“I swear to you,” exclaimed Alyosha, “that my brother will express his repentance in the most sincere, the fullest manner, even if it means going down on his knees in that very square ... I will make him, or he is no brother of mine!”
“Aha, so it’s still in the planning stage! And proceeds not directly from him, but only from the nobility of your fervent heart. Why didn’t you say so, sir? No, in that case, allow me to finish telling you about the highly chivalrous and soldierly nobility of your good brother, for he showed it that time, sir. So he finished dragging me by my whiskbroom and set me free: ‘You,’ he said, ‘are an officer, and I am an officer; if you can find a second, a decent man, send him to me—I shall give you satisfaction, though you are a scoundrel! ‘ That is what he said, sir. Truly a chivalrous spirit! Ilyusha and I withdrew then, but this genealogical family picture forever imprinted itself in the memory of Ilyusha’s soul. No, it’s not for us to stay gentry, sir. And judge for yourself, sir, you were just so good as to visit my castle—what did you see, sir? Three ladies sitting there, sir, one crippled and feebleminded, another crippled and hunchbacked, the third not a cripple, but too smart, sir, a student, longing to go back to Petersburg and search for the rights of the Russian woman, there on the banks of the Neva. Not to mention Ilyusha, sir, he’s only nine years old, alone in the world, for if I were to die, what would become of those depths, that’s all I ask, sir. And so, if I challenge him to a duel, what if he kills me on the spot— well, what then? Then what will happen to them all, sir? Still worse, if he doesn’t kill me but just cripples me: work would be impossible, but there would still be a mouth to feed, and who will feed my mouth then, who will feed them all, sir? Or should I then send Ilyusha out daily to beg instead of going to school? So that’s what it means for me to challenge him to a duel, sir. It’s foolish talk, sir, and nothing else.”
“He will ask your forgiveness, he will bow at your feet in the middle of the square,” Alyosha again cried, his eyes glowing.
“I thought of taking him to court,” the captain went on, “but open our code of law, how much compensation would I get from the offender for a personal offense, sir? And then suddenly Agrafena Alexandrovna summoned me and shouted: ‘Don’t you dare think of it! If you take him to court, I’ll fix it so that the whole world will publicly know that he beat you for your own cheating, and you’ll wind up in the dock yourself.’ But the Lord knows who was the source of this cheating, sir, and on whose orders some small fry like me was acting—wasn’t it her own orders and Fyodor Pavlovich’s? And besides,’ she added, ‘I’ll turn you out forever, and you’ll never earn anything from me again. And I’ll tell my merchant, too’—that’s what she calls the old man: ‘my merchant’—’and he will turn you out as well.’ So I thought to myself, if even the merchant turns me out, then where will I earn any money? Because I only had the two of them left, since your father, Fyodor Pavlovich, not only stopped trusting me for some unrelated reason, sir, but even wants to drag me into court himself, on the strength of some receipts he has from me. As a result of all that, I’ve kept quiet, sir, and the depths, sir, you’ve seen for yourself. And now, allow me to ask: did he bite your finger badly, my Ilyusha? Inside my castle, in his presence, I didn’t dare go into such details.”
“Yes, very badly, and he was very angry. He took revenge for you upon me, as a Karamazov, it’s clear to me now. But if you had seen how he was fighting with his schoolmates, throwing stones! It’s very dangerous, they might kill him, they’re children, stupid, a stone goes flying and could break his head.”
“Yes, he got it, sir, not in the head but in the chest, over the heart, a stone hit him today, bruised him, he came home crying, groaning, and now he’s fallen sick.”
“And you know, he starts it himself, he attacks everyone, he’s bitter because of you; they say the other day he stabbed a boy, Krasotkin, in the side with a penknife ...”
“I heard about that, too, it’s dangerous, sir: Krasotkin is a local official, there could still be trouble ...”
“I would advise you,” Alyosha continued fervently, “not to send him to ‘ school at all for a while, until he calms down ... and this wrath in him passes ...”
