The servants, Grigory and Smerdyakov, were standing by.
Both the gentlemen and the servants seemed in singularly good spirits.
Fyodor Pavlovitch was roaring with laughter. Before he entered the room, Alyosha heard the shrill laugh he knew so well, and could tell from the sound of it that his father had only reached the good-humoured stage, and was far from being completely drunk.
"Here he is! Here he is!" yelled Fyodor Pavlovitch, highly delighted at seeing Alyosha. "Join us. Sit down. Coffee is a lenten dish, but it's hot and good.
I don't offer you brandy, you're keeping the fast. But would you like some?
No; I'd better give you some of our famous liqueur.
Smerdyakov, go to the cupboard, the second shelf on the right. Here are the keys. Look sharp!"
Alyosha began refusing the liqueur.
"Never mind. If you won't have it, we will," said Fyodor Pavlovitch, beaming. "But stay- have you dined?"
"Yes," answered Alyosha, who had in truth only eaten a piece of bread and drunk a glass of kvass in the Father Superior's kitchen. "Though I should be pleased to have some hot coffee."
"Bravo, my darling!
He'll have some coffee.
Does it want warming?
No, it's boiling.
It's capital coffee: Smerdyakov's making.
My Smerdyakov's an artist at coffee and at fish patties, and at fish soup, too.
You must come one day and have some fish soup. Let me know beforehand.... But, stay; didn't I tell you this morning to come home with your mattress and pillow and all?
Have you brought your mattress? He he he!"
"No, I haven't," said Alyosha, smiling, too.
"Ah, but you were frightened, you were frightened this morning, weren't you?
There, my darling, I couldn't do anything to vex you.
Do you know, Ivan, I can't resist the way he looks one straight in the face and laughs?
It makes me laugh all over. I'm so fond of him.
Alyosha, let me give you my blessing- a father's blessing."
Alyosha rose, but Fyodor Pavlovitch had already changed his mind.
"No, no," he said. "I'll just make the sign of the cross over you, for now. Sit still.
Now we've a treat for you, in your own line, too.
It'll make you laugh.
Balaam's ass has begun talking to us here- and how he talks! How he talks!
Balaam's ass, it appeared, was the valet, Smerdyakov.
He was a young man of about four and twenty, remarkably unsociable and taciturn.
Not that he was shy or bashful. On the contrary, he was conceited and seemed to despise everybody.
But we must pause to say a few words about him now.
He was brought up by Grigory and Marfa, but the boy grew up "with no sense of gratitude," as Grigory expressed it; he was an unfriendly boy, and seemed to look at the world mistrustfully.
In his childhood he was very fond of hanging cats, and burying them with great ceremony.
He used to dress up in a sheet as though it were a surplice, and sang, and waved some object over the dead cat as though it were a censer.
All this he did on the sly, with the greatest secrecy.
Grigory caught him once at this diversion and gave him a sound beating.
He shrank into a corner and sulked there for a week.
"He doesn't care for you or me, the monster," Grigory used to say to Marfa, "and he doesn't care for anyone.
Are you a human being?" he said, addressing the boy directly. "You're not a human being. You grew from the mildew in the bath-house. That's what you are," Smerdyakov, it appeared afterwards, could never forgive him those words.
Grigory taught him to read and write, and when he was twelve years old, began teaching him the Scriptures.
But this teaching came to nothing.
At the second or third lesson the boy suddenly grinned.
"What's that for?" asked Grigory, looking at him threateningly from under his spectacles.
"Oh, nothing.
God created light on the first day, and the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day.
Where did the light come from on the first day?"
Grigory was thunderstruck.
The boy looked sarcastically at his teacher.