Текст книги "The Brothers Karamazov"

Автор книги: Федор Достоевский

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“But again you are forgetting one circumstance,” the prosecutor observed, still with the same restraint, but now, as it were, triumphantly, “that there was no need to give the signals if the door was already open, when you were still there, while you were still in the garden...”

“The door, the door,” Mitya muttered, staring speechlessly at the prosecutor, and he sank down weakly on his chair again. Everyone fell silent.

“Yes, the door . . .! It’s a phantom! God is against me!” he exclaimed, staring before him with an altogether vacant look. “So you see,” the prosecutor spoke imposingly, “and judge for yourself now, Dmitri Fyodorovich: on one side there is this evidence of the open door from which you ran out, which overwhelms both you and us. And, on the other side, your inexplicable, persistent, and almost obdurate silence with regard to the source of the money that suddenly appeared in your hands, when only three hours prior to that sum, according to your own testimony, you pawned your pistols to get a mere ten roubles! In view of all this, decide for yourself: what should we believe, and where does it leave us? And do not hold a grudge against us for being ‘cold cynics and scoffers’ who are incapable of believing in the noble impulses of your soul ... Try, on the contrary, to understand our position as well ...”

Mitya was inconceivably agitated; he turned pale.

“All right!” he suddenly exclaimed, “I will reveal my secret to you, reveal where I got the money . . .! I will reveal my disgrace, so as not to blame either you or myself later on ...”

“And you may believe, Dmitri Fyodorovich,” Nikolai Parfenovich added, in a sort of tenderly joyful little voice, “that any sincere and full confession you make precisely at this moment, may afterwards contribute towards an immeasurable alleviation of your fate, and, moreover, may even ...”

But the prosecutor nudged him slightly under the table, and he managed to stop himself in time. Mitya, to tell the truth, was not listening to him.

Chapter 7: Mitya’s Great Secret. Met with Hisses

“Gentlemen,” he began in the same agitation, “the money ... I want to confess completely ... the money was mine.”

The prosecutor and the district attorney even pulled long faces: this was not at all what they expected.

“How can that be,” murmured Nikolai Parfenovich, “when at five o’clock in the afternoon, by your own admission ...”

“Eh, devil take five o’clock in the afternoon and my own admission, that’s not the point now! The money was mine, mine, that is, my stolen money . . not mine, that is, but stolen, stolen by me, and it was fifteen hundred, and I had it with me, I had it with me all the while ...”

“But where did you get it?”

“From around my neck, gentlemen, I got it from around my neck, from this very neck of mine ... It was here on my neck, sewn up in a rag and hanging on my neck; for a long time, a month already, I was carrying it on my neck with shame and disgrace!”

“But who did you ... appropriate it from?”

“Were you about to say ‘steal’? Let’s not mince words now. Yes, I consider it the same as if I’d stolen it—’appropriated,’ indeed, if you wish, but in my view I stole it. And last evening I stole it altogether.”

“Last evening? But you just said it was a month ago that you ... obtained it!”

“Yes, but not from my father, not from my father, don’t worry, I stole it not from my father, but from her. Let me speak and don’t interrupt. It’s hard. You see: a month ago, Katerina Ivanovna Verkhovtsev, my former fiancée, sent for me ... Do you know her?”

“Of course, sir, good heavens!”

“I know you know her. The noblest soul, the noblest of the noble, but who has hated me for a long time, oh, a long, long time ... and rightly so, rightly so!”

“Katerina Ivanovna?” the district attorney asked in surprise. The prosecutor also stared terribly.

“Oh, do not utter her name in vain! I’m a scoundrel to bring her into it. Yes, I saw that she hated me ... long ago ... from the very first, from that time in my rooms, already then ... But enough, enough, you’re even unworthy to know of that, there’s no need at all ... All you need to know is that she sent for me a month ago, handed me three thousand to send to her sister and some other relative in Moscow (as if she couldn’t have sent it herself! ), and I ... it was precisely at that fatal moment of my life when I ... well, in a word, when I had just fallen in love with the other one, her, the present one, she’s sitting downstairs now, Grushenka ... I carried her off here, to Mokroye, and in two days here I squandered half of that cursed three thousand, that is, fifteen hundred, and the other half I kept on me. Well, so the fifteen hundred that I kept, I wore here on my neck, in place of an amulet, and yesterday I got it out and squandered it. The eight hundred roubles left are now in your hands, Nikolai Parfenovich, that’s what’s left of yesterday’s fifteen hundred.”

“I beg your pardon, but how can that be, when you squandered three thousand here a month ago, not fifteen hundred, and everyone knows it?”

“Who knows it? Who counted? Did I let anyone count it?”

“Good heavens, but you yourself told everyone that you squandered exactly three thousand then.”

“True, I said it. I said it to the whole town, and the whole town said it, and everyone thought so, and here in Mokroye everyone thought the same, that it was three thousand. Yet I only squandered fifteen hundred, not three thousand, and the other fifteen hundred I sewed into an amulet; that’s how it was, gentlemen, and that’s where yesterday’s money came from...”

“It’s almost miraculous ... ,” murmured Nikolai Parfenovich.

“Allow me to ask,” the prosecutor spoke finally, “if there is someone at least whom you informed of this circumstance ... that is, that you kept this fifteen hundred with you then, a month ago?”

“I told no one.”

“That’s strange. No one at all, can it really be?”

“No one at all. Nobody and no one.”

“But why such reticence? What moved you to make such a secret of it? Let me explain myself more precisely: you have finally told us your secret, so ‘disgraceful,’ as you say, though as a matter of fact—I mean, of course, only relatively speaking– this action—namely, that is, the appropriation of another person’s three thousand roubles, and, no doubt, only temporarily—this action, in my opinion at least, is simply a highly thoughtless action, but not so disgraceful, considering, moreover, your character ... Well, let us say it is even a highly discreditable action, I agree, but still discreditable is not disgraceful ... What I’m driving at, in fact, is that during this month many people have already guessed about Miss Verkhovtsev’s three thousand, which you have spent, even without your confession—I have heard this legend myself ... Mikhail Makarovich, for instance, has also heard it. So that, ultimately, it is almost not a legend anymore, but the gossip of the whole town. Moreover, there are signs that you yourself, if I am not mistaken, confessed it to someone or other—namely, that is, that this money came from Miss Verkhovtsev ... And therefore I am all the more surprised that until now, that is, until this very present moment, you have attached such extraordinary secrecy to this fifteen hundred, which, as you say, you set aside, even connecting this secret of yours with some kind of horror ... It is incredible that such a secret should cost you such torment in confessing it ... for you were just shouting that penal servitude would be better than confessing it...”

The prosecutor fell silent. He was flushed. He did not conceal his vexation, almost spite, and poured out all he had stored up, not even caring about the beauty of his style, that is, confusedly and almost incoherently.

“The disgrace lay not in the fifteen hundred, but in my separating that fifteen hundred from the three thousand,” Mitya spoke firmly.

“But what,” the prosecutor smiled irritably, “what precisely is disgraceful about your having chosen to set aside half of the three thousand that you had already discreditably, or, if you wish, disgracefully taken? That you appropriated the three thousand is the main thing, not how you disposed of it. Incidentally, why exactly did you dispose of it that way, I mean, set aside that half? What for, with what purpose in mind—can you explain that to us?”

“Oh, but gentlemen, it is in that purpose that the whole force lies!” Mitya exclaimed. “I set it aside out of baseness—that is, out of calculation, because calculation in this case is baseness ... And this baseness went on for a whole month!”

“Incomprehensible.”

“You surprise me. But, anyway, let me explain further; perhaps it really is incomprehensible. Try to follow me. You see, I appropriate three thousand, entrusted to my honor, I go on a spree with it, I squander it all, the next morning I go to her and say: ‘Katya, I’m sorry, I squandered your three thousand’– well, is that nice? No, it’s not nice, it’s dishonest, cowardly, I’m a beast, a man with no more self-restraint than a beast, right, am I right? But still not a thief! Not an outright thief, not outright, you’ll agree! I squandered it, but I did not steal it! Now a second, even more favorable case—follow me, or I may get confused again—I’m somehow giddy—so, the second case: I go on a spree and spend only fifteen hundred out of the three thousand—half, in other words. The next day I go to her and bring her the other half: ‘Katya, take this half back from me, a villain and a thoughtless scoundrel, because I’ve already squandered one half, therefore I’ll also squander the other, so put me out of harm’s way! ‘ Well, what am I in that case? Whatever you like, a beast, a scoundrel, but not a thief, not finally a thief, because if I were a thief, I’d have appropriated the other half as well and certainly not have brought it back. She would see at once that if he’s brought her the one half, he’ll also bring her the rest, the part he squandered, he’ll spend his life looking for it, he’ll work, but he will find it and give it back. Thus, a scoundrel, but not a thief, not a thief, anything you like, but not a thief!”

“There is some difference, I grant you,” the prosecutor smiled coldly. “But still it’s strange that you see it as such a fatal difference.”

“Yes, I see it as a fatal difference! Any man can be, and perhaps is, a scoundrel, but not any man can be a thief, only an arch-scoundrel can be that. Well, I’m not very good at these subtleties ... But still, a thief is more of a scoundrel than a scoundrel, that is my conviction. Listen: I carry the money on me for a whole month, even tomorrow I can decide to give it back, and then I’m not a scoundrel, but I can’t decide, that’s the thing, though I keep deciding every day, though I push myself every day: ‘Decide, you scoundrel, decide,’ and yet I can’t decide for a whole month, that’s the thing! Is that nice? What do you think, is it nice?”

“I grant you it is not very nice, I can understand that perfectly, and I do not dispute it,” the prosecutor answered with reserve. “And generally let us set aside any altercation concerning these subtleties and distinctions, and, if you please, come back to the point. And the point is that you have not yet explained to us, though we did ask, why you originally made such a division of the three thousand—that is, squandered one half and set aside the other half? Precisely what, properly speaking, did you set it aside for; and how, properly speaking, did you intend to use this separate fifteen hundred? I insist upon this question, Dmitri Fyodorovich.”

“Ah, yes, indeed!” cried Mitya, slapping himself on the forehead. “Forgive me, I’m tormenting you and not explaining the main thing, otherwise you’d understand it at once, because it is in this purpose, in this purpose, that the whole disgrace lies! You see, it was the old man, the dead man, he kept troubling Agrafena Alexandrovna, and I was jealous, I thought then that she was hesitating between me and him; and so I kept thinking each day: what if there suddenly comes a decision from her, what if she gets tired of tormenting me and suddenly says to me, ‘I love you and not him, take me away to the end of the earth.’ And all I have is some small change; how will I take her, what will I do then—it’s all over for me. I didn’t know her then, I didn’t understand, I thought she wanted money and that she’d never forgive me my poverty. And so I slyly counted out half of the three thousand and sewed it up with needle and thread, in cold blood, I sewed it up calculatingly, I sewed it up even before I went drinking, and then, when I had sewn it up, I went and got drunk on the other half! It took a scoundrel to do that, sir! Do you understand now?”

The prosecutor burst into loud laughter, as did the district attorney.

“In my opinion it is even sensible and moral that you restrained yourself and did not squander it all,” Nikolai Parfenovich tittered, “because what’s wrong with that, sir?”

“That I stole, that’s what! Oh, God, you horrify me with your lack of understanding! All the while I carried that fifteen hundred sewn up on my chest, I kept saying to myself every day and every hour: ‘You are a thief, you are a thief!’ And that’s why I raged all month, that’s why I fought in the tavern, that’s why I beat my father, because I felt I was a thief! I could not bring myself, I did not dare to reveal anything about the fifteen hundred even to Alyosha, my brother: so much did I feel myself a scoundrel and a pickpocket. But know that all the while I carried it, every day and every hour, I kept saying to myself at the same time: ‘No, Dmitri Fyodorovich, perhaps you’re not yet a thief.’ Why? Precisely because you can go tomorrow and give the fifteen hundred back to Katya. And only yesterday did I decide to tear the amulet off my neck, on my way from Fenya to Perkhotin, for until that moment I couldn’t decide, and as soon as I tore it off, at that moment I became a final and indisputable thief, a thief and a dishonest man for the rest of my life. Why? Because along with the amulet, my dream of going to Katya and saying: ‘I am a scoundrel, but not a thief,’ was also torn up! Do you understand now, do you understand!”

“Why did you decide to do it precisely last evening?” Nikolai Parfenovich interrupted.

“Why? A funny question! Because I had condemned myself to death, at five o’clock in the morning, here, at dawn: ‘It’s all the same how I die,’ I thought, ‘as a scoundrel or as a noble man! ‘ But not so, it turned out not to be all the same! Believe me, gentlemen, what tormented me most this night was not that I had killed the old servant, and that I was threatened with Siberia, and all of that when?—when my love had been crowned and heaven was open to me again! Oh, that was a torment, but not so great, still not so great as the cursed awareness that I had finally torn that cursed money off my chest and spent it, and therefore was now a final thief! Oh, gentlemen, I repeat to you in my heart’s blood: I learned a lot this night! I learned that it is impossible not only to live a scoundrel, but also to die a scoundrel ... No, gentlemen, one must die honestly . . .!”

Mitya was pale. His face had a wasted and worn-out look, despite his intense excitement.

“I am beginning to understand you, Dmitri Fyodorovich,” the prosecutor drawled softly and even somehow compassionately, “but, be it as you say, still, in my opinion it is just nerves ... your overwrought nerves, that’s all, sir. And why, for instance, to spare yourself so much torment over almost a whole month, would you not go and return the fifteen hundred to the person who entrusted it to you, and then, having talked things over with her, why, in view of your situation at the time, which you describe as being so terrible, would you not try the solution that so naturally comes to mind—I mean, after nobly confessing your errors to her, why not ask her for the sum needed for your expenses, which she, with her generous heart, seeing how upset you were, of course would not refuse you, especially with some written agreement, or, finally, at least with the same security you offered to the merchant Samsonov and Madame Khokhlakov? I suppose you still consider that security to be of value?”

Mitya suddenly blushed.

“Do you really consider me such a downright scoundrel? You can’t possibly be serious . . .!” he said indignantly, looking the prosecutor in the eye, as if he could not believe what he had heard.

“I assure you I am serious ... Why do you think I am not?” The prosecutor, in turn, was also surprised. “Oh, how base that would be! Gentlemen, you’re tormenting me, do you know that? As you wish, I’ll tell you everything, so be it, I will now confess all my infernality to you, just to put you to shame, and you yourselves will be surprised at what baseness a combination of human feelings can sink to. Know, then, that I already had that solution in mind, the very one you were just talking about, prosecutor! Yes, gentlemen, I, too, had that thought during this cursed month, so that I almost resolved to go to Katya, so base I was! But to go to her, to announce my betrayal to her, and for that betrayal, to carry through that betrayal, for the future expenses of that betrayal, to ask money (to ask, do you hear, to ask! ) from her, from Katya, and immediately run off with another woman, with her rival, with her hater and offender—my God, you’re out of your mind, prosecutor!”

“Out of my mind or not, of course, in the heat of the moment, I did fail to consider ... this matter of female jealousy ... if indeed there is a question of jealousy here, as you affirm ... yes, perhaps there is something of the sort,” the prosecutor grinned.

“But it would be such an abomination!” Mitya pounded the table fiercely with his fist, “it would stink so much, I can’t tell you! And do you know that she might have given me the money, and she would have given it, she certainly would have given it, she would have given it out of vengeance, for the pleasure of revenge, she would have given it out of contempt for me, because she, too, is an infernal soul, and a woman of great wrath! And I’d have taken the money, oh, I’d have taken it, I would, and then all my life ... oh, God! Forgive me, gentlemen, I’m shouting so because I had this idea only recently, only two days ago, that night when I was worrying over Lyagavy, and then yesterday, yes, also yesterday, all day yesterday, I remember it, till this very accident...”

“Till what accident?” Nikolai Parfenovich put in with curiosity, but Mitya did not hear him.

“I’ve made a terrible confession to you,” he concluded gloomily. “Do appreciate it, gentlemen. And it’s not enough, not enough to appreciate it, you must not just appreciate it, it should also be precious to you, and if not, if this, too, goes past your souls, then it means you really do not respect me, gentlemen, I tell you that, and I will die of shame at having confessed to such men as you! Oh, I will shoot myself! And I can see, I can see already that you don’t believe me! What, are you going to write this down, too?”he cried, frightened now.

“But what you have just said,” Nikolai Parfenovich was looking at him in surprise, “that is, that until the very last hour you still thought of going to Miss Verkhovtsev to ask for this sum ... I assure you that this evidence is very important for us, Dmitri Fyodorovich, this whole story, that is ... and especially important for you, especially for you.”

“Have mercy, gentlemen,” Mitya clasped his hands, “at least leave that out, for shame! I have, so to speak, torn my soul asunder before you, and you take advantage of it and go rummaging with your fingers in both halves of the torn spot ... Oh, God!”

He covered his face with his hands in despair.

“Do not upset yourself, Dmitri Fyodorovich,” the prosecutor concluded, “everything that has been written down here will be read over to you afterwards, and whatever you disagree with will be changed as you say, but now I shall repeat one little question for the third time: is it possible that indeed no one, really no one at all, heard from you about this money you sewed into the amulet? I must say I find that almost impossible to imagine.”

“No one, no one, I told you, or else you’ve understood nothing! Leave me alone!”

“As you wish, sir, the matter will have to be clarified, but there is still time enough for that, yet meanwhile consider: we have perhaps dozens of testimonies that precisely you yourself were spreading and even shouted everywhere about the three thousand you had spent, three thousand and not fifteen hundred, and now, too, with the appearance of yesterday’s money, you also let many people understand that once again you had brought three thousand with you...”

“Not dozens, you’ve got hundreds of testimonies, two hundred testimonies, two hundred people heard it, a thousand heard it!” Mitya exclaimed.

“Well, so you see, sir, everyone says it. Does the word everyone mean anything?”

“It means nothing, I lied, and everyone started lying after me.”

“And what need did you have to ‘lie,’ as you put it?”

“Devil knows. Maybe in order to boast ... well ... about squandering so much money ... Or maybe in order to forget about the money I had sewn up ... yes, that’s exactly why ... ah, the devil ... how many times must you ask me? So I lied, and that’s it, I lied once and then I didn’t want to correct it. Why does a man lie sometimes?”

“That is very difficult to say, Dmitri Fyodorovich, why a man lies,” the prosecutor said imposingly. “Tell me, however: this amulet, as you call it, that you wore on your neck—was it big?”

“No, not big.”

“What size was it, for instance?” “Fold a hundred-rouble bill in half—that’s the size for you.”

“Hadn’t you better show us the scraps of it? You must have them somewhere.”

“Ah, the devil ... what foolishness ... I don’t know where they are.”

“I beg your pardon, but where and when did you take it off your neck? According to your own testimony, you did not stop at home.”

“When I left Fenya and was going to Perkhotin’s, on the way I tore the money off my neck and took it out.”

“In the dark?”

“Should I have had a candle? I did it with my fingers in a second.”

“Without scissors, in the street?”

“In the square, I think. And why scissors? It was a wom-out rag, it tore at once.”

“What did you do with it then?”

“I dropped it right there.”

“Where, exactly?”

“In the square, in the square somewhere. Devil knows where in the square! What do you need that for?”

“It is extremely important, Dmitri Fyodorovich: material evidence in your favor, why can’t you understand that? And who helped you to sew it up a month ago?”

“No one did. I sewed it myself.”

“You know how to sew?”

“A soldier has to know how to sew. It didn’t take any special skill.”

“And where did you get the material, the rag, that is, into which you sewed it?”

“Are you joking?”

“By no means, Dmitri Fyodorovich. This is no time for joking.”

“I don’t remember where I got the rag, I got it somewhere.”

“I should think one would remember that.”

“By God, I don’t remember, maybe I tore some piece of my linen.”

“That is very interesting: the piece might be found tomorrow in your lodgings, perhaps a shirt with a bit torn off of it. What sort of rag was it, cotton or linen?”

“Devil knows what it was. Wait... I think I didn’t tear it off anything. It was calico ... I think I sewed it up in my landlady’s bonnet.”

“Your landlady’s bonnet?”

“Yes, I filched it from her.”

“What’s that? Filched?” “You see, I remember I did once filch a bonnet for a rag, or maybe to wipe a pen. I took it without asking, because it wasn’t good for anything, I had the scraps lying about, and then this fifteen hundred, so I went and sewed it ... I think I sewed it precisely in those rags. Worthless old calico, washed a thousand times.”

“And you remember that firmly now?” “I don’t know how firmly. I think it was a bonnet. But to hell with it!”

“In that case your landlady might at least remember finding it missing? “

“Not at all, she never missed it. It was an old rag, I tell you, an old rag, not worth a kopeck.”

“And the needle, where did you get the needle and thread?”

“I quit, I won’t go on! Enough!” Mitya finally got angry.

“Then, too, it’s strange that you should forget so completely just where you dropped this ... amulet in the square.”

“So, order them to sweep the square tomorrow, maybe you’ll find it,” Mitya smirked. “Enough, gentlemen, enough,” he finished in a weary voice. “I see very well that you don’t believe me! Not a word, not a bit! It’s my fault, not yours, I shouldn’t have stuck my neck out. Why, why did I defile myself by confessing my secret! And you think it’s funny, I can see by your eyes. You drove me to it, prosecutor! Sing your hymn, if you can ... Damn you, tormentors!”

He bent his head and covered his face with his hands. The prosecutor and the district attorney were silent. After a moment, he raised his head and looked at them somehow vacantly. His face expressed an already complete, already irreversible despair, and he, somehow gently, fell silent, sat, and seemed hardly aware of himself. Meanwhile they had to finish their business: it was urgent that they move on to the interrogation of the witnesses. It was already eight o’clock in the morning. The candles had long been extinguished. Mikhail Makarovich and Kalganov, who kept coming in and out of the room during the interrogation, now both went out. The prosecutor and the district attorney also looked extremely tired. The morning brought bad weather, the sky was all overcast and it was pouring rain. Mitya gazed vacantly at the windows.

“May I look out?” he suddenly asked Nikolai Parfenovich.

“Oh, as much as you like,” the latter replied.

Mitya rose and went over to the window. Rain was lashing the small greenish windowpanes. Just under the window a muddy road could be seen, and further off, in the rainy dimness, rows of black, poor, unsightly cottages, which seemed to have turned even blacker and poorer in the rain. Mitya remembered “golden-haired Phoebus” and how he had wanted to shoot himself at his first ray. “It might be better on a morning like this,” he grinned, and, suddenly, with a downward wave of his hand, turned to his “tormentors.”

“Gentlemen!” he exclaimed, “I’m lost, I can see that. But she? Tell me about her, I beg you, can it be that she, too, will be lost with me? She’s innocent, she was out of her mind when she shouted last night about being ‘guilty of everything.’ She is guilty of nothing, nothing! All this night, sitting with you, I’ve been grieving ... Won’t you, can’t you tell me what you’re going to do with her now?”

“You can be decidedly reassured in that regard, Dmitri Fyodorovich,” the prosecutor replied at once, and with obvious haste. “So far we have no significant motives for troubling in any way the person in whom you are so interested. It will turn out the same, I hope, as the case develops further ... On the contrary, for our part we shall do everything possible in that sense. Be completely reassured.”

“I thank you, gentlemen. I knew you were still honest and just men, in spite of everything. You’ve taken a burden from my soul ... Well, what do we do now? I’m ready.”

“Now, sir, we’ll have to speed things up. It’s urgent that we move on to the interrogation of the witnesses. This must all take place in your presence, to be sure, and therefore ...”

“Why don’t we have some tea first?” Nikolai Parfenovich interrupted. “I think by now we deserve it. “

It was decided that if there was tea ready downstairs (for Mikhail Makarovich had certainly gone “for a cup of tea”), they would have some tea and then “carry on, carry on.” And they would put off real tea and “a little something” until they had a free moment. Tea was indeed found downstairs, and was quickly brought upstairs. Mitya at first refused the cup Nikolai Parfenovich kindly offered him, but then asked for it himself and greedily drank it. Generally he looked even somehow surprisingly worn out. What, one might have thought, would one night of carousing mean for a man of such strength, even coupled with the strongest sensations? Yet he himself felt that he could hardly hold himself upright, and at times everything seemed to start swimming and turning before his eyes. “A little more and I’ll probably start raving,” he thought to himself.

Chapter 8: The Evidence of the Witnesses. The Wee One

The interrogation of the witnesses began. But we shall not continue our story in the same detail as we have maintained up to now. And therefore we shall omit how Nikolai Parfenovich impressed upon each witness called that he should give evidence truthfully and conscientiously, and that later he would have to repeat his evidence under oath; and how, finally, each witness was required to sign the transcript of his evidence, and so on and so forth. We shall note only one thing, that the main point to which the interrogators directed all their attention was predominantly the same question of the three thousand roubles—that is, whether it had been three thousand or fifteen hundred the first time, when Dmitri Fyodorovich gave his first party there, at Mokroye, a month ago, and three thousand or fifteen hundred yesterday, when Dmitri Fyodorovich gave his second party. Alas, all the evidence from first to last turned out to be against Mitya, and none in his favor, and some of the evidence even introduced new, almost astounding facts in refutation of his evidence. The first to be interrogated was Trifon Borisich. He came before the interrogators without a trace of fear; on the contrary, with a look of stern and severe indignation at the accused, thereby undoubtedly imparting to himself an air of extreme truthfulness and self-respect. He spoke little and with reserve, waiting for each question, answering precisely and deliberately. He testified firmly and without hesitation that the amount spent a month ago could not possibly have been less than three thousand, that all the peasants there would testify to having heard about the three thousand from “Mitri Fyodorovich” himself: “Look how much he threw away on the gypsy girls alone. It must have been over a thousand just on them.”