into it in our mansion before him.”

“Yes, very much, and he was in a great fury. He was avenging you on me
as a Karamazov, I see that now. But if only you had seen how he was
throwing stones at his school‐fellows! It’s very dangerous. They might
kill him. They are children and stupid. A stone may be thrown and break
somebody’s head.”

“That’s just what has happened. He has been bruised by a stone to‐day.
Not on the head but on the chest, just above the heart. He came home
crying and groaning and now he is ill.”

“And you know he attacks them first. He is bitter against them on your
account. They say he stabbed a boy called Krassotkin with a pen‐knife
not long ago.”

“I’ve heard about that too, it’s dangerous. Krassotkin is an official
here, we may hear more about it.”

“I would advise you,” Alyosha went on warmly, “not to send him to
school at all for a time till he is calmer ... and his anger is
passed.”

“Anger!” the captain repeated, “that’s just what it is. He is a little
creature, but it’s a mighty anger. You don’t know all, sir. Let me tell
you more. Since that incident all the boys have been teasing him about
the ‘wisp of tow.’ Schoolboys are a merciless race, individually they
are angels, but together, especially in schools, they are often
merciless. Their teasing has stirred up a gallant spirit in Ilusha. An
ordinary boy, a weak son, would have submitted, have felt ashamed of
his father, sir, but he stood up for his father against them all. For
his father and for truth and justice. For what he suffered when he
kissed your brother’s hand and cried to him ‘Forgive father, forgive
him,’—that only God knows—and I, his father. For our children—not your
children, but ours—the children of the poor gentlemen looked down upon
by every one—know what justice means, sir, even at nine years old. How
should the rich know? They don’t explore such depths once in their
lives. But at that moment in the square when he kissed his hand, at
that moment my Ilusha had grasped all that justice means. That truth
entered into him and crushed him for ever, sir,” the captain said hotly
again with a sort of frenzy, and he struck his right fist against his
left palm as though he wanted to show how “the truth” crushed Ilusha.
“That very day, sir, he fell ill with fever and was delirious all
night. All that day he hardly said a word to me, but I noticed he kept
watching me from the corner, though he turned to the window and
pretended to be learning his lessons. But I could see his mind was not
on his lessons. Next day I got drunk to forget my troubles, sinful man
as I am, and I don’t remember much. Mamma began crying, too—I am very
fond of mamma—well, I spent my last penny drowning my troubles. Don’t
despise me for that, sir, in Russia men who drink are the best. The
best men amongst us are the greatest drunkards. I lay down and I don’t
remember about Ilusha, though all that day the boys had been jeering at
him at school. ‘Wisp of tow,’ they shouted, ‘your father was pulled out
of the tavern by his wisp of tow, you ran by and begged forgiveness.’ ”

“On the third day when he came back from school, I saw he looked pale
and wretched. ‘What is it?’ I asked. He wouldn’t answer. Well, there’s
no talking in our mansion without mamma and the girls taking part in
it. What’s more, the girls had heard about it the very first day.
Varvara had begun snarling. ‘You fools and buffoons, can you ever do
anything rational?’ ‘Quite so,’ I said, ‘can we ever do anything
rational?’ For the time I turned it off like that. So in the evening I
took the boy out for a walk, for you must know we go for a walk every
evening, always the same way, along which we are going now—from our
gate to that great stone which lies alone in the road under the hurdle,
which marks the beginning of the town pasture. A beautiful and lonely
spot, sir. Ilusha and I walked along hand in hand as usual. He has a
little hand, his fingers are thin and cold—he suffers with his chest,
you know. ‘Father,’ said he, ‘father!’ ‘Well?’ said I. I saw his eyes
flashing. ‘Father, how he treated you then!’ ‘It can’t be helped,
Ilusha,’ I said. ‘Don’t forgive him, father, don’t forgive him! At
school they say that he has paid you ten roubles for it.’ ‘No, Ilusha,’
said I, ‘I would not take money from him for anything.’ Then he began
trembling all over, took my hand in both his and kissed it again.
‘Father,’ he said, ‘father, challenge him to a duel, at school they say
you are a coward and won’t challenge him, and that you’ll accept ten
roubles from him.’ ‘I can’t challenge him to a duel, Ilusha,’ I
answered. And I told briefly what I’ve just told you. He listened.
‘Father,’ he said, ‘anyway don’t forgive it. When I grow up I’ll call
him out myself and kill him.’ His eyes shone and glowed. And of course
I am his father, and I had to put in a word: ‘It’s a sin to kill,’ I
said, ‘even in a duel.’ ‘Father,’ he said, ‘when I grow up, I’ll knock
him down, knock the sword out of his hand, I’ll fall on him, wave my
sword over him and say: “I could kill you, but I forgive you, so
there!” ’ You see what the workings of his little mind have been during
these two days; he must have been planning that vengeance all day, and
raving about it at night.

“But he began to come home from school badly beaten, I found out about
it the day before yesterday, and you are right, I won’t send him to
that school any more. I heard that he was standing up against all the
class alone and defying them all, that his heart was full of
resentment, of bitterness—I was alarmed about him. We went for another
walk. ‘Father,’ he asked, ‘are the rich people stronger than any one
else on earth?’ ‘Yes, Ilusha,’ I said, ‘there are no people on earth
stronger than the rich.’ ‘Father,’ he said, ‘I will get rich, I will
become an officer and conquer everybody. The Tsar will reward me, I
will come back here and then no one will dare—’ Then he was silent and
his lips still kept trembling. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘what a horrid town
this is.’ ‘Yes, Ilusha,’ I said, ‘it isn’t a very nice town.’ ‘Father,
let us move into another town, a nice one,’ he said, ‘where people
don’t know about us.’ ‘We will move, we will, Ilusha,’ said I, ‘only I
must save up for it.’ I was glad to be able to turn his mind from
painful thoughts, and we began to dream of how we would move to another
town, how we would buy a horse and cart. ‘We will put mamma and your
sisters inside, we will cover them up and we’ll walk, you shall have a
lift now and then, and I’ll walk beside, for we must take care of our
horse, we can’t all ride. That’s how we’ll go.’ He was enchanted at
that, most of all at the thought of having a horse and driving him. For
of course a Russian boy is born among horses. We chattered a long
while. Thank God, I thought, I have diverted his mind and comforted
him.

“That was the day before yesterday, in the evening, but last night
everything was changed. He had gone to school in the morning, he came
back depressed, terribly depressed. In the evening I took him by the
hand and we went for a walk; he would not talk. There was a wind
blowing and no sun, and a feeling of autumn; twilight was coming on. We
walked along, both of us depressed. ‘Well, my boy,’ said I, ‘how about
our setting off on our travels?’ I thought I might bring him back to
our talk of the day before. He didn’t answer, but I felt his fingers
trembling in my hand. Ah, I thought, it’s a bad job; there’s something
fresh. We had reached the stone where we are now. I sat down on the
stone. And in the air there were lots of kites flapping and whirling.
There were as many as thirty in sight. Of course, it’s just the season
for the kites. ‘Look, Ilusha,’ said I, ‘it’s time we got out our last
year’s kite again. I’ll mend it, where have you put it away?’ My boy
made no answer. He looked away and turned sideways to me. And then a
gust of wind blew up the sand. He suddenly fell on me, threw both his
little arms round my neck and held me tight. You know, when children
are silent and proud, and try to keep back their tears when they are in
great trouble and suddenly break down, their tears fall in streams.
With those warm streams of tears, he suddenly wetted my face. He sobbed
and shook as though he were in convulsions, and squeezed up against me
as I sat on the stone. ‘Father,’ he kept crying, ‘dear father, how he
insulted you!’ And I sobbed too. We sat shaking in each other’s arms.
‘Ilusha,’ I said to him, ‘Ilusha darling.’ No one saw us then. God
alone saw us, I hope He will record it to my credit. You must thank
your brother, Alexey Fyodorovitch. No, sir, I won’t thrash my boy for
your satisfaction.”

He had gone back to his original tone of resentful buffoonery. Alyosha
felt though that he trusted him, and that if there had been some one
else in his, Alyosha’s place, the man would not have spoken so openly
and would not have told what he had just told. This encouraged Alyosha,
whose heart was trembling on the verge of tears.

“Ah, how I would like to make friends with your boy!” he cried. “If you
could arrange it—”

“Certainly, sir,” muttered the captain.

“But now listen to something quite different!” Alyosha went on. “I have
a message for you. That same brother of mine, Dmitri, has insulted his
betrothed, too, a noble‐hearted girl of whom you have probably heard. I
have a right to tell you of her wrong; I ought to do so, in fact, for
hearing of the insult done to you and learning all about your
unfortunate position, she commissioned me at once—just now—to bring you
this help from her—but only from her alone, not from Dmitri, who has
abandoned her. Nor from me, his brother, nor from any one else, but
from her, only from her! She entreats you to accept her help.... You
have both been insulted by the same man. She thought of you only when
she had just received a similar insult from him—similar in its cruelty,
I mean. She comes like a sister to help a brother in misfortune.... She
told me to persuade you to take these two hundred roubles from her, as
from a sister, knowing that you are in such need. No one will know of
it, it can give rise to no unjust slander. There are the two hundred
roubles, and I swear you must take them unless—unless all men are to be
enemies on earth! But there are brothers even on earth.... You have a
generous heart ... you must see that, you must,” and Alyosha held out
two new rainbow‐colored hundred‐rouble notes.

They were both standing at the time by the great stone close to the
fence, and there was no one near. The notes seemed to produce a
tremendous impression on the captain. He started, but at first only
from astonishment. Such an outcome of their conversation was the last
thing he expected. Nothing could have been farther from his dreams than
help from any one—and such a sum!

He took the notes, and for a minute he was almost unable to answer,
quite a new expression came into his face.

“That for me? So much money—two hundred roubles! Good heavens! Why, I
haven’t seen so much money for the last four years! Mercy on us! And
she says she is a sister.... And is that the truth?”

“I swear that all I told you is the truth,” cried Alyosha.

The captain flushed red.

“Listen, my dear, listen. If I take it, I shan’t be behaving like a
scoundrel? In your eyes, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I shan’t be a scoundrel?
No, Alexey Fyodorovitch, listen, listen,” he hurried, touching Alyosha
with both his hands. “You are persuading me to take it, saying that
it’s a sister sends it, but inwardly, in your heart won’t you feel
contempt for me if I take it, eh?”

“No, no, on my salvation I swear I shan’t! And no one will ever know
but me—I, you and she, and one other lady, her great friend.”

“Never mind the lady! Listen, Alexey Fyodorovitch, at a moment like
this you must listen, for you can’t understand what these two hundred
roubles mean to me now.” The poor fellow went on rising gradually into
a sort of incoherent, almost wild enthusiasm. He was thrown off his
balance and talked extremely fast, as though afraid he would not be
allowed to say all he had to say.

“Besides its being honestly acquired from a ‘sister,’ so highly
respected and revered, do you know that now I can look after mamma and
Nina, my hunchback angel daughter? Doctor Herzenstube came to me in the
kindness of his heart and was examining them both for a whole hour. ‘I
can make nothing of it,’ said he, but he prescribed a mineral water
which is kept at a chemist’s here. He said it would be sure to do her
good, and he ordered baths, too, with some medicine in them. The
mineral water costs thirty copecks, and she’d need to drink forty
bottles perhaps; so I took the prescription and laid it on the shelf
under the ikons, and there it lies. And he ordered hot baths for Nina
with something dissolved in them, morning and evening. But how can we
carry out such a cure in our mansion, without servants, without help,
without a bath, and without water? Nina is rheumatic all over, I don’t
think I told you that. All her right side aches at night, she is in
agony, and, would you believe it, the angel bears it without groaning
for fear of waking us. We eat what we can get, and she’ll only take the
leavings, what you’d scarcely give to a dog. ‘I am not worth it, I am
taking it from you, I am a burden on you,’ that’s what her angel eyes
try to express. We wait on her, but she doesn’t like it. ‘I am a
useless cripple, no good to any one.’ As though she were not worth it,
when she is the saving of all of us with her angelic sweetness. Without
her, without her gentle word it would be hell among us! She softens
even Varvara. And don’t judge Varvara harshly either, she is an angel
too, she, too, has suffered wrong. She came to us for the summer, and
she brought sixteen roubles she had earned by lessons and saved up, to
go back with to Petersburg in September, that is now. But we took her
money and lived on it, so now she has nothing to go back with. Though
indeed she couldn’t go back, for she has to work for us like a slave.
She is like an overdriven horse with all of us on her back. She waits
on us all, mends and washes, sweeps the floor, puts mamma to bed. And
mamma is capricious and tearful and insane! And now I can get a servant
with this money, you understand, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I can get
medicines for the dear creatures, I can send my student to Petersburg,
I can buy beef, I can feed them properly. Good Lord, but it’s a dream!”

Alyosha was delighted that he had brought him such happiness and that
the poor fellow had consented to be made happy.

“Stay, Alexey Fyodorovitch, stay,” the captain began to talk with
frenzied rapidity, carried away by a new day‐dream. “Do you know that
Ilusha and I will perhaps really carry out our dream. We will buy a
horse and cart, a black horse, he insists on its being black, and we
will set off as we pretended the other day. I have an old friend, a
lawyer in K. province, and I heard through a trustworthy man that if I
were to go he’d give me a place as clerk in his office, so, who knows,
maybe he would. So I’d just put mamma and Nina in the cart, and Ilusha
could drive, and I’d walk, I’d walk.... Why, if I only succeed in
getting one debt paid that’s owing me, I should have perhaps enough for
that too!”

“There would be enough!” cried Alyosha. “Katerina Ivanovna will send
you as much more as you need, and you know, I have money too, take what
you want, as you would from a brother, from a friend, you can give it
back later.... (You’ll get rich, you’ll get rich!) And you know you
couldn’t have a better idea than to move to another province! It would
be the saving of you, especially of your boy—and you ought to go
quickly, before the winter, before the cold. You must write to us when
you are there, and we will always be brothers.... No, it’s not a
dream!”

Alyosha could have hugged him, he was so pleased. But glancing at him
he stopped short. The man was standing with his neck outstretched and
his lips protruding, with a pale and frenzied face. His lips were
moving as though trying to articulate something; no sound came, but
still his lips moved. It was uncanny.

“What is it?” asked Alyosha, startled.

“Alexey Fyodorovitch ... I ... you,” muttered the captain, faltering,
looking at him with a strange, wild, fixed stare, and an air of
desperate resolution. At the same time there was a sort of grin on his
lips. “I ... you, sir ... wouldn’t you like me to show you a little
trick I know?” he murmured, suddenly, in a firm rapid whisper, his
voice no longer faltering.

“What trick?”

“A pretty trick,” whispered the captain. His mouth was twisted on the
left side, his left eye was screwed up. He still stared at Alyosha.

“What is the matter? What trick?” Alyosha cried, now thoroughly
alarmed.

“Why, look,” squealed the captain suddenly, and showing him the two
notes which he had been holding by one corner between his thumb and
forefinger during the conversation, he crumpled them up savagely and
squeezed them tight in his right hand. “Do you see, do you see?” he
shrieked, pale and infuriated. And suddenly flinging up his hand, he
threw the crumpled notes on the sand. “Do you see?” he shrieked again,
pointing to them. “Look there!”

And with wild fury he began trampling them under his heel, gasping and
exclaiming as he did so:

“So much for your money! So much for your money! So much for your
money! So much for your money!”

Suddenly he darted back and drew himself up before Alyosha, and his
whole figure expressed unutterable pride.

“Tell those who sent you that the wisp of tow does not sell his honor,”
he cried, raising his arm in the air. Then he turned quickly and began
to run; but he had not run five steps before he turned completely round
and kissed his hand to Alyosha. He ran another five paces and then
turned round for the last time. This time his face was not contorted
with laughter, but quivering all over with tears. In a tearful,
faltering, sobbing voice he cried:

“What should I say to my boy if I took money from you for our shame?”

And then he ran on without turning. Alyosha looked after him,
inexpressibly grieved. Oh, he saw that till the very last moment the
man had not known he would crumple up and fling away the notes. He did
not turn back. Alyosha knew he would not. He would not follow him and
call him back, he knew why. When he was out of sight, Alyosha picked up
the two notes. They were very much crushed and crumpled, and had been
pressed into the sand, but were uninjured and even rustled like new
ones when Alyosha unfolded them and smoothed them out. After smoothing
them out, he folded them up, put them in his pocket and went to
Katerina Ivanovna to report on the success of her commission.




Book V. Pro And Contra




Chapter I.
The Engagement


Madame Hohlakov was again the first to meet Alyosha. She was flustered;
something important had happened. Katerina Ivanovna’s hysterics had
ended in a fainting fit, and then “a terrible, awful weakness had
followed, she lay with her eyes turned up and was delirious. Now she
was in a fever. They had sent for Herzenstube; they had sent for the
aunts. The aunts were already here, but Herzenstube had not yet come.
They were all sitting in her room, waiting. She was unconscious now,
and what if it turned to brain fever!”

Madame Hohlakov looked gravely alarmed. “This is serious, serious,” she
added at every word, as though nothing that had happened to her before
had been serious. Alyosha listened with distress, and was beginning to
describe his adventures, but she interrupted him at the first words.
She had not time to listen. She begged him to sit with Lise and wait
for her there.

“Lise,” she whispered almost in his ear, “Lise has greatly surprised me
just now, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch. She touched me, too, and so my
heart forgives her everything. Only fancy, as soon as you had gone, she
began to be truly remorseful for having laughed at you to‐day and
yesterday, though she was not laughing at you, but only joking. But she
was seriously sorry for it, almost ready to cry, so that I was quite
surprised. She has never been really sorry for laughing at me, but has
only made a joke of it. And you know she is laughing at me every
minute. But this time she was in earnest. She thinks a great deal of
your opinion, Alexey Fyodorovitch, and don’t take offense or be wounded
by her if you can help it. I am never hard upon her, for she’s such a
clever little thing. Would you believe it? She said just now that you
were a friend of her childhood, ‘the greatest friend of her
childhood’—just think of that—‘greatest friend’—and what about me? She
has very strong feelings and memories, and, what’s more, she uses these
phrases, most unexpected words, which come out all of a sudden when you
least expect them. She spoke lately about a pine‐tree, for instance:
there used to be a pine‐tree standing in our garden in her early
childhood. Very likely it’s standing there still; so there’s no need to
speak in the past tense. Pine‐trees are not like people, Alexey
Fyodorovitch, they don’t change quickly. ‘Mamma,’ she said, ‘I remember
this pine‐tree as in a dream,’ only she said something so original
about it that I can’t repeat it. Besides, I’ve forgotten it. Well,
good‐by! I am so worried I feel I shall go out of my mind. Ah! Alexey
Fyodorovitch, I’ve been out of my mind twice in my life. Go to Lise,
cheer her up, as you always can so charmingly. Lise,” she cried, going
to her door, “here I’ve brought you Alexey Fyodorovitch, whom you
insulted so. He is not at all angry, I assure you; on the contrary, he
is surprised that you could suppose so.”

“_Merci, maman._ Come in, Alexey Fyodorovitch.”

Alyosha went in. Lise looked rather embarrassed, and at once flushed
crimson. She was evidently ashamed of something, and, as people always
do in such cases, she began immediately talking of other things, as
though they were of absorbing interest to her at the moment.

“Mamma has just told me all about the two hundred roubles, Alexey
Fyodorovitch, and your taking them to that poor officer ... and she
told me all the awful story of how he had been insulted ... and you
know, although mamma muddles things ... she always rushes from one
thing to another ... I cried when I heard. Well, did you give him the
money and how is that poor man getting on?”

“The fact is I didn’t give it to him, and it’s a long story,” answered
Alyosha, as though he, too, could think of nothing but his regret at
having failed, yet Lise saw perfectly well that he, too, looked away,
and that he, too, was trying to talk of other things.

Alyosha sat down to the table and began to tell his story, but at the
first words he lost his embarrassment and gained the whole of Lise’s
attention as well. He spoke with deep feeling, under the influence of
the strong impression he had just received, and he succeeded in telling
his story well and circumstantially. In old days in Moscow he had been
fond of coming to Lise and describing to her what had just happened to
him, what he had read, or what he remembered of his childhood.
Sometimes they had made day‐dreams and woven whole romances
together—generally cheerful and amusing ones. Now they both felt
suddenly transported to the old days in Moscow, two years before. Lise
was extremely touched by his story. Alyosha described Ilusha with warm
feeling. When he finished describing how the luckless man trampled on
the money, Lise could not help clasping her hands and crying out:

“So you didn’t give him the money! So you let him run away! Oh, dear,
you ought to have run after him!”

“No, Lise; it’s better I didn’t run after him,” said Alyosha, getting
up from his chair and walking thoughtfully across the room.

“How so? How is it better? Now they are without food and their case is
hopeless?”

“Not hopeless, for the two hundred roubles will still come to them.
He’ll take the money to‐morrow. To‐morrow he will be sure to take it,”
said Alyosha, pacing up and down, pondering. “You see, Lise,” he went
on, stopping suddenly before her, “I made one blunder, but that, even
that, is all for the best.”

“What blunder, and why is it for the best?”

“I’ll tell you. He is a man of weak and timorous character; he has
suffered so much and is very good‐natured. I keep wondering why he took
offense so suddenly, for I assure you, up to the last minute, he did
not know that he was going to trample on the notes. And I think now
that there was a great deal to offend him ... and it could not have
been otherwise in his position.... To begin with, he was sore at having
been so glad of the money in my presence and not having concealed it
from me. If he had been pleased, but not so much; if he had not shown
it; if he had begun affecting scruples and difficulties, as other
people do when they take money, he might still endure to take it. But
he was too genuinely delighted, and that was mortifying. Ah, Lise, he
is a good and truthful man—that’s the worst of the whole business. All
the while he talked, his voice was so weak, so broken, he talked so
fast, so fast, he kept laughing such a laugh, or perhaps he was
crying—yes, I am sure he was crying, he was so delighted—and he talked
about his daughters—and about the situation he could get in another
town.... And when he had poured out his heart, he felt ashamed at
having shown me his inmost soul like that. So he began to hate me at
once. He is one of those awfully sensitive poor people. What had made
him feel most ashamed was that he had given in too soon and accepted me
as a friend, you see. At first he almost flew at me and tried to
intimidate me, but as soon as he saw the money he had begun embracing
me; he kept touching me with his hands. This must have been how he came
to feel it all so humiliating, and then I made that blunder, a very
important one. I suddenly said to him that if he had not money enough
to move to another town, we would give it to him, and, indeed, I myself
would give him as much as he wanted out of my own money. That struck
him all at once. Why, he thought, did I put myself forward to help him?
You know, Lise, it’s awfully hard for a man who has been injured, when
other people look at him as though they were his benefactors.... I’ve
heard that; Father Zossima told me so. I don’t know how to put it, but
I have often seen it myself. And I feel like that myself, too. And the
worst of it was that though he did not know, up to the very last
minute, that he would trample on the notes, he had a kind of
presentiment of it, I am sure of that. That’s just what made him so
ecstatic, that he had that presentiment.... And though it’s so
dreadful, it’s all for the best. In fact, I believe nothing better
could have happened.”

“Why, why could nothing better have happened?” cried Lise, looking with
great surprise at Alyosha.

“Because if he had taken the money, in an hour after getting home, he
would be crying with mortification, that’s just what would have
happened. And most likely he would have come to me early to‐morrow, and
perhaps have flung the notes at me and trampled upon them as he did
just now. But now he has gone home awfully proud and triumphant, though
he knows he has ‘ruined himself.’ So now nothing could be easier than
to make him accept the two hundred roubles by to‐morrow, for he has
already vindicated his honor, tossed away the money, and trampled it
under foot.... He couldn’t know when he did it that I should bring it
to him again to‐morrow, and yet he is in terrible need of that money.
Though he is proud of himself now, yet even to‐day he’ll be thinking
what a help he has lost. He will think of it more than ever at night,
will dream of it, and by to‐morrow morning he may be ready to run to me
to ask forgiveness. It’s just then that I’ll appear. ‘Here, you are a
proud man,’ I shall say: ‘you have shown it; but now take the money and
forgive us!’ And then he will take it!”

Alyosha was carried away with joy as he uttered his last words, “And
then he will take it!” Lise clapped her hands.

“Ah, that’s true! I understand that perfectly now. Ah, Alyosha, how do
you know all this? So young and yet he knows what’s in the heart.... I
should never have worked it out.”

“The great thing now is to persuade him that he is on an equal footing
with us, in spite of his taking money from us,” Alyosha went on in his
excitement, “and not only on an equal, but even on a higher footing.”

“ ‘On a higher footing’ is charming, Alexey Fyodorovitch; but go on, go
on!”

“You mean there isn’t such an expression as ‘on a higher footing’; but
that doesn’t matter because—”

“Oh, no, of course it doesn’t matter. Forgive me, Alyosha, dear.... You
know, I scarcely respected you till now—that is I respected you but on
an equal footing; but now I shall begin to respect you on a higher
footing. Don’t be angry, dear, at my joking,” she put in at once, with
strong feeling. “I am absurd and small, but you, you! Listen, Alexey
Fyodorovitch. Isn’t there in all our analysis—I mean your analysis ...
no, better call it ours—aren’t we showing contempt for him, for that
poor man—in analyzing his soul like this, as it were, from above, eh?
In deciding so certainly that he will take the money?”

“No, Lise, it’s not contempt,” Alyosha answered, as though he had
prepared himself for the question. “I was thinking of that on the way
here. How can it be contempt when we are all like him, when we are all
just the same as he is? For you know we are just the same, no better.
If we are better, we should have been just the same in his place.... I
don’t know about you, Lise, but I consider that I have a sordid soul in
many ways, and his soul is not sordid; on the contrary, full of fine
feeling.... No, Lise, I have no contempt for him. Do you know, Lise, my
elder told me once to care for most people exactly as one would for
children, and for some of them as one would for the sick in hospitals.”

“Ah, Alexey Fyodorovitch, dear, let us care for people as we would for
the sick!”

“Let us, Lise; I am ready. Though I am not altogether ready in myself.
I am sometimes very impatient and at other times I don’t see things.
It’s different with you.”

“Ah, I don’t believe it! Alexey Fyodorovitch, how happy I am!”

“I am so glad you say so, Lise.”

“Alexey Fyodorovitch, you are wonderfully good, but you are sometimes
sort of formal.... And yet you are not a bit formal really. Go to the
door, open it gently, and see whether mamma is listening,” said Lise,
in a nervous, hurried whisper.

Alyosha went, opened the door, and reported that no one was listening.

“Come here, Alexey Fyodorovitch,” Lise went on, flushing redder and
redder. “Give me your hand—that’s right. I have to make a great
confession, I didn’t write to you yesterday in joke, but in earnest,”
and she hid her eyes with her hand. It was evident that she was greatly
ashamed of the confession.

Suddenly she snatched his hand and impulsively kissed it three times.

“Ah, Lise, what a good thing!” cried Alyosha joyfully. “You know, I was
perfectly sure you were in earnest.”

“Sure? Upon my word!” She put aside his hand, but did not leave go of
it, blushing hotly, and laughing a little happy laugh. “I kiss his hand
and he says, ‘What a good thing!’ ”

But her reproach was undeserved. Alyosha, too, was greatly overcome.

“I should like to please you always, Lise, but I don’t know how to do
it,” he muttered, blushing too.

“Alyosha, dear, you are cold and rude. Do you see? He has chosen me as
his wife and is quite settled about it. He is sure I was in earnest.
What a thing to say! Why, that’s impertinence—that’s what it is.”

“Why, was it wrong of me to feel sure?” Alyosha asked, laughing
suddenly.

“Ah, Alyosha, on the contrary, it was delightfully right,” cried Lise,
looking tenderly and happily at him.

Alyosha stood still, holding her hand in his. Suddenly he stooped down
and kissed her on her lips.

“Oh, what are you doing?” cried Lise. Alyosha was terribly abashed.

“Oh, forgive me if I shouldn’t.... Perhaps I’m awfully stupid.... You
said I was cold, so I kissed you.... But I see it was stupid.”

Lise laughed, and hid her face in her hands. “And in that dress!” she
ejaculated in the midst of her mirth. But she suddenly ceased laughing
and became serious, almost stern.

“Alyosha, we must put off kissing. We are not ready for that yet, and
we shall have a long time to wait,” she ended suddenly. “Tell me rather
why you who are so clever, so intellectual, so observant, choose a
little idiot, an invalid like me? Ah, Alyosha, I am awfully happy, for
I don’t deserve you a bit.”

“You do, Lise. I shall be leaving the monastery altogether in a few
days. If I go into the world, I must marry. I know that. _He_ told me
to marry, too. Whom could I marry better than you—and who would have me
except you? I have been thinking it over. In the first place, you’ve
known me from a child and you’ve a great many qualities I haven’t. You
are more light‐ hearted than I am; above all, you are more innocent
than I am. I have been brought into contact with many, many things
already.... Ah, you don’t know, but I, too, am a Karamazov. What does
it matter if you do laugh and make jokes, and at me, too? Go on
laughing. I am so glad you do. You laugh like a little child, but you
think like a martyr.”

“Like a martyr? How?”

“Yes, Lise, your question just now: whether we weren’t showing contempt
for that poor man by dissecting his soul—that was the question of a
sufferer.... You see, I don’t know how to express it, but any one who
thinks of such questions is capable of suffering. Sitting in your
invalid chair you must have thought over many things already.”

“Alyosha, give me your hand. Why are you taking it away?” murmured Lise
in a failing voice, weak with happiness. “Listen, Alyosha. What will
you wear when you come out of the monastery? What sort of suit? Don’t
laugh, don’t be angry, it’s very, very important to me.”

“I haven’t thought about the suit, Lise; but I’ll wear whatever you
like.”

“I should like you to have a dark blue velvet coat, a white piqué
waistcoat, and a soft gray felt hat.... Tell me, did you believe that I
didn’t care for you when I said I didn’t mean what I wrote?”

“No, I didn’t believe it.”

“Oh, you insupportable person, you are incorrigible.”

“You see, I knew that you—seemed to care for me, but I pretended to
believe that you didn’t care for me to make it—easier for you.”

“That makes it worse! Worse and better than all! Alyosha, I am awfully
fond of you. Just before you came this morning, I tried my fortune. I
decided I would ask you for my letter, and if you brought it out calmly
and gave it to me (as might have been expected from you) it would mean
that you did not love me at all, that you felt nothing, and were simply
a stupid boy, good for nothing, and that I am ruined. But you left the
letter at home and that cheered me. You left it behind on purpose, so
as not to give it back, because you knew I would ask for it? That was
it, wasn’t it?”

“Ah, Lise, it was not so a bit. The letter is with me now, and it was
this morning, in this pocket. Here it is.”

Alyosha pulled the letter out laughing, and showed it her at a
distance.

“But I am not going to give it to you. Look at it from here.”

“Why, then you told a lie? You, a monk, told a lie!”

“I told a lie if you like,” Alyosha laughed, too. “I told a lie so as
not to give you back the letter. It’s very precious to me,” he added
suddenly, with strong feeling, and again he flushed. “It always will
be, and I won’t give it up to any one!”

Lise looked at him joyfully. “Alyosha,” she murmured again, “look at
the door. Isn’t mamma listening?”

“Very well, Lise, I’ll look; but wouldn’t it be better not to look? Why
suspect your mother of such meanness?”

“What meanness? As for her spying on her daughter, it’s her right, it’s
not meanness!” cried Lise, firing up. “You may be sure, Alexey
Fyodorovitch, that when I am a mother, if I have a daughter like myself
I shall certainly spy on her!”

“Really, Lise? That’s not right.”

“Oh, my goodness! What has meanness to do with it? If she were
listening to some ordinary worldly conversation, it would be meanness,
but when her own daughter is shut up with a young man.... Listen,
Alyosha, do you know I shall spy upon you as soon as we are married,
and let me tell you I shall open all your letters and read them, so you
may as well be prepared.”

“Yes, of course, if so—” muttered Alyosha, “only it’s not right.”

“Ah, how contemptuous! Alyosha, dear, we won’t quarrel the very first
day. I’d better tell you the whole truth. Of course, it’s very wrong to
spy on people, and, of course, I am not right and you are, only I shall
spy on you all the same.”

“Do, then; you won’t find out anything,” laughed Alyosha.

“And, Alyosha, will you give in to me? We must decide that too.”

“I shall be delighted to, Lise, and certain to, only not in the most
important things. Even if you don’t agree with me, I shall do my duty
in the most important things.”

“That’s right; but let me tell you I am ready to give in to you not
only in the most important matters, but in everything. And I am ready
to vow to do so now—in everything, and for all my life!” cried Lise
fervently, “and I’ll do it gladly, gladly! What’s more, I’ll swear
never to spy on you, never once, never to read one of your letters. For
you are right and I am not. And though I shall be awfully tempted to
spy, I know that I won’t do it since you consider it dishonorable. You
are my conscience now.... Listen, Alexey Fyodorovitch, why have you
been so sad lately—both yesterday and to‐day? I know you have a lot of
anxiety and trouble, but I see you have some special grief besides,
some secret one, perhaps?”

“Yes, Lise, I have a secret one, too,” answered Alyosha mournfully. “I
see you love me, since you guessed that.”

“What grief? What about? Can you tell me?” asked Lise with timid
entreaty.

“I’ll tell you later, Lise—afterwards,” said Alyosha, confused. “Now
you wouldn’t understand it perhaps—and perhaps I couldn’t explain it.”

“I know your brothers and your father are worrying you, too.”

“Yes, my brothers too,” murmured Alyosha, pondering.

“I don’t like your brother Ivan, Alyosha,” said Lise suddenly.

He noticed this remark with some surprise, but did not answer it.

“My brothers are destroying themselves,” he went on, “my father, too.
And they are destroying others with them. It’s ‘the primitive force of
the Karamazovs,’ as Father Païssy said the other day, a crude,
unbridled, earthly force. Does the spirit of God move above that force?
Even that I don’t know. I only know that I, too, am a Karamazov.... Me
a monk, a monk! Am I a monk, Lise? You said just now that I was.”

“Yes, I did.”

“And perhaps I don’t even believe in God.”

“You don’t believe? What is the matter?” said Lise quietly and gently.
But Alyosha did not answer. There was something too mysterious, too
subjective in these last words of his, perhaps obscure to himself, but
yet torturing him.

“And now on the top of it all, my friend, the best man in the world, is
going, is leaving the earth! If you knew, Lise, how bound up in soul I
am with him! And then I shall be left alone.... I shall come to you,
Lise.... For the future we will be together.”

“Yes, together, together! Henceforward we shall be always together, all
our lives! Listen, kiss me, I allow you.”

Alyosha kissed her.

“Come, now go. Christ be with you!” and she made the sign of the cross
over him. “Make haste back to _him_ while he is alive. I see I’ve kept
you cruelly. I’ll pray to‐day for him and you. Alyosha, we shall be
happy! Shall we be happy, shall we?”

“I believe we shall, Lise.”

Alyosha thought it better not to go in to Madame Hohlakov and was going
out of the house without saying good‐by to her. But no sooner had he
opened the door than he found Madame Hohlakov standing before him. From
the first word Alyosha guessed that she had been waiting on purpose to
meet him.

“Alexey Fyodorovitch, this is awful. This is all childish nonsense and
ridiculous. I trust you won’t dream—It’s foolishness, nothing but
foolishness!” she said, attacking him at once.

“Only don’t tell her that,” said Alyosha, “or she will be upset, and
that’s bad for her now.”

“Sensible advice from a sensible young man. Am I to understand that you
only agreed with her from compassion for her invalid state, because you
didn’t want to irritate her by contradiction?”

“Oh, no, not at all. I was quite serious in what I said,” Alyosha
declared stoutly.

“To be serious about it is impossible, unthinkable, and in the first
place I shall never be at home to you again, and I shall take her away,
you may be sure of that.”

“But why?” asked Alyosha. “It’s all so far off. We may have to wait
another year and a half.”

“Ah, Alexey Fyodorovitch, that’s true, of course, and you’ll have time
to quarrel and separate a thousand times in a year and a half. But I am
so unhappy! Though it’s such nonsense, it’s a great blow to me. I feel
like Famusov in the last scene of _Sorrow from Wit_. You are Tchatsky
and she is Sofya, and, only fancy, I’ve run down to meet you on the
stairs, and in the play the fatal scene takes place on the staircase. I
heard it all; I almost dropped. So this is the explanation of her
dreadful night and her hysterics of late! It means love to the daughter
but death to the mother. I might as well be in my grave at once. And a
more serious matter still, what is this letter she has written? Show it
me at once, at once!”

“No, there’s no need. Tell me, how is Katerina Ivanovna now? I must
know.”

“She still lies in delirium; she has not regained consciousness. Her
aunts are here; but they do nothing but sigh and give themselves airs.
Herzenstube came, and he was so alarmed that I didn’t know what to do
for him. I nearly sent for a doctor to look after him. He was driven
home in my carriage. And on the top of it all, you and this letter!
It’s true nothing can happen for a year and a half. In the name of all
that’s holy, in the name of your dying elder, show me that letter,
Alexey Fyodorovitch. I’m her mother. Hold it in your hand, if you like,
and I will read it so.”

“No, I won’t show it to you. Even if she sanctioned it, I wouldn’t. I
am coming to‐morrow, and if you like, we can talk over many things, but
now good‐by!”

And Alyosha ran downstairs and into the street.




Chapter II.
Smerdyakov With A Guitar


He had no time to lose indeed. Even while he was saying good‐by to
Lise, the thought had struck him that he must attempt some stratagem to
find his brother Dmitri, who was evidently keeping out of his way. It
was getting late, nearly three o’clock. Alyosha’s whole soul turned to
the monastery, to his dying saint, but the necessity of seeing Dmitri
outweighed everything. The conviction that a great inevitable
catastrophe was about to happen grew stronger in Alyosha’s mind with
every hour. What that catastrophe was, and what he would say at that
moment to his brother, he could perhaps not have said definitely. “Even
if my benefactor must die without me, anyway I won’t have to reproach
myself all my life with the thought that I might have saved something
and did not, but passed by and hastened home. If I do as I intend, I
shall be following his great precept.”

His plan was to catch his brother Dmitri unawares, to climb over the
fence, as he had the day before, get into the garden and sit in the
summer‐house. If Dmitri were not there, thought Alyosha, he would not
announce himself to Foma or the women of the house, but would remain
hidden in the summer‐house, even if he had to wait there till evening.
If, as before, Dmitri were lying in wait for Grushenka to come, he
would be very likely to come to the summer‐house. Alyosha did not,
however, give much thought to the details of his plan, but resolved to
act upon it, even if it meant not getting back to the monastery that
day.

Everything happened without hindrance, he climbed over the hurdle
almost in the same spot as the day before, and stole into the
summer‐house unseen. He did not want to be noticed. The woman of the
house and Foma too, if he were here, might be loyal to his brother and
obey his instructions, and so refuse to let Alyosha come into the
garden, or might warn Dmitri that he was being sought and inquired for.

There was no one in the summer‐house. Alyosha sat down and began to
wait. He looked round the summer‐house, which somehow struck him as a
great deal more ancient than before. Though the day was just as fine as
yesterday, it seemed a wretched little place this time. There was a
circle on the table, left no doubt from the glass of brandy having been
spilt the day before. Foolish and irrelevant ideas strayed about his
mind, as they always do in a time of tedious waiting. He wondered, for
instance, why he had sat down precisely in the same place as before,
why not in the other seat. At last he felt very depressed—depressed by
suspense and uncertainty. But he had not sat there more than a quarter
of an hour, when he suddenly heard the thrum of a guitar somewhere
quite close. People were sitting, or had only just sat down, somewhere
in the bushes not more than twenty paces away. Alyosha suddenly
recollected that on coming out of the summer‐house the day before, he
had caught a glimpse of an old green low garden‐seat among the bushes
on the left, by the fence. The people must be sitting on it now. Who
were they?

A man’s voice suddenly began singing in a sugary falsetto, accompanying
himself on the guitar:

With invincible force
I am bound to my dear.
O Lord, have mercy
On her and on me!
On her and on me!
On her and on me!


The voice ceased. It was a lackey’s tenor and a lackey’s song. Another
voice, a woman’s, suddenly asked insinuatingly and bashfully, though
with mincing affectation:

“Why haven’t you been to see us for so long, Pavel Fyodorovitch? Why do
you always look down upon us?”

“Not at all,” answered a man’s voice politely, but with emphatic
dignity. It was clear that the man had the best of the position, and
that the woman was making advances. “I believe the man must be
Smerdyakov,” thought Alyosha, “from his voice. And the lady must be the
daughter of the house here, who has come from Moscow, the one who wears
the dress with a tail and goes to Marfa for soup.”

“I am awfully fond of verses of all kinds, if they rhyme,” the woman’s
voice continued. “Why don’t you go on?”

The man sang again:

What do I care for royal wealth
If but my dear one be in health?
Lord have mercy
On her and on me!
On her and on me!
On her and on me!


“It was even better last time,” observed the woman’s voice. “You sang
‘If my darling be in health’; it sounded more tender. I suppose you’ve
forgotten to‐day.”

“Poetry is rubbish!” said Smerdyakov curtly.

“Oh, no! I am very fond of poetry.”

“So far as it’s poetry, it’s essential rubbish. Consider yourself, who
ever talks in rhyme? And if we were all to talk in rhyme, even though
it were decreed by government, we shouldn’t say much, should we? Poetry
is no good, Marya Kondratyevna.”

“How clever you are! How is it you’ve gone so deep into everything?”
The woman’s voice was more and more insinuating.

“I could have done better than that. I could have known more than that,
if it had not been for my destiny from my childhood up. I would have
shot a man in a duel if he called me names because I am descended from
a filthy beggar and have no father. And they used to throw it in my
teeth in Moscow. It had reached them from here, thanks to Grigory
Vassilyevitch. Grigory Vassilyevitch blames me for rebelling against my
birth, but I would have sanctioned their killing me before I was born
that I might not have come into the world at all. They used to say in
the market, and your mamma too, with great lack of delicacy, set off
telling me that her hair was like a mat on her head, and that she was
short of five foot by a wee bit. Why talk of a wee bit while she might
have said ‘a little bit,’ like every one else? She wanted to make it
touching, a regular peasant’s feeling. Can a Russian peasant be said to
feel, in comparison with an educated man? He can’t be said to have
feeling at all, in his ignorance. From my childhood up when I hear ‘a
wee bit,’ I am ready to burst with rage. I hate all Russia, Marya
Kondratyevna.”

“If you’d been a cadet in the army, or a young hussar, you wouldn’t
have talked like that, but would have drawn your saber to defend all
Russia.”

“I don’t want to be a hussar, Marya Kondratyevna, and, what’s more, I
should like to abolish all soldiers.”

“And when an enemy comes, who is going to defend us?”

“There’s no need of defense. In 1812 there was a great invasion of
Russia by Napoleon, first Emperor of the French, father of the present
one, and it would have been a good thing if they had conquered us. A
clever nation would have conquered a very stupid one and annexed it. We
should have had quite different institutions.”

“Are they so much better in their own country than we are? I wouldn’t
change a dandy I know of for three young Englishmen,” observed Marya
Kondratyevna tenderly, doubtless accompanying her words with a most
languishing glance.

“That’s as one prefers.”

“But you are just like a foreigner—just like a most gentlemanly
foreigner. I tell you that, though it makes me bashful.”

“If you care to know, the folks there and ours here are just alike in
their vice. They are swindlers, only there the scoundrel wears polished
boots and here he grovels in filth and sees no harm in it. The Russian
people want thrashing, as Fyodor Pavlovitch said very truly yesterday,
though he is mad, and all his children.”

“You said yourself you had such a respect for Ivan Fyodorovitch.”

“But he said I was a stinking lackey. He thinks that I might be unruly.
He is mistaken there. If I had a certain sum in my pocket, I would have
left here long ago. Dmitri Fyodorovitch is lower than any lackey in his
behavior, in his mind, and in his poverty. He doesn’t know how to do
anything, and yet he is respected by every one. I may be only a soup‐
maker, but with luck I could open a café restaurant in Petrovka, in
Moscow, for my cookery is something special, and there’s no one in
Moscow, except the foreigners, whose cookery is anything special.
Dmitri Fyodorovitch is a beggar, but if he were to challenge the son of
the first count in the country, he’d fight him. Though in what way is
he better than I am? For he is ever so much stupider than I am. Look at
the money he has wasted without any need!”

“It must be lovely, a duel,” Marya Kondratyevna observed suddenly.

“How so?”

“It must be so dreadful and so brave, especially when young officers
with pistols in their hands pop at one another for the sake of some
lady. A perfect picture! Ah, if only girls were allowed to look on, I’d
give anything to see one!”

“It’s all very well when you are firing at some one, but when he is
firing straight in your mug, you must feel pretty silly. You’d be glad
to run away, Marya Kondratyevna.”

“You don’t mean you would run away?” But Smerdyakov did not deign to
reply. After a moment’s silence the guitar tinkled again, and he sang
again in the same falsetto:

Whatever you may say,
I shall go far away.
Life will be bright and gay
In the city far away.
I shall not grieve,
I shall not grieve at all,
I don’t intend to grieve at all.


Then something unexpected happened. Alyosha suddenly sneezed. They were
silent. Alyosha got up and walked towards them. He found Smerdyakov
dressed up and wearing polished boots, his hair pomaded, and perhaps
curled. The guitar lay on the garden‐seat. His companion was the
daughter of the house, wearing a light‐blue dress with a train two
yards long. She was young and would not have been bad‐looking, but that
her face was so round and terribly freckled.

“Will my brother Dmitri soon be back?” asked Alyosha with as much
composure as he could.

Smerdyakov got up slowly; Marya Kondratyevna rose too.

“How am I to know about Dmitri Fyodorovitch? It’s not as if I were his
keeper,” answered Smerdyakov quietly, distinctly, and superciliously.

“But I simply asked whether you do know?” Alyosha explained.

“I know nothing of his whereabouts and don’t want to.”

“But my brother told me that you let him know all that goes on in the
house, and promised to let him know when Agrafena Alexandrovna comes.”

Smerdyakov turned a deliberate, unmoved glance upon him.

“And how did you get in this time, since the gate was bolted an hour
ago?” he asked, looking at Alyosha.

“I came in from the back‐alley, over the fence, and went straight to
the summer‐house. I hope you’ll forgive me,” he added, addressing Marya
Kondratyevna. “I was in a hurry to find my brother.”

“Ach, as though we could take it amiss in you!” drawled Marya
Kondratyevna, flattered by Alyosha’s apology. “For Dmitri Fyodorovitch
often goes to the summer‐house in that way. We don’t know he is here
and he is sitting in the summer‐house.”

“I am very anxious to find him, or to learn from you where he is now.
Believe me, it’s on business of great importance to him.”

“He never tells us,” lisped Marya Kondratyevna.

“Though I used to come here as a friend,” Smerdyakov began again,
“Dmitri Fyodorovitch has pestered me in a merciless way even here by
his incessant questions about the master. ‘What news?’ he’ll ask.
‘What’s going on in there now? Who’s coming and going?’ and can’t I
tell him something more. Twice already he’s threatened me with death.”

“With death?” Alyosha exclaimed in surprise.

“Do you suppose he’d think much of that, with his temper, which you had
a chance of observing yourself yesterday? He says if I let Agrafena
Alexandrovna in and she passes the night there, I’ll be the first to
suffer for it. I am terribly afraid of him, and if I were not even more
afraid of doing so, I ought to let the police know. God only knows what
he might not do!”

“His honor said to him the other day, ‘I’ll pound you in a mortar!’ ”
added Marya Kondratyevna.

“Oh, if it’s pounding in a mortar, it may be only talk,” observed
Alyosha. “If I could meet him, I might speak to him about that too.”

“Well, the only thing I can tell you is this,” said Smerdyakov, as
though thinking better of it; “I am here as an old friend and neighbor,
and it would be odd if I didn’t come. On the other hand, Ivan
Fyodorovitch sent me first thing this morning to your brother’s lodging
in Lake Street, without a letter, but with a message to Dmitri
Fyodorovitch to go to dine with him at the restaurant here, in the
market‐place. I went, but didn’t find Dmitri Fyodorovitch at home,
though it was eight o’clock. ‘He’s been here, but he is quite gone,’
those were the very words of his landlady. It’s as though there was an
understanding between them. Perhaps at this moment he is in the
restaurant with Ivan Fyodorovitch, for Ivan Fyodorovitch has not been
home to dinner and Fyodor Pavlovitch dined alone an hour ago, and is
gone to lie down. But I beg you most particularly not to speak of me
and of what I have told you, for he’d kill me for nothing at all.”

“Brother Ivan invited Dmitri to the restaurant to‐day?” repeated
Alyosha quickly.

“That’s so.”

“The Metropolis tavern in the market‐place?”

“The very same.”

“That’s quite likely,” cried Alyosha, much excited. “Thank you,
Smerdyakov; that’s important. I’ll go there at once.”

“Don’t betray me,” Smerdyakov called after him.

“Oh, no, I’ll go to the tavern as though by chance. Don’t be anxious.”

“But wait a minute, I’ll open the gate to you,” cried Marya
Kondratyevna.

“No; it’s a short cut, I’ll get over the fence again.”

What he had heard threw Alyosha into great agitation. He ran to the
tavern. It was impossible for him to go into the tavern in his monastic
dress, but he could inquire at the entrance for his brothers and call
them down. But just as he reached the tavern, a window was flung open,
and his brother Ivan called down to him from it.

“Alyosha, can’t you come up here to me? I shall be awfully grateful.”

“To be sure I can, only I don’t quite know whether in this dress—”

“But I am in a room apart. Come up the steps; I’ll run down to meet
you.”

A minute later Alyosha was sitting beside his brother. Ivan was alone
dining.




Chapter III.
The Brothers Make Friends


Ivan was not, however, in a separate room, but only in a place shut off
by a screen, so that it was unseen by other people in the room. It was
the first room from the entrance with a buffet along the wall. Waiters
were continually darting to and fro in it. The only customer in the
room was an old retired military man drinking tea in a corner. But
there was the usual bustle going on in the other rooms of the tavern;
there were shouts for the waiters, the sound of popping corks, the
click of billiard balls, the drone of the organ. Alyosha knew that Ivan
did not usually visit this tavern and disliked taverns in general. So
he must have come here, he reflected, simply to meet Dmitri by
arrangement. Yet Dmitri was not there.

“Shall I order you fish, soup or anything. You don’t live on tea alone,
I suppose,” cried Ivan, apparently delighted at having got hold of
Alyosha. He had finished dinner and was drinking tea.

“Let me have soup, and tea afterwards, I am hungry,” said Alyosha
gayly.

“And cherry jam? They have it here. You remember how you used to love
cherry jam when you were little?”

“You remember that? Let me have jam too, I like it still.”

Ivan rang for the waiter and ordered soup, jam and tea.

“I remember everything, Alyosha, I remember you till you were eleven, I
was nearly fifteen. There’s such a difference between fifteen and
eleven that brothers are never companions at those ages. I don’t know
whether I was fond of you even. When I went away to Moscow for the
first few years I never thought of you at all. Then, when you came to
Moscow yourself, we only met once somewhere, I believe. And now I’ve
been here more than three months, and so far we have scarcely said a
word to each other. To‐morrow I am going away, and I was just thinking
as I sat here how I could see you to say good‐by and just then you
passed.”

“Were you very anxious to see me, then?”

“Very. I want to get to know you once for all, and I want you to know
me. And then to say good‐by. I believe it’s always best to get to know
people just before leaving them. I’ve noticed how you’ve been looking
at me these three months. There has been a continual look of
expectation in your eyes, and I can’t endure that. That’s how it is
I’ve kept away from you. But in the end I have learned to respect you.
The little man stands firm, I thought. Though I am laughing, I am
serious. You do stand firm, don’t you? I like people who are firm like
that whatever it is they stand by, even if they are such little fellows
as you. Your expectant eyes ceased to annoy me, I grew fond of them in
the end, those expectant eyes. You seem to love me for some reason,
Alyosha?”

“I do love you, Ivan. Dmitri says of you—Ivan is a tomb! I say of you,
Ivan is a riddle. You are a riddle to me even now. But I understand
something in you, and I did not understand it till this morning.”

“What’s that?” laughed Ivan.

“You won’t be angry?” Alyosha laughed too.

“Well?”

“That you are just as young as other young men of three and twenty,
that you are just a young and fresh and nice boy, green in fact! Now,
have I insulted you dreadfully?”

“On the contrary, I am struck by a coincidence,” cried Ivan, warmly and
good‐humoredly. “Would you believe it that ever since that scene with
her, I have thought of nothing else but my youthful greenness, and just
as though you guessed that, you begin about it. Do you know I’ve been
sitting here thinking to myself: that if I didn’t believe in life, if I
lost faith in the woman I love, lost faith in the order of things, were
convinced in fact that everything is a disorderly, damnable, and
perhaps devil‐ridden chaos, if I were struck by every horror of man’s
disillusionment—still I should want to live and, having once tasted of
the cup, I would not turn away from it till I had drained it! At
thirty, though, I shall be sure to leave the cup, even if I’ve not
emptied it, and turn away—where I don’t know. But till I am thirty, I
know that my youth will triumph over everything—every disillusionment,
every disgust with life. I’ve asked myself many times whether there is
in the world any despair that would overcome this frantic and perhaps
unseemly thirst for life in me, and I’ve come to the conclusion that
there isn’t, that is till I am thirty, and then I shall lose it of
myself, I fancy. Some driveling consumptive moralists—and poets
especially—often call that thirst for life base. It’s a feature of the
Karamazovs, it’s true, that thirst for life regardless of everything;
you have it no doubt too, but why is it base? The centripetal force on
our planet is still fearfully strong, Alyosha. I have a longing for
life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in
the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they
open in spring. I love the blue sky, I love some people, whom one loves
you know sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by
men, though I’ve long ceased perhaps to have faith in them, yet from
old habit one’s heart prizes them. Here they have brought the soup for
you, eat it, it will do you good. It’s first‐rate soup, they know how
to make it here. I want to travel in Europe, Alyosha, I shall set off
from here. And yet I know that I am only going to a graveyard, but it’s
a most precious graveyard, that’s what it is! Precious are the dead
that lie there, every stone over them speaks of such burning life in
the past, of such passionate faith in their work, their truth, their
struggle and their science, that I know I shall fall on the ground and
kiss those stones and weep over them; though I’m convinced in my heart
that it’s long been nothing but a graveyard. And I shall not weep from
despair, but simply because I shall be happy in my tears, I shall steep
my soul in my emotion. I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue
sky—that’s all it is. It’s not a matter of intellect or logic, it’s
loving with one’s inside, with one’s stomach. One loves the first
strength of one’s youth. Do you understand anything of my tirade,
Alyosha?” Ivan laughed suddenly.

“I understand too well, Ivan. One longs to love with one’s inside, with
one’s stomach. You said that so well and I am awfully glad that you
have such a longing for life,” cried Alyosha. “I think every one should
love life above everything in the world.”

“Love life more than the meaning of it?”

“Certainly, love it, regardless of logic as you say, it must be
regardless of logic, and it’s only then one will understand the meaning
of it. I have thought so a long time. Half your work is done, Ivan, you
love life, now you’ve only to try to do the second half and you are
saved.”

“You are trying to save me, but perhaps I am not lost! And what does
your second half mean?”

“Why, one has to raise up your dead, who perhaps have not died after
all. Come, let me have tea. I am so glad of our talk, Ivan.”

“I see you are feeling inspired. I am awfully fond of such _professions
de foi_ from such—novices. You are a steadfast person, Alexey. Is it
true that you mean to leave the monastery?”

“Yes, my elder sends me out into the world.”

“We shall see each other then in the world. We shall meet before I am
thirty, when I shall begin to turn aside from the cup. Father doesn’t
want to turn aside from his cup till he is seventy, he dreams of
hanging on to eighty in fact, so he says. He means it only too
seriously, though he is a buffoon. He stands on a firm rock, too, he
stands on his sensuality—though after we are thirty, indeed, there may
be nothing else to stand on.... But to hang on to seventy is nasty,
better only to thirty; one might retain ‘a shadow of nobility’ by
deceiving oneself. Have you seen Dmitri to‐day?”

“No, but I saw Smerdyakov,” and Alyosha rapidly, though minutely,
described his meeting with Smerdyakov. Ivan began listening anxiously
and questioned him.

“But he begged me not to tell Dmitri that he had told me about him,”
added Alyosha. Ivan frowned and pondered.

“Are you frowning on Smerdyakov’s account?” asked Alyosha.

“Yes, on his account. Damn him, I certainly did want to see Dmitri, but
now there’s no need,” said Ivan reluctantly.

“But are you really going so soon, brother?”

“Yes.”

“What of Dmitri and father? how will it end?” asked Alyosha anxiously.

“You are always harping upon it! What have I to do with it? Am I my
brother Dmitri’s keeper?” Ivan snapped irritably, but then he suddenly
smiled bitterly. “Cain’s answer about his murdered brother, wasn’t it?
Perhaps that’s what you’re thinking at this moment? Well, damn it all,
I can’t stay here to be their keeper, can I? I’ve finished what I had
to do, and I am going. Do you imagine I am jealous of Dmitri, that I’ve
been trying to steal his beautiful Katerina Ivanovna for the last three
months? Nonsense, I had business of my own. I finished it. I am going.
I finished it just now, you were witness.”

“At Katerina Ivanovna’s?”

“Yes, and I’ve released myself once for all. And after all, what have I
to do with Dmitri? Dmitri doesn’t come in. I had my own business to
settle with Katerina Ivanovna. You know, on the contrary, that Dmitri
behaved as though there was an understanding between us. I didn’t ask
him to do it, but he solemnly handed her over to me and gave us his
blessing. It’s all too funny. Ah, Alyosha, if you only knew how light
my heart is now! Would you believe, it, I sat here eating my dinner and
was nearly ordering champagne to celebrate my first hour of freedom.
Tfoo! It’s been going on nearly six months, and all at once I’ve thrown
it off. I could never have guessed even yesterday, how easy it would be
to put an end to it if I wanted.”

“You are speaking of your love, Ivan?”

“Of my love, if you like. I fell in love with the young lady, I worried
myself over her and she worried me. I sat watching over her ... and all
at once it’s collapsed! I spoke this morning with inspiration, but I
went away and roared with laughter. Would you believe it? Yes, it’s the
literal truth.”

“You seem very merry about it now,” observed Alyosha, looking into his
face, which had suddenly grown brighter.

“But how could I tell that I didn’t care for her a bit! Ha ha! It
appears after all I didn’t. And yet how she attracted me! How
attractive she was just now when I made my speech! And do you know she
attracts me awfully even now, yet how easy it is to leave her. Do you
think I am boasting?”

“No, only perhaps it wasn’t love.”

“Alyosha,” laughed Ivan, “don’t make reflections about love, it’s
unseemly for you. How you rushed into the discussion this morning! I’ve
forgotten to kiss you for it.... But how she tormented me! It certainly
was sitting by a ‘laceration.’ Ah, she knew how I loved her! She loved
me and not Dmitri,” Ivan insisted gayly. “Her feeling for Dmitri was
simply a self‐ laceration. All I told her just now was perfectly true,
but the worst of it is, it may take her fifteen or twenty years to find
out that she doesn’t care for Dmitri, and loves me whom she torments,
and perhaps she may never find it out at all, in spite of her lesson
to‐day. Well, it’s better so; I can simply go away for good. By the
way, how is she now? What happened after I departed?”

Alyosha told him she had been hysterical, and that she was now, he
heard, unconscious and delirious.

“Isn’t Madame Hohlakov laying it on?”

“I think not.”

“I must find out. Nobody dies of hysterics, though. They don’t matter.
God gave woman hysterics as a relief. I won’t go to her at all. Why
push myself forward again?”

“But you told her that she had never cared for you.”

“I did that on purpose. Alyosha, shall I call for some champagne? Let
us drink to my freedom. Ah, if only you knew how glad I am!”

“No, brother, we had better not drink,” said Alyosha suddenly. “Besides
I feel somehow depressed.”

“Yes, you’ve been depressed a long time, I’ve noticed it.”

“Have you settled to go to‐morrow morning, then?”

“Morning? I didn’t say I should go in the morning.... But perhaps it
may be the morning. Would you believe it, I dined here to‐day only to
avoid dining with the old man, I loathe him so. I should have left long
ago, so far as he is concerned. But why are you so worried about my
going away? We’ve plenty of time before I go, an eternity!”

“If you are going away to‐morrow, what do you mean by an eternity?”

“But what does it matter to us?” laughed Ivan. “We’ve time enough for
our talk, for what brought us here. Why do you look so surprised?
Answer: why have we met here? To talk of my love for Katerina Ivanovna,
of the old man and Dmitri? of foreign travel? of the fatal position of
Russia? Of the Emperor Napoleon? Is that it?”

“No.”

“Then you know what for. It’s different for other people; but we in our
green youth have to settle the eternal questions first of all. That’s
what we care about. Young Russia is talking about nothing but the
eternal questions now. Just when the old folks are all taken up with
practical questions. Why have you been looking at me in expectation for
the last three months? To ask me, ‘What do you believe, or don’t you
believe at all?’ That’s what your eyes have been meaning for these
three months, haven’t they?”

“Perhaps so,” smiled Alyosha. “You are not laughing at me, now, Ivan?”

“Me laughing! I don’t want to wound my little brother who has been
watching me with such expectation for three months. Alyosha, look
straight at me! Of course I am just such a little boy as you are, only
not a novice. And what have Russian boys been doing up till now, some
of them, I mean? In this stinking tavern, for instance, here, they meet
and sit down in a corner. They’ve never met in their lives before and,
when they go out of the tavern, they won’t meet again for forty years.
And what do they talk about in that momentary halt in the tavern? Of
the eternal questions, of the existence of God and immortality. And
those who do not believe in God talk of socialism or anarchism, of the
transformation of all humanity on a new pattern, so that it all comes
to the same, they’re the same questions turned inside out. And masses,
masses of the most original Russian boys do nothing but talk of the
eternal questions! Isn’t it so?”

“Yes, for real Russians the questions of God’s existence and of
immortality, or, as you say, the same questions turned inside out, come
first and foremost, of course, and so they should,” said Alyosha, still
watching his brother with the same gentle and inquiring smile.

“Well, Alyosha, it’s sometimes very unwise to be a Russian at all, but
anything stupider than the way Russian boys spend their time one can
hardly imagine. But there’s one Russian boy called Alyosha I am awfully
fond of.”

“How nicely you put that in!” Alyosha laughed suddenly.

“Well, tell me where to begin, give your orders. The existence of God,
eh?”

“Begin where you like. You declared yesterday at father’s that there
was no God.” Alyosha looked searchingly at his brother.

“I said that yesterday at dinner on purpose to tease you and I saw your
eyes glow. But now I’ve no objection to discussing with you, and I say
so very seriously. I want to be friends with you, Alyosha, for I have
no friends and want to try it. Well, only fancy, perhaps I too accept
God,” laughed Ivan; “that’s a surprise for you, isn’t it?”

“Yes, of course, if you are not joking now.”

“Joking? I was told at the elder’s yesterday that I was joking. You
know, dear boy, there was an old sinner in the eighteenth century who
declared that, if there were no God, he would have to be invented.
_S’il n’existait pas Dieu, il faudrait l’inventer._ And man has
actually invented God. And what’s strange, what would be marvelous, is
not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the
idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage,
vicious beast as man. So holy it is, so touching, so wise and so great
a credit it does to man. As for me, I’ve long resolved not to think
whether man created God or God man. And I won’t go through all the
axioms laid down by Russian boys on that subject, all derived from
European hypotheses; for what’s a hypothesis there, is an axiom with
the Russian boy, and not only with the boys but with their teachers
too, for our Russian professors are often just the same boys
themselves. And so I omit all the hypotheses. For what are we aiming at
now? I am trying to explain as quickly as possible my essential nature,
that is what manner of man I am, what I believe in, and for what I
hope, that’s it, isn’t it? And therefore I tell you that I accept God
simply. But you must note this: if God exists and if He really did
create the world, then, as we all know, He created it according to the
geometry of Euclid and the human mind with the conception of only three
dimensions in space. Yet there have been and still are geometricians
and philosophers, and even some of the most distinguished, who doubt
whether the whole universe, or to speak more widely the whole of being,
was only created in Euclid’s geometry; they even dare to dream that two
parallel lines, which according to Euclid can never meet on earth, may
meet somewhere in infinity. I have come to the conclusion that, since I
can’t understand even that, I can’t expect to understand about God. I
acknowledge humbly that I have no faculty for settling such questions,
I have a Euclidian earthly mind, and how could I solve problems that
are not of this world? And I advise you never to think about it either,
my dear Alyosha, especially about God, whether He exists or not. All
such questions are utterly inappropriate for a mind created with an
idea of only three dimensions. And so I accept God and am glad to, and
what’s more, I accept His wisdom, His purpose—which are utterly beyond
our ken; I believe in the underlying order and the meaning of life; I
believe in the eternal harmony in which they say we shall one day be
blended. I believe in the Word to Which the universe is striving, and
Which Itself was ‘with God,’ and Which Itself is God and so on, and so
on, to infinity. There are all sorts of phrases for it. I seem to be on
the right path, don’t I? Yet would you believe it, in the final result
I don’t accept this world of God’s, and, although I know it exists, I
don’t accept it at all. It’s not that I don’t accept God, you must
understand, it’s the world created by Him I don’t and cannot accept.
Let me make it plain. I believe like a child that suffering will be
healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human
contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable
fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidian mind of man,
that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something
so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for
the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes
of humanity, of all the blood they’ve shed; that it will make it not
only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened with
men—but though all that may come to pass, I don’t accept it. I won’t
accept it. Even if parallel lines do meet and I see it myself, I shall
see it and say that they’ve met, but still I won’t accept it. That’s
what’s at the root of me, Alyosha; that’s my creed. I am in earnest in
what I say. I began our talk as stupidly as I could on purpose, but
I’ve led up to my confession, for that’s all you want. You didn’t want
to hear about God, but only to know what the brother you love lives by.
And so I’ve told you.”

Ivan concluded his long tirade with marked and unexpected feeling.

“And why did you begin ‘as stupidly as you could’?” asked Alyosha,
looking dreamily at him.

“To begin with, for the sake of being Russian. Russian conversations on
such subjects are always carried on inconceivably stupidly. And
secondly, the stupider one is, the closer one is to reality. The
stupider one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless,
while intelligence wriggles and hides itself. Intelligence is a knave,
but stupidity is honest and straightforward. I’ve led the conversation
to my despair, and the more stupidly I have presented it, the better
for me.”

“You will explain why you don’t accept the world?” said Alyosha.

“To be sure I will, it’s not a secret, that’s what I’ve been leading up
to. Dear little brother, I don’t want to corrupt you or to turn you
from your stronghold, perhaps I want to be healed by you.” Ivan smiled
suddenly quite like a little gentle child. Alyosha had never seen such
a smile on his face before.




Chapter IV.
Rebellion


“I must make you one confession,” Ivan began. “I could never understand
how one can love one’s neighbors. It’s just one’s neighbors, to my
mind, that one can’t love, though one might love those at a distance. I
once read somewhere of John the Merciful, a saint, that when a hungry,
frozen beggar came to him, he took him into his bed, held him in his
arms, and began breathing into his mouth, which was putrid and
loathsome from some awful disease. I am convinced that he did that from
‘self‐laceration,’ from the self‐laceration of falsity, for the sake of
the charity imposed by duty, as a penance laid on him. For any one to
love a man, he must be hidden, for as soon as he shows his face, love
is gone.”

“Father Zossima has talked of that more than once,” observed Alyosha;
“he, too, said that the face of a man often hinders many people not
practiced in love, from loving him. But yet there’s a great deal of
love in mankind, and almost Christ‐like love. I know that myself,
Ivan.”

“Well, I know nothing of it so far, and can’t understand it, and the
innumerable mass of mankind are with me there. The question is, whether
that’s due to men’s bad qualities or whether it’s inherent in their
nature. To my thinking, Christ‐like love for men is a miracle
impossible on earth. He was God. But we are not gods. Suppose I, for
instance, suffer intensely. Another can never know how much I suffer,
because he is another and not I. And what’s more, a man is rarely ready
to admit another’s suffering (as though it were a distinction). Why
won’t he admit it, do you think? Because I smell unpleasant, because I
have a stupid face, because I once trod on his foot. Besides, there is
suffering and suffering; degrading, humiliating suffering such as
humbles me—hunger, for instance—my benefactor will perhaps allow me;
but when you come to higher suffering—for an idea, for instance—he will
very rarely admit that, perhaps because my face strikes him as not at
all what he fancies a man should have who suffers for an idea. And so
he deprives me instantly of his favor, and not at all from badness of
heart. Beggars, especially genteel beggars, ought never to show
themselves, but to ask for charity through the newspapers. One can love
one’s neighbors in the abstract, or even at a distance, but at close
quarters it’s almost impossible. If it were as on the stage, in the
ballet, where if beggars come in, they wear silken rags and tattered
lace and beg for alms dancing gracefully, then one might like looking
at them. But even then we should not love them. But enough of that. I
simply wanted to show you my point of view. I meant to speak of the
suffering of mankind generally, but we had better confine ourselves to
the sufferings of the children. That reduces the scope of my argument
to a tenth of what it would be. Still we’d better keep to the children,
though it does weaken my case. But, in the first place, children can be
loved even at close quarters, even when they are dirty, even when they
are ugly (I fancy, though, children never are ugly). The second reason
why I won’t speak of grown‐up people is that, besides being disgusting
and unworthy of love, they have a compensation—they’ve eaten the apple
and know good and evil, and they have become ‘like gods.’ They go on
eating it still. But the children haven’t eaten anything, and are so
far innocent. Are you fond of children, Alyosha? I know you are, and
you will understand why I prefer to speak of them. If they, too, suffer
horribly on earth, they must suffer for their fathers’ sins, they must
be punished for their fathers, who have eaten the apple; but that
reasoning is of the other world and is incomprehensible for the heart
of man here on earth. The innocent must not suffer for another’s sins,
and especially such innocents! You may be surprised at me, Alyosha, but
I am awfully fond of children, too. And observe, cruel people, the
violent, the rapacious, the Karamazovs are sometimes very fond of
children. Children while they are quite little—up to seven, for
instance—are so remote from grown‐up people; they are different
creatures, as it were, of a different species. I knew a criminal in
prison who had, in the course of his career as a burglar, murdered
whole families, including several children. But when he was in prison,
he had a strange affection for them. He spent all his time at his
window, watching the children playing in the prison yard. He trained
one little boy to come up to his window and made great friends with
him.... You don’t know why I am telling you all this, Alyosha? My head
aches and I am sad.”

“You speak with a strange air,” observed Alyosha uneasily, “as though
you were not quite yourself.”

“By the way, a Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow,” Ivan went on, seeming
not to hear his brother’s words, “told me about the crimes committed by
Turks and Circassians in all parts of Bulgaria through fear of a
general rising of the Slavs. They burn villages, murder, outrage women
and children, they nail their prisoners by the ears to the fences,
leave them so till morning, and in the morning they hang them—all sorts
of things you can’t imagine. People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty,
but that’s a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can
never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears
and gnaws, that’s all he can do. He would never think of nailing people
by the ears, even if he were able to do it. These Turks took a pleasure
in torturing children, too; cutting the unborn child from the mother’s
womb, and tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points
of their bayonets before their mothers’ eyes. Doing it before the
mothers’ eyes was what gave zest to the amusement. Here is another
scene that I thought very interesting. Imagine a trembling mother with
her baby in her arms, a circle of invading Turks around her. They’ve
planned a diversion: they pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They
succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points a pistol four
inches from the baby’s face. The baby laughs with glee, holds out its
little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby’s face
and blows out its brains. Artistic, wasn’t it? By the way, Turks are
particularly fond of sweet things, they say.”

“Brother, what are you driving at?” asked Alyosha.

“I think if the devil doesn’t exist, but man has created him, he has
created him in his own image and likeness.”

“Just as he did God, then?” observed Alyosha.

“ ‘It’s wonderful how you can turn words,’ as Polonius says in
_Hamlet_,” laughed Ivan. “You turn my words against me. Well, I am
glad. Yours must be a fine God, if man created Him in his image and
likeness. You asked just now what I was driving at. You see, I am fond
of collecting certain facts, and, would you believe, I even copy
anecdotes of a certain sort from newspapers and books, and I’ve already
got a fine collection. The Turks, of course, have gone into it, but
they are foreigners. I have specimens from home that are even better
than the Turks. You know we prefer beating—rods and scourges—that’s our
national institution. Nailing ears is unthinkable for us, for we are,
after all, Europeans. But the rod and the scourge we have always with
us and they cannot be taken from us. Abroad now they scarcely do any
beating. Manners are more humane, or laws have been passed, so that
they don’t dare to flog men now. But they make up for it in another way
just as national as ours. And so national that it would be practically
impossible among us, though I believe we are being inoculated with it,
since the religious movement began in our aristocracy. I have a
charming pamphlet, translated from the French, describing how, quite
recently, five years ago, a murderer, Richard, was executed—a young
man, I believe, of three and twenty, who repented and was converted to
the Christian faith at the very scaffold. This Richard was an
illegitimate child who was given as a child of six by his parents to
some shepherds on the Swiss mountains. They brought him up to work for
them. He grew up like a little wild beast among them. The shepherds
taught him nothing, and scarcely fed or clothed him, but sent him out
at seven to herd the flock in cold and wet, and no one hesitated or
scrupled to treat him so. Quite the contrary, they thought they had
every right, for Richard had been given to them as a chattel, and they
did not even see the necessity of feeding him. Richard himself
describes how in those years, like the Prodigal Son in the Gospel, he
longed to eat of the mash given to the pigs, which were fattened for
sale. But they wouldn’t even give him that, and beat him when he stole
from the pigs. And that was how he spent all his childhood and his
youth, till he grew up and was strong enough to go away and be a thief.
The savage began to earn his living as a day laborer in Geneva. He
drank what he earned, he lived like a brute, and finished by killing
and robbing an old man. He was caught, tried, and condemned to death.
They are not sentimentalists there. And in prison he was immediately
surrounded by pastors, members of Christian brotherhoods, philanthropic
ladies, and the like. They taught him to read and write in prison, and
expounded the Gospel to him. They exhorted him, worked upon him,
drummed at him incessantly, till at last he solemnly confessed his
crime. He was converted. He wrote to the court himself that he was a
monster, but that in the end God had vouchsafed him light and shown
grace. All Geneva was in excitement about him—all philanthropic and
religious Geneva. All the aristocratic and well‐bred society of the
town rushed to the prison, kissed Richard and embraced him; ‘You are
our brother, you have found grace.’ And Richard does nothing but weep
with emotion, ‘Yes, I’ve found grace! All my youth and childhood I was
glad of pigs’ food, but now even I have found grace. I am dying in the
Lord.’ ‘Yes, Richard, die in the Lord; you have shed blood and must
die. Though it’s not your fault that you knew not the Lord, when you
coveted the pigs’ food and were beaten for stealing it (which was very
wrong of you, for stealing is forbidden); but you’ve shed blood and you
must die.’ And on the last day, Richard, perfectly limp, did nothing
but cry and repeat every minute: ‘This is my happiest day. I am going
to the Lord.’ ‘Yes,’ cry the pastors and the judges and philanthropic
ladies. ‘This is the happiest day of your life, for you are going to
the Lord!’ They all walk or drive to the scaffold in procession behind
the prison van. At the scaffold they call to Richard: ‘Die, brother,
die in the Lord, for even thou hast found grace!’ And so, covered with
his brothers’ kisses, Richard is dragged on to the scaffold, and led to
the guillotine. And they chopped off his head in brotherly fashion,
because he had found grace. Yes, that’s characteristic. That pamphlet
is translated into Russian by some Russian philanthropists of
aristocratic rank and evangelical aspirations, and has been distributed
gratis for the enlightenment of the people. The case of Richard is
interesting because it’s national. Though to us it’s absurd to cut off
a man’s head, because he has become our brother and has found grace,
yet we have our own speciality, which is all but worse. Our historical
pastime is the direct satisfaction of inflicting pain. There are lines
in Nekrassov describing how a peasant lashes a horse on the eyes, ‘on
its meek eyes,’ every one must have seen it. It’s peculiarly Russian.
He describes how a feeble little nag has foundered under too heavy a
load and cannot move. The peasant beats it, beats it savagely, beats it
at last not knowing what he is doing in the intoxication of cruelty,
thrashes it mercilessly over and over again. ‘However weak you are, you
must pull, if you die for it.’ The nag strains, and then he begins
lashing the poor defenseless creature on its weeping, on its ‘meek
eyes.’ The frantic beast tugs and draws the load, trembling all over,
gasping for breath, moving sideways, with a sort of unnatural spasmodic
action—it’s awful in Nekrassov. But that’s only a horse, and God has
given horses to be beaten. So the Tatars have taught us, and they left
us the knout as a remembrance of it. But men, too, can be beaten. A
well‐educated, cultured gentleman and his wife beat their own child
with a birch‐rod, a girl of seven. I have an exact account of it. The
papa was glad that the birch was covered with twigs. ‘It stings more,’
said he, and so he began stinging his daughter. I know for a fact there
are people who at every blow are worked up to sensuality, to literal
sensuality, which increases progressively at every blow they inflict.
They beat for a minute, for five minutes, for ten minutes, more often
and more savagely. The child screams. At last the child cannot scream,
it gasps, ‘Daddy! daddy!’ By some diabolical unseemly chance the case
was brought into court. A counsel is engaged. The Russian people have
long called a barrister ‘a conscience for hire.’ The counsel protests
in his client’s defense. ‘It’s such a simple thing,’ he says, ‘an
everyday domestic event. A father corrects his child. To our shame be
it said, it is brought into court.’ The jury, convinced by him, give a
favorable verdict. The public roars with delight that the torturer is
acquitted. Ah, pity I wasn’t there! I would have proposed to raise a
subscription in his honor! Charming pictures.

“But I’ve still better things about children. I’ve collected a great,
great deal about Russian children, Alyosha. There was a little girl of
five who was hated by her father and mother, ‘most worthy and
respectable people, of good education and breeding.’ You see, I must
repeat again, it is a peculiar characteristic of many people, this love
of torturing children, and children only. To all other types of
humanity these torturers behave mildly and benevolently, like
cultivated and humane Europeans; but they are very fond of tormenting
children, even fond of children themselves in that sense. It’s just
their defenselessness that tempts the tormentor, just the angelic
confidence of the child who has no refuge and no appeal, that sets his
vile blood on fire. In every man, of course, a demon lies hidden—the
demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat at the screams of the tortured
victim, the demon of lawlessness let off the chain, the demon of
diseases that follow on vice, gout, kidney disease, and so on.

“This poor child of five was subjected to every possible torture by
those cultivated parents. They beat her, thrashed her, kicked her for
no reason till her body was one bruise. Then, they went to greater
refinements of cruelty—shut her up all night in the cold and frost in a
privy, and because she didn’t ask to be taken up at night (as though a
child of five sleeping its angelic, sound sleep could be trained to
wake and ask), they smeared her face and filled her mouth with
excrement, and it was her mother, her mother did this. And that mother
could sleep, hearing the poor child’s groans! Can you understand why a
little creature, who can’t even understand what’s done to her, should
beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark and the
cold, and weep her meek unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect
her? Do you understand that, friend and brother, you pious and humble
novice? Do you understand why this infamy must be and is permitted?
Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he
could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that diabolical
good and evil when it costs so much? Why, the whole world of knowledge
is not worth that child’s prayer to ‘dear, kind God’! I say nothing of
the sufferings of grown‐up people, they have eaten the apple, damn
them, and the devil take them all! But these little ones! I am making
you suffer, Alyosha, you are not yourself. I’ll leave off if you like.”

“Never mind. I want to suffer too,” muttered Alyosha.

“One picture, only one more, because it’s so curious, so
characteristic, and I have only just read it in some collection of
Russian antiquities. I’ve forgotten the name. I must look it up. It was
in the darkest days of serfdom at the beginning of the century, and
long live the Liberator of the People! There was in those days a
general of aristocratic connections, the owner of great estates, one of
those men—somewhat exceptional, I believe, even then—who, retiring from
the service into a life of leisure, are convinced that they’ve earned
absolute power over the lives of their subjects. There were such men
then. So our general, settled on his property of two thousand souls,
lives in pomp, and domineers over his poor neighbors as though they
were dependents and buffoons. He has kennels of hundreds of hounds and
nearly a hundred dog‐boys—all mounted, and in uniform. One day a
serf‐boy, a little child of eight, threw a stone in play and hurt the
paw of the general’s favorite hound. ‘Why is my favorite dog lame?’ He
is told that the boy threw a stone that hurt the dog’s paw. ‘So you did
it.’ The general looked the child up and down. ‘Take him.’ He was
taken—taken from his mother and kept shut up all night. Early that
morning the general comes out on horseback, with the hounds, his
dependents, dog‐boys, and huntsmen, all mounted around him in full
hunting parade. The servants are summoned for their edification, and in
front of them all stands the mother of the child. The child is brought
from the lock‐up. It’s a gloomy, cold, foggy autumn day, a capital day
for hunting. The general orders the child to be undressed; the child is
stripped naked. He shivers, numb with terror, not daring to cry....
‘Make him run,’ commands the general. ‘Run! run!’ shout the dog‐boys.
The boy runs.... ‘At him!’ yells the general, and he sets the whole
pack of hounds on the child. The hounds catch him, and tear him to
pieces before his mother’s eyes!... I believe the general was
afterwards declared incapable of administering his estates. Well—what
did he deserve? To be shot? To be shot for the satisfaction of our
moral feelings? Speak, Alyosha!”

“To be shot,” murmured Alyosha, lifting his eyes to Ivan with a pale,
twisted smile.

“Bravo!” cried Ivan, delighted. “If even you say so.... You’re a pretty
monk! So there is a little devil sitting in your heart, Alyosha
Karamazov!”

“What I said was absurd, but—”

“That’s just the point, that ‘but’!” cried Ivan. “Let me tell you,
novice, that the absurd is only too necessary on earth. The world
stands on absurdities, and perhaps nothing would have come to pass in
it without them. We know what we know!”

“What do you know?”

“I understand nothing,” Ivan went on, as though in delirium. “I don’t
want to understand anything now. I want to stick to the fact. I made up
my mind long ago not to understand. If I try to understand anything, I
shall be false to the fact, and I have determined to stick to the
fact.”

“Why are you trying me?” Alyosha cried, with sudden distress. “Will you
say what you mean at last?”

“Of course, I will; that’s what I’ve been leading up to. You are dear
to me, I don’t want to let you go, and I won’t give you up to your
Zossima.”

Ivan for a minute was silent, his face became all at once very sad.

“Listen! I took the case of children only to make my case clearer. Of
the other tears of humanity with which the earth is soaked from its
crust to its center, I will say nothing. I have narrowed my subject on
purpose. I am a bug, and I recognize in all humility that I cannot
understand why the world is arranged as it is. Men are themselves to
blame, I suppose; they were given paradise, they wanted freedom, and
stole fire from heaven, though they knew they would become unhappy, so
there is no need to pity them. With my pitiful, earthly, Euclidian
understanding, all I know is that there is suffering and that there are
none guilty; that cause follows effect, simply and directly; that
everything flows and finds its level—but that’s only Euclidian
nonsense, I know that, and I can’t consent to live by it! What comfort
is it to me that there are none guilty and that cause follows effect
simply and directly, and that I know it?—I must have justice, or I will
destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time and space,
but here on earth, and that I could see myself. I have believed in it.
I want to see it, and if I am dead by then, let me rise again, for if
it all happens without me, it will be too unfair. Surely I haven’t
suffered, simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the
soil of the future harmony for somebody else. I want to see with my own
eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace
his murderer. I want to be there when every one suddenly understands
what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built on
this longing, and I am a believer. But then there are the children, and
what am I to do about them? That’s a question I can’t answer. For the
hundredth time I repeat, there are numbers of questions, but I’ve only
taken the children, because in their case what I mean is so
unanswerably clear. Listen! If all must suffer to pay for the eternal
harmony, what have children to do with it, tell me, please? It’s beyond
all comprehension why they should suffer, and why they should pay for
the harmony. Why should they, too, furnish material to enrich the soil
for the harmony of the future? I understand solidarity in sin among
men. I understand solidarity in retribution, too; but there can be no
such solidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must
share responsibility for all their fathers’ crimes, such a truth is not
of this world and is beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say,
perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you
see he didn’t grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight
years old. Oh, Alyosha, I am not blaspheming! I understand, of course,
what an upheaval of the universe it will be, when everything in heaven
and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and
has lived cries aloud: ‘Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are
revealed.’ When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to
the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, ‘Thou art just, O Lord!’
then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be
made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can’t accept that
harmony. And while I am on earth, I make haste to take my own measures.
You see, Alyosha, perhaps it really may happen that if I live to that
moment, or rise again to see it, I, too, perhaps, may cry aloud with
the rest, looking at the mother embracing the child’s torturer, ‘Thou
art just, O Lord!’ but I don’t want to cry aloud then. While there is
still time, I hasten to protect myself, and so I renounce the higher
harmony altogether. It’s not worth the tears of that one tortured child
who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its
stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to ‘dear, kind God’! It’s
not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned
for, or there can be no harmony. But how? How are you going to atone
for them? Is it possible? By their being avenged? But what do I care
for avenging them? What do I care for a hell for oppressors? What good
can hell do, since those children have already been tortured? And what
becomes of harmony, if there is hell? I want to forgive. I want to
embrace. I don’t want more suffering. And if the sufferings of children
go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth,
then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price. I don’t want
the mother to embrace the oppressor who threw her son to the dogs! She
dare not forgive him! Let her forgive him for herself, if she will, let
her forgive the torturer for the immeasurable suffering of her mother’s
heart. But the sufferings of her tortured child she has no right to
forgive; she dare not forgive the torturer, even if the child were to
forgive him! And if that is so, if they dare not forgive, what becomes
of harmony? Is there in the whole world a being who would have the
right to forgive and could forgive? I don’t want harmony. From love for
humanity I don’t want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged
suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and
unsatisfied indignation, _even if I were wrong_. Besides, too high a
price is asked for harmony; it’s beyond our means to pay so much to
enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I
am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And
that I am doing. It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most
respectfully return Him the ticket.”

“That’s rebellion,” murmured Alyosha, looking down.

“Rebellion? I am sorry you call it that,” said Ivan earnestly. “One can
hardly live in rebellion, and I want to live. Tell me yourself, I
challenge you—answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human
destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them
peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to
torture to death only one tiny creature—that baby beating its breast
with its fist, for instance—and to found that edifice on its unavenged
tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell
me, and tell the truth.”

“No, I wouldn’t consent,” said Alyosha softly.

“And can you admit the idea that men for whom you are building it would
agree to accept their happiness on the foundation of the unexpiated
blood of a little victim? And accepting it would remain happy for
ever?”

“No, I can’t admit it. Brother,” said Alyosha suddenly, with flashing
eyes, “you said just now, is there a being in the whole world who would
have the right to forgive and could forgive? But there is a Being and
He can forgive everything, all and for all, because He gave His
innocent blood for all and everything. You have forgotten Him, and on
Him is built the edifice, and it is to Him they cry aloud, ‘Thou art
just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed!’ ”

“Ah! the One without sin and His blood! No, I have not forgotten Him;
on the contrary I’ve been wondering all the time how it was you did not
bring Him in before, for usually all arguments on your side put Him in
the foreground. Do you know, Alyosha—don’t laugh! I made a poem about a
year ago. If you can waste another ten minutes on me, I’ll tell it to
you.”

“You wrote a poem?”

“Oh, no, I didn’t write it,” laughed Ivan, “and I’ve never written two
lines of poetry in my life. But I made up this poem in prose and I
remembered it. I was carried away when I made it up. You will be my
first reader—that is listener. Why should an author forego even one
listener?” smiled Ivan. “Shall I tell it to you?”

“I am all attention,” said Alyosha.

“My poem is called ‘The Grand Inquisitor’; it’s a ridiculous thing, but
I want to tell it to you.”




Chapter V.
The Grand Inquisitor


“Even this must have a preface—that is, a literary preface,” laughed
Ivan, “and I am a poor hand at making one. You see, my action takes
place in the sixteenth century, and at that time, as you probably
learnt at school, it was customary in poetry to bring down heavenly
powers on earth. Not to speak of Dante, in France, clerks, as well as
the monks in the monasteries, used to give regular performances in
which the Madonna, the saints, the angels, Christ, and God himself were
brought on the stage. In those days it was done in all simplicity. In
Victor Hugo’s _Notre Dame de Paris_ an edifying and gratuitous
spectacle was provided for the people in the Hôtel de Ville of Paris in
the reign of Louis XI. in honor of the birth of the dauphin. It was
called _Le bon jugement de la très sainte et gracieuse Vierge Marie_,
and she appears herself on the stage and pronounces her _bon jugement_.
Similar plays, chiefly from the Old Testament, were occasionally
performed in Moscow too, up to the times of Peter the Great. But
besides plays there were all sorts of legends and ballads scattered
about the world, in which the saints and angels and all the powers of
Heaven took part when required. In our monasteries the monks busied
themselves in translating, copying, and even composing such poems—and
even under the Tatars. There is, for instance, one such poem (of
course, from the Greek), _The Wanderings of Our Lady through Hell_,
with descriptions as bold as Dante’s. Our Lady visits hell, and the
Archangel Michael leads her through the torments. She sees the sinners
and their punishment. There she sees among others one noteworthy set of
sinners in a burning lake; some of them sink to the bottom of the lake
so that they can’t swim out, and ‘these God forgets’—an expression of
extraordinary depth and force. And so Our Lady, shocked and weeping,
falls before the throne of God and begs for mercy for all in hell—for
all she has seen there, indiscriminately. Her conversation with God is
immensely interesting. She beseeches Him, she will not desist, and when
God points to the hands and feet of her Son, nailed to the Cross, and
asks, ‘How can I forgive His tormentors?’ she bids all the saints, all
the martyrs, all the angels and archangels to fall down with her and
pray for mercy on all without distinction. It ends by her winning from
God a respite of suffering every year from Good Friday till Trinity
Day, and the sinners at once raise a cry of thankfulness from hell,
chanting, ‘Thou art just, O Lord, in this judgment.’ Well, my poem
would have been of that kind if it had appeared at that time. He comes
on the scene in my poem, but He says nothing, only appears and passes
on. Fifteen centuries have passed since He promised to come in His
glory, fifteen centuries since His prophet wrote, ‘Behold, I come
quickly’; ‘Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, neither the Son,
but the Father,’ as He Himself predicted on earth. But humanity awaits
him with the same faith and with the same love. Oh, with greater faith,
for it is fifteen centuries since man has ceased to see signs from
heaven.

No signs from heaven come to‐day
To add to what the heart doth say.


There was nothing left but faith in what the heart doth say. It is true
there were many miracles in those days. There were saints who performed
miraculous cures; some holy people, according to their biographies,
were visited by the Queen of Heaven herself. But the devil did not
slumber, and doubts were already arising among men of the truth of
these miracles. And just then there appeared in the north of Germany a
terrible new heresy. “A huge star like to a torch” (that is, to a
church) “fell on the sources of the waters and they became bitter.”
These heretics began blasphemously denying miracles. But those who
remained faithful were all the more ardent in their faith. The tears of
humanity rose up to Him as before, awaited His coming, loved Him, hoped
for Him, yearned to suffer and die for Him as before. And so many ages
mankind had prayed with faith and fervor, “O Lord our God, hasten Thy
coming,” so many ages called upon Him, that in His infinite mercy He
deigned to come down to His servants. Before that day He had come down,
He had visited some holy men, martyrs and hermits, as is written in
their lives. Among us, Tyutchev, with absolute faith in the truth of
his words, bore witness that

Bearing the Cross, in slavish dress,
Weary and worn, the Heavenly King
Our mother, Russia, came to bless,
And through our land went wandering.


And that certainly was so, I assure you.

“And behold, He deigned to appear for a moment to the people, to the
tortured, suffering people, sunk in iniquity, but loving Him like
children. My story is laid in Spain, in Seville, in the most terrible
time of the Inquisition, when fires were lighted every day to the glory
of God, and ‘in the splendid _auto da fé_ the wicked heretics were
burnt.’ Oh, of course, this was not the coming in which He will appear
according to His promise at the end of time in all His heavenly glory,
and which will be sudden ‘as lightning flashing from east to west.’ No,
He visited His children only for a moment, and there where the flames
were crackling round the heretics. In His infinite mercy He came once
more among men in that human shape in which He walked among men for
three years fifteen centuries ago. He came down to the ‘hot pavements’
of the southern town in which on the day before almost a hundred
heretics had, _ad majorem gloriam Dei_, been burnt by the cardinal, the
Grand Inquisitor, in a magnificent _auto da fé_, in the presence of the
king, the court, the knights, the cardinals, the most charming ladies
of the court, and the whole population of Seville.

“He came softly, unobserved, and yet, strange to say, every one
recognized Him. That might be one of the best passages in the poem. I
mean, why they recognized Him. The people are irresistibly drawn to
Him, they surround Him, they flock about Him, follow Him. He moves
silently in their midst with a gentle smile of infinite compassion. The
sun of love burns in His heart, light and power shine from His eyes,
and their radiance, shed on the people, stirs their hearts with
responsive love. He holds out His hands to them, blesses them, and a
healing virtue comes from contact with Him, even with His garments. An
old man in the crowd, blind from childhood, cries out, ‘O Lord, heal me
and I shall see Thee!’ and, as it were, scales fall from his eyes and
the blind man sees Him. The crowd weeps and kisses the earth under His
feet. Children throw flowers before Him, sing, and cry hosannah. ‘It is
He—it is He!’ all repeat. ‘It must be He, it can be no one but Him!’ He
stops at the steps of the Seville cathedral at the moment when the
weeping mourners are bringing in a little open white coffin. In it lies
a child of seven, the only daughter of a prominent citizen. The dead
child lies hidden in flowers. ‘He will raise your child,’ the crowd
shouts to the weeping mother. The priest, coming to meet the coffin,
looks perplexed, and frowns, but the mother of the dead child throws
herself at His feet with a wail. ‘If it is Thou, raise my child!’ she
cries, holding out her hands to Him. The procession halts, the coffin
is laid on the steps at His feet. He looks with compassion, and His
lips once more softly pronounce, ‘Maiden, arise!’ and the maiden
arises. The little girl sits up in the coffin and looks round, smiling
with wide‐ open wondering eyes, holding a bunch of white roses they had
put in her hand.

“There are cries, sobs, confusion among the people, and at that moment
the cardinal himself, the Grand Inquisitor, passes by the cathedral. He
is an old man, almost ninety, tall and erect, with a withered face and
sunken eyes, in which there is still a gleam of light. He is not
dressed in his gorgeous cardinal’s robes, as he was the day before,
when he was burning the enemies of the Roman Church—at this moment he
is wearing his coarse, old, monk’s cassock. At a distance behind him
come his gloomy assistants and slaves and the ‘holy guard.’ He stops at
the sight of the crowd and watches it from a distance. He sees
everything; he sees them set the coffin down at His feet, sees the
child rise up, and his face darkens. He knits his thick gray brows and
his eyes gleam with a sinister fire. He holds out his finger and bids
the guards take Him. And such is his power, so completely are the
people cowed into submission and trembling obedience to him, that the
crowd immediately makes way for the guards, and in the midst of
deathlike silence they lay hands on Him and lead Him away. The crowd
instantly bows down to the earth, like one man, before the old
Inquisitor. He blesses the people in silence and passes on. The guards
lead their prisoner to the close, gloomy vaulted prison in the ancient
palace of the Holy Inquisition and shut Him in it. The day passes and
is followed by the dark, burning, ‘breathless’ night of Seville. The
air is ‘fragrant with laurel and lemon.’ In the pitch darkness the iron
door of the prison is suddenly opened and the Grand Inquisitor himself
comes in with a light in his hand. He is alone; the door is closed at
once behind him. He stands in the doorway and for a minute or two gazes
into His face. At last he goes up slowly, sets the light on the table
and speaks.

“ ‘Is it Thou? Thou?’ but receiving no answer, he adds at once, ‘Don’t
answer, be silent. What canst Thou say, indeed? I know too well what
Thou wouldst say. And Thou hast no right to add anything to what Thou
hadst said of old. Why, then, art Thou come to hinder us? For Thou hast
come to hinder us, and Thou knowest that. But dost Thou know what will
be to‐ morrow? I know not who Thou art and care not to know whether it
is Thou or only a semblance of Him, but to‐morrow I shall condemn Thee
and burn Thee at the stake as the worst of heretics. And the very
people who have to‐day kissed Thy feet, to‐morrow at the faintest sign
from me will rush to heap up the embers of Thy fire. Knowest Thou that?
Yes, maybe Thou knowest it,’ he added with thoughtful penetration,
never for a moment taking his eyes off the Prisoner.”

“I don’t quite understand, Ivan. What does it mean?” Alyosha, who had
been listening in silence, said with a smile. “Is it simply a wild
fantasy, or a mistake on the part of the old man—some impossible
_quiproquo_?”

“Take it as the last,” said Ivan, laughing, “if you are so corrupted by
modern realism and can’t stand anything fantastic. If you like it to be
a case of mistaken identity, let it be so. It is true,” he went on,
laughing, “the old man was ninety, and he might well be crazy over his
set idea. He might have been struck by the appearance of the Prisoner.
It might, in fact, be simply his ravings, the delusion of an old man of
ninety, over‐excited by the _auto da fé_ of a hundred heretics the day
before. But does it matter to us after all whether it was a mistake of
identity or a wild fantasy? All that matters is that the old man should
speak out, should speak openly of what he has thought in silence for
ninety years.”

“And the Prisoner too is silent? Does He look at him and not say a
word?”

“That’s inevitable in any case,” Ivan laughed again. “The old man has
told Him He hasn’t the right to add anything to what He has said of
old. One may say it is the most fundamental feature of Roman
Catholicism, in my opinion at least. ‘All has been given by Thee to the
Pope,’ they say, ‘and all, therefore, is still in the Pope’s hands, and
there is no need for Thee to come now at all. Thou must not meddle for
the time, at least.’ That’s how they speak and write too—the Jesuits,
at any rate. I have read it myself in the works of their theologians.
‘Hast Thou the right to reveal to us one of the mysteries of that world
from which Thou hast come?’ my old man asks Him, and answers the
question for Him. ‘No, Thou hast not; that Thou mayest not add to what
has been said of old, and mayest not take from men the freedom which
Thou didst exalt when Thou wast on earth. Whatsoever Thou revealest
anew will encroach on men’s freedom of faith; for it will be manifest
as a miracle, and the freedom of their faith was dearer to Thee than
anything in those days fifteen hundred years ago. Didst Thou not often
say then, “I will make you free”? But now Thou hast seen these “free”
men,’ the old man adds suddenly, with a pensive smile. ‘Yes, we’ve paid
dearly for it,’ he goes on, looking sternly at Him, ‘but at last we
have completed that work in Thy name. For fifteen centuries we have
been wrestling with Thy freedom, but now it is ended and over for good.
Dost Thou not believe that it’s over for good? Thou lookest meekly at
me and deignest not even to be wroth with me. But let me tell Thee that
now, to‐day, people are more persuaded than ever that they have perfect
freedom, yet they have brought their freedom to us and laid it humbly
at our feet. But that has been our doing. Was this what Thou didst? Was
this Thy freedom?’ ”

“I don’t understand again,” Alyosha broke in. “Is he ironical, is he
jesting?”

“Not a bit of it! He claims it as a merit for himself and his Church
that at last they have vanquished freedom and have done so to make men
happy. ‘For now’ (he is speaking of the Inquisition, of course) ‘for
the first time it has become possible to think of the happiness of men.
Man was created a rebel; and how can rebels be happy? Thou wast
warned,’ he says to Him. ‘Thou hast had no lack of admonitions and
warnings, but Thou didst not listen to those warnings; Thou didst
reject the only way by which men might be made happy. But, fortunately,
departing Thou didst hand on the work to us. Thou hast promised, Thou
hast established by Thy word, Thou hast given to us the right to bind
and to unbind, and now, of course, Thou canst not think of taking it
away. Why, then, hast Thou come to hinder us?’ ”

“And what’s the meaning of ‘no lack of admonitions and warnings’?”
asked Alyosha.

“Why, that’s the chief part of what the old man must say.

“ ‘The wise and dread spirit, the spirit of self‐destruction and non‐
existence,’ the old man goes on, ‘the great spirit talked with Thee in
the wilderness, and we are told in the books that he “tempted” Thee. Is
that so? And could anything truer be said than what he revealed to Thee
in three questions and what Thou didst reject, and what in the books is
called “the temptation”? And yet if there has ever been on earth a real
stupendous miracle, it took place on that day, on the day of the three
temptations. The statement of those three questions was itself the
miracle. If it were possible to imagine simply for the sake of argument
that those three questions of the dread spirit had perished utterly
from the books, and that we had to restore them and to invent them
anew, and to do so had gathered together all the wise men of the
earth—rulers, chief priests, learned men, philosophers, poets—and had
set them the task to invent three questions, such as would not only fit
the occasion, but express in three words, three human phrases, the
whole future history of the world and of humanity—dost Thou believe
that all the wisdom of the earth united could have invented anything in
depth and force equal to the three questions which were actually put to
Thee then by the wise and mighty spirit in the wilderness? From those
questions alone, from the miracle of their statement, we can see that
we have here to do not with the fleeting human intelligence, but with
the absolute and eternal. For in those three questions the whole
subsequent history of mankind is, as it were, brought together into one
whole, and foretold, and in them are united all the unsolved historical
contradictions of human nature. At the time it could not be so clear,
since the future was unknown; but now that fifteen hundred years have
passed, we see that everything in those three questions was so justly
divined and foretold, and has been so truly fulfilled, that nothing can
be added to them or taken from them.

“ ‘Judge Thyself who was right—Thou or he who questioned Thee then?
Remember the first question; its meaning, in other words, was this:
“Thou wouldst go into the world, and art going with empty hands, with
some promise of freedom which men in their simplicity and their natural
unruliness cannot even understand, which they fear and dread—for
nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society
than freedom. But seest Thou these stones in this parched and barren
wilderness? Turn them into bread, and mankind will run after Thee like
a flock of sheep, grateful and obedient, though for ever trembling,
lest Thou withdraw Thy hand and deny them Thy bread.” But Thou wouldst
not deprive man of freedom and didst reject the offer, thinking, what
is that freedom worth, if obedience is bought with bread? Thou didst
reply that man lives not by bread alone. But dost Thou know that for
the sake of that earthly bread the spirit of the earth will rise up
against Thee and will strive with Thee and overcome Thee, and all will
follow him, crying, “Who can compare with this beast? He has given us
fire from heaven!” Dost Thou know that the ages will pass, and humanity
will proclaim by the lips of their sages that there is no crime, and
therefore no sin; there is only hunger? “Feed men, and then ask of them
virtue!” that’s what they’ll write on the banner, which they will raise
against Thee, and with which they will destroy Thy temple. Where Thy
temple stood will rise a new building; the terrible tower of Babel will
be built again, and though, like the one of old, it will not be
finished, yet Thou mightest have prevented that new tower and have cut
short the sufferings of men for a thousand years; for they will come
back to us after a thousand years of agony with their tower. They will
seek us again, hidden underground in the catacombs, for we shall be
again persecuted and tortured. They will find us and cry to us, “Feed
us, for those who have promised us fire from heaven haven’t given it!”
And then we shall finish building their tower, for he finishes the
building who feeds them. And we alone shall feed them in Thy name,
declaring falsely that it is in Thy name. Oh, never, never can they
feed themselves without us! No science will give them bread so long as
they remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet,
and say to us, “Make us your slaves, but feed us.” They will understand
themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are
inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share
between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free,
for they are weak, vicious, worthless and rebellious. Thou didst
promise them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare
with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble
race of man? And if for the sake of the bread of Heaven thousands shall
follow Thee, what is to become of the millions and tens of thousands of
millions of creatures who will not have the strength to forego the
earthly bread for the sake of the heavenly? Or dost Thou care only for
the tens of thousands of the great and strong, while the millions,
numerous as the sands of the sea, who are weak but love Thee, must
exist only for the sake of the great and strong? No, we care for the
weak too. They are sinful and rebellious, but in the end they too will
become obedient. They will marvel at us and look on us as gods, because
we are ready to endure the freedom which they have found so dreadful
and to rule over them—so awful it will seem to them to be free. But we
shall tell them that we are Thy servants and rule them in Thy name. We
shall deceive them again, for we will not let Thee come to us again.
That deception will be our suffering, for we shall be forced to lie.

“ ‘This is the significance of the first question in the wilderness,
and this is what Thou hast rejected for the sake of that freedom which
Thou hast exalted above everything. Yet in this question lies hid the
great secret of this world. Choosing “bread,” Thou wouldst have
satisfied the universal and everlasting craving of humanity—to find
some one to worship. So long as man remains free he strives for nothing
so incessantly and so painfully as to find some one to worship. But man
seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men
would agree at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are
concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to
find something that all would believe in and worship; what is essential
is that all may be _together_ in it. This craving for _community_ of
worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all
humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship
they’ve slain each other with the sword. They have set up gods and
challenged one another, “Put away your gods and come and worship ours,
or we will kill you and your gods!” And so it will be to the end of the
world, even when gods disappear from the earth; they will fall down
before idols just the same. Thou didst know, Thou couldst not but have
known, this fundamental secret of human nature, but Thou didst reject
the one infallible banner which was offered Thee to make all men bow
down to Thee alone—the banner of earthly bread; and Thou hast rejected
it for the sake of freedom and the bread of Heaven. Behold what Thou
didst further. And all again in the name of freedom! I tell Thee that
man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find some one quickly to
whom he can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill‐fated
creature is born. But only one who can appease their conscience can
take over their freedom. In bread there was offered Thee an invincible
banner; give bread, and man will worship thee, for nothing is more
certain than bread. But if some one else gains possession of his
conscience—oh! then he will cast away Thy bread and follow after him
who has ensnared his conscience. In that Thou wast right. For the
secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live
for. Without a stable conception of the object of life, man would not
consent to go on living, and would rather destroy himself than remain
on earth, though he had bread in abundance. That is true. But what
happened? Instead of taking men’s freedom from them, Thou didst make it
greater than ever! Didst Thou forget that man prefers peace, and even
death, to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil? Nothing
is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing
is a greater cause of suffering. And behold, instead of giving a firm
foundation for setting the conscience of man at rest for ever, Thou
didst choose all that is exceptional, vague and enigmatic; Thou didst
choose what was utterly beyond the strength of men, acting as though
Thou didst not love them at all—Thou who didst come to give Thy life
for them! Instead of taking possession of men’s freedom, Thou didst
increase it, and burdened the spiritual kingdom of mankind with its
sufferings for ever. Thou didst desire man’s free love, that he should
follow Thee freely, enticed and taken captive by Thee. In place of the
rigid ancient law, man must hereafter with free heart decide for
himself what is good and what is evil, having only Thy image before him
as his guide. But didst Thou not know that he would at last reject even
Thy image and Thy truth, if he is weighed down with the fearful burden
of free choice? They will cry aloud at last that the truth is not in
Thee, for they could not have been left in greater confusion and
suffering than Thou hast caused, laying upon them so many cares and
unanswerable problems.

“ ‘So that, in truth, Thou didst Thyself lay the foundation for the
destruction of Thy kingdom, and no one is more to blame for it. Yet
what was offered Thee? There are three powers, three powers alone, able
to conquer and to hold captive for ever the conscience of these
impotent rebels for their happiness—those forces are miracle, mystery
and authority. Thou hast rejected all three and hast set the example
for doing so. When the wise and dread spirit set Thee on the pinnacle
of the temple and said to Thee, “If Thou wouldst know whether Thou art
the Son of God then cast Thyself down, for it is written: the angels
shall hold him up lest he fall and bruise himself, and Thou shalt know
then whether Thou art the Son of God and shalt prove then how great is
Thy faith in Thy Father.” But Thou didst refuse and wouldst not cast
Thyself down. Oh, of course, Thou didst proudly and well, like God; but
the weak, unruly race of men, are they gods? Oh, Thou didst know then
that in taking one step, in making one movement to cast Thyself down,
Thou wouldst be tempting God and have lost all Thy faith in Him, and
wouldst have been dashed to pieces against that earth which Thou didst
come to save. And the wise spirit that tempted Thee would have
rejoiced. But I ask again, are there many like Thee? And couldst Thou
believe for one moment that men, too, could face such a temptation? Is
the nature of men such, that they can reject miracle, and at the great
moments of their life, the moments of their deepest, most agonizing
spiritual difficulties, cling only to the free verdict of the heart?
Oh, Thou didst know that Thy deed would be recorded in books, would be
handed down to remote times and the utmost ends of the earth, and Thou
didst hope that man, following Thee, would cling to God and not ask for
a miracle. But Thou didst not know that when man rejects miracle he
rejects God too; for man seeks not so much God as the miraculous. And
as man cannot bear to be without the miraculous, he will create new
miracles of his own for himself, and will worship deeds of sorcery and
witchcraft, though he might be a hundred times over a rebel, heretic
and infidel. Thou didst not come down from the Cross when they shouted
to Thee, mocking and reviling Thee, “Come down from the cross and we
will believe that Thou art He.” Thou didst not come down, for again
Thou wouldst not enslave man by a miracle, and didst crave faith given
freely, not based on miracle. Thou didst crave for free love and not
the base raptures of the slave before the might that has overawed him
for ever. But Thou didst think too highly of men therein, for they are
slaves, of course, though rebellious by nature. Look round and judge;
fifteen centuries have passed, look upon them. Whom hast Thou raised up
to Thyself? I swear, man is weaker and baser by nature than Thou hast
believed him! Can he, can he do what Thou didst? By showing him so much
respect, Thou didst, as it were, cease to feel for him, for Thou didst
ask far too much from him—Thou who hast loved him more than Thyself!
Respecting him less, Thou wouldst have asked less of him. That would
have been more like love, for his burden would have been lighter. He is
weak and vile. What though he is everywhere now rebelling against our
power, and proud of his rebellion? It is the pride of a child and a
schoolboy. They are little children rioting and barring out the teacher
at school. But their childish delight will end; it will cost them dear.
They will cast down temples and drench the earth with blood. But they
will see at last, the foolish children, that, though they are rebels,
they are impotent rebels, unable to keep up their own rebellion. Bathed
in their foolish tears, they will recognize at last that He who created
them rebels must have meant to mock at them. They will say this in
despair, and their utterance will be a blasphemy which will make them
more unhappy still, for man’s nature cannot bear blasphemy, and in the
end always avenges it on itself. And so unrest, confusion and
unhappiness—that is the present lot of man after Thou didst bear so
much for their freedom! The great prophet tells in vision and in image,
that he saw all those who took part in the first resurrection and that
there were of each tribe twelve thousand. But if there were so many of
them, they must have been not men but gods. They had borne Thy cross,
they had endured scores of years in the barren, hungry wilderness,
living upon locusts and roots—and Thou mayest indeed point with pride
at those children of freedom, of free love, of free and splendid
sacrifice for Thy name. But remember that they were only some
thousands; and what of the rest? And how are the other weak ones to
blame, because they could not endure what the strong have endured? How
is the weak soul to blame that it is unable to receive such terrible
gifts? Canst Thou have simply come to the elect and for the elect? But
if so, it is a mystery and we cannot understand it. And if it is a
mystery, we too have a right to preach a mystery, and to teach them
that it’s not the free judgment of their hearts, not love that matters,
but a mystery which they must follow blindly, even against their
conscience. So we have done. We have corrected Thy work and have
founded it upon _miracle_, _mystery_ and _authority_. And men rejoiced
that they were again led like sheep, and that the terrible gift that
had brought them such suffering was, at last, lifted from their hearts.
Were we right teaching them this? Speak! Did we not love mankind, so
meekly acknowledging their feebleness, lovingly lightening their
burden, and permitting their weak nature even sin with our sanction?
Why hast Thou come now to hinder us? And why dost Thou look silently
and searchingly at me with Thy mild eyes? Be angry. I don’t want Thy
love, for I love Thee not. And what use is it for me to hide anything
from Thee? Don’t I know to Whom I am speaking? All that I can say is
known to Thee already. And is it for me to conceal from Thee our
mystery? Perhaps it is Thy will to hear it from my lips. Listen, then.
We are not working with Thee, but with _him_—that is our mystery. It’s
long—eight centuries—since we have been on _his_ side and not on Thine.
Just eight centuries ago, we took from him what Thou didst reject with
scorn, that last gift he offered Thee, showing Thee all the kingdoms of
the earth. We took from him Rome and the sword of Cæsar, and proclaimed
ourselves sole rulers of the earth, though hitherto we have not been
able to complete our work. But whose fault is that? Oh, the work is
only beginning, but it has begun. It has long to await completion and
the earth has yet much to suffer, but we shall triumph and shall be
Cæsars, and then we shall plan the universal happiness of man. But Thou
mightest have taken even then the sword of Cæsar. Why didst Thou reject
that last gift? Hadst Thou accepted that last counsel of the mighty
spirit, Thou wouldst have accomplished all that man seeks on earth—that
is, some one to worship, some one to keep his conscience, and some
means of uniting all in one unanimous and harmonious ant‐heap, for the
craving for universal unity is the third and last anguish of men.
Mankind as a whole has always striven to organize a universal state.
There have been many great nations with great histories, but the more
highly they were developed the more unhappy they were, for they felt
more acutely than other people the craving for world‐wide union. The
great conquerors, Timours and Ghenghis‐Khans, whirled like hurricanes
over the face of the earth striving to subdue its people, and they too
were but the unconscious expression of the same craving for universal
unity. Hadst Thou taken the world and Cæsar’s purple, Thou wouldst have
founded the universal state and have given universal peace. For who can
rule men if not he who holds their conscience and their bread in his
hands? We have taken the sword of Cæsar, and in taking it, of course,
have rejected Thee and followed _him_. Oh, ages are yet to come of the
confusion of free thought, of their science and cannibalism. For having
begun to build their tower of Babel without us, they will end, of
course, with cannibalism. But then the beast will crawl to us and lick
our feet and spatter them with tears of blood. And we shall sit upon
the beast and raise the cup, and on it will be written, “Mystery.” But
then, and only then, the reign of peace and happiness will come for
men. Thou art proud of Thine elect, but Thou hast only the elect, while
we give rest to all. And besides, how many of those elect, those mighty
ones who could become elect, have grown weary waiting for Thee, and
have transferred and will transfer the powers of their spirit and the
warmth of their heart to the other camp, and end by raising their
_free_ banner against Thee. Thou didst Thyself lift up that banner. But
with us all will be happy and will no more rebel nor destroy one
another as under Thy freedom. Oh, we shall persuade them that they will
only become free when they renounce their freedom to us and submit to
us. And shall we be right or shall we be lying? They will be convinced
that we are right, for they will remember the horrors of slavery and
confusion to which Thy freedom brought them. Freedom, free thought and
science, will lead them into such straits and will bring them face to
face with such marvels and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, the
fierce and rebellious, will destroy themselves, others, rebellious but
weak, will destroy one another, while the rest, weak and unhappy, will
crawl fawning to our feet and whine to us: “Yes, you were right, you
alone possess His mystery, and we come back to you, save us from
ourselves!”

“ ‘Receiving bread from us, they will see clearly that we take the
bread made by their hands from them, to give it to them, without any
miracle. They will see that we do not change the stones to bread, but
in truth they will be more thankful for taking it from our hands than
for the bread itself! For they will remember only too well that in old
days, without our help, even the bread they made turned to stones in
their hands, while since they have come back to us, the very stones
have turned to bread in their hands. Too, too well will they know the
value of complete submission! And until men know that, they will be
unhappy. Who is most to blame for their not knowing it?—speak! Who
scattered the flock and sent it astray on unknown paths? But the flock
will come together again and will submit once more, and then it will be
once for all. Then we shall give them the quiet humble happiness of
weak creatures such as they are by nature. Oh, we shall persuade them
at last not to be proud, for Thou didst lift them up and thereby taught
them to be proud. We shall show them that they are weak, that they are
only pitiful children, but that childlike happiness is the sweetest of
all. They will become timid and will look to us and huddle close to us
in fear, as chicks to the hen. They will marvel at us and will be
awe‐stricken before us, and will be proud at our being so powerful and
clever, that we have been able to subdue such a turbulent flock of
thousands of millions. They will tremble impotently before our wrath,
their minds will grow fearful, they will be quick to shed tears like
women and children, but they will be just as ready at a sign from us to
pass to laughter and rejoicing, to happy mirth and childish song. Yes,
we shall set them to work, but in their leisure hours we shall make
their life like a child’s game, with children’s songs and innocent
dance. Oh, we shall allow them even sin, they are weak and helpless,
and they will love us like children because we allow them to sin. We
shall tell them that every sin will be expiated, if it is done with our
permission, that we allow them to sin because we love them, and the
punishment for these sins we take upon ourselves. And we shall take it
upon ourselves, and they will adore us as their saviors who have taken
on themselves their sins before God. And they will have no secrets from
us. We shall allow or forbid them to live with their wives and
mistresses, to have or not to have children—according to whether they
have been obedient or disobedient—and they will submit to us gladly and
cheerfully. The most painful secrets of their conscience, all, all they
will bring to us, and we shall have an answer for all. And they will be
glad to believe our answer, for it will save them from the great
anxiety and terrible agony they endure at present in making a free
decision for themselves. And all will be happy, all the millions of
creatures except the hundred thousand who rule over them. For only we,
we who guard the mystery, shall be unhappy. There will be thousands of
millions of happy babes, and a hundred thousand sufferers who have
taken upon themselves the curse of the knowledge of good and evil.
Peacefully they will die, peacefully they will expire in Thy name, and
beyond the grave they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep
the secret, and for their happiness we shall allure them with the
reward of heaven and eternity. Though if there were anything in the
other world, it certainly would not be for such as they. It is
prophesied that Thou wilt come again in victory, Thou wilt come with
Thy chosen, the proud and strong, but we will say that they have only
saved themselves, but we have saved all. We are told that the harlot
who sits upon the beast, and holds in her hands the _mystery_, shall be
put to shame, that the weak will rise up again, and will rend her royal
purple and will strip naked her loathsome body. But then I will stand
up and point out to Thee the thousand millions of happy children who
have known no sin. And we who have taken their sins upon us for their
happiness will stand up before Thee and say: “Judge us if Thou canst
and darest.” Know that I fear Thee not. Know that I too have been in
the wilderness, I too have lived on roots and locusts, I too prized the
freedom with which Thou hast blessed men, and I too was striving to
stand among Thy elect, among the strong and powerful, thirsting “to
make up the number.” But I awakened and would not serve madness. I
turned back and joined the ranks of those _who have corrected Thy
work_. I left the proud and went back to the humble, for the happiness
of the humble. What I say to Thee will come to pass, and our dominion
will be built up. I repeat, to‐morrow Thou shalt see that obedient
flock who at a sign from me will hasten to heap up the hot cinders
about the pile on which I shall burn Thee for coming to hinder us. For
if any one has ever deserved our fires, it is Thou. To‐morrow I shall
burn Thee. _Dixi._’ ”

Ivan stopped. He was carried away as he talked, and spoke with
excitement; when he had finished, he suddenly smiled.

Alyosha had listened in silence; towards the end he was greatly moved
and seemed several times on the point of interrupting, but restrained
himself. Now his words came with a rush.

“But ... that’s absurd!” he cried, flushing. “Your poem is in praise of
Jesus, not in blame of Him—as you meant it to be. And who will believe
you about freedom? Is that the way to understand it? That’s not the
idea of it in the Orthodox Church.... That’s Rome, and not even the
whole of Rome, it’s false—those are the worst of the Catholics, the
Inquisitors, the Jesuits!... And there could not be such a fantastic
creature as your Inquisitor. What are these sins of mankind they take
on themselves? Who are these keepers of the mystery who have taken some
curse upon themselves for the happiness of mankind? When have they been
seen? We know the Jesuits, they are spoken ill of, but surely they are
not what you describe? They are not that at all, not at all.... They
are simply the Romish army for the earthly sovereignty of the world in
the future, with the Pontiff of Rome for Emperor ... that’s their
ideal, but there’s no sort of mystery or lofty melancholy about it....
It’s simple lust of power, of filthy earthly gain, of
domination—something like a universal serfdom with them as
masters—that’s all they stand for. They don’t even believe in God
perhaps. Your suffering Inquisitor is a mere fantasy.”

“Stay, stay,” laughed Ivan, “how hot you are! A fantasy you say, let it
be so! Of course it’s a fantasy. But allow me to say: do you really
think that the Roman Catholic movement of the last centuries is
actually nothing but the lust of power, of filthy earthly gain? Is that
Father Païssy’s teaching?”

“No, no, on the contrary, Father Païssy did once say something rather
the same as you ... but of course it’s not the same, not a bit the
same,” Alyosha hastily corrected himself.

“A precious admission, in spite of your ‘not a bit the same.’ I ask you
why your Jesuits and Inquisitors have united simply for vile material
gain? Why can there not be among them one martyr oppressed by great
sorrow and loving humanity? You see, only suppose that there was one
such man among all those who desire nothing but filthy material gain—if
there’s only one like my old Inquisitor, who had himself eaten roots in
the desert and made frenzied efforts to subdue his flesh to make
himself free and perfect. But yet all his life he loved humanity, and
suddenly his eyes were opened, and he saw that it is no great moral
blessedness to attain perfection and freedom, if at the same time one
gains the conviction that millions of God’s creatures have been created
as a mockery, that they will never be capable of using their freedom,
that these poor rebels can never turn into giants to complete the
tower, that it was not for such geese that the great idealist dreamt
his dream of harmony. Seeing all that he turned back and joined—the
clever people. Surely that could have happened?”

“Joined whom, what clever people?” cried Alyosha, completely carried
away. “They have no such great cleverness and no mysteries and
secrets.... Perhaps nothing but Atheism, that’s all their secret. Your
Inquisitor does not believe in God, that’s his secret!”

“What if it is so! At last you have guessed it. It’s perfectly true,
it’s true that that’s the whole secret, but isn’t that suffering, at
least for a man like that, who has wasted his whole life in the desert
and yet could not shake off his incurable love of humanity? In his old
age he reached the clear conviction that nothing but the advice of the
great dread spirit could build up any tolerable sort of life for the
feeble, unruly, ‘incomplete, empirical creatures created in jest.’ And
so, convinced of this, he sees that he must follow the counsel of the
wise spirit, the dread spirit of death and destruction, and therefore
accept lying and deception, and lead men consciously to death and
destruction, and yet deceive them all the way so that they may not
notice where they are being led, that the poor blind creatures may at
least on the way think themselves happy. And note, the deception is in
the name of Him in Whose ideal the old man had so fervently believed
all his life long. Is not that tragic? And if only one such stood at
the head of the whole army ‘filled with the lust of power only for the
sake of filthy gain’—would not one such be enough to make a tragedy?
More than that, one such standing at the head is enough to create the
actual leading idea of the Roman Church with all its armies and
Jesuits, its highest idea. I tell you frankly that I firmly believe
that there has always been such a man among those who stood at the head
of the movement. Who knows, there may have been some such even among
the Roman Popes. Who knows, perhaps the spirit of that accursed old man
who loves mankind so obstinately in his own way, is to be found even
now in a whole multitude of such old men, existing not by chance but by
agreement, as a secret league formed long ago for the guarding of the
mystery, to guard it from the weak and the unhappy, so as to make them
happy. No doubt it is so, and so it must be indeed. I fancy that even
among the Masons there’s something of the same mystery at the bottom,
and that that’s why the Catholics so detest the Masons as their rivals
breaking up the unity of the idea, while it is so essential that there
should be one flock and one shepherd.... But from the way I defend my
idea I might be an author impatient of your criticism. Enough of it.”

“You are perhaps a Mason yourself!” broke suddenly from Alyosha. “You
don’t believe in God,” he added, speaking this time very sorrowfully.
He fancied besides that his brother was looking at him ironically. “How
does your poem end?” he asked, suddenly looking down. “Or was it the
end?”

“I meant to end it like this. When the Inquisitor ceased speaking he
waited some time for his Prisoner to answer him. His silence weighed
down upon him. He saw that the Prisoner had listened intently all the
time, looking gently in his face and evidently not wishing to reply.
The old man longed for Him to say something, however bitter and
terrible. But He suddenly approached the old man in silence and softly
kissed him on his bloodless aged lips. That was all His answer. The old
man shuddered. His lips moved. He went to the door, opened it, and said
to Him: ‘Go, and come no more ... come not at all, never, never!’ And
he let Him out into the dark alleys of the town. The Prisoner went
away.”

“And the old man?”

“The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea.”

“And you with him, you too?” cried Alyosha, mournfully.

Ivan laughed.

“Why, it’s all nonsense, Alyosha. It’s only a senseless poem of a
senseless student, who could never write two lines of verse. Why do you
take it so seriously? Surely you don’t suppose I am going straight off
to the Jesuits, to join the men who are correcting His work? Good Lord,
it’s no business of mine. I told you, all I want is to live on to
thirty, and then ... dash the cup to the ground!”

“But the little sticky leaves, and the precious tombs, and the blue
sky, and the woman you love! How will you live, how will you love
them?” Alyosha cried sorrowfully. “With such a hell in your heart and
your head, how can you? No, that’s just what you are going away for, to
join them ... if not, you will kill yourself, you can’t endure it!”

“There is a strength to endure everything,” Ivan said with a cold
smile.

“What strength?”

“The strength of the Karamazovs—the strength of the Karamazov
baseness.”

“To sink into debauchery, to stifle your soul with corruption, yes?”

“Possibly even that ... only perhaps till I am thirty I shall escape
it, and then—”

“How will you escape it? By what will you escape it? That’s impossible
with your ideas.”

“In the Karamazov way, again.”

“ ‘Everything is lawful,’ you mean? Everything is lawful, is that it?”

Ivan scowled, and all at once turned strangely pale.

“Ah, you’ve caught up yesterday’s phrase, which so offended Miüsov—and
which Dmitri pounced upon so naïvely, and paraphrased!” he smiled
queerly. “Yes, if you like, ‘everything is lawful’ since the word has
been said. I won’t deny it. And Mitya’s version isn’t bad.”

Alyosha looked at him in silence.

“I thought that going away from here I have you at least,” Ivan said
suddenly, with unexpected feeling; “but now I see that there is no
place for me even in your heart, my dear hermit. The formula, ‘all is
lawful,’ I won’t renounce—will you renounce me for that, yes?”

Alyosha got up, went to him and softly kissed him on the lips.

“That’s plagiarism,” cried Ivan, highly delighted. “You stole that from
my poem. Thank you though. Get up, Alyosha, it’s time we were going,
both of us.”

They went out, but stopped when they reached the entrance of the
restaurant.

“Listen, Alyosha,” Ivan began in a resolute voice, “if I am really able
to care for the sticky little leaves I shall only love them,
remembering you. It’s enough for me that you are somewhere here, and I
shan’t lose my desire for life yet. Is that enough for you? Take it as
a declaration of love if you like. And now you go to the right and I to
the left. And it’s enough, do you hear, enough. I mean even if I don’t
go away to‐morrow (I think I certainly shall go) and we meet again,
don’t say a word more on these subjects. I beg that particularly. And
about Dmitri too, I ask you specially, never speak to me again,” he
added, with sudden irritation; “it’s all exhausted, it has all been
said over and over again, hasn’t it? And I’ll make you one promise in
return for it. When at thirty, I want to ‘dash the cup to the ground,’
wherever I may be I’ll come to have one more talk with you, even though
it were from America, you may be sure of that. I’ll come on purpose. It
will be very interesting to have a look at you, to see what you’ll be
by that time. It’s rather a solemn promise, you see. And we really may
be parting for seven years or ten. Come, go now to your Pater
Seraphicus, he is dying. If he dies without you, you will be angry with
me for having kept you. Good‐by, kiss me once more; that’s right, now
go.”

Ivan turned suddenly and went his way without looking back. It was just
as Dmitri had left Alyosha the day before, though the parting had been
very different. The strange resemblance flashed like an arrow through
Alyosha’s mind in the distress and dejection of that moment. He waited
a little, looking after his brother. He suddenly noticed that Ivan
swayed as he walked and that his right shoulder looked lower than his
left. He had never noticed it before. But all at once he turned too,
and almost ran to the monastery. It was nearly dark, and he felt almost
frightened; something new was growing up in him for which he could not
account. The wind had risen again as on the previous evening, and the
ancient pines murmured gloomily about him when he entered the hermitage
copse. He almost ran. “Pater Seraphicus—he got that name from
somewhere—where from?” Alyosha wondered. “Ivan, poor Ivan, and when
shall I see you again?... Here is the hermitage. Yes, yes, that he is,
Pater Seraphicus, he will save me—from him and for ever!”

Several times afterwards he wondered how he could on leaving Ivan so
completely forget his brother Dmitri, though he had that morning, only
a few hours before, so firmly resolved to find him and not to give up
doing so, even should he be unable to return to the monastery that
night.




Chapter VI.
For Awhile A Very Obscure One


And Ivan, on parting from Alyosha, went home to Fyodor Pavlovitch’s
house. But, strange to say, he was overcome by insufferable depression,
which grew greater at every step he took towards the house. There was
nothing strange in his being depressed; what was strange was that Ivan
could not have said what was the cause of it. He had often been
depressed before, and there was nothing surprising at his feeling so at
such a moment, when he had broken off with everything that had brought
him here, and was preparing that day to make a new start and enter upon
a new, unknown future. He would again be as solitary as ever, and
though he had great hopes, and great—too great—expectations from life,
he could not have given any definite account of his hopes, his
expectations, or even his desires.

Yet at that moment, though the apprehension of the new and unknown
certainly found place in his heart, what was worrying him was something
quite different. “Is it loathing for my father’s house?” he wondered.
“Quite likely; I am so sick of it; and though it’s the last time I
shall cross its hateful threshold, still I loathe it.... No, it’s not
that either. Is it the parting with Alyosha and the conversation I had
with him? For so many years I’ve been silent with the whole world and
not deigned to speak, and all of a sudden I reel off a rigmarole like
that.” It certainly might have been the youthful vexation of youthful
inexperience and vanity—vexation at having failed to express himself,
especially with such a being as Alyosha, on whom his heart had
certainly been reckoning. No doubt that came in, that vexation, it must
have done indeed; but yet that was not it, that was not it either. “I
feel sick with depression and yet I can’t tell what I want. Better not
think, perhaps.”

Ivan tried “not to think,” but that, too, was no use. What made his
depression so vexatious and irritating was that it had a kind of
casual, external character—he felt that. Some person or thing seemed to
be standing out somewhere, just as something will sometimes obtrude
itself upon the eye, and though one may be so busy with work or
conversation that for a long time one does not notice it, yet it
irritates and almost torments one till at last one realizes, and
removes the offending object, often quite a trifling and ridiculous
one—some article left about in the wrong place, a handkerchief on the
floor, a book not replaced on the shelf, and so on.

At last, feeling very cross and ill‐humored, Ivan arrived home, and
suddenly, about fifteen paces from the garden gate, he guessed what was
fretting and worrying him.

On a bench in the gateway the valet Smerdyakov was sitting enjoying the
coolness of the evening, and at the first glance at him Ivan knew that
the valet Smerdyakov was on his mind, and that it was this man that his
soul loathed. It all dawned upon him suddenly and became clear. Just
before, when Alyosha had been telling him of his meeting with
Smerdyakov, he had felt a sudden twinge of gloom and loathing, which
had immediately stirred responsive anger in his heart. Afterwards, as
he talked, Smerdyakov had been forgotten for the time; but still he had
been in his mind, and as soon as Ivan parted with Alyosha and was
walking home, the forgotten sensation began to obtrude itself again.
“Is it possible that a miserable, contemptible creature like that can
worry me so much?” he wondered, with insufferable irritation.

It was true that Ivan had come of late to feel an intense dislike for
the man, especially during the last few days. He had even begun to
notice in himself a growing feeling that was almost of hatred for the
creature. Perhaps this hatred was accentuated by the fact that when
Ivan first came to the neighborhood he had felt quite differently. Then
he had taken a marked interest in Smerdyakov, and had even thought him
very original. He had encouraged him to talk to him, although he had
always wondered at a certain incoherence, or rather restlessness, in
his mind, and could not understand what it was that so continually and
insistently worked upon the brain of “the contemplative.” They
discussed philosophical questions and even how there could have been
light on the first day when the sun, moon, and stars were only created
on the fourth day, and how that was to be understood. But Ivan soon saw
that, though the sun, moon, and stars might be an interesting subject,
yet that it was quite secondary to Smerdyakov, and that he was looking
for something altogether different. In one way and another, he began to
betray a boundless vanity, and a wounded vanity, too, and that Ivan
disliked. It had first given rise to his aversion. Later on, there had
been trouble in the house. Grushenka had come on the scene, and there
had been the scandals with his brother Dmitri—they discussed that, too.
But though Smerdyakov always talked of that with great excitement, it
was impossible to discover what he desired to come of it. There was, in
fact, something surprising in the illogicality and incoherence of some
of his desires, accidentally betrayed and always vaguely expressed.
Smerdyakov was always inquiring, putting certain indirect but obviously
premeditated questions, but what his object was he did not explain, and
usually at the most important moment he would break off and relapse
into silence or pass to another subject. But what finally irritated
Ivan most and confirmed his dislike for him was the peculiar, revolting
familiarity which Smerdyakov began to show more and more markedly. Not
that he forgot himself and was rude; on the contrary, he always spoke
very respectfully, yet he had obviously begun to consider—goodness
knows why!—that there was some sort of understanding between him and
Ivan Fyodorovitch. He always spoke in a tone that suggested that those
two had some kind of compact, some secret between them, that had at
some time been expressed on both sides, only known to them and beyond
the comprehension of those around them. But for a long while Ivan did
not recognize the real cause of his growing dislike and he had only
lately realized what was at the root of it.

With a feeling of disgust and irritation he tried to pass in at the
gate without speaking or looking at Smerdyakov. But Smerdyakov rose
from the bench, and from that action alone, Ivan knew instantly that he
wanted particularly to talk to him. Ivan looked at him and stopped, and
the fact that he did stop, instead of passing by, as he meant to the
minute before, drove him to fury. With anger and repulsion he looked at
Smerdyakov’s emasculate, sickly face, with the little curls combed
forward on his forehead. His left eye winked and he grinned as if to
say, “Where are you going? You won’t pass by; you see that we two
clever people have something to say to each other.”

Ivan shook. “Get away, miserable idiot. What have I to do with you?”
was on the tip of his tongue, but to his profound astonishment he heard
himself say, “Is my father still asleep, or has he waked?”

He asked the question softly and meekly, to his own surprise, and at
once, again to his own surprise, sat down on the bench. For an instant
he felt almost frightened; he remembered it afterwards. Smerdyakov
stood facing him, his hands behind his back, looking at him with
assurance and almost severity.

“His honor is still asleep,” he articulated deliberately (“You were the
first to speak, not I,” he seemed to say). “I am surprised at you,
sir,” he added, after a pause, dropping his eyes affectedly, setting
his right foot forward, and playing with the tip of his polished boot.

“Why are you surprised at me?” Ivan asked abruptly and sullenly, doing
his utmost to restrain himself, and suddenly realizing, with disgust,
that he was feeling intense curiosity and would not, on any account,
have gone away without satisfying it.

“Why don’t you go to Tchermashnya, sir?” Smerdyakov suddenly raised his
eyes and smiled familiarly. “Why I smile you must understand of
yourself, if you are a clever man,” his screwed‐up left eye seemed to
say.

“Why should I go to Tchermashnya?” Ivan asked in surprise.

Smerdyakov was silent again.

“Fyodor Pavlovitch himself has so begged you to,” he said at last,
slowly and apparently attaching no significance to his answer. “I put
you off with a secondary reason,” he seemed to suggest, “simply to say
something.”

“Damn you! Speak out what you want!” Ivan cried angrily at last,
passing from meekness to violence.

Smerdyakov drew his right foot up to his left, pulled himself up, but
still looked at him with the same serenity and the same little smile.

“Substantially nothing—but just by way of conversation.”

Another silence followed. They did not speak for nearly a minute. Ivan
knew that he ought to get up and show anger, and Smerdyakov stood
before him and seemed to be waiting as though to see whether he would
be angry or not. So at least it seemed to Ivan. At last he moved to get
up. Smerdyakov seemed to seize the moment.

“I’m in an awful position, Ivan Fyodorovitch. I don’t know how to help
myself,” he said resolutely and distinctly, and at his last word he
sighed. Ivan Fyodorovitch sat down again.

“They are both utterly crazy, they are no better than little children,”
Smerdyakov went on. “I am speaking of your parent and your brother
Dmitri Fyodorovitch. Here Fyodor Pavlovitch will get up directly and
begin worrying me every minute, ‘Has she come? Why hasn’t she come?’
and so on up till midnight and even after midnight. And if Agrafena
Alexandrovna doesn’t come (for very likely she does not mean to come at
all) then he will be at me again to‐morrow morning, ‘Why hasn’t she
come? When will she come?’—as though I were to blame for it. On the
other side it’s no better. As soon as it gets dark, or even before,
your brother will appear with his gun in his hands: ‘Look out, you
rogue, you soup‐maker. If you miss her and don’t let me know she’s
been—I’ll kill you before any one.’ When the night’s over, in the
morning, he, too, like Fyodor Pavlovitch, begins worrying me to death.
‘Why hasn’t she come? Will she come soon?’ And he, too, thinks me to
blame because his lady hasn’t come. And every day and every hour they
get angrier and angrier, so that I sometimes think I shall kill myself
in a fright. I can’t depend upon them, sir.”

“And why have you meddled? Why did you begin to spy for Dmitri
Fyodorovitch?” said Ivan irritably.

“How could I help meddling? Though, indeed, I haven’t meddled at all,
if you want to know the truth of the matter. I kept quiet from the very
beginning, not daring to answer; but he pitched on me to be his
servant. He has had only one thing to say since: ‘I’ll kill you, you
scoundrel, if you miss her,’ I feel certain, sir, that I shall have a
long fit to‐ morrow.”

“What do you mean by ‘a long fit’?”

“A long fit, lasting a long time—several hours, or perhaps a day or
two. Once it went on for three days. I fell from the garret that time.
The struggling ceased and then began again, and for three days I
couldn’t come back to my senses. Fyodor Pavlovitch sent for
Herzenstube, the doctor here, and he put ice on my head and tried
another remedy, too.... I might have died.”

“But they say one can’t tell with epilepsy when a fit is coming. What
makes you say you will have one to‐morrow?” Ivan inquired, with a
peculiar, irritable curiosity.

“That’s just so. You can’t tell beforehand.”

“Besides, you fell from the garret then.”

“I climb up to the garret every day. I might fall from the garret again
to‐morrow. And, if not, I might fall down the cellar steps. I have to
go into the cellar every day, too.”

Ivan took a long look at him.

“You are talking nonsense, I see, and I don’t quite understand you,” he
said softly, but with a sort of menace. “Do you mean to pretend to be
ill to‐morrow for three days, eh?”

Smerdyakov, who was looking at the ground again, and playing with the
toe of his right foot, set the foot down, moved the left one forward,
and, grinning, articulated:

“If I were able to play such a trick, that is, pretend to have a
fit—and it would not be difficult for a man accustomed to them—I should
have a perfect right to use such a means to save myself from death. For
even if Agrafena Alexandrovna comes to see his father while I am ill,
his honor can’t blame a sick man for not telling him. He’d be ashamed
to.”

“Hang it all!” Ivan cried, his face working with anger, “why are you
always in such a funk for your life? All my brother Dmitri’s threats
are only hasty words and mean nothing. He won’t kill you; it’s not you
he’ll kill!”

“He’d kill me first of all, like a fly. But even more than that, I am
afraid I shall be taken for an accomplice of his when he does something
crazy to his father.”

“Why should you be taken for an accomplice?”

“They’ll think I am an accomplice, because I let him know the signals
as a great secret.”

“What signals? Whom did you tell? Confound you, speak more plainly.”

“I’m bound to admit the fact,” Smerdyakov drawled with pedantic
composure, “that I have a secret with Fyodor Pavlovitch in this
business. As you know yourself (if only you do know it) he has for
several days past locked himself in as soon as night or even evening
comes on. Of late you’ve been going upstairs to your room early every
evening, and yesterday you did not come down at all, and so perhaps you
don’t know how carefully he has begun to lock himself in at night, and
even if Grigory Vassilyevitch comes to the door he won’t open to him
till he hears his voice. But Grigory Vassilyevitch does not come,
because I wait upon him alone in his room now. That’s the arrangement
he made himself ever since this to‐do with Agrafena Alexandrovna began.
But at night, by his orders, I go away to the lodge so that I don’t get
to sleep till midnight, but am on the watch, getting up and walking
about the yard, waiting for Agrafena Alexandrovna to come. For the last
few days he’s been perfectly frantic expecting her. What he argues is,
she is afraid of him, Dmitri Fyodorovitch (Mitya, as he calls him),
‘and so,’ says he, ‘she’ll come the back‐way, late at night, to me. You
look out for her,’ says he, ‘till midnight and later; and if she does
come, you run up and knock at my door or at the window from the garden.
Knock at first twice, rather gently, and then three times more quickly,
then,’ says he, ‘I shall understand at once that she has come, and will
open the door to you quietly.’ Another signal he gave me in case
anything unexpected happens. At first, two knocks, and then, after an
interval, another much louder. Then he will understand that something
has happened suddenly and that I must see him, and he will open to me
so that I can go and speak to him. That’s all in case Agrafena
Alexandrovna can’t come herself, but sends a message. Besides, Dmitri
Fyodorovitch might come, too, so I must let him know he is near. His
honor is awfully afraid of Dmitri Fyodorovitch, so that even if
Agrafena Alexandrovna had come and were locked in with him, and Dmitri
Fyodorovitch were to turn up anywhere near at the time, I should be
bound to let him know at once, knocking three times. So that the first
signal of five knocks means Agrafena Alexandrovna has come, while the
second signal of three knocks means ‘something important to tell you.’
His honor has shown me them several times and explained them. And as in
the whole universe no one knows of these signals but myself and his
honor, so he’d open the door without the slightest hesitation and
without calling out (he is awfully afraid of calling out aloud). Well,
those signals are known to Dmitri Fyodorovitch too, now.”

“How are they known? Did you tell him? How dared you tell him?”

“It was through fright I did it. How could I dare to keep it back from
him? Dmitri Fyodorovitch kept persisting every day, ‘You are deceiving
me, you are hiding something from me! I’ll break both your legs for
you.’ So I told him those secret signals that he might see my slavish
devotion, and might be satisfied that I was not deceiving him, but was
telling him all I could.”

“If you think that he’ll make use of those signals and try to get in,
don’t let him in.”

“But if I should be laid up with a fit, how can I prevent him coming in
then, even if I dared prevent him, knowing how desperate he is?”

“Hang it! How can you be so sure you are going to have a fit, confound
you? Are you laughing at me?”

“How could I dare laugh at you? I am in no laughing humor with this
fear on me. I feel I am going to have a fit. I have a presentiment.
Fright alone will bring it on.”

“Confound it! If you are laid up, Grigory will be on the watch. Let
Grigory know beforehand; he will be sure not to let him in.”

“I should never dare to tell Grigory Vassilyevitch about the signals
without orders from my master. And as for Grigory Vassilyevitch hearing
him and not admitting him, he has been ill ever since yesterday, and
Marfa Ignatyevna intends to give him medicine to‐morrow. They’ve just
arranged it. It’s a very strange remedy of hers. Marfa Ignatyevna knows
of a preparation and always keeps it. It’s a strong thing made from
some herb. She has the secret of it, and she always gives it to Grigory
Vassilyevitch three times a year when his lumbago’s so bad he is almost
paralyzed by it. Then she takes a towel, wets it with the stuff, and
rubs his whole back for half an hour till it’s quite red and swollen,
and what’s left in the bottle she gives him to drink with a special
prayer; but not quite all, for on such occasions she leaves some for
herself, and drinks it herself. And as they never take strong drink, I
assure you they both drop asleep at once and sleep sound a very long
time. And when Grigory Vassilyevitch wakes up he is perfectly well
after it, but Marfa Ignatyevna always has a headache from it. So, if
Marfa Ignatyevna carries out her intention to‐ morrow, they won’t hear
anything and hinder Dmitri Fyodorovitch. They’ll be asleep.”

“What a rigmarole! And it all seems to happen at once, as though it
were planned. You’ll have a fit and they’ll both be unconscious,” cried
Ivan. “But aren’t you trying to arrange it so?” broke from him
suddenly, and he frowned threateningly.

“How could I?... And why should I, when it all depends on Dmitri
Fyodorovitch and his plans?... If he means to do anything, he’ll do it;
but if not, I shan’t be thrusting him upon his father.”

“And why should he go to father, especially on the sly, if, as you say
yourself, Agrafena Alexandrovna won’t come at all?” Ivan went on,
turning white with anger. “You say that yourself, and all the while
I’ve been here, I’ve felt sure it was all the old man’s fancy, and the
creature won’t come to him. Why should Dmitri break in on him if she
doesn’t come? Speak, I want to know what you are thinking!”

“You know yourself why he’ll come. What’s the use of what I think? His
honor will come simply because he is in a rage or suspicious on account
of my illness perhaps, and he’ll dash in, as he did yesterday through
impatience to search the rooms, to see whether she hasn’t escaped him
on the sly. He is perfectly well aware, too, that Fyodor Pavlovitch has
a big envelope with three thousand roubles in it, tied up with ribbon
and sealed with three seals. On it is written in his own hand, ‘To my
angel Grushenka, if she will come,’ to which he added three days later,
‘for my little chicken.’ There’s no knowing what that might do.”

“Nonsense!” cried Ivan, almost beside himself. “Dmitri won’t come to
steal money and kill my father to do it. He might have killed him
yesterday on account of Grushenka, like the frantic, savage fool he is,
but he won’t steal.”

“He is in very great need of money now—the greatest need, Ivan
Fyodorovitch. You don’t know in what need he is,” Smerdyakov explained,
with perfect composure and remarkable distinctness. “He looks on that
three thousand as his own, too. He said so to me himself. ‘My father
still owes me just three thousand,’ he said. And besides that,
consider, Ivan Fyodorovitch, there is something else perfectly true.
It’s as good as certain, so to say, that Agrafena Alexandrovna will
force him, if only she cares to, to marry her—the master himself, I
mean, Fyodor Pavlovitch—if only she cares to, and of course she may
care to. All I’ve said is that she won’t come, but maybe she’s looking
for more than that—I mean to be mistress here. I know myself that
Samsonov, her merchant, was laughing with her about it, telling her
quite openly that it would not be at all a stupid thing to do. And
she’s got plenty of sense. She wouldn’t marry a beggar like Dmitri
Fyodorovitch. So, taking that into consideration, Ivan Fyodorovitch,
reflect that then neither Dmitri Fyodorovitch nor yourself and your
brother, Alexey Fyodorovitch, would have anything after the master’s
death, not a rouble, for Agrafena Alexandrovna would marry him simply
to get hold of the whole, all the money there is. But if your father
were to die now, there’d be some forty thousand for sure, even for
Dmitri Fyodorovitch whom he hates so, for he’s made no will.... Dmitri
Fyodorovitch knows all that very well.”

A sort of shudder passed over Ivan’s face. He suddenly flushed.

“Then why on earth,” he suddenly interrupted Smerdyakov, “do you advise
me to go to Tchermashnya? What did you mean by that? If I go away, you
see what will happen here.” Ivan drew his breath with difficulty.

“Precisely so,” said Smerdyakov, softly and reasonably, watching Ivan
intently, however.

“What do you mean by ‘precisely so’?” Ivan questioned him, with a
menacing light in his eyes, restraining himself with difficulty.

“I spoke because I felt sorry for you. If I were in your place I should
simply throw it all up ... rather than stay on in such a position,”
answered Smerdyakov, with the most candid air looking at Ivan’s
flashing eyes. They were both silent.

“You seem to be a perfect idiot, and what’s more ... an awful
scoundrel, too.” Ivan rose suddenly from the bench. He was about to
pass straight through the gate, but he stopped short and turned to
Smerdyakov. Something strange followed. Ivan, in a sudden paroxysm, bit
his lip, clenched his fists, and, in another minute, would have flung
himself on Smerdyakov. The latter, anyway, noticed it at the same
moment, started, and shrank back. But the moment passed without
mischief to Smerdyakov, and Ivan turned in silence, as it seemed in
perplexity, to the gate.

“I am going away to Moscow to‐morrow, if you care to know—early
to‐morrow morning. That’s all!” he suddenly said aloud angrily, and
wondered himself afterwards what need there was to say this then to
Smerdyakov.

“That’s the best thing you can do,” he responded, as though he had
expected to hear it; “except that you can always be telegraphed for
from Moscow, if anything should happen here.”

Ivan stopped again, and again turned quickly to Smerdyakov. But a
change had passed over him, too. All his familiarity and carelessness
had completely disappeared. His face expressed attention and
expectation, intent but timid and cringing.

“Haven’t you something more to say—something to add?” could be read in
the intent gaze he fixed on Ivan.

“And couldn’t I be sent for from Tchermashnya, too—in case anything
happened?” Ivan shouted suddenly, for some unknown reason raising his
voice.

“From Tchermashnya, too ... you could be sent for,” Smerdyakov
muttered, almost in a whisper, looking disconcerted, but gazing
intently into Ivan’s eyes.

“Only Moscow is farther and Tchermashnya is nearer. Is it to save my
spending money on the fare, or to save my going so far out of my way,
that you insist on Tchermashnya?”

“Precisely so ...” muttered Smerdyakov, with a breaking voice. He
looked at Ivan with a revolting smile, and again made ready to draw
back. But to his astonishment Ivan broke into a laugh, and went through
the gate still laughing. Any one who had seen his face at that moment
would have known that he was not laughing from lightness of heart, and
he could not have explained himself what he was feeling at that
instant. He moved and walked as though in a nervous frenzy.




Chapter VII.
“It’s Always Worth While Speaking To A Clever Man”


And in the same nervous frenzy, too, he spoke. Meeting Fyodor
Pavlovitch in the drawing‐room directly he went in, he shouted to him,
waving his hands, “I am going upstairs to my room, not in to you.
Good‐by!” and passed by, trying not even to look at his father. Very
possibly the old man was too hateful to him at that moment; but such an
unceremonious display of hostility was a surprise even to Fyodor
Pavlovitch. And the old man evidently wanted to tell him something at
once and had come to meet him in the drawing‐room on purpose. Receiving
this amiable greeting, he stood still in silence and with an ironical
air watched his son going upstairs, till he passed out of sight.

“What’s the matter with him?” he promptly asked Smerdyakov, who had
followed Ivan.

“Angry about something. Who can tell?” the valet muttered evasively.

“Confound him! Let him be angry then. Bring in the samovar, and get
along with you. Look sharp! No news?”

Then followed a series of questions such as Smerdyakov had just
complained of to Ivan, all relating to his expected visitor, and these
questions we will omit. Half an hour later the house was locked, and
the crazy old man was wandering along through the rooms in excited
expectation of hearing every minute the five knocks agreed upon. Now
and then he peered out into the darkness, seeing nothing.

It was very late, but Ivan was still awake and reflecting. He sat up
late that night, till two o’clock. But we will not give an account of
his thoughts, and this is not the place to look into that soul—its turn
will come. And even if one tried, it would be very hard to give an
account of them, for there were no thoughts in his brain, but something
very vague, and, above all, intense excitement. He felt himself that he
had lost his bearings. He was fretted, too, by all sorts of strange and
almost surprising desires; for instance, after midnight he suddenly had
an intense irresistible inclination to go down, open the door, go to
the lodge and beat Smerdyakov. But if he had been asked why, he could
not have given any exact reason, except perhaps that he loathed the
valet as one who had insulted him more gravely than any one in the
world. On the other hand, he was more than once that night overcome by
a sort of inexplicable humiliating terror, which he felt positively
paralyzed his physical powers. His head ached and he was giddy. A
feeling of hatred was rankling in his heart, as though he meant to
avenge himself on some one. He even hated Alyosha, recalling the
conversation he had just had with him. At moments he hated himself
intensely. Of Katerina Ivanovna he almost forgot to think, and wondered
greatly at this afterwards, especially as he remembered perfectly that
when he had protested so valiantly to Katerina Ivanovna that he would
go away next day to Moscow, something had whispered in his heart,
“That’s nonsense, you are not going, and it won’t be so easy to tear
yourself away as you are boasting now.”

Remembering that night long afterwards, Ivan recalled with peculiar
repulsion how he had suddenly got up from the sofa and had stealthily,
as though he were afraid of being watched, opened the door, gone out on
the staircase and listened to Fyodor Pavlovitch stirring down below,
had listened a long while—some five minutes—with a sort of strange
curiosity, holding his breath while his heart throbbed. And why he had
done all this, why he was listening, he could not have said. That
“action” all his life afterwards he called “infamous,” and at the
bottom of his heart, he thought of it as the basest action of his life.
For Fyodor Pavlovitch himself he felt no hatred at that moment, but was
simply intensely curious to know how he was walking down there below
and what he must be doing now. He wondered and imagined how he must be
peeping out of the dark windows and stopping in the middle of the room,
listening, listening—for some one to knock. Ivan went out on to the
stairs twice to listen like this.

About two o’clock when everything was quiet, and even Fyodor Pavlovitch
had gone to bed, Ivan had got into bed, firmly resolved to fall asleep
at once, as he felt fearfully exhausted. And he did fall asleep at
once, and slept soundly without dreams, but waked early, at seven
o’clock, when it was broad daylight. Opening his eyes, he was surprised
to feel himself extraordinarily vigorous. He jumped up at once and
dressed quickly; then dragged out his trunk and began packing
immediately. His linen had come back from the laundress the previous
morning. Ivan positively smiled at the thought that everything was
helping his sudden departure. And his departure certainly was sudden.
Though Ivan had said the day before (to Katerina Ivanovna, Alyosha, and
Smerdyakov) that he was leaving next day, yet he remembered that he had
no thought of departure when he went to bed, or, at least, had not
dreamed that his first act in the morning would be to pack his trunk.
At last his trunk and bag were ready. It was about nine o’clock when
Marfa Ignatyevna came in with her usual inquiry, “Where will your honor
take your tea, in your own room or downstairs?” He looked almost
cheerful, but there was about him, about his words and gestures,
something hurried and scattered. Greeting his father affably, and even
inquiring specially after his health, though he did not wait to hear
his answer to the end, he announced that he was starting off in an hour
to return to Moscow for good, and begged him to send for the horses.
His father heard this announcement with no sign of surprise, and forgot
in an unmannerly way to show regret at losing him. Instead of doing so,
he flew into a great flutter at the recollection of some important
business of his own.

“What a fellow you are! Not to tell me yesterday! Never mind; we’ll
manage it all the same. Do me a great service, my dear boy. Go to
Tchermashnya on the way. It’s only to turn to the left from the station
at Volovya, only another twelve versts and you come to Tchermashnya.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t. It’s eighty versts to the railway and the train
starts for Moscow at seven o’clock to‐night. I can only just catch it.”

“You’ll catch it to‐morrow or the day after, but to‐day turn off to
Tchermashnya. It won’t put you out much to humor your father! If I
hadn’t had something to keep me here, I would have run over myself long
ago, for I’ve some business there in a hurry. But here I ... it’s not
the time for me to go now.... You see, I’ve two pieces of copse land
there. The Maslovs, an old merchant and his son, will give eight
thousand for the timber. But last year I just missed a purchaser who
would have given twelve. There’s no getting any one about here to buy
it. The Maslovs have it all their own way. One has to take what they’ll
give, for no one here dare bid against them. The priest at Ilyinskoe
wrote to me last Thursday that a merchant called Gorstkin, a man I
know, had turned up. What makes him valuable is that he is not from
these parts, so he is not afraid of the Maslovs. He says he will give
me eleven thousand for the copse. Do you hear? But he’ll only be here,
the priest writes, for a week altogether, so you must go at once and
make a bargain with him.”

“Well, you write to the priest; he’ll make the bargain.”

“He can’t do it. He has no eye for business. He is a perfect treasure,
I’d give him twenty thousand to take care of for me without a receipt;
but he has no eye for business, he is a perfect child, a crow could
deceive him. And yet he is a learned man, would you believe it? This
Gorstkin looks like a peasant, he wears a blue kaftan, but he is a
regular rogue. That’s the common complaint. He is a liar. Sometimes he
tells such lies that you wonder why he is doing it. He told me the year
before last that his wife was dead and that he had married another, and
would you believe it, there was not a word of truth in it? His wife has
never died at all, she is alive to this day and gives him a beating
twice a week. So what you have to find out is whether he is lying or
speaking the truth, when he says he wants to buy it and would give
eleven thousand.”

“I shall be no use in such a business. I have no eye either.”

“Stay, wait a bit! You will be of use, for I will tell you the signs by
which you can judge about Gorstkin. I’ve done business with him a long
time. You see, you must watch his beard; he has a nasty, thin, red
beard. If his beard shakes when he talks and he gets cross, it’s all
right, he is saying what he means, he wants to do business. But if he
strokes his beard with his left hand and grins—he is trying to cheat
you. Don’t watch his eyes, you won’t find out anything from his eyes,
he is a deep one, a rogue—but watch his beard! I’ll give you a note and
you show it to him. He’s called Gorstkin, though his real name is
Lyagavy;[4] but don’t call him so, he will be offended. If you come to
an understanding with him, and see it’s all right, write here at once.
You need only write: ‘He’s not lying.’ Stand out for eleven thousand;
one thousand you can knock off, but not more. Just think! there’s a
difference between eight thousand and eleven thousand. It’s as good as
picking up three thousand; it’s not so easy to find a purchaser, and
I’m in desperate need of money. Only let me know it’s serious, and I’ll
run over and fix it up. I’ll snatch the time somehow. But what’s the
good of my galloping over, if it’s all a notion of the priest’s? Come,
will you go?”

“Oh, I can’t spare the time. You must excuse me.”

“Come, you might oblige your father. I shan’t forget it. You’ve no
heart, any of you—that’s what it is? What’s a day or two to you? Where
are you going now—to Venice? Your Venice will keep another two days. I
would have sent Alyosha, but what use is Alyosha in a thing like that?
I send you just because you are a clever fellow. Do you suppose I don’t
see that? You know nothing about timber, but you’ve got an eye. All
that is wanted is to see whether the man is in earnest. I tell you,
watch his beard—if his beard shakes you know he is in earnest.”

“You force me to go to that damned Tchermashnya yourself, then?” cried
Ivan, with a malignant smile.

Fyodor Pavlovitch did not catch, or would not catch, the malignancy,
but he caught the smile.

“Then you’ll go, you’ll go? I’ll scribble the note for you at once.”

“I don’t know whether I shall go. I don’t know. I’ll decide on the
way.”

“Nonsense! Decide at once. My dear fellow, decide! If you settle the
matter, write me a line; give it to the priest and he’ll send it on to
me at once. And I won’t delay you more than that. You can go to Venice.
The priest will give you horses back to Volovya station.”

The old man was quite delighted. He wrote the note, and sent for the
horses. A light lunch was brought in, with brandy. When Fyodor
Pavlovitch was pleased, he usually became expansive, but to‐day he
seemed to restrain himself. Of Dmitri, for instance, he did not say a
word. He was quite unmoved by the parting, and seemed, in fact, at a
loss for something to say. Ivan noticed this particularly. “He must be
bored with me,” he thought. Only when accompanying his son out on to
the steps, the old man began to fuss about. He would have kissed him,
but Ivan made haste to hold out his hand, obviously avoiding the kiss.
His father saw it at once, and instantly pulled himself up.

“Well, good luck to you, good luck to you!” he repeated from the steps.
“You’ll come again some time or other? Mind you do come. I shall always
be glad to see you. Well, Christ be with you!”

Ivan got into the carriage.

“Good‐by, Ivan! Don’t be too hard on me!” the father called for the
last time.

The whole household came out to take leave—Smerdyakov, Marfa and
Grigory. Ivan gave them ten roubles each. When he had seated himself in
the carriage, Smerdyakov jumped up to arrange the rug.

“You see ... I am going to Tchermashnya,” broke suddenly from Ivan.
Again, as the day before, the words seemed to drop of themselves, and
he laughed, too, a peculiar, nervous laugh. He remembered it long
after.

“It’s a true saying then, that ‘it’s always worth while speaking to a
clever man,’ ” answered Smerdyakov firmly, looking significantly at
Ivan.

The carriage rolled away. Nothing was clear in Ivan’s soul, but he
looked eagerly around him at the fields, at the hills, at the trees, at
a flock of geese flying high overhead in the bright sky. And all of a
sudden he felt very happy. He tried to talk to the driver, and he felt
intensely interested in an answer the peasant made him; but a minute
later he realized that he was not catching anything, and that he had
not really even taken in the peasant’s answer. He was silent, and it
was pleasant even so. The air was fresh, pure and cool, the sky bright.
The images of Alyosha and Katerina Ivanovna floated into his mind. But
he softly smiled, blew softly on the friendly phantoms, and they flew
away. “There’s plenty of time for them,” he thought. They reached the
station quickly, changed horses, and galloped to Volovya. “Why is it
worth while speaking to a clever man? What did he mean by that?” The
thought seemed suddenly to clutch at his breathing. “And why did I tell
him I was going to Tchermashnya?” They reached Volovya station. Ivan
got out of the carriage, and the drivers stood round him bargaining
over the journey of twelve versts to Tchermashnya. He told them to
harness the horses. He went into the station house, looked round,
glanced at the overseer’s wife, and suddenly went back to the entrance.

“I won’t go to Tchermashnya. Am I too late to reach the railway by
seven, brothers?”

“We shall just do it. Shall we get the carriage out?”

“At once. Will any one of you be going to the town to‐morrow?”

“To be sure. Mitri here will.”

“Can you do me a service, Mitri? Go to my father’s, to Fyodor
Pavlovitch Karamazov, and tell him I haven’t gone to Tchermashnya. Can
you?”

“Of course I can. I’ve known Fyodor Pavlovitch a long time.”

“And here’s something for you, for I dare say he won’t give you
anything,” said Ivan, laughing gayly.

“You may depend on it he won’t.” Mitya laughed too. “Thank you, sir.
I’ll be sure to do it.”

At seven o’clock Ivan got into the train and set off to Moscow “Away
with the past. I’ve done with the old world for ever, and may I have no
news, no echo, from it. To a new life, new places and no looking back!”
But instead of delight his soul was filled with such gloom, and his
heart ached with such anguish, as he had never known in his life
before. He was thinking all the night. The train flew on, and only at
daybreak, when he was approaching Moscow, he suddenly roused himself
from his meditation.

“I am a scoundrel,” he whispered to himself.

Fyodor Pavlovitch remained well satisfied at having seen his son off.
For two hours afterwards he felt almost happy, and sat drinking brandy.
But suddenly something happened which was very annoying and unpleasant
for every one in the house, and completely upset Fyodor Pavlovitch’s
equanimity at once. Smerdyakov went to the cellar for something and
fell down from the top of the steps. Fortunately, Marfa Ignatyevna was
in the yard and heard him in time. She did not see the fall, but heard
his scream—the strange, peculiar scream, long familiar to her—the
scream of the epileptic falling in a fit. They could not tell whether
the fit had come on him at the moment he was descending the steps, so
that he must have fallen unconscious, or whether it was the fall and
the shock that had caused the fit in Smerdyakov, who was known to be
liable to them. They found him at the bottom of the cellar steps,
writhing in convulsions and foaming at the mouth. It was thought at
first that he must have broken something—an arm or a leg—and hurt
himself, but “God had preserved him,” as Marfa Ignatyevna expressed
it—nothing of the kind had happened. But it was difficult to get him
out of the cellar. They asked the neighbors to help and managed it
somehow. Fyodor Pavlovitch himself was present at the whole ceremony.
He helped, evidently alarmed and upset. The sick man did not regain
consciousness; the convulsions ceased for a time, but then began again,
and every one concluded that the same thing would happen, as had
happened a year before, when he accidentally fell from the garret. They
remembered that ice had been put on his head then. There was still ice
in the cellar, and Marfa Ignatyevna had some brought up. In the
evening, Fyodor Pavlovitch sent for Doctor Herzenstube, who arrived at
once. He was a most estimable old man, and the most careful and
conscientious doctor in the province. After careful examination, he
concluded that the fit was a very violent one and might have serious
consequences; that meanwhile he, Herzenstube, did not fully understand
it, but that by to‐morrow morning, if the present remedies were
unavailing, he would venture to try something else. The invalid was
taken to the lodge, to a room next to Grigory’s and Marfa Ignatyevna’s.

Then Fyodor Pavlovitch had one misfortune after another to put up with
that day. Marfa Ignatyevna cooked the dinner, and the soup, compared
with Smerdyakov’s, was “no better than dish‐water,” and the fowl was so
dried up that it was impossible to masticate it. To her master’s
bitter, though deserved, reproaches, Marfa Ignatyevna replied that the
fowl was a very old one to begin with, and that she had never been
trained as a cook. In the evening there was another trouble in store
for Fyodor Pavlovitch; he was informed that Grigory, who had not been
well for the last three days, was completely laid up by his lumbago.
Fyodor Pavlovitch finished his tea as early as possible and locked
himself up alone in the house. He was in terrible excitement and
suspense. That evening he reckoned on Grushenka’s coming almost as a
certainty. He had received from Smerdyakov that morning an assurance
“that she had promised to come without fail.” The incorrigible old
man’s heart throbbed with excitement; he paced up and down his empty
rooms listening. He had to be on the alert. Dmitri might be on the
watch for her somewhere, and when she knocked on the window (Smerdyakov
had informed him two days before that he had told her where and how to
knock) the door must be opened at once. She must not be a second in the
passage, for fear—which God forbid!—that she should be frightened and
run away. Fyodor Pavlovitch had much to think of, but never had his
heart been steeped in such voluptuous hopes. This time he could say
almost certainly that she would come!




Book VI. The Russian Monk




Chapter I.
Father Zossima And His Visitors


When with an anxious and aching heart Alyosha went into his elder’s
cell, he stood still almost astonished. Instead of a sick man at his
last gasp, perhaps unconscious, as he had feared to find him, he saw
him sitting up in his chair and, though weak and exhausted, his face
was bright and cheerful, he was surrounded by visitors and engaged in a
quiet and joyful conversation. But he had only got up from his bed a
quarter of an hour before Alyosha’s arrival; his visitors had gathered
together in his cell earlier, waiting for him to wake, having received
a most confident assurance from Father Païssy that “the teacher would
get up, and as he had himself promised in the morning, converse once
more with those dear to his heart.” This promise and indeed every word
of the dying elder Father Païssy put implicit trust in. If he had seen
him unconscious, if he had seen him breathe his last, and yet had his
promise that he would rise up and say good‐by to him, he would not have
believed perhaps even in death, but would still have expected the dead
man to recover and fulfill his promise. In the morning as he lay down
to sleep, Father Zossima had told him positively: “I shall not die
without the delight of another conversation with you, beloved of my
heart. I shall look once more on your dear face and pour out my heart
to you once again.” The monks, who had gathered for this probably last
conversation with Father Zossima, had all been his devoted friends for
many years. There were four of them: Father Iosif and Father Païssy,
Father Mihaïl, the warden of the hermitage, a man not very old and far
from being learned. He was of humble origin, of strong will and
steadfast faith, of austere appearance, but of deep tenderness, though
he obviously concealed it as though he were almost ashamed of it. The
fourth, Father Anfim, was a very old and humble little monk of the
poorest peasant class. He was almost illiterate, and very quiet,
scarcely speaking to any one. He was the humblest of the humble, and
looked as though he had been frightened by something great and awful
beyond the scope of his intelligence. Father Zossima had a great
affection for this timorous man, and always treated him with marked
respect, though perhaps there was no one he had known to whom he had
said less, in spite of the fact that he had spent years wandering about
holy Russia with him. That was very long ago, forty years before, when
Father Zossima first began his life as a monk in a poor and little
monastery at Kostroma, and when, shortly after, he had accompanied
Father Anfim on his pilgrimage to collect alms for their poor
monastery.

The whole party were in the bedroom which, as we mentioned before, was
very small, so that there was scarcely room for the four of them (in
addition to Porfiry, the novice, who stood) to sit round Father Zossima
on chairs brought from the sitting‐room. It was already beginning to
get dark, the room was lighted up by the lamps and the candles before
the ikons.

Seeing Alyosha standing embarrassed in the doorway, Father Zossima
smiled at him joyfully and held out his hand.

“Welcome, my quiet one, welcome, my dear, here you are too. I knew you
would come.”

Alyosha went up to him, bowed down before him to the ground and wept.
Something surged up from his heart, his soul was quivering, he wanted
to sob.

“Come, don’t weep over me yet,” Father Zossima smiled, laying his right
hand on his head. “You see I am sitting up talking; maybe I shall live
another twenty years yet, as that dear good woman from Vishegorye, with
her little Lizaveta in her arms, wished me yesterday. God bless the
mother and the little girl Lizaveta,” he crossed himself. “Porfiry, did
you take her offering where I told you?”

He meant the sixty copecks brought him the day before by the
good‐humored woman to be given “to some one poorer than me.” Such
offerings, always of money gained by personal toil, are made by way of
penance voluntarily undertaken. The elder had sent Porfiry the evening
before to a widow, whose house had been burnt down lately, and who
after the fire had gone with her children begging alms. Porfiry
hastened to reply that he had given the money, as he had been
instructed, “from an unknown benefactress.”

“Get up, my dear boy,” the elder went on to Alyosha. “Let me look at
you. Have you been home and seen your brother?” It seemed strange to
Alyosha that he asked so confidently and precisely, about one of his
brothers only—but which one? Then perhaps he had sent him out both
yesterday and to‐day for the sake of that brother.

“I have seen one of my brothers,” answered Alyosha.

“I mean the elder one, to whom I bowed down.”

“I only saw him yesterday and could not find him to‐day,” said Alyosha.

“Make haste to find him, go again to‐morrow and make haste, leave
everything and make haste. Perhaps you may still have time to prevent
something terrible. I bowed down yesterday to the great suffering in
store for him.”

He was suddenly silent and seemed to be pondering. The words were
strange. Father Iosif, who had witnessed the scene yesterday, exchanged
glances with Father Païssy. Alyosha could not resist asking:

“Father and teacher,” he began with extreme emotion, “your words are
too obscure.... What is this suffering in store for him?”

“Don’t inquire. I seemed to see something terrible yesterday ... as
though his whole future were expressed in his eyes. A look came into
his eyes—so that I was instantly horror‐stricken at what that man is
preparing for himself. Once or twice in my life I’ve seen such a look
in a man’s face ... reflecting as it were his future fate, and that
fate, alas, came to pass. I sent you to him, Alexey, for I thought your
brotherly face would help him. But everything and all our fates are
from the Lord. ‘Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it
abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.’ Remember
that. You, Alexey, I’ve many times silently blessed for your face, know
that,” added the elder with a gentle smile. “This is what I think of
you, you will go forth from these walls, but will live like a monk in
the world. You will have many enemies, but even your foes will love
you. Life will bring you many misfortunes, but you will find your
happiness in them, and will bless life and will make others bless
it—which is what matters most. Well, that is your character. Fathers
and teachers,” he addressed his friends with a tender smile, “I have
never till to‐day told even him why the face of this youth is so dear
to me. Now I will tell you. His face has been as it were a remembrance
and a prophecy for me. At the dawn of my life when I was a child I had
an elder brother who died before my eyes at seventeen. And later on in
the course of my life I gradually became convinced that that brother
had been for a guidance and a sign from on high for me. For had he not
come into my life, I should never perhaps, so I fancy at least, have
become a monk and entered on this precious path. He appeared first to
me in my childhood, and here, at the end of my pilgrimage, he seems to
have come to me over again. It is marvelous, fathers and teachers, that
Alexey, who has some, though not a great, resemblance in face, seems to
me so like him spiritually, that many times I have taken him for that
young man, my brother, mysteriously come back to me at the end of my
pilgrimage, as a reminder and an inspiration. So that I positively
wondered at so strange a dream in myself. Do you hear this, Porfiry?”
he turned to the novice who waited on him. “Many times I’ve seen in
your face as it were a look of mortification that I love Alexey more
than you. Now you know why that was so, but I love you too, know that,
and many times I grieved at your mortification. I should like to tell
you, dear friends, of that youth, my brother, for there has been no
presence in my life more precious, more significant and touching. My
heart is full of tenderness, and I look at my whole life at this moment
as though living through it again.”


Here I must observe that this last conversation of Father Zossima with
the friends who visited him on the last day of his life has been partly
preserved in writing. Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov wrote it down from
memory, some time after his elder’s death. But whether this was only
the conversation that took place then, or whether he added to it his
notes of parts of former conversations with his teacher, I cannot
determine. In his account, Father Zossima’s talk goes on without
interruption, as though he told his life to his friends in the form of
a story, though there is no doubt, from other accounts of it, that the
conversation that evening was general. Though the guests did not
interrupt Father Zossima much, yet they too talked, perhaps even told
something themselves. Besides, Father Zossima could not have carried on
an uninterrupted narrative, for he was sometimes gasping for breath,
his voice failed him, and he even lay down to rest on his bed, though
he did not fall asleep and his visitors did not leave their seats. Once
or twice the conversation was interrupted by Father Païssy’s reading
the Gospel. It is worthy of note, too, that no one of them supposed
that he would die that night, for on that evening of his life after his
deep sleep in the day he seemed suddenly to have found new strength,
which kept him up through this long conversation. It was like a last
effort of love which gave him marvelous energy; only for a little time,
however, for his life was cut short immediately.... But of that later.
I will only add now that I have preferred to confine myself to the
account given by Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov. It will be shorter and
not so fatiguing, though of course, as I must repeat, Alyosha took a
great deal from previous conversations and added them to it.

Notes of the Life of the deceased Priest and Monk, the Elder Zossima,
taken from his own words by Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES


_(a)_ _Father Zossima’s Brother_


Beloved fathers and teachers, I was born in a distant province in the
north, in the town of V. My father was a gentleman by birth, but of no
great consequence or position. He died when I was only two years old,
and I don’t remember him at all. He left my mother a small house built
of wood, and a fortune, not large, but sufficient to keep her and her
children in comfort. There were two of us, my elder brother Markel and
I. He was eight years older than I was, of hasty irritable temperament,
but kind‐hearted and never ironical. He was remarkably silent,
especially at home with me, his mother, and the servants. He did well
at school, but did not get on with his schoolfellows, though he never
quarreled, at least so my mother has told me. Six months before his
death, when he was seventeen, he made friends with a political exile
who had been banished from Moscow to our town for freethinking, and led
a solitary existence there. He was a good scholar who had gained
distinction in philosophy in the university. Something made him take a
fancy to Markel, and he used to ask him to see him. The young man would
spend whole evenings with him during that winter, till the exile was
summoned to Petersburg to take up his post again at his own request, as
he had powerful friends.

It was the beginning of Lent, and Markel would not fast, he was rude
and laughed at it. “That’s all silly twaddle, and there is no God,” he
said, horrifying my mother, the servants, and me too. For though I was
only nine, I too was aghast at hearing such words. We had four
servants, all serfs. I remember my mother selling one of the four, the
cook Afimya, who was lame and elderly, for sixty paper roubles, and
hiring a free servant to take her place.

In the sixth week in Lent, my brother, who was never strong and had a
tendency to consumption, was taken ill. He was tall but thin and
delicate‐ looking, and of very pleasing countenance. I suppose he
caught cold, anyway the doctor, who came, soon whispered to my mother
that it was galloping consumption, that he would not live through the
spring. My mother began weeping, and, careful not to alarm my brother,
she entreated him to go to church, to confess and take the sacrament,
as he was still able to move about. This made him angry, and he said
something profane about the church. He grew thoughtful, however; he
guessed at once that he was seriously ill, and that that was why his
mother was begging him to confess and take the sacrament. He had been
aware, indeed, for a long time past, that he was far from well, and had
a year before coolly observed at dinner to our mother and me, “My life
won’t be long among you, I may not live another year,” which seemed now
like a prophecy.

Three days passed and Holy Week had come. And on Tuesday morning my
brother began going to church. “I am doing this simply for your sake,
mother, to please and comfort you,” he said. My mother wept with joy
and grief. “His end must be near,” she thought, “if there’s such a
change in him.” But he was not able to go to church long, he took to
his bed, so he had to confess and take the sacrament at home.

It was a late Easter, and the days were bright, fine, and full of
fragrance. I remember he used to cough all night and sleep badly, but
in the morning he dressed and tried to sit up in an arm‐chair. That’s
how I remember him sitting, sweet and gentle, smiling, his face bright
and joyous, in spite of his illness. A marvelous change passed over
him, his spirit seemed transformed. The old nurse would come in and
say, “Let me light the lamp before the holy image, my dear.” And once
he would not have allowed it and would have blown it out.

“Light it, light it, dear, I was a wretch to have prevented you doing
it. You are praying when you light the lamp, and I am praying when I
rejoice seeing you. So we are praying to the same God.”

Those words seemed strange to us, and mother would go to her room and
weep, but when she went in to him she wiped her eyes and looked
cheerful. “Mother, don’t weep, darling,” he would say, “I’ve long to
live yet, long to rejoice with you, and life is glad and joyful.”

“Ah, dear boy, how can you talk of joy when you lie feverish at night,
coughing as though you would tear yourself to pieces.”

“Don’t cry, mother,” he would answer, “life is paradise, and we are all
in paradise, but we won’t see it, if we would, we should have heaven on
earth the next day.”

Every one wondered at his words, he spoke so strangely and positively;
we were all touched and wept. Friends came to see us. “Dear ones,” he
would say to them, “what have I done that you should love me so, how
can you love any one like me, and how was it I did not know, I did not
appreciate it before?”

When the servants came in to him he would say continually, “Dear, kind
people, why are you doing so much for me, do I deserve to be waited on?
If it were God’s will for me to live, I would wait on you, for all men
should wait on one another.”

Mother shook her head as she listened. “My darling, it’s your illness
makes you talk like that.”

“Mother, darling,” he would say, “there must be servants and masters,
but if so I will be the servant of my servants, the same as they are to
me. And another thing, mother, every one of us has sinned against all
men, and I more than any.”

Mother positively smiled at that, smiled through her tears. “Why, how
could you have sinned against all men, more than all? Robbers and
murderers have done that, but what sin have you committed yet, that you
hold yourself more guilty than all?”

“Mother, little heart of mine,” he said (he had begun using such
strange caressing words at that time), “little heart of mine, my joy,
believe me, every one is really responsible to all men for all men and
for everything. I don’t know how to explain it to you, but I feel it is
so, painfully even. And how is it we went on then living, getting angry
and not knowing?”

So he would get up every day, more and more sweet and joyous and full
of love. When the doctor, an old German called Eisenschmidt, came:

“Well, doctor, have I another day in this world?” he would ask, joking.

“You’ll live many days yet,” the doctor would answer, “and months and
years too.”

“Months and years!” he would exclaim. “Why reckon the days? One day is
enough for a man to know all happiness. My dear ones, why do we
quarrel, try to outshine each other and keep grudges against each
other? Let’s go straight into the garden, walk and play there, love,
appreciate, and kiss each other, and glorify life.”

“Your son cannot last long,” the doctor told my mother, as she
accompanied him to the door. “The disease is affecting his brain.”

The windows of his room looked out into the garden, and our garden was
a shady one, with old trees in it which were coming into bud. The first
birds of spring were flitting in the branches, chirruping and singing
at the windows. And looking at them and admiring them, he began
suddenly begging their forgiveness too: “Birds of heaven, happy birds,
forgive me, for I have sinned against you too.” None of us could
understand that at the time, but he shed tears of joy. “Yes,” he said,
“there was such a glory of God all about me: birds, trees, meadows,
sky; only I lived in shame and dishonored it all and did not notice the
beauty and glory.”

“You take too many sins on yourself,” mother used to say, weeping.

“Mother, darling, it’s for joy, not for grief I am crying. Though I
can’t explain it to you, I like to humble myself before them, for I
don’t know how to love them enough. If I have sinned against every one,
yet all forgive me, too, and that’s heaven. Am I not in heaven now?”

And there was a great deal more I don’t remember. I remember I went
once into his room when there was no one else there. It was a bright
evening, the sun was setting, and the whole room was lighted up. He
beckoned me, and I went up to him. He put his hands on my shoulders and
looked into my face tenderly, lovingly; he said nothing for a minute,
only looked at me like that.

“Well,” he said, “run and play now, enjoy life for me too.”

I went out then and ran to play. And many times in my life afterwards I
remembered even with tears how he told me to enjoy life for him too.
There were many other marvelous and beautiful sayings of his, though we
did not understand them at the time. He died the third week after
Easter. He was fully conscious though he could not talk; up to his last
hour he did not change. He looked happy, his eyes beamed and sought us,
he smiled at us, beckoned us. There was a great deal of talk even in
the town about his death. I was impressed by all this at the time, but
not too much so, though I cried a good deal at his funeral. I was young
then, a child, but a lasting impression, a hidden feeling of it all,
remained in my heart, ready to rise up and respond when the time came.
So indeed it happened.

_(b) Of the Holy Scriptures in the Life of Father Zossima_


I was left alone with my mother. Her friends began advising her to send
me to Petersburg as other parents did. “You have only one son now,”
they said, “and have a fair income, and you will be depriving him
perhaps of a brilliant career if you keep him here.” They suggested I
should be sent to Petersburg to the Cadet Corps, that I might
afterwards enter the Imperial Guard. My mother hesitated for a long
time, it was awful to part with her only child, but she made up her
mind to it at last, though not without many tears, believing she was
acting for my happiness. She brought me to Petersburg and put me into
the Cadet Corps, and I never saw her again. For she too died three
years afterwards. She spent those three years mourning and grieving for
both of us.

From the house of my childhood I have brought nothing but precious
memories, for there are no memories more precious than those of early
childhood in one’s first home. And that is almost always so if there is
any love and harmony in the family at all. Indeed, precious memories
may remain even of a bad home, if only the heart knows how to find what
is precious. With my memories of home I count, too, my memories of the
Bible, which, child as I was, I was very eager to read at home. I had a
book of Scripture history then with excellent pictures, called _A
Hundred and Four Stories from the Old and New Testament_, and I learned
to read from it. I have it lying on my shelf now, I keep it as a
precious relic of the past. But even before I learned to read, I
remember first being moved to devotional feeling at eight years old. My
mother took me alone to mass (I don’t remember where my brother was at
the time) on the Monday before Easter. It was a fine day, and I
remember to‐day, as though I saw it now, how the incense rose from the
censer and softly floated upwards and, overhead in the cupola, mingled
in rising waves with the sunlight that streamed in at the little
window. I was stirred by the sight, and for the first time in my life I
consciously received the seed of God’s word in my heart. A youth came
out into the middle of the church carrying a big book, so large that at
the time I fancied he could scarcely carry it. He laid it on the
reading desk, opened it, and began reading, and suddenly for the first
time I understood something read in the church of God. In the land of
Uz, there lived a man, righteous and God‐fearing, and he had great
wealth, so many camels, so many sheep and asses, and his children
feasted, and he loved them very much and prayed for them. “It may be
that my sons have sinned in their feasting.” Now the devil came before
the Lord together with the sons of God, and said to the Lord that he
had gone up and down the earth and under the earth. “And hast thou
considered my servant Job?” God asked of him. And God boasted to the
devil, pointing to his great and holy servant. And the devil laughed at
God’s words. “Give him over to me and Thou wilt see that Thy servant
will murmur against Thee and curse Thy name.” And God gave up the just
man He loved so, to the devil. And the devil smote his children and his
cattle and scattered his wealth, all of a sudden like a thunderbolt
from heaven. And Job rent his mantle and fell down upon the ground and
cried aloud, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I
return into the earth; the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord for ever and ever.”

Fathers and teachers, forgive my tears now, for all my childhood rises
up again before me, and I breathe now as I breathed then, with the
breast of a little child of eight, and I feel as I did then, awe and
wonder and gladness. The camels at that time caught my imagination, and
Satan, who talked like that with God, and God who gave His servant up
to destruction, and His servant crying out: “Blessed be Thy name
although Thou dost punish me,” and then the soft and sweet singing in
the church: “Let my prayer rise up before Thee,” and again incense from
the priest’s censer and the kneeling and the prayer. Ever since
then—only yesterday I took it up—I’ve never been able to read that
sacred tale without tears. And how much that is great, mysterious and
unfathomable there is in it! Afterwards I heard the words of mockery
and blame, proud words, “How could God give up the most loved of His
saints for the diversion of the devil, take from him his children,
smite him with sore boils so that he cleansed the corruption from his
sores with a pot‐sherd—and for no object except to boast to the devil!
‘See what My saint can suffer for My sake.’ ” But the greatness of it
lies just in the fact that it is a mystery—that the passing earthly
show and the eternal verity are brought together in it. In the face of
the earthly truth, the eternal truth is accomplished. The Creator, just
as on the first days of creation He ended each day with praise: “That
is good that I have created,” looks upon Job and again praises His
creation. And Job, praising the Lord, serves not only Him but all His
creation for generations and generations, and for ever and ever, since
for that he was ordained. Good heavens, what a book it is, and what
lessons there are in it! What a book the Bible is, what a miracle, what
strength is given with it to man! It is like a mold cast of the world
and man and human nature, everything is there, and a law for everything
for all the ages. And what mysteries are solved and revealed! God
raises Job again, gives him wealth again. Many years pass by, and he
has other children and loves them. But how could he love those new ones
when those first children are no more, when he has lost them?
Remembering them, how could he be fully happy with those new ones,
however dear the new ones might be? But he could, he could. It’s the
great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet,
tender joy. The mild serenity of age takes the place of the riotous
blood of youth. I bless the rising sun each day, and, as before, my
hearts sings to meet it, but now I love even more its setting, its long
slanting rays and the soft, tender, gentle memories that come with
them, the dear images from the whole of my long, happy life—and over
all the Divine Truth, softening, reconciling, forgiving! My life is
ending, I know that well, but every day that is left me I feel how my
earthly life is in touch with a new infinite, unknown, that approaching
life, the nearness of which sets my soul quivering with rapture, my
mind glowing and my heart weeping with joy.

Friends and teachers, I have heard more than once, and of late one may
hear it more often, that the priests, and above all the village
priests, are complaining on all sides of their miserable income and
their humiliating lot. They plainly state, even in print—I’ve read it
myself—that they are unable to teach the Scriptures to the people
because of the smallness of their means, and if Lutherans and heretics
come and lead the flock astray, they let them lead them astray because
they have so little to live upon. May the Lord increase the sustenance
that is so precious to them, for their complaint is just, too. But of a
truth I say, if any one is to blame in the matter, half the fault is
ours. For he may be short of time, he may say truly that he is
overwhelmed all the while with work and services, but still it’s not
all the time, even he has an hour a week to remember God. And he does
not work the whole year round. Let him gather round him once a week,
some hour in the evening, if only the children at first—the fathers
will hear of it and they too will begin to come. There’s no need to
build halls for this, let him take them into his own cottage. They
won’t spoil his cottage, they would only be there one hour. Let him
open that book and begin reading it without grand words or
superciliousness, without condescension to them, but gently and kindly,
being glad that he is reading to them and that they are listening with
attention, loving the words himself, only stopping from time to time to
explain words that are not understood by the peasants. Don’t be
anxious, they will understand everything, the orthodox heart will
understand all! Let him read them about Abraham and Sarah, about Isaac
and Rebecca, of how Jacob went to Laban and wrestled with the Lord in
his dream and said, “This place is holy”—and he will impress the devout
mind of the peasant. Let him read, especially to the children, how the
brothers sold Joseph, the tender boy, the dreamer and prophet, into
bondage, and told their father that a wild beast had devoured him, and
showed him his blood‐ stained clothes. Let him read them how the
brothers afterwards journeyed into Egypt for corn, and Joseph, already
a great ruler, unrecognized by them, tormented them, accused them, kept
his brother Benjamin, and all through love: “I love you, and loving you
I torment you.” For he remembered all his life how they had sold him to
the merchants in the burning desert by the well, and how, wringing his
hands, he had wept and besought his brothers not to sell him as a slave
in a strange land. And how, seeing them again after many years, he
loved them beyond measure, but he harassed and tormented them in love.
He left them at last not able to bear the suffering of his heart, flung
himself on his bed and wept. Then, wiping his tears away, he went out
to them joyful and told them, “Brothers, I am your brother Joseph!” Let
him read them further how happy old Jacob was on learning that his
darling boy was still alive, and how he went to Egypt leaving his own
country, and died in a foreign land, bequeathing his great prophecy
that had lain mysteriously hidden in his meek and timid heart all his
life, that from his offspring, from Judah, will come the great hope of
the world, the Messiah and Saviour.

Fathers and teachers, forgive me and don’t be angry, that like a little
child I’ve been babbling of what you know long ago, and can teach me a
hundred times more skillfully. I only speak from rapture, and forgive
my tears, for I love the Bible. Let him too weep, the priest of God,
and be sure that the hearts of his listeners will throb in response.
Only a little tiny seed is needed—drop it into the heart of the peasant
and it won’t die, it will live in his soul all his life, it will be
hidden in the midst of his darkness and sin, like a bright spot, like a
great reminder. And there’s no need of much teaching or explanation, he
will understand it all simply. Do you suppose that the peasants don’t
understand? Try reading them the touching story of the fair Esther and
the haughty Vashti; or the miraculous story of Jonah in the whale.
Don’t forget either the parables of Our Lord, choose especially from
the Gospel of St. Luke (that is what I did), and then from the Acts of
the Apostles the conversion of St. Paul (that you mustn’t leave out on
any account), and from the _Lives of the Saints_, for instance, the
life of Alexey, the man of God and, greatest of all, the happy martyr
and the seer of God, Mary of Egypt—and you will penetrate their hearts
with these simple tales. Give one hour a week to it in spite of your
poverty, only one little hour. And you will see for yourselves that our
people is gracious and grateful, and will repay you a hundred‐fold.
Mindful of the kindness of their priest and the moving words they have
heard from him, they will of their own accord help him in his fields
and in his house, and will treat him with more respect than before—so
that it will even increase his worldly well‐being too. The thing is so
simple that sometimes one is even afraid to put it into words, for fear
of being laughed at, and yet how true it is! One who does not believe
in God will not believe in God’s people. He who believes in God’s
people will see His Holiness too, even though he had not believed in it
till then. Only the people and their future spiritual power will
convert our atheists, who have torn themselves away from their native
soil.

And what is the use of Christ’s words, unless we set an example? The
people is lost without the Word of God, for its soul is athirst for the
Word and for all that is good.

In my youth, long ago, nearly forty years ago, I traveled all over
Russia with Father Anfim, collecting funds for our monastery, and we
stayed one night on the bank of a great navigable river with some
fishermen. A good‐ looking peasant lad, about eighteen, joined us; he
had to hurry back next morning to pull a merchant’s barge along the
bank. I noticed him looking straight before him with clear and tender
eyes. It was a bright, warm, still, July night, a cool mist rose from
the broad river, we could hear the plash of a fish, the birds were
still, all was hushed and beautiful, everything praying to God. Only we
two were not sleeping, the lad and I, and we talked of the beauty of
this world of God’s and of the great mystery of it. Every blade of
grass, every insect, ant, and golden bee, all so marvelously know their
path, though they have not intelligence, they bear witness to the
mystery of God and continually accomplish it themselves. I saw the dear
lad’s heart was moved. He told me that he loved the forest and the
forest birds. He was a bird‐catcher, knew the note of each of them,
could call each bird. “I know nothing better than to be in the forest,”
said he, “though all things are good.”

“Truly,” I answered him, “all things are good and fair, because all is
truth. Look,” said I, “at the horse, that great beast that is so near
to man; or the lowly, pensive ox, which feeds him and works for him;
look at their faces, what meekness, what devotion to man, who often
beats them mercilessly. What gentleness, what confidence and what
beauty! It’s touching to know that there’s no sin in them, for all, all
except man, is sinless, and Christ has been with them before us.”

“Why,” asked the boy, “is Christ with them too?”

“It cannot but be so,” said I, “since the Word is for all. All creation
and all creatures, every leaf is striving to the Word, singing glory to
God, weeping to Christ, unconsciously accomplishing this by the mystery
of their sinless life. Yonder,” said I, “in the forest wanders the
dreadful bear, fierce and menacing, and yet innocent in it.” And I told
him how once a bear came to a great saint who had taken refuge in a
tiny cell in the wood. And the great saint pitied him, went up to him
without fear and gave him a piece of bread. “Go along,” said he,
“Christ be with you,” and the savage beast walked away meekly and
obediently, doing no harm. And the lad was delighted that the bear had
walked away without hurting the saint, and that Christ was with him
too. “Ah,” said he, “how good that is, how good and beautiful is all
God’s work!” He sat musing softly and sweetly. I saw he understood. And
he slept beside me a light and sinless sleep. May God bless youth! And
I prayed for him as I went to sleep. Lord, send peace and light to Thy
people!




Chapter II.
The Duel


_(c) Recollections of Father Zossima’s Youth before he became a Monk.
The Duel_

I spent a long time, almost eight years, in the military cadet school
at Petersburg, and in the novelty of my surroundings there, many of my
childish impressions grew dimmer, though I forgot nothing. I picked up
so many new habits and opinions that I was transformed into a cruel,
absurd, almost savage creature. A surface polish of courtesy and
society manners I did acquire together with the French language.

But we all, myself included, looked upon the soldiers in our service as
cattle. I was perhaps worse than the rest in that respect, for I was so
much more impressionable than my companions. By the time we left the
school as officers, we were ready to lay down our lives for the honor
of the regiment, but no one of us had any knowledge of the real meaning
of honor, and if any one had known it, he would have been the first to
ridicule it. Drunkenness, debauchery and devilry were what we almost
prided ourselves on. I don’t say that we were bad by nature, all these
young men were good fellows, but they behaved badly, and I worst of
all. What made it worse for me was that I had come into my own money,
and so I flung myself into a life of pleasure, and plunged headlong
into all the recklessness of youth.

I was fond of reading, yet strange to say, the Bible was the one book I
never opened at that time, though I always carried it about with me,
and I was never separated from it; in very truth I was keeping that
book “for the day and the hour, for the month and the year,” though I
knew it not.

After four years of this life, I chanced to be in the town of K. where
our regiment was stationed at the time. We found the people of the town
hospitable, rich and fond of entertainments. I met with a cordial
reception everywhere, as I was of a lively temperament and was known to
be well off, which always goes a long way in the world. And then a
circumstance happened which was the beginning of it all.

I formed an attachment to a beautiful and intelligent young girl of
noble and lofty character, the daughter of people much respected. They
were well‐to‐do people of influence and position. They always gave me a
cordial and friendly reception. I fancied that the young lady looked on
me with favor and my heart was aflame at such an idea. Later on I saw
and fully realized that I perhaps was not so passionately in love with
her at all, but only recognized the elevation of her mind and
character, which I could not indeed have helped doing. I was prevented,
however, from making her an offer at the time by my selfishness, I was
loath to part with the allurements of my free and licentious bachelor
life in the heyday of my youth, and with my pockets full of money. I
did drop some hint as to my feelings however, though I put off taking
any decisive step for a time. Then, all of a sudden, we were ordered
off for two months to another district.

On my return two months later, I found the young lady already married
to a rich neighboring landowner, a very amiable man, still young though
older than I was, connected with the best Petersburg society, which I
was not, and of excellent education, which I also was not. I was so
overwhelmed at this unexpected circumstance that my mind was positively
clouded. The worst of it all was that, as I learned then, the young
landowner had been a long while betrothed to her, and I had met him
indeed many times in her house, but blinded by my conceit I had noticed
nothing. And this particularly mortified me; almost everybody had known
all about it, while I knew nothing. I was filled with sudden
irrepressible fury. With flushed face I began recalling how often I had
been on the point of declaring my love to her, and as she had not
attempted to stop me or to warn me, she must, I concluded, have been
laughing at me all the time. Later on, of course, I reflected and
remembered that she had been very far from laughing at me; on the
contrary, she used to turn off any love‐making on my part with a jest
and begin talking of other subjects; but at that moment I was incapable
of reflecting and was all eagerness for revenge. I am surprised to
remember that my wrath and revengeful feelings were extremely repugnant
to my own nature, for being of an easy temper, I found it difficult to
be angry with any one for long, and so I had to work myself up
artificially and became at last revolting and absurd.

I waited for an opportunity and succeeded in insulting my “rival” in
the presence of a large company. I insulted him on a perfectly
extraneous pretext, jeering at his opinion upon an important public
event—it was in the year 1826[5]—and my jeer was, so people said,
clever and effective. Then I forced him to ask for an explanation, and
behaved so rudely that he accepted my challenge in spite of the vast
inequality between us, as I was younger, a person of no consequence,
and of inferior rank. I learned afterwards for a fact that it was from
a jealous feeling on his side also that my challenge was accepted; he
had been rather jealous of me on his wife’s account before their
marriage; he fancied now that if he submitted to be insulted by me and
refused to accept my challenge, and if she heard of it, she might begin
to despise him and waver in her love for him. I soon found a second in
a comrade, an ensign of our regiment. In those days though duels were
severely punished, yet dueling was a kind of fashion among the
officers—so strong and deeply rooted will a brutal prejudice sometimes
be.

It was the end of June, and our meeting was to take place at seven
o’clock the next day on the outskirts of the town—and then something
happened that in very truth was the turning‐point of my life. In the
evening, returning home in a savage and brutal humor, I flew into a
rage with my orderly Afanasy, and gave him two blows in the face with
all my might, so that it was covered with blood. He had not long been
in my service and I had struck him before, but never with such
ferocious cruelty. And, believe me, though it’s forty years ago, I
recall it now with shame and pain. I went to bed and slept for about
three hours; when I waked up the day was breaking. I got up—I did not
want to sleep any more—I went to the window—opened it, it looked out
upon the garden; I saw the sun rising; it was warm and beautiful, the
birds were singing.

“What’s the meaning of it?” I thought. “I feel in my heart as it were
something vile and shameful. Is it because I am going to shed blood?
No,” I thought, “I feel it’s not that. Can it be that I am afraid of
death, afraid of being killed? No, that’s not it, that’s not it at
all.”... And all at once I knew what it was: it was because I had
beaten Afanasy the evening before! It all rose before my mind, it all
was as it were repeated over again; he stood before me and I was
beating him straight on the face and he was holding his arms stiffly
down, his head erect, his eyes fixed upon me as though on parade. He
staggered at every blow and did not even dare to raise his hands to
protect himself. That is what a man has been brought to, and that was a
man beating a fellow creature! What a crime! It was as though a sharp
dagger had pierced me right through. I stood as if I were struck dumb,
while the sun was shining, the leaves were rejoicing and the birds were
trilling the praise of God.... I hid my face in my hands, fell on my
bed and broke into a storm of tears. And then I remembered my brother
Markel and what he said on his death‐bed to his servants: “My dear
ones, why do you wait on me, why do you love me, am I worth your
waiting on me?”

“Yes, am I worth it?” flashed through my mind. “After all what am I
worth, that another man, a fellow creature, made in the likeness and
image of God, should serve me?” For the first time in my life this
question forced itself upon me. He had said, “Mother, my little heart,
in truth we are each responsible to all for all, it’s only that men
don’t know this. If they knew it, the world would be a paradise at
once.”

“God, can that too be false?” I thought as I wept. “In truth, perhaps,
I am more than all others responsible for all, a greater sinner than
all men in the world.” And all at once the whole truth in its full
light appeared to me; what was I going to do? I was going to kill a
good, clever, noble man, who had done me no wrong, and by depriving his
wife of happiness for the rest of her life, I should be torturing and
killing her too. I lay thus in my bed with my face in the pillow,
heedless how the time was passing. Suddenly my second, the ensign, came
in with the pistols to fetch me.

“Ah,” said he, “it’s a good thing you are up already, it’s time we were
off, come along!”

I did not know what to do and hurried to and fro undecided; we went out
to the carriage, however.

“Wait here a minute,” I said to him. “I’ll be back directly, I have
forgotten my purse.”

And I ran back alone, to Afanasy’s little room.

“Afanasy,” I said, “I gave you two blows on the face yesterday, forgive
me,” I said.

He started as though he were frightened, and looked at me; and I saw
that it was not enough, and on the spot, in my full officer’s uniform,
I dropped at his feet and bowed my head to the ground.

“Forgive me,” I said.

Then he was completely aghast.

“Your honor ... sir, what are you doing? Am I worth it?”

And he burst out crying as I had done before, hid this face in his
hands, turned to the window and shook all over with his sobs. I flew
out to my comrade and jumped into the carriage.

“Ready,” I cried. “Have you ever seen a conqueror?” I asked him. “Here
is one before you.”

I was in ecstasy, laughing and talking all the way, I don’t remember
what about.

He looked at me. “Well, brother, you are a plucky fellow, you’ll keep
up the honor of the uniform, I can see.”

So we reached the place and found them there, waiting us. We were
placed twelve paces apart; he had the first shot. I stood gayly,
looking him full in the face; I did not twitch an eyelash, I looked
lovingly at him, for I knew what I would do. His shot just grazed my
cheek and ear.

“Thank God,” I cried, “no man has been killed,” and I seized my pistol,
turned back and flung it far away into the wood. “That’s the place for
you,” I cried.

I turned to my adversary.

“Forgive me, young fool that I am, sir,” I said, “for my unprovoked
insult to you and for forcing you to fire at me. I am ten times worse
than you and more, maybe. Tell that to the person whom you hold dearest
in the world.”

I had no sooner said this than they all three shouted at me.

“Upon my word,” cried my adversary, annoyed, “if you did not want to
fight, why did not you let me alone?”

“Yesterday I was a fool, to‐day I know better,” I answered him gayly.

“As to yesterday, I believe you, but as for to‐day, it is difficult to
agree with your opinion,” said he.

“Bravo,” I cried, clapping my hands. “I agree with you there too. I
have deserved it!”

“Will you shoot, sir, or not?”

“No, I won’t,” I said; “if you like, fire at me again, but it would be
better for you not to fire.”

The seconds, especially mine, were shouting too: “Can you disgrace the
regiment like this, facing your antagonist and begging his forgiveness!
If I’d only known this!”

I stood facing them all, not laughing now.

“Gentlemen,” I said, “is it really so wonderful in these days to find a
man who can repent of his stupidity and publicly confess his
wrongdoing?”

“But not in a duel,” cried my second again.

“That’s what’s so strange,” I said. “For I ought to have owned my fault
as soon as I got here, before he had fired a shot, before leading him
into a great and deadly sin; but we have made our life so grotesque,
that to act in that way would have been almost impossible, for only
after I have faced his shot at the distance of twelve paces could my
words have any significance for him, and if I had spoken before, he
would have said, ‘He is a coward, the sight of the pistols has
frightened him, no use to listen to him.’ Gentlemen,” I cried suddenly,
speaking straight from my heart, “look around you at the gifts of God,
the clear sky, the pure air, the tender grass, the birds; nature is
beautiful and sinless, and we, only we, are sinful and foolish, and we
don’t understand that life is heaven, for we have only to understand
that and it will at once be fulfilled in all its beauty, we shall
embrace each other and weep.”

I would have said more but I could not; my voice broke with the
sweetness and youthful gladness of it, and there was such bliss in my
heart as I had never known before in my life.

“All this as rational and edifying,” said my antagonist, “and in any
case you are an original person.”

“You may laugh,” I said to him, laughing too, “but afterwards you will
approve of me.”

“Oh, I am ready to approve of you now,” said he; “will you shake hands?
for I believe you are genuinely sincere.”

“No,” I said, “not now, later on when I have grown worthier and deserve
your esteem, then shake hands and you will do well.”

We went home, my second upbraiding me all the way, while I kissed him.
All my comrades heard of the affair at once and gathered together to
pass judgment on me the same day.

“He has disgraced the uniform,” they said; “let him resign his
commission.”

Some stood up for me: “He faced the shot,” they said.

“Yes, but he was afraid of his other shot and begged for forgiveness.”

“If he had been afraid of being shot, he would have shot his own pistol
first before asking forgiveness, while he flung it loaded into the
forest. No, there’s something else in this, something original.”

I enjoyed listening and looking at them. “My dear friends and
comrades,” said I, “don’t worry about my resigning my commission, for I
have done so already. I have sent in my papers this morning and as soon
as I get my discharge I shall go into a monastery—it’s with that object
I am leaving the regiment.”

When I had said this every one of them burst out laughing.

“You should have told us of that first, that explains everything, we
can’t judge a monk.”

They laughed and could not stop themselves, and not scornfully, but
kindly and merrily. They all felt friendly to me at once, even those
who had been sternest in their censure, and all the following month,
before my discharge came, they could not make enough of me. “Ah, you
monk,” they would say. And every one said something kind to me, they
began trying to dissuade me, even to pity me: “What are you doing to
yourself?”

“No,” they would say, “he is a brave fellow, he faced fire and could
have fired his own pistol too, but he had a dream the night before that
he should become a monk, that’s why he did it.”

It was the same thing with the society of the town. Till then I had
been kindly received, but had not been the object of special attention,
and now all came to know me at once and invited me; they laughed at me,
but they loved me. I may mention that although everybody talked openly
of our duel, the authorities took no notice of it, because my
antagonist was a near relation of our general, and as there had been no
bloodshed and no serious consequences, and as I resigned my commission,
they took it as a joke. And I began then to speak aloud and fearlessly,
regardless of their laughter, for it was always kindly and not spiteful
laughter. These conversations mostly took place in the evenings, in the
company of ladies; women particularly liked listening to me then and
they made the men listen.

“But how can I possibly be responsible for all?” every one would laugh
in my face. “Can I, for instance, be responsible for you?”

“You may well not know it,” I would answer, “since the whole world has
long been going on a different line, since we consider the veriest lies
as truth and demand the same lies from others. Here I have for once in
my life acted sincerely and, well, you all look upon me as a madman.
Though you are friendly to me, yet, you see, you all laugh at me.”

“But how can we help being friendly to you?” said my hostess, laughing.
The room was full of people. All of a sudden the young lady rose, on
whose account the duel had been fought and whom only lately I had
intended to be my future wife. I had not noticed her coming into the
room. She got up, came to me and held out her hand.

“Let me tell you,” she said, “that I am the first not to laugh at you,
but on the contrary I thank you with tears and express my respect for
you for your action then.”

Her husband, too, came up and then they all approached me and almost
kissed me. My heart was filled with joy, but my attention was
especially caught by a middle‐aged man who came up to me with the
others. I knew him by name already, but had never made his acquaintance
nor exchanged a word with him till that evening.

_(d) The Mysterious Visitor_


He had long been an official in the town; he was in a prominent
position, respected by all, rich and had a reputation for benevolence.
He subscribed considerable sums to the almshouse and the orphan asylum;
he was very charitable, too, in secret, a fact which only became known
after his death. He was a man of about fifty, almost stern in
appearance and not much given to conversation. He had been married
about ten years and his wife, who was still young, had borne him three
children. Well, I was sitting alone in my room the following evening,
when my door suddenly opened and this gentleman walked in.

I must mention, by the way, that I was no longer living in my former
quarters. As soon as I resigned my commission, I took rooms with an old
lady, the widow of a government clerk. My landlady’s servant waited
upon me, for I had moved into her rooms simply because on my return
from the duel I had sent Afanasy back to the regiment, as I felt
ashamed to look him in the face after my last interview with him. So
prone is the man of the world to be ashamed of any righteous action.

“I have,” said my visitor, “with great interest listened to you
speaking in different houses the last few days and I wanted at last to
make your personal acquaintance, so as to talk to you more intimately.
Can you, dear sir, grant me this favor?”

“I can, with the greatest pleasure, and I shall look upon it as an
honor.” I said this, though I felt almost dismayed, so greatly was I
impressed from the first moment by the appearance of this man. For
though other people had listened to me with interest and attention, no
one had come to me before with such a serious, stern and concentrated
expression. And now he had come to see me in my own rooms. He sat down.

“You are, I see, a man of great strength of character,” he said; “as
you have dared to serve the truth, even when by doing so you risked
incurring the contempt of all.”

“Your praise is, perhaps, excessive,” I replied.

“No, it’s not excessive,” he answered; “believe me, such a course of
action is far more difficult than you think. It is that which has
impressed me, and it is only on that account that I have come to you,”
he continued. “Tell me, please, that is if you are not annoyed by my
perhaps unseemly curiosity, what were your exact sensations, if you can
recall them, at the moment when you made up your mind to ask
forgiveness at the duel. Do not think my question frivolous; on the
contrary, I have in asking the question a secret motive of my own,
which I will perhaps explain to you later on, if it is God’s will that
we should become more intimately acquainted.”

All the while he was speaking, I was looking at him straight into the
face and I felt all at once a complete trust in him and great curiosity
on my side also, for I felt that there was some strange secret in his
soul.

“You ask what were my exact sensations at the moment when I asked my
opponent’s forgiveness,” I answered; “but I had better tell you from
the beginning what I have not yet told any one else.” And I described
all that had passed between Afanasy and me, and how I had bowed down to
the ground at his feet. “From that you can see for yourself,” I
concluded, “that at the time of the duel it was easier for me, for I
had made a beginning already at home, and when once I had started on
that road, to go farther along it was far from being difficult, but
became a source of joy and happiness.”

I liked the way he looked at me as he listened. “All that,” he said,
“is exceedingly interesting. I will come to see you again and again.”

And from that time forth he came to see me nearly every evening. And we
should have become greater friends, if only he had ever talked of
himself. But about himself he scarcely ever said a word, yet
continually asked me about myself. In spite of that I became very fond
of him and spoke with perfect frankness to him about all my feelings;
“for,” thought I, “what need have I to know his secrets, since I can
see without that that he is a good man? Moreover, though he is such a
serious man and my senior, he comes to see a youngster like me and
treats me as his equal.” And I learned a great deal that was profitable
from him, for he was a man of lofty mind.

“That life is heaven,” he said to me suddenly, “that I have long been
thinking about”; and all at once he added, “I think of nothing else
indeed.” He looked at me and smiled. “I am more convinced of it than
you are, I will tell you later why.”

I listened to him and thought that he evidently wanted to tell me
something.

“Heaven,” he went on, “lies hidden within all of us—here it lies hidden
in me now, and if I will it, it will be revealed to me to‐morrow and
for all time.”

I looked at him; he was speaking with great emotion and gazing
mysteriously at me, as if he were questioning me.

“And that we are all responsible to all for all, apart from our own
sins, you were quite right in thinking that, and it is wonderful how
you could comprehend it in all its significance at once. And in very
truth, so soon as men understand that, the Kingdom of Heaven will be
for them not a dream, but a living reality.”

“And when,” I cried out to him bitterly, “when will that come to pass?
and will it ever come to pass? Is not it simply a dream of ours?”

“What then, you don’t believe it,” he said. “You preach it and don’t
believe it yourself. Believe me, this dream, as you call it, will come
to pass without doubt; it will come, but not now, for every process has
its law. It’s a spiritual, psychological process. To transform the
world, to recreate it afresh, men must turn into another path
psychologically. Until you have become really, in actual fact, a
brother to every one, brotherhood will not come to pass. No sort of
scientific teaching, no kind of common interest, will ever teach men to
share property and privileges with equal consideration for all. Every
one will think his share too small and they will be always envying,
complaining and attacking one another. You ask when it will come to
pass; it will come to pass, but first we have to go through the period
of isolation.”

“What do you mean by isolation?” I asked him.

“Why, the isolation that prevails everywhere, above all in our age—it
has not fully developed, it has not reached its limit yet. For every
one strives to keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to
secure the greatest possible fullness of life for himself; but meantime
all his efforts result not in attaining fullness of life but
self‐destruction, for instead of self‐realization he ends by arriving
at complete solitude. All mankind in our age have split up into units,
they all keep apart, each in his own groove; each one holds aloof,
hides himself and hides what he has, from the rest, and he ends by
being repelled by others and repelling them. He heaps up riches by
himself and thinks, ‘How strong I am now and how secure,’ and in his
madness he does not understand that the more he heaps up, the more he
sinks into self‐destructive impotence. For he is accustomed to rely
upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has
trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men and in
humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and the
privileges that he has won for himself. Everywhere in these days men
have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is
to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual
effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end,
and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated
from one another. It will be the spirit of the time, and people will
marvel that they have sat so long in darkness without seeing the light.
And then the sign of the Son of Man will be seen in the heavens....
But, until then, we must keep the banner flying. Sometimes even if he
has to do it alone, and his conduct seems to be crazy, a man must set
an example, and so draw men’s souls out of their solitude, and spur
them to some act of brotherly love, that the great idea may not die.”

Our evenings, one after another, were spent in such stirring and
fervent talk. I gave up society and visited my neighbors much less
frequently. Besides, my vogue was somewhat over. I say this, not as
blame, for they still loved me and treated me good‐humoredly, but
there’s no denying that fashion is a great power in society. I began to
regard my mysterious visitor with admiration, for besides enjoying his
intelligence, I began to perceive that he was brooding over some plan
in his heart, and was preparing himself perhaps for a great deed.
Perhaps he liked my not showing curiosity about his secret, not seeking
to discover it by direct question nor by insinuation. But I noticed at
last, that he seemed to show signs of wanting to tell me something.
This had become quite evident, indeed, about a month after he first
began to visit me.

“Do you know,” he said to me once, “that people are very inquisitive
about us in the town and wonder why I come to see you so often. But let
them wonder, for _soon all will be explained_.”

Sometimes an extraordinary agitation would come over him, and almost
always on such occasions he would get up and go away. Sometimes he
would fix a long piercing look upon me, and I thought, “He will say
something directly now.” But he would suddenly begin talking of
something ordinary and familiar. He often complained of headache too.

One day, quite unexpectedly indeed, after he had been talking with
great fervor a long time, I saw him suddenly turn pale, and his face
worked convulsively, while he stared persistently at me.

“What’s the matter?” I said; “do you feel ill?”—he had just been
complaining of headache.

“I ... do you know ... I murdered some one.”

He said this and smiled with a face as white as chalk. “Why is it he is
smiling?” The thought flashed through my mind before I realized
anything else. I too turned pale.

“What are you saying?” I cried.

“You see,” he said, with a pale smile, “how much it has cost me to say
the first word. Now I have said it, I feel I’ve taken the first step
and shall go on.”

For a long while I could not believe him, and I did not believe him at
that time, but only after he had been to see me three days running and
told me all about it. I thought he was mad, but ended by being
convinced, to my great grief and amazement. His crime was a great and
terrible one.

Fourteen years before, he had murdered the widow of a landowner, a
wealthy and handsome young woman who had a house in our town. He fell
passionately in love with her, declared his feeling and tried to
persuade her to marry him. But she had already given her heart to
another man, an officer of noble birth and high rank in the service,
who was at that time away at the front, though she was expecting him
soon to return. She refused his offer and begged him not to come and
see her. After he had ceased to visit her, he took advantage of his
knowledge of the house to enter at night through the garden by the
roof, at great risk of discovery. But, as often happens, a crime
committed with extraordinary audacity is more successful than others.

Entering the garret through the skylight, he went down the ladder,
knowing that the door at the bottom of it was sometimes, through the
negligence of the servants, left unlocked. He hoped to find it so, and
so it was. He made his way in the dark to her bedroom, where a light
was burning. As though on purpose, both her maids had gone off to a
birthday‐party in the same street, without asking leave. The other
servants slept in the servants’ quarters or in the kitchen on the
ground‐floor. His passion flamed up at the sight of her asleep, and
then vindictive, jealous anger took possession of his heart, and like a
drunken man, beside himself, he thrust a knife into her heart, so that
she did not even cry out. Then with devilish and criminal cunning he
contrived that suspicion should fall on the servants. He was so base as
to take her purse, to open her chest with keys from under her pillow,
and to take some things from it, doing it all as it might have been
done by an ignorant servant, leaving valuable papers and taking only
money. He took some of the larger gold things, but left smaller
articles that were ten times as valuable. He took with him, too, some
things for himself as remembrances, but of that later. Having done this
awful deed, he returned by the way he had come.

Neither the next day, when the alarm was raised, nor at any time after
in his life, did any one dream of suspecting that he was the criminal.
No one indeed knew of his love for her, for he was always reserved and
silent and had no friend to whom he would have opened his heart. He was
looked upon simply as an acquaintance, and not a very intimate one, of
the murdered woman, as for the previous fortnight he had not even
visited her. A serf of hers called Pyotr was at once suspected, and
every circumstance confirmed the suspicion. The man knew—indeed his
mistress did not conceal the fact—that having to send one of her serfs
as a recruit she had decided to send him, as he had no relations and
his conduct was unsatisfactory. People had heard him angrily
threatening to murder her when he was drunk in a tavern. Two days
before her death, he had run away, staying no one knew where in the
town. The day after the murder, he was found on the road leading out of
the town, dead drunk, with a knife in his pocket, and his right hand
happened to be stained with blood. He declared that his nose had been
bleeding, but no one believed him. The maids confessed that they had
gone to a party and that the street‐door had been left open till they
returned. And a number of similar details came to light, throwing
suspicion on the innocent servant.

They arrested him, and he was tried for the murder; but a week after
the arrest, the prisoner fell sick of a fever and died unconscious in
the hospital. There the matter ended and the judges and the authorities
and every one in the town remained convinced that the crime had been
committed by no one but the servant who had died in the hospital. And
after that the punishment began.

My mysterious visitor, now my friend, told me that at first he was not
in the least troubled by pangs of conscience. He was miserable a long
time, but not for that reason; only from regret that he had killed the
woman he loved, that she was no more, that in killing her he had killed
his love, while the fire of passion was still in his veins. But of the
innocent blood he had shed, of the murder of a fellow creature, he
scarcely thought. The thought that his victim might have become the
wife of another man was insupportable to him, and so, for a long time,
he was convinced in his conscience that he could not have acted
otherwise.

At first he was worried at the arrest of the servant, but his illness
and death soon set his mind at rest, for the man’s death was apparently
(so he reflected at the time) not owing to his arrest or his fright,
but a chill he had taken on the day he ran away, when he had lain all
night dead drunk on the damp ground. The theft of the money and other
things troubled him little, for he argued that the theft had not been
committed for gain but to avert suspicion. The sum stolen was small,
and he shortly afterwards subscribed the whole of it, and much more,
towards the funds for maintaining an almshouse in the town. He did this
on purpose to set his conscience at rest about the theft, and it’s a
remarkable fact that for a long time he really was at peace—he told me
this himself. He entered then upon a career of great activity in the
service, volunteered for a difficult and laborious duty, which occupied
him two years, and being a man of strong will almost forgot the past.
Whenever he recalled it, he tried not to think of it at all. He became
active in philanthropy too, founded and helped to maintain many
institutions in the town, did a good deal in the two capitals, and in
both Moscow and Petersburg was elected a member of philanthropic
societies.

At last, however, he began brooding over the past, and the strain of it
was too much for him. Then he was attracted by a fine and intelligent
girl and soon after married her, hoping that marriage would dispel his
lonely depression, and that by entering on a new life and scrupulously
doing his duty to his wife and children, he would escape from old
memories altogether. But the very opposite of what he expected
happened. He began, even in the first month of his marriage, to be
continually fretted by the thought, “My wife loves me—but what if she
knew?” When she first told him that she would soon bear him a child, he
was troubled. “I am giving life, but I have taken life.” Children came.
“How dare I love them, teach and educate them, how can I talk to them
of virtue? I have shed blood.” They were splendid children, he longed
to caress them; “and I can’t look at their innocent candid faces, I am
unworthy.”

At last he began to be bitterly and ominously haunted by the blood of
his murdered victim, by the young life he had destroyed, by the blood
that cried out for vengeance. He had begun to have awful dreams. But,
being a man of fortitude, he bore his suffering a long time, thinking:
“I shall expiate everything by this secret agony.” But that hope, too,
was vain; the longer it went on, the more intense was his suffering.

He was respected in society for his active benevolence, though every
one was overawed by his stern and gloomy character. But the more he was
respected, the more intolerable it was for him. He confessed to me that
he had thoughts of killing himself. But he began to be haunted by
another idea—an idea which he had at first regarded as impossible and
unthinkable, though at last it got such a hold on his heart that he
could not shake it off. He dreamed of rising up, going out and
confessing in the face of all men that he had committed murder. For
three years this dream had pursued him, haunting him in different
forms. At last he believed with his whole heart that if he confessed
his crime, he would heal his soul and would be at peace for ever. But
this belief filled his heart with terror, for how could he carry it
out? And then came what happened at my duel.

“Looking at you, I have made up my mind.”

I looked at him.

“Is it possible,” I cried, clasping my hands, “that such a trivial
incident could give rise to such a resolution in you?”

“My resolution has been growing for the last three years,” he answered,
“and your story only gave the last touch to it. Looking at you, I
reproached myself and envied you.” He said this to me almost sullenly.

“But you won’t be believed,” I observed; “it’s fourteen years ago.”

“I have proofs, great proofs. I shall show them.”

Then I cried and kissed him.

“Tell me one thing, one thing,” he said (as though it all depended upon
me), “my wife, my children! My wife may die of grief, and though my
children won’t lose their rank and property, they’ll be a convict’s
children and for ever! And what a memory, what a memory of me I shall
leave in their hearts!”

I said nothing.

“And to part from them, to leave them for ever? It’s for ever, you
know, for ever!”

I sat still and repeated a silent prayer. I got up at last, I felt
afraid.

“Well?” He looked at me.

“Go!” said I, “confess. Everything passes, only the truth remains. Your
children will understand, when they grow up, the nobility of your
resolution.”

He left me that time as though he had made up his mind. Yet for more
than a fortnight afterwards, he came to me every evening, still
preparing himself, still unable to bring himself to the point. He made
my heart ache. One day he would come determined and say fervently:

“I know it will be heaven for me, heaven, the moment I confess.
Fourteen years I’ve been in hell. I want to suffer. I will take my
punishment and begin to live. You can pass through the world doing
wrong, but there’s no turning back. Now I dare not love my neighbor nor
even my own children. Good God, my children will understand, perhaps,
what my punishment has cost me and will not condemn me! God is not in
strength but in truth.”

“All will understand your sacrifice,” I said to him, “if not at once,
they will understand later; for you have served truth, the higher
truth, not of the earth.”

And he would go away seeming comforted, but next day he would come
again, bitter, pale, sarcastic.

“Every time I come to you, you look at me so inquisitively as though to
say, ‘He has still not confessed!’ Wait a bit, don’t despise me too
much. It’s not such an easy thing to do, as you would think. Perhaps I
shall not do it at all. You won’t go and inform against me then, will
you?”

And far from looking at him with indiscreet curiosity, I was afraid to
look at him at all. I was quite ill from anxiety, and my heart was full
of tears. I could not sleep at night.

“I have just come from my wife,” he went on. “Do you understand what
the word ‘wife’ means? When I went out, the children called to me,
‘Good‐by, father, make haste back to read _The Children’s Magazine_
with us.’ No, you don’t understand that! No one is wise from another
man’s woe.”

His eyes were glittering, his lips were twitching. Suddenly he struck
the table with his fist so that everything on it danced—it was the
first time he had done such a thing, he was such a mild man.

“But need I?” he exclaimed, “must I? No one has been condemned, no one
has been sent to Siberia in my place, the man died of fever. And I’ve
been punished by my sufferings for the blood I shed. And I shan’t be
believed, they won’t believe my proofs. Need I confess, need I? I am
ready to go on suffering all my life for the blood I have shed, if only
my wife and children may be spared. Will it be just to ruin them with
me? Aren’t we making a mistake? What is right in this case? And will
people recognize it, will they appreciate it, will they respect it?”

“Good Lord!” I thought to myself, “he is thinking of other people’s
respect at such a moment!” And I felt so sorry for him then, that I
believe I would have shared his fate if it could have comforted him. I
saw he was beside himself. I was aghast, realizing with my heart as
well as my mind what such a resolution meant.

“Decide my fate!” he exclaimed again.

“Go and confess,” I whispered to him. My voice failed me, but I
whispered it firmly. I took up the New Testament from the table, the
Russian translation, and showed him the Gospel of St. John, chapter
xii. verse 24:

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the
ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much
fruit.”

I had just been reading that verse when he came in. He read it.

“That’s true,” he said, but he smiled bitterly. “It’s terrible the
things you find in those books,” he said, after a pause. “It’s easy
enough to thrust them upon one. And who wrote them? Can they have been
written by men?”

“The Holy Spirit wrote them,” said I.

“It’s easy for you to prate,” he smiled again, this time almost with
hatred.

I took the book again, opened it in another place and showed him the
Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter x. verse 31. He read:

“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

He read it and simply flung down the book. He was trembling all over.

“An awful text,” he said. “There’s no denying you’ve picked out fitting
ones.” He rose from the chair. “Well!” he said, “good‐by, perhaps I
shan’t come again ... we shall meet in heaven. So I have been for
fourteen years ‘in the hands of the living God,’ that’s how one must
think of those fourteen years. To‐morrow I will beseech those hands to
let me go.”

I wanted to take him in my arms and kiss him, but I did not dare—his
face was contorted and somber. He went away.

“Good God,” I thought, “what has he gone to face!” I fell on my knees
before the ikon and wept for him before the Holy Mother of God, our
swift defender and helper. I was half an hour praying in tears, and it
was late, about midnight. Suddenly I saw the door open and he came in
again. I was surprised.

“Where have you been?” I asked him.

“I think,” he said, “I’ve forgotten something ... my handkerchief, I
think.... Well, even if I’ve not forgotten anything, let me stay a
little.”

He sat down. I stood over him.

“You sit down, too,” said he.

I sat down. We sat still for two minutes; he looked intently at me and
suddenly smiled—I remembered that—then he got up, embraced me warmly
and kissed me.

“Remember,” he said, “how I came to you a second time. Do you hear,
remember it!”

And he went out.

“To‐morrow,” I thought.

And so it was. I did not know that evening that the next day was his
birthday. I had not been out for the last few days, so I had no chance
of hearing it from any one. On that day he always had a great
gathering, every one in the town went to it. It was the same this time.
After dinner he walked into the middle of the room, with a paper in his
hand—a formal declaration to the chief of his department who was
present. This declaration he read aloud to the whole assembly. It
contained a full account of the crime, in every detail.

“I cut myself off from men as a monster. God has visited me,” he said
in conclusion. “I want to suffer for my sin!”

Then he brought out and laid on the table all the things he had been
keeping for fourteen years, that he thought would prove his crime, the
jewels belonging to the murdered woman which he had stolen to divert
suspicion, a cross and a locket taken from her neck with a portrait of
her betrothed in the locket, her notebook and two letters; one from her
betrothed, telling her that he would soon be with her, and her
unfinished answer left on the table to be sent off next day. He carried
off these two letters—what for? Why had he kept them for fourteen years
afterwards instead of destroying them as evidence against him?

And this is what happened: every one was amazed and horrified, every
one refused to believe it and thought that he was deranged, though all
listened with intense curiosity. A few days later it was fully decided
and agreed in every house that the unhappy man was mad. The legal
authorities could not refuse to take the case up, but they too dropped
it. Though the trinkets and letters made them ponder, they decided that
even if they did turn out to be authentic, no charge could be based on
those alone. Besides, she might have given him those things as a
friend, or asked him to take care of them for her. I heard afterwards,
however, that the genuineness of the things was proved by the friends
and relations of the murdered woman, and that there was no doubt about
them. Yet nothing was destined to come of it, after all.

Five days later, all had heard that he was ill and that his life was in
danger. The nature of his illness I can’t explain, they said it was an
affection of the heart. But it became known that the doctors had been
induced by his wife to investigate his mental condition also, and had
come to the conclusion that it was a case of insanity. I betrayed
nothing, though people ran to question me. But when I wanted to visit
him, I was for a long while forbidden to do so, above all by his wife.

“It’s you who have caused his illness,” she said to me; “he was always
gloomy, but for the last year people noticed that he was peculiarly
excited and did strange things, and now you have been the ruin of him.
Your preaching has brought him to this; for the last month he was
always with you.”

Indeed, not only his wife but the whole town were down upon me and
blamed me. “It’s all your doing,” they said. I was silent and indeed
rejoiced at heart, for I saw plainly God’s mercy to the man who had
turned against himself and punished himself. I could not believe in his
insanity.

They let me see him at last, he insisted upon saying good‐by to me. I
went in to him and saw at once, that not only his days, but his hours
were numbered. He was weak, yellow, his hands trembled, he gasped for
breath, but his face was full of tender and happy feeling.

“It is done!” he said. “I’ve long been yearning to see you, why didn’t
you come?”

I did not tell him that they would not let me see him.

“God has had pity on me and is calling me to Himself. I know I am
dying, but I feel joy and peace for the first time after so many years.
There was heaven in my heart from the moment I had done what I had to
do. Now I dare to love my children and to kiss them. Neither my wife
nor the judges, nor any one has believed it. My children will never
believe it either. I see in that God’s mercy to them. I shall die, and
my name will be without a stain for them. And now I feel God near, my
heart rejoices as in Heaven ... I have done my duty.”

He could not speak, he gasped for breath, he pressed my hand warmly,
looking fervently at me. We did not talk for long, his wife kept
peeping in at us. But he had time to whisper to me:

“Do you remember how I came back to you that second time, at midnight?
I told you to remember it. You know what I came back for? I came to
kill you!”

I started.

“I went out from you then into the darkness, I wandered about the
streets, struggling with myself. And suddenly I hated you so that I
could hardly bear it. Now, I thought, he is all that binds me, and he
is my judge. I can’t refuse to face my punishment to‐morrow, for he
knows all. It was not that I was afraid you would betray me (I never
even thought of that), but I thought, ‘How can I look him in the face
if I don’t confess?’ And if you had been at the other end of the earth,
but alive, it would have been all the same, the thought was unendurable
that you were alive knowing everything and condemning me. I hated you
as though you were the cause, as though you were to blame for
everything. I came back to you then, remembering that you had a dagger
lying on your table. I sat down and asked you to sit down, and for a
whole minute I pondered. If I had killed you, I should have been ruined
by that murder even if I had not confessed the other. But I didn’t
think about that at all, and I didn’t want to think of it at that
moment. I only hated you and longed to revenge myself on you for
everything. The Lord vanquished the devil in my heart. But let me tell
you, you were never nearer death.”

A week later he died. The whole town followed him to the grave. The
chief priest made a speech full of feeling. All lamented the terrible
illness that had cut short his days. But all the town was up in arms
against me after the funeral, and people even refused to see me. Some,
at first a few and afterwards more, began indeed to believe in the
truth of his story, and they visited me and questioned me with great
interest and eagerness, for man loves to see the downfall and disgrace
of the righteous. But I held my tongue, and very shortly after, I left
the town, and five months later by God’s grace I entered upon the safe
and blessed path, praising the unseen finger which had guided me so
clearly to it. But I remember in my prayer to this day, the servant of
God, Mihail, who suffered so greatly.




Chapter III.
Conversations And Exhortations Of Father Zossima


_(e) The Russian Monk and his possible Significance_


Fathers and teachers, what is the monk? In the cultivated world the
word is nowadays pronounced by some people with a jeer, and by others
it is used as a term of abuse, and this contempt for the monk is
growing. It is true, alas, it is true, that there are many sluggards,
gluttons, profligates and insolent beggars among monks. Educated people
point to these: “You are idlers, useless members of society, you live
on the labor of others, you are shameless beggars.” And yet how many
meek and humble monks there are, yearning for solitude and fervent
prayer in peace! These are less noticed, or passed over in silence. And
how surprised men would be if I were to say that from these meek monks,
who yearn for solitary prayer, the salvation of Russia will come
perhaps once more! For they are in truth made ready in peace and quiet
“for the day and the hour, the month and the year.” Meanwhile, in their
solitude, they keep the image of Christ fair and undefiled, in the
purity of God’s truth, from the times of the Fathers of old, the
Apostles and the martyrs. And when the time comes they will show it to
the tottering creeds of the world. That is a great thought. That star
will rise out of the East.

That is my view of the monk, and is it false? is it too proud? Look at
the worldly and all who set themselves up above the people of God, has
not God’s image and His truth been distorted in them? They have
science; but in science there is nothing but what is the object of
sense. The spiritual world, the higher part of man’s being is rejected
altogether, dismissed with a sort of triumph, even with hatred. The
world has proclaimed the reign of freedom, especially of late, but what
do we see in this freedom of theirs? Nothing but slavery and
self‐destruction! For the world says:

“You have desires and so satisfy them, for you have the same rights as
the most rich and powerful. Don’t be afraid of satisfying them and even
multiply your desires.” That is the modern doctrine of the world. In
that they see freedom. And what follows from this right of
multiplication of desires? In the rich, isolation and spiritual
suicide; in the poor, envy and murder; for they have been given rights,
but have not been shown the means of satisfying their wants. They
maintain that the world is getting more and more united, more and more
bound together in brotherly community, as it overcomes distance and
sets thoughts flying through the air.

Alas, put no faith in such a bond of union. Interpreting freedom as the
multiplication and rapid satisfaction of desires, men distort their own
nature, for many senseless and foolish desires and habits and
ridiculous fancies are fostered in them. They live only for mutual
envy, for luxury and ostentation. To have dinners, visits, carriages,
rank and slaves to wait on one is looked upon as a necessity, for which
life, honor and human feeling are sacrificed, and men even commit
suicide if they are unable to satisfy it. We see the same thing among
those who are not rich, while the poor drown their unsatisfied need and
their envy in drunkenness. But soon they will drink blood instead of
wine, they are being led on to it. I ask you is such a man free? I knew
one “champion of freedom” who told me himself that, when he was
deprived of tobacco in prison, he was so wretched at the privation that
he almost went and betrayed his cause for the sake of getting tobacco
again! And such a man says, “I am fighting for the cause of humanity.”

How can such a one fight? what is he fit for? He is capable perhaps of
some action quickly over, but he cannot hold out long. And it’s no
wonder that instead of gaining freedom they have sunk into slavery, and
instead of serving the cause of brotherly love and the union of
humanity have fallen, on the contrary, into dissension and isolation,
as my mysterious visitor and teacher said to me in my youth. And
therefore the idea of the service of humanity, of brotherly love and
the solidarity of mankind, is more and more dying out in the world, and
indeed this idea is sometimes treated with derision. For how can a man
shake off his habits? What can become of him if he is in such bondage
to the habit of satisfying the innumerable desires he has created for
himself? He is isolated, and what concern has he with the rest of
humanity? They have succeeded in accumulating a greater mass of
objects, but the joy in the world has grown less.

The monastic way is very different. Obedience, fasting and prayer are
laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real, true freedom. I
cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and
wanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God’s help I
attain freedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy. Which is most
capable of conceiving a great idea and serving it—the rich man in his
isolation or the man who has freed himself from the tyranny of material
things and habits? The monk is reproached for his solitude, “You have
secluded yourself within the walls of the monastery for your own
salvation, and have forgotten the brotherly service of humanity!” But
we shall see which will be most zealous in the cause of brotherly love.
For it is not we, but they, who are in isolation, though they don’t see
that. Of old, leaders of the people came from among us, and why should
they not again? The same meek and humble ascetics will rise up and go
out to work for the great cause. The salvation of Russia comes from the
people. And the Russian monk has always been on the side of the people.
We are isolated only if the people are isolated. The people believe as
we do, and an unbelieving reformer will never do anything in Russia,
even if he is sincere in heart and a genius. Remember that! The people
will meet the atheist and overcome him, and Russia will be one and
orthodox. Take care of the peasant and guard his heart. Go on educating
him quietly. That’s your duty as monks, for the peasant has God in his
heart.

(_f_) _Of Masters and Servants, and of whether it is possible for them
to be Brothers in the Spirit_


Of course, I don’t deny that there is sin in the peasants too. And the
fire of corruption is spreading visibly, hourly, working from above
downwards. The spirit of isolation is coming upon the people too.
Money‐ lenders and devourers of the commune are rising up. Already the
merchant grows more and more eager for rank, and strives to show
himself cultured though he has not a trace of culture, and to this end
meanly despises his old traditions, and is even ashamed of the faith of
his fathers. He visits princes, though he is only a peasant corrupted.
The peasants are rotting in drunkenness and cannot shake off the habit.
And what cruelty to their wives, to their children even! All from
drunkenness! I’ve seen in the factories children of nine years old,
frail, rickety, bent and already depraved. The stuffy workshop, the din
of machinery, work all day long, the vile language and the drink, the
drink—is that what a little child’s heart needs? He needs sunshine,
childish play, good examples all about him, and at least a little love.
There must be no more of this, monks, no more torturing of children,
rise up and preach that, make haste, make haste!

But God will save Russia, for though the peasants are corrupted and
cannot renounce their filthy sin, yet they know it is cursed by God and
that they do wrong in sinning. So that our people still believe in
righteousness, have faith in God and weep tears of devotion.

It is different with the upper classes. They, following science, want
to base justice on reason alone, but not with Christ, as before, and
they have already proclaimed that there is no crime, that there is no
sin. And that’s consistent, for if you have no God what is the meaning
of crime? In Europe the people are already rising up against the rich
with violence, and the leaders of the people are everywhere leading
them to bloodshed, and teaching them that their wrath is righteous. But
their “wrath is accursed, for it is cruel.” But God will save Russia as
He has saved her many times. Salvation will come from the people, from
their faith and their meekness.

Fathers and teachers, watch over the people’s faith and this will not
be a dream. I’ve been struck all my life in our great people by their
dignity, their true and seemly dignity. I’ve seen it myself, I can
testify to it, I’ve seen it and marveled at it, I’ve seen it in spite
of the degraded sins and poverty‐stricken appearance of our peasantry.
They are not servile, and even after two centuries of serfdom they are
free in manner and bearing, yet without insolence, and not revengeful
and not envious. “You are rich and noble, you are clever and talented,
well, be so, God bless you. I respect you, but I know that I too am a
man. By the very fact that I respect you without envy I prove my
dignity as a man.”

In truth if they don’t say this (for they don’t know how to say this
yet), that is how they act. I have seen it myself, I have known it
myself, and, would you believe it, the poorer our Russian peasant is,
the more noticeable is that serene goodness, for the rich among them
are for the most part corrupted already, and much of that is due to our
carelessness and indifference. But God will save His people, for Russia
is great in her humility. I dream of seeing, and seem to see clearly
already, our future. It will come to pass, that even the most corrupt
of our rich will end by being ashamed of his riches before the poor,
and the poor, seeing his humility, will understand and give way before
him, will respond joyfully and kindly to his honorable shame. Believe
me that it will end in that; things are moving to that. Equality is to
be found only in the spiritual dignity of man, and that will only be
understood among us. If we were brothers, there would be fraternity,
but before that, they will never agree about the division of wealth. We
preserve the image of Christ, and it will shine forth like a precious
diamond to the whole world. So may it be, so may it be!

Fathers and teachers, a touching incident befell me once. In my
wanderings I met in the town of K. my old orderly, Afanasy. It was
eight years since I had parted from him. He chanced to see me in the
market‐place, recognized me, ran up to me, and how delighted he was! He
simply pounced on me: “Master dear, is it you? Is it really you I see?”
He took me home with him.

He was no longer in the army, he was married and already had two little
children. He and his wife earned their living as costermongers in the
market‐place. His room was poor, but bright and clean. He made me sit
down, set the samovar, sent for his wife, as though my appearance were
a festival for them. He brought me his children: “Bless them, Father.”

“Is it for me to bless them? I am only a humble monk. I will pray for
them. And for you, Afanasy Pavlovitch, I have prayed every day since
that day, for it all came from you,” said I. And I explained that to
him as well as I could. And what do you think? The man kept gazing at
me and could not believe that I, his former master, an officer, was now
before him in such a guise and position; it made him shed tears.

“Why are you weeping?” said I, “better rejoice over me, dear friend,
whom I can never forget, for my path is a glad and joyful one.”

He did not say much, but kept sighing and shaking his head over me
tenderly.

“What has became of your fortune?” he asked.

“I gave it to the monastery,” I answered; “we live in common.”

After tea I began saying good‐by, and suddenly he brought out half a
rouble as an offering to the monastery, and another half‐rouble I saw
him thrusting hurriedly into my hand: “That’s for you in your
wanderings, it may be of use to you, Father.”

I took his half‐rouble, bowed to him and his wife, and went out
rejoicing. And on my way I thought: “Here we are both now, he at home
and I on the road, sighing and shaking our heads, no doubt, and yet
smiling joyfully in the gladness of our hearts, remembering how God
brought about our meeting.”

I have never seen him again since then. I had been his master and he my
servant, but now when we exchanged a loving kiss with softened hearts,
there was a great human bond between us. I have thought a great deal
about that, and now what I think is this: Is it so inconceivable that
that grand and simple‐hearted unity might in due time become universal
among the Russian people? I believe that it will come to pass and that
the time is at hand.

And of servants I will add this: In old days when I was young I was
often angry with servants; “the cook had served something too hot, the
orderly had not brushed my clothes.” But what taught me better then was
a thought of my dear brother’s, which I had heard from him in
childhood: “Am I worth it, that another should serve me and be ordered
about by me in his poverty and ignorance?” And I wondered at the time
that such simple and self‐ evident ideas should be so slow to occur to
our minds.

It is impossible that there should be no servants in the world, but act
so that your servant may be freer in spirit than if he were not a
servant. And why cannot I be a servant to my servant and even let him
see it, and that without any pride on my part or any mistrust on his?
Why should not my servant be like my own kindred, so that I may take
him into my family and rejoice in doing so? Even now this can be done,
but it will lead to the grand unity of men in the future, when a man
will not seek servants for himself, or desire to turn his fellow
creatures into servants as he does now, but on the contrary, will long
with his whole heart to be the servant of all, as the Gospel teaches.

And can it be a dream, that in the end man will find his joy only in
deeds of light and mercy, and not in cruel pleasures as now, in
gluttony, fornication, ostentation, boasting and envious rivalry of one
with the other? I firmly believe that it is not and that the time is at
hand. People laugh and ask: “When will that time come and does it look
like coming?” I believe that with Christ’s help we shall accomplish
this great thing. And how many ideas there have been on earth in the
history of man which were unthinkable ten years before they appeared!
Yet when their destined hour had come, they came forth and spread over
the whole earth. So it will be with us, and our people will shine forth
in the world, and all men will say: “The stone which the builders
rejected has become the corner‐stone of the building.”

And we may ask the scornful themselves: If our hope is a dream, when
will you build up your edifice and order things justly by your
intellect alone, without Christ? If they declare that it is they who
are advancing towards unity, only the most simple‐hearted among them
believe it, so that one may positively marvel at such simplicity. Of a
truth, they have more fantastic dreams than we. They aim at justice,
but, denying Christ, they will end by flooding the earth with blood,
for blood cries out for blood, and he that taketh up the sword shall
perish by the sword. And if it were not for Christ’s covenant, they
would slaughter one another down to the last two men on earth. And
those two last men would not be able to restrain each other in their
pride, and the one would slay the other and then himself. And that
would come to pass, were it not for the promise of Christ that for the
sake of the humble and meek the days shall be shortened.

While I was still wearing an officer’s uniform after my duel, I talked
about servants in general society, and I remember every one was amazed
at me. “What!” they asked, “are we to make our servants sit down on the
sofa and offer them tea?” And I answered them: “Why not, sometimes at
least?” Every one laughed. Their question was frivolous and my answer
was not clear; but the thought in it was to some extent right.

(_g_) _Of Prayer, of Love, and of Contact with other Worlds_


Young man, be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your
prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it,
which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer
is an education. Remember, too, every day, and whenever you can, repeat
to yourself, “Lord, have mercy on all who appear before Thee to‐day.”
For every hour and every moment thousands of men leave life on this
earth, and their souls appear before God. And how many of them depart
in solitude, unknown, sad, dejected that no one mourns for them or even
knows whether they have lived or not! And behold, from the other end of
the earth perhaps, your prayer for their rest will rise up to God
though you knew them not nor they you. How touching it must be to a
soul standing in dread before the Lord to feel at that instant that,
for him too, there is one to pray, that there is a fellow creature left
on earth to love him too! And God will look on you both more
graciously, for if you have had so much pity on him, how much will He
have pity Who is infinitely more loving and merciful than you! And He
will forgive him for your sake.

Brothers, have no fear of men’s sin. Love a man even in his sin, for
that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth.
Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love
every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the
plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the
divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to
comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the
whole world with an all‐ embracing love. Love the animals: God has
given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble
it, don’t harass them, don’t deprive them of their happiness, don’t
work against God’s intent. Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to
the animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile
the earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your
foulness after you—alas, it is true of almost every one of us! Love
children especially, for they too are sinless like the angels; they
live to soften and purify our hearts and as it were to guide us. Woe to
him who offends a child! Father Anfim taught me to love children. The
kind, silent man used often on our wanderings to spend the farthings
given us on sweets and cakes for the children. He could not pass by a
child without emotion. That’s the nature of the man.

At some thoughts one stands perplexed, especially at the sight of men’s
sin, and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always
decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that once for all, you may
subdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvelously strong, the
strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it.

Every day and every hour, every minute, walk round yourself and watch
yourself, and see that your image is a seemly one. You pass by a little
child, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with wrathful heart; you
may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image,
unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenseless heart. You don’t
know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and
all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not
foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love. Brothers, love
is a teacher; but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to
acquire, it is dearly bought, it is won slowly by long labor. For we
must love not only occasionally, for a moment, but for ever. Every one
can love occasionally, even the wicked can.

My brother asked the birds to forgive him; that sounds senseless, but
it is right; for all is like an ocean, all is flowing and blending; a
touch in one place sets up movement at the other end of the earth. It
may be senseless to beg forgiveness of the birds, but birds would be
happier at your side—a little happier, anyway—and children and all
animals, if you were nobler than you are now. It’s all like an ocean, I
tell you. Then you would pray to the birds too, consumed by an
all‐embracing love, in a sort of transport, and pray that they too will
forgive you your sin. Treasure this ecstasy, however senseless it may
seem to men.

My friends, pray to God for gladness. Be glad as children, as the birds
of heaven. And let not the sin of men confound you in your doings. Fear
not that it will wear away your work and hinder its being accomplished.
Do not say, “Sin is mighty, wickedness is mighty, evil environment is
mighty, and we are lonely and helpless, and evil environment is wearing
us away and hindering our good work from being done.” Fly from that
dejection, children! There is only one means of salvation, then take
yourself and make yourself responsible for all men’s sins, that is the
truth, you know, friends, for as soon as you sincerely make yourself
responsible for everything and for all men, you will see at once that
it is really so, and that you are to blame for every one and for all
things. But throwing your own indolence and impotence on others you
will end by sharing the pride of Satan and murmuring against God.

Of the pride of Satan what I think is this: it is hard for us on earth
to comprehend it, and therefore it is so easy to fall into error and to
share it, even imagining that we are doing something grand and fine.
Indeed, many of the strongest feelings and movements of our nature we
cannot comprehend on earth. Let not that be a stumbling‐block, and
think not that it may serve as a justification to you for anything. For
the Eternal Judge asks of you what you can comprehend and not what you
cannot. You will know that yourself hereafter, for you will behold all
things truly then and will not dispute them. On earth, indeed, we are
as it were astray, and if it were not for the precious image of Christ
before us, we should be undone and altogether lost, as was the human
race before the flood. Much on earth is hidden from us, but to make up
for that we have been given a precious mystic sense of our living bond
with the other world, with the higher heavenly world, and the roots of
our thoughts and feelings are not here but in other worlds. That is why
the philosophers say that we cannot apprehend the reality of things on
earth.

God took seeds from different worlds and sowed them on this earth, and
His garden grew up and everything came up that could come up, but what
grows lives and is alive only through the feeling of its contact with
other mysterious worlds. If that feeling grows weak or is destroyed in
you, the heavenly growth will die away in you. Then you will be
indifferent to life and even grow to hate it. That’s what I think.

_(h) Can a Man judge his Fellow Creatures? Faith to the End_


Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of any one. For no one
can judge a criminal, until he recognizes that he is just such a
criminal as the man standing before him, and that he perhaps is more
than all men to blame for that crime. When he understands that, he will
be able to be a judge. Though that sounds absurd, it is true. If I had
been righteous myself, perhaps there would have been no criminal
standing before me. If you can take upon yourself the crime of the
criminal your heart is judging, take it at once, suffer for him
yourself, and let him go without reproach. And even if the law itself
makes you his judge, act in the same spirit so far as possible, for he
will go away and condemn himself more bitterly than you have done. If,
after your kiss, he goes away untouched, mocking at you, do not let
that be a stumbling‐block to you. It shows his time has not yet come,
but it will come in due course. And if it come not, no matter; if not
he, then another in his place will understand and suffer, and judge and
condemn himself, and the truth will be fulfilled. Believe that, believe
it without doubt; for in that lies all the hope and faith of the
saints.

Work without ceasing. If you remember in the night as you go to sleep,
“I have not done what I ought to have done,” rise up at once and do it.
If the people around you are spiteful and callous and will not hear
you, fall down before them and beg their forgiveness; for in truth you
are to blame for their not wanting to hear you. And if you cannot speak
to them in their bitterness, serve them in silence and in humility,
never losing hope. If all men abandon you and even drive you away by
force, then when you are left alone fall on the earth and kiss it,
water it with your tears and it will bring forth fruit even though no
one has seen or heard you in your solitude. Believe to the end, even if
all men went astray and you were left the only one faithful; bring your
offering even then and praise God in your loneliness. And if two of you
are gathered together—then there is a whole world, a world of living
love. Embrace each other tenderly and praise God, for if only in you
two His truth has been fulfilled.

If you sin yourself and grieve even unto death for your sins or for
your sudden sin, then rejoice for others, rejoice for the righteous
man, rejoice that if you have sinned, he is righteous and has not
sinned.

If the evil‐doing of men moves you to indignation and overwhelming
distress, even to a desire for vengeance on the evil‐doers, shun above
all things that feeling. Go at once and seek suffering for yourself, as
though you were yourself guilty of that wrong. Accept that suffering
and bear it and your heart will find comfort, and you will understand
that you too are guilty, for you might have been a light to the
evil‐doers, even as the one man sinless, and you were not a light to
them. If you had been a light, you would have lightened the path for
others too, and the evil‐doer might perhaps have been saved by your
light from his sin. And even though your light was shining, yet you see
men were not saved by it, hold firm and doubt not the power of the
heavenly light. Believe that if they were not saved, they will be saved
hereafter. And if they are not saved hereafter, then their sons will be
saved, for your light will not die even when you are dead. The
righteous man departs, but his light remains. Men are always saved
after the death of the deliverer. Men reject their prophets and slay
them, but they love their martyrs and honor those whom they have slain.
You are working for the whole, you are acting for the future. Seek no
reward, for great is your reward on this earth: the spiritual joy which
is only vouchsafed to the righteous man. Fear not the great nor the
mighty, but be wise and ever serene. Know the measure, know the times,
study that. When you are left alone, pray. Love to throw yourself on
the earth and kiss it. Kiss the earth and love it with an unceasing,
consuming love. Love all men, love everything. Seek that rapture and
ecstasy. Water the earth with the tears of your joy and love those
tears. Don’t be ashamed of that ecstasy, prize it, for it is a gift of
God and a great one; it is not given to many but only to the elect.

_(i) Of Hell and Hell Fire, a Mystic Reflection_


Fathers and teachers, I ponder, “What is hell?” I maintain that it is
the suffering of being unable to love. Once in infinite existence,
immeasurable in time and space, a spiritual creature was given on his
coming to earth, the power of saying, “I am and I love.” Once, only
once, there was given him a moment of active _living_ love, and for
that was earthly life given him, and with it times and seasons. And
that happy creature rejected the priceless gift, prized it and loved it
not, scorned it and remained callous. Such a one, having left the
earth, sees Abraham’s bosom and talks with Abraham as we are told in
the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and beholds heaven and can go
up to the Lord. But that is just his torment, to rise up to the Lord
without ever having loved, to be brought close to those who have loved
when he has despised their love. For he sees clearly and says to
himself, “Now I have understanding, and though I now thirst to love,
there will be nothing great, no sacrifice in my love, for my earthly
life is over, and Abraham will not come even with a drop of living
water (that is the gift of earthly active life) to cool the fiery
thirst of spiritual love which burns in me now, though I despised it on
earth; there is no more life for me and will be no more time! Even
though I would gladly give my life for others, it can never be, for
that life is passed which can be sacrificed for love, and now there is
a gulf fixed between that life and this existence.”

They talk of hell fire in the material sense. I don’t go into that
mystery and I shun it. But I think if there were fire in material
sense, they would be glad of it, for I imagine that in material agony,
their still greater spiritual agony would be forgotten for a moment.
Moreover, that spiritual agony cannot be taken from them, for that
suffering is not external but within them. And if it could be taken
from them, I think it would be bitterer still for the unhappy
creatures. For even if the righteous in Paradise forgave them,
beholding their torments, and called them up to heaven in their
infinite love, they would only multiply their torments, for they would
arouse in them still more keenly a flaming thirst for responsive,
active and grateful love which is now impossible. In the timidity of my
heart I imagine, however, that the very recognition of this
impossibility would serve at last to console them. For accepting the
love of the righteous together with the impossibility of repaying it,
by this submissiveness and the effect of this humility, they will
attain at last, as it were, to a certain semblance of that active love
which they scorned in life, to something like its outward
expression.... I am sorry, friends and brothers, that I cannot express
this clearly. But woe to those who have slain themselves on earth, woe
to the suicides! I believe that there can be none more miserable than
they. They tell us that it is a sin to pray for them and outwardly the
Church, as it were, renounces them, but in my secret heart I believe
that we may pray even for them. Love can never be an offense to Christ.
For such as those I have prayed inwardly all my life, I confess it,
fathers and teachers, and even now I pray for them every day.

Oh, there are some who remain proud and fierce even in hell, in spite
of their certain knowledge and contemplation of the absolute truth;
there are some fearful ones who have given themselves over to Satan and
his proud spirit entirely. For such, hell is voluntary and ever
consuming; they are tortured by their own choice. For they have cursed
themselves, cursing God and life. They live upon their vindictive pride
like a starving man in the desert sucking blood out of his own body.
But they are never satisfied, and they refuse forgiveness, they curse
God Who calls them. They cannot behold the living God without hatred,
and they cry out that the God of life should be annihilated, that God
should destroy Himself and His own creation. And they will burn in the
fire of their own wrath for ever and yearn for death and annihilation.
But they will not attain to death....


Here Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov’s manuscript ends. I repeat, it is
incomplete and fragmentary. Biographical details, for instance, cover
only Father Zossima’s earliest youth. Of his teaching and opinions we
find brought together sayings evidently uttered on very different
occasions. His utterances during the last few hours have not been kept
separate from the rest, but their general character can be gathered
from what we have in Alexey Fyodorovitch’s manuscript.

The elder’s death came in the end quite unexpectedly. For although
those who were gathered about him that last evening realized that his
death was approaching, yet it was difficult to imagine that it would
come so suddenly. On the contrary, his friends, as I observed already,
seeing him that night apparently so cheerful and talkative, were
convinced that there was at least a temporary change for the better in
his condition. Even five minutes before his death, they said afterwards
wonderingly, it was impossible to foresee it. He seemed suddenly to
feel an acute pain in his chest, he turned pale and pressed his hands
to his heart. All rose from their seats and hastened to him. But though
suffering, he still looked at them with a smile, sank slowly from his
chair on to his knees, then bowed his face to the ground, stretched out
his arms and as though in joyful ecstasy, praying and kissing the
ground, quietly and joyfully gave up his soul to God.

The news of his death spread at once through the hermitage and reached
the monastery. The nearest friends of the deceased and those whose duty
it was from their position began to lay out the corpse according to the
ancient ritual, and all the monks gathered together in the church. And
before dawn the news of the death reached the town. By the morning all
the town was talking of the event, and crowds were flocking from the
town to the monastery. But this subject will be treated in the next
book; I will only add here that before a day had passed something
happened so unexpected, so strange, upsetting, and bewildering in its
effect on the monks and the townspeople, that after all these years,
that day of general suspense is still vividly remembered in the town.




PART III




Book VII. Alyosha




Chapter I.
The Breath Of Corruption


The body of Father Zossima was prepared for burial according to the
established ritual. As is well known, the bodies of dead monks and
hermits are not washed. In the words of the Church Ritual: “If any one
of the monks depart in the Lord, the monk designated (that is, whose
office it is) shall wipe the body with warm water, making first the
sign of the cross with a sponge on the forehead of the deceased, on the
breast, on the hands and feet and on the knees, and that is enough.”
All this was done by Father Païssy, who then clothed the deceased in
his monastic garb and wrapped him in his cloak, which was, according to
custom, somewhat slit to allow of its being folded about him in the
form of a cross. On his head he put a hood with an eight‐cornered
cross. The hood was left open and the dead man’s face was covered with
black gauze. In his hands was put an ikon of the Saviour. Towards
morning he was put in the coffin which had been made ready long before.
It was decided to leave the coffin all day in the cell, in the larger
room in which the elder used to receive his visitors and fellow monks.
As the deceased was a priest and monk of the strictest rule, the
Gospel, not the Psalter, had to be read over his body by monks in holy
orders. The reading was begun by Father Iosif immediately after the
requiem service. Father Païssy desired later on to read the Gospel all
day and night over his dead friend, but for the present he, as well as
the Father Superintendent of the Hermitage, was very busy and occupied,
for something extraordinary, an unheard‐of, even “unseemly” excitement
and impatient expectation began to be apparent in the monks, and the
visitors from the monastery hostels, and the crowds of people flocking
from the town. And as time went on, this grew more and more marked.
Both the Superintendent and Father Païssy did their utmost to calm the
general bustle and agitation.

When it was fully daylight, some people began bringing their sick, in
most cases children, with them from the town—as though they had been
waiting expressly for this moment to do so, evidently persuaded that
the dead elder’s remains had a power of healing, which would be
immediately made manifest in accordance with their faith. It was only
then apparent how unquestionably every one in our town had accepted
Father Zossima during his lifetime as a great saint. And those who came
were far from being all of the humbler classes.

This intense expectation on the part of believers displayed with such
haste, such openness, even with impatience and almost insistence,
impressed Father Païssy as unseemly. Though he had long foreseen
something of the sort, the actual manifestation of the feeling was
beyond anything he had looked for. When he came across any of the monks
who displayed this excitement, Father Païssy began to reprove them.
“Such immediate expectation of something extraordinary,” he said,
“shows a levity, possible to worldly people but unseemly in us.”

But little attention was paid him and Father Païssy noticed it
uneasily. Yet he himself (if the whole truth must be told), secretly at
the bottom of his heart, cherished almost the same hopes and could not
but be aware of it, though he was indignant at the too impatient
expectation around him, and saw in it light‐mindedness and vanity.
Nevertheless, it was particularly unpleasant to him to meet certain
persons, whose presence aroused in him great misgivings. In the crowd
in the dead man’s cell he noticed with inward aversion (for which he
immediately reproached himself) the presence of Rakitin and of the monk
from Obdorsk, who was still staying in the monastery. Of both of them
Father Païssy felt for some reason suddenly suspicious—though, indeed,
he might well have felt the same about others.

The monk from Obdorsk was conspicuous as the most fussy in the excited
crowd. He was to be seen everywhere; everywhere he was asking
questions, everywhere he was listening, on all sides he was whispering
with a peculiar, mysterious air. His expression showed the greatest
impatience and even a sort of irritation.

As for Rakitin, he, as appeared later, had come so early to the
hermitage at the special request of Madame Hohlakov. As soon as that
good‐hearted but weak‐minded woman, who could not herself have been
admitted to the hermitage, waked and heard of the death of Father
Zossima, she was overtaken with such intense curiosity that she
promptly dispatched Rakitin to the hermitage, to keep a careful look
out and report to her by letter every half‐hour or so “_everything that
takes place_.” She regarded Rakitin as a most religious and devout
young man. He was particularly clever in getting round people and
assuming whatever part he thought most to their taste, if he detected
the slightest advantage to himself from doing so.

It was a bright, clear day, and many of the visitors were thronging
about the tombs, which were particularly numerous round the church and
scattered here and there about the hermitage. As he walked round the
hermitage, Father Païssy remembered Alyosha and that he had not seen
him for some time, not since the night. And he had no sooner thought of
him than he at once noticed him in the farthest corner of the hermitage
garden, sitting on the tombstone of a monk who had been famous long ago
for his saintliness. He sat with his back to the hermitage and his face
to the wall, and seemed to be hiding behind the tombstone. Going up to
him, Father Païssy saw that he was weeping quietly but bitterly, with
his face hidden in his hands, and that his whole frame was shaking with
sobs. Father Païssy stood over him for a little.

“Enough, dear son, enough, dear,” he pronounced with feeling at last.
“Why do you weep? Rejoice and weep not. Don’t you know that this is the
greatest of his days? Think only where he is now, at this moment!”

Alyosha glanced at him, uncovering his face, which was swollen with
crying like a child’s, but turned away at once without uttering a word
and hid his face in his hands again.

“Maybe it is well,” said Father Païssy thoughtfully; “weep if you must,
Christ has sent you those tears.”

“Your touching tears are but a relief to your spirit and will serve to
gladden your dear heart,” he added to himself, walking away from
Alyosha, and thinking lovingly of him. He moved away quickly, however,
for he felt that he too might weep looking at him.

Meanwhile the time was passing; the monastery services and the requiems
for the dead followed in their due course. Father Païssy again took
Father Iosif’s place by the coffin and began reading the Gospel. But
before three o’clock in the afternoon that something took place to
which I alluded at the end of the last book, something so unexpected by
all of us and so contrary to the general hope, that, I repeat, this
trivial incident has been minutely remembered to this day in our town
and all the surrounding neighborhood. I may add here, for myself
personally, that I feel it almost repulsive to recall that event which
caused such frivolous agitation and was such a stumbling‐block to many,
though in reality it was the most natural and trivial matter. I should,
of course, have omitted all mention of it in my story, if it had not
exerted a very strong influence on the heart and soul of the chief,
though future, hero of my story, Alyosha, forming a crisis and
turning‐point in his spiritual development, giving a shock to his
intellect, which finally strengthened it for the rest of his life and
gave it a definite aim.

And so, to return to our story. When before dawn they laid Father
Zossima’s body in the coffin and brought it into the front room, the
question of opening the windows was raised among those who were around
the coffin. But this suggestion made casually by some one was
unanswered and almost unnoticed. Some of those present may perhaps have
inwardly noticed it, only to reflect that the anticipation of decay and
corruption from the body of such a saint was an actual absurdity,
calling for compassion (if not a smile) for the lack of faith and the
frivolity it implied. For they expected something quite different.

And, behold, soon after midday there were signs of something, at first
only observed in silence by those who came in and out and were
evidently each afraid to communicate the thought in his mind. But by
three o’clock those signs had become so clear and unmistakable, that
the news swiftly reached all the monks and visitors in the hermitage,
promptly penetrated to the monastery, throwing all the monks into
amazement, and finally, in the shortest possible time, spread to the
town, exciting every one in it, believers and unbelievers alike. The
unbelievers rejoiced, and as for the believers some of them rejoiced
even more than the unbelievers, for “men love the downfall and disgrace
of the righteous,” as the deceased elder had said in one of his
exhortations.

The fact is that a smell of decomposition began to come from the
coffin, growing gradually more marked, and by three o’clock it was
quite unmistakable. In all the past history of our monastery, no such
scandal could be recalled, and in no other circumstances could such a
scandal have been possible, as showed itself in unseemly disorder
immediately after this discovery among the very monks themselves.
Afterwards, even many years afterwards, some sensible monks were amazed
and horrified, when they recalled that day, that the scandal could have
reached such proportions. For in the past, monks of very holy life had
died, God‐fearing old men, whose saintliness was acknowledged by all,
yet from their humble coffins, too, the breath of corruption had come,
naturally, as from all dead bodies, but that had caused no scandal nor
even the slightest excitement. Of course there had been, in former
times, saints in the monastery whose memory was carefully preserved and
whose relics, according to tradition, showed no signs of corruption.
This fact was regarded by the monks as touching and mysterious, and the
tradition of it was cherished as something blessed and miraculous, and
as a promise, by God’s grace, of still greater glory from their tombs
in the future.

One such, whose memory was particularly cherished, was an old monk,
Job, who had died seventy years before at the age of a hundred and
five. He had been a celebrated ascetic, rigid in fasting and silence,
and his tomb was pointed out to all visitors on their arrival with
peculiar respect and mysterious hints of great hopes connected with it.
(That was the very tomb on which Father Païssy had found Alyosha
sitting in the morning.) Another memory cherished in the monastery was
that of the famous Father Varsonofy, who was only recently dead and had
preceded Father Zossima in the eldership. He was reverenced during his
lifetime as a crazy saint by all the pilgrims to the monastery. There
was a tradition that both of these had lain in their coffins as though
alive, that they had shown no signs of decomposition when they were
buried and that there had been a holy light in their faces. And some
people even insisted that a sweet fragrance came from their bodies.

Yet, in spite of these edifying memories, it would be difficult to
explain the frivolity, absurdity and malice that were manifested beside
the coffin of Father Zossima. It is my private opinion that several
different causes were simultaneously at work, one of which was the
deeply‐rooted hostility to the institution of elders as a pernicious
innovation, an antipathy hidden deep in the hearts of many of the
monks. Even more powerful was jealousy of the dead man’s saintliness,
so firmly established during his lifetime that it was almost a
forbidden thing to question it. For though the late elder had won over
many hearts, more by love than by miracles, and had gathered round him
a mass of loving adherents, none the less, in fact, rather the more on
that account he had awakened jealousy and so had come to have bitter
enemies, secret and open, not only in the monastery but in the world
outside it. He did no one any harm, but “Why do they think him so
saintly?” And that question alone, gradually repeated, gave rise at
last to an intense, insatiable hatred of him. That, I believe, was why
many people were extremely delighted at the smell of decomposition
which came so quickly, for not a day had passed since his death. At the
same time there were some among those who had been hitherto reverently
devoted to the elder, who were almost mortified and personally
affronted by this incident. This was how the thing happened.

As soon as signs of decomposition had begun to appear, the whole aspect
of the monks betrayed their secret motives in entering the cell. They
went in, stayed a little while and hastened out to confirm the news to
the crowd of other monks waiting outside. Some of the latter shook
their heads mournfully, but others did not even care to conceal the
delight which gleamed unmistakably in their malignant eyes. And now no
one reproached them for it, no one raised his voice in protest, which
was strange, for the majority of the monks had been devoted to the dead
elder. But it seemed as though God had in this case let the minority
get the upper hand for a time.

Visitors from outside, particularly of the educated class, soon went
into the cell, too, with the same spying intent. Of the peasantry few
went into the cell, though there were crowds of them at the gates of
the hermitage. After three o’clock the rush of worldly visitors was
greatly increased and this was no doubt owing to the shocking news.
People were attracted who would not otherwise have come on that day and
had not intended to come, and among them were some personages of high
standing. But external decorum was still preserved and Father Païssy,
with a stern face, continued firmly and distinctly reading aloud the
Gospel, apparently not noticing what was taking place around him,
though he had, in fact, observed something unusual long before. But at
last the murmurs, first subdued but gradually louder and more
confident, reached even him. “It shows God’s judgment is not as man’s,”
Father Païssy heard suddenly. The first to give utterance to this
sentiment was a layman, an elderly official from the town, known to be
a man of great piety. But he only repeated aloud what the monks had
long been whispering. They had long before formulated this damning
conclusion, and the worst of it was that a sort of triumphant
satisfaction at that conclusion became more and more apparent every
moment. Soon they began to lay aside even external decorum and almost
seemed to feel they had a sort of right to discard it.

“And for what reason can _this_ have happened,” some of the monks said,
at first with a show of regret; “he had a small frame and his flesh was
dried up on his bones, what was there to decay?”

“It must be a sign from heaven,” others hastened to add, and their
opinion was adopted at once without protest. For it was pointed out,
too, that if the decomposition had been natural, as in the case of
every dead sinner, it would have been apparent later, after a lapse of
at least twenty‐four hours, but this premature corruption “was in
excess of nature,” and so the finger of God was evident. It was meant
for a sign. This conclusion seemed irresistible.

Gentle Father Iosif, the librarian, a great favorite of the dead man’s,
tried to reply to some of the evil speakers that “this is not held
everywhere alike,” and that the incorruptibility of the bodies of the
just was not a dogma of the Orthodox Church, but only an opinion, and
that even in the most Orthodox regions, at Athos for instance, they
were not greatly confounded by the smell of corruption, and there the
chief sign of the glorification of the saved was not bodily
incorruptibility, but the color of the bones when the bodies have lain
many years in the earth and have decayed in it. “And if the bones are
yellow as wax, that is the great sign that the Lord has glorified the
dead saint, if they are not yellow but black, it shows that God has not
deemed him worthy of such glory—that is the belief in Athos, a great
place, where the Orthodox doctrine has been preserved from of old,
unbroken and in its greatest purity,” said Father Iosif in conclusion.

But the meek Father’s words had little effect and even provoked a
mocking retort. “That’s all pedantry and innovation, no use listening
to it,” the monks decided. “We stick to the old doctrine, there are all
sorts of innovations nowadays, are we to follow them all?” added
others.

“We have had as many holy fathers as they had. There they are among the
Turks, they have forgotten everything. Their doctrine has long been
impure and they have no bells even,” the most sneering added.

Father Iosif walked away, grieving the more since he had put forward
his own opinion with little confidence as though scarcely believing in
it himself. He foresaw with distress that something very unseemly was
beginning and that there were positive signs of disobedience. Little by
little, all the sensible monks were reduced to silence like Father
Iosif. And so it came to pass that all who loved the elder and had
accepted with devout obedience the institution of the eldership were
all at once terribly cast down and glanced timidly in one another’s
faces, when they met. Those who were hostile to the institution of
elders, as a novelty, held up their heads proudly. “There was no smell
of corruption from the late elder Varsonofy, but a sweet fragrance,”
they recalled malignantly. “But he gained that glory not because he was
an elder, but because he was a holy man.”

And this was followed by a shower of criticism and even blame of Father
Zossima. “His teaching was false; he taught that life is a great joy
and not a vale of tears,” said some of the more unreasonable. “He
followed the fashionable belief, he did not recognize material fire in
hell,” others, still more unreasonable, added. “He was not strict in
fasting, allowed himself sweet things, ate cherry jam with his tea,
ladies used to send it to him. Is it for a monk of strict rule to drink
tea?” could be heard among some of the envious. “He sat in pride,” the
most malignant declared vindictively; “he considered himself a saint
and he took it as his due when people knelt before him.” “He abused the
sacrament of confession,” the fiercest opponents of the institution of
elders added in a malicious whisper. And among these were some of the
oldest monks, strictest in their devotion, genuine ascetics, who had
kept silent during the life of the deceased elder, but now suddenly
unsealed their lips. And this was terrible, for their words had great
influence on young monks who were not yet firm in their convictions.
The monk from Obdorsk heard all this attentively, heaving deep sighs
and nodding his head. “Yes, clearly Father Ferapont was right in his
judgment yesterday,” and at that moment Father Ferapont himself made
his appearance, as though on purpose to increase the confusion.

I have mentioned already that he rarely left his wooden cell by the
apiary. He was seldom even seen at church and they overlooked this
neglect on the ground of his craziness, and did not keep him to the
rules binding on all the rest. But if the whole truth is to be told,
they hardly had a choice about it. For it would have been discreditable
to insist on burdening with the common regulations so great an ascetic,
who prayed day and night (he even dropped asleep on his knees). If they
had insisted, the monks would have said, “He is holier than all of us
and he follows a rule harder than ours. And if he does not go to
church, it’s because he knows when he ought to; he has his own rule.”
It was to avoid the chance of these sinful murmurs that Father Ferapont
was left in peace.

As every one was aware, Father Ferapont particularly disliked Father
Zossima. And now the news had reached him in his hut that “God’s
judgment is not the same as man’s,” and that something had happened
which was “in excess of nature.” It may well be supposed that among the
first to run to him with the news was the monk from Obdorsk, who had
visited him the evening before and left his cell terror‐stricken.

I have mentioned above, that though Father Païssy, standing firm and
immovable reading the Gospel over the coffin, could not hear nor see
what was passing outside the cell, he gauged most of it correctly in
his heart, for he knew the men surrounding him, well. He was not shaken
by it, but awaited what would come next without fear, watching with
penetration and insight for the outcome of the general excitement.

Suddenly an extraordinary uproar in the passage in open defiance of
decorum burst on his ears. The door was flung open and Father Ferapont
appeared in the doorway. Behind him there could be seen accompanying
him a crowd of monks, together with many people from the town. They did
not, however, enter the cell, but stood at the bottom of the steps,
waiting to see what Father Ferapont would say or do. For they felt with
a certain awe, in spite of their audacity, that he had not come for
nothing. Standing in the doorway, Father Ferapont raised his arms, and
under his right arm the keen inquisitive little eyes of the monk from
Obdorsk peeped in. He alone, in his intense curiosity, could not resist
running up the steps after Father Ferapont. The others, on the
contrary, pressed farther back in sudden alarm when the door was
noisily flung open. Holding his hands aloft, Father Ferapont suddenly
roared:

“Casting out I cast out!” and, turning in all directions, he began at
once making the sign of the cross at each of the four walls and four
corners of the cell in succession. All who accompanied Father Ferapont
immediately understood his action. For they knew he always did this
wherever he went, and that he would not sit down or say a word, till he
had driven out the evil spirits.

“Satan, go hence! Satan, go hence!” he repeated at each sign of the
cross. “Casting out I cast out,” he roared again.

He was wearing his coarse gown girt with a rope. His bare chest,
covered with gray hair, could be seen under his hempen shirt. His feet
were bare. As soon as he began waving his arms, the cruel irons he wore
under his gown could be heard clanking.

Father Païssy paused in his reading, stepped forward and stood before
him waiting.

“What have you come for, worthy Father? Why do you offend against good
order? Why do you disturb the peace of the flock?” he said at last,
looking sternly at him.

“What have I come for? You ask why? What is your faith?” shouted Father
Ferapont crazily. “I’ve come here to drive out your visitors, the
unclean devils. I’ve come to see how many have gathered here while I
have been away. I want to sweep them out with a birch broom.”

“You cast out the evil spirit, but perhaps you are serving him
yourself,” Father Païssy went on fearlessly. “And who can say of
himself ‘I am holy’? Can you, Father?”

“I am unclean, not holy. I would not sit in an arm‐chair and would not
have them bow down to me as an idol,” thundered Father Ferapont.
“Nowadays folk destroy the true faith. The dead man, your saint,” he
turned to the crowd, pointing with his finger to the coffin, “did not
believe in devils. He gave medicine to keep off the devils. And so they
have become as common as spiders in the corners. And now he has begun
to stink himself. In that we see a great sign from God.”

The incident he referred to was this. One of the monks was haunted in
his dreams and, later on, in waking moments, by visions of evil
spirits. When in the utmost terror he confided this to Father Zossima,
the elder had advised continual prayer and rigid fasting. But when that
was of no use, he advised him, while persisting in prayer and fasting,
to take a special medicine. Many persons were shocked at the time and
wagged their heads as they talked over it—and most of all Father
Ferapont, to whom some of the censorious had hastened to report this
“extraordinary” counsel on the part of the elder.

“Go away, Father!” said Father Païssy, in a commanding voice, “it’s not
for man to judge but for God. Perhaps we see here a ‘sign’ which
neither you, nor I, nor any one of us is able to comprehend. Go,
Father, and do not trouble the flock!” he repeated impressively.

“He did not keep the fasts according to the rule and therefore the sign
has come. That is clear and it’s a sin to hide it,” the fanatic,
carried away by a zeal that outstripped his reason, would not be
quieted. “He was seduced by sweetmeats, ladies brought them to him in
their pockets, he sipped tea, he worshiped his belly, filling it with
sweet things and his mind with haughty thoughts.... And for this he is
put to shame....”

“You speak lightly, Father.” Father Païssy, too, raised his voice. “I
admire your fasting and severities, but you speak lightly like some
frivolous youth, fickle and childish. Go away, Father, I command you!”
Father Païssy thundered in conclusion.

“I will go,” said Ferapont, seeming somewhat taken aback, but still as
bitter. “You learned men! You are so clever you look down upon my
humbleness. I came hither with little learning and here I have
forgotten what I did know, God Himself has preserved me in my weakness
from your subtlety.”

Father Païssy stood over him, waiting resolutely. Father Ferapont
paused and, suddenly leaning his cheek on his hand despondently,
pronounced in a sing‐song voice, looking at the coffin of the dead
elder:

“To‐morrow they will sing over him ‘Our Helper and Defender’—a splendid
anthem—and over me when I die all they’ll sing will be ‘What earthly
joy’—a little canticle,”[6] he added with tearful regret. “You are
proud and puffed up, this is a vain place!” he shouted suddenly like a
madman, and with a wave of his hand he turned quickly and quickly
descended the steps. The crowd awaiting him below wavered; some
followed him at once and some lingered, for the cell was still open,
and Father Païssy, following Father Ferapont on to the steps, stood
watching him. But the excited old fanatic was not completely silenced.
Walking twenty steps away, he suddenly turned towards the setting sun,
raised both his arms and, as though some one had cut him down, fell to
the ground with a loud scream.

“My God has conquered! Christ has conquered the setting sun!” he
shouted frantically, stretching up his hands to the sun, and falling
face downwards on the ground, he sobbed like a little child, shaken by
his tears and spreading out his arms on the ground. Then all rushed up
to him; there were exclamations and sympathetic sobs ... a kind of
frenzy seemed to take possession of them all.

“This is the one who is a saint! This is the one who is a holy man!”
some cried aloud, losing their fear. “This is he who should be an
elder,” others added malignantly.

“He wouldn’t be an elder ... he would refuse ... he wouldn’t serve a
cursed innovation ... he wouldn’t imitate their foolery,” other voices
chimed in at once. And it is hard to say how far they might have gone,
but at that moment the bell rang summoning them to service. All began
crossing themselves at once. Father Ferapont, too, got up and crossing
himself went back to his cell without looking round, still uttering
exclamations which were utterly incoherent. A few followed him, but the
greater number dispersed, hastening to service. Father Païssy let
Father Iosif read in his place and went down. The frantic outcries of
bigots could not shake him, but his heart was suddenly filled with
melancholy for some special reason and he felt that. He stood still and
suddenly wondered, “Why am I sad even to dejection?” and immediately
grasped with surprise that his sudden sadness was due to a very small
and special cause. In the crowd thronging at the entrance to the cell,
he had noticed Alyosha and he remembered that he had felt at once a
pang at heart on seeing him. “Can that boy mean so much to my heart
now?” he asked himself, wondering.

At that moment Alyosha passed him, hurrying away, but not in the
direction of the church. Their eyes met. Alyosha quickly turned away
his eyes and dropped them to the ground, and from the boy’s look alone,
Father Païssy guessed what a great change was taking place in him at
that moment.

“Have you, too, fallen into temptation?” cried Father Païssy. “Can you
be with those of little faith?” he added mournfully.

Alyosha stood still and gazed vaguely at Father Païssy, but quickly
turned his eyes away again and again looked on the ground. He stood
sideways and did not turn his face to Father Païssy, who watched him
attentively.

“Where are you hastening? The bell calls to service,” he asked again,
but again Alyosha gave no answer.

“Are you leaving the hermitage? What, without asking leave, without
asking a blessing?”

Alyosha suddenly gave a wry smile, cast a strange, very strange, look
at the Father to whom his former guide, the former sovereign of his
heart and mind, his beloved elder, had confided him as he lay dying.
And suddenly, still without speaking, waved his hand, as though not
caring even to be respectful, and with rapid steps walked towards the
gates away from the hermitage.

“You will come back again!” murmured Father Païssy, looking after him
with sorrowful surprise.




Chapter II.
A Critical Moment


Father Païssy, of course, was not wrong when he decided that his “dear
boy” would come back again. Perhaps indeed, to some extent, he
penetrated with insight into the true meaning of Alyosha’s spiritual
condition. Yet I must frankly own that it would be very difficult for
me to give a clear account of that strange, vague moment in the life of
the young hero I love so much. To Father Païssy’s sorrowful question,
“Are you too with those of little faith?” I could of course confidently
answer for Alyosha, “No, he is not with those of little faith. Quite
the contrary.” Indeed, all his trouble came from the fact that he was
of great faith. But still the trouble was there and was so agonizing
that even long afterwards Alyosha thought of that sorrowful day as one
of the bitterest and most fatal days of his life. If the question is
asked: “Could all his grief and disturbance have been only due to the
fact that his elder’s body had shown signs of premature decomposition
instead of at once performing miracles?” I must answer without beating
about the bush, “Yes, it certainly was.” I would only beg the reader
not to be in too great a hurry to laugh at my young hero’s pure heart.
I am far from intending to apologize for him or to justify his innocent
faith on the ground of his youth, or the little progress he had made in
his studies, or any such reason. I must declare, on the contrary, that
I have genuine respect for the qualities of his heart. No doubt a youth
who received impressions cautiously, whose love was lukewarm, and whose
mind was too prudent for his age and so of little value, such a young
man might, I admit, have avoided what happened to my hero. But in some
cases it is really more creditable to be carried away by an emotion,
however unreasonable, which springs from a great love, than to be
unmoved. And this is even truer in youth, for a young man who is always
sensible is to be suspected and is of little worth—that’s my opinion!

“But,” reasonable people will exclaim perhaps, “every young man cannot
believe in such a superstition and your hero is no model for others.”

To this I reply again, “Yes! my hero had faith, a faith holy and
steadfast, but still I am not going to apologize for him.”

Though I declared above, and perhaps too hastily, that I should not
explain or justify my hero, I see that some explanation is necessary
for the understanding of the rest of my story. Let me say then, it was
not a question of miracles. There was no frivolous and impatient
expectation of miracles in his mind. And Alyosha needed no miracles at
the time, for the triumph of some preconceived idea—oh, no, not at
all—what he saw before all was one figure—the figure of his beloved
elder, the figure of that holy man whom he revered with such adoration.
The fact is that all the love that lay concealed in his pure young
heart for every one and everything had, for the past year, been
concentrated—and perhaps wrongly so—on one being, his beloved elder. It
is true that being had for so long been accepted by him as his ideal,
that all his young strength and energy could not but turn towards that
ideal, even to the forgetting at the moment “of every one and
everything.” He remembered afterwards how, on that terrible day, he had
entirely forgotten his brother Dmitri, about whom he had been so
anxious and troubled the day before; he had forgotten, too, to take the
two hundred roubles to Ilusha’s father, though he had so warmly
intended to do so the preceding evening. But again it was not miracles
he needed but only “the higher justice” which had been in his belief
outraged by the blow that had so suddenly and cruelly wounded his
heart. And what does it signify that this “justice” looked for by
Alyosha inevitably took the shape of miracles to be wrought immediately
by the ashes of his adored teacher? Why, every one in the monastery
cherished the same thought and the same hope, even those whose
intellects Alyosha revered, Father Païssy himself, for instance. And so
Alyosha, untroubled by doubts, clothed his dreams too in the same form
as all the rest. And a whole year of life in the monastery had formed
the habit of this expectation in his heart. But it was justice,
justice, he thirsted for, not simply miracles.

And now the man who should, he believed, have been exalted above every
one in the whole world, that man, instead of receiving the glory that
was his due, was suddenly degraded and dishonored! What for? Who had
judged him? Who could have decreed this? Those were the questions that
wrung his inexperienced and virginal heart. He could not endure without
mortification, without resentment even, that the holiest of holy men
should have been exposed to the jeering and spiteful mockery of the
frivolous crowd so inferior to him. Even had there been no miracles,
had there been nothing marvelous to justify his hopes, why this
indignity, why this humiliation, why this premature decay, “in excess
of nature,” as the spiteful monks said? Why this “sign from heaven,”
which they so triumphantly acclaimed in company with Father Ferapont,
and why did they believe they had gained the right to acclaim it? Where
is the finger of Providence? Why did Providence hide its face “at the
most critical moment” (so Alyosha thought it), as though voluntarily
submitting to the blind, dumb, pitiless laws of nature?

That was why Alyosha’s heart was bleeding, and, of course, as I have
said already, the sting of it all was that the man he loved above
everything on earth should be put to shame and humiliated! This
murmuring may have been shallow and unreasonable in my hero, but I
repeat again for the third time—and am prepared to admit that it might
be difficult to defend my feeling—I am glad that my hero showed himself
not too reasonable at that moment, for any man of sense will always
come back to reason in time, but, if love does not gain the upper hand
in a boy’s heart at such an exceptional moment, when will it? I will
not, however, omit to mention something strange, which came for a time
to the surface of Alyosha’s mind at this fatal and obscure moment. This
new something was the harassing impression left by the conversation
with Ivan, which now persistently haunted Alyosha’s mind. At this
moment it haunted him. Oh, it was not that something of the
fundamental, elemental, so to speak, faith of his soul had been shaken.
He loved his God and believed in Him steadfastly, though he was
suddenly murmuring against Him. Yet a vague but tormenting and evil
impression left by his conversation with Ivan the day before, suddenly
revived again now in his soul and seemed forcing its way to the surface
of his consciousness.

It had begun to get dusk when Rakitin, crossing the pine copse from the
hermitage to the monastery, suddenly noticed Alyosha, lying face
downwards on the ground under a tree, not moving and apparently asleep.
He went up and called him by his name.

“You here, Alexey? Can you have—” he began wondering but broke off. He
had meant to say, “Can you have come to this?”

Alyosha did not look at him, but from a slight movement Rakitin at once
saw that he heard and understood him.

“What’s the matter?” he went on; but the surprise in his face gradually
passed into a smile that became more and more ironical.

“I say, I’ve been looking for you for the last two hours. You suddenly
disappeared. What are you about? What foolery is this? You might just
look at me...”

Alyosha raised his head, sat up and leaned his back against the tree.
He was not crying, but there was a look of suffering and irritability
in his face. He did not look at Rakitin, however, but looked away to
one side of him.

“Do you know your face is quite changed? There’s none of your famous
mildness to be seen in it. Are you angry with some one? Have they been
ill‐treating you?”

“Let me alone,” said Alyosha suddenly, with a weary gesture of his
hand, still looking away from him.

“Oho! So that’s how we are feeling! So you can shout at people like
other mortals. That is a come‐down from the angels. I say, Alyosha, you
have surprised me, do you hear? I mean it. It’s long since I’ve been
surprised at anything here. I always took you for an educated man....”

Alyosha at last looked at him, but vaguely, as though scarcely
understanding what he said.

“Can you really be so upset simply because your old man has begun to
stink? You don’t mean to say you seriously believed that he was going
to work miracles?” exclaimed Rakitin, genuinely surprised again.

“I believed, I believe, I want to believe, and I will believe, what
more do you want?” cried Alyosha irritably.

“Nothing at all, my boy. Damn it all! why, no schoolboy of thirteen
believes in that now. But there.... So now you are in a temper with
your God, you are rebelling against Him; He hasn’t given promotion, He
hasn’t bestowed the order of merit! Eh, you are a set!”

Alyosha gazed a long while with his eyes half closed at Rakitin, and
there was a sudden gleam in his eyes ... but not of anger with Rakitin.

“I am not rebelling against my God; I simply ‘don’t accept His world.’
” Alyosha suddenly smiled a forced smile.

“How do you mean, you don’t accept the world?” Rakitin thought a moment
over his answer. “What idiocy is this?”

Alyosha did not answer.

“Come, enough nonsense, now to business. Have you had anything to eat
to‐ day?”

“I don’t remember.... I think I have.”

“You need keeping up, to judge by your face. It makes one sorry to look
at you. You didn’t sleep all night either, I hear, you had a meeting in
there. And then all this bobbery afterwards. Most likely you’ve had
nothing to eat but a mouthful of holy bread. I’ve got some sausage in
my pocket; I’ve brought it from the town in case of need, only you
won’t eat sausage....”

“Give me some.”

“I say! You are going it! Why, it’s a regular mutiny, with barricades!
Well, my boy, we must make the most of it. Come to my place.... I
shouldn’t mind a drop of vodka myself, I am tired to death. Vodka is
going too far for you, I suppose ... or would you like some?”

“Give me some vodka too.”

“Hullo! You surprise me, brother!” Rakitin looked at him in amazement.
“Well, one way or another, vodka or sausage, this is a jolly fine
chance and mustn’t be missed. Come along.”

Alyosha got up in silence and followed Rakitin.

“If your little brother Ivan could see this—wouldn’t he be surprised!
By the way, your brother Ivan set off to Moscow this morning, did you
know?”

“Yes,” answered Alyosha listlessly, and suddenly the image of his
brother Dmitri rose before his mind. But only for a minute, and though
it reminded him of something that must not be put off for a moment,
some duty, some terrible obligation, even that reminder made no
impression on him, did not reach his heart and instantly faded out of
his mind and was forgotten. But, a long while afterwards, Alyosha
remembered this.

“Your brother Ivan declared once that I was a ‘liberal booby with no
talents whatsoever.’ Once you, too, could not resist letting me know I
was ‘dishonorable.’ Well! I should like to see what your talents and
sense of honor will do for you now.” This phrase Rakitin finished to
himself in a whisper.

“Listen!” he said aloud, “let’s go by the path beyond the monastery
straight to the town. Hm! I ought to go to Madame Hohlakov’s by the
way. Only fancy, I’ve written to tell her everything that happened, and
would you believe it, she answered me instantly in pencil (the lady has
a passion for writing notes) that ‘she would never have expected _such
conduct_ from a man of such a reverend character as Father Zossima.’
That was her very word: ‘conduct.’ She is angry too. Eh, you are a set!
Stay!” he cried suddenly again. He suddenly stopped and taking Alyosha
by the shoulder made him stop too.

“Do you know, Alyosha,” he peeped inquisitively into his eyes, absorbed
in a sudden new thought which had dawned on him, and though he was
laughing outwardly he was evidently afraid to utter that new idea
aloud, so difficult he still found it to believe in the strange and
unexpected mood in which he now saw Alyosha. “Alyosha, do you know
where we had better go?” he brought out at last timidly, and
insinuatingly.

“I don’t care ... where you like.”

“Let’s go to Grushenka, eh? Will you come?” pronounced Rakitin at last,
trembling with timid suspense.

“Let’s go to Grushenka,” Alyosha answered calmly, at once, and this
prompt and calm agreement was such a surprise to Rakitin that he almost
started back.

“Well! I say!” he cried in amazement, but seizing Alyosha firmly by the
arm he led him along the path, still dreading that he would change his
mind.

They walked along in silence, Rakitin was positively afraid to talk.

“And how glad she will be, how delighted!” he muttered, but lapsed into
silence again. And indeed it was not to please Grushenka he was taking
Alyosha to her. He was a practical person and never undertook anything
without a prospect of gain for himself. His object in this case was
twofold, first a revengeful desire to see “the downfall of the
righteous,” and Alyosha’s fall “from the saints to the sinners,” over
which he was already gloating in his imagination, and in the second
place he had in view a certain material gain for himself, of which more
will be said later.

“So the critical moment has come,” he thought to himself with spiteful
glee, “and we shall catch it on the hop, for it’s just what we want.”




Chapter III.
An Onion


Grushenka lived in the busiest part of the town, near the cathedral
square, in a small wooden lodge in the courtyard belonging to the house
of the widow Morozov. The house was a large stone building of two
stories, old and very ugly. The widow led a secluded life with her two
unmarried nieces, who were also elderly women. She had no need to let
her lodge, but every one knew that she had taken in Grushenka as a
lodger, four years before, solely to please her kinsman, the merchant
Samsonov, who was known to be the girl’s protector. It was said that
the jealous old man’s object in placing his “favorite” with the widow
Morozov was that the old woman should keep a sharp eye on her new
lodger’s conduct. But this sharp eye soon proved to be unnecessary, and
in the end the widow Morozov seldom met Grushenka and did not worry her
by looking after her in any way. It is true that four years had passed
since the old man had brought the slim, delicate, shy, timid, dreamy,
and sad girl of eighteen from the chief town of the province, and much
had happened since then. Little was known of the girl’s history in the
town and that little was vague. Nothing more had been learnt during the
last four years, even after many persons had become interested in the
beautiful young woman into whom Agrafena Alexandrovna had meanwhile
developed. There were rumors that she had been at seventeen betrayed by
some one, some sort of officer, and immediately afterwards abandoned by
him. The officer had gone away and afterwards married, while Grushenka
had been left in poverty and disgrace. It was said, however, that
though Grushenka had been raised from destitution by the old man,
Samsonov, she came of a respectable family belonging to the clerical
class, that she was the daughter of a deacon or something of the sort.

And now after four years the sensitive, injured and pathetic little
orphan had become a plump, rosy beauty of the Russian type, a woman of
bold and determined character, proud and insolent. She had a good head
for business, was acquisitive, saving and careful, and by fair means or
foul had succeeded, it was said, in amassing a little fortune. There
was only one point on which all were agreed. Grushenka was not easily
to be approached and except her aged protector there had not been one
man who could boast of her favors during those four years. It was a
positive fact, for there had been a good many, especially during the
last two years, who had attempted to obtain those favors. But all their
efforts had been in vain and some of these suitors had been forced to
beat an undignified and even comic retreat, owing to the firm and
ironical resistance they met from the strong‐willed young person. It
was known, too, that the young person had, especially of late, been
given to what is called “speculation,” and that she had shown marked
abilities in that direction, so that many people began to say that she
was no better than a Jew. It was not that she lent money on interest,
but it was known, for instance, that she had for some time past, in
partnership with old Karamazov, actually invested in the purchase of
bad debts for a trifle, a tenth of their nominal value, and afterwards
had made out of them ten times their value.

The old widower Samsonov, a man of large fortune, was stingy and
merciless. He tyrannized over his grown‐up sons, but, for the last year
during which he had been ill and lost the use of his swollen legs, he
had fallen greatly under the influence of his protégée, whom he had at
first kept strictly and in humble surroundings, “on Lenten fare,” as
the wits said at the time. But Grushenka had succeeded in emancipating
herself, while she established in him a boundless belief in her
fidelity. The old man, now long since dead, had had a large business in
his day and was also a noteworthy character, miserly and hard as flint.
Though Grushenka’s hold upon him was so strong that he could not live
without her (it had been so especially for the last two years), he did
not settle any considerable fortune on her and would not have been
moved to do so, if she had threatened to leave him. But he had
presented her with a small sum, and even that was a surprise to every
one when it became known.

“You are a wench with brains,” he said to her, when he gave her eight
thousand roubles, “and you must look after yourself, but let me tell
you that except your yearly allowance as before, you’ll get nothing
more from me to the day of my death, and I’ll leave you nothing in my
will either.”

And he kept his word; he died and left everything to his sons, whom,
with their wives and children, he had treated all his life as servants.
Grushenka was not even mentioned in his will. All this became known
afterwards. He helped Grushenka with his advice to increase her capital
and put business in her way.

When Fyodor Pavlovitch, who first came into contact with Grushenka over
a piece of speculation, ended to his own surprise by falling madly in
love with her, old Samsonov, gravely ill as he was, was immensely
amused. It is remarkable that throughout their whole acquaintance
Grushenka was absolutely and spontaneously open with the old man, and
he seems to have been the only person in the world with whom she was
so. Of late, when Dmitri too had come on the scene with his love, the
old man left off laughing. On the contrary, he once gave Grushenka a
stern and earnest piece of advice.

“If you have to choose between the two, father or son, you’d better
choose the old man, if only you make sure the old scoundrel will marry
you and settle some fortune on you beforehand. But don’t keep on with
the captain, you’ll get no good out of that.”

These were the very words of the old profligate, who felt already that
his death was not far off and who actually died five months later.

I will note, too, in passing, that although many in our town knew of
the grotesque and monstrous rivalry of the Karamazovs, father and son,
the object of which was Grushenka, scarcely any one understood what
really underlay her attitude to both of them. Even Grushenka’s two
servants (after the catastrophe of which we will speak later) testified
in court that she received Dmitri Fyodorovitch simply from fear because
“he threatened to murder her.” These servants were an old cook,
invalidish and almost deaf, who came from Grushenka’s old home, and her
granddaughter, a smart young girl of twenty, who performed the duties
of a maid. Grushenka lived very economically and her surroundings were
anything but luxurious. Her lodge consisted of three rooms furnished
with mahogany furniture in the fashion of 1820, belonging to her
landlady.

It was quite dark when Rakitin and Alyosha entered her rooms, yet they
were not lighted up. Grushenka was lying down in her drawing‐room on
the big, hard, clumsy sofa, with a mahogany back. The sofa was covered
with shabby and ragged leather. Under her head she had two white down
pillows taken from her bed. She was lying stretched out motionless on
her back with her hands behind her head. She was dressed as though
expecting some one, in a black silk dress, with a dainty lace fichu on
her head, which was very becoming. Over her shoulders was thrown a lace
shawl pinned with a massive gold brooch. She certainly was expecting
some one. She lay as though impatient and weary, her face rather pale
and her lips and eyes hot, restlessly tapping the arm of the sofa with
the tip of her right foot. The appearance of Rakitin and Alyosha caused
a slight excitement. From the hall they could hear Grushenka leap up
from the sofa and cry out in a frightened voice, “Who’s there?” But the
maid met the visitors and at once called back to her mistress.

“It’s not he, it’s nothing, only other visitors.”

“What can be the matter?” muttered Rakitin, leading Alyosha into the
drawing‐room.

Grushenka was standing by the sofa as though still alarmed. A thick
coil of her dark brown hair escaped from its lace covering and fell on
her right shoulder, but she did not notice it and did not put it back
till she had gazed at her visitors and recognized them.

“Ah, it’s you, Rakitin? You quite frightened me. Whom have you brought?
Who is this with you? Good heavens, you have brought him!” she
exclaimed, recognizing Alyosha.

“Do send for candles!” said Rakitin, with the free‐and‐easy air of a
most intimate friend, who is privileged to give orders in the house.

“Candles ... of course, candles.... Fenya, fetch him a candle.... Well,
you have chosen a moment to bring him!” she exclaimed again, nodding
towards Alyosha, and turning to the looking‐glass she began quickly
fastening up her hair with both hands. She seemed displeased.

“Haven’t I managed to please you?” asked Rakitin, instantly almost
offended.

“You frightened me, Rakitin, that’s what it is.” Grushenka turned with
a smile to Alyosha. “Don’t be afraid of me, my dear Alyosha, you cannot
think how glad I am to see you, my unexpected visitor. But you
frightened me, Rakitin, I thought it was Mitya breaking in. You see, I
deceived him just now, I made him promise to believe me and I told him
a lie. I told him that I was going to spend the evening with my old
man, Kuzma Kuzmitch, and should be there till late counting up his
money. I always spend one whole evening a week with him making up his
accounts. We lock ourselves in and he counts on the reckoning beads
while I sit and put things down in the book. I am the only person he
trusts. Mitya believes that I am there, but I came back and have been
sitting locked in here, expecting some news. How was it Fenya let you
in? Fenya, Fenya, run out to the gate, open it and look about whether
the captain is to be seen! Perhaps he is hiding and spying, I am
dreadfully frightened.”

“There’s no one there, Agrafena Alexandrovna, I’ve just looked out, I
keep running to peep through the crack, I am in fear and trembling
myself.”

“Are the shutters fastened, Fenya? And we must draw the curtains—that’s
better!” She drew the heavy curtains herself. “He’d rush in at once if
he saw a light. I am afraid of your brother Mitya to‐day, Alyosha.”

Grushenka spoke aloud, and, though she was alarmed, she seemed very
happy about something.

“Why are you so afraid of Mitya to‐day?” inquired Rakitin. “I should
have thought you were not timid with him, you’d twist him round your
little finger.”

“I tell you, I am expecting news, priceless news, so I don’t want Mitya
at all. And he didn’t believe, I feel he didn’t, that I should stay at
Kuzma Kuzmitch’s. He must be in his ambush now, behind Fyodor
Pavlovitch’s, in the garden, watching for me. And if he’s there, he
won’t come here, so much the better! But I really have been to Kuzma
Kuzmitch’s, Mitya escorted me there. I told him I should stay there
till midnight, and I asked him to be sure to come at midnight to fetch
me home. He went away and I sat ten minutes with Kuzma Kuzmitch and
came back here again. Ugh, I was afraid, I ran for fear of meeting
him.”

“And why are you so dressed up? What a curious cap you’ve got on!”

“How curious you are yourself, Rakitin! I tell you, I am expecting a
message. If the message comes, I shall fly, I shall gallop away and you
will see no more of me. That’s why I am dressed up, so as to be ready.”

“And where are you flying to?”

“If you know too much, you’ll get old too soon.”

“Upon my word! You are highly delighted ... I’ve never seen you like
this before. You are dressed up as if you were going to a ball.”
Rakitin looked her up and down.

“Much you know about balls.”

“And do you know much about them?”

“I have seen a ball. The year before last, Kuzma Kuzmitch’s son was
married and I looked on from the gallery. Do you suppose I want to be
talking to you, Rakitin, while a prince like this is standing here.
Such a visitor! Alyosha, my dear boy, I gaze at you and can’t believe
my eyes. Good heavens, can you have come here to see me! To tell you
the truth, I never had a thought of seeing you and I didn’t think that
you would ever come and see me. Though this is not the moment now, I am
awfully glad to see you. Sit down on the sofa, here, that’s right, my
bright young moon. I really can’t take it in even now.... Eh, Rakitin,
if only you had brought him yesterday or the day before! But I am glad
as it is! Perhaps it’s better he has come now, at such a moment, and
not the day before yesterday.”

She gayly sat down beside Alyosha on the sofa, looking at him with
positive delight. And she really was glad, she was not lying when she
said so. Her eyes glowed, her lips laughed, but it was a good‐hearted
merry laugh. Alyosha had not expected to see such a kind expression in
her face.... He had hardly met her till the day before, he had formed
an alarming idea of her, and had been horribly distressed the day
before by the spiteful and treacherous trick she had played on Katerina
Ivanovna. He was greatly surprised to find her now altogether different
from what he had expected. And, crushed as he was by his own sorrow,
his eyes involuntarily rested on her with attention. Her whole manner
seemed changed for the better since yesterday, there was scarcely any
trace of that mawkish sweetness in her speech, of that voluptuous
softness in her movements. Everything was simple and good‐natured, her
gestures were rapid, direct, confiding, but she was greatly excited.

“Dear me, how everything comes together to‐day!” she chattered on
again. “And why I am so glad to see you, Alyosha, I couldn’t say
myself! If you ask me, I couldn’t tell you.”

“Come, don’t you know why you’re glad?” said Rakitin, grinning. “You
used to be always pestering me to bring him, you’d some object, I
suppose.”

“I had a different object once, but now that’s over, this is not the
moment. I say, I want you to have something nice. I am so good‐natured
now. You sit down, too, Rakitin; why are you standing? You’ve sat down
already? There’s no fear of Rakitin’s forgetting to look after himself.
Look, Alyosha, he’s sitting there opposite us, so offended that I
didn’t ask him to sit down before you. Ugh, Rakitin is such a one to
take offense!” laughed Grushenka. “Don’t be angry, Rakitin, I’m kind
to‐day. Why are you so depressed, Alyosha? Are you afraid of me?” She
peeped into his eyes with merry mockery”

“He’s sad. The promotion has not been given,” boomed Rakitin.

“What promotion?”

“His elder stinks.”

“What? You are talking some nonsense, you want to say something nasty.
Be quiet, you stupid! Let me sit on your knee, Alyosha, like this.” She
suddenly skipped forward and jumped, laughing, on his knee, like a
nestling kitten, with her right arm about his neck. “I’ll cheer you up,
my pious boy. Yes, really, will you let me sit on your knee? You won’t
be angry? If you tell me, I’ll get off?”

Alyosha did not speak. He sat afraid to move, he heard her words, “If
you tell me, I’ll get off,” but he did not answer. But there was
nothing in his heart such as Rakitin, for instance, watching him
malignantly from his corner, might have expected or fancied. The great
grief in his heart swallowed up every sensation that might have been
aroused, and, if only he could have thought clearly at that moment, he
would have realized that he had now the strongest armor to protect him
from every lust and temptation. Yet in spite of the vague
irresponsiveness of his spiritual condition and the sorrow that
overwhelmed him, he could not help wondering at a new and strange
sensation in his heart. This woman, this “dreadful” woman, had no
terror for him now, none of that terror that had stirred in his soul at
any passing thought of woman. On the contrary, this woman, dreaded
above all women, sitting now on his knee, holding him in her arms,
aroused in him now a quite different, unexpected, peculiar feeling, a
feeling of the intensest and purest interest without a trace of fear,
of his former terror. That was what instinctively surprised him.

“You’ve talked nonsense enough,” cried Rakitin, “you’d much better give
us some champagne. You owe it me, you know you do!”

“Yes, I really do. Do you know, Alyosha, I promised him champagne on
the top of everything, if he’d bring you? I’ll have some too! Fenya,
Fenya, bring us the bottle Mitya left! Look sharp! Though I am so
stingy, I’ll stand a bottle, not for you, Rakitin, you’re a toadstool,
but he is a falcon! And though my heart is full of something very
different, so be it, I’ll drink with you. I long for some dissipation.”

“But what is the matter with you? And what is this message, may I ask,
or is it a secret?” Rakitin put in inquisitively, doing his best to
pretend not to notice the snubs that were being continually aimed at
him.

“Ech, it’s not a secret, and you know it, too,” Grushenka said, in a
voice suddenly anxious, turning her head towards Rakitin, and drawing a
little away from Alyosha, though she still sat on his knee with her arm
round his neck. “My officer is coming, Rakitin, my officer is coming.”

“I heard he was coming, but is he so near?”

“He is at Mokroe now; he’ll send a messenger from there, so he wrote; I
got a letter from him to‐day. I am expecting the messenger every
minute.”

“You don’t say so! Why at Mokroe?”

“That’s a long story, I’ve told you enough.”

“Mitya’ll be up to something now—I say! Does he know or doesn’t he?”

“He know! Of course he doesn’t. If he knew, there would be murder. But
I am not afraid of that now, I am not afraid of his knife. Be quiet,
Rakitin, don’t remind me of Dmitri Fyodorovitch, he has bruised my
heart. And I don’t want to think of that at this moment. I can think of
Alyosha here, I can look at Alyosha ... smile at me, dear, cheer up,
smile at my foolishness, at my pleasure.... Ah, he’s smiling, he’s
smiling! How kindly he looks at me! And you know, Alyosha, I’ve been
thinking all this time you were angry with me, because of the day
before yesterday, because of that young lady. I was a cur, that’s the
truth.... But it’s a good thing it happened so. It was a horrid thing,
but a good thing too.” Grushenka smiled dreamily and a little cruel
line showed in her smile. “Mitya told me that she screamed out that I
‘ought to be flogged.’ I did insult her dreadfully. She sent for me,
she wanted to make a conquest of me, to win me over with her
chocolate.... No, it’s a good thing it did end like that.” She smiled
again. “But I am still afraid of your being angry.”

“Yes, that’s really true,” Rakitin put in suddenly with genuine
surprise. “Alyosha, she is really afraid of a chicken like you.”

“He is a chicken to you, Rakitin ... because you’ve no conscience,
that’s what it is! You see, I love him with all my soul, that’s how it
is! Alyosha, do you believe I love you with all my soul?”

“Ah, you shameless woman! She is making you a declaration, Alexey!”

“Well, what of it, I love him!”

“And what about your officer? And the priceless message from Mokroe?”

“That is quite different.”

“That’s a woman’s way of looking at it!”

“Don’t you make me angry, Rakitin.” Grushenka caught him up hotly.
“This is quite different. I love Alyosha in a different way. It’s true,
Alyosha, I had sly designs on you before. For I am a horrid, violent
creature. But at other times I’ve looked upon you, Alyosha, as my
conscience. I’ve kept thinking ‘how any one like that must despise a
nasty thing like me.’ I thought that the day before yesterday, as I ran
home from the young lady’s. I have thought of you a long time in that
way, Alyosha, and Mitya knows, I’ve talked to him about it. Mitya
understands. Would you believe it, I sometimes look at you and feel
ashamed, utterly ashamed of myself.... And how, and since when, I began
to think about you like that, I can’t say, I don’t remember....”

Fenya came in and put a tray with an uncorked bottle and three glasses
of champagne on the table.

“Here’s the champagne!” cried Rakitin. “You’re excited, Agrafena
Alexandrovna, and not yourself. When you’ve had a glass of champagne,
you’ll be ready to dance. Eh, they can’t even do that properly,” he
added, looking at the bottle. “The old woman’s poured it out in the
kitchen and the bottle’s been brought in warm and without a cork. Well,
let me have some, anyway.”

He went up to the table, took a glass, emptied it at one gulp and
poured himself out another.

“One doesn’t often stumble upon champagne,” he said, licking his lips.
“Now, Alyosha, take a glass, show what you can do! What shall we drink
to? The gates of paradise? Take a glass, Grushenka, you drink to the
gates of paradise, too.”

“What gates of paradise?”

She took a glass, Alyosha took his, tasted it and put it back.

“No, I’d better not,” he smiled gently.

“And you bragged!” cried Rakitin.

“Well, if so, I won’t either,” chimed in Grushenka, “I really don’t
want any. You can drink the whole bottle alone, Rakitin. If Alyosha has
some, I will.”

“What touching sentimentality!” said Rakitin tauntingly; “and she’s
sitting on his knee, too! He’s got something to grieve over, but what’s
the matter with you? He is rebelling against his God and ready to eat
sausage....”

“How so?”

“His elder died to‐day, Father Zossima, the saint.”

“So Father Zossima is dead,” cried Grushenka. “Good God, I did not
know!” She crossed herself devoutly. “Goodness, what have I been doing,
sitting on his knee like this at such a moment!” She started up as
though in dismay, instantly slipped off his knee and sat down on the
sofa.

Alyosha bent a long wondering look upon her and a light seemed to dawn
in his face.

“Rakitin,” he said suddenly, in a firm and loud voice; “don’t taunt me
with having rebelled against God. I don’t want to feel angry with you,
so you must be kinder, too, I’ve lost a treasure such as you have never
had, and you cannot judge me now. You had much better look at her—do
you see how she has pity on me? I came here to find a wicked soul—I
felt drawn to evil because I was base and evil myself, and I’ve found a
true sister, I have found a treasure—a loving heart. She had pity on me
just now.... Agrafena Alexandrovna, I am speaking of you. You’ve raised
my soul from the depths.”

Alyosha’s lips were quivering and he caught his breath.

“She has saved you, it seems,” laughed Rakitin spitefully. “And she
meant to get you in her clutches, do you realize that?”

“Stay, Rakitin.” Grushenka jumped up. “Hush, both of you. Now I’ll tell
you all about it. Hush, Alyosha, your words make me ashamed, for I am
bad and not good—that’s what I am. And you hush, Rakitin, because you
are telling lies. I had the low idea of trying to get him in my
clutches, but now you are lying, now it’s all different. And don’t let
me hear anything more from you, Rakitin.”

All this Grushenka said with extreme emotion.

“They are both crazy,” said Rakitin, looking at them with amazement. “I
feel as though I were in a madhouse. They’re both getting so feeble
they’ll begin crying in a minute.”

“I shall begin to cry, I shall,” repeated Grushenka. “He called me his
sister and I shall never forget that. Only let me tell you, Rakitin,
though I am bad, I did give away an onion.”

“An onion? Hang it all, you really are crazy.”

Rakitin wondered at their enthusiasm. He was aggrieved and annoyed,
though he might have reflected that each of them was just passing
through a spiritual crisis such as does not come often in a lifetime.
But though Rakitin was very sensitive about everything that concerned
himself, he was very obtuse as regards the feelings and sensations of
others—partly from his youth and inexperience, partly from his intense
egoism.

“You see, Alyosha,” Grushenka turned to him with a nervous laugh. “I
was boasting when I told Rakitin I had given away an onion, but it’s
not to boast I tell you about it. It’s only a story, but it’s a nice
story. I used to hear it when I was a child from Matryona, my cook, who
is still with me. It’s like this. Once upon a time there was a peasant
woman and a very wicked woman she was. And she died and did not leave a
single good deed behind. The devils caught her and plunged her into the
lake of fire. So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed
of hers he could remember to tell to God; ‘She once pulled up an onion
in her garden,’ said he, ‘and gave it to a beggar woman.’ And God
answered: ‘You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake,
and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of
the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the
woman must stay where she is.’ The angel ran to the woman and held out
the onion to her. ‘Come,’ said he, ‘catch hold and I’ll pull you out.’
And he began cautiously pulling her out. He had just pulled her right
out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn
out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her. But
she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them. ‘I’m to be
pulled out, not you. It’s my onion, not yours.’ As soon as she said
that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and she is
burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away. So that’s
the story, Alyosha; I know it by heart, for I am that wicked woman
myself. I boasted to Rakitin that I had given away an onion, but to you
I’ll say: ‘I’ve done nothing but give away one onion all my life,
that’s the only good deed I’ve done.’ So don’t praise me, Alyosha,
don’t think me good, I am bad, I am a wicked woman and you make me
ashamed if you praise me. Eh, I must confess everything. Listen,
Alyosha. I was so anxious to get hold of you that I promised Rakitin
twenty‐five roubles if he would bring you to me. Stay, Rakitin, wait!”

She went with rapid steps to the table, opened a drawer, pulled out a
purse and took from it a twenty‐five rouble note.

“What nonsense! What nonsense!” cried Rakitin, disconcerted.

“Take it. Rakitin, I owe it you, there’s no fear of your refusing it,
you asked for it yourself.” And she threw the note to him.

“Likely I should refuse it,” boomed Rakitin, obviously abashed, but
carrying off his confusion with a swagger. “That will come in very
handy; fools are made for wise men’s profit.”

“And now hold your tongue, Rakitin, what I am going to say now is not
for your ears. Sit down in that corner and keep quiet. You don’t like
us, so hold your tongue.”

“What should I like you for?” Rakitin snarled, not concealing his ill‐
humor. He put the twenty‐five rouble note in his pocket and he felt
ashamed at Alyosha’s seeing it. He had reckoned on receiving his
payment later, without Alyosha’s knowing of it, and now, feeling
ashamed, he lost his temper. Till that moment he had thought it
discreet not to contradict Grushenka too flatly in spite of her
snubbing, since he had something to get out of her. But now he, too,
was angry:

“One loves people for some reason, but what have either of you done for
me?”

“You should love people without a reason, as Alyosha does.”

“How does he love you? How has he shown it, that you make such a fuss
about it?”

Grushenka was standing in the middle of the room; she spoke with heat
and there were hysterical notes in her voice.

“Hush, Rakitin, you know nothing about us! And don’t dare to speak to
me like that again. How dare you be so familiar! Sit in that corner and
be quiet, as though you were my footman! And now, Alyosha, I’ll tell
you the whole truth, that you may see what a wretch I am! I am not
talking to Rakitin, but to you. I wanted to ruin you, Alyosha, that’s
the holy truth; I quite meant to. I wanted to so much, that I bribed
Rakitin to bring you. And why did I want to do such a thing? You knew
nothing about it, Alyosha, you turned away from me; if you passed me,
you dropped your eyes. And I’ve looked at you a hundred times before
to‐day; I began asking every one about you. Your face haunted my heart.
‘He despises me,’ I thought; ‘he won’t even look at me.’ And I felt it
so much at last that I wondered at myself for being so frightened of a
boy. I’ll get him in my clutches and laugh at him. I was full of spite
and anger. Would you believe it, nobody here dares talk or think of
coming to Agrafena Alexandrovna with any evil purpose. Old Kuzma is the
only man I have anything to do with here; I was bound and sold to him;
Satan brought us together, but there has been no one else. But looking
at you, I thought, I’ll get him in my clutches and laugh at him. You
see what a spiteful cur I am, and you called me your sister! And now
that man who wronged me has come; I sit here waiting for a message from
him. And do you know what that man has been to me? Five years ago, when
Kuzma brought me here, I used to shut myself up, that no one might have
sight or sound of me. I was a silly slip of a girl; I used to sit here
sobbing; I used to lie awake all night, thinking: ‘Where is he now, the
man who wronged me? He is laughing at me with another woman, most
likely. If only I could see him, if I could meet him again, I’d pay him
out, I’d pay him out!’ At night I used to lie sobbing into my pillow in
the dark, and I used to brood over it; I used to tear my heart on
purpose and gloat over my anger. ‘I’ll pay him out, I’ll pay him out!’
That’s what I used to cry out in the dark. And when I suddenly thought
that I should really do nothing to him, and that he was laughing at me
then, or perhaps had utterly forgotten me, I would fling myself on the
floor, melt into helpless tears, and lie there shaking till dawn. In
the morning I would get up more spiteful than a dog, ready to tear the
whole world to pieces. And then what do you think? I began saving
money, I became hard‐hearted, grew stout—grew wiser, would you say? No,
no one in the whole world sees it, no one knows it, but when night
comes on, I sometimes lie as I did five years ago, when I was a silly
girl, clenching my teeth and crying all night, thinking, ‘I’ll pay him
out, I’ll pay him out!’ Do you hear? Well then, now you understand me.
A month ago a letter came to me—he was coming, he was a widower, he
wanted to see me. It took my breath away; then I suddenly thought: ‘If
he comes and whistles to call me, I shall creep back to him like a
beaten dog.’ I couldn’t believe myself. Am I so abject? Shall I run to
him or not? And I’ve been in such a rage with myself all this month
that I am worse than I was five years ago. Do you see now, Alyosha,
what a violent, vindictive creature I am? I have shown you the whole
truth! I played with Mitya to keep me from running to that other. Hush,
Rakitin, it’s not for you to judge me, I am not speaking to you. Before
you came in, I was lying here waiting, brooding, deciding my whole
future life, and you can never know what was in my heart. Yes, Alyosha,
tell your young lady not to be angry with me for what happened the day
before yesterday.... Nobody in the whole world knows what I am going
through now, and no one ever can know.... For perhaps I shall take a
knife with me to‐day, I can’t make up my mind ...”

And at this “tragic” phrase Grushenka broke down, hid her face in her
hands, flung herself on the sofa pillows, and sobbed like a little
child.

Alyosha got up and went to Rakitin.

“Misha,” he said, “don’t be angry. She wounded you, but don’t be angry.
You heard what she said just now? You mustn’t ask too much of human
endurance, one must be merciful.”

Alyosha said this at the instinctive prompting of his heart. He felt
obliged to speak and he turned to Rakitin. If Rakitin had not been
there, he would have spoken to the air. But Rakitin looked at him
ironically and Alyosha stopped short.

“You were so primed up with your elder’s teaching last night that now
you have to let it off on me, Alexey, man of God!” said Rakitin, with a
smile of hatred.

“Don’t laugh, Rakitin, don’t smile, don’t talk of the dead—he was
better than any one in the world!” cried Alyosha, with tears in his
voice. “I didn’t speak to you as a judge but as the lowest of the
judged. What am I beside her? I came here seeking my ruin, and said to
myself, ‘What does it matter?’ in my cowardliness, but she, after five
years in torment, as soon as any one says a word from the heart to
her—it makes her forget everything, forgive everything, in her tears!
The man who has wronged her has come back, he sends for her and she
forgives him everything, and hastens joyfully to meet him and she won’t
take a knife with her. She won’t! No, I am not like that. I don’t know
whether you are, Misha, but I am not like that. It’s a lesson to me....
She is more loving than we.... Have you heard her speak before of what
she has just told us? No, you haven’t; if you had, you’d have
understood her long ago ... and the person insulted the day before
yesterday must forgive her, too! She will, when she knows ... and she
shall know.... This soul is not yet at peace with itself, one must be
tender with it ... there may be a treasure in that soul....”

Alyosha stopped, because he caught his breath. In spite of his
ill‐humor Rakitin looked at him with astonishment. He had never
expected such a tirade from the gentle Alyosha.

“She’s found some one to plead her cause! Why, are you in love with
her? Agrafena Alexandrovna, our monk’s really in love with you, you’ve
made a conquest!” he cried, with a coarse laugh.

Grushenka lifted her head from the pillow and looked at Alyosha with a
tender smile shining on her tear‐stained face.

“Let him alone, Alyosha, my cherub; you see what he is, he is not a
person for you to speak to. Mihail Osipovitch,” she turned to Rakitin,
“I meant to beg your pardon for being rude to you, but now I don’t want
to. Alyosha, come to me, sit down here.” She beckoned to him with a
happy smile. “That’s right, sit here. Tell me,” she shook him by the
hand and peeped into his face, smiling, “tell me, do I love that man or
not? the man who wronged me, do I love him or not? Before you came, I
lay here in the dark, asking my heart whether I loved him. Decide for
me, Alyosha, the time has come, it shall be as you say. Am I to forgive
him or not?”

“But you have forgiven him already,” said Alyosha, smiling.

“Yes, I really have forgiven him,” Grushenka murmured thoughtfully.
“What an abject heart! To my abject heart!” She snatched up a glass
from the table, emptied it at a gulp, lifted it in the air and flung it
on the floor. The glass broke with a crash. A little cruel line came
into her smile.

“Perhaps I haven’t forgiven him, though,” she said, with a sort of
menace in her voice, and she dropped her eyes to the ground as though
she were talking to herself. “Perhaps my heart is only getting ready to
forgive. I shall struggle with my heart. You see, Alyosha, I’ve grown
to love my tears in these five years.... Perhaps I only love my
resentment, not him ...”

“Well, I shouldn’t care to be in his shoes,” hissed Rakitin.

“Well, you won’t be, Rakitin, you’ll never be in his shoes. You shall
black my shoes, Rakitin, that’s the place you are fit for. You’ll never
get a woman like me ... and he won’t either, perhaps ...”

“Won’t he? Then why are you dressed up like that?” said Rakitin, with a
venomous sneer.

“Don’t taunt me with dressing up, Rakitin, you don’t know all that is
in my heart! If I choose to tear off my finery, I’ll tear it off at
once, this minute,” she cried in a resonant voice. “You don’t know what
that finery is for, Rakitin! Perhaps I shall see him and say: ‘Have you
ever seen me look like this before?’ He left me a thin, consumptive
cry‐baby of seventeen. I’ll sit by him, fascinate him and work him up.
‘Do you see what I am like now?’ I’ll say to him; ‘well, and that’s
enough for you, my dear sir, there’s many a slip twixt the cup and the
lip!’ That may be what the finery is for, Rakitin.” Grushenka finished
with a malicious laugh. “I’m violent and resentful, Alyosha, I’ll tear
off my finery, I’ll destroy my beauty, I’ll scorch my face, slash it
with a knife, and turn beggar. If I choose, I won’t go anywhere now to
see any one. If I choose, I’ll send Kuzma back all he has ever given
me, to‐morrow, and all his money and I’ll go out charing for the rest
of my life. You think I wouldn’t do it, Rakitin, that I would not dare
to do it? I would, I would, I could do it directly, only don’t
exasperate me ... and I’ll send him about his business, I’ll snap my
fingers in his face, he shall never see me again!”

She uttered the last words in an hysterical scream, but broke down
again, hid her face in her hands, buried it in the pillow and shook
with sobs.

Rakitin got up.

“It’s time we were off,” he said, “it’s late, we shall be shut out of
the monastery.”

Grushenka leapt up from her place.

“Surely you don’t want to go, Alyosha!” she cried, in mournful
surprise. “What are you doing to me? You’ve stirred up my feeling,
tortured me, and now you’ll leave me to face this night alone!”

“He can hardly spend the night with you! Though if he wants to, let
him! I’ll go alone,” Rakitin scoffed jeeringly.

“Hush, evil tongue!” Grushenka cried angrily at him; “you never said
such words to me as he has come to say.”

“What has he said to you so special?” asked Rakitin irritably.

“I can’t say, I don’t know. I don’t know what he said to me, it went
straight to my heart; he has wrung my heart.... He is the first, the
only one who has pitied me, that’s what it is. Why did you not come
before, you angel?” She fell on her knees before him as though in a
sudden frenzy. “I’ve been waiting all my life for some one like you, I
knew that some one like you would come and forgive me. I believed that,
nasty as I am, some one would really love me, not only with a shameful
love!”

“What have I done to you?” answered Alyosha, bending over her with a
tender smile, and gently taking her by the hands; “I only gave you an
onion, nothing but a tiny little onion, that was all!”

He was moved to tears himself as he said it. At that moment there was a
sudden noise in the passage, some one came into the hall. Grushenka
jumped up, seeming greatly alarmed. Fenya ran noisily into the room,
crying out:

“Mistress, mistress darling, a messenger has galloped up,” she cried,
breathless and joyful. “A carriage from Mokroe for you, Timofey the
driver, with three horses, they are just putting in fresh horses.... A
letter, here’s the letter, mistress.”

A letter was in her hand and she waved it in the air all the while she
talked. Grushenka snatched the letter from her and carried it to the
candle. It was only a note, a few lines. She read it in one instant.

“He has sent for me,” she cried, her face white and distorted, with a
wan smile; “he whistles! Crawl back, little dog!”

But only for one instant she stood as though hesitating; suddenly the
blood rushed to her head and sent a glow to her cheeks.

“I will go,” she cried; “five years of my life! Good‐by! Good‐by,
Alyosha, my fate is sealed. Go, go, leave me all of you, don’t let me
see you again! Grushenka is flying to a new life.... Don’t you remember
evil against me either, Rakitin. I may be going to my death! Ugh! I
feel as though I were drunk!”

She suddenly left them and ran into her bedroom.

“Well, she has no thoughts for us now!” grumbled Rakitin. “Let’s go, or
we may hear that feminine shriek again. I am sick of all these tears
and cries.”

Alyosha mechanically let himself be led out. In the yard stood a
covered cart. Horses were being taken out of the shafts, men were
running to and fro with a lantern. Three fresh horses were being led in
at the open gate. But when Alyosha and Rakitin reached the bottom of
the steps, Grushenka’s bedroom window was suddenly opened and she
called in a ringing voice after Alyosha:

“Alyosha, give my greetings to your brother Mitya and tell him not to
remember evil against me, though I have brought him misery. And tell
him, too, in my words: ‘Grushenka has fallen to a scoundrel, and not to
you, noble heart.’ And add, too, that Grushenka loved him only one
hour, only one short hour she loved him—so let him remember that hour
all his life—say, ‘Grushenka tells you to!’ ”

She ended in a voice full of sobs. The window was shut with a slam.

“H’m, h’m!” growled Rakitin, laughing, “she murders your brother Mitya
and then tells him to remember it all his life! What ferocity!”

Alyosha made no reply, he seemed not to have heard. He walked fast
beside Rakitin as though in a terrible hurry. He was lost in thought
and moved mechanically. Rakitin felt a sudden twinge as though he had
been touched on an open wound. He had expected something quite
different by bringing Grushenka and Alyosha together. Something very
different from what he had hoped for had happened.

“He is a Pole, that officer of hers,” he began again, restraining
himself; “and indeed he is not an officer at all now. He served in the
customs in Siberia, somewhere on the Chinese frontier, some puny little
beggar of a Pole, I expect. Lost his job, they say. He’s heard now that
Grushenka’s saved a little money, so he’s turned up again—that’s the
explanation of the mystery.”

Again Alyosha seemed not to hear. Rakitin could not control himself.

“Well, so you’ve saved the sinner?” he laughed spitefully. “Have you
turned the Magdalene into the true path? Driven out the seven devils,
eh? So you see the miracles you were looking out for just now have come
to pass!”

“Hush, Rakitin,” Alyosha answered with an aching heart.

“So you despise me now for those twenty‐five roubles? I’ve sold my
friend, you think. But you are not Christ, you know, and I am not
Judas.”

“Oh, Rakitin, I assure you I’d forgotten about it,” cried Alyosha, “you
remind me of it yourself....”

But this was the last straw for Rakitin.

“Damnation take you all and each of you!” he cried suddenly, “why the
devil did I take you up? I don’t want to know you from this time
forward. Go alone, there’s your road!”

And he turned abruptly into another street, leaving Alyosha alone in
the dark. Alyosha came out of the town and walked across the fields to
the monastery.




Chapter IV.
Cana Of Galilee


It was very late, according to the monastery ideas, when Alyosha
returned to the hermitage; the door‐keeper let him in by a special
entrance. It had struck nine o’clock—the hour of rest and repose after
a day of such agitation for all. Alyosha timidly opened the door and
went into the elder’s cell where his coffin was now standing. There was
no one in the cell but Father Païssy, reading the Gospel in solitude
over the coffin, and the young novice Porfiry, who, exhausted by the
previous night’s conversation and the disturbing incidents of the day,
was sleeping the deep sound sleep of youth on the floor of the other
room. Though Father Païssy heard Alyosha come in, he did not even look
in his direction. Alyosha turned to the right from the door to the
corner, fell on his knees and began to pray.

His soul was overflowing but with mingled feelings; no single sensation
stood out distinctly; on the contrary, one drove out another in a slow,
continual rotation. But there was a sweetness in his heart and, strange
to say, Alyosha was not surprised at it. Again he saw that coffin
before him, the hidden dead figure so precious to him, but the weeping
and poignant grief of the morning was no longer aching in his soul. As
soon as he came in, he fell down before the coffin as before a holy
shrine, but joy, joy was glowing in his mind and in his heart. The one
window of the cell was open, the air was fresh and cool. “So the smell
must have become stronger, if they opened the window,” thought Alyosha.
But even this thought of the smell of corruption, which had seemed to
him so awful and humiliating a few hours before, no longer made him
feel miserable or indignant. He began quietly praying, but he soon felt
that he was praying almost mechanically. Fragments of thought floated
through his soul, flashed like stars and went out again at once, to be
succeeded by others. But yet there was reigning in his soul a sense of
the wholeness of things—something steadfast and comforting—and he was
aware of it himself. Sometimes he began praying ardently, he longed to
pour out his thankfulness and love....

But when he had begun to pray, he passed suddenly to something else,
and sank into thought, forgetting both the prayer and what had
interrupted it. He began listening to what Father Païssy was reading,
but worn out with exhaustion he gradually began to doze.

“_And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee;_” read
Father Païssy. “_And the mother of Jesus was there; And both Jesus was
called, and his disciples, to the marriage._”

“Marriage? What’s that?... A marriage!” floated whirling through
Alyosha’s mind. “There is happiness for her, too.... She has gone to
the feast.... No, she has not taken the knife.... That was only a
tragic phrase.... Well ... tragic phrases should be forgiven, they must
be. Tragic phrases comfort the heart.... Without them, sorrow would be
too heavy for men to bear. Rakitin has gone off to the back alley. As
long as Rakitin broods over his wrongs, he will always go off to the
back alley.... But the high road ... The road is wide and straight and
bright as crystal, and the sun is at the end of it.... Ah!... What’s
being read?”...

“_And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They
have no wine_” ... Alyosha heard.

“Ah, yes, I was missing that, and I didn’t want to miss it, I love that
passage: it’s Cana of Galilee, the first miracle.... Ah, that miracle!
Ah, that sweet miracle! It was not men’s grief, but their joy Christ
visited, He worked His first miracle to help men’s gladness.... ‘He who
loves men loves their gladness, too’ ... He was always repeating that,
it was one of his leading ideas.... ‘There’s no living without joy,’
Mitya says.... Yes, Mitya.... ‘Everything that is true and good is
always full of forgiveness,’ he used to say that, too” ...

“_Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what has it to do with thee or me? Mine
hour is not yet come._

“_His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do
it_” ...

“Do it.... Gladness, the gladness of some poor, very poor, people....
Of course they were poor, since they hadn’t wine enough even at a
wedding.... The historians write that, in those days, the people living
about the Lake of Gennesaret were the poorest that can possibly be
imagined ... and another great heart, that other great being, His
Mother, knew that He had come not only to make His great terrible
sacrifice. She knew that His heart was open even to the simple, artless
merrymaking of some obscure and unlearned people, who had warmly bidden
Him to their poor wedding. ‘Mine hour is not yet come,’ He said, with a
soft smile (He must have smiled gently to her). And, indeed, was it to
make wine abundant at poor weddings He had come down to earth? And yet
He went and did as she asked Him.... Ah, he is reading again”....

“_Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled
them up to the brim._

“_And he saith unto them, Draw out now and bear unto the governor of
the feast. And they bare it._

“_When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine,
and knew not whence it was; (but the servants which drew the water
knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom,_

“_And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good
wine; and when men have well drunk, that which is worse; but thou hast
kept the good wine until now._”

“But what’s this, what’s this? Why is the room growing wider?... Ah,
yes ... It’s the marriage, the wedding ... yes, of course. Here are the
guests, here are the young couple sitting, and the merry crowd and ...
Where is the wise governor of the feast? But who is this? Who? Again
the walls are receding.... Who is getting up there from the great
table? What!... He here, too? But he’s in the coffin ... but he’s here,
too. He has stood up, he sees me, he is coming here.... God!”...

Yes, he came up to him, to him, he, the little, thin old man, with tiny
wrinkles on his face, joyful and laughing softly. There was no coffin
now, and he was in the same dress as he had worn yesterday sitting with
them, when the visitors had gathered about him. His face was uncovered,
his eyes were shining. How was this, then? He, too, had been called to
the feast. He, too, at the marriage of Cana in Galilee....

“Yes, my dear, I am called, too, called and bidden,” he heard a soft
voice saying over him. “Why have you hidden yourself here, out of
sight? You come and join us too.”

It was his voice, the voice of Father Zossima. And it must be he, since
he called him!

The elder raised Alyosha by the hand and he rose from his knees.

“We are rejoicing,” the little, thin old man went on. “We are drinking
the new wine, the wine of new, great gladness; do you see how many
guests? Here are the bride and bridegroom, here is the wise governor of
the feast, he is tasting the new wine. Why do you wonder at me? I gave
an onion to a beggar, so I, too, am here. And many here have given only
an onion each—only one little onion.... What are all our deeds? And
you, my gentle one, you, my kind boy, you too have known how to give a
famished woman an onion to‐day. Begin your work, dear one, begin it,
gentle one!... Do you see our Sun, do you see Him?”

“I am afraid ... I dare not look,” whispered Alyosha.

“Do not fear Him. He is terrible in His greatness, awful in His
sublimity, but infinitely merciful. He has made Himself like unto us
from love and rejoices with us. He is changing the water into wine that
the gladness of the guests may not be cut short. He is expecting new
guests, He is calling new ones unceasingly for ever and ever.... There
they are bringing new wine. Do you see they are bringing the
vessels....”

Something glowed in Alyosha’s heart, something filled it till it ached,
tears of rapture rose from his soul.... He stretched out his hands,
uttered a cry and waked up.

Again the coffin, the open window, and the soft, solemn, distinct
reading of the Gospel. But Alyosha did not listen to the reading. It
was strange, he had fallen asleep on his knees, but now he was on his
feet, and suddenly, as though thrown forward, with three firm rapid
steps he went right up to the coffin. His shoulder brushed against
Father Païssy without his noticing it. Father Païssy raised his eyes
for an instant from his book, but looked away again at once, seeing
that something strange was happening to the boy. Alyosha gazed for half
a minute at the coffin, at the covered, motionless dead man that lay in
the coffin, with the ikon on his breast and the peaked cap with the
octangular cross, on his head. He had only just been hearing his voice,
and that voice was still ringing in his ears. He was listening, still
expecting other words, but suddenly he turned sharply and went out of
the cell.

He did not stop on the steps either, but went quickly down; his soul,
overflowing with rapture, yearned for freedom, space, openness. The
vault of heaven, full of soft, shining stars, stretched vast and
fathomless above him. The Milky Way ran in two pale streams from the
zenith to the horizon. The fresh, motionless, still night enfolded the
earth. The white towers and golden domes of the cathedral gleamed out
against the sapphire sky. The gorgeous autumn flowers, in the beds
round the house, were slumbering till morning. The silence of earth
seemed to melt into the silence of the heavens. The mystery of earth
was one with the mystery of the stars....

Alyosha stood, gazed, and suddenly threw himself down on the earth. He
did not know why he embraced it. He could not have told why he longed
so irresistibly to kiss it, to kiss it all. But he kissed it weeping,
sobbing and watering it with his tears, and vowed passionately to love
it, to love it for ever and ever. “Water the earth with the tears of
your joy and love those tears,” echoed in his soul.

What was he weeping over?

Oh! in his rapture he was weeping even over those stars, which were
shining to him from the abyss of space, and “he was not ashamed of that
ecstasy.” There seemed to be threads from all those innumerable worlds
of God, linking his soul to them, and it was trembling all over “in
contact with other worlds.” He longed to forgive every one and for
everything, and to beg forgiveness. Oh, not for himself, but for all
men, for all and for everything. “And others are praying for me too,”
echoed again in his soul. But with every instant he felt clearly and,
as it were, tangibly, that something firm and unshakable as that vault
of heaven had entered into his soul. It was as though some idea had
seized the sovereignty of his mind—and it was for all his life and for
ever and ever. He had fallen on the earth a weak boy, but he rose up a
resolute champion, and he knew and felt it suddenly at the very moment
of his ecstasy. And never, never, all his life long, could Alyosha
forget that minute.

“Some one visited my soul in that hour,” he used to say afterwards,
with implicit faith in his words.

Within three days he left the monastery in accordance with the words of
his elder, who had bidden him “sojourn in the world.”




Book VIII. Mitya




Chapter I.
Kuzma Samsonov


But Dmitri, to whom Grushenka, flying away to a new life, had left her
last greetings, bidding him remember the hour of her love for ever,
knew nothing of what had happened to her, and was at that moment in a
condition of feverish agitation and activity. For the last two days he
had been in such an inconceivable state of mind that he might easily
have fallen ill with brain fever, as he said himself afterwards.
Alyosha had not been able to find him the morning before, and Ivan had
not succeeded in meeting him at the tavern on the same day. The people
at his lodgings, by his orders, concealed his movements.

He had spent those two days literally rushing in all directions,
“struggling with his destiny and trying to save himself,” as he
expressed it himself afterwards, and for some hours he even made a dash
out of the town on urgent business, terrible as it was to him to lose
sight of Grushenka for a moment. All this was explained afterwards in
detail, and confirmed by documentary evidence; but for the present we
will only note the most essential incidents of those two terrible days
immediately preceding the awful catastrophe, that broke so suddenly
upon him.

Though Grushenka had, it is true, loved him for an hour, genuinely and
sincerely, yet she tortured him sometimes cruelly and mercilessly. The
worst of it was that he could never tell what she meant to do. To
prevail upon her by force or kindness was also impossible: she would
yield to nothing. She would only have become angry and turned away from
him altogether, he knew that well already. He suspected, quite
correctly, that she, too, was passing through an inward struggle, and
was in a state of extraordinary indecision, that she was making up her
mind to something, and unable to determine upon it. And so, not without
good reason, he divined, with a sinking heart, that at moments she must
simply hate him and his passion. And so, perhaps, it was, but what was
distressing Grushenka he did not understand. For him the whole
tormenting question lay between him and Fyodor Pavlovitch.

Here, we must note, by the way, one certain fact: he was firmly
persuaded that Fyodor Pavlovitch would offer, or perhaps had offered,
Grushenka lawful wedlock, and did not for a moment believe that the old
voluptuary hoped to gain his object for three thousand roubles. Mitya
had reached this conclusion from his knowledge of Grushenka and her
character. That was how it was that he could believe at times that all
Grushenka’s uneasiness rose from not knowing which of them to choose,
which was most to her advantage.

Strange to say, during those days it never occurred to him to think of
the approaching return of the “officer,” that is, of the man who had
been such a fatal influence in Grushenka’s life, and whose arrival she
was expecting with such emotion and dread. It is true that of late
Grushenka had been very silent about it. Yet he was perfectly aware of
a letter she had received a month ago from her seducer, and had heard
of it from her own lips. He partly knew, too, what the letter
contained. In a moment of spite Grushenka had shown him that letter,
but to her astonishment he attached hardly any consequence to it. It
would be hard to say why this was. Perhaps, weighed down by all the
hideous horror of his struggle with his own father for this woman, he
was incapable of imagining any danger more terrible, at any rate for
the time. He simply did not believe in a suitor who suddenly turned up
again after five years’ disappearance, still less in his speedy
arrival. Moreover, in the “officer’s” first letter which had been shown
to Mitya, the possibility of his new rival’s visit was very vaguely
suggested. The letter was very indefinite, high‐flown, and full of
sentimentality. It must be noted that Grushenka had concealed from him
the last lines of the letter, in which his return was alluded to more
definitely. He had, besides, noticed at that moment, he remembered
afterwards, a certain involuntary proud contempt for this missive from
Siberia on Grushenka’s face. Grushenka told him nothing of what had
passed later between her and this rival; so that by degrees he had
completely forgotten the officer’s existence.

He felt that whatever might come later, whatever turn things might
take, his final conflict with Fyodor Pavlovitch was close upon him, and
must be decided before anything else. With a sinking heart he was
expecting every moment Grushenka’s decision, always believing that it
would come suddenly, on the impulse of the moment. All of a sudden she
would say to him: “Take me, I’m yours for ever,” and it would all be
over. He would seize her and bear her away at once to the ends of the
earth. Oh, then he would bear her away at once, as far, far away as
possible; to the farthest end of Russia, if not of the earth, then he
would marry her, and settle down with her incognito, so that no one
would know anything about them, there, here, or anywhere. Then, oh,
then, a new life would begin at once!

Of this different, reformed and “virtuous” life (“it must, it must be
virtuous”) he dreamed feverishly at every moment. He thirsted for that
reformation and renewal. The filthy morass, in which he had sunk of his
own free will, was too revolting to him, and, like very many men in
such cases, he put faith above all in change of place. If only it were
not for these people, if only it were not for these circumstances, if
only he could fly away from this accursed place—he would be altogether
regenerated, would enter on a new path. That was what he believed in,
and what he was yearning for.

But all this could only be on condition of the first, the _happy_
solution of the question. There was another possibility, a different
and awful ending. Suddenly she might say to him: “Go away. I have just
come to terms with Fyodor Pavlovitch. I am going to marry him and don’t
want you”—and then ... but then.... But Mitya did not know what would
happen then. Up to the last hour he didn’t know. That must be said to
his credit. He had no definite intentions, had planned no crime. He was
simply watching and spying in agony, while he prepared himself for the
first, happy solution of his destiny. He drove away any other idea, in
fact. But for that ending a quite different anxiety arose, a new,
incidental, but yet fatal and insoluble difficulty presented itself.

If she were to say to him: “I’m yours; take me away,” how could he take
her away? Where had he the means, the money to do it? It was just at
this time that all sources of revenue from Fyodor Pavlovitch, doles
which had gone on without interruption for so many years, ceased.
Grushenka had money, of course, but with regard to this Mitya suddenly
evinced extraordinary pride; he wanted to carry her away and begin the
new life with her himself, at his own expense, not at hers. He could
not conceive of taking her money, and the very idea caused him a pang
of intense repulsion. I won’t enlarge on this fact or analyze it here,
but confine myself to remarking that this was his attitude at the
moment. All this may have arisen indirectly and unconsciously from the
secret stings of his conscience for the money of Katerina Ivanovna that
he had dishonestly appropriated. “I’ve been a scoundrel to one of them,
and I shall be a scoundrel again to the other directly,” was his
feeling then, as he explained after: “and when Grushenka knows, she
won’t care for such a scoundrel.”

Where then was he to get the means, where was he to get the fateful
money? Without it, all would be lost and nothing could be done, “and
only because I hadn’t the money. Oh, the shame of it!”

To anticipate things: he did, perhaps, know where to get the money,
knew, perhaps, where it lay at that moment. I will say no more of this
here, as it will all be clear later. But his chief trouble, I must
explain however obscurely, lay in the fact that to have that sum he
knew of, to _have the right_ to take it, he must first restore Katerina
Ivanovna’s three thousand—if not, “I’m a common pickpocket, I’m a
scoundrel, and I don’t want to begin a new life as a scoundrel,” Mitya
decided. And so he made up his mind to move heaven and earth to return
Katerina Ivanovna that three thousand, and that _first of all_. The
final stage of this decision, so to say, had been reached only during
the last hours, that is, after his last interview with Alyosha, two
days before, on the high‐road, on the evening when Grushenka had
insulted Katerina Ivanovna, and Mitya, after hearing Alyosha’s account
of it, had admitted that he was a scoundrel, and told him to tell
Katerina Ivanovna so, if it could be any comfort to her. After parting
from his brother on that night, he had felt in his frenzy that it would
be better “to murder and rob some one than fail to pay my debt to
Katya. I’d rather every one thought me a robber and a murderer, I’d
rather go to Siberia than that Katya should have the right to say that
I deceived her and stole her money, and used her money to run away with
Grushenka and begin a new life! That I can’t do!” So Mitya decided,
grinding his teeth, and he might well fancy at times that his brain
would give way. But meanwhile he went on struggling....

Strange to say, though one would have supposed there was nothing left
for him but despair—for what chance had he, with nothing in the world,
to raise such a sum?—yet to the very end he persisted in hoping that he
would get that three thousand, that the money would somehow come to him
of itself, as though it might drop from heaven. That is just how it is
with people who, like Dmitri, have never had anything to do with money,
except to squander what has come to them by inheritance without any
effort of their own, and have no notion how money is obtained. A whirl
of the most fantastic notions took possession of his brain immediately
after he had parted with Alyosha two days before, and threw his
thoughts into a tangle of confusion. This is how it was he pitched
first on a perfectly wild enterprise. And perhaps to men of that kind
in such circumstances the most impossible, fantastic schemes occur
first, and seem most practical.

He suddenly determined to go to Samsonov, the merchant who was
Grushenka’s protector, and to propose a “scheme” to him, and by means
of it to obtain from him at once the whole of the sum required. Of the
commercial value of his scheme he had no doubt, not the slightest, and
was only uncertain how Samsonov would look upon his freak, supposing he
were to consider it from any but the commercial point of view. Though
Mitya knew the merchant by sight, he was not acquainted with him and
had never spoken a word to him. But for some unknown reason he had long
entertained the conviction that the old reprobate, who was lying at
death’s door, would perhaps not at all object now to Grushenka’s
securing a respectable position, and marrying a man “to be depended
upon.” And he believed not only that he would not object, but that this
was what he desired, and, if opportunity arose, that he would be ready
to help. From some rumor, or perhaps from some stray word of
Grushenka’s, he had gathered further that the old man would perhaps
prefer him to Fyodor Pavlovitch for Grushenka.

Possibly many of the readers of my novel will feel that in reckoning on
such assistance, and being ready to take his bride, so to speak, from
the hands of her protector, Dmitri showed great coarseness and want of
delicacy. I will only observe that Mitya looked upon Grushenka’s past
as something completely over. He looked on that past with infinite pity
and resolved with all the fervor of his passion that when once
Grushenka told him she loved him and would marry him, it would mean the
beginning of a new Grushenka and a new Dmitri, free from every vice.
They would forgive one another and would begin their lives afresh. As
for Kuzma Samsonov, Dmitri looked upon him as a man who had exercised a
fateful influence in that remote past of Grushenka’s, though she had
never loved him, and who was now himself a thing of the past,
completely done with, and, so to say, non‐existent. Besides, Mitya
hardly looked upon him as a man at all, for it was known to every one
in the town that he was only a shattered wreck, whose relations with
Grushenka had changed their character and were now simply paternal, and
that this had been so for a long time.

In any case there was much simplicity on Mitya’s part in all this, for
in spite of all his vices, he was a very simple‐hearted man. It was an
instance of this simplicity that Mitya was seriously persuaded that,
being on the eve of his departure for the next world, old Kuzma must
sincerely repent of his past relations with Grushenka, and that she had
no more devoted friend and protector in the world than this, now
harmless old man.

After his conversation with Alyosha, at the cross‐roads, he hardly
slept all night, and at ten o’clock next morning, he was at the house
of Samsonov and telling the servant to announce him. It was a very
large and gloomy old house of two stories, with a lodge and outhouses.
In the lower story lived Samsonov’s two married sons with their
families, his old sister, and his unmarried daughter. In the lodge
lived two of his clerks, one of whom also had a large family. Both the
lodge and the lower story were overcrowded, but the old man kept the
upper floor to himself, and would not even let the daughter live there
with him, though she waited upon him, and in spite of her asthma was
obliged at certain fixed hours, and at any time he might call her, to
run upstairs to him from below.

This upper floor contained a number of large rooms kept purely for
show, furnished in the old‐fashioned merchant style, with long
monotonous rows of clumsy mahogany chairs along the walls, with glass
chandeliers under shades, and gloomy mirrors on the walls. All these
rooms were entirely empty and unused, for the old man kept to one room,
a small, remote bedroom, where he was waited upon by an old servant
with a kerchief on her head, and by a lad, who used to sit on the
locker in the passage. Owing to his swollen legs, the old man could
hardly walk at all, and was only rarely lifted from his leather
arm‐chair, when the old woman supporting him led him up and down the
room once or twice. He was morose and taciturn even with this old
woman.

When he was informed of the arrival of the “captain,” he at once
refused to see him. But Mitya persisted and sent his name up again.
Samsonov questioned the lad minutely: What he looked like? Whether he
was drunk? Was he going to make a row? The answer he received was: that
he was sober, but wouldn’t go away. The old man again refused to see
him. Then Mitya, who had foreseen this, and purposely brought pencil
and paper with him, wrote clearly on the piece of paper the words: “On
most important business closely concerning Agrafena Alexandrovna,” and
sent it up to the old man.

After thinking a little Samsonov told the lad to take the visitor to
the drawing‐room, and sent the old woman downstairs with a summons to
his younger son to come upstairs to him at once. This younger son, a
man over six foot and of exceptional physical strength, who was
closely‐shaven and dressed in the European style, though his father
still wore a kaftan and a beard, came at once without a comment. All
the family trembled before the father. The old man had sent for this
giant, not because he was afraid of the “captain” (he was by no means
of a timorous temper), but in order to have a witness in case of any
emergency. Supported by his son and the servant‐lad, he waddled at last
into the drawing‐room. It may be assumed that he felt considerable
curiosity. The drawing‐room in which Mitya was awaiting him was a vast,
dreary room that laid a weight of depression on the heart. It had a
double row of windows, a gallery, marbled walls, and three immense
chandeliers with glass lusters covered with shades.

Mitya was sitting on a little chair at the entrance, awaiting his fate
with nervous impatience. When the old man appeared at the opposite
door, seventy feet away, Mitya jumped up at once, and with his long,
military stride walked to meet him. Mitya was well dressed, in a
frock‐coat, buttoned up, with a round hat and black gloves in his
hands, just as he had been three days before at the elder’s, at the
family meeting with his father and brothers. The old man waited for
him, standing dignified and unbending, and Mitya felt at once that he
had looked him through and through as he advanced. Mitya was greatly
impressed, too, with Samsonov’s immensely swollen face. His lower lip,
which had always been thick, hung down now, looking like a bun. He
bowed to his guest in dignified silence, motioned him to a low chair by
the sofa, and, leaning on his son’s arm he began lowering himself on to
the sofa opposite, groaning painfully, so that Mitya, seeing his
painful exertions, immediately felt remorseful and sensitively
conscious of his insignificance in the presence of the dignified person
he had ventured to disturb.

“What is it you want of me, sir?” said the old man, deliberately,
distinctly, severely, but courteously, when he was at last seated.

Mitya started, leapt up, but sat down again. Then he began at once
speaking with loud, nervous haste, gesticulating, and in a positive
frenzy. He was unmistakably a man driven into a corner, on the brink of
ruin, catching at the last straw, ready to sink if he failed. Old
Samsonov probably grasped all this in an instant, though his face
remained cold and immovable as a statue’s.

“Most honored sir, Kuzma Kuzmitch, you have no doubt heard more than
once of my disputes with my father, Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, who
robbed me of my inheritance from my mother ... seeing the whole town is
gossiping about it ... for here every one’s gossiping of what they
shouldn’t ... and besides, it might have reached you through Grushenka
... I beg your pardon, through Agrafena Alexandrovna ... Agrafena
Alexandrovna, the lady for whom I have the highest respect and esteem
...”

So Mitya began, and broke down at the first sentence. We will not
reproduce his speech word for word, but will only summarize the gist of
it. Three months ago, he said, he had of express intention (Mitya
purposely used these words instead of “intentionally”) consulted a
lawyer in the chief town of the province, “a distinguished lawyer,
Kuzma Kuzmitch, Pavel Pavlovitch Korneplodov. You have perhaps heard of
him? A man of vast intellect, the mind of a statesman ... he knows you,
too ... spoke of you in the highest terms ...” Mitya broke down again.
But these breaks did not deter him. He leapt instantly over the gaps,
and struggled on and on.

This Korneplodov, after questioning him minutely, and inspecting the
documents he was able to bring him (Mitya alluded somewhat vaguely to
these documents, and slurred over the subject with special haste),
reported that they certainly might take proceedings concerning the
village of Tchermashnya, which ought, he said, to have come to him,
Mitya, from his mother, and so checkmate the old villain, his father
... “because every door was not closed and justice might still find a
loophole.” In fact, he might reckon on an additional sum of six or even
seven thousand roubles from Fyodor Pavlovitch, as Tchermashnya was
worth, at least, twenty‐five thousand, he might say twenty‐eight
thousand, in fact, “thirty, thirty, Kuzma Kuzmitch, and would you
believe it, I didn’t get seventeen from that heartless man!” So he,
Mitya, had thrown the business up, for the time, knowing nothing about
the law, but on coming here was struck dumb by a cross‐claim made upon
him (here Mitya went adrift again and again took a flying leap
forward), “so will not you, excellent and honored Kuzma Kuzmitch, be
willing to take up all my claims against that unnatural monster, and
pay me a sum down of only three thousand?... You see, you cannot, in
any case, lose over it. On my honor, my honor, I swear that. Quite the
contrary, you may make six or seven thousand instead of three.” Above
all, he wanted this concluded that very day.

“I’ll do the business with you at a notary’s, or whatever it is ... in
fact, I’m ready to do anything.... I’ll hand over all the deeds ...
whatever you want, sign anything ... and we could draw up the agreement
at once ... and if it were possible, if it were only possible, that
very morning.... You could pay me that three thousand, for there isn’t
a capitalist in this town to compare with you, and so would save me
from ... would save me, in fact ... for a good, I might say an
honorable action.... For I cherish the most honorable feelings for a
certain person, whom you know well, and care for as a father. I would
not have come, indeed, if it had not been as a father. And, indeed,
it’s a struggle of three in this business, for it’s fate—that’s a
fearful thing, Kuzma Kuzmitch! A tragedy, Kuzma Kuzmitch, a tragedy!
And as you’ve dropped out long ago, it’s a tug‐ of‐war between two. I’m
expressing it awkwardly, perhaps, but I’m not a literary man. You see,
I’m on the one side, and that monster on the other. So you must choose.
It’s either I or the monster. It all lies in your hands—the fate of
three lives, and the happiness of two.... Excuse me, I’m making a mess
of it, but you understand ... I see from your venerable eyes that you
understand ... and if you don’t understand, I’m done for ... so you
see!”

Mitya broke off his clumsy speech with that, “so you see!” and jumping
up from his seat, awaited the answer to his foolish proposal. At the
last phrase he had suddenly become hopelessly aware that it had all
fallen flat, above all, that he had been talking utter nonsense.

“How strange it is! On the way here it seemed all right, and now it’s
nothing but nonsense.” The idea suddenly dawned on his despairing mind.
All the while he had been talking, the old man sat motionless, watching
him with an icy expression in his eyes. After keeping him for a moment
in suspense, Kuzma Kuzmitch pronounced at last in the most positive and
chilling tone:

“Excuse me, we don’t undertake such business.”

Mitya suddenly felt his legs growing weak under him.

“What am I to do now, Kuzma Kuzmitch?” he muttered, with a pale smile.
“I suppose it’s all up with me—what do you think?”

“Excuse me....”

Mitya remained standing, staring motionless. He suddenly noticed a
movement in the old man’s face. He started.

“You see, sir, business of that sort’s not in our line,” said the old
man slowly. “There’s the court, and the lawyers—it’s a perfect misery.
But if you like, there is a man here you might apply to.”

“Good heavens! Who is it? You’re my salvation, Kuzma Kuzmitch,”
faltered Mitya.

“He doesn’t live here, and he’s not here just now. He is a peasant, he
does business in timber. His name is Lyagavy. He’s been haggling with
Fyodor Pavlovitch for the last year, over your copse at Tchermashnya.
They can’t agree on the price, maybe you’ve heard? Now he’s come back
again and is staying with the priest at Ilyinskoe, about twelve versts
from the Volovya station. He wrote to me, too, about the business of
the copse, asking my advice. Fyodor Pavlovitch means to go and see him
himself. So if you were to be beforehand with Fyodor Pavlovitch and to
make Lyagavy the offer you’ve made me, he might possibly—”

“A brilliant idea!” Mitya interrupted ecstatically. “He’s the very man,
it would just suit him. He’s haggling with him for it, being asked too
much, and here he would have all the documents entitling him to the
property itself. Ha ha ha!”

And Mitya suddenly went off into his short, wooden laugh, startling
Samsonov.

“How can I thank you, Kuzma Kuzmitch?” cried Mitya effusively.

“Don’t mention it,” said Samsonov, inclining his head.

“But you don’t know, you’ve saved me. Oh, it was a true presentiment
brought me to you.... So now to this priest!”

“No need of thanks.”

“I’ll make haste and fly there. I’m afraid I’ve overtaxed your
strength. I shall never forget it. It’s a Russian says that, Kuzma
Kuzmitch, a R‐r‐ russian!”

“To be sure!”

Mitya seized his hand to press it, but there was a malignant gleam in
the old man’s eye. Mitya drew back his hand, but at once blamed himself
for his mistrustfulness.

“It’s because he’s tired,” he thought.

“For her sake! For her sake, Kuzma Kuzmitch! You understand that it’s
for her,” he cried, his voice ringing through the room. He bowed,
turned sharply round, and with the same long stride walked to the door
without looking back. He was trembling with delight.

“Everything was on the verge of ruin and my guardian angel saved me,”
was the thought in his mind. And if such a business man as Samsonov (a
most worthy old man, and what dignity!) had suggested this course, then
... then success was assured. He would fly off immediately. “I will be
back before night, I shall be back at night and the thing is done.
Could the old man have been laughing at me?” exclaimed Mitya, as he
strode towards his lodging. He could, of course, imagine nothing, but
that the advice was practical “from such a business man” with an
understanding of the business, with an understanding of this Lyagavy
(curious surname!). Or—the old man was laughing at him.

Alas! The second alternative was the correct one. Long afterwards, when
the catastrophe had happened, old Samsonov himself confessed, laughing,
that he had made a fool of the “captain.” He was a cold, spiteful and
sarcastic man, liable to violent antipathies. Whether it was the
“captain’s” excited face, or the foolish conviction of the “rake and
spendthrift,” that he, Samsonov, could be taken in by such a
cock‐and‐bull story as his scheme, or his jealousy of Grushenka, in
whose name this “scapegrace” had rushed in on him with such a tale to
get money which worked on the old man, I can’t tell. But at the instant
when Mitya stood before him, feeling his legs grow weak under him, and
frantically exclaiming that he was ruined, at that moment the old man
looked at him with intense spite, and resolved to make a laughing‐stock
of him. When Mitya had gone, Kuzma Kuzmitch, white with rage, turned to
his son and bade him see to it that that beggar be never seen again,
and never admitted even into the yard, or else he’d—

He did not utter his threat. But even his son, who often saw him
enraged, trembled with fear. For a whole hour afterwards, the old man
was shaking with anger, and by evening he was worse, and sent for the
doctor.




Chapter II.
Lyagavy


So he must drive at full speed, and he had not the money for horses. He
had forty kopecks, and that was all, all that was left after so many
years of prosperity! But he had at home an old silver watch which had
long ceased to go. He snatched it up and carried it to a Jewish
watchmaker who had a shop in the market‐place. The Jew gave him six
roubles for it.

“And I didn’t expect that,” cried Mitya, ecstatically. (He was still in
a state of ecstasy.) He seized his six roubles and ran home. At home he
borrowed three roubles from the people of the house, who loved him so
much that they were pleased to give it him, though it was all they had.
Mitya in his excitement told them on the spot that his fate would be
decided that day, and he described, in desperate haste, the whole
scheme he had put before Samsonov, the latter’s decision, his own hopes
for the future, and so on. These people had been told many of their
lodger’s secrets before, and so looked upon him as a gentleman who was
not at all proud, and almost one of themselves. Having thus collected
nine roubles Mitya sent for posting‐horses to take him to the Volovya
station. This was how the fact came to be remembered and established
that “at midday, on the day before the event, Mitya had not a farthing,
and that he had sold his watch to get money and had borrowed three
roubles from his landlord, all in the presence of witnesses.”

I note this fact, later on it will be apparent why I do so.

Though he was radiant with the joyful anticipation that he would at
last solve all his difficulties, yet, as he drew near Volovya station,
he trembled at the thought of what Grushenka might be doing in his
absence. What if she made up her mind to‐day to go to Fyodor
Pavlovitch? This was why he had gone off without telling her and why he
left orders with his landlady not to let out where he had gone, if any
one came to inquire for him.

“I must, I must get back to‐night,” he repeated, as he was jolted along
in the cart, “and I dare say I shall have to bring this Lyagavy back
here ... to draw up the deed.” So mused Mitya, with a throbbing heart,
but alas! his dreams were not fated to be carried out.

To begin with, he was late, taking a short cut from Volovya station
which turned out to be eighteen versts instead of twelve. Secondly, he
did not find the priest at home at Ilyinskoe; he had gone off to a
neighboring village. While Mitya, setting off there with the same
exhausted horses, was looking for him, it was almost dark.

The priest, a shy and amiable looking little man, informed him at once
that though Lyagavy had been staying with him at first, he was now at
Suhoy Possyolok, that he was staying the night in the forester’s
cottage, as he was buying timber there too. At Mitya’s urgent request
that he would take him to Lyagavy at once, and by so doing “save him,
so to speak,” the priest agreed, after some demur, to conduct him to
Suhoy Possyolok; his curiosity was obviously aroused. But, unluckily,
he advised their going on foot, as it would not be “much over” a verst.
Mitya, of course, agreed, and marched off with his yard‐long strides,
so that the poor priest almost ran after him. He was a very cautious
man, though not old.

Mitya at once began talking to him, too, of his plans, nervously and
excitedly asking advice in regard to Lyagavy, and talking all the way.
The priest listened attentively, but gave little advice. He turned off
Mitya’s questions with: “I don’t know. Ah, I can’t say. How can I
tell?” and so on. When Mitya began to speak of his quarrel with his
father over his inheritance, the priest was positively alarmed, as he
was in some way dependent on Fyodor Pavlovitch. He inquired, however,
with surprise, why he called the peasant‐trader Gorstkin, Lyagavy, and
obligingly explained to Mitya that, though the man’s name really was
Lyagavy, he was never called so, as he would be grievously offended at
the name, and that he must be sure to call him Gorstkin, “or you’ll do
nothing with him; he won’t even listen to you,” said the priest in
conclusion.

Mitya was somewhat surprised for a moment, and explained that that was
what Samsonov had called him. On hearing this fact, the priest dropped
the subject, though he would have done well to put into words his doubt
whether, if Samsonov had sent him to that peasant, calling him Lyagavy,
there was not something wrong about it and he was turning him into
ridicule. But Mitya had no time to pause over such trifles. He hurried,
striding along, and only when he reached Suhoy Possyolok did he realize
that they had come not one verst, nor one and a half, but at least
three. This annoyed him, but he controlled himself.

They went into the hut. The forester lived in one half of the hut, and
Gorstkin was lodging in the other, the better room the other side of
the passage. They went into that room and lighted a tallow candle. The
hut was extremely overheated. On the table there was a samovar that had
gone out, a tray with cups, an empty rum bottle, a bottle of vodka
partly full, and some half‐eaten crusts of wheaten bread. The visitor
himself lay stretched at full length on the bench, with his coat
crushed up under his head for a pillow, snoring heavily. Mitya stood in
perplexity.

“Of course I must wake him. My business is too important. I’ve come in
such haste. I’m in a hurry to get back to‐day,” he said in great
agitation. But the priest and the forester stood in silence, not giving
their opinion. Mitya went up and began trying to wake him himself; he
tried vigorously, but the sleeper did not wake.

“He’s drunk,” Mitya decided. “Good Lord! What am I to do? What am I to
do?” And, terribly impatient, he began pulling him by the arms, by the
legs, shaking his head, lifting him up and making him sit on the bench.
Yet, after prolonged exertions, he could only succeed in getting the
drunken man to utter absurd grunts, and violent, but inarticulate
oaths.

“No, you’d better wait a little,” the priest pronounced at last, “for
he’s obviously not in a fit state.”

“He’s been drinking the whole day,” the forester chimed in.

“Good heavens!” cried Mitya. “If only you knew how important it is to
me and how desperate I am!”

“No, you’d better wait till morning,” the priest repeated.

“Till morning? Mercy! that’s impossible!”

And in his despair he was on the point of attacking the sleeping man
again, but stopped short at once, realizing the uselessness of his
efforts. The priest said nothing, the sleepy forester looked gloomy.

“What terrible tragedies real life contrives for people,” said Mitya,
in complete despair. The perspiration was streaming down his face. The
priest seized the moment to put before him, very reasonably, that, even
if he succeeded in wakening the man, he would still be drunk and
incapable of conversation. “And your business is important,” he said,
“so you’d certainly better put it off till morning.” With a gesture of
despair Mitya agreed.

“Father, I will stay here with a light, and seize the favorable moment.
As soon as he wakes I’ll begin. I’ll pay you for the light,” he said to
the forester, “for the night’s lodging, too; you’ll remember Dmitri
Karamazov. Only, Father, I don’t know what we’re to do with you. Where
will you sleep?”

“No, I’m going home. I’ll take his horse and get home,” he said,
indicating the forester. “And now I’ll say good‐by. I wish you all
success.”

So it was settled. The priest rode off on the forester’s horse,
delighted to escape, though he shook his head uneasily, wondering
whether he ought not next day to inform his benefactor Fyodor
Pavlovitch of this curious incident, “or he may in an unlucky hour hear
of it, be angry, and withdraw his favor.”

The forester, scratching himself, went back to his room without a word,
and Mitya sat on the bench to “catch the favorable moment,” as he
expressed it. Profound dejection clung about his soul like a heavy
mist. A profound, intense dejection! He sat thinking, but could reach
no conclusion. The candle burnt dimly, a cricket chirped; it became
insufferably close in the overheated room. He suddenly pictured the
garden, the path behind the garden, the door of his father’s house
mysteriously opening and Grushenka running in. He leapt up from the
bench.

“It’s a tragedy!” he said, grinding his teeth. Mechanically he went up
to the sleeping man and looked in his face. He was a lean, middle‐aged
peasant, with a very long face, flaxen curls, and a long, thin, reddish
beard, wearing a blue cotton shirt and a black waistcoat, from the
pocket of which peeped the chain of a silver watch. Mitya looked at his
face with intense hatred, and for some unknown reason his curly hair
particularly irritated him.

What was insufferably humiliating was, that after leaving things of
such importance and making such sacrifices, he, Mitya, utterly worn
out, should with business of such urgency be standing over this dolt on
whom his whole fate depended, while he snored as though there were
nothing the matter, as though he’d dropped from another planet.

“Oh, the irony of fate!” cried Mitya, and, quite losing his head, he
fell again to rousing the tipsy peasant. He roused him with a sort of
ferocity, pulled at him, pushed him, even beat him; but after five
minutes of vain exertions, he returned to his bench in helpless
despair, and sat down.

“Stupid! Stupid!” cried Mitya. “And how dishonorable it all is!”
something made him add. His head began to ache horribly. “Should he
fling it up and go away altogether?” he wondered. “No, wait till
to‐morrow now. I’ll stay on purpose. What else did I come for? Besides,
I’ve no means of going. How am I to get away from here now? Oh, the
idiocy of it!”

But his head ached more and more. He sat without moving, and
unconsciously dozed off and fell asleep as he sat. He seemed to have
slept for two hours or more. He was waked up by his head aching so
unbearably that he could have screamed. There was a hammering in his
temples, and the top of his head ached. It was a long time before he
could wake up fully and understand what had happened to him.

At last he realized that the room was full of charcoal fumes from the
stove, and that he might die of suffocation. And the drunken peasant
still lay snoring. The candle guttered and was about to go out. Mitya
cried out, and ran staggering across the passage into the forester’s
room. The forester waked up at once, but hearing that the other room
was full of fumes, to Mitya’s surprise and annoyance, accepted the fact
with strange unconcern, though he did go to see to it.

“But he’s dead, he’s dead! and ... what am I to do then?” cried Mitya
frantically.

They threw open the doors, opened a window and the chimney. Mitya
brought a pail of water from the passage. First he wetted his own head,
then, finding a rag of some sort, dipped it into the water, and put it
on Lyagavy’s head. The forester still treated the matter
contemptuously, and when he opened the window said grumpily:

“It’ll be all right, now.”

He went back to sleep, leaving Mitya a lighted lantern. Mitya fussed
about the drunken peasant for half an hour, wetting his head, and
gravely resolved not to sleep all night. But he was so worn out that
when he sat down for a moment to take breath, he closed his eyes,
unconsciously stretched himself full length on the bench and slept like
the dead.

It was dreadfully late when he waked. It was somewhere about nine
o’clock. The sun was shining brightly in the two little windows of the
hut. The curly‐headed peasant was sitting on the bench and had his coat
on. He had another samovar and another bottle in front of him.
Yesterday’s bottle had already been finished, and the new one was more
than half empty. Mitya jumped up and saw at once that the cursed
peasant was drunk again, hopelessly and incurably. He stared at him for
a moment with wide opened eyes. The peasant was silently and slyly
watching him, with insulting composure, and even a sort of contemptuous
condescension, so Mitya fancied. He rushed up to him.

“Excuse me, you see ... I ... you’ve most likely heard from the
forester here in the hut. I’m Lieutenant Dmitri Karamazov, the son of
the old Karamazov whose copse you are buying.”

“That’s a lie!” said the peasant, calmly and confidently.

“A lie? You know Fyodor Pavlovitch?”

“I don’t know any of your Fyodor Pavlovitches,” said the peasant,
speaking thickly.

“You’re bargaining with him for the copse, for the copse. Do wake up,
and collect yourself. Father Pavel of Ilyinskoe brought me here. You
wrote to Samsonov, and he has sent me to you,” Mitya gasped
breathlessly.

“You’re l‐lying!” Lyagavy blurted out again. Mitya’s legs went cold.

“For mercy’s sake! It isn’t a joke! You’re drunk, perhaps. Yet you can
speak and understand ... or else ... I understand nothing!”

“You’re a painter!”

“For mercy’s sake! I’m Karamazov, Dmitri Karamazov. I have an offer to
make you, an advantageous offer ... very advantageous offer, concerning
the copse!”

The peasant stroked his beard importantly.

“No, you’ve contracted for the job and turned out a scamp. You’re a
scoundrel!”

“I assure you you’re mistaken,” cried Mitya, wringing his hands in
despair. The peasant still stroked his beard, and suddenly screwed up
his eyes cunningly.

“No, you show me this: you tell me the law that allows roguery. D’you
hear? You’re a scoundrel! Do you understand that?”

Mitya stepped back gloomily, and suddenly “something seemed to hit him
on the head,” as he said afterwards. In an instant a light seemed to
dawn in his mind, “a light was kindled and I grasped it all.” He stood,
stupefied, wondering how he, after all a man of intelligence, could
have yielded to such folly, have been led into such an adventure, and
have kept it up for almost twenty‐four hours, fussing round this
Lyagavy, wetting his head.

“Why, the man’s drunk, dead drunk, and he’ll go on drinking now for a
week; what’s the use of waiting here? And what if Samsonov sent me here
on purpose? What if she—? Oh, God, what have I done?”

The peasant sat watching him and grinning. Another time Mitya might
have killed the fool in a fury, but now he felt as weak as a child. He
went quietly to the bench, took up his overcoat, put it on without a
word, and went out of the hut. He did not find the forester in the next
room; there was no one there. He took fifty kopecks in small change out
of his pocket and put them on the table for his night’s lodging, the
candle, and the trouble he had given. Coming out of the hut he saw
nothing but forest all round. He walked at hazard, not knowing which
way to turn out of the hut, to the right or to the left. Hurrying there
the evening before with the priest, he had not noticed the road. He had
no revengeful feeling for anybody, even for Samsonov, in his heart. He
strode along a narrow forest path, aimless, dazed, without heeding
where he was going. A child could have knocked him down, so weak was he
in body and soul. He got out of the forest somehow, however, and a
vista of fields, bare after the harvest, stretched as far as the eye
could see.

“What despair! What death all round!” he repeated, striding on and on.

He was saved by meeting an old merchant who was being driven across
country in a hired trap. When he overtook him, Mitya asked the way, and
it turned out that the old merchant, too, was going to Volovya. After
some discussion Mitya got into the trap. Three hours later they
arrived. At Volovya, Mitya at once ordered posting‐horses to drive to
the town, and suddenly realized that he was appallingly hungry. While
the horses were being harnessed, an omelette was prepared for him. He
ate it all in an instant, ate a huge hunk of bread, ate a sausage, and
swallowed three glasses of vodka. After eating, his spirits and his
heart grew lighter. He flew towards the town, urged on the driver, and
suddenly made a new and “unalterable” plan to procure that “accursed
money” before evening. “And to think, only to think that a man’s life
should be ruined for the sake of that paltry three thousand!” he cried,
contemptuously. “I’ll settle it to‐ day.” And if it had not been for
the thought of Grushenka and of what might have happened to her, which
never left him, he would perhaps have become quite cheerful again....
But the thought of her was stabbing him to the heart every moment, like
a sharp knife.

At last they arrived, and Mitya at once ran to Grushenka.




Chapter III.
Gold‐Mines


This was the visit of Mitya of which Grushenka had spoken to Rakitin
with such horror. She was just then expecting the “message,” and was
much relieved that Mitya had not been to see her that day or the day
before. She hoped that “please God he won’t come till I’m gone away,”
and he suddenly burst in on her. The rest we know already. To get him
off her hands she suggested at once that he should walk with her to
Samsonov’s, where she said she absolutely must go “to settle his
accounts,” and when Mitya accompanied her at once, she said good‐by to
him at the gate, making him promise to come at twelve o’clock to take
her home again. Mitya, too, was delighted at this arrangement. If she
was sitting at Samsonov’s she could not be going to Fyodor
Pavlovitch’s, “if only she’s not lying,” he added at once. But he
thought she was not lying from what he saw.

He was that sort of jealous man who, in the absence of the beloved
woman, at once invents all sorts of awful fancies of what may be
happening to her, and how she may be betraying him, but, when shaken,
heartbroken, convinced of her faithlessness, he runs back to her; at
the first glance at her face, her gay, laughing, affectionate face, he
revives at once, lays aside all suspicion and with joyful shame abuses
himself for his jealousy.

After leaving Grushenka at the gate he rushed home. Oh, he had so much
still to do that day! But a load had been lifted from his heart,
anyway.

“Now I must only make haste and find out from Smerdyakov whether
anything happened there last night, whether, by any chance, she went to
Fyodor Pavlovitch; ough!” floated through his mind.

Before he had time to reach his lodging, jealousy had surged up again
in his restless heart.

Jealousy! “Othello was not jealous, he was trustful,” observed Pushkin.
And that remark alone is enough to show the deep insight of our great
poet. Othello’s soul was shattered and his whole outlook clouded simply
because _his ideal was destroyed_. But Othello did not begin hiding,
spying, peeping. He was trustful, on the contrary. He had to be led up,
pushed on, excited with great difficulty before he could entertain the
idea of deceit. The truly jealous man is not like that. It is
impossible to picture to oneself the shame and moral degradation to
which the jealous man can descend without a qualm of conscience. And
yet it’s not as though the jealous were all vulgar and base souls. On
the contrary, a man of lofty feelings, whose love is pure and full of
self‐sacrifice, may yet hide under tables, bribe the vilest people, and
be familiar with the lowest ignominy of spying and eavesdropping.

Othello was incapable of making up his mind to faithlessness—not
incapable of forgiving it, but of making up his mind to it—though his
soul was as innocent and free from malice as a babe’s. It is not so
with the really jealous man. It is hard to imagine what some jealous
men can make up their mind to and overlook, and what they can forgive!
The jealous are the readiest of all to forgive, and all women know it.
The jealous man can forgive extraordinarily quickly (though, of course,
after a violent scene), and he is able to forgive infidelity almost
conclusively proved, the very kisses and embraces he has seen, if only
he can somehow be convinced that it has all been “for the last time,”
and that his rival will vanish from that day forward, will depart to
the ends of the earth, or that he himself will carry her away
somewhere, where that dreaded rival will not get near her. Of course
the reconciliation is only for an hour. For, even if the rival did
disappear next day, he would invent another one and would be jealous of
him. And one might wonder what there was in a love that had to be so
watched over, what a love could be worth that needed such strenuous
guarding. But that the jealous will never understand. And yet among
them are men of noble hearts. It is remarkable, too, that those very
men of noble hearts, standing hidden in some cupboard, listening and
spying, never feel the stings of conscience at that moment, anyway,
though they understand clearly enough with their “noble hearts” the
shameful depths to which they have voluntarily sunk.

At the sight of Grushenka, Mitya’s jealousy vanished, and, for an
instant he became trustful and generous, and positively despised
himself for his evil feelings. But it only proved that, in his love for
the woman, there was an element of something far higher than he himself
imagined, that it was not only a sensual passion, not only the “curve
of her body,” of which he had talked to Alyosha. But, as soon as
Grushenka had gone, Mitya began to suspect her of all the low cunning
of faithlessness, and he felt no sting of conscience at it.

And so jealousy surged up in him again. He had, in any case, to make
haste. The first thing to be done was to get hold of at least a small,
temporary loan of money. The nine roubles had almost all gone on his
expedition. And, as we all know, one can’t take a step without money.
But he had thought over in the cart where he could get a loan. He had a
brace of fine dueling pistols in a case, which he had not pawned till
then because he prized them above all his possessions.

In the “Metropolis” tavern he had some time since made acquaintance
with a young official and had learnt that this very opulent bachelor
was passionately fond of weapons. He used to buy pistols, revolvers,
daggers, hang them on his wall and show them to acquaintances. He
prided himself on them, and was quite a specialist on the mechanism of
the revolver. Mitya, without stopping to think, went straight to him,
and offered to pawn his pistols to him for ten roubles. The official,
delighted, began trying to persuade him to sell them outright. But
Mitya would not consent, so the young man gave him ten roubles,
protesting that nothing would induce him to take interest. They parted
friends.

Mitya was in haste; he rushed towards Fyodor Pavlovitch’s by the back
way, to his arbor, to get hold of Smerdyakov as soon as possible. In
this way the fact was established that three or four hours before a
certain event, of which I shall speak later on, Mitya had not a
farthing, and pawned for ten roubles a possession he valued, though,
three hours later, he was in possession of thousands.... But I am
anticipating. From Marya Kondratyevna (the woman living near Fyodor
Pavlovitch’s) he learned the very disturbing fact of Smerdyakov’s
illness. He heard the story of his fall in the cellar, his fit, the
doctor’s visit, Fyodor Pavlovitch’s anxiety; he heard with interest,
too, that his brother Ivan had set off that morning for Moscow.

“Then he must have driven through Volovya before me,” thought Dmitri,
but he was terribly distressed about Smerdyakov. “What will happen now?
Who’ll keep watch for me? Who’ll bring me word?” he thought. He began
greedily questioning the women whether they had seen anything the
evening before. They quite understood what he was trying to find out,
and completely reassured him. No one had been there. Ivan Fyodorovitch
had been there the night; everything had been perfectly as usual. Mitya
grew thoughtful. He would certainly have to keep watch to‐day, but
where? Here or at Samsonov’s gate? He decided that he must be on the
look out both here and there, and meanwhile ... meanwhile.... The
difficulty was that he had to carry out the new plan that he had made
on the journey back. He was sure of its success, but he must not delay
acting upon it. Mitya resolved to sacrifice an hour to it: “In an hour
I shall know everything, I shall settle everything, and then, then,
first of all to Samsonov’s. I’ll inquire whether Grushenka’s there and
instantly be back here again, stay till eleven, and then to Samsonov’s
again to bring her home.” This was what he decided.

He flew home, washed, combed his hair, brushed his clothes, dressed,
and went to Madame Hohlakov’s. Alas! he had built his hopes on her. He
had resolved to borrow three thousand from that lady. And what was
more, he felt suddenly convinced that she would not refuse to lend it
to him. It may be wondered why, if he felt so certain, he had not gone
to her at first, one of his own sort, so to speak, instead of to
Samsonov, a man he did not know, who was not of his own class, and to
whom he hardly knew how to speak.

But the fact was that he had never known Madame Hohlakov well, and had
seen nothing of her for the last month, and that he knew she could not
endure him. She had detested him from the first because he was engaged
to Katerina Ivanovna, while she had, for some reason, suddenly
conceived the desire that Katerina Ivanovna should throw him over, and
marry the “charming, chivalrously refined Ivan, who had such excellent
manners.” Mitya’s manners she detested. Mitya positively laughed at
her, and had once said about her that she was just as lively and at her
ease as she was uncultivated. But that morning in the cart a brilliant
idea had struck him: “If she is so anxious I should not marry Katerina
Ivanovna” (and he knew she was positively hysterical upon the subject)
“why should she refuse me now that three thousand, just to enable me to
leave Katya and get away from her for ever. These spoilt fine ladies,
if they set their hearts on anything, will spare no expense to satisfy
their caprice. Besides, she’s so rich,” Mitya argued.

As for his “plan” it was just the same as before; it consisted of the
offer of his rights to Tchermashnya—but not with a commercial object,
as it had been with Samsonov, not trying to allure the lady with the
possibility of making a profit of six or seven thousand—but simply as a
security for the debt. As he worked out this new idea, Mitya was
enchanted with it, but so it always was with him in all his
undertakings, in all his sudden decisions. He gave himself up to every
new idea with passionate enthusiasm. Yet, when he mounted the steps of
Madame Hohlakov’s house he felt a shiver of fear run down his spine. At
that moment he saw fully, as a mathematical certainty, that this was
his last hope, that if this broke down, nothing else was left him in
the world, but to “rob and murder some one for the three thousand.” It
was half‐past seven when he rang at the bell.

At first fortune seemed to smile upon him. As soon as he was announced
he was received with extraordinary rapidity. “As though she were
waiting for me,” thought Mitya, and as soon as he had been led to the
drawing‐room, the lady of the house herself ran in, and declared at
once that she was expecting him.

“I was expecting you! I was expecting you! Though I’d no reason to
suppose you would come to see me, as you will admit yourself. Yet, I
did expect you. You may marvel at my instinct, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, but
I was convinced all the morning that you would come.”

“That is certainly wonderful, madam,” observed Mitya, sitting down
limply, “but I have come to you on a matter of great importance.... On
a matter of supreme importance for me, that is, madam ... for me alone
... and I hasten—”

“I know you’ve come on most important business, Dmitri Fyodorovitch;
it’s not a case of presentiment, no reactionary harking back to the
miraculous (have you heard about Father Zossima?). This is a case of
mathematics: you couldn’t help coming, after all that has passed with
Katerina Ivanovna; you couldn’t, you couldn’t, that’s a mathematical
certainty.”

“The realism of actual life, madam, that’s what it is. But allow me to
explain—”

“Realism indeed, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. I’m all for realism now. I’ve
seen too much of miracles. You’ve heard that Father Zossima is dead?”

“No, madam, it’s the first time I’ve heard of it.” Mitya was a little
surprised. The image of Alyosha rose to his mind.

“Last night, and only imagine—”

“Madam,” said Mitya, “I can imagine nothing except that I’m in a
desperate position, and that if you don’t help me, everything will come
to grief, and I first of all. Excuse me for the triviality of the
expression, but I’m in a fever—”

“I know, I know that you’re in a fever. You could hardly fail to be,
and whatever you may say to me, I know beforehand. I have long been
thinking over your destiny, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, I am watching over it
and studying it.... Oh, believe me, I’m an experienced doctor of the
soul, Dmitri Fyodorovitch.”

“Madam, if you are an experienced doctor, I’m certainly an experienced
patient,” said Mitya, with an effort to be polite, “and I feel that if
you are watching over my destiny in this way, you will come to my help
in my ruin, and so allow me, at least to explain to you the plan with
which I have ventured to come to you ... and what I am hoping of
you.... I have come, madam—”

“Don’t explain it. It’s of secondary importance. But as for help,
you’re not the first I have helped, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. You have most
likely heard of my cousin, Madame Belmesov. Her husband was ruined,
‘had come to grief,’ as you characteristically express it, Dmitri
Fyodorovitch. I recommended him to take to horse‐breeding, and now he’s
doing well. Have you any idea of horse‐breeding, Dmitri Fyodorovitch?”

“Not the faintest, madam; ah, madam, not the faintest!” cried Mitya, in
nervous impatience, positively starting from his seat. “I simply
implore you, madam, to listen to me. Only give me two minutes of free
speech that I may just explain to you everything, the whole plan with
which I have come. Besides, I am short of time. I’m in a fearful
hurry,” Mitya cried hysterically, feeling that she was just going to
begin talking again, and hoping to cut her short. “I have come in
despair ... in the last gasp of despair, to beg you to lend me the sum
of three thousand, a loan, but on safe, most safe security, madam, with
the most trustworthy guarantees! Only let me explain—”

“You must tell me all that afterwards, afterwards!” Madame Hohlakov
with a gesture demanded silence in her turn, “and whatever you may tell
me, I know it all beforehand; I’ve told you so already. You ask for a
certain sum, for three thousand, but I can give you more, immeasurably
more, I will save you, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, but you must listen to me.”

Mitya started from his seat again.

“Madam, will you really be so good!” he cried, with strong feeling.
“Good God, you’ve saved me! You have saved a man from a violent death,
from a bullet.... My eternal gratitude—”

“I will give you more, infinitely more than three thousand!” cried
Madame Hohlakov, looking with a radiant smile at Mitya’s ecstasy.

“Infinitely? But I don’t need so much. I only need that fatal three
thousand, and on my part I can give security for that sum with infinite
gratitude, and I propose a plan which—”

“Enough, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, it’s said and done.” Madame Hohlakov cut
him short, with the modest triumph of beneficence: “I have promised to
save you, and I will save you. I will save you as I did Belmesov. What
do you think of the gold‐mines, Dmitri Fyodorovitch?”

“Of the gold‐mines, madam? I have never thought anything about them.”

“But I have thought of them for you. Thought of them over and over
again. I have been watching you for the last month. I’ve watched you a
hundred times as you’ve walked past, saying to myself: that’s a man of
energy who ought to be at the gold‐mines. I’ve studied your gait and
come to the conclusion: that’s a man who would find gold.”

“From my gait, madam?” said Mitya, smiling.

“Yes, from your gait. You surely don’t deny that character can be told
from the gait, Dmitri Fyodorovitch? Science supports the idea. I’m all
for science and realism now. After all this business with Father
Zossima, which has so upset me, from this very day I’m a realist and I
want to devote myself to practical usefulness. I’m cured. ‘Enough!’ as
Turgenev says.”

“But, madam, the three thousand you so generously promised to lend me—”

“It is yours, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” Madame Hohlakov cut in at once.
“The money is as good as in your pocket, not three thousand, but three
million, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, in less than no time. I’ll make you a
present of the idea: you shall find gold‐mines, make millions, return
and become a leading man, and wake us up and lead us to better things.
Are we to leave it all to the Jews? You will found institutions and
enterprises of all sorts. You will help the poor, and they will bless
you. This is the age of railways, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. You’ll become
famous and indispensable to the Department of Finance, which is so
badly off at present. The depreciation of the rouble keeps me awake at
night, Dmitri Fyodorovitch; people don’t know that side of me—”

“Madam, madam!” Dmitri interrupted with an uneasy presentiment. “I
shall indeed, perhaps, follow your advice, your wise advice, madam....
I shall perhaps set off ... to the gold‐mines.... I’ll come and see you
again about it ... many times, indeed ... but now, that three thousand
you so generously ... oh, that would set me free, and if you could
to‐day ... you see, I haven’t a minute, a minute to lose to‐day—”

“Enough, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, enough!” Madame Hohlakov interrupted
emphatically. “The question is, will you go to the gold‐mines or not;
have you quite made up your mind? Answer yes or no.”

“I will go, madam, afterwards.... I’ll go where you like ... but now—”

“Wait!” cried Madame Hohlakov. And jumping up and running to a handsome
bureau with numerous little drawers, she began pulling out one drawer
after another, looking for something with desperate haste.

“The three thousand,” thought Mitya, his heart almost stopping, “and at
the instant ... without any papers or formalities ... that’s doing
things in gentlemanly style! She’s a splendid woman, if only she didn’t
talk so much!”

“Here!” cried Madame Hohlakov, running back joyfully to Mitya, “here is
what I was looking for!”

It was a tiny silver ikon on a cord, such as is sometimes worn next the
skin with a cross.

“This is from Kiev, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” she went on reverently, “from
the relics of the Holy Martyr, Varvara. Let me put it on your neck
myself, and with it dedicate you to a new life, to a new career.”

And she actually put the cord round his neck, and began arranging it.
In extreme embarrassment, Mitya bent down and helped her, and at last
he got it under his neck‐tie and collar through his shirt to his chest.

“Now you can set off,” Madame Hohlakov pronounced, sitting down
triumphantly in her place again.

“Madam, I am so touched. I don’t know how to thank you, indeed ... for
such kindness, but ... If only you knew how precious time is to me....
That sum of money, for which I shall be indebted to your generosity....
Oh, madam, since you are so kind, so touchingly generous to me,” Mitya
exclaimed impulsively, “then let me reveal to you ... though, of
course, you’ve known it a long time ... that I love somebody here.... I
have been false to Katya ... Katerina Ivanovna I should say.... Oh,
I’ve behaved inhumanly, dishonorably to her, but I fell in love here
with another woman ... a woman whom you, madam, perhaps, despise, for
you know everything already, but whom I cannot leave on any account,
and therefore that three thousand now—”

“Leave everything, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” Madame Hohlakov interrupted in
the most decisive tone. “Leave everything, especially women. Gold‐mines
are your goal, and there’s no place for women there. Afterwards, when
you come back rich and famous, you will find the girl of your heart in
the highest society. That will be a modern girl, a girl of education
and advanced ideas. By that time the dawning woman question will have
gained ground, and the new woman will have appeared.”

“Madam, that’s not the point, not at all....” Mitya clasped his hands
in entreaty.

“Yes, it is, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, just what you need; the very thing
you’re yearning for, though you don’t realize it yourself. I am not at
all opposed to the present woman movement, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. The
development of woman, and even the political emancipation of woman in
the near future—that’s my ideal. I’ve a daughter myself, Dmitri
Fyodorovitch, people don’t know that side of me. I wrote a letter to
the author, Shtchedrin, on that subject. He has taught me so much, so
much about the vocation of woman. So last year I sent him an anonymous
letter of two lines: ‘I kiss and embrace you, my teacher, for the
modern woman. Persevere.’ And I signed myself, ‘A Mother.’ I thought of
signing myself ‘A contemporary Mother,’ and hesitated, but I stuck to
the simple ‘Mother’; there’s more moral beauty in that, Dmitri
Fyodorovitch. And the word ‘contemporary’ might have reminded him of
‘_The Contemporary_’—a painful recollection owing to the censorship....
Good Heavens, what is the matter!”

“Madam!” cried Mitya, jumping up at last, clasping his hands before her
in helpless entreaty. “You will make me weep if you delay what you have
so generously—”

“Oh, do weep, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, do weep! That’s a noble feeling ...
such a path lies open before you! Tears will ease your heart, and later
on you will return rejoicing. You will hasten to me from Siberia on
purpose to share your joy with me—”

“But allow me, too!” Mitya cried suddenly. “For the last time I entreat
you, tell me, can I have the sum you promised me to‐day, if not, when
may I come for it?”

“What sum, Dmitri Fyodorovitch?”

“The three thousand you promised me ... that you so generously—”

“Three thousand? Roubles? Oh, no, I haven’t got three thousand,” Madame
Hohlakov announced with serene amazement. Mitya was stupefied.

“Why, you said just now ... you said ... you said it was as good as in
my hands—”

“Oh, no, you misunderstood me, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. In that case you
misunderstood me. I was talking of the gold‐mines. It’s true I promised
you more, infinitely more than three thousand, I remember it all now,
but I was referring to the gold‐mines.”

“But the money? The three thousand?” Mitya exclaimed, awkwardly.

“Oh, if you meant money, I haven’t any. I haven’t a penny, Dmitri
Fyodorovitch. I’m quarreling with my steward about it, and I’ve just
borrowed five hundred roubles from Miüsov, myself. No, no, I’ve no
money. And, do you know, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, if I had, I wouldn’t give
it to you. In the first place I never lend money. Lending money means
losing friends. And I wouldn’t give it to you particularly. I wouldn’t
give it you, because I like you and want to save you, for all you need
is the gold‐mines, the gold‐mines, the gold‐mines!”

“Oh, the devil!” roared Mitya, and with all his might brought his fist
down on the table.

“Aie! Aie!” cried Madame Hohlakov, alarmed, and she flew to the other
end of the drawing‐room.

Mitya spat on the ground, and strode rapidly out of the room, out of
the house, into the street, into the darkness! He walked like one
possessed, and beating himself on the breast, on the spot where he had
struck himself two days previously, before Alyosha, the last time he
saw him in the dark, on the road. What those blows upon his breast
signified, _on that spot_, and what he meant by it—that was, for the
time, a secret which was known to no one in the world, and had not been
told even to Alyosha. But that secret meant for him more than disgrace;
it meant ruin, suicide. So he had determined, if he did not get hold of
the three thousand that would pay his debt to Katerina Ivanovna, and so
remove from his breast, from _that spot on his breast_, the shame he
carried upon it, that weighed on his conscience. All this will be fully
explained to the reader later on, but now that his last hope had
vanished, this man, so strong in appearance, burst out crying like a
little child a few steps from the Hohlakovs’ house. He walked on, and
not knowing what he was doing, wiped away his tears with his fist. In
this way he reached the square, and suddenly became aware that he had
stumbled against something. He heard a piercing wail from an old woman
whom he had almost knocked down.

“Good Lord, you’ve nearly killed me! Why don’t you look where you’re
going, scapegrace?”

“Why, it’s you!” cried Mitya, recognizing the old woman in the dark. It
was the old servant who waited on Samsonov, whom Mitya had particularly
noticed the day before.

“And who are you, my good sir?” said the old woman, in quite a
different voice. “I don’t know you in the dark.”

“You live at Kuzma Kuzmitch’s. You’re the servant there?”

“Just so, sir, I was only running out to Prohoritch’s.... But I don’t
know you now.”

“Tell me, my good woman, is Agrafena Alexandrovna there now?” said
Mitya, beside himself with suspense. “I saw her to the house some time
ago.”

“She has been there, sir. She stayed a little while, and went off
again.”

“What? Went away?” cried Mitya. “When did she go?”

“Why, as soon as she came. She only stayed a minute. She only told
Kuzma Kuzmitch a tale that made him laugh, and then she ran away.”

“You’re lying, damn you!” roared Mitya.

“Aie! Aie!” shrieked the old woman, but Mitya had vanished.

He ran with all his might to the house where Grushenka lived. At the
moment he reached it, Grushenka was on her way to Mokroe. It was not
more than a quarter of an hour after her departure.

Fenya was sitting with her grandmother, the old cook, Matryona, in the
kitchen when “the captain” ran in. Fenya uttered a piercing shriek on
seeing him.

“You scream?” roared Mitya, “where is she?”

But without giving the terror‐stricken Fenya time to utter a word, he
fell all of a heap at her feet.

“Fenya, for Christ’s sake, tell me, where is she?”

“I don’t know. Dmitri Fyodorovitch, my dear, I don’t know. You may kill
me but I can’t tell you.” Fenya swore and protested. “You went out with
her yourself not long ago—”

“She came back!”

“Indeed she didn’t. By God I swear she didn’t come back.”

“You’re lying!” shouted Mitya. “From your terror I know where she is.”

He rushed away. Fenya in her fright was glad she had got off so easily.
But she knew very well that it was only that he was in such haste, or
she might not have fared so well. But as he ran, he surprised both
Fenya and old Matryona by an unexpected action. On the table stood a
brass mortar, with a pestle in it, a small brass pestle, not much more
than six inches long. Mitya already had opened the door with one hand
when, with the other, he snatched up the pestle, and thrust it in his
side‐pocket.

“Oh, Lord! He’s going to murder some one!” cried Fenya, flinging up her
hands.




Chapter IV.
In The Dark


Where was he running? “Where could she be except at Fyodor
Pavlovitch’s? She must have run straight to him from Samsonov’s, that
was clear now. The whole intrigue, the whole deceit was evident.” ...
It all rushed whirling through his mind. He did not run to Marya
Kondratyevna’s. “There was no need to go there ... not the slightest
need ... he must raise no alarm ... they would run and tell
directly.... Marya Kondratyevna was clearly in the plot, Smerdyakov
too, he too, all had been bought over!”

He formed another plan of action: he ran a long way round Fyodor
Pavlovitch’s house, crossing the lane, running down Dmitrovsky Street,
then over the little bridge, and so came straight to the deserted alley
at the back, which was empty and uninhabited, with, on one side the
hurdle fence of a neighbor’s kitchen‐garden, on the other the strong
high fence, that ran all round Fyodor Pavlovitch’s garden. Here he
chose a spot, apparently the very place, where according to the
tradition, he knew Lizaveta had once climbed over it: “If she could
climb over it,” the thought, God knows why, occurred to him, “surely I
can.” He did in fact jump up, and instantly contrived to catch hold of
the top of the fence. Then he vigorously pulled himself up and sat
astride on it. Close by, in the garden stood the bath‐house, but from
the fence he could see the lighted windows of the house too.

“Yes, the old man’s bedroom is lighted up. She’s there!” and he leapt
from the fence into the garden. Though he knew Grigory was ill and very
likely Smerdyakov, too, and that there was no one to hear him, he
instinctively hid himself, stood still, and began to listen. But there
was dead silence on all sides and, as though of design, complete
stillness, not the slightest breath of wind.

“And naught but the whispering silence,” the line for some reason rose
to his mind. “If only no one heard me jump over the fence! I think
not.” Standing still for a minute, he walked softly over the grass in
the garden, avoiding the trees and shrubs. He walked slowly, creeping
stealthily at every step, listening to his own footsteps. It took him
five minutes to reach the lighted window. He remembered that just under
the window there were several thick and high bushes of elder and
whitebeam. The door from the house into the garden on the left‐hand
side, was shut; he had carefully looked on purpose to see, in passing.
At last he reached the bushes and hid behind them. He held his breath.
“I must wait now,” he thought, “to reassure them, in case they heard my
footsteps and are listening ... if only I don’t cough or sneeze.”

He waited two minutes. His heart was beating violently, and, at
moments, he could scarcely breathe. “No, this throbbing at my heart
won’t stop,” he thought. “I can’t wait any longer.” He was standing
behind a bush in the shadow. The light of the window fell on the front
part of the bush.

“How red the whitebeam berries are!” he murmured, not knowing why.
Softly and noiselessly, step by step, he approached the window, and
raised himself on tiptoe. All Fyodor Pavlovitch’s bedroom lay open
before him. It was not a large room, and was divided in two parts by a
red screen, “Chinese,” as Fyodor Pavlovitch used to call it. The word
“Chinese” flashed into Mitya’s mind, “and behind the screen, is
Grushenka,” thought Mitya. He began watching Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was
wearing his new striped‐silk dressing‐gown, which Mitya had never seen,
and a silk cord with tassels round the waist. A clean, dandified shirt
of fine linen with gold studs peeped out under the collar of the
dressing‐gown. On his head Fyodor Pavlovitch had the same red bandage
which Alyosha had seen.

“He has got himself up,” thought Mitya.

His father was standing near the window, apparently lost in thought.
Suddenly he jerked up his head, listened a moment, and hearing nothing
went up to the table, poured out half a glass of brandy from a decanter
and drank it off. Then he uttered a deep sigh, again stood still a
moment, walked carelessly up to the looking‐glass on the wall, with his
right hand raised the red bandage on his forehead a little, and began
examining his bruises and scars, which had not yet disappeared.

“He’s alone,” thought Mitya, “in all probability he’s alone.”

Fyodor Pavlovitch moved away from the looking‐glass, turned suddenly to
the window and looked out. Mitya instantly slipped away into the
shadow.

“She may be there behind the screen. Perhaps she’s asleep by now,” he
thought, with a pang at his heart. Fyodor Pavlovitch moved away from
the window. “He’s looking for her out of the window, so she’s not
there. Why should he stare out into the dark? He’s wild with
impatience.” ... Mitya slipped back at once, and fell to gazing in at
the window again. The old man was sitting down at the table, apparently
disappointed. At last he put his elbow on the table, and laid his right
cheek against his hand. Mitya watched him eagerly.

“He’s alone, he’s alone!” he repeated again. “If she were here, his
face would be different.”

Strange to say, a queer, irrational vexation rose up in his heart that
she was not here. “It’s not that she’s not here,” he explained to
himself, immediately, “but that I can’t tell for certain whether she is
or not.” Mitya remembered afterwards that his mind was at that moment
exceptionally clear, that he took in everything to the slightest
detail, and missed no point. But a feeling of misery, the misery of
uncertainty and indecision, was growing in his heart with every
instant. “Is she here or not?” The angry doubt filled his heart, and
suddenly, making up his mind, he put out his hand and softly knocked on
the window frame. He knocked the signal the old man had agreed upon
with Smerdyakov, twice slowly and then three times more quickly, the
signal that meant “Grushenka is here!”

The old man started, jerked up his head, and, jumping up quickly, ran
to the window. Mitya slipped away into the shadow. Fyodor Pavlovitch
opened the window and thrust his whole head out.

“Grushenka, is it you? Is it you?” he said, in a sort of trembling
half‐ whisper. “Where are you, my angel, where are you?” He was
fearfully agitated and breathless.

“He’s alone.” Mitya decided.

“Where are you?” cried the old man again; and he thrust his head out
farther, thrust it out to the shoulders, gazing in all directions,
right and left. “Come here, I’ve a little present for you. Come, I’ll
show you....”

“He means the three thousand,” thought Mitya.

“But where are you? Are you at the door? I’ll open it directly.”

And the old man almost climbed out of the window, peering out to the
right, where there was a door into the garden, trying to see into the
darkness. In another second he would certainly have run out to open the
door without waiting for Grushenka’s answer.

Mitya looked at him from the side without stirring. The old man’s
profile that he loathed so, his pendent Adam’s apple, his hooked nose,
his lips that smiled in greedy expectation, were all brightly lighted
up by the slanting lamplight falling on the left from the room. A
horrible fury of hatred suddenly surged up in Mitya’s heart: “There he
was, his rival, the man who had tormented him, had ruined his life!” It
was a rush of that sudden, furious, revengeful anger of which he had
spoken, as though foreseeing it, to Alyosha, four days ago in the
arbor, when, in answer to Alyosha’s question, “How can you say you’ll
kill our father?” “I don’t know, I don’t know,” he had said then.
“Perhaps I shall not kill him, perhaps I shall. I’m afraid he’ll
suddenly be so loathsome to me at that moment. I hate his double chin,
his nose, his eyes, his shameless grin. I feel a personal repulsion.
That’s what I’m afraid of, that’s what may be too much for me.” ...
This personal repulsion was growing unendurable. Mitya was beside
himself, he suddenly pulled the brass pestle out of his pocket.


“God was watching over me then,” Mitya himself said afterwards. At that
very moment Grigory waked up on his bed of sickness. Earlier in the
evening he had undergone the treatment which Smerdyakov had described
to Ivan. He had rubbed himself all over with vodka mixed with a secret,
very strong decoction, had drunk what was left of the mixture while his
wife repeated a “certain prayer” over him, after which he had gone to
bed. Marfa Ignatyevna had tasted the stuff, too, and, being unused to
strong drink, slept like the dead beside her husband.

But Grigory waked up in the night, quite suddenly, and, after a
moment’s reflection, though he immediately felt a sharp pain in his
back, he sat up in bed. Then he deliberated again, got up and dressed
hurriedly. Perhaps his conscience was uneasy at the thought of sleeping
while the house was unguarded “in such perilous times.” Smerdyakov,
exhausted by his fit, lay motionless in the next room. Marfa Ignatyevna
did not stir. “The stuff’s been too much for the woman,” Grigory
thought, glancing at her, and groaning, he went out on the steps. No
doubt he only intended to look out from the steps, for he was hardly
able to walk, the pain in his back and his right leg was intolerable.
But he suddenly remembered that he had not locked the little gate into
the garden that evening. He was the most punctual and precise of men, a
man who adhered to an unchangeable routine, and habits that lasted for
years. Limping and writhing with pain he went down the steps and
towards the garden. Yes, the gate stood wide open. Mechanically he
stepped into the garden. Perhaps he fancied something, perhaps caught
some sound, and, glancing to the left he saw his master’s window open.
No one was looking out of it then.

“What’s it open for? It’s not summer now,” thought Grigory, and
suddenly, at that very instant he caught a glimpse of something
extraordinary before him in the garden. Forty paces in front of him a
man seemed to be running in the dark, a sort of shadow was moving very
fast.

“Good Lord!” cried Grigory beside himself, and forgetting the pain in
his back, he hurried to intercept the running figure. He took a short
cut, evidently he knew the garden better; the flying figure went
towards the bath‐house, ran behind it and rushed to the garden fence.
Grigory followed, not losing sight of him, and ran, forgetting
everything. He reached the fence at the very moment the man was
climbing over it. Grigory cried out, beside himself, pounced on him,
and clutched his leg in his two hands.

Yes, his foreboding had not deceived him. He recognized him, it was he,
the “monster,” the “parricide.”

“Parricide!” the old man shouted so that the whole neighborhood could
hear, but he had not time to shout more, he fell at once, as though
struck by lightning.

Mitya jumped back into the garden and bent over the fallen man. In
Mitya’s hands was a brass pestle, and he flung it mechanically in the
grass. The pestle fell two paces from Grigory, not in the grass but on
the path, in a most conspicuous place. For some seconds he examined the
prostrate figure before him. The old man’s head was covered with blood.
Mitya put out his hand and began feeling it. He remembered afterwards
clearly, that he had been awfully anxious to make sure whether he had
broken the old man’s skull, or simply stunned him with the pestle. But
the blood was flowing horribly; and in a moment Mitya’s fingers were
drenched with the hot stream. He remembered taking out of his pocket
the clean white handkerchief with which he had provided himself for his
visit to Madame Hohlakov, and putting it to the old man’s head,
senselessly trying to wipe the blood from his face and temples. But the
handkerchief was instantly soaked with blood.

“Good heavens! what am I doing it for?” thought Mitya, suddenly pulling
himself together. “If I have broken his skull, how can I find out now?
And what difference does it make now?” he added, hopelessly. “If I’ve
killed him, I’ve killed him.... You’ve come to grief, old man, so there
you must lie!” he said aloud. And suddenly turning to the fence, he
vaulted over it into the lane and fell to running—the handkerchief
soaked with blood he held, crushed up in his right fist, and as he ran
he thrust it into the back pocket of his coat. He ran headlong, and the
few passers‐by who met him in the dark, in the streets, remembered
afterwards that they had met a man running that night. He flew back
again to the widow Morozov’s house.

Immediately after he had left it that evening, Fenya had rushed to the
chief porter, Nazar Ivanovitch, and besought him, for Christ’s sake,
“not to let the captain in again to‐day or to‐morrow.” Nazar Ivanovitch
promised, but went upstairs to his mistress who had suddenly sent for
him, and meeting his nephew, a boy of twenty, who had recently come
from the country, on the way up told him to take his place, but forgot
to mention “the captain.” Mitya, running up to the gate, knocked. The
lad instantly recognized him, for Mitya had more than once tipped him.
Opening the gate at once, he let him in, and hastened to inform him
with a good‐humored smile that “Agrafena Alexandrovna is not at home
now, you know.”

“Where is she then, Prohor?” asked Mitya, stopping short.

“She set off this evening, some two hours ago, with Timofey, to
Mokroe.”

“What for?” cried Mitya.

“That I can’t say. To see some officer. Some one invited her and horses
were sent to fetch her.”

Mitya left him, and ran like a madman to Fenya.




Chapter V.
A Sudden Resolution


She was sitting in the kitchen with her grandmother; they were both
just going to bed. Relying on Nazar Ivanovitch, they had not locked
themselves in. Mitya ran in, pounced on Fenya and seized her by the
throat.

“Speak at once! Where is she? With whom is she now, at Mokroe?” he
roared furiously.

Both the women squealed.

“Aie! I’ll tell you. Aie! Dmitri Fyodorovitch, darling, I’ll tell you
everything directly, I won’t hide anything,” gabbled Fenya, frightened
to death; “she’s gone to Mokroe, to her officer.”

“What officer?” roared Mitya.

“To her officer, the same one she used to know, the one who threw her
over five years ago,” cackled Fenya, as fast as she could speak.

Mitya withdrew the hands with which he was squeezing her throat. He
stood facing her, pale as death, unable to utter a word, but his eyes
showed that he realized it all, all, from the first word, and guessed
the whole position. Poor Fenya was not in a condition at that moment to
observe whether he understood or not. She remained sitting on the trunk
as she had been when he ran into the room, trembling all over, holding
her hands out before her as though trying to defend herself. She seemed
to have grown rigid in that position. Her wide‐opened, scared eyes were
fixed immovably upon him. And to make matters worse, both his hands
were smeared with blood. On the way, as he ran, he must have touched
his forehead with them, wiping off the perspiration, so that on his
forehead and his right cheek were blood‐stained patches. Fenya was on
the verge of hysterics. The old cook had jumped up and was staring at
him like a mad woman, almost unconscious with terror.

Mitya stood for a moment, then mechanically sank on to a chair next to
Fenya. He sat, not reflecting but, as it were, terror‐stricken,
benumbed. Yet everything was clear as day: that officer, he knew about
him, he knew everything perfectly, he had known it from Grushenka
herself, had known that a letter had come from him a month before. So
that for a month, for a whole month, this had been going on, a secret
from him, till the very arrival of this new man, and he had never
thought of him! But how could he, how could he not have thought of him?
Why was it he had forgotten this officer, like that, forgotten him as
soon as he heard of him? That was the question that faced him like some
monstrous thing. And he looked at this monstrous thing with horror,
growing cold with horror.

But suddenly, as gently and mildly as a gentle and affectionate child,
he began speaking to Fenya as though he had utterly forgotten how he
had scared and hurt her just now. He fell to questioning Fenya with an
extreme preciseness, astonishing in his position, and though the girl
looked wildly at his blood‐stained hands, she, too, with wonderful
readiness and rapidity, answered every question as though eager to put
the whole truth and nothing but the truth before him. Little by little,
even with a sort of enjoyment, she began explaining every detail, not
wanting to torment him, but, as it were, eager to be of the utmost
service to him. She described the whole of that day, in great detail,
the visit of Rakitin and Alyosha, how she, Fenya, had stood on the
watch, how the mistress had set off, and how she had called out of the
window to Alyosha to give him, Mitya, her greetings, and to tell him
“to remember for ever how she had loved him for an hour.”

Hearing of the message, Mitya suddenly smiled, and there was a flush of
color on his pale cheeks. At the same moment Fenya said to him, not a
bit afraid now to be inquisitive:

“Look at your hands, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. They’re all over blood!”

“Yes,” answered Mitya mechanically. He looked carelessly at his hands
and at once forgot them and Fenya’s question.

He sank into silence again. Twenty minutes had passed since he had run
in. His first horror was over, but evidently some new fixed
determination had taken possession of him. He suddenly stood up,
smiling dreamily.

“What has happened to you, sir?” said Fenya, pointing to his hands
again. She spoke compassionately, as though she felt very near to him
now in his grief. Mitya looked at his hands again.

“That’s blood, Fenya,” he said, looking at her with a strange
expression. “That’s human blood, and my God! why was it shed? But ...
Fenya ... there’s a fence here” (he looked at her as though setting her
a riddle), “a high fence, and terrible to look at. But at dawn
to‐morrow, when the sun rises, Mitya will leap over that fence.... You
don’t understand what fence, Fenya, and, never mind.... You’ll hear
to‐morrow and understand ... and now, good‐by. I won’t stand in her
way. I’ll step aside, I know how to step aside. Live, my joy.... You
loved me for an hour, remember Mityenka Karamazov so for ever.... She
always used to call me Mityenka, do you remember?”

And with those words he went suddenly out of the kitchen. Fenya was
almost more frightened at this sudden departure than she had been when
he ran in and attacked her.

Just ten minutes later Dmitri went in to Pyotr Ilyitch Perhotin, the
young official with whom he had pawned his pistols. It was by now
half‐past eight, and Pyotr Ilyitch had finished his evening tea, and
had just put his coat on again to go to the “Metropolis” to play
billiards. Mitya caught him coming out.

Seeing him with his face all smeared with blood, the young man uttered
a cry of surprise.

“Good heavens! What is the matter?”

“I’ve come for my pistols,” said Mitya, “and brought you the money. And
thanks very much. I’m in a hurry, Pyotr Ilyitch, please make haste.”

Pyotr Ilyitch grew more and more surprised; he suddenly caught sight of
a bundle of bank‐notes in Mitya’s hand, and what was more, he had
walked in holding the notes as no one walks in and no one carries
money: he had them in his right hand, and held them outstretched as if
to show them. Perhotin’s servant‐boy, who met Mitya in the passage,
said afterwards that he walked into the passage in the same way, with
the money outstretched in his hand, so he must have been carrying them
like that even in the streets. They were all rainbow‐colored
hundred‐rouble notes, and the fingers holding them were covered with
blood.

When Pyotr Ilyitch was questioned later on as to the sum of money, he
said that it was difficult to judge at a glance, but that it might have
been two thousand, or perhaps three, but it was a big, “fat” bundle.
“Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” so he testified afterwards, “seemed unlike
himself, too; not drunk, but, as it were, exalted, lost to everything,
but at the same time, as it were, absorbed, as though pondering and
searching for something and unable to come to a decision. He was in
great haste, answered abruptly and very strangely, and at moments
seemed not at all dejected but quite cheerful.”

“But what _is_ the matter with you? What’s wrong?” cried Pyotr Ilyitch,
looking wildly at his guest. “How is it that you’re all covered with
blood? Have you had a fall? Look at yourself!”

He took him by the elbow and led him to the glass.

Seeing his blood‐stained face, Mitya started and scowled wrathfully.

“Damnation! That’s the last straw,” he muttered angrily, hurriedly
changing the notes from his right hand to the left, and impulsively
jerked the handkerchief out of his pocket. But the handkerchief turned
out to be soaked with blood, too (it was the handkerchief he had used
to wipe Grigory’s face). There was scarcely a white spot on it, and it
had not merely begun to dry, but had stiffened into a crumpled ball and
could not be pulled apart. Mitya threw it angrily on the floor.

“Oh, damn it!” he said. “Haven’t you a rag of some sort ... to wipe my
face?”

“So you’re only stained, not wounded? You’d better wash,” said Pyotr
Ilyitch. “Here’s a wash‐stand. I’ll pour you out some water.”

“A wash‐stand? That’s all right ... but where am I to put this?”

With the strangest perplexity he indicated his bundle of hundred‐rouble
notes, looking inquiringly at Pyotr Ilyitch as though it were for him
to decide what he, Mitya, was to do with his own money.

“In your pocket, or on the table here. They won’t be lost.”

“In my pocket? Yes, in my pocket. All right.... But, I say, that’s all
nonsense,” he cried, as though suddenly coming out of his absorption.
“Look here, let’s first settle that business of the pistols. Give them
back to me. Here’s your money ... because I am in great need of them
... and I haven’t a minute, a minute to spare.”

And taking the topmost note from the bundle he held it out to Pyotr
Ilyitch.

“But I shan’t have change enough. Haven’t you less?”

“No,” said Mitya, looking again at the bundle, and as though not
trusting his own words he turned over two or three of the topmost ones.

“No, they’re all alike,” he added, and again he looked inquiringly at
Pyotr Ilyitch.

“How have you grown so rich?” the latter asked. “Wait, I’ll send my boy
to Plotnikov’s, they close late—to see if they won’t change it. Here,
Misha!” he called into the passage.

“To Plotnikov’s shop—first‐rate!” cried Mitya, as though struck by an
idea. “Misha,” he turned to the boy as he came in, “look here, run to
Plotnikov’s and tell them that Dmitri Fyodorovitch sends his greetings,
and will be there directly.... But listen, listen, tell them to have
champagne, three dozen bottles, ready before I come, and packed as it
was to take to Mokroe. I took four dozen with me then,” he added
(suddenly addressing Pyotr Ilyitch); “they know all about it, don’t you
trouble, Misha,” he turned again to the boy. “Stay, listen; tell them
to put in cheese, Strasburg pies, smoked fish, ham, caviare, and
everything, everything they’ve got, up to a hundred roubles, or a
hundred and twenty as before.... But wait: don’t let them forget
dessert, sweets, pears, water‐melons, two or three or four—no, one
melon’s enough, and chocolate, candy, toffee, fondants; in fact,
everything I took to Mokroe before, three hundred roubles’ worth with
the champagne ... let it be just the same again. And remember, Misha,
if you are called Misha—His name is Misha, isn’t it?” He turned to
Pyotr Ilyitch again.

“Wait a minute,” Protr Ilyitch intervened, listening and watching him
uneasily, “you’d better go yourself and tell them. He’ll muddle it.”

“He will, I see he will! Eh, Misha! Why, I was going to kiss you for
the commission.... If you don’t make a mistake, there’s ten roubles for
you, run along, make haste.... Champagne’s the chief thing, let them
bring up champagne. And brandy, too, and red and white wine, and all I
had then.... They know what I had then.”

“But listen!” Pyotr Ilyitch interrupted with some impatience. “I say,
let him simply run and change the money and tell them not to close, and
you go and tell them.... Give him your note. Be off, Misha! Put your
best leg forward!”

Pyotr Ilyitch seemed to hurry Misha off on purpose, because the boy
remained standing with his mouth and eyes wide open, apparently
understanding little of Mitya’s orders, gazing up with amazement and
terror at his blood‐stained face and the trembling bloodstained fingers
that held the notes.

“Well, now come and wash,” said Pyotr Ilyitch sternly. “Put the money
on the table or else in your pocket.... That’s right, come along. But
take off your coat.”

And beginning to help him off with his coat, he cried out again:

“Look, your coat’s covered with blood, too!”

“That ... it’s not the coat. It’s only a little here on the sleeve....
And that’s only here where the handkerchief lay. It must have soaked
through. I must have sat on the handkerchief at Fenya’s, and the
blood’s come through,” Mitya explained at once with a childlike
unconsciousness that was astounding. Pyotr Ilyitch listened, frowning.

“Well, you must have been up to something; you must have been fighting
with some one,” he muttered.

They began to wash. Pyotr Ilyitch held the jug and poured out the
water. Mitya, in desperate haste, scarcely soaped his hands (they were
trembling, and Pyotr Ilyitch remembered it afterwards). But the young
official insisted on his soaping them thoroughly and rubbing them more.
He seemed to exercise more and more sway over Mitya, as time went on.
It may be noted in passing that he was a young man of sturdy character.

“Look, you haven’t got your nails clean. Now rub your face; here, on
your temples, by your ear.... Will you go in that shirt? Where are you
going? Look, all the cuff of your right sleeve is covered with blood.”

“Yes, it’s all bloody,” observed Mitya, looking at the cuff of his
shirt.

“Then change your shirt.”

“I haven’t time. You see I’ll ...” Mitya went on with the same
confiding ingenuousness, drying his face and hands on the towel, and
putting on his coat. “I’ll turn it up at the wrist. It won’t be seen
under the coat.... You see!”

“Tell me now, what game have you been up to? Have you been fighting
with some one? In the tavern again, as before? Have you been beating
that captain again?” Pyotr Ilyitch asked him reproachfully. “Whom have
you been beating now ... or killing, perhaps?”

“Nonsense!” said Mitya.

“Why ‘nonsense’?”

“Don’t worry,” said Mitya, and he suddenly laughed. “I smashed an old
woman in the market‐place just now.”

“Smashed? An old woman?”

“An old man!” cried Mitya, looking Pyotr Ilyitch straight in the face,
laughing, and shouting at him as though he were deaf.

“Confound it! An old woman, an old man.... Have you killed some one?”

“We made it up. We had a row—and made it up. In a place I know of. We
parted friends. A fool.... He’s forgiven me.... He’s sure to have
forgiven me by now ... if he had got up, he wouldn’t have forgiven
me”—Mitya suddenly winked—“only damn him, you know, I say, Pyotr
Ilyitch, damn him! Don’t worry about him! I don’t want to just now!”
Mitya snapped out, resolutely.

“Whatever do you want to go picking quarrels with every one for? ...
Just as you did with that captain over some nonsense.... You’ve been
fighting and now you’re rushing off on the spree—that’s you all over!
Three dozen champagne—what do you want all that for?”

“Bravo! Now give me the pistols. Upon my honor I’ve no time now. I
should like to have a chat with you, my dear boy, but I haven’t the
time. And there’s no need, it’s too late for talking. Where’s my money?
Where have I put it?” he cried, thrusting his hands into his pockets.

“You put it on the table ... yourself.... Here it is. Had you
forgotten? Money’s like dirt or water to you, it seems. Here are your
pistols. It’s an odd thing, at six o’clock you pledged them for ten
roubles, and now you’ve got thousands. Two or three I should say.”

“Three, you bet,” laughed Mitya, stuffing the notes into the
side‐pocket of his trousers.

“You’ll lose it like that. Have you found a gold‐mine?”

“The mines? The gold‐mines?” Mitya shouted at the top of his voice and
went off into a roar of laughter. “Would you like to go to the mines,
Perhotin? There’s a lady here who’ll stump up three thousand for you,
if only you’ll go. She did it for me, she’s so awfully fond of
gold‐mines. Do you know Madame Hohlakov?”

“I don’t know her, but I’ve heard of her and seen her. Did she really
give you three thousand? Did she really?” said Pyotr Ilyitch, eyeing
him dubiously.

“As soon as the sun rises to‐morrow, as soon as Phœbus, ever young,
flies upwards, praising and glorifying God, you go to her, this Madame
Hohlakov, and ask her whether she did stump up that three thousand or
not. Try and find out.”

“I don’t know on what terms you are ... since you say it so positively,
I suppose she did give it to you. You’ve got the money in your hand,
but instead of going to Siberia you’re spending it all.... Where are
you really off to now, eh?”

“To Mokroe.”

“To Mokroe? But it’s night!”

“Once the lad had all, now the lad has naught,” cried Mitya suddenly.

“How ‘naught’? You say that with all those thousands!”

“I’m not talking about thousands. Damn thousands! I’m talking of the
female character.

Fickle is the heart of woman
Treacherous and full of vice;


I agree with Ulysses. That’s what he says.”

“I don’t understand you!”

“Am I drunk?”

“Not drunk, but worse.”

“I’m drunk in spirit, Pyotr Ilyitch, drunk in spirit! But that’s
enough!”

“What are you doing, loading the pistol?”

“I’m loading the pistol.”

Unfastening the pistol‐case, Mitya actually opened the powder horn, and
carefully sprinkled and rammed in the charge. Then he took the bullet
and, before inserting it, held it in two fingers in front of the
candle.

“Why are you looking at the bullet?” asked Pyotr Ilyitch, watching him
with uneasy curiosity.

“Oh, a fancy. Why, if you meant to put that bullet in your brain, would
you look at it or not?”

“Why look at it?”

“It’s going into my brain, so it’s interesting to look and see what
it’s like. But that’s foolishness, a moment’s foolishness. Now that’s
done,” he added, putting in the bullet and driving it home with the
ramrod. “Pyotr Ilyitch, my dear fellow, that’s nonsense, all nonsense,
and if only you knew what nonsense! Give me a little piece of paper
now.”

“Here’s some paper.”

“No, a clean new piece, writing‐paper. That’s right.”

And taking a pen from the table, Mitya rapidly wrote two lines, folded
the paper in four, and thrust it in his waistcoat pocket. He put the
pistols in the case, locked it up, and kept it in his hand. Then he
looked at Pyotr Ilyitch with a slow, thoughtful smile.

“Now, let’s go.”

“Where are we going? No, wait a minute.... Are you thinking of putting
that bullet in your brain, perhaps?” Pyotr Ilyitch asked uneasily.

“I was fooling about the bullet! I want to live. I love life! You may
be sure of that. I love golden‐haired Phœbus and his warm light....
Dear Pyotr Ilyitch, do you know how to step aside?”

“What do you mean by ‘stepping aside’?”

“Making way. Making way for a dear creature, and for one I hate. And to
let the one I hate become dear—that’s what making way means! And to say
to them: God bless you, go your way, pass on, while I—”

“While you—?”

“That’s enough, let’s go.”

“Upon my word. I’ll tell some one to prevent your going there,” said
Pyotr Ilyitch, looking at him. “What are you going to Mokroe for, now?”

“There’s a woman there, a woman. That’s enough for you. You shut up.”

“Listen, though you’re such a savage I’ve always liked you.... I feel
anxious.”

“Thanks, old fellow. I’m a savage you say. Savages, savages! That’s
what I am always saying. Savages! Why, here’s Misha! I was forgetting
him.”

Misha ran in, post‐haste, with a handful of notes in change, and
reported that every one was in a bustle at the Plotnikovs’; “They’re
carrying down the bottles, and the fish, and the tea; it will all be
ready directly.” Mitya seized ten roubles and handed it to Pyotr
Ilyitch, then tossed another ten‐rouble note to Misha.

“Don’t dare to do such a thing!” cried Pyotr Ilyitch. “I won’t have it
in my house, it’s a bad, demoralizing habit. Put your money away. Here,
put it here, why waste it? It would come in handy to‐morrow, and I dare
say you’ll be coming to me to borrow ten roubles again. Why do you keep
putting the notes in your side‐pocket? Ah, you’ll lose them!”

“I say, my dear fellow, let’s go to Mokroe together.”

“What should I go for?”

“I say, let’s open a bottle at once, and drink to life! I want to
drink, and especially to drink with you. I’ve never drunk with you,
have I?”

“Very well, we can go to the ‘Metropolis.’ I was just going there.”

“I haven’t time for that. Let’s drink at the Plotnikovs’, in the back
room. Shall I ask you a riddle?”

“Ask away.”

Mitya took the piece of paper out of his waistcoat pocket, unfolded it
and showed it. In a large, distinct hand was written: “I punish myself
for my whole life, my whole life I punish!”

“I will certainly speak to some one, I’ll go at once,” said Pyotr
Ilyitch, after reading the paper.

“You won’t have time, dear boy, come and have a drink. March!”

Plotnikov’s shop was at the corner of the street, next door but one to
Pyotr Ilyitch’s. It was the largest grocery shop in our town, and by no
means a bad one, belonging to some rich merchants. They kept everything
that could be got in a Petersburg shop, grocery of all sort, wines
“bottled by the brothers Eliseyev,” fruits, cigars, tea, coffee, sugar,
and so on. There were three shop‐assistants and two errand boys always
employed. Though our part of the country had grown poorer, the
landowners had gone away, and trade had got worse, yet the grocery
stores flourished as before, every year with increasing prosperity;
there were plenty of purchasers for their goods.

They were awaiting Mitya with impatience in the shop. They had vivid
recollections of how he had bought, three or four weeks ago, wine and
goods of all sorts to the value of several hundred roubles, paid for in
cash (they would never have let him have anything on credit, of
course). They remembered that then, as now, he had had a bundle of
hundred‐rouble notes in his hand, and had scattered them at random,
without bargaining, without reflecting, or caring to reflect what use
so much wine and provisions would be to him. The story was told all
over the town that, driving off then with Grushenka to Mokroe, he had
“spent three thousand in one night and the following day, and had come
back from the spree without a penny.” He had picked up a whole troop of
gypsies (encamped in our neighborhood at the time), who for two days
got money without stint out of him while he was drunk, and drank
expensive wine without stint. People used to tell, laughing at Mitya,
how he had given champagne to grimy‐ handed peasants, and feasted the
village women and girls on sweets and Strasburg pies. Though to laugh
at Mitya to his face was rather a risky proceeding, there was much
laughter behind his back, especially in the tavern, at his own
ingenuous public avowal that all he had got out of Grushenka by this
“escapade” was “permission to kiss her foot, and that was the utmost
she had allowed him.”

By the time Mitya and Pyotr Ilyitch reached the shop, they found a cart
with three horses harnessed abreast with bells, and with Andrey, the
driver, ready waiting for Mitya at the entrance. In the shop they had
almost entirely finished packing one box of provisions, and were only
waiting for Mitya’s arrival to nail it down and put it in the cart.
Pyotr Ilyitch was astounded.

“Where did this cart come from in such a hurry?” he asked Mitya.

“I met Andrey as I ran to you, and told him to drive straight here to
the shop. There’s no time to lose. Last time I drove with Timofey, but
Timofey now has gone on before me with the witch. Shall we be very
late, Andrey?”

“They’ll only get there an hour at most before us, not even that maybe.
I got Timofey ready to start. I know how he’ll go. Their pace won’t be
ours, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. How could it be? They won’t get there an
hour earlier!” Andrey, a lanky, red‐haired, middle‐aged driver, wearing
a full‐ skirted coat, and with a kaftan on his arm, replied warmly.

“Fifty roubles for vodka if we’re only an hour behind them.”

“I warrant the time, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. Ech, they won’t be half an
hour before us, let alone an hour.”

Though Mitya bustled about seeing after things, he gave his orders
strangely, as it were disconnectedly, and inconsecutively. He began a
sentence and forgot the end of it. Pyotr Ilyitch found himself obliged
to come to the rescue.

“Four hundred roubles’ worth, not less than four hundred roubles’
worth, just as it was then,” commanded Mitya. “Four dozen champagne,
not a bottle less.”

“What do you want with so much? What’s it for? Stay!” cried Pyotr
Ilyitch. “What’s this box? What’s in it? Surely there isn’t four
hundred roubles’ worth here?”

The officious shopmen began explaining with oily politeness that the
first box contained only half a dozen bottles of champagne, and only
“the most indispensable articles,” such as savories, sweets, toffee,
etc. But the main part of the goods ordered would be packed and sent
off, as on the previous occasion, in a special cart also with three
horses traveling at full speed, so that it would arrive not more than
an hour later than Dmitri Fyodorovitch himself.

“Not more than an hour! Not more than an hour! And put in more toffee
and fondants. The girls there are so fond of it,” Mitya insisted hotly.

“The fondants are all right. But what do you want with four dozen of
champagne? One would be enough,” said Pyotr Ilyitch, almost angry. He
began bargaining, asking for a bill of the goods, and refused to be
satisfied. But he only succeeded in saving a hundred roubles. In the
end it was agreed that only three hundred roubles’ worth should be
sent.

“Well, you may go to the devil!” cried Pyotr Ilyitch, on second
thoughts. “What’s it to do with me? Throw away your money, since it’s
cost you nothing.”

“This way, my economist, this way, don’t be angry.” Mitya drew him into
a room at the back of the shop. “They’ll give us a bottle here
directly. We’ll taste it. Ech, Pyotr Ilyitch, come along with me, for
you’re a nice fellow, the sort I like.”

Mitya sat down on a wicker chair, before a little table, covered with a
dirty dinner‐napkin. Pyotr Ilyitch sat down opposite, and the champagne
soon appeared, and oysters were suggested to the gentlemen.
“First‐class oysters, the last lot in.”

“Hang the oysters. I don’t eat them. And we don’t need anything,” cried
Pyotr Ilyitch, almost angrily.

“There’s no time for oysters,” said Mitya. “And I’m not hungry. Do you
know, friend,” he said suddenly, with feeling, “I never have liked all
this disorder.”

“Who does like it? Three dozen of champagne for peasants, upon my word,
that’s enough to make any one angry!”

“That’s not what I mean. I’m talking of a higher order. There’s no
order in me, no higher order. But ... that’s all over. There’s no need
to grieve about it. It’s too late, damn it! My whole life has been
disorder, and one must set it in order. Is that a pun, eh?”

“You’re raving, not making puns!”

“Glory be to God in Heaven,
Glory be to God in me....


“That verse came from my heart once, it’s not a verse, but a tear.... I
made it myself ... not while I was pulling the captain’s beard,
though....”

“Why do you bring him in all of a sudden?”

“Why do I bring him in? Foolery! All things come to an end; all things
are made equal. That’s the long and short of it.”

“You know, I keep thinking of your pistols.”

“That’s all foolery, too! Drink, and don’t be fanciful. I love life.
I’ve loved life too much, shamefully much. Enough! Let’s drink to life,
dear boy, I propose the toast. Why am I pleased with myself? I’m a
scoundrel, but I’m satisfied with myself. And yet I’m tortured by the
thought that I’m a scoundrel, but satisfied with myself. I bless the
creation. I’m ready to bless God and His creation directly, but ... I
must kill one noxious insect for fear it should crawl and spoil life
for others.... Let us drink to life, dear brother. What can be more
precious than life? Nothing! To life, and to one queen of queens!”

“Let’s drink to life and to your queen, too, if you like.”

They drank a glass each. Although Mitya was excited and expansive, yet
he was melancholy, too. It was as though some heavy, overwhelming
anxiety were weighing upon him.

“Misha ... here’s your Misha come! Misha, come here, my boy, drink this
glass to Phœbus, the golden‐haired, of to‐morrow morn....”

“What are you giving it him for?” cried Pyotr Ilyitch, irritably.

“Yes, yes, yes, let me! I want to!”

“E—ech!”

Misha emptied the glass, bowed, and ran out.

“He’ll remember it afterwards,” Mitya remarked. “Woman, I love woman!
What is woman? The queen of creation! My heart is sad, my heart is sad,
Pyotr Ilyitch. Do you remember Hamlet? ‘I am very sorry, good Horatio!
Alas, poor Yorick!’ Perhaps that’s me, Yorick? Yes, I’m Yorick now, and
a skull afterwards.”

Pyotr Ilyitch listened in silence. Mitya, too, was silent for a while.

“What dog’s that you’ve got here?” he asked the shopman, casually,
noticing a pretty little lap‐dog with dark eyes, sitting in the corner.

“It belongs to Varvara Alexyevna, the mistress,” answered the clerk.
“She brought it and forgot it here. It must be taken back to her.”

“I saw one like it ... in the regiment ...” murmured Mitya dreamily,
“only that one had its hind leg broken.... By the way, Pyotr Ilyitch, I
wanted to ask you: have you ever stolen anything in your life?”

“What a question!”

“Oh, I didn’t mean anything. From somebody’s pocket, you know. I don’t
mean government money, every one steals that, and no doubt you do,
too....”

“You go to the devil.”

“I’m talking of other people’s money. Stealing straight out of a
pocket? Out of a purse, eh?”

“I stole twenty copecks from my mother when I was nine years old. I
took it off the table on the sly, and held it tight in my hand.”

“Well, and what happened?”

“Oh, nothing. I kept it three days, then I felt ashamed, confessed, and
gave it back.”

“And what then?”

“Naturally I was whipped. But why do you ask? Have you stolen
something?”

“I have,” said Mitya, winking slyly.

“What have you stolen?” inquired Pyotr Ilyitch curiously.

“I stole twenty copecks from my mother when I was nine years old, and
gave it back three days after.”

As he said this, Mitya suddenly got up.

“Dmitri Fyodorovitch, won’t you come now?” called Andrey from the door
of the shop.

“Are you ready? We’ll come!” Mitya started. “A few more last words
and—Andrey, a glass of vodka at starting. Give him some brandy as well!
That box” (the one with the pistols) “put under my seat. Good‐by, Pyotr
Ilyitch, don’t remember evil against me.”

“But you’re coming back to‐morrow?”

“Of course.”

“Will you settle the little bill now?” cried the clerk, springing
forward.

“Oh, yes, the bill. Of course.”

He pulled the bundle of notes out of his pocket again, picked out three
hundred roubles, threw them on the counter, and ran hurriedly out of
the shop. Every one followed him out, bowing and wishing him good luck.
Andrey, coughing from the brandy he had just swallowed, jumped up on
the box. But Mitya was only just taking his seat when suddenly to his
surprise he saw Fenya before him. She ran up panting, clasped her hands
before him with a cry, and plumped down at his feet.

“Dmitri Fyodorovitch, dear good Dmitri Fyodorovitch, don’t harm my
mistress. And it was I told you all about it.... And don’t murder him,
he came first, he’s hers! He’ll marry Agrafena Alexandrovna now. That’s
why he’s come back from Siberia. Dmitri Fyodorovitch, dear, don’t take
a fellow creature’s life!”

“Tut—tut—tut! That’s it, is it? So you’re off there to make trouble!”
muttered Pyotr Ilyitch. “Now, it’s all clear, as clear as daylight.
Dmitri Fyodorovitch, give me your pistols at once if you mean to behave
like a man,” he shouted aloud to Mitya. “Do you hear, Dmitri?”

“The pistols? Wait a bit, brother, I’ll throw them into the pool on the
road,” answered Mitya. “Fenya, get up, don’t kneel to me. Mitya won’t
hurt any one, the silly fool won’t hurt any one again. But I say,
Fenya,” he shouted, after having taken his seat. “I hurt you just now,
so forgive me and have pity on me, forgive a scoundrel.... But it
doesn’t matter if you don’t. It’s all the same now. Now then, Andrey,
look alive, fly along full speed!”

Andrey whipped up the horses, and the bells began ringing.

“Good‐by, Pyotr Ilyitch! My last tear is for you!...”

“He’s not drunk, but he keeps babbling like a lunatic,” Pyotr Ilyitch
thought as he watched him go. He had half a mind to stay and see the
cart packed with the remaining wines and provisions, knowing that they
would deceive and defraud Mitya. But, suddenly feeling vexed with
himself, he turned away with a curse and went to the tavern to play
billiards.

“He’s a fool, though he’s a good fellow,” he muttered as he went. “I’ve
heard of that officer, Grushenka’s former flame. Well, if he has turned
up.... Ech, those pistols! Damn it all! I’m not his nurse! Let them do
what they like! Besides, it’ll all come to nothing. They’re a set of
brawlers, that’s all. They’ll drink and fight, fight and make friends
again. They are not men who do anything real. What does he mean by ‘I’m
stepping aside, I’m punishing myself?’ It’ll come to nothing! He’s
shouted such phrases a thousand times, drunk, in the taverns. But now
he’s not drunk. ‘Drunk in spirit’—they’re fond of fine phrases, the
villains. Am I his nurse? He must have been fighting, his face was all
over blood. With whom? I shall find out at the ‘Metropolis.’ And his
handkerchief was soaked in blood.... It’s still lying on my floor....
Hang it!”

He reached the tavern in a bad humor and at once made up a game. The
game cheered him. He played a second game, and suddenly began telling
one of his partners that Dmitri Karamazov had come in for some cash
again—something like three thousand roubles, and had gone to Mokroe
again to spend it with Grushenka.... This news roused singular interest
in his listeners. They all spoke of it, not laughing, but with a
strange gravity. They left off playing.

“Three thousand? But where can he have got three thousand?”

Questions were asked. The story of Madame Hohlakov’s present was
received with skepticism.

“Hasn’t he robbed his old father?—that’s the question.”

“Three thousand! There’s something odd about it.”

“He boasted aloud that he would kill his father; we all heard him,
here. And it was three thousand he talked about ...”

Pyotr Ilyitch listened. All at once he became short and dry in his
answers. He said not a word about the blood on Mitya’s face and hands,
though he had meant to speak of it at first.

They began a third game, and by degrees the talk about Mitya died away.
But by the end of the third game, Pyotr Ilyitch felt no more desire for
billiards; he laid down the cue, and without having supper as he had
intended, he walked out of the tavern. When he reached the market‐place
he stood still in perplexity, wondering at himself. He realized that
what he wanted was to go to Fyodor Pavlovitch’s and find out if
anything had happened there. “On account of some stupid nonsense—as
it’s sure to turn out—am I going to wake up the household and make a
scandal? Fooh! damn it, is it my business to look after them?”

In a very bad humor he went straight home, and suddenly remembered
Fenya. “Damn it all! I ought to have questioned her just now,” he
thought with vexation, “I should have heard everything.” And the desire
to speak to her, and so find out, became so pressing and importunate
that when he was half‐way home he turned abruptly and went towards the
house where Grushenka lodged. Going up to the gate he knocked. The
sound of the knock in the silence of the night sobered him and made him
feel annoyed. And no one answered him; every one in the house was
asleep.

“And I shall be making a fuss!” he thought, with a feeling of positive
discomfort. But instead of going away altogether, he fell to knocking
again with all his might, filling the street with clamor.

“Not coming? Well, I will knock them up, I will!” he muttered at each
knock, fuming at himself, but at the same time he redoubled his knocks
on the gate.




Chapter VI.
“I Am Coming, Too!”


But Dmitri Fyodorovitch was speeding along the road. It was a little
more than twenty versts to Mokroe, but Andrey’s three horses galloped
at such a pace that the distance might be covered in an hour and a
quarter. The swift motion revived Mitya. The air was fresh and cool,
there were big stars shining in the sky. It was the very night, and
perhaps the very hour, in which Alyosha fell on the earth, and
rapturously swore to love it for ever and ever.

All was confusion, confusion, in Mitya’s soul, but although many things
were goading his heart, at that moment his whole being was yearning for
her, his queen, to whom he was flying to look on her for the last time.
One thing I can say for certain; his heart did not waver for one
instant. I shall perhaps not be believed when I say that this jealous
lover felt not the slightest jealousy of this new rival, who seemed to
have sprung out of the earth. If any other had appeared on the scene,
he would have been jealous at once, and would perhaps have stained his
fierce hands with blood again. But as he flew through the night, he
felt no envy, no hostility even, for the man who had been her first
lover.... It is true he had not yet seen him.

“Here there was no room for dispute: it was her right and his; this was
her first love which, after five years, she had not forgotten; so she
had loved him only for those five years, and I, how do I come in? What
right have I? Step aside, Mitya, and make way! What am I now? Now
everything is over apart from the officer—even if he had not appeared,
everything would be over ...”

These words would roughly have expressed his feelings, if he had been
capable of reasoning. But he could not reason at that moment. His
present plan of action had arisen without reasoning. At Fenya’s first
words, it had sprung from feeling, and been adopted in a flash, with
all its consequences. And yet, in spite of his resolution, there was
confusion in his soul, an agonizing confusion: his resolution did not
give him peace. There was so much behind that tortured him. And it
seemed strange to him, at moments, to think that he had written his own
sentence of death with pen and paper: “I punish myself,” and the paper
was lying there in his pocket, ready; the pistol was loaded; he had
already resolved how, next morning, he would meet the first warm ray of
“golden‐haired Phœbus.”

And yet he could not be quit of the past, of all that he had left
behind and that tortured him. He felt that miserably, and the thought
of it sank into his heart with despair. There was one moment when he
felt an impulse to stop Andrey, to jump out of the cart, to pull out
his loaded pistol, and to make an end of everything without waiting for
the dawn. But that moment flew by like a spark. The horses galloped on,
“devouring space,” and as he drew near his goal, again the thought of
her, of her alone, took more and more complete possession of his soul,
chasing away the fearful images that had been haunting it. Oh, how he
longed to look upon her, if only for a moment, if only from a distance!

“She’s now with _him_,” he thought, “now I shall see what she looks
like with him, her first love, and that’s all I want.” Never had this
woman, who was such a fateful influence in his life, aroused such love
in his breast, such new and unknown feeling, surprising even to
himself, a feeling tender to devoutness, to self‐effacement before her!
“I will efface myself!” he said, in a rush of almost hysterical
ecstasy.

They had been galloping nearly an hour. Mitya was silent, and though
Andrey was, as a rule, a talkative peasant, he did not utter a word,
either. He seemed afraid to talk, he only whipped up smartly his three
lean, but mettlesome, bay horses. Suddenly Mitya cried out in horrible
anxiety:

“Andrey! What if they’re asleep?”

This thought fell upon him like a blow. It had not occurred to him
before.

“It may well be that they’re gone to bed, by now, Dmitri Fyodorovitch.”

Mitya frowned as though in pain. Yes, indeed ... he was rushing there
... with such feelings ... while they were asleep ... she was asleep,
perhaps, there too.... An angry feeling surged up in his heart.

“Drive on, Andrey! Whip them up! Look alive!” he cried, beside himself.

“But maybe they’re not in bed!” Andrey went on after a pause. “Timofey
said they were a lot of them there—”

“At the station?”

“Not at the posting‐station, but at Plastunov’s, at the inn, where they
let out horses, too.”

“I know. So you say there are a lot of them? How’s that? Who are they?”
cried Mitya, greatly dismayed at this unexpected news.

“Well, Timofey was saying they’re all gentlefolk. Two from our town—who
they are I can’t say—and there are two others, strangers, maybe more
besides. I didn’t ask particularly. They’ve set to playing cards, so
Timofey said.”

“Cards?”

“So, maybe they’re not in bed if they’re at cards. It’s most likely not
more than eleven.”

“Quicker, Andrey! Quicker!” Mitya cried again, nervously.

“May I ask you something, sir?” said Andrey, after a pause. “Only I’m
afraid of angering you, sir.”

“What is it?”

“Why, Fenya threw herself at your feet just now, and begged you not to
harm her mistress, and some one else, too ... so you see, sir— It’s I
am taking you there ... forgive me, sir, it’s my conscience ... maybe
it’s stupid of me to speak of it—”

Mitya suddenly seized him by the shoulders from behind.

“Are you a driver?” he asked frantically.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you know that one has to make way. What would you say to a driver
who wouldn’t make way for any one, but would just drive on and crush
people? No, a driver mustn’t run over people. One can’t run over a man.
One can’t spoil people’s lives. And if you have spoilt a life—punish
yourself.... If only you’ve spoilt, if only you’ve ruined any one’s
life—punish yourself and go away.”

These phrases burst from Mitya almost hysterically. Though Andrey was
surprised at him, he kept up the conversation.

“That’s right, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, you’re quite right, one mustn’t
crush or torment a man, or any kind of creature, for every creature is
created by God. Take a horse, for instance, for some folks, even among
us drivers, drive anyhow. Nothing will restrain them, they just force
it along.”

“To hell?” Mitya interrupted, and went off into his abrupt, short
laugh. “Andrey, simple soul,” he seized him by the shoulders again,
“tell me, will Dmitri Fyodorovitch Karamazov go to hell, or not, what
do you think?”

“I don’t know, darling, it depends on you, for you are ... you see,
sir, when the Son of God was nailed on the Cross and died, He went
straight down to hell from the Cross, and set free all sinners that
were in agony. And the devil groaned, because he thought that he would
get no more sinners in hell. And God said to him, then, ‘Don’t groan,
for you shall have all the mighty of the earth, the rulers, the chief
judges, and the rich men, and shall be filled up as you have been in
all the ages till I come again.’ Those were His very words ...”

“A peasant legend! Capital! Whip up the left, Andrey!”

“So you see, sir, who it is hell’s for,” said Andrey, whipping up the
left horse, “but you’re like a little child ... that’s how we look on
you ... and though you’re hasty‐tempered, sir, yet God will forgive you
for your kind heart.”

“And you, do you forgive me, Andrey?”

“What should I forgive you for, sir? You’ve never done me any harm.”

“No, for every one, for every one, you here alone, on the road, will
you forgive me for every one? Speak, simple peasant heart!”

“Oh, sir! I feel afraid of driving you, your talk is so strange.”

But Mitya did not hear. He was frantically praying and muttering to
himself.

“Lord, receive me, with all my lawlessness, and do not condemn me. Let
me pass by Thy judgment ... do not condemn me, for I have condemned
myself, do not condemn me, for I love Thee, O Lord. I am a wretch, but
I love Thee. If Thou sendest me to hell, I shall love Thee there, and
from there I shall cry out that I love Thee for ever and ever.... But
let me love to the end.... Here and now for just five hours ... till
the first light of Thy day ... for I love the queen of my soul ... I
love her and I cannot help loving her. Thou seest my whole heart.... I
shall gallop up, I shall fall before her and say, ‘You are right to
pass on and leave me. Farewell and forget your victim ... never fret
yourself about me!’ ”

“Mokroe!” cried Andrey, pointing ahead with his whip.

Through the pale darkness of the night loomed a solid black mass of
buildings, flung down, as it were, in the vast plain. The village of
Mokroe numbered two thousand inhabitants, but at that hour all were
asleep, and only here and there a few lights still twinkled.

“Drive on, Andrey, I come!” Mitya exclaimed, feverishly.

“They’re not asleep,” said Andrey again, pointing with his whip to the
Plastunovs’ inn, which was at the entrance to the village. The six
windows, looking on the street, were all brightly lighted up.

“They’re not asleep,” Mitya repeated joyously. “Quicker, Andrey!
Gallop! Drive up with a dash! Set the bells ringing! Let all know that
I have come. I’m coming! I’m coming, too!”

Andrey lashed his exhausted team into a gallop, drove with a dash and
pulled up his steaming, panting horses at the high flight of steps.

Mitya jumped out of the cart just as the innkeeper, on his way to bed,
peeped out from the steps curious to see who had arrived.

“Trifon Borissovitch, is that you?”

The innkeeper bent down, looked intently, ran down the steps, and
rushed up to the guest with obsequious delight.

“Dmitri Fyodorovitch, your honor! Do I see you again?”

Trifon Borissovitch was a thick‐set, healthy peasant, of middle height,
with a rather fat face. His expression was severe and uncompromising,
especially with the peasants of Mokroe, but he had the power of
assuming the most obsequious countenance, when he had an inkling that
it was to his interest. He dressed in Russian style, with a shirt
buttoning down on one side, and a full‐skirted coat. He had saved a
good sum of money, but was for ever dreaming of improving his position.
More than half the peasants were in his clutches, every one in the
neighborhood was in debt to him. From the neighboring landowners he
bought and rented lands which were worked by the peasants, in payment
of debts which they could never shake off. He was a widower, with four
grown‐up daughters. One of them was already a widow and lived in the
inn with her two children, his grandchildren, and worked for him like a
charwoman. Another of his daughters was married to a petty official,
and in one of the rooms of the inn, on the wall could be seen, among
the family photographs, a miniature photograph of this official in
uniform and official epaulettes. The two younger daughters used to wear
fashionable blue or green dresses, fitting tight at the back, and with
trains a yard long, on Church holidays or when they went to pay visits.
But next morning they would get up at dawn, as usual, sweep out the
rooms with a birch‐broom, empty the slops, and clean up after lodgers.

In spite of the thousands of roubles he had saved, Trifon Borissovitch
was very fond of emptying the pockets of a drunken guest, and
remembering that not a month ago he had, in twenty‐four hours, made two
if not three hundred roubles out of Dmitri, when he had come on his
escapade with Grushenka, he met him now with eager welcome, scenting
his prey the moment Mitya drove up to the steps.

“Dmitri Fyodorovitch, dear sir, we see you once more!”

“Stay, Trifon Borissovitch,” began Mitya, “first and foremost, where is
she?”

“Agrafena Alexandrovna?” The inn‐keeper understood at once, looking
sharply into Mitya’s face. “She’s here, too ...”

“With whom? With whom?”

“Some strangers. One is an official gentleman, a Pole, to judge from
his speech. He sent the horses for her from here; and there’s another
with him, a friend of his, or a fellow traveler, there’s no telling.
They’re dressed like civilians.”

“Well, are they feasting? Have they money?”

“Poor sort of a feast! Nothing to boast of, Dmitri Fyodorovitch.”

“Nothing to boast of? And who are the others?”

“They’re two gentlemen from the town.... They’ve come back from
Tcherny, and are putting up here. One’s quite a young gentleman, a
relative of Mr. Miüsov, he must be, but I’ve forgotten his name ... and
I expect you know the other, too, a gentleman called Maximov. He’s been
on a pilgrimage, so he says, to the monastery in the town. He’s
traveling with this young relation of Mr. Miüsov.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“Stay, listen, Trifon Borissovitch. Tell me the chief thing: What of
her? How is she?”

“Oh, she’s only just come. She’s sitting with them.”

“Is she cheerful? Is she laughing?”

“No, I think she’s not laughing much. She’s sitting quite dull. She’s
combing the young gentleman’s hair.”

“The Pole—the officer?”

“He’s not young, and he’s not an officer, either. Not him, sir. It’s
the young gentleman that’s Mr. Miüsov’s relation ... I’ve forgotten his
name.”

“Kalganov.”

“That’s it, Kalganov!”

“All right. I’ll see for myself. Are they playing cards?”

“They have been playing, but they’ve left off. They’ve been drinking
tea, the official gentleman asked for liqueurs.”

“Stay, Trifon Borissovitch, stay, my good soul, I’ll see for myself.
Now answer one more question: are the gypsies here?”

“You can’t have the gypsies now, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. The authorities
have sent them away. But we’ve Jews that play the cymbals and the
fiddle in the village, so one might send for them. They’d come.”

“Send for them. Certainly send for them!” cried Mitya. “And you can get
the girls together as you did then, Marya especially, Stepanida, too,
and Arina. Two hundred roubles for a chorus!”

“Oh, for a sum like that I can get all the village together, though by
now they’re asleep. Are the peasants here worth such kindness, Dmitri
Fyodorovitch, or the girls either? To spend a sum like that on such
coarseness and rudeness! What’s the good of giving a peasant a cigar to
smoke, the stinking ruffian! And the girls are all lousy. Besides, I’ll
get my daughters up for nothing, let alone a sum like that. They’ve
only just gone to bed, I’ll give them a kick and set them singing for
you. You gave the peasants champagne to drink the other day, e—ech!”

For all his pretended compassion for Mitya, Trifon Borissovitch had
hidden half a dozen bottles of champagne on that last occasion, and had
picked up a hundred‐rouble note under the table, and it had remained in
his clutches.

“Trifon Borissovitch, I sent more than one thousand flying last time I
was here. Do you remember?”

“You did send it flying. I may well remember. You must have left three
thousand behind you.”

“Well, I’ve come to do the same again, do you see?”

And he pulled out his roll of notes, and held them up before the
innkeeper’s nose.

“Now, listen and remember. In an hour’s time the wine will arrive,
savories, pies, and sweets—bring them all up at once. That box Andrey
has got is to be brought up at once, too. Open it, and hand champagne
immediately. And the girls, we must have the girls, Marya especially.”

He turned to the cart and pulled out the box of pistols.

“Here, Andrey, let’s settle. Here’s fifteen roubles for the drive, and
fifty for vodka ... for your readiness, for your love.... Remember
Karamazov!”

“I’m afraid, sir,” faltered Andrey. “Give me five roubles extra, but
more I won’t take. Trifon Borissovitch, bear witness. Forgive my
foolish words ...”

“What are you afraid of?” asked Mitya, scanning him. “Well, go to the
devil, if that’s it!” he cried, flinging him five roubles. “Now, Trifon
Borissovitch, take me up quietly and let me first get a look at them,
so that they don’t see me. Where are they? In the blue room?”

Trifon Borissovitch looked apprehensively at Mitya, but at once
obediently did his bidding. Leading him into the passage, he went
himself into the first large room, adjoining that in which the visitors
were sitting, and took the light away. Then he stealthily led Mitya in,
and put him in a corner in the dark, whence he could freely watch the
company without being seen. But Mitya did not look long, and, indeed,
he could not see them, he saw her, his heart throbbed violently, and
all was dark before his eyes.

She was sitting sideways to the table in a low chair, and beside her,
on the sofa, was the pretty youth, Kalganov. She was holding his hand
and seemed to be laughing, while he, seeming vexed and not looking at
her, was saying something in a loud voice to Maximov, who sat the other
side of the table, facing Grushenka. Maximov was laughing violently at
something. On the sofa sat _he_, and on a chair by the sofa there was
another stranger. The one on the sofa was lolling backwards, smoking a
pipe, and Mitya had an impression of a stoutish, broad‐faced, short
little man, who was apparently angry about something. His friend, the
other stranger, struck Mitya as extraordinarily tall, but he could make
out nothing more. He caught his breath. He could not bear it for a
minute, he put the pistol‐ case on a chest, and with a throbbing heart
he walked, feeling cold all over, straight into the blue room to face
the company.

“Aie!” shrieked Grushenka, the first to notice him.




Chapter VII.
The First And Rightful Lover


With his long, rapid strides, Mitya walked straight up to the table.

“Gentlemen,” he said in a loud voice, almost shouting, yet stammering
at every word, “I ... I’m all right! Don’t be afraid!” he exclaimed,
“I—there’s nothing the matter,” he turned suddenly to Grushenka, who
had shrunk back in her chair towards Kalganov, and clasped his hand
tightly. “I ... I’m coming, too. I’m here till morning. Gentlemen, may
I stay with you till morning? Only till morning, for the last time, in
this same room?”

So he finished, turning to the fat little man, with the pipe, sitting
on the sofa. The latter removed his pipe from his lips with dignity and
observed severely:

“_Panie_, we’re here in private. There are other rooms.”

“Why, it’s you, Dmitri Fyodorovitch! What do you mean?” answered
Kalganov suddenly. “Sit down with us. How are you?”

“Delighted to see you, dear ... and precious fellow, I always thought a
lot of you.” Mitya responded, joyfully and eagerly, at once holding out
his hand across the table.

“Aie! How tight you squeeze! You’ve quite broken my fingers,” laughed
Kalganov.

“He always squeezes like that, always,” Grushenka put in gayly, with a
timid smile, seeming suddenly convinced from Mitya’s face that he was
not going to make a scene. She was watching him with intense curiosity
and still some uneasiness. She was impressed by something about him,
and indeed the last thing she expected of him was that he would come in
and speak like this at such a moment.

“Good evening,” Maximov ventured blandly on the left. Mitya rushed up
to him, too.

“Good evening. You’re here, too! How glad I am to find you here, too!
Gentlemen, gentlemen, I—” (He addressed the Polish gentleman with the
pipe again, evidently taking him for the most important person
present.) “I flew here.... I wanted to spend my last day, my last hour
in this room, in this very room ... where I, too, adored ... my
queen.... Forgive me, _panie_,” he cried wildly, “I flew here and
vowed— Oh, don’t be afraid, it’s my last night! Let’s drink to our good
understanding. They’ll bring the wine at once.... I brought this with
me.” (Something made him pull out his bundle of notes.) “Allow me,
_panie_! I want to have music, singing, a revel, as we had before. But
the worm, the unnecessary worm, will crawl away, and there’ll be no
more of him. I will commemorate my day of joy on my last night.”

He was almost choking. There was so much, so much he wanted to say, but
strange exclamations were all that came from his lips. The Pole gazed
fixedly at him, at the bundle of notes in his hand; looked at
Grushenka, and was in evident perplexity.

“If my suverin lady is permitting—” he was beginning.

“What does ‘suverin’ mean? ‘Sovereign,’ I suppose?” interrupted
Grushenka. “I can’t help laughing at you, the way you talk. Sit down,
Mitya, what are you talking about? Don’t frighten us, please. You won’t
frighten us, will you? If you won’t, I am glad to see you ...”

“Me, me frighten you?” cried Mitya, flinging up his hands. “Oh, pass me
by, go your way, I won’t hinder you!...”

And suddenly he surprised them all, and no doubt himself as well, by
flinging himself on a chair, and bursting into tears, turning his head
away to the opposite wall, while his arms clasped the back of the chair
tight, as though embracing it.

“Come, come, what a fellow you are!” cried Grushenka reproachfully.
“That’s just how he comes to see me—he begins talking, and I can’t make
out what he means. He cried like that once before, and now he’s crying
again! It’s shameful! Why are you crying? _As though you had anything
to cry for!_” she added enigmatically, emphasizing each word with some
irritability.

“I ... I’m not crying.... Well, good evening!” He instantly turned
round in his chair, and suddenly laughed, not his abrupt wooden laugh,
but a long, quivering, inaudible nervous laugh.

“Well, there you are again.... Come, cheer up, cheer up!” Grushenka
said to him persuasively. “I’m very glad you’ve come, very glad, Mitya,
do you hear, I’m very glad! I want him to stay here with us,” she said
peremptorily, addressing the whole company, though her words were
obviously meant for the man sitting on the sofa. “I wish it, I wish it!
And if he goes away I shall go, too!” she added with flashing eyes.

“What my queen commands is law!” pronounced the Pole, gallantly kissing
Grushenka’s hand. “I beg you, _panie_, to join our company,” he added
politely, addressing Mitya.

Mitya was jumping up with the obvious intention of delivering another
tirade, but the words did not come.

“Let’s drink, _panie_,” he blurted out instead of making a speech.
Every one laughed.

“Good heavens! I thought he was going to begin again!” Grushenka
exclaimed nervously. “Do you hear, Mitya,” she went on insistently,
“don’t prance about, but it’s nice you’ve brought the champagne. I want
some myself, and I can’t bear liqueurs. And best of all, you’ve come
yourself. We were fearfully dull here.... You’ve come for a spree
again, I suppose? But put your money in your pocket. Where did you get
such a lot?”

Mitya had been, all this time, holding in his hand the crumpled bundle
of notes on which the eyes of all, especially of the Poles, were fixed.
In confusion he thrust them hurriedly into his pocket. He flushed. At
that moment the innkeeper brought in an uncorked bottle of champagne,
and glasses on a tray. Mitya snatched up the bottle, but he was so
bewildered that he did not know what to do with it. Kalganov took it
from him and poured out the champagne.

“Another! Another bottle!” Mitya cried to the innkeeper, and,
forgetting to clink glasses with the Pole whom he had so solemnly
invited to drink to their good understanding, he drank off his glass
without waiting for any one else. His whole countenance suddenly
changed. The solemn and tragic expression with which he had entered
vanished completely, and a look of something childlike came into his
face. He seemed to have become suddenly gentle and subdued. He looked
shyly and happily at every one, with a continual nervous little laugh,
and the blissful expression of a dog who has done wrong, been punished,
and forgiven. He seemed to have forgotten everything, and was looking
round at every one with a childlike smile of delight. He looked at
Grushenka, laughing continually, and bringing his chair close up to
her. By degrees he had gained some idea of the two Poles, though he had
formed no definite conception of them yet.

The Pole on the sofa struck him by his dignified demeanor and his
Polish accent; and, above all, by his pipe. “Well, what of it? It’s a
good thing he’s smoking a pipe,” he reflected. The Pole’s puffy,
middle‐aged face, with its tiny nose and two very thin, pointed, dyed
and impudent‐looking mustaches, had not so far roused the faintest
doubts in Mitya. He was not even particularly struck by the Pole’s
absurd wig made in Siberia, with love‐locks foolishly combed forward
over the temples. “I suppose it’s all right since he wears a wig,” he
went on, musing blissfully. The other, younger Pole, who was staring
insolently and defiantly at the company and listening to the
conversation with silent contempt, still only impressed Mitya by his
great height, which was in striking contrast to the Pole on the sofa.
“If he stood up he’d be six foot three.” The thought flitted through
Mitya’s mind. It occurred to him, too, that this Pole must be the
friend of the other, as it were, a “bodyguard,” and no doubt the big
Pole was at the disposal of the little Pole with the pipe. But this all
seemed to Mitya perfectly right and not to be questioned. In his mood
of doglike submissiveness all feeling of rivalry had died away.

Grushenka’s mood and the enigmatic tone of some of her words he
completely failed to grasp. All he understood, with thrilling heart,
was that she was kind to him, that she had forgiven him, and made him
sit by her. He was beside himself with delight, watching her sip her
glass of champagne. The silence of the company seemed somehow to strike
him, however, and he looked round at every one with expectant eyes.

“Why are we sitting here though, gentlemen? Why don’t you begin doing
something?” his smiling eyes seemed to ask.

“He keeps talking nonsense, and we were all laughing,” Kalganov began
suddenly, as though divining his thought, and pointing to Maximov.

Mitya immediately stared at Kalganov and then at Maximov.

“He’s talking nonsense?” he laughed, his short, wooden laugh, seeming
suddenly delighted at something—“ha ha!”

“Yes. Would you believe it, he will have it that all our cavalry
officers in the twenties married Polish women. That’s awful rot, isn’t
it?”

“Polish women?” repeated Mitya, perfectly ecstatic.

Kalganov was well aware of Mitya’s attitude to Grushenka, and he
guessed about the Pole, too, but that did not so much interest him,
perhaps did not interest him at all; what he was interested in was
Maximov. He had come here with Maximov by chance, and he met the Poles
here at the inn for the first time in his life. Grushenka he knew
before, and had once been with some one to see her; but she had not
taken to him. But here she looked at him very affectionately: before
Mitya’s arrival, she had been making much of him, but he seemed somehow
to be unmoved by it. He was a boy, not over twenty, dressed like a
dandy, with a very charming fair‐ skinned face, and splendid thick,
fair hair. From his fair face looked out beautiful pale blue eyes, with
an intelligent and sometimes even deep expression, beyond his age
indeed, although the young man sometimes looked and talked quite like a
child, and was not at all ashamed of it, even when he was aware of it
himself. As a rule he was very willful, even capricious, though always
friendly. Sometimes there was something fixed and obstinate in his
expression. He would look at you and listen, seeming all the while to
be persistently dreaming over something else. Often he was listless and
lazy, at other times he would grow excited, sometimes, apparently, over
the most trivial matters.

“Only imagine, I’ve been taking him about with me for the last four
days,” he went on, indolently drawling his words, quite naturally
though, without the slightest affectation. “Ever since your brother, do
you remember, shoved him off the carriage and sent him flying. That
made me take an interest in him at the time, and I took him into the
country, but he keeps talking such rot I’m ashamed to be with him. I’m
taking him back.”

“The gentleman has not seen Polish ladies, and says what is
impossible,” the Pole with the pipe observed to Maximov.

He spoke Russian fairly well, much better, anyway, than he pretended.
If he used Russian words, he always distorted them into a Polish form.

“But I was married to a Polish lady myself,” tittered Maximov.

“But did you serve in the cavalry? You were talking about the cavalry.
Were you a cavalry officer?” put in Kalganov at once.

“Was he a cavalry officer indeed? Ha ha!” cried Mitya, listening
eagerly, and turning his inquiring eyes to each as he spoke, as though
there were no knowing what he might hear from each.

“No, you see,” Maximov turned to him. “What I mean is that those pretty
Polish ladies ... when they danced the mazurka with our Uhlans ... when
one of them dances a mazurka with a Uhlan she jumps on his knee like a
kitten ... a little white one ... and the _pan_‐father and _pan_‐mother
look on and allow it.... They allow it ... and next day the Uhlan comes
and offers her his hand.... That’s how it is ... offers her his hand,
he he!” Maximov ended, tittering.

“The _pan_ is a _lajdak_!” the tall Pole on the chair growled suddenly
and crossed one leg over the other. Mitya’s eye was caught by his huge
greased boot, with its thick, dirty sole. The dress of both the Poles
looked rather greasy.

“Well, now it’s _lajdak_! What’s he scolding about?” said Grushenka,
suddenly vexed.

“_Pani_ Agrippina, what the gentleman saw in Poland were servant girls,
and not ladies of good birth,” the Pole with the pipe observed to
Grushenka.

“You can reckon on that,” the tall Pole snapped contemptuously.

“What next! Let him talk! People talk, why hinder them? It makes it
cheerful,” Grushenka said crossly.

“I’m not hindering them, _pani_,” said the Pole in the wig, with a long
look at Grushenka, and relapsing into dignified silence he sucked his
pipe again.

“No, no. The Polish gentleman spoke the truth.” Kalganov got excited
again, as though it were a question of vast import. “He’s never been in
Poland, so how can he talk about it? I suppose you weren’t married in
Poland, were you?”

“No, in the Province of Smolensk. Only, a Uhlan had brought her to
Russia before that, my future wife, with her mamma and her aunt, and
another female relation with a grown‐up son. He brought her straight
from Poland and gave her up to me. He was a lieutenant in our regiment,
a very nice young man. At first he meant to marry her himself. But he
didn’t marry her, because she turned out to be lame.”

“So you married a lame woman?” cried Kalganov.

“Yes. They both deceived me a little bit at the time, and concealed it.
I thought she was hopping; she kept hopping.... I thought it was for
fun.”

“So pleased she was going to marry you!” yelled Kalganov, in a ringing,
childish voice.

“Yes, so pleased. But it turned out to be quite a different cause.
Afterwards, when we were married, after the wedding, that very evening,
she confessed, and very touchingly asked forgiveness. ‘I once jumped
over a puddle when I was a child,’ she said, ‘and injured my leg.’ He
he!”

Kalganov went off into the most childish laughter, almost falling on
the sofa. Grushenka, too, laughed. Mitya was at the pinnacle of
happiness.

“Do you know, that’s the truth, he’s not lying now,” exclaimed
Kalganov, turning to Mitya; “and do you know, he’s been married twice;
it’s his first wife he’s talking about. But his second wife, do you
know, ran away, and is alive now.”

“Is it possible?” said Mitya, turning quickly to Maximov with an
expression of the utmost astonishment.

“Yes. She did run away. I’ve had that unpleasant experience,” Maximov
modestly assented, “with a _monsieur_. And what was worse, she’d had
all my little property transferred to her beforehand. ‘You’re an
educated man,’ she said to me. ‘You can always get your living.’ She
settled my business with that. A venerable bishop once said to me: ‘One
of your wives was lame, but the other was too light‐footed.’ He he!”

“Listen, listen!” cried Kalganov, bubbling over, “if he’s telling
lies—and he often is—he’s only doing it to amuse us all. There’s no
harm in that, is there? You know, I sometimes like him. He’s awfully
low, but it’s natural to him, eh? Don’t you think so? Some people are
low from self‐ interest, but he’s simply so, from nature. Only fancy,
he claims (he was arguing about it all the way yesterday) that Gogol
wrote _Dead Souls_ about him. Do you remember, there’s a landowner
called Maximov in it, whom Nozdryov thrashed. He was charged, do you
remember, ‘for inflicting bodily injury with rods on the landowner
Maximov in a drunken condition.’ Would you believe it, he claims that
he was that Maximov and that he was beaten! Now can it be so?
Tchitchikov made his journey, at the very latest, at the beginning of
the twenties, so that the dates don’t fit. He couldn’t have been
thrashed then, he couldn’t, could he?”

It was difficult to imagine what Kalganov was excited about, but his
excitement was genuine. Mitya followed his lead without protest.

“Well, but if they did thrash him!” he cried, laughing.

“It’s not that they thrashed me exactly, but what I mean is—” put in
Maximov.

“What do you mean? Either they thrashed you or they didn’t.”

“What o’clock is it, _panie_?” the Pole, with the pipe, asked his tall
friend, with a bored expression. The other shrugged his shoulders in
reply. Neither of them had a watch.

“Why not talk? Let other people talk. Mustn’t other people talk because
you’re bored?” Grushenka flew at him with evident intention of finding
fault. Something seemed for the first time to flash upon Mitya’s mind.
This time the Pole answered with unmistakable irritability.

“_Pani_, I didn’t oppose it. I didn’t say anything.”

“All right then. Come, tell us your story,” Grushenka cried to Maximov.
“Why are you all silent?”

“There’s nothing to tell, it’s all so foolish,” answered Maximov at
once, with evident satisfaction, mincing a little. “Besides, all that’s
by way of allegory in Gogol, for he’s made all the names have a
meaning. Nozdryov was really called Nosov, and Kuvshinikov had quite a
different name, he was called Shkvornev. Fenardi really was called
Fenardi, only he wasn’t an Italian but a Russian, and Mamsel Fenardi
was a pretty girl with her pretty little legs in tights, and she had a
little short skirt with spangles, and she kept turning round and round,
only not for four hours but for four minutes only, and she bewitched
every one...”

“But what were you beaten for?” cried Kalganov.

“For Piron!” answered Maximov.

“What Piron?” cried Mitya.

“The famous French writer, Piron. We were all drinking then, a big
party of us, in a tavern at that very fair. They’d invited me, and
first of all I began quoting epigrams. ‘Is that you, Boileau? What a
funny get‐up!’ and Boileau answers that he’s going to a masquerade,
that is to the baths, he he! And they took it to themselves, so I made
haste to repeat another, very sarcastic, well known to all educated
people:

Yes, Sappho and Phaon are we!
But one grief is weighing on me.
You don’t know your way to the sea!


They were still more offended and began abusing me in the most unseemly
way for it. And as ill‐luck would have it, to set things right, I began
telling a very cultivated anecdote about Piron, how he was not accepted
into the French Academy, and to revenge himself wrote his own epitaph:

Ci‐gît Piron qui ne fut rien,
Pas même académicien.


They seized me and thrashed me.”

“But what for? What for?”

“For my education. People can thrash a man for anything,” Maximov
concluded, briefly and sententiously.

“Eh, that’s enough! That’s all stupid, I don’t want to listen. I
thought it would be amusing,” Grushenka cut them short, suddenly.

Mitya started, and at once left off laughing. The tall Pole rose upon
his feet, and with the haughty air of a man, bored and out of his
element, began pacing from corner to corner of the room, his hands
behind his back.

“Ah, he can’t sit still,” said Grushenka, looking at him
contemptuously. Mitya began to feel anxious. He noticed besides, that
the Pole on the sofa was looking at him with an irritable expression.

“_Panie!_” cried Mitya, “let’s drink! and the other _pan_, too! Let us
drink.”

In a flash he had pulled three glasses towards him, and filled them
with champagne.

“To Poland, _panovie_, I drink to your Poland!” cried Mitya.

“I shall be delighted, _panie_,” said the Pole on the sofa, with
dignity and affable condescension, and he took his glass.

“And the other _pan_, what’s his name? Drink, most illustrious, take
your glass!” Mitya urged.

“Pan Vrublevsky,” put in the Pole on the sofa.

Pan Vrublevsky came up to the table, swaying as he walked.

“To Poland, _panovie!_” cried Mitya, raising his glass. “Hurrah!”

All three drank. Mitya seized the bottle and again poured out three
glasses.

“Now to Russia, _panovie_, and let us be brothers!”

“Pour out some for us,” said Grushenka; “I’ll drink to Russia, too!”

“So will I,” said Kalganov.

“And I would, too ... to Russia, the old grandmother!” tittered
Maximov.

“All! All!” cried Mitya. “Trifon Borissovitch, some more bottles!”

The other three bottles Mitya had brought with him were put on the
table. Mitya filled the glasses.

“To Russia! Hurrah!” he shouted again. All drank the toast except the
Poles, and Grushenka tossed off her whole glass at once. The Poles did
not touch theirs.

“How’s this, _panovie_?” cried Mitya, “won’t you drink it?”

Pan Vrublevsky took the glass, raised it and said with a resonant
voice:

“To Russia as she was before 1772.”

“Come, that’s better!” cried the other Pole, and they both emptied
their glasses at once.

“You’re fools, you _panovie_,” broke suddenly from Mitya.

“_Panie!_” shouted both the Poles, menacingly, setting on Mitya like a
couple of cocks. Pan Vrublevsky was specially furious.

“Can one help loving one’s own country?” he shouted.

“Be silent! Don’t quarrel! I won’t have any quarreling!” cried
Grushenka imperiously, and she stamped her foot on the floor. Her face
glowed, her eyes were shining. The effects of the glass she had just
drunk were apparent. Mitya was terribly alarmed.

“_Panovie_, forgive me! It was my fault, I’m sorry. Vrublevsky, _panie_
Vrublevsky, I’m sorry.”

“Hold your tongue, you, anyway! Sit down, you stupid!” Grushenka
scolded with angry annoyance.

Every one sat down, all were silent, looking at one another.

“Gentlemen, I was the cause of it all,” Mitya began again, unable to
make anything of Grushenka’s words. “Come, why are we sitting here?
What shall we do ... to amuse ourselves again?”

“Ach, it’s certainly anything but amusing!” Kalganov mumbled lazily.

“Let’s play faro again, as we did just now,” Maximov tittered suddenly.

“Faro? Splendid!” cried Mitya. “If only the _panovie_—”

“It’s lite, _panovie_,” the Pole on the sofa responded, as it were
unwillingly.

“That’s true,” assented Pan Vrublevsky.

“Lite? What do you mean by ‘lite’?” asked Grushenka.

“Late, _pani_! ‘a late hour’ I mean,” the Pole on the sofa explained.

“It’s always late with them. They can never do anything!” Grushenka
almost shrieked in her anger. “They’re dull themselves, so they want
others to be dull. Before you came, Mitya, they were just as silent and
kept turning up their noses at me.”

“My goddess!” cried the Pole on the sofa, “I see you’re not
well‐disposed to me, that’s why I’m gloomy. I’m ready, _panie_,” added
he, addressing Mitya.

“Begin, _panie_,” Mitya assented, pulling his notes out of his pocket,
and laying two hundred‐rouble notes on the table. “I want to lose a lot
to you. Take your cards. Make the bank.”

“We’ll have cards from the landlord, _panie_,” said the little Pole,
gravely and emphatically.

“That’s much the best way,” chimed in Pan Vrublevsky.

“From the landlord? Very good, I understand, let’s get them from him.
Cards!” Mitya shouted to the landlord.

The landlord brought in a new, unopened pack, and informed Mitya that
the girls were getting ready, and that the Jews with the cymbals would
most likely be here soon; but the cart with the provisions had not yet
arrived. Mitya jumped up from the table and ran into the next room to
give orders, but only three girls had arrived, and Marya was not there
yet. And he did not know himself what orders to give and why he had run
out. He only told them to take out of the box the presents for the
girls, the sweets, the toffee and the fondants. “And vodka for Andrey,
vodka for Andrey!” he cried in haste. “I was rude to Andrey!”

Suddenly Maximov, who had followed him out, touched him on the
shoulder.

“Give me five roubles,” he whispered to Mitya. “I’ll stake something at
faro, too, he he!”

“Capital! Splendid! Take ten, here!”

Again he took all the notes out of his pocket and picked out one for
ten roubles. “And if you lose that, come again, come again.”

“Very good,” Maximov whispered joyfully, and he ran back again. Mitya,
too, returned, apologizing for having kept them waiting. The Poles had
already sat down, and opened the pack. They looked much more amiable,
almost cordial. The Pole on the sofa had lighted another pipe and was
preparing to throw. He wore an air of solemnity.

“To your places, gentlemen,” cried Pan Vrublevsky.

“No, I’m not going to play any more,” observed Kalganov, “I’ve lost
fifty roubles to them just now.”

“The _pan_ had no luck, perhaps he’ll be lucky this time,” the Pole on
the sofa observed in his direction.

“How much in the bank? To correspond?” asked Mitya.

“That’s according, _panie_, maybe a hundred, maybe two hundred, as much
as you will stake.”

“A million!” laughed Mitya.

“The Pan Captain has heard of Pan Podvysotsky, perhaps?”

“What Podvysotsky?”

“In Warsaw there was a bank and any one comes and stakes against it.
Podvysotsky comes, sees a thousand gold pieces, stakes against the
bank. The banker says, ‘_Panie_ Podvysotsky, are you laying down the
gold, or must we trust to your honor?’ ‘To my honor, _panie_,’ says
Podvysotsky. ‘So much the better.’ The banker throws the dice.
Podvysotsky wins. ‘Take it, _panie_,’ says the banker, and pulling out
the drawer he gives him a million. ‘Take it, _panie_, this is your
gain.’ There was a million in the bank. ‘I didn’t know that,’ says
Podvysotsky. ‘_Panie_ Podvysotsky,’ said the banker, ‘you pledged your
honor and we pledged ours.’ Podvysotsky took the million.”

“That’s not true,” said Kalganov.

“_Panie_ Kalganov, in gentlemanly society one doesn’t say such things.”

“As if a Polish gambler would give away a million!” cried Mitya, but
checked himself at once. “Forgive me, _panie_, it’s my fault again, he
would, he would give away a million, for honor, for Polish honor. You
see how I talk Polish, ha ha! Here, I stake ten roubles, the knave
leads.”

“And I put a rouble on the queen, the queen of hearts, the pretty
little _panienotchka_, he he!” laughed Maximov, pulling out his queen,
and, as though trying to conceal it from every one, he moved right up
and crossed himself hurriedly under the table. Mitya won. The rouble
won, too.

“A corner!” cried Mitya.

“I’ll bet another rouble, a ‘single’ stake,” Maximov muttered
gleefully, hugely delighted at having won a rouble.

“Lost!” shouted Mitya. “A ‘double’ on the seven!”

The seven too was trumped.

“Stop!” cried Kalganov suddenly.

“Double! Double!” Mitya doubled his stakes, and each time he doubled
the stake, the card he doubled was trumped by the Poles. The rouble
stakes kept winning.

“On the double!” shouted Mitya furiously.

“You’ve lost two hundred, _panie_. Will you stake another hundred?” the
Pole on the sofa inquired.

“What? Lost two hundred already? Then another two hundred! All
doubles!”

And pulling his money out of his pocket, Mitya was about to fling two
hundred roubles on the queen, but Kalganov covered it with his hand.

“That’s enough!” he shouted in his ringing voice.

“What’s the matter?” Mitya stared at him.

“That’s enough! I don’t want you to play any more. Don’t!”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t. Hang it, come away. That’s why. I won’t let you go on
playing.”

Mitya gazed at him in astonishment.

“Give it up, Mitya. He may be right. You’ve lost a lot as it is,” said
Grushenka, with a curious note in her voice. Both the Poles rose from
their seats with a deeply offended air.

“Are you joking, _panie_?” said the short man, looking severely at
Kalganov.

“How dare you!” Pan Vrublevsky, too, growled at Kalganov.

“Don’t dare to shout like that,” cried Grushenka. “Ah, you
turkey‐cocks!”

Mitya looked at each of them in turn. But something in Grushenka’s face
suddenly struck him, and at the same instant something new flashed into
his mind—a strange new thought!

“_Pani_ Agrippina,” the little Pole was beginning, crimson with anger,
when Mitya suddenly went up to him and slapped him on the shoulder.

“Most illustrious, two words with you.”

“What do you want?”

“In the next room, I’ve two words to say to you, something pleasant,
very pleasant. You’ll be glad to hear it.”

The little _pan_ was taken aback and looked apprehensively at Mitya. He
agreed at once, however, on condition that Pan Vrublevsky went with
them.

“The bodyguard? Let him come, and I want him, too. I must have him!”
cried Mitya. “March, _panovie_!”

“Where are you going?” asked Grushenka, anxiously.

“We’ll be back in one moment,” answered Mitya.

There was a sort of boldness, a sudden confidence shining in his eyes.
His face had looked very different when he entered the room an hour
before.

He led the Poles, not into the large room where the chorus of girls was
assembling and the table was being laid, but into the bedroom on the
right, where the trunks and packages were kept, and there were two
large beds, with pyramids of cotton pillows on each. There was a
lighted candle on a small deal table in the corner. The small man and
Mitya sat down to this table, facing each other, while the huge
Vrublevsky stood beside them, his hands behind his back. The Poles
looked severe but were evidently inquisitive.

“What can I do for you, _panie_?” lisped the little Pole.

“Well, look here, _panie_, I won’t keep you long. There’s money for
you,” he pulled out his notes. “Would you like three thousand? Take it
and go your way.”

The Pole gazed open‐eyed at Mitya, with a searching look.

“Three thousand, _panie_?” He exchanged glances with Vrublevsky.

“Three, _panovie_, three! Listen, _panie_, I see you’re a sensible man.
Take three thousand and go to the devil, and Vrublevsky with you—d’you
hear? But, at once, this very minute, and for ever. You understand
that, _panie_, for ever. Here’s the door, you go out of it. What have
you got there, a great‐coat, a fur coat? I’ll bring it out to you.
They’ll get the horses out directly, and then—good‐by, _panie_!”

Mitya awaited an answer with assurance. He had no doubts. An expression
of extraordinary resolution passed over the Pole’s face.

“And the money, _panie_?”

“The money, _panie_? Five hundred roubles I’ll give you this moment for
the journey, and as a first installment, and two thousand five hundred
to‐ morrow, in the town—I swear on my honor, I’ll get it, I’ll get it
at any cost!” cried Mitya.

The Poles exchanged glances again. The short man’s face looked more
forbidding.

“Seven hundred, seven hundred, not five hundred, at once, this minute,
cash down!” Mitya added, feeling something wrong. “What’s the matter,
_panie_? Don’t you trust me? I can’t give you the whole three thousand
straight off. If I give it, you may come back to her to‐morrow....
Besides, I haven’t the three thousand with me. I’ve got it at home in
the town,” faltered Mitya, his spirit sinking at every word he uttered.
“Upon my word, the money’s there, hidden.”

In an instant an extraordinary sense of personal dignity showed itself
in the little man’s face.

“What next?” he asked ironically. “For shame!” and he spat on the
floor. Pan Vrublevsky spat too.

“You do that, _panie_,” said Mitya, recognizing with despair that all
was over, “because you hope to make more out of Grushenka? You’re a
couple of capons, that’s what you are!”

“This is a mortal insult!” The little Pole turned as red as a crab, and
he went out of the room, briskly, as though unwilling to hear another
word. Vrublevsky swung out after him, and Mitya followed, confused and
crestfallen. He was afraid of Grushenka, afraid that the _pan_ would at
once raise an outcry. And so indeed he did. The Pole walked into the
room and threw himself in a theatrical attitude before Grushenka.

“_Pani_ Agrippina, I have received a mortal insult!” he exclaimed. But
Grushenka suddenly lost all patience, as though they had wounded her in
the tenderest spot.

“Speak Russian! Speak Russian!” she cried, “not another word of Polish!
You used to talk Russian. You can’t have forgotten it in five years.”

She was red with passion.

“_Pani_ Agrippina—”

“My name’s Agrafena, Grushenka, speak Russian or I won’t listen!”

The Pole gasped with offended dignity, and quickly and pompously
delivered himself in broken Russian:

“_Pani_ Agrafena, I came here to forget the past and forgive it, to
forget all that has happened till to‐day—”

“Forgive? Came here to forgive me?” Grushenka cut him short, jumping up
from her seat.

“Just so, _pani_, I’m not pusillanimous, I’m magnanimous. But I was
astounded when I saw your lovers. Pan Mitya offered me three thousand,
in the other room to depart. I spat in the _pan’s_ face.”

“What? He offered you money for me?” cried Grushenka, hysterically. “Is
it true, Mitya? How dare you? Am I for sale?”

“_Panie, panie!_” yelled Mitya, “she’s pure and shining, and I have
never been her lover! That’s a lie....”

“How dare you defend me to him?” shrieked Grushenka. “It wasn’t virtue
kept me pure, and it wasn’t that I was afraid of Kuzma, but that I
might hold up my head when I met him, and tell him he’s a scoundrel.
And he did actually refuse the money?”

“He took it! He took it!” cried Mitya; “only he wanted to get the whole
three thousand at once, and I could only give him seven hundred
straight off.”

“I see: he heard I had money, and came here to marry me!”

“_Pani_ Agrippina!” cried the little Pole. “I’m—a knight, I’m—a
nobleman, and not a _lajdak_. I came here to make you my wife and I
find you a different woman, perverse and shameless.”

“Oh, go back where you came from! I’ll tell them to turn you out and
you’ll be turned out,” cried Grushenka, furious. “I’ve been a fool, a
fool, to have been miserable these five years! And it wasn’t for his
sake, it was my anger made me miserable. And this isn’t he at all! Was
he like this? It might be his father! Where did you get your wig from?
He was a falcon, but this is a gander. He used to laugh and sing to
me.... And I’ve been crying for five years, damned fool, abject,
shameless I was!”

She sank back in her low chair and hid her face in her hands. At that
instant the chorus of Mokroe began singing in the room on the left—a
rollicking dance song.

“A regular Sodom!” Vrublevsky roared suddenly. “Landlord, send the
shameless hussies away!”

The landlord, who had been for some time past inquisitively peeping in
at the door, hearing shouts and guessing that his guests were
quarreling, at once entered the room.

“What are you shouting for? D’you want to split your throat?” he said,
addressing Vrublevsky, with surprising rudeness.

“Animal!” bellowed Pan Vrublevsky.

“Animal? And what sort of cards were you playing with just now? I gave
you a pack and you hid it. You played with marked cards! I could send
you to Siberia for playing with false cards, d’you know that, for it’s
just the same as false banknotes....”

And going up to the sofa he thrust his fingers between the sofa back
and the cushion, and pulled out an unopened pack of cards.

“Here’s my pack unopened!”

He held it up and showed it to all in the room. “From where I stood I
saw him slip my pack away, and put his in place of it—you’re a cheat
and not a gentleman!”

“And I twice saw the _pan_ change a card!” cried Kalganov.

“How shameful! How shameful!” exclaimed Grushenka, clasping her hands,
and blushing for genuine shame. “Good Lord, he’s come to that!”

“I thought so, too!” said Mitya. But before he had uttered the words,
Vrublevsky, with a confused and infuriated face, shook his fist at
Grushenka, shouting:

“You low harlot!”

Mitya flew at him at once, clutched him in both hands, lifted him in
the air, and in one instant had carried him into the room on the right,
from which they had just come.

“I’ve laid him on the floor, there,” he announced, returning at once,
gasping with excitement. “He’s struggling, the scoundrel! But he won’t
come back, no fear of that!...”

He closed one half of the folding doors, and holding the other ajar
called out to the little Pole:

“Most illustrious, will you be pleased to retire as well?”

“My dear Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” said Trifon Borissovitch, “make them
give you back the money you lost. It’s as good as stolen from you.”

“I don’t want my fifty roubles back,” Kalganov declared suddenly.

“I don’t want my two hundred, either,” cried Mitya, “I wouldn’t take it
for anything! Let him keep it as a consolation.”

“Bravo, Mitya! You’re a trump, Mitya!” cried Grushenka, and there was a
note of fierce anger in the exclamation.

The little _pan_, crimson with fury but still mindful of his dignity,
was making for the door, but he stopped short and said suddenly,
addressing Grushenka:

“_Pani_, if you want to come with me, come. If not, good‐by.”

And swelling with indignation and importance he went to the door. This
was a man of character: he had so good an opinion of himself that after
all that had passed, he still expected that she would marry him. Mitya
slammed the door after him.

“Lock it,” said Kalganov. But the key clicked on the other side, they
had locked it from within.

“That’s capital!” exclaimed Grushenka relentlessly. “Serve them right!”




Chapter VIII.
Delirium


What followed was almost an orgy, a feast to which all were welcome.
Grushenka was the first to call for wine.

“I want to drink. I want to be quite drunk, as we were before. Do you
remember, Mitya, do you remember how we made friends here last time!”

Mitya himself was almost delirious, feeling that his happiness was at
hand. But Grushenka was continually sending him away from her.

“Go and enjoy yourself. Tell them to dance, to make merry, ‘let the
stove and cottage dance’; as we had it last time,” she kept exclaiming.
She was tremendously excited. And Mitya hastened to obey her. The
chorus were in the next room. The room in which they had been sitting
till that moment was too small, and was divided in two by cotton
curtains, behind which was a huge bed with a puffy feather mattress and
a pyramid of cotton pillows. In the four rooms for visitors there were
beds. Grushenka settled herself just at the door. Mitya set an easy
chair for her. She had sat in the same place to watch the dancing and
singing “the time before,” when they had made merry there. All the
girls who had come had been there then; the Jewish band with fiddles
and zithers had come, too, and at last the long expected cart had
arrived with the wines and provisions.

Mitya bustled about. All sorts of people began coming into the room to
look on, peasants and their women, who had been roused from sleep and
attracted by the hopes of another marvelous entertainment such as they
had enjoyed a month before. Mitya remembered their faces, greeting and
embracing every one he knew. He uncorked bottles and poured out wine
for every one who presented himself. Only the girls were very eager for
the champagne. The men preferred rum, brandy, and, above all, hot
punch. Mitya had chocolate made for all the girls, and ordered that
three samovars should be kept boiling all night to provide tea and
punch for everyone to help himself.

An absurd chaotic confusion followed, but Mitya was in his natural
element, and the more foolish it became, the more his spirits rose. If
the peasants had asked him for money at that moment, he would have
pulled out his notes and given them away right and left. This was
probably why the landlord, Trifon Borissovitch, kept hovering about
Mitya to protect him. He seemed to have given up all idea of going to
bed that night; but he drank little, only one glass of punch, and kept
a sharp look‐out on Mitya’s interests after his own fashion. He
intervened in the nick of time, civilly and obsequiously persuading
Mitya not to give away “cigars and Rhine wine,” and, above all, money
to the peasants as he had done before. He was very indignant, too, at
the peasant girls drinking liqueur, and eating sweets.

“They’re a lousy lot, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” he said. “I’d give them a
kick, every one of them, and they’d take it as an honor—that’s all
they’re worth!”

Mitya remembered Andrey again, and ordered punch to be sent out to him.
“I was rude to him just now,” he repeated with a sinking, softened
voice. Kalganov did not want to drink, and at first did not care for
the girls’ singing; but after he had drunk a couple of glasses of
champagne he became extraordinarily lively, strolling about the room,
laughing and praising the music and the songs, admiring every one and
everything. Maximov, blissfully drunk, never left his side. Grushenka,
too, was beginning to get drunk. Pointing to Kalganov, she said to
Mitya:

“What a dear, charming boy he is!”

And Mitya, delighted, ran to kiss Kalganov and Maximov. Oh, great were
his hopes! She had said nothing yet, and seemed, indeed, purposely to
refrain from speaking. But she looked at him from time to time with
caressing and passionate eyes. At last she suddenly gripped his hand
and drew him vigorously to her. She was sitting at the moment in the
low chair by the door.

“How was it you came just now, eh? Have you walked in!... I was
frightened. So you wanted to give me up to him, did you? Did you really
want to?”

“I didn’t want to spoil your happiness!” Mitya faltered blissfully. But
she did not need his answer.

“Well, go and enjoy yourself ...” she sent him away once more. “Don’t
cry, I’ll call you back again.”

He would run away, and she listened to the singing and looked at the
dancing, though her eyes followed him wherever he went. But in another
quarter of an hour she would call him once more and again he would run
back to her.

“Come, sit beside me, tell me, how did you hear about me, and my coming
here yesterday? From whom did you first hear it?”

And Mitya began telling her all about it, disconnectedly, incoherently,
feverishly. He spoke strangely, often frowning, and stopping abruptly.

“What are you frowning at?” she asked.

“Nothing.... I left a man ill there. I’d give ten years of my life for
him to get well, to know he was all right!”

“Well, never mind him, if he’s ill. So you meant to shoot yourself to‐
morrow! What a silly boy! What for? I like such reckless fellows as
you,” she lisped, with a rather halting tongue. “So you would go any
length for me, eh? Did you really mean to shoot yourself to‐morrow, you
stupid? No, wait a little. To‐morrow I may have something to say to
you.... I won’t say it to‐day, but to‐morrow. You’d like it to be
to‐day? No, I don’t want to to‐day. Come, go along now, go and amuse
yourself.”

Once, however, she called him, as it were, puzzled and uneasy.

“Why are you sad? I see you’re sad.... Yes, I see it,” she added,
looking intently into his eyes. “Though you keep kissing the peasants
and shouting, I see something. No, be merry. I’m merry; you be merry,
too.... I love somebody here. Guess who it is. Ah, look, my boy has
fallen asleep, poor dear, he’s drunk.”

She meant Kalganov. He was, in fact, drunk, and had dropped asleep for
a moment, sitting on the sofa. But he was not merely drowsy from drink;
he felt suddenly dejected, or, as he said, “bored.” He was intensely
depressed by the girls’ songs, which, as the drinking went on,
gradually became coarse and more reckless. And the dances were as bad.
Two girls dressed up as bears, and a lively girl, called Stepanida,
with a stick in her hand, acted the part of keeper, and began to “show
them.”

“Look alive, Marya, or you’ll get the stick!”

The bears rolled on the ground at last in the most unseemly fashion,
amid roars of laughter from the closely‐packed crowd of men and women.

“Well, let them! Let them!” said Grushenka sententiously, with an
ecstatic expression on her face. “When they do get a day to enjoy
themselves, why shouldn’t folks be happy?”

Kalganov looked as though he had been besmirched with dirt.

“It’s swinish, all this peasant foolery,” he murmured, moving away;
“it’s the game they play when it’s light all night in summer.”

He particularly disliked one “new” song to a jaunty dance‐tune. It
described how a gentleman came and tried his luck with the girls, to
see whether they would love him:

The master came to try the girls:
Would they love him, would they not?


But the girls could not love the master:

He would beat me cruelly
And such love won’t do for me.


Then a gypsy comes along and he, too, tries:

The gypsy came to try the girls:
Would they love him, would they not?


But they couldn’t love the gypsy either:

He would be a thief, I fear,
And would cause me many a tear.


And many more men come to try their luck, among them a soldier:

The soldier came to try the girls:
Would they love him, would they not?


But the soldier is rejected with contempt, in two indecent lines, sung
with absolute frankness and producing a furore in the audience. The
song ends with a merchant:

The merchant came to try the girls:
Would they love him, would they not?


And it appears that he wins their love because:

The merchant will make gold for me
And his queen I’ll gladly be.


Kalvanov was positively indignant.

“That’s just a song of yesterday,” he said aloud. “Who writes such
things for them? They might just as well have had a railwayman or a Jew
come to try his luck with the girls; they’d have carried all before
them.”

And, almost as though it were a personal affront, he declared, on the
spot, that he was bored, sat down on the sofa and immediately fell
asleep. His pretty little face looked rather pale, as it fell back on
the sofa cushion.

“Look how pretty he is,” said Grushenka, taking Mitya up to him. “I was
combing his hair just now; his hair’s like flax, and so thick....”

And, bending over him tenderly, she kissed his forehead. Kalganov
instantly opened his eyes, looked at her, stood up, and with the most
anxious air inquired where was Maximov?

“So that’s who it is you want.” Grushenka laughed. “Stay with me a
minute. Mitya, run and find his Maximov.”

Maximov, it appeared, could not tear himself away from the girls, only
running away from time to time to pour himself out a glass of liqueur.
He had drunk two cups of chocolate. His face was red, and his nose was
crimson; his eyes were moist and mawkishly sweet. He ran up and
announced that he was going to dance the “sabotière.”

“They taught me all those well‐bred, aristocratic dances when I was
little....”

“Go, go with him, Mitya, and I’ll watch from here how he dances,” said
Grushenka.

“No, no, I’m coming to look on, too,” exclaimed Kalganov, brushing
aside in the most naïve way Grushenka’s offer to sit with him. They all
went to look on. Maximov danced his dance. But it roused no great
admiration in any one but Mitya. It consisted of nothing but skipping
and hopping, kicking up the feet, and at every skip Maximov slapped the
upturned sole of his foot. Kalganov did not like it at all, but Mitya
kissed the dancer.

“Thanks. You’re tired perhaps? What are you looking for here? Would you
like some sweets? A cigar, perhaps?”

“A cigarette.”

“Don’t you want a drink?”

“I’ll just have a liqueur.... Have you any chocolates?”

“Yes, there’s a heap of them on the table there. Choose one, my dear
soul!”

“I like one with vanilla ... for old people. He he!”

“No, brother, we’ve none of that special sort.”

“I say,” the old man bent down to whisper in Mitya’s ear. “That girl
there, little Marya, he he! How would it be if you were to help me make
friends with her?”

“So that’s what you’re after! No, brother, that won’t do!”

“I’d do no harm to any one,” Maximov muttered disconsolately.

“Oh, all right, all right. They only come here to dance and sing, you
know, brother. But damn it all, wait a bit!... Eat and drink and be
merry, meanwhile. Don’t you want money?”

“Later on, perhaps,” smiled Maximov.

“All right, all right....”

Mitya’s head was burning. He went outside to the wooden balcony which
ran round the whole building on the inner side, overlooking the
courtyard. The fresh air revived him. He stood alone in a dark corner,
and suddenly clutched his head in both hands. His scattered thoughts
came together; his sensations blended into a whole and threw a sudden
light into his mind. A fearful and terrible light! “If I’m to shoot
myself, why not now?” passed through his mind. “Why not go for the
pistols, bring them here, and here, in this dark dirty corner, make an
end?” Almost a minute he stood, undecided. A few hours earlier, when he
had been dashing here, he was pursued by disgrace, by the theft he had
committed, and that blood, that blood!... But yet it was easier for him
then. Then everything was over: he had lost her, given her up. She was
gone, for him—oh, then his death sentence had been easier for him; at
least it had seemed necessary, inevitable, for what had he to stay on
earth for?

But now? Was it the same as then? Now one phantom, one terror at least
was at an end: that first, rightful lover, that fateful figure had
vanished, leaving no trace. The terrible phantom had turned into
something so small, so comic; it had been carried into the bedroom and
locked in. It would never return. She was ashamed, and from her eyes he
could see now whom she loved. Now he had everything to make life happy
... but he could not go on living, he could not; oh, damnation! “O God!
restore to life the man I knocked down at the fence! Let this fearful
cup pass from me! Lord, thou hast wrought miracles for such sinners as
me! But what, what if the old man’s alive? Oh, then the shame of the
other disgrace I would wipe away. I would restore the stolen money. I’d
give it back; I’d get it somehow.... No trace of that shame will remain
except in my heart for ever! But no, no; oh, impossible cowardly
dreams! Oh, damnation!”

Yet there was a ray of light and hope in his darkness. He jumped up and
ran back to the room—to her, to her, his queen for ever! Was not one
moment of her love worth all the rest of life, even in the agonies of
disgrace? This wild question clutched at his heart. “To her, to her
alone, to see her, to hear her, to think of nothing, to forget
everything, if only for that night, for an hour, for a moment!” Just as
he turned from the balcony into the passage, he came upon the landlord,
Trifon Borissovitch. He thought he looked gloomy and worried, and
fancied he had come to find him.

“What is it, Trifon Borissovitch? are you looking for me?”

“No, sir.” The landlord seemed disconcerted. “Why should I be looking
for you? Where have you been?”

“Why do you look so glum? You’re not angry, are you? Wait a bit, you
shall soon get to bed.... What’s the time?”

“It’ll be three o’clock. Past three, it must be.”

“We’ll leave off soon. We’ll leave off.”

“Don’t mention it; it doesn’t matter. Keep it up as long as you
like....”

“What’s the matter with him?” Mitya wondered for an instant, and he ran
back to the room where the girls were dancing. But she was not there.
She was not in the blue room either; there was no one but Kalganov
asleep on the sofa. Mitya peeped behind the curtain—she was there. She
was sitting in the corner, on a trunk. Bent forward, with her head and
arms on the bed close by, she was crying bitterly, doing her utmost to
stifle her sobs that she might not be heard. Seeing Mitya, she beckoned
him to her, and when he ran to her, she grasped his hand tightly.

“Mitya, Mitya, I loved him, you know. How I have loved him these five
years, all that time! Did I love him or only my own anger? No, him,
him! It’s a lie that it was my anger I loved and not him. Mitya, I was
only seventeen then; he was so kind to me, so merry; he used to sing to
me.... Or so it seemed to a silly girl like me.... And now, O Lord,
it’s not the same man. Even his face is not the same; he’s different
altogether. I shouldn’t have known him. I drove here with Timofey, and
all the way I was thinking how I should meet him, what I should say to
him, how we should look at one another. My soul was faint, and all of a
sudden it was just as though he had emptied a pail of dirty water over
me. He talked to me like a schoolmaster, all so grave and learned; he
met me so solemnly that I was struck dumb. I couldn’t get a word in. At
first I thought he was ashamed to talk before his great big Pole. I sat
staring at him and wondering why I couldn’t say a word to him now. It
must have been his wife that ruined him; you know he threw me up to get
married. She must have changed him like that. Mitya, how shameful it
is! Oh, Mitya, I’m ashamed, I’m ashamed for all my life. Curse it,
curse it, curse those five years!”

And again she burst into tears, but clung tight to Mitya’s hand and did
not let it go.

“Mitya, darling, stay, don’t go away. I want to say one word to you,”
she whispered, and suddenly raised her face to him. “Listen, tell me
who it is I love? I love one man here. Who is that man? That’s what you
must tell me.”

A smile lighted up her face that was swollen with weeping, and her eyes
shone in the half darkness.

“A falcon flew in, and my heart sank. ‘Fool! that’s the man you love!’
That was what my heart whispered to me at once. You came in and all
grew bright. What’s he afraid of? I wondered. For you were frightened;
you couldn’t speak. It’s not them he’s afraid of—could you be
frightened of any one? It’s me he’s afraid of, I thought, only me. So
Fenya told you, you little stupid, how I called to Alyosha out of the
window that I’d loved Mityenka for one hour, and that I was going now
to love ... another. Mitya, Mitya, how could I be such a fool as to
think I could love any one after you? Do you forgive me, Mitya? Do you
forgive me or not? Do you love me? Do you love me?” She jumped up and
held him with both hands on his shoulders. Mitya, dumb with rapture,
gazed into her eyes, at her face, at her smile, and suddenly clasped
her tightly in his arms and kissed her passionately.

“You will forgive me for having tormented you? It was through spite I
tormented you all. It was for spite I drove the old man out of his
mind.... Do you remember how you drank at my house one day and broke
the wine‐glass? I remembered that and I broke a glass to‐day and drank
‘to my vile heart.’ Mitya, my falcon, why don’t you kiss me? He kissed
me once, and now he draws back and looks and listens. Why listen to me?
Kiss me, kiss me hard, that’s right. If you love, well, then, love!
I’ll be your slave now, your slave for the rest of my life. It’s sweet
to be a slave. Kiss me! Beat me, ill‐treat me, do what you will with
me.... And I do deserve to suffer. Stay, wait, afterwards, I won’t have
that....” she suddenly thrust him away. “Go along, Mitya, I’ll come and
have some wine, I want to be drunk, I’m going to get drunk and dance; I
must, I must!” She tore herself away from him and disappeared behind
the curtain. Mitya followed like a drunken man.

“Yes, come what may—whatever may happen now, for one minute I’d give
the whole world,” he thought. Grushenka did, in fact, toss off a whole
glass of champagne at one gulp, and became at once very tipsy. She sat
down in the same chair as before, with a blissful smile on her face.
Her cheeks were glowing, her lips were burning, her flashing eyes were
moist; there was passionate appeal in her eyes. Even Kalganov felt a
stir at the heart and went up to her.

“Did you feel how I kissed you when you were asleep just now?” she said
thickly. “I’m drunk now, that’s what it is.... And aren’t you drunk?
And why isn’t Mitya drinking? Why don’t you drink, Mitya? I’m drunk,
and you don’t drink....”

“I am drunk! I’m drunk as it is ... drunk with you ... and now I’ll be
drunk with wine, too.”

He drank off another glass, and—he thought it strange himself—that
glass made him completely drunk. He was suddenly drunk, although till
that moment he had been quite sober, he remembered that. From that
moment everything whirled about him, as though he were delirious. He
walked, laughed, talked to everybody, without knowing what he was
doing. Only one persistent burning sensation made itself felt
continually, “like a red‐hot coal in his heart,” he said afterwards. He
went up to her, sat beside her, gazed at her, listened to her.... She
became very talkative, kept calling every one to her, and beckoned to
different girls out of the chorus. When the girl came up, she either
kissed her, or made the sign of the cross over her. In another minute
she might have cried. She was greatly amused by the “little old man,”
as she called Maximov. He ran up every minute to kiss her hands, “each
little finger,” and finally he danced another dance to an old song,
which he sang himself. He danced with special vigor to the refrain:

The little pig says—umph! umph! umph!
The little calf says—moo, moo, moo,
The little duck says—quack, quack, quack,
The little goose says—ga, ga, ga.
The hen goes strutting through the porch;
Troo‐roo‐roo‐roo‐roo, she’ll say,
Troo‐roo‐roo‐roo‐roo, she’ll say!


“Give him something, Mitya,” said Grushenka. “Give him a present, he’s
poor, you know. Ah, the poor, the insulted!... Do you know, Mitya, I
shall go into a nunnery. No, I really shall one day, Alyosha said
something to me to‐day that I shall remember all my life.... Yes....
But to‐day let us dance. To‐morrow to the nunnery, but to‐day we’ll
dance. I want to play to‐day, good people, and what of it? God will
forgive us. If I were God, I’d forgive every one: ‘My dear sinners,
from this day forth I forgive you.’ I’m going to beg forgiveness:
‘Forgive me, good people, a silly wench.’ I’m a beast, that’s what I
am. But I want to pray. I gave a little onion. Wicked as I’ve been, I
want to pray. Mitya, let them dance, don’t stop them. Every one in the
world is good. Every one—even the worst of them. The world’s a nice
place. Though we’re bad the world’s all right. We’re good and bad, good
and bad.... Come, tell me, I’ve something to ask you: come here every
one, and I’ll ask you: Why am I so good? You know I am good. I’m very
good.... Come, why am I so good?”

So Grushenka babbled on, getting more and more drunk. At last she
announced that she was going to dance, too. She got up from her chair,
staggering. “Mitya, don’t give me any more wine—if I ask you, don’t
give it to me. Wine doesn’t give peace. Everything’s going round, the
stove, and everything. I want to dance. Let every one see how I dance
... let them see how beautifully I dance....”

She really meant it. She pulled a white cambric handkerchief out of her
pocket, and took it by one corner in her right hand, to wave it in the
dance. Mitya ran to and fro, the girls were quiet, and got ready to
break into a dancing song at the first signal. Maximov, hearing that
Grushenka wanted to dance, squealed with delight, and ran skipping
about in front of her, humming:

With legs so slim and sides so trim
And its little tail curled tight.


But Grushenka waved her handkerchief at him and drove him away.

“Sh‐h! Mitya, why don’t they come? Let every one come ... to look on.
Call them in, too, that were locked in.... Why did you lock them in?
Tell them I’m going to dance. Let them look on, too....”

Mitya walked with a drunken swagger to the locked door, and began
knocking to the Poles with his fist.

“Hi, you ... Podvysotskys! Come, she’s going to dance. She calls you.”

“_Lajdak!_” one of the Poles shouted in reply.

“You’re a _lajdak_ yourself! You’re a little scoundrel, that’s what you
are.”

“Leave off laughing at Poland,” said Kalganov sententiously. He too was
drunk.

“Be quiet, boy! If I call him a scoundrel, it doesn’t mean that I
called all Poland so. One _lajdak_ doesn’t make a Poland. Be quiet, my
pretty boy, eat a sweetmeat.”

“Ach, what fellows! As though they were not men. Why won’t they make
friends?” said Grushenka, and went forward to dance. The chorus broke
into “Ah, my porch, my new porch!” Grushenka flung back her head, half
opened her lips, smiled, waved her handkerchief, and suddenly, with a
violent lurch, stood still in the middle of the room, looking
bewildered.

“I’m weak....” she said in an exhausted voice. “Forgive me.... I’m
weak, I can’t.... I’m sorry.”

She bowed to the chorus, and then began bowing in all directions.

“I’m sorry.... Forgive me....”

“The lady’s been drinking. The pretty lady has been drinking,” voices
were heard saying.

“The lady’s drunk too much,” Maximov explained to the girls, giggling.

“Mitya, lead me away ... take me,” said Grushenka helplessly. Mitya
pounced on her, snatched her up in his arms, and carried the precious
burden through the curtains.

“Well, now I’ll go,” thought Kalganov, and walking out of the blue
room, he closed the two halves of the door after him. But the orgy in
the larger room went on and grew louder and louder. Mitya laid
Grushenka on the bed and kissed her on the lips.

“Don’t touch me....” she faltered, in an imploring voice. “Don’t touch
me, till I’m yours.... I’ve told you I’m yours, but don’t touch me ...
spare me.... With them here, with them close, you mustn’t. He’s here.
It’s nasty here....”

“I’ll obey you! I won’t think of it ... I worship you!” muttered Mitya.
“Yes, it’s nasty here, it’s abominable.”

And still holding her in his arms, he sank on his knees by the bedside.

“I know, though you’re a brute, you’re generous,” Grushenka articulated
with difficulty. “It must be honorable ... it shall be honorable for
the future ... and let us be honest, let us be good, not brutes, but
good ... take me away, take me far away, do you hear? I don’t want it
to be here, but far, far away....”

“Oh, yes, yes, it must be!” said Mitya, pressing her in his arms. “I’ll
take you and we’ll fly away.... Oh, I’d give my whole life for one year
only to know about that blood!”

“What blood?” asked Grushenka, bewildered.

“Nothing,” muttered Mitya, through his teeth. “Grusha, you wanted to be
honest, but I’m a thief. But I’ve stolen money from Katya.... Disgrace,
a disgrace!”

“From Katya, from that young lady? No, you didn’t steal it. Give it her
back, take it from me.... Why make a fuss? Now everything of mine is
yours. What does money matter? We shall waste it anyway.... Folks like
us are bound to waste money. But we’d better go and work the land. I
want to dig the earth with my own hands. We must work, do you hear?
Alyosha said so. I won’t be your mistress, I’ll be faithful to you,
I’ll be your slave, I’ll work for you. We’ll go to the young lady and
bow down to her together, so that she may forgive us, and then we’ll go
away. And if she won’t forgive us, we’ll go, anyway. Take her her money
and love me.... Don’t love her.... Don’t love her any more. If you love
her, I shall strangle her.... I’ll put out both her eyes with a
needle....”

“I love you. I love only you. I’ll love you in Siberia....”

“Why Siberia? Never mind, Siberia, if you like. I don’t care ... we’ll
work ... there’s snow in Siberia.... I love driving in the snow ... and
must have bells.... Do you hear, there’s a bell ringing? Where is that
bell ringing? There are people coming.... Now it’s stopped.”

She closed her eyes, exhausted, and suddenly fell asleep for an
instant. There had certainly been the sound of a bell in the distance,
but the ringing had ceased. Mitya let his head sink on her breast. He
did not notice that the bell had ceased ringing, nor did he notice that
the songs had ceased, and that instead of singing and drunken clamor
there was absolute stillness in the house. Grushenka opened her eyes.

“What’s the matter? Was I asleep? Yes ... a bell ... I’ve been asleep
and dreamt I was driving over the snow with bells, and I dozed. I was
with some one I loved, with you. And far, far away. I was holding you
and kissing you, nestling close to you. I was cold, and the snow
glistened.... You know how the snow glistens at night when the moon
shines. It was as though I was not on earth. I woke up, and my dear one
is close to me. How sweet that is!...”

“Close to you,” murmured Mitya, kissing her dress, her bosom, her
hands. And suddenly he had a strange fancy: it seemed to him that she
was looking straight before her, not at him, not into his face, but
over his head, with an intent, almost uncanny fixity. An expression of
wonder, almost of alarm, came suddenly into her face.

“Mitya, who is that looking at us?” she whispered.

Mitya turned, and saw that some one had, in fact, parted the curtains
and seemed to be watching them. And not one person alone, it seemed.

He jumped up and walked quickly to the intruder.

“Here, come to us, come here,” said a voice, speaking not loudly, but
firmly and peremptorily.

Mitya passed to the other side of the curtain and stood stock still.
The room was filled with people, but not those who had been there
before. An instantaneous shiver ran down his back, and he shuddered. He
recognized all those people instantly. That tall, stout old man in the
overcoat and forage‐cap with a cockade—was the police captain, Mihail
Makarovitch. And that “consumptive‐looking” trim dandy, “who always has
such polished boots”—that was the deputy prosecutor. “He has a
chronometer worth four hundred roubles; he showed it to me.” And that
small young man in spectacles.... Mitya forgot his surname though he
knew him, had seen him: he was the “investigating lawyer,” from the
“school of jurisprudence,” who had only lately come to the town. And
this man—the inspector of police, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, a man he knew
well. And those fellows with the brass plates on, why are they here?
And those other two ... peasants.... And there at the door Kalganov
with Trifon Borissovitch....

“Gentlemen! What’s this for, gentlemen?” began Mitya, but suddenly, as
though beside himself, not knowing what he was doing, he cried aloud,
at the top of his voice:

“I un—der—stand!”

The young man in spectacles moved forward suddenly, and stepping up to
Mitya, began with dignity, though hurriedly:

“We have to make ... in brief, I beg you to come this way, this way to
the sofa.... It is absolutely imperative that you should give an
explanation.”

“The old man!” cried Mitya frantically. “The old man and his blood!...
I understand.”

And he sank, almost fell, on a chair close by, as though he had been
mown down by a scythe.

“You understand? He understands it! Monster and parricide! Your
father’s blood cries out against you!” the old captain of police roared
suddenly, stepping up to Mitya.

He was beside himself, crimson in the face and quivering all over.

“This is impossible!” cried the small young man. “Mihail Makarovitch,
Mihail Makarovitch, this won’t do!... I beg you’ll allow me to speak. I
should never have expected such behavior from you....”

“This is delirium, gentlemen, raving delirium,” cried the captain of
police; “look at him: drunk, at this time of night, in the company of a
disreputable woman, with the blood of his father on his hands.... It’s
delirium!...”

“I beg you most earnestly, dear Mihail Makarovitch, to restrain your
feelings,” the prosecutor said in a rapid whisper to the old police
captain, “or I shall be forced to resort to—”

But the little lawyer did not allow him to finish. He turned to Mitya,
and delivered himself in a loud, firm, dignified voice:

“Ex‐Lieutenant Karamazov, it is my duty to inform you that you are
charged with the murder of your father, Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov,
perpetrated this night....”

He said something more, and the prosecutor, too, put in something, but
though Mitya heard them he did not understand them. He stared at them
all with wild eyes.




Book IX. The Preliminary Investigation




Chapter I.
The Beginning Of Perhotin’s Official Career


Pyotr Ilyitch Perhotin, whom we left knocking at the strong locked
gates of the widow Morozov’s house, ended, of course, by making himself
heard. Fenya, who was still excited by the fright she had had two hours
before, and too much “upset” to go to bed, was almost frightened into
hysterics on hearing the furious knocking at the gate. Though she had
herself seen him drive away, she fancied that it must be Dmitri
Fyodorovitch knocking again, no one else could knock so savagely. She
ran to the house‐porter, who had already waked up and gone out to the
gate, and began imploring him not to open it. But having questioned
Pyotr Ilyitch, and learned that he wanted to see Fenya on very
“important business,” the man made up his mind at last to open. Pyotr
Ilyitch was admitted into Fenya’s kitchen, but the girl begged him to
allow the house‐porter to be present, “because of her misgivings.” He
began questioning her and at once learnt the most vital fact, that is,
that when Dmitri Fyodorovitch had run out to look for Grushenka, he had
snatched up a pestle from the mortar, and that when he returned, the
pestle was not with him and his hands were smeared with blood.

“And the blood was simply flowing, dripping from him, dripping!” Fenya
kept exclaiming. This horrible detail was simply the product of her
disordered imagination. But although not “dripping,” Pyotr Ilyitch had
himself seen those hands stained with blood, and had helped to wash
them. Moreover, the question he had to decide was not how soon the
blood had dried, but where Dmitri Fyodorovitch had run with the pestle,
or rather, whether it really was to Fyodor Pavlovitch’s, and how he
could satisfactorily ascertain. Pyotr Ilyitch persisted in returning to
this point, and though he found out nothing conclusive, yet he carried
away a conviction that Dmitri Fyodorovitch could have gone nowhere but
to his father’s house, and that therefore something must have happened
there.

“And when he came back,” Fenya added with excitement, “I told him the
whole story, and then I began asking him, ‘Why have you got blood on
your hands, Dmitri Fyodorovitch?’ and he answered that that was human
blood, and that he had just killed some one. He confessed it all to me,
and suddenly ran off like a madman. I sat down and began thinking,
where’s he run off to now like a madman? He’ll go to Mokroe, I thought,
and kill my mistress there. I ran out to beg him not to kill her. I was
running to his lodgings, but I looked at Plotnikov’s shop, and saw him
just setting off, and there was no blood on his hands then.” (Fenya had
noticed this and remembered it.) Fenya’s old grandmother confirmed her
evidence as far as she was capable. After asking some further
questions, Pyotr Ilyitch left the house, even more upset and uneasy
than he had been when he entered it.

The most direct and the easiest thing for him to do would have been to
go straight to Fyodor Pavlovitch’s, to find out whether anything had
happened there, and if so, what; and only to go to the police captain,
as Pyotr Ilyitch firmly intended doing, when he had satisfied himself
of the fact. But the night was dark, Fyodor Pavlovitch’s gates were
strong, and he would have to knock again. His acquaintance with Fyodor
Pavlovitch was of the slightest, and what if, after he had been
knocking, they opened to him, and nothing had happened? Then Fyodor
Pavlovitch in his jeering way would go telling the story all over the
town, how a stranger, called Perhotin, had broken in upon him at
midnight to ask if any one had killed him. It would make a scandal. And
scandal was what Pyotr Ilyitch dreaded more than anything in the world.

Yet the feeling that possessed him was so strong, that though he
stamped his foot angrily and swore at himself, he set off again, not to
Fyodor Pavlovitch’s but to Madame Hohlakov’s. He decided that if she
denied having just given Dmitri Fyodorovitch three thousand roubles, he
would go straight to the police captain, but if she admitted having
given him the money, he would go home and let the matter rest till next
morning.

It is, of course, perfectly evident that there was even more likelihood
of causing scandal by going at eleven o’clock at night to a fashionable
lady, a complete stranger, and perhaps rousing her from her bed to ask
her an amazing question, than by going to Fyodor Pavlovitch. But that
is just how it is, sometimes, especially in cases like the present one,
with the decisions of the most precise and phlegmatic people. Pyotr
Ilyitch was by no means phlegmatic at that moment. He remembered all
his life how a haunting uneasiness gradually gained possession of him,
growing more and more painful and driving him on, against his will. Yet
he kept cursing himself, of course, all the way for going to this lady,
but “I will get to the bottom of it, I will!” he repeated for the tenth
time, grinding his teeth, and he carried out his intention.

It was exactly eleven o’clock when he entered Madame Hohlakov’s house.
He was admitted into the yard pretty quickly, but, in response to his
inquiry whether the lady was still up, the porter could give no answer,
except that she was usually in bed by that time.

“Ask at the top of the stairs. If the lady wants to receive you, she’ll
receive you. If she won’t, she won’t.”

Pyotr Ilyitch went up, but did not find things so easy here. The
footman was unwilling to take in his name, but finally called a maid.
Pyotr Ilyitch politely but insistently begged her to inform her lady
that an official, living in the town, called Perhotin, had called on
particular business, and that if it were not of the greatest importance
he would not have ventured to come. “Tell her in those words, in those
words exactly,” he asked the girl.

She went away. He remained waiting in the entry. Madame Hohlakov
herself was already in her bedroom, though not yet asleep. She had felt
upset ever since Mitya’s visit, and had a presentiment that she would
not get through the night without the sick headache which always, with
her, followed such excitement. She was surprised on hearing the
announcement from the maid. She irritably declined to see him, however,
though the unexpected visit at such an hour, of an “official living in
the town,” who was a total stranger, roused her feminine curiosity
intensely. But this time Pyotr Ilyitch was as obstinate as a mule. He
begged the maid most earnestly to take another message in these very
words:

“That he had come on business of the greatest importance, and that
Madame Hohlakov might have cause to regret it later, if she refused to
see him now.”

“I plunged headlong,” he described it afterwards.

The maid, gazing at him in amazement, went to take his message again.
Madame Hohlakov was impressed. She thought a little, asked what he
looked like, and learned that he was “very well dressed, young and so
polite.” We may note, parenthetically, that Pyotr Ilyitch was a rather
good‐looking young man, and well aware of the fact. Madame Hohlakov
made up her mind to see him. She was in her dressing‐gown and slippers,
but she flung a black shawl over her shoulders. “The official” was
asked to walk into the drawing‐room, the very room in which Mitya had
been received shortly before. The lady came to meet her visitor, with a
sternly inquiring countenance, and, without asking him to sit down,
began at once with the question:

“What do you want?”

“I have ventured to disturb you, madam, on a matter concerning our
common acquaintance, Dmitri Fyodorovitch Karamazov,” Perhotin began.

But he had hardly uttered the name, when the lady’s face showed signs
of acute irritation. She almost shrieked, and interrupted him in a
fury:

“How much longer am I to be worried by that awful man?” she cried
hysterically. “How dare you, sir, how could you venture to disturb a
lady who is a stranger to you, in her own house at such an hour!... And
to force yourself upon her to talk of a man who came here, to this very
drawing‐room, only three hours ago, to murder me, and went stamping out
of the room, as no one would go out of a decent house. Let me tell you,
sir, that I shall lodge a complaint against you, that I will not let it
pass. Kindly leave me at once.... I am a mother.... I ... I—”

“Murder! then he tried to murder you, too?”

“Why, has he killed somebody else?” Madame Hohlakov asked impulsively.

“If you would kindly listen, madam, for half a moment, I’ll explain it
all in a couple of words,” answered Perhotin, firmly. “At five o’clock
this afternoon Dmitri Fyodorovitch borrowed ten roubles from me, and I
know for a fact he had no money. Yet at nine o’clock, he came to see me
with a bundle of hundred‐rouble notes in his hand, about two or three
thousand roubles. His hands and face were all covered with blood, and
he looked like a madman. When I asked him where he had got so much
money, he answered that he had just received it from you, that you had
given him a sum of three thousand to go to the gold‐mines....”

Madame Hohlakov’s face assumed an expression of intense and painful
excitement.

“Good God! He must have killed his old father!” she cried, clasping her
hands. “I have never given him money, never! Oh, run, run!... Don’t say
another word! Save the old man ... run to his father ... run!”

“Excuse me, madam, then you did not give him money? You remember for a
fact that you did not give him any money?”

“No, I didn’t, I didn’t! I refused to give it him, for he could not
appreciate it. He ran out in a fury, stamping. He rushed at me, but I
slipped away.... And let me tell you, as I wish to hide nothing from
you now, that he positively spat at me. Can you fancy that! But why are
we standing? Ah, sit down.”

“Excuse me, I....”

“Or better run, run, you must run and save the poor old man from an
awful death!”

“But if he has killed him already?”

“Ah, good heavens, yes! Then what are we to do now? What do you think
we must do now?”

Meantime she had made Pyotr Ilyitch sit down and sat down herself,
facing him. Briefly, but fairly clearly, Pyotr Ilyitch told her the
history of the affair, that part of it at least which he had himself
witnessed. He described, too, his visit to Fenya, and told her about
the pestle. All these details produced an overwhelming effect on the
distracted lady, who kept uttering shrieks, and covering her face with
her hands....

“Would you believe it, I foresaw all this! I have that special faculty,
whatever I imagine comes to pass. And how often I’ve looked at that
awful man and always thought, that man will end by murdering me. And
now it’s happened ... that is, if he hasn’t murdered me, but only his
own father, it’s only because the finger of God preserved me, and
what’s more, he was ashamed to murder me because, in this very place, I
put the holy ikon from the relics of the holy martyr, Saint Varvara, on
his neck.... And to think how near I was to death at that minute, I
went close up to him and he stretched out his neck to me!... Do you
know, Pyotr Ilyitch (I think you said your name was Pyotr Ilyitch), I
don’t believe in miracles, but that ikon and this unmistakable miracle
with me now—that shakes me, and I’m ready to believe in anything you
like. Have you heard about Father Zossima?... But I don’t know what I’m
saying ... and only fancy, with the ikon on his neck he spat at me....
He only spat, it’s true, he didn’t murder me and ... he dashed away!
But what shall we do, what must we do now? What do you think?”

Pyotr Ilyitch got up, and announced that he was going straight to the
police captain, to tell him all about it, and leave him to do what he
thought fit.

“Oh, he’s an excellent man, excellent! Mihail Makarovitch, I know him.
Of course, he’s the person to go to. How practical you are, Pyotr
Ilyitch! How well you’ve thought of everything! I should never have
thought of it in your place!”

“Especially as I know the police captain very well, too,” observed
Pyotr Ilyitch, who still continued to stand, and was obviously anxious
to escape as quickly as possible from the impulsive lady, who would not
let him say good‐by and go away.

“And be sure, be sure,” she prattled on, “to come back and tell me what
you see there, and what you find out ... what comes to light ... how
they’ll try him ... and what he’s condemned to.... Tell me, we have no
capital punishment, have we? But be sure to come, even if it’s at three
o’clock at night, at four, at half‐past four.... Tell them to wake me,
to wake me, to shake me, if I don’t get up.... But, good heavens, I
shan’t sleep! But wait, hadn’t I better come with you?”

“N—no. But if you would write three lines with your own hand, stating
that you did not give Dmitri Fyodorovitch money, it might, perhaps, be
of use ... in case it’s needed....”

“To be sure!” Madame Hohlakov skipped, delighted, to her bureau. “And
you know I’m simply struck, amazed at your resourcefulness, your good
sense in such affairs. Are you in the service here? I’m delighted to
think that you’re in the service here!”

And still speaking, she scribbled on half a sheet of notepaper the
following lines:

I’ve never in my life lent to that unhappy man, Dmitri Fyodorovitch
Karamazov (for, in spite of all, he is unhappy), three thousand roubles
to‐day. I’ve never given him money, never: That I swear by all that’s
holy!


K. HOHLAKOV.


“Here’s the note!” she turned quickly to Pyotr Ilyitch. “Go, save him.
It’s a noble deed on your part!”

And she made the sign of the cross three times over him. She ran out to
accompany him to the passage.

“How grateful I am to you! You can’t think how grateful I am to you for
having come to me, first. How is it I haven’t met you before? I shall
feel flattered at seeing you at my house in the future. How delightful
it is that you are living here!... Such precision! Such practical
ability!... They must appreciate you, they must understand you. If
there’s anything I can do, believe me ... oh, I love young people! I’m
in love with young people! The younger generation are the one prop of
our suffering country. Her one hope.... Oh, go, go!...”

But Pyotr Ilyitch had already run away or she would not have let him go
so soon. Yet Madame Hohlakov had made a rather agreeable impression on
him, which had somewhat softened his anxiety at being drawn into such
an unpleasant affair. Tastes differ, as we all know. “She’s by no means
so elderly,” he thought, feeling pleased, “on the contrary I should
have taken her for her daughter.”

As for Madame Hohlakov, she was simply enchanted by the young man.
“Such sense! such exactness! in so young a man! in our day! and all
that with such manners and appearance! People say the young people of
to‐day are no good for anything, but here’s an example!” etc. So she
simply forgot this “dreadful affair,” and it was only as she was
getting into bed, that, suddenly recalling “how near death she had
been,” she exclaimed: “Ah, it is awful, awful!”

But she fell at once into a sound, sweet sleep.

I would not, however, have dwelt on such trivial and irrelevant
details, if this eccentric meeting of the young official with the by no
means elderly widow had not subsequently turned out to be the
foundation of the whole career of that practical and precise young man.
His story is remembered to this day with amazement in our town, and I
shall perhaps have something to say about it, when I have finished my
long history of the Brothers Karamazov.




Chapter II.
The Alarm


Our police captain, Mihail Makarovitch Makarov, a retired lieutenant‐
colonel, was a widower and an excellent man. He had only come to us
three years previously, but had won general esteem, chiefly because he
“knew how to keep society together.” He was never without visitors, and
could not have got on without them. Some one or other was always dining
with him; he never sat down to table without guests. He gave regular
dinners, too, on all sorts of occasions, sometimes most surprising
ones. Though the fare was not _recherché_, it was abundant. The
fish‐pies were excellent, and the wine made up in quantity for what it
lacked in quality.

The first room his guests entered was a well‐fitted billiard‐room, with
pictures of English race‐horses, in black frames on the walls, an
essential decoration, as we all know, for a bachelor’s billiard‐room.
There was card‐playing every evening at his house, if only at one
table. But at frequent intervals, all the society of our town, with the
mammas and young ladies, assembled at his house to dance. Though Mihail
Makarovitch was a widower, he did not live alone. His widowed daughter
lived with him, with her two unmarried daughters, grown‐up girls, who
had finished their education. They were of agreeable appearance and
lively character, and though every one knew they would have no dowry,
they attracted all the young men of fashion to their grandfather’s
house.

Mihail Makarovitch was by no means very efficient in his work, though
he performed his duties no worse than many others. To speak plainly, he
was a man of rather narrow education. His understanding of the limits
of his administrative power could not always be relied upon. It was not
so much that he failed to grasp certain reforms enacted during the
present reign, as that he made conspicuous blunders in his
interpretation of them. This was not from any special lack of
intelligence, but from carelessness, for he was always in too great a
hurry to go into the subject.

“I have the heart of a soldier rather than of a civilian,” he used to
say of himself. He had not even formed a definite idea of the
fundamental principles of the reforms connected with the emancipation
of the serfs, and only picked it up, so to speak, from year to year,
involuntarily increasing his knowledge by practice. And yet he was
himself a landowner. Pyotr Ilyitch knew for certain that he would meet
some of Mihail Makarovitch’s visitors there that evening, but he didn’t
know which. As it happened, at that moment the prosecutor, and
Varvinsky, our district doctor, a young man, who had only just come to
us from Petersburg after taking a brilliant degree at the Academy of
Medicine, were playing whist at the police captain’s. Ippolit
Kirillovitch, the prosecutor (he was really the deputy prosecutor, but
we always called him the prosecutor), was rather a peculiar man, of
about five and thirty, inclined to be consumptive, and married to a fat
and childless woman. He was vain and irritable, though he had a good
intellect, and even a kind heart. It seemed that all that was wrong
with him was that he had a better opinion of himself than his ability
warranted. And that made him seem constantly uneasy. He had, moreover,
certain higher, even artistic, leanings, towards psychology, for
instance, a special study of the human heart, a special knowledge of
the criminal and his crime. He cherished a grievance on this ground,
considering that he had been passed over in the service, and being
firmly persuaded that in higher spheres he had not been properly
appreciated, and had enemies. In gloomy moments he even threatened to
give up his post, and practice as a barrister in criminal cases. The
unexpected Karamazov case agitated him profoundly: “It was a case that
might well be talked about all over Russia.” But I am anticipating.

Nikolay Parfenovitch Nelyudov, the young investigating lawyer, who had
only come from Petersburg two months before, was sitting in the next
room with the young ladies. People talked about it afterwards and
wondered that all the gentlemen should, as though intentionally, on the
evening of “the crime” have been gathered together at the house of the
executive authority. Yet it was perfectly simple and happened quite
naturally.

Ippolit Kirillovitch’s wife had had toothache for the last two days,
and he was obliged to go out to escape from her groans. The doctor,
from the very nature of his being, could not spend an evening except at
cards. Nikolay Parfenovitch Nelyudov had been intending for three days
past to drop in that evening at Mihail Makarovitch’s, so to speak
casually, so as slyly to startle the eldest granddaughter, Olga
Mihailovna, by showing that he knew her secret, that he knew it was her
birthday, and that she was trying to conceal it on purpose, so as not
to be obliged to give a dance. He anticipated a great deal of
merriment, many playful jests about her age, and her being afraid to
reveal it, about his knowing her secret and telling everybody, and so
on. The charming young man was a great adept at such teasing; the
ladies had christened him “the naughty man,” and he seemed to be
delighted at the name. He was extremely well‐bred, however, of good
family, education and feelings, and, though leading a life of pleasure,
his sallies were always innocent and in good taste. He was short, and
delicate‐looking. On his white, slender, little fingers he always wore
a number of big, glittering rings. When he was engaged in his official
duties, he always became extraordinarily grave, as though realizing his
position and the sanctity of the obligations laid upon him. He had a
special gift for mystifying murderers and other criminals of the
peasant class during interrogation, and if he did not win their
respect, he certainly succeeded in arousing their wonder.

Pyotr Ilyitch was simply dumbfounded when he went into the police
captain’s. He saw instantly that every one knew. They had positively
thrown down their cards, all were standing up and talking. Even Nikolay
Parfenovitch had left the young ladies and run in, looking strenuous
and ready for action. Pyotr Ilyitch was met with the astounding news
that old Fyodor Pavlovitch really had been murdered that evening in his
own house, murdered and robbed. The news had only just reached them in
the following manner.

Marfa Ignatyevna, the wife of old Grigory, who had been knocked
senseless near the fence, was sleeping soundly in her bed and might
well have slept till morning after the draught she had taken. But, all
of a sudden she waked up, no doubt roused by a fearful epileptic scream
from Smerdyakov, who was lying in the next room unconscious. That
scream always preceded his fits, and always terrified and upset Marfa
Ignatyevna. She could never get accustomed to it. She jumped up and ran
half‐awake to Smerdyakov’s room. But it was dark there, and she could
only hear the invalid beginning to gasp and struggle. Then Marfa
Ignatyevna herself screamed out and was going to call her husband, but
suddenly realized that when she had got up, he was not beside her in
bed. She ran back to the bedstead and began groping with her hands, but
the bed was really empty. Then he must have gone out—where? She ran to
the steps and timidly called him. She got no answer, of course, but she
caught the sound of groans far away in the garden in the darkness. She
listened. The groans were repeated, and it was evident they came from
the garden.

“Good Lord! Just as it was with Lizaveta Smerdyastchaya!” she thought
distractedly. She went timidly down the steps and saw that the gate
into the garden was open.

“He must be out there, poor dear,” she thought. She went up to the gate
and all at once she distinctly heard Grigory calling her by name,
“Marfa! Marfa!” in a weak, moaning, dreadful voice.

“Lord, preserve us from harm!” Marfa Ignatyevna murmured, and ran
towards the voice, and that was how she found Grigory. But she found
him not by the fence where he had been knocked down, but about twenty
paces off. It appeared later, that he had crawled away on coming to
himself, and probably had been a long time getting so far, losing
consciousness several times. She noticed at once that he was covered
with blood, and screamed at the top of her voice. Grigory was muttering
incoherently:

“He has murdered ... his father murdered.... Why scream, silly ... run
... fetch some one....”

But Marfa continued screaming, and seeing that her master’s window was
open and that there was a candle alight in the window, she ran there
and began calling Fyodor Pavlovitch. But peeping in at the window, she
saw a fearful sight. Her master was lying on his back, motionless, on
the floor. His light‐colored dressing‐gown and white shirt were soaked
with blood. The candle on the table brightly lighted up the blood and
the motionless dead face of Fyodor Pavlovitch. Terror‐stricken, Marfa
rushed away from the window, ran out of the garden, drew the bolt of
the big gate and ran headlong by the back way to the neighbor, Marya
Kondratyevna. Both mother and daughter were asleep, but they waked up
at Marfa’s desperate and persistent screaming and knocking at the
shutter. Marfa, shrieking and screaming incoherently, managed to tell
them the main fact, and to beg for assistance. It happened that Foma
had come back from his wanderings and was staying the night with them.
They got him up immediately and all three ran to the scene of the
crime. On the way, Marya Kondratyevna remembered that at about eight
o’clock she heard a dreadful scream from their garden, and this was no
doubt Grigory’s scream, “Parricide!” uttered when he caught hold of
Mitya’s leg.

“Some one person screamed out and then was silent,” Marya Kondratyevna
explained as she ran. Running to the place where Grigory lay, the two
women with the help of Foma carried him to the lodge. They lighted a
candle and saw that Smerdyakov was no better, that he was writhing in
convulsions, his eyes fixed in a squint, and that foam was flowing from
his lips. They moistened Grigory’s forehead with water mixed with
vinegar, and the water revived him at once. He asked immediately:

“Is the master murdered?”

Then Foma and both the women ran to the house and saw this time that
not only the window, but also the door into the garden was wide open,
though Fyodor Pavlovitch had for the last week locked himself in every
night and did not allow even Grigory to come in on any pretext. Seeing
that door open, they were afraid to go in to Fyodor Pavlovitch “for
fear anything should happen afterwards.” And when they returned to
Grigory, the old man told them to go straight to the police captain.
Marya Kondratyevna ran there and gave the alarm to the whole party at
the police captain’s. She arrived only five minutes before Pyotr
Ilyitch, so that his story came, not as his own surmise and theory, but
as the direct confirmation, by a witness, of the theory held by all, as
to the identity of the criminal (a theory he had in the bottom of his
heart refused to believe till that moment).

It was resolved to act with energy. The deputy police inspector of the
town was commissioned to take four witnesses, to enter Fyodor
Pavlovitch’s house and there to open an inquiry on the spot, according
to the regular forms, which I will not go into here. The district
doctor, a zealous man, new to his work, almost insisted on accompanying
the police captain, the prosecutor, and the investigating lawyer.

I will note briefly that Fyodor Pavlovitch was found to be quite dead,
with his skull battered in. But with what? Most likely with the same
weapon with which Grigory had been attacked. And immediately that
weapon was found, Grigory, to whom all possible medical assistance was
at once given, described in a weak and breaking voice how he had been
knocked down. They began looking with a lantern by the fence and found
the brass pestle dropped in a most conspicuous place on the garden
path. There were no signs of disturbance in the room where Fyodor
Pavlovitch was lying. But by the bed, behind the screen, they picked up
from the floor a big and thick envelope with the inscription: “A
present of three thousand roubles for my angel Grushenka, if she is
willing to come.” And below had been added by Fyodor Pavlovitch, “For
my little chicken.” There were three seals of red sealing‐wax on the
envelope, but it had been torn open and was empty: the money had been
removed. They found also on the floor a piece of narrow pink ribbon,
with which the envelope had been tied up.

One piece of Pyotr Ilyitch’s evidence made a great impression on the
prosecutor and the investigating magistrate, namely, his idea that
Dmitri Fyodorovitch would shoot himself before daybreak, that he had
resolved to do so, had spoken of it to Ilyitch, had taken the pistols,
loaded them before him, written a letter, put it in his pocket, etc.
When Pyotr Ilyitch, though still unwilling to believe in it, threatened
to tell some one so as to prevent the suicide, Mitya had answered
grinning: “You’ll be too late.” So they must make haste to Mokroe to
find the criminal, before he really did shoot himself.

“That’s clear, that’s clear!” repeated the prosecutor in great
excitement. “That’s just the way with mad fellows like that: ‘I shall
kill myself to‐ morrow, so I’ll make merry till I die!’ ”

The story of how he had bought the wine and provisions excited the
prosecutor more than ever.

“Do you remember the fellow that murdered a merchant called Olsufyev,
gentlemen? He stole fifteen hundred, went at once to have his hair
curled, and then, without even hiding the money, carrying it almost in
his hand in the same way, he went off to the girls.”

All were delayed, however, by the inquiry, the search, and the
formalities, etc., in the house of Fyodor Pavlovitch. It all took time
and so, two hours before starting, they sent on ahead to Mokroe the
officer of the rural police, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch Schmertsov, who had
arrived in the town the morning before to get his pay. He was
instructed to avoid raising the alarm when he reached Mokroe, but to
keep constant watch over the “criminal” till the arrival of the proper
authorities, to procure also witnesses for the arrest, police
constables, and so on. Mavriky Mavrikyevitch did as he was told,
preserving his incognito, and giving no one but his old acquaintance,
Trifon Borissovitch, the slightest hint of his secret business. He had
spoken to him just before Mitya met the landlord in the balcony,
looking for him in the dark, and noticed at once a change in Trifon
Borissovitch’s face and voice. So neither Mitya nor any one else knew
that he was being watched. The box with the pistols had been carried
off by Trifon Borissovitch and put in a suitable place. Only after four
o’clock, almost at sunrise, all the officials, the police captain, the
prosecutor, the investigating lawyer, drove up in two carriages, each
drawn by three horses. The doctor remained at Fyodor Pavlovitch’s to
make a post‐mortem next day on the body. But he was particularly
interested in the condition of the servant, Smerdyakov.

“Such violent and protracted epileptic fits, recurring continually for
twenty‐four hours, are rarely to be met with, and are of interest to
science,” he declared enthusiastically to his companions, and as they
left they laughingly congratulated him on his find. The prosecutor and
the investigating lawyer distinctly remembered the doctor’s saying that
Smerdyakov could not outlive the night.

After these long, but I think necessary explanations, we will return to
that moment of our tale at which we broke off.




Chapter III.
The Sufferings Of A Soul, The First Ordeal


And so Mitya sat looking wildly at the people round him, not
understanding what was said to him. Suddenly he got up, flung up his
hands, and shouted aloud:

“I’m not guilty! I’m not guilty of that blood! I’m not guilty of my
father’s blood.... I meant to kill him. But I’m not guilty. Not I.”

But he had hardly said this, before Grushenka rushed from behind the
curtain and flung herself at the police captain’s feet.

“It was my fault! Mine! My wickedness!” she cried, in a heartrending
voice, bathed in tears, stretching out her clasped hands towards them.
“He did it through me. I tortured him and drove him to it. I tortured
that poor old man that’s dead, too, in my wickedness, and brought him
to this! It’s my fault, mine first, mine most, my fault!”

“Yes, it’s your fault! You’re the chief criminal! You fury! You harlot!
You’re the most to blame!” shouted the police captain, threatening her
with his hand. But he was quickly and resolutely suppressed. The
prosecutor positively seized hold of him.

“This is absolutely irregular, Mihail Makarovitch!” he cried. “You are
positively hindering the inquiry.... You’re ruining the case....” he
almost gasped.

“Follow the regular course! Follow the regular course!” cried Nikolay
Parfenovitch, fearfully excited too, “otherwise it’s absolutely
impossible!...”

“Judge us together!” Grushenka cried frantically, still kneeling.
“Punish us together. I will go with him now, if it’s to death!”

“Grusha, my life, my blood, my holy one!” Mitya fell on his knees
beside her and held her tight in his arms. “Don’t believe her,” he
cried, “she’s not guilty of anything, of any blood, of anything!”

He remembered afterwards that he was forcibly dragged away from her by
several men, and that she was led out, and that when he recovered
himself he was sitting at the table. Beside him and behind him stood
the men with metal plates. Facing him on the other side of the table
sat Nikolay Parfenovitch, the investigating lawyer. He kept persuading
him to drink a little water out of a glass that stood on the table.

“That will refresh you, that will calm you. Be calm, don’t be
frightened,” he added, extremely politely. Mitya (he remembered it
afterwards) became suddenly intensely interested in his big rings, one
with an amethyst, and another with a transparent bright yellow stone,
of great brilliance. And long afterwards he remembered with wonder how
those rings had riveted his attention through all those terrible hours
of interrogation, so that he was utterly unable to tear himself away
from them and dismiss them, as things that had nothing to do with his
position. On Mitya’s left side, in the place where Maximov had been
sitting at the beginning of the evening, the prosecutor was now seated,
and on Mitya’s right hand, where Grushenka had been, was a rosy‐cheeked
young man in a sort of shabby hunting‐jacket, with ink and paper before
him. This was the secretary of the investigating lawyer, who had
brought him with him. The police captain was now standing by the window
at the other end of the room, beside Kalganov, who was sitting there.

“Drink some water,” said the investigating lawyer softly, for the tenth
time.

“I have drunk it, gentlemen, I have ... but ... come, gentlemen, crush
me, punish me, decide my fate!” cried Mitya, staring with terribly
fixed wide‐ open eyes at the investigating lawyer.

“So you positively declare that you are not guilty of the death of your
father, Fyodor Pavlovitch?” asked the investigating lawyer, softly but
insistently.

“I am not guilty. I am guilty of the blood of another old man but not
of my father’s. And I weep for it! I killed, I killed the old man and
knocked him down.... But it’s hard to have to answer for that murder
with another, a terrible murder of which I am not guilty.... It’s a
terrible accusation, gentlemen, a knock‐down blow. But who has killed
my father, who has killed him? Who can have killed him if I didn’t?
It’s marvelous, extraordinary, impossible.”

“Yes, who can have killed him?” the investigating lawyer was beginning,
but Ippolit Kirillovitch, the prosecutor, glancing at him, addressed
Mitya.

“You need not worry yourself about the old servant, Grigory
Vassilyevitch. He is alive, he has recovered, and in spite of the
terrible blows inflicted, according to his own and your evidence, by
you, there seems no doubt that he will live, so the doctor says, at
least.”

“Alive? He’s alive?” cried Mitya, flinging up his hands. His face
beamed. “Lord, I thank Thee for the miracle Thou has wrought for me, a
sinner and evildoer. That’s an answer to my prayer. I’ve been praying
all night.” And he crossed himself three times. He was almost
breathless.

“So from this Grigory we have received such important evidence
concerning you, that—” The prosecutor would have continued, but Mitya
suddenly jumped up from his chair.

“One minute, gentlemen, for God’s sake, one minute; I will run to her—”

“Excuse me, at this moment it’s quite impossible,” Nikolay Parfenovitch
almost shrieked. He, too, leapt to his feet. Mitya was seized by the
men with the metal plates, but he sat down of his own accord....

“Gentlemen, what a pity! I wanted to see her for one minute only; I
wanted to tell her that it has been washed away, it has gone, that
blood that was weighing on my heart all night, and that I am not a
murderer now! Gentlemen, she is my betrothed!” he said ecstatically and
reverently, looking round at them all. “Oh, thank you, gentlemen! Oh,
in one minute you have given me new life, new heart!... That old man
used to carry me in his arms, gentlemen. He used to wash me in the tub
when I was a baby three years old, abandoned by every one, he was like
a father to me!...”

“And so you—” the investigating lawyer began.

“Allow me, gentlemen, allow me one minute more,” interposed Mitya,
putting his elbows on the table and covering his face with his hands.
“Let me have a moment to think, let me breathe, gentlemen. All this is
horribly upsetting, horribly. A man is not a drum, gentlemen!”

“Drink a little more water,” murmured Nikolay Parfenovitch.

Mitya took his hands from his face and laughed. His eyes were
confident. He seemed completely transformed in a moment. His whole
bearing was changed; he was once more the equal of these men, with all
of whom he was acquainted, as though they had all met the day before,
when nothing had happened, at some social gathering. We may note in
passing that, on his first arrival, Mitya had been made very welcome at
the police captain’s, but later, during the last month especially,
Mitya had hardly called at all, and when the police captain met him, in
the street, for instance, Mitya noticed that he frowned and only bowed
out of politeness. His acquaintance with the prosecutor was less
intimate, though he sometimes paid his wife, a nervous and fanciful
lady, visits of politeness, without quite knowing why, and she always
received him graciously and had, for some reason, taken an interest in
him up to the last. He had not had time to get to know the
investigating lawyer, though he had met him and talked to him twice,
each time about the fair sex.

“You’re a most skillful lawyer, I see, Nikolay Parfenovitch,” cried
Mitya, laughing gayly, “but I can help you now. Oh, gentlemen, I feel
like a new man, and don’t be offended at my addressing you so simply
and directly. I’m rather drunk, too, I’ll tell you that frankly. I
believe I’ve had the honor and pleasure of meeting you, Nikolay
Parfenovitch, at my kinsman Miüsov’s. Gentlemen, gentlemen, I don’t
pretend to be on equal terms with you. I understand, of course, in what
character I am sitting before you. Oh, of course, there’s a horrible
suspicion ... hanging over me ... if Grigory has given evidence.... A
horrible suspicion! It’s awful, awful, I understand that! But to
business, gentlemen, I am ready, and we will make an end of it in one
moment; for, listen, listen, gentlemen! Since I know I’m innocent, we
can put an end to it in a minute. Can’t we? Can’t we?”

Mitya spoke much and quickly, nervously and effusively, as though he
positively took his listeners to be his best friends.

“So, for the present, we will write that you absolutely deny the charge
brought against you,” said Nikolay Parfenovitch, impressively, and
bending down to the secretary he dictated to him in an undertone what
to write.

“Write it down? You want to write that down? Well, write it; I consent,
I give my full consent, gentlemen, only ... do you see?... Stay, stay,
write this. Of disorderly conduct I am guilty, of violence on a poor
old man I am guilty. And there is something else at the bottom of my
heart, of which I am guilty, too—but that you need not write down” (he
turned suddenly to the secretary); “that’s my personal life, gentlemen,
that doesn’t concern you, the bottom of my heart, that’s to say.... But
of the murder of my old father I’m not guilty. That’s a wild idea. It’s
quite a wild idea!... I will prove you that and you’ll be convinced
directly.... You will laugh, gentlemen. You’ll laugh yourselves at your
suspicion!...”

“Be calm, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” said the investigating lawyer evidently
trying to allay Mitya’s excitement by his own composure. “Before we go
on with our inquiry, I should like, if you will consent to answer, to
hear you confirm the statement that you disliked your father, Fyodor
Pavlovitch, that you were involved in continual disputes with him. Here
at least, a quarter of an hour ago, you exclaimed that you wanted to
kill him: ‘I didn’t kill him,’ you said, ‘but I wanted to kill him.’ ”

“Did I exclaim that? Ach, that may be so, gentlemen! Yes, unhappily, I
did want to kill him ... many times I wanted to ... unhappily,
unhappily!”

“You wanted to. Would you consent to explain what motives precisely led
you to such a sentiment of hatred for your parent?”

“What is there to explain, gentlemen?” Mitya shrugged his shoulders
sullenly, looking down. “I have never concealed my feelings. All the
town knows about it—every one knows in the tavern. Only lately I
declared them in Father Zossima’s cell.... And the very same day, in
the evening I beat my father. I nearly killed him, and I swore I’d come
again and kill him, before witnesses.... Oh, a thousand witnesses! I’ve
been shouting it aloud for the last month, any one can tell you
that!... The fact stares you in the face, it speaks for itself, it
cries aloud, but feelings, gentlemen, feelings are another matter. You
see, gentlemen”—Mitya frowned—“it seems to me that about feelings
you’ve no right to question me. I know that you are bound by your
office, I quite understand that, but that’s my affair, my private,
intimate affair, yet ... since I haven’t concealed my feelings in the
past ... in the tavern, for instance, I’ve talked to every one, so ...
so I won’t make a secret of it now. You see, I understand, gentlemen,
that there are terrible facts against me in this business. I told every
one that I’d kill him, and now, all of a sudden, he’s been killed. So
it must have been me! Ha ha! I can make allowances for you, gentlemen,
I can quite make allowances. I’m struck all of a heap myself, for who
can have murdered him, if not I? That’s what it comes to, isn’t it? If
not I, who can it be, who? Gentlemen, I want to know, I insist on
knowing!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Where was he murdered? How was he
murdered? How, and with what? Tell me,” he asked quickly, looking at
the two lawyers.

“We found him in his study, lying on his back on the floor, with his
head battered in,” said the prosecutor.

“That’s horrible!” Mitya shuddered and, putting his elbows on the
table, hid his face in his right hand.

“We will continue,” interposed Nikolay Parfenovitch. “So what was it
that impelled you to this sentiment of hatred? You have asserted in
public, I believe, that it was based upon jealousy?”

“Well, yes, jealousy. And not only jealousy.”

“Disputes about money?”

“Yes, about money, too.”

“There was a dispute about three thousand roubles, I think, which you
claimed as part of your inheritance?”

“Three thousand! More, more,” cried Mitya hotly; “more than six
thousand, more than ten, perhaps. I told every one so, shouted it at
them. But I made up my mind to let it go at three thousand. I was
desperately in need of that three thousand ... so the bundle of notes
for three thousand that I knew he kept under his pillow, ready for
Grushenka, I considered as simply stolen from me. Yes, gentlemen, I
looked upon it as mine, as my own property....”

The prosecutor looked significantly at the investigating lawyer, and
had time to wink at him on the sly.

“We will return to that subject later,” said the lawyer promptly. “You
will allow us to note that point and write it down; that you looked
upon that money as your own property?”

“Write it down, by all means. I know that’s another fact that tells
against me, but I’m not afraid of facts and I tell them against myself.
Do you hear? Do you know, gentlemen, you take me for a different sort
of man from what I am,” he added, suddenly gloomy and dejected. “You
have to deal with a man of honor, a man of the highest honor; above
all—don’t lose sight of it—a man who’s done a lot of nasty things, but
has always been, and still is, honorable at bottom, in his inner being.
I don’t know how to express it. That’s just what’s made me wretched all
my life, that I yearned to be honorable, that I was, so to say, a
martyr to a sense of honor, seeking for it with a lantern, with the
lantern of Diogenes, and yet all my life I’ve been doing filthy things
like all of us, gentlemen ... that is like me alone. That was a
mistake, like me alone, me alone!... Gentlemen, my head aches ...” His
brows contracted with pain. “You see, gentlemen, I couldn’t bear the
look of him, there was something in him ignoble, impudent, trampling on
everything sacred, something sneering and irreverent, loathsome,
loathsome. But now that he’s dead, I feel differently.”

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t feel differently, but I wish I hadn’t hated him so.”

“You feel penitent?”

“No, not penitent, don’t write that. I’m not much good myself, I’m not
very beautiful, so I had no right to consider him repulsive. That’s
what I mean. Write that down, if you like.”

Saying this Mitya became very mournful. He had grown more and more
gloomy as the inquiry continued.

At that moment another unexpected scene followed. Though Grushenka had
been removed, she had not been taken far away, only into the room next
but one from the blue room, in which the examination was proceeding. It
was a little room with one window, next beyond the large room in which
they had danced and feasted so lavishly. She was sitting there with no
one by her but Maximov, who was terribly depressed, terribly scared,
and clung to her side, as though for security. At their door stood one
of the peasants with a metal plate on his breast. Grushenka was crying,
and suddenly her grief was too much for her, she jumped up, flung up
her arms and, with a loud wail of sorrow, rushed out of the room to
him, to her Mitya, and so unexpectedly that they had not time to stop
her. Mitya, hearing her cry, trembled, jumped up, and with a yell
rushed impetuously to meet her, not knowing what he was doing. But they
were not allowed to come together, though they saw one another. He was
seized by the arms. He struggled, and tried to tear himself away. It
took three or four men to hold him. She was seized too, and he saw her
stretching out her arms to him, crying aloud as they carried her away.
When the scene was over, he came to himself again, sitting in the same
place as before, opposite the investigating lawyer, and crying out to
them:

“What do you want with her? Why do you torment her? She’s done nothing,
nothing!...”

The lawyers tried to soothe him. About ten minutes passed like this. At
last Mihail Makarovitch, who had been absent, came hurriedly into the
room, and said in a loud and excited voice to the prosecutor:

“She’s been removed, she’s downstairs. Will you allow me to say one
word to this unhappy man, gentlemen? In your presence, gentlemen, in
your presence.”

“By all means, Mihail Makarovitch,” answered the investigating lawyer.
“In the present case we have nothing against it.”

“Listen, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, my dear fellow,” began the police
captain, and there was a look of warm, almost fatherly, feeling for the
luckless prisoner on his excited face. “I took your Agrafena
Alexandrovna downstairs myself, and confided her to the care of the
landlord’s daughters, and that old fellow Maximov is with her all the
time. And I soothed her, do you hear? I soothed and calmed her. I
impressed on her that you have to clear yourself, so she mustn’t hinder
you, must not depress you, or you may lose your head and say the wrong
thing in your evidence. In fact, I talked to her and she understood.
She’s a sensible girl, my boy, a good‐hearted girl, she would have
kissed my old hands, begging help for you. She sent me herself, to tell
you not to worry about her. And I must go, my dear fellow, I must go
and tell her that you are calm and comforted about her. And so you must
be calm, do you understand? I was unfair to her; she is a Christian
soul, gentlemen, yes, I tell you, she’s a gentle soul, and not to blame
for anything. So what am I to tell her, Dmitri Fyodorovitch? Will you
sit quiet or not?”

The good‐natured police captain said a great deal that was irregular,
but Grushenka’s suffering, a fellow creature’s suffering, touched his
good‐ natured heart, and tears stood in his eyes. Mitya jumped up and
rushed towards him.

“Forgive me, gentlemen, oh, allow me, allow me!” he cried. “You’ve the
heart of an angel, an angel, Mihail Makarovitch, I thank you for her. I
will, I will be calm, cheerful, in fact. Tell her, in the kindness of
your heart, that I am cheerful, quite cheerful, that I shall be
laughing in a minute, knowing that she has a guardian angel like you. I
shall have done with all this directly, and as soon as I’m free, I’ll
be with her, she’ll see, let her wait. Gentlemen,” he said, turning to
the two lawyers, “now I’ll open my whole soul to you; I’ll pour out
everything. We’ll finish this off directly, finish it off gayly. We
shall laugh at it in the end, shan’t we? But, gentlemen, that woman is
the queen of my heart. Oh, let me tell you that. That one thing I’ll
tell you now.... I see I’m with honorable men. She is my light, she is
my holy one, and if only you knew! Did you hear her cry, ‘I’ll go to
death with you’? And what have I, a penniless beggar, done for her? Why
such love for me? How can a clumsy, ugly brute like me, with my ugly
face, deserve such love, that she is ready to go to exile with me? And
how she fell down at your feet for my sake, just now!... and yet she’s
proud and has done nothing! How can I help adoring her, how can I help
crying out and rushing to her as I did just now? Gentlemen, forgive me!
But now, now I am comforted.”

And he sank back in his chair and, covering his face with his hands,
burst into tears. But they were happy tears. He recovered himself
instantly. The old police captain seemed much pleased, and the lawyers
also. They felt that the examination was passing into a new phase. When
the police captain went out, Mitya was positively gay.

“Now, gentlemen, I am at your disposal, entirely at your disposal. And
if it were not for all these trivial details, we should understand one
another in a minute. I’m at those details again. I’m at your disposal,
gentlemen, but I declare that we must have mutual confidence, you in me
and I in you, or there’ll be no end to it. I speak in your interests.
To business, gentlemen, to business, and don’t rummage in my soul;
don’t tease me with trifles, but only ask me about facts and what
matters, and I will satisfy you at once. And damn the details!”

So spoke Mitya. The interrogation began again.




Chapter IV.
The Second Ordeal


“You don’t know how you encourage us, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, by your
readiness to answer,” said Nikolay Parfenovitch, with an animated air,
and obvious satisfaction beaming in his very prominent, short‐sighted,
light gray eyes, from which he had removed his spectacles a moment
before. “And you have made a very just remark about the mutual
confidence, without which it is sometimes positively impossible to get
on in cases of such importance, if the suspected party really hopes and
desires to defend himself and is in a position to do so. We, on our
side, will do everything in our power, and you can see for yourself how
we are conducting the case. You approve, Ippolit Kirillovitch?” He
turned to the prosecutor.

“Oh, undoubtedly,” replied the prosecutor. His tone was somewhat cold,
compared with Nikolay Parfenovitch’s impulsiveness.

I will note once for all that Nikolay Parfenovitch, who had but lately
arrived among us, had from the first felt marked respect for Ippolit
Kirillovitch, our prosecutor, and had become almost his bosom friend.
He was almost the only person who put implicit faith in Ippolit
Kirillovitch’s extraordinary talents as a psychologist and orator and
in the justice of his grievance. He had heard of him in Petersburg. On
the other hand, young Nikolay Parfenovitch was the only person in the
whole world whom our “unappreciated” prosecutor genuinely liked. On
their way to Mokroe they had time to come to an understanding about the
present case. And now as they sat at the table, the sharp‐witted junior
caught and interpreted every indication on his senior colleague’s
face—half a word, a glance, or a wink.

“Gentlemen, only let me tell my own story and don’t interrupt me with
trivial questions and I’ll tell you everything in a moment,” said Mitya
excitedly.

“Excellent! Thank you. But before we proceed to listen to your
communication, will you allow me to inquire as to another little fact
of great interest to us? I mean the ten roubles you borrowed yesterday
at about five o’clock on the security of your pistols, from your
friend, Pyotr Ilyitch Perhotin.”

“I pledged them, gentlemen. I pledged them for ten roubles. What more?
That’s all about it. As soon as I got back to town I pledged them.”

“You got back to town? Then you had been out of town?”

“Yes, I went a journey of forty versts into the country. Didn’t you
know?”

The prosecutor and Nikolay Parfenovitch exchanged glances.

“Well, how would it be if you began your story with a systematic
description of all you did yesterday, from the morning onwards? Allow
us, for instance, to inquire why you were absent from the town, and
just when you left and when you came back—all those facts.”

“You should have asked me like that from the beginning,” cried Mitya,
laughing aloud, “and, if you like, we won’t begin from yesterday, but
from the morning of the day before; then you’ll understand how, why,
and where I went. I went the day before yesterday, gentlemen, to a
merchant of the town, called Samsonov, to borrow three thousand roubles
from him on safe security. It was a pressing matter, gentlemen, it was
a sudden necessity.”

“Allow me to interrupt you,” the prosecutor put in politely. “Why were
you in such pressing need for just that sum, three thousand?”

“Oh, gentlemen, you needn’t go into details, how, when and why, and why
just so much money, and not so much, and all that rigmarole. Why, it’ll
run to three volumes, and then you’ll want an epilogue!”

Mitya said all this with the good‐natured but impatient familiarity of
a man who is anxious to tell the whole truth and is full of the best
intentions.

“Gentlemen!”—he corrected himself hurriedly—“don’t be vexed with me for
my restiveness, I beg you again. Believe me once more, I feel the
greatest respect for you and understand the true position of affairs.
Don’t think I’m drunk. I’m quite sober now. And, besides, being drunk
would be no hindrance. It’s with me, you know, like the saying: ‘When
he is sober, he is a fool; when he is drunk, he is a wise man.’ Ha ha!
But I see, gentlemen, it’s not the proper thing to make jokes to you,
till we’ve had our explanation, I mean. And I’ve my own dignity to keep
up, too. I quite understand the difference for the moment. I am, after
all, in the position of a criminal, and so, far from being on equal
terms with you. And it’s your business to watch me. I can’t expect you
to pat me on the head for what I did to Grigory, for one can’t break
old men’s heads with impunity. I suppose you’ll put me away for him for
six months, or a year perhaps, in a house of correction. I don’t know
what the punishment is—but it will be without loss of the rights of my
rank, without loss of my rank, won’t it? So you see, gentlemen, I
understand the distinction between us.... But you must see that you
could puzzle God Himself with such questions. ‘How did you step? Where
did you step? When did you step? And on what did you step?’ I shall get
mixed up, if you go on like this, and you will put it all down against
me. And what will that lead to? To nothing! And even if it’s nonsense
I’m talking now, let me finish, and you, gentlemen, being men of honor
and refinement, will forgive me! I’ll finish by asking you, gentlemen,
to drop that conventional method of questioning. I mean, beginning from
some miserable trifle, how I got up, what I had for breakfast, how I
spat, and where I spat, and so distracting the attention of the
criminal, suddenly stun him with an overwhelming question, ‘Whom did
you murder? Whom did you rob?’ Ha ha! That’s your regulation method,
that’s where all your cunning comes in. You can put peasants off their
guard like that, but not me. I know the tricks. I’ve been in the
service, too. Ha ha ha! You’re not angry, gentlemen? You forgive my
impertinence?” he cried, looking at them with a good‐nature that was
almost surprising. “It’s only Mitya Karamazov, you know, so you can
overlook it. It would be inexcusable in a sensible man; but you can
forgive it in Mitya. Ha ha!”

Nikolay Parfenovitch listened, and laughed too. Though the prosecutor
did not laugh, he kept his eyes fixed keenly on Mitya, as though
anxious not to miss the least syllable, the slightest movement, the
smallest twitch of any feature of his face.

“That’s how we have treated you from the beginning,” said Nikolay
Parfenovitch, still laughing. “We haven’t tried to put you out by
asking how you got up in the morning and what you had for breakfast. We
began, indeed, with questions of the greatest importance.”

“I understand. I saw it and appreciated it, and I appreciate still more
your present kindness to me, an unprecedented kindness, worthy of your
noble hearts. We three here are gentlemen, and let everything be on the
footing of mutual confidence between educated, well‐bred people, who
have the common bond of noble birth and honor. In any case, allow me to
look upon you as my best friends at this moment of my life, at this
moment when my honor is assailed. That’s no offense to you, gentlemen,
is it?”

“On the contrary. You’ve expressed all that so well, Dmitri
Fyodorovitch,” Nikolay Parfenovitch answered with dignified
approbation.

“And enough of those trivial questions, gentlemen, all those tricky
questions!” cried Mitya enthusiastically. “Or there’s simply no knowing
where we shall get to! Is there?”

“I will follow your sensible advice entirely,” the prosecutor
interposed, addressing Mitya. “I don’t withdraw my question, however.
It is now vitally important for us to know exactly why you needed that
sum, I mean precisely three thousand.”

“Why I needed it?... Oh, for one thing and another.... Well, it was to
pay a debt.”

“A debt to whom?”

“That I absolutely refuse to answer, gentlemen. Not because I couldn’t,
or because I shouldn’t dare, or because it would be damaging, for it’s
all a paltry matter and absolutely trifling, but—I won’t, because it’s
a matter of principle: that’s my private life, and I won’t allow any
intrusion into my private life. That’s my principle. Your question has
no bearing on the case, and whatever has nothing to do with the case is
my private affair. I wanted to pay a debt. I wanted to pay a debt of
honor but to whom I won’t say.”

“Allow me to make a note of that,” said the prosecutor.

“By all means. Write down that I won’t say, that I won’t. Write that I
should think it dishonorable to say. Ech! you can write it; you’ve
nothing else to do with your time.”

“Allow me to caution you, sir, and to remind you once more, if you are
unaware of it,” the prosecutor began, with a peculiar and stern
impressiveness, “that you have a perfect right not to answer the
questions put to you now, and we on our side have no right to extort an
answer from you, if you decline to give it for one reason or another.
That is entirely a matter for your personal decision. But it is our
duty, on the other hand, in such cases as the present, to explain and
set before you the degree of injury you will be doing yourself by
refusing to give this or that piece of evidence. After which I will beg
you to continue.”

“Gentlemen, I’m not angry ... I ...” Mitya muttered in a rather
disconcerted tone. “Well, gentlemen, you see, that Samsonov to whom I
went then ...”

We will, of course, not reproduce his account of what is known to the
reader already. Mitya was impatiently anxious not to omit the slightest
detail. At the same time he was in a hurry to get it over. But as he
gave his evidence it was written down, and therefore they had
continually to pull him up. Mitya disliked this, but submitted; got
angry, though still good‐humoredly. He did, it is true, exclaim, from
time to time, “Gentlemen, that’s enough to make an angel out of
patience!” Or, “Gentlemen, it’s no good your irritating me.”

But even though he exclaimed he still preserved for a time his genially
expansive mood. So he told them how Samsonov had made a fool of him two
days before. (He had completely realized by now that he had been
fooled.) The sale of his watch for six roubles to obtain money for the
journey was something new to the lawyers. They were at once greatly
interested, and even, to Mitya’s intense indignation, thought it
necessary to write the fact down as a secondary confirmation of the
circumstance that he had hardly a farthing in his pocket at the time.
Little by little Mitya began to grow surly. Then, after describing his
journey to see Lyagavy, the night spent in the stifling hut, and so on,
he came to his return to the town. Here he began, without being
particularly urged, to give a minute account of the agonies of jealousy
he endured on Grushenka’s account.

He was heard with silent attention. They inquired particularly into the
circumstance of his having a place of ambush in Marya Kondratyevna’s
house at the back of Fyodor Pavlovitch’s garden to keep watch on
Grushenka, and of Smerdyakov’s bringing him information. They laid
particular stress on this, and noted it down. Of his jealousy he spoke
warmly and at length, and though inwardly ashamed at exposing his most
intimate feelings to “public ignominy,” so to speak, he evidently
overcame his shame in order to tell the truth. The frigid severity,
with which the investigating lawyer, and still more the prosecutor,
stared intently at him as he told his story, disconcerted him at last
considerably.

“That boy, Nikolay Parfenovitch, to whom I was talking nonsense about
women only a few days ago, and that sickly prosecutor are not worth my
telling this to,” he reflected mournfully. “It’s ignominious. ‘Be
patient, humble, hold thy peace.’ ” He wound up his reflections with
that line. But he pulled himself together to go on again. When he came
to telling of his visit to Madame Hohlakov, he regained his spirits and
even wished to tell a little anecdote of that lady which had nothing to
do with the case. But the investigating lawyer stopped him, and civilly
suggested that he should pass on to “more essential matters.” At last,
when he described his despair and told them how, when he left Madame
Hohlakov’s, he thought that he’d “get three thousand if he had to
murder some one to do it,” they stopped him again and noted down that
he had “meant to murder some one.” Mitya let them write it without
protest. At last he reached the point in his story when he learned that
Grushenka had deceived him and had returned from Samsonov’s as soon as
he left her there, though she had said that she would stay there till
midnight.

“If I didn’t kill Fenya then, gentlemen, it was only because I hadn’t
time,” broke from him suddenly at that point in his story. That, too,
was carefully written down. Mitya waited gloomily, and was beginning to
tell how he ran into his father’s garden when the investigating lawyer
suddenly stopped him, and opening the big portfolio that lay on the
sofa beside him he brought out the brass pestle.

“Do you recognize this object?” he asked, showing it to Mitya.

“Oh, yes,” he laughed gloomily. “Of course I recognize it. Let me have
a look at it.... Damn it, never mind!”

“You have forgotten to mention it,” observed the investigating lawyer.

“Hang it all, I shouldn’t have concealed it from you. Do you suppose I
could have managed without it? It simply escaped my memory.”

“Be so good as to tell us precisely how you came to arm yourself with
it.”

“Certainly I will be so good, gentlemen.”

And Mitya described how he took the pestle and ran.

“But what object had you in view in arming yourself with such a
weapon?”

“What object? No object. I just picked it up and ran off.”

“What for, if you had no object?”

Mitya’s wrath flared up. He looked intently at “the boy” and smiled
gloomily and malignantly. He was feeling more and more ashamed at
having told “such people” the story of his jealousy so sincerely and
spontaneously.

“Bother the pestle!” broke from him suddenly.

“But still—”

“Oh, to keep off dogs.... Oh, because it was dark.... In case anything
turned up.”

“But have you ever on previous occasions taken a weapon with you when
you went out, since you’re afraid of the dark?”

“Ugh! damn it all, gentlemen! There’s positively no talking to you!”
cried Mitya, exasperated beyond endurance, and turning to the
secretary, crimson with anger, he said quickly, with a note of fury in
his voice:

“Write down at once ... at once ... ‘that I snatched up the pestle to
go and kill my father ... Fyodor Pavlovitch ... by hitting him on the
head with it!’ Well, now are you satisfied, gentlemen? Are your minds
relieved?” he said, glaring defiantly at the lawyers.

“We quite understand that you made that statement just now through
exasperation with us and the questions we put to you, which you
consider trivial, though they are, in fact, essential,” the prosecutor
remarked dryly in reply.

“Well, upon my word, gentlemen! Yes, I took the pestle.... What does
one pick things up for at such moments? I don’t know what for. I
snatched it up and ran—that’s all. For to me, gentlemen, _passons_, or
I declare I won’t tell you any more.”

He sat with his elbows on the table and his head in his hand. He sat
sideways to them and gazed at the wall, struggling against a feeling of
nausea. He had, in fact, an awful inclination to get up and declare
that he wouldn’t say another word, “not if you hang me for it.”

“You see, gentlemen,” he said at last, with difficulty controlling
himself, “you see. I listen to you and am haunted by a dream.... It’s a
dream I have sometimes, you know.... I often dream it—it’s always the
same ... that some one is hunting me, some one I’m awfully afraid of
... that he’s hunting me in the dark, in the night ... tracking me, and
I hide somewhere from him, behind a door or cupboard, hide in a
degrading way, and the worst of it is, he always knows where I am, but
he pretends not to know where I am on purpose, to prolong my agony, to
enjoy my terror.... That’s just what you’re doing now. It’s just like
that!”

“Is that the sort of thing you dream about?” inquired the prosecutor.

“Yes, it is. Don’t you want to write it down?” said Mitya, with a
distorted smile.

“No; no need to write it down. But still you do have curious dreams.”

“It’s not a question of dreams now, gentlemen—this is realism, this is
real life! I’m a wolf and you’re the hunters. Well, hunt him down!”

“You are wrong to make such comparisons ...” began Nikolay
Parfenovitch, with extraordinary softness.

“No, I’m not wrong, not at all!” Mitya flared up again, though his
outburst of wrath had obviously relieved his heart. He grew more good‐
humored at every word. “You may not trust a criminal or a man on trial
tortured by your questions, but an honorable man, the honorable
impulses of the heart (I say that boldly!)—no! That you must believe
you have no right indeed ... but—

Be silent, heart,
Be patient, humble, hold thy peace.


Well, shall I go on?” he broke off gloomily.

“If you’ll be so kind,” answered Nikolay Parfenovitch.




Chapter V.
The Third Ordeal


Though Mitya spoke sullenly, it was evident that he was trying more
than ever not to forget or miss a single detail of his story. He told
them how he had leapt over the fence into his father’s garden; how he
had gone up to the window; told them all that had passed under the
window. Clearly, precisely, distinctly, he described the feelings that
troubled him during those moments in the garden when he longed so
terribly to know whether Grushenka was with his father or not. But,
strange to say, both the lawyers listened now with a sort of awful
reserve, looked coldly at him, asked few questions. Mitya could gather
nothing from their faces.

“They’re angry and offended,” he thought. “Well, bother them!”

When he described how he made up his mind at last to make the “signal”
to his father that Grushenka had come, so that he should open the
window, the lawyers paid no attention to the word “signal,” as though
they entirely failed to grasp the meaning of the word in this
connection: so much so, that Mitya noticed it. Coming at last to the
moment when, seeing his father peering out of the window, his hatred
flared up and he pulled the pestle out of his pocket, he suddenly, as
though of design, stopped short. He sat gazing at the wall and was
aware that their eyes were fixed upon him.

“Well?” said the investigating lawyer. “You pulled out the weapon and
... and what happened then?”

“Then? Why, then I murdered him ... hit him on the head and cracked his
skull.... I suppose that’s your story. That’s it!”

His eyes suddenly flashed. All his smothered wrath suddenly flamed up
with extraordinary violence in his soul.

“Our story?” repeated Nikolay Parfenovitch. “Well—and yours?”

Mitya dropped his eyes and was a long time silent.

“My story, gentlemen? Well, it was like this,” he began softly.
“Whether it was some one’s tears, or my mother prayed to God, or a good
angel kissed me at that instant, I don’t know. But the devil was
conquered. I rushed from the window and ran to the fence. My father was
alarmed and, for the first time, he saw me then, cried out, and sprang
back from the window. I remember that very well. I ran across the
garden to the fence ... and there Grigory caught me, when I was sitting
on the fence.”

At that point he raised his eyes at last and looked at his listeners.
They seemed to be staring at him with perfectly unruffled attention. A
sort of paroxysm of indignation seized on Mitya’s soul.

“Why, you’re laughing at me at this moment, gentlemen!” he broke off
suddenly.

“What makes you think that?” observed Nikolay Parfenovitch.

“You don’t believe one word—that’s why! I understand, of course, that I
have come to the vital point. The old man’s lying there now with his
skull broken, while I—after dramatically describing how I wanted to
kill him, and how I snatched up the pestle—I suddenly run away from the
window. A romance! Poetry! As though one could believe a fellow on his
word. Ha ha! You are scoffers, gentlemen!”

And he swung round on his chair so that it creaked.

“And did you notice,” asked the prosecutor suddenly, as though not
observing Mitya’s excitement, “did you notice when you ran away from
the window, whether the door into the garden was open?”

“No, it was not open.”

“It was not?”

“It was shut. And who could open it? Bah! the door. Wait a bit!” he
seemed suddenly to bethink himself, and almost with a start:

“Why, did you find the door open?”

“Yes, it was open.”

“Why, who could have opened it if you did not open it yourselves?”
cried Mitya, greatly astonished.

“The door stood open, and your father’s murderer undoubtedly went in at
that door, and, having accomplished the crime, went out again by the
same door,” the prosecutor pronounced deliberately, as though chiseling
out each word separately. “That is perfectly clear. The murder was
committed in the room and _not through the window_; that is absolutely
certain from the examination that has been made, from the position of
the body and everything. There can be no doubt of that circumstance.”

Mitya was absolutely dumbfounded.

“But that’s utterly impossible!” he cried, completely at a loss. “I ...
I didn’t go in.... I tell you positively, definitely, the door was shut
the whole time I was in the garden, and when I ran out of the garden. I
only stood at the window and saw him through the window. That’s all,
that’s all.... I remember to the last minute. And if I didn’t remember,
it would be just the same. I know it, for no one knew the signals
except Smerdyakov, and me, and the dead man. And he wouldn’t have
opened the door to any one in the world without the signals.”

“Signals? What signals?” asked the prosecutor, with greedy, almost
hysterical, curiosity. He instantly lost all trace of his reserve and
dignity. He asked the question with a sort of cringing timidity. He
scented an important fact of which he had known nothing, and was
already filled with dread that Mitya might be unwilling to disclose it.

“So you didn’t know!” Mitya winked at him with a malicious and mocking
smile. “What if I won’t tell you? From whom could you find out? No one
knew about the signals except my father, Smerdyakov, and me: that was
all. Heaven knew, too, but it won’t tell you. But it’s an interesting
fact. There’s no knowing what you might build on it. Ha ha! Take
comfort, gentlemen, I’ll reveal it. You’ve some foolish idea in your
hearts. You don’t know the man you have to deal with! You have to do
with a prisoner who gives evidence against himself, to his own damage!
Yes, for I’m a man of honor and you—are not.”

The prosecutor swallowed this without a murmur. He was trembling with
impatience to hear the new fact. Minutely and diffusely Mitya told them
everything about the signals invented by Fyodor Pavlovitch for
Smerdyakov. He told them exactly what every tap on the window meant,
tapped the signals on the table, and when Nikolay Parfenovitch said
that he supposed he, Mitya, had tapped the signal “Grushenka has come,”
when he tapped to his father, he answered precisely that he had tapped
that signal, that “Grushenka had come.”

“So now you can build up your tower,” Mitya broke off, and again turned
away from them contemptuously.

“So no one knew of the signals but your dead father, you, and the valet
Smerdyakov? And no one else?” Nikolay Parfenovitch inquired once more.

“Yes. The valet Smerdyakov, and Heaven. Write down about Heaven. That
may be of use. Besides, you will need God yourselves.”

And they had already, of course, begun writing it down. But while they
wrote, the prosecutor said suddenly, as though pitching on a new idea:

“But if Smerdyakov also knew of these signals and you absolutely deny
all responsibility for the death of your father, was it not he,
perhaps, who knocked the signal agreed upon, induced your father to
open to him, and then ... committed the crime?”

Mitya turned upon him a look of profound irony and intense hatred. His
silent stare lasted so long that it made the prosecutor blink.

“You’ve caught the fox again,” commented Mitya at last; “you’ve got the
beast by the tail. Ha ha! I see through you, Mr. Prosecutor. You
thought, of course, that I should jump at that, catch at your
prompting, and shout with all my might, ‘Aie! it’s Smerdyakov; he’s the
murderer.’ Confess that’s what you thought. Confess, and I’ll go on.”

But the prosecutor did not confess. He held his tongue and waited.

“You’re mistaken. I’m not going to shout ‘It’s Smerdyakov,’ ” said
Mitya.

“And you don’t even suspect him?”

“Why, do you suspect him?”

“He is suspected, too.”

Mitya fixed his eyes on the floor.

“Joking apart,” he brought out gloomily. “Listen. From the very
beginning, almost from the moment when I ran out to you from behind the
curtain, I’ve had the thought of Smerdyakov in my mind. I’ve been
sitting here, shouting that I’m innocent and thinking all the time
‘Smerdyakov!’ I can’t get Smerdyakov out of my head. In fact, I, too,
thought of Smerdyakov just now; but only for a second. Almost at once I
thought, ‘No, it’s not Smerdyakov.’ It’s not his doing, gentlemen.”

“In that case is there anybody else you suspect?” Nikolay Parfenovitch
inquired cautiously.

“I don’t know any one it could be, whether it’s the hand of Heaven or
Satan, but ... not Smerdyakov,” Mitya jerked out with decision.

“But what makes you affirm so confidently and emphatically that it’s
not he?”

“From my conviction—my impression. Because Smerdyakov is a man of the
most abject character and a coward. He’s not a coward, he’s the epitome
of all the cowardice in the world walking on two legs. He has the heart
of a chicken. When he talked to me, he was always trembling for fear I
should kill him, though I never raised my hand against him. He fell at
my feet and blubbered; he has kissed these very boots, literally,
beseeching me ‘not to frighten him.’ Do you hear? ‘Not to frighten
him.’ What a thing to say! Why, I offered him money. He’s a puling
chicken—sickly, epileptic, weak‐minded—a child of eight could thrash
him. He has no character worth talking about. It’s not Smerdyakov,
gentlemen. He doesn’t care for money; he wouldn’t take my presents.
Besides, what motive had he for murdering the old man? Why, he’s very
likely his son, you know—his natural son. Do you know that?”

“We have heard that legend. But you are your father’s son, too, you
know; yet you yourself told every one you meant to murder him.”

“That’s a thrust! And a nasty, mean one, too! I’m not afraid! Oh,
gentlemen, isn’t it too base of you to say that to my face? It’s base,
because I told you that myself. I not only wanted to murder him, but I
might have done it. And, what’s more, I went out of my way to tell you
of my own accord that I nearly murdered him. But, you see, I didn’t
murder him; you see, my guardian angel saved me—that’s what you’ve not
taken into account. And that’s why it’s so base of you. For I didn’t
kill him, I didn’t kill him! Do you hear, I did not kill him.”

He was almost choking. He had not been so moved before during the whole
interrogation.

“And what has he told you, gentlemen—Smerdyakov, I mean?” he added
suddenly, after a pause. “May I ask that question?”

“You may ask any question,” the prosecutor replied with frigid
severity, “any question relating to the facts of the case, and we are,
I repeat, bound to answer every inquiry you make. We found the servant
Smerdyakov, concerning whom you inquire, lying unconscious in his bed,
in an epileptic fit of extreme severity, that had recurred, possibly,
ten times. The doctor who was with us told us, after seeing him, that
he may possibly not outlive the night.”

“Well, if that’s so, the devil must have killed him,” broke suddenly
from Mitya, as though until that moment he had been asking himself:
“Was it Smerdyakov or not?”

“We will come back to this later,” Nikolay Parfenovitch decided. “Now,
wouldn’t you like to continue your statement?”

Mitya asked for a rest. His request was courteously granted. After
resting, he went on with his story. But he was evidently depressed. He
was exhausted, mortified and morally shaken. To make things worse the
prosecutor exasperated him, as though intentionally, by vexatious
interruptions about “trifling points.” Scarcely had Mitya described
how, sitting on the wall, he had struck Grigory on the head with the
pestle, while the old man had hold of his left leg, and how he had then
jumped down to look at him, when the prosecutor stopped him to ask him
to describe exactly how he was sitting on the wall. Mitya was
surprised.

“Oh, I was sitting like this, astride, one leg on one side of the wall
and one on the other.”

“And the pestle?”

“The pestle was in my hand.”

“Not in your pocket? Do you remember that precisely? Was it a violent
blow you gave him?”

“It must have been a violent one. But why do you ask?”

“Would you mind sitting on the chair just as you sat on the wall then
and showing us just how you moved your arm, and in what direction?”

“You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?” asked Mitya, looking haughtily
at the speaker; but the latter did not flinch.

Mitya turned abruptly, sat astride on his chair, and swung his arm.

“This was how I struck him! That’s how I knocked him down! What more do
you want?”

“Thank you. May I trouble you now to explain why you jumped down, with
what object, and what you had in view?”

“Oh, hang it!... I jumped down to look at the man I’d hurt ... I don’t
know what for!”

“Though you were so excited and were running away?”

“Yes, though I was excited and running away.”

“You wanted to help him?”

“Help!... Yes, perhaps I did want to help him.... I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember? Then you didn’t quite know what you were doing?”

“Not at all. I remember everything—every detail. I jumped down to look
at him, and wiped his face with my handkerchief.”

“We have seen your handkerchief. Did you hope to restore him to
consciousness?”

“I don’t know whether I hoped it. I simply wanted to make sure whether
he was alive or not.”

“Ah! You wanted to be sure? Well, what then?”

“I’m not a doctor. I couldn’t decide. I ran away thinking I’d killed
him. And now he’s recovered.”

“Excellent,” commented the prosecutor. “Thank you. That’s all I wanted.
Kindly proceed.”

Alas! it never entered Mitya’s head to tell them, though he remembered
it, that he had jumped back from pity, and standing over the prostrate
figure had even uttered some words of regret: “You’ve come to grief,
old man—there’s no help for it. Well, there you must lie.”

The prosecutor could only draw one conclusion: that the man had jumped
back “at such a moment and in such excitement simply with the object of
ascertaining whether the _only_ witness of his crime were dead; that he
must therefore have been a man of great strength, coolness, decision
and foresight even at such a moment,” ... and so on. The prosecutor was
satisfied: “I’ve provoked the nervous fellow by ‘trifles’ and he has
said more than he meant to.”

With painful effort Mitya went on. But this time he was pulled up
immediately by Nikolay Parfenovitch.

“How came you to run to the servant, Fedosya Markovna, with your hands
so covered with blood, and, as it appears, your face, too?”

“Why, I didn’t notice the blood at all at the time,” answered Mitya.

“That’s quite likely. It does happen sometimes.” The prosecutor
exchanged glances with Nikolay Parfenovitch.

“I simply didn’t notice. You’re quite right there, prosecutor,” Mitya
assented suddenly.

Next came the account of Mitya’s sudden determination to “step aside”
and make way for their happiness. But he could not make up his mind to
open his heart to them as before, and tell them about “the queen of his
soul.” He disliked speaking of her before these chilly persons “who
were fastening on him like bugs.” And so in response to their
reiterated questions he answered briefly and abruptly:

“Well, I made up my mind to kill myself. What had I left to live for?
That question stared me in the face. Her first rightful lover had come
back, the man who wronged her but who’d hurried back to offer his love,
after five years, and atone for the wrong with marriage.... So I knew
it was all over for me.... And behind me disgrace, and that
blood—Grigory’s.... What had I to live for? So I went to redeem the
pistols I had pledged, to load them and put a bullet in my brain
to‐morrow.”

“And a grand feast the night before?”

“Yes, a grand feast the night before. Damn it all, gentlemen! Do make
haste and finish it. I meant to shoot myself not far from here, beyond
the village, and I’d planned to do it at five o’clock in the morning.
And I had a note in my pocket already. I wrote it at Perhotin’s when I
loaded my pistols. Here’s the letter. Read it! It’s not for you I tell
it,” he added contemptuously. He took it from his waistcoat pocket and
flung it on the table. The lawyers read it with curiosity, and, as is
usual, added it to the papers connected with the case.

“And you didn’t even think of washing your hands at Perhotin’s? You
were not afraid then of arousing suspicion?”

“What suspicion? Suspicion or not, I should have galloped here just the
same, and shot myself at five o’clock, and you wouldn’t have been in
time to do anything. If it hadn’t been for what’s happened to my
father, you would have known nothing about it, and wouldn’t have come
here. Oh, it’s the devil’s doing. It was the devil murdered father, it
was through the devil that you found it out so soon. How did you manage
to get here so quick? It’s marvelous, a dream!”

“Mr. Perhotin informed us that when you came to him, you held in your
hands ... your blood‐stained hands ... your money ... a lot of money
... a bundle of hundred‐rouble notes, and that his servant‐boy saw it
too.”

“That’s true, gentlemen. I remember it was so.”

“Now, there’s one little point presents itself. Can you inform us,”
Nikolay Parfenovitch began, with extreme gentleness, “where did you get
so much money all of a sudden, when it appears from the facts, from the
reckoning of time, that you had not been home?”

The prosecutor’s brows contracted at the question being asked so
plainly, but he did not interrupt Nikolay Parfenovitch.

“No, I didn’t go home,” answered Mitya, apparently perfectly composed,
but looking at the floor.

“Allow me then to repeat my question,” Nikolay Parfenovitch went on as
though creeping up to the subject. “Where were you able to procure such
a sum all at once, when by your own confession, at five o’clock the
same day you—”

“I was in want of ten roubles and pledged my pistols with Perhotin, and
then went to Madame Hohlakov to borrow three thousand which she
wouldn’t give me, and so on, and all the rest of it,” Mitya interrupted
sharply. “Yes, gentlemen, I was in want of it, and suddenly thousands
turned up, eh? Do you know, gentlemen, you’re both afraid now ‘what if
he won’t tell us where he got it?’ That’s just how it is. I’m not going
to tell you, gentlemen. You’ve guessed right. You’ll never know,” said
Mitya, chipping out each word with extraordinary determination. The
lawyers were silent for a moment.

“You must understand, Mr. Karamazov, that it is of vital importance for
us to know,” said Nikolay Parfenovitch, softly and suavely.

“I understand; but still I won’t tell you.”

The prosecutor, too, intervened, and again reminded the prisoner that
he was at liberty to refuse to answer questions, if he thought it to
his interest, and so on. But in view of the damage he might do himself
by his silence, especially in a case of such importance as—

“And so on, gentlemen, and so on. Enough! I’ve heard that rigmarole
before,” Mitya interrupted again. “I can see for myself how important
it is, and that this is the vital point, and still I won’t say.”

“What is it to us? It’s not our business, but yours. You are doing
yourself harm,” observed Nikolay Parfenovitch nervously.

“You see, gentlemen, joking apart”—Mitya lifted his eyes and looked
firmly at them both—“I had an inkling from the first that we should
come to loggerheads at this point. But at first when I began to give my
evidence, it was all still far away and misty; it was all floating, and
I was so simple that I began with the supposition of mutual confidence
existing between us. Now I can see for myself that such confidence is
out of the question, for in any case we were bound to come to this
cursed stumbling‐ block. And now we’ve come to it! It’s impossible and
there’s an end of it! But I don’t blame you. You can’t believe it all
simply on my word. I understand that, of course.”

He relapsed into gloomy silence.

“Couldn’t you, without abandoning your resolution to be silent about
the chief point, could you not, at the same time, give us some slight
hint as to the nature of the motives which are strong enough to induce
you to refuse to answer, at a crisis so full of danger to you?”

Mitya smiled mournfully, almost dreamily.

“I’m much more good‐natured than you think, gentlemen. I’ll tell you
the reason why and give you that hint, though you don’t deserve it. I
won’t speak of that, gentlemen, because it would be a stain on my
honor. The answer to the question where I got the money would expose me
to far greater disgrace than the murder and robbing of my father, if I
had murdered and robbed him. That’s why I can’t tell you. I can’t for
fear of disgrace. What, gentlemen, are you going to write that down?”

“Yes, we’ll write it down,” lisped Nikolay Parfenovitch.

“You ought not to write that down about ‘disgrace.’ I only told you
that in the goodness of my heart. I needn’t have told you. I made you a
present of it, so to speak, and you pounce upon it at once. Oh, well,
write—write what you like,” he concluded, with scornful disgust. “I’m
not afraid of you and I can still hold up my head before you.”

“And can’t you tell us the nature of that disgrace?” Nikolay
Parfenovitch hazarded.

The prosecutor frowned darkly.

“No, no, _c’est fini_, don’t trouble yourselves. It’s not worth while
soiling one’s hands. I have soiled myself enough through you as it is.
You’re not worth it—no one is ... Enough, gentlemen. I’m not going on.”

This was said too peremptorily. Nikolay Parfenovitch did not insist
further, but from Ippolit Kirillovitch’s eyes he saw that he had not
given up hope.

“Can you not, at least, tell us what sum you had in your hands when you
went into Mr. Perhotin’s—how many roubles exactly?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“You spoke to Mr. Perhotin, I believe, of having received three
thousand from Madame Hohlakov.”

“Perhaps I did. Enough, gentlemen. I won’t say how much I had.”

“Will you be so good then as to tell us how you came here and what you
have done since you arrived?”

“Oh! you might ask the people here about that. But I’ll tell you if you
like.”

He proceeded to do so, but we won’t repeat his story. He told it dryly
and curtly. Of the raptures of his love he said nothing, but told them
that he abandoned his determination to shoot himself, owing to “new
factors in the case.” He told the story without going into motives or
details. And this time the lawyers did not worry him much. It was
obvious that there was no essential point of interest to them here.

“We shall verify all that. We will come back to it during the
examination of the witnesses, which will, of course, take place in your
presence,” said Nikolay Parfenovitch in conclusion. “And now allow me
to request you to lay on the table everything in your possession,
especially all the money you still have about you.”

“My money, gentlemen? Certainly. I understand that that is necessary.
I’m surprised, indeed, that you haven’t inquired about it before. It’s
true I couldn’t get away anywhere. I’m sitting here where I can be
seen. But here’s my money—count it—take it. That’s all, I think.”

He turned it all out of his pockets; even the small change—two pieces
of twenty copecks—he pulled out of his waistcoat pocket. They counted
the money, which amounted to eight hundred and thirty‐six roubles, and
forty copecks.

“And is that all?” asked the investigating lawyer.

“Yes.”

“You stated just now in your evidence that you spent three hundred
roubles at Plotnikovs’. You gave Perhotin ten, your driver twenty, here
you lost two hundred, then....”

Nikolay Parfenovitch reckoned it all up. Mitya helped him readily. They
recollected every farthing and included it in the reckoning. Nikolay
Parfenovitch hurriedly added up the total.

“With this eight hundred you must have had about fifteen hundred at
first?”

“I suppose so,” snapped Mitya.

“How is it they all assert there was much more?”

“Let them assert it.”

“But you asserted it yourself.”

“Yes, I did, too.”

“We will compare all this with the evidence of other persons not yet
examined. Don’t be anxious about your money. It will be properly taken
care of and be at your disposal at the conclusion of ... what is
beginning ... if it appears, or, so to speak, is proved that you have
undisputed right to it. Well, and now....”

Nikolay Parfenovitch suddenly got up, and informed Mitya firmly that it
was his duty and obligation to conduct a minute and thorough search “of
your clothes and everything else....”

“By all means, gentlemen. I’ll turn out all my pockets, if you like.”

And he did, in fact, begin turning out his pockets.

“It will be necessary to take off your clothes, too.”

“What! Undress? Ugh! Damn it! Won’t you search me as I am! Can’t you?”

“It’s utterly impossible, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. You must take off your
clothes.”

“As you like,” Mitya submitted gloomily; “only, please, not here, but
behind the curtains. Who will search them?”

“Behind the curtains, of course.”

Nikolay Parfenovitch bent his head in assent. His small face wore an
expression of peculiar solemnity.




Chapter VI.
The Prosecutor Catches Mitya


Something utterly unexpected and amazing to Mitya followed. He could
never, even a minute before, have conceived that any one could behave
like that to him, Mitya Karamazov. What was worst of all, there was
something humiliating in it, and on their side something “supercilious
and scornful.” It was nothing to take off his coat, but he was asked to
undress further, or rather not asked but “commanded,” he quite
understood that. From pride and contempt he submitted without a word.
Several peasants accompanied the lawyers and remained on the same side
of the curtain. “To be ready if force is required,” thought Mitya, “and
perhaps for some other reason, too.”

“Well, must I take off my shirt, too?” he asked sharply, but Nikolay
Parfenovitch did not answer. He was busily engaged with the prosecutor
in examining the coat, the trousers, the waistcoat and the cap; and it
was evident that they were both much interested in the scrutiny. “They
make no bones about it,” thought Mitya, “they don’t keep up the most
elementary politeness.”

“I ask you for the second time—need I take off my shirt or not?” he
said, still more sharply and irritably.

“Don’t trouble yourself. We will tell you what to do,” Nikolay
Parfenovitch said, and his voice was positively peremptory, or so it
seemed to Mitya.

Meantime a consultation was going on in undertones between the lawyers.
There turned out to be on the coat, especially on the left side at the
back, a huge patch of blood, dry, and still stiff. There were
bloodstains on the trousers, too. Nikolay Parfenovitch, moreover, in
the presence of the peasant witnesses, passed his fingers along the
collar, the cuffs, and all the seams of the coat and trousers,
obviously looking for something—money, of course. He didn’t even hide
from Mitya his suspicion that he was capable of sewing money up in his
clothes.

“He treats me not as an officer but as a thief,” Mitya muttered to
himself. They communicated their ideas to one another with amazing
frankness. The secretary, for instance, who was also behind the
curtain, fussing about and listening, called Nikolay Parfenovitch’s
attention to the cap, which they were also fingering.

“You remember Gridyenko, the copying‐clerk,” observed the secretary.
“Last summer he received the wages of the whole office, and pretended
to have lost the money when he was drunk. And where was it found? Why,
in just such pipings in his cap. The hundred‐rouble notes were screwed
up in little rolls and sewed in the piping.”

Both the lawyers remembered Gridyenko’s case perfectly, and so laid
aside Mitya’s cap, and decided that all his clothes must be more
thoroughly examined later.

“Excuse me,” cried Nikolay Parfenovitch, suddenly, noticing that the
right cuff of Mitya’s shirt was turned in, and covered with blood,
“excuse me, what’s that, blood?”

“Yes,” Mitya jerked out.

“That is, what blood? ... and why is the cuff turned in?”

Mitya told him how he had got the sleeve stained with blood looking
after Grigory, and had turned it inside when he was washing his hands
at Perhotin’s.

“You must take off your shirt, too. That’s very important as material
evidence.”

Mitya flushed red and flew into a rage.

“What, am I to stay naked?” he shouted.

“Don’t disturb yourself. We will arrange something. And meanwhile take
off your socks.”

“You’re not joking? Is that really necessary?” Mitya’s eyes flashed.

“We are in no mood for joking,” answered Nikolay Parfenovitch sternly.

“Well, if I must—” muttered Mitya, and sitting down on the bed, he took
off his socks. He felt unbearably awkward. All were clothed, while he
was naked, and strange to say, when he was undressed he felt somehow
guilty in their presence, and was almost ready to believe himself that
he was inferior to them, and that now they had a perfect right to
despise him.

“When all are undressed, one is somehow not ashamed, but when one’s the
only one undressed and everybody is looking, it’s degrading,” he kept
repeating to himself, again and again. “It’s like a dream, I’ve
sometimes dreamed of being in such degrading positions.” It was a
misery to him to take off his socks. They were very dirty, and so were
his underclothes, and now every one could see it. And what was worse,
he disliked his feet. All his life he had thought both his big toes
hideous. He particularly loathed the coarse, flat, crooked nail on the
right one, and now they would all see it. Feeling intolerably ashamed
made him, at once and intentionally, rougher. He pulled off his shirt,
himself.

“Would you like to look anywhere else if you’re not ashamed to?”

“No, there’s no need to, at present.”

“Well, am I to stay naked like this?” he added savagely.

“Yes, that can’t be helped for the time.... Kindly sit down here for a
while. You can wrap yourself in a quilt from the bed, and I ... I’ll
see to all this.”

All the things were shown to the witnesses. The report of the search
was drawn up, and at last Nikolay Parfenovitch went out, and the
clothes were carried out after him. Ippolit Kirillovitch went out, too.
Mitya was left alone with the peasants, who stood in silence, never
taking their eyes off him. Mitya wrapped himself up in the quilt. He
felt cold. His bare feet stuck out, and he couldn’t pull the quilt over
so as to cover them. Nikolay Parfenovitch seemed to be gone a long
time, “an insufferable time.” “He thinks of me as a puppy,” thought
Mitya, gnashing his teeth. “That rotten prosecutor has gone, too,
contemptuous no doubt, it disgusts him to see me naked!”

Mitya imagined, however, that his clothes would be examined and
returned to him. But what was his indignation when Nikolay Parfenovitch
came back with quite different clothes, brought in behind him by a
peasant.

“Here are clothes for you,” he observed airily, seeming well satisfied
with the success of his mission. “Mr. Kalganov has kindly provided
these for this unusual emergency, as well as a clean shirt. Luckily he
had them all in his trunk. You can keep your own socks and
underclothes.”

Mitya flew into a passion.

“I won’t have other people’s clothes!” he shouted menacingly, “give me
my own!”

“It’s impossible!”

“Give me my own. Damn Kalganov and his clothes, too!”

It was a long time before they could persuade him. But they succeeded
somehow in quieting him down. They impressed upon him that his clothes,
being stained with blood, must be “included with the other material
evidence,” and that they “had not even the right to let him have them
now ... taking into consideration the possible outcome of the case.”
Mitya at last understood this. He subsided into gloomy silence and
hurriedly dressed himself. He merely observed, as he put them on, that
the clothes were much better than his old ones, and that he disliked
“gaining by the change.” The coat was, besides, “ridiculously tight. Am
I to be dressed up like a fool ... for your amusement?”

They urged upon him again that he was exaggerating, that Kalganov was
only a little taller, so that only the trousers might be a little too
long. But the coat turned out to be really tight in the shoulders.

“Damn it all! I can hardly button it,” Mitya grumbled. “Be so good as
to tell Mr. Kalganov from me that I didn’t ask for his clothes, and
it’s not my doing that they’ve dressed me up like a clown.”

“He understands that, and is sorry ... I mean, not sorry to lend you
his clothes, but sorry about all this business,” mumbled Nikolay
Parfenovitch.

“Confound his sorrow! Well, where now? Am I to go on sitting here?”

He was asked to go back to the “other room.” Mitya went in, scowling
with anger, and trying to avoid looking at any one. Dressed in another
man’s clothes he felt himself disgraced, even in the eyes of the
peasants, and of Trifon Borissovitch, whose face appeared, for some
reason, in the doorway, and vanished immediately. “He’s come to look at
me dressed up,” thought Mitya. He sat down on the same chair as before.
He had an absurd nightmarish feeling, as though he were out of his
mind.

“Well, what now? Are you going to flog me? That’s all that’s left for
you,” he said, clenching his teeth and addressing the prosecutor. He
would not turn to Nikolay Parfenovitch, as though he disdained to speak
to him.

“He looked too closely at my socks, and turned them inside out on
purpose to show every one how dirty they were—the scoundrel!”

“Well, now we must proceed to the examination of witnesses,” observed
Nikolay Parfenovitch, as though in reply to Mitya’s question.

“Yes,” said the prosecutor thoughtfully, as though reflecting on
something.

“We’ve done what we could in your interest, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,”
Nikolay Parfenovitch went on, “but having received from you such an
uncompromising refusal to explain to us the source from which you
obtained the money found upon you, we are, at the present moment—”

“What is the stone in your ring?” Mitya interrupted suddenly, as though
awakening from a reverie. He pointed to one of the three large rings
adorning Nikolay Parfenovitch’s right hand.

“Ring?” repeated Nikolay Parfenovitch with surprise.

“Yes, that one ... on your middle finger, with the little veins in it,
what stone is that?” Mitya persisted, like a peevish child.

“That’s a smoky topaz,” said Nikolay Parfenovitch, smiling. “Would you
like to look at it? I’ll take it off ...”

“No, don’t take it off,” cried Mitya furiously, suddenly waking up, and
angry with himself. “Don’t take it off ... there’s no need.... Damn
it!... Gentlemen, you’ve sullied my heart! Can you suppose that I would
conceal it from you, if I had really killed my father, that I would
shuffle, lie, and hide myself? No, that’s not like Dmitri Karamazov,
that he couldn’t do, and if I were guilty, I swear I shouldn’t have
waited for your coming, or for the sunrise as I meant at first, but
should have killed myself before this, without waiting for the dawn! I
know that about myself now. I couldn’t have learnt so much in twenty
years as I’ve found out in this accursed night!... And should I have
been like this on this night, and at this moment, sitting with you,
could I have talked like this, could I have moved like this, could I
have looked at you and at the world like this, if I had really been the
murderer of my father, when the very thought of having accidentally
killed Grigory gave me no peace all night—not from fear—oh, not simply
from fear of your punishment! The disgrace of it! And you expect me to
be open with such scoffers as you, who see nothing and believe in
nothing, blind moles and scoffers, and to tell you another nasty thing
I’ve done, another disgrace, even if that would save me from your
accusation! No, better Siberia! The man who opened the door to my
father and went in at that door, he killed him, he robbed him. Who was
he? I’m racking my brains and can’t think who. But I can tell you it
was not Dmitri Karamazov, and that’s all I can tell you, and that’s
enough, enough, leave me alone.... Exile me, punish me, but don’t
bother me any more. I’ll say no more. Call your witnesses!”

Mitya uttered his sudden monologue as though he were determined to be
absolutely silent for the future. The prosecutor watched him the whole
time and only when he had ceased speaking, observed, as though it were
the most ordinary thing, with the most frigid and composed air:

“Oh, about the open door of which you spoke just now, we may as well
inform you, by the way, now, of a very interesting piece of evidence of
the greatest importance both to you and to us, that has been given us
by Grigory, the old man you wounded. On his recovery, he clearly and
emphatically stated, in reply to our questions, that when, on coming
out to the steps, and hearing a noise in the garden, he made up his
mind to go into it through the little gate which stood open, before he
noticed you running, as you have told us already, in the dark from the
open window where you saw your father, he, Grigory, glanced to the
left, and, while noticing the open window, observed at the same time,
much nearer to him, the door, standing wide open—that door which you
have stated to have been shut the whole time you were in the garden. I
will not conceal from you that Grigory himself confidently affirms and
bears witness that you must have run from that door, though, of course,
he did not see you do so with his own eyes, since he only noticed you
first some distance away in the garden, running towards the fence.”

Mitya had leapt up from his chair half‐way through this speech.

“Nonsense!” he yelled, in a sudden frenzy, “it’s a barefaced lie. He
couldn’t have seen the door open because it was shut. He’s lying!”

“I consider it my duty to repeat that he is firm in his statement. He
does not waver. He adheres to it. We’ve cross‐examined him several
times.”

“Precisely. I have cross‐examined him several times,” Nikolay
Parfenovitch confirmed warmly.

“It’s false, false! It’s either an attempt to slander me, or the
hallucination of a madman,” Mitya still shouted. “He’s simply raving,
from loss of blood, from the wound. He must have fancied it when he
came to.... He’s raving.”

“Yes, but he noticed the open door, not when he came to after his
injuries, but before that, as soon as he went into the garden from the
lodge.”

“But it’s false, it’s false! It can’t be so! He’s slandering me from
spite.... He couldn’t have seen it ... I didn’t come from the door,”
gasped Mitya.

The prosecutor turned to Nikolay Parfenovitch and said to him
impressively:

“Confront him with it.”

“Do you recognize this object?”

Nikolay Parfenovitch laid upon the table a large and thick official
envelope, on which three seals still remained intact. The envelope was
empty, and slit open at one end. Mitya stared at it with open eyes.

“It ... it must be that envelope of my father’s, the envelope that
contained the three thousand roubles ... and if there’s inscribed on
it, allow me, ‘For my little chicken’ ... yes—three thousand!” he
shouted, “do you see, three thousand, do you see?”

“Of course, we see. But we didn’t find the money in it. It was empty,
and lying on the floor by the bed, behind the screen.”

For some seconds Mitya stood as though thunderstruck.

“Gentlemen, it’s Smerdyakov!” he shouted suddenly, at the top of his
voice. “It’s he who’s murdered him! He’s robbed him! No one else knew
where the old man hid the envelope. It’s Smerdyakov, that’s clear,
now!”

“But you, too, knew of the envelope and that it was under the pillow.”

“I never knew it. I’ve never seen it. This is the first time I’ve
looked at it. I’d only heard of it from Smerdyakov.... He was the only
one who knew where the old man kept it hidden, I didn’t know ...” Mitya
was completely breathless.

“But you told us yourself that the envelope was under your deceased
father’s pillow. You especially stated that it was under the pillow, so
you must have known it.”

“We’ve got it written down,” confirmed Nikolay Parfenovitch.

“Nonsense! It’s absurd! I’d no idea it was under the pillow. And
perhaps it wasn’t under the pillow at all.... It was just a chance
guess that it was under the pillow. What does Smerdyakov say? Have you
asked him where it was? What does Smerdyakov say? that’s the chief
point.... And I went out of my way to tell lies against myself.... I
told you without thinking that it was under the pillow, and now you—
Oh, you know how one says the wrong thing, without meaning it. No one
knew but Smerdyakov, only Smerdyakov, and no one else.... He didn’t
even tell me where it was! But it’s his doing, his doing; there’s no
doubt about it, he murdered him, that’s as clear as daylight now,”
Mitya exclaimed more and more frantically, repeating himself
incoherently, and growing more and more exasperated and excited. “You
must understand that, and arrest him at once.... He must have killed
him while I was running away and while Grigory was unconscious, that’s
clear now.... He gave the signal and father opened to him ... for no
one but he knew the signal, and without the signal father would never
have opened the door....”

“But you’re again forgetting the circumstance,” the prosecutor
observed, still speaking with the same restraint, though with a note of
triumph, “that there was no need to give the signal if the door already
stood open when you were there, while you were in the garden....”

“The door, the door,” muttered Mitya, and he stared speechless at the
prosecutor. He sank back helpless in his chair. All were silent.

“Yes, the door!... It’s a nightmare! God is against me!” he exclaimed,
staring before him in complete stupefaction.

“Come, you see,” the prosecutor went on with dignity, “and you can
judge for yourself, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. On the one hand we have the
evidence of the open door from which you ran out, a fact which
overwhelms you and us. On the other side your incomprehensible,
persistent, and, so to speak, obdurate silence with regard to the
source from which you obtained the money which was so suddenly seen in
your hands, when only three hours earlier, on your own showing, you
pledged your pistols for the sake of ten roubles! In view of all these
facts, judge for yourself. What are we to believe, and what can we
depend upon? And don’t accuse us of being ‘frigid, cynical, scoffing
people,’ who are incapable of believing in the generous impulses of
your heart.... Try to enter into our position ...”

Mitya was indescribably agitated. He turned pale.

“Very well!” he exclaimed suddenly. “I will tell you my secret. I’ll
tell you where I got the money!... I’ll reveal my shame, that I may not
have to blame myself or you hereafter.”

“And believe me, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” put in Nikolay Parfenovitch, in
a voice of almost pathetic delight, “that every sincere and complete
confession on your part at this moment may, later on, have an immense
influence in your favor, and may, indeed, moreover—”

But the prosecutor gave him a slight shove under the table, and he
checked himself in time. Mitya, it is true, had not heard him.




Chapter VII.
Mitya’s Great Secret. Received With Hisses


“Gentlemen,” he began, still in the same agitation, “I want to make a
full confession: that money was _my own_.” The lawyers’ faces
lengthened. That was not at all what they expected.

“How do you mean?” faltered Nikolay Parfenovitch, “when at five o’clock
on the same day, from your own confession—”

“Damn five o’clock on the same day and my own confession! That’s
nothing to do with it now! That money was my own, my own, that is,
stolen by me ... not mine, I mean, but stolen by me, and it was fifteen
hundred roubles, and I had it on me all the time, all the time ...”

“But where did you get it?”

“I took it off my neck, gentlemen, off this very neck ... it was here,
round my neck, sewn up in a rag, and I’d had it round my neck a long
time, it’s a month since I put it round my neck ... to my shame and
disgrace!”

“And from whom did you ... appropriate it?”

“You mean, ‘steal it’? Speak out plainly now. Yes, I consider that I
practically stole it, but, if you prefer, I ‘appropriated it.’ I
consider I stole it. And last night I stole it finally.”

“Last night? But you said that it’s a month since you ... obtained
it?...”

“Yes. But not from my father. Not from my father, don’t be uneasy. I
didn’t steal it from my father, but from her. Let me tell you without
interrupting. It’s hard to do, you know. You see, a month ago, I was
sent for by Katerina Ivanovna, formerly my betrothed. Do you know her?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I know you know her. She’s a noble creature, noblest of the noble. But
she has hated me ever so long, oh, ever so long ... and hated me with
good reason, good reason!”

“Katerina Ivanovna!” Nikolay Parfenovitch exclaimed with wonder. The
prosecutor, too, stared.

“Oh, don’t take her name in vain! I’m a scoundrel to bring her into it.
Yes, I’ve seen that she hated me ... a long while.... From the very
first, even that evening at my lodging ... but enough, enough. You’re
unworthy even to know of that. No need of that at all.... I need only
tell you that she sent for me a month ago, gave me three thousand
roubles to send off to her sister and another relation in Moscow (as
though she couldn’t have sent it off herself!) and I ... it was just at
that fatal moment in my life when I ... well, in fact, when I’d just
come to love another, her, she’s sitting down below now, Grushenka. I
carried her off here to Mokroe then, and wasted here in two days half
that damned three thousand, but the other half I kept on me. Well, I’ve
kept that other half, that fifteen hundred, like a locket round my
neck, but yesterday I undid it, and spent it. What’s left of it, eight
hundred roubles, is in your hands now, Nikolay Parfenovitch. That’s the
change out of the fifteen hundred I had yesterday.”

“Excuse me. How’s that? Why, when you were here a month ago you spent
three thousand, not fifteen hundred, everybody knows that.”

“Who knows it? Who counted the money? Did I let any one count it?”

“Why, you told every one yourself that you’d spent exactly three
thousand.”

“It’s true, I did. I told the whole town so, and the whole town said
so. And here, at Mokroe, too, every one reckoned it was three thousand.
Yet I didn’t spend three thousand, but fifteen hundred. And the other
fifteen hundred I sewed into a little bag. That’s how it was,
gentlemen. That’s where I got that money yesterday....”

“This is almost miraculous,” murmured Nikolay Parfenovitch.

“Allow me to inquire,” observed the prosecutor at last, “have you
informed any one whatever of this circumstance before, I mean that you
had fifteen hundred left about you a month ago?”

“I told no one.”

“That’s strange. Do you mean absolutely no one?”

“Absolutely no one. No one and nobody.”

“What was your reason for this reticence? What was your motive for
making such a secret of it? To be more precise: You have told us at
last your secret, in your words, so ‘disgraceful,’ though in
reality—that is, of course, comparatively speaking—this action, that
is, the appropriation of three thousand roubles belonging to some one
else, and, of course, only for a time is, in my view at least, only an
act of the greatest recklessness and not so disgraceful, when one takes
into consideration your character.... Even admitting that it was an
action in the highest degree discreditable, still, discreditable is not
‘disgraceful.’... Many people have already guessed, during this last
month, about the three thousand of Katerina Ivanovna’s, that you have
spent, and I heard the legend myself, apart from your confession....
Mihail Makarovitch, for instance, had heard it, too, so that indeed, it
was scarcely a legend, but the gossip of the whole town. There are
indications, too, if I am not mistaken, that you confessed this
yourself to some one, I mean that the money was Katerina Ivanovna’s,
and so, it’s extremely surprising to me that hitherto, that is, up to
the present moment, you have made such an extraordinary secret of the
fifteen hundred you say you put by, apparently connecting a feeling of
positive horror with that secret.... It’s not easy to believe that it
could cost you such distress to confess such a secret.... You cried
out, just now, that Siberia would be better than confessing it ...”

The prosecutor ceased speaking. He was provoked. He did not conceal his
vexation, which was almost anger, and gave vent to all his accumulated
spleen, disconnectedly and incoherently, without choosing words.

“It’s not the fifteen hundred that’s the disgrace, but that I put it
apart from the rest of the three thousand,” said Mitya firmly.

“Why?” smiled the prosecutor irritably. “What is there disgraceful, to
your thinking, in your having set aside half of the three thousand you
had discreditably, if you prefer, ‘disgracefully,’ appropriated? Your
taking the three thousand is more important than what you did with it.
And by the way, why did you do that—why did you set apart that half,
for what purpose, for what object did you do it? Can you explain that
to us?”

“Oh, gentlemen, the purpose is the whole point!” cried Mitya. “I put it
aside because I was vile, that is, because I was calculating, and to be
calculating in such a case is vile ... and that vileness has been going
on a whole month.”

“It’s incomprehensible.”

“I wonder at you. But I’ll make it clearer. Perhaps it really is
incomprehensible. You see, attend to what I say. I appropriate three
thousand entrusted to my honor, I spend it on a spree, say I spend it
all, and next morning I go to her and say, ‘Katya, I’ve done wrong,
I’ve squandered your three thousand,’ well, is that right? No, it’s not
right—it’s dishonest and cowardly, I’m a beast, with no more
self‐control than a beast, that’s so, isn’t it? But still I’m not a
thief? Not a downright thief, you’ll admit! I squandered it, but I
didn’t steal it. Now a second, rather more favorable alternative:
follow me carefully, or I may get confused again—my head’s going
round—and so, for the second alternative: I spend here only fifteen
hundred out of the three thousand, that is, only half. Next day I go
and take that half to her: ‘Katya, take this fifteen hundred from me,
I’m a low beast, and an untrustworthy scoundrel, for I’ve wasted half
the money, and I shall waste this, too, so keep me from temptation!’
Well, what of that alternative? I should be a beast and a scoundrel,
and whatever you like; but not a thief, not altogether a thief, or I
should not have brought back what was left, but have kept that, too.
She would see at once that since I brought back half, I should pay back
what I’d spent, that I should never give up trying to, that I should
work to get it and pay it back. So in that case I should be a
scoundrel, but not a thief, you may say what you like, not a thief!”

“I admit that there is a certain distinction,” said the prosecutor,
with a cold smile. “But it’s strange that you see such a vital
difference.”

“Yes, I see a vital difference! Every man may be a scoundrel, and
perhaps every man is a scoundrel, but not every one can be a thief, it
takes an arch‐scoundrel to be that. Oh, of course, I don’t know how to
make these fine distinctions ... but a thief is lower than a scoundrel,
that’s my conviction. Listen, I carry the money about me a whole month,
I may make up my mind to give it back to‐morrow, and I’m a scoundrel no
longer, but I cannot make up my mind, you see, though I’m making up my
mind every day, and every day spurring myself on to do it, and yet for
a whole month I can’t bring myself to it, you see. Is that right to
your thinking, is that right?”

“Certainly, that’s not right, that I can quite understand, and that I
don’t dispute,” answered the prosecutor with reserve. “And let us give
up all discussion of these subtleties and distinctions, and, if you
will be so kind, get back to the point. And the point is, that you have
still not told us, altogether we’ve asked you, why, in the first place,
you halved the money, squandering one half and hiding the other? For
what purpose exactly did you hide it, what did you mean to do with that
fifteen hundred? I insist upon that question, Dmitri Fyodorovitch.”

“Yes, of course!” cried Mitya, striking himself on the forehead;
“forgive me, I’m worrying you, and am not explaining the chief point,
or you’d understand in a minute, for it’s just the motive of it that’s
the disgrace! You see, it was all to do with the old man, my dead
father. He was always pestering Agrafena Alexandrovna, and I was
jealous; I thought then that she was hesitating between me and him. So
I kept thinking every day, suppose she were to make up her mind all of
a sudden, suppose she were to leave off tormenting me, and were
suddenly to say to me, ‘I love you, not him; take me to the other end
of the world.’ And I’d only forty copecks; how could I take her away,
what could I do? Why, I’d be lost. You see, I didn’t know her then, I
didn’t understand her, I thought she wanted money, and that she
wouldn’t forgive my poverty. And so I fiendishly counted out the half
of that three thousand, sewed it up, calculating on it, sewed it up
before I was drunk, and after I had sewn it up, I went off to get drunk
on the rest. Yes, that was base. Do you understand now?”

Both the lawyers laughed aloud.

“I should have called it sensible and moral on your part not to have
squandered it all,” chuckled Nikolay Parfenovitch, “for after all what
does it amount to?”

“Why, that I stole it, that’s what it amounts to! Oh, God, you horrify
me by not understanding! Every day that I had that fifteen hundred sewn
up round my neck, every day and every hour I said to myself, ‘You’re a
thief! you’re a thief!’ Yes, that’s why I’ve been so savage all this
month, that’s why I fought in the tavern, that’s why I attacked my
father, it was because I felt I was a thief. I couldn’t make up my
mind, I didn’t dare even to tell Alyosha, my brother, about that
fifteen hundred: I felt I was such a scoundrel and such a pickpocket.
But, do you know, while I carried it I said to myself at the same time
every hour: ‘No, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, you may yet not be a thief.’ Why?
Because I might go next day and pay back that fifteen hundred to Katya.
And only yesterday I made up my mind to tear my amulet off my neck, on
my way from Fenya’s to Perhotin. I hadn’t been able till that moment to
bring myself to it. And it was only when I tore it off that I became a
downright thief, a thief and a dishonest man for the rest of my life.
Why? Because, with that I destroyed, too, my dream of going to Katya
and saying, ‘I’m a scoundrel, but not a thief!’ Do you understand now?
Do you understand?”

“What was it made you decide to do it yesterday?” Nikolay Parfenovitch
interrupted.

“Why? It’s absurd to ask. Because I had condemned myself to die at five
o’clock this morning, here, at dawn. I thought it made no difference
whether I died a thief or a man of honor. But I see it’s not so, it
turns out that it does make a difference. Believe me, gentlemen, what
has tortured me most during this night has not been the thought that
I’d killed the old servant, and that I was in danger of Siberia just
when my love was being rewarded, and Heaven was open to me again. Oh,
that did torture me, but not in the same way: not so much as the damned
consciousness that I had torn that damned money off my breast at last
and spent it, and had become a downright thief! Oh, gentlemen, I tell
you again, with a bleeding heart, I have learnt a great deal this
night. I have learnt that it’s not only impossible to live a scoundrel,
but impossible to die a scoundrel.... No, gentlemen, one must die
honest....”

Mitya was pale. His face had a haggard and exhausted look, in spite of
his being intensely excited.

“I am beginning to understand you, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” the prosecutor
said slowly, in a soft and almost compassionate tone. “But all this, if
you’ll excuse my saying so, is a matter of nerves, in my opinion ...
your overwrought nerves, that’s what it is. And why, for instance,
should you not have saved yourself such misery for almost a month, by
going and returning that fifteen hundred to the lady who had entrusted
it to you? And why could you not have explained things to her, and in
view of your position, which you describe as being so awful, why could
you not have had recourse to the plan which would so naturally have
occurred to one’s mind, that is, after honorably confessing your errors
to her, why could you not have asked her to lend you the sum needed for
your expenses, which, with her generous heart, she would certainly not
have refused you in your distress, especially if it had been with some
guarantee, or even on the security you offered to the merchant
Samsonov, and to Madame Hohlakov? I suppose you still regard that
security as of value?”

Mitya suddenly crimsoned.

“Surely you don’t think me such an out and out scoundrel as that? You
can’t be speaking in earnest?” he said, with indignation, looking the
prosecutor straight in the face, and seeming unable to believe his
ears.

“I assure you I’m in earnest.... Why do you imagine I’m not serious?”
It was the prosecutor’s turn to be surprised.

“Oh, how base that would have been! Gentlemen, do you know, you are
torturing me! Let me tell you everything, so be it. I’ll confess all my
infernal wickedness, but to put you to shame, and you’ll be surprised
yourselves at the depth of ignominy to which a medley of human passions
can sink. You must know that I already had that plan myself, that plan
you spoke of, just now, prosecutor! Yes, gentlemen, I, too, have had
that thought in my mind all this current month, so that I was on the
point of deciding to go to Katya—I was mean enough for that. But to go
to her, to tell her of my treachery, and for that very treachery, to
carry it out, for the expenses of that treachery, to beg for money from
her, Katya (to beg, do you hear, to beg), and go straight from her to
run away with the other, the rival, who hated and insulted her—to think
of it! You must be mad, prosecutor!”

“Mad I am not, but I did speak in haste, without thinking ... of that
feminine jealousy ... if there could be jealousy in this case, as you
assert ... yes, perhaps there is something of the kind,” said the
prosecutor, smiling.

“But that would have been so infamous!” Mitya brought his fist down on
the table fiercely. “That would have been filthy beyond everything!
Yes, do you know that she might have given me that money, yes, and she
would have given it, too; she’d have been certain to give it, to be
revenged on me, she’d have given it to satisfy her vengeance, to show
her contempt for me, for hers is an infernal nature, too, and she’s a
woman of great wrath. I’d have taken the money, too, oh, I should have
taken it; I should have taken it, and then, for the rest of my life ...
oh, God! Forgive me, gentlemen, I’m making such an outcry because I’ve
had that thought in my mind so lately, only the day before yesterday,
that night when I was having all that bother with Lyagavy, and
afterwards yesterday, all day yesterday, I remember, till that happened
...”

“Till what happened?” put in Nikolay Parfenovitch inquisitively, but
Mitya did not hear it.

“I have made you an awful confession,” Mitya said gloomily in
conclusion. “You must appreciate it, and what’s more, you must respect
it, for if not, if that leaves your souls untouched, then you’ve simply
no respect for me, gentlemen, I tell you that, and I shall die of shame
at having confessed it to men like you! Oh, I shall shoot myself! Yes,
I see, I see already that you don’t believe me. What, you want to write
that down, too?” he cried in dismay.

“Yes, what you said just now,” said Nikolay Parfenovitch, looking at
him in surprise, “that is, that up to the last hour you were still
contemplating going to Katerina Ivanovna to beg that sum from her.... I
assure you, that’s a very important piece of evidence for us, Dmitri
Fyodorovitch, I mean for the whole case ... and particularly for you,
particularly important for you.”

“Have mercy, gentlemen!” Mitya flung up his hands. “Don’t write that,
anyway; have some shame. Here I’ve torn my heart asunder before you,
and you seize the opportunity and are fingering the wounds in both
halves.... Oh, my God!”

In despair he hid his face in his hands.

“Don’t worry yourself so, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” observed the
prosecutor, “everything that is written down will be read over to you
afterwards, and what you don’t agree to we’ll alter as you like. But
now I’ll ask you one little question for the second time. Has no one,
absolutely no one, heard from you of that money you sewed up? That, I
must tell you, is almost impossible to believe.”

“No one, no one, I told you so before, or you’ve not understood
anything! Let me alone!”

“Very well, this matter is bound to be explained, and there’s plenty of
time for it, but meantime, consider; we have perhaps a dozen witnesses
that you yourself spread it abroad, and even shouted almost everywhere
about the three thousand you’d spent here; three thousand, not fifteen
hundred. And now, too, when you got hold of the money you had
yesterday, you gave many people to understand that you had brought
three thousand with you.”

“You’ve got not dozens, but hundreds of witnesses, two hundred
witnesses, two hundred have heard it, thousands have heard it!” cried
Mitya.

“Well, you see, all bear witness to it. And the word _all_ means
something.”

“It means nothing. I talked rot, and every one began repeating it.”

“But what need had you to ‘talk rot,’ as you call it?”

“The devil knows. From bravado perhaps ... at having wasted so much
money.... To try and forget that money I had sewn up, perhaps ... yes,
that was why ... damn it ... how often will you ask me that question?
Well, I told a fib, and that was the end of it, once I’d said it, I
didn’t care to correct it. What does a man tell lies for sometimes?”

“That’s very difficult to decide, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, what makes a man
tell lies,” observed the prosecutor impressively. “Tell me, though, was
that ‘amulet,’ as you call it, on your neck, a big thing?”

“No, not big.”

“How big, for instance?”

“If you fold a hundred‐rouble note in half, that would be the size.”

“You’d better show us the remains of it. You must have them somewhere.”

“Damnation, what nonsense! I don’t know where they are.”

“But excuse me: where and when did you take it off your neck? According
to your own evidence you didn’t go home.”

“When I was going from Fenya’s to Perhotin’s, on the way I tore it off
my neck and took out the money.”

“In the dark?”

“What should I want a light for? I did it with my fingers in one
minute.”

“Without scissors, in the street?”

“In the market‐place I think it was. Why scissors? It was an old rag.
It was torn in a minute.”

“Where did you put it afterwards?”

“I dropped it there.”

“Where was it, exactly?”

“In the market‐place, in the market‐place! The devil knows whereabouts.
What do you want to know for?”

“That’s extremely important, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. It would be material
evidence in your favor. How is it you don’t understand that? Who helped
you to sew it up a month ago?”

“No one helped me. I did it myself.”

“Can you sew?”

“A soldier has to know how to sew. No knowledge was needed to do that.”

“Where did you get the material, that is, the rag in which you sewed
the money?”

“Are you laughing at me?”

“Not at all. And we are in no mood for laughing, Dmitri Fyodorovitch.”

“I don’t know where I got the rag from—somewhere, I suppose.”

“I should have thought you couldn’t have forgotten it?”

“Upon my word, I don’t remember. I might have torn a bit off my linen.”

“That’s very interesting. We might find in your lodgings to‐morrow the
shirt or whatever it is from which you tore the rag. What sort of rag
was it, cloth or linen?”

“Goodness only knows what it was. Wait a bit.... I believe I didn’t
tear it off anything. It was a bit of calico.... I believe I sewed it
up in a cap of my landlady’s.”

“In your landlady’s cap?”

“Yes. I took it from her.”

“How did you get it?”

“You see, I remember once taking a cap for a rag, perhaps to wipe my
pen on. I took it without asking, because it was a worthless rag. I
tore it up, and I took the notes and sewed them up in it. I believe it
was in that very rag I sewed them. An old piece of calico, washed a
thousand times.”

“And you remember that for certain now?”

“I don’t know whether for certain. I think it was in the cap. But, hang
it, what does it matter?”

“In that case your landlady will remember that the thing was lost?”

“No, she won’t, she didn’t miss it. It was an old rag, I tell you, an
old rag not worth a farthing.”

“And where did you get the needle and thread?”

“I’ll stop now. I won’t say any more. Enough of it!” said Mitya, losing
his temper at last.

“It’s strange that you should have so completely forgotten where you
threw the pieces in the market‐place.”

“Give orders for the market‐place to be swept to‐morrow, and perhaps
you’ll find it,” said Mitya, sneering. “Enough, gentlemen, enough!” he
decided, in an exhausted voice. “I see you don’t believe me! Not for a
moment! It’s my fault, not yours. I ought not to have been so ready.
Why, why did I degrade myself by confessing my secret to you? It’s a
joke to you. I see that from your eyes. You led me on to it,
prosecutor? Sing a hymn of triumph if you can.... Damn you, you
torturers!”

He bent his head, and hid his face in his hands. The lawyers were
silent. A minute later he raised his head and looked at them almost
vacantly. His face now expressed complete, hopeless despair, and he sat
mute and passive as though hardly conscious of what was happening. In
the meantime they had to finish what they were about. They had
immediately to begin examining the witnesses. It was by now eight
o’clock in the morning. The lights had been extinguished long ago.
Mihail Makarovitch and Kalganov, who had been continually in and out of
the room all the while the interrogation had been going on, had now
both gone out again. The lawyers, too, looked very tired. It was a
wretched morning, the whole sky was overcast, and the rain streamed
down in bucketfuls. Mitya gazed blankly out of the window.

“May I look out of the window?” he asked Nikolay Parfenovitch,
suddenly.

“Oh, as much as you like,” the latter replied.

Mitya got up and went to the window.... The rain lashed against its
little greenish panes. He could see the muddy road just below the
house, and farther away, in the rain and mist, a row of poor, black,
dismal huts, looking even blacker and poorer in the rain. Mitya thought
of “Phœbus the golden‐haired,” and how he had meant to shoot himself at
his first ray. “Perhaps it would be even better on a morning like
this,” he thought with a smile, and suddenly, flinging his hand
downwards, he turned to his “torturers.”

“Gentlemen,” he cried, “I see that I am lost! But she? Tell me about
her, I beseech you. Surely she need not be ruined with me? She’s
innocent, you know, she was out of her mind when she cried last night
‘It’s all my fault!’ She’s done nothing, nothing! I’ve been grieving
over her all night as I sat with you.... Can’t you, won’t you tell me
what you are going to do with her now?”

“You can set your mind quite at rest on that score, Dmitri
Fyodorovitch,” the prosecutor answered at once, with evident alacrity.
“We have, so far, no grounds for interfering with the lady in whom you
are so interested. I trust that it may be the same in the later
development of the case.... On the contrary, we’ll do everything that
lies in our power in that matter. Set your mind completely at rest.”

“Gentlemen, I thank you. I knew that you were honest, straight‐forward
people in spite of everything. You’ve taken a load off my heart....
Well, what are we to do now? I’m ready.”

“Well, we ought to make haste. We must pass to examining the witnesses
without delay. That must be done in your presence and therefore—”

“Shouldn’t we have some tea first?” interposed Nikolay Parfenovitch, “I
think we’ve deserved it!”

They decided that if tea were ready downstairs (Mihail Makarovitch had,
no doubt, gone down to get some) they would have a glass and then “go
on and on,” putting off their proper breakfast until a more favorable
opportunity. Tea really was ready below, and was soon brought up. Mitya
at first refused the glass that Nikolay Parfenovitch politely offered
him, but afterwards he asked for it himself and drank it greedily. He
looked surprisingly exhausted. It might have been supposed from his
Herculean strength that one night of carousing, even accompanied by the
most violent emotions, could have had little effect on him. But he felt
that he could hardly hold his head up, and from time to time all the
objects about him seemed heaving and dancing before his eyes. “A little
more and I shall begin raving,” he said to himself.




Chapter VIII.
The Evidence Of The Witnesses. The Babe


The examination of the witnesses began. But we will not continue our
story in such detail as before. And so we will not dwell on how Nikolay
Parfenovitch impressed on every witness called that he must give his
evidence in accordance with truth and conscience, and that he would
afterwards have to repeat his evidence on oath, how every witness was
called upon to sign the protocol of his evidence, and so on. We will
only note that the point principally insisted upon in the examination
was the question of the three thousand roubles, that is, was the sum
spent here, at Mokroe, by Mitya on the first occasion, a month before,
three thousand or fifteen hundred? And again had he spent three
thousand or fifteen hundred yesterday? Alas, all the evidence given by
every one turned out to be against Mitya. There was not one in his
favor, and some witnesses introduced new, almost crushing facts, in
contradiction of his, Mitya’s, story.

The first witness examined was Trifon Borissovitch. He was not in the
least abashed as he stood before the lawyers. He had, on the contrary,
an air of stern and severe indignation with the accused, which gave him
an appearance of truthfulness and personal dignity. He spoke little,
and with reserve, waited to be questioned, answered precisely and
deliberately. Firmly and unhesitatingly he bore witness that the sum
spent a month before could not have been less than three thousand, that
all the peasants about here would testify that they had heard the sum
of three thousand mentioned by Dmitri Fyodorovitch himself. “What a lot
of money he flung away on the gypsy girls alone! He wasted a thousand,
I daresay, on them alone.”

“I don’t believe I gave them five hundred,” was Mitya’s gloomy comment
on this. “It’s a pity I didn’t count the money at the time, but I was
drunk....”

Mitya was sitting sideways with his back to the curtains. He listened
gloomily, with a melancholy and exhausted air, as though he would say:

“Oh, say what you like. It makes no difference now.”

“More than a thousand went on them, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” retorted
Trifon Borissovitch firmly. “You flung it about at random and they
picked it up. They were a rascally, thievish lot, horse‐stealers,
they’ve been driven away from here, or maybe they’d bear witness
themselves how much they got from you. I saw the sum in your hands,
myself—count it I didn’t, you didn’t let me, that’s true enough—but by
the look of it I should say it was far more than fifteen hundred ...
fifteen hundred, indeed! We’ve seen money too. We can judge of
amounts....”

As for the sum spent yesterday he asserted that Dmitri Fyodorovitch had
told him, as soon as he arrived, that he had brought three thousand
with him.

“Come now, is that so, Trifon Borissovitch?” replied Mitya. “Surely I
didn’t declare so positively that I’d brought three thousand?”

“You did say so, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. You said it before Andrey. Andrey
himself is still here. Send for him. And in the hall, when you were
treating the chorus, you shouted straight out that you would leave your
sixth thousand here—that is with what you spent before, we must
understand. Stepan and Semyon heard it, and Pyotr Fomitch Kalganov,
too, was standing beside you at the time. Maybe he’d remember it....”

The evidence as to the “sixth” thousand made an extraordinary
impression on the two lawyers. They were delighted with this new mode
of reckoning; three and three made six, three thousand then and three
now made six, that was clear.

They questioned all the peasants suggested by Trifon Borissovitch,
Stepan and Semyon, the driver Andrey, and Kalganov. The peasants and
the driver unhesitatingly confirmed Trifon Borissovitch’s evidence.
They noted down, with particular care, Andrey’s account of the
conversation he had had with Mitya on the road: “ ‘Where,’ says he, ‘am
I, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, going, to heaven or to hell, and shall I be
forgiven in the next world or not?’ ”

The psychological Ippolit Kirillovitch heard this with a subtle smile,
and ended by recommending that these remarks as to where Dmitri
Fyodorovitch would go should be “included in the case.”

Kalganov, when called, came in reluctantly, frowning and ill‐humored,
and he spoke to the lawyers as though he had never met them before in
his life, though they were acquaintances whom he had been meeting every
day for a long time past. He began by saying that “he knew nothing
about it and didn’t want to.” But it appeared that he had heard of the
“sixth” thousand, and he admitted that he had been standing close by at
the moment. As far as he could see he “didn’t know” how much money
Mitya had in his hands. He affirmed that the Poles had cheated at
cards. In reply to reiterated questions he stated that, after the Poles
had been turned out, Mitya’s position with Agrafena Alexandrovna had
certainly improved, and that she had said that she loved him. He spoke
of Agrafena Alexandrovna with reserve and respect, as though she had
been a lady of the best society, and did not once allow himself to call
her Grushenka. In spite of the young man’s obvious repugnance at giving
evidence, Ippolit Kirillovitch examined him at great length, and only
from him learnt all the details of what made up Mitya’s “romance,” so
to say, on that night. Mitya did not once pull Kalganov up. At last
they let the young man go, and he left the room with unconcealed
indignation.

The Poles, too, were examined. Though they had gone to bed in their
room, they had not slept all night, and on the arrival of the police
officers they hastily dressed and got ready, realizing that they would
certainly be sent for. They gave their evidence with dignity, though
not without some uneasiness. The little Pole turned out to be a retired
official of the twelfth class, who had served in Siberia as a
veterinary surgeon. His name was Mussyalovitch. Pan Vrublevsky turned
out to be an uncertificated dentist. Although Nikolay Parfenovitch
asked them questions on entering the room they both addressed their
answers to Mihail Makarovitch, who was standing on one side, taking him
in their ignorance for the most important person and in command, and
addressed him at every word as “Pan Colonel.” Only after several
reproofs from Mihail Makarovitch himself, they grasped that they had to
address their answers to Nikolay Parfenovitch only. It turned out that
they could speak Russian quite correctly except for their accent in
some words. Of his relations with Grushenka, past and present, Pan
Mussyalovitch spoke proudly and warmly, so that Mitya was roused at
once and declared that he would not allow the “scoundrel” to speak like
that in his presence! Pan Mussyalovitch at once called attention to the
word “scoundrel” and begged that it should be put down in the protocol.
Mitya fumed with rage.

“He’s a scoundrel! A scoundrel! You can put that down. And put down,
too, that, in spite of the protocol I still declare that he’s a
scoundrel!” he cried.

Though Nikolay Parfenovitch did insert this in the protocol, he showed
the most praiseworthy tact and management. After sternly reprimanding
Mitya, he cut short all further inquiry into the romantic aspect of the
case, and hastened to pass to what was essential. One piece of evidence
given by the Poles roused special interest in the lawyers: that was
how, in that very room, Mitya had tried to buy off Pan Mussyalovitch,
and had offered him three thousand roubles to resign his claims, seven
hundred roubles down, and the remaining two thousand three hundred “to
be paid next day in the town.” He had sworn at the time that he had not
the whole sum with him at Mokroe, but that his money was in the town.
Mitya observed hotly that he had not said that he would be sure to pay
him the remainder next day in the town. But Pan Vrublevsky confirmed
the statement, and Mitya, after thinking for a moment admitted,
frowning, that it must have been as the Poles stated, that he had been
excited at the time, and might indeed have said so.

The prosecutor positively pounced on this piece of evidence. It seemed
to establish for the prosecution (and they did, in fact, base this
deduction on it) that half, or a part of, the three thousand that had
come into Mitya’s hands might really have been left somewhere hidden in
the town, or even, perhaps, somewhere here, in Mokroe. This would
explain the circumstance, so baffling for the prosecution, that only
eight hundred roubles were to be found in Mitya’s hands. This
circumstance had been the one piece of evidence which, insignificant as
it was, had hitherto told, to some extent, in Mitya’s favor. Now this
one piece of evidence in his favor had broken down. In answer to the
prosecutor’s inquiry, where he would have got the remaining two
thousand three hundred roubles, since he himself had denied having more
than fifteen hundred, Mitya confidently replied that he had meant to
offer the “little chap,” not money, but a formal deed of conveyance of
his rights to the village of Tchermashnya, those rights which he had
already offered to Samsonov and Madame Hohlakov. The prosecutor
positively smiled at the “innocence of this subterfuge.”

“And you imagine he would have accepted such a deed as a substitute for
two thousand three hundred roubles in cash?”

“He certainly would have accepted it,” Mitya declared warmly. “Why,
look here, he might have grabbed not two thousand, but four or six, for
it. He would have put his lawyers, Poles and Jews, on to the job, and
might have got, not three thousand, but the whole property out of the
old man.”

The evidence of Pan Mussyalovitch was, of course, entered in the
protocol in the fullest detail. Then they let the Poles go. The
incident of the cheating at cards was hardly touched upon. Nikolay
Parfenovitch was too well pleased with them, as it was, and did not
want to worry them with trifles, moreover, it was nothing but a
foolish, drunken quarrel over cards. There had been drinking and
disorder enough, that night.... So the two hundred roubles remained in
the pockets of the Poles.

Then old Maximov was summoned. He came in timidly, approached with
little steps, looking very disheveled and depressed. He had, all this
time, taken refuge below with Grushenka, sitting dumbly beside her, and
“now and then he’d begin blubbering over her and wiping his eyes with a
blue check handkerchief,” as Mihail Makarovitch described afterwards.
So that she herself began trying to pacify and comfort him. The old man
at once confessed that he had done wrong, that he had borrowed “ten
roubles in my poverty,” from Dmitri Fyodorovitch, and that he was ready
to pay it back. To Nikolay Parfenovitch’s direct question, had he
noticed how much money Dmitri Fyodorovitch held in his hand, as he must
have been able to see the sum better than any one when he took the note
from him, Maximov, in the most positive manner, declared that there was
twenty thousand.

“Have you ever seen so much as twenty thousand before, then?” inquired
Nikolay Parfenovitch, with a smile.

“To be sure I have, not twenty, but seven, when my wife mortgaged my
little property. She’d only let me look at it from a distance, boasting
of it to me. It was a very thick bundle, all rainbow‐colored notes. And
Dmitri Fyodorovitch’s were all rainbow‐colored....”

He was not kept long. At last it was Grushenka’s turn. Nikolay
Parfenovitch was obviously apprehensive of the effect her appearance
might have on Mitya, and he muttered a few words of admonition to him,
but Mitya bowed his head in silence, giving him to understand “that he
would not make a scene.” Mihail Makarovitch himself led Grushenka in.
She entered with a stern and gloomy face, that looked almost composed
and sat down quietly on the chair offered her by Nikolay Parfenovitch.
She was very pale, she seemed to be cold, and wrapped herself closely
in her magnificent black shawl. She was suffering from a slight
feverish chill—the first symptom of the long illness which followed
that night. Her grave air, her direct earnest look and quiet manner
made a very favorable impression on every one. Nikolay Parfenovitch was
even a little bit “fascinated.” He admitted himself, when talking about
it afterwards, that only then had he seen “how handsome the woman was,”
for, though he had seen her several times before, he had always looked
upon her as something of a “provincial hetaira.” “She has the manners
of the best society,” he said enthusiastically, gossiping about her in
a circle of ladies. But this was received with positive indignation by
the ladies, who immediately called him a “naughty man,” to his great
satisfaction.

As she entered the room, Grushenka only glanced for an instant at
Mitya, who looked at her uneasily. But her face reassured him at once.
After the first inevitable inquiries and warnings, Nikolay Parfenovitch
asked her, hesitating a little, but preserving the most courteous
manner, on what terms she was with the retired lieutenant, Dmitri
Fyodorovitch Karamazov. To this Grushenka firmly and quietly replied:

“He was an acquaintance. He came to see me as an acquaintance during
the last month.” To further inquisitive questions she answered plainly
and with complete frankness, that, though “at times” she had thought
him attractive, she had not loved him, but had won his heart as well as
his old father’s “in my nasty spite,” that she had seen that Mitya was
very jealous of Fyodor Pavlovitch and every one else; but that had only
amused her. She had never meant to go to Fyodor Pavlovitch, she had
simply been laughing at him. “I had no thoughts for either of them all
this last month. I was expecting another man who had wronged me. But I
think,” she said in conclusion, “that there’s no need for you to
inquire about that, nor for me to answer you, for that’s my own
affair.”

Nikolay Parfenovitch immediately acted upon this hint. He again
dismissed the “romantic” aspect of the case and passed to the serious
one, that is, to the question of most importance, concerning the three
thousand roubles. Grushenka confirmed the statement that three thousand
roubles had certainly been spent on the first carousal at Mokroe, and,
though she had not counted the money herself, she had heard that it was
three thousand from Dmitri Fyodorovitch’s own lips.

“Did he tell you that alone, or before some one else, or did you only
hear him speak of it to others in your presence?” the prosecutor
inquired immediately.

To which Grushenka replied that she had heard him say so before other
people, and had heard him say so when they were alone.

“Did he say it to you alone once, or several times?” inquired the
prosecutor, and learned that he had told Grushenka so several times.

Ippolit Kirillovitch was very well satisfied with this piece of
evidence. Further examination elicited that Grushenka knew, too, where
that money had come from, and that Dmitri Fyodorovitch had got it from
Katerina Ivanovna.

“And did you never, once, hear that the money spent a month ago was not
three thousand, but less, and that Dmitri Fyodorovitch had saved half
that sum for his own use?”

“No, I never heard that,” answered Grushenka.

It was explained further that Mitya had, on the contrary, often told
her that he hadn’t a farthing.

“He was always expecting to get some from his father,” said Grushenka
in conclusion.

“Did he never say before you ... casually, or in a moment of
irritation,” Nikolay Parfenovitch put in suddenly, “that he intended to
make an attempt on his father’s life?”

“Ach, he did say so,” sighed Grushenka.

“Once or several times?”

“He mentioned it several times, always in anger.”

“And did you believe he would do it?”

“No, I never believed it,” she answered firmly. “I had faith in his
noble heart.”

“Gentlemen, allow me,” cried Mitya suddenly, “allow me to say one word
to Agrafena Alexandrovna, in your presence.”

“You can speak,” Nikolay Parfenovitch assented.

“Agrafena Alexandrovna!” Mitya got up from his chair, “have faith in
God and in me. I am not guilty of my father’s murder!”

Having uttered these words Mitya sat down again on his chair. Grushenka
stood up and crossed herself devoutly before the ikon. “Thanks be to
Thee, O Lord,” she said, in a voice thrilled with emotion, and still
standing, she turned to Nikolay Parfenovitch and added:

“As he has spoken now, believe it! I know him. He’ll say anything as a
joke or from obstinacy, but he’ll never deceive you against his
conscience. He’s telling the whole truth, you may believe it.”

“Thanks, Agrafena Alexandrovna, you’ve given me fresh courage,” Mitya
responded in a quivering voice.

As to the money spent the previous day, she declared that she did not
know what sum it was, but had heard him tell several people that he had
three thousand with him. And to the question where he got the money,
she said that he had told her that he had “stolen” it from Katerina
Ivanovna, and that she had replied to that that he hadn’t stolen it,
and that he must pay the money back next day. On the prosecutor’s
asking her emphatically whether the money he said he had stolen from
Katerina Ivanovna was what he had spent yesterday, or what he had
squandered here a month ago, she declared that he meant the money spent
a month ago, and that that was how she understood him.

Grushenka was at last released, and Nikolay Parfenovitch informed her
impulsively that she might at once return to the town and that if he
could be of any assistance to her, with horses for example, or if she
would care for an escort, he ... would be—

“I thank you sincerely,” said Grushenka, bowing to him, “I’m going with
this old gentleman, I am driving him back to town with me, and
meanwhile, if you’ll allow me, I’ll wait below to hear what you decide
about Dmitri Fyodorovitch.”

She went out. Mitya was calm, and even looked more cheerful, but only
for a moment. He felt more and more oppressed by a strange physical
weakness. His eyes were closing with fatigue. The examination of the
witnesses was, at last, over. They proceeded to a final revision of the
protocol. Mitya got up, moved from his chair to the corner by the
curtain, lay down on a large chest covered with a rug, and instantly
fell asleep.

He had a strange dream, utterly out of keeping with the place and the
time.

He was driving somewhere in the steppes, where he had been stationed
long ago, and a peasant was driving him in a cart with a pair of
horses, through snow and sleet. He was cold, it was early in November,
and the snow was falling in big wet flakes, melting as soon as it
touched the earth. And the peasant drove him smartly, he had a fair,
long beard. He was not an old man, somewhere about fifty, and he had on
a gray peasant’s smock. Not far off was a village, he could see the
black huts, and half the huts were burnt down, there were only the
charred beams sticking up. And as they drove in, there were peasant
women drawn up along the road, a lot of women, a whole row, all thin
and wan, with their faces a sort of brownish color, especially one at
the edge, a tall, bony woman, who looked forty, but might have been
only twenty, with a long thin face. And in her arms was a little baby
crying. And her breasts seemed so dried up that there was not a drop of
milk in them. And the child cried and cried, and held out its little
bare arms, with its little fists blue from cold.

“Why are they crying? Why are they crying?” Mitya asked, as they dashed
gayly by.

“It’s the babe,” answered the driver, “the babe weeping.”

And Mitya was struck by his saying, in his peasant way, “the babe,” and
he liked the peasant’s calling it a “babe.” There seemed more pity in
it.

“But why is it weeping?” Mitya persisted stupidly, “why are its little
arms bare? Why don’t they wrap it up?”

“The babe’s cold, its little clothes are frozen and don’t warm it.”

“But why is it? Why?” foolish Mitya still persisted.

“Why, they’re poor people, burnt out. They’ve no bread. They’re begging
because they’ve been burnt out.”

“No, no,” Mitya, as it were, still did not understand. “Tell me why it
is those poor mothers stand there? Why are people poor? Why is the babe
poor? Why is the steppe barren? Why don’t they hug each other and kiss?
Why don’t they sing songs of joy? Why are they so dark from black
misery? Why don’t they feed the babe?”

And he felt that, though his questions were unreasonable and senseless,
yet he wanted to ask just that, and he had to ask it just in that way.
And he felt that a passion of pity, such as he had never known before,
was rising in his heart, that he wanted to cry, that he wanted to do
something for them all, so that the babe should weep no more, so that
the dark‐ faced, dried‐up mother should not weep, that no one should
shed tears again from that moment, and he wanted to do it at once, at
once, regardless of all obstacles, with all the recklessness of the
Karamazovs.

“And I’m coming with you. I won’t leave you now for the rest of my
life, I’m coming with you,” he heard close beside him Grushenka’s
tender voice, thrilling with emotion. And his heart glowed, and he
struggled forward towards the light, and he longed to live, to live, to
go on and on, towards the new, beckoning light, and to hasten, hasten,
now, at once!

“What! Where?” he exclaimed opening his eyes, and sitting up on the
chest, as though he had revived from a swoon, smiling brightly. Nikolay
Parfenovitch was standing over him, suggesting that he should hear the
protocol read aloud and sign it. Mitya guessed that he had been asleep
an hour or more, but he did not hear Nikolay Parfenovitch. He was
suddenly struck by the fact that there was a pillow under his head,
which hadn’t been there when he had leant back, exhausted, on the
chest.

“Who put that pillow under my head? Who was so kind?” he cried, with a
sort of ecstatic gratitude, and tears in his voice, as though some
great kindness had been shown him.

He never found out who this kind man was; perhaps one of the peasant
witnesses, or Nikolay Parfenovitch’s little secretary, had
compassionately thought to put a pillow under his head; but his whole
soul was quivering with tears. He went to the table and said that he
would sign whatever they liked.

“I’ve had a good dream, gentlemen,” he said in a strange voice, with a
new light, as of joy, in his face.




Chapter IX.
They Carry Mitya Away


When the protocol had been signed, Nikolay Parfenovitch turned solemnly
to the prisoner and read him the “Committal,” setting forth, that in
such a year, on such a day, in such a place, the investigating lawyer
of such‐ and‐such a district court, having examined so‐and‐so (to wit,
Mitya) accused of this and of that (all the charges were carefully
written out) and having considered that the accused, not pleading
guilty to the charges made against him, had brought forward nothing in
his defense, while the witnesses, so‐and‐so, and so‐and‐so, and the
circumstances such‐and‐such testify against him, acting in accordance
with such‐and‐such articles of the Statute Book, and so on, has ruled,
that, in order to preclude so‐and‐ so (Mitya) from all means of evading
pursuit and judgment he be detained in such‐and‐such a prison, which he
hereby notifies to the accused and communicates a copy of this same
“Committal” to the deputy prosecutor, and so on, and so on.

In brief, Mitya was informed that he was, from that moment, a prisoner,
and that he would be driven at once to the town, and there shut up in a
very unpleasant place. Mitya listened attentively, and only shrugged
his shoulders.

“Well, gentlemen, I don’t blame you. I’m ready.... I understand that
there’s nothing else for you to do.”

Nikolay Parfenovitch informed him gently that he would be escorted at
once by the rural police officer, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, who happened
to be on the spot....

“Stay,” Mitya interrupted, suddenly, and impelled by uncontrollable
feeling he pronounced, addressing all in the room:

“Gentlemen, we’re all cruel, we’re all monsters, we all make men weep,
and mothers, and babes at the breast, but of all, let it be settled
here, now, of all I am the lowest reptile! I’ve sworn to amend, and
every day I’ve done the same filthy things. I understand now that such
men as I need a blow, a blow of destiny to catch them as with a noose,
and bind them by a force from without. Never, never should I have risen
of myself! But the thunderbolt has fallen. I accept the torture of
accusation, and my public shame, I want to suffer and by suffering I
shall be purified. Perhaps I shall be purified, gentlemen? But listen,
for the last time, I am not guilty of my father’s blood. I accept my
punishment, not because I killed him, but because I meant to kill him,
and perhaps I really might have killed him. Still I mean to fight it
out with you. I warn you of that. I’ll fight it out with you to the
end, and then God will decide. Good‐by, gentlemen, don’t be vexed with
me for having shouted at you during the examination. Oh, I was still
such a fool then.... In another minute I shall be a prisoner, but now,
for the last time, as a free man, Dmitri Karamazov offers you his hand.
Saying good‐by to you, I say it to all men.”

His voice quivered and he stretched out his hand, but Nikolay
Parfenovitch, who happened to stand nearest to him, with a sudden,
almost nervous movement, hid his hands behind his back. Mitya instantly
noticed this, and started. He let his outstretched hand fall at once.

“The preliminary inquiry is not yet over,” Nikolay Parfenovitch
faltered, somewhat embarrassed. “We will continue it in the town, and
I, for my part, of course, am ready to wish you all success ... in your
defense.... As a matter of fact, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, I’ve always been
disposed to regard you as, so to speak, more unfortunate than guilty.
All of us here, if I may make bold to speak for all, we are all ready
to recognize that you are, at bottom, a young man of honor, but, alas,
one who has been carried away by certain passions to a somewhat
excessive degree....”

Nikolay Parfenovitch’s little figure was positively majestic by the
time he had finished speaking. It struck Mitya that in another minute
this “boy” would take his arm, lead him to another corner, and renew
their conversation about “girls.” But many quite irrelevant and
inappropriate thoughts sometimes occur even to a prisoner when he is
being led out to execution.

“Gentlemen, you are good, you are humane, may I see _her_ to say
‘good‐by’ for the last time?” asked Mitya.

“Certainly, but considering ... in fact, now it’s impossible except in
the presence of—”

“Oh, well, if it must be so, it must!”

Grushenka was brought in, but the farewell was brief, and of few words,
and did not at all satisfy Nikolay Parfenovitch. Grushenka made a deep
bow to Mitya.

“I have told you I am yours, and I will be yours. I will follow you for
ever, wherever they may send you. Farewell; you are guiltless, though
you’ve been your own undoing.”

Her lips quivered, tears flowed from her eyes.

“Forgive me, Grusha, for my love, for ruining you, too, with my love.”

Mitya would have said something more, but he broke off and went out. He
was at once surrounded by men who kept a constant watch on him. At the
bottom of the steps to which he had driven up with such a dash the day
before with Andrey’s three horses, two carts stood in readiness.
Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, a sturdy, thick‐set man with a wrinkled face,
was annoyed about something, some sudden irregularity. He was shouting
angrily. He asked Mitya to get into the cart with somewhat excessive
surliness.

“When I stood him drinks in the tavern, the man had quite a different
face,” thought Mitya, as he got in. At the gates there was a crowd of
people, peasants, women and drivers. Trifon Borissovitch came down the
steps too. All stared at Mitya.

“Forgive me at parting, good people!” Mitya shouted suddenly from the
cart.

“Forgive us too!” he heard two or three voices.

“Good‐by to you, too, Trifon Borissovitch!”

But Trifon Borissovitch did not even turn round. He was, perhaps, too
busy. He, too, was shouting and fussing about something. It appeared
that everything was not yet ready in the second cart, in which two
constables were to accompany Mavriky Mavrikyevitch. The peasant who had
been ordered to drive the second cart was pulling on his smock, stoutly
maintaining that it was not his turn to go, but Akim’s. But Akim was
not to be seen. They ran to look for him. The peasant persisted and
besought them to wait.

“You see what our peasants are, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch. They’ve no
shame!” exclaimed Trifon Borissovitch. “Akim gave you twenty‐five
copecks the day before yesterday. You’ve drunk it all and now you cry
out. I’m simply surprised at your good‐nature, with our low peasants,
Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, that’s all I can say.”

“But what do we want a second cart for?” Mitya put in. “Let’s start
with the one, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch. I won’t be unruly, I won’t run
away from you, old fellow. What do we want an escort for?”

“I’ll trouble you, sir, to learn how to speak to me if you’ve never
been taught. I’m not ‘old fellow’ to you, and you can keep your advice
for another time!” Mavriky Mavrikyevitch snapped out savagely, as
though glad to vent his wrath.

Mitya was reduced to silence. He flushed all over. A moment later he
felt suddenly very cold. The rain had ceased, but the dull sky was
still overcast with clouds, and a keen wind was blowing straight in his
face.

“I’ve taken a chill,” thought Mitya, twitching his shoulders.

At last Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, too, got into the cart, sat down
heavily, and, as though without noticing it, squeezed Mitya into the
corner. It is true that he was out of humor and greatly disliked the
task that had been laid upon him.

“Good‐by, Trifon Borissovitch!” Mitya shouted again, and felt himself,
that he had not called out this time from good‐nature, but
involuntarily, from resentment.

But Trifon Borissovitch stood proudly, with both hands behind his back,
and staring straight at Mitya with a stern and angry face, he made no
reply.

“Good‐by, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, good‐by!” he heard all at once the voice
of Kalganov, who had suddenly darted out. Running up to the cart he
held out his hand to Mitya. He had no cap on.

Mitya had time to seize and press his hand.

“Good‐by, dear fellow! I shan’t forget your generosity,” he cried
warmly.

But the cart moved and their hands parted. The bell began ringing and
Mitya was driven off.

Kalganov ran back, sat down in a corner, bent his head, hid his face in
his hands, and burst out crying. For a long while he sat like that,
crying as though he were a little boy instead of a young man of twenty.
Oh, he believed almost without doubt in Mitya’s guilt.

“What are these people? What can men be after this?” he exclaimed
incoherently, in bitter despondency, almost despair. At that moment he
had no desire to live.

“Is it worth it? Is it worth it?” exclaimed the boy in his grief.




PART IV




Book X. The Boys




Chapter I.
Kolya Krassotkin


It was the beginning of November. There had been a hard frost, eleven
degrees Réaumur, without snow, but a little dry snow had fallen on the
frozen ground during the night, and a keen dry wind was lifting and
blowing it along the dreary streets of our town, especially about the
market‐place. It was a dull morning, but the snow had ceased.

Not far from the market‐place, close to Plotnikov’s shop, there stood a
small house, very clean both without and within. It belonged to Madame
Krassotkin, the widow of a former provincial secretary, who had been
dead for fourteen years. His widow, still a nice‐looking woman of
thirty‐two, was living in her neat little house on her private means.
She lived in respectable seclusion; she was of a soft but fairly
cheerful disposition. She was about eighteen at the time of her
husband’s death; she had been married only a year and had just borne
him a son. From the day of his death she had devoted herself heart and
soul to the bringing up of her precious treasure, her boy Kolya. Though
she had loved him passionately those fourteen years, he had caused her
far more suffering than happiness. She had been trembling and fainting
with terror almost every day, afraid he would fall ill, would catch
cold, do something naughty, climb on a chair and fall off it, and so on
and so on. When Kolya began going to school, the mother devoted herself
to studying all the sciences with him so as to help him, and go through
his lessons with him. She hastened to make the acquaintance of the
teachers and their wives, even made up to Kolya’s schoolfellows, and
fawned upon them in the hope of thus saving Kolya from being teased,
laughed at, or beaten by them. She went so far that the boys actually
began to mock at him on her account and taunt him with being a
“mother’s darling.”

But the boy could take his own part. He was a resolute boy,
“tremendously strong,” as was rumored in his class, and soon proved to
be the fact; he was agile, strong‐willed, and of an audacious and
enterprising temper. He was good at lessons, and there was a rumor in
the school that he could beat the teacher, Dardanelov, at arithmetic
and universal history. Though he looked down upon every one, he was a
good comrade and not supercilious. He accepted his schoolfellows’
respect as his due, but was friendly with them. Above all, he knew
where to draw the line. He could restrain himself on occasion, and in
his relations with the teachers he never overstepped that last mystic
limit beyond which a prank becomes an unpardonable breach of
discipline. But he was as fond of mischief on every possible occasion
as the smallest boy in the school, and not so much for the sake of
mischief as for creating a sensation, inventing something, something
effective and conspicuous. He was extremely vain. He knew how to make
even his mother give way to him; he was almost despotic in his control
of her. She gave way to him, oh, she had given way to him for years.
The one thought unendurable to her was that her boy had no great love
for her. She was always fancying that Kolya was “unfeeling” to her, and
at times, dissolving into hysterical tears, she used to reproach him
with his coldness. The boy disliked this, and the more demonstrations
of feeling were demanded of him the more he seemed intentionally to
avoid them. Yet it was not intentional on his part but instinctive—it
was his character. His mother was mistaken; he was very fond of her. He
only disliked “sheepish sentimentality,” as he expressed it in his
schoolboy language.

There was a bookcase in the house containing a few books that had been
his father’s. Kolya was fond of reading, and had read several of them
by himself. His mother did not mind that and only wondered sometimes at
seeing the boy stand for hours by the bookcase poring over a book
instead of going to play. And in that way Kolya read some things
unsuitable for his age.

Though the boy, as a rule, knew where to draw the line in his mischief,
he had of late begun to play pranks that caused his mother serious
alarm. It is true there was nothing vicious in what he did, but a wild
mad recklessness.

It happened that July, during the summer holidays, that the mother and
son went to another district, forty‐five miles away, to spend a week
with a distant relation, whose husband was an official at the railway
station (the very station, the nearest one to our town, from which a
month later Ivan Fyodorovitch Karamazov set off for Moscow). There
Kolya began by carefully investigating every detail connected with the
railways, knowing that he could impress his schoolfellows when he got
home with his newly acquired knowledge. But there happened to be some
other boys in the place with whom he soon made friends. Some of them
were living at the station, others in the neighborhood; there were six
or seven of them, all between twelve and fifteen, and two of them came
from our town. The boys played together, and on the fourth or fifth day
of Kolya’s stay at the station, a mad bet was made by the foolish boys.
Kolya, who was almost the youngest of the party and rather looked down
upon by the others in consequence, was moved by vanity or by reckless
bravado to bet them two roubles that he would lie down between the
rails at night when the eleven o’clock train was due, and would lie
there without moving while the train rolled over him at full speed. It
is true they made a preliminary investigation, from which it appeared
that it was possible to lie so flat between the rails that the train
could pass over without touching, but to lie there was no joke! Kolya
maintained stoutly that he would. At first they laughed at him, called
him a little liar, a braggart, but that only egged him on. What piqued
him most was that these boys of fifteen turned up their noses at him
too superciliously, and were at first disposed to treat him as “a small
boy,” not fit to associate with them, and that was an unendurable
insult.

And so it was resolved to go in the evening, half a mile from the
station, so that the train might have time to get up full speed after
leaving the station. The boys assembled. It was a pitch‐dark night
without a moon. At the time fixed, Kolya lay down between the rails.
The five others who had taken the bet waited among the bushes below the
embankment, their hearts beating with suspense, which was followed by
alarm and remorse. At last they heard in the distance the rumble of the
train leaving the station. Two red lights gleamed out of the darkness;
the monster roared as it approached.

“Run, run away from the rails,” the boys cried to Kolya from the
bushes, breathless with terror. But it was too late: the train darted
up and flew past. The boys rushed to Kolya. He lay without moving. They
began pulling at him, lifting him up. He suddenly got up and walked
away without a word. Then he explained that he had lain there as though
he were insensible to frighten them, but the fact was that he really
had lost consciousness, as he confessed long after to his mother. In
this way his reputation as “a desperate character,” was established for
ever. He returned home to the station as white as a sheet. Next day he
had a slight attack of nervous fever, but he was in high spirits and
well pleased with himself. The incident did not become known at once,
but when they came back to the town it penetrated to the school and
even reached the ears of the masters. But then Kolya’s mother hastened
to entreat the masters on her boy’s behalf, and in the end Dardanelov,
a respected and influential teacher, exerted himself in his favor, and
the affair was ignored.

Dardanelov was a middle‐aged bachelor, who had been passionately in
love with Madame Krassotkin for many years past, and had once already,
about a year previously, ventured, trembling with fear and the delicacy
of his sentiments, to offer her most respectfully his hand in marriage.
But she refused him resolutely, feeling that to accept him would be an
act of treachery to her son, though Dardanelov had, to judge from
certain mysterious symptoms, reason for believing that he was not an
object of aversion to the charming but too chaste and tender‐hearted
widow. Kolya’s mad prank seemed to have broken the ice, and Dardanelov
was rewarded for his intercession by a suggestion of hope. The
suggestion, it is true, was a faint one, but then Dardanelov was such a
paragon of purity and delicacy that it was enough for the time being to
make him perfectly happy. He was fond of the boy, though he would have
felt it beneath him to try and win him over, and was severe and strict
with him in class. Kolya, too, kept him at a respectful distance. He
learned his lessons perfectly; he was second in his class, was reserved
with Dardanelov, and the whole class firmly believed that Kolya was so
good at universal history that he could “beat” even Dardanelov. Kolya
did indeed ask him the question, “Who founded Troy?” to which
Dardanelov had made a very vague reply, referring to the movements and
migrations of races, to the remoteness of the period, to the mythical
legends. But the question, “Who had founded Troy?” that is, what
individuals, he could not answer, and even for some reason regarded the
question as idle and frivolous. But the boys remained convinced that
Dardanelov did not know who founded Troy. Kolya had read of the
founders of Troy in Smaragdov, whose history was among the books in his
father’s bookcase. In the end all the boys became interested in the
question, who it was that had founded Troy, but Krassotkin would not
tell his secret, and his reputation for knowledge remained unshaken.

After the incident on the railway a certain change came over Kolya’s
attitude to his mother. When Anna Fyodorovna (Madame Krassotkin) heard
of her son’s exploit, she almost went out of her mind with horror. She
had such terrible attacks of hysterics, lasting with intervals for
several days, that Kolya, seriously alarmed at last, promised on his
honor that such pranks should never be repeated. He swore on his knees
before the holy image, and swore by the memory of his father, at Madame
Krassotkin’s instance, and the “manly” Kolya burst into tears like a
boy of six. And all that day the mother and son were constantly rushing
into each other’s arms sobbing. Next day Kolya woke up as “unfeeling”
as before, but he had become more silent, more modest, sterner, and
more thoughtful.

Six weeks later, it is true, he got into another scrape, which even
brought his name to the ears of our Justice of the Peace, but it was a
scrape of quite another kind, amusing, foolish, and he did not, as it
turned out, take the leading part in it, but was only implicated in it.
But of this later. His mother still fretted and trembled, but the more
uneasy she became, the greater were the hopes of Dardanelov. It must be
noted that Kolya understood and divined what was in Dardanelov’s heart
and, of course, despised him profoundly for his “feelings”; he had in
the past been so tactless as to show this contempt before his mother,
hinting vaguely that he knew what Dardanelov was after. But from the
time of the railway incident his behavior in this respect also was
changed; he did not allow himself the remotest allusion to the subject
and began to speak more respectfully of Dardanelov before his mother,
which the sensitive woman at once appreciated with boundless gratitude.
But at the slightest mention of Dardanelov by a visitor in Kolya’s
presence, she would flush as pink as a rose. At such moments Kolya
would either stare out of the window scowling, or would investigate the
state of his boots, or would shout angrily for “Perezvon,” the big,
shaggy, mangy dog, which he had picked up a month before, brought home,
and kept for some reason secretly indoors, not showing him to any of
his schoolfellows. He bullied him frightfully, teaching him all sorts
of tricks, so that the poor dog howled for him whenever he was absent
at school, and when he came in, whined with delight, rushed about as if
he were crazy, begged, lay down on the ground pretending to be dead,
and so on; in fact, showed all the tricks he had taught him, not at the
word of command, but simply from the zeal of his excited and grateful
heart.

I have forgotten, by the way, to mention that Kolya Krassotkin was the
boy stabbed with a penknife by the boy already known to the reader as
the son of Captain Snegiryov. Ilusha had been defending his father when
the schoolboys jeered at him, shouting the nickname “wisp of tow.”




Chapter II.
Children


And so on that frosty, snowy, and windy day in November, Kolya
Krassotkin was sitting at home. It was Sunday and there was no school.
It had just struck eleven, and he particularly wanted to go out “on
very urgent business,” but he was left alone in charge of the house,
for it so happened that all its elder inmates were absent owing to a
sudden and singular event. Madame Krassotkin had let two little rooms,
separated from the rest of the house by a passage, to a doctor’s wife
with her two small children. This lady was the same age as Anna
Fyodorovna, and a great friend of hers. Her husband, the doctor, had
taken his departure twelve months before, going first to Orenburg and
then to Tashkend, and for the last six months she had not heard a word
from him. Had it not been for her friendship with Madame Krassotkin,
which was some consolation to the forsaken lady, she would certainly
have completely dissolved away in tears. And now, to add to her
misfortunes, Katerina, her only servant, was suddenly moved the evening
before to announce, to her mistress’s amazement, that she proposed to
bring a child into the world before morning. It seemed almost
miraculous to every one that no one had noticed the probability of it
before. The astounded doctor’s wife decided to move Katerina while
there was still time to an establishment in the town kept by a midwife
for such emergencies. As she set great store by her servant, she
promptly carried out this plan and remained there looking after her. By
the morning all Madame Krassotkin’s friendly sympathy and energy were
called upon to render assistance and appeal to some one for help in the
case.

So both the ladies were absent from home, the Krassotkins’ servant,
Agafya, had gone out to the market, and Kolya was thus left for a time
to protect and look after “the kids,” that is, the son and daughter of
the doctor’s wife, who were left alone. Kolya was not afraid of taking
care of the house, besides he had Perezvon, who had been told to lie
flat, without moving, under the bench in the hall. Every time Kolya,
walking to and fro through the rooms, came into the hall, the dog shook
his head and gave two loud and insinuating taps on the floor with his
tail, but alas! the whistle did not sound to release him. Kolya looked
sternly at the luckless dog, who relapsed again into obedient rigidity.
The one thing that troubled Kolya was “the kids.” He looked, of course,
with the utmost scorn on Katerina’s unexpected adventure, but he was
very fond of the bereaved “kiddies,” and had already taken them a
picture‐book. Nastya, the elder, a girl of eight, could read, and
Kostya, the boy, aged seven, was very fond of being read to by her.
Krassotkin could, of course, have provided more diverting entertainment
for them. He could have made them stand side by side and played
soldiers with them, or sent them hiding all over the house. He had done
so more than once before and was not above doing it, so much so that a
report once spread at school that Krassotkin played horses with the
little lodgers at home, prancing with his head on one side like a
trace‐horse. But Krassotkin haughtily parried this thrust, pointing out
that to play horses with boys of one’s own age, boys of thirteen, would
certainly be disgraceful “at this date,” but that he did it for the
sake of “the kids” because he liked them, and no one had a right to
call him to account for his feelings. The two “kids” adored him.

But on this occasion he was in no mood for games. He had very important
business of his own before him, something almost mysterious. Meanwhile
time was passing and Agafya, with whom he could have left the children,
would not come back from market. He had several times already crossed
the passage, opened the door of the lodgers’ room and looked anxiously
at “the kids” who were sitting over the book, as he had bidden them.
Every time he opened the door they grinned at him, hoping he would come
in and would do something delightful and amusing. But Kolya was
bothered and did not go in.

At last it struck eleven and he made up his mind, once for all, that if
that “damned” Agafya did not come back within ten minutes he should go
out without waiting for her, making “the kids” promise, of course, to
be brave when he was away, not to be naughty, not to cry from fright.
With this idea he put on his wadded winter overcoat with its catskin
fur collar, slung his satchel round his shoulder, and, regardless of
his mother’s constantly reiterated entreaties that he would always put
on goloshes in such cold weather, he looked at them contemptuously as
he crossed the hall and went out with only his boots on. Perezvon,
seeing him in his outdoor clothes, began tapping nervously, yet
vigorously, on the floor with his tail. Twitching all over, he even
uttered a plaintive whine. But Kolya, seeing his dog’s passionate
excitement, decided that it was a breach of discipline, kept him for
another minute under the bench, and only when he had opened the door
into the passage, whistled for him. The dog leapt up like a mad
creature and rushed bounding before him rapturously.

Kolya opened the door to peep at “the kids.” They were both sitting as
before at the table, not reading but warmly disputing about something.
The children often argued together about various exciting problems of
life, and Nastya, being the elder, always got the best of it. If Kostya
did not agree with her, he almost always appealed to Kolya Krassotkin,
and his verdict was regarded as infallible by both of them. This time
the “kids’” discussion rather interested Krassotkin, and he stood still
in the passage to listen. The children saw he was listening and that
made them dispute with even greater energy.

“I shall never, never believe,” Nastya prattled, “that the old women
find babies among the cabbages in the kitchen‐garden. It’s winter now
and there are no cabbages, and so the old woman couldn’t have taken
Katerina a daughter.”

Kolya whistled to himself.

“Or perhaps they do bring babies from somewhere, but only to those who
are married.”

Kostya stared at Nastya and listened, pondering profoundly.

“Nastya, how silly you are!” he said at last, firmly and calmly. “How
can Katerina have a baby when she isn’t married?”

Nastya was exasperated.

“You know nothing about it,” she snapped irritably. “Perhaps she has a
husband, only he is in prison, so now she’s got a baby.”

“But is her husband in prison?” the matter‐of‐fact Kostya inquired
gravely.

“Or, I tell you what,” Nastya interrupted impulsively, completely
rejecting and forgetting her first hypothesis. “She hasn’t a husband,
you are right there, but she wants to be married, and so she’s been
thinking of getting married, and thinking and thinking of it till now
she’s got it, that is, not a husband but a baby.”

“Well, perhaps so,” Kostya agreed, entirely vanquished. “But you didn’t
say so before. So how could I tell?”

“Come, kiddies,” said Kolya, stepping into the room. “You’re terrible
people, I see.”

“And Perezvon with you!” grinned Kostya, and began snapping his fingers
and calling Perezvon.

“I am in a difficulty, kids,” Krassotkin began solemnly, “and you must
help me. Agafya must have broken her leg, since she has not turned up
till now, that’s certain. I must go out. Will you let me go?”

The children looked anxiously at one another. Their smiling faces
showed signs of uneasiness, but they did not yet fully grasp what was
expected of them.

“You won’t be naughty while I am gone? You won’t climb on the cupboard
and break your legs? You won’t be frightened alone and cry?”

A look of profound despondency came into the children’s faces.

“And I could show you something as a reward, a little copper cannon
which can be fired with real gunpowder.”

The children’s faces instantly brightened. “Show us the cannon,” said
Kostya, beaming all over.

Krassotkin put his hand in his satchel, and pulling out a little bronze
cannon stood it on the table.

“Ah, you are bound to ask that! Look, it’s on wheels.” He rolled the
toy on along the table. “And it can be fired off, too. It can be loaded
with shot and fired off.”

“And it could kill any one?”

“It can kill any one; you’ve only got to aim at anybody,” and
Krassotkin explained where the powder had to be put, where the shot
should be rolled in, showing a tiny hole like a touch‐hole, and told
them that it kicked when it was fired.

The children listened with intense interest. What particularly struck
their imagination was that the cannon kicked.

“And have you got any powder?” Nastya inquired.

“Yes.”

“Show us the powder, too,” she drawled with a smile of entreaty.

Krassotkin dived again into his satchel and pulled out a small flask
containing a little real gunpowder. He had some shot, too, in a screw
of paper. He even uncorked the flask and shook a little powder into the
palm of his hand.

“One has to be careful there’s no fire about, or it would blow up and
kill us all,” Krassotkin warned them sensationally.

The children gazed at the powder with an awe‐stricken alarm that only
intensified their enjoyment. But Kostya liked the shot better.

“And does the shot burn?” he inquired.

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Give me a little shot,” he asked in an imploring voice.

“I’ll give you a little shot; here, take it, but don’t show it to your
mother till I come back, or she’ll be sure to think it’s gunpowder, and
will die of fright and give you a thrashing.”

“Mother never does whip us,” Nastya observed at once.

“I know, I only said it to finish the sentence. And don’t you ever
deceive your mother except just this once, until I come back. And so,
kiddies, can I go out? You won’t be frightened and cry when I’m gone?”

“We sha—all cry,” drawled Kostya, on the verge of tears already.

“We shall cry, we shall be sure to cry,” Nastya chimed in with timid
haste.

“Oh, children, children, how fraught with peril are your years! There’s
no help for it, chickens, I shall have to stay with you I don’t know
how long. And time is passing, time is passing, oogh!”

“Tell Perezvon to pretend to be dead!” Kostya begged.

“There’s no help for it, we must have recourse to Perezvon. _Ici_,
Perezvon.” And Kolya began giving orders to the dog, who performed all
his tricks.

He was a rough‐haired dog, of medium size, with a coat of a sort of
lilac‐ gray color. He was blind in his right eye, and his left ear was
torn. He whined and jumped, stood and walked on his hind legs, lay on
his back with his paws in the air, rigid as though he were dead. While
this last performance was going on, the door opened and Agafya, Madame
Krassotkin’s servant, a stout woman of forty, marked with small‐pox,
appeared in the doorway. She had come back from market and had a bag
full of provisions in her hand. Holding up the bag of provisions in her
left hand she stood still to watch the dog. Though Kolya had been so
anxious for her return, he did not cut short the performance, and after
keeping Perezvon dead for the usual time, at last he whistled to him.
The dog jumped up and began bounding about in his joy at having done
his duty.

“Only think, a dog!” Agafya observed sententiously.

“Why are you late, female?” asked Krassotkin sternly.

“Female, indeed! Go on with you, you brat.”

“Brat?”

“Yes, a brat. What is it to you if I’m late; if I’m late, you may be
sure I have good reason,” muttered Agafya, busying herself about the
stove, without a trace of anger or displeasure in her voice. She seemed
quite pleased, in fact, to enjoy a skirmish with her merry young
master.

“Listen, you frivolous young woman,” Krassotkin began, getting up from
the sofa, “can you swear by all you hold sacred in the world and
something else besides, that you will watch vigilantly over the kids in
my absence? I am going out.”

“And what am I going to swear for?” laughed Agafya. “I shall look after
them without that.”

“No, you must swear on your eternal salvation. Else I shan’t go.”

“Well, don’t then. What does it matter to me? It’s cold out; stay at
home.”

“Kids,” Kolya turned to the children, “this woman will stay with you
till I come back or till your mother comes, for she ought to have been
back long ago. She will give you some lunch, too. You’ll give them
something, Agafya, won’t you?”

“That I can do.”

“Good‐by, chickens, I go with my heart at rest. And you, granny,” he
added gravely, in an undertone, as he passed Agafya, “I hope you’ll
spare their tender years and not tell them any of your old woman’s
nonsense about Katerina. _Ici_, Perezvon!”

“Get along with you!” retorted Agafya, really angry this time.
“Ridiculous boy! You want a whipping for saying such things, that’s
what you want!”




Chapter III.
The Schoolboy


But Kolya did not hear her. At last he could go out. As he went out at
the gate he looked round him, shrugged up his shoulders, and saying “It
is freezing,” went straight along the street and turned off to the
right towards the market‐place. When he reached the last house but one
before the market‐place he stopped at the gate, pulled a whistle out of
his pocket, and whistled with all his might as though giving a signal.
He had not to wait more than a minute before a rosy‐cheeked boy of
about eleven, wearing a warm, neat and even stylish coat, darted out to
meet him. This was Smurov, a boy in the preparatory class (two classes
below Kolya Krassotkin), son of a well‐to‐do official. Apparently he
was forbidden by his parents to associate with Krassotkin, who was well
known to be a desperately naughty boy, so Smurov was obviously slipping
out on the sly. He was—if the reader has not forgotten—one of the group
of boys who two months before had thrown stones at Ilusha. He was the
one who told Alyosha Karamazov about Ilusha.

“I’ve been waiting for you for the last hour, Krassotkin,” said Smurov
stolidly, and the boys strode towards the market‐place.

“I am late,” answered Krassotkin. “I was detained by circumstances. You
won’t be thrashed for coming with me?”

“Come, I say, I’m never thrashed! And you’ve got Perezvon with you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re taking him, too?”

“Yes.”

“Ah! if it were only Zhutchka!”

“That’s impossible. Zhutchka’s non‐existent. Zhutchka is lost in the
mists of obscurity.”

“Ah! couldn’t we do this?” Smurov suddenly stood still. “You see Ilusha
says that Zhutchka was a shaggy, grayish, smoky‐looking dog like
Perezvon. Couldn’t you tell him this is Zhutchka, and he might believe
you?”

“Boy, shun a lie, that’s one thing; even with a good object—that’s
another. Above all, I hope you’ve not told them anything about my
coming.”

“Heaven forbid! I know what I am about. But you won’t comfort him with
Perezvon,” said Smurov, with a sigh. “You know his father, the captain,
‘the wisp of tow,’ told us that he was going to bring him a real
mastiff pup, with a black nose, to‐day. He thinks that would comfort
Ilusha; but I doubt it.”

“And how is Ilusha?”

“Ah, he is bad, very bad! I believe he’s in consumption: he is quite
conscious, but his breathing! His breathing’s gone wrong. The other day
he asked to have his boots on to be led round the room. He tried to
walk, but he couldn’t stand. ‘Ah, I told you before, father,’ he said,
‘that those boots were no good. I could never walk properly in them.’
He fancied it was his boots that made him stagger, but it was simply
weakness, really. He won’t live another week. Herzenstube is looking
after him. Now they are rich again—they’ve got heaps of money.”

“They are rogues.”

“Who are rogues?”

“Doctors and the whole crew of quacks collectively, and also, of
course, individually. I don’t believe in medicine. It’s a useless
institution. I mean to go into all that. But what’s that sentimentality
you’ve got up there? The whole class seems to be there every day.”

“Not the whole class: it’s only ten of our fellows who go to see him
every day. There’s nothing in that.”

“What I don’t understand in all this is the part that Alexey Karamazov
is taking in it. His brother’s going to be tried to‐morrow or next day
for such a crime, and yet he has so much time to spend on
sentimentality with boys.”

“There’s no sentimentality about it. You are going yourself now to make
it up with Ilusha.”

“Make it up with him? What an absurd expression! But I allow no one to
analyze my actions.”

“And how pleased Ilusha will be to see you! He has no idea that you are
coming. Why was it, why was it you wouldn’t come all this time?” Smurov
cried with sudden warmth.

“My dear boy, that’s my business, not yours. I am going of myself
because I choose to, but you’ve all been hauled there by Alexey
Karamazov—there’s a difference, you know. And how do you know? I may
not be going to make it up at all. It’s a stupid expression.”

“It’s not Karamazov at all; it’s not his doing. Our fellows began going
there of themselves. Of course, they went with Karamazov at first. And
there’s been nothing of that sort—no silliness. First one went, and
then another. His father was awfully pleased to see us. You know he
will simply go out of his mind if Ilusha dies. He sees that Ilusha’s
dying. And he seems so glad we’ve made it up with Ilusha. Ilusha asked
after you, that was all. He just asks and says no more. His father will
go out of his mind or hang himself. He behaved like a madman before.
You know he is a very decent man. We made a mistake then. It’s all the
fault of that murderer who beat him then.”

“Karamazov’s a riddle to me all the same. I might have made his
acquaintance long ago, but I like to have a proper pride in some cases.
Besides, I have a theory about him which I must work out and verify.”

Kolya subsided into dignified silence. Smurov, too, was silent. Smurov,
of course, worshiped Krassotkin and never dreamed of putting himself on
a level with him. Now he was tremendously interested at Kolya’s saying
that he was “going of himself” to see Ilusha. He felt that there must
be some mystery in Kolya’s suddenly taking it into his head to go to
him that day. They crossed the market‐place, in which at that hour were
many loaded wagons from the country and a great number of live fowls.
The market women were selling rolls, cottons and threads, etc., in
their booths. These Sunday markets were naïvely called “fairs” in the
town, and there were many such fairs in the year.

Perezvon ran about in the wildest spirits, sniffing about first one
side, then the other. When he met other dogs they zealously smelt each
other over according to the rules of canine etiquette.

“I like to watch such realistic scenes, Smurov,” said Kolya suddenly.
“Have you noticed how dogs sniff at one another when they meet? It
seems to be a law of their nature.”

“Yes; it’s a funny habit.”

“No, it’s not funny; you are wrong there. There’s nothing funny in
nature, however funny it may seem to man with his prejudices. If dogs
could reason and criticize us they’d be sure to find just as much that
would be funny to them, if not far more, in the social relations of
men, their masters—far more, indeed. I repeat that, because I am
convinced that there is far more foolishness among us. That’s Rakitin’s
idea—a remarkable idea. I am a Socialist, Smurov.”

“And what is a Socialist?” asked Smurov.

“That’s when all are equal and all have property in common, there are
no marriages, and every one has any religion and laws he likes best,
and all the rest of it. You are not old enough to understand that yet.
It’s cold, though.”

“Yes, twelve degrees of frost. Father looked at the thermometer just
now.”

“Have you noticed, Smurov, that in the middle of winter we don’t feel
so cold even when there are fifteen or eighteen degrees of frost as we
do now, in the beginning of winter, when there is a sudden frost of
twelve degrees, especially when there is not much snow. It’s because
people are not used to it. Everything is habit with men, everything
even in their social and political relations. Habit is the great
motive‐power. What a funny‐looking peasant!”

Kolya pointed to a tall peasant, with a good‐natured countenance in a
long sheepskin coat, who was standing by his wagon, clapping together
his hands, in their shapeless leather gloves, to warm them. His long
fair beard was all white with frost.

“That peasant’s beard’s frozen,” Kolya cried in a loud provocative
voice as he passed him.

“Lots of people’s beards are frozen,” the peasant replied, calmly and
sententiously.

“Don’t provoke him,” observed Smurov.

“It’s all right; he won’t be cross; he’s a nice fellow. Good‐by,
Matvey.”

“Good‐by.”

“Is your name Matvey?”

“Yes. Didn’t you know?”

“No, I didn’t. It was a guess.”

“You don’t say so! You are a schoolboy, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

“You get whipped, I expect?”

“Nothing to speak of—sometimes.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Well, yes, it does.”

“Ech, what a life!” The peasant heaved a sigh from the bottom of his
heart.

“Good‐by, Matvey.”

“Good‐by. You are a nice chap, that you are.”

The boys went on.

“That was a nice peasant,” Kolya observed to Smurov. “I like talking to
the peasants, and am always glad to do them justice.”

“Why did you tell a lie, pretending we are thrashed?” asked Smurov.

“I had to say that to please him.”

“How do you mean?”

“You know, Smurov, I don’t like being asked the same thing twice. I
like people to understand at the first word. Some things can’t be
explained. According to a peasant’s notions, schoolboys are whipped,
and must be whipped. What would a schoolboy be if he were not whipped?
And if I were to tell him we are not, he’d be disappointed. But you
don’t understand that. One has to know how to talk to the peasants.”

“Only don’t tease them, please, or you’ll get into another scrape as
you did about that goose.”

“So you’re afraid?”

“Don’t laugh, Kolya. Of course I’m afraid. My father would be awfully
cross. I am strictly forbidden to go out with you.”

“Don’t be uneasy, nothing will happen this time. Hallo, Natasha!” he
shouted to a market woman in one of the booths.

“Call me Natasha! What next! My name is Marya,” the middle‐aged market
woman shouted at him.

“I am so glad it’s Marya. Good‐by!”

“Ah, you young rascal! A brat like you to carry on so!”

“I’m in a hurry. I can’t stay now. You shall tell me next Sunday.”
Kolya waved his hand at her, as though she had attacked him and not he
her.

“I’ve nothing to tell you next Sunday. You set upon me, you impudent
young monkey. I didn’t say anything,” bawled Marya. “You want a
whipping, that’s what you want, you saucy jackanapes!”

There was a roar of laughter among the other market women round her.
Suddenly a man in a violent rage darted out from the arcade of shops
close by. He was a young man, not a native of the town, with dark,
curly hair and a long, pale face, marked with smallpox. He wore a long
blue coat and a peaked cap, and looked like a merchant’s clerk. He was
in a state of stupid excitement and brandished his fist at Kolya.

“I know you!” he cried angrily, “I know you!”

Kolya stared at him. He could not recall when he could have had a row
with the man. But he had been in so many rows in the street that he
could hardly remember them all.

“Do you?” he asked sarcastically.

“I know you! I know you!” the man repeated idiotically.

“So much the better for you. Well, it’s time I was going. Good‐by!”

“You are at your saucy pranks again?” cried the man. “You are at your
saucy pranks again? I know, you are at it again!”

“It’s not your business, brother, if I am at my saucy pranks again,”
said Kolya, standing still and scanning him.

“Not my business?”

“No; it’s not your business.”

“Whose then? Whose then? Whose then?”

“It’s Trifon Nikititch’s business, not yours.”

“What Trifon Nikititch?” asked the youth, staring with loutish
amazement at Kolya, but still as angry as ever.

Kolya scanned him gravely.

“Have you been to the Church of the Ascension?” he suddenly asked him,
with stern emphasis.

“What Church of Ascension? What for? No, I haven’t,” said the young
man, somewhat taken aback.

“Do you know Sabaneyev?” Kolya went on even more emphatically and even
more severely.

“What Sabaneyev? No, I don’t know him.”

“Well then you can go to the devil,” said Kolya, cutting short the
conversation; and turning sharply to the right he strode quickly on his
way as though he disdained further conversation with a dolt who did not
even know Sabaneyev.

“Stop, heigh! What Sabaneyev?” the young man recovered from his
momentary stupefaction and was as excited as before. “What did he say?”
He turned to the market women with a silly stare.

The women laughed.

“You can never tell what he’s after,” said one of them.

“What Sabaneyev is it he’s talking about?” the young man repeated,
still furious and brandishing his right arm.

“It must be a Sabaneyev who worked for the Kuzmitchovs, that’s who it
must be,” one of the women suggested.

The young man stared at her wildly.

“For the Kuzmitchovs?” repeated another woman. “But his name wasn’t
Trifon. His name’s Kuzma, not Trifon; but the boy said Trifon
Nikititch, so it can’t be the same.”

“His name is not Trifon and not Sabaneyev, it’s Tchizhov,” put in
suddenly a third woman, who had hitherto been silent, listening
gravely. “Alexey Ivanitch is his name. Tchizhov, Alexey Ivanitch.”

“Not a doubt about it, it’s Tchizhov,” a fourth woman emphatically
confirmed the statement.

The bewildered youth gazed from one to another.

“But what did he ask for, what did he ask for, good people?” he cried
almost in desperation. “ ‘Do you know Sabaneyev?’ says he. And who the
devil’s to know who is Sabaneyev?”

“You’re a senseless fellow. I tell you it’s not Sabaneyev, but
Tchizhov, Alexey Ivanitch Tchizhov, that’s who it is!” one of the women
shouted at him impressively.

“What Tchizhov? Who is he? Tell me, if you know.”

“That tall, sniveling fellow who used to sit in the market in the
summer.”

“And what’s your Tchizhov to do with me, good people, eh?”

“How can I tell what he’s to do with you?” put in another. “You ought
to know yourself what you want with him, if you make such a clamor
about him. He spoke to you, he did not speak to us, you stupid. Don’t
you really know him?”

“Know whom?”

“Tchizhov.”

“The devil take Tchizhov and you with him. I’ll give him a hiding, that
I will. He was laughing at me!”

“Will give Tchizhov a hiding! More likely he will give you one. You are
a fool, that’s what you are!”

“Not Tchizhov, not Tchizhov, you spiteful, mischievous woman. I’ll give
the boy a hiding. Catch him, catch him, he was laughing at me!”

The woman guffawed. But Kolya was by now a long way off, marching along
with a triumphant air. Smurov walked beside him, looking round at the
shouting group far behind. He too was in high spirits, though he was
still afraid of getting into some scrape in Kolya’s company.

“What Sabaneyev did you mean?” he asked Kolya, foreseeing what his
answer would be.

“How do I know? Now there’ll be a hubbub among them all day. I like to
stir up fools in every class of society. There’s another blockhead,
that peasant there. You know, they say ‘there’s no one stupider than a
stupid Frenchman,’ but a stupid Russian shows it in his face just as
much. Can’t you see it all over his face that he is a fool, that
peasant, eh?”

“Let him alone, Kolya. Let’s go on.”

“Nothing could stop me, now I am once off. Hey, good morning, peasant!”

A sturdy‐looking peasant, with a round, simple face and grizzled beard,
who was walking by, raised his head and looked at the boy. He seemed
not quite sober.

“Good morning, if you are not laughing at me,” he said deliberately in
reply.

“And if I am?” laughed Kolya.

“Well, a joke’s a joke. Laugh away. I don’t mind. There’s no harm in a
joke.”

“I beg your pardon, brother, it was a joke.”

“Well, God forgive you!”

“Do you forgive me, too?”

“I quite forgive you. Go along.”

“I say, you seem a clever peasant.”

“Cleverer than you,” the peasant answered unexpectedly, with the same
gravity.

“I doubt it,” said Kolya, somewhat taken aback.

“It’s true, though.”

“Perhaps it is.”

“It is, brother.”

“Good‐by, peasant!”

“Good‐by!”

“There are all sorts of peasants,” Kolya observed to Smurov after a
brief silence. “How could I tell I had hit on a clever one? I am always
ready to recognize intelligence in the peasantry.”

In the distance the cathedral clock struck half‐past eleven. The boys
made haste and they walked as far as Captain Snegiryov’s lodging, a
considerable distance, quickly and almost in silence. Twenty paces from
the house Kolya stopped and told Smurov to go on ahead and ask
Karamazov to come out to him.

“One must sniff round a bit first,” he observed to Smurov.

“Why ask him to come out?” Smurov protested. “You go in; they will be
awfully glad to see you. What’s the sense of making friends in the
frost out here?”

“I know why I want to see him out here in the frost,” Kolya cut him
short in the despotic tone he was fond of adopting with “small boys,”
and Smurov ran to do his bidding.




Chapter IV.
The Lost Dog


Kolya leaned against the fence with an air of dignity, waiting for
Alyosha to appear. Yes, he had long wanted to meet him. He had heard a
great deal about him from the boys, but hitherto he had always
maintained an appearance of disdainful indifference when he was
mentioned, and he had even “criticized” what he heard about Alyosha.
But secretly he had a great longing to make his acquaintance; there was
something sympathetic and attractive in all he was told about Alyosha.
So the present moment was important: to begin with, he had to show
himself at his best, to show his independence, “Or he’ll think of me as
thirteen and take me for a boy, like the rest of them. And what are
these boys to him? I shall ask him when I get to know him. It’s a pity
I am so short, though. Tuzikov is younger than I am, yet he is half a
head taller. But I have a clever face. I am not good‐looking. I know
I’m hideous, but I’ve a clever face. I mustn’t talk too freely; if I
fall into his arms all at once, he may think—Tfoo! how horrible if he
should think—!”

Such were the thoughts that excited Kolya while he was doing his utmost
to assume the most independent air. What distressed him most was his
being so short; he did not mind so much his “hideous” face, as being so
short. On the wall in a corner at home he had the year before made a
pencil‐mark to show his height, and every two months since he anxiously
measured himself against it to see how much he had gained. But alas! he
grew very slowly, and this sometimes reduced him almost to despair. His
face was in reality by no means “hideous”; on the contrary, it was
rather attractive, with a fair, pale skin, freckled. His small, lively
gray eyes had a fearless look, and often glowed with feeling. He had
rather high cheekbones; small, very red, but not very thick, lips; his
nose was small and unmistakably turned up. “I’ve a regular pug nose, a
regular pug nose,” Kolya used to mutter to himself when he looked in
the looking‐glass, and he always left it with indignation. “But perhaps
I haven’t got a clever face?” he sometimes thought, doubtful even of
that. But it must not be supposed that his mind was preoccupied with
his face and his height. On the contrary, however bitter the moments
before the looking‐glass were to him, he quickly forgot them, and
forgot them for a long time, “abandoning himself entirely to ideas and
to real life,” as he formulated it to himself.

Alyosha came out quickly and hastened up to Kolya. Before he reached
him, Kolya could see that he looked delighted. “Can he be so glad to
see me?” Kolya wondered, feeling pleased. We may note here, in passing,
that Alyosha’s appearance had undergone a complete change since we saw
him last. He had abandoned his cassock and was wearing now a well‐cut
coat, a soft, round hat, and his hair had been cropped short. All this
was very becoming to him, and he looked quite handsome. His charming
face always had a good‐humored expression; but there was a gentleness
and serenity in his good‐humor. To Kolya’s surprise, Alyosha came out
to him just as he was, without an overcoat. He had evidently come in
haste. He held out his hand to Kolya at once.

“Here you are at last! How anxious we’ve been to see you!”

“There were reasons which you shall know directly. Anyway, I am glad to
make your acquaintance. I’ve long been hoping for an opportunity, and
have heard a great deal about you,” Kolya muttered, a little
breathless.

“We should have met anyway. I’ve heard a great deal about you, too; but
you’ve been a long time coming here.”

“Tell me, how are things going?”

“Ilusha is very ill. He is certainly dying.”

“How awful! You must admit that medicine is a fraud, Karamazov,” cried
Kolya warmly.

“Ilusha has mentioned you often, very often, even in his sleep, in
delirium, you know. One can see that you used to be very, very dear to
him ... before the incident ... with the knife.... Then there’s another
reason.... Tell me, is that your dog?”

“Yes, Perezvon.”

“Not Zhutchka?” Alyosha looked at Kolya with eyes full of pity. “Is she
lost for ever?”

“I know you would all like it to be Zhutchka. I’ve heard all about it.”
Kolya smiled mysteriously. “Listen, Karamazov, I’ll tell you all about
it. That’s what I came for; that’s what I asked you to come out here
for, to explain the whole episode to you before we go in,” he began
with animation. “You see, Karamazov, Ilusha came into the preparatory
class last spring. Well, you know what our preparatory class is—a lot
of small boys. They began teasing Ilusha at once. I am two classes
higher up, and, of course, I only look on at them from a distance. I
saw the boy was weak and small, but he wouldn’t give in to them; he
fought with them. I saw he was proud, and his eyes were full of fire. I
like children like that. And they teased him all the more. The worst of
it was he was horribly dressed at the time, his breeches were too small
for him, and there were holes in his boots. They worried him about it;
they jeered at him. That I can’t stand. I stood up for him at once, and
gave it to them hot. I beat them, but they adore me, do you know,
Karamazov?” Kolya boasted impulsively; “but I am always fond of
children. I’ve two chickens in my hands at home now—that’s what
detained me to‐day. So they left off beating Ilusha and I took him
under my protection. I saw the boy was proud. I tell you that, the boy
was proud; but in the end he became slavishly devoted to me: he did my
slightest bidding, obeyed me as though I were God, tried to copy me. In
the intervals between the classes he used to run to me at once, and I’d
go about with him. On Sundays, too. They always laugh when an older boy
makes friends with a younger one like that; but that’s a prejudice. If
it’s my fancy, that’s enough. I am teaching him, developing him. Why
shouldn’t I develop him if I like him? Here you, Karamazov, have taken
up with all these nestlings. I see you want to influence the younger
generation—to develop them, to be of use to them, and I assure you this
trait in your character, which I knew by hearsay, attracted me more
than anything. Let us get to the point, though. I noticed that there
was a sort of softness and sentimentality coming over the boy, and you
know I have a positive hatred of this sheepish sentimentality, and I
have had it from a baby. There were contradictions in him, too: he was
proud, but he was slavishly devoted to me, and yet all at once his eyes
would flash and he’d refuse to agree with me; he’d argue, fly into a
rage. I used sometimes to propound certain ideas; I could see that it
was not so much that he disagreed with the ideas, but that he was
simply rebelling against me, because I was cool in responding to his
endearments. And so, in order to train him properly, the tenderer he
was, the colder I became. I did it on purpose: that was my idea. My
object was to form his character, to lick him into shape, to make a man
of him ... and besides ... no doubt, you understand me at a word.
Suddenly I noticed for three days in succession he was downcast and
dejected, not because of my coldness, but for something else, something
more important. I wondered what the tragedy was. I have pumped him and
found out that he had somehow got to know Smerdyakov, who was footman
to your late father—it was before his death, of course—and he taught
the little fool a silly trick—that is, a brutal, nasty trick. He told
him to take a piece of bread, to stick a pin in it, and throw it to one
of those hungry dogs who snap up anything without biting it, and then
to watch and see what would happen. So they prepared a piece of bread
like that and threw it to Zhutchka, that shaggy dog there’s been such a
fuss about. The people of the house it belonged to never fed it at all,
though it barked all day. (Do you like that stupid barking, Karamazov?
I can’t stand it.) So it rushed at the bread, swallowed it, and began
to squeal; it turned round and round and ran away, squealing as it ran
out of sight. That was Ilusha’s own account of it. He confessed it to
me, and cried bitterly. He hugged me, shaking all over. He kept on
repeating ‘He ran away squealing’: the sight of that haunted him. He
was tormented by remorse, I could see that. I took it seriously. I
determined to give him a lesson for other things as well. So I must
confess I wasn’t quite straightforward, and pretended to be more
indignant perhaps than I was. ‘You’ve done a nasty thing,’ I said, ‘you
are a scoundrel. I won’t tell of it, of course, but I shall have
nothing more to do with you for a time. I’ll think it over and let you
know through Smurov’—that’s the boy who’s just come with me; he’s
always ready to do anything for me—‘whether I will have anything to do
with you in the future or whether I give you up for good as a
scoundrel.’ He was tremendously upset. I must own I felt I’d gone too
far as I spoke, but there was no help for it. I did what I thought best
at the time. A day or two after, I sent Smurov to tell him that I would
not speak to him again. That’s what we call it when two schoolfellows
refuse to have anything more to do with one another. Secretly I only
meant to send him to Coventry for a few days and then, if I saw signs
of repentance, to hold out my hand to him again. That was my intention.
But what do you think happened? He heard Smurov’s message, his eyes
flashed. ‘Tell Krassotkin from me,’ he cried, ‘that I will throw bread
with pins to all the dogs—all—all of them!’ ‘So he’s going in for a
little temper. We must smoke it out of him.’ And I began to treat him
with contempt; whenever I met him I turned away or smiled
sarcastically. And just then that affair with his father happened. You
remember? You must realize that he was fearfully worked up by what had
happened already. The boys, seeing I’d given him up, set on him and
taunted him, shouting, ‘Wisp of tow, wisp of tow!’ And he had soon
regular skirmishes with them, which I am very sorry for. They seem to
have given him one very bad beating. One day he flew at them all as
they were coming out of school. I stood a few yards off, looking on.
And, I swear, I don’t remember that I laughed; it was quite the other
way, I felt awfully sorry for him, in another minute I would have run
up to take his part. But he suddenly met my eyes. I don’t know what he
fancied; but he pulled out a penknife, rushed at me, and struck at my
thigh, here in my right leg. I didn’t move. I don’t mind owning I am
plucky sometimes, Karamazov. I simply looked at him contemptuously, as
though to say, ‘This is how you repay all my kindness! Do it again, if
you like, I’m at your service.’ But he didn’t stab me again; he broke
down, he was frightened at what he had done, he threw away the knife,
burst out crying, and ran away. I did not sneak on him, of course, and
I made them all keep quiet, so it shouldn’t come to the ears of the
masters. I didn’t even tell my mother till it had healed up. And the
wound was a mere scratch. And then I heard that the same day he’d been
throwing stones and had bitten your finger—but you understand now what
a state he was in! Well, it can’t be helped: it was stupid of me not to
come and forgive him—that is, to make it up with him—when he was taken
ill. I am sorry for it now. But I had a special reason. So now I’ve
told you all about it ... but I’m afraid it was stupid of me.”

“Oh, what a pity,” exclaimed Alyosha, with feeling, “that I didn’t know
before what terms you were on with him, or I’d have come to you long
ago to beg you to go to him with me. Would you believe it, when he was
feverish he talked about you in delirium. I didn’t know how much you
were to him! And you’ve really not succeeded in finding that dog? His
father and the boys have been hunting all over the town for it. Would
you believe it, since he’s been ill, I’ve three times heard him repeat
with tears, ‘It’s because I killed Zhutchka, father, that I am ill now.
God is punishing me for it.’ He can’t get that idea out of his head.
And if the dog were found and proved to be alive, one might almost
fancy the joy would cure him. We have all rested our hopes on you.”

“Tell me, what made you hope that I should be the one to find him?”
Kolya asked, with great curiosity. “Why did you reckon on me rather
than any one else?”

“There was a report that you were looking for the dog, and that you
would bring it when you’d found it. Smurov said something of the sort.
We’ve all been trying to persuade Ilusha that the dog is alive, that
it’s been seen. The boys brought him a live hare; he just looked at it,
with a faint smile, and asked them to set it free in the fields. And so
we did. His father has just this moment come back, bringing him a
mastiff pup, hoping to comfort him with that; but I think it only makes
it worse.”

“Tell me, Karamazov, what sort of man is the father? I know him, but
what do you make of him—a mountebank, a buffoon?”

“Oh, no; there are people of deep feeling who have been somehow
crushed. Buffoonery in them is a form of resentful irony against those
to whom they daren’t speak the truth, from having been for years
humiliated and intimidated by them. Believe me, Krassotkin, that sort
of buffoonery is sometimes tragic in the extreme. His whole life now is
centered in Ilusha, and if Ilusha dies, he will either go mad with
grief or kill himself. I feel almost certain of that when I look at him
now.”

“I understand you, Karamazov. I see you understand human nature,” Kolya
added, with feeling.

“And as soon as I saw you with a dog, I thought it was Zhutchka you
were bringing.”

“Wait a bit, Karamazov, perhaps we shall find it yet; but this is
Perezvon. I’ll let him go in now and perhaps it will amuse Ilusha more
than the mastiff pup. Wait a bit, Karamazov, you will know something in
a minute. But, I say, I am keeping you here!” Kolya cried suddenly.
“You’ve no overcoat on in this bitter cold. You see what an egoist I
am. Oh, we are all egoists, Karamazov!”

“Don’t trouble; it is cold, but I don’t often catch cold. Let us go in,
though, and, by the way, what is your name? I know you are called
Kolya, but what else?”

“Nikolay—Nikolay Ivanovitch Krassotkin, or, as they say in official
documents, ‘Krassotkin son.’ ” Kolya laughed for some reason, but added
suddenly, “Of course I hate my name Nikolay.”

“Why so?”

“It’s so trivial, so ordinary.”

“You are thirteen?” asked Alyosha.

“No, fourteen—that is, I shall be fourteen very soon, in a fortnight.
I’ll confess one weakness of mine, Karamazov, just to you, since it’s
our first meeting, so that you may understand my character at once. I
hate being asked my age, more than that ... and in fact ... there’s a
libelous story going about me, that last week I played robbers with the
preparatory boys. It’s a fact that I did play with them, but it’s a
perfect libel to say I did it for my own amusement. I have reasons for
believing that you’ve heard the story; but I wasn’t playing for my own
amusement, it was for the sake of the children, because they couldn’t
think of anything to do by themselves. But they’ve always got some
silly tale. This is an awful town for gossip, I can tell you.”

“But what if you had been playing for your own amusement, what’s the
harm?”

“Come, I say, for my own amusement! You don’t play horses, do you?”

“But you must look at it like this,” said Alyosha, smiling. “Grown‐up
people go to the theater and there the adventures of all sorts of
heroes are represented—sometimes there are robbers and battles, too—and
isn’t that just the same thing, in a different form, of course? And
young people’s games of soldiers or robbers in their playtime are also
art in its first stage. You know, they spring from the growing artistic
instincts of the young. And sometimes these games are much better than
performances in the theater, the only difference is that people go
there to look at the actors, while in these games the young people are
the actors themselves. But that’s only natural.”

“You think so? Is that your idea?” Kolya looked at him intently. “Oh,
you know, that’s rather an interesting view. When I go home, I’ll think
it over. I’ll admit I thought I might learn something from you. I’ve
come to learn of you, Karamazov,” Kolya concluded, in a voice full of
spontaneous feeling.

“And I of you,” said Alyosha, smiling and pressing his hand.

Kolya was much pleased with Alyosha. What struck him most was that he
treated him exactly like an equal and that he talked to him just as if
he were “quite grown up.”

“I’ll show you something directly, Karamazov; it’s a theatrical
performance, too,” he said, laughing nervously. “That’s why I’ve come.”

“Let us go first to the people of the house, on the left. All the boys
leave their coats in there, because the room is small and hot.”

“Oh, I’m only coming in for a minute. I’ll keep on my overcoat.
Perezvon will stay here in the passage and be dead. _Ici_, Perezvon,
lie down and be dead! You see how he’s dead. I’ll go in first and
explore, then I’ll whistle to him when I think fit, and you’ll see,
he’ll dash in like mad. Only Smurov must not forget to open the door at
the moment. I’ll arrange it all and you’ll see something.”




Chapter V.
By Ilusha’s Bedside


The room inhabited by the family of the retired captain Snegiryov is
already familiar to the reader. It was close and crowded at that moment
with a number of visitors. Several boys were sitting with Ilusha, and
though all of them, like Smurov, were prepared to deny that it was
Alyosha who had brought them and reconciled them with Ilusha, it was
really the fact. All the art he had used had been to take them, one by
one, to Ilusha, without “sheepish sentimentality,” appearing to do so
casually and without design. It was a great consolation to Ilusha in
his suffering. He was greatly touched by seeing the almost tender
affection and sympathy shown him by these boys, who had been his
enemies. Krassotkin was the only one missing and his absence was a
heavy load on Ilusha’s heart. Perhaps the bitterest of all his bitter
memories was his stabbing Krassotkin, who had been his one friend and
protector. Clever little Smurov, who was the first to make it up with
Ilusha, thought it was so. But when Smurov hinted to Krassotkin that
Alyosha wanted to come and see him about something, the latter cut him
short, bidding Smurov tell “Karamazov” at once that he knew best what
to do, that he wanted no one’s advice, and that, if he went to see
Ilusha, he would choose his own time for he had “his own reasons.”

That was a fortnight before this Sunday. That was why Alyosha had not
been to see him, as he had meant to. But though he waited, he sent
Smurov to him twice again. Both times Krassotkin met him with a curt,
impatient refusal, sending Alyosha a message not to bother him any
more, that if he came himself, he, Krassotkin, would not go to Ilusha
at all. Up to the very last day, Smurov did not know that Kolya meant
to go to Ilusha that morning, and only the evening before, as he parted
from Smurov, Kolya abruptly told him to wait at home for him next
morning, for he would go with him to the Snegiryovs’, but warned him on
no account to say he was coming, as he wanted to drop in casually.
Smurov obeyed. Smurov’s fancy that Kolya would bring back the lost dog
was based on the words Kolya had dropped that “they must be asses not
to find the dog, if it was alive.” When Smurov, waiting for an
opportunity, timidly hinted at his guess about the dog, Krassotkin flew
into a violent rage. “I’m not such an ass as to go hunting about the
town for other people’s dogs when I’ve got a dog of my own! And how can
you imagine a dog could be alive after swallowing a pin? Sheepish
sentimentality, that’s what it is!”

For the last fortnight Ilusha had not left his little bed under the
ikons in the corner. He had not been to school since the day he met
Alyosha and bit his finger. He was taken ill the same day, though for a
month afterwards he was sometimes able to get up and walk about the
room and passage. But latterly he had become so weak that he could not
move without help from his father. His father was terribly concerned
about him. He even gave up drinking and was almost crazy with terror
that his boy would die. And often, especially after leading him round
the room on his arm and putting him back to bed, he would run to a dark
corner in the passage and, leaning his head against the wall, he would
break into paroxysms of violent weeping, stifling his sobs that they
might not be heard by Ilusha.

Returning to the room, he would usually begin doing something to amuse
and comfort his precious boy; he would tell him stories, funny
anecdotes, or would mimic comic people he had happened to meet, even
imitate the howls and cries of animals. But Ilusha could not bear to
see his father fooling and playing the buffoon. Though the boy tried
not to show how he disliked it, he saw with an aching heart that his
father was an object of contempt, and he was continually haunted by the
memory of the “wisp of tow” and that “terrible day.”

Nina, Ilusha’s gentle, crippled sister, did not like her father’s
buffoonery either (Varvara had been gone for some time past to
Petersburg to study at the university). But the half‐imbecile mother
was greatly diverted and laughed heartily when her husband began
capering about or performing something. It was the only way she could
be amused; all the rest of the time she was grumbling and complaining
that now every one had forgotten her, that no one treated her with
respect, that she was slighted, and so on. But during the last few days
she had completely changed. She began looking constantly at Ilusha’s
bed in the corner and seemed lost in thought. She was more silent,
quieter, and, if she cried, she cried quietly so as not to be heard.
The captain noticed the change in her with mournful perplexity. The
boys’ visits at first only angered her, but later on their merry shouts
and stories began to divert her, and at last she liked them so much
that, if the boys had given up coming, she would have felt dreary
without them. When the children told some story or played a game, she
laughed and clapped her hands. She called some of them to her and
kissed them. She was particularly fond of Smurov.

As for the captain, the presence in his room of the children, who came
to cheer up Ilusha, filled his heart from the first with ecstatic joy.
He even hoped that Ilusha would now get over his depression, and that
that would hasten his recovery. In spite of his alarm about Ilusha, he
had not, till lately, felt one minute’s doubt of his boy’s ultimate
recovery.

He met his little visitors with homage, waited upon them hand and foot;
he was ready to be their horse and even began letting them ride on his
back, but Ilusha did not like the game and it was given up. He began
buying little things for them, gingerbread and nuts, gave them tea and
cut them sandwiches. It must be noted that all this time he had plenty
of money. He had taken the two hundred roubles from Katerina Ivanovna
just as Alyosha had predicted he would. And afterwards Katerina
Ivanovna, learning more about their circumstances and Ilusha’s illness,
visited them herself, made the acquaintance of the family, and
succeeded in fascinating the half‐ imbecile mother. Since then she had
been lavish in helping them, and the captain, terror‐stricken at the
thought that his boy might be dying, forgot his pride and humbly
accepted her assistance.

All this time Doctor Herzenstube, who was called in by Katerina
Ivanovna, came punctually every other day, but little was gained by his
visits and he dosed the invalid mercilessly. But on that Sunday morning
a new doctor was expected, who had come from Moscow, where he had a
great reputation. Katerina Ivanovna had sent for him from Moscow at
great expense, not expressly for Ilusha, but for another object of
which more will be said in its place hereafter. But, as he had come,
she had asked him to see Ilusha as well, and the captain had been told
to expect him. He hadn’t the slightest idea that Kolya Krassotkin was
coming, though he had long wished for a visit from the boy for whom
Ilusha was fretting.

At the moment when Krassotkin opened the door and came into the room,
the captain and all the boys were round Ilusha’s bed, looking at a tiny
mastiff pup, which had only been born the day before, though the
captain had bespoken it a week ago to comfort and amuse Ilusha, who was
still fretting over the lost and probably dead Zhutchka. Ilusha, who
had heard three days before that he was to be presented with a puppy,
not an ordinary puppy, but a pedigree mastiff (a very important point,
of course), tried from delicacy of feeling to pretend that he was
pleased. But his father and the boys could not help seeing that the
puppy only served to recall to his little heart the thought of the
unhappy dog he had killed. The puppy lay beside him feebly moving and
he, smiling sadly, stroked it with his thin, pale, wasted hand. Clearly
he liked the puppy, but ... it wasn’t Zhutchka; if he could have had
Zhutchka and the puppy, too, then he would have been completely happy.

“Krassotkin!” cried one of the boys suddenly. He was the first to see
him come in.

Krassotkin’s entrance made a general sensation; the boys moved away and
stood on each side of the bed, so that he could get a full view of
Ilusha. The captain ran eagerly to meet Kolya.

“Please come in ... you are welcome!” he said hurriedly. “Ilusha, Mr.
Krassotkin has come to see you!”

But Krassotkin, shaking hands with him hurriedly, instantly showed his
complete knowledge of the manners of good society. He turned first to
the captain’s wife sitting in her arm‐chair, who was very ill‐humored
at the moment, and was grumbling that the boys stood between her and
Ilusha’s bed and did not let her see the new puppy. With the greatest
courtesy he made her a bow, scraping his foot, and turning to Nina, he
made her, as the only other lady present, a similar bow. This polite
behavior made an extremely favorable impression on the deranged lady.

“There, you can see at once he is a young man that has been well
brought up,” she commented aloud, throwing up her hands; “but as for
our other visitors they come in one on the top of another.”

“How do you mean, mamma, one on the top of another, how is that?”
muttered the captain affectionately, though a little anxious on her
account.

“That’s how they ride in. They get on each other’s shoulders in the
passage and prance in like that on a respectable family. Strange sort
of visitors!”

“But who’s come in like that, mamma?”

“Why, that boy came in riding on that one’s back and this one on that
one’s.”

Kolya was already by Ilusha’s bedside. The sick boy turned visibly
paler. He raised himself in the bed and looked intently at Kolya. Kolya
had not seen his little friend for two months, and he was overwhelmed
at the sight of him. He had never imagined that he would see such a
wasted, yellow face, such enormous, feverishly glowing eyes and such
thin little hands. He saw, with grieved surprise, Ilusha’s rapid, hard
breathing and dry lips. He stepped close to him, held out his hand, and
almost overwhelmed, he said:

“Well, old man ... how are you?” But his voice failed him, he couldn’t
achieve an appearance of ease; his face suddenly twitched and the
corners of his mouth quivered. Ilusha smiled a pitiful little smile,
still unable to utter a word. Something moved Kolya to raise his hand
and pass it over Ilusha’s hair.

“Never mind!” he murmured softly to him to cheer him up, or perhaps not
knowing why he said it. For a minute they were silent again.

“Hallo, so you’ve got a new puppy?” Kolya said suddenly, in a most
callous voice.

“Ye—es,” answered Ilusha in a long whisper, gasping for breath.

“A black nose, that means he’ll be fierce, a good house‐dog,” Kolya
observed gravely and stolidly, as if the only thing he cared about was
the puppy and its black nose. But in reality he still had to do his
utmost to control his feelings not to burst out crying like a child,
and do what he would he could not control it. “When it grows up, you’ll
have to keep it on the chain, I’m sure.”

“He’ll be a huge dog!” cried one of the boys.

“Of course he will,” “a mastiff,” “large,” “like this,” “as big as a
calf,” shouted several voices.

“As big as a calf, as a real calf,” chimed in the captain. “I got one
like that on purpose, one of the fiercest breed, and his parents are
huge and very fierce, they stand as high as this from the floor.... Sit
down here, on Ilusha’s bed, or here on the bench. You are welcome,
we’ve been hoping to see you a long time.... You were so kind as to
come with Alexey Fyodorovitch?”

Krassotkin sat on the edge of the bed, at Ilusha’s feet. Though he had
perhaps prepared a free‐and‐easy opening for the conversation on his
way, now he completely lost the thread of it.

“No ... I came with Perezvon. I’ve got a dog now, called Perezvon. A
Slavonic name. He’s out there ... if I whistle, he’ll run in. I’ve
brought a dog, too,” he said, addressing Ilusha all at once. “Do you
remember Zhutchka, old man?” he suddenly fired the question at him.

Ilusha’s little face quivered. He looked with an agonized expression at
Kolya. Alyosha, standing at the door, frowned and signed to Kolya not
to speak of Zhutchka, but he did not or would not notice.

“Where ... is Zhutchka?” Ilusha asked in a broken voice.

“Oh, well, my boy, your Zhutchka’s lost and done for!”

Ilusha did not speak, but he fixed an intent gaze once more on Kolya.
Alyosha, catching Kolya’s eye, signed to him vigorously again, but he
turned away his eyes pretending not to have noticed.

“It must have run away and died somewhere. It must have died after a
meal like that,” Kolya pronounced pitilessly, though he seemed a little
breathless. “But I’ve got a dog, Perezvon ... A Slavonic name.... I’ve
brought him to show you.”

“I don’t want him!” said Ilusha suddenly.

“No, no, you really must see him ... it will amuse you. I brought him
on purpose.... He’s the same sort of shaggy dog.... You allow me to
call in my dog, madam?” He suddenly addressed Madame Snegiryov, with
inexplicable excitement in his manner.

“I don’t want him, I don’t want him!” cried Ilusha, with a mournful
break in his voice. There was a reproachful light in his eyes.

“You’d better,” the captain started up from the chest by the wall on
which he had just sat down, “you’d better ... another time,” he
muttered, but Kolya could not be restrained. He hurriedly shouted to
Smurov, “Open the door,” and as soon as it was open, he blew his
whistle. Perezvon dashed headlong into the room.

“Jump, Perezvon, beg! Beg!” shouted Kolya, jumping up, and the dog
stood erect on its hind‐legs by Ilusha’s bedside. What followed was a
surprise to every one: Ilusha started, lurched violently forward, bent
over Perezvon and gazed at him, faint with suspense.

“It’s ... Zhutchka!” he cried suddenly, in a voice breaking with joy
and suffering.

“And who did you think it was?” Krassotkin shouted with all his might,
in a ringing, happy voice, and bending down he seized the dog and
lifted him up to Ilusha.

“Look, old man, you see, blind of one eye and the left ear is torn,
just the marks you described to me. It was by that I found him. I found
him directly. He did not belong to any one!” he explained, turning
quickly to the captain, to his wife, to Alyosha and then again to
Ilusha. “He used to live in the Fedotovs’ back‐yard. Though he made his
home there, they did not feed him. He was a stray dog that had run away
from the village ... I found him.... You see, old man, he couldn’t have
swallowed what you gave him. If he had, he must have died, he must
have! So he must have spat it out, since he is alive. You did not see
him do it. But the pin pricked his tongue, that is why he squealed. He
ran away squealing and you thought he’d swallowed it. He might well
squeal, because the skin of dogs’ mouths is so tender ... tenderer than
in men, much tenderer!” Kolya cried impetuously, his face glowing and
radiant with delight. Ilusha could not speak. White as a sheet, he
gazed open‐mouthed at Kolya, with his great eyes almost starting out of
his head. And if Krassotkin, who had no suspicion of it, had known what
a disastrous and fatal effect such a moment might have on the sick
child’s health, nothing would have induced him to play such a trick on
him. But Alyosha was perhaps the only person in the room who realized
it. As for the captain he behaved like a small child.

“Zhutchka! It’s Zhutchka!” he cried in a blissful voice, “Ilusha, this
is Zhutchka, your Zhutchka! Mamma, this is Zhutchka!” He was almost
weeping.

“And I never guessed!” cried Smurov regretfully. “Bravo, Krassotkin! I
said he’d find the dog and here he’s found him.”

“Here he’s found him!” another boy repeated gleefully.

“Krassotkin’s a brick!” cried a third voice.

“He’s a brick, he’s a brick!” cried the other boys, and they began
clapping.

“Wait, wait,” Krassotkin did his utmost to shout above them all. “I’ll
tell you how it happened, that’s the whole point. I found him, I took
him home and hid him at once. I kept him locked up at home and did not
show him to any one till to‐day. Only Smurov has known for the last
fortnight, but I assured him this dog was called Perezvon and he did
not guess. And meanwhile I taught the dog all sorts of tricks. You
should only see all the things he can do! I trained him so as to bring
you a well‐trained dog, in good condition, old man, so as to be able to
say to you, ‘See, old man, what a fine dog your Zhutchka is now!’
Haven’t you a bit of meat? He’ll show you a trick that will make you
die with laughing. A piece of meat, haven’t you got any?”

The captain ran across the passage to the landlady, where their cooking
was done. Not to lose precious time, Kolya, in desperate haste, shouted
to Perezvon, “Dead!” And the dog immediately turned round and lay on
his back with its four paws in the air. The boys laughed. Ilusha looked
on with the same suffering smile, but the person most delighted with
the dog’s performance was “mamma.” She laughed at the dog and began
snapping her fingers and calling it, “Perezvon, Perezvon!”

“Nothing will make him get up, nothing!” Kolya cried triumphantly,
proud of his success. “He won’t move for all the shouting in the world,
but if I call to him, he’ll jump up in a minute. Ici, Perezvon!” The
dog leapt up and bounded about, whining with delight. The captain ran
back with a piece of cooked beef.

“Is it hot?” Kolya inquired hurriedly, with a business‐like air, taking
the meat. “Dogs don’t like hot things. No, it’s all right. Look,
everybody, look, Ilusha, look, old man; why aren’t you looking? He does
not look at him, now I’ve brought him.”

The new trick consisted in making the dog stand motionless with his
nose out and putting a tempting morsel of meat just on his nose. The
luckless dog had to stand without moving, with the meat on his nose, as
long as his master chose to keep him, without a movement, perhaps for
half an hour. But he kept Perezvon only for a brief moment.

“Paid for!” cried Kolya, and the meat passed in a flash from the dog’s
nose to his mouth. The audience, of course, expressed enthusiasm and
surprise.

“Can you really have put off coming all this time simply to train the
dog?” exclaimed Alyosha, with an involuntary note of reproach in his
voice.

“Simply for that!” answered Kolya, with perfect simplicity. “I wanted
to show him in all his glory.”

“Perezvon! Perezvon,” called Ilusha suddenly, snapping his thin fingers
and beckoning to the dog.

“What is it? Let him jump up on the bed! _Ici_, Perezvon!” Kolya
slapped the bed and Perezvon darted up by Ilusha. The boy threw both
arms round his head and Perezvon instantly licked his cheek. Ilusha
crept close to him, stretched himself out in bed and hid his face in
the dog’s shaggy coat.

“Dear, dear!” kept exclaiming the captain. Kolya sat down again on the
edge of the bed.

“Ilusha, I can show you another trick. I’ve brought you a little
cannon. You remember, I told you about it before and you said how much
you’d like to see it. Well, here, I’ve brought it to you.”

And Kolya hurriedly pulled out of his satchel the little bronze cannon.
He hurried, because he was happy himself. Another time he would have
waited till the sensation made by Perezvon had passed off, now he
hurried on regardless of all consideration. “You are all happy now,” he
felt, “so here’s something to make you happier!” He was perfectly
enchanted himself.

“I’ve been coveting this thing for a long while; it’s for you, old man,
it’s for you. It belonged to Morozov, it was no use to him, he had it
from his brother. I swopped a book from father’s book‐case for it, _A
Kinsman of Mahomet or Salutary Folly_, a scandalous book published in
Moscow a hundred years ago, before they had any censorship. And Morozov
has a taste for such things. He was grateful to me, too....”

Kolya held the cannon in his hand so that all could see and admire it.
Ilusha raised himself, and, with his right arm still round the dog, he
gazed enchanted at the toy. The sensation was even greater when Kolya
announced that he had gunpowder too, and that it could be fired off at
once “if it won’t alarm the ladies.” “Mamma” immediately asked to look
at the toy closer and her request was granted. She was much pleased
with the little bronze cannon on wheels and began rolling it to and fro
on her lap. She readily gave permission for the cannon to be fired,
without any idea of what she had been asked. Kolya showed the powder
and the shot. The captain, as a military man, undertook to load it,
putting in a minute quantity of powder. He asked that the shot might be
put off till another time. The cannon was put on the floor, aiming
towards an empty part of the room, three grains of powder were thrust
into the touch‐hole and a match was put to it. A magnificent explosion
followed. Mamma was startled, but at once laughed with delight. The
boys gazed in speechless triumph. But the captain, looking at Ilusha,
was more enchanted than any of them. Kolya picked up the cannon and
immediately presented it to Ilusha, together with the powder and the
shot.

“I got it for you, for you! I’ve been keeping it for you a long time,”
he repeated once more in his delight.

“Oh, give it to me! No, give me the cannon!” mamma began begging like a
little child. Her face showed a piteous fear that she would not get it.
Kolya was disconcerted. The captain fidgeted uneasily.

“Mamma, mamma,” he ran to her, “the cannon’s yours, of course, but let
Ilusha have it, because it’s a present to him, but it’s just as good as
yours. Ilusha will always let you play with it; it shall belong to both
of you, both of you.”

“No, I don’t want it to belong to both of us, I want it to be mine
altogether, not Ilusha’s,” persisted mamma, on the point of tears.

“Take it, mother, here, keep it!” Ilusha cried. “Krassotkin, may I give
it to my mother?” he turned to Krassotkin with an imploring face, as
though he were afraid he might be offended at his giving his present to
some one else.

“Of course you may,” Krassotkin assented heartily, and, taking the
cannon from Ilusha, he handed it himself to mamma with a polite bow.
She was so touched that she cried.

“Ilusha, darling, he’s the one who loves his mamma!” she said tenderly,
and at once began wheeling the cannon to and fro on her lap again.

“Mamma, let me kiss your hand.” The captain darted up to her at once
and did so.

“And I never saw such a charming fellow as this nice boy,” said the
grateful lady, pointing to Krassotkin.

“And I’ll bring you as much powder as you like, Ilusha. We make the
powder ourselves now. Borovikov found out how it’s made—twenty‐four
parts of saltpeter, ten of sulphur and six of birchwood charcoal. It’s
all pounded together, mixed into a paste with water and rubbed through
a tammy sieve—that’s how it’s done.”

“Smurov told me about your powder, only father says it’s not real
gunpowder,” responded Ilusha.

“Not real?” Kolya flushed. “It burns. I don’t know, of course.”

“No, I didn’t mean that,” put in the captain with a guilty face. “I
only said that real powder is not made like that, but that’s nothing,
it can be made so.”

“I don’t know, you know best. We lighted some in a pomatum pot, it
burned splendidly, it all burnt away leaving only a tiny ash. But that
was only the paste, and if you rub it through ... but of course you
know best, I don’t know.... And Bulkin’s father thrashed him on account
of our powder, did you hear?” he turned to Ilusha.

“Yes,” answered Ilusha. He listened to Kolya with immense interest and
enjoyment.

“We had prepared a whole bottle of it and he used to keep it under his
bed. His father saw it. He said it might explode, and thrashed him on
the spot. He was going to make a complaint against me to the masters.
He is not allowed to go about with me now, no one is allowed to go
about with me now. Smurov is not allowed to either, I’ve got a bad name
with every one. They say I’m a ‘desperate character,’ ” Kolya smiled
scornfully. “It all began from what happened on the railway.”

“Ah, we’ve heard of that exploit of yours, too,” cried the captain.
“How could you lie still on the line? Is it possible you weren’t the
least afraid, lying there under the train? Weren’t you frightened?”

The captain was abject in his flattery of Kolya.

“N—not particularly,” answered Kolya carelessly. “What’s blasted my
reputation more than anything here was that cursed goose,” he said,
turning again to Ilusha. But though he assumed an unconcerned air as he
talked, he still could not control himself and was continually missing
the note he tried to keep up.

“Ah! I heard about the goose!” Ilusha laughed, beaming all over. “They
told me, but I didn’t understand. Did they really take you to the
court?”

“The most stupid, trivial affair, they made a mountain of a molehill as
they always do,” Kolya began carelessly. “I was walking through the
market‐place here one day, just when they’d driven in the geese. I
stopped and looked at them. All at once a fellow, who is an errand‐boy
at Plotnikov’s now, looked at me and said, ‘What are you looking at the
geese for?’ I looked at him; he was a stupid, moon‐faced fellow of
twenty. I am always on the side of the peasantry, you know. I like
talking to the peasants.... We’ve dropped behind the peasants—that’s an
axiom. I believe you are laughing, Karamazov?”

“No, Heaven forbid, I am listening,” said Alyosha with a most
good‐natured air, and the sensitive Kolya was immediately reassured.

“My theory, Karamazov, is clear and simple,” he hurried on again,
looking pleased. “I believe in the people and am always glad to give
them their due, but I am not for spoiling them, that is a _sine qua
non_ ... But I was telling you about the goose. So I turned to the fool
and answered, ‘I am wondering what the goose thinks about.’ He looked
at me quite stupidly, ‘And what does the goose think about?’ he asked.
‘Do you see that cart full of oats?’ I said. ‘The oats are dropping out
of the sack, and the goose has put its neck right under the wheel to
gobble them up—do you see?’ ‘I see that quite well,’ he said. ‘Well,’
said I, ‘if that cart were to move on a little, would it break the
goose’s neck or not?’ ‘It’d be sure to break it,’ and he grinned all
over his face, highly delighted. ‘Come on, then,’ said I, ‘let’s try.’
‘Let’s,’ he said. And it did not take us long to arrange: he stood at
the bridle without being noticed, and I stood on one side to direct the
goose. And the owner wasn’t looking, he was talking to some one, so I
had nothing to do, the goose thrust its head in after the oats of
itself, under the cart, just under the wheel. I winked at the lad, he
tugged at the bridle, and crack. The goose’s neck was broken in half.
And, as luck would have it, all the peasants saw us at that moment and
they kicked up a shindy at once. ‘You did that on purpose!’ ‘No, not on
purpose.’ ‘Yes, you did, on purpose!’ Well, they shouted, ‘Take him to
the justice of the peace!’ They took me, too. ‘You were there, too,’
they said, ‘you helped, you’re known all over the market!’ And, for
some reason, I really am known all over the market,” Kolya added
conceitedly. “We all went off to the justice’s, they brought the goose,
too. The fellow was crying in a great funk, simply blubbering like a
woman. And the farmer kept shouting that you could kill any number of
geese like that. Well, of course, there were witnesses. The justice of
the peace settled it in a minute, that the farmer was to be paid a
rouble for the goose, and the fellow to have the goose. And he was
warned not to play such pranks again. And the fellow kept blubbering
like a woman. ‘It wasn’t me,’ he said, ‘it was he egged me on,’ and he
pointed to me. I answered with the utmost composure that I hadn’t egged
him on, that I simply stated the general proposition, had spoken
hypothetically. The justice of the peace smiled and was vexed with
himself at once for having smiled. ‘I’ll complain to your masters of
you, so that for the future you mayn’t waste your time on such general
propositions, instead of sitting at your books and learning your
lessons.’ He didn’t complain to the masters, that was a joke, but the
matter was noised abroad and came to the ears of the masters. Their
ears are long, you know! The classical master, Kolbasnikov, was
particularly shocked about it, but Dardanelov got me off again. But
Kolbasnikov is savage with every one now like a green ass. Did you
know, Ilusha, he is just married, got a dowry of a thousand roubles,
and his bride’s a regular fright of the first rank and the last degree.
The third‐class fellows wrote an epigram on it:

Astounding news has reached the class,
Kolbasnikov has been an ass.


And so on, awfully funny, I’ll bring it to you later on. I say nothing
against Dardanelov, he is a learned man, there’s no doubt about it. I
respect men like that and it’s not because he stood up for me.”

“But you took him down about the founders of Troy!” Smurov put in
suddenly, unmistakably proud of Krassotkin at such a moment. He was
particularly pleased with the story of the goose.

“Did you really take him down?” the captain inquired, in a flattering
way. “On the question who founded Troy? We heard of it, Ilusha told me
about it at the time.”

“He knows everything, father, he knows more than any of us!” put in
Ilusha; “he only pretends to be like that, but really he is top in
every subject....”

Ilusha looked at Kolya with infinite happiness.

“Oh, that’s all nonsense about Troy, a trivial matter. I consider this
an unimportant question,” said Kolya with haughty humility. He had by
now completely recovered his dignity, though he was still a little
uneasy. He felt that he was greatly excited and that he had talked
about the goose, for instance, with too little reserve, while Alyosha
had looked serious and had not said a word all the time. And the vain
boy began by degrees to have a rankling fear that Alyosha was silent
because he despised him, and thought he was showing off before him. If
he dared to think anything like that Kolya would—

“I regard the question as quite a trivial one,” he rapped out again,
proudly.

“And I know who founded Troy,” a boy, who had not spoken before, said
suddenly, to the surprise of every one. He was silent and seemed to be
shy. He was a pretty boy of about eleven, called Kartashov. He was
sitting near the door. Kolya looked at him with dignified amazement.

The fact was that the identity of the founders of Troy had become a
secret for the whole school, a secret which could only be discovered by
reading Smaragdov, and no one had Smaragdov but Kolya. One day, when
Kolya’s back was turned, Kartashov hastily opened Smaragdov, which lay
among Kolya’s books, and immediately lighted on the passage relating to
the foundation of Troy. This was a good time ago, but he felt uneasy
and could not bring himself to announce publicly that he too knew who
had founded Troy, afraid of what might happen and of Krassotkin’s
somehow putting him to shame over it. But now he couldn’t resist saying
it. For weeks he had been longing to.

“Well, who did found it?” asked Kolya, turning to him with haughty
superciliousness. He saw from his face that he really did know and at
once made up his mind how to take it. There was, so to speak, a
discordant note in the general harmony.

“Troy was founded by Teucer, Dardanus, Ilius and Tros,” the boy rapped
out at once, and in the same instant he blushed, blushed so, that it
was painful to look at him. But the boys stared at him, stared at him
for a whole minute, and then all the staring eyes turned at once and
were fastened upon Kolya, who was still scanning the audacious boy with
disdainful composure.

“In what sense did they found it?” he deigned to comment at last. “And
what is meant by founding a city or a state? What do they do? Did they
go and each lay a brick, do you suppose?”

There was laughter. The offending boy turned from pink to crimson. He
was silent and on the point of tears. Kolya held him so for a minute.

“Before you talk of a historical event like the foundation of a
nationality, you must first understand what you mean by it,” he
admonished him in stern, incisive tones. “But I attach no consequence
to these old wives’ tales and I don’t think much of universal history
in general,” he added carelessly, addressing the company generally.

“Universal history?” the captain inquired, looking almost scared.

“Yes, universal history! It’s the study of the successive follies of
mankind and nothing more. The only subjects I respect are mathematics
and natural science,” said Kolya. He was showing off and he stole a
glance at Alyosha; his was the only opinion he was afraid of there. But
Alyosha was still silent and still serious as before. If Alyosha had
said a word it would have stopped him, but Alyosha was silent and “it
might be the silence of contempt,” and that finally irritated Kolya.

“The classical languages, too ... they are simply madness, nothing
more. You seem to disagree with me again, Karamazov?”

“I don’t agree,” said Alyosha, with a faint smile.

“The study of the classics, if you ask my opinion, is simply a police
measure, that’s simply why it has been introduced into our schools.” By
degrees Kolya began to get breathless again. “Latin and Greek were
introduced because they are a bore and because they stupefy the
intellect. It was dull before, so what could they do to make things
duller? It was senseless enough before, so what could they do to make
it more senseless? So they thought of Greek and Latin. That’s my
opinion, I hope I shall never change it,” Kolya finished abruptly. His
cheeks were flushed.

“That’s true,” assented Smurov suddenly, in a ringing tone of
conviction. He had listened attentively.

“And yet he is first in Latin himself,” cried one of the group of boys
suddenly.

“Yes, father, he says that and yet he is first in Latin,” echoed
Ilusha.

“What of it?” Kolya thought fit to defend himself, though the praise
was very sweet to him. “I am fagging away at Latin because I have to,
because I promised my mother to pass my examination, and I think that
whatever you do, it’s worth doing it well. But in my soul I have a
profound contempt for the classics and all that fraud.... You don’t
agree, Karamazov?”

“Why ‘fraud’?” Alyosha smiled again.

“Well, all the classical authors have been translated into all
languages, so it was not for the sake of studying the classics they
introduced Latin, but solely as a police measure, to stupefy the
intelligence. So what can one call it but a fraud?”

“Why, who taught you all this?” cried Alyosha, surprised at last.

“In the first place I am capable of thinking for myself without being
taught. Besides, what I said just now about the classics being
translated our teacher Kolbasnikov has said to the whole of the third
class.”

“The doctor has come!” cried Nina, who had been silent till then.

A carriage belonging to Madame Hohlakov drove up to the gate. The
captain, who had been expecting the doctor all the morning, rushed
headlong out to meet him. “Mamma” pulled herself together and assumed a
dignified air. Alyosha went up to Ilusha and began setting his pillows
straight. Nina, from her invalid chair, anxiously watched him putting
the bed tidy. The boys hurriedly took leave. Some of them promised to
come again in the evening. Kolya called Perezvon and the dog jumped off
the bed.

“I won’t go away, I won’t go away,” Kolya said hastily to Ilusha. “I’ll
wait in the passage and come back when the doctor’s gone, I’ll come
back with Perezvon.”

But by now the doctor had entered, an important‐looking person with
long, dark whiskers and a shiny, shaven chin, wearing a bearskin coat.
As he crossed the threshold he stopped, taken aback; he probably
fancied he had come to the wrong place. “How is this? Where am I?” he
muttered, not removing his coat nor his peaked sealskin cap. The crowd,
the poverty of the room, the washing hanging on a line in the corner,
puzzled him. The captain, bent double, was bowing low before him.

“It’s here, sir, here, sir,” he muttered cringingly; “it’s here, you’ve
come right, you were coming to us...”

“Sne‐gi‐ryov?” the doctor said loudly and pompously. “Mr. Snegiryov—is
that you?”

“That’s me, sir!”

“Ah!”

The doctor looked round the room with a squeamish air once more and
threw off his coat, displaying to all eyes the grand decoration at his
neck. The captain caught the fur coat in the air, and the doctor took
off his cap.

“Where is the patient?” he asked emphatically.




Chapter VI.
Precocity


“What do you think the doctor will say to him?” Kolya asked quickly.
“What a repulsive mug, though, hasn’t he? I can’t endure medicine!”

“Ilusha is dying. I think that’s certain,” answered Alyosha,
mournfully.

“They are rogues! Medicine’s a fraud! I am glad to have made your
acquaintance, though, Karamazov. I wanted to know you for a long time.
I am only sorry we meet in such sad circumstances.”

Kolya had a great inclination to say something even warmer and more
demonstrative, but he felt ill at ease. Alyosha noticed this, smiled,
and pressed his hand.

“I’ve long learned to respect you as a rare person,” Kolya muttered
again, faltering and uncertain. “I have heard you are a mystic and have
been in the monastery. I know you are a mystic, but ... that hasn’t put
me off. Contact with real life will cure you.... It’s always so with
characters like yours.”

“What do you mean by mystic? Cure me of what?” Alyosha was rather
astonished.

“Oh, God and all the rest of it.”

“What, don’t you believe in God?”

“Oh, I’ve nothing against God. Of course, God is only a hypothesis, but
... I admit that He is needed ... for the order of the universe and all
that ... and that if there were no God He would have to be invented,”
added Kolya, beginning to blush. He suddenly fancied that Alyosha might
think he was trying to show off his knowledge and to prove that he was
“grown up.” “I haven’t the slightest desire to show off my knowledge to
him,” Kolya thought indignantly. And all of a sudden he felt horribly
annoyed.

“I must confess I can’t endure entering on such discussions,” he said
with a final air. “It’s possible for one who doesn’t believe in God to
love mankind, don’t you think so? Voltaire didn’t believe in God and
loved mankind?” (“I am at it again,” he thought to himself.)

“Voltaire believed in God, though not very much, I think, and I don’t
think he loved mankind very much either,” said Alyosha quietly, gently,
and quite naturally, as though he were talking to some one of his own
age, or even older. Kolya was particularly struck by Alyosha’s apparent
diffidence about his opinion of Voltaire. He seemed to be leaving the
question for him, little Kolya, to settle.

“Have you read Voltaire?” Alyosha finished.

“No, not to say read.... But I’ve read _Candide_ in the Russian
translation ... in an absurd, grotesque, old translation ... (At it
again! again!)”

“And did you understand it?”

“Oh, yes, everything.... That is ... Why do you suppose I shouldn’t
understand it? There’s a lot of nastiness in it, of course.... Of
course I can understand that it’s a philosophical novel and written to
advocate an idea....” Kolya was getting mixed by now. “I am a
Socialist, Karamazov, I am an incurable Socialist,” he announced
suddenly, apropos of nothing.

“A Socialist?” laughed Alyosha. “But when have you had time to become
one? Why, I thought you were only thirteen?”

Kolya winced.

“In the first place I am not thirteen, but fourteen, fourteen in a
fortnight,” he flushed angrily, “and in the second place I am at a
complete loss to understand what my age has to do with it? The question
is what are my convictions, not what is my age, isn’t it?”

“When you are older, you’ll understand for yourself the influence of
age on convictions. I fancied, too, that you were not expressing your
own ideas,” Alyosha answered serenely and modestly, but Kolya
interrupted him hotly:

“Come, you want obedience and mysticism. You must admit that the
Christian religion, for instance, has only been of use to the rich and
the powerful to keep the lower classes in slavery. That’s so, isn’t
it?”

“Ah, I know where you read that, and I am sure some one told you so!”
cried Alyosha.

“I say, what makes you think I read it? And certainly no one told me
so. I can think for myself.... I am not opposed to Christ, if you like.
He was a most humane person, and if He were alive to‐day, He would be
found in the ranks of the revolutionists, and would perhaps play a
conspicuous part.... There’s no doubt about that.”

“Oh, where, where did you get that from? What fool have you made
friends with?” exclaimed Alyosha.

“Come, the truth will out! It has so chanced that I have often talked
to Mr. Rakitin, of course, but ... old Byelinsky said that, too, so
they say.”

“Byelinsky? I don’t remember. He hasn’t written that anywhere.”

“If he didn’t write it, they say he said it. I heard that from a ...
but never mind.”

“And have you read Byelinsky?”

“Well, no ... I haven’t read all of him, but ... I read the passage
about Tatyana, why she didn’t go off with Onyegin.”

“Didn’t go off with Onyegin? Surely you don’t ... understand that
already?”

“Why, you seem to take me for little Smurov,” said Kolya, with a grin
of irritation. “But please don’t suppose I am such a revolutionist. I
often disagree with Mr. Rakitin. Though I mention Tatyana, I am not at
all for the emancipation of women. I acknowledge that women are a
subject race and must obey. _Les femmes tricottent_, as Napoleon said.”
Kolya, for some reason, smiled, “And on that question at least I am
quite of one mind with that pseudo‐great man. I think, too, that to
leave one’s own country and fly to America is mean, worse than
mean—silly. Why go to America when one may be of great service to
humanity here? Now especially. There’s a perfect mass of fruitful
activity open to us. That’s what I answered.”

“What do you mean? Answered whom? Has some one suggested your going to
America already?”

“I must own, they’ve been at me to go, but I declined. That’s between
ourselves, of course, Karamazov; do you hear, not a word to any one. I
say this only to you. I am not at all anxious to fall into the clutches
of the secret police and take lessons at the Chain bridge.

Long will you remember
The house at the Chain bridge.


Do you remember? It’s splendid. Why are you laughing? You don’t suppose
I am fibbing, do you?” (“What if he should find out that I’ve only that
one number of _The Bell_ in father’s bookcase, and haven’t read any
more of it?” Kolya thought with a shudder.)

“Oh, no, I am not laughing and don’t suppose for a moment that you are
lying. No, indeed, I can’t suppose so, for all this, alas! is perfectly
true. But tell me, have you read Pushkin—_Onyegin_, for instance?...
You spoke just now of Tatyana.”

“No, I haven’t read it yet, but I want to read it. I have no
prejudices, Karamazov; I want to hear both sides. What makes you ask?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“Tell me, Karamazov, have you an awful contempt for me?” Kolya rapped
out suddenly and drew himself up before Alyosha, as though he were on
drill. “Be so kind as to tell me, without beating about the bush.”

“I have a contempt for you?” Alyosha looked at him wondering. “What
for? I am only sad that a charming nature such as yours should be
perverted by all this crude nonsense before you have begun life.”

“Don’t be anxious about my nature,” Kolya interrupted, not without
complacency. “But it’s true that I am stupidly sensitive, crudely
sensitive. You smiled just now, and I fancied you seemed to—”

“Oh, my smile meant something quite different. I’ll tell you why I
smiled. Not long ago I read the criticism made by a German who had
lived in Russia, on our students and schoolboys of to‐day. ‘Show a
Russian schoolboy,’ he writes, ‘a map of the stars, which he knows
nothing about, and he will give you back the map next day with
corrections on it.’ No knowledge and unbounded conceit—that’s what the
German meant to say about the Russian schoolboy.”

“Yes, that’s perfectly right,” Kolya laughed suddenly, “exactly so!
Bravo the German! But he did not see the good side, what do you think?
Conceit may be, that comes from youth, that will be corrected if need
be, but, on the other hand, there is an independent spirit almost from
childhood, boldness of thought and conviction, and not the spirit of
these sausage makers, groveling before authority.... But the German was
right all the same. Bravo the German! But Germans want strangling all
the same. Though they are so good at science and learning they must be
strangled.”

“Strangled, what for?” smiled Alyosha.

“Well, perhaps I am talking nonsense, I agree. I am awfully childish
sometimes, and when I am pleased about anything I can’t restrain myself
and am ready to talk any stuff. But, I say, we are chattering away here
about nothing, and that doctor has been a long time in there. But
perhaps he’s examining the mamma and that poor crippled Nina. I liked
that Nina, you know. She whispered to me suddenly as I was coming away,
‘Why didn’t you come before?’ And in such a voice, so reproachfully! I
think she is awfully nice and pathetic.”

“Yes, yes! Well, you’ll be coming often, you will see what she is like.
It would do you a great deal of good to know people like that, to learn
to value a great deal which you will find out from knowing these
people,” Alyosha observed warmly. “That would have more effect on you
than anything.”

“Oh, how I regret and blame myself for not having come sooner!” Kolya
exclaimed, with bitter feeling.

“Yes, it’s a great pity. You saw for yourself how delighted the poor
child was to see you. And how he fretted for you to come!”

“Don’t tell me! You make it worse! But it serves me right. What kept me
from coming was my conceit, my egoistic vanity, and the beastly
wilfullness, which I never can get rid of, though I’ve been struggling
with it all my life. I see that now. I am a beast in lots of ways,
Karamazov!”

“No, you have a charming nature, though it’s been distorted, and I
quite understand why you have had such an influence on this generous,
morbidly sensitive boy,” Alyosha answered warmly.

“And you say that to me!” cried Kolya; “and would you believe it, I
thought—I’ve thought several times since I’ve been here—that you
despised me! If only you knew how I prize your opinion!”

“But are you really so sensitive? At your age! Would you believe it,
just now, when you were telling your story, I thought, as I watched
you, that you must be very sensitive!”

“You thought so? What an eye you’ve got, I say! I bet that was when I
was talking about the goose. That was just when I was fancying you had
a great contempt for me for being in such a hurry to show off, and for
a moment I quite hated you for it, and began talking like a fool. Then
I fancied—just now, here—when I said that if there were no God He would
have to be invented, that I was in too great a hurry to display my
knowledge, especially as I got that phrase out of a book. But I swear I
wasn’t showing off out of vanity, though I really don’t know why.
Because I was so pleased? Yes, I believe it was because I was so
pleased ... though it’s perfectly disgraceful for any one to be gushing
directly they are pleased, I know that. But I am convinced now that you
don’t despise me; it was all my imagination. Oh, Karamazov, I am
profoundly unhappy. I sometimes fancy all sorts of things, that every
one is laughing at me, the whole world, and then I feel ready to
overturn the whole order of things.”

“And you worry every one about you,” smiled Alyosha.

“Yes, I worry every one about me, especially my mother. Karamazov, tell
me, am I very ridiculous now?”

“Don’t think about that, don’t think of it at all!” cried Alyosha. “And
what does ridiculous mean? Isn’t every one constantly being or seeming
ridiculous? Besides, nearly all clever people now are fearfully afraid
of being ridiculous, and that makes them unhappy. All I am surprised at
is that you should be feeling that so early, though I’ve observed it
for some time past, and not only in you. Nowadays the very children
have begun to suffer from it. It’s almost a sort of insanity. The devil
has taken the form of that vanity and entered into the whole
generation; it’s simply the devil,” added Alyosha, without a trace of
the smile that Kolya, staring at him, expected to see. “You are like
every one else,” said Alyosha, in conclusion, “that is, like very many
others. Only you must not be like everybody else, that’s all.”

“Even if every one is like that?”

“Yes, even if every one is like that. You be the only one not like it.
You really are not like every one else, here you are not ashamed to
confess to something bad and even ridiculous. And who will admit so
much in these days? No one. And people have even ceased to feel the
impulse to self‐ criticism. Don’t be like every one else, even if you
are the only one.”

“Splendid! I was not mistaken in you. You know how to console one. Oh,
how I have longed to know you, Karamazov! I’ve long been eager for this
meeting. Can you really have thought about me, too? You said just now
that you thought of me, too?”

“Yes, I’d heard of you and had thought of you, too ... and if it’s
partly vanity that makes you ask, it doesn’t matter.”

“Do you know, Karamazov, our talk has been like a declaration of love,”
said Kolya, in a bashful and melting voice. “That’s not ridiculous, is
it?”

“Not at all ridiculous, and if it were, it wouldn’t matter, because
it’s been a good thing.” Alyosha smiled brightly.

“But do you know, Karamazov, you must admit that you are a little
ashamed yourself, now.... I see it by your eyes.” Kolya smiled with a
sort of sly happiness.

“Why ashamed?”

“Well, why are you blushing?”

“It was you made me blush,” laughed Alyosha, and he really did blush.
“Oh, well, I am a little, goodness knows why, I don’t know...” he
muttered, almost embarrassed.

“Oh, how I love you and admire you at this moment just because you are
rather ashamed! Because you are just like me,” cried Kolya, in positive
ecstasy. His cheeks glowed, his eyes beamed.

“You know, Kolya, you will be very unhappy in your life,” something
made Alyosha say suddenly.

“I know, I know. How you know it all beforehand!” Kolya agreed at once.

“But you will bless life on the whole, all the same.”

“Just so, hurrah! You are a prophet. Oh, we shall get on together,
Karamazov! Do you know, what delights me most, is that you treat me
quite like an equal. But we are not equals, no, we are not, you are
better! But we shall get on. Do you know, all this last month, I’ve
been saying to myself, ‘Either we shall be friends at once, for ever,
or we shall part enemies to the grave!’ ”

“And saying that, of course, you loved me,” Alyosha laughed gayly.

“I did. I loved you awfully. I’ve been loving and dreaming of you. And
how do you know it all beforehand? Ah, here’s the doctor. Goodness!
What will he tell us? Look at his face!”




Chapter VII.
Ilusha


The doctor came out of the room again, muffled in his fur coat and with
his cap on his head. His face looked almost angry and disgusted, as
though he were afraid of getting dirty. He cast a cursory glance round
the passage, looking sternly at Alyosha and Kolya as he did so. Alyosha
waved from the door to the coachman, and the carriage that had brought
the doctor drove up. The captain darted out after the doctor, and,
bowing apologetically, stopped him to get the last word. The poor
fellow looked utterly crushed; there was a scared look in his eyes.

“Your Excellency, your Excellency ... is it possible?” he began, but
could not go on and clasped his hands in despair. Yet he still gazed
imploringly at the doctor, as though a word from him might still change
the poor boy’s fate.

“I can’t help it, I am not God!” the doctor answered offhand, though
with the customary impressiveness.

“Doctor ... your Excellency ... and will it be soon, soon?”

“You must be prepared for anything,” said the doctor in emphatic and
incisive tones, and dropping his eyes, he was about to step out to the
coach.

“Your Excellency, for Christ’s sake!” the terror‐stricken captain
stopped him again. “Your Excellency! but can nothing, absolutely
nothing save him now?”

“It’s not in my hands now,” said the doctor impatiently, “but h’m!...”
he stopped suddenly. “If you could, for instance ... send ... your
patient ... at once, without delay” (the words “at once, without
delay,” the doctor uttered with an almost wrathful sternness that made
the captain start) “to Syracuse, the change to the new be‐ne‐ficial
climatic conditions might possibly effect—”

“To Syracuse!” cried the captain, unable to grasp what was said.

“Syracuse is in Sicily,” Kolya jerked out suddenly in explanation. The
doctor looked at him.

“Sicily! your Excellency,” faltered the captain, “but you’ve seen”—he
spread out his hands, indicating his surroundings—“mamma and my
family?”

“N—no, Sicily is not the place for the family, the family should go to
Caucasus in the early spring ... your daughter must go to the Caucasus,
and your wife ... after a course of the waters in the Caucasus for her
rheumatism ... must be sent straight to Paris to the mental specialist
Lepelletier; I could give you a note to him, and then ... there might
be a change—”

“Doctor, doctor! But you see!” The captain flung wide his hands again
despairingly, indicating the bare wooden walls of the passage.

“Well, that’s not my business,” grinned the doctor. “I have only told
you the answer of medical science to your question as to possible
treatment. As for the rest, to my regret—”

“Don’t be afraid, apothecary, my dog won’t bite you,” Kolya rapped out
loudly, noticing the doctor’s rather uneasy glance at Perezvon, who was
standing in the doorway. There was a wrathful note in Kolya’s voice. He
used the word apothecary instead of doctor on purpose, and, as he
explained afterwards, used it “to insult him.”

“What’s that?” The doctor flung up his head, staring with surprise at
Kolya. “Who’s this?” he addressed Alyosha, as though asking him to
explain.

“It’s Perezvon’s master, don’t worry about me,” Kolya said incisively
again.

“Perezvon?”[7] repeated the doctor, perplexed.

“He hears the bell, but where it is he cannot tell. Good‐by, we shall
meet in Syracuse.”

“Who’s this? Who’s this?” The doctor flew into a terrible rage.

“He is a schoolboy, doctor, he is a mischievous boy; take no notice of
him,” said Alyosha, frowning and speaking quickly. “Kolya, hold your
tongue!” he cried to Krassotkin. “Take no notice of him, doctor,” he
repeated, rather impatiently.

“He wants a thrashing, a good thrashing!” The doctor stamped in a
perfect fury.

“And you know, apothecary, my Perezvon might bite!” said Kolya, turning
pale, with quivering voice and flashing eyes. “_Ici_, Perezvon!”

“Kolya, if you say another word, I’ll have nothing more to do with
you,” Alyosha cried peremptorily.

“There is only one man in the world who can command Nikolay
Krassotkin—this is the man”; Kolya pointed to Alyosha. “I obey him,
good‐ by!”

He stepped forward, opened the door, and quickly went into the inner
room. Perezvon flew after him. The doctor stood still for five seconds
in amazement, looking at Alyosha; then, with a curse, he went out
quickly to the carriage, repeating aloud, “This is ... this is ... I
don’t know what it is!” The captain darted forward to help him into the
carriage. Alyosha followed Kolya into the room. He was already by
Ilusha’s bedside. The sick boy was holding his hand and calling for his
father. A minute later the captain, too, came back.

“Father, father, come ... we ...” Ilusha faltered in violent
excitement, but apparently unable to go on, he flung his wasted arms
round his father and Kolya, uniting them in one embrace, and hugging
them as tightly as he could. The captain suddenly began to shake with
dumb sobs, and Kolya’s lips and chin twitched.

“Father, father! How sorry I am for you!” Ilusha moaned bitterly.

“Ilusha ... darling ... the doctor said ... you would be all right ...
we shall be happy ... the doctor ...” the captain began.

“Ah, father! I know what the new doctor said to you about me.... I
saw!” cried Ilusha, and again he hugged them both with all his
strength, hiding his face on his father’s shoulder.

“Father, don’t cry, and when I die get a good boy, another one ...
choose one of them all, a good one, call him Ilusha and love him
instead of me....”

“Hush, old man, you’ll get well,” Krassotkin cried suddenly, in a voice
that sounded angry.

“But don’t ever forget me, father,” Ilusha went on, “come to my grave
... and, father, bury me by our big stone, where we used to go for our
walk, and come to me there with Krassotkin in the evening ... and
Perezvon ... I shall expect you.... Father, father!”

His voice broke. They were all three silent, still embracing. Nina was
crying quietly in her chair, and at last seeing them all crying,
“mamma,” too, burst into tears.

“Ilusha! Ilusha!” she exclaimed.

Krassotkin suddenly released himself from Ilusha’s embrace.

“Good‐by, old man, mother expects me back to dinner,” he said quickly.
“What a pity I did not tell her! She will be dreadfully anxious.... But
after dinner I’ll come back to you for the whole day, for the whole
evening, and I’ll tell you all sorts of things, all sorts of things.
And I’ll bring Perezvon, but now I will take him with me, because he
will begin to howl when I am away and bother you. Good‐by!”

And he ran out into the passage. He didn’t want to cry, but in the
passage he burst into tears. Alyosha found him crying.

“Kolya, you must be sure to keep your word and come, or he will be
terribly disappointed,” Alyosha said emphatically.

“I will! Oh, how I curse myself for not having come before!” muttered
Kolya, crying, and no longer ashamed of it.

At that moment the captain flew out of the room, and at once closed the
door behind him. His face looked frenzied, his lips were trembling. He
stood before the two and flung up his arms.

“I don’t want a good boy! I don’t want another boy!” he muttered in a
wild whisper, clenching his teeth. “If I forget thee, Jerusalem, may my
tongue—” He broke off with a sob and sank on his knees before the
wooden bench. Pressing his fists against his head, he began sobbing
with absurd whimpering cries, doing his utmost that his cries should
not be heard in the room.

Kolya ran out into the street.

“Good‐by, Karamazov? Will you come yourself?” he cried sharply and
angrily to Alyosha.

“I will certainly come in the evening.”

“What was that he said about Jerusalem?... What did he mean by that?”

“It’s from the Bible. ‘If I forget thee, Jerusalem,’ that is, if I
forget all that is most precious to me, if I let anything take its
place, then may—”

“I understand, that’s enough! Mind you come! _Ici_, Perezvon!” he cried
with positive ferocity to the dog, and with rapid strides he went home.




Book XI. Ivan




Chapter I.
At Grushenka’s


Alyosha went towards the cathedral square to the widow Morozov’s house
to see Grushenka, who had sent Fenya to him early in the morning with
an urgent message begging him to come. Questioning Fenya, Alyosha
learned that her mistress had been particularly distressed since the
previous day. During the two months that had passed since Mitya’s
arrest, Alyosha had called frequently at the widow Morozov’s house,
both from his own inclination and to take messages for Mitya. Three
days after Mitya’s arrest, Grushenka was taken very ill and was ill for
nearly five weeks. For one whole week she was unconscious. She was very
much changed—thinner and a little sallow, though she had for the past
fortnight been well enough to go out. But to Alyosha her face was even
more attractive than before, and he liked to meet her eyes when he went
in to her. A look of firmness and intelligent purpose had developed in
her face. There were signs of a spiritual transformation in her, and a
steadfast, fine and humble determination that nothing could shake could
be discerned in her. There was a small vertical line between her brows
which gave her charming face a look of concentrated thought, almost
austere at the first glance. There was scarcely a trace of her former
frivolity.

It seemed strange to Alyosha, too, that in spite of the calamity that
had overtaken the poor girl, betrothed to a man who had been arrested
for a terrible crime, almost at the instant of their betrothal, in
spite of her illness and the almost inevitable sentence hanging over
Mitya, Grushenka had not yet lost her youthful cheerfulness. There was
a soft light in the once proud eyes, though at times they gleamed with
the old vindictive fire when she was visited by one disturbing thought
stronger than ever in her heart. The object of that uneasiness was the
same as ever—Katerina Ivanovna, of whom Grushenka had even raved when
she lay in delirium. Alyosha knew that she was fearfully jealous of
her. Yet Katerina Ivanovna had not once visited Mitya in his prison,
though she might have done it whenever she liked. All this made a
difficult problem for Alyosha, for he was the only person to whom
Grushenka opened her heart and from whom she was continually asking
advice. Sometimes he was unable to say anything.

Full of anxiety he entered her lodging. She was at home. She had
returned from seeing Mitya half an hour before, and from the rapid
movement with which she leapt up from her chair to meet him he saw that
she had been expecting him with great impatience. A pack of cards dealt
for a game of “fools” lay on the table. A bed had been made up on the
leather sofa on the other side and Maximov lay, half‐reclining, on it.
He wore a dressing‐ gown and a cotton nightcap, and was evidently ill
and weak, though he was smiling blissfully. When the homeless old man
returned with Grushenka from Mokroe two months before, he had simply
stayed on and was still staying with her. He arrived with her in rain
and sleet, sat down on the sofa, drenched and scared, and gazed mutely
at her with a timid, appealing smile. Grushenka, who was in terrible
grief and in the first stage of fever, almost forgot his existence in
all she had to do the first half‐ hour after her arrival. Suddenly she
chanced to look at him intently: he laughed a pitiful, helpless little
laugh. She called Fenya and told her to give him something to eat. All
that day he sat in the same place, almost without stirring. When it got
dark and the shutters were closed, Fenya asked her mistress:

“Is the gentleman going to stay the night, mistress?”

“Yes; make him a bed on the sofa,” answered Grushenka.

Questioning him more in detail, Grushenka learned from him that he had
literally nowhere to go, and that “Mr. Kalganov, my benefactor, told me
straight that he wouldn’t receive me again and gave me five roubles.”

“Well, God bless you, you’d better stay, then,” Grushenka decided in
her grief, smiling compassionately at him. Her smile wrung the old
man’s heart and his lips twitched with grateful tears. And so the
destitute wanderer had stayed with her ever since. He did not leave the
house even when she was ill. Fenya and her grandmother, the cook, did
not turn him out, but went on serving him meals and making up his bed
on the sofa. Grushenka had grown used to him, and coming back from
seeing Mitya (whom she had begun to visit in prison before she was
really well) she would sit down and begin talking to “Maximushka” about
trifling matters, to keep her from thinking of her sorrow. The old man
turned out to be a good story‐teller on occasions, so that at last he
became necessary to her. Grushenka saw scarcely any one else beside
Alyosha, who did not come every day and never stayed long. Her old
merchant lay seriously ill at this time, “at his last gasp” as they
said in the town, and he did, in fact, die a week after Mitya’s trial.
Three weeks before his death, feeling the end approaching, he made his
sons, their wives and children, come upstairs to him at last and bade
them not leave him again. From that moment he gave strict orders to his
servants not to admit Grushenka and to tell her if she came, “The
master wishes you long life and happiness and tells you to forget him.”
But Grushenka sent almost every day to inquire after him.

“You’ve come at last!” she cried, flinging down the cards and joyfully
greeting Alyosha, “and Maximushka’s been scaring me that perhaps you
wouldn’t come. Ah, how I need you! Sit down to the table. What will you
have—coffee?”

“Yes, please,” said Alyosha, sitting down at the table. “I am very
hungry.”

“That’s right. Fenya, Fenya, coffee,” cried Grushenka. “It’s been made
a long time ready for you. And bring some little pies, and mind they
are hot. Do you know, we’ve had a storm over those pies to‐day. I took
them to the prison for him, and would you believe it, he threw them
back to me: he would not eat them. He flung one of them on the floor
and stamped on it. So I said to him: ‘I shall leave them with the
warder; if you don’t eat them before evening, it will be that your
venomous spite is enough for you!’ With that I went away. We quarreled
again, would you believe it? Whenever I go we quarrel.”

Grushenka said all this in one breath in her agitation. Maximov,
feeling nervous, at once smiled and looked on the floor.

“What did you quarrel about this time?” asked Alyosha.

“I didn’t expect it in the least. Only fancy, he is jealous of the
Pole. ‘Why are you keeping him?’ he said. ‘So you’ve begun keeping
him.’ He is jealous, jealous of me all the time, jealous eating and
sleeping! He even took it into his head to be jealous of Kuzma last
week.”

“But he knew about the Pole before?”

“Yes, but there it is. He has known about him from the very beginning,
but to‐day he suddenly got up and began scolding about him. I am
ashamed to repeat what he said. Silly fellow! Rakitin went in as I came
out. Perhaps Rakitin is egging him on. What do you think?” she added
carelessly.

“He loves you, that’s what it is: he loves you so much. And now he is
particularly worried.”

“I should think he might be, with the trial to‐morrow. And I went to
him to say something about to‐morrow, for I dread to think what’s going
to happen then. You say that he is worried, but how worried I am! And
he talks about the Pole! He’s too silly! He is not jealous of
Maximushka yet, anyway.”

“My wife was dreadfully jealous over me, too,” Maximov put in his word.

“Jealous of you?” Grushenka laughed in spite of herself. “Of whom could
she have been jealous?”

“Of the servant girls.”

“Hold your tongue, Maximushka, I am in no laughing mood now; I feel
angry. Don’t ogle the pies. I shan’t give you any; they are not good
for you, and I won’t give you any vodka either. I have to look after
him, too, just as though I kept an almshouse,” she laughed.

“I don’t deserve your kindness. I am a worthless creature,” said
Maximov, with tears in his voice. “You would do better to spend your
kindness on people of more use than me.”

“Ech, every one is of use, Maximushka, and how can we tell who’s of
most use? If only that Pole didn’t exist, Alyosha. He’s taken it into
his head to fall ill, too, to‐day. I’ve been to see him also. And I
shall send him some pies, too, on purpose. I hadn’t sent him any, but
Mitya accused me of it, so now I shall send some! Ah, here’s Fenya with
a letter! Yes, it’s from the Poles—begging again!”

Pan Mussyalovitch had indeed sent an extremely long and
characteristically eloquent letter in which he begged her to lend him
three roubles. In the letter was enclosed a receipt for the sum, with a
promise to repay it within three months, signed by Pan Vrublevsky as
well. Grushenka had received many such letters, accompanied by such
receipts, from her former lover during the fortnight of her
convalescence. But she knew that the two Poles had been to ask after
her health during her illness. The first letter Grushenka got from them
was a long one, written on large notepaper and with a big family crest
on the seal. It was so obscure and rhetorical that Grushenka put it
down before she had read half, unable to make head or tail of it. She
could not attend to letters then. The first letter was followed next
day by another in which Pan Mussyalovitch begged her for a loan of two
thousand roubles for a very short period. Grushenka left that letter,
too, unanswered. A whole series of letters had followed—one every
day—all as pompous and rhetorical, but the loan asked for, gradually
diminishing, dropped to a hundred roubles, then to twenty‐five, to ten,
and finally Grushenka received a letter in which both the Poles begged
her for only one rouble and included a receipt signed by both.

Then Grushenka suddenly felt sorry for them, and at dusk she went round
herself to their lodging. She found the two Poles in great poverty,
almost destitution, without food or fuel, without cigarettes, in debt
to their landlady. The two hundred roubles they had carried off from
Mitya at Mokroe had soon disappeared. But Grushenka was surprised at
their meeting her with arrogant dignity and self‐assertion, with the
greatest punctilio and pompous speeches. Grushenka simply laughed, and
gave her former admirer ten roubles. Then, laughing, she told Mitya of
it and he was not in the least jealous. But ever since, the Poles had
attached themselves to Grushenka and bombarded her daily with requests
for money and she had always sent them small sums. And now that day
Mitya had taken it into his head to be fearfully jealous.

“Like a fool, I went round to him just for a minute, on the way to see
Mitya, for he is ill, too, my Pole,” Grushenka began again with nervous
haste. “I was laughing, telling Mitya about it. ‘Fancy,’ I said, ‘my
Pole had the happy thought to sing his old songs to me to the guitar.
He thought I would be touched and marry him!’ Mitya leapt up
swearing.... So, there, I’ll send them the pies! Fenya, is it that
little girl they’ve sent? Here, give her three roubles and pack a dozen
pies up in a paper and tell her to take them. And you, Alyosha, be sure
to tell Mitya that I did send them the pies.”

“I wouldn’t tell him for anything,” said Alyosha, smiling.

“Ech! You think he is unhappy about it. Why, he’s jealous on purpose.
He doesn’t care,” said Grushenka bitterly.

“On purpose?” queried Alyosha.

“I tell you you are silly, Alyosha. You know nothing about it, with all
your cleverness. I am not offended that he is jealous of a girl like
me. I would be offended if he were not jealous. I am like that. I am
not offended at jealousy. I have a fierce heart, too. I can be jealous
myself. Only what offends me is that he doesn’t love me at all. I tell
you he is jealous now _on purpose_. Am I blind? Don’t I see? He began
talking to me just now of that woman, of Katerina, saying she was this
and that, how she had ordered a doctor from Moscow for him, to try and
save him; how she had ordered the best counsel, the most learned one,
too. So he loves her, if he’ll praise her to my face, more shame to
him! He’s treated me badly himself, so he attacked me, to make out I am
in fault first and to throw it all on me. ‘You were with your Pole
before me, so I can’t be blamed for Katerina,’ that’s what it amounts
to. He wants to throw the whole blame on me. He attacked me on purpose,
on purpose, I tell you, but I’ll—”

Grushenka could not finish saying what she would do. She hid her eyes
in her handkerchief and sobbed violently.

“He doesn’t love Katerina Ivanovna,” said Alyosha firmly.

“Well, whether he loves her or not, I’ll soon find out for myself,”
said Grushenka, with a menacing note in her voice, taking the
handkerchief from her eyes. Her face was distorted. Alyosha saw
sorrowfully that from being mild and serene, it had become sullen and
spiteful.

“Enough of this foolishness,” she said suddenly; “it’s not for that I
sent for you. Alyosha, darling, to‐morrow—what will happen to‐morrow?
That’s what worries me! And it’s only me it worries! I look at every
one and no one is thinking of it. No one cares about it. Are you
thinking about it even? To‐morrow he’ll be tried, you know. Tell me,
how will he be tried? You know it’s the valet, the valet killed him!
Good heavens! Can they condemn him in place of the valet and will no
one stand up for him? They haven’t troubled the valet at all, have
they?”

“He’s been severely cross‐examined,” observed Alyosha thoughtfully;
“but every one came to the conclusion it was not he. Now he is lying
very ill. He has been ill ever since that attack. Really ill,” added
Alyosha.

“Oh, dear! couldn’t you go to that counsel yourself and tell him the
whole thing by yourself? He’s been brought from Petersburg for three
thousand roubles, they say.”

“We gave these three thousand together—Ivan, Katerina Ivanovna and
I—but she paid two thousand for the doctor from Moscow herself. The
counsel Fetyukovitch would have charged more, but the case has become
known all over Russia; it’s talked of in all the papers and journals.
Fetyukovitch agreed to come more for the glory of the thing, because
the case has become so notorious. I saw him yesterday.”

“Well? Did you talk to him?” Grushenka put in eagerly.

“He listened and said nothing. He told me that he had already formed
his opinion. But he promised to give my words consideration.”

“Consideration! Ah, they are swindlers! They’ll ruin him. And why did
she send for the doctor?”

“As an expert. They want to prove that Mitya’s mad and committed the
murder when he didn’t know what he was doing”; Alyosha smiled gently;
“but Mitya won’t agree to that.”

“Yes; but that would be the truth if he had killed him!” cried
Grushenka. “He was mad then, perfectly mad, and that was my fault,
wretch that I am! But, of course, he didn’t do it, he didn’t do it! And
they are all against him, the whole town. Even Fenya’s evidence went to
prove he had done it. And the people at the shop, and that official,
and at the tavern, too, before, people had heard him say so! They are
all, all against him, all crying out against him.”

“Yes, there’s a fearful accumulation of evidence,” Alyosha observed
grimly.

“And Grigory—Grigory Vassilyevitch—sticks to his story that the door
was open, persists that he saw it—there’s no shaking him. I went and
talked to him myself. He’s rude about it, too.”

“Yes, that’s perhaps the strongest evidence against him,” said Alyosha.

“And as for Mitya’s being mad, he certainly seems like it now,”
Grushenka began with a peculiarly anxious and mysterious air. “Do you
know, Alyosha, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about it for a long
time. I go to him every day and simply wonder at him. Tell me, now,
what do you suppose he’s always talking about? He talks and talks and I
can make nothing of it. I fancied he was talking of something
intellectual that I couldn’t understand in my foolishness. Only he
suddenly began talking to me about a babe—that is, about some child.
‘Why is the babe poor?’ he said. ‘It’s for that babe I am going to
Siberia now. I am not a murderer, but I must go to Siberia!’ What that
meant, what babe, I couldn’t tell for the life of me. Only I cried when
he said it, because he said it so nicely. He cried himself, and I
cried, too. He suddenly kissed me and made the sign of the cross over
me. What did it mean, Alyosha, tell me? What is this babe?”

“It must be Rakitin, who’s been going to see him lately,” smiled
Alyosha, “though ... that’s not Rakitin’s doing. I didn’t see Mitya
yesterday. I’ll see him to‐day.”

“No, it’s not Rakitin; it’s his brother Ivan Fyodorovitch upsetting
him. It’s his going to see him, that’s what it is,” Grushenka began,
and suddenly broke off. Alyosha gazed at her in amazement.

“Ivan’s going? Has he been to see him? Mitya told me himself that Ivan
hasn’t been once.”

“There ... there! What a girl I am! Blurting things out!” exclaimed
Grushenka, confused and suddenly blushing. “Stay, Alyosha, hush! Since
I’ve said so much I’ll tell the whole truth—he’s been to see him twice,
the first directly he arrived. He galloped here from Moscow at once, of
course, before I was taken ill; and the second time was a week ago. He
told Mitya not to tell you about it, under any circumstances; and not
to tell any one, in fact. He came secretly.”

Alyosha sat plunged in thought, considering something. The news
evidently impressed him.

“Ivan doesn’t talk to me of Mitya’s case,” he said slowly. “He’s said
very little to me these last two months. And whenever I go to see him,
he seems vexed at my coming, so I’ve not been to him for the last three
weeks. H’m!... if he was there a week ago ... there certainly has been
a change in Mitya this week.”

“There has been a change,” Grushenka assented quickly. “They have a
secret, they have a secret! Mitya told me himself there was a secret,
and such a secret that Mitya can’t rest. Before then, he was
cheerful—and, indeed, he is cheerful now—but when he shakes his head
like that, you know, and strides about the room and keeps pulling at
the hair on his right temple with his right hand, I know there is
something on his mind worrying him.... I know! He was cheerful before,
though, indeed, he is cheerful to‐day.”

“But you said he was worried.”

“Yes, he is worried and yet cheerful. He keeps on being irritable for a
minute and then cheerful and then irritable again. And you know,
Alyosha, I am constantly wondering at him—with this awful thing hanging
over him, he sometimes laughs at such trifles as though he were a baby
himself.”

“And did he really tell you not to tell me about Ivan? Did he say,
‘Don’t tell him’?”

“Yes, he told me, ‘Don’t tell him.’ It’s you that Mitya’s most afraid
of. Because it’s a secret: he said himself it was a secret. Alyosha,
darling, go to him and find out what their secret is and come and tell
me,” Grushenka besought him with sudden eagerness. “Set my mind at rest
that I may know the worst that’s in store for me. That’s why I sent for
you.”

“You think it’s something to do with you? If it were, he wouldn’t have
told you there was a secret.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps he wants to tell me, but doesn’t dare to. He
warns me. There is a secret, he tells me, but he won’t tell me what it
is.”

“What do you think yourself?”

“What do I think? It’s the end for me, that’s what I think. They all
three have been plotting my end, for Katerina’s in it. It’s all
Katerina, it all comes from her. She is this and that, and that means
that I am not. He tells me that beforehand—warns me. He is planning to
throw me over, that’s the whole secret. They’ve planned it together,
the three of them—Mitya, Katerina, and Ivan Fyodorovitch. Alyosha, I’ve
been wanting to ask you a long time. A week ago he suddenly told me
that Ivan was in love with Katerina, because he often goes to see her.
Did he tell me the truth or not? Tell me, on your conscience, tell me
the worst.”

“I won’t tell you a lie. Ivan is not in love with Katerina Ivanovna, I
think.”

“Oh, that’s what I thought! He is lying to me, shameless deceiver,
that’s what it is! And he was jealous of me just now, so as to put the
blame on me afterwards. He is stupid, he can’t disguise what he is
doing; he is so open, you know.... But I’ll give it to him, I’ll give
it to him! ‘You believe I did it,’ he said. He said that to me, to me.
He reproached me with that! God forgive him! You wait, I’ll make it hot
for Katerina at the trial! I’ll just say a word then ... I’ll tell
everything then!”

And again she cried bitterly.

“This I can tell you for certain, Grushenka,” Alyosha said, getting up.
“First, that he loves you, loves you more than any one in the world,
and you only, believe me. I know. I do know. The second thing is that I
don’t want to worm his secret out of him, but if he’ll tell me of
himself to‐ day, I shall tell him straight out that I have promised to
tell you. Then I’ll come to you to‐day, and tell you. Only ... I fancy
... Katerina Ivanovna has nothing to do with it, and that the secret is
about something else. That’s certain. It isn’t likely it’s about
Katerina Ivanovna, it seems to me. Good‐by for now.”

Alyosha shook hands with her. Grushenka was still crying. He saw that
she put little faith in his consolation, but she was better for having
had her sorrow out, for having spoken of it. He was sorry to leave her
in such a state of mind, but he was in haste. He had a great many
things to do still.




Chapter II.
The Injured Foot


The first of these things was at the house of Madame Hohlakov, and he
hurried there to get it over as quickly as possible and not be too late
for Mitya. Madame Hohlakov had been slightly ailing for the last three
weeks: her foot had for some reason swollen up, and though she was not
in bed, she lay all day half‐reclining on the couch in her boudoir, in
a fascinating but decorous _déshabillé_. Alyosha had once noted with
innocent amusement that, in spite of her illness, Madame Hohlakov had
begun to be rather dressy—top‐knots, ribbons, loose wrappers, had made
their appearance, and he had an inkling of the reason, though he
dismissed such ideas from his mind as frivolous. During the last two
months the young official, Perhotin, had become a regular visitor at
the house.

Alyosha had not called for four days and he was in haste to go straight
to Lise, as it was with her he had to speak, for Lise had sent a maid
to him the previous day, specially asking him to come to her “about
something very important,” a request which, for certain reasons, had
interest for Alyosha. But while the maid went to take his name in to
Lise, Madame Hohlakov heard of his arrival from some one, and
immediately sent to beg him to come to her “just for one minute.”
Alyosha reflected that it was better to accede to the mamma’s request,
or else she would be sending down to Lise’s room every minute that he
was there. Madame Hohlakov was lying on a couch. She was particularly
smartly dressed and was evidently in a state of extreme nervous
excitement. She greeted Alyosha with cries of rapture.

“It’s ages, ages, perfect ages since I’ve seen you! It’s a whole
week—only think of it! Ah, but you were here only four days ago, on
Wednesday. You have come to see Lise. I’m sure you meant to slip into
her room on tiptoe, without my hearing you. My dear, dear Alexey
Fyodorovitch, if you only knew how worried I am about her! But of that
later, though that’s the most important thing, of that later. Dear
Alexey Fyodorovitch, I trust you implicitly with my Lise. Since the
death of Father Zossima—God rest his soul!” (she crossed herself)—“I
look upon you as a monk, though you look charming in your new suit.
Where did you find such a tailor in these parts? No, no, that’s not the
chief thing—of that later. Forgive me for sometimes calling you
Alyosha; an old woman like me may take liberties,” she smiled
coquettishly; “but that will do later, too. The important thing is that
I shouldn’t forget what is important. Please remind me of it yourself.
As soon as my tongue runs away with me, you just say ‘the important
thing?’ Ach! how do I know now what is of most importance? Ever since
Lise took back her promise—her childish promise, Alexey Fyodorovitch—to
marry you, you’ve realized, of course, that it was only the playful
fancy of a sick child who had been so long confined to her chair—thank
God, she can walk now!... that new doctor Katya sent for from Moscow
for your unhappy brother, who will to‐morrow—But why speak of to‐
morrow? I am ready to die at the very thought of to‐morrow. Ready to
die of curiosity.... That doctor was with us yesterday and saw Lise....
I paid him fifty roubles for the visit. But that’s not the point,
that’s not the point again. You see, I’m mixing everything up. I am in
such a hurry. Why am I in a hurry? I don’t understand. It’s awful how I
seem growing unable to understand anything. Everything seems mixed up
in a sort of tangle. I am afraid you are so bored you will jump up and
run away, and that will be all I shall see of you. Goodness! Why are we
sitting here and no coffee? Yulia, Glafira, coffee!”

Alyosha made haste to thank her, and said that he had only just had
coffee.

“Where?”

“At Agrafena Alexandrovna’s.”

“At ... at that woman’s? Ah, it’s she has brought ruin on every one. I
know nothing about it though. They say she has become a saint, though
it’s rather late in the day. She had better have done it before. What
use is it now? Hush, hush, Alexey Fyodorovitch, for I have so much to
say to you that I am afraid I shall tell you nothing. This awful trial
... I shall certainly go, I am making arrangements. I shall be carried
there in my chair; besides I can sit up. I shall have people with me.
And, you know, I am a witness. How shall I speak, how shall I speak? I
don’t know what I shall say. One has to take an oath, hasn’t one?”

“Yes; but I don’t think you will be able to go.”

“I can sit up. Ah, you put me out! Ah! this trial, this savage act, and
then they are all going to Siberia, some are getting married, and all
this so quickly, so quickly, everything’s changing, and at
last—nothing. All grow old and have death to look forward to. Well, so
be it! I am weary. This Katya, _cette charmante personne_, has
disappointed all my hopes. Now she is going to follow one of your
brothers to Siberia, and your other brother is going to follow her, and
will live in the nearest town, and they will all torment one another.
It drives me out of my mind. Worst of all—the publicity. The story has
been told a million times over in all the papers in Moscow and
Petersburg. Ah! yes, would you believe it, there’s a paragraph that I
was ‘a dear friend’ of your brother’s ——, I can’t repeat the horrid
word. Just fancy, just fancy!”

“Impossible! Where was the paragraph? What did it say?”

“I’ll show you directly. I got the paper and read it yesterday. Here,
in the Petersburg paper _Gossip_. The paper began coming out this year.
I am awfully fond of gossip, and I take it in, and now it pays me
out—this is what gossip comes to! Here it is, here, this passage. Read
it.”

And she handed Alyosha a sheet of newspaper which had been under her
pillow.

It was not exactly that she was upset, she seemed overwhelmed and
perhaps everything really was mixed up in a tangle in her head. The
paragraph was very typical, and must have been a great shock to her,
but, fortunately perhaps, she was unable to keep her mind fixed on any
one subject at that moment, and so might race off in a minute to
something else and quite forget the newspaper.

Alyosha was well aware that the story of the terrible case had spread
all over Russia. And, good heavens! what wild rumors about his brother,
about the Karamazovs, and about himself he had read in the course of
those two months, among other equally credible items! One paper had
even stated that he had gone into a monastery and become a monk, in
horror at his brother’s crime. Another contradicted this, and stated
that he and his elder, Father Zossima, had broken into the monastery
chest and “made tracks from the monastery.” The present paragraph in
the paper _Gossip_ was under the heading, “The Karamazov Case at
Skotoprigonyevsk.” (That, alas! was the name of our little town. I had
hitherto kept it concealed.) It was brief, and Madame Hohlakov was not
directly mentioned in it. No names appeared, in fact. It was merely
stated that the criminal, whose approaching trial was making such a
sensation—retired army captain, an idle swaggerer, and reactionary
bully—was continually involved in amorous intrigues, and particularly
popular with certain ladies “who were pining in solitude.” One such
lady, a pining widow, who tried to seem young though she had a grown‐up
daughter, was so fascinated by him that only two hours before the crime
she offered him three thousand roubles, on condition that he would
elope with her to the gold mines. But the criminal, counting on
escaping punishment, had preferred to murder his father to get the
three thousand rather than go off to Siberia with the middle‐aged
charms of his pining lady. This playful paragraph finished, of course,
with an outburst of generous indignation at the wickedness of parricide
and at the lately abolished institution of serfdom. Reading it with
curiosity, Alyosha folded up the paper and handed it back to Madame
Hohlakov.

“Well, that must be me,” she hurried on again. “Of course I am meant.
Scarcely more than an hour before, I suggested gold mines to him, and
here they talk of ‘middle‐aged charms’ as though that were my motive!
He writes that out of spite! God Almighty forgive him for the
middle‐aged charms, as I forgive him! You know it’s— Do you know who it
is? It’s your friend Rakitin.”

“Perhaps,” said Alyosha, “though I’ve heard nothing about it.”

“It’s he, it’s he! No ‘perhaps’ about it. You know I turned him out of
the house.... You know all that story, don’t you?”

“I know that you asked him not to visit you for the future, but why it
was, I haven’t heard ... from you, at least.”

“Ah, then you’ve heard it from him! He abuses me, I suppose, abuses me
dreadfully?”

“Yes, he does; but then he abuses every one. But why you’ve given him
up I haven’t heard from him either. I meet him very seldom now, indeed.
We are not friends.”

“Well, then, I’ll tell you all about it. There’s no help for it, I’ll
confess, for there is one point in which I was perhaps to blame. Only a
little, little point, so little that perhaps it doesn’t count. You see,
my dear boy”—Madame Hohlakov suddenly looked arch and a charming,
though enigmatic, smile played about her lips—“you see, I suspect ...
You must forgive me, Alyosha. I am like a mother to you.... No, no;
quite the contrary. I speak to you now as though you were my
father—mother’s quite out of place. Well, it’s as though I were
confessing to Father Zossima, that’s just it. I called you a monk just
now. Well, that poor young man, your friend, Rakitin (Mercy on us! I
can’t be angry with him. I feel cross, but not very), that frivolous
young man, would you believe it, seems to have taken it into his head
to fall in love with me. I only noticed it later. At first—a month
ago—he only began to come oftener to see me, almost every day; though,
of course, we were acquainted before. I knew nothing about it ... and
suddenly it dawned upon me, and I began to notice things with surprise.
You know, two months ago, that modest, charming, excellent young man,
Pyotr Ilyitch Perhotin, who’s in the service here, began to be a
regular visitor at the house. You met him here ever so many times
yourself. And he is an excellent, earnest young man, isn’t he? He comes
once every three days, not every day (though I should be glad to see
him every day), and always so well dressed. Altogether, I love young
people, Alyosha, talented, modest, like you, and he has almost the mind
of a statesman, he talks so charmingly, and I shall certainly,
certainly try and get promotion for him. He is a future diplomat. On
that awful day he almost saved me from death by coming in the night.
And your friend Rakitin comes in such boots, and always stretches them
out on the carpet.... He began hinting at his feelings, in fact, and
one day, as he was going, he squeezed my hand terribly hard. My foot
began to swell directly after he pressed my hand like that. He had met
Pyotr Ilyitch here before, and would you believe it, he is always
gibing at him, growling at him, for some reason. I simply looked at the
way they went on together and laughed inwardly. So I was sitting here
alone—no, I was laid up then. Well, I was lying here alone and suddenly
Rakitin comes in, and only fancy! brought me some verses of his own
composition—a short poem, on my bad foot: that is, he described my foot
in a poem. Wait a minute—how did it go?

A captivating little foot.


It began somehow like that. I can never remember poetry. I’ve got it
here. I’ll show it to you later. But it’s a charming thing—charming;
and, you know, it’s not only about the foot, it had a good moral, too,
a charming idea, only I’ve forgotten it; in fact, it was just the thing
for an album. So, of course, I thanked him, and he was evidently
flattered. I’d hardly had time to thank him when in comes Pyotr
Ilyitch, and Rakitin suddenly looked as black as night. I could see
that Pyotr Ilyitch was in the way, for Rakitin certainly wanted to say
something after giving me the verses. I had a presentiment of it; but
Pyotr Ilyitch came in. I showed Pyotr Ilyitch the verses and didn’t say
who was the author. But I am convinced that he guessed, though he won’t
own it to this day, and declares he had no idea. But he says that on
purpose. Pyotr Ilyitch began to laugh at once, and fell to criticizing
it. ‘Wretched doggerel,’ he said they were, ‘some divinity student must
have written them,’ and with such vehemence, such vehemence! Then,
instead of laughing, your friend flew into a rage. ‘Good gracious!’ I
thought, ‘they’ll fly at each other.’ ‘It was I who wrote them,’ said
he. ‘I wrote them as a joke,’ he said, ‘for I think it degrading to
write verses.... But they are good poetry. They want to put a monument
to your Pushkin for writing about women’s feet, while I wrote with a
moral purpose, and you,’ said he, ‘are an advocate of serfdom. You’ve
no humane ideas,’ said he. ‘You have no modern enlightened feelings,
you are uninfluenced by progress, you are a mere official,’ he said,
‘and you take bribes.’ Then I began screaming and imploring them. And,
you know, Pyotr Ilyitch is anything but a coward. He at once took up
the most gentlemanly tone, looked at him sarcastically, listened, and
apologized. ‘I’d no idea,’ said he. ‘I shouldn’t have said it, if I had
known. I should have praised it. Poets are all so irritable,’ he said.
In short, he laughed at him under cover of the most gentlemanly tone.
He explained to me afterwards that it was all sarcastic. I thought he
was in earnest. Only as I lay there, just as before you now, I thought,
‘Would it, or would it not, be the proper thing for me to turn Rakitin
out for shouting so rudely at a visitor in my house?’ And, would you
believe it, I lay here, shut my eyes, and wondered, would it be the
proper thing or not. I kept worrying and worrying, and my heart began
to beat, and I couldn’t make up my mind whether to make an outcry or
not. One voice seemed to be telling me, ‘Speak,’ and the other ‘No,
don’t speak.’ And no sooner had the second voice said that than I cried
out, and fainted. Of course, there was a fuss. I got up suddenly and
said to Rakitin, ‘It’s painful for me to say it, but I don’t wish to
see you in my house again.’ So I turned him out. Ah! Alexey
Fyodorovitch, I know myself I did wrong. I was putting it on. I wasn’t
angry with him at all, really; but I suddenly fancied—that was what did
it—that it would be such a fine scene.... And yet, believe me, it was
quite natural, for I really shed tears and cried for several days
afterwards, and then suddenly, one afternoon, I forgot all about it. So
it’s a fortnight since he’s been here, and I kept wondering whether he
would come again. I wondered even yesterday, then suddenly last night
came this _Gossip_. I read it and gasped. Who could have written it? He
must have written it. He went home, sat down, wrote it on the spot,
sent it, and they put it in. It was a fortnight ago, you see. But,
Alyosha, it’s awful how I keep talking and don’t say what I want to
say. Ah! the words come of themselves!”

“It’s very important for me to be in time to see my brother to‐day,”
Alyosha faltered.

“To be sure, to be sure! You bring it all back to me. Listen, what is
an aberration?”

“What aberration?” asked Alyosha, wondering.

“In the legal sense. An aberration in which everything is pardonable.
Whatever you do, you will be acquitted at once.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll tell you. This Katya ... Ah! she is a charming, charming
creature, only I never can make out who it is she is in love with. She
was with me some time ago and I couldn’t get anything out of her.
Especially as she won’t talk to me except on the surface now. She is
always talking about my health and nothing else, and she takes up such
a tone with me, too. I simply said to myself, ‘Well, so be it. I don’t
care’... Oh, yes. I was talking of aberration. This doctor has come.
You know a doctor has come? Of course, you know it—the one who
discovers madmen. You wrote for him. No, it wasn’t you, but Katya. It’s
all Katya’s doing. Well, you see, a man may be sitting perfectly sane
and suddenly have an aberration. He may be conscious and know what he
is doing and yet be in a state of aberration. And there’s no doubt that
Dmitri Fyodorovitch was suffering from aberration. They found out about
aberration as soon as the law courts were reformed. It’s all the good
effect of the reformed law courts. The doctor has been here and
questioned me about that evening, about the gold mines. ‘How did he
seem then?’ he asked me. He must have been in a state of aberration. He
came in shouting, ‘Money, money, three thousand! Give me three
thousand!’ and then went away and immediately did the murder. ‘I don’t
want to murder him,’ he said, and he suddenly went and murdered him.
That’s why they’ll acquit him, because he struggled against it and yet
he murdered him.”

“But he didn’t murder him,” Alyosha interrupted rather sharply. He felt
more and more sick with anxiety and impatience.

“Yes, I know it was that old man Grigory murdered him.”

“Grigory?” cried Alyosha.

“Yes, yes; it was Grigory. He lay as Dmitri Fyodorovitch struck him
down, and then got up, saw the door open, went in and killed Fyodor
Pavlovitch.”

“But why, why?”

“Suffering from aberration. When he recovered from the blow Dmitri
Fyodorovitch gave him on the head, he was suffering from aberration; he
went and committed the murder. As for his saying he didn’t, he very
likely doesn’t remember. Only, you know, it’ll be better, ever so much
better, if Dmitri Fyodorovitch murdered him. And that’s how it must
have been, though I say it was Grigory. It certainly was Dmitri
Fyodorovitch, and that’s better, ever so much better! Oh! not better
that a son should have killed his father, I don’t defend that. Children
ought to honor their parents, and yet it would be better if it were he,
as you’d have nothing to cry over then, for he did it when he was
unconscious or rather when he was conscious, but did not know what he
was doing. Let them acquit him—that’s so humane, and would show what a
blessing reformed law courts are. I knew nothing about it, but they say
they have been so a long time. And when I heard it yesterday, I was so
struck by it that I wanted to send for you at once. And if he is
acquitted, make him come straight from the law courts to dinner with
me, and I’ll have a party of friends, and we’ll drink to the reformed
law courts. I don’t believe he’d be dangerous; besides, I’ll invite a
great many friends, so that he could always be led out if he did
anything. And then he might be made a justice of the peace or something
in another town, for those who have been in trouble themselves make the
best judges. And, besides, who isn’t suffering from aberration
nowadays?—you, I, all of us are in a state of aberration, and there are
ever so many examples of it: a man sits singing a song, suddenly
something annoys him, he takes a pistol and shoots the first person he
comes across, and no one blames him for it. I read that lately, and all
the doctors confirm it. The doctors are always confirming; they confirm
anything. Why, my Lise is in a state of aberration. She made me cry
again yesterday, and the day before, too, and to‐day I suddenly
realized that it’s all due to aberration. Oh, Lise grieves me so! I
believe she’s quite mad. Why did she send for you? Did she send for you
or did you come of yourself?”

“Yes, she sent for me, and I am just going to her.” Alyosha got up
resolutely.

“Oh, my dear, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, perhaps that’s what’s most
important,” Madame Hohlakov cried, suddenly bursting into tears. “God
knows I trust Lise to you with all my heart, and it’s no matter her
sending for you on the sly, without telling her mother. But forgive me,
I can’t trust my daughter so easily to your brother Ivan Fyodorovitch,
though I still consider him the most chivalrous young man. But only
fancy, he’s been to see Lise and I knew nothing about it!”

“How? What? When?” Alyosha was exceedingly surprised. He had not sat
down again and listened standing.

“I will tell you; that’s perhaps why I asked you to come, for I don’t
know now why I did ask you to come. Well, Ivan Fyodorovitch has been to
see me twice, since he came back from Moscow. First time he came as a
friend to call on me, and the second time Katya was here and he came
because he heard she was here. I didn’t, of course, expect him to come
often, knowing what a lot he has to do as it is, _vous comprenez, cette
affaire et la mort terrible de votre papa_. But I suddenly heard he’d
been here again, not to see me but to see Lise. That’s six days ago
now. He came, stayed five minutes, and went away. And I didn’t hear of
it till three days afterwards, from Glafira, so it was a great shock to
me. I sent for Lise directly. She laughed. ‘He thought you were
asleep,’ she said, ‘and came in to me to ask after your health.’ Of
course, that’s how it happened. But Lise, Lise, mercy on us, how she
distresses me! Would you believe it, one night, four days ago, just
after you saw her last time, and had gone away, she suddenly had a fit,
screaming, shrieking, hysterics! Why is it I never have hysterics?
Then, next day another fit, and the same thing on the third, and
yesterday too, and then yesterday that aberration. She suddenly
screamed out, ‘I hate Ivan Fyodorovitch. I insist on your never letting
him come to the house again.’ I was struck dumb at these amazing words,
and answered, ‘On what grounds could I refuse to see such an excellent
young man, a young man of such learning too, and so unfortunate?’—for
all this business is a misfortune, isn’t it? She suddenly burst out
laughing at my words, and so rudely, you know. Well, I was pleased; I
thought I had amused her and the fits would pass off, especially as I
wanted to refuse to see Ivan Fyodorovitch anyway on account of his
strange visits without my knowledge, and meant to ask him for an
explanation. But early this morning Lise waked up and flew into a
passion with Yulia and, would you believe it, slapped her in the face.
That’s monstrous; I am always polite to my servants. And an hour later
she was hugging Yulia’s feet and kissing them. She sent a message to me
that she wasn’t coming to me at all, and would never come and see me
again, and when I dragged myself down to her, she rushed to kiss me,
crying, and as she kissed me, she pushed me out of the room without
saying a word, so I couldn’t find out what was the matter. Now, dear
Alexey Fyodorovitch, I rest all my hopes on you, and, of course, my
whole life is in your hands. I simply beg you to go to Lise and find
out everything from her, as you alone can, and come back and tell
me—me, her mother, for you understand it will be the death of me,
simply the death of me, if this goes on, or else I shall run away. I
can stand no more. I have patience; but I may lose patience, and then
... then something awful will happen. Ah, dear me! At last, Pyotr
Ilyitch!” cried Madame Hohlakov, beaming all over as she saw Perhotin
enter the room. “You are late, you are late! Well, sit down, speak, put
us out of suspense. What does the counsel say. Where are you off to,
Alexey Fyodorovitch?”

“To Lise.”

“Oh, yes. You won’t forget, you won’t forget what I asked you? It’s a
question of life and death!”

“Of course, I won’t forget, if I can ... but I am so late,” muttered
Alyosha, beating a hasty retreat.

“No, be sure, be sure to come in; don’t say ‘If you can.’ I shall die
if you don’t,” Madame Hohlakov called after him, but Alyosha had
already left the room.




Chapter III.
A Little Demon


Going in to Lise, he found her half reclining in the invalid‐chair, in
which she had been wheeled when she was unable to walk. She did not
move to meet him, but her sharp, keen eyes were simply riveted on his
face. There was a feverish look in her eyes, her face was pale and
yellow. Alyosha was amazed at the change that had taken place in her in
three days. She was positively thinner. She did not hold out her hand
to him. He touched the thin, long fingers which lay motionless on her
dress, then he sat down facing her, without a word.

“I know you are in a hurry to get to the prison,” Lise said curtly,
“and mamma’s kept you there for hours; she’s just been telling you
about me and Yulia.”

“How do you know?” asked Alyosha.

“I’ve been listening. Why do you stare at me? I want to listen and I do
listen, there’s no harm in that. I don’t apologize.”

“You are upset about something?”

“On the contrary, I am very happy. I’ve only just been reflecting for
the thirtieth time what a good thing it is I refused you and shall not
be your wife. You are not fit to be a husband. If I were to marry you
and give you a note to take to the man I loved after you, you’d take it
and be sure to give it to him and bring an answer back, too. If you
were forty, you would still go on taking my love‐letters for me.”

She suddenly laughed.

“There is something spiteful and yet open‐hearted about you,” Alyosha
smiled to her.

“The open‐heartedness consists in my not being ashamed of myself with
you. What’s more, I don’t want to feel ashamed with you, just with you.
Alyosha, why is it I don’t respect you? I am very fond of you, but I
don’t respect you. If I respected you, I shouldn’t talk to you without
shame, should I?”

“No.”

“But do you believe that I am not ashamed with you?”

“No, I don’t believe it.”

Lise laughed nervously again; she spoke rapidly.

“I sent your brother, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, some sweets in prison.
Alyosha, you know, you are quite pretty! I shall love you awfully for
having so quickly allowed me not to love you.”

“Why did you send for me to‐day, Lise?”

“I wanted to tell you of a longing I have. I should like some one to
torture me, marry me and then torture me, deceive me and go away. I
don’t want to be happy.”

“You are in love with disorder?”

“Yes, I want disorder. I keep wanting to set fire to the house. I keep
imagining how I’ll creep up and set fire to the house on the sly; it
must be on the sly. They’ll try to put it out, but it’ll go on burning.
And I shall know and say nothing. Ah, what silliness! And how bored I
am!”

She waved her hand with a look of repulsion.

“It’s your luxurious life,” said Alyosha, softly.

“Is it better, then, to be poor?”

“Yes, it is better.”

“That’s what your monk taught you. That’s not true. Let me be rich and
all the rest poor, I’ll eat sweets and drink cream and not give any to
any one else. Ach, don’t speak, don’t say anything,” she shook her hand
at him, though Alyosha had not opened his mouth. “You’ve told me all
that before, I know it all by heart. It bores me. If I am ever poor, I
shall murder somebody, and even if I am rich, I may murder some one,
perhaps—why do nothing! But do you know, I should like to reap, cut the
rye? I’ll marry you, and you shall become a peasant, a real peasant;
we’ll keep a colt, shall we? Do you know Kalganov?”

“Yes.”

“He is always wandering about, dreaming. He says, ‘Why live in real
life? It’s better to dream. One can dream the most delightful things,
but real life is a bore.’ But he’ll be married soon for all that; he’s
been making love to me already. Can you spin tops?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he’s just like a top: he wants to be wound up and set spinning
and then to be lashed, lashed, lashed with a whip. If I marry him, I’ll
keep him spinning all his life. You are not ashamed to be with me?”

“No.”

“You are awfully cross, because I don’t talk about holy things. I don’t
want to be holy. What will they do to one in the next world for the
greatest sin? You must know all about that.”

“God will censure you.” Alyosha was watching her steadily.

“That’s just what I should like. I would go up and they would censure
me, and I would burst out laughing in their faces. I should dreadfully
like to set fire to the house, Alyosha, to our house; you still don’t
believe me?”

“Why? There are children of twelve years old, who have a longing to set
fire to something and they do set things on fire, too. It’s a sort of
disease.”

“That’s not true, that’s not true; there may be children, but that’s
not what I mean.”

“You take evil for good; it’s a passing crisis, it’s the result of your
illness, perhaps.”

“You do despise me, though! It’s simply that I don’t want to do good, I
want to do evil, and it has nothing to do with illness.”

“Why do evil?”

“So that everything might be destroyed. Ah, how nice it would be if
everything were destroyed! You know, Alyosha, I sometimes think of
doing a fearful lot of harm and everything bad, and I should do it for
a long while on the sly and suddenly every one would find it out. Every
one will stand round and point their fingers at me and I would look at
them all. That would be awfully nice. Why would it be so nice,
Alyosha?”

“I don’t know. It’s a craving to destroy something good or, as you say,
to set fire to something. It happens sometimes.”

“I not only say it, I shall do it.”

“I believe you.”

“Ah, how I love you for saying you believe me. And you are not lying
one little bit. But perhaps you think that I am saying all this on
purpose to annoy you?”

“No, I don’t think that ... though perhaps there is a little desire to
do that in it, too.”

“There is a little. I never can tell lies to you,” she declared, with a
strange fire in her eyes.

What struck Alyosha above everything was her earnestness. There was not
a trace of humor or jesting in her face now, though, in old days, fun
and gayety never deserted her even at her most “earnest” moments.

“There are moments when people love crime,” said Alyosha thoughtfully.

“Yes, yes! You have uttered my thought; they love crime, every one
loves crime, they love it always, not at some ‘moments.’ You know, it’s
as though people have made an agreement to lie about it and have lied
about it ever since. They all declare that they hate evil, but secretly
they all love it.”

“And are you still reading nasty books?”

“Yes, I am. Mamma reads them and hides them under her pillow and I
steal them.”

“Aren’t you ashamed to destroy yourself?”

“I want to destroy myself. There’s a boy here, who lay down between the
railway lines when the train was passing. Lucky fellow! Listen, your
brother is being tried now for murdering his father and every one loves
his having killed his father.”

“Loves his having killed his father?”

“Yes, loves it; every one loves it! Everybody says it’s so awful, but
secretly they simply love it. I for one love it.”

“There is some truth in what you say about every one,” said Alyosha
softly.

“Oh, what ideas you have!” Lise shrieked in delight. “And you a monk,
too! You wouldn’t believe how I respect you, Alyosha, for never telling
lies. Oh, I must tell you a funny dream of mine. I sometimes dream of
devils. It’s night; I am in my room with a candle and suddenly there
are devils all over the place, in all the corners, under the table, and
they open the doors; there’s a crowd of them behind the doors and they
want to come and seize me. And they are just coming, just seizing me.
But I suddenly cross myself and they all draw back, though they don’t
go away altogether, they stand at the doors and in the corners,
waiting. And suddenly I have a frightful longing to revile God aloud,
and so I begin, and then they come crowding back to me, delighted, and
seize me again and I cross myself again and they all draw back. It’s
awful fun. it takes one’s breath away.”

“I’ve had the same dream, too,” said Alyosha suddenly.

“Really?” cried Lise, surprised. “I say, Alyosha, don’t laugh, that’s
awfully important. Could two different people have the same dream?”

“It seems they can.”

“Alyosha, I tell you, it’s awfully important,” Lise went on, with
really excessive amazement. “It’s not the dream that’s important, but
your having the same dream as me. You never lie to me, don’t lie now:
is it true? You are not laughing?”

“It’s true.”

Lise seemed extraordinarily impressed and for half a minute she was
silent.

“Alyosha, come and see me, come and see me more often,” she said
suddenly, in a supplicating voice.

“I’ll always come to see you, all my life,” answered Alyosha firmly.

“You are the only person I can talk to, you know,” Lise began again. “I
talk to no one but myself and you. Only you in the whole world. And to
you more readily than to myself. And I am not a bit ashamed with you,
not a bit. Alyosha, why am I not ashamed with you, not a bit? Alyosha,
is it true that at Easter the Jews steal a child and kill it?”

“I don’t know.”

“There’s a book here in which I read about the trial of a Jew, who took
a child of four years old and cut off the fingers from both hands, and
then crucified him on the wall, hammered nails into him and crucified
him, and afterwards, when he was tried, he said that the child died
soon, within four hours. That was ‘soon’! He said the child moaned,
kept on moaning and he stood admiring it. That’s nice!”

“Nice?”

“Nice; I sometimes imagine that it was I who crucified him. He would
hang there moaning and I would sit opposite him eating pineapple
_compote_. I am awfully fond of pineapple _compote_. Do you like it?”

Alyosha looked at her in silence. Her pale, sallow face was suddenly
contorted, her eyes burned.

“You know, when I read about that Jew I shook with sobs all night. I
kept fancying how the little thing cried and moaned (a child of four
years old understands, you know), and all the while the thought of
pineapple _compote_ haunted me. In the morning I wrote a letter to a
certain person, begging him _particularly_ to come and see me. He came
and I suddenly told him all about the child and the pineapple
_compote_. _All_ about it, _all_, and said that it was nice. He laughed
and said it really was nice. Then he got up and went away. He was only
here five minutes. Did he despise me? Did he despise me? Tell me, tell
me, Alyosha, did he despise me or not?” She sat up on the couch, with
flashing eyes.

“Tell me,” Alyosha asked anxiously, “did you send for that person?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Did you send him a letter?”

“Yes.”

“Simply to ask about that, about that child?”

“No, not about that at all. But when he came, I asked him about that at
once. He answered, laughed, got up and went away.”

“That person behaved honorably,” Alyosha murmured.

“And did he despise me? Did he laugh at me?”

“No, for perhaps he believes in the pineapple _compote_ himself. He is
very ill now, too, Lise.”

“Yes, he does believe in it,” said Lise, with flashing eyes.

“He doesn’t despise any one,” Alyosha went on. “Only he does not
believe any one. If he doesn’t believe in people, of course, he does
despise them.”

“Then he despises me, me?”

“You, too.”

“Good,” Lise seemed to grind her teeth. “When he went out laughing, I
felt that it was nice to be despised. The child with fingers cut off is
nice, and to be despised is nice....”

And she laughed in Alyosha’s face, a feverish malicious laugh.

“Do you know, Alyosha, do you know, I should like—Alyosha, save me!”
She suddenly jumped from the couch, rushed to him and seized him with
both hands. “Save me!” she almost groaned. “Is there any one in the
world I could tell what I’ve told you? I’ve told you the truth, the
truth. I shall kill myself, because I loathe everything! I don’t want
to live, because I loathe everything! I loathe everything, everything.
Alyosha, why don’t you love me in the least?” she finished in a frenzy.

“But I do love you!” answered Alyosha warmly.

“And will you weep over me, will you?”

“Yes.”

“Not because I won’t be your wife, but simply weep for me?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you! It’s only your tears I want. Every one else may punish me
and trample me under foot, every one, every one, not excepting _any
one_. For I don’t love any one. Do you hear, not any one! On the
contrary, I hate him! Go, Alyosha; it’s time you went to your brother”;
she tore herself away from him suddenly.

“How can I leave you like this?” said Alyosha, almost in alarm.

“Go to your brother, the prison will be shut; go, here’s your hat. Give
my love to Mitya, go, go!”

And she almost forcibly pushed Alyosha out of the door. He looked at
her with pained surprise, when he was suddenly aware of a letter in his
right hand, a tiny letter folded up tight and sealed. He glanced at it
and instantly read the address, “To Ivan Fyodorovitch Karamazov.” He
looked quickly at Lise. Her face had become almost menacing.

“Give it to him, you must give it to him!” she ordered him, trembling
and beside herself. “To‐day, at once, or I’ll poison myself! That’s why
I sent for you.”

And she slammed the door quickly. The bolt clicked. Alyosha put the
note in his pocket and went straight downstairs, without going back to
Madame Hohlakov; forgetting her, in fact. As soon as Alyosha had gone,
Lise unbolted the door, opened it a little, put her finger in the crack
and slammed the door with all her might, pinching her finger. Ten
seconds after, releasing her finger, she walked softly, slowly to her
chair, sat up straight in it and looked intently at her blackened
finger and at the blood that oozed from under the nail. Her lips were
quivering and she kept whispering rapidly to herself:

“I am a wretch, wretch, wretch, wretch!”




Chapter IV.
A Hymn And A Secret


It was quite late (days are short in November) when Alyosha rang at the
prison gate. It was beginning to get dusk. But Alyosha knew that he
would be admitted without difficulty. Things were managed in our little
town, as everywhere else. At first, of course, on the conclusion of the
preliminary inquiry, relations and a few other persons could only
obtain interviews with Mitya by going through certain inevitable
formalities. But later, though the formalities were not relaxed,
exceptions were made for some, at least, of Mitya’s visitors. So much
so, that sometimes the interviews with the prisoner in the room set
aside for the purpose were practically _tête‐à‐tête_.

These exceptions, however, were few in number; only Grushenka, Alyosha
and Rakitin were treated like this. But the captain of the police,
Mihail Mihailovitch, was very favorably disposed to Grushenka. His
abuse of her at Mokroe weighed on the old man’s conscience, and when he
learned the whole story, he completely changed his view of her. And
strange to say, though he was firmly persuaded of his guilt, yet after
Mitya was once in prison, the old man came to take a more and more
lenient view of him. “He was a man of good heart, perhaps,” he thought,
“who had come to grief from drinking and dissipation.” His first horror
had been succeeded by pity. As for Alyosha, the police captain was very
fond of him and had known him for a long time. Rakitin, who had of late
taken to coming very often to see the prisoner, was one of the most
intimate acquaintances of the “police captain’s young ladies,” as he
called them, and was always hanging about their house. He gave lessons
in the house of the prison superintendent, too, who, though scrupulous
in the performance of his duties, was a kind‐ hearted old man. Alyosha,
again, had an intimate acquaintance of long standing with the
superintendent, who was fond of talking to him, generally on sacred
subjects. He respected Ivan Fyodorovitch, and stood in awe of his
opinion, though he was a great philosopher himself; “self‐ taught,” of
course. But Alyosha had an irresistible attraction for him. During the
last year the old man had taken to studying the Apocryphal Gospels, and
constantly talked over his impressions with his young friend. He used
to come and see him in the monastery and discussed for hours together
with him and with the monks. So even if Alyosha were late at the
prison, he had only to go to the superintendent and everything was made
easy. Besides, every one in the prison, down to the humblest warder,
had grown used to Alyosha. The sentry, of course, did not trouble him
so long as the authorities were satisfied.

When Mitya was summoned from his cell, he always went downstairs, to
the place set aside for interviews. As Alyosha entered the room he came
upon Rakitin, who was just taking leave of Mitya. They were both
talking loudly. Mitya was laughing heartily as he saw him out, while
Rakitin seemed grumbling. Rakitin did not like meeting Alyosha,
especially of late. He scarcely spoke to him, and bowed to him stiffly.
Seeing Alyosha enter now, he frowned and looked away, as though he were
entirely absorbed in buttoning his big, warm, fur‐trimmed overcoat.
Then he began looking at once for his umbrella.

“I must mind not to forget my belongings,” he muttered, simply to say
something.

“Mind you don’t forget other people’s belongings,” said Mitya, as a
joke, and laughed at once at his own wit. Rakitin fired up instantly.

“You’d better give that advice to your own family, who’ve always been a
slave‐driving lot, and not to Rakitin,” he cried, suddenly trembling
with anger.

“What’s the matter? I was joking,” cried Mitya. “Damn it all! They are
all like that,” he turned to Alyosha, nodding towards Rakitin’s
hurriedly retreating figure. “He was sitting here, laughing and
cheerful, and all at once he boils up like that. He didn’t even nod to
you. Have you broken with him completely? Why are you so late? I’ve not
been simply waiting, but thirsting for you the whole morning. But never
mind. We’ll make up for it now.”

“Why does he come here so often? Surely you are not such great
friends?” asked Alyosha. He, too, nodded at the door through which
Rakitin had disappeared.

“Great friends with Rakitin? No, not as much as that. Is it likely—a
pig like that? He considers I am ... a blackguard. They can’t
understand a joke either, that’s the worst of such people. They never
understand a joke, and their souls are dry, dry and flat; they remind
me of prison walls when I was first brought here. But he is a clever
fellow, very clever. Well, Alexey, it’s all over with me now.”

He sat down on the bench and made Alyosha sit down beside him.

“Yes, the trial’s to‐morrow. Are you so hopeless, brother?” Alyosha
said, with an apprehensive feeling.

“What are you talking about?” said Mitya, looking at him rather
uncertainly. “Oh, you mean the trial! Damn it all! Till now we’ve been
talking of things that don’t matter, about this trial, but I haven’t
said a word to you about the chief thing. Yes, the trial is to‐morrow;
but it wasn’t the trial I meant, when I said it was all over with me.
Why do you look at me so critically?”

“What do you mean, Mitya?”

“Ideas, ideas, that’s all! Ethics! What is ethics?”

“Ethics?” asked Alyosha, wondering.

“Yes; is it a science?”

“Yes, there is such a science ... but ... I confess I can’t explain to
you what sort of science it is.”

“Rakitin knows. Rakitin knows a lot, damn him! He’s not going to be a
monk. He means to go to Petersburg. There he’ll go in for criticism of
an elevating tendency. Who knows, he may be of use and make his own
career, too. Ough! they are first‐rate, these people, at making a
career! Damn ethics, I am done for, Alexey, I am, you man of God! I
love you more than any one. It makes my heart yearn to look at you. Who
was Karl Bernard?”

“Karl Bernard?” Alyosha was surprised again.

“No, not Karl. Stay, I made a mistake. Claude Bernard. What was he?
Chemist or what?”

“He must be a savant,” answered Alyosha; “but I confess I can’t tell
you much about him, either. I’ve heard of him as a savant, but what
sort I don’t know.”

“Well, damn him, then! I don’t know either,” swore Mitya. “A scoundrel
of some sort, most likely. They are all scoundrels. And Rakitin will
make his way. Rakitin will get on anywhere; he is another Bernard. Ugh,
these Bernards! They are all over the place.”

“But what is the matter?” Alyosha asked insistently.

“He wants to write an article about me, about my case, and so begin his
literary career. That’s what he comes for; he said so himself. He wants
to prove some theory. He wants to say ‘he couldn’t help murdering his
father, he was corrupted by his environment,’ and so on. He explained
it all to me. He is going to put in a tinge of Socialism, he says. But
there, damn the fellow, he can put in a tinge if he likes, I don’t
care. He can’t bear Ivan, he hates him. He’s not fond of you, either.
But I don’t turn him out, for he is a clever fellow. Awfully conceited,
though. I said to him just now, ‘The Karamazovs are not blackguards,
but philosophers; for all true Russians are philosophers, and though
you’ve studied, you are not a philosopher—you are a low fellow.’ He
laughed, so maliciously. And I said to him, ‘_De ideabus non est
disputandum_.’ Isn’t that rather good? I can set up for being a
classic, you see!” Mitya laughed suddenly.

“Why is it all over with you? You said so just now,” Alyosha
interposed.

“Why is it all over with me? H’m!... The fact of it is ... if you take
it as a whole, I am sorry to lose God—that’s why it is.”

“What do you mean by ‘sorry to lose God’?”

“Imagine: inside, in the nerves, in the head—that is, these nerves are
there in the brain ... (damn them!) there are sort of little tails, the
little tails of those nerves, and as soon as they begin quivering ...
that is, you see, I look at something with my eyes and then they begin
quivering, those little tails ... and when they quiver, then an image
appears ... it doesn’t appear at once, but an instant, a second, passes
... and then something like a moment appears; that is, not a
moment—devil take the moment!—but an image; that is, an object, or an
action, damn it! That’s why I see and then think, because of those
tails, not at all because I’ve got a soul, and that I am some sort of
image and likeness. All that is nonsense! Rakitin explained it all to
me yesterday, brother, and it simply bowled me over. It’s magnificent,
Alyosha, this science! A new man’s arising—that I understand.... And
yet I am sorry to lose God!”

“Well, that’s a good thing, anyway,” said Alyosha.

“That I am sorry to lose God? It’s chemistry, brother, chemistry!
There’s no help for it, your reverence, you must make way for
chemistry. And Rakitin does dislike God. Ough! doesn’t he dislike Him!
That’s the sore point with all of them. But they conceal it. They tell
lies. They pretend. ‘Will you preach this in your reviews?’ I asked
him. ‘Oh, well, if I did it openly, they won’t let it through,’ he
said. He laughed. ‘But what will become of men then?’ I asked him,
‘without God and immortal life? All things are lawful then, they can do
what they like?’ ‘Didn’t you know?’ he said laughing, ‘a clever man can
do what he likes,’ he said. ‘A clever man knows his way about, but
you’ve put your foot in it, committing a murder, and now you are
rotting in prison.’ He says that to my face! A regular pig! I used to
kick such people out, but now I listen to them. He talks a lot of
sense, too. Writes well. He began reading me an article last week. I
copied out three lines of it. Wait a minute. Here it is.”

Mitya hurriedly pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket and read:

“ ‘In order to determine this question, it is above all essential to
put one’s personality in contradiction to one’s reality.’ Do you
understand that?”

“No, I don’t,” said Alyosha. He looked at Mitya and listened to him
with curiosity.

“I don’t understand either. It’s dark and obscure, but intellectual.
‘Every one writes like that now,’ he says, ‘it’s the effect of their
environment.’ They are afraid of the environment. He writes poetry,
too, the rascal. He’s written in honor of Madame Hohlakov’s foot. Ha ha
ha!”

“I’ve heard about it,” said Alyosha.

“Have you? And have you heard the poem?”

“No.”

“I’ve got it. Here it is. I’ll read it to you. You don’t know—I haven’t
told you—there’s quite a story about it. He’s a rascal! Three weeks ago
he began to tease me. ‘You’ve got yourself into a mess, like a fool,
for the sake of three thousand, but I’m going to collar a hundred and
fifty thousand. I am going to marry a widow and buy a house in
Petersburg.’ And he told me he was courting Madame Hohlakov. She hadn’t
much brains in her youth, and now at forty she has lost what she had.
‘But she’s awfully sentimental,’ he says; ‘that’s how I shall get hold
of her. When I marry her, I shall take her to Petersburg and there I
shall start a newspaper.’ And his mouth was simply watering, the beast,
not for the widow, but for the hundred and fifty thousand. And he made
me believe it. He came to see me every day. ‘She is coming round,’ he
declared. He was beaming with delight. And then, all of a sudden, he
was turned out of the house. Perhotin’s carrying everything before him,
bravo! I could kiss the silly old noodle for turning him out of the
house. And he had written this doggerel. ‘It’s the first time I’ve
soiled my hands with writing poetry,’ he said. ‘It’s to win her heart,
so it’s in a good cause. When I get hold of the silly woman’s fortune,
I can be of great social utility.’ They have this social justification
for every nasty thing they do! ‘Anyway it’s better than your Pushkin’s
poetry,’ he said, ‘for I’ve managed to advocate enlightenment even in
that.’ I understand what he means about Pushkin, I quite see that, if
he really was a man of talent and only wrote about women’s feet. But
wasn’t Rakitin stuck up about his doggerel! The vanity of these
fellows! ‘On the convalescence of the swollen foot of the object of my
affections’—he thought of that for a title. He’s a waggish fellow.

A captivating little foot,
Though swollen and red and tender!
The doctors come and plasters put,
But still they cannot mend her.

Yet, ’tis not for her foot I dread—
A theme for Pushkin’s muse more fit—
It’s not her foot, it is her head:
I tremble for her loss of wit!

For as her foot swells, strange to say,
Her intellect is on the wane—
Oh, for some remedy I pray
That may restore both foot and brain!


He is a pig, a regular pig, but he’s very arch, the rascal! And he
really has put in a progressive idea. And wasn’t he angry when she
kicked him out! He was gnashing his teeth!”

“He’s taken his revenge already,” said Alyosha. “He’s written a
paragraph about Madame Hohlakov.”

And Alyosha told him briefly about the paragraph in _Gossip_.

“That’s his doing, that’s his doing!” Mitya assented, frowning. “That’s
him! These paragraphs ... I know ... the insulting things that have
been written about Grushenka, for instance.... And about Katya, too....
H’m!”

He walked across the room with a harassed air.

“Brother, I cannot stay long,” Alyosha said, after a pause. “To‐morrow
will be a great and awful day for you, the judgment of God will be
accomplished ... I am amazed at you, you walk about here, talking of I
don’t know what ...”

“No, don’t be amazed at me,” Mitya broke in warmly. “Am I to talk of
that stinking dog? Of the murderer? We’ve talked enough of him. I don’t
want to say more of the stinking son of Stinking Lizaveta! God will
kill him, you will see. Hush!”

He went up to Alyosha excitedly and kissed him. His eyes glowed.

“Rakitin wouldn’t understand it,” he began in a sort of exaltation;
“but you, you’ll understand it all. That’s why I was thirsting for you.
You see, there’s so much I’ve been wanting to tell you for ever so
long, here, within these peeling walls, but I haven’t said a word about
what matters most; the moment never seems to have come. Now I can wait
no longer. I must pour out my heart to you. Brother, these last two
months I’ve found in myself a new man. A new man has risen up in me. He
was hidden in me, but would never have come to the surface, if it
hadn’t been for this blow from heaven. I am afraid! And what do I care
if I spend twenty years in the mines, breaking ore with a hammer? I am
not a bit afraid of that—it’s something else I am afraid of now: that
that new man may leave me. Even there, in the mines, under‐ground, I
may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and
I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and
suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may
wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a
lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an
angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and
we are all to blame for them. Why was it I dreamed of that ‘babe’ at
such a moment? ‘Why is the babe so poor?’ That was a sign to me at that
moment. It’s for the babe I’m going. Because we are all responsible for
all. For all the ‘babes,’ for there are big children as well as little
children. All are ‘babes.’ I go for all, because some one must go for
all. I didn’t kill father, but I’ve got to go. I accept it. It’s all
come to me here, here, within these peeling walls. There are numbers of
them there, hundreds of them underground, with hammers in their hands.
Oh, yes, we shall be in chains and there will be no freedom, but then,
in our great sorrow, we shall rise again to joy, without which man
cannot live nor God exist, for God gives joy: it’s His privilege—a
grand one. Ah, man should be dissolved in prayer! What should I be
underground there without God? Rakitin’s laughing! If they drive God
from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground. One cannot exist in
prison without God; it’s even more impossible than out of prison. And
then we men underground will sing from the bowels of the earth a
glorious hymn to God, with Whom is joy. Hail to God and His joy! I love
Him!”

Mitya was almost gasping for breath as he uttered his wild speech. He
turned pale, his lips quivered, and tears rolled down his cheeks.

“Yes, life is full, there is life even underground,” he began again.
“You wouldn’t believe, Alexey, how I want to live now, what a thirst
for existence and consciousness has sprung up in me within these
peeling walls. Rakitin doesn’t understand that; all he cares about is
building a house and letting flats. But I’ve been longing for you. And
what is suffering? I am not afraid of it, even if it were beyond
reckoning. I am not afraid of it now. I was afraid of it before. Do you
know, perhaps I won’t answer at the trial at all.... And I seem to have
such strength in me now, that I think I could stand anything, any
suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment,
‘I exist.’ In thousands of agonies—I exist. I’m tormented on the
rack—but I exist! Though I sit alone on a pillar—I exist! I see the
sun, and if I don’t see the sun, I know it’s there. And there’s a whole
life in that, in knowing that the sun is there. Alyosha, my angel, all
these philosophies are the death of me. Damn them! Brother Ivan—”

“What of brother Ivan?” interrupted Alyosha, but Mitya did not hear.

“You see, I never had any of these doubts before, but it was all hidden
away in me. It was perhaps just because ideas I did not understand were
surging up in me, that I used to drink and fight and rage. It was to
stifle them in myself, to still them, to smother them. Ivan is not
Rakitin, there is an idea in him. Ivan is a sphinx and is silent; he is
always silent. It’s God that’s worrying me. That’s the only thing
that’s worrying me. What if He doesn’t exist? What if Rakitin’s
right—that it’s an idea made up by men? Then if He doesn’t exist, man
is the chief of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he
going to be good without God? That’s the question. I always come back
to that. For whom is man going to love then? To whom will he be
thankful? To whom will he sing the hymn? Rakitin laughs. Rakitin says
that one can love humanity without God. Well, only a sniveling idiot
can maintain that. I can’t understand it. Life’s easy for Rakitin.
‘You’d better think about the extension of civic rights, or even of
keeping down the price of meat. You will show your love for humanity
more simply and directly by that, than by philosophy.’ I answered him,
‘Well, but you, without a God, are more likely to raise the price of
meat, if it suits you, and make a rouble on every copeck.’ He lost his
temper. But after all, what is goodness? Answer me that, Alexey.
Goodness is one thing with me and another with a Chinaman, so it’s a
relative thing. Or isn’t it? Is it not relative? A treacherous
question! You won’t laugh if I tell you it’s kept me awake two nights.
I only wonder now how people can live and think nothing about it.
Vanity! Ivan has no God. He has an idea. It’s beyond me. But he is
silent. I believe he is a free‐mason. I asked him, but he is silent. I
wanted to drink from the springs of his soul—he was silent. But once he
did drop a word.”

“What did he say?” Alyosha took it up quickly.

“I said to him, ‘Then everything is lawful, if it is so?’ He frowned.
‘Fyodor Pavlovitch, our papa,’ he said, ‘was a pig, but his ideas were
right enough.’ That was what he dropped. That was all he said. That was
going one better than Rakitin.”

“Yes,” Alyosha assented bitterly. “When was he with you?”

“Of that later; now I must speak of something else. I have said nothing
about Ivan to you before. I put it off to the last. When my business
here is over and the verdict has been given, then I’ll tell you
something. I’ll tell you everything. We’ve something tremendous on
hand.... And you shall be my judge in it. But don’t begin about that
now; be silent. You talk of to‐morrow, of the trial; but, would you
believe it, I know nothing about it.”

“Have you talked to the counsel?”

“What’s the use of the counsel? I told him all about it. He’s a soft,
city‐bred rogue—a Bernard! But he doesn’t believe me—not a bit of it.
Only imagine, he believes I did it. I see it. ‘In that case,’ I asked
him, ‘why have you come to defend me?’ Hang them all! They’ve got a
doctor down, too, want to prove I’m mad. I won’t have that! Katerina
Ivanovna wants to do her ‘duty’ to the end, whatever the strain!” Mitya
smiled bitterly. “The cat! Hard‐hearted creature! She knows that I said
of her at Mokroe that she was a woman of ‘great wrath.’ They repeated
it. Yes, the facts against me have grown numerous as the sands of the
sea. Grigory sticks to his point. Grigory’s honest, but a fool. Many
people are honest because they are fools: that’s Rakitin’s idea.
Grigory’s my enemy. And there are some people who are better as foes
than friends. I mean Katerina Ivanovna. I am afraid, oh, I am afraid
she will tell how she bowed to the ground after that four thousand.
She’ll pay it back to the last farthing. I don’t want her sacrifice;
they’ll put me to shame at the trial. I wonder how I can stand it. Go
to her, Alyosha, ask her not to speak of that in the court, can’t you?
But damn it all, it doesn’t matter! I shall get through somehow. I
don’t pity her. It’s her own doing. She deserves what she gets. I shall
have my own story to tell, Alexey.” He smiled bitterly again. “Only ...
only Grusha, Grusha! Good Lord! Why should she have such suffering to
bear?” he exclaimed suddenly, with tears. “Grusha’s killing me; the
thought of her’s killing me, killing me. She was with me just now....”

“She told me she was very much grieved by you to‐day.”

“I know. Confound my temper! It was jealousy. I was sorry, I kissed her
as she was going. I didn’t ask her forgiveness.”

“Why didn’t you?” exclaimed Alyosha.

Suddenly Mitya laughed almost mirthfully.

“God preserve you, my dear boy, from ever asking forgiveness for a
fault from a woman you love. From one you love especially, however
greatly you may have been in fault. For a woman—devil only knows what
to make of a woman! I know something about them, anyway. But try
acknowledging you are in fault to a woman. Say, ‘I am sorry, forgive
me,’ and a shower of reproaches will follow! Nothing will make her
forgive you simply and directly, she’ll humble you to the dust, bring
forward things that have never happened, recall everything, forget
nothing, add something of her own, and only then forgive you. And even
the best, the best of them do it. She’ll scrape up all the scrapings
and load them on your head. They are ready to flay you alive, I tell
you, every one of them, all these angels without whom we cannot live! I
tell you plainly and openly, dear boy, every decent man ought to be
under some woman’s thumb. That’s my conviction—not conviction, but
feeling. A man ought to be magnanimous, and it’s no disgrace to a man!
No disgrace to a hero, not even a Cæsar! But don’t ever beg her pardon
all the same for anything. Remember that rule given you by your brother
Mitya, who’s come to ruin through women. No, I’d better make it up to
Grusha somehow, without begging pardon. I worship her, Alexey, worship
her. Only she doesn’t see it. No, she still thinks I don’t love her
enough. And she tortures me, tortures me with her love. The past was
nothing! In the past it was only those infernal curves of hers that
tortured me, but now I’ve taken all her soul into my soul and through
her I’ve become a man myself. Will they marry us? If they don’t, I
shall die of jealousy. I imagine something every day.... What did she
say to you about me?”

Alyosha repeated all Grushenka had said to him that day. Mitya
listened, made him repeat things, and seemed pleased.

“Then she is not angry at my being jealous?” he exclaimed. “She is a
regular woman! ‘I’ve a fierce heart myself!’ Ah, I love such fierce
hearts, though I can’t bear any one’s being jealous of me. I can’t
endure it. We shall fight. But I shall love her, I shall love her
infinitely. Will they marry us? Do they let convicts marry? That’s the
question. And without her I can’t exist....”

Mitya walked frowning across the room. It was almost dark. He suddenly
seemed terribly worried.

“So there’s a secret, she says, a secret? We have got up a plot against
her, and Katya is mixed up in it, she thinks. No, my good Grushenka,
that’s not it. You are very wide of the mark, in your foolish feminine
way. Alyosha, darling, well, here goes! I’ll tell you our secret!”

He looked round, went close up quickly to Alyosha, who was standing
before him, and whispered to him with an air of mystery, though in
reality no one could hear them: the old warder was dozing in the
corner, and not a word could reach the ears of the soldiers on guard.

“I will tell you all our secret,” Mitya whispered hurriedly. “I meant
to tell you later, for how could I decide on anything without you? You
are everything to me. Though I say that Ivan is superior to us, you are
my angel. It’s your decision will decide it. Perhaps it’s you that is
superior and not Ivan. You see, it’s a question of conscience, question
of the higher conscience—the secret is so important that I can’t settle
it myself, and I’ve put it off till I could speak to you. But anyway
it’s too early to decide now, for we must wait for the verdict. As soon
as the verdict is given, you shall decide my fate. Don’t decide it now.
I’ll tell you now. You listen, but don’t decide. Stand and keep quiet.
I won’t tell you everything. I’ll only tell you the idea, without
details, and you keep quiet. Not a question, not a movement. You agree?
But, goodness, what shall I do with your eyes? I’m afraid your eyes
will tell me your decision, even if you don’t speak. Oo! I’m afraid!
Alyosha, listen! Ivan suggests my _escaping_. I won’t tell you the
details: it’s all been thought out: it can all be arranged. Hush, don’t
decide. I should go to America with Grusha. You know I can’t live
without Grusha! What if they won’t let her follow me to Siberia? Do
they let convicts get married? Ivan thinks not. And without Grusha what
should I do there underground with a hammer? I should only smash my
skull with the hammer! But, on the other hand, my conscience? I should
have run away from suffering. A sign has come, I reject the sign. I
have a way of salvation and I turn my back on it. Ivan says that in
America, ‘with the good‐will,’ I can be of more use than underground.
But what becomes of our hymn from underground? What’s America? America
is vanity again! And there’s a lot of swindling in America, too, I
expect. I should have run away from crucifixion! I tell you, you know,
Alexey, because you are the only person who can understand this.
There’s no one else. It’s folly, madness to others, all I’ve told you
of the hymn. They’ll say I’m out of my mind or a fool. I am not out of
my mind and I am not a fool. Ivan understands about the hymn, too. He
understands, only he doesn’t answer—he doesn’t speak. He doesn’t
believe in the hymn. Don’t speak, don’t speak. I see how you look! You
have already decided. Don’t decide, spare me! I can’t live without
Grusha. Wait till after the trial!”

Mitya ended beside himself. He held Alyosha with both hands on his
shoulders, and his yearning, feverish eyes were fixed on his brother’s.

“They don’t let convicts marry, do they?” he repeated for the third
time in a supplicating voice.

Alyosha listened with extreme surprise and was deeply moved.

“Tell me one thing,” he said. “Is Ivan very keen on it, and whose idea
was it?”

“His, his, and he is very keen on it. He didn’t come to see me at
first, then he suddenly came a week ago and he began about it straight
away. He is awfully keen on it. He doesn’t ask me, but orders me to
escape. He doesn’t doubt of my obeying him, though I showed him all my
heart as I have to you, and told him about the hymn, too. He told me
he’d arrange it; he’s found out about everything. But of that later.
He’s simply set on it. It’s all a matter of money: he’ll pay ten
thousand for escape and give me twenty thousand for America. And he
says we can arrange a magnificent escape for ten thousand.”

“And he told you on no account to tell me?” Alyosha asked again.

“To tell no one, and especially not you; on no account to tell you. He
is afraid, no doubt, that you’ll stand before me as my conscience.
Don’t tell him I told you. Don’t tell him, for anything.”

“You are right,” Alyosha pronounced; “it’s impossible to decide
anything before the trial is over. After the trial you’ll decide of
yourself. Then you’ll find that new man in yourself and he will
decide.”

“A new man, or a Bernard who’ll decide _à la_ Bernard, for I believe
I’m a contemptible Bernard myself,” said Mitya, with a bitter grin.

“But, brother, have you no hope then of being acquitted?”

Mitya shrugged his shoulders nervously and shook his head. “Alyosha,
darling, it’s time you were going,” he said, with a sudden haste.
“There’s the superintendent shouting in the yard. He’ll be here
directly. We are late; it’s irregular. Embrace me quickly. Kiss me!
Sign me with the cross, darling, for the cross I have to bear
to‐morrow.”

They embraced and kissed.

“Ivan,” said Mitya suddenly, “suggests my escaping; but, of course, he
believes I did it.”

A mournful smile came on to his lips.

“Have you asked him whether he believes it?” asked Alyosha.

“No, I haven’t. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I hadn’t the courage. But
I saw it from his eyes. Well, good‐by!”

Once more they kissed hurriedly, and Alyosha was just going out, when
Mitya suddenly called him back.

“Stand facing me! That’s right!” And again he seized Alyosha, putting
both hands on his shoulders. His face became suddenly quite pale, so
that it was dreadfully apparent, even through the gathering darkness.
His lips twitched, his eyes fastened upon Alyosha.

“Alyosha, tell me the whole truth, as you would before God. Do you
believe I did it? Do you, do you in yourself, believe it? The whole
truth, don’t lie!” he cried desperately.

Everything seemed heaving before Alyosha, and he felt something like a
stab at his heart.

“Hush! What do you mean?” he faltered helplessly.

“The whole truth, the whole, don’t lie!” repeated Mitya.

“I’ve never for one instant believed that you were the murderer!” broke
in a shaking voice from Alyosha’s breast, and he raised his right hand
in the air, as though calling God to witness his words.

Mitya’s whole face was lighted up with bliss.

“Thank you!” he articulated slowly, as though letting a sigh escape him
after fainting. “Now you have given me new life. Would you believe it,
till this moment I’ve been afraid to ask you, you, even you. Well, go!
You’ve given me strength for to‐morrow. God bless you! Come, go along!
Love Ivan!” was Mitya’s last word.

Alyosha went out in tears. Such distrustfulness in Mitya, such lack of
confidence even to him, to Alyosha—all this suddenly opened before
Alyosha an unsuspected depth of hopeless grief and despair in the soul
of his unhappy brother. Intense, infinite compassion overwhelmed him
instantly. There was a poignant ache in his torn heart. “Love Ivan!”—he
suddenly recalled Mitya’s words. And he was going to Ivan. He badly
wanted to see Ivan all day. He was as much worried about Ivan as about
Mitya, and more than ever now.




Chapter V.
Not You, Not You!


On the way to Ivan he had to pass the house where Katerina Ivanovna was
living. There was light in the windows. He suddenly stopped and
resolved to go in. He had not seen Katerina Ivanovna for more than a
week. But now it struck him that Ivan might be with her, especially on
the eve of the terrible day. Ringing, and mounting the staircase, which
was dimly lighted by a Chinese lantern, he saw a man coming down, and
as they met, he recognized him as his brother. So he was just coming
from Katerina Ivanovna.

“Ah, it’s only you,” said Ivan dryly. “Well, good‐by! You are going to
her?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t advise you to; she’s upset and you’ll upset her more.”

A door was instantly flung open above, and a voice cried suddenly:

“No, no! Alexey Fyodorovitch, have you come from him?”

“Yes, I have been with him.”

“Has he sent me any message? Come up, Alyosha, and you, Ivan
Fyodorovitch, you must come back, you must. Do you hear?”

There was such a peremptory note in Katya’s voice that Ivan, after a
moment’s hesitation, made up his mind to go back with Alyosha.

“She was listening,” he murmured angrily to himself, but Alyosha heard
it.

“Excuse my keeping my greatcoat on,” said Ivan, going into the drawing‐
room. “I won’t sit down. I won’t stay more than a minute.”

“Sit down, Alexey Fyodorovitch,” said Katerina Ivanovna, though she
remained standing. She had changed very little during this time, but
there was an ominous gleam in her dark eyes. Alyosha remembered
afterwards that she had struck him as particularly handsome at that
moment.

“What did he ask you to tell me?”

“Only one thing,” said Alyosha, looking her straight in the face, “that
you would spare yourself and say nothing at the trial of what” (he was
a little confused) “... passed between you ... at the time of your
first acquaintance ... in that town.”

“Ah! that I bowed down to the ground for that money!” She broke into a
bitter laugh. “Why, is he afraid for me or for himself? He asks me to
spare—whom? Him or myself? Tell me, Alexey Fyodorovitch!”

Alyosha watched her intently, trying to understand her.

“Both yourself and him,” he answered softly.

“I am glad to hear it,” she snapped out maliciously, and she suddenly
blushed.

“You don’t know me yet, Alexey Fyodorovitch,” she said menacingly. “And
I don’t know myself yet. Perhaps you’ll want to trample me under foot
after my examination to‐morrow.”

“You will give your evidence honorably,” said Alyosha; “that’s all
that’s wanted.”

“Women are often dishonorable,” she snarled. “Only an hour ago I was
thinking I felt afraid to touch that monster ... as though he were a
reptile ... but no, he is still a human being to me! But did he do it?
Is he the murderer?” she cried, all of a sudden, hysterically, turning
quickly to Ivan. Alyosha saw at once that she had asked Ivan that
question before, perhaps only a moment before he came in, and not for
the first time, but for the hundredth, and that they had ended by
quarreling.

“I’ve been to see Smerdyakov.... It was you, you who persuaded me that
he murdered his father. It’s only you I believed!” she continued, still
addressing Ivan. He gave her a sort of strained smile. Alyosha started
at her tone. He had not suspected such familiar intimacy between them.

“Well, that’s enough, anyway,” Ivan cut short the conversation. “I am
going. I’ll come to‐morrow.” And turning at once, he walked out of the
room and went straight downstairs.

With an imperious gesture, Katerina Ivanovna seized Alyosha by both
hands.

“Follow him! Overtake him! Don’t leave him alone for a minute!” she
said, in a hurried whisper. “He’s mad! Don’t you know that he’s mad? He
is in a fever, nervous fever. The doctor told me so. Go, run after
him....”

Alyosha jumped up and ran after Ivan, who was not fifty paces ahead of
him.

“What do you want?” He turned quickly on Alyosha, seeing that he was
running after him. “She told you to catch me up, because I’m mad. I
know it all by heart,” he added irritably.

“She is mistaken, of course; but she is right that you are ill,” said
Alyosha. “I was looking at your face just now. You look very ill,
Ivan.”

Ivan walked on without stopping. Alyosha followed him.

“And do you know, Alexey Fyodorovitch, how people do go out of their
mind?” Ivan asked in a voice suddenly quiet, without a trace of
irritation, with a note of the simplest curiosity.

“No, I don’t. I suppose there are all kinds of insanity.”

“And can one observe that one’s going mad oneself?”

“I imagine one can’t see oneself clearly in such circumstances,”
Alyosha answered with surprise.

Ivan paused for half a minute.

“If you want to talk to me, please change the subject,” he said
suddenly.

“Oh, while I think of it, I have a letter for you,” said Alyosha
timidly, and he took Lise’s note from his pocket and held it out to
Ivan. They were just under a lamp‐post. Ivan recognized the handwriting
at once.

“Ah, from that little demon!” he laughed maliciously, and, without
opening the envelope, he tore it into bits and threw it in the air. The
bits were scattered by the wind.

“She’s not sixteen yet, I believe, and already offering herself,” he
said contemptuously, striding along the street again.

“How do you mean, offering herself?” exclaimed Alyosha.

“As wanton women offer themselves, to be sure.”

“How can you, Ivan, how can you?” Alyosha cried warmly, in a grieved
voice. “She is a child; you are insulting a child! She is ill; she is
very ill, too. She is on the verge of insanity, too, perhaps.... I had
hoped to hear something from you ... that would save her.”

“You’ll hear nothing from me. If she is a child I am not her nurse. Be
quiet, Alexey. Don’t go on about her. I am not even thinking about it.”

They were silent again for a moment.

“She will be praying all night now to the Mother of God to show her how
to act to‐morrow at the trial,” he said sharply and angrily again.

“You ... you mean Katerina Ivanovna?”

“Yes. Whether she’s to save Mitya or ruin him. She’ll pray for light
from above. She can’t make up her mind for herself, you see. She has
not had time to decide yet. She takes me for her nurse, too. She wants
me to sing lullabies to her.”

“Katerina Ivanovna loves you, brother,” said Alyosha sadly.

“Perhaps; but I am not very keen on her.”

“She is suffering. Why do you ... sometimes say things to her that give
her hope?” Alyosha went on, with timid reproach. “I know that you’ve
given her hope. Forgive me for speaking to you like this,” he added.

“I can’t behave to her as I ought—break off altogether and tell her so
straight out,” said Ivan, irritably. “I must wait till sentence is
passed on the murderer. If I break off with her now, she will avenge
herself on me by ruining that scoundrel to‐morrow at the trial, for she
hates him and knows she hates him. It’s all a lie—lie upon lie! As long
as I don’t break off with her, she goes on hoping, and she won’t ruin
that monster, knowing how I want to get him out of trouble. If only
that damned verdict would come!”

The words “murderer” and “monster” echoed painfully in Alyosha’s heart.

“But how can she ruin Mitya?” he asked, pondering on Ivan’s words.
“What evidence can she give that would ruin Mitya?”

“You don’t know that yet. She’s got a document in her hands, in Mitya’s
own writing, that proves conclusively that he did murder Fyodor
Pavlovitch.”

“That’s impossible!” cried Alyosha.

“Why is it impossible? I’ve read it myself.”

“There can’t be such a document!” Alyosha repeated warmly. “There can’t
be, because he’s not the murderer. It’s not he murdered father, not
he!”

Ivan suddenly stopped.

“Who is the murderer then, according to you?” he asked, with apparent
coldness. There was even a supercilious note in his voice.

“You know who,” Alyosha pronounced in a low, penetrating voice.

“Who? You mean the myth about that crazy idiot, the epileptic,
Smerdyakov?”

Alyosha suddenly felt himself trembling all over.

“You know who,” broke helplessly from him. He could scarcely breathe.

“Who? Who?” Ivan cried almost fiercely. All his restraint suddenly
vanished.

“I only know one thing,” Alyosha went on, still almost in a whisper,
“_it wasn’t you_ killed father.”

“ ‘Not you’! What do you mean by ‘not you’?” Ivan was thunderstruck.

“It was not you killed father, not you!” Alyosha repeated firmly.

The silence lasted for half a minute.

“I know I didn’t. Are you raving?” said Ivan, with a pale, distorted
smile. His eyes were riveted on Alyosha. They were standing again under
a lamp‐post.

“No, Ivan. You’ve told yourself several times that you are the
murderer.”

“When did I say so? I was in Moscow.... When have I said so?” Ivan
faltered helplessly.

“You’ve said so to yourself many times, when you’ve been alone during
these two dreadful months,” Alyosha went on softly and distinctly as
before. Yet he was speaking now, as it were, not of himself, not of his
own will, but obeying some irresistible command. “You have accused
yourself and have confessed to yourself that you are the murderer and
no one else. But you didn’t do it: you are mistaken: you are not the
murderer. Do you hear? It was not you! God has sent me to tell you so.”

They were both silent. The silence lasted a whole long minute. They
were both standing still, gazing into each other’s eyes. They were both
pale. Suddenly Ivan began trembling all over, and clutched Alyosha’s
shoulder.

“You’ve been in my room!” he whispered hoarsely. “You’ve been there at
night, when he came.... Confess ... have you seen him, have you seen
him?”

“Whom do you mean—Mitya?” Alyosha asked, bewildered.

“Not him, damn the monster!” Ivan shouted, in a frenzy. “Do you know
that he visits me? How did you find out? Speak!”

“Who is _he_! I don’t know whom you are talking about,” Alyosha
faltered, beginning to be alarmed.

“Yes, you do know ... or how could you—? It’s impossible that you don’t
know.”

Suddenly he seemed to check himself. He stood still and seemed to
reflect. A strange grin contorted his lips.

“Brother,” Alyosha began again, in a shaking voice, “I have said this
to you, because you’ll believe my word, I know that. I tell you once
and for all, it’s not you. You hear, once for all! God has put it into
my heart to say this to you, even though it may make you hate me from
this hour.”

But by now Ivan had apparently regained his self‐control.

“Alexey Fyodorovitch,” he said, with a cold smile, “I can’t endure
prophets and epileptics—messengers from God especially—and you know
that only too well. I break off all relations with you from this moment
and probably for ever. I beg you to leave me at this turning. It’s the
way to your lodgings, too. You’d better be particularly careful not to
come to me to‐day! Do you hear?”

He turned and walked on with a firm step, not looking back.

“Brother,” Alyosha called after him, “if anything happens to you
to‐day, turn to me before any one!”

But Ivan made no reply. Alyosha stood under the lamp‐post at the cross
roads, till Ivan had vanished into the darkness. Then he turned and
walked slowly homewards. Both Alyosha and Ivan were living in lodgings;
neither of them was willing to live in Fyodor Pavlovitch’s empty house.
Alyosha had a furnished room in the house of some working people. Ivan
lived some distance from him. He had taken a roomy and fairly
comfortable lodge attached to a fine house that belonged to a
well‐to‐do lady, the widow of an official. But his only attendant was a
deaf and rheumatic old crone who went to bed at six o’clock every
evening and got up at six in the morning. Ivan had become remarkably
indifferent to his comforts of late, and very fond of being alone. He
did everything for himself in the one room he lived in, and rarely
entered any of the other rooms in his abode.

He reached the gate of the house and had his hand on the bell, when he
suddenly stopped. He felt that he was trembling all over with anger.
Suddenly he let go of the bell, turned back with a curse, and walked
with rapid steps in the opposite direction. He walked a mile and a half
to a tiny, slanting, wooden house, almost a hut, where Marya
Kondratyevna, the neighbor who used to come to Fyodor Pavlovitch’s
kitchen for soup and to whom Smerdyakov had once sung his songs and
played on the guitar, was now lodging. She had sold their little house,
and was now living here with her mother. Smerdyakov, who was ill—almost
dying—had been with them ever since Fyodor Pavlovitch’s death. It was
to him Ivan was going now, drawn by a sudden and irresistible
prompting.




Chapter VI.
The First Interview With Smerdyakov


This was the third time that Ivan had been to see Smerdyakov since his
return from Moscow. The first time he had seen him and talked to him
was on the first day of his arrival, then he had visited him once more,
a fortnight later. But his visits had ended with that second one, so
that it was now over a month since he had seen him. And he had scarcely
heard anything of him.

Ivan had only returned five days after his father’s death, so that he
was not present at the funeral, which took place the day before he came
back. The cause of his delay was that Alyosha, not knowing his Moscow
address, had to apply to Katerina Ivanovna to telegraph to him, and
she, not knowing his address either, telegraphed to her sister and
aunt, reckoning on Ivan’s going to see them as soon as he arrived in
Moscow. But he did not go to them till four days after his arrival.
When he got the telegram, he had, of course, set off post‐haste to our
town. The first to meet him was Alyosha, and Ivan was greatly surprised
to find that, in opposition to the general opinion of the town, he
refused to entertain a suspicion against Mitya, and spoke openly of
Smerdyakov as the murderer. Later on, after seeing the police captain
and the prosecutor, and hearing the details of the charge and the
arrest, he was still more surprised at Alyosha, and ascribed his
opinion only to his exaggerated brotherly feeling and sympathy with
Mitya, of whom Alyosha, as Ivan knew, was very fond.

By the way, let us say a word or two of Ivan’s feeling to his brother
Dmitri. He positively disliked him; at most, felt sometimes a
compassion for him, and even that was mixed with great contempt, almost
repugnance. Mitya’s whole personality, even his appearance, was
extremely unattractive to him. Ivan looked with indignation on Katerina
Ivanovna’s love for his brother. Yet he went to see Mitya on the first
day of his arrival, and that interview, far from shaking Ivan’s belief
in his guilt, positively strengthened it. He found his brother
agitated, nervously excited. Mitya had been talkative, but very
absent‐minded and incoherent. He used violent language, accused
Smerdyakov, and was fearfully muddled. He talked principally about the
three thousand roubles, which he said had been “stolen” from him by his
father.

“The money was mine, it was my money,” Mitya kept repeating. “Even if I
had stolen it, I should have had the right.”

He hardly contested the evidence against him, and if he tried to turn a
fact to his advantage, it was in an absurd and incoherent way. He
hardly seemed to wish to defend himself to Ivan or any one else. Quite
the contrary, he was angry and proudly scornful of the charges against
him; he was continually firing up and abusing every one. He only
laughed contemptuously at Grigory’s evidence about the open door, and
declared that it was “the devil that opened it.” But he could not bring
forward any coherent explanation of the fact. He even succeeded in
insulting Ivan during their first interview, telling him sharply that
it was not for people who declared that “everything was lawful,” to
suspect and question him. Altogether he was anything but friendly with
Ivan on that occasion. Immediately after that interview with Mitya,
Ivan went for the first time to see Smerdyakov.

In the railway train on his way from Moscow, he kept thinking of
Smerdyakov and of his last conversation with him on the evening before
he went away. Many things seemed to him puzzling and suspicious. But
when he gave his evidence to the investigating lawyer Ivan said
nothing, for the time, of that conversation. He put that off till he
had seen Smerdyakov, who was at that time in the hospital.

Doctor Herzenstube and Varvinsky, the doctor he met in the hospital,
confidently asserted in reply to Ivan’s persistent questions, that
Smerdyakov’s epileptic attack was unmistakably genuine, and were
surprised indeed at Ivan asking whether he might not have been shamming
on the day of the catastrophe. They gave him to understand that the
attack was an exceptional one, the fits persisting and recurring
several times, so that the patient’s life was positively in danger, and
it was only now, after they had applied remedies, that they could
assert with confidence that the patient would survive. “Though it might
well be,” added Doctor Herzenstube, “that his reason would be impaired
for a considerable period, if not permanently.” On Ivan’s asking
impatiently whether that meant that he was now mad, they told him that
this was not yet the case, in the full sense of the word, but that
certain abnormalities were perceptible. Ivan decided to find out for
himself what those abnormalities were.

At the hospital he was at once allowed to see the patient. Smerdyakov
was lying on a truckle‐bed in a separate ward. There was only one other
bed in the room, and in it lay a tradesman of the town, swollen with
dropsy, who was obviously almost dying; he could be no hindrance to
their conversation. Smerdyakov grinned uncertainly on seeing Ivan, and
for the first instant seemed nervous. So at least Ivan fancied. But
that was only momentary. For the rest of the time he was struck, on the
contrary, by Smerdyakov’s composure. From the first glance Ivan had no
doubt that he was very ill. He was very weak; he spoke slowly, seeming
to move his tongue with difficulty; he was much thinner and sallower.
Throughout the interview, which lasted twenty minutes, he kept
complaining of headache and of pain in all his limbs. His thin
emasculate face seemed to have become so tiny; his hair was ruffled,
and his crest of curls in front stood up in a thin tuft. But in the
left eye, which was screwed up and seemed to be insinuating something,
Smerdyakov showed himself unchanged. “It’s always worth while speaking
to a clever man.” Ivan was reminded of that at once. He sat down on the
stool at his feet. Smerdyakov, with painful effort, shifted his
position in bed, but he was not the first to speak. He remained dumb,
and did not even look much interested.

“Can you talk to me?” asked Ivan. “I won’t tire you much.”

“Certainly I can,” mumbled Smerdyakov, in a faint voice. “Has your
honor been back long?” he added patronizingly, as though encouraging a
nervous visitor.

“I only arrived to‐day.... To see the mess you are in here.”

Smerdyakov sighed.

“Why do you sigh? You knew of it all along,” Ivan blurted out.

Smerdyakov was stolidly silent for a while.

“How could I help knowing? It was clear beforehand. But how could I
tell it would turn out like that?”

“What would turn out? Don’t prevaricate! You’ve foretold you’d have a
fit; on the way down to the cellar, you know. You mentioned the very
spot.”

“Have you said so at the examination yet?” Smerdyakov queried with
composure.

Ivan felt suddenly angry.

“No, I haven’t yet, but I certainly shall. You must explain a great
deal to me, my man; and let me tell you, I am not going to let you play
with me!”

“Why should I play with you, when I put my whole trust in you, as in
God Almighty?” said Smerdyakov, with the same composure, only for a
moment closing his eyes.

“In the first place,” began Ivan, “I know that epileptic fits can’t be
told beforehand. I’ve inquired; don’t try and take me in. You can’t
foretell the day and the hour. How was it you told me the day and the
hour beforehand, and about the cellar, too? How could you tell that you
would fall down the cellar stairs in a fit, if you didn’t sham a fit on
purpose?”

“I had to go to the cellar anyway, several times a day, indeed,”
Smerdyakov drawled deliberately. “I fell from the garret just in the
same way a year ago. It’s quite true you can’t tell the day and hour of
a fit beforehand, but you can always have a presentiment of it.”

“But you did foretell the day and the hour!”

“In regard to my epilepsy, sir, you had much better inquire of the
doctors here. You can ask them whether it was a real fit or a sham;
it’s no use my saying any more about it.”

“And the cellar? How could you know beforehand of the cellar?”

“You don’t seem able to get over that cellar! As I was going down to
the cellar, I was in terrible dread and doubt. What frightened me most
was losing you and being left without defense in all the world. So I
went down into the cellar thinking, ‘Here, it’ll come on directly,
it’ll strike me down directly, shall I fall?’ And it was through this
fear that I suddenly felt the spasm that always comes ... and so I went
flying. All that and all my previous conversation with you at the gate
the evening before, when I told you how frightened I was and spoke of
the cellar, I told all that to Doctor Herzenstube and Nikolay
Parfenovitch, the investigating lawyer, and it’s all been written down
in the protocol. And the doctor here, Mr. Varvinsky, maintained to all
of them that it was just the thought of it brought it on, the
apprehension that I might fall. It was just then that the fit seized
me. And so they’ve written it down, that it’s just how it must have
happened, simply from my fear.”

As he finished, Smerdyakov drew a deep breath, as though exhausted.

“Then you have said all that in your evidence?” said Ivan, somewhat
taken aback. He had meant to frighten him with the threat of repeating
their conversation, and it appeared that Smerdyakov had already
reported it all himself.

“What have I to be afraid of? Let them write down the whole truth,”
Smerdyakov pronounced firmly.

“And have you told them every word of our conversation at the gate?”

“No, not to say every word.”

“And did you tell them that you can sham fits, as you boasted then?”

“No, I didn’t tell them that either.”

“Tell me now, why did you send me then to Tchermashnya?”

“I was afraid you’d go away to Moscow; Tchermashnya is nearer, anyway.”

“You are lying; you suggested my going away yourself; you told me to
get out of the way of trouble.”

“That was simply out of affection and my sincere devotion to you,
foreseeing trouble in the house, to spare you. Only I wanted to spare
myself even more. That’s why I told you to get out of harm’s way, that
you might understand that there would be trouble in the house, and
would remain at home to protect your father.”

“You might have said it more directly, you blockhead!” Ivan suddenly
fired up.

“How could I have said it more directly then? It was simply my fear
that made me speak, and you might have been angry, too. I might well
have been apprehensive that Dmitri Fyodorovitch would make a scene and
carry away that money, for he considered it as good as his own; but who
could tell that it would end in a murder like this? I thought that he
would only carry off the three thousand that lay under the master’s
mattress in the envelope, and you see, he’s murdered him. How could you
guess it either, sir?”

“But if you say yourself that it couldn’t be guessed, how could I have
guessed and stayed at home? You contradict yourself!” said Ivan,
pondering.

“You might have guessed from my sending you to Tchermashnya and not to
Moscow.”

“How could I guess it from that?”

Smerdyakov seemed much exhausted, and again he was silent for a minute.

“You might have guessed from the fact of my asking you not to go to
Moscow, but to Tchermashnya, that I wanted to have you nearer, for
Moscow’s a long way off, and Dmitri Fyodorovitch, knowing you are not
far off, would not be so bold. And if anything had happened, you might
have come to protect me, too, for I warned you of Grigory
Vassilyevitch’s illness, and that I was afraid of having a fit. And
when I explained those knocks to you, by means of which one could go in
to the deceased, and that Dmitri Fyodorovitch knew them all through me,
I thought that you would guess yourself that he would be sure to do
something, and so wouldn’t go to Tchermashnya even, but would stay.”

“He talks very coherently,” thought Ivan, “though he does mumble;
what’s the derangement of his faculties that Herzenstube talked of?”

“You are cunning with me, damn you!” he exclaimed, getting angry.

“But I thought at the time that you quite guessed,” Smerdyakov parried
with the simplest air.

“If I’d guessed, I should have stayed,” cried Ivan.

“Why, I thought that it was because you guessed, that you went away in
such a hurry, only to get out of trouble, only to run away and save
yourself in your fright.”

“You think that every one is as great a coward as yourself?”

“Forgive me, I thought you were like me.”

“Of course, I ought to have guessed,” Ivan said in agitation; “and I
did guess there was some mischief brewing on your part ... only you are
lying, you are lying again,” he cried, suddenly recollecting. “Do you
remember how you went up to the carriage and said to me, ‘It’s always
worth while speaking to a clever man’? So you were glad I went away,
since you praised me?”

Smerdyakov sighed again and again. A trace of color came into his face.

“If I was pleased,” he articulated rather breathlessly, “it was simply
because you agreed not to go to Moscow, but to Tchermashnya. For it was
nearer, anyway. Only when I said these words to you, it was not by way
of praise, but of reproach. You didn’t understand it.”

“What reproach?”

“Why, that foreseeing such a calamity you deserted your own father, and
would not protect us, for I might have been taken up any time for
stealing that three thousand.”

“Damn you!” Ivan swore again. “Stay, did you tell the prosecutor and
the investigating lawyer about those knocks?”

“I told them everything just as it was.”

Ivan wondered inwardly again.

“If I thought of anything then,” he began again, “it was solely of some
wickedness on your part. Dmitri might kill him, but that he would
steal—I did not believe that then.... But I was prepared for any
wickedness from you. You told me yourself you could sham a fit. What
did you say that for?”

“It was just through my simplicity, and I never have shammed a fit on
purpose in my life. And I only said so then to boast to you. It was
just foolishness. I liked you so much then, and was open‐hearted with
you.”

“My brother directly accuses you of the murder and theft.”

“What else is left for him to do?” said Smerdyakov, with a bitter grin.
“And who will believe him with all the proofs against him? Grigory
Vassilyevitch saw the door open. What can he say after that? But never
mind him! He is trembling to save himself.”

He slowly ceased speaking; then suddenly, as though on reflection,
added:

“And look here again. He wants to throw it on me and make out that it
is the work of my hands—I’ve heard that already. But as to my being
clever at shamming a fit: should I have told you beforehand that I
could sham one, if I really had had such a design against your father?
If I had been planning such a murder could I have been such a fool as
to give such evidence against myself beforehand? And to his son, too!
Upon my word! Is that likely? As if that could be, such a thing has
never happened. No one hears this talk of ours now, except Providence
itself, and if you were to tell of it to the prosecutor and Nikolay
Parfenovitch you might defend me completely by doing so, for who would
be likely to be such a criminal, if he is so open‐hearted beforehand?
Any one can see that.”

“Well,” and Ivan got up to cut short the conversation, struck by
Smerdyakov’s last argument. “I don’t suspect you at all, and I think
it’s absurd, indeed, to suspect you. On the contrary, I am grateful to
you for setting my mind at rest. Now I am going, but I’ll come again.
Meanwhile, good‐by. Get well. Is there anything you want?”

“I am very thankful for everything. Marfa Ignatyevna does not forget
me, and provides me anything I want, according to her kindness. Good
people visit me every day.”

“Good‐by. But I shan’t say anything of your being able to sham a fit,
and I don’t advise you to, either,” something made Ivan say suddenly.

“I quite understand. And if you don’t speak of that, I shall say
nothing of that conversation of ours at the gate.”

Then it happened that Ivan went out, and only when he had gone a dozen
steps along the corridor, he suddenly felt that there was an insulting
significance in Smerdyakov’s last words. He was almost on the point of
turning back, but it was only a passing impulse, and muttering,
“Nonsense!” he went out of the hospital.

His chief feeling was one of relief at the fact that it was not
Smerdyakov, but Mitya, who had committed the murder, though he might
have been expected to feel the opposite. He did not want to analyze the
reason for this feeling, and even felt a positive repugnance at prying
into his sensations. He felt as though he wanted to make haste to
forget something. In the following days he became convinced of Mitya’s
guilt, as he got to know all the weight of evidence against him. There
was evidence of people of no importance, Fenya and her mother, for
instance, but the effect of it was almost overpowering. As to Perhotin,
the people at the tavern, and at Plotnikov’s shop, as well as the
witnesses at Mokroe, their evidence seemed conclusive. It was the
details that were so damning. The secret of the knocks impressed the
lawyers almost as much as Grigory’s evidence as to the open door.
Grigory’s wife, Marfa, in answer to Ivan’s questions, declared that
Smerdyakov had been lying all night the other side of the partition
wall. “He was not three paces from our bed,” and that although she was
a sound sleeper she waked several times and heard him moaning, “He was
moaning the whole time, moaning continually.”

Talking to Herzenstube, and giving it as his opinion that Smerdyakov
was not mad, but only rather weak, Ivan only evoked from the old man a
subtle smile.

“Do you know how he spends his time now?” he asked; “learning lists of
French words by heart. He has an exercise‐book under his pillow with
the French words written out in Russian letters for him by some one, he
he he!”

Ivan ended by dismissing all doubts. He could not think of Dmitri
without repulsion. Only one thing was strange, however. Alyosha
persisted that Dmitri was not the murderer, and that “in all
probability” Smerdyakov was. Ivan always felt that Alyosha’s opinion
meant a great deal to him, and so he was astonished at it now. Another
thing that was strange was that Alyosha did not make any attempt to
talk about Mitya with Ivan, that he never began on the subject and only
answered his questions. This, too, struck Ivan particularly.

But he was very much preoccupied at that time with something quite
apart from that. On his return from Moscow, he abandoned himself
hopelessly to his mad and consuming passion for Katerina Ivanovna. This
is not the time to begin to speak of this new passion of Ivan’s, which
left its mark on all the rest of his life: this would furnish the
subject for another novel, which I may perhaps never write. But I
cannot omit to mention here that when Ivan, on leaving Katerina
Ivanovna with Alyosha, as I’ve related already, told him, “I am not
keen on her,” it was an absolute lie: he loved her madly, though at
times he hated her so that he might have murdered her. Many causes
helped to bring about this feeling. Shattered by what had happened with
Mitya, she rushed on Ivan’s return to meet him as her one salvation.
She was hurt, insulted and humiliated in her feelings. And here the man
had come back to her, who had loved her so ardently before (oh! she
knew that very well), and whose heart and intellect she considered so
superior to her own. But the sternly virtuous girl did not abandon
herself altogether to the man she loved, in spite of the Karamazov
violence of his passions and the great fascination he had for her. She
was continually tormented at the same time by remorse for having
deserted Mitya, and in moments of discord and violent anger (and they
were numerous) she told Ivan so plainly. This was what he had called to
Alyosha “lies upon lies.” There was, of course, much that was false in
it, and that angered Ivan more than anything.... But of all this later.

He did, in fact, for a time almost forget Smerdyakov’s existence, and
yet, a fortnight after his first visit to him, he began to be haunted
by the same strange thoughts as before. It’s enough to say that he was
continually asking himself, why was it that on that last night in
Fyodor Pavlovitch’s house he had crept out on to the stairs like a
thief and listened to hear what his father was doing below? Why had he
recalled that afterwards with repulsion? Why next morning, had he been
suddenly so depressed on the journey? Why, as he reached Moscow, had he
said to himself, “I am a scoundrel”? And now he almost fancied that
these tormenting thoughts would make him even forget Katerina Ivanovna,
so completely did they take possession of him again. It was just after
fancying this, that he met Alyosha in the street. He stopped him at
once, and put a question to him:

“Do you remember when Dmitri burst in after dinner and beat father, and
afterwards I told you in the yard that I reserved ‘the right to
desire’?... Tell me, did you think then that I desired father’s death
or not?”

“I did think so,” answered Alyosha, softly.

“It was so, too; it was not a matter of guessing. But didn’t you fancy
then that what I wished was just that ‘one reptile should devour
another’; that is, just that Dmitri should kill father, and as soon as
possible ... and that I myself was even prepared to help to bring that
about?”

Alyosha turned rather pale, and looked silently into his brother’s
face.

“Speak!” cried Ivan, “I want above everything to know what you thought
then. I want the truth, the truth!”

He drew a deep breath, looking angrily at Alyosha before his answer
came.

“Forgive me, I did think that, too, at the time,” whispered Alyosha,
and he did not add one softening phrase.

“Thanks,” snapped Ivan, and, leaving Alyosha, he went quickly on his
way. From that time Alyosha noticed that Ivan began obviously to avoid
him and seemed even to have taken a dislike to him, so much so that
Alyosha gave up going to see him. Immediately after that meeting with
him, Ivan had not gone home, but went straight to Smerdyakov again.




Chapter VII.
The Second Visit To Smerdyakov


By that time Smerdyakov had been discharged from the hospital. Ivan
knew his new lodging, the dilapidated little wooden house, divided in
two by a passage on one side of which lived Marya Kondratyevna and her
mother, and on the other, Smerdyakov. No one knew on what terms he
lived with them, whether as a friend or as a lodger. It was supposed
afterwards that he had come to stay with them as Marya Kondratyevna’s
betrothed, and was living there for a time without paying for board or
lodging. Both mother and daughter had the greatest respect for him and
looked upon him as greatly superior to themselves.

Ivan knocked, and, on the door being opened, went straight into the
passage. By Marya Kondratyevna’s directions he went straight to the
better room on the left, occupied by Smerdyakov. There was a tiled
stove in the room and it was extremely hot. The walls were gay with
blue paper, which was a good deal used however, and in the cracks under
it cockroaches swarmed in amazing numbers, so that there was a
continual rustling from them. The furniture was very scanty: two
benches against each wall and two chairs by the table. The table of
plain wood was covered with a cloth with pink patterns on it. There was
a pot of geranium on each of the two little windows. In the corner
there was a case of ikons. On the table stood a little copper samovar
with many dents in it, and a tray with two cups. But Smerdyakov had
finished tea and the samovar was out. He was sitting at the table on a
bench. He was looking at an exercise‐book and slowly writing with a
pen. There was a bottle of ink by him and a flat iron candlestick, but
with a composite candle. Ivan saw at once from Smerdyakov’s face that
he had completely recovered from his illness. His face was fresher,
fuller, his hair stood up jauntily in front, and was plastered down at
the sides. He was sitting in a parti‐colored, wadded dressing‐gown,
rather dirty and frayed, however. He had spectacles on his nose, which
Ivan had never seen him wearing before. This trifling circumstance
suddenly redoubled Ivan’s anger: “A creature like that and wearing
spectacles!”

Smerdyakov slowly raised his head and looked intently at his visitor
through his spectacles; then he slowly took them off and rose from the
bench, but by no means respectfully, almost lazily, doing the least
possible required by common civility. All this struck Ivan instantly;
he took it all in and noted it at once—most of all the look in
Smerdyakov’s eyes, positively malicious, churlish and haughty. “What do
you want to intrude for?” it seemed to say; “we settled everything
then; why have you come again?” Ivan could scarcely control himself.

“It’s hot here,” he said, still standing, and unbuttoned his overcoat.

“Take off your coat,” Smerdyakov conceded.

Ivan took off his coat and threw it on a bench with trembling hands. He
took a chair, moved it quickly to the table and sat down. Smerdyakov
managed to sit down on his bench before him.

“To begin with, are we alone?” Ivan asked sternly and impulsively. “Can
they overhear us in there?”

“No one can hear anything. You’ve seen for yourself: there’s a
passage.”

“Listen, my good fellow; what was that you babbled, as I was leaving
the hospital, that if I said nothing about your faculty of shamming
fits, you wouldn’t tell the investigating lawyer all our conversation
at the gate? What do you mean by _all_? What could you mean by it? Were
you threatening me? Have I entered into some sort of compact with you?
Do you suppose I am afraid of you?”

Ivan said this in a perfect fury, giving him to understand with obvious
intention that he scorned any subterfuge or indirectness and meant to
show his cards. Smerdyakov’s eyes gleamed resentfully, his left eye
winked, and he at once gave his answer, with his habitual composure and
deliberation. “You want to have everything above‐board; very well, you
shall have it,” he seemed to say.

“This is what I meant then, and this is why I said that, that you,
knowing beforehand of this murder of your own parent, left him to his
fate, and that people mightn’t after that conclude any evil about your
feelings and perhaps of something else, too—that’s what I promised not
to tell the authorities.”

Though Smerdyakov spoke without haste and obviously controlling
himself, yet there was something in his voice, determined and emphatic,
resentful and insolently defiant. He stared impudently at Ivan. A mist
passed before Ivan’s eyes for the first moment.

“How? What? Are you out of your mind?”

“I’m perfectly in possession of all my faculties.”

“Do you suppose I _knew_ of the murder?” Ivan cried at last, and he
brought his fist violently on the table. “What do you mean by
‘something else, too’? Speak, scoundrel!”

Smerdyakov was silent and still scanned Ivan with the same insolent
stare.

“Speak, you stinking rogue, what is that ‘something else, too’?”

“The ‘something else’ I meant was that you probably, too, were very
desirous of your parent’s death.”

Ivan jumped up and struck him with all his might on the shoulder, so
that he fell back against the wall. In an instant his face was bathed
in tears. Saying, “It’s a shame, sir, to strike a sick man,” he dried
his eyes with a very dirty blue check handkerchief and sank into quiet
weeping. A minute passed.

“That’s enough! Leave off,” Ivan said peremptorily, sitting down again.
“Don’t put me out of all patience.”

Smerdyakov took the rag from his eyes. Every line of his puckered face
reflected the insult he had just received.

“So you thought then, you scoundrel, that together with Dmitri I meant
to kill my father?”

“I didn’t know what thoughts were in your mind then,” said Smerdyakov
resentfully; “and so I stopped you then at the gate to sound you on
that very point.”

“To sound what, what?”

“Why, that very circumstance, whether you wanted your father to be
murdered or not.”

What infuriated Ivan more than anything was the aggressive, insolent
tone to which Smerdyakov persistently adhered.

“It was you murdered him?” he cried suddenly.

Smerdyakov smiled contemptuously.

“You know of yourself, for a fact, that it wasn’t I murdered him. And I
should have thought that there was no need for a sensible man to speak
of it again.”

“But why, why had you such a suspicion about me at the time?”

“As you know already, it was simply from fear. For I was in such a
position, shaking with fear, that I suspected every one. I resolved to
sound you, too, for I thought if you wanted the same as your brother,
then the business was as good as settled and I should be crushed like a
fly, too.”

“Look here, you didn’t say that a fortnight ago.”

“I meant the same when I talked to you in the hospital, only I thought
you’d understand without wasting words, and that being such a sensible
man you wouldn’t care to talk of it openly.”

“What next! Come answer, answer, I insist: what was it ... what could I
have done to put such a degrading suspicion into your mean soul?”

“As for the murder, you couldn’t have done that and didn’t want to, but
as for wanting some one else to do it, that was just what you did
want.”

“And how coolly, how coolly he speaks! But why should I have wanted it;
what grounds had I for wanting it?”

“What grounds had you? What about the inheritance?” said Smerdyakov
sarcastically, and, as it were, vindictively. “Why, after your parent’s
death there was at least forty thousand to come to each of you, and
very likely more, but if Fyodor Pavlovitch got married then to that
lady, Agrafena Alexandrovna, she would have had all his capital made
over to her directly after the wedding, for she’s plenty of sense, so
that your parent would not have left you two roubles between the three
of you. And were they far from a wedding, either? Not a hair’s‐breadth:
that lady had only to lift her little finger and he would have run
after her to church, with his tongue out.”

Ivan restrained himself with painful effort.

“Very good,” he commented at last. “You see, I haven’t jumped up, I
haven’t knocked you down, I haven’t killed you. Speak on. So, according
to you, I had fixed on Dmitri to do it; I was reckoning on him?”

“How could you help reckoning on him? If he killed him, then he would
lose all the rights of a nobleman, his rank and property, and would go
off to exile; so his share of the inheritance would come to you and
your brother Alexey Fyodorovitch in equal parts; so you’d each have not
forty, but sixty thousand each. There’s not a doubt you did reckon on
Dmitri Fyodorovitch.”

“What I put up with from you! Listen, scoundrel, if I had reckoned on
any one then, it would have been on you, not on Dmitri, and I swear I
did expect some wickedness from you ... at the time.... I remember my
impression!”

“I thought, too, for a minute, at the time, that you were reckoning on
me as well,” said Smerdyakov, with a sarcastic grin. “So that it was
just by that more than anything you showed me what was in your mind.
For if you had a foreboding about me and yet went away, you as good as
said to me, ‘You can murder my parent, I won’t hinder you!’ ”

“You scoundrel! So that’s how you understood it!”

“It was all that going to Tchermashnya. Why! You were meaning to go to
Moscow and refused all your father’s entreaties to go to
Tchermashnya—and simply at a foolish word from me you consented at
once! What reason had you to consent to Tchermashnya? Since you went to
Tchermashnya with no reason, simply at my word, it shows that you must
have expected something from me.”

“No, I swear I didn’t!” shouted Ivan, grinding his teeth.

“You didn’t? Then you ought, as your father’s son, to have had me taken
to the lock‐up and thrashed at once for my words then ... or at least,
to have given me a punch in the face on the spot, but you were not a
bit angry, if you please, and at once in a friendly way acted on my
foolish word and went away, which was utterly absurd, for you ought to
have stayed to save your parent’s life. How could I help drawing my
conclusions?”

Ivan sat scowling, both his fists convulsively pressed on his knees.

“Yes, I am sorry I didn’t punch you in the face,” he said with a bitter
smile. “I couldn’t have taken you to the lock‐up just then. Who would
have believed me and what charge could I bring against you? But the
punch in the face ... oh, I’m sorry I didn’t think of it. Though blows
are forbidden, I should have pounded your ugly face to a jelly.”

Smerdyakov looked at him almost with relish.

“In the ordinary occasions of life,” he said in the same complacent and
sententious tone in which he had taunted Grigory and argued with him
about religion at Fyodor Pavlovitch’s table, “in the ordinary occasions
of life, blows on the face are forbidden nowadays by law, and people
have given them up, but in exceptional occasions of life people still
fly to blows, not only among us but all over the world, be it even the
fullest Republic of France, just as in the time of Adam and Eve, and
they never will leave off, but you, even in an exceptional case, did
not dare.”

“What are you learning French words for?” Ivan nodded towards the
exercise‐book lying on the table.

“Why shouldn’t I learn them so as to improve my education, supposing
that I may myself chance to go some day to those happy parts of
Europe?”

“Listen, monster.” Ivan’s eyes flashed and he trembled all over. “I am
not afraid of your accusations; you can say what you like about me, and
if I don’t beat you to death, it’s simply because I suspect you of that
crime and I’ll drag you to justice. I’ll unmask you.”

“To my thinking, you’d better keep quiet, for what can you accuse me
of, considering my absolute innocence? and who would believe you? Only
if you begin, I shall tell everything, too, for I must defend myself.”

“Do you think I am afraid of you now?”

“If the court doesn’t believe all I’ve said to you just now, the public
will, and you will be ashamed.”

“That’s as much as to say, ‘It’s always worth while speaking to a
sensible man,’ eh?” snarled Ivan.

“You hit the mark, indeed. And you’d better be sensible.”

Ivan got up, shaking all over with indignation, put on his coat, and
without replying further to Smerdyakov, without even looking at him,
walked quickly out of the cottage. The cool evening air refreshed him.
There was a bright moon in the sky. A nightmare of ideas and sensations
filled his soul. “Shall I go at once and give information against
Smerdyakov? But what information can I give? He is not guilty, anyway.
On the contrary, he’ll accuse me. And in fact, why did I set off for
Tchermashnya then? What for? What for?” Ivan asked himself. “Yes, of
course, I was expecting something and he is right....” And he
remembered for the hundredth time how, on the last night in his
father’s house, he had listened on the stairs. But he remembered it now
with such anguish that he stood still on the spot as though he had been
stabbed. “Yes, I expected it then, that’s true! I wanted the murder, I
did want the murder! Did I want the murder? Did I want it? I must kill
Smerdyakov! If I don’t dare kill Smerdyakov now, life is not worth
living!”

Ivan did not go home, but went straight to Katerina Ivanovna and
alarmed her by his appearance. He was like a madman. He repeated all
his conversation with Smerdyakov, every syllable of it. He couldn’t be
calmed, however much she tried to soothe him: he kept walking about the
room, speaking strangely, disconnectedly. At last he sat down, put his
elbows on the table, leaned his head on his hands and pronounced this
strange sentence: “If it’s not Dmitri, but Smerdyakov who’s the
murderer, I share his guilt, for I put him up to it. Whether I did, I
don’t know yet. But if he is the murderer, and not Dmitri, then, of
course, I am the murderer, too.”

When Katerina Ivanovna heard that, she got up from her seat without a
word, went to her writing‐table, opened a box standing on it, took out
a sheet of paper and laid it before Ivan. This was the document of
which Ivan spoke to Alyosha later on as a “conclusive proof” that
Dmitri had killed his father. It was the letter written by Mitya to
Katerina Ivanovna when he was drunk, on the very evening he met Alyosha
at the crossroads on the way to the monastery, after the scene at
Katerina Ivanovna’s, when Grushenka had insulted her. Then, parting
from Alyosha, Mitya had rushed to Grushenka. I don’t know whether he
saw her, but in the evening he was at the “Metropolis,” where he got
thoroughly drunk. Then he asked for pen and paper and wrote a document
of weighty consequences to himself. It was a wordy, disconnected,
frantic letter, a drunken letter in fact. It was like the talk of a
drunken man, who, on his return home, begins with extraordinary heat
telling his wife or one of his household how he has just been insulted,
what a rascal had just insulted him, what a fine fellow he is on the
other hand, and how he will pay that scoundrel out; and all that at
great length, with great excitement and incoherence, with drunken tears
and blows on the table. The letter was written on a dirty piece of
ordinary paper of the cheapest kind. It had been provided by the tavern
and there were figures scrawled on the back of it. There was evidently
not space enough for his drunken verbosity and Mitya not only filled
the margins but had written the last line right across the rest. The
letter ran as follows:

FATAL KATYA: To‐morrow I will get the money and repay your three
thousand and farewell, woman of great wrath, but farewell, too, my
love! Let us make an end! To‐morrow I shall try and get it from every
one, and if I can’t borrow it, I give you my word of honor I shall go
to my father and break his skull and take the money from under the
pillow, if only Ivan has gone. If I have to go to Siberia for it, I’ll
give you back your three thousand. And farewell. I bow down to the
ground before you, for I’ve been a scoundrel to you. Forgive me! No,
better not forgive me, you’ll be happier and so shall I! Better Siberia
than your love, for I love another woman and you got to know her too
well to‐day, so how can you forgive? I will murder the man who’s robbed
me! I’ll leave you all and go to the East so as to see no one again.
Not _her_ either, for you are not my only tormentress; she is too.
Farewell!
    P.S.—I write my curse, but I adore you! I hear it in my heart. One
    string is left, and it vibrates. Better tear my heart in two! I
    shall kill myself, but first of all that cur. I shall tear three
    thousand from him and fling it to you. Though I’ve been a scoundrel
    to you, I am not a thief! You can expect three thousand. The cur
    keeps it under his mattress, in pink ribbon. I am not a thief, but
    I’ll murder my thief. Katya, don’t look disdainful. Dmitri is not a
    thief! but a murderer! He has murdered his father and ruined
    himself to hold his ground, rather than endure your pride. And he
    doesn’t love you.
    P.P.S.—I kiss your feet, farewell! P.P.P.S.—Katya, pray to God that
    some one’ll give me the money. Then I shall not be steeped in gore,
    and if no one does—I shall! Kill me!


Your slave and enemy,
D. KARAMAZOV.


When Ivan read this “document” he was convinced. So then it was his
brother, not Smerdyakov. And if not Smerdyakov, then not he, Ivan. This
letter at once assumed in his eyes the aspect of a logical proof. There
could be no longer the slightest doubt of Mitya’s guilt. The suspicion
never occurred to Ivan, by the way, that Mitya might have committed the
murder in conjunction with Smerdyakov, and, indeed, such a theory did
not fit in with the facts. Ivan was completely reassured. The next
morning he only thought of Smerdyakov and his gibes with contempt. A
few days later he positively wondered how he could have been so
horribly distressed at his suspicions. He resolved to dismiss him with
contempt and forget him. So passed a month. He made no further inquiry
about Smerdyakov, but twice he happened to hear that he was very ill
and out of his mind.

“He’ll end in madness,” the young doctor Varvinsky observed about him,
and Ivan remembered this. During the last week of that month Ivan
himself began to feel very ill. He went to consult the Moscow doctor
who had been sent for by Katerina Ivanovna just before the trial. And
just at that time his relations with Katerina Ivanovna became acutely
strained. They were like two enemies in love with one another. Katerina
Ivanovna’s “returns” to Mitya, that is, her brief but violent
revulsions of feeling in his favor, drove Ivan to perfect frenzy.
Strange to say, until that last scene described above, when Alyosha
came from Mitya to Katerina Ivanovna, Ivan had never once, during that
month, heard her express a doubt of Mitya’s guilt, in spite of those
“returns” that were so hateful to him. It is remarkable, too, that
while he felt that he hated Mitya more and more every day, he realized
that it was not on account of Katya’s “returns” that he hated him, but
just _because he was the murderer of his father_. He was conscious of
this and fully recognized it to himself.

Nevertheless, he went to see Mitya ten days before the trial and
proposed to him a plan of escape—a plan he had obviously thought over a
long time. He was partly impelled to do this by a sore place still left
in his heart from a phrase of Smerdyakov’s, that it was to his, Ivan’s,
advantage that his brother should be convicted, as that would increase
his inheritance and Alyosha’s from forty to sixty thousand roubles. He
determined to sacrifice thirty thousand on arranging Mitya’s escape. On
his return from seeing him, he was very mournful and dispirited; he
suddenly began to feel that he was anxious for Mitya’s escape, not only
to heal that sore place by sacrificing thirty thousand, but for another
reason. “Is it because I am as much a murderer at heart?” he asked
himself. Something very deep down seemed burning and rankling in his
soul. His pride above all suffered cruelly all that month. But of that
later....

When, after his conversation with Alyosha, Ivan suddenly decided with
his hand on the bell of his lodging to go to Smerdyakov, he obeyed a
sudden and peculiar impulse of indignation. He suddenly remembered how
Katerina Ivanovna had only just cried out to him in Alyosha’s presence:
“It was you, you, persuaded me of his” (that is, Mitya’s) “guilt!” Ivan
was thunderstruck when he recalled it. He had never once tried to
persuade her that Mitya was the murderer; on the contrary, he had
suspected himself in her presence, that time when he came back from
Smerdyakov. It was _she_, she, who had produced that “document” and
proved his brother’s guilt. And now she suddenly exclaimed: “I’ve been
at Smerdyakov’s myself!” When had she been there? Ivan had known
nothing of it. So she was not at all so sure of Mitya’s guilt! And what
could Smerdyakov have told her? What, what, had he said to her? His
heart burned with violent anger. He could not understand how he could,
half an hour before, have let those words pass and not have cried out
at the moment. He let go of the bell and rushed off to Smerdyakov. “I
shall kill him, perhaps, this time,” he thought on the way.




Chapter VIII.
The Third And Last Interview With Smerdyakov


When he was half‐way there, the keen dry wind that had been blowing
early that morning rose again, and a fine dry snow began falling
thickly. It did not lie on the ground, but was whirled about by the
wind, and soon there was a regular snowstorm. There were scarcely any
lamp‐posts in the part of the town where Smerdyakov lived. Ivan strode
alone in the darkness, unconscious of the storm, instinctively picking
out his way. His head ached and there was a painful throbbing in his
temples. He felt that his hands were twitching convulsively. Not far
from Marya Kondratyevna’s cottage, Ivan suddenly came upon a solitary
drunken little peasant. He was wearing a coarse and patched coat, and
was walking in zigzags, grumbling and swearing to himself. Then
suddenly he would begin singing in a husky drunken voice:

“Ach, Vanka’s gone to Petersburg;
I won’t wait till he comes back.”


But he broke off every time at the second line and began swearing
again; then he would begin the same song again. Ivan felt an intense
hatred for him before he had thought about him at all. Suddenly he
realized his presence and felt an irresistible impulse to knock him
down. At that moment they met, and the peasant with a violent lurch
fell full tilt against Ivan, who pushed him back furiously. The peasant
went flying backwards and fell like a log on the frozen ground. He
uttered one plaintive “O—oh!” and then was silent. Ivan stepped up to
him. He was lying on his back, without movement or consciousness. “He
will be frozen,” thought Ivan, and he went on his way to Smerdyakov’s.

In the passage, Marya Kondratyevna, who ran out to open the door with a
candle in her hand, whispered that Smerdyakov was very ill, “It’s not
that he’s laid up, but he seems not himself, and he even told us to
take the tea away; he wouldn’t have any.”

“Why, does he make a row?” asked Ivan coarsely.

“Oh, dear, no, quite the contrary, he’s very quiet. Only please don’t
talk to him too long,” Marya Kondratyevna begged him. Ivan opened the
door and stepped into the room.

It was over‐heated as before, but there were changes in the room. One
of the benches at the side had been removed, and in its place had been
put a large old mahogany leather sofa, on which a bed had been made up,
with fairly clean white pillows. Smerdyakov was sitting on the sofa,
wearing the same dressing‐gown. The table had been brought out in front
of the sofa, so that there was hardly room to move. On the table lay a
thick book in yellow cover, but Smerdyakov was not reading it. He
seemed to be sitting doing nothing. He met Ivan with a slow silent
gaze, and was apparently not at all surprised at his coming. There was
a great change in his face; he was much thinner and sallower. His eyes
were sunken and there were blue marks under them.

“Why, you really are ill?” Ivan stopped short. “I won’t keep you long,
I won’t even take off my coat. Where can one sit down?”

He went to the other end of the table, moved up a chair and sat down on
it.

“Why do you look at me without speaking? I’ve only come with one
question, and I swear I won’t go without an answer. Has the young lady,
Katerina Ivanovna, been with you?”

Smerdyakov still remained silent, looking quietly at Ivan as before.
Suddenly, with a motion of his hand, he turned his face away.

“What’s the matter with you?” cried Ivan.

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean by ‘nothing’?”

“Yes, she has. It’s no matter to you. Let me alone.”

“No, I won’t let you alone. Tell me, when was she here?”

“Why, I’d quite forgotten about her,” said Smerdyakov, with a scornful
smile, and turning his face to Ivan again, he stared at him with a look
of frenzied hatred, the same look that he had fixed on him at their
last interview, a month before.

“You seem very ill yourself, your face is sunken; you don’t look like
yourself,” he said to Ivan.

“Never mind my health, tell me what I ask you.”

“But why are your eyes so yellow? The whites are quite yellow. Are you
so worried?” He smiled contemptuously and suddenly laughed outright.

“Listen; I’ve told you I won’t go away without an answer!” Ivan cried,
intensely irritated.

“Why do you keep pestering me? Why do you torment me?” said Smerdyakov,
with a look of suffering.

“Damn it! I’ve nothing to do with you. Just answer my question and I’ll
go away.”

“I’ve no answer to give you,” said Smerdyakov, looking down again.

“You may be sure I’ll make you answer!”

“Why are you so uneasy?” Smerdyakov stared at him, not simply with
contempt, but almost with repulsion. “Is this because the trial begins
to‐ morrow? Nothing will happen to you; can’t you believe that at last?
Go home, go to bed and sleep in peace, don’t be afraid of anything.”

“I don’t understand you.... What have I to be afraid of to‐morrow?”
Ivan articulated in astonishment, and suddenly a chill breath of fear
did in fact pass over his soul. Smerdyakov measured him with his eyes.

“You don’t understand?” he drawled reproachfully. “It’s a strange thing
a sensible man should care to play such a farce!”

Ivan looked at him speechless. The startling, incredibly supercilious
tone of this man who had once been his valet, was extraordinary in
itself. He had not taken such a tone even at their last interview.

“I tell you, you’ve nothing to be afraid of. I won’t say anything about
you; there’s no proof against you. I say, how your hands are trembling!
Why are your fingers moving like that? Go home, _you_ did not murder
him.”

Ivan started. He remembered Alyosha.

“I know it was not I,” he faltered.

“Do you?” Smerdyakov caught him up again.

Ivan jumped up and seized him by the shoulder.

“Tell me everything, you viper! Tell me everything!”

Smerdyakov was not in the least scared. He only riveted his eyes on
Ivan with insane hatred.

“Well, it was you who murdered him, if that’s it,” he whispered
furiously.

Ivan sank back on his chair, as though pondering something. He laughed
malignantly.

“You mean my going away. What you talked about last time?”

“You stood before me last time and understood it all, and you
understand it now.”

“All I understand is that you are mad.”

“Aren’t you tired of it? Here we are face to face; what’s the use of
going on keeping up a farce to each other? Are you still trying to
throw it all on me, to my face? _You_ murdered him; you are the real
murderer, I was only your instrument, your faithful servant, and it was
following your words I did it.”

“_Did_ it? Why, did you murder him?” Ivan turned cold.

Something seemed to give way in his brain, and he shuddered all over
with a cold shiver. Then Smerdyakov himself looked at him wonderingly;
probably the genuineness of Ivan’s horror struck him.

“You don’t mean to say you really did not know?” he faltered
mistrustfully, looking with a forced smile into his eyes. Ivan still
gazed at him, and seemed unable to speak.

Ach, Vanka’s gone to Petersburg;
I won’t wait till he comes back,


suddenly echoed in his head.

“Do you know, I am afraid that you are a dream, a phantom sitting
before me,” he muttered.

“There’s no phantom here, but only us two and one other. No doubt he is
here, that third, between us.”

“Who is he? Who is here? What third person?” Ivan cried in alarm,
looking about him, his eyes hastily searching in every corner.

“That third is God Himself—Providence. He is the third beside us now.
Only don’t look for Him, you won’t find Him.”

“It’s a lie that you killed him!” Ivan cried madly. “You are mad, or
teasing me again!”

Smerdyakov, as before, watched him curiously, with no sign of fear. He
could still scarcely get over his incredulity; he still fancied that
Ivan knew everything and was trying to “throw it all on him to his
face.”

“Wait a minute,” he said at last in a weak voice, and suddenly bringing
up his left leg from under the table, he began turning up his trouser
leg. He was wearing long white stockings and slippers. Slowly he took
off his garter and fumbled to the bottom of his stocking. Ivan gazed at
him, and suddenly shuddered in a paroxysm of terror.

“He’s mad!” he cried, and rapidly jumping up, he drew back, so that he
knocked his back against the wall and stood up against it, stiff and
straight. He looked with insane terror at Smerdyakov, who, entirely
unaffected by his terror, continued fumbling in his stocking, as though
he were making an effort to get hold of something with his fingers and
pull it out. At last he got hold of it and began pulling it out. Ivan
saw that it was a piece of paper, or perhaps a roll of papers.
Smerdyakov pulled it out and laid it on the table.

“Here,” he said quietly.

“What is it?” asked Ivan, trembling.

“Kindly look at it,” Smerdyakov answered, still in the same low tone.

Ivan stepped up to the table, took up the roll of paper and began
unfolding it, but suddenly he drew back his fingers, as though from
contact with a loathsome reptile.

“Your hands keep twitching,” observed Smerdyakov, and he deliberately
unfolded the bundle himself. Under the wrapper were three packets of
hundred‐rouble notes.

“They are all here, all the three thousand roubles; you need not count
them. Take them,” Smerdyakov suggested to Ivan, nodding at the notes.
Ivan sank back in his chair. He was as white as a handkerchief.

“You frightened me ... with your stocking,” he said, with a strange
grin.

“Can you really not have known till now?” Smerdyakov asked once more.

“No, I did not know. I kept thinking of Dmitri. Brother, brother! Ach!”
He suddenly clutched his head in both hands.

“Listen. Did you kill him alone? With my brother’s help or without?”

“It was only with you, with your help, I killed him, and Dmitri
Fyodorovitch is quite innocent.”

“All right, all right. Talk about me later. Why do I keep on trembling?
I can’t speak properly.”

“You were bold enough then. You said ‘everything was lawful,’ and how
frightened you are now,” Smerdyakov muttered in surprise. “Won’t you
have some lemonade? I’ll ask for some at once. It’s very refreshing.
Only I must hide this first.”

And again he motioned at the notes. He was just going to get up and
call at the door to Marya Kondratyevna to make some lemonade and bring
it them, but, looking for something to cover up the notes that she
might not see them, he first took out his handkerchief, and as it
turned out to be very dirty, took up the big yellow book that Ivan had
noticed at first lying on the table, and put it over the notes. The
book was _The Sayings of the Holy Father Isaac the Syrian_. Ivan read
it mechanically.

“I won’t have any lemonade,” he said. “Talk of me later. Sit down and
tell me how you did it. Tell me all about it.”

“You’d better take off your greatcoat, or you’ll be too hot.” Ivan, as
though he’d only just thought of it, took off his coat, and, without
getting up from his chair, threw it on the bench.

“Speak, please, speak.”

He seemed calmer. He waited, feeling sure that Smerdyakov would tell
him _all_ about it.

“How it was done?” sighed Smerdyakov. “It was done in a most natural
way, following your very words.”

“Of my words later,” Ivan broke in again, apparently with complete
self‐ possession, firmly uttering his words, and not shouting as
before. “Only tell me in detail how you did it. Everything, as it
happened. Don’t forget anything. The details, above everything, the
details, I beg you.”

“You’d gone away, then I fell into the cellar.”

“In a fit or in a sham one?”

“A sham one, naturally. I shammed it all. I went quietly down the steps
to the very bottom and lay down quietly, and as I lay down I gave a
scream, and struggled, till they carried me out.”

“Stay! And were you shamming all along, afterwards, and in the
hospital?”

“No, not at all. Next day, in the morning, before they took me to the
hospital, I had a real attack and a more violent one than I’ve had for
years. For two days I was quite unconscious.”

“All right, all right. Go on.”

“They laid me on the bed. I knew I’d be the other side of the
partition, for whenever I was ill, Marfa Ignatyevna used to put me
there, near them. She’s always been very kind to me, from my birth up.
At night I moaned, but quietly. I kept expecting Dmitri Fyodorovitch to
come.”

“Expecting him? To come to you?”

“Not to me. I expected him to come into the house, for I’d no doubt
that he’d come that night, for being without me and getting no news,
he’d be sure to come and climb over the fence, as he used to, and do
something.”

“And if he hadn’t come?”

“Then nothing would have happened. I should never have brought myself
to it without him.”

“All right, all right ... speak more intelligibly, don’t hurry; above
all, don’t leave anything out!”

“I expected him to kill Fyodor Pavlovitch. I thought that was certain,
for I had prepared him for it ... during the last few days.... He knew
about the knocks, that was the chief thing. With his suspiciousness and
the fury which had been growing in him all those days, he was bound to
get into the house by means of those taps. That was inevitable, so I
was expecting him.”

“Stay,” Ivan interrupted; “if he had killed him, he would have taken
the money and carried it away; you must have considered that. What
would you have got by it afterwards? I don’t see.”

“But he would never have found the money. That was only what I told
him, that the money was under the mattress. But that wasn’t true. It
had been lying in a box. And afterwards I suggested to Fyodor
Pavlovitch, as I was the only person he trusted, to hide the envelope
with the notes in the corner behind the ikons, for no one would have
guessed that place, especially if they came in a hurry. So that’s where
the envelope lay, in the corner behind the ikons. It would have been
absurd to keep it under the mattress; the box, anyway, could be locked.
But all believe it was under the mattress. A stupid thing to believe.
So if Dmitri Fyodorovitch had committed the murder, finding nothing, he
would either have run away in a hurry, afraid of every sound, as always
happens with murderers, or he would have been arrested. So I could
always have clambered up to the ikons and have taken away the money
next morning or even that night, and it would have all been put down to
Dmitri Fyodorovitch. I could reckon upon that.”

“But what if he did not kill him, but only knocked him down?”

“If he did not kill him, of course, I would not have ventured to take
the money, and nothing would have happened. But I calculated that he
would beat him senseless, and I should have time to take it then, and
then I’d make out to Fyodor Pavlovitch that it was no one but Dmitri
Fyodorovitch who had taken the money after beating him.”

“Stop ... I am getting mixed. Then it was Dmitri after all who killed
him; you only took the money?”

“No, he didn’t kill him. Well, I might as well have told you now that
he was the murderer.... But I don’t want to lie to you now, because ...
because if you really haven’t understood till now, as I see for myself,
and are not pretending, so as to throw your guilt on me to my very
face, you are still responsible for it all, since you knew of the
murder and charged me to do it, and went away knowing all about it. And
so I want to prove to your face this evening that you are the only real
murderer in the whole affair, and I am not the real murderer, though I
did kill him. You are the rightful murderer.”

“Why, why, am I a murderer? Oh, God!” Ivan cried, unable to restrain
himself at last, and forgetting that he had put off discussing himself
till the end of the conversation. “You still mean that Tchermashnya?
Stay, tell me, why did you want my consent, if you really took
Tchermashnya for consent? How will you explain that now?”

“Assured of your consent, I should have known that you wouldn’t have
made an outcry over those three thousand being lost, even if I’d been
suspected, instead of Dmitri Fyodorovitch, or as his accomplice; on the
contrary, you would have protected me from others.... And when you got
your inheritance you would have rewarded me when you were able, all the
rest of your life. For you’d have received your inheritance through me,
seeing that if he had married Agrafena Alexandrovna, you wouldn’t have
had a farthing.”

“Ah! Then you intended to worry me all my life afterwards,” snarled
Ivan. “And what if I hadn’t gone away then, but had informed against
you?”

“What could you have informed? That I persuaded you to go to
Tchermashnya? That’s all nonsense. Besides, after our conversation you
would either have gone away or have stayed. If you had stayed, nothing
would have happened. I should have known that you didn’t want it done,
and should have attempted nothing. As you went away, it meant you
assured me that you wouldn’t dare to inform against me at the trial,
and that you’d overlook my having the three thousand. And, indeed, you
couldn’t have prosecuted me afterwards, because then I should have told
it all in the court; that is, not that I had stolen the money or killed
him—I shouldn’t have said that—but that you’d put me up to the theft
and the murder, though I didn’t consent to it. That’s why I needed your
consent, so that you couldn’t have cornered me afterwards, for what
proof could you have had? I could always have cornered you, revealing
your eagerness for your father’s death, and I tell you the public would
have believed it all, and you would have been ashamed for the rest of
your life.”

“Was I then so eager, was I?” Ivan snarled again.

“To be sure you were, and by your consent you silently sanctioned my
doing it.” Smerdyakov looked resolutely at Ivan. He was very weak and
spoke slowly and wearily, but some hidden inner force urged him on. He
evidently had some design. Ivan felt that.

“Go on,” he said. “Tell me what happened that night.”

“What more is there to tell! I lay there and I thought I heard the
master shout. And before that Grigory Vassilyevitch had suddenly got up
and came out, and he suddenly gave a scream, and then all was silence
and darkness. I lay there waiting, my heart beating; I couldn’t bear
it. I got up at last, went out. I saw the window open on the left into
the garden, and I stepped to the left to listen whether he was sitting
there alive, and I heard the master moving about, sighing, so I knew he
was alive. ‘Ech!’ I thought. I went to the window and shouted to the
master, ‘It’s I.’ And he shouted to me, ‘He’s been, he’s been; he’s run
away.’ He meant Dmitri Fyodorovitch had been. ‘He’s killed Grigory!’
‘Where?’ I whispered. ‘There, in the corner,’ he pointed. He was
whispering, too. ‘Wait a bit,’ I said. I went to the corner of the
garden to look, and there I came upon Grigory Vassilyevitch lying by
the wall, covered with blood, senseless. So it’s true that Dmitri
Fyodorovitch has been here, was the thought that came into my head, and
I determined on the spot to make an end of it, as Grigory
Vassilyevitch, even if he were alive, would see nothing of it, as he
lay there senseless. The only risk was that Marfa Ignatyevna might wake
up. I felt that at the moment, but the longing to get it done came over
me, till I could scarcely breathe. I went back to the window to the
master and said, ‘She’s here, she’s come; Agrafena Alexandrovna has
come, wants to be let in.’ And he started like a baby. ‘Where is she?’
he fairly gasped, but couldn’t believe it. ‘She’s standing there,’ said
I. ‘Open.’ He looked out of the window at me, half believing and half
distrustful, but afraid to open. ‘Why, he is afraid of me now,’ I
thought. And it was funny. I bethought me to knock on the window‐frame
those taps we’d agreed upon as a signal that Grushenka had come, in his
presence, before his eyes. He didn’t seem to believe my word, but as
soon as he heard the taps, he ran at once to open the door. He opened
it. I would have gone in, but he stood in the way to prevent me
passing. ‘Where is she? Where is she?’ He looked at me, all of a
tremble. ‘Well,’ thought I, ‘if he’s so frightened of me as all that,
it’s a bad look out!’ And my legs went weak with fright that he
wouldn’t let me in or would call out, or Marfa Ignatyevna would run up,
or something else might happen. I don’t remember now, but I must have
stood pale, facing him. I whispered to him, ‘Why, she’s there, there,
under the window; how is it you don’t see her?’ I said. ‘Bring her
then, bring her.’ ‘She’s afraid,’ said I; ‘she was frightened at the
noise, she’s hidden in the bushes; go and call to her yourself from the
study.’ He ran to the window, put the candle in the window.
‘Grushenka,’ he cried, ‘Grushenka, are you here?’ Though he cried that,
he didn’t want to lean out of the window, he didn’t want to move away
from me, for he was panic‐stricken; he was so frightened he didn’t dare
to turn his back on me. ‘Why, here she is,’ said I. I went up to the
window and leaned right out of it. ‘Here she is; she’s in the bush,
laughing at you, don’t you see her?’ He suddenly believed it; he was
all of a shake—he was awfully crazy about her—and he leaned right out
of the window. I snatched up that iron paper‐weight from his table; do
you remember, weighing about three pounds? I swung it and hit him on
the top of the skull with the corner of it. He didn’t even cry out. He
only sank down suddenly, and I hit him again and a third time. And the
third time I knew I’d broken his skull. He suddenly rolled on his back,
face upwards, covered with blood. I looked round. There was no blood on
me, not a spot. I wiped the paper‐weight, put it back, went up to the
ikons, took the money out of the envelope, and flung the envelope on
the floor and the pink ribbon beside it. I went out into the garden all
of a tremble, straight to the apple‐tree with a hollow in it—you know
that hollow. I’d marked it long before and put a rag and a piece of
paper ready in it. I wrapped all the notes in the rag and stuffed it
deep down in the hole. And there it stayed for over a fortnight. I took
it out later, when I came out of the hospital. I went back to my bed,
lay down and thought, ‘If Grigory Vassilyevitch has been killed
outright it may be a bad job for me, but if he is not killed and
recovers, it will be first‐rate, for then he’ll bear witness that
Dmitri Fyodorovitch has been here, and so he must have killed him and
taken the money.’ Then I began groaning with suspense and impatience,
so as to wake Marfa Ignatyevna as soon as possible. At last she got up
and she rushed to me, but when she saw Grigory Vassilyevitch was not
there, she ran out, and I heard her scream in the garden. And that set
it all going and set my mind at rest.”

He stopped. Ivan had listened all the time in dead silence without
stirring or taking his eyes off him. As he told his story Smerdyakov
glanced at him from time to time, but for the most part kept his eyes
averted. When he had finished he was evidently agitated and was
breathing hard. The perspiration stood out on his face. But it was
impossible to tell whether it was remorse he was feeling, or what.

“Stay,” cried Ivan, pondering. “What about the door? If he only opened
the door to you, how could Grigory have seen it open before? For
Grigory saw it before you went.”

It was remarkable that Ivan spoke quite amicably, in a different tone,
not angry as before, so if any one had opened the door at that moment
and peeped in at them, he would certainly have concluded that they were
talking peaceably about some ordinary, though interesting, subject.

“As for that door and Grigory Vassilyevitch’s having seen it open,
that’s only his fancy,” said Smerdyakov, with a wry smile. “He is not a
man, I assure you, but an obstinate mule. He didn’t see it, but fancied
he had seen it, and there’s no shaking him. It’s just our luck he took
that notion into his head, for they can’t fail to convict Dmitri
Fyodorovitch after that.”

“Listen ...” said Ivan, beginning to seem bewildered again and making
an effort to grasp something. “Listen. There are a lot of questions I
want to ask you, but I forget them ... I keep forgetting and getting
mixed up. Yes. Tell me this at least, why did you open the envelope and
leave it there on the floor? Why didn’t you simply carry off the
envelope?... When you were telling me, I thought you spoke about it as
though it were the right thing to do ... but why, I can’t
understand....”

“I did that for a good reason. For if a man had known all about it, as
I did for instance, if he’d seen those notes before, and perhaps had
put them in that envelope himself, and had seen the envelope sealed up
and addressed, with his own eyes, if such a man had done the murder,
what should have made him tear open the envelope afterwards, especially
in such desperate haste, since he’d know for certain the notes must be
in the envelope? No, if the robber had been some one like me, he’d
simply have put the envelope straight in his pocket and got away with
it as fast as he could. But it’d be quite different with Dmitri
Fyodorovitch. He only knew about the envelope by hearsay; he had never
seen it, and if he’d found it, for instance, under the mattress, he’d
have torn it open as quickly as possible to make sure the notes were in
it. And he’d have thrown the envelope down, without having time to
think that it would be evidence against him. Because he was not an
habitual thief and had never directly stolen anything before, for he is
a gentleman born, and if he did bring himself to steal, it would not be
regular stealing, but simply taking what was his own, for he’d told the
whole town he meant to before, and had even bragged aloud before every
one that he’d go and take his property from Fyodor Pavlovitch. I didn’t
say that openly to the prosecutor when I was being examined, but quite
the contrary, I brought him to it by a hint, as though I didn’t see it
myself, and as though he’d thought of it himself and I hadn’t prompted
him; so that Mr. Prosecutor’s mouth positively watered at my
suggestion.”

“But can you possibly have thought of all that on the spot?” cried
Ivan, overcome with astonishment. He looked at Smerdyakov again with
alarm.

“Mercy on us! Could any one think of it all in such a desperate hurry?
It was all thought out beforehand.”

“Well ... well, it was the devil helped you!” Ivan cried again. “No,
you are not a fool, you are far cleverer than I thought....”

He got up, obviously intending to walk across the room. He was in
terrible distress. But as the table blocked his way, and there was
hardly room to pass between the table and the wall, he only turned
round where he stood and sat down again. Perhaps the impossibility of
moving irritated him, as he suddenly cried out almost as furiously as
before.

“Listen, you miserable, contemptible creature! Don’t you understand
that if I haven’t killed you, it’s simply because I am keeping you to
answer to‐morrow at the trial. God sees,” Ivan raised his hand,
“perhaps I, too, was guilty; perhaps I really had a secret desire for
my father’s ... death, but I swear I was not as guilty as you think,
and perhaps I didn’t urge you on at all. No, no, I didn’t urge you on!
But no matter, I will give evidence against myself to‐morrow at the
trial. I’m determined to! I shall tell everything, everything. But
we’ll make our appearance together. And whatever you may say against me
at the trial, whatever evidence you give, I’ll face it; I am not afraid
of you. I’ll confirm it all myself! But you must confess, too! You
must, you must; we’ll go together. That’s how it shall be!”

Ivan said this solemnly and resolutely and from his flashing eyes alone
it could be seen that it would be so.

“You are ill, I see; you are quite ill. Your eyes are yellow,”
Smerdyakov commented, without the least irony, with apparent sympathy
in fact.

“We’ll go together,” Ivan repeated. “And if you won’t go, no matter,
I’ll go alone.”

Smerdyakov paused as though pondering.

“There’ll be nothing of the sort, and you won’t go,” he concluded at
last positively.

“You don’t understand me,” Ivan exclaimed reproachfully.

“You’ll be too much ashamed, if you confess it all. And, what’s more,
it will be no use at all, for I shall say straight out that I never
said anything of the sort to you, and that you are either ill (and it
looks like it, too), or that you’re so sorry for your brother that you
are sacrificing yourself to save him and have invented it all against
me, for you’ve always thought no more of me than if I’d been a fly. And
who will believe you, and what single proof have you got?”

“Listen, you showed me those notes just now to convince me.”

Smerdyakov lifted the book off the notes and laid it on one side.

“Take that money away with you,” Smerdyakov sighed.

“Of course, I shall take it. But why do you give it to me, if you
committed the murder for the sake of it?” Ivan looked at him with great
surprise.

“I don’t want it,” Smerdyakov articulated in a shaking voice, with a
gesture of refusal. “I did have an idea of beginning a new life with
that money in Moscow or, better still, abroad. I did dream of it,
chiefly because ‘all things are lawful.’ That was quite right what you
taught me, for you talked a lot to me about that. For if there’s no
everlasting God, there’s no such thing as virtue, and there’s no need
of it. You were right there. So that’s how I looked at it.”

“Did you come to that of yourself?” asked Ivan, with a wry smile.

“With your guidance.”

“And now, I suppose, you believe in God, since you are giving back the
money?”

“No, I don’t believe,” whispered Smerdyakov.

“Then why are you giving it back?”

“Leave off ... that’s enough!” Smerdyakov waved his hand again. “You
used to say yourself that everything was lawful, so now why are you so
upset, too? You even want to go and give evidence against yourself....
Only there’ll be nothing of the sort! You won’t go to give evidence,”
Smerdyakov decided with conviction.

“You’ll see,” said Ivan.

“It isn’t possible. You are very clever. You are fond of money, I know
that. You like to be respected, too, for you’re very proud; you are far
too fond of female charms, too, and you mind most of all about living
in undisturbed comfort, without having to depend on any one—that’s what
you care most about. You won’t want to spoil your life for ever by
taking such a disgrace on yourself. You are like Fyodor Pavlovitch, you
are more like him than any of his children; you’ve the same soul as he
had.”

“You are not a fool,” said Ivan, seeming struck. The blood rushed to
his face. “You are serious now!” he observed, looking suddenly at
Smerdyakov with a different expression.

“It was your pride made you think I was a fool. Take the money.”

Ivan took the three rolls of notes and put them in his pocket without
wrapping them in anything.

“I shall show them at the court to‐morrow,” he said.

“Nobody will believe you, as you’ve plenty of money of your own; you
may simply have taken it out of your cash‐box and brought it to the
court.”

Ivan rose from his seat.

“I repeat,” he said, “the only reason I haven’t killed you is that I
need you for to‐morrow, remember that, don’t forget it!”

“Well, kill me. Kill me now,” Smerdyakov said, all at once looking
strangely at Ivan. “You won’t dare do that even!” he added, with a
bitter smile. “You won’t dare to do anything, you, who used to be so
bold!”

“Till to‐morrow,” cried Ivan, and moved to go out.

“Stay a moment.... Show me those notes again.”

Ivan took out the notes and showed them to him. Smerdyakov looked at
them for ten seconds.

“Well, you can go,” he said, with a wave of his hand. “Ivan
Fyodorovitch!” he called after him again.

“What do you want?” Ivan turned without stopping.

“Good‐by!”

“Till to‐morrow!” Ivan cried again, and he walked out of the cottage.

The snowstorm was still raging. He walked the first few steps boldly,
but suddenly began staggering. “It’s something physical,” he thought
with a grin. Something like joy was springing up in his heart. He was
conscious of unbounded resolution; he would make an end of the wavering
that had so tortured him of late. His determination was taken, “and now
it will not be changed,” he thought with relief. At that moment he
stumbled against something and almost fell down. Stopping short, he
made out at his feet the peasant he had knocked down, still lying
senseless and motionless. The snow had almost covered his face. Ivan
seized him and lifted him in his arms. Seeing a light in the little
house to the right he went up, knocked at the shutters, and asked the
man to whom the house belonged to help him carry the peasant to the
police‐station, promising him three roubles. The man got ready and came
out. I won’t describe in detail how Ivan succeeded in his object,
bringing the peasant to the police‐station and arranging for a doctor
to see him at once, providing with a liberal hand for the expenses. I
will only say that this business took a whole hour, but Ivan was well
content with it. His mind wandered and worked incessantly.

“If I had not taken my decision so firmly for to‐morrow,” he reflected
with satisfaction, “I should not have stayed a whole hour to look after
the peasant, but should have passed by, without caring about his being
frozen. I am quite capable of watching myself, by the way,” he thought
at the same instant, with still greater satisfaction, “although they
have decided that I am going out of my mind!”

Just as he reached his own house he stopped short, asking himself
suddenly hadn’t he better go at once to the prosecutor and tell him
everything. He decided the question by turning back to the house.
“Everything together to‐morrow!” he whispered to himself, and, strange
to say, almost all his gladness and self‐satisfaction passed in one
instant.

As he entered his own room he felt something like a touch of ice on his
heart, like a recollection or, more exactly, a reminder, of something
agonizing and revolting that was in that room now, at that moment, and
had been there before. He sank wearily on his sofa. The old woman
brought him a samovar; he made tea, but did not touch it. He sat on the
sofa and felt giddy. He felt that he was ill and helpless. He was
beginning to drop asleep, but got up uneasily and walked across the
room to shake off his drowsiness. At moments he fancied he was
delirious, but it was not illness that he thought of most. Sitting down
again, he began looking round, as though searching for something. This
happened several times. At last his eyes were fastened intently on one
point. Ivan smiled, but an angry flush suffused his face. He sat a long
time in his place, his head propped on both arms, though he looked
sideways at the same point, at the sofa that stood against the opposite
wall. There was evidently something, some object, that irritated him
there, worried him and tormented him.




Chapter IX.
The Devil. Ivan’s Nightmare


I am not a doctor, but yet I feel that the moment has come when I must
inevitably give the reader some account of the nature of Ivan’s
illness. Anticipating events I can say at least one thing: he was at
that moment on the very eve of an attack of brain fever. Though his
health had long been affected, it had offered a stubborn resistance to
the fever which in the end gained complete mastery over it. Though I
know nothing of medicine, I venture to hazard the suggestion that he
really had perhaps, by a terrible effort of will, succeeded in delaying
the attack for a time, hoping, of course, to check it completely. He
knew that he was unwell, but he loathed the thought of being ill at
that fatal time, at the approaching crisis in his life, when he needed
to have all his wits about him, to say what he had to say boldly and
resolutely and “to justify himself to himself.”

He had, however, consulted the new doctor, who had been brought from
Moscow by a fantastic notion of Katerina Ivanovna’s to which I have
referred already. After listening to him and examining him the doctor
came to the conclusion that he was actually suffering from some
disorder of the brain, and was not at all surprised by an admission
which Ivan had reluctantly made him. “Hallucinations are quite likely
in your condition,” the doctor opined, “though it would be better to
verify them ... you must take steps at once, without a moment’s delay,
or things will go badly with you.” But Ivan did not follow this
judicious advice and did not take to his bed to be nursed. “I am
walking about, so I am strong enough, if I drop, it’ll be different
then, any one may nurse me who likes,” he decided, dismissing the
subject.

And so he was sitting almost conscious himself of his delirium and, as
I have said already, looking persistently at some object on the sofa
against the opposite wall. Some one appeared to be sitting there,
though goodness knows how he had come in, for he had not been in the
room when Ivan came into it, on his return from Smerdyakov. This was a
person or, more accurately speaking, a Russian gentleman of a
particular kind, no longer young, _qui faisait la cinquantaine_, as the
French say, with rather long, still thick, dark hair, slightly streaked
with gray and a small pointed beard. He was wearing a brownish reefer
jacket, rather shabby, evidently made by a good tailor though, and of a
fashion at least three years old, that had been discarded by smart and
well‐to‐do people for the last two years. His linen and his long
scarf‐like neck‐tie were all such as are worn by people who aim at
being stylish, but on closer inspection his linen was not over‐clean
and his wide scarf was very threadbare. The visitor’s check trousers
were of excellent cut, but were too light in color and too tight for
the present fashion. His soft fluffy white hat was out of keeping with
the season.

In brief there was every appearance of gentility on straitened means.
It looked as though the gentleman belonged to that class of idle
landowners who used to flourish in the times of serfdom. He had
unmistakably been, at some time, in good and fashionable society, had
once had good connections, had possibly preserved them indeed, but,
after a gay youth, becoming gradually impoverished on the abolition of
serfdom, he had sunk into the position of a poor relation of the best
class, wandering from one good old friend to another and received by
them for his companionable and accommodating disposition and as being,
after all, a gentleman who could be asked to sit down with any one,
though, of course, not in a place of honor. Such gentlemen of
accommodating temper and dependent position, who can tell a story, take
a hand at cards, and who have a distinct aversion for any duties that
may be forced upon them, are usually solitary creatures, either
bachelors or widowers. Sometimes they have children, but if so, the
children are always being brought up at a distance, at some aunt’s, to
whom these gentlemen never allude in good society, seeming ashamed of
the relationship. They gradually lose sight of their children
altogether, though at intervals they receive a birthday or Christmas
letter from them and sometimes even answer it.

The countenance of the unexpected visitor was not so much good‐natured,
as accommodating and ready to assume any amiable expression as occasion
might arise. He had no watch, but he had a tortoise‐shell lorgnette on
a black ribbon. On the middle finger of his right hand was a massive
gold ring with a cheap opal stone in it.

Ivan was angrily silent and would not begin the conversation. The
visitor waited and sat exactly like a poor relation who had come down
from his room to keep his host company at tea, and was discreetly
silent, seeing that his host was frowning and preoccupied. But he was
ready for any affable conversation as soon as his host should begin it.
All at once his face expressed a sudden solicitude.

“I say,” he began to Ivan, “excuse me, I only mention it to remind you.
You went to Smerdyakov’s to find out about Katerina Ivanovna, but you
came away without finding out anything about her, you probably forgot—”

“Ah, yes,” broke from Ivan and his face grew gloomy with uneasiness.
“Yes, I’d forgotten ... but it doesn’t matter now, never mind, till
to‐morrow,” he muttered to himself, “and you,” he added, addressing his
visitor, “I should have remembered that myself in a minute, for that
was just what was tormenting me! Why do you interfere, as if I should
believe that you prompted me, and that I didn’t remember it of myself?”

“Don’t believe it then,” said the gentleman, smiling amicably, “what’s
the good of believing against your will? Besides, proofs are no help to
believing, especially material proofs. Thomas believed, not because he
saw Christ risen, but because he wanted to believe, before he saw. Look
at the spiritualists, for instance.... I am very fond of them ... only
fancy, they imagine that they are serving the cause of religion,
because the devils show them their horns from the other world. That,
they say, is a material proof, so to speak, of the existence of another
world. The other world and material proofs, what next! And if you come
to that, does proving there’s a devil prove that there’s a God? I want
to join an idealist society, I’ll lead the opposition in it, I’ll say I
am a realist, but not a materialist, he he!”

“Listen,” Ivan suddenly got up from the table. “I seem to be
delirious.... I am delirious, in fact, talk any nonsense you like, I
don’t care! You won’t drive me to fury, as you did last time. But I
feel somehow ashamed.... I want to walk about the room.... I sometimes
don’t see you and don’t even hear your voice as I did last time, but I
always guess what you are prating, for it’s I, _I myself speaking, not
you_. Only I don’t know whether I was dreaming last time or whether I
really saw you. I’ll wet a towel and put it on my head and perhaps
you’ll vanish into air.”

Ivan went into the corner, took a towel, and did as he said, and with a
wet towel on his head began walking up and down the room.

“I am so glad you treat me so familiarly,” the visitor began.

“Fool,” laughed Ivan, “do you suppose I should stand on ceremony with
you? I am in good spirits now, though I’ve a pain in my forehead ...
and in the top of my head ... only please don’t talk philosophy, as you
did last time. If you can’t take yourself off, talk of something
amusing. Talk gossip, you are a poor relation, you ought to talk
gossip. What a nightmare to have! But I am not afraid of you. I’ll get
the better of you. I won’t be taken to a mad‐house!”

“_C’est charmant_, poor relation. Yes, I am in my natural shape. For
what am I on earth but a poor relation? By the way, I am listening to
you and am rather surprised to find you are actually beginning to take
me for something real, not simply your fancy, as you persisted in
declaring last time—”

“Never for one minute have I taken you for reality,” Ivan cried with a
sort of fury. “You are a lie, you are my illness, you are a phantom.
It’s only that I don’t know how to destroy you and I see I must suffer
for a time. You are my hallucination. You are the incarnation of
myself, but only of one side of me ... of my thoughts and feelings, but
only the nastiest and stupidest of them. From that point of view you
might be of interest to me, if only I had time to waste on you—”

“Excuse me, excuse me, I’ll catch you. When you flew out at Alyosha
under the lamp‐post this evening and shouted to him, ‘You learnt it
from _him_! How do you know that _he_ visits me?’ you were thinking of
me then. So for one brief moment you did believe that I really exist,”
the gentleman laughed blandly.

“Yes, that was a moment of weakness ... but I couldn’t believe in you.
I don’t know whether I was asleep or awake last time. Perhaps I was
only dreaming then and didn’t see you really at all—”

“And why were you so surly with Alyosha just now? He is a dear; I’ve
treated him badly over Father Zossima.”

“Don’t talk of Alyosha! How dare you, you flunkey!” Ivan laughed again.

“You scold me, but you laugh—that’s a good sign. But you are ever so
much more polite than you were last time and I know why: that great
resolution of yours—”

“Don’t speak of my resolution,” cried Ivan, savagely.

“I understand, I understand, _c’est noble, c’est charmant_, you are
going to defend your brother and to sacrifice yourself ... _C’est
chevaleresque_.”

“Hold your tongue, I’ll kick you!”

“I shan’t be altogether sorry, for then my object will be attained. If
you kick me, you must believe in my reality, for people don’t kick
ghosts. Joking apart, it doesn’t matter to me, scold if you like,
though it’s better to be a trifle more polite even to me. ‘Fool,
flunkey!’ what words!”

“Scolding you, I scold myself,” Ivan laughed again, “you are myself,
myself, only with a different face. You just say what I am thinking ...
and are incapable of saying anything new!”

“If I am like you in my way of thinking, it’s all to my credit,” the
gentleman declared, with delicacy and dignity.

“You choose out only my worst thoughts, and what’s more, the stupid
ones. You are stupid and vulgar. You are awfully stupid. No, I can’t
put up with you! What am I to do, what am I to do?” Ivan said through
his clenched teeth.

“My dear friend, above all things I want to behave like a gentleman and
to be recognized as such,” the visitor began in an excess of
deprecating and simple‐hearted pride, typical of a poor relation. “I am
poor, but ... I won’t say very honest, but ... it’s an axiom generally
accepted in society that I am a fallen angel. I certainly can’t
conceive how I can ever have been an angel. If I ever was, it must have
been so long ago that there’s no harm in forgetting it. Now I only
prize the reputation of being a gentlemanly person and live as I can,
trying to make myself agreeable. I love men genuinely, I’ve been
greatly calumniated! Here when I stay with you from time to time, my
life gains a kind of reality and that’s what I like most of all. You
see, like you, I suffer from the fantastic and so I love the realism of
earth. Here, with you, everything is circumscribed, here all is
formulated and geometrical, while we have nothing but indeterminate
equations! I wander about here dreaming. I like dreaming. Besides, on
earth I become superstitious. Please don’t laugh, that’s just what I
like, to become superstitious. I adopt all your habits here: I’ve grown
fond of going to the public baths, would you believe it? and I go and
steam myself with merchants and priests. What I dream of is becoming
incarnate once for all and irrevocably in the form of some merchant’s
wife weighing eighteen stone, and of believing all she believes. My
ideal is to go to church and offer a candle in simple‐hearted faith,
upon my word it is. Then there would be an end to my sufferings. I like
being doctored too; in the spring there was an outbreak of smallpox and
I went and was vaccinated in a foundling hospital—if only you knew how
I enjoyed myself that day. I subscribed ten roubles in the cause of the
Slavs!... But you are not listening. Do you know, you are not at all
well this evening? I know you went yesterday to that doctor ... well,
what about your health? What did the doctor say?”

“Fool!” Ivan snapped out.

“But you are clever, anyway. You are scolding again? I didn’t ask out
of sympathy. You needn’t answer. Now rheumatism has come in again—”

“Fool!” repeated Ivan.

“You keep saying the same thing; but I had such an attack of rheumatism
last year that I remember it to this day.”

“The devil have rheumatism!”

“Why not, if I sometimes put on fleshly form? I put on fleshly form and
I take the consequences. Satan _sum et nihil humanum a me alienum
puto_.”

“What, what, Satan _sum et nihil humanum_ ... that’s not bad for the
devil!”

“I am glad I’ve pleased you at last.”

“But you didn’t get that from me.” Ivan stopped suddenly, seeming
struck. “That never entered my head, that’s strange.”

“_C’est du nouveau, n’est‐ce pas?_ This time I’ll act honestly and
explain to you. Listen, in dreams and especially in nightmares, from
indigestion or anything, a man sees sometimes such artistic visions,
such complex and real actuality, such events, even a whole world of
events, woven into such a plot, with such unexpected details from the
most exalted matters to the last button on a cuff, as I swear Leo
Tolstoy has never invented. Yet such dreams are sometimes seen not by
writers, but by the most ordinary people, officials, journalists,
priests.... The subject is a complete enigma. A statesman confessed to
me, indeed, that all his best ideas came to him when he was asleep.
Well, that’s how it is now, though I am your hallucination, yet just as
in a nightmare, I say original things which had not entered your head
before. So I don’t repeat your ideas, yet I am only your nightmare,
nothing more.”

“You are lying, your aim is to convince me you exist apart and are not
my nightmare, and now you are asserting you are a dream.”

“My dear fellow, I’ve adopted a special method to‐day, I’ll explain it
to you afterwards. Stay, where did I break off? Oh, yes! I caught cold
then, only not here but yonder.”

“Where is yonder? Tell me, will you be here long? Can’t you go away?”
Ivan exclaimed almost in despair. He ceased walking to and fro, sat
down on the sofa, leaned his elbows on the table again and held his
head tight in both hands. He pulled the wet towel off and flung it away
in vexation. It was evidently of no use.

“Your nerves are out of order,” observed the gentleman, with a
carelessly easy, though perfectly polite, air. “You are angry with me
even for being able to catch cold, though it happened in a most natural
way. I was hurrying then to a diplomatic _soirée_ at the house of a
lady of high rank in Petersburg, who was aiming at influence in the
Ministry. Well, an evening suit, white tie, gloves, though I was God
knows where and had to fly through space to reach your earth.... Of
course, it took only an instant, but you know a ray of light from the
sun takes full eight minutes, and fancy in an evening suit and open
waistcoat. Spirits don’t freeze, but when one’s in fleshly form, well
... in brief, I didn’t think, and set off, and you know in those
ethereal spaces, in the water that is above the firmament, there’s such
a frost ... at least one can’t call it frost, you can fancy, 150
degrees below zero! You know the game the village girls play—they
invite the unwary to lick an ax in thirty degrees of frost, the tongue
instantly freezes to it and the dupe tears the skin off, so it bleeds.
But that’s only in 30 degrees, in 150 degrees I imagine it would be
enough to put your finger on the ax and it would be the end of it ...
if only there could be an ax there.”

“And can there be an ax there?” Ivan interrupted, carelessly and
disdainfully. He was exerting himself to the utmost not to believe in
the delusion and not to sink into complete insanity.

“An ax?” the guest interrupted in surprise.

“Yes, what would become of an ax there?” Ivan cried suddenly, with a
sort of savage and insistent obstinacy.

“What would become of an ax in space? _Quelle idée!_ If it were to fall
to any distance, it would begin, I think, flying round the earth
without knowing why, like a satellite. The astronomers would calculate
the rising and the setting of the ax, _Gatzuk_ would put it in his
calendar, that’s all.”

“You are stupid, awfully stupid,” said Ivan peevishly. “Fib more
cleverly or I won’t listen. You want to get the better of me by
realism, to convince me that you exist, but I don’t want to believe you
exist! I won’t believe it!”

“But I am not fibbing, it’s all the truth; the truth is unhappily
hardly ever amusing. I see you persist in expecting something big of
me, and perhaps something fine. That’s a great pity, for I only give
what I can—”

“Don’t talk philosophy, you ass!”

“Philosophy, indeed, when all my right side is numb and I am moaning
and groaning. I’ve tried all the medical faculty: they can diagnose
beautifully, they have the whole of your disease at their finger‐tips,
but they’ve no idea how to cure you. There was an enthusiastic little
student here, ‘You may die,’ said he, ‘but you’ll know perfectly what
disease you are dying of!’ And then what a way they have sending people
to specialists! ‘We only diagnose,’ they say, ‘but go to such‐and‐such
a specialist, he’ll cure you.’ The old doctor who used to cure all
sorts of disease has completely disappeared, I assure you, now there
are only specialists and they all advertise in the newspapers. If
anything is wrong with your nose, they send you to Paris: there, they
say, is a European specialist who cures noses. If you go to Paris,
he’ll look at your nose; I can only cure your right nostril, he’ll tell
you, for I don’t cure the left nostril, that’s not my speciality, but
go to Vienna, there there’s a specialist who will cure your left
nostril. What are you to do? I fell back on popular remedies, a German
doctor advised me to rub myself with honey and salt in the bath‐house.
Solely to get an extra bath I went, smeared myself all over and it did
me no good at all. In despair I wrote to Count Mattei in Milan. He sent
me a book and some drops, bless him, and, only fancy, Hoff’s malt
extract cured me! I bought it by accident, drank a bottle and a half of
it, and I was ready to dance, it took it away completely. I made up my
mind to write to the papers to thank him, I was prompted by a feeling
of gratitude, and only fancy, it led to no end of a bother: not a
single paper would take my letter. ‘It would be very reactionary,’ they
said, ‘no one will believe it. _Le diable n’existe point._ You’d better
remain anonymous,’ they advised me. What use is a letter of thanks if
it’s anonymous? I laughed with the men at the newspaper office; ‘It’s
reactionary to believe in God in our days,’ I said, ‘but I am the
devil, so I may be believed in.’ ‘We quite understand that,’ they said.
‘Who doesn’t believe in the devil? Yet it won’t do, it might injure our
reputation. As a joke, if you like.’ But I thought as a joke it
wouldn’t be very witty. So it wasn’t printed. And do you know, I have
felt sore about it to this day. My best feelings, gratitude, for
instance, are literally denied me simply from my social position.”

“Philosophical reflections again?” Ivan snarled malignantly.

“God preserve me from it, but one can’t help complaining sometimes. I
am a slandered man. You upbraid me every moment with being stupid. One
can see you are young. My dear fellow, intelligence isn’t the only
thing! I have naturally a kind and merry heart. ‘I also write
vaudevilles of all sorts.’ You seem to take me for Hlestakov grown old,
but my fate is a far more serious one. Before time was, by some decree
which I could never make out, I was pre‐destined ‘to deny’ and yet I am
genuinely good‐hearted and not at all inclined to negation. ‘No, you
must go and deny, without denial there’s no criticism and what would a
journal be without a column of criticism?’ Without criticism it would
be nothing but one ‘hosannah.’ But nothing but hosannah is not enough
for life, the hosannah must be tried in the crucible of doubt and so
on, in the same style. But I don’t meddle in that, I didn’t create it,
I am not answerable for it. Well, they’ve chosen their scapegoat,
they’ve made me write the column of criticism and so life was made
possible. We understand that comedy; I, for instance, simply ask for
annihilation. No, live, I am told, for there’d be nothing without you.
If everything in the universe were sensible, nothing would happen.
There would be no events without you, and there must be events. So
against the grain I serve to produce events and do what’s irrational
because I am commanded to. For all their indisputable intelligence, men
take this farce as something serious, and that is their tragedy. They
suffer, of course ... but then they live, they live a real life, not a
fantastic one, for suffering is life. Without suffering what would be
the pleasure of it? It would be transformed into an endless church
service; it would be holy, but tedious. But what about me? I suffer,
but still, I don’t live. I am x in an indeterminate equation. I am a
sort of phantom in life who has lost all beginning and end, and who has
even forgotten his own name. You are laughing— no, you are not
laughing, you are angry again. You are for ever angry, all you care
about is intelligence, but I repeat again that I would give away all
this super‐stellar life, all the ranks and honors, simply to be
transformed into the soul of a merchant’s wife weighing eighteen stone
and set candles at God’s shrine.”

“Then even you don’t believe in God?” said Ivan, with a smile of
hatred.

“What can I say?—that is, if you are in earnest—”

“Is there a God or not?” Ivan cried with the same savage intensity.

“Ah, then you are in earnest! My dear fellow, upon my word I don’t
know. There! I’ve said it now!”

“You don’t know, but you see God? No, you are not some one apart, you
are myself, you are I and nothing more! You are rubbish, you are my
fancy!”

“Well, if you like, I have the same philosophy as you, that would be
true. _Je pense, donc je suis_, I know that for a fact; all the rest,
all these worlds, God and even Satan—all that is not proved, to my
mind. Does all that exist of itself, or is it only an emanation of
myself, a logical development of my ego which alone has existed for
ever: but I make haste to stop, for I believe you will be jumping up to
beat me directly.”

“You’d better tell me some anecdote!” said Ivan miserably.

“There is an anecdote precisely on our subject, or rather a legend, not
an anecdote. You reproach me with unbelief, you see, you say, yet you
don’t believe. But, my dear fellow, I am not the only one like that. We
are all in a muddle over there now and all through your science. Once
there used to be atoms, five senses, four elements, and then everything
hung together somehow. There were atoms in the ancient world even, but
since we’ve learned that you’ve discovered the chemical molecule and
protoplasm and the devil knows what, we had to lower our crest. There’s
a regular muddle, and, above all, superstition, scandal; there’s as
much scandal among us as among you, you know; a little more in fact,
and spying, indeed, for we have our secret police department where
private information is received. Well, this wild legend belongs to our
middle ages—not yours, but ours—and no one believes it even among us,
except the old ladies of eighteen stone, not your old ladies I mean,
but ours. We’ve everything you have, I am revealing one of our secrets
out of friendship for you; though it’s forbidden. This legend is about
Paradise. There was, they say, here on earth a thinker and philosopher.
He rejected everything, ‘laws, conscience, faith,’ and, above all, the
future life. He died; he expected to go straight to darkness and death
and he found a future life before him. He was astounded and indignant.
‘This is against my principles!’ he said. And he was punished for that
... that is, you must excuse me, I am just repeating what I heard
myself, it’s only a legend ... he was sentenced to walk a quadrillion
kilometers in the dark (we’ve adopted the metric system, you know) and
when he has finished that quadrillion, the gates of heaven would be
opened to him and he’ll be forgiven—”

“And what tortures have you in the other world besides the quadrillion
kilometers?” asked Ivan, with a strange eagerness.

“What tortures? Ah, don’t ask. In old days we had all sorts, but now
they have taken chiefly to moral punishments—‘the stings of conscience’
and all that nonsense. We got that, too, from you, from the softening
of your manners. And who’s the better for it? Only those who have got
no conscience, for how can they be tortured by conscience when they
have none? But decent people who have conscience and a sense of honor
suffer for it. Reforms, when the ground has not been prepared for them,
especially if they are institutions copied from abroad, do nothing but
mischief! The ancient fire was better. Well, this man, who was
condemned to the quadrillion kilometers, stood still, looked round and
lay down across the road. ‘I won’t go, I refuse on principle!’ Take the
soul of an enlightened Russian atheist and mix it with the soul of the
prophet Jonah, who sulked for three days and nights in the belly of the
whale, and you get the character of that thinker who lay across the
road.”

“What did he lie on there?”

“Well, I suppose there was something to lie on. You are not laughing?”

“Bravo!” cried Ivan, still with the same strange eagerness. Now he was
listening with an unexpected curiosity. “Well, is he lying there now?”

“That’s the point, that he isn’t. He lay there almost a thousand years
and then he got up and went on.”

“What an ass!” cried Ivan, laughing nervously and still seeming to be
pondering something intently. “Does it make any difference whether he
lies there for ever or walks the quadrillion kilometers? It would take
a billion years to walk it?”

“Much more than that. I haven’t got a pencil and paper or I could work
it out. But he got there long ago, and that’s where the story begins.”

“What, he got there? But how did he get the billion years to do it?”

“Why, you keep thinking of our present earth! But our present earth may
have been repeated a billion times. Why, it’s become extinct, been
frozen; cracked, broken to bits, disintegrated into its elements, again
‘the water above the firmament,’ then again a comet, again a sun, again
from the sun it becomes earth—and the same sequence may have been
repeated endlessly and exactly the same to every detail, most unseemly
and insufferably tedious—”

“Well, well, what happened when he arrived?”

“Why, the moment the gates of Paradise were open and he walked in,
before he had been there two seconds, by his watch (though to my
thinking his watch must have long dissolved into its elements on the
way), he cried out that those two seconds were worth walking not a
quadrillion kilometers but a quadrillion of quadrillions, raised to the
quadrillionth power! In fact, he sang ‘hosannah’ and overdid it so,
that some persons there of lofty ideas wouldn’t shake hands with him at
first—he’d become too rapidly reactionary, they said. The Russian
temperament. I repeat, it’s a legend. I give it for what it’s worth. So
that’s the sort of ideas we have on such subjects even now.”

“I’ve caught you!” Ivan cried, with an almost childish delight, as
though he had succeeded in remembering something at last. “That
anecdote about the quadrillion years, I made up myself! I was seventeen
then, I was at the high school. I made up that anecdote and told it to
a schoolfellow called Korovkin, it was at Moscow.... The anecdote is so
characteristic that I couldn’t have taken it from anywhere. I thought
I’d forgotten it ... but I’ve unconsciously recalled it—I recalled it
myself—it was not you telling it! Thousands of things are unconsciously
remembered like that even when people are being taken to execution ...
it’s come back to me in a dream. You are that dream! You are a dream,
not a living creature!”

“From the vehemence with which you deny my existence,” laughed the
gentleman, “I am convinced that you believe in me.”

“Not in the slightest! I haven’t a hundredth part of a grain of faith
in you!”

“But you have the thousandth of a grain. Homeopathic doses perhaps are
the strongest. Confess that you have faith even to the ten‐thousandth
of a grain.”

“Not for one minute,” cried Ivan furiously. “But I should like to
believe in you,” he added strangely.

“Aha! There’s an admission! But I am good‐natured. I’ll come to your
assistance again. Listen, it was I caught you, not you me. I told you
your anecdote you’d forgotten, on purpose, so as to destroy your faith
in me completely.”

“You are lying. The object of your visit is to convince me of your
existence!”

“Just so. But hesitation, suspense, conflict between belief and
disbelief—is sometimes such torture to a conscientious man, such as you
are, that it’s better to hang oneself at once. Knowing that you are
inclined to believe in me, I administered some disbelief by telling you
that anecdote. I lead you to belief and disbelief by turns, and I have
my motive in it. It’s the new method. As soon as you disbelieve in me
completely, you’ll begin assuring me to my face that I am not a dream
but a reality. I know you. Then I shall have attained my object, which
is an honorable one. I shall sow in you only a tiny grain of faith and
it will grow into an oak‐tree—and such an oak‐tree that, sitting on it,
you will long to enter the ranks of ‘the hermits in the wilderness and
the saintly women,’ for that is what you are secretly longing for.
You’ll dine on locusts, you’ll wander into the wilderness to save your
soul!”

“Then it’s for the salvation of my soul you are working, is it, you
scoundrel?”

“One must do a good work sometimes. How ill‐humored you are!”

“Fool! did you ever tempt those holy men who ate locusts and prayed
seventeen years in the wilderness till they were overgrown with moss?”

“My dear fellow, I’ve done nothing else. One forgets the whole world
and all the worlds, and sticks to one such saint, because he is a very
precious diamond. One such soul, you know, is sometimes worth a whole
constellation. We have our system of reckoning, you know. The conquest
is priceless! And some of them, on my word, are not inferior to you in
culture, though you won’t believe it. They can contemplate such depths
of belief and disbelief at the same moment that sometimes it really
seems that they are within a hair’s‐breadth of being ‘turned upside
down,’ as the actor Gorbunov says.”

“Well, did you get your nose pulled?”[8]

“My dear fellow,” observed the visitor sententiously, “it’s better to
get off with your nose pulled than without a nose at all. As an
afflicted marquis observed not long ago (he must have been treated by a
specialist) in confession to his spiritual father—a Jesuit. I was
present, it was simply charming. ‘Give me back my nose!’ he said, and
he beat his breast. ‘My son,’ said the priest evasively, ‘all things
are accomplished in accordance with the inscrutable decrees of
Providence, and what seems a misfortune sometimes leads to
extraordinary, though unapparent, benefits. If stern destiny has
deprived you of your nose, it’s to your advantage that no one can ever
pull you by your nose.’ ‘Holy father, that’s no comfort,’ cried the
despairing marquis. ‘I’d be delighted to have my nose pulled every day
of my life, if it were only in its proper place.’ ‘My son,’ sighs the
priest, ‘you can’t expect every blessing at once. This is murmuring
against Providence, who even in this has not forgotten you, for if you
repine as you repined just now, declaring you’d be glad to have your
nose pulled for the rest of your life, your desire has already been
fulfilled indirectly, for when you lost your nose, you were led by the
nose.’ ”

“Fool, how stupid!” cried Ivan.

“My dear friend, I only wanted to amuse you. But I swear that’s the
genuine Jesuit casuistry and I swear that it all happened word for word
as I’ve told you. It happened lately and gave me a great deal of
trouble. The unhappy young man shot himself that very night when he got
home. I was by his side till the very last moment. Those Jesuit
confessionals are really my most delightful diversion at melancholy
moments. Here’s another incident that happened only the other day. A
little blonde Norman girl of twenty—a buxom, unsophisticated beauty
that would make your mouth water—comes to an old priest. She bends down
and whispers her sin into the grating. ‘Why, my daughter, have you
fallen again already?’ cries the priest. ‘O Sancta Maria, what do I
hear! Not the same man this time, how long is this going on? Aren’t you
ashamed!’ ‘_Ah, mon père_,’ answers the sinner with tears of penitence,
‘_ça lui fait tant de plaisir, et à moi si peu de peine!_’ Fancy, such
an answer! I drew back. It was the cry of nature, better than innocence
itself, if you like. I absolved her sin on the spot and was turning to
go, but I was forced to turn back. I heard the priest at the grating
making an appointment with her for the evening—though he was an old man
hard as flint, he fell in an instant! It was nature, the truth of
nature asserted its rights! What, you are turning up your nose again?
Angry again? I don’t know how to please you—”

“Leave me alone, you are beating on my brain like a haunting
nightmare,” Ivan moaned miserably, helpless before his apparition. “I
am bored with you, agonizingly and insufferably. I would give anything
to be able to shake you off!”

“I repeat, moderate your expectations, don’t demand of me ‘everything
great and noble’ and you’ll see how well we shall get on,” said the
gentleman impressively. “You are really angry with me for not having
appeared to you in a red glow, with thunder and lightning, with
scorched wings, but have shown myself in such a modest form. You are
wounded, in the first place, in your esthetic feelings, and, secondly,
in your pride. How could such a vulgar devil visit such a great man as
you! Yes, there is that romantic strain in you, that was so derided by
Byelinsky. I can’t help it, young man, as I got ready to come to you I
did think as a joke of appearing in the figure of a retired general who
had served in the Caucasus, with a star of the Lion and the Sun on my
coat. But I was positively afraid of doing it, for you’d have thrashed
me for daring to pin the Lion and the Sun on my coat, instead of, at
least, the Polar Star or the Sirius. And you keep on saying I am
stupid, but, mercy on us! I make no claim to be equal to you in
intelligence. Mephistopheles declared to Faust that he desired evil,
but did only good. Well, he can say what he likes, it’s quite the
opposite with me. I am perhaps the one man in all creation who loves
the truth and genuinely desires good. I was there when the Word, Who
died on the Cross, rose up into heaven bearing on His bosom the soul of
the penitent thief. I heard the glad shrieks of the cherubim singing
and shouting hosannah and the thunderous rapture of the seraphim which
shook heaven and all creation, and I swear to you by all that’s sacred,
I longed to join the choir and shout hosannah with them all. The word
had almost escaped me, had almost broken from my lips ... you know how
susceptible and esthetically impressionable I am. But common sense—oh,
a most unhappy trait in my character—kept me in due bounds and I let
the moment pass! For what would have happened, I reflected, what would
have happened after my hosannah? Everything on earth would have been
extinguished at once and no events could have occurred. And so, solely
from a sense of duty and my social position, I was forced to suppress
the good moment and to stick to my nasty task. Somebody takes all the
credit of what’s good for Himself, and nothing but nastiness is left
for me. But I don’t envy the honor of a life of idle imposture, I am
not ambitious. Why am I, of all creatures in the world, doomed to be
cursed by all decent people and even to be kicked, for if I put on
mortal form I am bound to take such consequences sometimes? I know, of
course, there’s a secret in it, but they won’t tell me the secret for
anything, for then perhaps, seeing the meaning of it, I might bawl
hosannah, and the indispensable minus would disappear at once, and good
sense would reign supreme throughout the whole world. And that, of
course, would mean the end of everything, even of magazines and
newspapers, for who would take them in? I know that at the end of all
things I shall be reconciled. I, too, shall walk my quadrillion and
learn the secret. But till that happens I am sulking and fulfill my
destiny though it’s against the grain—that is, to ruin thousands for
the sake of saving one. How many souls have had to be ruined and how
many honorable reputations destroyed for the sake of that one righteous
man, Job, over whom they made such a fool of me in old days! Yes, till
the secret is revealed, there are two sorts of truths for me—one, their
truth, yonder, which I know nothing about so far, and the other my own.
And there’s no knowing which will turn out the better.... Are you
asleep?”

“I might well be,” Ivan groaned angrily. “All my stupid ideas—outgrown,
thrashed out long ago, and flung aside like a dead carcass—you present
to me as something new!”

“There’s no pleasing you! And I thought I should fascinate you by my
literary style. That hosannah in the skies really wasn’t bad, was it?
And then that ironical tone _à la_ Heine, eh?”

“No, I was never such a flunkey! How then could my soul beget a flunkey
like you?”

“My dear fellow, I know a most charming and attractive young Russian
gentleman, a young thinker and a great lover of literature and art, the
author of a promising poem entitled _The Grand Inquisitor_. I was only
thinking of him!”

“I forbid you to speak of _The Grand Inquisitor_,” cried Ivan, crimson
with shame.

“And the _Geological Cataclysm_. Do you remember? That was a poem,
now!”

“Hold your tongue, or I’ll kill you!”

“You’ll kill me? No, excuse me, I will speak. I came to treat myself to
that pleasure. Oh, I love the dreams of my ardent young friends,
quivering with eagerness for life! ‘There are new men,’ you decided
last spring, when you were meaning to come here, ‘they propose to
destroy everything and begin with cannibalism. Stupid fellows! they
didn’t ask my advice! I maintain that nothing need be destroyed, that
we only need to destroy the idea of God in man, that’s how we have to
set to work. It’s that, that we must begin with. Oh, blind race of men
who have no understanding! As soon as men have all of them denied
God—and I believe that period, analogous with geological periods, will
come to pass—the old conception of the universe will fall of itself
without cannibalism, and, what’s more, the old morality, and everything
will begin anew. Men will unite to take from life all it can give, but
only for joy and happiness in the present world. Man will be lifted up
with a spirit of divine Titanic pride and the man‐ god will appear.
From hour to hour extending his conquest of nature infinitely by his
will and his science, man will feel such lofty joy from hour to hour in
doing it that it will make up for all his old dreams of the joys of
heaven. Every one will know that he is mortal and will accept death
proudly and serenely like a god. His pride will teach him that it’s
useless for him to repine at life’s being a moment, and he will love
his brother without need of reward. Love will be sufficient only for a
moment of life, but the very consciousness of its momentariness will
intensify its fire, which now is dissipated in dreams of eternal love
beyond the grave’... and so on and so on in the same style. Charming!”

Ivan sat with his eyes on the floor, and his hands pressed to his ears,
but he began trembling all over. The voice continued.

“The question now is, my young thinker reflected, is it possible that
such a period will ever come? If it does, everything is determined and
humanity is settled for ever. But as, owing to man’s inveterate
stupidity, this cannot come about for at least a thousand years, every
one who recognizes the truth even now may legitimately order his life
as he pleases, on the new principles. In that sense, ‘all things are
lawful’ for him. What’s more, even if this period never comes to pass,
since there is anyway no God and no immortality, the new man may well
become the man‐god, even if he is the only one in the whole world, and
promoted to his new position, he may lightheartedly overstep all the
barriers of the old morality of the old slave‐man, if necessary. There
is no law for God. Where God stands, the place is holy. Where I stand
will be at once the foremost place ... ‘all things are lawful’ and
that’s the end of it! That’s all very charming; but if you want to
swindle why do you want a moral sanction for doing it? But that’s our
modern Russian all over. He can’t bring himself to swindle without a
moral sanction. He is so in love with truth—”

The visitor talked, obviously carried away by his own eloquence,
speaking louder and louder and looking ironically at his host. But he
did not succeed in finishing; Ivan suddenly snatched a glass from the
table and flung it at the orator.

“_Ah, mais c’est bête enfin_,” cried the latter, jumping up from the
sofa and shaking the drops of tea off himself. “He remembers Luther’s
inkstand! He takes me for a dream and throws glasses at a dream! It’s
like a woman! I suspected you were only pretending to stop up your
ears.”

A loud, persistent knocking was suddenly heard at the window. Ivan
jumped up from the sofa.

“Do you hear? You’d better open,” cried the visitor; “it’s your brother
Alyosha with the most interesting and surprising news, I’ll be bound!”

“Be silent, deceiver, I knew it was Alyosha, I felt he was coming, and
of course he has not come for nothing; of course he brings ‘news,’ ”
Ivan exclaimed frantically.

“Open, open to him. There’s a snowstorm and he is your brother.
_Monsieur sait‐il le temps qu’il fait? C’est à ne pas mettre un chien
dehors_.”

The knocking continued. Ivan wanted to rush to the window, but
something seemed to fetter his arms and legs. He strained every effort
to break his chains, but in vain. The knocking at the window grew
louder and louder. At last the chains were broken and Ivan leapt up
from the sofa. He looked round him wildly. Both candles had almost
burnt out, the glass he had just thrown at his visitor stood before him
on the table, and there was no one on the sofa opposite. The knocking
on the window frame went on persistently, but it was by no means so
loud as it had seemed in his dream; on the contrary, it was quite
subdued.

“It was not a dream! No, I swear it was not a dream, it all happened
just now!” cried Ivan. He rushed to the window and opened the movable
pane.

“Alyosha, I told you not to come,” he cried fiercely to his brother.
“In two words, what do you want? In two words, do you hear?”

“An hour ago Smerdyakov hanged himself,” Alyosha answered from the
yard.

“Come round to the steps, I’ll open at once,” said Ivan, going to open
the door to Alyosha.




Chapter X.
“It Was He Who Said That”


Alyosha coming in told Ivan that a little over an hour ago Marya
Kondratyevna had run to his rooms and informed him Smerdyakov had taken
his own life. “I went in to clear away the samovar and he was hanging
on a nail in the wall.” On Alyosha’s inquiring whether she had informed
the police, she answered that she had told no one, “but I flew straight
to you, I’ve run all the way.” She seemed perfectly crazy, Alyosha
reported, and was shaking like a leaf. When Alyosha ran with her to the
cottage, he found Smerdyakov still hanging. On the table lay a note: “I
destroy my life of my own will and desire, so as to throw no blame on
any one.” Alyosha left the note on the table and went straight to the
police captain and told him all about it. “And from him I’ve come
straight to you,” said Alyosha, in conclusion, looking intently into
Ivan’s face. He had not taken his eyes off him while he told his story,
as though struck by something in his expression.

“Brother,” he cried suddenly, “you must be terribly ill. You look and
don’t seem to understand what I tell you.”

“It’s a good thing you came,” said Ivan, as though brooding, and not
hearing Alyosha’s exclamation. “I knew he had hanged himself.”

“From whom?”

“I don’t know. But I knew. Did I know? Yes, he told me. He told me so
just now.”

Ivan stood in the middle of the room, and still spoke in the same
brooding tone, looking at the ground.

“Who is _he_?” asked Alyosha, involuntarily looking round.

“He’s slipped away.”

Ivan raised his head and smiled softly.

“He was afraid of you, of a dove like you. You are a ‘pure cherub.’
Dmitri calls you a cherub. Cherub!... the thunderous rapture of the
seraphim. What are seraphim? Perhaps a whole constellation. But perhaps
that constellation is only a chemical molecule. There’s a constellation
of the Lion and the Sun. Don’t you know it?”

“Brother, sit down,” said Alyosha in alarm. “For goodness’ sake, sit
down on the sofa! You are delirious; put your head on the pillow,
that’s right. Would you like a wet towel on your head? Perhaps it will
do you good.”

“Give me the towel: it’s here on the chair. I just threw it down
there.”

“It’s not here. Don’t worry yourself. I know where it is—here,” said
Alyosha, finding a clean towel, folded up and unused, by Ivan’s
dressing‐ table in the other corner of the room. Ivan looked strangely
at the towel: recollection seemed to come back to him for an instant.

“Stay”—he got up from the sofa—“an hour ago I took that new towel from
there and wetted it. I wrapped it round my head and threw it down here
... How is it it’s dry? There was no other.”

“You put that towel on your head?” asked Alyosha.

“Yes, and walked up and down the room an hour ago ... Why have the
candles burnt down so? What’s the time?”

“Nearly twelve.”

“No, no, no!” Ivan cried suddenly. “It was not a dream. He was here; he
was sitting here, on that sofa. When you knocked at the window, I threw
a glass at him ... this one. Wait a minute. I was asleep last time, but
this dream was not a dream. It has happened before. I have dreams now,
Alyosha ... yet they are not dreams, but reality. I walk about, talk
and see ... though I am asleep. But he was sitting here, on that sofa
there.... He is frightfully stupid, Alyosha, frightfully stupid.” Ivan
laughed suddenly and began pacing about the room.

“Who is stupid? Of whom are you talking, brother?” Alyosha asked
anxiously again.

“The devil! He’s taken to visiting me. He’s been here twice, almost
three times. He taunted me with being angry at his being a simple devil
and not Satan, with scorched wings, in thunder and lightning. But he is
not Satan: that’s a lie. He is an impostor. He is simply a devil—a
paltry, trivial devil. He goes to the baths. If you undressed him,
you’d be sure to find he had a tail, long and smooth like a Danish
dog’s, a yard long, dun color.... Alyosha, you are cold. You’ve been in
the snow. Would you like some tea? What? Is it cold? Shall I tell her
to bring some? _C’est à ne pas mettre un chien dehors._...”

Alyosha ran to the washing‐stand, wetted the towel, persuaded Ivan to
sit down again, and put the wet towel round his head. He sat down
beside him.

“What were you telling me just now about Lise?” Ivan began again. (He
was becoming very talkative.) “I like Lise. I said something nasty
about her. It was a lie. I like her ... I am afraid for Katya
to‐morrow. I am more afraid of her than of anything. On account of the
future. She will cast me off to‐morrow and trample me under foot. She
thinks that I am ruining Mitya from jealousy on her account! Yes, she
thinks that! But it’s not so. To‐morrow the cross, but not the gallows.
No, I shan’t hang myself. Do you know, I can never commit suicide,
Alyosha. Is it because I am base? I am not a coward. Is it from love of
life? How did I know that Smerdyakov had hanged himself? Yes, it was
_he_ told me so.”

“And you are quite convinced that there has been some one here?” asked
Alyosha.

“Yes, on that sofa in the corner. You would have driven him away. You
did drive him away: he disappeared when you arrived. I love your face,
Alyosha. Did you know that I loved your face? And _he_ is myself,
Alyosha. All that’s base in me, all that’s mean and contemptible. Yes,
I am a romantic. He guessed it ... though it’s a libel. He is
frightfully stupid; but it’s to his advantage. He has cunning, animal
cunning—he knew how to infuriate me. He kept taunting me with believing
in him, and that was how he made me listen to him. He fooled me like a
boy. He told me a great deal that was true about myself, though. I
should never have owned it to myself. Do you know, Alyosha,” Ivan added
in an intensely earnest and confidential tone, “I should be awfully
glad to think that it was _he_ and not I.”

“He has worn you out,” said Alyosha, looking compassionately at his
brother.

“He’s been teasing me. And you know he does it so cleverly, so
cleverly. ‘Conscience! What is conscience? I make it up for myself. Why
am I tormented by it? From habit. From the universal habit of mankind
for the seven thousand years. So let us give it up, and we shall be
gods.’ It was he said that, it was he said that!”

“And not you, not you?” Alyosha could not help crying, looking frankly
at his brother. “Never mind him, anyway; have done with him and forget
him. And let him take with him all that you curse now, and never come
back!”

“Yes, but he is spiteful. He laughed at me. He was impudent, Alyosha,”
Ivan said, with a shudder of offense. “But he was unfair to me, unfair
to me about lots of things. He told lies about me to my face. ‘Oh, you
are going to perform an act of heroic virtue: to confess you murdered
your father, that the valet murdered him at your instigation.’ ”

“Brother,” Alyosha interposed, “restrain yourself. It was not you
murdered him. It’s not true!”

“That’s what he says, he, and he knows it. ‘You are going to perform an
act of heroic virtue, and you don’t believe in virtue; that’s what
tortures you and makes you angry, that’s why you are so vindictive.’ He
said that to me about me and he knows what he says.”

“It’s you say that, not he,” exclaimed Alyosha mournfully, “and you say
it because you are ill and delirious, tormenting yourself.”

“No, he knows what he says. ‘You are going from pride,’ he says.
‘You’ll stand up and say it was I killed him, and why do you writhe
with horror? You are lying! I despise your opinion, I despise your
horror!’ He said that about me. ‘And do you know you are longing for
their praise—“he is a criminal, a murderer, but what a generous soul;
he wanted to save his brother and he confessed.” ’ That’s a lie,
Alyosha!” Ivan cried suddenly, with flashing eyes. “I don’t want the
low rabble to praise me, I swear I don’t! That’s a lie! That’s why I
threw the glass at him and it broke against his ugly face.”

“Brother, calm yourself, stop!” Alyosha entreated him.

“Yes, he knows how to torment one. He’s cruel,” Ivan went on,
unheeding. “I had an inkling from the first what he came for. ‘Granting
that you go through pride, still you had a hope that Smerdyakov might
be convicted and sent to Siberia, and Mitya would be acquitted, while
you would only be punished with moral condemnation’ (‘Do you hear?’ he
laughed then)—‘and some people will praise you. But now Smerdyakov’s
dead, he has hanged himself, and who’ll believe you alone? But yet you
are going, you are going, you’ll go all the same, you’ve decided to go.
What are you going for now?’ That’s awful, Alyosha. I can’t endure such
questions. Who dare ask me such questions?”

“Brother,” interposed Alyosha—his heart sank with terror, but he still
seemed to hope to bring Ivan to reason—“how could he have told you of
Smerdyakov’s death before I came, when no one knew of it and there was
no time for any one to know of it?”

“He told me,” said Ivan firmly, refusing to admit a doubt. “It was all
he did talk about, if you come to that. ‘And it would be all right if
you believed in virtue,’ he said. ‘No matter if they disbelieve you,
you are going for the sake of principle. But you are a little pig like
Fyodor Pavlovitch, and what do you want with virtue? Why do you want to
go meddling if your sacrifice is of no use to any one? Because you
don’t know yourself why you go! Oh, you’d give a great deal to know
yourself why you go! And can you have made up your mind? You’ve not
made up your mind. You’ll sit all night deliberating whether to go or
not. But you will go; you know you’ll go. You know that whichever way
you decide, the decision does not depend on you. You’ll go because you
won’t dare not to go. Why won’t you dare? You must guess that for
yourself. That’s a riddle for you!’ He got up and went away. You came
and he went. He called me a coward, Alyosha! _Le mot de l’énigme_ is
that I am a coward. ‘It is not for such eagles to soar above the
earth.’ It was he added that—he! And Smerdyakov said the same. He must
be killed! Katya despises me. I’ve seen that for a month past. Even
Lise will begin to despise me! ‘You are going in order to be praised.’
That’s a brutal lie! And you despise me too, Alyosha. Now I am going to
hate you again! And I hate the monster, too! I hate the monster! I
don’t want to save the monster. Let him rot in Siberia! He’s begun
singing a hymn! Oh, to‐morrow I’ll go, stand before them, and spit in
their faces!”

He jumped up in a frenzy, flung off the towel, and fell to pacing up
and down the room again. Alyosha recalled what he had just said. “I
seem to be sleeping awake.... I walk, I speak, I see, but I am asleep.”
It seemed to be just like that now. Alyosha did not leave him. The
thought passed through his mind to run for a doctor, but he was afraid
to leave his brother alone: there was no one to whom he could leave
him. By degrees Ivan lost consciousness completely at last. He still
went on talking, talking incessantly, but quite incoherently, and even
articulated his words with difficulty. Suddenly he staggered violently;
but Alyosha was in time to support him. Ivan let him lead him to his
bed. Alyosha undressed him somehow and put him to bed. He sat watching
over him for another two hours. The sick man slept soundly, without
stirring, breathing softly and evenly. Alyosha took a pillow and lay
down on the sofa, without undressing.

As he fell asleep he prayed for Mitya and Ivan. He began to understand
Ivan’s illness. “The anguish of a proud determination. An earnest
conscience!” God, in Whom he disbelieved, and His truth were gaining
mastery over his heart, which still refused to submit. “Yes,” the
thought floated through Alyosha’s head as it lay on the pillow, “yes,
if Smerdyakov is dead, no one will believe Ivan’s evidence; but he will
go and give it.” Alyosha smiled softly. “God will conquer!” he thought.
“He will either rise up in the light of truth, or ... he’ll perish in
hate, revenging on himself and on every one his having served the cause
he does not believe in,” Alyosha added bitterly, and again he prayed
for Ivan.




Book XII. A Judicial Error




Chapter I.
The Fatal Day


At ten o’clock in the morning of the day following the events I have
described, the trial of Dmitri Karamazov began in our district court.

I hasten to emphasize the fact that I am far from esteeming myself
capable of reporting all that took place at the trial in full detail,
or even in the actual order of events. I imagine that to mention
everything with full explanation would fill a volume, even a very large
one. And so I trust I may not be reproached, for confining myself to
what struck me. I may have selected as of most interest what was of
secondary importance, and may have omitted the most prominent and
essential details. But I see I shall do better not to apologize. I will
do my best and the reader will see for himself that I have done all I
can.

And, to begin with, before entering the court, I will mention what
surprised me most on that day. Indeed, as it appeared later, every one
was surprised at it, too. We all knew that the affair had aroused great
interest, that every one was burning with impatience for the trial to
begin, that it had been a subject of talk, conjecture, exclamation and
surmise for the last two months in local society. Every one knew, too,
that the case had become known throughout Russia, but yet we had not
imagined that it had aroused such burning, such intense, interest in
every one, not only among ourselves, but all over Russia. This became
evident at the trial this day.

Visitors had arrived not only from the chief town of our province, but
from several other Russian towns, as well as from Moscow and
Petersburg. Among them were lawyers, ladies, and even several
distinguished personages. Every ticket of admission had been snatched
up. A special place behind the table at which the three judges sat was
set apart for the most distinguished and important of the men visitors;
a row of arm‐chairs had been placed there—something exceptional, which
had never been allowed before. A large proportion—not less than half of
the public—were ladies. There was such a large number of lawyers from
all parts that they did not know where to seat them, for every ticket
had long since been eagerly sought for and distributed. I saw at the
end of the room, behind the platform, a special partition hurriedly put
up, behind which all these lawyers were admitted, and they thought
themselves lucky to have standing room there, for all chairs had been
removed for the sake of space, and the crowd behind the partition stood
throughout the case closely packed, shoulder to shoulder.

Some of the ladies, especially those who came from a distance, made
their appearance in the gallery very smartly dressed, but the majority
of the ladies were oblivious even of dress. Their faces betrayed
hysterical, intense, almost morbid, curiosity. A peculiar
fact—established afterwards by many observations—was that almost all
the ladies, or, at least the vast majority of them, were on Mitya’s
side and in favor of his being acquitted. This was perhaps chiefly
owing to his reputation as a conqueror of female hearts. It was known
that two women rivals were to appear in the case. One of them—Katerina
Ivanovna—was an object of general interest. All sorts of extraordinary
tales were told about her, amazing anecdotes of her passion for Mitya,
in spite of his crime. Her pride and “aristocratic connections” were
particularly insisted upon (she had called upon scarcely any one in the
town). People said she intended to petition the Government for leave to
accompany the criminal to Siberia and to be married to him somewhere in
the mines. The appearance of Grushenka in court was awaited with no
less impatience. The public was looking forward with anxious curiosity
to the meeting of the two rivals—the proud aristocratic girl and “the
hetaira.” But Grushenka was a more familiar figure to the ladies of the
district than Katerina Ivanovna. They had already seen “the woman who
had ruined Fyodor Pavlovitch and his unhappy son,” and all, almost
without exception, wondered how father and son could be so in love with
“such a very common, ordinary Russian girl, who was not even pretty.”

In brief, there was a great deal of talk. I know for a fact that there
were several serious family quarrels on Mitya’s account in our town.
Many ladies quarreled violently with their husbands over differences of
opinion about the dreadful case, and it was only natural that the
husbands of these ladies, far from being favorably disposed to the
prisoner, should enter the court bitterly prejudiced against him. In
fact, one may say pretty certainly that the masculine, as distinguished
from the feminine, part of the audience were biased against the
prisoner. There were numbers of severe, frowning, even vindictive
faces. Mitya, indeed, had managed to offend many people during his stay
in the town. Some of the visitors were, of course, in excellent spirits
and quite unconcerned as to the fate of Mitya personally. But all were
interested in the trial, and the majority of the men were certainly
hoping for the conviction of the criminal, except perhaps the lawyers,
who were more interested in the legal than in the moral aspect of the
case.

Everybody was excited at the presence of the celebrated lawyer,
Fetyukovitch. His talent was well known, and this was not the first
time he had defended notorious criminal cases in the provinces. And if
he defended them, such cases became celebrated and long remembered all
over Russia. There were stories, too, about our prosecutor and about
the President of the Court. It was said that Ippolit Kirillovitch was
in a tremor at meeting Fetyukovitch, and that they had been enemies
from the beginning of their careers in Petersburg, that though our
sensitive prosecutor, who always considered that he had been aggrieved
by some one in Petersburg because his talents had not been properly
appreciated, was keenly excited over the Karamazov case, and was even
dreaming of rebuilding his flagging fortunes by means of it,
Fetyukovitch, they said, was his one anxiety. But these rumors were not
quite just. Our prosecutor was not one of those men who lose heart in
face of danger. On the contrary, his self‐confidence increased with the
increase of danger. It must be noted that our prosecutor was in general
too hasty and morbidly impressionable. He would put his whole soul into
some case and work at it as though his whole fate and his whole fortune
depended on its result. This was the subject of some ridicule in the
legal world, for just by this characteristic our prosecutor had gained
a wider notoriety than could have been expected from his modest
position. People laughed particularly at his passion for psychology. In
my opinion, they were wrong, and our prosecutor was, I believe, a
character of greater depth than was generally supposed. But with his
delicate health he had failed to make his mark at the outset of his
career and had never made up for it later.

As for the President of our Court, I can only say that he was a humane
and cultured man, who had a practical knowledge of his work and
progressive views. He was rather ambitious, but did not concern himself
greatly about his future career. The great aim of his life was to be a
man of advanced ideas. He was, too, a man of connections and property.
He felt, as we learnt afterwards, rather strongly about the Karamazov
case, but from a social, not from a personal standpoint. He was
interested in it as a social phenomenon, in its classification and its
character as a product of our social conditions, as typical of the
national character, and so on, and so on. His attitude to the personal
aspect of the case, to its tragic significance and the persons involved
in it, including the prisoner, was rather indifferent and abstract, as
was perhaps fitting, indeed.

The court was packed and overflowing long before the judges made their
appearance. Our court is the best hall in the town—spacious, lofty, and
good for sound. On the right of the judges, who were on a raised
platform, a table and two rows of chairs had been put ready for the
jury. On the left was the place for the prisoner and the counsel for
the defense. In the middle of the court, near the judges, was a table
with the “material proofs.” On it lay Fyodor Pavlovitch’s white silk
dressing‐gown, stained with blood; the fatal brass pestle with which
the supposed murder had been committed; Mitya’s shirt, with a
blood‐stained sleeve; his coat, stained with blood in patches over the
pocket in which he had put his handkerchief; the handkerchief itself,
stiff with blood and by now quite yellow; the pistol loaded by Mitya at
Perhotin’s with a view to suicide, and taken from him on the sly at
Mokroe by Trifon Borissovitch; the envelope in which the three thousand
roubles had been put ready for Grushenka, the narrow pink ribbon with
which it had been tied, and many other articles I don’t remember. In
the body of the hall, at some distance, came the seats for the public.
But in front of the balustrade a few chairs had been placed for
witnesses who remained in the court after giving their evidence.

At ten o’clock the three judges arrived—the President, one honorary
justice of the peace, and one other. The prosecutor, of course, entered
immediately after. The President was a short, stout, thick‐set man of
fifty, with a dyspeptic complexion, dark hair turning gray and cut
short, and a red ribbon, of what Order I don’t remember. The prosecutor
struck me and the others, too, as looking particularly pale, almost
green. His face seemed to have grown suddenly thinner, perhaps in a
single night, for I had seen him looking as usual only two days before.
The President began with asking the court whether all the jury were
present.

But I see I can’t go on like this, partly because some things I did not
hear, others I did not notice, and others I have forgotten, but most of
all because, as I have said before, I have literally no time or space
to mention everything that was said and done. I only know that neither
side objected to very many of the jurymen. I remember the twelve
jurymen—four were petty officials of the town, two were merchants, and
six peasants and artisans of the town. I remember, long before the
trial, questions were continually asked with some surprise, especially
by ladies: “Can such a delicate, complex and psychological case be
submitted for decision to petty officials and even peasants?” and “What
can an official, still more a peasant, understand in such an affair?”
All the four officials in the jury were, in fact, men of no consequence
and of low rank. Except one who was rather younger, they were
gray‐headed men, little known in society, who had vegetated on a
pitiful salary, and who probably had elderly, unpresentable wives and
crowds of children, perhaps even without shoes and stockings. At most,
they spent their leisure over cards and, of course, had never read a
single book. The two merchants looked respectable, but were strangely
silent and stolid. One of them was close‐shaven, and was dressed in
European style; the other had a small, gray beard, and wore a red
ribbon with some sort of a medal upon it on his neck. There is no need
to speak of the artisans and the peasants. The artisans of
Skotoprigonyevsk are almost peasants, and even work on the land. Two of
them also wore European dress, and, perhaps for that reason, were
dirtier and more uninviting‐looking than the others. So that one might
well wonder, as I did as soon as I had looked at them, “what men like
that could possibly make of such a case?” Yet their faces made a
strangely imposing, almost menacing, impression; they were stern and
frowning.

At last the President opened the case of the murder of Fyodor
Pavlovitch Karamazov. I don’t quite remember how he described him. The
court usher was told to bring in the prisoner, and Mitya made his
appearance. There was a hush through the court. One could have heard a
fly. I don’t know how it was with others, but Mitya made a most
unfavorable impression on me. He looked an awful dandy in a brand‐new
frock‐coat. I heard afterwards that he had ordered it in Moscow
expressly for the occasion from his own tailor, who had his measure. He
wore immaculate black kid gloves and exquisite linen. He walked in with
his yard‐long strides, looking stiffly straight in front of him, and
sat down in his place with a most unperturbed air.

At the same moment the counsel for defense, the celebrated
Fetyukovitch, entered, and a sort of subdued hum passed through the
court. He was a tall, spare man, with long thin legs, with extremely
long, thin, pale fingers, clean‐shaven face, demurely brushed, rather
short hair, and thin lips that were at times curved into something
between a sneer and a smile. He looked about forty. His face would have
been pleasant, if it had not been for his eyes, which, in themselves
small and inexpressive, were set remarkably close together, with only
the thin, long nose as a dividing line between them. In fact, there was
something strikingly birdlike about his face. He was in evening dress
and white tie.

I remember the President’s first questions to Mitya, about his name,
his calling, and so on. Mitya answered sharply, and his voice was so
unexpectedly loud that it made the President start and look at the
prisoner with surprise. Then followed a list of persons who were to
take part in the proceedings—that is, of the witnesses and experts. It
was a long list. Four of the witnesses were not present—Miüsov, who had
given evidence at the preliminary inquiry, but was now in Paris; Madame
Hohlakov and Maximov, who were absent through illness; and Smerdyakov,
through his sudden death, of which an official statement from the
police was presented. The news of Smerdyakov’s death produced a sudden
stir and whisper in the court. Many of the audience, of course, had not
heard of the sudden suicide. What struck people most was Mitya’s sudden
outburst. As soon as the statement of Smerdyakov’s death was made, he
cried out aloud from his place:

“He was a dog and died like a dog!”

I remember how his counsel rushed to him, and how the President
addressed him, threatening to take stern measures, if such an
irregularity were repeated. Mitya nodded and in a subdued voice
repeated several times abruptly to his counsel, with no show of regret:

“I won’t again, I won’t. It escaped me. I won’t do it again.”

And, of course, this brief episode did him no good with the jury or the
public. His character was displayed, and it spoke for itself. It was
under the influence of this incident that the opening statement was
read. It was rather short, but circumstantial. It only stated the chief
reasons why he had been arrested, why he must be tried, and so on. Yet
it made a great impression on me. The clerk read it loudly and
distinctly. The whole tragedy was suddenly unfolded before us,
concentrated, in bold relief, in a fatal and pitiless light. I remember
how, immediately after it had been read, the President asked Mitya in a
loud impressive voice:

“Prisoner, do you plead guilty?”

Mitya suddenly rose from his seat.

“I plead guilty to drunkenness and dissipation,” he exclaimed, again in
a startling, almost frenzied, voice, “to idleness and debauchery. I
meant to become an honest man for good, just at the moment when I was
struck down by fate. But I am not guilty of the death of that old man,
my enemy and my father. No, no, I am not guilty of robbing him! I could
not be. Dmitri Karamazov is a scoundrel, but not a thief.”

He sat down again, visibly trembling all over. The President again
briefly, but impressively, admonished him to answer only what was
asked, and not to go off into irrelevant exclamations. Then he ordered
the case to proceed. All the witnesses were led up to take the oath.
Then I saw them all together. The brothers of the prisoner were,
however, allowed to give evidence without taking the oath. After an
exhortation from the priest and the President, the witnesses were led
away and were made to sit as far as possible apart from one another.
Then they began calling them up one by one.




Chapter II.
Dangerous Witnesses


I do not know whether the witnesses for the defense and for the
prosecution were separated into groups by the President, and whether it
was arranged to call them in a certain order. But no doubt it was so. I
only know that the witnesses for the prosecution were called first. I
repeat I don’t intend to describe all the questions step by step.
Besides, my account would be to some extent superfluous, because in the
speeches for the prosecution and for the defense the whole course of
the evidence was brought together and set in a strong and significant
light, and I took down parts of those two remarkable speeches in full,
and will quote them in due course, together with one extraordinary and
quite unexpected episode, which occurred before the final speeches, and
undoubtedly influenced the sinister and fatal outcome of the trial.

I will only observe that from the first moments of the trial one
peculiar characteristic of the case was conspicuous and observed by
all, that is, the overwhelming strength of the prosecution as compared
with the arguments the defense had to rely upon. Every one realized it
from the first moment that the facts began to group themselves round a
single point, and the whole horrible and bloody crime was gradually
revealed. Every one, perhaps, felt from the first that the case was
beyond dispute, that there was no doubt about it, that there could be
really no discussion, and that the defense was only a matter of form,
and that the prisoner was guilty, obviously and conclusively guilty. I
imagine that even the ladies, who were so impatiently longing for the
acquittal of the interesting prisoner, were at the same time, without
exception, convinced of his guilt. What’s more, I believe they would
have been mortified if his guilt had not been so firmly established, as
that would have lessened the effect of the closing scene of the
criminal’s acquittal. That he would be acquitted, all the ladies,
strange to say, were firmly persuaded up to the very last moment. “He
is guilty, but he will be acquitted, from motives of humanity, in
accordance with the new ideas, the new sentiments that had come into
fashion,” and so on, and so on. And that was why they had crowded into
the court so impatiently. The men were more interested in the contest
between the prosecutor and the famous Fetyukovitch. All were wondering
and asking themselves what could even a talent like Fetyukovitch’s make
of such a desperate case; and so they followed his achievements, step
by step, with concentrated attention.

But Fetyukovitch remained an enigma to all up to the very end, up to
his speech. Persons of experience suspected that he had some design,
that he was working towards some object, but it was almost impossible
to guess what it was. His confidence and self‐reliance were
unmistakable, however. Every one noticed with pleasure, moreover, that
he, after so short a stay, not more than three days, perhaps, among us,
had so wonderfully succeeded in mastering the case and “had studied it
to a nicety.” People described with relish, afterwards, how cleverly he
had “taken down” all the witnesses for the prosecution, and as far as
possible perplexed them and, what’s more, had aspersed their reputation
and so depreciated the value of their evidence. But it was supposed
that he did this rather by way of sport, so to speak, for professional
glory, to show nothing had been omitted of the accepted methods, for
all were convinced that he could do no real good by such disparagement
of the witnesses, and probably was more aware of this than any one,
having some idea of his own in the background, some concealed weapon of
defense, which he would suddenly reveal when the time came. But
meanwhile, conscious of his strength, he seemed to be diverting
himself.

So, for instance, when Grigory, Fyodor Pavlovitch’s old servant, who
had given the most damning piece of evidence about the open door, was
examined, the counsel for the defense positively fastened upon him when
his turn came to question him. It must be noted that Grigory entered
the hall with a composed and almost stately air, not the least
disconcerted by the majesty of the court or the vast audience listening
to him. He gave evidence with as much confidence as though he had been
talking with his Marfa, only perhaps more respectfully. It was
impossible to make him contradict himself. The prosecutor questioned
him first in detail about the family life of the Karamazovs. The family
picture stood out in lurid colors. It was plain to ear and eye that the
witness was guileless and impartial. In spite of his profound reverence
for the memory of his deceased master, he yet bore witness that he had
been unjust to Mitya and “hadn’t brought up his children as he should.
He’d have been devoured by lice when he was little, if it hadn’t been
for me,” he added, describing Mitya’s early childhood. “It wasn’t fair
either of the father to wrong his son over his mother’s property, which
was by right his.”

In reply to the prosecutor’s question what grounds he had for asserting
that Fyodor Pavlovitch had wronged his son in their money relations,
Grigory, to the surprise of every one, had no proof at all to bring
forward, but he still persisted that the arrangement with the son was
“unfair,” and that he ought “to have paid him several thousand roubles
more.” I must note, by the way, that the prosecutor asked this question
whether Fyodor Pavlovitch had really kept back part of Mitya’s
inheritance with marked persistence of all the witnesses who could be
asked it, not excepting Alyosha and Ivan, but he obtained no exact
information from any one; all alleged that it was so, but were unable
to bring forward any distinct proof. Grigory’s description of the scene
at the dinner‐table, when Dmitri had burst in and beaten his father,
threatening to come back to kill him, made a sinister impression on the
court, especially as the old servant’s composure in telling it, his
parsimony of words and peculiar phraseology, were as effective as
eloquence. He observed that he was not angry with Mitya for having
knocked him down and struck him on the face; he had forgiven him long
ago, he said. Of the deceased Smerdyakov he observed, crossing himself,
that he was a lad of ability, but stupid and afflicted, and, worse
still, an infidel, and that it was Fyodor Pavlovitch and his elder son
who had taught him to be so. But he defended Smerdyakov’s honesty
almost with warmth, and related how Smerdyakov had once found the
master’s money in the yard, and, instead of concealing it, had taken it
to his master, who had rewarded him with a “gold piece” for it, and
trusted him implicitly from that time forward. He maintained
obstinately that the door into the garden had been open. But he was
asked so many questions that I can’t recall them all.

At last the counsel for the defense began to cross‐examine him, and the
first question he asked was about the envelope in which Fyodor
Pavlovitch was supposed to have put three thousand roubles for “a
certain person.” “Have you ever seen it, you, who were for so many
years in close attendance on your master?” Grigory answered that he had
not seen it and had never heard of the money from any one “till
everybody was talking about it.” This question about the envelope
Fetyukovitch put to every one who could conceivably have known of it,
as persistently as the prosecutor asked his question about Dmitri’s
inheritance, and got the same answer from all, that no one had seen the
envelope, though many had heard of it. From the beginning every one
noticed Fetyukovitch’s persistence on this subject.

“Now, with your permission I’ll ask you a question,” Fetyukovitch said,
suddenly and unexpectedly. “Of what was that balsam, or, rather,
decoction, made, which, as we learn from the preliminary inquiry, you
used on that evening to rub your lumbago, in the hope of curing it?”

Grigory looked blankly at the questioner, and after a brief silence
muttered, “There was saffron in it.”

“Nothing but saffron? Don’t you remember any other ingredient?”

“There was milfoil in it, too.”

“And pepper perhaps?” Fetyukovitch queried.

“Yes, there was pepper, too.”

“Etcetera. And all dissolved in vodka?”

“In spirit.”

There was a faint sound of laughter in the court.

“You see, in spirit. After rubbing your back, I believe, you drank what
was left in the bottle with a certain pious prayer, only known to your
wife?”

“I did.”

“Did you drink much? Roughly speaking, a wine‐glass or two?”

“It might have been a tumbler‐full.”

“A tumbler‐full, even. Perhaps a tumbler and a half?”

Grigory did not answer. He seemed to see what was meant.

“A glass and a half of neat spirit—is not at all bad, don’t you think?
You might see the gates of heaven open, not only the door into the
garden?”

Grigory remained silent. There was another laugh in the court. The
President made a movement.

“Do you know for a fact,” Fetyukovitch persisted, “whether you were
awake or not when you saw the open door?”

“I was on my legs.”

“That’s not a proof that you were awake.” (There was again laughter in
the court.) “Could you have answered at that moment, if any one had
asked you a question—for instance, what year it is?”

“I don’t know.”

“And what year is it, Anno Domini, do you know?”

Grigory stood with a perplexed face, looking straight at his tormentor.
Strange to say, it appeared he really did not know what year it was.

“But perhaps you can tell me how many fingers you have on your hands?”

“I am a servant,” Grigory said suddenly, in a loud and distinct voice.
“If my betters think fit to make game of me, it is my duty to suffer
it.”

Fetyukovitch was a little taken aback, and the President intervened,
reminding him that he must ask more relevant questions. Fetyukovitch
bowed with dignity and said that he had no more questions to ask of the
witness. The public and the jury, of course, were left with a grain of
doubt in their minds as to the evidence of a man who might, while
undergoing a certain cure, have seen “the gates of heaven,” and who did
not even know what year he was living in. But before Grigory left the
box another episode occurred. The President, turning to the prisoner,
asked him whether he had any comment to make on the evidence of the
last witness.

“Except about the door, all he has said is true,” cried Mitya, in a
loud voice. “For combing the lice off me, I thank him; for forgiving my
blows, I thank him. The old man has been honest all his life and as
faithful to my father as seven hundred poodles.”

“Prisoner, be careful in your language,” the President admonished him.

“I am not a poodle,” Grigory muttered.

“All right, it’s I am a poodle myself,” cried Mitya. “If it’s an
insult, I take it to myself and I beg his pardon. I was a beast and
cruel to him. I was cruel to Æsop too.”

“What Æsop?” the President asked sternly again.

“Oh, Pierrot ... my father, Fyodor Pavlovitch.”

The President again and again warned Mitya impressively and very
sternly to be more careful in his language.

“You are injuring yourself in the opinion of your judges.”

The counsel for the defense was equally clever in dealing with the
evidence of Rakitin. I may remark that Rakitin was one of the leading
witnesses and one to whom the prosecutor attached great significance.
It appeared that he knew everything; his knowledge was amazing, he had
been everywhere, seen everything, talked to everybody, knew every
detail of the biography of Fyodor Pavlovitch and all the Karamazovs. Of
the envelope, it is true, he had only heard from Mitya himself. But he
described minutely Mitya’s exploits in the “Metropolis,” all his
compromising doings and sayings, and told the story of Captain
Snegiryov’s “wisp of tow.” But even Rakitin could say nothing positive
about Mitya’s inheritance, and confined himself to contemptuous
generalities.

“Who could tell which of them was to blame, and which was in debt to
the other, with their crazy Karamazov way of muddling things so that no
one could make head or tail of it?” He attributed the tragic crime to
the habits that had become ingrained by ages of serfdom and the
distressed condition of Russia, due to the lack of appropriate
institutions. He was, in fact, allowed some latitude of speech. This
was the first occasion on which Rakitin showed what he could do, and
attracted notice. The prosecutor knew that the witness was preparing a
magazine article on the case, and afterwards in his speech, as we shall
see later, quoted some ideas from the article, showing that he had seen
it already. The picture drawn by the witness was a gloomy and sinister
one, and greatly strengthened the case for the prosecution. Altogether,
Rakitin’s discourse fascinated the public by its independence and the
extraordinary nobility of its ideas. There were even two or three
outbreaks of applause when he spoke of serfdom and the distressed
condition of Russia.

But Rakitin, in his youthful ardor, made a slight blunder, of which the
counsel for the defense at once adroitly took advantage. Answering
certain questions about Grushenka, and carried away by the loftiness of
his own sentiments and his success, of which he was, of course,
conscious, he went so far as to speak somewhat contemptuously of
Agrafena Alexandrovna as “the kept mistress of Samsonov.” He would have
given a good deal to take back his words afterwards, for Fetyukovitch
caught him out over it at once. And it was all because Rakitin had not
reckoned on the lawyer having been able to become so intimately
acquainted with every detail in so short a time.

“Allow me to ask,” began the counsel for the defense, with the most
affable and even respectful smile, “you are, of course, the same Mr.
Rakitin whose pamphlet, _The Life of the Deceased Elder, Father
Zossima_, published by the diocesan authorities, full of profound and
religious reflections and preceded by an excellent and devout
dedication to the bishop, I have just read with such pleasure?”

“I did not write it for publication ... it was published afterwards,”
muttered Rakitin, for some reason fearfully disconcerted and almost
ashamed.

“Oh, that’s excellent! A thinker like you can, and indeed ought to,
take the widest view of every social question. Your most instructive
pamphlet has been widely circulated through the patronage of the
bishop, and has been of appreciable service.... But this is the chief
thing I should like to learn from you. You stated just now that you
were very intimately acquainted with Madame Svyetlov.” (It must be
noted that Grushenka’s surname was Svyetlov. I heard it for the first
time that day, during the case.)

“I cannot answer for all my acquaintances.... I am a young man ... and
who can be responsible for every one he meets?” cried Rakitin, flushing
all over.

“I understand, I quite understand,” cried Fetyukovitch, as though he,
too, were embarrassed and in haste to excuse himself. “You, like any
other, might well be interested in an acquaintance with a young and
beautiful woman who would readily entertain the _élite_ of the youth of
the neighborhood, but ... I only wanted to know ... It has come to my
knowledge that Madame Svyetlov was particularly anxious a couple of
months ago to make the acquaintance of the younger Karamazov, Alexey
Fyodorovitch, and promised you twenty‐five roubles, if you would bring
him to her in his monastic dress. And that actually took place on the
evening of the day on which the terrible crime, which is the subject of
the present investigation, was committed. You brought Alexey Karamazov
to Madame Svyetlov, and did you receive the twenty‐five roubles from
Madame Svyetlov as a reward, that’s what I wanted to hear from you?”

“It was a joke.... I don’t see of what interest that can be to you....
I took it for a joke ... meaning to give it back later....”

“Then you did take— But you have not given it back yet ... or have
you?”

“That’s of no consequence,” muttered Rakitin, “I refuse to answer such
questions.... Of course I shall give it back.”

The President intervened, but Fetyukovitch declared he had no more
questions to ask of the witness. Mr. Rakitin left the witness‐box not
absolutely without a stain upon his character. The effect left by the
lofty idealism of his speech was somewhat marred, and Fetyukovitch’s
expression, as he watched him walk away, seemed to suggest to the
public “this is a specimen of the lofty‐minded persons who accuse him.”
I remember that this incident, too, did not pass off without an
outbreak from Mitya. Enraged by the tone in which Rakitin had referred
to Grushenka, he suddenly shouted “Bernard!” When, after Rakitin’s
cross‐ examination, the President asked the prisoner if he had anything
to say, Mitya cried loudly:

“Since I’ve been arrested, he has borrowed money from me! He is a
contemptible Bernard and opportunist, and he doesn’t believe in God; he
took the bishop in!”

Mitya, of course, was pulled up again for the intemperance of his
language, but Rakitin was done for. Captain Snegiryov’s evidence was a
failure, too, but from quite a different reason. He appeared in ragged
and dirty clothes, muddy boots, and in spite of the vigilance and
expert observation of the police officers, he turned out to be
hopelessly drunk. On being asked about Mitya’s attack upon him, he
refused to answer.

“God bless him. Ilusha told me not to. God will make it up to me
yonder.”

“Who told you not to tell? Of whom are you talking?”

“Ilusha, my little son. ‘Father, father, how he insulted you!’ He said
that at the stone. Now he is dying....”

The captain suddenly began sobbing, and plumped down on his knees
before the President. He was hurriedly led away amidst the laughter of
the public. The effect prepared by the prosecutor did not come off at
all.

Fetyukovitch went on making the most of every opportunity, and amazed
people more and more by his minute knowledge of the case. Thus, for
example, Trifon Borissovitch made a great impression, of course, very
prejudicial to Mitya. He calculated almost on his fingers that on his
first visit to Mokroe, Mitya must have spent three thousand roubles,
“or very little less. Just think what he squandered on those gypsy
girls alone! And as for our lousy peasants, it wasn’t a case of
flinging half a rouble in the street, he made them presents of
twenty‐five roubles each, at least, he didn’t give them less. And what
a lot of money was simply stolen from him! And if any one did steal, he
did not leave a receipt. How could one catch the thief when he was
flinging his money away all the time? Our peasants are robbers, you
know; they have no care for their souls. And the way he went on with
the girls, our village girls! They’re completely set up since then, I
tell you, they used to be poor.” He recalled, in fact, every item of
expense and added it all up. So the theory that only fifteen hundred
had been spent and the rest had been put aside in a little bag seemed
inconceivable.

“I saw three thousand as clear as a penny in his hands, I saw it with
my own eyes; I should think I ought to know how to reckon money,” cried
Trifon Borissovitch, doing his best to satisfy “his betters.”

When Fetyukovitch had to cross‐examine him, he scarcely tried to refute
his evidence, but began asking him about an incident at the first
carousal at Mokroe, a month before the arrest, when Timofey and another
peasant called Akim had picked up on the floor in the passage a hundred
roubles dropped by Mitya when he was drunk, and had given them to
Trifon Borissovitch and received a rouble each from him for doing so.
“Well,” asked the lawyer, “did you give that hundred roubles back to
Mr. Karamazov?” Trifon Borissovitch shuffled in vain.... He was
obliged, after the peasants had been examined, to admit the finding of
the hundred roubles, only adding that he had religiously returned it
all to Dmitri Fyodorovitch “in perfect honesty, and it’s only because
his honor was in liquor at the time, he wouldn’t remember it.” But, as
he had denied the incident of the hundred roubles till the peasants had
been called to prove it, his evidence as to returning the money to
Mitya was naturally regarded with great suspicion. So one of the most
dangerous witnesses brought forward by the prosecution was again
discredited.

The same thing happened with the Poles. They took up an attitude of
pride and independence; they vociferated loudly that they had both been
in the service of the Crown, and that “Pan Mitya” had offered them
three thousand “to buy their honor,” and that they had seen a large sum
of money in his hands. Pan Mussyalovitch introduced a terrible number
of Polish words into his sentences, and seeing that this only increased
his consequence in the eyes of the President and the prosecutor, grew
more and more pompous, and ended by talking in Polish altogether. But
Fetyukovitch caught them, too, in his snares. Trifon Borissovitch,
recalled, was forced, in spite of his evasions, to admit that Pan
Vrublevsky had substituted another pack of cards for the one he had
provided, and that Pan Mussyalovitch had cheated during the game.
Kalganov confirmed this, and both the Poles left the witness‐box with
damaged reputations, amidst laughter from the public.

Then exactly the same thing happened with almost all the most dangerous
witnesses. Fetyukovitch succeeded in casting a slur on all of them, and
dismissing them with a certain derision. The lawyers and experts were
lost in admiration, and were only at a loss to understand what good
purpose could be served by it, for all, I repeat, felt that the case
for the prosecution could not be refuted, but was growing more and more
tragically overwhelming. But from the confidence of the “great
magician” they saw that he was serene, and they waited, feeling that
“such a man” had not come from Petersburg for nothing, and that he was
not a man to return unsuccessful.




Chapter III.
The Medical Experts And A Pound Of Nuts


The evidence of the medical experts, too, was of little use to the
prisoner. And it appeared later that Fetyukovitch had not reckoned much
upon it. The medical line of defense had only been taken up through the
insistence of Katerina Ivanovna, who had sent for a celebrated doctor
from Moscow on purpose. The case for the defense could, of course, lose
nothing by it and might, with luck, gain something from it. There was,
however, an element of comedy about it, through the difference of
opinion of the doctors. The medical experts were the famous doctor from
Moscow, our doctor, Herzenstube, and the young doctor, Varvinsky. The
two latter appeared also as witnesses for the prosecution.

The first to be called in the capacity of expert was Doctor
Herzenstube. He was a gray and bald old man of seventy, of middle
height and sturdy build. He was much esteemed and respected by every
one in the town. He was a conscientious doctor and an excellent and
pious man, a Hernguter or Moravian brother, I am not quite sure which.
He had been living amongst us for many years and behaved with wonderful
dignity. He was a kind‐hearted and humane man. He treated the sick poor
and peasants for nothing, visited them in their slums and huts, and
left money for medicine, but he was as obstinate as a mule. If once he
had taken an idea into his head, there was no shaking it. Almost every
one in the town was aware, by the way, that the famous doctor had,
within the first two or three days of his presence among us, uttered
some extremely offensive allusions to Doctor Herzenstube’s
qualifications. Though the Moscow doctor asked twenty‐five roubles for
a visit, several people in the town were glad to take advantage of his
arrival, and rushed to consult him regardless of expense. All these
had, of course, been previously patients of Doctor Herzenstube, and the
celebrated doctor had criticized his treatment with extreme harshness.
Finally, he had asked the patients as soon as he saw them, “Well, who
has been cramming you with nostrums? Herzenstube? He, he!” Doctor
Herzenstube, of course, heard all this, and now all the three doctors
made their appearance, one after another, to be examined.

Doctor Herzenstube roundly declared that the abnormality of the
prisoner’s mental faculties was self‐evident. Then giving his grounds
for this opinion, which I omit here, he added that the abnormality was
not only evident in many of the prisoner’s actions in the past, but was
apparent even now at this very moment. When he was asked to explain how
it was apparent now at this moment, the old doctor, with simple‐hearted
directness, pointed out that the prisoner on entering the court had “an
extraordinary air, remarkable in the circumstances”; that he had
“marched in like a soldier, looking straight before him, though it
would have been more natural for him to look to the left where, among
the public, the ladies were sitting, seeing that he was a great admirer
of the fair sex and must be thinking much of what the ladies are saying
of him now,” the old man concluded in his peculiar language.

I must add that he spoke Russian readily, but every phrase was formed
in German style, which did not, however, trouble him, for it had always
been a weakness of his to believe that he spoke Russian perfectly,
better indeed than Russians. And he was very fond of using Russian
proverbs, always declaring that the Russian proverbs were the best and
most expressive sayings in the whole world. I may remark, too, that in
conversation, through absent‐mindedness he often forgot the most
ordinary words, which sometimes went out of his head, though he knew
them perfectly. The same thing happened, though, when he spoke German,
and at such times he always waved his hand before his face as though
trying to catch the lost word, and no one could induce him to go on
speaking till he had found the missing word. His remark that the
prisoner ought to have looked at the ladies on entering roused a
whisper of amusement in the audience. All our ladies were very fond of
our old doctor; they knew, too, that having been all his life a
bachelor and a religious man of exemplary conduct, he looked upon women
as lofty creatures. And so his unexpected observation struck every one
as very queer.

The Moscow doctor, being questioned in his turn, definitely and
emphatically repeated that he considered the prisoner’s mental
condition abnormal in the highest degree. He talked at length and with
erudition of “aberration” and “mania,” and argued that, from all the
facts collected, the prisoner had undoubtedly been in a condition of
aberration for several days before his arrest, and, if the crime had
been committed by him, it must, even if he were conscious of it, have
been almost involuntary, as he had not the power to control the morbid
impulse that possessed him.

But apart from temporary aberration, the doctor diagnosed mania, which
premised, in his words, to lead to complete insanity in the future. (It
must be noted that I report this in my own words, the doctor made use
of very learned and professional language.) “All his actions are in
contravention of common sense and logic,” he continued. “Not to refer
to what I have not seen, that is, the crime itself and the whole
catastrophe, the day before yesterday, while he was talking to me, he
had an unaccountably fixed look in his eye. He laughed unexpectedly
when there was nothing to laugh at. He showed continual and
inexplicable irritability, using strange words, ‘Bernard!’ ‘Ethics!’
and others equally inappropriate.” But the doctor detected mania, above
all, in the fact that the prisoner could not even speak of the three
thousand roubles, of which he considered himself to have been cheated,
without extraordinary irritation, though he could speak comparatively
lightly of other misfortunes and grievances. According to all accounts,
he had even in the past, whenever the subject of the three thousand
roubles was touched on, flown into a perfect frenzy, and yet he was
reported to be a disinterested and not grasping man.

“As to the opinion of my learned colleague,” the Moscow doctor added
ironically in conclusion, “that the prisoner would, on entering the
court, have naturally looked at the ladies and not straight before him,
I will only say that, apart from the playfulness of this theory, it is
radically unsound. For though I fully agree that the prisoner, on
entering the court where his fate will be decided, would not naturally
look straight before him in that fixed way, and that that may really be
a sign of his abnormal mental condition, at the same time I maintain
that he would naturally not look to the left at the ladies, but, on the
contrary, to the right to find his legal adviser, on whose help all his
hopes rest and on whose defense all his future depends.” The doctor
expressed his opinion positively and emphatically.

But the unexpected pronouncement of Doctor Varvinsky gave the last
touch of comedy to the difference of opinion between the experts. In
his opinion the prisoner was now, and had been all along, in a
perfectly normal condition, and, although he certainly must have been
in a nervous and exceedingly excited state before his arrest, this
might have been due to several perfectly obvious causes, jealousy,
anger, continual drunkenness, and so on. But this nervous condition
would not involve the mental aberration of which mention had just been
made. As to the question whether the prisoner should have looked to the
left or to the right on entering the court, “in his modest opinion,”
the prisoner would naturally look straight before him on entering the
court, as he had in fact done, as that was where the judges, on whom
his fate depended, were sitting. So that it was just by looking
straight before him that he showed his perfectly normal state of mind
at the present. The young doctor concluded his “modest” testimony with
some heat.

“Bravo, doctor!” cried Mitya, from his seat, “just so!”

Mitya, of course, was checked, but the young doctor’s opinion had a
decisive influence on the judges and on the public, and, as appeared
afterwards, every one agreed with him. But Doctor Herzenstube, when
called as a witness, was quite unexpectedly of use to Mitya. As an old
resident in the town who had known the Karamazov family for years, he
furnished some facts of great value for the prosecution, and suddenly,
as though recalling something, he added:

“But the poor young man might have had a very different life, for he
had a good heart both in childhood and after childhood, that I know.
But the Russian proverb says, ‘If a man has one head, it’s good, but if
another clever man comes to visit him, it would be better still, for
then there will be two heads and not only one.’ ”

“One head is good, but two are better,” the prosecutor put in
impatiently. He knew the old man’s habit of talking slowly and
deliberately, regardless of the impression he was making and of the
delay he was causing, and highly prizing his flat, dull and always
gleefully complacent German wit. The old man was fond of making jokes.

“Oh, yes, that’s what I say,” he went on stubbornly. “One head is good,
but two are much better, but he did not meet another head with wits,
and his wits went. Where did they go? I’ve forgotten the word.” He went
on, passing his hand before his eyes, “Oh, yes, _spazieren_.”

“Wandering?”

“Oh, yes, wandering, that’s what I say. Well, his wits went wandering
and fell in such a deep hole that he lost himself. And yet he was a
grateful and sensitive boy. Oh, I remember him very well, a little chap
so high, left neglected by his father in the back yard, when he ran
about without boots on his feet, and his little breeches hanging by one
button.”

A note of feeling and tenderness suddenly came into the honest old
man’s voice. Fetyukovitch positively started, as though scenting
something, and caught at it instantly.

“Oh, yes, I was a young man then.... I was ... well, I was forty‐five
then, and had only just come here. And I was so sorry for the boy then;
I asked myself why shouldn’t I buy him a pound of ... a pound of what?
I’ve forgotten what it’s called. A pound of what children are very fond
of, what is it, what is it?” The doctor began waving his hands again.
“It grows on a tree and is gathered and given to every one....”

“Apples?”

“Oh, no, no. You have a dozen of apples, not a pound.... No, there are
a lot of them, and all little. You put them in the mouth and crack.”

“Nuts?”

“Quite so, nuts, I say so.” The doctor repeated in the calmest way as
though he had been at no loss for a word. “And I bought him a pound of
nuts, for no one had ever bought the boy a pound of nuts before. And I
lifted my finger and said to him, ‘Boy, _Gott der Vater_.’ He laughed
and said, ‘_Gott der Vater_.’... ‘_Gott der Sohn_.’ He laughed again
and lisped, ‘_Gott der Sohn_.’ ‘_Gott der heilige Geist_.’ Then he
laughed and said as best he could, ‘_Gott der heilige Geist_.’ I went
away, and two days after I happened to be passing, and he shouted to me
of himself, ‘Uncle, _Gott der Vater, Gott der Sohn_,’ and he had only
forgotten ‘_Gott der heilige Geist_.’ But I reminded him of it and I
felt very sorry for him again. But he was taken away, and I did not see
him again. Twenty‐ three years passed. I am sitting one morning in my
study, a white‐haired old man, when there walks into the room a
blooming young man, whom I should never have recognized, but he held up
his finger and said, laughing, ‘_Gott der Vater, Gott der Sohn_, and
_Gott der heilige Geist_. I have just arrived and have come to thank
you for that pound of nuts, for no one else ever bought me a pound of
nuts; you are the only one that ever did.’ And then I remembered my
happy youth and the poor child in the yard, without boots on his feet,
and my heart was touched and I said, ‘You are a grateful young man, for
you have remembered all your life the pound of nuts I bought you in
your childhood.’ And I embraced him and blessed him. And I shed tears.
He laughed, but he shed tears, too ... for the Russian often laughs
when he ought to be weeping. But he did weep; I saw it. And now,
alas!...”

“And I am weeping now, German, I am weeping now, too, you saintly man,”
Mitya cried suddenly.

In any case the anecdote made a certain favorable impression on the
public. But the chief sensation in Mitya’s favor was created by the
evidence of Katerina Ivanovna, which I will describe directly. Indeed,
when the witnesses _à décharge_, that is, called by the defense, began
giving evidence, fortune seemed all at once markedly more favorable to
Mitya, and what was particularly striking, this was a surprise even to
the counsel for the defense. But before Katerina Ivanovna was called,
Alyosha was examined, and he recalled a fact which seemed to furnish
positive evidence against one important point made by the prosecution.




Chapter IV.
Fortune Smiles On Mitya


It came quite as a surprise even to Alyosha himself. He was not
required to take the oath, and I remember that both sides addressed him
very gently and sympathetically. It was evident that his reputation for
goodness had preceded him. Alyosha gave his evidence modestly and with
restraint, but his warm sympathy for his unhappy brother was
unmistakable. In answer to one question, he sketched his brother’s
character as that of a man, violent‐tempered perhaps and carried away
by his passions, but at the same time honorable, proud and generous,
capable of self‐sacrifice, if necessary. He admitted, however, that,
through his passion for Grushenka and his rivalry with his father, his
brother had been of late in an intolerable position. But he repelled
with indignation the suggestion that his brother might have committed a
murder for the sake of gain, though he recognized that the three
thousand roubles had become almost an obsession with Mitya; that he
looked upon them as part of the inheritance he had been cheated of by
his father, and that, indifferent as he was to money as a rule, he
could not even speak of that three thousand without fury. As for the
rivalry of the two “ladies,” as the prosecutor expressed it—that is, of
Grushenka and Katya—he answered evasively and was even unwilling to
answer one or two questions altogether.

“Did your brother tell you, anyway, that he intended to kill your
father?” asked the prosecutor. “You can refuse to answer if you think
necessary,” he added.

“He did not tell me so directly,” answered Alyosha.

“How so? Did he indirectly?”

“He spoke to me once of his hatred for our father and his fear that at
an extreme moment ... at a moment of fury, he might perhaps murder
him.”

“And you believed him?”

“I am afraid to say that I did. But I never doubted that some higher
feeling would always save him at the fatal moment, as it has indeed
saved him, for it was not he killed my father,” Alyosha said firmly, in
a loud voice that was heard throughout the court.

The prosecutor started like a war‐horse at the sound of a trumpet.

“Let me assure you that I fully believe in the complete sincerity of
your conviction and do not explain it by or identify it with your
affection for your unhappy brother. Your peculiar view of the whole
tragic episode is known to us already from the preliminary
investigation. I won’t attempt to conceal from you that it is highly
individual and contradicts all the other evidence collected by the
prosecution. And so I think it essential to press you to tell me what
facts have led you to this conviction of your brother’s innocence and
of the guilt of another person against whom you gave evidence at the
preliminary inquiry?”

“I only answered the questions asked me at the preliminary inquiry,”
replied Alyosha, slowly and calmly. “I made no accusation against
Smerdyakov of myself.”

“Yet you gave evidence against him?”

“I was led to do so by my brother Dmitri’s words. I was told what took
place at his arrest and how he had pointed to Smerdyakov before I was
examined. I believe absolutely that my brother is innocent, and if he
didn’t commit the murder, then—”

“Then Smerdyakov? Why Smerdyakov? And why are you so completely
persuaded of your brother’s innocence?”

“I cannot help believing my brother. I know he wouldn’t lie to me. I
saw from his face he wasn’t lying.”

“Only from his face? Is that all the proof you have?”

“I have no other proof.”

“And of Smerdyakov’s guilt you have no proof whatever but your
brother’s word and the expression of his face?”

“No, I have no other proof.”

The prosecutor dropped the examination at this point. The impression
left by Alyosha’s evidence on the public was most disappointing. There
had been talk about Smerdyakov before the trial; some one had heard
something, some one had pointed out something else, it was said that
Alyosha had gathered together some extraordinary proofs of his
brother’s innocence and Smerdyakov’s guilt, and after all there was
nothing, no evidence except certain moral convictions so natural in a
brother.

But Fetyukovitch began his cross‐examination. On his asking Alyosha
when it was that the prisoner had told him of his hatred for his father
and that he might kill him, and whether he had heard it, for instance,
at their last meeting before the catastrophe, Alyosha started as he
answered, as though only just recollecting and understanding something.

“I remember one circumstance now which I’d quite forgotten myself. It
wasn’t clear to me at the time, but now—”

And, obviously only now for the first time struck by an idea, he
recounted eagerly how, at his last interview with Mitya that evening
under the tree, on the road to the monastery, Mitya had struck himself
on the breast, “the upper part of the breast,” and had repeated several
times that he had a means of regaining his honor, that that means was
here, here on his breast. “I thought, when he struck himself on the
breast, he meant that it was in his heart,” Alyosha continued, “that he
might find in his heart strength to save himself from some awful
disgrace which was awaiting him and which he did not dare confess even
to me. I must confess I did think at the time that he was speaking of
our father, and that the disgrace he was shuddering at was the thought
of going to our father and doing some violence to him. Yet it was just
then that he pointed to something on his breast, so that I remember the
idea struck me at the time that the heart is not on that part of the
breast, but below, and that he struck himself much too high, just below
the neck, and kept pointing to that place. My idea seemed silly to me
at the time, but he was perhaps pointing then to that little bag in
which he had fifteen hundred roubles!”

“Just so,” Mitya cried from his place. “That’s right, Alyosha, it was
the little bag I struck with my fist.”

Fetyukovitch flew to him in hot haste entreating him to keep quiet, and
at the same instant pounced on Alyosha. Alyosha, carried away himself
by his recollection, warmly expressed his theory that this disgrace was
probably just that fifteen hundred roubles on him, which he might have
returned to Katerina Ivanovna as half of what he owed her, but which he
had yet determined not to repay her and to use for another
purpose—namely, to enable him to elope with Grushenka, if she
consented.

“It is so, it must be so,” exclaimed Alyosha, in sudden excitement. “My
brother cried several times that half of the disgrace, half of it (he
said _half_ several times) he could free himself from at once, but that
he was so unhappy in his weakness of will that he wouldn’t do it ...
that he knew beforehand he was incapable of doing it!”

“And you clearly, confidently remember that he struck himself just on
this part of the breast?” Fetyukovitch asked eagerly.

“Clearly and confidently, for I thought at the time, ‘Why does he
strike himself up there when the heart is lower down?’ and the thought
seemed stupid to me at the time ... I remember its seeming stupid ...
it flashed through my mind. That’s what brought it back to me just now.
How could I have forgotten it till now? It was that little bag he meant
when he said he had the means but wouldn’t give back that fifteen
hundred. And when he was arrested at Mokroe he cried out—I know, I was
told it—that he considered it the most disgraceful act of his life that
when he had the means of repaying Katerina Ivanovna half (half, note!)
what he owed her, he yet could not bring himself to repay the money and
preferred to remain a thief in her eyes rather than part with it. And
what torture, what torture that debt has been to him!” Alyosha
exclaimed in conclusion.

The prosecutor, of course, intervened. He asked Alyosha to describe
once more how it had all happened, and several times insisted on the
question, “Had the prisoner seemed to point to anything? Perhaps he had
simply struck himself with his fist on the breast?”

“But it was not with his fist,” cried Alyosha; “he pointed with his
fingers and pointed here, very high up.... How could I have so
completely forgotten it till this moment?”

The President asked Mitya what he had to say to the last witness’s
evidence. Mitya confirmed it, saying that he had been pointing to the
fifteen hundred roubles which were on his breast, just below the neck,
and that that was, of course, the disgrace, “A disgrace I cannot deny,
the most shameful act of my whole life,” cried Mitya. “I might have
repaid it and didn’t repay it. I preferred to remain a thief in her
eyes rather than give it back. And the most shameful part of it was
that I knew beforehand I shouldn’t give it back! You are right,
Alyosha! Thanks, Alyosha!”

So Alyosha’s cross‐examination ended. What was important and striking
about it was that one fact at least had been found, and even though
this were only one tiny bit of evidence, a mere hint at evidence, it
did go some little way towards proving that the bag had existed and had
contained fifteen hundred roubles and that the prisoner had not been
lying at the preliminary inquiry when he alleged at Mokroe that those
fifteen hundred roubles were “his own.” Alyosha was glad. With a
flushed face he moved away to the seat assigned to him. He kept
repeating to himself: “How was it I forgot? How could I have forgotten
it? And what made it come back to me now?”

Katerina Ivanovna was called to the witness‐box. As she entered
something extraordinary happened in the court. The ladies clutched
their lorgnettes and opera‐glasses. There was a stir among the men:
some stood up to get a better view. Everybody alleged afterwards that
Mitya had turned “white as a sheet” on her entrance. All in black, she
advanced modestly, almost timidly. It was impossible to tell from her
face that she was agitated; but there was a resolute gleam in her dark
and gloomy eyes. I may remark that many people mentioned that she
looked particularly handsome at that moment. She spoke softly but
clearly, so that she was heard all over the court. She expressed
herself with composure, or at least tried to appear composed. The
President began his examination discreetly and very respectfully, as
though afraid to touch on “certain chords,” and showing consideration
for her great unhappiness. But in answer to one of the first questions
Katerina Ivanovna replied firmly that she had been formerly betrothed
to the prisoner, “until he left me of his own accord...” she added
quietly. When they asked her about the three thousand she had entrusted
to Mitya to post to her relations, she said firmly, “I didn’t give him
the money simply to send it off. I felt at the time that he was in
great need of money.... I gave him the three thousand on the
understanding that he should post it within the month if he cared to.
There was no need for him to worry himself about that debt afterwards.”

I will not repeat all the questions asked her and all her answers in
detail. I will only give the substance of her evidence.

“I was firmly convinced that he would send off that sum as soon as he
got money from his father,” she went on. “I have never doubted his
disinterestedness and his honesty ... his scrupulous honesty ... in
money matters. He felt quite certain that he would receive the money
from his father, and spoke to me several times about it. I knew he had
a feud with his father and have always believed that he had been
unfairly treated by his father. I don’t remember any threat uttered by
him against his father. He certainly never uttered any such threat
before me. If he had come to me at that time, I should have at once
relieved his anxiety about that unlucky three thousand roubles, but he
had given up coming to see me ... and I myself was put in such a
position ... that I could not invite him.... And I had no right,
indeed, to be exacting as to that money,” she added suddenly, and there
was a ring of resolution in her voice. “I was once indebted to him for
assistance in money for more than three thousand, and I took it,
although I could not at that time foresee that I should ever be in a
position to repay my debt.”

There was a note of defiance in her voice. It was then Fetyukovitch
began his cross‐examination.

“Did that take place not here, but at the beginning of your
acquaintance?” Fetyukovitch suggested cautiously, feeling his way,
instantly scenting something favorable. I must mention in parenthesis
that, though Fetyukovitch had been brought from Petersburg partly at
the instance of Katerina Ivanovna herself, he knew nothing about the
episode of the four thousand roubles given her by Mitya, and of her
“bowing to the ground to him.” She concealed this from him and said
nothing about it, and that was strange. It may be pretty certainly
assumed that she herself did not know till the very last minute whether
she would speak of that episode in the court, and waited for the
inspiration of the moment.

No, I can never forget those moments. She began telling her story. She
told everything, the whole episode that Mitya had told Alyosha, and her
bowing to the ground, and her reason. She told about her father and her
going to Mitya, and did not in one word, in a single hint, suggest that
Mitya had himself, through her sister, proposed they should “send him
Katerina Ivanovna” to fetch the money. She generously concealed that
and was not ashamed to make it appear as though she had of her own
impulse run to the young officer, relying on something ... to beg him
for the money. It was something tremendous! I turned cold and trembled
as I listened. The court was hushed, trying to catch each word. It was
something unexampled. Even from such a self‐willed and contemptuously
proud girl as she was, such an extremely frank avowal, such sacrifice,
such self‐immolation, seemed incredible. And for what, for whom? To
save the man who had deceived and insulted her and to help, in however
small a degree, in saving him, by creating a strong impression in his
favor. And, indeed, the figure of the young officer who, with a
respectful bow to the innocent girl, handed her his last four thousand
roubles—all he had in the world—was thrown into a very sympathetic and
attractive light, but ... I had a painful misgiving at heart! I felt
that calumny might come of it later (and it did, in fact, it did). It
was repeated all over the town afterwards with spiteful laughter that
the story was perhaps not quite complete—that is, in the statement that
the officer had let the young lady depart “with nothing but a
respectful bow.” It was hinted that something was here omitted.

“And even if nothing had been omitted, if this were the whole story,”
the most highly respected of our ladies maintained, “even then it’s
very doubtful whether it was creditable for a young girl to behave in
that way, even for the sake of saving her father.”

And can Katerina Ivanovna, with her intelligence, her morbid
sensitiveness, have failed to understand that people would talk like
that? She must have understood it, yet she made up her mind to tell
everything. Of course, all these nasty little suspicions as to the
truth of her story only arose afterwards and at the first moment all
were deeply impressed by it. As for the judges and the lawyers, they
listened in reverent, almost shame‐faced silence to Katerina Ivanovna.
The prosecutor did not venture upon even one question on the subject.
Fetyukovitch made a low bow to her. Oh, he was almost triumphant! Much
ground had been gained. For a man to give his last four thousand on a
generous impulse and then for the same man to murder his father for the
sake of robbing him of three thousand—the idea seemed too incongruous.
Fetyukovitch felt that now the charge of theft, at least, was as good
as disproved. “The case” was thrown into quite a different light. There
was a wave of sympathy for Mitya. As for him.... I was told that once
or twice, while Katerina Ivanovna was giving her evidence, he jumped up
from his seat, sank back again, and hid his face in his hands. But when
she had finished, he suddenly cried in a sobbing voice:

“Katya, why have you ruined me?” and his sobs were audible all over the
court. But he instantly restrained himself, and cried again:

“Now I am condemned!”

Then he sat rigid in his place, with his teeth clenched and his arms
across his chest. Katerina Ivanovna remained in the court and sat down
in her place. She was pale and sat with her eyes cast down. Those who
were sitting near her declared that for a long time she shivered all
over as though in a fever. Grushenka was called.

I am approaching the sudden catastrophe which was perhaps the final
cause of Mitya’s ruin. For I am convinced, so is every one—all the
lawyers said the same afterwards—that if the episode had not occurred,
the prisoner would at least have been recommended to mercy. But of that
later. A few words first about Grushenka.

She, too, was dressed entirely in black, with her magnificent black
shawl on her shoulders. She walked to the witness‐box with her smooth,
noiseless tread, with the slightly swaying gait common in women of full
figure. She looked steadily at the President, turning her eyes neither
to the right nor to the left. To my thinking she looked very handsome
at that moment, and not at all pale, as the ladies alleged afterwards.
They declared, too, that she had a concentrated and spiteful
expression. I believe that she was simply irritated and painfully
conscious of the contemptuous and inquisitive eyes of our
scandal‐loving public. She was proud and could not stand contempt. She
was one of those people who flare up, angry and eager to retaliate, at
the mere suggestion of contempt. There was an element of timidity, too,
of course, and inward shame at her own timidity, so it was not strange
that her tone kept changing. At one moment it was angry, contemptuous
and rough, and at another there was a sincere note of self‐
condemnation. Sometimes she spoke as though she were taking a desperate
plunge; as though she felt, “I don’t care what happens, I’ll say
it....” Apropos of her acquaintance with Fyodor Pavlovitch, she
remarked curtly, “That’s all nonsense, and was it my fault that he
would pester me?” But a minute later she added, “It was all my fault. I
was laughing at them both—at the old man and at him, too—and I brought
both of them to this. It was all on account of me it happened.”

Samsonov’s name came up somehow. “That’s nobody’s business,” she
snapped at once, with a sort of insolent defiance. “He was my
benefactor; he took me when I hadn’t a shoe to my foot, when my family
had turned me out.” The President reminded her, though very politely,
that she must answer the questions directly, without going off into
irrelevant details. Grushenka crimsoned and her eyes flashed.

The envelope with the notes in it she had not seen, but had only heard
from “that wicked wretch” that Fyodor Pavlovitch had an envelope with
notes for three thousand in it. “But that was all foolishness. I was
only laughing. I wouldn’t have gone to him for anything.”

“To whom are you referring as ‘that wicked wretch’?” inquired the
prosecutor.

“The lackey, Smerdyakov, who murdered his master and hanged himself
last night.”

She was, of course, at once asked what ground she had for such a
definite accusation; but it appeared that she, too, had no grounds for
it.

“Dmitri Fyodorovitch told me so himself; you can believe him. The woman
who came between us has ruined him; she is the cause of it all, let me
tell you,” Grushenka added. She seemed to be quivering with hatred, and
there was a vindictive note in her voice.

She was again asked to whom she was referring.

“The young lady, Katerina Ivanovna there. She sent for me, offered me
chocolate, tried to fascinate me. There’s not much true shame about
her, I can tell you that....”

At this point the President checked her sternly, begging her to
moderate her language. But the jealous woman’s heart was burning, and
she did not care what she did.

“When the prisoner was arrested at Mokroe,” the prosecutor asked,
“every one saw and heard you run out of the next room and cry out:
‘It’s all my fault. We’ll go to Siberia together!’ So you already
believed him to have murdered his father?”

“I don’t remember what I felt at the time,” answered Grushenka. “Every
one was crying out that he had killed his father, and I felt that it
was my fault, that it was on my account he had murdered him. But when
he said he wasn’t guilty, I believed him at once, and I believe him now
and always shall believe him. He is not the man to tell a lie.”

Fetyukovitch began his cross‐examination. I remember that among other
things he asked about Rakitin and the twenty‐five roubles “you paid him
for bringing Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov to see you.”

“There was nothing strange about his taking the money,” sneered
Grushenka, with angry contempt. “He was always coming to me for money:
he used to get thirty roubles a month at least out of me, chiefly for
luxuries: he had enough to keep him without my help.”

“What led you to be so liberal to Mr. Rakitin?” Fetyukovitch asked, in
spite of an uneasy movement on the part of the President.

“Why, he is my cousin. His mother was my mother’s sister. But he’s
always besought me not to tell any one here of it, he is so dreadfully
ashamed of me.”

This fact was a complete surprise to every one; no one in the town nor
in the monastery, not even Mitya, knew of it. I was told that Rakitin
turned purple with shame where he sat. Grushenka had somehow heard
before she came into the court that he had given evidence against
Mitya, and so she was angry. The whole effect on the public, of
Rakitin’s speech, of his noble sentiments, of his attacks upon serfdom
and the political disorder of Russia, was this time finally ruined.
Fetyukovitch was satisfied: it was another godsend. Grushenka’s
cross‐examination did not last long and, of course, there could be
nothing particularly new in her evidence. She left a very disagreeable
impression on the public; hundreds of contemptuous eyes were fixed upon
her, as she finished giving her evidence and sat down again in the
court, at a good distance from Katerina Ivanovna. Mitya was silent
throughout her evidence. He sat as though turned to stone, with his
eyes fixed on the ground.

Ivan was called to give evidence.




Chapter V.
A Sudden Catastrophe


I may note that he had been called before Alyosha. But the usher of the
court announced to the President that, owing to an attack of illness or
some sort of fit, the witness could not appear at the moment, but was
ready to give his evidence as soon as he recovered. But no one seemed
to have heard it and it only came out later.

His entrance was for the first moment almost unnoticed. The principal
witnesses, especially the two rival ladies, had already been
questioned. Curiosity was satisfied for the time; the public was
feeling almost fatigued. Several more witnesses were still to be heard,
who probably had little information to give after all that had been
given. Time was passing. Ivan walked up with extraordinary slowness,
looking at no one, and with his head bowed, as though plunged in gloomy
thought. He was irreproachably dressed, but his face made a painful
impression, on me at least: there was an earthy look in it, a look like
a dying man’s. His eyes were lusterless; he raised them and looked
slowly round the court. Alyosha jumped up from his seat and moaned
“Ah!” I remember that, but it was hardly noticed.

The President began by informing him that he was a witness not on oath,
that he might answer or refuse to answer, but that, of course, he must
bear witness according to his conscience, and so on, and so on. Ivan
listened and looked at him blankly, but his face gradually relaxed into
a smile, and as soon as the President, looking at him in astonishment,
finished, he laughed outright.

“Well, and what else?” he asked in a loud voice.

There was a hush in the court; there was a feeling of something
strange. The President showed signs of uneasiness.

“You ... are perhaps still unwell?” he began, looking everywhere for
the usher.

“Don’t trouble yourself, your excellency, I am well enough and can tell
you something interesting,” Ivan answered with sudden calmness and
respectfulness.

“You have some special communication to make?” the President went on,
still mistrustfully.

Ivan looked down, waited a few seconds and, raising his head, answered,
almost stammering:

“No ... I haven’t. I have nothing particular.”

They began asking him questions. He answered, as it were, reluctantly,
with extreme brevity, with a sort of disgust which grew more and more
marked, though he answered rationally. To many questions he answered
that he did not know. He knew nothing of his father’s money relations
with Dmitri. “I wasn’t interested in the subject,” he added. Threats to
murder his father he had heard from the prisoner. Of the money in the
envelope he had heard from Smerdyakov.

“The same thing over and over again,” he interrupted suddenly, with a
look of weariness. “I have nothing particular to tell the court.”

“I see you are unwell and understand your feelings,” the President
began.

He turned to the prosecutor and the counsel for the defense to invite
them to examine the witness, if necessary, when Ivan suddenly asked in
an exhausted voice:

“Let me go, your excellency, I feel very ill.”

And with these words, without waiting for permission, he turned to walk
out of the court. But after taking four steps he stood still, as though
he had reached a decision, smiled slowly, and went back.

“I am like the peasant girl, your excellency ... you know. How does it
go? ‘I’ll stand up if I like, and I won’t if I don’t.’ They were trying
to put on her sarafan to take her to church to be married, and she
said, ‘I’ll stand up if I like, and I won’t if I don’t.’... It’s in
some book about the peasantry.”

“What do you mean by that?” the President asked severely.

“Why, this,” Ivan suddenly pulled out a roll of notes. “Here’s the
money ... the notes that lay in that envelope” (he nodded towards the
table on which lay the material evidence), “for the sake of which our
father was murdered. Where shall I put them? Mr. Superintendent, take
them.”

The usher of the court took the whole roll and handed it to the
President.

“How could this money have come into your possession if it is the same
money?” the President asked wonderingly.

“I got them from Smerdyakov, from the murderer, yesterday.... I was
with him just before he hanged himself. It was he, not my brother,
killed our father. He murdered him and I incited him to do it ... Who
doesn’t desire his father’s death?”

“Are you in your right mind?” broke involuntarily from the President.

“I should think I am in my right mind ... in the same nasty mind as all
of you ... as all these ... ugly faces.” He turned suddenly to the
audience. “My father has been murdered and they pretend they are
horrified,” he snarled, with furious contempt. “They keep up the sham
with one another. Liars! They all desire the death of their fathers.
One reptile devours another.... If there hadn’t been a murder, they’d
have been angry and gone home ill‐humored. It’s a spectacle they want!
_Panem et circenses_. Though I am one to talk! Have you any water? Give
me a drink for Christ’s sake!” He suddenly clutched his head.

The usher at once approached him. Alyosha jumped up and cried, “He is
ill. Don’t believe him: he has brain fever.” Katerina Ivanovna rose
impulsively from her seat and, rigid with horror, gazed at Ivan. Mitya
stood up and greedily looked at his brother and listened to him with a
wild, strange smile.

“Don’t disturb yourselves. I am not mad, I am only a murderer,” Ivan
began again. “You can’t expect eloquence from a murderer,” he added
suddenly for some reason and laughed a queer laugh.

The prosecutor bent over to the President in obvious dismay. The two
other judges communicated in agitated whispers. Fetyukovitch pricked up
his ears as he listened: the hall was hushed in expectation. The
President seemed suddenly to recollect himself.

“Witness, your words are incomprehensible and impossible here. Calm
yourself, if you can, and tell your story ... if you really have
something to tell. How can you confirm your statement ... if indeed you
are not delirious?”

“That’s just it. I have no proof. That cur Smerdyakov won’t send you
proofs from the other world ... in an envelope. You think of nothing
but envelopes—one is enough. I’ve no witnesses ... except one,
perhaps,” he smiled thoughtfully.

“Who is your witness?”

“He has a tail, your excellency, and that would be irregular! _Le
diable n’existe point!_ Don’t pay attention: he is a paltry, pitiful
devil,” he added suddenly. He ceased laughing and spoke as it were,
confidentially. “He is here somewhere, no doubt—under that table with
the material evidence on it, perhaps. Where should he sit if not there?
You see, listen to me. I told him I don’t want to keep quiet, and he
talked about the geological cataclysm ... idiocy! Come, release the
monster ... he’s been singing a hymn. That’s because his heart is
light! It’s like a drunken man in the street bawling how ‘Vanka went to
Petersburg,’ and I would give a quadrillion quadrillions for two
seconds of joy. You don’t know me! Oh, how stupid all this business is!
Come, take me instead of him! I didn’t come for nothing.... Why, why is
everything so stupid?...”

And he began slowly, and as it were reflectively, looking round him
again. But the court was all excitement by now. Alyosha rushed towards
him, but the court usher had already seized Ivan by the arm.

“What are you about?” he cried, staring into the man’s face, and
suddenly seizing him by the shoulders, he flung him violently to the
floor. But the police were on the spot and he was seized. He screamed
furiously. And all the time he was being removed, he yelled and
screamed something incoherent.

The whole court was thrown into confusion. I don’t remember everything
as it happened. I was excited myself and could not follow. I only know
that afterwards, when everything was quiet again and every one
understood what had happened, the court usher came in for a reprimand,
though he very reasonably explained that the witness had been quite
well, that the doctor had seen him an hour ago, when he had a slight
attack of giddiness, but that, until he had come into the court, he had
talked quite consecutively, so that nothing could have been
foreseen—that he had, in fact, insisted on giving evidence. But before
every one had completely regained their composure and recovered from
this scene, it was followed by another. Katerina Ivanovna had an attack
of hysterics. She sobbed, shrieking loudly, but refused to leave the
court, struggled, and besought them not to remove her. Suddenly she
cried to the President:

“There is more evidence I must give at once ... at once! Here is a
document, a letter ... take it, read it quickly, quickly! It’s a letter
from that monster ... that man there, there!” she pointed to Mitya. “It
was he killed his father, you will see that directly. He wrote to me
how he would kill his father! But the other one is ill, he is ill, he
is delirious!” she kept crying out, beside herself.

The court usher took the document she held out to the President, and
she, dropping into her chair, hiding her face in her hands, began
convulsively and noiselessly sobbing, shaking all over, and stifling
every sound for fear she should be ejected from the court. The document
she had handed up was that letter Mitya had written at the “Metropolis”
tavern, which Ivan had spoken of as a “mathematical proof.” Alas! its
mathematical conclusiveness was recognized, and had it not been for
that letter, Mitya might have escaped his doom or, at least, that doom
would have been less terrible. It was, I repeat, difficult to notice
every detail. What followed is still confused to my mind. The President
must, I suppose, have at once passed on the document to the judges, the
jury, and the lawyers on both sides. I only remember how they began
examining the witness. On being gently asked by the President whether
she had recovered sufficiently, Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed
impetuously:

“I am ready, I am ready! I am quite equal to answering you,” she added,
evidently still afraid that she would somehow be prevented from giving
evidence. She was asked to explain in detail what this letter was and
under what circumstances she received it.

“I received it the day before the crime was committed, but he wrote it
the day before that, at the tavern—that is, two days before he
committed the crime. Look, it is written on some sort of bill!” she
cried breathlessly. “He hated me at that time, because he had behaved
contemptibly and was running after that creature ... and because he
owed me that three thousand.... Oh! he was humiliated by that three
thousand on account of his own meanness! This is how it happened about
that three thousand. I beg you, I beseech you, to hear me. Three weeks
before he murdered his father, he came to me one morning. I knew he was
in want of money, and what he wanted it for. Yes, yes—to win that
creature and carry her off. I knew then that he had been false to me
and meant to abandon me, and it was I, I, who gave him that money, who
offered it to him on the pretext of his sending it to my sister in
Moscow. And as I gave it him, I looked him in the face and said that he
could send it when he liked, ‘in a month’s time would do.’ How, how
could he have failed to understand that I was practically telling him
to his face, ‘You want money to be false to me with your creature, so
here’s the money for you. I give it to you myself. Take it, if you have
so little honor as to take it!’ I wanted to prove what he was, and what
happened? He took it, he took it, and squandered it with that creature
in one night.... But he knew, he knew that I knew all about it. I
assure you he understood, too, that I gave him that money to test him,
to see whether he was so lost to all sense of honor as to take it from
me. I looked into his eyes and he looked into mine, and he understood
it all and he took it—he carried off my money!”

“That’s true, Katya,” Mitya roared suddenly, “I looked into your eyes
and I knew that you were dishonoring me, and yet I took your money.
Despise me as a scoundrel, despise me, all of you! I’ve deserved it!”

“Prisoner,” cried the President, “another word and I will order you to
be removed.”

“That money was a torment to him,” Katya went on with impulsive haste.
“He wanted to repay it me. He wanted to, that’s true; but he needed
money for that creature, too. So he murdered his father, but he didn’t
repay me, and went off with her to that village where he was arrested.
There, again, he squandered the money he had stolen after the murder of
his father. And a day before the murder he wrote me this letter. He was
drunk when he wrote it. I saw it at once, at the time. He wrote it from
spite, and feeling certain, positively certain, that I should never
show it to any one, even if he did kill him, or else he wouldn’t have
written it. For he knew I shouldn’t want to revenge myself and ruin
him! But read it, read it attentively—more attentively, please—and you
will see that he had described it all in his letter, all beforehand,
how he would kill his father and where his money was kept. Look,
please, don’t overlook that, there’s one phrase there, ‘I shall kill
him as soon as Ivan has gone away.’ So he thought it all out beforehand
how he would kill him,” Katerina Ivanovna pointed out to the court with
venomous and malignant triumph. Oh! it was clear she had studied every
line of that letter and detected every meaning underlining it. “If he
hadn’t been drunk, he wouldn’t have written to me; but, look,
everything is written there beforehand, just as he committed the murder
after. A complete program of it!” she exclaimed frantically.

She was reckless now of all consequences to herself, though, no doubt,
she had foreseen them even a month ago, for even then, perhaps, shaking
with anger, she had pondered whether to show it at the trial or not.
Now she had taken the fatal plunge. I remember that the letter was read
aloud by the clerk, directly afterwards, I believe. It made an
overwhelming impression. They asked Mitya whether he admitted having
written the letter.

“It’s mine, mine!” cried Mitya. “I shouldn’t have written it, if I
hadn’t been drunk!... We’ve hated each other for many things, Katya,
but I swear, I swear I loved you even while I hated you, and you didn’t
love me!”

He sank back on his seat, wringing his hands in despair. The prosecutor
and counsel for the defense began cross‐examining her, chiefly to
ascertain what had induced her to conceal such a document and to give
her evidence in quite a different tone and spirit just before.

“Yes, yes. I was telling lies just now. I was lying against my honor
and my conscience, but I wanted to save him, for he has hated and
despised me so!” Katya cried madly. “Oh, he has despised me horribly,
he has always despised me, and do you know, he has despised me from the
very moment that I bowed down to him for that money. I saw that.... I
felt it at once at the time, but for a long time I wouldn’t believe it.
How often I have read it in his eyes, ‘You came of yourself, though.’
Oh, he didn’t understand, he had no idea why I ran to him, he can
suspect nothing but baseness, he judged me by himself, he thought every
one was like himself!” Katya hissed furiously, in a perfect frenzy.
“And he only wanted to marry me, because I’d inherited a fortune,
because of that, because of that! I always suspected it was because of
that! Oh, he is a brute! He was always convinced that I should be
trembling with shame all my life before him, because I went to him
then, and that he had a right to despise me for ever for it, and so to
be superior to me—that’s why he wanted to marry me! That’s so, that’s
all so! I tried to conquer him by my love—a love that knew no bounds. I
even tried to forgive his faithlessness; but he understood nothing,
nothing! How could he understand indeed? He is a monster! I only
received that letter the next evening: it was brought me from the
tavern—and only that morning, only that morning I wanted to forgive him
everything, everything—even his treachery!”

The President and the prosecutor, of course, tried to calm her. I can’t
help thinking that they felt ashamed of taking advantage of her
hysteria and of listening to such avowals. I remember hearing them say
to her, “We understand how hard it is for you; be sure we are able to
feel for you,” and so on, and so on. And yet they dragged the evidence
out of the raving, hysterical woman. She described at last with
extraordinary clearness, which is so often seen, though only for a
moment, in such over‐wrought states, how Ivan had been nearly driven
out of his mind during the last two months trying to save “the monster
and murderer,” his brother.

“He tortured himself,” she exclaimed, “he was always trying to minimize
his brother’s guilt and confessing to me that he, too, had never loved
his father, and perhaps desired his death himself. Oh, he has a tender,
over‐ tender conscience! He tormented himself with his conscience! He
told me everything, everything! He came every day and talked to me as
his only friend. I have the honor to be his only friend!” she cried
suddenly with a sort of defiance, and her eyes flashed. “He had been
twice to see Smerdyakov. One day he came to me and said, ‘If it was not
my brother, but Smerdyakov committed the murder’ (for the legend was
circulating everywhere that Smerdyakov had done it), ‘perhaps I too am
guilty, for Smerdyakov knew I didn’t like my father and perhaps
believed that I desired my father’s death.’ Then I brought out that
letter and showed it him. He was entirely convinced that his brother
had done it, and he was overwhelmed by it. He couldn’t endure the
thought that his own brother was a parricide! Only a week ago I saw
that it was making him ill. During the last few days he has talked
incoherently in my presence. I saw his mind was giving way. He walked
about, raving; he was seen muttering in the streets. The doctor from
Moscow, at my request, examined him the day before yesterday and told
me that he was on the eve of brain fever—and all on his account, on
account of this monster! And last night he learnt that Smerdyakov was
dead! It was such a shock that it drove him out of his mind ... and all
through this monster, all for the sake of saving the monster!”

Oh, of course, such an outpouring, such an avowal is only possible once
in a lifetime—at the hour of death, for instance, on the way to the
scaffold! But it was in Katya’s character, and it was such a moment in
her life. It was the same impetuous Katya who had thrown herself on the
mercy of a young profligate to save her father; the same Katya who had
just before, in her pride and chastity, sacrificed herself and her
maidenly modesty before all these people, telling of Mitya’s generous
conduct, in the hope of softening his fate a little. And now, again,
she sacrificed herself; but this time it was for another, and perhaps
only now—perhaps only at this moment—she felt and knew how dear that
other was to her! She had sacrificed herself in terror for him,
conceiving all of a sudden that he had ruined himself by his confession
that it was he who had committed the murder, not his brother, she had
sacrificed herself to save him, to save his good name, his reputation!

And yet one terrible doubt occurred to one—was she lying in her
description of her former relations with Mitya?—that was the question.
No, she had not intentionally slandered him when she cried that Mitya
despised her for her bowing down to him! She believed it herself. She
had been firmly convinced, perhaps ever since that bow, that the
simple‐hearted Mitya, who even then adored her, was laughing at her and
despising her. She had loved him with an hysterical, “lacerated” love
only from pride, from wounded pride, and that love was not like love,
but more like revenge. Oh! perhaps that lacerated love would have grown
into real love, perhaps Katya longed for nothing more than that, but
Mitya’s faithlessness had wounded her to the bottom of her heart, and
her heart could not forgive him. The moment of revenge had come upon
her suddenly, and all that had been accumulating so long and so
painfully in the offended woman’s breast burst out all at once and
unexpectedly. She betrayed Mitya, but she betrayed herself, too. And no
sooner had she given full expression to her feelings than the tension
of course was over and she was overwhelmed with shame. Hysterics began
again: she fell on the floor, sobbing and screaming. She was carried
out. At that moment Grushenka, with a wail, rushed towards Mitya before
they had time to prevent her.

“Mitya,” she wailed, “your serpent has destroyed you! There, she has
shown you what she is!” she shouted to the judges, shaking with anger.
At a signal from the President they seized her and tried to remove her
from the court. She wouldn’t allow it. She fought and struggled to get
back to Mitya. Mitya uttered a cry and struggled to get to her. He was
overpowered.

Yes, I think the ladies who came to see the spectacle must have been
satisfied—the show had been a varied one. Then I remember the Moscow
doctor appeared on the scene. I believe the President had previously
sent the court usher to arrange for medical aid for Ivan. The doctor
announced to the court that the sick man was suffering from a dangerous
attack of brain fever, and that he must be at once removed. In answer
to questions from the prosecutor and the counsel for the defense he
said that the patient had come to him of his own accord the day before
yesterday and that he had warned him that he had such an attack coming
on, but he had not consented to be looked after. “He was certainly not
in a normal state of mind: he told me himself that he saw visions when
he was awake, that he met several persons in the street, who were dead,
and that Satan visited him every evening,” said the doctor, in
conclusion. Having given his evidence, the celebrated doctor withdrew.
The letter produced by Katerina Ivanovna was added to the material
proofs. After some deliberation, the judges decided to proceed with the
trial and to enter both the unexpected pieces of evidence (given by
Ivan and Katerina Ivanovna) on the protocol.

But I will not detail the evidence of the other witnesses, who only
repeated and confirmed what had been said before, though all with their
characteristic peculiarities. I repeat, all was brought together in the
prosecutor’s speech, which I shall quote immediately. Every one was
excited, every one was electrified by the late catastrophe, and all
were awaiting the speeches for the prosecution and the defense with
intense impatience. Fetyukovitch was obviously shaken by Katerina
Ivanovna’s evidence. But the prosecutor was triumphant. When all the
evidence had been taken, the court was adjourned for almost an hour. I
believe it was just eight o’clock when the President returned to his
seat and our prosecutor, Ippolit Kirillovitch, began his speech.




Chapter VI.
The Prosecutor’s Speech. Sketches Of Character


Ippolit Kirillovitch began his speech, trembling with nervousness, with
cold sweat on his forehead, feeling hot and cold all over by turns. He
described this himself afterwards. He regarded this speech as his
_chef‐d’œuvre_, the _chef‐d’œuvre_ of his whole life, as his swan‐song.
He died, it is true, nine months later of rapid consumption, so that he
had the right, as it turned out, to compare himself to a swan singing
his last song. He had put his whole heart and all the brain he had into
that speech. And poor Ippolit Kirillovitch unexpectedly revealed that
at least some feeling for the public welfare and “the eternal question”
lay concealed in him. Where his speech really excelled was in its
sincerity. He genuinely believed in the prisoner’s guilt; he was
accusing him not as an official duty only, and in calling for vengeance
he quivered with a genuine passion “for the security of society.” Even
the ladies in the audience, though they remained hostile to Ippolit
Kirillovitch, admitted that he made an extraordinary impression on
them. He began in a breaking voice, but it soon gained strength and
filled the court to the end of his speech. But as soon as he had
finished, he almost fainted.

“Gentlemen of the jury,” began the prosecutor, “this case has made a
stir throughout Russia. But what is there to wonder at, what is there
so peculiarly horrifying in it for us? We are so accustomed to such
crimes! That’s what’s so horrible, that such dark deeds have ceased to
horrify us. What ought to horrify us is that we are so accustomed to
it, and not this or that isolated crime. What are the causes of our
indifference, our lukewarm attitude to such deeds, to such signs of the
times, ominous of an unenviable future? Is it our cynicism, is it the
premature exhaustion of intellect and imagination in a society that is
sinking into decay, in spite of its youth? Is it that our moral
principles are shattered to their foundations, or is it, perhaps, a
complete lack of such principles among us? I cannot answer such
questions; nevertheless they are disturbing, and every citizen not only
must, but ought to be harassed by them. Our newborn and still timid
press has done good service to the public already, for without it we
should never have heard of the horrors of unbridled violence and moral
degradation which are continually made known by the press, not merely
to those who attend the new jury courts established in the present
reign, but to every one. And what do we read almost daily? Of things
beside which the present case grows pale, and seems almost commonplace.
But what is most important is that the majority of our national crimes
of violence bear witness to a widespread evil, now so general among us
that it is difficult to contend against it.

“One day we see a brilliant young officer of high society, at the very
outset of his career, in a cowardly underhand way, without a pang of
conscience, murdering an official who had once been his benefactor, and
the servant girl, to steal his own I.O.U. and what ready money he could
find on him; ‘it will come in handy for my pleasures in the fashionable
world and for my career in the future.’ After murdering them, he puts
pillows under the head of each of his victims; he goes away. Next, a
young hero ‘decorated for bravery’ kills the mother of his chief and
benefactor, like a highwayman, and to urge his companions to join him
he asserts that ‘she loves him like a son, and so will follow all his
directions and take no precautions.’ Granted that he is a monster, yet
I dare not say in these days that he is unique. Another man will not
commit the murder, but will feel and think like him, and is as
dishonorable in soul. In silence, alone with his conscience, he asks
himself perhaps, ‘What is honor, and isn’t the condemnation of
bloodshed a prejudice?’

“Perhaps people will cry out against me that I am morbid, hysterical,
that it is a monstrous slander, that I am exaggerating. Let them say
so—and heavens! I should be the first to rejoice if it were so! Oh,
don’t believe me, think of me as morbid, but remember my words; if only
a tenth, if only a twentieth part of what I say is true—even so it’s
awful! Look how our young people commit suicide, without asking
themselves Hamlet’s question what there is beyond, without a sign of
such a question, as though all that relates to the soul and to what
awaits us beyond the grave had long been erased in their minds and
buried under the sands. Look at our vice, at our profligates. Fyodor
Pavlovitch, the luckless victim in the present case, was almost an
innocent babe compared with many of them. And yet we all knew him, ‘he
lived among us!’...

“Yes, one day perhaps the leading intellects of Russia and of Europe
will study the psychology of Russian crime, for the subject is worth
it. But this study will come later, at leisure, when all the tragic
topsy‐turvydom of to‐day is farther behind us, so that it’s possible to
examine it with more insight and more impartiality than I can do. Now
we are either horrified or pretend to be horrified, though we really
gloat over the spectacle, and love strong and eccentric sensations
which tickle our cynical, pampered idleness. Or, like little children,
we brush the dreadful ghosts away and hide our heads in the pillow so
as to return to our sports and merriment as soon as they have vanished.
But we must one day begin life in sober earnest, we must look at
ourselves as a society; it’s time we tried to grasp something of our
social position, or at least to make a beginning in that direction.

“A great writer[9] of the last epoch, comparing Russia to a swift
troika galloping to an unknown goal, exclaims, ‘Oh, troika, birdlike
troika, who invented thee!’ and adds, in proud ecstasy, that all the
peoples of the world stand aside respectfully to make way for the
recklessly galloping troika to pass. That may be, they may stand aside,
respectfully or no, but in my poor opinion the great writer ended his
book in this way either in an access of childish and naïve optimism, or
simply in fear of the censorship of the day. For if the troika were
drawn by his heroes, Sobakevitch, Nozdryov, Tchitchikov, it could reach
no rational goal, whoever might be driving it. And those were the
heroes of an older generation, ours are worse specimens still....”

At this point Ippolit Kirillovitch’s speech was interrupted by
applause. The liberal significance of this simile was appreciated. The
applause was, it’s true, of brief duration, so that the President did
not think it necessary to caution the public, and only looked severely
in the direction of the offenders. But Ippolit Kirillovitch was
encouraged; he had never been applauded before! He had been all his
life unable to get a hearing, and now he suddenly had an opportunity of
securing the ear of all Russia.

“What, after all, is this Karamazov family, which has gained such an
unenviable notoriety throughout Russia?” he continued. “Perhaps I am
exaggerating, but it seems to me that certain fundamental features of
the educated class of to‐day are reflected in this family picture—only,
of course, in miniature, ‘like the sun in a drop of water.’ Think of
that unhappy, vicious, unbridled old man, who has met with such a
melancholy end, the head of a family! Beginning life of noble birth,
but in a poor dependent position, through an unexpected marriage he
came into a small fortune. A petty knave, a toady and buffoon, of
fairly good, though undeveloped, intelligence, he was, above all, a
moneylender, who grew bolder with growing prosperity. His abject and
servile characteristics disappeared, his malicious and sarcastic
cynicism was all that remained. On the spiritual side he was
undeveloped, while his vitality was excessive. He saw nothing in life
but sensual pleasure, and he brought his children up to be the same. He
had no feelings for his duties as a father. He ridiculed those duties.
He left his little children to the servants, and was glad to be rid of
them, forgot about them completely. The old man’s maxim was _Après moi
le déluge_. He was an example of everything that is opposed to civic
duty, of the most complete and malignant individualism. ‘The world may
burn for aught I care, so long as I am all right,’ and he was all
right; he was content, he was eager to go on living in the same way for
another twenty or thirty years. He swindled his own son and spent his
money, his maternal inheritance, on trying to get his mistress from
him. No, I don’t intend to leave the prisoner’s defense altogether to
my talented colleague from Petersburg. I will speak the truth myself, I
can well understand what resentment he had heaped up in his son’s heart
against him.

“But enough, enough of that unhappy old man; he has paid the penalty.
Let us remember, however, that he was a father, and one of the typical
fathers of to‐day. Am I unjust, indeed, in saying that he is typical of
many modern fathers? Alas! many of them only differ in not openly
professing such cynicism, for they are better educated, more cultured,
but their philosophy is essentially the same as his. Perhaps I am a
pessimist, but you have agreed to forgive me. Let us agree beforehand,
you need not believe me, but let me speak. Let me say what I have to
say, and remember something of my words.

“Now for the children of this father, this head of a family. One of
them is the prisoner before us, all the rest of my speech will deal
with him. Of the other two I will speak only cursorily.

“The elder is one of those modern young men of brilliant education and
vigorous intellect, who has lost all faith in everything. He has denied
and rejected much already, like his father. We have all heard him, he
was a welcome guest in local society. He never concealed his opinions,
quite the contrary in fact, which justifies me in speaking rather
openly of him now, of course, not as an individual, but as a member of
the Karamazov family. Another personage closely connected with the case
died here by his own hand last night. I mean an afflicted idiot,
formerly the servant, and possibly the illegitimate son, of Fyodor
Pavlovitch, Smerdyakov. At the preliminary inquiry, he told me with
hysterical tears how the young Ivan Karamazov had horrified him by his
spiritual audacity. ‘Everything in the world is lawful according to
him, and nothing must be forbidden in the future—that is what he always
taught me.’ I believe that idiot was driven out of his mind by this
theory, though, of course, the epileptic attacks from which he
suffered, and this terrible catastrophe, have helped to unhinge his
faculties. But he dropped one very interesting observation, which would
have done credit to a more intelligent observer, and that is, indeed,
why I’ve mentioned it: ‘If there is one of the sons that is like Fyodor
Pavlovitch in character, it is Ivan Fyodorovitch.’

“With that remark I conclude my sketch of his character, feeling it
indelicate to continue further. Oh, I don’t want to draw any further
conclusions and croak like a raven over the young man’s future. We’ve
seen to‐day in this court that there are still good impulses in his
young heart, that family feeling has not been destroyed in him by lack
of faith and cynicism, which have come to him rather by inheritance
than by the exercise of independent thought.

“Then the third son. Oh, he is a devout and modest youth, who does not
share his elder brother’s gloomy and destructive theory of life. He has
sought to cling to the ‘ideas of the people,’ or to what goes by that
name in some circles of our intellectual classes. He clung to the
monastery, and was within an ace of becoming a monk. He seems to me to
have betrayed unconsciously, and so early, that timid despair which
leads so many in our unhappy society, who dread cynicism and its
corrupting influences, and mistakenly attribute all the mischief to
European enlightenment, to return to their ‘native soil,’ as they say,
to the bosom, so to speak, of their mother earth, like frightened
children, yearning to fall asleep on the withered bosom of their
decrepit mother, and to sleep there for ever, only to escape the
horrors that terrify them.

“For my part I wish the excellent and gifted young man every success; I
trust that his youthful idealism and impulse towards the ideas of the
people may never degenerate, as often happens, on the moral side into
gloomy mysticism, and on the political into blind chauvinism—two
elements which are even a greater menace to Russia than the premature
decay, due to misunderstanding and gratuitous adoption of European
ideas, from which his elder brother is suffering.”

Two or three people clapped their hands at the mention of chauvinism
and mysticism. Ippolit Kirillovitch had been, indeed, carried away by
his own eloquence. All this had little to do with the case in hand, to
say nothing of the fact of its being somewhat vague, but the sickly and
consumptive man was overcome by the desire to express himself once in
his life. People said afterwards that he was actuated by unworthy
motives in his criticism of Ivan, because the latter had on one or two
occasions got the better of him in argument, and Ippolit Kirillovitch,
remembering it, tried now to take his revenge. But I don’t know whether
it was true. All this was only introductory, however, and the speech
passed to more direct consideration of the case.

“But to return to the eldest son,” Ippolit Kirillovitch went on. “He is
the prisoner before us. We have his life and his actions, too, before
us; the fatal day has come and all has been brought to the surface.
While his brothers seem to stand for ‘Europeanism’ and ‘the principles
of the people,’ he seems to represent Russia as she is. Oh, not all
Russia, not all! God preserve us, if it were! Yet, here we have her,
our mother Russia, the very scent and sound of her. Oh, he is
spontaneous, he is a marvelous mingling of good and evil, he is a lover
of culture and Schiller, yet he brawls in taverns and plucks out the
beards of his boon companions. Oh, he, too, can be good and noble, but
only when all goes well with him. What is more, he can be carried off
his feet, positively carried off his feet by noble ideals, but only if
they come of themselves, if they fall from heaven for him, if they need
not be paid for. He dislikes paying for anything, but is very fond of
receiving, and that’s so with him in everything. Oh, give him every
possible good in life (he couldn’t be content with less), and put no
obstacle in his way, and he will show that he, too, can be noble. He is
not greedy, no, but he must have money, a great deal of money, and you
will see how generously, with what scorn of filthy lucre, he will fling
it all away in the reckless dissipation of one night. But if he has not
money, he will show what he is ready to do to get it when he is in
great need of it. But all this later, let us take events in their
chronological order.

“First, we have before us a poor abandoned child, running about the
back‐ yard ‘without boots on his feet,’ as our worthy and esteemed
fellow citizen, of foreign origin, alas! expressed it just now. I
repeat it again, I yield to no one the defense of the criminal. I am
here to accuse him, but to defend him also. Yes, I, too, am human; I,
too, can weigh the influence of home and childhood on the character.
But the boy grows up and becomes an officer; for a duel and other
reckless conduct he is exiled to one of the remote frontier towns of
Russia. There he led a wild life as an officer. And, of course, he
needed money, money before all things, and so after prolonged disputes
he came to a settlement with his father, and the last six thousand was
sent him. A letter is in existence in which he practically gives up his
claim to the rest and settles his conflict with his father over the
inheritance on the payment of this six thousand.

“Then came his meeting with a young girl of lofty character and
brilliant education. Oh, I do not venture to repeat the details; you
have only just heard them. Honor, self‐sacrifice were shown there, and
I will be silent. The figure of the young officer, frivolous and
profligate, doing homage to true nobility and a lofty ideal, was shown
in a very sympathetic light before us. But the other side of the medal
was unexpectedly turned to us immediately after in this very court.
Again I will not venture to conjecture why it happened so, but there
were causes. The same lady, bathed in tears of long‐concealed
indignation, alleged that he, he of all men, had despised her for her
action, which, though incautious, reckless perhaps, was still dictated
by lofty and generous motives. He, he, the girl’s betrothed, looked at
her with that smile of mockery, which was more insufferable from him
than from any one. And knowing that he had already deceived her (he had
deceived her, believing that she was bound to endure everything from
him, even treachery), she intentionally offered him three thousand
roubles, and clearly, too clearly, let him understand that she was
offering him money to deceive her. ‘Well, will you take it or not, are
you so lost to shame?’ was the dumb question in her scrutinizing eyes.
He looked at her, saw clearly what was in her mind (he’s admitted here
before you that he understood it all), appropriated that three thousand
unconditionally, and squandered it in two days with the new object of
his affections.

“What are we to believe then? The first legend of the young officer
sacrificing his last farthing in a noble impulse of generosity and
doing reverence to virtue, or this other revolting picture? As a rule,
between two extremes one has to find the mean, but in the present case
this is not true. The probability is that in the first case he was
genuinely noble, and in the second as genuinely base. And why? Because
he was of the broad Karamazov character—that’s just what I am leading
up to—capable of combining the most incongruous contradictions, and
capable of the greatest heights and of the greatest depths. Remember
the brilliant remark made by a young observer who has seen the
Karamazov family at close quarters—Mr. Rakitin: ‘The sense of their own
degradation is as essential to those reckless, unbridled natures as the
sense of their lofty generosity.’ And that’s true, they need
continually this unnatural mixture. Two extremes at the same moment, or
they are miserable and dissatisfied and their existence is incomplete.
They are wide, wide as mother Russia; they include everything and put
up with everything.

“By the way, gentlemen of the jury, we’ve just touched upon that three
thousand roubles, and I will venture to anticipate things a little. Can
you conceive that a man like that, on receiving that sum and in such a
way, at the price of such shame, such disgrace, such utter degradation,
could have been capable that very day of setting apart half that sum,
that very day, and sewing it up in a little bag, and would have had the
firmness of character to carry it about with him for a whole month
afterwards, in spite of every temptation and his extreme need of it!
Neither in drunken debauchery in taverns, nor when he was flying into
the country, trying to get from God knows whom, the money so essential
to him to remove the object of his affections from being tempted by his
father, did he bring himself to touch that little bag! Why, if only to
avoid abandoning his mistress to the rival of whom he was so jealous,
he would have been certain to have opened that bag and to have stayed
at home to keep watch over her, and to await the moment when she would
say to him at last ‘I am yours,’ and to fly with her far from their
fatal surroundings.

“But no, he did not touch his talisman, and what is the reason he gives
for it? The chief reason, as I have just said, was that when she would
say, ‘I am yours, take me where you will,’ he might have the
wherewithal to take her. But that first reason, in the prisoner’s own
words, was of little weight beside the second. While I have that money
on me, he said, I am a scoundrel, not a thief, for I can always go to
my insulted betrothed, and, laying down half the sum I have
fraudulently appropriated, I can always say to her, ‘You see, I’ve
squandered half your money, and shown I am a weak and immoral man, and,
if you like, a scoundrel’ (I use the prisoner’s own expressions), ‘but
though I am a scoundrel, I am not a thief, for if I had been a thief, I
shouldn’t have brought you back this half of the money, but should have
taken it as I did the other half!’ A marvelous explanation! This
frantic, but weak man, who could not resist the temptation of accepting
the three thousand roubles at the price of such disgrace, this very man
suddenly develops the most stoical firmness, and carries about a
thousand roubles without daring to touch it. Does that fit in at all
with the character we have analyzed? No, and I venture to tell you how
the real Dmitri Karamazov would have behaved in such circumstances, if
he really had brought himself to put away the money.

“At the first temptation—for instance, to entertain the woman with whom
he had already squandered half the money—he would have unpicked his
little bag and have taken out some hundred roubles, for why should he
have taken back precisely half the money, that is, fifteen hundred
roubles? why not fourteen hundred? He could just as well have said then
that he was not a thief, because he brought back fourteen hundred
roubles. Then another time he would have unpicked it again and taken
out another hundred, and then a third, and then a fourth, and before
the end of the month he would have taken the last note but one, feeling
that if he took back only a hundred it would answer the purpose, for a
thief would have stolen it all. And then he would have looked at this
last note, and have said to himself, ‘It’s really not worth while to
give back one hundred; let’s spend that, too!’ That’s how the real
Dmitri Karamazov, as we know him, would have behaved. One cannot
imagine anything more incongruous with the actual fact than this legend
of the little bag. Nothing could be more inconceivable. But we shall
return to that later.”

After touching upon what had come out in the proceedings concerning the
financial relations of father and son, and arguing again and again that
it was utterly impossible, from the facts known, to determine which was
in the wrong, Ippolit Kirillovitch passed to the evidence of the
medical experts in reference to Mitya’s fixed idea about the three
thousand owing him.




Chapter VII.
An Historical Survey


“The medical experts have striven to convince us that the prisoner is
out of his mind and, in fact, a maniac. I maintain that he is in his
right mind, and that if he had not been, he would have behaved more
cleverly. As for his being a maniac, that I would agree with, but only
in one point, that is, his fixed idea about the three thousand. Yet I
think one might find a much simpler cause than his tendency to
insanity. For my part I agree thoroughly with the young doctor who
maintained that the prisoner’s mental faculties have always been
normal, and that he has only been irritable and exasperated. The object
of the prisoner’s continual and violent anger was not the sum itself;
there was a special motive at the bottom of it. That motive is
jealousy!”

Here Ippolit Kirillovitch described at length the prisoner’s fatal
passion for Grushenka. He began from the moment when the prisoner went
to the “young person’s” lodgings “to beat her”—“I use his own
expression,” the prosecutor explained—“but instead of beating her, he
remained there, at her feet. That was the beginning of the passion. At
the same time the prisoner’s father was captivated by the same young
person—a strange and fatal coincidence, for they both lost their hearts
to her simultaneously, though both had known her before. And she
inspired in both of them the most violent, characteristically Karamazov
passion. We have her own confession: ‘I was laughing at both of them.’
Yes, the sudden desire to make a jest of them came over her, and she
conquered both of them at once. The old man, who worshiped money, at
once set aside three thousand roubles as a reward for one visit from
her, but soon after that, he would have been happy to lay his property
and his name at her feet, if only she would become his lawful wife. We
have good evidence of this. As for the prisoner, the tragedy of his
fate is evident; it is before us. But such was the young person’s
‘game.’ The enchantress gave the unhappy young man no hope until the
last moment, when he knelt before her, stretching out hands that were
already stained with the blood of his father and rival. It was in that
position that he was arrested. ‘Send me to Siberia with him, I have
brought him to this, I am most to blame,’ the woman herself cried, in
genuine remorse at the moment of his arrest.

“The talented young man, to whom I have referred already, Mr. Rakitin,
characterized this heroine in brief and impressive terms: ‘She was
disillusioned early in life, deceived and ruined by a betrothed, who
seduced and abandoned her. She was left in poverty, cursed by her
respectable family, and taken under the protection of a wealthy old
man, whom she still, however, considers as her benefactor. There was
perhaps much that was good in her young heart, but it was embittered
too early. She became prudent and saved money. She grew sarcastic and
resentful against society.’ After this sketch of her character it may
well be understood that she might laugh at both of them simply from
mischief, from malice.

“After a month of hopeless love and moral degradation, during which he
betrayed his betrothed and appropriated money entrusted to his honor,
the prisoner was driven almost to frenzy, almost to madness by
continual jealousy—and of whom? His father! And the worst of it was
that the crazy old man was alluring and enticing the object of his
affection by means of that very three thousand roubles, which the son
looked upon as his own property, part of his inheritance from his
mother, of which his father was cheating him. Yes, I admit it was hard
to bear! It might well drive a man to madness. It was not the money,
but the fact that this money was used with such revolting cynicism to
ruin his happiness!”

Then the prosecutor went on to describe how the idea of murdering his
father had entered the prisoner’s head, and illustrated his theory with
facts.

“At first he only talked about it in taverns—he was talking about it
all that month. Ah, he likes being always surrounded with company, and
he likes to tell his companions everything, even his most diabolical
and dangerous ideas; he likes to share every thought with others, and
expects, for some reason, that those he confides in will meet him with
perfect sympathy, enter into all his troubles and anxieties, take his
part and not oppose him in anything. If not, he flies into a rage and
smashes up everything in the tavern. [Then followed the anecdote about
Captain Snegiryov.] Those who heard the prisoner began to think at last
that he might mean more than threats, and that such a frenzy might turn
threats into actions.”

Here the prosecutor described the meeting of the family at the
monastery, the conversations with Alyosha, and the horrible scene of
violence when the prisoner had rushed into his father’s house just
after dinner.

“I cannot positively assert,” the prosecutor continued, “that the
prisoner fully intended to murder his father before that incident. Yet
the idea had several times presented itself to him, and he had
deliberated on it—for that we have facts, witnesses, and his own words.
I confess, gentlemen of the jury,” he added, “that till to‐day I have
been uncertain whether to attribute to the prisoner conscious
premeditation. I was firmly convinced that he had pictured the fatal
moment beforehand, but had only pictured it, contemplating it as a
possibility. He had not definitely considered when and how he might
commit the crime.

“But I was only uncertain till to‐day, till that fatal document was
presented to the court just now. You yourselves heard that young lady’s
exclamation, ‘It is the plan, the program of the murder!’ That is how
she defined that miserable, drunken letter of the unhappy prisoner.
And, in fact, from that letter we see that the whole fact of the murder
was premeditated. It was written two days before, and so we know now
for a fact that, forty‐eight hours before the perpetration of his
terrible design, the prisoner swore that, if he could not get money
next day, he would murder his father in order to take the envelope with
the notes from under his pillow, as soon as Ivan had left. ‘As soon as
Ivan had gone away’—you hear that; so he had thought everything out,
weighing every circumstance, and he carried it all out just as he had
written it. The proof of premeditation is conclusive; the crime must
have been committed for the sake of the money, that is stated clearly,
that is written and signed. The prisoner does not deny his signature.

“I shall be told he was drunk when he wrote it. But that does not
diminish the value of the letter, quite the contrary; he wrote when
drunk what he had planned when sober. Had he not planned it when sober,
he would not have written it when drunk. I shall be asked: Then why did
he talk about it in taverns? A man who premeditates such a crime is
silent and keeps it to himself. Yes, but he talked about it before he
had formed a plan, when he had only the desire, only the impulse to it.
Afterwards he talked less about it. On the evening he wrote that letter
at the ‘Metropolis’ tavern, contrary to his custom he was silent,
though he had been drinking. He did not play billiards, he sat in a
corner, talked to no one. He did indeed turn a shopman out of his seat,
but that was done almost unconsciously, because he could never enter a
tavern without making a disturbance. It is true that after he had taken
the final decision, he must have felt apprehensive that he had talked
too much about his design beforehand, and that this might lead to his
arrest and prosecution afterwards. But there was nothing for it; he
could not take his words back, but his luck had served him before, it
would serve him again. He believed in his star, you know! I must
confess, too, that he did a great deal to avoid the fatal catastrophe.
‘To‐morrow I shall try and borrow the money from every one,’ as he
writes in his peculiar language, ‘and if they won’t give it to me,
there will be bloodshed.’ ”

Here Ippolit Kirillovitch passed to a detailed description of all
Mitya’s efforts to borrow the money. He described his visit to
Samsonov, his journey to Lyagavy. “Harassed, jeered at, hungry, after
selling his watch to pay for the journey (though he tells us he had
fifteen hundred roubles on him—a likely story), tortured by jealousy at
having left the object of his affections in the town, suspecting that
she would go to Fyodor Pavlovitch in his absence, he returned at last
to the town, to find, to his joy, that she had not been near his
father. He accompanied her himself to her protector. (Strange to say,
he doesn’t seem to have been jealous of Samsonov, which is
psychologically interesting.) Then he hastens back to his ambush in the
back gardens, and there learns that Smerdyakov is in a fit, that the
other servant is ill—the coast is clear and he knows the ‘signals’—what
a temptation! Still he resists it; he goes off to a lady who has for
some time been residing in the town, and who is highly esteemed among
us, Madame Hohlakov. That lady, who had long watched his career with
compassion, gave him the most judicious advice, to give up his
dissipated life, his unseemly love‐affair, the waste of his youth and
vigor in pot‐house debauchery, and to set off to Siberia to the gold‐
mines: ‘that would be an outlet for your turbulent energies, your
romantic character, your thirst for adventure.’ ”

After describing the result of this conversation and the moment when
the prisoner learnt that Grushenka had not remained at Samsonov’s, the
sudden frenzy of the luckless man worn out with jealousy and nervous
exhaustion, at the thought that she had deceived him and was now with
his father, Ippolit Kirillovitch concluded by dwelling upon the fatal
influence of chance. “Had the maid told him that her mistress was at
Mokroe with her former lover, nothing would have happened. But she lost
her head, she could only swear and protest her ignorance, and if the
prisoner did not kill her on the spot, it was only because he flew in
pursuit of his false mistress.

“But note, frantic as he was, he took with him a brass pestle. Why
that? Why not some other weapon? But since he had been contemplating
his plan and preparing himself for it for a whole month, he would
snatch up anything like a weapon that caught his eye. He had realized
for a month past that any object of the kind would serve as a weapon,
so he instantly, without hesitation, recognized that it would serve his
purpose. So it was by no means unconsciously, by no means
involuntarily, that he snatched up that fatal pestle. And then we find
him in his father’s garden—the coast is clear, there are no witnesses,
darkness and jealousy. The suspicion that she was there, with him, with
his rival, in his arms, and perhaps laughing at him at that moment—took
his breath away. And it was not mere suspicion, the deception was open,
obvious. She must be there, in that lighted room, she must be behind
the screen; and the unhappy man would have us believe that he stole up
to the window, peeped respectfully in, and discreetly withdrew, for
fear something terrible and immoral should happen. And he tries to
persuade us of that, us, who understand his character, who know his
state of mind at the moment, and that he knew the signals by which he
could at once enter the house.” At this point Ippolit Kirillovitch
broke off to discuss exhaustively the suspected connection of
Smerdyakov with the murder. He did this very circumstantially, and
every one realized that, although he professed to despise that
suspicion, he thought the subject of great importance.




Chapter VIII.
A Treatise On Smerdyakov


“To begin with, what was the source of this suspicion?” (Ippolit
Kirillovitch began.) “The first person who cried out that Smerdyakov
had committed the murder was the prisoner himself at the moment of his
arrest, yet from that time to this he had not brought forward a single
fact to confirm the charge, nor the faintest suggestion of a fact. The
charge is confirmed by three persons only—the two brothers of the
prisoner and Madame Svyetlov. The elder of these brothers expressed his
suspicions only to‐day, when he was undoubtedly suffering from brain
fever. But we know that for the last two months he has completely
shared our conviction of his brother’s guilt and did not attempt to
combat that idea. But of that later. The younger brother has admitted
that he has not the slightest fact to support his notion of
Smerdyakov’s guilt, and has only been led to that conclusion from the
prisoner’s own words and the expression of his face. Yes, that
astounding piece of evidence has been brought forward twice to‐ day by
him. Madame Svyetlov was even more astounding. ‘What the prisoner tells
you, you must believe; he is not a man to tell a lie.’ That is all the
evidence against Smerdyakov produced by these three persons, who are
all deeply concerned in the prisoner’s fate. And yet the theory of
Smerdyakov’s guilt has been noised about, has been and is still
maintained. Is it credible? Is it conceivable?”

Here Ippolit Kirillovitch thought it necessary to describe the
personality of Smerdyakov, “who had cut short his life in a fit of
insanity.” He depicted him as a man of weak intellect, with a
smattering of education, who had been thrown off his balance by
philosophical ideas above his level and certain modern theories of
duty, which he learnt in practice from the reckless life of his master,
who was also perhaps his father—Fyodor Pavlovitch; and, theoretically,
from various strange philosophical conversations with his master’s
elder son, Ivan Fyodorovitch, who readily indulged in this diversion,
probably feeling dull or wishing to amuse himself at the valet’s
expense. “He spoke to me himself of his spiritual condition during the
last few days at his father’s house,” Ippolit Kirillovitch explained;
“but others too have borne witness to it—the prisoner himself, his
brother, and the servant Grigory—that is, all who knew him well.

“Moreover, Smerdyakov, whose health was shaken by his attacks of
epilepsy, had not the courage of a chicken. ‘He fell at my feet and
kissed them,’ the prisoner himself has told us, before he realized how
damaging such a statement was to himself. ‘He is an epileptic chicken,’
he declared about him in his characteristic language. And the prisoner
chose him for his confidant (we have his own word for it) and he
frightened him into consenting at last to act as a spy for him. In that
capacity he deceived his master, revealing to the prisoner the
existence of the envelope with the notes in it and the signals by means
of which he could get into the house. How could he help telling him,
indeed? ‘He would have killed me, I could see that he would have killed
me,’ he said at the inquiry, trembling and shaking even before us,
though his tormentor was by that time arrested and could do him no
harm. ‘He suspected me at every instant. In fear and trembling I
hastened to tell him every secret to pacify him, that he might see that
I had not deceived him and let me off alive.’ Those are his own words.
I wrote them down and I remember them. ‘When he began shouting at me, I
would fall on my knees.’

“He was naturally very honest and enjoyed the complete confidence of
his master, ever since he had restored him some money he had lost. So
it may be supposed that the poor fellow suffered pangs of remorse at
having deceived his master, whom he loved as his benefactor. Persons
severely afflicted with epilepsy are, so the most skillful doctors tell
us, always prone to continual and morbid self‐reproach. They worry over
their ‘wickedness,’ they are tormented by pangs of conscience, often
entirely without cause; they exaggerate and often invent all sorts of
faults and crimes. And here we have a man of that type who had really
been driven to wrong‐doing by terror and intimidation.

“He had, besides, a strong presentiment that something terrible would
be the outcome of the situation that was developing before his eyes.
When Ivan Fyodorovitch was leaving for Moscow, just before the
catastrophe, Smerdyakov besought him to remain, though he was too timid
to tell him plainly what he feared. He confined himself to hints, but
his hints were not understood.

“It must be observed that he looked on Ivan Fyodorovitch as a
protector, whose presence in the house was a guarantee that no harm
would come to pass. Remember the phrase in Dmitri Karamazov’s drunken
letter, ‘I shall kill the old man, if only Ivan goes away.’ So Ivan
Fyodorovitch’s presence seemed to every one a guarantee of peace and
order in the house.

“But he went away, and within an hour of his young master’s departure
Smerdyakov was taken with an epileptic fit. But that’s perfectly
intelligible. Here I must mention that Smerdyakov, oppressed by terror
and despair of a sort, had felt during those last few days that one of
the fits from which he had suffered before at moments of strain, might
be coming upon him again. The day and hour of such an attack cannot, of
course, be foreseen, but every epileptic can feel beforehand that he is
likely to have one. So the doctors tell us. And so, as soon as Ivan
Fyodorovitch had driven out of the yard, Smerdyakov, depressed by his
lonely and unprotected position, went to the cellar. He went down the
stairs wondering if he would have a fit or not, and what if it were to
come upon him at once. And that very apprehension, that very wonder,
brought on the spasm in his throat that always precedes such attacks,
and he fell unconscious into the cellar. And in this perfectly natural
occurrence people try to detect a suspicion, a hint that he was
shamming an attack _on purpose_. But, if it were on purpose, the
question arises at once, what was his motive? What was he reckoning on?
What was he aiming at? I say nothing about medicine: science, I am
told, may go astray: the doctors were not able to discriminate between
the counterfeit and the real. That may be so, but answer me one
question: what motive had he for such a counterfeit? Could he, had he
been plotting the murder, have desired to attract the attention of the
household by having a fit just before?

“You see, gentlemen of the jury, on the night of the murder, there were
five persons in Fyodor Pavlovitch’s—Fyodor Pavlovitch himself (but he
did not kill himself, that’s evident); then his servant, Grigory, but
he was almost killed himself; the third person was Grigory’s wife,
Marfa Ignatyevna, but it would be simply shameful to imagine her
murdering her master. Two persons are left—the prisoner and Smerdyakov.
But, if we are to believe the prisoner’s statement that he is not the
murderer, then Smerdyakov must have been, for there is no other
alternative, no one else can be found. That is what accounts for the
artful, astounding accusation against the unhappy idiot who committed
suicide yesterday. Had a shadow of suspicion rested on any one else,
had there been any sixth person, I am persuaded that even the prisoner
would have been ashamed to accuse Smerdyakov, and would have accused
that sixth person, for to charge Smerdyakov with that murder is
perfectly absurd.

“Gentlemen, let us lay aside psychology, let us lay aside medicine, let
us even lay aside logic, let us turn only to the facts and see what the
facts tell us. If Smerdyakov killed him, how did he do it? Alone or
with the assistance of the prisoner? Let us consider the first
alternative—that he did it alone. If he had killed him it must have
been with some object, for some advantage to himself. But not having a
shadow of the motive that the prisoner had for the murder—hatred,
jealousy, and so on—Smerdyakov could only have murdered him for the
sake of gain, in order to appropriate the three thousand roubles he had
seen his master put in the envelope. And yet he tells another
person—and a person most closely interested, that is, the
prisoner—everything about the money and the signals, where the envelope
lay, what was written on it, what it was tied up with, and, above all,
told him of those signals by which he could enter the house. Did he do
this simply to betray himself, or to invite to the same enterprise one
who would be anxious to get that envelope for himself? ‘Yes,’ I shall
be told, ‘but he betrayed it from fear.’ But how do you explain this? A
man who could conceive such an audacious, savage act, and carry it out,
tells facts which are known to no one else in the world, and which, if
he held his tongue, no one would ever have guessed!

“No, however cowardly he might be, if he had plotted such a crime,
nothing would have induced him to tell any one about the envelope and
the signals, for that was as good as betraying himself beforehand. He
would have invented something, he would have told some lie if he had
been forced to give information, but he would have been silent about
that. For, on the other hand, if he had said nothing about the money,
but had committed the murder and stolen the money, no one in the world
could have charged him with murder for the sake of robbery, since no
one but he had seen the money, no one but he knew of its existence in
the house. Even if he had been accused of the murder, it could only
have been thought that he had committed it from some other motive. But
since no one had observed any such motive in him beforehand, and every
one saw, on the contrary, that his master was fond of him and honored
him with his confidence, he would, of course, have been the last to be
suspected. People would have suspected first the man who had a motive,
a man who had himself declared he had such motives, who had made no
secret of it; they would, in fact, have suspected the son of the
murdered man, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. Had Smerdyakov killed and robbed
him, and the son been accused of it, that would, of course, have suited
Smerdyakov. Yet are we to believe that, though plotting the murder, he
told that son, Dmitri, about the money, the envelope, and the signals?
Is that logical? Is that clear?

“When the day of the murder planned by Smerdyakov came, we have him
falling downstairs in a _feigned_ fit—with what object? In the first
place that Grigory, who had been intending to take his medicine, might
put it off and remain on guard, seeing there was no one to look after
the house, and, in the second place, I suppose, that his master seeing
that there was no one to guard him, and in terror of a visit from his
son, might redouble his vigilance and precaution. And, most of all, I
suppose that he, Smerdyakov, disabled by the fit, might be carried from
the kitchen, where he always slept, apart from all the rest, and where
he could go in and out as he liked, to Grigory’s room at the other end
of the lodge, where he was always put, shut off by a screen three paces
from their own bed. This was the immemorial custom established by his
master and the kind‐hearted Marfa Ignatyevna, whenever he had a fit.
There, lying behind the screen, he would most likely, to keep up the
sham, have begun groaning, and so keeping them awake all night (as
Grigory and his wife testified). And all this, we are to believe, that
he might more conveniently get up and murder his master!

“But I shall be told that he shammed illness on purpose that he might
not be suspected and that he told the prisoner of the money and the
signals to tempt him to commit the murder, and when he had murdered him
and had gone away with the money, making a noise, most likely, and
waking people, Smerdyakov got up, am I to believe, and went in—what
for? To murder his master a second time and carry off the money that
had already been stolen? Gentlemen, are you laughing? I am ashamed to
put forward such suggestions, but, incredible as it seems, that’s just
what the prisoner alleges. When he had left the house, had knocked
Grigory down and raised an alarm, he tells us Smerdyakov got up, went
in and murdered his master and stole the money! I won’t press the point
that Smerdyakov could hardly have reckoned on this beforehand, and have
foreseen that the furious and exasperated son would simply come to peep
in respectfully, though he knew the signals, and beat a retreat,
leaving Smerdyakov his booty. Gentlemen of the jury, I put this
question to you in earnest; when was the moment when Smerdyakov could
have committed his crime? Name that moment, or you can’t accuse him.

“But, perhaps, the fit was a real one, the sick man suddenly recovered,
heard a shout, and went out. Well—what then? He looked about him and
said, ‘Why not go and kill the master?’ And how did he know what had
happened, since he had been lying unconscious till that moment? But
there’s a limit to these flights of fancy.

“ ‘Quite so,’ some astute people will tell me, ‘but what if they were
in agreement? What if they murdered him together and shared the
money—what then?’ A weighty question, truly! And the facts to confirm
it are astounding. One commits the murder and takes all the trouble
while his accomplice lies on one side shamming a fit, apparently to
arouse suspicion in every one, alarm in his master and alarm in
Grigory. It would be interesting to know what motives could have
induced the two accomplices to form such an insane plan.

“But perhaps it was not a case of active complicity on Smerdyakov’s
part, but only of passive acquiescence; perhaps Smerdyakov was
intimidated and agreed not to prevent the murder, and foreseeing that
he would be blamed for letting his master be murdered, without
screaming for help or resisting, he may have obtained permission from
Dmitri Karamazov to get out of the way by shamming a fit—‘you may
murder him as you like; it’s nothing to me.’ But as this attack of
Smerdyakov’s was bound to throw the household into confusion, Dmitri
Karamazov could never have agreed to such a plan. I will waive that
point however. Supposing that he did agree, it would still follow that
Dmitri Karamazov is the murderer and the instigator, and Smerdyakov is
only a passive accomplice, and not even an accomplice, but merely
acquiesced against his will through terror.

“But what do we see? As soon as he is arrested the prisoner instantly
throws all the blame on Smerdyakov, not accusing him of being his
accomplice, but of being himself the murderer. ‘He did it alone,’ he
says. ‘He murdered and robbed him. It was the work of his hands.’
Strange sort of accomplices who begin to accuse one another at once!
And think of the risk for Karamazov. After committing the murder while
his accomplice lay in bed, he throws the blame on the invalid, who
might well have resented it and in self‐preservation might well have
confessed the truth. For he might well have seen that the court would
at once judge how far he was responsible, and so he might well have
reckoned that if he were punished, it would be far less severely than
the real murderer. But in that case he would have been certain to make
a confession, yet he has not done so. Smerdyakov never hinted at their
complicity, though the actual murderer persisted in accusing him and
declaring that he had committed the crime alone.

“What’s more, Smerdyakov at the inquiry volunteered the statement that
it was _he_ who had told the prisoner of the envelope of notes and of
the signals, and that, but for him, he would have known nothing about
them. If he had really been a guilty accomplice, would he so readily
have made this statement at the inquiry? On the contrary, he would have
tried to conceal it, to distort the facts or minimize them. But he was
far from distorting or minimizing them. No one but an innocent man, who
had no fear of being charged with complicity, could have acted as he
did. And in a fit of melancholy arising from his disease and this
catastrophe he hanged himself yesterday. He left a note written in his
peculiar language, ‘I destroy myself of my own will and inclination so
as to throw no blame on any one.’ What would it have cost him to add:
‘I am the murderer, not Karamazov’? But that he did not add. Did his
conscience lead him to suicide and not to avowing his guilt?

“And what followed? Notes for three thousand roubles were brought into
the court just now, and we were told that they were the same that lay
in the envelope now on the table before us, and that the witness had
received them from Smerdyakov the day before. But I need not recall the
painful scene, though I will make one or two comments, selecting such
trivial ones as might not be obvious at first sight to every one, and
so may be overlooked. In the first place, Smerdyakov must have given
back the money and hanged himself yesterday from remorse. And only
yesterday he confessed his guilt to Ivan Karamazov, as the latter
informs us. If it were not so, indeed, why should Ivan Fyodorovitch
have kept silence till now? And so, if he has confessed, then why, I
ask again, did he not avow the whole truth in the last letter he left
behind, knowing that the innocent prisoner had to face this terrible
ordeal the next day?

“The money alone is no proof. A week ago, quite by chance, the fact
came to the knowledge of myself and two other persons in this court
that Ivan Fyodorovitch had sent two five per cent. coupons of five
thousand each—that is, ten thousand in all—to the chief town of the
province to be changed. I only mention this to point out that any one
may have money, and that it can’t be proved that these notes are the
same as were in Fyodor Pavlovitch’s envelope.

“Ivan Karamazov, after receiving yesterday a communication of such
importance from the real murderer, did not stir. Why didn’t he report
it at once? Why did he put it all off till morning? I think I have a
right to conjecture why. His health had been giving way for a week
past: he had admitted to a doctor and to his most intimate friends that
he was suffering from hallucinations and seeing phantoms of the dead:
he was on the eve of the attack of brain fever by which he has been
stricken down to‐day. In this condition he suddenly heard of
Smerdyakov’s death, and at once reflected, ‘The man is dead, I can
throw the blame on him and save my brother. I have money. I will take a
roll of notes and say that Smerdyakov gave them me before his death.’
You will say that was dishonorable: it’s dishonorable to slander even
the dead, and even to save a brother. True, but what if he slandered
him unconsciously? What if, finally unhinged by the sudden news of the
valet’s death, he imagined it really was so? You saw the recent scene:
you have seen the witness’s condition. He was standing up and was
speaking, but where was his mind?

“Then followed the document, the prisoner’s letter written two days
before the crime, and containing a complete program of the murder. Why,
then, are we looking for any other program? The crime was committed
precisely according to this program, and by no other than the writer of
it. Yes, gentlemen of the jury, it went off without a hitch! He did not
run respectfully and timidly away from his father’s window, though he
was firmly convinced that the object of his affections was with him.
No, that is absurd and unlikely! He went in and murdered him. Most
likely he killed him in anger, burning with resentment, as soon as he
looked on his hated rival. But having killed him, probably with one
blow of the brass pestle, and having convinced himself, after careful
search, that she was not there, he did not, however, forget to put his
hand under the pillow and take out the envelope, the torn cover of
which lies now on the table before us.

“I mention this fact that you may note one, to my thinking, very
characteristic circumstance. Had he been an experienced murderer and
had he committed the murder for the sake of gain only, would he have
left the torn envelope on the floor as it was found, beside the corpse?
Had it been Smerdyakov, for instance, murdering his master to rob him,
he would have simply carried away the envelope with him, without
troubling himself to open it over his victim’s corpse, for he would
have known for certain that the notes were in the envelope—they had
been put in and sealed up in his presence—and had he taken the envelope
with him, no one would ever have known of the robbery. I ask you,
gentlemen, would Smerdyakov have behaved in that way? Would he have
left the envelope on the floor?

“No, this was the action of a frantic murderer, a murderer who was not
a thief and had never stolen before that day, who snatched the notes
from under the pillow, not like a thief stealing them, but as though
seizing his own property from the thief who had stolen it. For that was
the idea which had become almost an insane obsession in Dmitri
Karamazov in regard to that money. And pouncing upon the envelope,
which he had never seen before, he tore it open to make sure whether
the money was in it, and ran away with the money in his pocket, even
forgetting to consider that he had left an astounding piece of evidence
against himself in that torn envelope on the floor. All because it was
Karamazov, not Smerdyakov, he didn’t think, he didn’t reflect, and how
should he? He ran away; he heard behind him the servant cry out; the
old man caught him, stopped him and was felled to the ground by the
brass pestle.

“The prisoner, moved by pity, leapt down to look at him. Would you
believe it, he tells us that he leapt down out of pity, out of
compassion, to see whether he could do anything for him. Was that a
moment to show compassion? No; he jumped down simply to make certain
whether the only witness of his crime were dead or alive. Any other
feeling, any other motive would be unnatural. Note that he took trouble
over Grigory, wiped his head with his handkerchief and, convincing
himself he was dead, he ran to the house of his mistress, dazed and
covered with blood. How was it he never thought that he was covered
with blood and would be at once detected? But the prisoner himself
assures us that he did not even notice that he was covered with blood.
That may be believed, that is very possible, that always happens at
such moments with criminals. On one point they will show diabolical
cunning, while another will escape them altogether. But he was thinking
at that moment of one thing only—where was _she_? He wanted to find out
at once where she was, so he ran to her lodging and learnt an
unexpected and astounding piece of news—she had gone off to Mokroe to
meet her first lover.”




Chapter IX.
The Galloping Troika. The End Of The Prosecutor’s Speech.


Ippolit Kirillovitch had chosen the historical method of exposition,
beloved by all nervous orators, who find in its limitation a check on
their own eager rhetoric. At this moment in his speech he went off into
a dissertation on Grushenka’s “first lover,” and brought forward
several interesting thoughts on this theme.

“Karamazov, who had been frantically jealous of every one, collapsed,
so to speak, and effaced himself at once before this first lover. What
makes it all the more strange is that he seems to have hardly thought
of this formidable rival. But he had looked upon him as a remote
danger, and Karamazov always lives in the present. Possibly he regarded
him as a fiction. But his wounded heart grasped instantly that the
woman had been concealing this new rival and deceiving him, because he
was anything but a fiction to her, because he was the one hope of her
life. Grasping this instantly, he resigned himself.

“Gentlemen of the jury, I cannot help dwelling on this unexpected trait
in the prisoner’s character. He suddenly evinces an irresistible desire
for justice, a respect for woman and a recognition of her right to
love. And all this at the very moment when he had stained his hands
with his father’s blood for her sake! It is true that the blood he had
shed was already crying out for vengeance, for, after having ruined his
soul and his life in this world, he was forced to ask himself at that
same instant what he was and what he could be now to her, to that
being, dearer to him than his own soul, in comparison with that former
lover who had returned penitent, with new love, to the woman he had
once betrayed, with honorable offers, with the promise of a reformed
and happy life. And he, luckless man, what could he give her now, what
could he offer her?

“Karamazov felt all this, knew that all ways were barred to him by his
crime and that he was a criminal under sentence, and not a man with
life before him! This thought crushed him. And so he instantly flew to
one frantic plan, which, to a man of Karamazov’s character, must have
appeared the one inevitable way out of his terrible position. That way
out was suicide. He ran for the pistols he had left in pledge with his
friend Perhotin and on the way, as he ran, he pulled out of his pocket
the money, for the sake of which he had stained his hands with his
father’s gore. Oh, now he needed money more than ever. Karamazov would
die, Karamazov would shoot himself and it should be remembered! To be
sure, he was a poet and had burnt the candle at both ends all his life.
‘To her, to her! and there, oh, there I will give a feast to the whole
world, such as never was before, that will be remembered and talked of
long after! In the midst of shouts of wild merriment, reckless gypsy
songs and dances I shall raise the glass and drink to the woman I adore
and her new‐found happiness! And then, on the spot, at her feet, I
shall dash out my brains before her and punish myself! She will
remember Mitya Karamazov sometimes, she will see how Mitya loved her,
she will feel for Mitya!’

“Here we see in excess a love of effect, a romantic despair and
sentimentality, and the wild recklessness of the Karamazovs. Yes, but
there is something else, gentlemen of the jury, something that cries
out in the soul, throbs incessantly in the mind, and poisons the heart
unto death—that _something_ is conscience, gentlemen of the jury, its
judgment, its terrible torments! The pistol will settle everything, the
pistol is the only way out! But _beyond_—I don’t know whether Karamazov
wondered at that moment ‘What lies beyond,’ and whether Karamazov
could, like Hamlet, wonder ‘What lies beyond.’ No, gentlemen of the
jury, they have their Hamlets, but we still have our Karamazovs!”

Here Ippolit Kirillovitch drew a minute picture of Mitya’s
preparations, the scene at Perhotin’s, at the shop, with the drivers.
He quoted numerous words and actions, confirmed by witnesses, and the
picture made a terrible impression on the audience. The guilt of this
harassed and desperate man stood out clear and convincing, when the
facts were brought together.

“What need had he of precaution? Two or three times he almost
confessed, hinted at it, all but spoke out.” (Then followed the
evidence given by witnesses.) “He even cried out to the peasant who
drove him, ‘Do you know, you are driving a murderer!’ But it was
impossible for him to speak out, he had to get to Mokroe and there to
finish his romance. But what was awaiting the luckless man? Almost from
the first minute at Mokroe he saw that his invincible rival was perhaps
by no means so invincible, that the toast to their new‐found happiness
was not desired and would not be acceptable. But you know the facts,
gentlemen of the jury, from the preliminary inquiry. Karamazov’s
triumph over his rival was complete and his soul passed into quite a
new phase, perhaps the most terrible phase through which his soul has
passed or will pass.

“One may say with certainty, gentlemen of the jury,” the prosecutor
continued, “that outraged nature and the criminal heart bring their own
vengeance more completely than any earthly justice. What’s more,
justice and punishment on earth positively alleviate the punishment of
nature and are, indeed, essential to the soul of the criminal at such
moments, as its salvation from despair. For I cannot imagine the horror
and moral suffering of Karamazov when he learnt that she loved him,
that for his sake she had rejected her first lover, that she was
summoning him, Mitya, to a new life, that she was promising him
happiness—and when? When everything was over for him and nothing was
possible!

“By the way, I will note in parenthesis a point of importance for the
light it throws on the prisoner’s position at the moment. This woman,
this love of his, had been till the last moment, till the very instant
of his arrest, a being unattainable, passionately desired by him but
unattainable. Yet why did he not shoot himself then, why did he
relinquish his design and even forget where his pistol was? It was just
that passionate desire for love and the hope of satisfying it that
restrained him. Throughout their revels he kept close to his adored
mistress, who was at the banquet with him and was more charming and
fascinating to him than ever—he did not leave her side, abasing himself
in his homage before her.

“His passion might well, for a moment, stifle not only the fear of
arrest, but even the torments of conscience. For a moment, oh, only for
a moment! I can picture the state of mind of the criminal hopelessly
enslaved by these influences—first, the influence of drink, of noise
and excitement, of the thud of the dance and the scream of the song,
and of her, flushed with wine, singing and dancing and laughing to him!
Secondly, the hope in the background that the fatal end might still be
far off, that not till next morning, at least, they would come and take
him. So he had a few hours and that’s much, very much! In a few hours
one can think of many things. I imagine that he felt something like
what criminals feel when they are being taken to the scaffold. They
have another long, long street to pass down and at walking pace, past
thousands of people. Then there will be a turning into another street
and only at the end of that street the dread place of execution! I
fancy that at the beginning of the journey the condemned man, sitting
on his shameful cart, must feel that he has infinite life still before
him. The houses recede, the cart moves on—oh, that’s nothing, it’s
still far to the turning into the second street and he still looks
boldly to right and to left at those thousands of callously curious
people with their eyes fixed on him, and he still fancies that he is
just such a man as they. But now the turning comes to the next street.
Oh, that’s nothing, nothing, there’s still a whole street before him,
and however many houses have been passed, he will still think there are
many left. And so to the very end, to the very scaffold.

“This I imagine is how it was with Karamazov then. ‘They’ve not had
time yet,’ he must have thought, ‘I may still find some way out, oh,
there’s still time to make some plan of defense, and now, now—she is so
fascinating!’

“His soul was full of confusion and dread, but he managed, however, to
put aside half his money and hide it somewhere—I cannot otherwise
explain the disappearance of quite half of the three thousand he had
just taken from his father’s pillow. He had been in Mokroe more than
once before, he had caroused there for two days together already, he
knew the old big house with all its passages and outbuildings. I
imagine that part of the money was hidden in that house, not long
before the arrest, in some crevice, under some floor, in some corner,
under the roof. With what object? I shall be asked. Why, the
catastrophe may take place at once, of course; he hadn’t yet considered
how to meet it, he hadn’t the time, his head was throbbing and his
heart was with _her_, but money—money was indispensable in any case!
With money a man is always a man. Perhaps such foresight at such a
moment may strike you as unnatural? But he assures us himself that a
month before, at a critical and exciting moment, he had halved his
money and sewn it up in a little bag. And though that was not true, as
we shall prove directly, it shows the idea was a familiar one to
Karamazov, he had contemplated it. What’s more, when he declared at the
inquiry that he had put fifteen hundred roubles in a bag (which never
existed) he may have invented that little bag on the inspiration of the
moment, because he had two hours before divided his money and hidden
half of it at Mokroe till morning, in case of emergency, simply not to
have it on himself. Two extremes, gentlemen of the jury, remember that
Karamazov can contemplate two extremes and both at once.

“We have looked in the house, but we haven’t found the money. It may
still be there or it may have disappeared next day and be in the
prisoner’s hands now. In any case he was at her side, on his knees
before her, she was lying on the bed, he had his hands stretched out to
her and he had so entirely forgotten everything that he did not even
hear the men coming to arrest him. He hadn’t time to prepare any line
of defense in his mind. He was caught unawares and confronted with his
judges, the arbiters of his destiny.

“Gentlemen of the jury, there are moments in the execution of our
duties when it is terrible for us to face a man, terrible on his
account, too! The moments of contemplating that animal fear, when the
criminal sees that all is lost, but still struggles, still means to
struggle, the moments when every instinct of self‐preservation rises up
in him at once and he looks at you with questioning and suffering eyes,
studies you, your face, your thoughts, uncertain on which side you will
strike, and his distracted mind frames thousands of plans in an
instant, but he is still afraid to speak, afraid of giving himself
away! This purgatory of the spirit, this animal thirst for
self‐preservation, these humiliating moments of the human soul, are
awful, and sometimes arouse horror and compassion for the criminal even
in the lawyer. And this was what we all witnessed then.

“At first he was thunderstruck and in his terror dropped some very
compromising phrases. ‘Blood! I’ve deserved it!’ But he quickly
restrained himself. He had not prepared what he was to say, what answer
he was to make, he had nothing but a bare denial ready. ‘I am not
guilty of my father’s death.’ That was his fence for the moment and
behind it he hoped to throw up a barricade of some sort. His first
compromising exclamations he hastened to explain by declaring that he
was responsible for the death of the servant Grigory only. ‘Of that
bloodshed I am guilty, but who has killed my father, gentlemen, who has
killed him? Who can have killed him, _if not I_?’ Do you hear, he asked
us that, us, who had come to ask him that question! Do you hear that
phrase uttered with such premature haste—‘if not I’—the animal cunning,
the naïveté, the Karamazov impatience of it? ‘I didn’t kill him and you
mustn’t think I did! I wanted to kill him, gentlemen, I wanted to kill
him,’ he hastens to admit (he was in a hurry, in a terrible hurry),
‘but still I am not guilty, it is not I murdered him.’ He concedes to
us that he wanted to murder him, as though to say, you can see for
yourselves how truthful I am, so you’ll believe all the sooner that I
didn’t murder him. Oh, in such cases the criminal is often amazingly
shallow and credulous.

“At that point one of the lawyers asked him, as it were incidentally,
the most simple question, ‘Wasn’t it Smerdyakov killed him?’ Then, as
we expected, he was horribly angry at our having anticipated him and
caught him unawares, before he had time to pave the way to choose and
snatch the moment when it would be most natural to bring in
Smerdyakov’s name. He rushed at once to the other extreme, as he always
does, and began to assure us that Smerdyakov could not have killed him,
was not capable of it. But don’t believe him, that was only his
cunning; he didn’t really give up the idea of Smerdyakov; on the
contrary, he meant to bring him forward again; for, indeed, he had no
one else to bring forward, but he would do that later, because for the
moment that line was spoiled for him. He would bring him forward
perhaps next day, or even a few days later, choosing an opportunity to
cry out to us, ‘You know I was more skeptical about Smerdyakov than
you, you remember that yourselves, but now I am convinced. He killed
him, he must have done!’ And for the present he falls back upon a
gloomy and irritable denial. Impatience and anger prompted him,
however, to the most inept and incredible explanation of how he looked
into his father’s window and how he respectfully withdrew. The worst of
it was that he was unaware of the position of affairs, of the evidence
given by Grigory.

“We proceeded to search him. The search angered, but encouraged him,
the whole three thousand had not been found on him, only half of it.
And no doubt only at that moment of angry silence, the fiction of the
little bag first occurred to him. No doubt he was conscious himself of
the improbability of the story and strove painfully to make it sound
more likely, to weave it into a romance that would sound plausible. In
such cases the first duty, the chief task of the investigating lawyers,
is to prevent the criminal being prepared, to pounce upon him
unexpectedly so that he may blurt out his cherished ideas in all their
simplicity, improbability and inconsistency. The criminal can only be
made to speak by the sudden and apparently incidental communication of
some new fact, of some circumstance of great importance in the case, of
which he had no previous idea and could not have foreseen. We had such
a fact in readiness—that was Grigory’s evidence about the open door
through which the prisoner had run out. He had completely forgotten
about that door and had not even suspected that Grigory could have seen
it.

“The effect of it was amazing. He leapt up and shouted to us, ‘Then
Smerdyakov murdered him, it was Smerdyakov!’ and so betrayed the basis
of the defense he was keeping back, and betrayed it in its most
improbable shape, for Smerdyakov could only have committed the murder
after he had knocked Grigory down and run away. When we told him that
Grigory saw the door was open before he fell down, and had heard
Smerdyakov behind the screen as he came out of his bedroom—Karamazov
was positively crushed. My esteemed and witty colleague, Nikolay
Parfenovitch, told me afterwards that he was almost moved to tears at
the sight of him. And to improve matters, the prisoner hastened to tell
us about the much‐talked‐of little bag—so be it, you shall hear this
romance!

“Gentlemen of the jury, I have told you already why I consider this
romance not only an absurdity, but the most improbable invention that
could have been brought forward in the circumstances. If one tried for
a bet to invent the most unlikely story, one could hardly find anything
more incredible. The worst of such stories is that the triumphant
romancers can always be put to confusion and crushed by the very
details in which real life is so rich and which these unhappy and
involuntary story‐tellers neglect as insignificant trifles. Oh, they
have no thought to spare for such details, their minds are concentrated
on their grand invention as a whole, and fancy any one daring to pull
them up for a trifle! But that’s how they are caught. The prisoner was
asked the question, ‘Where did you get the stuff for your little bag
and who made it for you?’ ‘I made it myself.’ ‘And where did you get
the linen?’ The prisoner was positively offended, he thought it almost
insulting to ask him such a trivial question, and would you believe it,
his resentment was genuine! But they are all like that. ‘I tore it off
my shirt.’ ‘Then we shall find that shirt among your linen to‐morrow,
with a piece torn off.’ And only fancy, gentlemen of the jury, if we
really had found that torn shirt (and how could we have failed to find
it in his chest of drawers or trunk?) that would have been a fact, a
material fact in support of his statement! But he was incapable of that
reflection. ‘I don’t remember, it may not have been off my shirt, I
sewed it up in one of my landlady’s caps.’ ‘What sort of a cap?’ ‘It
was an old cotton rag of hers lying about.’ ‘And do you remember that
clearly?’ ‘No, I don’t.’ And he was angry, very angry, and yet imagine
not remembering it! At the most terrible moments of man’s life, for
instance when he is being led to execution, he remembers just such
trifles. He will forget anything but some green roof that has flashed
past him on the road, or a jackdaw on a cross—that he will remember. He
concealed the making of that little bag from his household, he must
have remembered his humiliating fear that some one might come in and
find him needle in hand, how at the slightest sound he slipped behind
the screen (there is a screen in his lodgings).

“But, gentlemen of the jury, why do I tell you all this, all these
details, trifles?” cried Ippolit Kirillovitch suddenly. “Just because
the prisoner still persists in these absurdities to this moment. He has
not explained anything since that fatal night two months ago, he has
not added one actual illuminating fact to his former fantastic
statements; all those are trivialities. ‘You must believe it on my
honor.’ Oh, we are glad to believe it, we are eager to believe it, even
if only on his word of honor! Are we jackals thirsting for human blood?
Show us a single fact in the prisoner’s favor and we shall rejoice; but
let it be a substantial, real fact, and not a conclusion drawn from the
prisoner’s expression by his own brother, or that when he beat himself
on the breast he must have meant to point to the little bag, in the
darkness, too. We shall rejoice at the new fact, we shall be the first
to repudiate our charge, we shall hasten to repudiate it. But now
justice cries out and we persist, we cannot repudiate anything.”

Ippolit Kirillovitch passed to his final peroration. He looked as
though he was in a fever, he spoke of the blood that cried for
vengeance, the blood of the father murdered by his son, with the base
motive of robbery! He pointed to the tragic and glaring consistency of
the facts.

“And whatever you may hear from the talented and celebrated counsel for
the defense,” Ippolit Kirillovitch could not resist adding, “whatever
eloquent and touching appeals may be made to your sensibilities,
remember that at this moment you are in a temple of justice. Remember
that you are the champions of our justice, the champions of our holy
Russia, of her principles, her family, everything that she holds
sacred! Yes, you represent Russia here at this moment, and your verdict
will be heard not in this hall only but will reëcho throughout the
whole of Russia, and all Russia will hear you, as her champions and her
judges, and she will be encouraged or disheartened by your verdict. Do
not disappoint Russia and her expectations. Our fatal troika dashes on
in her headlong flight perhaps to destruction and in all Russia for
long past men have stretched out imploring hands and called a halt to
its furious reckless course. And if other nations stand aside from that
troika that may be, not from respect, as the poet would fain believe,
but simply from horror. From horror, perhaps from disgust. And well it
is that they stand aside, but maybe they will cease one day to do so
and will form a firm wall confronting the hurrying apparition and will
check the frenzied rush of our lawlessness, for the sake of their own
safety, enlightenment and civilization. Already we have heard voices of
alarm from Europe, they already begin to sound. Do not tempt them! Do
not heap up their growing hatred by a sentence justifying the murder of
a father by his son!”

Though Ippolit Kirillovitch was genuinely moved, he wound up his speech
with this rhetorical appeal—and the effect produced by him was
extraordinary. When he had finished his speech, he went out hurriedly
and, as I have mentioned before, almost fainted in the adjoining room.
There was no applause in the court, but serious persons were pleased.
The ladies were not so well satisfied, though even they were pleased
with his eloquence, especially as they had no apprehensions as to the
upshot of the trial and had full trust in Fetyukovitch. “He will speak
at last and of course carry all before him.”

Every one looked at Mitya; he sat silent through the whole of the
prosecutor’s speech, clenching his teeth, with his hands clasped, and
his head bowed. Only from time to time he raised his head and listened,
especially when Grushenka was spoken of. When the prosecutor mentioned
Rakitin’s opinion of her, a smile of contempt and anger passed over his
face and he murmured rather audibly, “The Bernards!” When Ippolit
Kirillovitch described how he had questioned and tortured him at
Mokroe, Mitya raised his head and listened with intense curiosity. At
one point he seemed about to jump up and cry out, but controlled
himself and only shrugged his shoulders disdainfully. People talked
afterwards of the end of the speech, of the prosecutor’s feat in
examining the prisoner at Mokroe, and jeered at Ippolit Kirillovitch.
“The man could not resist boasting of his cleverness,” they said.

The court was adjourned, but only for a short interval, a quarter of an
hour or twenty minutes at most. There was a hum of conversation and
exclamations in the audience. I remember some of them.

“A weighty speech,” a gentleman in one group observed gravely.

“He brought in too much psychology,” said another voice.

“But it was all true, the absolute truth!”

“Yes, he is first rate at it.”

“He summed it all up.”

“Yes, he summed us up, too,” chimed in another voice. “Do you remember,
at the beginning of his speech, making out we were all like Fyodor
Pavlovitch?”

“And at the end, too. But that was all rot.”

“And obscure too.”

“He was a little too much carried away.”

“It’s unjust, it’s unjust.”

“No, it was smartly done, anyway. He’s had long to wait, but he’s had
his say, ha ha!”

“What will the counsel for the defense say?”

In another group I heard:

“He had no business to make a thrust at the Petersburg man like that;
‘appealing to your sensibilities’—do you remember?”

“Yes, that was awkward of him.”

“He was in too great a hurry.”

“He is a nervous man.”

“We laugh, but what must the prisoner be feeling?”

“Yes, what must it be for Mitya?”

In a third group:

“What lady is that, the fat one, with the lorgnette, sitting at the
end?”

“She is a general’s wife, divorced, I know her.”

“That’s why she has the lorgnette.”

“She is not good for much.”

“Oh, no, she is a piquante little woman.”

“Two places beyond her there is a little fair woman, she is prettier.”

“They caught him smartly at Mokroe, didn’t they, eh?”

“Oh, it was smart enough. We’ve heard it before, how often he has told
the story at people’s houses!”

“And he couldn’t resist doing it now. That’s vanity.”

“He is a man with a grievance, he he!”

“Yes, and quick to take offense. And there was too much rhetoric, such
long sentences.”

“Yes, he tries to alarm us, he kept trying to alarm us. Do you remember
about the troika? Something about ‘They have Hamlets, but we have, so
far, only Karamazovs!’ That was cleverly said!”

“That was to propitiate the liberals. He is afraid of them.”

“Yes, and he is afraid of the lawyer, too.”

“Yes, what will Fetyukovitch say?”

“Whatever he says, he won’t get round our peasants.”

“Don’t you think so?”

A fourth group:

“What he said about the troika was good, that piece about the other
nations.”

“And that was true what he said about other nations not standing it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, in the English Parliament a Member got up last week and speaking
about the Nihilists asked the Ministry whether it was not high time to
intervene, to educate this barbarous people. Ippolit was thinking of
him, I know he was. He was talking about that last week.”

“Not an easy job.”

“Not an easy job? Why not?”

“Why, we’d shut up Kronstadt and not let them have any corn. Where
would they get it?”

“In America. They get it from America now.”

“Nonsense!”

But the bell rang, all rushed to their places. Fetyukovitch mounted the
tribune.




Chapter X.
The Speech For The Defense. An Argument That Cuts Both Ways


All was hushed as the first words of the famous orator rang out. The
eyes of the audience were fastened upon him. He began very simply and
directly, with an air of conviction, but not the slightest trace of
conceit. He made no attempt at eloquence, at pathos, or emotional
phrases. He was like a man speaking in a circle of intimate and
sympathetic friends. His voice was a fine one, sonorous and
sympathetic, and there was something genuine and simple in the very
sound of it. But every one realized at once that the speaker might
suddenly rise to genuine pathos and “pierce the heart with untold
power.” His language was perhaps more irregular than Ippolit
Kirillovitch’s, but he spoke without long phrases, and indeed, with
more precision. One thing did not please the ladies: he kept bending
forward, especially at the beginning of his speech, not exactly bowing,
but as though he were about to dart at his listeners, bending his long
spine in half, as though there were a spring in the middle that enabled
him to bend almost at right angles.

At the beginning of his speech he spoke rather disconnectedly, without
system, one may say, dealing with facts separately, though, at the end,
these facts formed a whole. His speech might be divided into two parts,
the first consisting of criticism in refutation of the charge,
sometimes malicious and sarcastic. But in the second half he suddenly
changed his tone, and even his manner, and at once rose to pathos. The
audience seemed on the look‐out for it, and quivered with enthusiasm.

He went straight to the point, and began by saying that although he
practiced in Petersburg, he had more than once visited provincial towns
to defend prisoners, of whose innocence he had a conviction or at least
a preconceived idea. “That is what has happened to me in the present
case,” he explained. “From the very first accounts in the newspapers I
was struck by something which strongly prepossessed me in the
prisoner’s favor. What interested me most was a fact which often occurs
in legal practice, but rarely, I think, in such an extreme and peculiar
form as in the present case. I ought to formulate that peculiarity only
at the end of my speech, but I will do so at the very beginning, for it
is my weakness to go to work directly, not keeping my effects in
reserve and economizing my material. That may be imprudent on my part,
but at least it’s sincere. What I have in my mind is this: there is an
overwhelming chain of evidence against the prisoner, and at the same
time not one fact that will stand criticism, if it is examined
separately. As I followed the case more closely in the papers my idea
was more and more confirmed, and I suddenly received from the
prisoner’s relatives a request to undertake his defense. I at once
hurried here, and here I became completely convinced. It was to break
down this terrible chain of facts, and to show that each piece of
evidence taken separately was unproved and fantastic, that I undertook
the case.”

So Fetyukovitch began.

“Gentlemen of the jury,” he suddenly protested, “I am new to this
district. I have no preconceived ideas. The prisoner, a man of
turbulent and unbridled temper, has not insulted me. But he has
insulted perhaps hundreds of persons in this town, and so prejudiced
many people against him beforehand. Of course I recognize that the
moral sentiment of local society is justly excited against him. The
prisoner is of turbulent and violent temper. Yet he was received in
society here; he was even welcome in the family of my talented friend,
the prosecutor.”

(N.B. At these words there were two or three laughs in the audience,
quickly suppressed, but noticed by all. All of us knew that the
prosecutor received Mitya against his will, solely because he had
somehow interested his wife—a lady of the highest virtue and moral
worth, but fanciful, capricious, and fond of opposing her husband,
especially in trifles. Mitya’s visits, however, had not been frequent.)

“Nevertheless I venture to suggest,” Fetyukovitch continued, “that in
spite of his independent mind and just character, my opponent may have
formed a mistaken prejudice against my unfortunate client. Oh, that is
so natural; the unfortunate man has only too well deserved such
prejudice. Outraged morality, and still more outraged taste, is often
relentless. We have, in the talented prosecutor’s speech, heard a stern
analysis of the prisoner’s character and conduct, and his severe
critical attitude to the case was evident. And, what’s more, he went
into psychological subtleties into which he could not have entered, if
he had the least conscious and malicious prejudice against the
prisoner. But there are things which are even worse, even more fatal in
such cases, than the most malicious and consciously unfair attitude. It
is worse if we are carried away by the artistic instinct, by the desire
to create, so to speak, a romance, especially if God has endowed us
with psychological insight. Before I started on my way here, I was
warned in Petersburg, and was myself aware, that I should find here a
talented opponent whose psychological insight and subtlety had gained
him peculiar renown in legal circles of recent years. But profound as
psychology is, it’s a knife that cuts both ways.” (Laughter among the
public.) “You will, of course, forgive me my comparison; I can’t boast
of eloquence. But I will take as an example any point in the
prosecutor’s speech.

“The prisoner, running away in the garden in the dark, climbed over the
fence, was seized by the servant, and knocked him down with a brass
pestle. Then he jumped back into the garden and spent five minutes over
the man, trying to discover whether he had killed him or not. And the
prosecutor refuses to believe the prisoner’s statement that he ran to
old Grigory out of pity. ‘No,’ he says, ‘such sensibility is impossible
at such a moment, that’s unnatural; he ran to find out whether the only
witness of his crime was dead or alive, and so showed that he had
committed the murder, since he would not have run back for any other
reason.’

“Here you have psychology; but let us take the same method and apply it
to the case the other way round, and our result will be no less
probable. The murderer, we are told, leapt down to find out, as a
precaution, whether the witness was alive or not, yet he had left in
his murdered father’s study, as the prosecutor himself argues, an
amazing piece of evidence in the shape of a torn envelope, with an
inscription that there had been three thousand roubles in it. ‘If he
had carried that envelope away with him, no one in the world would have
known of that envelope and of the notes in it, and that the money had
been stolen by the prisoner.’ Those are the prosecutor’s own words. So
on one side you see a complete absence of precaution, a man who has
lost his head and run away in a fright, leaving that clew on the floor,
and two minutes later, when he has killed another man, we are entitled
to assume the most heartless and calculating foresight in him. But even
admitting this was so, it is psychological subtlety, I suppose, that
discerns that under certain circumstances I become as bloodthirsty and
keen‐sighted as a Caucasian eagle, while at the next I am as timid and
blind as a mole. But if I am so bloodthirsty and cruelly calculating
that when I kill a man I only run back to find out whether he is alive
to witness against me, why should I spend five minutes looking after my
victim at the risk of encountering other witnesses? Why soak my
handkerchief, wiping the blood off his head so that it may be evidence
against me later? If he were so cold‐hearted and calculating, why not
hit the servant on the head again and again with the same pestle so as
to kill him outright and relieve himself of all anxiety about the
witness?

“Again, though he ran to see whether the witness was alive, he left
another witness on the path, that brass pestle which he had taken from
the two women, and which they could always recognize afterwards as
theirs, and prove that he had taken it from them. And it is not as
though he had forgotten it on the path, dropped it through carelessness
or haste, no, he had flung away his weapon, for it was found fifteen
paces from where Grigory lay. Why did he do so? Just because he was
grieved at having killed a man, an old servant; and he flung away the
pestle with a curse, as a murderous weapon. That’s how it must have
been, what other reason could he have had for throwing it so far? And
if he was capable of feeling grief and pity at having killed a man, it
shows that he was innocent of his father’s murder. Had he murdered him,
he would never have run to another victim out of pity; then he would
have felt differently; his thoughts would have been centered on
self‐preservation. He would have had none to spare for pity, that is
beyond doubt. On the contrary, he would have broken his skull instead
of spending five minutes looking after him. There was room for pity and
good‐feeling just because his conscience had been clear till then. Here
we have a different psychology. I have purposely resorted to this
method, gentlemen of the jury, to show that you can prove anything by
it. It all depends on who makes use of it. Psychology lures even most
serious people into romancing, and quite unconsciously. I am speaking
of the abuse of psychology, gentlemen.”

Sounds of approval and laughter, at the expense of the prosecutor, were
again audible in the court. I will not repeat the speech in detail; I
will only quote some passages from it, some leading points.




Chapter XI.
There Was No Money. There Was No Robbery


There was one point that struck every one in Fetyukovitch’s speech. He
flatly denied the existence of the fatal three thousand roubles, and
consequently, the possibility of their having been stolen.

“Gentlemen of the jury,” he began. “Every new and unprejudiced observer
must be struck by a characteristic peculiarity in the present case,
namely, the charge of robbery, and the complete impossibility of
proving that there was anything to be stolen. We are told that money
was stolen—three thousand roubles—but whether those roubles ever
existed, nobody knows. Consider, how have we heard of that sum, and who
has seen the notes? The only person who saw them, and stated that they
had been put in the envelope, was the servant, Smerdyakov. He had
spoken of it to the prisoner and his brother, Ivan Fyodorovitch, before
the catastrophe. Madame Svyetlov, too, had been told of it. But not one
of these three persons had actually seen the notes, no one but
Smerdyakov had seen them.

“Here the question arises, if it’s true that they did exist, and that
Smerdyakov had seen them, when did he see them for the last time? What
if his master had taken the notes from under his bed and put them back
in his cash‐box without telling him? Note, that according to
Smerdyakov’s story the notes were kept under the mattress; the prisoner
must have pulled them out, and yet the bed was absolutely unrumpled;
that is carefully recorded in the protocol. How could the prisoner have
found the notes without disturbing the bed? How could he have helped
soiling with his blood‐ stained hands the fine and spotless linen with
which the bed had been purposely made?

“But I shall be asked: What about the envelope on the floor? Yes, it’s
worth saying a word or two about that envelope. I was somewhat
surprised just now to hear the highly talented prosecutor declare of
himself—of himself, observe—that but for that envelope, but for its
being left on the floor, no one in the world would have known of the
existence of that envelope and the notes in it, and therefore of the
prisoner’s having stolen it. And so that torn scrap of paper is, by the
prosecutor’s own admission, the sole proof on which the charge of
robbery rests, ‘otherwise no one would have known of the robbery, nor
perhaps even of the money.’ But is the mere fact that that scrap of
paper was lying on the floor a proof that there was money in it, and
that that money had been stolen? Yet, it will be objected, Smerdyakov
had seen the money in the envelope. But when, when had he seen it for
the last time, I ask you that? I talked to Smerdyakov, and he told me
that he had seen the notes two days before the catastrophe. Then why
not imagine that old Fyodor Pavlovitch, locked up alone in impatient
and hysterical expectation of the object of his adoration, may have
whiled away the time by breaking open the envelope and taking out the
notes. ‘What’s the use of the envelope?’ he may have asked himself.
‘She won’t believe the notes are there, but when I show her the thirty
rainbow‐colored notes in one roll, it will make more impression, you
may be sure, it will make her mouth water.’ And so he tears open the
envelope, takes out the money, and flings the envelope on the floor,
conscious of being the owner and untroubled by any fears of leaving
evidence.

“Listen, gentlemen, could anything be more likely than this theory and
such an action? Why is it out of the question? But if anything of the
sort could have taken place, the charge of robbery falls to the ground;
if there was no money, there was no theft of it. If the envelope on the
floor may be taken as evidence that there had been money in it, why may
I not maintain the opposite, that the envelope was on the floor because
the money had been taken from it by its owner?

“But I shall be asked what became of the money if Fyodor Pavlovitch
took it out of the envelope since it was not found when the police
searched the house? In the first place, part of the money was found in
the cash‐box, and secondly, he might have taken it out that morning or
the evening before to make some other use of it, to give or send it
away; he may have changed his idea, his plan of action completely,
without thinking it necessary to announce the fact to Smerdyakov
beforehand. And if there is the barest possibility of such an
explanation, how can the prisoner be so positively accused of having
committed murder for the sake of robbery, and of having actually
carried out that robbery? This is encroaching on the domain of romance.
If it is maintained that something has been stolen, the thing must be
produced, or at least its existence must be proved beyond doubt. Yet no
one had ever seen these notes.

“Not long ago in Petersburg a young man of eighteen, hardly more than a
boy, who carried on a small business as a costermonger, went in broad
daylight into a moneychanger’s shop with an ax, and with extraordinary,
typical audacity killed the master of the shop and carried off fifteen
hundred roubles. Five hours later he was arrested, and, except fifteen
roubles he had already managed to spend, the whole sum was found on
him. Moreover, the shopman, on his return to the shop after the murder,
informed the police not only of the exact sum stolen, but even of the
notes and gold coins of which that sum was made up, and those very
notes and coins were found on the criminal. This was followed by a full
and genuine confession on the part of the murderer. That’s what I call
evidence, gentlemen of the jury! In that case I know, I see, I touch
the money, and cannot deny its existence. Is it the same in the present
case? And yet it is a question of life and death.

“Yes, I shall be told, but he was carousing that night, squandering
money; he was shown to have had fifteen hundred roubles—where did he
get the money? But the very fact that only fifteen hundred could be
found, and the other half of the sum could nowhere be discovered, shows
that that money was not the same, and had never been in any envelope.
By strict calculation of time it was proved at the preliminary inquiry
that the prisoner ran straight from those women servants to Perhotin’s
without going home, and that he had been nowhere. So he had been all
the time in company and therefore could not have divided the three
thousand in half and hidden half in the town. It’s just this
consideration that has led the prosecutor to assume that the money is
hidden in some crevice at Mokroe. Why not in the dungeons of the castle
of Udolpho, gentlemen? Isn’t this supposition really too fantastic and
too romantic? And observe, if that supposition breaks down, the whole
charge of robbery is scattered to the winds, for in that case what
could have become of the other fifteen hundred roubles? By what miracle
could they have disappeared, since it’s proved the prisoner went
nowhere else? And we are ready to ruin a man’s life with such tales!

“I shall be told that he could not explain where he got the fifteen
hundred that he had, and every one knew that he was without money
before that night. Who knew it, pray? The prisoner has made a clear and
unflinching statement of the source of that money, and if you will have
it so, gentlemen of the jury, nothing can be more probable than that
statement, and more consistent with the temper and spirit of the
prisoner. The prosecutor is charmed with his own romance. A man of weak
will, who had brought himself to take the three thousand so insultingly
offered by his betrothed, could not, we are told, have set aside half
and sewn it up, but would, even if he had done so, have unpicked it
every two days and taken out a hundred, and so would have spent it all
in a month. All this, you will remember, was put forward in a tone that
brooked no contradiction. But what if the thing happened quite
differently? What if you’ve been weaving a romance, and about quite a
different kind of man? That’s just it, you have invented quite a
different man!

“I shall be told, perhaps, there are witnesses that he spent on one day
all that three thousand given him by his betrothed a month before the
catastrophe, so he could not have divided the sum in half. But who are
these witnesses? The value of their evidence has been shown in court
already. Besides, in another man’s hand a crust always seems larger,
and no one of these witnesses counted that money; they all judged
simply at sight. And the witness Maximov has testified that the
prisoner had twenty thousand in his hand. You see, gentlemen of the
jury, psychology is a two‐ edged weapon. Let me turn the other edge now
and see what comes of it.

“A month before the catastrophe the prisoner was entrusted by Katerina
Ivanovna with three thousand roubles to send off by post. But the
question is: is it true that they were entrusted to him in such an
insulting and degrading way as was proclaimed just now? The first
statement made by the young lady on the subject was different,
perfectly different. In the second statement we heard only cries of
resentment and revenge, cries of long‐concealed hatred. And the very
fact that the witness gave her first evidence incorrectly, gives us a
right to conclude that her second piece of evidence may have been
incorrect also. The prosecutor will not, dare not (his own words) touch
on that story. So be it. I will not touch on it either, but will only
venture to observe that if a lofty and high‐ principled person, such as
that highly respected young lady unquestionably is, if such a person, I
say, allows herself suddenly in court to contradict her first
statement, with the obvious motive of ruining the prisoner, it is clear
that this evidence has been given not impartially, not coolly. Have not
we the right to assume that a revengeful woman might have exaggerated
much? Yes, she may well have exaggerated, in particular, the insult and
humiliation of her offering him the money. No, it was offered in such a
way that it was possible to take it, especially for a man so easy‐going
as the prisoner, above all, as he expected to receive shortly from his
father the three thousand roubles that he reckoned was owing to him. It
was unreflecting of him, but it was just his irresponsible want of
reflection that made him so confident that his father would give him
the money, that he would get it, and so could always dispatch the money
entrusted to him and repay the debt.

“But the prosecutor refuses to allow that he could the same day have
set aside half the money and sewn it up in a little bag. That’s not his
character, he tells us, he couldn’t have had such feelings. But yet he
talked himself of the broad Karamazov nature; he cried out about the
two extremes which a Karamazov can contemplate at once. Karamazov is
just such a two‐sided nature, fluctuating between two extremes, that
even when moved by the most violent craving for riotous gayety, he can
pull himself up, if something strikes him on the other side. And on the
other side is love—that new love which had flamed up in his heart, and
for that love he needed money; oh, far more than for carousing with his
mistress. If she were to say to him, ‘I am yours, I won’t have Fyodor
Pavlovitch,’ then he must have money to take her away. That was more
important than carousing. Could a Karamazov fail to understand it? That
anxiety was just what he was suffering from—what is there improbable in
his laying aside that money and concealing it in case of emergency?

“But time passed, and Fyodor Pavlovitch did not give the prisoner the
expected three thousand; on the contrary, the latter heard that he
meant to use this sum to seduce the woman he, the prisoner, loved. ‘If
Fyodor Pavlovitch doesn’t give the money,’ he thought, ‘I shall be put
in the position of a thief before Katerina Ivanovna.’ And then the idea
presented itself to him that he would go to Katerina Ivanovna, lay
before her the fifteen hundred roubles he still carried round his neck,
and say, ‘I am a scoundrel, but not a thief.’ So here we have already a
twofold reason why he should guard that sum of money as the apple of
his eye, why he shouldn’t unpick the little bag, and spend it a hundred
at a time. Why should you deny the prisoner a sense of honor? Yes, he
has a sense of honor, granted that it’s misplaced, granted it’s often
mistaken, yet it exists and amounts to a passion, and he has proved
that.

“But now the affair becomes even more complex; his jealous torments
reach a climax, and those same two questions torture his fevered brain
more and more: ‘If I repay Katerina Ivanovna, where can I find the
means to go off with Grushenka?’ If he behaved wildly, drank, and made
disturbances in the taverns in the course of that month, it was perhaps
because he was wretched and strained beyond his powers of endurance.
These two questions became so acute that they drove him at last to
despair. He sent his younger brother to beg for the last time for the
three thousand roubles, but without waiting for a reply, burst in
himself and ended by beating the old man in the presence of witnesses.
After that he had no prospect of getting it from any one; his father
would not give it him after that beating.

“The same evening he struck himself on the breast, just on the upper
part of the breast where the little bag was, and swore to his brother
that he had the means of not being a scoundrel, but that still he would
remain a scoundrel, for he foresaw that he would not use that means,
that he wouldn’t have the character, that he wouldn’t have the
will‐power to do it. Why, why does the prosecutor refuse to believe the
evidence of Alexey Karamazov, given so genuinely and sincerely, so
spontaneously and convincingly? And why, on the contrary, does he force
me to believe in money hidden in a crevice, in the dungeons of the
castle of Udolpho?

“The same evening, after his talk with his brother, the prisoner wrote
that fatal letter, and that letter is the chief, the most stupendous
proof of the prisoner having committed robbery! ‘I shall beg from every
one, and if I don’t get it I shall murder my father and shall take the
envelope with the pink ribbon on it from under his mattress as soon as
Ivan has gone.’ A full program of the murder, we are told, so it must
have been he. ‘It has all been done as he wrote,’ cries the prosecutor.

“But in the first place, it’s the letter of a drunken man and written
in great irritation; secondly, he writes of the envelope from what he
has heard from Smerdyakov again, for he has not seen the envelope
himself; and thirdly, he wrote it indeed, but how can you prove that he
did it? Did the prisoner take the envelope from under the pillow, did
he find the money, did that money exist indeed? And was it to get money
that the prisoner ran off, if you remember? He ran off post‐haste not
to steal, but to find out where she was, the woman who had crushed him.
He was not running to carry out a program, to carry out what he had
written, that is, not for an act of premeditated robbery, but he ran
suddenly, spontaneously, in a jealous fury. Yes! I shall be told, but
when he got there and murdered him he seized the money, too. But did he
murder him after all? The charge of robbery I repudiate with
indignation. A man cannot be accused of robbery, if it’s impossible to
state accurately what he has stolen; that’s an axiom. But did he murder
him without robbery, did he murder him at all? Is that proved? Isn’t
that, too, a romance?”




Chapter XII.
And There Was No Murder Either


“Allow me, gentlemen of the jury, to remind you that a man’s life is at
stake and that you must be careful. We have heard the prosecutor
himself admit that until to‐day he hesitated to accuse the prisoner of
a full and conscious premeditation of the crime; he hesitated till he
saw that fatal drunken letter which was produced in court to‐day. ‘All
was done as written.’ But, I repeat again, he was running to her, to
seek her, solely to find out where she was. That’s a fact that can’t be
disputed. Had she been at home, he would not have run away, but would
have remained at her side, and so would not have done what he promised
in the letter. He ran unexpectedly and accidentally, and by that time
very likely he did not even remember his drunken letter. ‘He snatched
up the pestle,’ they say, and you will remember how a whole edifice of
psychology was built on that pestle—why he was bound to look at that
pestle as a weapon, to snatch it up, and so on, and so on. A very
commonplace idea occurs to me at this point: What if that pestle had
not been in sight, had not been lying on the shelf from which it was
snatched by the prisoner, but had been put away in a cupboard? It would
not have caught the prisoner’s eye, and he would have run away without
a weapon, with empty hands, and then he would certainly not have killed
any one. How then can I look upon the pestle as a proof of
premeditation?

“Yes, but he talked in the taverns of murdering his father, and two
days before, on the evening when he wrote his drunken letter, he was
quiet and only quarreled with a shopman in the tavern, because a
Karamazov could not help quarreling, forsooth! But my answer to that
is, that, if he was planning such a murder in accordance with his
letter, he certainly would not have quarreled even with a shopman, and
probably would not have gone into the tavern at all, because a person
plotting such a crime seeks quiet and retirement, seeks to efface
himself, to avoid being seen and heard, and that not from calculation,
but from instinct. Gentlemen of the jury, the psychological method is a
two‐edged weapon, and we, too, can use it. As for all this shouting in
taverns throughout the month, don’t we often hear children, or
drunkards coming out of taverns shout, ‘I’ll kill you’? but they don’t
murder any one. And that fatal letter—isn’t that simply drunken
irritability, too? Isn’t that simply the shout of the brawler outside
the tavern, ‘I’ll kill you! I’ll kill the lot of you!’ Why not, why
could it not be that? What reason have we to call that letter ‘fatal’
rather than absurd? Because his father has been found murdered, because
a witness saw the prisoner running out of the garden with a weapon in
his hand, and was knocked down by him: therefore, we are told,
everything was done as he had planned in writing, and the letter was
not ‘absurd,’ but ‘fatal.’

“Now, thank God! we’ve come to the real point: ‘since he was in the
garden, he must have murdered him.’ In those few words: ‘since he
_was_, then he _must_’ lies the whole case for the prosecution. He was
there, so he must have. And what if there is no _must_ about it, even
if he was there? Oh, I admit that the chain of evidence—the
coincidences—are really suggestive. But examine all these facts
separately, regardless of their connection. Why, for instance, does the
prosecution refuse to admit the truth of the prisoner’s statement that
he ran away from his father’s window? Remember the sarcasms in which
the prosecutor indulged at the expense of the respectful and ‘pious’
sentiments which suddenly came over the murderer. But what if there
were something of the sort, a feeling of religious awe, if not of
filial respect? ‘My mother must have been praying for me at that
moment,’ were the prisoner’s words at the preliminary inquiry, and so
he ran away as soon as he convinced himself that Madame Svyetlov was
not in his father’s house. ‘But he could not convince himself by
looking through the window,’ the prosecutor objects. But why couldn’t
he? Why? The window opened at the signals given by the prisoner. Some
word might have been uttered by Fyodor Pavlovitch, some exclamation
which showed the prisoner that she was not there. Why should we assume
everything as we imagine it, as we make up our minds to imagine it? A
thousand things may happen in reality which elude the subtlest
imagination.

“ ‘Yes, but Grigory saw the door open and so the prisoner certainly was
in the house, therefore he killed him.’ Now about that door, gentlemen
of the jury.... Observe that we have only the statement of one witness
as to that door, and he was at the time in such a condition, that— But
supposing the door was open; supposing the prisoner has lied in denying
it, from an instinct of self‐defense, natural in his position;
supposing he did go into the house—well, what then? How does it follow
that because he was there he committed the murder? He might have dashed
in, run through the rooms; might have pushed his father away; might
have struck him; but as soon as he had made sure Madame Svyetlov was
not there, he may have run away rejoicing that she was not there and
that he had not killed his father. And it was perhaps just because he
had escaped from the temptation to kill his father, because he had a
clear conscience and was rejoicing at not having killed him, that he
was capable of a pure feeling, the feeling of pity and compassion, and
leapt off the fence a minute later to the assistance of Grigory after
he had, in his excitement, knocked him down.

“With terrible eloquence the prosecutor has described to us the
dreadful state of the prisoner’s mind at Mokroe when love again lay
before him calling him to new life, while love was impossible for him
because he had his father’s bloodstained corpse behind him and beyond
that corpse—retribution. And yet the prosecutor allowed him love, which
he explained, according to his method, talking about his drunken
condition, about a criminal being taken to execution, about it being
still far off, and so on and so on. But again I ask, Mr. Prosecutor,
have you not invented a new personality? Is the prisoner so coarse and
heartless as to be able to think at that moment of love and of dodges
to escape punishment, if his hands were really stained with his
father’s blood? No, no, no! As soon as it was made plain to him that
she loved him and called him to her side, promising him new happiness,
oh! then, I protest he must have felt the impulse to suicide doubled,
trebled, and must have killed himself, if he had his father’s murder on
his conscience. Oh, no! he would not have forgotten where his pistols
lay! I know the prisoner: the savage, stony heartlessness ascribed to
him by the prosecutor is inconsistent with his character. He would have
killed himself, that’s certain. He did not kill himself just because
‘his mother’s prayers had saved him,’ and he was innocent of his
father’s blood. He was troubled, he was grieving that night at Mokroe
only about old Grigory and praying to God that the old man would
recover, that his blow had not been fatal, and that he would not have
to suffer for it. Why not accept such an interpretation of the facts?
What trustworthy proof have we that the prisoner is lying?

“But we shall be told at once again, ‘There is his father’s corpse! If
he ran away without murdering him, who did murder him?’ Here, I repeat,
you have the whole logic of the prosecution. Who murdered him, if not
he? There’s no one to put in his place.

“Gentlemen of the jury, is that really so? Is it positively, actually
true that there is no one else at all? We’ve heard the prosecutor count
on his fingers all the persons who were in that house that night. They
were five in number; three of them, I agree, could not have been
responsible—the murdered man himself, old Grigory, and his wife. There
are left then the prisoner and Smerdyakov, and the prosecutor
dramatically exclaims that the prisoner pointed to Smerdyakov because
he had no one else to fix on, that had there been a sixth person, even
a phantom of a sixth person, he would have abandoned the charge against
Smerdyakov at once in shame and have accused that other. But, gentlemen
of the jury, why may I not draw the very opposite conclusion? There are
two persons—the prisoner and Smerdyakov. Why can I not say that you
accuse my client, simply because you have no one else to accuse? And
you have no one else only because you have determined to exclude
Smerdyakov from all suspicion.

“It’s true, indeed, Smerdyakov is accused only by the prisoner, his two
brothers, and Madame Svyetlov. But there are others who accuse him:
there are vague rumors of a question, of a suspicion, an obscure
report, a feeling of expectation. Finally, we have the evidence of a
combination of facts very suggestive, though, I admit, inconclusive. In
the first place we have precisely on the day of the catastrophe that
fit, for the genuineness of which the prosecutor, for some reason, has
felt obliged to make a careful defense. Then Smerdyakov’s sudden
suicide on the eve of the trial. Then the equally startling evidence
given in court to‐day by the elder of the prisoner’s brothers, who had
believed in his guilt, but has to‐day produced a bundle of notes and
proclaimed Smerdyakov as the murderer. Oh, I fully share the court’s
and the prosecutor’s conviction that Ivan Karamazov is suffering from
brain fever, that his statement may really be a desperate effort,
planned in delirium, to save his brother by throwing the guilt on the
dead man. But again Smerdyakov’s name is pronounced, again there is a
suggestion of mystery. There is something unexplained, incomplete. And
perhaps it may one day be explained. But we won’t go into that now. Of
that later.

“The court has resolved to go on with the trial, but, meantime, I might
make a few remarks about the character‐sketch of Smerdyakov drawn with
subtlety and talent by the prosecutor. But while I admire his talent I
cannot agree with him. I have visited Smerdyakov, I have seen him and
talked to him, and he made a very different impression on me. He was
weak in health, it is true; but in character, in spirit, he was by no
means the weak man the prosecutor has made him out to be. I found in
him no trace of the timidity on which the prosecutor so insisted. There
was no simplicity about him, either. I found in him, on the contrary,
an extreme mistrustfulness concealed under a mask of _naïveté_, and an
intelligence of considerable range. The prosecutor was too simple in
taking him for weak‐minded. He made a very definite impression on me: I
left him with the conviction that he was a distinctly spiteful
creature, excessively ambitious, vindictive, and intensely envious. I
made some inquiries: he resented his parentage, was ashamed of it, and
would clench his teeth when he remembered that he was the son of
‘stinking Lizaveta.’ He was disrespectful to the servant Grigory and
his wife, who had cared for him in his childhood. He cursed and jeered
at Russia. He dreamed of going to France and becoming a Frenchman. He
used often to say that he hadn’t the means to do so. I fancy he loved
no one but himself and had a strangely high opinion of himself. His
conception of culture was limited to good clothes, clean shirt‐fronts
and polished boots. Believing himself to be the illegitimate son of
Fyodor Pavlovitch (there is evidence of this), he might well have
resented his position, compared with that of his master’s legitimate
sons. They had everything, he nothing. They had all the rights, they
had the inheritance, while he was only the cook. He told me himself
that he had helped Fyodor Pavlovitch to put the notes in the envelope.
The destination of that sum—a sum which would have made his career—must
have been hateful to him. Moreover, he saw three thousand roubles in
new rainbow‐colored notes. (I asked him about that on purpose.) Oh,
beware of showing an ambitious and envious man a large sum of money at
once! And it was the first time he had seen so much money in the hands
of one man. The sight of the rainbow‐colored notes may have made a
morbid impression on his imagination, but with no immediate results.

“The talented prosecutor, with extraordinary subtlety, sketched for us
all the arguments for and against the hypothesis of Smerdyakov’s guilt,
and asked us in particular what motive he had in feigning a fit. But he
may not have been feigning at all, the fit may have happened quite
naturally, but it may have passed off quite naturally, and the sick man
may have recovered, not completely perhaps, but still regaining
consciousness, as happens with epileptics.

“The prosecutor asks at what moment could Smerdyakov have committed the
murder. But it is very easy to point out that moment. He might have
waked up from deep sleep (for he was only asleep—an epileptic fit is
always followed by a deep sleep) at that moment when the old Grigory
shouted at the top of his voice ‘Parricide!’ That shout in the dark and
stillness may have waked Smerdyakov whose sleep may have been less
sound at the moment: he might naturally have waked up an hour before.

“Getting out of bed, he goes almost unconsciously and with no definite
motive towards the sound to see what’s the matter. His head is still
clouded with his attack, his faculties are half asleep; but, once in
the garden, he walks to the lighted windows and he hears terrible news
from his master, who would be, of course, glad to see him. His mind
sets to work at once. He hears all the details from his frightened
master, and gradually in his disordered brain there shapes itself an
idea—terrible, but seductive and irresistibly logical. To kill the old
man, take the three thousand, and throw all the blame on to his young
master. A terrible lust of money, of booty, might seize upon him as he
realized his security from detection. Oh! these sudden and irresistible
impulses come so often when there is a favorable opportunity, and
especially with murderers who have had no idea of committing a murder
beforehand. And Smerdyakov may have gone in and carried out his plan.
With what weapon? Why, with any stone picked up in the garden. But what
for, with what object? Why, the three thousand which means a career for
him. Oh, I am not contradicting myself—the money may have existed. And
perhaps Smerdyakov alone knew where to find it, where his master kept
it. And the covering of the money—the torn envelope on the floor?

“Just now, when the prosecutor was explaining his subtle theory that
only an inexperienced thief like Karamazov would have left the envelope
on the floor, and not one like Smerdyakov, who would have avoided
leaving a piece of evidence against himself, I thought as I listened
that I was hearing something very familiar, and, would you believe it,
I have heard that very argument, that very conjecture, of how Karamazov
would have behaved, precisely two days before, from Smerdyakov himself.
What’s more, it struck me at the time. I fancied that there was an
artificial simplicity about him; that he was in a hurry to suggest this
idea to me that I might fancy it was my own. He insinuated it, as it
were. Did he not insinuate the same idea at the inquiry and suggest it
to the talented prosecutor?

“I shall be asked, ‘What about the old woman, Grigory’s wife? She heard
the sick man moaning close by, all night.’ Yes, she heard it, but that
evidence is extremely unreliable. I knew a lady who complained bitterly
that she had been kept awake all night by a dog in the yard. Yet the
poor beast, it appeared, had only yelped once or twice in the night.
And that’s natural. If any one is asleep and hears a groan he wakes up,
annoyed at being waked, but instantly falls asleep again. Two hours
later, again a groan, he wakes up and falls asleep again; and the same
thing again two hours later—three times altogether in the night. Next
morning the sleeper wakes up and complains that some one has been
groaning all night and keeping him awake. And it is bound to seem so to
him: the intervals of two hours of sleep he does not remember, he only
remembers the moments of waking, so he feels he has been waked up all
night.

“But why, why, asks the prosecutor, did not Smerdyakov confess in his
last letter? Why did his conscience prompt him to one step and not to
both? But, excuse me, conscience implies penitence, and the suicide may
not have felt penitence, but only despair. Despair and penitence are
two very different things. Despair may be vindictive and
irreconcilable, and the suicide, laying his hands on himself, may well
have felt redoubled hatred for those whom he had envied all his life.

“Gentlemen of the jury, beware of a miscarriage of justice! What is
there unlikely in all I have put before you just now? Find the error in
my reasoning; find the impossibility, the absurdity. And if there is
but a shade of possibility, but a shade of probability in my
propositions, do not condemn him. And is there only a shade? I swear by
all that is sacred, I fully believe in the explanation of the murder I
have just put forward. What troubles me and makes me indignant is that
of all the mass of facts heaped up by the prosecution against the
prisoner, there is not a single one certain and irrefutable. And yet
the unhappy man is to be ruined by the accumulation of these facts.
Yes, the accumulated effect is awful: the blood, the blood dripping
from his fingers, the bloodstained shirt, the dark night resounding
with the shout ‘Parricide!’ and the old man falling with a broken head.
And then the mass of phrases, statements, gestures, shouts! Oh! this
has so much influence, it can so bias the mind; but, gentlemen of the
jury, can it bias your minds? Remember, you have been given absolute
power to bind and to loose, but the greater the power, the more
terrible its responsibility.

“I do not draw back one iota from what I have said just now, but
suppose for one moment I agreed with the prosecution that my luckless
client had stained his hands with his father’s blood. This is only
hypothesis, I repeat; I never for one instant doubt of his innocence.
But, so be it, I assume that my client is guilty of parricide. Even so,
hear what I have to say. I have it in my heart to say something more to
you, for I feel that there must be a great conflict in your hearts and
minds.... Forgive my referring to your hearts and minds, gentlemen of
the jury, but I want to be truthful and sincere to the end. Let us all
be sincere!”

At this point the speech was interrupted by rather loud applause. The
last words, indeed, were pronounced with a note of such sincerity that
every one felt that he really might have something to say, and that
what he was about to say would be of the greatest consequence. But the
President, hearing the applause, in a loud voice threatened to clear
the court if such an incident were repeated. Every sound was hushed and
Fetyukovitch began in a voice full of feeling quite unlike the tone he
had used hitherto.




Chapter XIII.
A Corrupter Of Thought


“It’s not only the accumulation of facts that threatens my client with
ruin, gentlemen of the jury,” he began, “what is really damning for my
client is one fact—the dead body of his father. Had it been an ordinary
case of murder you would have rejected the charge in view of the
triviality, the incompleteness, and the fantastic character of the
evidence, if you examine each part of it separately; or, at least, you
would have hesitated to ruin a man’s life simply from the prejudice
against him which he has, alas! only too well deserved. But it’s not an
ordinary case of murder, it’s a case of parricide. That impresses men’s
minds, and to such a degree that the very triviality and incompleteness
of the evidence becomes less trivial and less incomplete even to an
unprejudiced mind. How can such a prisoner be acquitted? What if he
committed the murder and gets off unpunished? That is what every one,
almost involuntarily, instinctively, feels at heart.

“Yes, it’s a fearful thing to shed a father’s blood—the father who has
begotten me, loved me, not spared his life for me, grieved over my
illnesses from childhood up, troubled all his life for my happiness,
and has lived in my joys, in my successes. To murder such a
father—that’s inconceivable. Gentlemen of the jury, what is a father—a
real father? What is the meaning of that great word? What is the great
idea in that name? We have just indicated in part what a true father is
and what he ought to be. In the case in which we are now so deeply
occupied and over which our hearts are aching—in the present case, the
father, Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, did not correspond to that
conception of a father to which we have just referred. That’s the
misfortune. And indeed some fathers are a misfortune. Let us examine
this misfortune rather more closely: we must shrink from nothing,
gentlemen of the jury, considering the importance of the decision you
have to make. It’s our particular duty not to shrink from any idea,
like children or frightened women, as the talented prosecutor happily
expresses it.

“But in the course of his heated speech my esteemed opponent (and he
was my opponent before I opened my lips) exclaimed several times, ‘Oh,
I will not yield the defense of the prisoner to the lawyer who has come
down from Petersburg. I accuse, but I defend also!’ He exclaimed that
several times, but forgot to mention that if this terrible prisoner was
for twenty‐three years so grateful for a mere pound of nuts given him
by the only man who had been kind to him, as a child in his father’s
house, might not such a man well have remembered for twenty‐three years
how he ran in his father’s back‐yard, ‘without boots on his feet and
with his little trousers hanging by one button’—to use the expression
of the kind‐hearted doctor, Herzenstube?

“Oh, gentlemen of the jury, why need we look more closely at this
misfortune, why repeat what we all know already? What did my client
meet with when he arrived here, at his father’s house, and why depict
my client as a heartless egoist and monster? He is uncontrolled, he is
wild and unruly—we are trying him now for that—but who is responsible
for his life? Who is responsible for his having received such an
unseemly bringing up, in spite of his excellent disposition and his
grateful and sensitive heart? Did any one train him to be reasonable?
Was he enlightened by study? Did any one love him ever so little in his
childhood? My client was left to the care of Providence like a beast of
the field. He thirsted perhaps to see his father after long years of
separation. A thousand times perhaps he may, recalling his childhood,
have driven away the loathsome phantoms that haunted his childish
dreams and with all his heart he may have longed to embrace and to
forgive his father! And what awaited him? He was met by cynical taunts,
suspicions and wrangling about money. He heard nothing but revolting
talk and vicious precepts uttered daily over the brandy, and at last he
saw his father seducing his mistress from him with his own money. Oh,
gentlemen of the jury, that was cruel and revolting! And that old man
was always complaining of the disrespect and cruelty of his son. He
slandered him in society, injured him, calumniated him, bought up his
unpaid debts to get him thrown into prison.

“Gentlemen of the jury, people like my client, who are fierce, unruly,
and uncontrolled on the surface, are sometimes, most frequently indeed,
exceedingly tender‐hearted, only they don’t express it. Don’t laugh,
don’t laugh at my idea! The talented prosecutor laughed mercilessly
just now at my client for loving Schiller—loving the sublime and
beautiful! I should not have laughed at that in his place. Yes, such
natures—oh, let me speak in defense of such natures, so often and so
cruelly misunderstood—these natures often thirst for tenderness,
goodness, and justice, as it were, in contrast to themselves, their
unruliness, their ferocity—they thirst for it unconsciously. Passionate
and fierce on the surface, they are painfully capable of loving woman,
for instance, and with a spiritual and elevated love. Again do not
laugh at me, this is very often the case in such natures. But they
cannot hide their passions—sometimes very coarse—and that is
conspicuous and is noticed, but the inner man is unseen. Their passions
are quickly exhausted; but, by the side of a noble and lofty creature
that seemingly coarse and rough man seeks a new life, seeks to correct
himself, to be better, to become noble and honorable, ‘sublime and
beautiful,’ however much the expression has been ridiculed.

“I said just now that I would not venture to touch upon my client’s
engagement. But I may say half a word. What we heard just now was not
evidence, but only the scream of a frenzied and revengeful woman, and
it was not for her—oh, not for her!—to reproach him with treachery, for
she has betrayed him! If she had had but a little time for reflection
she would not have given such evidence. Oh, do not believe her! No, my
client is not a monster, as she called him!

“The Lover of Mankind on the eve of His Crucifixion said: ‘I am the
Good Shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep, so
that not one of them might be lost.’ Let not a man’s soul be lost
through us!

“I asked just now what does ‘father’ mean, and exclaimed that it was a
great word, a precious name. But one must use words honestly,
gentlemen, and I venture to call things by their right names: such a
father as old Karamazov cannot be called a father and does not deserve
to be. Filial love for an unworthy father is an absurdity, an
impossibility. Love cannot be created from nothing: only God can create
something from nothing.

“ ‘Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath,’ the apostle writes,
from a heart glowing with love. It’s not for the sake of my client that
I quote these sacred words, I mention them for all fathers. Who has
authorized me to preach to fathers? No one. But as a man and a citizen
I make my appeal—_vivos voco!_ We are not long on earth, we do many
evil deeds and say many evil words. So let us all catch a favorable
moment when we are all together to say a good word to each other.
That’s what I am doing: while I am in this place I take advantage of my
opportunity. Not for nothing is this tribune given us by the highest
authority—all Russia hears us! I am not speaking only for the fathers
here present, I cry aloud to all fathers: ‘Fathers, provoke not your
children to wrath.’ Yes, let us first fulfill Christ’s injunction
ourselves and only then venture to expect it of our children. Otherwise
we are not fathers, but enemies of our children, and they are not our
children, but our enemies, and we have made them our enemies ourselves.
‘What measure ye mete it shall be measured unto you again’—it’s not I
who say that, it’s the Gospel precept, measure to others according as
they measure to you. How can we blame children if they measure us
according to our measure?

“Not long ago a servant girl in Finland was suspected of having
secretly given birth to a child. She was watched, and a box of which no
one knew anything was found in the corner of the loft, behind some
bricks. It was opened and inside was found the body of a new‐born child
which she had killed. In the same box were found the skeletons of two
other babies which, according to her own confession, she had killed at
the moment of their birth.

“Gentlemen of the jury, was she a mother to her children? She gave
birth to them, indeed; but was she a mother to them? Would any one
venture to give her the sacred name of mother? Let us be bold,
gentlemen, let us be audacious even: it’s our duty to be so at this
moment and not to be afraid of certain words and ideas like the Moscow
women in Ostrovsky’s play, who are scared at the sound of certain
words. No, let us prove that the progress of the last few years has
touched even us, and let us say plainly, the father is not merely he
who begets the child, but he who begets it and does his duty by it.

“Oh, of course, there is the other meaning, there is the other
interpretation of the word ‘father,’ which insists that any father,
even though he be a monster, even though he be the enemy of his
children, still remains my father simply because he begot me. But this
is, so to say, the mystical meaning which I cannot comprehend with my
intellect, but can only accept by faith, or, better to say, _on faith_,
like many other things which I do not understand, but which religion
bids me believe. But in that case let it be kept outside the sphere of
actual life. In the sphere of actual life, which has, indeed, its own
rights, but also lays upon us great duties and obligations, in that
sphere, if we want to be humane—Christian, in fact—we must, or ought
to, act only upon convictions justified by reason and experience, which
have been passed through the crucible of analysis; in a word, we must
act rationally, and not as though in dream and delirium, that we may
not do harm, that we may not ill‐treat and ruin a man. Then it will be
real Christian work, not only mystic, but rational and
philanthropic....”

There was violent applause at this passage from many parts of the
court, but Fetyukovitch waved his hands as though imploring them to let
him finish without interruption. The court relapsed into silence at
once. The orator went on.

“Do you suppose, gentlemen, that our children as they grow up and begin
to reason can avoid such questions? No, they cannot, and we will not
impose on them an impossible restriction. The sight of an unworthy
father involuntarily suggests tormenting questions to a young creature,
especially when he compares him with the excellent fathers of his
companions. The conventional answer to this question is: ‘He begot you,
and you are his flesh and blood, and therefore you are bound to love
him.’ The youth involuntarily reflects: ‘But did he love me when he
begot me?’ he asks, wondering more and more. ‘Was it for my sake he
begot me? He did not know me, not even my sex, at that moment, at the
moment of passion, perhaps, inflamed by wine, and he has only
transmitted to me a propensity to drunkenness—that’s all he’s done for
me.... Why am I bound to love him simply for begetting me when he has
cared nothing for me all my life after?’

“Oh, perhaps those questions strike you as coarse and cruel, but do not
expect an impossible restraint from a young mind. ‘Drive nature out of
the door and it will fly in at the window,’ and, above all, let us not
be afraid of words, but decide the question according to the dictates
of reason and humanity and not of mystic ideas. How shall it be
decided? Why, like this. Let the son stand before his father and ask
him, ‘Father, tell me, why must I love you? Father, show me that I must
love you,’ and if that father is able to answer him and show him good
reason, we have a real, normal, parental relation, not resting on
mystical prejudice, but on a rational, responsible and strictly
humanitarian basis. But if he does not, there’s an end to the family
tie. He is not a father to him, and the son has a right to look upon
him as a stranger, and even an enemy. Our tribune, gentlemen of the
jury, ought to be a school of true and sound ideas.”

(Here the orator was interrupted by irrepressible and almost frantic
applause. Of course, it was not the whole audience, but a good half of
it applauded. The fathers and mothers present applauded. Shrieks and
exclamations were heard from the gallery, where the ladies were
sitting. Handkerchiefs were waved. The President began ringing his bell
with all his might. He was obviously irritated by the behavior of the
audience, but did not venture to clear the court as he had threatened.
Even persons of high position, old men with stars on their breasts,
sitting on specially reserved seats behind the judges, applauded the
orator and waved their handkerchiefs. So that when the noise died down,
the President confined himself to repeating his stern threat to clear
the court, and Fetyukovitch, excited and triumphant, continued his
speech.)

“Gentlemen of the jury, you remember that awful night of which so much
has been said to‐day, when the son got over the fence and stood face to
face with the enemy and persecutor who had begotten him. I insist most
emphatically it was not for money he ran to his father’s house: the
charge of robbery is an absurdity, as I proved before. And it was not
to murder him he broke into the house, oh, no! If he had had that
design he would, at least, have taken the precaution of arming himself
beforehand. The brass pestle he caught up instinctively without knowing
why he did it. Granted that he deceived his father by tapping at the
window, granted that he made his way in—I’ve said already that I do not
for a moment believe that legend, but let it be so, let us suppose it
for a moment. Gentlemen, I swear to you by all that’s holy, if it had
not been his father, but an ordinary enemy, he would, after running
through the rooms and satisfying himself that the woman was not there,
have made off, post‐haste, without doing any harm to his rival. He
would have struck him, pushed him away perhaps, nothing more, for he
had no thought and no time to spare for that. What he wanted to know
was where she was. But his father, his father! The mere sight of the
father who had hated him from his childhood, had been his enemy, his
persecutor, and now his unnatural rival, was enough! A feeling of
hatred came over him involuntarily, irresistibly, clouding his reason.
It all surged up in one moment! It was an impulse of madness and
insanity, but also an impulse of nature, irresistibly and unconsciously
(like everything in nature) avenging the violation of its eternal laws.

“But the prisoner even then did not murder him—I maintain that, I cry
that aloud!—no, he only brandished the pestle in a burst of indignant
disgust, not meaning to kill him, not knowing that he would kill him.
Had he not had this fatal pestle in his hand, he would have only
knocked his father down perhaps, but would not have killed him. As he
ran away, he did not know whether he had killed the old man. Such a
murder is not a murder. Such a murder is not a parricide. No, the
murder of such a father cannot be called parricide. Such a murder can
only be reckoned parricide by prejudice.

“But I appeal to you again and again from the depths of my soul; did
this murder actually take place? Gentlemen of the jury, if we convict
and punish him, he will say to himself: ‘These people have done nothing
for my bringing up, for my education, nothing to improve my lot,
nothing to make me better, nothing to make me a man. These people have
not given me to eat and to drink, have not visited me in prison and
nakedness, and here they have sent me to penal servitude. I am quits, I
owe them nothing now, and owe no one anything for ever. They are wicked
and I will be wicked. They are cruel and I will be cruel.’ That is what
he will say, gentlemen of the jury. And I swear, by finding him guilty
you will only make it easier for him: you will ease his conscience, he
will curse the blood he has shed and will not regret it. At the same
time you will destroy in him the possibility of becoming a new man, for
he will remain in his wickedness and blindness all his life.

“But do you want to punish him fearfully, terribly, with the most awful
punishment that could be imagined, and at the same time to save him and
regenerate his soul? If so, overwhelm him with your mercy! You will
see, you will hear how he will tremble and be horror‐struck. ‘How can I
endure this mercy? How can I endure so much love? Am I worthy of it?’
That’s what he will exclaim.

“Oh, I know, I know that heart, that wild but grateful heart, gentlemen
of the jury! It will bow before your mercy; it thirsts for a great and
loving action, it will melt and mount upwards. There are souls which,
in their limitation, blame the whole world. But subdue such a soul with
mercy, show it love, and it will curse its past, for there are many
good impulses in it. Such a heart will expand and see that God is
merciful and that men are good and just. He will be horror‐stricken; he
will be crushed by remorse and the vast obligation laid upon him
henceforth. And he will not say then, ‘I am quits,’ but will say, ‘I am
guilty in the sight of all men and am more unworthy than all.’ With
tears of penitence and poignant, tender anguish, he will exclaim:
‘Others are better than I, they wanted to save me, not to ruin me!’ Oh,
this act of mercy is so easy for you, for in the absence of anything
like real evidence it will be too awful for you to pronounce: ‘Yes, he
is guilty.’

“Better acquit ten guilty men than punish one innocent man! Do you
hear, do you hear that majestic voice from the past century of our
glorious history? It is not for an insignificant person like me to
remind you that the Russian court does not exist for the punishment
only, but also for the salvation of the criminal! Let other nations
think of retribution and the letter of the law, we will cling to the
spirit and the meaning—the salvation and the reformation of the lost.
If this is true, if Russia and her justice are such, she may go forward
with good cheer! Do not try to scare us with your frenzied troikas from
which all the nations stand aside in disgust. Not a runaway troika, but
the stately chariot of Russia will move calmly and majestically to its
goal. In your hands is the fate of my client, in your hands is the fate
of Russian justice. You will defend it, you will save it, you will
prove that there are men to watch over it, that it is in good hands!”




Chapter XIV.
The Peasants Stand Firm


This was how Fetyukovitch concluded his speech, and the enthusiasm of
the audience burst like an irresistible storm. It was out of the
question to stop it: the women wept, many of the men wept too, even two
important personages shed tears. The President submitted, and even
postponed ringing his bell. The suppression of such an enthusiasm would
be the suppression of something sacred, as the ladies cried afterwards.
The orator himself was genuinely touched.

And it was at this moment that Ippolit Kirillovitch got up to make
certain objections. People looked at him with hatred. “What? What’s the
meaning of it? He positively dares to make objections,” the ladies
babbled. But if the whole world of ladies, including his wife, had
protested he could not have been stopped at that moment. He was pale,
he was shaking with emotion, his first phrases were even
unintelligible, he gasped for breath, could hardly speak clearly, lost
the thread. But he soon recovered himself. Of this new speech of his I
will quote only a few sentences.

“... I am reproached with having woven a romance. But what is this
defense if not one romance on the top of another? All that was lacking
was poetry. Fyodor Pavlovitch, while waiting for his mistress, tears
open the envelope and throws it on the floor. We are even told what he
said while engaged in this strange act. Is not this a flight of fancy?
And what proof have we that he had taken out the money? Who heard what
he said? The weak‐minded idiot, Smerdyakov, transformed into a Byronic
hero, avenging society for his illegitimate birth—isn’t this a romance
in the Byronic style? And the son who breaks into his father’s house
and murders him without murdering him is not even a romance—this is a
sphinx setting us a riddle which he cannot solve himself. If he
murdered him, he murdered him, and what’s the meaning of his murdering
him without having murdered him—who can make head or tail of this?

“Then we are admonished that our tribune is a tribune of true and sound
ideas and from this tribune of ‘sound ideas’ is heard a solemn
declaration that to call the murder of a father ‘parricide’ is nothing
but a prejudice! But if parricide is a prejudice, and if every child is
to ask his father why he is to love him, what will become of us? What
will become of the foundations of society? What will become of the
family? Parricide, it appears, is only a bogy of Moscow merchants’
wives. The most precious, the most sacred guarantees for the destiny
and future of Russian justice are presented to us in a perverted and
frivolous form, simply to attain an object—to obtain the justification
of something which cannot be justified. ‘Oh, crush him by mercy,’ cries
the counsel for the defense; but that’s all the criminal wants, and
to‐morrow it will be seen how much he is crushed. And is not the
counsel for the defense too modest in asking only for the acquittal of
the prisoner? Why not found a charity in the honor of the parricide to
commemorate his exploit among future generations? Religion and the
Gospel are corrected—that’s all mysticism, we are told, and ours is the
only true Christianity which has been subjected to the analysis of
reason and common sense. And so they set up before us a false semblance
of Christ! ‘What measure ye mete so it shall be meted unto you again,’
cried the counsel for the defense, and instantly deduces that Christ
teaches us to measure as it is measured to us—and this from the tribune
of truth and sound sense! We peep into the Gospel only on the eve of
making speeches, in order to dazzle the audience by our acquaintance
with what is, anyway, a rather original composition, which may be of
use to produce a certain effect—all to serve the purpose! But what
Christ commands us is something very different: He bids us beware of
doing this, because the wicked world does this, but we ought to forgive
and to turn the other cheek, and not to measure to our persecutors as
they measure to us. This is what our God has taught us and not that to
forbid children to murder their fathers is a prejudice. And we will not
from the tribune of truth and good sense correct the Gospel of our
Lord, Whom the counsel for the defense deigns to call only ‘the
crucified lover of humanity,’ in opposition to all orthodox Russia,
which calls to Him, ‘For Thou art our God!’ ”

At this the President intervened and checked the over‐zealous speaker,
begging him not to exaggerate, not to overstep the bounds, and so on,
as presidents always do in such cases. The audience, too, was uneasy.
The public was restless: there were even exclamations of indignation.
Fetyukovitch did not so much as reply; he only mounted the tribune to
lay his hand on his heart and, with an offended voice, utter a few
words full of dignity. He only touched again, lightly and ironically,
on “romancing” and “psychology,” and in an appropriate place quoted,
“Jupiter, you are angry, therefore you are wrong,” which provoked a
burst of approving laughter in the audience, for Ippolit Kirillovitch
was by no means like Jupiter. Then, _à propos_ of the accusation that
he was teaching the young generation to murder their fathers,
Fetyukovitch observed, with great dignity, that he would not even
answer. As for the prosecutor’s charge of uttering unorthodox opinions,
Fetyukovitch hinted that it was a personal insinuation and that he had
expected in this court to be secure from accusations “damaging to my
reputation as a citizen and a loyal subject.” But at these words the
President pulled him up, too, and Fetyukovitch concluded his speech
with a bow, amid a hum of approbation in the court. And Ippolit
Kirillovitch was, in the opinion of our ladies, “crushed for good.”

Then the prisoner was allowed to speak. Mitya stood up, but said very
little. He was fearfully exhausted, physically and mentally. The look
of strength and independence with which he had entered in the morning
had almost disappeared. He seemed as though he had passed through an
experience that day, which had taught him for the rest of his life
something very important he had not understood till then. His voice was
weak, he did not shout as before. In his words there was a new note of
humility, defeat and submission.

“What am I to say, gentlemen of the jury? The hour of judgment has come
for me, I feel the hand of God upon me! The end has come to an erring
man! But, before God, I repeat to you, I am innocent of my father’s
blood! For the last time I repeat, it wasn’t I killed him! I was
erring, but I loved what is good. Every instant I strove to reform, but
I lived like a wild beast. I thank the prosecutor, he told me many
things about myself that I did not know; but it’s not true that I
killed my father, the prosecutor is mistaken. I thank my counsel, too.
I cried listening to him; but it’s not true that I killed my father,
and he needn’t have supposed it. And don’t believe the doctors. I am
perfectly sane, only my heart is heavy. If you spare me, if you let me
go, I will pray for you. I will be a better man. I give you my word
before God I will! And if you will condemn me, I’ll break my sword over
my head myself and kiss the pieces. But spare me, do not rob me of my
God! I know myself, I shall rebel! My heart is heavy, gentlemen ...
spare me!”

He almost fell back in his place: his voice broke: he could hardly
articulate the last phrase. Then the judges proceeded to put the
questions and began to ask both sides to formulate their conclusions.

But I will not describe the details. At last the jury rose to retire
for consultation. The President was very tired, and so his last charge
to the jury was rather feeble. “Be impartial, don’t be influenced by
the eloquence of the defense, but yet weigh the arguments. Remember
that there is a great responsibility laid upon you,” and so on and so
on.

The jury withdrew and the court adjourned. People could get up, move
about, exchange their accumulated impressions, refresh themselves at
the buffet. It was very late, almost one o’clock in the night, but
nobody went away: the strain was so great that no one could think of
repose. All waited with sinking hearts; though that is, perhaps, too
much to say, for the ladies were only in a state of hysterical
impatience and their hearts were untroubled. An acquittal, they
thought, was inevitable. They all prepared themselves for a dramatic
moment of general enthusiasm. I must own there were many among the men,
too, who were convinced that an acquittal was inevitable. Some were
pleased, others frowned, while some were simply dejected, not wanting
him to be acquitted. Fetyukovitch himself was confident of his success.
He was surrounded by people congratulating him and fawning upon him.

“There are,” he said to one group, as I was told afterwards, “there are
invisible threads binding the counsel for the defense with the jury.
One feels during one’s speech if they are being formed. I was aware of
them. They exist. Our cause is won. Set your mind at rest.”

“What will our peasants say now?” said one stout, cross‐looking, pock‐
marked gentleman, a landowner of the neighborhood, approaching a group
of gentlemen engaged in conversation.

“But they are not all peasants. There are four government clerks among
them.”

“Yes, there are clerks,” said a member of the district council, joining
the group.

“And do you know that Nazaryev, the merchant with the medal, a
juryman?”

“What of him?”

“He is a man with brains.”

“But he never speaks.”

“He is no great talker, but so much the better. There’s no need for the
Petersburg man to teach him: he could teach all Petersburg himself.
He’s the father of twelve children. Think of that!”

“Upon my word, you don’t suppose they won’t acquit him?” one of our
young officials exclaimed in another group.

“They’ll acquit him for certain,” said a resolute voice.

“It would be shameful, disgraceful, not to acquit him!” cried the
official. “Suppose he did murder him—there are fathers and fathers!
And, besides, he was in such a frenzy.... He really may have done
nothing but swing the pestle in the air, and so knocked the old man
down. But it was a pity they dragged the valet in. That was simply an
absurd theory! If I’d been in Fetyukovitch’s place, I should simply
have said straight out: ‘He murdered him; but he is not guilty, hang it
all!’ ”

“That’s what he did, only without saying, ‘Hang it all!’ ”

“No, Mihail Semyonovitch, he almost said that, too,” put in a third
voice.

“Why, gentlemen, in Lent an actress was acquitted in our town who had
cut the throat of her lover’s lawful wife.”

“Oh, but she did not finish cutting it.”

“That makes no difference. She began cutting it.”

“What did you think of what he said about children? Splendid, wasn’t
it?”

“Splendid!”

“And about mysticism, too!”

“Oh, drop mysticism, do!” cried some one else; “think of Ippolit and
his fate from this day forth. His wife will scratch his eyes out
to‐morrow for Mitya’s sake.”

“Is she here?”

“What an idea! If she’d been here she’d have scratched them out in
court. She is at home with toothache. He he he!”

“He he he!”

In a third group:

“I dare say they will acquit Mitenka, after all.”

“I should not be surprised if he turns the ‘Metropolis’ upside down to‐
morrow. He will be drinking for ten days!”

“Oh, the devil!”

“The devil’s bound to have a hand in it. Where should he be if not
here?”

“Well, gentlemen, I admit it was eloquent. But still it’s not the thing
to break your father’s head with a pestle! Or what are we coming to?”

“The chariot! Do you remember the chariot?”

“Yes; he turned a cart into a chariot!”

“And to‐morrow he will turn a chariot into a cart, just to suit his
purpose.”

“What cunning chaps there are nowadays! Is there any justice to be had
in Russia?”

But the bell rang. The jury deliberated for exactly an hour, neither
more nor less. A profound silence reigned in the court as soon as the
public had taken their seats. I remember how the jurymen walked into
the court. At last! I won’t repeat the questions in order, and, indeed,
I have forgotten them. I remember only the answer to the President’s
first and chief question: “Did the prisoner commit the murder for the
sake of robbery and with premeditation?” (I don’t remember the exact
words.) There was a complete hush. The foreman of the jury, the
youngest of the clerks, pronounced, in a clear, loud voice, amidst the
deathlike stillness of the court:

“Yes, guilty!”

And the same answer was repeated to every question: “Yes, guilty!” and
without the slightest extenuating comment. This no one had expected;
almost every one had reckoned upon a recommendation to mercy, at least.
The deathlike silence in the court was not broken—all seemed petrified:
those who desired his conviction as well as those who had been eager
for his acquittal. But that was only for the first instant, and it was
followed by a fearful hubbub. Many of the men in the audience were
pleased. Some were rubbing their hands with no attempt to conceal their
joy. Those who disagreed with the verdict seemed crushed, shrugged
their shoulders, whispered, but still seemed unable to realize this.
But how shall I describe the state the ladies were in? I thought they
would create a riot. At first they could scarcely believe their ears.
Then suddenly the whole court rang with exclamations: “What’s the
meaning of it? What next?” They leapt up from their places. They seemed
to fancy that it might be at once reconsidered and reversed. At that
instant Mitya suddenly stood up and cried in a heartrending voice,
stretching his hands out before him:

“I swear by God and the dreadful Day of Judgment I am not guilty of my
father’s blood! Katya, I forgive you! Brothers, friends, have pity on
the other woman!”

He could not go on, and broke into a terrible sobbing wail that was
heard all over the court in a strange, unnatural voice unlike his own.
From the farthest corner at the back of the gallery came a piercing
shriek—it was Grushenka. She had succeeded in begging admittance to the
court again before the beginning of the lawyers’ speeches. Mitya was
taken away. The passing of the sentence was deferred till next day. The
whole court was in a hubbub but I did not wait to hear. I only remember
a few exclamations I heard on the steps as I went out.

“He’ll have a twenty years’ trip to the mines!”

“Not less.”

“Well, our peasants have stood firm.”

“And have done for our Mitya.”




EPILOGUE




Chapter I.
Plans For Mitya’s Escape


Very early, at nine o’clock in the morning, five days after the trial,
Alyosha went to Katerina Ivanovna’s to talk over a matter of great
importance to both of them, and to give her a message. She sat and
talked to him in the very room in which she had once received
Grushenka. In the next room Ivan Fyodorovitch lay unconscious in a high
fever. Katerina Ivanovna had immediately after the scene at the trial
ordered the sick and unconscious man to be carried to her house,
disregarding the inevitable gossip and general disapproval of the
public. One of the two relations who lived with her had departed to
Moscow immediately after the scene in court, the other remained. But if
both had gone away, Katerina Ivanovna would have adhered to her
resolution, and would have gone on nursing the sick man and sitting by
him day and night. Varvinsky and Herzenstube were attending him. The
famous doctor had gone back to Moscow, refusing to give an opinion as
to the probable end of the illness. Though the doctors encouraged
Katerina Ivanovna and Alyosha, it was evident that they could not yet
give them positive hopes of recovery.

Alyosha came to see his sick brother twice a day. But this time he had
specially urgent business, and he foresaw how difficult it would be to
approach the subject, yet he was in great haste. He had another
engagement that could not be put off for that same morning, and there
was need of haste.

They had been talking for a quarter of an hour. Katerina Ivanovna was
pale and terribly fatigued, yet at the same time in a state of
hysterical excitement. She had a presentiment of the reason why Alyosha
had come to her.

“Don’t worry about his decision,” she said, with confident emphasis to
Alyosha. “One way or another he is bound to come to it. He must escape.
That unhappy man, that hero of honor and principle—not he, not Dmitri
Fyodorovitch, but the man lying the other side of that door, who has
sacrificed himself for his brother,” Katya added, with flashing
eyes—“told me the whole plan of escape long ago. You know he has
already entered into negotiations.... I’ve told you something
already.... You see, it will probably come off at the third _étape_
from here, when the party of prisoners is being taken to Siberia. Oh,
it’s a long way off yet. Ivan Fyodorovitch has already visited the
superintendent of the third _étape_. But we don’t know yet who will be
in charge of the party, and it’s impossible to find that out so long
beforehand. To‐morrow perhaps I will show you in detail the whole plan
which Ivan Fyodorovitch left me on the eve of the trial in case of
need.... That was when—do you remember?—you found us quarreling. He had
just gone down‐stairs, but seeing you I made him come back; do you
remember? Do you know what we were quarreling about then?”

“No, I don’t,” said Alyosha.

“Of course he did not tell you. It was about that plan of escape. He
had told me the main idea three days before, and we began quarreling
about it at once and quarreled for three days. We quarreled because,
when he told me that if Dmitri Fyodorovitch were convicted he would
escape abroad with that creature, I felt furious at once—I can’t tell
you why, I don’t know myself why.... Oh, of course, I was furious then
about that creature, and that she, too, should go abroad with Dmitri!”
Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed suddenly, her lips quivering with anger.
“As soon as Ivan Fyodorovitch saw that I was furious about that woman,
he instantly imagined I was jealous of Dmitri and that I still loved
Dmitri. That is how our first quarrel began. I would not give an
explanation, I could not ask forgiveness. I could not bear to think
that such a man could suspect me of still loving that ... and when I
myself had told him long before that I did not love Dmitri, that I
loved no one but him! It was only resentment against that creature that
made me angry with him. Three days later, on the evening you came, he
brought me a sealed envelope, which I was to open at once, if anything
happened to him. Oh, he foresaw his illness! He told me that the
envelope contained the details of the escape, and that if he died or
was taken dangerously ill, I was to save Mitya alone. Then he left me
money, nearly ten thousand—those notes to which the prosecutor referred
in his speech, having learnt from some one that he had sent them to be
changed. I was tremendously impressed to find that Ivan Fyodorovitch
had not given up his idea of saving his brother, and was confiding this
plan of escape to me, though he was still jealous of me and still
convinced that I loved Mitya. Oh, that was a sacrifice! No, you cannot
understand the greatness of such self‐sacrifice, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I
wanted to fall at his feet in reverence, but I thought at once that he
would take it only for my joy at the thought of Mitya’s being saved
(and he certainly would have imagined that!), and I was so exasperated
at the mere possibility of such an unjust thought on his part that I
lost my temper again, and instead of kissing his feet, flew into a fury
again! Oh, I am unhappy! It’s my character, my awful, unhappy
character! Oh, you will see, I shall end by driving him, too, to
abandon me for another with whom he can get on better, like Dmitri. But
... no, I could not bear it, I should kill myself. And when you came in
then, and when I called to you and told him to come back, I was so
enraged by the look of contempt and hatred he turned on me that—do you
remember?—I cried out to you that it was he, he alone who had persuaded
me that his brother Dmitri was a murderer! I said that malicious thing
on purpose to wound him again. He had never, never persuaded me that
his brother was a murderer. On the contrary, it was I who persuaded
him! Oh, my vile temper was the cause of everything! I paved the way to
that hideous scene at the trial. He wanted to show me that he was an
honorable man, and that, even if I loved his brother, he would not ruin
him for revenge or jealousy. So he came to the court ... I am the cause
of it all, I alone am to blame!”

Katya never had made such confessions to Alyosha before, and he felt
that she was now at that stage of unbearable suffering when even the
proudest heart painfully crushes its pride and falls vanquished by
grief. Oh, Alyosha knew another terrible reason of her present misery,
though she had carefully concealed it from him during those days since
the trial; but it would have been for some reason too painful to him if
she had been brought so low as to speak to him now about that. She was
suffering for her “treachery” at the trial, and Alyosha felt that her
conscience was impelling her to confess it to him, to him, Alyosha,
with tears and cries and hysterical writhings on the floor. But he
dreaded that moment and longed to spare her. It made the commission on
which he had come even more difficult. He spoke of Mitya again.

“It’s all right, it’s all right, don’t be anxious about him!” she began
again, sharply and stubbornly. “All that is only momentary, I know him,
I know his heart only too well. You may be sure he will consent to
escape. It’s not as though it would be immediately; he will have time
to make up his mind to it. Ivan Fyodorovitch will be well by that time
and will manage it all himself, so that I shall have nothing to do with
it. Don’t be anxious; he will consent to run away. He has agreed
already: do you suppose he would give up that creature? And they won’t
let her go to him, so he is bound to escape. It’s you he’s most afraid
of, he is afraid you won’t approve of his escape on moral grounds. But
you must generously _allow_ it, if your sanction is so necessary,”
Katya added viciously. She paused and smiled.

“He talks about some hymn,” she went on again, “some cross he has to
bear, some duty; I remember Ivan Fyodorovitch told me a great deal
about it, and if you knew how he talked!” Katya cried suddenly, with
feeling she could not repress, “if you knew how he loved that wretched
man at the moment he told me, and how he hated him, perhaps, at the
same moment. And I heard his story and his tears with sneering disdain.
Brute! Yes, I am a brute. I am responsible for his fever. But that man
in prison is incapable of suffering,” Katya concluded irritably. “Can
such a man suffer? Men like him never suffer!”

There was a note of hatred and contemptuous repulsion in her words. And
yet it was she who had betrayed him. “Perhaps because she feels how
she’s wronged him she hates him at moments,” Alyosha thought to
himself. He hoped that it was only “at moments.” In Katya’s last words
he detected a challenging note, but he did not take it up.

“I sent for you this morning to make you promise to persuade him
yourself. Or do you, too, consider that to escape would be
dishonorable, cowardly, or something ... unchristian, perhaps?” Katya
added, even more defiantly.

“Oh, no. I’ll tell him everything,” muttered Alyosha. “He asks you to
come and see him to‐day,” he blurted out suddenly, looking her steadily
in the face. She started, and drew back a little from him on the sofa.

“Me? Can that be?” she faltered, turning pale.

“It can and ought to be!” Alyosha began emphatically, growing more
animated. “He needs you particularly just now. I would not have opened
the subject and worried you, if it were not necessary. He is ill, he is
beside himself, he keeps asking for you. It is not to be reconciled
with you that he wants you, but only that you would go and show
yourself at his door. So much has happened to him since that day. He
realizes that he has injured you beyond all reckoning. He does not ask
your forgiveness—‘It’s impossible to forgive me,’ he says himself—but
only that you would show yourself in his doorway.”

“It’s so sudden....” faltered Katya. “I’ve had a presentiment all these
days that you would come with that message. I knew he would ask me to
come. It’s impossible!”

“Let it be impossible, but do it. Only think, he realizes for the first
time how he has wounded you, the first time in his life; he had never
grasped it before so fully. He said, ‘If she refuses to come I shall be
unhappy all my life.’ Do you hear? though he is condemned to penal
servitude for twenty years, he is still planning to be happy—is not
that piteous? Think—you must visit him; though he is ruined, he is
innocent,” broke like a challenge from Alyosha. “His hands are clean,
there is no blood on them! For the sake of his infinite sufferings in
the future visit him now. Go, greet him on his way into the
darkness—stand at his door, that is all.... You ought to do it, you
ought to!” Alyosha concluded, laying immense stress on the word
“ought.”

“I ought to ... but I cannot....” Katya moaned. “He will look at me....
I can’t.”

“Your eyes ought to meet. How will you live all your life, if you don’t
make up your mind to do it now?”

“Better suffer all my life.”

“You ought to go, you ought to go,” Alyosha repeated with merciless
emphasis.

“But why to‐day, why at once?... I can’t leave our patient—”

“You can for a moment. It will only be a moment. If you don’t come, he
will be in delirium by to‐night. I would not tell you a lie; have pity
on him!”

“Have pity on _me!_” Katya said, with bitter reproach, and she burst
into tears.

“Then you will come,” said Alyosha firmly, seeing her tears. “I’ll go
and tell him you will come directly.”

“No, don’t tell him so on any account,” cried Katya in alarm. “I will
come, but don’t tell him beforehand, for perhaps I may go, but not go
in.... I don’t know yet—”

Her voice failed her. She gasped for breath. Alyosha got up to go.

“And what if I meet any one?” she said suddenly, in a low voice,
turning white again.

“That’s just why you must go now, to avoid meeting any one. There will
be no one there, I can tell you that for certain. We will expect you,”
he concluded emphatically, and went out of the room.




Chapter II.
For A Moment The Lie Becomes Truth


He hurried to the hospital where Mitya was lying now. The day after his
fate was determined, Mitya had fallen ill with nervous fever, and was
sent to the prison division of the town hospital. But at the request of
several persons (Alyosha, Madame Hohlakov, Lise, etc.), Doctor
Varvinsky had put Mitya not with other prisoners, but in a separate
little room, the one where Smerdyakov had been. It is true that there
was a sentinel at the other end of the corridor, and there was a
grating over the window, so that Varvinsky could be at ease about the
indulgence he had shown, which was not quite legal, indeed; but he was
a kind‐hearted and compassionate young man. He knew how hard it would
be for a man like Mitya to pass at once so suddenly into the society of
robbers and murderers, and that he must get used to it by degrees. The
visits of relations and friends were informally sanctioned by the
doctor and overseer, and even by the police captain. But only Alyosha
and Grushenka had visited Mitya. Rakitin had tried to force his way in
twice, but Mitya persistently begged Varvinsky not to admit him.

Alyosha found him sitting on his bed in a hospital dressing‐gown,
rather feverish, with a towel, soaked in vinegar and water, on his
head. He looked at Alyosha as he came in with an undefined expression,
but there was a shade of something like dread discernible in it. He had
become terribly preoccupied since the trial; sometimes he would be
silent for half an hour together, and seemed to be pondering something
heavily and painfully, oblivious of everything about him. If he roused
himself from his brooding and began to talk, he always spoke with a
kind of abruptness and never of what he really wanted to say. He looked
sometimes with a face of suffering at his brother. He seemed to be more
at ease with Grushenka than with Alyosha. It is true, he scarcely spoke
to her at all, but as soon as she came in, his whole face lighted up
with joy.

Alyosha sat down beside him on the bed in silence. This time Mitya was
waiting for Alyosha in suspense, but he did not dare ask him a
question. He felt it almost unthinkable that Katya would consent to
come, and at the same time he felt that if she did not come, something
inconceivable would happen. Alyosha understood his feelings.

“Trifon Borissovitch,” Mitya began nervously, “has pulled his whole inn
to pieces, I am told. He’s taken up the flooring, pulled apart the
planks, split up all the gallery, I am told. He is seeking treasure all
the time—the fifteen hundred roubles which the prosecutor said I’d
hidden there. He began playing these tricks, they say, as soon as he
got home. Serve him right, the swindler! The guard here told me
yesterday; he comes from there.”

“Listen,” began Alyosha. “She will come, but I don’t know when. Perhaps
to‐day, perhaps in a few days, that I can’t tell. But she will come,
she will, that’s certain.”

Mitya started, would have said something, but was silent. The news had
a tremendous effect on him. It was evident that he would have liked
terribly to know what had been said, but he was again afraid to ask.
Something cruel and contemptuous from Katya would have cut him like a
knife at that moment.

“This was what she said among other things; that I must be sure to set
your conscience at rest about escaping. If Ivan is not well by then she
will see to it all herself.”

“You’ve spoken of that already,” Mitya observed musingly.

“And you have repeated it to Grusha,” observed Alyosha.

“Yes,” Mitya admitted. “She won’t come this morning.” He looked timidly
at his brother. “She won’t come till the evening. When I told her
yesterday that Katya was taking measures, she was silent, but she set
her mouth. She only whispered, ‘Let her!’ She understood that it was
important. I did not dare to try her further. She understands now, I
think, that Katya no longer cares for me, but loves Ivan.”

“Does she?” broke from Alyosha.

“Perhaps she does not. Only she is not coming this morning,” Mitya
hastened to explain again; “I asked her to do something for me. You
know, Ivan is superior to all of us. He ought to live, not us. He will
recover.”

“Would you believe it, though Katya is alarmed about him, she scarcely
doubts of his recovery,” said Alyosha.

“That means that she is convinced he will die. It’s because she is
frightened she’s so sure he will get well.”

“Ivan has a strong constitution, and I, too, believe there’s every hope
that he will get well,” Alyosha observed anxiously.

“Yes, he will get well. But she is convinced that he will die. She has
a great deal of sorrow to bear...” A silence followed. A grave anxiety
was fretting Mitya.

“Alyosha, I love Grusha terribly,” he said suddenly in a shaking voice,
full of tears.

“They won’t let her go out there to you,” Alyosha put in at once.

“And there is something else I wanted to tell you,” Mitya went on, with
a sudden ring in his voice. “If they beat me on the way or out there, I
won’t submit to it. I shall kill some one, and shall be shot for it.
And this will be going on for twenty years! They speak to me rudely as
it is. I’ve been lying here all night, passing judgment on myself. I am
not ready! I am not able to resign myself. I wanted to sing a ‘hymn’;
but if a guard speaks rudely to me, I have not the strength to bear it.
For Grusha I would bear anything ... anything except blows.... But she
won’t be allowed to come there.”

Alyosha smiled gently.

“Listen, brother, once for all,” he said. “This is what I think about
it. And you know that I would not tell you a lie. Listen: you are not
ready, and such a cross is not for you. What’s more, you don’t need
such a martyr’s cross when you are not ready for it. If you had
murdered our father, it would grieve me that you should reject your
punishment. But you are innocent, and such a cross is too much for you.
You wanted to make yourself another man by suffering. I say, only
remember that other man always, all your life and wherever you go; and
that will be enough for you. Your refusal of that great cross will only
serve to make you feel all your life an even greater duty, and that
constant feeling will do more to make you a new man, perhaps, than if
you went there. For there you would not endure it and would repine, and
perhaps at last would say: ‘I am quits.’ The lawyer was right about
that. Such heavy burdens are not for all men. For some they are
impossible. These are my thoughts about it, if you want them so much.
If other men would have to answer for your escape, officers or
soldiers, then I would not have ‘allowed’ you,” smiled Alyosha. “But
they declare—the superintendent of that _étape_ told Ivan himself—that
if it’s well managed there will be no great inquiry, and that they can
get off easily. Of course, bribing is dishonest even in such a case,
but I can’t undertake to judge about it, because if Ivan and Katya
commissioned me to act for you, I know I should go and give bribes. I
must tell you the truth. And so I can’t judge of your own action. But
let me assure you that I shall never condemn you. And it would be a
strange thing if I could judge you in this. Now I think I’ve gone into
everything.”

“But I do condemn myself!” cried Mitya. “I shall escape, that was
settled apart from you; could Mitya Karamazov do anything but run away?
But I shall condemn myself, and I will pray for my sin for ever. That’s
how the Jesuits talk, isn’t it? Just as we are doing?”

“Yes.” Alyosha smiled gently.

“I love you for always telling the whole truth and never hiding
anything,” cried Mitya, with a joyful laugh. “So I’ve caught my Alyosha
being Jesuitical. I must kiss you for that. Now listen to the rest;
I’ll open the other side of my heart to you. This is what I planned and
decided. If I run away, even with money and a passport, and even to
America, I should be cheered up by the thought that I am not running
away for pleasure, not for happiness, but to another exile as bad,
perhaps, as Siberia. It is as bad, Alyosha, it is! I hate that America,
damn it, already. Even though Grusha will be with me. Just look at her;
is she an American? She is Russian, Russian to the marrow of her bones;
she will be homesick for the mother country, and I shall see every hour
that she is suffering for my sake, that she has taken up that cross for
me. And what harm has she done? And how shall I, too, put up with the
rabble out there, though they may be better than I, every one of them?
I hate that America already! And though they may be wonderful at
machinery, every one of them, damn them, they are not of my soul. I
love Russia, Alyosha, I love the Russian God, though I am a scoundrel
myself. I shall choke there!” he exclaimed, his eyes suddenly flashing.
His voice was trembling with tears. “So this is what I’ve decided,
Alyosha, listen,” he began again, mastering his emotion. “As soon as I
arrive there with Grusha, we will set to work at once on the land, in
solitude, somewhere very remote, with wild bears. There must be some
remote parts even there. I am told there are still Redskins there,
somewhere, on the edge of the horizon. So to the country of the _Last
of the Mohicans_, and there we’ll tackle the grammar at once, Grusha
and I. Work and grammar—that’s how we’ll spend three years. And by that
time we shall speak English like any Englishman. And as soon as we’ve
learnt it—good‐by to America! We’ll run here to Russia as American
citizens. Don’t be uneasy—we would not come to this little town. We’d
hide somewhere, a long way off, in the north or in the south. I shall
be changed by that time, and she will, too, in America. The doctors
shall make me some sort of wart on my face—what’s the use of their
being so mechanical!—or else I’ll put out one eye, let my beard grow a
yard, and I shall turn gray, fretting for Russia. I dare say they won’t
recognize us. And if they do, let them send us to Siberia. I don’t
care. It will show it’s our fate. We’ll work on the land here, too,
somewhere in the wilds, and I’ll make up as an American all my life.
But we shall die on our own soil. That’s my plan, and it shan’t be
altered. Do you approve?”

“Yes,” said Alyosha, not wanting to contradict him. Mitya paused for a
minute and said suddenly:

“And how they worked it up at the trial! Didn’t they work it up!”

“If they had not, you would have been convicted just the same,” said
Alyosha, with a sigh.

“Yes, people are sick of me here! God bless them, but it’s hard,” Mitya
moaned miserably. Again there was silence for a minute.

“Alyosha, put me out of my misery at once!” he exclaimed suddenly.
“Tell me, is she coming now, or not? Tell me? What did she say? How did
she say it?”

“She said she would come, but I don’t know whether she will come
to‐day. It’s hard for her, you know,” Alyosha looked timidly at his
brother.

“I should think it is hard for her! Alyosha, it will drive me out of my
mind. Grusha keeps looking at me. She understands. My God, calm my
heart: what is it I want? I want Katya! Do I understand what I want?
It’s the headstrong, evil Karamazov spirit! No, I am not fit for
suffering. I am a scoundrel, that’s all one can say.”

“Here she is!” cried Alyosha.

At that instant Katya appeared in the doorway. For a moment she stood
still, gazing at Mitya with a dazed expression. He leapt impulsively to
his feet, and a scared look came into his face. He turned pale, but a
timid, pleading smile appeared on his lips at once, and with an
irresistible impulse he held out both hands to Katya. Seeing it, she
flew impetuously to him. She seized him by the hands, and almost by
force made him sit down on the bed. She sat down beside him, and still
keeping his hands pressed them violently. Several times they both
strove to speak, but stopped short and again gazed speechless with a
strange smile, their eyes fastened on one another. So passed two
minutes.

“Have you forgiven me?” Mitya faltered at last, and at the same moment
turning to Alyosha, his face working with joy, he cried, “Do you hear
what I am asking, do you hear?”

“That’s what I loved you for, that you are generous at heart!” broke
from Katya. “My forgiveness is no good to you, nor yours to me; whether
you forgive me or not, you will always be a sore place in my heart, and
I in yours—so it must be....” She stopped to take breath. “What have I
come for?” she began again with nervous haste: “to embrace your feet,
to press your hands like this, till it hurts—you remember how in Moscow
I used to squeeze them—to tell you again that you are my god, my joy,
to tell you that I love you madly,” she moaned in anguish, and suddenly
pressed his hand greedily to her lips. Tears streamed from her eyes.
Alyosha stood speechless and confounded; he had never expected what he
was seeing.

“Love is over, Mitya!” Katya began again, “but the past is painfully
dear to me. Know that you will always be so. But now let what might
have been come true for one minute,” she faltered, with a drawn smile,
looking into his face joyfully again. “You love another woman, and I
love another man, and yet I shall love you for ever, and you will love
me; do you know that? Do you hear? Love me, love me all your life!” she
cried, with a quiver almost of menace in her voice.

“I shall love you, and ... do you know, Katya,” Mitya began, drawing a
deep breath at each word, “do you know, five days ago, that same
evening, I loved you.... When you fell down and were carried out ...
All my life! So it will be, so it will always be—”

So they murmured to one another frantic words, almost meaningless,
perhaps not even true, but at that moment it was all true, and they
both believed what they said implicitly.

“Katya,” cried Mitya suddenly, “do you believe I murdered him? I know
you don’t believe it now, but then ... when you gave evidence....
Surely, surely you did not believe it!”

“I did not believe it even then. I’ve never believed it. I hated you,
and for a moment I persuaded myself. While I was giving evidence I
persuaded myself and believed it, but when I’d finished speaking I left
off believing it at once. Don’t doubt that! I have forgotten that I
came here to punish myself,” she said, with a new expression in her
voice, quite unlike the loving tones of a moment before.

“Woman, yours is a heavy burden,” broke, as it were, involuntarily from
Mitya.

“Let me go,” she whispered. “I’ll come again. It’s more than I can bear
now.”

She was getting up from her place, but suddenly uttered a loud scream
and staggered back. Grushenka walked suddenly and noiselessly into the
room. No one had expected her. Katya moved swiftly to the door, but
when she reached Grushenka, she stopped suddenly, turned as white as
chalk and moaned softly, almost in a whisper:

“Forgive me!”

Grushenka stared at her and, pausing for an instant, in a vindictive,
venomous voice, answered:

“We are full of hatred, my girl, you and I! We are both full of hatred!
As though we could forgive one another! Save him, and I’ll worship you
all my life.”

“You won’t forgive her!” cried Mitya, with frantic reproach.

“Don’t be anxious, I’ll save him for you!” Katya whispered rapidly, and
she ran out of the room.

“And you could refuse to forgive her when she begged your forgiveness
herself?” Mitya exclaimed bitterly again.

“Mitya, don’t dare to blame her; you have no right to!” Alyosha cried
hotly.

“Her proud lips spoke, not her heart,” Grushenka brought out in a tone
of disgust. “If she saves you I’ll forgive her everything—”

She stopped speaking, as though suppressing something. She could not
yet recover herself. She had come in, as appeared afterwards,
accidentally, with no suspicion of what she would meet.

“Alyosha, run after her!” Mitya cried to his brother; “tell her ... I
don’t know ... don’t let her go away like this!”

“I’ll come to you again at nightfall,” said Alyosha, and he ran after
Katya. He overtook her outside the hospital grounds. She was walking
fast, but as soon as Alyosha caught her up she said quickly:

“No, before that woman I can’t punish myself! I asked her forgiveness
because I wanted to punish myself to the bitter end. She would not
forgive me.... I like her for that!” she added, in an unnatural voice,
and her eyes flashed with fierce resentment.

“My brother did not expect this in the least,” muttered Alyosha. “He
was sure she would not come—”

“No doubt. Let us leave that,” she snapped. “Listen: I can’t go with
you to the funeral now. I’ve sent them flowers. I think they still have
money. If necessary, tell them I’ll never abandon them.... Now leave
me, leave me, please. You are late as it is—the bells are ringing for
the service.... Leave me, please!”




Chapter III.
Ilusha’s Funeral. The Speech At The Stone


He really was late. They had waited for him and had already decided to
bear the pretty flower‐decked little coffin to the church without him.
It was the coffin of poor little Ilusha. He had died two days after
Mitya was sentenced. At the gate of the house Alyosha was met by the
shouts of the boys, Ilusha’s schoolfellows. They had all been
impatiently expecting him and were glad that he had come at last. There
were about twelve of them, they all had their school‐bags or satchels
on their shoulders. “Father will cry, be with father,” Ilusha had told
them as he lay dying, and the boys remembered it. Kolya Krassotkin was
the foremost of them.

“How glad I am you’ve come, Karamazov!” he cried, holding out his hand
to Alyosha. “It’s awful here. It’s really horrible to see it. Snegiryov
is not drunk, we know for a fact he’s had nothing to drink to‐day, but
he seems as if he were drunk ... I am always manly, but this is awful.
Karamazov, if I am not keeping you, one question before you go in?”

“What is it, Kolya?” said Alyosha.

“Is your brother innocent or guilty? Was it he killed your father or
was it the valet? As you say, so it will be. I haven’t slept for the
last four nights for thinking of it.”

“The valet killed him, my brother is innocent,” answered Alyosha.

“That’s what I said,” cried Smurov.

“So he will perish an innocent victim!” exclaimed Kolya; “though he is
ruined he is happy! I could envy him!”

“What do you mean? How can you? Why?” cried Alyosha surprised.

“Oh, if I, too, could sacrifice myself some day for truth!” said Kolya
with enthusiasm.

“But not in such a cause, not with such disgrace and such horror!” said
Alyosha.

“Of course ... I should like to die for all humanity, and as for
disgrace, I don’t care about that—our names may perish. I respect your
brother!”

“And so do I!” the boy, who had once declared that he knew who had
founded Troy, cried suddenly and unexpectedly, and he blushed up to his
ears like a peony as he had done on that occasion.

Alyosha went into the room. Ilusha lay with his hands folded and his
eyes closed in a blue coffin with a white frill round it. His thin face
was hardly changed at all, and strange to say there was no smell of
decay from the corpse. The expression of his face was serious and, as
it were, thoughtful. His hands, crossed over his breast, looked
particularly beautiful, as though chiseled in marble. There were
flowers in his hands and the coffin, inside and out, was decked with
flowers, which had been sent early in the morning by Lise Hohlakov. But
there were flowers too from Katerina Ivanovna, and when Alyosha opened
the door, the captain had a bunch in his trembling hands and was
strewing them again over his dear boy. He scarcely glanced at Alyosha
when he came in, and he would not look at any one, even at his crazy
weeping wife, “mamma,” who kept trying to stand on her crippled legs to
get a nearer look at her dead boy. Nina had been pushed in her chair by
the boys close up to the coffin. She sat with her head pressed to it
and she too was no doubt quietly weeping. Snegiryov’s face looked
eager, yet bewildered and exasperated. There was something crazy about
his gestures and the words that broke from him. “Old man, dear old
man!” he exclaimed every minute, gazing at Ilusha. It was his habit to
call Ilusha “old man,” as a term of affection when he was alive.

“Father, give me a flower, too; take that white one out of his hand and
give it me,” the crazy mother begged, whimpering. Either because the
little white rose in Ilusha’s hand had caught her fancy or that she
wanted one from his hand to keep in memory of him, she moved
restlessly, stretching out her hands for the flower.

“I won’t give it to any one, I won’t give you anything,” Snegiryov
cried callously. “They are his flowers, not yours! Everything is his,
nothing is yours!”

“Father, give mother a flower!” said Nina, lifting her face wet with
tears.

“I won’t give away anything and to her less than any one! She didn’t
love Ilusha. She took away his little cannon and he gave it to her,”
the captain broke into loud sobs at the thought of how Ilusha had given
up his cannon to his mother. The poor, crazy creature was bathed in
noiseless tears, hiding her face in her hands.

The boys, seeing that the father would not leave the coffin and that it
was time to carry it out, stood round it in a close circle and began to
lift it up.

“I don’t want him to be buried in the churchyard,” Snegiryov wailed
suddenly; “I’ll bury him by the stone, by our stone! Ilusha told me to.
I won’t let him be carried out!”

He had been saying for the last three days that he would bury him by
the stone, but Alyosha, Krassotkin, the landlady, her sister and all
the boys interfered.

“What an idea, bury him by an unholy stone, as though he had hanged
himself!” the old landlady said sternly. “There in the churchyard the
ground has been crossed. He’ll be prayed for there. One can hear the
singing in church and the deacon reads so plainly and verbally that it
will reach him every time just as though it were read over his grave.”

At last the captain made a gesture of despair as though to say, “Take
him where you will.” The boys raised the coffin, but as they passed the
mother, they stopped for a moment and lowered it that she might say
good‐ by to Ilusha. But on seeing that precious little face, which for
the last three days she had only looked at from a distance, she
trembled all over and her gray head began twitching spasmodically over
the coffin.

“Mother, make the sign of the cross over him, give him your blessing,
kiss him,” Nina cried to her. But her head still twitched like an
automaton and with a face contorted with bitter grief she began,
without a word, beating her breast with her fist. They carried the
coffin past her. Nina pressed her lips to her brother’s for the last
time as they bore the coffin by her. As Alyosha went out of the house
he begged the landlady to look after those who were left behind, but
she interrupted him before he had finished.

“To be sure, I’ll stay with them, we are Christians, too.” The old
woman wept as she said it.

They had not far to carry the coffin to the church, not more than three
hundred paces. It was a still, clear day, with a slight frost. The
church bells were still ringing. Snegiryov ran fussing and distracted
after the coffin, in his short old summer overcoat, with his head bare
and his soft, old, wide‐brimmed hat in his hand. He seemed in a state
of bewildered anxiety. At one minute he stretched out his hand to
support the head of the coffin and only hindered the bearers, at
another he ran alongside and tried to find a place for himself there. A
flower fell on the snow and he rushed to pick it up as though
everything in the world depended on the loss of that flower.

“And the crust of bread, we’ve forgotten the crust!” he cried suddenly
in dismay. But the boys reminded him at once that he had taken the
crust of bread already and that it was in his pocket. He instantly
pulled it out and was reassured.

“Ilusha told me to, Ilusha,” he explained at once to Alyosha. “I was
sitting by him one night and he suddenly told me: ‘Father, when my
grave is filled up crumble a piece of bread on it so that the sparrows
may fly down, I shall hear and it will cheer me up not to be lying
alone.’ ”

“That’s a good thing,” said Alyosha, “we must often take some.”

“Every day, every day!” said the captain quickly, seeming cheered at
the thought.

They reached the church at last and set the coffin in the middle of it.
The boys surrounded it and remained reverently standing so, all through
the service. It was an old and rather poor church; many of the ikons
were without settings; but such churches are the best for praying in.
During the mass Snegiryov became somewhat calmer, though at times he
had outbursts of the same unconscious and, as it were, incoherent
anxiety. At one moment he went up to the coffin to set straight the
cover or the wreath, when a candle fell out of the candlestick he
rushed to replace it and was a fearful time fumbling over it, then he
subsided and stood quietly by the coffin with a look of blank
uneasiness and perplexity. After the Epistle he suddenly whispered to
Alyosha, who was standing beside him, that the Epistle had not been
read properly but did not explain what he meant. During the prayer,
“Like the Cherubim,” he joined in the singing but did not go on to the
end. Falling on his knees, he pressed his forehead to the stone floor
and lay so for a long while.

At last came the funeral service itself and candles were distributed.
The distracted father began fussing about again, but the touching and
impressive funeral prayers moved and roused his soul. He seemed
suddenly to shrink together and broke into rapid, short sobs, which he
tried at first to smother, but at last he sobbed aloud. When they began
taking leave of the dead and closing the coffin, he flung his arms
about, as though he would not allow them to cover Ilusha, and began
greedily and persistently kissing his dead boy on the lips. At last
they succeeded in persuading him to come away from the step, but
suddenly he impulsively stretched out his hand and snatched a few
flowers from the coffin. He looked at them and a new idea seemed to
dawn upon him, so that he apparently forgot his grief for a minute.
Gradually he seemed to sink into brooding and did not resist when the
coffin was lifted up and carried to the grave. It was an expensive one
in the churchyard close to the church, Katerina Ivanovna had paid for
it. After the customary rites the grave‐ diggers lowered the coffin.
Snegiryov with his flowers in his hands bent down so low over the open
grave that the boys caught hold of his coat in alarm and pulled him
back. He did not seem to understand fully what was happening. When they
began filling up the grave, he suddenly pointed anxiously at the
falling earth and began trying to say something, but no one could make
out what he meant, and he stopped suddenly. Then he was reminded that
he must crumble the bread and he was awfully excited, snatched up the
bread and began pulling it to pieces and flinging the morsels on the
grave.

“Come, fly down, birds, fly down, sparrows!” he muttered anxiously.

One of the boys observed that it was awkward for him to crumble the
bread with the flowers in his hands and suggested he should give them
to some one to hold for a time. But he would not do this and seemed
indeed suddenly alarmed for his flowers, as though they wanted to take
them from him altogether. And after looking at the grave, and as it
were, satisfying himself that everything had been done and the bread
had been crumbled, he suddenly, to the surprise of every one, turned,
quite composedly even, and made his way homewards. But his steps became
more and more hurried, he almost ran. The boys and Alyosha kept up with
him.

“The flowers are for mamma, the flowers are for mamma! I was unkind to
mamma,” he began exclaiming suddenly.

Some one called to him to put on his hat as it was cold. But he flung
the hat in the snow as though he were angry and kept repeating, “I
won’t have the hat, I won’t have the hat.” Smurov picked it up and
carried it after him. All the boys were crying, and Kolya and the boy
who discovered about Troy most of all. Though Smurov, with the
captain’s hat in his hand, was crying bitterly too, he managed, as he
ran, to snatch up a piece of red brick that lay on the snow of the
path, to fling it at the flock of sparrows that was flying by. He
missed them, of course, and went on crying as he ran. Half‐way,
Snegiryov suddenly stopped, stood still for half a minute, as though
struck by something, and suddenly turning back to the church, ran
towards the deserted grave. But the boys instantly overtook him and
caught hold of him on all sides. Then he fell helpless on the snow as
though he had been knocked down, and struggling, sobbing, and wailing,
he began crying out, “Ilusha, old man, dear old man!” Alyosha and Kolya
tried to make him get up, soothing and persuading him.

“Captain, give over, a brave man must show fortitude,” muttered Kolya.

“You’ll spoil the flowers,” said Alyosha, “and mamma is expecting them,
she is sitting crying because you would not give her any before.
Ilusha’s little bed is still there—”

“Yes, yes, mamma!” Snegiryov suddenly recollected, “they’ll take away
the bed, they’ll take it away,” he added as though alarmed that they
really would. He jumped up and ran homewards again. But it was not far
off and they all arrived together. Snegiryov opened the door hurriedly
and called to his wife with whom he had so cruelly quarreled just
before:

“Mamma, poor crippled darling, Ilusha has sent you these flowers,” he
cried, holding out to her a little bunch of flowers that had been
frozen and broken while he was struggling in the snow. But at that
instant he saw in the corner, by the little bed, Ilusha’s little boots,
which the landlady had put tidily side by side. Seeing the old,
patched, rusty‐ looking, stiff boots he flung up his hands and rushed
to them, fell on his knees, snatched up one boot and, pressing his lips
to it, began kissing it greedily, crying, “Ilusha, old man, dear old
man, where are your little feet?”

“Where have you taken him away? Where have you taken him?” the lunatic
cried in a heartrending voice. Nina, too, broke into sobs. Kolya ran
out of the room, the boys followed him. At last Alyosha too went out.

“Let them weep,” he said to Kolya, “it’s no use trying to comfort them
just now. Let us wait a minute and then go back.”

“No, it’s no use, it’s awful,” Kolya assented. “Do you know,
Karamazov,” he dropped his voice so that no one could hear them, “I
feel dreadfully sad, and if it were only possible to bring him back,
I’d give anything in the world to do it.”

“Ah, so would I,” said Alyosha.

“What do you think, Karamazov? Had we better come back here to‐night?
He’ll be drunk, you know.”

“Perhaps he will. Let us come together, you and I, that will be enough,
to spend an hour with them, with the mother and Nina. If we all come
together we shall remind them of everything again,” Alyosha suggested.

“The landlady is laying the table for them now—there’ll be a funeral
dinner or something, the priest is coming; shall we go back to it,
Karamazov?”

“Of course,” said Alyosha.

“It’s all so strange, Karamazov, such sorrow and then pancakes after
it, it all seems so unnatural in our religion.”

“They are going to have salmon, too,” the boy who had discovered about
Troy observed in a loud voice.

“I beg you most earnestly, Kartashov, not to interrupt again with your
idiotic remarks, especially when one is not talking to you and doesn’t
care to know whether you exist or not!” Kolya snapped out irritably.
The boy flushed crimson but did not dare to reply.

Meantime they were strolling slowly along the path and suddenly Smurov
exclaimed:

“There’s Ilusha’s stone, under which they wanted to bury him.”

They all stood still by the big stone. Alyosha looked and the whole
picture of what Snegiryov had described to him that day, how Ilusha,
weeping and hugging his father, had cried, “Father, father, how he
insulted you,” rose at once before his imagination.

A sudden impulse seemed to come into his soul. With a serious and
earnest expression he looked from one to another of the bright,
pleasant faces of Ilusha’s schoolfellows, and suddenly said to them:

“Boys, I should like to say one word to you, here at this place.”

The boys stood round him and at once bent attentive and expectant eyes
upon him.

“Boys, we shall soon part. I shall be for some time with my two
brothers, of whom one is going to Siberia and the other is lying at
death’s door. But soon I shall leave this town, perhaps for a long
time, so we shall part. Let us make a compact here, at Ilusha’s stone,
that we will never forget Ilusha and one another. And whatever happens
to us later in life, if we don’t meet for twenty years afterwards, let
us always remember how we buried the poor boy at whom we once threw
stones, do you remember, by the bridge? and afterwards we all grew so
fond of him. He was a fine boy, a kind‐hearted, brave boy, he felt for
his father’s honor and resented the cruel insult to him and stood up
for him. And so in the first place, we will remember him, boys, all our
lives. And even if we are occupied with most important things, if we
attain to honor or fall into great misfortune—still let us remember how
good it was once here, when we were all together, united by a good and
kind feeling which made us, for the time we were loving that poor boy,
better perhaps than we are. My little doves—let me call you so, for you
are very like them, those pretty blue birds, at this minute as I look
at your good dear faces. My dear children, perhaps you won’t understand
what I am saying to you, because I often speak very unintelligibly, but
you’ll remember it all the same and will agree with my words some time.
You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more
wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory,
especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great
deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from
childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such
memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if
one has only one good memory left in one’s heart, even that may
sometime be the means of saving us. Perhaps we may even grow wicked
later on, may be unable to refrain from a bad action, may laugh at
men’s tears and at those people who say as Kolya did just now, ‘I want
to suffer for all men,’ and may even jeer spitefully at such people.
But however bad we may become—which God forbid—yet, when we recall how
we buried Ilusha, how we loved him in his last days, and how we have
been talking like friends all together, at this stone, the cruelest and
most mocking of us—if we do become so—will not dare to laugh inwardly
at having been kind and good at this moment! What’s more, perhaps, that
one memory may keep him from great evil and he will reflect and say,
‘Yes, I was good and brave and honest then!’ Let him laugh to himself,
that’s no matter, a man often laughs at what’s good and kind. That’s
only from thoughtlessness. But I assure you, boys, that as he laughs he
will say at once in his heart, ‘No, I do wrong to laugh, for that’s not
a thing to laugh at.’ ”

“That will be so, I understand you, Karamazov!” cried Kolya, with
flashing eyes.

The boys were excited and they, too, wanted to say something, but they
restrained themselves, looking with intentness and emotion at the
speaker.

“I say this in case we become bad,” Alyosha went on, “but there’s no
reason why we should become bad, is there, boys? Let us be, first and
above all, kind, then honest and then let us never forget each other! I
say that again. I give you my word for my part that I’ll never forget
one of you. Every face looking at me now I shall remember even for
thirty years. Just now Kolya said to Kartashov that we did not care to
know whether he exists or not. But I cannot forget that Kartashov
exists and that he is not blushing now as he did when he discovered the
founders of Troy, but is looking at me with his jolly, kind, dear
little eyes. Boys, my dear boys, let us all be generous and brave like
Ilusha, clever, brave and generous like Kolya (though he will be ever
so much cleverer when he is grown up), and let us all be as modest, as
clever and sweet as Kartashov. But why am I talking about those two?
You are all dear to me, boys, from this day forth, I have a place in my
heart for you all, and I beg you to keep a place in your hearts for me!
Well, and who has united us in this kind, good feeling which we shall
remember and intend to remember all our lives? Who, if not Ilusha, the
good boy, the dear boy, precious to us for ever! Let us never forget
him. May his memory live for ever in our hearts from this time forth!”

“Yes, yes, for ever, for ever!” the boys cried in their ringing voices,
with softened faces.

“Let us remember his face and his clothes and his poor little boots,
his coffin and his unhappy, sinful father, and how boldly he stood up
for him alone against the whole school.”

“We will remember, we will remember,” cried the boys. “He was brave, he
was good!”

“Ah, how I loved him!” exclaimed Kolya.

“Ah, children, ah, dear friends, don’t be afraid of life! How good life
is when one does something good and just!”

“Yes, yes,” the boys repeated enthusiastically.

“Karamazov, we love you!” a voice, probably Kartashov’s, cried
impulsively.

“We love you, we love you!” they all caught it up. There were tears in
the eyes of many of them.

“Hurrah for Karamazov!” Kolya shouted ecstatically.

“And may the dead boy’s memory live for ever!” Alyosha added again with
feeling.

“For ever!” the boys chimed in again.

“Karamazov,” cried Kolya, “can it be true what’s taught us in religion,
that we shall all rise again from the dead and shall live and see each
other again, all, Ilusha too?”

“Certainly we shall all rise again, certainly we shall see each other
and shall tell each other with joy and gladness all that has happened!”
Alyosha answered, half laughing, half enthusiastic.

“Ah, how splendid it will be!” broke from Kolya.

“Well, now we will finish talking and go to his funeral dinner. Don’t
be put out at our eating pancakes—it’s a very old custom and there’s
something nice in that!” laughed Alyosha. “Well, let us go! And now we
go hand in hand.”

“And always so, all our lives hand in hand! Hurrah for Karamazov!”
Kolya cried once more rapturously, and once more the boys took up his
exclamation: “Hurrah for Karamazov!”

THE END




FOOTNOTES


 [1] In Russian, “silen.”

 [2] A proverbial expression in Russia.

 [3] Grushenka.

 [4] i.e. setter dog.

 [5] Probably the public event was the Decabrist plot against the Tsar,
 of December 1825, in which the most distinguished men in Russia were
 concerned.—TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.

 [6] When a monk’s body is carried out from the cell to the church and
 from the church to the graveyard, the canticle “What earthly joy...”
 is sung. If the deceased was a priest as well as a monk the canticle
 “Our Helper and Defender” is sung instead.

 [7] i.e. a chime of bells.

 [8] Literally: “Did you get off with a long nose made at you?”—a
 proverbial expression in Russia for failure.

 [9] Gogol is meant.