He shuddered, and breath failed him.
"Nicolas, this is beyond a joke!" he moaned mechanically in a voice not his own.
Alyosha and the colonel had not yet grasped the situation, besides they couldn't see, and fancied up to the end that the two were whispering together; and yet the old man's desperate face alarmed them.

They looked at one another with wide-open eyes, not knowing whether to rush to his assistance as agreed or to wait.

Nikolay noticed this perhaps, and bit the harder.
"Nicolas! Nicolas!" his victim moaned again, "come...

you've had your joke, that's enough!" In another moment the poor governor would certainly have died of terror; but the monster had mercy on him, and let go his ear.

The old man's deadly terror lasted for a full minute, and it was followed by a sort of fit.