The Brothers Karamazov

“Why is such a man alive!” Dmitri Fyodorovich growled in a muffled voice, now nearly beside himself with fury, somehow raising his shoulders peculiarly so that he looked almost hunchbacked. “No, tell me, can he be allowed to go on dishonoring the earth with himself?” He looked around at everyone, pointing his finger at the old man. His speech was slow and deliberate.

“Do you hear, you monks, do you hear the parricide!” Fyodor Pavlovich flung at Father Iosif. “There is the answer to your ‘shame’! What shame? This ‘creature,’ this ‘woman of bad behavior’ is perhaps holier than all of you, gentlemen soul-saving hieromonks! Maybe she fell in her youth, being influenced by her environment, but she has ‘loved much,’ and even Christ forgave her who loved much . . .”^[57]

“Christ did not forgive that kind of love ... ,” escaped impatiently from the meek Father Iosif.

“No, that kind, monks, exactly that kind, that kind! You are saving your souls here on cabbage and you think you’re righteous! You eat gudgeons, one gudgeon a day, and you think you can buy God with gudgeons!”

“Impossible! Impossible!” came from all sides of the cell.

But the whole scene, which had turned so ugly, was stopped in a most unexpected manner. The elder suddenly rose from his place. Alyosha, who had almost completely lost his head from fear for him and for all of them, had just time enough to support his arm. The elder stepped towards Dmitri Fyodorovich and, having come close to him, knelt before him. Alyosha thought for a moment that he had fallen from weakness, but it was something else. Kneeling in front of Dmitri Fyodorovich, the elder bowed down at his feet with a full, distinct, conscious bow, and even touched the floor with his forehead. Alyosha was so amazed that he failed to support him as he got to his feet. A weak smile barely glimmered on his lips. “Forgive me! Forgive me, all of you!” he said, bowing on all sides to his guests.

Dmitri Fyodorovich stood dumbstruck for a few moments. Bowing at his feet—what was that? Then suddenly he cried out: “Oh, God!” and, covering his face with his hands, rushed from the room. All the other guests flocked after him, forgetting in their confusion even to say good-bye or bow to their host. Only the hieromonks again came to receive his blessing.

“What’s that—bowing at his feet? Is it some sort of emblem?” Fyodor Pavlovich, who for some reason had suddenly grown quiet, tried to start a conversation, not daring, by the way, to address anyone in particular. At that moment they were just passing beyond the walls of the hermitage.

“I cannot answer for a madhouse or for madmen,” Miusov at once replied sharply, “but I can and will rid myself of your company, Fyodor Pavlovich, and that, believe me, forever. Where is that monk ... ?”

However, “that monk”—that is, the one who had invited them to dinner with the Superior—did not keep them waiting. He met the guests immediately, just as they came down the steps from the elder’s cell, as if he had been waiting for them all the time.

“Do me a favor, reverend father, convey my deepest respects to the Father Superior, and apologize for me, Miusov, personally to his reverence, that owing to the unexpected occurrence of unforeseen circumstances it is quite impossible for me to have the honor of joining him at his table, despite my most sincere wishes,” Pyotr Alexandrovich said irritably to the monk.

“And that unforeseen circumstance is me!” Fyodor Pavlovich immediately put in. “Do you hear, father? Pyotr Alexandrovich, here, doesn’t want to be in my company, otherwise he’d be glad to go. And you will go, Pyotr Alexandrovich, be so good as to visit the Father Superior, and—bon appetit!

You see, it is I who am going to decline, and not you. Home, home—I’ll eat at home. Here I just don’t feel able, Pyotr Alexandrovich, my dearest relative.”

“I am no relative of yours and never have been, you despicable man!”

“I said it on purpose to make you mad, because you disclaim our relation, though you’re still my relative no matter how you shuffle, I can prove it by the Church calendar.^[58] Stay if you like, Ivan Fyodorovich; I’ll send horses for you later. As for you, Pyotr Alexandrovich, even common decency must tell you now to go to the Father Superior, if only to apologize for the mess we made in there.”

“Are you really leaving? It’s not another lie?”

“Pyotr Alexandrovich, how could I dare stay after what happened? I got carried away, forgive me, gentlemen, I got carried away! And besides, I’m shaken! And ashamed, too! Gentlemen, one man has a heart like Alexander of Macedon and another like little Fido the lapdog. Mine is like little Fido the lapdog’s. I turned timid! How, after such an escapade, could I go to dinner and slop up monastery sauces? It’s shameful, I can’t, excuse me!”