The Brothers Karamazov
secret for the whole school, a secret which could only be discovered by
reading Smaragdov, and no one had Smaragdov but Kolya. One day, when
Kolya’s back was turned, Kartashov hastily opened Smaragdov, which lay
among Kolya’s books, and immediately lighted on the passage relating to
the foundation of Troy. This was a good time ago, but he felt uneasy
and could not bring himself to announce publicly that he too knew who
had founded Troy, afraid of what might happen and of Krassotkin’s
somehow putting him to shame over it. But now he couldn’t resist saying
it. For weeks he had been longing to.
“Well, who did found it?” asked Kolya, turning to him with haughty
superciliousness. He saw from his face that he really did know and at
once made up his mind how to take it. There was, so to speak, a
discordant note in the general harmony.
“Troy was founded by Teucer, Dardanus, Ilius and Tros,” the boy rapped
out at once, and in the same instant he blushed, blushed so, that it
was painful to look at him. But the boys stared at him, stared at him
for a whole minute, and then all the staring eyes turned at once and
were fastened upon Kolya, who was still scanning the audacious boy with
disdainful composure.
“In what sense did they found it?” he deigned to comment at last. “And
what is meant by founding a city or a state? What do they do? Did they
go and each lay a brick, do you suppose?”
There was laughter. The offending boy turned from pink to crimson. He
was silent and on the point of tears. Kolya held him so for a minute.
“Before you talk of a historical event like the foundation of a
nationality, you must first understand what you mean by it,” he
admonished him in stern, incisive tones. “But I attach no consequence
to these old wives’ tales and I don’t think much of universal history
in general,” he added carelessly, addressing the company generally.
“Universal history?” the captain inquired, looking almost scared.
“Yes, universal history! It’s the study of the successive follies of
mankind and nothing more. The only subjects I respect are mathematics
and natural science,” said Kolya. He was showing off and he stole a
glance at Alyosha; his was the only opinion he was afraid of there. But
Alyosha was still silent and still serious as before. If Alyosha had
said a word it would have stopped him, but Alyosha was silent and “it
might be the silence of contempt,” and that finally irritated Kolya.
“The classical languages, too ... they are simply madness, nothing
more. You seem to disagree with me again, Karamazov?”
“I don’t agree,” said Alyosha, with a faint smile.
“The study of the classics, if you ask my opinion, is simply a police
measure, that’s simply why it has been introduced into our schools.” By
degrees Kolya began to get breathless again. “Latin and Greek were
introduced because they are a bore and because they stupefy the
intellect. It was dull before, so what could they do to make things
duller? It was senseless enough before, so what could they do to make
it more senseless? So they thought of Greek and Latin. That’s my
opinion, I hope I shall never change it,” Kolya finished abruptly. His
cheeks were flushed.
“That’s true,” assented Smurov suddenly, in a ringing tone of
conviction. He had listened attentively.
“And yet he is first in Latin himself,” cried one of the group of boys
suddenly.
“Yes, father, he says that and yet he is first in Latin,” echoed
Ilusha.
“What of it?” Kolya thought fit to defend himself, though the praise
was very sweet to him. “I am fagging away at Latin because I have to,
because I promised my mother to pass my examination, and I think that
whatever you do, it’s worth doing it well. But in my soul I have a
profound contempt for the classics and all that fraud.... You don’t
agree, Karamazov?”
“Why ‘fraud’?” Alyosha smiled again.
“Well, all the classical authors have been translated into all
languages, so it was not for the sake of studying the classics they
introduced Latin, but solely as a police measure, to stupefy the
intelligence. So what can one call it but a fraud?”
“Why, who taught you all this?” cried Alyosha, surprised at last.
“In the first place I am capable of thinking for myself without being
taught. Besides, what I said just now about the classics being
translated our teacher Kolbasnikov has said to the whole of the third
class.”
“The doctor has come!” cried Nina, who had been silent till then.
A carriage belonging to Madame Hohlakov drove up to the gate. The
captain, who had been expecting the doctor all the morning, rushed
headlong out to meet him. “Mamma” pulled herself together and assumed a
dignified air. Alyosha went up to Ilusha and began setting his pillows
straight. Nina, from her invalid chair, anxiously watched him putting
the bed tidy. The boys hurriedly took leave. Some of them promised to
come again in the evening. Kolya called Perezvon and the dog jumped off
the bed.
“I won’t go away, I won’t go away,” Kolya said hastily to Ilusha. “I’ll
wait in the passage and come back when the doctor’s gone, I’ll come
back with Perezvon.”
But by now the doctor had entered, an important-looking person with
long, dark whiskers and a shiny, shaven chin, wearing a bearskin coat.
As he crossed the threshold he stopped, taken aback; he probably
fancied he had come to the wrong place. “How is this? Where am I?” he
muttered, not removing his coat nor his peaked sealskin cap. The crowd,
the poverty of the room, the washing hanging on a line in the corner,
puzzled him. The captain, bent double, was bowing low before him.
“It’s here, sir, here, sir,” he muttered cringingly; “it’s here, you’ve
come right, you were coming to us...”
“Sne-gi-ryov?” the doctor said loudly and pompously. “Mr. Snegiryov—is
that you?”
“That’s me, sir!”
“Ah!”
The doctor looked round the room with a squeamish air once more and
threw off his coat, displaying to all eyes the grand decoration at his
neck. The captain caught the fur coat in the air, and the doctor took
off his cap.
“Where is the patient?” he asked emphatically.
Chapter VI.
Precocity
“What do you think the doctor will say to him?” Kolya asked quickly.
“What a repulsive mug, though, hasn’t he? I can’t endure medicine!”
“Ilusha is dying. I think that’s certain,” answered Alyosha,
mournfully.
“They are rogues! Medicine’s a fraud! I am glad to have made your
acquaintance, though, Karamazov. I wanted to know you for a long time.
I am only sorry we meet in such sad circumstances.”
Kolya had a great inclination to say something even warmer and more
demonstrative, but he felt ill at ease. Alyosha noticed this, smiled,
and pressed his hand.
“I’ve long learned to respect you as a rare person,” Kolya muttered
again, faltering and uncertain. “I have heard you are a mystic and have
been in the monastery. I know you are a mystic, but ... that hasn’t put
me off. Contact with real life will cure you.... It’s always so with
characters like yours.”
“What do you mean by mystic? Cure me of what?” Alyosha was rather
astonished.
“Oh, God and all the rest of it.”
“What, don’t you believe in God?”
“Oh, I’ve nothing against God. Of course, God is only a hypothesis, but
... I admit that He is needed ... for the order of the universe and all
that ... and that if there were no God He would have to be invented,”
added Kolya, beginning to blush. He suddenly fancied that Alyosha might
think he was trying to show off his knowledge and to prove that he was
“grown up.” “I haven’t the slightest desire to show off my knowledge to
him,” Kolya thought indignantly. And all of a sudden he felt horribly
annoyed.
“I must confess I can’t endure entering on such discussions,” he said
with a final air. “It’s possible for one who doesn’t believe in God to
love mankind, don’t you think so? Voltaire didn’t believe in God and
loved mankind?” (“I am at it again,” he thought to himself.)
“Voltaire believed in God, though not very much, I think, and I don’t
think he loved mankind very much either,” said Alyosha quietly, gently,
and quite naturally, as though he were talking to some one of his own
age, or even older. Kolya was particularly struck by Alyosha’s apparent
diffidence about his opinion of Voltaire. He seemed to be leaving the
question for him, little Kolya, to settle.
“Have you read Voltaire?” Alyosha finished.
“No, not to say read.... But I’ve read _Candide_ in the Russian
translation ... in an absurd, grotesque, old translation ... (At it
again! again!)”
“And did you understand it?”
“Oh, yes, everything.... That is ... Why do you suppose I shouldn’t
understand it? There’s a lot of nastiness in it, of course.... Of
course I can understand that it’s a philosophical novel and written to
advocate an idea....” Kolya was getting mixed by now. “I am a
Socialist, Karamazov, I am an incurable Socialist,” he announced
suddenly, apropos of nothing.
“A Socialist?” laughed Alyosha. “But when have you had time to become
one? Why, I thought you were only thirteen?”
Kolya winced.
“In the first place I am not thirteen, but fourteen, fourteen in a
fortnight,” he flushed angrily, “and in the second place I am at a
complete loss to understand what my age has to do with it? The question
is what are my convictions, not what is my age, isn’t it?”
“When you are older, you’ll understand for yourself the influence of
age on convictions. I fancied, too, that you were not expressing your
own ideas,” Alyosha answered serenely and modestly, but Kolya
interrupted him hotly:
“Come, you want obedience and mysticism. You must admit that the
Christian religion, for instance, has only been of use to the rich and
the powerful to keep the lower classes in slavery. That’s so, isn’t
it?”
“Ah, I know where you read that, and I am sure some one told you so!”
cried Alyosha.
“I say, what makes you think I read it? And certainly no one told me
so. I can think for myself.... I am not opposed to Christ, if you like.
He was a most humane person, and if He were alive to-day, He would be
found in the ranks of the revolutionists, and would perhaps play a
conspicuous part.... There’s no doubt about that.”
“Oh, where, where did you get that from? What fool have you made
friends with?” exclaimed Alyosha.
“Come, the truth will out! It has so chanced that I have often talked
to Mr. Rakitin, of course, but ... old Byelinsky said that, too, so
they say.”
“Byelinsky? I don’t remember. He hasn’t written that anywhere.”
“If he didn’t write it, they say he said it. I heard that from a ...
but never mind.”
“And have you read Byelinsky?”
“Well, no ... I haven’t read all of him, but ... I read the passage
about Tatyana, why she didn’t go off with Onyegin.”
“Didn’t go off with Onyegin? Surely you don’t ... understand that
already?”
“Why, you seem to take me for little Smurov,” said Kolya, with a grin
of irritation. “But please don’t suppose I am such a revolutionist. I
often disagree with Mr. Rakitin. Though I mention Tatyana, I am not at
all for the emancipation of women. I acknowledge that women are a
subject race and must obey. _Les femmes tricottent_, as Napoleon said.”
Kolya, for some reason, smiled, “And on that question at least I am
quite of one mind with that pseudo-great man. I think, too, that to
leave one’s own country and fly to America is mean, worse than
mean—silly. Why go to America when one may be of great service to
humanity here? Now especially. There’s a perfect mass of fruitful
activity open to us. That’s what I answered.”
“What do you mean? Answered whom? Has some one suggested your going to
America already?”
“I must own, they’ve been at me to go, but I declined. That’s between
ourselves, of course, Karamazov; do you hear, not a word to any one. I