The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗
- Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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conclusions. But I will not describe the details. At last the jury
rose to retire for consultation. The President was very tired, and
so his last charge to the jury was rather feeble. “Be impartial, don’t
be influenced by the eloquence of the defence, but yet weigh the
arguments. Remember that there is a great responsibility laid upon
you,” and so on and so on.
The jury withdrew and the court adjourned. People could get up,
move about, exchange their accumulated impressions, refresh themselves
at the buffet. It was very late, almost one o’clock in the night,
but nobody went away: the strain was so great that no one could
think of repose. All waited with sinking hearts; though that is,
perhaps, too much to say, for the ladies were only in a state of
hysterical impatience and their hearts were untroubled. An
acquittal, they thought, was inevitable. They all prepared
themselves for a dramatic moment of general enthusiasm. I must own
there were many among the men, too, who were convinced that an
acquittal was inevitable. Some were pleased, others frowned, while
some were simply dejected, not wanting him to be acquitted.
Fetyukovitch himself was confident of his success. He was surrounded
by people congratulating him and fawning upon him.
“There are,” he said to one group, as I was told afterwards,
“there are invisible threads binding the counsel for the defence
with the jury. One feels during one’s speech if they are being formed.
I was aware of them. They exist. Our cause is won. Set your mind at
rest.”
“What will our peasants say now?” said one stout, cross-looking,
pock-marked gentleman, a landowner of the neighbourhood, approaching a
group of gentlemen engaged in conversation.
“But they are not all peasants. There are four government clerks
among them.”
“Yes, there are clerks,” said a member of the district council,
joining the group.
“And do you know that Nazaryev, the merchant with the medal, a
juryman?”
“What of him?”
“He is a man with brains.”
“But he never speaks.”
“He is no great talker, but so much the better. There’s no need
for the Petersburg man to teach him: he could teach all Petersburg
himself. He’s the father of twelve children. Think of that!”
“Upon my word, you don’t suppose they won’t acquit him?” one of
our young officials exclaimed in another group.
“They’ll acquit him for certain,” said a resolute voice.
“It would be shameful, disgraceful, not to acquit him cried the
official. “Suppose he did murder him-there are fathers and fathers!
And, besides, he was in such a frenzy…. He really may have done
nothing but swing the pestle in the air, and so knocked the old man
down. But it was a pity they dragged the valet in. That was simply
an absurd theory! If I’d been in Fetyukovitch’s place, I should simply
have said straight out: ‘He murdered him; but he is not guilty, hang
it all!’
“That’s what he did, only without saying, ‘Hang it all!’”
“No, Mihail Semyonovitch, he almost said that, too,” put in a
third voice.
“Why, gentlemen, in Lent an actress was acquitted in our town
who had cut the throat of her lover’s lawful wife.”
“Oh, but she did not finish cutting it.”
“That makes no difference. She began cutting it.”
“What did you think of what he said about children? Splendid,
wasn’t it?”
“Splended!”
“And about mysticism, too!”
“Oh, drop mysticism, do!” cried someone else; “think of Ippolit
and his fate from this day forth. His wife will scratch his eyes out
to-morrow for Mitya’s sake.”
“Is she here?”
“What an idea! If she’d been here she’d have scratched them out in
court. She is at home with toothache. He he he!”
“He he he!”
In a third group:
“I dare say they will acquit Mitenka, after all.”
“I should not be surprised if he turns the Metropolis upside
down to-morrow. He will be drinking for ten days!”
“Oh, the devil!”
“The devil’s bound to have a hand in it. Where should he be if not
here?”
“Well, gentlemen, I admit it was eloquent. But still it’s not
the thing to break your father’s head with a pestle! Or what are we
coming to?”
“The chariot! Do you remember the chariot?”
“Yes; he turned a cart into a chariot!”
“And to-morrow he will turn a chariot into a cart, just to suit
his purpose.”
“What cunning chaps there are nowadays! Is there any justice to be
had in Russia?”
But the bell rang. The jury deliberated for exactly an hour,
neither more nor less. A profound silence reigned in the court as soon
as the public had taken their seats. I remember how the jurymen walked
into the court. At last! I won’t repeat the questions in order, and,
indeed, I have forgotten them. I remember only the answer to the
President’s first and chief question: “Did the prisoner commit the
murder for the sake of robbery and with premeditation?” (I don’t
remember the exact words.) There was a complete hush. The foreman of
the jury, the youngest of the clerks, pronounced, in a clear, loud
voice, amidst the deathlike stillness of the court:
“Yes, guilty!”
And the same answer was repeated to every question: “Yes, guilty!”
and without the slightest extenuating comment. This no one had
expected; almost everyone had reckoned upon a recommendation to mercy,
at least. The deathlike silence in the court was not broken-all
seemed petrified: those who desired his conviction as well as those
who had been eager for his acquittal. But that was only for the
first instant, and it was followed by a fearful hubbub. Many of the
men in the audience were pleased. Some were rubbing their hands with
no attempt to conceal their joy. Those who disagreed with the
verdict seemed crushed, shrugged their shoulders, whispered, but still
seemed unable to realise this. But how shall I describe the state
the ladies were in? I thought they would create a riot. At first
they could scarcely believe their ears. Then suddenly the whole
court rang with exclamations: “What’s the meaning of it? What next?”
They leapt up from their places. They seemed to fancy that it might be
at once reconsidered and reversed. At that instant Mitya suddenly
stood up and cried in a heart-rending voice, stretching his hands
out before him:
“I swear by God and the dreadful Day of Judgment I am not guilty
of my father’s blood! Katya, I forgive you! Brothers, friends, have
pity on the other woman!”
He could not go on, and broke into a terrible sobbing wail that
was heard all over the court in a strange, unnatural voice unlike
his own. From the farthest corner at the back of the gallery came a
piercing shriek-it was Grushenka. She had succeeded in begging
admittance to the court again before the beginning of the lawyers’
speeches. Mitya was taken away. The passing of the sentence was
deferred till next day. The whole court was in a hubbub but I did
not wait to hear. I only remember a few exclamations I heard on the
steps as I went out.
“He’ll have a twenty years’ trip to the mines!”
“Not less.”
“Well, our peasants have stood firm.”
“And have done for our Mitya.”
Plans for Mitya’s Escape
VERY early, at nine o’clock in the morning, five days after the
trial, Alyosha went to Katerina Ivanovna’s to talk over a matter of
great importance to both of them, and to give her a message. She sat
and talked to him in the very room in which she had once received
Grushenka. In the next room Ivan Fyodorovitch lay unconscious in a
high fever. Katerina Ivanovna had immediately after the scene at the
trial ordered the sick and unconscious man to be carried to her house,
disregarding the inevitable gossip and general disapproval of the
public. One of two relations who lived with her had departed to Moscow
immediately after the scene in court, the other remained. But if
both had gone away, Katerina Ivanovna would have adhered to her
resolution, and would have gone on nursing the sick man and sitting by
him day and night. Varvinsky and Herzenstube were attending him. The
famous doctor had gone back to Moscow, refusing to give an opinion
as to the probable end of the illness. Though the doctors encouraged
Katerina Ivanovna and Alyosha, it was evident that they could not
yet give them positive hopes of recovery.
Alyosha came to see his sick brother twice a day. But this time he
had specially urgent business, and he foresaw how difficult it would
be to approach the subject, yet he was in great haste. He had
another engagement that could not be put off for that same morning,
and there was need of haste.
They had been talking for a quarter of an hour. Katerina
Ivanovna was pale and terribly fatigued, yet at the same time in a
state of hysterical excitement. She had a presentiment of the reason
why Alyosha had come to her.
“Don’t worry about his decision,” she said, with confident
emphasis to Alyosha. “One way or another he is bound to come to it. He
must escape. That unhappy man, that hero of honour and principle-not he, not Dmitri Fyodorovitch, but the man lying the other side of
that door, who has sacrificed himself for his brother,” Katya added,
with flashing eyes- “told me the whole plan of escape long ago. You
know he has already entered into negotiations…. I’ve told you
something already…. You see, it will probably come off at the
third etape from here, when the party of prisoners is being taken to
Siberia. Oh, it’s a long way off yet. Ivan Fyodorovitch has already
visited the superintendent of the third etape. But we don’t know yet
who will be in charge of the party, and it’s impossible to find that
out so long beforehand. To-morrow, perhaps, I will show you in
detail the whole plan which Ivan Fyodorovitch left me on the eve of
the trial in case of need…. That was when-do you remember?- you
found us quarrelling. He had just gone downstairs, but seeing you I
made him come back; do you remember? Do you know what we were
quarrelling about then?”
“No, I don’t,” said Alyosha.
“Of course he did not tell you. It was about that plan of
escape. He had told me the main idea three days before, and we began
quarrelling about it at once and quarrelled for three days. We
quarrelled because, when he told me that if Dmitri Fyodorovitch were
convicted he would escape abroad with that creature, I felt furious at
once-I can’t tell you why, I don’t know myself why…. Oh, of course,
I was furious then about that creature, and that she, too, should go
abroad with Dmitri!” Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed suddenly, her lips
quivering with anger. “As soon as Ivan Fyodorovitch saw that I was
furious about that woman, he instantly imagined I was jealous of
Dmitri and that I still loved Dmitri. That is how our first quarrel
began. I would not give an explanation, I could not ask forgiveness. I
could not bear to think that such a man could suspect me of still
loving that… and when I myself had told him long before that I did
not love Dmitri, that I loved no one but him! It was only resentment
against that creature that made me angry with him. Three days later,
on the evening you came, he brought me a sealed
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