0 The Brothers KaramazovI see you are interested in contemporary questions, but how
can I have excited your curiosity, living as I do in surround-
ings impossible for the exercise of hospitality?’
‘I’ve come — about that business.’
‘About what business?’ the captain interrupted impa-
tiently.
‘About your meeting with my brother Dmitri Fyodoro-
vitch,’ Alyosha blurted out awkwardly.
‘What meeting, sir? You don’t mean that meeting? About
my ‘wisp of tow,’ then?’ He moved closer so that his knees
positively knocked against Alyosha. His lips were strangely
compressed like a thread.
‘What wisp of tow?’ muttered Alyosha.
‘He is come to complain of me, father!’ cried a voice fa-
miliar to Alyosha — the voice of the schoolboy — from
behind the curtain. ‘I bit his finger just now.’ The curtain
was pulled, and Alyosha saw his assailant lying on a little
bed made up on the bench and the chair in the corner un-
der the ikons. The boy lay covered by his coat and an old
wadded quilt. He was evidently unwell, and, judging by his
glittering eyes, he was in a fever. He looked at Alyosha with-
out fear, as though he felt he was at home and could not be
touched.
‘What! Did he bite your finger?’ The captain jumped up
from his chair. ‘Was it your finger he bit?’
‘Yes. He was throwing stones with other schoolboys.
There were six of them against him alone. I went up to him,
and he threw a stone at me and then another at my head. I
asked him what I had done to him. And then he rushed at