After mentioning in order everything the investigation had disclosed about the property dispute and the family relations between father and son, and having again and again drawn the conclusion that, from the facts available, there was not the slightest possibility of determining who had outdone whom or who had been done out of what in this question of the property division, Ippolit Kirillovich brought up the medical opinions concerning the three thousand roubles stuck as a fixed idea in Mitya’s mind.

Chapter 7: A Historical Survey

“The medical experts strove to prove to us that the defendant is out of his mind and a maniac. I insist that he is precisely in his right mind, and so much the worse for him: had it not been his mind, he might have turned out to be much more intelligent. As for his being a maniac, I am prepared to agree, but precisely on one point only— that same point the experts indicated, precisely the defendant’s view of the three thousand roubles supposedly left owing to him by his father. Nevertheless, it may be possible to find an incomparably closer point of view than his inclination to madness to explain the defendant’s constant frenzy with regard to this money. For my part, I agree completely with the opinion of the young doctor who found that the defendant is and was in full and normal possession of his mental faculties, but has simply been exasperated and embittered. And that is just it: the object of the defendant’s constant and frenzied bitterness consisted not in the three thousand, not in the sum itself, but in the fact that there was a special reason that provoked his wrath. That reason was—jealousy!”

Here Ippolit Kirillovich unfolded at length the whole picture of the defendant’s fatal passion for Grushenka. He began from the very moment when the defendant went to “the young person” in order “to give her a beating”—in his own words, Ippolit Kirillovich commented—”but instead of beating her, he stays there at her feet—that is the beginning of this love. At the same time the old man, the defendant’s father, also sets his eye on the same person—a coincidence both surprising and fatal, for both hearts caught fire suddenly, simultaneously, though they had met and known this person before—and both hearts caught fire with the most unrestrained, the most Karamazovian passion. Here we have her own confession: ‘I laughed,’ she says, ‘at both of them.’ Yes, she suddenly wanted to laugh at the two of them; she had not wanted to before, but now suddenly this intention flew into her mind—and the end of it was that they both fell conquered before her. The old man, who worshipped money as if it were God, at once prepared three thousand roubles if she would only just visit his abode, but was soon driven to the point where he would have considered it happiness to lay his name and all his property at her feet if only she would consent to become his lawful wife. For this we have firm evidence. As for the defendant, his tragedy is obvious, it stands before us. But such was this young person’s ‘game.’ The seductress did not even give any hope to the unfortunate young man, for hope, real hope, was given him only at the very last moment, when he, kneeling before his tormentress, stretched out to her his hands already stained with the blood of his father and rival: precisely in that position he was arrested. ‘Send me, send me to hard labor with him, I drove him to it, I am the guiltiest of all!’—this woman herself exclaimed, in sincere repentance, at the moment of his arrest. The talented young man who has taken it upon himself to write about the present case— the same Mr. Rakitin whom I have already mentioned—defines this heroine’s character in a few concise and characteristic phrases: ‘Early disappointment, early deception and fall, the treachery of a fiancé-seducer who abandoned her, then poverty, the curses of a respectable family, and, finally, the patronage of a rich old man, whom she herself incidentally regards even now as her benefactor. Anger was buried far too early in a young heart, which perhaps contained much good. What formed was a calculating, money-hoarding character. What formed was a derisive and vengeful attitude towards society.’ After such a characterization one can understand how she might laugh at the two of them simply as a game, a vicious game. And so, during this month of hopeless love, of moral degradation, of betrayal of his fiancée, of appropriation of another person’s money, which was entrusted to his honor—the defendant, on top of that, was driven almost to frenzy, almost to fury, by continual jealousy, and of whom—of his own father! Worst of all, the crazy old man was luring and seducing the object of his passion with the very three thousand that he regarded as his family money, his maternal inheritance, for which he reproached his father. Yes, I agree, this was hard to bear! Here even a mania might appear. The point was not the money, but that by means of this very money his happiness was being shattered with such loathsome cynicism!”

Ippolit Kirillovich then went on to tell how the thought of killing his father gradually emerged in the defendant, and traced it fact by fact.

“At first we only shout in the taverns—shout all that month. Oh, we love to live among people and to inform these people at once of everything, even our most infernal and dangerous ideas; we like sharing with people, and, who knows why, we demand immediately, on the spot, that these people respond to us at once with the fullest sympathy, enter into all our cares and concerns, nod in agreement with us, and never cross our humor. Otherwise we will get angry and wreck the whole tavern.” (There followed the anecdote about Captain Snegiryov.) “Those who saw and heard the defendant during this month felt finally that these were not mere shouts and threats against his father, but that, considering the frenzied state he was in, the threats might become reality.” (Here the prosecutor described the family meeting in the monastery, the conversations with Alyosha, and the ugly scene of violence in his father’s house when the defendant burst in after dinner.) “I do not mean to assert emphatically,” Ippolit Kirillovich continued, “that before this scene the defendant had already determined deliberately and premeditatedly to do away with his father by murdering him. Nevertheless the idea had already presented itself to him several times, and he deliberately contemplated it—for that we have facts, witnesses, and his own confession. I must admit, gentlemen of the jury,” Ippolit Kirillovich added, “that even until today I was hesitant whether to ascribe to the defendant complete and conscious premeditation of the crime that was suggesting itself to him. I was firmly convinced that his soul had already contemplated many times the fatal moment ahead, but merely contemplated it, imagined it only as a possibility, without settling either on the time or the circumstances of its accomplishment. But I was hesitant only until today, until this fatal document was presented to the court today by Miss Verkhovtsev. You heard her exclamation yourselves, gentlemen: ‘This is the plan, this is the program of the murder! ‘—thus she defined the unfortunate ‘drunken’ letter of the unfortunate defendant. And indeed this letter bears all the significance of a program and of premeditation. It was written two days before the crime, and thus we now know firmly that two days before accomplishing his horrible design, the defendant declared with an oath that if he did not get the money the next day, he would kill his father, so as to take the money from under his pillow, ‘in the envelope with the red ribbon, if only Ivan goes away.’ Do you hear: ‘if only Ivan goes away’—so everything had been thought out, the circumstances had been weighed—and what then? It was all accomplished as written! Premeditation and deliberateness are beyond doubt, the crime was to be carried out for the purpose of robbery, that is stated directly, it is written and signed. The defendant does not deny his signature. I shall be told: it was written by a drunk man. But that diminishes nothing, it makes it all the more important: he wrote when drunk what he had planned when sober. Had he not planned it when sober, he would not have written about it when drunk. I shall perhaps be asked: why was he shouting about his intentions in the taverns? If a man determines to do such a thing with premeditation, he is silent and keeps it to himself. True, but he shouted when there was no plan or premeditation as yet, when just the desire alone was present, a yearning that was ripening. Later on he did not shout so much about it. On the evening when this letter was written, having gotten drunk in the ‘Metropolis’ tavern, he was silent, contrary to his custom, did not play billiards, sat apart, spoke to no one, and only chased a local shop clerk from his seat, but this he did almost unconsciously, from a habit of quarreling, which he could not do without anytime he entered a tavern. True, along with his final determination, the fear must have occurred to the defendant that he had shouted around town too much beforehand and that it would go a long way towards exposing and accusing him once he had carried out his plan. But there was no help for it, the fact of publication had been accomplished, it could not be taken back, and, after all, things had always worked out before, so they would work out now as well. We set our hopes on our lucky star, gentlemen! I must admit, furthermore, that he did a lot to get around the fatal moment, that he exerted much effort to avoid the bloody outcome. ‘Tomorrow I’ll ask all people for the three thousand,’ as he writes in his peculiar language, ‘and if I don’t get it from people, blood will be shed.’ Again it was written in a drunken state, and again in a sober state it was accomplished as written!”