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book under his pillow with the French words written out in
Russian letters for him by someone, he he he!’
Ivan ended by dismissing all doubts. He could not think
of Dmitri without repulsion. Only one thing was strange,
however. Alyosha persisted that Dmitri was not the mur-
derer, and that ‘in all probability’ Smerdyakov was. Ivan
always felt that Alyosha’s opinion meant a great deal to him,
and so he was astonished at it now. Another thing that was
strange was that Alyosha did not make any attempt to talk
about Mitya with Ivan, that he never began on the subject
and only answered his questions. This, too, struck Ivan par-
ticularly.
But he was very much preoccupied at that time with
something quite apart from that. On his return from Mos-
cow, he abandoned himself hopelessly to his mad and
consuming passion for Katerina Ivanovna. This is not the
time to begin to speak of this new passion of Ivan’s, which
left its mark on all the rest of his life: this would furnish
the subject for another novel, which I may perhaps never
write. But I cannot omit to mention here that when Ivan,
on leaving Katerina Ivanovna with Alyosha, as I’ve related
already, told him, ‘I am not keen on her,’ it was an absolute
lie: he loved her madly, though at times he hated her so that
he might have murdered her. Many causes helped to bring
about this feeling. Shattered by what had happened with
Mitya, she rushed on Ivan’s return to meet him as her one
salvation. She was hurt, insulted and humiliated in her feel-
ings. And here the man had come back to her, who had loved
her so ardently before (oh! she knew that very well), and

10 The Brothers Karamazov