The Brothers Karamazov
What will become of them? And worse still, if he doesn’t kill
me but only cripples me: I couldn’t work, but I should still
be a mouth to feed. Who would feed it and who would feed
them all? Must I take Ilusha from school and send him to
beg in the streets? That’s what it means for me to challenge
him to a duel. It’s silly talk and nothing else.’
‘He will beg your forgiveness, he will bow down at your
feet in the middle of the marketplace,’ cried Alyosha again,
with glowing eyes.
‘I did think of prosecuting him,’ the captain went on, ‘but
look in our code, could I get much compensation for a per-
sonal injury? And then Agrafena Alexandrovna* sent for
me and shouted at me: ‘Don’t dare to dream of it! If you
proceed against him, I’ll publish it to all the world that he
beat you for your dishonesty, and then you will be prosecut-
ed.’ I call God to witness whose was the dishonesty and by
whose commands I acted, wasn’t it by her own and Fyodor
Pavlovitch’s? And what’s more,’ she went on, ‘I’ll dismiss
you for good and you’ll never earn another penny from
me. I’ll speak to my merchant too’ (that’s what she calls her
old man) ‘and he will dismiss you!’ And if he dismisses me,
what can I earn then from anyone? Those two are all I have
to look to, for your Fyodor Pavlovitch has not only given
over employing me, for another reason, but he means to
make use of papers I’ve signed to go to law against me. And
so I kept quiet, and you have seen our retreat. But now let
me ask you: did Ilusha hurt your finger much? I didn’t like
to go into it in our mansion before him.’
- Grushenka.