Fyodor Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov

“But she has been crying – she has been wounded again,” cried Alyosha.

“Never trust a woman's tears, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I am never for the women in such cases. I am always on the side of the men.”

“Mamma, you are spoiling him,” Lise's little voice cried from behind the door.

“No, it was all my fault. I am horribly to blame,” Alyosha repeated unconsoled, hiding his face in his hands in an agony of remorse for his indiscretion.

“Quite the contrary; you behaved like an angel, like an angel. I am ready to say so a thousand times over.”

“Mamma, how has he behaved like an angel?” Lise's voice was heard again.

“I somehow fancied all at once,” Alyosha went on as though he had not heard Lise, “that she loved Ivan, and so I said that stupid thing… What will happen now?”

“To whom, to whom?” cried Lise. “Mamma, you really want to be the death of me. I ask you and you don't answer.”

At the moment the maid ran in.

“Katerina Ivanovna is ill… She is crying, struggling … hysterics.”

“What is the matter?” cried Lise, in a tone of real anxiety. “Mamma, I shall be having hysterics, and not she!”

“Lise, for mercy's sake, don't scream, don't persecute me. At your age one can't know everything that grown-up people know. I'll come and tell you everything you ought to know. Oh, mercy on us! I am coming, I am coming… Hysterics is a good sign, Alexey Fyodorovitch; it's an excellent thing that she is hysterical. That's just as it ought to be. In such cases I am always against the woman, against all these feminine tears and hysterics. Run and say, Yulia, that I'll fly to her. As for Ivan Fyodorovitch's going away like that, it's her own fault. But he won't go away. Lise, for mercy's sake, don't scream! Oh, yes; you are not screaming. It's I am screaming. Forgive your mamma; but I am delighted, delighted, delighted! Did you notice, Alexey Fyodorovitch, how young, how young Ivan Fyodorovitch was just now when he went out, when he said all that and went out? I thought he was so learned, such a savant

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In Russian, “silen.”

A proverbial expression in Russia.