I. В лакейской

It was rather decrepit, but its appearance was a pleasant one: a single story, with an attic loft, painted a greyish color and roofed in red iron.

Even so, it might still stand for a very long while; it was roomy and snug.

There were many odd little closets in it, all sorts of nooks and hiding places, and unexpected little staircases.

Rats lived in it, but Fyodor Pavlovich was not altogether cross with them: "At least it isn't so dreary in the evenings, when you're left alone."

And in fact he did have the habit of sending the servants off to the lodge for the night and locking himself up alone in the house for the whole night through.

This lodge stood in the yard, spacious and solid; in it Fyodor Pavlovich had also decreed the kitchen should be, although there was a kitchen in the house too: he did not care for the smell of cooking, and the food was carried across the yard winter and summer alike.

On the whole the house had been built for a large family: it could have housed five times as many masters and servants both.

But at the moment of our story only Fyodor Pavlovich and Ivan Fyodorovich were living in the house, while in the servants' lodge there were just three of the household staff in all: old Grigory, the old woman Marfa, his wife, and the servant Smerdyakov, still a young man.

We must say a few more words in detail about these three persons of the household.

Of old Grigory Vasilievich Kutuzov we have, however, already spoken at some length.

He was a man firm and unwavering, who pressed stubbornly and in a straight line toward whatever he aimed at, provided only that this aim, for some reason or other (often astonishingly illogical), had come to stand before him as an unalterable truth.

Generally speaking, he was honest and incorruptible.

His wife, Marfa Ignatievna, in spite of having bowed all her life without a murmur before her husband's will, badgered him dreadfully, for instance just after the emancipation of the serfs, to leave Fyodor Pavlovich and go to Moscow and start up some little business there (they had a bit of money set by); but Grigory decided then and there, once and for all, that the woman was talking nonsense, "because every woman is dishonest," and that it would not do for them to leave their former master, whatever sort of man he might be, "because that is now their duty."

"Do you understand what duty is?" he said, turning to Marfa Ignatievna.

"As for duty, I understand that, Grigory Vasilievich, but what duty there is for us in staying here, that I can make no sense of at all," Marfa Ignatievna answered firmly.

"Then don't make sense of it, but so it shall be.

From now on, hold your tongue."

And so it turned out: they did not leave, and Fyodor Pavlovich fixed them a wage, a small one, and paid the wage out.

Grigory knew, moreover, that he held an unquestionable sway over his master.

He felt it, and it was true: that cunning, obstinate buffoon, Fyodor Pavlovich, a man of very firm character "in certain matters of life," as he himself put it, would prove, to his own surprise, decidedly weak of character in certain other "matters of life."

And he himself knew in which ones, knew it and was afraid of much.

In certain matters of life one had to keep one's ear keen, and in those it was hard to do without a trustworthy man, and Grigory was the most trustworthy of men.

It even happened more than once in the course of his career that Fyodor Pavlovich might have been beaten, and beaten badly, and each time Grigory came to his rescue, though afterward he would read him a lecture every time.

But mere blows would not have frightened Fyodor Pavlovich: there were higher occasions, and even very subtle and complicated ones, when Fyodor Pavlovich himself, perhaps, would not have been able to define that extraordinary craving for a trusty and intimate person which he would suddenly and unaccountably begin at times to feel within himself.

These were almost morbid occasions: that most debauched man, often cruel in his sensuality, like some vicious insect, Fyodor Pavlovich would suddenly feel within himself, now and then in his drunken moments, a spiritual dread and a moral shudder that seemed almost, so to speak, to echo physically in his soul.

"At such times my soul fairly quivers in my throat," he used to say sometimes.

It was at just such moments that he liked to have nearby, close at hand — even, perhaps, not in the same room but in the lodge — such a man, devoted, steadfast, not at all like himself, not debauched, who, though he saw and knew all this depravity going on and knew all the secrets, would yet out of his devotion put up with it all, not resist, and above all would not reproach him or threaten him with anything, neither in this world nor in the next; and who, in case of need, would even defend him — from whom?

From someone unknown, but terrible and dangerous.

The whole point was that there should without fail be another person, old and friendly, whom in a sickly moment he could call to him, only so as to look into his face, perhaps exchange a word — about something quite irrelevant, even — and if the man took no offense and was not angry, then somehow his heart felt the lighter for it, and if he was angry, well, then it was the sadder.

It would happen (though, however, exceedingly rarely) that Fyodor Pavlovich would go even at night to the lodge to wake Grigory, so that he might come to him for a moment.

He would come, and Fyodor Pavlovich would begin talking of the most utter trifles and soon let him go, sometimes even with a little jeer and a little joke, while he himself, spitting, would lie down to sleep and sleep then the sleep of the righteous.

Something of this sort happened to Fyodor Pavlovich upon Alyosha's arrival as well.

Alyosha "pierced his heart" by the fact that he "lived among them, saw everything, and condemned nothing."

What is more, he brought with him an unprecedented thing: a complete absence of contempt for him, the old man — on the contrary, an unfailing tenderness and a wholly natural, plain-hearted attachment to him, who so little deserved it.

All this came as a perfect surprise to the old reprobate and family-less man, something quite unexpected for one who until then had loved nothing but "filth."

After Alyosha had gone, he confessed to himself that he had understood something he had not until then been willing to understand.

I have already mentioned at the beginning of my story how Grigory hated Adelaida Ivanovna, Fyodor Pavlovich's first wife and the mother of his first son, Dmitri Fyodorovich, and how, on the contrary, he defended his second wife, the shrieker, Sofya Ivanovna, against his own master and against everyone to whom it might occur to utter an unkind or frivolous word about her.

In him sympathy for this unfortunate woman turned into something sacred, so that even twenty years later he could not bear, from anyone whatsoever, so much as an unkind hint about her, and would at once round on the offender.

In his outward appearance Grigory was a man cold and self-important, not given to chatter, dispensing weighty words, not frivolous ones.

In the same way it would have been impossible to make out at first glance whether or not he loved his meek, submissive wife, and yet he did love her in fact, and she, of course, understood it.

This Marfa Ignatievna was a woman not only not stupid but perhaps even cleverer than her husband, at least more level-headed than he in worldly affairs, and yet she submitted to him without complaint and without protest from the very start of their marriage, and unquestionably respected him for his spiritual superiority.

It is remarkable that the two of them, all their lives, spoke exceedingly little with one another, save about the most necessary, everyday matters.

The grave and stately Grigory thought over all his affairs and cares always alone, so that Marfa Ignatievna had long since grasped, once and for all, that he had no need at all of her advice.

She felt that her husband valued her silence and credited her with intelligence on account of it.

He had never beaten her, except just one single time, and that but lightly.

In the first year of Adelaida Ivanovna's marriage to Fyodor Pavlovich, once in the country, the village girls and women, then still serfs, were gathered into the master's yard to sing and dance.

They struck up "In the Meadows," and suddenly Marfa Ignatievna, then still a young woman, sprang out in front of the chorus and danced "the Russian" in a particular manner, not in the village way, as the women did, but as she had danced when she was a house-serf girl with the wealthy Miusovs, on their private estate theater, where a dancing-master brought over from Moscow taught the actors to dance.

Grigory saw how his wife had danced, and at home in their cottage, an hour later, he taught her a lesson by dragging her a little by the hair.

But with that the beatings ended once and for all and were never repeated even once in their whole life, and Marfa Ignatievna swore off dancing from that time on.

God gave them no children; there was one little child, but it too died.

Grigory, however, plainly loved children, and did not even conceal it — that is, he was not ashamed to show it.