“I didn’t write it for publication ... they published it afterwards,” Rakitin mumbled, as if suddenly taken aback by something, and almost ashamed.
“Oh, but that’s wonderful! A thinker like you can, and even must, have a very broad attitude towards all social phenomena. Through the patronage of His Grace, your most useful pamphlet was distributed and has been relatively beneficial ... But what I mainly wanted to inquire about was this: you have just stated that you are a quite close acquaintance of Miss Svetlov?” (Nota bene: Grushenka’s last name turned out to be “Svetlov.” I learned it for the first time only that day, in the course of the trial. )
“I cannot answer for all my acquaintances ... I am a young man ... and who can answer for everyone he meets?” Rakitin simply blushed all over.
“I understand, I understand only too well!” exclaimed Fetyukovich, as if embarrassed himself, and as if hastening to apologize. “You, like anyone else, might be interested for your own part in the acquaintance of a young and beautiful woman who readily received the flower of local youth, but ... I simply wanted to inquire: it is known to us that about two months ago Miss Svetlov was extremely eager to make the acquaintance of the youngest Karamazov, Alexei Fyodorovich, and just for bringing him to her, and precisely in the monastery attire he was then wearing, she promised you twenty-five roubles, to be handed over as soon as you brought him. And that, as we know, took place precisely on the evening of the day that ended in the tragic catastrophe that has led to the present trial. You brought Alexei Karamazov to Miss Svetlov, but ... did you get the twenty-five-rouble reward from her—that is what I wanted to hear from you.”
“It was a joke ... I don’t see why it should interest you. I took it for a joke ... so as to give it back later ...”
“You did take it, then. But you have not given it back yet ... or have you?”
“It’s nothing ... ,” Rakitin muttered, “I cannot answer such questions ... Of course I’ll give it back.”
The presiding judge intervened, but the defense attorney announced that he had finished questioning Mr. Rakitin. Mr. Rakitin left the stage somewhat besmirched. The impression of the lofty nobility of his speech was indeed spoiled, and Fetyukovich, following him with his eyes, seemed to be saying, intending it for the public: “So, there goes one of your noble accusers!” I remember that this, too, did not go by without an episode on Mitya’s part: infuriated by the tone in which Rakitin referred to Grushenka, he suddenly cried out from his place: “Bernard!” And when, after all the questioning of Rakitin was over, the presiding judge addressed the defendant, asking him if he had any observations to make, Mitya shouted in a booming voice:
“He kept hitting me for loans, even in prison! A despicable Bernard and careerist, and he doesn’t believe in God, he hoodwinked His Grace!”
Mitya, of course, was again brought to reason for the violence of his language, but that was the end of Mr. Rakitin. There was no luck with Captain Snegiryov’s testimony either, but for an entirely different cause. He presented himself to the court all tattered, in dirty clothes, dirty boots, and, despite all precautions and preliminary “expertise,” suddenly turned out to be quite drunk. Asked about the insult he had received from Mitya, he suddenly refused to answer.
“God be with him, sir. Ilyushechka told me not to. God will repay me there, sir.”
“Who told you not to speak? Who are you referring to?”
“Ilyushechka, my little son. ‘Papa, papa, how he humiliated you! ‘ He said it by our stone. Now he’s dying, sir ...”
The captain suddenly burst into sobs and threw himself at the judge’s feet. He was quickly taken out amid the laughter of the public. The effect prepared by the prosecutor did not come off at all.
The defense attorney continued using every possible means, and surprised people more and more by his familiarity with the smallest details of the case. Thus, for example, the testimony of Trifon Borisovich was on its way to producing a rather strong impression, and one certainly highly unfavorable to Mitya. He calculated precisely, almost on his fingers, that during his first visit to Mokroye about a month before the catastrophe, Mitya could not have spent less than three thousand, or “maybe just a tiny bit less. Think how much he threw to the gypsy girls alone! ‘To fling kopecks down the street’—no, sir, he gave our lousy peasants twenty-five roubles at least, he wouldn’t give less than that. And how much was simply stolen from him then, sir! Whoever stole certainly didn’t sign for it; try catching a thief, when he himself was just throwing it around for nothing! Our people are robbers, they’re not worried about their souls. And the girls, our village girls, what he spent on them! People have got rich since then, that’s what, sir, and before there was just poverty.” In short, he recalled each expense and worked it all out precisely, as on an abacus. Thus the supposition that only fifteen hundred had been spent, and the rest set aside in the amulet, became unthinkable. “I myself saw it, I saw three thousand to a kopeck in his hands, contemplated it with my own eyes, who knows about money if not me, sir!” Trifon Borisovich kept exclaiming, doing his best to please “authority. “ But when the defense attorney began his cross-examination, instead of actually trying to refute the testimony, he suddenly started talking about how the coachman Timofei and another peasant named Akim, during that first spree in Mokroye a month before the arrest, had picked up a hundred roubles that Mitya had dropped on the floor in his drunken state, and turned the money over to Trifon Borisovich, for which he gave them each a rouble. “Well, and did you then return the hundred roubles to Mr. Karamazov, or not?” Trifon Borisovich tried in every way to dodge the question, but after the peasants themselves testified, he was forced to admit to the found hundred roubles, adding only that he had at once religiously returned and restored everything to Dmitri Fyodorovich “in all honesty, and that he simply wasn’t able to recall it himself, having been quite drunk at that time, sir.” But since he had nonetheless denied finding the hundred roubles before the peasant witnesses were called, his testimony about returning the money to the drunken Mitya was naturally called very much in question. And so one of the most dangerous witnesses brought forward by the prosecution again left under suspicion and with his reputation rather besmirched. The same thing happened with the Poles: the two of them appeared looking proud and independent. They loudly testified, first, that they had both “served the Crown” and that “Pan Mitya” had offered them three thousand, to buy their honor, and they themselves had seen a great deal of money in his hands. Pan Mussyalovich introduced a terrible quantity of Polish words into his phrases, and, seeing that this only raised him in the eyes of the judge and the prosecutor, finally let his spirit soar and in the end started speaking entirely in Polish. But Fetyukovich caught them, too, in his snares: no matter how Trifon Borisovich, who was called up again, tried to hedge, he still had to confess that Pan Vrublevsky had switched the innkeeper’s deck of cards for one of his own, and that Pan Mussyalovich had cheated while keeping the bank. This was also confirmed by Kalganov when his turn came to testify, and the two pans withdrew somewhat covered in shame, even amid public laughter.
Exactly the same thing happened with almost all the most dangerous witnesses. Fetyukovich succeeded in morally tainting each one of them and letting them go with their noses somewhat out of joint. Amateurs and lawyers were filled with admiration, and only wondered, again, what great and ultimate purpose all this could serve, for, I repeat, everyone felt that the accusation, which was growing and becoming ever more tragic, was irrefutable. But they waited, seeing by the assurance of “the great magician” that he himself was calm: “such a man” would not have come from Petersburg for nothing, nor was he such as to go back with nothing.