Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 11 breathed with difficulty. But everyone in the cell was stirred.
All except Father Zossima got up from their seats uneasily.
The monks looked austere but waited for guidance from the
elder. He sat still, pale, not from excitement but from the
weakness of disease. An imploring smile lighted up his face;
from time to time he raised his hand, as though to check
the storm, and, of course, a gesture from him would have
been enough to end the scene; but he seemed to be waiting
for something and watched them intently as though trying
to make out something which was not perfectly clear to him.
At last Miusov felt completely humiliated and disgraced.
‘We are all to blame for this scandalous scene,’ he said
hotly. ‘But I did not foresee it when I came, though I knew
with whom I had to deal. This must be stopped at once! Be-
lieve me, your reverence, I had no precise knowledge of the
details that have just come to light, I was unwilling to be-
lieve them, and I learn for the first time.... A father is jealous
of his son’s relation with a woman of loose behaviour and
intrigues with the creature to get his son into prison! This
is the company in which I have been forced to be present!
I was deceived. I declare to you all that I was as much de-
ceived as anyone.’
‘Dmitri Fyodorovitch,’ yelled Fyodor Pavlovitch sudden-
ly, in an unnatural voice, ‘if you were not my son I would
challenge you this instant to a duel... with pistols, at three
paces... across a handkerchief,’ he ended, stamping with
both feet.
With old liars who have been acting all their lives there
are moments when they enter so completely into their part