The Brothers Karamazov

“Of course he concealed it from you then: it was precisely about this plan of escape. He had revealed all the main things to me three days earlier—that was when we began quarreling, and we went on quarreling for three days. We quarreled because, when he announced to me that if Dmitri Fyodorovich was convicted, he would flee abroad with that creature, I suddenly got furious— I won’t tell you why, I don’t know why myself ... Oh, of course, because of that creature, I got furious because of that creature, and precisely because she, too, was going to flee abroad, together with Dmitri!” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly exclaimed, her lips trembling with wrath. “As soon as Ivan Fyodorovich saw how furious I was because of that creature, he immediately thought I was jealous of her over Dmitri, and that it meant I still loved Dmitri. And that led to our first quarrel. I did not want to give explanations, I could not ask forgiveness; it was hard for me to think that such a man could suspect me of still loving that ... Even though I myself had already told him directly, long before , that I did not love Dmitri, but loved only him! I got furious with him only because I was so furious with that creature! Three days later, that evening when you came, he brought me a sealed envelope, to be opened at once in case something happened to him. Oh, he foresaw his illness! He revealed to me that the envelope contained details of the escape, and that if he should die or become dangerously ill, I must save Mitya alone. He left me money along with it, nearly ten thousand roubles—the same money the prosecutor mentioned in his speech, having learned somehow that he had sent it to be cashed. I was terribly struck that Ivan Fyodorovich, who was still jealous over me and still convinced that I loved Mitya, nonetheless did not abandon the idea of saving his brother, and entrusted me, me myself, with saving him! Oh, there was a sacrifice! No, you would not understand such self-sacrifice in all its fullness, Alexei Fyodorovich. I almost fell at his feet in reverence, but the thought suddenly occurred to me that he would take it simply as my joy at Mitya’s being saved (and he certainly would have thought that), and I was so annoyed simply at the possibility of such an unjust thought on his part, that I became annoyed again, and instead of kissing his feet, I made another scene! Oh, how wretched I am! It’s my character—a terrible, wretched character! Oh, one day you’ll see: I’ll do it, I’ll bring it to such a point that he, too, will leave me for some other woman, someone easier to live with, as Dmitri did, but then ... no, I couldn’t bear it, I’d kill myself! And when you came then, and I called to you and told him to come back, when he came in with you then, the hateful, contemptuous look he suddenly gave me filled me with such wrath that—remember?—I suddenly cried to you that he, he alone had convinced me that his brother Dmitri was a murderer! I slandered him on purpose, in order to hurt him once more, but he never, never tried to convince me that his brother was a murderer, on the contrary, it was I, I who kept trying to convince him! Oh, my rage was the cause of everything, everything! It was I, I who brought on that cursed scene in court! He wanted to prove to me that he was noble, and that even though I might love his brother, he still would not destroy him out of revenge and jealousy. And so he stood up in court ... I am the cause of it all, I alone am guilty!”

Never before had Katya made such confessions to Alyosha, and he felt that she had then reached precisely that degree of unbearable suffering when a proud heart painfully shatters its own pride and falls, overcome by grief. Oh, Alyosha knew yet another terrible reason for her present torment, no matter how she had concealed it from him all those days since Mitya had been convicted; but for some reason it would have been too painful for him if she had decided to lower herself so much as to begin talking with him herself, now, at that moment, about that reason. She was suffering over her “betrayal” in court, and Alyosha sensed that her conscience was urging her to confess, precisely to him, to Alyosha, with tears, with shrieks, with hysterics, beating on the floor. But he dreaded that moment and wished to spare the suffering woman. This made the errand on which he had come all the more difficult. He again began talking about Mitya.