change had gradually come over Alyosha’s face. He flushed crimson, his eyes glowed, his lips quivered. The old sot had gone spluttering on, noticing nothing, till the moment when something very strange happened to Alyosha. Precisely what he was describing in the crazy woman was suddenly repeated with Alyosha. He jumped up from his seat exactly as his mother was said to have done, wrung his hands, hid his face in them, and fell back in his chair, shaking all over in an hysterical paroxysm of sudden violent, silent weeping. His extraordinary resemblance to his mother particularly impressed the old man.
“Ivan, Ivan! Water, quickly! It’s like her, exactly as she used to be then, his mother. Spurt some water on him from your mouth, that’s what I used to do to her. He’s upset about his mother, his mother,” he muttered to Ivan.
“But she was my mother, too, I believe, his mother. Was she not?” said Ivan, with uncontrolled anger and contempt. The old man shrank before his flashing eyes. But something very strange had happened, though only for a second; it seemed really to have escaped the old man’s mind that Alyosha’s mother actually was the mother of Ivan too.