Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com ‘Yes; but I don’t think you will be able to go.’
‘I can sit up. Ah, you put me out! Ah! this trial, this sav-
age act, and then they are all going to Siberia, some are
getting married, and all this so quickly, so quickly, every-
thing’s changing, and at last — nothing. All grow old and
have death to look forward to. Well, so be it! I am weary.
This Katya, cette charmante personne, has disappointed all
my hopes. Now she is going to follow one of your brothers
to Siberia, and your other brother is going to follow her, and
will live in the nearest town, and they will all torment one
another. It drives me out of my mind. Worst of all — the
publicity. The story has been told a million times over in all
the papers in Moscow and Petersburg. Ah! yes, would you
believe it, there’s a paragraph that I was ‘a dear friend’ of
your brother’s — , I can’t repeat the horrid word. just fancy,
just fancy!’
‘Impossible! Where was the paragraph? What did it say?’
‘I’ll show you directly. I got the paper and read it yester-
day. Here, in the Petersburg paper Gossip. The paper began
coming out this year. I am awfully fond of gossip, and I take
it in, and now it pays me out — this is what gossip comes to!
Here it is, here, this passage. Read it.’
And she handed Alyosha a sheet of newspaper which had
been under her pillow.
It was not exactly that she was upset, she seemed over-
whelmed and perhaps everything really was mixed up in
a tangle in her head. The paragraph was very typical, and
must have been a great shock to her, but, fortunately per-
haps, she was unable to keep her mind fixed on any one