HE really was late. They had waited for him and had already

decided to bear the pretty flower-decked little coffin to the church

without him. It was the coffin of poor little Ilusha. He had died

two days after Mitya was sentenced. At the gate of the house Alyosha

was met by the shouts of the boys, Ilusha's schoolfellows. They had

all been impatiently expecting him and were glad that he had come at

last. There were about twelve of them, they all had their

school-bags or satchels on their shoulders. "Father will cry, be

with father," Ilusha had told them as he lay dying, and the boys

remembered it. Kolya Krassotkin was the foremost of them.

    "How glad I am you've come, Karamazov!" he cried, holding out

his hand to Alyosha. "It's awful here. It's really horrible to see it.

Snegiryov is not drunk, we know for a fact he's had nothing to drink

to-day, but he seems as if he were drunk... I am always manly, but

this is awful. Karamazov, if I am not keeping you, one question before

you go in?"

    "What is it, Kolya?" said Alyosha.

    "Is your brother innocent or guilty? Was it he killed your

father or was it the valet? As you say, so it will be. I haven't slept

for the last four nights for thinking of it."

    "The valet killed him, my brother is innocent," answered Alyosha.

    "That's what I said," cried Smurov.

    "So he will perish an innocent victim!" exclaimed Kolya; "though

he is ruined he is happy! I could envy him!"

    "What do you mean? How can you? Why?" cried Alyosha surprised.

    "Oh, if I, too, could sacrifice myself some day for truth!" said

Kolya with enthusiasm.

    "But not in such a cause, not with such disgrace and such horrer!"

said Alyosha.

    "Of course... I should like to die for all humanity, and as for

disgrace, I don't care about that- our names may perish. I respect

your brother!"

    "And so do I!" the boy, who had once declared that he knew who had

founded Troy, cried suddenly and unexpectedly, and he blushed up to

his ears like a peony as he had done on that occasion.

    Alyosha went into the room. Ilusha lay with his hands folded and

his eyes closed in a blue coffin with a white frill round it. His thin

face was hardly changed at all, and strange to say there was no

smell of decay from the corpse. The expression of his face was serious

and, as it were, thoughtful. His hands, crossed over his breast,

looked particularly beautiful, as though chiselled in marble. There

were flowers in his hands and the coffin, with flowers, which had been

sent early in the morning by Lise Hohlakov. But there were flowers too

from Katerina Ivanovna, and when Alyosha opened the door, the

captain had a bunch in his trembling hands and was strewing them again

over his dear boy. He scarcely glanced at Alyosha when he came in, and

he would not look at anyone, even at his crazy weeping wife,

"mamma," who kept trying to stand on her crippled legs to get a nearer

look at her dead boy. Nina had been pushed in her chair by the boys

close up to the coffin. She sat with her head pressed to it and she

too was no doubt quietly weeping. Snegiryov's face looked eager, yet

bewildered and exasperated. There was something crazy about his

gestures and the words that broke from him. "Old man, dear old man!"

he exclaimed every minute, gazing at Ilusha. It was his habit to

call Ilusha "old man," as a term of affection when he was alive.

    "Father, give me a flower, too; take that white one out of his

hand and give it me," the crazy mother begged, whimpering. Either

because the little white rose in Ilusha's hand had caught her fancy or

that she wanted one from his hand to keep in memory of him, she

moved restlessly, stretching out her hands for the flower.

    "I won't give it to anyone, I won't give you anything,"

Snegiryov cried callously. "They are his flowers, not yours!

Everything is his, nothing is yours!"

    "Father, give mother a flower!" said Nina, lifting her face wet

with tears.

    "I won't give away anything and to her less than anyone! She

didn't love Ilusha. She took away his little cannon and he gave it

to her," the captain broke into loud sobs at the thought of how Ilusha

had given up his cannon to his mother. The poor, crazy creature was

bathed in noiseless tears, hiding her face in her hands.

    The boys, seeing that the father would not leave the coffin and

that it was time to carry it out, stood round it in a close circle and

began to lift it up.

    "I don't want him to be buried in the churchyard," Snegiryov

wailed suddenly; "I'll bury him by the stone, by our stone! Ilusha

told me to. I won't let him be carried out!" He had been saying for

the last three days that he would bury him by the stone, but

Alyosha, Krassotkin, the landlady, her sister and all the boys

interfered.

    "What an idea, bury him by an unholy stone, as though he had

hanged himself!" the old landlady said sternly. "There in the

churchyard the ground has been crossed. He'll be prayed for there. One

can hear the singing in church and the deacon reads so plainly and

verbally that it will reach him every time just as though it were read

over his grave."

    At last the captain made a gesture of despair as though to say,

"Take him where you will." The boys raised the coffin, but as they

passed the mother, they stopped for a moment and lowered it that she

might say good-bye to Ilusha. But on seeing that precious little face,

which for the last three days she had only looked at from a

distance, she trembled all over and her grey head began twitching

spasmodically over the coffin.

    "Mother, make the sign of the cross over him, give him your

blessing, kiss him," Nina cried to her. But her head still twitched

like an automaton and with a face contorted with bitter grief she

began, without a word, beating her breast with her fist. They

carried the coffin past her. Nina pressed her lips to her brother's

for the last time as they bore the coffin by her. As Alyosha went

out of the house he begged the landlady to look after those who were

left behind, but she interrupted him before he had finished.

    "To be sure, I'll stay with them, we are Christians, too." The old

woman wept as she said it.

    They had not far to carry the coffin to the church, not more

than three hundred paces. It was a still, clear day, with a slight

frost. The church bells were still ringing. Snegiryov ran fussing

and distracted after the coffin, in his short old summer overcoat,

with his head bare and his soft, old, wide-brimmed hat in his hand. He

seemed in a state of bewildered anxiety. At one minute he stretched

out his hand to support the head of the coffin and only hindered the

bearers, at another he ran alongside and tried to find a place for

himself there. A flower fell on the snow and he rushed to pick it up

as though everything in the world depended on the loss of that flower.

    "And the crust of bread, we've forgotten the crust!" he cried

suddenly in dismay. But the boys reminded him at once that he had

taken the crust of bread already and that it was in his pocket. He

instantly pulled it out and was reassured.

    "Ilusha told me to, Ilusha," he explained at once to Alyosha. "I

was sitting by him one night and he suddenly told me: 'Father, when my

grave is filled up crumble a piece of bread on it so that the sparrows

may fly down; I shall hear and it will cheer me up not to be lying

alone.'"

    "That's a good thing," said Alyosha, "we must often take some."

    "Every day, every day!" said the captain quickly, seeming

cheered at the thought.

    They reached the church at last and set the coffin in the middle

of it. The boys surrounded it and remained reverently standing so, all

through the service. It was an old and rather poor church; many of the

ikons were without settings; but such churches are the best for

praying in. During the mass Snegiryov became somewhat calmer, though

at times he had outbursts of the same unconscious and, as it were,

incoherent anxiety. At one moment he went up to the coffin to set

straight the cover or the wreath, when a candle fell out of the

candlestick he rushed to replace it and was a fearful time fumbling

over it, then he subsided and stood quietly by the coffin with a

look of blank uneasiness and perplexity. After the Epistle he suddenly

whispered to Alyosha, who was standing beside him, that the Epistle

had not been read properly but did not explain what he meant. During

the prayer, "Like the Cherubim," he joined in the singing but did

not go on to the end. Falling on his knees, he pressed his forehead to

the stone floor and lay so for a long while.

    At last came the funeral service itself and candles were

distributed. The distracted father began fussing about again, but

the touching and impressive funeral prayers moved and roused his soul.

He seemed suddenly to shrink together and broke into rapid, short

sobs, which he tried at first to smother, but at last he sobbed aloud.

When they began taking leave of the dead and closing the coffin, he

flung his arms about, as though he would not allow them to cover

Ilusha, and began greedily and persistently kissing his dead boy on

the lips. At last they succeeded in persuading him to come away from

the step, but suddenly he impulsively stretched out his hand and

snatched a few flowers from the coffin. He looked at them and a new

idea seemed to dawn upon him, so that he apparently forgot his grief

for a minute. Gradually he seemed to sink into brooding and did not

resist when the coffin was lifted up and carried to the grave. It

was an expensive one in the churchyard close to the church, Katerina

Ivanovna had paid for it. After the customary rites the

grave-diggers lowered the coffin. Snegiryov with his flowers in his

hands bent down so low over the open grave that the boys caught hold

of his coat in alarm and pulled him back. He did not seem to

understand fully what was happening. When they began filling up the

grave, he suddenly pointed anxiously at the falling earth and began

trying to say something, but no one could make out what he meant,

and he stopped suddenly. Then he was reminded that he must crumble the

bread and he was awfully excited, snatched up the bread and began

pulling it to pieces- and flinging the morsels on the grave.

    "Come, fly down, birds, fly down, sparrows!" he muttered

anxiously.

    One of the boys observed that it was awkward for him to crumble

the bread with the flowers in his hands and suggested he should give

them to someone to hold for a time. But he would not do this and

seemed indeed suddenly alarmed for his flowers, as though they

wanted to take them from him altogether. And after looking at the

grave, and as it were, satisfying himself that everything had been

done and the bread had been crumbled, he suddenly, to the surprise

of everyone, turned, quite composedly even, and made his way

homewards. But his steps became more and more hurried, he almost

ran. The boys and Alyosha kept up with him.

    "The flowers are for mamma, the flowers are for mamma! I was

unkind to mamma," he began exclaiming suddenly.

    Someone called to him to put on his hat as it was cold. But he

flung the hat in the snow as though he were angry and kept

repeating, "I won't have the hat, I won't have the hat." Smurov picked

it up and carried it after him. All the boys were crying, and Kolya

and the boy who discovered about Troy most of all. Though Smurov, with

the captain's hat in his hand, was crying bitterly too, he managed, as

he ran, to snatch up a piece of red brick that lay on the snow of

the path, to fling it at the flock of sparrows that was flying by.

He missed them, of course, and went on crying as he ran. Half-way,

Snegiryov suddenly stopped, stood still for half a minute, as though

struck by something, and suddenly turning back to the church, ran

towards the deserted grave. But the boys instantly overtook him and

caught hold of him on all sides. Then he fell helpless on the snow

as though he had been knocked down, and struggling, sobbing, and

wailing, he began crying out, "Ilusha, old man, dear old man!" Alyosha

and Kolya tried to make him get up, soothing and persuading him.

    "Captain, give over, a brave man must show fortitude," muttered

Kolya.

    "You'll spoil the flowers," said Alyosha, and mamma is expecting

them, she is sitting crying because you would not give her any before.

Ilusha's little bed is still there-"

    "Yes, yes, mamma!" Snegiryov suddenly recollected, "they'll take

away the bed, they'll take it away," he added as though alarmed that

they really would. He jumped up and ran homewards again. But it was

not far off and they all arrived together. Snegiryov opened the door

hurriedly and called to his wife with whom he had so cruelly

quarrelled just before:

    "Mamma, poor crippled darling, Ilusha has sent you these flowers,"

he cried, holding out to her a little bunch of flowers that had been

frozen and broken while he was struggling in the snow. But at that

instant he saw in the corner, by the little bed, Ilusha's little

boots, which the landlady had put tidily side by side. Seeing the old,

patched, rusty-looking, stiff boots he flung up his hands and rushed

to them, fell on his knees, snatched up one boot and, pressing his

lips to it, began kissing it greedily, crying, "Ilusha, old man,

dear old man, where are your little feet?"

    "Where have you taken him away? Where have you taken him?" the

lunatic cried in a heart-rending voice. Nina, too, broke into sobs.

Kolya ran out of the room, the boys followed him. At last Alyosha

too went out.

    "Let them weep," he said to Kolya, "it's no use trying to

comfort them just now. Let wait a minute and then go back."

    "No, it's no use, it's awful," Kolya assented. "Do you know,

Karamazov," he dropped his voice so that no one could hear them, "I

feel dreadfully sad, and if it were only possible to bring him back,

I'd give anything in the world to do it."

    "Ah, so would I," said Alyosha.

    "What do you think, Karamazov? Had we better come back here

to-night? He'll be drunk, you know."

    "Perhaps he will. Let us come together, you and I, that will be

enough, to spend an hour with them, with the mother and Nina. If we

all come together we shall remind them of everything again," Alyosha

suggested.

    "The landlady is laying the table for them now- there'll be a

funeral dinner or something, the priest is coming; shall we go back to

it, Karamazov?"

    "Of course," said Alyosha.

    "It's all so strange, Karamazov, such sorrow and then pancakes

after it, it all seems so unnatural in our religion."

    "They are going to have salmon, too," the boy who had discovered

about Troy observed in a loud voice.

    "I beg you most earnestly, Kartashov, not to interrupt again

with your idiotic remarks, especially when one is not talking to you

and doesn't care to know whether you exist or not!" Kolya snapped

out irritably. The boy flushed crimson but did not dare to reply.

    Meantime they were strolling slowly along the path and suddenly

Smurov exclaimed:

    "There's Ilusha's stone, under which they wanted to bury him."

    They all stood still by the big stone. Alyosha looked and the

whole picture of what Snegiryov had described to him that day, how

Ilusha, weeping and hugging his father, had cried, "Father, father,

how he insulted you," rose at once before his imagination. A sudden

impulse seemed to come into his soul. With a serious and earnest

expression he looked from one to another of the bright, pleasant faces

of Ilusha's schoolfellows, and suddenly said to them:

    "Boys, I should like to say one word to you, here at this place."

    The boys stood round him and at once bent attentive and

expectant eyes upon him.

    "Boys, we shall soon part. I shall be for some time with my two

brothers, of whom one is going to Siberia and the other is lying at

death's door. But soon I shall leave this town, perhaps for a long

time, so we shall part. Let us make a compact here, at Ilusha's stone,

that we will never forget Ilusha and one another.

    And whatever happens to us later in life, if we don't meet for

twenty years afterwards, let us always remember how we buried the poor

boy at whom we once threw stones, do you remember, by the bridge?

and afterwards we all grew so fond of him. He was a fine boy, a

kindhearted, brave boy, he felt for his father's honour and resented

the cruel insult to him and stood up for him. And so in the first

place, we will remember him, boys, all our lives. And even if we are

occupied with most important things, if we attain to honour or fall

into great misfortune- still let us remember how good it was once

here, when we were all together, united by a good and kind feeling

which made us, for the time we were loving that poor boy, better

perhaps than we are. My little doves let me call you so, for you are

very like them, those pretty blue birds, at this minute as I look at

your good dear faces. My dear children, perhaps you won't understand

what I am saying to you, because I often speak very unintelligibly,

but you'll remember all the same and will agree with my words some

time. You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more

wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory,

especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a

great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory,

preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man

carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end

of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one's

heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us. Perhaps we

may even grow wicked later on, may be unable to refrain from a bad

action, may laugh at men's tears and at those people who say as

Kolya did just now, 'I want to suffer for all men,' and may even

jeer spitefully at such people. But however bad we may become- which

God forbid- yet, when we recall how we buried Ilusha, how we loved him

in his last days, and how we have been talking like friends all

together, at this stone, the cruellest and most mocking of us- if we

do become so will not dare to laugh inwardly at having been kind and

good at this moment! What's more, perhaps, that one memory may keep

him from great evil and he will reflect and say, 'Yes, I was good

and brave and honest then!' Let him laugh to himself, that's no

matter, a man often laughs at what's good and kind. That's only from

thoughtlessness. But I assure you, boys, that as he laughs he will say

at once in his heart, 'No, I do wrong to laugh, for that's not a thing

to laugh at.'

    "That will be so, I understand you, Karamazov!" cried Kolya,

with flashing eyes.

    The boys were excited and they, too, wanted to say something,

but they restrained themselves, looking with intentness and emotion at

the speaker.

    "I say this in case we become bad," Alyosha went on, "but

there's no reason why we should become bad, is there, boys? Let us be,

first and above all, kind, then honest and then let us never forget

each other! I say that again. I give you my word for my part that I'll

never forget one of you. Every face looking at me now I shall remember

even for thirty years. Just now Kolya said to Kartashov that we did

not care to know whether he exists or not. But I cannot forget that

Kartashov exists and that he is not blushing now as he did when he

discovered the founders of Troy, but is looking at me with his

jolly, kind, dear little eyes. Boys, my dear boys, let us all be

generous and brave like Ilusha, clever, brave and generous like

Kolya (though he will be ever so much cleverer when he is grown up),

and let us all be as modest, as clever and sweet as Kartashov. But why

am I talking about those two? You are all dear to me, boys; from

this day forth, I have a place in my heart for you all, and I beg

you to keep a place in your hearts for me! Well, and who has united us

in this kind, good feeling which we shall remember and intend to

remember all our lives? Who, if not Ilusha, the good boy, the dear

boy, precious to us for ever! Let us never forget him. May his

memory live for ever in our hearts from this time forth!"

    "Yes, yes, for ever, for ever!" the boys cried in their ringing

voices, with softened faces.

    "Let us remember his face and his clothes and his poor little

boots, his coffin and his unhappy, sinful father, and how boldly he

stood up for him alone against the whole school."

    "We will remember, we will remember," cried the boys. "He was

brave, he was good!"

    "Ah, how I loved him!" exclaimed Kolya.

    "Ah, children, ah, dear friends, don't be afraid of life! How good

life is when one does something good and just!"

    "Yes, yes," the boys repeated enthusiastically.

    "Karamazov, we love you!" a voice, probably Kartashov's, cried

impulsively.

    "We love you, we love you!" they all caught it up. There were

tears in the eyes of many of them.

    "Hurrah for Karamazov!" Kolya shouted ecstatically.

    "And may the dead boy's memory live for ever!" Alyosha added again

with feeling.

    "For ever!" the boys chimed in again.

    "Karamazov," cried Kolya, "can it be true what's taught us in

religion, that we shall all rise again from the dead and shall live

and see each other again, all, Ilusha too?"

    "Certainly we shall all rise again, certainly we shall see each

other and shall tell each other with joy and gladness all that has

happened!" Alyosha answered, half laughing, half enthusiastic.

    "Ah, how splendid it will be!" broke from Kolya.

    "Well, now we will finish talking and go to his funeral dinner.

Don't be put out at our eating pancakes- it's a very old custom and

there's something nice in that!" laughed Alyosha. "Well, let us go!

And now we go hand in hand."

    "And always so, all our lives hand in hand! Hurrah for Karamazov!"

Kolya cried once more rapturously, and once more the boys took up

his exclamation:

    "Hurrah for Karamazov!"





                               THE END

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