The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky (the reader ebook txt) 📖

too, the rascal. He’s written in honor of Madame Hohlakov’s foot. Ha ha ha!”

“I’ve heard about it,” said Alyosha.

“Have you? And have you heard the poem?”

“No.”

“I’ve got it. Here it is. I’ll read it to you. You don’t know⁠—I haven’t told you⁠—there’s quite a story about it. He’s a rascal! Three weeks ago he began to tease me. ‘You’ve got yourself into a mess, like a fool, for the sake of three thousand, but I’m going to collar a hundred and fifty thousand. I am going to marry a widow and buy a house in Petersburg.’ And he told me he was courting Madame Hohlakov. She hadn’t much brains in her youth, and now at forty she has lost what she had. ‘But she’s awfully sentimental,’ he says; ‘that’s how I shall get hold of her. When I marry her, I shall take her to Petersburg and there I shall start a newspaper.’ And his mouth was simply watering, the beast, not for the widow, but for the hundred and fifty thousand. And he made me believe it. He came to see me every day. ‘She is coming round,’ he declared. He was beaming with delight. And then, all of a sudden, he was turned out of the house. Perhotin’s carrying everything before him, bravo! I could kiss the silly old noodle for turning him out of the house. And he had written this doggerel. ‘It’s the first time I’ve soiled my hands with writing poetry,’ he said. ‘It’s to win her heart, so it’s in a good cause. When I get hold of the silly woman’s fortune, I can be of great social utility.’ They have this social justification for every nasty thing they do! ‘Anyway it’s better than your Pushkin’s poetry,’ he said, ‘for I’ve managed to advocate enlightenment even in that.’ I understand what he means about Pushkin, I quite see that, if he really was a man of talent and only wrote about women’s feet. But wasn’t Rakitin stuck up about his doggerel! The vanity of these fellows! ‘On the convalescence of the swollen foot of the object of my affections’⁠—he thought of that for a title. He’s a waggish fellow.

A captivating little foot,
Though swollen and red and tender!
The doctors come and plasters put,
But still they cannot mend her.

Yet, ’tis not for her foot I dread⁠—
A theme for Pushkin’s muse more fit⁠—
It’s not her foot, it is her head:
I tremble for her loss of wit!

For as her foot swells, strange to say,
Her intellect is on the wane⁠—
Oh, for some remedy I pray
That may restore both foot and brain!

He is a pig, a regular pig, but he’s very arch, the rascal! And he really has put in a progressive idea. And wasn’t he angry when she kicked him out! He was gnashing his teeth!”

“He’s taken his revenge already,” said Alyosha. “He’s written a paragraph about Madame Hohlakov.”

And Alyosha told him briefly about the paragraph in Gossip.

“That’s his doing, that’s his doing!” Mitya assented, frowning. “That’s him! These paragraphs⁠ ⁠… I know⁠ ⁠… the insulting things that have been written about Grushenka, for instance.⁠ ⁠… And about Katya, too.⁠ ⁠… H’m!”

He walked across the room with a harassed air.

“Brother, I cannot stay long,” Alyosha said, after a pause. “Tomorrow will be a great and awful day for you, the judgment of God will be accomplished⁠ ⁠… I am amazed at you, you walk about here, talking of I don’t know what⁠ ⁠…”

“No, don’t be amazed at me,” Mitya broke in warmly. “Am I to talk of that stinking dog? Of the murderer? We’ve talked enough of him. I don’t want to say more of the stinking son of Stinking Lizaveta! God will kill him, you will see. Hush!”

He went up to Alyosha excitedly and kissed him. His eyes glowed.

“Rakitin wouldn’t understand it,” he began in a sort of exaltation; “but you, you’ll understand it all. That’s why I was thirsting for you. You see, there’s so much I’ve been wanting to tell you forever so long, here, within these peeling walls, but I haven’t said a word about what matters most; the moment never seems to have come. Now I can wait no longer. I must pour out my heart to you. Brother, these last two months I’ve found in myself a new man. A new man has risen up in me. He was hidden in me, but would never have come to the surface, if it hadn’t been for this blow from heaven. I am afraid! And what do I care if I spend twenty years in the mines, breaking ore with a hammer? I am not a bit afraid of that⁠—it’s something else I am afraid of now: that that new man may leave me. Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are all to blame for them. Why was it I dreamed of that ‘babe’ at such a moment? ‘Why is the babe so poor?’ That was a sign to me at that moment. It’s for the babe I’m going. Because we are all responsible for all. For all the ‘babes,’ for there are big children as well as little children. All are ‘babes.’ I go for all, because someone must go for all. I didn’t kill father, but I’ve got to go. I accept it. It’s all come to me here, here, within these peeling walls. There are numbers of them there, hundreds of them underground, with hammers in their hands. Oh, yes, we shall be in chains and there will be no freedom,