Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 1‘Did you really mean to send me?’ cried Alyosha with a
distressed expression.
‘Stay! You knew it And I see you understand it all at once.
But be quiet, be quiet for a time. Don’t be sorry, and don’t
cry.’
Dmitri stood up, thought a moment, and put his finger
to his forehead.
‘She’s asked you, written to you a letter or something,
that’s why you’re going to her? You wouldn’t be going ex-
cept for that?’
‘Here is her note.’ Alyosha took it out of his pocket. Mitya
looked through it quickly.
‘And you were going the backway! Oh, gods, I thank you
for sending him by the backway, and he came to me like
the golden fish to the silly old fishermen in the fable! Listen,
Alyosha, listen, brother! Now I mean to tell you everything,
for I must tell someone. An angel in heaven I’ve told al-
ready; but I want to tell an angel on earth. You are an angel
on earth. You will hear and judge and forgive. And that’s
what I need, that someone above me should forgive. Listen!
If two people break away from everything on earth and fly
off into the unknown, or at least one of them, and before
flying off or going to ruin he comes to someone else and
says, ‘Do this for me’ — some favour never asked before that
could only be asked on one’s deathbed — would that other
refuse, if he were a friend or a brother?’
‘I will do it, but tell me what it is, and make haste,’ said
Alyosha.
‘Make haste! H’m!... Don’t be in a hurry, Alyosha, you