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But something very strange had happened, though only for a second; it seemed really to have escaped the old man’s mind that Alyosha’s mother actually was the mother of Ivan too. “Your mother?” he muttered, not understanding. “What do you mean? What mother are you talking about? Was she?... Why, damn it! of course she was yours too! Damn it! My mind has never been so darkened before.
“Then he despises me, me?” “You, too.” “Good,” Lise seemed to grind her teeth. “When he went out laughing, I felt that it was nice to be despised. The child with fingers cut off is nice, and to be despised is nice....” And she laughed in Alyosha’s face, a feverish malicious laugh.
“So you’ll hit a man from behind! They tell the truth, then, when they say that you attack on the sly,” said Alyosha, turning round again. This time the boy threw a stone savagely right into Alyosha’s face; but Alyosha just had time to guard himself, and the stone struck him on the elbow. “Aren’t you ashamed? What have I done to you?” he cried.
And, if it had not been for the same servant Grigory, who by that time had aged considerably too, and used to look after him sometimes almost like a tutor, Fyodor Pavlovitch might have got into terrible scrapes. Alyosha’s arrival seemed to affect even his moral side, as though something had awakened in this prematurely old man which had long been dead in his soul.
This action and all the preceding conversation, which was so surprising from Ivan, impressed every one by its strangeness and a certain solemnity, so that all were silent for a moment, and there was a look almost of apprehension in Alyosha’s face. But Miüsov suddenly shrugged his shoulders. And at the same moment Fyodor Pavlovitch jumped up from his seat.
This is my last message to you: in sorrow seek happiness. Work, work unceasingly. Remember my words, for although I shall talk with you again, not only my days but my hours are numbered.” Alyosha’s face again betrayed strong emotion. The corners of his mouth quivered.
Alyosha coming in told Ivan that a little over an hour ago Marya Kondratyevna had run to his rooms and informed him Smerdyakov had taken his own life. “I went in to clear away the samovar and he was hanging on a nail in the wall.” On Alyosha’s inquiring whether she had informed the police, she answered that she had told no one, “but I flew straight to you, I’ve run all the way.” She seemed perfectly crazy, Alyosha reported, and was shaking like a leaf.
I preferred to remain a thief in her eyes rather than give it back. And the most shameful part of it was that I knew beforehand I shouldn’t give it back! You are right, Alyosha! Thanks, Alyosha!” So Alyosha’s cross-examination ended.
Dmitri’s enthusiastic references to Ivan were the more striking in Alyosha’s eyes since Dmitri was, compared with Ivan, almost uneducated, and the two brothers were such a contrast in personality and character that it would be difficult to find two men more unlike.
Something glowed in Alyosha’s heart, something filled it till it ached, tears of rapture rose from his soul.... He stretched out his hands, uttered a cry and waked up. Again the coffin, the open window, and the soft, solemn, distinct reading of the Gospel. But Alyosha did not listen to the reading.
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