“A whipping, right now, sir! A whipping this very minute, sir,” the captain now jumped all the way out of his chair.

“But I’m not complaining at all, I was simply telling you ... I don’t want you to whip him at all. Besides, he seems to be ill now ...”

“And did you think I’d whip him, sir? That I’d take Ilyushechka and whip him right now, in front of you, for your full satisfaction? How soon would you like it done, sir?” said the captain, suddenly turning to Alyosha with such a gesture that he seemed as if he were going to leap at him. “I am sorry, my dear sir, about your poor little finger, but before I go whipping Ilyushechka maybe you’d like me to chop off these four fingers, right here, in front of your eyes, for your righteous satisfaction, with this very knife? Four fingers, I think, should be enough for you, sir, to satisfy your thirst for revenge, you won’t demand the fifth one, sir ... ?” he suddenly stopped as if he were suffocating. Every feature of his face was moving and twitching, and he looked extremely defiant. He was as if in a frenzy.

“I think I understand it all now,” Alyosha replied softly and sadly, without getting up. “So your boy is a good boy, he loves his father, and he attacked me as your offender’s brother ... I understand it now,” he repeated, pondering. “But my brother, Dmitri Fyodorovich, repents of his act, I know, and if it were only possible for him to come to you, or, best of all, to meet you again in the same place, he would ask your forgiveness in front of everyone ... if you wish.”

“You mean he pulls my beard out and then asks my forgiveness ... and it’s all over and everyone’s satisfied, is that it, sir?” “Oh, no, on the contrary, he will do whatever you want and however you want!”

“So if I asked his excellency to go down on his knees to me in that very tavern, sir—the ‘Metropolis’ by name—or in the public square, he would do it?”

“Yes, he would even go down on his knees.”

“You’ve pierced me, sir. Pierced me to tears, sir. I’m too inclined to be sensitive . Allow me to make a full introduction: my family, my two daughters and my son—my litter, sir. If I die, who will so love them, sir, and while I live, who will so love me, a little wretch, if not them? This great thing the Lord has provided for every man of my sort, sir. For it’s necessary that at least someone should so love a man of my sort, sir...”

“Ah, that is perfectly true!” exclaimed Alyosha.

“Enough of this clowning! Some fool comes along and you shame us all,” the girl at the window suddenly cried out, addressing her father with a disgusted and contemptuous look.

“Wait a little, Varvara Nikolaevna, allow me to sustain my point,” her father cried to her in a peremptory tone, looking at her, however, quite approvingly. “It’s our character, sir,” he turned again to Alyosha.

“And in all nature there was nothing He would give his blessing to—^[119] only it should be in the feminine: that she would give her blessing to, sir. But allow me to introduce you to my wife: this is Arina Petrovna, sir, a crippled lady, about forty-three years old, she can walk, but very little, sir. From simple people. Arina Petrovna, smooth your brow; this is Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov. Stand up, Alexei Fyodorovich,” he took him by the arm and, with a force one would not have suspected in him, suddenly raised him up. “You are being introduced to a lady, you should stand up, sir. Not that Karamazov, mama, the one who ... hm, and so on, but his brother, shining with humble virtues. Allow me, Arina Petrovna, allow me, mama, allow me preliminarily to kiss your hand.”

And he kissed his wife’s hand respectfully and even tenderly. The girl at the window indignantly turned her back on the scene; the haughtily questioning face of the wife suddenly took on a remarkably sweet expression.

“How do you do, sit down, Mr. Chernomazov,”^[120] she said.

“Karamazov, mama, Karamazov—we’re from simple people, sir,” he whispered again.

“Well, Karamazov, or whatever it is, but I always say Chernomazov ... But sit down, why did he get you up? A crippled lady, he says, but my legs still work, only they’re swollen like buckets, and the rest of me is dried up. Once I was good and fat, but now it’s as if I swallowed a needle...”

“We’re from simple people, sir, simple people,” the captain prompted once again.

“Papa, oh, papa!” the hunchbacked girl, who until then had been silent on her chair, said suddenly, and suddenly hid her eyes in her handkerchief.

“Buffoon!” the girl at the window flung out.

“You see what sort of news we have,” the mother spread her arms, pointing at her daughters, “like clouds coming over; the clouds pass, and we have our music again. Before, when we were military, we had many such guests. I’m not comparing, dear father. If someone loves someone, let him love him. The deacon’s wife came once and said: ‘Alexander Alexandrovich is a man of excellent soul, but Nastasya,’ she said, ‘Nastasya Petrovna is a hellcat.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘we all have our likes, and you’re a little pile, but you smell vile.’ And you need to be kept in your place,’ she said. ‘Ah, you black sword,’ I said to her, ‘who are you to teach me?”I’m letting in fresh air,’ she said, ‘yours is foul.”Go and ask all the gentlemen officers,’ I told her, ‘whether the air in me is foul or otherwise.’ And from that time on it’s been weighing on my heart, and the other day I was sitting here, like now, and saw the same general come in who visited us in Holy Week: ‘Tell me, now, Your Excellency,’ I said to him, ‘can a noble lady let in free air?”Yes,’ he said to me, ‘you should open the window or the door, because that the air in here is not clean.’ And it’s always like that! What’s wrong with my air? The dead smell even worse. ‘I’m not spoiling your air,’ I tell them, ‘I’ll order some shoes and go away.’ My dear ones, my darlings, don’t reproach your own mother! Nikolai llyich, dear father, don’t I please you? I have only one thing left—that Ilyushechka comes home from school and loves me. Yesterday he brought me an apple. Forgive me, my dears, forgive me, my darlings, forgive your own mother, I’m quite lonely, and why is my air so offensive to you?”

And the poor woman suddenly burst into sobs, tears streamed from her eyes. The captain quickly leaped to her side.

“Mama, mama, darling, enough, enough! You’re not lonely. Everyone loves you, everyone adores you!” and he again began kissing both her hands and tenderly caressing her face with his palms; and taking a napkin, he suddenly began wiping the tears from her face. Alyosha even fancied that there were tears shining in his eyes, too. “Well, sir, did you see? Did you hear, sir?” he suddenly turned somehow fiercely to Alyosha, pointing with his hand to the poor, feebleminded woman.

“I see and hear,” murmured Alyosha. “Papa, papa! How can you ... with him ... stop it, papa!” the boy suddenly cried, rising in his bed and looking at his father with burning eyes.

“Enough of your clowning, showing off your stupid antics, which never get anywhere...!” Varvara Nikolaevna shouted from the same corner, quite furious now, and even stamping her foot.

“You are perfectly justified, this time, to be so good as to lose your temper, Varvara Nikolaevna, and I shall hasten to satisfy you. Put on your hat, Alexei Fyodorovich, and I’ll take my cap—and let us go, sir. I have something serious to tell you, only outside these walls. This sitting girl here—she’s my daughter, sir, Nina Nikolaevna, I forgot to introduce her to you—is God’s angel in the flesh ... who has flown down to us mortals ... if you can possibly understand that ...”

“He’s twitching all over, as if he had cramps,” Varvara Nikolaevna went on indignantly.

“And this one who is now stamping her little foot and has just denounced me as a clown—she, too, is God’s angel in the flesh, sir, and rightly calls me names. Let us go, Alexei Fyodorovich, we must bring this to an end, sir...”