The Brothers Karamazov
to defend prisoners, of whose innocence he had a conviction or at least
a preconceived idea. “That is what has happened to me in the present
case,” he explained. “From the very first accounts in the newspapers I
was struck by something which strongly prepossessed me in the
prisoner’s favor. What interested me most was a fact which often occurs
in legal practice, but rarely, I think, in such an extreme and peculiar
form as in the present case. I ought to formulate that peculiarity only
at the end of my speech, but I will do so at the very beginning, for it
is my weakness to go to work directly, not keeping my effects in
reserve and economizing my material. That may be imprudent on my part,
but at least it’s sincere. What I have in my mind is this: there is an
overwhelming chain of evidence against the prisoner, and at the same
time not one fact that will stand criticism, if it is examined
separately. As I followed the case more closely in the papers my idea
was more and more confirmed, and I suddenly received from the
prisoner’s relatives a request to undertake his defense. I at once
hurried here, and here I became completely convinced. It was to break
down this terrible chain of facts, and to show that each piece of
evidence taken separately was unproved and fantastic, that I undertook
the case.”
So Fetyukovitch began.
“Gentlemen of the jury,” he suddenly protested, “I am new to this
district. I have no preconceived ideas. The prisoner, a man of
turbulent and unbridled temper, has not insulted me. But he has
insulted perhaps hundreds of persons in this town, and so prejudiced
many people against him beforehand. Of course I recognize that the
moral sentiment of local society is justly excited against him. The
prisoner is of turbulent and violent temper. Yet he was received in
society here; he was even welcome in the family of my talented friend,
the prosecutor.”
(N.B. At these words there were two or three laughs in the audience,
quickly suppressed, but noticed by all. All of us knew that the
prosecutor received Mitya against his will, solely because he had
somehow interested his wife—a lady of the highest virtue and moral
worth, but fanciful, capricious, and fond of opposing her husband,
especially in trifles. Mitya’s visits, however, had not been frequent.)
“Nevertheless I venture to suggest,” Fetyukovitch continued, “that in
spite of his independent mind and just character, my opponent may have
formed a mistaken prejudice against my unfortunate client. Oh, that is
so natural; the unfortunate man has only too well deserved such
prejudice. Outraged morality, and still more outraged taste, is often
relentless. We have, in the talented prosecutor’s speech, heard a stern
analysis of the prisoner’s character and conduct, and his severe
critical attitude to the case was evident. And, what’s more, he went
into psychological subtleties into which he could not have entered, if
he had the least conscious and malicious prejudice against the
prisoner. But there are things which are even worse, even more fatal in
such cases, than the most malicious and consciously unfair attitude. It
is worse if we are carried away by the artistic instinct, by the desire
to create, so to speak, a romance, especially if God has endowed us
with psychological insight. Before I started on my way here, I was
warned in Petersburg, and was myself aware, that I should find here a
talented opponent whose psychological insight and subtlety had gained
him peculiar renown in legal circles of recent years. But profound as
psychology is, it’s a knife that cuts both ways.” (Laughter among the
public.) “You will, of course, forgive me my comparison; I can’t boast
of eloquence. But I will take as an example any point in the
prosecutor’s speech.
“The prisoner, running away in the garden in the dark, climbed over the
fence, was seized by the servant, and knocked him down with a brass
pestle. Then he jumped back into the garden and spent five minutes over
the man, trying to discover whether he had killed him or not. And the
prosecutor refuses to believe the prisoner’s statement that he ran to
old Grigory out of pity. ‘No,’ he says, ‘such sensibility is impossible
at such a moment, that’s unnatural; he ran to find out whether the only
witness of his crime was dead or alive, and so showed that he had
committed the murder, since he would not have run back for any other
reason.’
“Here you have psychology; but let us take the same method and apply it
to the case the other way round, and our result will be no less
probable. The murderer, we are told, leapt down to find out, as a
precaution, whether the witness was alive or not, yet he had left in
his murdered father’s study, as the prosecutor himself argues, an
amazing piece of evidence in the shape of a torn envelope, with an
inscription that there had been three thousand roubles in it. ‘If he
had carried that envelope away with him, no one in the world would have
known of that envelope and of the notes in it, and that the money had
been stolen by the prisoner.’ Those are the prosecutor’s own words. So
on one side you see a complete absence of precaution, a man who has
lost his head and run away in a fright, leaving that clew on the floor,
and two minutes later, when he has killed another man, we are entitled
to assume the most heartless and calculating foresight in him. But even
admitting this was so, it is psychological subtlety, I suppose, that
discerns that under certain circumstances I become as bloodthirsty and
keen-sighted as a Caucasian eagle, while at the next I am as timid and
blind as a mole. But if I am so bloodthirsty and cruelly calculating
that when I kill a man I only run back to find out whether he is alive
to witness against me, why should I spend five minutes looking after my
victim at the risk of encountering other witnesses? Why soak my
handkerchief, wiping the blood off his head so that it may be evidence
against me later? If he were so cold-hearted and calculating, why not
hit the servant on the head again and again with the same pestle so as
to kill him outright and relieve himself of all anxiety about the
witness?
“Again, though he ran to see whether the witness was alive, he left
another witness on the path, that brass pestle which he had taken from
the two women, and which they could always recognize afterwards as
theirs, and prove that he had taken it from them. And it is not as
though he had forgotten it on the path, dropped it through carelessness
or haste, no, he had flung away his weapon, for it was found fifteen
paces from where Grigory lay. Why did he do so? Just because he was
grieved at having killed a man, an old servant; and he flung away the
pestle with a curse, as a murderous weapon. That’s how it must have
been, what other reason could he have had for throwing it so far? And
if he was capable of feeling grief and pity at having killed a man, it
shows that he was innocent of his father’s murder. Had he murdered him,
he would never have run to another victim out of pity; then he would
have felt differently; his thoughts would have been centered on
self-preservation. He would have had none to spare for pity, that is
beyond doubt. On the contrary, he would have broken his skull instead
of spending five minutes looking after him. There was room for pity and
good-feeling just because his conscience had been clear till then. Here
we have a different psychology. I have purposely resorted to this
method, gentlemen of the jury, to show that you can prove anything by
it. It all depends on who makes use of it. Psychology lures even most
serious people into romancing, and quite unconsciously. I am speaking
of the abuse of psychology, gentlemen.”
Sounds of approval and laughter, at the expense of the prosecutor, were
again audible in the court. I will not repeat the speech in detail; I
will only quote some passages from it, some leading points.
Chapter XI.
There Was No Money. There Was No Robbery
There was one point that struck every one in Fetyukovitch’s speech. He
flatly denied the existence of the fatal three thousand roubles, and
consequently, the possibility of their having been stolen.
“Gentlemen of the jury,” he began. “Every new and unprejudiced observer
must be struck by a characteristic peculiarity in the present case,
namely, the charge of robbery, and the complete impossibility of
proving that there was anything to be stolen. We are told that money
was stolen—three thousand roubles—but whether those roubles ever
existed, nobody knows. Consider, how have we heard of that sum, and who
has seen the notes? The only person who saw them, and stated that they
had been put in the envelope, was the servant, Smerdyakov. He had
spoken of it to the prisoner and his brother, Ivan Fyodorovitch, before
the catastrophe. Madame Svyetlov, too, had been told of it. But not one
of these three persons had actually seen the notes, no one but
Smerdyakov had seen them.
“Here the question arises, if it’s true that they did exist, and that
Smerdyakov had seen them, when did he see them for the last time? What
if his master had taken the notes from under his bed and put them back
in his cash-box without telling him? Note, that according to
Smerdyakov’s story the notes were kept under the mattress; the prisoner
must have pulled them out, and yet the bed was absolutely unrumpled;
that is carefully recorded in the protocol. How could the prisoner have
found the notes without disturbing the bed? How could he have helped
soiling with his blood-stained hands the fine and spotless linen with
which the bed had been purposely made?
“But I shall be asked: What about the envelope on the floor? Yes, it’s
worth saying a word or two about that envelope. I was somewhat
surprised just now to hear the highly talented prosecutor declare of
himself—of himself, observe—that but for that envelope, but for its
being left on the floor, no one in the world would have known of the
existence of that envelope and the notes in it, and therefore of the
prisoner’s having stolen it. And so that torn scrap of paper is, by the
prosecutor’s own admission, the sole proof on which the charge of
robbery rests, ‘otherwise no one would have known of the robbery, nor
perhaps even of the money.’ But is the mere fact that that scrap of
paper was lying on the floor a proof that there was money in it, and
that that money had been stolen? Yet, it will be objected, Smerdyakov
had seen the money in the envelope. But when, when had he seen it for
the last time, I ask you that? I talked to Smerdyakov, and he told me
that he had seen the notes two days before the catastrophe. Then why
not imagine that old Fyodor Pavlovitch, locked up alone in impatient
and hysterical expectation of the object of his adoration, may have
whiled away the time by breaking open the envelope and taking out the
notes. ‘What’s the use of the envelope?’ he may have asked himself.
‘She won’t believe the notes are there, but when I show her the thirty
rainbow-colored notes in one roll, it will make more impression, you
may be sure, it will make her mouth water.’ And so he tears open the
envelope, takes out the money, and flings the envelope on the floor,
conscious of being the owner and untroubled by any fears of leaving
evidence.
“Listen, gentlemen, could anything be more likely than this theory and
such an action? Why is it out of the question? But if anything of the
sort could have taken place, the charge of robbery falls to the ground;
if there was no money, there was no theft of it. If the envelope on the
floor may be taken as evidence that there had been money in it, why may
I not maintain the opposite, that the envelope was on the floor because
the money had been taken from it by its owner?