Page 793 - the-brothers-karamazov

hand. He sat sideways to them and gazed at the wall, strug-
gling against a feeling of nausea. He had, in fact, an awful
inclination to get up and declare that he wouldn’t say an-
other word, ‘not if you hang me for it.’
‘You see, gentlemen,’ he said at last, with difficulty con-
trolling himself, ‘you see. I listen to you and am haunted
by a dream.... It’s a dream I have sometimes, you know....
I often dream it — it’s always the same... that someone is
hunting me, someone I’m awfully afraid of... that he’s hunt-
ing me in the dark, in the night... tracking me, and I hide
somewhere from him, behind a door or cupboard, hide in
a degrading way, and the worst of it is, he always knows
where I am, but he pretends not to know where I am on pur-
pose, to prolong my agony, to enjoy my terror.... That’s just
what you’re doing now. It’s just like that!’
‘Is that the sort of thing you dream about?’ inquired the
prosecutor.
‘Yes, it is. Don’t you want to write it down?’ said Mitya,
with a distorted smile.
‘No; no need to write it down. But still you do have curi-
ous dreams.’
‘It’s not a question of dreams now, gentlemen — this is
realism, this is real life! I’m a wolf and you’re the hunters.
Well, hunt him down!’
‘You are wrong to make such comparisons.’ began Niko-
lay Parfenovitch, with extraordinary softness.
‘No, I’m not wrong, at all!’ Mitya flared up again, though
his outburst of wrath had obviously relieved his heart. He
grew more good humoured at every word. ‘You may not

The Brothers Karamazov