choke there!” he exclaimed, his eyes suddenly flashing. His voice was trembling with tears. “So this is what I’ve decided, Alyosha, listen,” he began again, mastering his emotion. “As soon as I arrive there with Grusha, we will set to work at once on the land, in solitude, somewhere very remote, with wild bears. There must be some remote parts even there. I am told there are still Redskins there, somewhere, on the edge of the horizon. So to the country of the Last of the Mohicans , and there we’ll tackle the grammar at once, Grusha and I. Work and grammar—that’s how we’ll spend three years. And by that time we shall speak English like any Englishman. And as soon as we’ve learnt it—goodbye to America! We’ll run here to Russia as American citizens. Don’t be uneasy—we would not come to this little town. We’d hide somewhere, a long way off, in the north or in the south. I shall be changed by that time, and she will, too, in America. The doctors shall make me some sort of wart on my face—what’s the use of their being so mechanical!—or else I’ll put out one eye, let my beard grow a yard, and I shall turn gray, fretting for Russia. I dare say they won’t recognize us. And if they do, let them send us to Siberia. I don’t care. It will show it’s our fate. We’ll work on the land here, too, somewhere in the wilds, and I’ll make up as an American all my life. But we shall die on our own soil. That’s my plan, and it shan’t be altered. Do you approve?”
“Yes,” said Alyosha, not wanting to contradict him. Mitya paused for a minute and said suddenly:
“And how they worked it up at the trial! Didn’t they work it up!”
“If they had not, you would have been convicted just the same,” said Alyosha, with a sigh.
“Yes, people are sick of me here! God bless them, but it’s hard,” Mitya moaned miserably.
Again there was silence for a minute.