Chapter VIII. A Treatise On Smerdyakov

"To begin with, what was the source of this suspicion?" (Ippolit
Kirillovitch began.) "The first person who cried out that Smerdyakov had
committed the murder was the prisoner himself at the moment of his arrest,
yet from that time to this he had not brought forward a single fact to
confirm the charge, nor the faintest suggestion of a fact. The charge is
confirmed by three persons only--the two brothers of the prisoner and
Madame Svyetlov. The elder of these brothers expressed his suspicions only
to-day, when he was undoubtedly suffering from brain fever. But we know
that for the last two months he has completely shared our conviction of
his brother's guilt and did not attempt to combat that idea. But of that
later. The younger brother has admitted that he has not the slightest fact
to support his notion of Smerdyakov's guilt, and has only been led to that
conclusion from the prisoner's own words and the expression of his face.
Yes, that astounding piece of evidence has been brought forward twice to-
day by him. Madame Svyetlov was even more astounding. 'What the prisoner
tells you, you must believe; he is not a man to tell a lie.' That is all
the evidence against Smerdyakov produced by these three persons, who are
all deeply concerned in the prisoner's fate. And yet the theory of
Smerdyakov's guilt has been noised about, has been and is still
maintained. Is it credible? Is it conceivable?"

Here Ippolit Kirillovitch thought it necessary to describe the personality
of Smerdyakov, "who had cut short his life in a fit of insanity." He
depicted him as a man of weak intellect, with a smattering of education,
who had been thrown off his balance by philosophical ideas above his level
and certain modern theories of duty, which he learnt in practice from the
reckless life of his master, who was also perhaps his father--Fyodor
Pavlovitch; and, theoretically, from various strange philosophical
conversations with his master's elder son, Ivan Fyodorovitch, who readily
indulged in this diversion, probably feeling dull or wishing to amuse
himself at the valet's expense. "He spoke to me himself of his spiritual
condition during the last few days at his father's house," Ippolit
Kirillovitch explained; "but others too have borne witness to it--the
prisoner himself, his brother, and the servant Grigory--that is, all who
knew him well.

"Moreover, Smerdyakov, whose health was shaken by his attacks of epilepsy,
had not the courage of a chicken. 'He fell at my feet and kissed them,'
the prisoner himself has told us, before he realized how damaging such a
statement was to himself. 'He is an epileptic chicken,' he declared about
him in his characteristic language. And the prisoner chose him for his
confidant (we have his own word for it) and he frightened him into
consenting at last to act as a spy for him. In that capacity he deceived
his master, revealing to the prisoner the existence of the envelope with
the notes in it and the signals by means of which he could get into the
house. How could he help telling him, indeed? 'He would have killed me, I
could see that he would have killed me,' he said at the inquiry, trembling
and shaking even before us, though his tormentor was by that time arrested
and could do him no harm. 'He suspected me at every instant. In fear and
trembling I hastened to tell him every secret to pacify him, that he might
see that I had not deceived him and let me off alive.' Those are his own
words. I wrote them down and I remember them. 'When he began shouting at
me, I would fall on my knees.'

"He was naturally very honest and enjoyed the complete confidence of his
master, ever since he had restored him some money he had lost. So it may
be supposed that the poor fellow suffered pangs of remorse at having
deceived his master, whom he loved as his benefactor. Persons severely
afflicted with epilepsy are, so the most skillful doctors tell us, always
prone to continual and morbid self-reproach. They worry over their
'wickedness,' they are tormented by pangs of conscience, often entirely
without cause; they exaggerate and often invent all sorts of faults and
crimes. And here we have a man of that type who had really been driven to
wrong-doing by terror and intimidation.

"He had, besides, a strong presentiment that something terrible would be
the outcome of the situation that was developing before his eyes. When
Ivan Fyodorovitch was leaving for Moscow, just before the catastrophe,
Smerdyakov besought him to remain, though he was too timid to tell him
plainly what he feared. He confined himself to hints, but his hints were
not understood.

"It must be observed that he looked on Ivan Fyodorovitch as a protector,
whose presence in the house was a guarantee that no harm would come to
pass. Remember the phrase in Dmitri Karamazov's drunken letter, 'I shall
kill the old man, if only Ivan goes away.' So Ivan Fyodorovitch's presence
seemed to every one a guarantee of peace and order in the house.

"But he went away, and within an hour of his young master's departure
Smerdyakov was taken with an epileptic fit. But that's perfectly
intelligible. Here I must mention that Smerdyakov, oppressed by terror and
despair of a sort, had felt during those last few days that one of the
fits from which he had suffered before at moments of strain, might be
coming upon him again. The day and hour of such an attack cannot, of
course, be foreseen, but every epileptic can feel beforehand that he is
likely to have one. So the doctors tell us. And so, as soon as Ivan
Fyodorovitch had driven out of the yard, Smerdyakov, depressed by his
lonely and unprotected position, went to the cellar. He went down the
stairs wondering if he would have a fit or not, and what if it were to
come upon him at once. And that very apprehension, that very wonder,
brought on the spasm in his throat that always precedes such attacks, and
he fell unconscious into the cellar. And in this perfectly natural
occurrence people try to detect a suspicion, a hint that he was shamming
an attack _on purpose_. But, if it were on purpose, the question arises at
once, what was his motive? What was he reckoning on? What was he aiming
at? I say nothing about medicine: science, I am told, may go astray: the
doctors were not able to discriminate between the counterfeit and the
real. That may be so, but answer me one question: what motive had he for
such a counterfeit? Could he, had he been plotting the murder, have
desired to attract the attention of the household by having a fit just
before?

"You see, gentlemen of the jury, on the night of the murder, there were
five persons in Fyodor Pavlovitch's--Fyodor Pavlovitch himself (but he did
not kill himself, that's evident); then his servant, Grigory, but he was
almost killed himself; the third person was Grigory's wife, Marfa
Ignatyevna, but it would be simply shameful to imagine her murdering her
master. Two persons are left--the prisoner and Smerdyakov. But, if we are
to believe the prisoner's statement that he is not the murderer, then
Smerdyakov must have been, for there is no other alternative, no one else
can be found. That is what accounts for the artful, astounding accusation
against the unhappy idiot who committed suicide yesterday. Had a shadow of
suspicion rested on any one else, had there been any sixth person, I am
persuaded that even the prisoner would have been ashamed to accuse
Smerdyakov, and would have accused that sixth person, for to charge
Smerdyakov with that murder is perfectly absurd.

"Gentlemen, let us lay aside psychology, let us lay aside medicine, let us
even lay aside logic, let us turn only to the facts and see what the facts
tell us. If Smerdyakov killed him, how did he do it? Alone or with the
assistance of the prisoner? Let us consider the first alternative--that he
did it alone. If he had killed him it must have been with some object, for
some advantage to himself. But not having a shadow of the motive that the
prisoner had for the murder--hatred, jealousy, and so on--Smerdyakov could
only have murdered him for the sake of gain, in order to appropriate the
three thousand roubles he had seen his master put in the envelope. And yet
he tells another person--and a person most closely interested, that is, the
prisoner--everything about the money and the signals, where the envelope
lay, what was written on it, what it was tied up with, and, above all,
told him of those signals by which he could enter the house. Did he do
this simply to betray himself, or to invite to the same enterprise one who
would be anxious to get that envelope for himself? 'Yes,' I shall be told,
'but he betrayed it from fear.' But how do you explain this? A man who
could conceive such an audacious, savage act, and carry it out, tells
facts which are known to no one else in the world, and which, if he held
his tongue, no one would ever have guessed!

"No, however cowardly he might be, if he had plotted such a crime, nothing
would have induced him to tell any one about the envelope and the signals,
for that was as good as betraying himself beforehand. He would have
invented something, he would have told some lie if he had been forced to
give information, but he would have been silent about that. For, on the
other hand, if he had said nothing about the money, but had committed the
murder and stolen the money, no one in the world could have charged him
with murder for the sake of robbery, since no one but he had seen the
money, no one but he knew of its existence in the house. Even if he had
been accused of the murder, it could only have been thought that he had
committed it from some other motive. But since no one had observed any
such motive in him beforehand, and every one saw, on the contrary, that
his master was fond of him and honored him with his confidence, he would,
of course, have been the last to be suspected. People would have suspected
first the man who had a motive, a man who had himself declared he had such
motives, who had made no secret of it; they would, in fact, have suspected
the son of the murdered man, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. Had Smerdyakov killed
and robbed him, and the son been accused of it, that would, of course,
have suited Smerdyakov. Yet are we to believe that, though plotting the
murder, he told that son, Dmitri, about the money, the envelope, and the
signals? Is that logical? Is that clear?

"When the day of the murder planned by Smerdyakov came, we have him
falling downstairs in a _feigned_ fit--with what object? In the first place
that Grigory, who had been intending to take his medicine, might put it
off and remain on guard, seeing there was no one to look after the house,
and, in the second place, I suppose, that his master seeing that there was
no one to guard him, and in terror of a visit from his son, might redouble
his vigilance and precaution. And, most of all, I suppose that he,
Smerdyakov, disabled by the fit, might be carried from the kitchen, where
he always slept, apart from all the rest, and where he could go in and out
as he liked, to Grigory's room at the other end of the lodge, where he was
always put, shut off by a screen three paces from their own bed. This was
the immemorial custom established by his master and the kind-hearted Marfa
Ignatyevna, whenever he had a fit. There, lying behind the screen, he
would most likely, to keep up the sham, have begun groaning, and so
keeping them awake all night (as Grigory and his wife testified). And all
this, we are to believe, that he might more conveniently get up and murder
his master!

"But I shall be told that he shammed illness on purpose that he might not
be suspected and that he told the prisoner of the money and the signals to
tempt him to commit the murder, and when he had murdered him and had gone
away with the money, making a noise, most likely, and waking people,
Smerdyakov got up, am I to believe, and went in--what for? To murder his
master a second time and carry off the money that had already been stolen?
Gentlemen, are you laughing? I am ashamed to put forward such suggestions,
but, incredible as it seems, that's just what the prisoner alleges. When
he had left the house, had knocked Grigory down and raised an alarm, he
tells us Smerdyakov got up, went in and murdered his master and stole the
money! I won't press the point that Smerdyakov could hardly have reckoned
on this beforehand, and have foreseen that the furious and exasperated son
would simply come to peep in respectfully, though he knew the signals, and
beat a retreat, leaving Smerdyakov his booty. Gentlemen of the jury, I put
this question to you in earnest; when was the moment when Smerdyakov could
have committed his crime? Name that moment, or you can't accuse him.

"But, perhaps, the fit was a real one, the sick man suddenly recovered,
heard a shout, and went out. Well--what then? He looked about him and said,
'Why not go and kill the master?' And how did he know what had happened,
since he had been lying unconscious till that moment? But there's a limit
to these flights of fancy.

" 'Quite so,' some astute people will tell me, 'but what if they were in
agreement? What if they murdered him together and shared the money--what
then?' A weighty question, truly! And the facts to confirm it are
astounding. One commits the murder and takes all the trouble while his
accomplice lies on one side shamming a fit, apparently to arouse suspicion
in every one, alarm in his master and alarm in Grigory. It would be
interesting to know what motives could have induced the two accomplices to
form such an insane plan.

"But perhaps it was not a case of active complicity on Smerdyakov's part,
but only of passive acquiescence; perhaps Smerdyakov was intimidated and
agreed not to prevent the murder, and foreseeing that he would be blamed
for letting his master be murdered, without screaming for help or
resisting, he may have obtained permission from Dmitri Karamazov to get
out of the way by shamming a fit--'you may murder him as you like; it's
nothing to me.' But as this attack of Smerdyakov's was bound to throw the
household into confusion, Dmitri Karamazov could never have agreed to such
a plan. I will waive that point however. Supposing that he did agree, it
would still follow that Dmitri Karamazov is the murderer and the
instigator, and Smerdyakov is only a passive accomplice, and not even an
accomplice, but merely acquiesced against his will through terror.

"But what do we see? As soon as he is arrested the prisoner instantly
throws all the blame on Smerdyakov, not accusing him of being his
accomplice, but of being himself the murderer. 'He did it alone,' he says.
'He murdered and robbed him. It was the work of his hands.' Strange sort
of accomplices who begin to accuse one another at once! And think of the
risk for Karamazov. After committing the murder while his accomplice lay
in bed, he throws the blame on the invalid, who might well have resented
it and in self-preservation might well have confessed the truth. For he
might well have seen that the court would at once judge how far he was
responsible, and so he might well have reckoned that if he were punished,
it would be far less severely than the real murderer. But in that case he
would have been certain to make a confession, yet he has not done so.
Smerdyakov never hinted at their complicity, though the actual murderer
persisted in accusing him and declaring that he had committed the crime
alone.

"What's more, Smerdyakov at the inquiry volunteered the statement that it
was _he_ who had told the prisoner of the envelope of notes and of the
signals, and that, but for him, he would have known nothing about them. If
he had really been a guilty accomplice, would he so readily have made this
statement at the inquiry? On the contrary, he would have tried to conceal
it, to distort the facts or minimize them. But he was far from distorting
or minimizing them. No one but an innocent man, who had no fear of being
charged with complicity, could have acted as he did. And in a fit of
melancholy arising from his disease and this catastrophe he hanged himself
yesterday. He left a note written in his peculiar language, 'I destroy
myself of my own will and inclination so as to throw no blame on any one.'
What would it have cost him to add: 'I am the murderer, not Karamazov'?
But that he did not add. Did his conscience lead him to suicide and not to
avowing his guilt?

"And what followed? Notes for three thousand roubles were brought into the
court just now, and we were told that they were the same that lay in the
envelope now on the table before us, and that the witness had received
them from Smerdyakov the day before. But I need not recall the painful
scene, though I will make one or two comments, selecting such trivial ones
as might not be obvious at first sight to every one, and so may be
overlooked. In the first place, Smerdyakov must have given back the money
and hanged himself yesterday from remorse. And only yesterday he confessed
his guilt to Ivan Karamazov, as the latter informs us. If it were not so,
indeed, why should Ivan Fyodorovitch have kept silence till now? And so,
if he has confessed, then why, I ask again, did he not avow the whole
truth in the last letter he left behind, knowing that the innocent
prisoner had to face this terrible ordeal the next day?

"The money alone is no proof. A week ago, quite by chance, the fact came
to the knowledge of myself and two other persons in this court that Ivan
Fyodorovitch had sent two five per cent. coupons of five thousand
each--that is, ten thousand in all--to the chief town of the province to be
changed. I only mention this to point out that any one may have money, and
that it can't be proved that these notes are the same as were in Fyodor
Pavlovitch's envelope.

"Ivan Karamazov, after receiving yesterday a communication of such
importance from the real murderer, did not stir. Why didn't he report it
at once? Why did he put it all off till morning? I think I have a right to
conjecture why. His health had been giving way for a week past: he had
admitted to a doctor and to his most intimate friends that he was
suffering from hallucinations and seeing phantoms of the dead: he was on
the eve of the attack of brain fever by which he has been stricken down
to-day. In this condition he suddenly heard of Smerdyakov's death, and at
once reflected, 'The man is dead, I can throw the blame on him and save my
brother. I have money. I will take a roll of notes and say that Smerdyakov
gave them me before his death.' You will say that was dishonorable: it's
dishonorable to slander even the dead, and even to save a brother. True,
but what if he slandered him unconsciously? What if, finally unhinged by
the sudden news of the valet's death, he imagined it really was so? You
saw the recent scene: you have seen the witness's condition. He was
standing up and was speaking, but where was his mind?

"Then followed the document, the prisoner's letter written two days before
the crime, and containing a complete program of the murder. Why, then, are
we looking for any other program? The crime was committed precisely
according to this program, and by no other than the writer of it. Yes,
gentlemen of the jury, it went off without a hitch! He did not run
respectfully and timidly away from his father's window, though he was
firmly convinced that the object of his affections was with him. No, that
is absurd and unlikely! He went in and murdered him. Most likely he killed
him in anger, burning with resentment, as soon as he looked on his hated
rival. But having killed him, probably with one blow of the brass pestle,
and having convinced himself, after careful search, that she was not
there, he did not, however, forget to put his hand under the pillow and
take out the envelope, the torn cover of which lies now on the table
before us.

"I mention this fact that you may note one, to my thinking, very
characteristic circumstance. Had he been an experienced murderer and had
he committed the murder for the sake of gain only, would he have left the
torn envelope on the floor as it was found, beside the corpse? Had it been
Smerdyakov, for instance, murdering his master to rob him, he would have
simply carried away the envelope with him, without troubling himself to
open it over his victim's corpse, for he would have known for certain that
the notes were in the envelope--they had been put in and sealed up in his
presence--and had he taken the envelope with him, no one would ever have
known of the robbery. I ask you, gentlemen, would Smerdyakov have behaved
in that way? Would he have left the envelope on the floor?

"No, this was the action of a frantic murderer, a murderer who was not a
thief and had never stolen before that day, who snatched the notes from
under the pillow, not like a thief stealing them, but as though seizing
his own property from the thief who had stolen it. For that was the idea
which had become almost an insane obsession in Dmitri Karamazov in regard
to that money. And pouncing upon the envelope, which he had never seen
before, he tore it open to make sure whether the money was in it, and ran
away with the money in his pocket, even forgetting to consider that he had
left an astounding piece of evidence against himself in that torn envelope
on the floor. All because it was Karamazov, not Smerdyakov, he didn't
think, he didn't reflect, and how should he? He ran away; he heard behind
him the servant cry out; the old man caught him, stopped him and was
felled to the ground by the brass pestle.

"The prisoner, moved by pity, leapt down to look at him. Would you believe
it, he tells us that he leapt down out of pity, out of compassion, to see
whether he could do anything for him. Was that a moment to show
compassion? No; he jumped down simply to make certain whether the only
witness of his crime were dead or alive. Any other feeling, any other
motive would be unnatural. Note that he took trouble over Grigory, wiped
his head with his handkerchief and, convincing himself he was dead, he ran
to the house of his mistress, dazed and covered with blood. How was it he
never thought that he was covered with blood and would be at once
detected? But the prisoner himself assures us that he did not even notice
that he was covered with blood. That may be believed, that is very
possible, that always happens at such moments with criminals. On one point
they will show diabolical cunning, while another will escape them
altogether. But he was thinking at that moment of one thing only--where was
_she_? He wanted to find out at once where she was, so he ran to her
lodging and learnt an unexpected and astounding piece of news--she had gone
off to Mokroe to meet her first lover."

Now we go into the third part of prosecutor Kirillovich's closing statement. Kirillovich rejects the idea that Smerdyakov murdered Fyodor, because there is no factual evidence. He paints Smerdyakov as essentially a coward, fearful of Dmitri's strength and Ivan's newfangled ideas, unable to muster enough guts to do something as extreme as murder. In his retelling of the events of that night, Kirillovich argues that there was no point at which Smerdyakov could have murdered Fyodor. Then Kirillovich turns to Smerdyakov's suicide note and argues that the absence of any confession to Fyodor's murder is further proof that Smerdyakov didn't do it. He asserts that if Smerdyakov had really confessed to Ivan the night before, as Ivan claimed, Ivan would have gone straight to the police instead of waiting for the trial. Kirillovich said he had information that Ivan had cashed two 5 percent bank notes for 5,000 roubles each a week ago. Kirillovich points to Katerina's letter as further evidence for his version of events. Just as the letter had stated, Dmitri had murdered and robbed his father, leaving the envelope containing the roubles on the floor. This is just how someone who murdered in a fit of passion would act, not caring about leaving key evidence behind. He also dismisses the idea that Dmitri could have checked on Grigory after he attacked him, because such an act of compassion isn't consistent with Dmitri's character.

A Treatise on Smerdyakov Kirrillovich says that unlike Smerdyakov, Dmitri had a motive to kill Fyodor Pavlovich because he hated the old man and craved his money. Given the violent sentiment of the letter Dmitri wrote to Katerina, Kirrillovich says, his guilt seems clear


Chapter IX. The Galloping Troika. The End Of The Prosecutor's Speech.

Ippolit Kirillovitch had chosen the historical method of exposition,
beloved by all nervous orators, who find in its limitation a check on
their own eager rhetoric. At this moment in his speech he went off into a
dissertation on Grushenka's "first lover," and brought forward several
interesting thoughts on this theme.

"Karamazov, who had been frantically jealous of every one, collapsed, so
to speak, and effaced himself at once before this first lover. What makes
it all the more strange is that he seems to have hardly thought of this
formidable rival. But he had looked upon him as a remote danger, and
Karamazov always lives in the present. Possibly he regarded him as a
fiction. But his wounded heart grasped instantly that the woman had been
concealing this new rival and deceiving him, because he was anything but a
fiction to her, because he was the one hope of her life. Grasping this
instantly, he resigned himself.

"Gentlemen of the jury, I cannot help dwelling on this unexpected trait in
the prisoner's character. He suddenly evinces an irresistible desire for
justice, a respect for woman and a recognition of her right to love. And
all this at the very moment when he had stained his hands with his
father's blood for her sake! It is true that the blood he had shed was
already crying out for vengeance, for, after having ruined his soul and
his life in this world, he was forced to ask himself at that same instant
what he was and what he could be now to her, to that being, dearer to him
than his own soul, in comparison with that former lover who had returned
penitent, with new love, to the woman he had once betrayed, with honorable
offers, with the promise of a reformed and happy life. And he, luckless
man, what could he give her now, what could he offer her?

"Karamazov felt all this, knew that all ways were barred to him by his
crime and that he was a criminal under sentence, and not a man with life
before him! This thought crushed him. And so he instantly flew to one
frantic plan, which, to a man of Karamazov's character, must have appeared
the one inevitable way out of his terrible position. That way out was
suicide. He ran for the pistols he had left in pledge with his friend
Perhotin and on the way, as he ran, he pulled out of his pocket the money,
for the sake of which he had stained his hands with his father's gore. Oh,
now he needed money more than ever. Karamazov would die, Karamazov would
shoot himself and it should be remembered! To be sure, he was a poet and
had burnt the candle at both ends all his life. 'To her, to her! and
there, oh, there I will give a feast to the whole world, such as never was
before, that will be remembered and talked of long after! In the midst of
shouts of wild merriment, reckless gypsy songs and dances I shall raise
the glass and drink to the woman I adore and her new-found happiness! And
then, on the spot, at her feet, I shall dash out my brains before her and
punish myself! She will remember Mitya Karamazov sometimes, she will see
how Mitya loved her, she will feel for Mitya!'

"Here we see in excess a love of effect, a romantic despair and
sentimentality, and the wild recklessness of the Karamazovs. Yes, but
there is something else, gentlemen of the jury, something that cries out
in the soul, throbs incessantly in the mind, and poisons the heart unto
death--that _something_ is conscience, gentlemen of the jury, its judgment,
its terrible torments! The pistol will settle everything, the pistol is
the only way out! But _beyond_--I don't know whether Karamazov wondered at
that moment 'What lies beyond,' and whether Karamazov could, like Hamlet,
wonder 'What lies beyond.' No, gentlemen of the jury, they have their
Hamlets, but we still have our Karamazovs!"

Here Ippolit Kirillovitch drew a minute picture of Mitya's preparations,
the scene at Perhotin's, at the shop, with the drivers. He quoted numerous
words and actions, confirmed by witnesses, and the picture made a terrible
impression on the audience. The guilt of this harassed and desperate man
stood out clear and convincing, when the facts were brought together.

"What need had he of precaution? Two or three times he almost confessed,
hinted at it, all but spoke out." (Then followed the evidence given by
witnesses.) "He even cried out to the peasant who drove him, 'Do you know,
you are driving a murderer!' But it was impossible for him to speak out,
he had to get to Mokroe and there to finish his romance. But what was
awaiting the luckless man? Almost from the first minute at Mokroe he saw
that his invincible rival was perhaps by no means so invincible, that the
toast to their new-found happiness was not desired and would not be
acceptable. But you know the facts, gentlemen of the jury, from the
preliminary inquiry. Karamazov's triumph over his rival was complete and
his soul passed into quite a new phase, perhaps the most terrible phase
through which his soul has passed or will pass.

"One may say with certainty, gentlemen of the jury," the prosecutor
continued, "that outraged nature and the criminal heart bring their own
vengeance more completely than any earthly justice. What's more, justice
and punishment on earth positively alleviate the punishment of nature and
are, indeed, essential to the soul of the criminal at such moments, as its
salvation from despair. For I cannot imagine the horror and moral
suffering of Karamazov when he learnt that she loved him, that for his
sake she had rejected her first lover, that she was summoning him, Mitya,
to a new life, that she was promising him happiness--and when? When
everything was over for him and nothing was possible!

"By the way, I will note in parenthesis a point of importance for the
light it throws on the prisoner's position at the moment. This woman, this
love of his, had been till the last moment, till the very instant of his
arrest, a being unattainable, passionately desired by him but
unattainable. Yet why did he not shoot himself then, why did he relinquish
his design and even forget where his pistol was? It was just that
passionate desire for love and the hope of satisfying it that restrained
him. Throughout their revels he kept close to his adored mistress, who was
at the banquet with him and was more charming and fascinating to him than
ever--he did not leave her side, abasing himself in his homage before her.

"His passion might well, for a moment, stifle not only the fear of arrest,
but even the torments of conscience. For a moment, oh, only for a moment!
I can picture the state of mind of the criminal hopelessly enslaved by
these influences--first, the influence of drink, of noise and excitement,
of the thud of the dance and the scream of the song, and of her, flushed
with wine, singing and dancing and laughing to him! Secondly, the hope in
the background that the fatal end might still be far off, that not till
next morning, at least, they would come and take him. So he had a few
hours and that's much, very much! In a few hours one can think of many
things. I imagine that he felt something like what criminals feel when
they are being taken to the scaffold. They have another long, long street
to pass down and at walking pace, past thousands of people. Then there
will be a turning into another street and only at the end of that street
the dread place of execution! I fancy that at the beginning of the journey
the condemned man, sitting on his shameful cart, must feel that he has
infinite life still before him. The houses recede, the cart moves on--oh,
that's nothing, it's still far to the turning into the second street and
he still looks boldly to right and to left at those thousands of callously
curious people with their eyes fixed on him, and he still fancies that he
is just such a man as they. But now the turning comes to the next street.
Oh, that's nothing, nothing, there's still a whole street before him, and
however many houses have been passed, he will still think there are many
left. And so to the very end, to the very scaffold.

"This I imagine is how it was with Karamazov then. 'They've not had time
yet,' he must have thought, 'I may still find some way out, oh, there's
still time to make some plan of defense, and now, now--she is so
fascinating!'

"His soul was full of confusion and dread, but he managed, however, to put
aside half his money and hide it somewhere--I cannot otherwise explain the
disappearance of quite half of the three thousand he had just taken from
his father's pillow. He had been in Mokroe more than once before, he had
caroused there for two days together already, he knew the old big house
with all its passages and outbuildings. I imagine that part of the money
was hidden in that house, not long before the arrest, in some crevice,
under some floor, in some corner, under the roof. With what object? I
shall be asked. Why, the catastrophe may take place at once, of course; he
hadn't yet considered how to meet it, he hadn't the time, his head was
throbbing and his heart was with _her_, but money--money was indispensable
in any case! With money a man is always a man. Perhaps such foresight at
such a moment may strike you as unnatural? But he assures us himself that
a month before, at a critical and exciting moment, he had halved his money
and sewn it up in a little bag. And though that was not true, as we shall
prove directly, it shows the idea was a familiar one to Karamazov, he had
contemplated it. What's more, when he declared at the inquiry that he had
put fifteen hundred roubles in a bag (which never existed) he may have
invented that little bag on the inspiration of the moment, because he had
two hours before divided his money and hidden half of it at Mokroe till
morning, in case of emergency, simply not to have it on himself. Two
extremes, gentlemen of the jury, remember that Karamazov can contemplate
two extremes and both at once.

"We have looked in the house, but we haven't found the money. It may still
be there or it may have disappeared next day and be in the prisoner's
hands now. In any case he was at her side, on his knees before her, she
was lying on the bed, he had his hands stretched out to her and he had so
entirely forgotten everything that he did not even hear the men coming to
arrest him. He hadn't time to prepare any line of defense in his mind. He
was caught unawares and confronted with his judges, the arbiters of his
destiny.

"Gentlemen of the jury, there are moments in the execution of our duties
when it is terrible for us to face a man, terrible on his account, too!
The moments of contemplating that animal fear, when the criminal sees that
all is lost, but still struggles, still means to struggle, the moments
when every instinct of self-preservation rises up in him at once and he
looks at you with questioning and suffering eyes, studies you, your face,
your thoughts, uncertain on which side you will strike, and his distracted
mind frames thousands of plans in an instant, but he is still afraid to
speak, afraid of giving himself away! This purgatory of the spirit, this
animal thirst for self-preservation, these humiliating moments of the
human soul, are awful, and sometimes arouse horror and compassion for the
criminal even in the lawyer. And this was what we all witnessed then.

"At first he was thunderstruck and in his terror dropped some very
compromising phrases. 'Blood! I've deserved it!' But he quickly restrained
himself. He had not prepared what he was to say, what answer he was to
make, he had nothing but a bare denial ready. 'I am not guilty of my
father's death.' That was his fence for the moment and behind it he hoped
to throw up a barricade of some sort. His first compromising exclamations
he hastened to explain by declaring that he was responsible for the death
of the servant Grigory only. 'Of that bloodshed I am guilty, but who has
killed my father, gentlemen, who has killed him? Who can have killed him,
_if not I_?' Do you hear, he asked us that, us, who had come to ask him
that question! Do you hear that phrase uttered with such premature
haste--'if not I'--the animal cunning, the naivete, the Karamazov impatience
of it? 'I didn't kill him and you mustn't think I did! I wanted to kill
him, gentlemen, I wanted to kill him,' he hastens to admit (he was in a
hurry, in a terrible hurry), 'but still I am not guilty, it is not I
murdered him.' He concedes to us that he wanted to murder him, as though
to say, you can see for yourselves how truthful I am, so you'll believe
all the sooner that I didn't murder him. Oh, in such cases the criminal is
often amazingly shallow and credulous.

"At that point one of the lawyers asked him, as it were incidentally, the
most simple question, 'Wasn't it Smerdyakov killed him?' Then, as we
expected, he was horribly angry at our having anticipated him and caught
him unawares, before he had time to pave the way to choose and snatch the
moment when it would be most natural to bring in Smerdyakov's name. He
rushed at once to the other extreme, as he always does, and began to
assure us that Smerdyakov could not have killed him, was not capable of
it. But don't believe him, that was only his cunning; he didn't really
give up the idea of Smerdyakov; on the contrary, he meant to bring him
forward again; for, indeed, he had no one else to bring forward, but he
would do that later, because for the moment that line was spoiled for him.
He would bring him forward perhaps next day, or even a few days later,
choosing an opportunity to cry out to us, 'You know I was more skeptical
about Smerdyakov than you, you remember that yourselves, but now I am
convinced. He killed him, he must have done!' And for the present he falls
back upon a gloomy and irritable denial. Impatience and anger prompted
him, however, to the most inept and incredible explanation of how he
looked into his father's window and how he respectfully withdrew. The
worst of it was that he was unaware of the position of affairs, of the
evidence given by Grigory.

"We proceeded to search him. The search angered, but encouraged him, the
whole three thousand had not been found on him, only half of it. And no
doubt only at that moment of angry silence, the fiction of the little bag
first occurred to him. No doubt he was conscious himself of the
improbability of the story and strove painfully to make it sound more
likely, to weave it into a romance that would sound plausible. In such
cases the first duty, the chief task of the investigating lawyers, is to
prevent the criminal being prepared, to pounce upon him unexpectedly so
that he may blurt out his cherished ideas in all their simplicity,
improbability and inconsistency. The criminal can only be made to speak by
the sudden and apparently incidental communication of some new fact, of
some circumstance of great importance in the case, of which he had no
previous idea and could not have foreseen. We had such a fact in
readiness--that was Grigory's evidence about the open door through which
the prisoner had run out. He had completely forgotten about that door and
had not even suspected that Grigory could have seen it.

"The effect of it was amazing. He leapt up and shouted to us, 'Then
Smerdyakov murdered him, it was Smerdyakov!' and so betrayed the basis of
the defense he was keeping back, and betrayed it in its most improbable
shape, for Smerdyakov could only have committed the murder after he had
knocked Grigory down and run away. When we told him that Grigory saw the
door was open before he fell down, and had heard Smerdyakov behind the
screen as he came out of his bedroom--Karamazov was positively crushed. My
esteemed and witty colleague, Nikolay Parfenovitch, told me afterwards
that he was almost moved to tears at the sight of him. And to improve
matters, the prisoner hastened to tell us about the much-talked-of little
bag--so be it, you shall hear this romance!

"Gentlemen of the jury, I have told you already why I consider this
romance not only an absurdity, but the most improbable invention that
could have been brought forward in the circumstances. If one tried for a
bet to invent the most unlikely story, one could hardly find anything more
incredible. The worst of such stories is that the triumphant romancers can
always be put to confusion and crushed by the very details in which real
life is so rich and which these unhappy and involuntary story-tellers
neglect as insignificant trifles. Oh, they have no thought to spare for
such details, their minds are concentrated on their grand invention as a
whole, and fancy any one daring to pull them up for a trifle! But that's
how they are caught. The prisoner was asked the question, 'Where did you
get the stuff for your little bag and who made it for you?' 'I made it
myself.' 'And where did you get the linen?' The prisoner was positively
offended, he thought it almost insulting to ask him such a trivial
question, and would you believe it, his resentment was genuine! But they
are all like that. 'I tore it off my shirt.' 'Then we shall find that
shirt among your linen to-morrow, with a piece torn off.' And only fancy,
gentlemen of the jury, if we really had found that torn shirt (and how
could we have failed to find it in his chest of drawers or trunk?) that
would have been a fact, a material fact in support of his statement! But
he was incapable of that reflection. 'I don't remember, it may not have
been off my shirt, I sewed it up in one of my landlady's caps.' 'What sort
of a cap?' 'It was an old cotton rag of hers lying about.' 'And do you
remember that clearly?' 'No, I don't.' And he was angry, very angry, and
yet imagine not remembering it! At the most terrible moments of man's
life, for instance when he is being led to execution, he remembers just
such trifles. He will forget anything but some green roof that has flashed
past him on the road, or a jackdaw on a cross--that he will remember. He
concealed the making of that little bag from his household, he must have
remembered his humiliating fear that some one might come in and find him
needle in hand, how at the slightest sound he slipped behind the screen
(there is a screen in his lodgings).

"But, gentlemen of the jury, why do I tell you all this, all these
details, trifles?" cried Ippolit Kirillovitch suddenly. "Just because the
prisoner still persists in these absurdities to this moment. He has not
explained anything since that fatal night two months ago, he has not added
one actual illuminating fact to his former fantastic statements; all those
are trivialities. 'You must believe it on my honor.' Oh, we are glad to
believe it, we are eager to believe it, even if only on his word of honor!
Are we jackals thirsting for human blood? Show us a single fact in the
prisoner's favor and we shall rejoice; but let it be a substantial, real
fact, and not a conclusion drawn from the prisoner's expression by his own
brother, or that when he beat himself on the breast he must have meant to
point to the little bag, in the darkness, too. We shall rejoice at the new
fact, we shall be the first to repudiate our charge, we shall hasten to
repudiate it. But now justice cries out and we persist, we cannot
repudiate anything."

Ippolit Kirillovitch passed to his final peroration. He looked as though
he was in a fever, he spoke of the blood that cried for vengeance, the
blood of the father murdered by his son, with the base motive of robbery!
He pointed to the tragic and glaring consistency of the facts.

"And whatever you may hear from the talented and celebrated counsel for
the defense," Ippolit Kirillovitch could not resist adding, "whatever
eloquent and touching appeals may be made to your sensibilities, remember
that at this moment you are in a temple of justice. Remember that you are
the champions of our justice, the champions of our holy Russia, of her
principles, her family, everything that she holds sacred! Yes, you
represent Russia here at this moment, and your verdict will be heard not
in this hall only but will reecho throughout the whole of Russia, and all
Russia will hear you, as her champions and her judges, and she will be
encouraged or disheartened by your verdict. Do not disappoint Russia and
her expectations. Our fatal troika dashes on in her headlong flight
perhaps to destruction and in all Russia for long past men have stretched
out imploring hands and called a halt to its furious reckless course. And
if other nations stand aside from that troika that may be, not from
respect, as the poet would fain believe, but simply from horror. From
horror, perhaps from disgust. And well it is that they stand aside, but
maybe they will cease one day to do so and will form a firm wall
confronting the hurrying apparition and will check the frenzied rush of
our lawlessness, for the sake of their own safety, enlightenment and
civilization. Already we have heard voices of alarm from Europe, they
already begin to sound. Do not tempt them! Do not heap up their growing
hatred by a sentence justifying the murder of a father by his son!"

Though Ippolit Kirillovitch was genuinely moved, he wound up his speech
with this rhetorical appeal--and the effect produced by him was
extraordinary. When he had finished his speech, he went out hurriedly and,
as I have mentioned before, almost fainted in the adjoining room. There
was no applause in the court, but serious persons were pleased. The ladies
were not so well satisfied, though even they were pleased with his
eloquence, especially as they had no apprehensions as to the upshot of the
trial and had full trust in Fetyukovitch. "He will speak at last and of
course carry all before him."

Every one looked at Mitya; he sat silent through the whole of the
prosecutor's speech, clenching his teeth, with his hands clasped, and his
head bowed. Only from time to time he raised his head and listened,
especially when Grushenka was spoken of. When the prosecutor mentioned
Rakitin's opinion of her, a smile of contempt and anger passed over his
face and he murmured rather audibly, "The Bernards!" When Ippolit
Kirillovitch described how he had questioned and tortured him at Mokroe,
Mitya raised his head and listened with intense curiosity. At one point he
seemed about to jump up and cry out, but controlled himself and only
shrugged his shoulders disdainfully. People talked afterwards of the end
of the speech, of the prosecutor's feat in examining the prisoner at
Mokroe, and jeered at Ippolit Kirillovitch. "The man could not resist
boasting of his cleverness," they said.

The court was adjourned, but only for a short interval, a quarter of an
hour or twenty minutes at most. There was a hum of conversation and
exclamations in the audience. I remember some of them.

"A weighty speech," a gentleman in one group observed gravely.

"He brought in too much psychology," said another voice.

"But it was all true, the absolute truth!"

"Yes, he is first rate at it."

"He summed it all up."

"Yes, he summed us up, too," chimed in another voice. "Do you remember, at
the beginning of his speech, making out we were all like Fyodor
Pavlovitch?"

"And at the end, too. But that was all rot."

"And obscure too."

"He was a little too much carried away."

"It's unjust, it's unjust."

"No, it was smartly done, anyway. He's had long to wait, but he's had his
say, ha ha!"

"What will the counsel for the defense say?"

In another group I heard:

"He had no business to make a thrust at the Petersburg man like that;
'appealing to your sensibilities'--do you remember?"

"Yes, that was awkward of him."

"He was in too great a hurry."

"He is a nervous man."

"We laugh, but what must the prisoner be feeling?"

"Yes, what must it be for Mitya?"

In a third group:

"What lady is that, the fat one, with the lorgnette, sitting at the end?"

"She is a general's wife, divorced, I know her."

"That's why she has the lorgnette."

"She is not good for much."

"Oh, no, she is a piquante little woman."

"Two places beyond her there is a little fair woman, she is prettier."

"They caught him smartly at Mokroe, didn't they, eh?"

"Oh, it was smart enough. We've heard it before, how often he has told the
story at people's houses!"

"And he couldn't resist doing it now. That's vanity."

"He is a man with a grievance, he he!"

"Yes, and quick to take offense. And there was too much rhetoric, such
long sentences."

"Yes, he tries to alarm us, he kept trying to alarm us. Do you remember
about the troika? Something about 'They have Hamlets, but we have, so far,
only Karamazovs!' That was cleverly said!"

"That was to propitiate the liberals. He is afraid of them."

"Yes, and he is afraid of the lawyer, too."

"Yes, what will Fetyukovitch say?"

"Whatever he says, he won't get round our peasants."

"Don't you think so?"

A fourth group:

"What he said about the troika was good, that piece about the other
nations."

"And that was true what he said about other nations not standing it."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, in the English Parliament a Member got up last week and speaking
about the Nihilists asked the Ministry whether it was not high time to
intervene, to educate this barbarous people. Ippolit was thinking of him,
I know he was. He was talking about that last week."

"Not an easy job."

"Not an easy job? Why not?"

"Why, we'd shut up Kronstadt and not let them have any corn. Where would
they get it?"

"In America. They get it from America now."

"Nonsense!"

But the bell rang, all rushed to their places. Fetyukovitch mounted the
tribune.

Phew. Now you've made it through Chapters 6 through 8 and have finally arrived at the final part of the prosecutor's closing statement. Kirillovich describes the events at Mokroye. He depicts Dmitri as someone who thought his world had ended and his romantic hopes were dashed until he arrived at Mokroye. There, according to Kirillovich, he realized that he still had a chance with Grushenka. Reunited with her, his desire to live is rekindled. The reason the investigators found only 1,500 roubles on him is that he stashed the rest of the money in some secret hole at the inn. Kirillovich claims that Dmitri's desire to live fuels his absurd stories during his interrogation at Mokroye. When confronted with the seemingly trivial but damning detail that the gate to his father's house was open, Dmitri desperately came up with the fiction of the amulet and Smerdyakov's murdering his father. Kirillovich then begs the jury to save Russia and convict Dmitri for the murder of his father. His speech over, Kirillovich leaves the courtroom immediately and nearly faints in the next room. The chapter ends with chatter in the courtroom during a brief, twenty-minute break, before the defense attorney begins his speech.

Psychology at Full Steam. The Galloping Troika. The Finale of the Prosecutor's Speech Kirrillovich exhorts the jury to punish Dmitri to defend the cause of justice in Russia, and to annihilate the perpetrator of the most hateful crime imaginable--the murder of a father by a son


Chapter X. The Speech For The Defense. An Argument That Cuts Both Ways

All was hushed as the first words of the famous orator rang out. The eyes
of the audience were fastened upon him. He began very simply and directly,
with an air of conviction, but not the slightest trace of conceit. He made
no attempt at eloquence, at pathos, or emotional phrases. He was like a
man speaking in a circle of intimate and sympathetic friends. His voice
was a fine one, sonorous and sympathetic, and there was something genuine
and simple in the very sound of it. But every one realized at once that
the speaker might suddenly rise to genuine pathos and "pierce the heart
with untold power." His language was perhaps more irregular than Ippolit
Kirillovitch's, but he spoke without long phrases, and indeed, with more
precision. One thing did not please the ladies: he kept bending forward,
especially at the beginning of his speech, not exactly bowing, but as
though he were about to dart at his listeners, bending his long spine in
half, as though there were a spring in the middle that enabled him to bend
almost at right angles.

At the beginning of his speech he spoke rather disconnectedly, without
system, one may say, dealing with facts separately, though, at the end,
these facts formed a whole. His speech might be divided into two parts,
the first consisting of criticism in refutation of the charge, sometimes
malicious and sarcastic. But in the second half he suddenly changed his
tone, and even his manner, and at once rose to pathos. The audience seemed
on the look-out for it, and quivered with enthusiasm.

He went straight to the point, and began by saying that although he
practiced in Petersburg, he had more than once visited provincial towns to
defend prisoners, of whose innocence he had a conviction or at least a
preconceived idea. "That is what has happened to me in the present case,"
he explained. "From the very first accounts in the newspapers I was struck
by something which strongly prepossessed me in the prisoner's favor. What
interested me most was a fact which often occurs in legal practice, but
rarely, I think, in such an extreme and peculiar form as in the present
case. I ought to formulate that peculiarity only at the end of my speech,
but I will do so at the very beginning, for it is my weakness to go to
work directly, not keeping my effects in reserve and economizing my
material. That may be imprudent on my part, but at least it's sincere.
What I have in my mind is this: there is an overwhelming chain of evidence
against the prisoner, and at the same time not one fact that will stand
criticism, if it is examined separately. As I followed the case more
closely in the papers my idea was more and more confirmed, and I suddenly
received from the prisoner's relatives a request to undertake his defense.
I at once hurried here, and here I became completely convinced. It was to
break down this terrible chain of facts, and to show that each piece of
evidence taken separately was unproved and fantastic, that I undertook the
case."

So Fetyukovitch began.

"Gentlemen of the jury," he suddenly protested, "I am new to this
district. I have no preconceived ideas. The prisoner, a man of turbulent
and unbridled temper, has not insulted me. But he has insulted perhaps
hundreds of persons in this town, and so prejudiced many people against
him beforehand. Of course I recognize that the moral sentiment of local
society is justly excited against him. The prisoner is of turbulent and
violent temper. Yet he was received in society here; he was even welcome
in the family of my talented friend, the prosecutor."

(N.B. At these words there were two or three laughs in the audience,
quickly suppressed, but noticed by all. All of us knew that the prosecutor
received Mitya against his will, solely because he had somehow interested
his wife--a lady of the highest virtue and moral worth, but fanciful,
capricious, and fond of opposing her husband, especially in trifles.
Mitya's visits, however, had not been frequent.)

"Nevertheless I venture to suggest," Fetyukovitch continued, "that in
spite of his independent mind and just character, my opponent may have
formed a mistaken prejudice against my unfortunate client. Oh, that is so
natural; the unfortunate man has only too well deserved such prejudice.
Outraged morality, and still more outraged taste, is often relentless. We
have, in the talented prosecutor's speech, heard a stern analysis of the
prisoner's character and conduct, and his severe critical attitude to the
case was evident. And, what's more, he went into psychological subtleties
into which he could not have entered, if he had the least conscious and
malicious prejudice against the prisoner. But there are things which are
even worse, even more fatal in such cases, than the most malicious and
consciously unfair attitude. It is worse if we are carried away by the
artistic instinct, by the desire to create, so to speak, a romance,
especially if God has endowed us with psychological insight. Before I
started on my way here, I was warned in Petersburg, and was myself aware,
that I should find here a talented opponent whose psychological insight
and subtlety had gained him peculiar renown in legal circles of recent
years. But profound as psychology is, it's a knife that cuts both ways."
(Laughter among the public.) "You will, of course, forgive me my
comparison; I can't boast of eloquence. But I will take as an example any
point in the prosecutor's speech.

"The prisoner, running away in the garden in the dark, climbed over the
fence, was seized by the servant, and knocked him down with a brass
pestle. Then he jumped back into the garden and spent five minutes over
the man, trying to discover whether he had killed him or not. And the
prosecutor refuses to believe the prisoner's statement that he ran to old
Grigory out of pity. 'No,' he says, 'such sensibility is impossible at
such a moment, that's unnatural; he ran to find out whether the only
witness of his crime was dead or alive, and so showed that he had
committed the murder, since he would not have run back for any other
reason.'

"Here you have psychology; but let us take the same method and apply it to
the case the other way round, and our result will be no less probable. The
murderer, we are told, leapt down to find out, as a precaution, whether
the witness was alive or not, yet he had left in his murdered father's
study, as the prosecutor himself argues, an amazing piece of evidence in
the shape of a torn envelope, with an inscription that there had been
three thousand roubles in it. 'If he had carried that envelope away with
him, no one in the world would have known of that envelope and of the
notes in it, and that the money had been stolen by the prisoner.' Those
are the prosecutor's own words. So on one side you see a complete absence
of precaution, a man who has lost his head and run away in a fright,
leaving that clew on the floor, and two minutes later, when he has killed
another man, we are entitled to assume the most heartless and calculating
foresight in him. But even admitting this was so, it is psychological
subtlety, I suppose, that discerns that under certain circumstances I
become as bloodthirsty and keen-sighted as a Caucasian eagle, while at the
next I am as timid and blind as a mole. But if I am so bloodthirsty and
cruelly calculating that when I kill a man I only run back to find out
whether he is alive to witness against me, why should I spend five minutes
looking after my victim at the risk of encountering other witnesses? Why
soak my handkerchief, wiping the blood off his head so that it may be
evidence against me later? If he were so cold-hearted and calculating, why
not hit the servant on the head again and again with the same pestle so as
to kill him outright and relieve himself of all anxiety about the witness?

"Again, though he ran to see whether the witness was alive, he left
another witness on the path, that brass pestle which he had taken from the
two women, and which they could always recognize afterwards as theirs, and
prove that he had taken it from them. And it is not as though he had
forgotten it on the path, dropped it through carelessness or haste, no, he
had flung away his weapon, for it was found fifteen paces from where
Grigory lay. Why did he do so? Just because he was grieved at having
killed a man, an old servant; and he flung away the pestle with a curse,
as a murderous weapon. That's how it must have been, what other reason
could he have had for throwing it so far? And if he was capable of feeling
grief and pity at having killed a man, it shows that he was innocent of
his father's murder. Had he murdered him, he would never have run to
another victim out of pity; then he would have felt differently; his
thoughts would have been centered on self-preservation. He would have had
none to spare for pity, that is beyond doubt. On the contrary, he would
have broken his skull instead of spending five minutes looking after him.
There was room for pity and good-feeling just because his conscience had
been clear till then. Here we have a different psychology. I have
purposely resorted to this method, gentlemen of the jury, to show that you
can prove anything by it. It all depends on who makes use of it.
Psychology lures even most serious people into romancing, and quite
unconsciously. I am speaking of the abuse of psychology, gentlemen."

Sounds of approval and laughter, at the expense of the prosecutor, were
again audible in the court. I will not repeat the speech in detail; I will
only quote some passages from it, some leading points.

Like Chapters 6-9, Chapters 10-13 consist entirely in the defense attorney's speech, with little action, if any. We give you the basic rundown of the speech over the next four chapters. In contrast to the prosecutor, Fetyukovich is quite calm, and everyone in the courtroom is impressed with his eloquence. Fetyukovich puts forward his argument that while all of the details the prosecutor presented seem convincing when taken as a whole, not one of the details can be held up as a concrete, indisputable fact. Every detail can be questioned or challenged in some way. Fetyukovich describes the prosecutor's use of psychology as a "stick with two ends": psychology can justify two contradictory explanations of the same thing. So on one hand the prosecutor says Dmitri recklessly left an envelope on his father's bedroom floor in his mad rush. On the other hand, he says Dmitri was methodical in making sure that Grigory was dead. Psychology paints Dmitri as both reckless and methodical at the same time. How can that be, Fetyukovich asks? Fetyukovich gets a few chuckles from the courtroom here, then he moves on.

The Defense Attorney's Speech. A Stick with Two Ends Fetyukovich counters by pointing out the flimsiness of all the evidence against Dmitri. Apart from circumstance and the conjecture of unreliable witnesses, there is no proof that Dmitri is guilty


Chapter XI. There Was No Money. There Was No Robbery

There was one point that struck every one in Fetyukovitch's speech. He
flatly denied the existence of the fatal three thousand roubles, and
consequently, the possibility of their having been stolen.

"Gentlemen of the jury," he began. "Every new and unprejudiced observer
must be struck by a characteristic peculiarity in the present case,
namely, the charge of robbery, and the complete impossibility of proving
that there was anything to be stolen. We are told that money was
stolen--three thousand roubles--but whether those roubles ever existed,
nobody knows. Consider, how have we heard of that sum, and who has seen
the notes? The only person who saw them, and stated that they had been put
in the envelope, was the servant, Smerdyakov. He had spoken of it to the
prisoner and his brother, Ivan Fyodorovitch, before the catastrophe.
Madame Svyetlov, too, had been told of it. But not one of these three
persons had actually seen the notes, no one but Smerdyakov had seen them.

"Here the question arises, if it's true that they did exist, and that
Smerdyakov had seen them, when did he see them for the last time? What if
his master had taken the notes from under his bed and put them back in his
cash-box without telling him? Note, that according to Smerdyakov's story
the notes were kept under the mattress; the prisoner must have pulled them
out, and yet the bed was absolutely unrumpled; that is carefully recorded
in the protocol. How could the prisoner have found the notes without
disturbing the bed? How could he have helped soiling with his blood-
stained hands the fine and spotless linen with which the bed had been
purposely made?

"But I shall be asked: What about the envelope on the floor? Yes, it's
worth saying a word or two about that envelope. I was somewhat surprised
just now to hear the highly talented prosecutor declare of himself--of
himself, observe--that but for that envelope, but for its being left on the
floor, no one in the world would have known of the existence of that
envelope and the notes in it, and therefore of the prisoner's having
stolen it. And so that torn scrap of paper is, by the prosecutor's own
admission, the sole proof on which the charge of robbery rests, 'otherwise
no one would have known of the robbery, nor perhaps even of the money.'
But is the mere fact that that scrap of paper was lying on the floor a
proof that there was money in it, and that that money had been stolen?
Yet, it will be objected, Smerdyakov had seen the money in the envelope.
But when, when had he seen it for the last time, I ask you that? I talked
to Smerdyakov, and he told me that he had seen the notes two days before
the catastrophe. Then why not imagine that old Fyodor Pavlovitch, locked
up alone in impatient and hysterical expectation of the object of his
adoration, may have whiled away the time by breaking open the envelope and
taking out the notes. 'What's the use of the envelope?' he may have asked
himself. 'She won't believe the notes are there, but when I show her the
thirty rainbow-colored notes in one roll, it will make more impression,
you may be sure, it will make her mouth water.' And so he tears open the
envelope, takes out the money, and flings the envelope on the floor,
conscious of being the owner and untroubled by any fears of leaving
evidence.

"Listen, gentlemen, could anything be more likely than this theory and
such an action? Why is it out of the question? But if anything of the sort
could have taken place, the charge of robbery falls to the ground; if
there was no money, there was no theft of it. If the envelope on the floor
may be taken as evidence that there had been money in it, why may I not
maintain the opposite, that the envelope was on the floor because the
money had been taken from it by its owner?

"But I shall be asked what became of the money if Fyodor Pavlovitch took
it out of the envelope since it was not found when the police searched the
house? In the first place, part of the money was found in the cash-box,
and secondly, he might have taken it out that morning or the evening
before to make some other use of it, to give or send it away; he may have
changed his idea, his plan of action completely, without thinking it
necessary to announce the fact to Smerdyakov beforehand. And if there is
the barest possibility of such an explanation, how can the prisoner be so
positively accused of having committed murder for the sake of robbery, and
of having actually carried out that robbery? This is encroaching on the
domain of romance. If it is maintained that something has been stolen, the
thing must be produced, or at least its existence must be proved beyond
doubt. Yet no one had ever seen these notes.

"Not long ago in Petersburg a young man of eighteen, hardly more than a
boy, who carried on a small business as a costermonger, went in broad
daylight into a moneychanger's shop with an ax, and with extraordinary,
typical audacity killed the master of the shop and carried off fifteen
hundred roubles. Five hours later he was arrested, and, except fifteen
roubles he had already managed to spend, the whole sum was found on him.
Moreover, the shopman, on his return to the shop after the murder,
informed the police not only of the exact sum stolen, but even of the
notes and gold coins of which that sum was made up, and those very notes
and coins were found on the criminal. This was followed by a full and
genuine confession on the part of the murderer. That's what I call
evidence, gentlemen of the jury! In that case I know, I see, I touch the
money, and cannot deny its existence. Is it the same in the present case?
And yet it is a question of life and death.

"Yes, I shall be told, but he was carousing that night, squandering money;
he was shown to have had fifteen hundred roubles--where did he get the
money? But the very fact that only fifteen hundred could be found, and the
other half of the sum could nowhere be discovered, shows that that money
was not the same, and had never been in any envelope. By strict
calculation of time it was proved at the preliminary inquiry that the
prisoner ran straight from those women servants to Perhotin's without
going home, and that he had been nowhere. So he had been all the time in
company and therefore could not have divided the three thousand in half
and hidden half in the town. It's just this consideration that has led the
prosecutor to assume that the money is hidden in some crevice at Mokroe.
Why not in the dungeons of the castle of Udolpho, gentlemen? Isn't this
supposition really too fantastic and too romantic? And observe, if that
supposition breaks down, the whole charge of robbery is scattered to the
winds, for in that case what could have become of the other fifteen
hundred roubles? By what miracle could they have disappeared, since it's
proved the prisoner went nowhere else? And we are ready to ruin a man's
life with such tales!

"I shall be told that he could not explain where he got the fifteen
hundred that he had, and every one knew that he was without money before
that night. Who knew it, pray? The prisoner has made a clear and
unflinching statement of the source of that money, and if you will have it
so, gentlemen of the jury, nothing can be more probable than that
statement, and more consistent with the temper and spirit of the prisoner.
The prosecutor is charmed with his own romance. A man of weak will, who
had brought himself to take the three thousand so insultingly offered by
his betrothed, could not, we are told, have set aside half and sewn it up,
but would, even if he had done so, have unpicked it every two days and
taken out a hundred, and so would have spent it all in a month. All this,
you will remember, was put forward in a tone that brooked no
contradiction. But what if the thing happened quite differently? What if
you've been weaving a romance, and about quite a different kind of man?
That's just it, you have invented quite a different man!

"I shall be told, perhaps, there are witnesses that he spent on one day
all that three thousand given him by his betrothed a month before the
catastrophe, so he could not have divided the sum in half. But who are
these witnesses? The value of their evidence has been shown in court
already. Besides, in another man's hand a crust always seems larger, and
no one of these witnesses counted that money; they all judged simply at
sight. And the witness Maximov has testified that the prisoner had twenty
thousand in his hand. You see, gentlemen of the jury, psychology is a two-
edged weapon. Let me turn the other edge now and see what comes of it.

"A month before the catastrophe the prisoner was entrusted by Katerina
Ivanovna with three thousand roubles to send off by post. But the question
is: is it true that they were entrusted to him in such an insulting and
degrading way as was proclaimed just now? The first statement made by the
young lady on the subject was different, perfectly different. In the
second statement we heard only cries of resentment and revenge, cries of
long-concealed hatred. And the very fact that the witness gave her first
evidence incorrectly, gives us a right to conclude that her second piece
of evidence may have been incorrect also. The prosecutor will not, dare
not (his own words) touch on that story. So be it. I will not touch on it
either, but will only venture to observe that if a lofty and high-
principled person, such as that highly respected young lady unquestionably
is, if such a person, I say, allows herself suddenly in court to
contradict her first statement, with the obvious motive of ruining the
prisoner, it is clear that this evidence has been given not impartially,
not coolly. Have not we the right to assume that a revengeful woman might
have exaggerated much? Yes, she may well have exaggerated, in particular,
the insult and humiliation of her offering him the money. No, it was
offered in such a way that it was possible to take it, especially for a
man so easy-going as the prisoner, above all, as he expected to receive
shortly from his father the three thousand roubles that he reckoned was
owing to him. It was unreflecting of him, but it was just his
irresponsible want of reflection that made him so confident that his
father would give him the money, that he would get it, and so could always
dispatch the money entrusted to him and repay the debt.

"But the prosecutor refuses to allow that he could the same day have set
aside half the money and sewn it up in a little bag. That's not his
character, he tells us, he couldn't have had such feelings. But yet he
talked himself of the broad Karamazov nature; he cried out about the two
extremes which a Karamazov can contemplate at once. Karamazov is just such
a two-sided nature, fluctuating between two extremes, that even when moved
by the most violent craving for riotous gayety, he can pull himself up, if
something strikes him on the other side. And on the other side is
love--that new love which had flamed up in his heart, and for that love he
needed money; oh, far more than for carousing with his mistress. If she
were to say to him, 'I am yours, I won't have Fyodor Pavlovitch,' then he
must have money to take her away. That was more important than carousing.
Could a Karamazov fail to understand it? That anxiety was just what he was
suffering from--what is there improbable in his laying aside that money and
concealing it in case of emergency?

"But time passed, and Fyodor Pavlovitch did not give the prisoner the
expected three thousand; on the contrary, the latter heard that he meant
to use this sum to seduce the woman he, the prisoner, loved. 'If Fyodor
Pavlovitch doesn't give the money,' he thought, 'I shall be put in the
position of a thief before Katerina Ivanovna.' And then the idea presented
itself to him that he would go to Katerina Ivanovna, lay before her the
fifteen hundred roubles he still carried round his neck, and say, 'I am a
scoundrel, but not a thief.' So here we have already a twofold reason why
he should guard that sum of money as the apple of his eye, why he
shouldn't unpick the little bag, and spend it a hundred at a time. Why
should you deny the prisoner a sense of honor? Yes, he has a sense of
honor, granted that it's misplaced, granted it's often mistaken, yet it
exists and amounts to a passion, and he has proved that.

"But now the affair becomes even more complex; his jealous torments reach
a climax, and those same two questions torture his fevered brain more and
more: 'If I repay Katerina Ivanovna, where can I find the means to go off
with Grushenka?' If he behaved wildly, drank, and made disturbances in the
taverns in the course of that month, it was perhaps because he was
wretched and strained beyond his powers of endurance. These two questions
became so acute that they drove him at last to despair. He sent his
younger brother to beg for the last time for the three thousand roubles,
but without waiting for a reply, burst in himself and ended by beating the
old man in the presence of witnesses. After that he had no prospect of
getting it from any one; his father would not give it him after that
beating.

"The same evening he struck himself on the breast, just on the upper part
of the breast where the little bag was, and swore to his brother that he
had the means of not being a scoundrel, but that still he would remain a
scoundrel, for he foresaw that he would not use that means, that he
wouldn't have the character, that he wouldn't have the will-power to do
it. Why, why does the prosecutor refuse to believe the evidence of Alexey
Karamazov, given so genuinely and sincerely, so spontaneously and
convincingly? And why, on the contrary, does he force me to believe in
money hidden in a crevice, in the dungeons of the castle of Udolpho?

"The same evening, after his talk with his brother, the prisoner wrote
that fatal letter, and that letter is the chief, the most stupendous proof
of the prisoner having committed robbery! 'I shall beg from every one, and
if I don't get it I shall murder my father and shall take the envelope
with the pink ribbon on it from under his mattress as soon as Ivan has
gone.' A full program of the murder, we are told, so it must have been he.
'It has all been done as he wrote,' cries the prosecutor.

"But in the first place, it's the letter of a drunken man and written in
great irritation; secondly, he writes of the envelope from what he has
heard from Smerdyakov again, for he has not seen the envelope himself; and
thirdly, he wrote it indeed, but how can you prove that he did it? Did the
prisoner take the envelope from under the pillow, did he find the money,
did that money exist indeed? And was it to get money that the prisoner ran
off, if you remember? He ran off post-haste not to steal, but to find out
where she was, the woman who had crushed him. He was not running to carry
out a program, to carry out what he had written, that is, not for an act
of premeditated robbery, but he ran suddenly, spontaneously, in a jealous
fury. Yes! I shall be told, but when he got there and murdered him he
seized the money, too. But did he murder him after all? The charge of
robbery I repudiate with indignation. A man cannot be accused of robbery,
if it's impossible to state accurately what he has stolen; that's an
axiom. But did he murder him without robbery, did he murder him at all? Is
that proved? Isn't that, too, a romance?"

Fetyukovich next tackles the question of the money. To put it bluntly, where is it? No one, Fetyukovich points out, can confirm actually having seen Fyodor Karamazov put the money in the so-called envelope. If the money never existed, then Dmitri couldn't have stolen it. Fetyukovich dismisses Kirillovich's conjecture that Dmitri hid it in some secret crevice in the inn as pure fantasy. Fetyukovich then explains Katerina's conflicting testimony as the impulsive utterances of a vengeful woman. This is kind of clever, because if someone as well-respected as Katerina can be both lofty and petty at the same time, Dmitri, too, can have contradictory impulses toward both honor and utter disgracefulness. On the question of Katerina's letter, Fetyukovich points out how closely Dmitri's words about the envelope echo the way that Smerdyakov talks about the letter, suggesting that Dmitri, like everyone else, only knew about the money secondhand, from Smerdyakov.

There Was No Money. There Was No Robbery Fetyukovich continues his summation. He points out that there is not even any proof that Fyodor Pavlovich kept an envelope full of 3,000 rubles; it is only a rumor. The letter that Dmitri wrote to Katerina was written drunkenly and under extreme emotional torment, and cannot be taken as a statement of Dmitri's real intention


Chapter XII. And There Was No Murder Either

"Allow me, gentlemen of the jury, to remind you that a man's life is at
stake and that you must be careful. We have heard the prosecutor himself
admit that until to-day he hesitated to accuse the prisoner of a full and
conscious premeditation of the crime; he hesitated till he saw that fatal
drunken letter which was produced in court to-day. 'All was done as
written.' But, I repeat again, he was running to her, to seek her, solely
to find out where she was. That's a fact that can't be disputed. Had she
been at home, he would not have run away, but would have remained at her
side, and so would not have done what he promised in the letter. He ran
unexpectedly and accidentally, and by that time very likely he did not
even remember his drunken letter. 'He snatched up the pestle,' they say,
and you will remember how a whole edifice of psychology was built on that
pestle--why he was bound to look at that pestle as a weapon, to snatch it
up, and so on, and so on. A very commonplace idea occurs to me at this
point: What if that pestle had not been in sight, had not been lying on
the shelf from which it was snatched by the prisoner, but had been put
away in a cupboard? It would not have caught the prisoner's eye, and he
would have run away without a weapon, with empty hands, and then he would
certainly not have killed any one. How then can I look upon the pestle as
a proof of premeditation?

"Yes, but he talked in the taverns of murdering his father, and two days
before, on the evening when he wrote his drunken letter, he was quiet and
only quarreled with a shopman in the tavern, because a Karamazov could not
help quarreling, forsooth! But my answer to that is, that, if he was
planning such a murder in accordance with his letter, he certainly would
not have quarreled even with a shopman, and probably would not have gone
into the tavern at all, because a person plotting such a crime seeks quiet
and retirement, seeks to efface himself, to avoid being seen and heard,
and that not from calculation, but from instinct. Gentlemen of the jury,
the psychological method is a two-edged weapon, and we, too, can use it.
As for all this shouting in taverns throughout the month, don't we often
hear children, or drunkards coming out of taverns shout, 'I'll kill you'?
but they don't murder any one. And that fatal letter--isn't that simply
drunken irritability, too? Isn't that simply the shout of the brawler
outside the tavern, 'I'll kill you! I'll kill the lot of you!' Why not,
why could it not be that? What reason have we to call that letter 'fatal'
rather than absurd? Because his father has been found murdered, because a
witness saw the prisoner running out of the garden with a weapon in his
hand, and was knocked down by him: therefore, we are told, everything was
done as he had planned in writing, and the letter was not 'absurd,' but
'fatal.'

"Now, thank God! we've come to the real point: 'since he was in the
garden, he must have murdered him.' In those few words: 'since he _was_,
then he _must_' lies the whole case for the prosecution. He was there, so
he must have. And what if there is no _must_ about it, even if he was
there? Oh, I admit that the chain of evidence--the coincidences--are really
suggestive. But examine all these facts separately, regardless of their
connection. Why, for instance, does the prosecution refuse to admit the
truth of the prisoner's statement that he ran away from his father's
window? Remember the sarcasms in which the prosecutor indulged at the
expense of the respectful and 'pious' sentiments which suddenly came over
the murderer. But what if there were something of the sort, a feeling of
religious awe, if not of filial respect? 'My mother must have been praying
for me at that moment,' were the prisoner's words at the preliminary
inquiry, and so he ran away as soon as he convinced himself that Madame
Svyetlov was not in his father's house. 'But he could not convince himself
by looking through the window,' the prosecutor objects. But why couldn't
he? Why? The window opened at the signals given by the prisoner. Some word
might have been uttered by Fyodor Pavlovitch, some exclamation which
showed the prisoner that she was not there. Why should we assume
everything as we imagine it, as we make up our minds to imagine it? A
thousand things may happen in reality which elude the subtlest
imagination.

" 'Yes, but Grigory saw the door open and so the prisoner certainly was in
the house, therefore he killed him.' Now about that door, gentlemen of the
jury.... Observe that we have only the statement of one witness as to that
door, and he was at the time in such a condition, that-- But supposing the
door was open; supposing the prisoner has lied in denying it, from an
instinct of self-defense, natural in his position; supposing he did go
into the house--well, what then? How does it follow that because he was
there he committed the murder? He might have dashed in, run through the
rooms; might have pushed his father away; might have struck him; but as
soon as he had made sure Madame Svyetlov was not there, he may have run
away rejoicing that she was not there and that he had not killed his
father. And it was perhaps just because he had escaped from the temptation
to kill his father, because he had a clear conscience and was rejoicing at
not having killed him, that he was capable of a pure feeling, the feeling
of pity and compassion, and leapt off the fence a minute later to the
assistance of Grigory after he had, in his excitement, knocked him down.

"With terrible eloquence the prosecutor has described to us the dreadful
state of the prisoner's mind at Mokroe when love again lay before him
calling him to new life, while love was impossible for him because he had
his father's bloodstained corpse behind him and beyond that
corpse--retribution. And yet the prosecutor allowed him love, which he
explained, according to his method, talking about his drunken condition,
about a criminal being taken to execution, about it being still far off,
and so on and so on. But again I ask, Mr. Prosecutor, have you not
invented a new personality? Is the prisoner so coarse and heartless as to
be able to think at that moment of love and of dodges to escape
punishment, if his hands were really stained with his father's blood? No,
no, no! As soon as it was made plain to him that she loved him and called
him to her side, promising him new happiness, oh! then, I protest he must
have felt the impulse to suicide doubled, trebled, and must have killed
himself, if he had his father's murder on his conscience. Oh, no! he would
not have forgotten where his pistols lay! I know the prisoner: the savage,
stony heartlessness ascribed to him by the prosecutor is inconsistent with
his character. He would have killed himself, that's certain. He did not
kill himself just because 'his mother's prayers had saved him,' and he was
innocent of his father's blood. He was troubled, he was grieving that
night at Mokroe only about old Grigory and praying to God that the old man
would recover, that his blow had not been fatal, and that he would not
have to suffer for it. Why not accept such an interpretation of the facts?
What trustworthy proof have we that the prisoner is lying?

"But we shall be told at once again, 'There is his father's corpse! If he
ran away without murdering him, who did murder him?' Here, I repeat, you
have the whole logic of the prosecution. Who murdered him, if not he?
There's no one to put in his place.

"Gentlemen of the jury, is that really so? Is it positively, actually true
that there is no one else at all? We've heard the prosecutor count on his
fingers all the persons who were in that house that night. They were five
in number; three of them, I agree, could not have been responsible--the
murdered man himself, old Grigory, and his wife. There are left then the
prisoner and Smerdyakov, and the prosecutor dramatically exclaims that the
prisoner pointed to Smerdyakov because he had no one else to fix on, that
had there been a sixth person, even a phantom of a sixth person, he would
have abandoned the charge against Smerdyakov at once in shame and have
accused that other. But, gentlemen of the jury, why may I not draw the
very opposite conclusion? There are two persons--the prisoner and
Smerdyakov. Why can I not say that you accuse my client, simply because
you have no one else to accuse? And you have no one else only because you
have determined to exclude Smerdyakov from all suspicion.

"It's true, indeed, Smerdyakov is accused only by the prisoner, his two
brothers, and Madame Svyetlov. But there are others who accuse him: there
are vague rumors of a question, of a suspicion, an obscure report, a
feeling of expectation. Finally, we have the evidence of a combination of
facts very suggestive, though, I admit, inconclusive. In the first place
we have precisely on the day of the catastrophe that fit, for the
genuineness of which the prosecutor, for some reason, has felt obliged to
make a careful defense. Then Smerdyakov's sudden suicide on the eve of the
trial. Then the equally startling evidence given in court to-day by the
elder of the prisoner's brothers, who had believed in his guilt, but has
to-day produced a bundle of notes and proclaimed Smerdyakov as the
murderer. Oh, I fully share the court's and the prosecutor's conviction
that Ivan Karamazov is suffering from brain fever, that his statement may
really be a desperate effort, planned in delirium, to save his brother by
throwing the guilt on the dead man. But again Smerdyakov's name is
pronounced, again there is a suggestion of mystery. There is something
unexplained, incomplete. And perhaps it may one day be explained. But we
won't go into that now. Of that later.

"The court has resolved to go on with the trial, but, meantime, I might
make a few remarks about the character-sketch of Smerdyakov drawn with
subtlety and talent by the prosecutor. But while I admire his talent I
cannot agree with him. I have visited Smerdyakov, I have seen him and
talked to him, and he made a very different impression on me. He was weak
in health, it is true; but in character, in spirit, he was by no means the
weak man the prosecutor has made him out to be. I found in him no trace of
the timidity on which the prosecutor so insisted. There was no simplicity
about him, either. I found in him, on the contrary, an extreme
mistrustfulness concealed under a mask of _naivete_, and an intelligence
of considerable range. The prosecutor was too simple in taking him for
weak-minded. He made a very definite impression on me: I left him with the
conviction that he was a distinctly spiteful creature, excessively
ambitious, vindictive, and intensely envious. I made some inquiries: he
resented his parentage, was ashamed of it, and would clench his teeth when
he remembered that he was the son of 'stinking Lizaveta.' He was
disrespectful to the servant Grigory and his wife, who had cared for him
in his childhood. He cursed and jeered at Russia. He dreamed of going to
France and becoming a Frenchman. He used often to say that he hadn't the
means to do so. I fancy he loved no one but himself and had a strangely
high opinion of himself. His conception of culture was limited to good
clothes, clean shirt-fronts and polished boots. Believing himself to be
the illegitimate son of Fyodor Pavlovitch (there is evidence of this), he
might well have resented his position, compared with that of his master's
legitimate sons. They had everything, he nothing. They had all the rights,
they had the inheritance, while he was only the cook. He told me himself
that he had helped Fyodor Pavlovitch to put the notes in the envelope. The
destination of that sum--a sum which would have made his career--must have
been hateful to him. Moreover, he saw three thousand roubles in new
rainbow-colored notes. (I asked him about that on purpose.) Oh, beware of
showing an ambitious and envious man a large sum of money at once! And it
was the first time he had seen so much money in the hands of one man. The
sight of the rainbow-colored notes may have made a morbid impression on
his imagination, but with no immediate results.

"The talented prosecutor, with extraordinary subtlety, sketched for us all
the arguments for and against the hypothesis of Smerdyakov's guilt, and
asked us in particular what motive he had in feigning a fit. But he may
not have been feigning at all, the fit may have happened quite naturally,
but it may have passed off quite naturally, and the sick man may have
recovered, not completely perhaps, but still regaining consciousness, as
happens with epileptics.

"The prosecutor asks at what moment could Smerdyakov have committed the
murder. But it is very easy to point out that moment. He might have waked
up from deep sleep (for he was only asleep--an epileptic fit is always
followed by a deep sleep) at that moment when the old Grigory shouted at
the top of his voice 'Parricide!' That shout in the dark and stillness may
have waked Smerdyakov whose sleep may have been less sound at the moment:
he might naturally have waked up an hour before.

"Getting out of bed, he goes almost unconsciously and with no definite
motive towards the sound to see what's the matter. His head is still
clouded with his attack, his faculties are half asleep; but, once in the
garden, he walks to the lighted windows and he hears terrible news from
his master, who would be, of course, glad to see him. His mind sets to
work at once. He hears all the details from his frightened master, and
gradually in his disordered brain there shapes itself an idea--terrible,
but seductive and irresistibly logical. To kill the old man, take the
three thousand, and throw all the blame on to his young master. A terrible
lust of money, of booty, might seize upon him as he realized his security
from detection. Oh! these sudden and irresistible impulses come so often
when there is a favorable opportunity, and especially with murderers who
have had no idea of committing a murder beforehand. And Smerdyakov may
have gone in and carried out his plan. With what weapon? Why, with any
stone picked up in the garden. But what for, with what object? Why, the
three thousand which means a career for him. Oh, I am not contradicting
myself--the money may have existed. And perhaps Smerdyakov alone knew where
to find it, where his master kept it. And the covering of the money--the
torn envelope on the floor?

"Just now, when the prosecutor was explaining his subtle theory that only
an inexperienced thief like Karamazov would have left the envelope on the
floor, and not one like Smerdyakov, who would have avoided leaving a piece
of evidence against himself, I thought as I listened that I was hearing
something very familiar, and, would you believe it, I have heard that very
argument, that very conjecture, of how Karamazov would have behaved,
precisely two days before, from Smerdyakov himself. What's more, it struck
me at the time. I fancied that there was an artificial simplicity about
him; that he was in a hurry to suggest this idea to me that I might fancy
it was my own. He insinuated it, as it were. Did he not insinuate the same
idea at the inquiry and suggest it to the talented prosecutor?

"I shall be asked, 'What about the old woman, Grigory's wife? She heard
the sick man moaning close by, all night.' Yes, she heard it, but that
evidence is extremely unreliable. I knew a lady who complained bitterly
that she had been kept awake all night by a dog in the yard. Yet the poor
beast, it appeared, had only yelped once or twice in the night. And that's
natural. If any one is asleep and hears a groan he wakes up, annoyed at
being waked, but instantly falls asleep again. Two hours later, again a
groan, he wakes up and falls asleep again; and the same thing again two
hours later--three times altogether in the night. Next morning the sleeper
wakes up and complains that some one has been groaning all night and
keeping him awake. And it is bound to seem so to him: the intervals of two
hours of sleep he does not remember, he only remembers the moments of
waking, so he feels he has been waked up all night.

"But why, why, asks the prosecutor, did not Smerdyakov confess in his last
letter? Why did his conscience prompt him to one step and not to both?
But, excuse me, conscience implies penitence, and the suicide may not have
felt penitence, but only despair. Despair and penitence are two very
different things. Despair may be vindictive and irreconcilable, and the
suicide, laying his hands on himself, may well have felt redoubled hatred
for those whom he had envied all his life.

"Gentlemen of the jury, beware of a miscarriage of justice! What is there
unlikely in all I have put before you just now? Find the error in my
reasoning; find the impossibility, the absurdity. And if there is but a
shade of possibility, but a shade of probability in my propositions, do
not condemn him. And is there only a shade? I swear by all that is sacred,
I fully believe in the explanation of the murder I have just put forward.
What troubles me and makes me indignant is that of all the mass of facts
heaped up by the prosecution against the prisoner, there is not a single
one certain and irrefutable. And yet the unhappy man is to be ruined by
the accumulation of these facts. Yes, the accumulated effect is awful: the
blood, the blood dripping from his fingers, the bloodstained shirt, the
dark night resounding with the shout 'Parricide!' and the old man falling
with a broken head. And then the mass of phrases, statements, gestures,
shouts! Oh! this has so much influence, it can so bias the mind; but,
gentlemen of the jury, can it bias your minds? Remember, you have been
given absolute power to bind and to loose, but the greater the power, the
more terrible its responsibility.

"I do not draw back one iota from what I have said just now, but suppose
for one moment I agreed with the prosecution that my luckless client had
stained his hands with his father's blood. This is only hypothesis, I
repeat; I never for one instant doubt of his innocence. But, so be it, I
assume that my client is guilty of parricide. Even so, hear what I have to
say. I have it in my heart to say something more to you, for I feel that
there must be a great conflict in your hearts and minds.... Forgive my
referring to your hearts and minds, gentlemen of the jury, but I want to
be truthful and sincere to the end. Let us all be sincere!"

At this point the speech was interrupted by rather loud applause. The last
words, indeed, were pronounced with a note of such sincerity that every
one felt that he really might have something to say, and that what he was
about to say would be of the greatest consequence. But the President,
hearing the applause, in a loud voice threatened to clear the court if
such an incident were repeated. Every sound was hushed and Fetyukovitch
began in a voice full of feeling quite unlike the tone he had used
hitherto.

In this portion of his speech, Fetyukovich sets out to establish a plausible explanation for Smerdyakov as Fyodor's murderer. After dismissing Grigory's testimony , Fetyukovich proceeds to tell the court about his own impressions on meeting Smerdyakov. In contrast to the prosecutor's description of Smerdyakov as a weak, bullied man, Fetyukovich paints a picture of him as a wily, spiteful man who knew exactly what he was doing when he set up Dmitri. Fetyukovich then points out that Smerdyakov had plenty of time to commit Fyodor's murder between the time Dmitri attacked Grigory and the time Grigory fully recovered consciousness. At this point Fetyukovich takes on a "heartfelt" voice, in contrast to the calm, sensible way he had proceeded thus far.

No Murder Either Finally, Fetyukovich says, even if Dmitri had killed Fyodor Pavlovich, he would not have been murdering his father, because the repugnant old man never acted as his father and forgot about the boy the moment he was born