The Brothers Karamazov
well be understood that she might laugh at both of them simply from
mischief, from malice.
“After a month of hopeless love and moral degradation, during which he
betrayed his betrothed and appropriated money entrusted to his honor,
the prisoner was driven almost to frenzy, almost to madness by
continual jealousy—and of whom? His father! And the worst of it was
that the crazy old man was alluring and enticing the object of his
affection by means of that very three thousand roubles, which the son
looked upon as his own property, part of his inheritance from his
mother, of which his father was cheating him. Yes, I admit it was hard
to bear! It might well drive a man to madness. It was not the money,
but the fact that this money was used with such revolting cynicism to
ruin his happiness!”
Then the prosecutor went on to describe how the idea of murdering his
father had entered the prisoner’s head, and illustrated his theory with
facts.
“At first he only talked about it in taverns—he was talking about it
all that month. Ah, he likes being always surrounded with company, and
he likes to tell his companions everything, even his most diabolical
and dangerous ideas; he likes to share every thought with others, and
expects, for some reason, that those he confides in will meet him with
perfect sympathy, enter into all his troubles and anxieties, take his
part and not oppose him in anything. If not, he flies into a rage and
smashes up everything in the tavern. [Then followed the anecdote about
Captain Snegiryov.] Those who heard the prisoner began to think at last
that he might mean more than threats, and that such a frenzy might turn
threats into actions.”
Here the prosecutor described the meeting of the family at the
monastery, the conversations with Alyosha, and the horrible scene of
violence when the prisoner had rushed into his father’s house just
after dinner.
“I cannot positively assert,” the prosecutor continued, “that the
prisoner fully intended to murder his father before that incident. Yet
the idea had several times presented itself to him, and he had
deliberated on it—for that we have facts, witnesses, and his own words.
I confess, gentlemen of the jury,” he added, “that till to-day I have
been uncertain whether to attribute to the prisoner conscious
premeditation. I was firmly convinced that he had pictured the fatal
moment beforehand, but had only pictured it, contemplating it as a
possibility. He had not definitely considered when and how he might
commit the crime.
“But I was only uncertain till to-day, till that fatal document was
presented to the court just now. You yourselves heard that young lady’s
exclamation, ‘It is the plan, the program of the murder!’ That is how
she defined that miserable, drunken letter of the unhappy prisoner.
And, in fact, from that letter we see that the whole fact of the murder
was premeditated. It was written two days before, and so we know now
for a fact that, forty-eight hours before the perpetration of his
terrible design, the prisoner swore that, if he could not get money
next day, he would murder his father in order to take the envelope with
the notes from under his pillow, as soon as Ivan had left. ‘As soon as
Ivan had gone away’—you hear that; so he had thought everything out,
weighing every circumstance, and he carried it all out just as he had
written it. The proof of premeditation is conclusive; the crime must
have been committed for the sake of the money, that is stated clearly,
that is written and signed. The prisoner does not deny his signature.
“I shall be told he was drunk when he wrote it. But that does not
diminish the value of the letter, quite the contrary; he wrote when
drunk what he had planned when sober. Had he not planned it when sober,
he would not have written it when drunk. I shall be asked: Then why did
he talk about it in taverns? A man who premeditates such a crime is
silent and keeps it to himself. Yes, but he talked about it before he
had formed a plan, when he had only the desire, only the impulse to it.
Afterwards he talked less about it. On the evening he wrote that letter
at the ‘Metropolis’ tavern, contrary to his custom he was silent,
though he had been drinking. He did not play billiards, he sat in a
corner, talked to no one. He did indeed turn a shopman out of his seat,
but that was done almost unconsciously, because he could never enter a
tavern without making a disturbance. It is true that after he had taken
the final decision, he must have felt apprehensive that he had talked
too much about his design beforehand, and that this might lead to his
arrest and prosecution afterwards. But there was nothing for it; he
could not take his words back, but his luck had served him before, it
would serve him again. He believed in his star, you know! I must
confess, too, that he did a great deal to avoid the fatal catastrophe.
‘To-morrow I shall try and borrow the money from every one,’ as he
writes in his peculiar language, ‘and if they won’t give it to me,
there will be bloodshed.’”
Here Ippolit Kirillovitch passed to a detailed description of all
Mitya’s efforts to borrow the money. He described his visit to
Samsonov, his journey to Lyagavy. “Harassed, jeered at, hungry, after
selling his watch to pay for the journey (though he tells us he had
fifteen hundred roubles on him—a likely story), tortured by jealousy at
having left the object of his affections in the town, suspecting that
she would go to Fyodor Pavlovitch in his absence, he returned at last
to the town, to find, to his joy, that she had not been near his
father. He accompanied her himself to her protector. (Strange to say,
he doesn’t seem to have been jealous of Samsonov, which is
psychologically interesting.) Then he hastens back to his ambush in the
back gardens, and there learns that Smerdyakov is in a fit, that the
other servant is ill—the coast is clear and he knows the ‘signals’—what
a temptation! Still he resists it; he goes off to a lady who has for
some time been residing in the town, and who is highly esteemed among
us, Madame Hohlakov. That lady, who had long watched his career with
compassion, gave him the most judicious advice, to give up his
dissipated life, his unseemly love-affair, the waste of his youth and
vigor in pot-house debauchery, and to set off to Siberia to the
gold-mines: ‘that would be an outlet for your turbulent energies, your
romantic character, your thirst for adventure.’”
After describing the result of this conversation and the moment when
the prisoner learnt that Grushenka had not remained at Samsonov’s, the
sudden frenzy of the luckless man worn out with jealousy and nervous
exhaustion, at the thought that she had deceived him and was now with
his father, Ippolit Kirillovitch concluded by dwelling upon the fatal
influence of chance. “Had the maid told him that her mistress was at
Mokroe with her former lover, nothing would have happened. But she lost
her head, she could only swear and protest her ignorance, and if the
prisoner did not kill her on the spot, it was only because he flew in
pursuit of his false mistress.
“But note, frantic as he was, he took with him a brass pestle. Why
that? Why not some other weapon? But since he had been contemplating
his plan and preparing himself for it for a whole month, he would
snatch up anything like a weapon that caught his eye. He had realized
for a month past that any object of the kind would serve as a weapon,
so he instantly, without hesitation, recognized that it would serve his
purpose. So it was by no means unconsciously, by no means
involuntarily, that he snatched up that fatal pestle. And then we find
him in his father’s garden—the coast is clear, there are no witnesses,
darkness and jealousy. The suspicion that she was there, with him, with
his rival, in his arms, and perhaps laughing at him at that moment—took
his breath away. And it was not mere suspicion, the deception was open,
obvious. She must be there, in that lighted room, she must be behind
the screen; and the unhappy man would have us believe that he stole up
to the window, peeped respectfully in, and discreetly withdrew, for
fear something terrible and immoral should happen. And he tries to
persuade us of that, us, who understand his character, who know his
state of mind at the moment, and that he knew the signals by which he
could at once enter the house.” At this point Ippolit Kirillovitch
broke off to discuss exhaustively the suspected connection of
Smerdyakov with the murder. He did this very circumstantially, and
every one realized that, although he professed to despise that
suspicion, he thought the subject of great importance.
Chapter VIII.
A Treatise On Smerdyakov
“To begin with, what was the source of this suspicion?” (Ippolit
Kirillovitch began.) “The first person who cried out that Smerdyakov
had committed the murder was the prisoner himself at the moment of his
arrest, yet from that time to this he had not brought forward a single
fact to confirm the charge, nor the faintest suggestion of a fact. The
charge is confirmed by three persons only—the two brothers of the
prisoner and Madame Svyetlov. The elder of these brothers expressed his
suspicions only to-day, when he was undoubtedly suffering from brain
fever. But we know that for the last two months he has completely
shared our conviction of his brother’s guilt and did not attempt to
combat that idea. But of that later. The younger brother has admitted
that he has not the slightest fact to support his notion of
Smerdyakov’s guilt, and has only been led to that conclusion from the
prisoner’s own words and the expression of his face. Yes, that
astounding piece of evidence has been brought forward twice to-day by
him. Madame Svyetlov was even more astounding. ‘What the prisoner tells
you, you must believe; he is not a man to tell a lie.’ That is all the
evidence against Smerdyakov produced by these three persons, who are
all deeply concerned in the prisoner’s fate. And yet the theory of
Smerdyakov’s guilt has been noised about, has been and is still
maintained. Is it credible? Is it conceivable?”
Here Ippolit Kirillovitch thought it necessary to describe the
personality of Smerdyakov, “who had cut short his life in a fit of
insanity.” He depicted him as a man of weak intellect, with a
smattering of education, who had been thrown off his balance by
philosophical ideas above his level and certain modern theories of
duty, which he learnt in practice from the reckless life of his master,
who was also perhaps his father—Fyodor Pavlovitch; and, theoretically,
from various strange philosophical conversations with his master’s
elder son, Ivan Fyodorovitch, who readily indulged in this diversion,
probably feeling dull or wishing to amuse himself at the valet’s
expense. “He spoke to me himself of his spiritual condition during the
last few days at his father’s house,” Ippolit Kirillovitch explained;
“but others too have borne witness to it—the prisoner himself, his
brother, and the servant Grigory—that is, all who knew him well.
“Moreover, Smerdyakov, whose health was shaken by his attacks of
epilepsy, had not the courage of a chicken. ‘He fell at my feet and
kissed them,’ the prisoner himself has told us, before he realized how
damaging such a statement was to himself. ‘He is an epileptic chicken,’
he declared about him in his characteristic language. And the prisoner
chose him for his confidant (we have his own word for it) and he
frightened him into consenting at last to act as a spy for him. In that
capacity he deceived his master, revealing to the prisoner the
existence of the envelope with the notes in it and the signals by means
of which he could get into the house. How could he help telling him,