“Farewell, Pyotr Ilyich! For you, for you is my last tear . . .!” “He’s not drunk, but what drivel he’s spouting!” Pyotr Ilyich thought, watching him go. He almost made up his mind to stay and keep an eye on the loading of the cart (also with a troika) with the rest of the goods and wine, suspecting that Mitya would be cheated and robbed, but suddenly, getting angry with himself, he spat and went to his tavern to play billiards.

“A nice fellow, but a fool ... ,” he muttered to himself as he went. “I’ve heard about some officer, Grushenka’s ‘former’ one. Well, if he’s come now ... Ah, those pistols! Eh, the devil, I’m not his nursemaid, am I? Go ahead! Anyway, nothing will happen. Loudmouths, that’s all they are. They get drunk and fight, fight and make peace. They don’t mean business. ‘Remove myself,’ ‘punish myself—what is all that? Nothing will happen! He’s shouted in the same style a thousand times, drunk, in the tavern. Now he’s not drunk. ‘Drunk in spirit—these scoundrels love style. I’m not his nursemaid, am I? He must have had a fight, his whole mug was covered with blood. But who with? I’ll find out in the tavern. And that bloodstained handkerchief. . . Pah, the devil, he left it on my floor ... But who cares?”

He arrived at the tavern in the foulest of humors, and at once got a game going. The game cheered him up. He played another, and suddenly began telling one of his partners that Dmitri Karamazov had money again, as much as three thousand, he had seen it himself, and that he had gone off to Mokroye again, on a spree with Grushenka. The listeners received his news with almost unexpected curiosity. And they all began to talk, not laughing, but somehow with strange seriousness. They even stopped playing.

“Three thousand? Where did he get three thousand?”

More questions were asked. The news about Madame Khokhlakov was received skeptically.

“Could he have robbed the old man, do you think?”

“Three thousand? Something’s not right.”

“He was boasting out loud that he’d kill his father, everyone here heard it. He talked precisely about three thousand...”

Pyotr Ilyich listened and suddenly started answering their questions drily and sparingly. He did not say a word about the blood on Mitya’s hands and face, though on his way there he had been planning to mention it. They began a third game, gradually the talk about Mitya died away; but, having finished the third game, Pyotr Ilyich did not wish to play any more, put down his cue, and, without taking supper, as had been his intention, left the tavern. As he walked out into the square, he stopped in perplexity, and even marveled at himself. He suddenly realized that he was just about to go to Fyodor Pavlovich’s house, to find out if anything had happened. “On account of the nonsense it will all turn out to be, I shall wake up someone else’s household and cause a scandal. Pah, the devil, I’m not their nursemaid, am I?”

In the foulest humor, he went straight home, but suddenly remembered Fenya: “Eh, the devil, I should have asked her then,” he thought with annoyance, “then I’d know everything.” And the most impatient and stubborn desire to talk with her and find things out suddenly began burning in him, so much so that, halfway home, he turned sharply towards the widow Morozov’s house, where Grushenka lived. Coming up to the gates, he knocked, and the knock breaking the stillness of the night again seemed suddenly to sober him and anger him. Besides, no one answered, everyone in the house was asleep. “Here, too, I’ll cause a scandal!” he thought, now with a sort of suffering in his soul, but instead of finally going away, he suddenly began knocking again with all his might. The racket could be heard all up and down the street. “No, I’ll keep knocking until they answer, I will!” he muttered, getting more and more enraged each time he knocked, and at the same time banging still louder on the gate.

Chapter 6: Here I Come!

Dmitri Fyodorovich flew over the road. Mokroye was some fifteen miles away, but Andrei’s troika galloped so fast that they could make it in an hour and a quarter. It was as if the swift ride suddenly refreshed Mitya. The air was fresh and rather cool; big stars shone in the clear sky. This was the same night, perhaps the same hour, when Alyosha threw himself to the earth “vowing ecstatically to love it unto ages of ages.” But Mitya’s soul was troubled, very troubled, and though many things now tormented his soul, at this moment his whole being yearned irresistibly for her, for his queen, to whom he was flying in order to look at her for the last time. I will say just one thing: his heart did not argue even for a moment. I shall not be believed, perhaps, if I say that this jealous man did not feel the least jealousy towards this new man, this new rival who had sprung up from nowhere, this “officer.” If some other man had appeared, he would at once have become jealous, and would perhaps again have drenched his terrible hands with blood, but towards this man, “her first,” he felt no jealous hatred as he flew along in his troika, nor even any hostility— though it is true he had not yet seen him. “This is beyond dispute, this is his right and hers; this is her first love, which in five years she has not forgotten; so she has loved only him these five years, and I—what am I doing here? Why am I here, and what for? Step aside, Mitya, make way! And what am I now? It’s all finished now, even without the officer, even if he hadn’t come at all, it would still be finished...”

In some such words he might have set forth his feelings, if he had been able to reason. But at the moment he could no longer reason. All his present resolve had been born then, at Fenya’s, from her first words, without reasoning, in an instant, had been felt at once and accepted as a whole with all its consequences. And yet, despite the attained resolve, his soul was troubled, troubled to the point of suffering: even his resolve did not bring him peace. Too much stood behind him and tormented him. And at moments it seemed strange to him: he had already written his own sentence with pen and paper: “I punish myself and my life”; and the paper was there, ready, in his pocket; the pistol was already loaded, he had already decided how he would greet the first hot ray of “golden-haired Phoebus” in the morning, and yet it was impossible to square accounts with the past, with all that stood behind him and tormented him, he felt it to the point of suffering, and the thought of it pierced his soul with despair. There was a moment on the way when he suddenly wanted to stop Andrei, jump out of the cart, take his loaded pistol, and finish everything without waiting for dawn. But this moment flew by like a spark. And the troika went flying on, “devouring space,” and the closer he came to his goal, the more powerfully the thought of her again, of her alone, took his breath away and drove all the other terrible phantoms from his heart. Oh, he wanted so much to look at her, if only briefly, if only from afar!”She is with him now, so I will only look at how she is with him, with her former sweetheart, that is all I want.” And never before had such love for this woman, so fatal for his destiny, risen in his breast, such a new feeling, never experienced before, a feeling unexpected even to himself, tender to the point of prayer, to the point of vanishing before her. “And I will vanish!” he said suddenly, in a fit of hysterical rapture.

They had been galloping for almost an hour. Mitya was silent, and Andrei, though he was a talkative fellow, had not said a word yet either, as though he were wary of talking, and only urged on his “nags,” his lean but spirited bay troika. Then suddenly, in terrible agitation, Mitya exclaimed: