0 The Brothers Karamazov‘Your Excellency, for Christ’s sake!’ the terror-stricken
captain stopped him again. ‘Your Excellency! But can noth-
ing, absolutely nothing save him now?’
‘It’s not in my hands now,’ said the doctor impatiently,
‘but h’m!...’ he stopped suddenly. ‘If you could, for instance...
send... your patient... at once, without delay’ (the words
‘at once, without delay,’ the doctor uttered with an almost
wrathful sternness that made the captain start) ‘to Syracuse,
the change to the new be-ne-ficial
‘To Syracuse!’ cried the captain, unable to grasp what
was said.
‘Syracuse is in Sicily,’ Kolya jerked out suddenly in expla-
nation. The doctor looked at him.
‘Sicily! Your Excellency,’ faltered the captain, ‘but you’ve
seen’ — he spread out his hands, indicating his surround-
ings — ‘mamma and my family?’
‘N-no, SiciIy is not the place for the family, the family
should go to Caucasus in the early spring... your daughter
must go to the Caucasus, and your wife... after a course of
the waters in the Caucasus for her rheumatism... must be
sent straight to Paris to the mental specialist Lepelletier; I
could give you a note to him, and then... there might be a
change-.’
‘Doctor, doctor! But you see!’ The captain flung wide his
hands again despairingly, indicating the bare wooden walls
of the passage.
‘Well, that’s not my business,’ grinned the doctor. ‘I have
only told you the answer of medical science to your ques-
tion as to possible