The Brothers Karamazov
home? I’ll go — ah — I’ll run to her! Alyosha, don’t blame
me, I agree that hanging is too good for her.’
‘But Katerina Ivanovna!’ exclaimed Alyosha sorrowfully.
‘I see her, too! I see right through her, as I’ve never done
before! It’s a regular discovery of the four continents of the
world, that is, of the five! What a thing to do! That’s just
like Katya, who was not afraid to face a coarse, unmannerly
officer and risk a deadly insult on a generous impulse to
save her father! But the pride, the recklessness, the defiance
of fate, the unbounded defiance! You say that aunt tried to
stop her? That aunt, you know, is overbearing, herself. She’s
the sister of the general’s widow in Moscow, and even more
stuck-up than she. But her husband was caught stealing gov-
ernment money. He lost everything, his estate and all, and
the proud wife had to lower her colours, and hasn’t raised
them since. So she tried to prevent Katya, but she wouldn’t
listen to her! She thinks she can overcome everything, that
everything will give way to her. She thought she could be-
witch Grushenka if she liked, and she believed it herself: she
plays a part to herself, and whose fault is it? Do you think
she kissed Grushenka’s hand first, on purpose, with a mo-
tive? No, she really was fascinated by Grushenka, that’s to
say, not by Grushenka, but by her own dream, her own de-
lusion — because it was her dream, her delusion! Alyosha,
darling, how did you escape from them, those women? Did
you pick up your cassock and run? Ha ha ha!’
‘Brother, you don’t seem to have noticed how you’ve in-
sulted Katerina Ivanovna by telling Grushenka about that
day. And she flung it in her face just now that she had gone