Alyosha was naturally silent, and he seemed to be expecting something, ashamed about something, while his brother Ivan, though Alyosha noticed at first that he looked long and curiously at him, seemed soon to have left off thinking of him.Alyosha noticed it with some embarrassment.He ascribed his brother's indifference at first to the disparity of their age and education.But he also wondered whether the absence of curiosity and sympathy in Ivan might be due to some other cause entirely unknown to him.He kept fancying that Ivan was absorbed in something- something inward and important- that he was striving towards some goal, perhaps very hard to attain, and that that was why he had no thought for him.Alyosha wondered, too, whether there was not some contempt on the part of the learned atheist for him- a foolish novice.He knew for certain that his brother was an atheist.He could not take offence at this contempt, if it existed;yet, with an uneasy embarrassment which he did not himself understand, he waited for his brother to come nearer to him.Dmitri used to speak of Ivan with the deepest respect and with a peculiar earnestness.From him Alyosha learnt all the details of the important affair which had of late formed such a close and remarkable bond between the two elder brothers.Dmitri's enthusiastic references to Ivan were the more striking in Alyosha's eyes since Dmitri was, compared with Ivan, almost uneducated, and the two brothers were such a contrast in personality and character that it would be difficult to find two men more unlike.
It was at this time that the meeting, or, rather gathering of the members of this inharmonious family took place in the cell of the elder who had such an extraordinary influence on Alyosha.The pretext for this gathering was a false one.It was at this time that the discord between Dmitri and his father seemed at its acutest stage and their relations had become insufferably strained.Fyodor Pavlovitch seems to have been the first to suggest, apparently in joke, that they should all meet in Father Zossima's cell, and that, without appealing to his direct intervention, they might more decently come to an understanding under the conciliating influence of the elder's presence.Dmitri, who had never seen the elder, naturally supposed that his father was trying to intimidate him, but, as he secretly blamed himself for his outbursts of temper with his father on several recent occasions, he accepted the challenge.It must be noted that he was not, like Ivan, staying with his father, but living apart at the other end of the town.It happened that Pyotr Alexandrovitch Miusov, who was staying in the district at the time, caught eagerly at the idea.A Liberal of the forties and fifties, a freethinker and atheist, he may have been led on by boredom or the hope of frivolous diversion.He was suddenly seized with the desire to see the monastery and the holy man.As his lawsuit with the monastery still dragged on, he made it the pretext for seeing the Superior, in order to attempt to settle it amicably.A visitor coming with such laudable intentions might be received with more attention and consideration than if he came from simple curiosity.
Influences from within the monastery were brought to bear on the elder, who of late had scarcely left his cell, and had been forced by illness to deny even his ordinary visitors.In the end he consented to see them, and the day was fixed.
"Who has made me a judge over them?" was all he said, smilingly, to Alyosha.
Alyosha was much perturbed when he heard of the proposed visit.Of all the wrangling, quarrelsome party, Dmitri was the only one who could regard the interview seriously.All the others would come from frivolous motives, perhaps insulting to the elder.Alyosha was well aware of that.Ivan and Miusov would come from curiosity, perhaps of the coarsest kind, while his father might be contemplating some piece of buffoonery.Though he said nothing, Alyosha thoroughly understood his father.The boy, I repeat, was far from being so simple as everyone thought him.He awaited the day with a heavy heart.No doubt he was always pondering in his mind how the family discord could be ended.But his chief anxiety concerned the elder.He trembled for him, for his glory, and dreaded any affront to him, especially the refined, courteous irony of Miusov and the supercilious half-utterances of the highly educated Ivan.He even wanted to venture on warning the elder, telling him something about them, but, on second thoughts, said nothing.He only sent word the day before, through a friend, to his brother Dmitri, that he loved him and expected him to keep his promise.Dmitri wondered, for he could not remember what he had promised, but he answered by letter that he would do his utmost not to let himself be provoked "by vileness," but that, although he had a deep respect for the elder and for his brother Ivan, he was convinced that the meeting was either a trap for him or an unworthy farce.
"Nevertheless I would rather bite out my tongue than be lacking in respect to the sainted man whom you reverence so highly," he wrote in conclusion.Alyosha was not greatly cheered by the letter.
