“And saying that, of course, you loved me,” Alyosha laughed gayly.
“I did. I loved you awfully. I’ve been loving and dreaming of you. And how do you know it all beforehand? Ah, here’s the doctor. Goodness! What will he tell us? Look at his face!”
Chapter VII.
Ilusha
The doctor came out of the room again, muffled in his fur coat and with his cap on his head. His face looked almost angry and disgusted, as though he were afraid of getting dirty. He cast a cursory glance round the passage, looking sternly at Alyosha and Kolya as he did so. Alyosha waved from the door to the coachman, and the carriage that had brought the doctor drove up. The captain darted out after the doctor, and, bowing apologetically, stopped him to get the last word. The poor fellow looked utterly crushed; there was a scared look in his eyes.
“Your Excellency, your Excellency ... is it possible?” he began, but could not go on and clasped his hands in despair. Yet he still gazed imploringly at the doctor, as though a word from him might still change the poor boy’s fate.
“I can’t help it, I am not God!” the doctor answered offhand, though with the customary impressiveness.
“Doctor ... your Excellency ... and will it be soon, soon?”
“You must be prepared for anything,” said the doctor in emphatic and incisive tones, and dropping his eyes, he was about to step out to the coach.
“Your Excellency, for Christ’s sake!” the terror‐stricken captain stopped him again. “Your Excellency! but can nothing, absolutely nothing save him now?”
“It’s not in my hands now,” said the doctor impatiently, “but h’m!...” he stopped suddenly. “If you could, for instance ... send ... your patient ... at once, without delay” (the words “at once, without delay,” the doctor uttered with an almost wrathful sternness that made the captain start) “to Syracuse, the change to the new be‐ne‐ficial climatic conditions might possibly effect—”