his eyes, he was about to step out to the
coach.

"Your Excellency, for Christ's sake!" the terror-stricken captain stopped
him again. "Your Excellency! but can nothing, absolutely nothing save him
now?"

"It's not in my hands now," said the doctor impatiently, "but h'm!..." he
stopped suddenly. "If you could, for instance ... send ... your patient
... at once, without delay" (the words "at once, without delay," the
doctor uttered with an almost wrathful sternness that made the captain
start) "to Syracuse, the change to the new be-ne-ficial climatic
conditions might possibly effect--"

"To Syracuse!" cried the captain, unable to grasp what was said.

"Syracuse is in Sicily," Kolya jerked out suddenly in explanation. The
doctor looked at him.

"Sicily! your Excellency," faltered the captain, "but you've seen"--he
spread out his hands, indicating his surroundings--"mamma and my family?"

"N--no, Sicily is not the place for the family, the family should go to
Caucasus in the early spring ... your daughter must go to the Caucasus,
and your wife ... after a course of the waters in the Caucasus for her
rheumatism ... must be sent straight to Paris to the mental specialist
Lepelletier; I could give you a note to him, and then ... there might be a
change--"

"Doctor, doctor! But you see!" The captain flung wide his hands again
despairingly, indicating the bare wooden walls of the passage.

"Well, that's not my business," grinned the doctor. "I have only told you
the answer of medical science to your question as to possible treatment.
As for the rest, to my regret--"

"Don't be afraid, apothecary, my dog won't bite you," Kolya rapped out
loudly, noticing the doctor's rather uneasy glance at Perezvon, who was
standing in the doorway. There was a wrathful note in Kolya's voice. He
used the word apothecary instead of doctor on purpose, and, as he
explained afterwards, used it "to insult him."

"What's that?" The doctor flung up his head, staring with surprise at
Kolya. "Who's this?" he addressed Alyosha, as though asking him to
explain.

"It's Perezvon's master, don't worry about me," Kolya said incisively
again.

"Perezvon?"(7) repeated the doctor, perplexed.

"He hears the bell, but where it is he cannot tell. Good-by, we shall meet
in Syracuse."

"Who's this? Who's this?" The doctor flew into a terrible rage.

"He is a schoolboy, doctor, he is a mischievous boy; take no notice of
him," said Alyosha, frowning