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Chapter 1

Kuzma Samsonov

B

UT Dmitri, to whom Grushenka, flying away to a new

life, had left her last greetings, bidding him remember

the hour of her love for ever, knew nothing of what had

happened to her, and was at that moment in a condition

of feverish agitation and activity. For the last two days he

had been in such an inconceivable state of mind that he

might easily have fallen ill with brain fever, as he said him-

self afterwards. Alyosha had not been able to find him the

morning before, and Ivan had not succeeded in meeting

him at the tavern on the same day. The people at his lodg-

ings, by his orders, concealed his movements.

He had spent those two days literally rushing in all di-

rections, ‘struggling with his destiny and trying to save

himself,’ as he expressed it himself afterwards, and for some

hours he even made a dash out of the town on urgent busi-

ness, terrible as it was to him to lose sight of Grushenka for

a moment. All this was explained afterwards in detail, and

confirmed by documentary evidence; but for the present

we will only note the most essential incidents of those two

terrible days immediately preceding the awful catastrophe