said to him that if he had not money enough to move to another town, we would give it to him, and, indeed, I myself would give him as much as he wanted out of my own money. That struck him all at once. Why, he thought, did I put myself forward to help him? You know, Lise, it’s awfully hard for a man who has been injured, when other people look at him as though they were his benefactors. … I’ve heard that; Father Zossima told me so. I don’t know how to put it, but I have often seen it myself. And I feel like that myself, too. And the worst of it was that though he did not know, up to the very last minute, that he would trample on the notes, he had a kind of presentiment of it, I am sure of that. That’s just what made him so ecstatic, that he had that presentiment. … And though it’s so dreadful, it’s all for the best. In fact, I believe nothing better could have happened.”
“Why, why could nothing better have happened?” cried Lise, looking with great surprise at Alyosha.
“Because if he had taken the money, in an hour after getting home, he would be crying with mortification, that’s just what would have happened. And most likely he would have come to me early tomorrow, and perhaps have flung the notes at me and trampled upon them as he did just now. But now he has gone home awfully proud and triumphant, though he knows he has ‘ruined himself.’ So now nothing could be easier than to make him accept the two hundred roubles by tomorrow, for he has already vindicated his honor, tossed away the money, and trampled it under foot. … He couldn’t know when he did it that I should bring it to him again tomorrow, and yet he is in terrible need of that money. Though he is