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Book II
An Unfortunate Gathering
They Arrive at the Monastery
It was a warm, bright day the end of August. The interview with the elder had been fixed for half-past eleven, immediately after late mass. Our visitors did not take part in the service, but arrived just as it was over. First an elegant open carriage, drawn by two valuable horses, drove up with Miusov and a distant relative of his, a young man of twenty, called Pyotr Fomitch Kalganov. This young man was preparing to enter the university. Miusov with whom he was staying for the time, was trying to persuade him to go abroad to the university of Zurich or Jena. The young man was still undecided. He was thoughtful and absent-minded. He was nice-looking, strongly built, and rather tall. There was a strange fixity in his gaze at times. Like all very absent-minded people he would sometimes stare at a person without seeing him. He was silent and rather awkward, but sometimes, when he was alone with anyone, he became talkative and effusive, and would laugh at anything or nothing. But his animation vanished as quickly as it appeared. He was always well and even elaborately dressed; he had already some independent fortune and expectations of much more. He was a friend of Alyosha's.
In an ancient, jolting, but roomy, hired carriage, with a pair
of old pinkish-grey horses, a long way behind Miusov's carriage, came Fyodor Pavlovitch, with his son Ivan. Dmitri was late, though he had been informed of the time the evening before. The visitors left their carriage at the hotel, outside the precincts, and went to the gates of the monastery on foot. Except Fyodor Pavlovitch, none of the party had ever seen the monastery, and Miusov had probably not even been to church for thirty years. He looked about him with curiosity, together with assumed ease. But, except the church and the domestic buildings, though these too were ordinary enough, he found nothing of interest in the interior of the monastery. The last of the worshippers were coming out of the church bareheaded and crossing themselves. Among the humbler people were a few of higher rank- two or three ladies and a very old general. They were all staying at the hotel. Our visitors were at once surrounded by beggars, but none of them gave them anything, except young Kalganov, who took a ten-copeck piece out of his purse, and, nervous and embarrassed- God knows why!- hurriedly gave it to an old woman, saying: "Divide it equally." None of his companions made any remark upon it, so that he had no reason to be embarrassed; but, perceiving this, he was even more overcome.
It was strange that their arrival did not seem expected, and
that they were not received with special honour, though one of them
had recently made a donation of a thousand roubles, while another
was a very wealthy and highly cultured landowner, upon whom all in the
monastery were in a sense dependent, as a decision of the lawsuit
might at any moment put their fishing rights in his hands. Yet no
official personage met them.
Miusov looked absent-mindedly at the tombstones round the
church, and was on the point of saying that the dead buried here
must have paid a pretty penny for the right of lying in this "holy
place," but refrained. His liberal irony was rapidly changing almost
into anger.
"Who the devil is there to ask in this imbecile place? We must
find out, for time is passing," he observed suddenly, as though
speaking to himself.
All at once there came up a bald-headed, elderly man with
ingratiating little eyes, wearing a full, summer overcoat. Lifting his
hat, he introduced himself with a honeyed lisp as Maximov, a landowner
of Tula. He at once entered into our visitors' difficulty.
"Father Zossima lives in the hermitage, apart, four hundred
paces from the monastery, the other side of the copse."
"I know it's the other side of the copse," observed Fyodor
Pavlovitch, "but we don't remember the way. It is a long time since
we've been here."
"This way, by this gate, and straight across the copse... the
copse. Come with me, won't you? I'll show you. I have to go.... I am
going myself. This way, this way."
They came out of the gate and turned towards the copse. Maximov, a
man of sixty, ran rather than walked, turning sideways to stare at
them all, with an incredible degree of nervous curiosity. His eyes
looked starting out of his head.