The Brothers Karamazov
door without the slightest hesitation and without calling
out (he is awfully afraid of calling out aloud). Well, those
signals are known to Dmitri Fyodorovitch too, now.’
‘How are they known? Did you tell him? How dared you
tell him?’
‘It was through fright I did it. How could I dare to keep it
back from him? Dmitri Fyodorovitch kept persisting every
day, ‘You are deceiving me, you are hiding something from
me! I’ll break both your legs for you.’ So I told him those
secret signals that he might see my slavish devotion, and
might be satisfied that I was not deceiving him, but was tell-
ing him all I could.’
‘If you think that he’ll make use of those signals and try
to get in, don’t let him in.’
‘But if I should be laid up with a fit, how can I prevent
him coming in then, even if I dared prevent him, knowing
how desperate he is?’
‘Hang it! How can you be so sure you are going to have a
fit, confound you? Are you laughing at me?’
‘How could I dare laugh at you? I am in no laughing hu-
mour with this fear on me. I feel I am going to have a fit. I
have a presentiment. Fright alone will bring it on.’
‘Confound it! If you are laid up, Grigory will be on the
watch. Let Grigory know beforehand; he will be sure not to
let him in.’
‘I should never dare to tell Grigory Vassilyevitch about
the signals without orders from my master. And as for
Grigory Vassilyevitch hearing him and not admitting him,
he has been ill ever since yesterday, and Marfa Ignatyev-