“What’s wrong with you?” Alyosha suddenly started for some reason.

“Alexei Fyodorovich ... I ... you ... ,” the captain muttered and broke off, staring strangely and wildly straight in his face, with the look of a man who has decided to throw himself off a cliff, and at the same time smiling, as it were, with his lips only. “I, sir ... you, sir ... And would you like me to show you a nice little trick, sir?” he suddenly whispered in a quick, firm whisper, his voice no longer faltering.

“What little trick?”

“A little trick, a bit of hocus-pocus,” the captain kept whispering; his mouth became twisted to the left side, his left eye squinted, he went on staring at Alyosha as if his eyes were riveted to him.

“But what’s wrong with you? What trick?” Alyosha cried, now quite alarmed.

“Watch this!” the captain suddenly shrieked.

And holding up both iridescent bills, which all the while, during the whole conversation, he had been holding by the corner between the thumb and index finger of his right hand, he suddenly seized them in some kind of rage, crumpled them, and clutched them tightly in his right fist.

“See that, sir, see that?” he shrieked to Alyosha, pale and frenzied, and suddenly, raising his fist, he threw both crumpled bills with all his might on the sand. “See that, sir?” he shrieked again, pointing at them with his finger. “Well, so, there, sir...!”

And suddenly raising his right foot, he fell to trampling them with his heel, in wild anger, gasping and exclaiming each time his foot struck:

“There’s your money, sir! There’s your money, sir! There’s your money, sir! There’s your money, sir!” Suddenly he leaped back and straightened up before Alyosha. His whole figure presented a picture of inexplicable pride. “Report to those who sent you that the whiskbroom does not sell his honor, sir!” he cried out, raising his arm in the air. Then he quickly turned and broke into a run; but he had not gone even five steps when, turning all the way around, he suddenly made a gesture to Alyosha with his hand. Then, before he had gone even five more steps, he turned around again, this time for the last time, and now there was no twisted laugh on his face, but, on the contrary, it was all shaken with tears. In a weeping, faltering, spluttering patter, he cried out:

“And what would I tell my boy, if I took money from you for our disgrace?” And having said this, he broke into a run, this time without turning around. Alyosha looked after him with inexpressible sadness. Oh, he understood that the captain had not known until the very last moment that he would crumple the bills and fling them down. The running man did not once look back, and Alyosha knew that he would not look back. He did not want to pursue him or call out to him, and he knew why. When the captain was out of sight, Alyosha picked up the two bills. They were just very crumpled, flattened, and pressed into the sand, but were perfectly intact and crisp as new when Alyosha spread them and smoothed them out. Having smoothed them out, he folded them, put them in his pocket, and went to report to Katerina Ivanovna on the success of her errand.

BOOK V: PRO AND CONTRA

Chapter 1: A Betrothal

Madame Khokhlakov was again the first to meet Alyosha. She was in a hurry; something important had happened: Katerina Ivanovna’s hysterics had ended in a fainting spell, then she felt “terrible, horrible weakness, she lay down, rolled up her eyes, and became delirious. Now there’s fever, we sent for Herzenstube, we sent for her aunts. The aunts are already here, but Herzen-stube still isn’t. They’re all sitting in her room and waiting. Who knows what may come of it? And she’s unconscious. What if it’s brain fever?”

Exclaiming this, Madame Khokhlakov looked seriously frightened: “Now this is serious, serious!” she added at every word, as if everything that had happened to her before were not serious. Alyosha listened to her with sorrow; he tried to begin telling her of his own adventures, but she interrupted him at the first words: she had no time, she asked him to sit with Lise and wait for her there.

“Lise, my dearest Alexei Fyodorovich,” she whispered almost in his ear, “Lise has given me a strange surprise just now, but she has also moved me, and so my heart forgives her everything. Imagine, no sooner had you gone than she suddenly began sincerely regretting that she had supposedly been laughing at you yesterday and today. But she wasn’t laughing, she was only joking. Yet she so seriously regretted it, almost to the point of tears, that I was surprised. She has never so seriously regretted laughing at me, she has always made light of it. And you know, she laughs at me all the time. But now she’s serious, now everything has become serious. She values your opinion highly, Alexei Fyodorovich, and, if possible, do not be offended, and do not bear her a grudge. I myself am forever sparing her, because she’s such a smart little girl—don’t you think so? She was saying just now that you were a friend of her childhood—’the most serious friend of my childhood’—imagine that, the most serious—and what about me? In this regard she has the most serious feelings, and even memories, and above all, these phrases and words of hers, the most unexpected little words, that suddenly pop out when you least expect them. Recently, for instance, talking about a pine tree: there was a pine tree standing in our garden when she was very little, maybe it’s still standing, so there’s no need to speak in the past tense. Pines are not people, Alexei Fyodorovich, they take a long time to change. ‘Mama,’ she said, ‘how I pine for that pine’—you see, ‘pine’ and ‘pine’—but she put it some other way, because something’s confused here, pine is such a silly word, only she said something so original on the subject that I decidedly cannot begin to repeat it. Besides, I’ve forgotten it all. Well, good-bye, I am deeply shaken, and am probably losing my mind. Ah, Alexei Fyodorovich, twice in my life I’ve lost my mind and had to be treated. Go to Lise. Cheer her up, as you always manage to do so charmingly. Lise,” she called, going up to her door, “here I’ve brought you your much-insulted Alexei Fyodorovich, and he’s not at all angry, I assure you; quite the opposite, he’s surprised you could think so!”

“Merci, maman. Come in, Alexei Fyodorovich.”

Alyosha went in. Lise looked somehow embarrassed and suddenly blushed all over. She seemed to be ashamed of something, and, as always happens in such cases, she quickly began speaking of something quite unrelated, as if at that moment only this unrelated thing interested her.

“Mama suddenly told me just now, Alexei Fyodorovich, the whole story about the two hundred roubles, and about this errand of yours ... to that poor officer ... and the whole awful story, how he was offended, and, you know, though mama gets everything mixed up ... she keeps jumping all over ... I still cried when I heard it. Well, what happened? Did you give him the money, and how is the wretched man now ... ?”

“That’s just it—I didn’t, but it’s a long story,” Alyosha replied, as if for his part what concerned him most was precisely that he had not given the money, but at the same time Lise saw perfectly well that he, too, was looking away and was also obviously trying to speak of unrelated matters. Alyosha sat down at the table and began telling his story, but from the first words he lost all his embarrassment and, in turn, carried Lise away. He spoke under the influence of strong emotion and the recent extraordinary impression, and succeeded in telling it well and thoroughly. Earlier, while still in Moscow, still in Lise’s childhood, he had enjoyed visiting her and telling her now something that had just happened to him, now something he had read, or again something he remembered from his own childhood. Sometimes they even both daydreamed together and made up long stories between them, mostly gay and amusing ones. Now it was as if they were suddenly transported back to that time in Moscow two years before. Lise was greatly moved by his story. Alyosha managed to paint the image of “Ilyushechka” for her with ardent feeling. And when he finished describing in great detail the scene of the wretched man trampling on the money, Lise clasped her hands and cried out with irrepressible feeling: “So you didn’t give him the money, you just let him run away like that! My God, but you should at least have run after him and caught him...”