The Brothers Karamazov
Rakitin, however, but looked away to one side of him.
‘Do you know your face is quite changed? There’s none of
your famous mildness to be seen in it. Are you angry with
someone? Have they been ill-treating you?’
‘Let me alone,’ said Alyosha suddenly, with a weary ges-
ture of his hand, still looking away from him.
‘Oho! So that’s how we are feeling! So you can shout at
people like other mortals. That is a come-down from the
angels. I say, Alyosha, you have surprised me, do you hear?
I mean it. It’s long since I’ve been surprised at anything here.
I always took you for an educated man.
Alyosha at last looked at him, but vaguely, as though
scarcely understanding what he said.
‘Can you really be so upset simply because your old man
has begun to stink? You don’t mean to say you seriously
believed that he was going to work miracles?’ exclaimed
Rakitin, genuinely surprised again.
‘I believed, I believe, I want to believe, and I will believe,
what more do you want?’ cried Alyosha irritably.
‘Nothing at all, my boy. Damn it all! why, no schoolboy
of thirteen believes in that now. But there... So now you are
in a temper with your God, you are rebelling against Him;
He hasn’t given promotion, He hasn’t bestowed the order of
merit! Eh, you are a set!’
Alyosha gazed a long while with his eyes half closed at
Rakitin, and there was a sudden gleam in his eyes... but not
of anger with Rakitin.
‘I am not rebelling against my God; I simply ‘don’t accept
His world.’’ Alyosha suddenly smiled a forced smile.