﻿The Brothers Karamazov

Translated from the Russian of

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

by Constance Garnett

The Lowell Press

New York



Book I. The History Of A Family




Chapter I.
Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov


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

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

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

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




Chapter II.
He Gets Rid Of His Eldest Son


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

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

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

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




Chapter III.
The Second Marriage And The Second Family


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Chapter IV.
The Third Son, Alyosha


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Chapter V.
Elders


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


