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you told me the day and the hour beforehand, and about the
cellar, too? How could you tell that you would fall down the
cellar stairs in a fit, if you didn’t sham a fit on purpose?’
‘I had to go to the cellar anyway, several times a day, in-
deed,’ Smerdyakov drawled deliberately. ‘I fell from the
garret just in the same way a year ago. It’s quite true you
can’t tell the day and hour of a fit beforehand, but you can
always have a presentiment of it.’
‘But you did foretell the day and the hour!’
‘In regard to my epilepsy, sir, you had much better in-
quire of the doctors here. You can ask them whether it was a
real fit or a sham; it’s no use my saying any more about it.’
‘And the cellar? How could you know beforehand of the
cellar?’
‘You don’t seem able to get over that cellar! As I was go-
ing down to the cellar, I was in terrible dread and doubt.
What frightened me most was losing you and being left
without defence in all the world. So I went down into the
cellar thinking, ‘Here, it’ll come on directly, it’ll strike me
down directly, shall I fall?’ And it was through this fear that
I suddenly felt the spasm that always comes... and so I went
flying. All that and all my previous conversation with you
at the gate the evening before, when I told you how fright-
ened I was and spoke of the cellar, I told all that to Doctor
Herzenstube and Nikolay Parfenovitch, the investigating
lawyer, and it’s all been written down in the protocol. And
the doctor here, Mr. Varvinsky, maintained to all of them
that it was just the thought of it brought it on, the apprehen-
sion that I might fall. It was just then that the fit seized me.