“Never mind, I want to suffer, too,” Alyosha murmured.
“One more picture, just one more, for curiosity, because it’s so typical, and above all I just read it in one of the collections of our old documents, the Archive, Antiquities, or somewhere, I’ll have to check the reference, I even forget where I read it.[139] It was in the darkest days of serfdom, back at the beginning of the century—and long live the liberator of the people![140] There was a general at the beginning of the century, a general with high connections and a very wealthy landowner, the sort of man (indeed, even then they seem to have been very few) who, on retiring from the army, feels all but certain that his service has earned him the power of life and death over his subjects. There were such men in those days. So this general settled on his estate of two thousand souls, swaggered around, treated his lesser neighbors as his spongers and buffoons. He had hundreds of dogs in his kennels and nearly a hundred handlers, all in livery, all on horseback. And so one day a house-serf, a little boy, only eight years old, threw a stone while he was playing and hurt the paw of the general’s favorite hound. ‘Why is my favorite dog limping?’ It was reported to him that this boy had thrown a stone at her and hurt her paw. ‘So it was you,’ the general looked the boy up and down. ‘Take him!’ They took him, took him from his mother, and locked him up for the night. In the morning, at dawn, the general rode out in full dress for the hunt, mounted on his horse, surrounded by spongers, dogs, handlers, huntsmen, all on horseback. The house-serfs are gathered for their edification, the guilty boy’s mother in front of them all. The boy is led out of the lockup. A gloomy, cold, misty autumn day, a great day for hunting. The general orders them to undress the boy; the child is stripped naked, he shivers, he’s crazy with fear, he doesn’t dare make a peep ... ‘Drive him!’ the general commands. The huntsmen shout, ‘Run, run!’ The boy runs ... ‘Sic him!’ screams the general and looses the whole pack of wolfhounds on him. He hunted him down before his mother’s eyes, and the dogs tore the child to pieces...! I believe the general was later declared incompetent to administer his estates. Well ... what to do with him? Shoot him? Shoot him for our moral satisfaction? Speak, Alyoshka!”
“Shoot him!” Alyosha said softly, looking up at his brother with a sort of pale, twisted smile.
“Bravo!”Ivan yelled in a sort of rapture.”If even you say so,then ... A fine monk you are! See what a little devil is sitting in your heart, Alyoshka Karamazov!”
“What I said is absurd, but ...”
“That’s just it, that ‘but ... ,’” Ivan was shouting. “I tell you, novice, that absurdities are all too necessary on earth. The world stands on absurdities, and without them perhaps nothing at all would happen. We know what we know!”
“What do you know?”
“I don’t understand anything,” Ivan went on as if in delirium, “and I no longer want to understand anything. I want to stick to the fact. I made up my mind long ago not to understand. If I wanted to understand something, I would immediately have to betray the fact, but I’ve made up my mind to stick to the fact...”
“Why are you testing me?” Alyosha exclaimed with a rueful strain. “Will you finally tell me?”
“Of course I’ll tell you, that’s just what I’ve been leading up to. You are dear to me, I don’t want to let you slip, and I won’t give you up to your Zosima.”
Ivan was silent for a moment; his face suddenly became very sad.
