finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Brothers Karamazov/section_8_part_0.txt
The Brothers Karamazov.book 9.chapter 1-chapter 9
book 9
{"name": "Book 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422052201/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-brothers-karamazov/study-guide/summary-book-9", "summary": "Perhotin is determined to find out what Dmitri was doing when the two men saw each other. Agitated and restless, he retraces Dmitri's steps the night of the murder, gathering bits of information from everyone he meets. He talks to Fenya, who tells him Dmitri grabbed a pestle when he ran off to see Grushenka. When he returned, he did not have the pestle and his hands were \"dripping, dripping, dripping\" with blood. Perhotin thinks of visiting the Karamazov household directly, but he does not want to cause a scandal if nothing wayward has actually transpired. He decides to do more detective work before resorting to a visit to the curmudgeonly Fyodor Karamazov. Perhotin visits Madame Hohlakov instead. He shows up late at night and, after such a disturbing earlier meeting with Dmitri, she has a migraine and is very perturbed. He asks her if she lent Dmitri 3,000 rubles. When she admits that she did not, the two surmise that he must have robbed someone, and they fear it is Fyodor Karamazov. Since he has found such incriminating information, he decides to report it to the authorities. But when he arrives at the police inspector's house, the place is in an uproar because Fyodor Karamazov has been murdered and robbed. In the servant's quarters in Fyodor Karamazov's house, Marfa wakes up to hear Smerdyakov screaming, which always signifies one of his epileptic fits. She cannot find Grigory to come to help their adopted boy, and she begins to worry. She hears groans coming from the garden, and she remembers the night they found Smerdyakov with his dying mother. She finds Grigory covered in blood, muttering, \"He's killed his father.\" Indeed, when she looks in on Fyodor, she sees that he is on his back, covered in blood. Confused and hysterical, she runs to their neighbor's house. After the neighbors hear all the facts, they go to the police inspector's house to explain what has happened at the Karamazov house. Fyodor's skull has been crushed, and the envelope that he kept clearly marked for Grushenka has been torn open and emptied. Perhotin tells the police inspector that Dmitri declared that he would shoot himself. While Perhotin is worried about Dmitri and wants to find him before he commits suicide, the police inspector is assured that Dmitri is a prime suspect--he says, \"that's exactly the way a desperate man of that type thinks: 'I'll kill myself tomorrow, but before I die I'll have a wild time.'\" The district medical officer who goes to the Karamazov household to examine the corpse takes a particular in Smerdyakov. He notes that the length and persistence of Smerdyakov's seizures are unusual, and he specifically predicts that Smerdyakov will die by morning. The police arrest Dmitri, who is flabbergasted by the charges. He says he \"thought of killing him, but didn't do it.\" Grushenka swears she will stay by Dmitri's side, but this does not help his situation; she assumes he has killed Fyodor, and she lovingly says she is to blame for pushing him to do it. Her good intentions backfire when she says she will \"follow him to the gallows.\" No one, not even his beloved Grushenka, believes he is innocent. From his presence at the scene of the crime on the night of the murder to his animosity toward Fyodor to his admission that he needed 3,000 rubles--the exact amount Fyodor has set aside for Grushenka--the facts are stacked against him. He thinks he has killed Grigory, and when they tell him Grigory has recovered, he is overjoyed. His conscience is clear, and he tells the prosecutors this news has \"made a new man\" of him. He tells them to write down that he is \"guilty of disorderly conduct, guilty of violently attacking and hurting a poor old man,\" but that the idea of his murdering his father is \"absurd, completely absurd!\" He goes on to say that he understands why he is suspected of this crime. He acknowledges that he has threatened his father, attacked his father, and promised to kill his father in front of many witnesses. He laughs, \"I cannot imagine who but me could have killed him!\" When they ask who else knew the secret signals that Grushenka and Fyodor had agreed upon, he names Smerdyakov. Ironically, though, Dmitri says he does not think Smerdyakov is capable of such a crime. When he is searched, the police find 1,500 rubles on him, and he must admit the embarrassing truth that he has used only half the money Katerina loaned him on his fling with Grushenka. He saved the rest. Dmitri thinks that since he did not commit the crime, anything he says cannot hurt him. This openness has led him to admit very incriminating facts, but now that the police have found 1,500 rubles on his person, his honesty is now in question. Dmitri stated many times that he spent 3,000 rubles on the fling with Grushenka because he would not tell anyone this deeply shameful fact about himself. After all the witnesses are interviewed, Dmitri is detained. His lawyers promise that they will work hard to acquit him of the murder. They tell him they believe that he is a good man and a \"victim of unhappy circumstances.\" Dmitri gives a heartfelt farewell to Grushenka, who says she will remain by his side forever. In despair, Dmitri is carted off as many onlookers watch the murder suspect get taken away.", "analysis": "This book focuses on the story of the Karamazovs from an outside perspective--the experiences of Perhotin, Madame Hohlakov, Marfa, police officers, and townspeople. Instead of presenting the Karamazov family firsthand, these chapters add a degree of remove. This slight distance makes the reader realize how guilty Dmitri seems to an observer with only limited information. Suddenly, the case of Fyodor's murder has catapulted from a private matter into a public one. This section of the novel illuminates how the drama reaches beyond the boundaries of the Karamazov family. Not only is the Karamazovs' story known to the other members of the community, but it affects them. Perhotin is suspicious and troubled by Dmitri's desperation. He does not want a comrade to commit suicide, and he investigates Dmitri's actions because he is worried about Dmitri. Marfa, Grigory's wife, awakes to find her husband unconscious and her master slain.  Grigory incoherently mutters something about how \"he has killed his father.\" The police question Dmitri , and everyone sees that the evidence is stacked against him. The Karamazovs are not an insular group; the entire town knows them, and the murder is quite a phenomenon. For the first time, the petty infighting of the Karamazov clan feels larger than a dispute between family members. The brothers have become quite a spectacle. This circumstance strengthens the notion of myth in the novel, and it makes the tragedy seem much more meaningful--after all, we readers are also on the outside, following the family's moves. Dmitri, curiously, has found love and direction in his life. He feels like a new man, and his feeling of invincibility may be what makes him speak so honestly with the police. When the police knock on the door to arrest Dmitri, his fortune has changed. Up to this point in the novel, Dmitri has had a strong motive to kill his father. After winning the affections of Grushenka, however, he has little reason left to murder his competition. This night, the night when Dmitri solves his romantic problem, thereby alleviating his desire for murder, is also the night when he acts the most erratically and desperately. It is a cruel trick of fate that this is this night when Fyodor is murdered. Even though Dmitri ends the night a changed man, his dramatic actions--leading to his epiphany--damn him in the eyes of the world. His newfound strength of spirit remains undaunted, though. He has remarkable faith in justice and the legal system. He is honest and open and, knowing that he is innocent, feels entirely confident that he will be acquitted. He has the utmost faith that the truth of his heart will be apparent to everyone. Notwithstanding that faith, everyone pays less attention to Dmitri's soul and more attention to the facts at hand, most of which point to Dmitri's guilt. Dmitri's fickle nature means that he can abruptly turn from a murderer into a harmless lover. The law, however, seeks a consistent story. Dmitri's longstanding hatred for his father is more consistent than his sudden change of heart, and therefore it is a more salient indicator of his personality to others. People cannot easily know another's heart. Often they know little more than what they see, which can be a better indicator of a man's prejudices and preconceived notions than the things he says. Strangely, the idea of sympathy for Fyodor never seriously comes up. No character expresses much sadness at his demise, nor does anyone say that the old man was misunderstood. His sons are not even very surprised, for they have expected this murder to some degree for the entire novel. In a book about morality and religion, one would expect that murder of a man would be treated a bit more humanely, but the clear lack of humane sentiments at this point illustrates the family's sense of the perverse justice of the murder--somehow Fyodor was not innocent enough to escape what was coming to him. Dostoevsky even writes at the beginning of the novel that no one could feel bad for such a wretched creature, but can we really accept such a cold and harsh indictment? The unassailable importance of human life is given more weight in other areas. Ivan talks about the desire to live and the tragedy of making an innocent suffer. He does not seem to feel remorse for his father, however. He only feels the burden of responsibility for a terrible crime. Not even Alyosha misses his father. He loved Fyodor while he was alive as Alyosha loves all creatures, but he feels no lasting connection to Fyodor aside from familial ties. Dostoevsky's characters treat the character of Fyodor as practically inhuman; the only problem lies with the legal and spiritual effects of committing the mortal sin of murder. Perhaps Dostoevsky hated his own father enough to leave Fyodor as a character who seems almost to deserve this treatment upon his death, so different from that of Father Zossima. Fyodor is presented mainly as a cancer to those around him, making life worse for them without contributing in any good way. This vice is at odds with the loving religious sentiments of the rest of the novel. Perhaps Dostoevsky intends such a contrast with his more powerful theme of love and understanding. Ivan and Dmitri have no desire to see their father alive. In fact, it seems probable that both brothers want to see him killed. Smerdyakov, in hindsight, also obviously wants Fyodor dead.  In the end, Ivan is driven crazy by his own guilt, Dmitri is convicted of the murder--his life ruined--and Smerdyakov commits suicide, presumably because of his own feelings of guilt. These three, who seem pleased to see Fyodor killed, are the ones who suffer most after his death. If this is poetic justice, Dostoevsky is condemning their lack of sympathy. If Dostoevsky is in some way using this theme in relation to his own feelings about his own father, we might read these developments as his way of faulting those who do not adequately respect or like their fathers. As in Crime and Punishment, the motives and effects of the murder are very complex, involving themes of nihilism, utility, and Christianity. If one feels both love and disgust for one's fellow humans, some murders might seem more justifiable than others. In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov feels guilty for killing a fairly innocent witness, but he never expresses guilt for killing the old woman, against whom he develops several reasons for the murder. In the present novel, would murdering Father Zossima have carried the same moral weight as the murder of Fyodor? The characters generally feel less upset over the murder of Fyodor, insofar as Fyodor has died, than over the natural death of Father Zossima. Feeling guilty over a death or a murder is not the same as feeling sympathetic."}
Book IX. The Preliminary Investigation Chapter I. The Beginning Of Perhotin's Official Career


Pyotr Ilyitch Perhotin, whom we left knocking at the strong locked gates
of the widow Morozov's house, ended, of course, by making himself heard.
Fenya, who was still excited by the fright she had had two hours before,
and too much "upset" to go to bed, was almost frightened into hysterics on
hearing the furious knocking at the gate. Though she had herself seen him
drive away, she fancied that it must be Dmitri Fyodorovitch knocking
again, no one else could knock so savagely. She ran to the house-porter,
who had already waked up and gone out to the gate, and began imploring him
not to open it. But having questioned Pyotr Ilyitch, and learned that he
wanted to see Fenya on very "important business," the man made up his mind
at last to open. Pyotr Ilyitch was admitted into Fenya's kitchen, but the
girl begged him to allow the house-porter to be present, "because of her
misgivings." He began questioning her and at once learnt the most vital
fact, that is, that when Dmitri Fyodorovitch had run out to look for
Grushenka, he had snatched up a pestle from the mortar, and that when he
returned, the pestle was not with him and his hands were smeared with
blood.

"And the blood was simply flowing, dripping from him, dripping!" Fenya
kept exclaiming. This horrible detail was simply the product of her
disordered imagination. But although not "dripping," Pyotr Ilyitch had
himself seen those hands stained with blood, and had helped to wash them.
Moreover, the question he had to decide was not how soon the blood had
dried, but where Dmitri Fyodorovitch had run with the pestle, or rather,
whether it really was to Fyodor Pavlovitch's, and how he could
satisfactorily ascertain. Pyotr Ilyitch persisted in returning to this
point, and though he found out nothing conclusive, yet he carried away a
conviction that Dmitri Fyodorovitch could have gone nowhere but to his
father's house, and that therefore something must have happened there.

"And when he came back," Fenya added with excitement, "I told him the
whole story, and then I began asking him, 'Why have you got blood on your
hands, Dmitri Fyodorovitch?' and he answered that that was human blood,
and that he had just killed some one. He confessed it all to me, and
suddenly ran off like a madman. I sat down and began thinking, where's he
run off to now like a madman? He'll go to Mokroe, I thought, and kill my
mistress there. I ran out to beg him not to kill her. I was running to his
lodgings, but I looked at Plotnikov's shop, and saw him just setting off,
and there was no blood on his hands then." (Fenya had noticed this and
remembered it.) Fenya's old grandmother confirmed her evidence as far as
she was capable. After asking some further questions, Pyotr Ilyitch left
the house, even more upset and uneasy than he had been when he entered it.

The most direct and the easiest thing for him to do would have been to go
straight to Fyodor Pavlovitch's, to find out whether anything had happened
there, and if so, what; and only to go to the police captain, as Pyotr
Ilyitch firmly intended doing, when he had satisfied himself of the fact.
But the night was dark, Fyodor Pavlovitch's gates were strong, and he
would have to knock again. His acquaintance with Fyodor Pavlovitch was of
the slightest, and what if, after he had been knocking, they opened to
him, and nothing had happened? Then Fyodor Pavlovitch in his jeering way
would go telling the story all over the town, how a stranger, called
Perhotin, had broken in upon him at midnight to ask if any one had killed
him. It would make a scandal. And scandal was what Pyotr Ilyitch dreaded
more than anything in the world.

Yet the feeling that possessed him was so strong, that though he stamped
his foot angrily and swore at himself, he set off again, not to Fyodor
Pavlovitch's but to Madame Hohlakov's. He decided that if she denied
having just given Dmitri Fyodorovitch three thousand roubles, he would go
straight to the police captain, but if she admitted having given him the
money, he would go home and let the matter rest till next morning.

It is, of course, perfectly evident that there was even more likelihood of
causing scandal by going at eleven o'clock at night to a fashionable lady,
a complete stranger, and perhaps rousing her from her bed to ask her an
amazing question, than by going to Fyodor Pavlovitch. But that is just how
it is, sometimes, especially in cases like the present one, with the
decisions of the most precise and phlegmatic people. Pyotr Ilyitch was by
no means phlegmatic at that moment. He remembered all his life how a
haunting uneasiness gradually gained possession of him, growing more and
more painful and driving him on, against his will. Yet he kept cursing
himself, of course, all the way for going to this lady, but "I will get to
the bottom of it, I will!" he repeated for the tenth time, grinding his
teeth, and he carried out his intention.

It was exactly eleven o'clock when he entered Madame Hohlakov's house. He
was admitted into the yard pretty quickly, but, in response to his inquiry
whether the lady was still up, the porter could give no answer, except
that she was usually in bed by that time.

"Ask at the top of the stairs. If the lady wants to receive you, she'll
receive you. If she won't, she won't."

Pyotr Ilyitch went up, but did not find things so easy here. The footman
was unwilling to take in his name, but finally called a maid. Pyotr
Ilyitch politely but insistently begged her to inform her lady that an
official, living in the town, called Perhotin, had called on particular
business, and that if it were not of the greatest importance he would not
have ventured to come. "Tell her in those words, in those words exactly,"
he asked the girl.

She went away. He remained waiting in the entry. Madame Hohlakov herself
was already in her bedroom, though not yet asleep. She had felt upset ever
since Mitya's visit, and had a presentiment that she would not get through
the night without the sick headache which always, with her, followed such
excitement. She was surprised on hearing the announcement from the maid.
She irritably declined to see him, however, though the unexpected visit at
such an hour, of an "official living in the town," who was a total
stranger, roused her feminine curiosity intensely. But this time Pyotr
Ilyitch was as obstinate as a mule. He begged the maid most earnestly to
take another message in these very words:

"That he had come on business of the greatest importance, and that Madame
Hohlakov might have cause to regret it later, if she refused to see him
now."

"I plunged headlong," he described it afterwards.

The maid, gazing at him in amazement, went to take his message again.
Madame Hohlakov was impressed. She thought a little, asked what he looked
like, and learned that he was "very well dressed, young and so polite." We
may note, parenthetically, that Pyotr Ilyitch was a rather good-looking
young man, and well aware of the fact. Madame Hohlakov made up her mind to
see him. She was in her dressing-gown and slippers, but she flung a black
shawl over her shoulders. "The official" was asked to walk into the
drawing-room, the very room in which Mitya had been received shortly
before. The lady came to meet her visitor, with a sternly inquiring
countenance, and, without asking him to sit down, began at once with the
question:

"What do you want?"

"I have ventured to disturb you, madam, on a matter concerning our common
acquaintance, Dmitri Fyodorovitch Karamazov," Perhotin began.

But he had hardly uttered the name, when the lady's face showed signs of
acute irritation. She almost shrieked, and interrupted him in a fury:

"How much longer am I to be worried by that awful man?" she cried
hysterically. "How dare you, sir, how could you venture to disturb a lady
who is a stranger to you, in her own house at such an hour!... And to
force yourself upon her to talk of a man who came here, to this very
drawing-room, only three hours ago, to murder me, and went stamping out of
the room, as no one would go out of a decent house. Let me tell you, sir,
that I shall lodge a complaint against you, that I will not let it pass.
Kindly leave me at once.... I am a mother.... I ... I--"

"Murder! then he tried to murder you, too?"

"Why, has he killed somebody else?" Madame Hohlakov asked impulsively.

"If you would kindly listen, madam, for half a moment, I'll explain it all
in a couple of words," answered Perhotin, firmly. "At five o'clock this
afternoon Dmitri Fyodorovitch borrowed ten roubles from me, and I know for
a fact he had no money. Yet at nine o'clock, he came to see me with a
bundle of hundred-rouble notes in his hand, about two or three thousand
roubles. His hands and face were all covered with blood, and he looked
like a madman. When I asked him where he had got so much money, he
answered that he had just received it from you, that you had given him a
sum of three thousand to go to the gold-mines...."

Madame Hohlakov's face assumed an expression of intense and painful
excitement.

"Good God! He must have killed his old father!" she cried, clasping her
hands. "I have never given him money, never! Oh, run, run!... Don't say
another word! Save the old man ... run to his father ... run!"

"Excuse me, madam, then you did not give him money? You remember for a
fact that you did not give him any money?"

"No, I didn't, I didn't! I refused to give it him, for he could not
appreciate it. He ran out in a fury, stamping. He rushed at me, but I
slipped away.... And let me tell you, as I wish to hide nothing from you
now, that he positively spat at me. Can you fancy that! But why are we
standing? Ah, sit down."

"Excuse me, I...."

"Or better run, run, you must run and save the poor old man from an awful
death!"

"But if he has killed him already?"

"Ah, good heavens, yes! Then what are we to do now? What do you think we
must do now?"

Meantime she had made Pyotr Ilyitch sit down and sat down herself, facing
him. Briefly, but fairly clearly, Pyotr Ilyitch told her the history of
the affair, that part of it at least which he had himself witnessed. He
described, too, his visit to Fenya, and told her about the pestle. All
these details produced an overwhelming effect on the distracted lady, who
kept uttering shrieks, and covering her face with her hands....

"Would you believe it, I foresaw all this! I have that special faculty,
whatever I imagine comes to pass. And how often I've looked at that awful
man and always thought, that man will end by murdering me. And now it's
happened ... that is, if he hasn't murdered me, but only his own father,
it's only because the finger of God preserved me, and what's more, he was
ashamed to murder me because, in this very place, I put the holy ikon from
the relics of the holy martyr, Saint Varvara, on his neck.... And to think
how near I was to death at that minute, I went close up to him and he
stretched out his neck to me!... Do you know, Pyotr Ilyitch (I think you
said your name was Pyotr Ilyitch), I don't believe in miracles, but that
ikon and this unmistakable miracle with me now--that shakes me, and I'm
ready to believe in anything you like. Have you heard about Father
Zossima?... But I don't know what I'm saying ... and only fancy, with the
ikon on his neck he spat at me.... He only spat, it's true, he didn't
murder me and ... he dashed away! But what shall we do, what must we do
now? What do you think?"

Pyotr Ilyitch got up, and announced that he was going straight to the
police captain, to tell him all about it, and leave him to do what he
thought fit.

"Oh, he's an excellent man, excellent! Mihail Makarovitch, I know him. Of
course, he's the person to go to. How practical you are, Pyotr Ilyitch!
How well you've thought of everything! I should never have thought of it
in your place!"

"Especially as I know the police captain very well, too," observed Pyotr
Ilyitch, who still continued to stand, and was obviously anxious to escape
as quickly as possible from the impulsive lady, who would not let him say
good-by and go away.

"And be sure, be sure," she prattled on, "to come back and tell me what
you see there, and what you find out ... what comes to light ... how
they'll try him ... and what he's condemned to.... Tell me, we have no
capital punishment, have we? But be sure to come, even if it's at three
o'clock at night, at four, at half-past four.... Tell them to wake me, to
wake me, to shake me, if I don't get up.... But, good heavens, I shan't
sleep! But wait, hadn't I better come with you?"

"N--no. But if you would write three lines with your own hand, stating that
you did not give Dmitri Fyodorovitch money, it might, perhaps, be of use
... in case it's needed...."

"To be sure!" Madame Hohlakov skipped, delighted, to her bureau. "And you
know I'm simply struck, amazed at your resourcefulness, your good sense in
such affairs. Are you in the service here? I'm delighted to think that
you're in the service here!"

And still speaking, she scribbled on half a sheet of notepaper the
following lines:


    I've never in my life lent to that unhappy man, Dmitri
    Fyodorovitch Karamazov (for, in spite of all, he is unhappy),
    three thousand roubles to-day. I've never given him money, never:
    That I swear by all that's holy!

    K. HOHLAKOV.


"Here's the note!" she turned quickly to Pyotr Ilyitch. "Go, save him.
It's a noble deed on your part!"

And she made the sign of the cross three times over him. She ran out to
accompany him to the passage.

"How grateful I am to you! You can't think how grateful I am to you for
having come to me, first. How is it I haven't met you before? I shall feel
flattered at seeing you at my house in the future. How delightful it is
that you are living here!... Such precision! Such practical ability!...
They must appreciate you, they must understand you. If there's anything I
can do, believe me ... oh, I love young people! I'm in love with young
people! The younger generation are the one prop of our suffering country.
Her one hope.... Oh, go, go!..."

But Pyotr Ilyitch had already run away or she would not have let him go so
soon. Yet Madame Hohlakov had made a rather agreeable impression on him,
which had somewhat softened his anxiety at being drawn into such an
unpleasant affair. Tastes differ, as we all know. "She's by no means so
elderly," he thought, feeling pleased, "on the contrary I should have
taken her for her daughter."

As for Madame Hohlakov, she was simply enchanted by the young man. "Such
sense! such exactness! in so young a man! in our day! and all that with
such manners and appearance! People say the young people of to-day are no
good for anything, but here's an example!" etc. So she simply forgot this
"dreadful affair," and it was only as she was getting into bed, that,
suddenly recalling "how near death she had been," she exclaimed: "Ah, it
is awful, awful!"

But she fell at once into a sound, sweet sleep.

I would not, however, have dwelt on such trivial and irrelevant details,
if this eccentric meeting of the young official with the by no means
elderly widow had not subsequently turned out to be the foundation of the
whole career of that practical and precise young man. His story is
remembered to this day with amazement in our town, and I shall perhaps
have something to say about it, when I have finished my long history of
the Brothers Karamazov.




Chapter II. The Alarm


Our police captain, Mihail Makarovitch Makarov, a retired lieutenant-
colonel, was a widower and an excellent man. He had only come to us three
years previously, but had won general esteem, chiefly because he "knew how
to keep society together." He was never without visitors, and could not
have got on without them. Some one or other was always dining with him; he
never sat down to table without guests. He gave regular dinners, too, on
all sorts of occasions, sometimes most surprising ones. Though the fare
was not _recherche_, it was abundant. The fish-pies were excellent, and
the wine made up in quantity for what it lacked in quality.

The first room his guests entered was a well-fitted billiard-room, with
pictures of English race-horses, in black frames on the walls, an
essential decoration, as we all know, for a bachelor's billiard-room.
There was card-playing every evening at his house, if only at one table.
But at frequent intervals, all the society of our town, with the mammas
and young ladies, assembled at his house to dance. Though Mihail
Makarovitch was a widower, he did not live alone. His widowed daughter
lived with him, with her two unmarried daughters, grown-up girls, who had
finished their education. They were of agreeable appearance and lively
character, and though every one knew they would have no dowry, they
attracted all the young men of fashion to their grandfather's house.

Mihail Makarovitch was by no means very efficient in his work, though he
performed his duties no worse than many others. To speak plainly, he was a
man of rather narrow education. His understanding of the limits of his
administrative power could not always be relied upon. It was not so much
that he failed to grasp certain reforms enacted during the present reign,
as that he made conspicuous blunders in his interpretation of them. This
was not from any special lack of intelligence, but from carelessness, for
he was always in too great a hurry to go into the subject.

"I have the heart of a soldier rather than of a civilian," he used to say
of himself. He had not even formed a definite idea of the fundamental
principles of the reforms connected with the emancipation of the serfs,
and only picked it up, so to speak, from year to year, involuntarily
increasing his knowledge by practice. And yet he was himself a landowner.
Pyotr Ilyitch knew for certain that he would meet some of Mihail
Makarovitch's visitors there that evening, but he didn't know which. As it
happened, at that moment the prosecutor, and Varvinsky, our district
doctor, a young man, who had only just come to us from Petersburg after
taking a brilliant degree at the Academy of Medicine, were playing whist
at the police captain's. Ippolit Kirillovitch, the prosecutor (he was
really the deputy prosecutor, but we always called him the prosecutor),
was rather a peculiar man, of about five and thirty, inclined to be
consumptive, and married to a fat and childless woman. He was vain and
irritable, though he had a good intellect, and even a kind heart. It
seemed that all that was wrong with him was that he had a better opinion
of himself than his ability warranted. And that made him seem constantly
uneasy. He had, moreover, certain higher, even artistic, leanings, towards
psychology, for instance, a special study of the human heart, a special
knowledge of the criminal and his crime. He cherished a grievance on this
ground, considering that he had been passed over in the service, and being
firmly persuaded that in higher spheres he had not been properly
appreciated, and had enemies. In gloomy moments he even threatened to give
up his post, and practice as a barrister in criminal cases. The unexpected
Karamazov case agitated him profoundly: "It was a case that might well be
talked about all over Russia." But I am anticipating.

Nikolay Parfenovitch Nelyudov, the young investigating lawyer, who had
only come from Petersburg two months before, was sitting in the next room
with the young ladies. People talked about it afterwards and wondered that
all the gentlemen should, as though intentionally, on the evening of "the
crime" have been gathered together at the house of the executive
authority. Yet it was perfectly simple and happened quite naturally.

Ippolit Kirillovitch's wife had had toothache for the last two days, and
he was obliged to go out to escape from her groans. The doctor, from the
very nature of his being, could not spend an evening except at cards.
Nikolay Parfenovitch Nelyudov had been intending for three days past to
drop in that evening at Mihail Makarovitch's, so to speak casually, so as
slyly to startle the eldest granddaughter, Olga Mihailovna, by showing
that he knew her secret, that he knew it was her birthday, and that she
was trying to conceal it on purpose, so as not to be obliged to give a
dance. He anticipated a great deal of merriment, many playful jests about
her age, and her being afraid to reveal it, about his knowing her secret
and telling everybody, and so on. The charming young man was a great adept
at such teasing; the ladies had christened him "the naughty man," and he
seemed to be delighted at the name. He was extremely well-bred, however,
of good family, education and feelings, and, though leading a life of
pleasure, his sallies were always innocent and in good taste. He was
short, and delicate-looking. On his white, slender, little fingers he
always wore a number of big, glittering rings. When he was engaged in his
official duties, he always became extraordinarily grave, as though
realizing his position and the sanctity of the obligations laid upon him.
He had a special gift for mystifying murderers and other criminals of the
peasant class during interrogation, and if he did not win their respect,
he certainly succeeded in arousing their wonder.

Pyotr Ilyitch was simply dumbfounded when he went into the police
captain's. He saw instantly that every one knew. They had positively
thrown down their cards, all were standing up and talking. Even Nikolay
Parfenovitch had left the young ladies and run in, looking strenuous and
ready for action. Pyotr Ilyitch was met with the astounding news that old
Fyodor Pavlovitch really had been murdered that evening in his own house,
murdered and robbed. The news had only just reached them in the following
manner.

Marfa Ignatyevna, the wife of old Grigory, who had been knocked senseless
near the fence, was sleeping soundly in her bed and might well have slept
till morning after the draught she had taken. But, all of a sudden she
waked up, no doubt roused by a fearful epileptic scream from Smerdyakov,
who was lying in the next room unconscious. That scream always preceded
his fits, and always terrified and upset Marfa Ignatyevna. She could never
get accustomed to it. She jumped up and ran half-awake to Smerdyakov's
room. But it was dark there, and she could only hear the invalid beginning
to gasp and struggle. Then Marfa Ignatyevna herself screamed out and was
going to call her husband, but suddenly realized that when she had got up,
he was not beside her in bed. She ran back to the bedstead and began
groping with her hands, but the bed was really empty. Then he must have
gone out--where? She ran to the steps and timidly called him. She got no
answer, of course, but she caught the sound of groans far away in the
garden in the darkness. She listened. The groans were repeated, and it was
evident they came from the garden.

"Good Lord! Just as it was with Lizaveta Smerdyastchaya!" she thought
distractedly. She went timidly down the steps and saw that the gate into
the garden was open.

"He must be out there, poor dear," she thought. She went up to the gate
and all at once she distinctly heard Grigory calling her by name, "Marfa!
Marfa!" in a weak, moaning, dreadful voice.

"Lord, preserve us from harm!" Marfa Ignatyevna murmured, and ran towards
the voice, and that was how she found Grigory. But she found him not by
the fence where he had been knocked down, but about twenty paces off. It
appeared later, that he had crawled away on coming to himself, and
probably had been a long time getting so far, losing consciousness several
times. She noticed at once that he was covered with blood, and screamed at
the top of her voice. Grigory was muttering incoherently:

"He has murdered ... his father murdered.... Why scream, silly ... run ...
fetch some one...."

But Marfa continued screaming, and seeing that her master's window was
open and that there was a candle alight in the window, she ran there and
began calling Fyodor Pavlovitch. But peeping in at the window, she saw a
fearful sight. Her master was lying on his back, motionless, on the floor.
His light-colored dressing-gown and white shirt were soaked with blood.
The candle on the table brightly lighted up the blood and the motionless
dead face of Fyodor Pavlovitch. Terror-stricken, Marfa rushed away from
the window, ran out of the garden, drew the bolt of the big gate and ran
headlong by the back way to the neighbor, Marya Kondratyevna. Both mother
and daughter were asleep, but they waked up at Marfa's desperate and
persistent screaming and knocking at the shutter. Marfa, shrieking and
screaming incoherently, managed to tell them the main fact, and to beg for
assistance. It happened that Foma had come back from his wanderings and
was staying the night with them. They got him up immediately and all three
ran to the scene of the crime. On the way, Marya Kondratyevna remembered
that at about eight o'clock she heard a dreadful scream from their garden,
and this was no doubt Grigory's scream, "Parricide!" uttered when he
caught hold of Mitya's leg.

"Some one person screamed out and then was silent," Marya Kondratyevna
explained as she ran. Running to the place where Grigory lay, the two
women with the help of Foma carried him to the lodge. They lighted a
candle and saw that Smerdyakov was no better, that he was writhing in
convulsions, his eyes fixed in a squint, and that foam was flowing from
his lips. They moistened Grigory's forehead with water mixed with vinegar,
and the water revived him at once. He asked immediately:

"Is the master murdered?"

Then Foma and both the women ran to the house and saw this time that not
only the window, but also the door into the garden was wide open, though
Fyodor Pavlovitch had for the last week locked himself in every night and
did not allow even Grigory to come in on any pretext. Seeing that door
open, they were afraid to go in to Fyodor Pavlovitch "for fear anything
should happen afterwards." And when they returned to Grigory, the old man
told them to go straight to the police captain. Marya Kondratyevna ran
there and gave the alarm to the whole party at the police captain's. She
arrived only five minutes before Pyotr Ilyitch, so that his story came,
not as his own surmise and theory, but as the direct confirmation, by a
witness, of the theory held by all, as to the identity of the criminal (a
theory he had in the bottom of his heart refused to believe till that
moment).

It was resolved to act with energy. The deputy police inspector of the
town was commissioned to take four witnesses, to enter Fyodor Pavlovitch's
house and there to open an inquiry on the spot, according to the regular
forms, which I will not go into here. The district doctor, a zealous man,
new to his work, almost insisted on accompanying the police captain, the
prosecutor, and the investigating lawyer.

I will note briefly that Fyodor Pavlovitch was found to be quite dead,
with his skull battered in. But with what? Most likely with the same
weapon with which Grigory had been attacked. And immediately that weapon
was found, Grigory, to whom all possible medical assistance was at once
given, described in a weak and breaking voice how he had been knocked
down. They began looking with a lantern by the fence and found the brass
pestle dropped in a most conspicuous place on the garden path. There were
no signs of disturbance in the room where Fyodor Pavlovitch was lying. But
by the bed, behind the screen, they picked up from the floor a big and
thick envelope with the inscription: "A present of three thousand roubles
for my angel Grushenka, if she is willing to come." And below had been
added by Fyodor Pavlovitch, "For my little chicken." There were three
seals of red sealing-wax on the envelope, but it had been torn open and
was empty: the money had been removed. They found also on the floor a
piece of narrow pink ribbon, with which the envelope had been tied up.

One piece of Pyotr Ilyitch's evidence made a great impression on the
prosecutor and the investigating magistrate, namely, his idea that Dmitri
Fyodorovitch would shoot himself before daybreak, that he had resolved to
do so, had spoken of it to Ilyitch, had taken the pistols, loaded them
before him, written a letter, put it in his pocket, etc. When Pyotr
Ilyitch, though still unwilling to believe in it, threatened to tell some
one so as to prevent the suicide, Mitya had answered grinning: "You'll be
too late." So they must make haste to Mokroe to find the criminal, before
he really did shoot himself.

"That's clear, that's clear!" repeated the prosecutor in great excitement.
"That's just the way with mad fellows like that: 'I shall kill myself to-
morrow, so I'll make merry till I die!' "

The story of how he had bought the wine and provisions excited the
prosecutor more than ever.

"Do you remember the fellow that murdered a merchant called Olsufyev,
gentlemen? He stole fifteen hundred, went at once to have his hair curled,
and then, without even hiding the money, carrying it almost in his hand in
the same way, he went off to the girls."

All were delayed, however, by the inquiry, the search, and the
formalities, etc., in the house of Fyodor Pavlovitch. It all took time and
so, two hours before starting, they sent on ahead to Mokroe the officer of
the rural police, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch Schmertsov, who had arrived in the
town the morning before to get his pay. He was instructed to avoid raising
the alarm when he reached Mokroe, but to keep constant watch over the
"criminal" till the arrival of the proper authorities, to procure also
witnesses for the arrest, police constables, and so on. Mavriky
Mavrikyevitch did as he was told, preserving his incognito, and giving no
one but his old acquaintance, Trifon Borissovitch, the slightest hint of
his secret business. He had spoken to him just before Mitya met the
landlord in the balcony, looking for him in the dark, and noticed at once
a change in Trifon Borissovitch's face and voice. So neither Mitya nor any
one else knew that he was being watched. The box with the pistols had been
carried off by Trifon Borissovitch and put in a suitable place. Only after
four o'clock, almost at sunrise, all the officials, the police captain,
the prosecutor, the investigating lawyer, drove up in two carriages, each
drawn by three horses. The doctor remained at Fyodor Pavlovitch's to make
a post-mortem next day on the body. But he was particularly interested in
the condition of the servant, Smerdyakov.

"Such violent and protracted epileptic fits, recurring continually for
twenty-four hours, are rarely to be met with, and are of interest to
science," he declared enthusiastically to his companions, and as they left
they laughingly congratulated him on his find. The prosecutor and the
investigating lawyer distinctly remembered the doctor's saying that
Smerdyakov could not outlive the night.

After these long, but I think necessary explanations, we will return to
that moment of our tale at which we broke off.




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.




Chapter IV. The Second Ordeal


"You don't know how you encourage us, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, by your
readiness to answer," said Nikolay Parfenovitch, with an animated air, and
obvious satisfaction beaming in his very prominent, short-sighted, light
gray eyes, from which he had removed his spectacles a moment before. "And
you have made a very just remark about the mutual confidence, without
which it is sometimes positively impossible to get on in cases of such
importance, if the suspected party really hopes and desires to defend
himself and is in a position to do so. We, on our side, will do everything
in our power, and you can see for yourself how we are conducting the case.
You approve, Ippolit Kirillovitch?" He turned to the prosecutor.

"Oh, undoubtedly," replied the prosecutor. His tone was somewhat cold,
compared with Nikolay Parfenovitch's impulsiveness.

I will note once for all that Nikolay Parfenovitch, who had but lately
arrived among us, had from the first felt marked respect for Ippolit
Kirillovitch, our prosecutor, and had become almost his bosom friend. He
was almost the only person who put implicit faith in Ippolit
Kirillovitch's extraordinary talents as a psychologist and orator and in
the justice of his grievance. He had heard of him in Petersburg. On the
other hand, young Nikolay Parfenovitch was the only person in the whole
world whom our "unappreciated" prosecutor genuinely liked. On their way to
Mokroe they had time to come to an understanding about the present case.
And now as they sat at the table, the sharp-witted junior caught and
interpreted every indication on his senior colleague's face--half a word, a
glance, or a wink.

"Gentlemen, only let me tell my own story and don't interrupt me with
trivial questions and I'll tell you everything in a moment," said Mitya
excitedly.

"Excellent! Thank you. But before we proceed to listen to your
communication, will you allow me to inquire as to another little fact of
great interest to us? I mean the ten roubles you borrowed yesterday at
about five o'clock on the security of your pistols, from your friend,
Pyotr Ilyitch Perhotin."

"I pledged them, gentlemen. I pledged them for ten roubles. What more?
That's all about it. As soon as I got back to town I pledged them."

"You got back to town? Then you had been out of town?"

"Yes, I went a journey of forty versts into the country. Didn't you know?"

The prosecutor and Nikolay Parfenovitch exchanged glances.

"Well, how would it be if you began your story with a systematic
description of all you did yesterday, from the morning onwards? Allow us,
for instance, to inquire why you were absent from the town, and just when
you left and when you came back--all those facts."

"You should have asked me like that from the beginning," cried Mitya,
laughing aloud, "and, if you like, we won't begin from yesterday, but from
the morning of the day before; then you'll understand how, why, and where
I went. I went the day before yesterday, gentlemen, to a merchant of the
town, called Samsonov, to borrow three thousand roubles from him on safe
security. It was a pressing matter, gentlemen, it was a sudden necessity."

"Allow me to interrupt you," the prosecutor put in politely. "Why were you
in such pressing need for just that sum, three thousand?"

"Oh, gentlemen, you needn't go into details, how, when and why, and why
just so much money, and not so much, and all that rigmarole. Why, it'll
run to three volumes, and then you'll want an epilogue!"

Mitya said all this with the good-natured but impatient familiarity of a
man who is anxious to tell the whole truth and is full of the best
intentions.

"Gentlemen!"--he corrected himself hurriedly--"don't be vexed with me for my
restiveness, I beg you again. Believe me once more, I feel the greatest
respect for you and understand the true position of affairs. Don't think
I'm drunk. I'm quite sober now. And, besides, being drunk would be no
hindrance. It's with me, you know, like the saying: 'When he is sober, he
is a fool; when he is drunk, he is a wise man.' Ha ha! But I see,
gentlemen, it's not the proper thing to make jokes to you, till we've had
our explanation, I mean. And I've my own dignity to keep up, too. I quite
understand the difference for the moment. I am, after all, in the position
of a criminal, and so, far from being on equal terms with you. And it's
your business to watch me. I can't expect you to pat me on the head for
what I did to Grigory, for one can't break old men's heads with impunity.
I suppose you'll put me away for him for six months, or a year perhaps, in
a house of correction. I don't know what the punishment is--but it will be
without loss of the rights of my rank, without loss of my rank, won't it?
So you see, gentlemen, I understand the distinction between us.... But you
must see that you could puzzle God Himself with such questions. 'How did
you step? Where did you step? When did you step? And on what did you
step?' I shall get mixed up, if you go on like this, and you will put it
all down against me. And what will that lead to? To nothing! And even if
it's nonsense I'm talking now, let me finish, and you, gentlemen, being
men of honor and refinement, will forgive me! I'll finish by asking you,
gentlemen, to drop that conventional method of questioning. I mean,
beginning from some miserable trifle, how I got up, what I had for
breakfast, how I spat, and where I spat, and so distracting the attention
of the criminal, suddenly stun him with an overwhelming question, 'Whom
did you murder? Whom did you rob?' Ha ha! That's your regulation method,
that's where all your cunning comes in. You can put peasants off their
guard like that, but not me. I know the tricks. I've been in the service,
too. Ha ha ha! You're not angry, gentlemen? You forgive my impertinence?"
he cried, looking at them with a good-nature that was almost surprising.
"It's only Mitya Karamazov, you know, so you can overlook it. It would be
inexcusable in a sensible man; but you can forgive it in Mitya. Ha ha!"

Nikolay Parfenovitch listened, and laughed too. Though the prosecutor did
not laugh, he kept his eyes fixed keenly on Mitya, as though anxious not
to miss the least syllable, the slightest movement, the smallest twitch of
any feature of his face.

"That's how we have treated you from the beginning," said Nikolay
Parfenovitch, still laughing. "We haven't tried to put you out by asking
how you got up in the morning and what you had for breakfast. We began,
indeed, with questions of the greatest importance."

"I understand. I saw it and appreciated it, and I appreciate still more
your present kindness to me, an unprecedented kindness, worthy of your
noble hearts. We three here are gentlemen, and let everything be on the
footing of mutual confidence between educated, well-bred people, who have
the common bond of noble birth and honor. In any case, allow me to look
upon you as my best friends at this moment of my life, at this moment when
my honor is assailed. That's no offense to you, gentlemen, is it?"

"On the contrary. You've expressed all that so well, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,"
Nikolay Parfenovitch answered with dignified approbation.

"And enough of those trivial questions, gentlemen, all those tricky
questions!" cried Mitya enthusiastically. "Or there's simply no knowing
where we shall get to! Is there?"

"I will follow your sensible advice entirely," the prosecutor interposed,
addressing Mitya. "I don't withdraw my question, however. It is now
vitally important for us to know exactly why you needed that sum, I mean
precisely three thousand."

"Why I needed it?... Oh, for one thing and another.... Well, it was to pay
a debt."

"A debt to whom?"

"That I absolutely refuse to answer, gentlemen. Not because I couldn't, or
because I shouldn't dare, or because it would be damaging, for it's all a
paltry matter and absolutely trifling, but--I won't, because it's a matter
of principle: that's my private life, and I won't allow any intrusion into
my private life. That's my principle. Your question has no bearing on the
case, and whatever has nothing to do with the case is my private affair. I
wanted to pay a debt. I wanted to pay a debt of honor but to whom I won't
say."

"Allow me to make a note of that," said the prosecutor.

"By all means. Write down that I won't say, that I won't. Write that I
should think it dishonorable to say. Ech! you can write it; you've nothing
else to do with your time."

"Allow me to caution you, sir, and to remind you once more, if you are
unaware of it," the prosecutor began, with a peculiar and stern
impressiveness, "that you have a perfect right not to answer the questions
put to you now, and we on our side have no right to extort an answer from
you, if you decline to give it for one reason or another. That is entirely
a matter for your personal decision. But it is our duty, on the other
hand, in such cases as the present, to explain and set before you the
degree of injury you will be doing yourself by refusing to give this or
that piece of evidence. After which I will beg you to continue."

"Gentlemen, I'm not angry ... I ..." Mitya muttered in a rather
disconcerted tone. "Well, gentlemen, you see, that Samsonov to whom I went
then ..."

We will, of course, not reproduce his account of what is known to the
reader already. Mitya was impatiently anxious not to omit the slightest
detail. At the same time he was in a hurry to get it over. But as he gave
his evidence it was written down, and therefore they had continually to
pull him up. Mitya disliked this, but submitted; got angry, though still
good-humoredly. He did, it is true, exclaim, from time to time,
"Gentlemen, that's enough to make an angel out of patience!" Or,
"Gentlemen, it's no good your irritating me."

But even though he exclaimed he still preserved for a time his genially
expansive mood. So he told them how Samsonov had made a fool of him two
days before. (He had completely realized by now that he had been fooled.)
The sale of his watch for six roubles to obtain money for the journey was
something new to the lawyers. They were at once greatly interested, and
even, to Mitya's intense indignation, thought it necessary to write the
fact down as a secondary confirmation of the circumstance that he had
hardly a farthing in his pocket at the time. Little by little Mitya began
to grow surly. Then, after describing his journey to see Lyagavy, the
night spent in the stifling hut, and so on, he came to his return to the
town. Here he began, without being particularly urged, to give a minute
account of the agonies of jealousy he endured on Grushenka's account.

He was heard with silent attention. They inquired particularly into the
circumstance of his having a place of ambush in Marya Kondratyevna's house
at the back of Fyodor Pavlovitch's garden to keep watch on Grushenka, and
of Smerdyakov's bringing him information. They laid particular stress on
this, and noted it down. Of his jealousy he spoke warmly and at length,
and though inwardly ashamed at exposing his most intimate feelings to
"public ignominy," so to speak, he evidently overcame his shame in order
to tell the truth. The frigid severity, with which the investigating
lawyer, and still more the prosecutor, stared intently at him as he told
his story, disconcerted him at last considerably.

"That boy, Nikolay Parfenovitch, to whom I was talking nonsense about
women only a few days ago, and that sickly prosecutor are not worth my
telling this to," he reflected mournfully. "It's ignominious. 'Be patient,
humble, hold thy peace.' " He wound up his reflections with that line. But
he pulled himself together to go on again. When he came to telling of his
visit to Madame Hohlakov, he regained his spirits and even wished to tell
a little anecdote of that lady which had nothing to do with the case. But
the investigating lawyer stopped him, and civilly suggested that he should
pass on to "more essential matters." At last, when he described his
despair and told them how, when he left Madame Hohlakov's, he thought that
he'd "get three thousand if he had to murder some one to do it," they
stopped him again and noted down that he had "meant to murder some one."
Mitya let them write it without protest. At last he reached the point in
his story when he learned that Grushenka had deceived him and had returned
from Samsonov's as soon as he left her there, though she had said that she
would stay there till midnight.

"If I didn't kill Fenya then, gentlemen, it was only because I hadn't
time," broke from him suddenly at that point in his story. That, too, was
carefully written down. Mitya waited gloomily, and was beginning to tell
how he ran into his father's garden when the investigating lawyer suddenly
stopped him, and opening the big portfolio that lay on the sofa beside him
he brought out the brass pestle.

"Do you recognize this object?" he asked, showing it to Mitya.

"Oh, yes," he laughed gloomily. "Of course I recognize it. Let me have a
look at it.... Damn it, never mind!"

"You have forgotten to mention it," observed the investigating lawyer.

"Hang it all, I shouldn't have concealed it from you. Do you suppose I
could have managed without it? It simply escaped my memory."

"Be so good as to tell us precisely how you came to arm yourself with it."

"Certainly I will be so good, gentlemen."

And Mitya described how he took the pestle and ran.

"But what object had you in view in arming yourself with such a weapon?"

"What object? No object. I just picked it up and ran off."

"What for, if you had no object?"

Mitya's wrath flared up. He looked intently at "the boy" and smiled
gloomily and malignantly. He was feeling more and more ashamed at having
told "such people" the story of his jealousy so sincerely and
spontaneously.

"Bother the pestle!" broke from him suddenly.

"But still--"

"Oh, to keep off dogs.... Oh, because it was dark.... In case anything
turned up."

"But have you ever on previous occasions taken a weapon with you when you
went out, since you're afraid of the dark?"

"Ugh! damn it all, gentlemen! There's positively no talking to you!" cried
Mitya, exasperated beyond endurance, and turning to the secretary, crimson
with anger, he said quickly, with a note of fury in his voice:

"Write down at once ... at once ... 'that I snatched up the pestle to go
and kill my father ... Fyodor Pavlovitch ... by hitting him on the head
with it!' Well, now are you satisfied, gentlemen? Are your minds
relieved?" he said, glaring defiantly at the lawyers.

"We quite understand that you made that statement just now through
exasperation with us and the questions we put to you, which you consider
trivial, though they are, in fact, essential," the prosecutor remarked
dryly in reply.

"Well, upon my word, gentlemen! Yes, I took the pestle.... What does one
pick things up for at such moments? I don't know what for. I snatched it
up and ran--that's all. For to me, gentlemen, _passons_, or I declare I
won't tell you any more."

He sat with his elbows on the table and his head in his hand. He sat
sideways to them and gazed at the wall, struggling against a feeling of
nausea. He had, in fact, an awful inclination to get up and declare that
he wouldn't say another word, "not if you hang me for it."

"You see, gentlemen," he said at last, with difficulty controlling
himself, "you see. I listen to you and am haunted by a dream.... It's a
dream I have sometimes, you know.... I often dream it--it's always the same
... that some one is hunting me, some one I'm awfully afraid of ... that
he's hunting me in the dark, in the night ... tracking me, and I hide
somewhere from him, behind a door or cupboard, hide in a degrading way,
and the worst of it is, he always knows where I am, but he pretends not to
know where I am on purpose, to prolong my agony, to enjoy my terror....
That's just what you're doing now. It's just like that!"

"Is that the sort of thing you dream about?" inquired the prosecutor.

"Yes, it is. Don't you want to write it down?" said Mitya, with a
distorted smile.

"No; no need to write it down. But still you do have curious dreams."

"It's not a question of dreams now, gentlemen--this is realism, this is
real life! I'm a wolf and you're the hunters. Well, hunt him down!"

"You are wrong to make such comparisons ..." began Nikolay Parfenovitch,
with extraordinary softness.

"No, I'm not wrong, not at all!" Mitya flared up again, though his
outburst of wrath had obviously relieved his heart. He grew more good-
humored at every word. "You may not trust a criminal or a man on trial
tortured by your questions, but an honorable man, the honorable impulses
of the heart (I say that boldly!)--no! That you must believe you have no
right indeed ... but--


    Be silent, heart,
    Be patient, humble, hold thy peace.


Well, shall I go on?" he broke off gloomily.

"If you'll be so kind," answered Nikolay Parfenovitch.




Chapter V. The Third Ordeal


Though Mitya spoke sullenly, it was evident that he was trying more than
ever not to forget or miss a single detail of his story. He told them how
he had leapt over the fence into his father's garden; how he had gone up
to the window; told them all that had passed under the window. Clearly,
precisely, distinctly, he described the feelings that troubled him during
those moments in the garden when he longed so terribly to know whether
Grushenka was with his father or not. But, strange to say, both the
lawyers listened now with a sort of awful reserve, looked coldly at him,
asked few questions. Mitya could gather nothing from their faces.

"They're angry and offended," he thought. "Well, bother them!"

When he described how he made up his mind at last to make the "signal" to
his father that Grushenka had come, so that he should open the window, the
lawyers paid no attention to the word "signal," as though they entirely
failed to grasp the meaning of the word in this connection: so much so,
that Mitya noticed it. Coming at last to the moment when, seeing his
father peering out of the window, his hatred flared up and he pulled the
pestle out of his pocket, he suddenly, as though of design, stopped short.
He sat gazing at the wall and was aware that their eyes were fixed upon
him.

"Well?" said the investigating lawyer. "You pulled out the weapon and ...
and what happened then?"

"Then? Why, then I murdered him ... hit him on the head and cracked his
skull.... I suppose that's your story. That's it!"

His eyes suddenly flashed. All his smothered wrath suddenly flamed up with
extraordinary violence in his soul.

"Our story?" repeated Nikolay Parfenovitch. "Well--and yours?"

Mitya dropped his eyes and was a long time silent.

"My story, gentlemen? Well, it was like this," he began softly. "Whether
it was some one's tears, or my mother prayed to God, or a good angel
kissed me at that instant, I don't know. But the devil was conquered. I
rushed from the window and ran to the fence. My father was alarmed and,
for the first time, he saw me then, cried out, and sprang back from the
window. I remember that very well. I ran across the garden to the fence
... and there Grigory caught me, when I was sitting on the fence."

At that point he raised his eyes at last and looked at his listeners. They
seemed to be staring at him with perfectly unruffled attention. A sort of
paroxysm of indignation seized on Mitya's soul.

"Why, you're laughing at me at this moment, gentlemen!" he broke off
suddenly.

"What makes you think that?" observed Nikolay Parfenovitch.

"You don't believe one word--that's why! I understand, of course, that I
have come to the vital point. The old man's lying there now with his skull
broken, while I--after dramatically describing how I wanted to kill him,
and how I snatched up the pestle--I suddenly run away from the window. A
romance! Poetry! As though one could believe a fellow on his word. Ha ha!
You are scoffers, gentlemen!"

And he swung round on his chair so that it creaked.

"And did you notice," asked the prosecutor suddenly, as though not
observing Mitya's excitement, "did you notice when you ran away from the
window, whether the door into the garden was open?"

"No, it was not open."

"It was not?"

"It was shut. And who could open it? Bah! the door. Wait a bit!" he seemed
suddenly to bethink himself, and almost with a start:

"Why, did you find the door open?"

"Yes, it was open."

"Why, who could have opened it if you did not open it yourselves?" cried
Mitya, greatly astonished.

"The door stood open, and your father's murderer undoubtedly went in at
that door, and, having accomplished the crime, went out again by the same
door," the prosecutor pronounced deliberately, as though chiseling out
each word separately. "That is perfectly clear. The murder was committed
in the room and _not through the __ window_; that is absolutely certain
from the examination that has been made, from the position of the body and
everything. There can be no doubt of that circumstance."

Mitya was absolutely dumbfounded.

"But that's utterly impossible!" he cried, completely at a loss. "I ... I
didn't go in.... I tell you positively, definitely, the door was shut the
whole time I was in the garden, and when I ran out of the garden. I only
stood at the window and saw him through the window. That's all, that's
all.... I remember to the last minute. And if I didn't remember, it would
be just the same. I know it, for no one knew the signals except
Smerdyakov, and me, and the dead man. And he wouldn't have opened the door
to any one in the world without the signals."

"Signals? What signals?" asked the prosecutor, with greedy, almost
hysterical, curiosity. He instantly lost all trace of his reserve and
dignity. He asked the question with a sort of cringing timidity. He
scented an important fact of which he had known nothing, and was already
filled with dread that Mitya might be unwilling to disclose it.

"So you didn't know!" Mitya winked at him with a malicious and mocking
smile. "What if I won't tell you? From whom could you find out? No one
knew about the signals except my father, Smerdyakov, and me: that was all.
Heaven knew, too, but it won't tell you. But it's an interesting fact.
There's no knowing what you might build on it. Ha ha! Take comfort,
gentlemen, I'll reveal it. You've some foolish idea in your hearts. You
don't know the man you have to deal with! You have to do with a prisoner
who gives evidence against himself, to his own damage! Yes, for I'm a man
of honor and you--are not."

The prosecutor swallowed this without a murmur. He was trembling with
impatience to hear the new fact. Minutely and diffusely Mitya told them
everything about the signals invented by Fyodor Pavlovitch for Smerdyakov.
He told them exactly what every tap on the window meant, tapped the
signals on the table, and when Nikolay Parfenovitch said that he supposed
he, Mitya, had tapped the signal "Grushenka has come," when he tapped to
his father, he answered precisely that he had tapped that signal, that
"Grushenka had come."

"So now you can build up your tower," Mitya broke off, and again turned
away from them contemptuously.

"So no one knew of the signals but your dead father, you, and the valet
Smerdyakov? And no one else?" Nikolay Parfenovitch inquired once more.

"Yes. The valet Smerdyakov, and Heaven. Write down about Heaven. That may
be of use. Besides, you will need God yourselves."

And they had already, of course, begun writing it down. But while they
wrote, the prosecutor said suddenly, as though pitching on a new idea:

"But if Smerdyakov also knew of these signals and you absolutely deny all
responsibility for the death of your father, was it not he, perhaps, who
knocked the signal agreed upon, induced your father to open to him, and
then ... committed the crime?"

Mitya turned upon him a look of profound irony and intense hatred. His
silent stare lasted so long that it made the prosecutor blink.

"You've caught the fox again," commented Mitya at last; "you've got the
beast by the tail. Ha ha! I see through you, Mr. Prosecutor. You thought,
of course, that I should jump at that, catch at your prompting, and shout
with all my might, 'Aie! it's Smerdyakov; he's the murderer.' Confess
that's what you thought. Confess, and I'll go on."

But the prosecutor did not confess. He held his tongue and waited.

"You're mistaken. I'm not going to shout 'It's Smerdyakov,' " said Mitya.

"And you don't even suspect him?"

"Why, do you suspect him?"

"He is suspected, too."

Mitya fixed his eyes on the floor.

"Joking apart," he brought out gloomily. "Listen. From the very beginning,
almost from the moment when I ran out to you from behind the curtain, I've
had the thought of Smerdyakov in my mind. I've been sitting here, shouting
that I'm innocent and thinking all the time 'Smerdyakov!' I can't get
Smerdyakov out of my head. In fact, I, too, thought of Smerdyakov just
now; but only for a second. Almost at once I thought, 'No, it's not
Smerdyakov.' It's not his doing, gentlemen."

"In that case is there anybody else you suspect?" Nikolay Parfenovitch
inquired cautiously.

"I don't know any one it could be, whether it's the hand of Heaven or
Satan, but ... not Smerdyakov," Mitya jerked out with decision.

"But what makes you affirm so confidently and emphatically that it's not
he?"

"From my conviction--my impression. Because Smerdyakov is a man of the most
abject character and a coward. He's not a coward, he's the epitome of all
the cowardice in the world walking on two legs. He has the heart of a
chicken. When he talked to me, he was always trembling for fear I should
kill him, though I never raised my hand against him. He fell at my feet
and blubbered; he has kissed these very boots, literally, beseeching me
'not to frighten him.' Do you hear? 'Not to frighten him.' What a thing to
say! Why, I offered him money. He's a puling chicken--sickly, epileptic,
weak-minded--a child of eight could thrash him. He has no character worth
talking about. It's not Smerdyakov, gentlemen. He doesn't care for money;
he wouldn't take my presents. Besides, what motive had he for murdering
the old man? Why, he's very likely his son, you know--his natural son. Do
you know that?"

"We have heard that legend. But you are your father's son, too, you know;
yet you yourself told every one you meant to murder him."

"That's a thrust! And a nasty, mean one, too! I'm not afraid! Oh,
gentlemen, isn't it too base of you to say that to my face? It's base,
because I told you that myself. I not only wanted to murder him, but I
might have done it. And, what's more, I went out of my way to tell you of
my own accord that I nearly murdered him. But, you see, I didn't murder
him; you see, my guardian angel saved me--that's what you've not taken into
account. And that's why it's so base of you. For I didn't kill him, I
didn't kill him! Do you hear, I did not kill him."

He was almost choking. He had not been so moved before during the whole
interrogation.

"And what has he told you, gentlemen--Smerdyakov, I mean?" he added
suddenly, after a pause. "May I ask that question?"

"You may ask any question," the prosecutor replied with frigid severity,
"any question relating to the facts of the case, and we are, I repeat,
bound to answer every inquiry you make. We found the servant Smerdyakov,
concerning whom you inquire, lying unconscious in his bed, in an epileptic
fit of extreme severity, that had recurred, possibly, ten times. The
doctor who was with us told us, after seeing him, that he may possibly not
outlive the night."

"Well, if that's so, the devil must have killed him," broke suddenly from
Mitya, as though until that moment he had been asking himself: "Was it
Smerdyakov or not?"

"We will come back to this later," Nikolay Parfenovitch decided. "Now,
wouldn't you like to continue your statement?"

Mitya asked for a rest. His request was courteously granted. After
resting, he went on with his story. But he was evidently depressed. He was
exhausted, mortified and morally shaken. To make things worse the
prosecutor exasperated him, as though intentionally, by vexatious
interruptions about "trifling points." Scarcely had Mitya described how,
sitting on the wall, he had struck Grigory on the head with the pestle,
while the old man had hold of his left leg, and how he had then jumped
down to look at him, when the prosecutor stopped him to ask him to
describe exactly how he was sitting on the wall. Mitya was surprised.

"Oh, I was sitting like this, astride, one leg on one side of the wall and
one on the other."

"And the pestle?"

"The pestle was in my hand."

"Not in your pocket? Do you remember that precisely? Was it a violent blow
you gave him?"

"It must have been a violent one. But why do you ask?"

"Would you mind sitting on the chair just as you sat on the wall then and
showing us just how you moved your arm, and in what direction?"

"You're making fun of me, aren't you?" asked Mitya, looking haughtily at
the speaker; but the latter did not flinch.

Mitya turned abruptly, sat astride on his chair, and swung his arm.

"This was how I struck him! That's how I knocked him down! What more do
you want?"

"Thank you. May I trouble you now to explain why you jumped down, with
what object, and what you had in view?"

"Oh, hang it!... I jumped down to look at the man I'd hurt ... I don't
know what for!"

"Though you were so excited and were running away?"

"Yes, though I was excited and running away."

"You wanted to help him?"

"Help!... Yes, perhaps I did want to help him.... I don't remember."

"You don't remember? Then you didn't quite know what you were doing?"

"Not at all. I remember everything--every detail. I jumped down to look at
him, and wiped his face with my handkerchief."

"We have seen your handkerchief. Did you hope to restore him to
consciousness?"

"I don't know whether I hoped it. I simply wanted to make sure whether he
was alive or not."

"Ah! You wanted to be sure? Well, what then?"

"I'm not a doctor. I couldn't decide. I ran away thinking I'd killed him.
And now he's recovered."

"Excellent," commented the prosecutor. "Thank you. That's all I wanted.
Kindly proceed."

Alas! it never entered Mitya's head to tell them, though he remembered it,
that he had jumped back from pity, and standing over the prostrate figure
had even uttered some words of regret: "You've come to grief, old
man--there's no help for it. Well, there you must lie."

The prosecutor could only draw one conclusion: that the man had jumped
back "at such a moment and in such excitement simply with the object of
ascertaining whether the _only_ witness of his crime were dead; that he
must therefore have been a man of great strength, coolness, decision and
foresight even at such a moment," ... and so on. The prosecutor was
satisfied: "I've provoked the nervous fellow by 'trifles' and he has said
more than he meant to."

With painful effort Mitya went on. But this time he was pulled up
immediately by Nikolay Parfenovitch.

"How came you to run to the servant, Fedosya Markovna, with your hands so
covered with blood, and, as it appears, your face, too?"

"Why, I didn't notice the blood at all at the time," answered Mitya.

"That's quite likely. It does happen sometimes." The prosecutor exchanged
glances with Nikolay Parfenovitch.

"I simply didn't notice. You're quite right there, prosecutor," Mitya
assented suddenly.

Next came the account of Mitya's sudden determination to "step aside" and
make way for their happiness. But he could not make up his mind to open
his heart to them as before, and tell them about "the queen of his soul."
He disliked speaking of her before these chilly persons "who were
fastening on him like bugs." And so in response to their reiterated
questions he answered briefly and abruptly:

"Well, I made up my mind to kill myself. What had I left to live for? That
question stared me in the face. Her first rightful lover had come back,
the man who wronged her but who'd hurried back to offer his love, after
five years, and atone for the wrong with marriage.... So I knew it was all
over for me.... And behind me disgrace, and that blood--Grigory's.... What
had I to live for? So I went to redeem the pistols I had pledged, to load
them and put a bullet in my brain to-morrow."

"And a grand feast the night before?"

"Yes, a grand feast the night before. Damn it all, gentlemen! Do make
haste and finish it. I meant to shoot myself not far from here, beyond the
village, and I'd planned to do it at five o'clock in the morning. And I
had a note in my pocket already. I wrote it at Perhotin's when I loaded my
pistols. Here's the letter. Read it! It's not for you I tell it," he added
contemptuously. He took it from his waistcoat pocket and flung it on the
table. The lawyers read it with curiosity, and, as is usual, added it to
the papers connected with the case.

"And you didn't even think of washing your hands at Perhotin's? You were
not afraid then of arousing suspicion?"

"What suspicion? Suspicion or not, I should have galloped here just the
same, and shot myself at five o'clock, and you wouldn't have been in time
to do anything. If it hadn't been for what's happened to my father, you
would have known nothing about it, and wouldn't have come here. Oh, it's
the devil's doing. It was the devil murdered father, it was through the
devil that you found it out so soon. How did you manage to get here so
quick? It's marvelous, a dream!"

"Mr. Perhotin informed us that when you came to him, you held in your
hands ... your blood-stained hands ... your money ... a lot of money ... a
bundle of hundred-rouble notes, and that his servant-boy saw it too."

"That's true, gentlemen. I remember it was so."

"Now, there's one little point presents itself. Can you inform us,"
Nikolay Parfenovitch began, with extreme gentleness, "where did you get so
much money all of a sudden, when it appears from the facts, from the
reckoning of time, that you had not been home?"

The prosecutor's brows contracted at the question being asked so plainly,
but he did not interrupt Nikolay Parfenovitch.

"No, I didn't go home," answered Mitya, apparently perfectly composed, but
looking at the floor.

"Allow me then to repeat my question," Nikolay Parfenovitch went on as
though creeping up to the subject. "Where were you able to procure such a
sum all at once, when by your own confession, at five o'clock the same day
you--"

"I was in want of ten roubles and pledged my pistols with Perhotin, and
then went to Madame Hohlakov to borrow three thousand which she wouldn't
give me, and so on, and all the rest of it," Mitya interrupted sharply.
"Yes, gentlemen, I was in want of it, and suddenly thousands turned up,
eh? Do you know, gentlemen, you're both afraid now 'what if he won't tell
us where he got it?' That's just how it is. I'm not going to tell you,
gentlemen. You've guessed right. You'll never know," said Mitya, chipping
out each word with extraordinary determination. The lawyers were silent
for a moment.

"You must understand, Mr. Karamazov, that it is of vital importance for us
to know," said Nikolay Parfenovitch, softly and suavely.

"I understand; but still I won't tell you."

The prosecutor, too, intervened, and again reminded the prisoner that he
was at liberty to refuse to answer questions, if he thought it to his
interest, and so on. But in view of the damage he might do himself by his
silence, especially in a case of such importance as--

"And so on, gentlemen, and so on. Enough! I've heard that rigmarole
before," Mitya interrupted again. "I can see for myself how important it
is, and that this is the vital point, and still I won't say."

"What is it to us? It's not our business, but yours. You are doing
yourself harm," observed Nikolay Parfenovitch nervously.

"You see, gentlemen, joking apart"--Mitya lifted his eyes and looked firmly
at them both--"I had an inkling from the first that we should come to
loggerheads at this point. But at first when I began to give my evidence,
it was all still far away and misty; it was all floating, and I was so
simple that I began with the supposition of mutual confidence existing
between us. Now I can see for myself that such confidence is out of the
question, for in any case we were bound to come to this cursed stumbling-
block. And now we've come to it! It's impossible and there's an end of it!
But I don't blame you. You can't believe it all simply on my word. I
understand that, of course."

He relapsed into gloomy silence.

"Couldn't you, without abandoning your resolution to be silent about the
chief point, could you not, at the same time, give us some slight hint as
to the nature of the motives which are strong enough to induce you to
refuse to answer, at a crisis so full of danger to you?"

Mitya smiled mournfully, almost dreamily.

"I'm much more good-natured than you think, gentlemen. I'll tell you the
reason why and give you that hint, though you don't deserve it. I won't
speak of that, gentlemen, because it would be a stain on my honor. The
answer to the question where I got the money would expose me to far
greater disgrace than the murder and robbing of my father, if I had
murdered and robbed him. That's why I can't tell you. I can't for fear of
disgrace. What, gentlemen, are you going to write that down?"

"Yes, we'll write it down," lisped Nikolay Parfenovitch.

"You ought not to write that down about 'disgrace.' I only told you that
in the goodness of my heart. I needn't have told you. I made you a present
of it, so to speak, and you pounce upon it at once. Oh, well, write--write
what you like," he concluded, with scornful disgust. "I'm not afraid of
you and I can still hold up my head before you."

"And can't you tell us the nature of that disgrace?" Nikolay Parfenovitch
hazarded.

The prosecutor frowned darkly.

"No, no, _c'est fini_, don't trouble yourselves. It's not worth while
soiling one's hands. I have soiled myself enough through you as it is.
You're not worth it--no one is ... Enough, gentlemen. I'm not going on."

This was said too peremptorily. Nikolay Parfenovitch did not insist
further, but from Ippolit Kirillovitch's eyes he saw that he had not given
up hope.

"Can you not, at least, tell us what sum you had in your hands when you
went into Mr. Perhotin's--how many roubles exactly?"

"I can't tell you that."

"You spoke to Mr. Perhotin, I believe, of having received three thousand
from Madame Hohlakov."

"Perhaps I did. Enough, gentlemen. I won't say how much I had."

"Will you be so good then as to tell us how you came here and what you
have done since you arrived?"

"Oh! you might ask the people here about that. But I'll tell you if you
like."

He proceeded to do so, but we won't repeat his story. He told it dryly and
curtly. Of the raptures of his love he said nothing, but told them that he
abandoned his determination to shoot himself, owing to "new factors in the
case." He told the story without going into motives or details. And this
time the lawyers did not worry him much. It was obvious that there was no
essential point of interest to them here.

"We shall verify all that. We will come back to it during the examination
of the witnesses, which will, of course, take place in your presence,"
said Nikolay Parfenovitch in conclusion. "And now allow me to request you
to lay on the table everything in your possession, especially all the
money you still have about you."

"My money, gentlemen? Certainly. I understand that that is necessary. I'm
surprised, indeed, that you haven't inquired about it before. It's true I
couldn't get away anywhere. I'm sitting here where I can be seen. But
here's my money--count it--take it. That's all, I think."

He turned it all out of his pockets; even the small change--two pieces of
twenty copecks--he pulled out of his waistcoat pocket. They counted the
money, which amounted to eight hundred and thirty-six roubles, and forty
copecks.

"And is that all?" asked the investigating lawyer.

"Yes."

"You stated just now in your evidence that you spent three hundred roubles
at Plotnikovs'. You gave Perhotin ten, your driver twenty, here you lost
two hundred, then...."

Nikolay Parfenovitch reckoned it all up. Mitya helped him readily. They
recollected every farthing and included it in the reckoning. Nikolay
Parfenovitch hurriedly added up the total.

"With this eight hundred you must have had about fifteen hundred at
first?"

"I suppose so," snapped Mitya.

"How is it they all assert there was much more?"

"Let them assert it."

"But you asserted it yourself."

"Yes, I did, too."

"We will compare all this with the evidence of other persons not yet
examined. Don't be anxious about your money. It will be properly taken
care of and be at your disposal at the conclusion of ... what is beginning
... if it appears, or, so to speak, is proved that you have undisputed
right to it. Well, and now...."

Nikolay Parfenovitch suddenly got up, and informed Mitya firmly that it
was his duty and obligation to conduct a 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.




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.

Meantime a consultation was going on in undertones between the lawyers.
There turned out to be on the coat, especially on the left side at the
back, a huge patch of blood, dry, and still stiff. There were bloodstains
on the trousers, too. Nikolay Parfenovitch, moreover, in the presence of
the peasant witnesses, passed his fingers along the collar, the cuffs, and
all the seams of the coat and trousers, obviously looking for
something--money, of course. He didn't even hide from Mitya his suspicion
that he was capable of sewing money up in his clothes.

"He treats me not as an officer but as a thief," Mitya muttered to
himself. They communicated their ideas to one another with amazing
frankness. The secretary, for instance, who was also behind the curtain,
fussing about and listening, called Nikolay Parfenovitch's attention to
the cap, which they were also fingering.

"You remember Gridyenko, the copying-clerk," observed the secretary. "Last
summer he received the wages of the whole office, and pretended to have
lost the money when he was drunk. And where was it found? Why, in just
such pipings in his cap. The hundred-rouble notes were screwed up in
little rolls and sewed in the piping."

Both the lawyers remembered Gridyenko's case perfectly, and so laid aside
Mitya's cap, and decided that all his clothes must be more thoroughly
examined later.

"Excuse me," cried Nikolay Parfenovitch, suddenly, noticing that the right
cuff of Mitya's shirt was turned in, and covered with blood, "excuse me,
what's that, blood?"

"Yes," Mitya jerked out.

"That is, what blood? ... and why is the cuff turned in?"

Mitya told him how he had got the sleeve stained with blood looking after
Grigory, and had turned it inside when he was washing his hands at
Perhotin's.

"You must take off your shirt, too. That's very important as material
evidence."

Mitya flushed red and flew into a rage.

"What, am I to stay naked?" he shouted.

"Don't disturb yourself. We will arrange something. And meanwhile take off
your socks."

"You're not joking? Is that really necessary?" Mitya's eyes flashed.

"We are in no mood for joking," answered Nikolay Parfenovitch sternly.

"Well, if I must--" muttered Mitya, and sitting down on the bed, he took
off his socks. He felt unbearably awkward. All were clothed, while he was
naked, and strange to say, when he was undressed he felt somehow guilty in
their presence, and was almost ready to believe himself that he was
inferior to them, and that now they had a perfect right to despise him.

"When all are undressed, one is somehow not ashamed, but when one's the
only one undressed and everybody is looking, it's degrading," he kept
repeating to himself, again and again. "It's like a dream, I've sometimes
dreamed of being in such degrading positions." It was a misery to him to
take off his socks. They were very dirty, and so were his underclothes,
and now every one could see it. And what was worse, he disliked his feet.
All his life he had thought both his big toes hideous. He particularly
loathed the coarse, flat, crooked nail on the right one, and now they
would all see it. Feeling intolerably ashamed made him, at once and
intentionally, rougher. He pulled off his shirt, himself.

"Would you like to look anywhere else if you're not ashamed to?"

"No, there's no need to, at present."

"Well, am I to stay naked like this?" he added savagely.

"Yes, that can't be helped for the time.... Kindly sit down here for a
while. You can wrap yourself in a quilt from the bed, and I ... I'll see
to all this."

All the things were shown to the witnesses. The report of the search was
drawn up, and at last Nikolay Parfenovitch went out, and the clothes were
carried out after him. Ippolit Kirillovitch went out, too. Mitya was left
alone with the peasants, who stood in silence, never taking their eyes off
him. Mitya wrapped himself up in the quilt. He felt cold. His bare feet
stuck out, and he couldn't pull the quilt over so as to cover them.
Nikolay Parfenovitch seemed to be gone a long time, "an insufferable
time." "He thinks of me as a puppy," thought Mitya, gnashing his teeth.
"That rotten prosecutor has gone, too, contemptuous no doubt, it disgusts
him to see me naked!"

Mitya imagined, however, that his clothes would be examined and returned
to him. But what was his indignation when Nikolay Parfenovitch came back
with quite different clothes, brought in behind him by a peasant.

"Here are clothes for you," he observed airily, seeming well satisfied
with the success of his mission. "Mr. Kalganov has kindly provided these
for this unusual emergency, as well as a clean shirt. Luckily he had them
all in his trunk. You can keep your own socks and underclothes."

Mitya flew into a passion.

"I won't have other people's clothes!" he shouted menacingly, "give me my
own!"

"It's impossible!"

"Give me my own. Damn Kalganov and his clothes, too!"

It was a long time before they could persuade him. But they succeeded
somehow in quieting him down. They impressed upon him that his clothes,
being stained with blood, must be "included with the other material
evidence," and that they "had not even the right to let him have them now
... taking into consideration the possible outcome of the case." Mitya at
last understood this. He subsided into gloomy silence and hurriedly
dressed himself. He merely observed, as he put them on, that the clothes
were much better than his old ones, and that he disliked "gaining by the
change." The coat was, besides, "ridiculously tight. Am I to be dressed up
like a fool ... for your amusement?"

They urged upon him again that he was exaggerating, that Kalganov was only
a little taller, so that only the trousers might be a little too long. But
the coat turned out to be really tight in the shoulders.

"Damn it all! I can hardly button it," Mitya grumbled. "Be so good as to
tell Mr. Kalganov from me that I didn't ask for his clothes, and it's not
my doing that they've dressed me up like a clown."

"He understands that, and is sorry ... I mean, not sorry to lend you his
clothes, but sorry about all this business," mumbled Nikolay Parfenovitch.

"Confound his sorrow! Well, where now? Am I to go on sitting here?"

He was asked to go back to the "other room." Mitya went in, scowling with
anger, and trying to avoid looking at any one. Dressed in another man's
clothes he felt himself disgraced, even in the eyes of the peasants, and
of Trifon Borissovitch, whose face appeared, for some reason, in the
doorway, and vanished immediately. "He's come to look at me dressed up,"
thought Mitya. He sat down on the same chair as before. He had an absurd
nightmarish feeling, as though he were out of his mind.

"Well, what now? Are you going to flog me? That's all that's left for
you," he said, clenching his teeth and addressing the prosecutor. He would
not turn to Nikolay Parfenovitch, as though he disdained to speak to him.

"He looked too closely at my socks, and turned them inside out on purpose
to show every one how dirty they were--the scoundrel!"

"Well, now we must proceed to the examination of witnesses," observed
Nikolay Parfenovitch, as though in reply to Mitya's question.

"Yes," said the prosecutor thoughtfully, as though reflecting on
something.

"We've done what we could in your interest, Dmitri Fyodorovitch," Nikolay
Parfenovitch went on, "but having received from you such an uncompromising
refusal to explain to us the source from which you obtained the money
found upon you, we are, at the present moment--"

"What is the stone in your ring?" Mitya interrupted suddenly, as though
awakening from a reverie. He pointed to one of the three large rings
adorning Nikolay Parfenovitch's right hand.

"Ring?" repeated Nikolay Parfenovitch with surprise.

"Yes, that one ... on your middle finger, with the little veins in it,
what stone is that?" Mitya persisted, like a peevish child.

"That's a smoky topaz," said Nikolay Parfenovitch, smiling. "Would you
like to look at it? I'll take it off ..."

"No, don't take it off," cried Mitya furiously, suddenly waking up, and
angry with himself. "Don't take it off ... there's no need.... Damn it!...
Gentlemen, you've sullied my heart! Can you suppose that I would conceal
it from you, if I had really killed my father, that I would shuffle, lie,
and hide myself? No, that's not like Dmitri Karamazov, that he couldn't
do, and if I were guilty, I swear I shouldn't have waited for your coming,
or for the sunrise as I meant at first, but should have killed myself
before this, without waiting for the dawn! I know that about myself now. I
couldn't have learnt so much in twenty years as I've found out in this
accursed night!... And should I have been like this on this night, and at
this moment, sitting with you, could I have talked like this, could I have
moved like this, could I have looked at you and at the world like this, if
I had really been the murderer of my father, when the very thought of
having accidentally killed Grigory gave me no peace all night--not from
fear--oh, not simply from fear of your punishment! The disgrace of it! And
you expect me to be open with such scoffers as you, who see nothing and
believe in nothing, blind moles and scoffers, and to tell you another
nasty thing I've done, another disgrace, even if that would save me from
your accusation! No, better Siberia! The man who opened the door to my
father and went in at that door, he killed him, he robbed him. Who was he?
I'm racking my brains and can't think who. But I can tell you it was not
Dmitri Karamazov, and that's all I can tell you, and that's enough,
enough, leave me alone.... Exile me, punish me, but don't bother me any
more. I'll say no more. Call your witnesses!"

Mitya uttered his sudden monologue as though he were determined to be
absolutely silent for the future. The prosecutor watched him the whole
time and only when he had ceased speaking, observed, as though it were the
most ordinary thing, with the most frigid and composed air:

"Oh, about the open door of which you spoke just now, we may as well
inform you, by the way, now, of a very interesting piece of evidence of
the greatest importance both to you and to us, that has been given us by
Grigory, the old man you wounded. On his recovery, he clearly and
emphatically stated, in reply to our questions, that when, on coming out
to the steps, and hearing a noise in the garden, he made up his mind to go
into it through the little gate which stood open, before he noticed you
running, as you have told us already, in the dark from the open window
where you saw your father, he, Grigory, glanced to the left, and, while
noticing the open window, observed at the same time, much nearer to him,
the door, standing wide open--that door which you have stated to have been
shut the whole time you were in the garden. I will not conceal from you
that Grigory himself confidently affirms and bears witness that you must
have run from that door, though, of course, he did not see you do so with
his own eyes, since he only noticed you first some distance away in the
garden, running towards the fence."

Mitya had leapt up from his chair half-way through this speech.

"Nonsense!" he yelled, in a sudden frenzy, "it's a barefaced lie. He
couldn't have seen the door open because it was shut. He's lying!"

"I consider it my duty to repeat that he is firm in his statement. He does
not waver. He adheres to it. We've cross-examined him several times."

"Precisely. I have cross-examined him several times," Nikolay Parfenovitch
confirmed warmly.

"It's false, false! It's either an attempt to slander me, or the
hallucination of a madman," Mitya still shouted. "He's simply raving, from
loss of blood, from the wound. He must have fancied it when he came to....
He's raving."

"Yes, but he noticed the open door, not when he came to after his
injuries, but before that, as soon as he went into the garden from the
lodge."

"But it's false, it's false! It can't be so! He's slandering me from
spite.... He couldn't have seen it ... I didn't come from the door,"
gasped Mitya.

The prosecutor turned to Nikolay Parfenovitch and said to him
impressively:

"Confront him with it."

"Do you recognize this object?"

Nikolay Parfenovitch laid upon the table a large and thick official
envelope, on which three seals still remained intact. The envelope was
empty, and slit open at one end. Mitya stared at it with open eyes.

"It ... it must be that envelope of my father's, the envelope that
contained the three thousand roubles ... and if there's inscribed on it,
allow me, 'For my little chicken' ... yes--three thousand!" he shouted, "do
you see, three thousand, do you see?"

"Of course, we see. But we didn't find the money in it. It was empty, and
lying on the floor by the bed, behind the screen."

For some seconds Mitya stood as though thunderstruck.

"Gentlemen, it's Smerdyakov!" he shouted suddenly, at the top of his
voice. "It's he who's murdered him! He's robbed him! No one else knew
where the old man hid the envelope. It's Smerdyakov, that's clear, now!"

"But you, too, knew of the envelope and that it was under the pillow."

"I never knew it. I've never seen it. This is the first time I've looked
at it. I'd only heard of it from Smerdyakov.... He was the only one who
knew where the old man kept it hidden, I didn't know ..." Mitya was
completely breathless.

"But you told us yourself that the envelope was under your deceased
father's pillow. You especially stated that it was under the pillow, so
you must have known it."

"We've got it written down," confirmed Nikolay Parfenovitch.

"Nonsense! It's absurd! I'd no idea it was under the pillow. And perhaps
it wasn't under the pillow at all.... It was just a chance guess that it
was under the pillow. What does Smerdyakov say? Have you asked him where
it was? What does Smerdyakov say? that's the chief point.... And I went
out of my way to tell lies against myself.... I told you without thinking
that it was under the pillow, and now you-- Oh, you know how one says the
wrong thing, without meaning it. No one knew but Smerdyakov, only
Smerdyakov, and no one else.... He didn't even tell me where it was! But
it's his doing, his doing; there's no doubt about it, he murdered him,
that's as clear as daylight now," Mitya exclaimed more and more
frantically, repeating himself incoherently, and growing more and more
exasperated and excited. "You must understand that, and arrest him at
once.... He must have killed him while I was running away and while
Grigory was unconscious, that's clear now.... He gave the signal and
father opened to him ... for no one but he knew the signal, and without
the signal father would never have opened the door...."

"But you're again forgetting the circumstance," the prosecutor observed,
still speaking with the same restraint, though with a note of triumph,
"that there was no need to give the signal if the door already stood open
when you were there, while you were in the garden...."

"The door, the door," muttered Mitya, and he stared speechless at the
prosecutor. He sank back helpless in his chair. All were silent.

"Yes, the door!... It's a nightmare! God is against me!" he exclaimed,
staring before him in complete stupefaction.

"Come, you see," the prosecutor went on with dignity, "and you can judge
for yourself, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. On the one hand we have the evidence of
the open door from which you ran out, a fact which overwhelms you and us.
On the other side your incomprehensible, persistent, and, so to speak,
obdurate silence with regard to the source from which you obtained the
money which was so suddenly seen in your hands, when only three hours
earlier, on your own showing, you pledged your pistols for the sake of ten
roubles! In view of all these facts, judge for yourself. What are we to
believe, and what can we depend upon? And don't accuse us of being
'frigid, cynical, scoffing people,' who are incapable of believing in the
generous impulses of your heart.... Try to enter into our position ..."

Mitya was indescribably agitated. He turned pale.

"Very well!" he exclaimed suddenly. "I will tell you my secret. I'll tell
you where I got the money!... I'll reveal my shame, that I may not have to
blame myself or you hereafter."

"And believe me, Dmitri Fyodorovitch," put in Nikolay Parfenovitch, in a
voice of almost pathetic delight, "that every sincere and complete
confession on your part at this moment may, later on, have an immense
influence in your favor, and may, indeed, moreover--"

But the prosecutor gave him a slight shove under the table, and he checked
himself in time. Mitya, it is true, had not heard him.




Chapter VII. Mitya's Great Secret. Received With Hisses


"Gentlemen," he began, still in the same agitation, "I want to make a full
confession: that money was _my own_." The lawyers' faces lengthened. That
was not at all what they expected.

"How do you mean?" faltered Nikolay Parfenovitch, "when at five o'clock on
the same day, from your own confession--"

"Damn five o'clock on the same day and my own confession! That's nothing
to do with it now! That money was my own, my own, that is, stolen by me
... not mine, I mean, but stolen by me, and it was fifteen hundred
roubles, and I had it on me all the time, all the time ..."

"But where did you get it?"

"I took it off my neck, gentlemen, off this very neck ... it was here,
round my neck, sewn up in a rag, and I'd had it round my neck a long time,
it's a month since I put it round my neck ... to my shame and disgrace!"

"And from whom did you ... appropriate it?"

"You mean, 'steal it'? Speak out plainly now. Yes, I consider that I
practically stole it, but, if you prefer, I 'appropriated it.' I consider
I stole it. And last night I stole it finally."

"Last night? But you said that it's a month since you ... obtained it?..."

"Yes. But not from my father. Not from my father, don't be uneasy. I
didn't steal it from my father, but from her. Let me tell you without
interrupting. It's hard to do, you know. You see, a month ago, I was sent
for by Katerina Ivanovna, formerly my betrothed. Do you know her?"

"Yes, of course."

"I know you know her. She's a noble creature, noblest of the noble. But
she has hated me ever so long, oh, ever so long ... and hated me with good
reason, good reason!"

"Katerina Ivanovna!" Nikolay Parfenovitch exclaimed with wonder. The
prosecutor, too, stared.

"Oh, don't take her name in vain! I'm a scoundrel to bring her into it.
Yes, I've seen that she hated me ... a long while.... From the very first,
even that evening at my lodging ... but enough, enough. You're unworthy
even to know of that. No need of that at all.... I need only tell you that
she sent for me a month ago, gave me three thousand roubles to send off to
her sister and another relation in Moscow (as though she couldn't have
sent it off herself!) and I ... it was just at that fatal moment in my
life when I ... well, in fact, when I'd just come to love another, her,
she's sitting down below now, Grushenka. I carried her off here to Mokroe
then, and wasted here in two days half that damned three thousand, but the
other half I kept on me. Well, I've kept that other half, that fifteen
hundred, like a locket round my neck, but yesterday I undid it, and spent
it. What's left of it, eight hundred roubles, is in your hands now,
Nikolay Parfenovitch. That's the change out of the fifteen hundred I had
yesterday."

"Excuse me. How's that? Why, when you were here a month ago you spent
three thousand, not fifteen hundred, everybody knows that."

"Who knows it? Who counted the money? Did I let any one count it?"

"Why, you told every one yourself that you'd spent exactly three
thousand."

"It's true, I did. I told the whole town so, and the whole town said so.
And here, at Mokroe, too, every one reckoned it was three thousand. Yet I
didn't spend three thousand, but fifteen hundred. And the other fifteen
hundred I sewed into a little bag. That's how it was, gentlemen. That's
where I got that money yesterday...."

"This is almost miraculous," murmured Nikolay Parfenovitch.

"Allow me to inquire," observed the prosecutor at last, "have you informed
any one whatever of this circumstance before, I mean that you had fifteen
hundred left about you a month ago?"

"I told no one."

"That's strange. Do you mean absolutely no one?"

"Absolutely no one. No one and nobody."

"What was your reason for this reticence? What was your motive for making
such a secret of it? To be more precise: You have told us at last your
secret, in your words, so 'disgraceful,' though in reality--that is, of
course, comparatively speaking--this action, that is, the appropriation of
three thousand roubles belonging to some one else, and, of course, only
for a time is, in my view at least, only an act of the greatest
recklessness and not so disgraceful, when one takes into consideration
your character.... Even admitting that it was an action in the highest
degree discreditable, still, discreditable is not 'disgraceful.'... Many
people have already guessed, during this last month, about the three
thousand of Katerina Ivanovna's, that you have spent, and I heard the
legend myself, apart from your confession.... Mihail Makarovitch, for
instance, had heard it, too, so that indeed, it was scarcely a legend, but
the gossip of the whole town. There are indications, too, if I am not
mistaken, that you confessed this yourself to some one, I mean that the
money was Katerina Ivanovna's, and so, it's extremely surprising to me
that hitherto, that is, up to the present moment, you have made such an
extraordinary secret of the fifteen hundred you say you put by, apparently
connecting a feeling of positive horror with that secret.... It's not easy
to believe that it could cost you such distress to confess such a
secret.... You cried out, just now, that Siberia would be better than
confessing it ..."

The prosecutor ceased speaking. He was provoked. He did not conceal his
vexation, which was almost anger, and gave vent to all his accumulated
spleen, disconnectedly and incoherently, without choosing words.

"It's not the fifteen hundred that's the disgrace, but that I put it apart
from the rest of the three thousand," said Mitya firmly.

"Why?" smiled the prosecutor irritably. "What is there disgraceful, to
your thinking, in your having set aside half of the three thousand you had
discreditably, if you prefer, 'disgracefully,' appropriated? Your taking
the three thousand is more important than what you did with it. And by the
way, why did you do that--why did you set apart that half, for what
purpose, for what object did you do it? Can you explain that to us?"

"Oh, gentlemen, the purpose is the whole point!" cried Mitya. "I put it
aside because I was vile, that is, because I was calculating, and to be
calculating in such a case is vile ... and that vileness has been going on
a whole month."

"It's incomprehensible."

"I wonder at you. But I'll make it clearer. Perhaps it really is
incomprehensible. You see, attend to what I say. I appropriate three
thousand entrusted to my honor, I spend it on a spree, say I spend it all,
and next morning I go to her and say, 'Katya, I've done wrong, I've
squandered your three thousand,' well, is that right? No, it's not
right--it's dishonest and cowardly, I'm a beast, with no more self-control
than a beast, that's so, isn't it? But still I'm not a thief? Not a
downright thief, you'll admit! I squandered it, but I didn't steal it. Now
a second, rather more favorable alternative: follow me carefully, or I may
get confused again--my head's going round--and so, for the second
alternative: I spend here only fifteen hundred out of the three thousand,
that is, only half. Next day I go and take that half to her: 'Katya, take
this fifteen hundred from me, I'm a low beast, and an untrustworthy
scoundrel, for I've wasted half the money, and I shall waste this, too, so
keep me from temptation!' Well, what of that alternative? I should be a
beast and a scoundrel, and whatever you like; but not a thief, not
altogether a thief, or I should not have brought back what was left, but
have kept that, too. She would see at once that since I brought back half,
I should pay back what I'd spent, that I should never give up trying to,
that I should work to get it and pay it back. So in that case I should be
a scoundrel, but not a thief, you may say what you like, not a thief!"

"I admit that there is a certain distinction," said the prosecutor, with a
cold smile. "But it's strange that you see such a vital difference."

"Yes, I see a vital difference! Every man may be a scoundrel, and perhaps
every man is a scoundrel, but not every one can be a thief, it takes an
arch-scoundrel to be that. Oh, of course, I don't know how to make these
fine distinctions ... but a thief is lower than a scoundrel, that's my
conviction. Listen, I carry the money about me a whole month, I may make
up my mind to give it back to-morrow, and I'm a scoundrel no longer, but I
cannot make up my mind, you see, though I'm making up my mind every day,
and every day spurring myself on to do it, and yet for a whole month I
can't bring myself to it, you see. Is that right to your thinking, is that
right?"

"Certainly, that's not right, that I can quite understand, and that I
don't dispute," answered the prosecutor with reserve. "And let us give up
all discussion of these subtleties and distinctions, and, if you will be
so kind, get back to the point. And the point is, that you have still not
told us, altogether we've asked you, why, in the first place, you halved
the money, squandering one half and hiding the other? For what purpose
exactly did you hide it, what did you mean to do with that fifteen
hundred? I insist upon that question, Dmitri Fyodorovitch."

"Yes, of course!" cried Mitya, striking himself on the forehead; "forgive
me, I'm worrying you, and am not explaining the chief point, or you'd
understand in a minute, for it's just the motive of it that's the
disgrace! You see, it was all to do with the old man, my dead father. He
was always pestering Agrafena Alexandrovna, and I was jealous; I thought
then that she was hesitating between me and him. So I kept thinking every
day, suppose she were to make up her mind all of a sudden, suppose she
were to leave off tormenting me, and were suddenly to say to me, 'I love
you, not him; take me to the other end of the world.' And I'd only forty
copecks; how could I take her away, what could I do? Why, I'd be lost. You
see, I didn't know her then, I didn't understand her, I thought she wanted
money, and that she wouldn't forgive my poverty. And so I fiendishly
counted out the half of that three thousand, sewed it up, calculating on
it, sewed it up before I was drunk, and after I had sewn it up, I went off
to get drunk on the rest. Yes, that was base. Do you understand now?"

Both the lawyers laughed aloud.

"I should have called it sensible and moral on your part not to have
squandered it all," chuckled Nikolay Parfenovitch, "for after all what
does it amount to?"

"Why, that I stole it, that's what it amounts to! Oh, God, you horrify me
by not understanding! Every day that I had that fifteen hundred sewn up
round my neck, every day and every hour I said to myself, 'You're a thief!
you're a thief!' Yes, that's why I've been so savage all this month,
that's why I fought in the tavern, that's why I attacked my father, it was
because I felt I was a thief. I couldn't make up my mind, I didn't dare
even to tell Alyosha, my brother, about that fifteen hundred: I felt I was
such a scoundrel and such a pickpocket. But, do you know, while I carried
it I said to myself at the same time every hour: 'No, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,
you may yet not be a thief.' Why? Because I might go next day and pay back
that fifteen hundred to Katya. And only yesterday I made up my mind to
tear my amulet off my neck, on my way from Fenya's to Perhotin. I hadn't
been able till that moment to bring myself to it. And it was only when I
tore it off that I became a downright thief, a thief and a dishonest man
for the rest of my life. Why? Because, with that I destroyed, too, my
dream of going to Katya and saying, 'I'm a scoundrel, but not a thief!' Do
you understand now? Do you understand?"

"What was it made you decide to do it yesterday?" Nikolay Parfenovitch
interrupted.

"Why? It's absurd to ask. Because I had condemned myself to die at five
o'clock this morning, here, at dawn. I thought it made no difference
whether I died a thief or a man of honor. But I see it's not so, it turns
out that it does make a difference. Believe me, gentlemen, what has
tortured me most during this night has not been the thought that I'd
killed the old servant, and that I was in danger of Siberia just when my
love was being rewarded, and Heaven was open to me again. Oh, that did
torture me, but not in the same way: not so much as the damned
consciousness that I had torn that damned money off my breast at last and
spent it, and had become a downright thief! Oh, gentlemen, I tell you
again, with a bleeding heart, I have learnt a great deal this night. I
have learnt that it's not only impossible to live a scoundrel, but
impossible to die a scoundrel.... No, gentlemen, one must die honest...."

Mitya was pale. His face had a haggard and exhausted look, in spite of his
being intensely excited.

"I am beginning to understand you, Dmitri Fyodorovitch," the prosecutor
said slowly, in a soft and almost compassionate tone. "But all this, if
you'll excuse my saying so, is a matter of nerves, in my opinion ... your
overwrought nerves, that's what it is. And why, for instance, should you
not have saved yourself such misery for almost a month, by going and
returning that fifteen hundred to the lady who had entrusted it to you?
And why could you not have explained things to her, and in view of your
position, which you describe as being so awful, why could you not have had
recourse to the plan which would so naturally have occurred to one's mind,
that is, after honorably confessing your errors to her, why could you not
have asked her to lend you the sum needed for your expenses, which, with
her generous heart, she would certainly not have refused you in your
distress, especially if it had been with some guarantee, or even on the
security you offered to the merchant Samsonov, and to Madame Hohlakov? I
suppose you still regard that security as of value?"

Mitya suddenly crimsoned.

"Surely you don't think me such an out and out scoundrel as that? You
can't be speaking in earnest?" he said, with indignation, looking the
prosecutor straight in the face, and seeming unable to believe his ears.

"I assure you I'm in earnest.... Why do you imagine I'm not serious?" It
was the prosecutor's turn to be surprised.

"Oh, how base that would have been! Gentlemen, do you know, you are
torturing me! Let me tell you everything, so be it. I'll confess all my
infernal wickedness, but to put you to shame, and you'll be surprised
yourselves at the depth of ignominy to which a medley of human passions
can sink. You must know that I already had that plan myself, that plan you
spoke of, just now, prosecutor! Yes, gentlemen, I, too, have had that
thought in my mind all this current month, so that I was on the point of
deciding to go to Katya--I was mean enough for that. But to go to her, to
tell her of my treachery, and for that very treachery, to carry it out,
for the expenses of that treachery, to beg for money from her, Katya (to
beg, do you hear, to beg), and go straight from her to run away with the
other, the rival, who hated and insulted her--to think of it! You must be
mad, prosecutor!"

"Mad I am not, but I did speak in haste, without thinking ... of that
feminine jealousy ... if there could be jealousy in this case, as you
assert ... yes, perhaps there is something of the kind," said the
prosecutor, smiling.

"But that would have been so infamous!" Mitya brought his fist down on the
table fiercely. "That would have been filthy beyond everything! Yes, do
you know that she might have given me that money, yes, and she would have
given it, too; she'd have been certain to give it, to be revenged on me,
she'd have given it to satisfy her vengeance, to show her contempt for me,
for hers is an infernal nature, too, and she's a woman of great wrath. I'd
have taken the money, too, oh, I should have taken it; I should have taken
it, and then, for the rest of my life ... oh, God! Forgive me, gentlemen,
I'm making such an outcry because I've had that thought in my mind so
lately, only the day before yesterday, that night when I was having all
that bother with Lyagavy, and afterwards yesterday, all day yesterday, I
remember, till that happened ..."

"Till what happened?" put in Nikolay Parfenovitch inquisitively, but Mitya
did not hear it.

"I have made you an awful confession," Mitya said gloomily in conclusion.
"You must appreciate it, and what's more, you must respect it, for if not,
if that leaves your souls untouched, then you've simply no respect for me,
gentlemen, I tell you that, and I shall die of shame at having confessed
it to men like you! Oh, I shall shoot myself! Yes, I see, I see already
that you don't believe me. What, you want to write that down, too?" he
cried in dismay.

"Yes, what you said just now," said Nikolay Parfenovitch, looking at him
in surprise, "that is, that up to the last hour you were still
contemplating going to Katerina Ivanovna to beg that sum from her.... I
assure you, that's a very important piece of evidence for us, Dmitri
Fyodorovitch, I mean for the whole case ... and particularly for you,
particularly important for you."

"Have mercy, gentlemen!" Mitya flung up his hands. "Don't write that,
anyway; have some shame. Here I've torn my heart asunder before you, and
you seize the opportunity and are fingering the wounds in both halves....
Oh, my God!"

In despair he hid his face in his hands.

"Don't worry yourself so, Dmitri Fyodorovitch," observed the prosecutor,
"everything that is written down will be read over to you afterwards, and
what you don't agree to we'll alter as you like. But now I'll ask you one
little question for the second time. Has no one, absolutely no one, heard
from you of that money you sewed up? That, I must tell you, is almost
impossible to believe."

"No one, no one, I told you so before, or you've not understood anything!
Let me alone!"

"Very well, this matter is bound to be explained, and there's plenty of
time for it, but meantime, consider; we have perhaps a dozen witnesses
that you yourself spread it abroad, and even shouted almost everywhere
about the three thousand you'd spent here; three thousand, not fifteen
hundred. And now, too, when you got hold of the money you had yesterday,
you gave many people to understand that you had brought three thousand
with you."

"You've got not dozens, but hundreds of witnesses, two hundred witnesses,
two hundred have heard it, thousands have heard it!" cried Mitya.

"Well, you see, all bear witness to it. And the word _all_ means
something."

"It means nothing. I talked rot, and every one began repeating it."

"But what need had you to 'talk rot,' as you call it?"

"The devil knows. From bravado perhaps ... at having wasted so much
money.... To try and forget that money I had sewn up, perhaps ... yes,
that was why ... damn it ... how often will you ask me that question?
Well, I told a fib, and that was the end of it, once I'd said it, I didn't
care to correct it. What does a man tell lies for sometimes?"

"That's very difficult to decide, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, what makes a man
tell lies," observed the prosecutor impressively. "Tell me, though, was
that 'amulet,' as you call it, on your neck, a big thing?"

"No, not big."

"How big, for instance?"

"If you fold a hundred-rouble note in half, that would be the size."

"You'd better show us the remains of it. You must have them somewhere."

"Damnation, what nonsense! I don't know where they are."

"But excuse me: where and when did you take it off your neck? According to
your own evidence you didn't go home."

"When I was going from Fenya's to Perhotin's, on the way I tore it off my
neck and took out the money."

"In the dark?"

"What should I want a light for? I did it with my fingers in one minute."

"Without scissors, in the street?"

"In the market-place I think it was. Why scissors? It was an old rag. It
was torn in a minute."

"Where did you put it afterwards?"

"I dropped it there."

"Where was it, exactly?"

"In the market-place, in the market-place! The devil knows whereabouts.
What do you want to know for?"

"That's extremely important, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. It would be material
evidence in your favor. How is it you don't understand that? Who helped
you to sew it up a month ago?"

"No one helped me. I did it myself."

"Can you sew?"

"A soldier has to know how to sew. No knowledge was needed to do that."

"Where did you get the material, that is, the rag in which you sewed the
money?"

"Are you laughing at me?"

"Not at all. And we are in no mood for laughing, Dmitri Fyodorovitch."

"I don't know where I got the rag from--somewhere, I suppose."

"I should have thought you couldn't have forgotten it?"

"Upon my word, I don't remember. I might have torn a bit off my linen."

"That's very interesting. We might find in your lodgings to-morrow the
shirt or whatever it is from which you tore the rag. What sort of rag was
it, cloth or linen?"

"Goodness only knows what it was. Wait a bit.... I believe I didn't tear
it off anything. It was a bit of calico.... I believe I sewed it up in a
cap of my landlady's."

"In your landlady's cap?"

"Yes. I took it from her."

"How did you get it?"

"You see, I remember once taking a cap for a rag, perhaps to wipe my pen
on. I took it without asking, because it was a worthless rag. I tore it
up, and I took the notes and sewed them up in it. I believe it was in that
very rag I sewed them. An old piece of calico, washed a thousand times."

"And you remember that for certain now?"

"I don't know whether for certain. I think it was in the cap. But, hang
it, what does it matter?"

"In that case your landlady will remember that the thing was lost?"

"No, she won't, she didn't miss it. It was an old rag, I tell you, an old
rag not worth a farthing."

"And where did you get the needle and thread?"

"I'll stop now. I won't say any more. Enough of it!" said Mitya, losing
his temper at last.

"It's strange that you should have so completely forgotten where you threw
the pieces in the market-place."

"Give orders for the market-place to be swept to-morrow, and perhaps
you'll find it," said Mitya, sneering. "Enough, gentlemen, enough!" he
decided, in an exhausted voice. "I see you don't believe me! Not for a
moment! It's my fault, not yours. I ought not to have been so ready. Why,
why did I degrade myself by confessing my secret to you? It's a joke to
you. I see that from your eyes. You led me on to it, prosecutor? Sing a
hymn of triumph if you can.... Damn you, you torturers!"

He bent his head, and hid his face in his hands. The lawyers were silent.
A minute later he raised his head and looked at them almost vacantly. His
face now expressed complete, hopeless despair, and he sat mute and passive
as though hardly conscious of what was happening. In the meantime they had
to finish what they were about. They had immediately to begin examining
the witnesses. It was by now eight o'clock in the morning. The lights had
been extinguished long ago. Mihail Makarovitch and Kalganov, who had been
continually in and out of the room all the while the interrogation had
been going on, had now both gone out again. The lawyers, too, looked very
tired. It was a wretched morning, the whole sky was overcast, and the rain
streamed down in bucketfuls. Mitya gazed blankly out of the window.

"May I look out of the window?" he asked Nikolay Parfenovitch, suddenly.

"Oh, as much as you like," the latter replied.

Mitya got up and went to the window.... The rain lashed against its little
greenish panes. He could see the muddy road just below the house, and
farther away, in the rain and mist, a row of poor, black, dismal huts,
looking even blacker and poorer in the rain. Mitya thought of "Phoebus the
golden-haired," and how he had meant to shoot himself at his first ray.
"Perhaps it would be even better on a morning like this," he thought with
a smile, and suddenly, flinging his hand downwards, he turned to his
"torturers."

"Gentlemen," he cried, "I see that I am lost! But she? Tell me about her,
I beseech you. Surely she need not be ruined with me? She's innocent, you
know, she was out of her mind when she cried last night 'It's all my
fault!' She's done nothing, nothing! I've been grieving over her all night
as I sat with you.... Can't you, won't you tell me what you are going to
do with her now?"

"You can set your mind quite at rest on that score, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,"
the prosecutor answered at once, with evident alacrity. "We have, so far,
no grounds for interfering with the lady in whom you are so interested. I
trust that it may be the same in the later development of the case.... On
the contrary, we'll do everything that lies in our power in that matter.
Set your mind completely at rest."

"Gentlemen, I thank you. I knew that you were honest, straight-forward
people in spite of everything. You've taken a load off my heart.... Well,
what are we to do now? I'm ready."

"Well, we ought to make haste. We must pass to examining the witnesses
without delay. That must be done in your presence and therefore--"

"Shouldn't we have some tea first?" interposed Nikolay Parfenovitch, "I
think we've deserved it!"

They decided that if tea were ready downstairs (Mihail Makarovitch had, no
doubt, gone down to get some) they would have a glass and then "go on and
on," putting off their proper breakfast until a more favorable
opportunity. Tea really was ready below, and was soon brought up. Mitya at
first refused the glass that Nikolay Parfenovitch politely offered him,
but afterwards he asked for it himself and drank it greedily. He looked
surprisingly exhausted. It might have been supposed from his Herculean
strength that one night of carousing, even accompanied by the most violent
emotions, could have had little effect on him. But he felt that he could
hardly hold his head up, and from time to time all the objects about him
seemed heaving and dancing before his eyes. "A little more and I shall
begin raving," he said to himself.




Chapter VIII. The Evidence Of The Witnesses. The Babe


The examination of the witnesses began. But we will not continue our story
in such detail as before. And so we will not dwell on how Nikolay
Parfenovitch impressed on every witness called that he must give his
evidence in accordance with truth and conscience, and that he would
afterwards have to repeat his evidence on oath, how every witness was
called upon to sign the protocol of his evidence, and so on. We will only
note that the point principally insisted upon in the examination was the
question of the three thousand roubles, that is, was the sum spent here,
at Mokroe, by Mitya on the first occasion, a month before, three thousand
or fifteen hundred? And again had he spent three thousand or fifteen
hundred yesterday? Alas, all the evidence given by every one turned out to
be against Mitya. There was not one in his favor, and some witnesses
introduced new, almost crushing facts, in contradiction of his, Mitya's,
story.

The first witness examined was Trifon Borissovitch. He was not in the
least abashed as he stood before the lawyers. He had, on the contrary, an
air of stern and severe indignation with the accused, which gave him an
appearance of truthfulness and personal dignity. He spoke little, and with
reserve, waited to be questioned, answered precisely and deliberately.
Firmly and unhesitatingly he bore witness that the sum spent a month
before could not have been less than three thousand, that all the peasants
about here would testify that they had heard the sum of three thousand
mentioned by Dmitri Fyodorovitch himself. "What a lot of money he flung
away on the gypsy girls alone! He wasted a thousand, I daresay, on them
alone."

"I don't believe I gave them five hundred," was Mitya's gloomy comment on
this. "It's a pity I didn't count the money at the time, but I was
drunk...."

Mitya was sitting sideways with his back to the curtains. He listened
gloomily, with a melancholy and exhausted air, as though he would say:

"Oh, say what you like. It makes no difference now."

"More than a thousand went on them, Dmitri Fyodorovitch," retorted Trifon
Borissovitch firmly. "You flung it about at random and they picked it up.
They were a rascally, thievish lot, horse-stealers, they've been driven
away from here, or maybe they'd bear witness themselves how much they got
from you. I saw the sum in your hands, myself--count it I didn't, you
didn't let me, that's true enough--but by the look of it I should say it
was far more than fifteen hundred ... fifteen hundred, indeed! We've seen
money too. We can judge of amounts...."

As for the sum spent yesterday he asserted that Dmitri Fyodorovitch had
told him, as soon as he arrived, that he had brought three thousand with
him.

"Come now, is that so, Trifon Borissovitch?" replied Mitya. "Surely I
didn't declare so positively that I'd brought three thousand?"

"You did say so, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. You said it before Andrey. Andrey
himself is still here. Send for him. And in the hall, when you were
treating the chorus, you shouted straight out that you would leave your
sixth thousand here--that is with what you spent before, we must
understand. Stepan and Semyon heard it, and Pyotr Fomitch Kalganov, too,
was standing beside you at the time. Maybe he'd remember it...."

The evidence as to the "sixth" thousand made an extraordinary impression
on the two lawyers. They were delighted with this new mode of reckoning;
three and three made six, three thousand then and three now made six, that
was clear.

They questioned all the peasants suggested by Trifon Borissovitch, Stepan
and Semyon, the driver Andrey, and Kalganov. The peasants and the driver
unhesitatingly confirmed Trifon Borissovitch's evidence. They noted down,
with particular care, Andrey's account of the conversation he had had with
Mitya on the road: " 'Where,' says he, 'am I, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, going,
to heaven or to hell, and shall I be forgiven in the next world or not?' "

The psychological Ippolit Kirillovitch heard this with a subtle smile, and
ended by recommending that these remarks as to where Dmitri Fyodorovitch
would go should be "included in the case."

Kalganov, when called, came in reluctantly, frowning and ill-humored, and
he spoke to the lawyers as though he had never met them before in his
life, though they were acquaintances whom he had been meeting every day
for a long time past. He began by saying that "he knew nothing about it
and didn't want to." But it appeared that he had heard of the "sixth"
thousand, and he admitted that he had been standing close by at the
moment. As far as he could see he "didn't know" how much money Mitya had
in his hands. He affirmed that the Poles had cheated at cards. In reply to
reiterated questions he stated that, after the Poles had been turned out,
Mitya's position with Agrafena Alexandrovna had certainly improved, and
that she had said that she loved him. He spoke of Agrafena Alexandrovna
with reserve and respect, as though she had been a lady of the best
society, and did not once allow himself to call her Grushenka. In spite of
the young man's obvious repugnance at giving evidence, Ippolit
Kirillovitch examined him at great length, and only from him learnt all
the details of what made up Mitya's "romance," so to say, on that night.
Mitya did not once pull Kalganov up. At last they let the young man go,
and he left the room with unconcealed indignation.

The Poles, too, were examined. Though they had gone to bed in their room,
they had not slept all night, and on the arrival of the police officers
they hastily dressed and got ready, realizing that they would certainly be
sent for. They gave their evidence with dignity, though not without some
uneasiness. The little Pole turned out to be a retired official of the
twelfth class, who had served in Siberia as a veterinary surgeon. His name
was Mussyalovitch. Pan Vrublevsky turned out to be an uncertificated
dentist. Although Nikolay Parfenovitch asked them questions on entering
the room they both addressed their answers to Mihail Makarovitch, who was
standing on one side, taking him in their ignorance for the most important
person and in command, and addressed him at every word as "Pan Colonel."
Only after several reproofs from Mihail Makarovitch himself, they grasped
that they had to address their answers to Nikolay Parfenovitch only. It
turned out that they could speak Russian quite correctly except for their
accent in some words. Of his relations with Grushenka, past and present,
Pan Mussyalovitch spoke proudly and warmly, so that Mitya was roused at
once and declared that he would not allow the "scoundrel" to speak like
that in his presence! Pan Mussyalovitch at once called attention to the
word "scoundrel" and begged that it should be put down in the protocol.
Mitya fumed with rage.

"He's a scoundrel! A scoundrel! You can put that down. And put down, too,
that, in spite of the protocol I still declare that he's a scoundrel!" he
cried.

Though Nikolay Parfenovitch did insert this in the protocol, he showed the
most praiseworthy tact and management. After sternly reprimanding Mitya,
he cut short all further inquiry into the romantic aspect of the case, and
hastened to pass to what was essential. One piece of evidence given by the
Poles roused special interest in the lawyers: that was how, in that very
room, Mitya had tried to buy off Pan Mussyalovitch, and had offered him
three thousand roubles to resign his claims, seven hundred roubles down,
and the remaining two thousand three hundred "to be paid next day in the
town." He had sworn at the time that he had not the whole sum with him at
Mokroe, but that his money was in the town. Mitya observed hotly that he
had not said that he would be sure to pay him the remainder next day in
the town. But Pan Vrublevsky confirmed the statement, and Mitya, after
thinking for a moment admitted, frowning, that it must have been as the
Poles stated, that he had been excited at the time, and might indeed have
said so.

The prosecutor positively pounced on this piece of evidence. It seemed to
establish for the prosecution (and they did, in fact, base this deduction
on it) that half, or a part of, the three thousand that had come into
Mitya's hands might really have been left somewhere hidden in the town, or
even, perhaps, somewhere here, in Mokroe. This would explain the
circumstance, so baffling for the prosecution, that only eight hundred
roubles were to be found in Mitya's hands. This circumstance had been the
one piece of evidence which, insignificant as it was, had hitherto told,
to some extent, in Mitya's favor. Now this one piece of evidence in his
favor had broken down. In answer to the prosecutor's inquiry, where he
would have got the remaining two thousand three hundred roubles, since he
himself had denied having more than fifteen hundred, Mitya confidently
replied that he had meant to offer the "little chap," not money, but a
formal deed of conveyance of his rights to the village of Tchermashnya,
those rights which he had already offered to Samsonov and Madame Hohlakov.
The prosecutor positively smiled at the "innocence of this subterfuge."

"And you imagine he would have accepted such a deed as a substitute for
two thousand three hundred roubles in cash?"

"He certainly would have accepted it," Mitya declared warmly. "Why, look
here, he might have grabbed not two thousand, but four or six, for it. He
would have put his lawyers, Poles and Jews, on to the job, and might have
got, not three thousand, but the whole property out of the old man."

The evidence of Pan Mussyalovitch was, of course, entered in the protocol
in the fullest detail. Then they let the Poles go. The incident of the
cheating at cards was hardly touched upon. Nikolay Parfenovitch was too
well pleased with them, as it was, and did not want to worry them with
trifles, moreover, it was nothing but a foolish, drunken quarrel over
cards. There had been drinking and disorder enough, that night.... So the
two hundred roubles remained in the pockets of the Poles.

Then old Maximov was summoned. He came in timidly, approached with little
steps, looking very disheveled and depressed. He had, all this time, taken
refuge below with Grushenka, sitting dumbly beside her, and "now and then
he'd begin blubbering over her and wiping his eyes with a blue check
handkerchief," as Mihail Makarovitch described afterwards. So that she
herself began trying to pacify and comfort him. The old man at once
confessed that he had done wrong, that he had borrowed "ten roubles in my
poverty," from Dmitri Fyodorovitch, and that he was ready to pay it back.
To Nikolay Parfenovitch's direct question, had he noticed how much money
Dmitri Fyodorovitch held in his hand, as he must have been able to see the
sum better than any one when he took the note from him, Maximov, in the
most positive manner, declared that there was twenty thousand.

"Have you ever seen so much as twenty thousand before, then?" inquired
Nikolay Parfenovitch, with a smile.

"To be sure I have, not twenty, but seven, when my wife mortgaged my
little property. She'd only let me look at it from a distance, boasting of
it to me. It was a very thick bundle, all rainbow-colored notes. And
Dmitri Fyodorovitch's were all rainbow-colored...."

He was not kept long. At last it was Grushenka's turn. Nikolay
Parfenovitch was obviously apprehensive of the effect her appearance might
have on Mitya, and he muttered a few words of admonition to him, but Mitya
bowed his head in silence, giving him to understand "that he would not
make a scene." Mihail Makarovitch himself led Grushenka in. She entered
with a stern and gloomy face, that looked almost composed and sat down
quietly on the chair offered her by Nikolay Parfenovitch. She was very
pale, she seemed to be cold, and wrapped herself closely in her
magnificent black shawl. She was suffering from a slight feverish
chill--the first symptom of the long illness which followed that night. Her
grave air, her direct earnest look and quiet manner made a very favorable
impression on every one. Nikolay Parfenovitch was even a little bit
"fascinated." He admitted himself, when talking about it afterwards, that
only then had he seen "how handsome the woman was," for, though he had
seen her several times before, he had always looked upon her as something
of a "provincial hetaira." "She has the manners of the best society," he
said enthusiastically, gossiping about her in a circle of ladies. But this
was received with positive indignation by the ladies, who immediately
called him a "naughty man," to his great satisfaction.

As she entered the room, Grushenka only glanced for an instant at Mitya,
who looked at her uneasily. But her face reassured him at once. After the
first inevitable inquiries and warnings, Nikolay Parfenovitch asked her,
hesitating a little, but preserving the most courteous manner, on what
terms she was with the retired lieutenant, Dmitri Fyodorovitch Karamazov.
To this Grushenka firmly and quietly replied:

"He was an acquaintance. He came to see me as an acquaintance during the
last month." To further inquisitive questions she answered plainly and
with complete frankness, that, though "at times" she had thought him
attractive, she had not loved him, but had won his heart as well as his
old father's "in my nasty spite," that she had seen that Mitya was very
jealous of Fyodor Pavlovitch and every one else; but that had only amused
her. She had never meant to go to Fyodor Pavlovitch, she had simply been
laughing at him. "I had no thoughts for either of them all this last
month. I was expecting another man who had wronged me. But I think," she
said in conclusion, "that there's no need for you to inquire about that,
nor for me to answer you, for that's my own affair."

Nikolay Parfenovitch immediately acted upon this hint. He again dismissed
the "romantic" aspect of the case and passed to the serious one, that is,
to the question of most importance, concerning the three thousand roubles.
Grushenka confirmed the statement that three thousand roubles had
certainly been spent on the first carousal at Mokroe, and, though she had
not counted the money herself, she had heard that it was three thousand
from Dmitri Fyodorovitch's own lips.

"Did he tell you that alone, or before some one else, or did you only hear
him speak of it to others in your presence?" the prosecutor inquired
immediately.

To which Grushenka replied that she had heard him say so before other
people, and had heard him say so when they were alone.

"Did he say it to you alone once, or several times?" inquired the
prosecutor, and learned that he had told Grushenka so several times.

Ippolit Kirillovitch was very well satisfied with this piece of evidence.
Further examination elicited that Grushenka knew, too, where that money
had come from, and that Dmitri Fyodorovitch had got it from Katerina
Ivanovna.

"And did you never, once, hear that the money spent a month ago was not
three thousand, but less, and that Dmitri Fyodorovitch had saved half that
sum for his own use?"

"No, I never heard that," answered Grushenka.

It was explained further that Mitya had, on the contrary, often told her
that he hadn't a farthing.

"He was always expecting to get some from his father," said Grushenka in
conclusion.

"Did he never say before you ... casually, or in a moment of irritation,"
Nikolay Parfenovitch put in suddenly, "that he intended to make an attempt
on his father's life?"

"Ach, he did say so," sighed Grushenka.

"Once or several times?"

"He mentioned it several times, always in anger."

"And did you believe he would do it?"

"No, I never believed it," she answered firmly. "I had faith in his noble
heart."

"Gentlemen, allow me," cried Mitya suddenly, "allow me to say one word to
Agrafena Alexandrovna, in your presence."

"You can speak," Nikolay Parfenovitch assented.

"Agrafena Alexandrovna!" Mitya got up from his chair, "have faith in God
and in me. I am not guilty of my father's murder!"

Having uttered these words Mitya sat down again on his chair. Grushenka
stood up and crossed herself devoutly before the ikon. "Thanks be to Thee,
O Lord," she said, in a voice thrilled with emotion, and still standing,
she turned to Nikolay Parfenovitch and added:

"As he has spoken now, believe it! I know him. He'll say anything as a
joke or from obstinacy, but he'll never deceive you against his
conscience. He's telling the whole truth, you may believe it."

"Thanks, Agrafena Alexandrovna, you've given me fresh courage," Mitya
responded in a quivering voice.

As to the money spent the previous day, she declared that she did not know
what sum it was, but had heard him tell several people that he had three
thousand with him. And to the question where he got the money, she said
that he had told her that he had "stolen" it from Katerina Ivanovna, and
that she had replied to that that he hadn't stolen it, and that he must
pay the money back next day. On the prosecutor's asking her emphatically
whether the money he said he had stolen from Katerina Ivanovna was what he
had spent yesterday, or what he had squandered here a month ago, she
declared that he meant the money spent a month ago, and that that was how
she understood him.

Grushenka was at last released, and Nikolay Parfenovitch informed her
impulsively that she might at once return to the town and that if he could
be of any assistance to her, with horses for example, or if she would care
for an escort, he ... would be--

"I thank you sincerely," said Grushenka, bowing to him, "I'm going with
this old gentleman, I am driving him back to town with me, and meanwhile,
if you'll allow me, I'll wait below to hear what you decide about Dmitri
Fyodorovitch."

She went out. Mitya was calm, and even looked more cheerful, but only for
a moment. He felt more and more oppressed by a strange physical weakness.
His eyes were closing with fatigue. The examination of the witnesses was,
at last, over. They proceeded to a final revision of the protocol. Mitya
got up, moved from his chair to the corner by the curtain, lay down on a
large chest covered with a rug, and instantly fell asleep.

He had a strange dream, utterly out of keeping with the place and the
time.

He was driving somewhere in the steppes, where he had been stationed long
ago, and a peasant was driving him in a cart with a pair of horses,
through snow and sleet. He was cold, it was early in November, and the
snow was falling in big wet flakes, melting as soon as it touched the
earth. And the peasant drove him smartly, he had a fair, long beard. He
was not an old man, somewhere about fifty, and he had on a gray peasant's
smock. Not far off was a village, he could see the black huts, and half
the huts were burnt down, there were only the charred beams sticking up.
And as they drove in, there were peasant women drawn up along the road, a
lot of women, a whole row, all thin and wan, with their faces a sort of
brownish color, especially one at the edge, a tall, bony woman, who looked
forty, but might have been only twenty, with a long thin face. And in her
arms was a little baby crying. And her breasts seemed so dried up that
there was not a drop of milk in them. And the child cried and cried, and
held out its little bare arms, with its little fists blue from cold.

"Why are they crying? Why are they crying?" Mitya asked, as they dashed
gayly by.

"It's the babe," answered the driver, "the babe weeping."

And Mitya was struck by his saying, in his peasant way, "the babe," and he
liked the peasant's calling it a "babe." There seemed more pity in it.

"But why is it weeping?" Mitya persisted stupidly, "why are its little
arms bare? Why don't they wrap it up?"

"The babe's cold, its little clothes are frozen and don't warm it."

"But why is it? Why?" foolish Mitya still persisted.

"Why, they're poor people, burnt out. They've no bread. They're begging
because they've been burnt out."

"No, no," Mitya, as it were, still did not understand. "Tell me why it is
those poor mothers stand there? Why are people poor? Why is the babe poor?
Why is the steppe barren? Why don't they hug each other and kiss? Why
don't they sing songs of joy? Why are they so dark from black misery? Why
don't they feed the babe?"

And he felt that, though his questions were unreasonable and senseless,
yet he wanted to ask just that, and he had to ask it just in that way. And
he felt that a passion of pity, such as he had never known before, was
rising in his heart, that he wanted to cry, that he wanted to do something
for them all, so that the babe should weep no more, so that the dark-
faced, dried-up mother should not weep, that no one should shed tears
again from that moment, and he wanted to do it at once, at once,
regardless of all obstacles, with all the recklessness of the Karamazovs.

"And I'm coming with you. I won't leave you now for the rest of my life,
I'm coming with you," he heard close beside him Grushenka's tender voice,
thrilling with emotion. And his heart glowed, and he struggled forward
towards the light, and he longed to live, to live, to go on and on,
towards the new, beckoning light, and to hasten, hasten, now, at once!

"What! Where?" he exclaimed opening his eyes, and sitting up on the chest,
as though he had revived from a swoon, smiling brightly. Nikolay
Parfenovitch was standing over him, suggesting that he should hear the
protocol read aloud and sign it. Mitya guessed that he had been asleep an
hour or more, but he did not hear Nikolay Parfenovitch. He was suddenly
struck by the fact that there was a pillow under his head, which hadn't
been there when he had leant back, exhausted, on the chest.

"Who put that pillow under my head? Who was so kind?" he cried, with a
sort of ecstatic gratitude, and tears in his voice, as though some great
kindness had been shown him.

He never found out who this kind man was; perhaps one of the peasant
witnesses, or Nikolay Parfenovitch's little secretary, had compassionately
thought to put a pillow under his head; but his whole soul was quivering
with tears. He went to the table and said that he would sign whatever they
liked.

"I've had a good dream, gentlemen," he said in a strange voice, with a new
light, as of joy, in his face.




Chapter IX. They Carry Mitya Away


When the protocol had been signed, Nikolay Parfenovitch turned solemnly to
the prisoner and read him the "Committal," setting forth, that in such a
year, on such a day, in such a place, the investigating lawyer of such-
and-such a district court, having examined so-and-so (to wit, Mitya)
accused of this and of that (all the charges were carefully written out)
and having considered that the accused, not pleading guilty to the charges
made against him, had brought forward nothing in his defense, while the
witnesses, so-and-so, and so-and-so, and the circumstances such-and-such
testify against him, acting in accordance with such-and-such articles of
the Statute Book, and so on, has ruled, that, in order to preclude so-and-
so (Mitya) from all means of evading pursuit and judgment he be detained
in such-and-such a prison, which he hereby notifies to the accused and
communicates a copy of this same "Committal" to the deputy prosecutor, and
so on, and so on.

In brief, Mitya was informed that he was, from that moment, a prisoner,
and that he would be driven at once to the town, and there shut up in a
very unpleasant place. Mitya listened attentively, and only shrugged his
shoulders.

"Well, gentlemen, I don't blame you. I'm ready.... I understand that
there's nothing else for you to do."

Nikolay Parfenovitch informed him gently that he would be escorted at once
by the rural police officer, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, who happened to be on
the spot....

"Stay," Mitya interrupted, suddenly, and impelled by uncontrollable
feeling he pronounced, addressing all in the room:

"Gentlemen, we're all cruel, we're all monsters, we all make men weep, and
mothers, and babes at the breast, but of all, let it be settled here, now,
of all I am the lowest reptile! I've sworn to amend, and every day I've
done the same filthy things. I understand now that such men as I need a
blow, a blow of destiny to catch them as with a noose, and bind them by a
force from without. Never, never should I have risen of myself! But the
thunderbolt has fallen. I accept the torture of accusation, and my public
shame, I want to suffer and by suffering I shall be purified. Perhaps I
shall be purified, gentlemen? But listen, for the last time, I am not
guilty of my father's blood. I accept my punishment, not because I killed
him, but because I meant to kill him, and perhaps I really might have
killed him. Still I mean to fight it out with you. I warn you of that.
I'll fight it out with you to the end, and then God will decide. Good-by,
gentlemen, don't be vexed with me for having shouted at you during the
examination. Oh, I was still such a fool then.... In another minute I
shall be a prisoner, but now, for the last time, as a free man, Dmitri
Karamazov offers you his hand. Saying good-by to you, I say it to all
men."

His voice quivered and he stretched out his hand, but Nikolay
Parfenovitch, who happened to stand nearest to him, with a sudden, almost
nervous movement, hid his hands behind his back. Mitya instantly noticed
this, and started. He let his outstretched hand fall at once.

"The preliminary inquiry is not yet over," Nikolay Parfenovitch faltered,
somewhat embarrassed. "We will continue it in the town, and I, for my
part, of course, am ready to wish you all success ... in your defense....
As a matter of fact, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, I've always been disposed to
regard you as, so to speak, more unfortunate than guilty. All of us here,
if I may make bold to speak for all, we are all ready to recognize that
you are, at bottom, a young man of honor, but, alas, one who has been
carried away by certain passions to a somewhat excessive degree...."

Nikolay Parfenovitch's little figure was positively majestic by the time
he had finished speaking. It struck Mitya that in another minute this
"boy" would take his arm, lead him to another corner, and renew their
conversation about "girls." But many quite irrelevant and inappropriate
thoughts sometimes occur even to a prisoner when he is being led out to
execution.

"Gentlemen, you are good, you are humane, may I see _her_ to say 'good-by'
for the last time?" asked Mitya.

"Certainly, but considering ... in fact, now it's impossible except in the
presence of--"

"Oh, well, if it must be so, it must!"

Grushenka was brought in, but the farewell was brief, and of few words,
and did not at all satisfy Nikolay Parfenovitch. Grushenka made a deep bow
to Mitya.

"I have told you I am yours, and I will be yours. I will follow you for
ever, wherever they may send you. Farewell; you are guiltless, though
you've been your own undoing."

Her lips quivered, tears flowed from her eyes.

"Forgive me, Grusha, for my love, for ruining you, too, with my love."

Mitya would have said something more, but he broke off and went out. He
was at once surrounded by men who kept a constant watch on him. At the
bottom of the steps to which he had driven up with such a dash the day
before with Andrey's three horses, two carts stood in readiness. Mavriky
Mavrikyevitch, a sturdy, thick-set man with a wrinkled face, was annoyed
about something, some sudden irregularity. He was shouting angrily. He
asked Mitya to get into the cart with somewhat excessive surliness.

"When I stood him drinks in the tavern, the man had quite a different
face," thought Mitya, as he got in. At the gates there was a crowd of
people, peasants, women and drivers. Trifon Borissovitch came down the
steps too. All stared at Mitya.

"Forgive me at parting, good people!" Mitya shouted suddenly from the
cart.

"Forgive us too!" he heard two or three voices.

"Good-by to you, too, Trifon Borissovitch!"

But Trifon Borissovitch did not even turn round. He was, perhaps, too
busy. He, too, was shouting and fussing about something. It appeared that
everything was not yet ready in the second cart, in which two constables
were to accompany Mavriky Mavrikyevitch. The peasant who had been ordered
to drive the second cart was pulling on his smock, stoutly maintaining
that it was not his turn to go, but Akim's. But Akim was not to be seen.
They ran to look for him. The peasant persisted and besought them to wait.

"You see what our peasants are, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch. They've no shame!"
exclaimed Trifon Borissovitch. "Akim gave you twenty-five copecks the day
before yesterday. You've drunk it all and now you cry out. I'm simply
surprised at your good-nature, with our low peasants, Mavriky
Mavrikyevitch, that's all I can say."

"But what do we want a second cart for?" Mitya put in. "Let's start with
the one, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch. I won't be unruly, I won't run away from
you, old fellow. What do we want an escort for?"

"I'll trouble you, sir, to learn how to speak to me if you've never been
taught. I'm not 'old fellow' to you, and you can keep your advice for
another time!" Mavriky Mavrikyevitch snapped out savagely, as though glad
to vent his wrath.

Mitya was reduced to silence. He flushed all over. A moment later he felt
suddenly very cold. The rain had ceased, but the dull sky was still
overcast with clouds, and a keen wind was blowing straight in his face.

"I've taken a chill," thought Mitya, twitching his shoulders.

At last Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, too, got into the cart, sat down heavily,
and, as though without noticing it, squeezed Mitya into the corner. It is
true that he was out of humor and greatly disliked the task that had been
laid upon him.

"Good-by, Trifon Borissovitch!" Mitya shouted again, and felt himself,
that he had not called out this time from good-nature, but involuntarily,
from resentment.

But Trifon Borissovitch stood proudly, with both hands behind his back,
and staring straight at Mitya with a stern and angry face, he made no
reply.

"Good-by, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, good-by!" he heard all at once the voice of
Kalganov, who had suddenly darted out. Running up to the cart he held out
his hand to Mitya. He had no cap on.

Mitya had time to seize and press his hand.

"Good-by, dear fellow! I shan't forget your generosity," he cried warmly.

But the cart moved and their hands parted. The bell began ringing and
Mitya was driven off.

Kalganov ran back, sat down in a corner, bent his head, hid his face in
his hands, and burst out crying. For a long while he sat like that, crying
as though he were a little boy instead of a young man of twenty. Oh, he
believed almost without doubt in Mitya's guilt.

"What are these people? What can men be after this?" he exclaimed
incoherently, in bitter despondency, almost despair. At that moment he had
no desire to live.

"Is it worth it? Is it worth it?" exclaimed the boy in his grief.







Book 9
Perhotin is determined to find out what Dmitri was doing when the two men saw each other. Agitated and restless, he retraces Dmitri's steps the night of the murder, gathering bits of information from everyone he meets. He talks to Fenya, who tells him Dmitri grabbed a pestle when he ran off to see Grushenka. When he returned, he did not have the pestle and his hands were "dripping, dripping, dripping" with blood. Perhotin thinks of visiting the Karamazov household directly, but he does not want to cause a scandal if nothing wayward has actually transpired. He decides to do more detective work before resorting to a visit to the curmudgeonly Fyodor Karamazov. Perhotin visits Madame Hohlakov instead. He shows up late at night and, after such a disturbing earlier meeting with Dmitri, she has a migraine and is very perturbed. He asks her if she lent Dmitri 3,000 rubles. When she admits that she did not, the two surmise that he must have robbed someone, and they fear it is Fyodor Karamazov. Since he has found such incriminating information, he decides to report it to the authorities. But when he arrives at the police inspector's house, the place is in an uproar because Fyodor Karamazov has been murdered and robbed. In the servant's quarters in Fyodor Karamazov's house, Marfa wakes up to hear Smerdyakov screaming, which always signifies one of his epileptic fits. She cannot find Grigory to come to help their adopted boy, and she begins to worry. She hears groans coming from the garden, and she remembers the night they found Smerdyakov with his dying mother. She finds Grigory covered in blood, muttering, "He's killed his father." Indeed, when she looks in on Fyodor, she sees that he is on his back, covered in blood. Confused and hysterical, she runs to their neighbor's house. After the neighbors hear all the facts, they go to the police inspector's house to explain what has happened at the Karamazov house. Fyodor's skull has been crushed, and the envelope that he kept clearly marked for Grushenka has been torn open and emptied. Perhotin tells the police inspector that Dmitri declared that he would shoot himself. While Perhotin is worried about Dmitri and wants to find him before he commits suicide, the police inspector is assured that Dmitri is a prime suspect--he says, "that's exactly the way a desperate man of that type thinks: 'I'll kill myself tomorrow, but before I die I'll have a wild time.'" The district medical officer who goes to the Karamazov household to examine the corpse takes a particular in Smerdyakov. He notes that the length and persistence of Smerdyakov's seizures are unusual, and he specifically predicts that Smerdyakov will die by morning. The police arrest Dmitri, who is flabbergasted by the charges. He says he "thought of killing him, but didn't do it." Grushenka swears she will stay by Dmitri's side, but this does not help his situation; she assumes he has killed Fyodor, and she lovingly says she is to blame for pushing him to do it. Her good intentions backfire when she says she will "follow him to the gallows." No one, not even his beloved Grushenka, believes he is innocent. From his presence at the scene of the crime on the night of the murder to his animosity toward Fyodor to his admission that he needed 3,000 rubles--the exact amount Fyodor has set aside for Grushenka--the facts are stacked against him. He thinks he has killed Grigory, and when they tell him Grigory has recovered, he is overjoyed. His conscience is clear, and he tells the prosecutors this news has "made a new man" of him. He tells them to write down that he is "guilty of disorderly conduct, guilty of violently attacking and hurting a poor old man," but that the idea of his murdering his father is "absurd, completely absurd!" He goes on to say that he understands why he is suspected of this crime. He acknowledges that he has threatened his father, attacked his father, and promised to kill his father in front of many witnesses. He laughs, "I cannot imagine who but me could have killed him!" When they ask who else knew the secret signals that Grushenka and Fyodor had agreed upon, he names Smerdyakov. Ironically, though, Dmitri says he does not think Smerdyakov is capable of such a crime. When he is searched, the police find 1,500 rubles on him, and he must admit the embarrassing truth that he has used only half the money Katerina loaned him on his fling with Grushenka. He saved the rest. Dmitri thinks that since he did not commit the crime, anything he says cannot hurt him. This openness has led him to admit very incriminating facts, but now that the police have found 1,500 rubles on his person, his honesty is now in question. Dmitri stated many times that he spent 3,000 rubles on the fling with Grushenka because he would not tell anyone this deeply shameful fact about himself. After all the witnesses are interviewed, Dmitri is detained. His lawyers promise that they will work hard to acquit him of the murder. They tell him they believe that he is a good man and a "victim of unhappy circumstances." Dmitri gives a heartfelt farewell to Grushenka, who says she will remain by his side forever. In despair, Dmitri is carted off as many onlookers watch the murder suspect get taken away.
This book focuses on the story of the Karamazovs from an outside perspective--the experiences of Perhotin, Madame Hohlakov, Marfa, police officers, and townspeople. Instead of presenting the Karamazov family firsthand, these chapters add a degree of remove. This slight distance makes the reader realize how guilty Dmitri seems to an observer with only limited information. Suddenly, the case of Fyodor's murder has catapulted from a private matter into a public one. This section of the novel illuminates how the drama reaches beyond the boundaries of the Karamazov family. Not only is the Karamazovs' story known to the other members of the community, but it affects them. Perhotin is suspicious and troubled by Dmitri's desperation. He does not want a comrade to commit suicide, and he investigates Dmitri's actions because he is worried about Dmitri. Marfa, Grigory's wife, awakes to find her husband unconscious and her master slain.  Grigory incoherently mutters something about how "he has killed his father." The police question Dmitri , and everyone sees that the evidence is stacked against him. The Karamazovs are not an insular group; the entire town knows them, and the murder is quite a phenomenon. For the first time, the petty infighting of the Karamazov clan feels larger than a dispute between family members. The brothers have become quite a spectacle. This circumstance strengthens the notion of myth in the novel, and it makes the tragedy seem much more meaningful--after all, we readers are also on the outside, following the family's moves. Dmitri, curiously, has found love and direction in his life. He feels like a new man, and his feeling of invincibility may be what makes him speak so honestly with the police. When the police knock on the door to arrest Dmitri, his fortune has changed. Up to this point in the novel, Dmitri has had a strong motive to kill his father. After winning the affections of Grushenka, however, he has little reason left to murder his competition. This night, the night when Dmitri solves his romantic problem, thereby alleviating his desire for murder, is also the night when he acts the most erratically and desperately. It is a cruel trick of fate that this is this night when Fyodor is murdered. Even though Dmitri ends the night a changed man, his dramatic actions--leading to his epiphany--damn him in the eyes of the world. His newfound strength of spirit remains undaunted, though. He has remarkable faith in justice and the legal system. He is honest and open and, knowing that he is innocent, feels entirely confident that he will be acquitted. He has the utmost faith that the truth of his heart will be apparent to everyone. Notwithstanding that faith, everyone pays less attention to Dmitri's soul and more attention to the facts at hand, most of which point to Dmitri's guilt. Dmitri's fickle nature means that he can abruptly turn from a murderer into a harmless lover. The law, however, seeks a consistent story. Dmitri's longstanding hatred for his father is more consistent than his sudden change of heart, and therefore it is a more salient indicator of his personality to others. People cannot easily know another's heart. Often they know little more than what they see, which can be a better indicator of a man's prejudices and preconceived notions than the things he says. Strangely, the idea of sympathy for Fyodor never seriously comes up. No character expresses much sadness at his demise, nor does anyone say that the old man was misunderstood. His sons are not even very surprised, for they have expected this murder to some degree for the entire novel. In a book about morality and religion, one would expect that murder of a man would be treated a bit more humanely, but the clear lack of humane sentiments at this point illustrates the family's sense of the perverse justice of the murder--somehow Fyodor was not innocent enough to escape what was coming to him. Dostoevsky even writes at the beginning of the novel that no one could feel bad for such a wretched creature, but can we really accept such a cold and harsh indictment? The unassailable importance of human life is given more weight in other areas. Ivan talks about the desire to live and the tragedy of making an innocent suffer. He does not seem to feel remorse for his father, however. He only feels the burden of responsibility for a terrible crime. Not even Alyosha misses his father. He loved Fyodor while he was alive as Alyosha loves all creatures, but he feels no lasting connection to Fyodor aside from familial ties. Dostoevsky's characters treat the character of Fyodor as practically inhuman; the only problem lies with the legal and spiritual effects of committing the mortal sin of murder. Perhaps Dostoevsky hated his own father enough to leave Fyodor as a character who seems almost to deserve this treatment upon his death, so different from that of Father Zossima. Fyodor is presented mainly as a cancer to those around him, making life worse for them without contributing in any good way. This vice is at odds with the loving religious sentiments of the rest of the novel. Perhaps Dostoevsky intends such a contrast with his more powerful theme of love and understanding. Ivan and Dmitri have no desire to see their father alive. In fact, it seems probable that both brothers want to see him killed. Smerdyakov, in hindsight, also obviously wants Fyodor dead.  In the end, Ivan is driven crazy by his own guilt, Dmitri is convicted of the murder--his life ruined--and Smerdyakov commits suicide, presumably because of his own feelings of guilt. These three, who seem pleased to see Fyodor killed, are the ones who suffer most after his death. If this is poetic justice, Dostoevsky is condemning their lack of sympathy. If Dostoevsky is in some way using this theme in relation to his own feelings about his own father, we might read these developments as his way of faulting those who do not adequately respect or like their fathers. As in Crime and Punishment, the motives and effects of the murder are very complex, involving themes of nihilism, utility, and Christianity. If one feels both love and disgust for one's fellow humans, some murders might seem more justifiable than others. In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov feels guilty for killing a fairly innocent witness, but he never expresses guilt for killing the old woman, against whom he develops several reasons for the murder. In the present novel, would murdering Father Zossima have carried the same moral weight as the murder of Fyodor? The characters generally feel less upset over the murder of Fyodor, insofar as Fyodor has died, than over the natural death of Father Zossima. Feeling guilty over a death or a murder is not the same as feeling sympathetic.