Текст книги "The Brothers Karamazov"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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In a word, Ippolit Kirillovich, though very much carried away, still ended on a note of pathos—and, indeed, the impression he produced was extraordinary. He himself, having finished his speech, left hastily and, I repeat, nearly fainted in the next room. The courtroom did not applaud, but serious people were pleased. And if the ladies were not so pleased, they still admired such eloquence, the more so as they were notât all fearful of the consequences and waited for everything from Fetyukovich: “He will finally speak and, of course, overcome them all!” Everyone kept glancing at Mitya; he sat silently throughout the prosecutor’s speech, clenching his fists, gritting his teeth, looking down. Only from time to time did he raise his head and listen. Especially when there was mention of Grushenka. When the prosecutor quoted Rakitin’s opinion of her, a contemptuous and spiteful smile appeared on his face, and he said quite audibly: “Bernards!” When Ippolit Kirillovich told about interrogating him and tormenting him in Mokroye, Mitya raised his head and listened with terrible curiosity. At one point in the speech he even seemed about to jump up and shout something; he controlled himself, however, and merely shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. About this finale of the speech—namely, to do with the prosecutor’s feats in Mokroye during the interrogation of the criminal—there was talk later among our society, and Ippolit Kirillovich was made fun of: “The man couldn’t help boasting of his abilities,” they said. The session was interrupted, but for a very short time, a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes at the most. There were exchanges and exclamations among the public. I recall some of them:
“A serious speech!” a gentleman in one group observed, frowning.
“Too wrapped up in psychology,” another voice was heard.
“Yes, but all true, irrefutably true!”
“Yes, he’s a master of it.”
“Summed it all up.”
“Us, too, he summed us up, too,” a third voice joined in, “at the start of the speech, remember, that we’re all the same as Fyodor Pavlovich?”
“And at the end, too. But that was all rubbish.”
“There were some vague spots.”
“Got a bit carried away. “
“Unjust, unjust, sir.”
“No, but anyway it was clever. The man waited for a long time, and finally he said it, heh, heh!”
“What will the defense attorney say?”
In another group:
“It wasn’t very smart of him to prod the Petersburg fellow: ‘aimed at your emotions,’ remember?”
“Yes, that was awkward.”
“Much too hasty.”
“A nervous man, sir.”
“We may laugh, but how about the defendant?” “Yes, sir, how about Mitenka?”
“And what will the defense attorney say?”
In a third group:
“Which lady, the one with the lorgnette, the fat one, at the end?”
“Former wife of a general, a divorcée, I know her.”
“That’s the one, with the lorgnette.”
“Trash.”
“No, no, quite sprightly.”
“The little blonde two seats away from her is better.”
“Clever how they caught him at Mokroye, eh?”
“Yes, clever. And he had to tell it again. He’s already told it all over town.”
“And now he just couldn’t resist. Vanity.”
“An offended man, heh, heh!”
“Quick to take offense, too. And too much rhetoric, long phrases.”
“And browbeating, did you notice how he kept browbeating us? Remember the troika? ‘They have their Hamlets, but so far we have only Karamazovs!’ That was clever.”
“Courting liberalism. Afraid.”
“He’s also afraid of the defense attorney.”
“Yes, what will Mr. Fetyukovich say?”
“Well, whatever he says, he won’t get around our peasants.”
“You don’t think so?”
In a fourth group:
“But that was good about the troika, the part about the other nations.”
“And it’s true, remember, where he said the other nations won’t wait.”
“What do you mean?”
“In the English Parliament just last week one member stood up, to do with the nihilists, and asked the Ministry if it wasn’t time to intervene in a barbarous nation, in order to educate us. It was him Ippolit meant, I know it was him. He talked about it last week.”
“There’s many a slip.”
“What slip? Why many?”
“We’ll close Kronstadt and not give them any bread. [345]Where will they get it?”
“And America? It’s America now.”
“Rubbish.”
But the bell rang, all rushed to their places. Fetyukovich mounted the rostrum.
Chapter 10: The Defense Attorney’s Speech. A Stick with Two Ends
All became hushed as the first words of the famous orator resounded. The whole room fixed their eyes on him. He began with extreme directness, simplicity, and conviction, but without the slightest presumption. Not the slightest attempt at eloquence, at notes of pathos, at words ringing with emotion. This was a man speaking within an intimate circle of sympathizers. His voice was beautiful, loud, and attractive, and even in this voice itself one seemed to hear something genuine and guileless. But everyone realized at once that the orator could suddenly rise to true pathos—and “strike the heart with an unutterable power.’” [346]He spoke perhaps less correctly than Ippolit Kirillovich, but without long phrases, and even more precisely. There was one thing the ladies did not quite like: he somehow kept bending forward, especially at the beginning of his speech, not really bowing, but as if he were rushing or flying at his listeners, and this he did by bending precisely, as it were, with half of his long back, as if a hinge were located midway down that long and narrow back ‘ that enabled it to bend almost at a right angle. He spoke somehow scatteredly at the beginning, as if without any system, snatching up facts at random, but in the end it all fell together. His speech could be divided into two halves: the first half was a critique, a refutation of the charges, at times malicious and sarcastic. But in the second half of the speech he seemed to change his tone and even his method, and all at once rose into pathos, and the courtroom seemed to be waiting for it and all began trembling with rapture. He went straight to work, and began by saying that although his practice was in Petersburg, this was not the first time he had visited the towns of Russia to defend a case, though he did so only when he was convinced of the defendant’s innocence or anticipated it beforehand. “The same thing happened to me in the present case,” he explained. “Even in the initial newspaper reports alone, I caught a glimpse of something that struck me greatly in favor of the defendant. In a word, I was interested first of all in a certain juridical fact, which appears often enough in legal practice, though never, it seems to me, so fully or with such characteristic peculiarities as in the present case. This fact I ought to formulate only in the finale of my speech, when I have finished my statement; however, I shall express my thought at the very beginning as well, for I have a weakness for going straight to the point, not storing up effects or sparing impressions. This may be improvident on my part, yet it is sincere. This thought of mine—my formula—is as follows: the overwhelming totality of the facts is against the defendant, and at the same time there is not one fact that will stand up to criticism, if it is considered separately, on its own! Following along through rumors and the newspapers, I was becoming more and more firmly set in my thought, when suddenly I received an invitation from the defendant’s relatives to come and defend him. I hastened here at once, and here became finally convinced. It was in order to demolish this terrible totality of facts and show how undemonstrable and fantastic each separate accusing fact is, that I undertook the defense of this case.”
Thus the defense attorney began, and suddenly he raised his voice: “Gentlemen of the jury, I am a newcomer here. All impressions fell upon me without preconceived ideas. The defendant, a man of stormy and unbridled character, had not offended me to begin with, as he had perhaps a hundred persons in this town, which is why many are prejudiced against him beforehand. Of course, I also admit that the moral sense of local society has been justly aroused: the defendant is stormy and unbridled. Nonetheless he was received in local society; even in the family of the highly talented prosecutor he was warmly welcomed.” ( Nota bene:At these words two or three chuckles came from the public, quickly suppressed, but noticed by all. We all knew that the prosecutor had admitted Mitya to his house against his will, solely because for some reason he interested the prosecutor’s wife—a highly virtuous and respectable, but fantastic and self-willed, lady, who in certain cases, for the most part trifling, loved to oppose her husband. Mitya, by the way, had visited their home rather infrequently.) “Nevertheless, I make so bold as to assume,” the defense attorney went on, “that even in such an independent mind and just character as my opponent’s, a somewhat erroneous prejudice against my unfortunate client might have formed. Oh, it’s quite natural: the unfortunate man deserved all too well to be treated with prejudice. And an offended moral and, even more so, aesthetic sense is sometimes implacable. Of course, in the highly talented speech for the prosecution, we have all heard a strict analysis of the defendant’s character and actions, a strictly critical attitude towards the case; and, above all, such psychological depths were demonstrated to explain the essence of the matter, that a penetration to those depths could by no means have taken place were there even the slightest amount of deliberate and malicious prejudice with regard to the person of the defendant. But there are things that are even worse, even more ruinous in such cases than the most malicious and preconceived attitude towards the matter. Namely, if we are, for example, possessed by a certain, so to speak, artistic game, by the need for artistic production, so to speak, the creation of a novel, especially seeing the wealth of psychological gifts with which God has endowed our abilities. While still in Petersburg, still only preparing to come here, I was warned—and I myself knew without any warning—that I would meet here as my opponent a profound and most subtle psychologist, who has long deserved special renown for this quality in our still young legal world. But psychology, gentlemen, though a profound thing, is still like a stick with two ends.” (A chuckle from the public.) “Oh, you will of course forgive the triviality of my comparison; I am not a master of eloquent speaking. Here, however, is an example—I take the first I happen upon in the prosecutor’s speech. The defendant, at night, in the garden, climbs the fence as he is fleeing, and strikes down with a brass pestle the servant who has seized him by the leg. Then he at once jumps back down into the garden and for a whole five minutes fusses over the fallen man, trying to see whether he has killed him or not. Now, not for anything will the prosecutor believe in the truthfulness of the defendant’s testimony that he jumped down to the old man Grigory out of pity. ‘No,’ he says, ‘how could there be such sensitivity at such a moment; this is unnatural; he jumped down precisely in order to make sure that the only witness to his evil deed was dead, and thereby testified that he had committed this evil deed, since he could not have jumped down into the garden for any other reason, inclination, or feeling.’ There you have psychology; but let us take the same psychology and apply it to this case, only from the other end, and the result will be no less plausible. The murderer jumps down as a precaution, to make sure if the witness is alive or not, and yet, according to the words of the prosecutor himself, he had just left in the study of his father, whom he had murdered, a colossal piece of evidence against himself in the form of a torn envelope on which it was written that it contained three thousand roubles. ‘Were he to have taken this envelope with him, no one in the whole world would have learned that the envelope existed, or the money inside it, and that the defendant had therefore robbed the money.’ These are the prosecutor’s own words. Well, so you see, on the one hand the man was not cautious enough, he lost his head, got frightened, and ran away leaving evidence on the floor, but when two minutes later he strikes and kills another man, then all at once the most heartless and calculating sense of caution comes to our service. But so, let it be so: it is, shall we say, the subtlety of psychology that under certain circumstances I instantly become bloodthirsty and sharp-eyed as a Caucasian eagle, and the next moment as blind and timid as a worthless mole. But if I am so bloodthirsty and cruelly calculating that, having killed, I jump down only to see if the witness against me is alive or not, do you think I would fuss over this new victim of mine for a whole five minutes, allowing, perhaps, for new witnesses? Why soak the handkerchief, wiping blood from the fallen man’s head, so that this handkerchief can later serve as evidence against me? No, if we really are so calculating and hard-hearted, would it not be better, having jumped down, simply to whack the fallen servant on the head again and again with the same pestle, so as to kill him finally, and, having eradicated the witness, to put all worry out of our mind? And, lastly, I jump down in order to see whether the witness against me is alive or dead, and right there on the path I leave another witness—namely, this very pestle that I took from the two women, both of whom can later recognize the pestle as theirs and testify that I took it from their house. And it’s not that I forgot it on the path, dropped it in distraction, in confusion: no, we precisely threw our weapon away, because it was found about fifteen paces from the spot where Grigory was struck down. The question is, why did we do that? But we did it precisely because we felt bitter at having killed a man, an old servant, and therefore in vexation, with a curse, we threw the pestle away as a murderous weapon, it could not be otherwise, or why throw it with such force? And if we could feel pain and pity at having killed a man, it is of course because we did not kill our father: if he had killed his father, he would not have jumped down to another fallen man out of pity, in that case there would be a different feeling, in that case we would not be bothered with pity but would think about self-salvation, that is certainly so. On the contrary, I repeat, we would have smashed his skull finally, and not fussed over him for five minutes. There was room for pity and kind feeling precisely because our conscience was clear to begin with. Here, then, is a different psychology. I myself, gentlemen of the jury, have resorted to psychology now, in order to demonstrate that one can draw whatever conclusions one likes from it. It all depends on whose hands it is in. Psychology prompts novels even from the most serious people, and quite unintentionally. I am speaking of excessive psychology, gentlemen of the jury, of a certain abuse of it.”
Here again approving chuckles came from the public, all directed at the prosecutor. I shall not give the entire speech of the defense attorney in detail, but shall only take some parts of it, some of its most salient points.
Chapter 11: There Was No Money. There Was No Robbery
There was one point that even struck everyone in the defense attorney’s speech—namely, his complete denial of the existence of the fatal three thousand roubles, and thus also of the possibility of their robbery.
“Gentlemen of the jury,” the defense attorney began, “one most characteristic peculiarity will strike any fresh and unprejudiced person in this case– namely, the charge of robbery, and at the same time the complete impossibility of pointing in fact to what precisely was robbed. Money, they say, was robbed—namely, three thousand roubles—but whether this money actually existed, nobody knows. Consider: first of all, how did we learn of the three thousand, and who actually saw it? The only one who saw it and pointed out that it was wrapped in the envelope with the inscription was the servant Smerdyakov. He told this information to the defendant and to his brother Ivan Fyodorovich still prior to the catastrophe. It was also made known to Miss Svetlov. Yet none of these three persons saw the money, again only Smerdyakov saw it, but here the question naturally arises: if the money really existed and Smerdyakov saw it, when was the last time he saw it? And what if his master took the money from under the bed and put it back in the box without telling him? Notice, according to Smerdyakov the money was under the bed, under the mattress; the defendant would have had to pull it from under the mattress, and yet the bed was not rumpled at all, that has been carefully noted in the record. How could the defendant leave the bed entirely unrumpled, and, moreover, not stain with his still bloody hands the fresh, fine bed linen that had just been put on it purposely for the occasion? But, you will say, what about the envelope on the floor? It is worth saying a few words about this envelope. I was even somewhat surprised just now: the highly talented prosecutor, when he began speaking of this envelope, suddenly declared of it himself—do you hear, gentlemen, himself—namely, in that part of his speech where he points out the absurdity of the suggestion that Smerdyakov was the murderer: ‘Were it not for this envelope, had it not been left on the floor as evidence, had the robber taken it with him, no one in the whole world would have learned that the envelope existed, or the money inside it, and that the defendant had therefore robbed the money.’ Thus it is solely because of this torn scrap of paper with the inscription on it, as even the prosecutor himself admits, that the defendant has been accused of robbery, ‘otherwise no one would know that there had been a robbery, nor perhaps that there had been any money either. ‘ But can the simple fact that this scrap of paper was lying on the floor possibly be proof that it once contained money and that this money had been robbed? ‘But,’ they will reply, ‘Smerdyakov did see it in the envelope,’ but when, when did he last see it?—that is my question. I spoke with Smerdyakov, and he told me that he had seen it two days before the catastrophe! But why can I not suppose at least some such circumstance, for example, as that old Fyodor Pavlovich, having locked himself in the house, in impatient, hysterical expectation of his beloved, might suddenly decide, having nothing better to do, to take the envelope and unseal it. ‘An envelope is just an envelope,’ he might think, ‘why should she believe me? If I show her a wad of hundred-rouble bills, that will really work, it will make her mouth water’– and so he tears open the envelope, takes out the money, and throws the envelope on the floor with the imperious gesture of an owner, and certainly not afraid of any evidence. Listen, gentlemen of the jury, could anything be more possible than such a speculation and such a fact? Why is it impossible? But if at least something of the sort could have taken place, then the charge of robbery is wiped out of itself: there was no money, therefore there was no robbery. If the envelope lying on the floor is evidence that there was once money in it, then why may I not assert the opposite—namely, that the envelope was lying on the floor precisely because it no longer contained any money, the money having been taken out of it previously by the owner himself? ‘Yes, but in that case where did the money go, if Fyodor Pavlovich took it out of the envelope himself; it was not found when his house was searched?’ First, part of the money was found in his box, and second, might he not have taken it out that morning, or even the day before, and made some other use of it, paid it out, sent it away, might he not, finally, have changed his thinking, the very basis of his plan of action, and that without finding it at all necessary to report first to Smerdyakov? And if even the mere possibility of such a speculation exists, then how can it be asserted so insistently and so firmly that the defendant committed the murder with the purpose of robbery, and indeed that the robbery existed? We thereby enter the realm of novels. If one asserts that such and such a thing was robbed, one must needs point to this thing, or at least prove indisputably that it existed. Yet no one even saw it. Not long ago in Petersburg a young man, hardly more than a boy, eighteen years old, a little peddler with a tray, went into a money changer’s shop in broad daylight with an axe, and with extraordinary, typical boldness killed the shopkeeper and carried off fifteen hundred roubles. About five hours later he was arrested, and except for fifteen roubles that he had already managed to spend, the entire fifteen hundred was found on him. Moreover, the shop clerk, who returned to the shop after the murder, informed the police not only of the amount stolen, but also of what sort of money it consisted—that is, so many hundred-rouble bills, so many fifties, so many tens, so many gold coins and precisely which ones—and then precisely the same bills and coins were found on the arrested murderer. On top of that there followed a full and frank confession from the murderer that he had killed the man and taken that very money. This, gentlemen of the jury, is what I call evidence! Here I know, I see, I touch the money, and I cannot say that it does not or never did exist. Is that so in the present case? And yet it is a matter of life and death, of a man’s fate. ‘So it is,’ they will say, ‘but that night he was carousing, throwing money away, he was found with fifteen hundred roubles—where did he get it?’ But precisely because only fifteen hundred was found, and the other half of the sum could not be located or discovered anywhere, precisely this fact proves that the money could be quite different, that it may never have been in any envelope at all. By the reckoning of time (quite strict here), it has been determined and demonstrated by the preliminary investigation that the defendant, when he ran from the serving-women to the official Perkhotin, did not stop at his place, and did not stop anywhere else, and afterwards was constantly in the presence of other people, and therefore could not have separated half of the three thousand and hidden it somewhere in town. Precisely this consideration caused the prosecutor to assume that the money was hidden somewhere in a crevice in the village of Mokroye. And why not in the dungeons of the castle of Udolpho, [347] gentlemen? Is it not a fantastic, is it not a novelistic suggestion? And, notice, let just this one assumption—that is, that the money is hidden in Mokroye—be demolished, and the whole charge of robbery is blown sky-high, for where is it, what has become of this fifteen hundred? By what miracle did it disappear, if it has been proved that the defendant did not stop anywhere? And with such novels we are prepared to ruin a human life! They will say: ‘Still, he was unable to explain where he got the fifteen hundred that was found on him; moreover, everyone knew that before that night he had no money.’ But who, in fact, knew that? The defendant has given clear and firm testimony to where he got the money, and, if I may say so, gentlemen of the jury, if I may say so—there neither can nor ever could be anything more plausible than this testimony, nor more in keeping with the defendant’s character and soul. The prosecution liked its own novel: a man of weak will, who determined to take the three thousand so shamingly offered him by his fiancée, could not, they say, have separated half of it and sewn it into an amulet; on the contrary, even if he did, he would open it every two days and peel off a hundred, and thus run through it all in a month. Remember, this was all told here in a tone that would brook no objections. Well, and what if the thing went quite differently, what if you have created a novel around quite a different person? That’s just it, you have created a different person! It will perhaps be objected: ‘There are witnesses that the whole three thousand he took from Miss Verkhovtsev was squandered in the village of Mokroye a month before the catastrophe, at one go, to the last kopeck, so that he could not have set aside half of it.’ But who are these witnesses? The degree of trustworthiness of these witnesses has already displayed itself in court. Besides, a crust always looks bigger in another man’s hand. Lastly, not one of these witnesses counted the money himself, they merely judged by eye. Did not the witness Maximov testify that the defendant had twenty thousand in his hands? So, gentlemen of the jury, since psychology has two ends, allow me to apply the other end and let us see if it comes out the same.
“A month before the catastrophe, the defendant was entrusted by Miss Verkhovtsev with three thousand roubles to be sent by mail—but a question: is it true that it was entrusted to him in such shame and humiliation as was declared here today? In Miss Verkhovtsev’s first testimony on the same subject, it came out differently, quite differently; and in her second testimony all we heard were cries of anger, revenge, cries of long-concealed hatred. But this alone, that the witness testified incorrectly in her first testimony, gives us the right to conclude that her second testimony may also be incorrect. The prosecutor ‘does not wish, does not dare’ (in his own words) to touch on this romance. So be it, I shall not touch on it either, but will only allow myself to observe that if a pure and highly virtuous person such as the highly esteemed Miss Verkhovtsev undoubtedly is, if such a person, I say, allows herself suddenly, all at once, in court, to change her first testimony with the direct aim of ruining the defendant, then it is clear that she has also not given this testimony impartially, coolheadedly. Can we be deprived of the right to conclude that a vengeful woman may have exaggerated many things? Yes, precisely exaggerated the shame and disgrace in which she offered the money. On the contrary, it was offered precisely in such a way that it could still be accepted, especially by such a light-minded man as our defendant. Above all, he still had it in his head then that he would soon receive the three thousand he reckoned was owing to him from his father. This was light-minded, but precisely because of his light-mindedness he was firmly convinced that his father would give it to him, that he would get it, and therefore would always be able to mail the money entrusted to him by Miss Verkhovtsev and settle his debt. But the prosecutor will in no way allow that on that same day, the day of the accusation, he was capable of separating half of the money entrusted to him and sewing it into an amulet: ‘Such, ‘ he says, ‘is not his character, he could not have had such feelings.’ But you yourself were shouting that Karamazov is broad, you yourself were shouting about the two extreme abysses Karamazov can contemplate. Karamazov is precisely of such a nature, with two sides, two abysses, as can stop amid the most unrestrained need of carousing if something strikes him on the other side. And the other side is love, precisely this new love that flared up in him like powder, and for this love he needs money, he has more need of it, oh! much more need of it even than of carousing with this same beloved. If she were to say to him: ‘I am yours, I do not want Fyodor Pavlovich,’ and he were to snatch her and take her away—then he would have to have some means of taking her away. This is more important than carousing. Could Karamazov fail to understand that? This is precisely what he was sick over, this care—what, then, is so incredible in his separating this money and stashing it away just in case? But now, however, time is passing, and Fyodor Pavlovich does not give the defendant his three thousand; on the contrary, he hears that he has allotted it precisely to luring away his beloved. ‘If Fyodor Pavlovich does not give it back to me,’ he thinks, ‘I will come out as a thief before Katerina Ivanovna.’ But now the thought is born in him that he will take this same fifteen hundred, which he is still carrying on him in the amulet, lay it before Miss Verkhovtsev, and say to her: ‘I am a scoundrel, but not a thief.’ So now he has a double reason to hold on to this fifteen hundred like the apple of his eye, and on no account to unstitch the amulet and peel off a hundred at a time. Why should you deny the defendant a sense of honor? No, he has a sense of honor, let’s say a faulty one, let’s say very often a mistaken one, but he has it, has it to the point of passion, and he has proved it. Now, however, the situation gets more complicated, the torments of jealousy reach the highest pitch, and the same questions, the two old questions, etch themselves more and more tormentingly in the defendant’s fevered brain: ‘If I give it back to Katerina Ivanovna, with what means will I take Grushenka away?’ If he was raving so, getting drunk and storming in the taverns all that month, it is precisely, perhaps, because he felt bitter himself, it was more than he could bear. These two questions finally became so acute that they finally drove him to despair. He tried sending his younger brother to their father to ask one last time for the three thousand, but without waiting for an answer he burst in himself and ended by beating the old man in front of witnesses. After that, consequently, there is no one to get the money from, his beaten father will not give it. The evening of that same day he beats himself on the chest, precisely on the upper part of the chest, where the amulet was, and swears to his brother that he has the means not to be a scoundrel, but will still remain a scoundrel, because he foresees that he will not use this means, he will not have enough strength of soul, he will not have enough character. Why, why does the prosecution not believe the evidence of Alexei Karamazov, given so purely, so sincerely, so spontaneously and plausibly? Why, on the contrary, would they have me believe in money hidden in some crevice, in the dungeons of the castle of Udolpho? That same evening, after the conversation with his brother, the defendant writes this fatal letter, and now this letter is the most important, the most colossal evidence, convicting the defendant of robbery! ‘I will ask all people, and if I don’t get it from people, I will kill father and take it from under his mattress, in the envelope with the pink ribbon, if only Ivan goes away’—a complete program of the murder, they say; who else could it be? ‘It was accomplished as written! ‘ the prosecution exclaims. But, first of all, the letter is a drunken one, and written in terrible exasperation; second, about the envelope, again he is writing in Smerdyakov’s words, because he did not see the envelope himself; and, third, maybe he wrote it, but was it accomplished as written, is there any proof of that? Did the defendant take the envelope from under the pillow, did he find the money, did it even exist? And was it money that the defendant went running for—remember, remember? He went running headlong, not to rob, but only to find out where she was, this woman who had crushed him—so it was not according to the program, not as written, that he went running there, that is, not for a premeditated robbery; he ran suddenly, impulsively, in a jealous rage! ‘Yes,’ they will say, ‘but having come and killed him, he also took the money.’ But did he kill him, finally, or not? The accusation of robbery I reject with indignation: there can be no accusation of robbery if it is impossible to point exactly to what precisely has been robbed—that is an axiom! But did he kill him, without the robbery, did he kill him? Is this proved? Is this not also a novel?”
