The Brothers Karamazov

Chapter 10

Both Together

A

LYOSHA left his father’s house feeling even more ex-

hausted and dejected in spirit than when he had entered

it. His mind too seemed shattered and unhinged, while he

felt that he was afraid to put together the disjointed frag-

ments and form a general idea from all the agonising and

conflicting experiences of the day. He felt something bor-

dering upon despair, which he had never known till then.

Towering like a mountain above all the rest stood the fatal,

insoluble question: How would things end between his fa-

ther and his brother Dmitri with this terrible woman? Now

he had himself been a witness of it, he had been present and

seen them face to face. Yet only his brother Dmitri could

be made unhappy, terribly, completely unhappy: there was

trouble awaiting him. It appeared too that there were oth-

er people concerned, far more so than Alyosha could have

supposed before. There was something positively mysteri-

ous in it, too. Ivan had made a step towards him, which was

what Alyosha had been long desiring. Yet now he felt for

some reason that he was frightened at it. And these wom-

en? Strange to say, that morning he had set out for Katerina