“I like any verses terribly, if it’s nicely put together,” the female voice went on. “Why don’t you go on?”

The voice sang again:

More than all a king’s wealth Is my dear one’s good health. Lord have me-e-e-ercy On her and me! On her and me! On her and me!

“Last time it came out even better,” remarked the female voice. “After the king’s wealth, you sang: ‘Is my honey’s good health.’ It came out more tender. You must have forgotten today.” “Verse is nonsense, miss,” Smerdyakov said curtly. “Oh, no, I do so like a bit of verse.”

“As far as verse goes, miss, essentially it’s nonsense. Consider for yourself: who on earth talks in rhymes? And if we all started talking in rhymes, even by order of the authorities, how much would get said, miss? Verse is no good, Maria Kondratievna.”

“You’re so smart about everything! How did you ever amount to all that?” the female voice was growing more and more caressing.

“I could have done even better, miss, and I’d know a lot more, if it wasn’t for my destiny ever since childhood. I’d have killed a man in a duel with a pistol for calling me low-born, because I came from Stinking Lizaveta without a father, and they were shoving that in my face in Moscow, it spread there thanks to Grigory Vasilievich. Grigory Vasilievich reproaches me for rebelling against my nativity: ‘You opened her matrix,’ he says.^[123] I don’t know about her matrix, but I’d have let them kill me in the womb, so as not to come out into the world at all, miss. They used to say in the market, and your mama, too, started telling me, with her great indelicacy, that she went around with her hair in a Polish plait and was a wee bit under five feet tall. Why say a wee bit when you can simply say ‘a little’ like everyone else? She wanted to make it tearful, but those are peasant tears, miss, so to speak, those are real peasant feelings. Can a Russian peasant have feelings comparably to an educated man? With such lack of education, he can’t have any feelings at all. Ever since my childhood, whenever I hear this ‘wee bit,’ I want to throw myself at the wall. I hate all of Russia, Maria Kondratievna.”

“If you were a military cadet or a fine young hussar, you wouldn’t talk that way, you’d draw your sword and start defending all of Russia.”

“I not only have no wish to be a fine military hussar, Maria Kondratievna, but I wish, on the contrary, for the abolition of all soldiers.”

“And when the enemy comes, who will defend us?”

“But there’s no need to at all, miss. In the year twelve there was a great invasion by the emperor Napoleon of France, the first, the father of the present one,^[124] and it would have been good if we had been subjected then by those same Frenchmen: an intelligent nation would have subjected a very stupid one, miss, and joined it to itself. There would be quite a different order of things then, miss.”

“Why, as if theirs are so much better than ours! I wouldn’t trade a certain gallant I know for three of the youngest Englishmen,” Maria Kondratievna said tenderly, no doubt accompanying her words at that moment with a most languid look.

“Folks have their preferences, miss.”

“And you yourself are just like a foreigner, just like a real noble foreigner, I’ll tell you so for all that I’m blushing.”

“When it comes to depravity, if you want to know, theirs and ours are no different. They’re all rogues, only theirs walks around in patent leather boots, and our swine stinks in his poverty and sees nothing wrong with it. The Russian people need thrashing, miss, as Fyodor Pavlovich rightly said yesterday, though he’s a madman, he and all his children, miss.”

“But you respect Ivan Fyodorovich, you said so yourself.”

“And he made reference to me that I’m a stinking lackey. He considers me as maybe rebelling, but he’s mistaken, miss. If I had just so much in my pocket, I’d have left long ago. Dmitri Fyodorovich is worse than any lackey, in his behavior, and in his intelligence, and in his poverty, miss, and he’s not fit for anything, but, on the contrary, he gets honor from everybody. I may be only a broth-maker, but if I’m lucky I can open a café-restaurant in Moscow, on the Petrovka.^[125] Because I cook specialités, and no one in Moscow except foreigners can serve specialités. Dmitri Fyodorovich is a ragamuffin, but if he were to challenge the biggest count’s son to a duel, he would accept, miss, and how is he any better than me? Because he’s a lot stupider than me. He’s blown so much money, and for nothing, miss.”

“I think duels are so nice,” Maria Kondratievna suddenly remarked.

“How so, miss?” “It’s so scary and brave, especially when fine young officers with pistols in their hands are shooting at each other because of some lady friend. Just like a picture. Oh, if only they let girls watch, I’d like terribly to see one.”

“It’s fine when he’s doing the aiming, but when it’s his mug that’s being aimed at, there’s the stupidest feeling, miss. You’d run away from the place, Maria Kondratievna.”

“Do you mean you would run away?”

But Smerdyakov did not deign to answer. After a moment’s silence there came another strum, and the falsetto poured out the last verse:

I don’t care what you say

For I’m going away,

I’ll be happy and free In the big citee! And I won’t grieve, No, I’ll never grieve,I don’t plan ever to grieve.

Here something unexpected happened: Alyosha suddenly sneezed. The people on the bench hushed at once. Alyosha got up and walked in their direction. It was indeed Smerdyakov, dressed up, pomaded, perhaps even curled, in patent leather shoes. The guitar lay on the bench. The lady was Maria Kondratievna, the landlady’s daughter; she was wearing a light blue dress with a train two yards long; she was still a young girl, and would have been pretty if her face had not been so round and so terribly freckled.

“Will my brother Dmitri be back soon?” Alyosha asked as calmly as he could.

Smerdyakov slowly rose from the bench; Maria Kondratievna rose, too.

“Why should I be informed as to Dmitri Fyodorovich? It’s not as if I were his keeper,” Smerdyakov answered quietly, distinctly, and superciliously.

“But I just asked if you knew,” Alyosha explained.

“I know nothing of his whereabouts, and have no wish to know, sir.”

“But my brother precisely told me that it is you who let him know about everything that goes on in the house, and have promised to let him know when Agrafena Alexandrovna comes.”

Smerdyakov slowly and imperturbably raised his eyes to him.

“And how were you pleased to get in this time, since the gates here have been latched for an hour already?” he asked, looking fixedly at Alyosha.

“I got in over the fence from the lane and went straight to the gazebo. I hope you will excuse me for that,” he addressed Maria Kondratievna, “I was in a hurry to get hold of my brother.” “Ah, how should we take offense at you,” drawled Maria Kondratievna, flattered by Alyosha’s apology, “since Dmitri Fyodorovich, too, often goes to the gazebo in the same manner, we don’t even know it and there he is sitting in the gazebo.”

“I am trying very hard to find him now, I very much wish to see him, or to find out from you where he is now. Believe me, it’s a matter of great importance for him.”

“He doesn’t keep us notified,” babbled Maria Kondratievna.

“Even though I come here as an acquaintance,” Smerdyakov began again, “even here the gentleman harasses me cruelly with his ceaseless inquiries about the master; well, he says, how are things there, who comes and who goes, and can I tell him anything else? Twice he even threatened me with death.”

“With death?” Alyosha asked in surprise.

“But that would constitute nothing for him, sir, given his character, which you yourself had the honor of observing yesterday. If I miss Agrafena Alexandrovna, and she spends the night here, he says, you won’t live long, you first. I’m very afraid of him, sir, and if I wasn’t even more afraid, I’d have to report him to the town authorities. God even knows what he may produce.”