“What! Undress? Ugh! Damn it! Won’t you search me as I am! Can’t you?”
“It’s utterly impossible, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. You must take off your clothes.”
“As you like,” Mitya submitted gloomily; “only, please, not here, but behind the curtains. Who will search them?”
“Behind the curtains, of course.”
Nikolay Parfenovitch bent his head in assent. His small face wore an expression of peculiar solemnity.
Chapter VI.
The Prosecutor Catches Mitya
Something utterly unexpected and amazing to Mitya followed. He could never, even a minute before, have conceived that any one could behave like that to him, Mitya Karamazov. What was worst of all, there was something humiliating in it, and on their side something “supercilious and scornful.” It was nothing to take off his coat, but he was asked to undress further, or rather not asked but “commanded,” he quite understood that. From pride and contempt he submitted without a word. Several peasants accompanied the lawyers and remained on the same side of the curtain. “To be ready if force is required,” thought Mitya, “and perhaps for some other reason, too.”
“Well, must I take off my shirt, too?” he asked sharply, but Nikolay Parfenovitch did not answer. He was busily engaged with the prosecutor in examining the coat, the trousers, the waistcoat and the cap; and it was evident that they were both much interested in the scrutiny. “They make no bones about it,” thought Mitya, “they don’t keep up the most elementary politeness.”
“I ask you for the second time—need I take off my shirt or not?” he said, still more sharply and irritably.
“Don’t trouble yourself. We will tell you what to do,” Nikolay Parfenovitch said, and his voice was positively peremptory, or so it seemed to Mitya.