“What’s that for?” asked Grigory, looking at him threateningly from under his spectacles.
“Oh, nothing. God created light on the first day, and the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day. Where did the light come from on the first day?”
Grigory was thunderstruck. The boy looked sarcastically at his teacher. There was something positively condescending in his expression. Grigory could not restrain himself. “I’ll show you where!” he cried, and gave the boy a violent slap on the cheek. The boy took the slap without a word, but withdrew into his corner again for some days. A week later he had his first attack of the disease to which he was subject all the rest of his life—epilepsy. When Fyodor Pavlovitch heard of it, his attitude to the boy seemed changed at once. Till then he had taken no notice of him, though he never scolded him, and always gave him a copeck when he met him. Sometimes, when he was in good humor, he would send the boy something sweet from his table. But as soon as he heard of his illness, he showed an active interest in him, sent for a doctor, and tried remedies, but the disease turned out to be incurable. The fits occurred, on an average, once a month, but at various intervals. The fits varied too, in violence: some were light and some were very severe. Fyodor Pavlovitch strictly forbade Grigory to use corporal punishment to the boy, and began allowing him to come upstairs to him. He forbade him to be taught anything whatever for a time, too. One day when the boy was about fifteen, Fyodor Pavlovitch noticed him lingering by the bookcase, and reading the titles through the glass. Fyodor Pavlovitch had a fair number of books—over a hundred—but no one ever saw him reading. He at once gave Smerdyakov the key of the bookcase. “Come, read. You shall be my librarian. You’ll be better sitting reading than hanging about the courtyard. Come, read this,” and Fyodor Pavlovitch gave him Evenings in a Cottage near Dikanka.
He read a little but didn’t like it. He did not once smile, and ended by frowning.
“Why? Isn’t it funny?” asked Fyodor Pavlovitch.
Smerdyakov did not speak.
“Answer, stupid!”
“It’s all untrue,” mumbled the boy, with a grin.
“Then go to the devil! You have the soul of a lackey. Stay, here’s Smaragdov’s Universal History. That’s all true. Read that.”
But Smerdyakov did not get through ten pages of Smaragdov. He thought it dull. So the bookcase was closed again.