II. Такая минутка

Nevertheless I confess frankly that it would now be very hard for me to convey clearly the exact sense of this strange, indistinct moment in the life of the so beloved and still so young hero of my tale.

To Father Paisy's grieved question, fixed upon Alyosha—"Are you too among those of little faith?" —I could, of course, answer firmly on Alyosha's behalf: "No, he is not among those of little faith."

Indeed, it was even quite the opposite: his whole distress arose precisely from the fact that he believed so much.

But the distress was there all the same, it had happened, and it was so agonizing that even afterward, long afterward, Alyosha counted that grievous day one of the most painful and fateful days of his life.

And if anyone should ask outright, "Could all this anguish and such alarm really have arisen in him merely because the body of his elder, instead of beginning at once to work cures, had on the contrary fallen prey to early decay?"—then I shall answer without dissembling: "Yes, that is truly how it was."

I would only ask the reader not to be in too great a hurry to laugh at my young man's pure heart.

As for myself, far from intending to beg pardon for him, or to excuse and justify his guileless faith by his youth, say, or by his slight progress in the studies he had pursued earlier, and so on and so forth, I shall do quite the reverse and declare firmly that I feel a sincere respect for the nature of his heart.

Without doubt, some other young man who takes the impressions of the heart cautiously, who already knows how to love not ardently but only lukewarmly, with a mind sound enough but, for his age, far too judicious (and therefore cheap)—such a young man, I say, would have avoided what befell mine; but in certain cases it is, truly, more honorable to give oneself up to some impulse, however unreasonable, that nonetheless springs from a great love, than not to give oneself up to it at all.

And in youth all the more so, for a young man perpetually too judicious is not to be relied on, and his worth is cheap—that is my opinion!

"But,"—sensible people will perhaps exclaim at this point—"one cannot have every young man believing in such a superstition, and your young man is no rule for the rest."

To this I answer once again: yes, my young man believed, believed devoutly and unshakably, but even so I do not beg pardon for him.

You see: although I declared above (and, perhaps, too hastily) that I would not explain, excuse, or justify my hero, I now see that something must nonetheless be made clear for the further understanding of the tale.

Here is what I shall say: it was not a matter of miracles.

It was no frivolous, impatient expectation of miracles that was at work here.

And it was not for the triumph of any convictions that Alyosha needed miracles then (that, of course, not at all), nor for the sake of some earlier, preconceived idea that might prevail the sooner over another—oh no, not in the least: here, in all of this and above all, in the first place, there stood before him a face, and only a face—the face of his beloved elder, the face of that righteous man whom he revered to the point of adoration.

The very thing is that all the love hidden away in his young and pure heart for "one and all", in that time and throughout the whole year leading up to it, seemed at times to gather wholly, and perhaps even wrongly, upon one being preeminently—at least in the strongest surgings of his heart—upon his beloved elder, now departed.

True, this being had stood before him so long as an indisputable ideal that all his young powers and their whole striving could not but turn toward this ideal exclusively, and at moments even to the point of forgetting "one and all".

(He himself recalled afterward that on this heavy day he had forgotten altogether about his brother Dmitri, over whom he had fretted and grieved the day before; he had forgotten, too, to carry the two hundred rubles to Ilyushechka's father, which he had so eagerly meant to do, also the day before.)

But again, it was not miracles he needed, only the "higher justice" that, by his belief, had been violated—and by which his heart had been so cruelly and suddenly wounded.

And what of it that this "justice", in Alyosha's expectations, took, by the very course of events, the form of miracles awaited at once from the remains of his adored former guide?

But everyone in the monastery thought and expected the same, even those before whose intellect Alyosha bowed, Father Paisy himself, for instance; and so Alyosha, untroubling himself with any doubts, cast his own dreams into the very form into which all the rest had cast theirs.

And besides, it had long since been so arranged in his heart, by a whole year of his monastery life, and his heart had already taken up the habit of expecting just so.

But it was justice he thirsted for, justice, and not merely miracles alone!

And now the very one who ought, by his hopes, to have been exalted above all others in the whole world—that very one, instead of the glory due him, was suddenly cast down and disgraced!

For what?

Who had judged?

Who could pass such a judgment?—these were the questions that at once tormented his inexperienced and virgin heart.

He could not bear, without offense, without even a bitterness of heart, that the most righteous of the righteous should be given over to such mocking and malicious derision by a crowd so frivolous and standing so far beneath him.

Well, suppose there had been no miracles at all, suppose nothing wondrous had appeared and what was awaited had not been justified at once—but why had infamy appeared, why had disgrace been suffered, why this hasty decay that "forestalled nature", as the malicious monks put it?

Why this "sign" that they now draw forth with such triumph along with Father Ferapont, and why do they believe they have even gained the right to draw it forth?

Where, then, is Providence and its finger?

Why had it hidden its finger "at the very moment of need" (thought Alyosha), as if it had itself chosen to submit to the blind, mute, pitiless laws of nature?

That was why Alyosha's heart bled, and of course, as I have said already, before all else there stood there a face, the face he loved more than anything in the world, and that very face "disgraced", that very one "dishonored"!

Let this murmuring of my young man have been frivolous and unreasoning, yet again, for the third time I repeat (and I grant in advance that this too may be frivolous): I am glad that my young man proved not so judicious at such a moment, for reason will always come in time to a man who is not a fool, but if at such an exceptional moment no love is found in a young man's heart, then when will it ever come?

I will not, however, pass over in silence a certain strange phenomenon that, fleeting as it was, nonetheless showed itself in Alyosha's mind in this fateful and bewildering moment.

This new something, which had appeared and flashed by, consisted in a certain painful impression left by the conversation he had had the day before with his brother Ivan, which Alyosha now kept recalling without cease.

Precisely now.

Oh, it was not that anything had been shaken in his soul among its fundamental, elemental, so to speak, beliefs.

His God he loved and believed in unshakably, even though he had suddenly begun to murmur against Him.

But all the same some vague, yet painful and malign impression from the recollection of yesterday's conversation with his brother Ivan now suddenly stirred again in his soul and pressed more and more to rise to the surface of it.

When it had already begun to grow heavily dark, Rakitin, passing through the pine grove from the hermitage to the monastery, suddenly noticed Alyosha lying beneath a tree, face to the ground, motionless and as if asleep.

He came up and called to him.

— You here, Alexei? Can it be that you… —he began, astonished, but, not finishing, stopped short.

He had meant to say: "Can it be you have come to such a pass?"

Alyosha did not look at him, but from a certain movement of his Rakitin guessed at once that he heard and understood him.

— Why, what is the matter with you? —he went on wondering, but the wonder was already beginning to give way in his face to a smile that took on a more and more mocking expression.

— Listen, I have been looking for you more than two hours now. You suddenly vanished from over there. Now what are you doing here? What sort of pious nonsense is this you are up to? Come, look at me at least…

Alyosha raised his head, sat up, and leaned his back against the tree.