 CHAPTER ONE FEODER PAVLEVICH-KARMAZOV Say Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us, owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. For the present I would only say that this landowner, for so we used to call him, although he hardly spent a day of his life on his own estate, was a strange type, yet one pretty frequently to be met with, a type abject, ambitious, and at the same time senseless. But he was one of those senseless persons who were very well capable of looking after their worldly affairs, and apparently after nothing else. Fyodor Pavlovich, for instance, began with next to nothing. His estate was of the smallest. He ran to dine at other men's tables, and fastened on them as a todie, yet at his death it appeared that he had a hundred thousand rubles in hard cash. At the same time he was all his life one of the most senseless, fantastical fellows in the whole district. I repeat, it was not stupidity. The majority of these fantastical fellows are shrewd and intelligent enough, but just senselessness, and a peculiar national form of it. He was married twice, and had three sons, the eldest, Dmitry, by his first wife, and two, Ivan and Alexei, by his second. Fyodor Pavlovich's first wife, Adalida Ivanovna, belonged to a fairly rich and distinguished noble family, also landowners in our district, the Musoths. Now it came to pass that an heiress who was also a beauty, and moreover one of those vigorous intelligent girls so common in this generation, but sometimes also to be found in the last, could have married such a worthless puny weakling, as we all called him, I won't attempt to explain. I knew a young lady of the last romantic generation who after some years of an enigmatic passion for a gentleman, whom she might quite easily have married at any moment, invented insuperable obstacles to their union, and ended by throwing herself one stormy night into a rather deep and rapid river from a high bank, almost a precipice, and so perished, entirely to satisfy her own caprice, and to be like Shakespeare's Ophelia. Indeed, if this precipice, a chosen and favourite spot of hers, had been less picturesque, if there had been a prosaic flat bank in its place, most likely the suicide would never have taken place. This is a fact, and probably there have been not a few similar instances in the last two or three generations. Adalida Ivanovna Musoth's action was, similarly, no doubt, an echo of other people's ideas, and was due to the irritation caused by lack of mental freedom. She wanted, perhaps, to show her feminine independence, to override class distinctions and the despotism of her family. And a pliable imagination persuaded her, we must suppose, for a brief moment that Fyodor Pavlovich, in spite of his parasitic position, was one of the bold and ironical spirits of that progressive epoch, though he was, in fact, an ill-natured buffoon and nothing more. What gave the marriage pecancy was that it was preceded by an elopement, and this greatly captivated Adalida Ivanovna's fancy. Fyodor Pavlovich's position at the time made him specially eager for any such enterprise, for he was passionately anxious to make a career in one way or another, to attach himself to a good family and obtain a dowry, was an alluring prospect. As for mutual love, it did not exist, apparently, either in the bride or in him, in spite of Adalida Ivanovna's beauty. This was perhaps a unique case of the kind in the life of Fyodor Pavlovich, who was always of a voluptuous temper and was ready to run after any petticoat on the slightest encouragement. She seems to have been the only woman who made no particular appeal to his senses. Immediately after the elopement Adalida Ivanovna discerned in a flash that she had no feeling for her husband but contempt. The marriage accordingly showed itself in its true colours with extraordinary rapidity. Although the family accepted the event pretty quickly and apportioned the runaway bride her dowry, the husband and wife began to lead a most disorderly life and there were everlasting scenes between them. It was said that the young wife showed incomparably more generosity and dignity than Fyodor Pavlovich, who, as is now known, had hold of all her money up to twenty-five thousand rubles as soon as she received it, so that those thousands were lost to her forever. The little village and the rather fine townhouse which formed part of her dowry, he did his utmost for a long time to transfer to his name by means of some deed of conveyance. He would probably have succeeded, merely from her moral fatigue and desire to get rid of him, and from the contempt and loathing he aroused by his persistent and shameless importunity. But, fortunately, Adalida Ivanovna's family intervened and circumvented his greediness. It is known for a fact that frequent fights took place between the husband and wife, but rumour had it that Fyodor Pavlovich did not beat his wife but was beaten by her, for she was a hot-tempered, bold, dark-browed, impatient woman, possessed of remarkable physical strength. Finally she left the house and ran away from Fyodor Pavlovich with the destitute divinity student, leaving Mitsha, a child of three years old, in her husband's hands. Immediately Fyodor Pavlovich introduced a regular harem into the house and abandoned himself to orgies of drunkenness. In the intervals he used to drive all over the province, complaining tearfully to each and all of Adalida Ivanovna's having left him, going into details too disgraceful for a husband to mention in regard to his own married life. What seemed to gratify him and flatter his self-love most was to play the ridiculous part of the injured husband and to parade his woes with embellishments. One would think that you'd got a promotion, Fyodor Pavlovich, you seem so pleased in spite of your sorrow, scoffers said to him. Many even added that he was glad of a new comic part in which to play the buffoon and that it was simply to make it funnier that he pretended to be unaware of his ludicrous position. But, who knows, it may have been simplicity. At last he succeeded in getting on the track of his runaway wife. The poor woman turned out to be in Petersburg, where she had gone with her divinity student, and where she had thrown herself into a life of complete emancipation. Fyodor Pavlovich had once began bustling about making preparations to go to Petersburg with what object he could not himself have said. He would perhaps have really gone, but having determined to do so he felt at once entitled to fortify himself for the journey by another bout of reckless drinking. And just at that time his wife's family received the news of her death in Petersburg. She had died quite suddenly in a garret, according to one story, of typhus, or has another version had it, of starvation. Fyodor Pavlovich was drunk when he heard of his wife's death, and the story is that he ran out into the street and began shouting with joy, raising his hands to heaven, Lord, now letest thou thy servant depart in peace. But others said he wept without restraint, like a little child, so much so that people were sorry for him in spite of the repulsion he inspired. It is quite possible that both versions were true, that he rejoiced at his release, and at the same time wept for her who released him. As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naïve and simple-hearted than we suppose, and we ourselves are too. CHAPTER II You can easily imagine what a father such a man could be and how he would bring up his children. His behaviour as a father was exactly what might be expected. He completely abandoned the child of his marriage with Adelaida Ivanovna, not from Malice, nor because of his matrimonial grievances, but simply because he forgot him. While he was wearying everyone with his tears and complaints and turning his house into a sink of debauchery, a faithful servant of the family, Grigori, took the three-year-old Mitcha into his care. If he hadn't looked after him there would have been no one even to change the baby's little shirt. It happened, moreover, that the child's relations on his mother's side forgot him too at first. His grandfather was no longer living, his widow, Mitcha's grandmother, had moved to Moscow, and was seriously ill while his daughters were married, so that Mitcha remained for almost a whole year in old Grigori's barge, and lived with him in the servant's cottage. But if his father had remembered him, he could not indeed have been altogether unaware of his existence. He would have sent him back to the cottage, as the child would only have been in the way of his debaucheries. But a cousin of Mitcha's mother, Pyotr Alexandrovich Musov, happened to return from Paris. He lived for many years afterwards abroad, but was at that time quite a young man and distinguished among the Musovs as a man of enlightened ideas and of European culture, who had been in the capitals and abroad. Towards the end of his life he became a liberal of the type common in the forties and fifties. In the course of his career he had come into contact with many of the most liberal men of his epoch, both in Russia and abroad. He had known Proudon and Bakunin personally, and in his declining years was very fond of describing the three days of the Paris Revolution of February 1848, hinting that he himself had almost taken part in the fighting on the barricades. This was one of the most grateful recollections of his youth. He had an independent property of about a thousand souls, to reckon in the old style. His splendid estate lay on the outskirts of our little town, and bordered on the lands of our famous monastery, with which Pyotr Alexandrovich began an endless lawsuit almost as soon as he came into the estate concerning the rights of fishing in the river, or woodcutting in the forest, I don't know exactly which. He regarded it as his duty as a citizen and a man of culture to open an attack upon the clericals. Hearing all about Adelaide Ivanovna, whom he of course remembered, and in whom he had at one time been interested, and learning of the existence of Mitr, he intervened in spite of all his youthful indignation and contempt for Fyodor Pavlovich. He made the latter's acquaintance for the first time, and told him directly that he wished to undertake the child's education. He used long afterwards to tell, as a characteristic touch, that when he began to speak of Mitr, Fyodor Pavlovich looked for some time as though he did not understand what child he was talking about, and even as though he was surprised to hear that he had a little son in the house. The story may have been exaggerated, yet it must have been something like the truth. Fyodor Pavlovich was all his life fond of acting, of suddenly playing an unexpected part, sometimes without any motive for doing so, and even to his own direct disadvantage, as for instance in the present case. This habit, however, is characteristic of a very great number of people, some of them very clever ones, not like Fyodor Pavlovich. Piotr Alexandrovich carried the business through vigorously, and was appointed with Fyodor Pavlovich joint guardian of the child, who had a small property, a house, and land left him by his mother. Mitr did, in fact, pass into his cousin's keeping, but as the latter had no family of his own, and after securing the revenues of his estates was in haste to return at once to Paris, he left the boy in charge of one of his cousins, a lady living in Moscow. It came to pass that, settling permanently in Paris, he too forgot the child, especially when the revolution of February broke out, making an impression on his mind that he remembered all the rest of his life. The Moscow lady died, and Mitr passed into the care of one of her married daughters. I believe he changed his home a fourth time later on. I won't enlarge upon that now, as I shall have much to tell later of Fyodor Pavlovich's first-born, and must confine myself now to the most essential facts about him, without which I could not begin my story. In the first place, this Mitya, or rather the Mitr Fyodorovich, was the only one of Fyodor Pavlovich's three sons who grew up in the belief that he had property, that he would be independent on coming of age. He spent an irregular boyhood and youth. He did not finish his studies at the gymnasium. He got into a military school, then went to the Caucasus, was promoted, fought a duel, and was degraded to the ranks, earned promotion again, led a wild life, and spent a good deal of money. He did not begin to receive any income from Fyodor Pavlovich until he came of age, and until then got into debt. He saw and knew his father, Fyodor Pavlovich, for the first time on coming of age when he visited our neighbourhood on purpose to settle with him about his property. He seems not to have liked his father. He did not stay long with him and may taste to get away, having only succeeded in obtaining a sum of money and entering into an agreement for future payments from the estate of the revenues and value of which he was unable, a fact worthy of note, upon this occasion to get a statement from his father. Fyodor Pavlovich remarked, for the first time then, this too should be noted, that Mitcha had a vague and exaggerated idea of his property. Fyodor Pavlovich was very well satisfied with this as it fell in with his own designs. He gathered only that the young man was frivolous, unruly, of violent passions, impatient and dissipated, and that if he could only obtain ready money he would be satisfied, although only, of course, for a short time. So Fyodor Pavlovich began to take advantage of this fact, sending him from time to time small doles, installments. In the end, when four years later, Mitcha losing patience came a second time to our little town to settle up once for all with his father, it turned out to his amazement that he had nothing, that it was difficult to get an account even, that he had received the whole value of his property in sums of money from Fyodor Pavlovich, and was perhaps even in debt to him, that by various agreements into which he had, of his own desire, entered at various previous dates, he had no right to expect anything more, and so on and so on. The young man was overwhelmed, suspected deceit and cheating, and was almost beside himself, and indeed this circumstance led to the catastrophe, the account of which forms the subject of my first introductory story, or rather the external side of it. But before I pass to that story I must say a little of Fyodor Pavlovich's other two sons, and of their origin. Off his hands Fyodor Pavlovich married a second time, his second marriage lasted eight years. He took this second wife, Sophia Ivanovna, also a very young girl, from another province where he had gone upon some small piece of business in company with a Jew. Though Fyodor Pavlovich was a drunkard and a vicious debauchee, he never neglected investing his capital and managed his business affairs very successfully, though no doubt not over scrupulously. Sophia Ivanovna was the daughter of an obscure deacon, and was left from childhood an orphan without relations. She grew up in the house of a general's widow, a wealthy old lady of good position, who was at once her benefactress and torment her. I do not know the details, but I have only heard that the orphan girl, a meek and gentle creature, was once cut down from a halter in which she was hanging from a nail in the loft. So terrible were her sufferings from the caprice and everlasting nagging of this old woman, who was apparently not bad-hearted but had become an insufferable tyrant through idleness. Fyodor Pavlovich made her an offer. Inquiries were made about him, and he was refused. But again, as in his first marriage, he proposed an elopement to the orphan girl. There is very little doubt that she would not on any account have married him if she had known a little more about him in time. But she lived in another province, besides what could a little girl of sixteen know about it, except that she would be better at the bottom of the river than remaining with her benefactress. So the poor child exchanged a benefactress for a benefactor. Fyodor Pavlovich did not get a penny this time, for the general's widow was furious. She gave them nothing and cursed them both. But he had not reckoned on a dowry. What allured him was the remarkable beauty of the innocent girl, above all her innocent appearance, which had a peculiar attraction for a vicious profligate who had hitherto admired only the coarser types of feminine beauty. Those innocent eyes slipped my soul up like a razor, he used to say afterwards, with his loathsome snigger. In a man so depraved this might of course mean no more than sensual attraction. As he had received no dowry with his wife, and had, so to speak, taken her from the halter, he did not stand on ceremony with her. Making her feel that she had wronged him, he took advantage of her phenomenal meekness and submissiveness to trample on the elementary decencies of marriage. He gathered loose women into his house and carried on orgies of debauchery in his wife's presence. To show what a pass things had come to, I may mention that Grigori, the gloomy, stupid, obstinate argumentative servant, who had always hated his first mistress, Adelaida Ivanovna, took the side of his new mistress. He championed her cause, abusing Fyodor Pavlovitch in a manner little befitting a servant, and on one occasion broke up the revels and drove all the disorderly women out of the house. In the end this unhappy young woman, kept in terror from her childhood, fell into that kind of nervous disease which is most frequently found in peasant women who are said to be possessed by devils. At times, after terrible fits of hysterics, she even lost her reason. Yet she bore Fyodor Pavlovitch two sons, Ivan and Alexei, the eldest in the first year of marriage and the second three years later. When she died, little Alexei was in his fourth year, and, strange as it seems, I know that he remembered his mother all his life, like a dream, of course. At her death almost exactly the same thing happened to the two little boys as to their elder brother, Misha. They were completely forgotten and abandoned by their father. They were looked after by the same Grigori and lived in his cottage where they were found by the tyrannical old lady who had brought up their mother. She was still alive and had not all those eight years forgotten the insult done her. All that time she was obtaining exact information as to her Sophia's manner of life, and hearing of her illness and hideous surroundings, she declared aloud two or three times to her retainers, it serves her right, God has punished her for her ingratitude. Exactly three months after Sophia Ivanovna's death the General's widow suddenly appeared in our town and went straight to Fyodor Pavlovitch's house. She spent only half an hour in the town, but she did a great deal. It was evening. Fyodor Pavlovitch, whom she had not seen for those eight years, came in to her drunk. The story is that instantly upon seeing him, without any sort of explanation, she gave him two good resounding slaps on the face, seized him by a tuft of hair and shook him three times up and down. Then, without a word, she went straight to the cottage to the two boys. Seeing at the first glance that they were unwashed and in dirty linen, she promptly gave Grigori two a box on the ear, and announcing that she would carry off both the children, she wrapped them just as they were in a rug, put them in the carriage, and drove off to her own town. Grigori accepted the blow like a devoted slave, without a word, and when he escorted the old lady to her carriage, he made her a low bow and pronounced impressively that, God would repay her for the orphans. You are a blockhead, all the same, the old lady shouted to him as she drove away. Fyodor Pavlovitch, thinking it over, decided that it was a good thing and did not refuse the general's widow his formal consent to any proposition in regard to his children's education. As for the slaps she had given him, he drove all over the town telling the story. It happened that the old lady died soon after this, but she left the boys in her will a thousand rupals each, for their instruction and so that all be spent on them exclusively with the condition that it be so portioned out as to last till they are twenty-one, for it is more than adequate provision for such children if other people think fit to throw away their money, let them. I have not read the will myself, but I heard there was something queer of the sort, very whimsically expressed. The principal heir, Yefim Petrovitch Polyanov, the marshal of nobility of the province, turned out, however, to be an honest man, writing to Fyodor Pavlovitch and discerning at once that he could extract nothing from him for his children's education, though the latter never directly refused, but only procrastinated, as he always did in such cases, and was indeed at times effusively sentimental. Yefim Petrovitch took a personal interest in the orphans. He became especially fond of the younger. Alexei, who lived for a long while as one of his family, I beg the reader to note this from the beginning. And to Yefim Petrovitch, a man of a generosity and humanity rarely to be met with, the young people were more indebted for their education and bringing up than to anyone. He kept the two thousand rubles left to them by the general's widow intact, so that by the time they came of age their portions had been doubled by the accumulation of interest. He educated them both at his own expense, and certainly spent far more than a thousand rubles upon each of them. I won't enter into a detailed account of their boyhood and youth, but will only mention a few of the most important events. Of the elder, Ivan, I will only say that he grew into a somewhat morose and reserved, though far from timid, boy. At ten years old he had realized that they were living not in their own home but on other people's charity, and that their father was a man of whom it was disgraceful to speak. This boy began very early, almost in his infancy, so they say at least, to show a brilliant and unusual aptitude for learning. I don't know precisely why, but he left the family of Yafim Petrovich when he was hardly thirteen, entering a Moscow gymnasium and boarding with an experienced and celebrated teacher, an old friend of Yafim Petrovich. Ivan used to declare afterwards that this was all due to the ardor for good works of Yafim Petrovich, who was captivated by the idea that the boy's genius should be trained by a teacher of genius. But neither Yafim Petrovich nor this teacher was living when the young man finished at the gymnasium and entered the university. As Yafim Petrovich had made no provision for the payment of the tyrannical old lady's legacy, which had grown from one thousand to two, it was delayed, owing to formalities inevitable in Russia, and the young man was in great straits for the first two years at the university as he was forced to keep himself all the time he was studying. It must be noted that he did not even attempt to communicate with his father, perhaps from pride, from contempt for him, or perhaps from his cool common sense, which told him that from such a father he would get no real assistance. However, that may have been, the young man was by no means despondent and succeeded in getting work, at first giving six-penny lessons, and afterwards getting paragraphs on street incidents into the newspapers under the signature of eye-witness. These paragraphs, it was said, were so interesting and pecant that they were soon taken. This alone showed the young man's practical and intellectual superiority over the masses of needy and unfortunate students of both sexes, who hang about the offices of the newspapers and journals unable to think of anything better than everlasting entreaties for copying and translations from the French. Having once got into touch with the editors, Yvon Fyodorovich always kept up his connection with them, and in his latter years at the university he published brilliant reviews of books upon various special subjects, so that he became well-known in literary circles. But only in his last year he suddenly succeeded in attracting the attention of a far wider circle of readers, so that a great many people noticed and remembered him. It was rather a curious incident. When he had just left the university and was preparing to go abroad upon his two thousand rubles, Yvon Fyodorovich published in one of the more important journals a strange article, which attracted general notice on a subject of which he might have been supposed to know nothing as he was a student of natural science. The article dealt with a subject which was being debated everywhere at the time, the position of the ecclesiastical courts. After discussing several opinions on the subject he went on to explain his own view. What was most striking about the article was its tone and its unexpected conclusion. Many of the church party regarded him unquestioningly as on their side, and yet not only the secularists but even atheists joined them in their applause. Finally some sagacious persons opined that the article was nothing but an impudent satirical burlesque. I mentioned this incident particularly because this article penetrated into the famous monastery in our neighborhood, where the inmates being particularly interested in the question of the ecclesiastical courts were completely bewildered by it. Learning the author's name they were interested in his being a native of the town and the son of that Fyodor Pavlovich. And just then it was that the author himself made his appearance among us. Why Yvon Fyodorovich had come amongst us I remember asking myself at the time with a certain uneasiness. This fateful visit, which was the first step leading to so many consequences I never fully explained to myself. It seemed strange on the face of it that a young man so learned, so proud, and apparently so cautious should suddenly visit such an infamous house and a father who had ignored him all his life, hardly knew him, never thought of him, and would not under any circumstances have given him money, though he was always afraid that his sons Yvon and Alexei would also come to ask him for it. And here the young man was, staying in the house of such a father, had been living with him for two months, and they were on the best possible terms. This last fact was a special cause of wonder to many others as well as to me. Peter Alexandrovich Musov, of whom we have spoken already, the cousin of Fyodor Pavlovich's first wife, happened to be in the neighbourhood again on a visit to his estate. He had come from Paris, which was his permanent home. I remember that he was more surprised than anyone when he made the acquaintance of the young man who interested him extremely and with whom he sometimes argued and not without an inner pang compared himself in acquirements. He is proud, he used to say. He will never be in want of pence. He has got money enough to go abroad now. What does he want here? Everyone can see that he hasn't come for money, for his father would never give him any. He has no taste for drink and dissipation, and yet his father can't do without him. They get on so well together. That was the truth. The young man had an unmistakable influence over his father, who positively appeared to be behaving more decently and even seemed at times ready to obey his son, though often extremely and even spitefully perverse. It was only later that we learned that Yvonne had come partly at the request of, and in the interests of, his elder brother, Dmitry, whom he saw for the first time on this very visit, though he had before leaving Moscow been in correspondence with him about an important matter of more concern to Dmitry than himself. What that business was the reader will learn fully in due time. Yet even when I did know of this special circumstance I still felt Yvonne Fyodorovich to be an enigmatic figure and thought his visit rather mysterious. I may add that Yvonne appeared at the time in the light of a mediator between his father and his elder brother Dmitry, who was in open quarrel with his father and even planning to bring an action against him. The family, I repeat, was now united for the first time, and some of its members met for the first time in their lives. The younger brother, Alexei, had been a year already among us having been the first of the three to arrive. It is of that brother, Alexei, I find it most difficult to speak in this introduction, yet I must give some preliminary account of him, if only to explain one queer fact which is that I have to introduce my hero to the reader wearing the cassock of a novice. Yes, he had been for the last year in our monastery and seemed willing to be cloistered there for the rest of his life. CHAPTER IV. THE THIRD SON, ALYOSHA He was only twenty, his brother Yvonne was in his twenty-fourth year at the time, while their elder brother Dmitry was twenty-seven. First of all, I must explain that this young man, Alyosha, was not a fanatic and, in my opinion, at least, was not even a mystic. I may as well give my full opinion from the beginning. He was simply an early lover of humanity, and that he adopted the monastic life was simply because at that time it struck him, so to say, as the ideal escape for his soul, struggling from the darkness of worldly wickedness to the light of love. And the reason this life struck him in this way was that he found in it at that time, as he thought, an extraordinary being, our celebrated elder, Sassima, to whom he became attached with all the warm first love of his ardent heart. But I do not dispute that he was very strange, even at that time, and had been so, indeed, from his cradle. I have mentioned already, by the way, that though he lost his mother in his fourth year, he remembered her, all his life, her face, her caresses, as though she stood living before me. Such memories may persist, as everyone knows, from an even earlier age, even from two years old, but scarcely standing out through a whole lifetime, like spots of light out of darkness, like a corner torn out of a huge picture which has all faded and disappeared except that fragment. That is how it was with him. He remembered one still summer evening, an open window, the slanting rays of the setting sun, that he recalled most vividly of all, in the corner of the room, the holy image, before it, a lighted lamp, and on her knees, before the image, his mother, sobbing hysterically with cries and moans, snatching him up in both arms, squeezing him close till it hurt, and praying for him to the mother of God, holding him out in both arms to the image as though to put him under the mother's protection. And suddenly a nurse runs in and snatches him from her in terror. That was the picture. And Aliyasha remembered his mother's face at that minute. He used to say that it was frenzied but beautiful, as he remembered, but he rarely cared to speak of this memory to anyone. In his childhood and youth he was by no means expansive and talked little indeed, but not from shyness or a sullen unsociability, quite the contrary, from something different, from a sort of inner preoccupation entirely personal and unconcerned with other people, but so important to him that he seemed, as it were, to forget others on account of it. But he was fond of people. He seemed throughout his life to put implicit trust in people, yet no one ever looked on him as a simpleton or naive person. There was something about him which made one feel at once, and it was so all his life afterwards, that he did not care to be a judge of others, that he would never take it upon himself to criticise and would never condemn anyone for anything. He seemed indeed to accept everything without the least condemnation, though often grieving bitterly. And this was so much so that no one could surprise or frighten him even in his earliest youth. Coming at twenty to his father's house, which was a very sink of filthy debauchery, he, chaste and pure as he was, simply withdrew in silence when to look on was unbearable, but without the slightest sign of contempt or condemnation. His father, who had once been in a dependent position and so was sensitive and ready to take offence, met him at first with distrust and sullenness. He does not say much, he used to say, and thinks the more. But soon, within a fortnight, indeed, he took to embracing him and kissing him terribly often with drunken tears, with sautish sentimentality, yet he evidently felt a real and deep affection for him, such as he had never been capable of feeling for anyone before. Everyone, indeed, loved this young man wherever he went, and it was so from his earliest childhood. When he entered the household of his patron and benefactor, Yefim Petrovich Polinov, he gained the hearts of all the family, so that they looked on him quite as their own child. Yet he entered the house at such a tender age that he could not have acted from design nor artfulness in winning affection, so that the gift of making himself loved directly and unconsciously was inherent in him, in his very nature, so to speak. It was the same at school, though he seemed to be just one of those children who are distrusted, sometimes ridiculed, and even disliked by their school-fellows. He was dreamy, for instance, and rather solitary. From his earliest childhood he was fond of creeping into a corner to read, and yet he was a general favorite all the while he was at school. He was rarely playful or merry, but anyone could see at the first glance that this was not from any sullenness. On the contrary, he was bright and good-tempered. He never tried to show off among his school-fellows. Perhaps because of this he was never afraid of anyone, yet the boys immediately understood that he was not proud of his fearlessness and seemed to be unaware that he was bold and courageous. He never resented an insult. It would happen that an hour after the offense he would address the offender or answer some question with as trustful and candid an expression as though nothing had happened between them. And it was not that he seemed to have forgotten or intentionally forgiven the affront, but simply that he did not regard it as an affront, and this completely conquered and captivated the boys. He had one characteristic which made all his school-fellows from the bottom class to the top want to mock at him, not from malice, but because it amused them. This characteristic was a wild, fanatical, modesty, and chastity. He could not bear to hear certain words and certain conversations about women. There are certain words and conversations unhappily impossible to eradicate in schools. Boys pure in mind and heart, almost children, are fond of talking in school among themselves, and even aloud, of things, pictures, and images of which even soldiers would sometimes hesitate to speak. More than that, much that soldiers have no knowledge or conception of, is familiar to quite young children of our intellectual and higher classes. There is no moral depravity, no real corrupt inner cynicism in it, but there is the appearance of it, and it is often looked upon among them as something refined, subtle, daring, and worthy of imitation. Seeing that Alyosha Karamazov put his fingers in his ears when they talked of that, they used sometimes to crowd round him, pull his hands away, and shout nastiness into both ears, while he struggled, slipped to the floor, tried to hide himself without uttering one word of abuse, enduring their insults in silence. But at last they left him alone, and gave up taunting him with being a regular girl, and what's more they looked upon it with compassion as a weakness. He was always one of the best in the class, but was never first. At the time of Yefim Petrovic's death Alyosha had two more years to complete at the provincial gymnasium. The inconsolable widow went almost immediately after his death for a long visit to Italy with her whole family, which consisted only of women and girls. Alyosha went to live in the house of two distant relations of Yefim Petrovic, ladies whom he had never seen before. On what terms he lived with them he did not know himself. It was very characteristic of him indeed that he never cared at whose expense he was living. In that respect he was a striking contrast to his elder brother Ivan, who struggled with poverty for his first two years in the university, maintained himself by his own efforts, and had from childhood been bitterly conscious of living at the expense of his benefactor. But this strange trait in Alyosha's character must not, I think, be criticized too severely, for at the slightest acquaintance with him anyone would have perceived that Alyosha was one of those youths, almost of the type of religious enthusiast who, if they were suddenly to come into possession of a large fortune, would not hesitate to give it away for the asking, either for good works or perhaps to a clever rogue. In general he seemed scarcely to know the value of money, not, of course, in a literal sense. When he was given pocket money, which he never asked for, he was either terribly careless of it so that it was gone in a moment, or he kept it for weeks together, not knowing what to do with it. In later years Pyotr Alexandrovich Musav, a man very sensitive on the score of money and bourgeois honesty, pronounced the following judgment after getting to know Alyosha. Here is perhaps the one man in the world whom you might leave alone without a penny in the center of an unknown town of a million inhabitants, and he would not come to harm, he would not die of cold and hunger, for he would be fed and sheltered at once, and if he were not he would find a shelter for himself, and it would cost him no effort or humiliation, and to shelter him would be no burden, but on the contrary would probably be looked on as a pleasure. He did not finish his studies at the gymnasium. A year before the end of the course he suddenly announced to the ladies that he was going to see his father about a plan which had occurred to him. They were sorry and unwilling to let him go. The journey was not an expensive one, and the ladies would not let him pawn his watch, a parting present from his benefactor's family. They provided him liberally with money and even fitted him out with new clothes and linen, but he returned half the money they gave him, saying that he intended to go third class. On his arrival in the town he made no answer to his father's first inquiry why he had come before completing his studies, and seemed, so they say, unusually thoughtful. It soon became apparent that he was looking for his mother's tomb. He practically acknowledged at the time that that was the only object of his visit, but it can hardly have been the whole reason of it. It is more probable that he himself did not understand and could not explain what had suddenly arisen in his soul and drawn him irresistibly into a new, unknown, but inevitable path. Fyodor Pavlovich could not show him where his second wife was buried, for he had never visited her grave since he had thrown earth upon her coffin, and in the course of years had entirely forgotten where she was buried. Fyodor Pavlovich, by the way, had for some time previously not been living in our town. Three or four years after his wife's death he had gone to the south of Russia and finally turned up in Odessa, where he spent several years. He made the acquaintance at first, in his own words, of a lot of low Jews, Jewesses and Jewkins, and ended by being received by Jews high and low alike. It may be presumed that at this period he developed a peculiar faculty for making and hoarding money. He finally returned to our town, only three years before Alyosh's arrival. His former acquaintances found him looking terribly aged, although he was by no means an old man. He behaved not exactly with more dignity, but with more effrontery. The former buffoon showed an insolent propensity for making buffoons of others. His depravity with women was not simply what it used to be, but even more revolting. In a short time he opened a great number of new taverns in the district. It was evident that he had perhaps a hundred thousand rubles or not much less. Many of the inhabitants of the town and district were soon in his debt, and, of course, had given good security. Of late, too, he looked somehow bloated and seemed more irresponsible, more uneven, had sunk into a sort of incoherence, used to begin one thing and go on with another as though he were letting himself go altogether. He was more and more frequently drunk. And if it had not been for the same servant Grigori, who by that time had aged considerably too and used to look after him sometimes almost like a tutor, Fyodor Pavlovich might have gotten into terrible scrapes. Alyosha's arrival seemed to affect even his moral side, as though something had awakened in this prematurely old man which had long been dead in his soul. Do you know, he used often to say, looking at Alyosha, that you are like her the crazy woman? That was what he used to call his dead wife Alyosha's mother. Grigori, it was, who pointed out the crazy woman's grave to Alyosha. He took him to our town cemetery and showed him, in a remote corner, a cast iron tombstone, cheap but decently kept, on which were inscribed the name and age of the deceased and the date of her death, and below a four-lined verse, such as are commonly used on old-fashioned middle-class tombs. To Alyosha's amazement, this tomb turned out to be Grigori's doing. He had put it up on the poor crazy woman's grave at his own expense, after Fyodor Pavlovich, whom he had often pestered about the grave, had gone to Odessa, abandoning the grave and all his memories. Alyosha showed no particular emotion at the sight of his mother's grave. He only listened to Grigori's manute and solemn account of the erection of the tomb. He stood with bowed head and walked away without uttering a word. It was perhaps a year before he visited the cemetery again. But this little episode was not without an influence upon Fyodor Pavlovich, and a very original one. He suddenly took a thousand rubles to our monastery to pay for requiems for the soul of his wife, but not for the second, Alyosha's mother, the crazy woman, but for the first, Adelaida Ivanovna, who used to thrash him. In the evening of the same day he got drunk and abused the monks to Alyosha. He himself was far from being religious. He had probably never put a penny candle before the image of a saint. Strange impulses of sudden feeling and sudden thought are common in such types. I have mentioned already that he looked bloated. His countenance at this time bore traces of something that testified unmistakably to the life he had led. Besides the long, fleshy bags under his little, always insolent, suspicious, and ironic eyes, besides the multitude of deep wrinkles in his little fat face, the Adam's apple hung below his sharp chin like a great fleshy goiter which gave him a peculiar repulsive sensual appearance, add to that a long rapacious mouth with full lips, between which could be seen little stumps of black, decayed teeth. He thlobbered every time he began to speak. He was fond indeed of making fun of his own face, though I believe he was well satisfied with it. He used particularly to point to his nose, which was not very large, but very delicate and conspicuously aquiline. A regular Roman nose, he used to say, with my goiter I've quite the countenance of an ancient Roman patrician of the decadent period. He seemed proud of it. Not long after visiting his mother's grave, Alyosha suddenly announced that he wanted to enter the monastery and that the monks were willing to receive him as a novice. He explained that this was his strong desire and that he was summably asking his consent as his father. The old man knew that the elder Sassima, who was living in the monastery Hermitage, had made a special impression upon his gentle boy. That is the most honest monk among them, of course. He observed, after listening in thoughtful silence to Alyosha, and seeming scarcely surprised at his request. Hmm, so that's where you want to be, my gentle boy. He was half-drunk, and suddenly he grinned his slow half-drunken grin, which was not without a certain cunning and tipsy slowness. Hmm, I had a presentiment that you would end in something like this, would you believe it? You were making straight for it. Well, to be sure, you have your own two-thousand. That's a dowry for you, and I'll never desert you, my angel, and I'll pay what's wanted for you there if they ask for it. But, of course, if they don't ask, why should we worry them? What do you say? You know, you spend money like a canary two grains a week. Hmm, do you know that near one monastery there's a place outside the town where every baby knows there are none but the monk's wives living, as they are called. Thirty women, I believe. I have been there myself. You know, it's interesting in its own way, of course, as a variety. The worst of it is it's awfully Russian. There are no French women there. Of course, they could get them fast enough. They have plenty of money. If they get to hear of it, they'll come along. Well, there's nothing of that sort here. No monk's wives, and two hundred monks. They're honest. They keep the fasts. I admit it. So, you want to be a monk. And you know, I'm sorry to lose you, Ayasha. Would you believe it? I've really grown fond of you. Well, it's a good opportunity. You'll pray for us sinners. We have sinned too much here. I've always been thinking who would pray for me, and whether there's anyone in the world to do it. My dear boy, I'm awfully stupid about that. You wouldn't believe it, awfully. You see, however stupid I am about it, I keep thinking, I keep thinking, from time to time, of course, not all the while. It's impossible, I think, for the devils to forget to drag me down to hell with their hooks when I die. Then I wonder, hooks? Where would they get them? What of iron hooks? Where do they forge them? Have they a foundry there of some sort? The monks in the monastery probably believe that there's a ceiling in hell, for instance. Now, I'm ready to believe in hell, but without a ceiling, it makes it more refined, more enlightened, more Lutheran, that is. And after all, what does it matter whether it has a ceiling or hasn't? But do you know, there's a damnable question involved in it. If there's no ceiling, there can be no hooks. And if there are no hooks, it all breaks down, which is unlikely again, for then there would be none to drag me down to hell. And if they don't drag me down, what justice is there in the world? If foldery lays invente, those hooks, on purpose for me alone, for if you only knew Al-Yasha, what a blackard I am. But there are no hooks there, said Al-Yasha, looking gently and seriously at his father. Yes, yes, only the shadows of hooks. I know, I know. That's how a Frenchman described hell. How do you know there are no hooks, darling? When you've lived with the monks, you will sing a different tune. But go and get at the truth there, and then come and tell me. Anyway, it's easier going to the other world if one knows what there is there. Besides, it will be more seemly for you, with the monks, than here with me, with the drunken old man and young harlots. Though you're like an angel, nothing touches you, and I dare say nothing will touch you there. That's why I let you go, because I hope for that. You've got all your wits about you. You will burn and you will burn out. You will be healed and come back again. And I will wait for you. I feel that you're the only creature in the world who has not condemned me. My dear boy, I feel it, you know. I can't help feeling it. And he even began blubbering. He was sentimental. He was wicked and sentimental. Some of my readers may imagine that my young man was a sickly, ecstatic, poorly developed creature, a pale, consumptive dreamer. On the contrary, Ayasha was at this time a well-grown, red-cheeked, clear-eyed lad of nineteen, radiant with health. He was very handsome, too, graceful, moderately tall, with hair of a dark brown, with a regular, rather long, oval-shaped face, and wide-set dark gray, shining eyes. He was very thoughtful and apparently very serene. I shall be told, perhaps, that red-cheeks are not incompatible with fanaticism and mysticism. But I fancy that Ayasha was more of a realist than any one. Oh, no doubt in the monastery he fully believed in miracles, but to my thinking miracles are never a stumbling block to the realist. It is not miracles that dispose realists to believe. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact, he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact. Even if he admits it, he admits it as a fact of nature, till then unrecognized by him. Faith does not in the realist spring from the miracle, but the miracle from faith. If the realist once believes, then he is bound by his very realism to admit the miraculous also. The Apostle Thomas said that he would not believe till he saw, but when he did see, he said, My Lord and My God, was it the miracle forced him to believe? Most likely not, but he believed solely because he desired to believe, and possibly he fully believed in his secret heart even when he said, I do not believe till I see. Usher'll be told, perhaps, that I, Usher, was stupid, undeveloped, had not finished his studies, and so on. That he did not finish his studies is true, but to say that he was stupid or dull would be a great injustice. I'll simply repeat what I have said above. He entered upon this path only because, at that time, it alone struck his imagination and presented itself to him as offering an ideal means of escape for his soul from darkness to light. Add to that that he was, to some extent, a youth of our last epoch, that is, honest in nature, desiring the truth, seeking for it and believing in it, and seeking to serve it at once with all the strength of his soul, seeking for immediate action and ready to sacrifice everything, life itself, for it. Though these young men unhappily fail to understand that the sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest of all sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years of their seething youth to hard and tedious study, if only to multiply tenfold their powers of serving the truth and the cause they have set before them as their goal, such a sacrifice is utterly beyond the strength of many of them. The path Alyosha chose was a path going in the opposite direction, but he chose it with the same thirst for swift achievement. As soon as he reflected seriously, he was convinced of the existence of God and immortality, and at once he instinctively said to himself, I want to live for immortality, and I will accept no compromise. In the same way, if he had decided that God and immortality did not exist, he would at once have become an atheist and a socialist. For socialism is not merely the labour question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism today, the question of the tower of Babel, built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth, but to set up heaven on earth. Alyosha would have found it strange and impossible to go on living as before. It is written, Give all that thou hast to the poor, and follow me if thou wouldst be perfect. Alyosha said to himself, I can't give two rubles instead of all, and only go to mass instead of following him. Perhaps his memories of childhood brought back our monastery, to which his mother may have taken him to mass. Perhaps the slanting sunlight and the holy image to which his poor, crazy mother had held him up still acted upon his imagination. Brooding on these things, he may have come to us perhaps only to see whether here he could sacrifice all or only two rubles, and in the monastery he met this elder. I must digress to explain what an elder is in Russian monasteries, and I am sorry that I do not feel very competent to do so. I will try, however, to give a superficial account of it in a few words. Authorities on the subject assert that the institution of elders is of recent date, not more than a hundred years old in our monasteries, though in the Orthodox East, especially in Sinai and Athos, it has existed over a thousand years. It is maintained that it existed in ancient times in Russia also, but through the calamities which overtook Russia, the Tartars, civil war, the interruption of relations with the East after the destruction of Constantinople, this institution fell into oblivion. It was revived among us towards the end of the last century by one of the great aesthetics, as they called him, Paesi Velichkovsky and his disciples. But to this day it exists in few monasteries only, and has sometimes been almost persecuted as an innovation in Russia. It flourished especially in the celebrated Kozelsky-Optin monastery. When and how it was introduced into our monastery, I cannot say. There had already been three such elders, and Zasima was the last of them. But he was almost dying of weakness and disease, and they had no one to take his place. The question for our monastery was an important one, for it had not been distinguished by anything in particular till then. They had neither relics of saints, nor wonder-working icons, nor glorious traditions, nor historical exploits. It had flourished, and being glorious, all over Russia, through its elders, to see and hear whom pilgrims had flocked for thousands of miles from all parts. What was such an elder? An elder was one who took your soul, your will, into his soul and his will. When you choose an elder, you renounce your own will, and yield it to him in complete submission, complete self-abnegation. This novitiate, this terrible school of abnegation, is undertaken voluntarily in the hope of self-conquest, of self-mastery, in order, after a life of obedience, to attain perfect freedom—that is, from self—to escape the lot of those who have lived their whole life without finding their true selves in themselves. This institution of elders is not founded on theory, but was established in the east from the practice of the thousand years. The obligations due to an elder are not the ordinary obedience, which has always existed in our Russian monasteries. The obligation involves confession to the elder by all who have submitted themselves to him, and to the indissoluble bond between him and them. The story is told, for instance, that in the early days of Christianity, one such novice, failing to fulfil some command laid upon him by his elder, left his monastery in Syria and went to Egypt. There, after great exploits, he was found worthy at last to suffer torture and a martyr's death for the faith. When the church, regarding him as a saint, was burying him, suddenly, at the deacon's exhortation, depart all ye unbaptised, the coffin containing the martyr's body left its place, and was cast forth from the church, and this took place three times. And only at last they learned that this holy man had broken his vow of obedience and left his elder, and therefore could not be forgiven without the elder's absolution, in spite of his great deeds. Only after this could the funeral take place. This, of course, is only an old legend, but here is a recent instance. A monk was suddenly commanded by his elder to quit Athos, which he loved as a sacred place and a haven of refuge, and to go first to Jerusalem to do homage to the holy places, and then to go to the north to Siberia. There is the place for thee and not here. The monk, overwhelmed with sorrow, went to the ecumenical patriarch at Constantinople and besought him to release him from his obedience. But the patriarch replied that not only was he unable to release him, but there was not and could not be on earth a power which could release him except the elder who had himself laid that duty upon him. In this way the elders are endowed in certain cases with unbounded and inexplicable authority. That is why in many of our monasteries the institution was at first resisted almost to persecution. Meantime the elders immediately began to be highly esteemed among the people. Masses of the ignorant people, as well as men of distinction, flocked, for instance, to the elders of our monastery to confess their doubts, their sins, and their sufferings, and ask for counsel and admonition. Seeing this, the opponents of the elders declared that the sacrament of confession was being arbitrarily and frivolously degraded, though the continual opening of the heart to the elder by the monk or the layman had nothing of the character of the sacrament. In the end, however, the institution of elders has been retained and is becoming established in Russian monasteries. It is true, perhaps, that this instrument which had stood the test of a thousand years for the moral regeneration of a man from slavery to freedom and to moral perfectibility may be a two-edged weapon, and it may lead some not to humility and complete self-control, but to the most satanic pride, that is, to bondage and not to freedom. The elder Sassima was sixty-five. He came of a family of landowners, had been in the army in early youth and served in the Caucasus as an officer. He had no doubt impressed Al-Yasha by some peculiar quality of his soul. Al-Yasha lived in the cell of the elder, who was very fond of him and let him wait upon him. It must be noted that Al-Yasha was bound by no obligation and could go where he pleased and be absent for whole days. Though he wore the monastic dress, it was voluntarily not to be different from others. No doubt he liked to do so. Possibly his youthful imagination was deeply stirred by the power and fame of his elder. It was said that so many people had for years past come to confess their sins to Father Sassima and to entreat him for words of advice and healing, that he had acquired the keenest intuition and could tell from an unknown face what a newcomer wanted and what was the suffering on his conscience. He sometimes astounded and almost alarmed his visitors by his knowledge of their secrets before they had spoken a word. Al-Yasha noticed that many, almost all, went into the elder for the first time with apprehension and uneasiness, but came out with bright and happy faces. Al-Yasha was particularly struck by the fact that Father Sassima was not a tall stern. On the contrary, he was almost always gay. The monks used to say that he was more drawn to those who were more sinful and the greater the sinner, the more he loved him. There were, no doubt, up to the end of his life among the monks, some who hated and envied him, but they were few in number, and they were silent, though among them were some of great dignity in the monastery. One, for instance, of the older monks distinguished for his strict keeping of fasts and vows of silence. But the majority were on Father Sassima's side, and very many of them loved him with all their hearts, warmly and sincerely. Some were almost fanatically devoted to him, and declared, though not quite allowed, that he was a saint, that there could be no doubt of it, and seeing that his end was near, they anticipated miracles and great glory to the monastery in the immediate future from his relics. Al-Yasha had unquestioning faith in the miraculous power of the elder, just as he had unquestioning faith in the story of the coffin that flew out of the church. He saw many who came with sick children or relatives, and besought the elder to lay hands on them and to pray over them, return shortly after, some the next day, and falling in tears at the elder's feet, thank him for healing their sick. Whether they had really been healed or were simply better in the natural course of the disease, was a question which did not exist for Al-Yasha, for he fully believed in the spiritual power of his teacher and rejoiced in his fame, in his glory, as though it were his own triumph. His heart throbbed, and he beamed, as it were, all over, when the elder came out to the gates of the Hermitage into the waiting crowd of pilgrims of the humbler class, who had flocked from all parts of Russia on purpose to see the elder and obtain his blessing. They fell down before him, wept, kissed his feet, kissed the earth on which he stood, and wailed, while the women held up their children to him and brought him the sick possessed with devils. The elder spoke to them, read a brief prayer over them, blessed them and dismissed them. Of late he had become so weak through attacks of illness that he was sometimes unable to leave his cell, and the pilgrims waited for him to come out for several days. Al-Yasha did not wonder why they loved him so, why they fell down before him and wept with emotion merely at seeing his face. Oh, he understood that for the humble soul of the Russian peasant, worn out by grief and toil, and still more by the everlasting injustice and everlasting sin, his own and the world's, it was the greatest need and comfort to find someone or something holy to fall down before and worship. Among us there is sin, injustice, and temptation, but yet somewhere on earth there is someone holy and exalted. He has the truth, he knows the truth, so it is not dead upon the earth, so it will come one day to us too, and rule over all the earth according to the promise. Al-Yasha knew that this was just how the people felt and even reasoned. He understood it, but that the elder Zasima was this saint and custodian of God's truth, of that he had no more doubt than the weeping peasants and the sick women who held out their children to the elder. The conviction that after his death the elder would bring extraordinary glory to the monastery was even stronger in Al-Yasha than in anyone there, and of late a kind of deep flame of inner ecstasy burnt more and more strongly in his heart. He was not at all troubled at this elder's standing as a solitary example before him. No matter, he is holy, he carries in his heart the secret of renewal for all, that power which will at last establish truth on the earth, and all men will be holy and love one another, and there will be no more rich nor poor, no exalted nor humbled, but all will be as the children of God and the true kingdom of Christ will come. That was the dream in Al-Yasha's heart. The arrival of his two brothers, whom he had not known till then, seemed to make a great impression on Al-Yasha. He more quickly made friends with his half-brother Dmitri, though he arrived later, than with his own brother Ivan. He was extremely interested in his brother Ivan, but when the latter had been two months in the town, though they had met fairly often, they were still not intimate. Al-Yasha was naturally silent, and he seemed to be expecting something, ashamed about something, while his brother Ivan, though Al-Yasha noticed at first that he looked long and curiously at him, seemed soon to have left off thinking of him. Al-Yasha noticed it with some embarrassment. He ascribed his brother's indifference at first to the disparity of their age and education. But he also wondered whether the absence of curiosity and sympathy in Ivan might be due to some other cause entirely unknown to him. He kept fancying that Ivan was absorbed in something, something inward and important, that he was striving toward some goal, perhaps very hard to attain, and that that was why he had no thought for him. Al-Yasha wondered too whether there was not some contempt on the part of the learned atheist for him, a foolish novice. He knew for certain that his brother was an atheist. He could not take offence at this contempt if it existed, yet with an uneasy embarrassment which he did not himself understand, he waited for his brother to come nearer to him. Dmitri used to speak of Ivan with the deepest respect and with the peculiar earnestness. From him Al-Yasha learned all the details of the important affair which had of late formed such a close and remarkable bond between the two elder brothers. Dmitri's enthusiastic references to Ivan were the more striking in Al-Yasha's eyes since Dmitri was, compared with Ivan, almost uneducated, and the two brothers were such a contrast in personality and character that it would be difficult to find two men more unlike. It was at this time that the meeting, or rather gathering, of the members of this inharmonious family, took place in the cell of the elder who had such an extraordinary influence on Al-Yasha. The pretext for this gathering was a false one. It was at this time that the discord between Dmitri and his father seemed at its acutest stage and the relations had become insufferably strained. Fyodor Pavlovich seems to have been the first to suggest, apparently in joke, that they should all meet in Father Zasima's cell, and that without appealing to his direct intervention they might more decently come to an understanding under the conciliating influence of the elder's presence. Dmitri, who had never seen the elder, naturally supposed that his father was trying to intimidate him, but as he secretly blamed himself for his outbursts of temper with his father on several recent occasions, he accepted the challenge. It must be noted that he was not, like Ivan, staying with his father, but living apart at the other end of the town. It happened that Pyotr Alexandrovich Musov, who was staying in the district at the time, caught eagerly at the idea. A liberal of the forties and fifties, a free thinker and atheist, he may have been led on by boredom or the hope of frivolous diversion. He was suddenly seized with the desire to see the monastery and the holy man. As his lawsuit with the monastery still dragged on, he made it the pretext for seeing the superior in order to attempt to settle it amicably. A visitor coming with such laudable intentions might be received with more attention and consideration than if he came from simple curiosity. Influences from within the monastery were brought to bear on the elder, who of late had scarcely left his cell and had been forced by illness to deny even his ordinary visitors. In the end he consented to see them, and the day was fixed. Who has made me a judge over them? was all he said, smilingly to Alyosha. Alyosha was much perturbed when he heard of the proposed visit. Of all the wrangling, quarrelsome party, Dmitri was the only one who could regard the interview seriously. All the others would come from frivolous motives, perhaps insulting to the elder. Alyosha was well aware of that. Yvon and Musov would come from curiosity, perhaps of the coarsest kind, while his father might be contemplating some piece of buffoonery. Though he said nothing, Alyosha thoroughly understood his father. The boy, I repeat, was far from being so simple as everyone thought him. He awaited the day with a heavy heart. No doubt he was always pondering in his mind how the family discord could be ended. But his chief anxiety concerned the elder. He trembled for him, for his glory, and dreaded any affront to him, especially the refined, courteous irony of Musov, and the supercilious half-utterances of the highly educated Yvon. He even wanted to venture on warning the elder, telling him something about them, but on second thoughts said nothing. He only sent word the day before through a friend to his brother Dmitri that he loved him, and expected him to keep his promise. Dmitri wondered, for he could not remember what he had promised, but he answered by letter that he would do his utmost not to let himself be provoked by vileness, but that, although he had a deep respect for the elder and for his brother Yvon, he was convinced that the meeting was either a trap for him or an unworthy farce. Nevertheless I would rather bite out my tongue than be lacking in respect to the sainted man whom you reference so highly, he wrote in conclusion. Alyosha was not greatly cheered by the letter. It was a warm bright day at the end of August. The interview with the elder had been fixed for half-past eleven, immediately after late mass. Our visitors did not take part in the service, but arrived just as it was over. First an elegant open carriage, drawn by two valuable horses, drove up with Musov and a distant relative of his, a young man of twenty, called Pyotr Fomich Kalganov. This young man was preparing to enter the university. Musov, with whom he was staying for the time, was trying to persuade him to go abroad to the University of Zurich, or Jena. The young man was still undecided. He was thoughtful and absent-minded. He was nice-looking, strongly built, and rather tall. There was a strange fixity in his gaze at times. Like all very absent-minded people he would sometimes stare at a person without seeing him. He was silent and rather awkward, but sometimes when he was alone with any one he became talkative and effusive and would laugh at anything or nothing. But his animation vanished as quickly as it appeared. He was always well and even elaborately dressed. He had already some independent fortune and expectations of much more. He was a friend of Alyosha's. In an ancient jolting but roomy-hired carriage with a pair of old pinkish-gray horses, a long way behind Musov's carriage, came Fyodor Pavlovich with his son Ivan. Dmitry was late, though he had been informed of the time the evening before. The visitors left their carriage at the hotel, outside the precincts, and went to the gates of the monastery on foot. Except Fyodor Pavlovich, none of the party had ever seen the monastery, and Musov had probably not even been to church for thirty years. He looked about him with curiosity, together with assumed ease. But except the church and the domestic buildings, though these two were ordinary enough, he found nothing of interest in the interior of the monastery. The last of the worshippers were coming out of the church, bare-headed and crossing themselves. Among the humbler people were a few of higher rank, two or three ladies, and a very old general. They were all staying at the hotel. Our visitors were at once surrounded by beggars, but none of them gave them anything except young Kalganov, who took a ten-copek piece out of his purse and, nervous and embarrassed, God knows why, hurriedly gave it to an old woman, saying, Divide it equally. None of his companions made any remark upon it, so that he had no reason to be embarrassed, but, perceiving this, he was even more overcome. It was strange that their arrival did not seem expected, and that they were not received with special honour, though one of them had recently made a donation of a thousand rubles, while another was a very wealthy and highly-cultured landowner, upon whom all in the monastery were in a sense dependent, as a decision of the lawsuit might at any moment put their fishing rights in his hands. Yet no official personage met them. Musov looked absentmindedly at the tombstones round the church, and was on the point of saying that the dead buried here must have paid a pretty penny for the right of lying in this holy place, but refrained. His liberal irony was rapidly changing almost into anger. Who the devil is there to ask in this imbecile place? We must find out, for time is passing, he observed suddenly as though speaking to himself. All at once there came up a bald-headed elderly man with ingratiating little eyes, wearing a full summer overcoat. Lifting his hat, he introduced himself with a honeyed lisp as Maximov, a landowner of Tula. He at once entered into our visitor's difficulty. Father Zasima lives in the Hermitage, a part, four hundred paces from the monastery, the other side of the Cops. I know it's the other side of the Cops, observed Fyodor Pavlovich, but we don't remember the way. It's a long time since we've been here. This way, by this gate, and straight across the Cops, the Cops, come with me, won't you? I'll show you. I have to go. I'm going myself. This way, this way. They came out of the gate and turned towards the Cops. Maximov, a man of sixty, ran rather than walked, turning sideways to stare at the mall, with an incredible degree of nervous curiosity. His eyes looked starting out of his head. You see, we have come to the elder upon business of our own, observed Musov severely. That personage has granted us an audience, so to speak, and so, though we thank you for showing us the way, we cannot ask you to accompany us. I've been there. I've been already. A chevalier parfait, and Maximov snapped his fingers in the air. Who is a chevalier? asked Musov. The elder, the splendid elder, the elder, the honour and glory of the monastery. Zasima, such an elder. But his incoherent talk was cut short by a very pale, one-looking monk of medium height, wearing a monk's cap, who overtook them. Fyodor Pavlovich and Musov stopped. The monk, with an extremely courteous, profound bow, announced. The Father Superior invites all of you gentlemen to dine with him after your visit to the Hermitage, at one o'clock, not later, and you also. He added, addressing Maximov. That I certainly will, without fail, cried Fyodor Pavlovich, hugely delighted at the invitation, and believe me, we've all given our word to behave properly here. And you, Pyotr Alexandrovich, will you go too? Yes, of course. What have I come for but to study all the customs here? The only obstacle to me is your company. Yes, Dmitry Fyodorovich, is nonexistent as yet. It would be a capital thing if he didn't turn up. Do you suppose I like all this business, and in your company too? So we will come to dinner. Thank the Father Superior, he said, to the monk. No, it is my duty now to conduct you to the elder, answered the monk. If so, I'll go straight to the Father Superior, to the Father Superior. Babbled Maximov. The Father Superior is engaged just now, but, as you please, the monk hesitated. Impurtenant old man, Musov observed aloud while Maximov ran back to the monastery. He's like Fonson, Fyodor Pavlovich said suddenly. Is that all you can think of? In what way is he like Fonson? Have you ever seen Fonson? I've seen his portrait. It's not the features, but something indefinable. He's a second Fonson. I can always tell from the physiognomy. Ah, I daresay you are a connoisseur in that. But look here, Fyodor Pavlovich, you said just now that we had given our word to behave properly. Remember it. I advise you to control yourself. But if you begin to play the fool, I don't intend to be associated with you here. You see what a man he is. He turned to the monk. I'm afraid to go among decent people with him. A fine smile, not without a certain slainess, came on to the pale bloodless lips of the monk, but he made no reply, and was evidently silent from a sense of his own dignity. Musov frowned more than ever. Oh, devil take them all! An outer show elaborated through centuries, and nothing but charlatanism and nonsense underneath flashed through Musov's mind. Here's the hermitage we've arrived, cried Fyodor Pavlovich. The gates are shut, and he repeatedly made the sign of the cross to the saints painted above and on the sides of the gates. When you go to Rome you must do as the Romans do. Here in this hermitage there are twenty-five saints being saved. They look at one another and eat cabbages, and not one woman goes in at this gate. That's what is remarkable, and that really is so. But I did hear that the elder receives ladies, he remarked suddenly to the monk. Women of the people are here, too, now, lying in the portico they're waiting. But for ladies of higher rank two rooms have been built adjoining the portico, but outside the precincts. You can see the windows, and the elder goes out to them by an inner passage when he is well enough. They are always outside the precincts. There is a harkoff lady, Madame Holokov, waiting there now with her sick daughter. Probably he has promised to come out to her, though of late he has been so weak that he has hardly shown himself, even to the people. So then there are loopholes, after all, to creep out of the hermitage to the ladies. Don't suppose, Holy Father, that I mean any harm, but do you know that at Athos not only the visits of women are not allowed, but no creature of the female sex, no hens, nor turkey hens, nor cows. Piotr Pavlovich, I warn you, I shall go back and leave you here. They'll turn you out when I'm gone. But I'm not interfering with you, Piotr Alexandrovich. Look, he cried suddenly, stepping within the precincts. What a veil of roses they live in! Though there were no roses now, there were numbers of rare and beautiful autumn flowers growing wherever there was space for them, and evidently tended by a skilful hand. There were flower beds round the church and between the tombs, and the one storied wooden house where the elder lived was also surrounded with flowers. And was it like this in the time of the last elder, Varsonofi? He didn't care for such elegance. They say he used to jump up and thrash even ladies with a stick. Observed Piotr Pavlovich as he went up the steps. The elder Varsonofi did sometimes seem rather strange, but a great deal of its toll, his foolishness, he never thrashed anyone, answered the monk. Now, gentlemen, if you will wait a minute, I will announce you. Piotr Pavlovich, for the last time you're compact, do you hear? Behave properly, or I will pay you out. Musov had time to mutter again. I can't think why you were so agitated, Piotr Pavlovich observed sarcastically. Are you uneasy about your sins? They say he can tell by one's eyes what one has come about. And what a lot you think of their opinion! You, a Parisian, and so advanced! I'm surprised at you! But Musov had no time to reply to this sarcasm. They were asked to come in. He walked in, somewhat irritated. Now I know myself. I am annoyed. I shall lose my temper and begin to quarrel, and lower myself and my ideas. He reflected. End of Section 6