The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗

found, and the other half of the sum could nowhere be

discovered, shows that that money was not the same, and had never been

in any envelope. By strict calculation of time it was proved at the

preliminary inquiry that the prisoner ran straight from those women

servants to Perhotin’s without going home, and that he had been

nowhere. So he had been all the time in company and therefore could

not have divided the three thousand in half and hidden half in the

town. It’s just this consideration that has led the prosecutor to

assume that the money is hidden in some crevice at Mokroe. Why not

in the dungeons of the castle of Udolpho, gentlemen? Isn’t this

supposition really too fantastic and too romantic? And observe, if

that supposition breaks down, the whole charge of robbery is scattered

to the winds, for in that case what could have become of the other

fifteen hundred roubles? By what miracle could they have

disappeared, since it’s proved the prisoner went nowhere else? And

we are ready to ruin a man’s life with such tales!

 

“I shall be told that he could not explain where he got the

fifteen hundred that he had. and everyone knew that he was without

money before that night. Who knew it, pray? The prisoner has made a

clear and unflinching statement of the source of that money, and if

you will have it so, gentlemen of the jury, nothing can be more

probable than that statement, and more consistent with the temper

and spirit of the prisoner. The prosecutor is charmed with his own

romance. A man of weak will, who had brought himself to take the three

thousand so insultingly offered by his betrothed, could not, we are

told, have set aside half and sewn it up, but would, even if he had

done so, have unpicked it every two days and taken out a hundred,

and so would have spent it all in a month. All this, you will

remember, was put forward in a tone what brooked no contradiction. But

what if the thing happened quite differently? What if you’ve been

weaving a romance, and about quite a different kind of man? That’s

just it, you have invented quite a different man!

 

“I shall be told, perhaps, there are witnesses that he spent on

one day all that three thousand given him by his betrothed a month

before the catastrophe, so he could not have divided the sum in

half. But who are these witnesses? The value of their evidence has

been shown in court already. Besides, in another man’s hand a crust

always seems larger, and no one of these witnesses counted that money;

they all judged simply at sight. And the witness Maximov has testified

that the prisoner had twenty thousand in his hand. You see,

gentlemen of the jury, psychology is a two edged weapon. Let me turn

the other edge now and see what comes of it.

 

“A month before the catastrophe the prisoner was entrusted by

Katerina Ivanovna with three thousand roubles to send off by post. But

the question is: is it true that they were entrusted to him in such an

insulting and degrading way as was proclaimed just now? The first

statement made by the young lady on the subject was different,

perfectly different. In the second statement we heard only cries of

resentment and revenge, cries of long-concealed hatred. And the very

fact that the witness gave her first evidence incorrectly gives us a

right to conclude that her second piece of evidence may have been

incorrect also. The prosecutor will not, dare not (his own words)

touch on that story. So be it. I will not touch on it either, but will

only venture to observe that if a lofty and high-principled person,

such as that highly respected young lady unquestionably is, if such

a person, I say, allows herself suddenly in court to contradict her

first statement, with the obvious motive of ruining the prisoner, it

is clear that this evidence has been given not impartially, not

coolly. Have not we the right to assume that a revengeful woman

might have exaggerated much? Yes, she may well have exaggerated, in

particular, the insult and humiliation of her offering him the

money. No, it was offered in such a way that it was possible to take

it, especially for a man so easygoing as the prisoner, above all, as

he expected to receive shortly from his father the three thousand

roubles that he reckoned was owing to him. It was unreflecting of him,

but it was just his irresponsible want of reflection that made him

so confident that his father would give him the money, that he would

get it, and so could always dispatch the money entrusted to him and

repay the debt.

 

“But the prosecutor refuses to allow that he could the same day

have set aside half the money and sewn it up in a little bag. That’s

not his character, he tells us, he couldn’t have had such feelings.

But yet he talked himself of the broad Karamazov nature; he cried

out about the two extremes which a Karamazov can contemplate at

once. Karamazov is just such a two-sided nature, fluctuating between

two extremes, that even when moved by the most violent craving for

riotous gaiety, he can pull himself up, if something strikes him on

the other side. And on the other side is love that new love which

had flamed up in his heart, and for that love he needed money; oh, far

more than for carousing with his mistress. If she were to say to

him, ‘I am yours, I won’t have Fyodor Pavlovitch,’ then he must have

money to take her away. That was more important than carousing.

Could a Karamazov fail to understand it? That anxiety was just what he

was suffering from-what is there improbable in his laying aside

that money and concealing it in case of emergency?

 

“But time passed, and Fyodor Pavlovitch did not give the

prisoner the expected three thousand; on the contrary, the latter

heard that he meant to use this sum to seduce the woman he, the

prisoner, loved. ‘If Fyodor Pavlovitch doesn’t give the money,’ he

thought, ‘I shall be put in the position of a thief before Katerina

Ivanovna.’ And then the idea presented itself to him that he would

go to Katerina Ivanovna, lay before her the fifteen hundred roubles he

still carried round his neck, and say, ‘I am a scoundrel, but not a

thief.’ So here we have already a twofold reason why he should guard

that sum of money as the apple of his eye, why he shouldn’t unpick the

little bag, and spend it a hundred at a time. Why should you deny

the prisoner a sense of honour? Yes, he has a sense of honour, granted

that it’s misplaced, granted it’s often mistaken, yet it exists and

amounts to a passion, and he has proved that.

 

“But now the affair becomes even more complex; his jealous

torments reach a climax, and those same two questions torture his

fevered brain more and more: ‘If I repay Katerina Ivanovna, where

can I find the means to go off with Grushenka?’ If he behaved

wildly, drank, and made disturbances in the taverns in the course of

that month, it was perhaps because he was wretched and strained beyond

his powers of endurance. These two questions became so acute that they

drove him at last to despair. He sent his younger brother to beg for

the last time for the three thousand roubles, but without waiting

for a reply, burst in himself and ended by beating the old man in

the presence of witnesses. After that he had no prospect of getting it

from anyone; his father would not give it him after that beating.

 

“The same evening he struck himself on the breast, just on the

upper part of the breast where the little bag was, and swore to his

brother that he had the means of not being a scoundrel, but that still

he would remain a scoundrel, for he foresaw that he would not use that

means, that he wouldn’t have the character, that he wouldn’t have

the will-power to do it. Why, why does the prosecutor refuse to

believe the evidence of Alexey Karamazov, given so genuinely and

sincerely, so spontaneously and convincingly? And why, on the

contrary, does he force me to believe in money hidden in a crevice, in

the dungeons of the castle of Udolpho?

 

“The same evening, after his talk with his brother, the prisoner

wrote that fatal letter, and that letter is the chief, the most

stupendous proof of the prisoner having committed robbery! ‘I shall

beg from everyone, and if I don’t get it I shall murder my father

and shall take the envelope with the pink ribbon on it from under

his mattress as soon as Ivan has gone.’ A full programme of the

murder, we are told, so it must have been he. ‘It has all been done as

he wrote,’ cries the prosecutor.

 

“But in the first place, it’s the letter of a drunken man and

written in great irritation; secondly, he writes of the envelope

from what he has heard from Smerdyakov again, for he has not seen

the envelope himself; and thirdly, he wrote it indeed, but how can you

prove that he did it? Did the prisoner take the envelope from under

the pillow, did he find the money, did that money exist indeed? And

was it to get money that the prisoner ran off, if you remember? He ran

off post-haste not to steal, but to find out where she was, the

woman who had crushed him. He was not running to carry out a

programme, to carry out what he had written, that is, not for an act

of premeditated robbery, but he ran suddenly, spontaneously, in a

jealous fury. Yes! I shall be told, but when he got there and murdered

him he seized the money, too. But did he murder him after all? The

charge of robbery I repudiate with indignation. A man cannot be

accused of robbery, if it’s impossible to state accurately what he has

stolen; that’s an axiom. But did he murder him without robbery, did he

murder him at all? Is that proved? Isn’t that, too, a romance?”