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Chapter 1

Father Zossima and

His Visitors

W

HEN with an anxious and aching heart Alyosha went

into his elder’s cell, he stood still almost astonished.

Instead of a sick man at his last gasp, perhaps unconscious,

as he had feared to find him, he saw him sitting up in his

chair and, though weak and exhausted, his face was bright

and cheerful, he was surrounded by visitors and engaged

in a quiet and joyful conversation. But he had only got up

from his bed a quarter of an hour before Alyosha’s arrival;

his visitors had gathered together in his cell earlier, waiting

for him to wake, having received a most confident assur-

ance from Father Paissy that ‘the teacher would get up,

and as he had himself promised in the morning, converse

once more with those dear to his heart.’ This promise and

indeed every word of the dying elder Father Paissy put im-

plicit trust in. If he had seen him unconscious, if he had

seen him breathe his last, and yet had his promise that he

would rise up and say good-bye to him, he would not have

believed perhaps even in death, but would still have expect-