The Brothers Karamazov
but did not get on with his school-fellows, though he never
quarrelled, at least so my mother has told me. Six months
before his death, when he was seventeen, he made friends
with a political exile who had been banished from Moscow
to our town for freethinking, and led a solitary existence
there. He was a good scholar who had gained distinction
in philosophy in the university. Something made him take
a fancy to Markel, and he used to ask him to see him. The
young man would spend whole evenings with him during
that winter, till the exile was summoned to Petersburg to
take up his post again at his own request, as he had power-
ful friends.
It was the beginning of Lent, and Markel would not fast,
he was rude and laughed at it. ‘That’s all silly twaddle, and
there is no God,’ he said, horrifying my mother, the ser-
vants, and me too. For though I was only nine, I too was
aghast at hearing such words. We had four servants, all
serfs. I remember my mother selling one of the four, the
cook Afimya, who was lame and elderly, for sixty paper rou-
bles, and hiring a free servant to take her place.
In the sixth week in Lent, my brother, who was never
strong and had a tendency to consumption, was taken ill. He
was tall but thin and delicate-looking, and of very pleasing
countenance. I suppose he caught cold, anyway the doctor,
who came, soon whispered to my mother that it was gallop-
ing consumption, that he would not live through the spring.
My mother began weeping, and, careful not to alarm my
brother, she entreated him to go to church, to confess and
take the sacrament, as he was still able to move about. This