Touched me to tears and pierced me to the heart!
I am only too sensible of your brother's generosity.
Allow me to introduce my family, my two daughters and my son- my litter.
If I die, who will care for them, and while I live who but they will care for a wretch like me?
That's a great thing the Lord has ordained for every man of my sort, sir.
For there must be someone able to love even a man like me."
"Ah, that's perfectly true!" exclaimed Alyosha.
"Oh, do leave off playing the fool! Some idiot comes in, and you put us to shame!" cried the girl by the window, suddenly turning to her father with a disdainful and contemptuous air.
"Wait a little, Varvara!" cried her father, speaking peremptorily but looking at them quite approvingly. "That's her character," he said, addressing Alyosha again.
"And in all nature there was naught That could find favour in his eyes- or rather in the feminine- that could find favour in her eyes- .
But now let me present you to my wife, Arina Petrovna. She is crippled, she is forty-three; she can move, but very little.
She is of humble origin.
Arina Petrovna, compose your countenance. This is Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov.
Get up, Alexey Fyodorovitch." He took him by the hand and with unexpected force pulled him up. "You must stand up to be introduced to a lady.
It's not the Karamazov, mamma, who... h'm... etcetera, but his brother, radiant with modest virtues.
Come, Arina Petrovna, come, mamma, first your hand to be kissed."
And he kissed his wife's hand respectfully and even tenderly.
The girl at the window turned her back indignantly on the scene; an expression of extraordinary cordiality came over the haughtily inquiring face of the woman.
"Good morning! Sit down, Mr. Tchernomazov," she said.
"Karamazov, mamma, Karamazov. We are of humble origin," he whispered again.
"Well, Karamazov, or whatever it is, but I always think of Tchermomazov.... Sit down. Why has he pulled you up?
He calls me crippled, but I am not, only my legs are swollen like barrels, and I am shrivelled up myself.
Once I used to be so fat, but now it's as though I had swallowed a needle."
"We are of humble origin," the captain muttered again.
"Oh, father, father!" the hunchback girl, who had till then been silent on her chair, said suddenly, and she hid her eyes in her handkerchief.
"Buffoon!" blurted out the girl at the window.
"Have you heard our news?" said the mother, pointing at her daughters. "It's like clouds coming over; the clouds pass and we have music again.
When we were with the army, we used to have many such guests.
I don't mean to make any comparisons; everyone to their taste.
The deacon's wife used to come then and say,
'Alexandr Alexandrovitch is a man of the noblest heart, but Nastasya Petrovna,' she would say, 'is of the brood of hell.'
'Well,' I said, 'that's a matter of taste; but you are a little spitfire.'
'And you want keeping in your place;' says she.
'You black sword,' said I, 'who asked you to teach me?'
'But my breath,' says she, 'is clean, and yours is unclean.'
'You ask all the officers whether my breath is unclean.'
And ever since then I had it in my mind. Not long ago I was sitting here as I am now, when I saw that very general come in who came here for Easter, and I asked him:
'Your Excellency,' said I, 'can a lady's breath be unpleasant?'
'Yes,' he answered; 'you ought to open a window-pane or open the door, for the air is not fresh here.'
And they all go on like that!
And what is my breath to them?
The dead smell worse still!.
'I won't spoil the air,' said I, 'I'll order some slippers and go away.'
My darlings, don't blame your own mother!
Nikolay Ilyitch, how is it I can't please you? There's only Ilusha who comes home from school and loves me.
Yesterday he brought me an apple.
Forgive your own mother- forgive a poor lonely creature! Why has my breath become unpleasant to you?"
And the poor mad woman broke into sobs, and tears streamed down her cheeks.
The captain rushed up to her.
"Mamma, mamma, my dear, give over!