Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 1Alyosha, but Katerina Ivanovna suddenly returned. She had
two hundred-rouble notes in her hand.
‘I have a great favour to ask of you, Alexey Fyodorovitch,’
she began, addressing Alyosha with an apparently calm and
even voice, as though nothing had happened. ‘A week — yes,
I think it was a week ago — Dmitri Fyodorovitch was guilty
of a hasty and unjust action — a very ugly action. There is a
low tavern here, and in it he met that discharged officer, that
captain, whom your father used to employ in some busi-
ness. Dmitri Fyodorovitch somehow lost his temper with
this captain, seized him by the beard and dragged him out
into the street and for some distance along it, in that in-
sulting fashion. And I am told that his son, a boy, quite a
child, who is at the school here, saw it and ran beside them
crying and begging for his father, appealing to everyone to
defend him, while everyone laughed. You must forgive me,
Alexey Fyodorovitch, I cannot think without indignation of
that disgraceful action of his... one of those actions of which
only Dmitri Fyodorovitch would be capable in his anger...
and in his passions! I can’t describe it even.... I can’t find my
words. I’ve made inquiries about his victim, and find he is
quite a poor man. His name is Snegiryov. He did something
wrong in the army and was discharged. I can’t tell you what.
And now he has sunk into terrible destitution, with his fam-
ily — an unhappy family of sick children, and, I believe, an
insane wife. He has been living here a long time; he used
to work as a copying clerk, but now he is getting nothing.
I thought if you... that is I thought... I don’t know. I am so
confused. You see, I wanted to ask you, my dear Alexey Fy-