10  The Brothers Karamazov

Chapter 6

Why Is Such a Man Alive?

D

MITRI FYODOROVITCH, a young man of eight and

twenty, of medium height and agreeable countenance,

looked older than his years. He was muscular, and showed

signs of considerable physical strength. Yet there was some-

thing not healthy in his face. It was rather thin, his cheeks

were hollow, and there was an unhealthy sallowness in their

colour. His rather large, prominent, dark eyes had an ex-

pression of firm determination, and yet there was a vague

look in them, too. Even when he was excited and talking

irritably, his eyes somehow did not follow his mood, but be-

trayed something else, sometimes quite incongruous with

what was passing. ‘It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking,’ those

who talked to him sometimes declared. People who saw

something pensive and sullen in his eyes were startled by

his sudden laugh, which bore witness to mirthful and light-

hearted thoughts at the very time when his eyes were so

gloomy. A certain strained look in his face was easy to un-

derstand at this moment. Everyone knew, or had heard of,

the extremely restless and dissipated life which he had been

leading of late, as well as of the violent anger to which he