IV. A Hymn and a Secret

It was already quite late (and how long is a November day, after all) when Alyosha rang at the prison gate. It was even beginning to get dark. But Alyosha knew that they would let him in to Mitya without hindrance. All this is the same with us, in our little town, as everywhere else. At first, of course, after the whole preliminary investigation was concluded, access to Mitya for visits from relatives and certain other persons was still hedged about with certain necessary formalities, but later on the formalities did not exactly slacken, but for some persons at least, those who came to see Mitya, certain exceptions somehow established themselves of their own accord. So much so that at times even the visits with the prisoner in the room set aside for that purpose took place almost in private, just the two of them. However, there were very few such persons: only Grushenka, Alyosha, and Rakitin. But the district police chief himself, Mikhail Makarovich, was very well disposed toward Grushenka. The old man had on his conscience the way he had shouted at her in Mokroye. Afterward, learning the whole substance of the matter, he had completely changed his opinion of her. And a strange thing: although he was firmly convinced of Mitya’s crime, ever since Mitya’s imprisonment he had somehow come to look on him more and more mildly: “A man with a good soul, perhaps, and he’s perished like a Swede at Poltava, from drink and disorder!” His former horror had given way in his heart to a kind of pity. As for Alyosha, the police chief was very fond of him and had known him for a long time, and Rakitin, who later took to coming very often to see the prisoner, was one of the closest acquaintances of “the police chief’s young ladies,” as he called them, and hung about their house every day. He also gave lessons in the house of the prison warden, a good-natured old man, though a strict old servant of the state. Alyosha, again, was a special and long-standing acquaintance of the warden as well, who liked to talk with him generally about “higher wisdom.” Ivan Fyodorovich, for instance, the warden did not so much respect as actually fear, his opinions above all, although he was a great philosopher himself, “having got there by his own wits,” of course. But toward Alyosha he felt a kind of invincible sympathy. In the past year the old man had just settled down to the apocryphal gospels and was constantly communicating his impressions to his young friend. Before, he had even visited him at the monastery and discussed things with him and the hieromonks for hours on end. In short, even if Alyosha came to the prison late, he had only to go to the warden and the matter was always settled. Besides, everyone in the prison, down to the last guard, had grown used to Alyosha. The sentries, of course, did not hinder him, as long as there was permission from the authorities. Mitya, when he was sent for, always came down from his little cell to the place set aside for visits. As he entered the room, Alyosha ran straight into Rakitin, who was already leaving Mitya. They were both talking loudly. Mitya, seeing him off, was laughing very much at something, and Rakitin seemed to be grumbling. Rakitin, especially of late, did not like meeting Alyosha, hardly spoke to him, and even bowed to him with an effort. Seeing Alyosha come in now, he frowned particularly and turned his eyes aside, as though entirely occupied in buttoning his big warm coat with the fur collar. Then he at once began looking for his umbrella.

“Mustn’t forget anything of my own,” he muttered, solely in order to say something.

“Mind you don’t forget anything of somebody else’s!” Mitya quipped, and at once burst out laughing at his own quip. Rakitin flared up in an instant.

“You can recommend that to your Karamazovs, you serf-owning spawn, and not to Rakitin!” he shouted suddenly, simply shaking with spite.

“What’s the matter with you? I was joking!” cried Mitya. “Pah, the devil! They’re all like that,” he turned to Alyosha, nodding at the quickly departing Rakitin. “There he was sitting and laughing and cheerful, and then all of a sudden he boils over! He didn’t even nod his head to you; have you two quarreled completely, or what? Why are you so late? I wasn’t just waiting for you, I was thirsting for you all morning. Well, never mind! We’ll make up for it.”

“Why has he taken to coming to you so often? Have you made friends with him, or what?” asked Alyosha, nodding likewise at the door through which Rakitin had taken himself off.

“Made friends with Mikhail? No, not exactly. And what for, the swine! He considers that I’m… a scoundrel. They don’t understand a joke either, that’s the main thing about them. They’ll never understand a joke. And it’s dry in their souls, flat and dry, just like the way it was when I was driving up to the prison that time and looking at the prison walls. But a clever man, clever. Well, Alexei, my head is done for now!”

He sat down on a bench and sat Alyosha down beside him.

“Yes, the trial is tomorrow. But surely you aren’t so completely without hope, brother?” Alyosha said with a timid feeling.

“What do you mean?” Mitya glanced at him somehow vaguely. “Ah, you mean the trial! Well, the devil with it! Up to now you and I have kept talking about trifles, it’s all been about this trial, and about the most important thing I’ve kept silent with you. Yes, the trial is tomorrow, only it wasn’t about the trial that I said my head is done for. My head isn’t done for, but what was sitting in my head, that’s done for. Why are you looking at me with such criticism in your face?”

“What do you mean, Mitya?”

“Ideas, ideas, that’s what! Ephics. What is this ephics?”

“Ephics?” Alyosha was surprised.

“Yes, is it some kind of science, or what?”

“Yes, there is such a science… only… I confess I can’t explain to you what science it is.”

“Rakitin knows. Rakitin knows a lot, devil take him! He won’t become a monk. He’s getting ready to go to Petersburg. There, he says, into the critical section, but with a noble tendency. Well, he may do some good and make a career. Ugh, they’re masters at careers! The devil with ephics! It’s me who’s done for, Alexei, me, you man of God! I love you more than anyone. My heart trembles for you, that’s what. Who was that Karl Bernard?”

“Karl Bernard?” Alyosha was surprised again.

“No, not Karl, wait, I got it wrong: Claude Bernard. What is that? Chemistry, or something?”

“That must be a certain scientist,” Alyosha answered, “only, I confess, I can’t tell you much about him either. I’ve only heard he is a scientist, but what kind I don’t know.”

“Well, devil take him, I don’t know either,” Mitya swore. “Some scoundrel, most likely, and they’re all scoundrels. But Rakitin will worm his way in, Rakitin will squeeze through a crack, he’s a Bernard too. Ugh, these Bernards! There’s a lot of them have bred!”

“But what’s the matter with you?” Alyosha asked insistently.

“He wants to write an article about me, about my case, and begin his role in literature with it; that’s why he comes, he explained it himself. He wants something with a tendency: ‘He couldn’t help killing, you see, he was eaten up by his environment,’ and so on, he explained to me. It will have a tinge of socialism, he says. Well, devil take him, a tinge is a tinge, I don’t care. He doesn’t like brother Ivan, he hates him, and he doesn’t think much of you either. Well, but I don’t drive him away, because he’s a clever man. Very conceited, though. I was just telling him: ‘The Karamazovs are not scoundrels but philosophers, because all real Russian people are philosophers, and you, though you’ve studied, are no philosopher, you’re a churl.’ He laughs, so spitefully. And I say to him: de thoughtibus non est disputandum; a good quip, isn’t it? At least I’ve gone in for classicism too,” Mitya suddenly guffawed.

“Why are you done for? You said so just now?” Alyosha interrupted.

“Why am I done for? Hm! In essence… if you take the whole thing together, I’m sorry for God, that’s why!”

“What do you mean, sorry for God?”

“Imagine: it’s there in the nerves, in the head, that is, there in the brain, these nerves (well, devil take them!)… there are these sort of little tails, the nerves have little tails, well, and as soon as they start trembling there… that is, you see, I look at something with my eyes, like this, and they start trembling, the little tails… and when they tremble, an image appears, and it doesn’t appear at once, but some instant, some second passes, and there appears a sort of moment, no, not a moment, devil take the moment, but an image, I mean an object or an event, well, devil take it—that’s why I contemplate, and then think… because of the little tails, and not at all because I have a soul and am some sort of image and likeness, that’s all foolishness. Mikhail explained this to me only yesterday, brother, and it was as though I’d been scorched. It’s magnificent, Alyosha, this science! A new man will come, that much I understand… And all the same I’m sorry for God!”

“Well, that’s good too,” said Alyosha.

“That I’m sorry for God? Chemistry, brother, chemistry! There’s nothing to be done, Your Reverence, move over a little, chemistry is coming! And Rakitin doesn’t love God, ugh, he doesn’t love him! That’s the sorest spot with all of them! But they hide it. They lie. They pretend. ‘Well, are you going to push this in the critical section?’ I ask. ‘Well, they won’t let me do it openly,’ he says, and laughs. ‘Only how will it be, then,’ I ask, ‘for man after that? Without God and without a future life? Then, that means, everything is permitted now, one can do anything?’ ‘And you didn’t know?’ he says. He laughs. ‘For a clever man,’ he says, ‘anything is possible, a clever man knows how to catch crayfish, but you, now,’ he says, ‘you killed and got caught and are rotting in prison!’ That’s what he says to me. A natural-born swine! Before, I used to throw his sort out, but now I listen. He says a lot of sensible things, after all. He writes cleverly too. About a week ago he started reading me an article of his, and I copied out three lines on purpose then, here, wait, here it is.”

Mitya hurriedly took a scrap of paper out of his waistcoat pocket and read:

“‘In order to resolve this question, it is necessary first of all to set one’s personality at variance with one’s reality.’ Do you understand or not?”

“No, I don’t understand,” said Alyosha.

He was watching Mitya with curiosity and listening to him.

“I don’t understand either. Dark and unclear, but clever. ‘Everybody,’ he says, ‘writes like that now, because such is the environment…’ They’re afraid of the environment. He writes verses too, the scoundrel, he’s sung the praises of Khokhlakova’s little foot, ha-ha-ha!”

“I’ve heard,” said Alyosha.

“You’ve heard? And have you heard the verses?”

“No.”

“I have them, here, I’ll read them. You don’t know, I haven’t told you, there’s a whole story here. The rogue! Three weeks ago he took it into his head to tease me: ‘Here you’ve got yourself caught like a fool,’ he says, ‘over three thousand, but I’ll grab a hundred and fifty thousand, I’ll marry a certain widow and buy a stone house in Petersburg.’ And he told me he was making up to Khokhlakova, and she was never clever even in her youth, and at forty she’s gone completely out of her mind. ‘But she’s terribly sentimental,’ he says, ‘and that’s how I’ll finish her off. I’ll marry her, take her to Petersburg, and start publishing a newspaper there.’ And there was such a nasty, sensual slobber on his lips, not slobber over Khokhlakova but over those hundred and fifty thousand. And he convinced me, he did convince me; he kept coming to me every day: she’s giving in, he says. He was beaming with joy. And then all of a sudden they threw him out: Perkhotin, Pyotr Ilyich, got the upper hand, good man! I mean, I could just kiss that silly goose all over for driving him out! Well, it was while he was coming to see me that he composed these verses. ‘It’s the first time,’ he says, ‘that I’ve soiled my hands writing verses, for seduction, that is, for a useful cause. Once I’ve got the capital out of the silly goose, I can bring civic benefit afterward.’ They have a civic justification for every vileness, after all! ‘And all the same,’ he says, ‘I’ve written better than your Pushkin, because I managed to slip civic grief even into a comic verse.’ That bit about Pushkin, I understand. What of it, if he really was a man of talent and only described little feet! But how proud he was of his little verses! The vanity they have, the vanity! ‘On the Recovery of the Sore Little Foot of My Beloved Object,’ that’s the title he thought up, a frisky fellow!

“Oh, what a little foot, what a foot,
A little foot that’s swollen up a bit!
The doctors come to cure it,
They bandage it and maim it.
It’s not for little feet I pine,
Let Pushkin sing their praises:
It’s for a little head I pine
That cannot grasp ideas.
It had begun to grasp a bit,
But then the foot got in the way!
So let the little foot be cured,
And let the little head grasp.

“A swine, a pure swine, and yet it came out playful, the scoundrel! And he really did slip in the ‘civic’ part. And how angry he got when they threw him out. Gnashing his teeth!”

“He has already taken his revenge,” said Alyosha. “He wrote a report about Khokhlakova.”

And Alyosha told him hastily about the report in the newspaper Rumors.

“It’s he, he!” Mitya confirmed, frowning. “It’s he! These reports… I know… I mean, how many base things have already been written, about Grusha, for instance!… And about that other one too, about Katya… Hm!”

He walked about the room, preoccupied.

“Brother, I can’t stay long,” Alyosha said after a silence. “Tomorrow is a terrible, great day for you: God’s judgment will be passed on you… and I’m amazed, here you are walking about and talking God knows what instead of business.”

“No, don’t be amazed,” Mitya interrupted hotly. “What should I talk about, that stinking cur? About the murderer? You and I have talked enough about that. I don’t want any more about the stinking one, the son of the Stinking woman! God will kill him, you’ll see, hush!”

He went up to Alyosha in agitation and suddenly kissed him. His eyes were burning.

“Rakitin won’t understand this,” he began, all as if in some sort of rapture, “but you, you will understand everything. That’s why I was thirsting for you. You see, I’ve long wanted to express a great deal to you here, within these peeling walls, but I kept silent about the most important thing: it was as though the time still hadn’t come. Now I’ve waited until the last hour, to pour out my soul to you. Brother, in these last two months I have felt a new man in myself, a new man has risen in me! He was shut up in me, but he would never have appeared if it hadn’t been for this thunderbolt. It’s frightening! And what is it to me that I’ll be beating out ore with a hammer in the mines for twenty years, I’m not afraid of that at all, but something else frightens me now: that the risen man may leave me! One can find there too, in the mines, underground, beside you, in another convict and murderer just like yourself, a human heart, and come together with him, because there too one can live, and love, and suffer! One can revive and raise up the frozen heart in this convict, one can tend him for years and at last bring up out of the den into the light a soul that is lofty by now, a suffering consciousness, revive an angel, raise up a hero! And there are many of them, hundreds of them, and we are all guilty for them! Why did I dream of the ‘babe’ at such a moment then? ‘Why is the babe poor?’ That was a prophecy to me at that moment! For the ‘babe’ I shall go. Because all are guilty for all. It’s ‘the babe’ for all of them, because there are little children and big children. All are ‘the babe.’ For all I shall go, because someone has to go for all, after all. I didn’t kill my father, but I must go. I accept! It all came to me here… here within these peeling walls. And there are many of them, hundreds of them there, the underground ones, hammers in hand. Oh yes, we shall be in chains, and there will be no freedom, but then, in our great grief, we shall rise again into joy, without which man cannot live, nor God be, for God gives joy, that is his privilege, a great one… Lord, let man melt away in prayer! How shall I be there underground without God? Rakitin is lying: if they drive God from the earth, we shall meet him underground! A convict cannot be without God, it is even more impossible than for one who is not a convict! And then we, the men of underground, will sing from the bowels of the earth a tragic hymn to God, in whom is joy! Long live God and his joy! I love him!”

Mitya, delivering his wild speech, was almost choking. He had turned pale, his lips were twitching, tears were rolling from his eyes.

“No, life is full, even underground there is life!” he began again. “You won’t believe, Alexei, how I want to live now, what a thirst to exist and to be conscious has been born in me precisely within these peeling walls! Rakitin doesn’t understand that, all he wants is to build a house and let out lodgings, but I was waiting for you. And what is suffering, anyway? I’m not afraid of it, even if it were countless. I’m not afraid now, before I was afraid. You know, perhaps I won’t even answer at the trial… And it seems there’s so much of this strength in me now that I’ll overcome everything, all sufferings, only so as to say and to tell myself every minute: I am! In a thousand torments—I am; I writhe under torture—but I am! I sit on a pillar, but I too exist, I see the sun, and if I can’t see the sun, still I know it is there. And to know that the sun is there, that is already the whole of life. Alyosha, my cherub, all these different philosophies are killing me, devil take them! Brother Ivan…”

“What about brother Ivan?” Alyosha tried to interrupt, but Mitya did not hear.

“You see, before, I had none of these doubts, but it was all hiding in me. Precisely, perhaps, because unknown ideas were raging in me, I drank and fought and raged. I fought to quench them in myself, to subdue them, to crush them down. Brother Ivan is not Rakitin, he hides an idea. Brother Ivan is a sphinx and keeps silent, keeps silent all the time. But God torments me. That alone torments me. What if he doesn’t exist? What if Rakitin is right that it’s an artificial idea in mankind? Then, if he isn’t there, man is the chief of the earth, of the whole creation. Magnificent! Only how will he be virtuous without God? A question! I keep thinking about that. Whom will he love then, man? To whom will he be grateful, to whom will he sing a hymn? Rakitin laughs. Rakitin says one can love mankind without God. Well, only a snot-nosed shrimp can assert that, but I can’t understand it. Life is easy for Rakitin: ‘You,’ he says to me today, ‘had better busy yourself with extending man’s civil rights, or at least with seeing that the price of beef doesn’t go up; that way you’ll show your love for mankind more simply and more directly than with philosophies.’ And I came back at him with this: ‘And you,’ I say, ‘without God, you’ll be the one to push up the price of beef yourself, if the chance comes your way, and you’ll make a ruble on every kopeck.’ He got angry. For what is virtue? Answer me that, Alexei. I have one virtue and a Chinaman has another, so it’s a relative thing. Or not? Or isn’t it relative? A treacherous question! You won’t laugh if I tell you I didn’t sleep for two nights over it. What amazes me now is only how people live there and don’t think about any of it. Vanity! Ivan has no God. He has an idea. Not on my scale. But he keeps silent. I think he’s a Freemason. I asked him, he keeps silent. I wanted to drink a little water from his spring, he keeps silent. Only once did he say one little word.”

“What did he say?” Alyosha hastily took up.

“I said to him: then everything is permitted, if that’s so? He frowned: ‘Fyodor Pavlovich,’ he says, ‘our papa, was a little pig, but he thought correctly.’ That’s what he came out with. That was all he said. That beats Rakitin.”

“Yes,” Alyosha confirmed bitterly. “When was he here with you?”

“About that later, now something else. Up to now I’ve told you almost nothing about Ivan. I put it off till the end. When this business of mine here is over and they pronounce the sentence, then I’ll tell you a thing or two, I’ll tell you everything. There’s one terrible thing here… And you will be my judge in this matter. But now don’t even begin about it, now mum’s the word. Here you talk about tomorrow, about the trial, but would you believe it, I know nothing.”

“Have you talked with this lawyer?”

“What of the lawyer! I told him about everything. A soft rogue, from the capital. A Bernard! Only he doesn’t believe me a broken penny’s worth. He believes I killed him, imagine, I can see it already. ‘Then why,’ I ask, ‘have you come to defend me, in that case?’ To hell with them. They’ve sent for a doctor too, they want to make me out a madman. I won’t allow it! Katerina Ivanovna wants to do ‘her duty’ to the end. Straining herself to do it!” Mitya grinned bitterly. “A cat! A cruel heart! And she knows, after all, what I said about her then in Mokroye, that she’s a woman ‘of great wrath’! They passed it on. Yes, the evidence has multiplied like the sand of the sea! Grigory sticks to his story. Grigory is honest, but a fool. Many people are honest thanks to being fools. That’s Rakitin’s idea. Grigory is my enemy. Some people it pays better to have among your enemies than among your friends. I say that about Katerina Ivanovna. I’m afraid, oh, I’m afraid she’ll tell at the trial about the bow to the ground after the four thousand five hundred! She’ll pay me back to the end, to the last penny. I don’t want her sacrifice! They’ll shame me at the trial! I’ll bear it somehow. Go to her, Alyosha, ask her not to tell that at the trial. Or is it impossible? Ah, the devil, it’s all the same, I’ll bear it! And I’m not sorry for her. She wants it herself. The thief deserves his torment. I’ll make my speech, Alexei.” He grinned bitterly again. “Only… only Grusha, Grusha, Lord! Why should she take such torment on herself now!” he suddenly exclaimed with tears. “Grusha is killing me, the thought of her is killing me, killing me! She was here with me today…”

“She told me. She was very upset with you today.”

“I know. Devil take me for my temper. I was jealous! When I let her go, I repented, I kissed her. I didn’t ask her forgiveness.”

“Why didn’t you ask?” exclaimed Alyosha.

Mitya suddenly laughed almost merrily.

“God preserve you, my dear boy, from ever asking forgiveness of a woman you love for something you’ve done wrong! Of a woman you love especially, especially, however guilty you may be before her! Because woman, brother, is the devil knows what, women at least are a thing I know something about! Well, just try confessing your guilt to her, ‘I’m guilty, so to speak, forgive me, pardon me’: that’s when the hail of reproaches will start! Never will she forgive you straight and simply, but she’ll humble you to a rag, she’ll reckon up even what never happened, she’ll take it all, she won’t forget a thing, she’ll add her own, and only then will she forgive. And that’s the best, the best of them! She’ll scrape up the last scrapings and heap it all on your head—such a flaying cruelty sits in them, I tell you, in every last one of them, these angels without whom we can’t live! You see, my dear, I’ll tell you frankly and simply: every decent man ought to be under the slipper of some woman or other. That is my conviction; not a conviction, a feeling. A man ought to be magnanimous, and it won’t soil a man. It won’t soil even a hero, it won’t soil Caesar! Well, but don’t ask forgiveness all the same, never and not for anything. Remember the rule: it was taught you by your brother Mitya, who perished through women. No, I’d better earn something from Grusha without forgiveness. I revere her, Alexei, I revere her! Only she doesn’t see it, no, it’s never enough love for her. And she wears me out, wears me out with love. What was before! Before, it was only infernal curves that wore me out, but now I’ve taken her whole soul into my own soul and through her I myself have become a man! Will they marry us? And without that I’ll die of jealousy. I keep dreaming of something every day… What did she tell you about me?”

Alyosha repeated everything Grushenka had said earlier. Mitya listened in detail, asked again about many things, and was satisfied.

“So she isn’t angry that I’m jealous,” he exclaimed. “A real woman! ‘I have a cruel heart myself.’ Ugh, I love that kind, the cruel ones, though I can’t stand it when people are jealous of me, I can’t stand it! We’ll fight. But love, I’ll love her endlessly. Will they marry us? Do they marry convicts? A question. And without her I can’t live…”

Mitya walked about the room, frowning. It was getting almost dark in the room. He suddenly became terribly anxious.

“So there’s a secret, she says, a secret? The three of us, so to speak, have a plot against her, and ‘Katka,’ so to speak, is mixed up in it? No, Grushenka, my dear, that’s not it. You’ve made a slip there, your silly little woman’s slip! Alyosha, my dear, ah, come what may! I’ll reveal our secret to you!”

He looked around on all sides, quickly came right up close to Alyosha, who was standing before him, and began whispering to him with a mysterious air, although in reality no one could hear them: the old guard was dozing on a bench in the corner, and not a word could reach the soldiers on sentry duty.

“I’ll reveal our whole secret to you!” Mitya whispered in haste. “I meant to reveal it later, because without you how can I make up my mind to anything? You’re everything to me. Though I say that Ivan is higher than us, you are my cherub. Only your decision will decide it. Perhaps it’s you who are the higher man, and not Ivan. You see, this is a matter of conscience, a matter of the highest conscience—a secret so important that I can’t manage it myself, and I put it all off until you came. But all the same it’s too early to decide now, because we must wait for the verdict: when the verdict is out, then you will decide my fate. Don’t decide now; I’ll tell you right now, you’ll hear it, but don’t decide. Stand and keep silent. I won’t reveal everything to you. I’ll tell you only the idea, without details, and you keep silent. Not a question, not a movement, agreed? But then, Lord, where am I to put your eyes? I’m afraid your eyes will speak the decision, even if you yourself keep silent. Ugh, I’m afraid! Alyosha, listen: brother Ivan is proposing that I escape. I won’t tell you the details: everything’s been foreseen, everything can be arranged. Keep silent, don’t decide. To America with Grusha. I can’t live without Grusha, after all! What if they won’t let her come to me there? Do they marry convicts? Brother Ivan says no. And without Grusha what am I to do there underground with a hammer? I’ll only smash my own head with that hammer! But on the other hand, what about conscience? I’d have run away from suffering! There was a sign, and I rejected the sign; there was a path of purification, and I made an about-face. Ivan says that in America, ‘with good inclinations,’ one can do more good than underground. Well, and where will our underground hymn take place? What is America? America is vanity again! And besides, I should think, there’s plenty of swindling in America. I’d have run away from the crucifixion! That’s why I’m telling you, Alexei, because you alone can understand this, and nobody else; for others it’s foolishness, delirium, all that I told you about the hymn. They’ll say he’s gone out of his mind, or he’s a fool. But I haven’t gone out of my mind, and I’m not a fool either. Ivan understands about the hymn too, ugh, he understands, only he doesn’t answer to it, he keeps silent. He doesn’t believe in the hymn. Don’t speak, don’t speak: I can see how you’re looking at me: you’ve made up your mind already! Don’t decide, spare me, I can’t live without Grusha, wait for the trial!”

Mitya finished like a man in a frenzy. He held Alyosha by the shoulders with both hands and simply fastened his thirsting, feverish gaze on his eyes.

“Do they marry convicts?” he repeated for the third time, in a pleading voice.

Alyosha listened in extraordinary amazement and was deeply shaken.

“Tell me one thing,” he said. “Is Ivan insisting very much, and who thought of it first?”

“He, he thought of it, he insists! He never came to see me, and suddenly a week ago he came and began with this straight off. He insists terribly. He doesn’t ask, he orders. He has no doubt that I’ll obey, though I turned my whole heart inside out to him, as I have to you, and told him about the hymn. He told me how he’ll arrange it, he’s gathered all the information, but that’s for later. He wants it to the point of hysterics. The main thing is money: ten thousand, he says, for you to escape, and twenty thousand for America, and with ten thousand, he says, we’ll arrange a magnificent escape.”

“And he absolutely forbade you to tell me?” Alyosha asked again.

“Absolutely, not anyone, and above all you: you not for anything! He’s afraid, surely, that you’ll stand before me like my conscience. Don’t tell him I told you. Ugh, don’t tell him!”

“You are right,” Alyosha decided, “it’s impossible to decide before the verdict of the court. After the trial you will decide for yourself; then you will find a new man in yourself, and he will decide.”

“A new man, or a Bernard, and he’ll decide it Bernard-fashion! Because, it seems, I’m a contemptible Bernard myself!” Mitya grinned bitterly.

“But surely, surely, brother, you haven’t lost all hope of being acquitted?”

Mitya shrugged his shoulders convulsively and shook his head.

“Alyosha, my dear, it’s time for you to go!” he suddenly began to hurry. “The warden shouted in the yard, he’ll be here in a minute. It’s late for us, it’s disorder. Embrace me quickly, kiss me, make the sign of the cross over me, my dear, cross me for tomorrow’s cross…”

They embraced and kissed.

“And Ivan,” Mitya suddenly said, “he proposed escape, and yet he believes I killed him, after all!”

A sad grin forced itself onto his lips.

“Did you ask him whether he believes it or not?” asked Alyosha.

“No, I didn’t ask him. I wanted to, but I couldn’t, I didn’t have the strength. And it’s all the same, I can see it in his eyes. Well, goodbye!”

They kissed once more in haste, and Alyosha was already about to go out when suddenly Mitya called him again:

“Stand in front of me, like this.”

And again he seized Alyosha firmly by the shoulders with both hands. His face suddenly turned quite pale, so that even in the near darkness it was terribly noticeable. His lips were twisted, his gaze fastened on Alyosha.

“Alyosha, tell me the whole truth, as before the Lord God: do you believe that I killed him, or don’t you? You, you yourself, do you believe it or not? The whole truth, don’t lie!” he shouted to him in a frenzy.

Alyosha seemed to reel all over, and in his heart, he felt it, something sharp seemed to pass through.

“Enough, what are you…” he began to murmur, as if lost.

“The whole truth, the whole of it, don’t lie!” Mitya repeated.

“Not for a single moment have I believed that you are the murderer,” burst suddenly from Alyosha’s breast in a trembling voice, and he lifted his right hand high, as though calling on God to witness what he said. Bliss instantly lit up Mitya’s whole face.

“Thank you!” he brought out in a long breath, as if sighing after a faint. “Now you have revived me… Would you believe it: until now I was afraid to ask you, you, of all people, you! Well, go, go! You’ve strengthened me for tomorrow, God bless you! Well, go now, love Ivan!” broke from Mitya as his last word.

Alyosha went out all in tears. Such a degree of suspiciousness in Mitya, such a degree of distrust even of him, of Alyosha, all this suddenly opened before Alyosha such an abyss of hopeless grief and despair in his unhappy brother’s soul as he had never suspected before. A deep, infinite compassion suddenly seized him and tormented him in an instant. His pierced heart ached terribly. “Love Ivan!” Mitya’s words of a moment ago suddenly came back to him. And he was going to Ivan, as it happened. Since that very morning he had needed terribly to see Ivan. Ivan tormented him no less than Mitya, and now, after seeing his brother, more than ever.