The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov is introduced through the narrator's account of his character and first marriage. Though regarded as abject, vicious, and senseless, he is also capable in worldly matters and accumulates about one hundred thousand roubles by the time of his death. He has three sons: Dmitri by his first wife, Adelaïda Ivanovna Miüsova, and Ivan and Alexey by his second.

Adelaïda, a wealthy heiress, elopes with Fyodor. The narrator speculates that she may have seen the marriage as an assertion of independence, while Fyodor is attracted by the chance to join a wealthy family and obtain a dowry. There is apparently no mutual love. Adelaïda quickly comes to despise him. Fyodor obtains twenty-five thousand roubles of her money and tries unsuccessfully to get her village and town house transferred to himself after her family intervenes. Their household is marked by repeated fights, and rumor says that Adelaïda beats Fyodor rather than the reverse.

Adelaïda eventually leaves with a destitute divinity student, leaving three-year-old Mitya behind. Fyodor begins a life of open debauchery while publicly presenting himself as the injured husband. When he learns that Adelaïda has died in Petersburg, accounts of his reaction conflict: one says he rejoices, while another says he weeps uncontrollably. The narrator allows that both reactions may have occurred.

After Adelaïda leaves, Fyodor Pavlovitch simply forgets three-year-old Mitya. The servant Grigory takes the child into his care for almost a year. Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miüsov, a cousin of Adelaïda's, returns from Paris, learns of Mitya's existence, confronts Fyodor, and becomes the boy's joint guardian. Mitya has a small property, including a house and land, left by his mother. Pyotr soon returns to Paris and leaves Mitya with a female cousin in Moscow, later forgetting him as well. After that woman's death, Mitya passes into the care of one of her married daughters and later changes homes again.

Dmitri grows up believing that his property will make him independent when he comes of age. His education and youth are irregular: he leaves the gymnasium unfinished, enters military school, serves in the Caucasus, is promoted, fights a duel, is reduced to the ranks, earns promotion again, lives wildly, and incurs debts. On coming of age, he sees and knows his father for the first time. He receives some money and agrees to future payments without obtaining a clear statement of the property's value or revenues.

Fyodor recognizes that Dmitri has a vague and exaggerated idea of his property and takes advantage of it by sending him small installments. Four years later Dmitri returns for a final settlement and is confronted with the claim that he has already received the whole value of his property and may even owe Fyodor money. Dmitri is overwhelmed and suspects deceit and cheating. The narrator states that this dispute leads to the coming catastrophe.

Shortly after four-year-old Mitya leaves his household, Fyodor Pavlovitch marries Sofya Ivanovna, the sixteen-year-old orphaned daughter of a deacon. She has been raised by a wealthy general's widow who is both her benefactress and tormentor. After inquiries about Fyodor lead the widow to refuse his proposal, he persuades Sofya to elope with him. He receives no dowry and is drawn chiefly to her innocent beauty. He then subjects her to a degrading household in which he brings other women into the house and holds drunken revels in her presence. Grigory, despite having disliked Adelaïda, defends Sofya and once drives the women out. Sofya develops severe nervous attacks and at times loses her reason. She bears two sons, Ivan and Alexey, and dies when Alexey is still in his fourth year.

Fyodor forgets Ivan and Alexey after their mother's death, and Grigory cares for them. Three months later Sofya's former guardian arrives, strikes both Fyodor and Grigory, takes the boys away, and obtains Fyodor's formal consent concerning their education. When she dies, she leaves each boy one thousand roubles for his instruction. Her principal heir, Yefim Petrovitch Polenov, preserves that money, educates both boys at his own expense, and becomes especially attached to Alexey.

Ivan grows into a reserved and exceptionally able student. After leaving Polenov's household for a Moscow gymnasium, he later has to support himself during his first university years because payment of his legacy is delayed. He earns money through lessons, newspaper pieces signed "Eye-Witness," and later book reviews. After university he attracts wider attention with an article on ecclesiastical courts whose position is interpreted differently by religious and secular readers. Ivan then returns to his native town and lives with Fyodor for two months on unexpectedly good terms. The narrator later learns that Ivan came partly at Dmitri's request and acts as a mediator in Dmitri's open dispute with their father. Alexey has already been in the local monastery for a year.

The narrator describes Alyosha as twenty years old and rejects the idea that he is a fanatic or mystic. He presents him instead as an early lover of humanity who sees monastic life as a way toward love and attaches himself deeply to the elder Zossima. Alyosha retains one vivid childhood memory of his mother praying before an icon while holding him toward the image. He grows up quiet and inwardly preoccupied but trusting, nonjudgmental, and unusually able to win affection. At school he is respected despite his solitary habits and is mocked mainly for his extreme modesty about sexual talk, which he endures without resentment.

After Yefim Petrovitch Polenov dies, Alyosha lives with two distant female relatives. A year before finishing the gymnasium, he leaves them to visit his father, returning half the travel money they provide. In town it becomes apparent that he is looking for his mother's grave. Fyodor cannot tell him where she was buried, but Grigory takes Alyosha to the grave and reveals that he paid for its modest tombstone himself. Alyosha shows no outward display of strong emotion. The episode affects Fyodor in an erratic way: he gives the monastery one thousand roubles for requiems, but for his first wife Adelaïda rather than Alyosha's mother, and later that same evening drunkenly abuses the monks.

The narrator also notes that Fyodor had spent years away in southern Russia and Odessa, returned wealthier and more dissolute, and opened numerous taverns. Alyosha's arrival nevertheless appears to soften him. Soon after visiting his mother's grave, Alyosha tells Fyodor that he wants to enter the monastery as a novice. Fyodor consents, notes that Alyosha has his own two thousand roubles, and offers to pay any additional expenses. During a long drunken speech he mixes crude jokes about monks with fear of hell, says he is sorry to lose Alyosha, asks him to pray for sinners, and says Alyosha is the only person who has not condemned him. He ends in tears, and the narrator closes by calling him both wicked and sentimental.

The narrator describes nineteen-year-old Alyosha as healthy and, despite his religious commitment, more realist than mystic. Alyosha has become convinced of God and immortality and wants to act on that belief without compromise. His monastic path brings him to the elder Zossima, and the narrator pauses to explain the institution of elders: a disciple voluntarily submits his will to an elder in the hope of attaining self-mastery and spiritual freedom. The practice has ancient Eastern roots, was revived in Russia, and has also been criticized for giving elders extraordinary authority.

Zossima is sixty-five, comes from a landowning family, and served as an officer in the Caucasus when young. He is now very weak and ill. Alyosha lives in his cell and serves him voluntarily, without being bound to remain there. Pilgrims come from great distances to seek Zossima's counsel, blessing, and prayers. Some later return thanking him for healings, but the narrator does not establish whether the recoveries were miraculous or natural. Alyosha himself has complete faith in Zossima's spiritual power and expects great glory for the monastery after the elder's death.

Alyosha has become closer to Dmitri than to Ivan, although he remains deeply interested in Ivan and knows that Ivan is an atheist. At the same time, the dispute between Dmitri and Fyodor Pavlovitch has become acute. Fyodor proposes that the family meet in Zossima's cell, ostensibly so the elder's presence may help them reach an understanding. Dmitri agrees despite suspecting an attempt to intimidate him, while Miüsov also joins the visit and uses his long-running dispute with the monastery as an additional pretext. Zossima consents to receive them. Alyosha is troubled because he expects most of the visitors to come from curiosity or frivolous motives and fears that his father may insult the elder.

On a warm day at the end of August, the visitors arrive at the monastery for their half-past-eleven meeting with Zossima. Miüsov comes with his twenty-year-old relative Pyotr Fomitch Kalganov, who is considering university study abroad. Fyodor Pavlovitch and Ivan arrive behind them in a hired carriage. Dmitri, although told the time the previous evening, has not yet appeared. At the monastery gates the party encounters beggars, and Kalganov awkwardly gives an old woman ten copecks.

The visitors receive no special welcome despite Fyodor's recent thousand-rouble donation and Miüsov's wealth and pending lawsuit with the monastery. Maximov, a Tula landowner, approaches and shows them the way toward Zossima's hermitage. Miüsov objects not to Maximov guiding them there but to his accompanying them into their private meeting. A monk then arrives with an invitation from the Father Superior to dine after the visit. Maximov turns back toward the monastery, while the others continue with the monk.

As they approach the hermitage, Fyodor makes jokes and provocative remarks while Miüsov repeatedly warns him to behave. The monk explains that women do not enter the hermitage precincts but that Zossima can meet them in rooms outside it, where Madame Hohlakov and her sick daughter are waiting. Fyodor also repeats a story that the former elder Varsonofy used to strike women, which the monk says is false. When the party is finally invited inside, Miüsov recognizes that he is already irritated and fears that he will lose his temper and quarrel.

When the visitors enter Zossima's cell, Father Païssy, the Father Librarian, a divinity student later identified as Rakitin, a novice, and Alyosha are present. Miüsov declines the elder's blessing and Fyodor Pavlovitch imitates him, while Ivan bows courteously and Kalganov becomes too confused to bow. Miüsov immediately judges Zossima harshly, and Alyosha is embarrassed by the visitors' behavior.

Fyodor begins performing as a buffoon, tells stories about his social blunders, and recounts a false anecdote about Diderot and Metropolitan Platon. When Miüsov denounces the story as a lie, Fyodor admits that he invented part of it. Miüsov becomes so angry and embarrassed that he starts to leave, but Zossima takes his hands and persuades him to remain. Fyodor then kneels and asks what he must do to gain eternal life. The narration explicitly leaves uncertain whether he is joking or genuinely moved.

Zossima tells Fyodor to avoid drunkenness, uncontrolled speech, sensuality, love of money, and above all lying, especially lying to himself. He explains that self-deception destroys a person's ability to distinguish truth and can turn imagined offense into real vindictiveness. Fyodor briefly acknowledges the point, then resumes his performance by asking about a saint who supposedly walked while carrying his severed head. Zossima says the story is false. Fyodor blames Miüsov for having repeated it years earlier and claims it weakened his faith, while Miüsov says Fyodor defiles everything he touches.

Zossima then leaves to bless visitors waiting outside, telling Fyodor once more not to lie. Alyosha is relieved that the elder is not offended. At the doorway Fyodor stops Zossima again, claims he has been testing him, and promises to keep quiet while Miüsov speaks.

Outside the hermitage, Zossima first turns to a crowd of about twenty peasant women while Madame Hohlakov and her fourteen-year-old, partially paralyzed daughter wait separately. A woman described as "possessed" begins shrieking and writhing when she sees Zossima; after he places his stole on her forehead and prays, she becomes quiet. The narrator does not present this as proof of a miracle. He describes such episodes as a genuine nervous illness and says the temporary calming can probably be explained naturally by the sufferer's expectation and belief in healing.

Zossima then speaks with Nastasya, who has traveled about two hundred miles after the death of Alexey, the last of her four children. She has left her husband Nikita and has been wandering on pilgrimage for three months. Zossima tells her to grieve but also to return to Nikita, saying that abandoning her husband is wrong and that their dead child remains near them in spirit. Nastasya accepts the instruction and resolves to go home.

An older widow, Prohorovna, asks whether she should have prayers said for the repose of her son Vasenka's soul even though she does not know that he is dead, because Stepanida Ilyinishna told her this might prompt him to write. Zossima condemns the idea as sinful and tells her instead to pray for her son's health, adding that he believes Vasenka is alive and will either return or send a letter. A young widow then whispers a grave sin connected with her abusive dead husband. Because the source keeps the confession itself inaudible, the exact act is not stated. Zossima tells her that sincere repentance and love are not beyond God's forgiveness and gives her a small icon.

Finally, an unnamed peasant woman from Vyshegorye gives Zossima sixty copecks to pass to someone poorer than herself. He blesses her and her infant daughter, Lizaveta, and then blesses the rest of the crowd.

Madame Hohlakov thanks Zossima for what she calls the healing of her fourteen-year-old daughter, Lise. Lise's night fevers have stopped and her legs seem stronger, but Zossima explicitly says that relief is not the same as a complete cure and may have different causes; if healing has occurred, he attributes it to God's will rather than to his own power. Doctor Herzenstube has examined Lise and says he cannot explain the improvement. Lise laughs at Alyosha, then gives him a note from Katerina Ivanovna asking him to visit her urgently about matters involving Dmitri. Alyosha is surprised but agrees to go.

Madame Hohlakov then tells Zossima that she suffers from doubt about life after death and asks how she can prove immortality to herself. Zossima tells her that it cannot be proved in the way she wants, but that she can become convinced through the experience of active love. She admits that although she dreams of serving suffering people, she fears she would stop loving them if they were ungrateful and recognizes that she wants praise in return. Zossima warns her against falsehood, especially self-deception, and contrasts idealized love in dreams with active love, which he describes as sustained labor and fortitude.

Before leaving, Zossima turns to Lise's teasing of Alyosha. Lise complains that Alyosha has forgotten their childhood friendship, says he once promised never to forget her, and resents that he no longer visits. She then becomes embarrassed, cries while kissing Zossima's hand, and calls herself ridiculous. Zossima tells her that he will send Alyosha to visit.

After about twenty-five minutes, Zossima returns to his cell and finds Ivan, Father Païssy, Father Iosif, and the others discussing Ivan's article on ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Alyosha notices that Zossima is exhausted and fears he may faint, but the elder allows the discussion to continue. Father Iosif summarizes Ivan's opposition to treating Church and State as permanently separate institutions. Ivan explains his position calmly: in his view, the Christian State should ultimately be transformed into the Church rather than the Church being reduced to one organization within the State.

Father Païssy endorses this position and describes it as a specifically Christian transformation of the State. Miüsov calls the idea Ultramontanism and asks what such a system would mean for criminal justice. Ivan argues that if society were wholly Church, punishment would be understood through exclusion, repentance, reformation, and salvation rather than execution or imprisonment. Zossima then gives his own argument that civil punishment often fails to reform offenders, while recognition of sin through conscience and continued relationship with the Church can work toward repentance. He presents the complete transformation of society into a universal Church as a future religious ideal, not as an existing political arrangement.

Miüsov again objects that the proposal amounts to raising the Church into the position of the State. Father Païssy rejects that interpretation and repeats that, in his view, the State is to become Church, not the reverse. Miüsov then recounts a remark he says he heard from a French political official, who claimed that Christian socialists were more dangerous than atheist socialists. Father Païssy asks whether Miüsov means to apply the comparison to those present. Before Miüsov answers, Dmitri finally arrives.

Dmitri arrives late at Zossima's cell and explains that Smerdyakov told him twice that the meeting was set for one o'clock. Dmitri respectfully asks Zossima's blessing, kisses his hand, and then gives Fyodor Pavlovitch a formal bow, which his father theatrically returns. Miüsov then repeats a recent argument he attributes to Ivan: that without belief in immortality there is no natural basis for love or virtue and that, for an unbeliever, even crime could become rationally permissible. When Zossima asks whether this is really Ivan's position, Ivan says it was his contention and later admits that he was not altogether joking. Zossima interprets Ivan as genuinely troubled by the unresolved question and blesses him after Ivan approaches and kisses his hand.

Fyodor then turns the meeting into a public accusation against Dmitri. He claims that Dmitri has exhausted or exceeded his property, lives dissolutely, has compromised his betrothed, and is pursuing another woman. Dmitri admits that he recently assaulted a discharged captain but says the captain was acting as Fyodor's agent in a scheme involving Dmitri's promissory notes. Dmitri further accuses Fyodor of wanting him imprisoned and of being jealous because both father and son are pursuing the same unnamed woman. Their exchange becomes increasingly abusive, while Miüsov says he had not known these details and feels deceived into attending the scene.

After Dmitri asks why such a man as his father should remain alive, Fyodor seizes on the remark as evidence of potential parricide. The confrontation ends unexpectedly when the exhausted Zossima deliberately kneels before Dmitri and bows until his forehead touches the floor. The source does not explain what the gesture means. Dmitri cries out, covers his face, and rushes from the cell. The others follow in confusion. Outside, Fyodor says he will go home, while Ivan and the reluctant Miüsov continue toward the Father Superior's delayed dinner.

Alyosha helps the exhausted Zossima to his bedroom. Zossima tells him to leave the monastery after the elder's death, predicts a long period of service in the world, says he will have to marry, and tells him to remain near both of his brothers. Alyosha wants to ask why Zossima bowed to Dmitri, but the elder does not explain it. Alyosha himself believes the gesture has a mysterious and possibly terrible significance and is anguished by Zossima's statement that his remaining time is short.

On the path back toward the monastery, Alyosha meets Rakitin, who has been waiting for him. Rakitin interprets Zossima's bow as a calculated sign anticipating a crime in the Karamazov family and speculates that Dmitri could attack Fyodor if their conflict passes a certain point. Alyosha initially resists this prediction. Rakitin then characterizes the Karamazovs as driven by sensuality and says Grushenka has repeatedly asked him to bring Alyosha to her. Alyosha refuses the invitation.

Rakitin goes on to make a series of claims about the family: he says Dmitri wants Grushenka despite being engaged to Katerina Ivanovna, that Fyodor is also pursuing Grushenka, that Grushenka is playing father and son against each other, and that Ivan hopes to gain Katerina and her sixty-thousand-rouble dowry if Dmitri leaves her. These are Rakitin's assertions and predictions, not narrator-established facts in this chapter. Alyosha defends Ivan, saying that Ivan seeks answers rather than money, and then guesses that Rakitin himself may be jealous because of Katerina. Rakitin reacts angrily.

Rakitin also reveals that he overheard Dmitri while sitting in Grushenka's bedroom and sharply rejects Alyosha's mistaken belief that Grushenka is his relative. As they reach the monastery, they see Fyodor and Ivan leaving the Father Superior's rooms, Miüsov departing in his carriage, Father Isidor calling after them, and Maximov running nearby. Rakitin concludes that another scandal has occurred, and the narrator confirms that an unprecedented scene has just taken place.

Miüsov reaches the Father Superior's rooms ashamed of having lost his temper in Zossima's cell and resolves to behave courteously. He even decides that he will drop his litigation with the monastery over wood-cutting and fishing rights. Ivan, Kalganov, and Maximov are also present. Miüsov tells the Father Superior that Fyodor Pavlovitch regrets his conduct and has sent apologies, allowing Miüsov to restore his own composure before the meal begins.

Fyodor Pavlovitch had in fact intended to go home, but while getting into his carriage he decides that, since he has already disgraced himself, he will return and shame the others further. He interrupts the meal and deliberately provokes Miüsov and the monks. Among his accusations, he claims that the elders abuse the sacrament of confession by making people confess publicly. The narrator explicitly identifies this as confused repetition of old slanders: nothing of the kind had occurred in Zossima's cell, and Fyodor does not understand the accusation he is making. He also attacks monastic fasting and wealth, claims the monastery harmed him and his late wife, and announces that he will withdraw his financial support and take Alyosha home. The narrator likewise states that his claim that the monastery had caused him years of suffering is false.

Miüsov and Kalganov leave during the outburst. The Father Superior answers Fyodor without retaliating, while Fyodor continues his abuse until he departs. Outside, he orders Alyosha to return home permanently. Maximov then runs to the carriage and tries to join Fyodor and Ivan, but Ivan strikes him in the chest and sends him back from the step. As the carriage leaves, Fyodor reminds Ivan that Ivan had proposed and approved the monastery meeting. Ivan angrily tells him he has talked enough. Fyodor again says he will take Alyosha away from the monastery, and father and son ride home in silence.

The narrative turns to the Karamazov household, where Fyodor Pavlovitch and Ivan live in the main house while Grigory, his wife Marfa Ignatyevna, and Smerdyakov live in the lodge. After the emancipation of the serfs, Marfa wanted them to leave Fyodor and open a small shop in Moscow, but Grigory decided that remaining with their former master was their duty. Fyodor pays them wages, and Grigory knows that he has unusual influence over him.

Fyodor depends on Grigory not only because the servant has repeatedly protected him from physical confrontations, but because periods of drunken fear leave him craving the presence of someone faithful, morally unlike himself, and fully aware of his conduct. He sometimes summons Grigory at night simply to see him and speak briefly. Alyosha's arrival produces a related effect because Alyosha sees his father's behavior without showing contempt and treats him with steady kindness. Grigory, meanwhile, continues to revere Sofya Ivanovna's memory and will not tolerate insults to her, although he had disliked Adelaïda Ivanovna.

The chapter also describes Grigory and Marfa's marriage and the loss of their only child. Their baby is born with six fingers. Grigory calls the deformity a "confusion of nature," initially says the child should not be christened, and regards it with fear, but after the infant dies of thrush two weeks later he makes the coffin himself and grieves at the grave. Marfa later observes that from the burial onward he devotes himself more heavily to religious reading. He reads the Lives of the Saints, the Book of Job, and Isaac the Syrian, and later listens to local Flagellant teachings without joining the sect.

On the night after the baby's burial, Marfa wakes to what she thinks is an infant crying. Grigory hears what sounds more like a woman groaning from the locked garden. He unlocks the garden, traces the sound to the bath-house, and finds Lizaveta Smerdyastchaya there, dying after having just given birth, with her newborn beside her. The narrator ends the chapter by reserving Lizaveta's story for the next chapter.

Lizaveta Smerdyastchaya is described as a small, nearly mute homeless woman who wanders the town barefoot in a hempen smock. Her father, Ilya, is a sickly drunkard who beats her when she returns to him, but townspeople generally protect her, feed her, and regard her as especially dear to God. She gives away money and food offered to her and repeatedly discards the clothes people provide. The narrator rejects as scarcely credible the suggestion that this behavior comes from pride.

Years earlier, a group of drunken men finds Lizaveta asleep near the back-way. Fyodor Pavlovitch is among them and responds obscenely when the men joke about whether anyone could regard her as a woman. One man challenges him to act on his remarks. Fyodor later insists that he left with the group, and the narrator states that this may have been true because no one ever knew what happened. Five or six months later, when Lizaveta is visibly pregnant, town rumor identifies Fyodor as the man who assaulted her, but the source does not establish the accusation as fact. Grigory vigorously defends Fyodor and instead names an escaped convict, Karp, as a possible culprit.

Near the end of Lizaveta's pregnancy, a merchant's widow named Kondratyev takes her in and tries to keep her indoors until the birth. Lizaveta escapes on the last day and somehow enters Fyodor's enclosed garden. The exact method is unknown; the narrator considers it most likely that she climbed the fence herself despite her condition. Grigory sends Marfa to her and fetches a midwife. The child survives, but Lizaveta dies at dawn.

Grigory brings the newborn home and tells Marfa that they should raise the orphan. The child is christened Pavel, and townspeople add the patronymic Fyodorovitch. Fyodor continues to deny that he is the father but does not object to the name or to taking in the child. He later gives the boy the surname Smerdyakov, derived from Lizaveta's nickname. Smerdyakov grows up in Grigory and Marfa's household and is serving Fyodor as a cook when the main narrative begins.

Alyosha is briefly uncertain after Fyodor orders him home from the carriage, but he is not frightened by the command and assumes his father will soon allow him back to the monastery. His stronger anxiety concerns Katerina Ivanovna's urgent note. Although he regards her intentions toward Dmitri as generous, he finds her personally intimidating. He decides to visit her before returning to his father and takes a shortcut through back gardens.

In a neighboring garden, Alyosha unexpectedly finds Dmitri hiding and keeping watch. Dmitri draws him into an old summer-house, where Alyosha notices brandy on the table. Dmitri insists that he is not drunk and says that he has been longing to see Alyosha because Alyosha is the one person to whom he can tell everything. He says that he loves Alyosha and is also in love with a woman whom he can nevertheless hate. He speaks of the next day as a point when his life will end and begin again and asks Alyosha, whom he calls an angel, to hear, judge, forgive, and perform a favor for him.

When Alyosha says that he is already going to Katerina and then to their father, Dmitri treats the coincidence as providential. He reads Katerina's note and says that he had wanted Alyosha sent to both her and Fyodor so that his affairs with them could be settled. Before explaining the concrete situation, however, he begins what he calls his confession with Schiller's poetry.

Dmitri recites passages about human degradation and joy, breaks into tears, and identifies himself with the degraded man in the poem. He says that his recurring descent into degradation has not been corrected by reading it, yet even at his lowest he remains capable of praising God. He then turns to the poem's reference to sensual lust and calls himself an insect, extending the same Karamazov capacity to Alyosha. Dmitri describes beauty as unresolved contradiction, especially the coexistence of the ideals of the Madonna and Sodom, and says that God and the devil contend in the human heart. The chapter ends precisely when Dmitri says he will stop speaking abstractly and come to the facts; the anecdotes and concrete history of his relationships follow in later chapters.

Dmitri begins the factual part of his confession by disputing Fyodor Pavlovitch's earlier claim that he spent thousands of roubles seducing young girls. He admits to a wild life of drinking, spending, sexual pursuit, and cruelty, but says money was not primarily used for seduction and insists that he did not boast about women afterward. He illustrates his conduct with the story of an official's daughter whom he forced to kiss him during a winter outing and then ignored for five months despite knowing that she expected a proposal. Alyosha responds that the same capacity exists in him, differing only in degree.

Dmitri then recounts his service as a lieutenant and his conflict with his lieutenant-colonel. The colonel's household includes his daughter Agafya Ivanovna and his younger daughter Katerina Ivanovna. Dmitri resents Katerina's proud treatment of him and later learns that the colonel faces a deficit of 4,500 roubles in government funds. He tells Agafya that he will provide four thousand roubles if Katerina comes to him secretly. Agafya indignantly rejects the proposal but tells Katerina about it.

The colonel had been lending the government money to a merchant named Trifonov, who this time denies ever having received it. When an order arrives requiring the colonel to hand over the money within two hours, he attempts to shoot himself, but Agafya intervenes and the gun discharges harmlessly into the ceiling. Later that evening Katerina appears alone at Dmitri's lodging and asks for the promised 4,500 roubles.

Dmitri says that Katerina's vulnerability initially arouses both desire and hatred in him. He imagines humiliating her by refusing the money, but instead silently gives her a five-thousand-rouble banknote and bows to her. Katerina turns pale and bows to the floor at his feet before leaving. Dmitri says he then drew his sword and nearly stabbed himself, though he cannot fully explain why and supposes it was from delight; instead he kisses the sword and sheathes it. He acknowledges that his account of his inner conflict may exaggerate his own nobility. He ends by saying that Ivan already knew this story and that Alyosha is now the only other person to whom he has told it.

Dmitri continues by explaining what happened after Katerina's visit. The next day she returns the unused change from the five-thousand-rouble note without a message. The lieutenant-colonel somehow produces the missing battalion money, later becomes gravely ill, and dies. Katerina, Agafya, and their aunt then leave for Moscow. There, after two of the general's widow's nieces die of smallpox, the widow makes Katerina her heir and gives her eighty thousand roubles for present use.

Katerina sends Dmitri 4,500 roubles and then writes offering to marry him even if he does not love her. Dmitri accepts and writes Ivan a long account, sending him to Katerina. Dmitri and Katerina later become formally betrothed in Moscow. Dmitri now claims that Katerina loves her own virtue and gratitude more than she loves him, while also insisting that her feelings are sincere. He believes Ivan loves her and predicts that she will ultimately marry Ivan, although these are Dmitri's interpretations rather than established facts.

Dmitri tells Alyosha to go to Katerina that same day and say that Dmitri will never visit her again. He explains that he first went to Grushenka intending to beat her because a captain acting for Fyodor had given her one of Dmitri's promissory notes to use against him. Instead Dmitri became infatuated with her. He took her to Mokroe, spent heavily over three days, and says he would marry her immediately if she agreed.

Dmitri then reveals the source of the three thousand roubles spent at Mokroe. Katerina had secretly entrusted him with that money so he could send it to Agafya in Moscow. He spent it instead, falsely told Katerina he had sent it, and has never produced the postal receipt. Alyosha offers to combine two thousand roubles of his own with another thousand from Ivan, but Dmitri insists that Katerina must receive his farewell that day and turns instead to one final appeal to Fyodor.

Dmitri admits that Fyodor legally owes him nothing, but argues that his father morally owes him part of the money derived from his mother's property. He asks Alyosha to request three thousand roubles from Fyodor. Dmitri also reveals that Fyodor has three thousand roubles in hundred-rouble notes sealed in an envelope for Grushenka. Smerdyakov told him about the money and is supposed to alert him if Grushenka goes to Fyodor. Dmitri is secretly watching from a room belonging to Foma, while Fyodor is trying to send Ivan away to Tchermashnya on a timber transaction.

Dmitri says he is waiting for a miracle that will let him repay Katerina and end the situation. When Alyosha asks what will happen if Grushenka goes to Fyodor, Dmitri says he will rush out to stop it and admits that he might murder his father, though he also says he does not know whether he actually would. Alyosha leaves thoughtfully for Fyodor's house while Dmitri remains behind waiting.

Alyosha reaches Fyodor Pavlovitch's house after dinner and finds Fyodor, Ivan, Grigory, and Smerdyakov still around the table. Fyodor is in a good-humored stage of drinking. He offers Alyosha liqueur, which Alyosha refuses because he is fasting, but Alyosha accepts hot coffee. Fyodor jokes about his earlier order that Alyosha return with his mattress, says he could not bear to hurt him, briefly proposes giving him a father's blessing, and then changes his mind and tells him instead to listen to the unexpected discussion involving Smerdyakov.

The narrator pauses to describe Smerdyakov, now about twenty-four. Raised by Grigory and Marfa, he was an unfriendly and secretive child who hanged cats and staged mock religious burials for them. After Grigory began teaching him Scripture, Smerdyakov sarcastically asked how light could have existed before the sun, moon, and stars were created. Grigory slapped him, and about a week later Smerdyakov suffered his first epileptic seizure. Once Fyodor learned of the illness, he became more attentive, summoned a doctor, prohibited further corporal punishment, and temporarily stopped his lessons.

At about fifteen, Smerdyakov showed interest in Fyodor's bookcase. Fyodor let him read Gogol's Evenings in a Cottage near Dikanka, which Smerdyakov dismissed as untrue, and then Smaragdov's Universal History, which he found dull. His later extreme fastidiousness about food led Fyodor to send him to Moscow for training as a cook. When he returned, he remained unsociable but had become meticulous about clothing and grooming and proved to be an excellent cook. His epilepsy continued, and he reacted with anger when Fyodor suggested marriage.

Fyodor develops complete confidence in Smerdyakov's honesty after Smerdyakov returns money Fyodor dropped while drunk. The narrator then describes Smerdyakov's habit of stopping for long periods in apparent contemplation. Using Kramskoy's painting Contemplation as an analogy, the narrator speculates about people who unconsciously accumulate impressions without knowing what they may later produce. Smerdyakov is only tentatively classed among such people; the chapter does not establish what he is thinking or predict any particular future act.

The discussion begins with a story Grigory heard from the shopkeeper Lukyanov about a Russian soldier captured in Asia who refused to renounce Christianity, was tortured and flayed alive, and died praising Christ. Fyodor responds cynically that such a man should be made a saint because his relics would draw paying pilgrims. When Smerdyakov smiles at Grigory's displeasure, Fyodor asks what he finds amusing.

Smerdyakov argues that the soldier might have been justified in renouncing Christianity under threat of death so that he could survive and later perform good deeds. Alyosha enters after this argument has begun. Smerdyakov develops a deliberately casuistic claim: once a person sincerely thinks of denying God, he says, that person is already cut off from Christianity before speaking, so a subsequent verbal denial cannot be judged as a Christian renouncing Christ. Grigory calls the reasoning blasphemous, while Fyodor encourages Smerdyakov to continue and tells Ivan that Smerdyakov appears to be performing for him. Ivan listens with curiosity rather than endorsing Smerdyakov's argument.

Smerdyakov then turns to the Gospel image of faith moving mountains. He tells Grigory that if genuine faith of even mustard-seed size could move a mountain, Grigory's inability to do so shows that his own faith is insufficient. Extending the point, Smerdyakov says almost no one can possess such faith, perhaps only one or two hidden hermits, and therefore hopes that ordinary human doubt can be forgiven. Fyodor is delighted by the image of the two hermits and calls it characteristically Russian. Ivan agrees that this particular idea is characteristic of popular Russian faith. Alyosha explicitly says that Smerdyakov himself does not have the Russian faith, while agreeing that the image of the two hermits is Russian.

Fyodor still calls Smerdyakov's broader reasoning nonsense and argues that deliberate denial remains sinful. Smerdyakov does not concede. He answers that weak faith and mortal terror mitigate the offense and imagines testing faith by commanding a mountain to crush his tormentors. If nothing happened, he says, fear and doubt might overwhelm him, and he would trust in God's mercy rather than submit to torture for no apparent spiritual benefit. The chapter ends with Smerdyakov still making this argument; the servants are not dismissed until the next chapter.

After the previous argument ends, Fyodor Pavlovitch abruptly becomes irritable and drinks more brandy. He dismisses Smerdyakov and Grigory, then asks Ivan why Smerdyakov is so interested in him. Ivan calls Smerdyakov a lackey and a mean soul and describes him as possible "raw material" for a future revolution, while Fyodor says Smerdyakov seems to be storing up ideas. Fyodor then launches into a drunken series of remarks about peasants, Russia, punishment, monasteries, and his own appetite for wit.

The discussion turns to belief. Fyodor asks Ivan directly whether God exists, and Ivan answers no. Alyosha answers yes. Ivan likewise denies immortality, while Alyosha affirms both God and immortality. Fyodor briefly reflects on the possibility that humanity has spent enormous effort on a false belief, and Ivan says civilization would not have existed without the invention of God. Fyodor then asks whether Ivan loves Alyosha, and Ivan says that he does.

Fyodor begins speaking about Zossima. He first claims that the elder privately admits uncertainty about God and tells stories showing that he is a sensualist and a swindler. He then stops himself and explicitly admits that he has confused Zossima with someone else and has been lying. When Ivan says he knew Fyodor would stop on his own, Fyodor accuses him of contempt and again presses him to go to Tchermashnya. Ivan says he will go the next day if Fyodor insists.

Fyodor continues drinking and talks crudely about women. He recalls Alyosha and Ivan's mother, Sofya Ivanovna, describing how he manipulated her emotions and once threatened to spit on an icon she revered. As he recounts her collapse, Alyosha suddenly undergoes a nearly identical hysterical reaction, wringing his hands, hiding his face, and shaking with silent weeping. Fyodor is struck by Alyosha's resemblance to his mother. Ivan angrily reminds him that Sofya was also Ivan's mother, and for a moment Fyodor appears to have forgotten that fact before acknowledging it.

At that moment a violent commotion erupts in the hall. Dmitri bursts into the room, and Fyodor clings to Ivan in terror, crying that Dmitri will kill him. The chapter ends at Dmitri's entrance, before the physical confrontation begins.

Grigory and Smerdyakov follow Dmitri into the drawing room after trying to keep him out on Fyodor's prior orders. Dmitri sees Grigory guarding the inner rooms and concludes that Grushenka must be hidden there. He strikes Grigory down, leaps over him, and forces his way farther into the house. As the others follow, Dmitri knocks over a glass vase. Fyodor becomes frantic when he hears Dmitri claim that he saw Grushenka approaching the house, even though the inner entrance is locked and its key is in Fyodor's pocket.

Dmitri returns after finding no way for Grushenka to have entered. Fyodor accuses him of stealing money and rushes at him. Dmitri seizes Fyodor by the remaining hair at his temples, throws him to the floor, and kicks him two or three times in the face. Ivan and Alyosha pull Dmitri away. Dmitri says that if he has not killed Fyodor he may return and kill him, but he then turns to Alyosha and asks whether Grushenka was actually there. Alyosha swears she was not. Dmitri leaves after telling Alyosha not to raise the money question with Fyodor and to deliver his farewell message to Katerina Ivanovna.

Fyodor remains convinced for a time that Grushenka may be in the house. After he is put to bed, Alyosha sits with him until he wakes. Fyodor says that he fears Ivan more than Dmitri and is reassured when Alyosha says Grushenka will not marry Dmitri. Fyodor initially asks Alyosha to find Grushenka and determine whether she prefers him or Dmitri, but then immediately retracts the request, saying she would deceive Alyosha and that he should not go to her. He asks Alyosha to return the next morning and not tell Ivan that Fyodor specifically requested the visit.

Outside, Alyosha finds Ivan writing in a notebook. Ivan unexpectedly asks to meet him the next morning. They discuss Dmitri's farewell to Katerina and the possibility of further violence. Ivan says people have the right to wish for another person's death, but when Alyosha asks about murder, Ivan distinguishes wishes from actions. He asks whether Alyosha thinks him capable of killing Fyodor; Alyosha says no and also says he does not think Dmitri capable of murder. Ivan says he would always defend Fyodor from being killed, while reserving complete freedom in his wishes.

The brothers shake hands warmly for the first time. Alyosha interprets Ivan's cordiality as a deliberate first step toward him, though he does not yet know Ivan's motive.

Alyosha leaves his father's house exhausted and distressed by the conflict between Fyodor Pavlovitch and Dmitri, then goes to Katerina Ivanovna to deliver Dmitri's exact message: his compliments and farewell. Katerina focuses on Dmitri's insistence that Alyosha repeat those words, arguing that the emphasis may show he made his decision while excited rather than calmly and that he may still be saved. She also tells Alyosha that she already learned the three thousand roubles never reached Moscow and has been trying to make Dmitri understand that he need not be ashamed before her for spending the money. Alyosha then describes Dmitri's assault on Fyodor Pavlovitch and says that Dmitri has gone to Grushenka.

Katerina says she can endure Dmitri's passion for Grushenka and unexpectedly calls Grushenka from the next room. She tells Alyosha that Grushenka's former officer, now widowed, has written and is coming back, and she treats this as the solution to the rivalry. Grushenka immediately qualifies Katerina's account: she says she made no promise, may take to Dmitri again, and will act as she chooses. Katerina nevertheless continues to praise her and, in her excitement, repeatedly kisses Grushenka's hand.

Grushenka takes Katerina's hand as though she will return the kisses, keeps it near her lips, and then deliberately refuses. She says Katerina will have to remember that she kissed Grushenka's hand while Grushenka did not kiss hers, and that she will tell Dmitri so he can laugh. Katerina calls her a vile slut and a creature for sale. Grushenka answers by revealing that she knows Katerina once went to a gentleman at dusk for money, exposing the private incident Dmitri had told her. Katerina tries to rush at Grushenka, but Alyosha restrains her.

Grushenka says she arranged the scene for Alyosha's benefit and leaves laughing. Katerina falls into hysterics and condemns Dmitri for having told Grushenka about the humiliating visit from her past. Alyosha leaves unable to answer her. Outside, a maid catches him and gives him a small pink note that had been left at the house since dinner-time; the chapter ends before Alyosha opens it.

On the road back to the monastery, Alyosha reaches a crossroads and is startled when Dmitri steps out from beneath a willow and jokingly shouts, "Your money or your life!" Dmitri explains that while waiting he had considered hanging himself, but hearing Alyosha approach reminded him that there was still one person in the world whom he loved, so he decided instead to scare him as a joke. Alyosha then tells him what happened between Katerina Ivanovna and Grushenka.

Dmitri first reacts with uncontrolled laughter to Grushenka's refusal to kiss Katerina's hand and speaks approvingly of Grushenka's audacity. Alyosha points out the deeper injury: Grushenka could insult Katerina with the story of her earlier visit to Dmitri only because Dmitri had told her about it. Dmitri remembers telling Grushenka while drunk at Mokroe, admits that this makes him a scoundrel, and starts to leave. He then turns back for one more confession. He says a terrible dishonor is already upon him, that he is free to stop the plan behind it and could recover half of his lost honor by the next day, but that he intends to carry the plan through. He refuses to explain further and leaves.

At the monastery, Alyosha learns from Father Païssy that Father Zossima has grown weaker. Païssy reports that Zossima remembered Alyosha, blessed the work that had taken him into town, and said that Alyosha's place was in the world for a time. Despite his promises to his father, the Hohlakovs, and Katerina Ivanovna, Alyosha resolves to remain at the monastery with Zossima until the elder dies.

Before sleeping, Alyosha opens the pink note he received on leaving Katerina's house. It is from Lise. She writes that she has loved him since their childhood in Moscow, asks him to keep the confession secret, imagines that they can marry after he leaves the monastery and they are old enough, and begs him to come the next day. Alyosha reads the letter twice, laughs softly and happily, prays for the troubled people around him, and falls asleep peacefully.

Before daybreak, Father Zossima wakes extremely weak but clear-minded and says that he may not live through the day. He confesses, takes communion, receives extreme unction, and then speaks as strength permits to the monks gathered in his cell. He urges them to love one another, reject spiritual pride, regard themselves as personally responsible for all people and all human sin, confess their own sins continually, and pray even for those who reject or hate them. The narrator notes that his speech is disconnected and that some listeners find parts of it obscure.

When Alyosha briefly leaves the cell, Rakitin sends him a letter from Madame Hohlakov about Prohorovna and her absent son Vasenka. Madame Hohlakov presents the incident as a fulfilled prediction by Zossima: after he told Prohorovna that her son was alive and would soon return or write, she reached home to find a letter saying that Vasenka was returning to Russia. Father Païssy is visibly moved but asks that the story not be repeated until it is better confirmed, explicitly observing that it may have happened naturally. The story nevertheless spreads rapidly through the monastery.

The visiting monk from the Obdorsk monastery is especially unsettled because he had already visited Father Ferapont, an elderly ascetic opposed to Zossima and the institution of elders. Ferapont lives under an exceptionally severe fasting regimen and claims that he sees devils, receives visits from the Holy Spirit in the forms of birds, and at night sees Christ in the branches of an elm. The visiting monk is predisposed toward strict fasting and against elders, so despite his uncertainty about Ferapont's claims he leaves the encounter with greater reverence for Ferapont than for Zossima. News of the supposed new miracle involving Zossima leaves him perplexed.

After Zossima becomes tired and returns to bed, he sends for Alyosha and reminds him of the promises he made to his father, brothers, and others. He orders Alyosha to go into town and assures him that he will not die before Alyosha returns to hear his last word. As Alyosha leaves, Father Païssy warns him about the intellectual and moral temptations of the world and argues that, despite modern criticism of religion, the Christian ideal remains a living force. Alyosha departs realizing that he has found in Païssy an unexpected friend and teacher.

Alyosha first goes to Fyodor Pavlovitch's house. Ivan has already gone out, Grigory is ill in bed after Dmitri's blow, and Smerdyakov is away marketing. Fyodor is bruised, bandaged, tired, and irritable. He immediately begins accusing Ivan of staying in town so that Dmitri will marry Grushenka and leave Katerina Ivanovna available for Ivan, though these claims are Fyodor's suspicions rather than established facts.

Fyodor tells Alyosha that he intends to preserve his money for himself as he grows older and continue living in what he calls his sins. He dismisses Alyosha's idea of paradise and says that he expects simply to fall asleep in death and never wake. He then reveals that he had considered having Dmitri prosecuted for the previous day's assault. Ivan has dissuaded him, but Fyodor's stronger practical reason for holding back is Grushenka: he imagines that if Dmitri were imprisoned she would run to visit him, whereas learning that Dmitri nearly beat an old man to death might instead turn her against Dmitri and toward Fyodor.

Alyosha declines brandy but asks to take a roll with him, and he urges Fyodor not to drink. Fyodor nevertheless has one glass. He continues denouncing Ivan and Dmitri, then explains why he had asked Alyosha to visit privately: he had considered offering Dmitri one or two thousand roubles to leave for years and give up Grushenka entirely. When Alyosha suggests that three thousand might persuade Dmitri, Fyodor immediately abandons the idea and orders Alyosha not to mention it.

Fyodor asks whether Katerina Ivanovna will still marry Dmitri, and Alyosha answers that nothing will induce her to abandon him. Fyodor again vows that Dmitri will not have Grushenka and abruptly dismisses Alyosha. After Alyosha kisses him on the shoulder, Fyodor calls after him to return the next day for better fish soup. Once Alyosha leaves, Fyodor drinks another half-glass of brandy, lies down exhausted, and quickly falls asleep.

Leaving his father's house, Alyosha worries that both Fyodor Pavlovitch and Dmitri have hardened themselves since the previous day and may each be acting on a plan. He resolves to find Dmitri. On the way, however, he notices six schoolboys armed with stones facing a solitary boy across a ditch. After Alyosha begins talking to the group, the lone boy throws a stone that strikes Alyosha on the shoulder. The others retaliate in a volley and tell Alyosha that the boy had recently stabbed Krassotkin with a penknife at school. Alyosha runs forward to shield the solitary child from the six-to-one attack.

After the boy retreats, Alyosha follows to ask why the others hate him. The child, about nine years old, is poorly dressed, pale, and defiant. He denies knowing Alyosha. When Alyosha turns to leave, the boy calls him a "monk in silk trousers," strikes him from behind with a stone, and then throws another stone at his face. Alyosha still does not retaliate.

The boy finally rushes at Alyosha, seizes his left hand, and bites his middle finger badly enough to reach the bone. Alyosha binds the bleeding wound and calmly asks what he could have done to deserve such hatred, pointing out that this is the first time they have met. Instead of answering, the boy suddenly breaks into a tearful wail and runs away. Alyosha decides that when he has time he will find the child again and discover the reason for the hostility, but for the moment he continues on his errand.

Alyosha reaches Madame Hohlakov's house, where she immediately asks about the reported new miracle involving Father Zossima and Prohorovna's son. She speaks of it as though Zossima had restored the son to his mother, while Alyosha simply answers that Zossima is dying. Madame Hohlakov then tells him that Katerina Ivanovna is in the house with Ivan and describes their private conversation as emotionally destructive and incomprehensible. She also complains that Lise has been feverish and hysterical.

When Madame Hohlakov sees Alyosha's badly bitten finger, she panics. Lise opens the door, takes charge of the wound, orders cold water, ice, lint, and lotion, and has her mother leave the room to fetch supplies. While they are briefly alone, Alyosha tells Lise about the schoolboys. Lise then asks him to return the love letter she sent the previous day, calling it a foolish joke. Alyosha says the letter is at home and that he cannot bring it that day because he must return to the monastery.

Lise asks whether Alyosha laughed at her letter. He says he did not because he believed it. He tells her that after Father Zossima dies he expects to leave the monastery, finish his studies, and, when Lise reaches the legal age, marry her. Lise insists that the letter was a joke, calls him childish, and laughs at the idea of his marrying. After Madame Hohlakov returns, the conversation about the injured finger leads her to speculate anxiously about rabies, while Lise mocks the idea.

Madame Hohlakov then reports that Katerina is urgently asking to see Alyosha. Alyosha agrees to go because he wants to return to the monastery soon. Lise reacts angrily and tells him not to come back afterward. As Madame Hohlakov takes Alyosha toward the drawing room, she gives him her own interpretation of the situation: Katerina loves Ivan but is trying to persuade herself that she loves Dmitri. She says she intends to go in with Alyosha and remain if she is not sent away.

Alyosha enters the drawing room as Ivan is preparing to leave and continues privately wondering what Katerina Ivanovna truly feels for Dmitri and Ivan. Katerina asks Alyosha to judge a decision she has made. She admits that she does not know whether she still loves Dmitri and says that, even if he marries Grushenka, she will never abandon him. She imagines living elsewhere but watching over him permanently as a sister and friend, becoming an instrument of his happiness and proving lifelong fidelity despite his betrayal.

Ivan says he approves, but his explanation is openly ironic and malicious: he predicts that Katerina will spend her life contemplating her own heroism, suffering, and fulfilled duty. When Ivan announces that he must return to Moscow, probably the next day, Katerina instinctively exclaims that this is fortunate, then immediately tries to recast her reaction by saying he can explain her situation to her relatives there. Alyosha interprets the exchange as theatrical and blurts out that Katerina may never have loved Dmitri at all, that Dmitri may only esteem her, and that she is tormenting Ivan because she loves him while maintaining an unreal love for Dmitri through self-laceration.

Ivan rejects Alyosha's conclusion about Katerina loving him. He says Katerina has always known that he loved her but never cared for him, and that she kept him near as a means of revenge for Dmitri's insults. Ivan gives his own opposite interpretation: Katerina really does love Dmitri, increasingly so because he humiliates her, while her heroic fidelity and self-abasement are sustained by pride. Deeply wounded, Ivan says he is leaving for good, refuses Katerina's hand, and departs. Alyosha immediately blames himself for provoking the rupture.

Katerina soon returns with two hundred roubles and asks Alyosha to take them to Captain Snegiryov, the impoverished discharged officer whom Dmitri dragged by the beard from a tavern into the street. She explains that the captain's young son witnessed the humiliation and ran alongside begging people to defend his father. Katerina wants the money presented not as payment to suppress legal action, but as assistance and sympathy from Dmitri's betrothed. She gives Alyosha the address at a house belonging to Kalmikov and leaves abruptly. Afterward Madame Hohlakov reports that Katerina has fallen into hysterics, while Alyosha remains distressed by what he believes was his own harmful interference.

Alyosha leaves Madame Hohlakov's deeply ashamed of having interfered in Katerina and Ivan's relationship, but decides to stop brooding and carry out his duties. On the way to Captain Snegiryov, he first tries to find Dmitri. Dmitri has not slept at his lodging for three nights, and the cabinet-maker's family there answers Alyosha suspiciously, apparently under instructions not to reveal where Dmitri is. Alyosha also realizes that the schoolboy who bit him is probably the captain's son. Hungry, he eats the roll he had taken from Fyodor Pavlovitch's house and continues to Lake Street.

The Snegiryov family lives in a cramped, poor cottage. Captain Nikolay Ilyitch Snegiryov greets Alyosha with a volatile mixture of hostility, fear, mockery, and exaggerated politeness. Before Alyosha can explain fully, the sick schoolboy behind a curtain reveals himself as Ilusha and says that he bit Alyosha's finger. Alyosha then understands that Ilusha attacked him because he is the brother of Dmitri, the man who humiliated the boy's father.

When the captain theatrically threatens to punish Ilusha or sacrifice his own fingers in compensation, Alyosha insists that he has not come to complain. Alyosha says that Dmitri regrets what he did and expresses his own belief that Dmitri would apologize publicly, even on his knees if the captain demanded it. The captain is emotionally affected, but the chapter does not establish that Dmitri himself has authorized such an apology.

The captain introduces his family. His wife, Arina Petrovna, is ill and has difficulty walking. His daughters are Varvara, who openly rebukes her father's buffoonery, and Nina, who is hunchbacked and disabled. Ilusha is feverish in bed. Arina Petrovna launches into a confused account of past insults and then begins crying that she is lonely and unloved. The captain comforts her tenderly while Varvara angrily condemns his theatrical behavior.

Finally, Captain Snegiryov says that he wants to speak seriously with Alyosha somewhere outside the cottage. He identifies Nina and Varvara more fully, takes Alyosha by the hand, and leads him into the street. The chapter ends before Alyosha presents Katerina's two hundred roubles or before the captain gives the fuller account of Dmitri's public humiliation.

After leaving the Snegiryov cottage, Alyosha walks with Captain Nikolay Ilyitch Snegiryov. The captain explains that Dmitri dragged him by his beard from a tavern into the marketplace while Ilusha and other schoolboys watched. Ilusha clung to Dmitri's hand, kissed it, and begged him to forgive his father. Snegiryov says he cannot challenge Dmitri because his family depends on him and he risks death or disability. He also says he considered legal action, but Grushenka threatened to expose his supposed dishonesty and cut off work, while Fyodor Pavlovitch has already stopped employing him and may use signed papers against him.

Snegiryov describes how the humiliation has consumed Ilusha. Other boys mock him as the son of the "wisp of tow"; Ilusha has been beaten, has attacked classmates, stabbed Krassotkin with a penknife, fallen ill, and imagined avenging his father. Father and son dream of leaving town with a horse and cart, but after another day of teasing Ilusha breaks down during their walk and sobs over the insult to his father. Alyosha says he wants to befriend Ilusha and again promises that Dmitri will apologize, though the captain correctly notes that this promise comes from Alyosha, not Dmitri.

Alyosha then offers Katerina Ivanovna's two hundred roubles, explaining that she considers herself Snegiryov's sister in misfortune because Dmitri has also humiliated her. The captain accepts the notes and excitedly calculates how they could pay for medicine, food, help for his family, Varvara's return to Petersburg, and perhaps a move to another province. Alyosha adds that more money can be provided if needed.

The captain's reaction suddenly reverses. He crumples and tramples the notes, declares that the "wisp of tow" will not sell his honor, and runs off. He turns back twice, finally crying that he could not face Ilusha if he took money for their shame. The narrator emphasizes that Snegiryov did not know until the last moment that he would reject the money. Alyosha does not pursue him; he gathers and smooths the notes and goes to Katerina Ivanovna to report what happened.

Madame Hohlakov meets Alyosha and reports that Katerina Ivanovna's hysterics ended in a fainting fit, followed by weakness, delirium, fever, and unconsciousness. She fears brain fever and has sent for Herzenstube and Katerina's aunts. She asks Alyosha to wait with Lise, who has become genuinely remorseful about having laughed at him.

Lise asks what happened with Snegiryov. Alyosha tells her the full story and then offers his own interpretation of why the captain rejected the money: after openly showing relief and gratitude, Snegiryov felt humiliated by having exposed his need and by Alyosha's offer of still more help. Alyosha believes that rejecting the money allowed the captain to vindicate his honor and that he will therefore be able to accept the same two hundred roubles the next day. Lise is impressed but also challenges whether analyzing Snegiryov so confidently is itself contemptuous. Alyosha replies that it is not because they are no better than he is, and recalls Zossima's teaching to care for people as one would for children or the sick.

Lise then admits that her letter was sincere. She kisses Alyosha's hand; he kisses her on the lips; and they openly discuss marrying after he leaves the monastery and after the necessary wait. Alyosha refuses to return the letter, calling it precious. They discuss privacy, whether spouses should yield to each other, and Lise's promise not to spy on him or read his letters.

Their conversation turns to Alyosha's deeper distress. He says his brothers and father are destroying themselves and others, questions whether the spirit of God is above the Karamazov force, and says that perhaps he does not even believe in God. He is also grieving Zossima's approaching death and tells Lise that afterward he will come to her. They reaffirm their intention to be together, and Lise urges him to return to the elder.

As Alyosha leaves, Madame Hohlakov reveals that she heard the conversation. She rejects the marriage plan as childish, says she will try to prevent it, and demands to see Lise's letter. Alyosha says he was entirely serious, refuses to show the letter, learns that Katerina remains delirious and unconscious, and leaves after saying he will return the next day.

After leaving Lise, Alyosha decides that finding Dmitri is more urgent than returning immediately to the dying Zossima. Convinced that some catastrophe is approaching, he climbs the fence into the garden where Dmitri had waited the day before and hides in the summer-house, hoping to catch him there without alerting the household.

While he waits, Alyosha overhears Smerdyakov playing guitar for Marya Kondratyevna, the daughter of the house. Smerdyakov complains about his illegitimate birth and the contempt he has endured, says he hates Russia, disparages peasants and soldiers, resents Ivan for calling him a lackey, and speaks contemptuously of Dmitri. He says that with money he would leave and could open a restaurant in Moscow. Marya flirts with him and romanticizes dueling, while Smerdyakov mocks the idea.

After Alyosha accidentally reveals himself by sneezing, he asks whether they know where Dmitri is. Smerdyakov first says he does not know and does not want to know, then explains that Dmitri has repeatedly pressed him for information about Fyodor Pavlovitch and has twice threatened to kill him, especially if Smerdyakov allows Grushenka into Fyodor's house and she stays there.

Smerdyakov finally reports that Ivan sent him to Dmitri's lodging at eight that morning with an invitation to dine at the Metropolis tavern. Dmitri was not home, so Smerdyakov can only speculate that he may now be with Ivan. He asks Alyosha not to reveal the source of the information. Alyosha hurries to the tavern; before he can inquire for his brothers, Ivan calls to him from a window. Alyosha goes upstairs and finds Ivan dining alone.

Ivan welcomes Alyosha at the Metropolis tavern and orders him soup, tea, and cherry jam, remembering that Alyosha loved it as a child. Ivan says that although they have scarcely known one another as brothers, he has come to respect Alyosha and wanted to know him before leaving town. Alyosha tells Ivan that beneath his reserve he now sees him as a young man of twenty-three rather than an impenetrable "tomb."

Ivan responds by describing his intense attachment to life. Even if he lost faith in love and in the order of the universe, he says he would still want to live through his youth. He loves spring leaves, the blue sky, certain people and human achievements, and he wants to travel through Europe even though he calls it a precious graveyard. Alyosha answers that one must love life before understanding its meaning, and says Ivan has already completed half the work needed to be saved.

Alyosha then recounts his meeting with Smerdyakov. Ivan becomes concerned, says that he had wanted to see Dmitri but now no longer needs to, and confirms that he intends to leave. When Alyosha asks about Dmitri and Fyodor, Ivan rejects responsibility for keeping watch over them and says he has finished his own business with Katerina Ivanovna.

Ivan describes himself as newly free of Katerina, but his account is deliberately unstable. He says he fell in love with her, then says perhaps he never cared for her, admits she still attracts him, and insists that she loves him rather than Dmitri. These are Ivan's claims, not settled facts. He refuses to visit Katerina after learning that she is unconscious and delirious and proposes celebrating his freedom.

The brothers then turn to the questions Ivan says young Russians care about most: God, immortality, and the meaning of life. Ivan says his declaration the previous day that there is no God was partly meant to provoke Alyosha. He now says that he accepts God, divine wisdom, an underlying order, the meaning of life, and a future eternal harmony, while also insisting that he cannot accept the world God created. He presents this as the core of his position and says he will explain why. The chapter ends with Ivan saying that he does not want to corrupt Alyosha and that perhaps he wants to be healed by him.

Ivan begins by saying that he cannot understand how people can love their neighbors at close range, though Alyosha answers that Zossima recognizes this difficulty while still affirming that genuine, almost Christ-like love exists. Ivan narrows the discussion from human suffering generally to children, whom he treats as innocent of the knowledge and guilt he attributes to adults.

To support his argument, Ivan recounts examples of deliberate cruelty. He describes atrocities against children in Bulgaria, the case of Richard, an abused illegitimate child who later murdered a man and was converted to Christianity before being executed, and Russian examples of beating and torturing children. His account of Richard is explicitly satirical: the same religious society that embraces Richard as a redeemed brother still sends him to the guillotine. Ivan then tells of a five-year-old girl tortured by her parents and an eight-year-old serf boy whom a landowner has torn apart by hounds in front of his mother.

When Ivan asks what the landowner deserves, Alyosha answers that he should be shot, then immediately calls his own answer absurd. Ivan presses beyond punishment. He says that he deliberately chose children because he cannot accept any future harmony that requires their undeserved suffering as its price. He wants justice but rejects both vengeance and a final reconciliation in which a victim's suffering is retrospectively justified. A mother may forgive her own suffering, he argues, but she has no right to forgive what was done to her child.

Ivan therefore says that he does not reject God; rather, he refuses the price of the promised harmony and "returns the ticket." He challenges Alyosha to imagine creating universal happiness on the condition that one innocent child must be tortured to death. Alyosha says he would not consent and cannot believe that humanity could remain happy on such a foundation.

Alyosha then answers Ivan's question about who could have the right to forgive by invoking Christ, the innocent Being who gave His blood for all. Ivan says he has not forgotten Christ. Instead, he has been waiting for Alyosha to bring Him into the argument, and he introduces a prose poem he composed about a year earlier, "The Grand Inquisitor," which he offers to tell Alyosha next.

Ivan tells Alyosha the prose poem he composed, setting it in sixteenth-century Seville during the Inquisition. In the poem, Christ appears among the people, who recognize Him, gather around Him, and witness acts of healing and resurrection. The aged Grand Inquisitor sees the crowd's response, has Christ arrested, and visits Him alone in prison. Christ remains silent while the Inquisitor explains why His return threatens the system the Church has built.

The Inquisitor argues that Christ placed an unbearable burden on humanity by preserving freedom. He interprets the three temptations in the wilderness as the decisive alternatives Christ rejected. First, Christ refused to turn stones into bread, choosing free faith over obedience purchased by material security. Second, He refused to prove Himself by miracle, leaving people to the difficult freedom of conscience rather than compelling belief. Third, He rejected earthly dominion and the power of Caesar. According to the Inquisitor, humanity instead longs for bread, miracle, mystery, authority, and universal unity, and most people are too weak to bear the freedom Christ demanded.

The Inquisitor claims that his Church has therefore "corrected" Christ's work by accepting the powers Christ rejected. It will rule people, manage their consciences, permit or forbid their choices, promise them heaven, and conceal from them that their rulers themselves no longer believe the promise. The rulers, he says, will accept the burden of deception and unhappiness so that the masses can live as obedient and contented children. Ivan later makes explicit that his Inquisitor's secret is unbelief: the old man once sought spiritual freedom himself but concluded that humanity could be made tolerably happy only through authority, deception, and the counsel of the "dread spirit."

Alyosha objects that the poem is really praise of Christ rather than condemnation and rejects Ivan's portrayal of Roman Catholicism as a fantasy built around the worst Inquisitors and Jesuits. Ivan defends the possibility that at least one leader could sincerely love humanity while choosing coercion and deception because he believes ordinary people cannot sustain freedom. When the Inquisitor finishes, Christ gives no verbal answer. He silently kisses the old man, who releases Him and orders Him never to return. The kiss remains in the Inquisitor's heart, but he keeps his former conviction.

Alyosha then turns the poem back on Ivan. Ivan denies that he is about to join those who would "correct" Christ's work and repeats that he wants to live until thirty before perhaps "dashing the cup to the ground." When Alyosha asks whether his alternative is the Karamazov path of corruption and "everything is lawful," Ivan refuses to renounce the formula. Alyosha responds by kissing Ivan on the lips, echoing Christ's answer in the poem.

Outside the tavern, Ivan tells Alyosha that remembering him may preserve his love of life. He asks Alyosha not to discuss these subjects or Dmitri with him again and promises that when he reaches thirty and is ready to "dash the cup to the ground," he will seek Alyosha out for another conversation wherever he may then be, even if he is in America. The brothers separate. Alyosha hurries back to the monastery, distressed and thinking of Zossima, and later wonders how he could have completely forgotten his earlier determination to find Dmitri.

After parting from Alyosha, Ivan walks back to Fyodor Pavlovitch's house in a worsening depression that he cannot initially explain. Near the gate he sees Smerdyakov and suddenly realizes that Smerdyakov is the person who has been troubling him. Ivan recalls that he was initially interested in Smerdyakov and discussed philosophical questions with him, but gradually came to dislike his wounded vanity, indirect questions, unclear intentions, and especially his growing assumption that he and Ivan shared some private understanding or compact.

Ivan intends to pass without speaking, yet unexpectedly stops and sits beside Smerdyakov. Smerdyakov asks why Ivan does not go to Tchermashnya, where Fyodor Pavlovitch has wanted him to go. He then describes being trapped between Fyodor Pavlovitch and Dmitri over Grushenka: each demands information from him, and Dmitri has threatened him. Smerdyakov says he expects a prolonged epileptic fit the next day. When Ivan questions how he could know this in advance, Smerdyakov admits hypothetically that a man accustomed to seizures could imitate one and argues that doing so would protect him from Dmitri's blame if Grushenka arrived while he was incapacitated.

Smerdyakov then reveals the secret knocking signals by which Fyodor Pavlovitch will open his locked door: five knocks mean that Grushenka has arrived, while three signify important news. He has already disclosed these signals to Dmitri because he feared him. Smerdyakov adds that Grigory is ill and that Marfa plans to give him a strong household remedy the next day that normally leaves both of them sleeping heavily. Ivan is struck by how Smerdyakov's expected fit and the servants' sleep would leave the house unusually unguarded and directly asks whether Smerdyakov is arranging it. Smerdyakov denies doing so and says that whatever happens depends on Dmitri.

Pressed further, Smerdyakov points to another motive for Dmitri to enter the house: Fyodor Pavlovitch keeps three thousand roubles in a sealed envelope intended for Grushenka, while Dmitri believes his father still owes him exactly that amount. Smerdyakov also speculates that Grushenka might marry Fyodor Pavlovitch, which could affect the sons' inheritance. Ivan rejects the idea that Dmitri would commit robbery and murder for the money, but the implications of Smerdyakov's account visibly disturb him.

Ivan then asks why Smerdyakov has been urging him to go to Tchermashnya if his departure could leave such a dangerous situation behind. Smerdyakov answers, "Precisely so," but then says only that he feels sorry for Ivan and would leave such a position himself. Ivan calls him a scoundrel and nearly attacks him. He then announces, without understanding why he feels compelled to tell Smerdyakov, that he will leave for Moscow the next morning. Smerdyakov says Moscow is suitable because Ivan could be telegraphed for if anything happened. Ivan pointedly asks whether he could also be summoned from the nearer Tchermashnya. Smerdyakov agrees. Ivan laughs and enters the house, but the narrator stresses that the laughter is not from amusement and that Ivan is moving in a nervous frenzy.

Ivan enters Fyodor Pavlovitch's house still in the nervous agitation produced by his conversation with Smerdyakov. He brusquely tells his father that he is going upstairs and refuses to stop with him. Late that night Ivan remains awake in intense, confused excitement. Twice he stealthily goes onto the staircase and listens to Fyodor Pavlovitch moving below, curious about his father's vigil for Grushenka. Ivan later remembers this unexplained act with particular disgust and calls it the basest action of his life.

Although Ivan has repeatedly said that he will leave the next day, when he goes to bed he still has no settled expectation that he will actually depart. He wakes at seven feeling unexpectedly vigorous and immediately packs for Moscow. When he announces his departure, Fyodor Pavlovitch asks him to detour through Tchermashnya to investigate a proposed timber purchase by a merchant called Gorstkin, whose real name is Lyagavy. Fyodor explains the proposed price and gives Ivan elaborate instructions for judging whether the merchant is serious. Ivan initially refuses, then bitterly remarks that his father is forcing him toward Tchermashnya and says he will decide on the road.

As Ivan leaves, he unexpectedly tells Smerdyakov that he is going to Tchermashnya. Smerdyakov replies significantly that it is "always worth while speaking to a clever man." Ivan rides away in a confused state, briefly feeling unusually happy, but the remark continues to trouble him. At Volovya he first orders horses for Tchermashnya, then abruptly changes his mind. He sends a driver named Mitri to tell Fyodor Pavlovitch that he has not gone there and instead catches the evening train to Moscow.

On the train Ivan tries to regard his departure as a complete break with his former life, but his mood becomes one of unprecedented anguish. Near Moscow at daybreak he finally says to himself, "I am a scoundrel."

Back at the Karamazov house, Smerdyakov falls on the cellar stairs in a severe epileptic seizure. No one can tell whether the seizure caused the fall or the fall triggered the seizure. Doctor Herzenstube judges the attack serious. Grigory is also laid up with lumbago, leaving Fyodor Pavlovitch increasingly isolated. Fyodor locks himself inside the house that evening in intense expectation of Grushenka because Smerdyakov had assured him that morning that she had promised to come.

Alyosha returns to Zossima's cell with an anxious heart and is surprised to find the elder sitting up, weak but cheerful, among Father Iosif, Father Païssy, Father Mihaïl, Father Anfim, and the novice Porfiry. Zossima confirms that Porfiry delivered the sixty copecks from the woman of Vyshegorye to a widow whose house had burned. He then asks Alyosha specifically about Dmitri. When Alyosha says he could not find him that day, Zossima urges him to go again the next day, leave everything else, and make haste in case he can still prevent something terrible. He explains that his bow to Dmitri came from seeing in Dmitri's face the prospect of great suffering and self-destruction.

Zossima tells Alyosha that he will leave the monastery but continue to live like a monk in the world, meeting misfortune yet finding happiness in it and helping others bless life. He explains his special affection for Alyosha by recalling his own elder brother Markel, whose face and spirit Alyosha partly resemble. The narrator then clarifies the form of the material that follows: after Zossima's death, Alyosha wrote down this final conversation from memory, apparently combining it with notes or memories of earlier conversations. Zossima did not actually speak without interruption that evening, and Father Païssy at times read from the Gospel while the weakened elder rested.

Zossima recounts Markel's final illness. Markel had been influenced by a freethinking political exile and had mocked religion, but during his fatal consumption he changed profoundly. He became gentle and joyful, asked forgiveness, spoke of serving others, insisted that each person is responsible for everyone and everything, and declared that life is paradise if people would recognize it. He even asked forgiveness of the birds and died conscious and peaceful. Zossima says that Markel's example remained within him and later helped direct him toward monastic life.

Zossima next recalls his own childhood encounter with Scripture, especially hearing the story of Job in church. He describes Job's suffering, faith, and restoration as a mystery in which earthly grief and eternal meaning meet, and says that old grief can gradually become quiet joy. He urges village priests, despite poverty and heavy duties, to devote regular time to reading Scripture simply and respectfully to peasants and children. He recommends biblical stories and Gospel passages that ordinary listeners can understand without condescension, arguing that the people hunger for the Word of God and that spiritual renewal must be lived as well as preached.

Finally, Zossima remembers traveling through Russia with Father Anfim to collect alms for their monastery. One summer night he speaks with a young barge hauler about the beauty and innocence of creation, including animals, and tells him a story of a saint peacefully feeding a bear. The young man's delight confirms for Zossima the value of simple spiritual teaching, and he closes the memory by blessing youth.

Continuing his account of his youth, Zossima recalls nearly eight years in the military cadet school at Petersburg and the worldly life that followed. He became proud, harsh toward soldiers, and devoted to drinking and pleasure. While stationed in the town of K., he became attached to a young woman but delayed making a serious proposal. After two months away with his regiment, he returned to find her married to a wealthy neighboring landowner to whom she had already long been betrothed. Humiliated by his own failure to understand the situation, Zossima worked himself into anger, publicly insulted the husband, and forced a duel.

The night before the duel, Zossima brutally struck his orderly Afanasy twice in the face. At dawn he became overwhelmed by shame over treating another human being as a servant without dignity and remembered Markel's teaching that each person is responsible for everyone and everything. Before leaving for the duel, he returned to Afanasy, asked forgiveness, and bowed to the ground before him. At the duel, his opponent fired first and grazed Zossima's cheek and ear. Zossima then threw his loaded pistol into the woods, apologized for the unprovoked insult, and refused to fire even when challenged to do so. He publicly admitted that he had acted foolishly and argued that sincere repentance should not be treated as disgrace.

Zossima had already submitted his resignation that morning and announced that he intended to enter a monastery after leaving the regiment. His comrades initially judged that he had disgraced the uniform, but their ridicule soon became friendly. Society in the town also treated him with unusual interest. The young woman whose marriage had prompted the duel publicly thanked him for his conduct, and her husband joined in showing him respect. A respected middle-aged official who had heard Zossima speak then began visiting him privately.

The visitor discussed Zossima's ideas about universal responsibility, human isolation, and the need for brotherhood, then eventually confessed a secret he had kept for fourteen years. He had murdered a wealthy young widow after she rejected his marriage proposal because she loved another man. He entered her house at night, stabbed her, and staged a theft so suspicion would fall on the servants. A serf named Pyotr was arrested under strong circumstantial suspicion and died of fever in the hospital before the case could be resolved. The visitor initially felt little remorse for the murder itself and tried to quiet his conscience through work, philanthropy, marriage, and family life. Over time, however, his wife and children made his concealed guilt harder to bear, and for three years he had repeatedly imagined publicly confessing.

Zossima's conduct at the duel helped bring the visitor closer to confession. For more than two weeks the man returned almost every evening, alternating between determination and fear over the effect a confession would have on his wife and children. Zossima consistently urged him to confess and showed him passages from the New Testament about truth, judgment, and the grain of wheat that must die to bear fruit. One night the visitor left in agitation, returned around midnight, sat silently with Zossima, embraced him, and told him to remember that second visit.

The next day, which was the visitor's birthday, he read a formal public declaration admitting the murder and produced jewelry, letters, and other objects he had kept from the victim as evidence. The town and the authorities largely concluded that he was mentally ill, and no prosecution followed even after the objects were verified as genuine. His wife and others blamed Zossima for encouraging the confession. The visitor soon became gravely ill. During their final meeting, he told Zossima that confession had finally given him peace and allowed him to love his children without feeling false. He also revealed that when he returned at midnight he had intended to kill Zossima, whom he hated as the one person who knew his secret and therefore made continued concealment unbearable, but he had abandoned the plan. He died a week later. Zossima identifies him at the end as Mihail, says he still remembers him in prayer, and recalls leaving the town soon afterward and entering a monastery five months later.

Zossima continues the teachings collected in Alyosha's manuscript. He first defends the possible spiritual significance of the Russian monk while explicitly acknowledging that many monks are idle, corrupt, or hypocritical. He argues that humble monks preserve an image of Christ that may one day serve the Russian people. In contrast, he criticizes a modern idea of freedom based on multiplying and satisfying desires, which he says produces dependence, isolation, envy, and spiritual emptiness. He presents obedience, fasting, prayer, and voluntary restraint as a different form of freedom and repeatedly states his belief that Russia's spiritual renewal will come through the people and their faith.

Turning to masters, servants, wealth, and poverty, Zossima does not deny corruption among peasants. He condemns drunkenness, cruelty within families, child labor, and the spread of greed and social ambition. He also attacks the upper classes for trying, in his view, to construct justice without Christ. His proposed equality is spiritual rather than material: people should recognize one another's human dignity and cease treating service as inferiority. He illustrates this with his later reunion with Afanasy, once his orderly and now a married market trader with two children. The former master and servant greet each other affectionately, exchange gifts, and part as equals in a human bond. Zossima says this reunion confirmed his hope that relations between masters and servants could be transformed through mutual love and service.

Zossima then turns to prayer and active love. He urges prayer even for unknown people dying alone, love for people despite their sins, care for animals and children, and deliberate cultivation of humble love rather than force. He warns that a person's conduct can influence others without the person realizing it, so each individual should accept responsibility rather than blaming an evil environment. He describes all creation as interconnected and says that spiritual life depends on a living relation to a higher world. Father Anfim's tenderness toward children is given as an example of this active love.

In discussing judgment, Zossima says no one should condemn a criminal without recognizing the same capacity for wrongdoing in oneself. Even a lawful judge should act without self-righteousness, and a person disturbed by another's wrongdoing should first examine how he may have failed to provide a better example. Zossima urges persistent service without expectation of reward, faith even in apparent failure, refusal of vengeance, and love for the earth and for other people. His emphasis remains that responsibility extends beyond one's private acts to the effects of one's life on others.

Zossima defines hell primarily as the suffering of being unable to love after having rejected the opportunity for active love during earthly life. He distinguishes this spiritual torment from any material conception of hell fire and speculates that humility might offer some consolation even after death. He says that he privately prays for suicides despite the Church's outward prohibition and describes the most hardened souls as voluntarily clinging to pride, hatred, and refusal of forgiveness.

The narrator then marks the end of Alyosha's manuscript and again warns that it is incomplete and combines teachings delivered on different occasions. Zossima's death follows suddenly. After appearing unusually cheerful and vigorous, he feels acute pain in his chest, turns pale, sinks from his chair to his knees, bows to the ground, stretches out his arms, and dies while praying and kissing the earth. The monks prepare his body according to ritual, news spreads through the monastery and town before dawn, and crowds begin arriving. The narrator closes by foreshadowing an unexpected event connected with Zossima's body that will dominate the following book.

Father Zossima's body is prepared according to monastic burial practice and placed in the coffin in his cell. Father Iosif begins reading the Gospel over him, while Father Païssy and the superintendent try to restrain the growing excitement among monks and visitors. Many people arrive expecting an immediate miracle, some bringing sick children in the belief that Zossima's remains will heal them. Païssy rebukes such impatient expectations as unseemly, although the narrator says that he privately shares some of the same hopes. Rakitin is present at Madame Hohlakov's request to report developments to her frequently, while the monk from Obdorsk circulates through the crowd gathering information.

Païssy finds Alyosha alone in the hermitage garden, sitting on the tomb of an old ascetic named Job and weeping violently over Zossima's death. Païssy first urges him to rejoice for the elder, then decides that the tears may be a necessary relief and leaves him alone. The narrator emphasizes that the event about to occur is physically ordinary but becomes a major crisis in Alyosha's development because of the meaning others attach to it.

Soon after midday, a smell of decomposition begins coming from Zossima's coffin, and by about three o'clock it is unmistakable. The news spreads rapidly through the hermitage, monastery, and town. The narrator explicitly treats decomposition as natural, but many monks and visitors interpret its early appearance as evidence against Zossima's holiness. Memories of former ascetics whose bodies were said not to decay, especially Job and Father Varsonofy, strengthen the expectation that a saint's body should remain incorrupt. The narrator attributes much of the hostile reaction to long-standing opposition to the institution of elders, jealousy of Zossima's reputation, and resentment that had remained restrained during his lifetime.

Criticism of Zossima quickly becomes open. Some monks attack his teachings, his comparatively mild fasting practices, his acceptance of tea and sweets, his views on hell, and the authority attached to the eldership. Father Iosif argues that bodily incorruptibility is not an Orthodox dogma and cites different traditions at Athos, but his defense is mocked and the more restrained monks fall silent. Father Ferapont then arrives, accompanied by an excited crowd. He enters the cell making signs of the cross to drive out supposed demons and declares the smell a divine judgment on Zossima.

Father Païssy confronts Ferapont and orders him to leave. Ferapont continues accusing Zossima of lax fasting, pride, disbelief in devils, and other supposed spiritual failures. After leaving the cell, Ferapont turns toward the setting sun, falls to the ground crying that God and Christ have conquered, and sobs. The crowd reacts with religious excitement, and some begin declaring Ferapont the true saint and suggesting that he should have been the elder. The monastery bell finally disperses much of the gathering for service.

Païssy then notices Alyosha moving away from the hermitage instead of toward the service. From Alyosha's expression he realizes that the young man is undergoing a serious inner change. Païssy asks whether Alyosha has fallen into temptation and reminds him that the bell is calling him to worship. Alyosha does not answer. When Païssy asks whether he is leaving without permission or a blessing, Alyosha gives a strained smile, makes a dismissive gesture, and walks rapidly toward the gates. Païssy watches him go and says that he will return.

The narrator explains Alyosha's departure from the hermitage as a crisis produced not by loss of faith but by the intensity of his faith and love for Zossima. Alyosha had not simply expected a miracle from the elder's body. What he wanted was a visible confirmation of a higher justice that would honor the man he regarded as the holiest person he knew. The rapid decomposition of Zossima's body, and especially the mockery and triumph it provokes among his critics, therefore feels to Alyosha like an unjust humiliation. He cannot understand why Providence seems to permit the elder's reputation to be degraded at the moment when Alyosha expected vindication.

His grief temporarily absorbs his attention so completely that he forgets other obligations. He forgets his anxiety about Dmitri and also fails to deliver the two hundred roubles he had intended to take to Ilusha's father. At the same time, the disturbing impression left by his conversation with Ivan returns to his mind. The narrator stresses that Alyosha still loves and believes in God, but he is inwardly protesting against what he sees as an intolerable injustice.

Near dusk, Rakitin finds Alyosha lying face down beneath a tree in the pine copse. Alyosha is no longer crying, but his face shows suffering and irritability. Rakitin mocks him for being upset by the decomposition and assumes that he is rebelling against God. Alyosha rejects that description and says instead that he does not accept God's world, echoing the language of Ivan's argument while still insisting on his faith.

Rakitin then tests how far Alyosha's altered mood will go. He offers sausage and vodka, and Alyosha accepts both. When Rakitin mentions that Ivan has left for Moscow, Alyosha briefly remembers Dmitri and the urgent duty connected with him, but the thought immediately fades again. Rakitin also reports that Madame Hohlakov has reacted indignantly to the news about Zossima.

Seeing an opportunity, Rakitin proposes that they go to Grushenka. Alyosha agrees at once and without resistance. Rakitin is astonished and pleased. The narrator explains that Rakitin has two motives: he wants the satisfaction of seeing the supposedly righteous Alyosha fall into sin, and he expects some material benefit for himself. He leads Alyosha toward town, convinced that Alyosha's critical moment has arrived.

Grushenka lives in a small lodge belonging to the widow Morozov, where the merchant Samsonov placed her four years earlier. The narrator reviews the uncertain story of her youth: at seventeen she was reportedly betrayed and abandoned by an officer, after which Samsonov became her protector. Over the following years she became self-reliant, accumulated money through business dealings, and resisted other suitors. Samsonov gave her eight thousand roubles and business advice but left her nothing in his will. He had also advised her that, if forced to choose between Fyodor Pavlovitch and Dmitri, she should prefer the father only if she could secure marriage and a financial settlement.

When Rakitin brings Alyosha to her rooms, Grushenka is dressed for departure and waiting anxiously for news from the former officer who abandoned her. She has deceived Dmitri by telling him she will remain with Samsonov until midnight, then slipped back home so she can leave if the expected message arrives. Although she had previously wanted Rakitin to bring Alyosha so that she could tempt and humiliate him, Alyosha's grief leaves him without the lust or fear of women that Rakitin expects. Grushenka, meanwhile, is sincerely pleased to see him and admits that she has long regarded him as a kind of conscience.

Rakitin crudely tells Grushenka that Zossima has died. She immediately crosses herself and gets off Alyosha's knee in dismay at having behaved frivolously while he is grieving. Her spontaneous pity changes Alyosha's own state. He tells Rakitin that he came seeking a wicked soul but has instead found a true sister and a loving heart, and says that Grushenka has raised his soul from the depths. Grushenka is ashamed by his praise and tells the story of the onion: a wicked woman is almost pulled from hell by the single onion she once gave a beggar, but the onion breaks when she refuses to let other sinners cling to her. Grushenka identifies herself with that woman and says that giving away one onion is the only good deed she can claim.

She then reveals that she promised Rakitin twenty-five roubles to bring Alyosha to her and pays him in front of Alyosha. She confesses that she had wanted to ruin Alyosha because she imagined that he despised her, but she also recounts the five years of anger and humiliation she has carried toward the officer who abandoned her. A month earlier he wrote that he was widowed and returning. Grushenka admits that she has spent the month torn between revenge and the fear that she will run back to him like a beaten dog; she also says that she used her involvement with Dmitri partly to keep herself from doing so.

Alyosha responds with mercy rather than judgment. He tells Rakitin that human endurance has limits and later says that Grushenka's willingness to forgive the man who wronged her is a lesson to him. When Grushenka asks whether she truly loves the officer and whether she should forgive him, Alyosha answers that she has already forgiven him. She agrees for a moment, then admits that she may still be struggling between love, resentment, and the desire for revenge. Her emotions swing between forgiveness, defiance, and threats to destroy her own beauty or abandon everything Samsonov has given her.

Grushenka finally tells Alyosha that he is the first person who has pitied her and made her believe she could be loved without shame. Alyosha answers that he has done no more than give her a tiny onion. At that moment Fenya announces that Timofey has arrived from Mokroe with a carriage and a note from the former officer. Grushenka decides to go to him. Before Alyosha leaves, she calls from the window and asks him to tell Dmitri not to remember evil against her, calls Dmitri a noble heart, and says that she loved him for one short hour.

On the way out, Rakitin is angered that the encounter produced compassion rather than Alyosha's fall. He taunts Alyosha about having saved a sinner and about the twenty-five roubles he accepted from Grushenka. Alyosha says he had forgotten about the money, which further humiliates Rakitin. Rakitin breaks with him and turns into another street, leaving Alyosha to cross the fields back toward the monastery alone.

At nine o'clock, Alyosha returns to Zossima's cell through a special entrance. Father Païssy is reading the Gospel over the coffin while Porfiry sleeps in the adjoining room. Alyosha kneels to pray and notices that the open window suggests the odor of decomposition has grown stronger, but the fact that had humiliated and angered him earlier no longer disturbs him. His grief has changed into a quiet sense of joy and wholeness, although exhaustion makes his thoughts drift and he gradually begins to doze.

As Father Païssy reads the account of the wedding at Cana, Alyosha's thoughts move through the events of the evening. He thinks of Grushenka going to her own "feast," is relieved that she has not taken a knife, and reflects that people should be forgiven for dramatic expressions born of suffering. He also thinks of Rakitin, whose resentment keeps turning him away from the "high road," and briefly remembers Dmitri. The Gospel passage then absorbs him. Alyosha dwells on the significance of Christ's first miracle being performed not in response to grief but to preserve the joy of poor people at a wedding. He recalls Zossima's teaching that whoever loves humanity must also love human gladness.

While half asleep, Alyosha experiences the scene of Cana as a vivid dream or vision. The walls seem to recede and Zossima appears among the wedding guests, alive and joyful. Zossima tells Alyosha that he too has been invited to the feast because he gave an onion to a beggar, then connects the onion story directly to Alyosha's encounter with Grushenka: Alyosha has also given an onion to a spiritually hungry woman. He tells Alyosha to begin his work and directs his attention to Christ, whose greatness is joined to infinite mercy and whose miracle keeps the guests' joy from ending.

Alyosha wakes standing before the coffin, deeply moved by what he has experienced. He looks at Zossima's covered body, still hearing the elder's voice in his mind, then abruptly leaves the cell. Outside beneath the night sky, his rapture expands into a sense of connection with the earth, the stars, and all creation. He throws himself to the ground, kisses and embraces the earth, and weeps. He longs to forgive everyone and everything and to ask forgiveness for all people rather than merely for himself.

The narrator describes this moment as decisive. Alyosha feels that something firm and permanent has entered his soul. He falls to the earth as a weak boy and rises as a resolute champion, later saying that someone visited his soul in that hour. He never forgets the experience. Within three days he leaves the monastery, obeying Zossima's instruction that he live and work in the world.

Dmitri spends the two days before the approaching catastrophe in feverish activity, trying to determine his future with Grushenka. He correctly senses that she is struggling with an important decision but mistakenly assumes that the decisive rivalry is still between himself and Fyodor Pavlovitch. Although he knows that Grushenka's former officer wrote to her a month earlier, he has largely dismissed that threat and does not know that she is now preparing to meet the man.

Dmitri imagines two possible outcomes. If Grushenka chooses him, he wants to take her far away, marry her, and begin what he calls a new, virtuous life. If she chooses Fyodor Pavlovitch, he does not know what he will do. The narrator explicitly states that, at this point, Dmitri has no definite criminal intention and has planned no crime. His immediate practical problem is money. He refuses to begin a new life using Grushenka's funds, and his conscience fixes instead on the three thousand roubles belonging to Katerina Ivanovna that he has failed to return. He believes he cannot honestly use another sum he knows about unless he first restores Katerina's money, because otherwise he would be starting his new life as a thief.

Convinced that he must somehow raise three thousand roubles immediately, Dmitri develops a speculative legal scheme. He believes he may still have claims against Fyodor Pavlovitch connected with the village of Tchermashnya, based in part on earlier advice from the lawyer Pavel Pavlovitch Korneplodov. Dmitri decides to offer those claims to Kuzma Samsonov in exchange for three thousand roubles paid at once. He also assumes, with characteristic simplicity, that the dying Samsonov now regards Grushenka almost paternally and may prefer Dmitri to Fyodor Pavlovitch as her husband.

At ten the next morning Dmitri goes to Samsonov's house. Samsonov initially refuses to see him, but Dmitri gains admission by sending up a note saying that his business closely concerns Agrafena Alexandrovna. Samsonov receives him with his younger son present as a witness. Dmitri nervously proposes assigning his supposed claims against Fyodor Pavlovitch to Samsonov, arguing that they could eventually produce six or seven thousand roubles, while asking only three thousand in cash that morning. His confused speech also makes clear that he believes Samsonov can decide the struggle between him and Fyodor Pavlovitch for Grushenka.

Samsonov coldly rejects the proposal. When Dmitri despairingly asks what he can do, however, Samsonov suggests that he approach the timber dealer known as Lyagavy, who is staying with a priest at Ilyinskoe and has been negotiating with Fyodor Pavlovitch over the Tchermashnya copse. Dmitri immediately interprets this as expert commercial advice. He believes that Lyagavy may accept the same claim in order to gain leverage over Fyodor Pavlovitch, and he leaves Samsonov's house convinced that he has been saved.

The narrator then reveals that Samsonov deliberately deceived him. The old merchant later admits that he sent Dmitri after Lyagavy merely to make a fool of him. His motive may include contempt for Dmitri's foolish scheme, jealousy concerning Grushenka, and simple spite. After Dmitri leaves, Samsonov angrily orders his son never to admit the "beggar" again. Dmitri, unaware of the mockery, sets out with renewed hope, convinced that the plan suggested by such an experienced businessman must succeed.

Dmitri begins the trip to find Lyagavy with almost no money. He has only forty kopecks, so he sells a broken silver watch to a watchmaker for six roubles and borrows three more roubles from the people at his lodgings. The narrator emphasizes that witnesses can establish that, at midday on the day before the coming catastrophe, Dmitri had no substantial cash and had to sell and borrow simply to pay for the journey. Dmitri nevertheless remains euphoric, convinced that Samsonov's suggestion will solve his financial crisis, while fearing that Grushenka may choose Fyodor Pavlovitch before he can return.

The journey immediately goes wrong. The supposed short route from Volovya station proves much longer than expected, the priest at Ilyinskoe is away, and when Dmitri finally finds him he learns that Lyagavy is staying with a forester at Suhoy Possyolok. On the walk there, the priest explains that the timber dealer is actually called Gorstkin and that he is deeply offended by the nickname Lyagavy. Dmitri says that Samsonov himself used that name. The priest senses that Samsonov's wording may indicate a practical joke but does not voice the warning.

At the forester's hut Dmitri finds Gorstkin completely drunk and asleep. He repeatedly tries to wake him, but the priest explains that even if he succeeds the man is too intoxicated to conduct business. Dmitri reluctantly decides to remain overnight and wait for a usable moment. Left alone, he grows increasingly desperate, imagines Grushenka entering Fyodor Pavlovitch's house, and again tries violently but unsuccessfully to wake the sleeping man.

Dmitri eventually falls asleep in the overheated room and wakes with a severe headache to discover that charcoal fumes from the stove have filled the hut. Realizing that both he and Gorstkin may suffocate, he calls the forester, opens the room, brings water, and spends time wetting the drunken man's head. Exhaustion finally overcomes Dmitri again.

When Dmitri wakes around nine in the morning, Gorstkin is already drinking from another bottle and is still hopelessly intoxicated. Dmitri tries to explain that he is Dmitri Karamazov and has a proposal concerning the Tchermashnya copse, but Gorstkin repeatedly calls him a liar, a scoundrel, and a workman who has cheated on a contract. Dmitri suddenly understands the absurdity of what he has done. He realizes that the man may remain drunk for days and begins to suspect that Samsonov sent him there deliberately to make a fool of him.

Physically and emotionally exhausted, Dmitri leaves without anger or revenge, pays fifty kopecks for the lodging and trouble, and wanders into the forest without knowing the road. An old merchant eventually gives him a ride to Volovya. There Dmitri eats ravenously and drinks three glasses of vodka while waiting for fresh horses. His strength and hope partially return, and he forms another "unalterable" plan to obtain the three thousand roubles before evening. The thought of Grushenka still torments him, however, and as soon as he reaches town he runs directly to her.

Dmitri returns to town after the failed Lyagavy errand and immediately goes to Grushenka. She is waiting for the former officer's message and wants Dmitri out of the way, so she tells him that she must spend the evening at Samsonov's settling accounts. Dmitri escorts her there and, reassured by seeing her affectionate face, temporarily abandons his suspicions. Almost as soon as he leaves, however, his jealousy returns. He decides that he must verify what happened at Fyodor Pavlovitch's and obtain money before collecting Grushenka at midnight.

Because the nine roubles from the previous day are nearly gone, Dmitri pawns a prized pair of dueling pistols to a young official for ten roubles. The narrator again emphasizes the evidentiary importance of his finances: only three or four hours before a later event, Dmitri has no substantial cash and must pawn a valued possession for ten roubles, although a few hours later he will possess thousands. Dmitri then goes by the back way toward Fyodor Pavlovitch's house to find Smerdyakov.

From Marya Kondratyevna he learns that Smerdyakov suffered an epileptic fit after falling in the cellar and is seriously ill, and that Ivan left for Moscow that morning. Dmitri questions the women closely about the previous night and is reassured that Grushenka did not visit Fyodor Pavlovitch. With Smerdyakov unavailable to serve as his informant, Dmitri decides he will have to watch both Fyodor Pavlovitch's house and Samsonov's gate himself. Before doing so, he gives one hour to what he regards as his last financial plan.

Dmitri goes to Madame Hohlakov intending to borrow three thousand roubles, offering his supposed rights in Tchermashnya as security. He believes she may help because she wants his engagement to Katerina Ivanovna ended. By the time he reaches her house, he regards the loan as his last legitimate hope; if it fails, he thinks that nothing remains but to obtain the money through robbery and murder. Madame Hohlakov receives him eagerly and repeatedly insists that she can save him, leading Dmitri to believe she has agreed to the loan.

Instead, Madame Hohlakov launches into an enthusiastic proposal that Dmitri go to the gold mines, become rich, return as an important public figure, and begin a new life. Each time Dmitri tries to return to the immediate question of three thousand roubles, she interrupts him. She finally places a small silver icon of the martyr Varvara around his neck as a symbolic dedication to this imagined future. When Dmitri directly asks for the promised money, Madame Hohlakov reveals that she has no three thousand roubles to lend and says that, even if she did, she would refuse because lending ruins friendships and because the gold mines are what will truly save him.

The collapse of Dmitri's last hope overwhelms him. He strikes the table, leaves in fury, then beats himself on the same place on his chest that he had struck before Alyosha. The narrator explains that this gesture refers to a secret Dmitri has told no one: unless he restores Katerina Ivanovna's three thousand roubles and removes the shame he feels there, he regards himself as ruined and capable of suicide. Once outside, the apparently strong Dmitri breaks down and cries like a child.

In the square Dmitri nearly knocks down Samsonov's old servant. When he asks about Grushenka, the woman tells him that Grushenka stayed at Samsonov's only briefly and left almost immediately. Dmitri concludes that Grushenka deceived him and runs to her home. Fenya, terrified by his arrival, insists that she does not know where Grushenka is and falsely claims that Grushenka did not return after Dmitri escorted her to Samsonov's. Dmitri reads her fear as evidence that she is hiding the truth and rushes out. As he leaves, he snatches a small brass pestle from the kitchen table and puts it in his pocket. Fenya, seeing this, cries out that he is going to murder someone.

Convinced that Grushenka must have gone from Samsonov's directly to Fyodor Pavlovitch, Dmitri avoids Marya Kondratyevna's house because he believes she and Smerdyakov are part of the deception and might raise an alarm. He circles around to the back of Fyodor Pavlovitch's property, climbs the garden fence near the place where Lizaveta was said to have climbed it years earlier, and approaches the lighted bedroom window in silence.

From behind the bushes Dmitri watches Fyodor Pavlovitch alone in his room. His father is dressed carefully, drinks brandy, examines his healing injuries, and repeatedly looks toward the garden in obvious expectation. Dmitri cannot be completely certain that Grushenka is not hidden behind the screen, so he uses the secret signal Smerdyakov had explained to him: two slow knocks followed by three quick ones, meaning that Grushenka has arrived. Fyodor Pavlovitch immediately rushes to the window, opens it, calls for Grushenka, and offers to show her a present. His response confirms to Dmitri that Grushenka is not inside and also reminds him of the three thousand roubles Fyodor Pavlovitch has prepared for her.

Seeing his father leaning from the window in excited expectation, Dmitri is overwhelmed by the physical loathing and murderous fury he had previously described to Alyosha. He pulls the brass pestle from his pocket. The narration then breaks away from the window scene, and Dmitri later says of this moment, "God was watching over me then." No blow against Fyodor Pavlovitch is narrated.

At the same time Grigory, despite his illness and the strong home remedy he has taken, wakes and realizes that the small garden gate was left unlocked. He goes outside, sees a man running through the garden, and pursues him toward the fence. As Dmitri climbs over, Grigory catches his leg and recognizes him, shouting "Parricide!" Grigory then suddenly falls unconscious with a severe head wound. The narration does not explicitly describe Dmitri striking him. Dmitri is holding the brass pestle, throws it onto the path, and anxiously examines Grigory, later remembering that he wanted to know whether he had broken the old man's skull or merely stunned him.

Dmitri tries to wipe the blood from Grigory's head with a clean white handkerchief, which immediately becomes soaked. Concluding that he cannot determine whether Grigory is dead and can do nothing more, he vaults the fence and runs away with the bloody handkerchief in his pocket. Several people later remember seeing a man running through the streets that night.

Dmitri returns to the widow Morozov's house. Fenya had previously asked the chief porter, Nazar Ivanovitch, not to admit him, but Nazar has temporarily left his young nephew Prohor at the gate without passing on the warning. Prohor lets Dmitri in and tells him that Grushenka left about two hours earlier with Timofey for Mokroe to meet an officer. Dmitri immediately leaves the gate and runs to Fenya for the full explanation.

Dmitri bursts back into Grushenka's kitchen and seizes Fenya by the throat until she tells him that Grushenka has gone to Mokroe to meet the officer who abandoned her five years earlier. The news immediately makes the situation clear to him. He releases Fenya, becomes pale and stunned, then questions her with unusual calm and precision. Fenya recounts the day's events, including Rakitin and Alyosha's visit and Grushenka's farewell message that Dmitri should remember the hour in which she loved him. That message briefly brings color and a smile back to Dmitri's face.

Fenya notices that Dmitri's hands, forehead, and cheek are smeared with blood. Dmitri calls it human blood and asks why it was shed, then speaks cryptically of a terrible fence that he will leap at sunrise. He says he will step aside and not stand in Grushenka's way. Ten minutes later he reaches the home of Pyotr Ilyitch Perhotin, the young official to whom he pawned his pistols earlier that evening.

Pyotr Ilyitch is shocked by Dmitri's blood-stained face and by the large bundle of hundred-rouble notes Dmitri carries openly in a bloody hand. Both Pyotr Ilyitch and his servant later remember the bundle. Pyotr estimates that it may contain two or three thousand roubles. The unexplained money is especially striking because Dmitri had pawned the pistols for only ten roubles a few hours earlier. Dmitri washes the blood from his hands and face, but his cuff remains stained and the handkerchief he used on Grigory is soaked and stiff with blood. Asked what happened, Dmitri gives evasive and contradictory answers about an old man and says that if the man had gotten up he would not have forgiven him.

Dmitri retrieves the pistols and sends Pyotr Ilyitch's servant Misha to Plotnikov's shop to obtain change and begin preparing wine and food for Mokroe. When Pyotr asks where Dmitri suddenly obtained thousands, Dmitri jokes about Madame Hohlakov and the gold mines, then specifically tells Pyotr to ask her the next morning whether she gave him the three thousand. He does not actually explain the source of the money.

Dmitri loads one of the pistols, studies the bullet, and remarks that a man intending to put it into his brain might naturally want to look at it first. He then writes a note reading, "I punish myself for my whole life, my whole life I punish!" Pyotr becomes alarmed about possible suicide, but Dmitri says he wants to live and speaks instead of "stepping aside" so that Grushenka and the man she loves may pass on with his blessing. His words remain unstable and contradictory: he praises life and creation but also says he must kill "one noxious insect," without identifying the target.

At Plotnikov's, Dmitri arranges another extravagant shipment to Mokroe resembling his earlier spree. The shopkeepers remember that on the previous occasion he also carried a bundle of hundred-rouble notes, while town gossip claimed he spent three thousand roubles in one night and the following day. Pyotr Ilyitch reduces the new order from roughly four hundred to three hundred roubles, which Dmitri pays in cash. The driver Andrey is already waiting with a three-horse cart, and Dmitri promises him fifty roubles if they can nearly catch Timofey's carriage.

Before Dmitri departs, Fenya runs to the cart, kneels, and begs him not to kill Grushenka or the officer. Pyotr Ilyitch, now understanding why Dmitri is going to Mokroe, demands the pistols, but Dmitri says he will throw them into a pond on the road. He assures Fenya that he will not hurt anyone again, asks forgiveness for attacking her, and leaves at full speed.

Pyotr Ilyitch initially dismisses the situation and goes to the Metropolis to play billiards. There he tells others that Dmitri has suddenly obtained about three thousand roubles and gone to Mokroe. The listeners immediately question where the money came from and raise the possibility that Dmitri robbed his father, recalling his public threats against Fyodor Pavlovitch. Pyotr says nothing about Dmitri's blood-stained appearance. Increasingly uneasy, he leaves the tavern. He considers going to Fyodor Pavlovitch's house but instead remembers that Fenya can explain what happened. The chapter ends with Pyotr Ilyitch at Grushenka's gate, repeatedly knocking to wake the household so that he can question her.

Dmitri races toward Mokroe with Andrey, intending to see Grushenka with her former lover and then remove himself from her life. He is not jealous of this particular rival because he regards the man as Grushenka's first and rightful love. At the same time, Dmitri remains tormented by what he has left behind. He carries the note in which he sentenced himself to punishment, has a loaded pistol, and has resolved to kill himself at dawn. For a moment on the road he even considers shooting himself immediately, but the impulse passes as his attention returns to Grushenka.

When Andrey says that Fenya begged him not to let Dmitri harm Grushenka or anyone else, Dmitri answers with the image of a driver who must not run people down and says that a person who has ruined another life should punish himself and go away. Their conversation turns to hell, forgiveness, and God's judgment. Dmitri asks Andrey to forgive him on behalf of everyone and prays that God will receive him despite his wrongdoing, while allowing him a few final hours to love Grushenka and say farewell.

At Mokroe, Trifon Borissovitch tells Dmitri that Grushenka is at the Plastunovs' inn with a Polish gentleman, another Pole, Kalganov, and Maximov. The gathering is not the grand feast Dmitri imagined. Dmitri nevertheless orders musicians, village girls, wine, food, and another lavish celebration, openly displaying his roll of banknotes. He offers Andrey a large gratuity, but Andrey accepts only five roubles beyond the fare.

Dmitri asks Trifon to let him observe the company without being seen. From a dark adjoining room he sees Grushenka beside Kalganov, with Maximov and the two Polish men nearby. Unable to remain hidden, Dmitri leaves the pistol case behind and enters the blue room. Grushenka is the first to notice him and cries out in surprise.

Dmitri enters the blue room and asks to remain only until morning, speaking of his last night and of stepping aside for Grushenka. Grushenka is initially uneasy but, once convinced that he will not make a scene, insists that he stay. Dmitri bursts into tears, then becomes almost childishly happy when she treats him kindly. He drinks champagne but is not yet drunk, and his attention fixes on Grushenka's apparent forgiveness rather than on rivalry with the Polish man she came to meet.

Conversation turns to Maximov's stories and then to Poland. Dmitri proposes a toast to Poland, but a later toast to Russia produces a quarrel when the Polish men refuse it except on their own historical terms. Grushenka stops the argument. The group then begins a game of faro. Dmitri quickly loses two hundred roubles while Maximov's small bets keep winning. When Kalganov abruptly stops Dmitri from risking more money, the Polish men take offense.

Dmitri privately offers Grushenka's former lover three thousand roubles to leave permanently with Pan Vrublevsky. He cannot actually pay the full amount at once, however, and offers seven hundred immediately with the remainder to follow in town the next day. The Pole rejects the proposal and spits on the floor. Back in the blue room, he announces the attempted payment to Grushenka. She is furious with Dmitri for treating her as something that can be bought, but she is even more shaken by the man she waited five years to see. She concludes that he has returned because he heard she had money and says that the man before her is nothing like the person she remembered.

The confrontation then exposes the card game. Trifon Borissovitch, not the Poles, accuses them of substituting a marked pack for the unopened cards he supplied, and Kalganov says he twice saw a card changed. When Pan Vrublevsky insults Grushenka, Dmitri physically carries him into the adjoining room. The other Pole also withdraws there, and the two lock the door from inside. Grushenka approves of their removal, ending the chapter with her former lover discredited in her eyes.

The Mokroe gathering turns into the lavish celebration Dmitri had ordered. Grushenka calls for wine, musicians, dancing, and an open feast, while peasants and village women crowd in. Dmitri distributes food and drink freely, and Trifon Borissovitch stays close to prevent him from giving away still more money. Grushenka repeatedly sends Dmitri into the festivities and then summons him back, watching him closely even while both try to act merry.

In one of their conversations, Dmitri tells Grushenka that he left an old man badly injured and would give ten years of his life to know that the man would recover. Grushenka also knows that Dmitri intended to shoot himself the next day. Later, alone on the balcony, Dmitri again considers suicide, but his new hope with Grushenka makes death harder to accept. He prays that the man he struck at the fence is alive and thinks that, if so, he could still repay the money he stole from Katerina Ivanovna and remove that shame.

Grushenka then confesses privately that seeing her former lover again destroyed the image she had preserved for five years. She tells Dmitri that she loves him, asks whether he forgives her for tormenting him, and says his arrival made everything bright. Dmitri declares his love in return. Grushenka imagines a future in which they live honestly, repay Katerina, work the land, and even go to Siberia if necessary. She also refuses sexual intimacy there at the inn, telling Dmitri that their future must be honorable and that he should take her away from the setting.

After more champagne, both become drunk. Grushenka talks of Alyosha, prayer, forgiveness, and the little onion, tries to dance, then becomes too weak to continue. Dmitri carries her behind the curtain to rest. Their conversation about leaving together is interrupted by the arrival of officials. Dmitri recognizes police captain Mihail Makarovitch, police inspector Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, the deputy prosecutor, and the investigating lawyer among the men in the room. He immediately connects their arrival with the old man's blood, but the investigating lawyer formally informs him that he is charged with the murder of his father, Fyodor Pavlovitch.

Pyotr Ilyitch Perhotin reaches the widow Morozov's house and questions Fenya about Dmitri's movements. Fenya tells him that Dmitri took the brass pestle when he went looking for Grushenka and returned without it, with blood on his hands. She exaggerates the amount of blood as dripping from him, a detail the narrator explicitly attributes to her frightened imagination. Fenya also reports Dmitri's statement that the blood was human and that he had just killed someone. Pyotr himself had seen Dmitri's bloody hands, so the new information deepens his suspicion.

Pyotr considers going directly to Fyodor Pavlovitch's house but fears creating a scandal if nothing has happened. Instead he decides to test Dmitri's claim about the sudden money by visiting Madame Hohlakov. He reasons that if she confirms giving Dmitri three thousand roubles, he can go home; if she denies it, he will go to the police captain. Although the late visit to a fashionable woman is itself potentially scandalous, his growing uneasiness drives him to insist on seeing her.

Madame Hohlakov initially refuses the unexpected caller but admits him after he stresses the importance of his business. When Pyotr explains that Dmitri had only ten roubles earlier in the evening, later appeared with two or three thousand roubles and blood on him, and claimed that she had supplied the money for the gold mines, Madame Hohlakov emphatically denies giving him anything. She immediately concludes that Dmitri must have killed his father. Pyotr then relates what he learned from Fenya, including the pestle.

Pyotr decides to go straight to the police captain. At his request, Madame Hohlakov writes and signs a statement swearing that she did not give Dmitri three thousand roubles. She urges Pyotr to save Fyodor Pavlovitch and becomes impressed by his practical handling of the matter. The narrator closes by explaining that this eccentric encounter later became the foundation of Pyotr Ilyitch's official career.

Police captain Mihail Makarovitch Makarov is at home with guests when the murder investigation begins. The deputy prosecutor Ippolit Kirillovitch and district doctor Varvinsky are playing whist, while investigating lawyer Nikolay Parfenovitch Nelyudov is visiting the household. Pyotr Ilyitch arrives expecting to report his suspicions, only to discover that the authorities already know Fyodor Pavlovitch is dead. Marya Kondratyevna, not Marfa Ignatyevna, reached the police captain only about five minutes before him with the alarm.

The chapter reconstructs the discovery. Marfa wakes after hearing the scream that precedes Smerdyakov's epileptic attacks and realizes Grigory is missing. She hears groaning in the garden, finds Grigory badly wounded after he has crawled away from the fence, and then sees Fyodor Pavlovitch lying motionless and blood-soaked through the open bedroom window. Marfa runs to Marya Kondratyevna's house for help. Marya, her mother, and Foma carry Grigory to the lodge, find Smerdyakov in violent convulsions, and then see that both Fyodor Pavlovitch's window and garden door are open. Grigory tells them to alert the police, and Marya Kondratyevna goes to the police captain.

At Fyodor Pavlovitch's house the officials confirm that he is dead with his skull battered. A brass pestle is found conspicuously on the garden path and is considered the likely weapon connected with the attack on Grigory and potentially the killing, though the chapter does not establish that conclusion as absolute fact. Near the bed they find the torn, empty envelope labeled as a three-thousand-rouble present for Grushenka and the pink ribbon that had bound it.

Pyotr Ilyitch's testimony about Dmitri's loaded pistols, written self-punishment note, and stated intention to shoot himself before dawn creates additional urgency. Because the on-site inquiry and formalities take time, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch Schmertsov is sent ahead to Mokroe to watch Dmitri without alarming him, arrange witnesses, and prepare for the arrest. He quietly informs Trifon Borissovitch, explaining the landlord's changed behavior toward Dmitri during the celebration.

Only after four in the morning do the police captain, prosecutor, and investigating lawyer leave for Mokroe. Varvinsky remains behind for the post-mortem and to observe Smerdyakov, whose prolonged epileptic condition interests him medically. The doctor tells the departing officials that he does not expect Smerdyakov to survive the night.

Dmitri immediately denies murdering Fyodor Pavlovitch while admitting that he had wanted to kill him. Grushenka rushes forward and blames herself for driving both Dmitri and Fyodor Pavlovitch into the conflict. Mihail Makarovitch angrily calls her the chief culprit, but the prosecutor and Nikolay Parfenovitch stop him and insist on regular procedure. Dmitri defends Grushenka and is separated from her before the formal interrogation begins.

The officials first tell Dmitri that Grigory is alive and expected to recover. Dmitri is overwhelmed with relief, thanks God, and says the blood that had weighed on his conscience has been removed because he is no longer responsible for the old servant's death. He explains that Grigory had cared for him when he was a neglected child. This news transforms Dmitri's mood and makes him initially confident that the accusation against him can quickly be cleared up.

Questioned about his father, Dmitri openly admits his past hatred, his public threats, the earlier assault, and his repeated desire to kill Fyodor Pavlovitch. He identifies both jealousy and money as motives for that hatred. On the financial dispute, he says he believed Fyodor Pavlovitch owed him far more than three thousand roubles but had reduced his immediate claim to three thousand. He further admits that he regarded the sealed three-thousand-rouble bundle intended for Grushenka as money stolen from him and therefore as his own property. The investigators recognize the significance of that admission.

Dmitri insists that, despite his misconduct, he considers himself a man of honor. He refuses to call his present feeling simple repentance, saying instead that he wishes he had not hated his father so much. The interrogation is interrupted when Grushenka breaks from the adjoining room and rushes toward him. The officials prevent them from reaching one another, and both become distraught.

Mihail Makarovitch later returns after personally taking Grushenka downstairs and placing her in the care of the landlord's daughters with Maximov nearby. He withdraws his earlier hostility toward her, calling her good-hearted and assuring Dmitri that she understands she must not interfere with the inquiry. Reassured about both Grigory and Grushenka, Dmitri regains composure and agrees to continue. The chapter ends not with optimism about his case, but with the officials recognizing that the examination has entered a new phase.

The interrogation resumes with Nikolay Parfenovitch praising Dmitri's willingness to answer and Dmitri again asking that the inquiry proceed on the basis of mutual confidence. The officials return first to the ten roubles he borrowed from Pyotr Ilyitch on the security of his pistols, then ask for a chronological account of the preceding two days. Dmitri agrees, but objects repeatedly to questions he considers trivial and warns that excessive detail will confuse rather than clarify his story.

Dmitri recounts his failed attempt to obtain three thousand roubles from Samsonov, the sale of his watch for six roubles to finance the trip to Lyagavy, the fruitless journey, his jealous surveillance of Grushenka, Smerdyakov's role as an informant, and his visit to Madame Hohlakov. The investigators pay close attention to facts showing how little money he had before the murder. They also record statements Dmitri makes against his own interest, including that after Madame Hohlakov refused him he thought he would get three thousand roubles even if he had to murder someone, and that he might have killed Fenya if he had had time.

When Dmitri reaches the point where he took the brass pestle, Nikolay Parfenovitch produces the weapon. Asked why he armed himself, Dmitri first says he had no definite purpose, then gives evasive explanations about dogs and darkness. In exasperation he sarcastically dictates that he took the pestle in order to kill Fyodor Pavlovitch by striking him on the head. The prosecutor explicitly recognizes this as an angry statement rather than a literal confession, but Dmitri becomes increasingly hostile to the questioning.

Dmitri compares the inquiry to a recurring nightmare in which a pursuer knows exactly where he is hiding but prolongs the hunt to increase his fear. He says the investigators are treating him in the same way. After another outburst about honor and distrust, he nevertheless agrees to continue. The chapter ends before he gives the detailed account of what happened at Fyodor Pavlovitch's window and in the garden.

Dmitri continues with the events in Fyodor Pavlovitch's garden. He describes going to the window, giving the signal that meant Grushenka had arrived, seeing his father respond, and pulling out the pestle as his hatred flared. He insists that he did not enter the house or strike Fyodor Pavlovitch. Instead, he says that some combination of tears, his mother's prayer, or a good angel overcame the impulse and that he ran toward the fence, where Grigory caught him.

The investigators then disclose that the garden door was found open. Dmitri is stunned because he insists it was closed throughout the time he was in the garden. He explains the secret signals known to Fyodor Pavlovitch, Smerdyakov, and himself, including the signal he used at the window. When the prosecutor suggests that Smerdyakov could have used those signals to commit the murder, Dmitri initially rejects the theory. Although he admits that Smerdyakov has been in his thoughts from the beginning, he describes him as too cowardly, weak, and uninterested in money to be the murderer. The officials tell Dmitri that Smerdyakov is suffering repeated severe epileptic seizures and may not survive the night.

Dmitri next gives a detailed account of the attack on Grigory. At this stage of the interrogation he explicitly says that, while sitting astride the fence with the pestle in his hand, he struck Grigory on the head after the servant caught his leg. He reenacts the motion for the investigators. He also explains that he jumped back down, examined Grigory, and wiped his face with a handkerchief, although he cannot clearly explain why. The narrator notes that Dmitri fails to mention his remembered words of pity, allowing the prosecutor to interpret the return as an attempt to determine whether the only witness was dead.

Dmitri recounts his plan to step aside for Grushenka's former lover and shoot himself at five in the morning. He produces the self-punishment note he wrote at Pyotr Ilyitch's. The questioning then turns to the unexplained money. Dmitri admits that he had not gone home and refuses to say where the sudden cash came from, stating that the truth would expose him to a disgrace he considers worse than being accused of murdering and robbing his father.

The officials count everything remaining in Dmitri's possession: eight hundred thirty-six roubles and forty copecks. Their reconstruction suggests that he had roughly fifteen hundred roubles when he began spending at Mokroe, although other witnesses have claimed much more. Nikolay Parfenovitch then announces that Dmitri and his clothing must be thoroughly searched. Dmitri consents, and the chapter ends with the order that he undress behind the curtain.

The search becomes an acute humiliation for Dmitri. The investigators examine his coat, trousers, waistcoat, cap, shirt, and socks in front of peasant witnesses. They find extensive dried blood on his outer clothing and blood on the turned-in cuff of his shirt. They also inspect seams and the cap for hidden money, openly discussing a prior case in which the copying clerk Gridyenko concealed banknotes in a cap. Dmitri is required to strip further and is deeply ashamed at standing nearly naked before fully dressed observers.

His own clothing is retained as material evidence because of the bloodstains. Nikolay Parfenovitch returns with clean clothing supplied by Kalganov. Dmitri initially refuses it, then dresses after being told his own clothes cannot be returned. The borrowed coat is too tight, and the entire episode intensifies his sense that the officials regard him as a thief rather than as a man of honor.

Back in the examination room, Dmitri again insists that if he had murdered his father he could not have behaved as he has or remained alive to face the inquiry. The prosecutor then reveals Grigory's formal testimony: before seeing Dmitri running through the garden, Grigory says he saw the garden door standing wide open. Dmitri vehemently denies this and calls the testimony false or hallucinatory.

Nikolay Parfenovitch next produces the torn, empty envelope that had contained the three thousand roubles intended for Grushenka. Seeing it, Dmitri abruptly accuses Smerdyakov of both murder and robbery, arguing that only Smerdyakov knew where the envelope was kept and knew the signals. The investigators immediately expose a problem in Dmitri's claim: earlier he himself said the envelope was under Fyodor Pavlovitch's pillow. Dmitri retreats from that statement, saying it was only a guess and that Smerdyakov had never actually told him the hiding place.

The prosecutor further points out that if the garden door was already open, the murderer would not have needed to use the secret signal to gain entry. Faced with the open-door evidence, the empty envelope, and his own unexplained possession of money, Dmitri concludes that he must reveal the secret he has been withholding about the source of the cash.

Dmitri reveals that the money was not taken from Fyodor Pavlovitch. A month earlier Katerina Ivanovna entrusted him with three thousand roubles to send to relatives in Moscow. Dmitri instead took the money to Mokroe with Grushenka. He now claims that he spent only fifteen hundred roubles during that first spree, despite repeatedly telling others that he had spent all three thousand. Before becoming drunk, he says, he sewed the remaining fifteen hundred roubles into a small rag packet and wore it around his neck for the next month.

The secret's shame, in Dmitri's own moral accounting, is not simply that he misused Katerina's money. He says he deliberately reserved half as an escape fund in case Grushenka suddenly chose him and asked him to take her away from Fyodor Pavlovitch. Because he could still return the saved half to Katerina, he told himself each day that he was a scoundrel but not yet a thief. Only the previous evening, after deciding that he would kill himself at dawn, did he tear the packet from his neck and begin spending the money. In his own judgment, that act destroyed his last possibility of returning half and made him a thief.

The prosecutor asks why Dmitri did not simply return the fifteen hundred and ask Katerina to lend him money legitimately. Dmitri reacts with horror because he had in fact considered doing exactly that: confess his betrayal to Katerina and then ask her to finance his flight with Grushenka. He regards that contemplated request as even more degrading. The officials record the admission because it shows that he was still searching for money shortly before the murder.

The investigators then test whether Dmitri's account can be corroborated. He admits that he told no one about the saved fifteen hundred. He cannot produce the rag packet because he says he tore it off in the marketplace and discarded it. Pressed on the material, he eventually says he probably made it from an old piece of his landlady's calico cap, but he is uncertain. The lack of any witness to the packet and his repeated public claims of having spent three thousand make the officials openly skeptical, and Dmitri falls into exhausted despair.

Near the end Dmitri asks what will happen to Grushenka, not Katerina Ivanovna. The prosecutor assures him that the authorities currently have no grounds to proceed against her. Relieved, Dmitri thanks them and agrees to continue. Before the witness examination begins, the exhausted officials pause for tea. Dmitri initially refuses it, then drinks greedily as he feels himself close to physical collapse.

The witness examination centers on whether Dmitri possessed and spent three thousand roubles or only fifteen hundred. Trifon Borissovitch firmly says that the first Mokroe spree involved at least three thousand roubles and that on the current night Dmitri again announced that he had brought three thousand. Trifon also recalls Dmitri saying that he would leave his "sixth thousand" at Mokroe. The peasants Stepan and Semyon, the driver Andrey, and Kalganov are questioned about these statements. Andrey also repeats Dmitri's conversation on the road about judgment, heaven, hell, and forgiveness.

Kalganov reluctantly confirms hearing the reference to the "sixth" thousand. He also states that the Polish men cheated at cards and describes the change in Grushenka's relationship with Dmitri after the Poles were expelled. The Polish former lover is now identified as Mussyalovitch, a retired twelfth-class official who had served as a veterinary surgeon in Siberia; Pan Vrublevsky is identified as an uncertificated dentist.

Mussyalovitch and Vrublevsky testify that Dmitri offered three thousand roubles to make Mussyalovitch give up Grushenka, with seven hundred to be paid immediately and the remaining two thousand three hundred the next day in town. Because Dmitri had claimed to possess only fifteen hundred, the prosecution treats this as evidence that he may have hidden additional money elsewhere. Dmitri counters that he intended to satisfy the balance not with cash but by assigning his supposed rights in Tchermashnya.

Maximov gives an obviously inflated estimate that the bundle of notes he saw in Dmitri's hand contained twenty thousand roubles. Grushenka then testifies more carefully. She says Dmitri repeatedly told her and others that he had spent three thousand at the first Mokroe spree, that she knew the original money came from Katerina Ivanovna, and that she never heard him say he had saved half. She also says he often claimed to have no money and expected to obtain some from his father. Although Dmitri had repeatedly threatened his father in anger, Grushenka says she never believed he would kill him because she trusted his noble heart.

Dmitri is permitted to tell Grushenka directly that he did not murder his father. She crosses herself and says she believes him. Asked about the present night's money, she says she heard Dmitri tell several people that he had three thousand, but she understood his remark about having "stolen" money from Katerina to refer to the money squandered a month earlier, not to new money obtained that night.

After the witnesses leave, Dmitri collapses into sleep while the officials revise the protocol. He dreams of a burned-out village, impoverished women, and a crying infant whose bare arms are blue with cold. Overcome by pity, he longs to end the suffering of the child and the women and hears Grushenka's voice promising to stay with him. He wakes with a renewed desire to live. Discovering that someone placed a pillow under his head while he slept moves him deeply, and he agrees to hear and sign the protocol, telling the officials that he has had a good dream.

After Dmitri signs the protocol, Nikolay Parfenovitch reads the formal committal ordering that he be detained and transferred to prison in town. Dmitri accepts that the officials have little alternative, but he interprets the accusation and public disgrace as a blow of fate that may force him toward moral change. He says he wants to suffer and perhaps be purified through suffering. At the same time, he again insists that he did not kill his father and says he will fight the charge to the end.

Dmitri offers his hand in farewell to everyone in the room. Nikolay Parfenovitch, standing nearest, nervously puts his hands behind his back and explains that the preliminary inquiry is not finished. He nevertheless tells Dmitri that he has always regarded him as more unfortunate than guilty and as a man of honor carried too far by his passions.

Grushenka is brought in for a brief farewell under supervision. She says she belongs to Dmitri, will follow him wherever he is sent, and believes him guiltless even though he has brought ruin on himself. Dmitri asks her forgiveness for ruining her life through his love. He is then taken outside under guard.

At the steps, Dmitri asks the gathered people for forgiveness, and two or three voices answer by asking his forgiveness in return. Trifon Borissovitch does not respond to Dmitri's farewell. Departure is delayed while a second cart is prepared and a peasant argues that the driving assignment belongs to Akim. Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, irritated by the delay and by his assignment, treats Dmitri with pronounced surliness. Dmitri notices how different the officer now appears from the man he had previously entertained in taverns.

Just before the cart leaves, Kalganov runs out bareheaded and silently offers Dmitri his hand. Dmitri thanks him for his generosity, and they part as the cart starts moving. Only after Dmitri has gone does the narration reveal Kalganov's state of mind: he sits down and cries, believing almost without doubt that Dmitri is guilty and despairing over what human beings can become.

At the beginning of November, the narrative turns to Kolya Krassotkin and his mother, Anna Fyodorovna, the thirty-two-year-old widow of a former provincial secretary. Since her husband died fourteen years earlier, Anna Fyodorovna has devoted herself to raising Kolya and worries constantly about his health, safety, school life, and affection for her. Kolya is strong-willed, audacious, academically capable, vain, and fond of conspicuous pranks, but he is also a good comrade and generally knows how far he can go without crossing the final boundary into serious school discipline.

During the summer holidays, while staying near a railway station with relatives, Kolya accepts a two-rouble bet that he can lie between the rails while the eleven o'clock train passes over him at full speed. He carries out the stunt and survives, but actually loses consciousness under the train before pretending afterward that he had only been trying to frighten the other boys. The incident gives him a reputation as a desperate character, causes a brief nervous fever, and later reaches his school.

Teacher Dardanelov, a middle-aged bachelor who has long loved Anna Fyodorovna and has unsuccessfully proposed marriage to her, intervenes so that the railway incident is not formally punished at school. When Anna learns what Kolya did, she suffers repeated hysterical attacks. Alarmed by her condition, Kolya promises on his honor and by his father's memory never to repeat such dangerous pranks. Their mutual emotional breakdown briefly brings them closer, and afterward Kolya becomes somewhat more restrained and more respectful when speaking of Dardanelov, whose feelings for his mother he understands.

Kolya remains highly conscious of his reputation for intelligence. He has privately read books from his father's bookcase and has impressed his classmates with a question about who founded Troy that Dardanelov cannot answer precisely. Six weeks after the railway stunt, Kolya becomes involved in another incident that reaches the Justice of the Peace, though the narrator postpones that story.

The chapter also introduces Perezvon, a shaggy, one-eyed dog Kolya picked up about a month earlier and has secretly trained to perform tricks. The closing paragraph connects Kolya directly with the earlier schoolboy episode: Krassotkin is the boy whom Ilusha, Captain Snegiryov's son, stabbed in the leg with a penknife.

On a Sunday morning in November, Kolya is left in charge of the Krassotkin house while the adults are away. Anna Fyodorovna and the doctor's wife who rents rooms from her have gone to help the doctor's wife's servant Katerina, whose unexpected labor led them to take her to a midwife's establishment. The Krassotkins' servant Agafya is at the market, leaving Kolya responsible for the doctor's wife's two children, eight-year-old Nastya and seven-year-old Kostya.

Kolya urgently wants to leave on private business but will not simply abandon the children. He has Perezvon waiting obediently under a bench and repeatedly checks on Nastya and Kostya. When he overhears them trying to reason out how an unmarried Katerina could be having a baby, he enters and asks whether they can remain alone without becoming frightened.

To distract them, Kolya shows them a small bronze cannon that can be fired with real gunpowder and shot. Their interest in the cannon temporarily replaces their anxiety, but when Kolya again asks whether he can leave, both children say they will cry. He therefore stays and has Perezvon perform his tricks, including pretending to be dead.

Agafya finally returns from the market. After trading insults with her in a familiar and good-humored manner, Kolya tries to make her swear that she will watch the children. Agafya refuses the oath but says she will care for and feed them. Satisfied, Kolya says goodbye to Nastya and Kostya and leaves on his urgent business with Perezvon. The dog is not left behind.

Kolya leaves home with Perezvon and meets Smurov, who has been waiting for him secretly because his parents forbid him to associate with the supposedly reckless Krassotkin. Smurov reports that Ilusha is very ill, can barely stand, and is being treated by Doctor Herzenstube. The boys who once fought with Ilusha now visit him regularly, and Captain Snegiryov is trying to comfort his son with a new mastiff puppy. Smurov wishes Perezvon could simply be passed off as the lost Zhutchka, but Kolya rejects lying even for a good purpose.

Kolya asks about Alyosha's role with the boys and initially dismisses the reconciliation around Ilusha as sentimentality. Smurov corrects him, saying the boys have gone largely of their own accord and that Ilusha still asks about Kolya. Kolya maintains that he will visit for his own reasons and says he wants first to test his own theory about Alyosha.

As they cross the Sunday market, Kolya repeatedly provokes conversations to display his wit and independence. He guesses a peasant's name as Matvey and then explains to Smurov why he falsely claimed that schoolboys are whipped: he says he wanted to satisfy the peasant's expectations. He teases a market woman named Marya and then deliberately confuses an angry, smallpox-marked young man with invented or irrelevant questions about Trifon Nikititch and Sabaneyev. The surrounding women eventually redirect the argument toward a real person named Alexey Ivanitch Tchizhov, leaving the young man more confused.

Kolya also lectures Smurov on habit, peasants, dogs, and society. He announces that he is a Socialist and gives Smurov a crude definition involving equality, common property, religion, law, and marriage. His remarks repeatedly reveal ideas borrowed from elsewhere alongside his conviction that he can judge people and social arrangements for himself.

Near Captain Snegiryov's lodging, Kolya stops rather than entering immediately. He sends Smurov ahead to ask Alyosha to come outside, saying he wants to inspect the situation first before going in.

Waiting outside the Snegiryovs' lodging, Kolya is intensely concerned with the impression he will make on Alyosha. He worries about his height, appearance, age, and whether Alyosha will treat him merely as a child. Alyosha, now out of his monastic cassock and dressed in ordinary clothes, comes out immediately and greets him with obvious pleasure. Kolya is gratified that Alyosha treats him seriously.

Kolya explains his earlier relationship with Ilusha. After seeing the smaller boy bullied at school, he defended him and took him under his protection. Ilusha became deeply attached to him, but Kolya responded to what he considered excessive tenderness by deliberately becoming colder in an effort to form the younger boy's character.

Ilusha later confessed that Smerdyakov had taught him to put a pin in bread and feed it to the hungry dog Zhutchka. Ilusha saw the dog run away squealing and became consumed by remorse. Kolya decided to punish him by temporarily breaking off their friendship. When Ilusha reacted defiantly, Kolya prolonged the estrangement. Soon afterward Captain Snegiryov's public humiliation intensified Ilusha's anger, the other boys began attacking him again, and Ilusha eventually stabbed Kolya in the thigh with a penknife. Kolya did not report him and now regrets failing to reconcile with him once Ilusha became ill.

Alyosha tells Kolya that Ilusha repeatedly speaks about Zhutchka while feverish and believes his illness is God's punishment for killing the dog. Alyosha says the family and boys have searched unsuccessfully and have hoped Kolya might somehow find it. Kolya continues to conceal what he knows, saying only that Perezvon is not Zhutchka and hinting that something will soon be revealed.

The conversation then turns to Kolya's insecurity about being fourteen and to gossip that he recently played robbers with younger children. When Alyosha says children's games can be an early form of artistic performance, Kolya is surprised and pleased by the seriousness with which he is treated. He says he came partly to learn from Alyosha, and Alyosha replies that he can learn from Kolya as well.

They enter with a plan: Perezvon will remain outside the room pretending to be dead until Kolya gives the signal, allowing Kolya to stage the surprise he has prepared for Ilusha.

Ilusha has been confined to bed for the last two weeks and has become dangerously weak. Alyosha has quietly reconciled the boys who once tormented him and brought them to visit one at a time, though they prefer to deny that he arranged it. Kolya alone has stayed away, and his absence weighs heavily on Ilusha because Kolya had been his closest friend and protector. Captain Snegiryov has stopped drinking and is nearly frantic with fear over his son's condition. Katerina Ivanovna has supplied the family with money, including the two hundred roubles the captain once rejected, and has arranged continuing medical care.

When Kolya enters, he is shocked by Ilusha's wasted appearance and nearly loses his composure. He first speaks as though Zhutchka must be dead, despite Alyosha's attempts to stop him. Then he calls Perezvon into the room. Ilusha immediately recognizes the dog as Zhutchka. Kolya confirms it by pointing to the blind eye and torn ear and explains that he found the dog, hid it, and spent the intervening time training it before bringing it back. He reasons that Zhutchka must have spat out the pinned bread and survived. The revelation gives Ilusha intense joy, although Alyosha alone appears to recognize that such a violent emotional shock may also be dangerous for the sick boy.

Perezvon performs tricks and then lies beside Ilusha, who embraces the dog. Kolya next presents Ilusha with the small bronze cannon he has been carrying. After the cannon is fired with a small charge of powder, Ilusha's mother begs to have it. Ilusha immediately asks Kolya's permission to give it to her, and Kolya agrees.

Kolya then boasts about homemade gunpowder, the railway stunt, and the incident that brought him before the Justice of the Peace. He explains that he encouraged a young errand-boy to test whether a cart wheel would break a goose's neck while it ate spilled oats. The goose is killed, the case reaches the justice, and Kolya defends himself by saying he merely proposed a hypothetical question while the other youth moved the cart.

The conversation shifts to Kolya's intellectual reputation. When the question of Troy comes up, the previously quiet Kartashov correctly names Teucer, Dardanus, Ilius, and Tros. Kolya responds by embarrassing him over what it means to found a city and then dismisses universal history as a record of human follies. He also attacks classical education as a means of stupefying students, although he is himself first in Latin. Alyosha disagrees and asks who taught him these ideas, prompting Kolya to admit that teacher Kolbasnikov has expressed at least part of the argument.

The chapter ends when the expensive Moscow doctor arranged by Katerina Ivanovna arrives at the Snegiryovs' home. He has come to town primarily for another purpose but has been asked to examine Ilusha as well. Kolya promises Ilusha that he will wait outside and return after the examination.

While the Moscow doctor examines Ilusha, Kolya and Alyosha wait outside and continue getting acquainted. Kolya begins by attacking medicine, then turns to religion. He calls Alyosha a mystic and says that contact with real life will cure him. Asked whether he believes in God, Kolya describes God as a hypothesis needed for the order of the universe and repeats the idea that if God did not exist He would have to be invented.

Kolya tries repeatedly to demonstrate intellectual independence. He invokes Voltaire, announces that he is an incurable Socialist, argues that Christianity has served the rich and powerful, and claims that Christ would side with revolutionaries if alive in the present. Alyosha quickly recognizes that these are not simply Kolya's original conclusions. Kolya admits that he has talked with Rakitin and has absorbed statements attributed to Byelinsky, despite having read little of the writers and works he invokes. He similarly boasts about revolutionary ideas, America, and the secret police, while privately worrying that Alyosha will discover how limited his actual reading is.

When Alyosha asks whether Kolya has read Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Kolya admits that he has not, despite previously discussing Tatyana. The exchange exposes the gap between his confidence and his knowledge. Kolya then abruptly asks whether Alyosha despises him. Alyosha says he does not, but regrets seeing a promising nature distorted so early by crude borrowed ideas.

Kolya admits that he is extremely sensitive to ridicule and often imagines that everyone is laughing at him. Alyosha identifies fear of appearing ridiculous as a broader form of vanity and tells Kolya not to become like everyone else, even if he must stand alone. He also praises Kolya's willingness to admit foolish or bad behavior rather than conceal it.

The conversation becomes openly affectionate. Kolya admits that he has long wanted Alyosha's approval and had imagined they would either become permanent friends or permanent enemies. Alyosha tells him that he may be very unhappy in life but will still bless life as a whole. Kolya responds enthusiastically and says he has loved and dreamed of Alyosha before meeting him.

The chapter ends when the doctor reappears from the examination. Kolya immediately turns back to Ilusha's condition and asks what the doctor's expression means. The doctor does not first arrive in this chapter; his arrival occurred at the end of the preceding unit.

The Moscow doctor finishes examining Ilusha and gives Captain Snegiryov little hope, telling him to be prepared for anything. When the desperate captain asks whether anything can still save his son, the doctor suggests that Ilusha might benefit from being sent immediately to Syracuse, while other members of the family should later seek treatment in the Caucasus and Paris. The recommendations are plainly beyond the family's means, and the captain responds by gesturing helplessly at their poverty.

Kolya deliberately insults the doctor by calling him an apothecary and threatening that Perezvon may bite him. Alyosha sharply orders Kolya to stop, and Kolya obeys, declaring that Alyosha is the one person who can command him. The doctor leaves in anger.

Back at Ilusha's bedside, the dying boy embraces his father and Kolya together. He tells his father that after his death he should choose another good boy, call him Ilusha, and love him, but asks that he never forget his real son. He asks to be buried by the large stone where he and his father used to walk and says that his father, Kolya, and Perezvon should visit him there. Captain Snegiryov, Kolya, Nina, and Ilusha's mother are overcome by grief.

Kolya leaves because his mother expects him for dinner, promising to return afterward for the rest of the day and evening. In the passage he breaks down and tells Alyosha that he bitterly regrets not coming sooner. Captain Snegiryov then rushes out and rejects Ilusha's request that he find another boy, beginning the biblical line, "If I forget thee, Jerusalem." After Kolya reaches the street, Alyosha explains that the phrase means refusing to let anything replace what is most precious. Kolya again makes Alyosha promise to return that evening and leaves with Perezvon.

Two months after Dmitri's arrest, Alyosha goes to Grushenka at the widow Morozov's house in response to an urgent message. Grushenka has recently recovered from a severe illness that left her unconscious for a week and confined her for nearly five weeks. Alyosha sees a marked change in her: she is thinner and more serious, with a new firmness and humility, though her jealousy of Katerina Ivanovna remains intense. Maximov has lived with Grushenka since returning from Mokroe because he had nowhere else to go, and she has taken responsibility for him. Her former protector Samsonov is meanwhile dying and has ordered that Grushenka no longer be admitted to him, though she continues to inquire about his condition.

Grushenka has just quarreled with Dmitri in prison. He suddenly became jealous of Mussyalovitch, even though he had previously known that Grushenka sometimes helped the impoverished Pole and Pan Vrublevsky. The two men have repeatedly begged her for increasingly small loans, and she now sends them modest sums. Grushenka interprets Dmitri's jealousy as partly deliberate, a way to accuse her before praising Katerina Ivanovna and shifting blame onto Grushenka. Alyosha insists that Dmitri does not love Katerina and loves Grushenka above everyone else.

The trial is the more serious source of Grushenka's fear. Alyosha explains that the defense counsel Fetyukovitch has come from Petersburg and that Katerina Ivanovna paid for a Moscow doctor to support an argument that Dmitri may have been mentally deranged. Grushenka insists Dmitri did not kill Fyodor Pavlovitch and worries about the mass of evidence against him, especially Grigory's persistent statement that the garden door was open.

Grushenka then asks Alyosha to explain Dmitri's repeated talk about the suffering "babe" and his claim that he must go to Siberia even though he is not a murderer. She assumes at first that Rakitin has influenced him, but then accidentally reveals that Ivan has secretly visited Dmitri twice, including once during the previous week. Dmitri had specifically ordered her not to tell Alyosha or anyone else. Grushenka says the brothers now share a secret that has changed Dmitri's behavior and fears that Ivan, Dmitri, and Katerina have planned for Dmitri to abandon her.

Alyosha promises that if Dmitri voluntarily tells him the secret, he will say that he has promised to report it to Grushenka. He also assures her that the secret is unlikely to concern Katerina Ivanovna. Grushenka remains doubtful but is somewhat relieved simply to have spoken openly about her fears.

Alyosha next goes to Madame Hohlakov's house, intending to speak with Lise before visiting Dmitri. Madame Hohlakov has had a swollen foot for three weeks and insists on seeing him first. Her conversation ranges rapidly across the trial, her health, Lise, and the publicity surrounding the Karamazov case.

She shows Alyosha a satirical newspaper item in the Petersburg paper Gossip that portrays an unnamed middle-aged widow as offering Dmitri three thousand roubles to elope with her to the gold mines. Madame Hohlakov is certain the item refers to her and suspects Rakitin wrote it in revenge. She then explains why she expelled him from her house. Rakitin had begun visiting frequently, hinted at romantic interest, wrote a poem about her swollen foot, and quarreled with Pyotr Ilyitch Perhotin after Perhotin mocked the poem. Madame Hohlakov admits that her dramatic expulsion of Rakitin was partly theatrical.

Her attention then shifts to the legal idea of "aberration." Because Katerina Ivanovna has brought a Moscow doctor to examine Dmitri, Madame Hohlakov imagines that Dmitri can be acquitted as mentally deranged. She even proposes, inconsistently, that Grigory may have killed Fyodor Pavlovitch in an aberrant state, before deciding that it would be better for Dmitri to have committed the murder unconsciously because then he could be acquitted. Alyosha repeatedly insists that Dmitri did not kill his father.

The most urgent subject is Lise. Madame Hohlakov reveals that Ivan secretly visited Lise six days earlier, remaining only five minutes, and that she learned of the visit later from Glafira. Since then Lise has suffered repeated hysterical fits. She declared that she hated Ivan and demanded that he never be admitted again. That morning she struck the servant Yulia, then an hour later embraced and kissed Yulia's feet. She also alternated between rejecting and embracing her mother. Madame Hohlakov begs Alyosha to discover what is happening and report back to her.

As Alyosha finally leaves for Lise's room, Pyotr Ilyitch arrives to speak with Madame Hohlakov about the defense. Alyosha departs without promising that he can return, despite Madame Hohlakov's repeated demand that he do so.

Alyosha finds Lise markedly changed in only three days: pale, thinner, feverish, and intensely watchful. She says she is glad she refused to marry him, mocks his willingness to serve others, and admits that she loves him without respecting him because she feels no shame in speaking openly to him.

Lise describes a desire for disorder, destruction, humiliation, and deliberate wrongdoing. She fantasizes about setting fire to the house, being tortured by a husband, and committing murder. Alyosha treats these impulses as a destructive crisis rather than as proof that she is irredeemably evil. When Lise claims that everyone secretly loves crime, Alyosha says there is some truth in the idea that people can be attracted to wrongdoing.

She then describes a recurring dream in which devils approach her whenever she deliberately reviles God and retreat when she crosses herself. Alyosha unexpectedly tells her that he has had the same dream. This deeply affects Lise and briefly draws her toward him.

Lise next recounts reading a grotesque story alleging that a Jewish man tortured and killed a child. The narrative is something she read, not an established event in the novel. She says the account horrified her and that she nevertheless became obsessed with imagining herself watching the child's suffering while eating pineapple compote. She later told these thoughts to an unnamed visitor who laughed, agreed that the idea was 'nice,' and left after only five minutes. Alyosha says the visitor is himself ill and does not believe in people.

Her defiance collapses into an appeal for help. Lise says she wants to destroy herself, loathes everything, and asks Alyosha to weep for her. She then abruptly sends him away and secretly gives him a sealed letter addressed to Ivan Fyodorovitch, threatening to poison herself unless Alyosha delivers it immediately. Alyosha leaves without returning to Madame Hohlakov.

Once alone, Lise deliberately traps her finger in the door and slams it shut. She watches the finger blacken and bleed and repeatedly calls herself a wretch.

Late in the afternoon Alyosha reaches the prison and finds Rakitin just leaving Dmitri. Rakitin has been visiting frequently because he plans to use Dmitri's case as the basis of an article arguing that environment and social conditions explain the crime. Dmitri mocks Rakitin but also repeats materialist ideas Rakitin has been teaching him. The notion that thought and consciousness arise only from physical processes in the brain has shaken Dmitri because he fears it leaves no place for God or immortality.

Dmitri nevertheless says that imprisonment has awakened a "new man" in him. He interprets his dream of the suffering babe as a call to accept responsibility for others, including criminals and the poor. Even if sentenced to twenty years in the mines, he imagines finding humanity among other convicts, helping another damaged person recover, and preserving God underground if society rejects Him. He speaks of suffering, consciousness, and the possibility of singing a hymn to God from beneath the earth. His deepest fear is not physical punishment but losing this newly awakened self.

The conversation turns repeatedly to Ivan. Dmitri says Ivan is different from Rakitin because Ivan carries a serious idea but remains silent. Dmitri worries over Ivan's unbelief and the question of how goodness can exist without God. He also tells Alyosha that Ivan once answered the question of whether everything is lawful by saying that Fyodor Pavlovitch was a pig but that his ideas were right.

Dmitri remains anxious about the trial. He distrusts the defense lawyer, rejects the attempt to portray him as insane, fears Katerina Ivanovna will recount their humiliating financial history in court, and worries most about what imprisonment would do to Grushenka. He admits that his quarrel with her earlier that day came from jealousy and is relieved when Alyosha reports that she still loves him.

Dmitri then reveals the secret Grushenka suspected. Ivan has proposed arranging Dmitri's escape after conviction and sending him to America with Grushenka. Ivan expects the escape to cost ten thousand roubles and proposes giving Dmitri another twenty thousand for America. Dmitri is deeply divided: he cannot imagine Siberia without Grushenka, but escape would mean refusing the suffering he has begun to see as morally necessary. He asks Alyosha not to decide for him until after the verdict.

Before Alyosha leaves, Dmitri adds that Ivan's escape plan seems to show that Ivan believes him guilty. He then makes Alyosha face him and asks directly whether Alyosha himself believes he murdered Fyodor Pavlovitch. Alyosha swears that he has never believed Dmitri was the murderer. The answer gives Dmitri immediate relief and strength for the trial. His final instruction is that Alyosha should love Ivan.

On the way to Ivan, Alyosha stops at Katerina Ivanovna's house and meets Ivan as he is leaving. Katerina calls both brothers back and immediately asks what message Dmitri sent her. Alyosha says Dmitri begs her to spare both herself and him by not recounting the humiliating circumstances of their first financial encounter at the trial. Katerina reacts bitterly and says Alyosha may despise her after hearing her evidence.

Katerina then asks Ivan yet again whether Dmitri murdered Fyodor Pavlovitch. She says Ivan was the person who persuaded her that Smerdyakov was the killer and reveals that Ivan has visited Smerdyakov. Ivan abruptly leaves. Katerina tells Alyosha to follow because Ivan is ill with nervous fever and, in her view, nearly mad.

Alyosha catches Ivan in the street and gives him Lise's sealed letter. Ivan recognizes the handwriting, calls Lise a little demon, tears the letter apart without opening it, and contemptuously dismisses her. He then speaks bitterly about Katerina, saying he cannot break with her before the verdict because he believes she may retaliate by ruining Dmitri at the trial if she loses hope of Ivan. He reveals that Katerina possesses a document in Dmitri's handwriting that he believes conclusively incriminates Dmitri.

Alyosha insists that Dmitri is not the murderer. When Ivan asks who is, Alyosha answers indirectly and then suddenly tells Ivan with absolute conviction that Ivan himself did not kill their father. He says Ivan has repeatedly accused himself in private during the previous two months but is mistaken. Alyosha presents the assurance as something God compelled him to say.

Ivan is profoundly shaken. He demands to know whether Alyosha has secretly been in his room at night "when he came," referring to an unidentified visitor Alyosha knows nothing about. After recovering some control, Ivan rejects Alyosha as a prophet and messenger from God and says he is breaking off relations with him, perhaps forever.

Alyosha watches Ivan disappear and then goes home. Ivan reaches his own gate but abruptly turns away, driven by anger and an irresistible impulse. Instead of entering his lodgings, he walks to Marya Kondratyevna's current house, where the seriously ill Smerdyakov has been living since Fyodor Pavlovitch's death.

The narrative shifts backward to Ivan's first interview with Smerdyakov after Ivan returns from Moscow, five days after Fyodor Pavlovitch's death. Ivan has already visited Dmitri, whose agitation, contempt for the charge, fixation on the three thousand roubles, and inability to explain the open door strengthen Ivan's belief that Dmitri is guilty. At the hospital, Doctors Herzenstube and Varvinsky tell Ivan that Smerdyakov's epileptic attack was genuine and unusually severe, although they have noticed some mental abnormalities.

Smerdyakov denies that he staged the seizure. He says fear of an approaching fit and of being left without Ivan's protection brought it on as he descended to the cellar. He has already told the investigators about his fear, the cellar, the warning he gave Ivan, and the secret knocks, though not about his boast that he could imitate a fit or every word of their conversation at the gate. Asked why he urged Ivan to go to Tchermashnya, Smerdyakov says he wanted Ivan nearby rather than in Moscow so Ivan might infer the danger, stay to protect Fyodor, and protect Smerdyakov as well. At the same time, he repeatedly implies that Ivan understood the danger and deliberately left.

Smerdyakov argues that a man planning murder would hardly have told Fyodor's son beforehand that he could fake a seizure. Ivan accepts the argument and says he no longer suspects him. Before leaving, however, Ivan says he will not tell the authorities about Smerdyakov's claim that he could imitate a fit. Smerdyakov replies that, in return, he will say nothing about their conversation at the gate. Only after walking away does Ivan recognize the insulting implication of this exchange.

Ivan nevertheless feels relieved that Smerdyakov appears innocent and becomes increasingly convinced of Dmitri's guilt as he reviews the evidence, especially the secret knocks, Grigory's claim that the door was open, and Marfa Ignatyevna's testimony that Smerdyakov lay moaning near her throughout the night. During the following weeks Ivan also becomes passionately attached to Katerina Ivanovna, while recurring memories of his own conduct before leaving for Moscow begin to torment him. He remembers listening on the stairs in Fyodor's house and calling himself a scoundrel on the journey.

Finally Ivan stops Alyosha in the street and asks whether Alyosha had believed that Ivan desired Fyodor's death and wanted Dmitri to kill him. Alyosha quietly admits that he had believed both. Ivan thanks him sharply and walks away. From then on he avoids Alyosha, and immediately after this exchange he goes straight to Smerdyakov for a second interview.

Smerdyakov has left the hospital and is living with Marya Kondratyevna and her mother. Ivan confronts him about the remark he made at the hospital, demanding to know what Smerdyakov meant by saying he would keep quiet if Ivan did. Smerdyakov answers that Ivan knew his father was in danger, desired Fyodor Pavlovitch's death, and left anyway. He adds an inheritance motive: if Fyodor married Grushenka, the sons might receive nothing, while Dmitri's conviction would increase Ivan's and Alyosha's shares.

Smerdyakov treats Ivan's sudden decision to go to Tchermashnya, after previously intending to go to Moscow, as proof of tacit consent. If Ivan truly suspected Smerdyakov, he argues, Ivan should have stayed, denounced him, or at least struck him at once. Ivan does strike Smerdyakov during this interview, but Smerdyakov continues to insist that Ivan's departure meant he expected and permitted some crime to occur. He warns that if Ivan accuses him, he can publicly expose Ivan's desire for his father's death.

After leaving, Ivan is tormented by the possibility that Smerdyakov is right. He admits to himself that he expected something to happen and even that he wanted the murder. He goes directly to Katerina Ivanovna and repeats the entire conversation, telling her that if Smerdyakov killed Fyodor, then Ivan shares the guilt because he put him up to it.

Katerina responds by producing Dmitri's drunken letter from the night after Grushenka humiliated her. In it Dmitri promises that if he cannot obtain three thousand roubles elsewhere, he will kill Fyodor, take the money, and do so only if Ivan has gone away. Ivan treats the letter as decisive logical proof that Dmitri, not Smerdyakov, murdered their father, and for about a month his suspicions recede.

During that month Smerdyakov is reported increasingly ill, while Ivan's own health deteriorates and he consults the Moscow doctor. His relationship with Katerina also becomes bitter and unstable. Ten days before the trial Ivan offers Dmitri an escape plan, partly because Smerdyakov's accusation that Ivan would benefit financially from Dmitri's conviction continues to trouble him.

The immediate cause of Ivan's third visit comes after Katerina tells Alyosha, in Ivan's presence, that she herself has been to Smerdyakov. Ivan realizes that she may not be as certain of Dmitri's guilt as she had seemed and becomes obsessed with what Smerdyakov told her. He abandons his own doorbell and rushes to Smerdyakov, thinking that he may kill him this time.

On the way to Smerdyakov through a snowstorm, Ivan encounters a drunken peasant who collides with him. Ivan angrily pushes the man down, sees that he is unconscious, and initially leaves him lying in the snow. At Smerdyakov's lodgings, Ivan finds Smerdyakov seriously ill and asks what Katerina Ivanovna learned from him. Smerdyakov instead tells Ivan that he has nothing to fear from the trial and then repeats his central accusation: Ivan is the real murderer because Smerdyakov acted as his instrument.

When Ivan finally asks directly whether Smerdyakov killed Fyodor Pavlovitch, Smerdyakov produces the stolen three thousand roubles from his stocking and confesses. He says the seizure in the cellar was staged, though he suffered a genuine and severe epileptic attack the following morning. His plan depended on Dmitri coming to the house. Smerdyakov had falsely told Dmitri that the money was under the mattress while arranging for Fyodor to hide it behind the icons, so Dmitri could create the opportunity without finding the money himself.

After Dmitri attacks Grigory and leaves, Smerdyakov confirms that Fyodor is still alive and that Grigory is unconscious. He then uses the secret signal for Grushenka to make Fyodor open the door, tricks him into leaning out the study window, and kills him with three blows from the iron paperweight. Smerdyakov takes the money, leaves the empty envelope and pink ribbon on the floor to imitate what he believes Dmitri would have done, hides the notes in a hollow apple tree, and returns to bed. He then groans until Marfa Ignatyevna wakes and discovers the aftermath. He says Grigory never truly saw the door open and that this mistaken memory has helped secure the case against Dmitri.

Smerdyakov admits that the staging was planned in advance. He says Ivan's departure signaled permission, protected Smerdyakov from later accusation, and suggested that Ivan would reward him after receiving his inheritance. Ivan rejects the claim that he ordered the murder but acknowledges that he may have secretly desired Fyodor's death. He declares that he will testify at the trial about everything and insists that Smerdyakov must appear with him.

Smerdyakov refuses and predicts that Ivan's pride, love of comfort, and concern for his reputation will stop him. He gives Ivan the three thousand roubles, explaining that he once planned to begin a new life with the money because Ivan's teaching that "all things are lawful" convinced him that without God there is no virtue. He says he still does not believe in God. Ivan takes the money as evidence and leaves, determined to testify the next day.

Outside, Ivan finds the drunken peasant still unconscious and nearly covered by snow. He carries him to a nearby house, arranges for him to be taken to the police station and seen by a doctor, and pays the expenses. Ivan interprets this action as evidence of the firmness of his new moral resolution. He briefly considers going directly to the prosecutor but postpones everything until the next day. Back at home he becomes increasingly ill and delirious, repeatedly staring at the sofa opposite him as though something there is tormenting him.

The narrator states that Ivan is on the verge of brain fever. A Moscow doctor has already diagnosed a disorder of the brain and warned him that hallucinations are likely, but Ivan has refused to stop working or take to bed. In his room, after returning from Smerdyakov, Ivan sees a shabby but once-fashionable gentleman sitting on the opposite sofa.

Ivan recognizes the visitor as a hallucination and repeatedly calls him a lie, an illness, and an embodiment of Ivan's own worst and most contemptible thoughts. The visitor presents himself as a trivial, impoverished devil and keeps Ivan suspended between belief and disbelief. Their conversation ranges through material proof, spiritualism, the devil's supposed longing for ordinary earthly life, suffering, negation, and his claim that he is required to produce irrational events so that human life can continue rather than become an endless, static hosannah.

The visitor tells a story about an atheist condemned after death to walk a quadrillion kilometers before entering Paradise. Ivan suddenly recognizes the story as one he invented at seventeen and told to a schoolfellow named Korovkin. He seizes on the recovered memory as proof that the visitor is only a dream, while the visitor turns Ivan's uncertainty itself into another source of torment.

The hallucination then repeats and mocks Ivan's former philosophical ideas. It recalls his theory that humanity could abolish the idea of God, discard the old morality, create the self-authorizing "man-god," and conclude that "all things are lawful." It also taunts him about his resolution to defend Dmitri and sacrifice himself. Ivan, increasingly agitated, throws a glass at the visitor.

A persistent knocking at the window interrupts the scene. Ivan struggles to move, then finds the opposite sofa empty while the glass he threw is still in the room. He insists that what happened was not merely a dream. Alyosha is outside. When Ivan opens the window and demands the news in a few words, Alyosha tells him that Smerdyakov hanged himself about an hour earlier. Ivan immediately goes to let him in.

Alyosha enters and explains that Marya Kondratyevna found Smerdyakov hanging from a nail in the wall. Smerdyakov left a note stating that he was destroying his life by his own will and wished to blame no one. Alyosha went with Marya to the cottage, saw the body, left the note in place, reported the death to the police captain, and then came directly to Ivan.

Ivan says he already knew Smerdyakov had hanged himself because "he" had told him. As his speech becomes increasingly disordered, Ivan identifies the visitor as the devil and insists that the figure has appeared to him more than once. A clean, dry towel where Ivan remembers using and throwing down a wet one further destabilizes his sense of what has happened. He describes the devil as a trivial creature but also as an embodiment of everything base, mean, and contemptible in himself.

Ivan repeats the devil's accusations. According to the hallucination, Ivan's conscience is only habit, his plan to testify is driven by pride, and he wants admiration for sacrificing himself to save Dmitri. The devil also argues that Smerdyakov's death has made Ivan's testimony practically useless because no one will believe Ivan without Smerdyakov. Ivan rejects the claim that he seeks praise but remains tormented by the question of why he is determined to testify.

Alyosha repeatedly tells Ivan that he did not murder Fyodor. Ivan vacillates between affection and hostility toward Alyosha, Katerina, and Dmitri, and his delirium worsens until he becomes incoherent and collapses. Alyosha gets him into bed, remains with him, and watches until he falls into a deep sleep.

As Alyosha lies down nearby, he interprets Ivan's condition as the struggle of a proud but earnest conscience. He believes Ivan will still go to court even though Smerdyakov's suicide has removed the one person who could confirm his account. Alyosha prays for both Ivan and Dmitri, hoping Ivan will accept the truth rather than turn his anguish into hatred.

Dmitri's trial begins at ten o'clock the next morning in a courtroom packed well beyond its usual capacity. The case has attracted visitors, lawyers, and distinguished spectators from across Russia. The narrator observes that most of the women favor Dmitri, partly because of his reputation and the public fascination with his relationships with Katerina Ivanovna and Grushenka, while much of the male audience is already biased against him.

The celebrated defense lawyer Fetyukovitch has drawn particular attention. Rumors portray the trial as a professional contest between him and prosecutor Ippolit Kirillovitch, though the narrator emphasizes the prosecutor's seriousness and psychological style rather than simple fear of his opponent. The material evidence is displayed before the court, including Fyodor Pavlovitch's bloodstained dressing gown, the brass pestle, Dmitri's bloodstained clothing and handkerchief, his loaded pistol, the empty money envelope, and its pink ribbon.

The twelve jurors consist of four minor officials, two merchants, and six peasants or artisans. The narrator records the condescending doubts voiced by some spectators about whether such men can understand a complex psychological case, while also noting the stern impression the jurors make.

Dmitri enters in a new frock coat, immaculate gloves, and fine linen, creating what the narrator considers an unfavorable impression of excessive display. The list of witnesses shows that Miüsov is in Paris, Madame Hohlakov and Maximov are ill, and Smerdyakov is dead. When the official notice of Smerdyakov's suicide is read, Dmitri blurts out that Smerdyakov "was a dog and died like a dog." The outburst immediately harms his standing with both the court and the audience.

After the opening statement summarizes the prosecution's case, Dmitri is asked for his plea. He admits drunkenness, dissipation, idleness, and debauchery but emphatically denies killing or robbing his father, declaring that Dmitri Karamazov may be a scoundrel but is not a thief. The witnesses are then sworn, while Dmitri's brothers are permitted to testify without taking the oath, and the court begins calling witnesses one by one.

At the start of the testimony, the narrator emphasizes that the prosecution's evidence appears overwhelmingly convincing, even to many spectators who hope Dmitri will be acquitted. Defense lawyer Fetyukovitch has mastered the case in a few days and methodically challenges the prosecution witnesses, but the audience cannot yet understand how his tactics could overcome the apparent strength of the evidence.

Grigory testifies confidently about the Karamazov household, Dmitri's threats and violence, and the garden door he insists he saw open. Although he reveres Fyodor Pavlovitch, he acknowledges the father's neglect of Dmitri and believes Dmitri was cheated of part of his maternal inheritance, though he has no proof. He defends Smerdyakov's honesty and recalls an instance when Smerdyakov returned money he had found. Fetyukovitch establishes that Grigory never saw or heard of the envelope before the investigation and questions him about drinking a strong alcoholic medicinal infusion on the night of the murder. Grigory's inability to state the current year increases doubts about his perception, although his dignified protest against being mocked checks the lawyer momentarily. Dmitri thanks Grigory for caring for him in childhood and forgiving his blows, but his impulsive comments draw warnings from the judge.

Rakitin offers a sweeping social explanation of the crime, attributing it to Russia's history of serfdom and inadequate institutions. The prosecutor values his testimony, and some spectators applaud. After Rakitin contemptuously characterizes Grushenka as Samsonov's kept mistress, Fetyukovitch reveals both Rakitin's religious pamphlet about Father Zossima and his acceptance of twenty-five roubles for bringing Alyosha to Grushenka. The questioning undermines Rakitin's image of principled independence, and Dmitri denounces him. Captain Snegiryov arrives visibly drunk and refuses to describe Dmitri's humiliation of him, referring instead to his dying son Ilusha; overcome by grief, he kneels and is removed.

Trifon Borissovitch gives damaging, detailed testimony that Dmitri spent approximately three thousand roubles during his first visit to Mokroe. Fetyukovitch then calls attention to a hundred-rouble note found by peasants Timofey and Akim and given to Trifon, who initially denies the incident and later claims he returned the money. This contradiction damages his credibility. The two Polish witnesses also describe a substantial sum in Dmitri's possession, but evidence from Trifon and Kalganov establishes their cheating at cards, discrediting them. Despite the defense's effective attacks on these witnesses, the narrator concludes that the cumulative prosecution case remains formidable, and spectators wait for Fetyukovitch's larger defense strategy.

Three doctors disagree over Dmitri's mental condition. The medical defense has been pursued principally because Katerina Ivanovna brought a celebrated specialist from Moscow; Fetyukovitch has little confidence in it. The respected local doctor Herzenstube and the Moscow specialist both regard Dmitri's behavior as abnormal, but their explanations differ. Herzenstube interprets Dmitri's rigid entrance and failure to glance at the women in court as evidence of disordered faculties. The Moscow doctor, who has already offended Herzenstube by criticizing his treatment of local patients, describes aberration and developing mania and argues that, if Dmitri committed the crime, his morbid impulse might have deprived him of meaningful self-control. He counters that Dmitri should have looked toward his defense lawyer, on the right, rather than toward the women, on the left.

The younger doctor Varvinsky rejects the diagnosis of mental aberration. He attributes Dmitri's excitement to recognizable causes, including jealousy, anger, and drinking, and argues that a defendant would naturally look straight ahead at the judges. His explanation wins approval in the courtroom, and Dmitri impulsively endorses it.

Later, giving factual testimony about his acquaintance with the Karamazovs, Herzenstube unexpectedly recalls Dmitri as a neglected, barefoot child. Pitying him, he bought him a pound of nuts and taught him to repeat the German words 'Gott der Vater,' 'Gott der Sohn,' and 'Gott der heilige Geist.' The boy remembered most of the phrases when they next met. Twenty-three years later, an adult Dmitri visited the doctor, repeated all three phrases, and thanked him for the only pound of nuts anyone had bought him in childhood. Herzenstube remembers embracing and blessing the grateful young man; he and Dmitri both wept. Dmitri cries out from his seat that he is weeping now as well.

The childhood anecdote makes a favorable impression by demonstrating Dmitri's lasting gratitude and sensitivity. The narrator nevertheless explains that the greater improvement in Dmitri's prospects comes from the defense testimony that follows, especially Katerina Ivanovna's. Before her appearance, Alyosha is called and recalls a potentially important detail about the prosecution's theory.

Alyosha testifies that Dmitri is violent and passionate but capable of generosity and self-sacrifice. He insists on his brother's innocence yet admits that his suspicion of Smerdyakov rests on Dmitri's word and his own conviction rather than independent evidence. Under Fetyukovitch's questioning, Alyosha remembers Dmitri pointing repeatedly high on his chest during their last conversation before the crime, while speaking of a means to redeem half his disgrace. He now realizes that Dmitri may have been indicating the pouch holding fifteen hundred roubles, rather than his heart. Dmitri confirms this explanation. The recollection gives the defense limited corroboration for Dmitri's account of money he had retained from Katerina.

Katerina tells the court that she gave Dmitri three thousand roubles with no urgent deadline for repayment and trusted his financial honesty. She then publicly recounts how Dmitri gave her his last four thousand roubles when she needed to save her father, including her own humiliating request and bow. She omits his earlier suggestion that she be sent to him. The account was previously concealed even from Fetyukovitch. It exposes Katerina to scandal but strongly supports Dmitri's capacity for disinterested generosity and casts doubt on a murder motivated simply by stealing three thousand. Dmitri, deeply affected, cries out that she has ruined him and that he is condemned.

Grushenka testifies next. She admits she toyed with both Fyodor and Dmitri but insists she never intended to visit Fyodor for his money. Her knowledge of the envelope came from Smerdyakov; her accusation that he murdered Fyodor comes from Dmitri rather than independent evidence. She says her earlier expressions of guilt arose from feeling responsible for the rivalry, and she continues to believe Dmitri innocent. Angered by the public's contempt, she lashes out at Katerina. Under cross-examination she reveals that Rakitin is her cousin, that he has regularly accepted money from her, and that he concealed their relationship. This further damages his testimony. Grushenka leaves an unfavorable impression, while Dmitri remains motionless. Ivan is called next.

Ivan, who was originally summoned before Alyosha, enters court after an episode of illness. He initially answers questions briefly and rationally but then turns back as he is leaving and produces three thousand roubles he says Smerdyakov gave him the previous day. Ivan accuses Smerdyakov of murdering Fyodor and says he himself encouraged the act. Challenged to supply proof, Ivan admits he has no supporting witness. His remarks become increasingly disordered, mixing accusations against the spectators with references to the devil and his own responsibility. Alyosha warns the court that Ivan has brain fever. When an usher tries to restrain him, Ivan throws the man down and is forcibly removed.

Katerina Ivanovna reacts by submitting Dmitri's drunken letter written two days before the crime. The letter threatens that if Dmitri fails to find the money elsewhere, he will kill his father and take the three thousand roubles after Ivan has departed. Although she previously testified to Dmitri's generosity and honesty, she now treats this letter as a detailed statement of his intentions. Dmitri acknowledges writing it while intoxicated but continues to deny the crime. Katerina describes how she offered him three thousand roubles partly to test whether he would accept money she knew he wanted to spend on Grushenka. Her long-standing resentment over his supposed contempt for her emerges in her testimony.

Katerina also recounts Ivan's prolonged efforts to save Dmitri, his belief that he might share responsibility if Smerdyakov committed the crime, and his deteriorating health. She explains that showing Ivan the letter had temporarily convinced him of Dmitri's guilt. The narrator interprets her reversal as an effort to shield Ivan after his public confession, combined with wounded pride and resentment toward Dmitri. Katerina collapses and is carried away; Grushenka rushes toward Dmitri and denounces her, while officials restrain the disturbance.

The Moscow doctor confirms that Ivan is suffering a dangerous attack of brain fever and had reported waking visions and visits from Satan before the trial. The judges decide to record both unexpected pieces of testimony and add Katerina's letter to the material evidence. Further witnesses are heard. Fetyukovitch is shaken, while the prosecutor is encouraged by the letter. The court adjourns for almost an hour, and Ippolit Kirillovitch begins his closing speech at approximately eight o'clock.

Ippolit Kirillovitch begins his closing speech nervously but gains confidence as he argues that Dmitri is guilty and that punishment is necessary for public security. The narrator anticipates the prosecutor's death from consumption nine months later. The speech condemns society's indifference to violence, its fascination with criminal spectacles, and optimistic depictions of Russia's direction. His criticism of the literary image of a galloping Russian troika wins applause. He characterizes Fyodor Pavlovitch as a cynical, sensual, negligent father who mistreated his sons and provoked justified resentment. He describes Ivan as an educated skeptic, quoting Smerdyakov's report that Ivan believed everything was lawful, but also recognizes Ivan's remaining attachment to his brothers. He presents Alyosha's religious idealism sympathetically while warning that such impulses might deteriorate into mysticism or chauvinism. These are the prosecutor's judgments, not established findings about the brothers. Turning to Dmitri, he recounts an abandoned childhood, reckless military service, and financial quarrels with Fyodor. He contrasts Dmitri's generous gift of his last four thousand roubles to Katerina with his later acceptance and dissipation of three thousand roubles entrusted by her. Invoking the coexistence of generosity and degradation, the prosecutor argues that someone of Dmitri's impulsive character could not plausibly have kept fifteen hundred roubles untouched in a pouch for a month. This psychological assessment is offered against Dmitri's explanation of the money found in his possession, not as direct proof that the pouch never existed. He acknowledges the uncertainty in the paternal inheritance dispute and turns to the medical evidence.

The prosecutor rejects the claim that Dmitri was mentally incapable of controlling his actions. Agreeing with Doctor Varvinsky, he attributes Dmitri's fixation on the three thousand roubles principally to jealousy. In his reconstruction, Dmitri and Fyodor compete for Grushenka, who admits that she laughed at both men's advances. Fyodor's offer of three thousand roubles to attract Grushenka intensifies Dmitri's grievance because Dmitri considers the money part of his maternal inheritance. The prosecutor also quotes Rakitin's interpretation of Grushenka's earlier mistreatment and its effect on her attitude toward the men.

The prosecutor recounts Dmitri's threats, the confrontation at the monastery, and his assault on Fyodor. He admits he had initially been uncertain that these actions amounted to a definite plan to kill. Katerina's recently submitted letter changes his interpretation: Dmitri wrote that he would kill his father, take the money from under his pillow, and act after Ivan had left if he failed to borrow the money. The prosecutor presents this drunken letter as conclusive evidence of premeditation and argues that Dmitri's intoxication made him disclose what he had already planned while sober.

He nevertheless acknowledges that Dmitri tried repeatedly to obtain money without killing anyone. He recounts the unsuccessful visits to Samsonov and Lyagavy, the conversation with Madame Hohlakov, and Dmitri's increasing suspicion over Grushenka's whereabouts. The prosecutor speculates that the encounter might have been avoided had the servant told Dmitri that Grushenka had traveled to Mokroe. Instead, Dmitri believed her to be with Fyodor. The prosecutor interprets his taking of the brass pestle and arrival at Fyodor's window as evidence of deliberate violence, rejecting his account that he looked in and withdrew. All of these claims remain the prosecution's theory rather than verified facts about the murder. The chapter closes as Ippolit Kirillovitch turns to the separate suspicion that Smerdyakov was involved, reserving that detailed discussion for the following chapter.

In his closing speech, Ippolit Kirillovitch challenges the suggestion that Smerdyakov murdered Fyodor. He says Dmitri accused Smerdyakov at his arrest without supporting facts, while Alyosha and Grushenka rely chiefly on Dmitri's credibility, and Ivan's recent accusation came during an episode of illness. He portrays Smerdyakov as a timid epileptic servant who disclosed the money envelope and secret signals because Dmitri threatened him. The prosecutor argues that a genuine seizure after Ivan's departure was plausible and that pretending to be ill would have complicated a murder by alerting the household and putting Smerdyakov under the servants' care.

He considers and rejects theories that Smerdyakov acted alone, conspired with Dmitri, or merely consented to the crime. He reasons that a thief would not divulge the secret of the envelope, and a conspirator would not freely report that disclosure during the investigation. He emphasizes that Smerdyakov's suicide note contained no confession, and argues that Ivan's banknotes cannot be identified conclusively as Fyodor's money. Citing Ivan's illness and his earlier exchange of securities, the prosecutor speculates that Ivan imagined or invented the accusation to save his brother.

Finally, the prosecutor reconstructs Dmitri's alleged killing of Fyodor and seizure of the three thousand roubles. He argues that an experienced thief would have taken the whole envelope, whereas Dmitri would have torn it open hurriedly because he believed the money belonged to him. He interprets Dmitri's return to the injured Grigory not as compassion but as an attempt to establish whether the only witness was alive. These conclusions remain the prosecutor's theory, not established narrative facts.

The prosecutor continues reconstructing Dmitri's movements after learning that Grushenka had gone to Mokroe to meet her former lover. In his interpretation, Dmitri, believing himself already guilty of his father's murder, recovered his pledged pistols and intended to stage a final celebration before ending his life. The prosecutor describes Dmitri's behavior at Perhotin's, the shops, and on the road to Mokroe as the actions of a desperate man. When Grushenka rejects her former lover and returns Dmitri's affection, he argues, her love interrupts Dmitri's intended suicide and temporarily overwhelms his fear of punishment.

Addressing the missing half of the alleged three thousand roubles, the prosecutor speculates that Dmitri hid fifteen hundred somewhere at Mokroe shortly before his arrest. He admits that the authorities have not found this money. He portrays Dmitri's initial reactions during the arrest and subsequent questioning as confused attempts at self-protection. In particular, he says Dmitri shifted his accusations against Smerdyakov, was surprised by Grigory's testimony about the open garden door, and could not reliably identify the material from which he allegedly sewed the pouch that had held fifteen hundred roubles. These details, in the prosecutor's account, undermine Dmitri's explanation; they do not independently establish his guilt.

In his conclusion, Ippolit Kirillovitch urges the jury to uphold justice and Russia's moral principles. Returning to the image of the galloping troika, he warns that excusing a son for murdering his father would encourage lawlessness and provoke the contempt of other nations. He finishes visibly exhausted and nearly faints in another room. Dmitri has remained largely silent, reacting chiefly when Grushenka or the interrogation at Mokroe is discussed. After a short adjournment, spectators debate both the force of the speech and its excessive psychology, rhetoric, and self-importance. They await Fetyukovitch's response, and the chapter ends as the defense lawyer rises to speak.

Fetyukovitch begins the defense in a simple, direct manner. He explains that newspaper accounts had already predisposed him in Dmitri's favor because the case seemed to present an overwhelming chain of evidence while no individual fact, examined separately, appeared secure. He acknowledges Dmitri's turbulent and violent character and the prejudice that his conduct has created locally, but warns that the prosecutor's psychological analysis can become a form of unconscious invention. Psychology, he argues, is a method that can be made to support opposite conclusions.

Using Dmitri's conduct after striking Grigory, Fetyukovitch reverses the prosecutor's interpretation. The prosecution treats Dmitri's return to Grigory as a calculation to determine whether a witness was still alive. Fetyukovitch points out that this theory sits uneasily beside Dmitri's other actions: leaving the torn envelope behind, spending several minutes over Grigory, wiping the blood from his head with a handkerchief, and throwing the brass pestle away rather than using it again. If Dmitri were acting only from cold self-preservation, the defense argues, he would have had stronger reasons to kill Grigory outright and remove the witness.

Fetyukovitch therefore offers the opposite psychological reading: Dmitri returned because he believed he had killed an old servant and felt pity, and that capacity for pity is more consistent with a conscience not already burdened by his father's murder. He presents the example not as independent proof of innocence but as a demonstration that psychological interpretation can be made to prove almost anything. The audience responds with laughter and approval at the prosecutor's expense, and the narrator says he will give only the defense's principal points rather than reproduce the entire speech.

Fetyukovitch turns to the alleged robbery and argues that the prosecution has not proved that the three thousand roubles were still in the envelope when Fyodor Pavlovitch was killed. Smerdyakov was the only person who had actually seen the notes, and he told Fetyukovitch that he had last seen them two days before the crime. The defense points to the undisturbed bed and proposes that Fyodor Pavlovitch himself could have opened the envelope, removed the money, and discarded the paper before the murder. Because the notes were never produced and their continued presence cannot be established, Fetyukovitch argues that the torn envelope alone cannot prove a theft.

He then attacks the prosecution's explanation of Dmitri's fifteen hundred roubles. Dmitri went directly from the servants to Perhotin and remained around other people, so, Fetyukovitch argues, there was no demonstrated opportunity for him to divide a stolen three thousand and conceal the missing half. He mocks the prosecutor's suggestion that the other fifteen hundred were hidden at Mokroe and contrasts the case with a Petersburg robbery in which the exact stolen money was identified and recovered. He also notes that witnesses who claimed Dmitri had earlier spent all of Katerina Ivanovna's three thousand had only estimated what they saw, with Maximov even claiming that Dmitri had possessed twenty thousand.

Addressing Dmitri's own explanation, Fetyukovitch emphasizes that Katerina entrusted him with three thousand roubles to send elsewhere and that her two accounts of the transaction differed. He argues that Dmitri could have kept fifteen hundred sewn in a small bag while expecting to replace the full sum with money he believed his father owed him. The defense gives Dmitri two reasons to preserve that half: he might need money to leave with Grushenka, and he could return it to Katerina to show that, although he had behaved dishonorably, he was not a thief. Alyosha's testimony that Dmitri struck the place on his chest where he claimed to carry the money is presented as support for this account.

Finally, Fetyukovitch addresses Dmitri's drunken letter threatening to kill his father and take the envelope. He argues that Dmitri knew of the envelope only through Smerdyakov, that the letter does not prove he later carried out what he wrote, and that Dmitri rushed away in jealous desperation to discover Grushenka's whereabouts rather than to execute a plan of robbery. Having repudiated the robbery charge, the defense ends by asking whether the murder itself has been proved, leading into the next stage of the argument.

Fetyukovitch disputes the inference that Dmitri's threatening drunken letter and the brass pestle prove a premeditated killing. Dmitri, he argues, rushed out in search of Grushenka, not to execute the letter's threats. If the pestle had not happened to be visible, he might have run unarmed. The defense also rejects the prosecution's inference that Dmitri's presence in his father's garden proves he murdered him. Fetyukovitch suggests Dmitri may have concluded that Grushenka was absent and left the window without attacking his father. Even if Grigory's testimony about the open door were accepted and Dmitri had entered the house, that would not itself prove murder. He further argues that Dmitri's concern for the wounded Grigory and his renewed love for Grushenka at Mokroe are difficult to reconcile with the guilt and suicidal despair attributed to him by the prosecutor. These remain the defense's competing interpretations, not established facts.

Turning to possible alternatives, Fetyukovitch argues that the prosecution dismisses Smerdyakov because it has already decided Dmitri is guilty. He acknowledges that the evidence against Smerdyakov is suggestive but inconclusive. He cites the epileptic fit, the suicide shortly before trial, and Ivan's feverish testimony and presentation of banknotes while conceding that Ivan might be delusional. Fetyukovitch describes his own meetings with Smerdyakov, whom he found mistrustful, intelligent, ambitious, resentful of his low status and alleged parentage, and envious of Fyodor's legitimate sons. He proposes that Smerdyakov's seizure might have been genuine but that he could have recovered enough to hear Grigory's shout, approach Fyodor, seize an opportunity to kill him for the money, and leave the blame on Dmitri. This is explicitly a hypothetical reconstruction.

Fetyukovitch adds that Smerdyakov himself had suggested the argument that a practiced thief would not leave the torn envelope behind. He challenges the reliability of Grigory's wife's recollection of hearing Smerdyakov groan all night and notes that suicide need not indicate penitence or a willingness to confess. He warns that the accumulated circumstances can create a powerful impression without producing a single conclusive fact, and asks the jury not to convict if another explanation remains possible. At the end he introduces a new, explicitly hypothetical argument: even supposing Dmitri killed his father, there are further moral considerations. The audience applauds, the presiding judge threatens to clear the courtroom, and Fetyukovitch resumes in a changed tone.

Fetyukovitch changes from disputing the physical evidence to confronting the special horror attached to parricide. He argues that the dead man's status as Dmitri's father predisposes the jury to interpret weak evidence as conclusive. Asking what deserves the name of father, he distinguishes biological parenthood from the responsibilities of care, nurture, and love. Fyodor Pavlovitch, he contends, neglected his son and later became his enemy and rival. Fetyukovitch presents Dmitri as a violent but emotionally capable man who longs for goodness. He denounces Katerina Ivanovna's damaging testimony as the outburst of a vindictive woman, and argues that a parent who neglects a child cannot demand filial devotion merely on the ground of blood. He reinforces the distinction between giving birth and acting as a parent with the example of a woman who killed her newborn children.

The defense calls for rational and humane relations between parents and children rather than an unquestioned, mystical obligation to honor a biological father. It provokes prolonged applause and repeated warnings from the presiding judge. Returning to the events of the murder night, Fetyukovitch again insists Dmitri did not kill Fyodor. Yet he advances a deliberately hypothetical version in which the sight of his hated father could have produced an instantaneous, uncontrolled blow, not a calculated act of robbery or premeditated parricide. His rhetorical claim that the killing of such a father would not truly be parricide is an argument about moral designation, not a judicial finding or a statement that the killing did occur.

Finally, Fetyukovitch argues that conviction would harden Dmitri's resentment and prevent moral recovery, whereas an unexpected acquittal and mercy might induce remorse and change. Invoking the principle that it is better to acquit guilty people than punish an innocent one, he urges the jury to regard Russian justice as concerned with reform as well as punishment. He counters the prosecutor's warning about Russia's runaway troika with an image of a stately chariot guided by mercy and entrusts both Dmitri's fate and Russian justice to the jury. The chapter closes with his appeal; no verdict has yet been delivered.

Fetyukovitch's closing appeal brings tears and sustained applause. Ippolit Kirillovitch, visibly shaken, replies that the defense has constructed speculative narratives while accusing the prosecution of the same fault. He disputes the conjecture that Fyodor opened the money envelope, the portrayal of Smerdyakov as a vengeful murderer, and the defense's distinction between killing a father and committing parricide. He also condemns its interpretation of parental duty and the Gospel as a threat to family and religious principles. The presiding judge restrains him. Fetyukovitch makes a brief, ironic rejoinder and protests the personal insinuation about his religious orthodoxy before the judge stops him too.

Exhausted and subdued, Dmitri addresses the jury. He admits his moral failings, thanks both advocates for what their speeches taught him, but repeatedly denies killing his father and also rejects the defense's hypothetical suggestion that he might have done so. He insists he is sane, promises reform if spared, and fears that condemnation will lead him to rebellion and the loss of his faith. The jury retires. As the court waits late into the night, many spectators, particularly the women, anticipate an acquittal, and Fetyukovitch expresses confidence in his effect on the jurors. Other observers discuss the composition of the jury and disagree about what justice requires.

After exactly an hour, the jury returns affirmative answers to every charge, finding Dmitri guilty of premeditated murder for robbery without any mitigating qualification. The verdict shocks much of the audience, although some welcome it. Dmitri rises to swear again that he did not shed his father's blood, forgives Katerina, and asks his brothers and friends to care for Grushenka. He breaks down; Grushenka cries out from the gallery, and he is led away. Sentencing is postponed until the following day. The chapter ends with spectators discussing his likely punishment and remarking that the peasant jurors have stood firm.

Five days after the trial, Alyosha visits Katerina Ivanovna, who has taken the gravely ill Ivan into her home. Ivan lies unconscious with a high fever under the care of Varvinsky and Herzenstube; his prognosis remains uncertain. Katerina explains that Ivan had devised a plan to help Dmitri escape during transport to Siberia, probably at the third staging station, and had begun arrangements with the superintendent there. He left her detailed instructions in a sealed envelope and almost ten thousand roubles in case he became seriously ill or died.

Katerina recounts the quarrels leading up to her confrontation with Ivan before the trial. She resented the prospect of Grushenka escaping abroad with Dmitri, and Ivan mistook her anger for proof that she still loved his brother. She now insists that she loves Ivan, acknowledges deliberately wounding him by claiming that he had persuaded her of Dmitri's guilt, and blames her jealousy and pride for the breakdown between them. Alyosha recognizes her remorse for her damaging testimony against Dmitri, although she does not directly confess that wrong to him here. Katerina believes Dmitri will eventually consent to escape because he will not abandon Grushenka, but she also worries that Alyosha might oppose the plan as dishonorable or unchristian. Alyosha offers no such objection.

Alyosha's urgent purpose is to deliver Dmitri's request that Katerina visit him. Dmitri, deeply distressed, does not ask for forgiveness or formal reconciliation, but wants her merely to appear at his doorway. Alyosha urges her to grant this small request before Dmitri's condition worsens, reminding her of his innocence and coming suffering. Katerina initially says she cannot bear to face him or leave Ivan, then tearfully agrees to try, while refusing to promise she will enter or allow Dmitri to be told in advance. Alyosha departs expecting her visit.

After the verdict, Dmitri is recovering from nervous fever in a separate room in the prison hospital. Alyosha visits and tells him that Katerina has agreed to come, although her arrival is uncertain. Dmitri also mentions that Trifon Borissovitch is reportedly tearing apart his inn at Mokroe in search of the supposedly hidden fifteen hundred roubles. Dmitri fears Katerina's judgment, while Grushenka knows about her role in the possible escape. Ivan remains dangerously ill.

Dmitri admits that he cannot endure twenty years of penal servitude, especially beatings, and that Grushenka would not be allowed to accompany him. Alyosha tells him that because he is innocent of the murder and not prepared for this particular suffering, escape would not necessarily betray his aspiration to become a better man. He distinguishes this from an escape that would punish innocent guards and acknowledges the dishonesty of bribery without claiming moral authority to condemn Dmitri. Dmitri has already decided to escape, though he expects to repent of the act. He imagines exile with Grushenka in America, learning English, then returning secretly to Russia, whose people and faith he cannot bear to leave. Alyosha does not challenge these speculative plans.

Katerina arrives unexpectedly while Dmitri is anxiously asking about her. They embrace and speak as if their former love could briefly be restored, although both acknowledge that she loves Ivan and he loves Grushenka. The narrator explicitly notes that their impassioned declarations may not be literally true outside that moment. Katerina says she did not believe Dmitri murdered his father, except for a fleeting self-persuasion while testifying against him; she came partly to punish herself. Grushenka then enters by chance. Katerina asks her forgiveness, but Grushenka refuses, promising to forgive if Katerina saves Dmitri. Dmitri reproaches Grushenka and Alyosha objects. Katerina leaves, promising to save Dmitri. Alyosha follows her, and she admits that asking Grushenka's forgiveness was part of her attempted self-punishment and that she cannot accompany him to Ilusha's funeral. She has sent flowers and pledges continued support for the family.

Alyosha reaches Ilusha's home late for the funeral. The boy has died two days after Dmitri's sentencing, and his schoolfellows, including Kolya Krassotkin, are waiting. Kolya asks who killed Fyodor Pavlovitch, and Alyosha states that Smerdyakov committed the murder and Dmitri is innocent. Inside, Captain Snegiryov is overcome by grief for his son. During the procession and funeral he fusses over the coffin and flowers, struggles to accept the burial, and remembers Ilusha's wish that bread be scattered on his grave to attract sparrows. The boys accompany him, and Katerina Ivanovna has paid for the grave. After the burial Snegiryov hurries home with flowers for his wife, collapses in grief on the way, and then breaks down again when he sees Ilusha's little boots. Alyosha advises the boys to give the family time to grieve and proposes visiting again later.

As they walk, the boys stop beside the stone associated with Ilusha's earlier humiliation and defense of his father. Alyosha asks them to remember Ilusha and one another even if they separate for decades. He recalls that the boys once threw stones at Ilusha but later formed a bond through kindness to him. A good childhood memory, he says, may help a person resist wrongdoing later in life. He asks them to remain kind, honest, brave, and generous, explicitly including boys such as Kolya and Kartashov rather than excluding anyone from their fellowship. They pledge never to forget Ilusha.

Kolya asks whether they will truly rise from the dead and meet Ilusha again. Alyosha answers with confidence that they will. The boys respond with affection for Alyosha, and they return hand in hand toward the customary funeral meal. The novel ends with their shared remembrance and hope, not with any further resolution of Dmitri's sentence or Ivan's illness.