own composure. 'Before we go on with our inquiry, I should like, if you will consent to answer, to hear you confirm the statement that you disliked your father, Fyodor Pavlovitch, that you were involved in continual disputes with him. Here at least, a quarter of an hour ago, you exclaimed that you wanted to kill him: ‘I didn't kill him,’ you said,'but I wanted to kill him.''
'Did I exclaim that? Ach, that may be so, gentlemen! Yes, unhappily, I did want to kill him... many times I wanted to... unhappily, unhappily!'
'You wanted to. Would you consent to explain what motives precisely led you to such a sentiment of hatred for your parent?'
'What is there to explain, gentlemen?' Mitya shrugged his shoulders sullenly, looking down. 'I have never concealed my feelings. All the town knows about it--everyone knows in the tavern. Only lately I declared them in Father Zossima's cell. And the very same day, in the evening I beat my father. I nearly killed him, and I swore I'd come again and kill him, before witnesses.... Oh, a thousand witnesses! I've been shouting it aloud for the last month, anyone can tell you that!... The fact stares you in the face, it speaks for itself, it cries aloud, but feelings, gentlemen, feelings are another matter. You see, gentlemen'--Mitya frowned--'it seemed to me that about feelings you've no right to question me. I know that you are bound by your office, I quite understand that, but that's my affair, my private, intimate affair, yet... since I haven't concealed my feelings in the past... in the tavern, for instance, I've talked to everyone, so... so I won't make a secret of it now. You see, I understand, gentlemen, that there are terrible facts against me in this business. I told everyone that I'd kill him, and now, all of a sudden, he's been killed. So it must have been me! Ha ha! I can make allowances for you, gentlemen, I can quite make allowances. I'm struck all of a heap myself, for who can have murdered him, if not I? That's what it comes to, isn't it? If not I, who can it be, who? Gentlemen, I want to know, I insist on knowing!' he exclaimed suddenly. 'Where was he murdered? How was he murdered? How, and with what? Tell me,' he asked quickly, looking at the two lawyers.
'We found him in his study, lying on his back on the floor, with his head battered in,' said the prosecutor.
'That's horrible!' Mitya shuddered and, putting his elbows on the table, hid his face in his right hand.
'We will continue,' interposed Nikolay Parfenovitch. 'So what was it that impelled you to this sentiment of hatred? You have asserted in public, I believe, that it was based upon jealousy?'
'Well, yes, jealousy. not only jealousy.'
'Disputes about money?'
'Yes, about money, too.'
'There was a dispute about three thousand roubles, I think, which you claimed as part of your inheritance?'
'Three thousand! More, more,' cried Mitya hotly; 'more than six thousand, more than ten, perhaps. I told everyone so, shouted it at them. But I made up my mind to let it go at three thousand. I was desperately in need of that three thousand... so the bundle of notes for three thousand that I knew he kept under his pillow, ready for Grushenka, I considered as simply stolen from me. Yes, gentlemen, I looked upon it as mine, as my own property...'
The prosecutor looked significantly at the investigating lawyer, and had time to wink at him on the sly.
'We will return to that subject later,' said the lawyer promptly. 'You will allow us to note that point and write it down; that you looked upon that money as your own property?'
'Write it down, by all means. I know that's another fact that tells against me, but I'm not afraid of facts and I tell them against myself. Do you hear? Do you know, gentlemen, you take me for a different sort of man from what I am,' he added, suddenly gloomy and dejected. 'You have to deal with a man of honour, a man of the highest honour; above all don't lose sight of it--a man who's done a lot of nasty things, but has always been, and still is, honourable at bottom, in his inner being. I don't know how to express it. That's just what's made me wretched all my life, that I yearned to be honourable, that I was, so to say, a martyr to a sense of honour, seeking for it with a lantern, with the lantern of Diogenes, and yet all my life I've been doing filthy things like all of us, gentlemen... that is like me alone. That was a mistake, like me alone, me alone!... Gentlemen, my head aches...' His brows contracted with pain. 'You see, gentlemen, I couldn't bear the look of him, there was something in him ignoble, impudent, trampling on everything sacred, something sneering and irreverent, loathsome, loathsome. But now that he's dead, I feel differently.'
'How do you mean?'
'I don't feel differently, but I wish I hadn't hated him so.'
'You feel penitent?'
'No, not penitent, don't write that. I'm not much good myself; I'm not very beautiful, so I had no right to consider him repulsive. That's what I mean. Write that down, if you like.'
Saying this Mitya became very mournful. He had grown more and more gloomy as the inquiry continued.
At that moment another unexpected scene followed. Though Grushenka had been removed, she had not been taken far away, only into the room next but one from the blue room, in which the examination was proceeding. It was a little room with one window, next beyond the large room in which they had danced and feasted so lavishly. She was sitting there with no one by her but Maximov, who was terribly depressed, terribly scared, and clung to her side, as though for security. At their door stood one of the peasants with a metal plate on his breast. Grushenka was crying, and suddenly her grief was too much for her, she jumped up, flung up her arms and, with a loud wail of sorrow, rushed out of the room to him, to her Mitya, and so unexpectedly that they had not time to stop her. Mitya, hearing her cry, trembled, jumped up, and with a yell rushed impetuously to meet her, not knowing what he was doing. But they were not allowed to come together, though they saw one another. He was seized by the arms. He struggled, and tried to tear himself away. It took three or four men to hold him. She was seized too, and he saw her stretching out her arms to him, crying aloud as they carried her away. When the scene was over, he came to himself again, sitting in the same place as before, opposite the investigating lawyer, and crying out to them:
'What do you want with her? Why do you torment her? She's done nothing, nothing!
The lawyers tried to soothe him. About ten minutes passed like this. At last Mihail Makarovitch, who had been absent, came hurriedly into the room, and said in a loud and excited voice to the prosecutor:
'She's been removed, she's downstairs. Will you allow me to say one word to this unhappy man, gentlemen? In your presence, gentlemen, in your presence.'
'By all means, Mihail Makarovitch,' answered the investigating lawyer. 'In the present case we have nothing against it.'
'Listen, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, my dear fellow,' began the police captain, and there was a look of warm, almost fatherly, feeling for the luckless prisoner on his excited face. 'I took your Agrafena Alexandrovna downstairs myself, and confided her to the care of the landlord's daughters, and that old fellow Maximov is with her all the time. And I soothed her, do you hear? I soothed and calmed her. I impressed on her that you have to clear yourself, so she mustn't hinder you, must not depress you, or you may lose your head and say the wrong thing in your evidence. In fact, I talked to her and she understood. She's a sensible girl, my boy, a good-hearted girl, she would have kissed my old hands, begging help for you. She sent me herself, to tell you not to worry about her. And I must go, my dear fellow, I must go and tell her that you are calm and comforted about her. And so you must be calm, do you understand? I was unfair to her; she is a Christian soul, gentlemen, yes, I tell you, she's a gentle soul, and not to blame for anything. So what am I to tell her, Dmitri Fyodorovitch? Will you sit quiet or not?'
The good-natured police captain said a great deal that was irregular, but Grushenka's suffering, a fellow creature's suffering, touched his good-natured heart, and tears stood in his eyes. Mitya jumped up and rushed towards him.
'Forgive me, gentlemen, oh, allow me, allow me!' he cried. 'You've the heart of an angel, an angel, Mihail Makarovitch, I thank you for her. I will, I will be calm, cheerful, in fact. Tell her, in the kindness of your heart, that I am cheerful, quite cheerful, that I shall be laughing in a minute, knowing that she has a guardian angel like you. I shall have done with all this directly, and as soon as I'm free, I'll be with her, she'll see, let her wait. Gentlemen,' he said, turning to the two lawyers, now I'll open my whole soul to you; I'll pour out everything. We'll finish this off directly, finish it off gaily. We shall laugh at it in the end, shan't we? But gentlemen, that woman is the queen of my heart. Oh, let me tell you that. That one thing I'll tell you now.... I see I'm with honourable men. She is my light, she is my holy one, and if only you knew! Did you hear her cry, ‘I'll go to death with you'? And what have I, a penniless beggar, done for her? Why such love for me? How can a clumsy, ugly brute like me, with my ugly face, deserve such love, that she is ready to go to exile with me? And how she fell down at your feet for my sake, just
