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But Miüsov fancied that it was all done with intentional impressiveness. He stood in front of the other visitors. He ought—he had reflected upon it the evening before—from simple politeness, since it was the custom here, to have gone up to receive the elder’s blessing, even if he did not kiss his hand.
Fyodor Pavlovitch seems to have been the first to suggest, apparently in joke, that they should all meet in Father Zossima’s cell, and that, without appealing to his direct intervention, they might more decently come to an understanding under the conciliating influence of the elder’s presence.
Where’s that monk?” “That monk,” that is, the monk who had invited them to dine with the Superior, did not keep them waiting. He met them as soon as they came down the steps from the elder’s cell, as though he had been waiting for them all the time. “Reverend Father, kindly do me a favor.
At last he turned away from her altogether and hid behind the elder’s back. After a few minutes, drawn by the same irresistible force, he turned again to see whether he was being looked at or not, and found Lise almost hanging out of her chair to peep sideways at him, eagerly waiting for him to look.
He too sought the elder’s blessing. But Father Zossima, on entering the portico, went first straight to the peasants who were crowded at the foot of the three steps that led up into the portico. Father Zossima stood on the top step, put on his stole, and began blessing the women who thronged about him. One crazy woman was led up to him.
It was very late, according to the monastery ideas, when Alyosha returned to the hermitage; the door-keeper let him in by a special entrance. It had struck nine o’clock—the hour of rest and repose after a day of such agitation for all. Alyosha timidly opened the door and went into the elder’s cell where his coffin was now standing.
Here I must observe that this last conversation of Father Zossima with the friends who visited him on the last day of his life has been partly preserved in writing. Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov wrote it down from memory, some time after his elder’s death.
Alyosha remembered afterwards how their inquisitive guest from Obdorsk had been continually flitting to and fro from one group to another, listening and asking questions among the monks that were crowding within and without the elder’s cell. But he did not pay much attention to him at the time, and only recollected it afterwards.
It must be noted that he really had meant to go home, and really had felt the impossibility of going to dine with the Father Superior as though nothing had happened, after his disgraceful behavior in the elder’s cell. Not that he was so very much ashamed of himself—quite the contrary perhaps. But still he felt it would be unseemly to go to dinner.
All were expecting that some marvel would happen immediately after the elder’s death. Their suspense was, from one point of view, almost frivolous, but even the most austere of the monks were affected by it. Father Païssy’s face looked the gravest of all. Alyosha was mysteriously summoned by a monk to see Rakitin, who had arrived from town with a singular letter for him from Madame Hohlakov.
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