The Brothers Karamazov
of late formed such a close and remarkable bond between
the two elder brothers. Dmitri’s enthusiastic references to
Ivan were the more striking in Alyosha’s eyes since Dmitri
was, compared with Ivan, almost uneducated, and the two
brothers were such a contrast in personality and character
that it would be difficult to find two men more unlike.
It was at this time that the meeting, or, rather gathering
of the members of this inharmonious family took place in
the cell of the elder who had such an extraordinary influ-
ence on Alyosha. The pretext for this gathering was a false
one. It was at this time that the discord between Dmitri and
his father seemed at its acutest stage and their relations had
become insufferably strained. Fyodor Pavlovitch seems to
have been the first to suggest, apparently in joke, that they
should all meet in Father Zossima’s cell, and that, without
appealing to his direct intervention, they might more de-
cently come to an understanding under the conciliating
influence of the elder’s presence. Dmitri, who had never
seen the elder, naturally supposed that his father was try-
ing to intimidate him, but, as he secretly blamed himself for
his outbursts of temper with his father on several recent oc-
casions, he accepted the challenge. It must be noted that he
was not, like Ivan, staying with his father, but living apart
at the other end of the town. It happened that Pyotr Alex-
androvitch Miusov, who was staying in the district at the
time, caught eagerly at the idea. A Liberal of the forties and
fifties, a freethinker and atheist, he may have been led on
by boredom or the hope of frivolous diversion. He was sud-
denly seized with the desire to see the monastery and the