The Brothers Karamazov
‘No, no, on my salvation I swear I shan’t! And no one will
ever know but me — I, you and she, and one other lady, her
great friend.’
‘Never mind the lady! Listen, Alexey Fyodorovitch, at a
moment like this you must listen, for you can’t understand
what these two hundred roubles mean to me now.’ The poor
fellow went on rising gradually into a sort of incoherent, al-
most wild enthusiasm. He was thrown off his balance and
talked extremely fast, as though afraid he would not be al-
lowed to say all he had to say.
‘Besides its being honestly acquired from a ‘sister,’ so
highly respected and revered, do you know that now I can
look after mamma and Nina, my hunchback angel daugh-
ter? Doctor Herzenstube came to me in the kindness of his
heart and was examining them both for a whole hour. ‘I
can make nothing of it,’ said he, but he prescribed a mineral
water which is kept at a chemist’s here. He said it would be
sure to do her good, and he ordered baths, too, with some
medicine in them. The mineral water costs thirty copecks,
and she’d need to drink forty bottles perhaps: so I took the
prescription and laid it on the shelf under the ikons, and
there it lies. And he ordered hot baths for Nina with some-
thing dissolved in them, morning and evening. But how can
we carry out such a cure in our mansion, without servants,
without help, without a bath, and without water? Nina is
rheumatic all over, I don’t think I told you that. All her right
side aches at night, she is in agony, and, would you believe
it, the angel bears it without groaning for fear of waking us.
We eat what we can get, and she’ll only take the leavings,