Mitya holds a second all-night revel at Mokroye

Mitya holds a second all-night revel at Mokroye, reenacting an earlier bout of extravagant hospitality even as his urgent search for Grushenka gives the feast its emotional center. He arrives at the inn asking first where she is, displays his roll of banknotes, and orders wine, food, champagne, and music. What follows is at once a spectacle of spending and a vigil for the woman whose presence makes the night matter to him.

The Return to Mokroye

The innkeeper, Trifon Borissovitch, greets Mitya as an old customer and recalls that he had left three thousand roubles behind on his previous visit. Mitya answers that he has come to do the same again. The remark turns repetition into a declared intention: he is not merely arranging an ordinary celebration but deliberately reviving the scale of his earlier extravagance.

The first question, however, is not about the entertainment but Grushenka. When Mitya asks where she is, Trifon understands immediately that he means Agrafena Alexandrovna. The feast is organized around her arrival and attention, even before she appears in the room. Mitya’s spending thus has two faces: it recreates his familiar public excess, but it also accompanies an intensely personal hope.

The Feast and Its Guests

Mitya tells Trifon to have the wine, savouries, pies, and sweets brought up together in an hour. He also orders the box in Andrey’s possession opened and the champagne served at once, and insists that the girls be gathered, especially Marya. When the innkeeper remarks that two hundred roubles would bring the whole village together, he questions whether the peasants and girls deserve such kindness when it is spent on what he calls coarseness and rudeness. Mitya’s reply is to insist on the scale of the event rather than retreat from it.

As the night develops into what the narrator calls almost an orgy, the preparations become a crowded public occasion. A cart finally arrives with wine and provisions, and a Jewish band with fiddles and zithers is present. Peasants and their women, roused from sleep by the prospect of another marvellous entertainment like the one a month earlier, come to watch. Mitya remembers their faces, greets and embraces those he knows, uncorks bottles, and pours wine for everyone who presents himself.

The distribution of drink and food gives the scene its concrete, communal rhythm. The men prefer rum, brandy, and especially hot punch; the girls are eager for champagne, and Mitya has chocolate made for them. The feast is not confined to a private party: the doors open onto a gathering of people drawn by memory of the previous revel, while Mitya assumes the role of host, welcoming familiar faces and supplying what they ask for.

Grushenka at the Center

The bustle does not distract Mitya from Grushenka. He is delighted enough to run and kiss Kalgonov and Maximov, buoyed by hope, but her silence leaves him waiting for a sign. She appears deliberately not to speak, though from time to time she looks at him with caressing, passionate eyes. At last she grips his hand and draws him vigorously toward her as she sits in the low chair by the door.

Even after that gesture, their attention does not settle into uninterrupted conversation. Grushenka’s eyes follow Mitya as he moves about; after a quarter of an hour she calls him again, and he returns to her. The repeated movement between the room’s noisy activity and her chair gives the feast a second pattern beneath its public revelry: Mitya circulates among the guests, but keeps being summoned back to the person for whom he has come.

Repetition, Spending, and Hope

When Grushenka asks how he heard about her and her coming the previous day, Mitya begins to explain, but his account comes out disconnectedly and incoherently. The question briefly draws the scene away from drinking and entertainment toward the chain of information that has brought him to Mokroye. His disjointed answer underscores the intensity of the moment without resolving it: he has found her, but the conversation and her feelings are still unfolding.

The revel’s repetition links spectacle to expectation. Mitya openly announces that he intends to spend as he did before, and the villagers arrive anticipating another extraordinary night. Yet the gathering is not simply a second performance of his old excess. His urgency about Grushenka precedes his orders, and her gestures repeatedly interrupt his role as host. The scene therefore holds public generosity and private longing together: money summons a crowd, but Mitya’s hopes are fixed on the woman who watches him move through it. During the feast, her attention offers encouragement, while her questions and silence leave the larger meaning of their encounter unsettled.