Текст книги "The Brothers Karamazov"

Автор книги: Федор Достоевский

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Текущая страница: 42 (всего у книги 70 страниц)

And he sank down and, covering his face with both hands, burst into sobs. But they were happy tears. He collected himself at once. The old commissioner was very pleased, and so the jurists seemed to be, too: they felt that the interrogation was now entering a new phase. Having sent the commissioner off, Mitya became quite cheerful.

“Well, gentlemen, now I am yours, yours completely. And ... if only it weren’t for all these small details, we would come to an understanding at once. Again I’m talking about small details. I’m yours, gentlemen, but, I swear, we must have mutual trust—you in me, and I in you—otherwise we’ll never finish. I’m saying it for your sake. To business, gentlemen, to business, and above all don’t go digging around in my soul so much, don’t torment it with trifles, but keep to the point, to the facts, and I’ll satisfy you at once. Devil take the small details!”

So Mitya exclaimed. The interrogation began again.

Chapter 4: The Second Torment

“You would not believe how encouraged we are, Dmitri Fyodorovich, by this readiness of yours ... ,” Nikolai Parfenovich started saying, with an animated look and with visible pleasure shining in his big, protruding, pale gray, and, by the way, extremely myopic eyes, from which he had just removed his spectacles a moment before. “And you have made a very just observation concerning our mutual confidentiality, without which it is sometimes even impossible to proceed in matters of such importance, in the case and sense that the suspected person indeed wishes, hopes, and is able to vindicate himself. For our part, we shall do everything possible, and you have already been able to see how we are conducting this case ... Do you approve, Ippolit Kirillovich?” he suddenly turned to the prosecutor.

“Oh, indubitably,” the prosecutor approved, though somewhat drily compared with Nikolai Parfenovich’s outburst.

I will note once and for all that the newly arrived Nikolai Parfenovich, from the very beginning of his career among us, felt a marked respect for our Ippolit Kirillovich, the prosecutor, and became almost heart-to-heart friends with him. He was almost the only man who believed without reservation in the remarkable psychological and oratorical talents of our “passed-over” Ippolit Kirillovich, and also fully believed that he had indeed been passed over. He had heard of him while still in Petersburg. And in turn the young Nikolai Parfenovich happened to be the only man in the whole world whom our “passed-over” prosecutor came sincerely to love. On the way there they had had time to set up a few things and make arrangements for the impending case, and now, at the table, the sharp little mind of Nikolai Parfenovich caught on the wing and understood every indication, every movement in the face of his older colleague, from half a word, a look, a wink of the eye.

“Gentlemen, give me leave to tell my own story and do not interrupt me with trifles, and I will lay it all out for you in no time,” Mitya was seething.

“Excellent, sir. Thank you. But before we go on to hear your account, allow me simply to mention one more little fact, of great interest for us, namely, the ten roubles you borrowed yesterday, at around five o’clock, by pawning your pistols to your friend Pyotr Ilyich Perkhotin.”

“I pawned them, gentlemen, I pawned them for ten roubles, that’s all. What of it? As soon as I got back to town from my trip, I pawned them at once.”

“Got back? So you left town?”

“I did, gentlemen, I went thirty miles out of town, didn’t you know that?”

The prosecutor and Nikolai Parfenovich exchanged glances.

“Suppose you begin your story with a systematic description of your whole day yesterday, starting from the morning? Let us know, for example, why you left town, and precisely when you went and came back ... and all these facts ...”

“But you should have asked me that from the very beginning,” Mitya laughed loudly, “and, if you please, I should start not from yesterday but from the day before yesterday, from that morning; then you’ll understand where, how, and why I went or drove. The day before yesterday, gentlemen, I went to a local merchant, Samsonov, to borrow three thousand roubles from him on the best security—a sudden itch, gentlemen, a sudden itch...”

“Allow me to interrupt you,” the prosecutor interjected politely, “why did you so suddenly need precisely that amount, that is, three thousand roubles? “

“Eh, gentlemen, why pick on such little things: how, when, and why, and precisely this much money and not that much, and all that claptrap ... if you keep on, it’ll take you three volumes and an epilogue to cram it all in.”

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

“Gentlemen,” he caught himself, as it were, “don’t murmur against me for my bristliness. I ask you again: believe once more that I feel the utmost respect and fully understand the situation. And don’t think that I’m drunk. I’ve sobered up now. And it would be no hindrance if I were drunk, because:

Sober and wise, he’s stupid, Drunk and stupid, he’s wise.

That’s how I am. Ha, ha! I see, by the way, that it’s not proper for me to be cracking jokes with you yet—that is, before we’ve explained everything. Allow me to keep my dignity. I quite understand the present difference: I’m still sitting before you as a criminal, and, therefore, unequal to you in the highest degree, and your duty is to watch me: you really can’t pat me on the back for Grigory, one certainly can’t go breaking old men’s heads with impunity, you’ll probably try me and lock me up for, what, six months or a year in the penitentiary for that, or, I don’t know, whatever the sentence would be—but without loss of rights, it will be without loss of rights, won’t it, prosecutor? And so, gentlemen, I quite understand this difference ... But you must also agree that you could confuse even God himself with such questions: where I stepped, how I stepped, when I stepped, what I stepped in? I’ll get confused that way, and you’ll pick up every dropped stitch and write it down at once, and what will come of it? Nothing will come of it! And finally, since I’ve already begun telling my tale, I’ll finish it now, and you, gentlemen, being most noble and highly educated, will forgive me. I’ll end precisely with a request: you, gentlemen, must unlearn this official method of interrogation, I mean, first you begin, say, with something measly and insignificant: how did you get up, what did you eat, how did you spit, and ‘having lulled the criminal’s attention,’ you suddenly catch him with a stunning question: ‘Whom did you kill, whom did you rob?’ Ha, ha! That’s your official method, that’s your rule, that’s what all your cleverness is based on! You can lull peasants with your cleverness, but not me. I understand the system, I was in the service myself, ha, ha, ha! You’re not angry, are you, gentlemen? You’ll forgive my boldness?” he cried, looking at them with almost surprising good-naturedness. “Mitka Karamazov said it, so it’s excusable, because what would be inexcusable in an intelligent man is excusable in Mitka! Ha, ha!”

Nikolai Parfenovich listened and laughed, too. The prosecutor, though he did not laugh, was studying Mitya intently, without taking his eyes off him, as if not wishing to miss the least word, the least movement, the least twitch of the least little line on his face.

“Incidentally, that is how we began with you from the beginning,” Nikolai Parfenovich replied, still laughing, “not confusing you with questions about how you got up in the morning and what you ate, but beginning even from what is all too essential.”

“I understand, I understood and appreciated it, and I appreciate still more your present kindness to me, which is unprecedented, worthy of the noblest souls. We are three noble men come together here, and let everything with us be on the footing of mutual trust between educated and worldly men, bound by nobility and honor. In any case, allow me to look upon you as my best friends in this moment of my life, in this moment when my honor is humiliated! That’s no offense to you, is it, gentlemen?”

“On the contrary, you’ve expressed it all quite beautifully, Dmitri Fyodorovich,” Nikolai Parfenovich gravely and approvingly agreed.

“And away with little details, gentlemen, with all these pettifogging details,” Mitya delightedly exclaimed, “otherwise the devil knows what will come of it, isn’t that so?”

“I will follow your sensible advice completely,” the prosecutor suddenly mixed in, addressing Mitya. “However, I still do not withdraw my question. It is all too essentially necessary for us to know why precisely you needed such an amount—that is, precisely three thousand.” “Why I needed it? Well, for this and that ... well, to repay a debt.”

“To whom, precisely?”

“That I positively refuse to tell you, gentlemen! You see, it’s not that I cannot tell you, or don’t dare, or am afraid, because it’s all a paltry matter and perfectly trifling, no, but I won’t tell you on principle: it’s my private life, and I will not allow you to invade my private life. That is my principle. Your question is irrelevant to the case, and whatever is irrelevant to the case is my private life! I wanted to repay a debt, a debt of honor, but to whom I won’t say.”

“Allow us to write that down,” said the prosecutor.

“As you wish. Write down this: that I just won’t say. Write, gentlemen, that I would even consider it dishonorable to say. You’ve got lots of time for writing, haven’t you?”

“Allow me, dear sir, to caution you and remind you once more, in case you are still unaware of it,” the prosecutor said with particular and rather stern impressiveness, “that you have every right not to answer the questions that are put to you now, and we, on the contrary, have no right to extort answers from you, if you decline to answer for one reason or another. That is a matter of your personal consideration. On the other hand, in such a situation, it is our business to point out to you and explain the full extent of the harm you will be doing yourself by refusing to give this or that evidence. At which point I ask you to continue.”

“Gentlemen, I’m not angry ... I ... ,” Mitya started mumbling, somewhat taken aback by this reprimand, “you see, gentlemen, this Samsonov to whom I went then ...”

We shall not, of course, reproduce his detailed account of what is already known to the reader. The narrator was impatient to tell everything in the smallest particulars, and at the same time to get through it quickly. But his evidence was being written down as he gave it, and he therefore had necessarily to be stopped. Dmitri Fyodorovich objected but submitted, was angry, but so far good-naturedly. True, from time to time he cried out, “Gentlemen, this would exasperate the Lord God himself!” or “Gentlemen, do you know you’re irritating me for nothing?” but despite his exclamations, he still preserved his friendly and expansive mood. Thus he told them how Samsonov had “hoodwinked” him two days before. (He now realized fully that he had been hoodwinked then.) The sale of the watch for six roubles in order to get money for the road, which was still completely unknown to the district attorney and the prosecutor, at once aroused their greatest interest, and, to Mitya’s boundless indignation, they found it necessary to record this fact in detail, seeing in it a second confirmation of the circumstance that even a day before he had been almost without a kopeck. Little by little Mitya was becoming gloomy. Then, having described his trip to Lyagavy, the night spent in the fume-poisoned hut, and so on, he brought his story as far as his return to town, where he began on his own, without being specially asked, to describe in detail his jealous torments over Grushenka. He was listened to silently and attentively; they particularly went into the circumstance of his having long ago set up his lookout for Grushenka going to Fyodor Pavlovich in Maria Kondratievna’s backyard, and of Smerdyakov’s bringing him information: this was much noticed and written down. Of his jealousy he spoke ardently and extensively, and though inwardly ashamed at displaying his most intimate feelings, so to speak, “for general disgrace,” he obviously tried to overcome his shame for the sake of being truthful. The indifferent sternness of the district attorney’s and, especially, the prosecutor’s eyes, which they kept fixed on him during his account, disconcerted him in the end rather strongly: “This boy, Nikolai Parfenovich, with whom I exchanged some silly remarks about women only a few days ago, and this sickly prosecutor are not worthy of my telling them this,” flashed sadly through his mind. “Oh, shame! Be patient, humble, hold thy peace,’” ^[273]he concluded his thoughts with this line of verse, but still collected himself again in order to go on. Having come to the part about Madame Khokhlakov, he even brightened up again, and was even about to tell a certain recent anecdote, unrelated to the case, concerning the good lady, but the district attorney stopped him and politely suggested that they pass on “to more essential things.” Finally, having described his despair and told them of that moment when, as he walked out of Madame Khokhlakov’s, he had even had the thought of “quickly putting a knife into someone, just to get the three thousand,” he was stopped again, and it was recorded that “he wanted to put a knife into someone.” Mitya let them write it down without protest. Finally he came to the point in the story when he suddenly found out that Grushenka had deceived him and left Samsonov’s just after he brought her there, though she had told him she would stay until midnight. “If I didn’t kill this Fenya right then, gentlemen, it was only because I had no time,” suddenly escaped him at this place in the story. And this, too, was carefully written down. Mitya waited gloomily and was beginning to tell how he ran to his; father’s garden, when the district attorney suddenly stopped him, and, opening his large briefcase, which lay beside him on the sofa, took out of it a brass pestle.

“Are you familiar with this object?” he showed it to Mitya.

“Ah, yes!” Mitya grinned gloomily, “indeed I am! Let me see it ... Or don’t, devil take it!” “You forgot to mention it,” the district attorney observed.

“Ah, the devil! I wouldn’t hide it from you, we certainly couldn’t get along without it, don’t you agree? It just escaped my memory.”

“Be so good, then, as to tell us in detail how you came to arm yourself with it.”

“I’ll be so good, if you wish, gentlemen.”

And Mitya told how he took the pestle and ran.

“But what purpose did you have in mind in arming yourself with such an implement?”

“What purpose? No purpose! I just grabbed it and ran.”

“But why, if there was no purpose?”

Mitya was seething with vexation. He looked fixedly at the “boy” and grinned gloomily and maliciously. The thing was that he felt more and more ashamed at having just told “such people” the story of his jealousy, so sincerely and with such effusion.

“I spit on the pestle,” suddenly escaped him.

“Even so, sir.”

“So I grabbed it to keep off the dogs. Or because it was dark ... Or just in case.”

“And have you always been in the habit of taking some weapon with you when going out at night, since you are so afraid of the dark?”

“Agh, the devil, pah! Gentlemen, it’s literally impossible to talk to you!” Mitya cried out in the utmost annoyance, and turning to the clerk, all red with anger, with a sort of frenzied note in his voice, quickly said to him:

“Take this down right now ... right now ... ‘that I grabbed the pestle in order to run and kill my father, Fyodor Pavlovich ... by hitting him on the head’! Well, are you content now, gentlemen? Does that ease your hearts?” he said, staring defiantly at the prosecutor and the district attorney.

“We realize only too well that you have given such evidence just now because you are annoyed with us and vexed by the questions we put to you, which you regard as petty, and which in essence are quite essential,” the prosecutor answered him drily.

“But for pity’s sake, gentlemen! So I took the pestle ... So, what does one pick things up for in such cases? I don’t know. I snatched it and ran. That’s all. Shame on you, gentlemen– passons,or I swear I won’t say anything more!”

He leaned his elbow on the table and propped his head in his hand. He was sitting sideways to them, looking at the wall, and trying to overcome the bad feeling inside him. In fact, he really had a terrible urge to stand up and declare that he was not going to say another word, “even if you should take me out and hang me.” “You see, gentlemen,” he suddenly spoke, overcoming himself with difficulty, “you see. I’m listening to you and imagining ... You see, sometimes I dream a dream in my sleep ... one particular dream, and I often dream it, it keeps repeating itself, that someone is chasing me, someone I’m terribly afraid of is chasing me in the darkness, at night, looking for me, and I’m hiding from him somewhere behind a door or a wardrobe, hiding in a humiliating way, and moreover he knows perfectly well where I’m hiding, but he seems to pretend not to know where I am on purpose, in order to torment me longer, in order to revel in my fear ... That’s what you are doing now! It’s just the same!”

“Is that the sort of dreams you have?” the prosecutor inquired.

“Yes, I have such dreams ... Why, do you want to write it down?” Mitya grinned crookedly.

“No, sir, I do not want to write it down, but still you do have curious dreams.”

“This time it’s not a dream! Realism, gentlemen, the realism of actual life! I’m the wolf, you’re the hunters—so hunt the wolf down.”

“You shouldn’t make such comparisons ... ,” Nikolai Parfenovich began very gently.

“Why shouldn’t I, gentlemen, why shouldn’t I!” Mitya boiled up again, though he had apparently unburdened his soul with this outburst of sudden anger and was growing kinder again with every word. “You may disbelieve a criminal or a prisoner in the dock whom you’re tormenting with your questions, but to disbelieve the noblest man, gentlemen, the noblest impulses of the soul (I cry it boldly!)—no! that you cannot do ... you even have no right to ... but—

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

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

“Of course, if you’d be so good,” replied Nikolai Parfenovich.

Chapter 5: The Third Torment

Though Mitya began speaking sternly, he apparently was trying all the more not to forget or skip over the least detail in his account. He told how he had jumped over the fence into his father’s garden, how he went up to the window, and, finally, everything that took place under the window. Clearly, precisely, as though hammering it out, he spoke of the feelings that had troubled him during those moments in the garden, when he had wanted so terribly to know whether Grushenka was with his father or not. But, strangely, this time both the prosecutor and the district attorney somehow listened with terrible reserve, looked at him drily, asked far fewer questions. Mitya could gather nothing from their faces. “They’re angry and offended,” he thought, “well, devil take them!” When he told how he finally made up his mind to give his father the signal that Grushenka had come, so that he would open the window, the prosecutor and the district attorney paid no attention to the word “signal,” as if they had no idea at all of the word’s significance here; Mitya even noticed it. When he finally came to the moment when, seeing his father leaning out of the window, hatred boiled up in him and he snatched the pestle from his pocket, he suddenly stopped as if on purpose. He sat and looked at the wall, knowing they both had their eyes glued to him.

“Well, sir,” said the district attorney, “so you snatched out the weapon and ... and what then?”

“Then? Oh, then I killed him ... smashed him on the head and split his skull. That’s your version, is it!” he suddenly flashed his eyes. All the wrath that had almost died out in him suddenly rose up in his soul with extraordinary force.

“Ours,” Nikolai Parfenovich repeated, “well, and what is yours?”

Mitya lowered his eyes and was silent for a long time.

“My version, gentlemen, my version is this,” he began softly. “Whether it was someone’s tears, or God heard my mother’s prayers, or a bright spirit kissed me at that moment, I don’t know—but the devil was overcome. I dashed away from the window and ran to the fence. . . Father got frightened. He caught sight of me then for the first time, cried out, and jumped back from the window—I remember that very well. And I ran through the garden to the fence ... it was here that Grigory caught up with me, when I was already sitting on the fence ...”

At this point he finally raised his eyes to his listeners. They seemed to be looking at him with completely untroubled attention. A sort of twinge of indignation went through Mitya’s soul.

“But I see right now you’re laughing at me, gentlemen!” he suddenly interrupted.

“Why would you draw such a conclusion?” Nikolai Parfenovich remarked.

“You don’t believe a word of it, that’s why! I quite understand that I’ve come to the main point: the old man is now lying there with his head smashed in, and I—having tragically described how I wanted to kill him and how I already snatched out the pestle—I suddenly run away from the window ... A poem! In verse! Take the good man’s word for it! Ha, ha! You are scoffers, gentlemen!”

And he swung his whole body around on the chair so hard that the chair creaked.

“And did you notice,” the prosecutor began suddenly, as if paying no attention to Mitya’s excitement, “did you notice, when you ran away from the window, whether the door to the garden, at the other end of the house, was open or not?”

“No, it was not open.”

“It was not?”

“On the contrary, it was shut. Who could have opened it? Bah, the door– wait!” he suddenly seemed to collect himself and all but jumped up. “Did you find the door open?”

“Open.”

“But who could have opened it, if you didn’t open it yourselves?” Mitya was suddenly terribly surprised.

“The door was open, and your father’s murderer undoubtedly went in through that door and, having committed the murder, went out through the same door,” the prosecutor spoke slowly and distinctly, as though hammering out each word. “It is perfectly clear to us. The murder obviously took place , in the room, and not through the window,which is positively clear from the investigation carried out, from the position of the body, and everything else. There can be no doubt of that circumstance.”

Mitya was terribly astounded.

“But that’s impossible, gentlemen!” he cried out, completely at a loss. “I ... I didn’t go in . . .I tell you positively, with exactness, that the door was shut all the while I was in the garden and when I ran out of the garden. I just stood outside the window and saw him in the window, and that’s all, that’s all ... I remember it down to the last moment. And even if I didn’t remember, I know it anyway, because the signals were known only to me and Smerdyakov, and to him, the dead man, and without the signals he wouldn’t have opened the door to anyone in the world.”

“Signals? What kind of signals?” the prosecutor said with greedy, almost hysterical curiosity, and instantly lost all his reserved demeanor. He asked as if creeping up timidly. He scented an important fact, still unknown to him, and at once felt great fear that Mitya might not be willing to reveal it fully.

“So you didn’t even know?” Mitya winked at him, smiling mockingly and spitefully. “And what if I won’t tell you? Who will you find out from then? Only the dead man knew about the signals, and me, and Smerdyakov, that’s all, and heaven knew, too, but it won’t tell you. And it’s a curious little fact, one could build devil knows what on it, ha, ha! Take comfort, gentlemen, I’ll reveal it to you. You’ve got foolishness in your minds. You don’t know with whom you’re dealing! You’re dealing with a suspect who gives evidence against himself, who gives evidence that does him harm! Yes, sirs, for I am a knight of honor and you are not!”

The prosecutor swallowed all these pills; he was simply trembling with impatience to know about the new fact. Mitya gave them a precise and extensive account of everything to do with the signals invented by Fyodor Pavlovich for Smerdyakov, told them precisely what each knock on the window meant, even knocked out the signals on the table, and when asked by Nikolai Parfenovich whether it meant that he, Mitya, when he knocked on the old man’s window, had used precisely the signal meaning “Grushenka has come,” answered exactly that, yes, he had used precisely the signal meaning “Grushenka has come.”

“There you are, now build your tower!” Mitya broke off, and again turned away from them in contempt.

“And only your deceased parent, you, and the servant Smerdyakov knew about these signals? And no one else?” Nikolai Parfenovich inquired once again.

“Yes, the servant Smerdyakov, and heaven, too. Write that down about heaven, too; it’s worth writing down. And you’ll have need of God yourselves.”

Of course, they began writing it down, but while they were writing, the prosecutor, as if stumbling quite unexpectedly onto a new thought, suddenly said:

“But if Smerdyakov also knew about these signals, and you radically deny all accusations of your father’s death, then was it not he who, having given the agreed signal, got your father to unlock the door for him, and then ... committed the crime?”

Mitya gave him a deeply mocking and at the same time terribly hateful look. He stared at him long and silently, until the prosecutor began blinking his eyes.

“Caught the fox again!” Mitya spoke finally. “Pinched the rascal by the tail, heh, heh! I see right through you, prosecutor! You thought I’d jump up at once, snatch your prompting, and shout at the top of my lungs: ‘Aie, it’s Smerdyakov, he’s the murderer! ‘ Admit that’s what you thought, admit it, and then I’ll go on.”

But the prosecutor admitted nothing. He was silent and waited.

“You’re mistaken, I will not shout against Smerdyakov!” said Mitya.

“And you do not even suspect him at all?”

“Do you suspect him? “

“He is one of our suspects.”

Mitya planted his eyes on the floor.

“Joking aside,” he said gloomily, “listen: from the very beginning, almost from the moment when I ran out to you from behind the curtains tonight, this thought already flashed through me: ‘Smerdyakov! ‘ All the while I was sitting here at the table, shouting that I was not guilty of blood, I kept thinking: ‘Smerdyakov!’ And Smerdyakov would not let go of my soul. Finally, just now I suddenly had the same thought: ‘Smerdyakov,’ but only for a second; immediately, right next to it, came the thought: ‘No, not Smerdyakov! ‘ It’s not his doing, gentlemen.”

“In that case, do you suspect yet another person?” Nikolai Parfenovich asked guardedly.

“I don’t know who or what person, the hand of heaven or Satan, but. . not Smerdyakov!” Mitya snapped out resolutely.

“But why do you maintain so firmly and with such insistence that he is not the one?”

“From conviction. From impression. Because Smerdyakov is a man of the most abject nature and a coward. Not just a coward, but a conjunction of all cowardice in the world taken together, walking on two legs. He was born of a chicken. Every time he talked with me, he trembled for fear I might kill him, though I never even raised my hand. He fell at my feet and wept, he kissed these very boots of mine, literally, begging me not to ‘scare’ him. ‘Scare,’ do you hear?—what sort of word is that? And I even gave him presents. He’s a sickly, epileptic, feebleminded chicken, who could be thrashed by an eight-year-old boy. What sort of a character is that? No, not Smerdyakov, gentlemen—and he doesn’t care about money either, he never would take my presents ... Anyway,why would he kill the old man? You see he may be his son, his natural son, do you know that?”

“We have heard that legend. But after all, you, too, are your father’s son, and yet you told everyone you wanted to kill him.”

“A rock through my own window! And a low one, a nasty one! I’m not afraid. Oh, gentlemen, how mean of you to say that to my face! Mean, because I myself said it to you. I not only wanted to kill him, but I could well have killed him, and I voluntarily heaped it upon myself that I almost killed him! But I didn’t kill him, my guardian angel saved me—that’s what you haven’t taken into consideration ... And that is what makes it mean, mean! Because I didn’t kill him, I didn’t, I didn’t! Do you hear, prosecutor: I didn’t!”

He almost choked. Not once during the whole investigation had he been so agitated.

“And what has he told you, gentlemen—Smerdyakov, I mean?” he suddenly concluded, after a silence. “May I ask you that?”

“You may ask us anything,” the prosecutor replied with a cold and stern look, “anything concerning the factual side of the case, and it is our duty, I repeat, to satisfy your every question. We found the servant Smerdyakov, about whom you inquire, lying unconscious in his bed with a very severe attack of the falling sickness, which had recurred perhaps ten times in succession. The doctor who was with us examined the sick man and told us he might not even live till morning.”

“Well, in that case the devil killed my father!” suddenly escaped from Mitya, as if even up to that minute he had been asking himself: “Smerdyakov, or not Smerdyakov?”

“We shall return to this fact again,” Nikolai Parfenovich resolved, “and now wouldn’t you like to go on with your evidence?”

Mitya asked for a rest. It was politely granted. Having rested, he began to go on. But it was obviously difficult for him. He was worn out, insulted, and morally shaken. Besides, the prosecutor, now quite intentionally, began irritating him every moment by pestering him with “details.” As soon as Mitya described how, sitting astride the fence, he had hit Grigory, who was clutching his left leg, on the head with the pestle, and then jumped down at once to the stricken man, the prosecutor stopped him and asked him to describe in greater detail how he was sitting on the fence. Mitya was surprised.