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 naive person. There was something about
him which made one feel at once (and it was so all his life afterwards)
that he did not care to be a judge of others--that he would never take it
upon himself to 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 Miuesov, 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, Adelaida Ivanovna,
who used to thrash him. In the evening of the same day he got drunk and
abused the monks to Alyosha. He himself was far from being religious; he
had probably never put a penny candle before the image of a saint. Strange
impulses of sudden feeling and sudden thought are common in such types.

I have mentioned already that he looked bloated. His countenance at this
time bore traces of something that testified unmistakably to the life he
had led. Besides the long fleshy bags under his little, always insolent,
suspicious, and 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 bu 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.

At this point, we've caught up to the time period of the main events of the story. Alyosha is now 20, Ivan is 24, and Dmitri is 28. Of all the sons, Alyosha is least like Fyodor. He's pure, sweet, and everyone spontaneously loves him. Alyosha had initially come to town to visit his mother's grave. Just three years before, his father had gone off to Odessa and made a pile of cash. Upon his return to town, he devoted all his time to acting like a fool and humiliating women and generally creating scandal. Fyodor didn't even remember where Alyosha's mother was buried - Grigory the servant had to show Alyosha the grave marker. After seeing his mother's grave, Alyosha asked his father's consent to enter the monastery, and after cracking a few blasphemous jokes, his father consented.

The Third Son, Alyosha Alyosha is twenty years old when Dmitri moves to their father's home. Alyosha has lived in the monastery in his father's town for about a year before his brothers' arrival. He is religious--not in a mystical or superstitious way, but simply out of a generous and innate love of humankind. Alyosha even seems to love his father and is never critical of him or unkind to him. Everyone loves Alyosha, for despite his tendency to remain detached from others, he exudes a kind of blissful serenity. He has been extremely popular as a student despite his passive nature and his innocence--the only thing the other students ever tease him about is the acute embarrassment he feels whenever the topics of women or sex arise. After Alyosha moves back to his father's town, he quickly grows close to Fyodor Pavlovich, who uncharacteristically donates a great deal of money to the monastery after Alyosha visits his mother's grave. Fyodor Pavlovich becomes very sentimental when Alyosha tells him that he intends to enter the monastery and study under the elder Zosima


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, Paissy 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 OEcumenical 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 Miuesov, 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
Miuesov 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 Miuesov 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.

Alyosha's mentor at the monastery is the spiritual figurehead, Zosima. As his elder, Zosima has complete control over Alyosha. The idea is that through obedience to his elder, Alyosha will be able to gain mastery over himself and attain religious illumination. Meanwhile, relations between Dmitri and Fyodor have become so bad that Fyodor, half in jest, suggests that they settle it through a meeting with Zosima. Dmitri agrees, and so does his former guardian Pyotr Miusov, who happens to be suing the monastery over a forest. Ivan, who functions as a mediator between Dmitri and Fyodor, is also coming. Alyosha is filled with foreboding at the prospect of this meeting, and he's particularly concerned that his father is going to cause another scandal.

Elders Alyosha is greatly moved by the arrival of his brothers. He quickly becomes close to Dmitri, but he feels that Ivan's cold intellectualism keeps him distant from others. Alyosha senses that Ivan is struggling toward an inner goal that makes him indifferent to the outside world. Dmitri and Ivan are as unlike as two people can be, but Alyosha notices that Dmitri speaks of Ivan with warmth and admiration. Dmitri has become embroiled with their father in a conflict over the inheritance, and it is finally arranged that the two parties will have a discussion in Zosima's cell, where the presence of the influential monk might help them resolve their differences. The prospect of this meeting makes Alyosha nervous--he knows that his father would only agree to such a thing sarcastically, and that Ivan himself is an atheist. He worries that his family's behavior will offend Zosima, whom he esteems very highly and who acts as his spiritual leader within the monastery.

Author's Note and Book I: A Nice Little Family, Chapters 1-5 Book I provides a history of the major characters and their relationships, so the narrator can jump right into the main story in Book II without stopping to explain things as he goes. The narrator presents all of the incidents described in these chapters as though they take place before the real beginning of his story, describing the events as information that is generally well-known, repeated only for the convenience of a reader who somehow may not have heard it before. The narrator, as a result, is a strong presence in these chapters. The narrator signals that the story he tells is widely known by interjecting phrases such as "only later did we learn" and "well known in his own day. The Brothers Karamazov is a cross between a realistic novel and a philosophical novel. The characters have extremely complicated and intricate psychologies, and yet they also each represent certain ideas and concepts. This combination of realism and philosophical symbolism is evident in these chapters, as each meticulously drawn character comes to embody a more abstract set of concepts and beliefs. Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, the father, with his orgies and his abhorrent treatment of his wives and children, embodies amoral, obnoxious Epicureanism--that is, a commitment to seeking pleasure rather than living responsibly or virtuously. Ivan Karamazov's brilliant mind and burgeoning literary reputation embody the struggle to reconcile intellect with religious belief. Dmitri Karamazov's violent hatred of his father and uncritical love of his brothers stand in opposition to Ivan's critical faculties. Dmitri's character illustrates the effects of action based on emotion rather than on intellect. Finally, Alyosha, whom Dostoevsky describes as the hero of the novel, is nearly the opposite of Fyodor Pavlovich. His love of mankind shows that he is innocent, pious, and virtuous without being mystical or fanatical. Each character in Dostoevsky's quartet of personalities works as a foil, or contrast, for each of the others. Because the novel's philosophical themes are immediately connected to the personalities of its characters, the conflicts and contrasts between the main characters come to symbolize some of the most fundamental problems of human existence. The difference between Ivan and Alyosha, for instance, represents the conflict between faith and doubt. Though none of these philosophical issues are given extensive treatment in this section, each of them, along with many others, is expanded and developed as the novel progresses. In the end, the story of the Karamazov brothers enacts a part of the drama of ideas on which civilization itself is based. There are several religious concepts in these chapters that may be unfamiliar to modern readers who are not members of the Russian Orthodox church, to which the Karamazovs belong. First, the article for which Ivan has gained notoriety before the story begins deals with the question of ecclesiastical courts. These are simply courts of law, which decide cases based not on the political laws that govern nations, but on religious law and the strictures of the church. Ecclesiastical courts in Russia at the time of the novel do not have the power to try or punish criminals. Ivan's article argues that ecclesiastical courts should be given authority over criminal prosecution and punishment because if criminals knew they were defying God when they committed their crimes, many of them would choose to obey the law. Given Ivan's reputation for religious doubt, many of the people who know him suspect that he does not entirely believe his own argument. Ivan's argument is motivated not by a desire to punish, but, paradoxically, by compassion for mankind. He believes that without religious authority, people will descend into lawlessness and chaos. At the same time, because he does not believe in the church, Ivan rejects the notion of a binding morality. His article is sincere in that he believes his recommendations would improve the human condition, but insincere in that he does not believe in the ideas and institutions under which his recommendations would be carried out. The article, and the larger debate about ecclesiastical courts, thus serves to offer a preliminary insight into the nature of Ivan's anguished mind: he is so committed to intellectual logic that he is led to advocate ideas he does not believe in his heart


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.

Fyodor, Ivan, Pyotr Miusov, and Miusov's distant relative Pyotr Fomich Kalganov arrive at the monastery, but there's no Dmitri in sight. They are led to Zosima's hermitage by Maximov, a landowner who happens to be headed in the same direction. On the way, a monk intercepts them and invites them to dinner with the Father Superior later in the day. The hermitage is surrounded by beautiful flowers. Outside, the faithful have gathered to wait for Zosima's blessing. A monk asks them to wait while he announces their arrival to Zosima.

They Arrive at the Monastery On a warm, clear day at the end of August, Fyodor Pavlovich and Ivan Karamazov arrive at the monastery for the meeting with Zosima. Pyotr Alexandrovich Miusov, the cousin of Fyodor Pavlovich's first wife who briefly adopted the young Dmitri, is with them, as is Kalganov, a young relative of Miusov's who is living with him while preparing to enter a university. None of the men knows much about religion. Miusov, an atheist, has not been in a church for three decades. The men look around the monastery curiously. Miusov detests Fyodor Pavlovich, who intentionally torments Miusov by mocking the monastery and pretending not to understand why Miusov, as an irreligious man, would care what the monks think of him. Miusov angrily chastises himself for letting Fyodor Pavlovich bother him, but Fyodor Pavlovich's crudeness and vulgarity are so exasperating to Miusov that he cannot control his irritation. Dmitri has not yet arrived, and the men are shown to Zosima's cell to wait. The little monk who escorts them tells them that they are all invited to lunch with the Father Superior of the monastery after their meeting


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."

When they enter Zosima's cell, they are joined by two hieromonks , the Father Librarian and Father Paissy, as well as another young seminarian. Alyosha walks in at the same time with a novice and Zosima. Zosima blesses the hieromonks, but Pyotr Miusov, who considers himself too advanced to believe in religion, politely refuses the blessing. Fyodor mockingly imitates Pyotr. Ivan also bows and refuses the blessing. Alyosha blushes, ashamed of their behavior. Fyodor goes off on a tangent and tells a silly and untrue story about Diderot. He then asks Zosima how to "inherit eternal life," and Zosima calmly tells him by not lying. Fyodor seems to take this advice with good humor, then accuses Miusov of telling him the false story about Diderot. Miusov is confused and wonders whether he did tell the story, but then gets annoyed with Fyodor for mocking him. Zosima excuses himself from the gathering to bless the faithful outside, but before he leaves, Fyodor manages to kiss his hand, claiming that he was fooling around just to test him.

The Old Buffoon The men enter Zosima's room just as Zosima himself arrives there, accompanied by Alyosha and a small group of monks. The monks kiss Zosima's hand in deference and ask for his blessing, but the other men decline to do so and merely bow to him somewhat stiffly. Alyosha is embarrassed by this awkward display of disrespect, but Zosima gives no sign of being troubled. Fyodor Pavlovich apologizes melodramatically for Dmitri's lateness and fills the awkward silence in the room with his chatter. Under the pretense of being apologetic for his uncontrollably -buffoonish behavior, Fyodor Pavlovich indulges in a series of increasingly sacrilegious witticisms and stories, well aware that in doing so, he is embarrassing and irritating the other men, especially Miusov, whom he relentlessly teases. Alyosha is mortified by his father's behavior, but Zosima does not seem to mind it. When Fyodor begins to play the supplicant and asks Zosima for spiritual advice, Alyosha is even more humiliated. But Zosima merely tells him that, if he wants to attain eternal life, he must stop telling lies, especially to himself. Surprisingly, Zosima attributes Fyodor Pavlovich's clownish behavior to the fact that Fyodor Pavlovich is embarrassed and ashamed of himself, and Zosima earnestly tries to make him more comfortable