Текст книги "The Brothers Karamazov"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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“And do you think that I cannot endure that woman? He thinks that I will not endure her? But he won’t marry her,” she suddenly gave a nervous laugh. “Can a Karamazov eternally burn with such a passion? It’s passion, not love. He won’t marry her, because she won’t marry him ... ,” again Katerina Ivanovna suddenly laughed strangely.
“He may well marry her,” Alyosha said sadly, lowering his eyes.
“He won’t marry her, I tell you! That girl—she’s an angel, do you know that? Do you know it?” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly exclaimed with remarkable fervor. “The most fantastic of all fantastic beings! I know how bewitching she is, but I also know how kind, firm, noble she is. Why are you looking at me that way, Alexei Fyodorovich? Perhaps you’re surprised at my words, perhaps you don’t believe me? Agrafena Alexandrovna, my angel!” she suddenly called out to someone, looking into the other room, “come and join us! This is a dear man, this is Alyosha, he knows all about our affairs. Show yourself to him!”
“I’ve only been waiting behind the curtain for you to call me,” said a tender, even somewhat sugary woman’s voice.
The portière was raised and ... Grushenka herself, laughing and joyful, came up to the table. Something seemed to contract in Alyosha. His eyes were glued to her, he couldn’t take them off of her. Here she was, that terrible woman, that “beast,” as his brother Ivan had let slip half an hour earlier. And yet before him stood what seemed, at first glance, to be a most ordinary and simple being—a kind, nice woman; beautiful, yes, but so much like all other beautiful but “ordinary” women! It’s true that she was very good-looking indeed—with that Russian beauty loved so passionately by so many. She was a rather tall woman, slightly shorter, however, than Katerina Ivanovna (who was exceptionally tall), plump, with a soft, even, as it were, inaudible way of moving her body, and delicate as well, as though it were some sort of special sugary confection, like her voice. She came up not like Katerina Ivanovna, with strong, cheerful strides, but, on the contrary, inaudibly. Her step was completely noiseless. Softly she lowered herself into an armchair, softly rustling her ample black silk dress, and delicately wrapping her plump neck, white as foam, and her wide shoulders in an expensive black woolen shawl. She was twenty-two years old, and her face showed exactly that age. Her complexion was very white, with a pale rosy tint high on her cheeks. The shape of her face was too broad, perhaps, and her lower jaw even protruded a bit. Her upper lip was thin, and her more prominent lower lip was twice as full and seemed a little swollen. But the most wonderful, most abundant dark brown hair, dark sable eyebrows, and lovely gray blue eyes with long lashes could not fail to make even the most indifferent and absent-minded man somewhere in the crowd, on market day, in the crush, stop suddenly before this face and remember it afterwards for a long time. What struck Alyosha most of all in this face was its childlike, openhearted expression. Her look was like a child’s, her joy was like a child’s, she came up to the table precisely “joyfully,” as if she were expecting something now with the most childlike, impatient, and trusting curiosity. Her look made the soul glad—Alyosha felt it. But there was something else in her that he could not, and would not have been able to, account for, but which perhaps affected him unconsciously—namely, once again, this softness, this tenderness of her bodily movements, the feline inaudibility of her movements. And yet it was a strong and abundant body. Under the shawl one sensed her broad, full shoulders, her high, still quite youthful bosom. This body perhaps promised the forms of the Venus de Milo, one could sense that—though the proportions must have been and indeed already were somewhat exaggerated. Connoisseurs of Russian feminine beauty could have foretold with certainty, looking at Grushenka, that this fresh, still youthful beauty would lose its harmony towards the age of thirty, would grow shapeless, the face itself would become puffy, wrinkles would very quickly appear around the eyes and on the forehead, the complexion would turn coarser, ruddier perhaps—the beauty of a moment, in short, a passing beauty, such as one so often finds precisely in a Russian woman. Alyosha, of course, was not thinking of that, but, though he was fascinated, he asked himself with a certain unpleasant feeling, and as if regretfully, why she had this manner of drawing out her words instead of speaking naturally. She did it, obviously, because she found this drawn-out and too-sugary enunciation of sounds and syllables beautiful. It was, of course, simply a bad habit, in bad tone, which indicated a low upbringing and a notion of propriety vulgarly adopted in childhood. And yet this manner of speaking and intonation seemed to Alyosha almost an impossible contradiction to the childlike, open-hearted, and joyful expression of her face, to the quiet, happy, infant shining of her eyes! Katerina Ivanovna at once sat her down in an armchair facing Alyosha, and delightedly kissed her several times on her smiling lips. She seemed to be in love with her.
“We’ve met for the first time, Alexei Fyodorovich,” she said rapturously. “I wanted to know her, to see her. I would have gone to her, but she came herself as soon as I asked. I knew that we would resolve everything, everything! My heart foresaw it ... They begged me to abandon this step, but I foresaw the outcome, and I was not mistaken. Grushenka has explained everything to me, all her intentions; like a good angel, she has flown down here and brought peace and joy ...”
“My dear, worthy young lady did not scorn me,” Grushenka drawled in a singsong voice with the same lovely, joyful smile.
“Don’t you dare say such a thing to me, you enchantress, you sorceress! Scorn you? I shall kiss your lower lip one more time. It seems a little swollen, then let it be more swollen, and more, and more ... See how she laughs! Alexei Fyodorovich, it’s a joy for the heart just to look at this angel...”
Alyosha blushed, and an imperceptible trembling came over him.
“You are too kind to me, dear young lady, and perhaps I am not at all worthy of your caresses.” “Not worthy! She is not worthy!” Katerina Ivanovna again exclaimed with the same fervor. “You know, Alexei Fyodorovich, we have a fantastic little head, we’re willful and have a proud, proud little heart! We are noble, Alexei Fyodorovich, we are magnanimous, did you know that? Only we have been so unhappy! We were too ready to make all sorts of sacrifices for an unworthy, perhaps, or frivolous man. There was one man, he was an officer, too, we fell in love with him, we offered him everything, it was long ago, five years ago, and he forgot us, he got married. Now he’s a widower, he’s written, he’s coming here—and, you know, it is only him, only him and no one else that we love now and have loved all our life! He will come, and Grushenka will be happy again, and for all these five years she has been unhappy. But who will reproach her, who will boast of her favors? Only that bedridden old man, a merchant—but he has been more of a father, a friend, a protector to us. He found us in despair, in torment, abandoned by the one we loved so ... why, she wanted to drown herself then, and this old man saved her, saved her!”
“You defend me too much, dear young lady; you are in too much of a hurry with everything,” Grushenka drawled again.
“Defend? Is it for me to defend you? Would we even dare to defend you here? Grushenka, angel, give me your hand. Look at this plump, lovely little hand, Alexei Fyodorovich; do you see it? It brought me happiness and resurrected me, and now I am going to kiss it, back and front, here, here, and here!” And as if in rapture, she kissed the indeed lovely, if perhaps too plump, hand of Grushenka three times. The latter, offering her hand with a nervous, pealing, lovely little laugh, watched the “dear young lady,” apparently pleased at having her hand kissed like that. “Maybe a little too much rapture,” flashed through Alyosha’s mind. He blushed. All the while his heart was somehow peculiarly uneasy.
“Won’t you make me ashamed, dear young lady, kissing my hand like that in front of Alexei Fyodorovich!”
“How could I possibly make you ashamed?” said Katerina Ivanovna, somewhat surprised. “Ah, my dear, how poorly you understand me!”
“But perhaps you do not quite understand me either, dear young lady. Perhaps I’m more wicked than you see on the surface. I have a wicked heart, I’m willful. I charmed poor Dmitri Fyodorovich that time only to laugh at him.”
“But now it will be you who save him. You gave your word. You will make him listen to reason, you will reveal to him that you love another man, that you have loved him for a long time, and he is now offering you his hand...”
“Ah, no, I never gave you my word. It’s you who were saying all that, but I didn’t give my word.” “Then I must have misunderstood you,” Katerina Ivanovna said softly, turning a bit pale, as it were. “You promised...”
“Ah, no, my young lady, my angel, I promised nothing,” Grushenka interrupted softly and calmly, with the same gay and innocent expression. “Now you see, worthy young lady, how wicked and willful I am next to you. Whatever I want, I will do. Maybe I just promised you something, but now I’m thinking: what if I like him again all of a sudden—Mitya, I mean—because I did like him once very much, I liked him for almost a whole hour. So, maybe I’ll go now and tell him to stay with me starting today ... That’s how fickle I am...”
“You just said ... something quite different. . . ,” Katerina Ivanovna said faintly.
“Ah, I just said! But I have such a tender, foolish heart. Think what he’s suffered because of me! What if I go home and suddenly take pity on him—what then?”
“I didn’t expect...”
“Eh, young lady, how kind and noble you turn out to be next to me. So now perhaps you’ll stop loving such a fool as I am, seeing my character. Give me your little hand, my angel,” she asked tenderly, and took Katerina Ivanovna’s hand as if in reverence. “Here, dear young lady, I’ll take your little hand and kiss it, just as you did to me. You kissed mine three times, and for that I ought to kiss yours three hundred times to be even. And so I shall, and then let it be as God wills; maybe I’ll be your complete slave and want to please you in everything like a slave. As God wills, so let it be, with no deals or promises between us. What a hand, what a dear little hand you have, what a hand! My dear young lady, beauty that you are, my impossible beauty!”
She slowly raised this hand to her lips, though with the rather strange purpose of “getting even” in kisses. Katerina Ivanovna did not withdraw her hand: with a timid hope, she listened to Grushenka’s last, also rather strangely expressed, promise to please her “like a slave”; she looked tensely into her eyes: she saw in those eyes the same openhearted, trusting expression, the same serene gaiety ... “Perhaps she is so naive!” a hope flashed in Katerina Ivanovna’s heart. Meanwhile Grushenka, as if admiring the “dear little hand,” was slowly raising it to her lips. But with the hand just at her lips, she suddenly hesitated for two, maybe three seconds, as if thinking something over.
“Do you know, my angel,”she suddenly drawled in the most tender, sugary voice, “do you know? I’m just not going to kiss your hand.” And she laughed a gleeful little laugh. “As you wish ... What’s the matter?” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly started.
“And you can keep this as a memory—that you kissed my hand, and I did not kiss yours.” Something suddenly flashed in her eyes. She looked with terrible fixity at Katerina Ivanovna.
“Insolent!” Katerina Ivanovna said suddenly, as if suddenly understanding something. She blushed all over and jumped up from her place. Grushenka, too, got up, without haste.
“So I’ll go right now and tell Mitya that you kissed my hand, and I didn’t kiss yours at all. How he’ll laugh!”
“You slut! Get out!”
“Ah, shame on you, young lady, shame on you! It’s really quite indecent for you to use such words, dear young lady.”
“Get out, bought woman!” screamed Katerina Ivanovna. Every muscle trembled in her completely distorted face.
“Bought, am I? You yourself as a young girl used to go to your gentlemen at dusk to get money, offering your beauty for sale, and I know it.”
Katerina Ivanovna made a cry and was about to leap at her, but Alyosha held her back with all his strength.
“Not a step, not a word! Don’t speak, don’t answer anything—she’ll leave, she’ll leave right now!”
At that moment both of Katerina Ivanovna’s aunts, having heard her cry, ran into the room; the maid ran in, too. They all rushed to her.
“That I will,” said Grushenka, picking up her mantilla from the sofa. “Alyosha, dear, come with me!”
“Go, go quickly,” Alyosha pleaded, clasping his hands before her.
“Alyoshenka, dear, come with me! I have something very, very nice to tell you on the way. I performed this scene for you, Alyoshenka. Come with me, darling, you’ll be glad you did.”
Alyosha turned away, wringing his hands. Grushenka, with a peal of laughter, ran out of the house.
Katerina Ivanovna had a fit. She sobbed, she choked with spasms. Everyone fussed around her.
“I warned you,” the elder of the aunts was saying, “I tried to keep you from taking this step ... You are too passionate ... How could you think of taking such a step! You do not know these creatures, and this one, they say, is worse than all of them ... No, you are too willful!”
“She’s a tiger!” screamed Katerina Ivanovna. “Why did you hold me back, Alexei Fyodorovich! I’d have beaten her, beaten her!”
She could not restrain herself in front of Alyosha, and perhaps did not want to restrain herself. “She should be flogged, on a scaffold, by an executioner, with everyone watching!”
Alyosha backed towards the door.
“But, my God!” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly cried out, clasping her hands. “And he! He could be so dishonest, so inhuman! He told this creature what happened then, on that fatal, eternally accursed, accursed day! ‘You came to sell your beauty, dear young lady!’ She knows! Your brother is a scoundrel, Alexei Fyodorovich!”
Alyosha wanted to say something, but he could not find a single word. His heart ached within him.
“Go away, Alexei Fyodorovich! It’s so shameful, so terrible! Tomorrow ... I beg you on my knees, come tomorrow. Do not condemn me. Forgive me. I don’t know what I’ll still do to myself!”
Alyosha went outside, staggering, as it were. He, too, felt like crying as she had. Suddenly a maid caught up with him.
“The young lady forgot to give you this letter from Madame Khokhlakov. She’s had it since dinnertime.”
Alyosha mechanically took the small pink envelope and almost unconsciously put it in his pocket.
Chapter 11: One More Ruined Reputation
From town to the monastery was not more than half a mile or so. Alyosha hurried along the road, which was deserted at that hour. It was already almost night; it was difficult to make out objects thirty paces ahead. There was a crossroads halfway. At the crossroads, under a solitary willow, a figure came into view. Alyosha had just reached the crossroads when the figure tore itself from its place, leaped out at him, and shouted in a wild voice:
“Your money or your life!”
“Ah, it’s you, Mitya!” Alyosha, though badly startled, said in surprise.
“Ha, ha, ha! You didn’t expect me? I wondered where to wait for you. Near her house? There are three roads from there, and I might have missed you. Finally I decided, I’ll wait here, because he’ll have to pass here, there’s no other way to the monastery. Well, give me the truth, crush me like a cockroach ... Why, what’s the matter?” “Nothing, brother ... Just that you startled me. Oh, Dmitri! Father’s blood today ...” Alyosha began to cry. He had been wanting to cry for a long time, and now it was as if something suddenly snapped in his soul. “You all but killed him ... you cursed him ... and now ... here ... you’re making jokes ... ‘Your money or your life!’”
“Well, what of it? Improper, eh? Doesn’t fit my position?”
“No ... I just. . .”
“Wait. Look at the night: see what a gloomy night it is, what clouds, how the wind is rising! I hid myself here, under the willow, waiting for you, and suddenly thought (as God is my witness): why languish any longer, why wait? Here is the willow, there is a handkerchief, a shirt, I can make a rope right now, plus suspenders, and—no longer burden the earth, or dishonor it with my vile presence! And then I heard you coming—Lord, just as if something suddenly flew down on me: ah, so there is a man that I love, here he is, here is that man, my dear little brother, whom I love more than anyone in the world, and who is the only one I love! And I loved you so, I loved you so at that moment that I thought: I’ll throw myself on his neck! But then a foolish thought came to me: ‘I’ll amuse him, I’ll give him a scare.’ So I yelled: ‘Your money!’ like a fool. Forgive my foolishness—it’s only nonsense, and in my soul ... it’s also fitting ... Well, damn it, tell me what happened! What did she say? Crush me, strike me down, don’t spare me! Was she furious?”
“No,notthat ... It wasn’t like that at all, Mitya. It was ... I found the two of them there together.”
“What two?”
“Grushenka and Katerina Ivanovna.”
Dmitri Fyodorovich was dumbstruck.
“Impossible!” he cried. “You’re raving! Grushenka with her?”
Alyosha told him everything that had happened to him from the very moment he entered Katerina Ivanovna’s house. He spoke for about ten minutes, one would not say fluently or coherently, but he seemed to convey it clearly, grasping the main words, the main gestures, and vividly conveying his own feelings, often with a single stroke. His brother Dmitri listened silently, staring point blank at him with horrible fixity, but it was clear to Alyosha that he already understood everything and comprehended the whole fact. But his face, as the story went on, became not merely grim but menacing, as it were. He glowered, clenched his teeth, his fixed stare seemed to become still more fixed, more intent, more terrible ... Which made it all the more unexpected when, with inconceivable swiftness, his face, until then angry and ferocious, suddenly changed all at once, his compressed lips parted, and Dmitri Fyodorovich suddenly dissolved in the most irrepressible, the most genuine laughter. He literally dissolved in laughter, and for a long time could not even speak for laughing.
“She just didn’t kiss her hand! She just didn’t, she just ran away!” he exclaimed with some sort of morbid delight—one might have called it insolent delight had it not been so artless. “And the other one shouted that she was a tiger! A tiger she is! And that she deserves the scaffold! Yes, yes, so she does, she does, I agree, she deserves it, she has long deserved it! Let’s have that scaffold, brother, but let me recover first. I can see that queen of insolence, the whole of her is there, that hand expresses the whole of her! Infernal woman! She’s the queen of all infernal women the world can imagine! Delightful in a way! So she ran home? Then I ... eh ... will run to her! Alyoshka, don’t blame me, I do agree that throttling’s too good for her ...”
“And Katerina Ivanovna!” Alyosha exclaimed sadly.
“I see her, too, right through her, I see her, I see her better than ever before! It’s quite a discovery—all four cardinal points—all five, I mean. [106]What a thing to do! It’s the same Katenka, the institute girl, who wasn’t afraid to run to an absurd brute of an officer with the generous idea of saving her father, at the risk of being horribly insulted! But what pride, what recklessness, what defiance of fate, what infinite defiance! You say the aunt tried to stop her? That aunt, you know, is a despot herself, she’s the sister of the Moscow general’s widow, she used to put on even more airs than the other one, but her husband was convicted of embezzlement, lost everything, his estate and everything, and his proud spouse had to pull her head in, and never stuck it out again. So she was holding Katya back, and Katya didn’t listen. ‘I can conquer all, all is in my power; I can bewitch Grushenka, too, if I like’—and she did believe herself, she was showing off to herself, so whose fault is it? Do you think she first kissed Grushenka’s hand with some purpose, out of cunning calculation? No, she really and truly fell in love with Grushenka—that is, not with Grushenka but with her own dream, her own delusion—because it was herdream, her delusion! My dear Alyosha, how did you manage to save yourself from them, from those women? You must have hitched up your cassock and run! Ha, ha, ha!”
“But Mitya, you don’t seem to have noticed how you offended Katerina Ivanovna by telling Grushenka about that day. And she immediately threw it in her face, that she ‘went secretly to her gentlemen to sell her beauty’! Could any offense be greater than that, brother?” Alyosha was most tormented by the thought that his brother seemed pleased at Katerina Ivanovna’s humiliation, though of course it could not be so.
“Bah!” Dmitri Fyodorovich frowned horribly all of a sudden and slapped himself on the forehead. Only now did he notice it, though Alyosha had just told him both about the offense and about Katerina Ivanovna’s cry: “Your brother is a scoundrel!”
“Yes, maybe I really did tell Grushenka about that ‘fatal day,’ as Katya calls it. Yes, I did, I did tell her, I remember! It was that time in Mokroye, I was drunk, the gypsy women were singing ... But I was weeping, I myself was weeping, I was on my knees, praying before Katya’s image, and Grushenka understood. She understood everything then. I remember, she wept herself ... Ah, the devil! But it couldn’t be otherwise! Then she wept, and now ... now ‘a dagger in the heart.’ That’s how it is with women.”
He looked down and thought for a moment.
“Yes, I am a scoundrel! An unquestionable scoundrel!” he said suddenly in a gloomy voice. “No matter whether I wept or not, I’m still a scoundrel! Tell her I accept the title, if it’s any comfort. But enough, farewell, there’s no use talking. It’s not amusing. You take your road and I’ll take mine. And I don’t want to see you any more until some last moment. Farewell, Alexei!” He gripped Alyosha’s hand, and still looking down, without raising his head, as though tearing himself away, he quickly strode off towards town. Alyosha looked after him, not believing that he was quite so suddenly gone.
“Wait, Alexei, one more confession, to you alone!” Dmitri Fyodorovich suddenly turned back. “Look at me, look closely: right here, do you see, right here a horrible dishonor is being prepared.” (As he said “right here,” Dmitri Fyodorovich struck himself on the chest with his fist, and with such a strange look as though the dishonor was lying and being kept precisely there on his chest, in some actual place, maybe in a pocket, or sewn up and hanging around his neck.) “You know me by now: a scoundrel, an avowed scoundrel! But know that whatever I have done before or now or may do later—nothing, nothing can compare in baseness with the dishonor I am carrying, precisely now, precisely at this moment, here on my chest, here, right here, which is being enacted and carried out, and which it is fully in my power to stop, I can stop it or carry it out, make a note of that! And know, then, that I will carry it out and will not stop it. I just told you everything, but this I did not tell you, because even I am not so brazen! I could still stop; if I stopped, tomorrow I could recover fully half of my lost honor; but I will not stop, I will carry out my base design, and in the future you can be my witness that I told you beforehand and with aforethought! Darkness and ruin! There’s nothing to explain, you’ll learn it all in due time. A stinking back lane and an infernal woman! Farewell. Don’t pray for me, I’m not worthy of it, and it’s unnecessary, quite unnecessary ... I don’t need it at all! Away!”
And suddenly he was gone, this time for good. Alyosha walked towards the monastery. “What does he mean? Why will I not see him anymore? What is he talking about?” went wildly through his head. “Tomorrow I must be sure to see him and find him; I’ll make a point of finding him. What is he talking about?”
He skirted the monastery and walked straight to the hermitage through the pine woods. The door was opened for him, though at that hour no one was let in. His heart trembled as he entered the elder’s cell: Why, why had he left? Why had the elder sent him “into the world”? Here was quiet, here was holiness, and there—confusion, and a darkness in which one immediately got lost and went astray . . .
In the cell were the novice Porfiry and the hieromonk Father Paissy, who all through the day, every hour, had come to inquire about the health of Father Zosima. Alyosha was alarmed to learn that he was getting worse and worse. This time even the usual evening talk with the brothers could not take place. Ordinarily, each day after the evening service, before going to bed, the monastery brothers gathered in the elder’s cell, and everyone confessed aloud to him his transgressions of the day, sinful dreams, thoughts, temptations, even quarrels among themselves if there had been any. Some confessed on their knees. The elder absolved, reconciled, admonished, imposed penance, blessed, and dismissed. It was against these brotherly “confessions” that the opponents of the institution of elders protested, saying that this was a profanation of confession as a sacrament, almost a blasphemy, though it was a matter of something quite different. It was even brought up before the diocesan authorities that such confessions not only do not achieve any good purpose, but really and knowingly lead to sin and temptation; that for many of the brothers it was a burden to go to the elder, and that they went against their will, because everyone went, and to avoid being considered proud and rebellious in thought. It was said that some of the brothers agreed among themselves before going to the evening confession: “I’ll say I was angry with you this morning, and you confirm it,” so that they could get off with saying something. Alyosha knew that this sometimes really happened. He also knew that there were some among the brothers who were quite indignant at the custom of having even the letters they received from their relatives brought to the elder first, to be opened, before they were delivered to them. It was assumed, of course, that this all should be done freely and sincerely, without reservation, for the sake of free humility and saving instruction, but in reality, as it turned out, it sometimes was also done quite insincerely and, on the contrary, artificially and falsely. Yet the older and more experienced of the brothers stood their ground, arguing that “for those who have sincerely entered these walls in order to be saved, all these obediences and deeds will no doubt work for salvation and be of great benefit; as for those who, on the contrary, find them burdensome and murmur against them, for them it is the same as if they were not monks, and they have come to the monastery in vain, for their place is in the world. And as one cannot protect oneself from sin either in the world or in the Church, so there is no need for indulging sin.”
“He’s grown weak, overcome by drowsiness,” Father Paissy informed Alyosha in a whisper, having given him a blessing. “It is even difficult to rouse him. But there’s no need to rouse him. He woke up for about five minutes, asked to send the brothers his blessing, and asked the brothers to mention him in their evening prayers. Tomorrow morning he intends to take communion one more time. He mentioned you, Alexei, asked whether you were away, and was told that you were in town. ‘I gave him my blessing for that; his place is there, and not here as yet’—so he spoke of you. He remembered you lovingly, with concern; do you realize what has been granted you? But why did he decide that you should now spend time in the world? It must mean that he foresees something in your destiny! Understand, Alexei, that even if you go back into the world, it will be as though it were an obedience imposed on you by your elder, and not for vain frivolity, not for worldly pleasure...”
Father Paissy went out. That the elder was dying, Alyosha did not doubt, though he might still live for another day or two. Alyosha firmly and ardently resolved that, despite the promises he had given to see his father, the Khokhlakovs, his brother, and Katerina Ivanovna, he would not leave the monastery at all the next day, but would stay by his elder until the very end. His heart began burning with love, and he bitterly reproached himself that he had been able, for a moment, there in town, even to forget the one whom he had left in the monastery on his bed of death, and whom he honored above everyone in the world. He went to the elder’s little bedroom, knelt, and bowed to the ground before the sleeping man. The latter slept quietly, motionlessly; his faint breath came evenly, almost imperceptibly. His face was peaceful.
When he returned to the other room, the same room in which the elder had received his guests that morning, Alyosha, almost without undressing, taking off only his boots, lay down on the hard, narrow leather divan he always slept on, and had for a long time now, every night, bringing only a pillow. As for the mattress his father had shouted about, he had long ceased sleeping on it. He simply took off his cassock and covered himself with it instead of a blanket. But before going to sleep, he threw himself down on his knees and prayed for a long time. In his ardent prayer, he did not ask God to explain his confusion to him, but only thirsted for joyful tenderness, the same tenderness that always visited his soul after praising and glorifying God, of which his prayer before going to sleep usually consisted. This joy that visited him always drew after it a light and peaceful sleep. Praying now, he suddenly happened to feel in his pocket the little pink envelope that Katerina Ivanovna’s maid had given him when she caught up with him in the street. He was troubled, but finished his prayer. Then, after some hesitation, he opened the envelope. It contained a note signed by Lise, the young daughter of Madame Khokhlakov, the one who had laughed at him so much that morning in front of the elder.
