The Brothers Karamazov

“Gentlemen, it’s Smerdyakov!” he suddenly shouted with all his might. “He killed him, he robbed him! He’s the only one who knew where the old man hid the envelope ... It’s him, it’s clear now!”

“But you also knew about the envelope and that it was under the pillow.”

“I never knew: I’ve never seen it before, I’m seeing it now for the first time, I just heard about it from Smerdyakov ... He’s the only one who knew where the old man kept it hidden, I didn’t know ... ,” Mitya was completely breathless.

“And yet you yourself told us just now that the envelope was under your deceased father’s pillow. You precisely said under the pillow, which means you did know where it was.”

“We have it written down!” Nikolai Parfenovich confirmed.

“Nonsense, absurdity! I had no idea it was under the pillow. And maybe it wasn’t under the pillow at all ... It was a random guess that it was under the pillow ... What does Smerdyakov say? Did you ask him where it was? What does Smerdyakov say? That’s the most important thing ... And I deliberately told lies against myself... I lied to you that it was under the pillow, without thinking, and now you ... Ah, you know, something just comes out of your mouth, and you tell a lie. But only Smerdyakov knew, just Smerdyakov alone, and no one else . . .! He didn’t even reveal to me where it was! So it’s him, it’s him; there’s no question he killed him, it’s clear as day to me now,” Mitya kept exclaiming more and more frenziedly, repeating himself incoherently, growing impassioned and bitter. “You must understand that and arrest him quickly, quickly ... Precisely he killed him, after I ran away and while Grigory was lying unconscious, it’s clear now ... He gave the signals, and father opened the door for him ... Because he alone knew the signals, and without the signals father wouldn’t have opened the door for anyone...”

“But again you are forgetting one circumstance,” the prosecutor observed, still with the same restraint, but now, as it were, triumphantly, “that there was no need to give the signals if the door was already open, when you were still there, while you were still in the garden...”

“The door, the door,” Mitya muttered, staring speechlessly at the prosecutor, and he sank down weakly on his chair again. Everyone fell silent.

“Yes, the door . . .! It’s a phantom! God is against me!” he exclaimed, staring before him with an altogether vacant look. “So you see,” the prosecutor spoke imposingly, “and judge for yourself now, Dmitri Fyodorovich: on one side there is this evidence of the open door from which you ran out, which overwhelms both you and us. And, on the other side, your inexplicable, persistent, and almost obdurate silence with regard to the source of the money that suddenly appeared in your hands, when only three hours prior to that sum, according to your own testimony, you pawned your pistols to get a mere ten roubles! In view of all this, decide for yourself: what should we believe, and where does it leave us? And do not hold a grudge against us for being ‘cold cynics and scoffers’ who are incapable of believing in the noble impulses of your soul ... Try, on the contrary, to understand our position as well ...”

Mitya was inconceivably agitated; he turned pale.

“All right!” he suddenly exclaimed, “I will reveal my secret to you, reveal where I got the money . . .! I will reveal my disgrace, so as not to blame either you or myself later on ...”

“And you may believe, Dmitri Fyodorovich,” Nikolai Parfenovich added, in a sort of tenderly joyful little voice, “that any sincere and full confession you make precisely at this moment, may afterwards contribute towards an immeasurable alleviation of your fate, and, moreover, may even ...”

But the prosecutor nudged him slightly under the table, and he managed to stop himself in time. Mitya, to tell the truth, was not listening to him.

Chapter 7: Mitya’s Great Secret. Met with Hisses

“Gentlemen,” he began in the same agitation, “the money ... I want to confess completely ... the money was mine.”

The prosecutor and the district attorney even pulled long faces: this was not at all what they expected.

“How can that be,” murmured Nikolai Parfenovich, “when at five o’clock in the afternoon, by your own admission ...”

“Eh, devil take five o’clock in the afternoon and my own admission, that’s not the point now! The money was mine, mine, that is, my stolen money . . not mine, that is, but stolen, stolen by me, and it was fifteen hundred, and I had it with me, I had it with me all the while ...”

“But where did you get it?”

“From around my neck, gentlemen, I got it from around my neck, from this very neck of mine ... It was here on my neck, sewn up in a rag and hanging on my neck; for a long time, a month already, I was carrying it on my neck with shame and disgrace!”

“But who did you ... appropriate it from?”