that Smerdyakov was
not mad, but only rather weak, Ivan only evoked from the old man a subtle
smile.

"Do you know how he spends his time now?" he asked; "learning lists of
French words by heart. He has an exercise-book under his pillow with the
French words written out in Russian letters for him by some one, he he
he!"

Ivan ended by dismissing all doubts. He could not think of Dmitri without
repulsion. Only one thing was strange, however. Alyosha persisted that
Dmitri was not the murderer, and that "in all probability" Smerdyakov was.
Ivan always felt that Alyosha's opinion meant a great deal to him, and so
he was astonished at it now. Another thing that was strange was that
Alyosha did not make any attempt to talk about Mitya with Ivan, that he
never began on the subject and only answered his questions. This, too,
struck Ivan particularly.

But he was very much preoccupied at that time with something quite apart
from that. On his return from Moscow, he abandoned himself hopelessly to
his mad and consuming passion for Katerina Ivanovna. This is not the time
to begin to speak of this new passion of Ivan's, which left its mark on
all the rest of his life: this would furnish the subject for another
novel, which I may perhaps never write. But I cannot omit to mention here
that when Ivan, on leaving Katerina Ivanovna with Alyosha, as I've related
already, told him, "I am not keen on her," it was an absolute lie: he
loved her madly, though at times he hated her so that he might have
murdered her. Many causes helped to bring about this feeling. Shattered by
what had happened with Mitya, she rushed on Ivan's return to meet him as
her one salvation. She was hurt, insulted and humiliated in her feelings.
And here the man had come back to her, who had loved her so ardently
before (oh! she knew that very well), and whose heart and intellect she
considered so superior to her own. But the sternly virtuous girl did not
abandon herself altogether to the man she loved, in spite of the Karamazov
violence of his passions and the great fascination he had for her. She was
continually tormented at the same time by remorse for having deserted
Mitya, and in moments of discord and violent anger (and they were
numerous) she told Ivan so plainly. This was what he had called to Alyosha
"lies upon lies." There was, of course, much that was false in it, and
that angered Ivan more than anything.... But of all this later.

He did, in fact, for