The lady was weeping.
“Lise, Lise, but bless her, bless her!” she suddenly fluttered herself up.
“But does she deserve to be loved? I saw how she was being naughty all this time,” the elder said jokingly. “Why have you been laughing at Alexei all this time?”
Lise had, indeed, been busy teasing Alyosha all the time. She had noticed long ago, from their first visit, that Alyosha was shy of her and tried not to look at her, and she found this terribly amusing. She waited purposely to catch his eye: Alyosha, unable to endure her persistent stare, would glance at her from time to time, unwillingly, drawn by an irresistible force, and at once she would grin a triumphant grin right in his face. Alyosha would become embarrassed, and even more annoyed. Finally he turned away from her altogether and hid behind the elder’s back. After a few minutes, drawn by the same irresistible force, he turned to see if he was still being looked at or not, and saw Lise, almost hanging out of her chair, peering at him sideways, waiting with all her might for him to look at her. Having caught his eye, she burst into such laughter that even the elder could not help saying:
“Naughty girl, why are you shaming him like that?”
Lise suddenly and quite unexpectedly blushed, her eyes flashed, her face became terribly serious, and with hot indignation she suddenly protested rapidly, nervously:
“And why has he forgotten everything? He carried me in his arms when I was little, we played together. Why, he used to come and teach me to read, do you know that? Two years ago, when we parted, he said he would never forget that we were friends forever, forever and ever! And now all of a sudden he’s afraid of me. I’m not going to bite him, am I? Why doesn’t he want to come near me? Why doesn’t he say anything? Why won’t he come to see us? It’s not that you won’t let him: we know he goes everywhere. It’s improper for me to invite him, he should be the first to think of it, if he hasn’t forgotten. No, sir, now he’s saving his soul! Why did you put those long skirts on him ... If he runs, he’ll trip and fall...”
And suddenly, unable to restrain herself, she covered her face with her hand and burst, terribly, uncontrollably, into her prolonged, nervous, shaking, and inaudible laughter. The elder listened to her with a smile and blessed her tenderly. As she kissed his hand, she suddenly pressed it to her eyes and started crying:
“Don’t be angry with me, I’m a fool, I’m worthless ... and maybe Alyosha is right, very right, in not wanting to come and see such a silly girl.”
“I’ll be sure to send him,” the elder decided.
Chapter 5: So Be It! So Be It!
The elder’s absence from his cell lasted for about twenty-five minutes. It was already past twelve-thirty, yet Dmitri Fyodorovich, for whose sake everyone had gathered, was still nowhere to be seen. But it was almost as if he had been forgotten, and when the elder stepped into the cell again, he found his guests engaged in a most lively general conversation. Ivan Fyodorovich and the two hieromonks were the main participants. Miusov, too, was trying—very eagerly, it appeared—to get into the conversation, but again he had no luck; he was obviously in the background, and they scarcely even responded to him, which new circumstance only added to his growing irritation. The thing was that he had engaged in some intellectual fencing with Ivan Fyodorovich before, and could not calmly endure this seeming negligence from him: “Up to now, at least, I have stood very high with all that is progressive in Europe, but this new generation is decidedly ignoring us,” he thought to himself. Fyodor Pavlovich, who had given his word to sit in his chair and be silent, was indeed silent for a while, but he watched his neighbor, Pyotr Alexandrovich, with a mocking little smile, obviously taking pleasure in his irritation. He had been meaning for a long time to pay back some old scores and now did not want to let his chance slip. Finally, unable to restrain himself, he leaned over his neighbor’s shoulder and began taunting him again in a half-whisper.
“And why, instead of going away just now, after my ‘kissing it belovingly,’ have you consented to remain in such unseemly company? It’s because you felt yourself humiliated and insulted, and stayed in order to display your intelligence and get your own back. You won’t leave now until you’ve displayed your intelligence for them.”
“What, again? On the contrary, I’ll leave at once.”
“You’ll be the last, the last of all to go!” Fyodor Pavlovich picked at him once more. This was almost the very moment of the elder’s return.
The discussion died briefly, but the elder, having sat down in his former place, looked around at them all as if cordially inviting them to continue. Alyosha, who had learned almost every expression of his face, saw clearly that he was terribly tired and was forcing himself. In the recent days of his illness, he had occasionally fainted from exhaustion. Almost the same pallor as before he fainted was now spreading over his face, his lips became white. But he obviously did not want to dismiss the gathering; he seemed, besides, to have some purpose of his own—but what was it? Alyosha watched him intently.
“We are talking about a most curious article by the gentleman,” said the hieromonk Iosif, the librarian, addressing the elder and pointing to Ivan Fyodorovich. “There is much that is new in it, but it seems the argument is two-edged. It is a magazine article on the subject of ecclesiastical courts and the scope of their rights, written in reply to a churchman who wrote an entire book on the subject . . .”[45]
“Unfortunately, I have not read your article, but I have heard about it,” the elder replied, looking intently and keenly at Ivan Fyodorovich.
“He stands on a most curious point,” the Father Librarian went on. “Apparently, on the question of ecclesiastical courts, he completely rejects the separation of Church and state.”
“That is curious, but in what sense?” the elder asked Ivan Fyodorovich. The latter answered at last, not with polite condescension, as Alyosha had feared the day before, but modestly and reservedly, with apparent consideration and, evidently, without the least ulterior motive.
“I start from the proposition that this mixing of elements, that is, of the essences of Church and state taken separately, will of course go on eternally, despite the fact that it is impossible, and that it will never be brought not only to a normal but even to any degree of compatible relationship, because there is a lie at the very basis of the matter. Compromise between the state and the Church on such questions as courts, for example, is, in my opinion, in its perfect and pure essence, impossible. The churchman with whom I argued maintains that the Church occupies a precise and definite place within the state. I objected that, on the contrary, the Church should contain in itself the whole state and not merely occupy a certain corner of it, and that if for some reason that is impossible now, then in the essence of things it undoubtedly should be posited as the direct and chief aim of the whole further development of Christian society.”