Ivan laughs that even this must have a preface, a literary one, and that he is a poor hand at making one. The action is in the sixteenth century, when poetry brought heavenly powers down to earth. Not to speak of Dante, in France the clerks and the monks gave performances in which the Madonna, the saints, the angels, Christ, and God Himself were brought on. He remembers The Wanderings of Our Lady through Hell. The Archangel Michael leads her through the torments. She sees the sinners and their punishment, and among them a set in a burning lake. Some sink to the bottom so that they cannot swim out, and these God forgets. Fifteen centuries have passed since the promise, Behold, I come quickly. His Christ says nothing through all those years. Then He deigns to appear for a moment to the tortured people who love Him like children. The story is laid in Spain, in Seville, in the worst days of the Inquisition, when fires were lighted every day to the glory of God. This is not the coming in glory at the end of time. He comes in the human shape in which He walked for three years, down to the hot pavements of a town where, the day before, almost a hundred heretics were burnt.
He comes softly, and yet everyone recognises Him. The people flock about Him. An old blind man cries out to be healed, and scales fall from his eyes. Children throw flowers and cry hosannah. At the steps of the Seville cathedral the mourners are bringing in a little open white coffin. In it lies a child of seven, the only daughter of a prominent citizen, hidden in flowers. The mother throws herself at His feet. If it is Thou, raise my child. He says, Maiden, arise. The little girl sits up, holding a bunch of white roses. At that moment the cardinal himself passes, the Grand Inquisitor, almost ninety, tall and erect, in his coarse old monk's cassock, not the gorgeous robes of the day before. He sees the child rise. His face darkens. He holds out his finger and bids the guards take Him. The crowd, cowed, makes way. They lay hands on Him and lead Him away. The people bow to the earth before the old man. He blesses them in silence. The guards shut the Prisoner in the close, gloomy, vaulted prison of the ancient palace of the Holy Inquisition. The day passes. The dark, burning night of Seville follows.
The old man comes to the cell alone. He asks why He has come to hinder them, and why He looks on in silence with those mild eyes. Be angry. I do not want Thy love, for I love Thee not. Fifteen centuries of work are complete, and now He comes to disturb it. Whatever He reveals anew will encroach on the freedom of their faith, for it will be manifest as a miracle, and that freedom was dearer to Him than anything. Christ would not deprive man of freedom. He rejected the offer, thinking, what is that freedom worth if obedience is bought with bread? He replied that man lives not by bread alone. The old man says that for the sake of that earthly bread the spirit of the earth will rise up against Him, and all will follow the beast who has given them fire from heaven. Men cannot bear the freedom He wanted for them. They will lay it at the feet of anyone who feeds them.
The wise and dread spirit set three questions. The forces that can hold men are miracle, mystery, and authority. Christ rejected all three, and set the example for doing so. The old man asks whether there are many like Him. Could He believe for one moment that men, too, could face such a temptation? Is their nature such that, at the great moments of their life, the moments of the deepest spiritual difficulty, they can reject miracle and cling only to the free verdict of the heart? He knew that His deed would be written in books and handed down to the ends of the earth. Ordinary men are weaker. They will cry that the Church was right, that it alone possesses His mystery, and that it must save them from themselves.
Receiving bread from those hands, they will see that no miracle has changed the stones. They will be more thankful for taking the bread from those hands than for the bread itself. They will remember that in the old days, without that help, the bread they made turned to stones in their hands. The corrected work is finished in His name. Miracle, mystery, and authority have been taken up again, and the happiness of the millions has been founded on them. The old man has been speaking for a lifetime. He loves the people more, he claims, than the Prisoner who asked too much of them.
Alyosha has been listening in pain. Perhaps it is nothing but atheism, he says. That is the Inquisitor's secret. He does not believe in God. Ivan laughs. At last you have guessed it. It is perfectly true that the old man does not believe. How does the poem end? When the Inquisitor ceases, he waits for an answer. The silence weighs on him. The Prisoner has listened intently, looking gently into his face, and does not wish to reply. The old man longs for something bitter and terrible. Instead the Prisoner approaches in silence and softly kisses him on his bloodless aged lips. That is all His answer. The old man shudders. He opens the door. Go, and come no more. Come not at all, never, never. He lets Him out into the dark alleys. The Prisoner goes away. And the old man? The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea. And you with him? Ivan laughs. It is a senseless poem of a senseless student who could never write two lines of verse. He is not going off to join the men who are correcting His work. All he wants is to live on to thirty, and then dash the cup to the ground. There is a strength to endure everything, he says, the strength of the Karamazov baseness. They may be parting for seven years or ten. When he is thirty he will come back, even from America, for one more talk. Now Alyosha must go to his Pater Seraphicus, who is dying. If the elder dies without him, Alyosha will be angry at having been kept. They kiss. Ivan turns and goes without looking back. Alyosha notices that he sways, and that his right shoulder looks lower than his left. He had never seen that before. He almost runs to the monastery. The wind has risen, and the ancient pines murmur. Pater Seraphicus will save him from Ivan, and for ever. Only afterwards does he wonder how, on leaving Ivan, he could so completely forget Dmitri, whom he had resolved that morning to find.
