11 The Brothers Karamazov
the prisoner had ‘an extraordinary air, remarkable in the
circumstances”; that he had ‘marched in like a soldier, look-
ing straight before him, though it would have been more
natural for him to look to the left where, among the public,
the ladies were sitting, seeing that he was a great admirer of
the fair sex and must be thinking much of what the ladies
are saying of him now,’ the old man concluded in his pecu-
liar language.
I must add that he spoke Russian readily, but every
phrase was formed in German style, which did not, how-
ever, trouble him, for it had always been a weakness of his to
believe that he spoke Russian perfectly, better indeed than
Russians. And he was very fond of using Russian proverbs,
always declaring that the Russian proverbs were the best
and most expressive sayings in the whole world. I may re-
mark, too, that in conversation, through absent-mindedness
he often forgot the most ordinary words, which sometimes
went out of his head, though he knew them perfectly. The
same thing happened, though, when he spoke German, and
at such times he always waved his hand before his face as
though trying to catch the lost word, and no one could in-
duce him to go on speaking till he had found the missing
word. His remark that the prisoner ought to have looked
at the ladies on entering roused a whisper of amusement in
the audience. All our ladies were very fond of our old doc-
tor; they knew, too, that having been all his life a bachelor
and a religious man of exemplary conduct, he looked upon
women as lofty creatures. And so his unexpected observa-
tion struck everyone as very queer.