Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com profoundest veneration. Almost everyone admitted to the
cell felt that a great favour was being shown him. Many re-
mained kneeling during the whole visit. Of those visitors,
many had been men of high rank and learning, some even
free thinkers, attracted by curiosity, but all without excep-
tion had shown the profoundest reverence and delicacy, for
here there was no question of money, but only, on the one
side love and kindness, and on the other penitence and ea-
ger desire to decide some spiritual problem or crisis. So that
such buffoonery amazed and bewildered the spectators, or
at least some of them. The monks, with unchanged coun-
tenances, waited, with earnest attention, to hear what the
elder would say, but seemed on the point of standing up,
like Miusov. Alyosha stood, with hanging head, on the verge
of tears. What seemed to him strangest of all was that his
brother Ivan, on whom alone he had rested his hopes, and
who alone had such influence on his father that he could
have stopped him, sat now quite unmoved, with downcast
eyes, apparently waiting with interest to see how it would
end, as though he had nothing to do with it. Alyosha did
not dare to look at Rakitin, the divinity student, whom he
knew almost intimately. He alone in the monastery knew
Rakitin’s thoughts.
‘Forgive me,’ began Miusov, addressing Father Zossima,
‘for perhaps I seem to be taking part in this shameful foolery.
I made a mistake in believing that even a man like Fyodor
Pavlovitch would understand what was due on a visit to so
honoured a personage. I did not suppose I should have to
apologise simply for having come with him...’