“I won’t, I won’t! It just came out! Not again!”

And of course this brief episode did not stand him in favor with the jurors or the public. His character was already showing and speaking for itself. And it was under this impression that the accusation was read by the clerk of the court.

It was rather brief, but thorough. Only the chiefest reasons were stated why so and so had been brought to court, why he should stand trial, and so on. Nevertheless it made a strong impression on me. The clerk read clearly, sonorously, distinctly. The whole tragedy seemed to unfold again before everyone, vivid, concentrated, lit by a fatal, inexorable light. I remember how, right after the reading, the prosecutor loudly and imposingly asked Mitya:

“Defendant, how do you plead, guilty or not guilty?”

Mitya suddenly rose from his seat:

“I plead guilty to drunkenness and depravity,” he exclaimed, again in some unexpected, almost frenzied voice, “to idleness and debauchery. I intended to become an honest man ever after, precisely at the moment when fate cut me down! But of the death of the old man, my enemy and my father—I am not guilty! Of robbing him—no, no, not guilty, and I could not be guilty: Dmitri Karamazov is a scoundrel, but not a thief!”

Having cried this out, he sat down in his seat, visibly trembling all over. The presiding judge again addressed him with a brief but edifying admonition that he should answer only what he was asked, and not get into irrelevant and frenzied exclamations. Then he ordered the examination to begin. All the witnesses were brought in to take the oath. It was then that I saw them all together. Incidentally, the defendant’s brothers were permitted to testify without the oath. After being admonished by the priest and the presiding judge, the witnesses were led away and seated as far apart from one another as possible. Then they were called up one by one.

Chapter 2: Dangerous Witnesses

I do not know whether the witnesses for the prosecution and the defense were somehow divided into groups by the judge, or in precisely what order they were supposed to be called. All that must have been so. I know only that the witnesses for the prosecution were called first. I repeat, I do not intend to describe all the cross-examinations step by step. Besides, my description would also end up as partly superfluous, because, when the closing debate began, the whole course and meaning of all the evidence given and heard was brought, as it were, to a fine point, shown in a bright and characteristic light, in the speeches of the prosecutor and the defense attorney, and these two remarkable speeches I did write down in full, at least some parts of them, and will recount them in due time, as well as one extraordinary and quite unexpected episode that broke out all of a sudden, even before the closing debate, and undoubtedly influenced the dread and fatal outcome of the trial. I will note only that from the very first moments of the trial a certain peculiar characteristic of this “case” stood out clearly and was noticed by everyone— namely, the remarkable strength of the prosecution as compared with the means available to the defense. Everyone realized this at the first moment when, in this dread courtroom, the facts were focused and began falling together, and all the horror and blood began gradually to emerge. It perhaps became clear to everyone from the very outset that this was not a controversial case at all, that there were no doubts here, that essentially there was no need for any debate, that the debate would take place only for the sake of form, and that the criminal was guilty, clearly guilty, utterly guilty. I even think that the ladies, one and all, who yearned with such impatience for the acquittal of an interesting defendant, were at the same time fully convinced of his complete guilt. Moreover, I believe they would even have been upset if his guilt were not unquestionable, for in that case there would be no great effect at the denouement when the criminal was acquitted. And that he would be acquitted, all the ladies, strangely enough, remained utterly convinced almost to the very last moment: “He is guilty, but he will be acquitted because of humaneness, because of the new ideas, because of the new feelings that are going around nowadays,” and so on and so forth. This was what brought them running there with such impatience. The men were mostly interested in the struggle between the prosecutor and the renowned Fetyukovich. Everyone was wondering and asking himself what even a talent like Fetyukovich’s could do with such a lost case, not worth the candle—and therefore followed his deeds step by step with strained attention. But to the very end, to his very last speech, Fetyukovich remained an enigma to everyone. Experienced people suspected that he had a system, that he already had something worked out, that he had an aim in view, but it was almost impossible to guess what it was. His confidence and self-assurance, however, stared everyone in the face. Furthermore, everyone immediately noticed with pleasure that during his brief stay with us, in perhaps only three days’ time, he had managed to become surprisingly well acquainted with the case, and had “mastered it in the finest detail. “ Afterwards people delighted in telling, for example, how he had been able to “take down” all the witnesses for the prosecution, to throw them off as much as possible, and, above all, to cast a slight taint on their moral reputations, thereby, of course, casting a slight taint on their evidence. It was supposed, however, that at the most he was doing it for sport, so to speak, for the sake of a certain juridical brilliance, in order to omit none of the conventional strategies of defense: for everyone was convinced that he could achieve no great and ultimate advantage by all these “slight taints,” and that he probably knew it better than anyone, holding ready some idea of his own, some still hidden weapon of defense that he would suddenly reveal when the time came. But meanwhile, aware of his strength, he was frisking and playing, as it were. Thus, for example, during the questioning of Grigory Vasiliev, Fyodor Pavlovich’s former valet, who had given the most fundamental evidence about “the door open to the garden,” the defense attorney simply fastened upon him when it came his turn to ask questions. It should be noted that Grigory Vasilievich stood up in the courtroom not in the least embarrassed either by the grandeur of the court or by the presence of the huge audience listening to him, and appeared calm and all but majestic. He gave his testimony with as much assurance as if he had been talking alone with his Marfa Ignatievna, only perhaps more respectfully. It was impossible to throw him off. The prosecutor first questioned him at length about all the details of the Karamazov family. The family picture was vividly exposed to view. One could hear, one could see that the witness was a simple-hearted and impartial man. With all his deep respect for the memory of his former master, he still declared, for example, that he had been unjust to Mitya and “didn’t bring the children up right. Lice would have eaten the little boy but for me,” he added, telling of Mitya’s childhood. “And it wasn’t good for the father to do his son wrong over his mother’s family estate.” To the prosecutor’s question as to what grounds he had for asserting that Fyodor Pavlovich had done his son wrong in their settlement, Grigory Vasilievich, to everyone’s surprise, did not offer any solid facts at all, yet he stood by his statement that the settlement with the son was “unfair” and that there were certainly “several thousands left owing to him.” I will note in passing that the prosecutor later posed this question of whether Fyodor Pavlovich had indeed paid Mitya something less than he owed him with special insistence to all the witnesses to whom he could pose it, not excepting Alyosha and Ivan Fyodorovich, but got no precise information from any of them; everyone confirmed the fact, yet no one could offer even the slightest clear proof. After Grigory described the scene at the table when Dmitri Fyodorovich had burst in and beaten his father, threatening to come back and kill him—a gloomy impression swept over the courtroom, the more so as the old servant spoke calmly, without unnecessary words, in his own peculiar language, and it came out as terribly eloquent. He observed that he was not angry at Mitya for hitting him in the face and knocking him down, and that he had forgiven him long ago. Of the late Smerdyakov he expressed the opinion, crossing himself, that he had been a capable fellow but stupid and oppressed by illness, and that, above all, he was a godless man, and had learned his god-lessness from Fyodor Pavlovich and his elder son. But Smerdyakov’s honesty he confirmed almost ardently, and told then and there how Smerdyakov, ages ago, had found the money his master had dropped, and instead of keeping it had brought it to his master, who “gave him a gold piece” as a reward, and thereafter began trusting him in all things. The open door to the garden he confirmed with stubborn insistence. However, he was questioned so much that I cannot even recall it all. Finally the questioning passed to the defense attorney, and he, first of all, began asking about the envelope in which Fyodor Pavlovich “supposedly” hid three thousand roubles for “a certain person.” “Did you see it yourself—you, a man closely attendant on your master for so many years?” Grigory answered that he had not seen it and had never heard of such money from anyone, “until now when everyone started talking.”This question about the envelope, Fetyukovich, for his part, posed to every witness he could put it to, with the same insistence as the prosecutor asked his question about the division of the estate, and also received just one answer from them all, that no one had seen the envelope, though a great many had heard of it. Everyone noticed the defense attorney’s insistence on this question from the very beginning.