Page 468 - the-brothers-karamazov

Chapter 1

Father Zossima and

His Visitors

HEN with an anxious and aching heart Alyosha went
Winto his elder’s cell, he stood still almost astonished.
Instead of a sick man at his last gasp, perhaps unconscious,
as he had feared to find him, he saw him sitting up in his
chair and, though weak and exhausted, his face was bright
and cheerful, he was surrounded by visitors and engaged
in a quiet and joyful conversation. But he had only got up
from his bed a quarter of an hour before Alyosha’s arrival;
his visitors had gathered together in his cell earlier, waiting
for him to wake, having received a most confident assur-
ance from Father Paissy that ‘the teacher would get up,
and as he had himself promised in the morning, converse
once more with those dear to his heart.’ This promise and
indeed every word of the dying elder Father Paissy put im-
plicit trust in. If he had seen him unconscious, if he had
seen him breathe his last, and yet had his promise that he
would rise up and say good-bye to him, he would not have
believed perhaps even in death, but would still have expect-