feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_16_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Brothers Karamazov.epilogue.chapter 1-chapter 3
feat_summary_id: epilogue
feat_summary: {"name": "Epilogue", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219142226/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/b/the-brothers-karamazov/summary-and-analysis/part-4-epilogue", "summary": "After Dmitri's trial, Alyosha goes to Katerina's, where Ivan is ill, unconscious, and burning with high fever; in spite of gossip, Katerina has ordered that he be brought to her house. When Alyosha arrives, she confesses her deep regret over what she revealed during the trial but says that Dmitri's escape is already being planned. She explains further that more help is needed; Alyosha must aid his brother and bribe the appropriate officials. Alyosha agrees but forces Katerina to promise that she will visit Dmitri in prison. Alyosha then goes to his brother and tells him that Katerina also will come, but Dmitri has weightier problems troubling him. He explains his desire to repent and, through suffering, to become a new human being. He fears only one thing: that he will be unable to carry out his intentions if the authorities do not let Grushenka accompany him. Alyosha explains the plans that have been made for the escape, and Dmitri reluctantly agrees to them. He makes one stipulation, however; he escapes only for the present. Someday he must return to Mother Russia. Katerina then enters, and she and Dmitri ask each other for forgiveness. Peace is not so easy, though, even now, for Grushenka unexpectedly arrives. Although Katerina begs her for forgiveness, Grushenka still feels too bitter toward her former rival to acknowledge any pleas. In the meantime, little Ilusha has died, and Alyosha leaves Dmitri to go to the young boy's funeral. After the burial, Alyosha talks with Ilusha's many school friends and asks them to remember forever their friendship at the present moment. He, in turn, promises that he will never forget any one of them. The boys are deeply affected by Alyosha's sincerity and all cheer, \"Hurrah for Karamazov.\"", "analysis": "In a sense, the epilogue conforms to the nineteenth-century custom of tidying up the end of a novel. Here the final fates of all the characters are revealed, and the reader is relieved from speculating. Dmitri accepts Ivan's plan for escape, but only after he has Alyosha's sanction. As for Alyosha, he conforms to the directives of the late Father Zossima. He does not condemn his brother, nor does he object to the escape. In short, he refuses to judge Dmitri. Even in his escape, it is important to note that Dmitri feels that he will suffer immensely. He has been depicted as being closely attached to Russia and to be exiled to America -- to be separated from the soil from which he takes his strength -- is an extreme form of punishment for him. His plans are to return to his country as soon as possible and then to live anonymously in some remote region. This lasting love for Russian soil, of course, reflects Dostoevsky's passion for his native land. In the novel's final pages, all concern is with Alyosha and Ilusha's young school friends. The ex-monk has had little success with adults in Russian society, but with children he is unexcelled. The boys eagerly gather around Alyosha and are openly responsive to his speech about love and devotion -- a message quite clear: Dostoevsky believes that youth, nurtured on the wisdom of Father Zossima, will be the salvation of Russia."}
text: EPILOGUE Chapter I. Plans For Mitya's Escape
  
  
  Very early, at nine o'clock in the morning, five days after the trial,
  Alyosha went to Katerina Ivanovna's to talk over a matter of great
  importance to both of them, and to give her a message. She sat and talked
  to him in the very room in which she had once received Grushenka. In the
  next room Ivan Fyodorovitch lay unconscious in a high fever. Katerina
  Ivanovna had immediately after the scene at the trial ordered the sick and
  unconscious man to be carried to her house, disregarding the inevitable
  gossip and general disapproval of the public. One of the two relations who
  lived with her had departed to Moscow immediately after the scene in
  court, the other remained. But if both had gone away, Katerina Ivanovna
  would have adhered to her resolution, and would have gone on nursing the
  sick man and sitting by him day and night. Varvinsky and Herzenstube were
  attending him. The famous doctor had gone back to Moscow, refusing to give
  an opinion as to the probable end of the illness. Though the doctors
  encouraged Katerina Ivanovna and Alyosha, it was evident that they could
  not yet give them positive hopes of recovery.
  
  Alyosha came to see his sick brother twice a day. But this time he had
  specially urgent business, and he foresaw how difficult it would be to
  approach the subject, yet he was in great haste. He had another engagement
  that could not be put off for that same morning, and there was need of
  haste.
  
  They had been talking for a quarter of an hour. Katerina Ivanovna was pale
  and terribly fatigued, yet at the same time in a state of hysterical
  excitement. She had a presentiment of the reason why Alyosha had come to
  her.
  
  "Don't worry about his decision," she said, with confident emphasis to
  Alyosha. "One way or another he is bound to come to it. He must escape.
  That unhappy man, that hero of honor and principle--not he, not Dmitri
  Fyodorovitch, but the man lying the other side of that door, who has
  sacrificed himself for his brother," Katya added, with flashing eyes--"told
  me the whole plan of escape long ago. You know he has already entered into
  negotiations.... I've told you something already.... You see, it will
  probably come off at the third _etape_ from here, when the party of
  prisoners is being taken to Siberia. Oh, it's a long way off yet. Ivan
  Fyodorovitch has already visited the superintendent of the third _etape_.
  But we don't know yet who will be in charge of the party, and it's
  impossible to find that out so long beforehand. To-morrow perhaps I will
  show you in detail the whole plan which Ivan Fyodorovitch left me on the
  eve of the trial in case of need.... That was when--do you remember?--you
  found us quarreling. He had just gone down-stairs, but seeing you I made
  him come back; do you remember? Do you know what we were quarreling about
  then?"
  
  "No, I don't," said Alyosha.
  
  "Of course he did not tell you. It was about that plan of escape. He had
  told me the main idea three days before, and we began quarreling about it
  at once and quarreled for three days. We quarreled because, when he told
  me that if Dmitri Fyodorovitch were convicted he would escape abroad with
  that creature, I felt furious at once--I can't tell you why, I don't know
  myself why.... Oh, of course, I was furious then about that creature, and
  that she, too, should go abroad with Dmitri!" Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed
  suddenly, her lips quivering with anger. "As soon as Ivan Fyodorovitch saw
  that I was furious about that woman, he instantly imagined I was jealous
  of Dmitri and that I still loved Dmitri. That is how our first quarrel
  began. I would not give an explanation, I could not ask forgiveness. I
  could not bear to think that such a man could suspect me of still loving
  that ... and when I myself had told him long before that I did not love
  Dmitri, that I loved no one but him! It was only resentment against that
  creature that made me angry with him. Three days later, on the evening you
  came, he brought me a sealed envelope, which I was to open at once, if
  anything happened to him. Oh, he foresaw his illness! He told me that the
  envelope contained the details of the escape, and that if he died or was
  taken dangerously ill, I was to save Mitya alone. Then he left me money,
  nearly ten thousand--those notes to which the prosecutor referred in his
  speech, having learnt from some one that he had sent them to be changed. I
  was tremendously impressed to find that Ivan Fyodorovitch had not given up
  his idea of saving his brother, and was confiding this plan of escape to
  me, though he was still jealous of me and still convinced that I loved
  Mitya. Oh, that was a sacrifice! No, you cannot understand the greatness
  of such self-sacrifice, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I wanted to fall at his feet
  in reverence, but I thought at once that he would take it only for my joy
  at the thought of Mitya's being saved (and he certainly would have
  imagined that!), and I was so exasperated at the mere possibility of such
  an unjust thought on his part that I lost my temper again, and instead of
  kissing his feet, flew into a fury again! Oh, I am unhappy! It's my
  character, my awful, unhappy character! Oh, you will see, I shall end by
  driving him, too, to abandon me for another with whom he can get on
  better, like Dmitri. But ... no, I could not bear it, I should kill
  myself. And when you came in then, and when I called to you and told him
  to come back, I was so enraged by the look of contempt and hatred he
  turned on me that--do you remember?--I cried out to you that it was he, he
  alone who had persuaded me that his brother Dmitri was a murderer! I said
  that malicious thing on purpose to wound him again. He had never, never
  persuaded me that his brother was a murderer. On the contrary, it was I
  who persuaded him! Oh, my vile temper was the cause of everything! I paved
  the way to that hideous scene at the trial. He wanted to show me that he
  was an honorable man, and that, even if I loved his brother, he would not
  ruin him for revenge or jealousy. So he came to the court ... I am the
  cause of it all, I alone am to blame!"
  
  Katya never had made such confessions to Alyosha before, and he felt that
  she was now at that stage of unbearable suffering when even the proudest
  heart painfully crushes its pride and falls vanquished by grief. Oh,
  Alyosha knew another terrible reason of her present misery, though she had
  carefully concealed it from him during those days since the trial; but it
  would have been for some reason too painful to him if she had been brought
  so low as to speak to him now about that. She was suffering for her
  "treachery" at the trial, and Alyosha felt that her conscience was
  impelling her to confess it to him, to him, Alyosha, with tears and cries
  and hysterical writhings on the floor. But he dreaded that moment and
  longed to spare her. It made the commission on which he had come even more
  difficult. He spoke of Mitya again.
  
  "It's all right, it's all right, don't be anxious about him!" she began
  again, sharply and stubbornly. "All that is only momentary, I know him, I
  know his heart only too well. You may be sure he will consent to escape.
  It's not as though it would be immediately; he will have time to make up
  his mind to it. Ivan Fyodorovitch will be well by that time and will
  manage it all himself, so that I shall have nothing to do with it. Don't
  be anxious; he will consent to run away. He has agreed already: do you
  suppose he would give up that creature? And they won't let her go to him,
  so he is bound to escape. It's you he's most afraid of, he is afraid you
  won't approve of his escape on moral grounds. But you must generously
  _allow_ it, if your sanction is so necessary," Katya added viciously. She
  paused and smiled.
  
  "He talks about some hymn," she went on again, "some cross he has to bear,
  some duty; I remember Ivan Fyodorovitch told me a great deal about it, and
  if you knew how he talked!" Katya cried suddenly, with feeling she could
  not repress, "if you knew how he loved that wretched man at the moment he
  told me, and how he hated him, perhaps, at the same moment. And I heard
  his story and his tears with sneering disdain. Brute! Yes, I am a brute. I
  am responsible for his fever. But that man in prison is incapable of
  suffering," Katya concluded irritably. "Can such a man suffer? Men like
  him never suffer!"
  
  There was a note of hatred and contemptuous repulsion in her words. And
  yet it was she who had betrayed him. "Perhaps because she feels how she's
  wronged him she hates him at moments," Alyosha thought to himself. He
  hoped that it was only "at moments." In Katya's last words he detected a
  challenging note, but he did not take it up.
  
  "I sent for you this morning to make you promise to persuade him yourself.
  Or do you, too, consider that to escape would be dishonorable, cowardly,
  or something ... unchristian, perhaps?" Katya added, even more defiantly.
  
  "Oh, no. I'll tell him everything," muttered Alyosha. "He asks you to come
  and see him to-day," he blurted out suddenly, looking her steadily in the
  face. She started, and drew back a little from him on the sofa.
  
  "Me? Can that be?" she faltered, turning pale.
  
  "It can and ought to be!" Alyosha began emphatically, growing more
  animated. "He needs you particularly just now. I would not have opened the
  subject and worried you, if it were not necessary. He is ill, he is beside
  himself, he keeps asking for you. It is not to be reconciled with you that
  he wants you, but only that you would go and show yourself at his door. So
  much has happened to him since that day. He realizes that he has injured
  you beyond all reckoning. He does not ask your forgiveness--'It's
  impossible to forgive me,' he says himself--but only that you would show
  yourself in his doorway."
  
  "It's so sudden...." faltered Katya. "I've had a presentiment all these
  days that you would come with that message. I knew he would ask me to
  come. It's impossible!"
  
  "Let it be impossible, but do it. Only think, he realizes for the first
  time how he has wounded you, the first time in his life; he had never
  grasped it before so fully. He said, 'If she refuses to come I shall be
  unhappy all my life.' Do you hear? though he is condemned to penal
  servitude for twenty years, he is still planning to be happy--is not that
  piteous? Think--you must visit him; though he is ruined, he is innocent,"
  broke like a challenge from Alyosha. "His hands are clean, there is no
  blood on them! For the sake of his infinite sufferings in the future visit
  him now. Go, greet him on his way into the darkness--stand at his door,
  that is all.... You ought to do it, you ought to!" Alyosha concluded,
  laying immense stress on the word "ought."
  
  "I ought to ... but I cannot...." Katya moaned. "He will look at me.... I
  can't."
  
  "Your eyes ought to meet. How will you live all your life, if you don't
  make up your mind to do it now?"
  
  "Better suffer all my life."
  
  "You ought to go, you ought to go," Alyosha repeated with merciless
  emphasis.
  
  "But why to-day, why at once?... I can't leave our patient--"
  
  "You can for a moment. It will only be a moment. If you don't come, he
  will be in delirium by to-night. I would not tell you a lie; have pity on
  him!"
  
  "Have pity on _me!_" Katya said, with bitter reproach, and she burst into
  tears.
  
  "Then you will come," said Alyosha firmly, seeing her tears. "I'll go and
  tell him you will come directly."
  
  "No, don't tell him so on any account," cried Katya in alarm. "I will
  come, but don't tell him beforehand, for perhaps I may go, but not go
  in.... I don't know yet--"
  
  Her voice failed her. She gasped for breath. Alyosha got up to go.
  
  "And what if I meet any one?" she said suddenly, in a low voice, turning
  white again.
  
  "That's just why you must go now, to avoid meeting any one. There will be
  no one there, I can tell you that for certain. We will expect you," he
  concluded emphatically, and went out of the room.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter II. For A Moment The Lie Becomes Truth
  
  
  He hurried to the hospital where Mitya was lying now. The day after his
  fate was determined, Mitya had fallen ill with nervous fever, and was sent
  to the prison division of the town hospital. But at the request of several
  persons (Alyosha, Madame Hohlakov, Lise, etc.), Doctor Varvinsky had put
  Mitya not with other prisoners, but in a separate little room, the one
  where Smerdyakov had been. It is true that there was a sentinel at the
  other end of the corridor, and there was a grating over the window, so
  that Varvinsky could be at ease about the indulgence he had shown, which
  was not quite legal, indeed; but he was a kind-hearted and compassionate
  young man. He knew how hard it would be for a man like Mitya to pass at
  once so suddenly into the society of robbers and murderers, and that he
  must get used to it by degrees. The visits of relations and friends were
  informally sanctioned by the doctor and overseer, and even by the police
  captain. But only Alyosha and Grushenka had visited Mitya. Rakitin had
  tried to force his way in twice, but Mitya persistently begged Varvinsky
  not to admit him.
  
  Alyosha found him sitting on his bed in a hospital dressing-gown, rather
  feverish, with a towel, soaked in vinegar and water, on his head. He
  looked at Alyosha as he came in with an undefined expression, but there
  was a shade of something like dread discernible in it. He had become
  terribly preoccupied since the trial; sometimes he would be silent for
  half an hour together, and seemed to be pondering something heavily and
  painfully, oblivious of everything about him. If he roused himself from
  his brooding and began to talk, he always spoke with a kind of abruptness
  and never of what he really wanted to say. He looked sometimes with a face
  of suffering at his brother. He seemed to be more at ease with Grushenka
  than with Alyosha. It is true, he scarcely spoke to her at all, but as
  soon as she came in, his whole face lighted up with joy.
  
  Alyosha sat down beside him on the bed in silence. This time Mitya was
  waiting for Alyosha in suspense, but he did not dare ask him a question.
  He felt it almost unthinkable that Katya would consent to come, and at the
  same time he felt that if she did not come, something inconceivable would
  happen. Alyosha understood his feelings.
  
  "Trifon Borissovitch," Mitya began nervously, "has pulled his whole inn to
  pieces, I am told. He's taken up the flooring, pulled apart the planks,
  split up all the gallery, I am told. He is seeking treasure all the
  time--the fifteen hundred roubles which the prosecutor said I'd hidden
  there. He began playing these tricks, they say, as soon as he got home.
  Serve him right, the swindler! The guard here told me yesterday; he comes
  from there."
  
  "Listen," began Alyosha. "She will come, but I don't know when. Perhaps
  to-day, perhaps in a few days, that I can't tell. But she will come, she
  will, that's certain."
  
  Mitya started, would have said something, but was silent. The news had a
  tremendous effect on him. It was evident that he would have liked terribly
  to know what had been said, but he was again afraid to ask. Something
  cruel and contemptuous from Katya would have cut him like a knife at that
  moment.
  
  "This was what she said among other things; that I must be sure to set
  your conscience at rest about escaping. If Ivan is not well by then she
  will see to it all herself."
  
  "You've spoken of that already," Mitya observed musingly.
  
  "And you have repeated it to Grusha," observed Alyosha.
  
  "Yes," Mitya admitted. "She won't come this morning." He looked timidly at
  his brother. "She won't come till the evening. When I told her yesterday
  that Katya was taking measures, she was silent, but she set her mouth. She
  only whispered, 'Let her!' She understood that it was important. I did not
  dare to try her further. She understands now, I think, that Katya no
  longer cares for me, but loves Ivan."
  
  "Does she?" broke from Alyosha.
  
  "Perhaps she does not. Only she is not coming this morning," Mitya
  hastened to explain again; "I asked her to do something for me. You know,
  Ivan is superior to all of us. He ought to live, not us. He will recover."
  
  "Would you believe it, though Katya is alarmed about him, she scarcely
  doubts of his recovery," said Alyosha.
  
  "That means that she is convinced he will die. It's because she is
  frightened she's so sure he will get well."
  
  "Ivan has a strong constitution, and I, too, believe there's every hope
  that he will get well," Alyosha observed anxiously.
  
  "Yes, he will get well. But she is convinced that he will die. She has a
  great deal of sorrow to bear..." A silence followed. A grave anxiety was
  fretting Mitya.
  
  "Alyosha, I love Grusha terribly," he said suddenly in a shaking voice,
  full of tears.
  
  "They won't let her go out there to you," Alyosha put in at once.
  
  "And there is something else I wanted to tell you," Mitya went on, with a
  sudden ring in his voice. "If they beat me on the way or out there, I
  won't submit to it. I shall kill some one, and shall be shot for it. And
  this will be going on for twenty years! They speak to me rudely as it is.
  I've been lying here all night, passing judgment on myself. I am not
  ready! I am not able to resign myself. I wanted to sing a 'hymn'; but if a
  guard speaks rudely to me, I have not the strength to bear it. For Grusha
  I would bear anything ... anything except blows.... But she won't be
  allowed to come there."
  
  Alyosha smiled gently.
  
  "Listen, brother, once for all," he said. "This is what I think about it.
  And you know that I would not tell you a lie. Listen: you are not ready,
  and such a cross is not for you. What's more, you don't need such a
  martyr's cross when you are not ready for it. If you had murdered our
  father, it would grieve me that you should reject your punishment. But you
  are innocent, and such a cross is too much for you. You wanted to make
  yourself another man by suffering. I say, only remember that other man
  always, all your life and wherever you go; and that will be enough for
  you. Your refusal of that great cross will only serve to make you feel all
  your life an even greater duty, and that constant feeling will do more to
  make you a new man, perhaps, than if you went there. For there you would
  not endure it and would repine, and perhaps at last would say: 'I am
  quits.' The lawyer was right about that. Such heavy burdens are not for
  all men. For some they are impossible. These are my thoughts about it, if
  you want them so much. If other men would have to answer for your escape,
  officers or soldiers, then I would not have 'allowed' you," smiled
  Alyosha. "But they declare--the superintendent of that _etape_ told Ivan
  himself--that if it's well managed there will be no great inquiry, and that
  they can get off easily. Of course, bribing is dishonest even in such a
  case, but I can't undertake to judge about it, because if Ivan and Katya
  commissioned me to act for you, I know I should go and give bribes. I must
  tell you the truth. And so I can't judge of your own action. But let me
  assure you that I shall never condemn you. And it would be a strange thing
  if I could judge you in this. Now I think I've gone into everything."
  
  "But I do condemn myself!" cried Mitya. "I shall escape, that was settled
  apart from you; could Mitya Karamazov do anything but run away? But I
  shall condemn myself, and I will pray for my sin for ever. That's how the
  Jesuits talk, isn't it? Just as we are doing?"
  
  "Yes." Alyosha smiled gently.
  
  "I love you for always telling the whole truth and never hiding anything,"
  cried Mitya, with a joyful laugh. "So I've caught my Alyosha being
  Jesuitical. I must kiss you for that. Now listen to the rest; I'll open
  the other side of my heart to you. This is what I planned and decided. If
  I run away, even with money and a passport, and even to America, I should
  be cheered up by the thought that I am not running away for pleasure, not
  for happiness, but to another exile as bad, perhaps, as Siberia. It is as
  bad, Alyosha, it is! I hate that America, damn it, already. Even though
  Grusha will be with me. Just look at her; is she an American? She is
  Russian, Russian to the marrow of her bones; she will be homesick for the
  mother country, and I shall see every hour that she is suffering for my
  sake, that she has taken up that cross for me. And what harm has she done?
  And how shall I, too, put up with the rabble out there, though they may be
  better than I, every one of them? I hate that America already! And though
  they may be wonderful at machinery, every one of them, damn them, they are
  not of my soul. I love Russia, Alyosha, I love the Russian God, though I
  am a scoundrel myself. I shall choke there!" he exclaimed, his eyes
  suddenly flashing. His voice was trembling with tears. "So this is what
  I've decided, Alyosha, listen," he began again, mastering his emotion. "As
  soon as I arrive there with Grusha, we will set to work at once on the
  land, in solitude, somewhere very remote, with wild bears. There must be
  some remote parts even there. I am told there are still Redskins there,
  somewhere, on the edge of the horizon. So to the country of the _Last of
  the Mohicans_, and there we'll tackle the grammar at once, Grusha and I.
  Work and grammar--that's how we'll spend three years. And by that time we
  shall speak English like any Englishman. And as soon as we've learnt
  it--good-by to America! We'll run here to Russia as American citizens.
  Don't be uneasy--we would not come to this little town. We'd hide
  somewhere, a long way off, in the north or in the south. I shall be
  changed by that time, and she will, too, in America. The doctors shall
  make me some sort of wart on my face--what's the use of their being so
  mechanical!--or else I'll put out one eye, let my beard grow a yard, and I
  shall turn gray, fretting for Russia. I dare say they won't recognize us.
  And if they do, let them send us to Siberia. I don't care. It will show
  it's our fate. We'll work on the land here, too, somewhere in the wilds,
  and I'll make up as an American all my life. But we shall die on our own
  soil. That's my plan, and it shan't be altered. Do you approve?"
  
  "Yes," said Alyosha, not wanting to contradict him. Mitya paused for a
  minute and said suddenly:
  
  "And how they worked it up at the trial! Didn't they work it up!"
  
  "If they had not, you would have been convicted just the same," said
  Alyosha, with a sigh.
  
  "Yes, people are sick of me here! God bless them, but it's hard," Mitya
  moaned miserably. Again there was silence for a minute.
  
  "Alyosha, put me out of my misery at once!" he exclaimed suddenly. "Tell
  me, is she coming now, or not? Tell me? What did she say? How did she say
  it?"
  
  "She said she would come, but I don't know whether she will come to-day.
  It's hard for her, you know," Alyosha looked timidly at his brother.
  
  "I should think it is hard for her! Alyosha, it will drive me out of my
  mind. Grusha keeps looking at me. She understands. My God, calm my heart:
  what is it I want? I want Katya! Do I understand what I want? It's the
  headstrong, evil Karamazov spirit! No, I am not fit for suffering. I am a
  scoundrel, that's all one can say."
  
  "Here she is!" cried Alyosha.
  
  At that instant Katya appeared in the doorway. For a moment she stood
  still, gazing at Mitya with a dazed expression. He leapt impulsively to
  his feet, and a scared look came into his face. He turned pale, but a
  timid, pleading smile appeared on his lips at once, and with an
  irresistible impulse he held out both hands to Katya. Seeing it, she flew
  impetuously to him. She seized him by the hands, and almost by force made
  him sit down on the bed. She sat down beside him, and still keeping his
  hands pressed them violently. Several times they both strove to speak, but
  stopped short and again gazed speechless with a strange smile, their eyes
  fastened on one another. So passed two minutes.
  
  "Have you forgiven me?" Mitya faltered at last, and at the same moment
  turning to Alyosha, his face working with joy, he cried, "Do you hear what
  I am asking, do you hear?"
  
  "That's what I loved you for, that you are generous at heart!" broke from
  Katya. "My forgiveness is no good to you, nor yours to me; whether you
  forgive me or not, you will always be a sore place in my heart, and I in
  yours--so it must be...." She stopped to take breath. "What have I come
  for?" she began again with nervous haste: "to embrace your feet, to press
  your hands like this, till it hurts--you remember how in Moscow I used to
  squeeze them--to tell you again that you are my god, my joy, to tell you
  that I love you madly," she moaned in anguish, and suddenly pressed his
  hand greedily to her lips. Tears streamed from her eyes. Alyosha stood
  speechless and confounded; he had never expected what he was seeing.
  
  "Love is over, Mitya!" Katya began again, "but the past is painfully dear
  to me. Know that you will always be so. But now let what might have been
  come true for one minute," she faltered, with a drawn smile, looking into
  his face joyfully again. "You love another woman, and I love another man,
  and yet I shall love you for ever, and you will love me; do you know that?
  Do you hear? Love me, love me all your life!" she cried, with a quiver
  almost of menace in her voice.
  
  "I shall love you, and ... do you know, Katya," Mitya began, drawing a
  deep breath at each word, "do you know, five days ago, that same evening,
  I loved you.... When you fell down and were carried out ... All my life!
  So it will be, so it will always be--"
  
  So they murmured to one another frantic words, almost meaningless, perhaps
  not even true, but at that moment it was all true, and they both believed
  what they said implicitly.
  
  "Katya," cried Mitya suddenly, "do you believe I murdered him? I know you
  don't believe it now, but then ... when you gave evidence.... Surely,
  surely you did not believe it!"
  
  "I did not believe it even then. I've never believed it. I hated you, and
  for a moment I persuaded myself. While I was giving evidence I persuaded
  myself and believed it, but when I'd finished speaking I left off
  believing it at once. Don't doubt that! I have forgotten that I came here
  to punish myself," she said, with a new expression in her voice, quite
  unlike the loving tones of a moment before.
  
  "Woman, yours is a heavy burden," broke, as it were, involuntarily from
  Mitya.
  
  "Let me go," she whispered. "I'll come again. It's more than I can bear
  now."
  
  She was getting up from her place, but suddenly uttered a loud scream and
  staggered back. Grushenka walked suddenly and noiselessly into the room.
  No one had expected her. Katya moved swiftly to the door, but when she
  reached Grushenka, she stopped suddenly, turned as white as chalk and
  moaned softly, almost in a whisper:
  
  "Forgive me!"
  
  Grushenka stared at her and, pausing for an instant, in a vindictive,
  venomous voice, answered:
  
  "We are full of hatred, my girl, you and I! We are both full of hatred! As
  though we could forgive one another! Save him, and I'll worship you all my
  life."
  
  "You won't forgive her!" cried Mitya, with frantic reproach.
  
  "Don't be anxious, I'll save him for you!" Katya whispered rapidly, and
  she ran out of the room.
  
  "And you could refuse to forgive her when she begged your forgiveness
  herself?" Mitya exclaimed bitterly again.
  
  "Mitya, don't dare to blame her; you have no right to!" Alyosha cried
  hotly.
  
  "Her proud lips spoke, not her heart," Grushenka brought out in a tone of
  disgust. "If she saves you I'll forgive her everything--"
  
  She stopped speaking, as though suppressing something. She could not yet
  recover herself. She had come in, as appeared afterwards, accidentally,
  with no suspicion of what she would meet.
  
  "Alyosha, run after her!" Mitya cried to his brother; "tell her ... I
  don't know ... don't let her go away like this!"
  
  "I'll come to you again at nightfall," said Alyosha, and he ran after
  Katya. He overtook her outside the hospital grounds. She was walking fast,
  but as soon as Alyosha caught her up she said quickly:
  
  "No, before that woman I can't punish myself! I asked her forgiveness
  because I wanted to punish myself to the bitter end. She would not forgive
  me.... I like her for that!" she added, in an unnatural voice, and her
  eyes flashed with fierce resentment.
  
  "My brother did not expect this in the least," muttered Alyosha. "He was
  sure she would not come--"
  
  "No doubt. Let us leave that," she snapped. "Listen: I can't go with you
  to the funeral now. I've sent them flowers. I think they still have money.
  If necessary, tell them I'll never abandon them.... Now leave me, leave
  me, please. You are late as it is--the bells are ringing for the
  service.... Leave me, please!"
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter III. Ilusha's Funeral. The Speech At The Stone
  
  
  He really was late. They had waited for him and had already decided to
  bear the pretty flower-decked little coffin to the church without him. It
  was the coffin of poor little Ilusha. He had died two days after Mitya was
  sentenced. At the gate of the house Alyosha was met by the shouts of the
  boys, Ilusha's schoolfellows. They had all been impatiently expecting him
  and were glad that he had come at last. There were about twelve of them,
  they all had their school-bags or satchels on their shoulders. "Father
  will cry, be with father," Ilusha had told them as he lay dying, and the
  boys remembered it. Kolya Krassotkin was the foremost of them.
  
  "How glad I am you've come, Karamazov!" he cried, holding out his hand to
  Alyosha. "It's awful here. It's really horrible to see it. Snegiryov is
  not drunk, we know for a fact he's had nothing to drink to-day, but he
  seems as if he were drunk ... I am always manly, but this is awful.
  Karamazov, if I am not keeping you, one question before you go in?"
  
  "What is it, Kolya?" said Alyosha.
  
  "Is your brother innocent or guilty? Was it he killed your father or was
  it the valet? As you say, so it will be. I haven't slept for the last four
  nights for thinking of it."
  
  "The valet killed him, my brother is innocent," answered Alyosha.
  
  "That's what I said," cried Smurov.
  
  "So he will perish an innocent victim!" exclaimed Kolya; "though he is
  ruined he is happy! I could envy him!"
  
  "What do you mean? How can you? Why?" cried Alyosha surprised.
  
  "Oh, if I, too, could sacrifice myself some day for truth!" said Kolya
  with enthusiasm.
  
  "But not in such a cause, not with such disgrace and such horror!" said
  Alyosha.
  
  "Of course ... I should like to die for all humanity, and as for disgrace,
  I don't care about that--our names may perish. I respect your brother!"
  
  "And so do I!" the boy, who had once declared that he knew who had founded
  Troy, cried suddenly and unexpectedly, and he blushed up to his ears like
  a peony as he had done on that occasion.
  
  Alyosha went into the room. Ilusha lay with his hands folded and his eyes
  closed in a blue coffin with a white frill round it. His thin face was
  hardly changed at all, and strange to say there was no smell of decay from
  the corpse. The expression of his face was serious and, as it were,
  thoughtful. His hands, crossed over his breast, looked particularly
  beautiful, as though chiseled in marble. There were flowers in his hands
  and the coffin, inside and out, was decked with flowers, which had been
  sent early in the morning by Lise Hohlakov. But there were flowers too
  from Katerina Ivanovna, and when Alyosha opened the door, the captain had
  a bunch in his trembling hands and was strewing them again over his dear
  boy. He scarcely glanced at Alyosha when he came in, and he would not look
  at any one, even at his crazy weeping wife, "mamma," who kept trying to
  stand on her crippled legs to get a nearer look at her dead boy. Nina had
  been pushed in her chair by the boys close up to the coffin. She sat with
  her head pressed to it and she too was no doubt quietly weeping.
  Snegiryov's face looked eager, yet bewildered and exasperated. There was
  something crazy about his gestures and the words that broke from him. "Old
  man, dear old man!" he exclaimed every minute, gazing at Ilusha. It was
  his habit to call Ilusha "old man," as a term of affection when he was
  alive.
  
  "Father, give me a flower, too; take that white one out of his hand and
  give it me," the crazy mother begged, whimpering. Either because the
  little white rose in Ilusha's hand had caught her fancy or that she wanted
  one from his hand to keep in memory of him, she moved restlessly,
  stretching out her hands for the flower.
  
  "I won't give it to any one, I won't give you anything," Snegiryov cried
  callously. "They are his flowers, not yours! Everything is his, nothing is
  yours!"
  
  "Father, give mother a flower!" said Nina, lifting her face wet with
  tears.
  
  "I won't give away anything and to her less than any one! She didn't love
  Ilusha. She took away his little cannon and he gave it to her," the
  captain broke into loud sobs at the thought of how Ilusha had given up his
  cannon to his mother. The poor, crazy creature was bathed in noiseless
  tears, hiding her face in her hands.
  
  The boys, seeing that the father would not leave the coffin and that it
  was time to carry it out, stood round it in a close circle and began to
  lift it up.
  
  "I don't want him to be buried in the churchyard," Snegiryov wailed
  suddenly; "I'll bury him by the stone, by our stone! Ilusha told me to. I
  won't let him be carried out!"
  
  He had been saying for the last three days that he would bury him by the
  stone, but Alyosha, Krassotkin, the landlady, her sister and all the boys
  interfered.
  
  "What an idea, bury him by an unholy stone, as though he had hanged
  himself!" the old landlady said sternly. "There in the churchyard the
  ground has been crossed. He'll be prayed for there. One can hear the
  singing in church and the deacon reads so plainly and verbally that it
  will reach him every time just as though it were read over his grave."
  
  At last the captain made a gesture of despair as though to say, "Take him
  where you will." The boys raised the coffin, but as they passed the
  mother, they stopped for a moment and lowered it that she might say good-
  by to Ilusha. But on seeing that precious little face, which for the last
  three days she had only looked at from a distance, she trembled all over
  and her gray head began twitching spasmodically over the coffin.
  
  "Mother, make the sign of the cross over him, give him your blessing, kiss
  him," Nina cried to her. But her head still twitched like an automaton and
  with a face contorted with bitter grief she began, without a word, beating
  her breast with her fist. They carried the coffin past her. Nina pressed
  her lips to her brother's for the last time as they bore the coffin by
  her. As Alyosha went out of the house he begged the landlady to look after
  those who were left behind, but she interrupted him before he had
  finished.
  
  "To be sure, I'll stay with them, we are Christians, too." The old woman
  wept as she said it.
  
  They had not far to carry the coffin to the church, not more than three
  hundred paces. It was a still, clear day, with a slight frost. The church
  bells were still ringing. Snegiryov ran fussing and distracted after the
  coffin, in his short old summer overcoat, with his head bare and his soft,
  old, wide-brimmed hat in his hand. He seemed in a state of bewildered
  anxiety. At one minute he stretched out his hand to support the head of
  the coffin and only hindered the bearers, at another he ran alongside and
  tried to find a place for himself there. A flower fell on the snow and he
  rushed to pick it up as though everything in the world depended on the
  loss of that flower.
  
  "And the crust of bread, we've forgotten the crust!" he cried suddenly in
  dismay. But the boys reminded him at once that he had taken the crust of
  bread already and that it was in his pocket. He instantly pulled it out
  and was reassured.
  
  "Ilusha told me to, Ilusha," he explained at once to Alyosha. "I was
  sitting by him one night and he suddenly told me: 'Father, when my grave
  is filled up crumble a piece of bread on it so that the sparrows may fly
  down, I shall hear and it will cheer me up not to be lying alone.' "
  
  "That's a good thing," said Alyosha, "we must often take some."
  
  "Every day, every day!" said the captain quickly, seeming cheered at the
  thought.
  
  They reached the church at last and set the coffin in the middle of it.
  The boys surrounded it and remained reverently standing so, all through
  the service. It was an old and rather poor church; many of the ikons were
  without settings; but such churches are the best for praying in. During
  the mass Snegiryov became somewhat calmer, though at times he had
  outbursts of the same unconscious and, as it were, incoherent anxiety. At
  one moment he went up to the coffin to set straight the cover or the
  wreath, when a candle fell out of the candlestick he rushed to replace it
  and was a fearful time fumbling over it, then he subsided and stood
  quietly by the coffin with a look of blank uneasiness and perplexity.
  After the Epistle he suddenly whispered to Alyosha, who was standing
  beside him, that the Epistle had not been read properly but did not
  explain what he meant. During the prayer, "Like the Cherubim," he joined
  in the singing but did not go on to the end. Falling on his knees, he
  pressed his forehead to the stone floor and lay so for a long while.
  
  At last came the funeral service itself and candles were distributed. The
  distracted father began fussing about again, but the touching and
  impressive funeral prayers moved and roused his soul. He seemed suddenly
  to shrink together and broke into rapid, short sobs, which he tried at
  first to smother, but at last he sobbed aloud. When they began taking
  leave of the dead and closing the coffin, he flung his arms about, as
  though he would not allow them to cover Ilusha, and began greedily and
  persistently kissing his dead boy on the lips. At last they succeeded in
  persuading him to come away from the step, but suddenly he impulsively
  stretched out his hand and snatched a few flowers from the coffin. He
  looked at them and a new idea seemed to dawn upon him, so that he
  apparently forgot his grief for a minute. Gradually he seemed to sink into
  brooding and did not resist when the coffin was lifted up and carried to
  the grave. It was an expensive one in the churchyard close to the church,
  Katerina Ivanovna had paid for it. After the customary rites the grave-
  diggers lowered the coffin. Snegiryov with his flowers in his hands bent
  down so low over the open grave that the boys caught hold of his coat in
  alarm and pulled him back. He did not seem to understand fully what was
  happening. When they began filling up the grave, he suddenly pointed
  anxiously at the falling earth and began trying to say something, but no
  one could make out what he meant, and he stopped suddenly. Then he was
  reminded that he must crumble the bread and he was awfully excited,
  snatched up the bread and began pulling it to pieces and flinging the
  morsels on the grave.
  
  "Come, fly down, birds, fly down, sparrows!" he muttered anxiously.
  
  One of the boys observed that it was awkward for him to crumble the bread
  with the flowers in his hands and suggested he should give them to some
  one to hold for a time. But he would not do this and seemed indeed
  suddenly alarmed for his flowers, as though they wanted to take them from
  him altogether. And after looking at the grave, and as it were, satisfying
  himself that everything had been done and the bread had been crumbled, he
  suddenly, to the surprise of every one, turned, quite composedly even, and
  made his way homewards. But his steps became more and more hurried, he
  almost ran. The boys and Alyosha kept up with him.
  
  "The flowers are for mamma, the flowers are for mamma! I was unkind to
  mamma," he began exclaiming suddenly.
  
  Some one called to him to put on his hat as it was cold. But he flung the
  hat in the snow as though he were angry and kept repeating, "I won't have
  the hat, I won't have the hat." Smurov picked it up and carried it after
  him. All the boys were crying, and Kolya and the boy who discovered about
  Troy most of all. Though Smurov, with the captain's hat in his hand, was
  crying bitterly too, he managed, as he ran, to snatch up a piece of red
  brick that lay on the snow of the path, to fling it at the flock of
  sparrows that was flying by. He missed them, of course, and went on crying
  as he ran. Half-way, Snegiryov suddenly stopped, stood still for half a
  minute, as though struck by something, and suddenly turning back to the
  church, ran towards the deserted grave. But the boys instantly overtook
  him and caught hold of him on all sides. Then he fell helpless on the snow
  as though he had been knocked down, and struggling, sobbing, and wailing,
  he began crying out, "Ilusha, old man, dear old man!" Alyosha and Kolya
  tried to make him get up, soothing and persuading him.
  
  "Captain, give over, a brave man must show fortitude," muttered Kolya.
  
  "You'll spoil the flowers," said Alyosha, "and mamma is expecting them,
  she is sitting crying because you would not give her any before. Ilusha's
  little bed is still there--"
  
  "Yes, yes, mamma!" Snegiryov suddenly recollected, "they'll take away the
  bed, they'll take it away," he added as though alarmed that they really
  would. He jumped up and ran homewards again. But it was not far off and
  they all arrived together. Snegiryov opened the door hurriedly and called
  to his wife with whom he had so cruelly quarreled just before:
  
  "Mamma, poor crippled darling, Ilusha has sent you these flowers," he
  cried, holding out to her a little bunch of flowers that had been frozen
  and broken while he was struggling in the snow. But at that instant he saw
  in the corner, by the little bed, Ilusha's little boots, which the
  landlady had put tidily side by side. Seeing the old, patched, rusty-
  looking, stiff boots he flung up his hands and rushed to them, fell on his
  knees, snatched up one boot and, pressing his lips to it, began kissing it
  greedily, crying, "Ilusha, old man, dear old man, where are your little
  feet?"
  
  "Where have you taken him away? Where have you taken him?" the lunatic
  cried in a heartrending voice. Nina, too, broke into sobs. Kolya ran out
  of the room, the boys followed him. At last Alyosha too went out.
  
  "Let them weep," he said to Kolya, "it's no use trying to comfort them
  just now. Let us wait a minute and then go back."
  
  "No, it's no use, it's awful," Kolya assented. "Do you know, Karamazov,"
  he dropped his voice so that no one could hear them, "I feel dreadfully
  sad, and if it were only possible to bring him back, I'd give anything in
  the world to do it."
  
  "Ah, so would I," said Alyosha.
  
  "What do you think, Karamazov? Had we better come back here to-night?
  He'll be drunk, you know."
  
  "Perhaps he will. Let us come together, you and I, that will be enough, to
  spend an hour with them, with the mother and Nina. If we all come together
  we shall remind them of everything again," Alyosha suggested.
  
  "The landlady is laying the table for them now--there'll be a funeral
  dinner or something, the priest is coming; shall we go back to it,
  Karamazov?"
  
  "Of course," said Alyosha.
  
  "It's all so strange, Karamazov, such sorrow and then pancakes after it,
  it all seems so unnatural in our religion."
  
  "They are going to have salmon, too," the boy who had discovered about
  Troy observed in a loud voice.
  
  "I beg you most earnestly, Kartashov, not to interrupt again with your
  idiotic remarks, especially when one is not talking to you and doesn't
  care to know whether you exist or not!" Kolya snapped out irritably. The
  boy flushed crimson but did not dare to reply.
  
  Meantime they were strolling slowly along the path and suddenly Smurov
  exclaimed:
  
  "There's Ilusha's stone, under which they wanted to bury him."
  
  They all stood still by the big stone. Alyosha looked and the whole
  picture of what Snegiryov had described to him that day, how Ilusha,
  weeping and hugging his father, had cried, "Father, father, how he
  insulted you," rose at once before his imagination.
  
  A sudden impulse seemed to come into his soul. With a serious and earnest
  expression he looked from one to another of the bright, pleasant faces of
  Ilusha's schoolfellows, and suddenly said to them:
  
  "Boys, I should like to say one word to you, here at this place."
  
  The boys stood round him and at once bent attentive and expectant eyes
  upon him.
  
  "Boys, we shall soon part. I shall be for some time with my two brothers,
  of whom one is going to Siberia and the other is lying at death's door.
  But soon I shall leave this town, perhaps for a long time, so we shall
  part. Let us make a compact here, at Ilusha's stone, that we will never
  forget Ilusha and one another. And whatever happens to us later in life,
  if we don't meet for twenty years afterwards, let us always remember how
  we buried the poor boy at whom we once threw stones, do you remember, by
  the bridge? and afterwards we all grew so fond of him. He was a fine boy,
  a kind-hearted, brave boy, he felt for his father's honor and resented the
  cruel insult to him and stood up for him. And so in the first place, we
  will remember him, boys, all our lives. And even if we are occupied with
  most important things, if we attain to honor or fall into great
  misfortune--still let us remember how good it was once here, when we were
  all together, united by a good and kind feeling which made us, for the
  time we were loving that poor boy, better perhaps than we are. My little
  doves--let me call you so, for you are very like them, those pretty blue
  birds, at this minute as I look at your good dear faces. My dear children,
  perhaps you won't understand what I am saying to you, because I often
  speak very unintelligibly, but you'll remember it all the same and will
  agree with my words some time. You must know that there is nothing higher
  and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some
  good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you
  a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved
  from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such
  memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one
  has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be
  the means of saving us. Perhaps we may even grow wicked later on, may be
  unable to refrain from a bad action, may laugh at men's tears and at those
  people who say as Kolya did just now, 'I want to suffer for all men,' and
  may even jeer spitefully at such people. But however bad we may
  become--which God forbid--yet, when we recall how we buried Ilusha, how we
  loved him in his last days, and how we have been talking like friends all
  together, at this stone, the cruelest and most mocking of us--if we do
  become so--will not dare to laugh inwardly at having been kind and good at
  this moment! What's more, perhaps, that one memory may keep him from great
  evil and he will reflect and say, 'Yes, I was good and brave and honest
  then!' Let him laugh to himself, that's no matter, a man often laughs at
  what's good and kind. That's only from thoughtlessness. But I assure you,
  boys, that as he laughs he will say at once in his heart, 'No, I do wrong
  to laugh, for that's not a thing to laugh at.' "
  
  "That will be so, I understand you, Karamazov!" cried Kolya, with flashing
  eyes.
  
  The boys were excited and they, too, wanted to say something, but they
  restrained themselves, looking with intentness and emotion at the speaker.
  
  "I say this in case we become bad," Alyosha went on, "but there's no
  reason why we should become bad, is there, boys? Let us be, first and
  above all, kind, then honest and then let us never forget each other! I
  say that again. I give you my word for my part that I'll never forget one
  of you. Every face looking at me now I shall remember even for thirty
  years. Just now Kolya said to Kartashov that we did not care to know
  whether he exists or not. But I cannot forget that Kartashov exists and
  that he is not blushing now as he did when he discovered the founders of
  Troy, but is looking at me with his jolly, kind, dear little eyes. Boys,
  my dear boys, let us all be generous and brave like Ilusha, clever, brave
  and generous like Kolya (though he will be ever so much cleverer when he
  is grown up), and let us all be as modest, as clever and sweet as
  Kartashov. But why am I talking about those two? You are all dear to me,
  boys, from this day forth, I have a place in my heart for you all, and I
  beg you to keep a place in your hearts for me! Well, and who has united us
  in this kind, good feeling which we shall remember and intend to remember
  all our lives? Who, if not Ilusha, the good boy, the dear boy, precious to
  us for ever! Let us never forget him. May his memory live for ever in our
  hearts from this time forth!"
  
  "Yes, yes, for ever, for ever!" the boys cried in their ringing voices,
  with softened faces.
  
  "Let us remember his face and his clothes and his poor little boots, his
  coffin and his unhappy, sinful father, and how boldly he stood up for him
  alone against the whole school."
  
  "We will remember, we will remember," cried the boys. "He was brave, he
  was good!"
  
  "Ah, how I loved him!" exclaimed Kolya.
  
  "Ah, children, ah, dear friends, don't be afraid of life! How good life is
  when one does something good and just!"
  
  "Yes, yes," the boys repeated enthusiastically.
  
  "Karamazov, we love you!" a voice, probably Kartashov's, cried
  impulsively.
  
  "We love you, we love you!" they all caught it up. There were tears in the
  eyes of many of them.
  
  "Hurrah for Karamazov!" Kolya shouted ecstatically.
  
  "And may the dead boy's memory live for ever!" Alyosha added again with
  feeling.
  
  "For ever!" the boys chimed in again.
  
  "Karamazov," cried Kolya, "can it be true what's taught us in religion,
  that we shall all rise again from the dead and shall live and see each
  other again, all, Ilusha too?"
  
  "Certainly we shall all rise again, certainly we shall see each other and
  shall tell each other with joy and gladness all that has happened!"
  Alyosha answered, half laughing, half enthusiastic.
  
  "Ah, how splendid it will be!" broke from Kolya.
  
  "Well, now we will finish talking and go to his funeral dinner. Don't be
  put out at our eating pancakes--it's a very old custom and there's
  something nice in that!" laughed Alyosha. "Well, let us go! And now we go
  hand in hand."
  
  "And always so, all our lives hand in hand! Hurrah for Karamazov!" Kolya
  cried once more rapturously, and once more the boys took up his
  exclamation: "Hurrah for Karamazov!"
  
  
  THE END
  
  
  
  
  
  
  FOOTNOTES
  
  
      1 In Russian, "silen."
  
      2 A proverbial expression in Russia.
  
      3 Grushenka.
  
      4 i.e. setter dog.
  
      5 Probably the public event was the Decabrist plot against the Tsar,
        of December 1825, in which the most distinguished men in Russia were
        concerned.--TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.
  
      6 When a monk's body is carried out from the cell to the church and
        from the church to the graveyard, the canticle "What earthly joy..."
        is sung. If the deceased was a priest as well as a monk the canticle
        "Our Helper and Defender" is sung instead.
  
      7 i.e. a chime of bells.
  
      8 Literally: "Did you get off with a long nose made at you?"--a
        proverbial expression in Russia for failure.
  
      9 Gogol is meant.
  
feat_summary_name: Epilogue
target: After Dmitri's trial, Alyosha goes to Katerina's, where Ivan is ill, unconscious, and burning with high fever; in spite of gossip, Katerina has ordered that he be brought to her house. When Alyosha arrives, she confesses her deep regret over what she revealed during the trial but says that Dmitri's escape is already being planned. She explains further that more help is needed; Alyosha must aid his brother and bribe the appropriate officials. Alyosha agrees but forces Katerina to promise that she will visit Dmitri in prison. Alyosha then goes to his brother and tells him that Katerina also will come, but Dmitri has weightier problems troubling him. He explains his desire to repent and, through suffering, to become a new human being. He fears only one thing: that he will be unable to carry out his intentions if the authorities do not let Grushenka accompany him. Alyosha explains the plans that have been made for the escape, and Dmitri reluctantly agrees to them. He makes one stipulation, however; he escapes only for the present. Someday he must return to Mother Russia. Katerina then enters, and she and Dmitri ask each other for forgiveness. Peace is not so easy, though, even now, for Grushenka unexpectedly arrives. Although Katerina begs her for forgiveness, Grushenka still feels too bitter toward her former rival to acknowledge any pleas. In the meantime, little Ilusha has died, and Alyosha leaves Dmitri to go to the young boy's funeral. After the burial, Alyosha talks with Ilusha's many school friends and asks them to remember forever their friendship at the present moment. He, in turn, promises that he will never forget any one of them. The boys are deeply affected by Alyosha's sincerity and all cheer, "Hurrah for Karamazov."
feat_summary_analysis: In a sense, the epilogue conforms to the nineteenth-century custom of tidying up the end of a novel. Here the final fates of all the characters are revealed, and the reader is relieved from speculating. Dmitri accepts Ivan's plan for escape, but only after he has Alyosha's sanction. As for Alyosha, he conforms to the directives of the late Father Zossima. He does not condemn his brother, nor does he object to the escape. In short, he refuses to judge Dmitri. Even in his escape, it is important to note that Dmitri feels that he will suffer immensely. He has been depicted as being closely attached to Russia and to be exiled to America -- to be separated from the soil from which he takes his strength -- is an extreme form of punishment for him. His plans are to return to his country as soon as possible and then to live anonymously in some remote region. This lasting love for Russian soil, of course, reflects Dostoevsky's passion for his native land. In the novel's final pages, all concern is with Alyosha and Ilusha's young school friends. The ex-monk has had little success with adults in Russian society, but with children he is unexcelled. The boys eagerly gather around Alyosha and are openly responsive to his speech about love and devotion -- a message quite clear: Dostoevsky believes that youth, nurtured on the wisdom of Father Zossima, will be the salvation of Russia.