The Brothers Karamazov
him formidable was that a number of monks fully shared
his feeling, and many of the visitors looked upon him as a
great saint and ascetic, although they had no doubt that he
was crazy. But it was just his craziness attracted them.
Father Ferapont never went to see the elder. Though he
lived in the hermitage they did not worry him to keep its
regulations, and this too because he behaved as though he
were crazy. He was seventy-five or more, and he lived in a
corner beyond the apiary in an old decaying wooden cell
which had been built long ago for another great ascetic, Fa-
ther Iona, who had lived to be a hundred and five, and of
whose saintly doings many curious stories were still extant
in the monastery and the neighbourhood.
Father Ferapont had succeeded in getting himself in-
stalled in this same solitary cell seven years previously. It
was simply a peasant’s hut, though it looked like a chapel, for
it contained an extraordinary number of ikons with lamps
perpetually burning before them — which men brought
to the monastery as offerings to God. Father Ferapont had
been appointed to look after them and keep the lamps burn-
ing. It was said (and indeed it was true) that he ate only two
pounds of bread in three days. The beekeeper, who lived
close by the apiary, used to bring him the bread every three
days, and even to this man who waited upon him, Father
Ferapont rarely uttered a word. The four pounds of bread,
together with the sacrament bread, regularly sent him on
Sundays after the late mass by the Father Superior, made up
his weekly rations. The water in his jug was changed every
day. He rarely appeared at mass. Visitors who came to do