“Katerina Ivanovna sends you this by me.” She handed him a small letter. “She especially asks that you come to her soon, soon, and not to disappoint her but to be sure to come.”

“She asks me to come? Me ... to her ... but why?” Alyosha muttered, deeply astonished. His face suddenly became quite worried.

“Oh, it’s all about Dmitri Fyodorovich and ... all these recent events,” her mama explained briefly. “Katerina Ivanovna has now come to a decision ... but for that she must see you ... why, of course, I don’t know, but she asked that you come as soon as possible. And you will do it, surely you will, even Christian feeling must tell you to do it.”

“I’ve met her only once,” Alyosha continued, still puzzled.

“Oh, she is such a lofty, such an unattainable creature...! Only think of her sufferings ... Consider what she’s endured, what she’s enduring now, consider what lies ahead of her ... it’s all terrible, terrible!”

“Very well, I’ll go,” Alyosha decided, glancing through the short and mysterious note, which, apart from an urgent request to come, contained no explanations.

“Ah, how nice and splendid it will be of you,” Lise cried with sudden animation. “And I just said to mother: he won’t go for anything, he is saving his soul. You’re so wonderful, so wonderful! I always did think you were wonderful, and it’s so nice to say it to you now!”

“Lise!” her mama said imposingly, though she immediately smiled.

“You’ve forgotten us, too, Alexei Fyodorovich, you don’t care to visit us at all: and yet twice Lise has told me that she feels good only with you.” Alyosha raised his downcast eyes, suddenly blushed again, and suddenly grinned again, not knowing why himself. The elder, however, was no longer watching him. He had gotten into conversation with the visiting monk, who, as we have already said, was waiting by Lise’s chair for him to come out. He was apparently one of those monks of the humblest sort, that is, from the common people, with a short, unshakable world view, but a believer and, in his own way, a tenacious one. He introduced himself as coming from somewhere in the far north, from Obdorsk, from St. Sylvester’s, a poor monastery with only nine monks. The elder gave him his blessing and invited him to visit his cell when he liked.

“How are you so bold as to do such deeds?” the monk suddenly asked, pointing solemnly and imposingly at Lise. He was alluding to her “healing.”

“It is, of course, too early to speak of that. Improvement is not yet a complete healing, and might also occur for other reasons. Still, if there was anything, it came about by no one else’s power save the divine will. Everything is from God. Visit me, father,” he added, addressing the monk, “while I’m still able: I’m ill, and I know that my days are numbered.”

“Oh, no, no, God will not take you from us, you will live a long, long time yet,” the mama exclaimed. “What’s this about being ill? You look so healthy, so cheerful, so happy.”

“I feel remarkably better today, but by now I know that it is only for a moment. I’ve come to understand my illness perfectly. But since I seem so cheerful to you, nothing could ever gladden me more than your saying so. For people are created for happiness, and he who is completely happy can at once be deemed worthy of saying to himself: ‘I have fulfilled God’s commandment on this earth.’ All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy.”

“Oh, how you speak! What brave and lofty words!” the mama exclaimed. “You speak, and it seems to pierce one right through. And yet happiness, happiness—where is it? Who can call himself happy? Oh, since you were already so kind as to allow us to see you once more today, let me tell you everything that I held back last time, that I did not dare to say, everything that I suffer with, and have for so long, so long! I am suffering, forgive me, I am suffering!” And in a sort of hot rush of emotion, she pressed her hands together before him.

“From what precisely?”

“I suffer from ... lack of faith...”

“Lack of faith in God?”

“Oh, no, no, I dare not even think of that, but the life after death—it’s such a riddle! And no one, but no one will solve it! Listen, you are a healer, a connoisseur of human souls; of course, I dare not expect you to believe me completely, but I assure you, I give you my greatest word that I am not speaking lightly now, that this thought about a future life after death troubles me to the point of suffering, terror, and fright ... And I don’t know who to turn to, all my life I’ve never dared ... And now I’m so bold as to turn to you ... Oh, God, what will you think of me now!” And she clasped her hands.

“Don’t worry about my opinion,” the elder answered. “I believe completely in the genuineness of your anguish.”

“Oh, how grateful I am to you! You see, I close my eyes and think: if everyone has faith, where does it come from? And then they say that it all came originally from fear of the awesome phenomena of nature, and that there is nothing to it at all. What? I think, all my life I’ve believed, then I die, and suddenly there’s nothing, and only ‘burdock will grow on my grave,’^[44] as I read in one writer? It’s terrible! What, what will give me back my faith? Though I believed only when I was a little child, mechanically, without thinking about anything ... How, how can it be proved? I’ve come now to throw myself at your feet and ask you about it. If I miss this chance, too, then surely no one will answer me for the rest of my life. How can it be proved, how can one be convinced? Oh, miserable me! I look around and see that for everyone else, almost everyone, it’s all the same, no one worries about it anymore, and I’m the only one who can’t bear it. It’s devastating, devastating!”

“No doubt it is devastating. One cannot prove anything here, but it is possible to be convinced.”

“How? By what?”

“By the experience of active love. Try to love your neighbors actively and tirelessly. The more you succeed in loving, the more you’ll be convinced of the existence of God and the immortality of your soul. And if you reach complete selflessness in the love of your neighbor, then undoubtedly you will believe, and no doubt will even be able to enter your soul. This has been tested. It is certain.”

“Active love? That’s another question, and what a question, what a question! You see, I love mankind so much that—would you believe it?—I sometimes dream of giving up all, all I have, of leaving Lise and going to become a sister of mercy. I close my eyes, I think and dream, and in such moments I feel an invincible strength in myself. No wounds, no festering sores could frighten me. I would bind them and cleanse them with my own hands, I would nurse the suffering, I am ready to kiss those sores ...”

“It’s already a great deal and very well for you that you dream of that in your mind and not of something else. Once in a while, by chance, you may really do some good deed.”

“Yes, but could I survive such a life for long?” the lady went on heatedly, almost frantically, as it were. “That’s the main question, that’s my most tormenting question of all. I close my eyes and ask myself: could you stand it for long on such a path? And if the sick man whose sores you are cleansing does not respond immediately with gratitude but, on the contrary, begins tormenting you with his whims, not appreciating and not noticing your philanthropic ministry, if he begins to shout at you, to make rude demands, even to complain to some sort of superiors (as often happens with people who are in pain)—what then? Will you go on loving, or not? And, imagine, the answer already came to me with a shudder: if there’s anything that would immediately cool my ‘active’ love for mankind, that one thing is ingratitude. In short, I work for pay and demand my pay at once, that is, praise and a return of love lor my love. Otherwise I’m unable to love anyone!”