finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_55_part_0.txt
The Brothers Karamazov.book 9.chapter 3
book 9, chapter 3
{"name": "Book 9, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-9-chapter-3", "summary": "So now we're back at the inn, where Dmitri has just been accused of his father's murder. Grushenka has to be pulled away from Dmitri. Dmitri is sat at a table, where Parfenovich and Kirillovich begin his interrogation. A clerk takes notes. Dmitri is relieved to learn that Grigory is OK, and he denies that he murdered Fyodor. The officials remind him that he's been talking about murdering his father for the last month or so; that he's been loudly protesting that his father owes him his inheritance; and that Dmitri regarded the 3,000 roubles Fyodor was saving for Grushenka as his own property. Dmitri concedes all these points, but he still denies murdering his father. His initial joy and relief at discovering that Grigory is still alive gives way to sadness at his father's death. Grushenka bursts in to interrupt the interrogation and she has to be taken to a different floor altogether. Makarovich explains to Dmitri that he calmed Grushenka down and placed her in the care of Maximov and the innkeeper's daughters. Dmitri is grateful.", "analysis": ""}
Chapter III. The Sufferings Of A Soul, The First Ordeal


And so Mitya sat looking wildly at the people round him, not understanding
what was said to him. Suddenly he got up, flung up his hands, and shouted
aloud:

"I'm not guilty! I'm not guilty of that blood! I'm not guilty of my
father's blood.... I meant to kill him. But I'm not guilty. Not I."

But he had hardly said this, before Grushenka rushed from behind the
curtain and flung herself at the police captain's feet.

"It was my fault! Mine! My wickedness!" she cried, in a heartrending
voice, bathed in tears, stretching out her clasped hands towards them. "He
did it through me. I tortured him and drove him to it. I tortured that
poor old man that's dead, too, in my wickedness, and brought him to this!
It's my fault, mine first, mine most, my fault!"

"Yes, it's your fault! You're the chief criminal! You fury! You harlot!
You're the most to blame!" shouted the police captain, threatening her
with his hand. But he was quickly and resolutely suppressed. The
prosecutor positively seized hold of him.

"This is absolutely irregular, Mihail Makarovitch!" he cried. "You are
positively hindering the inquiry.... You're ruining the case...." he
almost gasped.

"Follow the regular course! Follow the regular course!" cried Nikolay
Parfenovitch, fearfully excited too, "otherwise it's absolutely
impossible!..."

"Judge us together!" Grushenka cried frantically, still kneeling. "Punish
us together. I will go with him now, if it's to death!"

"Grusha, my life, my blood, my holy one!" Mitya fell on his knees beside
her and held her tight in his arms. "Don't believe her," he cried, "she's
not guilty of anything, of any blood, of anything!"

He remembered afterwards that he was forcibly dragged away from her by
several men, and that she was led out, and that when he recovered himself
he was sitting at the table. Beside him and behind him stood the men with
metal plates. Facing him on the other side of the table sat Nikolay
Parfenovitch, the investigating lawyer. He kept persuading him to drink a
little water out of a glass that stood on the table.

"That will refresh you, that will calm you. Be calm, don't be frightened,"
he added, extremely politely. Mitya (he remembered it afterwards) became
suddenly intensely interested in his big rings, one with an amethyst, and
another with a transparent bright yellow stone, of great brilliance. And
long afterwards he remembered with wonder how those rings had riveted his
attention through all those terrible hours of interrogation, so that he
was utterly unable to tear himself away from them and dismiss them, as
things that had nothing to do with his position. On Mitya's left side, in
the place where Maximov had been sitting at the beginning of the evening,
the prosecutor was now seated, and on Mitya's right hand, where Grushenka
had been, was a rosy-cheeked young man in a sort of shabby hunting-jacket,
with ink and paper before him. This was the secretary of the investigating
lawyer, who had brought him with him. The police captain was now standing
by the window at the other end of the room, beside Kalganov, who was
sitting there.

"Drink some water," said the investigating lawyer softly, for the tenth
time.

"I have drunk it, gentlemen, I have ... but ... come, gentlemen, crush me,
punish me, decide my fate!" cried Mitya, staring with terribly fixed wide-
open eyes at the investigating lawyer.

"So you positively declare that you are not guilty of the death of your
father, Fyodor Pavlovitch?" asked the investigating lawyer, softly but
insistently.

"I am not guilty. I am guilty of the blood of another old man but not of
my father's. And I weep for it! I killed, I killed the old man and knocked
him down.... But it's hard to have to answer for that murder with another,
a terrible murder of which I am not guilty.... It's a terrible accusation,
gentlemen, a knock-down blow. But who has killed my father, who has killed
him? Who can have killed him if I didn't? It's marvelous, extraordinary,
impossible."

"Yes, who can have killed him?" the investigating lawyer was beginning,
but Ippolit Kirillovitch, the prosecutor, glancing at him, addressed
Mitya.

"You need not worry yourself about the old servant, Grigory Vassilyevitch.
He is alive, he has recovered, and in spite of the terrible blows
inflicted, according to his own and your evidence, by you, there seems no
doubt that he will live, so the doctor says, at least."

"Alive? He's alive?" cried Mitya, flinging up his hands. His face beamed.
"Lord, I thank Thee for the miracle Thou has wrought for me, a sinner and
evildoer. That's an answer to my prayer. I've been praying all night." And
he crossed himself three times. He was almost breathless.

"So from this Grigory we have received such important evidence concerning
you, that--" The prosecutor would have continued, but Mitya suddenly jumped
up from his chair.

"One minute, gentlemen, for God's sake, one minute; I will run to her--"

"Excuse me, at this moment it's quite impossible," Nikolay Parfenovitch
almost shrieked. He, too, leapt to his feet. Mitya was seized by the men
with the metal plates, but he sat down of his own accord....

"Gentlemen, what a pity! I wanted to see her for one minute only; I wanted
to tell her that it has been washed away, it has gone, that blood that was
weighing on my heart all night, and that I am not a murderer now!
Gentlemen, she is my betrothed!" he said ecstatically and reverently,
looking round at them all. "Oh, thank you, gentlemen! Oh, in one minute
you have given me new life, new heart!... That old man used to carry me in
his arms, gentlemen. He used to wash me in the tub when I was a baby three
years old, abandoned by every one, he was like a father to me!..."

"And so you--" the investigating lawyer began.

"Allow me, gentlemen, allow me one minute more," interposed Mitya, putting
his elbows on the table and covering his face with his hands. "Let me have
a moment to think, let me breathe, gentlemen. All this is horribly
upsetting, horribly. A man is not a drum, gentlemen!"

"Drink a little more water," murmured Nikolay Parfenovitch.

Mitya took his hands from his face and laughed. His eyes were confident.
He seemed completely transformed in a moment. His whole bearing was
changed; he was once more the equal of these men, with all of whom he was
acquainted, as though they had all met the day before, when nothing had
happened, at some social gathering. We may note in passing that, on his
first arrival, Mitya had been made very welcome at the police captain's,
but later, during the last month especially, Mitya had hardly called at
all, and when the police captain met him, in the street, for instance,
Mitya noticed that he frowned and only bowed out of politeness. His
acquaintance with the prosecutor was less intimate, though he sometimes
paid his wife, a nervous and fanciful lady, visits of politeness, without
quite knowing why, and she always received him graciously and had, for
some reason, taken an interest in him up to the last. He had not had time
to get to know the investigating lawyer, though he had met him and talked
to him twice, each time about the fair sex.

"You're a most skillful lawyer, I see, Nikolay Parfenovitch," cried Mitya,
laughing gayly, "but I can help you now. Oh, gentlemen, I feel like a new
man, and don't be offended at my addressing you so simply and directly.
I'm rather drunk, too, I'll tell you that frankly. I believe I've had the
honor and pleasure of meeting you, Nikolay Parfenovitch, at my kinsman
Miuesov's. Gentlemen, gentlemen, I don't pretend to be on equal terms with
you. I understand, of course, in what character I am sitting before you.
Oh, of course, there's a horrible suspicion ... hanging over me ... if
Grigory has given evidence.... A horrible suspicion! It's awful, awful, I
understand that! But to business, gentlemen, I am ready, and we will make
an end of it in one moment; for, listen, listen, gentlemen! Since I know
I'm innocent, we can put an end to it in a minute. Can't we? Can't we?"

Mitya spoke much and quickly, nervously and effusively, as though he
positively took his listeners to be his best friends.

"So, for the present, we will write that you absolutely deny the charge
brought against you," said Nikolay Parfenovitch, impressively, and bending
down to the secretary he dictated to him in an undertone what to write.

"Write it down? You want to write that down? Well, write it; I consent, I
give my full consent, gentlemen, only ... do you see?... Stay, stay, write
this. Of disorderly conduct I am guilty, of violence on a poor old man I
am guilty. And there is something else at the bottom of my heart, of which
I am guilty, too--but that you need not write down" (he turned suddenly to
the secretary); "that's my personal life, gentlemen, that doesn't concern
you, the bottom of my heart, that's to say.... But of the murder of my old
father I'm not guilty. That's a wild idea. It's quite a wild idea!... I
will prove you that and you'll be convinced directly.... You will laugh,
gentlemen. You'll laugh yourselves at your suspicion!..."

"Be calm, Dmitri Fyodorovitch," said the investigating lawyer evidently
trying to allay Mitya's excitement by his own composure. "Before we go on
with our inquiry, I should like, if you will consent to answer, to hear
you confirm the statement that you disliked your father, Fyodor
Pavlovitch, that you were involved in continual disputes with him. Here at
least, a quarter of an hour ago, you exclaimed that you wanted to kill
him: 'I didn't kill him,' you said, 'but I wanted to kill him.' "

"Did I exclaim that? Ach, that may be so, gentlemen! Yes, unhappily, I did
want to kill him ... many times I wanted to ... unhappily, unhappily!"

"You wanted to. Would you consent to explain what motives precisely led
you to such a sentiment of hatred for your parent?"

"What is there to explain, gentlemen?" Mitya shrugged his shoulders
sullenly, looking down. "I have never concealed my feelings. All the town
knows about it--every one knows in the tavern. Only lately I declared them
in Father Zossima's cell.... And the very same day, in the evening I beat
my father. I nearly killed him, and I swore I'd come again and kill him,
before witnesses.... Oh, a thousand witnesses! I've been shouting it aloud
for the last month, any one can tell you that!... The fact stares you in
the face, it speaks for itself, it cries aloud, but feelings, gentlemen,
feelings are another matter. You see, gentlemen"--Mitya frowned--"it seems
to me that about feelings you've no right to question me. I know that you
are bound by your office, I quite understand that, but that's my affair,
my private, intimate affair, yet ... since I haven't concealed my feelings
in the past ... in the tavern, for instance, I've talked to every one, so
... so I won't make a secret of it now. You see, I understand, gentlemen,
that there are terrible facts against me in this business. I told every
one that I'd kill him, and now, all of a sudden, he's been killed. So it
must have been me! Ha ha! I can make allowances for you, gentlemen, I can
quite make allowances. I'm struck all of a heap myself, for who can have
murdered him, if not I? That's what it comes to, isn't it? If not I, who
can it be, who? Gentlemen, I want to know, I insist on knowing!" he
exclaimed suddenly. "Where was he murdered? How was he murdered? How, and
with what? Tell me," he asked quickly, looking at the two lawyers.

"We found him in his study, lying on his back on the floor, with his head
battered in," said the prosecutor.

"That's horrible!" Mitya shuddered and, putting his elbows on the table,
hid his face in his right hand.

"We will continue," interposed Nikolay Parfenovitch. "So what was it that
impelled you to this sentiment of hatred? You have asserted in public, I
believe, that it was based upon jealousy?"

"Well, yes, jealousy. And not only jealousy."

"Disputes about money?"

"Yes, about money, too."

"There was a dispute about three thousand roubles, I think, which you
claimed as part of your inheritance?"

"Three thousand! More, more," cried Mitya hotly; "more than six thousand,
more than ten, perhaps. I told every one so, shouted it at them. But I
made up my mind to let it go at three thousand. I was desperately in need
of that three thousand ... so the bundle of notes for three thousand that
I knew he kept under his pillow, ready for Grushenka, I considered as
simply stolen from me. Yes, gentlemen, I looked upon it as mine, as my own
property...."

The prosecutor looked significantly at the investigating lawyer, and had
time to wink at him on the sly.

"We will return to that subject later," said the lawyer promptly. "You
will allow us to note that point and write it down; that you looked upon
that money as your own property?"

"Write it down, by all means. I know that's another fact that tells
against me, but I'm not afraid of facts and I tell them against myself. Do
you hear? Do you know, gentlemen, you take me for a different sort of man
from what I am," he added, suddenly gloomy and dejected. "You have to deal
with a man of honor, a man of the highest honor; above all--don't lose
sight of it--a man who's done a lot of nasty things, but has always been,
and still is, honorable at bottom, in his inner being. I don't know how to
express it. That's just what's made me wretched all my life, that I
yearned to be honorable, that I was, so to say, a martyr to a sense of
honor, seeking for it with a lantern, with the lantern of Diogenes, and
yet all my life I've been doing filthy things like all of us, gentlemen
... that is like me alone. That was a mistake, like me alone, me alone!...
Gentlemen, my head aches ..." His brows contracted with pain. "You see,
gentlemen, I couldn't bear the look of him, there was something in him
ignoble, impudent, trampling on everything sacred, something sneering and
irreverent, loathsome, loathsome. But now that he's dead, I feel
differently."

"How do you mean?"

"I don't feel differently, but I wish I hadn't hated him so."

"You feel penitent?"

"No, not penitent, don't write that. I'm not much good myself, I'm not
very beautiful, so I had no right to consider him repulsive. That's what I
mean. Write that down, if you like."

Saying this Mitya became very mournful. He had grown more and more gloomy
as the inquiry continued.

At that moment another unexpected scene followed. Though Grushenka had
been removed, she had not been taken far away, only into the room next but
one from the blue room, in which the examination was proceeding. It was a
little room with one window, next beyond the large room in which they had
danced and feasted so lavishly. She was sitting there with no one by her
but Maximov, who was terribly depressed, terribly scared, and clung to her
side, as though for security. At their door stood one of the peasants with
a metal plate on his breast. Grushenka was crying, and suddenly her grief
was too much for her, she jumped up, flung up her arms and, with a loud
wail of sorrow, rushed out of the room to him, to her Mitya, and so
unexpectedly that they had not time to stop her. Mitya, hearing her cry,
trembled, jumped up, and with a yell rushed impetuously to meet her, not
knowing what he was doing. But they were not allowed to come together,
though they saw one another. He was seized by the arms. He struggled, and
tried to tear himself away. It took three or four men to hold him. She was
seized too, and he saw her stretching out her arms to him, crying aloud as
they carried her away. When the scene was over, he came to himself again,
sitting in the same place as before, opposite the investigating lawyer,
and crying out to them:

"What do you want with her? Why do you torment her? She's done nothing,
nothing!..."

The lawyers tried to soothe him. About ten minutes passed like this. At
last Mihail Makarovitch, who had been absent, came hurriedly into the
room, and said in a loud and excited voice to the prosecutor:

"She's been removed, she's downstairs. Will you allow me to say one word
to this unhappy man, gentlemen? In your presence, gentlemen, in your
presence."

"By all means, Mihail Makarovitch," answered the investigating lawyer. "In
the present case we have nothing against it."

"Listen, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, my dear fellow," began the police captain,
and there was a look of warm, almost fatherly, feeling for the luckless
prisoner on his excited face. "I took your Agrafena Alexandrovna
downstairs myself, and confided her to the care of the landlord's
daughters, and that old fellow Maximov is with her all the time. And I
soothed her, do you hear? I soothed and calmed her. I impressed on her
that you have to clear yourself, so she mustn't hinder you, must not
depress you, or you may lose your head and say the wrong thing in your
evidence. In fact, I talked to her and she understood. She's a sensible
girl, my boy, a good-hearted girl, she would have kissed my old hands,
begging help for you. She sent me herself, to tell you not to worry about
her. And I must go, my dear fellow, I must go and tell her that you are
calm and comforted about her. And so you must be calm, do you understand?
I was unfair to her; she is a Christian soul, gentlemen, yes, I tell you,
she's a gentle soul, and not to blame for anything. So what am I to tell
her, Dmitri Fyodorovitch? Will you sit quiet or not?"

The good-natured police captain said a great deal that was irregular, but
Grushenka's suffering, a fellow creature's suffering, touched his good-
natured heart, and tears stood in his eyes. Mitya jumped up and rushed
towards him.

"Forgive me, gentlemen, oh, allow me, allow me!" he cried. "You've the
heart of an angel, an angel, Mihail Makarovitch, I thank you for her. I
will, I will be calm, cheerful, in fact. Tell her, in the kindness of your
heart, that I am cheerful, quite cheerful, that I shall be laughing in a
minute, knowing that she has a guardian angel like you. I shall have done
with all this directly, and as soon as I'm free, I'll be with her, she'll
see, let her wait. Gentlemen," he said, turning to the two lawyers, "now
I'll open my whole soul to you; I'll pour out everything. We'll finish
this off directly, finish it off gayly. We shall laugh at it in the end,
shan't we? But, gentlemen, that woman is the queen of my heart. Oh, let me
tell you that. That one thing I'll tell you now.... I see I'm with
honorable men. She is my light, she is my holy one, and if only you knew!
Did you hear her cry, 'I'll go to death with you'? And what have I, a
penniless beggar, done for her? Why such love for me? How can a clumsy,
ugly brute like me, with my ugly face, deserve such love, that she is
ready to go to exile with me? And how she fell down at your feet for my
sake, just now!... and yet she's proud and has done nothing! How can I
help adoring her, how can I help crying out and rushing to her as I did
just now? Gentlemen, forgive me! But now, now I am comforted."

And he sank back in his chair and, covering his face with his hands, burst
into tears. But they were happy tears. He recovered himself instantly. The
old police captain seemed much pleased, and the lawyers also. They felt
that the examination was passing into a new phase. When the police captain
went out, Mitya was positively gay.

"Now, gentlemen, I am at your disposal, entirely at your disposal. And if
it were not for all these trivial details, we should understand one
another in a minute. I'm at those details again. I'm at your disposal,
gentlemen, but I declare that we must have mutual confidence, you in me
and I in you, or there'll be no end to it. I speak in your interests. To
business, gentlemen, to business, and don't rummage in my soul; don't
tease me with trifles, but only ask me about facts and what matters, and I
will satisfy you at once. And damn the details!"

So spoke Mitya. The interrogation began again.





Book 9, Chapter 3
So now we're back at the inn, where Dmitri has just been accused of his father's murder. Grushenka has to be pulled away from Dmitri. Dmitri is sat at a table, where Parfenovich and Kirillovich begin his interrogation. A clerk takes notes. Dmitri is relieved to learn that Grigory is OK, and he denies that he murdered Fyodor. The officials remind him that he's been talking about murdering his father for the last month or so; that he's been loudly protesting that his father owes him his inheritance; and that Dmitri regarded the 3,000 roubles Fyodor was saving for Grushenka as his own property. Dmitri concedes all these points, but he still denies murdering his father. His initial joy and relief at discovering that Grigory is still alive gives way to sadness at his father's death. Grushenka bursts in to interrupt the interrogation and she has to be taken to a different floor altogether. Makarovich explains to Dmitri that he calmed Grushenka down and placed her in the care of Maximov and the innkeeper's daughters. Dmitri is grateful.