minute and thorough search “of your clothes and everything else.⁠ ⁠…”

“By all means, gentlemen. I’ll turn out all my pockets, if you like.”

And he did, in fact, begin turning out his pockets.

“It will be necessary to take off your clothes, too.”

“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.

VI

The Prosecutor Catches Mitya

Something utterly unexpected and amazing to Mitya followed. He could never, even a minute before, have conceived that anyone could behave like that to him, Mitya Karamazov. What was worst of all,