Then he fell helpless on the snow as though he had been knocked down, and struggling, sobbing, and wailing, he began crying out,
"Ilusha, old man, dear old man!"
Alyosha and Kolya tried to make him get up, soothing and persuading him.
"Captain, give over, a brave man must show fortitude," muttered Kolya.
"You'll spoil the flowers," said Alyosha, and mamma is expecting them, she is sitting crying because you would not give her any before.
Ilusha's little bed is still there-"
"Yes, yes, mamma!" Snegiryov suddenly recollected, "they'll take away the bed, they'll take it away," he added as though alarmed that they really would. He jumped up and ran homewards again.
But it was not far off and they all arrived together.
Snegiryov opened the door hurriedly and called to his wife with whom he had so cruelly quarrelled just before:
"Mamma, poor crippled darling, Ilusha has sent you these flowers," he cried, holding out to her a little bunch of flowers that had been frozen and broken while he was struggling in the snow.
But at that instant he saw in the corner, by the little bed, Ilusha's little boots, which the landlady had put tidily side by side. Seeing the old, patched, rusty-looking, stiff boots he flung up his hands and rushed to them, fell on his knees, snatched up one boot and, pressing his lips to it, began kissing it greedily, crying,
"Ilusha, old man, dear old man, where are your little feet?"
"Where have you taken him away?
Where have you taken him?" the lunatic cried in a heart-rending voice.
Nina, too, broke into sobs.
Kolya ran out of the room, the boys followed him.
At last Alyosha too went out.
"Let them weep," he said to Kolya, "it's no use trying to comfort them just now.
Let wait a minute and then go back."
"No, it's no use, it's awful," Kolya assented. "Do you know, Karamazov," he dropped his voice so that no one could hear them, "I feel dreadfully sad, and if it were only possible to bring him back, I'd give anything in the world to do it."
"Ah, so would I," said Alyosha.
"What do you think, Karamazov? Had we better come back here to-night?
He'll be drunk, you know."
"Perhaps he will.
Let us come together, you and I, that will be enough, to spend an hour with them, with the mother and Nina. If we all come together we shall remind them of everything again," Alyosha suggested.
"The landlady is laying the table for them now- there'll be a funeral dinner or something, the priest is coming; shall we go back to it, Karamazov?"
"Of course," said Alyosha.
"It's all so strange, Karamazov, such sorrow and then pancakes after it, it all seems so unnatural in our religion."
"They are going to have salmon, too," the boy who had discovered about Troy observed in a loud voice.
"I beg you most earnestly, Kartashov, not to interrupt again with your idiotic remarks, especially when one is not talking to you and doesn't care to know whether you exist or not!" Kolya snapped out irritably.
The boy flushed crimson but did not dare to reply.
Meantime they were strolling slowly along the path and suddenly Smurov exclaimed:
"There's Ilusha's stone, under which they wanted to bury him."
They all stood still by the big stone.
Alyosha looked and the whole picture of what Snegiryov had described to him that day, how Ilusha, weeping and hugging his father, had cried,
"Father, father, how he insulted you," rose at once before his imagination.
A sudden impulse seemed to come into his soul.
With a serious and earnest expression he looked from one to another of the bright, pleasant faces of Ilusha's schoolfellows, and suddenly said to them:
"Boys, I should like to say one word to you, here at this place."
The boys stood round him and at once bent attentive and expectant eyes upon him.
"Boys, we shall soon part.
I shall be for some time with my two brothers, of whom one is going to Siberia and the other is lying at death's door.
But soon I shall leave this town, perhaps for a long time, so we shall part.
Let us make a compact here, at Ilusha's stone, that we will never forget Ilusha and one another.
And whatever happens to us later in life, if we don't meet for twenty years afterwards, let us always remember how we buried the poor boy at whom we once threw stones, do you remember, by the bridge? and afterwards we all grew so fond of him.
He was a fine boy, a kindhearted, brave boy, he felt for his father's honour and resented the cruel insult to him and stood up for him.
And so in the first place, we will remember him, boys, all our lives.
And even if we are occupied with most important things, if we attain to honour or fall into great misfortune- still let us remember how good it was once here, when we were all together, united by a good and kind feeling which made us, for the time we were loving that poor boy, better perhaps than we are.
My little doves let me call you so, for you are very like them, those pretty blue birds, at this minute as I look at your good dear faces. My dear children, perhaps you won't understand what I am saying to you, because I often speak very unintelligibly, but you'll remember all the same and will agree with my words some time.
You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home.