The Brothers Karamazov
by
Dostoyevsky
PART I
PART IPART II
PART III
PART IV
This is a hypertextual, self-referential edition of
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky.
The text was prepared using the Project Gutenberg edition.
Click on any word to see its occurrences in the text;
click on line numbers to go to that line;
click on chapter names to go to that chapter;
or search using the form below.
Search terms can contain spaces and punctuation.
The concordance for The Brothers Karamazov ordered alphanumerically,
and listed in order of word frequency. Click here for more texts.
[2]
[3] Book I
[4] The History of a Family
[5]
[6] Chapter 1
[7] Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov
[8]
[9] ALEXEY Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor
[10] Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his
[11] own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and
[12] tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall
[13] describe in its proper place. For the present I will only say that
[14] this "landowner"- for so we used to call him, although he hardly spent
[15] a day of his life on his own estate- was a strange type, yet one
[16] pretty frequently to be met with, a type abject and vicious and at the
[17] same time senseless. But he was one of those senseless persons who are
[18] very well capable of looking after their worldly affairs, and,
[19] apparently, after nothing else. Fyodor Pavlovitch, for instance, began
[20] with next to nothing; his estate was of the smallest; he ran to dine
[21] at other men's tables, and fastened on them as a toady, yet at his
[22] death it appeared that he had a hundred thousand roubles in hard cash.
[23] At the same time, he was all his life one of the most senseless,
[24] fantastical fellows in the whole district. I repeat, it was not
[25] stupidity- the majority of these fantastical fellows are shrewd and
[26] intelligent enough- but just senselessness, and a peculiar national
[27] form of it.
[28] He was married twice, and had three sons, the eldest, Dmitri, by
[29] his first wife, and two, Ivan and Alexey, by his second. Fyodor
[30] Pavlovitch's first wife, Adelaida Ivanovna, belonged to a fairly
[31] rich and distinguished noble family, also landowners in our
[32] district, the Miusovs. How it came to pass that an heiress, who was
[33] also a beauty, and moreover one of those vigorous intelligent girls,
[34] so common in this generation, but sometimes also to be found in the
[35] last, could have married such a worthless, puny weakling, as we all
[36] called him, I won't attempt to explain. I knew a young lady of the
[37] last "romantic" generation who after some years of an enigmatic
[38] passion for a gentleman, whom she might quite easily have married at
[39] any moment, invented insuperable obstacles to their union, and ended
[40] by throwing herself one stormy night into a rather deep and rapid
[41] river from a high bank, almost a precipice, and so perished,
[42] entirely to satisfy her own caprice, and to be like Shakespeare's
[43] Ophelia. Indeed, if this precipice, a chosen and favourite spot of
[44] hers, had been less picturesque, if there had been a prosaic flat bank
[45] in its place, most likely the suicide would never have taken place.
[46] This is a fact, and probably there have been not a few similar
[47] instances in the last two or three generations. Adelaida Ivanovna
[48] Miusov's action was similarly, no doubt, an echo of other people's
[49] ideas, and was due to the irritation caused by lack of mental freedom.
[50] She wanted, perhaps, to show her feminine independence, to override
[51] class distinctions and the despotism of her family. And a pliable
[52] imagination persuaded her, we must suppose, for a brief moment, that
[53] Fyodor Pavlovitch, in spite of his parasitic position, was one of
[54] the bold and ironical spirits of that progressive epoch, though he
[55] was, in fact, an ill-natured buffoon and nothing more. What gave the
[56] marriage piquancy was that it was preceded by an elopement, and this
[57] greatly captivated Adelaida Ivanovna's fancy. Fyodor Pavlovitch's
[58] position at the time made him specially eager for any such enterprise,
[59] for he was passionately anxious to make a career in one way or
[60] another. To attach himself to a good family and obtain a dowry was
[61] an alluring prospect. As for mutual love it did not exist
[62] apparently, either in the bride or in him, in spite of Adelaida
[63] Ivanovna's beauty. This was, perhaps, a unique case of the kind in the
[64] life of Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was always of a voluptuous temper,
[65] and ready to run after any petticoat on the slightest encouragement.
[66] She seems to have been the only woman who made no particular appeal to
[67] his senses.
[68] Immediatley after the elopement Adelaida Ivanovna discerned in a
[69] flash that she had no feeling for her husband but contempt. The
[70] marriage accordingly showed itself in its true colours with
[71] extraordinary rapidity. Although the family accepted the event
[72] pretty quickly and apportioned the runaway bride her dowry, the
[73] husband and wife began to lead a most disorderly life, and there
[74] were everlasting scenes between them. It was said that the young
[75] wife showed incomparably more generosity and dignity than Fyodor
[76] Pavlovitch, who, as is now known, got hold of all her money up to
[77] twenty five thousand roubles as soon as she received it, so that those
[78] thousands were lost to her forever. The little village and the
[79] rather fine town house which formed part of her dowry he did his
[80] utmost for a long time to transfer to his name, by means of some
[81] deed of conveyance. He would probably have succeeded, merely from
[82] her moral fatigue and desire to get rid of him, and from the
[83] contempt and loathing he aroused by his persistent and shameless
[84] importunity. But, fortunately, Adelaida Ivanovna's family intervened
[85] and circumvented his greediness. It is known for a fact that
[86] frequent fights took place between the husband and wife, but rumour
[87] had it that Fyodor Pavlovitch did not beat his wife but was beaten
[88] by her, for she was a hot-tempered, bold, dark-browed, impatient
[89] woman, possessed of remarkable physical strength. Finally, she left
[90] the house and ran away from Fyodor Pavlovitch with a destitute
[91] divinity student, leaving Mitya, a child of three years old, in her
[92] husband's hands. Immediately Fyodor Pavlovitch introduced a regular
[93] harem into the house, and abandoned himself to orgies of
[94] drunkenness. In the intervals he used to drive all over the
[95] province, complaining tearfully to each and all of Adelaida Ivanovna's
[96] having left him, going into details too disgraceful for a husband to
[97] mention in regard to his own married life. What seemed to gratify
[98] him and flatter his self-love most was to play the ridiculous part
[99] of the injured husband, and to parade his woes with embellishments.
[100] "One would think that you'd got a promotion, Fyodor Pavlovitch,
[101] you seem so pleased in spite of your sorrow," scoffers said to him.
[102] Many even added that he was glad of a new comic part in which to
[103] play the buffoon, and that it was simply to make it funnier that he
[104] pretended to be unaware of his ludicrous position. But, who knows,
[105] it may have been simplicity. At last he succeeded in getting on the
[106] track of his runaway wife. The poor woman turned out to be in
[107] Petersburg, where she had gone with her divinity student, and where
[108] she had thrown herself into a life of complete emancipation. Fyodor
[109] Pavlovitch at once began bustling about, making preparations to go
[110] to Petersburg, with what object he could not himself have said. He
[111] would perhaps have really gone; but having determined to do so he felt
[112] at once entitled to fortify himself for the journey by another bout of
[113] reckless drinking. And just at that time his wife's family received
[114] the news of her death in Petersburg. She had died quite suddenly in
[115] a garret, according to one story, of typhus, or as another version had
[116] it, of starvation. Fyodor Pavlovitch was drunk when he heard of his
[117] wife's death, and the story is that he ran out into the street and
[118] began shouting with joy, raising his hands to Heaven: "Lord, now
[119] lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace," but others say he wept
[120] without restraint like a little child, so much so that people were
[121] sorry for him, in spite of the repulsion he inspired. It is quite
[122] possible that both versions were true, that he rejoiced at his
[123] release, and at the same time wept for her who released him. As a
[124] general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naive and
[125] simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too.
[126] Chapter 2
[127] He Gets Rid of His Eldest Son
[128]
[129] YOU can easily imagine what a father such a man could be and how
[130] he would bring up his children. His behaviour as a father was
[131] exactly what might be expected. He completely abandoned the child of
[132] his marriage with Adelaida Ivanovna, not from malice, nor because of
[133] his matrimonial grievances, but simply because he forgot him. While he
[134] was wearying everyone with his tears and complaints, and turning his
[135] house into a sink of debauchery, a faithful servant of the family,
[136] Grigory, took the three-year old Mitya into his care. If he hadn't
[137] looked after him there would have been no one even to change the
[138] baby's little shirt.
[139] It happened moreover that the child's relations on his mother's
[140] side forgot him too at first. His grandfather was no longer living,
[141] his widow, Mitya's grandmother, had moved to Moscow, and was seriously
[142] ill, while his daughters were married, so that Mitya remained for
[143] almost a whole year in old Grigory's charge and lived with him in
[144] the servant's cottage. But if his father had remembered him (he
[145] could not, indeed, have been altogether unaware of his existence) he
[146] would have sent him back to the cottage, as the child would only
[147] have been in the way of his debaucheries. But a cousin of Mitya's
[148] mother, Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miusov, happened to return from Paris. He
[149] lived for many years afterwards abroad, but was at that time quite a
[150] young .man, and distinguished among the Miusovs as a man of
[151] enlightened ideas and of European culture, who had been in the
[152] capitals and abroad. Towards the end of his life he became a Liberal
[153] of the type common in the forties and fifties. In the course of his
[154] career he had come into contact with many of the most Liberal men of
[155] his epoch, both in Russia and abroad. He had known Proudhon and
[156] Bakunin personally, and in his declining years was very fond of
[157] describing the three days of the Paris Revolution of February, 1848,
[158] hinting that he himself had almost taken part in the fighting on the
[159] barricades. This was one of the most grateful recollections of his
[160] youth. He had an independent property of about a thousand souls, to
[161] reckon in the old style. His splendid estate lay on the outskirts of
[162] our little town and bordered on the lands of our famous monastery,
[163] with which Pyotr Alexandrovitch began an endless lawsuit, almost as
[164] soon as he came into the estate, concerning the rights of fishing in
[165] the river or wood-cutting in the forest, I don't know exactly which.
[166] He regarded it as his duty as a citizen and a man of culture to open
[167] an attack upon the "clericals." Hearing all about Adelaida Ivanovna,
[168] whom he, of course, remembered, and in whom he had at one time been
[169] interested, and learning of the existence of Mitya, he intervened,
[170] in spite of all his youthful indignation and contempt for Fyodor
[171] Pavlovitch. He made the latter's acquaintance for the first time,
[172] and told him directly that he wished to undertake the child's
[173] education. He used long afterwards to tell as a characteristic
[174] touch, that when he began to speak of Mitya, Fyodor Pavlovitch
[175] looked for some time as though he did not understand what child he was
[176] talking about, and even as though he was surprised to hear that he had
[177] a little son in the house. The story may have been exaggerated, yet it
[178] must have been something like the truth.
[179] Fyodor Pavlovitch was all his life fond of acting, of suddenly
[180] playing an unexpected part, sometimes without any motive for doing so,
[181] and even to his own direct disadvantage, as, for instance, in the
[182] present case. This habit, however, is characteristic of a very great
[183] number of people, some of them very clever ones, not like Fyodor
[184] Pavlovitch. Pyotr Alexandrovitch carried the business through
[185] vigorously, and was appointed, with Fyodor Pavlovitch, joint
[186] guardian of the child, who had a small property, a house and land,
[187] left him by his mother. Mitya did, in fact, pass into this cousin's
[188] keeping, but as the latter had no family of his own, and after
[189] securing the revenues of his estates was in haste to return at once to
[190] Paris, he left the boy in charge of one of his cousins, a lady
[191] living in Moscow. It came to pass that, settling permanently in
[192] Paris he, too, forgot the child, especially when the Revolution of
[193] February broke out, making an impression on his mind that he
[194] remembered all the rest of his life. The Moscow lady died, and Mitya
[195] passed into the care of one of her married daughters. I believe he
[196] changed his home a fourth time later on. I won't enlarge upon that
[197] now, as I shall have much to tell later of Fyodor Pavlovitch's
[198] firstborn, and must confine myself now to the most essential facts
[199] about him, without which I could not begin my story.
[200] In the first place, this Mitya, or rather Dmitri Fyodorovitch, was
[201] the only one of Fyodor Pavlovitch's three sons who grew up in the
[202] belief that he had property, and that he would be independent on
[203] coming of age. He spent an irregular boyhood and youth. He did not
[204] finish his studies at the gymnasium, he got into a military school,
[205] then went to the Caucasus, was promoted, fought a duel, and was
[206] degraded to the ranks, earned promotion again, led a wild life, and
[207] spent a good deal of money. He did not begin to receive any income
[208] from Fyodor Pavlovitch until he came of age, and until then got into
[209] debt. He saw and knew his father, Fyodor Pavlovitch, for the first
[210] time on coming of age, when he visited our neighbourhood on purpose to
[211] settle with him about his property. He seems not to have liked his
[212] father. He did not stay long with him, and made haste to get away,
[213] having only succeeded in obtaining a sum of money, and entering into
[214] an agreement for future payments from the estate, of the revenues
[215] and value of which he was unable (a fact worthy of note), upon this
[216] occasion, to get a statement from his father. Fyodor Pavlovitch
[217] remarked for the first time then (this, too, should be noted) that
[218] Mitya had a vague and exaggerated idea of his property. Fyodor
[219] Pavlovitch was very well satisfied with this, as it fell in with his
[220] own designs. He gathered only that the young man was frivolous,
[221] unruly, of violent passions, impatient, and dissipated, and that if he
[222] could only obtain ready money he would be satisfied, although only, of
[223] course, a short time. So Fyodor Pavlovitch began to take advantage
[224] of this fact, sending him from time to time small doles,
[225] instalments. In the end, when four years later, Mitya, losing
[226] patience, came a second time to our little town to settle up once
[227] for all with his father, it turned out to his amazement that he had
[228] nothing, that it was difficult to get an account even, that he had
[229] received the whole value of his property in sums of money from
[230] Fyodor Pavlovitch, and was perhaps even in debt to him, that by
[231] various agreements into which he had, of his own desire, entered at
[232] various previous dates, he had no right to expect anything more, and
[233] so on, and so on. The young man was overwhelmed, suspected deceit
[234] and cheating, and was almost beside himself. And, indeed, this
[235] circumstance led to the catastrophe, the account of which forms the
[236] subject of my first introductory story, or rather the external side of
[237] it. But before I pass to that story I must say a little of Fyodor
[238] Pavlovitch's other two sons, and of their origin.
[239] Chapter 3
[240] The Second Marriage and the Second Family
[241]
[242] VERY shortly after getting his four-year-old Mitya off his hands
[243] Fyodor Pavlovitch married a second time. His second marriage lasted
[244] eight years. He took this second wife, Sofya Ivanovna, also a very
[245] young girl, from another province, where he had gone upon some small
[246] piece of business in company with a Jew. Though Fyodor Pavlovitch
[247] was a drunkard and a vicious debauchee he never neglected investing
[248] his capital, and managed his business affairs very successfully,
[249] though, no doubt, not over-scrupulously. Sofya Ivanovna was the
[250] daughter of an obscure deacon, and was left from childhood an orphan
[251] without relations. She grew up in the house of a general's widow, a
[252] wealthy old lady of good position, who was at once her benefactress
[253] and tormentor. I do not know the details, but I have only heard that
[254] the orphan girl, a meek and gentle creature, was once cut down from
[255] a halter in which she was hanging from a nail in the loft, so terrible
[256] were her sufferings from the caprice and everlasting nagging of this
[257] old woman, who was apparently not bad-hearted but had become an
[258] insufferable tyrant through idleness.
[259] Fyodor Pavlovitch made her an offer; inquiries were made about him
[260] and he was refused. But again, as in his first marriage, he proposed
[261] an elopement to the orphan girl. There is very little doubt that she
[262] would not on any account have married him if she had known a little
[263] more about him in time. But she lived in another province; besides,
[264] what could a little girl of sixteen know about it, except that she
[265] would be better at the bottom of the river than remaining with her
[266] benefactress. So the poor child exchanged a benefactress for a
[267] benefactor. Fyodor Pavlovitch did not get a penny this time, for the
[268] general's widow was furious. She gave them nothing and cursed them
[269] both. But he had not reckoned on a dowry; what allured him was the
[270] remarkable beauty of the innocent girl, above all her innocent
[271] appearance, which had a peculiar attraction for a vicious
[272] profligate, who had hitherto admired only the coarser types of
[273] feminine beauty.
[274] "Those innocent eyes slit my soul up like a razor," he used to say
[275] afterwards, with his loathsome snigger. In a man so depraved this
[276] might, of course, mean no more than sensual attraction. As he had
[277] received no dowry with his wife, and had, so to speak, taken her "from
[278] the halter," he did not stand on ceremony with her. Making her feel
[279] that she had "wronged" him, he took advantage of her phenomenal
[280] meekness and submissiveness to trample on the elementary decencies
[281] of marriage. He gathered loose women into his house, and carried on
[282] orgies of debauchery in his wife's presence. To show what a pass
[283] things had come to, I may mention that Grigory, the gloomy, stupid,
[284] obstinate, argumentative servant, who had always hated his first
[285] mistress, Adelaida Ivanovna, took the side of his new mistress. He
[286] championed her cause, abusing Fyodor Pavlovitch in a manner little
[287] befitting a servant, and on one occasion broke up the revels and drove
[288] all the disorderly women out of the house. In the end this unhappy
[289] young woman, kept in terror from her childhood, fell into that kind of
[290] nervous disease which is most frequently found in peasant women who
[291] are said to be "possessed by devils." At times after terrible fits
[292] of hysterics she even lost her reason. Yet she bore Fyodor
[293] Pavlovitch two sons, Ivan and Alexey, the eldest in the first year
[294] of marriage and the second three years later. When she died, little
[295] Alexey was in his fourth year, and, strange as it seems, I know that
[296] he remembered his mother all his life, like a dream, of course. At her
[297] death almost exactly the same thing happened to the two little boys as
[298] to their elder brother, Mitya. They were completely forgotten and
[299] abandoned by their father. They were looked after by the same
[300] Grigory and lived in his cottage, where they were found by the
[301] tyrannical old lady who had brought up their mother. She was still
[302] alive, and had not, all those eight years, forgotten the insult done
[303] her. All that time she was obtaining exact information as to her
[304] Sofya's manner of life, and hearing of her illness and hideous
[305] surroundings she declared aloud two or three times to her retainers:
[306] "It serves her right. God has punished her for her ingratitude."
[307] Exactly three months after Sofya Ivanovna's death the general's
[308] widow suddenly appeared in our town, and went straight to Fyodor
[309] Pavlovitch's house. She spent only half an hour in the town but she
[310] did a great deal. It was evening. Fyodor Pavlovitch, whom she had
[311] not seen for those eight years, came in to her drunk. The story is
[312] that instantly upon seeing him, without any sort of explanation, she
[313] gave him two good, resounding slaps on the face, seized him by a
[314] tuft of hair, and shook him three times up and down. Then, without a
[315] word, she went straight to the cottage to the two boys. Seeing, at the
[316] first glance, that they were unwashed and in dirty linen, she promptly
[317] gave Grigory, too, a box on the ear, and announcing that she would
[318] carry off both the children she wrapped them just as they were in a
[319] rug, put them in the carriage, and drove off to her own town.
[320] Grigory accepted the blow like a devoted slave, without a word, and
[321] when he escorted the old lady to her carriage he made her a low bow
[322] and pronounced impressively that, "God would repay her for orphans."
[323] "You are a blockhead all the same," the old lady shouted to him as she
[324] drove away.
[325] Fyodor Pavlovitch, thinking it over, decided that it was a good
[326] thing, and did not refuse the general's widow his formal consent to
[327] any proposition in regard to his children's education. As for the
[328] slaps she had given him, he drove all over the town telling the story.
[329] It happened that the old lady died soon after this, but she left
[330] the boys in her will a thousand roubles each "for their instruction,
[331] and so that all be spent on them exclusively, with the condition
[332] that it be so portioned out as to last till they are twenty-one, for
[333] it is more than adequate provision for such children. If other
[334] people think fit to throw away their money, let them." I have not read
[335] the will myself, but I heard there was something queer of the sort,
[336] very whimsically expressed. The principal heir, Yefim Petrovitch
[337] Polenov, the Marshal of Nobility of the province, turned out, however,
[338] to be an honest man. Writing to Fyodor Pavlovitch, and discerning at
[339] once that he could extract nothing from him for his children's
[340] education (though the latter never directly refused but only
[341] procrastinated as he always did in such cases, and was, indeed, at
[342] times effusively sentimental), Yefim Petrovitch took a personal
[343] interest in the orphans. He became especially fond of the younger,
[344] Alexey, who lived for a long while as one of his family. I beg the
[345] reader to note this from the beginning. And to Yefim Petrovitch, a man
[346] of a generosity and humanity rarely to be met with, the young people
[347] were more indebted for their education and bringing up than to anyone.
[348] He kept the two thousand roubles left to them by the general's widow
[349] intact, so that by the time they came of age their portions had been
[350] doubled by the accumulation of interest. He educated them both at
[351] his own expense, and certainly spent far more than a thousand
[352] roubles upon each of them. I won't enter into a detailed account of
[353] their boyhood and youth, but will only mention a few of the most
[354] important events. Of the elder, Ivan, I will only say that he grew
[355] into a somewhat morose and reserved, though far from timid boy. At ten
[356] years old he had realised that they were living not in their own
[357] home but on other people's charity, and that their father was a man of
[358] whom it was disgraceful to speak. This boy began very early, almost in
[359] his infancy (so they say at least), to show a brilliant and unusual
[360] aptitude for learning. I don't know precisely why, but he left the
[361] family of Yefim Petrovitch when he was hardly thirteen, entering a
[362] Moscow gymnasium and boarding with an experienced and celebrated
[363] teacher, an old friend of Yefim Petrovitch. Ivan used to declare
[364] afterwards that this was all due to the "ardour for good works" of
[365] Yefim Petrovitch, who was captivated by the idea that the boy's genius
[366] should be trained by a teacher of genius. But neither Yefim Petrovitch
[367] nor this teacher was living when the young man finished at the
[368] gymnasium and entered the university. As Yefim Petrovitch had made
[369] no provision for the payment of the tyrannical old lady's legacy,
[370] which had grown from one thousand to two, it was delayed, owing to
[371] formalities inevitable in Russia, and the young man was in great
[372] straits for the first two years at the university, as he was forced to
[373] keep himself all the time he was studying. It must be noted that he
[374] did not even attempt to communicate with his father, perhaps from
[375] pride, from contempt for him, or perhaps from his cool common sense,
[376] which told him that from such a father he would get no real
[377] assistance. However that may have been, the young man was by no
[378] means despondent and succeeded in getting work, at first giving
[379] sixpenny lessons and afterwards getting paragraphs on street incidents
[380] into the newspapers under the signature of "Eye-Witness." These
[381] paragraphs, it was said, were so interesting and piquant that they
[382] were soon taken. This alone showed the young man's practical and
[383] intellectual superiority over the masses of needy and unfortunate
[384] students of both sexes who hang about the offices of the newspapers
[385] and journals, unable to think of anything better than everlasting
[386] entreaties for copying and translations from the French. Having once
[387] got into touch with the editors Ivan Fyodorovitch always kept up his
[388] connection with them, and in his latter years at the university he
[389] published brilliant reviews of books upon various special subjects, so
[390] that he became well known in literary circles. But only in his last
[391] year he suddenly succeeded in attracting the attention of a far
[392] wider circle of readers, so that a great many people noticed and
[393] remembered him. It was rather a curious incident. When he had just
[394] left the university and was preparing to go abroad upon his two
[395] thousand roubles, Ivan Fyodorovitch published in one of the more
[396] important journals a strange article, which attracted general
[397] notice, on a subject of which he might have been supposed to know
[398] nothing, as he was a student of natural science. The article dealt
[399] with a subject which was being debated everywhere at the time- the
[400] position of the ecclesiastical courts. After discussing several
[401] opinions on the subject he went on to explain his own view. What was
[402] most striking about the article was its tone, and its unexpected
[403] conclusion. Many of the Church party regarded him unquestioningly as
[404] on their side. And yet not only the secularists but even atheists
[405] joined them in their applause. Finally some sagacious persons opined
[406] that the article was nothing but an impudent satirical burlesque. I
[407] mention this incident particularly because this article penetrated
[408] into the famous monastery in our neighbourhood, where the inmates,
[409] being particularly interested in question of the ecclesiastical
[410] courts, were completely bewildered by it. Learning the author's
[411] name, they were interested in his being a native of the town and the
[412] son of "that Fyodor Pavlovitch." And just then it was that the
[413] author himself made his appearance among us.
[414] Why Ivan Fyodorovitch had come amongst us I remember asking myself
[415] at the time with a certain uneasiness. This fateful visit, which was
[416] the first step lea