She began combing his hair with a most serious expression, even parted it on one side, drew back a little to see if it was good, and then put the comb back in her pocket.

"You know what, Shatushka," she shook her head, "you may be a sensible man, but you're bored. It's strange for me looking at you all, I don't understand how it is that people are bored. Sorrow isn't boredom. I'm of good cheer."

"And with your brother, too?"

"You mean Lebyadkin? He's my lackey. It makes no difference to me whether he's here or not. I shout at him: 'Lebyadkin, fetch water, Lebyadkin, bring my shoes,' and off he runs. I sin sometimes thinking how funny he is."

"And that's exactly so," Shatov again addressed me aloud and without ceremony, "she treats him just like a lackey; I myself have heard her shouting at him: 'Lebyadkin, fetch water,' and laughing loudly; the only difference is that he doesn't go running for water, but beats her for it; yet she's not afraid of him in the least. She has some sort of nervous fits almost every day, and they take away her memory, so that after them she forgets everything that's just happened and always gets mixed up about time. You think she remembers how we came in, and maybe she does, but she's certainly changed it all in her own way and takes us for someone other than we are, even if she remembers that I'm Shatushka. It doesn't matter that I'm talking out loud; if the talk isn't addressed to her, she immediately stops listening and immediately plunges into dreaming within herself; precisely plunges. She's an extraordinary dreamer; she sits in one place for eight hours, for a whole day. Here's her roll, she may have taken only one bite of it since morning, and won't finish it until tomorrow. And now she's begun reading the cards..."

"Reading the cards I am, Shatushka, only it comes out wrong somehow," Marya Timofeevna suddenly joined in, catching the last words, and without looking she reached for the roll with her left hand (having probably heard about the roll, too). She finally got hold of it, but after keeping it for a while in her left hand, being distracted by the newly sprung-up conversation, she put it back on the table without noticing, and without having taken a single bite. "It keeps coming out the same: a journey, a wicked man, someone's perfidy, a deathbed, a letter from somewhere, unexpected news—it's all lies, I think. Shatushka, what's your opinion? If people lie, why shouldn't cards lie?" She suddenly mixed up the cards. "It's the same thing I said once to Mother Praskovya, a venerable woman she is, she used to stop by my cell to read the cards, in secret from the mother superior. And she wasn't the only one who stopped by. They'd 'oh' and 'ah,' shake their heads, say one thing and another, and I'd just laugh. 'Mother Praskovya,' I said, 'how are you going to get a letter if it hasn't come for twelve years?' Her daughter's husband took her daughter to Turkey somewhere, and for twelve years there wasn't a word or a peep from her. Only the next day I was sitting in the evening having tea at the mother superior's (and our mother superior is of a princely family), and there was also a lady visitor sitting there, a great dreamer, and some little monk from Athos,^[59] rather a funny man in my opinion. And just think, Shatushka, that same monk had brought Mother Praskovya a letter from her daughter in Turkey that same morning—there's the knave of diamonds for you—unexpected news! So we're having tea there, and this monk from Athos says to the mother superior: 'Most of all, blessed Mother Superior, the Lord has blessed your convent because you keep such a precious treasure in its depths.' 'What treasure?' the mother superior asked. 'Mother Lizaveta the blessed.' Now, this blessed Lizaveta was set into our convent wall, in a cage seven feet long and five feet high, and for seventeen years she's been sitting there behind the iron bars, winter and summer, in nothing but a hempen shift, and she keeps poking at the shift, at the hempen cloth, all the time, with a straw or some twig, whatever she finds, and she says nothing, and she hasn't combed her hair or washed for seventeen years. In winter they'd push in a sheepskin coat for her, and every day a cup of water and a crust of bread. Pilgrims look, say 'Ahh,' sigh, give money. 'A nice treasure for you,' the mother superior replied (she was angry; she disliked Lizaveta terribly). 'Lizaveta sits there only out of spite, only out of stubbornness, and it is all a sham.' I didn't like that; I myself was thinking then about shutting myself away. 'And in my opinion,' I said, 'God and nature are all the same.' And they all said to me in one voice: 'There now!' The mother superior laughed, whispered something to the lady, called me to her, was ever so nice, and the lady gave me a pink bow, want me to show it to you? And the little monk right away began reading me a lesson, and he spoke so tenderly and humbly, and, it must be, with such intelligence. I sat and listened. 'Did you understand?' he asked. 'No,' I said, 'I didn't understand a thing, and just leave me completely in peace,' I said. So since then they've left me completely in peace, Shatushka. And meanwhile one of our old women, who lived with us under penance for prophesying,^[60] whispered to me on the way out of church: 'What is the Mother of God, in your view?' 'The great mother,' I answered, 'the hope of the human race.' 'Yes,' she said, 'the Mother of God is our great mother the moist earth, and therein lies a great joy for man. And every earthly sorrow and every earthly tear is a joy for us; and when you have watered the earth under you a foot deep with your tears, then you will at once rejoice over everything. And there will be no more, no more of your grief from then on,' she said, 'and such,' she said, 'is the prophecy.' And this word sank into me then. After that I began to kiss the earth when I prayed, each time I bowed to the ground, I kissed it and wept. And I'll tell you this, Shatushka: there's no harm, no harm in these tears; and even if you have no grief, your tears will flow all the same from joy alone. The tears flow by themselves, that's the truth. I used to go away to the shore of the lake—on the one side is our convent, on the other our Pointed Mountain, for so they've named it—Pointed Mountain. I would go up this mountain, turn my face to the east, fall and press myself to the ground, and weep and weep, and I wouldn't remember how long I'd been weeping, and I wouldn't remember or know anything then. After that I'd get up, turn around, and the sun would be setting, so big, so splendid, so fair—do you like looking at the sun, Shatushka? It's nice, but sad. I'd turn back to the east, and the shadow from our mountain would run like an arrow far out on the lake, thin and long, so long, half a mile out, to the very island in the lake, and it would cut right across that stone island, and as soon as it cut across it, the sun would set altogether, and everything would suddenly die out. Now I, too, would be filled with sorrow, now my memory would come back, I'm afraid of the dark, Shatushka. And most of all I weep for my baby..."

"Was there one?" Shatov, who had been listening all the while with extreme attention, nudged me with his elbow.

"But, of course: little, pink, with such tiny fingernails, only my whole sorrow is that I don't remember whether it was a boy or a girl. One time I remember a boy, and another time a girl. And as soon as I gave birth to it then, I wrapped it in cambric and lace, tied it round with pink ribbons, strewed flowers, made it ready, prayed over it, and took it unbaptized, and as I was carrying it through the forest, I'd get frightened of the forest, and I'd be afraid and weeping most of all because I gave birth to it and did not know a husband."