“A month before the catastrophe, the defendant was entrusted by Miss Verkhovtsev with three thousand roubles to be sent by mail—but a question: is it true that it was entrusted to him in such shame and humiliation as was declared here today? In Miss Verkhovtsev’s first testimony on the same subject, it came out differently, quite differently; and in her second testimony all we heard were cries of anger, revenge, cries of long-concealed hatred. But this alone, that the witness testified incorrectly in her first testimony, gives us the right to conclude that her second testimony may also be incorrect. The prosecutor ‘does not wish, does not dare’ (in his own words) to touch on this romance. So be it, I shall not touch on it either, but will only allow myself to observe that if a pure and highly virtuous person such as the highly esteemed Miss Verkhovtsev undoubtedly is, if such a person, I say, allows herself suddenly, all at once, in court, to change her first testimony with the direct aim of ruining the defendant, then it is clear that she has also not given this testimony impartially, coolheadedly. Can we be deprived of the right to conclude that a vengeful woman may have exaggerated many things? Yes, precisely exaggerated the shame and disgrace in which she offered the money. On the contrary, it was offered precisely in such a way that it could still be accepted, especially by such a light-minded man as our defendant. Above all, he still had it in his head then that he would soon receive the three thousand he reckoned was owing to him from his father. This was light-minded, but precisely because of his light-mindedness he was firmly convinced that his father would give it to him, that he would get it, and therefore would always be able to mail the money entrusted to him by Miss Verkhovtsev and settle his debt. But the prosecutor will in no way allow that on that same day, the day of the accusation, he was capable of separating half of the money entrusted to him and sewing it into an amulet: ‘Such, ‘ he says, ‘is not his character, he could not have had such feelings.’ But you yourself were shouting that Karamazov is broad, you yourself were shouting about the two extreme abysses Karamazov can contemplate. Karamazov is precisely of such a nature, with two sides, two abysses, as can stop amid the most unrestrained need of carousing if something strikes him on the other side. And the other side is love, precisely this new love that flared up in him like powder, and for this love he needs money, he has more need of it, oh! much more need of it even than of carousing with this same beloved. If she were to say to him: ‘I am yours, I do not want Fyodor Pavlovich,’ and he were to snatch her and take her away—then he would have to have some means of taking her away. This is more important than carousing. Could Karamazov fail to understand that? This is precisely what he was sick over, this care—what, then, is so incredible in his separating this money and stashing it away just in case? But now, however, time is passing, and Fyodor Pavlovich does not give the defendant his three thousand; on the contrary, he hears that he has allotted it precisely to luring away his beloved. ‘If Fyodor Pavlovich does not give it back to me,’ he thinks, ‘I will come out as a thief before Katerina Ivanovna.’ But now the thought is born in him that he will take this same fifteen hundred, which he is still carrying on him in the amulet, lay it before Miss Verkhovtsev, and say to her: ‘I am a scoundrel, but not a thief.’ So now he has a double reason to hold on to this fifteen hundred like the apple of his eye, and on no account to unstitch the amulet and peel off a hundred at a time. Why should you deny the defendant a sense of honor? No, he has a sense of honor, let’s say a faulty one, let’s say very often a mistaken one, but he has it, has it to the point of passion, and he has proved it. Now, however, the situation gets more complicated, the torments of jealousy reach the highest pitch, and the same questions, the two old questions, etch themselves more and more tormentingly in the defendant’s fevered brain: ‘If I give it back to Katerina Ivanovna, with what means will I take Grushenka away?’ If he was raving so, getting drunk and storming in the taverns all that month, it is precisely, perhaps, because he felt bitter himself, it was more than he could bear. These two questions finally became so acute that they finally drove him to despair. He tried sending his younger brother to their father to ask one last time for the three thousand, but without waiting for an answer he burst in himself and ended by beating the old man in front of witnesses. After that, consequently, there is no one to get the money from, his beaten father will not give it. The evening of that same day he beats himself on the chest, precisely on the upper part of the chest, where the amulet was, and swears to his brother that he has the means not to be a scoundrel, but will still remain a scoundrel, because he foresees that he will not use this means, he will not have enough strength of soul, he will not have enough character. Why, why does the prosecution not believe the evidence of Alexei Karamazov, given so purely, so sincerely, so spontaneously and plausibly? Why, on the contrary, would they have me believe in money hidden in some crevice, in the dungeons of the castle of Udolpho? That same evening, after the conversation with his brother, the defendant writes this fatal letter, and now this letter is the most important, the most colossal evidence, convicting the defendant of robbery! ‘I will ask all people, and if I don’t get it from people, I will kill father and take it from under his mattress, in the envelope with the pink ribbon, if only Ivan goes away’—a complete program of the murder, they say; who else could it be? ‘It was accomplished as written! ‘ the prosecution exclaims. But, first of all, the letter is a drunken one, and written in terrible exasperation; second, about the envelope, again he is writing in Smerdyakov’s words, because he did not see the envelope himself; and, third, maybe he wrote it, but was it accomplished as written, is there any proof of that? Did the defendant take the envelope from under the pillow, did he find the money, did it even exist? And was it money that the defendant went running for—remember, remember? He went running headlong, not to rob, but only to find out where she was, this woman who had crushed him—so it was not according to the program, not as written, that he went running there, that is, not for a premeditated robbery; he ran suddenly, impulsively, in a jealous rage! ‘Yes,’ they will say, ‘but having come and killed him, he also took the money.’ But did he kill him, finally, or not? The accusation of robbery I reject with indignation: there can be no accusation of robbery if it is impossible to point exactly to what precisely has been robbed—that is an axiom! But did he kill him, without the robbery, did he kill him? Is this proved? Is this not also a novel?”

Chapter 12: And There Was No Murder Either

“Forgive me, gentlemen of the jury, but there is a human life here, and we must be more careful. We have heard the prosecution testify that until the very last day, until today, until the day of the trial, even they hesitated to accuse the defendant of full and complete premeditation of the murder, hesitated until this same fatal ‘drunken’ letter was produced today in court. ‘It was accomplished as written!’ But again I repeat: he ran to her, for her, only to find out where she was. This is an indisputable fact. Had she been at home, he would not have run anywhere, he would have stayed with her, and would not have done what he promised in the letter. He ran impulsively and suddenly, and perhaps had no recollection at all of his ‘drunken’ letter. ‘He took the pestle with him,’ they say—and you will remember how an entire psychology was derived for us from this pestle alone: why he had to take this pestle as a weapon, to snatch it up as a weapon, and so on and so forth. A most ordinary thought comes to my mind here: what if this pestle had not been lying in plain sight, had not been on the shelf from which the defendant snatched it, but had been put away in a cupboard?—then it wouldn’t have caught the defendant’s eye, and he would have run off without a weapon, empty-handed, and so perhaps would not have killed anyone. How, then, can I possibly arrive at the conclusion that the pestle is a proof of arming and premeditating? Yes, but he shouted in the taverns that he was going to murder his father, and two days before, on the evening when he wrote his drunken letter, he was quiet and quarreled only with a shop clerk, ‘because,’ they say, ‘Karamazov could not help quarreling.’ To which I reply that if he was contemplating such a murder, had planned it, moreover, and written it out, he surely would not have quarreled with a shop clerk, and perhaps would not have stopped at the tavern at all, because a soul that has conceived such a thing seeks silence and self-effacement, seeks disappearance, not to be seen, not to be heard: ‘Forget all about me if you can,’ and that not only from calculation, but from instinct. Gentlemen of the jury, psychology has two ends, and we, too, are able to understand psychology. As for all this shouting in taverns for the whole month, oftentimes children or drunken idlers, leaving a tavern or quarreling with each other, shout: ‘I’ll kill you,’ but they don’t kill anyone. And this fatal letter—is it not also drunken exasperation, the shout of a man coming out of a tavern: ‘I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you all! ‘ Why not, why could it not be so? What makes this letter a fatal one; why, on the contrary, is it not funny? Precisely because the corpse of the murdered father has been found, because a witness saw the defendant in the garden, armed and running away, and was himself struck down by him—therefore it was all accomplished as written, and therefore the letter is not funny but fatal. Thank God, we have gotten to the point: ‘Since he was in the garden, it means he also killed him.’ On these two words—since he was, it also inevitably means—everything, the entire accusation, rests: ‘He was, therefore it means.’ And what if it does not mean, even though he was? Oh, I agree that the totality of the facts and the coincidence of the facts are indeed rather eloquent. Consider all these facts separately, however, without being impressed by their totality: why, for instance, will the prosecution in no way accept the truth of the defendant’s testimony that he ran away from his father’s window? Remember the sarcasms the prosecution allows itself concerning the respectfulness and ‘pious’ feelings that suddenly took hold of the murderer. And what if there actually was something of the sort—that is, if not respectfulness of feeling, then piety of feeling? ‘My mother must have been praying for me at that moment,’ the defendant testified at the investigation, and so he ran away as soon as he was convinced that Miss Svetlov was not in his father’s house. ‘But he could not have been convinced by looking through the window,’ the prosecution objects to us. And why couldn’t he? After all, the window was opened when the defendant gave the signals. Fyodor Pavlovich might have uttered some one word then, some cry might have escaped him—and the defendant might suddenly have been convinced that Miss Svetlov was not there. Why must we assume what we imagine, or imagine what we have assumed? In reality a thousand things can flash by, which escape the observation of the subtlest novelist. ‘Yes, but Grigory saw the door open, therefore the defendant had certainly been in the house, and therefore he killed him.’ About that door, gentlemen of the jury ... You see, about that open door we have testimony from only one person, who was himself, however, in such a condition at the time ... But suppose it was so, suppose the door was open, suppose the defendant denied it, lied about it from a sense of self-protection, quite understandable in his position; suppose so, suppose he got into the house, was in the house—well, what of it, why is it so inevitable that if he was, he also killed him? He might have burst in, run through the rooms, might have pushed his father aside, might even have hit his father, and then, convinced that Miss Svetlov was not there, he might have run away rejoicing that she was not there and that he had run away without killing his father. Perhaps he jumped down from the fence a moment later to help Grigory, whom he had struck down in his excitement, precisely because he was capable of a pure feeling, a feeling of compassion and pity, because he had run away from the temptation to kill his father, because he felt in himself a pure heart and the joy that he had not killed his father. With horrifying eloquence, the prosecutor describes to us the terrible state the defendant was in when love opened to him again, in the village of Mokroye, calling him to new life, and when it was no longer possible for him to love, because behind him lay the bloodstained corpse of his father, and beyond that corpse—punishment. Yet the prosecutor still assumes there was love, and has explained it according to his psychology: ‘Drunkenness,’ he says ‘a criminal being taken to his execution, still a long time to wait,’ and so on and so forth. But, I ask you again, have you not created a different character, Mr. Prosecutor? Is the defendant so coarse, is he so heartless that he could still think at that moment about love and about hedging before the court, if indeed the blood of his father lay upon him? No, no, and no! As soon as it became clear to him that she loved him, was calling him to her, promised him new happiness—oh, I swear, he should then have felt a double, a triple need to kill himself, and he would certainly have killed himself if he had had his father’s corpse behind him! Oh, no, he would not have forgotten where his pistols lay! I know the defendant: the savage, stony heartlessness imputed to him by the prosecution is incompatible with his character. He would have killed himself, that is certain; he did not kill himself precisely because ‘his mother prayed for him,’ and his heart was guiltless of his father’s blood. That night in Mokroye he suffered, he grieved only for the stricken old man Grigory, and prayed to God within himself that the old man would rise and recover, that his blow would not be fatal and punishment would pass him by. Why should we not accept such an interpretation of events? What firm proof have we that the defendant is lying to us? But there is his father’s body, it will be pointed out to us again: he ran away, he did not kill him—then who did kill the old man?