The Brothers Karamazov
without uttering a word and hid his face in his hands again.
‘Maybe it is well,’ said Father Paissy thoughtfully; ‘weep
if you must; Christ has sent you those tears.’
‘Your touching tears are but a relief to your spirit and
will serve to gladden your dear heart,’ he added to himself,
walking away from Alyosha, and thinking lovingly of him.
He moved away quickly, however, for he felt that he too
might weep looking at him.
Meanwhile the time was passing; the monastery services
and the requiems for the dead followed in their due course.
Father Paissy again took Father Iosif ’s place by the coffin
and began reading the Gospel. But before three o’clock in
the afternoon that something took place to which I alluded
at the end of the last book, something so unexpected by all
of us and so contrary to the general hope, that, I repeat, this
trivial incident has been minutely remembered to this day
in our town and all the surrounding neighbourhood. I may
add here, for myself personally, that I feel it almost repul-
sive that event which caused such frivolous agitation and
was such a stumbling-block to many, though in reality it
was the most natural and trivial matter. I should, of course,
have omitted all mention of it in my story, if it had not ex-
erted a very strong influence on the heart and soul of the
chief, though future, hero of my story, Alyosha, forming a
crisis and turning-point in his spiritual development, giv-
ing a shock to his intellect, which finally strengthened it for
the rest of his life and gave it a definite aim.
And so, to return to our story. When before dawn they
laid Father Zossima’s body in the coffin and brought it into