“And now what? This afternoon money was brought into court, three thousand roubles—’the same,’ we were told, ‘that was here in this envelope, which is on the table with the material evidence; received yesterday from Smerdyakov,’ we were told. But you yourselves, gentlemen of the jury, cannot have forgotten that sad picture. I will not go back over the details, but all the same I shall allow myself to make two or three observations, choosing from the most insignificant of them—precisely because they are insignificant, and so will not have occurred to everyone and might be forgotten. First, once again, we have Smerdyakov, yesterday, returning the money in remorse and hanging himself. (For without remorse he would not have returned the money.) And of course it was only yesterday evening that he confessed his crime for the first time to Ivan Karamazov, as Ivan Karamazov himself declared, otherwise why would he have been silent about it up to now? He confessed, then; but, I repeat once more, why did he not proclaim the whole truth to us in his dying note, knowing that the innocent defendant was going to his last judgment the very next day? The money alone is no proof. I, for example, and two other persons in this room, became acquainted with a certain fact quite by chance a week ago—namely, that Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov sent two five-percent bank notes, for five thousand roubles each, that is, ten thousand in all, to the provincial capital to be cashed. All I mean to say is that anyone could happen to have money on a given day, and by producing three thousand one does not necessarily prove that it is the same money as lay precisely in some particular drawer or envelope. Finally, having received such important information from the real murderer yesterday, Ivan Karamazov kept still. Why did he not report it at once? Why did he put it off till the next morning? I suppose I have the right to guess why: his health had been unsettled for about a week, he himself confessed to the doctor and to those closest to him that he was having visions, meeting people who were already dead; on the verge of brain fever, which struck him precisely today, having learned unexpectedly of Smerdyakov’s demise, he suddenly forms the following argument: ‘The man is dead, he can be denounced, and I will save my brother. I have money: I’ll take a wad of bills and say that Smerdyakov gave it to me before he died.’ You will tell me it is dishonest; that even though the man is dead, it is still dishonest to lie, even to save a brother? Perhaps so, but what if he lied unconsciously, what if he himself imagined that it happened that way, his mind precisely being struck finally by the news of the lackey’s sudden death? You did see that scene today, you saw what state the man was in. He stood here and spoke, but where was his mind? Today’s testimony from a delirious man was followed by a document, the defendant’s letter to Miss Verkhovtsev, written by him two days before he committed the crime, containing beforehand a detailed program of the crime. Why, then, are we looking for the program and its authors? It was accomplished exactly following this program, and accomplished by none other than its author. Yes, gentlemen of the jury, ‘accomplished as written!’ And in no case, in no case did we run respectfully and timidly from our father’s window, being at the same time firmly convinced that our sweetheart was there with him. No, that is absurd and impossible. He went in and—finished the business. Very likely he killed him in exasperation, in anger, which flared up as soon as he looked at his foe and rival, but once he had killed him, which he probably did instantly, with one swing of the arm wielding the brass pestle, and made sure, after a thorough search, that she was not there, he still did not forget to slip his hand under the pillow and take the envelope with the money, the torn remains of which are lying here on the table with the material evidence. What I am getting at is that you should notice one circumstance, in my opinion a highly characteristic one. Were we dealing here with an experienced murderer, and precisely with a murderer whose sole purpose was robbery—well, would he have left the torn envelope on the floor, where it was found, next to the body? Were it Smerdyakov, for example, killing for the sake of robbery—why, he would simply have taken the whole envelope with him, without bothering in the least to open it over his victim’s body; because he knew for certain that the money was in the envelope—it had been put there and sealed in his presence—and if he had taken the envelope away altogether, would anyone even know there had been a robbery? I ask you, gentlemen of the jury, would Smerdyakov have acted this way? Would he have left the envelope on the floor? No, that is precisely how a frenzied murderer would act, one who is not thinking well, a murderer who is not a thief, who has never stolen anything before, and who even now snatches the money from under the bed not as a thief stealing, but as someone taking his own back from the thief who has stolen it—for that is precisely the idea Dmitri Karamazov had of those three thousand roubles, which had become almost a mania with him. And so, taking hold of this envelope, which he has never seen before, he tears it open to make sure the money is there, then runs away with the money in his pocket, forgetting even to think that he is leaving behind a colossal accusation against himself in the form of a torn envelope lying on the floor. All because it was Karamazov, not Smerdyakov; he did not think, he did not see, and how could he! He runs away, he hears the shout of the servant overtaking him, the servant seizes him, stops him, and falls, struck down by the brass pestle. The defendant jumps down to him ... out of pity. Imagine, he suddenly assures us that he jumped down to him then out of pity, out of compassion, in order to see if he could help him in some way. But was that any moment to be showing such compassion? No, he jumped down precisely in order to make sure that the only witness to his evil deed was no longer alive. Any other feeling, any other motive would be unnatural! Notice, he takes trouble over Grigory, he wipes his head with a handkerchief, and, convinced that he is dead, he runs, out of his senses, all covered with blood, there, to the house of his sweetheart—how did it not occur to him that he was covered with blood and would give himself away at once? But the defendant himself assures us that he never even noticed he was covered with blood; that is conceivable, that is very possible, that always happens with criminals in such moments. Devilish calculation in the one case, and in the other no discernment at all. But his only thought at that moment was of where she was. He had to find out quickly where she was, and so he runs to her place and learns some unexpected and colossal news: she has gone to Mokroye with her ‘former,’ ‘indisputable’ one!”

Chapter 9: Psychology at Full Steam. The Galloping Troika. The Finale of the Prosecutor’s Speech

Having come thus far in his speech, Ippolit Kirillovich, who had evidently chosen a strictly historical method of accounting, which is a favorite resort of all nervous orators who purposely seek a strict framework in order to restrain their own impatient zeal—Ippolit Kirillovich expanded particularly on the “former” and “indisputable” one, and on this topic expressed several rather amusing thoughts. “Karamazov, who was jealous of everyone to the point of frenzy, suddenly and instantly collapses and vanishes, as it were, before the ‘former’ and ‘indisputable’ one. And it is all the more strange in that previously he had paid almost no attention to this new threat to himself, coming in the person of this, for him, unexpected rival. But his notion had always been that it was all still very far off, and a Karamazov always lives in the present moment. Most likely he even considered him a fiction. But having understood at once in his sick heart that the woman had perhaps been concealing this new rival, that she had deceived him that same day, precisely because this newly emerged rival, so far from being a fantasy or a fiction, constituted all for her— all her hopes in life—having instantly understood this, he resigned himself. Indeed, gentlemen of the jury, I cannot pass over in silence this sudden streak in the soul of the defendant, who seemed to be totally incapable of manifesting it; there suddenly arose in him an inexorable need for truth, a respect for woman, an acknowledgement of the rights of her heart, and when?—at the very moment when, because of her, he had stained his hands with his father’s blood! It is also true that the spilt blood was at that moment already crying out for revenge, for he, having ruined his soul and all his earthly destiny, could not help feeling and asking himself at the same time: ‘What does he mean and what could he mean now to her, to this being whom he loved more than his own soul, compared with this “former” and “indisputable” one, who had repented and returned to the woman he had ruined once, with new love, with honest offers, with the promise of a restored and now happy life? And he, unfortunate man, what could he give her now, what could he offer her?’ Karamazov understood it all, he understood that all paths were closed to him by his crime, and that he was just a criminal under sentence and not a man with a life ahead of him! This thought crushed and destroyed him. And so he instantly fixes on a wild plan that, considering Karamazov’s character, could not but seem to him the only and fatal way out of his terrible situation. This way out was suicide. He runs for his pistols, which he had pawned to the official Perkhotin, and at the same time, as he runs, he pulls all his money out of his pocket, for which he had just spattered his hands with his father’s blood. Oh, money is what he needs most of all now: Karamazov dies, Karamazov shoots himself, this will be remembered! Not for nothing are we a poet, not for nothing have we been burning our life like a candle at both ends. ‘To her, to her—and there, there I will put on a feast, a feast such as the world has never seen, to be remembered and talked about long after. Amid wild shouts, mad gypsy singing and dancing, we will raise a cup and toast the new happiness of the woman we adore, and then—right there, at her feet, we will blow our brains out before her, and punish our life! Some day she will remember Mitya Karamazov, she will see how Mitya loved her, she will feel sorry for Mitya! ‘ There is a good deal of posturing here, of romantic frenzy, of wild Karamazovian unrestraint and sentimentality—yes, and also something else, gentlemen of the jury, something that cries out in the soul, that throbs incessantly in his mind, and poisons his heart unto death; this something is conscience, gentlemen of the jury, the judgment, the terrible pangs of conscience! But the pistol will reconcile everything, the pistol is the only way out, there is no other, and beyond—I do not know whether Karamazov thought at that moment of ‘what lies beyond’^[344]or whether a Karamazov could think, in Hamlet fashion, of what lies beyond. No, gentlemen of the jury, they have their Hamlets, but so far we have only Karamazovs!”