Page 757 - the-brothers-karamazov

‘How grateful I am to you! You can’t think how grateful
I am to you for having come to me, first. How is it I haven’t
met you before? I shall feel flattered at seeing you at my
house in the future. How delightful it is that you are living
here!... Such precision! Such practical ability!... They must
appreciate you, they must understand you. If there’s any-
thing I can do, believe me... oh, I love young people! I’m in
love with young people! The younger generation are the one
prop of our suffering country. Her one hope.... Oh, go, go!..’
But Pyotr Ilyitch had already run away or she would not
have let him go so soon. Yet Madame Hohlakov had made
a rather agreeable impression on him, which had somewhat
softened his anxiety at being drawn into such an unpleasant
affair. Tastes differ, as we all know. ‘She’s by no means so el-
derly,’ he thought, feeling pleased, ‘on the contrary I should
have taken her for her daughter.’
As for Madame Hohlakov, she was simply enchanted by
the young man. ‘Such sence such exactness! in so young a
man! in our day! and all that with such manners and ap-
pearance! People say the young people of to-day are no
good for anything, but here’s an example!’ etc. So she sim-
ply forgot this ‘dreadful affair,’ and it was only as she was
getting into bed, that, suddenly recalling ‘how near death
she had been,’ she exclaimed: ‘Ah, it is awful, awful!’
But she fell at once into a sound, sweet sleep.
I would not, however, have dwelt on such trivial and irrel-
evant details, if this eccentric meeting of the young official
with the by no means elderly widow had not subsequently
turned out to be the foundation of the whole career of that

The Brothers Karamazov