The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗
- Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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against the prisoner. But there are things which are even worse,
even more fatal in such cases, than the most malicious and consciously
unfair attitude. It is worse if we are carried away by the artistic
instinct, by the desire to create, so to speak, a romance,
especially if God has endowed us with psychological insight. Before
I started on my way here, I was warned in Petersburg, and was myself
aware, that I should find here a talented opponent whose psychological
insight and subtlety had gained him peculiar renown in legal circles
of recent years. But profound as psychology is, it’s a knife that cuts
both ways.” (Laughter among the public.) “You will, of course, forgive
me my comparison; I can’t boast of eloquence. But I will take as an
example any point in the prosecutor’s speech.
“The prisoner, running away in the garden in the dark, climbed
over the fence, was seized by the servant, and knocked him down with a
brass pestle. Then he jumped back into the garden and spent five
minutes over the man, trying to discover whether he had killed him
or not. And the prosecutor refuses to believe the prisoner’s statement
that he ran to old Grigory out of pity. ‘No,’ he says, ‘such
sensibility is impossible at such a moment, that’s unnatural; he ran
to find out whether the only witness of his crime was dead or alive,
and so showed that he had committed the murder, since he would not
have run back for any other reason.’
“Here you have psychology; but let us take the same method and
apply it to the case the other way round, and our result will be no
less probable. The murderer, we are told, leapt down to find out, as a
precaution, whether the witness was alive or not, yet he had left in
his murdered father’s study, as the prosecutor himself argues, an
amazing piece of evidence in the shape of a torn envelope, with an
inscription that there had been three thousand roubles in it. ‘If he
had carried that envelope away with him, no one in the world would
have known of that envelope and of the notes in it, and that the money
had been stolen by the prisoner.’ Those are the prosecutor’s own
words. So on one side you see a complete absence of precaution, a
man who has lost his head and run away in a fright, leaving that
clue on the floor, and two minutes later, when he has killed another
man, we are entitled to assume the most heartless and calculating
foresight in him. But even admitting this was so, it is
psychological subtlety, I suppose, that discerns that under certain
circumstances I become as bloodthirsty and keen-sighted as a Caucasian
eagle, while at the next I am as timid and blind as a mole. But if I
am so bloodthirsty and cruelly calculating that when I kill a man I
only run back to find out whether he is alive to witness against me,
why should I spend five minutes looking after my victim at the risk of
encountering other witnesses? Why soak my handkerchief, wiping the
blood off his head so that it may be evidence against me later? If
he were so cold-hearted and calculating, why not hit the servant on
the head again and again with the same pestle so as to kill him
outright and relieve himself of all anxiety about the witness?
“Again, though he ran to see whether the witness was alive, he
left another witness on the path, that brass pestle which he had taken
from the two women, and which they could always recognise afterwards
as theirs, and prove that he had taken it from them. And it is not
as though he had forgotten it on the path, dropped it through
carelessness or haste, no, he had flung away his weapon, for it was
found fifteen paces from where Grigory lay. Why did he do so? just
because he was grieved at having killed a man, an old servant; and
he flung away the pestle with a curse, as a murderous weapon. That’s
how it must have been, what other reason could he have had for
throwing it so far? And if he was capable of feeling grief and pity at
having killed a man, it shows that he was innocent of his father’s
murder. Had he murdered him, he would never have run to another victim
out of pity; then he would have felt differently; his thoughts would
have been centred on self-preservation. He would have had none to
spare for pity, that is beyond doubt. On the contrary, he would have
broken his skull instead of spending five minutes looking after him.
There was room for pity and good-feeling just because his conscience
had been clear till then. Here we have a different psychology. I
have purposely resorted to this method, gentlemen of the jury, to show
that you can prove anything by it. It all depends on who makes use
of it. Psychology lures even most serious people into romancing, and
quite unconsciously. I am speaking of the abuse of psychology,
gentlemen.”
Sounds of approval and laughter, at the expense of the prosecutor,
were again audible in the court. I will not repeat the speech in
detail; I will only quote some passages from it, some leading points.
There Was No Money. There Was No Robbery
THERE was one point that struck everyone in Fetyukovitch’s speech.
He flatly denied the existence of the fatal three thousand roubles,
and consequently, the possibility of their having been stolen.
“Gentlemen of the jury,” he began. “Every new and unprejudiced
observer must be struck by a characteristic peculiarity in the present
case, namely, the charge of robbery, and the complete impossibility of
proving that there was anything to be stolen. We are told that money
was stolen-three thousand roubles but whether those roubles ever
existed, nobody knows. Consider, how have we heard of that sum, and
who has seen the notes? The only person who saw them, and stated
that they had been put in the envelope, was the servant, Smerdyakov.
He had spoken of it to the prisoner and his brother, Ivan
Fyodorovitch, before the catastrophe. Madame Svyetlov, too, had been
told of it. But not one of these three persons had actually seen the
notes, no one but Smerdyakov had seen them.
“Here the question arises, if it’s true that they did exist, and
that Smerdyakov had seen them, when did he see them for the last time?
What if his master had taken the notes from under his bed and put them
back in his cash-box without telling him? Note, that according to
Smerdyakov’s story the notes were kept under the mattress; the
prisoner must have pulled them out, and yet the bed was absolutely
unrumpled; that is carefully recorded in the protocol. How could the
prisoner have found the notes without disturbing the bed? How could he
have helped soiling with his bloodstained hands the fine and spotless
linen with which the bed had been purposely made?
“But I shall be asked: What about the envelope on the floor?
Yes, it’s worth saying a word or two about that envelope. I was
somewhat surprised just now to hear the highly talented prosecutor
declare of himself-of himself, observe-that but for that envelope,
but for its being left on the floor, no one in the world would have
known of the existence of that envelope and the notes in it, and
therefore of the prisoner’s having stolen it. And so that torn scrap
of paper is, by the prosecutor’s own admission, the sole proof on
which the charge of robbery rests, ‘otherwise no one would have
known of the robbery, nor perhaps even of the money.’ But is the
mere fact that that scrap of paper was lying on the floor a proof that
there was money in it, and that that money had been stolen? Yet, it
will be objected, Smerdyakov had seen the money in the envelope. But
when, when had he seen it for the last time, I ask you that? I
talked to Smerdyakov, and he told me that he had seen the notes two
days before the catastrophe. Then why not imagine that old Fyodor
Pavlovitch, locked up alone in impatient and hysterical expectation of
the object of his adoration, may have whiled away the time by breaking
open the envelope and taking out the notes. ‘What’s the use of the
envelope?’ he may have asked himself. ‘She won’t believe the notes are
there, but when I show her the thirty rainbow-coloured notes in one
roll, it will make more impression, you may be sure, it will make
her mouth water.’ And so he tears open the envelope, takes out the
money, and flings the envelope on the floor, conscious of being the
owner and untroubled by any fears of leaving evidence.
“Listen, gentlemen, could anything be more likely than this theory
and such an action? Why is it out of the question? But if anything
of the sort could have taken place, the charge of robbery falls to the
ground; if there was no money, there was no theft of it. If the
envelope on the floor may be taken as evidence that there had been
money in it, why may I not maintain the opposite, that the envelope
was on the floor because the money had been taken from it by its
owner?
“But I shall be asked what became of the money if Fyodor
Pavlovitch took it out of the envelope since it was not found when the
police searched the house? In the first place, part of the money was
found in the cash-box, and secondly, he might have taken it out that
morning or the evening before to make some other use of it, to give or
send it away; he may have changed his idea, his plan of action
completely, without thinking it necessary to announce the fact to
Smerdyakov beforehand. And if there is the barest possibility of
such an explanation, how can the prisoner be so positively accused
of having committed murder for the sake of robbery, and of having
actually carried out that robbery? This is encroaching on the domain
of romance. If it is maintained that something has been stolen, the
thing must be produced, or at least its existence must be proved
beyond doubt. Yet no one had ever seen these notes.
“Not long ago in Petersburg a young man of eighteen, hardly more
than a boy, who carried on a small business as a costermonger, went in
broad daylight into a moneychanger’s shop with an axe, and with
extraordinary, typical audacity killed the master of the shop and
carried off fifteen hundred roubles. Five hours later he was arrested,
and, except fifteen roubles he had already managed to spend, the whole
sum was found on him. Moreover, the shopman, on his return to the shop
after the murder, informed the police not only of the exact sum
stolen, but even of the notes and gold coins of which that sum was
made up, and those very notes and coins were found on the criminal.
This was followed by a full and genuine confession on the part of
the murderer. That’s what I call evidence, gentlemen of the jury! In
that case I know, I see, I touch the money, and cannot deny its
existence. Is it the same in the present case? And yet it is a
question of life and death.
“Yes, I shall be told, but he was carousing that night,
squandering money; he was shown to have had fifteen hundred roubles-where did he get the money? But the very fact that only fifteen
hundred could be
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