“Never mind! You’re young folks yet, and please God may still have some. The great thing is to live in harmony.⁠ ⁠…”

“But it’s all the same now,” Pierre could not help saying.

“Ah, my dear fellow!” rejoined Karatáev, “never decline a prison or a beggar’s sack!”

He seated himself more comfortably and coughed, evidently preparing to tell a long story.

“Well, my dear fellow, I was still living at home,” he began. “We had a well-to-do homestead, plenty of land, we peasants lived well and our house was one to thank God for. When Father and we went out mowing there were seven of us. We lived well. We were real peasants. It so happened⁠ ⁠…”

And Platón Karatáev told a long story of how he had gone into someone’s copse to take wood, how he had been caught by the keeper, had been tried, flogged, and sent to serve as a soldier.