“So, for the present we shall write down that you radically deny the accusation brought against you,” Nikolai Parfenovich pronounced imposingly, and, turning to the clerk, he dictated in a low voice what he was to write down.
“Write down? You want to write it down? Well, write it down then, I consent, I give my full consent, gentlemen ... Only, you see ... Wait, wait, write it down like this: ‘Of violence—guilty; of inflicting a savage beating on a poor old man—guilty.’ And then, within himself, too, inside, in the bottom of his heart, he is guilty—but there’s no need to write that down,” he turned suddenly to the clerk, “that is my private life, gentlemen, that doesn’t concern you now, the bottom of my heart, I mean ... But of the murder of his old father—not guilty! It’s a wild idea! It’s an utterly wild idea...! I’ll prove it to you and you’ll be convinced immediately. You’ll laugh, gentlemen, you’ll roar with laughter at your own suspicion...!”
“Calm yourself, Dmitri Fyodorovich,” the district attorney reminded him, apparently as if he wished to subdue the frenzied man with his own calmness. “Before continuing the interrogation, I should like, if only you will agree to answer, to hear from you a confirmation of the fact that you seem to have disliked the late Fyodor Pavlovich, and were in some sort of permanent dispute with him ... Here, in any case, a quarter of an hour ago, I believe you were pleased to say that you even wanted to kill him: ‘I did not kill him,’ you exclaimed, ‘but I wanted to kill him! ‘“
“I exclaimed that? Ah, maybe I did, gentlemen! Yes, unfortunately I wanted to kill him, wanted to many times ... unfortunately, unfortunately!”
“You wanted to. Would you be willing to explain what principles in fact guided you in this hatred for the person of your parent?”
“What’s there to explain, gentlemen!” Mitya shrugged gloomily, looking down. “I’ve never hidden my feelings, the whole town knows of it—everyone in the tavern knows. Recently, in the monastery, I announced it in the elder Zosima’s cell ... That same day, in the evening, I beat my father and nearly killed him, and swore in front of witnesses that I would come back and kill him ... Oh, there’s a thousand witnesses! I’ve been shouting for the whole month, everyone is a witness...! The fact is right there, the fact speaks, it cries out, but—feelings, gentlemen, feelings are something else. You see, gentlemen,” Mitya frowned, “it seems to me that you have no right to question me about my feelings. You are empowered, I understand that, but this is my business, my inner business, an intimate thing, but ... since I haven’t hidden my feelings before ... in the tavern, for instance, but have talked of it to all and sundry, so I won’t ... I won’t make a secret of it now, either. You see, gentlemen, I quite understand that in that case there is horrible evidence against me: I told everyone I would kill him, and suddenly he is killed: who else but me in that case? Ha, ha! I don’t blame you, gentlemen, I don’t blame you at all. I’m struck to the epidermis myself, because who, finally, did kill him in that case, if not me? Isn’t that so? If not me, then who, who? Gentlemen,” he suddenly exclaimed, “I want to know, I even demand it of you, gentlemen: where was he killed? How was he killed, with what and how? Tell me,” he asked quickly, looking around at the prosecutor and the district attorney.
“We found him lying on his back, on the floor of his study, with his head smashed in,” the prosecutor said.
“How horrible, gentlemen!” Mitya suddenly shuddered, and leaning his elbow on the table, he covered his face with his right hand.
“Let us continue,” Nikolai Parfenovich interrupted. “What, then, guided you in your feeling of hatred? I believe you have announced publicly that it was a feeling of jealousy?”
“Yes, jealousy, and not only jealousy.”
“Disputes about money?” ‘ “Yes, about money, too.”
“The dispute seems to have been over three thousand roubles, allegedly due you as part of your inheritance?”
“Three thousand, hah! It was more, more,” Mitya heaved himself up, “more than six, more than ten, maybe. I told everyone, I shouted it to everyone! But I decided to let it go, to settle for three thousand. I desperately needed that three thousand ... so the envelope with three thousand which I knew was under his pillow, waiting for Grushenka, I considered definitely as stolen from me, that’s what, gentlemen, I considered it mine, just as if it was my own property ...”
The prosecutor exchanged meaningful glances with the district attorney and managed to wink at him unobserved.
“We shall come back to that subject later,” the district attorney said at once. “For now, allow me to take note of precisely this little point and write it down: that you considered the money in that envelope as your own property.”
“Write it down, gentlemen, I quite understand that it is one more piece of evidence against me, but I’m not afraid of evidence and even testify against myself. Do you hear, against myself! You see, gentlemen, you seem to be taking me for quite a different man from what I am,” he suddenly added, glumly and sadly. “It is a noble man you are speaking with, a most noble person; above all—do not lose sight of this—a man who has done a world of mean things, but who always was and remained a most noble person, as a person, inside, in his depths, well, in short, I don’t know how to say it ... This is precisely what has tormented me all my life, that I thirsted for nobility, that I was, so to speak, a sufferer for nobility, seeking it with a lantern, Diogenes’ lantern,[272] and meanwhile all my life I’ve been doing only dirty things, as we all do, gentlemen ... I mean, me alone, gentlemen, not all but me alone, I made a mistake, me alone, alone . . .! Gentlemen, my head aches,” he winced with pain. “You see, gentlemen, I did not like his appearance, it was somehow dishonorable, boastful, trampling on all that’s holy, mockery and unbelief, loathsome, loathsome! But now that he’s dead, I think differently.”
“How differently?”
“Not differently, but I’m sorry I hated him so much.”
“You feel repentant?”
“No, not really repentant, don’t write that down. I’m not good myself, gentlemen, that’s the thing, I’m not so beautiful myself, and therefore I had no right to consider him repulsive, that’s the thing. Perhaps you can write that down.”
Having said this, Mitya suddenly became extremely sad. Gradually, for some time now, as he answered the district attorney’s questions, he had been growing more and more gloomy. And suddenly, just at that moment, another unexpected scene broke out. It so happened that, though Grushenka had been removed, she had not been taken very far, only to the third room down from the blue room in which the interrogation was now going on. It was a small room with one window, just beyond the big room where they had been dancing and feasting during the night. There she sat, and so far the only one with her was Maximov, who was terribly shocked, terribly frightened, and clung to her as if seeking salvation at her side. Some peasant with a badge on his chest stood at their door. Grushenka was weeping, and then suddenly, when the grief came too near her soul, she jumped up, clasped her hands, and, crying “Woe, woe is me!” in a loud wail, rushed out of the room to him, to her Mitya, so unexpectedly that no one had time to stop her. Mitya, hearing her wail, shuddered all over, jumped up, gave a shout, and, as if forgetting himself, rushed headlong to meet her. But again they were not allowed to come together, though they had already caught sight of each other. He was seized firmly by the arms: he struggled, tried to break loose, it took three or four men to hold him. She, too, was seized, and he saw her shouting and stretching out her arms to him as they drew her away. When the scene was over, he came to himself again in the same place, across the table from the district attorney, and was shouting at them: