V. A Sudden Decision

She was sitting in the kitchen with her grandmother; both were getting ready for bed. Relying on Nazar Ivanovich, they had once again not locked themselves in from inside. Mitya ran in, threw himself at Fenya, and seized her tightly by the throat.

“Tell me now, where is she, who is she with now in Mokroye?” he howled in a frenzy.

Both women shrieked.

“Oh, I’ll tell, oh, Dmitri Fyodorovich, dear, I’ll tell everything right now, I won’t hide a thing,” Fenya, frightened to death, cried out in a patter. “She’s gone to Mokroye, to the officer.”

“What officer?” Mitya howled.

“To her first officer, that very one, her first one, who was here five years ago, who threw her over and went away,” Fenya rattled off in the same patter.

Dmitri Fyodorovich took away the hands with which he had been squeezing her throat. He stood before her, pale as a corpse and speechless, but it could be seen by his eyes that he had understood everything at once, everything, everything, at half a word he had understood it all at once, to the last little detail, and had guessed it all. It was not for poor Fenya, of course, to observe at that second whether he had understood or not. Just as she had been, sitting on a trunk when he ran in, so she remained now, all trembling, and, holding her hands out in front of her as if wishing to defend herself, she froze in that position. With frightened eyes, their pupils dilated with fear, she fixed him with a motionless stare. And as it happened, both his hands were smeared with blood besides. Running here, he must have put them to his forehead along the way to wipe the sweat off his face, so that both on his forehead and on his right cheek there were red spots of smeared blood. Fenya might go into hysterics at any moment, while the old cook had jumped up and was staring like a madwoman, almost losing consciousness. Dmitri Fyodorovich stood for a minute and suddenly sank mechanically onto a chair beside Fenya.

He sat, not so much reflecting as in a kind of fright, as if in some sort of stupor. But everything was as clear as day: this officer—he knew about him, why, he knew everything perfectly well, knew it from Grushenka herself, knew that a month ago he had sent a letter. So for a month, a whole month, this affair had been carried on in deep secrecy from him, right up to the present arrival of this new man, and he hadn’t even thought about him! But how could he, how could he not have thought about him? Why had he so completely forgotten about this officer that time, forgotten him the moment he learned of him? That was the question that stood before him like some sort of monster. And he contemplated this monster really in fright, gone cold with fright. But suddenly he began talking to Fenya quietly and meekly, like a quiet and affectionate child, as if he had completely forgotten that he had just frightened, hurt, and tormented her so. He suddenly began questioning Fenya with an extraordinary precision, astonishing even, in his position. And Fenya, though she looked wildly at his bloodstained hands, also began, with astonishing readiness and haste, to answer his every question, as if even in a hurry to lay out before him all “the truest truth.” Little by little, even with a kind of joy, she began to set out all the details, not at all wishing to torment him, but as if hurrying with all her might to serve him from her heart. To the last detail she told him all about that day too, Rakitin’s and Alyosha’s visit, how she, Fenya, had stood on watch, how the mistress had gone off, and how she had cried out of the window to Alyosha her bow to him, to Mitenka, and that he should “remember forever how she loved him for one little hour.” On hearing about the bow, Mitya suddenly smiled, and a flush flared up on his pale cheeks. At that same moment Fenya said to him, no longer the least bit afraid for her curiosity:

“Look at your hands, Dmitri Fyodorovich, they’re all covered with blood!”

“Yes,” Mitya answered mechanically, looked absently at his hands, and at once forgot about them and about Fenya’s question. He sank into silence again. Some twenty minutes had already passed since he had run in. His earlier fright had passed, but some new, inflexible resolve had evidently taken complete possession of him. He suddenly got up from his seat and smiled pensively.

“Master, what happened to you?” said Fenya, pointing again at his hands; she said it with pity, as if she were now the being closest to him in his grief.

Mitya looked at his hands again.

“It’s blood, Fenya,” he said, with a strange look at her, “human blood, it is, and, God, what was it spilled for! But… Fenya… there’s a fence here, one particular fence” (he was looking at her as if setting her a riddle), “a certain high fence, and terrible to look at, but… tomorrow at dawn, when ‘the sun soars up,’ Mitenka will jump over that fence… You don’t understand, Fenya, what fence, well, never mind… it doesn’t matter, tomorrow you’ll hear and understand everything… and now goodbye! I won’t stand in the way, I’ll step aside, I’ll manage to step aside. Live, my joy… for one hour you loved me, so remember Mitenka Karamazov forever… She always called me Mitenka, didn’t she, remember?”

And with these words he suddenly went out of the kitchen. And Fenya was frightened by this exit almost more than when he had run in earlier and thrown himself at her.

Exactly ten minutes later Dmitri Fyodorovich walked in on that young official, Pyotr Ilyich Perkhotin, with whom he had pawned his pistols earlier. It was already half past eight, and Pyotr Ilyich, having had his tea at home, had only just put on his frock coat again to go to the Metropolis tavern to play billiards. Mitya caught him on his way out. On seeing him and his blood-smeared face, Pyotr Ilyich simply cried out:

“Lord! What’s the matter with you?”

“Why, here,” Mitya said quickly, “I’ve come for my pistols and brought you your money. With my thanks. I’m in a hurry, Pyotr Ilyich, please be quick.”

Pyotr Ilyich was more and more surprised: in Mitya’s hands he suddenly made out a heap of money, and, above all, he was holding this heap and had come in with it as nobody holds money and nobody comes in with it: he was carrying all the notes in his right hand, as if for show, holding his hand straight out in front of him. The boy, the official’s servant, who had met Mitya in the front hall, said afterward that he had come into the front hall like that, with the money in his hand, so he must have carried it in the street, too, the same way, before him in his right hand. The notes were all hundred-ruble ones, rainbow-colored, and he was holding them with bloodstained fingers. Later, to the questions of interested persons, how much money there was, Pyotr Ilyich declared that it had been hard to count by eye at the time, perhaps two thousand, perhaps three, but the wad was a big one, “nice and thick.” As for Dmitri Fyodorovich himself, as he also testified later, “he was as if not quite himself either, but not drunk, rather as if in some sort of rapture, very absentminded, and at the same time as if concentrated, as if he were thinking about something and trying to get to the bottom of it and couldn’t decide. He was in a great hurry, answered sharply, very strangely, and at moments seemed not to be in grief at all, but even cheerful.”

“But what’s the matter with you, what’s the matter with you now?” Pyotr Ilyich cried again, examining his guest wildly. “How did you get yourself so bloody, did you fall or something, look!”

He seized him by the elbow and stood him in front of the mirror. Mitya, seeing his blood-smeared face, gave a start and frowned angrily.

“Eh, damn it! That’s all I needed,” he muttered spitefully, quickly shifted the notes from his right hand to his left, and convulsively pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket. But the handkerchief too turned out to be all bloody (it was with this very handkerchief that he had wiped Grigory’s head and face): there was hardly a single little spot of white left on it, and it had not so much begun to dry as somehow stiffened into a lump and would not unfold. Mitya flung it spitefully on the floor.

“Eh, damn it! Haven’t you got some rag… to wipe myself…”

“So you’ve only got yourself dirty, you’re not wounded? Then you’d better wash,” answered Pyotr Ilyich. “Here’s the washstand, I’ll pour for you.”

“The washstand? That’s good… only where am I to put this?” In a kind of quite strange perplexity he pointed out his wad of hundred-ruble notes to Pyotr Ilyich, looking at him questioningly, as if Pyotr Ilyich had to decide where he should put his own money.

“Stick it in your pocket, or put it on the table here, it won’t get lost.”

“In my pocket? Yes, in my pocket. That’s good… No, you see, this is all nonsense!” he cried, as if suddenly coming out of his absentmindedness. “You see: first we’ll finish this business, the pistols, you give them back to me, and here is your money… because I need them very, very much… and time, there’s not a drop of time…”

And taking the top hundred-ruble note from the wad, he held it out to the official.

“But I won’t have change for that,” the latter remarked. “Haven’t you anything smaller?”

“No,” said Mitya, looking at the wad again, and, as if uncertain of his words, he tried two or three notes on top with his fingers. “No, they’re all the same,” he added, and again looked questioningly at Pyotr Ilyich.

“But where did you get so rich?” asked Pyotr Ilyich. “Wait, I’ll send my boy to run over to the Plotnikovs’. They close late—maybe they’ll change it. Hey, Misha!” he shouted into the front hall.

“To the Plotnikovs’ shop—a most magnificent idea!” Mitya shouted too, as if struck by some thought. “Misha,” he turned to the boy who had come in, “look, run to the Plotnikovs’ and say that Dmitri Fyodorovich sends his bow and will be there himself in a moment… And listen, listen: have them get champagne ready for when he comes, three dozen or so, and pack it the way they did that time when I went to Mokroye… I took four dozen from them that time,” he suddenly turned to Pyotr Ilyich. “They know, don’t worry, Misha,” he turned again to the boy. “And listen: so there’s cheese, Strasbourg pies, smoked whitefish, ham, caviar, well, and everything, everything they’ve got, about a hundred rubles’ worth or a hundred and twenty, the way it was before… And listen: they’re not to forget the treats, candy, pears, two watermelons or three, or four—no, well, one watermelon is enough, and chocolate, sugar candies, fruit drops, toffees—well, everything they packed with me that time for Mokroye, about three hundred rubles’ worth with the champagne… Well, now it’s to be exactly the same. And remember, Misha, if you are Misha… His name is Misha, isn’t it?” he turned again to Pyotr Ilyich.

“Wait a moment,” Pyotr Ilyich interrupted, listening to him and examining him uneasily, “you’d better go yourself and tell them then, he’ll garble it.”

“He’ll garble it, I see he’ll garble it! Eh, Misha, and I was going to kiss you for the errand… If you don’t garble it, ten rubles for you, gallop off quick… Champagne, the main thing is to have them roll out the champagne, and some cognac too, and red, and white, and all of that, like that time… They know how it was that time.”

“Will you listen!” Pyotr Ilyich interrupted, impatient by now. “I’m saying: let him just run and change it and tell them not to close, and you’ll go and tell them yourself… Give me your note. March, Misha, one foot there and the other back here!” Pyotr Ilyich, it seems, chased Misha off as quickly as possible on purpose, because, as soon as the boy had come to stand before the guest, staring with bulging eyes at his bloody face and bloodstained hands with a bunch of money in their trembling fingers, he had just stood there with his mouth open in surprise and fear, and had probably understood little of all that Mitya was telling him.

“Well, now let’s go and wash,” Pyotr Ilyich said sternly. “Put the money on the table or stick it in your pocket… That’s it, come on. And take off your frock coat.”

And he began helping him take off his frock coat, and suddenly cried out again:

“Look, your frock coat is bloody too!”

“That… that isn’t the frock coat. Only a little here by the sleeve… And this is only here, where the handkerchief was. It soaked through from the pocket. I sat down on the handkerchief at Fenya’s, and the blood soaked through,” Mitya explained at once with a kind of astonishing trustfulness. Pyotr Ilyich listened, frowning.

“Well, you’ve managed it; you must have been in a fight with someone,” he muttered.

They began to wash. Pyotr Ilyich held the jug and poured the water. Mitya was in a hurry and soaped his hands badly. (His hands were trembling, as Pyotr Ilyich remembered later.) Pyotr Ilyich at once told him to soap more and rub more. He seemed to be gaining a kind of upper hand over Mitya at that moment, more and more as it went on. Let us note, by the way: the young man was not of a timid character.

“Look, you haven’t washed under your nails; well, now rub your face, here: on the temples, by the ear… Are you going to go in that shirt? Where is it you’re going? Look, the whole cuff of your right sleeve is bloody.”

“Yes, it’s bloody,” Mitya observed, examining the cuff of his shirt.

“Then change your linen.”

“No time. But look, here, you see…” Mitya went on with the same trustfulness, already wiping his face and hands with the towel and putting on his frock coat. “I’ll turn back the edge of the sleeve here, and it won’t be seen under the frock coat… You see!”

“Tell me now, where did you manage to get into this? Were you in a fight with someone, or what? Not in the tavern again, like that time? Not with the captain again, like that time, when you beat him and dragged him about?” Pyotr Ilyich recalled, as if reproachfully. “Whom else have you beaten up… or killed, maybe?”

“Nonsense!” said Mitya.

“What do you mean, nonsense?”

“Never mind,” said Mitya, and suddenly grinned. “I just ran over a little old woman on the square.”

“Ran over? A little old woman?”

“An old man!” cried Mitya, looking Pyotr Ilyich straight in the face, laughing and shouting at him as if he were deaf.

“Eh, damn it, an old man, an old woman… Have you killed somebody, or what?”

“We made it up. We grappled—and made it up. In a certain place. We parted friends. A certain fool… he’s forgiven me, he has surely forgiven me by now… If he’d got up, he wouldn’t have forgiven me,” Mitya suddenly winked. “Only you know, the devil take him, do you hear, Pyotr Ilyich, the devil take him, never mind! I don’t want to this minute!” Mitya cut him off decisively.

“I only mean, why should you get mixed up with every sort of person… like that time over nothing with that staff captain… You’ve been in a fight, and now you’re rushing off to carouse—that’s your whole character. Three dozen champagne—where do you want so much?”

“Bravo! Now give me the pistols. By God, I have no time. And I’d like to have a talk with you, my dear fellow, but there’s no time. And there’s no need for it at all, it’s too late to talk. Ah! where’s the money, where did I put it?” he cried out, and began thrusting his hands into his pockets.

“You put it on the table… yourself… there it is. Forgot? Truly, money is like rubbish or water to you. Here are your pistols. It’s strange, after five o’clock you pawned them for ten rubles, and now look, there are thousands in your hands. Two or three, I bet?”

“Three, I bet,” laughed Mitya, stuffing the money into the side pocket of his trousers.

“You’ll lose it that way. Have you got gold mines, or what?”

“Mines? Gold mines!” Mitya shouted with all his might and burst out laughing. “Would you like to go to the mines, Perkhotin? There’s a lady here who’ll pour out three thousand for you at once, just so you go. She poured it out for me, she loves the mines so! Do you know Khokhlakova?”

“I don’t know her, but I’ve heard about her and seen her. Can it be that she gave you three thousand? Just poured it out like that?” Pyotr Ilyich looked at him incredulously.

“Tomorrow, when the sun soars up, when ever-youthful Phoebus soars up, praising and glorifying God, you go to her tomorrow, to Khokhlakova, and ask her yourself: did she pour out three thousand for me or not? Just inquire.”

“I don’t know what your relations are… if you say so positively, then she gave it… And you, with the cash in your paws, instead of Siberia, off at a gallop on all three… But where are you really off to now, eh?”

“To Mokroye.”

“To Mokroye? But it’s night!”

“Mastryuk had all he could want, now Mastryuk hasn’t a thing!” Mitya said suddenly.

“What do you mean, hasn’t a thing? With all those thousands, not a thing?”

“I don’t mean the thousands. To the devil with the thousands! I’m talking about woman’s nature:

“Woman’s nature is credulous,
And fickle, and depraved.

“I agree with Ulysses, he’s the one who says it.”

“I don’t understand you!”

“Drunk, or what?”

“Not drunk, but worse than that.”

“I’m drunk in spirit, Pyotr Ilyich, drunk in spirit, and enough, enough…”

“What’s that you’re doing, loading a pistol?”

“I’m loading a pistol.”

Mitya had indeed opened the pistol case, unstopped the powder horn, carefully poured in the charge, and rammed it home. Then he took a bullet and, before rolling it in, held it up in two fingers before him over the candle.

“Why are you looking at the bullet?” Pyotr Ilyich watched him with uneasy curiosity.

“Just so. Imagination. Now, if you took it into your head to put this bullet into your brain, would you look at it while loading the pistol, or not?”

“Why look at it?”

“It’ll go into my brain, so it’s interesting to have a look at it, see what it’s like… But anyway, nonsense, a moment’s nonsense. There, that’s done,” he added, having rolled in the bullet and rammed it down with tow. “Pyotr Ilyich, my dear, nonsense, it’s all nonsense, and if only you knew to what a degree it’s nonsense! Give me a little piece of paper now.”

“Here’s some paper.”

“No, smooth, clean paper, the kind you write on. That’s it.” And Mitya, snatching a pen from the table, quickly wrote two lines on the paper, folded it in four, and thrust it into his waistcoat pocket. He laid the pistols back in their case, turned the little key in the lock, and took the case in his hands. Then he looked at Pyotr Ilyich and smiled a long, thoughtful smile.

“Now let’s go,” he said.

“Go where? No, wait… It’s into your own brain, I dare say, that you want to send it, the bullet…” Pyotr Ilyich said uneasily.

“The bullet is nonsense! I want to live, I love life! Know that. I love golden-haired Phoebus and his hot light… Dear Pyotr Ilyich, do you know how to step aside?”

“What do you mean, step aside?”

“To make way. To make way for a dear being and for a hateful one. And so that the hateful one too should become dear—that’s how to make way! And to say to them: God be with you, go on, pass by, and I…”

“And you?”

“Enough, let’s go.”

“By God, I’ll tell somebody,” Pyotr Ilyich looked at him, “so they won’t let you go there. Why should you go to Mokroye now?”

“There’s a woman there, a woman, and that’s enough for you, Pyotr Ilyich, and basta!”

“Listen, though you’re wild, I’ve always somehow liked you… that’s why I’m worried.”

“Thank you, brother. I’m wild, you say. Savages, savages! That’s all I keep saying: savages! Ah, yes, here’s Misha, and I’d forgotten all about him.”

Misha came in in a great hurry with a wad of changed money and reported that at the Plotnikovs’ “they’ve all got moving” and are hauling out bottles, and fish, and tea—everything will be ready in a minute. Mitya seized a ten-ruble note and handed it to Pyotr Ilyich, and flung another ten-ruble note to Misha.

“Don’t you dare!” cried Pyotr Ilyich. “Not in my house, and besides, it’s bad spoiling. Put your money away, put it here, why scatter it about? Tomorrow it’ll come in handy, you’ll be coming to me, of all people, to ask for ten rubles. Why do you keep stuffing it into your side pocket? Hey, you’ll lose it!”

“Listen, my dear man, let’s go to Mokroye together?”

“What should I go there for?”

“Listen, if you like I’ll uncork a bottle right now, and we’ll drink to life! I want to drink, and most of all to drink with you. I’ve never drunk with you, eh?”

“All right, we can in the tavern, let’s go, I’m on my way there myself now.”

“No time for the tavern, but at the Plotnikovs’ shop, in the back room. If you like, I’ll ask you a riddle now.”

“Ask away.”

Mitya took his piece of paper out of his waistcoat, unfolded it, and showed it. On it was written in a clear, large hand:

“I execute myself for my whole life; my whole life I punish!”

“Really, I’ll tell somebody, I’ll go right now and tell,” Pyotr Ilyich said, having read the paper.

“You won’t have time, my dear fellow, come and let’s drink, march!”

The Plotnikovs’ shop was almost just one house away from Pyotr Ilyich’s, on the corner of the street. It was the very chief grocery in our town, belonging to rich merchants, and quite a decent one in itself. There was everything there that there is in any shop in the capital, every sort of grocery: wines “bottled by the Eliseev Brothers,” fruit, cigars, tea, sugar, coffee, and so on. Three clerks were always sitting there, and two errand boys always running about. Though our region had grown poorer, the landowners had gone away, trade had slackened, the grocery business flourished as before, and even better and better every year: there was no lack of buyers for these articles. Mitya was awaited in the shop with impatience. They remembered too well how three or four weeks before he had bought up, exactly like this, every sort of goods and wines at one go to the tune of several hundred rubles in cash (on credit, of course, they would not have trusted him with anything), remembered that, just as now, a whole wad of rainbow-colored notes had stuck out of his hand, and that he had thrown them about at random, without bargaining, without considering and without wishing to consider what he needed so many goods, so much wine, and so on for. All over town it was said afterward that, having rolled off with Grushenka to Mokroye that time, he “ran through three thousand at one go in a single night and the day after, and came back from the spree without a kopeck, as naked as the day he was born.” He had roused a whole camp of Gypsies then (who were roaming about our parts at the time), who in two days, it was said, pulled no end of money out of him while he was drunk and drank no end of expensive wine. People told, laughing at Mitya, how in Mokroye he had plied the clodhopping peasants with champagne and stuffed the village girls and women with candy and Strasbourg pies. People among us laughed too, especially in the tavern, at Mitya’s own frank and public admission at the time (not to his face, of course; to laugh in his face was somewhat dangerous) that from Grushenka, for that whole “escapade,” he had got nothing except that “she let him kiss her little foot, and allowed him nothing more.”

When Mitya and Pyotr Ilyich came up to the shop, they found at the entrance a troika already waiting, with a cart covered with a rug, with bells and harness bells, and with the coachman Andrei, waiting for Mitya. In the shop they had almost finished “fixing up” one crate of goods and were only waiting for Mitya to appear, to nail it shut and load it on the cart. Pyotr Ilyich was surprised.

“Well, and where’d you get a troika so fast?” he asked Mitya.

“I was running to you and met him, Andrei here, and told him to drive right on to the shop here. Not a moment to lose! Last time I went with Timofei, but Timofei is now fft, gone, rolled off ahead of me with a certain enchantress. Andrei, will we be very late?”

“They’ll only get there an hour ahead of us at most, and not even that, they’ll be ahead by an hour at most!” Andrei responded hastily. “It was me who fitted Timofei out, I know how they’ll go. Their driving isn’t ours, Dmitri Fyodorovich, they’re nowhere near us. They won’t make it even an hour sooner!” Andrei, a coachman not yet old, a lean, reddish-haired fellow in a long-waisted coat, with a peasant overcoat over his left arm, broke in hotly.

“Fifty rubles for vodka, if you fall only an hour behind.”

“We guarantee the hour, Dmitri Fyodorovich, eh, they won’t be half an hour ahead, let alone an hour!”

Mitya, though he bustled about giving orders, spoke and ordered somehow strangely, in a jumble, not in order. He would begin one thing and forget the end of it. Pyotr Ilyich found it necessary to step in and help.

“Four hundred rubles’ worth, no less than four hundred, so that it’s exactly as it was that time,” Mitya commanded. “Four dozen champagne, not a bottle less.”

“What do you want so much for, what’s it for? Stop!” Pyotr Ilyich howled. “What’s this crate? What’s in it? Can there really be four hundred rubles’ worth here?”

The bustling clerks explained to him at once, in sugary speech, that in this first crate there was only half a dozen champagne and “all sorts of articles needed for a start,” in the way of hors d’oeuvres, candy, fruit drops, and so on. But that the main “consumables” would be packed and sent off separately this very minute, as on that previous occasion, in a separate cart, also with a troika, and would be in time, “arriving at the spot no more than an hour after Dmitri Fyodorovich.”

“No more than an hour, mind, no more than an hour, and put in as many fruit drops and toffees as possible; the girls there love them,” Mitya insisted hotly.

“Toffees—fine. But what do you want four dozen for? One is enough,” said Pyotr Ilyich, almost angry by now. He began to bargain, he demanded the bill, he would not calm down. He saved, however, only one hundred rubles. They settled on delivering no more than three hundred rubles’ worth of goods in all.

“Ah, the devil take you!” cried Pyotr Ilyich, as if suddenly thinking better of it. “What is it to me, anyway? Throw your money away, if you came by it for nothing!”

“This way, my economist, this way, don’t be angry,” Mitya dragged him into the back room of the shop. “They’ll bring us a bottle here in a minute, and we’ll have a swig. Eh, Pyotr Ilyich, come along with me, because you’re a dear man, I love that kind.”

Mitya sat down on a little wicker chair before a tiny table covered with a most filthy napkin. Pyotr Ilyich perched opposite him, and the champagne appeared in a flash. They asked whether the gentlemen would not care for oysters, “the finest oysters, the very latest delivery.”

“To the devil with oysters, I don’t eat them, and I don’t want anything,” Pyotr Ilyich snapped almost spitefully.

“No time for oysters,” Mitya remarked, “and no appetite either. You know, friend,” he suddenly said with feeling, “I never liked all this disorder.”

“And who likes it! Three dozen, for pity’s sake, for peasants, that would make anyone explode.”

“That’s not what I mean. It’s a higher order I mean. I haven’t got order in me, the higher order… But… all that is finished, there’s nothing to grieve about. It’s too late, and to the devil with it! My whole life has been disorder, and order must be put into it. Am I punning, eh?”

“You’re raving, not punning.”

“Glory to the Highest in the world,
Glory to the Highest in me!

“That little verse burst out of my soul once, not a verse, but a tear… I made it up myself… not, however, when I was dragging the staff captain by his little beard…”

“Why do you suddenly bring him up?”

“Why do I suddenly bring him up? Nonsense! Everything comes to an end, everything is evened out, a line is drawn—and there’s the sum.”

“Really, I keep seeing those pistols of yours.”

“The pistols are nonsense too! Drink and don’t fantasize. I love life, I’ve come to love life too much, so much that it’s even vile. Enough! To life, my dear fellow, let’s drink to life, I propose a toast to life! Why am I pleased with myself? I am base, but pleased with myself. And yet I am tormented that I am base, but pleased with myself. I bless creation, I am ready right now to bless God and his creation, but… one stinking insect must be exterminated, so that it won’t crawl about and spoil life for others… Let’s drink to life, dear brother! What is dearer than life! Nothing is, nothing! To life, and to one queen among queens.”

“Let’s drink to life, and, I dare say, to your queen too.”

They each drank a glass. Mitya, though rapturous and lavish, was somehow sad. It was as though some insurmountable and heavy care stood behind him.

“Misha… is that your Misha who’s come in? Misha, my dear, Misha, come here, drink this glass for me, to golden-haired Phoebus, tomorrow’s…”

“What are you giving it to him for!” Pyotr Ilyich cried irritably.

“Oh, let me, oh, just so, oh, I want to.”

“Eh-h!”

Misha drank the glass, bowed, and ran off.

“He’ll remember it longer,” Mitya remarked. “I love woman, woman! What is woman? The queen of the earth! I’m sad, sad, Pyotr Ilyich. Remember Hamlet: ‘I am so sad, so sad, Horatio… Ah, poor Yorick!’ Maybe that’s me, Yorick. Precisely now I am Yorick, and the skull comes later.”

Pyotr Ilyich listened and was silent; Mitya too was silent for a while.

“What little dog is that you have?” he suddenly asked the clerk absently, noticing in the corner a pretty little lapdog with black eyes.

“That’s Varvara Alexeevna’s little lapdog, our mistress’s,” answered the clerk. “She brought it in herself earlier and forgot it here. It’ll have to be taken back.”

“I saw one just like it… in the regiment…” Mitya said pensively, “only that one had a broken hind leg… Pyotr Ilyich, I wanted to ask you, by the way: have you ever stolen anything in your life or not?”

“What sort of question is that?”

“No, I just wondered. You see, from someone’s pocket, something not yours? I’m not talking about the treasury, everyone fleeces the treasury, and you too, of course…”

“Go to the devil.”

“I mean something not yours: right out of a pocket, out of a purse, eh?”

“I stole twenty kopecks from my mother once, when I was nine, off the table. I took it quietly and clutched it in my hand.”

“Well, and then?”

“Well, nothing. I kept it three days, got ashamed, confessed, and gave it back.”

“Well, and then?”

“Naturally, I got a whipping. But what’s with you, did you steal something yourself?”

“I did,” Mitya winked slyly.

“What did you steal?” Pyotr Ilyich grew curious.

“Twenty kopecks from my mother, when I was nine, I gave it back after three days.” Having said this, Mitya suddenly got up from his seat.

“Dmitri Fyodorovich, shouldn’t we be hurrying?” Andrei suddenly shouted at the door of the shop.

“Ready? Let’s go!” Mitya started up in a flurry. “One last word more and… A glass of vodka for Andrei for the road, right now! And a glass of cognac for him besides the vodka! This case” (with the pistols) “under my seat. Goodbye, Pyotr Ilyich, don’t think ill of me.”

“But you’ll be back tomorrow?”

“Without fail.”

“Would you be pleased to settle the little bill now?” a clerk sprang up.

“Ah, yes, the bill! Without fail!”

He again snatched his wad of notes out of his pocket, peeled off three rainbow-colored ones, threw them on the counter, and hurried out of the shop. Everyone followed him and, bowing, saw him off with greetings and good wishes. Andrei grunted from the cognac he had just drunk and jumped up onto the box. But no sooner had Mitya begun to get in than suddenly, quite unexpectedly, Fenya appeared before him. She had come running all out of breath, and with a cry she clasped her hands before him and flopped down at his feet:

“Master, Dmitri Fyodorovich, dear, don’t ruin my mistress! And I told you everything!… And don’t ruin him, he’s her first one, after all, her own! He’s going to marry Agrafena Alexandrovna now, that’s what he came back from Siberia for… Master, Dmitri Fyodorovich, don’t destroy another’s life!”

“Tut-tut-tut, so that’s it! Well, you’ll make a fine mess of things there now!” Pyotr Ilyich muttered to himself. “Now everything’s clear, now how could one not understand. Dmitri Fyodorovich, give me the pistols this minute, if you want to be a man,” he exclaimed loudly to Mitya. “Do you hear, Dmitri!”

“The pistols? Wait, my dear fellow, I’ll throw them into a puddle on the way,” answered Mitya. “Fenya, get up, don’t lie there in front of me. Mitya won’t ruin anyone, from now on this stupid man won’t ruin anyone anymore. And here’s the thing, Fenya,” he shouted to her, already seated, “I hurt you earlier, so forgive me and have mercy, forgive a scoundrel… And if you won’t forgive me, it doesn’t matter! Because now it doesn’t matter anymore! Off we go, Andrei, fly away, quick!”

Andrei started off; the bell began to jingle.

“Goodbye, Pyotr Ilyich! My last tear is for you!…”

“He isn’t even drunk, and what drivel he spouts!” Pyotr Ilyich thought, looking after him. He had meant to stay and keep an eye on how they loaded the cart (with a troika too) with the rest of the provisions and wines, sensing that they would cheat and overcharge Mitya, but suddenly, getting angry with himself, he spat and went off to his tavern to play billiards.

“A fool, though a good fellow…” he muttered to himself on the way. “I’ve heard about some officer of Grushenka’s, her ‘first’ one. Well, if he’s arrived, then… Eh, those pistols! Ah, the devil, what am I, his nanny or something? Let them be! And nothing will happen. Loudmouths, and nothing more. They’ll get drunk and fight, fight and make up. Are they men of action? What’s all this ‘I’ll step aside,’ ‘I execute myself’—nothing will happen! A thousand times he’s shouted in that style, drunk in the tavern. Now he isn’t drunk. ‘Drunk in spirit’—scoundrels love that style. Am I his nanny or something? And he can’t have kept out of a fight, his whole mug was bloody. Who with? I’ll find out at the tavern. And the handkerchief was bloody… Pfoo, damn it, it’s left on my floor… to hell with it!”

He arrived at the tavern in the foulest of moods and at once began a game. The game cheered him up. He played another and suddenly began telling one of his partners that Dmitri Karamazov had money again, up to three thousand, he had seen it himself, and that he had rolled off again to carouse in Mokroye with Grushenka. This was received by his listeners with an almost unexpected curiosity. And they all began talking, not laughing, but somehow strangely seriously. They even interrupted the game.

“Three thousand? But where would he get three thousand?”

They began to question him further. The news about Khokhlakova was received with doubt.

“And mightn’t he have robbed the old man, that’s the question? Three thousand! Something’s not right.”

“He did boast out loud that he’d kill his father, everyone here heard it. He was talking about three thousand precisely…”

Pyotr Ilyich listened, and suddenly began answering their questions drily and sparingly. About the blood that had been on Mitya’s face and hands he did not say a word, though on his way here he had meant to tell about it. They began a third game; little by little the talk about Mitya died down; but, having finished the third game, Pyotr Ilyich did not want to play anymore, put down his cue, and, without having supper as he had intended, left the tavern. On coming out onto the square, he stood still in perplexity, even wondering at himself. He suddenly realized that what he wanted was to go now to Fyodor Pavlovich’s house and find out whether something had happened. “Over some nonsense, as it’ll turn out, I’ll wake up somebody else’s house and make a scandal. Pfoo, damn it, am I their nanny or something?”

In the foulest of moods he set off straight home, and suddenly remembered Fenya: “Eh, damn it, I should have questioned her earlier,” he thought in vexation, “I’d have known everything.” And such a most impatient and stubborn desire suddenly flared up in him to talk to her and find out, that halfway home he turned sharply toward Morozova’s house, where Grushenka lodged. Going up to the gate, he knocked, and the knock that resounded in the silence of the night again, as it were, suddenly sobered and angered him. Besides, no one answered; everyone in the house was asleep. “And here too I’ll make a scandal!” he thought, with a kind of suffering in his soul by now, but instead of leaving for good, he suddenly began knocking again, and this time with all his might. A din arose through the whole street. “Well, no, I’ll knock till they open, I’ll knock till they open!” he muttered, with every sound growing furious with himself to the point of frenzy, but at the same time redoubling his blows on the gate.