Chasing Fool's Gold — The Brothers Karamazov

This was the visit of which Grushenka had spoken to Rakitin with such horror. She was expecting the message, and she was much relieved that he had not been to see her that day or the day before. She hoped, please God, he would not come until she was gone, and he suddenly burst in. To get him off her hands she said at once that he must walk with her to Samsonov's, where she absolutely must go to settle his accounts. He went at once. At the gate she said good-bye and made him promise to come at twelve o'clock to take her home. He was delighted. If she was sitting at Samsonov's she could not be going to Fyodor, if only she was not lying. He added that at once. Before he had gone far, the jealousy was back. Pushkin observed that Othello was not jealous, he was trustful. Real jealousy, the narrator says, is another kind of work.

He still has the pistols in their case, which he has not pawned until now because he prized them above all his possessions. In the town he lets them go for ten roubles. The official is delighted. He asks after the house. Ivan set off that morning for Moscow. Then he must have driven through Volovya before me, Dmitri thinks, and he is terribly distressed about Smerdyakov. What will happen now? Who will keep watch for him? Who will bring him word? He questions the women about the evening before. They understand what he is trying to find out.

He flies home, washes, combs his hair, brushes his clothes, and goes to Madame Hohlakov. He has built his hopes on her. He has resolved to borrow three thousand from that lady, and he feels suddenly convinced that she will not refuse. She receives him in a flutter of talk. She has studied his gait, she says, and concluded that he is a man who would find gold. He can hardly get the request in. She jumps up and runs to a handsome bureau, pulling out one drawer after another, looking for something with desperate haste. The three thousand, he thinks, his heart almost stopping, and at the instant, without papers or formalities. She is a splendid woman, if only she did not talk so much. What she brings is not the money. She hangs an icon of the Kiev Mother of God on his neck.

Wait, she has been saying, and then the truth. She has not a penny. She is quarrelling with her steward, and she has just borrowed five hundred roubles from Miüsov herself. No, no, she has no money. And if she had, she would not give it to him. He storms out. At Samsonov's they tell him Grushenka came, stayed a minute, told Kuzma Kuzmitch a tale that made him laugh, and ran away. He roars that they are lying. He runs with all his might to the house where she lives. On the table stands a brass mortar, with a pestle in it, a small brass pestle, not much more than six inches long. He has already opened the door with one hand when, with the other, he snatches up the pestle and thrusts it into his side pocket. Oh, Lord, he's going to murder someone, Fenya cries after him.