The Brothers Karamazov
be ill, and the thought never leaves me.”
“Have you come from far?”
“Over three hundred miles away.”
“Have you told it in confession?”
“I have confessed it. Twice I have confessed it.”
“Have you been admitted to Communion?”
“Yes. I am afraid. I am afraid to die.”
“Fear nothing and never be afraid; and don’t fret. If only your
penitence fail not, God will forgive all. There is no sin, and there
can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the
truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the
infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of
God? Think only of repentance, continual repentance, but dismiss fear
altogether. Believe that God loves you as you cannot conceive; that He
loves you with your sin, in your sin. It has been said of old that over
one repentant sinner there is more joy in heaven than over ten
righteous men. Go, and fear not. Be not bitter against men. Be not
angry if you are wronged. Forgive the dead man in your heart what wrong
he did you. Be reconciled with him in truth. If you are penitent, you
love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all
things are saved by love. If I, a sinner, even as you are, am tender
with you and have pity on you, how much more will God. Love is such a
priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and
expiate not only your own sins but the sins of others.”
He signed her three times with the cross, took from his own neck a
little ikon and put it upon her. She bowed down to the earth without
speaking.
He got up and looked cheerfully at a healthy peasant woman with a tiny
baby in her arms.
“From Vyshegorye, dear Father.”
“Five miles you have dragged yourself with the baby. What do you want?”
“I’ve come to look at you. I have been to you before—or have you
forgotten? You’ve no great memory if you’ve forgotten me. They told us
you were ill. Thinks I, I’ll go and see him for myself. Now I see you,
and you’re not ill! You’ll live another twenty years. God bless you!
There are plenty to pray for you; how should you be ill?”
“I thank you for all, daughter.”
“By the way, I have a thing to ask, not a great one. Here are sixty
copecks. Give them, dear Father, to some one poorer than me. I thought
as I came along, better give through him. He’ll know whom to give to.”
“Thanks, my dear, thanks! You are a good woman. I love you. I will do
so certainly. Is that your little girl?”
“My little girl, Father, Lizaveta.”
“May the Lord bless you both, you and your babe Lizaveta! You have
gladdened my heart, mother. Farewell, dear children, farewell, dear
ones.”
He blessed them all and bowed low to them.
Chapter IV.
A Lady Of Little Faith
A visitor looking on the scene of his conversation with the peasants
and his blessing them shed silent tears and wiped them away with her
handkerchief. She was a sentimental society lady of genuinely good
disposition in many respects. When the elder went up to her at last she
met him enthusiastically.
“Ah, what I have been feeling, looking on at this touching scene!...”
She could not go on for emotion. “Oh, I understand the people’s love
for you. I love the people myself. I want to love them. And who could
help loving them, our splendid Russian people, so simple in their
greatness!”
“How is your daughter’s health? You wanted to talk to me again?”
“Oh, I have been urgently begging for it, I have prayed for it! I was
ready to fall on my knees and kneel for three days at your windows
until you let me in. We have come, great healer, to express our ardent
gratitude. You have healed my Lise, healed her completely, merely by
praying over her last Thursday and laying your hands upon her. We have
hastened here to kiss those hands, to pour out our feelings and our
homage.”
“What do you mean by healed? But she is still lying down in her chair.”
“But her night fevers have entirely ceased ever since Thursday,” said
the lady with nervous haste. “And that’s not all. Her legs are
stronger. This morning she got up well; she had slept all night. Look
at her rosy cheeks, her bright eyes! She used to be always crying, but
now she laughs and is gay and happy. This morning she insisted on my
letting her stand up, and she stood up for a whole minute without any
support. She wagers that in a fortnight she’ll be dancing a quadrille.
I’ve called in Doctor Herzenstube. He shrugged his shoulders and said,
‘I am amazed; I can make nothing of it.’ And would you have us not come
here to disturb you, not fly here to thank you? Lise, thank him—thank
him!”
Lise’s pretty little laughing face became suddenly serious. She rose in
her chair as far as she could and, looking at the elder, clasped her
hands before him, but could not restrain herself and broke into
laughter.
“It’s at him,” she said, pointing to Alyosha, with childish vexation at
herself for not being able to repress her mirth.
If any one had looked at Alyosha standing a step behind the elder, he
would have caught a quick flush crimsoning his cheeks in an instant.
His eyes shone and he looked down.
“She has a message for you, Alexey Fyodorovitch. How are you?” the
mother went on, holding out her exquisitely gloved hand to Alyosha.
The elder turned round and all at once looked attentively at Alyosha.
The latter went nearer to Lise and, smiling in a strangely awkward way,
held out his hand to her too. Lise assumed an important air.
“Katerina Ivanovna has sent you this through me.” She handed him a
little note. “She particularly begs you to go and see her as soon as
possible; that you will not fail her, but will be sure to come.”
“She asks me to go and see her? Me? What for?” Alyosha muttered in
great astonishment. His face at once looked anxious. “Oh, it’s all to
do with Dmitri Fyodorovitch and—what has happened lately,” the mother
explained hurriedly. “Katerina Ivanovna has made up her mind, but she
must see you about it.... Why, of course, I can’t say. But she wants to
see you at once. And you will go to her, of course. It is a Christian
duty.”
“I have only seen her once,” Alyosha protested with the same
perplexity.
“Oh, she is such a lofty, incomparable creature! If only for her
suffering.... Think what she has gone through, what she is enduring
now! Think what awaits her! It’s all terrible, terrible!”
“Very well, I will come,” Alyosha decided, after rapidly scanning the
brief, enigmatic note, which consisted of an urgent entreaty that he
would come, without any sort of explanation.
“Oh, how sweet and generous that would be of you!” cried Lise with
sudden animation. “I told mamma you’d be sure not to go. I said you
were saving your soul. How splendid you are! I’ve always thought you
were splendid. How glad I am to tell you so!”
“Lise!” said her mother impressively, though she smiled after she had
said it.
“You have quite forgotten us, Alexey Fyodorovitch,” she said; “you
never come to see us. Yet Lise has told me twice that she is never
happy except with you.”
Alyosha raised his downcast eyes and again flushed, and again smiled
without knowing why. But the elder was no longer watching him. He had
begun talking to a monk who, as mentioned before, had been awaiting his
entrance by Lise’s chair. He was evidently a monk of the humblest, that
is of the peasant, class, of a narrow outlook, but a true believer,
and, in his own way, a stubborn one. He announced that he had come from
the far north, from Obdorsk, from Saint Sylvester, and was a member of
a poor monastery, consisting of only ten monks. The elder gave him his
blessing and invited him to come to his cell whenever he liked.
“How can you presume to do such deeds?” the monk asked suddenly,
pointing solemnly and significantly at Lise. He was referring to her
“healing.”
“It’s too early, of course, to speak of that. Relief is not complete
cure, and may proceed from different causes. But if there has been any
healing, it is by no power but God’s will. It’s all from God. Visit me,
Father,” he added to the monk. “It’s not often I can see visitors. I am
ill, and I know that my days are numbered.”
“Oh, no, no! God will not take you from us. You will live a long, long
time yet,” cried the lady. “And in what way are you ill? You look so
well, so gay and happy.”
“I am extraordinarily better to-day. But I know that it’s only for a
moment. I understand my disease now thoroughly. If I seem so happy to
you, you could never say anything that would please me so much. For men
are made for happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right
to say to himself, ‘I am doing God’s will on earth.’ All the righteous,
all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy.”
“Oh, how you speak! What bold and lofty words!” cried the lady. “You
seem to pierce with your words. And yet—happiness, happiness—where is
it? Who can say of himself that he is happy? Oh, since you have been so
good as to let us see you once more to-day, let me tell you what I
could not utter last time, what I dared not say, all I am suffering and
have been for so long! I am suffering! Forgive me! I am suffering!”
And in a rush of fervent feeling she clasped her hands before him.
“From what specially?”
“I suffer ... from lack of faith.”
“Lack of faith in God?”
“Oh, no, no! I dare not even think of that. But the future life—it is
such an enigma! And no one, no one can solve it. Listen! You are a
healer, you are deeply versed in the human soul, and of course I dare
not expect you to believe me entirely, but I assure you on my word of
honor that I am not speaking lightly now. The thought of the life
beyond the grave distracts me to anguish, to terror. And I don’t know
to whom to appeal, and have not dared to all my life. And now I am so
bold as to ask you. Oh, God! What will you think of me now?”
She clasped her hands.
“Don’t distress yourself about my opinion of you,” said the elder. “I
quite believe in the sincerity of your suffering.”
“Oh, how thankful I am to you! You see, I shut my eyes and ask myself
if every one has faith, where did it come from? And then they do say
that it all comes from terror at the menacing phenomena of nature, and
that none of it’s real. And I say to myself, ‘What if I’ve been
believing all my life, and when I come to die there’s nothing but the
burdocks growing on my grave?’ as I read in some author. It’s awful!
How—how can I get back my faith? But I only believed when I was a
little child, mechanically, without thinking of anything. How, how is
one to prove it? I have come now to lay my soul before you and to ask
you about it. If I let this chance slip, no one all my life will answer
me. How can I prove it? How can I convince myself? Oh, how unhappy I
am! I stand and look about me and see that scarcely any one else cares;
no one troubles his head about it, and I’m the only one who can’t stand
it. It’s deadly—deadly!”
“No doubt. But there’s no proving it, though you can be convinced of
it.”
“How?”
“By the experience of active love. Strive to love your neighbor
actively and indefatigably. In as far as you advance in love you will
grow surer of the reality of God and of the immortality of your soul.
If you attain to perfect self-forgetfulness in the love of your
neighbor, then you will believe without doubt, and no doubt can
possibly enter your soul. This has been tried. This is certain.”
“In active love? There’s another question—and such a question! You see,
I so love humanity that—would you believe it?—I often dream of
forsaking all that I have, leaving Lise, and becoming a sister of
mercy. I close my eyes and think and dream, and at that moment I feel
full of strength to overcome all obstacles. No wounds, no festering