Summarise the following in one paragraph: The Brothers Karamazov

Translated from the Russian of

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

by Constance Garnett

The Lowell Press

New York


Contents

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

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

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

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

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

 Footnotes




PART I




Book I. The History Of A Family




Chapter I.
Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov


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

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

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

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




Chapter II.
He Gets Rid Of His Eldest Son


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

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

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

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




Chapter III.
The Second Marriage And The Second Family


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Chapter IV.
The Third Son, Alyosha


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Chapter V.
Elders


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Book II. An Unfortunate Gathering




Chapter I.
They Arrive At The Monastery


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who is a _chevalier_?” asked Miüsov.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Chapter II.
The Old Buffoon


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Father Zossima scrutinized them both in silence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You mean about Diderot?”

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

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

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

“No, it is untrue,” said the elder.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Chapter III.
Peasant Women Who Have Faith


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What are you weeping for?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Alexey, Father.”

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

“Yes, Father.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What is it, my child?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Three years ago?” asked the elder.

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

“Have you come from far?”

“Over three hundred miles away.”

“Have you told it in confession?”

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

“Have you been admitted to Communion?”

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

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

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

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

“From Vyshegorye, dear Father.”

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

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

“I thank you for all, daughter.”

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

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

“My little girl, Father, Lizaveta.”

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

He blessed them all and bowed low to them.




Chapter IV.
A Lady Of Little Faith


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“From what specially?”

“I suffer ... from lack of faith.”

“Lack of faith in God?”

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

She clasped her hands.

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

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

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

“How?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The lady was weeping.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Chapter V.
So Be It! So Be It!


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Chapter VI.
Why Is Such A Man Alive?


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Quite so,” said Father Païssy.

“I’ll remember it.”

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

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

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

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

“Why unhappy?” Ivan asked smiling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was breathless.

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

“Shameless hypocrite!” exclaimed Dmitri furiously.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Shameful!” broke from Father Iosif.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why not? I was especially invited yesterday.”

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

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

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

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

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




Chapter VII.
A Young Man Bent On A Career


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

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

“Let me stay here,” Alyosha entreated.

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

Alyosha started.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What vision?”

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

“You speak of Father Zossima?”

“Yes, of Father Zossima.”

“Tapped the ground?”

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

“I don’t know what it means, Misha.”

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

“What crime?”

Rakitin evidently had something he was eager to speak of.

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

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

Alyosha stopped dead. Rakitin stopped, too.

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

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

“What? Have you really?” he cried.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I understand that,” Alyosha jerked out suddenly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rakitin was intensely irritated.

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

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

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




Chapter VIII.
The Scandalous Scene


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How disgraceful!” cried Pyotr Alexandrovitch.

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

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

“This is too disgraceful!” said Father Iosif.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fyodor Pavlovitch was silent again for two minutes.

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

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

Ivan was still silent.

Fyodor Pavlovitch waited another two minutes.

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

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




Book III. The Sensualists




Chapter I.
In The Servants’ Quarters


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A dragon? What dragon?”

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

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

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




Chapter II.
Lizaveta


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

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

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

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

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

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




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


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

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

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

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