The Brothers Karamazov
and suddenly her grief was too much for her, she jumped up, flung up
her arms and, with a loud wail of sorrow, rushed out of the room to
him, to her Mitya, and so unexpectedly that they had not time to stop
her. Mitya, hearing her cry, trembled, jumped up, and with a yell
rushed impetuously to meet her, not knowing what he was doing. But they
were not allowed to come together, though they saw one another. He was
seized by the arms. He struggled, and tried to tear himself away. It
took three or four men to hold him. She was seized too, and he saw her
stretching out her arms to him, crying aloud as they carried her away.
When the scene was over, he came to himself again, sitting in the same
place as before, opposite the investigating lawyer, and crying out to
them:
“What do you want with her? Why do you torment her? She’s done nothing,
nothing!...”
The lawyers tried to soothe him. About ten minutes passed like this. At
last Mihail Makarovitch, who had been absent, came hurriedly into the
room, and said in a loud and excited voice to the prosecutor:
“She’s been removed, she’s downstairs. Will you allow me to say one
word to this unhappy man, gentlemen? In your presence, gentlemen, in
your presence.”
“By all means, Mihail Makarovitch,” answered the investigating lawyer.
“In the present case we have nothing against it.”
“Listen, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, my dear fellow,” began the police
captain, and there was a look of warm, almost fatherly, feeling for the
luckless prisoner on his excited face. “I took your Agrafena
Alexandrovna downstairs myself, and confided her to the care of the
landlord’s daughters, and that old fellow Maximov is with her all the
time. And I soothed her, do you hear? I soothed and calmed her. I
impressed on her that you have to clear yourself, so she mustn’t hinder
you, must not depress you, or you may lose your head and say the wrong
thing in your evidence. In fact, I talked to her and she understood.
She’s a sensible girl, my boy, a good-hearted girl, she would have
kissed my old hands, begging help for you. She sent me herself, to tell
you not to worry about her. And I must go, my dear fellow, I must go
and tell her that you are calm and comforted about her. And so you must
be calm, do you understand? I was unfair to her; she is a Christian
soul, gentlemen, yes, I tell you, she’s a gentle soul, and not to blame
for anything. So what am I to tell her, Dmitri Fyodorovitch? Will you
sit quiet or not?”
The good-natured police captain said a great deal that was irregular,
but Grushenka’s suffering, a fellow creature’s suffering, touched his
good-natured heart, and tears stood in his eyes. Mitya jumped up and
rushed towards him.
“Forgive me, gentlemen, oh, allow me, allow me!” he cried. “You’ve the
heart of an angel, an angel, Mihail Makarovitch, I thank you for her. I
will, I will be calm, cheerful, in fact. Tell her, in the kindness of
your heart, that I am cheerful, quite cheerful, that I shall be
laughing in a minute, knowing that she has a guardian angel like you. I
shall have done with all this directly, and as soon as I’m free, I’ll
be with her, she’ll see, let her wait. Gentlemen,” he said, turning to
the two lawyers, “now I’ll open my whole soul to you; I’ll pour out
everything. We’ll finish this off directly, finish it off gayly. We
shall laugh at it in the end, shan’t we? But, gentlemen, that woman is
the queen of my heart. Oh, let me tell you that. That one thing I’ll
tell you now.... I see I’m with honorable men. She is my light, she is
my holy one, and if only you knew! Did you hear her cry, ‘I’ll go to
death with you’? And what have I, a penniless beggar, done for her? Why
such love for me? How can a clumsy, ugly brute like me, with my ugly
face, deserve such love, that she is ready to go to exile with me? And
how she fell down at your feet for my sake, just now!... and yet she’s
proud and has done nothing! How can I help adoring her, how can I help
crying out and rushing to her as I did just now? Gentlemen, forgive me!
But now, now I am comforted.”
And he sank back in his chair and, covering his face with his hands,
burst into tears. But they were happy tears. He recovered himself
instantly. The old police captain seemed much pleased, and the lawyers
also. They felt that the examination was passing into a new phase. When
the police captain went out, Mitya was positively gay.
“Now, gentlemen, I am at your disposal, entirely at your disposal. And
if it were not for all these trivial details, we should understand one
another in a minute. I’m at those details again. I’m at your disposal,
gentlemen, but I declare that we must have mutual confidence, you in me
and I in you, or there’ll be no end to it. I speak in your interests.
To business, gentlemen, to business, and don’t rummage in my soul;
don’t tease me with trifles, but only ask me about facts and what
matters, and I will satisfy you at once. And damn the details!”
So spoke Mitya. The interrogation began again.
Chapter IV.
The Second Ordeal
“You don’t know how you encourage us, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, by your
readiness to answer,” said Nikolay Parfenovitch, with an animated air,
and obvious satisfaction beaming in his very prominent, short-sighted,
light gray eyes, from which he had removed his spectacles a moment
before. “And you have made a very just remark about the mutual
confidence, without which it is sometimes positively impossible to get
on in cases of such importance, if the suspected party really hopes and
desires to defend himself and is in a position to do so. We, on our
side, will do everything in our power, and you can see for yourself how
we are conducting the case. You approve, Ippolit Kirillovitch?” He
turned to the prosecutor.
“Oh, undoubtedly,” replied the prosecutor. His tone was somewhat cold,
compared with Nikolay Parfenovitch’s impulsiveness.
I will note once for all that Nikolay Parfenovitch, who had but lately
arrived among us, had from the first felt marked respect for Ippolit
Kirillovitch, our prosecutor, and had become almost his bosom friend.
He was almost the only person who put implicit faith in Ippolit
Kirillovitch’s extraordinary talents as a psychologist and orator and
in the justice of his grievance. He had heard of him in Petersburg. On
the other hand, young Nikolay Parfenovitch was the only person in the
whole world whom our “unappreciated” prosecutor genuinely liked. On
their way to Mokroe they had time to come to an understanding about the
present case. And now as they sat at the table, the sharp-witted junior
caught and interpreted every indication on his senior colleague’s
face—half a word, a glance, or a wink.
“Gentlemen, only let me tell my own story and don’t interrupt me with
trivial questions and I’ll tell you everything in a moment,” said Mitya
excitedly.
“Excellent! Thank you. But before we proceed to listen to your
communication, will you allow me to inquire as to another little fact
of great interest to us? I mean the ten roubles you borrowed yesterday
at about five o’clock on the security of your pistols, from your
friend, Pyotr Ilyitch Perhotin.”
“I pledged them, gentlemen. I pledged them for ten roubles. What more?
That’s all about it. As soon as I got back to town I pledged them.”
“You got back to town? Then you had been out of town?”
“Yes, I went a journey of forty versts into the country. Didn’t you
know?”
The prosecutor and Nikolay Parfenovitch exchanged glances.
“Well, how would it be if you began your story with a systematic
description of all you did yesterday, from the morning onwards? Allow
us, for instance, to inquire why you were absent from the town, and
just when you left and when you came back—all those facts.”
“You should have asked me like that from the beginning,” cried Mitya,
laughing aloud, “and, if you like, we won’t begin from yesterday, but
from the morning of the day before; then you’ll understand how, why,
and where I went. I went the day before yesterday, gentlemen, to a
merchant of the town, called Samsonov, to borrow three thousand roubles
from him on safe security. It was a pressing matter, gentlemen, it was
a sudden necessity.”
“Allow me to interrupt you,” the prosecutor put in politely. “Why were
you in such pressing need for just that sum, three thousand?”
“Oh, gentlemen, you needn’t go into details, how, when and why, and why
just so much money, and not so much, and all that rigmarole. Why, it’ll
run to three volumes, and then you’ll want an epilogue!”
Mitya said all this with the good-natured but impatient familiarity of
a man who is anxious to tell the whole truth and is full of the best
intentions.
“Gentlemen!”—he corrected himself hurriedly—“don’t be vexed with me for
my restiveness, I beg you again. Believe me once more, I feel the
greatest respect for you and understand the true position of affairs.
Don’t think I’m drunk. I’m quite sober now. And, besides, being drunk
would be no hindrance. It’s with me, you know, like the saying: ‘When
he is sober, he is a fool; when he is drunk, he is a wise man.’ Ha ha!
But I see, gentlemen, it’s not the proper thing to make jokes to you,
till we’ve had our explanation, I mean. And I’ve my own dignity to keep
up, too. I quite understand the difference for the moment. I am, after
all, in the position of a criminal, and so, far from being on equal
terms with you. And it’s your business to watch me. I can’t expect you
to pat me on the head for what I did to Grigory, for one can’t break
old men’s heads with impunity. I suppose you’ll put me away for him for
six months, or a year perhaps, in a house of correction. I don’t know
what the punishment is—but it will be without loss of the rights of my
rank, without loss of my rank, won’t it? So you see, gentlemen, I
understand the distinction between us.... But you must see that you
could puzzle God Himself with such questions. ‘How did you step? Where
did you step? When did you step? And on what did you step?’ I shall get
mixed up, if you go on like this, and you will put it all down against
me. And what will that lead to? To nothing! And even if it’s nonsense
I’m talking now, let me finish, and you, gentlemen, being men of honor
and refinement, will forgive me! I’ll finish by asking you, gentlemen,
to drop that conventional method of questioning. I mean, beginning from
some miserable trifle, how I got up, what I had for breakfast, how I
spat, and where I spat, and so distracting the attention of the
criminal, suddenly stun him with an overwhelming question, ‘Whom did
you murder? Whom did you rob?’ Ha ha! That’s your regulation method,
that’s where all your cunning comes in. You can put peasants off their
guard like that, but not me. I know the tricks. I’ve been in the
service, too. Ha ha ha! You’re not angry, gentlemen? You forgive my
impertinence?” he cried, looking at them with a good-nature that was
almost surprising. “It’s only Mitya Karamazov, you know, so you can
overlook it. It would be inexcusable in a sensible man; but you can
forgive it in Mitya. Ha ha!”
Nikolay Parfenovitch listened, and laughed too. Though the prosecutor
did not laugh, he kept his eyes fixed keenly on Mitya, as though
anxious not to miss the least syllable, the slightest movement, the
smallest twitch of any feature of his face.
“That’s how we have treated you from the beginning,” said Nikolay
Parfenovitch, still laughing. “We haven’t tried to put you out by
asking how you got up in the morning and what you had for breakfast. We
began, indeed, with questions of the greatest importance.”
“I understand. I saw it and appreciated it, and I appreciate still more
your present kindness to me, an unprecedented kindness, worthy of your
noble hearts. We three here are gentlemen, and let everything be on the