angel. I might have sent
any one, but I wanted to send an angel. And here you are on your way to
see father and her."

"Did you really mean to send me?" cried Alyosha with a distressed
expression.

"Stay! You knew it! And I see you understand it all at once. But be quiet,
be quiet for a time. Don't be sorry, and don't cry."

Dmitri stood up, thought a moment, and put his finger to his forehead.

"She's asked you, written to you a letter or something, that's why you're
going to her? You wouldn't be going except for that?"

"Here is her note." Alyosha took it out of his pocket. Mitya looked
through it quickly.

"And you were going the back-way! Oh, gods, I thank you for sending him by
the back-way, and he came to me like the golden fish to the silly old
fishermen in the fable! Listen, Alyosha, listen, brother! Now I mean to
tell you everything, for I must tell some one. An angel in heaven I've
told already; but I want to tell an angel on earth. You are an angel on
earth. You will hear and judge and forgive. And that's what I need, that
some one above me should forgive. Listen! If two people break away from
everything on earth and fly off into the unknown, or at least one of them,
and before flying off or going to ruin he comes to some one else and says,
'Do this for me'--some favor never asked before that could only be asked on
one's deathbed--would that other refuse, if he were a friend or a brother?"

"I will do it, but tell me what it is, and make haste," said Alyosha.

"Make haste! H'm!... Don't be in a hurry, Alyosha, you hurry and worry
yourself. There's no need to hurry now. Now the world has taken a new
turning. Ah, Alyosha, what a pity you can't understand ecstasy. But what
am I saying to him? As though you didn't understand it. What an ass I am!
What am I saying? 'Be noble, O man!'--who says that?"

Alyosha made up his mind to wait. He felt that, perhaps, indeed, his work
lay here. Mitya sank into thought for a moment, with his elbow on the
table and his head in his hand. Both were silent.

"Alyosha," said Mitya, "you're the only one who won't laugh. I should like
to begin--my confession--with Schiller's _Hymn to Joy_, _An die Freude_! I
don't know German, I only know it's called that. Don't think I'm talking
nonsense because I'm drunk. I'm not a bit drunk. Brandy's all very well,
but I need two bottles to make me drunk:

Silenus with his rosy phiz
Upon his stumbling ass.

But I've not