The Brothers Karamazov

Medical expertise was not much help to the defendant either. And Fetyukovich himself seemed not to be counting on it very much, as turned out later to be the case. Basically, it was introduced solely at the insistence of Katerina Ivanovna, who had purposely invited a famous doctor from Moscow. The defense, of course, could not lose anything by it, and at best might even gain something. What came of it, however, was partly even comic, as it were, owing to some disagreement among the doctors. The experts called were: the famous visiting doctor, then our own Dr. Herzenstube, and finally the young Dr. Varvinsky. The latter two were also called as regular witnesses by the prosecution. The first to give expert testimony was Dr. Herzenstube. He was an old man of seventy, gray-haired and bald, of medium height and sturdy build. Everyone in our town valued and respected him very much. He was a conscientious doctor, an excellent and pious man, some sort of Herrnhuter or “Moravian brother”^[331]—I am not sure which. He had been with us for a very long time and behaved with the greatest dignity. He was kind and philanthropic, treated poor patients and peasants for nothing, visited their hovels and cottages himself, and left them money for medications, yet for all that he was stubborn as a mule. Once an idea had lodged itself in his head, it was impossible to shake it out of him. Incidentally, almost everyone in town knew by then that the famous visiting doctor, in the two or three days since his arrival, had allowed himself several extremely insulting comments with respect to Dr. Herzenstube’s abilities. The thing was that, though the Moscow doctor charged no less than twenty-five roubles for a visit, some people in our town still rejoiced at the occasion of his coming, and, not sparing the money, rushed to him for advice. Previously all these sick people had, of course, been treated by Herzenstube, and now the famous doctor went around criticizing his treatment with extreme sharpness. In the end, coming to a sick person, he would ask straight off: “Well, who’s been mucking about with you—Herzenstube? Heh, heh!” Dr. Herzenstube, of course, found out about all this. And so all three doctors appeared, one after the other, to be questioned. Dr. Herzenstube declared directly that “the mental abnormality of the defendant is self-evident.” Then, having offered his considerations, which I omit here, he added that this abnormality could be perceived above all, not only in many of the defendant’s former actions, but also now, even this very minute, and when asked to explain how it could be perceived now, this very minute, the old doctor, with all his simple-hearted directness, pointed out that the defendant, on entering the courtroom, “had, considering the circumstances, a remarkable and strange look, marched along like a soldier, and kept his eyes fixed straight in front of him, whereas it would have been more correct for him to look to the left where, among the public, the ladies were sitting, since he was a great admirer of the fair sex and ought to have thought very much about what the ladies would now be saying of him,” the dear old man concluded in his peculiar language. It should be added that he spoke Russian readily and copiously, but somehow each of his phrases came out in German fashion, which, however, never embarrassed him, for all his life he had the weakness of considering his spoken Russian exemplary, “even better than with the Russians,” and he was even very fond of quoting Russian proverbs, each time maintaining that Russian proverbs were the best and most expressive proverbs in the world. I will note, also, that in conversation, perhaps from some sort of absentmindedness, he often forgot the most ordinary words, which he knew perfectly well, but which for some reason suddenly slipped his mind. The same thing happened, incidentally, when he spoke German, and he would always start waving his hand in front of his face, as if seeking to catch the lost word, and no one could make him go on with what he was saying before the lost word was found. His observation that the defendant ought to have looked at the ladies as he came in drew some playful whispers from the public. All our ladies loved our dear old doctor very much, and also knew that he, a lifelong bachelor, a chaste and pious man, looked upon women as exalted and ideal beings. His unexpected observation therefore struck everyone as terribly strange.