The Brothers Karamazovto think, and wondered greatly at this afterwards, especial-
ly as he remembered perfectly that when he had protested
so valiantly to Katerina Ivanovna that he would go away
next day to Moscow, something had whispered in his heart,
‘That’s nonsense, you are not going, and it won’t be so easy
to tear yourself away as you are boasting now.’
Remembering that night long afterwards, Ivan recalled
with peculiar repulsion how he had suddenly got up from
the sofa and had stealthily, as though he were afraid of being
watched, opened the door, gone out on the staircase and lis-
tened to Fyodor Pavlovitch stirring down below, had listened
a long while — some five minutes- with a sort of strange cu-
riosity, holding his breath while his heart throbbed. And
why he had done all this, why he was listening, he could not
have said. That ‘action’ all his life afterwards he called ‘in-
famous,’ and at the bottom of his heart, he thought of it as
the basest action of his life. For Fyodor Pavlovitch himself
he felt no hatred at that moment, but was simply intensely
curious to know how he was walking down there below and
what he must be doing now. He wondered and imagined
how he must be peeping out of the dark windows and stop-
ping in the middle of the room, listening, listening — for
someone to knock. Ivan went out on the stairs twice to lis-
ten like this.
About two o’clock when everything was quiet, and even
Fyodor Pavlovitch had gone to bed, Ivan had got into bed,
firmly resolved to fall asleep at once, as he felt fearfully ex-
hausted. And he did fall asleep at once, and slept soundly
without dreams, but waked early, at seven o’clock, when it