The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (easy to read books for adults list .txt) 📕

that about feelings you’ve no right to question me. I know that you

are bound by your office, I quite understand that, but that’s my

affair, my private, intimate affair, yet… since I haven’t

concealed my feelings in the past… in the tavern, for instance, I’ve

talked to everyone, so… so I won’t make a secret of it now. You see,

I understand, gentlemen, that there are terrible facts against me in

this business. I told everyone that I’d kill him, and now, all of a

sudden, he’s been killed. So it must have been me! Ha ha! I can make

allowances for you, gentlemen, I can quite make allowances. I’m struck

all of a heap myself, for who can have murdered him, if not I?

That’s what it comes to, isn’t it? If not I, who can it be, who?

Gentlemen, I want to know, I insist on knowing!” he exclaimed

suddenly. “Where was he murdered? How was he murdered? How, and with

what? Tell me,” he asked quickly, looking at the two lawyers.

“We found him in his study, lying on his back on the floor, with

his head battered in,” said the prosecutor.

“That’s horrible!” Mitya shuddered and, putting his elbows on

the table, hid his face in his right hand.

“We will continue,” interposed Nikolay Parfenovitch. “So what

was it that impelled you to this sentiment of hatred? You have

asserted in public, I believe, that it was based upon jealousy?”

“Well, yes, jealousy. not only jealousy.”

“Disputes about money?”

“Yes, about money, too.”

“There was a dispute about three thousand roubles, I think,

which you claimed as part of your inheritance?”

“Three thousand! More, more,” cried Mitya hotly; “more than six

thousand, more than ten, perhaps. I told everyone so, shouted it at

them. But I made up my mind to let it go at three thousand. I was

desperately in need of that three thousand… so the bundle of notes

for three thousand that I knew he kept under his pillow, ready for

Grushenka, I considered as simply stolen from me. Yes, gentlemen, I

looked upon it as mine, as my own property…”

The prosecutor looked significantly at the investigating lawyer,

and had time to wink at him on the sly.

“We will return to that subject later,” said the lawyer

promptly. “You will allow us to note that point and write it down;

that you looked upon that money as your own property?”

“Write it down, by all means. I know that’s another fact that

tells against me, but I’m not afraid of facts and I tell them

against myself. Do you hear? Do you know, gentlemen, you take me for a

different sort of man from what I am,” he added, suddenly gloomy and

dejected. “You have to deal with a man of honour, a man of the highest

honour; above all don’t lose sight of it-a man who’s done a lot of

nasty things, but has always been, and still is, honourable at bottom,

in his inner being. I don’t know how to express it. That’s just what’s

made me wretched all my life, that I yearned to be honourable, that

I was, so to say, a martyr to a sense of honour, seeking for it with a

lantern, with the lantern of Diogenes, and yet all my life I’ve been

doing filthy things like all of us, gentlemen… that is like me

alone. That was a mistake, like me alone, me alone!… Gentlemen, my

head aches…” His brows contracted with pain. “You see, gentlemen,

I couldn’t bear the look of him, there was something in him ignoble,

impudent, trampling on everything sacred, something sneering and

irreverent, loathsome, loathsome. But now that he’s dead, I feel

differently.”

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t feel differently, but I wish I hadn’t hated him so.”

“You feel penitent?”

“No, not penitent, don’t write that. I’m not much good myself; I’m

not very beautiful, so I had no right to consider him repulsive.

That’s what I mean. Write that down, if you like.”

Saying this Mitya became very mournful. He had grown more and more

gloomy as the inquiry continued.

At that moment another unexpected scene followed. Though Grushenka

had been removed, she had not been taken far away, only into the

room next but one from the blue room, in which the examination was

proceeding. It was a little room with one window, next beyond the

large room in which they had danced and feasted so lavishly. She was

sitting there with no one by her but Maximov, who was terribly

depressed, terribly scared, and clung to her side, as though for

security. At their door stood one of the peasants with a metal plate

on his breast. Grushenka was crying, 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

gaily. 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 honourable 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.