The Brothers Karamazov
had never seen the elder, naturally supposed that his father was trying
to intimidate him, but, as he secretly blamed himself for his outbursts
of temper with his father on several recent occasions, he accepted the
challenge. It must be noted that he was not, like Ivan, staying with
his father, but living apart at the other end of the town. It happened
that Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miüsov, who was staying in the district at
the time, caught eagerly at the idea. A Liberal of the forties and
fifties, a freethinker and atheist, he may have been led on by boredom
or the hope of frivolous diversion. He was suddenly seized with the
desire to see the monastery and the holy man. As his lawsuit with the
monastery still dragged on, he made it the pretext for seeing the
Superior, in order to attempt to settle it amicably. A visitor coming
with such laudable intentions might be received with more attention and
consideration than if he came from simple curiosity. Influences from
within the monastery were brought to bear on the elder, who of late had
scarcely left his cell, and had been forced by illness to deny even his
ordinary visitors. In the end he consented to see them, and the day was
fixed.
“Who has made me a judge over them?” was all he said, smilingly, to
Alyosha.
Alyosha was much perturbed when he heard of the proposed visit. Of all
the wrangling, quarrelsome party, Dmitri was the only one who could
regard the interview seriously. All the others would come from
frivolous motives, perhaps insulting to the elder. Alyosha was well
aware of that. Ivan and Miüsov would come from curiosity, perhaps of
the coarsest kind, while his father might be contemplating some piece
of buffoonery. Though he said nothing, Alyosha thoroughly understood
his father. The boy, I repeat, was far from being so simple as every
one thought him. He awaited the day with a heavy heart. No doubt he was
always pondering in his mind how the family discord could be ended. But
his chief anxiety concerned the elder. He trembled for him, for his
glory, and dreaded any affront to him, especially the refined,
courteous irony of Miüsov and the supercilious half-utterances of the
highly educated Ivan. He even wanted to venture on warning the elder,
telling him something about them, but, on second thoughts, said
nothing. He only sent word the day before, through a friend, to his
brother Dmitri, that he loved him and expected him to keep his promise.
Dmitri wondered, for he could not remember what he had promised, but he
answered by letter that he would do his utmost not to let himself be
provoked “by vileness,” but that, although he had a deep respect for
the elder and for his brother Ivan, he was convinced that the meeting
was either a trap for him or an unworthy farce.
“Nevertheless I would rather bite out my tongue than be lacking in
respect to the sainted man whom you reverence so highly,” he wrote in
conclusion. Alyosha was not greatly cheered by the letter.
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 Miüsov and a distant relative of his, a young man of
twenty, called Pyotr Fomitch Kalganov. This young man was preparing to
enter the university. Miüsov, 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 Miüsov’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 Miüsov 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.
Miüsov 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
Miüsov 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 Miüsov.
“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 Miüsov 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!” Miüsov 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.
Miüsov frowned more than ever.
“Oh, devil take them all! An outer show elaborated through centuries,
and nothing but charlatanism and nonsense underneath,” flashed through
Miüsov’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