The Brothers Karamazov

“Alive? So he’s alive!” Mitya suddenly shouted, clasping his hands. His whole face lit up. “Lord, I thank you for this greatest miracle, which you have done for me, a sinner and evildoer, according to my prayer! Yes, yes, it’s according to my prayer, I was praying all night!” And he crossed himself three times. He was nearly breathless.

“And it is from this same Grigory that we have received such significant evidence regarding you, that ... ,” the prosecutor went on, but Mitya suddenly jumped up from his chair.

“One moment, gentlemen, for God’s sake, just one moment; I’ll run to her...”

“Sorry! Right now it’s quite impossible!” Nikolai Parfenovich almost shrieked, and he, too, jumped to his feet. The men with badges laid hold of Mitya; however, he sat down on the chair himself . . .

“What a pity, gentlemen! I wanted to see her for just one moment ... I wanted to announce to her that this blood that was gnawing at my heart all night has been washed away, has disappeared, and I am no longer a murderer! She is my fiancée, gentlemen!” he suddenly spoke ecstatically and reverently, looking around at them all. “Oh, thank you, gentlemen! Oh, how you’ve restored, how you’ve resurrected me in a moment ... ‘.That old man—he carried me in his arms, gentlemen, he washed me in a tub when I was a three-year-old child and abandoned by everyone, he was my own father . . .!”

“And so you ... ,” the district attorney began.

“Sorry, gentlemen, sorry, just one more minute,” Mitya interrupted, putting both elbows on the table and covering his face with his hands, “let me collect myself a little, let me catch my breath, gentlemen. It’s all terribly shocking, terribly—a man is not a drumskin, gentlemen!”

“Have some more water,” muttered Nikolai Parfenovich.

Mitya took his hands away from his face and laughed. His look was cheerful; he had quite changed, as it were, in a moment. And his whole tone was changed: here now sat a man once again the equal of all these men, of all these previous acquaintances of his, exactly as if they had all come together the day before, when nothing had happened yet, somewhere at a social gathering. Let us note, incidentally, that when he first came to our town, Mitya was warmly received at the commissioner’s house, but later, especially during the last month, Mitya hardly ever visited him, and the commissioner, meeting him in the street, for example, frowned deeply and bowed to him only out of politeness, which circumstance Mitya noted very well. His acquaintance with the prosecutor was even more distant, but to the prosecutor’s wife, a nervous and fantastic lady, he sometimes paid visits, most respectful visits, by the way, himself not even quite knowing why he was calling on her, and she always received him kindly, taking an interest in him for some reason, until quite recently. He had not yet had time to make the acquaintance of the district attorney, though he had met him and even spoken with him once or twice, both times about the female sex.

“You, Nikolai Parfenovich, are, I can see, a most skillful investigator,” Mitya suddenly laughed gaily, “but now I will help you myself. Oh, gentlemen, I am resurrected ... and do not take it amiss that I address you so casually and directly. Besides, I’m a little drunk, that I will frankly admit. I believe I had the honor ... the honor and the pleasure of meeting you, Nikolai Parfenovich, at the home of my relation, Miusov ... Gentlemen, gentlemen, I do not claim to be equal, I quite understand who I am now, as I sit here before you. A horrible suspicion hangs over me ... if Grigory has given evidence regardingme ... then of course, oh, of course it hangs over me! Horrible, horrible—I quite understand! But—to business, gentlemen, I’m ready, and now we’ll make short work of it, because, listen, listen, gentlemen. You see, if I know I am not guilty, then of course we can make short work of it! Can’t we? Can’t we?”

Mitya spoke much and quickly, nervously and expansively, and as if he decidedly took his listeners for his best friends.

“So, for the present we shall write down that you radically deny the accusation brought against you,” Nikolai Parfenovich pronounced imposingly, and, turning to the clerk, he dictated in a low voice what he was to write down.