1 The Brothers Karamazov
he could not bear a slighting allusion to her from anyone,
and would at once check the offender. Externally, Grigo-
ry was cold, dignified and taciturn, and spoke, weighing
his words, without frivolity. It was impossible to tell at first
sight whether he loved his meek, obedient wife; but he really
did love her, and she knew it.
Marfa Ignatyevna was by no means foolish; she was prob-
ably, indeed, cleverer than her husband, or, at least, more
prudent than he in worldly affairs, and yet she had given
in to him in everything without question or complaint ever
since her marriage, and respected him for his spiritual su-
periority. It was remarkable how little they spoke to one
another in the course of their lives, and only of the most
necessary daily affairs. The grave and dignified Grigory
thought over all his cares and duties alone, so that Marfa
Ignatyevna had long grown used to knowing that he did
not need her advice. She felt that her husband respected her
silence, and took it as a sign of her good sense. He had never
beaten her but once, and then only slightly. Once during
the year after Fyodor Pavlovitch’s marriage with Adelai-
da Ivanovna, the village girls and women — at that time
serfs — were called together before the house to sing and
dance. They were beginning ‘In the Green Meadows,’ when
Marfa, at that time a young woman, skipped forward and
danced ‘the Russian Dance,’ not in the village fashion, but
as she had danced it when she was a servant in the service
of the rich Miusov family, in their private theatre, where the
actors were taught to dance by a dancing master from Mos-
cow. Grigory saw how his wife danced, and, an hour later, at