"Be quiet!" said Andréi Yéfimitch, smiling guiltily. "I assure you I have never stolen anything.... I see that you are angry with me. Be calm, I implore you, if you can, and tell me why you want to kill me."
"For keeping me here."
"I do that because you are ill."
"Yes! Ill! But surely tens, hundreds, thousands of madmen live unmolested merely because you in your ignorance cannot distinguish them from the sane. You, the feldscher, the superintendent, all the rascals employed in the hospital are immeasurably lower in morals than the worst of us; why, then, are we here instead of you? Where is the logic?"
"It is not a question of morality or logic. It depends on circumstances. The man who is put here, here he stays, and the man who is not here lives in freedom, that is all For the fact that I am a doctor and you a lunatic neither morals nor logic is responsible, but only empty circumstance."
"This nonsense I do not understand!" answered Iván Dmitri tch, sitting down on his bed.
Moséika, whom Nikita was afraid to search in the doctor's presence, spread out on his bed his booty—pieces of bread, papers, and bones; and trembling with the cold, talked Yiddish in a sing-song voice. Apparently he imagined that he was opening a shop.
"Release me!" said Iván Dmítritch. His voice trembled.
"I cannot."
"Why not?"