feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_11_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Brothers Karamazov.book viii.chapter i-chapter viii
feat_summary_id: book viii
feat_summary: {"name": "Book VIII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219142226/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/b/the-brothers-karamazov/summary-and-analysis/part-3-book-viii", "summary": "Dmitri feels that there is still a possibility that Grushenka may accept him as her husband, but his problem is that if she does accept him, he cannot rightfully carry her away until he repays the money he owes Katerina Ivanovna. In a desperate effort to find a solution, he contrives a fantastic scheme. He goes to old Samsonov -- Grushenka's previous protector -- and offers him the rights to some property that he believes the law courts might take away from Fyodor and give to him if the old merchant will immediately give him 3,000 rubles. The merchant, of course, refuses and plays a trick on Dmitri: he sends him off to the country to see a merchant named Lyagavy, who is bargaining with Fyodor for this very property. Dmitri pawns his watch, hires transportation to the neighboring town, and finds the merchant. Unfortunately, the man is thoroughly drunk. Dmitri tries to sober him up but is unable to, so he waits until the next day. The merchant remains in a stupor, so Dmitri returns to town, hoping to borrow money from Madame Hohlakov. Madame Hohlakov, however, tries to convince him that he should go off to the gold mines if he wants money; she refuses to lend him anything. Dmitri next goes to claim Grushenka but finds that she is not at home. The servant is no help; she pretends that she does not know where Grushenka has gone. Dmitri is outraged. He picks up a brass pestle and dashes to his father's house. Then he sneaks into the garden and peers through a lighted window. He is sure that Grushenka has finally come to the old man. He is disappointed, however; he sees only his father pacing the floor. But to make certain that Grushenka is not there, Dmitri taps the secret signal. The old man opens the window and Dmitri is greatly relieved. Grushenka is not with his father! Meanwhile, Grigory, the old servant, awakens and goes into the garden for a breath of air. He sees Dmitri leaving the garden and tries to stop him, but Dmitri, confused and distraught, fights off his attacker and finally strikes him on the head with the pestle. The servant crumples to the ground, and Dmitri stops for a moment to see if the man is dead. He tries to stop the puddle of blood; then, in a panic, he tosses the pestle away and flees. He returns to Grushenka's house and forces the servants to reveal where Grushenka has gone. The answer is agonizing: she has gone to rejoin her first lover. Dmitri knows now that he can no longer claim the girl. He must step aside and leave her to her happiness. But he passionately wants one last look at Grushenka. After that, he will kill himself; his future holds nothing without Grushenka. He goes to retrieve pistols from Perhotin, a minor official who lent Dmitri money and kept the pistols as security. Perhotin is amazed to see Dmitri, who is now carrying a large bundle of money and blotched with blood. He goes to a nearby store with young Karamazov and remains while Dmitri buys 300 rubles worth of food and wine and makes arrangements to go where Grushenka is rumored to be staying. After Perhotin watches Dmitri leave, he decides to do some detective work. Dmitri is in luck: Grushenka is indeed staying where he was directed. He rushes to her rooms and greatly shocks Grushenka, but she recovers and welcomes him. Until now, the celebration has been gloomy and restrained. Dmitri's wine helps liven the spirits, and soon Grushenka and her officer friend and Dmitri are all playing cards together. All does not go well, however. The Polish officer begins to cheat and tosses out disgusting, cynical remarks. Grushenka recoils. She realizes that she can never love such a man. Dmitri senses Grushenka's pain, and when the officer finally turns his insults on her, Dmitri forces him into another room and locks him inside. Then a real celebration ensues, and Grushenka knows that she can love only Dmitri. Dmitri is not quite so lucky. He is troubled because he has struck Grigory, perhaps killed him; he also owes money to Katerina Ivanovna. He talks with Grushenka of their future together, but they are interrupted. A group of officers arrive, charge Dmitri with the murder of his father, and place him under arrest.", "analysis": "Until now, the novel has moved with a sure, slow deliberateness as Dostoevsky depicts the intellectual conflicts in Ivan, the philosophy of Zossima, and the mystic affirmation of life by Alyosha. Now, however, this section, devoted to Dmitri, rushes along with breathtaking speed as it records Dmitri's frantic efforts to save both his life and his love. Dostoevsky is a master at depicting the torment of despondency within a character who has no money and desperately needs it in order to salvage some remnant of his honor. Dmitri has spent most of the money that Katerina Ivanovna has lent him, and, although we know that he has the rest concealed on him, he still feels that he cannot elope with Grushenka until the entire sum is repaid. He must secure the money so that he can begin a new life with Grushenka and still retain his integrity. If he were to use Katerina's money to elope with Grushenka, he feels that this would be his absolute lowest, most degrading act. Looking forward, when he decides to step aside and allow Grushenka to return to her first love, one should realize that by this time he has decided to end his life. This resolution should be kept in mind when Dmitri shows few qualms about usurping the money; it is not that he considers it any less dishonorable, but, because he intends to take his life, he will not have to face the dishonor. Dostoevsky does not present an entirely admirable character in Dmitri. He continually lets the reader know that Dmitri's financial predicament is due to his irresponsibility with money. Consequently, his frantic search for someone who will lend him money and his absurd proposals reveal his lack of acumen. He is also unable to realize that the old merchant, Samsonov, is making fun of him and sending him on a wild goose chase. It takes two days for Dmitri to come to his senses, but even then he tries to convince Madame Hohlakov that she should lend him money. Were he more rational, he would know that the lady detests him. These scenes of begging, then, show to what degree of desperation Dmitri will go in his need for money. This alone casts suspicion upon him concerning his father's murder. Remember, too, that Dostoevsky arranges his plot in such a way that it is natural and logical for the reader to assume on first reading that Dmitri is the murderer. Every detail in this chapter attests to the incriminating evidence that will be accumulated against Dmitri. Furthermore, even Dmitri's thoughts cast suspicion upon him. As he goes to see Madame Hohlakov, for example, he thinks \"his last hope . . . if this broke down, nothing else was left him in the world but to rob and murder some one for the three thousand.\" Such evidence, coupled with his distraught emotions, allows the reader to assume that Dmitri is indeed guilty of his father's murder. Ironically, one small lie contributes most of all to Dmitri's arrest. Fenya, Grushenka's servant, lies to him; she says that she does not know of Grushenka's whereabouts, thereby forcing Dmitri to go to his father's to search for her. Had the servant told the truth, Dmitri would not have been present at the scene of the murder; nor would he have been covered with Grigory's blood. Dmitri's resolve to commit suicide is quite believable. On the road to Mokroe to meet Grushenka, he fully intends to see her and then kill himself. Indeed, the mere fact that he is now spending the rest of Katerina Ivanovna's money and the fact that he has left old Grigory to face possible death from his wounds suggest that Dmitri no longer has any concern about the future. During the ride, he knows that he cannot stand in Grushenka's way, but he wants to see her once more. He is in agony; he even asks the peasant driver, as one might ask a priest, to forgive him all the sins of his life. Incidentally, with this last act, he echoes one of Zossima's ideas concerning the repudiation of master-servant distinction and the responsibility of all men for one another. Dmitri fully intends to kill himself, and his prayer, most of all, reveals the anguish in his soul. \"Lord,\" he pleads, \"receive me with all my lawlessness and do not condemn me. Let me pass Thy judgment -- do not condemn me for I have condemned myself . . . for I love Thee, O Lord. I am a wretch, but I love Thee. If Thou sendest me to hell, I shall love Thee there and from there I shall cry out that I love Thee for ever and ever.\" In this prayer is Dmitri's most redeeming value; it holds the key to Dmitri's character -- that which Zossima recognized. Dmitri is one of the \"folk\" of whom the elder spoke. He is one of those who may sin, but who still love God. That love, said Zossima, leads to salvation; such deep love the elder recognized early in his relationship with Dmitri. Henceforth, young Karamazov calls upon this love and its strength as he begins the slow journey toward regeneration and redemption."}
text: Book VIII. Mitya Chapter I. Kuzma Samsonov
  
  
  But Dmitri, to whom Grushenka, flying away to a new life, had left her
  last greetings, bidding him remember the hour of her love for ever, knew
  nothing of what had happened to her, and was at that moment in a condition
  of feverish agitation and activity. For the last two days he had been in
  such an inconceivable state of mind that he might easily have fallen ill
  with brain fever, as he said himself afterwards. Alyosha had not been able
  to find him the morning before, and Ivan had not succeeded in meeting him
  at the tavern on the same day. The people at his lodgings, by his orders,
  concealed his movements.
  
  He had spent those two days literally rushing in all directions,
  "struggling with his destiny and trying to save himself," as he expressed
  it himself afterwards, and for some hours he even made a dash out of the
  town on urgent business, terrible as it was to him to lose sight of
  Grushenka for a moment. All this was explained afterwards in detail, and
  confirmed by documentary evidence; but for the present we will only note
  the most essential incidents of those two terrible days immediately
  preceding the awful catastrophe, that broke so suddenly upon him.
  
  Though Grushenka had, it is true, loved him for an hour, genuinely and
  sincerely, yet she tortured him sometimes cruelly and mercilessly. The
  worst of it was that he could never tell what she meant to do. To prevail
  upon her by force or kindness was also impossible: she would yield to
  nothing. She would only have become angry and turned away from him
  altogether, he knew that well already. He suspected, quite correctly, that
  she, too, was passing through an inward struggle, and was in a state of
  extraordinary indecision, that she was making up her mind to something,
  and unable to determine upon it. And so, not without good reason, he
  divined, with a sinking heart, that at moments she must simply hate him
  and his passion. And so, perhaps, it was, but what was distressing
  Grushenka he did not understand. For him the whole tormenting question lay
  between him and Fyodor Pavlovitch.
  
  Here, we must note, by the way, one certain fact: he was firmly persuaded
  that Fyodor Pavlovitch would offer, or perhaps had offered, Grushenka
  lawful wedlock, and did not for a moment believe that the old voluptuary
  hoped to gain his object for three thousand roubles. Mitya had reached
  this conclusion from his knowledge of Grushenka and her character. That
  was how it was that he could believe at times that all Grushenka's
  uneasiness rose from not knowing which of them to choose, which was most
  to her advantage.
  
  Strange to say, during those days it never occurred to him to think of the
  approaching return of the "officer," that is, of the man who had been such
  a fatal influence in Grushenka's life, and whose arrival she was expecting
  with such emotion and dread. It is true that of late Grushenka had been
  very silent about it. Yet he was perfectly aware of a letter she had
  received a month ago from her seducer, and had heard of it from her own
  lips. He partly knew, too, what the letter contained. In a moment of spite
  Grushenka had shown him that letter, but to her astonishment he attached
  hardly any consequence to it. It would be hard to say why this was.
  Perhaps, weighed down by all the hideous horror of his struggle with his
  own father for this woman, he was incapable of imagining any danger more
  terrible, at any rate for the time. He simply did not believe in a suitor
  who suddenly turned up again after five years' disappearance, still less
  in his speedy arrival. Moreover, in the "officer's" first letter which had
  been shown to Mitya, the possibility of his new rival's visit was very
  vaguely suggested. The letter was very indefinite, high-flown, and full of
  sentimentality. It must be noted that Grushenka had concealed from him the
  last lines of the letter, in which his return was alluded to more
  definitely. He had, besides, noticed at that moment, he remembered
  afterwards, a certain involuntary proud contempt for this missive from
  Siberia on Grushenka's face. Grushenka told him nothing of what had passed
  later between her and this rival; so that by degrees he had completely
  forgotten the officer's existence.
  
  He felt that whatever might come later, whatever turn things might take,
  his final conflict with Fyodor Pavlovitch was close upon him, and must be
  decided before anything else. With a sinking heart he was expecting every
  moment Grushenka's decision, always believing that it would come suddenly,
  on the impulse of the moment. All of a sudden she would say to him: "Take
  me, I'm yours for ever," and it would all be over. He would seize her and
  bear her away at once to the ends of the earth. Oh, then he would bear her
  away at once, as far, far away as possible; to the farthest end of Russia,
  if not of the earth, then he would marry her, and settle down with her
  incognito, so that no one would know anything about them, there, here, or
  anywhere. Then, oh, then, a new life would begin at once!
  
  Of this different, reformed and "virtuous" life ("it must, it must be
  virtuous") he dreamed feverishly at every moment. He thirsted for that
  reformation and renewal. The filthy morass, in which he had sunk of his
  own free will, was too revolting to him, and, like very many men in such
  cases, he put faith above all in change of place. If only it were not for
  these people, if only it were not for these circumstances, if only he
  could fly away from this accursed place--he would be altogether
  regenerated, would enter on a new path. That was what he believed in, and
  what he was yearning for.
  
  But all this could only be on condition of the first, the _happy_ solution
  of the question. There was another possibility, a different and awful
  ending. Suddenly she might say to him: "Go away. I have just come to terms
  with Fyodor Pavlovitch. I am going to marry him and don't want you"--and
  then ... but then.... But Mitya did not know what would happen then. Up to
  the last hour he didn't know. That must be said to his credit. He had no
  definite intentions, had planned no crime. He was simply watching and
  spying in agony, while he prepared himself for the first, happy solution
  of his destiny. He drove away any other idea, in fact. But for that ending
  a quite different anxiety arose, a new, incidental, but yet fatal and
  insoluble difficulty presented itself.
  
  If she were to say to him: "I'm yours; take me away," how could he take
  her away? Where had he the means, the money to do it? It was just at this
  time that all sources of revenue from Fyodor Pavlovitch, doles which had
  gone on without interruption for so many years, ceased. Grushenka had
  money, of course, but with regard to this Mitya suddenly evinced
  extraordinary pride; he wanted to carry her away and begin the new life
  with her himself, at his own expense, not at hers. He could not conceive
  of taking her money, and the very idea caused him a pang of intense
  repulsion. I won't enlarge on this fact or analyze it here, but confine
  myself to remarking that this was his attitude at the moment. All this may
  have arisen indirectly and unconsciously from the secret stings of his
  conscience for the money of Katerina Ivanovna that he had dishonestly
  appropriated. "I've been a scoundrel to one of them, and I shall be a
  scoundrel again to the other directly," was his feeling then, as he
  explained after: "and when Grushenka knows, she won't care for such a
  scoundrel."
  
  Where then was he to get the means, where was he to get the fateful money?
  Without it, all would be lost and nothing could be done, "and only because
  I hadn't the money. Oh, the shame of it!"
  
  To anticipate things: he did, perhaps, know where to get the money, knew,
  perhaps, where it lay at that moment. I will say no more of this here, as
  it will all be clear later. But his chief trouble, I must explain however
  obscurely, lay in the fact that to have that sum he knew of, to _have the
  right_ to take it, he must first restore Katerina Ivanovna's three
  thousand--if not, "I'm a common pickpocket, I'm a scoundrel, and I don't
  want to begin a new life as a scoundrel," Mitya decided. And so he made up
  his mind to move heaven and earth to return Katerina Ivanovna that three
  thousand, and that _first of all_. The final stage of this decision, so to
  say, had been reached only during the last hours, that is, after his last
  interview with Alyosha, two days before, on the high-road, on the evening
  when Grushenka had insulted Katerina Ivanovna, and Mitya, after hearing
  Alyosha's account of it, had admitted that he was a scoundrel, and told
  him to tell Katerina Ivanovna so, if it could be any comfort to her. After
  parting from his brother on that night, he had felt in his frenzy that it
  would be better "to murder and rob some one than fail to pay my debt to
  Katya. I'd rather every one thought me a robber and a murderer, I'd rather
  go to Siberia than that Katya should have the right to say that I deceived
  her and stole her money, and used her money to run away with Grushenka and
  begin a new life! That I can't do!" So Mitya decided, grinding his teeth,
  and he might well fancy at times that his brain would give way. But
  meanwhile he went on struggling....
  
  Strange to say, though one would have supposed there was nothing left for
  him but despair--for what chance had he, with nothing in the world, to
  raise such a sum?--yet to the very end he persisted in hoping that he would
  get that three thousand, that the money would somehow come to him of
  itself, as though it might drop from heaven. That is just how it is with
  people who, like Dmitri, have never had anything to do with money, except
  to squander what has come to them by inheritance without any effort of
  their own, and have no notion how money is obtained. A whirl of the most
  fantastic notions took possession of his brain immediately after he had
  parted with Alyosha two days before, and threw his thoughts into a tangle
  of confusion. This is how it was he pitched first on a perfectly wild
  enterprise. And perhaps to men of that kind in such circumstances the most
  impossible, fantastic schemes occur first, and seem most practical.
  
  He suddenly determined to go to Samsonov, the merchant who was Grushenka's
  protector, and to propose a "scheme" to him, and by means of it to obtain
  from him at once the whole of the sum required. Of the commercial value of
  his scheme he had no doubt, not the slightest, and was only uncertain how
  Samsonov would look upon his freak, supposing he were to consider it from
  any but the commercial point of view. Though Mitya knew the merchant by
  sight, he was not acquainted with him and had never spoken a word to him.
  But for some unknown reason he had long entertained the conviction that
  the old reprobate, who was lying at death's door, would perhaps not at all
  object now to Grushenka's securing a respectable position, and marrying a
  man "to be depended upon." And he believed not only that he would not
  object, but that this was what he desired, and, if opportunity arose, that
  he would be ready to help. From some rumor, or perhaps from some stray
  word of Grushenka's, he had gathered further that the old man would
  perhaps prefer him to Fyodor Pavlovitch for Grushenka.
  
  Possibly many of the readers of my novel will feel that in reckoning on
  such assistance, and being ready to take his bride, so to speak, from the
  hands of her protector, Dmitri showed great coarseness and want of
  delicacy. I will only observe that Mitya looked upon Grushenka's past as
  something completely over. He looked on that past with infinite pity and
  resolved with all the fervor of his passion that when once Grushenka told
  him she loved him and would marry him, it would mean the beginning of a
  new Grushenka and a new Dmitri, free from every vice. They would forgive
  one another and would begin their lives afresh. As for Kuzma Samsonov,
  Dmitri looked upon him as a man who had exercised a fateful influence in
  that remote past of Grushenka's, though she had never loved him, and who
  was now himself a thing of the past, completely done with, and, so to say,
  non-existent. Besides, Mitya hardly looked upon him as a man at all, for
  it was known to every one in the town that he was only a shattered wreck,
  whose relations with Grushenka had changed their character and were now
  simply paternal, and that this had been so for a long time.
  
  In any case there was much simplicity on Mitya's part in all this, for in
  spite of all his vices, he was a very simple-hearted man. It was an
  instance of this simplicity that Mitya was seriously persuaded that, being
  on the eve of his departure for the next world, old Kuzma must sincerely
  repent of his past relations with Grushenka, and that she had no more
  devoted friend and protector in the world than this, now harmless old man.
  
  After his conversation with Alyosha, at the cross-roads, he hardly slept
  all night, and at ten o'clock next morning, he was at the house of
  Samsonov and telling the servant to announce him. It was a very large and
  gloomy old house of two stories, with a lodge and outhouses. In the lower
  story lived Samsonov's two married sons with their families, his old
  sister, and his unmarried daughter. In the lodge lived two of his clerks,
  one of whom also had a large family. Both the lodge and the lower story
  were overcrowded, but the old man kept the upper floor to himself, and
  would not even let the daughter live there with him, though she waited
  upon him, and in spite of her asthma was obliged at certain fixed hours,
  and at any time he might call her, to run upstairs to him from below.
  
  This upper floor contained a number of large rooms kept purely for show,
  furnished in the old-fashioned merchant style, with long monotonous rows
  of clumsy mahogany chairs along the walls, with glass chandeliers under
  shades, and gloomy mirrors on the walls. All these rooms were entirely
  empty and unused, for the old man kept to one room, a small, remote
  bedroom, where he was waited upon by an old servant with a kerchief on her
  head, and by a lad, who used to sit on the locker in the passage. Owing to
  his swollen legs, the old man could hardly walk at all, and was only
  rarely lifted from his leather arm-chair, when the old woman supporting
  him led him up and down the room once or twice. He was morose and taciturn
  even with this old woman.
  
  When he was informed of the arrival of the "captain," he at once refused
  to see him. But Mitya persisted and sent his name up again. Samsonov
  questioned the lad minutely: What he looked like? Whether he was drunk?
  Was he going to make a row? The answer he received was: that he was sober,
  but wouldn't go away. The old man again refused to see him. Then Mitya,
  who had foreseen this, and purposely brought pencil and paper with him,
  wrote clearly on the piece of paper the words: "On most important business
  closely concerning Agrafena Alexandrovna," and sent it up to the old man.
  
  After thinking a little Samsonov told the lad to take the visitor to the
  drawing-room, and sent the old woman downstairs with a summons to his
  younger son to come upstairs to him at once. This younger son, a man over
  six foot and of exceptional physical strength, who was closely-shaven and
  dressed in the European style, though his father still wore a kaftan and a
  beard, came at once without a comment. All the family trembled before the
  father. The old man had sent for this giant, not because he was afraid of
  the "captain" (he was by no means of a timorous temper), but in order to
  have a witness in case of any emergency. Supported by his son and the
  servant-lad, he waddled at last into the drawing-room. It may be assumed
  that he felt considerable curiosity. The drawing-room in which Mitya was
  awaiting him was a vast, dreary room that laid a weight of depression on
  the heart. It had a double row of windows, a gallery, marbled walls, and
  three immense chandeliers with glass lusters covered with shades.
  
  Mitya was sitting on a little chair at the entrance, awaiting his fate
  with nervous impatience. When the old man appeared at the opposite door,
  seventy feet away, Mitya jumped up at once, and with his long, military
  stride walked to meet him. Mitya was well dressed, in a frock-coat,
  buttoned up, with a round hat and black gloves in his hands, just as he
  had been three days before at the elder's, at the family meeting with his
  father and brothers. The old man waited for him, standing dignified and
  unbending, and Mitya felt at once that he had looked him through and
  through as he advanced. Mitya was greatly impressed, too, with Samsonov's
  immensely swollen face. His lower lip, which had always been thick, hung
  down now, looking like a bun. He bowed to his guest in dignified silence,
  motioned him to a low chair by the sofa, and, leaning on his son's arm he
  began lowering himself on to the sofa opposite, groaning painfully, so
  that Mitya, seeing his painful exertions, immediately felt remorseful and
  sensitively conscious of his insignificance in the presence of the
  dignified person he had ventured to disturb.
  
  "What is it you want of me, sir?" said the old man, deliberately,
  distinctly, severely, but courteously, when he was at last seated.
  
  Mitya started, leapt up, but sat down again. Then he began at once
  speaking with loud, nervous haste, gesticulating, and in a positive
  frenzy. He was unmistakably a man driven into a corner, on the brink of
  ruin, catching at the last straw, ready to sink if he failed. Old Samsonov
  probably grasped all this in an instant, though his face remained cold and
  immovable as a statue's.
  
  "Most honored sir, Kuzma Kuzmitch, you have no doubt heard more than once
  of my disputes with my father, Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, who robbed me
  of my inheritance from my mother ... seeing the whole town is gossiping
  about it ... for here every one's gossiping of what they shouldn't ... and
  besides, it might have reached you through Grushenka ... I beg your
  pardon, through Agrafena Alexandrovna ... Agrafena Alexandrovna, the lady
  for whom I have the highest respect and esteem ..."
  
  So Mitya began, and broke down at the first sentence. We will not
  reproduce his speech word for word, but will only summarize the gist of
  it. Three months ago, he said, he had of express intention (Mitya
  purposely used these words instead of "intentionally") consulted a lawyer
  in the chief town of the province, "a distinguished lawyer, Kuzma
  Kuzmitch, Pavel Pavlovitch Korneplodov. You have perhaps heard of him? A
  man of vast intellect, the mind of a statesman ... he knows you, too ...
  spoke of you in the highest terms ..." Mitya broke down again. But these
  breaks did not deter him. He leapt instantly over the gaps, and struggled
  on and on.
  
  This Korneplodov, after questioning him minutely, and inspecting the
  documents he was able to bring him (Mitya alluded somewhat vaguely to
  these documents, and slurred over the subject with special haste),
  reported that they certainly might take proceedings concerning the village
  of Tchermashnya, which ought, he said, to have come to him, Mitya, from
  his mother, and so checkmate the old villain, his father ... "because
  every door was not closed and justice might still find a loophole." In
  fact, he might reckon on an additional sum of six or even seven thousand
  roubles from Fyodor Pavlovitch, as Tchermashnya was worth, at least,
  twenty-five thousand, he might say twenty-eight thousand, in fact,
  "thirty, thirty, Kuzma Kuzmitch, and would you believe it, I didn't get
  seventeen from that heartless man!" So he, Mitya, had thrown the business
  up, for the time, knowing nothing about the law, but on coming here was
  struck dumb by a cross-claim made upon him (here Mitya went adrift again
  and again took a flying leap forward), "so will not you, excellent and
  honored Kuzma Kuzmitch, be willing to take up all my claims against that
  unnatural monster, and pay me a sum down of only three thousand?... You
  see, you cannot, in any case, lose over it. On my honor, my honor, I swear
  that. Quite the contrary, you may make six or seven thousand instead of
  three." Above all, he wanted this concluded that very day.
  
  "I'll do the business with you at a notary's, or whatever it is ... in
  fact, I'm ready to do anything.... I'll hand over all the deeds ...
  whatever you want, sign anything ... and we could draw up the agreement at
  once ... and if it were possible, if it were only possible, that very
  morning.... You could pay me that three thousand, for there isn't a
  capitalist in this town to compare with you, and so would save me from ...
  would save me, in fact ... for a good, I might say an honorable action....
  For I cherish the most honorable feelings for a certain person, whom you
  know well, and care for as a father. I would not have come, indeed, if it
  had not been as a father. And, indeed, it's a struggle of three in this
  business, for it's fate--that's a fearful thing, Kuzma Kuzmitch! A tragedy,
  Kuzma Kuzmitch, a tragedy! And as you've dropped out long ago, it's a tug-
  of-war between two. I'm expressing it awkwardly, perhaps, but I'm not a
  literary man. You see, I'm on the one side, and that monster on the other.
  So you must choose. It's either I or the monster. It all lies in your
  hands--the fate of three lives, and the happiness of two.... Excuse me, I'm
  making a mess of it, but you understand ... I see from your venerable eyes
  that you understand ... and if you don't understand, I'm done for ... so
  you see!"
  
  Mitya broke off his clumsy speech with that, "so you see!" and jumping up
  from his seat, awaited the answer to his foolish proposal. At the last
  phrase he had suddenly become hopelessly aware that it had all fallen
  flat, above all, that he had been talking utter nonsense.
  
  "How strange it is! On the way here it seemed all right, and now it's
  nothing but nonsense." The idea suddenly dawned on his despairing mind.
  All the while he had been talking, the old man sat motionless, watching
  him with an icy expression in his eyes. After keeping him for a moment in
  suspense, Kuzma Kuzmitch pronounced at last in the most positive and
  chilling tone:
  
  "Excuse me, we don't undertake such business."
  
  Mitya suddenly felt his legs growing weak under him.
  
  "What am I to do now, Kuzma Kuzmitch?" he muttered, with a pale smile. "I
  suppose it's all up with me--what do you think?"
  
  "Excuse me...."
  
  Mitya remained standing, staring motionless. He suddenly noticed a
  movement in the old man's face. He started.
  
  "You see, sir, business of that sort's not in our line," said the old man
  slowly. "There's the court, and the lawyers--it's a perfect misery. But if
  you like, there is a man here you might apply to."
  
  "Good heavens! Who is it? You're my salvation, Kuzma Kuzmitch," faltered
  Mitya.
  
  "He doesn't live here, and he's not here just now. He is a peasant, he
  does business in timber. His name is Lyagavy. He's been haggling with
  Fyodor Pavlovitch for the last year, over your copse at Tchermashnya. They
  can't agree on the price, maybe you've heard? Now he's come back again and
  is staying with the priest at Ilyinskoe, about twelve versts from the
  Volovya station. He wrote to me, too, about the business of the copse,
  asking my advice. Fyodor Pavlovitch means to go and see him himself. So if
  you were to be beforehand with Fyodor Pavlovitch and to make Lyagavy the
  offer you've made me, he might possibly--"
  
  "A brilliant idea!" Mitya interrupted ecstatically. "He's the very man, it
  would just suit him. He's haggling with him for it, being asked too much,
  and here he would have all the documents entitling him to the property
  itself. Ha ha ha!"
  
  And Mitya suddenly went off into his short, wooden laugh, startling
  Samsonov.
  
  "How can I thank you, Kuzma Kuzmitch?" cried Mitya effusively.
  
  "Don't mention it," said Samsonov, inclining his head.
  
  "But you don't know, you've saved me. Oh, it was a true presentiment
  brought me to you.... So now to this priest!"
  
  "No need of thanks."
  
  "I'll make haste and fly there. I'm afraid I've overtaxed your strength. I
  shall never forget it. It's a Russian says that, Kuzma Kuzmitch, a R-r-
  russian!"
  
  "To be sure!"
  
  Mitya seized his hand to press it, but there was a malignant gleam in the
  old man's eye. Mitya drew back his hand, but at once blamed himself for
  his mistrustfulness.
  
  "It's because he's tired," he thought.
  
  "For her sake! For her sake, Kuzma Kuzmitch! You understand that it's for
  her," he cried, his voice ringing through the room. He bowed, turned
  sharply round, and with the same long stride walked to the door without
  looking back. He was trembling with delight.
  
  "Everything was on the verge of ruin and my guardian angel saved me," was
  the thought in his mind. And if such a business man as Samsonov (a most
  worthy old man, and what dignity!) had suggested this course, then ...
  then success was assured. He would fly off immediately. "I will be back
  before night, I shall be back at night and the thing is done. Could the
  old man have been laughing at me?" exclaimed Mitya, as he strode towards
  his lodging. He could, of course, imagine nothing, but that the advice was
  practical "from such a business man" with an understanding of the
  business, with an understanding of this Lyagavy (curious surname!). Or--the
  old man was laughing at him.
  
  Alas! The second alternative was the correct one. Long afterwards, when
  the catastrophe had happened, old Samsonov himself confessed, laughing,
  that he had made a fool of the "captain." He was a cold, spiteful and
  sarcastic man, liable to violent antipathies. Whether it was the
  "captain's" excited face, or the foolish conviction of the "rake and
  spendthrift," that he, Samsonov, could be taken in by such a cock-and-bull
  story as his scheme, or his jealousy of Grushenka, in whose name this
  "scapegrace" had rushed in on him with such a tale to get money which
  worked on the old man, I can't tell. But at the instant when Mitya stood
  before him, feeling his legs grow weak under him, and frantically
  exclaiming that he was ruined, at that moment the old man looked at him
  with intense spite, and resolved to make a laughing-stock of him. When
  Mitya had gone, Kuzma Kuzmitch, white with rage, turned to his son and
  bade him see to it that that beggar be never seen again, and never
  admitted even into the yard, or else he'd--
  
  He did not utter his threat. But even his son, who often saw him enraged,
  trembled with fear. For a whole hour afterwards, the old man was shaking
  with anger, and by evening he was worse, and sent for the doctor.
  
  
  
  
  Chapter II. Lyagavy
  
  
  So he must drive at full speed, and he had not the money for horses. He
  had forty kopecks, and that was all, all that was left after so many years
  of prosperity! But he had at home an old silver watch which had long
  ceased to go. He snatched it up and carried it to a Jewish watchmaker who
  had a shop in the market-place. The Jew gave him six roubles for it.
  
  "And I didn't expect that," cried Mitya, ecstatically. (He was still in a
  state of ecstasy.) He seized his six roubles and ran home. At home he
  borrowed three roubles from the people of the house, who loved him so much
  that they were pleased to give it him, though it was all they had. Mitya
  in his excitement told them on the spot that his fate would be decided
  that day, and he described, in desperate haste, the whole scheme he had
  put before Samsonov, the latter's decision, his own hopes for the future,
  and so on. These people had been told many of their lodger's secrets
  before, and so looked upon him as a gentleman who was not at all proud,
  and almost one of themselves. Having thus collected nine roubles Mitya
  sent for posting-horses to take him to the Volovya station. This was how
  the fact came to be remembered and established that "at midday, on the day
  before the event, Mitya had not a farthing, and that he had sold his watch
  to get money and had borrowed three roubles from his landlord, all in the
  presence of witnesses."
  
  I note this fact, later on it will be apparent why I do so.
  
  Though he was radiant with the joyful anticipation that he would at last
  solve all his difficulties, yet, as he drew near Volovya station, he
  trembled at the thought of what Grushenka might be doing in his absence.
  What if she made up her mind to-day to go to Fyodor Pavlovitch? This was
  why he had gone off without telling her and why he left orders with his
  landlady not to let out where he had gone, if any one came to inquire for
  him.
  
  "I must, I must get back to-night," he repeated, as he was jolted along in
  the cart, "and I dare say I shall have to bring this Lyagavy back here ...
  to draw up the deed." So mused Mitya, with a throbbing heart, but alas!
  his dreams were not fated to be carried out.
  
  To begin with, he was late, taking a short cut from Volovya station which
  turned out to be eighteen versts instead of twelve. Secondly, he did not
  find the priest at home at Ilyinskoe; he had gone off to a neighboring
  village. While Mitya, setting off there with the same exhausted horses,
  was looking for him, it was almost dark.
  
  The priest, a shy and amiable looking little man, informed him at once
  that though Lyagavy had been staying with him at first, he was now at
  Suhoy Possyolok, that he was staying the night in the forester's cottage,
  as he was buying timber there too. At Mitya's urgent request that he would
  take him to Lyagavy at once, and by so doing "save him, so to speak," the
  priest agreed, after some demur, to conduct him to Suhoy Possyolok; his
  curiosity was obviously aroused. But, unluckily, he advised their going on
  foot, as it would not be "much over" a verst. Mitya, of course, agreed,
  and marched off with his yard-long strides, so that the poor priest almost
  ran after him. He was a very cautious man, though not old.
  
  Mitya at once began talking to him, too, of his plans, nervously and
  excitedly asking advice in regard to Lyagavy, and talking all the way. The
  priest listened attentively, but gave little advice. He turned off Mitya's
  questions with: "I don't know. Ah, I can't say. How can I tell?" and so
  on. When Mitya began to speak of his quarrel with his father over his
  inheritance, the priest was positively alarmed, as he was in some way
  dependent on Fyodor Pavlovitch. He inquired, however, with surprise, why
  he called the peasant-trader Gorstkin, Lyagavy, and obligingly explained
  to Mitya that, though the man's name really was Lyagavy, he was never
  called so, as he would be grievously offended at the name, and that he
  must be sure to call him Gorstkin, "or you'll do nothing with him; he
  won't even listen to you," said the priest in conclusion.
  
  Mitya was somewhat surprised for a moment, and explained that that was
  what Samsonov had called him. On hearing this fact, the priest dropped the
  subject, though he would have done well to put into words his doubt
  whether, if Samsonov had sent him to that peasant, calling him Lyagavy,
  there was not something wrong about it and he was turning him into
  ridicule. But Mitya had no time to pause over such trifles. He hurried,
  striding along, and only when he reached Suhoy Possyolok did he realize
  that they had come not one verst, nor one and a half, but at least three.
  This annoyed him, but he controlled himself.
  
  They went into the hut. The forester lived in one half of the hut, and
  Gorstkin was lodging in the other, the better room the other side of the
  passage. They went into that room and lighted a tallow candle. The hut was
  extremely overheated. On the table there was a samovar that had gone out,
  a tray with cups, an empty rum bottle, a bottle of vodka partly full, and
  some half-eaten crusts of wheaten bread. The visitor himself lay stretched
  at full length on the bench, with his coat crushed up under his head for a
  pillow, snoring heavily. Mitya stood in perplexity.
  
  "Of course I must wake him. My business is too important. I've come in
  such haste. I'm in a hurry to get back to-day," he said in great
  agitation. But the priest and the forester stood in silence, not giving
  their opinion. Mitya went up and began trying to wake him himself; he
  tried vigorously, but the sleeper did not wake.
  
  "He's drunk," Mitya decided. "Good Lord! What am I to do? What am I to
  do?" And, terribly impatient, he began pulling him by the arms, by the
  legs, shaking his head, lifting him up and making him sit on the bench.
  Yet, after prolonged exertions, he could only succeed in getting the
  drunken man to utter absurd grunts, and violent, but inarticulate oaths.
  
  "No, you'd better wait a little," the priest pronounced at last, "for he's
  obviously not in a fit state."
  
  "He's been drinking the whole day," the forester chimed in.
  
  "Good heavens!" cried Mitya. "If only you knew how important it is to me
  and how desperate I am!"
  
  "No, you'd better wait till morning," the priest repeated.
  
  "Till morning? Mercy! that's impossible!"
  
  And in his despair he was on the point of attacking the sleeping man
  again, but stopped short at once, realizing the uselessness of his
  efforts. The priest said nothing, the sleepy forester looked gloomy.
  
  "What terrible tragedies real life contrives for people," said Mitya, in
  complete despair. The perspiration was streaming down his face. The priest
  seized the moment to put before him, very reasonably, that, even if he
  succeeded in wakening the man, he would still be drunk and incapable of
  conversation. "And your business is important," he said, "so you'd
  certainly better put it off till morning." With a gesture of despair Mitya
  agreed.
  
  "Father, I will stay here with a light, and seize the favorable moment. As
  soon as he wakes I'll begin. I'll pay you for the light," he said to the
  forester, "for the night's lodging, too; you'll remember Dmitri Karamazov.
  Only, Father, I don't know what we're to do with you. Where will you
  sleep?"
  
  "No, I'm going home. I'll take his horse and get home," he said,
  indicating the forester. "And now I'll say good-by. I wish you all
  success."
  
  So it was settled. The priest rode off on the forester's horse, delighted
  to escape, though he shook his head uneasily, wondering whether he ought
  not next day to inform his benefactor Fyodor Pavlovitch of this curious
  incident, "or he may in an unlucky hour hear of it, be angry, and withdraw
  his favor."
  
  The forester, scratching himself, went back to his room without a word,
  and Mitya sat on the bench to "catch the favorable moment," as he
  expressed it. Profound dejection clung about his soul like a heavy mist. A
  profound, intense dejection! He sat thinking, but could reach no
  conclusion. The candle burnt dimly, a cricket chirped; it became
  insufferably close in the overheated room. He suddenly pictured the
  garden, the path behind the garden, the door of his father's house
  mysteriously opening and Grushenka running in. He leapt up from the bench.
  
  "It's a tragedy!" he said, grinding his teeth. Mechanically he went up to
  the sleeping man and looked in his face. He was a lean, middle-aged
  peasant, with a very long face, flaxen curls, and a long, thin, reddish
  beard, wearing a blue cotton shirt and a black waistcoat, from the pocket
  of which peeped the chain of a silver watch. Mitya looked at his face with
  intense hatred, and for some unknown reason his curly hair particularly
  irritated him.
  
  What was insufferably humiliating was, that after leaving things of such
  importance and making such sacrifices, he, Mitya, utterly worn out, should
  with business of such urgency be standing over this dolt on whom his whole
  fate depended, while he snored as though there were nothing the matter, as
  though he'd dropped from another planet.
  
  "Oh, the irony of fate!" cried Mitya, and, quite losing his head, he fell
  again to rousing the tipsy peasant. He roused him with a sort of ferocity,
  pulled at him, pushed him, even beat him; but after five minutes of vain
  exertions, he returned to his bench in helpless despair, and sat down.
  
  "Stupid! Stupid!" cried Mitya. "And how dishonorable it all is!" something
  made him add. His head began to ache horribly. "Should he fling it up and
  go away altogether?" he wondered. "No, wait till to-morrow now. I'll stay
  on purpose. What else did I come for? Besides, I've no means of going. How
  am I to get away from here now? Oh, the idiocy of it!"
  
  But his head ached more and more. He sat without moving, and unconsciously
  dozed off and fell asleep as he sat. He seemed to have slept for two hours
  or more. He was waked up by his head aching so unbearably that he could
  have screamed. There was a hammering in his temples, and the top of his
  head ached. It was a long time before he could wake up fully and
  understand what had happened to him.
  
  At last he realized that the room was full of charcoal fumes from the
  stove, and that he might die of suffocation. And the drunken peasant still
  lay snoring. The candle guttered and was about to go out. Mitya cried out,
  and ran staggering across the passage into the forester's room. The
  forester waked up at once, but hearing that the other room was full of
  fumes, to Mitya's surprise and annoyance, accepted the fact with strange
  unconcern, though he did go to see to it.
  
  "But he's dead, he's dead! and ... what am I to do then?" cried Mitya
  frantically.
  
  They threw open the doors, opened a window and the chimney. Mitya brought
  a pail of water from the passage. First he wetted his own head, then,
  finding a rag of some sort, dipped it into the water, and put it on
  Lyagavy's head. The forester still treated the matter contemptuously, and
  when he opened the window said grumpily:
  
  "It'll be all right, now."
  
  He went back to sleep, leaving Mitya a lighted lantern. Mitya fussed about
  the drunken peasant for half an hour, wetting his head, and gravely
  resolved not to sleep all night. But he was so worn out that when he sat
  down for a moment to take breath, he closed his eyes, unconsciously
  stretched himself full length on the bench and slept like the dead.
  
  It was dreadfully late when he waked. It was somewhere about nine o'clock.
  The sun was shining brightly in the two little windows of the hut. The
  curly-headed peasant was sitting on the bench and had his coat on. He had
  another samovar and another bottle in front of him. Yesterday's bottle had
  already been finished, and the new one was more than half empty. Mitya
  jumped up and saw at once that the cursed peasant was drunk again,
  hopelessly and incurably. He stared at him for a moment with wide opened
  eyes. The peasant was silently and slyly watching him, with insulting
  composure, and even a sort of contemptuous condescension, so Mitya
  fancied. He rushed up to him.
  
  "Excuse me, you see ... I ... you've most likely heard from the forester
  here in the hut. I'm Lieutenant Dmitri Karamazov, the son of the old
  Karamazov whose copse you are buying."
  
  "That's a lie!" said the peasant, calmly and confidently.
  
  "A lie? You know Fyodor Pavlovitch?"
  
  "I don't know any of your Fyodor Pavlovitches," said the peasant, speaking
  thickly.
  
  "You're bargaining with him for the copse, for the copse. Do wake up, and
  collect yourself. Father Pavel of Ilyinskoe brought me here. You wrote to
  Samsonov, and he has sent me to you," Mitya gasped breathlessly.
  
  "You're l-lying!" Lyagavy blurted out again. Mitya's legs went cold.
  
  "For mercy's sake! It isn't a joke! You're drunk, perhaps. Yet you can
  speak and understand ... or else ... I understand nothing!"
  
  "You're a painter!"
  
  "For mercy's sake! I'm Karamazov, Dmitri Karamazov. I have an offer to
  make you, an advantageous offer ... very advantageous offer, concerning
  the copse!"
  
  The peasant stroked his beard importantly.
  
  "No, you've contracted for the job and turned out a scamp. You're a
  scoundrel!"
  
  "I assure you you're mistaken," cried Mitya, wringing his hands in
  despair. The peasant still stroked his beard, and suddenly screwed up his
  eyes cunningly.
  
  "No, you show me this: you tell me the law that allows roguery. D'you
  hear? You're a scoundrel! Do you understand that?"
  
  Mitya stepped back gloomily, and suddenly "something seemed to hit him on
  the head," as he said afterwards. In an instant a light seemed to dawn in
  his mind, "a light was kindled and I grasped it all." He stood, stupefied,
  wondering how he, after all a man of intelligence, could have yielded to
  such folly, have been led into such an adventure, and have kept it up for
  almost twenty-four hours, fussing round this Lyagavy, wetting his head.
  
  "Why, the man's drunk, dead drunk, and he'll go on drinking now for a
  week; what's the use of waiting here? And what if Samsonov sent me here on
  purpose? What if she--? Oh, God, what have I done?"
  
  The peasant sat watching him and grinning. Another time Mitya might have
  killed the fool in a fury, but now he felt as weak as a child. He went
  quietly to the bench, took up his overcoat, put it on without a word, and
  went out of the hut. He did not find the forester in the next room; there
  was no one there. He took fifty kopecks in small change out of his pocket
  and put them on the table for his night's lodging, the candle, and the
  trouble he had given. Coming out of the hut he saw nothing but forest all
  round. He walked at hazard, not knowing which way to turn out of the hut,
  to the right or to the left. Hurrying there the evening before with the
  priest, he had not noticed the road. He had no revengeful feeling for
  anybody, even for Samsonov, in his heart. He strode along a narrow forest
  path, aimless, dazed, without heeding where he was going. A child could
  have knocked him down, so weak was he in body and soul. He got out of the
  forest somehow, however, and a vista of fields, bare after the harvest,
  stretched as far as the eye could see.
  
  "What despair! What death all round!" he repeated, striding on and on.
  
  He was saved by meeting an old merchant who was being driven across
  country in a hired trap. When he overtook him, Mitya asked the way, and it
  turned out that the old merchant, too, was going to Volovya. After some
  discussion Mitya got into the trap. Three hours later they arrived. At
  Volovya, Mitya at once ordered posting-horses to drive to the town, and
  suddenly realized that he was appallingly hungry. While the horses were
  being harnessed, an omelette was prepared for him. He ate it all in an
  instant, ate a huge hunk of bread, ate a sausage, and swallowed three
  glasses of vodka. After eating, his spirits and his heart grew lighter. He
  flew towards the town, urged on the driver, and suddenly made a new and
  "unalterable" plan to procure that "accursed money" before evening. "And
  to think, only to think that a man's life should be ruined for the sake of
  that paltry three thousand!" he cried, contemptuously. "I'll settle it to-
  day." And if it had not been for the thought of Grushenka and of what
  might have happened to her, which never left him, he would perhaps have
  become quite cheerful again.... But the thought of her was stabbing him to
  the heart every moment, like a sharp knife.
  
  At last they arrived, and Mitya at once ran to Grushenka.
  
  
  
  
  Chapter III. Gold-Mines
  
  
  This was the visit of Mitya of which Grushenka had spoken to Rakitin with
  such horror. She was just then expecting the "message," and was much
  relieved that Mitya had not been to see her that day or the day before.
  She hoped that "please God he won't come till I'm gone away," and he
  suddenly burst in on her. The rest we know already. To get him off her
  hands she suggested at once that he should walk with her to Samsonov's,
  where she said she absolutely must go "to settle his accounts," and when
  Mitya accompanied her at once, she said good-by to him at the gate, making
  him promise to come at twelve o'clock to take her home again. Mitya, too,
  was delighted at this arrangement. If she was sitting at Samsonov's she
  could not be going to Fyodor Pavlovitch's, "if only she's not lying," he
  added at once. But he thought she was not lying from what he saw.
  
  He was that sort of jealous man who, in the absence of the beloved woman,
  at once invents all sorts of awful fancies of what may be happening to
  her, and how she may be betraying him, but, when shaken, heartbroken,
  convinced of her faithlessness, he runs back to her; at the first glance
  at her face, her gay, laughing, affectionate face, he revives at once,
  lays aside all suspicion and with joyful shame abuses himself for his
  jealousy.
  
  After leaving Grushenka at the gate he rushed home. Oh, he had so much
  still to do that day! But a load had been lifted from his heart, anyway.
  
  "Now I must only make haste and find out from Smerdyakov whether anything
  happened there last night, whether, by any chance, she went to Fyodor
  Pavlovitch; ough!" floated through his mind.
  
  Before he had time to reach his lodging, jealousy had surged up again in
  his restless heart.
  
  Jealousy! "Othello was not jealous, he was trustful," observed Pushkin.
  And that remark alone is enough to show the deep insight of our great
  poet. Othello's soul was shattered and his whole outlook clouded simply
  because _his ideal was destroyed_. But Othello did not begin hiding,
  spying, peeping. He was trustful, on the contrary. He had to be led up,
  pushed on, excited with great difficulty before he could entertain the
  idea of deceit. The truly jealous man is not like that. It is impossible
  to picture to oneself the shame and moral degradation to which the jealous
  man can descend without a qualm of conscience. And yet it's not as though
  the jealous were all vulgar and base souls. On the contrary, a man of
  lofty feelings, whose love is pure and full of self-sacrifice, may yet
  hide under tables, bribe the vilest people, and be familiar with the
  lowest ignominy of spying and eavesdropping.
  
  Othello was incapable of making up his mind to faithlessness--not incapable
  of forgiving it, but of making up his mind to it--though his soul was as
  innocent and free from malice as a babe's. It is not so with the really
  jealous man. It is hard to imagine what some jealous men can make up their
  mind to and overlook, and what they can forgive! The jealous are the
  readiest of all to forgive, and all women know it. The jealous man can
  forgive extraordinarily quickly (though, of course, after a violent
  scene), and he is able to forgive infidelity almost conclusively proved,
  the very kisses and embraces he has seen, if only he can somehow be
  convinced that it has all been "for the last time," and that his rival
  will vanish from that day forward, will depart to the ends of the earth,
  or that he himself will carry her away somewhere, where that dreaded rival
  will not get near her. Of course the reconciliation is only for an hour.
  For, even if the rival did disappear next day, he would invent another one
  and would be jealous of him. And one might wonder what there was in a love
  that had to be so watched over, what a love could be worth that needed
  such strenuous guarding. But that the jealous will never understand. And
  yet among them are men of noble hearts. It is remarkable, too, that those
  very men of noble hearts, standing hidden in some cupboard, listening and
  spying, never feel the stings of conscience at that moment, anyway, though
  they understand clearly enough with their "noble hearts" the shameful
  depths to which they have voluntarily sunk.
  
  At the sight of Grushenka, Mitya's jealousy vanished, and, for an instant
  he became trustful and generous, and positively despised himself for his
  evil feelings. But it only proved that, in his love for the woman, there
  was an element of something far higher than he himself imagined, that it
  was not only a sensual passion, not only the "curve of her body," of which
  he had talked to Alyosha. But, as soon as Grushenka had gone, Mitya began
  to suspect her of all the low cunning of faithlessness, and he felt no
  sting of conscience at it.
  
  And so jealousy surged up in him again. He had, in any case, to make
  haste. The first thing to be done was to get hold of at least a small,
  temporary loan of money. The nine roubles had almost all gone on his
  expedition. And, as we all know, one can't take a step without money. But
  he had thought over in the cart where he could get a loan. He had a brace
  of fine dueling pistols in a case, which he had not pawned till then
  because he prized them above all his possessions.
  
  In the "Metropolis" tavern he had some time since made acquaintance with a
  young official and had learnt that this very opulent bachelor was
  passionately fond of weapons. He used to buy pistols, revolvers, daggers,
  hang them on his wall and show them to acquaintances. He prided himself on
  them, and was quite a specialist on the mechanism of the revolver. Mitya,
  without stopping to think, went straight to him, and offered to pawn his
  pistols to him for ten roubles. The official, delighted, began trying to
  persuade him to sell them outright. But Mitya would not consent, so the
  young man gave him ten roubles, protesting that nothing would induce him
  to take interest. They parted friends.
  
  Mitya was in haste; he rushed towards Fyodor Pavlovitch's by the back way,
  to his arbor, to get hold of Smerdyakov as soon as possible. In this way
  the fact was established that three or four hours before a certain event,
  of which I shall speak later on, Mitya had not a farthing, and pawned for
  ten roubles a possession he valued, though, three hours later, he was in
  possession of thousands.... But I am anticipating. From Marya Kondratyevna
  (the woman living near Fyodor Pavlovitch's) he learned the very disturbing
  fact of Smerdyakov's illness. He heard the story of his fall in the
  cellar, his fit, the doctor's visit, Fyodor Pavlovitch's anxiety; he heard
  with interest, too, that his brother Ivan had set off that morning for
  Moscow.
  
  "Then he must have driven through Volovya before me," thought Dmitri, but
  he was terribly distressed about Smerdyakov. "What will happen now? Who'll
  keep watch for me? Who'll bring me word?" he thought. He began greedily
  questioning the women whether they had seen anything the evening before.
  They quite understood what he was trying to find out, and completely
  reassured him. No one had been there. Ivan Fyodorovitch had been there the
  night; everything had been perfectly as usual. Mitya grew thoughtful. He
  would certainly have to keep watch to-day, but where? Here or at
  Samsonov's gate? He decided that he must be on the look out both here and
  there, and meanwhile ... meanwhile.... The difficulty was that he had to
  carry out the new plan that he had made on the journey back. He was sure
  of its success, but he must not delay acting upon it. Mitya resolved to
  sacrifice an hour to it: "In an hour I shall know everything, I shall
  settle everything, and then, then, first of all to Samsonov's. I'll
  inquire whether Grushenka's there and instantly be back here again, stay
  till eleven, and then to Samsonov's again to bring her home." This was
  what he decided.
  
  He flew home, washed, combed his hair, brushed his clothes, dressed, and
  went to Madame Hohlakov's. Alas! he had built his hopes on her. He had
  resolved to borrow three thousand from that lady. And what was more, he
  felt suddenly convinced that she would not refuse to lend it to him. It
  may be wondered why, if he felt so certain, he had not gone to her at
  first, one of his own sort, so to speak, instead of to Samsonov, a man he
  did not know, who was not of his own class, and to whom he hardly knew how
  to speak.
  
  But the fact was that he had never known Madame Hohlakov well, and had
  seen nothing of her for the last month, and that he knew she could not
  endure him. She had detested him from the first because he was engaged to
  Katerina Ivanovna, while she had, for some reason, suddenly conceived the
  desire that Katerina Ivanovna should throw him over, and marry the
  "charming, chivalrously refined Ivan, who had such excellent manners."
  Mitya's manners she detested. Mitya positively laughed at her, and had
  once said about her that she was just as lively and at her ease as she was
  uncultivated. But that morning in the cart a brilliant idea had struck
  him: "If she is so anxious I should not marry Katerina Ivanovna" (and he
  knew she was positively hysterical upon the subject) "why should she
  refuse me now that three thousand, just to enable me to leave Katya and
  get away from her for ever. These spoilt fine ladies, if they set their
  hearts on anything, will spare no expense to satisfy their caprice.
  Besides, she's so rich," Mitya argued.
  
  As for his "plan" it was just the same as before; it consisted of the
  offer of his rights to Tchermashnya--but not with a commercial object, as
  it had been with Samsonov, not trying to allure the lady with the
  possibility of making a profit of six or seven thousand--but simply as a
  security for the debt. As he worked out this new idea, Mitya was enchanted
  with it, but so it always was with him in all his undertakings, in all his
  sudden decisions. He gave himself up to every new idea with passionate
  enthusiasm. Yet, when he mounted the steps of Madame Hohlakov's house he
  felt a shiver of fear run down his spine. At that moment he saw fully, as
  a mathematical certainty, that this was his last hope, that if this broke
  down, nothing else was left him in the world, but to "rob and murder some
  one for the three thousand." It was half-past seven when he rang at the
  bell.
  
  At first fortune seemed to smile upon him. As soon as he was announced he
  was received with extraordinary rapidity. "As though she were waiting for
  me," thought Mitya, and as soon as he had been led to the drawing-room,
  the lady of the house herself ran in, and declared at once that she was
  expecting him.
  
  "I was expecting you! I was expecting you! Though I'd no reason to suppose
  you would come to see me, as you will admit yourself. Yet, I did expect
  you. You may marvel at my instinct, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, but I was
  convinced all the morning that you would come."
  
  "That is certainly wonderful, madam," observed Mitya, sitting down limply,
  "but I have come to you on a matter of great importance.... On a matter of
  supreme importance for me, that is, madam ... for me alone ... and I
  hasten--"
  
  "I know you've come on most important business, Dmitri Fyodorovitch; it's
  not a case of presentiment, no reactionary harking back to the miraculous
  (have you heard about Father Zossima?). This is a case of mathematics: you
  couldn't help coming, after all that has passed with Katerina Ivanovna;
  you couldn't, you couldn't, that's a mathematical certainty."
  
  "The realism of actual life, madam, that's what it is. But allow me to
  explain--"
  
  "Realism indeed, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. I'm all for realism now. I've seen
  too much of miracles. You've heard that Father Zossima is dead?"
  
  "No, madam, it's the first time I've heard of it." Mitya was a little
  surprised. The image of Alyosha rose to his mind.
  
  "Last night, and only imagine--"
  
  "Madam," said Mitya, "I can imagine nothing except that I'm in a desperate
  position, and that if you don't help me, everything will come to grief,
  and I first of all. Excuse me for the triviality of the expression, but
  I'm in a fever--"
  
  "I know, I know that you're in a fever. You could hardly fail to be, and
  whatever you may say to me, I know beforehand. I have long been thinking
  over your destiny, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, I am watching over it and studying
  it.... Oh, believe me, I'm an experienced doctor of the soul, Dmitri
  Fyodorovitch."
  
  "Madam, if you are an experienced doctor, I'm certainly an experienced
  patient," said Mitya, with an effort to be polite, "and I feel that if you
  are watching over my destiny in this way, you will come to my help in my
  ruin, and so allow me, at least to explain to you the plan with which I
  have ventured to come to you ... and what I am hoping of you.... I have
  come, madam--"
  
  "Don't explain it. It's of secondary importance. But as for help, you're
  not the first I have helped, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. You have most likely
  heard of my cousin, Madame Belmesov. Her husband was ruined, 'had come to
  grief,' as you characteristically express it, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. I
  recommended him to take to horse-breeding, and now he's doing well. Have
  you any idea of horse-breeding, Dmitri Fyodorovitch?"
  
  "Not the faintest, madam; ah, madam, not the faintest!" cried Mitya, in
  nervous impatience, positively starting from his seat. "I simply implore
  you, madam, to listen to me. Only give me two minutes of free speech that
  I may just explain to you everything, the whole plan with which I have
  come. Besides, I am short of time. I'm in a fearful hurry," Mitya cried
  hysterically, feeling that she was just going to begin talking again, and
  hoping to cut her short. "I have come in despair ... in the last gasp of
  despair, to beg you to lend me the sum of three thousand, a loan, but on
  safe, most safe security, madam, with the most trustworthy guarantees!
  Only let me explain--"
  
  "You must tell me all that afterwards, afterwards!" Madame Hohlakov with a
  gesture demanded silence in her turn, "and whatever you may tell me, I
  know it all beforehand; I've told you so already. You ask for a certain
  sum, for three thousand, but I can give you more, immeasurably more, I
  will save you, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, but you must listen to me."
  
  Mitya started from his seat again.
  
  "Madam, will you really be so good!" he cried, with strong feeling. "Good
  God, you've saved me! You have saved a man from a violent death, from a
  bullet.... My eternal gratitude--"
  
  "I will give you more, infinitely more than three thousand!" cried Madame
  Hohlakov, looking with a radiant smile at Mitya's ecstasy.
  
  "Infinitely? But I don't need so much. I only need that fatal three
  thousand, and on my part I can give security for that sum with infinite
  gratitude, and I propose a plan which--"
  
  "Enough, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, it's said and done." Madame Hohlakov cut him
  short, with the modest triumph of beneficence: "I have promised to save
  you, and I will save you. I will save you as I did Belmesov. What do you
  think of the gold-mines, Dmitri Fyodorovitch?"
  
  "Of the gold-mines, madam? I have never thought anything about them."
  
  "But I have thought of them for you. Thought of them over and over again.
  I have been watching you for the last month. I've watched you a hundred
  times as you've walked past, saying to myself: That's a man of energy who
  ought to be at the gold-mines. I've studied your gait and come to the
  conclusion: that's a man who would find gold."
  
  "From my gait, madam?" said Mitya, smiling.
  
  "Yes, from your gait. You surely don't deny that character can be told
  from the gait, Dmitri Fyodorovitch? Science supports the idea. I'm all for
  science and realism now. After all this business with Father Zossima,
  which has so upset me, from this very day I'm a realist and I want to
  devote myself to practical usefulness. I'm cured. 'Enough!' as Turgenev
  says."
  
  "But, madam, the three thousand you so generously promised to lend me--"
  
  "It is yours, Dmitri Fyodorovitch," Madame Hohlakov cut in at once. "The
  money is as good as in your pocket, not three thousand, but three million,
  Dmitri Fyodorovitch, in less than no time. I'll make you a present of the
  idea: you shall find gold-mines, make millions, return and become a
  leading man, and wake us up and lead us to better things. Are we to leave
  it all to the Jews? You will found institutions and enterprises of all
  sorts. You will help the poor, and they will bless you. This is the age of
  railways, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. You'll become famous and indispensable to
  the Department of Finance, which is so badly off at present. The
  depreciation of the rouble keeps me awake at night, Dmitri Fyodorovitch;
  people don't know that side of me--"
  
  "Madam, madam!" Dmitri interrupted with an uneasy presentiment. "I shall
  indeed, perhaps, follow your advice, your wise advice, madam.... I shall
  perhaps set off ... to the gold-mines.... I'll come and see you again
  about it ... many times, indeed ... but now, that three thousand you so
  generously ... oh, that would set me free, and if you could to-day ... you
  see, I haven't a minute, a minute to lose to-day--"
  
  "Enough, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, enough!" Madame Hohlakov interrupted
  emphatically. "The question is, will you go to the gold-mines or not; have
  you quite made up your mind? Answer yes or no."
  
  "I will go, madam, afterwards.... I'll go where you like ... but now--"
  
  "Wait!" cried Madame Hohlakov. And jumping up and running to a handsome
  bureau with numerous little drawers, she began pulling out one drawer
  after another, looking for something with desperate haste.
  
  "The three thousand," thought Mitya, his heart almost stopping, "and at
  the instant ... without any papers or formalities ... that's doing things
  in gentlemanly style! She's a splendid woman, if only she didn't talk so
  much!"
  
  "Here!" cried Madame Hohlakov, running back joyfully to Mitya, "here is
  what I was looking for!"
  
  It was a tiny silver ikon on a cord, such as is sometimes worn next the
  skin with a cross.
  
  "This is from Kiev, Dmitri Fyodorovitch," she went on reverently, "from
  the relics of the Holy Martyr, Varvara. Let me put it on your neck myself,
  and with it dedicate you to a new life, to a new career."
  
  And she actually put the cord round his neck, and began arranging it. In
  extreme embarrassment, Mitya bent down and helped her, and at last he got
  it under his neck-tie and collar through his shirt to his chest.
  
  "Now you can set off," Madame Hohlakov pronounced, sitting down
  triumphantly in her place again.
  
  "Madam, I am so touched. I don't know how to thank you, indeed ... for
  such kindness, but ... If only you knew how precious time is to me....
  That sum of money, for which I shall be indebted to your generosity....
  Oh, madam, since you are so kind, so touchingly generous to me," Mitya
  exclaimed impulsively, "then let me reveal to you ... though, of course,
  you've known it a long time ... that I love somebody here.... I have been
  false to Katya ... Katerina Ivanovna I should say.... Oh, I've behaved
  inhumanly, dishonorably to her, but I fell in love here with another woman
  ... a woman whom you, madam, perhaps, despise, for you know everything
  already, but whom I cannot leave on any account, and therefore that three
  thousand now--"
  
  "Leave everything, Dmitri Fyodorovitch," Madame Hohlakov interrupted in
  the most decisive tone. "Leave everything, especially women. Gold-mines
  are your goal, and there's no place for women there. Afterwards, when you
  come back rich and famous, you will find the girl of your heart in the
  highest society. That will be a modern girl, a girl of education and
  advanced ideas. By that time the dawning woman question will have gained
  ground, and the new woman will have appeared."
  
  "Madam, that's not the point, not at all...." Mitya clasped his hands in
  entreaty.
  
  "Yes, it is, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, just what you need; the very thing
  you're yearning for, though you don't realize it yourself. I am not at all
  opposed to the present woman movement, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. The
  development of woman, and even the political emancipation of woman in the
  near future--that's my ideal. I've a daughter myself, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,
  people don't know that side of me. I wrote a letter to the author,
  Shtchedrin, on that subject. He has taught me so much, so much about the
  vocation of woman. So last year I sent him an anonymous letter of two
  lines: 'I kiss and embrace you, my teacher, for the modern woman.
  Persevere.' And I signed myself, 'A Mother.' I thought of signing myself
  'A contemporary Mother,' and hesitated, but I stuck to the simple
  'Mother'; there's more moral beauty in that, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. And the
  word 'contemporary' might have reminded him of '_The Contemporary_'--a
  painful recollection owing to the censorship.... Good Heavens, what is the
  matter!"
  
  "Madam!" cried Mitya, jumping up at last, clasping his hands before her in
  helpless entreaty. "You will make me weep if you delay what you have so
  generously--"
  
  "Oh, do weep, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, do weep! That's a noble feeling ...
  such a path lies open before you! Tears will ease your heart, and later on
  you will return rejoicing. You will hasten to me from Siberia on purpose
  to share your joy with me--"
  
  "But allow me, too!" Mitya cried suddenly. "For the last time I entreat
  you, tell me, can I have the sum you promised me to-day, if not, when may
  I come for it?"
  
  "What sum, Dmitri Fyodorovitch?"
  
  "The three thousand you promised me ... that you so generously--"
  
  "Three thousand? Roubles? Oh, no, I haven't got three thousand," Madame
  Hohlakov announced with serene amazement. Mitya was stupefied.
  
  "Why, you said just now ... you said ... you said it was as good as in my
  hands--"
  
  "Oh, no, you misunderstood me, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. In that case you
  misunderstood me. I was talking of the gold-mines. It's true I promised
  you more, infinitely more than three thousand, I remember it all now, but
  I was referring to the gold-mines."
  
  "But the money? The three thousand?" Mitya exclaimed, awkwardly.
  
  "Oh, if you meant money, I haven't any. I haven't a penny, Dmitri
  Fyodorovitch. I'm quarreling with my steward about it, and I've just
  borrowed five hundred roubles from Miuesov, myself. No, no, I've no money.
  And, do you know, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, if I had, I wouldn't give it to
  you. In the first place I never lend money. Lending money means losing
  friends. And I wouldn't give it to you particularly. I wouldn't give it
  you, because I like you and want to save you, for all you need is the
  gold-mines, the gold-mines, the gold-mines!"
  
  "Oh, the devil!" roared Mitya, and with all his might brought his fist
  down on the table.
  
  "Aie! Aie!" cried Madame Hohlakov, alarmed, and she flew to the other end
  of the drawing-room.
  
  Mitya spat on the ground, and strode rapidly out of the room, out of the
  house, into the street, into the darkness! He walked like one possessed,
  and beating himself on the breast, on the spot where he had struck himself
  two days previously, before Alyosha, the last time he saw him in the dark,
  on the road. What those blows upon his breast signified, _on that spot_,
  and what he meant by it--that was, for the time, a secret which was known
  to no one in the world, and had not been told even to Alyosha. But that
  secret meant for him more than disgrace; it meant ruin, suicide. So he had
  determined, if he did not get hold of the three thousand that would pay
  his debt to Katerina Ivanovna, and so remove from his breast, from _that
  spot on his breast_, the shame he carried upon it, that weighed on his
  conscience. All this will be fully explained to the reader later on, but
  now that his last hope had vanished, this man, so strong in appearance,
  burst out crying like a little child a few steps from the Hohlakovs'
  house. He walked on, and not knowing what he was doing, wiped away his
  tears with his fist. In this way he reached the square, and suddenly
  became aware that he had stumbled against something. He heard a piercing
  wail from an old woman whom he had almost knocked down.
  
  "Good Lord, you've nearly killed me! Why don't you look where you're
  going, scapegrace?"
  
  "Why, it's you!" cried Mitya, recognizing the old woman in the dark. It
  was the old servant who waited on Samsonov, whom Mitya had particularly
  noticed the day before.
  
  "And who are you, my good sir?" said the old woman, in quite a different
  voice. "I don't know you in the dark."
  
  "You live at Kuzma Kuzmitch's. You're the servant there?"
  
  "Just so, sir, I was only running out to Prohoritch's.... But I don't know
  you now."
  
  "Tell me, my good woman, is Agrafena Alexandrovna there now?" said Mitya,
  beside himself with suspense. "I saw her to the house some time ago."
  
  "She has been there, sir. She stayed a little while, and went off again."
  
  "What? Went away?" cried Mitya. "When did she go?"
  
  "Why, as soon as she came. She only stayed a minute. She only told Kuzma
  Kuzmitch a tale that made him laugh, and then she ran away."
  
  "You're lying, damn you!" roared Mitya.
  
  "Aie! Aie!" shrieked the old woman, but Mitya had vanished.
  
  He ran with all his might to the house where Grushenka lived. At the
  moment he reached it, Grushenka was on her way to Mokroe. It was not more
  than a quarter of an hour after her departure.
  
  Fenya was sitting with her grandmother, the old cook, Matryona, in the
  kitchen when "the captain" ran in. Fenya uttered a piercing shriek on
  seeing him.
  
  "You scream?" roared Mitya, "where is she?"
  
  But without giving the terror-stricken Fenya time to utter a word, he fell
  all of a heap at her feet.
  
  "Fenya, for Christ's sake, tell me, where is she?"
  
  "I don't know. Dmitri Fyodorovitch, my dear, I don't know. You may kill me
  but I can't tell you." Fenya swore and protested. "You went out with her
  yourself not long ago--"
  
  "She came back!"
  
  "Indeed she didn't. By God I swear she didn't come back."
  
  "You're lying!" shouted Mitya. "From your terror I know where she is."
  
  He rushed away. Fenya in her fright was glad she had got off so easily.
  But she knew very well that it was only that he was in such haste, or she
  might not have fared so well. But as he ran, he surprised both Fenya and
  old Matryona by an unexpected action. On the table stood a brass mortar,
  with a pestle in it, a small brass pestle, not much more than six inches
  long. Mitya already had opened the door with one hand when, with the
  other, he snatched up the pestle, and thrust it in his side-pocket.
  
  "Oh, Lord! He's going to murder some one!" cried Fenya, flinging up her
  hands.
  
  
  
  
  Chapter IV. In The Dark
  
  
  Where was he running? "Where could she be except at Fyodor Pavlovitch's?
  She must have run straight to him from Samsonov's, that was clear now. The
  whole intrigue, the whole deceit was evident." ... It all rushed whirling
  through his mind. He did not run to Marya Kondratyevna's. "There was no
  need to go there ... not the slightest need ... he must raise no alarm ...
  they would run and tell directly.... Marya Kondratyevna was clearly in the
  plot, Smerdyakov too, he too, all had been bought over!"
  
  He formed another plan of action: he ran a long way round Fyodor
  Pavlovitch's house, crossing the lane, running down Dmitrovsky Street,
  then over the little bridge, and so came straight to the deserted alley at
  the back, which was empty and uninhabited, with, on one side the hurdle
  fence of a neighbor's kitchen-garden, on the other the strong high fence,
  that ran all round Fyodor Pavlovitch's garden. Here he chose a spot,
  apparently the very place, where according to the tradition, he knew
  Lizaveta had once climbed over it: "If she could climb over it," the
  thought, God knows why, occurred to him, "surely I can." He did in fact
  jump up, and instantly contrived to catch hold of the top of the fence.
  Then he vigorously pulled himself up and sat astride on it. Close by, in
  the garden stood the bath-house, but from the fence he could see the
  lighted windows of the house too.
  
  "Yes, the old man's bedroom is lighted up. She's there!" and he leapt from
  the fence into the garden. Though he knew Grigory was ill and very likely
  Smerdyakov, too, and that there was no one to hear him, he instinctively
  hid himself, stood still, and began to listen. But there was dead silence
  on all sides and, as though of design, complete stillness, not the
  slightest breath of wind.
  
  "And naught but the whispering silence," the line for some reason rose to
  his mind. "If only no one heard me jump over the fence! I think not."
  Standing still for a minute, he walked softly over the grass in the
  garden, avoiding the trees and shrubs. He walked slowly, creeping
  stealthily at every step, listening to his own footsteps. It took him five
  minutes to reach the lighted window. He remembered that just under the
  window there were several thick and high bushes of elder and whitebeam.
  The door from the house into the garden on the left-hand side, was shut;
  he had carefully looked on purpose to see, in passing. At last he reached
  the bushes and hid behind them. He held his breath. "I must wait now," he
  thought, "to reassure them, in case they heard my footsteps and are
  listening ... if only I don't cough or sneeze."
  
  He waited two minutes. His heart was beating violently, and, at moments,
  he could scarcely breathe. "No, this throbbing at my heart won't stop," he
  thought. "I can't wait any longer." He was standing behind a bush in the
  shadow. The light of the window fell on the front part of the bush.
  
  "How red the whitebeam berries are!" he murmured, not knowing why. Softly
  and noiselessly, step by step, he approached the window, and raised
  himself on tiptoe. All Fyodor Pavlovitch's bedroom lay open before him. It
  was not a large room, and was divided in two parts by a red screen,
  "Chinese," as Fyodor Pavlovitch used to call it. The word "Chinese"
  flashed into Mitya's mind, "and behind the screen, is Grushenka," thought
  Mitya. He began watching Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was wearing his new
  striped-silk dressing-gown, which Mitya had never seen, and a silk cord
  with tassels round the waist. A clean, dandified shirt of fine linen with
  gold studs peeped out under the collar of the dressing-gown. On his head
  Fyodor Pavlovitch had the same red bandage which Alyosha had seen.
  
  "He has got himself up," thought Mitya.
  
  His father was standing near the window, apparently lost in thought.
  Suddenly he jerked up his head, listened a moment, and hearing nothing
  went up to the table, poured out half a glass of brandy from a decanter
  and drank it off. Then he uttered a deep sigh, again stood still a moment,
  walked carelessly up to the looking-glass on the wall, with his right hand
  raised the red bandage on his forehead a little, and began examining his
  bruises and scars, which had not yet disappeared.
  
  "He's alone," thought Mitya, "in all probability he's alone."
  
  Fyodor Pavlovitch moved away from the looking-glass, turned suddenly to
  the window and looked out. Mitya instantly slipped away into the shadow.
  
  "She may be there behind the screen. Perhaps she's asleep by now," he
  thought, with a pang at his heart. Fyodor Pavlovitch moved away from the
  window. "He's looking for her out of the window, so she's not there. Why
  should he stare out into the dark? He's wild with impatience." ... Mitya
  slipped back at once, and fell to gazing in at the window again. The old
  man was sitting down at the table, apparently disappointed. At last he put
  his elbow on the table, and laid his right cheek against his hand. Mitya
  watched him eagerly.
  
  "He's alone, he's alone!" he repeated again. "If she were here, his face
  would be different."
  
  Strange to say, a queer, irrational vexation rose up in his heart that she
  was not here. "It's not that she's not here," he explained to himself,
  immediately, "but that I can't tell for certain whether she is or not."
  Mitya remembered afterwards that his mind was at that moment exceptionally
  clear, that he took in everything to the slightest detail, and missed no
  point. But a feeling of misery, the misery of uncertainty and indecision,
  was growing in his heart with every instant. "Is she here or not?" The
  angry doubt filled his heart, and suddenly, making up his mind, he put out
  his hand and softly knocked on the window frame. He knocked the signal the
  old man had agreed upon with Smerdyakov, twice slowly and then three times
  more quickly, the signal that meant "Grushenka is here!"
  
  The old man started, jerked up his head, and, jumping up quickly, ran to
  the window. Mitya slipped away into the shadow. Fyodor Pavlovitch opened
  the window and thrust his whole head out.
  
  "Grushenka, is it you? Is it you?" he said, in a sort of trembling half-
  whisper. "Where are you, my angel, where are you?" He was fearfully
  agitated and breathless.
  
  "He's alone." Mitya decided.
  
  "Where are you?" cried the old man again; and he thrust his head out
  farther, thrust it out to the shoulders, gazing in all directions, right
  and left. "Come here, I've a little present for you. Come, I'll show
  you...."
  
  "He means the three thousand," thought Mitya.
  
  "But where are you? Are you at the door? I'll open it directly."
  
  And the old man almost climbed out of the window, peering out to the
  right, where there was a door into the garden, trying to see into the
  darkness. In another second he would certainly have run out to open the
  door without waiting for Grushenka's answer.
  
  Mitya looked at him from the side without stirring. The old man's profile
  that he loathed so, his pendent Adam's apple, his hooked nose, his lips
  that smiled in greedy expectation, were all brightly lighted up by the
  slanting lamplight falling on the left from the room. A horrible fury of
  hatred suddenly surged up in Mitya's heart: "There he was, his rival, the
  man who had tormented him, had ruined his life!" It was a rush of that
  sudden, furious, revengeful anger of which he had spoken, as though
  foreseeing it, to Alyosha, four days ago in the arbor, when, in answer to
  Alyosha's question, "How can you say you'll kill our father?" "I don't
  know, I don't know," he had said then. "Perhaps I shall not kill him,
  perhaps I shall. I'm afraid he'll suddenly be so loathsome to me at that
  moment. I hate his double chin, his nose, his eyes, his shameless grin. I
  feel a personal repulsion. That's what I'm afraid of, that's what may be
  too much for me." ... This personal repulsion was growing unendurable.
  Mitya was beside himself, he suddenly pulled the brass pestle out of his
  pocket.
  
                    -------------------------------------
  
  "God was watching over me then," Mitya himself said afterwards. At that
  very moment Grigory waked up on his bed of sickness. Earlier in the
  evening he had undergone the treatment which Smerdyakov had described to
  Ivan. He had rubbed himself all over with vodka mixed with a secret, very
  strong decoction, had drunk what was left of the mixture while his wife
  repeated a "certain prayer" over him, after which he had gone to bed.
  Marfa Ignatyevna had tasted the stuff, too, and, being unused to strong
  drink, slept like the dead beside her husband.
  
  But Grigory waked up in the night, quite suddenly, and, after a moment's
  reflection, though he immediately felt a sharp pain in his back, he sat up
  in bed. Then he deliberated again, got up and dressed hurriedly. Perhaps
  his conscience was uneasy at the thought of sleeping while the house was
  unguarded "in such perilous times." Smerdyakov, exhausted by his fit, lay
  motionless in the next room. Marfa Ignatyevna did not stir. "The stuff's
  been too much for the woman," Grigory thought, glancing at her, and
  groaning, he went out on the steps. No doubt he only intended to look out
  from the steps, for he was hardly able to walk, the pain in his back and
  his right leg was intolerable. But he suddenly remembered that he had not
  locked the little gate into the garden that evening. He was the most
  punctual and precise of men, a man who adhered to an unchangeable routine,
  and habits that lasted for years. Limping and writhing with pain he went
  down the steps and towards the garden. Yes, the gate stood wide open.
  Mechanically he stepped into the garden. Perhaps he fancied something,
  perhaps caught some sound, and, glancing to the left he saw his master's
  window open. No one was looking out of it then.
  
  "What's it open for? It's not summer now," thought Grigory, and suddenly,
  at that very instant he caught a glimpse of something extraordinary before
  him in the garden. Forty paces in front of him a man seemed to be running
  in the dark, a sort of shadow was moving very fast.
  
  "Good Lord!" cried Grigory beside himself, and forgetting the pain in his
  back, he hurried to intercept the running figure. He took a short cut,
  evidently he knew the garden better; the flying figure went towards the
  bath-house, ran behind it and rushed to the garden fence. Grigory
  followed, not losing sight of him, and ran, forgetting everything. He
  reached the fence at the very moment the man was climbing over it. Grigory
  cried out, beside himself, pounced on him, and clutched his leg in his two
  hands.
  
  Yes, his foreboding had not deceived him. He recognized him, it was he,
  the "monster," the "parricide."
  
  "Parricide!" the old man shouted so that the whole neighborhood could
  hear, but he had not time to shout more, he fell at once, as though struck
  by lightning.
  
  Mitya jumped back into the garden and bent over the fallen man. In Mitya's
  hands was a brass pestle, and he flung it mechanically in the grass. The
  pestle fell two paces from Grigory, not in the grass but on the path, in a
  most conspicuous place. For some seconds he examined the prostrate figure
  before him. The old man's head was covered with blood. Mitya put out his
  hand and began feeling it. He remembered afterwards clearly, that he had
  been awfully anxious to make sure whether he had broken the old man's
  skull, or simply stunned him with the pestle. But the blood was flowing
  horribly; and in a moment Mitya's fingers were drenched with the hot
  stream. He remembered taking out of his pocket the clean white
  handkerchief with which he had provided himself for his visit to Madame
  Hohlakov, and putting it to the old man's head, senselessly trying to wipe
  the blood from his face and temples. But the handkerchief was instantly
  soaked with blood.
  
  "Good heavens! what am I doing it for?" thought Mitya, suddenly pulling
  himself together. "If I have broken his skull, how can I find out now? And
  what difference does it make now?" he added, hopelessly. "If I've killed
  him, I've killed him.... You've come to grief, old man, so there you must
  lie!" he said aloud. And suddenly turning to the fence, he vaulted over it
  into the lane and fell to running--the handkerchief soaked with blood he
  held, crushed up in his right fist, and as he ran he thrust it into the
  back pocket of his coat. He ran headlong, and the few passers-by who met
  him in the dark, in the streets, remembered afterwards that they had met a
  man running that night. He flew back again to the widow Morozov's house.
  
  Immediately after he had left it that evening, Fenya had rushed to the
  chief porter, Nazar Ivanovitch, and besought him, for Christ's sake, "not
  to let the captain in again to-day or to-morrow." Nazar Ivanovitch
  promised, but went upstairs to his mistress who had suddenly sent for him,
  and meeting his nephew, a boy of twenty, who had recently come from the
  country, on the way up told him to take his place, but forgot to mention
  "the captain." Mitya, running up to the gate, knocked. The lad instantly
  recognized him, for Mitya had more than once tipped him. Opening the gate
  at once, he let him in, and hastened to inform him with a good-humored
  smile that "Agrafena Alexandrovna is not at home now, you know."
  
  "Where is she then, Prohor?" asked Mitya, stopping short.
  
  "She set off this evening, some two hours ago, with Timofey, to Mokroe."
  
  "What for?" cried Mitya.
  
  "That I can't say. To see some officer. Some one invited her and horses
  were sent to fetch her."
  
  Mitya left him, and ran like a madman to Fenya.
  
  
  
  
  Chapter V. A Sudden Resolution
  
  
  She was sitting in the kitchen with her grandmother; they were both just
  going to bed. Relying on Nazar Ivanovitch, they had not locked themselves
  in. Mitya ran in, pounced on Fenya and seized her by the throat.
  
  "Speak at once! Where is she? With whom is she now, at Mokroe?" he roared
  furiously.
  
  Both the women squealed.
  
  "Aie! I'll tell you. Aie! Dmitri Fyodorovitch, darling, I'll tell you
  everything directly, I won't hide anything," gabbled Fenya, frightened to
  death; "she's gone to Mokroe, to her officer."
  
  "What officer?" roared Mitya.
  
  "To her officer, the same one she used to know, the one who threw her over
  five years ago," cackled Fenya, as fast as she could speak.
  
  Mitya withdrew the hands with which he was squeezing her throat. He stood
  facing her, pale as death, unable to utter a word, but his eyes showed
  that he realized it all, all, from the first word, and guessed the whole
  position. Poor Fenya was not in a condition at that moment to observe
  whether he understood or not. She remained sitting on the trunk as she had
  been when he ran into the room, trembling all over, holding her hands out
  before her as though trying to defend herself. She seemed to have grown
  rigid in that position. Her wide-opened, scared eyes were fixed immovably
  upon him. And to make matters worse, both his hands were smeared with
  blood. On the way, as he ran, he must have touched his forehead with them,
  wiping off the perspiration, so that on his forehead and his right cheek
  were blood-stained patches. Fenya was on the verge of hysterics. The old
  cook had jumped up and was staring at him like a mad woman, almost
  unconscious with terror.
  
  Mitya stood for a moment, then mechanically sank on to a chair next to
  Fenya. He sat, not reflecting but, as it were, terror-stricken, benumbed.
  Yet everything was clear as day: that officer, he knew about him, he knew
  everything perfectly, he had known it from Grushenka herself, had known
  that a letter had come from him a month before. So that for a month, for a
  whole month, this had been going on, a secret from him, till the very
  arrival of this new man, and he had never thought of him! But how could
  he, how could he not have thought of him? Why was it he had forgotten this
  officer, like that, forgotten him as soon as he heard of him? That was the
  question that faced him like some monstrous thing. And he looked at this
  monstrous thing with horror, growing cold with horror.
  
  But suddenly, as gently and mildly as a gentle and affectionate child, he
  began speaking to Fenya as though he had utterly forgotten how he had
  scared and hurt her just now. He fell to questioning Fenya with an extreme
  preciseness, astonishing in his position, and though the girl looked
  wildly at his blood-stained hands, she, too, with wonderful readiness and
  rapidity, answered every question as though eager to put the whole truth
  and nothing but the truth before him. Little by little, even with a sort
  of enjoyment, she began explaining every detail, not wanting to torment
  him, but, as it were, eager to be of the utmost service to him. She
  described the whole of that day, in great detail, the visit of Rakitin and
  Alyosha, how she, Fenya, had stood on the watch, how the mistress had set
  off, and how she had called out of the window to Alyosha to give him,
  Mitya, her greetings, and to tell him "to remember for ever how she had
  loved him for an hour."
  
  Hearing of the message, Mitya suddenly smiled, and there was a flush of
  color on his pale cheeks. At the same moment Fenya said to him, not a bit
  afraid now to be inquisitive:
  
  "Look at your hands, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. They're all over blood!"
  
  "Yes," answered Mitya mechanically. He looked carelessly at his hands and
  at once forgot them and Fenya's question.
  
  He sank into silence again. Twenty minutes had passed since he had run in.
  His first horror was over, but evidently some new fixed determination had
  taken possession of him. He suddenly stood up, smiling dreamily.
  
  "What has happened to you, sir?" said Fenya, pointing to his hands again.
  She spoke compassionately, as though she felt very near to him now in his
  grief. Mitya looked at his hands again.
  
  "That's blood, Fenya," he said, looking at her with a strange expression.
  "That's human blood, and my God! why was it shed? But ... Fenya ...
  there's a fence here" (he looked at her as though setting her a riddle),
  "a high fence, and terrible to look at. But at dawn to-morrow, when the
  sun rises, Mitya will leap over that fence.... You don't understand what
  fence, Fenya, and, never mind.... You'll hear to-morrow and understand ...
  and now, good-by. I won't stand in her way. I'll step aside, I know how to
  step aside. Live, my joy.... You loved me for an hour, remember Mityenka
  Karamazov so for ever.... She always used to call me Mityenka, do you
  remember?"
  
  And with those words he went suddenly out of the kitchen. Fenya was almost
  more frightened at this sudden departure than she had been when he ran in
  and attacked her.
  
  Just ten minutes later Dmitri went in to Pyotr Ilyitch Perhotin, the young
  official with whom he had pawned his pistols. It was by now half-past
  eight, and Pyotr Ilyitch had finished his evening tea, and had just put
  his coat on again to go to the "Metropolis" to play billiards. Mitya
  caught him coming out.
  
  Seeing him with his face all smeared with blood, the young man uttered a
  cry of surprise.
  
  "Good heavens! What is the matter?"
  
  "I've come for my pistols," said Mitya, "and brought you the money. And
  thanks very much. I'm in a hurry, Pyotr Ilyitch, please make haste."
  
  Pyotr Ilyitch grew more and more surprised; he suddenly caught sight of a
  bundle of bank-notes in Mitya's hand, and what was more, he had walked in
  holding the notes as no one walks in and no one carries money: he had them
  in his right hand, and held them outstretched as if to show them.
  Perhotin's servant-boy, who met Mitya in the passage, said afterwards that
  he walked into the passage in the same way, with the money outstretched in
  his hand, so he must have been carrying them like that even in the
  streets. They were all rainbow-colored hundred-rouble notes, and the
  fingers holding them were covered with blood.
  
  When Pyotr Ilyitch was questioned later on as to the sum of money, he said
  that it was difficult to judge at a glance, but that it might have been
  two thousand, or perhaps three, but it was a big, "fat" bundle. "Dmitri
  Fyodorovitch," so he testified afterwards, "seemed unlike himself, too;
  not drunk, but, as it were, exalted, lost to everything, but at the same
  time, as it were, absorbed, as though pondering and searching for
  something and unable to come to a decision. He was in great haste,
  answered abruptly and very strangely, and at moments seemed not at all
  dejected but quite cheerful."
  
  "But what _is_ the matter with you? What's wrong?" cried Pyotr Ilyitch,
  looking wildly at his guest. "How is it that you're all covered with
  blood? Have you had a fall? Look at yourself!"
  
  He took him by the elbow and led him to the glass.
  
  Seeing his blood-stained face, Mitya started and scowled wrathfully.
  
  "Damnation! That's the last straw," he muttered angrily, hurriedly
  changing the notes from his right hand to the left, and impulsively jerked
  the handkerchief out of his pocket. But the handkerchief turned out to be
  soaked with blood, too (it was the handkerchief he had used to wipe
  Grigory's face). There was scarcely a white spot on it, and it had not
  merely begun to dry, but had stiffened into a crumpled ball and could not
  be pulled apart. Mitya threw it angrily on the floor.
  
  "Oh, damn it!" he said. "Haven't you a rag of some sort ... to wipe my
  face?"
  
  "So you're only stained, not wounded? You'd better wash," said Pyotr
  Ilyitch. "Here's a wash-stand. I'll pour you out some water."
  
  "A wash-stand? That's all right ... but where am I to put this?"
  
  With the strangest perplexity he indicated his bundle of hundred-rouble
  notes, looking inquiringly at Pyotr Ilyitch as though it were for him to
  decide what he, Mitya, was to do with his own money.
  
  "In your pocket, or on the table here. They won't be lost."
  
  "In my pocket? Yes, in my pocket. All right.... But, I say, that's all
  nonsense," he cried, as though suddenly coming out of his absorption.
  "Look here, let's first settle that business of the pistols. Give them
  back to me. Here's your money ... because I am in great need of them ...
  and I haven't a minute, a minute to spare."
  
  And taking the topmost note from the bundle he held it out to Pyotr
  Ilyitch.
  
  "But I shan't have change enough. Haven't you less?"
  
  "No," said Mitya, looking again at the bundle, and as though not trusting
  his own words he turned over two or three of the topmost ones.
  
  "No, they're all alike," he added, and again he looked inquiringly at
  Pyotr Ilyitch.
  
  "How have you grown so rich?" the latter asked. "Wait, I'll send my boy to
  Plotnikov's, they close late--to see if they won't change it. Here, Misha!"
  he called into the passage.
  
  "To Plotnikov's shop--first-rate!" cried Mitya, as though struck by an
  idea. "Misha," he turned to the boy as he came in, "look here, run to
  Plotnikov's and tell them that Dmitri Fyodorovitch sends his greetings,
  and will be there directly.... But listen, listen, tell them to have
  champagne, three dozen bottles, ready before I come, and packed as it was
  to take to Mokroe. I took four dozen with me then," he added (suddenly
  addressing Pyotr Ilyitch); "they know all about it, don't you trouble,
  Misha," he turned again to the boy. "Stay, listen; tell them to put in
  cheese, Strasburg pies, smoked fish, ham, caviare, and everything,
  everything they've got, up to a hundred roubles, or a hundred and twenty
  as before.... But wait: don't let them forget dessert, sweets, pears,
  water-melons, two or three or four--no, one melon's enough, and chocolate,
  candy, toffee, fondants; in fact, everything I took to Mokroe before,
  three hundred roubles' worth with the champagne ... let it be just the
  same again. And remember, Misha, if you are called Misha--His name is
  Misha, isn't it?" He turned to Pyotr Ilyitch again.
  
  "Wait a minute," Protr Ilyitch intervened, listening and watching him
  uneasily, "you'd better go yourself and tell them. He'll muddle it."
  
  "He will, I see he will! Eh, Misha! Why, I was going to kiss you for the
  commission.... If you don't make a mistake, there's ten roubles for you,
  run along, make haste.... Champagne's the chief thing, let them bring up
  champagne. And brandy, too, and red and white wine, and all I had then....
  They know what I had then."
  
  "But listen!" Pyotr Ilyitch interrupted with some impatience. "I say, let
  him simply run and change the money and tell them not to close, and you go
  and tell them.... Give him your note. Be off, Misha! Put your best leg
  forward!"
  
  Pyotr Ilyitch seemed to hurry Misha off on purpose, because the boy
  remained standing with his mouth and eyes wide open, apparently
  understanding little of Mitya's orders, gazing up with amazement and
  terror at his blood-stained face and the trembling bloodstained fingers
  that held the notes.
  
  "Well, now come and wash," said Pyotr Ilyitch sternly. "Put the money on
  the table or else in your pocket.... That's right, come along. But take
  off your coat."
  
  And beginning to help him off with his coat, he cried out again:
  
  "Look, your coat's covered with blood, too!"
  
  "That ... it's not the coat. It's only a little here on the sleeve.... And
  that's only here where the handkerchief lay. It must have soaked through.
  I must have sat on the handkerchief at Fenya's, and the blood's come
  through," Mitya explained at once with a childlike unconsciousness that
  was astounding. Pyotr Ilyitch listened, frowning.
  
  "Well, you must have been up to something; you must have been fighting
  with some one," he muttered.
  
  They began to wash. Pyotr Ilyitch held the jug and poured out the water.
  Mitya, in desperate haste, scarcely soaped his hands (they were trembling,
  and Pyotr Ilyitch remembered it afterwards). But the young official
  insisted on his soaping them thoroughly and rubbing them more. He seemed
  to exercise more and more sway over Mitya, as time went on. It may be
  noted in passing that he was a young man of sturdy character.
  
  "Look, you haven't got your nails clean. Now rub your face; here, on your
  temples, by your ear.... Will you go in that shirt? Where are you going?
  Look, all the cuff of your right sleeve is covered with blood."
  
  "Yes, it's all bloody," observed Mitya, looking at the cuff of his shirt.
  
  "Then change your shirt."
  
  "I haven't time. You see I'll ..." Mitya went on with the same confiding
  ingenuousness, drying his face and hands on the towel, and putting on his
  coat. "I'll turn it up at the wrist. It won't be seen under the coat....
  You see!"
  
  "Tell me now, what game have you been up to? Have you been fighting with
  some one? In the tavern again, as before? Have you been beating that
  captain again?" Pyotr Ilyitch asked him reproachfully. "Whom have you been
  beating now ... or killing, perhaps?"
  
  "Nonsense!" said Mitya.
  
  "Why 'nonsense'?"
  
  "Don't worry," said Mitya, and he suddenly laughed. "I smashed an old
  woman in the market-place just now."
  
  "Smashed? An old woman?"
  
  "An old man!" cried Mitya, looking Pyotr Ilyitch straight in the face,
  laughing, and shouting at him as though he were deaf.
  
  "Confound it! An old woman, an old man.... Have you killed some one?"
  
  "We made it up. We had a row--and made it up. In a place I know of. We
  parted friends. A fool.... He's forgiven me.... He's sure to have forgiven
  me by now ... if he had got up, he wouldn't have forgiven me"--Mitya
  suddenly winked--"only damn him, you know, I say, Pyotr Ilyitch, damn him!
  Don't worry about him! I don't want to just now!" Mitya snapped out,
  resolutely.
  
  "Whatever do you want to go picking quarrels with every one for? ... Just
  as you did with that captain over some nonsense.... You've been fighting
  and now you're rushing off on the spree--that's you all over! Three dozen
  champagne--what do you want all that for?"
  
  "Bravo! Now give me the pistols. Upon my honor I've no time now. I should
  like to have a chat with you, my dear boy, but I haven't the time. And
  there's no need, it's too late for talking. Where's my money? Where have I
  put it?" he cried, thrusting his hands into his pockets.
  
  "You put it on the table ... yourself.... Here it is. Had you forgotten?
  Money's like dirt or water to you, it seems. Here are your pistols. It's
  an odd thing, at six o'clock you pledged them for ten roubles, and now
  you've got thousands. Two or three I should say."
  
  "Three, you bet," laughed Mitya, stuffing the notes into the side-pocket
  of his trousers.
  
  "You'll lose it like that. Have you found a gold-mine?"
  
  "The mines? The gold-mines?" Mitya shouted at the top of his voice and
  went off into a roar of laughter. "Would you like to go to the mines,
  Perhotin? There's a lady here who'll stump up three thousand for you, if
  only you'll go. She did it for me, she's so awfully fond of gold-mines. Do
  you know Madame Hohlakov?"
  
  "I don't know her, but I've heard of her and seen her. Did she really give
  you three thousand? Did she really?" said Pyotr Ilyitch, eyeing him
  dubiously.
  
  "As soon as the sun rises to-morrow, as soon as Phoebus, ever young, flies
  upwards, praising and glorifying God, you go to her, this Madame Hohlakov,
  and ask her whether she did stump up that three thousand or not. Try and
  find out."
  
  "I don't know on what terms you are ... since you say it so positively, I
  suppose she did give it to you. You've got the money in your hand, but
  instead of going to Siberia you're spending it all.... Where are you
  really off to now, eh?"
  
  "To Mokroe."
  
  "To Mokroe? But it's night!"
  
  "Once the lad had all, now the lad has naught," cried Mitya suddenly.
  
  "How 'naught'? You say that with all those thousands!"
  
  "I'm not talking about thousands. Damn thousands! I'm talking of the
  female character.
  
  
      Fickle is the heart of woman
      Treacherous and full of vice;
  
  
  I agree with Ulysses. That's what he says."
  
  "I don't understand you!"
  
  "Am I drunk?"
  
  "Not drunk, but worse."
  
  "I'm drunk in spirit, Pyotr Ilyitch, drunk in spirit! But that's enough!"
  
  "What are you doing, loading the pistol?"
  
  "I'm loading the pistol."
  
  Unfastening the pistol-case, Mitya actually opened the powder horn, and
  carefully sprinkled and rammed in the charge. Then he took the bullet and,
  before inserting it, held it in two fingers in front of the candle.
  
  "Why are you looking at the bullet?" asked Pyotr Ilyitch, watching him
  with uneasy curiosity.
  
  "Oh, a fancy. Why, if you meant to put that bullet in your brain, would
  you look at it or not?"
  
  "Why look at it?"
  
  "It's going into my brain, so it's interesting to look and see what it's
  like. But that's foolishness, a moment's foolishness. Now that's done," he
  added, putting in the bullet and driving it home with the ramrod. "Pyotr
  Ilyitch, my dear fellow, that's nonsense, all nonsense, and if only you
  knew what nonsense! Give me a little piece of paper now."
  
  "Here's some paper."
  
  "No, a clean new piece, writing-paper. That's right."
  
  And taking a pen from the table, Mitya rapidly wrote two lines, folded the
  paper in four, and thrust it in his waistcoat pocket. He put the pistols
  in the case, locked it up, and kept it in his hand. Then he looked at
  Pyotr Ilyitch with a slow, thoughtful smile.
  
  "Now, let's go."
  
  "Where are we going? No, wait a minute.... Are you thinking of putting
  that bullet in your brain, perhaps?" Pyotr Ilyitch asked uneasily.
  
  "I was fooling about the bullet! I want to live. I love life! You may be
  sure of that. I love golden-haired Phoebus and his warm light.... Dear
  Pyotr Ilyitch, do you know how to step aside?"
  
  "What do you mean by 'stepping aside'?"
  
  "Making way. Making way for a dear creature, and for one I hate. And to
  let the one I hate become dear--that's what making way means! And to say to
  them: God bless you, go your way, pass on, while I--"
  
  "While you--?"
  
  "That's enough, let's go."
  
  "Upon my word. I'll tell some one to prevent your going there," said Pyotr
  Ilyitch, looking at him. "What are you going to Mokroe for, now?"
  
  "There's a woman there, a woman. That's enough for you. You shut up."
  
  "Listen, though you're such a savage I've always liked you.... I feel
  anxious."
  
  "Thanks, old fellow. I'm a savage you say. Savages, savages! That's what I
  am always saying. Savages! Why, here's Misha! I was forgetting him."
  
  Misha ran in, post-haste, with a handful of notes in change, and reported
  that every one was in a bustle at the Plotnikovs'; "They're carrying down
  the bottles, and the fish, and the tea; it will all be ready directly."
  Mitya seized ten roubles and handed it to Pyotr Ilyitch, then tossed
  another ten-rouble note to Misha.
  
  "Don't dare to do such a thing!" cried Pyotr Ilyitch. "I won't have it in
  my house, it's a bad, demoralizing habit. Put your money away. Here, put
  it here, why waste it? It would come in handy to-morrow, and I dare say
  you'll be coming to me to borrow ten roubles again. Why do you keep
  putting the notes in your side-pocket? Ah, you'll lose them!"
  
  "I say, my dear fellow, let's go to Mokroe together."
  
  "What should I go for?"
  
  "I say, let's open a bottle at once, and drink to life! I want to drink,
  and especially to drink with you. I've never drunk with you, have I?"
  
  "Very well, we can go to the 'Metropolis.' I was just going there."
  
  "I haven't time for that. Let's drink at the Plotnikovs', in the back
  room. Shall I ask you a riddle?"
  
  "Ask away."
  
  Mitya took the piece of paper out of his waistcoat pocket, unfolded it and
  showed it. In a large, distinct hand was written: "I punish myself for my
  whole life, my whole life I punish!"
  
  "I will certainly speak to some one, I'll go at once," said Pyotr Ilyitch,
  after reading the paper.
  
  "You won't have time, dear boy, come and have a drink. March!"
  
  Plotnikov's shop was at the corner of the street, next door but one to
  Pyotr Ilyitch's. It was the largest grocery shop in our town, and by no
  means a bad one, belonging to some rich merchants. They kept everything
  that could be got in a Petersburg shop, grocery of all sort, wines
  "bottled by the brothers Eliseyev," fruits, cigars, tea, coffee, sugar,
  and so on. There were three shop-assistants and two errand boys always
  employed. Though our part of the country had grown poorer, the landowners
  had gone away, and trade had got worse, yet the grocery stores flourished
  as before, every year with increasing prosperity; there were plenty of
  purchasers for their goods.
  
  They were awaiting Mitya with impatience in the shop. They had vivid
  recollections of how he had bought, three or four weeks ago, wine and
  goods of all sorts to the value of several hundred roubles, paid for in
  cash (they would never have let him have anything on credit, of course).
  They remembered that then, as now, he had had a bundle of hundred-rouble
  notes in his hand, and had scattered them at random, without bargaining,
  without reflecting, or caring to reflect what use so much wine and
  provisions would be to him. The story was told all over the town that,
  driving off then with Grushenka to Mokroe, he had "spent three thousand in
  one night and the following day, and had come back from the spree without
  a penny." He had picked up a whole troop of gypsies (encamped in our
  neighborhood at the time), who for two days got money without stint out of
  him while he was drunk, and drank expensive wine without stint. People
  used to tell, laughing at Mitya, how he had given champagne to grimy-
  handed peasants, and feasted the village women and girls on sweets and
  Strasburg pies. Though to laugh at Mitya to his face was rather a risky
  proceeding, there was much laughter behind his back, especially in the
  tavern, at his own ingenuous public avowal that all he had got out of
  Grushenka by this "escapade" was "permission to kiss her foot, and that
  was the utmost she had allowed him."
  
  By the time Mitya and Pyotr Ilyitch reached the shop, they found a cart
  with three horses harnessed abreast with bells, and with Andrey, the
  driver, ready waiting for Mitya at the entrance. In the shop they had
  almost entirely finished packing one box of provisions, and were only
  waiting for Mitya's arrival to nail it down and put it in the cart. Pyotr
  Ilyitch was astounded.
  
  "Where did this cart come from in such a hurry?" he asked Mitya.
  
  "I met Andrey as I ran to you, and told him to drive straight here to the
  shop. There's no time to lose. Last time I drove with Timofey, but Timofey
  now has gone on before me with the witch. Shall we be very late, Andrey?"
  
  "They'll only get there an hour at most before us, not even that maybe. I
  got Timofey ready to start. I know how he'll go. Their pace won't be ours,
  Dmitri Fyodorovitch. How could it be? They won't get there an hour
  earlier!" Andrey, a lanky, red-haired, middle-aged driver, wearing a full-
  skirted coat, and with a kaftan on his arm, replied warmly.
  
  "Fifty roubles for vodka if we're only an hour behind them."
  
  "I warrant the time, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. Ech, they won't be half an hour
  before us, let alone an hour."
  
  Though Mitya bustled about seeing after things, he gave his orders
  strangely, as it were disconnectedly, and inconsecutively. He began a
  sentence and forgot the end of it. Pyotr Ilyitch found himself obliged to
  come to the rescue.
  
  "Four hundred roubles' worth, not less than four hundred roubles' worth,
  just as it was then," commanded Mitya. "Four dozen champagne, not a bottle
  less."
  
  "What do you want with so much? What's it for? Stay!" cried Pyotr Ilyitch.
  "What's this box? What's in it? Surely there isn't four hundred roubles'
  worth here?"
  
  The officious shopmen began explaining with oily politeness that the first
  box contained only half a dozen bottles of champagne, and only "the most
  indispensable articles," such as savories, sweets, toffee, etc. But the
  main part of the goods ordered would be packed and sent off, as on the
  previous occasion, in a special cart also with three horses traveling at
  full speed, so that it would arrive not more than an hour later than
  Dmitri Fyodorovitch himself.
  
  "Not more than an hour! Not more than an hour! And put in more toffee and
  fondants. The girls there are so fond of it," Mitya insisted hotly.
  
  "The fondants are all right. But what do you want with four dozen of
  champagne? One would be enough," said Pyotr Ilyitch, almost angry. He
  began bargaining, asking for a bill of the goods, and refused to be
  satisfied. But he only succeeded in saving a hundred roubles. In the end
  it was agreed that only three hundred roubles' worth should be sent.
  
  "Well, you may go to the devil!" cried Pyotr Ilyitch, on second thoughts.
  "What's it to do with me? Throw away your money, since it's cost you
  nothing."
  
  "This way, my economist, this way, don't be angry." Mitya drew him into a
  room at the back of the shop. "They'll give us a bottle here directly.
  We'll taste it. Ech, Pyotr Ilyitch, come along with me, for you're a nice
  fellow, the sort I like."
  
  Mitya sat down on a wicker chair, before a little table, covered with a
  dirty dinner-napkin. Pyotr Ilyitch sat down opposite, and the champagne
  soon appeared, and oysters were suggested to the gentlemen. "First-class
  oysters, the last lot in."
  
  "Hang the oysters. I don't eat them. And we don't need anything," cried
  Pyotr Ilyitch, almost angrily.
  
  "There's no time for oysters," said Mitya. "And I'm not hungry. Do you
  know, friend," he said suddenly, with feeling, "I never have liked all
  this disorder."
  
  "Who does like it? Three dozen of champagne for peasants, upon my word,
  that's enough to make any one angry!"
  
  "That's not what I mean. I'm talking of a higher order. There's no order
  in me, no higher order. But ... that's all over. There's no need to grieve
  about it. It's too late, damn it! My whole life has been disorder, and one
  must set it in order. Is that a pun, eh?"
  
  "You're raving, not making puns!"
  
  
      "Glory be to God in Heaven,
      Glory be to God in me....
  
  
  "That verse came from my heart once, it's not a verse, but a tear.... I
  made it myself ... not while I was pulling the captain's beard,
  though...."
  
  "Why do you bring him in all of a sudden?"
  
  "Why do I bring him in? Foolery! All things come to an end; all things are
  made equal. That's the long and short of it."
  
  "You know, I keep thinking of your pistols."
  
  "That's all foolery, too! Drink, and don't be fanciful. I love life. I've
  loved life too much, shamefully much. Enough! Let's drink to life, dear
  boy, I propose the toast. Why am I pleased with myself? I'm a scoundrel,
  but I'm satisfied with myself. And yet I'm tortured by the thought that
  I'm a scoundrel, but satisfied with myself. I bless the creation. I'm
  ready to bless God and His creation directly, but ... I must kill one
  noxious insect for fear it should crawl and spoil life for others.... Let
  us drink to life, dear brother. What can be more precious than life?
  Nothing! To life, and to one queen of queens!"
  
  "Let's drink to life and to your queen, too, if you like."
  
  They drank a glass each. Although Mitya was excited and expansive, yet he
  was melancholy, too. It was as though some heavy, overwhelming anxiety
  were weighing upon him.
  
  "Misha ... here's your Misha come! Misha, come here, my boy, drink this
  glass to Phoebus, the golden-haired, of to-morrow morn...."
  
  "What are you giving it him for?" cried Pyotr Ilyitch, irritably.
  
  "Yes, yes, yes, let me! I want to!"
  
  "E--ech!"
  
  Misha emptied the glass, bowed, and ran out.
  
  "He'll remember it afterwards," Mitya remarked. "Woman, I love woman! What
  is woman? The queen of creation! My heart is sad, my heart is sad, Pyotr
  Ilyitch. Do you remember Hamlet? 'I am very sorry, good Horatio! Alas,
  poor Yorick!' Perhaps that's me, Yorick? Yes, I'm Yorick now, and a skull
  afterwards."
  
  Pyotr Ilyitch listened in silence. Mitya, too, was silent for a while.
  
  "What dog's that you've got here?" he asked the shopman, casually,
  noticing a pretty little lap-dog with dark eyes, sitting in the corner.
  
  "It belongs to Varvara Alexyevna, the mistress," answered the clerk. "She
  brought it and forgot it here. It must be taken back to her."
  
  "I saw one like it ... in the regiment ..." murmured Mitya dreamily, "only
  that one had its hind leg broken.... By the way, Pyotr Ilyitch, I wanted
  to ask you: have you ever stolen anything in your life?"
  
  "What a question!"
  
  "Oh, I didn't mean anything. From somebody's pocket, you know. I don't
  mean government money, every one steals that, and no doubt you do,
  too...."
  
  "You go to the devil."
  
  "I'm talking of other people's money. Stealing straight out of a pocket?
  Out of a purse, eh?"
  
  "I stole twenty copecks from my mother when I was nine years old. I took
  it off the table on the sly, and held it tight in my hand."
  
  "Well, and what happened?"
  
  "Oh, nothing. I kept it three days, then I felt ashamed, confessed, and
  gave it back."
  
  "And what then?"
  
  "Naturally I was whipped. But why do you ask? Have you stolen something?"
  
  "I have," said Mitya, winking slyly.
  
  "What have you stolen?" inquired Pyotr Ilyitch curiously.
  
  "I stole twenty copecks from my mother when I was nine years old, and gave
  it back three days after."
  
  As he said this, Mitya suddenly got up.
  
  "Dmitri Fyodorovitch, won't you come now?" called Andrey from the door of
  the shop.
  
  "Are you ready? We'll come!" Mitya started. "A few more last words
  and--Andrey, a glass of vodka at starting. Give him some brandy as well!
  That box" (the one with the pistols) "put under my seat. Good-by, Pyotr
  Ilyitch, don't remember evil against me."
  
  "But you're coming back to-morrow?"
  
  "Of course."
  
  "Will you settle the little bill now?" cried the clerk, springing forward.
  
  "Oh, yes, the bill. Of course."
  
  He pulled the bundle of notes out of his pocket again, picked out three
  hundred roubles, threw them on the counter, and ran hurriedly out of the
  shop. Every one followed him out, bowing and wishing him good luck.
  Andrey, coughing from the brandy he had just swallowed, jumped up on the
  box. But Mitya was only just taking his seat when suddenly to his surprise
  he saw Fenya before him. She ran up panting, clasped her hands before him
  with a cry, and plumped down at his feet.
  
  "Dmitri Fyodorovitch, dear good Dmitri Fyodorovitch, don't harm my
  mistress. And it was I told you all about it.... And don't murder him, he
  came first, he's hers! He'll marry Agrafena Alexandrovna now. That's why
  he's come back from Siberia. Dmitri Fyodorovitch, dear, don't take a
  fellow creature's life!"
  
  "Tut--tut--tut! That's it, is it? So you're off there to make trouble!"
  muttered Pyotr Ilyitch. "Now, it's all clear, as clear as daylight. Dmitri
  Fyodorovitch, give me your pistols at once if you mean to behave like a
  man," he shouted aloud to Mitya. "Do you hear, Dmitri?"
  
  "The pistols? Wait a bit, brother, I'll throw them into the pool on the
  road," answered Mitya. "Fenya, get up, don't kneel to me. Mitya won't hurt
  any one, the silly fool won't hurt any one again. But I say, Fenya," he
  shouted, after having taken his seat. "I hurt you just now, so forgive me
  and have pity on me, forgive a scoundrel.... But it doesn't matter if you
  don't. It's all the same now. Now then, Andrey, look alive, fly along full
  speed!"
  
  Andrey whipped up the horses, and the bells began ringing.
  
  "Good-by, Pyotr Ilyitch! My last tear is for you!..."
  
  "He's not drunk, but he keeps babbling like a lunatic," Pyotr Ilyitch
  thought as he watched him go. He had half a mind to stay and see the cart
  packed with the remaining wines and provisions, knowing that they would
  deceive and defraud Mitya. But, suddenly feeling vexed with himself, he
  turned away with a curse and went to the tavern to play billiards.
  
  "He's a fool, though he's a good fellow," he muttered as he went. "I've
  heard of that officer, Grushenka's former flame. Well, if he has turned
  up.... Ech, those pistols! Damn it all! I'm not his nurse! Let them do
  what they like! Besides, it'll all come to nothing. They're a set of
  brawlers, that's all. They'll drink and fight, fight and make friends
  again. They are not men who do anything real. What does he mean by 'I'm
  stepping aside, I'm punishing myself?' It'll come to nothing! He's shouted
  such phrases a thousand times, drunk, in the taverns. But now he's not
  drunk. 'Drunk in spirit'--they're fond of fine phrases, the villains. Am I
  his nurse? He must have been fighting, his face was all over blood. With
  whom? I shall find out at the 'Metropolis.' And his handkerchief was
  soaked in blood.... It's still lying on my floor.... Hang it!"
  
  He reached the tavern in a bad humor and at once made up a game. The game
  cheered him. He played a second game, and suddenly began telling one of
  his partners that Dmitri Karamazov had come in for some cash
  again--something like three thousand roubles, and had gone to Mokroe again
  to spend it with Grushenka.... This news roused singular interest in his
  listeners. They all spoke of it, not laughing, but with a strange gravity.
  They left off playing.
  
  "Three thousand? But where can he have got three thousand?"
  
  Questions were asked. The story of Madame Hohlakov's present was received
  with skepticism.
  
  "Hasn't he robbed his old father?--that's the question."
  
  "Three thousand! There's something odd about it."
  
  "He boasted aloud that he would kill his father; we all heard him, here.
  And it was three thousand he talked about ..."
  
  Pyotr Ilyitch listened. All at once he became short and dry in his
  answers. He said not a word about the blood on Mitya's face and hands,
  though he had meant to speak of it at first.
  
  They began a third game, and by degrees the talk about Mitya died away.
  But by the end of the third game, Pyotr Ilyitch felt no more desire for
  billiards; he laid down the cue, and without having supper as he had
  intended, he walked out of the tavern. When he reached the market-place he
  stood still in perplexity, wondering at himself. He realized that what he
  wanted was to go to Fyodor Pavlovitch's and find out if anything had
  happened there. "On account of some stupid nonsense--as it's sure to turn
  out--am I going to wake up the household and make a scandal? Fooh! damn it,
  is it my business to look after them?"
  
  In a very bad humor he went straight home, and suddenly remembered Fenya.
  "Damn it all! I ought to have questioned her just now," he thought with
  vexation, "I should have heard everything." And the desire to speak to
  her, and so find out, became so pressing and importunate that when he was
  half-way home he turned abruptly and went towards the house where
  Grushenka lodged. Going up to the gate he knocked. The sound of the knock
  in the silence of the night sobered him and made him feel annoyed. And no
  one answered him; every one in the house was asleep.
  
  "And I shall be making a fuss!" he thought, with a feeling of positive
  discomfort. But instead of going away altogether, he fell to knocking
  again with all his might, filling the street with clamor.
  
  "Not coming? Well, I will knock them up, I will!" he muttered at each
  knock, fuming at himself, but at the same time he redoubled his knocks on
  the gate.
  
  
  
  
  Chapter VI. "I Am Coming, Too!"
  
  
  But Dmitri Fyodorovitch was speeding along the road. It was a little more
  than twenty versts to Mokroe, but Andrey's three horses galloped at such a
  pace that the distance might be covered in an hour and a quarter. The
  swift motion revived Mitya. The air was fresh and cool, there were big
  stars shining in the sky. It was the very night, and perhaps the very
  hour, in which Alyosha fell on the earth, and rapturously swore to love it
  for ever and ever.
  
  All was confusion, confusion, in Mitya's soul, but although many things
  were goading his heart, at that moment his whole being was yearning for
  her, his queen, to whom he was flying to look on her for the last time.
  One thing I can say for certain; his heart did not waver for one instant.
  I shall perhaps not be believed when I say that this jealous lover felt
  not the slightest jealousy of this new rival, who seemed to have sprung
  out of the earth. If any other had appeared on the scene, he would have
  been jealous at once, and would perhaps have stained his fierce hands with
  blood again. But as he flew through the night, he felt no envy, no
  hostility even, for the man who had been her first lover.... It is true he
  had not yet seen him.
  
  "Here there was no room for dispute: it was her right and his; this was
  her first love which, after five years, she had not forgotten; so she had
  loved him only for those five years, and I, how do I come in? What right
  have I? Step aside, Mitya, and make way! What am I now? Now everything is
  over apart from the officer--even if he had not appeared, everything would
  be over ..."
  
  These words would roughly have expressed his feelings, if he had been
  capable of reasoning. But he could not reason at that moment. His present
  plan of action had arisen without reasoning. At Fenya's first words, it
  had sprung from feeling, and been adopted in a flash, with all its
  consequences. And yet, in spite of his resolution, there was confusion in
  his soul, an agonizing confusion: his resolution did not give him peace.
  There was so much behind that tortured him. And it seemed strange to him,
  at moments, to think that he had written his own sentence of death with
  pen and paper: "I punish myself," and the paper was lying there in his
  pocket, ready; the pistol was loaded; he had already resolved how, next
  morning, he would meet the first warm ray of "golden-haired Phoebus."
  
  And yet he could not be quit of the past, of all that he had left behind
  and that tortured him. He felt that miserably, and the thought of it sank
  into his heart with despair. There was one moment when he felt an impulse
  to stop Andrey, to jump out of the cart, to pull out his loaded pistol,
  and to make an end of everything without waiting for the dawn. But that
  moment flew by like a spark. The horses galloped on, "devouring space,"
  and as he drew near his goal, again the thought of her, of her alone, took
  more and more complete possession of his soul, chasing away the fearful
  images that had been haunting it. Oh, how he longed to look upon her, if
  only for a moment, if only from a distance!
  
  "She's now with _him_," he thought, "now I shall see what she looks like
  with him, her first love, and that's all I want." Never had this woman,
  who was such a fateful influence in his life, aroused such love in his
  breast, such new and unknown feeling, surprising even to himself, a
  feeling tender to devoutness, to self-effacement before her! "I will
  efface myself!" he said, in a rush of almost hysterical ecstasy.
  
  They had been galloping nearly an hour. Mitya was silent, and though
  Andrey was, as a rule, a talkative peasant, he did not utter a word,
  either. He seemed afraid to talk, he only whipped up smartly his three
  lean, but mettlesome, bay horses. Suddenly Mitya cried out in horrible
  anxiety:
  
  "Andrey! What if they're asleep?"
  
  This thought fell upon him like a blow. It had not occurred to him before.
  
  "It may well be that they're gone to bed, by now, Dmitri Fyodorovitch."
  
  Mitya frowned as though in pain. Yes, indeed ... he was rushing there ...
  with such feelings ... while they were asleep ... she was asleep, perhaps,
  there too.... An angry feeling surged up in his heart.
  
  "Drive on, Andrey! Whip them up! Look alive!" he cried, beside himself.
  
  "But maybe they're not in bed!" Andrey went on after a pause. "Timofey
  said they were a lot of them there--"
  
  "At the station?"
  
  "Not at the posting-station, but at Plastunov's, at the inn, where they
  let out horses, too."
  
  "I know. So you say there are a lot of them? How's that? Who are they?"
  cried Mitya, greatly dismayed at this unexpected news.
  
  "Well, Timofey was saying they're all gentlefolk. Two from our town--who
  they are I can't say--and there are two others, strangers, maybe more
  besides. I didn't ask particularly. They've set to playing cards, so
  Timofey said."
  
  "Cards?"
  
  "So, maybe they're not in bed if they're at cards. It's most likely not
  more than eleven."
  
  "Quicker, Andrey! Quicker!" Mitya cried again, nervously.
  
  "May I ask you something, sir?" said Andrey, after a pause. "Only I'm
  afraid of angering you, sir."
  
  "What is it?"
  
  "Why, Fenya threw herself at your feet just now, and begged you not to
  harm her mistress, and some one else, too ... so you see, sir-- It's I am
  taking you there ... forgive me, sir, it's my conscience ... maybe it's
  stupid of me to speak of it--"
  
  Mitya suddenly seized him by the shoulders from behind.
  
  "Are you a driver?" he asked frantically.
  
  "Yes, sir."
  
  "Then you know that one has to make way. What would you say to a driver
  who wouldn't make way for any one, but would just drive on and crush
  people? No, a driver mustn't run over people. One can't run over a man.
  One can't spoil people's lives. And if you have spoilt a life--punish
  yourself.... If only you've spoilt, if only you've ruined any one's
  life--punish yourself and go away."
  
  These phrases burst from Mitya almost hysterically. Though Andrey was
  surprised at him, he kept up the conversation.
  
  "That's right, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, you're quite right, one mustn't crush
  or torment a man, or any kind of creature, for every creature is created
  by God. Take a horse, for instance, for some folks, even among us drivers,
  drive anyhow. Nothing will restrain them, they just force it along."
  
  "To hell?" Mitya interrupted, and went off into his abrupt, short laugh.
  "Andrey, simple soul," he seized him by the shoulders again, "tell me,
  will Dmitri Fyodorovitch Karamazov go to hell, or not, what do you think?"
  
  "I don't know, darling, it depends on you, for you are ... you see, sir,
  when the Son of God was nailed on the Cross and died, He went straight
  down to hell from the Cross, and set free all sinners that were in agony.
  And the devil groaned, because he thought that he would get no more
  sinners in hell. And God said to him, then, 'Don't groan, for you shall
  have all the mighty of the earth, the rulers, the chief judges, and the
  rich men, and shall be filled up as you have been in all the ages till I
  come again.' Those were His very words ..."
  
  "A peasant legend! Capital! Whip up the left, Andrey!"
  
  "So you see, sir, who it is hell's for," said Andrey, whipping up the left
  horse, "but you're like a little child ... that's how we look on you ...
  and though you're hasty-tempered, sir, yet God will forgive you for your
  kind heart."
  
  "And you, do you forgive me, Andrey?"
  
  "What should I forgive you for, sir? You've never done me any harm."
  
  "No, for every one, for every one, you here alone, on the road, will you
  forgive me for every one? Speak, simple peasant heart!"
  
  "Oh, sir! I feel afraid of driving you, your talk is so strange."
  
  But Mitya did not hear. He was frantically praying and muttering to
  himself.
  
  "Lord, receive me, with all my lawlessness, and do not condemn me. Let me
  pass by Thy judgment ... do not condemn me, for I have condemned myself,
  do not condemn me, for I love Thee, O Lord. I am a wretch, but I love
  Thee. If Thou sendest me to hell, I shall love Thee there, and from there
  I shall cry out that I love Thee for ever and ever.... But let me love to
  the end.... Here and now for just five hours ... till the first light of
  Thy day ... for I love the queen of my soul ... I love her and I cannot
  help loving her. Thou seest my whole heart.... I shall gallop up, I shall
  fall before her and say, 'You are right to pass on and leave me. Farewell
  and forget your victim ... never fret yourself about me!' "
  
  "Mokroe!" cried Andrey, pointing ahead with his whip.
  
  Through the pale darkness of the night loomed a solid black mass of
  buildings, flung down, as it were, in the vast plain. The village of
  Mokroe numbered two thousand inhabitants, but at that hour all were
  asleep, and only here and there a few lights still twinkled.
  
  "Drive on, Andrey, I come!" Mitya exclaimed, feverishly.
  
  "They're not asleep," said Andrey again, pointing with his whip to the
  Plastunovs' inn, which was at the entrance to the village. The six
  windows, looking on the street, were all brightly lighted up.
  
  "They're not asleep," Mitya repeated joyously. "Quicker, Andrey! Gallop!
  Drive up with a dash! Set the bells ringing! Let all know that I have
  come. I'm coming! I'm coming, too!"
  
  Andrey lashed his exhausted team into a gallop, drove with a dash and
  pulled up his steaming, panting horses at the high flight of steps.
  
  Mitya jumped out of the cart just as the innkeeper, on his way to bed,
  peeped out from the steps curious to see who had arrived.
  
  "Trifon Borissovitch, is that you?"
  
  The innkeeper bent down, looked intently, ran down the steps, and rushed
  up to the guest with obsequious delight.
  
  "Dmitri Fyodorovitch, your honor! Do I see you again?"
  
  Trifon Borissovitch was a thick-set, healthy peasant, of middle height,
  with a rather fat face. His expression was severe and uncompromising,
  especially with the peasants of Mokroe, but he had the power of assuming
  the most obsequious countenance, when he had an inkling that it was to his
  interest. He dressed in Russian style, with a shirt buttoning down on one
  side, and a full-skirted coat. He had saved a good sum of money, but was
  for ever dreaming of improving his position. More than half the peasants
  were in his clutches, every one in the neighborhood was in debt to him.
  From the neighboring landowners he bought and rented lands which were
  worked by the peasants, in payment of debts which they could never shake
  off. He was a widower, with four grown-up daughters. One of them was
  already a widow and lived in the inn with her two children, his
  grandchildren, and worked for him like a charwoman. Another of his
  daughters was married to a petty official, and in one of the rooms of the
  inn, on the wall could be seen, among the family photographs, a miniature
  photograph of this official in uniform and official epaulettes. The two
  younger daughters used to wear fashionable blue or green dresses, fitting
  tight at the back, and with trains a yard long, on Church holidays or when
  they went to pay visits. But next morning they would get up at dawn, as
  usual, sweep out the rooms with a birch-broom, empty the slops, and clean
  up after lodgers.
  
  In spite of the thousands of roubles he had saved, Trifon Borissovitch was
  very fond of emptying the pockets of a drunken guest, and remembering that
  not a month ago he had, in twenty-four hours, made two if not three
  hundred roubles out of Dmitri, when he had come on his escapade with
  Grushenka, he met him now with eager welcome, scenting his prey the moment
  Mitya drove up to the steps.
  
  "Dmitri Fyodorovitch, dear sir, we see you once more!"
  
  "Stay, Trifon Borissovitch," began Mitya, "first and foremost, where is
  she?"
  
  "Agrafena Alexandrovna?" The inn-keeper understood at once, looking
  sharply into Mitya's face. "She's here, too ..."
  
  "With whom? With whom?"
  
  "Some strangers. One is an official gentleman, a Pole, to judge from his
  speech. He sent the horses for her from here; and there's another with
  him, a friend of his, or a fellow traveler, there's no telling. They're
  dressed like civilians."
  
  "Well, are they feasting? Have they money?"
  
  "Poor sort of a feast! Nothing to boast of, Dmitri Fyodorovitch."
  
  "Nothing to boast of? And who are the others?"
  
  "They're two gentlemen from the town.... They've come back from Tcherny,
  and are putting up here. One's quite a young gentleman, a relative of Mr.
  Miuesov, he must be, but I've forgotten his name ... and I expect you know
  the other, too, a gentleman called Maximov. He's been on a pilgrimage, so
  he says, to the monastery in the town. He's traveling with this young
  relation of Mr. Miuesov."
  
  "Is that all?"
  
  "Yes."
  
  "Stay, listen, Trifon Borissovitch. Tell me the chief thing: What of her?
  How is she?"
  
  "Oh, she's only just come. She's sitting with them."
  
  "Is she cheerful? Is she laughing?"
  
  "No, I think she's not laughing much. She's sitting quite dull. She's
  combing the young gentleman's hair."
  
  "The Pole--the officer?"
  
  "He's not young, and he's not an officer, either. Not him, sir. It's the
  young gentleman that's Mr. Miuesov's relation ... I've forgotten his name."
  
  "Kalganov."
  
  "That's it, Kalganov!"
  
  "All right. I'll see for myself. Are they playing cards?"
  
  "They have been playing, but they've left off. They've been drinking tea,
  the official gentleman asked for liqueurs."
  
  "Stay, Trifon Borissovitch, stay, my good soul, I'll see for myself. Now
  answer one more question: are the gypsies here?"
  
  "You can't have the gypsies now, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. The authorities have
  sent them away. But we've Jews that play the cymbals and the fiddle in the
  village, so one might send for them. They'd come."
  
  "Send for them. Certainly send for them!" cried Mitya. "And you can get
  the girls together as you did then, Marya especially, Stepanida, too, and
  Arina. Two hundred roubles for a chorus!"
  
  "Oh, for a sum like that I can get all the village together, though by now
  they're asleep. Are the peasants here worth such kindness, Dmitri
  Fyodorovitch, or the girls either? To spend a sum like that on such
  coarseness and rudeness! What's the good of giving a peasant a cigar to
  smoke, the stinking ruffian! And the girls are all lousy. Besides, I'll
  get my daughters up for nothing, let alone a sum like that. They've only
  just gone to bed, I'll give them a kick and set them singing for you. You
  gave the peasants champagne to drink the other day, e--ech!"
  
  For all his pretended compassion for Mitya, Trifon Borissovitch had hidden
  half a dozen bottles of champagne on that last occasion, and had picked up
  a hundred-rouble note under the table, and it had remained in his
  clutches.
  
  "Trifon Borissovitch, I sent more than one thousand flying last time I was
  here. Do you remember?"
  
  "You did send it flying. I may well remember. You must have left three
  thousand behind you."
  
  "Well, I've come to do the same again, do you see?"
  
  And he pulled out his roll of notes, and held them up before the
  innkeeper's nose.
  
  "Now, listen and remember. In an hour's time the wine will arrive,
  savories, pies, and sweets--bring them all up at once. That box Andrey has
  got is to be brought up at once, too. Open it, and hand champagne
  immediately. And the girls, we must have the girls, Marya especially."
  
  He turned to the cart and pulled out the box of pistols.
  
  "Here, Andrey, let's settle. Here's fifteen roubles for the drive, and
  fifty for vodka ... for your readiness, for your love.... Remember
  Karamazov!"
  
  "I'm afraid, sir," faltered Andrey. "Give me five roubles extra, but more
  I won't take. Trifon Borissovitch, bear witness. Forgive my foolish words
  ..."
  
  "What are you afraid of?" asked Mitya, scanning him. "Well, go to the
  devil, if that's it!" he cried, flinging him five roubles. "Now, Trifon
  Borissovitch, take me up quietly and let me first get a look at them, so
  that they don't see me. Where are they? In the blue room?"
  
  Trifon Borissovitch looked apprehensively at Mitya, but at once obediently
  did his bidding. Leading him into the passage, he went himself into the
  first large room, adjoining that in which the visitors were sitting, and
  took the light away. Then he stealthily led Mitya in, and put him in a
  corner in the dark, whence he could freely watch the company without being
  seen. But Mitya did not look long, and, indeed, he could not see them, he
  saw her, his heart throbbed violently, and all was dark before his eyes.
  
  She was sitting sideways to the table in a low chair, and beside her, on
  the sofa, was the pretty youth, Kalganov. She was holding his hand and
  seemed to be laughing, while he, seeming vexed and not looking at her, was
  saying something in a loud voice to Maximov, who sat the other side of the
  table, facing Grushenka. Maximov was laughing violently at something. On
  the sofa sat _he_, and on a chair by the sofa there was another stranger.
  The one on the sofa was lolling backwards, smoking a pipe, and Mitya had
  an impression of a stoutish, broad-faced, short little man, who was
  apparently angry about something. His friend, the other stranger, struck
  Mitya as extraordinarily tall, but he could make out nothing more. He
  caught his breath. He could not bear it for a minute, he put the pistol-
  case on a chest, and with a throbbing heart he walked, feeling cold all
  over, straight into the blue room to face the company.
  
  "Aie!" shrieked Grushenka, the first to notice him.
  
  
  
  
  Chapter VII. The First And Rightful Lover
  
  
  With his long, rapid strides, Mitya walked straight up to the table.
  
  "Gentlemen," he said in a loud voice, almost shouting, yet stammering at
  every word, "I ... I'm all right! Don't be afraid!" he exclaimed,
  "I--there's nothing the matter," he turned suddenly to Grushenka, who had
  shrunk back in her chair towards Kalganov, and clasped his hand tightly.
  "I ... I'm coming, too. I'm here till morning. Gentlemen, may I stay with
  you till morning? Only till morning, for the last time, in this same
  room?"
  
  So he finished, turning to the fat little man, with the pipe, sitting on
  the sofa. The latter removed his pipe from his lips with dignity and
  observed severely:
  
  "_Panie_, we're here in private. There are other rooms."
  
  "Why, it's you, Dmitri Fyodorovitch! What do you mean?" answered Kalganov
  suddenly. "Sit down with us. How are you?"
  
  "Delighted to see you, dear ... and precious fellow, I always thought a
  lot of you." Mitya responded, joyfully and eagerly, at once holding out
  his hand across the table.
  
  "Aie! How tight you squeeze! You've quite broken my fingers," laughed
  Kalganov.
  
  "He always squeezes like that, always," Grushenka put in gayly, with a
  timid smile, seeming suddenly convinced from Mitya's face that he was not
  going to make a scene. She was watching him with intense curiosity and
  still some uneasiness. She was impressed by something about him, and
  indeed the last thing she expected of him was that he would come in and
  speak like this at such a moment.
  
  "Good evening," Maximov ventured blandly on the left. Mitya rushed up to
  him, too.
  
  "Good evening. You're here, too! How glad I am to find you here, too!
  Gentlemen, gentlemen, I--" (He addressed the Polish gentleman with the pipe
  again, evidently taking him for the most important person present.) "I
  flew here.... I wanted to spend my last day, my last hour in this room, in
  this very room ... where I, too, adored ... my queen.... Forgive me,
  _panie_," he cried wildly, "I flew here and vowed-- Oh, don't be afraid,
  it's my last night! Let's drink to our good understanding. They'll bring
  the wine at once.... I brought this with me." (Something made him pull out
  his bundle of notes.) "Allow me, _panie_! I want to have music, singing, a
  revel, as we had before. But the worm, the unnecessary worm, will crawl
  away, and there'll be no more of him. I will commemorate my day of joy on
  my last night."
  
  He was almost choking. There was so much, so much he wanted to say, but
  strange exclamations were all that came from his lips. The Pole gazed
  fixedly at him, at the bundle of notes in his hand; looked at Grushenka,
  and was in evident perplexity.
  
  "If my suverin lady is permitting--" he was beginning.
  
  "What does 'suverin' mean? 'Sovereign,' I suppose?" interrupted Grushenka.
  "I can't help laughing at you, the way you talk. Sit down, Mitya, what are
  you talking about? Don't frighten us, please. You won't frighten us, will
  you? If you won't, I am glad to see you ..."
  
  "Me, me frighten you?" cried Mitya, flinging up his hands. "Oh, pass me
  by, go your way, I won't hinder you!..."
  
  And suddenly he surprised them all, and no doubt himself as well, by
  flinging himself on a chair, and bursting into tears, turning his head
  away to the opposite wall, while his arms clasped the back of the chair
  tight, as though embracing it.
  
  "Come, come, what a fellow you are!" cried Grushenka reproachfully.
  "That's just how he comes to see me--he begins talking, and I can't make
  out what he means. He cried like that once before, and now he's crying
  again! It's shameful! Why are you crying? _As though you had anything to
  cry for!_" she added enigmatically, emphasizing each word with some
  irritability.
  
  "I ... I'm not crying.... Well, good evening!" He instantly turned round
  in his chair, and suddenly laughed, not his abrupt wooden laugh, but a
  long, quivering, inaudible nervous laugh.
  
  "Well, there you are again.... Come, cheer up, cheer up!" Grushenka said
  to him persuasively. "I'm very glad you've come, very glad, Mitya, do you
  hear, I'm very glad! I want him to stay here with us," she said
  peremptorily, addressing the whole company, though her words were
  obviously meant for the man sitting on the sofa. "I wish it, I wish it!
  And if he goes away I shall go, too!" she added with flashing eyes.
  
  "What my queen commands is law!" pronounced the Pole, gallantly kissing
  Grushenka's hand. "I beg you, _panie_, to join our company," he added
  politely, addressing Mitya.
  
  Mitya was jumping up with the obvious intention of delivering another
  tirade, but the words did not come.
  
  "Let's drink, _panie_," he blurted out instead of making a speech. Every
  one laughed.
  
  "Good heavens! I thought he was going to begin again!" Grushenka exclaimed
  nervously. "Do you hear, Mitya," she went on insistently, "don't prance
  about, but it's nice you've brought the champagne. I want some myself, and
  I can't bear liqueurs. And best of all, you've come yourself. We were
  fearfully dull here.... You've come for a spree again, I suppose? But put
  your money in your pocket. Where did you get such a lot?"
  
  Mitya had been, all this time, holding in his hand the crumpled bundle of
  notes on which the eyes of all, especially of the Poles, were fixed. In
  confusion he thrust them hurriedly into his pocket. He flushed. At that
  moment the innkeeper brought in an uncorked bottle of champagne, and
  glasses on a tray. Mitya snatched up the bottle, but he was so bewildered
  that he did not know what to do with it. Kalganov took it from him and
  poured out the champagne.
  
  "Another! Another bottle!" Mitya cried to the innkeeper, and, forgetting
  to clink glasses with the Pole whom he had so solemnly invited to drink to
  their good understanding, he drank off his glass without waiting for any
  one else. His whole countenance suddenly changed. The solemn and tragic
  expression with which he had entered vanished completely, and a look of
  something childlike came into his face. He seemed to have become suddenly
  gentle and subdued. He looked shyly and happily at every one, with a
  continual nervous little laugh, and the blissful expression of a dog who
  has done wrong, been punished, and forgiven. He seemed to have forgotten
  everything, and was looking round at every one with a childlike smile of
  delight. He looked at Grushenka, laughing continually, and bringing his
  chair close up to her. By degrees he had gained some idea of the two
  Poles, though he had formed no definite conception of them yet.
  
  The Pole on the sofa struck him by his dignified demeanor and his Polish
  accent; and, above all, by his pipe. "Well, what of it? It's a good thing
  he's smoking a pipe," he reflected. The Pole's puffy, middle-aged face,
  with its tiny nose and two very thin, pointed, dyed and impudent-looking
  mustaches, had not so far roused the faintest doubts in Mitya. He was not
  even particularly struck by the Pole's absurd wig made in Siberia, with
  love-locks foolishly combed forward over the temples. "I suppose it's all
  right since he wears a wig," he went on, musing blissfully. The other,
  younger Pole, who was staring insolently and defiantly at the company and
  listening to the conversation with silent contempt, still only impressed
  Mitya by his great height, which was in striking contrast to the Pole on
  the sofa. "If he stood up he'd be six foot three." The thought flitted
  through Mitya's mind. It occurred to him, too, that this Pole must be the
  friend of the other, as it were, a "bodyguard," and no doubt the big Pole
  was at the disposal of the little Pole with the pipe. But this all seemed
  to Mitya perfectly right and not to be questioned. In his mood of doglike
  submissiveness all feeling of rivalry had died away.
  
  Grushenka's mood and the enigmatic tone of some of her words he completely
  failed to grasp. All he understood, with thrilling heart, was that she was
  kind to him, that she had forgiven him, and made him sit by her. He was
  beside himself with delight, watching her sip her glass of champagne. The
  silence of the company seemed somehow to strike him, however, and he
  looked round at every one with expectant eyes.
  
  "Why are we sitting here though, gentlemen? Why don't you begin doing
  something?" his smiling eyes seemed to ask.
  
  "He keeps talking nonsense, and we were all laughing," Kalganov began
  suddenly, as though divining his thought, and pointing to Maximov.
  
  Mitya immediately stared at Kalganov and then at Maximov.
  
  "He's talking nonsense?" he laughed, his short, wooden laugh, seeming
  suddenly delighted at something--"ha ha!"
  
  "Yes. Would you believe it, he will have it that all our cavalry officers
  in the twenties married Polish women. That's awful rot, isn't it?"
  
  "Polish women?" repeated Mitya, perfectly ecstatic.
  
  Kalganov was well aware of Mitya's attitude to Grushenka, and he guessed
  about the Pole, too, but that did not so much interest him, perhaps did
  not interest him at all; what he was interested in was Maximov. He had
  come here with Maximov by chance, and he met the Poles here at the inn for
  the first time in his life. Grushenka he knew before, and had once been
  with some one to see her; but she had not taken to him. But here she
  looked at him very affectionately: before Mitya's arrival, she had been
  making much of him, but he seemed somehow to be unmoved by it. He was a
  boy, not over twenty, dressed like a dandy, with a very charming fair-
  skinned face, and splendid thick, fair hair. From his fair face looked out
  beautiful pale blue eyes, with an intelligent and sometimes even deep
  expression, beyond his age indeed, although the young man sometimes looked
  and talked quite like a child, and was not at all ashamed of it, even when
  he was aware of it himself. As a rule he was very willful, even
  capricious, though always friendly. Sometimes there was something fixed
  and obstinate in his expression. He would look at you and listen, seeming
  all the while to be persistently dreaming over something else. Often he
  was listless and lazy, at other times he would grow excited, sometimes,
  apparently, over the most trivial matters.
  
  "Only imagine, I've been taking him about with me for the last four days,"
  he went on, indolently drawling his words, quite naturally though, without
  the slightest affectation. "Ever since your brother, do you remember,
  shoved him off the carriage and sent him flying. That made me take an
  interest in him at the time, and I took him into the country, but he keeps
  talking such rot I'm ashamed to be with him. I'm taking him back."
  
  "The gentleman has not seen Polish ladies, and says what is impossible,"
  the Pole with the pipe observed to Maximov.
  
  He spoke Russian fairly well, much better, anyway, than he pretended. If
  he used Russian words, he always distorted them into a Polish form.
  
  "But I was married to a Polish lady myself," tittered Maximov.
  
  "But did you serve in the cavalry? You were talking about the cavalry.
  Were you a cavalry officer?" put in Kalganov at once.
  
  "Was he a cavalry officer indeed? Ha ha!" cried Mitya, listening eagerly,
  and turning his inquiring eyes to each as he spoke, as though there were
  no knowing what he might hear from each.
  
  "No, you see," Maximov turned to him. "What I mean is that those pretty
  Polish ladies ... when they danced the mazurka with our Uhlans ... when
  one of them dances a mazurka with a Uhlan she jumps on his knee like a
  kitten ... a little white one ... and the _pan_-father and _pan_-mother
  look on and allow it.... They allow it ... and next day the Uhlan comes
  and offers her his hand.... That's how it is ... offers her his hand, he
  he!" Maximov ended, tittering.
  
  "The _pan_ is a _lajdak_!" the tall Pole on the chair growled suddenly and
  crossed one leg over the other. Mitya's eye was caught by his huge greased
  boot, with its thick, dirty sole. The dress of both the Poles looked
  rather greasy.
  
  "Well, now it's _lajdak_! What's he scolding about?" said Grushenka,
  suddenly vexed.
  
  "_Pani_ Agrippina, what the gentleman saw in Poland were servant girls,
  and not ladies of good birth," the Pole with the pipe observed to
  Grushenka.
  
  "You can reckon on that," the tall Pole snapped contemptuously.
  
  "What next! Let him talk! People talk, why hinder them? It makes it
  cheerful," Grushenka said crossly.
  
  "I'm not hindering them, _pani_," said the Pole in the wig, with a long
  look at Grushenka, and relapsing into dignified silence he sucked his pipe
  again.
  
  "No, no. The Polish gentleman spoke the truth." Kalganov got excited
  again, as though it were a question of vast import. "He's never been in
  Poland, so how can he talk about it? I suppose you weren't married in
  Poland, were you?"
  
  "No, in the Province of Smolensk. Only, a Uhlan had brought her to Russia
  before that, my future wife, with her mamma and her aunt, and another
  female relation with a grown-up son. He brought her straight from Poland
  and gave her up to me. He was a lieutenant in our regiment, a very nice
  young man. At first he meant to marry her himself. But he didn't marry
  her, because she turned out to be lame."
  
  "So you married a lame woman?" cried Kalganov.
  
  "Yes. They both deceived me a little bit at the time, and concealed it. I
  thought she was hopping; she kept hopping.... I thought it was for fun."
  
  "So pleased she was going to marry you!" yelled Kalganov, in a ringing,
  childish voice.
  
  "Yes, so pleased. But it turned out to be quite a different cause.
  Afterwards, when we were married, after the wedding, that very evening,
  she confessed, and very touchingly asked forgiveness. 'I once jumped over
  a puddle when I was a child,' she said, 'and injured my leg.' He he!"
  
  Kalganov went off into the most childish laughter, almost falling on the
  sofa. Grushenka, too, laughed. Mitya was at the pinnacle of happiness.
  
  "Do you know, that's the truth, he's not lying now," exclaimed Kalganov,
  turning to Mitya; "and do you know, he's been married twice; it's his
  first wife he's talking about. But his second wife, do you know, ran away,
  and is alive now."
  
  "Is it possible?" said Mitya, turning quickly to Maximov with an
  expression of the utmost astonishment.
  
  "Yes. She did run away. I've had that unpleasant experience," Maximov
  modestly assented, "with a _monsieur_. And what was worse, she'd had all
  my little property transferred to her beforehand. 'You're an educated
  man,' she said to me. 'You can always get your living.' She settled my
  business with that. A venerable bishop once said to me: 'One of your wives
  was lame, but the other was too light-footed.' He he!"
  
  "Listen, listen!" cried Kalganov, bubbling over, "if he's telling lies--and
  he often is--he's only doing it to amuse us all. There's no harm in that,
  is there? You know, I sometimes like him. He's awfully low, but it's
  natural to him, eh? Don't you think so? Some people are low from self-
  interest, but he's simply so, from nature. Only fancy, he claims (he was
  arguing about it all the way yesterday) that Gogol wrote _Dead Souls_
  about him. Do you remember, there's a landowner called Maximov in it, whom
  Nozdryov thrashed. He was charged, do you remember, 'for inflicting bodily
  injury with rods on the landowner Maximov in a drunken condition.' Would
  you believe it, he claims that he was that Maximov and that he was beaten!
  Now can it be so? Tchitchikov made his journey, at the very latest, at the
  beginning of the twenties, so that the dates don't fit. He couldn't have
  been thrashed then, he couldn't, could he?"
  
  It was difficult to imagine what Kalganov was excited about, but his
  excitement was genuine. Mitya followed his lead without protest.
  
  "Well, but if they did thrash him!" he cried, laughing.
  
  "It's not that they thrashed me exactly, but what I mean is--" put in
  Maximov.
  
  "What do you mean? Either they thrashed you or they didn't."
  
  "What o'clock is it, _panie_?" the Pole, with the pipe, asked his tall
  friend, with a bored expression. The other shrugged his shoulders in
  reply. Neither of them had a watch.
  
  "Why not talk? Let other people talk. Mustn't other people talk because
  you're bored?" Grushenka flew at him with evident intention of finding
  fault. Something seemed for the first time to flash upon Mitya's mind.
  This time the Pole answered with unmistakable irritability.
  
  "_Pani_, I didn't oppose it. I didn't say anything."
  
  "All right then. Come, tell us your story," Grushenka cried to Maximov.
  "Why are you all silent?"
  
  "There's nothing to tell, it's all so foolish," answered Maximov at once,
  with evident satisfaction, mincing a little. "Besides, all that's by way
  of allegory in Gogol, for he's made all the names have a meaning. Nozdryov
  was really called Nosov, and Kuvshinikov had quite a different name, he
  was called Shkvornev. Fenardi really was called Fenardi, only he wasn't an
  Italian but a Russian, and Mamsel Fenardi was a pretty girl with her
  pretty little legs in tights, and she had a little short skirt with
  spangles, and she kept turning round and round, only not for four hours
  but for four minutes only, and she bewitched every one..."
  
  "But what were you beaten for?" cried Kalganov.
  
  "For Piron!" answered Maximov.
  
  "What Piron?" cried Mitya.
  
  "The famous French writer, Piron. We were all drinking then, a big party
  of us, in a tavern at that very fair. They'd invited me, and first of all
  I began quoting epigrams. 'Is that you, Boileau? What a funny get-up!' and
  Boileau answers that he's going to a masquerade, that is to the baths, he
  he! And they took it to themselves, so I made haste to repeat another,
  very sarcastic, well known to all educated people:
  
  
      Yes, Sappho and Phaon are we!
      But one grief is weighing on me.
      You don't know your way to the sea!
  
  
  They were still more offended and began abusing me in the most unseemly
  way for it. And as ill-luck would have it, to set things right, I began
  telling a very cultivated anecdote about Piron, how he was not accepted
  into the French Academy, and to revenge himself wrote his own epitaph:
  
  
      Ci-git Piron qui ne fut rien,
      Pas meme academicien.
  
  
  They seized me and thrashed me."
  
  "But what for? What for?"
  
  "For my education. People can thrash a man for anything," Maximov
  concluded, briefly and sententiously.
  
  "Eh, that's enough! That's all stupid, I don't want to listen. I thought
  it would be amusing," Grushenka cut them short, suddenly.
  
  Mitya started, and at once left off laughing. The tall Pole rose upon his
  feet, and with the haughty air of a man, bored and out of his element,
  began pacing from corner to corner of the room, his hands behind his back.
  
  "Ah, he can't sit still," said Grushenka, looking at him contemptuously.
  Mitya began to feel anxious. He noticed besides, that the Pole on the sofa
  was looking at him with an irritable expression.
  
  "_Panie!_" cried Mitya, "let's drink! and the other _pan_, too! Let us
  drink."
  
  In a flash he had pulled three glasses towards him, and filled them with
  champagne.
  
  "To Poland, _panovie_, I drink to your Poland!" cried Mitya.
  
  "I shall be delighted, _panie_," said the Pole on the sofa, with dignity
  and affable condescension, and he took his glass.
  
  "And the other _pan_, what's his name? Drink, most illustrious, take your
  glass!" Mitya urged.
  
  "Pan Vrublevsky," put in the Pole on the sofa.
  
  Pan Vrublevsky came up to the table, swaying as he walked.
  
  "To Poland, _panovie!_" cried Mitya, raising his glass. "Hurrah!"
  
  All three drank. Mitya seized the bottle and again poured out three
  glasses.
  
  "Now to Russia, _panovie_, and let us be brothers!"
  
  "Pour out some for us," said Grushenka; "I'll drink to Russia, too!"
  
  "So will I," said Kalganov.
  
  "And I would, too ... to Russia, the old grandmother!" tittered Maximov.
  
  "All! All!" cried Mitya. "Trifon Borissovitch, some more bottles!"
  
  The other three bottles Mitya had brought with him were put on the table.
  Mitya filled the glasses.
  
  "To Russia! Hurrah!" he shouted again. All drank the toast except the
  Poles, and Grushenka tossed off her whole glass at once. The Poles did not
  touch theirs.
  
  "How's this, _panovie_?" cried Mitya, "won't you drink it?"
  
  Pan Vrublevsky took the glass, raised it and said with a resonant voice:
  
  "To Russia as she was before 1772."
  
  "Come, that's better!" cried the other Pole, and they both emptied their
  glasses at once.
  
  "You're fools, you _panovie_," broke suddenly from Mitya.
  
  "_Panie!_" shouted both the Poles, menacingly, setting on Mitya like a
  couple of cocks. Pan Vrublevsky was specially furious.
  
  "Can one help loving one's own country?" he shouted.
  
  "Be silent! Don't quarrel! I won't have any quarreling!" cried Grushenka
  imperiously, and she stamped her foot on the floor. Her face glowed, her
  eyes were shining. The effects of the glass she had just drunk were
  apparent. Mitya was terribly alarmed.
  
  "_Panovie_, forgive me! It was my fault, I'm sorry. Vrublevsky, _panie_
  Vrublevsky, I'm sorry."
  
  "Hold your tongue, you, anyway! Sit down, you stupid!" Grushenka scolded
  with angry annoyance.
  
  Every one sat down, all were silent, looking at one another.
  
  "Gentlemen, I was the cause of it all," Mitya began again, unable to make
  anything of Grushenka's words. "Come, why are we sitting here? What shall
  we do ... to amuse ourselves again?"
  
  "Ach, it's certainly anything but amusing!" Kalganov mumbled lazily.
  
  "Let's play faro again, as we did just now," Maximov tittered suddenly.
  
  "Faro? Splendid!" cried Mitya. "If only the _panovie_--"
  
  "It's lite, _panovie_," the Pole on the sofa responded, as it were
  unwillingly.
  
  "That's true," assented Pan Vrublevsky.
  
  "Lite? What do you mean by 'lite'?" asked Grushenka.
  
  "Late, _pani_! 'a late hour' I mean," the Pole on the sofa explained.
  
  "It's always late with them. They can never do anything!" Grushenka almost
  shrieked in her anger. "They're dull themselves, so they want others to be
  dull. Before you came, Mitya, they were just as silent and kept turning up
  their noses at me."
  
  "My goddess!" cried the Pole on the sofa, "I see you're not well-disposed
  to me, that's why I'm gloomy. I'm ready, _panie_," added he, addressing
  Mitya.
  
  "Begin, _panie_," Mitya assented, pulling his notes out of his pocket, and
  laying two hundred-rouble notes on the table. "I want to lose a lot to
  you. Take your cards. Make the bank."
  
  "We'll have cards from the landlord, _panie_," said the little Pole,
  gravely and emphatically.
  
  "That's much the best way," chimed in Pan Vrublevsky.
  
  "From the landlord? Very good, I understand, let's get them from him.
  Cards!" Mitya shouted to the landlord.
  
  The landlord brought in a new, unopened pack, and informed Mitya that the
  girls were getting ready, and that the Jews with the cymbals would most
  likely be here soon; but the cart with the provisions had not yet arrived.
  Mitya jumped up from the table and ran into the next room to give orders,
  but only three girls had arrived, and Marya was not there yet. And he did
  not know himself what orders to give and why he had run out. He only told
  them to take out of the box the presents for the girls, the sweets, the
  toffee and the fondants. "And vodka for Andrey, vodka for Andrey!" he
  cried in haste. "I was rude to Andrey!"
  
  Suddenly Maximov, who had followed him out, touched him on the shoulder.
  
  "Give me five roubles," he whispered to Mitya. "I'll stake something at
  faro, too, he he!"
  
  "Capital! Splendid! Take ten, here!"
  
  Again he took all the notes out of his pocket and picked out one for ten
  roubles. "And if you lose that, come again, come again."
  
  "Very good," Maximov whispered joyfully, and he ran back again. Mitya,
  too, returned, apologizing for having kept them waiting. The Poles had
  already sat down, and opened the pack. They looked much more amiable,
  almost cordial. The Pole on the sofa had lighted another pipe and was
  preparing to throw. He wore an air of solemnity.
  
  "To your places, gentlemen," cried Pan Vrublevsky.
  
  "No, I'm not going to play any more," observed Kalganov, "I've lost fifty
  roubles to them just now."
  
  "The _pan_ had no luck, perhaps he'll be lucky this time," the Pole on the
  sofa observed in his direction.
  
  "How much in the bank? To correspond?" asked Mitya.
  
  "That's according, _panie_, maybe a hundred, maybe two hundred, as much as
  you will stake."
  
  "A million!" laughed Mitya.
  
  "The Pan Captain has heard of Pan Podvysotsky, perhaps?"
  
  "What Podvysotsky?"
  
  "In Warsaw there was a bank and any one comes and stakes against it.
  Podvysotsky comes, sees a thousand gold pieces, stakes against the bank.
  The banker says, '_Panie_ Podvysotsky, are you laying down the gold, or
  must we trust to your honor?' 'To my honor, _panie_,' says Podvysotsky.
  'So much the better.' The banker throws the dice. Podvysotsky wins. 'Take
  it, _panie_,' says the banker, and pulling out the drawer he gives him a
  million. 'Take it, _panie_, this is your gain.' There was a million in the
  bank. 'I didn't know that,' says Podvysotsky. '_Panie_ Podvysotsky,' said
  the banker, 'you pledged your honor and we pledged ours.' Podvysotsky took
  the million."
  
  "That's not true," said Kalganov.
  
  "_Panie_ Kalganov, in gentlemanly society one doesn't say such things."
  
  "As if a Polish gambler would give away a million!" cried Mitya, but
  checked himself at once. "Forgive me, _panie_, it's my fault again, he
  would, he would give away a million, for honor, for Polish honor. You see
  how I talk Polish, ha ha! Here, I stake ten roubles, the knave leads."
  
  "And I put a rouble on the queen, the queen of hearts, the pretty little
  _panienotchka_, he he!" laughed Maximov, pulling out his queen, and, as
  though trying to conceal it from every one, he moved right up and crossed
  himself hurriedly under the table. Mitya won. The rouble won, too.
  
  "A corner!" cried Mitya.
  
  "I'll bet another rouble, a 'single' stake," Maximov muttered gleefully,
  hugely delighted at having won a rouble.
  
  "Lost!" shouted Mitya. "A 'double' on the seven!"
  
  The seven too was trumped.
  
  "Stop!" cried Kalganov suddenly.
  
  "Double! Double!" Mitya doubled his stakes, and each time he doubled the
  stake, the card he doubled was trumped by the Poles. The rouble stakes
  kept winning.
  
  "On the double!" shouted Mitya furiously.
  
  "You've lost two hundred, _panie_. Will you stake another hundred?" the
  Pole on the sofa inquired.
  
  "What? Lost two hundred already? Then another two hundred! All doubles!"
  
  And pulling his money out of his pocket, Mitya was about to fling two
  hundred roubles on the queen, but Kalganov covered it with his hand.
  
  "That's enough!" he shouted in his ringing voice.
  
  "What's the matter?" Mitya stared at him.
  
  "That's enough! I don't want you to play any more. Don't!"
  
  "Why?"
  
  "Because I don't. Hang it, come away. That's why. I won't let you go on
  playing."
  
  Mitya gazed at him in astonishment.
  
  "Give it up, Mitya. He may be right. You've lost a lot as it is," said
  Grushenka, with a curious note in her voice. Both the Poles rose from
  their seats with a deeply offended air.
  
  "Are you joking, _panie_?" said the short man, looking severely at
  Kalganov.
  
  "How dare you!" Pan Vrublevsky, too, growled at Kalganov.
  
  "Don't dare to shout like that," cried Grushenka. "Ah, you turkey-cocks!"
  
  Mitya looked at each of them in turn. But something in Grushenka's face
  suddenly struck him, and at the same instant something new flashed into
  his mind--a strange new thought!
  
  "_Pani_ Agrippina," the little Pole was beginning, crimson with anger,
  when Mitya suddenly went up to him and slapped him on the shoulder.
  
  "Most illustrious, two words with you."
  
  "What do you want?"
  
  "In the next room, I've two words to say to you, something pleasant, very
  pleasant. You'll be glad to hear it."
  
  The little _pan_ was taken aback and looked apprehensively at Mitya. He
  agreed at once, however, on condition that Pan Vrublevsky went with them.
  
  "The bodyguard? Let him come, and I want him, too. I must have him!" cried
  Mitya. "March, _panovie_!"
  
  "Where are you going?" asked Grushenka, anxiously.
  
  "We'll be back in one moment," answered Mitya.
  
  There was a sort of boldness, a sudden confidence shining in his eyes. His
  face had looked very different when he entered the room an hour before.
  
  He led the Poles, not into the large room where the chorus of girls was
  assembling and the table was being laid, but into the bedroom on the
  right, where the trunks and packages were kept, and there were two large
  beds, with pyramids of cotton pillows on each. There was a lighted candle
  on a small deal table in the corner. The small man and Mitya sat down to
  this table, facing each other, while the huge Vrublevsky stood beside
  them, his hands behind his back. The Poles looked severe but were
  evidently inquisitive.
  
  "What can I do for you, _panie_?" lisped the little Pole.
  
  "Well, look here, _panie_, I won't keep you long. There's money for you,"
  he pulled out his notes. "Would you like three thousand? Take it and go
  your way."
  
  The Pole gazed open-eyed at Mitya, with a searching look.
  
  "Three thousand, _panie_?" He exchanged glances with Vrublevsky.
  
  "Three, _panovie_, three! Listen, _panie_, I see you're a sensible man.
  Take three thousand and go to the devil, and Vrublevsky with you--d'you
  hear? But, at once, this very minute, and for ever. You understand that,
  _panie_, for ever. Here's the door, you go out of it. What have you got
  there, a great-coat, a fur coat? I'll bring it out to you. They'll get the
  horses out directly, and then--good-by, _panie_!"
  
  Mitya awaited an answer with assurance. He had no doubts. An expression of
  extraordinary resolution passed over the Pole's face.
  
  "And the money, _panie_?"
  
  "The money, _panie_? Five hundred roubles I'll give you this moment for
  the journey, and as a first installment, and two thousand five hundred to-
  morrow, in the town--I swear on my honor, I'll get it, I'll get it at any
  cost!" cried Mitya.
  
  The Poles exchanged glances again. The short man's face looked more
  forbidding.
  
  "Seven hundred, seven hundred, not five hundred, at once, this minute,
  cash down!" Mitya added, feeling something wrong. "What's the matter,
  _panie_? Don't you trust me? I can't give you the whole three thousand
  straight off. If I give it, you may come back to her to-morrow....
  Besides, I haven't the three thousand with me. I've got it at home in the
  town," faltered Mitya, his spirit sinking at every word he uttered. "Upon
  my word, the money's there, hidden."
  
  In an instant an extraordinary sense of personal dignity showed itself in
  the little man's face.
  
  "What next?" he asked ironically. "For shame!" and he spat on the floor.
  Pan Vrublevsky spat too.
  
  "You do that, _panie_," said Mitya, recognizing with despair that all was
  over, "because you hope to make more out of Grushenka? You're a couple of
  capons, that's what you are!"
  
  "This is a mortal insult!" The little Pole turned as red as a crab, and he
  went out of the room, briskly, as though unwilling to hear another word.
  Vrublevsky swung out after him, and Mitya followed, confused and
  crestfallen. He was afraid of Grushenka, afraid that the _pan_ would at
  once raise an outcry. And so indeed he did. The Pole walked into the room
  and threw himself in a theatrical attitude before Grushenka.
  
  "_Pani_ Agrippina, I have received a mortal insult!" he exclaimed. But
  Grushenka suddenly lost all patience, as though they had wounded her in
  the tenderest spot.
  
  "Speak Russian! Speak Russian!" she cried, "not another word of Polish!
  You used to talk Russian. You can't have forgotten it in five years."
  
  She was red with passion.
  
  "_Pani_ Agrippina--"
  
  "My name's Agrafena, Grushenka, speak Russian or I won't listen!"
  
  The Pole gasped with offended dignity, and quickly and pompously delivered
  himself in broken Russian:
  
  "_Pani_ Agrafena, I came here to forget the past and forgive it, to forget
  all that has happened till to-day--"
  
  "Forgive? Came here to forgive me?" Grushenka cut him short, jumping up
  from her seat.
  
  "Just so, _pani_, I'm not pusillanimous, I'm magnanimous. But I was
  astounded when I saw your lovers. Pan Mitya offered me three thousand, in
  the other room to depart. I spat in the _pan's_ face."
  
  "What? He offered you money for me?" cried Grushenka, hysterically. "Is it
  true, Mitya? How dare you? Am I for sale?"
  
  "_Panie, panie!_" yelled Mitya, "she's pure and shining, and I have never
  been her lover! That's a lie...."
  
  "How dare you defend me to him?" shrieked Grushenka. "It wasn't virtue
  kept me pure, and it wasn't that I was afraid of Kuzma, but that I might
  hold up my head when I met him, and tell him he's a scoundrel. And he did
  actually refuse the money?"
  
  "He took it! He took it!" cried Mitya; "only he wanted to get the whole
  three thousand at once, and I could only give him seven hundred straight
  off."
  
  "I see: he heard I had money, and came here to marry me!"
  
  "_Pani_ Agrippina!" cried the little Pole. "I'm--a knight, I'm--a nobleman,
  and not a _lajdak_. I came here to make you my wife and I find you a
  different woman, perverse and shameless."
  
  "Oh, go back where you came from! I'll tell them to turn you out and
  you'll be turned out," cried Grushenka, furious. "I've been a fool, a
  fool, to have been miserable these five years! And it wasn't for his sake,
  it was my anger made me miserable. And this isn't he at all! Was he like
  this? It might be his father! Where did you get your wig from? He was a
  falcon, but this is a gander. He used to laugh and sing to me.... And I've
  been crying for five years, damned fool, abject, shameless I was!"
  
  She sank back in her low chair and hid her face in her hands. At that
  instant the chorus of Mokroe began singing in the room on the left--a
  rollicking dance song.
  
  "A regular Sodom!" Vrublevsky roared suddenly. "Landlord, send the
  shameless hussies away!"
  
  The landlord, who had been for some time past inquisitively peeping in at
  the door, hearing shouts and guessing that his guests were quarreling, at
  once entered the room.
  
  "What are you shouting for? D'you want to split your throat?" he said,
  addressing Vrublevsky, with surprising rudeness.
  
  "Animal!" bellowed Pan Vrublevsky.
  
  "Animal? And what sort of cards were you playing with just now? I gave you
  a pack and you hid it. You played with marked cards! I could send you to
  Siberia for playing with false cards, d'you know that, for it's just the
  same as false banknotes...."
  
  And going up to the sofa he thrust his fingers between the sofa back and
  the cushion, and pulled out an unopened pack of cards.
  
  "Here's my pack unopened!"
  
  He held it up and showed it to all in the room. "From where I stood I saw
  him slip my pack away, and put his in place of it--you're a cheat and not a
  gentleman!"
  
  "And I twice saw the _pan_ change a card!" cried Kalganov.
  
  "How shameful! How shameful!" exclaimed Grushenka, clasping her hands, and
  blushing for genuine shame. "Good Lord, he's come to that!"
  
  "I thought so, too!" said Mitya. But before he had uttered the words,
  Vrublevsky, with a confused and infuriated face, shook his fist at
  Grushenka, shouting:
  
  "You low harlot!"
  
  Mitya flew at him at once, clutched him in both hands, lifted him in the
  air, and in one instant had carried him into the room on the right, from
  which they had just come.
  
  "I've laid him on the floor, there," he announced, returning at once,
  gasping with excitement. "He's struggling, the scoundrel! But he won't
  come back, no fear of that!..."
  
  He closed one half of the folding doors, and holding the other ajar called
  out to the little Pole:
  
  "Most illustrious, will you be pleased to retire as well?"
  
  "My dear Dmitri Fyodorovitch," said Trifon Borissovitch, "make them give
  you back the money you lost. It's as good as stolen from you."
  
  "I don't want my fifty roubles back," Kalganov declared suddenly.
  
  "I don't want my two hundred, either," cried Mitya, "I wouldn't take it
  for anything! Let him keep it as a consolation."
  
  "Bravo, Mitya! You're a trump, Mitya!" cried Grushenka, and there was a
  note of fierce anger in the exclamation.
  
  The little _pan_, crimson with fury but still mindful of his dignity, was
  making for the door, but he stopped short and said suddenly, addressing
  Grushenka:
  
  "_Pani_, if you want to come with me, come. If not, good-by."
  
  And swelling with indignation and importance he went to the door. This was
  a man of character: he had so good an opinion of himself that after all
  that had passed, he still expected that she would marry him. Mitya slammed
  the door after him.
  
  "Lock it," said Kalganov. But the key clicked on the other side, they had
  locked it from within.
  
  "That's capital!" exclaimed Grushenka relentlessly. "Serve them right!"
  
  
  
  
  Chapter VIII. Delirium
  
  
  What followed was almost an orgy, a feast to which all were welcome.
  Grushenka was the first to call for wine.
  
  "I want to drink. I want to be quite drunk, as we were before. Do you
  remember, Mitya, do you remember how we made friends here last time!"
  
  Mitya himself was almost delirious, feeling that his happiness was at
  hand. But Grushenka was continually sending him away from her.
  
  "Go and enjoy yourself. Tell them to dance, to make merry, 'let the stove
  and cottage dance'; as we had it last time," she kept exclaiming. She was
  tremendously excited. And Mitya hastened to obey her. The chorus were in
  the next room. The room in which they had been sitting till that moment
  was too small, and was divided in two by cotton curtains, behind which was
  a huge bed with a puffy feather mattress and a pyramid of cotton pillows.
  In the four rooms for visitors there were beds. Grushenka settled herself
  just at the door. Mitya set an easy chair for her. She had sat in the same
  place to watch the dancing and singing "the time before," when they had
  made merry there. All the girls who had come had been there then; the
  Jewish band with fiddles and zithers had come, too, and at last the long
  expected cart had arrived with the wines and provisions.
  
  Mitya bustled about. All sorts of people began coming into the room to
  look on, peasants and their women, who had been roused from sleep and
  attracted by the hopes of another marvelous entertainment such as they had
  enjoyed a month before. Mitya remembered their faces, greeting and
  embracing every one he knew. He uncorked bottles and poured out wine for
  every one who presented himself. Only the girls were very eager for the
  champagne. The men preferred rum, brandy, and, above all, hot punch. Mitya
  had chocolate made for all the girls, and ordered that three samovars
  should be kept boiling all night to provide tea and punch for everyone to
  help himself.
  
  An absurd chaotic confusion followed, but Mitya was in his natural
  element, and the more foolish it became, the more his spirits rose. If the
  peasants had asked him for money at that moment, he would have pulled out
  his notes and given them away right and left. This was probably why the
  landlord, Trifon Borissovitch, kept hovering about Mitya to protect him.
  He seemed to have given up all idea of going to bed that night; but he
  drank little, only one glass of punch, and kept a sharp look-out on
  Mitya's interests after his own fashion. He intervened in the nick of
  time, civilly and obsequiously persuading Mitya not to give away "cigars
  and Rhine wine," and, above all, money to the peasants as he had done
  before. He was very indignant, too, at the peasant girls drinking liqueur,
  and eating sweets.
  
  "They're a lousy lot, Dmitri Fyodorovitch," he said. "I'd give them a
  kick, every one of them, and they'd take it as an honor--that's all they're
  worth!"
  
  Mitya remembered Andrey again, and ordered punch to be sent out to him. "I
  was rude to him just now," he repeated with a sinking, softened voice.
  Kalganov did not want to drink, and at first did not care for the girls'
  singing; but after he had drunk a couple of glasses of champagne he became
  extraordinarily lively, strolling about the room, laughing and praising
  the music and the songs, admiring every one and everything. Maximov,
  blissfully drunk, never left his side. Grushenka, too, was beginning to
  get drunk. Pointing to Kalganov, she said to Mitya:
  
  "What a dear, charming boy he is!"
  
  And Mitya, delighted, ran to kiss Kalganov and Maximov. Oh, great were his
  hopes! She had said nothing yet, and seemed, indeed, purposely to refrain
  from speaking. But she looked at him from time to time with caressing and
  passionate eyes. At last she suddenly gripped his hand and drew him
  vigorously to her. She was sitting at the moment in the low chair by the
  door.
  
  "How was it you came just now, eh? Have you walked in!... I was
  frightened. So you wanted to give me up to him, did you? Did you really
  want to?"
  
  "I didn't want to spoil your happiness!" Mitya faltered blissfully. But
  she did not need his answer.
  
  "Well, go and enjoy yourself ..." she sent him away once more. "Don't cry,
  I'll call you back again."
  
  He would run away, and she listened to the singing and looked at the
  dancing, though her eyes followed him wherever he went. But in another
  quarter of an hour she would call him once more and again he would run
  back to her.
  
  "Come, sit beside me, tell me, how did you hear about me, and my coming
  here yesterday? From whom did you first hear it?"
  
  And Mitya began telling her all about it, disconnectedly, incoherently,
  feverishly. He spoke strangely, often frowning, and stopping abruptly.
  
  "What are you frowning at?" she asked.
  
  "Nothing.... I left a man ill there. I'd give ten years of my life for him
  to get well, to know he was all right!"
  
  "Well, never mind him, if he's ill. So you meant to shoot yourself to-
  morrow! What a silly boy! What for? I like such reckless fellows as you,"
  she lisped, with a rather halting tongue. "So you would go any length for
  me, eh? Did you really mean to shoot yourself to-morrow, you stupid? No,
  wait a little. To-morrow I may have something to say to you.... I won't
  say it to-day, but to-morrow. You'd like it to be to-day? No, I don't want
  to to-day. Come, go along now, go and amuse yourself."
  
  Once, however, she called him, as it were, puzzled and uneasy.
  
  "Why are you sad? I see you're sad.... Yes, I see it," she added, looking
  intently into his eyes. "Though you keep kissing the peasants and
  shouting, I see something. No, be merry. I'm merry; you be merry, too....
  I love somebody here. Guess who it is. Ah, look, my boy has fallen asleep,
  poor dear, he's drunk."
  
  She meant Kalganov. He was, in fact, drunk, and had dropped asleep for a
  moment, sitting on the sofa. But he was not merely drowsy from drink; he
  felt suddenly dejected, or, as he said, "bored." He was intensely
  depressed by the girls' songs, which, as the drinking went on, gradually
  became coarse and more reckless. And the dances were as bad. Two girls
  dressed up as bears, and a lively girl, called Stepanida, with a stick in
  her hand, acted the part of keeper, and began to "show them."
  
  "Look alive, Marya, or you'll get the stick!"
  
  The bears rolled on the ground at last in the most unseemly fashion, amid
  roars of laughter from the closely-packed crowd of men and women.
  
  "Well, let them! Let them!" said Grushenka sententiously, with an ecstatic
  expression on her face. "When they do get a day to enjoy themselves, why
  shouldn't folks be happy?"
  
  Kalganov looked as though he had been besmirched with dirt.
  
  "It's swinish, all this peasant foolery," he murmured, moving away; "it's
  the game they play when it's light all night in summer."
  
  He particularly disliked one "new" song to a jaunty dance-tune. It
  described how a gentleman came and tried his luck with the girls, to see
  whether they would love him:
  
  
      The master came to try the girls:
      Would they love him, would they not?
  
  
  But the girls could not love the master:
  
  
      He would beat me cruelly
      And such love won't do for me.
  
  
  Then a gypsy comes along and he, too, tries:
  
  
      The gypsy came to try the girls:
      Would they love him, would they not?
  
  
  But they couldn't love the gypsy either:
  
  
      He would be a thief, I fear,
      And would cause me many a tear.
  
  
  And many more men come to try their luck, among them a soldier:
  
  
      The soldier came to try the girls:
      Would they love him, would they not?
  
  
  But the soldier is rejected with contempt, in two indecent lines, sung
  with absolute frankness and producing a furore in the audience. The song
  ends with a merchant:
  
  
      The merchant came to try the girls:
      Would they love him, would they not?
  
  
  And it appears that he wins their love because:
  
  
      The merchant will make gold for me
      And his queen I'll gladly be.
  
  
  Kalvanov was positively indignant.
  
  "That's just a song of yesterday," he said aloud. "Who writes such things
  for them? They might just as well have had a railwayman or a Jew come to
  try his luck with the girls; they'd have carried all before them."
  
  And, almost as though it were a personal affront, he declared, on the
  spot, that he was bored, sat down on the sofa and immediately fell asleep.
  His pretty little face looked rather pale, as it fell back on the sofa
  cushion.
  
  "Look how pretty he is," said Grushenka, taking Mitya up to him. "I was
  combing his hair just now; his hair's like flax, and so thick...."
  
  And, bending over him tenderly, she kissed his forehead. Kalganov
  instantly opened his eyes, looked at her, stood up, and with the most
  anxious air inquired where was Maximov?
  
  "So that's who it is you want." Grushenka laughed. "Stay with me a minute.
  Mitya, run and find his Maximov."
  
  Maximov, it appeared, could not tear himself away from the girls, only
  running away from time to time to pour himself out a glass of liqueur. He
  had drunk two cups of chocolate. His face was red, and his nose was
  crimson; his eyes were moist and mawkishly sweet. He ran up and announced
  that he was going to dance the "sabotiere."
  
  "They taught me all those well-bred, aristocratic dances when I was
  little...."
  
  "Go, go with him, Mitya, and I'll watch from here how he dances," said
  Grushenka.
  
  "No, no, I'm coming to look on, too," exclaimed Kalganov, brushing aside
  in the most naive way Grushenka's offer to sit with him. They all went to
  look on. Maximov danced his dance. But it roused no great admiration in
  any one but Mitya. It consisted of nothing but skipping and hopping,
  kicking up the feet, and at every skip Maximov slapped the upturned sole
  of his foot. Kalganov did not like it at all, but Mitya kissed the dancer.
  
  "Thanks. You're tired perhaps? What are you looking for here? Would you
  like some sweets? A cigar, perhaps?"
  
  "A cigarette."
  
  "Don't you want a drink?"
  
  "I'll just have a liqueur.... Have you any chocolates?"
  
  "Yes, there's a heap of them on the table there. Choose one, my dear
  soul!"
  
  "I like one with vanilla ... for old people. He he!"
  
  "No, brother, we've none of that special sort."
  
  "I say," the old man bent down to whisper in Mitya's ear. "That girl
  there, little Marya, he he! How would it be if you were to help me make
  friends with her?"
  
  "So that's what you're after! No, brother, that won't do!"
  
  "I'd do no harm to any one," Maximov muttered disconsolately.
  
  "Oh, all right, all right. They only come here to dance and sing, you
  know, brother. But damn it all, wait a bit!... Eat and drink and be merry,
  meanwhile. Don't you want money?"
  
  "Later on, perhaps," smiled Maximov.
  
  "All right, all right...."
  
  Mitya's head was burning. He went outside to the wooden balcony which ran
  round the whole building on the inner side, overlooking the courtyard. The
  fresh air revived him. He stood alone in a dark corner, and suddenly
  clutched his head in both hands. His scattered thoughts came together; his
  sensations blended into a whole and threw a sudden light into his mind. A
  fearful and terrible light! "If I'm to shoot myself, why not now?" passed
  through his mind. "Why not go for the pistols, bring them here, and here,
  in this dark dirty corner, make an end?" Almost a minute he stood,
  undecided. A few hours earlier, when he had been dashing here, he was
  pursued by disgrace, by the theft he had committed, and that blood, that
  blood!... But yet it was easier for him then. Then everything was over: he
  had lost her, given her up. She was gone, for him--oh, then his death
  sentence had been easier for him; at least it had seemed necessary,
  inevitable, for what had he to stay on earth for?
  
  But now? Was it the same as then? Now one phantom, one terror at least was
  at an end: that first, rightful lover, that fateful figure had vanished,
  leaving no trace. The terrible phantom had turned into something so small,
  so comic; it had been carried into the bedroom and locked in. It would
  never return. She was ashamed, and from her eyes he could see now whom she
  loved. Now he had everything to make life happy ... but he could not go on
  living, he could not; oh, damnation! "O God! restore to life the man I
  knocked down at the fence! Let this fearful cup pass from me! Lord, thou
  hast wrought miracles for such sinners as me! But what, what if the old
  man's alive? Oh, then the shame of the other disgrace I would wipe away. I
  would restore the stolen money. I'd give it back; I'd get it somehow....
  No trace of that shame will remain except in my heart for ever! But no,
  no; oh, impossible cowardly dreams! Oh, damnation!"
  
  Yet there was a ray of light and hope in his darkness. He jumped up and
  ran back to the room--to her, to her, his queen for ever! Was not one
  moment of her love worth all the rest of life, even in the agonies of
  disgrace? This wild question clutched at his heart. "To her, to her alone,
  to see her, to hear her, to think of nothing, to forget everything, if
  only for that night, for an hour, for a moment!" Just as he turned from
  the balcony into the passage, he came upon the landlord, Trifon
  Borissovitch. He thought he looked gloomy and worried, and fancied he had
  come to find him.
  
  "What is it, Trifon Borissovitch? are you looking for me?"
  
  "No, sir." The landlord seemed disconcerted. "Why should I be looking for
  you? Where have you been?"
  
  "Why do you look so glum? You're not angry, are you? Wait a bit, you shall
  soon get to bed.... What's the time?"
  
  "It'll be three o'clock. Past three, it must be."
  
  "We'll leave off soon. We'll leave off."
  
  "Don't mention it; it doesn't matter. Keep it up as long as you like...."
  
  "What's the matter with him?" Mitya wondered for an instant, and he ran
  back to the room where the girls were dancing. But she was not there. She
  was not in the blue room either; there was no one but Kalganov asleep on
  the sofa. Mitya peeped behind the curtain--she was there. She was sitting
  in the corner, on a trunk. Bent forward, with her head and arms on the bed
  close by, she was crying bitterly, doing her utmost to stifle her sobs
  that she might not be heard. Seeing Mitya, she beckoned him to her, and
  when he ran to her, she grasped his hand tightly.
  
  "Mitya, Mitya, I loved him, you know. How I have loved him these five
  years, all that time! Did I love him or only my own anger? No, him, him!
  It's a lie that it was my anger I loved and not him. Mitya, I was only
  seventeen then; he was so kind to me, so merry; he used to sing to me....
  Or so it seemed to a silly girl like me.... And now, O Lord, it's not the
  same man. Even his face is not the same; he's different altogether. I
  shouldn't have known him. I drove here with Timofey, and all the way I was
  thinking how I should meet him, what I should say to him, how we should
  look at one another. My soul was faint, and all of a sudden it was just as
  though he had emptied a pail of dirty water over me. He talked to me like
  a schoolmaster, all so grave and learned; he met me so solemnly that I was
  struck dumb. I couldn't get a word in. At first I thought he was ashamed
  to talk before his great big Pole. I sat staring at him and wondering why
  I couldn't say a word to him now. It must have been his wife that ruined
  him; you know he threw me up to get married. She must have changed him
  like that. Mitya, how shameful it is! Oh, Mitya, I'm ashamed, I'm ashamed
  for all my life. Curse it, curse it, curse those five years!"
  
  And again she burst into tears, but clung tight to Mitya's hand and did
  not let it go.
  
  "Mitya, darling, stay, don't go away. I want to say one word to you," she
  whispered, and suddenly raised her face to him. "Listen, tell me who it is
  I love? I love one man here. Who is that man? That's what you must tell
  me."
  
  A smile lighted up her face that was swollen with weeping, and her eyes
  shone in the half darkness.
  
  "A falcon flew in, and my heart sank. 'Fool! that's the man you love!'
  That was what my heart whispered to me at once. You came in and all grew
  bright. What's he afraid of? I wondered. For you were frightened; you
  couldn't speak. It's not them he's afraid of--could you be frightened of
  any one? It's me he's afraid of, I thought, only me. So Fenya told you,
  you little stupid, how I called to Alyosha out of the window that I'd
  loved Mityenka for one hour, and that I was going now to love ... another.
  Mitya, Mitya, how could I be such a fool as to think I could love any one
  after you? Do you forgive me, Mitya? Do you forgive me or not? Do you love
  me? Do you love me?" She jumped up and held him with both hands on his
  shoulders. Mitya, dumb with rapture, gazed into her eyes, at her face, at
  her smile, and suddenly clasped her tightly in his arms and kissed her
  passionately.
  
  "You will forgive me for having tormented you? It was through spite I
  tormented you all. It was for spite I drove the old man out of his
  mind.... Do you remember how you drank at my house one day and broke the
  wine-glass? I remembered that and I broke a glass to-day and drank 'to my
  vile heart.' Mitya, my falcon, why don't you kiss me? He kissed me once,
  and now he draws back and looks and listens. Why listen to me? Kiss me,
  kiss me hard, that's right. If you love, well, then, love! I'll be your
  slave now, your slave for the rest of my life. It's sweet to be a slave.
  Kiss me! Beat me, ill-treat me, do what you will with me.... And I do
  deserve to suffer. Stay, wait, afterwards, I won't have that...." she
  suddenly thrust him away. "Go along, Mitya, I'll come and have some wine,
  I want to be drunk, I'm going to get drunk and dance; I must, I must!" She
  tore herself away from him and disappeared behind the curtain. Mitya
  followed like a drunken man.
  
  "Yes, come what may--whatever may happen now, for one minute I'd give the
  whole world," he thought. Grushenka did, in fact, toss off a whole glass
  of champagne at one gulp, and became at once very tipsy. She sat down in
  the same chair as before, with a blissful smile on her face. Her cheeks
  were glowing, her lips were burning, her flashing eyes were moist; there
  was passionate appeal in her eyes. Even Kalganov felt a stir at the heart
  and went up to her.
  
  "Did you feel how I kissed you when you were asleep just now?" she said
  thickly. "I'm drunk now, that's what it is.... And aren't you drunk? And
  why isn't Mitya drinking? Why don't you drink, Mitya? I'm drunk, and you
  don't drink...."
  
  "I am drunk! I'm drunk as it is ... drunk with you ... and now I'll be
  drunk with wine, too."
  
  He drank off another glass, and--he thought it strange himself--that glass
  made him completely drunk. He was suddenly drunk, although till that
  moment he had been quite sober, he remembered that. From that moment
  everything whirled about him, as though he were delirious. He walked,
  laughed, talked to everybody, without knowing what he was doing. Only one
  persistent burning sensation made itself felt continually, "like a red-hot
  coal in his heart," he said afterwards. He went up to her, sat beside her,
  gazed at her, listened to her.... She became very talkative, kept calling
  every one to her, and beckoned to different girls out of the chorus. When
  the girl came up, she either kissed her, or made the sign of the cross
  over her. In another minute she might have cried. She was greatly amused
  by the "little old man," as she called Maximov. He ran up every minute to
  kiss her hands, "each little finger," and finally he danced another dance
  to an old song, which he sang himself. He danced with special vigor to the
  refrain:
  
  
      The little pig says--umph! umph! umph!
      The little calf says--moo, moo, moo,
      The little duck says--quack, quack, quack,
      The little goose says--ga, ga, ga.
      The hen goes strutting through the porch;
      Troo-roo-roo-roo-roo, she'll say,
      Troo-roo-roo-roo-roo, she'll say!
  
  
  "Give him something, Mitya," said Grushenka. "Give him a present, he's
  poor, you know. Ah, the poor, the insulted!... Do you know, Mitya, I shall
  go into a nunnery. No, I really shall one day, Alyosha said something to
  me to-day that I shall remember all my life.... Yes.... But to-day let us
  dance. To-morrow to the nunnery, but to-day we'll dance. I want to play
  to-day, good people, and what of it? God will forgive us. If I were God,
  I'd forgive every one: 'My dear sinners, from this day forth I forgive
  you.' I'm going to beg forgiveness: 'Forgive me, good people, a silly
  wench.' I'm a beast, that's what I am. But I want to pray. I gave a little
  onion. Wicked as I've been, I want to pray. Mitya, let them dance, don't
  stop them. Every one in the world is good. Every one--even the worst of
  them. The world's a nice place. Though we're bad the world's all right.
  We're good and bad, good and bad.... Come, tell me, I've something to ask
  you: come here every one, and I'll ask you: Why am I so good? You know I
  am good. I'm very good.... Come, why am I so good?"
  
  So Grushenka babbled on, getting more and more drunk. At last she
  announced that she was going to dance, too. She got up from her chair,
  staggering. "Mitya, don't give me any more wine--if I ask you, don't give
  it to me. Wine doesn't give peace. Everything's going round, the stove,
  and everything. I want to dance. Let every one see how I dance ... let
  them see how beautifully I dance...."
  
  She really meant it. She pulled a white cambric handkerchief out of her
  pocket, and took it by one corner in her right hand, to wave it in the
  dance. Mitya ran to and fro, the girls were quiet, and got ready to break
  into a dancing song at the first signal. Maximov, hearing that Grushenka
  wanted to dance, squealed with delight, and ran skipping about in front of
  her, humming:
  
  
      With legs so slim and sides so trim
      And its little tail curled tight.
  
  
  But Grushenka waved her handkerchief at him and drove him away.
  
  "Sh-h! Mitya, why don't they come? Let every one come ... to look on. Call
  them in, too, that were locked in.... Why did you lock them in? Tell them
  I'm going to dance. Let them look on, too...."
  
  Mitya walked with a drunken swagger to the locked door, and began knocking
  to the Poles with his fist.
  
  "Hi, you ... Podvysotskys! Come, she's going to dance. She calls you."
  
  "_Lajdak!_" one of the Poles shouted in reply.
  
  "You're a _lajdak_ yourself! You're a little scoundrel, that's what you
  are."
  
  "Leave off laughing at Poland," said Kalganov sententiously. He too was
  drunk.
  
  "Be quiet, boy! If I call him a scoundrel, it doesn't mean that I called
  all Poland so. One _lajdak_ doesn't make a Poland. Be quiet, my pretty
  boy, eat a sweetmeat."
  
  "Ach, what fellows! As though they were not men. Why won't they make
  friends?" said Grushenka, and went forward to dance. The chorus broke into
  "Ah, my porch, my new porch!" Grushenka flung back her head, half opened
  her lips, smiled, waved her handkerchief, and suddenly, with a violent
  lurch, stood still in the middle of the room, looking bewildered.
  
  "I'm weak...." she said in an exhausted voice. "Forgive me.... I'm weak, I
  can't.... I'm sorry."
  
  She bowed to the chorus, and then began bowing in all directions.
  
  "I'm sorry.... Forgive me...."
  
  "The lady's been drinking. The pretty lady has been drinking," voices were
  heard saying.
  
  "The lady's drunk too much," Maximov explained to the girls, giggling.
  
  "Mitya, lead me away ... take me," said Grushenka helplessly. Mitya
  pounced on her, snatched her up in his arms, and carried the precious
  burden through the curtains.
  
  "Well, now I'll go," thought Kalganov, and walking out of the blue room,
  he closed the two halves of the door after him. But the orgy in the larger
  room went on and grew louder and louder. Mitya laid Grushenka on the bed
  and kissed her on the lips.
  
  "Don't touch me...." she faltered, in an imploring voice. "Don't touch me,
  till I'm yours.... I've told you I'm yours, but don't touch me ... spare
  me.... With them here, with them close, you mustn't. He's here. It's nasty
  here...."
  
  "I'll obey you! I won't think of it ... I worship you!" muttered Mitya.
  "Yes, it's nasty here, it's abominable."
  
  And still holding her in his arms, he sank on his knees by the bedside.
  
  "I know, though you're a brute, you're generous," Grushenka articulated
  with difficulty. "It must be honorable ... it shall be honorable for the
  future ... and let us be honest, let us be good, not brutes, but good ...
  take me away, take me far away, do you hear? I don't want it to be here,
  but far, far away...."
  
  "Oh, yes, yes, it must be!" said Mitya, pressing her in his arms. "I'll
  take you and we'll fly away.... Oh, I'd give my whole life for one year
  only to know about that blood!"
  
  "What blood?" asked Grushenka, bewildered.
  
  "Nothing," muttered Mitya, through his teeth. "Grusha, you wanted to be
  honest, but I'm a thief. But I've stolen money from Katya.... Disgrace, a
  disgrace!"
  
  "From Katya, from that young lady? No, you didn't steal it. Give it her
  back, take it from me.... Why make a fuss? Now everything of mine is
  yours. What does money matter? We shall waste it anyway.... Folks like us
  are bound to waste money. But we'd better go and work the land. I want to
  dig the earth with my own hands. We must work, do you hear? Alyosha said
  so. I won't be your mistress, I'll be faithful to you, I'll be your slave,
  I'll work for you. We'll go to the young lady and bow down to her
  together, so that she may forgive us, and then we'll go away. And if she
  won't forgive us, we'll go, anyway. Take her her money and love me....
  Don't love her.... Don't love her any more. If you love her, I shall
  strangle her.... I'll put out both her eyes with a needle...."
  
  "I love you. I love only you. I'll love you in Siberia...."
  
  "Why Siberia? Never mind, Siberia, if you like. I don't care ... we'll
  work ... there's snow in Siberia.... I love driving in the snow ... and
  must have bells.... Do you hear, there's a bell ringing? Where is that
  bell ringing? There are people coming.... Now it's stopped."
  
  She closed her eyes, exhausted, and suddenly fell asleep for an instant.
  There had certainly been the sound of a bell in the distance, but the
  ringing had ceased. Mitya let his head sink on her breast. He did not
  notice that the bell had ceased ringing, nor did he notice that the songs
  had ceased, and that instead of singing and drunken clamor there was
  absolute stillness in the house. Grushenka opened her eyes.
  
  "What's the matter? Was I asleep? Yes ... a bell ... I've been asleep and
  dreamt I was driving over the snow with bells, and I dozed. I was with
  some one I loved, with you. And far, far away. I was holding you and
  kissing you, nestling close to you. I was cold, and the snow glistened....
  You know how the snow glistens at night when the moon shines. It was as
  though I was not on earth. I woke up, and my dear one is close to me. How
  sweet that is!..."
  
  "Close to you," murmured Mitya, kissing her dress, her bosom, her hands.
  And suddenly he had a strange fancy: it seemed to him that she was looking
  straight before her, not at him, not into his face, but over his head,
  with an intent, almost uncanny fixity. An expression of wonder, almost of
  alarm, came suddenly into her face.
  
  "Mitya, who is that looking at us?" she whispered.
  
  Mitya turned, and saw that some one had, in fact, parted the curtains and
  seemed to be watching them. And not one person alone, it seemed.
  
  He jumped up and walked quickly to the intruder.
  
  "Here, come to us, come here," said a voice, speaking not loudly, but
  firmly and peremptorily.
  
  Mitya passed to the other side of the curtain and stood stock still. The
  room was filled with people, but not those who had been there before. An
  instantaneous shiver ran down his back, and he shuddered. He recognized
  all those people instantly. That tall, stout old man in the overcoat and
  forage-cap with a cockade--was the police captain, Mihail Makarovitch. And
  that "consumptive-looking" trim dandy, "who always has such polished
  boots"--that was the deputy prosecutor. "He has a chronometer worth four
  hundred roubles; he showed it to me." And that small young man in
  spectacles.... Mitya forgot his surname though he knew him, had seen him:
  he was the "investigating lawyer," from the "school of jurisprudence," who
  had only lately come to the town. And this man--the inspector of police,
  Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, a man he knew well. And those fellows with the
  brass plates on, why are they here? And those other two ... peasants....
  And there at the door Kalganov with Trifon Borissovitch....
  
  "Gentlemen! What's this for, gentlemen?" began Mitya, but suddenly, as
  though beside himself, not knowing what he was doing, he cried aloud, at
  the top of his voice:
  
  "I un--der--stand!"
  
  The young man in spectacles moved forward suddenly, and stepping up to
  Mitya, began with dignity, though hurriedly:
  
  "We have to make ... in brief, I beg you to come this way, this way to the
  sofa.... It is absolutely imperative that you should give an explanation."
  
  "The old man!" cried Mitya frantically. "The old man and his blood!... I
  understand."
  
  And he sank, almost fell, on a chair close by, as though he had been mown
  down by a scythe.
  
  "You understand? He understands it! Monster and parricide! Your father's
  blood cries out against you!" the old captain of police roared suddenly,
  stepping up to Mitya.
  
  He was beside himself, crimson in the face and quivering all over.
  
  "This is impossible!" cried the small young man. "Mihail Makarovitch,
  Mihail Makarovitch, this won't do!... I beg you'll allow me to speak. I
  should never have expected such behavior from you...."
  
  "This is delirium, gentlemen, raving delirium," cried the captain of
  police; "look at him: drunk, at this time of night, in the company of a
  disreputable woman, with the blood of his father on his hands.... It's
  delirium!..."
  
  "I beg you most earnestly, dear Mihail Makarovitch, to restrain your
  feelings," the prosecutor said in a rapid whisper to the old police
  captain, "or I shall be forced to resort to--"
  
  But the little lawyer did not allow him to finish. He turned to Mitya, and
  delivered himself in a loud, firm, dignified voice:
  
  "Ex-Lieutenant Karamazov, it is my duty to inform you that you are charged
  with the murder of your father, Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, perpetrated
  this night...."
  
  He said something more, and the prosecutor, too, put in something, but
  though Mitya heard them he did not understand them. He stared at them all
  with wild eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Book VIII
target: Dmitri feels that there is still a possibility that Grushenka may accept him as her husband, but his problem is that if she does accept him, he cannot rightfully carry her away until he repays the money he owes Katerina Ivanovna. In a desperate effort to find a solution, he contrives a fantastic scheme. He goes to old Samsonov -- Grushenka's previous protector -- and offers him the rights to some property that he believes the law courts might take away from Fyodor and give to him if the old merchant will immediately give him 3,000 rubles. The merchant, of course, refuses and plays a trick on Dmitri: he sends him off to the country to see a merchant named Lyagavy, who is bargaining with Fyodor for this very property. Dmitri pawns his watch, hires transportation to the neighboring town, and finds the merchant. Unfortunately, the man is thoroughly drunk. Dmitri tries to sober him up but is unable to, so he waits until the next day. The merchant remains in a stupor, so Dmitri returns to town, hoping to borrow money from Madame Hohlakov. Madame Hohlakov, however, tries to convince him that he should go off to the gold mines if he wants money; she refuses to lend him anything. Dmitri next goes to claim Grushenka but finds that she is not at home. The servant is no help; she pretends that she does not know where Grushenka has gone. Dmitri is outraged. He picks up a brass pestle and dashes to his father's house. Then he sneaks into the garden and peers through a lighted window. He is sure that Grushenka has finally come to the old man. He is disappointed, however; he sees only his father pacing the floor. But to make certain that Grushenka is not there, Dmitri taps the secret signal. The old man opens the window and Dmitri is greatly relieved. Grushenka is not with his father! Meanwhile, Grigory, the old servant, awakens and goes into the garden for a breath of air. He sees Dmitri leaving the garden and tries to stop him, but Dmitri, confused and distraught, fights off his attacker and finally strikes him on the head with the pestle. The servant crumples to the ground, and Dmitri stops for a moment to see if the man is dead. He tries to stop the puddle of blood; then, in a panic, he tosses the pestle away and flees. He returns to Grushenka's house and forces the servants to reveal where Grushenka has gone. The answer is agonizing: she has gone to rejoin her first lover. Dmitri knows now that he can no longer claim the girl. He must step aside and leave her to her happiness. But he passionately wants one last look at Grushenka. After that, he will kill himself; his future holds nothing without Grushenka. He goes to retrieve pistols from Perhotin, a minor official who lent Dmitri money and kept the pistols as security. Perhotin is amazed to see Dmitri, who is now carrying a large bundle of money and blotched with blood. He goes to a nearby store with young Karamazov and remains while Dmitri buys 300 rubles worth of food and wine and makes arrangements to go where Grushenka is rumored to be staying. After Perhotin watches Dmitri leave, he decides to do some detective work. Dmitri is in luck: Grushenka is indeed staying where he was directed. He rushes to her rooms and greatly shocks Grushenka, but she recovers and welcomes him. Until now, the celebration has been gloomy and restrained. Dmitri's wine helps liven the spirits, and soon Grushenka and her officer friend and Dmitri are all playing cards together. All does not go well, however. The Polish officer begins to cheat and tosses out disgusting, cynical remarks. Grushenka recoils. She realizes that she can never love such a man. Dmitri senses Grushenka's pain, and when the officer finally turns his insults on her, Dmitri forces him into another room and locks him inside. Then a real celebration ensues, and Grushenka knows that she can love only Dmitri. Dmitri is not quite so lucky. He is troubled because he has struck Grigory, perhaps killed him; he also owes money to Katerina Ivanovna. He talks with Grushenka of their future together, but they are interrupted. A group of officers arrive, charge Dmitri with the murder of his father, and place him under arrest.
feat_summary_analysis: Until now, the novel has moved with a sure, slow deliberateness as Dostoevsky depicts the intellectual conflicts in Ivan, the philosophy of Zossima, and the mystic affirmation of life by Alyosha. Now, however, this section, devoted to Dmitri, rushes along with breathtaking speed as it records Dmitri's frantic efforts to save both his life and his love. Dostoevsky is a master at depicting the torment of despondency within a character who has no money and desperately needs it in order to salvage some remnant of his honor. Dmitri has spent most of the money that Katerina Ivanovna has lent him, and, although we know that he has the rest concealed on him, he still feels that he cannot elope with Grushenka until the entire sum is repaid. He must secure the money so that he can begin a new life with Grushenka and still retain his integrity. If he were to use Katerina's money to elope with Grushenka, he feels that this would be his absolute lowest, most degrading act. Looking forward, when he decides to step aside and allow Grushenka to return to her first love, one should realize that by this time he has decided to end his life. This resolution should be kept in mind when Dmitri shows few qualms about usurping the money; it is not that he considers it any less dishonorable, but, because he intends to take his life, he will not have to face the dishonor. Dostoevsky does not present an entirely admirable character in Dmitri. He continually lets the reader know that Dmitri's financial predicament is due to his irresponsibility with money. Consequently, his frantic search for someone who will lend him money and his absurd proposals reveal his lack of acumen. He is also unable to realize that the old merchant, Samsonov, is making fun of him and sending him on a wild goose chase. It takes two days for Dmitri to come to his senses, but even then he tries to convince Madame Hohlakov that she should lend him money. Were he more rational, he would know that the lady detests him. These scenes of begging, then, show to what degree of desperation Dmitri will go in his need for money. This alone casts suspicion upon him concerning his father's murder. Remember, too, that Dostoevsky arranges his plot in such a way that it is natural and logical for the reader to assume on first reading that Dmitri is the murderer. Every detail in this chapter attests to the incriminating evidence that will be accumulated against Dmitri. Furthermore, even Dmitri's thoughts cast suspicion upon him. As he goes to see Madame Hohlakov, for example, he thinks "his last hope . . . if this broke down, nothing else was left him in the world but to rob and murder some one for the three thousand." Such evidence, coupled with his distraught emotions, allows the reader to assume that Dmitri is indeed guilty of his father's murder. Ironically, one small lie contributes most of all to Dmitri's arrest. Fenya, Grushenka's servant, lies to him; she says that she does not know of Grushenka's whereabouts, thereby forcing Dmitri to go to his father's to search for her. Had the servant told the truth, Dmitri would not have been present at the scene of the murder; nor would he have been covered with Grigory's blood. Dmitri's resolve to commit suicide is quite believable. On the road to Mokroe to meet Grushenka, he fully intends to see her and then kill himself. Indeed, the mere fact that he is now spending the rest of Katerina Ivanovna's money and the fact that he has left old Grigory to face possible death from his wounds suggest that Dmitri no longer has any concern about the future. During the ride, he knows that he cannot stand in Grushenka's way, but he wants to see her once more. He is in agony; he even asks the peasant driver, as one might ask a priest, to forgive him all the sins of his life. Incidentally, with this last act, he echoes one of Zossima's ideas concerning the repudiation of master-servant distinction and the responsibility of all men for one another. Dmitri fully intends to kill himself, and his prayer, most of all, reveals the anguish in his soul. "Lord," he pleads, "receive me with all my lawlessness and do not condemn me. Let me pass Thy judgment -- do not condemn me for I have condemned myself . . . for I love Thee, O Lord. I am a wretch, but I love Thee. If Thou sendest me to hell, I shall love Thee there and from there I shall cry out that I love Thee for ever and ever." In this prayer is Dmitri's most redeeming value; it holds the key to Dmitri's character -- that which Zossima recognized. Dmitri is one of the "folk" of whom the elder spoke. He is one of those who may sin, but who still love God. That love, said Zossima, leads to salvation; such deep love the elder recognized early in his relationship with Dmitri. Henceforth, young Karamazov calls upon this love and its strength as he begins the slow journey toward regeneration and redemption.