The Brothers KaramazovPyotr Alexandrovitch could say no more, and was about
to leave the room, overwhelmed with confusion.
‘Don’t distress yourself, I beg.’ The elder got on to his fee-
ble legs, and taking Pyotr Alexandrovitch by both hands,
made him sit down again. ‘I beg you not to disturb yourself.
I particularly beg you to be my guest.’ And with a bow he
went back and sat down again on his little sofa.
‘Great elder, speak! Do I annoy you by my vivacity?’ Fy-
odor Pavlovitch cried suddenly, clutching the arms of his
chair in both hands, as though ready to leap up from it if
the answer were unfavourable.
‘I earnestly beg you, too, not to disturb yourself, and not
to be uneasy,’ the elder said impressively. ‘Do not trouble.
Make yourself quite at home. And, above all, do not be so
ashamed of yourself, for that is at the root of it all.’
‘Quite at home? To be my natural self? Oh, that is much
too much, but I accept it with grateful joy. Do you know,
blessed father, you’d better not invite me to be my natu-
ral self. Don’t risk it.... I will not go so far as that myself. I
warn you for your own sake. Well, the rest is still plunged
in the mists of uncertainty, though there are people who’d
be pleased to describe me for you. I mean that for you, Pyotr
Alexandrovitch. But as for you, holy being, let me tell you, I
am brimming over with ecstasy.’
He got up, and throwing up his hands, declaimed,
‘Blessed be the womb that bare thee, and the paps that gave
thee suck — the paps especially. When you said just now,
‘Don’t be so ashamed of yourself, for that is at the root of it
all,’ you pierced right through me by that remark, and read