Where was the paragraph? What did it say?"
"I'll show you directly.
I got the paper and read it yesterday.
Here, in the Petersburg paper Gossip.
The paper began coming out this year. I am awfully fond of gossip, and I take it in, and now it pays me out- this is what gossip comes to!
Here it is, here, this passage. Read it."
And she handed Alyosha a sheet of newspaper which had been under her pillow.
It was not exactly that she was upset, she seemed overwhelmed and perhaps everything really was mixed up in a tangle in her head.
The paragraph was very typical, and must have been a great shock to her, but, fortunately perhaps, she was unable to keep her mind fixed on any one subject at that moment, and so might race off in a minute to something else and quite forget the newspaper.
Alyosha was well aware that the story of the terrible case had spread all over Russia. And, good heavens! what wild rumours about his brother, about the Karamazovs, and about himself he had read in the course of those two months, among other equally credible items!
One paper had even stated that he had gone into a monastery and become a monk, in horror at his brother's crime. Another contradicted this, and stated that he and his elder, Father Zossima, had broken into the monastery chest and "made tracks from the monastery."
The present paragraph in the paper Gossip was under the heading,
"The Karamazov Case at Skotoprigonyevsk." (That, alas! was the name of our little town.
I had hitherto kept it concealed.) It was brief, and Madame Hohlakov was not directly mentioned in it. No names appeared, in fact.
It was merely stated that the criminal, whose approaching trial was making such a sensation- retired army captain, an idle swaggerer, and reactionary bully- was continually involved in amorous intrigues, and particularly popular with certain ladies "who were pining in solitude."
One such lady, a pining widow, who tried to seem young though she had a grown-up daughter, was so fascinated by him that only two hours before the crime she offered him three thousand roubles, on condition that he would elope with her to the gold mines.
But the criminal, counting on escaping punishment, had preferred to murder his father to get the three thousand rather than go off to Siberia with the middle-aged charms of his pining lady.
This playful paragraph finished, of course, with an outburst of generous indignation at the wickedness of parricide and at the lately abolished institution of serfdom.
Reading it with curiosity, Alyosha folded up the paper and handed it back to Madame Hohlakov.
"Well, that must be me," she hurried on again. "Of course I am meant. Scarcely more than an hour before, I suggested gold mines to him, and here they talk of 'middle-aged charms' as though that were my motive!
He writes that out of spite!
God Almighty forgive him for the middle-aged charms, as I forgive him! You know it's -Do you know who it is?
It's your friend Rakitin."
"Perhaps," said Alyosha, "though I've heard nothing about it."
"It's he, it's he! No 'perhaps' about it.
You know I turned him out of the house.... You know all that story, don't you?"
"I know that you asked him not to visit you for the future, but why it was, I haven't heard... from you, at least."
"Ah, then you've heard it from him!
He abuses me, I suppose, abuses me dreadfully?"
"Yes, he does; but then he abuses everyone.
But why you've given him up I, haven't heard from him either.
I meet him very seldom now, indeed.
We are not friends."
"Well, then, I'll tell you all about it. There's no help for it, I'll confess, for there is one point in which I was perhaps to blame.
Only a little, little point, so little that perhaps it doesn't count.
You see, my dear boy"- Madame Hohlakov suddenly looked arch and a charming, though enigmatic, smile played about her lips- "you see, I suspect... You must forgive me, Alyosha. I am like a mother to you... No, no; quite the contrary. I speak to you now as though you were my father- mother's quite out of place. Well, it's as though I were confessing to Father Zossima, that's just it. I called you a monk just now. Well, that poor young man, your friend, Rakitin (Mercy on us! I can't be angry with him.
I feel cross, but not very), that frivolous young man, would you believe it, seems to have taken it into his head to fall in love with me.
I only noticed it later. At first- a month ago- he only began to come oftener to see me, almost every day; though, of course, we were acquainted before.
I knew nothing about it... and suddenly it dawned upon me, and I began to notice things with surprise.
You know, two months ago, that modest, charming, excellent young man, Ilyitch Perhotin, who's in the service here, began to be a regular visitor at the house.
You met him here ever so many times yourself.
And he is an excellent, earnest young man, isn't he?
He comes once every three days, not every day (though I should be glad to see him every day), and always so well dressed. Altogether, I love young people, Alyosha, talented, modest, like you, and he has almost the mind of a statesman, he talks so charmingly, and I shall certainly, certainly try and get promotion for him.
He is a future diplomat.
On that awful day he almost saved me from death by coming in the night.
And your friend Rakitin comes in such boots, and always stretches them out on the carpet.... He began hinting at his feelings, in fact, and one day, as he was going, he squeezed my hand terribly hard.
My foot began to swell directly after he pressed my hand like that.
He had met Pyotr Ilyitch here before, and would you believe it, he is always gibing at him, growling at him, for some reason.
I simply looked at the way they went on together and laughed inwardly.
So I was sitting here alone- no, I was laid up then. Well, I was lying here alone and suddenly Rakitin comes in, and only fancy! brought me some verses of his own composition- a short poem, on my bad foot: that is, he described my foot in a poem.