The Brothers Karamazov(this comparison and the phrase ‘a wisp of tow’ flashed at
once into Alyosha’s mind for some reason, he remembered
it afterwards). It was obviously this gentleman who had
shouted to him, as there was no other man in the room. But
when Alyosha went in, he leapt up from the bench on which
he was sitting, and, hastily wiping his mouth with a ragged
napkin, darted up to Alyosha.
‘It’s a monk come to beg for the monastery. A nice place
to come to!’ the girl standing in the left corner said aloud.
The man spun round instantly towards her and answered
her in an excited and breaking voice:
‘No, Varvara, you are wrong. Allow me to ask,’ he turned
again to Alyosha, ‘what has brought you to our retreat?’
Alyosha looked attentively at him. It was the first time
he had seen him. There was something angular, flurried
and irritable about him. Though he had obviously just been
drinking, he was not drunk. There was extraordinary im-
pudence in his expression, and yet, strange to say, at the
same time there was fear. He looked like a man who had
long been kept in subjection and had submitted to it, and
now had suddenly turned and was trying to assert himself.
Or, better still, like a man who wants dreadfully to hit you
but is horribly afraid you will hit him. In his words and in
the intonation of his shrill voice there was a sort of crazy
humour, at times spiteful and at times cringing, and con-
tinually shifting from one tone to another. The question
about ‘our retreat’ he had asked, as it were, quivering all
over, rolling his eyes, and skipping up so close to Alyosha
that he instinctively drew back a step. He was dressed in a