So she cried out, beside herself. The marshal took the paper she was holding out to the judge, and she, collapsing on her chair and covering her face, began sobbing convulsively and soundlessly, shaking all over and suppressing the slightest moan for fear of being put out of the courtroom. The paper she handed over was that same letter Mitya had written from the “Metropolis” tavern, which Ivan Fyodorovich referred to as a document of “mathematical” importance. Alas, it was acknowledged precisely as mathematical, and had it not been for this letter, Mitya would perhaps not have perished, or at least not have perished so terribly! I repeat, it was difficult to follow all the details. Even now I picture it as so much turmoil. The presiding judge must at once have communicated the new document to the court, the prosecutor, the defense attorney, the jury. I remember only how they began questioning the witness. To the question of whether she had calmed down, which the judge gently addressed to her, Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed impetuously:

“I am ready, ready! I am quite capable of answering you,” she added, apparently still terribly afraid that for some reason she would not be listened to. She was asked to explain in more detail what this letter was and under what circumstances she had received it.

“I received it on the eve of the crime itself, but he wrote it the day before, in the tavern, which means two days before his crime—look, it’s written on some sort of bill!” she cried breathlessly. “He hated me then, because he himself had done a base thing, going after that creature ... and also because he owed me that three thousand ... Oh, he felt bad about that three thousand because of his own baseness! The three thousand happened like this—I ask you, I beg you to listen to me: three weeks before he killed his father, he came to me in the morning. I knew he needed money, and knew what he needed it for—precisely, precisely to seduce that creature and take her away. I knew that he had already betrayed me, and wanted to abandon me, and I, I myself, handed him the money then, I myself offered it to him, supposedly to be sent to my sister in Moscow—and as I was handing it to him, I looked him in the face and said he could send it whenever he chose, ‘even in a month.’ How, how could he not understand that I was telling him right to his face: ‘You need money to betray me with your creature, here is the money, I’m giving it to you myself, take it, if you’re dishonorable enough to take it...! ‘ I wanted to catch him out, and what then? He took it, he took it and went off and spent it with that creature there, in one night ... But he saw, he saw that I knew everything, I assure you, he also saw that I was just testing him by giving him the money: would he be so dishonorable as to take it from me, or not? I looked into his eyes, and he looked into my eyes and saw everything, everything, and he took it, he took my money and went off with it!”

“True, Katya!” Mitya suddenly yelled. “I looked in your eyes, knowing that you were dishonoring me, and yet I took your money! Despise the scoundrel, all of you, despise me, I deserve it!”

“Defendant,” cried the judge, “one more word and I’ll order you to be removed.”

“That money tormented him,” Katya continued, hurrying convulsively, “he wanted to give it back to me, he wanted to, it’s true, but he also needed money for that creature. So he killed his father, but he still did not give me back the money, but went with her to that village where he was seized. There he again squandered the money he had stolen from his father, whom he had killed. And the day before he killed his father, he wrote me that letter, he was drunk when he wrote it, I saw that at once, he wrote it out of spite, and knowing, knowing for certain that I wouldn’t show the letter to anyone, even if he did kill him. Otherwise he wouldn’t have written it. He knew I would not want to revenge myself and ruin him! But read it, read it closely, please, read it more closely and you’ll see that he described everything in the letter, everything beforehand: how he would kill his father, and where he kept his money. Look, please don’t miss this one phrase there: ‘I will kill him, if only Ivan goes away.’ So he thought it all out beforehand, how he was going to kill him,” Katerina Ivanovna went on, gloatingly, and insidiously prompting the court. Oh, one could see that she had thoroughly examined this fatal letter and studied every little detail of it. “If he hadn’t been drunk, he would never have written to me, but see how everything is described beforehand, everything exactly as he killed him afterwards, the whole program!”

So she went on exclaiming, beside herself, and, of course, heedless of all consequences for herself, though she had certainly foreseen them, perhaps as much as a month before, because even then, perhaps, shuddering with malice, she had imagined: “Why don’t I read it in court?” And now it was as if she had thrown herself off the mountain. I seem to recall the clerk reading the letter aloud precisely at that moment, and it made a tremendous impression. Mitya was asked if he acknowledged the letter.

“It’s mine, mine!” cried Mitya. “If I hadn’t been drunk, I’d never have written it...! We hated each other for many things, Katya, but I swear, I swear I loved you even as I hated you, and you—didn’t!”

He sank back on his seat, wringing his hands in despair. The prosecutor and the defense attorney began cross-examining her, mainly in one sense: “What prompted you to withhold such a document till now and to testify previously in a completely different spirit and tone?”

“Yes, yes, I was lying before, it was all lies, against my honor and conscience, but then I wanted to save him, because he hated me so, and despised me so,” Katya exclaimed wildly. “Oh, he despised me terribly, he despised me always, and you know, you know—he despised me from the very moment when I bowed at his feet for that money. I saw it ... I felt it right then, at once, but for a long time I didn’t believe myself. How many times I’ve read it in his eyes: ‘Still, it was you who came to me that time.’ Oh, he didn’t understand, he didn’t understand at all why I came running then, he can only imagine the basest reasons! He measured me by his own measure, he thought everyone was like him,” Katya snarled fiercely, now in an utter frenzy. “And he wanted to marry me only because of the inheritance I received, that’s why, that’s why, I’ve always suspected that was why! Oh, he’s a beast! He was sure I would go on trembling before him all my life out of shame for having come to him that time, and that he could despise me eternally and so hold himself above me— that’s why he wanted to marry me! It’s true, it’s true! I tried to win him over with my love, love without end, I was even willing to endure his betrayal, but he understood nothing, nothing! And how could he understand anything! He’s a monster! That letter I received only the next day, in the evening, they brought it to me from the tavern, and still that morning, still in the morning of that same day, I was willing to forgive him everything, everything, even his betrayal!”

The judge and the prosecutor tried, of course, to calm her down. I am sure that they were all, perhaps, ashamed to be taking advantage in such a way of her frenzy, and to be listening to such confessions. I remember hearing them say to her: “We understand how difficult it is for you, believe us. we are not unfeeling,” and so on, and so on—and yet they did extract evidence from the raving, hysterical woman. She finally described with extraordinary clarity, which often shines through briefly even in moments of such an overwrought condition, how for those two whole months Ivan Fyodorovich had been driving himself nearly out of his mind over saving “the monster and murderer,” his brother.

“He tormented himself,” she exclaimed, “he kept trying to minimize his brother’s guilt, confessing to me that he had not loved his father either, and perhaps had wished for his death himself. Oh, he has a deep, deep conscience! He tormented himself with his conscience! He revealed everything to me, everything, he would come to see me and talk with me every day as with his only friend. I have the honor of being his only friend!” she exclaimed suddenly, as if with some sort of defiance, and her eyes flashed. “Twice he went to see Smerdyakov. Once he came to me and said: ‘If it wasn’t my brother who killed him, but Smerdyakov’ (because everyone here had been spreading this fable that Smerdyakov killed him), ‘then perhaps I am guilty, too, because Smerdyakov knew that I did not like my father, and perhaps thought I wished for my father’s death.’ Then I took out that letter and showed it to him, and he was totally convinced that his brother was the killer, and it totally overwhelmed him. He could not bear it that his own brother was a parricide! Already a week ago I saw that he had become ill from it. In the past few days, sitting with me, he was raving. I saw that he was losing his mind. He went about raving, he was seen like that in the streets. The visiting doctor, at my request, examined him the day before yesterday and told me that he was close to brain fever—all because of him, all because of the monster! And yesterday he learned that Smerdyakov had died—he was so struck by it that he’s lost his mind ... and all because of the monster, all to save the monster!”