VIII. The Evidence Of The Witnesses. The Babe…

VIII. The Evidence Of The Witnesses. The Babe

The examination of the witnesses began. But we will not continue our story in such detail as before. And so we will not dwell on how Nikolay Parfenovitch impressed on every witness called that he must give his evidence in accordance with truth and conscience, and that he would afterwards have to repeat his evidence on oath, how every witness was called upon to sign the protocol of his evidence, and so on. We will only note that the point principally insisted upon in the examination was the question of the three thousand roubles, that is, was the sum spent here, at Mokroe, by Mitya on the first occasion, a month before, three thousand or fifteen hundred? And again had he spent three thousand or fifteen hundred yesterday? Alas, all the evidence given by every one turned out to be against Mitya. There was not one in his favor, and some witnesses introduced new, almost crushing facts, in contradiction of his, Mitya’s, story.

The first witness examined was Trifon Borissovitch. He was not in the least abashed as he stood before the lawyers. He had, on the contrary, an air of stern and severe indignation with the accused, which gave him an appearance of truthfulness and personal dignity. He spoke little, and with reserve, waited to be questioned, answered precisely and deliberately. Firmly and unhesitatingly he bore witness that the sum spent a month before could not have been less than three thousand, that all the peasants about here would testify that they had heard the sum of three thousand mentioned by Dmitri Fyodorovitch himself. “What a lot of money he flung away on the gypsy girls alone! He wasted a thousand, I daresay, on them alone.”

“I don’t believe I gave them five hundred,” was Mitya’s gloomy comment on this. “It’s a pity I didn’t count the money at the time, but I was drunk....”

Mitya was sitting sideways with his back to the curtains. He listened gloomily, with a melancholy and exhausted air, as though he would say:

“Oh, say what you like. It makes no difference now.”

“More than a thousand went on them, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” retorted Trifon Borissovitch firmly. “You flung it about at random and they picked it up. They were a rascally, thievish lot, horse-stealers, they’ve been driven away from here, or maybe they’d bear witness themselves how much they got from you. I saw the sum in your hands, myself—count it I didn’t, you didn’t let me, that’s true enough—but by the look of it I should say it was far more than fifteen hundred ... fifteen hundred, indeed! We’ve seen money too. We can judge of amounts....”

As for the sum spent yesterday he asserted that Dmitri Fyodorovitch had told him, as soon as he arrived, that he had brought three thousand with him.

“Come now, is that so, Trifon Borissovitch?” replied Mitya. “Surely I didn’t declare so positively that I’d brought three thousand?”

“You did say so, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. You said it before Andrey. Andrey himself is still here. Send for him. And in the hall, when you were treating the chorus, you shouted straight out that you would leave your sixth thousand here—that is with what you spent before, we must understand. Stepan and Semyon heard it, and Pyotr Fomitch Kalganov, too, was standing beside you at the time. Maybe he’d remember it....”

The evidence as to the “sixth” thousand made an extraordinary impression on the two lawyers. They were delighted with this new mode of reckoning; three and three made six, three thousand then and three now made six, that was clear.

They questioned all the peasants suggested by Trifon Borissovitch, Stepan and Semyon, the driver Andrey, and Kalganov. The peasants and the driver unhesitatingly confirmed Trifon Borissovitch’s evidence. They noted down, with particular care, Andrey’s account of the conversation he had had with Mitya on the road: “‘Where,’ says he, ‘am I, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, going, to heaven or to hell, and shall I be forgiven in the next world or not?’”

The psychological Ippolit Kirillovitch heard this with a subtle smile, and ended by recommending that these remarks as to where Dmitri Fyodorovitch would go should be “included in the case.”

Kalganov, when called, came in reluctantly, frowning and ill-humored, and he spoke to the lawyers as though he had never met them before in his life, though they were acquaintances whom he had been meeting every day for a long time past. He began by saying that “he knew nothing about it and didn’t want to.” But it appeared that he had heard of the “sixth” thousand, and he admitted that he had been standing close by at the moment. As far as he could see he “didn’t know” how much money Mitya had in his hands. He affirmed that the Poles had cheated at cards. In reply to reiterated questions he stated that, after the Poles had been turned out, Mitya’s position with Agrafena Alexandrovna had certainly improved, and that she had said that she loved him. He spoke of Agrafena Alexandrovna with reserve and respect, as though she had been a lady of the best society, and did not once allow himself to call her Grushenka. In spite of the young man’s obvious repugnance at giving evidence, Ippolit Kirillovitch examined him at great length, and only from him learnt all the details of what made up Mitya’s “romance,” so to say, on that night. Mitya did not once pull Kalganov up. At last they let the young man go, and he left the room with unconcealed indignation.

The Poles, too, were examined. Though they had gone to bed in their room, they had not slept all night, and on the arrival of the police officers they hastily dressed and got ready, realizing that they would certainly be sent for. They gave their evidence with dignity, though not without some uneasiness. The little Pole turned out to be a retired official of the twelfth class, who had served in Siberia as a veterinary surgeon. His name was Mussyalovitch. Pan Vrublevsky turned out to be an uncertificated dentist. Although Nikolay Parfenovitch asked them questions on entering the room they both addressed their answers to Mihail Makarovitch, who was standing on one side, taking him in their ignorance for the most important person and in command, and addressed him at every word as “Pan Colonel.” Only after several reproofs from Mihail Makarovitch himself, they grasped that they had to address their answers to Nikolay Parfenovitch only. It turned out that they could speak Russian quite correctly except for their accent in some words. Of his relations with Grushenka, past and present, Pan Mussyalovitch spoke proudly and warmly, so that Mitya was roused at once and declared that he would not allow the “scoundrel” to speak like that in his presence! Pan Mussyalovitch at once called attention to the word “scoundrel” and begged that it should be put down in the protocol. Mitya fumed with rage.

“He’s a scoundrel! A scoundrel! You can put that down. And put down, too, that, in spite of the protocol I still declare that he’s a scoundrel!” he cried.

Though Nikolay Parfenovitch did insert this in the protocol, he showed the most praiseworthy tact and management. After sternly reprimanding Mitya, he cut short all further inquiry into the romantic aspect of the case, and hastened to pass to what was essential. One piece of evidence given by the Poles roused special interest in the lawyers: that was how, in that very room, Mitya had tried to buy off Pan Mussyalovitch, and had offered him three thousand roubles to resign his claims, seven hundred roubles down, and the remaining two thousand three hundred “to be paid next day in the town.” He had sworn at the time that he had not the whole sum with him at Mokroe, but that his money was in the town. Mitya observed hotly that he had not said that he would be sure to pay him the remainder next day in the town. But Pan Vrublevsky confirmed the statement, and Mitya, after thinking for a moment admitted, frowning, that it must have been as the Poles stated, that he had been excited at the time, and might indeed have said so.

The prosecutor positively pounced on this piece of evidence. It seemed to establish for the prosecution (and they did, in fact, base this deduction on it) that half, or a part of, the three thousand that had come into Mitya’s hands might really have been left somewhere hidden in the town, or even, perhaps, somewhere here, in Mokroe. This would explain the circumstance, so baffling for the prosecution, that only eight hundred roubles were to be found in Mitya’s hands. This circumstance had been the one piece of evidence which, insignificant as it was, had hitherto told, to some extent, in Mitya’s favor. Now this one piece of evidence in his favor had broken down. In answer to the prosecutor’s inquiry, where he would have got the remaining two thousand three hundred roubles, since he himself had denied having more than fifteen hundred, Mitya confidently replied that he had meant to offer the “little chap,” not money, but a formal deed of conveyance of his rights to the village of Tchermashnya, those rights which he had already offered to Samsonov and Madame Hohlakov. The prosecutor positively smiled at the “innocence of this subterfuge.”

“And you imagine he would have accepted such a deed as a substitute for two thousand three hundred roubles in cash?”

“He certainly would have accepted it,” Mitya declared warmly. “Why, look here, he might have grabbed not two thousand, but four or six, for it. He would have put his lawyers, Poles and Jews, on to the job, and might have got, not three thousand, but the whole property out of the old man.”

The evidence of Pan Mussyalovitch was, of course, entered in the protocol in the fullest detail. Then they let the Poles go. The incident of the cheating at cards was hardly touched upon. Nikolay Parfenovitch was too well pleased with them, as it was, and did not want to worry them with trifles, moreover, it was nothing but a foolish, drunken quarrel over cards. There had been drinking and disorder enough, that night.... So the two hundred roubles remained in the pockets of the Poles.

Then old Maximov was summoned. He came in timidly, approached with little steps, looking very disheveled and depressed. He had, all this time, taken refuge below with Grushenka, sitting dumbly beside her, and “now and then he’d begin blubbering over her and wiping his eyes with a blue check handkerchief,” as Mihail Makarovitch described afterwards. So that she herself began trying to pacify and comfort him. The old man at once confessed that he had done wrong, that he had borrowed “ten roubles in my poverty,” from Dmitri Fyodorovitch, and that he was ready to pay it back. To Nikolay Parfenovitch’s direct question, had he noticed how much money Dmitri Fyodorovitch held in his hand, as he must have been able to see the sum better than any one when he took the note from him, Maximov, in the most positive manner, declared that there was twenty thousand.

“Have you ever seen so much as twenty thousand before, then?” inquired Nikolay Parfenovitch, with a smile.

“To be sure I have, not twenty, but seven, when my wife mortgaged my little property. She’d only let me look at it from a distance, boasting of it to me. It was a very thick bundle, all rainbow-colored notes. And Dmitri Fyodorovitch’s were all rainbow-colored....”

He was not kept long. At last it was Grushenka’s turn. Nikolay Parfenovitch was obviously apprehensive of the effect her appearance might have on Mitya, and he muttered a few words of admonition to him, but Mitya bowed his head in silence, giving him to understand “that he would not make a scene.” Mihail Makarovitch himself led Grushenka in. She entered with a stern and gloomy face, that looked almost composed and sat down quietly on the chair offered her by Nikolay Parfenovitch. She was very pale, she seemed to be cold, and wrapped herself closely in her magnificent black shawl. She was suffering from a slight feverish chill—the first symptom of the long illness which followed that night. Her grave air, her direct earnest look and quiet manner made a very favorable impression on every one. Nikolay Parfenovitch was even a little bit “fascinated.” He admitted himself, when talking about it afterwards, that only then had he seen “how handsome the woman was,” for, though he had seen her several times before, he had always looked upon her as something of a “provincial hetaira.” “She has the manners of the best society,” he said enthusiastically, gossiping about her in a circle of ladies. But this was received with positive indignation by the ladies, who immediately called him a “naughty man,” to his great satisfaction.

As she entered the room, Grushenka only glanced for an instant at Mitya, who looked at her uneasily. But her face reassured him at once. After the first inevitable inquiries and warnings, Nikolay Parfenovitch asked her, hesitating a little, but preserving the most courteous manner, on what terms she was with the retired lieutenant, Dmitri Fyodorovitch Karamazov. To this Grushenka firmly and quietly replied:

“He was an acquaintance. He came to see me as an acquaintance during the last month.” To further inquisitive questions she answered plainly and with complete frankness, that, though “at times” she had thought him attractive, she had not loved him, but had won his heart as well as his old father’s “in my nasty spite,” that she had seen that Mitya was very jealous of Fyodor Pavlovitch and every one else; but that had only amused her. She had never meant to go to Fyodor Pavlovitch, she had simply been laughing at him. “I had no thoughts for either of them all this last month. I was expecting another man who had wronged me. But I think,” she said in conclusion, “that there’s no need for you to inquire about that, nor for me to answer you, for that’s my own affair.”

Nikolay Parfenovitch immediately acted upon this hint. He again dismissed the “romantic” aspect of the case and passed to the serious one, that is, to the question of most importance, concerning the three thousand roubles. Grushenka confirmed the statement that three thousand roubles had certainly been spent on the first carousal at Mokroe, and, though she had not counted the money herself, she had heard that it was three thousand from Dmitri Fyodorovitch’s own lips.

“Did he tell you that alone, or before some one else, or did you only hear him speak of it to others in your presence?” the prosecutor inquired immediately.

To which Grushenka replied that she had heard him say so before other people, and had heard him say so when they were alone.

“Did he say it to you alone once, or several times?” inquired the prosecutor, and learned that he had told Grushenka so several times.

Ippolit Kirillovitch was very well satisfied with this piece of evidence. Further examination elicited that Grushenka knew, too, where that money had come from, and that Dmitri Fyodorovitch had got it from Katerina Ivanovna.

“And did you never, once, hear that the money spent a month ago was not three thousand, but less, and that Dmitri Fyodorovitch had saved half that sum for his own use?”

“No, I never heard that,” answered Grushenka.

It was explained further that Mitya had, on the contrary, often told her that he hadn’t a farthing.

“He was always expecting to get some from his father,” said Grushenka in conclusion.

“Did he never say before you ... casually, or in a moment of irritation,” Nikolay Parfenovitch put in suddenly, “that he intended to make an attempt on his father’s life?”

“Ach, he did say so,” sighed Grushenka.

“Once or several times?”

“He mentioned it several times, always in anger.”

“And did you believe he would do it?”

“No, I never believed it,” she answered firmly. “I had faith in his noble heart.”

“Gentlemen, allow me,” cried Mitya suddenly, “allow me to say one word to Agrafena Alexandrovna, in your presence.”

“You can speak,” Nikolay Parfenovitch assented.

“Agrafena Alexandrovna!” Mitya got up from his chair, “have faith in God and in me. I am not guilty of my father’s murder!”

Having uttered these words Mitya sat down again on his chair. Grushenka stood up and crossed herself devoutly before the ikon. “Thanks be to Thee, O Lord,” she said, in a voice thrilled with emotion, and still standing, she turned to Nikolay Parfenovitch and added:

“As he has spoken now, believe it! I know him. He’ll say anything as a joke or from obstinacy, but he’ll never deceive you against his conscience. He’s telling the whole truth, you may believe it.”

“Thanks, Agrafena Alexandrovna, you’ve given me fresh courage,” Mitya responded in a quivering voice.

As to the money spent the previous day, she declared that she did not know what sum it was, but had heard him tell several people that he had three thousand with him. And to the question where he got the money, she said that he had told her that he had “stolen” it from Katerina Ivanovna, and that she had replied to that that he hadn’t stolen it, and that he must pay the money back next day. On the prosecutor’s asking her emphatically whether the money he said he had stolen from Katerina Ivanovna was what he had spent yesterday, or what he had squandered here a month ago, she declared that he meant the money spent a month ago, and that that was how she understood him.

Grushenka was at last released, and Nikolay Parfenovitch informed her impulsively that she might at once return to the town and that if he could be of any assistance to her, with horses for example, or if she would care for an escort, he ... would be—

“I thank you sincerely,” said Grushenka, bowing to him, “I’m going with this old gentleman, I am driving him back to town with me, and meanwhile, if you’ll allow me, I’ll wait below to hear what you decide about Dmitri Fyodorovitch.”

She went out. Mitya was calm, and even looked more cheerful, but only for a moment. He felt more and more oppressed by a strange physical weakness. His eyes were closing with fatigue. The examination of the witnesses was, at last, over. They proceeded to a final revision of the protocol. Mitya got up, moved from his chair to the corner by the curtain, lay down on a large chest covered with a rug, and instantly fell asleep.

He had a strange dream, utterly out of keeping with the place and the time.

He was driving somewhere in the steppes, where he had been stationed long ago, and a peasant was driving him in a cart with a pair of horses, through snow and sleet. He was cold, it was early in November, and the snow was falling in big wet flakes, melting as soon as it touched the earth. And the peasant drove him smartly, he had a fair, long beard. He was not an old man, somewhere about fifty, and he had on a gray peasant’s smock. Not far off was a village, he could see the black huts, and half the huts were burnt down, there were only the charred beams sticking up. And as they drove in, there were peasant women drawn up along the road, a lot of women, a whole row, all thin and wan, with their faces a sort of brownish color, especially one at the edge, a tall, bony woman, who looked forty, but might have been only twenty, with a long thin face. And in her arms was a little baby crying. And her breasts seemed so dried up that there was not a drop of milk in them. And the child cried and cried, and held out its little bare arms, with its little fists blue from cold.

“Why are they crying? Why are they crying?” Mitya asked, as they dashed gayly by.

“It’s the babe,” answered the driver, “the babe weeping.”

And Mitya was struck by his saying, in his peasant way, “the babe,” and he liked the peasant’s calling it a “babe.” There seemed more pity in it.

“But why is it weeping?” Mitya persisted stupidly, “why are its little arms bare? Why don’t they wrap it up?”

“The babe’s cold, its little clothes are frozen and don’t warm it.”

“But why is it? Why?” foolish Mitya still persisted.

“Why, they’re poor people, burnt out. They’ve no bread. They’re begging because they’ve been burnt out.”

“No, no,” Mitya, as it were, still did not understand. “Tell me why it is those poor mothers stand there? Why are people poor? Why is the babe poor? Why is the steppe barren? Why don’t they hug each other and kiss? Why don’t they sing songs of joy? Why are they so dark from black misery? Why don’t they feed the babe?”

And he felt that, though his questions were unreasonable and senseless, yet he wanted to ask just that, and he had to ask it just in that way. And he felt that a passion of pity, such as he had never known before, was rising in his heart, that he wanted to cry, that he wanted to do something for them all, so that the babe should weep no more, so that the dark-faced, dried-up mother should not weep, that no one should shed tears again from that moment, and he wanted to do it at once, at once, regardless of all obstacles, with all the recklessness of the Karamazovs.

“And I’m coming with you. I won’t leave you now for the rest of my life, I’m coming with you,” he heard close beside him Grushenka’s tender voice, thrilling with emotion. And his heart glowed, and he struggled forward towards the light, and he longed to live, to live, to go on and on, towards the new, beckoning light, and to hasten, hasten, now, at once!

“What! Where?” he exclaimed opening his eyes, and sitting up on the chest, as though he had revived from a swoon, smiling brightly. Nikolay Parfenovitch was standing over him, suggesting that he should hear the protocol read aloud and sign it. Mitya guessed that he had been asleep an hour or more, but he did not hear Nikolay Parfenovitch. He was suddenly struck by the fact that there was a pillow under his head, which hadn’t been there when he had leant back, exhausted, on the chest.

“Who put that pillow under my head? Who was so kind?” he cried, with a sort of ecstatic gratitude, and tears in his voice, as though some great kindness had been shown him.

He never found out who this kind man was; perhaps one of the peasant witnesses, or Nikolay Parfenovitch’s little secretary, had compassionately thought to put a pillow under his head; but his whole soul was quivering with tears. He went to the table and said that he would sign whatever they liked.

“I’ve had a good dream, gentlemen,” he said in a strange voice, with a new light, as of joy, in his face.

IX. They Carry Mitya Away

When the protocol had been signed, Nikolay Parfenovitch turned solemnly to the prisoner and read him the “Committal,” setting forth, that in such a year, on such a day, in such a place, the investigating lawyer of such-and-such a district court, having examined so-and-so (to wit, Mitya) accused of this and of that (all the charges were carefully written out) and having considered that the accused, not pleading guilty to the charges made against him, had brought forward nothing in his defense, while the witnesses, so-and-so, and so-and-so, and the circumstances such-and-such testify against him, acting in accordance with such-and-such articles of the Statute Book, and so on, has ruled, that, in order to preclude so-and-so (Mitya) from all means of evading pursuit and judgment he be detained in such-and-such a prison, which he hereby notifies to the accused and communicates a copy of this same “Committal” to the deputy prosecutor, and so on, and so on.

In brief, Mitya was informed that he was, from that moment, a prisoner, and that he would be driven at once to the town, and there shut up in a very unpleasant place. Mitya listened attentively, and only shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, gentlemen, I don’t blame you. I’m ready.... I understand that there’s nothing else for you to do.”

Nikolay Parfenovitch informed him gently that he would be escorted at once by the rural police officer, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, who happened to be on the spot....

“Stay,” Mitya interrupted, suddenly, and impelled by uncontrollable feeling he pronounced, addressing all in the room:

“Gentlemen, we’re all cruel, we’re all monsters, we all make men weep, and mothers, and babes at the breast, but of all, let it be settled here, now, of all I am the lowest reptile! I’ve sworn to amend, and every day I’ve done the same filthy things. I understand now that such men as I need a blow, a blow of destiny to catch them as with a noose, and bind them by a force from without. Never, never should I have risen of myself! But the thunderbolt has fallen. I accept the torture of accusation, and my public shame, I want to suffer and by suffering I shall be purified. Perhaps I shall be purified, gentlemen? But listen, for the last time, I am not guilty of my father’s blood. I accept my punishment, not because I killed him, but because I meant to kill him, and perhaps I really might have killed him. Still I mean to fight it out with you. I warn you of that. I’ll fight it out with you to the end, and then God will decide. Good-by, gentlemen, don’t be vexed with me for having shouted at you during the examination. Oh, I was still such a fool then.... In another minute I shall be a prisoner, but now, for the last time, as a free man, Dmitri Karamazov offers you his hand. Saying good-by to you, I say it to all men.”

His voice quivered and he stretched out his hand, but Nikolay Parfenovitch, who happened to stand nearest to him, with a sudden, almost nervous movement, hid his hands behind his back. Mitya instantly noticed this, and started. He let his outstretched hand fall at once.

“The preliminary inquiry is not yet over,” Nikolay Parfenovitch faltered, somewhat embarrassed. “We will continue it in the town, and I, for my part, of course, am ready to wish you all success ... in your defense.... As a matter of fact, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, I’ve always been disposed to regard you as, so to speak, more unfortunate than guilty. All of us here, if I may make bold to speak for all, we are all ready to recognize that you are, at bottom, a young man of honor, but, alas, one who has been carried away by certain passions to a somewhat excessive degree....”

Nikolay Parfenovitch’s little figure was positively majestic by the time he had finished speaking. It struck Mitya that in another minute this “boy” would take his arm, lead him to another corner, and renew their conversation about “girls.” But many quite irrelevant and inappropriate thoughts sometimes occur even to a prisoner when he is being led out to execution.

“Gentlemen, you are good, you are humane, may I see her to say ‘good-by’ for the last time?” asked Mitya.

“Certainly, but considering ... in fact, now it’s impossible except in the presence of—”

“Oh, well, if it must be so, it must!”

Grushenka was brought in, but the farewell was brief, and of few words, and did not at all satisfy Nikolay Parfenovitch. Grushenka made a deep bow to Mitya.

“I have told you I am yours, and I will be yours. I will follow you for ever, wherever they may send you. Farewell; you are guiltless, though you’ve been your own undoing.”

Her lips quivered, tears flowed from her eyes.

“Forgive me, Grusha, for my love, for ruining you, too, with my love.”

Mitya would have said something more, but he broke off and went out. He was at once surrounded by men who kept a constant watch on him. At the bottom of the steps to which he had driven up with such a dash the day before with Andrey’s three horses, two carts stood in readiness. Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, a sturdy, thick-set man with a wrinkled face, was annoyed about something, some sudden irregularity. He was shouting angrily. He asked Mitya to get into the cart with somewhat excessive surliness.

“When I stood him drinks in the tavern, the man had quite a different face,” thought Mitya, as he got in. At the gates there was a crowd of people, peasants, women and drivers. Trifon Borissovitch came down the steps too. All stared at Mitya.

“Forgive me at parting, good people!” Mitya shouted suddenly from the cart.

“Forgive us too!” he heard two or three voices.

“Good-by to you, too, Trifon Borissovitch!”

But Trifon Borissovitch did not even turn round. He was, perhaps, too busy. He, too, was shouting and fussing about something. It appeared that everything was not yet ready in the second cart, in which two constables were to accompany Mavriky Mavrikyevitch. The peasant who had been ordered to drive the second cart was pulling on his smock, stoutly maintaining that it was not his turn to go, but Akim’s. But Akim was not to be seen. They ran to look for him. The peasant persisted and besought them to wait.

“You see what our peasants are, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch. They’ve no shame!” exclaimed Trifon Borissovitch. “Akim gave you twenty-five copecks the day before yesterday. You’ve drunk it all and now you cry out. I’m simply surprised at your good-nature, with our low peasants, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, that’s all I can say.”

“But what do we want a second cart for?” Mitya put in. “Let’s start with the one, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch. I won’t be unruly, I won’t run away from you, old fellow. What do we want an escort for?”

“I’ll trouble you, sir, to learn how to speak to me if you’ve never been taught. I’m not ‘old fellow’ to you, and you can keep your advice for another time!” Mavriky Mavrikyevitch snapped out savagely, as though glad to vent his wrath.

Mitya was reduced to silence. He flushed all over. A moment later he felt suddenly very cold. The rain had ceased, but the dull sky was still overcast with clouds, and a keen wind was blowing straight in his face.

“I’ve taken a chill,” thought Mitya, twitching his shoulders.

At last Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, too, got into the cart, sat down heavily, and, as though without noticing it, squeezed Mitya into the corner. It is true that he was out of humor and greatly disliked the task that had been laid upon him.

“Good-by, Trifon Borissovitch!” Mitya shouted again, and felt himself, that he had not called out this time from good-nature, but involuntarily, from resentment.

But Trifon Borissovitch stood proudly, with both hands behind his back, and staring straight at Mitya with a stern and angry face, he made no reply.

“Good-by, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, good-by!” he heard all at once the voice of Kalganov, who had suddenly darted out. Running up to the cart he held out his hand to Mitya. He had no cap on.

Mitya had time to seize and press his hand.

“Good-by, dear fellow! I shan’t forget your generosity,” he cried warmly.

But the cart moved and their hands parted. The bell began ringing and Mitya was driven off.

Kalganov ran back, sat down in a corner, bent his head, hid his face in his hands, and burst out crying. For a long while he sat like that, crying as though he were a little boy instead of a young man of twenty. Oh, he believed almost without doubt in Mitya’s guilt.

“What are these people? What can men be after this?” he exclaimed incoherently, in bitter despondency, almost despair. At that moment he had no desire to live.

“Is it worth it? Is it worth it?” exclaimed the boy in his grief.

I. Kolya Krassotkin

It was the beginning of November. There had been a hard frost, eleven degrees Réaumur, without snow, but a little dry snow had fallen on the frozen ground during the night, and a keen dry wind was lifting and blowing it along the dreary streets of our town, especially about the market-place. It was a dull morning, but the snow had ceased.

Not far from the market-place, close to Plotnikov’s shop, there stood a small house, very clean both without and within. It belonged to Madame Krassotkin, the widow of a former provincial secretary, who had been dead for fourteen years. His widow, still a nice-looking woman of thirty-two, was living in her neat little house on her private means. She lived in respectable seclusion; she was of a soft but fairly cheerful disposition. She was about eighteen at the time of her husband’s death; she had been married only a year and had just borne him a son. From the day of his death she had devoted herself heart and soul to the bringing up of her precious treasure, her boy Kolya. Though she had loved him passionately those fourteen years, he had caused her far more suffering than happiness. She had been trembling and fainting with terror almost every day, afraid he would fall ill, would catch cold, do something naughty, climb on a chair and fall off it, and so on and so on. When Kolya began going to school, the mother devoted herself to studying all the sciences with him so as to help him, and go through his lessons with him. She hastened to make the acquaintance of the teachers and their wives, even made up to Kolya’s schoolfellows, and fawned upon them in the hope of thus saving Kolya from being teased, laughed at, or beaten by them. She went so far that the boys actually began to mock at him on her account and taunt him with being a “mother’s darling.”

But the boy could take his own part. He was a resolute boy, “tremendously strong,” as was rumored in his class, and soon proved to be the fact; he was agile, strong-willed, and of an audacious and enterprising temper. He was good at lessons, and there was a rumor in the school that he could beat the teacher, Dardanelov, at arithmetic and universal history. Though he looked down upon every one, he was a good comrade and not supercilious. He accepted his schoolfellows’ respect as his due, but was friendly with them. Above all, he knew where to draw the line. He could restrain himself on occasion, and in his relations with the teachers he never overstepped that last mystic limit beyond which a prank becomes an unpardonable breach of discipline. But he was as fond of mischief on every possible occasion as the smallest boy in the school, and not so much for the sake of mischief as for creating a sensation, inventing something, something effective and conspicuous. He was extremely vain. He knew how to make even his mother give way to him; he was almost despotic in his control of her. She gave way to him, oh, she had given way to him for years. The one thought unendurable to her was that her boy had no great love for her. She was always fancying that Kolya was “unfeeling” to her, and at times, dissolving into hysterical tears, she used to reproach him with his coldness. The boy disliked this, and the more demonstrations of feeling were demanded of him the more he seemed intentionally to avoid them. Yet it was not intentional on his part but instinctive—it was his character. His mother was mistaken; he was very fond of her. He only disliked “sheepish sentimentality,” as he expressed it in his schoolboy language.

There was a bookcase in the house containing a few books that had been his father’s. Kolya was fond of reading, and had read several of them by himself. His mother did not mind that and only wondered sometimes at seeing the boy stand for hours by the bookcase poring over a book instead of going to play. And in that way Kolya read some things unsuitable for his age.

Though the boy, as a rule, knew where to draw the line in his mischief, he had of late begun to play pranks that caused his mother serious alarm. It is true there was nothing vicious in what he did, but a wild mad recklessness.

It happened that July, during the summer holidays, that the mother and son went to another district, forty-five miles away, to spend a week with a distant relation, whose husband was an official at the railway station (the very station, the nearest one to our town, from which a month later Ivan Fyodorovitch Karamazov set off for Moscow). There Kolya began by carefully investigating every detail connected with the railways, knowing that he could impress his schoolfellows when he got home with his newly acquired knowledge. But there happened to be some other boys in the place with whom he soon made friends. Some of them were living at the station, others in the neighborhood; there were six or seven of them, all between twelve and fifteen, and two of them came from our town. The boys played together, and on the fourth or fifth day of Kolya’s stay at the station, a mad bet was made by the foolish boys. Kolya, who was almost the youngest of the party and rather looked down upon by the others in consequence, was moved by vanity or by reckless bravado to bet them two roubles that he would lie down between the rails at night when the eleven o’clock train was due, and would lie there without moving while the train rolled over him at full speed. It is true they made a preliminary investigation, from which it appeared that it was possible to lie so flat between the rails that the train could pass over without touching, but to lie there was no joke! Kolya maintained stoutly that he would. At first they laughed at him, called him a little liar, a braggart, but that only egged him on. What piqued him most was that these boys of fifteen turned up their noses at him too superciliously, and were at first disposed to treat him as “a small boy,” not fit to associate with them, and that was an unendurable insult.

And so it was resolved to go in the evening, half a mile from the station, so that the train might have time to get up full speed after leaving the station. The boys assembled. It was a pitch-dark night without a moon. At the time fixed, Kolya lay down between the rails. The five others who had taken the bet waited among the bushes below the embankment, their hearts beating with suspense, which was followed by alarm and remorse. At last they heard in the distance the rumble of the train leaving the station. Two red lights gleamed out of the darkness; the monster roared as it approached.

“Run, run away from the rails,” the boys cried to Kolya from the bushes, breathless with terror. But it was too late: the train darted up and flew past. The boys rushed to Kolya. He lay without moving. They began pulling at him, lifting him up. He suddenly got up and walked away without a word. Then he explained that he had lain there as though he were insensible to frighten them, but the fact was that he really had lost consciousness, as he confessed long after to his mother. In this way his reputation as “a desperate character,” was established for ever. He returned home to the station as white as a sheet. Next day he had a slight attack of nervous fever, but he was in high spirits and well pleased with himself. The incident did not become known at once, but when they came back to the town it penetrated to the school and even reached the ears of the masters. But then Kolya’s mother hastened to entreat the masters on her boy’s behalf, and in the end Dardanelov, a respected and influential teacher, exerted himself in his favor, and the affair was ignored.

Dardanelov was a middle-aged bachelor, who had been passionately in love with Madame Krassotkin for many years past, and had once already, about a year previously, ventured, trembling with fear and the delicacy of his sentiments, to offer her most respectfully his hand in marriage. But she refused him resolutely, feeling that to accept him would be an act of treachery to her son, though Dardanelov had, to judge from certain mysterious symptoms, reason for believing that he was not an object of aversion to the charming but too chaste and tender-hearted widow. Kolya’s mad prank seemed to have broken the ice, and Dardanelov was rewarded for his intercession by a suggestion of hope. The suggestion, it is true, was a faint one, but then Dardanelov was such a paragon of purity and delicacy that it was enough for the time being to make him perfectly happy. He was fond of the boy, though he would have felt it beneath him to try and win him over, and was severe and strict with him in class. Kolya, too, kept him at a respectful distance. He learned his lessons perfectly; he was second in his class, was reserved with Dardanelov, and the whole class firmly believed that Kolya was so good at universal history that he could “beat” even Dardanelov. Kolya did indeed ask him the question, “Who founded Troy?” to which Dardanelov had made a very vague reply, referring to the movements and migrations of races, to the remoteness of the period, to the mythical legends. But the question, “Who had founded Troy?” that is, what individuals, he could not answer, and even for some reason regarded the question as idle and frivolous. But the boys remained convinced that Dardanelov did not know who founded Troy. Kolya had read of the founders of Troy in Smaragdov, whose history was among the books in his father’s bookcase. In the end all the boys became interested in the question, who it was that had founded Troy, but Krassotkin would not tell his secret, and his reputation for knowledge remained unshaken.

After the incident on the railway a certain change came over Kolya’s attitude to his mother. When Anna Fyodorovna (Madame Krassotkin) heard of her son’s exploit, she almost went out of her mind with horror. She had such terrible attacks of hysterics, lasting with intervals for several days, that Kolya, seriously alarmed at last, promised on his honor that such pranks should never be repeated. He swore on his knees before the holy image, and swore by the memory of his father, at Madame Krassotkin’s instance, and the “manly” Kolya burst into tears like a boy of six. And all that day the mother and son were constantly rushing into each other’s arms sobbing. Next day Kolya woke up as “unfeeling” as before, but he had become more silent, more modest, sterner, and more thoughtful.

Six weeks later, it is true, he got into another scrape, which even brought his name to the ears of our Justice of the Peace, but it was a scrape of quite another kind, amusing, foolish, and he did not, as it turned out, take the leading part in it, but was only implicated in it. But of this later. His mother still fretted and trembled, but the more uneasy she became, the greater were the hopes of Dardanelov. It must be noted that Kolya understood and divined what was in Dardanelov’s heart and, of course, despised him profoundly for his “feelings”; he had in the past been so tactless as to show this contempt before his mother, hinting vaguely that he knew what Dardanelov was after. But from the time of the railway incident his behavior in this respect also was changed; he did not allow himself the remotest allusion to the subject and began to speak more respectfully of Dardanelov before his mother, which the sensitive woman at once appreciated with boundless gratitude. But at the slightest mention of Dardanelov by a visitor in Kolya’s presence, she would flush as pink as a rose. At such moments Kolya would either stare out of the window scowling, or would investigate the state of his boots, or would shout angrily for “Perezvon,” the big, shaggy, mangy dog, which he had picked up a month before, brought home, and kept for some reason secretly indoors, not showing him to any of his schoolfellows. He bullied him frightfully, teaching him all sorts of tricks, so that the poor dog howled for him whenever he was absent at school, and when he came in, whined with delight, rushed about as if he were crazy, begged, lay down on the ground pretending to be dead, and so on; in fact, showed all the tricks he had taught him, not at the word of command, but simply from the zeal of his excited and grateful heart.

I have forgotten, by the way, to mention that Kolya Krassotkin was the boy stabbed with a penknife by the boy already known to the reader as the son of Captain Snegiryov. Ilusha had been defending his father when the schoolboys jeered at him, shouting the nickname “wisp of tow.”

II. Children

And so on that frosty, snowy, and windy day in November, Kolya Krassotkin was sitting at home. It was Sunday and there was no school. It had just struck eleven, and he particularly wanted to go out “on very urgent business,” but he was left alone in charge of the house, for it so happened that all its elder inmates were absent owing to a sudden and singular event. Madame Krassotkin had let two little rooms, separated from the rest of the house by a passage, to a doctor’s wife with her two small children. This lady was the same age as Anna Fyodorovna, and a great friend of hers. Her husband, the doctor, had taken his departure twelve months before, going first to Orenburg and then to Tashkend, and for the last six months she had not heard a word from him. Had it not been for her friendship with Madame Krassotkin, which was some consolation to the forsaken lady, she would certainly have completely dissolved away in tears. And now, to add to her misfortunes, Katerina, her only servant, was suddenly moved the evening before to announce, to her mistress’s amazement, that she proposed to bring a child into the world before morning. It seemed almost miraculous to every one that no one had noticed the probability of it before. The astounded doctor’s wife decided to move Katerina while there was still time to an establishment in the town kept by a midwife for such emergencies. As she set great store by her servant, she promptly carried out this plan and remained there looking after her. By the morning all Madame Krassotkin’s friendly sympathy and energy were called upon to render assistance and appeal to some one for help in the case.

So both the ladies were absent from home, the Krassotkins’ servant, Agafya, had gone out to the market, and Kolya was thus left for a time to protect and look after “the kids,” that is, the son and daughter of the doctor’s wife, who were left alone. Kolya was not afraid of taking care of the house, besides he had Perezvon, who had been told to lie flat, without moving, under the bench in the hall. Every time Kolya, walking to and fro through the rooms, came into the hall, the dog shook his head and gave two loud and insinuating taps on the floor with his tail, but alas! the whistle did not sound to release him. Kolya looked sternly at the luckless dog, who relapsed again into obedient rigidity. The one thing that troubled Kolya was “the kids.” He looked, of course, with the utmost scorn on Katerina’s unexpected adventure, but he was very fond of the bereaved “kiddies,” and had already taken them a picture-book. Nastya, the elder, a girl of eight, could read, and Kostya, the boy, aged seven, was very fond of being read to by her. Krassotkin could, of course, have provided more diverting entertainment for them. He could have made them stand side by side and played soldiers with them, or sent them hiding all over the house. He had done so more than once before and was not above doing it, so much so that a report once spread at school that Krassotkin played horses with the little lodgers at home, prancing with his head on one side like a trace-horse. But Krassotkin haughtily parried this thrust, pointing out that to play horses with boys of one’s own age, boys of thirteen, would certainly be disgraceful “at this date,” but that he did it for the sake of “the kids” because he liked them, and no one had a right to call him to account for his feelings. The two “kids” adored him.

But on this occasion he was in no mood for games. He had very important business of his own before him, something almost mysterious. Meanwhile time was passing and Agafya, with whom he could have left the children, would not come back from market. He had several times already crossed the passage, opened the door of the lodgers’ room and looked anxiously at “the kids” who were sitting over the book, as he had bidden them. Every time he opened the door they grinned at him, hoping he would come in and would do something delightful and amusing. But Kolya was bothered and did not go in.

At last it struck eleven and he made up his mind, once for all, that if that “damned” Agafya did not come back within ten minutes he should go out without waiting for her, making “the kids” promise, of course, to be brave when he was away, not to be naughty, not to cry from fright. With this idea he put on his wadded winter overcoat with its catskin fur collar, slung his satchel round his shoulder, and, regardless of his mother’s constantly reiterated entreaties that he would always put on goloshes in such cold weather, he looked at them contemptuously as he crossed the hall and went out with only his boots on. Perezvon, seeing him in his outdoor clothes, began tapping nervously, yet vigorously, on the floor with his tail. Twitching all over, he even uttered a plaintive whine. But Kolya, seeing his dog’s passionate excitement, decided that it was a breach of discipline, kept him for another minute under the bench, and only when he had opened the door into the passage, whistled for him. The dog leapt up like a mad creature and rushed bounding before him rapturously.

Kolya opened the door to peep at “the kids.” They were both sitting as before at the table, not reading but warmly disputing about something. The children often argued together about various exciting problems of life, and Nastya, being the elder, always got the best of it. If Kostya did not agree with her, he almost always appealed to Kolya Krassotkin, and his verdict was regarded as infallible by both of them. This time the “kids’” discussion rather interested Krassotkin, and he stood still in the passage to listen. The children saw he was listening and that made them dispute with even greater energy.

“I shall never, never believe,” Nastya prattled, “that the old women find babies among the cabbages in the kitchen-garden. It’s winter now and there are no cabbages, and so the old woman couldn’t have taken Katerina a daughter.”

Kolya whistled to himself.

“Or perhaps they do bring babies from somewhere, but only to those who are married.”

Kostya stared at Nastya and listened, pondering profoundly.

“Nastya, how silly you are!” he said at last, firmly and calmly. “How can Katerina have a baby when she isn’t married?”

Nastya was exasperated.

“You know nothing about it,” she snapped irritably. “Perhaps she has a husband, only he is in prison, so now she’s got a baby.”

“But is her husband in prison?” the matter-of-fact Kostya inquired gravely.

“Or, I tell you what,” Nastya interrupted impulsively, completely rejecting and forgetting her first hypothesis. “She hasn’t a husband, you are right there, but she wants to be married, and so she’s been thinking of getting married, and thinking and thinking of it till now she’s got it, that is, not a husband but a baby.”

“Well, perhaps so,” Kostya agreed, entirely vanquished. “But you didn’t say so before. So how could I tell?”

“Come, kiddies,” said Kolya, stepping into the room. “You’re terrible people, I see.”

“And Perezvon with you!” grinned Kostya, and began snapping his fingers and calling Perezvon.

“I am in a difficulty, kids,” Krassotkin began solemnly, “and you must help me. Agafya must have broken her leg, since she has not turned up till now, that’s certain. I must go out. Will you let me go?”

The children looked anxiously at one another. Their smiling faces showed signs of uneasiness, but they did not yet fully grasp what was expected of them.

“You won’t be naughty while I am gone? You won’t climb on the cupboard and break your legs? You won’t be frightened alone and cry?”

A look of profound despondency came into the children’s faces.

“And I could show you something as a reward, a little copper cannon which can be fired with real gunpowder.”

The children’s faces instantly brightened. “Show us the cannon,” said Kostya, beaming all over.

Krassotkin put his hand in his satchel, and pulling out a little bronze cannon stood it on the table.

“Ah, you are bound to ask that! Look, it’s on wheels.” He rolled the toy on along the table. “And it can be fired off, too. It can be loaded with shot and fired off.”

“And it could kill any one?”

“It can kill any one; you’ve only got to aim at anybody,” and Krassotkin explained where the powder had to be put, where the shot should be rolled in, showing a tiny hole like a touch-hole, and told them that it kicked when it was fired.

The children listened with intense interest. What particularly struck their imagination was that the cannon kicked.

“And have you got any powder?” Nastya inquired.

“Yes.”

“Show us the powder, too,” she drawled with a smile of entreaty.

Krassotkin dived again into his satchel and pulled out a small flask containing a little real gunpowder. He had some shot, too, in a screw of paper. He even uncorked the flask and shook a little powder into the palm of his hand.

“One has to be careful there’s no fire about, or it would blow up and kill us all,” Krassotkin warned them sensationally.

The children gazed at the powder with an awe-stricken alarm that only intensified their enjoyment. But Kostya liked the shot better.

“And does the shot burn?” he inquired.

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Give me a little shot,” he asked in an imploring voice.

“I’ll give you a little shot; here, take it, but don’t show it to your mother till I come back, or she’ll be sure to think it’s gunpowder, and will die of fright and give you a thrashing.”

“Mother never does whip us,” Nastya observed at once.

“I know, I only said it to finish the sentence. And don’t you ever deceive your mother except just this once, until I come back. And so, kiddies, can I go out? You won’t be frightened and cry when I’m gone?”

“We sha—all cry,” drawled Kostya, on the verge of tears already.

“We shall cry, we shall be sure to cry,” Nastya chimed in with timid haste.

“Oh, children, children, how fraught with peril are your years! There’s no help for it, chickens, I shall have to stay with you I don’t know how long. And time is passing, time is passing, oogh!”

“Tell Perezvon to pretend to be dead!” Kostya begged.

“There’s no help for it, we must have recourse to Perezvon. Ici, Perezvon.” And Kolya began giving orders to the dog, who performed all his tricks.

He was a rough-haired dog, of medium size, with a coat of a sort of lilac-gray color. He was blind in his right eye, and his left ear was torn. He whined and jumped, stood and walked on his hind legs, lay on his back with his paws in the air, rigid as though he were dead. While this last performance was going on, the door opened and Agafya, Madame Krassotkin’s servant, a stout woman of forty, marked with small-pox, appeared in the doorway. She had come back from market and had a bag full of provisions in her hand. Holding up the bag of provisions in her left hand she stood still to watch the dog. Though Kolya had been so anxious for her return, he did not cut short the performance, and after keeping Perezvon dead for the usual time, at last he whistled to him. The dog jumped up and began bounding about in his joy at having done his duty.

“Only think, a dog!” Agafya observed sententiously.

“Why are you late, female?” asked Krassotkin sternly.

“Female, indeed! Go on with you, you brat.”

“Brat?”

“Yes, a brat. What is it to you if I’m late; if I’m late, you may be sure I have good reason,” muttered Agafya, busying herself about the stove, without a trace of anger or displeasure in her voice. She seemed quite pleased, in fact, to enjoy a skirmish with her merry young master.

“Listen, you frivolous young woman,” Krassotkin began, getting up from the sofa, “can you swear by all you hold sacred in the world and something else besides, that you will watch vigilantly over the kids in my absence? I am going out.”

“And what am I going to swear for?” laughed Agafya. “I shall look after them without that.”

“No, you must swear on your eternal salvation. Else I shan’t go.”

“Well, don’t then. What does it matter to me? It’s cold out; stay at home.”

“Kids,” Kolya turned to the children, “this woman will stay with you till I come back or till your mother comes, for she ought to have been back long ago. She will give you some lunch, too. You’ll give them something, Agafya, won’t you?”

“That I can do.”

“Good-by, chickens, I go with my heart at rest. And you, granny,” he added gravely, in an undertone, as he passed Agafya, “I hope you’ll spare their tender years and not tell them any of your old woman’s nonsense about Katerina. Ici, Perezvon!”

“Get along with you!” retorted Agafya, really angry this time. “Ridiculous boy! You want a whipping for saying such things, that’s what you want!”

III. The Schoolboy

But Kolya did not hear her. At last he could go out. As he went out at the gate he looked round him, shrugged up his shoulders, and saying “It is freezing,” went straight along the street and turned off to the right towards the market-place. When he reached the last house but one before the market-place he stopped at the gate, pulled a whistle out of his pocket, and whistled with all his might as though giving a signal. He had not to wait more than a minute before a rosy-cheeked boy of about eleven, wearing a warm, neat and even stylish coat, darted out to meet him. This was Smurov, a boy in the preparatory class (two classes below Kolya Krassotkin), son of a well-to-do official. Apparently he was forbidden by his parents to associate with Krassotkin, who was well known to be a desperately naughty boy, so Smurov was obviously slipping out on the sly. He was—if the reader has not forgotten—one of the group of boys who two months before had thrown stones at Ilusha. He was the one who told Alyosha Karamazov about Ilusha.

“I’ve been waiting for you for the last hour, Krassotkin,” said Smurov stolidly, and the boys strode towards the market-place.

“I am late,” answered Krassotkin. “I was detained by circumstances. You won’t be thrashed for coming with me?”

“Come, I say, I’m never thrashed! And you’ve got Perezvon with you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re taking him, too?”

“Yes.”

“Ah! if it were only Zhutchka!”

“That’s impossible. Zhutchka’s non-existent. Zhutchka is lost in the mists of obscurity.”

“Ah! couldn’t we do this?” Smurov suddenly stood still. “You see Ilusha says that Zhutchka was a shaggy, grayish, smoky-looking dog like Perezvon. Couldn’t you tell him this is Zhutchka, and he might believe you?”

“Boy, shun a lie, that’s one thing; even with a good object—that’s another. Above all, I hope you’ve not told them anything about my coming.”

“Heaven forbid! I know what I am about. But you won’t comfort him with Perezvon,” said Smurov, with a sigh. “You know his father, the captain, ‘the wisp of tow,’ told us that he was going to bring him a real mastiff pup, with a black nose, to-day. He thinks that would comfort Ilusha; but I doubt it.”

“And how is Ilusha?”

“Ah, he is bad, very bad! I believe he’s in consumption: he is quite conscious, but his breathing! His breathing’s gone wrong. The other day he asked to have his boots on to be led round the room. He tried to walk, but he couldn’t stand. ‘Ah, I told you before, father,’ he said, ‘that those boots were no good. I could never walk properly in them.’ He fancied it was his boots that made him stagger, but it was simply weakness, really. He won’t live another week. Herzenstube is looking after him. Now they are rich again—they’ve got heaps of money.”

“They are rogues.”

“Who are rogues?”

“Doctors and the whole crew of quacks collectively, and also, of course, individually. I don’t believe in medicine. It’s a useless institution. I mean to go into all that. But what’s that sentimentality you’ve got up there? The whole class seems to be there every day.”

“Not the whole class: it’s only ten of our fellows who go to see him every day. There’s nothing in that.”

“What I don’t understand in all this is the part that Alexey Karamazov is taking in it. His brother’s going to be tried to-morrow or next day for such a crime, and yet he has so much time to spend on sentimentality with boys.”

“There’s no sentimentality about it. You are going yourself now to make it up with Ilusha.”

“Make it up with him? What an absurd expression! But I allow no one to analyze my actions.”

“And how pleased Ilusha will be to see you! He has no idea that you are coming. Why was it, why was it you wouldn’t come all this time?” Smurov cried with sudden warmth.

“My dear boy, that’s my business, not yours. I am going of myself because I choose to, but you’ve all been hauled there by Alexey Karamazov—there’s a difference, you know. And how do you know? I may not be going to make it up at all. It’s a stupid expression.”

“It’s not Karamazov at all; it’s not his doing. Our fellows began going there of themselves. Of course, they went with Karamazov at first. And there’s been nothing of that sort—no silliness. First one went, and then another. His father was awfully pleased to see us. You know he will simply go out of his mind if Ilusha dies. He sees that Ilusha’s dying. And he seems so glad we’ve made it up with Ilusha. Ilusha asked after you, that was all. He just asks and says no more. His father will go out of his mind or hang himself. He behaved like a madman before. You know he is a very decent man. We made a mistake then. It’s all the fault of that murderer who beat him then.”

“Karamazov’s a riddle to me all the same. I might have made his acquaintance long ago, but I like to have a proper pride in some cases. Besides, I have a theory about him which I must work out and verify.”

Kolya subsided into dignified silence. Smurov, too, was silent. Smurov, of course, worshiped Krassotkin and never dreamed of putting himself on a level with him. Now he was tremendously interested at Kolya’s saying that he was “going of himself” to see Ilusha. He felt that there must be some mystery in Kolya’s suddenly taking it into his head to go to him that day. They crossed the market-place, in which at that hour were many loaded wagons from the country and a great number of live fowls. The market women were selling rolls, cottons and threads, etc., in their booths. These Sunday markets were naïvely called “fairs” in the town, and there were many such fairs in the year.

Perezvon ran about in the wildest spirits, sniffing about first one side, then the other. When he met other dogs they zealously smelt each other over according to the rules of canine etiquette.

“I like to watch such realistic scenes, Smurov,” said Kolya suddenly. “Have you noticed how dogs sniff at one another when they meet? It seems to be a law of their nature.”

“Yes; it’s a funny habit.”

“No, it’s not funny; you are wrong there. There’s nothing funny in nature, however funny it may seem to man with his prejudices. If dogs could reason and criticize us they’d be sure to find just as much that would be funny to them, if not far more, in the social relations of men, their masters—far more, indeed. I repeat that, because I am convinced that there is far more foolishness among us. That’s Rakitin’s idea—a remarkable idea. I am a Socialist, Smurov.”

“And what is a Socialist?” asked Smurov.

“That’s when all are equal and all have property in common, there are no marriages, and every one has any religion and laws he likes best, and all the rest of it. You are not old enough to understand that yet. It’s cold, though.”

“Yes, twelve degrees of frost. Father looked at the thermometer just now.”

“Have you noticed, Smurov, that in the middle of winter we don’t feel so cold even when there are fifteen or eighteen degrees of frost as we do now, in the beginning of winter, when there is a sudden frost of twelve degrees, especially when there is not much snow. It’s because people are not used to it. Everything is habit with men, everything even in their social and political relations. Habit is the great motive-power. What a funny-looking peasant!”

Kolya pointed to a tall peasant, with a good-natured countenance in a long sheepskin coat, who was standing by his wagon, clapping together his hands, in their shapeless leather gloves, to warm them. His long fair beard was all white with frost.

“That peasant’s beard’s frozen,” Kolya cried in a loud provocative voice as he passed him.

“Lots of people’s beards are frozen,” the peasant replied, calmly and sententiously.

“Don’t provoke him,” observed Smurov.

“It’s all right; he won’t be cross; he’s a nice fellow. Good-by, Matvey.”

“Good-by.”

“Is your name Matvey?”

“Yes. Didn’t you know?”

“No, I didn’t. It was a guess.”

“You don’t say so! You are a schoolboy, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

“You get whipped, I expect?”

“Nothing to speak of—sometimes.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Well, yes, it does.”

“Ech, what a life!” The peasant heaved a sigh from the bottom of his heart.

“Good-by, Matvey.”

“Good-by. You are a nice chap, that you are.”

The boys went on.

“That was a nice peasant,” Kolya observed to Smurov. “I like talking to the peasants, and am always glad to do them justice.”

“Why did you tell a lie, pretending we are thrashed?” asked Smurov.

“I had to say that to please him.”

“How do you mean?”

“You know, Smurov, I don’t like being asked the same thing twice. I like people to understand at the first word. Some things can’t be explained. According to a peasant’s notions, schoolboys are whipped, and must be whipped. What would a schoolboy be if he were not whipped? And if I were to tell him we are not, he’d be disappointed. But you don’t understand that. One has to know how to talk to the peasants.”

“Only don’t tease them, please, or you’ll get into another scrape as you did about that goose.”

“So you’re afraid?”

“Don’t laugh, Kolya. Of course I’m afraid. My father would be awfully cross. I am strictly forbidden to go out with you.”

“Don’t be uneasy, nothing will happen this time. Hallo, Natasha!” he shouted to a market woman in one of the booths.

“Call me Natasha! What next! My name is Marya,” the middle-aged market woman shouted at him.

“I am so glad it’s Marya. Good-by!”

“Ah, you young rascal! A brat like you to carry on so!”

“I’m in a hurry. I can’t stay now. You shall tell me next Sunday.” Kolya waved his hand at her, as though she had attacked him and not he her.

“I’ve nothing to tell you next Sunday. You set upon me, you impudent young monkey. I didn’t say anything,” bawled Marya. “You want a whipping, that’s what you want, you saucy jackanapes!”

There was a roar of laughter among the other market women round her. Suddenly a man in a violent rage darted out from the arcade of shops close by. He was a young man, not a native of the town, with dark, curly hair and a long, pale face, marked with smallpox. He wore a long blue coat and a peaked cap, and looked like a merchant’s clerk. He was in a state of stupid excitement and brandished his fist at Kolya.

“I know you!” he cried angrily, “I know you!”

Kolya stared at him. He could not recall when he could have had a row with the man. But he had been in so many rows in the street that he could hardly remember them all.

“Do you?” he asked sarcastically.

“I know you! I know you!” the man repeated idiotically.

“So much the better for you. Well, it’s time I was going. Good-by!”

“You are at your saucy pranks again?” cried the man. “You are at your saucy pranks again? I know, you are at it again!”

“It’s not your business, brother, if I am at my saucy pranks again,” said Kolya, standing still and scanning him.

“Not my business?”

“No; it’s not your business.”

“Whose then? Whose then? Whose then?”

“It’s Trifon Nikititch’s business, not yours.”

“What Trifon Nikititch?” asked the youth, staring with loutish amazement at Kolya, but still as angry as ever.

Kolya scanned him gravely.

“Have you been to the Church of the Ascension?” he suddenly asked him, with stern emphasis.

“What Church of Ascension? What for? No, I haven’t,” said the young man, somewhat taken aback.

“Do you know Sabaneyev?” Kolya went on even more emphatically and even more severely.

“What Sabaneyev? No, I don’t know him.”

“Well then you can go to the devil,” said Kolya, cutting short the conversation; and turning sharply to the right he strode quickly on his way as though he disdained further conversation with a dolt who did not even know Sabaneyev.

“Stop, heigh! What Sabaneyev?” the young man recovered from his momentary stupefaction and was as excited as before. “What did he say?” He turned to the market women with a silly stare.

The women laughed.

“You can never tell what he’s after,” said one of them.

“What Sabaneyev is it he’s talking about?” the young man repeated, still furious and brandishing his right arm.

“It must be a Sabaneyev who worked for the Kuzmitchovs, that’s who it must be,” one of the women suggested.

The young man stared at her wildly.

“For the Kuzmitchovs?” repeated another woman. “But his name wasn’t Trifon. His name’s Kuzma, not Trifon; but the boy said Trifon Nikititch, so it can’t be the same.”

“His name is not Trifon and not Sabaneyev, it’s Tchizhov,” put in suddenly a third woman, who had hitherto been silent, listening gravely. “Alexey Ivanitch is his name. Tchizhov, Alexey Ivanitch.”

“Not a doubt about it, it’s Tchizhov,” a fourth woman emphatically confirmed the statement.

The bewildered youth gazed from one to another.

“But what did he ask for, what did he ask for, good people?” he cried almost in desperation. “‘Do you know Sabaneyev?’ says he. And who the devil’s to know who is Sabaneyev?”

“You’re a senseless fellow. I tell you it’s not Sabaneyev, but Tchizhov, Alexey Ivanitch Tchizhov, that’s who it is!” one of the women shouted at him impressively.

“What Tchizhov? Who is he? Tell me, if you know.”

“That tall, sniveling fellow who used to sit in the market in the summer.”

“And what’s your Tchizhov to do with me, good people, eh?”

“How can I tell what he’s to do with you?” put in another. “You ought to know yourself what you want with him, if you make such a clamor about him. He spoke to you, he did not speak to us, you stupid. Don’t you really know him?”

“Know whom?”

“Tchizhov.”

“The devil take Tchizhov and you with him. I’ll give him a hiding, that I will. He was laughing at me!”

“Will give Tchizhov a hiding! More likely he will give you one. You are a fool, that’s what you are!”

“Not Tchizhov, not Tchizhov, you spiteful, mischievous woman. I’ll give the boy a hiding. Catch him, catch him, he was laughing at me!”

The woman guffawed. But Kolya was by now a long way off, marching along with a triumphant air. Smurov walked beside him, looking round at the shouting group far behind. He too was in high spirits, though he was still afraid of getting into some scrape in Kolya’s company.

“What Sabaneyev did you mean?” he asked Kolya, foreseeing what his answer would be.

“How do I know? Now there’ll be a hubbub among them all day. I like to stir up fools in every class of society. There’s another blockhead, that peasant there. You know, they say ‘there’s no one stupider than a stupid Frenchman,’ but a stupid Russian shows it in his face just as much. Can’t you see it all over his face that he is a fool, that peasant, eh?”

“Let him alone, Kolya. Let’s go on.”

“Nothing could stop me, now I am once off. Hey, good morning, peasant!”

A sturdy-looking peasant, with a round, simple face and grizzled beard, who was walking by, raised his head and looked at the boy. He seemed not quite sober.

“Good morning, if you are not laughing at me,” he said deliberately in reply.

“And if I am?” laughed Kolya.

“Well, a joke’s a joke. Laugh away. I don’t mind. There’s no harm in a joke.”

“I beg your pardon, brother, it was a joke.”

“Well, God forgive you!”

“Do you forgive me, too?”

“I quite forgive you. Go along.”

“I say, you seem a clever peasant.”

“Cleverer than you,” the peasant answered unexpectedly, with the same gravity.

“I doubt it,” said Kolya, somewhat taken aback.

“It’s true, though.”

“Perhaps it is.”

“It is, brother.”

“Good-by, peasant!”

“Good-by!”

“There are all sorts of peasants,” Kolya observed to Smurov after a brief silence. “How could I tell I had hit on a clever one? I am always ready to recognize intelligence in the peasantry.”

In the distance the cathedral clock struck half-past eleven. The boys made haste and they walked as far as Captain Snegiryov’s lodging, a considerable distance, quickly and almost in silence. Twenty paces from the house Kolya stopped and told Smurov to go on ahead and ask Karamazov to come out to him.

“One must sniff round a bit first,” he observed to Smurov.

“Why ask him to come out?” Smurov protested. “You go in; they will be awfully glad to see you. What’s the sense of making friends in the frost out here?”

“I know why I want to see him out here in the frost,” Kolya cut him short in the despotic tone he was fond of adopting with “small boys,” and Smurov ran to do his bidding.

IV. The Lost Dog

Kolya leaned against the fence with an air of dignity, waiting for Alyosha to appear. Yes, he had long wanted to meet him. He had heard a great deal about him from the boys, but hitherto he had always maintained an appearance of disdainful indifference when he was mentioned, and he had even “criticized” what he heard about Alyosha. But secretly he had a great longing to make his acquaintance; there was something sympathetic and attractive in all he was told about Alyosha. So the present moment was important: to begin with, he had to show himself at his best, to show his independence, “Or he’ll think of me as thirteen and take me for a boy, like the rest of them. And what are these boys to him? I shall ask him when I get to know him. It’s a pity I am so short, though. Tuzikov is younger than I am, yet he is half a head taller. But I have a clever face. I am not good-looking. I know I’m hideous, but I’ve a clever face. I mustn’t talk too freely; if I fall into his arms all at once, he may think—Tfoo! how horrible if he should think—!”

Such were the thoughts that excited Kolya while he was doing his utmost to assume the most independent air. What distressed him most was his being so short; he did not mind so much his “hideous” face, as being so short. On the wall in a corner at home he had the year before made a pencil-mark to show his height, and every two months since he anxiously measured himself against it to see how much he had gained. But alas! he grew very slowly, and this sometimes reduced him almost to despair. His face was in reality by no means “hideous”; on the contrary, it was rather attractive, with a fair, pale skin, freckled. His small, lively gray eyes had a fearless look, and often glowed with feeling. He had rather high cheekbones; small, very red, but not very thick, lips; his nose was small and unmistakably turned up. “I’ve a regular pug nose, a regular pug nose,” Kolya used to mutter to himself when he looked in the looking-glass, and he always left it with indignation. “But perhaps I haven’t got a clever face?” he sometimes thought, doubtful even of that. But it must not be supposed that his mind was preoccupied with his face and his height. On the contrary, however bitter the moments before the looking-glass were to him, he quickly forgot them, and forgot them for a long time, “abandoning himself entirely to ideas and to real life,” as he formulated it to himself.

Alyosha came out quickly and hastened up to Kolya. Before he reached him, Kolya could see that he looked delighted. “Can he be so glad to see me?” Kolya wondered, feeling pleased. We may note here, in passing, that Alyosha’s appearance had undergone a complete change since we saw him last. He had abandoned his cassock and was wearing now a well-cut coat, a soft, round hat, and his hair had been cropped short. All this was very becoming to him, and he looked quite handsome. His charming face always had a good-humored expression; but there was a gentleness and serenity in his good-humor. To Kolya’s surprise, Alyosha came out to him just as he was, without an overcoat. He had evidently come in haste. He held out his hand to Kolya at once.

“Here you are at last! How anxious we’ve been to see you!”

“There were reasons which you shall know directly. Anyway, I am glad to make your acquaintance. I’ve long been hoping for an opportunity, and have heard a great deal about you,” Kolya muttered, a little breathless.

“We should have met anyway. I’ve heard a great deal about you, too; but you’ve been a long time coming here.”

“Tell me, how are things going?”

“Ilusha is very ill. He is certainly dying.”

“How awful! You must admit that medicine is a fraud, Karamazov,” cried Kolya warmly.

“Ilusha has mentioned you often, very often, even in his sleep, in delirium, you know. One can see that you used to be very, very dear to him ... before the incident ... with the knife.... Then there’s another reason.... Tell me, is that your dog?”

“Yes, Perezvon.”

“Not Zhutchka?” Alyosha looked at Kolya with eyes full of pity. “Is she lost for ever?”

“I know you would all like it to be Zhutchka. I’ve heard all about it.” Kolya smiled mysteriously. “Listen, Karamazov, I’ll tell you all about it. That’s what I came for; that’s what I asked you to come out here for, to explain the whole episode to you before we go in,” he began with animation. “You see, Karamazov, Ilusha came into the preparatory class last spring. Well, you know what our preparatory class is—a lot of small boys. They began teasing Ilusha at once. I am two classes higher up, and, of course, I only look on at them from a distance. I saw the boy was weak and small, but he wouldn’t give in to them; he fought with them. I saw he was proud, and his eyes were full of fire. I like children like that. And they teased him all the more. The worst of it was he was horribly dressed at the time, his breeches were too small for him, and there were holes in his boots. They worried him about it; they jeered at him. That I can’t stand. I stood up for him at once, and gave it to them hot. I beat them, but they adore me, do you know, Karamazov?” Kolya boasted impulsively; “but I am always fond of children. I’ve two chickens in my hands at home now—that’s what detained me to-day. So they left off beating Ilusha and I took him under my protection. I saw the boy was proud. I tell you that, the boy was proud; but in the end he became slavishly devoted to me: he did my slightest bidding, obeyed me as though I were God, tried to copy me. In the intervals between the classes he used to run to me at once, and I’d go about with him. On Sundays, too. They always laugh when an older boy makes friends with a younger one like that; but that’s a prejudice. If it’s my fancy, that’s enough. I am teaching him, developing him. Why shouldn’t I develop him if I like him? Here you, Karamazov, have taken up with all these nestlings. I see you want to influence the younger generation—to develop them, to be of use to them, and I assure you this trait in your character, which I knew by hearsay, attracted me more than anything. Let us get to the point, though. I noticed that there was a sort of softness and sentimentality coming over the boy, and you know I have a positive hatred of this sheepish sentimentality, and I have had it from a baby. There were contradictions in him, too: he was proud, but he was slavishly devoted to me, and yet all at once his eyes would flash and he’d refuse to agree with me; he’d argue, fly into a rage. I used sometimes to propound certain ideas; I could see that it was not so much that he disagreed with the ideas, but that he was simply rebelling against me, because I was cool in responding to his endearments. And so, in order to train him properly, the tenderer he was, the colder I became. I did it on purpose: that was my idea. My object was to form his character, to lick him into shape, to make a man of him ... and besides ... no doubt, you understand me at a word. Suddenly I noticed for three days in succession he was downcast and dejected, not because of my coldness, but for something else, something more important. I wondered what the tragedy was. I have pumped him and found out that he had somehow got to know Smerdyakov, who was footman to your late father—it was before his death, of course—and he taught the little fool a silly trick—that is, a brutal, nasty trick. He told him to take a piece of bread, to stick a pin in it, and throw it to one of those hungry dogs who snap up anything without biting it, and then to watch and see what would happen. So they prepared a piece of bread like that and threw it to Zhutchka, that shaggy dog there’s been such a fuss about. The people of the house it belonged to never fed it at all, though it barked all day. (Do you like that stupid barking, Karamazov? I can’t stand it.) So it rushed at the bread, swallowed it, and began to squeal; it turned round and round and ran away, squealing as it ran out of sight. That was Ilusha’s own account of it. He confessed it to me, and cried bitterly. He hugged me, shaking all over. He kept on repeating ‘He ran away squealing’: the sight of that haunted him. He was tormented by remorse, I could see that. I took it seriously. I determined to give him a lesson for other things as well. So I must confess I wasn’t quite straightforward, and pretended to be more indignant perhaps than I was. ‘You’ve done a nasty thing,’ I said, ‘you are a scoundrel. I won’t tell of it, of course, but I shall have nothing more to do with you for a time. I’ll think it over and let you know through Smurov’—that’s the boy who’s just come with me; he’s always ready to do anything for me—‘whether I will have anything to do with you in the future or whether I give you up for good as a scoundrel.’ He was tremendously upset. I must own I felt I’d gone too far as I spoke, but there was no help for it. I did what I thought best at the time. A day or two after, I sent Smurov to tell him that I would not speak to him again. That’s what we call it when two schoolfellows refuse to have anything more to do with one another. Secretly I only meant to send him to Coventry for a few days and then, if I saw signs of repentance, to hold out my hand to him again. That was my intention. But what do you think happened? He heard Smurov’s message, his eyes flashed. ‘Tell Krassotkin from me,’ he cried, ‘that I will throw bread with pins to all the dogs—all—all of them!’ ‘So he’s going in for a little temper. We must smoke it out of him.’ And I began to treat him with contempt; whenever I met him I turned away or smiled sarcastically. And just then that affair with his father happened. You remember? You must realize that he was fearfully worked up by what had happened already. The boys, seeing I’d given him up, set on him and taunted him, shouting, ‘Wisp of tow, wisp of tow!’ And he had soon regular skirmishes with them, which I am very sorry for. They seem to have given him one very bad beating. One day he flew at them all as they were coming out of school. I stood a few yards off, looking on. And, I swear, I don’t remember that I laughed; it was quite the other way, I felt awfully sorry for him, in another minute I would have run up to take his part. But he suddenly met my eyes. I don’t know what he fancied; but he pulled out a penknife, rushed at me, and struck at my thigh, here in my right leg. I didn’t move. I don’t mind owning I am plucky sometimes, Karamazov. I simply looked at him contemptuously, as though to say, ‘This is how you repay all my kindness! Do it again, if you like, I’m at your service.’ But he didn’t stab me again; he broke down, he was frightened at what he had done, he threw away the knife, burst out crying, and ran away. I did not sneak on him, of course, and I made them all keep quiet, so it shouldn’t come to the ears of the masters. I didn’t even tell my mother till it had healed up. And the wound was a mere scratch. And then I heard that the same day he’d been throwing stones and had bitten your finger—but you understand now what a state he was in! Well, it can’t be helped: it was stupid of me not to come and forgive him—that is, to make it up with him—when he was taken ill. I am sorry for it now. But I had a special reason. So now I’ve told you all about it ... but I’m afraid it was stupid of me.”

“Oh, what a pity,” exclaimed Alyosha, with feeling, “that I didn’t know before what terms you were on with him, or I’d have come to you long ago to beg you to go to him with me. Would you believe it, when he was feverish he talked about you in delirium. I didn’t know how much you were to him! And you’ve really not succeeded in finding that dog? His father and the boys have been hunting all over the town for it. Would you believe it, since he’s been ill, I’ve three times heard him repeat with tears, ‘It’s because I killed Zhutchka, father, that I am ill now. God is punishing me for it.’ He can’t get that idea out of his head. And if the dog were found and proved to be alive, one might almost fancy the joy would cure him. We have all rested our hopes on you.”

“Tell me, what made you hope that I should be the one to find him?” Kolya asked, with great curiosity. “Why did you reckon on me rather than any one else?”

“There was a report that you were looking for the dog, and that you would bring it when you’d found it. Smurov said something of the sort. We’ve all been trying to persuade Ilusha that the dog is alive, that it’s been seen. The boys brought him a live hare; he just looked at it, with a faint smile, and asked them to set it free in the fields. And so we did. His father has just this moment come back, bringing him a mastiff pup, hoping to comfort him with that; but I think it only makes it worse.”

“Tell me, Karamazov, what sort of man is the father? I know him, but what do you make of him—a mountebank, a buffoon?”

“Oh, no; there are people of deep feeling who have been somehow crushed. Buffoonery in them is a form of resentful irony against those to whom they daren’t speak the truth, from having been for years humiliated and intimidated by them. Believe me, Krassotkin, that sort of buffoonery is sometimes tragic in the extreme. His whole life now is centered in Ilusha, and if Ilusha dies, he will either go mad with grief or kill himself. I feel almost certain of that when I look at him now.”

“I understand you, Karamazov. I see you understand human nature,” Kolya added, with feeling.

“And as soon as I saw you with a dog, I thought it was Zhutchka you were bringing.”

“Wait a bit, Karamazov, perhaps we shall find it yet; but this is Perezvon. I’ll let him go in now and perhaps it will amuse Ilusha more than the mastiff pup. Wait a bit, Karamazov, you will know something in a minute. But, I say, I am keeping you here!” Kolya cried suddenly. “You’ve no overcoat on in this bitter cold. You see what an egoist I am. Oh, we are all egoists, Karamazov!”

“Don’t trouble; it is cold, but I don’t often catch cold. Let us go in, though, and, by the way, what is your name? I know you are called Kolya, but what else?”

“Nikolay—Nikolay Ivanovitch Krassotkin, or, as they say in official documents, ‘Krassotkin son.’” Kolya laughed for some reason, but added suddenly, “Of course I hate my name Nikolay.”

“Why so?”

“It’s so trivial, so ordinary.”

“You are thirteen?” asked Alyosha.

“No, fourteen—that is, I shall be fourteen very soon, in a fortnight. I’ll confess one weakness of mine, Karamazov, just to you, since it’s our first meeting, so that you may understand my character at once. I hate being asked my age, more than that ... and in fact ... there’s a libelous story going about me, that last week I played robbers with the preparatory boys. It’s a fact that I did play with them, but it’s a perfect libel to say I did it for my own amusement. I have reasons for believing that you’ve heard the story; but I wasn’t playing for my own amusement, it was for the sake of the children, because they couldn’t think of anything to do by themselves. But they’ve always got some silly tale. This is an awful town for gossip, I can tell you.”

“But what if you had been playing for your own amusement, what’s the harm?”

“Come, I say, for my own amusement! You don’t play horses, do you?”

“But you must look at it like this,” said Alyosha, smiling. “Grown-up people go to the theater and there the adventures of all sorts of heroes are represented—sometimes there are robbers and battles, too—and isn’t that just the same thing, in a different form, of course? And young people’s games of soldiers or robbers in their playtime are also art in its first stage. You know, they spring from the growing artistic instincts of the young. And sometimes these games are much better than performances in the theater, the only difference is that people go there to look at the actors, while in these games the young people are the actors themselves. But that’s only natural.”

“You think so? Is that your idea?” Kolya looked at him intently. “Oh, you know, that’s rather an interesting view. When I go home, I’ll think it over. I’ll admit I thought I might learn something from you. I’ve come to learn of you, Karamazov,” Kolya concluded, in a voice full of spontaneous feeling.

“And I of you,” said Alyosha, smiling and pressing his hand.

Kolya was much pleased with Alyosha. What struck him most was that he treated him exactly like an equal and that he talked to him just as if he were “quite grown up.”

“I’ll show you something directly, Karamazov; it’s a theatrical performance, too,” he said, laughing nervously. “That’s why I’ve come.”

“Let us go first to the people of the house, on the left. All the boys leave their coats in there, because the room is small and hot.”

“Oh, I’m only coming in for a minute. I’ll keep on my overcoat. Perezvon will stay here in the passage and be dead. Ici, Perezvon, lie down and be dead! You see how he’s dead. I’ll go in first and explore, then I’ll whistle to him when I think fit, and you’ll see, he’ll dash in like mad. Only Smurov must not forget to open the door at the moment. I’ll arrange it all and you’ll see something.”

V. By Ilusha’s Bedside

The room inhabited by the family of the retired captain Snegiryov is already familiar to the reader. It was close and crowded at that moment with a number of visitors. Several boys were sitting with Ilusha, and though all of them, like Smurov, were prepared to deny that it was Alyosha who had brought them and reconciled them with Ilusha, it was really the fact. All the art he had used had been to take them, one by one, to Ilusha, without “sheepish sentimentality,” appearing to do so casually and without design. It was a great consolation to Ilusha in his suffering. He was greatly touched by seeing the almost tender affection and sympathy shown him by these boys, who had been his enemies. Krassotkin was the only one missing and his absence was a heavy load on Ilusha’s heart. Perhaps the bitterest of all his bitter memories was his stabbing Krassotkin, who had been his one friend and protector. Clever little Smurov, who was the first to make it up with Ilusha, thought it was so. But when Smurov hinted to Krassotkin that Alyosha wanted to come and see him about something, the latter cut him short, bidding Smurov tell “Karamazov” at once that he knew best what to do, that he wanted no one’s advice, and that, if he went to see Ilusha, he would choose his own time for he had “his own reasons.”

That was a fortnight before this Sunday. That was why Alyosha had not been to see him, as he had meant to. But though he waited, he sent Smurov to him twice again. Both times Krassotkin met him with a curt, impatient refusal, sending Alyosha a message not to bother him any more, that if he came himself, he, Krassotkin, would not go to Ilusha at all. Up to the very last day, Smurov did not know that Kolya meant to go to Ilusha that morning, and only the evening before, as he parted from Smurov, Kolya abruptly told him to wait at home for him next morning, for he would go with him to the Snegiryovs’, but warned him on no account to say he was coming, as he wanted to drop in casually. Smurov obeyed. Smurov’s fancy that Kolya would bring back the lost dog was based on the words Kolya had dropped that “they must be asses not to find the dog, if it was alive.” When Smurov, waiting for an opportunity, timidly hinted at his guess about the dog, Krassotkin flew into a violent rage. “I’m not such an ass as to go hunting about the town for other people’s dogs when I’ve got a dog of my own! And how can you imagine a dog could be alive after swallowing a pin? Sheepish sentimentality, that’s what it is!”

For the last fortnight Ilusha had not left his little bed under the ikons in the corner. He had not been to school since the day he met Alyosha and bit his finger. He was taken ill the same day, though for a month afterwards he was sometimes able to get up and walk about the room and passage. But latterly he had become so weak that he could not move without help from his father. His father was terribly concerned about him. He even gave up drinking and was almost crazy with terror that his boy would die. And often, especially after leading him round the room on his arm and putting him back to bed, he would run to a dark corner in the passage and, leaning his head against the wall, he would break into paroxysms of violent weeping, stifling his sobs that they might not be heard by Ilusha.

Returning to the room, he would usually begin doing something to amuse and comfort his precious boy; he would tell him stories, funny anecdotes, or would mimic comic people he had happened to meet, even imitate the howls and cries of animals. But Ilusha could not bear to see his father fooling and playing the buffoon. Though the boy tried not to show how he disliked it, he saw with an aching heart that his father was an object of contempt, and he was continually haunted by the memory of the “wisp of tow” and that “terrible day.”

Nina, Ilusha’s gentle, crippled sister, did not like her father’s buffoonery either (Varvara had been gone for some time past to Petersburg to study at the university). But the half-imbecile mother was greatly diverted and laughed heartily when her husband began capering about or performing something. It was the only way she could be amused; all the rest of the time she was grumbling and complaining that now every one had forgotten her, that no one treated her with respect, that she was slighted, and so on. But during the last few days she had completely changed. She began looking constantly at Ilusha’s bed in the corner and seemed lost in thought. She was more silent, quieter, and, if she cried, she cried quietly so as not to be heard. The captain noticed the change in her with mournful perplexity. The boys’ visits at first only angered her, but later on their merry shouts and stories began to divert her, and at last she liked them so much that, if the boys had given up coming, she would have felt dreary without them. When the children told some story or played a game, she laughed and clapped her hands. She called some of them to her and kissed them. She was particularly fond of Smurov.

As for the captain, the presence in his room of the children, who came to cheer up Ilusha, filled his heart from the first with ecstatic joy. He even hoped that Ilusha would now get over his depression, and that that would hasten his recovery. In spite of his alarm about Ilusha, he had not, till lately, felt one minute’s doubt of his boy’s ultimate recovery.

He met his little visitors with homage, waited upon them hand and foot; he was ready to be their horse and even began letting them ride on his back, but Ilusha did not like the game and it was given up. He began buying little things for them, gingerbread and nuts, gave them tea and cut them sandwiches. It must be noted that all this time he had plenty of money. He had taken the two hundred roubles from Katerina Ivanovna just as Alyosha had predicted he would. And afterwards Katerina Ivanovna, learning more about their circumstances and Ilusha’s illness, visited them herself, made the acquaintance of the family, and succeeded in fascinating the half-imbecile mother. Since then she had been lavish in helping them, and the captain, terror-stricken at the thought that his boy might be dying, forgot his pride and humbly accepted her assistance.

All this time Doctor Herzenstube, who was called in by Katerina Ivanovna, came punctually every other day, but little was gained by his visits and he dosed the invalid mercilessly. But on that Sunday morning a new doctor was expected, who had come from Moscow, where he had a great reputation. Katerina Ivanovna had sent for him from Moscow at great expense, not expressly for Ilusha, but for another object of which more will be said in its place hereafter. But, as he had come, she had asked him to see Ilusha as well, and the captain had been told to expect him. He hadn’t the slightest idea that Kolya Krassotkin was coming, though he had long wished for a visit from the boy for whom Ilusha was fretting.

At the moment when Krassotkin opened the door and came into the room, the captain and all the boys were round Ilusha’s bed, looking at a tiny mastiff pup, which had only been born the day before, though the captain had bespoken it a week ago to comfort and amuse Ilusha, who was still fretting over the lost and probably dead Zhutchka. Ilusha, who had heard three days before that he was to be presented with a puppy, not an ordinary puppy, but a pedigree mastiff (a very important point, of course), tried from delicacy of feeling to pretend that he was pleased. But his father and the boys could not help seeing that the puppy only served to recall to his little heart the thought of the unhappy dog he had killed. The puppy lay beside him feebly moving and he, smiling sadly, stroked it with his thin, pale, wasted hand. Clearly he liked the puppy, but ... it wasn’t Zhutchka; if he could have had Zhutchka and the puppy, too, then he would have been completely happy.

“Krassotkin!” cried one of the boys suddenly. He was the first to see him come in.

Krassotkin’s entrance made a general sensation; the boys moved away and stood on each side of the bed, so that he could get a full view of Ilusha. The captain ran eagerly to meet Kolya.

“Please come in ... you are welcome!” he said hurriedly. “Ilusha, Mr. Krassotkin has come to see you!”

But Krassotkin, shaking hands with him hurriedly, instantly showed his complete knowledge of the manners of good society. He turned first to the captain’s wife sitting in her arm-chair, who was very ill-humored at the moment, and was grumbling that the boys stood between her and Ilusha’s bed and did not let her see the new puppy. With the greatest courtesy he made her a bow, scraping his foot, and turning to Nina, he made her, as the only other lady present, a similar bow. This polite behavior made an extremely favorable impression on the deranged lady.

“There, you can see at once he is a young man that has been well brought up,” she commented aloud, throwing up her hands; “but as for our other visitors they come in one on the top of another.”

“How do you mean, mamma, one on the top of another, how is that?” muttered the captain affectionately, though a little anxious on her account.

“That’s how they ride in. They get on each other’s shoulders in the passage and prance in like that on a respectable family. Strange sort of visitors!”

“But who’s come in like that, mamma?”

“Why, that boy came in riding on that one’s back and this one on that one’s.”

Kolya was already by Ilusha’s bedside. The sick boy turned visibly paler. He raised himself in the bed and looked intently at Kolya. Kolya had not seen his little friend for two months, and he was overwhelmed at the sight of him. He had never imagined that he would see such a wasted, yellow face, such enormous, feverishly glowing eyes and such thin little hands. He saw, with grieved surprise, Ilusha’s rapid, hard breathing and dry lips. He stepped close to him, held out his hand, and almost overwhelmed, he said:

“Well, old man ... how are you?” But his voice failed him, he couldn’t achieve an appearance of ease; his face suddenly twitched and the corners of his mouth quivered. Ilusha smiled a pitiful little smile, still unable to utter a word. Something moved Kolya to raise his hand and pass it over Ilusha’s hair.

“Never mind!” he murmured softly to him to cheer him up, or perhaps not knowing why he said it. For a minute they were silent again.

“Hallo, so you’ve got a new puppy?” Kolya said suddenly, in a most callous voice.

“Ye—es,” answered Ilusha in a long whisper, gasping for breath.

“A black nose, that means he’ll be fierce, a good house-dog,” Kolya observed gravely and stolidly, as if the only thing he cared about was the puppy and its black nose. But in reality he still had to do his utmost to control his feelings not to burst out crying like a child, and do what he would he could not control it. “When it grows up, you’ll have to keep it on the chain, I’m sure.”

“He’ll be a huge dog!” cried one of the boys.

“Of course he will,” “a mastiff,” “large,” “like this,” “as big as a calf,” shouted several voices.

“As big as a calf, as a real calf,” chimed in the captain. “I got one like that on purpose, one of the fiercest breed, and his parents are huge and very fierce, they stand as high as this from the floor.... Sit down here, on Ilusha’s bed, or here on the bench. You are welcome, we’ve been hoping to see you a long time.... You were so kind as to come with Alexey Fyodorovitch?”

Krassotkin sat on the edge of the bed, at Ilusha’s feet. Though he had perhaps prepared a free-and-easy opening for the conversation on his way, now he completely lost the thread of it.

“No ... I came with Perezvon. I’ve got a dog now, called Perezvon. A Slavonic name. He’s out there ... if I whistle, he’ll run in. I’ve brought a dog, too,” he said, addressing Ilusha all at once. “Do you remember Zhutchka, old man?” he suddenly fired the question at him.

Ilusha’s little face quivered. He looked with an agonized expression at Kolya. Alyosha, standing at the door, frowned and signed to Kolya not to speak of Zhutchka, but he did not or would not notice.

“Where ... is Zhutchka?” Ilusha asked in a broken voice.

“Oh, well, my boy, your Zhutchka’s lost and done for!”

Ilusha did not speak, but he fixed an intent gaze once more on Kolya. Alyosha, catching Kolya’s eye, signed to him vigorously again, but he turned away his eyes pretending not to have noticed.

“It must have run away and died somewhere. It must have died after a meal like that,” Kolya pronounced pitilessly, though he seemed a little breathless. “But I’ve got a dog, Perezvon ... A Slavonic name.... I’ve brought him to show you.”

“I don’t want him!” said Ilusha suddenly.

“No, no, you really must see him ... it will amuse you. I brought him on purpose.... He’s the same sort of shaggy dog.... You allow me to call in my dog, madam?” He suddenly addressed Madame Snegiryov, with inexplicable excitement in his manner.

“I don’t want him, I don’t want him!” cried Ilusha, with a mournful break in his voice. There was a reproachful light in his eyes.

“You’d better,” the captain started up from the chest by the wall on which he had just sat down, “you’d better ... another time,” he muttered, but Kolya could not be restrained. He hurriedly shouted to Smurov, “Open the door,” and as soon as it was open, he blew his whistle. Perezvon dashed headlong into the room.

“Jump, Perezvon, beg! Beg!” shouted Kolya, jumping up, and the dog stood erect on its hind-legs by Ilusha’s bedside. What followed was a surprise to every one: Ilusha started, lurched violently forward, bent over Perezvon and gazed at him, faint with suspense.

“It’s ... Zhutchka!” he cried suddenly, in a voice breaking with joy and suffering.

“And who did you think it was?” Krassotkin shouted with all his might, in a ringing, happy voice, and bending down he seized the dog and lifted him up to Ilusha.

“Look, old man, you see, blind of one eye and the left ear is torn, just the marks you described to me. It was by that I found him. I found him directly. He did not belong to any one!” he explained, turning quickly to the captain, to his wife, to Alyosha and then again to Ilusha. “He used to live in the Fedotovs’ back-yard. Though he made his home there, they did not feed him. He was a stray dog that had run away from the village ... I found him.... You see, old man, he couldn’t have swallowed what you gave him. If he had, he must have died, he must have! So he must have spat it out, since he is alive. You did not see him do it. But the pin pricked his tongue, that is why he squealed. He ran away squealing and you thought he’d swallowed it. He might well squeal, because the skin of dogs’ mouths is so tender ... tenderer than in men, much tenderer!” Kolya cried impetuously, his face glowing and radiant with delight. Ilusha could not speak. White as a sheet, he gazed open-mouthed at Kolya, with his great eyes almost starting out of his head. And if Krassotkin, who had no suspicion of it, had known what a disastrous and fatal effect such a moment might have on the sick child’s health, nothing would have induced him to play such a trick on him. But Alyosha was perhaps the only person in the room who realized it. As for the captain he behaved like a small child.

“Zhutchka! It’s Zhutchka!” he cried in a blissful voice, “Ilusha, this is Zhutchka, your Zhutchka! Mamma, this is Zhutchka!” He was almost weeping.

“And I never guessed!” cried Smurov regretfully. “Bravo, Krassotkin! I said he’d find the dog and here he’s found him.”

“Here he’s found him!” another boy repeated gleefully.

“Krassotkin’s a brick!” cried a third voice.

“He’s a brick, he’s a brick!” cried the other boys, and they began clapping.

“Wait, wait,” Krassotkin did his utmost to shout above them all. “I’ll tell you how it happened, that’s the whole point. I found him, I took him home and hid him at once. I kept him locked up at home and did not show him to any one till to-day. Only Smurov has known for the last fortnight, but I assured him this dog was called Perezvon and he did not guess. And meanwhile I taught the dog all sorts of tricks. You should only see all the things he can do! I trained him so as to bring you a well-trained dog, in good condition, old man, so as to be able to say to you, ‘See, old man, what a fine dog your Zhutchka is now!’ Haven’t you a bit of meat? He’ll show you a trick that will make you die with laughing. A piece of meat, haven’t you got any?”

The captain ran across the passage to the landlady, where their cooking was done. Not to lose precious time, Kolya, in desperate haste, shouted to Perezvon, “Dead!” And the dog immediately turned round and lay on his back with its four paws in the air. The boys laughed. Ilusha looked on with the same suffering smile, but the person most delighted with the dog’s performance was “mamma.” She laughed at the dog and began snapping her fingers and calling it, “Perezvon, Perezvon!”

“Nothing will make him get up, nothing!” Kolya cried triumphantly, proud of his success. “He won’t move for all the shouting in the world, but if I call to him, he’ll jump up in a minute. Ici, Perezvon!” The dog leapt up and bounded about, whining with delight. The captain ran back with a piece of cooked beef.

“Is it hot?” Kolya inquired hurriedly, with a business-like air, taking the meat. “Dogs don’t like hot things. No, it’s all right. Look, everybody, look, Ilusha, look, old man; why aren’t you looking? He does not look at him, now I’ve brought him.”

The new trick consisted in making the dog stand motionless with his nose out and putting a tempting morsel of meat just on his nose. The luckless dog had to stand without moving, with the meat on his nose, as long as his master chose to keep him, without a movement, perhaps for half an hour. But he kept Perezvon only for a brief moment.

“Paid for!” cried Kolya, and the meat passed in a flash from the dog’s nose to his mouth. The audience, of course, expressed enthusiasm and surprise.

“Can you really have put off coming all this time simply to train the dog?” exclaimed Alyosha, with an involuntary note of reproach in his voice.

“Simply for that!” answered Kolya, with perfect simplicity. “I wanted to show him in all his glory.”

“Perezvon! Perezvon,” called Ilusha suddenly, snapping his thin fingers and beckoning to the dog.

“What is it? Let him jump up on the bed! Ici, Perezvon!” Kolya slapped the bed and Perezvon darted up by Ilusha. The boy threw both arms round his head and Perezvon instantly licked his cheek. Ilusha crept close to him, stretched himself out in bed and hid his face in the dog’s shaggy coat.

“Dear, dear!” kept exclaiming the captain. Kolya sat down again on the edge of the bed.

“Ilusha, I can show you another trick. I’ve brought you a little cannon. You remember, I told you about it before and you said how much you’d like to see it. Well, here, I’ve brought it to you.”

And Kolya hurriedly pulled out of his satchel the little bronze cannon. He hurried, because he was happy himself. Another time he would have waited till the sensation made by Perezvon had passed off, now he hurried on regardless of all consideration. “You are all happy now,” he felt, “so here’s something to make you happier!” He was perfectly enchanted himself.

“I’ve been coveting this thing for a long while; it’s for you, old man, it’s for you. It belonged to Morozov, it was no use to him, he had it from his brother. I swopped a book from father’s book-case for it, A Kinsman of Mahomet or Salutary Folly, a scandalous book published in Moscow a hundred years ago, before they had any censorship. And Morozov has a taste for such things. He was grateful to me, too....”

Kolya held the cannon in his hand so that all could see and admire it. Ilusha raised himself, and, with his right arm still round the dog, he gazed enchanted at the toy. The sensation was even greater when Kolya announced that he had gunpowder too, and that it could be fired off at once “if it won’t alarm the ladies.” “Mamma” immediately asked to look at the toy closer and her request was granted. She was much pleased with the little bronze cannon on wheels and began rolling it to and fro on her lap. She readily gave permission for the cannon to be fired, without any idea of what she had been asked. Kolya showed the powder and the shot. The captain, as a military man, undertook to load it, putting in a minute quantity of powder. He asked that the shot might be put off till another time. The cannon was put on the floor, aiming towards an empty part of the room, three grains of powder were thrust into the touch-hole and a match was put to it. A magnificent explosion followed. Mamma was startled, but at once laughed with delight. The boys gazed in speechless triumph. But the captain, looking at Ilusha, was more enchanted than any of them. Kolya picked up the cannon and immediately presented it to Ilusha, together with the powder and the shot.

“I got it for you, for you! I’ve been keeping it for you a long time,” he repeated once more in his delight.

“Oh, give it to me! No, give me the cannon!” mamma began begging like a little child. Her face showed a piteous fear that she would not get it. Kolya was disconcerted. The captain fidgeted uneasily.

“Mamma, mamma,” he ran to her, “the cannon’s yours, of course, but let Ilusha have it, because it’s a present to him, but it’s just as good as yours. Ilusha will always let you play with it; it shall belong to both of you, both of you.”

“No, I don’t want it to belong to both of us, I want it to be mine altogether, not Ilusha’s,” persisted mamma, on the point of tears.

“Take it, mother, here, keep it!” Ilusha cried. “Krassotkin, may I give it to my mother?” he turned to Krassotkin with an imploring face, as though he were afraid he might be offended at his giving his present to some one else.

“Of course you may,” Krassotkin assented heartily, and, taking the cannon from Ilusha, he handed it himself to mamma with a polite bow. She was so touched that she cried.

“Ilusha, darling, he’s the one who loves his mamma!” she said tenderly, and at once began wheeling the cannon to and fro on her lap again.

“Mamma, let me kiss your hand.” The captain darted up to her at once and did so.

“And I never saw such a charming fellow as this nice boy,” said the grateful lady, pointing to Krassotkin.

“And I’ll bring you as much powder as you like, Ilusha. We make the powder ourselves now. Borovikov found out how it’s made—twenty-four parts of saltpeter, ten of sulphur and six of birchwood charcoal. It’s all pounded together, mixed into a paste with water and rubbed through a tammy sieve—that’s how it’s done.”

“Smurov told me about your powder, only father says it’s not real gunpowder,” responded Ilusha.

“Not real?” Kolya flushed. “It burns. I don’t know, of course.”

“No, I didn’t mean that,” put in the captain with a guilty face. “I only said that real powder is not made like that, but that’s nothing, it can be made so.”

“I don’t know, you know best. We lighted some in a pomatum pot, it burned splendidly, it all burnt away leaving only a tiny ash. But that was only the paste, and if you rub it through ... but of course you know best, I don’t know.... And Bulkin’s father thrashed him on account of our powder, did you hear?” he turned to Ilusha.

“Yes,” answered Ilusha. He listened to Kolya with immense interest and enjoyment.

“We had prepared a whole bottle of it and he used to keep it under his bed. His father saw it. He said it might explode, and thrashed him on the spot. He was going to make a complaint against me to the masters. He is not allowed to go about with me now, no one is allowed to go about with me now. Smurov is not allowed to either, I’ve got a bad name with every one. They say I’m a ‘desperate character,’” Kolya smiled scornfully. “It all began from what happened on the railway.”

“Ah, we’ve heard of that exploit of yours, too,” cried the captain. “How could you lie still on the line? Is it possible you weren’t the least afraid, lying there under the train? Weren’t you frightened?”

The captain was abject in his flattery of Kolya.

“N—not particularly,” answered Kolya carelessly. “What’s blasted my reputation more than anything here was that cursed goose,” he said, turning again to Ilusha. But though he assumed an unconcerned air as he talked, he still could not control himself and was continually missing the note he tried to keep up.

“Ah! I heard about the goose!” Ilusha laughed, beaming all over. “They told me, but I didn’t understand. Did they really take you to the court?”

“The most stupid, trivial affair, they made a mountain of a molehill as they always do,” Kolya began carelessly. “I was walking through the market-place here one day, just when they’d driven in the geese. I stopped and looked at them. All at once a fellow, who is an errand-boy at Plotnikov’s now, looked at me and said, ‘What are you looking at the geese for?’ I looked at him; he was a stupid, moon-faced fellow of twenty. I am always on the side of the peasantry, you know. I like talking to the peasants.... We’ve dropped behind the peasants—that’s an axiom. I believe you are laughing, Karamazov?”

“No, Heaven forbid, I am listening,” said Alyosha with a most good-natured air, and the sensitive Kolya was immediately reassured.

“My theory, Karamazov, is clear and simple,” he hurried on again, looking pleased. “I believe in the people and am always glad to give them their due, but I am not for spoiling them, that is a sine qua non ... But I was telling you about the goose. So I turned to the fool and answered, ‘I am wondering what the goose thinks about.’ He looked at me quite stupidly, ‘And what does the goose think about?’ he asked. ‘Do you see that cart full of oats?’ I said. ‘The oats are dropping out of the sack, and the goose has put its neck right under the wheel to gobble them up—do you see?’ ‘I see that quite well,’ he said. ‘Well,’ said I, ‘if that cart were to move on a little, would it break the goose’s neck or not?’ ‘It’d be sure to break it,’ and he grinned all over his face, highly delighted. ‘Come on, then,’ said I, ‘let’s try.’ ‘Let’s,’ he said. And it did not take us long to arrange: he stood at the bridle without being noticed, and I stood on one side to direct the goose. And the owner wasn’t looking, he was talking to some one, so I had nothing to do, the goose thrust its head in after the oats of itself, under the cart, just under the wheel. I winked at the lad, he tugged at the bridle, and crack. The goose’s neck was broken in half. And, as luck would have it, all the peasants saw us at that moment and they kicked up a shindy at once. ‘You did that on purpose!’ ‘No, not on purpose.’ ‘Yes, you did, on purpose!’ Well, they shouted, ‘Take him to the justice of the peace!’ They took me, too. ‘You were there, too,’ they said, ‘you helped, you’re known all over the market!’ And, for some reason, I really am known all over the market,” Kolya added conceitedly. “We all went off to the justice’s, they brought the goose, too. The fellow was crying in a great funk, simply blubbering like a woman. And the farmer kept shouting that you could kill any number of geese like that. Well, of course, there were witnesses. The justice of the peace settled it in a minute, that the farmer was to be paid a rouble for the goose, and the fellow to have the goose. And he was warned not to play such pranks again. And the fellow kept blubbering like a woman. ‘It wasn’t me,’ he said, ‘it was he egged me on,’ and he pointed to me. I answered with the utmost composure that I hadn’t egged him on, that I simply stated the general proposition, had spoken hypothetically. The justice of the peace smiled and was vexed with himself at once for having smiled. ‘I’ll complain to your masters of you, so that for the future you mayn’t waste your time on such general propositions, instead of sitting at your books and learning your lessons.’ He didn’t complain to the masters, that was a joke, but the matter was noised abroad and came to the ears of the masters. Their ears are long, you know! The classical master, Kolbasnikov, was particularly shocked about it, but Dardanelov got me off again. But Kolbasnikov is savage with every one now like a green ass. Did you know, Ilusha, he is just married, got a dowry of a thousand roubles, and his bride’s a regular fright of the first rank and the last degree. The third-class fellows wrote an epigram on it:

Astounding news has reached the class, Kolbasnikov has been an ass.

And so on, awfully funny, I’ll bring it to you later on. I say nothing against Dardanelov, he is a learned man, there’s no doubt about it. I respect men like that and it’s not because he stood up for me.”

“But you took him down about the founders of Troy!” Smurov put in suddenly, unmistakably proud of Krassotkin at such a moment. He was particularly pleased with the story of the goose.

“Did you really take him down?” the captain inquired, in a flattering way. “On the question who founded Troy? We heard of it, Ilusha told me about it at the time.”

“He knows everything, father, he knows more than any of us!” put in Ilusha; “he only pretends to be like that, but really he is top in every subject....”

Ilusha looked at Kolya with infinite happiness.

“Oh, that’s all nonsense about Troy, a trivial matter. I consider this an unimportant question,” said Kolya with haughty humility. He had by now completely recovered his dignity, though he was still a little uneasy. He felt that he was greatly excited and that he had talked about the goose, for instance, with too little reserve, while Alyosha had looked serious and had not said a word all the time. And the vain boy began by degrees to have a rankling fear that Alyosha was silent because he despised him, and thought he was showing off before him. If he dared to think anything like that Kolya would—

“I regard the question as quite a trivial one,” he rapped out again, proudly.

“And I know who founded Troy,” a boy, who had not spoken before, said suddenly, to the surprise of every one. He was silent and seemed to be shy. He was a pretty boy of about eleven, called Kartashov. He was sitting near the door. Kolya looked at him with dignified amazement.

The fact was that the identity of the founders of Troy had become a secret for the whole school, a secret which could only be discovered by reading Smaragdov, and no one had Smaragdov but Kolya. One day, when Kolya’s back was turned, Kartashov hastily opened Smaragdov, which lay among Kolya’s books, and immediately lighted on the passage relating to the foundation of Troy. This was a good time ago, but he felt uneasy and could not bring himself to announce publicly that he too knew who had founded Troy, afraid of what might happen and of Krassotkin’s somehow putting him to shame over it. But now he couldn’t resist saying it. For weeks he had been longing to.

“Well, who did found it?” asked Kolya, turning to him with haughty superciliousness. He saw from his face that he really did know and at once made up his mind how to take it. There was, so to speak, a discordant note in the general harmony.

“Troy was founded by Teucer, Dardanus, Ilius and Tros,” the boy rapped out at once, and in the same instant he blushed, blushed so, that it was painful to look at him. But the boys stared at him, stared at him for a whole minute, and then all the staring eyes turned at once and were fastened upon Kolya, who was still scanning the audacious boy with disdainful composure.

“In what sense did they found it?” he deigned to comment at last. “And what is meant by founding a city or a state? What do they do? Did they go and each lay a brick, do you suppose?”

There was laughter. The offending boy turned from pink to crimson. He was silent and on the point of tears. Kolya held him so for a minute.

“Before you talk of a historical event like the foundation of a nationality, you must first understand what you mean by it,” he admonished him in stern, incisive tones. “But I attach no consequence to these old wives’ tales and I don’t think much of universal history in general,” he added carelessly, addressing the company generally.

“Universal history?” the captain inquired, looking almost scared.

“Yes, universal history! It’s the study of the successive follies of mankind and nothing more. The only subjects I respect are mathematics and natural science,” said Kolya. He was showing off and he stole a glance at Alyosha; his was the only opinion he was afraid of there. But Alyosha was still silent and still serious as before. If Alyosha had said a word it would have stopped him, but Alyosha was silent and “it might be the silence of contempt,” and that finally irritated Kolya.

“The classical languages, too ... they are simply madness, nothing more. You seem to disagree with me again, Karamazov?”

“I don’t agree,” said Alyosha, with a faint smile.

“The study of the classics, if you ask my opinion, is simply a police measure, that’s simply why it has been introduced into our schools.” By degrees Kolya began to get breathless again. “Latin and Greek were introduced because they are a bore and because they stupefy the intellect. It was dull before, so what could they do to make things duller? It was senseless enough before, so what could they do to make it more senseless? So they thought of Greek and Latin. That’s my opinion, I hope I shall never change it,” Kolya finished abruptly. His cheeks were flushed.

“That’s true,” assented Smurov suddenly, in a ringing tone of conviction. He had listened attentively.

“And yet he is first in Latin himself,” cried one of the group of boys suddenly.

“Yes, father, he says that and yet he is first in Latin,” echoed Ilusha.

“What of it?” Kolya thought fit to defend himself, though the praise was very sweet to him. “I am fagging away at Latin because I have to, because I promised my mother to pass my examination, and I think that whatever you do, it’s worth doing it well. But in my soul I have a profound contempt for the classics and all that fraud.... You don’t agree, Karamazov?”

“Why ‘fraud’?” Alyosha smiled again.

“Well, all the classical authors have been translated into all languages, so it was not for the sake of studying the classics they introduced Latin, but solely as a police measure, to stupefy the intelligence. So what can one call it but a fraud?”

“Why, who taught you all this?” cried Alyosha, surprised at last.

“In the first place I am capable of thinking for myself without being taught. Besides, what I said just now about the classics being translated our teacher Kolbasnikov has said to the whole of the third class.”

“The doctor has come!” cried Nina, who had been silent till then.

A carriage belonging to Madame Hohlakov drove up to the gate. The captain, who had been expecting the doctor all the morning, rushed headlong out to meet him. “Mamma” pulled herself together and assumed a dignified air. Alyosha went up to Ilusha and began setting his pillows straight. Nina, from her invalid chair, anxiously watched him putting the bed tidy. The boys hurriedly took leave. Some of them promised to come again in the evening. Kolya called Perezvon and the dog jumped off the bed.

“I won’t go away, I won’t go away,” Kolya said hastily to Ilusha. “I’ll wait in the passage and come back when the doctor’s gone, I’ll come back with Perezvon.”

But by now the doctor had entered, an important-looking person with long, dark whiskers and a shiny, shaven chin, wearing a bearskin coat. As he crossed the threshold he stopped, taken aback; he probably fancied he had come to the wrong place. “How is this? Where am I?” he muttered, not removing his coat nor his peaked sealskin cap. The crowd, the poverty of the room, the washing hanging on a line in the corner, puzzled him. The captain, bent double, was bowing low before him.

“It’s here, sir, here, sir,” he muttered cringingly; “it’s here, you’ve come right, you were coming to us...”

“Sne-gi-ryov?” the doctor said loudly and pompously. “Mr. Snegiryov—is that you?”

“That’s me, sir!”

“Ah!”

The doctor looked round the room with a squeamish air once more and threw off his coat, displaying to all eyes the grand decoration at his neck. The captain caught the fur coat in the air, and the doctor took off his cap.

“Where is the patient?” he asked emphatically.

VI. Precocity

“What do you think the doctor will say to him?” Kolya asked quickly. “What a repulsive mug, though, hasn’t he? I can’t endure medicine!”

“Ilusha is dying. I think that’s certain,” answered Alyosha, mournfully.

“They are rogues! Medicine’s a fraud! I am glad to have made your acquaintance, though, Karamazov. I wanted to know you for a long time. I am only sorry we meet in such sad circumstances.”

Kolya had a great inclination to say something even warmer and more demonstrative, but he felt ill at ease. Alyosha noticed this, smiled, and pressed his hand.

“I’ve long learned to respect you as a rare person,” Kolya muttered again, faltering and uncertain. “I have heard you are a mystic and have been in the monastery. I know you are a mystic, but ... that hasn’t put me off. Contact with real life will cure you.... It’s always so with characters like yours.”

“What do you mean by mystic? Cure me of what?” Alyosha was rather astonished.

“Oh, God and all the rest of it.”

“What, don’t you believe in God?”

“Oh, I’ve nothing against God. Of course, God is only a hypothesis, but ... I admit that He is needed ... for the order of the universe and all that ... and that if there were no God He would have to be invented,” added Kolya, beginning to blush. He suddenly fancied that Alyosha might think he was trying to show off his knowledge and to prove that he was “grown up.” “I haven’t the slightest desire to show off my knowledge to him,” Kolya thought indignantly. And all of a sudden he felt horribly annoyed.

“I must confess I can’t endure entering on such discussions,” he said with a final air. “It’s possible for one who doesn’t believe in God to love mankind, don’t you think so? Voltaire didn’t believe in God and loved mankind?” (“I am at it again,” he thought to himself.)

“Voltaire believed in God, though not very much, I think, and I don’t think he loved mankind very much either,” said Alyosha quietly, gently, and quite naturally, as though he were talking to some one of his own age, or even older. Kolya was particularly struck by Alyosha’s apparent diffidence about his opinion of Voltaire. He seemed to be leaving the question for him, little Kolya, to settle.

“Have you read Voltaire?” Alyosha finished.

“No, not to say read.... But I’ve read Candide in the Russian translation ... in an absurd, grotesque, old translation ... (At it again! again!)”

“And did you understand it?”

“Oh, yes, everything.... That is ... Why do you suppose I shouldn’t understand it? There’s a lot of nastiness in it, of course.... Of course I can understand that it’s a philosophical novel and written to advocate an idea....” Kolya was getting mixed by now. “I am a Socialist, Karamazov, I am an incurable Socialist,” he announced suddenly, apropos of nothing.

“A Socialist?” laughed Alyosha. “But when have you had time to become one? Why, I thought you were only thirteen?”

Kolya winced.

“In the first place I am not thirteen, but fourteen, fourteen in a fortnight,” he flushed angrily, “and in the second place I am at a complete loss to understand what my age has to do with it? The question is what are my convictions, not what is my age, isn’t it?”

“When you are older, you’ll understand for yourself the influence of age on convictions. I fancied, too, that you were not expressing your own ideas,” Alyosha answered serenely and modestly, but Kolya interrupted him hotly:

“Come, you want obedience and mysticism. You must admit that the Christian religion, for instance, has only been of use to the rich and the powerful to keep the lower classes in slavery. That’s so, isn’t it?”

“Ah, I know where you read that, and I am sure some one told you so!” cried Alyosha.

“I say, what makes you think I read it? And certainly no one told me so. I can think for myself.... I am not opposed to Christ, if you like. He was a most humane person, and if He were alive to-day, He would be found in the ranks of the revolutionists, and would perhaps play a conspicuous part.... There’s no doubt about that.”

“Oh, where, where did you get that from? What fool have you made friends with?” exclaimed Alyosha.

“Come, the truth will out! It has so chanced that I have often talked to Mr. Rakitin, of course, but ... old Byelinsky said that, too, so they say.”

“Byelinsky? I don’t remember. He hasn’t written that anywhere.”

“If he didn’t write it, they say he said it. I heard that from a ... but never mind.”

“And have you read Byelinsky?”

“Well, no ... I haven’t read all of him, but ... I read the passage about Tatyana, why she didn’t go off with Onyegin.”

“Didn’t go off with Onyegin? Surely you don’t ... understand that already?”

“Why, you seem to take me for little Smurov,” said Kolya, with a grin of irritation. “But please don’t suppose I am such a revolutionist. I often disagree with Mr. Rakitin. Though I mention Tatyana, I am not at all for the emancipation of women. I acknowledge that women are a subject race and must obey. Les femmes tricottent, as Napoleon said.” Kolya, for some reason, smiled, “And on that question at least I am quite of one mind with that pseudo-great man. I think, too, that to leave one’s own country and fly to America is mean, worse than mean—silly. Why go to America when one may be of great service to humanity here? Now especially. There’s a perfect mass of fruitful activity open to us. That’s what I answered.”

“What do you mean? Answered whom? Has some one suggested your going to America already?”

“I must own, they’ve been at me to go, but I declined. That’s between ourselves, of course, Karamazov; do you hear, not a word to any one. I say this only to you. I am not at all anxious to fall into the clutches of the secret police and take lessons at the Chain bridge.

Long will you remember The house at the Chain bridge.

Do you remember? It’s splendid. Why are you laughing? You don’t suppose I am fibbing, do you?” (“What if he should find out that I’ve only that one number of The Bell in father’s bookcase, and haven’t read any more of it?” Kolya thought with a shudder.)

“Oh, no, I am not laughing and don’t suppose for a moment that you are lying. No, indeed, I can’t suppose so, for all this, alas! is perfectly true. But tell me, have you read Pushkin—Onyegin, for instance?... You spoke just now of Tatyana.”

“No, I haven’t read it yet, but I want to read it. I have no prejudices, Karamazov; I want to hear both sides. What makes you ask?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“Tell me, Karamazov, have you an awful contempt for me?” Kolya rapped out suddenly and drew himself up before Alyosha, as though he were on drill. “Be so kind as to tell me, without beating about the bush.”

“I have a contempt for you?” Alyosha looked at him wondering. “What for? I am only sad that a charming nature such as yours should be perverted by all this crude nonsense before you have begun life.”

“Don’t be anxious about my nature,” Kolya interrupted, not without complacency. “But it’s true that I am stupidly sensitive, crudely sensitive. You smiled just now, and I fancied you seemed to—”

“Oh, my smile meant something quite different. I’ll tell you why I smiled. Not long ago I read the criticism made by a German who had lived in Russia, on our students and schoolboys of to-day. ‘Show a Russian schoolboy,’ he writes, ‘a map of the stars, which he knows nothing about, and he will give you back the map next day with corrections on it.’ No knowledge and unbounded conceit—that’s what the German meant to say about the Russian schoolboy.”

“Yes, that’s perfectly right,” Kolya laughed suddenly, “exactly so! Bravo the German! But he did not see the good side, what do you think? Conceit may be, that comes from youth, that will be corrected if need be, but, on the other hand, there is an independent spirit almost from childhood, boldness of thought and conviction, and not the spirit of these sausage makers, groveling before authority.... But the German was right all the same. Bravo the German! But Germans want strangling all the same. Though they are so good at science and learning they must be strangled.”

“Strangled, what for?” smiled Alyosha.

“Well, perhaps I am talking nonsense, I agree. I am awfully childish sometimes, and when I am pleased about anything I can’t restrain myself and am ready to talk any stuff. But, I say, we are chattering away here about nothing, and that doctor has been a long time in there. But perhaps he’s examining the mamma and that poor crippled Nina. I liked that Nina, you know. She whispered to me suddenly as I was coming away, ‘Why didn’t you come before?’ And in such a voice, so reproachfully! I think she is awfully nice and pathetic.”

“Yes, yes! Well, you’ll be coming often, you will see what she is like. It would do you a great deal of good to know people like that, to learn to value a great deal which you will find out from knowing these people,” Alyosha observed warmly. “That would have more effect on you than anything.”

“Oh, how I regret and blame myself for not having come sooner!” Kolya exclaimed, with bitter feeling.

“Yes, it’s a great pity. You saw for yourself how delighted the poor child was to see you. And how he fretted for you to come!”

“Don’t tell me! You make it worse! But it serves me right. What kept me from coming was my conceit, my egoistic vanity, and the beastly wilfullness, which I never can get rid of, though I’ve been struggling with it all my life. I see that now. I am a beast in lots of ways, Karamazov!”

“No, you have a charming nature, though it’s been distorted, and I quite understand why you have had such an influence on this generous, morbidly sensitive boy,” Alyosha answered warmly.

“And you say that to me!” cried Kolya; “and would you believe it, I thought—I’ve thought several times since I’ve been here—that you despised me! If only you knew how I prize your opinion!”

“But are you really so sensitive? At your age! Would you believe it, just now, when you were telling your story, I thought, as I watched you, that you must be very sensitive!”

“You thought so? What an eye you’ve got, I say! I bet that was when I was talking about the goose. That was just when I was fancying you had a great contempt for me for being in such a hurry to show off, and for a moment I quite hated you for it, and began talking like a fool. Then I fancied—just now, here—when I said that if there were no God He would have to be invented, that I was in too great a hurry to display my knowledge, especially as I got that phrase out of a book. But I swear I wasn’t showing off out of vanity, though I really don’t know why. Because I was so pleased? Yes, I believe it was because I was so pleased ... though it’s perfectly disgraceful for any one to be gushing directly they are pleased, I know that. But I am convinced now that you don’t despise me; it was all my imagination. Oh, Karamazov, I am profoundly unhappy. I sometimes fancy all sorts of things, that every one is laughing at me, the whole world, and then I feel ready to overturn the whole order of things.”

“And you worry every one about you,” smiled Alyosha.

“Yes, I worry every one about me, especially my mother. Karamazov, tell me, am I very ridiculous now?”

“Don’t think about that, don’t think of it at all!” cried Alyosha. “And what does ridiculous mean? Isn’t every one constantly being or seeming ridiculous? Besides, nearly all clever people now are fearfully afraid of being ridiculous, and that makes them unhappy. All I am surprised at is that you should be feeling that so early, though I’ve observed it for some time past, and not only in you. Nowadays the very children have begun to suffer from it. It’s almost a sort of insanity. The devil has taken the form of that vanity and entered into the whole generation; it’s simply the devil,” added Alyosha, without a trace of the smile that Kolya, staring at him, expected to see. “You are like every one else,” said Alyosha, in conclusion, “that is, like very many others. Only you must not be like everybody else, that’s all.”

“Even if every one is like that?”

“Yes, even if every one is like that. You be the only one not like it. You really are not like every one else, here you are not ashamed to confess to something bad and even ridiculous. And who will admit so much in these days? No one. And people have even ceased to feel the impulse to self-criticism. Don’t be like every one else, even if you are the only one.”

“Splendid! I was not mistaken in you. You know how to console one. Oh, how I have longed to know you, Karamazov! I’ve long been eager for this meeting. Can you really have thought about me, too? You said just now that you thought of me, too?”

“Yes, I’d heard of you and had thought of you, too ... and if it’s partly vanity that makes you ask, it doesn’t matter.”

“Do you know, Karamazov, our talk has been like a declaration of love,” said Kolya, in a bashful and melting voice. “That’s not ridiculous, is it?”

“Not at all ridiculous, and if it were, it wouldn’t matter, because it’s been a good thing.” Alyosha smiled brightly.

“But do you know, Karamazov, you must admit that you are a little ashamed yourself, now.... I see it by your eyes.” Kolya smiled with a sort of sly happiness.

“Why ashamed?”

“Well, why are you blushing?”

“It was you made me blush,” laughed Alyosha, and he really did blush. “Oh, well, I am a little, goodness knows why, I don’t know...” he muttered, almost embarrassed.

“Oh, how I love you and admire you at this moment just because you are rather ashamed! Because you are just like me,” cried Kolya, in positive ecstasy. His cheeks glowed, his eyes beamed.

“You know, Kolya, you will be very unhappy in your life,” something made Alyosha say suddenly.

“I know, I know. How you know it all beforehand!” Kolya agreed at once.

“But you will bless life on the whole, all the same.”

“Just so, hurrah! You are a prophet. Oh, we shall get on together, Karamazov! Do you know, what delights me most, is that you treat me quite like an equal. But we are not equals, no, we are not, you are better! But we shall get on. Do you know, all this last month, I’ve been saying to myself, ‘Either we shall be friends at once, for ever, or we shall part enemies to the grave!’”

“And saying that, of course, you loved me,” Alyosha laughed gayly.

“I did. I loved you awfully. I’ve been loving and dreaming of you. And how do you know it all beforehand? Ah, here’s the doctor. Goodness! What will he tell us? Look at his face!”

VII. Ilusha

The doctor came out of the room again, muffled in his fur coat and with his cap on his head. His face looked almost angry and disgusted, as though he were afraid of getting dirty. He cast a cursory glance round the passage, looking sternly at Alyosha and Kolya as he did so. Alyosha waved from the door to the coachman, and the carriage that had brought the doctor drove up. The captain darted out after the doctor, and, bowing apologetically, stopped him to get the last word. The poor fellow looked utterly crushed; there was a scared look in his eyes.

“Your Excellency, your Excellency ... is it possible?” he began, but could not go on and clasped his hands in despair. Yet he still gazed imploringly at the doctor, as though a word from him might still change the poor boy’s fate.

“I can’t help it, I am not God!” the doctor answered offhand, though with the customary impressiveness.

“Doctor ... your Excellency ... and will it be soon, soon?”

“You must be prepared for anything,” said the doctor in emphatic and incisive tones, and dropping his eyes, he was about to step out to the coach.

“Your Excellency, for Christ’s sake!” the terror-stricken captain stopped him again. “Your Excellency! but can nothing, absolutely nothing save him now?”

“It’s not in my hands now,” said the doctor impatiently, “but h’m!...” he stopped suddenly. “If you could, for instance ... send ... your patient ... at once, without delay” (the words “at once, without delay,” the doctor uttered with an almost wrathful sternness that made the captain start) “to Syracuse, the change to the new be-ne-ficial climatic conditions might possibly effect—”

“To Syracuse!” cried the captain, unable to grasp what was said.

“Syracuse is in Sicily,” Kolya jerked out suddenly in explanation. The doctor looked at him.

“Sicily! your Excellency,” faltered the captain, “but you’ve seen”—he spread out his hands, indicating his surroundings—“mamma and my family?”

“N—no, Sicily is not the place for the family, the family should go to Caucasus in the early spring ... your daughter must go to the Caucasus, and your wife ... after a course of the waters in the Caucasus for her rheumatism ... must be sent straight to Paris to the mental specialist Lepelletier; I could give you a note to him, and then ... there might be a change—”

“Doctor, doctor! But you see!” The captain flung wide his hands again despairingly, indicating the bare wooden walls of the passage.

“Well, that’s not my business,” grinned the doctor. “I have only told you the answer of medical science to your question as to possible treatment. As for the rest, to my regret—”

“Don’t be afraid, apothecary, my dog won’t bite you,” Kolya rapped out loudly, noticing the doctor’s rather uneasy glance at Perezvon, who was standing in the doorway. There was a wrathful note in Kolya’s voice. He used the word apothecary instead of doctor on purpose, and, as he explained afterwards, used it “to insult him.”

“What’s that?” The doctor flung up his head, staring with surprise at Kolya. “Who’s this?” he addressed Alyosha, as though asking him to explain.

“It’s Perezvon’s master, don’t worry about me,” Kolya said incisively again.

“Perezvon?”[7] repeated the doctor, perplexed.

“He hears the bell, but where it is he cannot tell. Good-by, we shall meet in Syracuse.”

“Who’s this? Who’s this?” The doctor flew into a terrible rage.

“He is a schoolboy, doctor, he is a mischievous boy; take no notice of him,” said Alyosha, frowning and speaking quickly. “Kolya, hold your tongue!” he cried to Krassotkin. “Take no notice of him, doctor,” he repeated, rather impatiently.

“He wants a thrashing, a good thrashing!” The doctor stamped in a perfect fury.

“And you know, apothecary, my Perezvon might bite!” said Kolya, turning pale, with quivering voice and flashing eyes. “Ici, Perezvon!”

“Kolya, if you say another word, I’ll have nothing more to do with you,” Alyosha cried peremptorily.

“There is only one man in the world who can command Nikolay Krassotkin—this is the man”; Kolya pointed to Alyosha. “I obey him, good-by!”

He stepped forward, opened the door, and quickly went into the inner room. Perezvon flew after him. The doctor stood still for five seconds in amazement, looking at Alyosha; then, with a curse, he went out quickly to the carriage, repeating aloud, “This is ... this is ... I don’t know what it is!” The captain darted forward to help him into the carriage. Alyosha followed Kolya into the room. He was already by Ilusha’s bedside. The sick boy was holding his hand and calling for his father. A minute later the captain, too, came back.

“Father, father, come ... we ...” Ilusha faltered in violent excitement, but apparently unable to go on, he flung his wasted arms round his father and Kolya, uniting them in one embrace, and hugging them as tightly as he could. The captain suddenly began to shake with dumb sobs, and Kolya’s lips and chin twitched.

“Father, father! How sorry I am for you!” Ilusha moaned bitterly.

“Ilusha ... darling ... the doctor said ... you would be all right ... we shall be happy ... the doctor ...” the captain began.

“Ah, father! I know what the new doctor said to you about me.... I saw!” cried Ilusha, and again he hugged them both with all his strength, hiding his face on his father’s shoulder.

“Father, don’t cry, and when I die get a good boy, another one ... choose one of them all, a good one, call him Ilusha and love him instead of me....”

“Hush, old man, you’ll get well,” Krassotkin cried suddenly, in a voice that sounded angry.

“But don’t ever forget me, father,” Ilusha went on, “come to my grave ... and, father, bury me by our big stone, where we used to go for our walk, and come to me there with Krassotkin in the evening ... and Perezvon ... I shall expect you.... Father, father!”

His voice broke. They were all three silent, still embracing. Nina was crying quietly in her chair, and at last seeing them all crying, “mamma,” too, burst into tears.

“Ilusha! Ilusha!” she exclaimed.

Krassotkin suddenly released himself from Ilusha’s embrace.

“Good-by, old man, mother expects me back to dinner,” he said quickly. “What a pity I did not tell her! She will be dreadfully anxious.... But after dinner I’ll come back to you for the whole day, for the whole evening, and I’ll tell you all sorts of things, all sorts of things. And I’ll bring Perezvon, but now I will take him with me, because he will begin to howl when I am away and bother you. Good-by!”

And he ran out into the passage. He didn’t want to cry, but in the passage he burst into tears. Alyosha found him crying.

“Kolya, you must be sure to keep your word and come, or he will be terribly disappointed,” Alyosha said emphatically.

“I will! Oh, how I curse myself for not having come before!” muttered Kolya, crying, and no longer ashamed of it.

At that moment the captain flew out of the room, and at once closed the door behind him. His face looked frenzied, his lips were trembling. He stood before the two and flung up his arms.

“I don’t want a good boy! I don’t want another boy!” he muttered in a wild whisper, clenching his teeth. “If I forget thee, Jerusalem, may my tongue—” He broke off with a sob and sank on his knees before the wooden bench. Pressing his fists against his head, he began sobbing with absurd whimpering cries, doing his utmost that his cries should not be heard in the room.

Kolya ran out into the street.

“Good-by, Karamazov? Will you come yourself?” he cried sharply and angrily to Alyosha.

“I will certainly come in the evening.”

“What was that he said about Jerusalem?... What did he mean by that?”

“It’s from the Bible. ‘If I forget thee, Jerusalem,’ that is, if I forget all that is most precious to me, if I let anything take its place, then may—”

“I understand, that’s enough! Mind you come! Ici, Perezvon!” he cried with positive ferocity to the dog, and with rapid strides he went home.

I. At Grushenka’s

Alyosha went towards the cathedral square to the widow Morozov’s house to see Grushenka, who had sent Fenya to him early in the morning with an urgent message begging him to come. Questioning Fenya, Alyosha learned that her mistress had been particularly distressed since the previous day. During the two months that had passed since Mitya’s arrest, Alyosha had called frequently at the widow Morozov’s house, both from his own inclination and to take messages for Mitya. Three days after Mitya’s arrest, Grushenka was taken very ill and was ill for nearly five weeks. For one whole week she was unconscious. She was very much changed—thinner and a little sallow, though she had for the past fortnight been well enough to go out. But to Alyosha her face was even more attractive than before, and he liked to meet her eyes when he went in to her. A look of firmness and intelligent purpose had developed in her face. There were signs of a spiritual transformation in her, and a steadfast, fine and humble determination that nothing could shake could be discerned in her. There was a small vertical line between her brows which gave her charming face a look of concentrated thought, almost austere at the first glance. There was scarcely a trace of her former frivolity.

It seemed strange to Alyosha, too, that in spite of the calamity that had overtaken the poor girl, betrothed to a man who had been arrested for a terrible crime, almost at the instant of their betrothal, in spite of her illness and the almost inevitable sentence hanging over Mitya, Grushenka had not yet lost her youthful cheerfulness. There was a soft light in the once proud eyes, though at times they gleamed with the old vindictive fire when she was visited by one disturbing thought stronger than ever in her heart. The object of that uneasiness was the same as ever—Katerina Ivanovna, of whom Grushenka had even raved when she lay in delirium. Alyosha knew that she was fearfully jealous of her. Yet Katerina Ivanovna had not once visited Mitya in his prison, though she might have done it whenever she liked. All this made a difficult problem for Alyosha, for he was the only person to whom Grushenka opened her heart and from whom she was continually asking advice. Sometimes he was unable to say anything.

Full of anxiety he entered her lodging. She was at home. She had returned from seeing Mitya half an hour before, and from the rapid movement with which she leapt up from her chair to meet him he saw that she had been expecting him with great impatience. A pack of cards dealt for a game of “fools” lay on the table. A bed had been made up on the leather sofa on the other side and Maximov lay, half-reclining, on it. He wore a dressing-gown and a cotton nightcap, and was evidently ill and weak, though he was smiling blissfully. When the homeless old man returned with Grushenka from Mokroe two months before, he had simply stayed on and was still staying with her. He arrived with her in rain and sleet, sat down on the sofa, drenched and scared, and gazed mutely at her with a timid, appealing smile. Grushenka, who was in terrible grief and in the first stage of fever, almost forgot his existence in all she had to do the first half-hour after her arrival. Suddenly she chanced to look at him intently: he laughed a pitiful, helpless little laugh. She called Fenya and told her to give him something to eat. All that day he sat in the same place, almost without stirring. When it got dark and the shutters were closed, Fenya asked her mistress:

“Is the gentleman going to stay the night, mistress?”

“Yes; make him a bed on the sofa,” answered Grushenka.

Questioning him more in detail, Grushenka learned from him that he had literally nowhere to go, and that “Mr. Kalganov, my benefactor, told me straight that he wouldn’t receive me again and gave me five roubles.”

“Well, God bless you, you’d better stay, then,” Grushenka decided in her grief, smiling compassionately at him. Her smile wrung the old man’s heart and his lips twitched with grateful tears. And so the destitute wanderer had stayed with her ever since. He did not leave the house even when she was ill. Fenya and her grandmother, the cook, did not turn him out, but went on serving him meals and making up his bed on the sofa. Grushenka had grown used to him, and coming back from seeing Mitya (whom she had begun to visit in prison before she was really well) she would sit down and begin talking to “Maximushka” about trifling matters, to keep her from thinking of her sorrow. The old man turned out to be a good story-teller on occasions, so that at last he became necessary to her. Grushenka saw scarcely any one else beside Alyosha, who did not come every day and never stayed long. Her old merchant lay seriously ill at this time, “at his last gasp” as they said in the town, and he did, in fact, die a week after Mitya’s trial. Three weeks before his death, feeling the end approaching, he made his sons, their wives and children, come upstairs to him at last and bade them not leave him again. From that moment he gave strict orders to his servants not to admit Grushenka and to tell her if she came, “The master wishes you long life and happiness and tells you to forget him.” But Grushenka sent almost every day to inquire after him.

“You’ve come at last!” she cried, flinging down the cards and joyfully greeting Alyosha, “and Maximushka’s been scaring me that perhaps you wouldn’t come. Ah, how I need you! Sit down to the table. What will you have—coffee?”

“Yes, please,” said Alyosha, sitting down at the table. “I am very hungry.”

“That’s right. Fenya, Fenya, coffee,” cried Grushenka. “It’s been made a long time ready for you. And bring some little pies, and mind they are hot. Do you know, we’ve had a storm over those pies to-day. I took them to the prison for him, and would you believe it, he threw them back to me: he would not eat them. He flung one of them on the floor and stamped on it. So I said to him: ‘I shall leave them with the warder; if you don’t eat them before evening, it will be that your venomous spite is enough for you!’ With that I went away. We quarreled again, would you believe it? Whenever I go we quarrel.”

Grushenka said all this in one breath in her agitation. Maximov, feeling nervous, at once smiled and looked on the floor.

“What did you quarrel about this time?” asked Alyosha.

“I didn’t expect it in the least. Only fancy, he is jealous of the Pole. ‘Why are you keeping him?’ he said. ‘So you’ve begun keeping him.’ He is jealous, jealous of me all the time, jealous eating and sleeping! He even took it into his head to be jealous of Kuzma last week.”

“But he knew about the Pole before?”

“Yes, but there it is. He has known about him from the very beginning, but to-day he suddenly got up and began scolding about him. I am ashamed to repeat what he said. Silly fellow! Rakitin went in as I came out. Perhaps Rakitin is egging him on. What do you think?” she added carelessly.

“He loves you, that’s what it is: he loves you so much. And now he is particularly worried.”

“I should think he might be, with the trial to-morrow. And I went to him to say something about to-morrow, for I dread to think what’s going to happen then. You say that he is worried, but how worried I am! And he talks about the Pole! He’s too silly! He is not jealous of Maximushka yet, anyway.”

“My wife was dreadfully jealous over me, too,” Maximov put in his word.

“Jealous of you?” Grushenka laughed in spite of herself. “Of whom could she have been jealous?”

“Of the servant girls.”

“Hold your tongue, Maximushka, I am in no laughing mood now; I feel angry. Don’t ogle the pies. I shan’t give you any; they are not good for you, and I won’t give you any vodka either. I have to look after him, too, just as though I kept an almshouse,” she laughed.

“I don’t deserve your kindness. I am a worthless creature,” said Maximov, with tears in his voice. “You would do better to spend your kindness on people of more use than me.”

“Ech, every one is of use, Maximushka, and how can we tell who’s of most use? If only that Pole didn’t exist, Alyosha. He’s taken it into his head to fall ill, too, to-day. I’ve been to see him also. And I shall send him some pies, too, on purpose. I hadn’t sent him any, but Mitya accused me of it, so now I shall send some! Ah, here’s Fenya with a letter! Yes, it’s from the Poles—begging again!”

Pan Mussyalovitch had indeed sent an extremely long and characteristically eloquent letter in which he begged her to lend him three roubles. In the letter was enclosed a receipt for the sum, with a promise to repay it within three months, signed by Pan Vrublevsky as well. Grushenka had received many such letters, accompanied by such receipts, from her former lover during the fortnight of her convalescence. But she knew that the two Poles had been to ask after her health during her illness. The first letter Grushenka got from them was a long one, written on large notepaper and with a big family crest on the seal. It was so obscure and rhetorical that Grushenka put it down before she had read half, unable to make head or tail of it. She could not attend to letters then. The first letter was followed next day by another in which Pan Mussyalovitch begged her for a loan of two thousand roubles for a very short period. Grushenka left that letter, too, unanswered. A whole series of letters had followed—one every day—all as pompous and rhetorical, but the loan asked for, gradually diminishing, dropped to a hundred roubles, then to twenty-five, to ten, and finally Grushenka received a letter in which both the Poles begged her for only one rouble and included a receipt signed by both.

Then Grushenka suddenly felt sorry for them, and at dusk she went round herself to their lodging. She found the two Poles in great poverty, almost destitution, without food or fuel, without cigarettes, in debt to their landlady. The two hundred roubles they had carried off from Mitya at Mokroe had soon disappeared. But Grushenka was surprised at their meeting her with arrogant dignity and self-assertion, with the greatest punctilio and pompous speeches. Grushenka simply laughed, and gave her former admirer ten roubles. Then, laughing, she told Mitya of it and he was not in the least jealous. But ever since, the Poles had attached themselves to Grushenka and bombarded her daily with requests for money and she had always sent them small sums. And now that day Mitya had taken it into his head to be fearfully jealous.

“Like a fool, I went round to him just for a minute, on the way to see Mitya, for he is ill, too, my Pole,” Grushenka began again with nervous haste. “I was laughing, telling Mitya about it. ‘Fancy,’ I said, ‘my Pole had the happy thought to sing his old songs to me to the guitar. He thought I would be touched and marry him!’ Mitya leapt up swearing.... So, there, I’ll send them the pies! Fenya, is it that little girl they’ve sent? Here, give her three roubles and pack a dozen pies up in a paper and tell her to take them. And you, Alyosha, be sure to tell Mitya that I did send them the pies.”

“I wouldn’t tell him for anything,” said Alyosha, smiling.

“Ech! You think he is unhappy about it. Why, he’s jealous on purpose. He doesn’t care,” said Grushenka bitterly.

“On purpose?” queried Alyosha.

“I tell you you are silly, Alyosha. You know nothing about it, with all your cleverness. I am not offended that he is jealous of a girl like me. I would be offended if he were not jealous. I am like that. I am not offended at jealousy. I have a fierce heart, too. I can be jealous myself. Only what offends me is that he doesn’t love me at all. I tell you he is jealous now on purpose. Am I blind? Don’t I see? He began talking to me just now of that woman, of Katerina, saying she was this and that, how she had ordered a doctor from Moscow for him, to try and save him; how she had ordered the best counsel, the most learned one, too. So he loves her, if he’ll praise her to my face, more shame to him! He’s treated me badly himself, so he attacked me, to make out I am in fault first and to throw it all on me. ‘You were with your Pole before me, so I can’t be blamed for Katerina,’ that’s what it amounts to. He wants to throw the whole blame on me. He attacked me on purpose, on purpose, I tell you, but I’ll—”

Grushenka could not finish saying what she would do. She hid her eyes in her handkerchief and sobbed violently.

“He doesn’t love Katerina Ivanovna,” said Alyosha firmly.

“Well, whether he loves her or not, I’ll soon find out for myself,” said Grushenka, with a menacing note in her voice, taking the handkerchief from her eyes. Her face was distorted. Alyosha saw sorrowfully that from being mild and serene, it had become sullen and spiteful.

“Enough of this foolishness,” she said suddenly; “it’s not for that I sent for you. Alyosha, darling, to-morrow—what will happen to-morrow? That’s what worries me! And it’s only me it worries! I look at every one and no one is thinking of it. No one cares about it. Are you thinking about it even? To-morrow he’ll be tried, you know. Tell me, how will he be tried? You know it’s the valet, the valet killed him! Good heavens! Can they condemn him in place of the valet and will no one stand up for him? They haven’t troubled the valet at all, have they?”

“He’s been severely cross-examined,” observed Alyosha thoughtfully; “but every one came to the conclusion it was not he. Now he is lying very ill. He has been ill ever since that attack. Really ill,” added Alyosha.

“Oh, dear! couldn’t you go to that counsel yourself and tell him the whole thing by yourself? He’s been brought from Petersburg for three thousand roubles, they say.”

“We gave these three thousand together—Ivan, Katerina Ivanovna and I—but she paid two thousand for the doctor from Moscow herself. The counsel Fetyukovitch would have charged more, but the case has become known all over Russia; it’s talked of in all the papers and journals. Fetyukovitch agreed to come more for the glory of the thing, because the case has become so notorious. I saw him yesterday.”

“Well? Did you talk to him?” Grushenka put in eagerly.

“He listened and said nothing. He told me that he had already formed his opinion. But he promised to give my words consideration.”

“Consideration! Ah, they are swindlers! They’ll ruin him. And why did she send for the doctor?”

“As an expert. They want to prove that Mitya’s mad and committed the murder when he didn’t know what he was doing”; Alyosha smiled gently; “but Mitya won’t agree to that.”

“Yes; but that would be the truth if he had killed him!” cried Grushenka. “He was mad then, perfectly mad, and that was my fault, wretch that I am! But, of course, he didn’t do it, he didn’t do it! And they are all against him, the whole town. Even Fenya’s evidence went to prove he had done it. And the people at the shop, and that official, and at the tavern, too, before, people had heard him say so! They are all, all against him, all crying out against him.”

“Yes, there’s a fearful accumulation of evidence,” Alyosha observed grimly.

“And Grigory—Grigory Vassilyevitch—sticks to his story that the door was open, persists that he saw it—there’s no shaking him. I went and talked to him myself. He’s rude about it, too.”

“Yes, that’s perhaps the strongest evidence against him,” said Alyosha.

“And as for Mitya’s being mad, he certainly seems like it now,” Grushenka began with a peculiarly anxious and mysterious air. “Do you know, Alyosha, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about it for a long time. I go to him every day and simply wonder at him. Tell me, now, what do you suppose he’s always talking about? He talks and talks and I can make nothing of it. I fancied he was talking of something intellectual that I couldn’t understand in my foolishness. Only he suddenly began talking to me about a babe—that is, about some child. ‘Why is the babe poor?’ he said. ‘It’s for that babe I am going to Siberia now. I am not a murderer, but I must go to Siberia!’ What that meant, what babe, I couldn’t tell for the life of me. Only I cried when he said it, because he said it so nicely. He cried himself, and I cried, too. He suddenly kissed me and made the sign of the cross over me. What did it mean, Alyosha, tell me? What is this babe?”

“It must be Rakitin, who’s been going to see him lately,” smiled Alyosha, “though ... that’s not Rakitin’s doing. I didn’t see Mitya yesterday. I’ll see him to-day.”

“No, it’s not Rakitin; it’s his brother Ivan Fyodorovitch upsetting him. It’s his going to see him, that’s what it is,” Grushenka began, and suddenly broke off. Alyosha gazed at her in amazement.

“Ivan’s going? Has he been to see him? Mitya told me himself that Ivan hasn’t been once.”

“There ... there! What a girl I am! Blurting things out!” exclaimed Grushenka, confused and suddenly blushing. “Stay, Alyosha, hush! Since I’ve said so much I’ll tell the whole truth—he’s been to see him twice, the first directly he arrived. He galloped here from Moscow at once, of course, before I was taken ill; and the second time was a week ago. He told Mitya not to tell you about it, under any circumstances; and not to tell any one, in fact. He came secretly.”

Alyosha sat plunged in thought, considering something. The news evidently impressed him.

“Ivan doesn’t talk to me of Mitya’s case,” he said slowly. “He’s said very little to me these last two months. And whenever I go to see him, he seems vexed at my coming, so I’ve not been to him for the last three weeks. H’m!... if he was there a week ago ... there certainly has been a change in Mitya this week.”

“There has been a change,” Grushenka assented quickly. “They have a secret, they have a secret! Mitya told me himself there was a secret, and such a secret that Mitya can’t rest. Before then, he was cheerful—and, indeed, he is cheerful now—but when he shakes his head like that, you know, and strides about the room and keeps pulling at the hair on his right temple with his right hand, I know there is something on his mind worrying him.... I know! He was cheerful before, though, indeed, he is cheerful to-day.”

“But you said he was worried.”

“Yes, he is worried and yet cheerful. He keeps on being irritable for a minute and then cheerful and then irritable again. And you know, Alyosha, I am constantly wondering at him—with this awful thing hanging over him, he sometimes laughs at such trifles as though he were a baby himself.”

“And did he really tell you not to tell me about Ivan? Did he say, ‘Don’t tell him’?”

“Yes, he told me, ‘Don’t tell him.’ It’s you that Mitya’s most afraid of. Because it’s a secret: he said himself it was a secret. Alyosha, darling, go to him and find out what their secret is and come and tell me,” Grushenka besought him with sudden eagerness. “Set my mind at rest that I may know the worst that’s in store for me. That’s why I sent for you.”

“You think it’s something to do with you? If it were, he wouldn’t have told you there was a secret.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps he wants to tell me, but doesn’t dare to. He warns me. There is a secret, he tells me, but he won’t tell me what it is.”

“What do you think yourself?”

“What do I think? It’s the end for me, that’s what I think. They all three have been plotting my end, for Katerina’s in it. It’s all Katerina, it all comes from her. She is this and that, and that means that I am not. He tells me that beforehand—warns me. He is planning to throw me over, that’s the whole secret. They’ve planned it together, the three of them—Mitya, Katerina, and Ivan Fyodorovitch. Alyosha, I’ve been wanting to ask you a long time. A week ago he suddenly told me that Ivan was in love with Katerina, because he often goes to see her. Did he tell me the truth or not? Tell me, on your conscience, tell me the worst.”

“I won’t tell you a lie. Ivan is not in love with Katerina Ivanovna, I think.”

“Oh, that’s what I thought! He is lying to me, shameless deceiver, that’s what it is! And he was jealous of me just now, so as to put the blame on me afterwards. He is stupid, he can’t disguise what he is doing; he is so open, you know.... But I’ll give it to him, I’ll give it to him! ‘You believe I did it,’ he said. He said that to me, to me. He reproached me with that! God forgive him! You wait, I’ll make it hot for Katerina at the trial! I’ll just say a word then ... I’ll tell everything then!”

And again she cried bitterly.

“This I can tell you for certain, Grushenka,” Alyosha said, getting up. “First, that he loves you, loves you more than any one in the world, and you only, believe me. I know. I do know. The second thing is that I don’t want to worm his secret out of him, but if he’ll tell me of himself to-day, I shall tell him straight out that I have promised to tell you. Then I’ll come to you to-day, and tell you. Only ... I fancy ... Katerina Ivanovna has nothing to do with it, and that the secret is about something else. That’s certain. It isn’t likely it’s about Katerina Ivanovna, it seems to me. Good-by for now.”

Alyosha shook hands with her. Grushenka was still crying. He saw that she put little faith in his consolation, but she was better for having had her sorrow out, for having spoken of it. He was sorry to leave her in such a state of mind, but he was in haste. He had a great many things to do still.

II. The Injured Foot

The first of these things was at the house of Madame Hohlakov, and he hurried there to get it over as quickly as possible and not be too late for Mitya. Madame Hohlakov had been slightly ailing for the last three weeks: her foot had for some reason swollen up, and though she was not in bed, she lay all day half-reclining on the couch in her boudoir, in a fascinating but decorous déshabillé. Alyosha had once noted with innocent amusement that, in spite of her illness, Madame Hohlakov had begun to be rather dressy—top-knots, ribbons, loose wrappers, had made their appearance, and he had an inkling of the reason, though he dismissed such ideas from his mind as frivolous. During the last two months the young official, Perhotin, had become a regular visitor at the house.

Alyosha had not called for four days and he was in haste to go straight to Lise, as it was with her he had to speak, for Lise had sent a maid to him the previous day, specially asking him to come to her “about something very important,” a request which, for certain reasons, had interest for Alyosha. But while the maid went to take his name in to Lise, Madame Hohlakov heard of his arrival from some one, and immediately sent to beg him to come to her “just for one minute.” Alyosha reflected that it was better to accede to the mamma’s request, or else she would be sending down to Lise’s room every minute that he was there. Madame Hohlakov was lying on a couch. She was particularly smartly dressed and was evidently in a state of extreme nervous excitement. She greeted Alyosha with cries of rapture.

“It’s ages, ages, perfect ages since I’ve seen you! It’s a whole week—only think of it! Ah, but you were here only four days ago, on Wednesday. You have come to see Lise. I’m sure you meant to slip into her room on tiptoe, without my hearing you. My dear, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, if you only knew how worried I am about her! But of that later, though that’s the most important thing, of that later. Dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, I trust you implicitly with my Lise. Since the death of Father Zossima—God rest his soul!” (she crossed herself)—“I look upon you as a monk, though you look charming in your new suit. Where did you find such a tailor in these parts? No, no, that’s not the chief thing—of that later. Forgive me for sometimes calling you Alyosha; an old woman like me may take liberties,” she smiled coquettishly; “but that will do later, too. The important thing is that I shouldn’t forget what is important. Please remind me of it yourself. As soon as my tongue runs away with me, you just say ‘the important thing?’ Ach! how do I know now what is of most importance? Ever since Lise took back her promise—her childish promise, Alexey Fyodorovitch—to marry you, you’ve realized, of course, that it was only the playful fancy of a sick child who had been so long confined to her chair—thank God, she can walk now!... that new doctor Katya sent for from Moscow for your unhappy brother, who will to-morrow—But why speak of to-morrow? I am ready to die at the very thought of to-morrow. Ready to die of curiosity.... That doctor was with us yesterday and saw Lise.... I paid him fifty roubles for the visit. But that’s not the point, that’s not the point again. You see, I’m mixing everything up. I am in such a hurry. Why am I in a hurry? I don’t understand. It’s awful how I seem growing unable to understand anything. Everything seems mixed up in a sort of tangle. I am afraid you are so bored you will jump up and run away, and that will be all I shall see of you. Goodness! Why are we sitting here and no coffee? Yulia, Glafira, coffee!”

Alyosha made haste to thank her, and said that he had only just had coffee.

“Where?”

“At Agrafena Alexandrovna’s.”

“At ... at that woman’s? Ah, it’s she has brought ruin on every one. I know nothing about it though. They say she has become a saint, though it’s rather late in the day. She had better have done it before. What use is it now? Hush, hush, Alexey Fyodorovitch, for I have so much to say to you that I am afraid I shall tell you nothing. This awful trial ... I shall certainly go, I am making arrangements. I shall be carried there in my chair; besides I can sit up. I shall have people with me. And, you know, I am a witness. How shall I speak, how shall I speak? I don’t know what I shall say. One has to take an oath, hasn’t one?”

“Yes; but I don’t think you will be able to go.”

“I can sit up. Ah, you put me out! Ah! this trial, this savage act, and then they are all going to Siberia, some are getting married, and all this so quickly, so quickly, everything’s changing, and at last—nothing. All grow old and have death to look forward to. Well, so be it! I am weary. This Katya, cette charmante personne, has disappointed all my hopes. Now she is going to follow one of your brothers to Siberia, and your other brother is going to follow her, and will live in the nearest town, and they will all torment one another. It drives me out of my mind. Worst of all—the publicity. The story has been told a million times over in all the papers in Moscow and Petersburg. Ah! yes, would you believe it, there’s a paragraph that I was ‘a dear friend’ of your brother’s ——, I can’t repeat the horrid word. Just fancy, just fancy!”

“Impossible! Where was the paragraph? What did it say?”

“I’ll show you directly. I got the paper and read it yesterday. Here, in the Petersburg paper Gossip. The paper began coming out this year. I am awfully fond of gossip, and I take it in, and now it pays me out—this is what gossip comes to! Here it is, here, this passage. Read it.”

And she handed Alyosha a sheet of newspaper which had been under her pillow.

It was not exactly that she was upset, she seemed overwhelmed and perhaps everything really was mixed up in a tangle in her head. The paragraph was very typical, and must have been a great shock to her, but, fortunately perhaps, she was unable to keep her mind fixed on any one subject at that moment, and so might race off in a minute to something else and quite forget the newspaper.

Alyosha was well aware that the story of the terrible case had spread all over Russia. And, good heavens! what wild rumors about his brother, about the Karamazovs, and about himself he had read in the course of those two months, among other equally credible items! One paper had even stated that he had gone into a monastery and become a monk, in horror at his brother’s crime. Another contradicted this, and stated that he and his elder, Father Zossima, had broken into the monastery chest and “made tracks from the monastery.” The present paragraph in the paper Gossip was under the heading, “The Karamazov Case at Skotoprigonyevsk.” (That, alas! was the name of our little town. I had hitherto kept it concealed.) It was brief, and Madame Hohlakov was not directly mentioned in it. No names appeared, in fact. It was merely stated that the criminal, whose approaching trial was making such a sensation—retired army captain, an idle swaggerer, and reactionary bully—was continually involved in amorous intrigues, and particularly popular with certain ladies “who were pining in solitude.” One such lady, a pining widow, who tried to seem young though she had a grown-up daughter, was so fascinated by him that only two hours before the crime she offered him three thousand roubles, on condition that he would elope with her to the gold mines. But the criminal, counting on escaping punishment, had preferred to murder his father to get the three thousand rather than go off to Siberia with the middle-aged charms of his pining lady. This playful paragraph finished, of course, with an outburst of generous indignation at the wickedness of parricide and at the lately abolished institution of serfdom. Reading it with curiosity, Alyosha folded up the paper and handed it back to Madame Hohlakov.

“Well, that must be me,” she hurried on again. “Of course I am meant. Scarcely more than an hour before, I suggested gold mines to him, and here they talk of ‘middle-aged charms’ as though that were my motive! He writes that out of spite! God Almighty forgive him for the middle-aged charms, as I forgive him! You know it’s— Do you know who it is? It’s your friend Rakitin.”

“Perhaps,” said Alyosha, “though I’ve heard nothing about it.”

“It’s he, it’s he! No ‘perhaps’ about it. You know I turned him out of the house.... You know all that story, don’t you?”

“I know that you asked him not to visit you for the future, but why it was, I haven’t heard ... from you, at least.”

“Ah, then you’ve heard it from him! He abuses me, I suppose, abuses me dreadfully?”

“Yes, he does; but then he abuses every one. But why you’ve given him up I haven’t heard from him either. I meet him very seldom now, indeed. We are not friends.”

“Well, then, I’ll tell you all about it. There’s no help for it, I’ll confess, for there is one point in which I was perhaps to blame. Only a little, little point, so little that perhaps it doesn’t count. You see, my dear boy”—Madame Hohlakov suddenly looked arch and a charming, though enigmatic, smile played about her lips—“you see, I suspect ... You must forgive me, Alyosha. I am like a mother to you.... No, no; quite the contrary. I speak to you now as though you were my father—mother’s quite out of place. Well, it’s as though I were confessing to Father Zossima, that’s just it. I called you a monk just now. Well, that poor young man, your friend, Rakitin (Mercy on us! I can’t be angry with him. I feel cross, but not very), that frivolous young man, would you believe it, seems to have taken it into his head to fall in love with me. I only noticed it later. At first—a month ago—he only began to come oftener to see me, almost every day; though, of course, we were acquainted before. I knew nothing about it ... and suddenly it dawned upon me, and I began to notice things with surprise. You know, two months ago, that modest, charming, excellent young man, Pyotr Ilyitch Perhotin, who’s in the service here, began to be a regular visitor at the house. You met him here ever so many times yourself. And he is an excellent, earnest young man, isn’t he? He comes once every three days, not every day (though I should be glad to see him every day), and always so well dressed. Altogether, I love young people, Alyosha, talented, modest, like you, and he has almost the mind of a statesman, he talks so charmingly, and I shall certainly, certainly try and get promotion for him. He is a future diplomat. On that awful day he almost saved me from death by coming in the night. And your friend Rakitin comes in such boots, and always stretches them out on the carpet.... He began hinting at his feelings, in fact, and one day, as he was going, he squeezed my hand terribly hard. My foot began to swell directly after he pressed my hand like that. He had met Pyotr Ilyitch here before, and would you believe it, he is always gibing at him, growling at him, for some reason. I simply looked at the way they went on together and laughed inwardly. So I was sitting here alone—no, I was laid up then. Well, I was lying here alone and suddenly Rakitin comes in, and only fancy! brought me some verses of his own composition—a short poem, on my bad foot: that is, he described my foot in a poem. Wait a minute—how did it go?

A captivating little foot.

It began somehow like that. I can never remember poetry. I’ve got it here. I’ll show it to you later. But it’s a charming thing—charming; and, you know, it’s not only about the foot, it had a good moral, too, a charming idea, only I’ve forgotten it; in fact, it was just the thing for an album. So, of course, I thanked him, and he was evidently flattered. I’d hardly had time to thank him when in comes Pyotr Ilyitch, and Rakitin suddenly looked as black as night. I could see that Pyotr Ilyitch was in the way, for Rakitin certainly wanted to say something after giving me the verses. I had a presentiment of it; but Pyotr Ilyitch came in. I showed Pyotr Ilyitch the verses and didn’t say who was the author. But I am convinced that he guessed, though he won’t own it to this day, and declares he had no idea. But he says that on purpose. Pyotr Ilyitch began to laugh at once, and fell to criticizing it. ‘Wretched doggerel,’ he said they were, ‘some divinity student must have written them,’ and with such vehemence, such vehemence! Then, instead of laughing, your friend flew into a rage. ‘Good gracious!’ I thought, ‘they’ll fly at each other.’ ‘It was I who wrote them,’ said he. ‘I wrote them as a joke,’ he said, ‘for I think it degrading to write verses.... But they are good poetry. They want to put a monument to your Pushkin for writing about women’s feet, while I wrote with a moral purpose, and you,’ said he, ‘are an advocate of serfdom. You’ve no humane ideas,’ said he. ‘You have no modern enlightened feelings, you are uninfluenced by progress, you are a mere official,’ he said, ‘and you take bribes.’ Then I began screaming and imploring them. And, you know, Pyotr Ilyitch is anything but a coward. He at once took up the most gentlemanly tone, looked at him sarcastically, listened, and apologized. ‘I’d no idea,’ said he. ‘I shouldn’t have said it, if I had known. I should have praised it. Poets are all so irritable,’ he said. In short, he laughed at him under cover of the most gentlemanly tone. He explained to me afterwards that it was all sarcastic. I thought he was in earnest. Only as I lay there, just as before you now, I thought, ‘Would it, or would it not, be the proper thing for me to turn Rakitin out for shouting so rudely at a visitor in my house?’ And, would you believe it, I lay here, shut my eyes, and wondered, would it be the proper thing or not. I kept worrying and worrying, and my heart began to beat, and I couldn’t make up my mind whether to make an outcry or not. One voice seemed to be telling me, ‘Speak,’ and the other ‘No, don’t speak.’ And no sooner had the second voice said that than I cried out, and fainted. Of course, there was a fuss. I got up suddenly and said to Rakitin, ‘It’s painful for me to say it, but I don’t wish to see you in my house again.’ So I turned him out. Ah! Alexey Fyodorovitch, I know myself I did wrong. I was putting it on. I wasn’t angry with him at all, really; but I suddenly fancied—that was what did it—that it would be such a fine scene.... And yet, believe me, it was quite natural, for I really shed tears and cried for several days afterwards, and then suddenly, one afternoon, I forgot all about it. So it’s a fortnight since he’s been here, and I kept wondering whether he would come again. I wondered even yesterday, then suddenly last night came this Gossip. I read it and gasped. Who could have written it? He must have written it. He went home, sat down, wrote it on the spot, sent it, and they put it in. It was a fortnight ago, you see. But, Alyosha, it’s awful how I keep talking and don’t say what I want to say. Ah! the words come of themselves!”

“It’s very important for me to be in time to see my brother to-day,” Alyosha faltered.

“To be sure, to be sure! You bring it all back to me. Listen, what is an aberration?”

“What aberration?” asked Alyosha, wondering.

“In the legal sense. An aberration in which everything is pardonable. Whatever you do, you will be acquitted at once.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll tell you. This Katya ... Ah! she is a charming, charming creature, only I never can make out who it is she is in love with. She was with me some time ago and I couldn’t get anything out of her. Especially as she won’t talk to me except on the surface now. She is always talking about my health and nothing else, and she takes up such a tone with me, too. I simply said to myself, ‘Well, so be it. I don’t care’... Oh, yes. I was talking of aberration. This doctor has come. You know a doctor has come? Of course, you know it—the one who discovers madmen. You wrote for him. No, it wasn’t you, but Katya. It’s all Katya’s doing. Well, you see, a man may be sitting perfectly sane and suddenly have an aberration. He may be conscious and know what he is doing and yet be in a state of aberration. And there’s no doubt that Dmitri Fyodorovitch was suffering from aberration. They found out about aberration as soon as the law courts were reformed. It’s all the good effect of the reformed law courts. The doctor has been here and questioned me about that evening, about the gold mines. ‘How did he seem then?’ he asked me. He must have been in a state of aberration. He came in shouting, ‘Money, money, three thousand! Give me three thousand!’ and then went away and immediately did the murder. ‘I don’t want to murder him,’ he said, and he suddenly went and murdered him. That’s why they’ll acquit him, because he struggled against it and yet he murdered him.”

“But he didn’t murder him,” Alyosha interrupted rather sharply. He felt more and more sick with anxiety and impatience.

“Yes, I know it was that old man Grigory murdered him.”

“Grigory?” cried Alyosha.

“Yes, yes; it was Grigory. He lay as Dmitri Fyodorovitch struck him down, and then got up, saw the door open, went in and killed Fyodor Pavlovitch.”

“But why, why?”

“Suffering from aberration. When he recovered from the blow Dmitri Fyodorovitch gave him on the head, he was suffering from aberration; he went and committed the murder. As for his saying he didn’t, he very likely doesn’t remember. Only, you know, it’ll be better, ever so much better, if Dmitri Fyodorovitch murdered him. And that’s how it must have been, though I say it was Grigory. It certainly was Dmitri Fyodorovitch, and that’s better, ever so much better! Oh! not better that a son should have killed his father, I don’t defend that. Children ought to honor their parents, and yet it would be better if it were he, as you’d have nothing to cry over then, for he did it when he was unconscious or rather when he was conscious, but did not know what he was doing. Let them acquit him—that’s so humane, and would show what a blessing reformed law courts are. I knew nothing about it, but they say they have been so a long time. And when I heard it yesterday, I was so struck by it that I wanted to send for you at once. And if he is acquitted, make him come straight from the law courts to dinner with me, and I’ll have a party of friends, and we’ll drink to the reformed law courts. I don’t believe he’d be dangerous; besides, I’ll invite a great many friends, so that he could always be led out if he did anything. And then he might be made a justice of the peace or something in another town, for those who have been in trouble themselves make the best judges. And, besides, who isn’t suffering from aberration nowadays?—you, I, all of us are in a state of aberration, and there are ever so many examples of it: a man sits singing a song, suddenly something annoys him, he takes a pistol and shoots the first person he comes across, and no one blames him for it. I read that lately, and all the doctors confirm it. The doctors are always confirming; they confirm anything. Why, my Lise is in a state of aberration. She made me cry again yesterday, and the day before, too, and to-day I suddenly realized that it’s all due to aberration. Oh, Lise grieves me so! I believe she’s quite mad. Why did she send for you? Did she send for you or did you come of yourself?”

“Yes, she sent for me, and I am just going to her.” Alyosha got up resolutely.

“Oh, my dear, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, perhaps that’s what’s most important,” Madame Hohlakov cried, suddenly bursting into tears. “God knows I trust Lise to you with all my heart, and it’s no matter her sending for you on the sly, without telling her mother. But forgive me, I can’t trust my daughter so easily to your brother Ivan Fyodorovitch, though I still consider him the most chivalrous young man. But only fancy, he’s been to see Lise and I knew nothing about it!”

“How? What? When?” Alyosha was exceedingly surprised. He had not sat down again and listened standing.

“I will tell you; that’s perhaps why I asked you to come, for I don’t know now why I did ask you to come. Well, Ivan Fyodorovitch has been to see me twice, since he came back from Moscow. First time he came as a friend to call on me, and the second time Katya was here and he came because he heard she was here. I didn’t, of course, expect him to come often, knowing what a lot he has to do as it is, vous comprenez, cette affaire et la mort terrible de votre papa. But I suddenly heard he’d been here again, not to see me but to see Lise. That’s six days ago now. He came, stayed five minutes, and went away. And I didn’t hear of it till three days afterwards, from Glafira, so it was a great shock to me. I sent for Lise directly. She laughed. ‘He thought you were asleep,’ she said, ‘and came in to me to ask after your health.’ Of course, that’s how it happened. But Lise, Lise, mercy on us, how she distresses me! Would you believe it, one night, four days ago, just after you saw her last time, and had gone away, she suddenly had a fit, screaming, shrieking, hysterics! Why is it I never have hysterics? Then, next day another fit, and the same thing on the third, and yesterday too, and then yesterday that aberration. She suddenly screamed out, ‘I hate Ivan Fyodorovitch. I insist on your never letting him come to the house again.’ I was struck dumb at these amazing words, and answered, ‘On what grounds could I refuse to see such an excellent young man, a young man of such learning too, and so unfortunate?’—for all this business is a misfortune, isn’t it? She suddenly burst out laughing at my words, and so rudely, you know. Well, I was pleased; I thought I had amused her and the fits would pass off, especially as I wanted to refuse to see Ivan Fyodorovitch anyway on account of his strange visits without my knowledge, and meant to ask him for an explanation. But early this morning Lise waked up and flew into a passion with Yulia and, would you believe it, slapped her in the face. That’s monstrous; I am always polite to my servants. And an hour later she was hugging Yulia’s feet and kissing them. She sent a message to me that she wasn’t coming to me at all, and would never come and see me again, and when I dragged myself down to her, she rushed to kiss me, crying, and as she kissed me, she pushed me out of the room without saying a word, so I couldn’t find out what was the matter. Now, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, I rest all my hopes on you, and, of course, my whole life is in your hands. I simply beg you to go to Lise and find out everything from her, as you alone can, and come back and tell me—me, her mother, for you understand it will be the death of me, simply the death of me, if this goes on, or else I shall run away. I can stand no more. I have patience; but I may lose patience, and then ... then something awful will happen. Ah, dear me! At last, Pyotr Ilyitch!” cried Madame Hohlakov, beaming all over as she saw Perhotin enter the room. “You are late, you are late! Well, sit down, speak, put us out of suspense. What does the counsel say. Where are you off to, Alexey Fyodorovitch?”

“To Lise.”

“Oh, yes. You won’t forget, you won’t forget what I asked you? It’s a question of life and death!”

“Of course, I won’t forget, if I can ... but I am so late,” muttered Alyosha, beating a hasty retreat.

“No, be sure, be sure to come in; don’t say ‘If you can.’ I shall die if you don’t,” Madame Hohlakov called after him, but Alyosha had already left the room.

III. A Little Demon

Going in to Lise, he found her half reclining in the invalid-chair, in which she had been wheeled when she was unable to walk. She did not move to meet him, but her sharp, keen eyes were simply riveted on his face. There was a feverish look in her eyes, her face was pale and yellow. Alyosha was amazed at the change that had taken place in her in three days. She was positively thinner. She did not hold out her hand to him. He touched the thin, long fingers which lay motionless on her dress, then he sat down facing her, without a word.

“I know you are in a hurry to get to the prison,” Lise said curtly, “and mamma’s kept you there for hours; she’s just been telling you about me and Yulia.”

“How do you know?” asked Alyosha.

“I’ve been listening. Why do you stare at me? I want to listen and I do listen, there’s no harm in that. I don’t apologize.”

“You are upset about something?”

“On the contrary, I am very happy. I’ve only just been reflecting for the thirtieth time what a good thing it is I refused you and shall not be your wife. You are not fit to be a husband. If I were to marry you and give you a note to take to the man I loved after you, you’d take it and be sure to give it to him and bring an answer back, too. If you were forty, you would still go on taking my love-letters for me.”

She suddenly laughed.

“There is something spiteful and yet open-hearted about you,” Alyosha smiled to her.

“The open-heartedness consists in my not being ashamed of myself with you. What’s more, I don’t want to feel ashamed with you, just with you. Alyosha, why is it I don’t respect you? I am very fond of you, but I don’t respect you. If I respected you, I shouldn’t talk to you without shame, should I?”

“No.”

“But do you believe that I am not ashamed with you?”

“No, I don’t believe it.”

Lise laughed nervously again; she spoke rapidly.

“I sent your brother, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, some sweets in prison. Alyosha, you know, you are quite pretty! I shall love you awfully for having so quickly allowed me not to love you.”

“Why did you send for me to-day, Lise?”

“I wanted to tell you of a longing I have. I should like some one to torture me, marry me and then torture me, deceive me and go away. I don’t want to be happy.”

“You are in love with disorder?”

“Yes, I want disorder. I keep wanting to set fire to the house. I keep imagining how I’ll creep up and set fire to the house on the sly; it must be on the sly. They’ll try to put it out, but it’ll go on burning. And I shall know and say nothing. Ah, what silliness! And how bored I am!”

She waved her hand with a look of repulsion.

“It’s your luxurious life,” said Alyosha, softly.

“Is it better, then, to be poor?”

“Yes, it is better.”

“That’s what your monk taught you. That’s not true. Let me be rich and all the rest poor, I’ll eat sweets and drink cream and not give any to any one else. Ach, don’t speak, don’t say anything,” she shook her hand at him, though Alyosha had not opened his mouth. “You’ve told me all that before, I know it all by heart. It bores me. If I am ever poor, I shall murder somebody, and even if I am rich, I may murder some one, perhaps—why do nothing! But do you know, I should like to reap, cut the rye? I’ll marry you, and you shall become a peasant, a real peasant; we’ll keep a colt, shall we? Do you know Kalganov?”

“Yes.”

“He is always wandering about, dreaming. He says, ‘Why live in real life? It’s better to dream. One can dream the most delightful things, but real life is a bore.’ But he’ll be married soon for all that; he’s been making love to me already. Can you spin tops?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he’s just like a top: he wants to be wound up and set spinning and then to be lashed, lashed, lashed with a whip. If I marry him, I’ll keep him spinning all his life. You are not ashamed to be with me?”

“No.”

“You are awfully cross, because I don’t talk about holy things. I don’t want to be holy. What will they do to one in the next world for the greatest sin? You must know all about that.”

“God will censure you.” Alyosha was watching her steadily.

“That’s just what I should like. I would go up and they would censure me, and I would burst out laughing in their faces. I should dreadfully like to set fire to the house, Alyosha, to our house; you still don’t believe me?”

“Why? There are children of twelve years old, who have a longing to set fire to something and they do set things on fire, too. It’s a sort of disease.”

“That’s not true, that’s not true; there may be children, but that’s not what I mean.”

“You take evil for good; it’s a passing crisis, it’s the result of your illness, perhaps.”

“You do despise me, though! It’s simply that I don’t want to do good, I want to do evil, and it has nothing to do with illness.”

“Why do evil?”

“So that everything might be destroyed. Ah, how nice it would be if everything were destroyed! You know, Alyosha, I sometimes think of doing a fearful lot of harm and everything bad, and I should do it for a long while on the sly and suddenly every one would find it out. Every one will stand round and point their fingers at me and I would look at them all. That would be awfully nice. Why would it be so nice, Alyosha?”

“I don’t know. It’s a craving to destroy something good or, as you say, to set fire to something. It happens sometimes.”

“I not only say it, I shall do it.”

“I believe you.”

“Ah, how I love you for saying you believe me. And you are not lying one little bit. But perhaps you think that I am saying all this on purpose to annoy you?”

“No, I don’t think that ... though perhaps there is a little desire to do that in it, too.”

“There is a little. I never can tell lies to you,” she declared, with a strange fire in her eyes.

What struck Alyosha above everything was her earnestness. There was not a trace of humor or jesting in her face now, though, in old days, fun and gayety never deserted her even at her most “earnest” moments.

“There are moments when people love crime,” said Alyosha thoughtfully.

“Yes, yes! You have uttered my thought; they love crime, every one loves crime, they love it always, not at some ‘moments.’ You know, it’s as though people have made an agreement to lie about it and have lied about it ever since. They all declare that they hate evil, but secretly they all love it.”

“And are you still reading nasty books?”

“Yes, I am. Mamma reads them and hides them under her pillow and I steal them.”

“Aren’t you ashamed to destroy yourself?”

“I want to destroy myself. There’s a boy here, who lay down between the railway lines when the train was passing. Lucky fellow! Listen, your brother is being tried now for murdering his father and every one loves his having killed his father.”

“Loves his having killed his father?”

“Yes, loves it; every one loves it! Everybody says it’s so awful, but secretly they simply love it. I for one love it.”

“There is some truth in what you say about every one,” said Alyosha softly.

“Oh, what ideas you have!” Lise shrieked in delight. “And you a monk, too! You wouldn’t believe how I respect you, Alyosha, for never telling lies. Oh, I must tell you a funny dream of mine. I sometimes dream of devils. It’s night; I am in my room with a candle and suddenly there are devils all over the place, in all the corners, under the table, and they open the doors; there’s a crowd of them behind the doors and they want to come and seize me. And they are just coming, just seizing me. But I suddenly cross myself and they all draw back, though they don’t go away altogether, they stand at the doors and in the corners, waiting. And suddenly I have a frightful longing to revile God aloud, and so I begin, and then they come crowding back to me, delighted, and seize me again and I cross myself again and they all draw back. It’s awful fun. it takes one’s breath away.”

“I’ve had the same dream, too,” said Alyosha suddenly.

“Really?” cried Lise, surprised. “I say, Alyosha, don’t laugh, that’s awfully important. Could two different people have the same dream?”

“It seems they can.”

“Alyosha, I tell you, it’s awfully important,” Lise went on, with really excessive amazement. “It’s not the dream that’s important, but your having the same dream as me. You never lie to me, don’t lie now: is it true? You are not laughing?”

“It’s true.”

Lise seemed extraordinarily impressed and for half a minute she was silent.

“Alyosha, come and see me, come and see me more often,” she said suddenly, in a supplicating voice.

“I’ll always come to see you, all my life,” answered Alyosha firmly.

“You are the only person I can talk to, you know,” Lise began again. “I talk to no one but myself and you. Only you in the whole world. And to you more readily than to myself. And I am not a bit ashamed with you, not a bit. Alyosha, why am I not ashamed with you, not a bit? Alyosha, is it true that at Easter the Jews steal a child and kill it?”

“I don’t know.”

“There’s a book here in which I read about the trial of a Jew, who took a child of four years old and cut off the fingers from both hands, and then crucified him on the wall, hammered nails into him and crucified him, and afterwards, when he was tried, he said that the child died soon, within four hours. That was ‘soon’! He said the child moaned, kept on moaning and he stood admiring it. That’s nice!”

“Nice?”

“Nice; I sometimes imagine that it was I who crucified him. He would hang there moaning and I would sit opposite him eating pineapple compote. I am awfully fond of pineapple compote. Do you like it?”

Alyosha looked at her in silence. Her pale, sallow face was suddenly contorted, her eyes burned.

“You know, when I read about that Jew I shook with sobs all night. I kept fancying how the little thing cried and moaned (a child of four years old understands, you know), and all the while the thought of pineapple compote haunted me. In the morning I wrote a letter to a certain person, begging him particularly to come and see me. He came and I suddenly told him all about the child and the pineapple compote. All about it, all, and said that it was nice. He laughed and said it really was nice. Then he got up and went away. He was only here five minutes. Did he despise me? Did he despise me? Tell me, tell me, Alyosha, did he despise me or not?” She sat up on the couch, with flashing eyes.

“Tell me,” Alyosha asked anxiously, “did you send for that person?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Did you send him a letter?”

“Yes.”

“Simply to ask about that, about that child?”

“No, not about that at all. But when he came, I asked him about that at once. He answered, laughed, got up and went away.”

“That person behaved honorably,” Alyosha murmured.

“And did he despise me? Did he laugh at me?”

“No, for perhaps he believes in the pineapple compote himself. He is very ill now, too, Lise.”

“Yes, he does believe in it,” said Lise, with flashing eyes.

“He doesn’t despise any one,” Alyosha went on. “Only he does not believe any one. If he doesn’t believe in people, of course, he does despise them.”

“Then he despises me, me?”

“You, too.”

“Good,” Lise seemed to grind her teeth. “When he went out laughing, I felt that it was nice to be despised. The child with fingers cut off is nice, and to be despised is nice....”

And she laughed in Alyosha’s face, a feverish malicious laugh.

“Do you know, Alyosha, do you know, I should like—Alyosha, save me!” She suddenly jumped from the couch, rushed to him and seized him with both hands. “Save me!” she almost groaned. “Is there any one in the world I could tell what I’ve told you? I’ve told you the truth, the truth. I shall kill myself, because I loathe everything! I don’t want to live, because I loathe everything! I loathe everything, everything. Alyosha, why don’t you love me in the least?” she finished in a frenzy.

“But I do love you!” answered Alyosha warmly.

“And will you weep over me, will you?”

“Yes.”

“Not because I won’t be your wife, but simply weep for me?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you! It’s only your tears I want. Every one else may punish me and trample me under foot, every one, every one, not excepting any one. For I don’t love any one. Do you hear, not any one! On the contrary, I hate him! Go, Alyosha; it’s time you went to your brother”; she tore herself away from him suddenly.

“How can I leave you like this?” said Alyosha, almost in alarm.

“Go to your brother, the prison will be shut; go, here’s your hat. Give my love to Mitya, go, go!”

And she almost forcibly pushed Alyosha out of the door. He looked at her with pained surprise, when he was suddenly aware of a letter in his right hand, a tiny letter folded up tight and sealed. He glanced at it and instantly read the address, “To Ivan Fyodorovitch Karamazov.” He looked quickly at Lise. Her face had become almost menacing.

“Give it to him, you must give it to him!” she ordered him, trembling and beside herself. “To-day, at once, or I’ll poison myself! That’s why I sent for you.”

And she slammed the door quickly. The bolt clicked. Alyosha put the note in his pocket and went straight downstairs, without going back to Madame Hohlakov; forgetting her, in fact. As soon as Alyosha had gone, Lise unbolted the door, opened it a little, put her finger in the crack and slammed the door with all her might, pinching her finger. Ten seconds after, releasing her finger, she walked softly, slowly to her chair, sat up straight in it and looked intently at her blackened finger and at the blood that oozed from under the nail. Her lips were quivering and she kept whispering rapidly to herself:

“I am a wretch, wretch, wretch, wretch!”