“But there’s no use sending me; I have no eye either.”

“No, no, you’ll do fine, because I’m going to tell you all his signs, Gorstkin’s, I mean; I’ve been dealing with him from way back. You see, you must watch his beard; he has a red, ugly, thin little beard. If his beard shakes and he looks angry when he talks—good, it means he’s telling the truth, he wants to do business; but if he strokes his beard with his left hand and chuckles to himself—no good, he’s swindling, he’s going to cheat you. Never watch his eyes, you can’t tell anything from his eyes, they’re murky water, he’s a rogue—but watch his beard. I’ll give you a note for him, and you show it. His name is Gorstkin, only it’s not Gorstkin but Lyagavy, so don’t tell him he’s Lyagavy or he’ll get offended.^[186] If you settle with him and see that it’s all right, send me a note at once. Just write: ‘He’s not lying.’ Insist on eleven thousand; you can knock off a thousand, but not more. Think: from eight to eleven, it’s a difference of three thousand. It’s as if I just picked up three thousand, finding a buyer is hard, and I need money desperately. Let me know if it’s serious, then I’ll shoot over and back myself, I’ll snatch some time somehow. Why drive over there now, if the priest is only imagining things? Well, will you go or not?”

“Spare me, eh? I have no time.”

“Ahh, do it for your father, I won’t forget it! You have no hearts, any of you, that’s what! Will a day or two make any difference? Where are you off to— Venice? Your Venice won’t fall apart in two days. I’d send Alyoshka, but Alyoshka’s no use in such matters. It’s because you’re an intelligent man—don’t I know that? You’re not a timber dealer, but you have a good eye. The only thing is to see whether the man is talking seriously or not. Watch his beard, I tell you: if his little beard shakes, it’s serious.”

“So you yourself are pushing me to this damned Chermashnya, eh?” Ivan Fyodorovich cried with a malicious grin. Fyodor Pavlovich did not perceive or did not want to perceive the malice, but he did catch the grin.

“You’ll go, then, you’ll go? I’ll scribble a note for you right now.” “I don’t know if I’ll go, I don’t know, I’ll decide on the way.”

“Why on the way? Decide now. Decide, my dear! Make the deal, write me two lines, give the note to the priest, and he’ll send it to me at once. Then off to Venice—I won’t keep you any longer. The priest will deliver you to the Volovya station with his own horses ...”

The old man was simply delighted; he scribbled the note, the horses were sent for, cognac was served with a bite to eat. When the old man was pleased, he always became effusive, but this time he restrained himself, as it were. For instance, he did not say a single word about Dmitri Fyodorovich. And he was quite unmoved by the parting. He even seemed to have run out of things to talk about, and Ivan Fyodorovich was very much aware of it: “He’s sick of me really,” he thought to himself. Only when they were already saying good-bye on the porch did the old man begin to flutter about, as it were, and try to start kissing. But Ivan Fyodorovich quickly gave him his hand to shake, obviously backing away from the kisses. The old man understood at once and immediately checked himself.

“Well, God be with you, God be with you!” he kept repeating from the porch. “Will you come back again in this lifetime? Well, do come, I’ll always be glad to see you. Well, so Christ be with you!”

Ivan Fyodorovich got into the carriage.

“Farewell, Ivan! Don’t hold any grudges!” the father cried for the last time.

The whole household came out to see him off: Smerdyakov, Marfa, and Grigory. Ivan Fyodorovich presented each of them with ten roubles. When he was already seated in the carriage, Smerdyakov ran up to straighten the rug.

“You see ... I’m going to Chermashnya ... ,” somehow suddenly escaped from Ivan Fyodorovich; again, as the day before, it flew out by itself, accompanied by a kind of nervous chuckle. He kept remembering it for a long time afterwards.

“So it’s true what they say, that it’s always interesting to talk with an intelligent man,” Smerdyakov replied firmly, giving Ivan Fyodorovich a penetrating look.

The carriage started and raced off. All was vague in the traveler’s soul, but he greedily looked around him at the fields, the hills, the trees, a flock of geese flying high above him in the clear sky. Suddenly he felt so well. He tried to strike up a conversation with the coachman, and found something in the peasant’s reply terribly interesting, but a moment later he realized that it had all flown over his head and, in fact, he had not understood what the peasant had replied. He fell silent; it was good just as it was: clean, fresh, cool air; a clear sky. The images of Alyosha and Katerina Ivanovna flashed through his mind; but he gently smiled and gently blew at the dear shadows, and they flew away: “Their time will come,” he thought. They covered the distance to the next station quickly, changed horses, and raced on to Volovya. “Why is it interesting to talk with an intelligent man? What did he mean by that?” the thought suddenly took his breath away. “And why did I report to him that I was going to Chermashnya?” They pulled up at the Volovya station. Ivan Fyodorovich got out of the carriage and was surrounded by coachmen. They haggled over the ride to Chermashnya, eight miles by country road, in a hired carriage. He told them to harness up. He went into the station house, looked around, glanced at the stationmaster’s wife, and suddenly walked back out on the porch.

“Forget about Chermashnya, brothers. Am I too late to get to the railway by seven o’clock?”

“We’ll just make it. Shall we harness up?”

“At once. Will one of you be in town tomorrow?”

“Yes, sure, Mitri here will be.”

“Can you do me a favor, Mitri? Stop and see my father, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, and tell him that I didn’t go to Chermashnya. Can you do that?”

“Why not? I’ll stop by. I’ve known Fyodor Pavlovich for a long time.”

“Here’s a tip for you; I don’t suppose you’ll get anything from him ... ,” Ivan Fyodorovich laughed gaily.

“True enough, I won’t,” Mitri laughed, too. “Thank you, sir, I’ll be sure to do it...”

At seven o’clock in the evening Ivan Fyodorovich boarded the train and flew towards Moscow. “Away with all the past, I’m through with the old world forever, and may I never hear another word or echo from it; to the new world, to new places, and no looking back!” But instead of delight, such darkness suddenly descended on his soul, and such grief gnawed at his heart, as he had never known before in the whole of his life. He sat thinking all night; the train flew on, and only at daybreak, entering Moscow, did he suddenly come to, as it were.

“I am a scoundrel,” he whispered to himself.

And Fyodor Pavlovich, having seen his boy off, was left feeling very pleased. For all of two hours he felt almost happy and sat sipping cognac; but suddenly there occurred a most annoying and unpleasant circumstance for everyone in the house, which instantly plunged Fyodor Pavlovich into great confusion: Smerdyakov went to the cellar for something and fell in from the top step.Fortunately, Marfa Ignatievna happened to be in the yard at the moment and heard it in time. She did not see the fall, but she did hear the cry, a special, strange cry, long familiar to her—the cry of an epileptic falling into a fit. Whether the fit had come on him as he was going down the stairs, so that of course he would have fallen unconscious at once, or whether, on the contrary, the fall and concussion had caused the fit in Smerdyakov, who was a known epileptic, was impossible to figure out; but he was found in the cellar, in cramps and convulsions, writhing and foaming at the mouth. At first they thought he must have broken something, an arm or a leg, and injured himself, but “God preserved him,” as Marfa Ignatievna put it: nothing of the sort had happened, and the only difficulty lay in getting him up and out of the cellar into the daylight. But they asked for help from some neighbors and somehow managed to accomplish it. Fyodor Pavlovich was present at this ceremony and lent a hand, obviously frightened and lost, as it were. The sick man, however, did not regain consciousness: the fits would let up for a time, but they kept coming back, and everyone concluded that the same thing would happen as the year before when he had accidentally fallen from the attic. They remembered that then they had applied ice to his head. Some ice was found in the cellar and Marfa Ignatievna arranged things, and towards evening Fyodor Pavlovich sent for Dr. Herzenstube, which doctor arrived at once. Having examined the patient thoroughly (he was the most thorough and attentive doctor in the whole district, an elderly and most venerable man), he concluded that the fit was an extraordinary one and “might threaten a danger,” and that meanwhile he, Herzenstube, does not fully understand it yet, but if by tomorrow morning the present remedies have not helped, he will venture to try others. The sick man was put to bed in the cottage, in a small room next to the quarters of Grigory and Marfa Ignatievna. For the rest of the day, Fyodor Pavlovich suffered one disaster after another: Marfa Ignatievna cooked dinner, and the soup, compared with Smerdyakov’s cooking, came out “like swill,” while the chicken was so dry that teeth could not chew it. In reply to the bitter, though just, reproaches of her master, Marfa Ignatievna objected that the chicken was a very old one to begin with, and that she had never been to cooking school. Towards evening another care cropped up: it was reported to Fyodor Pavlovich that Grigory, who had fallen ill two days before, was now almost completely bedridden with his lower back out. Fyodor Pavlovich finished tea as early as possible and locked himself up alone in the house. He was in terrible and anxious expectation. It so happened that he expected Grushenka’s arrival almost certainly that very evening; at least he had gotten from Smerdyakov, still early that morning, almost an assurance that “she has now undoubtedly promised to arrive, sir.” The irrepressible old man’s heart was beating anxiously; he paced his empty rooms and listened. He had to be on the alert: Dmitri Fyodorovich could be watching out for her somewhere, and when she knocked at the window (Smerdyakov had assured Fyodor Pavlovich two days before that he had told her where and how to knock), he would have to open the door as quickly as possible and by no means keep her waiting in the entryway even for a second, or else, God forbid, she might become frightened and run away. It was bothersome for Fyodor Pavlovich, but never had his heart bathed in sweeter hopes: for it was possible to say almost for certain that this time she would surely come ... !