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 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.