strong enough "in some of the affairs of life," as he expressed it, he found
himself, to his surprise, extremely feeble in facing certain other emergencies. He
knew his weaknesses and was afraid of them. There are positions in which one
has to keep a sharp lookout. And that's not easy without a trustworthy man, and
Grigory was a most trustworthy man. Many times in the course of his life Fyodor
Pavlovitch had only just escaped a sound thrashing through Grigory's
intervention, and on each occasion the old servant gave him a good lecture. But
it wasn't only thrashings that Fyodor Pavlovitch was afraid of. There were graver
occasions, and very subtle and complicated ones, when Fyodor Pavlovitch could
not have explained the extraordinary craving for someone faithful and devoted,
which sometimes unaccountably came upon him all in a moment. It was almost a
morbid condition. Corrupt and often cruel in his lust, like some noxious insect,
Fyodor Pavlovitch was sometimes, in moments of drunkenness, overcome by
superstitious terror and a moral convulsion which took an almost physical form.
"My soul's simply quaking in my throat at those times," he used to say. At such
moments he liked to feel that there was near at hand, in the lodge if not in the
room, a strong, faithful man, virtuous and unlike himself, who had seen all his
debauchery and knew all his secrets, but was ready in his devotion to overlook
all that, not to oppose him, above all, not to reproach him or threaten him with
anything, either in this world or in the next, and, in case of need, to defend him-
from whom? From somebody unknown, but terrible and dangerous. What he
needed was to feel that there was another man, an old and tried friend, that he
might call him in his sick moments merely to look at his face, or, perhaps,
exchange some quite irrelevant words with him. And if the old servant were not
angry, he felt comforted, and if he were angry, he was more dejected. It
happened even (very rarely however) that Fyodor Pavlovitch went at night to the
lodge to wake Grigory and fetch him for a moment. When the old man came,
Fyodor Pavlovitch would begin talking about the most trivial matters, and would
soon let him go again, sometimes even with a jest. And after he had gone,
Fyodor Pavlovitch would get into bed with a curse and sleep the sleep of the just.
Something of the same sort had happened to Fyodor Pavlovitch on Alyosha's
arrival. Alyosha "pierced his heart" by "living with him, seeing everything and
blaming nothing." Moreover, Alyosha brought with him something his father had
never known before: a complete absence of contempt for him and an invariable
kindness, a perfectly natural unaffected devotion to the old man who deserved it
so little. All this was a complete surprise to the old profligate, who had dropped
all family ties. It was a new and surprising experience for him, who had till then
loved nothing but "evil." When Alyosha had left him, he confessed to himself that
he had learnt something he had not till then been willing to learn.
