Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com
the hand and with unexpected force pulled him up. ‘You
must stand up to be introduced to a lady. It’s not the Karam-
azov, mamma, who... h’m... etcetera, but his brother, radiant
with modest virtues. Come, Arina Petrovna, come, mam-
ma, first your hand to be kissed.’
And he kissed his wife’s hand respectfully and even ten-
derly. The girl at the window turned her back indignantly
on the scene; an expression of extraordinary cordiality
came over the haughtily inquiring face of the woman.
‘Good morning! Sit down, Mr. Tchernomazov,’ she said.
‘Karamazov, mamma, Karamazov. We are of humble ori-
gin,’ he whispered again.
‘Well, Karamazov, or whatever it is, but I always think of
Tchermomazov.... Sit down. Why has he pulled you up? He
calls me crippled, but I am not, only my legs are swollen like
barrels, and I am shrivelled up myself. Once I used to be so
fat, but now it’s as though I had swallowed a needle.’
‘We are of humble origin,’ the captain muttered again.
‘Oh, father, father!’ the hunchback girl, who had till then
been silent on her chair, said suddenly, and she hid her eyes
in her handkerchief.
‘Buffoon!’ blurted out the girl at the window.
‘Have you heard our news?’ said the mother, pointing at
her daughters. ‘It’s like clouds coming over; the clouds pass
and we have music again. When we were with the army, we
used to have many such guests. I don’t mean to make any
comparisons; everyone to their taste. The deacon’s wife
used to come then and say, ‘Alexandr Alexandrovitch is a
man of the noblest heart, but Nastasya Petrovna,’ she would