The Brothers Karamazov | Page 5

this unhappy young
woman, kept in terror from her childhood, fell into that kind of nervous
disease which is most frequently found in peasant women who are said
to be "possessed by devils." At times after terrible fits of hysterics she
even lost her reason. Yet she bore Fyodor Pavlovitch two sons, Ivan
and Alexey, the eldest in the first year of marriage and the second three
years later. When she died, little Alexey was in his fourth year, and,
strange as it seems, I know that he remembered his mother all his life,
like a dream, of course. At her death almost exactly the same thing
happened to the two little boys as to their elder brother, Mitya. They
were completely forgotten and abandoned by their father. They were
looked after by the same Grigory and lived in his cottage, where they
were found by the tyrannical old lady who had brought up their mother.
She was still alive, and had not, all those eight years, forgotten the
insult done her. All that time she was obtaining exact information as to
her Sofya's manner of life, and hearing of her illness and hideous
surroundings she declared aloud two or three times to her retainers:
"It serves her right. God has punished her for her ingratitude."
Exactly three months after Sofya Ivanovna's death the general's widow
suddenly appeared in our town, and went straight to Fyodor
Pavlovitch's house. She spent only half an hour in the town but she did

a great deal. It was evening. Fyodor Pavlovitch, whom she had not seen
for those eight years, came in to her drunk. The story is that instantly
upon seeing him, without any sort of explanation, she gave him two
good, resounding slaps on the face, seized him by a tuft of hair, and
shook him three times up and down. Then, without a word, she went
straight to the cottage to the two boys. Seeing, at the first glance, that
they were unwashed and in dirty linen, she promptly gave Grigory, too,
a box on the ear, and announcing that she would carry off both the
children she wrapped them just as they were in a rug, put them in the
carriage, and drove off to her own town. Grigory accepted the blow like
a devoted slave, without a word, and when he escorted the old lady to
her carriage he made her a low bow and pronounced impressively that,
"God would repay her for orphans." "You are a blockhead all the
same," the old lady shouted to him as she drove away.
Fyodor Pavlovitch, thinking it over, decided that it was a good thing,
and did not refuse the general's widow his formal consent to any
proposition in regard to his children's education. As for the slaps she
had given him, he drove all over the town telling the story.
It happened that the old lady died soon after this, but she left the boys
in her will a thousand roubles each "for their instruction, and so that all
be spent on them exclusively, with the condition that it be so portioned
out as to last till they are twenty-one, for it is more than adequate
provision for such children. If other people think fit to throw away their
money, let them." I have not read the will myself, but I heard there was
something queer of the sort, very whimsically expressed. The principal
heir, Yefim Petrovitch Polenov, the Marshal of Nobility of the province,
turned out, however, to be an honest man. Writing to Fyodor
Pavlovitch, and discerning at once that he could extract nothing from
him for his children's education (though the latter never directly refused
but only procrastinated as he always did in such cases, and was, indeed,
at times effusively sentimental), Yefim Petrovitch took a personal
interest in the orphans. He became especially fond of the younger,
Alexey, who lived for a long while as one of his family. I beg the
reader to note this from the beginning. And to Yefim Petrovitch, a man
of a generosity and humanity rarely to be met with, the young people

were more indebted for their education and bringing up than to anyone.
He kept the two thousand roubles left to them by the general's widow
intact, so that by the time they came of age their portions had been
doubled by the accumulation of interest. He educated them both at his
own expense, and certainly spent far more than a thousand roubles
upon each of them. I won't enter into a detailed account of their
boyhood and youth, but will only mention a few of the most important
events. Of the elder, Ivan, I will only say that he grew into a somewhat
morose and reserved, though far from