An Opportune Moment
- The narrator explains that Alyosha is feeling all kinds of conflicted emotions about his elder's death.
- Rakitin comes across Alyosha in a pine grove between the hermitage and the monastery. He is lying face down on the ground.
- Rakitin goads Alyosha about his feelings about Zosima's death (and the corpse's unseemly rotting). Alyosha dimly feels that he needs to remember something really important about Dmitri, but he can't remember what.
- Finally Rakitin convinces Alyosha to peel himself off the ground and join him for a visit to Grushenka's.