0 The Brothers KaramazovI tell you this morning to come home with your mattress
and pillow and all? Have you brought your mattress? He
he he!’
‘No, I haven’t,’ said Alyosha, smiling, too.
‘Ah, but you were frightened, you were frightened this
morning, weren’t you? There, my darling, I couldn’t do any-
thing to vex you. Do you know, Ivan, I can’t resist the way
he looks one straight in the face and laughs? It makes me
laugh all over. I’m so fond of him. Alyosha, let me give you
my blessing — a father’s blessing.’
Alyosha rose, but Fyodor Pavlovitch had already changed
his mind.
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I’ll just make the sign of the cross over
you, for now. Sit still. Now we’ve a treat for you, in your own
line, too. It’ll make you laugh. Balaam’s ass has begun talk-
ing to us here — and how he talks! How he talks!
Balaam’s ass, it appeared, was the valet, Smerdyakov. He
was a young man of about four and twenty, remarkably un-
sociable and taciturn. Not that he was shy or bashful. On
the contrary, he was conceited and seemed to despise ev-
erybody.
But we must pause to say a few words about him now. He
was brought up by Grigory and Marfa, but the boy grew up
‘with no sense of gratitude,’ as Grigory expressed it; he was
an unfriendly boy, and seemed to look at the world mis-
trustfully. In his childhood he was very fond of hanging
cats, and burying them with great ceremony. He used to
dress up in a sheet as though it were a surplice, and sang,
and waved some object over the dead cat as though it were