So you’ll hit a man from behind! They tell the truth, then, when they say that you attack on the sly. Aren’t you ashamed? What have I done to you?


Very well, you see how badly you’ve bitten me. That’s enough, isn’t it? Now tell me, what have I done to you? Though I don’t know you and it’s the first time I’ve seen you, yet I must have done something to you—you wouldn’t have hurt me like this for nothing. So what have I done? How have I wronged you, tell me?


Did you get my letter about the new miracle?


Yes.


Did you show it to every one? He restored the son to his mother!


He is dying to‐day,


I have heard, I know, oh, how I long to talk to you, to you or some one, about all this. No, to you, to you! And how sorry I am I can’t see him! The whole town is in excitement, they are all suspense. But now— do you know Katerina Ivanovna is here now?


Ah, that’s lucky,


I know, I know all. I’ve heard exactly what happened yesterday—and the atrocious behavior of that—creature. C’est tragique, and if I’d been in her place I don’t know what I should have done. And your brother Dmitri Fyodorovitch, what do you think of him?—my goodness! Alexey Fyodorovitch, I am forgetting, only fancy; your brother is in there with her, not that dreadful brother who was so shocking yesterday, but the other, Ivan Fyodorovitch, he is sitting with her talking; they are having a serious conversation. If you could only imagine what’s passing between them now—it’s awful, I tell you it’s lacerating, it’s like some incredible tale of horror. They are ruining their lives for no reason any one can see. They both recognize it and revel in it. I’ve been watching for you! I’ve been thirsting for you! It’s too much for me, that’s the worst of it. I’ll tell you all about it presently, but now I must speak of something else, the most important thing—I had quite forgotten what’s most important. Tell me, why has Lise been in hysterics? As soon as she heard you were here, she began to be hysterical!


Maman, it’s you who are hysterical now, not I,


And no wonder, Lise, no wonder ... your caprices will make me hysterical too. But she is so ill, Alexey Fyodorovitch, she has been so ill all night, feverish and moaning! I could hardly wait for the morning and for Herzenstube to come. He says that he can make nothing of it, that we must wait. Herzenstube always comes and says that he can make nothing of it. As soon as you approached the house, she screamed, fell into hysterics, and insisted on being wheeled back into this room here.


Mamma, I didn’t know he had come. It wasn’t on his account I wanted to be wheeled into this room. That’s not true, Lise, Yulia ran to tell you that Alexey Fyodorovitch was coming. She was on the look‐out for you. My darling mamma, it’s not at all clever of you. But if you want to make up for it and say something very clever, dear mamma, you’d better tell our honored visitor, Alexey Fyodorovitch, that he has shown his want of wit by venturing to us after what happened yesterday and although every one is laughing at him.


Lise, you go too far. I declare I shall have to be severe. Who laughs at him? I am so glad he has come, I need him, I can’t do without him. Oh, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I am exceedingly unhappy! Ah, your caprices, Lise, your fidgetiness, your illness, that awful night of fever, that awful everlasting Herzenstube, everlasting, everlasting, that’s the worst of it! Everything, in fact, everything.... Even that miracle, too! Oh, how it has upset me, how it has shattered me, that miracle, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch! And that tragedy in the drawing‐room, it’s more than I can bear, I warn you. I can’t bear it. A comedy, perhaps, not a tragedy. Tell me, will Father Zossima live till to‐morrow, will he? Oh, my God! What is happening to me? Every minute I close my eyes and see that it’s all nonsense, all nonsense.


I should be very grateful, if you could give me a clean rag to bind up my finger with. I have hurt it, and it’s very painful.


Good heavens, what a wound, how awful!


Come, come here. No nonsense now! Good heavens, why did you stand there saying nothing about it all this time? He might have bled to death, mamma! How did you do it? Water, water! You must wash it first of all, simply hold it in cold water to stop the pain, and keep it there, keep it there.... Make haste, mamma, some water in a slop‐basin. But do make haste,


Shouldn’t we send for Herzenstube?


Mamma, you’ll be the death of me. Your Herzenstube will come and say that he can make nothing of it! Water, water! Mamma, for goodness’ sake go yourself and hurry Yulia, she is such a slowcoach and never can come quickly! Make haste, mamma, or I shall die.


Why, it’s nothing much,


Some lint, mamma, for mercy’s sake, bring some lint and that muddy caustic lotion for wounds, what’s it called? We’ve got some. You know where the bottle is, mamma; it’s in your bedroom in the right‐hand cupboard, there’s a big bottle of it there with the lint.


I’ll bring everything in a minute, Lise, only don’t scream and don’t fuss. You see how bravely Alexey Fyodorovitch bears it. Where did you get such a dreadful wound, Alexey Fyodorovitch?


First of all, answer the question, where did you get hurt like this? How can you, and in that dress too, associate with schoolboys? You are nothing but a boy yourself if you can do that, a perfect boy! But you must find out for me about that horrid boy and tell me all about it, for there’s some mystery in it. Now for the second thing, but first a question: does the pain prevent you talking about utterly unimportant things, but talking sensibly?


Of course not, and I don’t feel much pain now.


That’s because your finger is in the water. It must be changed directly, for it will get warm in a minute. Yulia, bring some ice from the cellar and another basin of water. Now she is gone, I can speak; will you give me the letter I sent you yesterday, dear Alexey Fyodorovitch—be quick, for mamma will be back in a minute and I don’t want—


I haven’t got the letter.


That’s not true, you have. I knew you would say that. You’ve got it in that pocket. I’ve been regretting that joke all night. Give me back the letter at once, give it me.


I’ve left it at home.


But you can’t consider me as a child, a little girl, after that silly joke! I beg your pardon for that silliness, but you must bring me the letter, if you really haven’t got it—bring it to‐day, you must, you must.


To‐day I can’t possibly, for I am going back to the monastery and I shan’t come and see you for the next two days—three or four perhaps—for Father Zossima—


Four days, what nonsense! Listen. Did you laugh at me very much?


I didn’t laugh at all.


Why not?


Because I believed all you said.


You are insulting me!


Not at all. As soon as I read it, I thought that all that would come to pass, for as soon as Father Zossima dies, I am to leave the monastery. Then I shall go back and finish my studies, and when you reach the legal age we will be married. I shall love you. Though I haven’t had time to think about it, I believe I couldn’t find a better wife than you, and Father Zossima tells me I must marry.


But I am a cripple, wheeled about in a chair,


I’ll wheel you about myself, but I’m sure you’ll get well by then.


But you are mad, to make all this nonsense out of a joke! Here’s mamma, very à propos, perhaps. Mamma, how slow you always are, how can you be so long! And here’s Yulia with the ice!


Oh, Lise, don’t scream, above all things don’t scream. That scream drives me ... How can I help it when you put the lint in another place? I’ve been hunting and hunting—I do believe you did it on purpose.


But I couldn’t tell that he would come with a bad finger, or else perhaps I might have done it on purpose. My darling mamma, you begin to say really witty things.


Never mind my being witty, but I must say you show nice feeling for Alexey Fyodorovitch’s sufferings! Oh, my dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, what’s killing me is no one thing in particular, not Herzenstube, but everything together, that’s what is too much for me.


That’s enough, mamma, enough about Herzenstube. Make haste with the lint and the lotion, mamma. That’s simply Goulard’s water, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I remember the name now, but it’s a splendid lotion. Would you believe it, mamma, on the way here he had a fight with the boys in the street, and it was a boy bit his finger, isn’t he a child, a child himself? Is he fit to be married after that? For only fancy, he wants to be married, mamma. Just think of him married, wouldn’t it be funny, wouldn’t it be awful? Why married, Lise? What makes you talk of such a thing? It’s quite out of place—and perhaps the boy was rabid.


Why, mamma! As though there were rabid boys! Why not, Lise, as though I had said something stupid! Your boy might have been bitten by a mad dog and he would become mad and bite any one near him. How well she has bandaged it, Alexey Fyodorovitch! I couldn’t have done it. Do you still feel the pain?


It’s nothing much now.


You don’t feel afraid of water?


Come, that’s enough, Lise, perhaps I really was rather too quick talking of the boy being rabid, and you pounced upon it at once Katerina Ivanovna has only just heard that you are here, Alexey Fyodorovitch, she simply rushed at me, she’s dying to see you, dying!


Ach, mamma, go to them yourself. He can’t go just now, he is in too much pain.


Not at all, I can go quite well,


What! You are going away? Is that what you say?


Well, when I’ve seen them, I’ll come back here and we can talk as much as you like. But I should like to see Katerina Ivanovna at once, for I am very anxious to be back at the monastery as soon as I can.


Mamma, take him away quickly. Alexey Fyodorovitch, don’t trouble to come and see me afterwards, but go straight back to your monastery and a good riddance. I want to sleep, I didn’t sleep all night.


Ah, Lise, you are only making fun, but how I wish you would sleep!


I don’t know what I’ve done.... I’ll stay another three minutes, five if you like,


Even five! Do take him away quickly, mamma, he is a monster.


Lise, you are crazy. Let us go, Alexey Fyodorovitch, she is too capricious to‐day. I am afraid to cross her. Oh, the trouble one has with nervous girls! Perhaps she really will be able to sleep after seeing you. How quickly you have made her sleepy, and how fortunate it is!


Ah, mamma, how sweetly you talk! I must kiss you for it, mamma.


And I kiss you too, Lise. Listen, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I don’t want to suggest anything, I don’t want to lift the veil, you will see for yourself what’s going on. It’s appalling. It’s the most fantastic farce. She loves your brother, Ivan, and she is doing her utmost to persuade herself she loves your brother, Dmitri. It’s appalling! I’ll go in with you, and if they don’t turn me out, I’ll stay to the end.


A minute! Stay another minute! I want to hear the opinion of this person here whom I trust absolutely. Don’t go away. You are all my friends here, all I have in the world, my dear friends. You, Alexey Fyodorovitch, were witness yesterday of that abominable scene, and saw what I did. You did not see it, Ivan Fyodorovitch, he did. What he thought of me yesterday I don’t know. I only know one thing, that if it were repeated to‐day, this minute, I should express the same feelings again as yesterday—the same feelings, the same words, the same actions. You remember my actions, Alexey Fyodorovitch; you checked me in one of them I must tell you that I can’t get over it. Listen, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I don’t even know whether I still love him. I feel pity for him, and that is a poor sign of love. If I loved him, if I still loved him, perhaps I shouldn’t be sorry for him now, but should hate him.


That’s true, that’s true,


Wait, dear. I haven’t told you the chief, the final decision I came to during the night. I feel that perhaps my decision is a terrible one—for me, but I foresee that nothing will induce me to change it—nothing. It will be so all my life. My dear, kind, ever‐faithful and generous adviser, the one friend I have in the world, Ivan Fyodorovitch, with his deep insight into the heart, approves and commends my decision. He knows it.


Yes, I approve of it,


But I should like Alyosha, too (Ah! Alexey Fyodorovitch, forgive my calling you simply Alyosha), I should like Alexey Fyodorovitch, too, to tell me before my two friends whether I am right. I feel instinctively that you, Alyosha, my dear brother (for you are a dear brother to me). I foresee that your decision, your approval, will bring me peace, in spite of all my sufferings, for, after your words, I shall be calm and submit—I feel that.


I don’t know what you are asking me. I only know that I love you and at this moment wish for your happiness more than my own!... But I know nothing about such affairs,


In such affairs, Alexey Fyodorovitch, in such affairs, the chief thing is honor and duty and something higher—I don’t know what—but higher perhaps even than duty. I am conscious of this irresistible feeling in my heart, and it compels me irresistibly. But it may all be put in two words. I’ve already decided, even if he marries that—creature, whom I never, never can forgive, even then I will not abandon him. Henceforward I will never, never abandon him! Not that I would run after him continually, get in his way and worry him. Oh, no! I will go away to another town—where you like—but I will watch over him all my life—I will watch over him all my life unceasingly. When he becomes unhappy with that woman, and that is bound to happen quite soon, let him come to me and he will find a friend, a sister.... Only a sister, of course, and so for ever; but he will learn at least that that sister is really his sister, who loves him and has sacrificed all her life to him. I will gain my point. I will insist on his knowing me and confiding entirely in me, without reserve. I will be a god to whom he can pray—and that, at least, he owes me for his treachery and for what I suffered yesterday through him. And let him see that all my life I will be true to him and the promise I gave him, in spite of his being untrue and betraying me. I will—I will become nothing but a means for his happiness, or—how shall I say?—an instrument, a machine for his happiness, and that for my whole life, my whole life, and that he may see that all his life! That’s my decision. Ivan Fyodorovitch fully approves me.


I’ve only expressed my own view. From any one else, this would have been affected and overstrained, but from you—no. Any other woman would have been wrong, but you are right. I don’t know how to explain it, but I see that you are absolutely genuine and, therefore, you are right.


But that’s only for the moment. And what does this moment stand for? Nothing but yesterday’s insult.


Quite so, quite so, in any one else this moment would be only due to yesterday’s impression and would be only a moment. But with Katerina Ivanovna’s character, that moment will last all her life. What for any one else would be only a promise is for her an everlasting burdensome, grim perhaps, but unflagging duty. And she will be sustained by the feeling of this duty being fulfilled. Your life, Katerina Ivanovna, will henceforth be spent in painful brooding over your own feelings, your own heroism, and your own suffering; but in the end that suffering will be softened and will pass into sweet contemplation of the fulfillment of a bold and proud design. Yes, proud it certainly is, and desperate in any case, but a triumph for you. And the consciousness of it will at last be a source of complete satisfaction and will make you resigned to everything else.


Oh, dear, how mistaken it all is!


Alexey Fyodorovitch, you speak. I want dreadfully to know what you will say! It’s nothing, nothing! I’m upset, I didn’t sleep last night. But by the side of two such friends as you and your brother I still feel strong—for I know—you two will never desert me.


Unluckily I am obliged to return to Moscow—perhaps to‐morrow—and to leave you for a long time—And, unluckily, it’s unavoidable,


To‐morrow—to Moscow! but—but, dear me, how fortunate! Oh, not fortunate that I am losing you, of course not. Such a friend as you are could not suppose that. I am only too unhappy at losing you. But what is fortunate is that you will be able in Moscow to see auntie and Agafya and to tell them all the horror of my present position. You can speak with complete openness to Agafya, but spare dear auntie. You will know how to do that. You can’t think how wretched I was yesterday and this morning, wondering how I could write them that dreadful letter—for one can never tell such things in a letter.... Now it will be easy for me to write, for you will see them and explain everything. Oh, how glad I am! But I am only glad of that, believe me. Of course, no one can take your place.... I will run at once to write the letter,


And what about Alyosha and his opinion, which you were so desperately anxious to hear?


I had not forgotten that, and why are you so antagonistic at such a moment? What I said, I repeat. I must have his opinion. More than that, I must have his decision! As he says, so it shall be. You see how anxious I am for your words, Alexey Fyodorovitch.... But what’s the matter?


I couldn’t have believed it. I can’t understand it!


What? What?


He is going to Moscow, and you cry out that you are glad. You said that on purpose! And you begin explaining that you are not glad of that but sorry to be—losing a friend. But that was acting, too—you were playing a part—as in a theater!


In a theater? What? What do you mean?


Though you assure him you are sorry to lose a friend in him, you persist in telling him to his face that it’s fortunate he is going. What are you talking about? I don’t understand. I don’t understand myself.... I seemed to see in a flash ... I know I am not saying it properly, but I’ll say it all the same. What I see is that perhaps you don’t love Dmitri at all ... and never have, from the beginning.... And Dmitri, too, has never loved you ... and only esteems you.... I really don’t know how I dare to say all this, but somebody must tell the truth ... for nobody here will tell the truth.


What truth?


I’ll tell you. Call Dmitri; I will fetch him—and let him come here and take your hand and take Ivan’s and join your hands. For you’re torturing Ivan, simply because you love him—and torturing him, because you love Dmitri through ‘self‐laceration’—with an unreal love—because you’ve persuaded yourself.


you ... you ... you are a little religious idiot—that’s what you are!


You are mistaken, my good Alyosha. Katerina Ivanovna has never cared for me! She has known all the time that I cared for her—though I never said a word of my love to her—she knew, but she didn’t care for me. I have never been her friend either, not for one moment; she is too proud to need my friendship. She kept me at her side as a means of revenge. She revenged with me and on me all the insults which she has been continually receiving from Dmitri ever since their first meeting. For even that first meeting has rankled in her heart as an insult—that’s what her heart is like! She has talked to me of nothing but her love for him. I am going now; but, believe me, Katerina Ivanovna, you really love him. And the more he insults you, the more you love him—that’s your ‘laceration.’ You love him just as he is; you love him for insulting you. If he reformed, you’d give him up at once and cease to love him. But you need him so as to contemplate continually your heroic fidelity and to reproach him for infidelity. And it all comes from your pride. Oh, there’s a great deal of humiliation and self‐abasement about it, but it all comes from pride.... I am too young and I’ve loved you too much. I know that I ought not to say this, that it would be more dignified on my part simply to leave you, and it would be less offensive for you. But I am going far away, and shall never come back.... It is for ever. I don’t want to sit beside a ‘laceration.’... But I don’t know how to speak now. I’ve said everything.... Good‐by, Katerina Ivanovna; you can’t be angry with me, for I am a hundred times more severely punished than you, if only by the fact that I shall never see you again. Good‐by! I don’t want your hand. You have tortured me too deliberately for me to be able to forgive you at this moment. I shall forgive you later, but now I don’t want your hand. ‘Den Dank, Dame, begehr ich nicht,’


Ivan! Come back, Ivan! No, nothing will induce him to come back now! but it’s my fault, my fault. I began it! Ivan spoke angrily, wrongly. Unjustly and angrily. He must come back here, come back,


You have done no harm. You behaved beautifully, like an angel. I will do my utmost to prevent Ivan Fyodorovitch from going.


I have a great favor to ask of you, Alexey Fyodorovitch. A week—yes, I think it was a week ago—Dmitri Fyodorovitch was guilty of a hasty and unjust action—a very ugly action. There is a low tavern here, and in it he met that discharged officer, that captain, whom your father used to employ in some business. Dmitri Fyodorovitch somehow lost his temper with this captain, seized him by the beard and dragged him out into the street and for some distance along it, in that insulting fashion. And I am told that his son, a boy, quite a child, who is at the school here, saw it and ran beside them crying and begging for his father, appealing to every one to defend him, while every one laughed. You must forgive me, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I cannot think without indignation of that disgraceful action of his ... one of those actions of which only Dmitri Fyodorovitch would be capable in his anger ... and in his passions! I can’t describe it even.... I can’t find my words. I’ve made inquiries about his victim, and find he is quite a poor man. His name is Snegiryov. He did something wrong in the army and was discharged. I can’t tell you what. And now he has sunk into terrible destitution, with his family—an unhappy family of sick children, and, I believe, an insane wife. He has been living here a long time; he used to work as a copying clerk, but now he is getting nothing. I thought if you ... that is I thought ... I don’t know. I am so confused. You see, I wanted to ask you, my dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, to go to him, to find some excuse to go to them—I mean to that captain—oh, goodness, how badly I explain it!—and delicately, carefully, as only you know how to manage to give him this assistance, these two hundred roubles. He will be sure to take it.... I mean, persuade him to take it.... Or, rather, what do I mean? You see it’s not by way of compensation to prevent him from taking proceedings (for I believe he meant to), but simply a token of sympathy, of a desire to assist him from me, Dmitri Fyodorovitch’s betrothed, not from himself.... But you know.... I would go myself, but you’ll know how to do it ever so much better. He lives in Lake Street, in the house of a woman called Kalmikov.... For God’s sake, Alexey Fyodorovitch, do it for me, and now ... now I am rather ... tired. Good‐ by!


She is proud, she is struggling with herself; but kind, charming, generous. Oh, how I love her, especially sometimes, and how glad I am again of everything! Dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, you didn’t know, but I must tell you, that we all, all—both her aunts, I and all of us, Lise, even—have been hoping and praying for nothing for the last month but that she may give up your favorite Dmitri, who takes no notice of her and does not care for her, and may marry Ivan Fyodorovitch—such an excellent and cultivated young man, who loves her more than anything in the world. We are in a regular plot to bring it about, and I am even staying on here perhaps on that account.


But she has been crying—she has been wounded again,


Never trust a woman’s tears, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I am never for the women in such cases. I am always on the side of the men.


Mamma, you are spoiling him,


No, it was all my fault. I am horribly to blame,


Quite the contrary; you behaved like an angel, like an angel. I am ready to say so a thousand times over.


Mamma, how has he behaved like an angel?


I somehow fancied all at once, that she loved Ivan, and so I said that stupid thing.... What will happen now?


To whom, to whom? Mamma, you really want to be the death of me. I ask you and you don’t answer.


Katerina Ivanovna is ill.... She is crying, struggling ... hysterics.


What is the matter? Mamma, I shall be having hysterics, and not she!


Lise, for mercy’s sake, don’t scream, don’t persecute me. At your age one can’t know everything that grown‐up people know. I’ll come and tell you everything you ought to know. Oh, mercy on us! I am coming, I am coming.... Hysterics is a good sign, Alexey Fyodorovitch; it’s an excellent thing that she is hysterical. That’s just as it ought to be. In such cases I am always against the woman, against all these feminine tears and hysterics. Run and say, Yulia, that I’ll fly to her. As for Ivan Fyodorovitch’s going away like that, it’s her own fault. But he won’t go away. Lise, for mercy’s sake, don’t scream! Oh, yes; you are not screaming. It’s I am screaming. Forgive your mamma; but I am delighted, delighted, delighted! Did you notice, Alexey Fyodorovitch, how young, how young Ivan Fyodorovitch was just now when he went out, when he said all that and went out? I thought he was so learned, such a savant, and all of a sudden he behaved so warmly, openly, and youthfully, with such youthful inexperience, and it was all so fine, like you.... And the way he repeated that German verse, it was just like you! But I must fly, I must fly! Alexey Fyodorovitch, make haste to carry out her commission, and then make haste back. Lise, do you want anything now? For mercy’s sake, don’t keep Alexey Fyodorovitch a minute. He will come back to you at once.


On no account. On no account now. Speak through the door. How have you come to be an angel? That’s the only thing I want to know.


For an awful piece of stupidity, Lise! Good‐by!


Don’t dare to go away like that!


Lise, I have a real sorrow! I’ll be back directly, but I have a great, great sorrow! But what do I know about it? What can I tell about such things? Oh, being ashamed would be nothing; shame is only the punishment I deserve. The trouble is I shall certainly have caused more unhappiness.... And Father Zossima sent me to reconcile and bring them together. Is this the way to bring them together? Though I acted quite sincerely, I must be more sensible in the future,


Who’s there?


It’s a monk come to beg for the monastery. A nice place to come to!


No, Varvara, you are wrong. Allow me to ask, what has brought you to—our retreat?


I am Alexey Karamazov,


I quite understand that, sir. I am Captain Snegiryov, sir, but I am still desirous to know precisely what has led you—


Oh, I’ve come for nothing special. I wanted to have a word with you—if only you allow me.


In that case, here is a chair, sir; kindly be seated. That’s what they used to say in the old comedies, ‘kindly be seated,’ Nikolay Ilyitch Snegiryov, sir, formerly a captain in the Russian infantry, put to shame for his vices, but still a captain. Though I might not be one now for the way I talk; for the last half of my life I’ve learnt to say ‘sir.’ It’s a word you use when you’ve come down in the world.


That’s very true. But is it used involuntarily or on purpose?


As God’s above, it’s involuntary, and I usen’t to use it! I didn’t use the word ‘sir’ all my life, but as soon as I sank into low water I began to say ‘sir.’ It’s the work of a higher power. I see you are interested in contemporary questions, but how can I have excited your curiosity, living as I do in surroundings impossible for the exercise of hospitality?


I’ve come—about that business.


About what business?


About your meeting with my brother Dmitri Fyodorovitch,


What meeting, sir? You don’t mean that meeting? About my ‘wisp of tow,’ then?


What wisp of tow?


He is come to complain of me, father! father! I bit his finger just now.


What! Did he bite your finger? Was it your finger he bit?


Yes. He was throwing stones with other schoolboys. There were six of them against him alone. I went up to him, and he threw a stone at me and then another at my head. I asked him what I had done to him. And then he rushed at me and bit my finger badly, I don’t know why.


I’ll thrash him, sir, at once—this minute!


But I am not complaining at all, I am simply telling you ... I don’t want him to be thrashed. Besides, he seems to be ill.


And do you suppose I’d thrash him? That I’d take my Ilusha and thrash him before you for your satisfaction? Would you like it done at once, sir? I am sorry about your finger, sir; but instead of thrashing Ilusha, would you like me to chop off my four fingers with this knife here before your eyes to satisfy your just wrath? I should think four fingers would be enough to satisfy your thirst for vengeance. You won’t ask for the fifth one too?


I think I understand it all now. So your boy is a good boy, he loves his father, and he attacked me as the brother of your assailant.... Now I understand it. But my brother Dmitri Fyodorovitch regrets his action, I know that, and if only it is possible for him to come to you, or better still, to meet you in that same place, he will ask your forgiveness before every one—if you wish it.


After pulling out my beard, you mean, he will ask my forgiveness? And he thinks that will be a satisfactory finish, doesn’t he?


Oh, no! On the contrary, he will do anything you like and in any way you like.


So if I were to ask his highness to go down on his knees before me in that very tavern—‘The Metropolis’ it’s called—or in the market‐place, he would do it?


Yes, he would even go down on his knees.


You’ve pierced me to the heart, sir. Touched me to tears and pierced me to the heart! I am only too sensible of your brother’s generosity. Allow me to introduce my family, my two daughters and my son—my litter. If I die, who will care for them, and while I live who but they will care for a wretch like me? That’s a great thing the Lord has ordained for every man of my sort, sir. For there must be some one able to love even a man like me.


Ah, that’s perfectly true!


Oh, do leave off playing the fool! Some idiot comes in, and you put us to shame!


Wait a little, Varvara! That’s her character. And in all nature there was naught That could find favor in his eyes— But now let me present you to my wife, Arina Petrovna. She is crippled, she is forty‐ three; she can move, but very little. She is of humble origin. Arina Petrovna, compose your countenance. This is Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov. Get up, Alexey Fyodorovitch. You must stand up to be introduced to a lady. It’s not the Karamazov, mamma, who ... h’m ... etcetera, but his brother, radiant with modest virtues. Come, Arina Petrovna, come, mamma, first your hand to be kissed.


Good morning! Sit down, Mr. Tchernomazov,


Karamazov, mamma, Karamazov. We are of humble origin,


Well, Karamazov, or whatever it is, but I always think of Tchernomazov.... Sit down. Why has he pulled you up? He calls me crippled, but I am not, only my legs are swollen like barrels, and I am shriveled up myself. Once I used to be so fat, but now it’s as though I had swallowed a needle.


We are of humble origin,


Oh, father, father!


Buffoon!


Have you heard our news? It’s like clouds coming over; the clouds pass and we have music again. When we were with the army, we used to have many such guests. I don’t mean to make any comparisons; every one to their taste. The deacon’s wife used to come then and say, ‘Alexandr Alexandrovitch is a man of the noblest heart, but Nastasya Petrovna,’ she would say, ‘is of the brood of hell.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘that’s a matter of taste; but you are a little spitfire.’ ‘And you want keeping in your place,’ says she. ‘You black sword,’ said I, ‘who asked you to teach me?’ ‘But my breath,’ says she, ‘is clean, and yours is unclean.’ ‘You ask all the officers whether my breath is unclean.’ And ever since then I had it in my mind. Not long ago I was sitting here as I am now, when I saw that very general come in who came here for Easter, and I asked him: ‘Your Excellency,’ said I, ‘can a lady’s breath be unpleasant?’ ‘Yes,’ he answered; ‘you ought to open a window‐ pane or open the door, for the air is not fresh here.’ And they all go on like that! And what is my breath to them? The dead smell worse still! ‘I won’t spoil the air,’ said I, ‘I’ll order some slippers and go away.’ My darlings, don’t blame your own mother! Nikolay Ilyitch, how is it I can’t please you? There’s only Ilusha who comes home from school and loves me. Yesterday he brought me an apple. Forgive your own mother—forgive a poor lonely creature! Why has my breath become unpleasant to you?


Mamma, mamma, my dear, give over! You are not lonely. Every one loves you, every one adores you. There, you see, you hear?


I see and hear,


Father. Father, father, how can you—with him! Let him alone!


Do give over fooling, showing off your silly antics which never lead to anything!


Your anger is quite just this time, Varvara, and I’ll make haste to satisfy you. Come, put on your cap, Alexey Fyodorovitch, and I’ll put on mine. We will go out. I have a word to say to you in earnest, but not within these walls. This girl sitting here is my daughter Nina; I forgot to introduce her to you. She is a heavenly angel incarnate ... who has flown down to us mortals,... if you can understand.


There he is shaking all over, as though he is in convulsions!


And she there stamping her foot at me and calling me a fool just now, she is a heavenly angel incarnate too, and she has good reason to call me so. Come along, Alexey Fyodorovitch, we must make an end. The air is fresh, but in my apartment it is not so in any sense of the word. Let us walk slowly, sir. I should be glad of your kind interest.


I too have something important to say to you, only I don’t know how to begin.


To be sure you must have business with me. You would never have looked in upon me without some object. Unless you come simply to complain of the boy, and that’s hardly likely. And, by the way, about the boy: I could not explain to you in there, but here I will describe that scene to you. My tow was thicker a week ago—I mean my beard. That’s the nickname they give to my beard, the schoolboys most of all. Well, your brother Dmitri Fyodorovitch was pulling me by my beard, I’d done nothing, he was in a towering rage and happened to come upon me. He dragged me out of the tavern into the market‐place; at that moment the boys were coming out of school, and with them Ilusha. As soon as he saw me in such a state he rushed up to me. ‘Father,’ he cried, ‘father!’ He caught hold of me, hugged me, tried to pull me away, crying to my assailant, ‘Let go, let go, it’s my father, forgive him!’—yes, he actually cried ‘forgive him.’ He clutched at that hand, that very hand, in his little hands and kissed it.... I remember his little face at that moment, I haven’t forgotten it and I never shall! Let go, let go, it’s my father, forgive him! forgive him.


I swear, that my brother will express his most deep and sincere regret, even if he has to go down on his knees in that same market‐place.... I’ll make him or he is no brother of mine!


Aha, then it’s only a suggestion! And it does not come from him but simply from the generosity of your own warm heart. You should have said so. No, in that case allow me to tell you of your brother’s highly chivalrous soldierly generosity, for he did give expression to it at the time. He left off dragging me by my beard and released me: ‘You are an officer,’ he said, ‘and I am an officer, if you can find a decent man to be your second send me your challenge. I will give satisfaction, though you are a scoundrel.’ That’s what he said. A chivalrous spirit indeed! I retired with Ilusha, and that scene is a family record imprinted for ever on Ilusha’s soul. No, it’s not for us to claim the privileges of noblemen. Judge for yourself. You’ve just been in our mansion, what did you see there? Three ladies, one a cripple and weak‐minded, another a cripple and hunchback and the third not crippled but far too clever. She is a student, dying to get back to Petersburg, to work for the emancipation of the Russian woman on the banks of the Neva. I won’t speak of Ilusha, he is only nine. I am alone in the world, and if I die, what will become of all of them? I simply ask you that. And if I challenge him and he kills me on the spot, what then? What will become of them? And worse still, if he doesn’t kill me but only cripples me: I couldn’t work, but I should still be a mouth to feed. Who would feed it and who would feed them all? Must I take Ilusha from school and send him to beg in the streets? That’s what it means for me to challenge him to a duel. It’s silly talk and nothing else. You are an officer, and I am an officer, if you can find a decent man to be your second send me your challenge. I will give satisfaction, though you are a scoundrel.


He will beg your forgiveness, he will bow down at your feet in the middle of the market‐place,


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


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


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


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


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


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


Anger! that’s just what it is. He is a little creature, but it’s a mighty anger. You don’t know all, sir. Let me tell you more. Since that incident all the boys have been teasing him about the ‘wisp of tow.’ Schoolboys are a merciless race, individually they are angels, but together, especially in schools, they are often merciless. Their teasing has stirred up a gallant spirit in Ilusha. An ordinary boy, a weak son, would have submitted, have felt ashamed of his father, sir, but he stood up for his father against them all. For his father and for truth and justice. For what he suffered when he kissed your brother’s hand and cried to him ‘Forgive father, forgive him,’—that only God knows—and I, his father. For our children—not your children, but ours—the children of the poor gentlemen looked down upon by every one—know what justice means, sir, even at nine years old. How should the rich know? They don’t explore such depths once in their lives. But at that moment in the square when he kissed his hand, at that moment my Ilusha had grasped all that justice means. That truth entered into him and crushed him for ever, sir. Forgive father, forgive him,


That very day, sir, he fell ill with fever and was delirious all night. All that day he hardly said a word to me, but I noticed he kept watching me from the corner, though he turned to the window and pretended to be learning his lessons. But I could see his mind was not on his lessons. Next day I got drunk to forget my troubles, sinful man as I am, and I don’t remember much. Mamma began crying, too—I am very fond of mamma—well, I spent my last penny drowning my troubles. Don’t despise me for that, sir, in Russia men who drink are the best. The best men amongst us are the greatest drunkards. I lay down and I don’t remember about Ilusha, though all that day the boys had been jeering at him at school. ‘Wisp of tow,’ they shouted, ‘your father was pulled out of the tavern by his wisp of tow, you ran by and begged forgiveness.’ Wisp of tow, your father was pulled out of the tavern by his wisp of tow, you ran by and begged forgiveness.


On the third day when he came back from school, I saw he looked pale and wretched.


What is it?


You fools and buffoons, can you ever do anything rational?


Quite so, can we ever do anything rational?


Father, father!


Well?


Father, how he treated you then!


It can’t be helped, Ilusha,


Don’t forgive him, father, don’t forgive him! At school they say that he has paid you ten roubles for it.


No, Ilusha. I would not take money from him for anything.


Father, father, challenge him to a duel, at school they say you are a coward and won’t challenge him, and that you’ll accept ten roubles from him.


I can’t challenge him to a duel, Ilusha,


Father,


anyway don’t forgive it. When I grow up I’ll call him out myself and kill him.


It’s a sin to kill,


even in a duel.


when I grow up, I’ll knock him down, knock the sword out of his hand, I’ll fall on him, wave my sword over him and say: “I could kill you, but I forgive you, so there!”


are the rich people stronger than any one else on earth?


Yes, Ilusha,


there are no people on earth stronger than the rich.


I will get rich, I will become an officer and conquer everybody. The Tsar will reward me, I will come back here and then no one will dare—


what a horrid town this is.


it isn’t a very nice town.


Father, let us move into another town, a nice one,


where people don’t know about us.


We will move, we will, Ilusha,


only I must save up for it.


Well, my boy,


how about our setting off on our travels?


Look, Ilusha,


it’s time we got out our last year’s kite again. I’ll mend it, where have you put it away?


Father,


dear father, how he insulted you!


Ilusha,


Ilusha darling.


Ah, how I would like to make friends with your boy! If you could arrange it—


Certainly, sir,


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


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


I swear that all I told you is the truth,


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


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


Never mind the lady! Listen, Alexey Fyodorovitch, at a moment like this you must listen, for you can’t understand what these two hundred roubles mean to me now. Besides its being honestly acquired from a ‘sister,’ so highly respected and revered, do you know that now I can look after mamma and Nina, my hunchback angel daughter? Doctor Herzenstube came to me in the kindness of his heart and was examining them both for a whole hour. ‘I can make nothing of it,’ said he, but he prescribed a mineral water which is kept at a chemist’s here. He said it would be sure to do her good, and he ordered baths, too, with some medicine in them. The mineral water costs thirty copecks, and she’d need to drink forty bottles perhaps; so I took the prescription and laid it on the shelf under the ikons, and there it lies. And he ordered hot baths for Nina with something dissolved in them, morning and evening. But how can we carry out such a cure in our mansion, without servants, without help, without a bath, and without water? Nina is rheumatic all over, I don’t think I told you that. All her right side aches at night, she is in agony, and, would you believe it, the angel bears it without groaning for fear of waking us. We eat what we can get, and she’ll only take the leavings, what you’d scarcely give to a dog. ‘I am not worth it, I am taking it from you, I am a burden on you,’ that’s what her angel eyes try to express. We wait on her, but she doesn’t like it. ‘I am a useless cripple, no good to any one.’ As though she were not worth it, when she is the saving of all of us with her angelic sweetness. Without her, without her gentle word it would be hell among us! She softens even Varvara. And don’t judge Varvara harshly either, she is an angel too, she, too, has suffered wrong. She came to us for the summer, and she brought sixteen roubles she had earned by lessons and saved up, to go back with to Petersburg in September, that is now. But we took her money and lived on it, so now she has nothing to go back with. Though indeed she couldn’t go back, for she has to work for us like a slave. She is like an overdriven horse with all of us on her back. She waits on us all, mends and washes, sweeps the floor, puts mamma to bed. And mamma is capricious and tearful and insane! And now I can get a servant with this money, you understand, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I can get medicines for the dear creatures, I can send my student to Petersburg, I can buy beef, I can feed them properly. Good Lord, but it’s a dream! Stay, Alexey Fyodorovitch, stay. Do you know that Ilusha and I will perhaps really carry out our dream. We will buy a horse and cart, a black horse, he insists on its being black, and we will set off as we pretended the other day. I have an old friend, a lawyer in K. province, and I heard through a trustworthy man that if I were to go he’d give me a place as clerk in his office, so, who knows, maybe he would. So I’d just put mamma and Nina in the cart, and Ilusha could drive, and I’d walk, I’d walk.... Why, if I only succeed in getting one debt paid that’s owing me, I should have perhaps enough for that too!


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


Alexey Fyodorovitch ... I ... you. I ... you, sir ... wouldn’t you like me to show you a little trick I know? A pretty trick,


What trick?


Why, look. Do you see, do you see? So much for your money! So much for your money! So much for your money! So much for your money! Tell those who sent you that the wisp of tow does not sell his honor. What should I say to my boy if I took money from you for our shame?


This is serious, serious,


Lise,


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


here I’ve brought you Alexey Fyodorovitch, whom you insulted so. He is not at all angry, I assure you; on the contrary, he is surprised that you could suppose so.


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


The fact is I didn’t give it to him, and it’s a long story,


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


No, Lise; it’s better I didn’t run after him,


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


Not hopeless, for the two hundred roubles will still come to them. He’ll take the money to‐morrow. To‐morrow he will be sure to take it. You see, Lise. I made one blunder, but that, even that, is all for the best.


What blunder, and why is it for the best?


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


Why, why could nothing better have happened?


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


I am so glad you say so, Lise.


Alexey Fyodorovitch, you are wonderfully good, but you are sometimes sort of formal.... And yet you are not a bit formal really. Go to the door, open it gently, and see whether mamma is listening. Come here, Alexey Fyodorovitch. Give me your hand—that’s right. I have to make a great confession, I didn’t write to you yesterday in joke, but in earnest,


Ah, Lise, what a good thing! You know, I was perfectly sure you were in earnest.


Sure? Upon my word! I kiss his hand and he says, ‘What a good thing!’


I should like to please you always, Lise, but I don’t know how to do it,


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


Why, was it wrong of me to feel sure?


Ah, Alyosha, on the contrary, it was delightfully right. Oh, what are you doing?


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


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


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


Like a martyr? How?


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


Alyosha, give me your hand. Why are you taking it away? Listen, Alyosha. What will you wear when you come out of the monastery? What sort of suit? Don’t laugh, don’t be angry, it’s very, very important to me.


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


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


No, I didn’t believe it.


Oh, you insupportable person, you are incorrigible.


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


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


Ah, Lise, it was not so a bit. The letter is with me now, and it was this morning, in this pocket. Here it is. But I am not going to give it to you. Look at it from here.


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


I told a lie if you like. I told a lie so as not to give you back the letter. It’s very precious to me. It always will be, and I won’t give it up to any one!


Alyosha, look at the door. Isn’t mamma listening?


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


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


Really, Lise? That’s not right.


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


Yes, of course, if so— only it’s not right.


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


Do, then; you won’t find out anything,


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


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


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


Yes, Lise, I have a secret one, too. I see you love me, since you guessed that.


What grief? What about? Can you tell me?


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


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


Yes, my brothers too,


I don’t like your brother Ivan, Alyosha,


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


Yes, I did.


And perhaps I don’t even believe in God.


You don’t believe? What is the matter?


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


Yes, together, together! Henceforward we shall be always together, all our lives! Listen, kiss me, I allow you. Come, now go. Christ be with you! Make haste back to him while he is alive. I see I’ve kept you cruelly. I’ll pray to‐day for him and you. Alyosha, we shall be happy! Shall we be happy, shall we?


I believe we shall, Lise.


Alexey Fyodorovitch, this is awful. This is all childish nonsense and ridiculous. I trust you won’t dream—It’s foolishness, nothing but foolishness!


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


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


Oh, no, not at all. I was quite serious in what I said,


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


Not at all,


I am awfully fond of verses of all kinds, if they rhyme. Why don’t you go on?


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


It was even better last time. You sang ‘If my darling be in health’; it sounded more tender. I suppose you’ve forgotten to‐day.


Poetry is rubbish!


Oh, no! I am very fond of poetry.


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


How clever you are! How is it you’ve gone so deep into everything?


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


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


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


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


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


Are they so much better in their own country than we are? I wouldn’t change a dandy I know of for three young Englishmen,


That’s as one prefers.


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


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


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


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


It must be lovely, a duel,


How so?


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


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


You don’t mean you would run away?


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


Will my brother Dmitri soon be back?


How am I to know about Dmitri Fyodorovitch? It’s not as if I were his keeper,


But I simply asked whether you do know?


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


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


And how did you get in this time, since the gate was bolted an hour ago?


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


Ach, as though we could take it amiss in you! For Dmitri Fyodorovitch often goes to the summer‐house in that way. We don’t know he is here and he is sitting in the summer‐house.


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


He never tells us,


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


With death?


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


His honor said to him the other day, ‘I’ll pound you in a mortar!’


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


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


Brother Ivan invited Dmitri to the restaurant to‐day?


That’s so.


The Metropolis tavern in the market‐place?


The very same.


That’s quite likely. Thank you, Smerdyakov; that’s important. I’ll go there at once.


Don’t betray me,


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


But wait a minute, I’ll open the gate to you,


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


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


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


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


Shall I order you fish, soup or anything. You don’t live on tea alone, I suppose,


Let me have soup, and tea afterwards, I am hungry,


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


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


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


Were you very anxious to see me, then?


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


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


What’s that?


You won’t be angry?


Well?


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


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


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


Love life more than the meaning of it?


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


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


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


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


Yes, my elder sends me out into the world.


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


No, but I saw Smerdyakov. But he begged me not to tell Dmitri that he had told me about him,


Are you frowning on Smerdyakov’s account?


Yes, on his account. Damn him, I certainly did want to see Dmitri, but now there’s no need. But are you really going so soon, brother?


Yes.


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


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


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


No.


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


Perhaps so. You are not laughing at me, now, Ivan?


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


Yes, for real Russians the questions of God’s existence and of immortality, or, as you say, the same questions turned inside out, come first and foremost, of course, and so they should,


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


How nicely you put that in!


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


Begin where you like. You declared yesterday at father’s that there was no God.


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


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


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


And why did you begin ‘as stupidly as you could’?


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


You will explain why you don’t accept the world?


To be sure I will, it’s not a secret, that’s what I’ve been leading up to. Dear little brother, I don’t want to corrupt you or to turn you from your stronghold, perhaps I want to be healed by you. I must make you one confession. I could never understand how one can love one’s neighbors. It’s just one’s neighbors, to my mind, that one can’t love, though one might love those at a distance. I once read somewhere of John the Merciful, a saint, that when a hungry, frozen beggar came to him, he took him into his bed, held him in his arms, and began breathing into his mouth, which was putrid and loathsome from some awful disease. I am convinced that he did that from ‘self‐laceration,’ from the self‐laceration of falsity, for the sake of the charity imposed by duty, as a penance laid on him. For any one to love a man, he must be hidden, for as soon as he shows his face, love is gone.


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


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


You speak with a strange air, as though you were not quite yourself.


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


Brother, what are you driving at?


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


Just as he did God, then?


‘It’s wonderful how you can turn words,’ as Polonius says in Hamlet


To be shot,


Bravo! If even you say so.... You’re a pretty monk! So there is a little devil sitting in your heart, Alyosha Karamazov! What I said was absurd, but— That’s just the point, that ‘but’! Let me tell you, novice, that the absurd is only too necessary on earth. The world stands on absurdities, and perhaps nothing would have come to pass in it without them. We know what we know!


What do you know?


I understand nothing. I don’t want to understand anything now. I want to stick to the fact. I made up my mind long ago not to understand. If I try to understand anything, I shall be false to the fact, and I have determined to stick to the fact.


Why are you trying me? Will you say what you mean at last?


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


That’s rebellion,


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


No, I wouldn’t consent,


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


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