11 The Brothers Karamazov
was touched on, flown into a perfect frenzy, and yet he was
reported to be a disinterested and not grasping man.
‘As to the opinion of my learned colleague,’ the Moscow
doctor added ironically in conclusion ‘that the prisoner
would, entering the court, have naturally looked at the la-
dies and not straight before him, I will only say that, apart
from the playfulness of this theory, it is radically unsound.
For though I fully agree that the prisoner, on entering the
court where his fate will be decided, would not naturally
look straight before him in that fixed way, and that that may
really be a sign of his abnormal mental condition, at the
same time I maintain that he would naturally not look to
the left at the ladies, but, on the contrary, to the right to find
his legal adviser, on whose help all his hopes rest and on
whose defence all his future depends.’ The doctor expressed
his opinion positively and emphatically.
But the unexpected pronouncement of Doctor Varvinsky
gave the last touch of comedy to the difference of opinion
between the experts. In his opinion the prisoner was now,
and had been all along, in a perfectly normal condition,
and, although he certainly must have been in a nervous and
exceedingly excited state before his arrest, this might have
been due to several perfectly obvious causes, jealousy, anger,
continual drunkenness, and so on. But this nervous con-
dition would not involve the mental abberation of which
mention had just been made. As to the question whether
the prisoner should have looked to the left or to the right
on entering the court, ‘in his modest opinion,’ the prisoner
would naturally look straight before him on entering the