The Brothers Karamazov
“And do you know that Nazaryev, the merchant with the medal, a
juryman?”
“What of him?”
“He is a man with brains.”
“But he never speaks.”
“He is no great talker, but so much the better. There’s no need for the
Petersburg man to teach him: he could teach all Petersburg himself.
He’s the father of twelve children. Think of that!”
“Upon my word, you don’t suppose they won’t acquit him?” one of our
young officials exclaimed in another group.
“They’ll acquit him for certain,” said a resolute voice.
“It would be shameful, disgraceful, not to acquit him!” cried the
official. “Suppose he did murder him—there are fathers and fathers!
And, besides, he was in such a frenzy.... He really may have done
nothing but swing the pestle in the air, and so knocked the old man
down. But it was a pity they dragged the valet in. That was simply an
absurd theory! If I’d been in Fetyukovitch’s place, I should simply
have said straight out: ‘He murdered him; but he is not guilty, hang it
all!’”
“That’s what he did, only without saying, ‘Hang it all!’”
“No, Mihail Semyonovitch, he almost said that, too,” put in a third
voice.
“Why, gentlemen, in Lent an actress was acquitted in our town who had
cut the throat of her lover’s lawful wife.”
“Oh, but she did not finish cutting it.”
“That makes no difference. She began cutting it.”
“What did you think of what he said about children? Splendid, wasn’t
it?”
“Splendid!”
“And about mysticism, too!”
“Oh, drop mysticism, do!” cried some one else; “think of Ippolit and
his fate from this day forth. His wife will scratch his eyes out
to-morrow for Mitya’s sake.”
“Is she here?”
“What an idea! If she’d been here she’d have scratched them out in
court. She is at home with toothache. He he he!”
“He he he!”
In a third group:
“I dare say they will acquit Mitenka, after all.”
“I should not be surprised if he turns the ‘Metropolis’ upside down
to-morrow. He will be drinking for ten days!”
“Oh, the devil!”
“The devil’s bound to have a hand in it. Where should he be if not
here?”
“Well, gentlemen, I admit it was eloquent. But still it’s not the thing
to break your father’s head with a pestle! Or what are we coming to?”
“The chariot! Do you remember the chariot?”
“Yes; he turned a cart into a chariot!”
“And to-morrow he will turn a chariot into a cart, just to suit his
purpose.”
“What cunning chaps there are nowadays! Is there any justice to be had
in Russia?”
But the bell rang. The jury deliberated for exactly an hour, neither
more nor less. A profound silence reigned in the court as soon as the
public had taken their seats. I remember how the jurymen walked into
the court. At last! I won’t repeat the questions in order, and, indeed,
I have forgotten them. I remember only the answer to the President’s
first and chief question: “Did the prisoner commit the murder for the
sake of robbery and with premeditation?” (I don’t remember the exact
words.) There was a complete hush. The foreman of the jury, the
youngest of the clerks, pronounced, in a clear, loud voice, amidst the
deathlike stillness of the court:
“Yes, guilty!”
And the same answer was repeated to every question: “Yes, guilty!” and
without the slightest extenuating comment. This no one had expected;
almost every one had reckoned upon a recommendation to mercy, at least.
The deathlike silence in the court was not broken—all seemed petrified:
those who desired his conviction as well as those who had been eager
for his acquittal. But that was only for the first instant, and it was
followed by a fearful hubbub. Many of the men in the audience were
pleased. Some were rubbing their hands with no attempt to conceal their
joy. Those who disagreed with the verdict seemed crushed, shrugged
their shoulders, whispered, but still seemed unable to realize this.
But how shall I describe the state the ladies were in? I thought they
would create a riot. At first they could scarcely believe their ears.
Then suddenly the whole court rang with exclamations: “What’s the
meaning of it? What next?” They leapt up from their places. They seemed
to fancy that it might be at once reconsidered and reversed. At that
instant Mitya suddenly stood up and cried in a heartrending voice,
stretching his hands out before him:
“I swear by God and the dreadful Day of Judgment I am not guilty of my
father’s blood! Katya, I forgive you! Brothers, friends, have pity on
the other woman!”
He could not go on, and broke into a terrible sobbing wail that was
heard all over the court in a strange, unnatural voice unlike his own.
From the farthest corner at the back of the gallery came a piercing
shriek—it was Grushenka. She had succeeded in begging admittance to the
court again before the beginning of the lawyers’ speeches. Mitya was
taken away. The passing of the sentence was deferred till next day. The
whole court was in a hubbub but I did not wait to hear. I only remember
a few exclamations I heard on the steps as I went out.
“He’ll have a twenty years’ trip to the mines!”
“Not less.”
“Well, our peasants have stood firm.”
“And have done for our Mitya.”
EPILOGUE
Chapter I.
Plans For Mitya’s Escape
Very early, at nine o’clock in the morning, five days after the trial,
Alyosha went to Katerina Ivanovna’s to talk over a matter of great
importance to both of them, and to give her a message. She sat and
talked to him in the very room in which she had once received
Grushenka. In the next room Ivan Fyodorovitch lay unconscious in a high
fever. Katerina Ivanovna had immediately after the scene at the trial
ordered the sick and unconscious man to be carried to her house,
disregarding the inevitable gossip and general disapproval of the
public. One of the two relations who lived with her had departed to
Moscow immediately after the scene in court, the other remained. But if
both had gone away, Katerina Ivanovna would have adhered to her
resolution, and would have gone on nursing the sick man and sitting by
him day and night. Varvinsky and Herzenstube were attending him. The
famous doctor had gone back to Moscow, refusing to give an opinion as
to the probable end of the illness. Though the doctors encouraged
Katerina Ivanovna and Alyosha, it was evident that they could not yet
give them positive hopes of recovery.
Alyosha came to see his sick brother twice a day. But this time he had
specially urgent business, and he foresaw how difficult it would be to
approach the subject, yet he was in great haste. He had another
engagement that could not be put off for that same morning, and there
was need of haste.
They had been talking for a quarter of an hour. Katerina Ivanovna was
pale and terribly fatigued, yet at the same time in a state of
hysterical excitement. She had a presentiment of the reason why Alyosha
had come to her.
“Don’t worry about his decision,” she said, with confident emphasis to
Alyosha. “One way or another he is bound to come to it. He must escape.
That unhappy man, that hero of honor and principle—not he, not Dmitri
Fyodorovitch, but the man lying the other side of that door, who has
sacrificed himself for his brother,” Katya added, with flashing
eyes—“told me the whole plan of escape long ago. You know he has
already entered into negotiations.... I’ve told you something
already.... You see, it will probably come off at the third _étape_
from here, when the party of prisoners is being taken to Siberia. Oh,
it’s a long way off yet. Ivan Fyodorovitch has already visited the
superintendent of the third _étape_. But we don’t know yet who will be
in charge of the party, and it’s impossible to find that out so long
beforehand. To-morrow perhaps I will show you in detail the whole plan
which Ivan Fyodorovitch left me on the eve of the trial in case of
need.... That was when—do you remember?—you found us quarreling. He had
just gone down-stairs, but seeing you I made him come back; do you
remember? Do you know what we were quarreling about then?”
“No, I don’t,” said Alyosha.
“Of course he did not tell you. It was about that plan of escape. He
had told me the main idea three days before, and we began quarreling
about it at once and quarreled for three days. We quarreled because,
when he told me that if Dmitri Fyodorovitch were convicted he would
escape abroad with that creature, I felt furious at once—I can’t tell
you why, I don’t know myself why.... Oh, of course, I was furious then
about that creature, and that she, too, should go abroad with Dmitri!”
Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed suddenly, her lips quivering with anger.
“As soon as Ivan Fyodorovitch saw that I was furious about that woman,
he instantly imagined I was jealous of Dmitri and that I still loved
Dmitri. That is how our first quarrel began. I would not give an
explanation, I could not ask forgiveness. I could not bear to think
that such a man could suspect me of still loving that ... and when I
myself had told him long before that I did not love Dmitri, that I
loved no one but him! It was only resentment against that creature that
made me angry with him. Three days later, on the evening you came, he
brought me a sealed envelope, which I was to open at once, if anything
happened to him. Oh, he foresaw his illness! He told me that the
envelope contained the details of the escape, and that if he died or
was taken dangerously ill, I was to save Mitya alone. Then he left me
money, nearly ten thousand—those notes to which the prosecutor referred
in his speech, having learnt from some one that he had sent them to be
changed. I was tremendously impressed to find that Ivan Fyodorovitch
had not given up his idea of saving his brother, and was confiding this
plan of escape to me, though he was still jealous of me and still
convinced that I loved Mitya. Oh, that was a sacrifice! No, you cannot
understand the greatness of such self-sacrifice, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I
wanted to fall at his feet in reverence, but I thought at once that he
would take it only for my joy at the thought of Mitya’s being saved
(and he certainly would have imagined that!), and I was so exasperated
at the mere possibility of such an unjust thought on his part that I
lost my temper again, and instead of kissing his feet, flew into a fury
again! Oh, I am unhappy! It’s my character, my awful, unhappy
character! Oh, you will see, I shall end by driving him, too, to
abandon me for another with whom he can get on better, like Dmitri. But
... no, I could not bear it, I should kill myself. And when you came in
then, and when I called to you and told him to come back, I was so
enraged by the look of contempt and hatred he turned on me that—do you
remember?—I cried out to you that it was he, he alone who had persuaded
me that his brother Dmitri was a murderer! I said that malicious thing
on purpose to wound him again. He had never, never persuaded me that
his brother was a murderer. On the contrary, it was I who persuaded
him! Oh, my vile temper was the cause of everything! I paved the way to
that hideous scene at the trial. He wanted to show me that he was an
honorable man, and that, even if I loved his brother, he would not ruin
him for revenge or jealousy. So he came to the court ... I am the cause
of it all, I alone am to blame!”
Katya never had made such confessions to Alyosha before, and he felt
that she was now at that stage of unbearable suffering when even the
proudest heart painfully crushes its pride and falls vanquished by
grief. Oh, Alyosha knew another terrible reason of her present misery,
though she had carefully concealed it from him during those days since
the trial; but it would have been for some reason too painful to him if
she had been brought so low as to speak to him now about that. She was