Literary Quote #6--'The Brothers Karamazov'

'Once upon a time there lived a very nasty, horrible old woman. When she died, she didn't leave behind her one single good deed. So the devils got hold of her and tossed her into the flaming lake. Meantime, her guardian angel stood there, trying hard to think of one good deed of hers that he could mention to God in order to save her. Then he remembered and said to God: "Once," he said, "She pulled up an onion in her garden and gave it to a beggar woman." So God said to him: "Take that onion, hold it out to her over the lake, let her hold onto it, and try to pull herself out. If she does, let her enter heaven; if the onion breaks, the old woman will just have to stay where she is." So the angel hurried to the woman, held out the onion to her, and told her to take hold of it and pull. Then he himself began to pull her out very carefully and she was almost entirely out of the lake when the other sinners saw that she was being pulled out and grabbed on to her so that they'd be pulled out of the flames too. But when she saw them, that wicked, horrible woman started kicking them, saying: "I'm being pulled out, not you, for it's my onion, not yours!" As soon as she said that, then onion snapped and the woman fell back into the flaming lake, where she's still burning to this day. And her guardian angel wept and walked away.'


What a story! And yet it is a moment in the book which stood out to me very clearly. I enjoyed it. Is this truly a Russian folk tale, does anyone know, or did Dostoevsky make it up?