every sincere and complete confession on your part at this moment may, later on, have an immense influence in your favour, and may, indeed, moreover-'
But the prosecutor gave him a slight shove under the table, and he checked himself in time. Mitya, it is true, had not heard him.
Chapter 7
Mitya's Great Secret Received with Hisses
'GENTLEMEN,' he began, still in the same agitation, 'I want to make a full confession: that money was my own.'
The lawyer's faces lengthened. That was not at all what they expected.
'How do you mean?' faltered Nikolay Parfenovitch, 'when at five o'clock on the same day, from your own confession-'
'Damn five o'clock on the same day and my own confession! That's nothing to do with it now! That money was my own, my own, that is, stolen by me...not mine, I mean, but stolen by me, and it was fifteen hundred roubles, and I had it on me all the time, all the time...'
'But where did you get it?'
'I took it off my neck, gentlemen, off this very neck... it was here, round my neck, sewn up in a rag, and I'd had it round my neck a long time, it's a month since I put it round my neck... to my shame and disgrace!'
'And from whom did you... appropriate it?'
'You mean, ‘steal it'? Speak out plainly now. Yes, I consider that I practically stole it, but, if you prefer, I ‘appropriated it.’ I consider I stole it. And last night I stole it finally.'
'Last night? But you said that it's a month since you... obtained it?...'
'Yes. But not from my father. Not from my father, don't be uneasy. I didn't steal it from my father, but from her. Let me tell you without interrupting. It's hard to do, you know. You see, a month ago, I was sent for by Katerina Ivanovna, formerly my betrothed. Do you know her?'
'Yes, of course.'
'I know you know her. She's a noble creature, noblest of the noble. But she has hated me ever so long, oh, ever so long... and hated me with good reason, good reason!'
'Katerina Ivanovna!' Nikolay Parfenovitch exclaimed with wonder. The prosecutor, too, stared.
'Oh, don't take her name in vain! I'm a scoundrel to bring her into it. Yes, I've seen that she hated me... a long while.... From the very first, even that evening at my lodging... but enough, enough. You're unworthy even to know of that. No need of that at all.... I need only tell you that she sent for me a month ago, gave me three thousand roubles to send off to her sister and another relation in Moscow (as though she couldn't have sent it off herself!) and I... it was just at that fatal moment in my life when I... well, in fact, when I'd just come to love another, her, she's sitting down below now, Grushenka. I carried her off here to Mokroe then, and wasted here in two days half that damned three thousand, but the other half I kept on me. Well, I've kept that other half, that fifteen hundred, like a locket round my neck, but yesterday I undid it, and spent it. What's left of it, eight hundred roubles, is in your hands now, Nikolay Parfenovitch. That's the change out of the fifteen hundred I had yesterday.'
'Excuse me. How's that? Why, when you were here a month ago you spent three thousand, not fifteen hundred, everybody knows that.'
'Who knows it? Who counted the money? Did I let anyone count it?'
'Why, you told everyone yourself that you'd spent exactly three thousand.'
'It's true, I did. I told the whole town so, and the whole town said so. And here, at Mokroe, too, everyone reckoned it was three thousand. Yet I didn't spend three thousand, but fifteen hundred. And the other fifteen hundred I sewed into a little bag. That's how it was, gentlemen. That's where I got that money yesterday....'
'This is almost miraculous,' murmured Nikolay Parfenovitch.
'Allow me to inquire,' observed the prosecutor at last, 'have you informed anyone whatever of this circumstance before; I mean that you had fifteen hundred left about you a month ago?'
'I told no one.'
'That's strange. Do you mean absolutely no one?'
'Absolutely no one. No one and nobody.'
'What was your reason for this reticence? What was your motive for making such a secret of it? To be more precise: You have told us at last your secret, in your words, so ‘disgraceful,’ though in reality-- that is, of course, comparatively speaking--this action, that is, the appropriation of three thousand roubles belonging to someone else, and, of course, only for a time is, in my view at least, only an act of the greatest recklessness and not so disgraceful, when one takes into consideration your character.... Even admitting that it was an action in the highest degree discreditable, still, discreditable is not disgraceful.... Many people have already guessed, during this last month, about the three thousand of Katerina Ivanovna's that you have spent, and I heard the legend myself, apart from your confession.... Mihail Makarovitch, for instance, had heard it, too, so that indeed, it was scarcely a legend, but the gossip of the whole town. There are indications, too, if I am not mistaken, that you confessed this yourself to someone, I mean that the money was Katerina Ivanovna's, and so, it's extremely surprising to me that hitherto, that is, up to the present moment, you have made such an extraordinary secret of the fifteen hundred you say you put by, apparently connecting a feeling of positive horror with that secret.... It's not easy to believe that it could cost you such distress to confess such a secret.... You cried out, just now, that Siberia would be better than confessing it...'
The prosecutor ceased speaking. He was provoked. He did not conceal his vexation, which was almost anger, and gave vent to all his accumulated spleen, disconnectedly and incoherently, without choosing words.
'It's not the fifteen hundred that's the disgrace, but that I put it apart from the rest of the three thousand,' said Mitya firmly.
'Why?' smiled the prosecutor irritably. 'What is there disgraceful, to your thinking, in your having set aside half of the three thousand you had discreditably, if you prefer, ‘disgracefully,’ appropriated? Your taking the three thousand is more important than what you did with it. And by the way, why did you do that--why did you set apart that half, for what purpose, for what object did you do it? Can you explain that to us?'
'Oh, gentlemen, the purpose is the whole point!' cried Mitya. 'I put it aside because I was vile, that is, because I was calculating, and to be calculating in such a case is vile... and that vileness has been going on a whole month.'
'It's incomprehensible.'
'I wonder at you. But I'll make it clearer. Perhaps it really is incomprehensible. You see, attend to what I say. I appropriate three thousand entrusted to my honour; I spend it on a spree, say I spend it all, and next morning I go to her and say, ‘Katya, I've done wrong, I've squandered your three thousand'; well, is that right? No, it's not right--it's dishonest and cowardly; I'm a beast, with no more self-control than a beast, that's so, isn't it? But still I'm not a thief? Not a downright thief, you'll admit! I squandered it, but I didn't steal it. Now a second, rather more favourable alternative: follow me carefully, or I may get confused again--my head's going round--and so, for the second alternative: I spend here only fifteen hundred out of the three thousand, that is, only half. Next day I go and take that half to her: ‘Katya, take this fifteen hundred from me, I'm a low beast, and an untrustworthy scoundrel, for I've wasted half the money, and I shall waste this, too, so keep me from temptation!’ Well, what of that alternative? I should be a beast and a scoundrel, and whatever you like; but not a thief, not altogether a thief, or I should not have brought back what was left, but have kept that, too. She would see at once that since I brought back half, I should pay back what I'd spent, that I should never give up trying to, that I should work to get it and pay it back. So in that case I should be a scoundrel, but not a thief, you may say what you like, not a thief!'
'I admit that there is a certain distinction,' said the prosecutor, with a cold smile. 'But it's strange that you see such a vital difference.'
'Yes, I see a vital difference. Every man may be a scoundrel, and perhaps every man is a scoundrel, but not everyone can be a thief; it takes an arch-scoundrel to be that. Oh, of course, I don't know how to make these fine distinctions... but a thief is lower than a scoundrel, that's my conviction. Listen, I carry the money about me a whole month; I may make up my mind to give it back to-morrow, and I'm a scoundrel no longer; but I cannot make up my mind, you see, though I'm making up my mind every day, and every day spurring myself on to do it, and yet for a whole month I can't bring myself to it, you see. Is that right to your thinking, is that right?'
'Certainly, that's not right; that I can quite understand, and that I don't dispute,' answered the prosecutor
