 Section 78 of the Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, translated by Constance Garnet. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Bruce Peary. Book 11, Chapter 9 The Devil, Yvonne's Nightmare I am not a doctor, but yet I feel that the moment has come when I must inevitably give the reader some account of the nature of Yvonne's illness. During events I can say at least one thing. He was at that moment on the very eve of an attack of brain fever. Though his health had long been affected, it had offered a stubborn resistance to the fever which in the end gained complete mastery over it. Though I know nothing of medicine, I venture to hazard the suggestion that he really had perhaps by a terrible effort of will succeeded in delaying the attack for a time, hoping of course to check it completely. He knew that he was unwell, but he loathed the thought of being ill at that fatal time at the approaching crisis in his life when he needed to have all his wits about him, to say what he had to say boldly and resolutely, and to justify himself to himself. He had, however, consulted the new doctor who had been brought from Moscow by a fantastic notion of Katarina Yvonnevna's to which I have referred already. After listening to him and examining him, the doctor came to the conclusion that he was actually suffering from some disorder of the brain, and was not at all surprised by an admission which Yvonne had reluctantly made him. Hallucinations are quite likely in your condition, the doctor opined, though it would be better to verify them. You must take steps at once without a moment's delay, or things will go badly with you. But Yvonne did not follow this judicious advice and did not take to his bed to be nursed. I am walking about, so I am strong enough. If I drop, it will be different then. Anyone may nurse me who likes, he decided, dismissing the subject. And so he was sitting, almost conscious himself of his delirium, and, as I have said already, looking persistently at some object on the sofa against the opposite wall. Someone appeared to be sitting there, though goodness knows how he had come in, for he had not been in the room when Yvonne came into it, on his return from Smirjakov. This was a person, or, more accurately speaking, a Russian gentleman of a particular kind, no longer young, qui faisait la cinquantaine, as the French say, with rather long, still thick dark hair, slightly streaked with grey and a small pointed beard. He was wearing a brownish, reefer jacket, rather shabby, evidently made by a good tailor, though, and of a fashion at least three years old that had been discarded by smart and well-to-do people for the last two years. His linen and his long scarf-like neck-tie were all such as are worn by people who aim at being stylish, but on closer inspection his linen was not over-clean, and his wide scarf was very threadbare. The visitors' check trousers were of excellent cut, but were too light in colour and too tight for the present fashion. His soft, fluffy white hat was out of keeping with the season. In brief there was every appearance of gentility on straightened means. It looked as though the gentleman belonged to that class of idle landowners who used to flourish in the times of serfdom. He had unmistakably been at some time in good and fashionable society, had once had good connections, had possibly preserved them indeed, but after a gay youth becoming gradually impoverished on the abolition of serfdom, he had sunk into the position of the poor relation of the best class, wandering from one good old friend to another, and received by them for his companionable and accommodating disposition, and as being, after all, a gentleman who could be asked to sit down with any one, though, of course, not in a place of honour. Such gentlemen of accommodating temper and dependent position who can tell a story, take a hand at cards, and who have a distinct aversion for any duties that may be forced upon them, are usually solitary creatures, either bachelors or widowers. Sometimes they have children, but if so, the children are always being brought up at a distance at some ants, to whom these gentlemen never allude in good society, seeming ashamed of the relationship. They gradually lose sight of their children altogether, though at intervals they receive a birthday or Christmas letter from them, and sometimes even answer it. The countenance of the unexpected visitor was not so much good-natured as accommodating, and ready to assume any amiable expression as occasion might arise. He had no watch, but he had a tortoise shell learned yet on a black ribbon. On the middle finger of his right hand was a massive gold ring with a cheap opal stone in it. Yvonne was angrily silent and would not begin the conversation. The visitor waited, and sat exactly like a poor relation who had come down from his room to keep his host company at tea, and was discreetly silent, seeing that his host was frowning and preoccupied. But he was ready for any affable conversation as soon as his host should begin it. All at once his face expressed a sudden solicitude. I say, he began to Yvonne, excuse me, I only mention it to remind you. You went to Smerjikov's to find out about Katarina Yvonnevna, but you came away without finding out anything about her. You probably forgot. Ah, yes, broke from Yvonne, and his face grew gloomy with uneasiness. Yes, I'd forgotten, but it doesn't matter now, never mind, till to-morrow he muttered to himself. And you, he added, addressing his visitor, I should have remembered that myself in a minute, for that was just what was tormenting me. Why do you interfere, as if I should believe that you prompted me, and that I didn't remember it of myself? Don't believe it then, said the gentleman, smiling amicably. What's the good at believing against your will? Besides, proofs are no help to believing, especially material proofs. Thomas believed, not because he saw Christ risen, but because he wanted to believe before he saw. Look at the spiritualists, for instance. I'm very fond of them, only fancy. They imagine that they are serving the cause of religion, because the devils show them their horns from the other world. That they say is a material proof, so to speak, of the existence of another world. The other world and material proofs. What next? And if you come to that, does proving there's a devil prove that there's a god? I want to join an idealist society, I'll lead the opposition in it. I'll say I am a realist, but not a materialist. Listen, Yvonne suddenly got up from the table. I seem to be delirious. I am delirious, in fact. Talk any nonsense you like, I don't care. You won't drive me to fury, as you did last time. But I feel somehow ashamed. I want to walk about the room. I sometimes don't see you, and don't even hear your voice as I did last time. But I always guess what you are preting, for it's I, I myself speaking, not you. Only I don't know whether I was dreaming last time, or whether I really saw you. I'll wet a towel and put it on my head, and perhaps you'll vanish into air. Yvonne went into the corner, took a towel, and did as he said, and with a wet towel on his head began walking up and down the room. I am so glad you treat me so familiarly. The visitor began. Fools! laughed Yvonne. Do you suppose I should stand on ceremony with you? I am in good spirits now, though I have a pain in my forehead, and in the top of my head. Only please don't talk philosophy as you did last time. If you can't take yourself off, talk of something amusing. Talk gossip. You are a poor relation. You ought to talk gossip. Not a nightmare to have. But I am not afraid of you. I'll get the better of you. I won't be taken to a madhouse. C'est charmant. Poor relation. Yes, I am in my natural shape. For what am I on earth but a poor relation? By the way, I am listening to you, and am rather surprised to find that you are actually beginning to take me for something real. Not simply your fancy as you persisted in declaring last time. Never for one minute have I taken you for reality. Yvonne cried with a sort of fury. You are a lie. You are my illness. You are a phantom. It's only that I don't know how to destroy you, and I see I must suffer for a time. You are my hallucination. You are the incarnation of myself, but only of one side of me. Of my thoughts and feelings, but only the nastiest and stupidest of them. From that point of view you might be of interest to me if only I had time to waste on you. Excuse me, excuse me, I'll catch you. When you flew out at Al Yasha under the lamp-post this evening and shouted to him, you learned it from him. How do you know that he visits me? You were thinking of me, then. So for one brief moment you did believe that I really exist. The gentleman laughed blandly. Yes, that was a moment of weakness, but I couldn't believe in you. I don't know whether I was asleep or awake last time. Perhaps I was only dreaming, then, and didn't see you really at all. And why were you so surly with Al Yasha just now? He is a dear. I've treated him badly over Father Zasima. Don't talk of Al Yasha. How dare you, you flunky! Yvonne laughed again. You scold me, but you laugh. That's a good sign. But you are ever so much more polite than you were last time, and I know why. That great resolution of yours. Don't speak of my resolution, cried Yvonne savagely. I understand, I understand. C'est noble, c'est charmant. You are going to defend your brother and to sacrifice yourself. C'est chez valeresque. Hold your tongue, I'll kick you. I shan't be altogether sorry, for then my object will be attained. If you kick me, you must believe in my reality, for people don't kick ghosts. Joking apart, it doesn't matter to me. It's gold if you like, though it's better to be a trifle more polite, even to me. Fool, flunky, what words? Skolding you, I scold myself, Yvonne laughed again. You are myself, myself, only with a different face. You just say what I am thinking, and are incapable of saying anything new. If I am like you in my way of thinking, it's all to my credit, the gentleman declared, with delicacy and dignity. You choose out only my worst thoughts, and what's more the stupid ones. You are stupid and vulgar. You are awfully stupid. No, I can't put up with you. What am I to do? What am I to do? Yvonne said through his clenched teeth. My dear friend, above all things I want to behave like a gentleman, and to be recognized as such. The visitor began, in an excess of deprecating and simple-hearted pride, typical of a poor relation. I am poor, but I won't say very honest, but it's an axiom generally accepted in society that I am a fallen angel. I certainly can't conceive how I can ever have been an angel. If I ever was, it must have been so long ago that there's no harm in forgetting it. Now I only prize the reputation of being a gentlemanly person, and live as I can, trying to make myself agreeable. I love men genuinely. I've been greatly columnated. Here when I stay with you from time to time, my life gains a kind of reality, and that's what I like most of all. You see, like you, I suffer from the fantastic, and so I love the realism of earth. Here with you, everything is circumscribed, here all is formulated and geometrical, while we have nothing but indeterminate equations. I wander about here dreaming, I like dreaming. Besides, on earth I become superstitious. Just don't laugh, that's just what I like, to become superstitious. I adopt all your habits here. I've grown fond of going to the public baths, would you believe it? And I go and steam myself with merchants and priests. What I dream of is becoming incarnate, once for all, and irrevocably, in the form of some merchant's wife, weighing eighteen stone, and of believing all she believes. My ideal is to go to church and offer a candle in simple-hearted faith, upon my word it is. Then there would be an end to my sufferings. I like being doctored, too. In the spring there was an outbreak of smallpox, and I went and was vaccinated in a foundling hospital. If only you knew how I enjoyed myself that day. I subscribed ten rubles in the cause of the slavs. But you are not listening. Do you know you are not at all well this evening? I know you went yesterday to that doctor. Well, what about your health? What did the doctor say? Fool, Yvonne snapped out. But you are clever, anyway. You are scolding again? I didn't ask out of sympathy, you needn't answer. Now rheumatism has come in again. Fool, repeated Yvonne. You keep saying the same thing, but I had such an attack of rheumatism last year that I remember it to this day. The devil have rheumatism. Why not if I sometimes put on fleshly form? I put on fleshly form and I take the consequences. Satan sum et nihil humanum ame alienum puto. What? What? Satan sum et nihil humanum? That's not bad for the devil. I am glad I've pleased you at last. But you didn't get that from me, Yvonne stopped suddenly, seeming struck. That never entered my head. That's strange. C'est de nouveau, n'est-ce pas? This time I'll act honestly and explain to you. In dreams and especially in nightmares, from indigestion or anything, a man sees sometimes such artistic visions, such complex and real actuality, such events even the whole world of events woven into such a plot with such unexpected details from the most exalted matters to the last button on a cuff as I swear Leo Tolstoy has never invented. Yet such dreams are sometimes seen, not by writers but by the most ordinary people, officials, journalists, priests. The subject is a complete enigma. A statement confessed to me, indeed, that all his best ideas came to him when he was asleep. Well, that's how it is now, though I am your hallucination, yet just as in a nightmare I say original things which had not entered your head before, so I don't repeat your ideas, yet I am only your nightmare, nothing more. You are lying. Your aim is to convince me you exist apart and are not my nightmare, and now you are asserting you are a dream. My dear fellow, I've adopted a special method today, I'll explain it to you afterwards. Stay where did I break off? Oh yes, I caught cold then, only not here, but yonder. Where is yonder? Tell me, will you be here long? Can't you go away? Yvonne exclaimed almost in despair. He ceased walking to and fro, sat down on the sofa, leaned his elbows on the table again, and held his head tight in both hands. He pulled the wet towel off and flung it away in vexation. It was evidently of no use. Your nerves are out of order, observed the gentleman, with the carelessly easy though perfectly polite air. You are angry with me even for being able to catch cold, though it happened in a most natural way. I was hurrying then to a diplomatic soiree at the house of a lady of high rank in Petersburg who was aiming at influence in the ministry. Well, an evening suit, white tie, gloves, though I was God knows where and had to fly through space to reach your earth. Of course it took only an instant, but you know a ray of light from the sun takes full eight minutes, and fancy, in an evening suit and open waistcoat? Spirits don't freeze, but when ones in fleshly form, well, in brief, I didn't think and set off, and you know in those ethereal spaces, in the water that is above the firmament, there's such a frost, at least one can't call it frost. You can fancy one hundred and fifty degrees below zero. You know the game the village girls play. They invite the unwary to lick an ax in thirty degrees of frost. The tongue instantly freezes to it, and the dupe tears the skin off, so it bleeds. But that's only in thirty degrees. In one hundred and fifty degrees, I imagine it would be enough to put your finger on the ax, and it would be the end of it. If only there could be an ax there. And can there be an ax there? One interrupted carelessly and disdainfully. He was exerting himself to the utmost not to believe in the delusion and not to sink into complete insanity. An ax? The guest interrupted in surprise. Yes, what would become of an ax there? Yvonne cried suddenly, with a sort of savage and insistent obstinacy. What would become of an ax in space? Kelly Day! If it were to fall to any distance it would begin, I think, flying round the earth without knowing why, like a satellite. The astronomers would calculate the rising and the setting of the ax. Gatzuk would put it in his calendar. That's all. You are stupid, awfully stupid, said Yvonne peevishly. Fib more cleverly, or I won't listen. You want to get the better of me by realism, to convince me that you exist, but I don't want to believe you exist. I won't believe it. But I am not fibbing. It's all the truth. The truth is unhappily, hardly ever amusing. I see you persist in expecting something big of me, and perhaps something fine. That's a great pity, for I only give what I can. Don't talk philosophy, you ass. See indeed, when all my right side is numb and I am moaning and groaning, I've tried all the medical faculty. They can diagnose beautifully. They have the whole of your disease at their fingertips, but they've no idea how to cure you. There was an enthusiastic little student here. You may die, said he, but you'll know perfectly what disease you are dying of. And then what a way they have, sending people to specialists. We only diagnose, they say, but go to such and such a specialist. He'll cure you. The old doctor, who used to cure all sorts of disease, has completely disappeared, I assure you. Now there are only specialists, and they all advertise in the newspapers. If anything is wrong with your nose, they send you to Paris. There, they say, is a European specialist who cures noses. If you go to Paris, he'll look at your nose. I could only cure your right nostril, he'll tell you, for I don't cure the left nostril, that's not my specialty, but go to Vienna. There there's a specialist who will cure your left nostril. What are you to do? I fell back on popular remedies. A German doctor advised me to rub myself with honey and salt in the bath-house. Only to get an extra bath I went, smeared myself all over, and it did me no good at all. In despair I wrote to Count Maté in Milan. He sent me a book, and some drops, bless him, and only fancy, Huff's malt extract cured me. I bought it by accident, drank a bottle and a half of it, and I was ready to dance. It took it away completely. I made up my mind to write to the papers, to thank him. I was prompted by a feeling of gratitude, and only fancy. It led to no end of a bother. Not a single paper would take my letter. It would be very reactionary, they said. No one will believe it. Le diable n'existe pas. You'd better remain anonymous, they advised me. What use is a letter of thanks if it's anonymous? I laughed with the men at the newspaper office. It's reactionary to believe in God in our days, I said, but I am the devil, so I may be believed in. We quite understand that, they said, who doesn't believe in the devil. Yet it won't do. It might injure our reputation. As a joke, if you like. But I thought as a joke it wouldn't be very witty. So it wasn't printed. And you know I have felt sore about it to this day. My best feelings, gratitude, for instance, are literally denied me simply from my social position. Philosophical Reflections Again Yvonne Snarled Malignantly God preserved me from it, but one can't help complaining sometimes. I am a slandered man. You upgrade me every moment with being stupid. One can see you are young. My dear fellow, intelligence isn't the only thing. I have naturally a kind and merry heart. I also write vaudeville's of all sorts. You seem to take me for less to cough, grown old, but my fate is a far more serious one. Before time was, by some decree which I could never make out, I was predestined to deny. And yet I am genuinely good-hearted and not at all inclined to negation. Oh, you must go and deny. Without denial there's no criticism. And what would a journal be without a column of criticism? Without criticism it would be nothing but one, Hosanna. But nothing but Hosanna is not enough for life. The Hosanna must be tried in the crucible of doubt and so on in the same style. But I don't meddle in that. I didn't create it. I am not answerable for it. Well they've chosen their scapegoat, they've made me write the column of criticism, and so life was made possible. We understand that comedy. I, for instance, simply ask for annihilation. No, live, I am told, for there'd be nothing without you. If everything in the universe were sensible, nothing would happen. There would be no events without you, and there must be events. So against the grain I serve to produce events and do what's irrational because I am commanded to. For all their indisputable intelligence men take this far as something serious, and that is their tragedy. They suffer, of course, but then they live. They live a real life, not a fantastic one, for suffering is life. Without suffering what would be the pleasure of it? It would be transformed into an endless church service. It would be holy but tedious. But what about me? I suffer, but still I don't live. I am ex in an indeterminate equation. I am a sort of phantom in life, who has lost all beginning and end, and who has even forgotten his own name. You are laughing. No. You are not laughing. You are angry again. You are forever angry. All you care about is intelligence. But I repeat again that I would give away all this super stellar life, all the ranks and honours, simply to be transformed into the soul of a merchant's wife weighing eighteen stone and set candles at God's shrine. Then even you don't believe in God, said Yvonne, with a smile of hatred. What can I say? That is, if you are an earnest. Is there a God or not, Yvonne cried, with the same savage intensity. Ah, then you are in earnest. My dear fellow, upon my word, I don't know. There, I've said it now. You don't know, but you see God. No, you are not someone apart, you are myself, you are I, and nothing more. You are rubbish, you are my fancy. Well, if you like, I have the same philosophy as you, that would be true. Je pense, donc je suis. I know that, for a fact. All the rest, all these worlds, God and even Satan, all that is not proved, to my mind. Does all that exist of itself, or is it only an emanation of myself, a logical development of my ego, which alone has existed forever? But I make haste to stop, for I believe you will be jumping up to beat me directly. You'd better tell me some anecdote, said Yvonne, miserably. There is an anecdote precisely on our subject, or rather a legend, not an anecdote. You reproach me with unbelief, you see, you say, yet you don't believe. My dear fellow, I am not the only one like that. We are all in a muddle over there now, and all through your science. Once there used to be atoms, five senses, four elements, and then everything hung together somehow. There were atoms in the ancient world even, but since we've learned that you've discovered the chemical molecule, and protoplasm, and the devil knows what, we had to lower our crest. There's a regular muddle, and above all, superstition, scandal. This as much scandal among us as among you, you know, a little more, in fact, and spying, indeed, for we have our secret police department where private information is received. Well, this wild legend belongs to our Middle Ages, not yours, but ours, and no one believes it, even among us, except the old ladies of Eighteen Stone, not your old ladies, I mean, but ours. We've everything you have. I am revealing one of our secrets out of friendship for you, though it's forbidden. This legend is about paradise. There was, they say, here on earth a thinker and philosopher. He rejected everything, laws, conscience, faith, and above all the future life. He died. He expected to go straight to darkness and death, and he found a future life before him. He was astounded and indignant. This is against my principles, he said, and he was punished for that. That is, you must excuse me, I am just repeating what I heard myself, it's only a legend. He was sentenced to walk a quadrillion kilometres in the dark. We've adopted the metric system, you know, and when he has finished that quadrillion, the gates of heaven would be opened to him, and he'll be forgiven. And what tortures have you in the other world besides the quadrillion kilometres, asked Yvonne, with a strange eagerness? What tortures? Ah, don't ask. In old days we had all sorts, but now they have taken chiefly to moral punishments, the stings of conscience and all that nonsense. We got that too from you, from the softening of your manners. And who's the better for it? Only those who have got no conscience, for how can they be tortured by conscience when they have none? But decent people, who have conscience and a sense of honour, suffer for it. Conscious when the ground has not been prepared for them, especially if they are institutions copied from abroad, do nothing but mischief. The ancient fire was better. Well, this man, who was condemned to the quadrillion kilometres, stood still, looked round, and lay down across the road. I won't go, I refuse, unprinciple. Take the soul of an enlightened Russian atheist, and mix it with the soul of the prophet Jonah, who sulked for three days and nights in the belly of the whale, and you get the character of that thinker who lay across the road. What did he lie on there? Well, I suppose there was something to lie on. You're not laughing. Bravo, cried Yvonne, still with the same strange eagerness. Now he was listening with an unexpected curiosity. Well, is he lying there now? That's the point, that he isn't. He lay there almost a thousand years, and then he got up and went on. What an ass, cried Yvonne, laughing nervously, and still seeming to be pondering something intently. Does it make any difference whether he lies there forever, or walks the quadrillion kilometres? It would take a billion years to walk it. Much more than that, I haven't got a pencil and paper, or I could work it out. But he got there long ago, and that's where the story begins. What? He got there? But how did he get the billion years to do it? Why, you keep thinking of our present earth, but our present earth may have been repeated a billion times. Why, it's become extinct, been frozen, cracked, broken to bits, disintegrated into its elements, again the water above the firmament, then again a comet, again a sun, again from the sun it becomes earth, and the same sequence may have been repeated endlessly and exactly the same to every detail, most unseemly and insufferably tedious. Well, what happened when he arrived? Why the moment the gates of paradise were open and he walked in before he had been there two seconds by his watch, though to my thinking his watch must have long dissolved into its elements on the way. He cried out that those two seconds were worth walking, not a quadrillion kilometres, but a quadrillion of quadrillions raised to the quadrillionth power. In fact, he sang Hosanna and overdid it so that some persons there of lofty ideas wouldn't shake hands with him at first. He'd become too rapidly reactionary, they said, the Russian temperament. I repeat, it's a legend. I give it for what it's worth. So that's the sort of ideas we have on such subjects even now. I've caught you, Yvon cried, with an almost childish delight, as though he had succeeded in remembering something at last. That anecdote about the quadrillion years I made up myself. I was seventeen then, I was at the high school. I made up that anecdote and told it to a school fellow called Korovkin. It was at Moscow. The anecdote is so characteristic that I couldn't have taken it from anywhere. I thought I'd forgotten it, but I've unconsciously recalled it. I recalled it myself. It was not you telling it. Thousands of things are unconsciously remembered like that, even when people are being taken to execution. It's come back to me in a dream. You are that dream. You are a dream, not a living creature. From the vehemence with which you deny my existence, laughed the gentleman, I am convinced that you believe in me. Not in the slightest, I have in the hundredth part of a grain of faith in you. But you have the thousandth of a grain. Homeopathic doses perhaps are the strongest. Confess that you have faith even to the ten thousandth of a grain. Not for one minute, cried Yvon furiously, but I should like to believe in you. He added, strangely, Aha! There is an admission, but I am good-natured. I'll come to your assistance again. Listen! It was I caught you, not you, me. I told you your anecdote you'd forgotten, on purpose, so as to destroy your faith in me completely. You are lying. The object of your visit is to convince me of your existence. Just so. But hesitation, suspense, conflict between belief and disbelief, is sometimes such torture to a conscientious man, such as you are, that it's better to hang oneself at once. Knowing that you are inclined to believe in me, I administered some disbelief by telling you that anecdote. I lead you to belief and disbelief by turns, and I have my motive in it. It's the new method. As soon as you disbelieve in me completely, you'll begin assuring me to my face that I am not a dream but a reality. I know you. Then I shall have attained my object, which is an honorable one. I shall sow in you only a tiny grain of faith, and it will grow into an oak tree, and such an oak tree that, sitting on it, you will long to enter the ranks of the hermits in the wilderness and the saintly women. For that is what you are secretly longing for. You'll dine on locusts. You'll wander into the wilderness to save your soul. Then it's for the salvation of my soul you are working, is it, you scoundrel? One must do a good work sometimes. How ill-humoured you are! Fool! Did you ever tempt those holy men who ate locusts and prayed seventeen years in the wilderness till they were overgrown with maws? My dear fellow, I've done nothing else. One forgets the whole world and all the worlds and sticks to one such saint because he is a very precious diamond. One such soul, you know, is sometimes worth a whole constellation. We have our system of reckoning, you know. The conquest is priceless, and some of them, on my word, are not inferior to you in culture, though you won't believe it. They can contemplate such depths of belief and disbelief at the same moment that sometimes it really seems that they are within a hair's breadth of being turned upside down, as the actor Gorbenov says. Well, did you get your nose pulled? My dear fellow, observed the visitor sententiously, it's better to get off with your nose pulled than without a nose at all, as an afflicted Marquis observed not long ago. He must have been treated by a specialist in confession to his spiritual father, a Jesuit. I was present. It was simply charming. Give me back my nose, he said, and he beat his breast. My son said the priest evasively. All things are accomplished in accordance with the inscrutable decrees of providence, and what seems a misfortune sometimes leads to extraordinary, though unapparent, benefits. If stern destiny has deprived you of your nose, it's to your advantage that no one can ever pull you by your nose. Holy Father, that's no comfort! cried the despairing Marquis. I'd be delighted to have my nose pulled every day of my life if it were only in its proper place. My son, sighs the priest, you can't expect every blessing at once. This is murmuring against providence, who even in this has not forgotten you. For if you repined, as you repined just now, declaring you'd be glad to have your nose pulled for the rest of your life, your desire has already been fulfilled indirectly, for when you lost your nose you were led by the nose. Fool! how stupid! cried Yvonne. My dear friend, I only wanted to amuse you. But I swear that's the genuine Jesuit casuistry, and I swear that it all happened, word for word, as I've told you. It happened lately, and gave me a great deal of trouble. The unhappy young man shot himself that very night when he got home. I was by his side till the very last moment. Those Jesuit confessionals are really my most delightful diversion that melancholy moments. Here's another incident that happened only the other day. A little blonde Norman girl of twenty, a buxom unsophisticated beauty that would make your mouth water, comes to an old priest. She bends down and whispers her sin into the grating. Why, my daughter, have you fallen again already? cries the priest. Oh, sanctum Maria, what do I hear? Not the same man this time? How long is this going on? Aren't you ashamed? Ah, mon père, answers the sinner with tears of penitence. C'est lui fait tant de plaisir, et à moi s'y peut de peine. Fancy such an answer, I drew back. It was the cry of nature, better than innocence itself, if you like. I absolved her sin on the spot, and was turning to go, but I was forced to turn back. I heard the priest at the grating, making an appointment with her for the evening. Though he was an old man hard as flint, he fell in an instant. It was nature, the truth of nature asserted its rights. What, you are turning up your nose again? Angry again? I don't know how to please you. Leave me alone, you are beating on my brain like a haunting nightmare. Yvonne moans miserably, helpless before his apparition. I am bored with you, agonizingly and insufferably. I would give anything to be able to shake you off. I repeat, moderate your expectations. Don't demand of me everything great and noble, and you'll see how well we shall get on, said the gentleman impressively. You are really angry with me for not having appeared to you in a red glow, with thunder and lightning, with scorched wings, but have shown myself in such a modest form. You are wounded, in the first place, in your aesthetic feelings, and secondly, in your pride. How could such a vulgar devil visit such a great man as you? Yes, there is that romantic strain in you that was so derided by Bialinsky. I can't help it, young man, as I got ready to come to you I did think, as a joke, of appearing in the figure of a retired general who has served in the Caucasus, with the star of the lion and the sun on my coat, but I was positively afraid of doing it, for you'd have thrashed me for daring to pin the lion and the sun on my coat, instead of, at least, the polar star, or the serious. And you keep on saying I am stupid, but mercy on us. I make no claim to be equal to you in intelligence. Mephistopheles declared to Faust that he desired evil, but did only good. Well, he can say what he likes. It's quite the opposite with me. I am perhaps the one man in all creation who loves the truth, and genuinely desires good. I was there, when the word, who died on the cross, rose up into heaven, bearing on his bosom the soul of the penitent thief. I heard the glad shrieks of the cherubim, singing and shouting Hosanna, and the thunderous rapture of the seraphim, which shook heaven and all creation, and I swear to you by all that sacred, I longed to join the choir, and shout Hosanna with them all. The word had almost escaped me, had almost broken from my lips. You know how susceptible and aesthetically impressionable I am. But common sense, oh, a most unhappy trait in my character, kept me in due bounds, and I let the moment pass. For what would have happened, I reflected, what would have happened after my Hosanna. Everything on earth would have been extinguished at once, and no events could have occurred. And so, solely from a sense of duty and my social position, I was forced to suppress the good moment, and to stick to my nasty task. Somebody takes all the credit of what's good for himself, and nothing but nastiness is left for me. But I don't envy the honour of a life of idle imposture. I am not ambitious. Why am I, of all creatures in the world, doomed to be cursed by all decent people, and even to be kicked, for if I put on mortal form, I am bound to take such consequences sometimes. I know, of course, there's a secret in it, but they won't tell me the secret for anything. For then, perhaps, seeing the meaning of it, I might ball Hosanna, and the indispensable minus would disappear at once, and good sense would reign supreme throughout the whole world, and that, of course, would mean the end of everything, even of magazines and newspapers, for who would take them in. I know that at the end of all things I shall be reconciled, I too shall walk my quadrillion and learn the secret, but till that happens I am sulking and fulfil my destiny, though it's against the grain, that is, to ruin thousands for the sake of saving one, how many souls have had to be ruined, and how many honourable reputations destroyed for the sake of that one righteous man, Job, over whom they made such a fool of me in old days. Yes, till the secret is revealed there are two sorts of truths for me, one their truth, Yonder, which I know nothing about so far, and the other my own, and there's no knowing which will turn out the better. Are you asleep? I might well be, Yvonne groaned angrily, all my stupid ideas outgrown, thrashed out long ago, and flung aside like a dead carcass you present to me as something new. There's no pleasing you, and I thought I should fascinate you by my literary style. That Hosanna in the skies really wasn't bad, was it, and then that ironical tone, no, I was never such a flunky, how then could my soul beget a flunky like you? My dear fellow, I know a most charming and attractive young Russian gentleman, a young thinker and a great lover of literature and art, the author of a promising poem entitled The Grand Inquisitor. I was only thinking of him. I forbid you to speak of the Grand Inquisitor, cried Yvonne, crimson with shame. And the geological cataclysm, do you remember? That was a poem now. Hold your tongue or I'll kill you. You'll kill me. No, excuse me, I will speak. I came to treat myself to that pleasure. Oh, I love the dreams of my ardent young friends, quivering with eagerness for life. There are new men, you decided last spring when you were meaning to come here. They propose to destroy everything and begin with cannibalism. Stupid fellows, they didn't ask my advice. I maintain that nothing need be destroyed, that we only need to destroy the idea of God in man. That's how we have to set to work. It's that that we must begin with. Oh, blind race of men who have no understanding, as soon as men have all of them denied God, and I believe that period analogous with geological periods will come to pass, the old conception of the universe will fall of itself without cannibalism, and what's more the old morality and everything will begin anew. Men will unite to take from life all it can give, but only for joy and happiness in the present world. Man will be lifted up with the spirit of divine tetanic pride, and the man God will appear. From hour to hour, extending his conquest of nature infinitely by his will and his science, man will feel such lofty joy from hour to hour in doing it that it will make up for all his old dreams of the joys of heaven. Everyone will know that he is mortal and will accept death proudly and serenely like a God. His pride will teach him that it's useless for him to repine at life's being a moment, and he will love his brother without need of reward. Love will be sufficient only for a moment of life, but the very consciousness of its momentariness will intensify its fire, which now is dissipated in dreams of eternal love beyond the grave, and so on and so on in the same style, charming. Yvon sat with his eyes on the floor and his hands pressed to his ears, but he began trembling all over. The voice continued. The question now is, my young thinker reflected, is it possible that such a period will ever come? If it does, everything is determined and humanity is settled forever. But as, owing to man's inveterate stupidity, this cannot come about for at least a thousand years, everyone who recognizes the truth even now may legitimately order his life as he pleases on the new principles. In that sense, all things are lawful for him. What's more, even if this period never comes to pass, since there is anyway no god and no immortality, the new man may well become the man god, even if he is the only one in the whole world, and, promoted to his new position, he may lightheartedly overstep all the barriers of the old morality of the old slave man, if necessary. There is no law for god, where god stands, the place is holy, where I stand will be at once the foremost place. All things are lawful, and that's the end of it. That's all very charming, but if you want to swindle, why do you want a moral sanction for doing it? But that's our modern Russian all over. He can't bring himself to swindle without a moral sanction. He is so in love with truth. The visitor talked, obviously carried away by his own eloquence, speaking louder and louder, and looking ironically at his host. But he did not succeed in finishing. Yvonne suddenly snatched a glass from the table and flung it at the orator. Ah, mais sa bête enfin! cried the latter, jumping up from the sofa and shaking the drops of tea off himself. He remembers Luther's ink-stand. He takes me for a dream and throws glasses at a dream. It's like a woman. I suspected you were only pretending to stop up your ears. A loud, persistent knocking was suddenly heard at the window. Yvonne jumped up from the sofa. Do you hear? You'd better open, cried the visitor. It's your brother Alyosha with the most interesting and surprising news I'll be bound. Be silent, deceiver. I knew it was Alyosha. I felt he was coming, and of course he has not come for nothing. Of course he brings news, Yvonne exclaimed frantically. Open, open to him. There's a snowstorm, and he is your brother. Monsieur, c'est-il le temps qu'il fait? The knocking continued. Yvonne wanted to rush to the window, but something seemed to fetter his arms and legs. He strained every effort to break his chains, but in vain. The knocking at the window grew louder and louder. At last the chains were broken, and Yvonne leapt up from the sofa. He looked round him wildly. Both candles had almost burnt out. The glass he had just thrown at his visitor stood before him on the table, and there was no one on the sofa opposite. The knocking on the window frame went on persistently, but it was by no means so loud as it had seemed in his dream. On the contrary, it was quite subdued. It was not a dream. No, I swear it was not a dream. It all happened just now, cried Yvonne. He rushed to the window and opened the movable pane. Alyosha, I told you not to come. He cried fiercely to his brother. In two words, what do you want? In two words, do you hear? An hour ago Smirjakov hanged himself. Alyosha answered from the yard. Come round to the steps. I'll open it once, said Yvonne, going to open the door to Alyosha. End of Section 78. Section 79 of the Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Constance Garnet. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Bruce Peary. Book 11, Chapter 10. It was he who said that. Alyosha, coming in, told Yvonne that a little over an hour ago, Maria Kondratchevna had run to his rooms and informed him Smirjakov had taken his own life. I went in to clear away the Samovar, and he was hanging on a nail in the wall. On Alyosha's inquiring whether she had informed the police, she answered that she had told no one. But I flew straight to you, I've run all the way. She seemed perfectly crazy, Alyosha reported, and was shaking like a leaf. When Alyosha ran with her to the cottage he found Smirjakov still hanging. On the table lay a note. I destroy my life of my own will and desire, so as to throw no blame on anyone. Alyosha left the note on the table and went straight to the police captain and told him all about it. And from him I've come straight to you, said Alyosha, in conclusion, looking intently into Yvonne's face. He had not taken his eyes off him while he told his story, as though struck by something in his expression. Brother, he cried suddenly, you must be terribly ill, you look and don't seem to understand what I tell you. It's a good thing you came, said Yvonne, as though brooding and not hearing Alyosha's exclamation. I knew he had hanged himself. From whom? I don't know, but I knew. Did I know? Yes, he told me. He told me so just now. Yvonne stood in the middle of the room and still spoke in the same brooding tone, looking at the ground. Who is he? asked Alyosha, involuntarily looking round. He slipped away. Yvonne raised his head and smiled softly. He was afraid of you, of a dove like you. You are a pure cherub. Dmitry calls you a cherub. Cherub, the thunderous rapture of the Seraphim. What are Seraphim? Perhaps a whole constellation. But perhaps that constellation is only a chemical molecule. There's a constellation of the lion and the sun. Don't you know it? Brother, sit down, said Alyosha, in alarm. For goodness' sake, sit down on the sofa. You are delirious. Put your head on the pillow, that's right. Would you like a wet towel on your head? Perhaps it will do you good. Give me the towel. It's here on the chair. I just threw it down there. It's not here. Don't worry yourself. I know where it is. Here, said Alyosha, finding a clean towel, folded up and unused, by Yvonne's dressing table in the other corner of the room. Yvonne looked strangely at the towel. Recollection seemed to come back to him for an instant. Stay! He got up from the sofa. An hour ago I took that new towel from there and wetted it. I wrapped it round my head and threw it down here. How is it? It's dry. There was no other. You put that towel on your head? Asked Alyosha. Yes, and walked up and down the room an hour ago. Why have the candles burnt down so? What's the time? Nearly twelve. No, no, no, Yvonne cried suddenly. It was not a dream. He was here. He was sitting here on that sofa. When you knocked at the window, I threw a glass at him. This one. Wait a minute. I was asleep last time, but this dream was not a dream. It has happened before. I have dreams now, Alyosha, yet they are not dreams, but reality. I walk about, talk, and see, though I am asleep. But he was sitting here on that sofa there. He is frightfully stupid, Alyosha, frightfully stupid. Yvonne laughed suddenly and began pacing about the room. Who is stupid? Of whom are you talking, brother? Alyosha asked, anxiously again. The devil. He's taken to visiting me. He's been here twice, almost three times. He taunted me with being angry at his being a simple devil and not Satan with scorched wings in thunder and lightning. But he is not Satan. That's a lie. He is an imposter. He is simply a devil, a paltry, trivial devil. He goes to the baths. If you undressed him, you'd be sure to find he had a tail long and smooth like a Danish dog's, a yard long, done colour. Alyosha, you are cold. You've been in the snow. Would you like some tea? What, is it cold? Shall I tell her to bring some? Alyosha ran to the washing-stand, wetted the towel, persuaded Yvonne to sit down again, and put the wet towel round his head. He sat down beside him. What were you telling me just now about Lise? Yvonne began again. He was becoming very talkative. I liked Lise. I said something nasty about her. It was a lie. I like her. I am afraid for Katcha to-morrow. I am more afraid of her than of anything, on account of the future. She will cast me off to-morrow and trample me underfoot. She thinks that I am ruining Mitchell from jealousy on her account. Yes, she thinks that. But it's not so. To-morrow the cross, but not the gallows. No, I shan't hang myself. Do you know I can never commit suicide, Alyosha? Is it because I am base? I am not a coward. Is it from love of life? How did I know that Smirjakov had hanged himself? Yes, it was he told me so. And you are quite convinced that there has been someone here? Asked Alyosha. Yes, on that sofa in the corner. You would have driven him away. You did drive him away. He disappeared when you arrived. I love your face, Alyosha. Did you know that I loved your face? And he is myself, Alyosha. All that's base in me, all that's mean and contemptible. Yes, I am a romantic. He guessed it, though it's a libel. He is frightfully stupid, but it's to his advantage. He has cunning, animal cunning. He knew how to infuriate me. He kept taunting me with believing in him, and that was how he made me listen to him. He fooled me like a boy. He told me a great deal that was true about myself, though. I should never have owned it to myself. Do you know Alyosha, Yvonne added, in an intensely earnest and confidential tone, I should be awfully glad to think that it was he and not I. He has worn you out, said Alyosha, looking compassionately at his brother. He's been teasing me, and to know he does it so cleverly, so cleverly. Conscience? What is conscience? I make it up for myself. Why am I tormented by it? From habit. From the universal habit of mankind for the seven thousand years. So let us give it up, and we shall be gods. It was he, said that. It was he, said that. And not you? Not you? Alyosha could not help crying, looking frankly at his brother. Never mind him, anyway. Have done with him and forget him, and let him take with him all that you curse now, and never come back. Yes, but he is spiteful. He laughed at me. He was impudent, Alyosha, Yvonne said, with the shudder of offence. But he was unfair to me, unfair to me about lots of things. He told lies about me to my face. Oh, you are going to perform an act of heroic virtue to confess you murdered your father, that the valet murdered him at your instigation. Brother, Alyosha interposed, restrain yourself. It was not you murdered him. It's not true. That's what he says, he and he knows it. You are going to perform an act of heroic virtue, and you don't believe in virtue. That's what tortures you, and makes you angry. That's why you are so vindictive. He said that to me about me, and he knows what he says. It's you say that, not he, exclaimed Alyosha mournfully, and you say it because you are ill and delirious, tormenting yourself. No, he knows what he says. You are going from pride, he says. You will stand up and say it was I killed him, and why do you rise with horror? You are lying. I despise your opinion. I despise your horror. He said that about me. And do you know you are longing for their praise? He is a criminal, a murderer, but what a generous soul. He wanted to save his brother, and he confessed. That's a lie, Alyosha. Yvonne cried, suddenly with flashing eyes. I don't want the low rabble to praise me. I swear I don't. That's a lie. That's why I threw the glass at him, and it broke against his ugly face. Brother, calm yourself. Stop, Alyosha, and treated him. Yes, he knows how to torment one. He's cruel, Yvonne went on, unheeding. I had an inkling from the first what he came for. Granting that you go through pride, still you had a hope that Smerchikov might be convicted and sent to Siberia, and Mitchell would be acquitted, while you would only be punished with moral condemnation. Do you hear? He laughed, then. And some people will praise you. But now Smerchikov's dead. He has hanged himself, and who will believe you alone? But yet you are going, you are going. You'll go all the same. You've decided to go. What are you going for, now? That's awful, Alyosha. I can't endure such questions. Who dare ask me such questions? Brother, interposed Alyosha. His heart sank with terror, but he still seemed to hope to bring Yvonne to reason. How could he have told you of Smerchikov's death before I came, when no one knew of it and there was no time for anyone to know of it? He told me, Siddhivaan firmly, refusing to admit a doubt. It was all he did talk about if you come to that. And it would be all right if you believed in virtue, he said, no matter if they disbelieve you, you are going for the sake of principle. But you are a little pegged like Fyodor Pavlovich, and what do you want with virtue? Why do you want to go meddling if your sacrifices of no use to anyone? Because you don't know yourself why you go, or you'd give a great deal to know yourself why you go. And can you have made up your mind? You've not made up your mind. You'll sit all night deliberating whether to go or not, but you will go. You know you'll go. You know that whichever way you decide, the decision does not depend on you. You will go because you won't dare not to go. Why won't you dare? You must guess that for yourself. That's a riddle for you. He got up and went away. You came, and he went. He called me a coward, le mot de l'énigma, is that I am a coward. It is not for such eagles to soar above the earth. It was he added that. He and Smirjakov said the same. He must be killed. Kacha despises me. I've seen that for a month past. Even Lise will begin to despise me. You are going in order to be praised. That's a brutal lie. And you despise me too, Alyosha. Now I am going to hate you again. And I hate the monster too. I hate the monster. I don't want to save the monster. Let him rot in Siberia. He's begun singing a hymn. Oh, tomorrow I'll go. Stand before them, and spit in their faces. He jumped up in a frenzy, flung off the towel, and fell to pacing up and down the room again. Alyosha recalled what he had just said. I seemed to be sleeping awake. I walk, I speak, I see, but I am asleep. It seemed to be just like that now. Alyosha did not leave him. The thought passed through his mind to run for a doctor, but he was afraid to leave his brother alone. There was no one to whom he could leave him. By degrees, Yvonne lost consciousness completely at last. He still went on talking, talking incessantly, but quite incoherently, and even articulated his words with difficulty. Suddenly he staggered violently, but Alyosha was in time to support him. Yvonne let him lead him to his bed. Alyosha undressed him somehow and put him to bed. He sat watching over him for another two hours. The sick man slept soundly, without stirring, breathing softly and evenly. Alyosha took a pillow and lay down on the sofa, without undressing. As he fell asleep, he prayed for Mitcha and Yvonne. He began to understand Yvonne's illness, the anguish of a proud determination and earnest conscience, God in whom he disbelieved and his truth were gaining mastery over his heart, which still refused to submit. Yes, the thought floated through Alyosha's head as it lay on the pillow. Yes, if Smyrnyakov is dead, no one will believe Yvonne's evidence, but he will go and give it. Alyosha smiled softly. God will conquer, he thought. He will either rise up in the light of truth or he'll perish in hate, revenging on himself and on everyone his having served the cause he does not believe in. Alyosha added bitterly, and again he prayed for Yvonne. CHAPTER 1 THE FATAL DAY At ten o'clock in the morning of the day following the events I have described, the trial of Dmitry Karamazov began in our district court. I hasten to emphasise the fact that I am far from esteeming myself capable of reporting all that took place at the trial in full detail or even in the actual order of events. I imagine that to mention everything with full explanation would fill a volume even a very large one, and so I trust I may not be reproached for confining myself to what struck me. I may have selected as of most interest what was of secondary importance, and may have omitted the most prominent and essential details. But I see I shall do better not to apologise. I will do my best, and the reader will see for himself that I have done all I can. And to begin with, before entering the court, I will mention what surprised me most on that day. Indeed, as it appeared later, everyone was surprised at it too. We all knew that the affair had aroused great interest, that everyone was burning with impatience for the trial to begin, that it had been a subject of talk, conjecture, exclamation, and surmise for the last two months in local society. Everyone knew too that the case had become known throughout Russia, but yet we had not imagined that it had aroused such burning, such intense interest in everyone, not only among ourselves, but all over Russia. This became evident at the trial this day. Visitors had arrived not only from the chief town of our province, but from several other Russian towns, as well as from Moscow and Petersburg. Among them were lawyers, ladies, and even several distinguished personages. Every ticket of admission had been snatched up. A special place behind the table at which the three judges sat was set apart for the most distinguished and important of the men visitors. A row of arm-chairs had been placed there, something exceptional which had never been allowed before. A large proportion, not less than half of the public, were ladies. There was such a large number of lawyers from all parts that they did not know where to seat them, for every ticket had long since been eagerly sought for and distributed. I saw, at the end of the room, behind the platform, a special partition hurriedly put up behind which all these lawyers were admitted, and they thought themselves lucky to have standing room there, for all chairs had been removed for the sake of space, and the crowd behind the partition stood throughout the case, closely packed, shoulder to shoulder. Some of the ladies, especially those who came from a distance, made their appearance in the gallery very smartly dressed, but the majority of the ladies were oblivious even of dress. Their faces betrayed hysterical, intense, almost morbid curiosity. A peculiar fact established afterwards by many observations was that almost all the ladies, or at least the vast majority of them, were on Mitch's side, and in favour of his being acquitted. This was perhaps chiefly owing to his reputation as a conqueror of female hearts. It was known that two women rivals were to appear in the case. One of them, Katerina Ivanovna, was an object of general interest. All sorts of extraordinary tales were told about her, amazing anecdotes of her passion for Mitchell, in spite of his crime. Her pride and aristocratic connections were particularly insisted upon. She had called upon scarcely anyone in the town. People said she intended to petition the government for leave to accompany the criminal to Siberia and to be married to him somewhere in the mines. The appearance of Grushanka in court was awaited with no less impatience. The public was looking forward with anxious curiosity to the meeting of the two rivals, the proud aristocratic girl and the hetira. But Grushanka was a more familiar figure to the ladies of the district than Katerina Ivanovna. They had already seen the woman who had ruined Theodor Pavlovich and his unhappy son, and all, almost without exception, wondered how father and son could be so in love with such a very common ordinary Russian girl who was not even pretty. In brief there was a great deal of talk. I know for a fact that there were several serious family quarrels on Mitch's account in our town. Many ladies quarreled violently with their husbands over differences of opinion about the dreadful case, and it was only natural that the husbands of these ladies, far from being favourably disposed to the prisoner, should enter the court bitterly prejudiced against him. In fact, one may say pretty certainly that the masculine, as distinguished from the feminine, part of the audience, were biased against the prisoner. There were numbers of severe frowning, even vindictive, faces. Mitcha indeed had managed to offend many people during his stay in the town. Some of the visitors were, of course, in excellent spirits and quite unconcerned as to the fate of Mitcha personally. But all were interested in the trial, and the majority of the men were certainly hoping for the conviction of the criminal, except perhaps the lawyers, who were more interested in the legal than in the moral aspect of the case. Everybody was excited at the presence of the celebrated lawyer Fechikovic. His talent was well known, and this was not the first time he had defended notorious criminal cases in the provinces. And if he defended them, such cases became celebrated and long remembered all over Russia. There were stories, too, about our prosecutor and about the president of the court. It was said that Ipalit Kurilevich was in a tremor at meeting Fechikovic, and that they had been enemies from the beginning of their careers in Petersburg, that, though our sensitive prosecutor, who always considered that he had been aggrieved by someone in Petersburg because his talents had not been properly appreciated, was keenly excited over the Karamazov case and was even dreaming of rebuilding his flagging fortunes by means of it, Fechikovic, they said, was his one anxiety. But these rumors were not quite just. Our prosecutor was not one of those men who lose heart in face of danger. On the contrary, his self-confidence increased with the increase of danger. It must be noted that our prosecutor was, in general, too hasty and morbidly impressionable. He would put his whole soul into some case and work at it as though his whole fate and his whole fortune depended on its result. This was the subject of some ridicule in the legal world, for just by this characteristic our prosecutor had gained a wider notoriety than could have been expected from his modest position. People laughed particularly at his passion for psychology. In my opinion they were wrong, and our prosecutor was, I believe, a character of greater depth than was generally supposed. But with his delicate health he had failed to make his mark at the outset of his career and had never made up for it later. As for the president of our court, I can only say that he was a humane and cultured man who had a practical knowledge of his work and progressive views. He was rather ambitious but did not concern himself greatly about his future career. The great aim of his life was to be a man of advanced ideas. He was, too, a man of connections and property. He felt, as we learnt afterwards, rather strongly about the Karamazov case, but from a social, not from a personal standpoint. He was interested in it as a social phenomenon, in its classification and its character as a product of our social conditions, as typical of the national character, and so on and so on. His attitude to the personal aspect of the case, to its tragic significance and the persons involved in it, including the prisoner, was rather indifferent and abstract, as was perhaps fitting indeed. The court was packed and overflowing long before the judges made their appearance. Our court is the best hall in the town, spacious, lofty, and good for sound. On the right of the judges, who were on a raised platform, a table and two rows of chairs had been put ready for the jury. On the left was the place for the prisoner and the council for the defence. In the middle of the court, near the judges, was a table with the material proofs. On it lay Fyodor Pavlovitch's white silk dressing gown stained with blood, the fatal brass pestle with which the supposed murder had been committed, Mitch's shirt with the blood stained sleeve, his coat stained with blood in patches over the pocket in which he had put his handkerchief, the handkerchief itself, stiff with blood and by now quite yellow, the pistol loaded by Mitch at Perhotin's with a view to suicide and taken from him on the sly at Macro by Trifon Borisovich, the envelope in which the three thousand rubles had been put ready for Grushanka, the narrow pink ribbon with which it had been tied, and many other articles I don't remember. In the body of the hall at some distance came the seats for the public, but in front of the balustrade a few chairs had been placed for witnesses who remained in the court after giving their evidence. At ten o'clock the three judges arrived, the President, one honorary justice of the peace, and one other. The prosecutor, of course, entered immediately after. The President was a short, stout, thick-set man of fifty, with a dyspeptic complexion, dark hair turning grey and cut short, and a red ribbon of what order I don't remember. The prosecutor struck me and the others too, as looking particularly pale, almost green. His face seemed to have grown suddenly thinner, perhaps in a single night, for I had seen him looking as usual only two days before. The President began with asking the court whether all the jury were present. But I see I can't go on like this, partly because some things I did not hear, others I did not notice, and others I have forgotten, but most of all because, as I have said before, I have literally no time or space to mention everything that was said and done. I only know that neither side objected to very many of the jury men. I remember the twelve jury men. Four were petty officials of the town, two were merchants, and six peasants and artisans of the town. I remember long before the trial questions were continually asked, with some surprise, especially by ladies. Can such a delicate complex and psychological case be submitted for decision to petty officials and even peasants? And what can an official, still more a peasant, understand in such an affair? All the four officials in the jury were, in fact, men of no consequence and of low rank. Except one who was rather younger, they were gray-headed men, little known in society, who had vegetated on a pitiful salary and who probably had elderly, unpresentable wives and crowds of children, perhaps even without shoes and stockings. At most they spent their leisure over cards, and of course had never read a single book. The two merchants looked respectable, but were strangely silent and stolid. One of them was close-shaven and was dressed in European style, the other had a small grey beard and wore a red ribbon with some sort of a metal upon it on his back. There is no need to speak of the artisans and the peasants. The artisans of Skotoprygonyevsk are almost all peasants, and even work on the land. Two of them also wore European dress, and perhaps for that reason were dirtier and more uninviting looking than the others. So that one might well wonder, as I did as soon as I had looked at them, what men like that could possibly make of such a case? Yet their faces made a strangely imposing, almost menacing impression. They were stern and frowning. At last the President opened the case of the murder of Theodor Pavlovich Karamazov. I don't quite remember how he described him. The court usher was told to bring in the prisoner, and Mitche made his appearance. There was a hush through the court. One could have heard a fly. I don't know how it was with others, but Mitche made a most unfavorable impression on me. He looked an awful dandy in a brand new front coat. I heard afterwards that he had ordered it from Moscow, expressly for the occasion, from his own tailor who had his measure. He wore immaculate black kid gloves and exquisite linen. He walked in with his yard-long strides, looking stiffly straight in front of him, and sat down in his place with a most unperturbed air. At the same moment the Council for Defence, the celebrated Fechikovich, entered, and a sort of subdued hum passed through the court. He was a tall, spare man with long, thin legs, with extremely long, thin, pale fingers, clean-shaven face, demurely brushed, rather short hair, and thin lips that were at times curved into something between a sneer and a smile. He looked about forty. His face would have been pleasant, if it had not been for his eyes, which in themselves, small and inexpressive, were set remarkably close together, with only the thin, long nose as a dividing line between them. In fact, there was something strikingly bird-like about his face. He was in evening dress and white tie. I remember the President's first questions to Mitche about his name, his calling, and so on. Mitche answered sharply, and his voice was so unexpectedly loud that it made the President start and look at the prisoner with surprise. Then followed a list of persons who were to take part in the proceedings, that is, of the witnesses and experts. It was a long list. Four of the witnesses were not present. Müsov, who had given evidence at the preliminary inquiry, but was now in Paris, Madame Holikov and Maximov, who were absent through illness, and Smirjakov through his sudden death, of which an official statement from the police was presented. The news of Smirjakov's death produced a sudden stirrer and whisperer in the court. Many of the audience, of course, had not heard of the sudden suicide. What struck people most was Mitche's sudden outburst. As soon as the statement of Smirjakov's death was made, he cried aloud from his place. He was a dog, and died like a dog. I remember how his counsel rushed to him, and how the President addressed him, threatening to take stern measures if such an irregularity were repeated. Mitche nodded, and in a subdued voice repeated several times abruptly to his counsel, with no show of regret. I won't again. I won't. It escaped me. I won't do it again. And, of course, this brief episode did him no good with the jury or the public. His character was displayed, and it spoke for itself. It was under the influence of this incident that the opening statement was read. It was rather short, but circumstantial. It only stated the chief reasons why he had been arrested, why he must be tried, and so on. Yet had made a great impression on me. The clerk read it loudly and distinctly. The whole tragedy was suddenly unfolded before us, concentrated in bold relief, in a fatal and pitiless light. I remember how, immediately after it had been read, the President asked Mitche in a loud, impressive voice, Prisoner, do you plead guilty? Mitche suddenly rose from his seat. I plead guilty to drunkenness and dissipation, he exclaimed, again in a startling almost frenzied voice. To idleness and debauchery. I meant to become an honest man for good just at the moment when I was struck down by fate, but I am not guilty of the death of that old man, my enemy, and my father. No, no, I am not guilty of robbing him. I could not be. Dmitry Karamazov is a scoundrel, but not a thief. He sat down again, visibly trembling all over. The President again, briefly but impressively, admonished him to answer only what was asked, and not to go off into irrelevant exclamations. Then he ordered the case to proceed. All the witnesses were led up to take the oath. Then I saw them all together. The brothers of the Prisoner were, however, allowed to give evidence without taking the oath. After an exhortation from the Priest and the President, the witnesses were led away and were made to sit as far as possible apart from one another. Then they began calling them up, one by one. I do not know whether the witnesses for the defense and for the prosecution were separated into groups by the President and whether it was arranged to call them in a certain order, but no doubt it was so. I only know that the witnesses for the prosecution were called first. I repeat, I do not intend to describe all the questions step by step. Besides, my account would be to some extent superfluous, because in the speeches for the prosecution and for the defense the whole course of the evidence was brought together and set in a strong and significant light, and I took down parts of those two remarkable speeches in full and will quote them in due course, together with one extraordinary and quite unexpected episode which occurred before the final speeches and undoubtedly influenced the sinister and fatal outcome of the trial. I will only observe that from the first moments of the trial one peculiar characteristic of the case was conspicuous and observed by all, that is, the overwhelming strength of the prosecution as compared with the arguments the defense had to rely upon. Everyone realised it from the first moment that the facts began to group themselves round a single point and the whole horrible and bloody crime was gradually revealed. Everyone perhaps felt from the first that the case was beyond dispute, that there was no doubt about it, that there could be really no discussion and that the defense was only a matter of form and that the prisoner was guilty, obviously and conclusively guilty. I imagine that even the ladies who were so impatiently longing for the acquittal of the interesting prisoner were at the same time, without exception, convinced of his guilt. What's more, I believe they would have been mortified if his guilt had not been so firmly established, as that would have lessened the effect of the closing scene of the criminal's acquittal, that he would be acquitted, all the ladies, strange to say, were firmly persuaded up to the very last moment. He is guilty, but he will be acquitted, from motives of humanity, in accordance with the new ideas, the new sentiments that had come into fashion, and so on and so on. And that was why they had crowded into the court so impatiently. The men were more interested in the contest between the prosecutor and the famous Fechikovic. All were wondering and asking themselves, what could even a talent like Fechikovic's make of such a desperate case, and so they followed his achievements, step by step, with concentrated attention. But Fechikovic remained an enigma to all, up to the very end, up to his speech. Persons of experience suspected that he had some design, that he was working towards some object, but it was almost impossible to guess what it was. His confidence and self-reliance were unmistakable, however. Everyone noticed, with pleasure, moreover, that he, after so short a stay, not more than three days, perhaps among us, had so wonderfully succeeded in mastering the case, and had studied it to a nicety. People described with relish, afterwards, how cleverly he had taken down all the witnesses for the prosecution, and as far as possible perplexed them, and what's more, had espersed their reputation, and so depreciated the value of their evidence. But it was supposed that he did this rather by way of sport, so to speak, for professional glory, to show nothing had been omitted of the accepted methods, for all were convinced that he could do no real good, by such disparagement of the witnesses, and probably was more aware of this than any one, having some idea of his own, in the background, some concealed weapon of defence, which he would suddenly reveal when the time came, but, meanwhile, conscious of his strength, he seemed to be diverting himself. So, for instance, when Grigori, Fyodor Pavlovich's old servant, who had given the most damning piece of evidence about the open door, was examined, the counsel for the defence positively fastened upon him when his turn came to question him. It must be noted that Grigori entered the hall with a composed and almost stately air, not the least disconcerted by the majesty of the court or the vast audience listening to him. He gave evidence with as much confidence as though he had been talking with his Martha, only perhaps more respectfully. It was impossible to make him contradict himself. The prosecutor questioned him, first in detail, about the family life of the Karamazovs. The family picture stood out in lurid colours. It was plain to ear and eye that the witness was guileless and impartial. In spite of his profound reverence for the memory of his deceased master, he yet bore witness that he had been unjust to Mitcha and hadn't brought up his children as he should. He'd have been devoured by lice when he was little if it hadn't been for me, he added, describing Mitcha's early childhood. It wasn't fair, either, of the father to wrong his son over his mother's property, which was, by right, his. In reply to the prosecutor's question, what grounds he had for asserting that Fyodor Pavlovich had wronged his son in their money relations, Grigori, to the surprise of everyone, had no proof at all to bring forward, but he still persisted that the arrangement with the son was unfair, and that he ought to have paid him several thousand rubles more. I must note, by the way, that the prosecutor asked this question, whether Fyodor Pavlovich had really kept back part of Mitcha's inheritance, with marked persistence of all the witnesses who could be asked it, not accepting Alyosha and Ivan, but he obtained no exact information from any one, all alleged that it was so, but were unable to bring forward any distinct proof. Grigori's description of the scene at the dinner table when Dmitry had burst in and beaten his father, threatening to come back to kill him, made a sinister impression on the court, especially as the old servant's composure in telling it, his parsimony of words and peculiar phraseology, were as effective as eloquence. He observed that he was not angry with Mitcha for having knocked him down and struck him on the face. He had forgiven him long ago, he said. Of the deceased Smirjakov, he observed, crossing himself, that he was a lad of ability, but stupid and afflicted and, worse still, an infidel, and that it was Fyodor Pavlovich and his elder son who had taught him to be so. But he defended Smirjakov's honesty, almost with warmth, and related how Smirjakov had once found the master's money in the yard, and instead of concealing it, had taken it to his master, who had rewarded him with a gold piece for it, and trusted him implicitly from that time forward, he maintained obstinately that the door into the garden had been open. But he was asked so many questions that I can't recall them all. At last the Council for the Defence began to cross-examine him, and the first question he asked was about the envelope in which Fyodor Pavlovich was supposed to have put three thousand rubles for a certain person. Have you ever seen it, you, who were for so many years in close attendance on your master? Gregori answered that he had not seen it, and had never heard of the money from anyone till everybody was talking about it. This question about the envelope Fyodor Pavlovich put to everyone who could conceivably have known of it, as persistently as the prosecutor asked his question about Dmitri's inheritance, and got the same answer from all that no one had seen the envelope, though many had heard of it. From the beginning, everyone noticed Fyodor Pavlovich's persistence on this subject. Now, with your permission, I'll ask you a question, Fyodor Pavlovich said suddenly and unexpectedly. Of what was that balsam or rather decoction made, which, as we learned from the preliminary inquiry, you used on that evening to rub your lumbago in the hope of curing it? Gregori looked blankly at the questioner, and after a brief silence muttered, there was saffron in it. Nothing but saffron? Don't you remember any other ingredient? There was millfoil in it, too. And pepper, perhaps? Fechakovich queried. Yes, there was pepper, too. Et cetera, and all dissolved in vodka? In spirit. There was a faint sound of laughter in the court. You see, in spirit, after rubbing your back I believe you drank what was left in the bottle with a certain pious prayer only known to your wife? I did. Did you drink much, roughly speaking, a wine glass or two? It might have been a tumbler full. A tumbler full, even, perhaps a tumbler and a half. Gregori did not answer. He seemed to see what was meant. A glass and a half of neat spirit is not at all bad, don't you think? You might see the gates of heaven open, not only the door into the garden. Gregori remained silent. There was another laugh in the court. The president made a movement. Do you know for a fact, Fechakovich persisted, whether you were awake or not, when you saw the open door? I was on my legs. That's not a proof that you were awake. There was again laughter in the court. Could you have answered at that moment if anyone had asked you a question, for instance, what year it is? I don't know. And what year is it, Anno Domini, do you know? Gregori stood with a perplexed face, looking straight at his tormentor. Strange to say, it appeared he really did not know what year it was. But perhaps you can tell me how many fingers you have on your hands. I am a servant, Gregori said, suddenly in a loud and distinct voice. If my betters think fit to make game of me, it is my duty to suffer it. Fechakovich was a little taken aback, and the president intervened, reminding him that he must ask more relevant questions. Fechakovich bowed with dignity, and said that he had no more questions to ask of the witness. The public and the jury, of course, were left with a green of doubt in their minds, as to the evidence of a man who might, while undergoing a certain cure, have seen the gates of heaven, and who did not even know what year he was living in. But before Gregori left the box another episode occurred. The president, turning to the prisoner, asked him whether he had any comment to make on the evidence of the last witness. Except about the door, all he has said is true, cried Mitcha in a loud voice. For combing the lice off me, I thank him. For forgiving my blows, I thank him. The old man has been honest all his life, and as faithful to my father as seven hundred poodles. Prisoner, be careful in your language, the president admonished him. I am not a poodle, Gregori muttered. All right, it's I am a poodle myself, cried Mitcha. If it's an insult, I take it to myself, and I beg his pardon. I was a beast, and cruel to him. I was cruel to Esop, too. What Esop! the president asked sternly again. Oh Piero, my father, Fyodor Pavlovich! The president again and again warned Mitcha impressively and very sternly to be more careful in his language. You are injuring yourself in the opinion of your judges. The counsel for the defense was equally clever in dealing with the evidence of Raketen. I may remark that Raketen was one of the leading witnesses, and one to whom the prosecutor attached great significance. It appeared that he knew everything. His knowledge was amazing. He had been everywhere, seen everything, talked to everybody, knew every detail of the biography of Fyodor Pavlovich and all the Karamazovs. Of the envelope it is true he had only heard from Mitcha himself, but he described minutely Mitcha's exploits in the metropolis, all his compromising doings and sayings, and told the story of Captain Snigiriot's wisp of toe. But even Raketen could say nothing positive about Mitcha's inheritance and confined himself to contemptuous generalities. Who could tell which of them was to blame and which was in depth to the other with their crazy Karamazov way of muddling things so that no one could make head or tail of it? He attributed the tragic crime to the habits that had become ingrained by ages of serfdom and the distressed condition of Russia due to the lack of appropriate institutions. He was in fact allowed some latitude of speech. This was the first occasion on which Raketen showed what he could do and attracted notice. The prosecutor knew that the witness was preparing a magazine article on the case, and afterwards, in his speech, as we shall see later, quoted some ideas from the article, showing that he had seen it already. The picture drawn by the witness was a gloomy and sinister one and greatly strengthened the case for the prosecution. Altogether Raketen's discourse fascinated the public by its independence and the extraordinary nobility of its ideas. There were even two or three outbreaks of applause when he spoke of serfdom and the distressed condition of Russia. But Raketen, in his youthful ardor, made a slight blunder, of which the Council for the Defence at once adroitly took advantage. Answering certain questions about Grushanka and carried away by the loftiness of his own sentiments and his success, of which he was, of course, conscious, he went so far as to speak somewhat contemptuously of Agrifena Alexandrovna as the kept mistress of Samsonov. He would have given a good deal to take back his words afterwards, for Fechiković cut him out over it at once. And it was all because Raketen had not reckoned on the lawyer having been able to become so intimately acquainted with every detail in so short a time. Allow me to ask. Began the Council for the Defence with the most affable and even respectful smile. You are, of course, the same Mr. Raketen, whose pamphlet, The Life of the Deceased Elder Fávez Asima, published by the diocesan authorities full of profound and religious reflections, and preceded by an excellent and devout dedication to the bishop, I have just read with such pleasure. I did not write it for publication. It was published afterwards, muttered Raketen, for some reason fearfully disconcerted and almost ashamed. Oh, that's excellent. A thinker like you can, and indeed ought to, take the widest view of every social question. Your most instructive pamphlet has been widely circulated through the patronage of the bishop, and has been of appreciable service. But this is the chief thing I should like to learn from you. You stated just now that you were very intimately acquainted with Madame Svjetlov. It must be noted that Grushinka's surname was Svjetlov. I heard it for the first time that day during the case. I cannot answer for all my acquaintances. I am a young man, and who can be responsible for every one he meets, cried Raketen, flushing all over. I understand, I quite understand, cried Fetyakovitch, as though he too were embarrassed and in haste to excuse himself. You, like any other, might well be interested in an acquaintance with a young and beautiful woman who would readily entertain the elite of the youth of the neighborhood. But I only wanted to know. It has come to my knowledge that Madame Svjetlov was particularly anxious a couple of months ago to make the acquaintance of the younger Karamazov, Alexei Fyodorovich, and promised you twenty-five rubles if you would bring him to her in his monastic dress. And that actually took place on the evening of the day on which the terrible crime which is the subject of the present investigation was committed. You brought Alexei Karamazov to Madame Svjetlov, and did you receive the twenty-five rubles from Madame Svjetlov as a reward? That's what I wanted to hear from you. It was a joke. I don't see of what interest that can be to you. I took it for a joke, meaning to give it back later. Then you did take, but you have not given it back yet, or have you? That's of no consequence, muttered Raketen. I refuse to answer such questions. Of course, I shall give it back. The President intervened, but Fetyakovitch declared he had no more questions to ask of the witness. Mr. Raketen left the witness-box not absolutely without a stain upon his character. The effect left by the lofty idealism of his speech was somewhat marred, and Fetyakovitch's expression as he watched him walk away seemed to suggest to the public, this is a specimen of the lofty-minded persons who accuse him. I remember that this incident, too, did not pass off without an outbreak from Mitya. Enraged by the tone in which Raketen had referred to Goshenko, he suddenly shouted, Bernard! When, after Raketen's cross-examination, the President asked the prisoner if he had anything to say, Mitya cried loudly. Since I've been arrested he has borrowed money from me, he is a contemptible Bernard and opportunist, and he doesn't believe in God, he took the bishop in. Mitya, of course, was pulled up again for the intemperance of his language, but Raketen was done for. Captain Snagiriot's evidence was a failure, too, but from quite a different reason. He appeared in ragged and dirty clothes, muddy boots, and in spite of the vigilance and expert observation of the police officers, he turned out to be hopelessly drunk. On being asked about Mitch's attack on him, he refused to answer. God bless him, Ilyusha told me not to. God will make it up to me yonder. Who told you not to tell? Of whom are you talking? Ilyusha, my little son, father, father, how he insulted you, he said that at the stone. Now he is dying. The Captain suddenly began sobbing and plumped down on his knees before the President. He was hurriedly led away amidst the laughter of the public. The effect prepared by the prosecutor did not come off at all. Fechakovich went on making the most of every opportunity and amazed people more and more by his minute knowledge of the case. Thus, for example, Trifon Borisovich made a great impression, of course, very prejudicial to Mitcha. He calculated, almost on his fingers, that on his first visit to Makrow, Mitcha must have spent three thousand rubles, or very little less. Just think what he squandered on those gypsy girls alone, and as for our lousy peasants it wasn't a case of flinging half a rubble in the street. He made them presence of twenty-five rubles each, at least. He didn't give them less, and what a lot of money was simply stolen from him. And if anyone did steal, he did not leave a receipt. How could one catch the thief when he was flinging his money away all the time? Our peasants are robbers, you know. They have no care for their souls, and the way he went on with the girls, our village girls, they're completely set up since then, I tell you, they used to be poor. He recalled, in fact, every item of expense, and added it all up. So the theory that only fifteen hundred had been spent, and the rest had been put aside in a little bag, seemed inconceivable. I saw three thousand as clear as a penny in his hands. I saw it with my own eyes. I should think I ought to know how to reckon money, cried Trifon Borisovich, doing his best to satisfy his betters. When Fechikovic had to cross-examine him, he scarcely tried to refute his evidence, but began asking him about an incident at the first carousel at Makrow, a month before the arrest, when Timofei and another peasant called Akim had picked up on the floor in the passage a hundred rubles dropped by Mitcher when he was drunk, and had given them to Trifon Borisovich, and received a ruble each from him for doing so. Well, asked the lawyer, did you give that hundred rubles back to Mr. Karamazov? Trifon Borisovich shuffled in vain. He was obliged, after the peasants had been examined, to admit the finding of the hundred rubles, only adding that he had religiously returned it all to Dmitry Fyodorovich in perfect honesty, and it's only because his honour was in liquor at the time he wouldn't remember it. But as he had denied the incident of the hundred rubles, till the peasants had been called to prove it, his evidence as to returning the money to Mitcher was naturally regarded with great suspicion. So one of the most dangerous witnesses brought forward by the prosecution was again discredited. The same thing happened with the Poles. They took up an attitude of pride and independence. They vociferated loudly that they had both been in the service of the Crown, and that Pan Mitcher had offered them three thousand to buy their honour, and that they had seen a large sum of money in his hands. Pan Musilovich introduced a terrible number of Polish words into his sentences, and, seeing that this only increased his consequence in the eyes of the President and the prosecutor, grew more and more pompous and ended by talking in Polish altogether. But Fechiković caught them, too, in his snares. Trifon Borisovich recalled, was forced in spite of his evasions, to admit that Pan Rubleski had substituted another pack of cards for the one he had provided, and that Pan Musilovich had cheated during the game. Kalganov confirmed this, and both the Poles left the witness-box with damaged reputations amidst laughter from the public. Then exactly the same thing happened with almost all the most dangerous witnesses. Fechiković succeeded in casting a slur on all of them, and dismissing them with a certain derision. The lawyers and experts were lost in admiration, and were only at a loss to understand what good purpose could be served by it. For all, I repeat, felt that the case for the prosecution could not be refuted, but was growing more and more tragically overwhelming. But from the confidence of the great magician, they saw that he was serene, and they waited, feeling that such a man had not come from Petersburg for nothing, and that he was not a man to return unsuccessful. End of section 81