Wait a minute- how did it go?
A captivating little foot.
It began somehow like that. I can never remember poetry. I've got it here. I'll show it to you later. But it's a charming thing- charming; and, you know, it's not only about the foot, it had a good moral, too, a charming idea, only I've forgotten it; in fact, it was just the thing for an album.
So, of course, I thanked him, and he was evidently flattered.
I'd hardly had time to thank him when in comes Pyotr Ilyitch, and Rakitin suddenly looked as black as night.
I could see that Pyotr Ilyitch was in the way, for Rakitin certainly wanted to say something after giving me the verses. I had a presentiment of it; but Pyotr Ilyitch came in.
I showed Pyotr Ilyitch the verses and didn't say who was the author.
But I am convinced that he guessed, though he won't own it to this day, and declares he had no idea. But he says that on purpose.
Pyotr Ilyitch began to laugh at once, and fell to criticising it. 'Wretched doggerel,' he said they were, 'some divinity student must have written them,' and with such vehemence, such vehemence!
Then, instead of laughing, your friend flew into a rage. 'Good gracious!' I thought, 'they'll fly at each other.'
'It was I who wrote them,' said he.
'I wrote them as a joke,' he said, 'for I think it degrading to write verses.... But they are good poetry.
They want to put a monument to your Pushkin for writing about women's feet, while I wrote with a moral purpose, and you,' said he, 'are an advocate of serfdom. You've no humane ideas,' said he. 'You have no modern enlightened feelings, you are uninfluenced by progress, you are a mere official,' he said, 'and you take bribes.'
Then I began screaming and imploring them.
And, you know, Pyotr Ilyitch is anything but a coward. He at once took up the most gentlemanly tone, looked at him sarcastically, listened, and apologised.
'I'd no idea,' said he.
'I shouldn't have said it, if I had known. I should have praised it. Poets are all so irritable,' he said. In short, he laughed at him under cover of the most gentlemanly tone.
He explained to me afterwards that it was all sarcastic. I thought he was in earnest.
Only as I lay there, just as before you now, I thought, 'Would it, or would it not, be the proper thing for me to turn Rakitin out for shouting so rudely at a visitor in my house?'
And, would you believe it, I lay here, shut my eyes, and wondered, would it be the proper thing or not. I kept worrying and worrying, and my heart began to beat, and I couldn't make up my mind whether to make an outcry or not.
One voice seemed to be telling me, 'Speak,' and the other 'No, don't speak.'
And no sooner had the second voice said that than I cried out, and fainted.
Of course, there was a fuss.
I got up suddenly and said to Rakitin, 'It's painful for me to say it, but I don't wish to see you in my house again.'
So I turned him out.
Ah! Alexey Fyodorovitch, I know myself I did wrong. I was putting it on. I wasn't angry with him at all, really; but I suddenly fancied- that was what did it- that it would be such a fine scene.... And yet, believe me, it was quite natural, for I really shed tears and cried for several days afterwards, and then suddenly, one afternoon, I forgot all about it.
So it's a fortnight since he's been here, and I kept wondering whether he would come again.
I wondered even yesterday, then suddenly last night came this Gossip.
I read it and gasped. Who could have written it? He must have written it. He went home, sat down, wrote it on the spot, sent it, and they put it in.
It was a fortnight ago, you see.
But, Alyosha, it's awful how I keep talking and don't say what I want to say. the words come of themselves!"
"It's very important for me to be in time to see my brother to-day," Alyosha faltered.
"To be sure, to be sure!
You bring it all back to me.
Listen, what is an aberration?"
"What aberration?" asked Alyosha, wondering.
"In the legal sense.
An aberration in which everything is pardonable.
Whatever you do, you will be acquitted at once."
"What do you mean?"
"I'll tell you. This Katya... Ah! she is a charming, charming creature, only I never can make out who it is she is in love with.
She was with me some time ago and I couldn't get anything out of her.
Especially as she won't talk to me except on the surface now. She is always talking about my health and nothing else, and she takes up such a tone with me, too. I simply said to myself, 'Well so be it. I don't care'...Oh, yes. I was talking of aberration. This doctor has come.
You know a doctor has come?
Of course, you know it- the one who discovers madmen. You wrote for him. No, it wasn't you, but Katya.
It's all Katya's doing.
Well, you see, a man may be sitting perfectly sane and suddenly have an aberration.
He may be conscious and know what he is doing and yet be in a state of aberration.
And there's no doubt that Dmitri Fyodorovitch was suffering from aberration.
They found out about aberration as soon as the law courts were reformed.