The Brothers Karamazov

BOOK III: THE SENSUALISTS

Chapter 1: In the Servants’ Quarters

The house of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov stood far from in the very center of town, yet not quite on the outskirts. It was rather decrepit, but had a pleasant appearance: one-storied, with an attic, painted a gray color, and with a red iron roof. However, it had many good years left, and was roomy and snug. It had all sorts of closets, all sorts of nooks and unexpected little stairways. There were rats in it, but Fyodor Pavlovich was not altogether angry with them: “Still, it’s not so boring in the evenings when one is alone.” And indeed he had the custom of dismissing the servants to their cottage for the night and locking himself up in the house alone for the whole night. This cottage stood in the yard. It was spacious and solid; and Fyodor Pavlovich also appointed his kitchen to be there, though there was a kitchen in the main house: he did not like kitchen smells, and food was carried across the yard winter and summer. As a matter of fact, the house had been built for a large family: it could have accommodated five times as many masters and servants. But at the moment of our story, only Fyodor Pavlovich and Ivan Fyodorovich lived in the house, and in the cottage there were just three servants: the old man Grigory, the old woman Marfa, his wife, and the servant Smerdyakov, who was still a young man. We must say a little more in particular about these three auxiliary persons. We have already said enough, however, about old Grigory Vasilievich Kutuzov. He was a firm and unwavering man, who persistently and directly pursued his point, provided that this point for some reason (often surprisingly illogical) stood before him as an immutable truth. Generally speaking, he was honest and incorruptible. His wife, Marfa Ignatievna, despite the fact that she had submitted unquestioningly to her husband’s will all her life, pestered him terribly, just after the emancipation of the serfs, for example, to leave Fyodor Pavlovich and move to Moscow to open some sort of little shop there (they had some money); but Grigory then decided once and for all that the woman was talking nonsense, “for every woman is without honor,” and that they should not leave their former master, whatever sort he was, “for it was now their duty.”

“Do you understand what duty is?” he asked Marfa Ignatievna. “I understand about duty, Grigory Vasilievich, but why it should be our duty to stay here, that I do not understand at all,” Marfa Ignatievna replied firmly.

“Don’t understand, then, but that is how it will be. Henceforth hold your tongue.”

And so it was: they did not leave, and Fyodor Pavlovich appointed them a salary, a small one, but he paid it. Besides that, Grigory knew that he had an unquestionable influence over his master. He felt it, and he was right. A cunning and obstinate buffoon, Fyodor Pavlovich, while he had a very firm character “in certain things in life,” as he himself put it, showed, to his own surprise, even a rather weakish character in certain other “things in life. “ And he knew which ones, he knew and was afraid of many things. In certain things in life one had to be on one’s guard, and that was difficult without a faithful man. And Grigory was a most faithful man. It even so happened that many times in the course of his career, Fyodor Pavlovich might have been beaten, and beaten badly, but Grigory always came to his rescue, though he admonished him each time afterwards. But Fyodor Pavlovich would not have been afraid of beatings alone: there were higher occasions, even rather subtle and complicated ones, when Fyodor Pavlovich himself would have been unable, perhaps, to explain this remarkable need for a close and faithful man that he would sometimes, all of a sudden, momentarily and inconceivably, begin to feel in himself. These occasions were almost morbid: most depraved, and, in his sensuality, often as cruel as a wicked insect, Fyodor Pavlovich at times suddenly felt in himself, in his drunken moments, a spiritual fear, a moral shock, that almost, so to speak, resounded physically in his soul. “On those occasions it’s as if my soul were fluttering in my throat,” he sometimes used to say. And at such moments he was glad that nearby, close at hand, maybe not in the same room but in the cottage, there was such a man, firm, devoted, not at all like himself, not depraved, who, though he saw all this depravity going on and knew all the secrets, still put up with it all out of devotion, did not protest, and—above all—did not reproach him or threaten him with anything either in this age or in the age to come, and who would defend him if need be—from whom? From someone unknown, but terrible and dangerous. The thing precisely was that there should be another man, ancient and amicable, who could be summoned in a morbid moment, so that he could look him in the face and perhaps exchange a few words, even quite irrelevant words, and if it’s all right and he does not get angry, then somehow it eases the heart, but if he gets angry, well, then it’s a little sadder. It happened (very rarely, however) that Fyodor Pavlovich would even go at night to the cottage to wake Grigory so that Grigory could come to him for a moment. Grigory would come, and Fyodor Pavlovich would begin talking about perfect trifles, and would soon let him go, sometimes even with a little joke or jibe, and would spit and go to bed himself, and sleep the sleep of the blessed. Something of this sort happened to Fyodor Pavlovich when Alyosha arrived. Alyosha “pierced his heart” because he “lived there, saw everything, and condemned nothing.” Moreover, he brought something unprecedented with him: a complete lack of contempt for him, the old man, and, on the contrary, an unvarying affection and a perfectly natural, single-hearted attachment to him, little though he deserved it. All of this came as a perfect surprise to the solitary old lecher; it was quite unexpected for him, who until then had loved only “iniquity.” When Alyosha left, he admitted to himself that he had understood something that until then he had been unwilling to understand.

I mentioned at the beginning of my story that Grigory hated Adelaide Ivanovna, Fyodor Pavlovich’s first wife and the mother of his first son, Dmitri Fyodorovich, and that, on the contrary, he defended his second wife, the shrieker, Sofia Ivanovna, against his master himself and against all who might chance to speak a bad or flippant word about her. His sympathy for the unfortunate woman became something sacred to him, so that even twenty years later he would not suffer a slighting allusion to her from anyone at all, and would at once object to the offender. Outwardly Grigory was a cold and pompous man, taciturn, delivering himself of weighty, unfrivolous words. In the same way, it was impossible to tell at first glance whether he loved his meek, obedient wife or not, and yet he really did love her, and she, of course, knew it. This Marfa Ignatievna not only was not a stupid woman, but was even perhaps more intelligent than her husband, at least more reasonable than he in everyday things, and yet she submitted to him without a murmur and without complaint from the very beginning of their married life, and unquestionably respected his spiritual superiority. It was remarkable that all their life they spoke very little to each other, and then only of the most necessary daily things. Pompous and majestic Grigory always thought through all his affairs and concerns by himself, and Marfa Ignatievna had long ago understood once and for all that he had absolutely no need of her advice. She felt that her husband valued her silence and took it as a sign of her intelligence. He had never beaten her, save only once, and then slightly. In the first year of the marriage of Adelaide Ivanovna and Fyodor Pavlovich, one day in the village, the village girls and women, who were then still serfs, were gathered in the master’s yard to sing and dance. They began “In the Meadows,” and suddenly Marfa Ignatievna, then still a young woman, leaped out in front of the chorus and performed the “Russian dance” in a special manner, not as village women did it, but as she used to dance when she was a servant of the wealthy Miusovs, in their own household theater, where they were taught to dance by a dancing master invited from Moscow. Grigory saw his wife’s performance and, back home, an hour later, taught her a lesson by pulling her hair a little. There the beatings ended forever, and were not repeated even once in the rest of their life, and Marfa Ignatievna also foreswore dancing.

God did not grant them children; there was one baby, but it died. Grigory obviously loved children, and did not even conceal it, that is, he was not ashamed to show it. After Adelaida Ivanovna fled, he took charge of Dmitri Fyodorovich, then a three-year-old boy, and fussed over him for almost a year, combing his hair and even washing him in a tub himself. He took the same trouble over Ivan Fyodorovich, and then over Alyosha, for which he received a slap in the face; but I have already related all that. His own baby gave him only the joy of hope while Marfa Ignatievna was still pregnant. When it was born, it struck his heart with grief and horror. The fact is that the boy was born with six fingers.^[73] Seeing this, Grigory was so mortified that he not only kept silent up to the very day of the baptism, but even went out to the garden especially to be silent. It was spring, and he spent all three days digging beds in the vegetable garden. On the third day they were to baptize the infant; by then Grigory had worked something out. Going into the cottage where the clergy and guests had gathered, including, finally, Fyodor Pavlovich himself, who came in person to be the godfather, he suddenly announced that “the baby oughtn’t to be baptized at all”—announced it not loudly or in many words, but speaking each word through his teeth, and only gazing dully and intently at the priest.

“Why not?” asked the priest with good-humored astonishment.

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

“A dragon? How is he a dragon?”

Grigory was silent for a while.

“A confusion of natures occurred ... ,” he muttered, rather vaguely but very firmly, apparently unwilling to say more.

There was laughter, and of course the poor baby was baptized. At the font, Grigory prayed zealously, yet he did not change his opinion about the newborn. However, he did not interfere in any way, but for the two weeks that the sickly boy lived, he scarcely ever looked at him, did not even want to notice him, and kept away from the house most of the time. When the child died of thrush two weeks later, he himself put him into the little coffin, looked at him with deep grief, and when his shallow little grave was covered with earth, he knelt and prostrated before it. For many years afterwards he never once mentioned his child, and Marfa Ignatievna never once recalled her child in his presence, and whenever she happened to talk with someone about her “baby,” she spoke in a whisper, even if Grigory Vasilievich was not present. As Marfa Ignatievna observed, ever since that little grave, he had mainly concerned himself with “the divine,” reading the Lives of the Saints, mostly silently and by himself, and each time putting on his big, round silver spectacles. He rarely read aloud, except during Lent. He loved the Book of Job,^[74] and somewhere obtained a copy of the homilies and sermons of “Our God-bearing Father, Isaac the Syrian,”^[75] which he read persistently over many years, understanding almost nothing at all of it, but perhaps precisely for that reason prizing and loving it all the more. Of late he had noticed and begun to take an interest in the Flagellants,^[76] for which there was an opportunity in the neighborhood; he was apparently shaken, but did not deem it necessary to convert to the new faith. Assiduous reading in “the divine” certainly added to the pomposity of his physiognomy.

He was perhaps inclined to mysticism. And here, as if by design, the occasion of the arrival in the world of his six-fingered baby and its death coincided with another very strange, unexpected, and original occurrence, which left, as he himself once put it later, “a stamp” on his soul. It happened that on the very day when they buried their six-fingered infant, Marfa Ignatievna, awakened during the night, heard what sounded like the cry of a newborn baby. She was frightened and woke her husband. He listened and observed that it was more likely someone groaning, “possibly a woman.” He got up and dressed; it was a rather warm May night. Stepping out on the porch, he heard clearly that the groans were coming from the garden. But the garden was always locked from inside for the night, and it was impossible to get in except by that entrance, because the whole garden was surrounded with a high, sturdy fence. Grigory went back in, lighted a lantern, took the garden key, and paying no attention to the hysterical terror of his wife, who kept insisting that she heard a baby crying, and that it could only be her little boy crying and calling her, he silently went out to the garden. There he clearly recognized that the groans were coming from their bathhouse, which stood in the garden not far from the gate, and that they were indeed the groans of a woman. He opened the bathhouse door and was dumbfounded by what he saw: a local girl, a holy fool who roamed the streets and was known to the whole town as Stinking Lizaveta, had gotten into the bathhouse and just given birth to an infant. The infant was lying beside her, and she was dying beside him. She said nothing, for the simple reason that she had never been able to speak. But all this had better be explained separately.

Chapter 2: Stinking Lizaveta

There was one particular circumstance here that deeply shocked Grigory, ultimately strengthening in him an earlier, unpleasant and abhorrent, suspicion. This Stinking Lizaveta was a very short girl, “a wee bit under five feet,” as many pious old ladies in our town touchingly recalled after her death. Her twenty-year-old face, healthy, broad, and ruddy, was completely idiotic; and the look in her eyes was fixed and unpleasant, though mild. All her life, both summer and winter, she went barefoot and wore only a hempen shift. Her nearly black hair, extremely thick and as curly as sheep’s wool, formed a sort of huge hat on her head. Besides, it was always dirty with earth and mud, and had little leaves, splinters, and shavings stuck to it, because she always slept on the ground and in the mud. Her father was homeless and sickly, a failed tradesman named Ilya, who had fits of heavy drinking and for many years had been sponging off one of our well-to-do middle-class families as some sort of handyman. Lizaveta’s mother had long been dead. Eternally ill and angry, Ilya used to beat Lizaveta brutally whenever she came home. But she rarely came home, because she went begging all over town as a holy fool of God. Both Ilya’s employers and Ilya himself, and even many compassionate townspeople, mainly merchants and their wives, tried more than once to clothe Lizaveta more decently than in her one shift, and towards winter always put a sheepskin coat and a pair of boots on her; but she, though she let them put every-thing on her without protesting, usually went away somewhere, most often to the porch of the cathedral church, and took off all they had given her— whether a kerchief, a skirt, or a sheepskin coat and boots—left it there, and went away barefoot, dressed as before only in her shift. It happened once that the new governor of our province, observing our town on a visit, was greatly offended in his noblest feelings when he saw Lizaveta, and though he understood that she was a “holy fool,” as had been reported to him, nevertheless pointed out that a young girl wandering around in her shift was an offense to public decency, and that a stop should be put to it. But the governor left and Lizaveta remained as she was. Her father finally died, and she thereby became even dearer, as an orphan, to all the pious people in town. Indeed, everyone seemed to like her, and even the boys did not tease or insult her, though our boys, especially at school, are a mischievous lot. She walked into strangers’ houses and no one turned her out; quite the opposite, everyone was nice to her and gave her a kopeck. When she was given a kopeck, she would accept it and at once take it and put it in some poor box in the church or prison. When she was given a roll or a bun in the marketplace, she always went and gave this roll or bun to the first child she met, or else she would stop some one of our wealthiest ladies and give it to her; and the ladies would even gladly accept it. She herself lived only on black bread and water. She would sometimes stop in at an expensive shop and sit down, and though there were costly goods and money lying about, the owners were never wary of her: they knew that even if someone had put thousands down and forgotten them, she would not take a kopeck. She rarely went into a church, but she used to sleep on church porches, or in kitchen gardens, having climbed over someone’s wattle fence (we still have many wattle fences instead of real fences, even to this day). She would go home—that is, to the home of those people her late father had lived with—about once a week, every day in winter, but only to spend the night, and she slept either in the hallway or in the barn. People marveled that she could endure such a life, but it was what she was used to; though she was small, she was remarkably sturdy. There were some among our gentry who said she did it all out of pride; but that somehow did not make sense; she could not even speak a word, and would only rarely move her tongue and mumble—how could she have been proud? And so it happened that once (this was quite a while ago), on a bright and warm September night, under a full moon, rather late by our standards, a bunch of drunken gentlemen, five or six hearty fellows, were returning home from their club “by the back way.” There were wattle fences on both sides of the lane, behind which lay the kitchen gardens of the adjacent houses; the lane gave onto a plank bridge that crossed the long, stinking puddle it is our custom sometimes to call a stream. Near the wattle fence, among the nettles and burdock, our band discovered Lizaveta sleeping. The tipsy gentlemen looked down at her, laughing loudly, and began producing all sorts of unprintable witticisms. It suddenly occurred to one young sir to pose a completely bizarre question on an impossible subject: “Could anyone possibly regard such an animal as a woman, right now, for instance?” and so on. With lofty disdain, they all declared it impossible. But the group happened to include Fyodor Pavlovich, and he at once popped up and declared that, yes, she could be regarded as a woman, even very much so, and that there was even some piquancy in it of a special sort, and so on and so forth. It’s true that at that time he was even overzealously establishing himself as a buffoon, and loved to pop up and amuse the gentlemen, ostensibly as an equal, of course, though in reality he was an absolute boor beside them. It was exactly at the same time that he received the news from Petersburg about the death of his first wife, Adelaide Ivanovna, and, with crêpe on his hat, went drinking and carousing so outrageously that some people in our town, even the most dissolute, cringed at the sight. The bunch, of course, burst out laughing at this unexpected opinion; one of them even began urging Fyodor Pavlovich on, but the rest spat even more disgustedly, though still with the utmost merriment, and finally they all went on their way. Later, Fyodor Pavlovich swore that he, too, had left with everyone else; maybe it was so, no one knows or ever knew for certain, but about five or six months later the whole town began asking, with great and genuine indignation, why Lizaveta was walking around pregnant, and trying to find out: who was the sinner? Who was the offender? And then suddenly a strange rumor spread all over town that the offender was none other than Fyodor Pavlovich. Where did the rumor come from? Of that bunch of drunken gentlemen, only one participant remained in our town by then, and he was an elderly and respectable state councillor,^[77] a family man with grown-up daughters, who would by no means have spread anything, even if there were some truth in it. The rest of the participants, about five in all, had left by that time. But the rumor pointed straight at Fyodor Pavlovich, and kept pointing at him. Of course he never owned up to it: he would not even deign to answer such petty merchants and tradesmen. He was proud then, and refused to speak anywhere but in the company of the civil servants and gentlemen whom he entertained so well. This time Grigory stood up for his master energetically and with all his might, and not only defended him against all this slander but even got into arguments and disputes and managed to convince many people. “She herself is to blame, the low creature,” he asserted, and the offender was none other than “Karp with the Screw” (this was the nickname of a horrible convict, well known at the time, who had just escaped from the provincial prison and was secretly living in our town). This surmise seemed plausible: Karp was remembered, it was specifically remembered that on those very nights, in autumn, he had been lurking around town and had robbed three people. But the whole affair and all this gossip not only did not turn people’s sympathy away from the poor holy fool, but everyone began looking after her and protecting her all the more. The widow of the merchant Kondratiev, a wealthy woman, even arranged it all so that by the end of April she had brought Lizaveta to her house, intending to keep her there until she gave birth. They guarded her vigilantly, but in the end, despite their vigilance, on the very last day, in the evening, Lizaveta suddenly left the widow’s house unobserved and turned up in Fyodor Pavlovich’s garden. How she managed, in her condition, to climb over the high and sturdy garden fence remained rather a mystery. Some asserted that “someone had lifted her over,” others that “it had lifted her over.” Most likely everything happened in a natural, if rather tricky, way: Lizaveta, who knew how to climb over wattle fences to spend the night in people’s kitchen gardens, somehow also climbed up onto Fyodor Pavlovich’s fence and from there jumped down into the garden, despite her condition, though not without harming herself. Grigory rushed to Marfa Ignatievna and sent her to help Lizaveta while he himself ran to bring the midwife, an old tradeswoman who happened to live nearby. The child was saved, but Lizaveta died towards morning. Grigory took the infant, brought him into the house, sat his wife down, and put him in her lap near her breast: “God’s orphan child is everyone’s kin, all the more so for you and me. Our little dead one sent us this one, who was born of the devil’s son and a righteous woman. Nurse him and weep no more.” And so Marfa Ignatievna brought the baby up. He was baptized and given the name of Pavel; as for his patronymic, as if by unspoken agreement everyone began calling him Fyodorovich. Fyodor Pavlovich made no objection to anything, and even found it all amusing, though he still vehemently disavowed it all. The townspeople were pleased that he had taken the foundling in. Later on, Fyodor Pavlovich invented a last name for the child: he called him Smerdyakov, after the name of his mother, Lizaveta Smerdyashchaya.^[78] This Smerdyakov became Fyodor Pavlovich’s second servant, and was living, at the time our story begins, with old Grigory and Marfa in the servants’ cottage. He was employed as a cook. I ought to say a little more about him in particular, but I am ashamed to distract my reader’s attention for such a long time to such ordinary lackeys, and therefore I shall go back to my narrative, hoping that with regard to Smerdyakov things will somehow work themselves out in the further course of the story.

Chapter 3: The Confession of an Ardent Heart. In Verse

Alyosha, having heard the order his father shouted to him from the carriage as he was leaving the monastery, remained for a while in great perplexity. Not that he stood there like a post—such things did not happen to him. On the contrary, despite all his anxiety, he managed to go at once to the Superior’s kitchen and find out what his father had done upstairs. And then he set off for town, hoping that on the way he would somehow succeed in resolving the problem that oppressed him. I hasten to say that he was not in the least afraid of his father’s shouts or his order to move home with “pillows and mattress.” He understood very well that the order to move, given aloud and with such ostentatious shouting, was given “in passion,” even for the beauty of it, so to speak—just as recently in our town a tradesman who got a little too merry at his own birthday party, in front of his guests, became angry when they would not give him more vodka and suddenly began smashing his own dishes, tearing up his and his wife’s clothes, breaking his furniture, and, finally, the windows, and all, again, for the beauty of it. The same sort of thing, of course, had now happened with his father. And of course the next day the too-merry tradesman sobered up and was sorry for the broken cups and dishes. Alyosha knew that the old man, too, would surely let him return to the monastery the next day, or perhaps even that same day. He was also quite sure that he was the last person his father would want to offend. Alyosha was sure that no one in the whole world would ever want to offend him, and not only would not want to but even would not be able to. For him this was an axiom, it was given once and for all, without argument, and in that sense he went ahead without any hesitation.

But at that moment another fear was stirring in him, of quite another sort, and all the more tormenting since he himself was unable to define it: namely, the fear of a woman, and, namely, of Katerina Ivanovna, who so insistently pleaded with him, in the note just given him by Madame Khokhlakov, to visit her for some reason. This demand, and the absolute necessity of going, immediately awakened some tormenting feeling in his heart, and all morning as time went on this feeling grew more and more painful, despite all the subsequent scenes and adventures in the monastery, and just now at the Superior’s, and so on and so forth. He was afraid not because he did not know what she wanted to talk with him about or what he would answer. And generally it was not the woman in her that he was afraid of: he had little knowledge of women, of course, but still, all his life, from his very infancy right up to the monastery, he had lived only with women. It was this woman he was afraid of, precisely Katerina Ivanovna herself. He had been afraid of her ever since he saw her for the first time. And he had seen her only once or twice, perhaps even three times, and had even chanced to exchange a few words with her once. Her image he recalled as that of a beautiful, proud, and imperious girl. But it was not her beauty that tormented him, it was something else. It was precisely the inexplicable nature of his fear that now added to the fear itself. The girl’s aims were the noblest, that he knew; she was striving to save his brother Dmitri, who was already guilty before her, and she was striving solely out of magnanimity. And yet, despite this awareness and the justice he could not fail to do to all these beautiful and magnanimous feelings, a chill ran down his spine the closer he came to her house.

He reckoned that he would not find his brother Ivan Fyodorovich, who was so close with her, at her house: his brother Ivan was certainly with their father now. It was even more certain that he would not find Dmitri there, and he sensed why. So their conversation would be one to one. He would have liked very much to see his brother Dmitri, to run over to him before this fateful conversation. He would have a word with him without showing him the letter. But his brother Dmitri lived far away and most likely was not at home either. He stood still for a moment and at last made a final decision. He crossed himself with an accustomed and hasty cross, at once smiled at something, and firmly went to meet his terrible lady.

He knew her house. But if he were to go to Main Street, then across the square and so on, it would be rather long. Our small town is extremely sprawling, and the distances can sometimes be quite great. Besides, his father was expecting him, had perhaps not yet forgotten his order, and might wax capricious, and therefore Alyosha had to hurry to get to one place and the other. As a result of all these considerations, he decided to cut the distance by going the back way, which he knew like his own hand. That meant passing along deserted fences, almost without a path, sometimes even climbing over other people’s fences and past other people’s yards, where, by the way, everyone knew him and said hello to him. That way he could get to Main Street twice as soon. In one place he even had to pass very close to his father’s house—namely, by the garden adjacent to his father’s, which belonged to a decrepit, crooked little house with four windows. The owner of this little house was, as Alyosha knew, a bedridden old woman who lived with her daughter, a former civilized chambermaid from the capital, who until recently had lived in generals’ homes, and who now had come home for about a year already, because of the old woman’s infirmity, and paraded around in smart dresses. The old woman and her daughter fell into terrible poverty, however, and even went every day to the kitchen of their neighbor, Fyodor Pavlovich, for soup and bread. Marfa Ignatievna gladly ladled out the soup for them. But the daughter, while coming for soup, did not sell a single one of her dresses, one of which even had a very long train. This last circumstance Alyosha had learned—quite accidentally, of course—from his friend Rakitin, who knew decidedly everything in their little town, and having learned it, he naturally forgot it at once. But coming up to the neighbor’s garden, he suddenly remembered precisely about the train, quickly raised his downcast and thoughtful head, and ... stumbled into a most unexpected meeting. In the neighbors’ garden, perched on something on the other side of the wattle fence, and sticking up half over it, stood his brother Dmitri Fyodorovich, wildly gesticulating, waving and beckoning to him, apparently afraid not only to shout but even to speak aloud, for fear of being heard. Alyosha at once ran up to the fence.

“It’s a good thing you looked up yourself—I was just about to call out to you,” Dmitri Fyodorovich whispered to him joyfully and hurriedly. “Climb up here! Quick! Ah, how good that you’ve come. I was just thinking about you...”

Alyosha was glad himself and was only wondering how to get over the fence. But “Mitya” caught hold of his elbow with his powerful hand and helped him to jump. Alyosha tucked up his cassock and jumped over with the agility of a barefoot street urchin.

“Bravo! Let’s go!” Mitya burst out in a delighted whisper.

“Where?” Alyosha also whispered, looking around on all sides and finding himself in a completely deserted garden with no one there but the two of them. The garden was small, but even so the owner’s little house stood no less than fifty paces away from them. “Why are you whispering? There’s no one here.”

“Why am I whispering? Devil take it,” Dmitri Fyodorovich suddenly shouted at the top of his lungs, “why am I whispering! You see what jumbles of nature can suddenly happen? I’m here in secret, I’m guarding a secret. Explanation to follow; but knowing it’s a secret, I suddenly began to speak secretly, whispering like a fool when there’s no need to. Let’s go! Over there! Till then, silence. I want to kiss you!

Glory to the Highest in the world, Glory to the Highest in me ... !^[79]

I was sitting here reciting that just before you came.”

The garden was about three acres or a little less, but there were trees planted only around it, along all four fences—apple trees, maples, lindens, birches. The middle of the garden was empty, a meadow that yielded several hundred pounds of hay in the summer. The owner rented the garden out for a few roubles each spring. There were rows of raspberries, gooseberries, currants, all near the fence as well; there was a vegetable garden up next to the house, started, in fact, quite recently. Dmitri Fyodorovich led his guest to the corner of the garden farthest from the house. Suddenly, amid a thicket of lindens and old currant, elder, snow ball, and lilac bushes, something that looked like the ruins of an ancient green gazebo appeared, blackened and lopsided, with lattice sides, but with a roof under which it was still possible to find shelter from the rain. The gazebo had been built God knows when, about fifty years ago according to tradition, by the then owner of the house, Alexander Karlovich von Schmidt, a retired lieutenant colonel. But everything. was decayed, the floor was rotted, all the planks were loose, the wood smelled of dampness. Inside the gazebo stood a green wooden table, fixed in the ground, and around it were benches, also green, on which it was still possible to sit. Alyosha had noticed at once his brother’s exalted state, but as he entered the gazebo, he saw on the table half a bottle of cognac and a liqueur glass.

“It’s cognac!” Mitya laughed loudly. “I see your look: ‘He’s drinking again! ‘ Do not believe the phantom.

Do not believe the empty, lying crowd, Forget your doubts . . .^[80]

I’m not drinking, I’m just relishing, as that pig of yours, Rakitin, says; and he’ll become a state councillor and still say ‘relishing.’ Sit down. I could take you, Alyoshka, and press you to my heart until I crushed you, for in all the world ... I really ... re-al-ly ... (understand?) ... love only you!”

He spoke this last line almost in a sort of ecstasy.

“Only you, and also one other, a ‘low woman’ I’ve fallen in love with and it was the end of me. But to fall in love does not mean to love. One can fall in love and still hate. Remember that! I say it now while there’s still joy in it. Sit down here at the table, I’ll be right beside you, and I’ll look at you and go on talking. You’ll keep quiet and I’ll keep talking, for the time has come. And by the way, you know, I’ve decided we really ought to speak softly, because here ... here ... the most unexpected ears may turn up. I’ll explain everything: sequel to follow, as they say. Why was I longing for you, thirsting for you now, all these days and now? (It’s five days since I dropped anchor here.) Why all these days? Because I’ll tell everything to you alone, because it’s necessary, because you’re necessary, because tomorrow I’ll fall from the clouds, because tomorrow life will end and begin. Have you ever felt, have you ever dreamed that you were falling off a mountain into a deep pit? Well, I’m falling now, and not in a dream. And I’m not afraid, and don’t you be afraid either. That is, I am afraid, but I’m delighted! That is, not delighted, but ecstatic ... Oh, to hell with it, it’s all the same, whatever it is. Strong spirit, weak spirit, woman’s spirit—whatever it is! Let us praise nature: see how the sun shines, how clear the sky is, the leaves are all green, it’s still summer, four o’clock in the afternoon, so calm! Where were you going?”

“To father’s, but first I wanted to stop and see Katerina Ivanovna.”

“To her, and to father! Whew! A coincidence! Why was I calling you, wishing for you, why was I longing and thirsting for you with every curve of my soul and even with my ribs? Because I wanted to send you precisely to father, and then to her as well, to Katerina Ivanovna, to have done with her and with father. To send an angel. I could have sent anybody, but I need to send an angel. And here you are going to her and father yourself.”

“Did you really want to send me?” Alyosha let fall, with a pained expression on his face.

“Wait! You knew it! And I see that you understood everything at once. But not a word, not a word now. Don’t pity me, and don’t cry!”

Dmitri Fyodorovich stood up, thought for a moment, and put his finger to his forehead:

“She sent for you herself, she wrote you a letter or something like that, and that’s why you were going to see her, otherwise why would you go?”

“Here’s the note.” Alyosha took it from his pocket. Mitya quickly read it over.

“And you were going the back way! Oh, gods! I thank you that you sent him the back way and he got caught, like the golden fish in the tale who gets caught by an old fool of a fisherman.^[81] Listen, Alyosha, listen, brother! Now I’m going to tell you everything. For I surely must tell at least somebody. I’ve already told it to an angel in heaven, but I must also tell it to an angel on earth. You are the angel on earth. You will listen, you will judge, and you will forgive ... And that is what I need, that someone higher forgive me. Listen: if two beings suddenly break away from everything earthly and fly off into the extraordinary, or at least one of them does, and before that, as he flies off or perishes, he comes to someone else and says: do this or that for me, something that one would never ask of anybody except on one’s deathbed—can that person refuse to do it ... if he’s a friend, a brother?”

“I’ll do it, but tell me what it is, and quickly,” said Alyosha.

“Quickly ... Hm. Don’t be in a hurry, Alyosha: you hurry and worry. There’s no rush now. Now the world has come out onto a new street. Hey, Alyosha, it’s a pity you never hit on ecstasy! But what am I saying? As if you hadn’t hit on it! What a babbler I am:

= man, be noble!

Whose line is that?”^[82]

Alyosha decided to wait. He realized that all his business was now, indeed, perhaps only here. Mitya thought for a moment, leaning his elbow on the table and resting his head in his hand. Both were silent.

“Lyosha,” said Mitya, “you alone will not laugh. I wanted to begin ... my confession ... with Schiller’s hymn to joy. An die Freude!^[83] But I don’t know German, I only know it’s An die Freude. And don’t think this is drunken nonsense. I’m not drunk at all. Cognac is cognac, but I need two bottles to get drunk—

And a ruddy-mugged Silenus Riding a stumbling ass—^[84]

and I haven’t drunk even a quarter of a bottle, and I’m not Silenus. Not Silenus, but not silent either, because I’m telling you I’ve made a decision forever. Forgive the pun; you’ll have to forgive me a lot more than puns today. Don’t worry, I’m not losing the point, I’m talking business, and I’ll get to business at once. I won’t leave you hanging. Wait, how does it go ... ?”

He raised his head, thought for a moment, and suddenly began ecstatically:

Darkly hid in cave and cleft

Shy, the troglodyte abode; Earth a waste was found and left

Where the wandering nomad strode: Deadly with the spear and shaft,

Prowled the hunter through the land; Woe to the stranger waves may waft

On an ever-fatal strand!

Thus was all to Ceres, when Searching for her ravish’d child

(No green culture smiling then),

O’er the drear coast bleak and wild,

Never shelter did she gain,

Never friendly threshold trod;

All unbuilded then the fane,

All unheeded then the god!

Not with golden corn-ears strew’d

Were the ghastly altar stones; Bleaching there, and gore-imbued,

Lay unhallow’d human bones! Wide and far, where’er she roved,

Still reign’d Misery over all; And her mighty soul was moved At man’s universal fall.^[85]

Sobs suddenly burst from Mitya’s breast. He seized Alyosha’s hand. “My friend, my friend, still fallen, still fallen even now. There’s so terribly much suffering for man on earth, so terribly much grief for him! Don’t think I’m just a brute of an officer who drinks cognac and goes whoring. No, brother, I hardly think of anything else, of anything but that fallen man, if only I’m not lying now. God keep me from lying, and from praising myself! I think about that man, because I myself am such a man.

That men to man again may soar,

Let man and Earth with one another Make a compact evermore—

Man the son, and Earth the mother ...^[86]

There’s just one thing: how can I make a compact with the earth evermore? I don’t kiss the earth, I don’t tear open her bosom; what should I do, become a peasant or a shepherd? I keep going, and I don’t know: have I gotten into stench and shame, or into light and joy? That’s the whole trouble, because everything on earth is a riddle. And whenever I happened to sink into the deepest, the very deepest shame of depravity (and that’s all I ever happened to do), I always read that poem about Ceres and man. Did it set me right? Never! Because I’m a Karamazov. Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I’m even pleased that I’m falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful. And so in that very shame I suddenly begin a hymn. Let me be cursed, let me be base and vile, but let me also kiss the hem of that garment in which my God is clothed; let me be following the devil at the same time, but still I am also your son, Lord, and I love you, and I feel a joy without which the world cannot stand and be.

Joy is the mainspring of the whole

Of endless Nature’s calm rotation; Joy moves the dazzling wheels that roll

Within the great heart of creation; Joy breathes on buds, and flowers they are;

Joy beckons, suns come forth from heaven; Joy moves the spheres in realms afar,

Ne’er to thy glass, dim wisdom, given!

All being drinks the mother-dew

Of joy from Nature’s holy bosom; And good and evil both pursue

Her steps that strew the rose’s blossom. The brimming cup, love’s loyalty

Joy gives to us; beneath the sod, To insects—sensuality;

In heaven the cherub looks on God!^[87]

But enough poetry! I shed tears; well, then, let me cry. Maybe everyone will laugh at this foolishness, but you won’t. Your eyes are shining, too. Enough poetry. I want to tell you now about the ‘insects,’ about those to whom God gave sensuality:

To insects—sensuality!

I am that very insect, brother, and those words are precisely about me. And all of us Karamazovs are like that, and in you, an angel, the same insect lives and stirs up storms in your blood. Storms, because sensuality is a storm, more than a storm! Beauty is a fearful and terrible thing! Fearful because it’s undefinable, and it cannot be defined, because here God gave us only riddles. Here the shores converge, here all contradictions live together. I’m a very uneducated man, brother, but I’ve thought about it a lot. So terribly many mysteries! Too many riddles oppress man on earth. Solve them if you can without getting your feet wet. Beauty! Besides, I can’t bear it that some man, even with a lofty heart and the highest mind, should start from the ideal of the Madonna and end with the ideal of Sodom. It’s even more fearful when someone who already has the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not deny the ideal of the Madonna either, and his heart burns with it, verily, verily burns, as in his young, blameless years. No, man is broad, even too broad, I would narrow him down. Devil knows even what to make of him, that’s the thing! What’s shame for the mind is beauty all over for the heart. Can there be beauty in Sodom? Believe me, for the vast majority of people, that’s just where beauty lies—did you know that secret? The terrible thing is that beauty is not only fearful but also mysterious. Here the devil is struggling with God, and the battlefield is the human heart. But, anyway, why kick against the pricks? Listen, now to real business.”

Chapter 4: The Confession of an Ardent Heart. In Anecdotes

“I was leading a wild life there. Father said I used to pay several thousand to seduce girls. That’s a swinish phantom, it never happened, and as for what did happen, ‘that,’ in fact, never required any money. For me, money is an accessory, a fever of the soul, an ambience. Today, here she is, my lady—tomorrow a little street girl is in her place. I entertained the one and the other. I threw fistfuls of money around—music, noise, gypsy women. If need be, I’d give her something, because they do take it, they take it eagerly, one must admit, and are pleased, and grateful. The ladies used to love me, not all of them, but it happened, it happened; but I always liked the back lanes, dark and remote little crannies, away from the main square—there lay adventure, there lay the unexpected, nuggets in the dirt. I’m speaking allegorically, brother. In that little town there were no such back lanes, physically, but morally there were. If you were the same as me, you’d know what that means. I loved depravity, I also loved the shame of depravity. I loved cruelty: am I not a bedbug, an evil insect? In short—a Karamazov! Once there was a picnic for the whole town; we went in seven troikas; in the darkness, in winter, in the sleigh, I began squeezing a girl’s hand, the girl who was next to me, and forced her to kiss me—an official’s daughter, a poor, nice, meek, submissive girl. She let me, she let me do a lot in the darkness. She thought, the poor dear, that I would come the next day and propose (I was prized, above all, as an eligible young man); but after that I didn’t say a word to her for five months, not even half a word. I’d see her eyes watching me from the corner of the room when we used to dance (in that town they were always having dances), I saw them burning like little flames—flames of meek indignation. This game only amused my insect sensuality, which I was nurturing in myself. After five months she married an official and left ... angry, and maybe still in love with me. Now they’re living happily together. Note that I didn’t tell anyone, I didn’t defame her; though I have base desires and love baseness, I’m not dishonorable. You’re blushing; your eyes flashed. Enough of this filth for you. And it’s all nothing yet, just Paul de Kock’s little flowers,^[88] though the cruel insect was already growing, spreading out in my soul. I have a whole album of memories, brother. God bless the little dears. I preferred not to quarrel when breaking up. And I never gave them away, I never defamed even one of them. But enough. You don’t think I called you in here just for this trash, do you? No, I’ll tell you something more curious; but don’t be surprised that I’m not ashamed before you, but even seem to be glad.”

“You say that because I blushed,” Alyosha suddenly remarked. “I blushed not at your words, and not at your deeds, but because I’m the same as you.”

“You? Well, that’s going a bit too far.”

“No, not too far,” Alyosha said hotly. (Apparently the thought had been with him for some time.) “The steps are all the same. I’m on the lowest, and you are above, somewhere on the thirteenth. That’s how I see it, but it’s all one and the same, all exactly the same sort of thing. Whoever steps on the lowest step will surely step on the highest.”

“So one had better not step at all.” “Not if one can help it.”

“Can you?”

“It seems not.”

“Stop, Alyosha, stop, my dear, I want to kiss your hand, just out of tenderness. That rogue Grushenka has an eye for men; she once told me she’d eat you up some day. I’ll stop, I’ll stop! From abominations, from this flyblown margin, let us move on to my tragedy, another flyblown margin, covered with all kinds of baseness. The thing is that though the old man lied about seducing innocence, essentially, in my tragedy, that’s how it was, though only once, and even so it never took place. The old man reproached me with a fable, but this fact he doesn’t know: I’ve never told anyone, you’ll be the first, except for Ivan, of course, Ivan knows everything. He’s known it for a long time before you. But Ivan is a grave.”

“Ivan is a grave?”

“Yes.”

Alyosha was listening with great attention.

“You see, though I was a lieutenant in a line battalion, even so it was as if I were under observation, like some exile. But that little town received me awfully well. I threw a lot of money around, they thought I was rich, and I thought so myself. However, something else about me must have pleased them as well. Though they wagged their heads, still they really liked me. My colonel, who was an old man, suddenly took a dislike to me. He kept finding fault with me, but I had my connections, and besides the whole town stood up for me, so he couldn’t find too much fault. I was partly to blame, too, I deliberately failed to show due respect. I was proud. This old pighead, who was not at all a bad sort, quite good-natured and hospitable, had had two wives at some point, both deceased. One of them, the first, came from some simple family, and left him a daughter, also a simple person. In my time she was already a maiden of about twenty-four, and lived with her father together with an aunt, her dead mother’s sister. The aunt was simple and meek; the niece, the colonel’s older daughter, was simple and pert. I like to put in a good word for her whenever I think of her: I’ve never known a lovelier woman’s character than in this girl, Agafya was her name, imagine it, Agafya Ivanovna. And she wasn’t bad looking either, for Russian taste—tall, buxom, full-figured, with beautiful eyes and, shall we say, a rather coarse face. She wouldn’t marry, though two men had proposed to her; she declined without losing her cheerfulness. I became close with her—not in that way, no, it was all pure, we were just friends. I often became close with women, quite sinlessly, as a friend. I used to chat with her in such a frank way—whew!—and she just laughed. Many women like frankness, make a note of that, and besides she was a virgin, which I found very amusing. And another thing: it was quite impossible to call her a young lady. She and her aunt lived with her father in some sort of voluntary humility, not putting themselves on a par with the rest of society. Everyone loved her and needed her, because she was a great dressmaker: she had talent, asked no money for her services, did it all as a favor, but if they gave her presents she wouldn’t refuse them. But the colonel was something else again! He was one of the big men of the place. He lived in grand style, entertained the whole town, gave dinners, dances. When I came and joined the battalion, the talk all over the little town was that we were about to have a visitor from the capital, the colonel’s second daughter, a beauty of beauties, who had just finished one of the institutes for well-born young ladies there. This second daughter was none other than Katerina Ivanovna, born of the colonel’s second wife. And this second wife, already dead, was from the great, noble family of some general, though, by the way, I know for certain that she didn’t bring the colonel any money either. So she had her relatives, but that was all; some hopes, maybe, but nothing in her hands. And yet, when the institute girl came (to visit, not to stay), our whole little town seemed to revive: our noblest ladies—two generals’ wives, one colonel’s wife, and after them everyone, everyone immediately got into it, and kept inviting her right and left, entertaining her, she was the queen of the balls, the picnics, they cooked up tableaux vivants for the benefit of some governesses. I kept still. I kept on carousing. Just then I fetched off such a stunt that the whole town was squawking about it. I saw her sizing me up; it was at the battery commander’s, but I didn’t go up to her then: I scorn your acquaintance, thought I. I went up to her a bit later on, also at a party; I began talking, she barely looked at me, pressed her contemptuous lips together. Well, thought I, just wait, I’ll get my revenge! I was a terrible boor then, on most occasions, and I felt it. Mainly I felt that ‘Katenka’ was not like some innocent institute girl, but a person of character, proud and truly virtuous, and above all intelligent and educated, while I was neither the one nor the other. You think I wanted to propose? Not at all, I simply wanted revenge because I was such a fine fellow and she didn’t feel it. Meanwhile, riot and ruin! The colonel finally put me under arrest for three days. It was just then that father sent me six thousand, after I’d sent him a formal renunciation of all and all, that is, saying we were ‘quits’ and I would make no further demands. I didn’t understand a thing then: not until I came here, brother, and even not until these very last present days, maybe even not until today, did I understand anything in all these financial squabbles between me and father. But to hell with it, save that for later. Then, when I received that six, I suddenly learned from a friend’s letter something that interested me very much—namely, that there was some dissatisfaction with regard to our colonel, that there was a suspicion that things were not in good order, in short, that his enemies were arranging a little surprise for him. And indeed the division commander came and hauled him over the coals. Then, a little later, he was ordered to apply for retirement. I won’t go into detail about how it all went; he certainly had enemies; but suddenly the town became extremely cool towards him and his whole family, everyone suddenly withdrew. It was then that I did my first stunt; I met Agafya Ivanovna, with whom I had always remained friends, and said: ‘Your papa, by the way, is short forty-five hundred roubles of government money.’ ‘What do you mean? Why do you say that? The general came recently and the cash was all there . . .’ ‘It was there then, but it isn’t now.’ She was terribly frightened: ‘Please don’t frighten me! Who told you?’ ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘I won’t tell anyone, and you know that on that account I’m like the grave, but I wanted to say something more on that account, “just in case,” as it were: when they ask your papa for the forty-five hundred and he hasn’t got it, then instead of having him face court-martial and end up as a foot soldier in his old age, why don’t you secretly send me your institute girl? I’ve just received money; maybe I’ll fork out some four thousand to her and keep it a holy secret.’ ‘Oh, what a scoundrel!’ (She actually said that.) ‘What a wicked scoundrel!’ she said. ‘How dare you!’ She went away terribly indignant, and I shouted after her once more that I’d keep it a holy and inviolable secret. Both women, that is, Agafya and her aunt, I’ll tell you beforehand, turned out to be pure angels in this whole story, and indeed adored this sister, haughty Katya, humbled themselves before her, were like her maids ... Only Agafya then went and told her all about this stunt, I mean our conversation. I learned that later in full detail. She didn’t conceal it, and I ... well, naturally, that was just what I needed.

“Suddenly a new major arrived to take command of the battalion. He took command. And the old colonel suddenly fell ill, couldn’t move, stayed home for two days, did not turn over the government money. Our doctor Kravchenko gave assurances that he really was ill. Only here’s what I knew thoroughly and secretly, and for a long time: that for four years in a row, as soon as the authorities finished going over the accounts, the money disappeared for a while. The colonel used to loan it to a most reliable man, a local merchant, the old widower Trifonov, a bearded man with gold spectacles. Trifonov would go to the fair, put the money out as he liked, and return the whole amount to the colonel immediately, with some little presents from the fair besides, and along with the presents a little interest as well. Only this last time (I learned of it quite by chance from a boy, Trifonov’s driveling son, his son and heir, one of the most depraved lads the world has yet produced), this time, as I said, when Trifonov returned from the fair, he didn’t return anything. The colonel rushed to him. ‘I never received anything from you, and could not have received anything,’ came the answer. So our colonel sat at home like that, with his head wrapped in a towel, and all three women putting ice to it; suddenly an orderly arrived with the books and an order to turn over the government funds at once, immediately, in two hours. He signed—I saw his signature afterwards in the book—stood up, said he would go and put on his uniform, ran to the bedroom, took his double-barreled shotgun, loaded it, rammed home a service bullet, took off his right boot, propped the gun against his chest, and began feeling for the trigger with his foot. But Agafya was suspicious; she remembered what I had told her, stole over and peeked into the room just in time: she rushed in, threw herself on him from behind, the gun fired into the ceiling, no one was hurt; the others ran in, seized him, took the gun away, held him by the arms ... All this I learned afterwards to the last detail. I was sitting at home at the time, it was dusk, I was just about to go out, I got dressed, combed my hair, put scent on my handkerchief, picked up my cap, when suddenly the door opened—and there, in my room, stood Katerina Ivanovna.

“Strange things do happen: no one in the street then noticed her coming into my place, so for the town it just vanished. I rented my lodgings from two widows of local officials, two ancient crones, they also served me, respectful women, they obeyed me in everything, and this time, on my orders, they were as silent as iron posts. Of course, I at once understood everything. She came in and looked squarely at me, her dark eyes resolute, defiant even, but on her lips and around her mouth I noticed some irresolution.

“‘My sister told me you would give us forty-five hundred roubles if I came ... to get them myself. I have come ... give me the money ... !’ She couldn’t keep it up, she choked, got frightened, her voice broke off, and the corners of her mouth and the lines around her mouth trembled. Alyoshka, are you listening or sleeping?”

“Mitya, I know you will tell me the whole truth,” Alyosha said with emotion.

“So I will. If you want the whole truth, this is it, I won’t spare myself. My first thought was a Karamazov thought. Once, brother, I was bitten by a spider, and was laid up with a fever for two weeks; it was the same now, I could feel the spider bite my heart, an evil insect, understand? I sized her up. Have you seen her? A real beauty. And she was beautiful then, but for a different reason. She was beautiful at that moment because she was noble, and I was a scoundrel; she was there in the majesty of her magnanimity and her sacrifice for her father, and I was a bedbug. And on me, a bedbug and a scoundrel, she depended entirely, all of her, all of her entirely, body and soul. No way out. I’ll tell you honestly: this thought, this spider’s thought, so seized my heart that it almost poured out from the sheer sweetness of it. It seemed there could even be no struggle: I had to act precisely like a bedbug, like an evil tarantula, without any pity ... I was breathless. Listen: naturally I would come the next day to ask for her hand, so that it would all end, so to speak, in the noblest manner, and no one, therefore, would or could know of it. Because although I’m a man of base desires, I am honest. And then suddenly, at that very second, someone whispered in my ear: ‘But tomorrow, when you come to offer your hand, a girl like this will not even see you, she’ll have the coachman throw you out: Go cry it all over town, I’m not afraid of you!’ I glanced at the girl. The voice was right: that was certainly what she would do. I’d be thrown out, you could see it in the look on her face. Anger boiled up in me. I wanted to pull some mean, piggish, merchant’s trick: to give her a sneering look, and right there, as she stood before me, to stun her with the tone of voice you only hear from some petty merchant:

“‘But four thousand is much too much! I was joking, how could you think it? You’ve been too gullible, madam. Perhaps two hundred, even gladly and with pleasure, but four thousand—it’s too much money, miss, to throw away on such trifles. You have gone to all this trouble for nothing.’”

“You see, I’d lose everything, of course, she would run away, but on the other hand, such infernal revenge would be worth it all. I might have spent the rest of my life howling with remorse, but right then I just wanted to pull this little stunt. Believe me, never in such a moment have I looked at any woman, not a single one, with hatred—see, I’m making the sign of the cross—but I looked at this one for three or five seconds, then, with terrible hatred—the kind of hatred that is only a hair’s breadth from love, the maddest love! I went to the window, leaned my forehead on the frozen glass, and I remember that the ice burned my forehead like fire. I didn’t keep her long, don’t worry; I turned around, went to the table, opened the drawer and took out a five percent bank note for five thousand roubles, with no name filled in (it was stuck in a French dictionary). I silently showed it to her, folded it, handed it to her, opened the door to the hallway for her, and, stepping back, bowed deeply to her, with a most respectful and heartfelt bow, believe me! She was startled, she looked intently at me for a second, turned terribly pale—white as a sheet—and suddenly, also without saying a word, not impulsively but very gently, deeply, quietly, bent way down and fell right at my feet—with her forehead to the ground, not like an institute girl but like a Russian woman! Then she jumped up and ran away. When she ran out—I was wearing my sword—I drew it and wanted to stab myself right there—why, I don’t know, it was terribly foolish, of course, but probably from a certain kind of ecstasy. Do you understand that one can kill oneself from a certain kind of ecstasy? But I didn’t stab myself, I only kissed the sword and put it back in the scabbard—which detail, by the way, I needn’t have mentioned. And it even seems that while I was telling about all these agonies just now, I must have been filling them out a little, to praise myself. But let it be, let it be so, and to hell with all spies into the human heart! That’s the whole of my past ‘incident’ with Katerina Ivanovna. So now brother Ivan knows about it, and you—and that’s all.”

Dmitri Fyodorovich got up, took a step, then another in his agitation, pulled out his handkerchief, wiped the sweat from his brow, then sat down again, not in the same place as before, but on another bench against the opposite wall, so that Alyosha had to turn all the way around to face him.

Chapter 5: The Confession of an Ardent Heart. “Heels Up”

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

“You understand the first half: it’s a drama, and it took place there. The second half is a tragedy, and will take place here.”

“I still don’t understand anything of the second half,” said Alyosha.

“And I? Do I understand it?”

“Wait, Dmitri, there is one key word here. Tell me: you are her fiancé, aren’t you still her fiancé?”

“I became her fiancé, not at once, but only three months after those events. The day after it happened I told myself that the case was closed, done with, there would be no sequel. To come with an offer of my hand seemed a base thing to do. For her part, during all the six weeks she then spent in our town, she never once let me hear a word of herself. Except, indeed, in one instance: on the day after her visit, their maid slipped into my room, and without saying a word handed me an envelope. It was addressed to me. I opened it—there was the change from the five-thousand-rouble bank note. They needed only forty-five hundred, and there was a loss of about two hundred and something on the sale of the note. She sent me back only two hundred and sixty roubles, I think, I don’t quite remember, and just the money—no note, no word, no explanation. I looked into the envelope for some mark of a pencil—nothing! So meanwhile I went on a spree with the rest of my roubles, until the new major also finally had to reprimand me. And the colonel did hand over the government funds—satisfactorily and to everyone’s surprise, because nobody believed any longer that he had them intact. He handed them over, and came down sick, lay in bed for about three weeks, then suddenly he got a softening of the brain, and in five days he was dead. He was buried with military honors, since his discharge hadn’t come through yet. Katerina Ivanovna, her sister, and her aunt, having buried the father, set out for Moscow ten days later. And just before their departure, on the very day they left (I didn’t see them or say good-bye), I received a tiny letter, a blue one, on lacy paper, with only one line penciled on it: ‘I’ll write to you. Wait. K.’ That was all.

“I’ll explain the rest in two words. Once they were in Moscow, things developed in a flash and as unexpectedly as in an Arabian tale. The widow of the general, her main relative, suddenly lost both of her closest heirs, her two closest nieces, who died of smallpox in one and the same week. The shaken old woman welcomed Katya like her own daughter, like a star of salvation, fell upon her, changed her will at once in her favor, but that was for the future, and meanwhile she gave her eighty thousand roubles outright—here’s a dowry for you, she said, do as you like with it. A hysterical woman, I observed her later in Moscow. So then suddenly I received forty-five hundred roubles in the mail; naturally, I was bewildered and struck dumb. Three days later came the promised letter as well. It’s here with me now, I always keep it with me, and shall die with it—do you want to see it? You must read it: she offers to be my fiancée, she offers herself, ‘I love you madly,’ she says, ‘even if you do not love me—no matter, only be my husband. Don’t be afraid, I shan’t hinder you in any way, I’ll be your furniture, the rug you walk on ... I want to love you eternally, I want to save you from yourself . . .’ Alyosha, I’m not worthy even to repeat those lines in my mean words and in my mean tone, in my eternally mean tone that I can never be cured of! This letter pierced me even to this day, and is it easy for me now, is it easy for me today? I wrote a reply at once (I couldn’t manage to go to Moscow in person). I wrote it in tears. One thing I am eternally ashamed of: I mentioned that she was now rich and had a dowry, and I was just a poverty-stricken boor—I mentioned money! I should have borne it, but it slipped off my pen. Then I wrote at once to Ivan, in Moscow, and explained everything to him, as far as I could in a letter, it was a six-page letter, and sent Ivan to her. Why are you looking, why are you staring at me? So, yes, Ivan fell in love with her, is in love with her still, I know it, I did a foolish thing, in your worldly sense, but maybe just this foolishness will now save us all! Ah! Don’t you see how she reveres him, how she respects him? Can she compare the two of us and still love a man like me, especially after all that’s happened here?”

“But I’m sure she does love a man like you, and not a man like him.” “She loves her own virtue, not me,” the words suddenly escaped, inadvertently and almost maliciously, from Dmitri Fyodorovich. He laughed, but a moment later his eyes flashed, he blushed all over and pounded his fist violently on the table.

“I swear, Alyosha,” he exclaimed with terrible and sincere anger at himself, “believe it or not, but I swear as God is holy and Christ is the Lord, that even though I sneered just now at her lofty feelings, still I know that I am a million times more worthless in my soul than she is, and that her lofty feelings—are as sincere as a heavenly angel’s! That’s the tragedy, that I know it for certain. What’s wrong with declaiming a little? Am I not declaiming? But I am sincere, I really am sincere. As for Ivan, I can understand with what a curse he must look at nature now, and with his intelligence, too! To whom, to what has the preference been given? It has been given to a monster, who even here, already a fiancé and with all eyes looking at him, was not able to refrain from debaucheries—and that right in front of his fiancée, right in front of his fiancée! And a man like me is preferred, and he is rejected. Why? Because a girl wants to violate her life and destiny, out of gratitude! Absurd! I’ve never said anything of the sort to Ivan; Ivan, of course, has never said half a word about it to me either, not the slightest hint; but destiny will be fulfilled, the worthy man will take his place, and the unworthy one will disappear down his back lane— his dirty back lane, his beloved, his befitting back lane, and there, in filth and stench, will perish of his own free will, and revel in it. I seem to be rambling; all my words are worn out, as if I were just joining them at random; but I’ve determined that it will be so. I’ll drown in my back lane, and she will marry Ivan.”

“Wait, brother,” Alyosha interrupted again, deeply troubled, “you still haven’t explained one thing to me: are you her fiancé, are you really her fiancé? How can you want to break it off if she, your fiancée, doesn’t want to?”

“I am her fiancé, formally and with blessings; it all happened in Moscow after my arrival, with pomp, with icons, in the proper manner. The general’s widow gave the blessing, and—would you believe it?—even congratulated Katya: you have chosen well, she said, I can see inside him. And would you believe that she disliked Ivan and did not congratulate him? In Moscow I talked a lot with Katya, I painted myself in my true colors, nobly, precisely, in all sincerity. She listened to it all.

There was sweet confusion, There were tender words . . .^[89]

Well, there were some proud words, too. She extorted from me, then, a great promise to reform. I gave my promise. And now ...” “What now?” “And now I’ve called you and dragged you here today, this very day—remember that!—in order to send you, again this very day, to Katerina Ivanovna, and...”

“And what?”

“And tell her that I shall never come to her again, that I—tell her that I bow to her.”

“But is it possible?”

“But that’s why I’m sending you instead of going myself, because it’s impossible. How could I say that to her myself?”

“But where will you go?”

“To my back lane.”

“You mean to Grushenka!” Alyosha exclaimed ruefully, clasping his hands. “Can it be that Rakitin was really speaking the truth? And I thought you just saw her a few times and stopped.”

“How can a fiancé just see another woman? And with such a fiancée, and before everyone’s eyes? It’s impossible! I have my honor, haven’t I? As soon as I began seeing Grushenka, I at once ceased to be a fiancé and an honest man, of course I know that. Why do you stare at me? You see, first of all I went to give her a beating. I had heard, and now know for certain, that this Grushenka had gotten from this captain, father’s agent, a promissory note in my name, so that she could demand payment and that would stop me and shut me up. They wanted to frighten me. So I set out to give Grushenka a beating. I’d seen her before around town. Nothing striking. I knew about the old merchant, who on top of everything else is lying sick now, paralyzed, but still will leave her a nice sum. I also knew that she likes making money, that she does make it, loans it out at wicked rates of interest, a sly fox, a rogue, merciless. I went to give her a beating, and stayed. A thunderstorm struck, a plague broke out, I got infected and am infected even now, and I know that everything is over and there will never be anything else. The wheel has come full circle. That’s how it is for me. And then suddenly, as if on purpose, in my beggar’s pocket, three thousand roubles turned up. We went from here to Mokroye, it’s fifteen miles away, I got some gypsies to join us, gypsy women, champagne, got all the peasants drunk on champagne, all the village women and girls, thousands were flying around. In three days I was broke, but a hero. And did he get anywhere , this hero? She didn’t even show it to him from a distance. A curve, I tell you! That rogue Grushenka has a certain curve to her body, it even shows in her foot, it’s even echoed in her little left toe. I saw it and kissed it, but that’s all—I swear! She said, ‘I’ll marry you if you like, though you’re a beggar. Tell me you won’t beat me and will let me do anything I want, and then maybe I’ll marry you,’ she laughed. And she’s laughing still.” Dmitri Fyodorovich rose from his place, almost in a sort of fury. He seemed suddenly as if he were drunk. His eyes suddenly became bloodshot.

“And do you really want to marry her?”

“At once, if she will, and if she won’t, I’ll stay anyway, I’ll be a caretaker in her yard. You ... you, Alyosha ... ,” he stopped suddenly in front of him and, grasping his shoulders, suddenly began shaking him violently, “but do you know, you innocent boy, that all of this is raving, impossible raving, because there’s a tragedy here! I tell you, Alexei: I can be a mean man, with passions mean and ruinous, but a thief, a pickpocket, a pilferer, that Dmitri Karamazov can never be! And now let me tell you that I am a little thief, a pickpocket and pilferer! Just before I went to give Grushenka a beating, that very morning, Katerina Ivanovna sent for me and, in terrible secrecy, so that for the time being no one would know (I have no idea why, but that’s evidently how she wanted it), she asked me to go to the provincial capital and from there post three thousand roubles to Agafya Ivanovna in Moscow, so that nobody here in town would know about it. And with those three thousand roubles in my pocket, I then found myself at Grushenka’s, and on them we went to Mokroye. Later I pretended that I had raced to the capital and back, but I didn’t present her with a postal receipt; I told her I’d sent the money and would bring her the receipt, but so far I haven’t brought it, I’ve forgotten, if you like. Now, what if you go today and say to her: ‘He bows to you,’ and she says, And the money?’ You could tell her: ‘He’s a base sensualist, a mean creature with irrepressible passions. He did not send your money that time, he spent it, because he couldn’t help himself, like an animal,’ and then you could add: ‘But he is not a thief, here are your three thousand roubles, he returns them to you, send them to Agafya Ivanovna yourself, and he says he bows to you.’ But then what if she suddenly says: And where is the money?’”

“Mitya, you’re unhappy, yes! But not as unhappy as you think. Don’t kill yourself with despair, don’t do it!”

“What do you think, that I’ll shoot myself if I can’t find three thousand roubles to give back to her? That’s just the thing: I won’t shoot myself. It’s beyond my strength right now—later, maybe, but right now I’ll go to Grushenka ... Let my flesh rot!”

“And what then?”

“I’ll be her husband, I’ll have the honor of being her spouse, and if a lover comes, I’ll go to another room. I’ll clean her friends’ dirty galoshes, I’ll heat up the samovar, I’ll run errands ...”

“Katerina Ivanovna will understand everything,” Alyosha all of a sudden said solemnly. “She will understand all the depths of all this grief and be reconciled. She has a lofty mind, because it’s impossible to be unhappier than you are, she will see that.”

“She will not be reconciled to everything,” Mitya grinned. “There’s something here, brother, that no woman can be reconciled to. Do you know what the best thing would be?”

“What?”

“To give her back the three thousand.”

“But where can we get it? Listen, I have two thousand, Ivan will give a thousand, that makes three—take it and give it to her.”

“And how soon will we get your three thousand? Besides, you’re not of age yet, and you must, you must go today and make that bow to her, with the money or without it, because I can’t drag on any longer, that’s what it’s come to. Tomorrow will already be too late, too late. I’ll send you to father.”

“To father?”

“Yes, to father, and then to her. Ask him for three thousand.”

“But, Mitya, he won’t give it.”

“Of course he won’t, I know he won’t. Alexei, do you know what despair is?”

“I do.”

“Listen: legally he owes me nothing. I’ve already gotten everything out of him, everything, I know that. But morally he surely owes me something, doesn’t he? He started with my mother’s twenty-eight thousand and made a hundred thousand out of it. Let him give me only three of those twenty-eight thousands, only three, and bring up my life from the Pit,^[90] and it will be reckoned unto him for his many sins! And I’ll stop at those three thousands, I give you my solemn word on it, and he’ll never hear of me again. For the last time I give him a chance to be my father. Tell him that God himself sends him this chance.”

“Mitya, he won’t do it for anything.”

“I know he won’t do it, I know perfectly well he won’t. Not now, especially. Moreover, I know something else: recently, only the other day, just yesterday maybe, he learned for the first time seriously—underline seriously—that Grushenka indeed may not be joking and could very well up and marry me. He knows her nature, he knows the cat in her. And can he really give me money to help make that happen, when he himself has lost his mind over her? And that’s still not all, I can present you with something more: I know that about five days ago he withdrew three thousand roubles in hundred-rouble notes and packed them into a big envelope, sealed with five seals and tied crisscross with a red ribbon. See what detailed knowledge I have! And written on the envelope is: ‘To my angel Grushenka, if she wants to come.’ He scribbled it himself in silence and secrecy, and no one knows he’s keeping the money except the lackey Smerdyakov, whose honesty he trusts like himself. For three or four days now he’s been waiting for Grushenka, hoping she’ll come for the envelope. He sent her word of it, and she sent word back saying, ‘Maybe I’ll come.’ But if she comes to the old man, could I marry her then? Do you understand, now, why I’m keeping a secret watch here, and what precisely I’m watching for?”

“Her?”

“Her. The sluts who own this house rent out a closet to Foma. Foma is a local man, one of our former soldiers. He does chores for them, guards the house at night, and goes hunting grouse during the day, and that’s how he lives. I’ve set myself up in his place; neither he nor the women of the house know the secret, that is, that I’m keeping watch here.”

“Only Smerdyakov knows?”

“Only he. And he’ll let me know if she comes to the old man.”

“It was he who told you about the envelope?”

“Yes. It’s a great secret. Even Ivan knows nothing about the money or anything. And the old man is sending Ivan on a ride to Chermashnya for two or three days: a buyer has turned up for the woodlot, eight thousand to cut down the trees, so the old man is begging Ivan: ‘Help me, go by yourself—which means for two or three days. So that when Grushenka comes, he won’t be there.”

“So he’s expecting her even today?”

“No, she won’t come today, there are signs. She surely won’t come today!” Mitya suddenly shouted. “And Smerdyakov thinks the same. Father is drinking now, he’s sitting at the table with brother Ivan. Go, Alexei, and ask him for the three thousand ...”

“Mitya, my dear, what’s the matter with you!” Alyosha exclaimed, jumping up and staring at the frenzied Dmitri Fyodorovich. For a moment he thought he had gone mad.

“What’s wrong? I haven’t gone mad,” said Dmitri Fyodorovich, looking at him intently and even somehow solemnly. “No, when I tell you to go to father, I know what I’m saying: I believe in a miracle.”

“In a miracle?”

“In a miracle of divine Providence. God knows my heart, he sees all my despair. He sees the whole picture. Can he allow horror to happen? Alyosha, I believe in a miracle. Go!”

“I will go. Tell me, will you be waiting here?”

“Yes. I realize it will take some time, you can’t just walk in and ask him— bang!—like that. He’s drunk now. I’ll wait three hours, and four, and five, and six, and seven—only know that you must go to Katerina Ivanovna today, even if it’s at midnight, with the money or without it, and tell her: ‘He says he bows to you.’ I want you to say precisely this verse: ‘He says he bows to you.’”

“Mitya! What if Grushenka comes today ... or if not today, then tomorrow, or the day after?”

“Grushenka? I’ll spot her, burst in, and stop it...”

“And if ... ?”

“If there’s an if, I’ll kill. I couldn’t endure that.”

“Kill whom?”

“The old man. I wouldn’t kill her.”

“Brother, what are you saying!”

“I don’t know, I don’t know ... Maybe I won’t kill him, and maybe I will. I’m afraid that at that moment his face will suddenly become hateful to me. I hate his Adam’s apple, his nose, his eyes, his shameless sneer. I feel a personal loathing. I’m afraid of that. I may not be able to help myself ...”

“I’ll go, Mitya. I believe God will arrange it as he knows best, so that there will be no horror.”

“And I’ll sit and wait for a miracle. But if it doesn’t happen, then...”

Alyosha, in deep thought, went to see his father.

Chapter 6: Smerdyakov

And indeed he found his father still at the table. And the table was laid, as usual, in the drawing room, though the house had an actual dining room. This drawing room was the largest room in the house, furnished with some sort of old-fashioned pretentiousness. The furniture was ancient, white, with threadbare upholstery of red half-silk. Mirrors in fanciful frames with old-fashioned carving, also white and gilt, hung in the spaces between the windows. The walls, covered with white paper, now cracked in many places, were adorned by two large portraits—one of some prince who thirty years before had been governor-general hereabouts, and the other of some bishop, also long since deceased. In the front corner were several icons, before which an oil-lamp burned all night ... not so much out of veneration as to keep the room lit through the night. Fyodor Pavlovich went to bed very late, at about three or four o’clock in the morning, and until then would pace around the room or sit in his armchair and think. This had become a habit with him. He often spent the night quite alone in the house, after sending the servants to the cottage, but usually the servant Smerdyakov stayed with him, sleeping on a bench in the front hall. The dinner was all finished when Alyosha entered, but they were still having coffee and preserves. Fyodor Pavlovich liked sweets and cognac after dinner. Ivan Fyodorovich was there at the table, also having coffee. The servants Grigory and Smerdyakov stood near the table. Both masters and servants were obviously and unusually animated. Fyodor Pavlovich loudly roared and laughed. From the front hall, Alyosha already heard his shrill laughter, by now so familiar to him, and concluded at once from the sound of it that his father was not yet drunk, but was still only in a benevolent mood.

“Here he is! Here he is!” yelled Fyodor Pavlovich, terribly glad suddenly to see Alyosha. “Join us, sit down, have some coffee—it’s lenten fare, lenten fare, and it’s hot, it’s good! I’m not offering you cognac, you’re fasting, but would you like some, would you? No, I’d better give you some liqueur, it’s fine stuff! Smerdyakov, go to the cupboard, second shelf on the right, here’s the key, get moving!”

Alyosha started to refuse the liqueur.

“We’ll serve it anyway, if not for you then for us,” Fyodor Pavlovich beamed. “But wait, did you have dinner or not?”

“I did,” said Alyosha, who in truth had had only a piece of bread and a glass of kvass in the Superior’s kitchen. “But I’d very much like some hot coffee.”

“Good for you, my dear! He’ll have some coffee. Shall we heat it up? Ah, no, it’s already boiling. Fine stuff, this coffee. Smerdyakovian! With coffee and cabbage pies, my Smerdyakov is an artist—yes, and with fish soup, too. Come for fish soup some time, let us know beforehand ... But wait, wait, didn’t I tell you this morning to move back today with your mattress and pillows? Did you bring the mattress, heh, heh, heh?”

“No, I didn’t,” Alyosha grinned too.

“Ah, but you were scared then—weren’t you scared, scared? Ah, my boy, my dear, could I offend you? You know, Ivan, I can’t resist it when he looks me in the eyes like that and laughs, I simply can’t. My whole insides begin to laugh with him, I love him so! Alyoshka, let me give you my paternal blessing.”

Alyosha stood up, but Fyodor Pavlovich had time to think better of it.

“No, no, for now I’ll just make a cross over you—so—sit down. Well, now you’re going to have some fun, and precisely in your line. You’ll laugh your head off. Balaam’s ass,^[91] here, has started to talk, and what a talker, what a talker!” Balaam’s ass turned out to be the lackey Smerdyakov. Still a young man, only about twenty-four years old, he was terribly unsociable and taciturn. Not that he was shy or ashamed of anything—no, on the contrary, he had an arrogant nature and seemed to despise everyone. But precisely at this point we cannot avoid saying at least a few words about him. He had been raised by Marfa Ignatievna and Grigory Vasilievich, but the boy grew up “without any gratitude,” as Grigory put it, solitary, and with a sidelong look in his eye. As a child he was fond of hanging cats and then burying them with ceremony. He would put on a sheet, which served him as a vestment, chant, and swing something over the dead cat as if it were a censer. It was all done on the sly, in great secrecy. Grigory once caught him at this exercise and gave him a painful birching. The boy went into a corner and sat there looking sullen for a week. “He doesn’t like us, the monster,” Grigory used to say to Marfa Ignatievna, “and he doesn’t like anyone. You think you’re a human being? “ he would suddenly address Smerdyakov directly. “You are not a human being, you were begotten of bathhouse slime, that’s who you are ... “ Smerdyakov, it turned out later, never could forgive him these words. Grigory taught him to read and write and, when he was twelve, began teaching him the Scriptures. But that immediately went nowhere. One day, at only the second or third lesson, the boy suddenly grinned.

“What is it?” asked Grigory, looking at him sternly from under his spectacles.

“Nothing, sir. The Lord God created light on the first day, and the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day.^[92] Where did the light shine from on the first day?”

Grigory was dumbfounded. The boy looked derisively at his teacher; there was even something supercilious in his look. Grigory could not help himself. “I’ll show you where!” he shouted, and gave his pupil a violent blow on the cheek. The boy suffered the slap without a word, but again hid in the corner for a few days. A week later, as it happened, they discovered for the first time that he had the falling sickness, which never left him for the rest of his life.^[93]Having learned of it, Fyodor Pavlovich seemed to change his view of the boy. Formerly he had looked on him somehow indifferently, though he never scolded him and always gave him a kopeck when they met. If he was in a benevolent mood, he sometimes sent the boy some sweets from the table. But now, when he learned of the illness, he decidedly began to worry about him, called in a doctor, began treating him, but a cure turned out to be impossible. The attacks came on the average of once a month, and at various times. They were also of various strength—some were slight, others were extremely severe. Fyodor Pavlovich strictly forbade Grigory any corporal punishment of the boy, and began allowing him upstairs. He also forbade teaching him anything at all for the time being. But once, when the boy was already about fifteen years old, Fyodor Pavlovich noticed him loitering by the bookcase and reading the titles through the glass. There were a fair number of books in the house, more than a hundred volumes, but no one had ever seen Fyodor Pavlovich with a book in his hands. He immediately gave Smerdyakov the key to the bookcase: “Well, read then, you can be my librarian; sit and read, it’s better than loafing around the yard. Here, try this one,” and Fyodor Pavlovich handed him Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.^[94]

The lad read it but with displeasure; he never once smiled, and, on the contrary, finished it with a frown.

“What? Not funny?” asked Fyodor Pavlovich.

Smerdyakov was silent.

“Answer, fool!”

“It’s all about lies,” Smerdyakov drawled, grinning.

“Well, then, go to the devil with your lackey soul! Wait, here’s Smaragdov’s Universal History,^[95] it’s all true, read it!”

But Smerdyakov did not get through even ten pages of Smaragdov. He found it boring. So the bookcase was locked again. Soon Marfa and Grigory reported to Fyodor Pavlovich that Smerdyakov suddenly was beginning to show signs of some terrible squeamishness: at supper, he would take his spoon and explore the soup, bend over it, examine it, lift up a spoonful and hold it to the light.

“What is it, a cockroach?” Grigory would ask.

“Maybe a fly,” Marfa would suggest. The fastidious boy never answered, but it was the same with the bread, the meat, every dish: he would hold a piece up to the light on his fork, and study it as if through a microscope, sometimes taking a long time to decide, and, finally, would decide to send it into his mouth. “A fine young sir we’ve got here,” Grigory muttered, looking at him. Fyodor Pavlovich, when he heard about this new quality in Smerdyakov, immediately decided that he should be a cook, and sent him to Moscow for training. He spent a few years in training, and came back much changed in appearance . He suddenly became somehow remarkably old, with wrinkles even quite disproportionate to his age, turned sallow, and began to look like a eunuch. But morally he was almost the same when he returned as he had been before his departure for Moscow, was still just as unsociable, and felt not the slightest need for anyone’s company. In Moscow, too, as was afterwards reported, he was silent all the time; Moscow itself interested him somehow very little, so that he learned only a few things about it and paid no attention to all the rest. He even went to the theater once, but came home silent and displeased. On the other hand, he returned to us from Moscow very well dressed, in a clean frock coat and linen, scrupulously brushed his clothes twice a day without fail, and was terribly fond of waxing his smart calfskin boots with a special English polish so that they shone like mirrors. He turned out to be a superb cook. Fyodor Pavlovich appointed him a salary, and Smerdyakov spent almost the whole of this salary on clothes, pomade, perfume, and so on. Yet he seemed to despise the female sex as much as the male, and behaved solemnly, almost inaccessibly, with it. Fyodor Pavlovich also began glancing at him from a somewhat different point of view. The thing was that the attacks of his falling sickness became more frequent, and on those days Marfa Ignatievna prepared the meals, which did not suit him at all.

“How come you’re having more attacks now?” he sometimes looked askance at the new cook, peering into his face. “I wish you’d marry somebody, do you want me to get you married ... ?”

But Smerdyakov only turned pale with vexation at such talk, without making any reply. Fyodor Pavlovich would walk off, waving his hand. Above all he was convinced of his honesty, convinced once and for all that he would not take or steal anything. It once happened that Fyodor Pavlovich, being a little drunk, dropped in the mud of his own yard three hundred-rouble bank notes he had just received, and did not notice it until the next day: just as he was rushing to search through all his pockets for them, he suddenly discovered all three bank notes lying on the table. How did they get there? Smerdyakov had picked them up and brought them in the evening before. “Well, my lad, I’ve never seen the likes of you,” Fyodor Pavlovich said brusquely, and gave him ten roubles. It should be added that he was not only convinced of his honesty, but for some reason even loved him, though the fellow looked as askance at him as at others and was always silent. Only rarely did he speak. If at that time it had occurred to someone to ask, looking at him, what this fellow was interested in, and what was most often on his mind, it would really have been impossible to tell from looking at him. Yet he would sometimes stop in the house, or else in the yard or the street, fall into thought, and stand like that even for ten minutes. A physiognomist, studying him, would have said that his face showed neither thought nor reflection, but just some sort of contemplation. The painter Kramskoy has a remarkable painting entitled The Contemplator:^[96] it depicts a forest in winter, and in the forest, standing all by himself on the road, in deepest solitude, a stray little peasant in a ragged caftan and bast shoes; he stands as if he were lost in thought, but he is not thinking, he is “contemplating” something. If you nudged him, he would give a start and look at you as if he had just woken up, but without understanding anything. It’s true that he would come to himself at once, and yet, if he were asked what he had been thinking about while standing there, he would most likely not remember, but would most likely keep hidden away in himself the impression he had been under while contemplating. These impressions are dear to him, and he is most likely storing them up imperceptibly and even without realizing it—why and what for, of course, he does not know either; perhaps suddenly, having stored up his impressions over many years, he will drop everything and wander off to Jerusalem to save his soul, or perhaps he will suddenly burn down his native village, or perhaps he will do both. There are plenty of contemplators among the people. Most likely Smerdyakov, too, was such a contemplator, and most likely he, too, was greedily storing up his impressions, almost without knowing why himself.

Chapter 7: Disputation

But Balaam’s ass suddenly spoke. The topic happened to be a strange one: Grigory, while picking up goods that morning at the shop of the merchant Lukyanov, had heard from him about a Russian soldier stationed somewhere far away at the border who was captured by Asians and, being forced by them on pain of agonizing and immediate death to renounce Christianity and convert to Islam, would not agree to change his faith, and endured torture, was flayed alive, and died glorifying and praising Christ—a report of which deed was printed in the newspaper received that day.^[97] And this Grigory began speaking about at the table. Fyodor Pavlovich always liked to laugh and talk after dinner, over dessert, even if only with Grigory. This time he was in a light and pleasantly expansive mood. Sipping cognac, he listened to the reported news and remarked that such a soldier ought at once to be promoted to saint, and his flayed skin dispatched to some monastery: “You’ll see how people will come pouring in, and money, too.” Grigory scowled, seeing that Fyodor Pavlovich was not at all moved but, as usual, was beginning to blaspheme. Then Smerdyakov, who was standing at the door, suddenly grinned. Even before then, Smerdyakov was quite often allowed to stand by the table—that is, at the end of dinner. And since Ivan Fyodorovich arrived in our town, he began appearing at dinner almost every day.

“What is it?” asked Fyodor Pavlovich, noticing his grin at once and understanding, of course, that it referred to Grigory. “What you’re talking about,” Smerdyakov suddenly spoke loudly and unexpectedly, “that if the deed of this laudable soldier was so great, sir, there would also have been no sin, in my opinion, if on such an occasion he had even renounced Christ’s name and his own baptism in order thereby to save his life for good deeds with which to atone in the course of the years for his faintheartedness.”

“How could there be no sin in it? What nonsense! For that you’ll go straight to hell and be roasted there like mutton,” Fyodor Pavlovich took him up.

And it was here that Alyosha entered. Fyodor Pavlovich, as we have seen, was terribly glad he had come.

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

“Concerning mutton, it isn’t so, sir, and there will be nothing there for that, sir, and there shouldn’t be any such thing, if it’s in all fairness,” Smerdyakov solemnly observed.

“How do you mean—in all fairness?” Fyodor Pavlovich cried even more merrily, nudging Alyosha with his knee.

“He’s a scoundrel, that’s who he is!” Grigory suddenly burst out. Angrily he looked Smerdyakov straight in the eye.

“Wait a little with your ‘scoundrel,’ Grigory Vasilievich, sir,” Smerdyakov retorted quietly and with restraint, “and you’d better consider for yourself, that if I am taken captive by the tormentors of Christian people, and they demand that I curse God’s name and renounce my holy baptism, then I’m quite authorized to do it by my own reason, because there wouldn’t be any sin in it.”

“You’ve already said all that. Don’t embroider on it, but prove it!” cried Fyodor Pavlovich.

“Broth-maker!” Grigory whispered scornfully.

“Wait a little with your ‘broth-maker,’ too, Grigory Vasilievich, and consider for yourself without scolding. Because as soon as I say to my tormentors: ‘No, I’m not a Christian and I curse my true God,’ then at once, by the highest divine judgment, I immediately and specifically become anathema, I’m cursed and completely excommunicated from the Holy Church like a heathener, as it were, so that even at that very moment, sir, not as soon as I say it, but as soon as I just think of saying it, not even a quarter of a second goes by and I’m excommunicated—is that so or not, Grigory Vasilievich?”

He addressed Grigory with obvious pleasure, though essentially he was answering Fyodor Pavlovich’s questions, and was well aware of it, but deliberately pretending that it was Grigory who had asked them.

“Ivan!” Fyodor Pavlovich suddenly shouted, “give me your ear. He arranged all this for you, he wants you to praise him. Go on, praise him!” Ivan Fyodorovich listened quite seriously to his papa’s rapturous communication.

“Wait, Smerdyakov, be still for a minute,” Fyodor Pavlovich shouted again. “Ivan, your ear again.”

Ivan Fyodorovich leaned over once more with a most serious expression.

“I love you as much as Alyoshka. Don’t think that I don’t love you. A little cognac?”

“Yes.” Ivan Fyodorovich looked intently at his father, thinking, “You’re pretty well loaded yourself.” As for Smerdyakov, he was watching him with great curiosity.

“You’re anathema and cursed even now,” Grigory suddenly broke out, “and how dare you reason after that, you scoundrel, if...”

“No abuse, Grigory, no abuse!” Fyodor Pavlovich interrupted.

“You wait, Grigory Vasilievich, at least for a very short time, sir, and keep listening, because I haven’t finished yet. Because at the very time when I immediately become cursed by God, at that moment, at that highest moment, sir, I become a heathener, as it were, and my baptism is taken off me and counts for nothing—is that so, at least?”

“Come on, lad, get to the point,” Fyodor Pavlovich hurried him, sipping with pleasure from his glass.

“And since I’m no longer a Christian, it follows that I’m not lying to my tormentors when they ask am I a Christian or not, since God himself has already deprived me of my Christianity, for the sole reason of my intention and before I even had time to say a word to my tormentors. And if I’m already demoted, then in what way, with what sort of justice can they call me to account in the other world, as if I were a Christian, about my renunciation of Christ, when for the intention alone, even before the renunciation, I was deprived of my baptism? If I’m not a Christian, then I can’t renunciate Christ, because I’ll have nothing to renounce. Who, even in heaven, Grigory Vasilievich, will ask an unclean Tartar to answer for not being born a Christian, and who is going to punish him for that, considering that you can’t skin the same ox twice? And God Almighty himself, even if he does hold the Tartar to account when he dies, I suppose will only give him the smallest punishment (because it’s not possible not to punish him at all), considering that it’s surely not his fault that he came into the world unclean, and from unclean parents. The Lord God can’t take some Tartar by the neck and claim that he, too, was a Christian? That would mean that the Lord Almighty was saying a real untruth. And how can the Almighty Lord of heaven and earth tell a lie, even if it’s only one word, sir?”

Grigory was dumbfounded and stared wide-eyed at the orator. Though he did not understand very well what was being said, he did suddenly understand some of all this gibberish, and stood looking like a man who had just run his head into a wall. Fyodor Pavlovich emptied his glass and burst into shrill laughter.

“Alyoshka, Alyoshka, did you hear that? Ah, you casuist! He must have spent some time with the Jesuits, Ivan.^[98] Ah, you stinking Jesuit, who taught you all that? But it’s lies, casuist, lies, lies, lies. Don’t cry, Grigory, we’ll grind him to dust and ashes this very minute. Tell me something, ass: before your tormentors you may be right, but you yourself have still renounced your faith within yourself, and you yourself say that in that very hour you became anathema and cursed, and since you’re anathema, you won’t be patted on the back for that in hell. What do you say to that, my fine young Jesuit?”^[99]

“There’s no doubt, sir, that I renounced it within myself, but still there wasn’t any sin especially, and if there was a little sin, it was a rather ordinary one, sir.”

“What do you mean—rather ordinary, sir!”

“You’re lying, curssse you!” Grigory hissed.

“Consider for yourself, Grigory Vasilievich,” Smerdyakov went on gravely and evenly, conscious of his victory but being magnanimous, as it were, with the vanquished enemy, “consider for yourself: in the Scriptures it is said that if you have faith even as little as the smallest seed and then say unto this mountain that it should go down into the sea, it would go, without the slightest delay, at your first order.^[100] Well, then, Grigory Vasilievich, if I’m an unbeliever, and you are such a believer that you’re even constantly scolding me, then you, sir, try telling this mountain to go down, not into the sea (because it’s far from here to the sea, sir), but even just into our stinking stream, the one beyond our garden, and you’ll see for yourself right then that nothing will go down, sir, but everything will remain in its former order and security, no matter how much you shout, sir. And that means that you, too, Grigory Vasilievich, do not believe in a proper manner, and merely scold others for it in every possible way. And then, again, taken also the fact that no one in our time, not only you, sir, but decidedly no one, starting even from the highest persons down to the very last peasant, sir, can shove a mountain into the sea, except maybe one person on the whole earth, two at the most, and even they could be secretly saving their souls somewhere in the Egyptian desert, so they can’t even be found—and if that’s so, if all the rest come out as unbelievers, can it be that all the rest, that is, the population of the whole earth, sir, except those two desert hermits, will be cursed by the Lord, and in his mercy, which is so famous, he won’t forgive a one of them? So I, too, have hopes that though I doubted once, I’ll be forgiven if I shed tears of repentance.”

“Stop!” shrieked Fyodor Pavlovich in an apotheosis of delight. “So you still suppose that those two, the kind that can move mountains, really exist? Ivan, cut a notch, write it down: here you have the whole Russian man!”

“You are quite right in observing that this is a feature of popular faith,” Ivan concurred with an approving smile.

“So you agree! Well, it must be so if even you agree! Alyoshka, it’s true, isn’t it? Completely Russian faith is like that?”

“No, Smerdyakov’s faith is not Russian at all,” Alyosha spoke seriously and firmly.

“I don’t mean his faith, I mean that feature, those two desert dwellers, just that little detail alone: that is certainly Russian, Russian.”

“Yes, that detail is quite Russian,” Alyosha smiled.

“Your word, ass, is worth a gold piece, and I’ll see that you get it today, but for the rest, it’s all still lies, lies, lies; let it be known to you, fool, that we here are unbelievers only out of carelessness, because we don’t have time: first, we’re too beset with business, and second, God gave us too little time, he only allotted twenty-four hours to a day, so that there isn’t even time enough to sleep, let alone repent. And you went and renounced your faith before your tormentors when you had nothing else to think about, and when it was precisely the time to show your faith! And so, my lad, isn’t that tantamount?”

“Tantamount, it may be tantamount, but consider for yourself, Grigory Vasilievich, that if it is tantamount, it makes things easier. Because if I then believed in very truth, as one ought to believe, then it would really be sinful if I did not endure torments for my faith but converted to the unclean Mohammedan faith. But then it wouldn’t even come to torments, sir, for if at that moment I were to say unto that mountain: ‘Move and crush my tormentor,’ it would move and in that same moment crush him like a cockroach, and I would go off as if nothing had happened, praising and glorifying God. But if precisely at that moment I tried all that, and deliberately cried unto that mountain: ‘Crush my tormentors’—and it didn’t crush them, then how, tell me, should I not doubt then, in such a terrible hour of great mortal fear? I’d know even without that that I wasn’t going to reach the fullness of the Kingdom of Heaven (because the mountain didn’t move at my word, so they must not trust much in my faith there, and no very great reward awaits me in the other world), so why, on top of that, should I let myself be flayed to no purpose? Because even if my back were already half flayed, that mountain still wouldn’t move at my word or cry. In such moments, you can not only get overcome by doubt, you can even lose your mind itself from fear, so it would be quite impossible to reason. And so, why should I come out looking so specially to blame, if, seeing no profit or reward either here or there, I at least keep my skin on? And therefore, trusting greatly in the mercy of God, I live in hopes that I’ll be completely forgiven, sir.”

Chapter 8: Over the Cognac

The dispute was over, but, strangely, Fyodor Pavlovich, who had been laughing so much, in the end suddenly frowned. He frowned and tossed off a glass of cognac, which was quite superfluous.

“Clear out, Jesuits, out!” he shouted at the servants. “Go, Smerdyakov. That gold piece I promised, I’ll send you today, but go now. Don’t cry, Gri-gory, go to Marfa, she’ll comfort you, she’ll put you to bed. Canaille! They won’t let one sit quietly after dinner,” he suddenly snapped in vexation, as the servants at once withdrew on his orders. “Smerdyakov sticks his nose in every time we have dinner now—is it you he’s so interested in? What have you done to endear yourself to him?” he added, turning to Ivan Fyodorovich.

“Nothing whatever,” the latter replied. “He has taken to respecting me; he’s a lackey and a boor. Prime cannon fodder, however, when the time comes.”

“Prime?”

“There will be others and better ones, but there will be his kind as well. First his kind, and then the better ones.”

“And when will the time come?”

“The rocket will go off, but it may fizzle out. So far the people do not much like listening to these broth-makers.”

“That’s just it, my friend, a Balaam’s ass like him thinks and thinks, and the devil knows what he’s going to think up for himself.”

“He’s storing up his thoughts,” Ivan smirked.

“You see, I for one know that he can’t stand me, or anybody else, including you, though you imagine he’s ‘taken to respecting you.’ Still less Alyoshka, he despises Alyoshka. Yet he doesn’t steal, that’s the thing, he’s not a gossip, he keeps his mouth shut, he won’t wash our dirty linen in public, he makes great cabbage pies, and furthermore to hell with him, really, is he worth talking about?”

“Of course not.”

“As to what he’s going to think up for himself, generally speaking, the Russian peasant should be whipped. I have always maintained that. Our peasants are cheats, they’re not worth our pity, and it’s good that they’re still sometimes given a birching. The strength of the Russian land is in its birches. If the forests were destroyed, it would be the end of the Russian land. I stand with the men of intelligence. In our great intelligence, we’ve stopped flogging our peasants, but they go on whipping themselves. And right they are. For as you measure, so it will be measured, or however it goes . . .^[101] In short, it will be measured. And Russia is all swinishness. My friend, if only you knew how I hate Russia ... that is, not Russia, but all this vice ... and maybe Russia, too. Tout cela c’est de la cochonnerie.^[102] Do you know what I love? I love wit.”

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

“Wait, I’ll have one more, and then another, and then I’ll stop. No, wait, you interrupted me. I was passing through Mokroye, and I asked an old man, and he told me: ‘Best of all,’ he said, ‘we like sentencing the girls to be whipped, and we let the young lads do the whipping.^[103] Next day the young lad takes the girl he’s whipped for his bride, so you see, our girls themselves go for it.’ There’s some Marquis de Sades for you, eh? Say what you like, but it’s witty. Why don’t we go and have a look, eh? Alyoshka, are you blushing? Don’t be bashful, child. It’s a pity I didn’t sit down to the Superior’s dinner this afternoon and tell the monks about the Mokroye girls. Alyoshka, don’t be angry that I got your Superior all offended this afternoon. It really makes me mad, my friend. Because if there’s a God, if he exists, well, then of course I’m guilty and I’ll answer for it, but if there’s no God at all, then what do those fathers of yours deserve? It’s not enough just to cut off their heads—because they hold up progress. Will you believe, Ivan, that it torments me in my feelings? No, you don’t believe it, I can see by your eyes. You believe I’m just a buffoon like they say. Alyosha, do you believe that I’m not just a buffoon?”

“I believe that you are not just a buffoon.”

“And I believe that you believe it and speak sincerely. You look sincerely and speak sincerely. Not so Ivan. Ivan is haughty ... But still I’d put an end to that little monastery of yours. Take all this mysticism and abolish it at once all over the Russian land, and finally bring all the fools to reason. And think how much silver, how much gold would come into the mint!”

“But why abolish it?” asked Ivan.

“To let the truth shine forth sooner, that’s why.”

“But if this truth shines forth, you will be the first to be robbed and then ... abolished.”

“Bah! You’re probably right. Ah, what an ass I am!” Fyodor Pavlovich suddenly cried, slapping himself lightly on the forehead. “Well, then, Alyoshka, in that case let your little monastery stand. And we intelligent people will keep warm and sip cognac. You know, Ivan, God himself surely must have set it up this way on purpose. Speak, Ivan: is there a God, or not? Wait: tell me for certain, tell me seriously! Why are you laughing again?”

“I’m laughing at the witty remark you made about Smerdyakov’s belief in the existence of two hermits who can move mountains.”

“Do I sound like him now?” “Very much so.”

“Well, then I, too, am a Russian man, and have the Russian feature, and you, a philosopher, can also be caught with the same sort of feature yourself. Want me to catch you? I bet you I’ll catch you tomorrow. But still, tell me: is there a God or not? But seriously. I want to be serious now.”

“No, there is no God.”

“Alyoshka, is there a God?”

“There is.”

“And is there immortality, Ivan? At least some kind, at least a little, a teeny-tiny one?”

“There is no immortality either.”

“Not of any kind?”

“Not of any kind.”

“Complete zero? Or is there something? Maybe there’s some kind of something? At least not nothing!”

“Complete zero.”

“Alyoshka, is there immortality?”

“There is.”

“Both God and immortality?”

“Both God and immortality. Immortality is in God.”

“Hm. More likely Ivan is right. Lord, just think how much faith, how much energy of all kinds man has spent on this dream, and for so many thousands of years! Who could be laughing at man like that? Ivan? For the last time, definitely: is there a God or not? It’s the last time I’ll ask.”

“For the last time—no.”

“Then who is laughing at mankind, Ivan?”

“Must be the devil,” Ivan smirked.

“And is there a devil?”

“No, there is no devil, either.”

“Too bad. Devil knows, then, what I wouldn’t do to the man who first invented God! Hanging from the bitter aspen tree would be too good for him.”

“There would be no civilization at all if God had not been invented.”

“There wouldn’t? Without God?”

“Right. And there would be no cognac either. But even so, we’ll have to take your cognac away from you.”

“Wait, wait, wait, my dear, one more little glass. I offended Alyosha. You’re not angry with me, Alexei? My dear Alexeichik, my Alexeichik!”

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

“My heart is better than my head? Lord, and it’s you who say so? Ivan, do you love Alyoshka?” “I love him.”

“Do love him!” (Fyodor Pavlovich was getting very drunk.) “Listen, Alyosha, I committed a rudeness with your elder this afternoon. But I was excited. Say, there’s wit in that elder, don’t you think so, Ivan?”

“Perhaps so.”

“There is, there is, il y a du Piron là-dedans.^[104] He’s a Jesuit, a Russian one, that is. As a noble person, he has this hidden indignation seething in him because he has to pretend ... to put on all this holiness.”

“But he does believe in God.”

“Not for a minute. Didn’t you know? But he himself says so to everyone, that is, not to everyone, but to all the intelligent people who visit him. With Governor Schultz he came right out and said: credo, but I don’t know in what.”

“He said that?”

“Precisely that. But I respect him. There’s something Mephistophelean in him, or, better, from the Hero of Our Time ... Arbenin, or what’s his name?^[105] ... you see, I mean, he’s a sensualist, he’s such a sensualist that even now I’d be afraid for my daughter or my wife if she went to him for confession. You know, when he gets to telling stories ... The year before last he invited us to tea, with liqueur, too (the ladies send him liqueurs), and he began painting such pictures of the old days that we almost split our sides laughing ... Especially about how he healed one paralyzed woman. ‘If my legs were still good, I’d show you a step or two.’ Eh? You see? ‘I’ve done some holy fooling in my day,’ he said. He filched sixty thousand from the merchant Demidov.”

“What, stole it?”

“Demidov brought it to him as to a decent man: ‘Keep it for me, brother, they’re going to search my place tomorrow.’ Keep it he did. ‘You donated it to the Church, didn’t you?’ he said. I said to him: ‘You’re a scoundrel,’ I said. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m not a scoundrel, I’m broad-natured . . .’ It wasn’t him, though ... It was someone else. I confused him with someone else ... and didn’t notice. Just one more glass and that’s it; take the bottle away, Ivan. I was lying, why didn’t you stop me, Ivan ... why didn’t you tell me I was lying?”

“I knew you’d stop by yourself.”

“That’s a lie! It was out of malice towards me, out of sheer malice. You despise me. You came to me and you despise me in my own house.”

“And I’ll leave; the drink is acting up in you.”

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

“I’ll go tomorrow, if you’re so insistent.”

“You won’t go. You want to spy on me here, that’s what you want, you wicked soul, that’s why you won’t go.” The old man would not be still. He had reached that level of drunkenness at which some drunkards, who until then have been peaceable, suddenly want to get angry and make a show of themselves.

“What are you staring at me for? What kind of look is that? Your eyes look at me and say: ‘You drunken pig! ‘ Suspicious eyes, malicious eyes ... You came here with something in mind. Alyoshka looks at me and his eyes shine. Alyosha doesn’t despise me. Alexei, do not love Ivan...”

“Don’t be angry with my brother! Stop hurting him,” Alyosha all of a sudden said insistently.

“Well, well, maybe I will. Oof, what a headache! Take away the cognac, Ivan, it’s the third time I’m telling you.” He lapsed into thought and suddenly smiled a long and cunning smile: “Don’t be angry with an old runt like me, Ivan. I know you don’t love me, but still don’t be angry. There’s nothing to love me for. You go to Chermashnya, and I’ll visit you there, I’ll bring presents . I’ll show you a young wench there, I’ve had my eye on her for a long time. She’s still barefoot. Don’t be afraid of the barefoot ones, don’t despise them, they’re pearls...!”

And he kissed his hand with a smack.

“For me,” he suddenly became all animated, as if sobering up for a moment, once he hit on his favorite subject, “for me ... Ah, you children! My babes, my little piglets, for me ... even in the whole of my life there has never been an ugly woman, that’s my rule! Can you understand that? But how could you understand it? You’ve still got milk in your veins instead of blood, you’re not hatched yet! According to my rule, one can damn well find something extremely interesting in every woman, something that’s not to be found in any other—one just has to know how to find it, that’s the trick! It’s a talent! For me, there’s no such thing as an ugly woman: the fact alone that she’s a woman, that alone is half the whole thing ... but how could you understand that? Even old maids, even in them one sometimes finds such a thing that one can only marvel at all the other fools who let her get old and never noticed it before! The barefoot or ugly ones have to be taken by surprise, first of all— that’s how one must approach them. Didn’t you know that? They must be surprised so that they’re enraptured, smitten, ashamed that such a gentleman should have fallen in love with such a grimy creature. It’s very nice, indeed, that there have always been and always will be boors and gentlemen in the world, and so there will always be such a little floor scrubber, and there will always be a master over her, and that is all one needs for happiness in life! Wait ... listen, Alyoshka, I always used to take your la te mother by surprise, only it worked out differently. I never used to caress her, but suddenly, when the moment came—suddenly I’d lay myself down before her, crawling on my knees, kissing her feet, and I always, always sent her—I remember it as if it were today—into that little laugh, a showery, tinkling, soft, nervous, peculiar little laugh. It was the only kind she had. I knew that that was how her sickness usually began, that the next day she’d start her shrieking again, and that this present little laugh was no sign of delight—well, it may have been false, but still it was delight. That’s what it means to be able to find the right little touch in everything! Once Belyavsky—a handsome man, and a rich one, from these parts; he was chasing after her and had taken to coming for visits—suddenly slapped me in the face, in my own house, right in front of her. And she, sheep though she was, attacked me for that slap so that I thought she was going to give me a thrashing herself: ‘You’ve been beaten now, beaten!’ she said. ‘You’ve had your face slapped by him! You were selling me to him ... ,’ she said. ‘How dare he strike you in front of me! Don’t you dare to come near me again ever, ever! Run right now and challenge him to a duel . . .’ I took her to the monastery then, to humble her, the holy fathers reprimanded her. But honest to God, Alyosha, I never offended my little shrieker! Except once only, still in the first year: she was praying too much then, she especially kept the feasts of the Mother of God, and on those days she would drive me away from her to my study. I’d better knock this mysticism out of her, I thought. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘look, here’s your icon, here it is, I’m taking it down. Now watch. You think it’s a wonder-working icon, and right now, before your eyes, I’m going to spit on it, and nothing will happen to me ... !’Whenshesawthat,Lord,Ithought,nowshe’sgoingtokillme! But she just jumped up, clasped her hands, then suddenly covered her face with them, shook all over, and fell to the floor ... just sank down ... Alyosha! Alyosha! What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

The old man jumped up in fright. From the time he began talking about his mother, a change had gradually come over Alyosha’s face. He flushed, his eyes burned, his lips trembled ... The drunken old man went on spluttering and noticed nothing until the moment when something very strange suddenly happened to Alyosha—namely, the very same thing he had just told about the “shrieker” repeated itself with him. He suddenly jumped up from the table, just as his mother was said to have done, clasped his hands, then covered his face with them, fell back in his chair as if he’d been cut down, and suddenly began shaking all over in a hysterical attack of sudden trembling and silent tears. The remarkable resemblance to his mother especially struck the old man.

“Ivan! Ivan! Quick, bring him water! It’s like her, it’s just like her, his mother did the same thing! Spray him with water from your mouth, that’s what I used to do with her. It’s on account of his mother, his mother ... ,”he muttered to Ivan.

“But my mother, I think, was also his mother, wouldn’t you agree?” Ivan suddenly burst out with irrepressible, angry contempt. The flashing of his eyes startled the old man. But here something very strange happened, if only for a moment. The notion that Alyosha’s mother was also Ivan’s mother really seemed to have gone clean out of the old man’s mind . . .

“What do you mean, your mother?” he muttered, not understanding. “What are you talking about ... ? Whose mother ... was she ... ? Ah, damn! Of course she was yours, too! Damn! You know, my friend, my mind just went blank as never before. Forgive me, Ivan, I was thinking ... heh, heh, heh!” He stopped. His face split into a long, drunken, half-senseless grin. And suddenly, at that very moment, a terrible noise and clamor came from the front hall, furious shouting was heard, the door was flung open, and Dmitri Fyodorovich flew into the room. The old man rushed to Ivan in terror.

“He’ll kill me, he’ll kill me! Don’t let him get me! Don’t let him!” he cried out, clutching at the skirt of Ivan Fyodorovich’s coat.

Chapter 9: The Sensualists

On the heels of Dmitri Fyodorovich, Grigory and Smerdyakov also ran into the room. It was they who had struggled with him in the front hall and tried not to let him in (following instructions given them by Fyodor Pavlovich several days earlier). Seizing his chance when Dmitri Fyodorovich stopped for a moment to look about him after bursting into the room, Grigory ran around the table, closed both halves of the door leading to the inner rooms, which was opposite the entrance from the front hall, and stood before the closed door with his arms spread crosswise, ready to defend the entrance, so to speak, to the last drop. Seeing this, Dmitri gave something more like a shriek than a shout and hurled himself at Grigory.

“So she’s there! They’ve hidden her in there! Get away, scoundrel!” He tried to tear Grigory away, but Grigory pushed him back. Beside himself with rage, Dmitri swung and hit Grigory with all his strength. The old man collapsed as if he had been cut down, and Dmitri jumped over him and smashed through the door. Smerdyakov stayed at the other end of the room, pale and trembling, pressed up close to Fyodor Pavlovich.

“She’s here!” cried Dmitri Fyodorovich. “I just saw her turn towards the house, but I couldn’t catch up with her. Where is she? Where is she?” Inconceivable was the effect produced on Fyodor Pavlovich by the cry: “She’s here!” All his fright dropped away.

“Catch him! Catch him!” he yelled and dashed after Dmitri Fyodorovich.

Grigory meanwhile had gotten up from the floor but was still beside himself, as it were. Ivan Fyodorovich and Alyosha ran after their father. From the third room came the sound of something falling to the floor with a crash and a tinkle: it was a large glass vase (of the inexpensive sort) on a marble pedestal, which Dmitri Fyodorovich had brushed against as he ran past it.

“Sic him!” yelled the old man. “Help!”

Ivan Fyodorovich and Alyosha finally caught up with the old man and forced him back to the drawing room.

“What are you chasing him for? He really will kill you in there!” Ivan Fyodorovich shouted angrily at his father.

“Vanechka, Lyoshechka, she’s here, then, Grushenka is here, he said he saw her ...”

He was spluttering. He had not expected Grushenka to come this time, and suddenly the news that she was there drove him at once beyond his wits. He was shaking all over. He seemed to have gone mad.

“But you can see for yourself that she hasn’t come!” Ivan cried.

“Maybe by the back door.”

“But it’s locked, the back door is locked, and you have the key...”

Dmitri suddenly reappeared in the drawing room. He had of course found that door locked, and the key to the locked door was indeed in Fyodor Pav-lovich’s pocket. All the windows in all the rooms were locked as well. There was no way Grushenka could have gotten in, then, and no way she could have jumped out.

“Catch him!” shrieked Fyodor Pavlovich the moment he sighted Dmitri again. “He’s stolen money in there, from my bedroom!”

And breaking away from Ivan, he again rushed at Dmitri. But Dmitri raised both hands and suddenly seized the old man by the two surviving wisps of hair on his temples, pulled, and smashed him against the floor. He even had time to kick the fallen man in the face two or three times with his heel. The old man let out a shrill moan. Ivan Fyodorovich, though not as strong as his brother Dmitri, grasped him with both arms and tore him with all his might away from the old man. Alyosha, too, helped with his small strength, grasping his brother from the front.

“Madman, you’ve killed him!” shouted Ivan.

“Serves him right!” Dmitri cried, gasping. “And if I haven’t killed him this time, I’ll come back and kill him. You can’t save him!”

“Dmitri! Get out of here, at once!” Alyosha shouted commandingly. “Alexei, you tell me, you alone, you’re the only one I’ll believe: was she here just now or not? I saw her sneaking this way past the fence from the lane. I called out. She ran away ...”

“I swear to you, she has not been here, and no one here even expected her.”

“But I saw her ... So, she ... I’ll find out where she is ... Farewell, Alexei! Not a word to Aesop now about money. But go to Katerina Ivanovna at once, and be sure to tell her: ‘He says he bows to you, he bows to you, bows!’ Precisely that: ‘He bows to you—and he bows out! ‘ Describe this scene to her.”

Ivan and Grigory had meanwhile lifted the old man up and put him in the armchair. His face was covered with blood, but he was conscious and listened eagerly to Dmitri’s shouts. He still imagined that Grushenka was indeed somewhere in the house. Dmitri Fyodorovich gave him a hateful glance as he was leaving.

“I do not repent of your blood!” he exclaimed. “Watch out, old man, watch out for your dream, for I, too, have a dream! I curse you and disown you completely ...”

He ran out of the room.

“She’s here, she must be here! Smerdyakov, Smerdyakov,” the old man wheezed almost inaudibly, beckoning to Smerdyakov with his finger.

“She’s not here, not here, you crazy old man!” Ivan shouted at him viciously. “Hah, he’s fainted! Water, a towel! Move, Smerdyakov!”

Smerdyakov ran to get water. The old man was finally undressed, taken to the bedroom, and put to bed. His head was wrapped with a wet towel. Weakened by cognac, strong sensations, and the beating, he rolled up his eyes as soon as he touched the pillow and at once dozed off. Ivan Fyodorovich and Alyosha went back to the drawing room. Smerdyakov was carrying out the shards of the broken vase, and Grigory was standing by the table looking gloomily at the floor.

“Shouldn’t you, too, put something wet on your head and lie down?” Alyosha turned to Grigory. “We will look after him. My brother gave you a terribly painful blow ... on the head.”

“Me he dared . . .!”Grigory uttered gloomily and distinctly.

“He ‘dared’ father, too, not just you!” Ivan Fyodorovich observed, twisting his mouth.

“I used to wash him in a tub ... Me he dared . . .!” Grigory kept repeating.

“Devil take it, if I hadn’t pulled him away, he might have killed him right there. It wouldn’t take much for Aesop,” Ivan Fyodorovich whispered to Alyosha. “God forbid!” exclaimed Alyosha.

“Why ‘forbid’?” Ivan continued in the same whisper, his face twisted maliciously. “Viper will eat viper, and it would serve them both right!”

Alyosha started.

“Of course I will not allow murder to be committed, any more than I did just now. Stay here, Alyosha, while I take a walk in the yard. I’m getting a headache.”

Alyosha went to his father’s bedroom and sat with him behind the screen for about an hour. The old man suddenly opened his eyes and gazed silently at Alyosha for a long time, evidently recollecting and pondering. Suddenly an extraordinary agitation showed on his face.

“Alyosha,” he whispered warily, “where is Ivan?”

“Out in the yard. He’s got a headache. He’s keeping watch for us.”

“Bring me the mirror, it’s over there, bring it to me!”

Alyosha brought him a small, round folding mirror that stood on the chest of drawers. The old man looked in it: his nose was quite badly swollen, and there was a large purple bruise on his forehead above the left eyebrow.

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

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

“And what about the other one, Alyosha? He ran to Grushenka! My dear angel, tell me the truth: was Grushenka here just now or not?”

“No one saw her. It’s not true, she wasn’t here.”

“But Mitka, he wants to marry her, marry her!”

“She won’t marry him.”

“She won’t marry him, she won’t, she won’t, she won’t, she won’t marry him for anything in the world!” The old man roused himself joyfully, as if nothing more delightful could have been said to him at that moment. Enraptured, he seized Alyosha’s hand and firmly pressed it to his heart. Tears even shone in his eyes.

“That little icon, the one of the Mother of God, the one I was just talking about, you can have it, take it with you. And I permit you to go back to the monastery ... I was joking this morning, don’t be cross with me. My head aches, Alyosha ... Lyosha, ease my heart, be an angel, tell me the truth!”

“You mean whether she was here or not?” Alyosha said ruefully.

“No, no, no, I believe you, but I tell you what: go to Grushenka yourself, or get to see her somehow; find out from her soon, as soon as possible, figure out with your own eyes who she wants to be with, me or him. Eh, what? Can you do it or not?”

“If I see her, I’ll ask her,” Alyosha murmured in embarrassment. “No, she won’t tell you,” the old man interrupted. “She’s a fidget. She’ll start kissing you and say it’s you she wants to marry. She’s a cheat, she’s shameless. No, you mustn’t go to her, you mustn’t.”

“And it wouldn’t be nice either, father, not nice at all.”

“Where was he sending you just now when he shouted ‘Go!’ as he ran out the door?”

“To Katerina Ivanovna.”

“For money? To ask for money?”

“No, not for money.”

“He has no money, not a drop. Listen, Alyosha, I’ll lie in bed all night and think things over. You go now. Maybe you’ll meet her ... Only be sure to stop by tomorrow morning. Be sure to. I’ll tell you a little something tomorrow. Will you come?”

“I will.”

“When you do, pretend that it was your own idea, that you just came to visit me. Don’t tell anyone I asked you to come. Don’t say a word to Ivan.”

“Very well.”

“Good-bye, my angel, you stood up for me today, I won’t ever forget it. I’ll tell you a little something tomorrow, only I still have to think...”

“And how do you feel now?”

“By tomorrow, by tomorrow I’ll be up and around. Quite well, quite well, quite well!”

Passing through the yard, Alyosha met his brother Ivan on a bench by the gate. He was sitting and writing something in his notebook with a pencil. Alyosha told Ivan that the old man was awake and conscious and had let him go to spend the night in the monastery.

“Alyosha, it would be my pleasure to meet with you tomorrow morning,” Ivan said affably, rising a little. His affability took Alyosha completely by surprise.

“I’ll be at the Khokhlakovs’ tomorrow,” Alyosha replied. “I may be at Katerina Ivanovna’s, too, if I don’t find her in now ...”

“So you are going to Katerina Ivanovna’s now? ‘To bow and bow out’?” Ivan suddenly smiled. Alyosha looked embarrassed.

“I think I understood it all from those exclamations just now, and from certain things that happened before. Dmitri, most likely, has asked you to go to her and tell her that he ... well ... well, in a word, that he is ‘bowing out’?”

“Brother! What will all this horror between father and Dmitri come to?” Alyosha exclaimed.

“It’s impossible to guess for certain. Maybe nothing: the whole affair could just dissolve. That woman is a beast. In any case, the old man must be kept at home, and Dmitri must not be let into the house.”

“Brother, let me ask you one more thing: can it be that any man has the right to decide about the rest of mankind, who is worthy to live and who is more unworthy?”

“But why bring worth into it? The question is most often decided in the hearts of men not at all on the basis of worth, but for quite different reasons, much more natural ones. As for rights, tell me, who has no right to wish?”

“But surely not for another’s death?”

“Maybe even for another’s death. Why lie to yourself when everyone lives like that, and perhaps even cannot live any other way? What are you getting at—what I said about ‘two vipers eating each other up’? In that case, let me ask you: do you consider me capable, like Dmitri, of shedding Aesop’s blood, well, of killing him? Eh?”

“What are you saying, Ivan! The thought never entered my mind! And I don’t consider Dmitri ...”

“Thanks at least for that,” Ivan grinned. “Let it be known to you that I will always protect him. But as for my wishes in the matter, there I reserve complete freedom for myself. I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t condemn me, and don’t look on me as a villain,” he added with a smile.

They shook hands firmly, as they had never done before. Alyosha felt that his brother had stepped a step towards him, and that he must have done so for some reason, with some purpose in mind.

Chapter 10: The Two Together

Yet Alyosha left his father’s house even more broken and dejected in spirit than when he had entered it. His mind, too, was splintered and scattered, as it were, while he himself felt at the same time that he was afraid to bring the scattered together and draw a general idea from all the tormenting contradictions he had lived through that day. Something was bordering almost on despair in Alyosha’s heart, which had never happened to him before. One main, fateful, and insoluble question towered over everything like a mountain: how would it end between his father and his brother Dmitri with this terrible woman? Now he himself had been a witness. He himself had been there and had seen them face each other. However, only his brother Dmitri could turn out to be unhappy, completely and terribly unhappy: disaster undoubtedly lay in wait for him. Other people also turned out to be concerned in it all, and perhaps far more so than Alyosha could have imagined before. There was something even mysterious in it. His brother Ivan had taken a step towards him, which Alyosha had so long desired, but now for some reason he felt frightened by this step towards intimacy. And those women? It was strange: earlier he had set out to see Katerina Ivanovna in great embarrassment, but now he felt none; on the contrary, he was hurrying to her, as though he expected her to give him guidance. And yet to convey the message to her was now obviously more difficult than before: the matter of the three thousand roubles was decided finally, and his brother Dmitri, now feeling himself dishonest and without any hope, would of course not hesitate at any further fall. Besides, he had ordered him to tell Katerina Ivanovna about the scene that had just taken place at his father’s.

It was already seven o’clock and dusk was falling when Alyosha went to see Katerina Ivanovna, who occupied a spacious and comfortable house on Main Street. Alyosha knew that she lived with two aunts. One of them, however, was the aunt only of her sister Agafya Ivanovna; this was that meek person in her father’s house who had looked after her together with her sister when she had come from the institute. The other was a stately Moscow grande dame, of the impoverished sort. Rumor had it that they both obeyed Katerina Ivanovna in everything and stayed with her solely for the sake of propriety. And Katerina Ivanovna obeyed only her benefactress, the general’s widow, who had remained in Moscow because of her illness, and to whom she was obliged to send two letters every week with detailed news of herself.

When Alyosha entered the front hall and asked the chambermaid who had let him in to announce him, they evidently already knew of his arrival in the drawing room (perhaps they had seen him from the window); in any case Alyosha suddenly heard some noise, some women’s running steps, the rustle of skirts: perhaps two or three women had run out. It seemed strange to Alyosha that his arrival could cause such a stir. However, he was at once shown into the drawing room. It was a large room, filled with elegant and abundant furniture, not at all in a provincial manner. There were many sofas, settees, love seats, tables large and small; there were paintings on the walls, vases and lamps on the tables, there were lots of flowers, there was even an aquarium by the window. Twilight made the room somewhat dark. On a sofa where someone had obviously just been sitting, Alyosha noticed a silk mantilla, and on the table in front of the sofa two unfinished cups of chocolate, biscuits, a crystal dish with purple raisins, another with candies. Someone was visiting. Alyosha realized that he had intruded on guests and frowned. But at that very moment the portière was raised and Katerina Ivanovna came in with quick, hurrying steps, and with a joyful, delighted smile held out both hands to Alyosha. At the same moment a maid brought in two lighted candles and set them on the table.

“Thank God it’s you at last! All day I’ve been asking God for no one but you! Sit down.”

The beauty of Katerina Ivanovna had struck Alyosha even before, when his brother Dmitri had brought him to her for the first time three weeks earlier, to introduce them and get them acquainted, at Katerina Ivanovna’s special request. In that meeting, however, they had failed to strike up any conversation. Supposing Alyosha to be ill at ease, Katerina Ivanovna had spared him, as it were, and spent the whole time talking with Dmitri Fyodorovich. Alyosha had been silent, but had perceived a great deal very clearly. He was struck by the imperiousness, the proud ease, the self-confidence of the arrogant girl. And all that was unquestionable. Alyosha felt that he was not exaggerating. He found her large, black, burning eyes beautiful and especially becoming to her pale, even somewhat pale yellow, oval face. But in those eyes, as well as in the outline of her lovely lips, there was something that his brother certainly might fall terribly in love with, but that it was perhaps impossible to love for long. He almost said so outright to Dmitri, who pestered him after the visit, begging him not to conceal his impressions after seeing his fiancée.

“You will be happy with her, but perhaps ... not quietly happy.”

“That’s just it, brother, such women stay as they are, they don’t humble themselves before fate. So you think I won’t love her eternally?”

“No, maybe you will love her eternally, but maybe you won’t always be happy with her ...”

Alyosha had given his opinion then, blushing and annoyed with himself for having yielded to his brother’s entreaties and expressed such “foolish” thoughts. Because his opinion seemed terribly foolish to him as soon as he expressed it. And he felt ashamed at having expressed such an authoritative opinion about a woman. With all the more amazement did he feel now, at the first sight of Katerina Ivanovna as she ran out to him, that perhaps he had been very mistaken then. This time her face shone with unfeigned, openhearted kindness, with direct and ardent sincerity. Of all the former “pride and arrogance” that had so struck Alyosha at first, he now saw only a courageous, noble energy and a certain clear, strong faith in herself. Alyosha realized at the first sight of her, at the first words, that the whole tragedy of her situation with respect to the man she loved so much was no secret to her, that she, perhaps, knew everything already, decidedly everything. And yet, despite that, there was still so much light in her face, so much faith in the future, that Alyosha suddenly felt himself gravely and deliberately guilty before her. He was conquered and attracted at the same time. Besides which he noticed at her first words that she was in some great excitement, perhaps quite unusual for her—an excitement even almost resembling a sort of rapture.

“I’ve been waiting for you so, because now I can learn the whole truth only from you—and from no one else!”

“I’ve come ... ,” Alyosha muttered, confused, “I ... he sent me...”

“Ah, he sent you! Well, that is just what I anticipated. Now I know everything, everything!” Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed, her eyes suddenly flashing. “Wait, Alexei Fyodorovich, I shall tell you first of all why I was so anxious for you to come. You see, I know perhaps much more even than you do yourself; it’s not news that I need from you. This is what I need from you: I need to know your own personal, last impression of him, I need you to tell me directly, plainly, even coarsely (oh, as coarsely as you like! ) how you yourself see him now and how you see his position after your meeting with him today. It will be better, perhaps, than if I myself, whom he no longer wishes to see, were to discuss it with him personally. Do you understand what I want from you? Now, what is it that he sent you to tell me (I just knew he would send you!)—tell me simply, to the very last word...!”

“He says that he ... bows to you, and that he will never come again and ... that he bows to you.”

“Bows? Did he say that, did he put it that way?”

“Yes.”

“Just in passing, inadvertently, maybe he made a mistake, maybe he used the wrong word?”

“No, he asked me precisely to give you this word, ‘bows.’ He asked about three times, so that I wouldn’t forget to tell you.”

Katerina Ivanovna flushed.

“Help me now, Alexei Fyodorovich, it is now that I need your help. I’ll tell you my thought, and you simply tell me whether my thought is right or not. Listen, if he had asked you to bow to me just in passing, without insisting on the word, without underlining the word, that would be it ... that would be the end! But if he especially insisted on this word, if he especially told you not to forget to convey this bow to me, then it means he was agitated, beside himself perhaps. He had made a decision, and was frightened by his decision! He did not walk away from me with a firm step but leaped headlong off the mountain. That he stressed this word may only be a sign of bravado ...”

“Right, right!” Alyosha ardently agreed, “so it seems to me now.” “And if so, then he hasn’t perished yet! He’s just in despair, but I can still save him. Wait: did he tell you anything about money, about three thousand roubles?”

“He not only told me, but that is perhaps what was killing him most of all. He said he was now deprived of his honor and nothing mattered anymore,” Alyosha ardently replied, feeling with his whole heart that hope was flowing into his heart, and that, indeed, there might be a way out, there might be salvation for his brother. “But do you ... know about this money?” he added, and suddenly stopped short.

“I’ve known for a long time, and for certain. I inquired by telegraph in Moscow and have long known that the money was never received. He never sent the money, but I said nothing. Last week I learned how much he needed and still needs money ... I set myself only one goal in all of this: that he should know who to turn back to, and who is his most faithful friend. No, he does not want to believe that I am his most faithful friend, he has never wanted to know me, he looks on me only as a woman. All week one terrible care has tormented me: how to make it so that he will not be ashamed before me because he spent those three thousand roubles. I mean, let him be ashamed before everyone and before himself, but let him not be ashamed before me. To God he says everything without being ashamed. Why, then, does he still not know how much I can endure for him? Why, why does he not know me, how dare he not know me after all that has happened? I want to save him forever. Let him forget that I am his fiancée! And now he’s afraid before me because of his honor! He wasn’t afraid to open himself to you, Alexei Fyodorovich. Why haven’t I yet deserved the same?”

The last words she spoke in tears; tears gushed from her eyes.

“I must tell you,” said Alyosha, also in a trembling voice, “of what took place just now between him and father.” And he described the whole scene, described how he had been sent to get money, how Mitya had burst in, beaten their father, and after that specifically and insistently confirmed that he, Alyosha, should go and “bow” ... “He went to that woman ... ,” Alyosha added softly.

“And do you think that I cannot endure that woman? He thinks that I will not endure her? But he won’t marry her,” she suddenly gave a nervous laugh. “Can a Karamazov eternally burn with such a passion? It’s passion, not love. He won’t marry her, because she won’t marry him ... ,” again Katerina Ivanovna suddenly laughed strangely.

“He may well marry her,” Alyosha said sadly, lowering his eyes.

“He won’t marry her, I tell you! That girl—she’s an angel, do you know that? Do you know it?” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly exclaimed with remarkable fervor. “The most fantastic of all fantastic beings! I know how bewitching she is, but I also know how kind, firm, noble she is. Why are you looking at me that way, Alexei Fyodorovich? Perhaps you’re surprised at my words, perhaps you don’t believe me? Agrafena Alexandrovna, my angel!” she suddenly called out to someone, looking into the other room, “come and join us! This is a dear man, this is Alyosha, he knows all about our affairs. Show yourself to him!”

“I’ve only been waiting behind the curtain for you to call me,” said a tender, even somewhat sugary woman’s voice.

The portière was raised and ... Grushenka herself, laughing and joyful, came up to the table. Something seemed to contract in Alyosha. His eyes were glued to her, he couldn’t take them off of her. Here she was, that terrible woman, that “beast,” as his brother Ivan had let slip half an hour earlier. And yet before him stood what seemed, at first glance, to be a most ordinary and simple being—a kind, nice woman; beautiful, yes, but so much like all other beautiful but “ordinary” women! It’s true that she was very good-looking indeed—with that Russian beauty loved so passionately by so many. She was a rather tall woman, slightly shorter, however, than Katerina Ivanovna (who was exceptionally tall), plump, with a soft, even, as it were, inaudible way of moving her body, and delicate as well, as though it were some sort of special sugary confection, like her voice. She came up not like Katerina Ivanovna, with strong, cheerful strides, but, on the contrary, inaudibly. Her step was completely noiseless. Softly she lowered herself into an armchair, softly rustling her ample black silk dress, and delicately wrapping her plump neck, white as foam, and her wide shoulders in an expensive black woolen shawl. She was twenty-two years old, and her face showed exactly that age. Her complexion was very white, with a pale rosy tint high on her cheeks. The shape of her face was too broad, perhaps, and her lower jaw even protruded a bit. Her upper lip was thin, and her more prominent lower lip was twice as full and seemed a little swollen. But the most wonderful, most abundant dark brown hair, dark sable eyebrows, and lovely gray blue eyes with long lashes could not fail to make even the most indifferent and absent-minded man somewhere in the crowd, on market day, in the crush, stop suddenly before this face and remember it afterwards for a long time. What struck Alyosha most of all in this face was its childlike, openhearted expression. Her look was like a child’s, her joy was like a child’s, she came up to the table precisely “joyfully,” as if she were expecting something now with the most childlike, impatient, and trusting curiosity. Her look made the soul glad—Alyosha felt it. But there was something else in her that he could not, and would not have been able to, account for, but which perhaps affected him unconsciously—namely, once again, this softness, this tenderness of her bodily movements, the feline inaudibility of her movements. And yet it was a strong and abundant body. Under the shawl one sensed her broad, full shoulders, her high, still quite youthful bosom. This body perhaps promised the forms of the Venus de Milo, one could sense that—though the proportions must have been and indeed already were somewhat exaggerated. Connoisseurs of Russian feminine beauty could have foretold with certainty, looking at Grushenka, that this fresh, still youthful beauty would lose its harmony towards the age of thirty, would grow shapeless, the face itself would become puffy, wrinkles would very quickly appear around the eyes and on the forehead, the complexion would turn coarser, ruddier perhaps—the beauty of a moment, in short, a passing beauty, such as one so often finds precisely in a Russian woman. Alyosha, of course, was not thinking of that, but, though he was fascinated, he asked himself with a certain unpleasant feeling, and as if regretfully, why she had this manner of drawing out her words instead of speaking naturally. She did it, obviously, because she found this drawn-out and too-sugary enunciation of sounds and syllables beautiful. It was, of course, simply a bad habit, in bad tone, which indicated a low upbringing and a notion of propriety vulgarly adopted in childhood. And yet this manner of speaking and intonation seemed to Alyosha almost an impossible contradiction to the childlike, open-hearted, and joyful expression of her face, to the quiet, happy, infant shining of her eyes! Katerina Ivanovna at once sat her down in an armchair facing Alyosha, and delightedly kissed her several times on her smiling lips. She seemed to be in love with her.

“We’ve met for the first time, Alexei Fyodorovich,” she said rapturously. “I wanted to know her, to see her. I would have gone to her, but she came herself as soon as I asked. I knew that we would resolve everything, everything! My heart foresaw it ... They begged me to abandon this step, but I foresaw the outcome, and I was not mistaken. Grushenka has explained everything to me, all her intentions; like a good angel, she has flown down here and brought peace and joy ...”

“My dear, worthy young lady did not scorn me,” Grushenka drawled in a singsong voice with the same lovely, joyful smile.

“Don’t you dare say such a thing to me, you enchantress, you sorceress! Scorn you? I shall kiss your lower lip one more time. It seems a little swollen, then let it be more swollen, and more, and more ... See how she laughs! Alexei Fyodorovich, it’s a joy for the heart just to look at this angel...”

Alyosha blushed, and an imperceptible trembling came over him.

“You are too kind to me, dear young lady, and perhaps I am not at all worthy of your caresses.” “Not worthy! She is not worthy!” Katerina Ivanovna again exclaimed with the same fervor. “You know, Alexei Fyodorovich, we have a fantastic little head, we’re willful and have a proud, proud little heart! We are noble, Alexei Fyodorovich, we are magnanimous, did you know that? Only we have been so unhappy! We were too ready to make all sorts of sacrifices for an unworthy, perhaps, or frivolous man. There was one man, he was an officer, too, we fell in love with him, we offered him everything, it was long ago, five years ago, and he forgot us, he got married. Now he’s a widower, he’s written, he’s coming here—and, you know, it is only him, only him and no one else that we love now and have loved all our life! He will come, and Grushenka will be happy again, and for all these five years she has been unhappy. But who will reproach her, who will boast of her favors? Only that bedridden old man, a merchant—but he has been more of a father, a friend, a protector to us. He found us in despair, in torment, abandoned by the one we loved so ... why, she wanted to drown herself then, and this old man saved her, saved her!”

“You defend me too much, dear young lady; you are in too much of a hurry with everything,” Grushenka drawled again.

“Defend? Is it for me to defend you? Would we even dare to defend you here? Grushenka, angel, give me your hand. Look at this plump, lovely little hand, Alexei Fyodorovich; do you see it? It brought me happiness and resurrected me, and now I am going to kiss it, back and front, here, here, and here!” And as if in rapture, she kissed the indeed lovely, if perhaps too plump, hand of Grushenka three times. The latter, offering her hand with a nervous, pealing, lovely little laugh, watched the “dear young lady,” apparently pleased at having her hand kissed like that. “Maybe a little too much rapture,” flashed through Alyosha’s mind. He blushed. All the while his heart was somehow peculiarly uneasy.

“Won’t you make me ashamed, dear young lady, kissing my hand like that in front of Alexei Fyodorovich!”

“How could I possibly make you ashamed?” said Katerina Ivanovna, somewhat surprised. “Ah, my dear, how poorly you understand me!”

“But perhaps you do not quite understand me either, dear young lady. Perhaps I’m more wicked than you see on the surface. I have a wicked heart, I’m willful. I charmed poor Dmitri Fyodorovich that time only to laugh at him.”

“But now it will be you who save him. You gave your word. You will make him listen to reason, you will reveal to him that you love another man, that you have loved him for a long time, and he is now offering you his hand...”

“Ah, no, I never gave you my word. It’s you who were saying all that, but I didn’t give my word.” “Then I must have misunderstood you,” Katerina Ivanovna said softly, turning a bit pale, as it were. “You promised...”

“Ah, no, my young lady, my angel, I promised nothing,” Grushenka interrupted softly and calmly, with the same gay and innocent expression. “Now you see, worthy young lady, how wicked and willful I am next to you. Whatever I want, I will do. Maybe I just promised you something, but now I’m thinking: what if I like him again all of a sudden—Mitya, I mean—because I did like him once very much, I liked him for almost a whole hour. So, maybe I’ll go now and tell him to stay with me starting today ... That’s how fickle I am...”

“You just said ... something quite different. . . ,” Katerina Ivanovna said faintly.

“Ah, I just said! But I have such a tender, foolish heart. Think what he’s suffered because of me! What if I go home and suddenly take pity on him—what then?”

“I didn’t expect...”

“Eh, young lady, how kind and noble you turn out to be next to me. So now perhaps you’ll stop loving such a fool as I am, seeing my character. Give me your little hand, my angel,” she asked tenderly, and took Katerina Ivanovna’s hand as if in reverence. “Here, dear young lady, I’ll take your little hand and kiss it, just as you did to me. You kissed mine three times, and for that I ought to kiss yours three hundred times to be even. And so I shall, and then let it be as God wills; maybe I’ll be your complete slave and want to please you in everything like a slave. As God wills, so let it be, with no deals or promises between us. What a hand, what a dear little hand you have, what a hand! My dear young lady, beauty that you are, my impossible beauty!”

She slowly raised this hand to her lips, though with the rather strange purpose of “getting even” in kisses. Katerina Ivanovna did not withdraw her hand: with a timid hope, she listened to Grushenka’s last, also rather strangely expressed, promise to please her “like a slave”; she looked tensely into her eyes: she saw in those eyes the same openhearted, trusting expression, the same serene gaiety ... “Perhaps she is so naive!” a hope flashed in Katerina Ivanovna’s heart. Meanwhile Grushenka, as if admiring the “dear little hand,” was slowly raising it to her lips. But with the hand just at her lips, she suddenly hesitated for two, maybe three seconds, as if thinking something over.

“Do you know, my angel,”she suddenly drawled in the most tender, sugary voice, “do you know? I’m just not going to kiss your hand.” And she laughed a gleeful little laugh. “As you wish ... What’s the matter?” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly started.

“And you can keep this as a memory—that you kissed my hand, and I did not kiss yours.” Something suddenly flashed in her eyes. She looked with terrible fixity at Katerina Ivanovna.

“Insolent!” Katerina Ivanovna said suddenly, as if suddenly understanding something. She blushed all over and jumped up from her place. Grushenka, too, got up, without haste.

“So I’ll go right now and tell Mitya that you kissed my hand, and I didn’t kiss yours at all. How he’ll laugh!”

“You slut! Get out!”

“Ah, shame on you, young lady, shame on you! It’s really quite indecent for you to use such words, dear young lady.”

“Get out, bought woman!” screamed Katerina Ivanovna. Every muscle trembled in her completely distorted face.

“Bought, am I? You yourself as a young girl used to go to your gentlemen at dusk to get money, offering your beauty for sale, and I know it.”

Katerina Ivanovna made a cry and was about to leap at her, but Alyosha held her back with all his strength.

“Not a step, not a word! Don’t speak, don’t answer anything—she’ll leave, she’ll leave right now!”

At that moment both of Katerina Ivanovna’s aunts, having heard her cry, ran into the room; the maid ran in, too. They all rushed to her.

“That I will,” said Grushenka, picking up her mantilla from the sofa. “Alyosha, dear, come with me!”

“Go, go quickly,” Alyosha pleaded, clasping his hands before her.

“Alyoshenka, dear, come with me! I have something very, very nice to tell you on the way. I performed this scene for you, Alyoshenka. Come with me, darling, you’ll be glad you did.”

Alyosha turned away, wringing his hands. Grushenka, with a peal of laughter, ran out of the house.

Katerina Ivanovna had a fit. She sobbed, she choked with spasms. Everyone fussed around her.

“I warned you,” the elder of the aunts was saying, “I tried to keep you from taking this step ... You are too passionate ... How could you think of taking such a step! You do not know these creatures, and this one, they say, is worse than all of them ... No, you are too willful!”

“She’s a tiger!” screamed Katerina Ivanovna. “Why did you hold me back, Alexei Fyodorovich! I’d have beaten her, beaten her!”

She could not restrain herself in front of Alyosha, and perhaps did not want to restrain herself. “She should be flogged, on a scaffold, by an executioner, with everyone watching!”

Alyosha backed towards the door.

“But, my God!” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly cried out, clasping her hands. “And he! He could be so dishonest, so inhuman! He told this creature what happened then, on that fatal, eternally accursed, accursed day! ‘You came to sell your beauty, dear young lady!’ She knows! Your brother is a scoundrel, Alexei Fyodorovich!”

Alyosha wanted to say something, but he could not find a single word. His heart ached within him.

“Go away, Alexei Fyodorovich! It’s so shameful, so terrible! Tomorrow ... I beg you on my knees, come tomorrow. Do not condemn me. Forgive me. I don’t know what I’ll still do to myself!”

Alyosha went outside, staggering, as it were. He, too, felt like crying as she had. Suddenly a maid caught up with him.

“The young lady forgot to give you this letter from Madame Khokhlakov. She’s had it since dinnertime.”

Alyosha mechanically took the small pink envelope and almost unconsciously put it in his pocket.

Chapter 11: One More Ruined Reputation

From town to the monastery was not more than half a mile or so. Alyosha hurried along the road, which was deserted at that hour. It was already almost night; it was difficult to make out objects thirty paces ahead. There was a crossroads halfway. At the crossroads, under a solitary willow, a figure came into view. Alyosha had just reached the crossroads when the figure tore itself from its place, leaped out at him, and shouted in a wild voice:

“Your money or your life!”

“Ah, it’s you, Mitya!” Alyosha, though badly startled, said in surprise.

“Ha, ha, ha! You didn’t expect me? I wondered where to wait for you. Near her house? There are three roads from there, and I might have missed you. Finally I decided, I’ll wait here, because he’ll have to pass here, there’s no other way to the monastery. Well, give me the truth, crush me like a cockroach ... Why, what’s the matter?” “Nothing, brother ... Just that you startled me. Oh, Dmitri! Father’s blood today ...” Alyosha began to cry. He had been wanting to cry for a long time, and now it was as if something suddenly snapped in his soul. “You all but killed him ... you cursed him ... and now ... here ... you’re making jokes ... ‘Your money or your life!’”

“Well, what of it? Improper, eh? Doesn’t fit my position?”

“No ... I just. . .”

“Wait. Look at the night: see what a gloomy night it is, what clouds, how the wind is rising! I hid myself here, under the willow, waiting for you, and suddenly thought (as God is my witness): why languish any longer, why wait? Here is the willow, there is a handkerchief, a shirt, I can make a rope right now, plus suspenders, and—no longer burden the earth, or dishonor it with my vile presence! And then I heard you coming—Lord, just as if something suddenly flew down on me: ah, so there is a man that I love, here he is, here is that man, my dear little brother, whom I love more than anyone in the world, and who is the only one I love! And I loved you so, I loved you so at that moment that I thought: I’ll throw myself on his neck! But then a foolish thought came to me: ‘I’ll amuse him, I’ll give him a scare.’ So I yelled: ‘Your money!’ like a fool. Forgive my foolishness—it’s only nonsense, and in my soul ... it’s also fitting ... Well, damn it, tell me what happened! What did she say? Crush me, strike me down, don’t spare me! Was she furious?”

“No,notthat ... It wasn’t like that at all, Mitya. It was ... I found the two of them there together.”

“What two?”

“Grushenka and Katerina Ivanovna.”

Dmitri Fyodorovich was dumbstruck.

“Impossible!” he cried. “You’re raving! Grushenka with her?”

Alyosha told him everything that had happened to him from the very moment he entered Katerina Ivanovna’s house. He spoke for about ten minutes, one would not say fluently or coherently, but he seemed to convey it clearly, grasping the main words, the main gestures, and vividly conveying his own feelings, often with a single stroke. His brother Dmitri listened silently, staring point blank at him with horrible fixity, but it was clear to Alyosha that he already understood everything and comprehended the whole fact. But his face, as the story went on, became not merely grim but menacing, as it were. He glowered, clenched his teeth, his fixed stare seemed to become still more fixed, more intent, more terrible ... Which made it all the more unexpected when, with inconceivable swiftness, his face, until then angry and ferocious, suddenly changed all at once, his compressed lips parted, and Dmitri Fyodorovich suddenly dissolved in the most irrepressible, the most genuine laughter. He literally dissolved in laughter, and for a long time could not even speak for laughing.

“She just didn’t kiss her hand! She just didn’t, she just ran away!” he exclaimed with some sort of morbid delight—one might have called it insolent delight had it not been so artless. “And the other one shouted that she was a tiger! A tiger she is! And that she deserves the scaffold! Yes, yes, so she does, she does, I agree, she deserves it, she has long deserved it! Let’s have that scaffold, brother, but let me recover first. I can see that queen of insolence, the whole of her is there, that hand expresses the whole of her! Infernal woman! She’s the queen of all infernal women the world can imagine! Delightful in a way! So she ran home? Then I ... eh ... will run to her! Alyoshka, don’t blame me, I do agree that throttling’s too good for her ...”

“And Katerina Ivanovna!” Alyosha exclaimed sadly.

“I see her, too, right through her, I see her, I see her better than ever before! It’s quite a discovery—all four cardinal points—all five, I mean.^[106] What a thing to do! It’s the same Katenka, the institute girl, who wasn’t afraid to run to an absurd brute of an officer with the generous idea of saving her father, at the risk of being horribly insulted! But what pride, what recklessness, what defiance of fate, what infinite defiance! You say the aunt tried to stop her? That aunt, you know, is a despot herself, she’s the sister of the Moscow general’s widow, she used to put on even more airs than the other one, but her husband was convicted of embezzlement, lost everything, his estate and everything, and his proud spouse had to pull her head in, and never stuck it out again. So she was holding Katya back, and Katya didn’t listen. ‘I can conquer all, all is in my power; I can bewitch Grushenka, too, if I like’—and she did believe herself, she was showing off to herself, so whose fault is it? Do you think she first kissed Grushenka’s hand with some purpose, out of cunning calculation? No, she really and truly fell in love with Grushenka—that is, not with Grushenka but with her own dream, her own delusion—because it was her dream, her delusion! My dear Alyosha, how did you manage to save yourself from them, from those women? You must have hitched up your cassock and run! Ha, ha, ha!”

“But Mitya, you don’t seem to have noticed how you offended Katerina Ivanovna by telling Grushenka about that day. And she immediately threw it in her face, that she ‘went secretly to her gentlemen to sell her beauty’! Could any offense be greater than that, brother?” Alyosha was most tormented by the thought that his brother seemed pleased at Katerina Ivanovna’s humiliation, though of course it could not be so.

“Bah!” Dmitri Fyodorovich frowned horribly all of a sudden and slapped himself on the forehead. Only now did he notice it, though Alyosha had just told him both about the offense and about Katerina Ivanovna’s cry: “Your brother is a scoundrel!”

“Yes, maybe I really did tell Grushenka about that ‘fatal day,’ as Katya calls it. Yes, I did, I did tell her, I remember! It was that time in Mokroye, I was drunk, the gypsy women were singing ... But I was weeping, I myself was weeping, I was on my knees, praying before Katya’s image, and Grushenka understood. She understood everything then. I remember, she wept herself ... Ah, the devil! But it couldn’t be otherwise! Then she wept, and now ... now ‘a dagger in the heart.’ That’s how it is with women.”

He looked down and thought for a moment.

“Yes, I am a scoundrel! An unquestionable scoundrel!” he said suddenly in a gloomy voice. “No matter whether I wept or not, I’m still a scoundrel! Tell her I accept the title, if it’s any comfort. But enough, farewell, there’s no use talking. It’s not amusing. You take your road and I’ll take mine. And I don’t want to see you any more until some last moment. Farewell, Alexei!” He gripped Alyosha’s hand, and still looking down, without raising his head, as though tearing himself away, he quickly strode off towards town. Alyosha looked after him, not believing that he was quite so suddenly gone.

“Wait, Alexei, one more confession, to you alone!” Dmitri Fyodorovich suddenly turned back. “Look at me, look closely: right here, do you see, right here a horrible dishonor is being prepared.” (As he said “right here,” Dmitri Fyodorovich struck himself on the chest with his fist, and with such a strange look as though the dishonor was lying and being kept precisely there on his chest, in some actual place, maybe in a pocket, or sewn up and hanging around his neck.) “You know me by now: a scoundrel, an avowed scoundrel! But know that whatever I have done before or now or may do later—nothing, nothing can compare in baseness with the dishonor I am carrying, precisely now, precisely at this moment, here on my chest, here, right here, which is being enacted and carried out, and which it is fully in my power to stop, I can stop it or carry it out, make a note of that! And know, then, that I will carry it out and will not stop it. I just told you everything, but this I did not tell you, because even I am not so brazen! I could still stop; if I stopped, tomorrow I could recover fully half of my lost honor; but I will not stop, I will carry out my base design, and in the future you can be my witness that I told you beforehand and with aforethought! Darkness and ruin! There’s nothing to explain, you’ll learn it all in due time. A stinking back lane and an infernal woman! Farewell. Don’t pray for me, I’m not worthy of it, and it’s unnecessary, quite unnecessary ... I don’t need it at all! Away!”

And suddenly he was gone, this time for good. Alyosha walked towards the monastery. “What does he mean? Why will I not see him anymore? What is he talking about?” went wildly through his head. “Tomorrow I must be sure to see him and find him; I’ll make a point of finding him. What is he talking about?”

He skirted the monastery and walked straight to the hermitage through the pine woods. The door was opened for him, though at that hour no one was let in. His heart trembled as he entered the elder’s cell: Why, why had he left? Why had the elder sent him “into the world”? Here was quiet, here was holiness, and there—confusion, and a darkness in which one immediately got lost and went astray . . .

In the cell were the novice Porfiry and the hieromonk Father Paissy, who all through the day, every hour, had come to inquire about the health of Father Zosima. Alyosha was alarmed to learn that he was getting worse and worse. This time even the usual evening talk with the brothers could not take place. Ordinarily, each day after the evening service, before going to bed, the monastery brothers gathered in the elder’s cell, and everyone confessed aloud to him his transgressions of the day, sinful dreams, thoughts, temptations, even quarrels among themselves if there had been any. Some confessed on their knees. The elder absolved, reconciled, admonished, imposed penance, blessed, and dismissed. It was against these brotherly “confessions” that the opponents of the institution of elders protested, saying that this was a profanation of confession as a sacrament, almost a blasphemy, though it was a matter of something quite different. It was even brought up before the diocesan authorities that such confessions not only do not achieve any good purpose, but really and knowingly lead to sin and temptation; that for many of the brothers it was a burden to go to the elder, and that they went against their will, because everyone went, and to avoid being considered proud and rebellious in thought. It was said that some of the brothers agreed among themselves before going to the evening confession: “I’ll say I was angry with you this morning, and you confirm it,” so that they could get off with saying something. Alyosha knew that this sometimes really happened. He also knew that there were some among the brothers who were quite indignant at the custom of having even the letters they received from their relatives brought to the elder first, to be opened, before they were delivered to them. It was assumed, of course, that this all should be done freely and sincerely, without reservation, for the sake of free humility and saving instruction, but in reality, as it turned out, it sometimes was also done quite insincerely and, on the contrary, artificially and falsely. Yet the older and more experienced of the brothers stood their ground, arguing that “for those who have sincerely entered these walls in order to be saved, all these obediences and deeds will no doubt work for salvation and be of great benefit; as for those who, on the contrary, find them burdensome and murmur against them, for them it is the same as if they were not monks, and they have come to the monastery in vain, for their place is in the world. And as one cannot protect oneself from sin either in the world or in the Church, so there is no need for indulging sin.”

“He’s grown weak, overcome by drowsiness,” Father Paissy informed Alyosha in a whisper, having given him a blessing. “It is even difficult to rouse him. But there’s no need to rouse him. He woke up for about five minutes, asked to send the brothers his blessing, and asked the brothers to mention him in their evening prayers. Tomorrow morning he intends to take communion one more time. He mentioned you, Alexei, asked whether you were away, and was told that you were in town. ‘I gave him my blessing for that; his place is there, and not here as yet’—so he spoke of you. He remembered you lovingly, with concern; do you realize what has been granted you? But why did he decide that you should now spend time in the world? It must mean that he foresees something in your destiny! Understand, Alexei, that even if you go back into the world, it will be as though it were an obedience imposed on you by your elder, and not for vain frivolity, not for worldly pleasure...”

Father Paissy went out. That the elder was dying, Alyosha did not doubt, though he might still live for another day or two. Alyosha firmly and ardently resolved that, despite the promises he had given to see his father, the Khokhlakovs, his brother, and Katerina Ivanovna, he would not leave the monastery at all the next day, but would stay by his elder until the very end. His heart began burning with love, and he bitterly reproached himself that he had been able, for a moment, there in town, even to forget the one whom he had left in the monastery on his bed of death, and whom he honored above everyone in the world. He went to the elder’s little bedroom, knelt, and bowed to the ground before the sleeping man. The latter slept quietly, motionlessly; his faint breath came evenly, almost imperceptibly. His face was peaceful.

When he returned to the other room, the same room in which the elder had received his guests that morning, Alyosha, almost without undressing, taking off only his boots, lay down on the hard, narrow leather divan he always slept on, and had for a long time now, every night, bringing only a pillow. As for the mattress his father had shouted about, he had long ceased sleeping on it. He simply took off his cassock and covered himself with it instead of a blanket. But before going to sleep, he threw himself down on his knees and prayed for a long time. In his ardent prayer, he did not ask God to explain his confusion to him, but only thirsted for joyful tenderness, the same tenderness that always visited his soul after praising and glorifying God, of which his prayer before going to sleep usually consisted. This joy that visited him always drew after it a light and peaceful sleep. Praying now, he suddenly happened to feel in his pocket the little pink envelope that Katerina Ivanovna’s maid had given him when she caught up with him in the street. He was troubled, but finished his prayer. Then, after some hesitation, he opened the envelope. It contained a note signed by Lise, the young daughter of Madame Khokhlakov, the one who had laughed at him so much that morning in front of the elder.

“Alexei Fyodorovich,” she wrote, “I am writing to you in secret from everyone, from mama, too, and I know how wrong it is. But I cannot live any longer without telling you what has been born in my heart, and this no one but the two of us should know for the time being. But how shall I tell you that which I want so much to tell you? Paper, they say, does not blush, but I assure you that it is not true, and that it is blushing now just as I am blushing all over. Dear Alyosha, I love you, I have loved you ever since childhood, in Moscow, when you were nothing like you are now, and I shall love you all my life. I have chosen you with my heart, to be united with you, and to end our life together in old age. Of course, on the condition that you leave the monastery. As far as our age is concerned, we will wait as long as the law requires. By that time I shall certainly get well, I shall walk and dance. There is no question of it.

“You see how I have thought of everything. There is only one thing I cannot imagine: what will you think when you read this? I am always laughing and being naughty, just today I made you angry, but I assure you that now, before I took up the pen, I prayed to the icon of the Mother of God, and I am praying now and nearly crying.

“My secret is in your hands; tomorrow when you come, I do not know how I shall look at you. Ah, Alexei Fyodorovich, what if I am again unable to help myself and start laughing like a fool, as I did today, when I see you? You will take me for a naughty teaser and will not believe my letter. And so I beg you, my dear one, if you have any compassion for me, when you come in tomorrow, do not look too directly in my eyes, because if I happen to meet yours, perhaps I shall surely burst out laughing, and besides you will be wearing that long dress ... Even now I feel cold all over when I think of it, and so, when you come in, do not look at me at all for a while, but look at mama, or at the window . . .

“So, I have written you a love letter, oh, my God, what have I done! Alyosha, do not despise me, and if I have done something very bad and upset you, forgive me. Now the secret of my reputation, ruined perhaps forever, is in your hands.

“I shall surely cry today. Till tomorrow, till that terrible morrow. Lise.

“P.S. Only, Alyosha, you must, must, must come! Lise.” Alyosha read the note with surprise, read it a second time, thought a moment, and suddenly laughed softly and sweetly. Then he gave a start; this laughter seemed sinful to him. But a moment later he laughed again just as softly and happily. He slowly put the note into the little envelope, crossed himself, and lay down. The confusion in his soul suddenly passed. “Lord have mercy on them all today, unhappy and stormy as they are, preserve and guide them. All ways are yours: save them according to your ways. You are love, you will send joy to all!” Alyosha murmured, crossing himself and falling into a serene sleep.