III. Золотые прииски

She was awaiting her "courier" at the time and was very glad that Mitya had come neither yesterday nor today, hoping that, God willing, he would not turn up before her departure — and then all at once he had descended upon her.

The rest we know: to get him off her hands, she instantly talked him into escorting her to Kuzma Samsonov, where she supposedly had a most urgent need to go and "count money", and once Mitya had seen her there without delay, she, taking leave of him at Kuzma's gate, exacted from him a promise to come back for her toward twelve o'clock and walk her home again.

Mitya was glad of this arrangement too: "If she sits at Kuzma's, then she won't go to Fyodor Pavlovich… so long as she isn't lying", he added at once.

But to his eye, it seemed, she was not lying.

He was precisely the kind of jealous man who, parted from the woman he loved, would at once conjure up God knows what horrors about what was happening to her and how she was "betraying" him there, yet, running back to her again — shaken, crushed, by now irrevocably certain that she had indeed managed to betray him — at the very first glance at her face, at the laughing, gay, affectionate face of this woman, would instantly revive in spirit, instantly lose all suspicion, and with joyful shame upbraid himself for his jealousy.

Having seen Grushenka off, he hurried home.

Oh, there was still so much he had to manage to do that day!

But at least his heart felt lighter.

"Only I'd better find out as soon as I can from Smerdyakov whether anything happened there last night, whether she didn't go, heaven forbid, to Fyodor Pavlovich — ugh!" flashed through his head.

So that he had not even managed to reach his lodging before jealousy was already stirring again in his restless heart.

Jealousy!

"Othello is not jealous, he is trustful", Pushkin observed, and this remark alone bears witness to the extraordinary depth of mind in our great poet.

In Othello the soul is simply shattered and his whole view of the world is darkened, because ''his ideal has perished''.

But Othello will not hide, spy, peer through keyholes: he is trustful.

On the contrary, he had to be led on, prodded, inflamed with extraordinary effort before he so much as guessed at the betrayal.

The true jealous man is not like that.

It is impossible even to imagine the whole shame and moral degradation a jealous man can make his peace with, without any pangs of conscience whatever.

And it is not as though these were all vulgar and dirty souls.

On the contrary, with a lofty heart, with a love that is pure and full of self-sacrifice, one may at the same time crouch beneath tables, bribe the basest of men, and consort with the foulest filth of spying and eavesdropping.

Othello could in no way have reconciled himself to betrayal — not that he could not have forgiven it, but reconciled himself — though his soul is as guileless and innocent as the soul of a babe.

Not so with the real jealous man: it is hard to conceive what some jealous men can put up with and make peace with, and what they can forgive!

The jealous are the quickest of all to forgive, and every woman knows it.

The jealous man is extraordinarily quick (after a terrible scene at the start, of course) to be willing and able to forgive, say, a betrayal already all but proved, embraces and kisses he has seen with his own eyes, if only, for instance, he could at the same time somehow assure himself that this was "the last time" and that his rival would from that hour vanish, go off to the ends of the earth, or that he himself would carry her away somewhere, to some place this dread rival could no longer reach.

Of course, the reconciliation will last but an hour, for even if the rival really did vanish, the very next day he would invent another, a new one, and grow jealous of the new.

And one would think — what is a love worth that has to be spied upon so, and what is the worth of a love that must be guarded with such effort?

But this is just what the true jealous man will never understand, and yet among them there are, truly, men even of lofty hearts.

It is also remarkable that these very men of lofty hearts, while they stand in some little closet, eavesdropping and spying, do, with "those lofty hearts of theirs", clearly grasp the whole disgrace into which they have voluntarily crawled, and yet, in that moment at least, so long as they stand in that closet, never feel any pangs of conscience.

At the sight of Grushenka, Mitya's jealousy would vanish, and for a moment he would become trustful and noble, even despising himself for his ugly feelings.

But this meant only that in his love for this woman there lay something far higher than he himself supposed, and not mere passion alone, not merely that "curve of the body" he had spoken of to Alyosha.

Yet whenever Grushenka was out of sight, Mitya at once began again to suspect her of all the baseness and treachery of betrayal.

And of pangs of conscience over this he felt none.

And so jealousy boiled up in him anew.

In any case, he had to hurry.

The first thing was to lay hold of at least a little money to tide him over.

Yesterday's nine roubles had nearly all gone on the journey, and without any money at all, as everyone knows, one cannot stir a step anywhere.

But along with his new plan he had already worked out, back on the cart, where to get something to tide him over too.

He had a pair of fine duelling pistols with their cartridges, and if he had not pawned them before now, it was because he loved that thing more than anything he owned.

At the tavern "The Capital City" he had long ago struck up a slight acquaintance with a certain young official, and had somehow learned, there at the tavern, that this unmarried and quite well-off official was passionately fond of weapons, bought pistols, revolvers, daggers, hung them on his walls, showed them off to acquaintances, boasted, was a master at explaining the workings of a revolver, how to load it, how to fire it, and so on.

Without long deliberation Mitya went straight to him and offered to leave the pistols in pledge for ten roubles.

The official began with delight to urge him to sell them outright, but Mitya would not agree, and the man handed him the ten roubles, declaring that he would on no account take any interest.

They parted friends.

Mitya was in a hurry; he rushed off to the back of Fyodor Pavlovich's place, to his arbor, to call Smerdyakov out as quickly as possible.

But in this way there arose once more the fact that, a mere three or four hours before a certain occurrence of which I shall speak below, Mitya had not a kopeck of money and pawned a beloved possession for ten roubles, whereas suddenly, three hours later, thousands turned up in his hands… But I am getting ahead of myself.

At the house of Marya Kondratyevna (Fyodor Pavlovich's neighbor) there awaited him a piece of news that astonished and disturbed him exceedingly — news of Smerdyakov's illness.

He heard out the story of the fall into the cellar, then of the fit, the doctor's coming, Fyodor Pavlovich's anxious care; with curiosity he learned, too, that his brother Ivan Fyodorovich had already driven off that very morning to Moscow.

"He must have driven through Volovya before me", thought Dmitri Fyodorovich, but Smerdyakov troubled him terribly: "How is it now — who will keep watch, who will bring me word?"

Eagerly he began to question these women: had they not noticed anything the evening before?

They understood very well what he was trying to find out, and reassured him completely: no one had come, Ivan Fyodorovich had spent the night, "everything had been in perfect order".

Mitya fell to thinking.

Beyond doubt he must keep watch today as well, but where: here, or at Samsonov's gate?

He decided both here and there, all as circumstances dictated, but meanwhile, meanwhile…

The thing was that there now stood before him this "plan" — the one from earlier, the new and by now reliable plan, conceived by him on the cart, whose execution could no longer be put off.

Mitya resolved to give an hour to it: "in an hour I'll settle everything, find everything out, and then, then — first, to Samsonov's house, to ask whether Grushenka is there, and back here in a flash, and stay here till eleven o'clock, and then off again for her at Samsonov's, to walk her home".

That was how he decided it.

He flew home, washed, combed his hair, brushed his clothes, dressed, and set off to Madame Hohlakov's.

Alas, his "plan" lay there.

He had made up his mind to borrow three thousand from this lady.

And the chief thing was that, suddenly, somehow all at once, an extraordinary certainty had come over him that she would not refuse him.

It may be wondered why, if he had such certainty, he had not gone there first — into his own circle, so to speak — but had headed for Samsonov, a man of an alien stamp, with whom he did not even know how to talk.