The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (reading an ebook TXT) 📗
- Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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a long while yet will you keep that great mother’s grief. But it
will turn in the end into quiet joy, and your bitter tears will be
only tears of tender sorrow that purifies the heart and delivers it
from sin. And I shall pray for the peace of your child’s soul. What
was his name?”
“Alexey, Father.”
“A sweet name. After Alexey, the man of God?”
“Yes, Father.”
“What a saint he was! I will remember him, mother, and your
grief in my prayers, and I will pray for your husband’s health. It
is a sin for you to leave him. Your little one will see from heaven
that you have forsaken his father, and will weep over you. Why do
you trouble his happiness? He is living, for the soul lives for
ever, and though he is not in the house he is near you, unseen. How
can he go into the house when you say that the house is hateful to
you? To whom is he to go if he find you not together, his father and
mother? He comes to you in dreams now, and you grieve. But then he
will send you gentle dreams. Go to your husband, mother; go this
very day.”
“I will go, Father, at your word. I will go. You’ve gone
straight to my heart. My Nikita, my Nikita, you are waiting for me,”
the woman began in a singsong voice; but the elder had already turned
away to a very old woman, dressed like a dweller in the town, not like
a pilgrim. Her eyes showed that she had come with an object, and in
order to say something. She said she was the widow of a
non-commissioned officer, and lived close by in the town. Her son
Vasenka was in the commissariat service, and had gone to Irkutsk in
Siberia. He had written twice from there, but now a year had passed
since he had written. She did inquire about him, but she did not
know the proper place to inquire.
“Only the other day Stepanida Ilyinishna-she’s a rich
merchant’s wife-said to me, ‘You go, Prohorovna, and put your son’s
name down for prayer in the church, and pray for the peace of his soul
as though he were dead. His soul will be troubled,’ she said, ‘and
he will write you a letter.’ And Stepanida Ilyinishna told me it was a
certain thing which had been many times tried. Only I am in
doubt…. Oh, you light of ours! is it true or false, and would it
be right?”
“Don’t think of it. It’s shameful to ask the question. How is it
possible to pray for the peace of a living soul? And his own mother
too! It’s a great sin, akin to sorcery. Only for your ignorance it
is forgiven you. Better pray to the Queen of Heaven, our swift defence
and help, for his good health, and that she may forgive you for your
error. And another thing I will tell you, Prohorovna. Either he will
soon come back to you, your son, or he will be sure to send a
letter. Go, and henceforward be in peace. Your son is alive, I tell
you.”
“Dear Father, God reward you, our benefactor, who prays for all of
us and for our sins!”
But the elder had already noticed in the crowd two glowing eyes
fixed upon him. An exhausted, consumptive-looking, though young
peasant woman was gazing at him in silence. Her eyes besought him, but
she seemed afraid to approach.
“What is it, my child?”
“Absolve my soul, Father,” she articulated softly, and slowly sank
on her knees and bowed down at his feet. “I have sinned, Father. I
am afraid of my sin.”
The elder sat down on the lower step. The woman crept closer to
him, still on her knees.
“I am a widow these three years,” she began in a half-whisper,
with a sort of shudder. “I had a hard life with my husband. He was
an old man. He used to beat me cruelly. He lay ill; I thought
looking at him, if he were to get well, if he were to get up again,
what then? And then the thought came to me-”
“Stay!” said the elder, and he put his ear close to her lips.
The woman went on in a low whisper, so that it was almost
impossible to catch anything. She had soon done.
“Three years ago?” asked the elder.
“Three years. At first I didn’t think about it, but now I’ve begun
to be ill, and the thought never leaves me.”
“Have you come from far?”
“Over three hundred miles away.”
“Have you told it in confession?”
“I have confessed it. Twice I have confessed it.”
“Have you been admitted to Communion?”
“Yes. I am afraid. I am afraid to die.”
“Fear nothing and never be afraid; and don’t fret. If only your
penitence fail not, God will forgive all. There is no sin, and there
can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the
truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the
infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love
of God? Think only of repentance, continual repentance, but dismiss
fear altogether. Believe that God loves you as you cannot conceive;
that He loves you with your sin, in your sin. It has been said of
old that over one repentant sinner there is more joy in heaven than
over ten righteous men. Go, and fear not. Be not bitter against men.
Be not angry if you are wronged. Forgive the dead man in your heart
what wrong he did you. Be reconciled with him in truth. If you are
penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are
atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner, even as
you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will
God. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole
world by it, and expiate not only your own sins but the sins of
others.”
He signed her three times with the cross, took from his own neck a
little ikon and put it upon her. She bowed down to the earth without
speaking.
He got up and looked cheerfully at a healthy peasant woman with
a tiny baby in her arms.
“From Vyshegorye, dear Father.”
“Five miles you have dragged yourself with the baby. What do you
want?”
“I’ve come to look at you. I have been to you before-or have
you forgotten? You’ve no great memory if you’ve forgotten me. They
told us you were ill. Thinks I, I’ll go and see him for myself. Now
I see you, and you’re not ill! You’ll live another twenty years. God
bless you! There are plenty to pray for you; how should you be ill?”
“I thank you for all, daughter.”
“By the way, I have a thing to ask, not a great one. Here are
sixty copecks. Give them, dear Father, to someone poorer than me. I
thought as I came along, better give through him. He’ll know whom to
give to.”
“Thanks, my dear, thanks! You are a good woman. I love you. I will
do so certainly. Is that your little girl?”
“My little girl, Father, Lizaveta.”
“May the Lord bless you both, you and your babe Lizaveta! You have
gladdened my heart, mother. Farewell, dear children, farewell, dear
ones.”
He blessed them all and bowed low to them.
A Lady of Little Faith
A visitor looking on the scene of his conversation with the
peasants and his blessing them shed silent tears and wiped them away
with her handkerchief. She was a sentimental society lady of genuinely
good disposition in many respects. When the elder went up to her at
last she met him enthusiastically.
“Ah, what I have been feeling, looking on at this touching
scene!… “She could not go on for emotion. “Oh, I understand the
people’s love for you. I love the people myself. I want to love
them. And who could help loving them, our splendid Russian people,
so simple in their greatness!”
“How is your daughter’s health? You wanted to talk to me again?”
“Oh, I have been urgently begging for it, I have prayed for it!
I was ready to fall on my knees and kneel for three days at your
windows until you let me in. We have come, great healer, to express
our ardent gratitude. You have healed my Lise, healed her
completely, merely by praying over her last Thursday and laying your
hands upon her. We have hastened here to kiss those hands, to pour out
our feelings and our homage.”
“What do you mean by healed? But she is still lying down in her
chair.”
“But her night fevers have entirely ceased ever since Thursday,”
said the lady with nervous haste. “And that’s not all. Her legs are
stronger. This mourning she got up well; she had slept all night. Look
at her rosy cheeks, her bright eyes! She used to be always crying, but
now she laughs and is gay and happy. This morning she insisted on my
letting her stand up, and she stood up for a whole minute without
any support. She wagers that in a fortnight she’ll be dancing a
quadrille. I’ve called in Doctor Herzenstube. He shrugged his
shoulders and said, ‘I am amazed; I can make nothing of it.’ And would
you have us not come here to disturb you, not fly here to thank you?
Lise, thank him-thank him!”
Lise’s pretty little laughing face became suddenly serious. She
rose in her chair as far as she could and, looking at the elder,
clasped her hands before him, but could not restrain herself and broke
into laughter.
“It’s at him,” she said, pointing to Alyosha, with childish
vexation at herself for not being able to repress her mirth.
If anyone had looked at Alyosha standing a step behind the
elder, he would have caught a quick flush crimsoning his cheeks in
an instant. His eyes shone and he looked down.
“She has a message for you, Alexey Fyodorovitch. How are you?” the
mother went on, holding out her exquisitely gloved hand to Alyosha.
The elder turned round and all at once looked attentively at
Alyosha. The latter went nearer to Lise and, smiling in a strangely
awkward way, held out his hand to her too. Lise assumed an important
air.
“Katerina Ivanovna has sent you this through me.” She handed him a
little note. “She particularly begs you to go and see her as soon as
possible; that you will not fail her, but will be sure to come.”
“She asks me to go and see her? Me? What for?” Alyosha muttered in
great astonishment. His face at once looked anxious.
“Oh, it’s all to do with Dmitri Fyodorovitch and-what has
happened lately,” the mother explained hurriedly. “Katerina Ivanovna
has made up her mind, but she must see you about it…. Why, of
course, I can’t say. But she wants to see you at once. And you will go
to her, of course. It is a Christian duty.”
“I have only seen her once,” Alyosha protested with the same
perplexity.
“Oh, she is such a lofty, incomparable creature If only for her
suffering…. Think what she has gone through, what she is enduring
now Think what awaits her! It’s all terrible, terrible!
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