The Brothers Karamazov
new rainbow-colored notes. (I asked him about that on purpose.) Oh,
beware of showing an ambitious and envious man a large sum of money at
once! And it was the first time he had seen so much money in the hands
of one man. The sight of the rainbow-colored notes may have made a
morbid impression on his imagination, but with no immediate results.
“The talented prosecutor, with extraordinary subtlety, sketched for us
all the arguments for and against the hypothesis of Smerdyakov’s guilt,
and asked us in particular what motive he had in feigning a fit. But he
may not have been feigning at all, the fit may have happened quite
naturally, but it may have passed off quite naturally, and the sick man
may have recovered, not completely perhaps, but still regaining
consciousness, as happens with epileptics.
“The prosecutor asks at what moment could Smerdyakov have committed the
murder. But it is very easy to point out that moment. He might have
waked up from deep sleep (for he was only asleep—an epileptic fit is
always followed by a deep sleep) at that moment when the old Grigory
shouted at the top of his voice ‘Parricide!’ That shout in the dark and
stillness may have waked Smerdyakov whose sleep may have been less
sound at the moment: he might naturally have waked up an hour before.
“Getting out of bed, he goes almost unconsciously and with no definite
motive towards the sound to see what’s the matter. His head is still
clouded with his attack, his faculties are half asleep; but, once in
the garden, he walks to the lighted windows and he hears terrible news
from his master, who would be, of course, glad to see him. His mind
sets to work at once. He hears all the details from his frightened
master, and gradually in his disordered brain there shapes itself an
idea—terrible, but seductive and irresistibly logical. To kill the old
man, take the three thousand, and throw all the blame on to his young
master. A terrible lust of money, of booty, might seize upon him as he
realized his security from detection. Oh! these sudden and irresistible
impulses come so often when there is a favorable opportunity, and
especially with murderers who have had no idea of committing a murder
beforehand. And Smerdyakov may have gone in and carried out his plan.
With what weapon? Why, with any stone picked up in the garden. But what
for, with what object? Why, the three thousand which means a career for
him. Oh, I am not contradicting myself—the money may have existed. And
perhaps Smerdyakov alone knew where to find it, where his master kept
it. And the covering of the money—the torn envelope on the floor?
“Just now, when the prosecutor was explaining his subtle theory that
only an inexperienced thief like Karamazov would have left the envelope
on the floor, and not one like Smerdyakov, who would have avoided
leaving a piece of evidence against himself, I thought as I listened
that I was hearing something very familiar, and, would you believe it,
I have heard that very argument, that very conjecture, of how Karamazov
would have behaved, precisely two days before, from Smerdyakov himself.
What’s more, it struck me at the time. I fancied that there was an
artificial simplicity about him; that he was in a hurry to suggest this
idea to me that I might fancy it was my own. He insinuated it, as it
were. Did he not insinuate the same idea at the inquiry and suggest it
to the talented prosecutor?
“I shall be asked, ‘What about the old woman, Grigory’s wife? She heard
the sick man moaning close by, all night.’ Yes, she heard it, but that
evidence is extremely unreliable. I knew a lady who complained bitterly
that she had been kept awake all night by a dog in the yard. Yet the
poor beast, it appeared, had only yelped once or twice in the night.
And that’s natural. If any one is asleep and hears a groan he wakes up,
annoyed at being waked, but instantly falls asleep again. Two hours
later, again a groan, he wakes up and falls asleep again; and the same
thing again two hours later—three times altogether in the night. Next
morning the sleeper wakes up and complains that some one has been
groaning all night and keeping him awake. And it is bound to seem so to
him: the intervals of two hours of sleep he does not remember, he only
remembers the moments of waking, so he feels he has been waked up all
night.
“But why, why, asks the prosecutor, did not Smerdyakov confess in his
last letter? Why did his conscience prompt him to one step and not to
both? But, excuse me, conscience implies penitence, and the suicide may
not have felt penitence, but only despair. Despair and penitence are
two very different things. Despair may be vindictive and
irreconcilable, and the suicide, laying his hands on himself, may well
have felt redoubled hatred for those whom he had envied all his life.
“Gentlemen of the jury, beware of a miscarriage of justice! What is
there unlikely in all I have put before you just now? Find the error in
my reasoning; find the impossibility, the absurdity. And if there is
but a shade of possibility, but a shade of probability in my
propositions, do not condemn him. And is there only a shade? I swear by
all that is sacred, I fully believe in the explanation of the murder I
have just put forward. What troubles me and makes me indignant is that
of all the mass of facts heaped up by the prosecution against the
prisoner, there is not a single one certain and irrefutable. And yet
the unhappy man is to be ruined by the accumulation of these facts.
Yes, the accumulated effect is awful: the blood, the blood dripping
from his fingers, the bloodstained shirt, the dark night resounding
with the shout ‘Parricide!’ and the old man falling with a broken head.
And then the mass of phrases, statements, gestures, shouts! Oh! this
has so much influence, it can so bias the mind; but, gentlemen of the
jury, can it bias your minds? Remember, you have been given absolute
power to bind and to loose, but the greater the power, the more
terrible its responsibility.
“I do not draw back one iota from what I have said just now, but
suppose for one moment I agreed with the prosecution that my luckless
client had stained his hands with his father’s blood. This is only
hypothesis, I repeat; I never for one instant doubt of his innocence.
But, so be it, I assume that my client is guilty of parricide. Even so,
hear what I have to say. I have it in my heart to say something more to
you, for I feel that there must be a great conflict in your hearts and
minds.... Forgive my referring to your hearts and minds, gentlemen of
the jury, but I want to be truthful and sincere to the end. Let us all
be sincere!”
At this point the speech was interrupted by rather loud applause. The
last words, indeed, were pronounced with a note of such sincerity that
every one felt that he really might have something to say, and that
what he was about to say would be of the greatest consequence. But the
President, hearing the applause, in a loud voice threatened to clear
the court if such an incident were repeated. Every sound was hushed and
Fetyukovitch began in a voice full of feeling quite unlike the tone he
had used hitherto.
Chapter XIII.
A Corrupter Of Thought
“It’s not only the accumulation of facts that threatens my client with
ruin, gentlemen of the jury,” he began, “what is really damning for my
client is one fact—the dead body of his father. Had it been an ordinary
case of murder you would have rejected the charge in view of the
triviality, the incompleteness, and the fantastic character of the
evidence, if you examine each part of it separately; or, at least, you
would have hesitated to ruin a man’s life simply from the prejudice
against him which he has, alas! only too well deserved. But it’s not an
ordinary case of murder, it’s a case of parricide. That impresses men’s
minds, and to such a degree that the very triviality and incompleteness
of the evidence becomes less trivial and less incomplete even to an
unprejudiced mind. How can such a prisoner be acquitted? What if he
committed the murder and gets off unpunished? That is what every one,
almost involuntarily, instinctively, feels at heart.
“Yes, it’s a fearful thing to shed a father’s blood—the father who has
begotten me, loved me, not spared his life for me, grieved over my
illnesses from childhood up, troubled all his life for my happiness,
and has lived in my joys, in my successes. To murder such a
father—that’s inconceivable. Gentlemen of the jury, what is a father—a
real father? What is the meaning of that great word? What is the great
idea in that name? We have just indicated in part what a true father is
and what he ought to be. In the case in which we are now so deeply
occupied and over which our hearts are aching—in the present case, the
father, Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, did not correspond to that
conception of a father to which we have just referred. That’s the
misfortune. And indeed some fathers are a misfortune. Let us examine
this misfortune rather more closely: we must shrink from nothing,
gentlemen of the jury, considering the importance of the decision you
have to make. It’s our particular duty not to shrink from any idea,
like children or frightened women, as the talented prosecutor happily
expresses it.
“But in the course of his heated speech my esteemed opponent (and he
was my opponent before I opened my lips) exclaimed several times, ‘Oh,
I will not yield the defense of the prisoner to the lawyer who has come
down from Petersburg. I accuse, but I defend also!’ He exclaimed that
several times, but forgot to mention that if this terrible prisoner was
for twenty-three years so grateful for a mere pound of nuts given him
by the only man who had been kind to him, as a child in his father’s
house, might not such a man well have remembered for twenty-three years
how he ran in his father’s back-yard, ‘without boots on his feet and
with his little trousers hanging by one button’—to use the expression
of the kind-hearted doctor, Herzenstube?
“Oh, gentlemen of the jury, why need we look more closely at this
misfortune, why repeat what we all know already? What did my client
meet with when he arrived here, at his father’s house, and why depict
my client as a heartless egoist and monster? He is uncontrolled, he is
wild and unruly—we are trying him now for that—but who is responsible
for his life? Who is responsible for his having received such an
unseemly bringing up, in spite of his excellent disposition and his
grateful and sensitive heart? Did any one train him to be reasonable?
Was he enlightened by study? Did any one love him ever so little in his
childhood? My client was left to the care of Providence like a beast of
the field. He thirsted perhaps to see his father after long years of
separation. A thousand times perhaps he may, recalling his childhood,
have driven away the loathsome phantoms that haunted his childish
dreams and with all his heart he may have longed to embrace and to
forgive his father! And what awaited him? He was met by cynical taunts,
suspicions and wrangling about money. He heard nothing but revolting
talk and vicious precepts uttered daily over the brandy, and at last he
saw his father seducing his mistress from him with his own money. Oh,
gentlemen of the jury, that was cruel and revolting! And that old man
was always complaining of the disrespect and cruelty of his son. He
slandered him in society, injured him, calumniated him, bought up his
unpaid debts to get him thrown into prison.
“Gentlemen of the jury, people like my client, who are fierce, unruly,
and uncontrolled on the surface, are sometimes, most frequently indeed,
exceedingly tender-hearted, only they don’t express it. Don’t laugh,