1 The Brothers Karamazovtheir hearts!’
I said nothing.
‘And to part from them, to leave them for ever? It’s for
ever, you know, for ever!’ I sat still and repeated a silent
prayer. I got up at last, I felt afraid.
‘Well?’ He looked at me.
‘Go!’ said I, ‘confess. Everything passes, only the truth
remains. Your children will understand, when they grow
up, the nobility of your resolution.’
He left me that time as though he had made up his mind.
Yet for more than a fortnight afterwards, he came to me ev-
ery evening, still preparing himself, still unable to bring
himself to the point. He made my heart ache. One day he
would come determined and say fervently:
‘I know it will be heaven for me, heaven, the moment
I confess. Fourteen years I’ve been in hell. I want to suf-
fer. I will take my punishment and begin to live. You can
pass through the world doing wrong, but there’s no turning
back. Now I dare not love my neighbour nor even my own
children. Good God, my children will understand, perhaps,
what my punishment has cost me and will not condemn
me! God is not in strength but in truth.’
‘All will understand your sacrifice,’ I said to him, ‘if not at
once, they will understand later; for you have served truth,
the higher truth, not of the earth.’
And he would go away seeming comforted, but next day
he would come again, bitter, pale, sarcastic.
‘Every time I come to you, you look at me so inquisitive-
ly as though to say, ‘He has still not confessed!’ Wait a bit,