Page 189 - the-brothers-karamazov

dressed to me. I tore it open; it contained the change out
of the banknote. Only four thousand five hundred roubles
was needed, but there was a discount of about two hundred
on changing it. She only sent me about two hundred and
sixty. I don’t remember exactly, but not a note, not a word
of explanation. I searched the packet for a pencil mark n-
nothing! Well, I spent the rest of the money on such an orgy
that the new major was obliged to reprimand me.
‘Well, the lieutenant-colonel produced the battalion
money, to the astonishment of everyone, for nobody be-
lieved that he had the money untouched. He’d no sooner
paid it than he fell ill, took to his bed, and, three weeks later,
softening of the brain set in, and he died five days after-
wards. He was buried with military honours, for he had not
had time to receive his discharge. Ten days after his funeral,
Katerina Ivanovna, with her aunt and sister, went to Mos-
cow. And, behold, on the very day they went away (I hadn’t
seen them, didn’t see them off or take leave) I received a tiny
note, a sheet of thin blue paper, and on it only one line in
pencil: ‘I will write to you. Wait. K.’ And that was all.
‘I’ll explain the rest now, in two words. In Moscow their
fortunes changed with the swiftness of lightning and the
unexpectedness of an Arabian fairy-tale. That general’s
widow, their nearest relation, suddenly lost the two nieces
who were her heiresses and next-of-kin- both died in the
same week of small-pox. The old lady, prostrated with grief,
welcomed Katya as a daughter, as her one hope, clutched at
her, altered her will in Katya’s favour. But that concerned
the future. Meanwhile she gave her, for present use, eighty

1 The Brothers Karamazov