The Brothers KaramazovWho could have decreed this? Those were the questions that
wrung his inexperienced and virginal heart. He could not
endure without mortification, without resentment even,
that the holiest of holy men should have been exposed to
the jeering and spiteful mockery of the frivolous crowd so
inferior to him. Even had there been no miracles, had there
been nothing marvellous to justify his hopes, why this in-
dignity, why this humiliation, why this premature decay,
‘in excess of nature,’ as the spiteful monks said? Why this
‘sign from heaven,’ which they so triumphantly acclaimed
in company with Father Ferapont, and why did they believe
they had gained the right to acclaim it? Where is the fin-
ger of Providence? Why did Providence hide its face ‘at the
most critical moment’ (so Alyosha thought it), as though
voluntarily submitting to the blind, dumb, pitiless laws of
nature?
That was why Alyosha’s heart was bleeding, and, of
course, as I have said already, the sting of it all was that
the man he loved above everything on earth should be put
to shame and humiliated! This murmuring may have been
shallow and unreasonable in my hero, but I repeat again for
the third time — and am prepared to admit that it might
be difficult to defend my feeling — I am glad that my hero
showed himself not too reasonable at that moment, for any
man of sense will always come back to reason in time, but, if
love does not gain the upper hand in a boy’s heart at such an
exceptional moment, when will it? I will not, however, omit
to mention something strange, which came for a time to the
surface of Alyosha’s mind at this fatal and obscure moment.