United States or Greece ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Doctor Herzenstube and Varvinsky, the doctor he met in the hospital, confidently asserted in reply to Ivan’s persistent questions, that Smerdyakov’s epileptic attack was unmistakably genuine, and were surprised indeed at Ivan asking whether he might not have been shamming on the day of the catastrophe.
Smerdyakov grinned uncertainly on seeing Ivan, and for the first instant seemed nervous. So at least Ivan fancied. But that was only momentary. For the rest of the time he was struck, on the contrary, by Smerdyakov’s composure. From the first glance Ivan had no doubt that he was very ill.
“Well,” and Ivan got up to cut short the conversation, struck by Smerdyakov’s last argument. “I don’t suspect you at all, and I think it’s absurd, indeed, to suspect you. On the contrary, I am grateful to you for setting my mind at rest. Now I am going, but I’ll come again. Meanwhile, good-by. Get well. Is there anything you want?” “I am very thankful for everything.
Smerdyakov’s eyes gleamed resentfully, his left eye winked, and he at once gave his answer, with his habitual composure and deliberation. “You want to have everything above-board; very well, you shall have it,” he seemed to say.
“I’m laughing that you should have made a clever remark just now about Smerdyakov’s belief in the existence of two saints who could move mountains.” “Why, am I like him now, then?” “Very much.” “Well, that shows I’m a Russian, too, and I have a Russian characteristic. And you may be caught in the same way, though you are a philosopher. Shall I catch you?
“At that point one of the lawyers asked him, as it were incidentally, the most simple question, ‘Wasn’t it Smerdyakov killed him?’ Then, as we expected, he was horribly angry at our having anticipated him and caught him unawares, before he had time to pave the way to choose and snatch the moment when it would be most natural to bring in Smerdyakov’s name.
But he defended Smerdyakov’s honesty almost with warmth, and related how Smerdyakov had once found the master’s money in the yard, and, instead of concealing it, had taken it to his master, who had rewarded him with a “gold piece” for it, and trusted him implicitly from that time forward. He maintained obstinately that the door into the garden had been open.
But Smerdyakov had finished tea and the samovar was out. He was sitting at the table on a bench. He was looking at an exercise-book and slowly writing with a pen. There was a bottle of ink by him and a flat iron candlestick, but with a composite candle. Ivan saw at once from Smerdyakov’s face that he had completely recovered from his illness.
“The talented prosecutor, with extraordinary subtlety, sketched for us all the arguments for and against the hypothesis of Smerdyakov’s guilt, and asked us in particular what motive he had in feigning a fit.
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 a time almost forget Smerdyakov’s existence, and yet, a fortnight after his first visit to him, he began to be haunted by the same strange thoughts as before.
Word Of The Day