feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Brothers Karamazov/section_1_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Brothers Karamazov.book 2.chapter 1-chapter 8
feat_summary_id: book 2
feat_summary: {"name": "Book 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422052201/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-brothers-karamazov/study-guide/summary-book-2", "summary": "The Karamazovs go to the meeting with Father Zossima to resolve the dispute between Dmitri and Fyodor over Dmitri's inheritance. Ivan and Fyodor arrive with Ivan's former benefactor, Peter Miusov, but Dmitri is nowhere in sight. Even though the group contains very influential citizens, no fuss is made upon their arrival. No monks rush to greet them. Instead, they are surrounded by beggars. Eventually, a monk invites them into the monastery, and they are all invited to dine with the Father after the meeting. Fyodor exclaims, \"I wouldn't miss it for anything!\" Old Karamazov calls Zossima \"Holy Elder,\" \"Your Reverence,\" \"angelic man,\" and \"blessed man.\" He gets down on his knees and kisses the father's hand. It seems as if he is playing. Peter Miusov is very annoyed by Fyodor's ironic demeanor, and he bickers with the elder Karamazov, showing his embarrassment at his presence, chastising him for his inconsiderate nature in front of a respected man. After such pleasantries, Father Zossima leaves to greet some visitors for a moment. The visitors are peasant women except for a more well-to-do pair: Madame Hohlakov and her sickly and paralyzed daughter Lise. All the women ask Father Zossima for advice. Many of them behave quite strangely, \"wailing in ecstasy ...barking like dogs,\" as if \"shocked\" by the \"host\" himself. The narrator explains that this is the behavior of suffering women with an \"intensely unhappy life, full of brutality and ill-treatment.\" Father Zossima is patient with each woman, listening to her problems and offering thoughtful advice. When he gets to Madame Hohlakov, she thanks him profusely for \"healing\" her Lise. When the Father talks to Lise, instead of shedding tears she bursts into giggles. She blames her outburst on Alyosha, to whom she has taken a liking. Madame Hohlakov tells Father Zossima that she lacks faith in God and is not altruistic; instead, she expects gratitude for her good deeds. He advises her to \"avoid lying, especially to yourself.\" Again Lise laughs, then suddenly begins to cry, pining for Alyosha. Father Zossima tells her that he will send Alyosha to visit her. When Father Zossima and Alyosha return to the Father's cell, Ivan is talking to the monks about the separation of church and state. He advocates no separation, for he believes that if the church were the institution punishing crime, crime would be virtually nonexistent. Criminals would be more afraid of excommunication than jail time. Alyosha, who is still trying to figure out his intellectual brother, is impressed by Ivan's respectfulness and lack of condescension toward the monks. Father Zossima responds to Ivan's ruminations by saying that the only effective punishment is one's \"awareness of one's own conscience.\" Before they can debate this issue, however, Dmitri bursts into the room. He apologizes for his tardiness, saying that Smerdyakov told him the wrong time for the meeting. Father Zossima is not angry, and he greets Dmitri warmly. Dmitri sits down, and the men continue their theological debate. Ivan argues that \"there is no virtue if there is no immortality.\" Men will cannibalize each other, figuratively and literally. Without belief in immortality, crime becomes inevitable. Dmitri and old Fyodor begin bickering. Karamazov accuses Dmitri of owing him money and attacking a captain in the army. Dmitri accuses old Karamazov of chasing after Grushenka, a girl he has been pursuing. Karamazov becomes so worked up that he challenges Dmitri to a duel, and an infuriated Dmitri exclaims, \"why should such a man live?\" As everyone bickers and shouts, Father Zossima bends down and kisses Dmitri's feet. Everyone is shocked; they do not know what to make of this. Everyone exits and continues on to a luncheon with Father Zossima except Fyodor. He decides not to attend the luncheon. While Alyosha is walking the Father back, Zossima tells him he should leave the monastery and rejoin the world. He tells Alyosha to \"stay close to your brothers--not just one of them, but both.\" Alyosha is very upset by this because he wants to be with Father Zossima, who is very ill. Disturbed by Father Zossima's advice, Alyosha continues on. He discusses the father's bow with Rakitin, a \"career-conscious divinity student.\" Rakitin is skeptical of Father Zossima's motives. During Rakitin's rant, he predicts the murder of old Karamazov by Dmitri. Alyosha is a bit shocked. Rakitin hypothesizes that Ivan would like to marry Katerina for her dowry. Alyosha refuses to believe this. He says that Ivan is after \"higher things ... perhaps it's suffering and torment he's after.\" Rakitin does not like Ivan. The two see that the luncheon is breaking up, and they rush over excitedly to see what has transpired. Fyodor changed his mind and decided to go to the luncheon, a five-course feast. He decided, \"since it was not in his power to regain their respect, why shouldn't he go on and disgrace himself altogether?\" After telling distasteful stories and attacking the monks for taking advantage of believers, saying that they \"suck the blood of the poor,\" Ivan puts him in a carriage. As they drive away, Fyodor yells at Alyosha to leave the monastery and move back in with Fyodor. As the father and son drive back, Fyodor promises Ivan a drink.", "analysis": "The much-anticipated meeting is, in fact, extremely telling about the personalities of the Karamazov men. Fyodor's mischievous manner is very much in keeping with the stories about his past from the first book. It seems that he causes trouble arbitrarily, not because he is particularly angry or disgruntled but because he feels like causing trouble. He is not respectful of anyone or anything, and he is not afraid to embarrass himself or those around him. The accusation that Fyodor might be trying to bed the same girl whom Dmitri has been courting adds another dimension to their dispute. Fyodor and Dmitri are the two most undependable and explosive members of the Karamazov clan. Dmitri shows up late and quarrels with his father in front of a respected man. But he is also gracious, listening closely to Father Zossima's advice. Their dispute is not resolved, and they part on bad terms. It seems unlikely that, if a calm and reasonable man such as Father Zossima could not help resolve their dispute, they will not be able to do so independently. Father Zossima acts as a foil to Fyodor, matching the elder Karamazov's vulgarity with quiet integrity, combating his acerbic remarks with patience and love. He is as much a father to Alyosha as Fyodor is, setting up an interesting duality for Alyosha's character. Alyosha seems to align his actions and ideas wholly with Father Zossima's, even though he is caring and understanding toward his biological father. Whereas Dmitri's character may be an amalgam of his parents' characters, bolstering the idea that one cannot escape his own genes, Alyosha is completely different from his father, affected more by his teachings than by his blood. Both Father Zossima and Alyosha are very noticeably devoid of hatred and temper. Neither character is a simple embodiment of Dostoevsky's ideas; each is individually human. Father Zossima has a sense of humor; he jokes with Fyodor by telling him to try not to tell any lies while Zossima steps outside for a moment. Alyosha is also prone to emotions such as embarrassment and worry; he is not the picture of calm holiness. It remains to be seen if Alyosha's and Father Zossima's reason and love will triumph over the hot-bloodedness of Dmitri and Fyodor. Madame Hohlakov and Lise are interesting additions to the mostly all-male cast thus far. Lise's girlish adoration for Alyosha reminds the reader how young Alyosha is, and it also brings up the possibility of a romance between the two. While making Alyosha seem more human, this budding romance could serve to compromise his pious status as a monk. Along with the other women who visit the monastery, Madame Hohlakov's adulation for the man borders on infatuation. While he remains humble, his fame precedes him and his followers worship him. It is unclear if these women actually feel legitimately helped by him or if they are simply gravitating toward an icon. Father Zossima's sensitive, loving manner puts to rest the fear that he may be a manipulative attention-seeker, but this does not mean his devotees come to him with wholly pure intentions. Father Zossima's status is fascinating. The fate of a man surrounded by such hysteria is uncertain. Ivan remains an enigma. While the rest of the characters are caught up in an emotional dispute, Ivan remains aloof and distant, instead talking about larger issues. He is very quiet and difficult to read, but he is polite and agreeable for most of the interview. When Maximov tries to get in the coach as it is leaving, however, he violently pushes him off, showing a shockingly violent streak. He seems very dangerous. When Rakitin hypothesizes that Dmitri will kill Fyodor and Ivan will benefit, it seems plausible that Ivan could have a hidden agenda. Alyosha defends his brother, and Alyosha's honesty and thoughtfulness lead the reader to agree with him. The candid conjecture about murder is unsettling, as is Father Zossima's bow. Such a vague and grand gesture seems to portend something. The final impression of this book is a feeling of foreboding. From Ivan's covered smoldering to the impassioned feud between Fyodor and Dmitri, there are many clues that a great drama-perhaps a great tragedy-is to come."}
text: Book II. An Unfortunate Gathering Chapter I. They Arrive At The Monastery
  
  
  It was a warm, bright day at the end of August. The interview with the
  elder had been fixed for half-past eleven, immediately after late mass.
  Our visitors did not take part in the service, but arrived just as it was
  over. First an elegant open carriage, drawn by two valuable horses, drove
  up with Miuesov and a distant relative of his, a young man of twenty,
  called Pyotr Fomitch Kalganov. This young man was preparing to enter the
  university. Miuesov, 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 Miuesov's carriage, came Fyodor
  Pavlovitch, with his son Ivan. Dmitri was late, though he had been
  informed of the time the evening before. The visitors left their carriage
  at the hotel, outside the precincts, and went to the gates of the
  monastery on foot. Except Fyodor Pavlovitch, none of the party had ever
  seen the monastery, and Miuesov had probably not even been to church for
  thirty years. He looked about him with curiosity, together with assumed
  ease. But, except the church and the domestic buildings, though these too
  were ordinary enough, he found nothing of interest in the interior of the
  monastery. The last of the worshippers were coming out of the church,
  bareheaded and crossing themselves. Among the humbler people were a few of
  higher rank--two or three ladies and a very old general. They were all
  staying at the hotel. Our visitors were at once surrounded by beggars, but
  none of them gave them anything, except young Kalganov, who took a ten-
  copeck piece out of his purse, and, nervous and embarrassed--God knows
  why!--hurriedly gave it to an old woman, saying: "Divide it equally." None
  of his companions made any remark upon it, so that he had no reason to be
  embarrassed; but, perceiving this, he was even more overcome.
  
  It was strange that their arrival did not seem expected, and that they
  were not received with special honor, though one of them had recently made
  a donation of a thousand roubles, while another was a very wealthy and
  highly cultured landowner, upon whom all in the monastery were in a sense
  dependent, as a decision of the lawsuit might at any moment put their
  fishing rights in his hands. Yet no official personage met them.
  
  Miuesov looked absent-mindedly at the tombstones round the church, and was
  on the point of saying that the dead buried here must have paid a pretty
  penny for the right of lying in this "holy place," but refrained. His
  liberal irony was rapidly changing almost into anger.
  
  "Who the devil is there to ask in this imbecile place? We must find out,
  for time is passing," he observed suddenly, as though speaking to himself.
  
  All at once there came up a bald-headed, elderly man with ingratiating
  little eyes, wearing a full, summer overcoat. Lifting his hat, he
  introduced himself with a honeyed lisp as Maximov, a landowner of Tula. He
  at once entered into our visitors' difficulty.
  
  "Father Zossima lives in the hermitage, apart, four hundred paces from the
  monastery, the other side of the copse."
  
  "I know it's the other side of the copse," observed Fyodor Pavlovitch,
  "but we don't remember the way. It is a long time since we've been here."
  
  "This way, by this gate, and straight across the copse ... the copse. Come
  with me, won't you? I'll show you. I have to go.... I am going myself.
  This way, this way."
  
  They came out of the gate and turned towards the copse. Maximov, a man of
  sixty, ran rather than walked, turning sideways to stare at them all, with
  an incredible degree of nervous curiosity. His eyes looked starting out of
  his head.
  
  "You see, we have come to the elder upon business of our own," observed
  Miuesov severely. "That personage has granted us an audience, so to speak,
  and so, though we thank you for showing us the way, we cannot ask you to
  accompany us."
  
  "I've been there. I've been already; _un chevalier parfait_," and Maximov
  snapped his fingers in the air.
  
  "Who is a _chevalier_?" asked Miuesov.
  
  "The elder, the splendid elder, the elder! The honor and glory of the
  monastery, Zossima. Such an elder!"
  
  But his incoherent talk was cut short by a very pale, wan-looking monk of
  medium height, wearing a monk's cap, who overtook them. Fyodor Pavlovitch
  and Miuesov stopped.
  
  The monk, with an extremely courteous, profound bow, announced:
  
  "The Father Superior invites all of you gentlemen to dine with him after
  your visit to the hermitage. At one o'clock, not later. And you also," he
  added, addressing Maximov.
  
  "That I certainly will, without fail," cried Fyodor Pavlovitch, hugely
  delighted at the invitation. "And, believe me, we've all given our word to
  behave properly here.... And you, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, will you go, too?"
  
  "Yes, of course. What have I come for but to study all the customs here?
  The only obstacle to me is your company...."
  
  "Yes, Dmitri Fyodorovitch is non-existent as yet."
  
  "It would be a capital thing if he didn't turn up. Do you suppose I like
  all this business, and in your company, too? So we will come to dinner.
  Thank the Father Superior," he said to the monk.
  
  "No, it is my duty now to conduct you to the elder," answered the monk.
  
  "If so I'll go straight to the Father Superior--to the Father Superior,"
  babbled Maximov.
  
  "The Father Superior is engaged just now. But as you please--" the monk
  hesitated.
  
  "Impertinent old man!" Miuesov observed aloud, while Maximov ran back to
  the monastery.
  
  "He's like von Sohn," Fyodor Pavlovitch said suddenly.
  
  "Is that all you can think of?... In what way is he like von Sohn? Have
  you ever seen von Sohn?"
  
  "I've seen his portrait. It's not the features, but something indefinable.
  He's a second von Sohn. I can always tell from the physiognomy."
  
  "Ah, I dare say you are a connoisseur in that. But, look here, Fyodor
  Pavlovitch, you said just now that we had given our word to behave
  properly. Remember it. I advise you to control yourself. But, if you begin
  to play the fool I don't intend to be associated with you here.... You see
  what a man he is"--he turned to the monk--"I'm afraid to go among decent
  people with him." A fine smile, not without a certain slyness, came on to
  the pale, bloodless lips of the monk, but he made no reply, and was
  evidently silent from a sense of his own dignity. Miuesov frowned more than
  ever.
  
  "Oh, devil take them all! An outer show elaborated through centuries, and
  nothing but charlatanism and nonsense underneath," flashed through
  Miuesov's mind.
  
  "Here's the hermitage. We've arrived," cried Fyodor Pavlovitch. "The gates
  are shut."
  
  And he repeatedly made the sign of the cross to the saints painted above
  and on the sides of the gates.
  
  "When you go to Rome you must do as the Romans do. Here in this hermitage
  there are twenty-five saints being saved. They look at one another, and
  eat cabbages. And not one woman goes in at this gate. That's what is
  remarkable. And that really is so. But I did hear that the elder receives
  ladies," he remarked suddenly to the monk.
  
  "Women of the people are here too now, lying in the portico there waiting.
  But for ladies of higher rank two rooms have been built adjoining the
  portico, but outside the precincts--you can see the windows--and the elder
  goes out to them by an inner passage when he is well enough. They are
  always outside the precincts. There is a Harkov lady, Madame Hohlakov,
  waiting there now with her sick daughter. Probably he has promised to come
  out to her, though of late he has been so weak that he has hardly shown
  himself even to the people."
  
  "So then there are loopholes, after all, to creep out of the hermitage to
  the ladies. Don't suppose, holy father, that I mean any harm. But do you
  know that at Athos not only the visits of women are not allowed, but no
  creature of the female sex--no hens, nor turkey-hens, nor cows."
  
  "Fyodor Pavlovitch, I warn you I shall go back and leave you here. They'll
  turn you out when I'm gone."
  
  "But I'm not interfering with you, Pyotr Alexandrovitch. Look," he cried
  suddenly, stepping within the precincts, "what a vale of roses they live
  in!"
  
  Though there were no roses now, there were numbers of rare and beautiful
  autumn flowers growing wherever there was space for them, and evidently
  tended by a skillful hand; there were flower-beds round the church, and
  between the tombs; and the one-storied wooden house where the elder lived
  was also surrounded with flowers.
  
  "And was it like this in the time of the last elder, Varsonofy? He didn't
  care for such elegance. They say he used to jump up and thrash even ladies
  with a stick," observed Fyodor Pavlovitch, as he went up the steps.
  
  "The elder Varsonofy did sometimes seem rather strange, but a great deal
  that's told is foolishness. He never thrashed any one," answered the monk.
  "Now, gentlemen, if you will wait a minute I will announce you."
  
  "Fyodor Pavlovitch, for the last time, your compact, do you hear? Behave
  properly or I will pay you out!" Miuesov had time to mutter again.
  
  "I can't think why you are so agitated," Fyodor Pavlovitch observed
  sarcastically. "Are you uneasy about your sins? They say he can tell by
  one's eyes what one has come about. And what a lot you think of their
  opinion! you, a Parisian, and so advanced. I'm surprised at you."
  
  But Miuesov had no time to reply to this sarcasm. They were asked to come
  in. He walked in, somewhat irritated.
  
  "Now, I know myself, I am annoyed, I shall lose my temper and begin to
  quarrel--and lower myself and my ideas," he reflected.
  
  
  
  
  Chapter II. The Old Buffoon
  
  
  They entered the room almost at the same moment that the elder came in
  from his bedroom. There were already in the cell, awaiting the elder, two
  monks of the hermitage, one the Father Librarian, and the other Father
  Paissy, a very learned man, so they said, in delicate health, though not
  old. There was also a tall young man, who looked about two and twenty,
  standing in the corner throughout the interview. He had a broad, fresh
  face, and clever, observant, narrow brown eyes, and was wearing ordinary
  dress. He was a divinity student, living under the protection of the
  monastery. His expression was one of unquestioning, but self-respecting,
  reverence. Being in a subordinate and dependent position, and so not on an
  equality with the guests, he did not greet them with a bow.
  
  Father Zossima was accompanied by a novice, and by Alyosha. The two monks
  rose and greeted him with a very deep bow, touching the ground with their
  fingers; then kissed his hand. Blessing them, the elder replied with as
  deep a reverence to them, and asked their blessing. The whole ceremony was
  performed very seriously and with an appearance of feeling, not like an
  everyday rite. But Miuesov fancied that it was all done with intentional
  impressiveness. He stood in front of the other visitors. He ought--he had
  reflected upon it the evening before--from simple politeness, since it was
  the custom here, to have gone up to receive the elder's blessing, even if
  he did not kiss his hand. But when he saw all this bowing and kissing on
  the part of the monks he instantly changed his mind. With dignified
  gravity he made a rather deep, conventional bow, and moved away to a
  chair. Fyodor Pavlovitch did the same, mimicking Miuesov like an ape. Ivan
  bowed with great dignity and courtesy, but he too kept his hands at his
  sides, while Kalganov was so confused that he did not bow at all. The
  elder let fall the hand raised to bless them, and bowing to them again,
  asked them all to sit down. The blood rushed to Alyosha's cheeks. He was
  ashamed. His forebodings were coming true.
  
  Father Zossima sat down on a very old-fashioned mahogany sofa, covered
  with leather, and made his visitors sit down in a row along the opposite
  wall on four mahogany chairs, covered with shabby black leather. The monks
  sat, one at the door and the other at the window. The divinity student,
  the novice, and Alyosha remained standing. The cell was not very large and
  had a faded look. It contained nothing but the most necessary furniture,
  of coarse and poor quality. There were two pots of flowers in the window,
  and a number of holy pictures in the corner. Before one huge ancient ikon
  of the Virgin a lamp was burning. Near it were two other holy pictures in
  shining settings, and, next them, carved cherubims, china eggs, a Catholic
  cross of ivory, with a Mater Dolorosa embracing it, and several foreign
  engravings from the great Italian artists of past centuries. Next to these
  costly and artistic engravings were several of the roughest Russian prints
  of saints and martyrs, such as are sold for a few farthings at all the
  fairs. On the other walls were portraits of Russian bishops, past and
  present.
  
  Miuesov took a cursory glance at all these "conventional" surroundings and
  bent an intent look upon the elder. He had a high opinion of his own
  insight, a weakness excusable in him as he was fifty, an age at which a
  clever man of the world of established position can hardly help taking
  himself rather seriously. At the first moment he did not like Zossima.
  There was, indeed, something in the elder's face which many people besides
  Miuesov might not have liked. He was a short, bent, little man, with very
  weak legs, and though he was only sixty-five, he looked at least ten years
  older. His face was very thin and covered with a network of fine wrinkles,
  particularly numerous about his eyes, which were small, light-colored,
  quick, and shining like two bright points. He had a sprinkling of gray
  hair about his temples. His pointed beard was small and scanty, and his
  lips, which smiled frequently, were as thin as two threads. His nose was
  not long, but sharp, like a bird's beak.
  
  "To all appearances a malicious soul, full of petty pride," thought
  Miuesov. He felt altogether dissatisfied with his position.
  
  A cheap little clock on the wall struck twelve hurriedly, and served to
  begin the conversation.
  
  "Precisely to our time," cried Fyodor Pavlovitch, "but no sign of my son,
  Dmitri. I apologize for him, sacred elder!" (Alyosha shuddered all over at
  "sacred elder.") "I am always punctual myself, minute for minute,
  remembering that punctuality is the courtesy of kings...."
  
  "But you are not a king, anyway," Miuesov muttered, losing his self-
  restraint at once.
  
  "Yes; that's true. I'm not a king, and, would you believe it, Pyotr
  Alexandrovitch, I was aware of that myself. But, there! I always say the
  wrong thing. Your reverence," he cried, with sudden pathos, "you behold
  before you a buffoon in earnest! I introduce myself as such. It's an old
  habit, alas! And if I sometimes talk nonsense out of place it's with an
  object, with the object of amusing people and making myself agreeable. One
  must be agreeable, mustn't one? I was seven years ago in a little town
  where I had business, and I made friends with some merchants there. We
  went to the captain of police because we had to see him about something,
  and to ask him to dine with us. He was a tall, fat, fair, sulky man, the
  most dangerous type in such cases. It's their liver. I went straight up to
  him, and with the ease of a man of the world, you know, 'Mr. Ispravnik,'
  said I, 'be our Napravnik.' 'What do you mean by Napravnik?' said he. I
  saw, at the first half-second, that it had missed fire. He stood there so
  glum. 'I wanted to make a joke,' said I, 'for the general diversion, as
  Mr. Napravnik is our well-known Russian orchestra conductor and what we
  need for the harmony of our undertaking is some one of that sort.' And I
  explained my comparison very reasonably, didn't I? 'Excuse me,' said he,
  'I am an Ispravnik, and I do not allow puns to be made on my calling.' He
  turned and walked away. I followed him, shouting, 'Yes, yes, you are an
  Ispravnik, not a Napravnik.' 'No,' he said, 'since you called me a
  Napravnik I am one.' And would you believe it, it ruined our business! And
  I'm always like that, always like that. Always injuring myself with my
  politeness. Once, many years ago, I said to an influential person: 'Your
  wife is a ticklish lady,' in an honorable sense, of the moral qualities,
  so to speak. But he asked me, 'Why, have you tickled her?' I thought I'd
  be polite, so I couldn't help saying, 'Yes,' and he gave me a fine
  tickling on the spot. Only that happened long ago, so I'm not ashamed to
  tell the story. I'm always injuring myself like that."
  
  "You're doing it now," muttered Miuesov, with disgust.
  
  Father Zossima scrutinized them both in silence.
  
  "Am I? Would you believe it, I was aware of that, too, Pyotr
  Alexandrovitch, and let me tell you, indeed, I foresaw I should as soon as
  I began to speak. And do you know I foresaw, too, that you'd be the first
  to remark on it. The minute I see my joke isn't coming off, your
  reverence, both my cheeks feel as though they were drawn down to the lower
  jaw and there is almost a spasm in them. That's been so since I was young,
  when I had to make jokes for my living in noblemen's families. I am an
  inveterate buffoon, and have been from birth up, your reverence, it's as
  though it were a craze in me. I dare say it's a devil within me. But only
  a little one. A more serious one would have chosen another lodging. But
  not your soul, Pyotr Alexandrovitch; you're not a lodging worth having
  either. But I do believe--I believe in God, though I have had doubts of
  late. But now I sit and await words of wisdom. I'm like the philosopher,
  Diderot, your reverence. Did you ever hear, most Holy Father, how Diderot
  went to see the Metropolitan Platon, in the time of the Empress Catherine?
  He went in and said straight out, 'There is no God.' To which the great
  bishop lifted up his finger and answered, 'The fool hath said in his heart
  there is no God.' And he fell down at his feet on the spot. 'I believe,'
  he cried, 'and will be christened.' And so he was. Princess Dashkov was
  his godmother, and Potyomkin his godfather."
  
  "Fyodor Pavlovitch, this is unbearable! You know you're telling lies and
  that that stupid anecdote isn't true. Why are you playing the fool?" cried
  Miuesov in a shaking voice.
  
  "I suspected all my life that it wasn't true," Fyodor Pavlovitch cried
  with conviction. "But I'll tell you the whole truth, gentlemen. Great
  elder! Forgive me, the last thing about Diderot's christening I made up
  just now. I never thought of it before. I made it up to add piquancy. I
  play the fool, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, to make myself agreeable. Though I
  really don't know myself, sometimes, what I do it for. And as for Diderot,
  I heard as far as 'the fool hath said in his heart' twenty times from the
  gentry about here when I was young. I heard your aunt, Pyotr
  Alexandrovitch, tell the story. They all believe to this day that the
  infidel Diderot came to dispute about God with the Metropolitan
  Platon...."
  
  Miuesov got up, forgetting himself in his impatience. He was furious, and
  conscious of being ridiculous.
  
  What was taking place in the cell was really incredible. For forty or
  fifty years past, from the times of former elders, no visitors had entered
  that cell without feelings of the profoundest veneration. Almost every one
  admitted to the cell felt that a great favor was being shown him. Many
  remained kneeling during the whole visit. Of those visitors, many had been
  men of high rank and learning, some even freethinkers, attracted by
  curiosity, but all without exception had shown the profoundest reverence
  and delicacy, for here there was no question of money, but only, on the
  one side love and kindness, and on the other penitence and eager desire to
  decide some spiritual problem or crisis. So that such buffoonery amazed
  and bewildered the spectators, or at least some of them. The monks, with
  unchanged countenances, waited, with earnest attention, to hear what the
  elder would say, but seemed on the point of standing up, like Miuesov.
  Alyosha stood, with hanging head, on the verge of tears. What seemed to
  him strangest of all was that his brother Ivan, on whom alone he had
  rested his hopes, and who alone had such influence on his father that he
  could have stopped him, sat now quite unmoved, with downcast eyes,
  apparently waiting with interest to see how it would end, as though he had
  nothing to do with it. Alyosha did not dare to look at Rakitin, the
  divinity student, whom he knew almost intimately. He alone in the
  monastery knew Rakitin's thoughts.
  
  "Forgive me," began Miuesov, addressing Father Zossima, "for perhaps I seem
  to be taking part in this shameful foolery. I made a mistake in believing
  that even a man like Fyodor Pavlovitch would understand what was due on a
  visit to so honored a personage. I did not suppose I should have to
  apologize simply for having come with him...."
  
  Pyotr Alexandrovitch could say no more, and was about to leave the room,
  overwhelmed with confusion.
  
  "Don't distress yourself, I beg." The elder got on to his feeble legs, and
  taking Pyotr Alexandrovitch by both hands, made him sit down again. "I beg
  you not to disturb yourself. I particularly beg you to be my guest." And
  with a bow he went back and sat down again on his little sofa.
  
  "Great elder, speak! Do I annoy you by my vivacity?" Fyodor Pavlovitch
  cried suddenly, clutching the arms of his chair in both hands, as though
  ready to leap up from it if the answer were unfavorable.
  
  "I earnestly beg you, too, not to disturb yourself, and not to be uneasy,"
  the elder said impressively. "Do not trouble. Make yourself quite at home.
  And, above all, do not be so ashamed of yourself, for that is at the root
  of it all."
  
  "Quite at home? To be my natural self? Oh, that is much too much, but I
  accept it with grateful joy. Do you know, blessed Father, you'd better not
  invite me to be my natural self. Don't risk it.... I will not go so far as
  that myself. I warn you for your own sake. Well, the rest is still plunged
  in the mists of uncertainty, though there are people who'd be pleased to
  describe me for you. I mean that for you, Pyotr Alexandrovitch. But as for
  you, holy being, let me tell you, I am brimming over with ecstasy."
  
  He got up, and throwing up his hands, declaimed, "Blessed be the womb that
  bare thee, and the paps that gave thee suck--the paps especially. When you
  said just now, 'Don't be so ashamed of yourself, for that is at the root
  of it all,' you pierced right through me by that remark, and read me to
  the core. Indeed, I always feel when I meet people that I am lower than
  all, and that they all take me for a buffoon. So I say, 'Let me really
  play the buffoon. I am not afraid of your opinion, for you are every one
  of you worse than I am.' That is why I am a buffoon. It is from shame,
  great elder, from shame; it's simply over-sensitiveness that makes me
  rowdy. If I had only been sure that every one would accept me as the
  kindest and wisest of men, oh, Lord, what a good man I should have been
  then! Teacher!" he fell suddenly on his knees, "what must I do to gain
  eternal life?"
  
  It was difficult even now to decide whether he was joking or really moved.
  
  Father Zossima, lifting his eyes, looked at him, and said with a smile:
  
  "You have known for a long time what you must do. You have sense enough:
  don't give way to drunkenness and incontinence of speech; don't give way
  to sensual lust; and, above all, to the love of money. And close your
  taverns. If you can't close all, at least two or three. And, above
  all--don't lie."
  
  "You mean about Diderot?"
  
  "No, not about Diderot. Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies
  to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot
  distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect
  for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and
  in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to
  passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all
  from continual lying to other men and to himself. The man who lies to
  himself can be more easily offended than any one. You know it is sometimes
  very pleasant to take offense, isn't it? A man may know that nobody has
  insulted him, but that he has invented the insult for himself, has lied
  and exaggerated to make it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a
  mountain out of a molehill--he knows that himself, yet he will be the first
  to take offense, and will revel in his resentment till he feels great
  pleasure in it, and so pass to genuine vindictiveness. But get up, sit
  down, I beg you. All this, too, is deceitful posturing...."
  
  "Blessed man! Give me your hand to kiss."
  
  Fyodor Pavlovitch skipped up, and imprinted a rapid kiss on the elder's
  thin hand. "It is, it is pleasant to take offense. You said that so well,
  as I never heard it before. Yes, I have been all my life taking offense,
  to please myself, taking offense on esthetic grounds, for it is not so
  much pleasant as distinguished sometimes to be insulted--that you had
  forgotten, great elder, it is distinguished! I shall make a note of that.
  But I have been lying, lying positively my whole life long, every day and
  hour of it. Of a truth, I am a lie, and the father of lies. Though I
  believe I am not the father of lies. I am getting mixed in my texts. Say,
  the son of lies, and that will be enough. Only ... my angel ... I may
  sometimes talk about Diderot! Diderot will do no harm, though sometimes a
  word will do harm. Great elder, by the way, I was forgetting, though I had
  been meaning for the last two years to come here on purpose to ask and to
  find out something. Only do tell Pyotr Alexandrovitch not to interrupt me.
  Here is my question: Is it true, great Father, that the story is told
  somewhere in the _Lives of the Saints_ of a holy saint martyred for his
  faith who, when his head was cut off at last, stood up, picked up his
  head, and, 'courteously kissing it,' walked a long way, carrying it in his
  hands. Is that true or not, honored Father?"
  
  "No, it is untrue," said the elder.
  
  "There is nothing of the kind in all the lives of the saints. What saint
  do you say the story is told of?" asked the Father Librarian.
  
  "I do not know what saint. I do not know, and can't tell. I was deceived.
  I was told the story. I had heard it, and do you know who told it? Pyotr
  Alexandrovitch Miuesov here, who was so angry just now about Diderot. He it
  was who told the story."
  
  "I have never told it you, I never speak to you at all."
  
  "It is true you did not tell me, but you told it when I was present. It
  was three years ago. I mentioned it because by that ridiculous story you
  shook my faith, Pyotr Alexandrovitch. You knew nothing of it, but I went
  home with my faith shaken, and I have been getting more and more shaken
  ever since. Yes, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, you were the cause of a great fall.
  That was not a Diderot!"
  
  Fyodor Pavlovitch got excited and pathetic, though it was perfectly clear
  to every one by now that he was playing a part again. Yet Miuesov was stung
  by his words.
  
  "What nonsense, and it is all nonsense," he muttered. "I may really have
  told it, some time or other ... but not to you. I was told it myself. I
  heard it in Paris from a Frenchman. He told me it was read at our mass
  from the _Lives of the Saints_ ... he was a very learned man who had made
  a special study of Russian statistics and had lived a long time in
  Russia.... I have not read the _Lives of the Saints_ myself, and I am not
  going to read them ... all sorts of things are said at dinner--we were
  dining then."
  
  "Yes, you were dining then, and so I lost my faith!" said Fyodor
  Pavlovitch, mimicking him.
  
  "What do I care for your faith?" Miuesov was on the point of shouting, but
  he suddenly checked himself, and said with contempt, "You defile
  everything you touch."
  
  The elder suddenly rose from his seat. "Excuse me, gentlemen, for leaving
  you a few minutes," he said, addressing all his guests. "I have visitors
  awaiting me who arrived before you. But don't you tell lies all the same,"
  he added, turning to Fyodor Pavlovitch with a good-humored face. He went
  out of the cell. Alyosha and the novice flew to escort him down the steps.
  Alyosha was breathless: he was glad to get away, but he was glad, too,
  that the elder was good-humored and not offended. Father Zossima was going
  towards the portico to bless the people waiting for him there. But Fyodor
  Pavlovitch persisted in stopping him at the door of the cell.
  
  "Blessed man!" he cried, with feeling. "Allow me to kiss your hand once
  more. Yes, with you I could still talk, I could still get on. Do you think
  I always lie and play the fool like this? Believe me, I have been acting
  like this all the time on purpose to try you. I have been testing you all
  the time to see whether I could get on with you. Is there room for my
  humility beside your pride? I am ready to give you a testimonial that one
  can get on with you! But now, I'll be quiet; I will keep quiet all the
  time. I'll sit in a chair and hold my tongue. Now it is for you to speak,
  Pyotr Alexandrovitch. You are the principal person left now--for ten
  minutes."
  
  
  
  
  Chapter III. Peasant Women Who Have Faith
  
  
  Near the wooden portico below, built on to the outer wall of the precinct,
  there was a crowd of about twenty peasant women. They had been told that
  the elder was at last coming out, and they had gathered together in
  anticipation. Two ladies, Madame Hohlakov and her daughter, had also come
  out into the portico to wait for the elder, but in a separate part of it
  set aside for women of rank.
  
  Madame Hohlakov was a wealthy lady, still young and attractive, and always
  dressed with taste. She was rather pale, and had lively black eyes. She
  was not more than thirty-three, and had been five years a widow. Her
  daughter, a girl of fourteen, was partially paralyzed. The poor child had
  not been able to walk for the last six months, and was wheeled about in a
  long reclining chair. She had a charming little face, rather thin from
  illness, but full of gayety. There was a gleam of mischief in her big dark
  eyes with their long lashes. Her mother had been intending to take her
  abroad ever since the spring, but they had been detained all the summer by
  business connected with their estate. They had been staying a week in our
  town, where they had come more for purposes of business than devotion, but
  had visited Father Zossima once already, three days before. Though they
  knew that the elder scarcely saw any one, they had now suddenly turned up
  again, and urgently entreated "the happiness of looking once again on the
  great healer."
  
  The mother was sitting on a chair by the side of her daughter's invalid
  carriage, and two paces from her stood an old monk, not one of our
  monastery, but a visitor from an obscure religious house in the far north.
  He too sought the elder's blessing.
  
  But Father Zossima, on entering the portico, went first straight to the
  peasants who were crowded at the foot of the three steps that led up into
  the portico. Father Zossima stood on the top step, put on his stole, and
  began blessing the women who thronged about him. One crazy woman was led
  up to him. As soon as she caught sight of the elder she began shrieking
  and writhing as though in the pains of childbirth. Laying the stole on her
  forehead, he read a short prayer over her, and she was at once soothed and
  quieted.
  
  I do not know how it may be now, but in my childhood I often happened to
  see and hear these "possessed" women in the villages and monasteries. They
  used to be brought to mass; they would squeal and bark like a dog so that
  they were heard all over the church. But when the sacrament was carried in
  and they were led up to it, at once the "possession" ceased, and the sick
  women were always soothed for a time. I was greatly impressed and amazed
  at this as a child; but then I heard from country neighbors and from my
  town teachers that the whole illness was simulated to avoid work, and that
  it could always be cured by suitable severity; various anecdotes were told
  to confirm this. But later on I learnt with astonishment from medical
  specialists that there is no pretense about it, that it is a terrible
  illness to which women are subject, specially prevalent among us in
  Russia, and that it is due to the hard lot of the peasant women. It is a
  disease, I was told, arising from exhausting toil too soon after hard,
  abnormal and unassisted labor in childbirth, and from the hopeless misery,
  from beatings, and so on, which some women were not able to endure like
  others. The strange and instant healing of the frantic and struggling
  woman as soon as she was led up to the holy sacrament, which had been
  explained to me as due to malingering and the trickery of the "clericals,"
  arose probably in the most natural manner. Both the women who supported
  her and the invalid herself fully believed as a truth beyond question that
  the evil spirit in possession of her could not hold out if the sick woman
  were brought to the sacrament and made to bow down before it. And so, with
  a nervous and psychically deranged woman, a sort of convulsion of the
  whole organism always took place, and was bound to take place, at the
  moment of bowing down to the sacrament, aroused by the expectation of the
  miracle of healing and the implicit belief that it would come to pass; and
  it did come to pass, though only for a moment. It was exactly the same now
  as soon as the elder touched the sick woman with the stole.
  
  Many of the women in the crowd were moved to tears of ecstasy by the
  effect of the moment: some strove to kiss the hem of his garment, others
  cried out in sing-song voices.
  
  He blessed them all and talked with some of them. The "possessed" woman he
  knew already. She came from a village only six versts from the monastery,
  and had been brought to him before.
  
  "But here is one from afar." He pointed to a woman by no means old but
  very thin and wasted, with a face not merely sunburnt but almost blackened
  by exposure. She was kneeling and gazing with a fixed stare at the elder;
  there was something almost frenzied in her eyes.
  
  "From afar off, Father, from afar off! From two hundred miles from here.
  From afar off, Father, from afar off!" the woman began in a sing-song
  voice as though she were chanting a dirge, swaying her head from side to
  side with her cheek resting in her hand.
  
  There is silent and long-suffering sorrow to be met with among the
  peasantry. It withdraws into itself and is still. But there is a grief
  that breaks out, and from that minute it bursts into tears and finds vent
  in wailing. This is particularly common with women. But it is no lighter a
  grief than the silent. Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart
  still more. Such grief does not desire consolation. It feeds on the sense
  of its hopelessness. Lamentations spring only from the constant craving to
  reopen the wound.
  
  "You are of the tradesman class?" said Father Zossima, looking curiously
  at her.
  
  "Townfolk we are, Father, townfolk. Yet we are peasants though we live in
  the town. I have come to see you, O Father! We heard of you, Father, we
  heard of you. I have buried my little son, and I have come on a
  pilgrimage. I have been in three monasteries, but they told me, 'Go,
  Nastasya, go to them'--that is to you. I have come; I was yesterday at the
  service, and to-day I have come to you."
  
  "What are you weeping for?"
  
  "It's my little son I'm grieving for, Father. He was three years old--three
  years all but three months. For my little boy, Father, I'm in anguish, for
  my little boy. He was the last one left. We had four, my Nikita and I, and
  now we've no children, our dear ones have all gone. I buried the first
  three without grieving overmuch, and now I have buried the last I can't
  forget him. He seems always standing before me. He never leaves me. He has
  withered my heart. I look at his little clothes, his little shirt, his
  little boots, and I wail. I lay out all that is left of him, all his
  little things. I look at them and wail. I say to Nikita, my husband, 'Let
  me go on a pilgrimage, master.' He is a driver. We're not poor people,
  Father, not poor; he drives our own horse. It's all our own, the horse and
  the carriage. And what good is it all to us now? My Nikita has begun
  drinking while I am away. He's sure to. It used to be so before. As soon
  as I turn my back he gives way to it. But now I don't think about him.
  It's three months since I left home. I've forgotten him. I've forgotten
  everything. I don't want to remember. And what would our life be now
  together? I've done with him, I've done. I've done with them all. I don't
  care to look upon my house and my goods. I don't care to see anything at
  all!"
  
  "Listen, mother," said the elder. "Once in olden times a holy saint saw in
  the Temple a mother like you weeping for her little one, her only one,
  whom God had taken. 'Knowest thou not,' said the saint to her, 'how bold
  these little ones are before the throne of God? Verily there are none
  bolder than they in the Kingdom of Heaven. "Thou didst give us life, O
  Lord," they say, "and scarcely had we looked upon it when Thou didst take
  it back again." And so boldly they ask and ask again that God gives them
  at once the rank of angels. Therefore,' said the saint, 'thou, too, O
  mother, rejoice and weep not, for thy little son is with the Lord in the
  fellowship of the angels.' That's what the saint said to the weeping
  mother of old. He was a great saint and he could not have spoken falsely.
  Therefore you too, mother, know that your little one is surely before the
  throne of God, is rejoicing and happy, and praying to God for you, and
  therefore weep not, but rejoice."
  
  The woman listened to him, looking down with her cheek in her hand. She
  sighed deeply.
  
  "My Nikita tried to comfort me with the same words as you. 'Foolish one,'
  he said, 'why weep? Our son is no doubt singing with the angels before
  God.' He says that to me, but he weeps himself. I see that he cries like
  me. 'I know, Nikita,' said I. 'Where could he be if not with the Lord God?
  Only, here with us now he is not as he used to sit beside us before.' And
  if only I could look upon him one little time, if only I could peep at him
  one little time, without going up to him, without speaking, if I could be
  hidden in a corner and only see him for one little minute, hear him
  playing in the yard, calling in his little voice, 'Mammy, where are you?'
  If only I could hear him pattering with his little feet about the room
  just once, only once; for so often, so often I remember how he used to run
  to me and shout and laugh, if only I could hear his little feet I should
  know him! But he's gone, Father, he's gone, and I shall never hear him
  again. Here's his little sash, but him I shall never see or hear now."
  
  She drew out of her bosom her boy's little embroidered sash, and as soon
  as she looked at it she began shaking with sobs, hiding her eyes with her
  fingers through which the tears flowed in a sudden stream.
  
  "It is Rachel of old," said the elder, "weeping for her children, and will
  not be comforted because they are not. Such is the lot set on earth for
  you mothers. Be not comforted. Consolation is not what you need. Weep and
  be not consoled, but weep. Only every time that you weep be sure to
  remember that your little son is one of the angels of God, that he looks
  down from there at you and sees you, and rejoices at your tears, and
  points at them to the Lord God; and a long while yet will you keep that
  great mother's grief. But it will turn in the end into quiet joy, and your
  bitter tears will be only tears of tender sorrow that purifies the heart
  and delivers it from sin. And I shall pray for the peace of your child's
  soul. What was his name?"
  
  "Alexey, Father."
  
  "A sweet name. After Alexey, the man of God?"
  
  "Yes, Father."
  
  "What a saint he was! I will remember him, mother, and your grief in my
  prayers, and I will pray for your husband's health. It is a sin for you to
  leave him. Your little one will see from heaven that you have forsaken his
  father, and will weep over you. Why do you trouble his happiness? He is
  living, for the soul lives for ever, and though he is not in the house he
  is near you, unseen. How can he go into the house when you say that the
  house is hateful to you? To whom is he to go if he find you not together,
  his father and mother? He comes to you in dreams now, and you grieve. But
  then he will send you gentle dreams. Go to your husband, mother; go this
  very day."
  
  "I will go, Father, at your word. I will go. You've gone straight to my
  heart. My Nikita, my Nikita, you are waiting for me," the woman began in a
  sing-song voice; but the elder had already turned away to a very old
  woman, dressed like a dweller in the town, not like a pilgrim. Her eyes
  showed that she had come with an object, and in order to say something.
  She said she was the widow of a non-commissioned officer, and lived close
  by in the town. Her son Vasenka was in the commissariat service, and had
  gone to Irkutsk in Siberia. He had written twice from there, but now a
  year had passed since he had written. She did inquire about him, but she
  did not know the proper place to inquire.
  
  "Only the other day Stepanida Ilyinishna--she's a rich merchant's wife--said
  to me, 'You go, Prohorovna, and put your son's name down for prayer in the
  church, and pray for the peace of his soul as though he were dead. His
  soul will be troubled,' she said, 'and he will write you a letter.' And
  Stepanida Ilyinishna told me it was a certain thing which had been many
  times tried. Only I am in doubt.... Oh, you light of ours! is it true or
  false, and would it be right?"
  
  "Don't think of it. It's shameful to ask the question. How is it possible
  to pray for the peace of a living soul? And his own mother too! It's a
  great sin, akin to sorcery. Only for your ignorance it is forgiven you.
  Better pray to the Queen of Heaven, our swift defense and help, for his
  good health, and that she may forgive you for your error. And another
  thing I will tell you, Prohorovna. Either he will soon come back to you,
  your son, or he will be sure to send a letter. Go, and henceforward be in
  peace. Your son is alive, I tell you."
  
  "Dear Father, God reward you, our benefactor, who prays for all of us and
  for our sins!"
  
  But the elder had already noticed in the crowd two glowing eyes fixed upon
  him. An exhausted, consumptive-looking, though young peasant woman was
  gazing at him in silence. Her eyes besought him, but she seemed afraid to
  approach.
  
  "What is it, my child?"
  
  "Absolve my soul, Father," she articulated softly, and slowly sank on her
  knees and bowed down at his feet. "I have sinned, Father. I am afraid of
  my sin."
  
  The elder sat down on the lower step. The woman crept closer to him, still
  on her knees.
  
  "I am a widow these three years," she began in a half-whisper, with a sort
  of shudder. "I had a hard life with my husband. He was an old man. He used
  to beat me cruelly. He lay ill; I thought looking at him, if he were to
  get well, if he were to get up again, what then? And then the thought came
  to me--"
  
  "Stay!" said the elder, and he put his ear close to her lips.
  
  The woman went on in a low whisper, so that it was almost impossible to
  catch anything. She had soon done.
  
  "Three years ago?" asked the elder.
  
  "Three years. At first I didn't think about it, but now I've begun to be
  ill, and the thought never leaves me."
  
  "Have you come from far?"
  
  "Over three hundred miles away."
  
  "Have you told it in confession?"
  
  "I have confessed it. Twice I have confessed it."
  
  "Have you been admitted to Communion?"
  
  "Yes. I am afraid. I am afraid to die."
  
  "Fear nothing and never be afraid; and don't fret. If only your penitence
  fail not, God will forgive all. There is no sin, and there can be no sin
  on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant!
  Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God.
  Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God? Think only of
  repentance, continual repentance, but dismiss fear altogether. Believe
  that God loves you as you cannot conceive; that He loves you with your
  sin, in your sin. It has been said of old that over one repentant sinner
  there is more joy in heaven than over ten righteous men. Go, and fear not.
  Be not bitter against men. Be not angry if you are wronged. Forgive the
  dead man in your heart what wrong he did you. Be reconciled with him in
  truth. If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All
  things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner, even
  as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will
  God. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world
  by it, and expiate not only your own sins but the sins of others."
  
  He signed her three times with the cross, took from his own neck a little
  ikon and put it upon her. She bowed down to the earth without speaking.
  
  He got up and looked cheerfully at a healthy peasant woman with a tiny
  baby in her arms.
  
  "From Vyshegorye, dear Father."
  
  "Five miles you have dragged yourself with the baby. What do you want?"
  
  "I've come to look at you. I have been to you before--or have you
  forgotten? You've no great memory if you've forgotten me. They told us you
  were ill. Thinks I, I'll go and see him for myself. Now I see you, and
  you're not ill! You'll live another twenty years. God bless you! There are
  plenty to pray for you; how should you be ill?"
  
  "I thank you for all, daughter."
  
  "By the way, I have a thing to ask, not a great one. Here are sixty
  copecks. Give them, dear Father, to some one poorer than me. I thought as
  I came along, better give through him. He'll know whom to give to."
  
  "Thanks, my dear, thanks! You are a good woman. I love you. I will do so
  certainly. Is that your little girl?"
  
  "My little girl, Father, Lizaveta."
  
  "May the Lord bless you both, you and your babe Lizaveta! You have
  gladdened my heart, mother. Farewell, dear children, farewell, dear ones."
  
  He blessed them all and bowed low to them.
  
  
  
  
  Chapter IV. A Lady Of Little Faith
  
  
  A visitor looking on the scene of his conversation with the peasants and
  his blessing them shed silent tears and wiped them away with her
  handkerchief. She was a sentimental society lady of genuinely good
  disposition in many respects. When the elder went up to her at last she
  met him enthusiastically.
  
  "Ah, what I have been feeling, looking on at this touching scene!..." She
  could not go on for emotion. "Oh, I understand the people's love for you.
  I love the people myself. I want to love them. And who could help loving
  them, our splendid Russian people, so simple in their greatness!"
  
  "How is your daughter's health? You wanted to talk to me again?"
  
  "Oh, I have been urgently begging for it, I have prayed for it! I was
  ready to fall on my knees and kneel for three days at your windows until
  you let me in. We have come, great healer, to express our ardent
  gratitude. You have healed my Lise, healed her completely, merely by
  praying over her last Thursday and laying your hands upon her. We have
  hastened here to kiss those hands, to pour out our feelings and our
  homage."
  
  "What do you mean by healed? But she is still lying down in her chair."
  
  "But her night fevers have entirely ceased ever since Thursday," said the
  lady with nervous haste. "And that's not all. Her legs are stronger. This
  morning she got up well; she had slept all night. Look at her rosy cheeks,
  her bright eyes! She used to be always crying, but now she laughs and is
  gay and happy. This morning she insisted on my letting her stand up, and
  she stood up for a whole minute without any support. She wagers that in a
  fortnight she'll be dancing a quadrille. I've called in Doctor
  Herzenstube. He shrugged his shoulders and said, 'I am amazed; I can make
  nothing of it.' And would you have us not come here to disturb you, not
  fly here to thank you? Lise, thank him--thank him!"
  
  Lise's pretty little laughing face became suddenly serious. She rose in
  her chair as far as she could and, looking at the elder, clasped her hands
  before him, but could not restrain herself and broke into laughter.
  
  "It's at him," she said, pointing to Alyosha, with childish vexation at
  herself for not being able to repress her mirth.
  
  If any one had looked at Alyosha standing a step behind the elder, he
  would have caught a quick flush crimsoning his cheeks in an instant. His
  eyes shone and he looked down.
  
  "She has a message for you, Alexey Fyodorovitch. How are you?" the mother
  went on, holding out her exquisitely gloved hand to Alyosha.
  
  The elder turned round and all at once looked attentively at Alyosha. The
  latter went nearer to Lise and, smiling in a strangely awkward way, held
  out his hand to her too. Lise assumed an important air.
  
  "Katerina Ivanovna has sent you this through me." She handed him a little
  note. "She particularly begs you to go and see her as soon as possible;
  that you will not fail her, but will be sure to come."
  
  "She asks me to go and see her? Me? What for?" Alyosha muttered in great
  astonishment. His face at once looked anxious. "Oh, it's all to do with
  Dmitri Fyodorovitch and--what has happened lately," the mother explained
  hurriedly. "Katerina Ivanovna has made up her mind, but she must see you
  about it.... Why, of course, I can't say. But she wants to see you at
  once. And you will go to her, of course. It is a Christian duty."
  
  "I have only seen her once," Alyosha protested with the same perplexity.
  
  "Oh, she is such a lofty, incomparable creature! If only for her
  suffering.... Think what she has gone through, what she is enduring now!
  Think what awaits her! It's all terrible, terrible!"
  
  "Very well, I will come," Alyosha decided, after rapidly scanning the
  brief, enigmatic note, which consisted of an urgent entreaty that he would
  come, without any sort of explanation.
  
  "Oh, how sweet and generous that would be of you!" cried Lise with sudden
  animation. "I told mamma you'd be sure not to go. I said you were saving
  your soul. How splendid you are! I've always thought you were splendid.
  How glad I am to tell you so!"
  
  "Lise!" said her mother impressively, though she smiled after she had said
  it.
  
  "You have quite forgotten us, Alexey Fyodorovitch," she said; "you never
  come to see us. Yet Lise has told me twice that she is never happy except
  with you."
  
  Alyosha raised his downcast eyes and again flushed, and again smiled
  without knowing why. But the elder was no longer watching him. He had
  begun talking to a monk who, as mentioned before, had been awaiting his
  entrance by Lise's chair. He was evidently a monk of the humblest, that is
  of the peasant, class, of a narrow outlook, but a true believer, and, in
  his own way, a stubborn one. He announced that he had come from the far
  north, from Obdorsk, from Saint Sylvester, and was a member of a poor
  monastery, consisting of only ten monks. The elder gave him his blessing
  and invited him to come to his cell whenever he liked.
  
  "How can you presume to do such deeds?" the monk asked suddenly, pointing
  solemnly and significantly at Lise. He was referring to her "healing."
  
  "It's too early, of course, to speak of that. Relief is not complete cure,
  and may proceed from different causes. But if there has been any healing,
  it is by no power but God's will. It's all from God. Visit me, Father," he
  added to the monk. "It's not often I can see visitors. I am ill, and I
  know that my days are numbered."
  
  "Oh, no, no! God will not take you from us. You will live a long, long
  time yet," cried the lady. "And in what way are you ill? You look so well,
  so gay and happy."
  
  "I am extraordinarily better to-day. But I know that it's only for a
  moment. I understand my disease now thoroughly. If I seem so happy to you,
  you could never say anything that would please me so much. For men are
  made for happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right to say
  to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.' All the righteous, all the
  saints, all the holy martyrs were happy."
  
  "Oh, how you speak! What bold and lofty words!" cried the lady. "You seem
  to pierce with your words. And yet--happiness, happiness--where is it? Who
  can say of himself that he is happy? Oh, since you have been so good as to
  let us see you once more to-day, let me tell you what I could not utter
  last time, what I dared not say, all I am suffering and have been for so
  long! I am suffering! Forgive me! I am suffering!"
  
  And in a rush of fervent feeling she clasped her hands before him.
  
  "From what specially?"
  
  "I suffer ... from lack of faith."
  
  "Lack of faith in God?"
  
  "Oh, no, no! I dare not even think of that. But the future life--it is such
  an enigma! And no one, no one can solve it. Listen! You are a healer, you
  are deeply versed in the human soul, and of course I dare not expect you
  to believe me entirely, but I assure you on my word of honor that I am not
  speaking lightly now. The thought of the life beyond the grave distracts
  me to anguish, to terror. And I don't know to whom to appeal, and have not
  dared to all my life. And now I am so bold as to ask you. Oh, God! What
  will you think of me now?"
  
  She clasped her hands.
  
  "Don't distress yourself about my opinion of you," said the elder. "I
  quite believe in the sincerity of your suffering."
  
  "Oh, how thankful I am to you! You see, I shut my eyes and ask myself if
  every one has faith, where did it come from? And then they do say that it
  all comes from terror at the menacing phenomena of nature, and that none
  of it's real. And I say to myself, 'What if I've been believing all my
  life, and when I come to die there's nothing but the burdocks growing on
  my grave?' as I read in some author. It's awful! How--how can I get back my
  faith? But I only believed when I was a little child, mechanically,
  without thinking of anything. How, how is one to prove it? I have come now
  to lay my soul before you and to ask you about it. If I let this chance
  slip, no one all my life will answer me. How can I prove it? How can I
  convince myself? Oh, how unhappy I am! I stand and look about me and see
  that scarcely any one else cares; no one troubles his head about it, and
  I'm the only one who can't stand it. It's deadly--deadly!"
  
  "No doubt. But there's no proving it, though you can be convinced of it."
  
  "How?"
  
  "By the experience of active love. Strive to love your neighbor actively
  and indefatigably. In as far as you advance in love you will grow surer of
  the reality of God and of the immortality of your soul. If you attain to
  perfect self-forgetfulness in the love of your neighbor, then you will
  believe without doubt, and no doubt can possibly enter your soul. This has
  been tried. This is certain."
  
  "In active love? There's another question--and such a question! You see, I
  so love humanity that--would you believe it?--I often dream of forsaking all
  that I have, leaving Lise, and becoming a sister of mercy. I close my eyes
  and think and dream, and at that moment I feel full of strength to
  overcome all obstacles. No wounds, no festering sores could at that moment
  frighten me. I would bind them up and wash them with my own hands. I would
  nurse the afflicted. I would be ready to kiss such wounds."
  
  "It is much, and well that your mind is full of such dreams and not
  others. Sometime, unawares, you may do a good deed in reality."
  
  "Yes. But could I endure such a life for long?" the lady went on
  fervently, almost frantically. "That's the chief question--that's my most
  agonizing question. I shut my eyes and ask myself, 'Would you persevere
  long on that path? And if the patient whose wounds you are washing did not
  meet you with gratitude, but worried you with his whims, without valuing
  or remarking your charitable services, began abusing you and rudely
  commanding you, and complaining to the superior authorities of you (which
  often happens when people are in great suffering)--what then? Would you
  persevere in your love, or not?' And do you know, I came with horror to
  the conclusion that, if anything could dissipate my love to humanity, it
  would be ingratitude. In short, I am a hired servant, I expect my payment
  at once--that is, praise, and the repayment of love with love. Otherwise I
  am incapable of loving any one."
  
  She was in a very paroxysm of self-castigation, and, concluding, she
  looked with defiant resolution at the elder.
  
  "It's just the same story as a doctor once told me," observed the elder.
  "He was a man getting on in years, and undoubtedly clever. He spoke as
  frankly as you, though in jest, in bitter jest. 'I love humanity,' he
  said, 'but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the
  less I love man in particular. In my dreams,' he said, 'I have often come
  to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity, and perhaps I
  might actually have faced crucifixion if it had been suddenly necessary;
  and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with any one for two
  days together, as I know by experience. As soon as any one is near me, his
  personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In
  twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he's too
  long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing
  his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But
  it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more
  ardent becomes my love for humanity.' "
  
  "But what's to be done? What can one do in such a case? Must one despair?"
  
  "No. It is enough that you are distressed at it. Do what you can, and it
  will be reckoned unto you. Much is done already in you since you can so
  deeply and sincerely know yourself. If you have been talking to me so
  sincerely, simply to gain approbation for your frankness, as you did from
  me just now, then of course you will not attain to anything in the
  achievement of real love; it will all get no further than dreams, and your
  whole life will slip away like a phantom. In that case you will naturally
  cease to think of the future life too, and will of yourself grow calmer
  after a fashion in the end."
  
  "You have crushed me! Only now, as you speak, I understand that I was
  really only seeking your approbation for my sincerity when I told you I
  could not endure ingratitude. You have revealed me to myself. You have
  seen through me and explained me to myself!"
  
  "Are you speaking the truth? Well, now, after such a confession, I believe
  that you are sincere and good at heart. If you do not attain happiness,
  always remember that you are on the right road, and try not to leave it.
  Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness
  to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every
  hour, every minute. Avoid being scornful, both to others and to yourself.
  What seems to you bad within you will grow purer from the very fact of
  your observing it in yourself. Avoid fear, too, though fear is only the
  consequence of every sort of falsehood. Never be frightened at your own
  faint-heartedness in attaining love. Don't be frightened overmuch even at
  your evil actions. I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for
  love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.
  Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in
  the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does
  not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as
  though on the stage. But active love is labor and fortitude, and for some
  people too, perhaps, a complete science. But I predict that just when you
  see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting farther
  from your goal instead of nearer to it--at that very moment I predict that
  you will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who
  has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you. Forgive me for
  not being able to stay longer with you. They are waiting for me. Good-by."
  
  The lady was weeping.
  
  "Lise, Lise! Bless her--bless her!" she cried, starting up suddenly.
  
  "She does not deserve to be loved. I have seen her naughtiness all along,"
  the elder said jestingly. "Why have you been laughing at Alexey?"
  
  Lise had in fact been occupied in mocking at him all the time. She had
  noticed before that Alyosha was shy and tried not to look at her, and she
  found this extremely amusing. She waited intently to catch his eye.
  Alyosha, unable to endure her persistent stare, was irresistibly and
  suddenly drawn to glance at her, and at once she smiled triumphantly in
  his face. Alyosha was even more disconcerted and vexed. At last he turned
  away from her altogether and hid behind the elder's back. After a few
  minutes, drawn by the same irresistible force, he turned again to see
  whether he was being looked at or not, and found Lise almost hanging out
  of her chair to peep sideways at him, eagerly waiting for him to look.
  Catching his eye, she laughed so that the elder could not help saying,
  "Why do you make fun of him like that, naughty girl?"
  
  Lise suddenly and quite unexpectedly blushed. Her eyes flashed and her
  face became quite serious. She began speaking quickly and nervously in a
  warm and resentful voice:
  
  "Why has he forgotten everything, then? He used to carry me about when I
  was little. We used to play together. He used to come to teach me to read,
  do you know. Two years ago, when he went away, he said that he would never
  forget me, that we were friends for ever, for ever, for ever! And now he's
  afraid of me all at once. Am I going to eat him? Why doesn't he want to
  come near me? Why doesn't he talk? Why won't he come and see us? It's not
  that you won't let him. We know that he goes everywhere. It's not good
  manners for me to invite him. He ought to have thought of it first, if he
  hasn't forgotten me. No, now he's saving his soul! Why have you put that
  long gown on him? If he runs he'll fall."
  
  And suddenly she hid her face in her hand and went off into irresistible,
  prolonged, nervous, inaudible laughter. The elder listened to her with a
  smile, and blessed her tenderly. As she kissed his hand she suddenly
  pressed it to her eyes and began crying.
  
  "Don't be angry with me. I'm silly and good for nothing ... and perhaps
  Alyosha's right, quite right, in not wanting to come and see such a
  ridiculous girl."
  
  "I will certainly send him," said the elder.
  
  
  
  
  Chapter V. So Be It! So Be It!
  
  
  The elder's absence from his cell had lasted for about twenty-five
  minutes. It was more than half-past twelve, but Dmitri, on whose account
  they had all met there, had still not appeared. But he seemed almost to be
  forgotten, and when the elder entered the cell again, he found his guests
  engaged in eager conversation. Ivan and the two monks took the leading
  share in it. Miuesov, too, was trying to take a part, and apparently very
  eagerly, in the conversation. But he was unsuccessful in this also. He was
  evidently in the background, and his remarks were treated with neglect,
  which increased his irritability. He had had intellectual encounters with
  Ivan before and he could not endure a certain carelessness Ivan showed
  him.
  
  "Hitherto at least I have stood in the front ranks of all that is
  progressive in Europe, and here the new generation positively ignores us,"
  he thought.
  
  Fyodor Pavlovitch, who had given his word to sit still and be quiet, had
  actually been quiet for some time, but he watched his neighbor Miuesov with
  an ironical little smile, obviously enjoying his discomfiture. He had been
  waiting for some time to pay off old scores, and now he could not let the
  opportunity slip. Bending over his shoulder he began teasing him again in
  a whisper.
  
  "Why didn't you go away just now, after the 'courteously kissing'? Why did
  you consent to remain in such unseemly company? It was because you felt
  insulted and aggrieved, and you remained to vindicate yourself by showing
  off your intelligence. Now you won't go till you've displayed your
  intellect to them."
  
  "You again?... On the contrary, I'm just going."
  
  "You'll be the last, the last of all to go!" Fyodor Pavlovitch delivered
  him another thrust, almost at the moment of Father Zossima's return.
  
  The discussion died down for a moment, but the elder, seating himself in
  his former place, looked at them all as though cordially inviting them to
  go on. Alyosha, who knew every expression of his face, saw that he was
  fearfully exhausted and making a great effort. Of late he had been liable
  to fainting fits from exhaustion. His face had the pallor that was common
  before such attacks, and his lips were white. But he evidently did not
  want to break up the party. He seemed to have some special object of his
  own in keeping them. What object? Alyosha watched him intently.
  
  "We are discussing this gentleman's most interesting article," said Father
  Iosif, the librarian, addressing the elder, and indicating Ivan. "He
  brings forward much that is new, but I think the argument cuts both ways.
  It is an article written in answer to a book by an ecclesiastical
  authority on the question of the ecclesiastical court, and the scope of
  its jurisdiction."
  
  "I'm sorry I have not read your article, but I've heard of it," said the
  elder, looking keenly and intently at Ivan.
  
  "He takes up a most interesting position," continued the Father Librarian.
  "As far as Church jurisdiction is concerned he is apparently quite opposed
  to the separation of Church from State."
  
  "That's interesting. But in what sense?" Father Zossima asked Ivan.
  
  The latter, at last, answered him, not condescendingly, as Alyosha had
  feared, but with modesty and reserve, with evident goodwill and apparently
  without the slightest _arriere-pensee_.
  
  "I start from the position that this confusion of elements, that is, of
  the essential principles of Church and State, will, of course, go on for
  ever, in spite of the fact that it is impossible for them to mingle, and
  that the confusion of these elements cannot lead to any consistent or even
  normal results, for there is falsity at the very foundation of it.
  Compromise between the Church and State in such questions as, for
  instance, jurisdiction, is, to my thinking, impossible in any real sense.
  My clerical opponent maintains that the Church holds a precise and defined
  position in the State. I maintain, on the contrary, that the Church ought
  to include the whole State, and not simply to occupy a corner in it, and,
  if this is, for some reason, impossible at present, then it ought, in
  reality, to be set up as the direct and chief aim of the future
  development of Christian society!"
  
  "Perfectly true," Father Paissy, the silent and learned monk, assented
  with fervor and decision.
  
  "The purest Ultramontanism!" cried Miuesov impatiently, crossing and
  recrossing his legs.
  
  "Oh, well, we have no mountains," cried Father Iosif, and turning to the
  elder he continued: "Observe the answer he makes to the following
  'fundamental and essential' propositions of his opponent, who is, you must
  note, an ecclesiastic. First, that 'no social organization can or ought to
  arrogate to itself power to dispose of the civic and political rights of
  its members.' Secondly, that 'criminal and civil jurisdiction ought not to
  belong to the Church, and is inconsistent with its nature, both as a
  divine institution and as an organization of men for religious objects,'
  and, finally, in the third place, 'the Church is a kingdom not of this
  world.' "
  
  "A most unworthy play upon words for an ecclesiastic!" Father Paissy could
  not refrain from breaking in again. "I have read the book which you have
  answered," he added, addressing Ivan, "and was astounded at the words 'the
  Church is a kingdom not of this world.' If it is not of this world, then
  it cannot exist on earth at all. In the Gospel, the words 'not of this
  world' are not used in that sense. To play with such words is
  indefensible. Our Lord Jesus Christ came to set up the Church upon earth.
  The Kingdom of Heaven, of course, is not of this world, but in Heaven; but
  it is only entered through the Church which has been founded and
  established upon earth. And so a frivolous play upon words in such a
  connection is unpardonable and improper. The Church is, in truth, a
  kingdom and ordained to rule, and in the end must undoubtedly become the
  kingdom ruling over all the earth. For that we have the divine promise."
  
  He ceased speaking suddenly, as though checking himself. After listening
  attentively and respectfully Ivan went on, addressing the elder with
  perfect composure and as before with ready cordiality:
  
  "The whole point of my article lies in the fact that during the first
  three centuries Christianity only existed on earth in the Church and was
  nothing but the Church. When the pagan Roman Empire desired to become
  Christian, it inevitably happened that, by becoming Christian, it included
  the Church but remained a pagan State in very many of its departments. In
  reality this was bound to happen. But Rome as a State retained too much of
  the pagan civilization and culture, as, for example, in the very objects
  and fundamental principles of the State. The Christian Church entering
  into the State could, of course, surrender no part of its fundamental
  principles--the rock on which it stands--and could pursue no other aims than
  those which have been ordained and revealed by God Himself, and among them
  that of drawing the whole world, and therefore the ancient pagan State
  itself, into the Church. In that way (that is, with a view to the future)
  it is not the Church that should seek a definite position in the State,
  like 'every social organization,' or as 'an organization of men for
  religious purposes' (as my opponent calls the Church), but, on the
  contrary, every earthly State should be, in the end, completely
  transformed into the Church and should become nothing else but a Church,
  rejecting every purpose incongruous with the aims of the Church. All this
  will not degrade it in any way or take from its honor and glory as a great
  State, nor from the glory of its rulers, but only turns it from a false,
  still pagan, and mistaken path to the true and rightful path, which alone
  leads to the eternal goal. This is why the author of the book _On the
  Foundations of Church Jurisdiction_ would have judged correctly if, in
  seeking and laying down those foundations, he had looked upon them as a
  temporary compromise inevitable in our sinful and imperfect days. But as
  soon as the author ventures to declare that the foundations which he
  predicates now, part of which Father Iosif just enumerated, are the
  permanent, essential, and eternal foundations, he is going directly
  against the Church and its sacred and eternal vocation. That is the gist
  of my article."
  
  "That is, in brief," Father Paissy began again, laying stress on each
  word, "according to certain theories only too clearly formulated in the
  nineteenth century, the Church ought to be transformed into the State, as
  though this would be an advance from a lower to a higher form, so as to
  disappear into it, making way for science, for the spirit of the age, and
  civilization. And if the Church resists and is unwilling, some corner will
  be set apart for her in the State, and even that under control--and this
  will be so everywhere in all modern European countries. But Russian hopes
  and conceptions demand not that the Church should pass as from a lower
  into a higher type into the State, but, on the contrary, that the State
  should end by being worthy to become only the Church and nothing else. So
  be it! So be it!"
  
  "Well, I confess you've reassured me somewhat," Miuesov said smiling, again
  crossing his legs. "So far as I understand, then, the realization of such
  an ideal is infinitely remote, at the second coming of Christ. That's as
  you please. It's a beautiful Utopian dream of the abolition of war,
  diplomacy, banks, and so on--something after the fashion of socialism,
  indeed. But I imagined that it was all meant seriously, and that the
  Church might be _now_ going to try criminals, and sentence them to
  beating, prison, and even death."
  
  "But if there were none but the ecclesiastical court, the Church would not
  even now sentence a criminal to prison or to death. Crime and the way of
  regarding it would inevitably change, not all at once of course, but
  fairly soon," Ivan replied calmly, without flinching.
  
  "Are you serious?" Miuesov glanced keenly at him.
  
  "If everything became the Church, the Church would exclude all the
  criminal and disobedient, and would not cut off their heads," Ivan went
  on. "I ask you, what would become of the excluded? He would be cut off
  then not only from men, as now, but from Christ. By his crime he would
  have transgressed not only against men but against the Church of Christ.
  This is so even now, of course, strictly speaking, but it is not clearly
  enunciated, and very, very often the criminal of to-day compromises with
  his conscience: 'I steal,' he says, 'but I don't go against the Church.
  I'm not an enemy of Christ.' That's what the criminal of to-day is
  continually saying to himself, but when the Church takes the place of the
  State it will be difficult for him, in opposition to the Church all over
  the world, to say: 'All men are mistaken, all in error, all mankind are
  the false Church. I, a thief and murderer, am the only true Christian
  Church.' It will be very difficult to say this to himself; it requires a
  rare combination of unusual circumstances. Now, on the other side, take
  the Church's own view of crime: is it not bound to renounce the present
  almost pagan attitude, and to change from a mechanical cutting off of its
  tainted member for the preservation of society, as at present, into
  completely and honestly adopting the idea of the regeneration of the man,
  of his reformation and salvation?"
  
  "What do you mean? I fail to understand again," Miuesov interrupted. "Some
  sort of dream again. Something shapeless and even incomprehensible. What
  is excommunication? What sort of exclusion? I suspect you are simply
  amusing yourself, Ivan Fyodorovitch."
  
  "Yes, but you know, in reality it is so now," said the elder suddenly, and
  all turned to him at once. "If it were not for the Church of Christ there
  would be nothing to restrain the criminal from evil-doing, no real
  chastisement for it afterwards; none, that is, but the mechanical
  punishment spoken of just now, which in the majority of cases only
  embitters the heart; and not the real punishment, the only effectual one,
  the only deterrent and softening one, which lies in the recognition of sin
  by conscience."
  
  "How is that, may one inquire?" asked Miuesov, with lively curiosity.
  
  "Why," began the elder, "all these sentences to exile with hard labor, and
  formerly with flogging also, reform no one, and what's more, deter hardly
  a single criminal, and the number of crimes does not diminish but is
  continually on the increase. You must admit that. Consequently the
  security of society is not preserved, for, although the obnoxious member
  is mechanically cut off and sent far away out of sight, another criminal
  always comes to take his place at once, and often two of them. If anything
  does preserve society, even in our time, and does regenerate and transform
  the criminal, it is only the law of Christ speaking in his conscience. It
  is only by recognizing his wrong-doing as a son of a Christian
  society--that is, of the Church--that he recognizes his sin against
  society--that is, against the Church. So that it is only against the
  Church, and not against the State, that the criminal of to-day can
  recognize that he has sinned. If society, as a Church, had jurisdiction,
  then it would know when to bring back from exclusion and to reunite to
  itself. Now the Church having no real jurisdiction, but only the power of
  moral condemnation, withdraws of her own accord from punishing the
  criminal actively. She does not excommunicate him but simply persists in
  motherly exhortation of him. What is more, the Church even tries to
  preserve all Christian communion with the criminal. She admits him to
  church services, to the holy sacrament, gives him alms, and treats him
  more as a captive than as a convict. And what would become of the
  criminal, O Lord, if even the Christian society--that is, the Church--were
  to reject him even as the civil law rejects him and cuts him off? What
  would become of him if the Church punished him with her excommunication as
  the direct consequence of the secular law? There could be no more terrible
  despair, at least for a Russian criminal, for Russian criminals still have
  faith. Though, who knows, perhaps then a fearful thing would happen,
  perhaps the despairing heart of the criminal would lose its faith and then
  what would become of him? But the Church, like a tender, loving mother,
  holds aloof from active punishment herself, as the sinner is too severely
  punished already by the civil law, and there must be at least some one to
  have pity on him. The Church holds aloof, above all, because its judgment
  is the only one that contains the truth, and therefore cannot practically
  and morally be united to any other judgment even as a temporary
  compromise. She can enter into no compact about that. The foreign
  criminal, they say, rarely repents, for the very doctrines of to-day
  confirm him in the idea that his crime is not a crime, but only a reaction
  against an unjustly oppressive force. Society cuts him off completely by a
  force that triumphs over him mechanically and (so at least they say of
  themselves in Europe) accompanies this exclusion with hatred,
  forgetfulness, and the most profound indifference as to the ultimate fate
  of the erring brother. In this way, it all takes place without the
  compassionate intervention of the Church, for in many cases there are no
  churches there at all, for though ecclesiastics and splendid church
  buildings remain, the churches themselves have long ago striven to pass
  from Church into State and to disappear in it completely. So it seems at
  least in Lutheran countries. As for Rome, it was proclaimed a State
  instead of a Church a thousand years ago. And so the criminal is no longer
  conscious of being a member of the Church and sinks into despair. If he
  returns to society, often it is with such hatred that society itself
  instinctively cuts him off. You can judge for yourself how it must end. In
  many cases it would seem to be the same with us, but the difference is
  that besides the established law courts we have the Church too, which
  always keeps up relations with the criminal as a dear and still precious
  son. And besides that, there is still preserved, though only in thought,
  the judgment of the Church, which though no longer existing in practice is
  still living as a dream for the future, and is, no doubt, instinctively
  recognized by the criminal in his soul. What was said here just now is
  true too, that is, that if the jurisdiction of the Church were introduced
  in practice in its full force, that is, if the whole of the society were
  changed into the Church, not only the judgment of the Church would have
  influence on the reformation of the criminal such as it never has now, but
  possibly also the crimes themselves would be incredibly diminished. And
  there can be no doubt that the Church would look upon the criminal and the
  crime of the future in many cases quite differently and would succeed in
  restoring the excluded, in restraining those who plan evil, and in
  regenerating the fallen. It is true," said Father Zossima, with a smile,
  "the Christian society now is not ready and is only resting on some seven
  righteous men, but as they are never lacking, it will continue still
  unshaken in expectation of its complete transformation from a society
  almost heathen in character into a single universal and all-powerful
  Church. So be it, so be it! Even though at the end of the ages, for it is
  ordained to come to pass! And there is no need to be troubled about times
  and seasons, for the secret of the times and seasons is in the wisdom of
  God, in His foresight, and His love. And what in human reckoning seems
  still afar off, may by the Divine ordinance be close at hand, on the eve
  of its appearance. And so be it, so be it!"
  
  "So be it, so be it!" Father Paissy repeated austerely and reverently.
  
  "Strange, extremely strange!" Miuesov pronounced, not so much with heat as
  with latent indignation.
  
  "What strikes you as so strange?" Father Iosif inquired cautiously.
  
  "Why, it's beyond anything!" cried Miuesov, suddenly breaking out; "the
  State is eliminated and the Church is raised to the position of the State.
  It's not simply Ultramontanism, it's arch-Ultramontanism! It's beyond the
  dreams of Pope Gregory the Seventh!"
  
  "You are completely misunderstanding it," said Father Paissy sternly.
  "Understand, the Church is not to be transformed into the State. That is
  Rome and its dream. That is the third temptation of the devil. On the
  contrary, the State is transformed into the Church, will ascend and become
  a Church over the whole world--which is the complete opposite of
  Ultramontanism and Rome, and your interpretation, and is only the glorious
  destiny ordained for the Orthodox Church. This star will arise in the
  east!"
  
  Miuesov was significantly silent. His whole figure expressed extraordinary
  personal dignity. A supercilious and condescending smile played on his
  lips. Alyosha watched it all with a throbbing heart. The whole
  conversation stirred him profoundly. He glanced casually at Rakitin, who
  was standing immovable in his place by the door listening and watching
  intently though with downcast eyes. But from the color in his cheeks
  Alyosha guessed that Rakitin was probably no less excited, and he knew
  what caused his excitement.
  
  "Allow me to tell you one little anecdote, gentlemen," Miuesov said
  impressively, with a peculiarly majestic air. "Some years ago, soon after
  the _coup d'etat_ of December, I happened to be calling in Paris on an
  extremely influential personage in the Government, and I met a very
  interesting man in his house. This individual was not precisely a
  detective but was a sort of superintendent of a whole regiment of
  political detectives--a rather powerful position in its own way. I was
  prompted by curiosity to seize the opportunity of conversation with him.
  And as he had not come as a visitor but as a subordinate official bringing
  a special report, and as he saw the reception given me by his chief, he
  deigned to speak with some openness, to a certain extent only, of course.
  He was rather courteous than open, as Frenchmen know how to be courteous,
  especially to a foreigner. But I thoroughly understood him. The subject
  was the socialist revolutionaries who were at that time persecuted. I will
  quote only one most curious remark dropped by this person. 'We are not
  particularly afraid,' said he, 'of all these socialists, anarchists,
  infidels, and revolutionists; we keep watch on them and know all their
  goings on. But there are a few peculiar men among them who believe in God
  and are Christians, but at the same time are socialists. These are the
  people we are most afraid of. They are dreadful people! The socialist who
  is a Christian is more to be dreaded than a socialist who is an atheist.'
  The words struck me at the time, and now they have suddenly come back to
  me here, gentlemen."
  
  "You apply them to us, and look upon us as socialists?" Father Paissy
  asked directly, without beating about the bush.
  
  But before Pyotr Alexandrovitch could think what to answer, the door
  opened, and the guest so long expected, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, came in. They
  had, in fact, given up expecting him, and his sudden appearance caused
  some surprise for a moment.
  
  
  
  
  Chapter VI. Why Is Such A Man Alive?
  
  
  Dmitri Fyodorovitch, a young man of eight and twenty, of medium height and
  agreeable countenance, looked older than his years. He was muscular, and
  showed signs of considerable physical strength. Yet there was something
  not healthy in his face. It was rather thin, his cheeks were hollow, and
  there was an unhealthy sallowness in their color. His rather large,
  prominent, dark eyes had an expression of firm determination, and yet
  there was a vague look in them, too. Even when he was excited and talking
  irritably, his eyes somehow did not follow his mood, but betrayed
  something else, sometimes quite incongruous with what was passing. "It's
  hard to tell what he's thinking," those who talked to him sometimes
  declared. People who saw something pensive and sullen in his eyes were
  startled by his sudden laugh, which bore witness to mirthful and light-
  hearted thoughts at the very time when his eyes were so gloomy. A certain
  strained look in his face was easy to understand at this moment. Every one
  knew, or had heard of, the extremely restless and dissipated life which he
  had been leading of late, as well as of the violent anger to which he had
  been roused in his quarrels with his father. There were several stories
  current in the town about it. It is true that he was irascible by nature,
  "of an unstable and unbalanced mind," as our justice of the peace,
  Katchalnikov, happily described him.
  
  He was stylishly and irreproachably dressed in a carefully buttoned frock-
  coat. He wore black gloves and carried a top-hat. Having only lately left
  the army, he still had mustaches and no beard. His dark brown hair was
  cropped short, and combed forward on his temples. He had the long,
  determined stride of a military man. He stood still for a moment on the
  threshold, and glancing at the whole party went straight up to the elder,
  guessing him to be their host. He made him a low bow, and asked his
  blessing. Father Zossima, rising in his chair, blessed him. Dmitri kissed
  his hand respectfully, and with intense feeling, almost anger, he said:
  
  "Be so generous as to forgive me for having kept you waiting so long, but
  Smerdyakov, the valet sent me by my father, in reply to my inquiries, told
  me twice over that the appointment was for one. Now I suddenly learn--"
  
  "Don't disturb yourself," interposed the elder. "No matter. You are a
  little late. It's of no consequence...."
  
  "I'm extremely obliged to you, and expected no less from your goodness."
  
  Saying this, Dmitri bowed once more. Then, turning suddenly towards his
  father, made him, too, a similarly low and respectful bow. He had
  evidently considered it beforehand, and made this bow in all seriousness,
  thinking it his duty to show his respect and good intentions.
  
  Although Fyodor Pavlovitch was taken unawares, he was equal to the
  occasion. In response to Dmitri's bow he jumped up from his chair and made
  his son a bow as low in return. His face was suddenly solemn and
  impressive, which gave him a positively malignant look. Dmitri bowed
  generally to all present, and without a word walked to the window with his
  long, resolute stride, sat down on the only empty chair, near Father
  Paissy, and, bending forward, prepared to listen to the conversation he
  had interrupted.
  
  Dmitri's entrance had taken no more than two minutes, and the conversation
  was resumed. But this time Miuesov thought it unnecessary to reply to
  Father Paissy's persistent and almost irritable question.
  
  "Allow me to withdraw from this discussion," he observed with a certain
  well-bred nonchalance. "It's a subtle question, too. Here Ivan
  Fyodorovitch is smiling at us. He must have something interesting to say
  about that also. Ask him."
  
  "Nothing special, except one little remark," Ivan replied at once.
  "European Liberals in general, and even our liberal dilettanti, often mix
  up the final results of socialism with those of Christianity. This wild
  notion is, of course, a characteristic feature. But it's not only Liberals
  and dilettanti who mix up socialism and Christianity, but, in many cases,
  it appears, the police--the foreign police, of course--do the same. Your
  Paris anecdote is rather to the point, Pyotr Alexandrovitch."
  
  "I ask your permission to drop this subject altogether," Miuesov repeated.
  "I will tell you instead, gentlemen, another interesting and rather
  characteristic anecdote of Ivan Fyodorovitch himself. Only five days ago,
  in a gathering here, principally of ladies, he solemnly declared in
  argument that there was nothing in the whole world to make men love their
  neighbors. That there was no law of nature that man should love mankind,
  and that, if there had been any love on earth hitherto, it was not owing
  to a natural law, but simply because men have believed in immortality.
  Ivan Fyodorovitch added in parenthesis that the whole natural law lies in
  that faith, and that if you were to destroy in mankind the belief in
  immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of
  the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be
  immoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism. That's not all. He
  ended by asserting that for every individual, like ourselves, who does not
  believe in God or immortality, the moral law of nature must immediately be
  changed into the exact contrary of the former religious law, and that
  egoism, even to crime, must become not only lawful but even recognized as
  the inevitable, the most rational, even honorable outcome of his position.
  From this paradox, gentlemen, you can judge of the rest of our eccentric
  and paradoxical friend Ivan Fyodorovitch's theories."
  
  "Excuse me," Dmitri cried suddenly; "if I've heard aright, crime must not
  only be permitted but even recognized as the inevitable and the most
  rational outcome of his position for every infidel! Is that so or not?"
  
  "Quite so," said Father Paissy.
  
  "I'll remember it."
  
  Having uttered these words Dmitri ceased speaking as suddenly as he had
  begun. Every one looked at him with curiosity.
  
  "Is that really your conviction as to the consequences of the
  disappearance of the faith in immortality?" the elder asked Ivan suddenly.
  
  "Yes. That was my contention. There is no virtue if there is no
  immortality."
  
  "You are blessed in believing that, or else most unhappy."
  
  "Why unhappy?" Ivan asked smiling.
  
  "Because, in all probability you don't believe yourself in the immortality
  of your soul, nor in what you have written yourself in your article on
  Church jurisdiction."
  
  "Perhaps you are right! ... But I wasn't altogether joking," Ivan suddenly
  and strangely confessed, flushing quickly.
  
  "You were not altogether joking. That's true. The question is still
  fretting your heart, and not answered. But the martyr likes sometimes to
  divert himself with his despair, as it were driven to it by despair
  itself. Meanwhile, in your despair, you, too, divert yourself with
  magazine articles, and discussions in society, though you don't believe
  your own arguments, and with an aching heart mock at them inwardly....
  That question you have not answered, and it is your great grief, for it
  clamors for an answer."
  
  "But can it be answered by me? Answered in the affirmative?" Ivan went on
  asking strangely, still looking at the elder with the same inexplicable
  smile.
  
  "If it can't be decided in the affirmative, it will never be decided in
  the negative. You know that that is the peculiarity of your heart, and all
  its suffering is due to it. But thank the Creator who has given you a
  lofty heart capable of such suffering; of thinking and seeking higher
  things, for our dwelling is in the heavens. God grant that your heart will
  attain the answer on earth, and may God bless your path."
  
  The elder raised his hand and would have made the sign of the cross over
  Ivan from where he stood. But the latter rose from his seat, went up to
  him, received his blessing, and kissing his hand went back to his place in
  silence. His face looked firm and earnest. This action and all the
  preceding conversation, which was so surprising from Ivan, impressed every
  one by its strangeness and a certain solemnity, so that all were silent
  for a moment, and there was a look almost of apprehension in Alyosha's
  face. But Miuesov suddenly shrugged his shoulders. And at the same moment
  Fyodor Pavlovitch jumped up from his seat.
  
  "Most pious and holy elder," he cried, pointing to Ivan, "that is my son,
  flesh of my flesh, the dearest of my flesh! He is my most dutiful Karl
  Moor, so to speak, while this son who has just come in, Dmitri, against
  whom I am seeking justice from you, is the undutiful Franz Moor--they are
  both out of Schiller's _Robbers_, and so I am the reigning Count von Moor!
  Judge and save us! We need not only your prayers but your prophecies!"
  
  "Speak without buffoonery, and don't begin by insulting the members of
  your family," answered the elder, in a faint, exhausted voice. He was
  obviously getting more and more fatigued, and his strength was failing.
  
  "An unseemly farce which I foresaw when I came here!" cried Dmitri
  indignantly. He too leapt up. "Forgive it, reverend Father," he added,
  addressing the elder. "I am not a cultivated man, and I don't even know
  how to address you properly, but you have been deceived and you have been
  too good-natured in letting us meet here. All my father wants is a
  scandal. Why he wants it only he can tell. He always has some motive. But
  I believe I know why--"
  
  "They all blame me, all of them!" cried Fyodor Pavlovitch in his turn.
  "Pyotr Alexandrovitch here blames me too. You have been blaming me, Pyotr
  Alexandrovitch, you have!" he turned suddenly to Miuesov, although the
  latter was not dreaming of interrupting him. "They all accuse me of having
  hidden the children's money in my boots, and cheated them, but isn't there
  a court of law? There they will reckon out for you, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,
  from your notes, your letters, and your agreements, how much money you
  had, how much you have spent, and how much you have left. Why does Pyotr
  Alexandrovitch refuse to pass judgment? Dmitri is not a stranger to him.
  Because they are all against me, while Dmitri Fyodorovitch is in debt to
  me, and not a little, but some thousands of which I have documentary
  proof. The whole town is echoing with his debaucheries. And where he was
  stationed before, he several times spent a thousand or two for the
  seduction of some respectable girl; we know all about that, Dmitri
  Fyodorovitch, in its most secret details. I'll prove it.... Would you
  believe it, holy Father, he has captivated the heart of the most honorable
  of young ladies of good family and fortune, daughter of a gallant colonel,
  formerly his superior officer, who had received many honors and had the
  Anna Order on his breast. He compromised the girl by his promise of
  marriage, now she is an orphan and here; she is betrothed to him, yet
  before her very eyes he is dancing attendance on a certain enchantress.
  And although this enchantress has lived in, so to speak, civil marriage
  with a respectable man, yet she is of an independent character, an
  unapproachable fortress for everybody, just like a legal wife--for she is
  virtuous, yes, holy Fathers, she is virtuous. Dmitri Fyodorovitch wants to
  open this fortress with a golden key, and that's why he is insolent to me
  now, trying to get money from me, though he has wasted thousands on this
  enchantress already. He's continually borrowing money for the purpose.
  From whom do you think? Shall I say, Mitya?"
  
  "Be silent!" cried Dmitri, "wait till I'm gone. Don't dare in my presence
  to asperse the good name of an honorable girl! That you should utter a
  word about her is an outrage, and I won't permit it!"
  
  He was breathless.
  
  "Mitya! Mitya!" cried Fyodor Pavlovitch hysterically, squeezing out a
  tear. "And is your father's blessing nothing to you? If I curse you, what
  then?"
  
  "Shameless hypocrite!" exclaimed Dmitri furiously.
  
  "He says that to his father! his father! What would he be with others?
  Gentlemen, only fancy; there's a poor but honorable man living here,
  burdened with a numerous family, a captain who got into trouble and was
  discharged from the army, but not publicly, not by court-martial, with no
  slur on his honor. And three weeks ago, Dmitri seized him by the beard in
  a tavern, dragged him out into the street and beat him publicly, and all
  because he is an agent in a little business of mine."
  
  "It's all a lie! Outwardly it's the truth, but inwardly a lie!" Dmitri was
  trembling with rage. "Father, I don't justify my action. Yes, I confess it
  publicly, I behaved like a brute to that captain, and I regret it now, and
  I'm disgusted with myself for my brutal rage. But this captain, this agent
  of yours, went to that lady whom you call an enchantress, and suggested to
  her from you, that she should take I.O.U.'s of mine which were in your
  possession, and should sue me for the money so as to get me into prison by
  means of them, if I persisted in claiming an account from you of my
  property. Now you reproach me for having a weakness for that lady when you
  yourself incited her to captivate me! She told me so to my face.... She
  told me the story and laughed at you.... You wanted to put me in prison
  because you are jealous of me with her, because you'd begun to force your
  attentions upon her; and I know all about that, too; she laughed at you
  for that as well--you hear--she laughed at you as she described it. So here
  you have this man, this father who reproaches his profligate son!
  Gentlemen, forgive my anger, but I foresaw that this crafty old man would
  only bring you together to create a scandal. I had come to forgive him if
  he held out his hand; to forgive him, and ask forgiveness! But as he has
  just this minute insulted not only me, but an honorable young lady, for
  whom I feel such reverence that I dare not take her name in vain, I have
  made up my mind to show up his game, though he is my father...."
  
  He could not go on. His eyes were glittering and he breathed with
  difficulty. But every one in the cell was stirred. All except Father
  Zossima got up from their seats uneasily. The monks looked austere but
  waited for guidance from the elder. He sat still, pale, not from
  excitement but from the weakness of disease. An imploring smile lighted up
  his face; from time to time he raised his hand, as though to check the
  storm, and, of course, a gesture from him would have been enough to end
  the scene; but he seemed to be waiting for something and watched them
  intently as though trying to make out something which was not perfectly
  clear to him. At last Miuesov felt completely humiliated and disgraced.
  
  "We are all to blame for this scandalous scene," he said hotly. "But I did
  not foresee it when I came, though I knew with whom I had to deal. This
  must be stopped at once! Believe me, your reverence, I had no precise
  knowledge of the details that have just come to light, I was unwilling to
  believe them, and I learn for the first time.... A father is jealous of
  his son's relations with a woman of loose behavior and intrigues with the
  creature to get his son into prison! This is the company in which I have
  been forced to be present! I was deceived. I declare to you all that I was
  as much deceived as any one."
  
  "Dmitri Fyodorovitch," yelled Fyodor Pavlovitch suddenly, in an unnatural
  voice, "if you were not my son I would challenge you this instant to a
  duel ... with pistols, at three paces ... across a handkerchief," he
  ended, stamping with both feet.
  
  With old liars who have been acting all their lives there are moments when
  they enter so completely into their part that they tremble or shed tears
  of emotion in earnest, although at that very moment, or a second later,
  they are able to whisper to themselves, "You know you are lying, you
  shameless old sinner! You're acting now, in spite of your 'holy' wrath."
  
  Dmitri frowned painfully, and looked with unutterable contempt at his
  father.
  
  "I thought ... I thought," he said, in a soft and, as it were, controlled
  voice, "that I was coming to my native place with the angel of my heart,
  my betrothed, to cherish his old age, and I find nothing but a depraved
  profligate, a despicable clown!"
  
  "A duel!" yelled the old wretch again, breathless and spluttering at each
  syllable. "And you, Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miuesov, let me tell you that
  there has never been in all your family a loftier, and more honest--you
  hear--more honest woman than this 'creature,' as you have dared to call
  her! And you, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, have abandoned your betrothed for that
  'creature,' so you must yourself have thought that your betrothed couldn't
  hold a candle to her. That's the woman called a 'creature'!"
  
  "Shameful!" broke from Father Iosif.
  
  "Shameful and disgraceful!" Kalganov, flushing crimson, cried in a boyish
  voice, trembling with emotion. He had been silent till that moment.
  
  "Why is such a man alive?" Dmitri, beside himself with rage, growled in a
  hollow voice, hunching up his shoulders till he looked almost deformed.
  "Tell me, can he be allowed to go on defiling the earth?" He looked round
  at every one and pointed at the old man. He spoke evenly and deliberately.
  
  "Listen, listen, monks, to the parricide!" cried Fyodor Pavlovitch,
  rushing up to Father Iosif. "That's the answer to your 'shameful!' What is
  shameful? That 'creature,' that 'woman of loose behavior' is perhaps
  holier than you are yourselves, you monks who are seeking salvation! She
  fell perhaps in her youth, ruined by her environment. But she loved much,
  and Christ himself forgave the woman 'who loved much.' "
  
  "It was not for such love Christ forgave her," broke impatiently from the
  gentle Father Iosif.
  
  "Yes, it was for such, monks, it was! You save your souls here, eating
  cabbage, and think you are the righteous. You eat a gudgeon a day, and you
  think you bribe God with gudgeon."
  
  "This is unendurable!" was heard on all sides in the cell.
  
  But this unseemly scene was cut short in a most unexpected way. Father
  Zossima rose suddenly from his seat. Almost distracted with anxiety for
  the elder and every one else, Alyosha succeeded, however, in supporting
  him by the arm. Father Zossima moved towards Dmitri and reaching him sank
  on his knees before him. Alyosha thought that he had fallen from weakness,
  but this was not so. The elder distinctly and deliberately bowed down at
  Dmitri's feet till his forehead touched the floor. Alyosha was so
  astounded that he failed to assist him when he got up again. There was a
  faint smile on his lips.
  
  "Good-by! Forgive me, all of you!" he said, bowing on all sides to his
  guests.
  
  Dmitri stood for a few moments in amazement. Bowing down to him--what did
  it mean? Suddenly he cried aloud, "Oh, God!" hid his face in his hands,
  and rushed out of the room. All the guests flocked out after him, in their
  confusion not saying good-by, or bowing to their host. Only the monks went
  up to him again for a blessing.
  
  "What did it mean, falling at his feet like that? Was it symbolic or
  what?" said Fyodor Pavlovitch, suddenly quieted and trying to reopen
  conversation without venturing to address anybody in particular. They were
  all passing out of the precincts of the hermitage at the moment.
  
  "I can't answer for a madhouse and for madmen," Miuesov answered at once
  ill-humoredly, "but I will spare myself your company, Fyodor Pavlovitch,
  and, trust me, for ever. Where's that monk?"
  
  "That monk," that is, the monk who had invited them to dine with the
  Superior, did not keep them waiting. He met them as soon as they came down
  the steps from the elder's cell, as though he had been waiting for them
  all the time.
  
  "Reverend Father, kindly do me a favor. Convey my deepest respect to the
  Father Superior, apologize for me, personally, Miuesov, to his reverence,
  telling him that I deeply regret that owing to unforeseen circumstances I
  am unable to have the honor of being present at his table, greatly as I
  should desire to do so," Miuesov said irritably to the monk.
  
  "And that unforeseen circumstance, of course, is myself," Fyodor
  Pavlovitch cut in immediately. "Do you hear, Father; this gentleman
  doesn't want to remain in my company or else he'd come at once. And you
  shall go, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, pray go to the Father Superior and good
  appetite to you. I will decline, and not you. Home, home, I'll eat at
  home, I don't feel equal to it here, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, my amiable
  relative."
  
  "I am not your relative and never have been, you contemptible man!"
  
  "I said it on purpose to madden you, because you always disclaim the
  relationship, though you really are a relation in spite of your shuffling.
  I'll prove it by the church calendar. As for you, Ivan, stay if you like.
  I'll send the horses for you later. Propriety requires you to go to the
  Father Superior, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, to apologize for the disturbance
  we've been making...."
  
  "Is it true that you are going home? Aren't you lying?"
  
  "Pyotr Alexandrovitch! How could I dare after what's happened! Forgive me,
  gentlemen, I was carried away! And upset besides! And, indeed, I am
  ashamed. Gentlemen, one man has the heart of Alexander of Macedon and
  another the heart of the little dog Fido. Mine is that of the little dog
  Fido. I am ashamed! After such an escapade how can I go to dinner, to
  gobble up the monastery's sauces? I am ashamed, I can't. You must excuse
  me!"
  
  "The devil only knows, what if he deceives us?" thought Miuesov, still
  hesitating, and watching the retreating buffoon with distrustful eyes. The
  latter turned round, and noticing that Miuesov was watching him, waved him
  a kiss.
  
  "Well, are you coming to the Superior?" Miuesov asked Ivan abruptly.
  
  "Why not? I was especially invited yesterday."
  
  "Unfortunately I feel myself compelled to go to this confounded dinner,"
  said Miuesov with the same irritability, regardless of the fact that the
  monk was listening. "We ought, at least, to apologize for the disturbance,
  and explain that it was not our doing. What do you think?"
  
  "Yes, we must explain that it wasn't our doing. Besides, father won't be
  there," observed Ivan.
  
  "Well, I should hope not! Confound this dinner!"
  
  They all walked on, however. The monk listened in silence. On the road
  through the copse he made one observation however--that the Father Superior
  had been waiting a long time, and that they were more than half an hour
  late. He received no answer. Miuesov looked with hatred at Ivan.
  
  "Here he is, going to the dinner as though nothing had happened," he
  thought. "A brazen face, and the conscience of a Karamazov!"
  
  
  
  
  Chapter VII. A Young Man Bent On A Career
  
  
  Alyosha helped Father Zossima to his bedroom and seated him on his bed. It
  was a little room furnished with the bare necessities. There was a narrow
  iron bedstead, with a strip of felt for a mattress. In the corner, under
  the ikons, was a reading-desk with a cross and the Gospel lying on it. The
  elder sank exhausted on the bed. His eyes glittered and he breathed hard.
  He looked intently at Alyosha, as though considering something.
  
  "Go, my dear boy, go. Porfiry is enough for me. Make haste, you are needed
  there, go and wait at the Father Superior's table."
  
  "Let me stay here," Alyosha entreated.
  
  "You are more needed there. There is no peace there. You will wait, and be
  of service. If evil spirits rise up, repeat a prayer. And remember, my
  son"--the elder liked to call him that--"this is not the place for you in
  the future. When it is God's will to call me, leave the monastery. Go away
  for good."
  
  Alyosha started.
  
  "What is it? This is not your place for the time. I bless you for great
  service in the world. Yours will be a long pilgrimage. And you will have
  to take a wife, too. You will have to bear _all_ before you come back.
  There will be much to do. But I don't doubt of you, and so I send you
  forth. Christ is with you. Do not abandon Him and He will not abandon you.
  You will see great sorrow, and in that sorrow you will be happy. This is
  my last message to you: in sorrow seek happiness. Work, work unceasingly.
  Remember my words, for although I shall talk with you again, not only my
  days but my hours are numbered."
  
  Alyosha's face again betrayed strong emotion. The corners of his mouth
  quivered.
  
  "What is it again?" Father Zossima asked, smiling gently. "The worldly may
  follow the dead with tears, but here we rejoice over the father who is
  departing. We rejoice and pray for him. Leave me, I must pray. Go, and
  make haste. Be near your brothers. And not near one only, but near both."
  
  Father Zossima raised his hand to bless him. Alyosha could make no
  protest, though he had a great longing to remain. He longed, moreover, to
  ask the significance of his bowing to Dmitri, the question was on the tip
  of his tongue, but he dared not ask it. He knew that the elder would have
  explained it unasked if he had thought fit. But evidently it was not his
  will. That action had made a terrible impression on Alyosha; he believed
  blindly in its mysterious significance. Mysterious, and perhaps awful.
  
  As he hastened out of the hermitage precincts to reach the monastery in
  time to serve at the Father Superior's dinner, he felt a sudden pang at
  his heart, and stopped short. He seemed to hear again Father Zossima's
  words, foretelling his approaching end. What he had foretold so exactly
  must infallibly come to pass. Alyosha believed that implicitly. But how
  could he be left without him? How could he live without seeing and hearing
  him? Where should he go? He had told him not to weep, and to leave the
  monastery. Good God! It was long since Alyosha had known such anguish. He
  hurried through the copse that divided the monastery from the hermitage,
  and unable to bear the burden of his thoughts, he gazed at the ancient
  pines beside the path. He had not far to go--about five hundred paces. He
  expected to meet no one at that hour, but at the first turn of the path he
  noticed Rakitin. He was waiting for some one.
  
  "Are you waiting for me?" asked Alyosha, overtaking him.
  
  "Yes," grinned Rakitin. "You are hurrying to the Father Superior, I know;
  he has a banquet. There's not been such a banquet since the Superior
  entertained the Bishop and General Pahatov, do you remember? I shan't be
  there, but you go and hand the sauces. Tell me one thing, Alexey, what
  does that vision mean? That's what I want to ask you."
  
  "What vision?"
  
  "That bowing to your brother, Dmitri. And didn't he tap the ground with
  his forehead, too!"
  
  "You speak of Father Zossima?"
  
  "Yes, of Father Zossima."
  
  "Tapped the ground?"
  
  "Ah, an irreverent expression! Well, what of it? Anyway, what does that
  vision mean?"
  
  "I don't know what it means, Misha."
  
  "I knew he wouldn't explain it to you! There's nothing wonderful about it,
  of course, only the usual holy mummery. But there was an object in the
  performance. All the pious people in the town will talk about it and
  spread the story through the province, wondering what it meant. To my
  thinking the old man really has a keen nose; he sniffed a crime. Your
  house stinks of it."
  
  "What crime?"
  
  Rakitin evidently had something he was eager to speak of.
  
  "It'll be in your family, this crime. Between your brothers and your rich
  old father. So Father Zossima flopped down to be ready for what may turn
  up. If something happens later on, it'll be: 'Ah, the holy man foresaw it,
  prophesied it!' though it's a poor sort of prophecy, flopping like that.
  'Ah, but it was symbolic,' they'll say, 'an allegory,' and the devil knows
  what all! It'll be remembered to his glory: 'He predicted the crime and
  marked the criminal!' That's always the way with these crazy fanatics;
  they cross themselves at the tavern and throw stones at the temple. Like
  your elder, he takes a stick to a just man and falls at the feet of a
  murderer."
  
  "What crime? What murderer? What do you mean?"
  
  Alyosha stopped dead. Rakitin stopped, too.
  
  "What murderer? As though you didn't know! I'll bet you've thought of it
  before. That's interesting, too, by the way. Listen, Alyosha, you always
  speak the truth, though you're always between two stools. Have you thought
  of it or not? Answer."
  
  "I have," answered Alyosha in a low voice. Even Rakitin was taken aback.
  
  "What? Have you really?" he cried.
  
  "I ... I've not exactly thought it," muttered Alyosha, "but directly you
  began speaking so strangely, I fancied I had thought of it myself."
  
  "You see? (And how well you expressed it!) Looking at your father and your
  brother Mitya to-day you thought of a crime. Then I'm not mistaken?"
  
  "But wait, wait a minute," Alyosha broke in uneasily. "What has led you to
  see all this? Why does it interest you? That's the first question."
  
  "Two questions, disconnected, but natural. I'll deal with them separately.
  What led me to see it? I shouldn't have seen it, if I hadn't suddenly
  understood your brother Dmitri, seen right into the very heart of him all
  at once. I caught the whole man from one trait. These very honest but
  passionate people have a line which mustn't be crossed. If it were, he'd
  run at your father with a knife. But your father's a drunken and abandoned
  old sinner, who can never draw the line--if they both let themselves go,
  they'll both come to grief."
  
  "No, Misha, no. If that's all, you've reassured me. It won't come to
  that."
  
  "But why are you trembling? Let me tell you; he may be honest, our Mitya
  (he is stupid, but honest), but he's--a sensualist. That's the very
  definition and inner essence of him. It's your father has handed him on
  his low sensuality. Do you know, I simply wonder at you, Alyosha, how you
  can have kept your purity. You're a Karamazov too, you know! In your
  family sensuality is carried to a disease. But now, these three
  sensualists are watching one another, with their knives in their belts.
  The three of them are knocking their heads together, and you may be the
  fourth."
  
  "You are mistaken about that woman. Dmitri--despises her," said Alyosha,
  with a sort of shudder.
  
  "Grushenka? No, brother, he doesn't despise her. Since he has openly
  abandoned his betrothed for her, he doesn't despise her. There's something
  here, my dear boy, that you don't understand yet. A man will fall in love
  with some beauty, with a woman's body, or even with a part of a woman's
  body (a sensualist can understand that), and he'll abandon his own
  children for her, sell his father and mother, and his country, Russia,
  too. If he's honest, he'll steal; if he's humane, he'll murder; if he's
  faithful, he'll deceive. Pushkin, the poet of women's feet, sung of their
  feet in his verse. Others don't sing their praises, but they can't look at
  their feet without a thrill--and it's not only their feet. Contempt's no
  help here, brother, even if he did despise Grushenka. He does, but he
  can't tear himself away."
  
  "I understand that," Alyosha jerked out suddenly.
  
  "Really? Well, I dare say you do understand, since you blurt it out at the
  first word," said Rakitin, malignantly. "That escaped you unawares, and
  the confession's the more precious. So it's a familiar subject; you've
  thought about it already, about sensuality, I mean! Oh, you virgin soul!
  You're a quiet one, Alyosha, you're a saint, I know, but the devil only
  knows what you've thought about, and what you know already! You are pure,
  but you've been down into the depths.... I've been watching you a long
  time. You're a Karamazov yourself; you're a thorough Karamazov--no doubt
  birth and selection have something to answer for. You're a sensualist from
  your father, a crazy saint from your mother. Why do you tremble? Is it
  true, then? Do you know, Grushenka has been begging me to bring you along.
  'I'll pull off his cassock,' she says. You can't think how she keeps
  begging me to bring you. I wondered why she took such an interest in you.
  Do you know, she's an extraordinary woman, too!"
  
  "Thank her and say I'm not coming," said Alyosha, with a strained smile.
  "Finish what you were saying, Misha. I'll tell you my idea after."
  
  "There's nothing to finish. It's all clear. It's the same old tune,
  brother. If even you are a sensualist at heart, what of your brother,
  Ivan? He's a Karamazov, too. What is at the root of all you Karamazovs is
  that you're all sensual, grasping and crazy! Your brother Ivan writes
  theological articles in joke, for some idiotic, unknown motive of his own,
  though he's an atheist, and he admits it's a fraud himself--that's your
  brother Ivan. He's trying to get Mitya's betrothed for himself, and I
  fancy he'll succeed, too. And what's more, it's with Mitya's consent. For
  Mitya will surrender his betrothed to him to be rid of her, and escape to
  Grushenka. And he's ready to do that in spite of all his nobility and
  disinterestedness. Observe that. Those are the most fatal people! Who the
  devil can make you out? He recognizes his vileness and goes on with it!
  Let me tell you, too, the old man, your father, is standing in Mitya's way
  now. He has suddenly gone crazy over Grushenka. His mouth waters at the
  sight of her. It's simply on her account he made that scene in the cell
  just now, simply because Miuesov called her an 'abandoned creature.' He's
  worse than a tom-cat in love. At first she was only employed by him in
  connection with his taverns and in some other shady business, but now he
  has suddenly realized all she is and has gone wild about her. He keeps
  pestering her with his offers, not honorable ones, of course. And they'll
  come into collision, the precious father and son, on that path! But
  Grushenka favors neither of them, she's still playing with them, and
  teasing them both, considering which she can get most out of. For though
  she could filch a lot of money from the papa he wouldn't marry her, and
  maybe he'll turn stingy in the end, and keep his purse shut. That's where
  Mitya's value comes in; he has no money, but he's ready to marry her. Yes,
  ready to marry her! to abandon his betrothed, a rare beauty, Katerina
  Ivanovna, who's rich, and the daughter of a colonel, and to marry
  Grushenka, who has been the mistress of a dissolute old merchant,
  Samsonov, a coarse, uneducated, provincial mayor. Some murderous conflict
  may well come to pass from all this, and that's what your brother Ivan is
  waiting for. It would suit him down to the ground. He'll carry off
  Katerina Ivanovna, for whom he is languishing, and pocket her dowry of
  sixty thousand. That's very alluring to start with, for a man of no
  consequence and a beggar. And, take note, he won't be wronging Mitya, but
  doing him the greatest service. For I know as a fact that Mitya only last
  week, when he was with some gypsy girls drunk in a tavern, cried out aloud
  that he was unworthy of his betrothed, Katya, but that his brother Ivan,
  he was the man who deserved her. And Katerina Ivanovna will not in the end
  refuse such a fascinating man as Ivan. She's hesitating between the two of
  them already. And how has that Ivan won you all, so that you all worship
  him? He is laughing at you, and enjoying himself at your expense."
  
  "How do you know? How can you speak so confidently?" Alyosha asked
  sharply, frowning.
  
  "Why do you ask, and are frightened at my answer? It shows that you know
  I'm speaking the truth."
  
  "You don't like Ivan. Ivan wouldn't be tempted by money."
  
  "Really? And the beauty of Katerina Ivanovna? It's not only the money,
  though a fortune of sixty thousand is an attraction."
  
  "Ivan is above that. He wouldn't make up to any one for thousands. It is
  not money, it's not comfort Ivan is seeking. Perhaps it's suffering he is
  seeking."
  
  "What wild dream now? Oh, you--aristocrats!"
  
  "Ah, Misha, he has a stormy spirit. His mind is in bondage. He is haunted
  by a great, unsolved doubt. He is one of those who don't want millions,
  but an answer to their questions."
  
  "That's plagiarism, Alyosha. You're quoting your elder's phrases. Ah, Ivan
  has set you a problem!" cried Rakitin, with undisguised malice. His face
  changed, and his lips twitched. "And the problem's a stupid one. It is no
  good guessing it. Rack your brains--you'll understand it. His article is
  absurd and ridiculous. And did you hear his stupid theory just now: if
  there's no immortality of the soul, then there's no virtue, and everything
  is lawful. (And by the way, do you remember how your brother Mitya cried
  out: 'I will remember!') An attractive theory for scoundrels!--(I'm being
  abusive, that's stupid.) Not for scoundrels, but for pedantic _poseurs_,
  'haunted by profound, unsolved doubts.' He's showing off, and what it all
  comes to is, 'on the one hand we cannot but admit' and 'on the other it
  must be confessed!' His whole theory is a fraud! Humanity will find in
  itself the power to live for virtue even without believing in immortality.
  It will find it in love for freedom, for equality, for fraternity."
  
  Rakitin could hardly restrain himself in his heat, but, suddenly, as
  though remembering something, he stopped short.
  
  "Well, that's enough," he said, with a still more crooked smile. "Why are
  you laughing? Do you think I'm a vulgar fool?"
  
  "No, I never dreamed of thinking you a vulgar fool. You are clever but ...
  never mind, I was silly to smile. I understand your getting hot about it,
  Misha. I guess from your warmth that you are not indifferent to Katerina
  Ivanovna yourself; I've suspected that for a long time, brother, that's
  why you don't like my brother Ivan. Are you jealous of him?"
  
  "And jealous of her money, too? Won't you add that?"
  
  "I'll say nothing about money. I am not going to insult you."
  
  "I believe it, since you say so, but confound you, and your brother Ivan
  with you. Don't you understand that one might very well dislike him, apart
  from Katerina Ivanovna. And why the devil should I like him? He
  condescends to abuse me, you know. Why haven't I a right to abuse him?"
  
  "I never heard of his saying anything about you, good or bad. He doesn't
  speak of you at all."
  
  "But I heard that the day before yesterday at Katerina Ivanovna's he was
  abusing me for all he was worth--you see what an interest he takes in your
  humble servant. And which is the jealous one after that, brother, I can't
  say. He was so good as to express the opinion that, if I don't go in for
  the career of an archimandrite in the immediate future and don't become a
  monk, I shall be sure to go to Petersburg and get on to some solid
  magazine as a reviewer, that I shall write for the next ten years, and in
  the end become the owner of the magazine, and bring it out on the liberal
  and atheistic side, with a socialistic tinge, with a tiny gloss of
  socialism, but keeping a sharp look out all the time, that is, keeping in
  with both sides and hoodwinking the fools. According to your brother's
  account, the tinge of socialism won't hinder me from laying by the
  proceeds and investing them under the guidance of some Jew, till at the
  end of my career I build a great house in Petersburg and move my
  publishing offices to it, and let out the upper stories to lodgers. He has
  even chosen the place for it, near the new stone bridge across the Neva,
  which they say is to be built in Petersburg."
  
  "Ah, Misha, that's just what will really happen, every word of it," cried
  Alyosha, unable to restrain a good-humored smile.
  
  "You are pleased to be sarcastic, too, Alexey Fyodorovitch."
  
  "No, no, I'm joking, forgive me. I've something quite different in my
  mind. But, excuse me, who can have told you all this? You can't have been
  at Katerina Ivanovna's yourself when he was talking about you?"
  
  "I wasn't there, but Dmitri Fyodorovitch was; and I heard him tell it with
  my own ears; if you want to know, he didn't tell me, but I overheard him,
  unintentionally, of course, for I was sitting in Grushenka's bedroom and I
  couldn't go away because Dmitri Fyodorovitch was in the next room."
  
  "Oh, yes, I'd forgotten she was a relation of yours."
  
  "A relation! That Grushenka a relation of mine!" cried Rakitin, turning
  crimson. "Are you mad? You're out of your mind!"
  
  "Why, isn't she a relation of yours? I heard so."
  
  "Where can you have heard it? You Karamazovs brag of being an ancient,
  noble family, though your father used to run about playing the buffoon at
  other men's tables, and was only admitted to the kitchen as a favor. I may
  be only a priest's son, and dirt in the eyes of noblemen like you, but
  don't insult me so lightly and wantonly. I have a sense of honor, too,
  Alexey Fyodorovitch, I couldn't be a relation of Grushenka, a common
  harlot. I beg you to understand that!"
  
  Rakitin was intensely irritated.
  
  "Forgive me, for goodness' sake, I had no idea ... besides ... how can you
  call her a harlot? Is she ... that sort of woman?" Alyosha flushed
  suddenly. "I tell you again, I heard that she was a relation of yours. You
  often go to see her, and you told me yourself you're not her lover. I
  never dreamed that you of all people had such contempt for her! Does she
  really deserve it?"
  
  "I may have reasons of my own for visiting her. That's not your business.
  But as for relationship, your brother, or even your father, is more likely
  to make her yours than mine. Well, here we are. You'd better go to the
  kitchen. Hullo! what's wrong, what is it? Are we late? They can't have
  finished dinner so soon! Have the Karamazovs been making trouble again? No
  doubt they have. Here's your father and your brother Ivan after him.
  They've broken out from the Father Superior's. And look, Father Isidor's
  shouting out something after them from the steps. And your father's
  shouting and waving his arms. I expect he's swearing. Bah, and there goes
  Miuesov driving away in his carriage. You see, he's going. And there's old
  Maximov running!--there must have been a row. There can't have been any
  dinner. Surely they've not been beating the Father Superior! Or have they,
  perhaps, been beaten? It would serve them right!"
  
  There was reason for Rakitin's exclamations. There had been a scandalous,
  an unprecedented scene. It had all come from the impulse of a moment.
  
  
  
  
  Chapter VIII. The Scandalous Scene
  
  
  Miuesov, as a man of breeding and delicacy, could not but feel some inward
  qualms, when he reached the Father Superior's with Ivan: he felt ashamed
  of having lost his temper. He felt that he ought to have disdained that
  despicable wretch, Fyodor Pavlovitch, too much to have been upset by him
  in Father Zossima's cell, and so to have forgotten himself. "The monks
  were not to blame, in any case," he reflected, on the steps. "And if
  they're decent people here (and the Father Superior, I understand, is a
  nobleman) why not be friendly and courteous with them? I won't argue, I'll
  fall in with everything, I'll win them by politeness, and ... and ... show
  them that I've nothing to do with that AEsop, that buffoon, that Pierrot,
  and have merely been taken in over this affair, just as they have."
  
  He determined to drop his litigation with the monastery, and relinquish
  his claims to the wood-cutting and fishery rights at once. He was the more
  ready to do this because the rights had become much less valuable, and he
  had indeed the vaguest idea where the wood and river in question were.
  
  These excellent intentions were strengthened when he entered the Father
  Superior's dining-room, though, strictly speaking, it was not a dining-
  room, for the Father Superior had only two rooms altogether; they were,
  however, much larger and more comfortable than Father Zossima's. But there
  was no great luxury about the furnishing of these rooms either. The
  furniture was of mahogany, covered with leather, in the old-fashioned
  style of 1820; the floor was not even stained, but everything was shining
  with cleanliness, and there were many choice flowers in the windows; the
  most sumptuous thing in the room at the moment was, of course, the
  beautifully decorated table. The cloth was clean, the service shone; there
  were three kinds of well-baked bread, two bottles of wine, two of
  excellent mead, and a large glass jug of kvas--both the latter made in the
  monastery, and famous in the neighborhood. There was no vodka. Rakitin
  related afterwards that there were five dishes: fish-soup made of
  sterlets, served with little fish patties; then boiled fish served in a
  special way; then salmon cutlets, ice pudding and compote, and finally,
  blanc-mange. Rakitin found out about all these good things, for he could
  not resist peeping into the kitchen, where he already had a footing. He
  had a footing everywhere, and got information about everything. He was of
  an uneasy and envious temper. He was well aware of his own considerable
  abilities, and nervously exaggerated them in his self-conceit. He knew he
  would play a prominent part of some sort, but Alyosha, who was attached to
  him, was distressed to see that his friend Rakitin was dishonorable, and
  quite unconscious of being so himself, considering, on the contrary, that
  because he would not steal money left on the table he was a man of the
  highest integrity. Neither Alyosha nor any one else could have influenced
  him in that.
  
  Rakitin, of course, was a person of too little consequence to be invited
  to the dinner, to which Father Iosif, Father Paissy, and one other monk
  were the only inmates of the monastery invited. They were already waiting
  when Miuesov, Kalganov, and Ivan arrived. The other guest, Maximov, stood a
  little aside, waiting also. The Father Superior stepped into the middle of
  the room to receive his guests. He was a tall, thin, but still vigorous
  old man, with black hair streaked with gray, and a long, grave, ascetic
  face. He bowed to his guests in silence. But this time they approached to
  receive his blessing. Miuesov even tried to kiss his hand, but the Father
  Superior drew it back in time to avoid the salute. But Ivan and Kalganov
  went through the ceremony in the most simple-hearted and complete manner,
  kissing his hand as peasants do.
  
  "We must apologize most humbly, your reverence," began Miuesov, simpering
  affably, and speaking in a dignified and respectful tone. "Pardon us for
  having come alone without the gentleman you invited, Fyodor Pavlovitch. He
  felt obliged to decline the honor of your hospitality, and not without
  reason. In the reverend Father Zossima's cell he was carried away by the
  unhappy dissension with his son, and let fall words which were quite out
  of keeping ... in fact, quite unseemly ... as"--he glanced at the
  monks--"your reverence is, no doubt, already aware. And therefore,
  recognizing that he had been to blame, he felt sincere regret and shame,
  and begged me, and his son Ivan Fyodorovitch, to convey to you his
  apologies and regrets. In brief, he hopes and desires to make amends
  later. He asks your blessing, and begs you to forget what has taken
  place."
  
  As he uttered the last word of his tirade, Miuesov completely recovered his
  self-complacency, and all traces of his former irritation disappeared. He
  fully and sincerely loved humanity again.
  
  The Father Superior listened to him with dignity, and, with a slight bend
  of the head, replied:
  
  "I sincerely deplore his absence. Perhaps at our table he might have
  learnt to like us, and we him. Pray be seated, gentlemen."
  
  He stood before the holy image, and began to say grace, aloud. All bent
  their heads reverently, and Maximov clasped his hands before him, with
  peculiar fervor.
  
  It was at this moment that Fyodor Pavlovitch played his last prank. It
  must be noted that he really had meant to go home, and really had felt the
  impossibility of going to dine with the Father Superior as though nothing
  had happened, after his disgraceful behavior in the elder's cell. Not that
  he was so very much ashamed of himself--quite the contrary perhaps. But
  still he felt it would be unseemly to go to dinner. Yet his creaking
  carriage had hardly been brought to the steps of the hotel, and he had
  hardly got into it, when he suddenly stopped short. He remembered his own
  words at the elder's: "I always feel when I meet people that I am lower
  than all, and that they all take me for a buffoon; so I say let me play
  the buffoon, for you are, every one of you, stupider and lower than I." He
  longed to revenge himself on every one for his own unseemliness. He
  suddenly recalled how he had once in the past been asked, "Why do you hate
  so and so, so much?" And he had answered them, with his shameless
  impudence, "I'll tell you. He has done me no harm. But I played him a
  dirty trick, and ever since I have hated him."
  
  Remembering that now, he smiled quietly and malignantly, hesitating for a
  moment. His eyes gleamed, and his lips positively quivered. "Well, since I
  have begun, I may as well go on," he decided. His predominant sensation at
  that moment might be expressed in the following words, "Well, there is no
  rehabilitating myself now. So let me shame them for all I am worth. I will
  show them I don't care what they think--that's all!"
  
  He told the coachman to wait, while with rapid steps he returned to the
  monastery and straight to the Father Superior's. He had no clear idea what
  he would do, but he knew that he could not control himself, and that a
  touch might drive him to the utmost limits of obscenity, but only to
  obscenity, to nothing criminal, nothing for which he could be legally
  punished. In the last resort, he could always restrain himself, and had
  marveled indeed at himself, on that score, sometimes. He appeared in the
  Father Superior's dining-room, at the moment when the prayer was over, and
  all were moving to the table. Standing in the doorway, he scanned the
  company, and laughing his prolonged, impudent, malicious chuckle, looked
  them all boldly in the face. "They thought I had gone, and here I am
  again," he cried to the whole room.
  
  For one moment every one stared at him without a word; and at once every
  one felt that something revolting, grotesque, positively scandalous, was
  about to happen. Miuesov passed immediately from the most benevolent frame
  of mind to the most savage. All the feelings that had subsided and died
  down in his heart revived instantly.
  
  "No! this I cannot endure!" he cried. "I absolutely cannot! and ... I
  certainly cannot!"
  
  The blood rushed to his head. He positively stammered; but he was beyond
  thinking of style, and he seized his hat.
  
  "What is it he cannot?" cried Fyodor Pavlovitch, "that he absolutely
  cannot and certainly cannot? Your reverence, am I to come in or not? Will
  you receive me as your guest?"
  
  "You are welcome with all my heart," answered the Superior. "Gentlemen!"
  he added, "I venture to beg you most earnestly to lay aside your
  dissensions, and to be united in love and family harmony--with prayer to
  the Lord at our humble table."
  
  "No, no, it is impossible!" cried Miuesov, beside himself.
  
  "Well, if it is impossible for Pyotr Alexandrovitch, it is impossible for
  me, and I won't stop. That is why I came. I will keep with Pyotr
  Alexandrovitch everywhere now. If you will go away, Pyotr Alexandrovitch,
  I will go away too, if you remain, I will remain. You stung him by what
  you said about family harmony, Father Superior, he does not admit he is my
  relation. That's right, isn't it, von Sohn? Here's von Sohn. How are you,
  von Sohn?"
  
  "Do you mean me?" muttered Maximov, puzzled.
  
  "Of course I mean you," cried Fyodor Pavlovitch. "Who else? The Father
  Superior could not be von Sohn."
  
  "But I am not von Sohn either. I am Maximov."
  
  "No, you are von Sohn. Your reverence, do you know who von Sohn was? It
  was a famous murder case. He was killed in a house of harlotry--I believe
  that is what such places are called among you--he was killed and robbed,
  and in spite of his venerable age, he was nailed up in a box and sent from
  Petersburg to Moscow in the luggage van, and while they were nailing him
  up, the harlots sang songs and played the harp, that is to say, the piano.
  So this is that very von Sohn. He has risen from the dead, hasn't he, von
  Sohn?"
  
  "What is happening? What's this?" voices were heard in the group of monks.
  
  "Let us go," cried Miuesov, addressing Kalganov.
  
  "No, excuse me," Fyodor Pavlovitch broke in shrilly, taking another step
  into the room. "Allow me to finish. There in the cell you blamed me for
  behaving disrespectfully just because I spoke of eating gudgeon, Pyotr
  Alexandrovitch. Miuesov, my relation, prefers to have _plus de noblesse que
  de sincerite_ in his words, but I prefer in mine _plus de sincerite que de
  noblesse_, and--damn the _noblesse_! That's right, isn't it, von Sohn?
  Allow me, Father Superior, though I am a buffoon and play the buffoon, yet
  I am the soul of honor, and I want to speak my mind. Yes, I am the soul of
  honor, while in Pyotr Alexandrovitch there is wounded vanity and nothing
  else. I came here perhaps to have a look and speak my mind. My son,
  Alexey, is here, being saved. I am his father; I care for his welfare, and
  it is my duty to care. While I've been playing the fool, I have been
  listening and having a look on the sly; and now I want to give you the
  last act of the performance. You know how things are with us? As a thing
  falls, so it lies. As a thing once has fallen, so it must lie for ever.
  Not a bit of it! I want to get up again. Holy Father, I am indignant with
  you. Confession is a great sacrament, before which I am ready to bow down
  reverently; but there in the cell, they all kneel down and confess aloud.
  Can it be right to confess aloud? It was ordained by the holy Fathers to
  confess in secret: then only your confession will be a mystery, and so it
  was of old. But how can I explain to him before every one that I did this
  and that ... well, you understand what--sometimes it would not be proper to
  talk about it--so it is really a scandal! No, Fathers, one might be carried
  along with you to the Flagellants, I dare say ... at the first opportunity
  I shall write to the Synod, and I shall take my son, Alexey, home."
  
  We must note here that Fyodor Pavlovitch knew where to look for the weak
  spot. There had been at one time malicious rumors which had even reached
  the Archbishop (not only regarding our monastery, but in others where the
  institution of elders existed) that too much respect was paid to the
  elders, even to the detriment of the authority of the Superior, that the
  elders abused the sacrament of confession and so on and so on--absurd
  charges which had died away of themselves everywhere. But the spirit of
  folly, which had caught up Fyodor Pavlovitch, and was bearing him on the
  current of his own nerves into lower and lower depths of ignominy,
  prompted him with this old slander. Fyodor Pavlovitch did not understand a
  word of it, and he could not even put it sensibly, for on this occasion no
  one had been kneeling and confessing aloud in the elder's cell, so that he
  could not have seen anything of the kind. He was only speaking from
  confused memory of old slanders. But as soon as he had uttered his foolish
  tirade, he felt he had been talking absurd nonsense, and at once longed to
  prove to his audience, and above all to himself, that he had not been
  talking nonsense. And, though he knew perfectly well that with each word
  he would be adding more and more absurdity, he could not restrain himself,
  and plunged forward blindly.
  
  "How disgraceful!" cried Pyotr Alexandrovitch.
  
  "Pardon me!" said the Father Superior. "It was said of old, 'Many have
  begun to speak against me and have uttered evil sayings about me. And
  hearing it I have said to myself: it is the correction of the Lord and He
  has sent it to heal my vain soul.' And so we humbly thank you, honored
  guest!" and he made Fyodor Pavlovitch a low bow.
  
  "Tut--tut--tut--sanctimoniousness and stock phrases! Old phrases and old
  gestures. The old lies and formal prostrations. We know all about them. A
  kiss on the lips and a dagger in the heart, as in Schiller's _Robbers_. I
  don't like falsehood, Fathers, I want the truth. But the truth is not to
  be found in eating gudgeon and that I proclaim aloud! Father monks, why do
  you fast? Why do you expect reward in heaven for that? Why, for reward
  like that I will come and fast too! No, saintly monk, you try being
  virtuous in the world, do good to society, without shutting yourself up in
  a monastery at other people's expense, and without expecting a reward up
  aloft for it--you'll find that a bit harder. I can talk sense, too, Father
  Superior. What have they got here?" He went up to the table. "Old port
  wine, mead brewed by the Eliseyev Brothers. Fie, fie, fathers! That is
  something beyond gudgeon. Look at the bottles the fathers have brought
  out, he he he! And who has provided it all? The Russian peasant, the
  laborer, brings here the farthing earned by his horny hand, wringing it
  from his family and the tax-gatherer! You bleed the people, you know, holy
  fathers."
  
  "This is too disgraceful!" said Father Iosif.
  
  Father Paissy kept obstinately silent. Miuesov rushed from the room, and
  Kalganov after him.
  
  "Well, Father, I will follow Pyotr Alexandrovitch! I am not coming to see
  you again. You may beg me on your knees, I shan't come. I sent you a
  thousand roubles, so you have begun to keep your eye on me. He he he! No,
  I'll say no more. I am taking my revenge for my youth, for all the
  humiliation I endured." He thumped the table with his fist in a paroxysm
  of simulated feeling. "This monastery has played a great part in my life!
  It has cost me many bitter tears. You used to set my wife, the crazy one,
  against me. You cursed me with bell and book, you spread stories about me
  all over the place. Enough, fathers! This is the age of Liberalism, the
  age of steamers and railways. Neither a thousand, nor a hundred roubles,
  no, nor a hundred farthings will you get out of me!"
  
  It must be noted again that our monastery never had played any great part
  in his life, and he never had shed a bitter tear owing to it. But he was
  so carried away by his simulated emotion, that he was for one moment
  almost believing it himself. He was so touched he was almost weeping. But
  at that very instant, he felt that it was time to draw back.
  
  The Father Superior bowed his head at his malicious lie, and again spoke
  impressively:
  
  "It is written again, 'Bear circumspectly and gladly dishonor that cometh
  upon thee by no act of thine own, be not confounded and hate not him who
  hath dishonored thee.' And so will we."
  
  "Tut, tut, tut! Bethinking thyself and the rest of the rigmarole. Bethink
  yourselves, Fathers, I will go. But I will take my son, Alexey, away from
  here for ever, on my parental authority. Ivan Fyodorovitch, my most
  dutiful son, permit me to order you to follow me. Von Sohn, what have you
  to stay for? Come and see me now in the town. It is fun there. It is only
  one short verst; instead of lenten oil, I will give you sucking-pig and
  kasha. We will have dinner with some brandy and liqueur to it.... I've
  cloudberry wine. Hey, von Sohn, don't lose your chance." He went out,
  shouting and gesticulating.
  
  It was at that moment Rakitin saw him and pointed him out to Alyosha.
  
  "Alexey!" his father shouted, from far off, catching sight of him. "You
  come home to me to-day, for good, and bring your pillow and mattress, and
  leave no trace behind."
  
  Alyosha stood rooted to the spot, watching the scene in silence.
  Meanwhile, Fyodor Pavlovitch had got into the carriage, and Ivan was about
  to follow him in grim silence without even turning to say good-by to
  Alyosha. But at this point another almost incredible scene of grotesque
  buffoonery gave the finishing touch to the episode. Maximov suddenly
  appeared by the side of the carriage. He ran up, panting, afraid of being
  too late. Rakitin and Alyosha saw him running. He was in such a hurry that
  in his impatience he put his foot on the step on which Ivan's left foot
  was still resting, and clutching the carriage he kept trying to jump in.
  "I am going with you!" he kept shouting, laughing a thin mirthful laugh
  with a look of reckless glee in his face. "Take me, too."
  
  "There!" cried Fyodor Pavlovitch, delighted. "Did I not say he was von
  Sohn. It is von Sohn himself, risen from the dead. Why, how did you tear
  yourself away? What did you _vonsohn_ there? And how could you get away
  from the dinner? You must be a brazen-faced fellow! I am that myself, but
  I am surprised at you, brother! Jump in, jump in! Let him pass, Ivan. It
  will be fun. He can lie somewhere at our feet. Will you lie at our feet,
  von Sohn? Or perch on the box with the coachman. Skip on to the box, von
  Sohn!"
  
  But Ivan, who had by now taken his seat, without a word gave Maximov a
  violent punch in the breast and sent him flying. It was quite by chance he
  did not fall.
  
  "Drive on!" Ivan shouted angrily to the coachman.
  
  "Why, what are you doing, what are you about? Why did you do that?" Fyodor
  Pavlovitch protested.
  
  But the carriage had already driven away. Ivan made no reply.
  
  "Well, you are a fellow," Fyodor Pavlovitch said again.
  
  After a pause of two minutes, looking askance at his son, "Why, it was you
  got up all this monastery business. You urged it, you approved of it. Why
  are you angry now?"
  
  "You've talked rot enough. You might rest a bit now," Ivan snapped
  sullenly.
  
  Fyodor Pavlovitch was silent again for two minutes.
  
  "A drop of brandy would be nice now," he observed sententiously, but Ivan
  made no response.
  
  "You shall have some, too, when we get home."
  
  Ivan was still silent.
  
  Fyodor Pavlovitch waited another two minutes.
  
  "But I shall take Alyosha away from the monastery, though you will dislike
  it so much, most honored Karl von Moor."
  
  Ivan shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, and turning away stared at the
  road. And they did not speak again all the way home.
  
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Book 2
target: The Karamazovs go to the meeting with Father Zossima to resolve the dispute between Dmitri and Fyodor over Dmitri's inheritance. Ivan and Fyodor arrive with Ivan's former benefactor, Peter Miusov, but Dmitri is nowhere in sight. Even though the group contains very influential citizens, no fuss is made upon their arrival. No monks rush to greet them. Instead, they are surrounded by beggars. Eventually, a monk invites them into the monastery, and they are all invited to dine with the Father after the meeting. Fyodor exclaims, "I wouldn't miss it for anything!" Old Karamazov calls Zossima "Holy Elder," "Your Reverence," "angelic man," and "blessed man." He gets down on his knees and kisses the father's hand. It seems as if he is playing. Peter Miusov is very annoyed by Fyodor's ironic demeanor, and he bickers with the elder Karamazov, showing his embarrassment at his presence, chastising him for his inconsiderate nature in front of a respected man. After such pleasantries, Father Zossima leaves to greet some visitors for a moment. The visitors are peasant women except for a more well-to-do pair: Madame Hohlakov and her sickly and paralyzed daughter Lise. All the women ask Father Zossima for advice. Many of them behave quite strangely, "wailing in ecstasy ...barking like dogs," as if "shocked" by the "host" himself. The narrator explains that this is the behavior of suffering women with an "intensely unhappy life, full of brutality and ill-treatment." Father Zossima is patient with each woman, listening to her problems and offering thoughtful advice. When he gets to Madame Hohlakov, she thanks him profusely for "healing" her Lise. When the Father talks to Lise, instead of shedding tears she bursts into giggles. She blames her outburst on Alyosha, to whom she has taken a liking. Madame Hohlakov tells Father Zossima that she lacks faith in God and is not altruistic; instead, she expects gratitude for her good deeds. He advises her to "avoid lying, especially to yourself." Again Lise laughs, then suddenly begins to cry, pining for Alyosha. Father Zossima tells her that he will send Alyosha to visit her. When Father Zossima and Alyosha return to the Father's cell, Ivan is talking to the monks about the separation of church and state. He advocates no separation, for he believes that if the church were the institution punishing crime, crime would be virtually nonexistent. Criminals would be more afraid of excommunication than jail time. Alyosha, who is still trying to figure out his intellectual brother, is impressed by Ivan's respectfulness and lack of condescension toward the monks. Father Zossima responds to Ivan's ruminations by saying that the only effective punishment is one's "awareness of one's own conscience." Before they can debate this issue, however, Dmitri bursts into the room. He apologizes for his tardiness, saying that Smerdyakov told him the wrong time for the meeting. Father Zossima is not angry, and he greets Dmitri warmly. Dmitri sits down, and the men continue their theological debate. Ivan argues that "there is no virtue if there is no immortality." Men will cannibalize each other, figuratively and literally. Without belief in immortality, crime becomes inevitable. Dmitri and old Fyodor begin bickering. Karamazov accuses Dmitri of owing him money and attacking a captain in the army. Dmitri accuses old Karamazov of chasing after Grushenka, a girl he has been pursuing. Karamazov becomes so worked up that he challenges Dmitri to a duel, and an infuriated Dmitri exclaims, "why should such a man live?" As everyone bickers and shouts, Father Zossima bends down and kisses Dmitri's feet. Everyone is shocked; they do not know what to make of this. Everyone exits and continues on to a luncheon with Father Zossima except Fyodor. He decides not to attend the luncheon. While Alyosha is walking the Father back, Zossima tells him he should leave the monastery and rejoin the world. He tells Alyosha to "stay close to your brothers--not just one of them, but both." Alyosha is very upset by this because he wants to be with Father Zossima, who is very ill. Disturbed by Father Zossima's advice, Alyosha continues on. He discusses the father's bow with Rakitin, a "career-conscious divinity student." Rakitin is skeptical of Father Zossima's motives. During Rakitin's rant, he predicts the murder of old Karamazov by Dmitri. Alyosha is a bit shocked. Rakitin hypothesizes that Ivan would like to marry Katerina for her dowry. Alyosha refuses to believe this. He says that Ivan is after "higher things ... perhaps it's suffering and torment he's after." Rakitin does not like Ivan. The two see that the luncheon is breaking up, and they rush over excitedly to see what has transpired. Fyodor changed his mind and decided to go to the luncheon, a five-course feast. He decided, "since it was not in his power to regain their respect, why shouldn't he go on and disgrace himself altogether?" After telling distasteful stories and attacking the monks for taking advantage of believers, saying that they "suck the blood of the poor," Ivan puts him in a carriage. As they drive away, Fyodor yells at Alyosha to leave the monastery and move back in with Fyodor. As the father and son drive back, Fyodor promises Ivan a drink.
feat_summary_analysis: The much-anticipated meeting is, in fact, extremely telling about the personalities of the Karamazov men. Fyodor's mischievous manner is very much in keeping with the stories about his past from the first book. It seems that he causes trouble arbitrarily, not because he is particularly angry or disgruntled but because he feels like causing trouble. He is not respectful of anyone or anything, and he is not afraid to embarrass himself or those around him. The accusation that Fyodor might be trying to bed the same girl whom Dmitri has been courting adds another dimension to their dispute. Fyodor and Dmitri are the two most undependable and explosive members of the Karamazov clan. Dmitri shows up late and quarrels with his father in front of a respected man. But he is also gracious, listening closely to Father Zossima's advice. Their dispute is not resolved, and they part on bad terms. It seems unlikely that, if a calm and reasonable man such as Father Zossima could not help resolve their dispute, they will not be able to do so independently. Father Zossima acts as a foil to Fyodor, matching the elder Karamazov's vulgarity with quiet integrity, combating his acerbic remarks with patience and love. He is as much a father to Alyosha as Fyodor is, setting up an interesting duality for Alyosha's character. Alyosha seems to align his actions and ideas wholly with Father Zossima's, even though he is caring and understanding toward his biological father. Whereas Dmitri's character may be an amalgam of his parents' characters, bolstering the idea that one cannot escape his own genes, Alyosha is completely different from his father, affected more by his teachings than by his blood. Both Father Zossima and Alyosha are very noticeably devoid of hatred and temper. Neither character is a simple embodiment of Dostoevsky's ideas; each is individually human. Father Zossima has a sense of humor; he jokes with Fyodor by telling him to try not to tell any lies while Zossima steps outside for a moment. Alyosha is also prone to emotions such as embarrassment and worry; he is not the picture of calm holiness. It remains to be seen if Alyosha's and Father Zossima's reason and love will triumph over the hot-bloodedness of Dmitri and Fyodor. Madame Hohlakov and Lise are interesting additions to the mostly all-male cast thus far. Lise's girlish adoration for Alyosha reminds the reader how young Alyosha is, and it also brings up the possibility of a romance between the two. While making Alyosha seem more human, this budding romance could serve to compromise his pious status as a monk. Along with the other women who visit the monastery, Madame Hohlakov's adulation for the man borders on infatuation. While he remains humble, his fame precedes him and his followers worship him. It is unclear if these women actually feel legitimately helped by him or if they are simply gravitating toward an icon. Father Zossima's sensitive, loving manner puts to rest the fear that he may be a manipulative attention-seeker, but this does not mean his devotees come to him with wholly pure intentions. Father Zossima's status is fascinating. The fate of a man surrounded by such hysteria is uncertain. Ivan remains an enigma. While the rest of the characters are caught up in an emotional dispute, Ivan remains aloof and distant, instead talking about larger issues. He is very quiet and difficult to read, but he is polite and agreeable for most of the interview. When Maximov tries to get in the coach as it is leaving, however, he violently pushes him off, showing a shockingly violent streak. He seems very dangerous. When Rakitin hypothesizes that Dmitri will kill Fyodor and Ivan will benefit, it seems plausible that Ivan could have a hidden agenda. Alyosha defends his brother, and Alyosha's honesty and thoughtfulness lead the reader to agree with him. The candid conjecture about murder is unsettling, as is Father Zossima's bow. Such a vague and grand gesture seems to portend something. The final impression of this book is a feeling of foreboding. From Ivan's covered smoldering to the impassioned feud between Fyodor and Dmitri, there are many clues that a great drama-perhaps a great tragedy-is to come.