III

“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 horror!” 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 chiseled in marble. There were flowers in his hands and the coffin, inside and out, was decked 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.