1 The Brothers Karamazov
Grigory did not speak for some time. ‘It’s a confusion of
nature,’ he muttered vaguely, but firmly, and obviously un-
willing to say more.
They laughed, and, of course, christened the poor baby.
Grigory prayed earnestly at the font, but his opinion of the
new-born child remained unchanged. Yet he did not inter-
fere in any way. As long as the sickly infant lived he scarcely
looked at it, tried indeed not to notice it, and for the most
part kept out of the cottage. But when, at the end of a fort-
night, the baby died of thrush, he himself laid the child in
its little coffin, looked at it in profound grief, and when they
were filling up the shallow little grave he fell on his knees
and bowed down to the earth. He did not for years after-
wards mention his child, nor did Marfa speak of the baby
before him, and, even if Grigory were not present, she nev-
er spoke of it above a whisper. Marfa observed that, from
the day of the burial, he devoted himself to ‘religion,’ and
took to reading the Lives of the Saints, for the most part
sitting alone and in silence, and always putting on his big,
round, silver-rimmed spectacles. He rarely read aloud, only
perhaps in Lent. He was fond of the Book of Job, and had
somehow got hold of a copy of the sayings and sermons
of ‘the God fearing Father Isaac the Syrian, which he read
persistently for years together, understanding very little of
it, but perhaps prizing and loving it the more for that. Of
late he had begun to listen to the doctrines of the sect of
Flagellants settled in the neighbourhood. He was evidently
shaken by them, but judged it unfitting to go over to the
new faith. His habit of theological reading gave him an ex-