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angry and proudly scornful of the charges against him; he
was continually firing up and abusing everyone. He only
laughed contemptuously at Grigory’s evidence about the
open door, and declared that it was ‘the devil that opened it.’
But he could not bring forward any coherent explanation of
the fact. He even succeeded in insulting Ivan during their
first interview, telling him sharply that it was not for people
who declared that ‘everything was lawful,’ to suspect and
question him. Altogether he was anything but friendly with
Ivan on that occasion. Immediately after that interview
with Mitya, Ivan went for the first time to see Smerdyakov.
In the railway train on his way from Moscow, he kept
thinking of Smerdyakov and of his last conversation with
him on the evening before he went away. Many things
seemed to him puzzling and suspicious. when he gave his
evidence to the investigating lawyer Ivan said nothing, for
the time, of that conversation. He put that off till he had
seen Smerdyakov, who was at that time in the hospital.
Doctor Herzenstube and Varvinsky, the doctor he met
in the hospital, confidently asserted in reply to Ivan’s per-
sistent questions, that Smerdyakov’s epileptic attack was
unmistakably genuine, and were surprised indeed at Ivan
asking whether he might not have been shamming on the
day of the catastrophe. They gave him to understand that
the attack was an exceptional one, the fits persisting and
recurring several times, so that the patient’s life was posi-
tively in danger, and it was only now, after they had applied
remedies, that they could assert with confidence that the
patient would survive. ‘Though it might well be,’ added

101 The Brothers Karamazov