The Brothers Karamazov

“There are,” he said to one group, as was reported afterwards, “there are these invisible threads that bind the defense attorney and the jury together. They begin and can already be sensed during the speech. I felt them, they exist. Don’t worry, the case is ours.”

“I wonder what our peasants are going to say?” said one sullen, fat, pockmarked gentleman, a neighboring landowner, approaching a group of gentlemen conversing.

“But they’re not all peasants. There are four officials among them.”

“Yes, officials,” a member of the district council said, joining them.

“And do you know Nazaryev, Prokhor Ivanovich, the merchant with the medal, the one on the jury?”

“What about him?”

“Palatial mind.”

“But he never says a word.”

“Never says a word, but so much the better. Your man from Petersburg has nothing to teach him; he could teach the whole of Petersburg himself. Twelve children, just think of it!”

“Good God, how can they possibly not acquit him?” cried one of our young officials in another group.

“He’s sure to be acquitted,” a resolute voice was heard.

“It would be a shame and a disgrace not to acquit him!” the official went on exclaiming. “Suppose he did kill him, but there are fathers and fathers! And, finally, he was in such a frenzy ... Maybe he really did just swing the pestle and the old man fell down. Only it’s too bad they dragged the lackey into it. That’s just a ridiculous episode. If I were the defense attorney, I’d have said straight out: he killed him, but he’s not guilty, and devil take you!”

“But that’s just what he did, only he didn’t say ‘devil take you.’”

“No, Mikhail Semyonovich, but he nearly said it,” a third little voice chimed in.

“Good God, gentlemen, didn’t they acquit an actress, during Great Lent, who cut the throat of her lover’s lawful wife?”[360]

“But she didn’t finish cutting it.”

“All the same, all the same, she started to!”

“And what he said about children! Splendid!”

“Splendid.”

“And about mysticism, about mysticism, eh?”

“Mysticism nothing,” someone else cried out, “think about Ippolit, think what his fate is going to be after this day! His wife is sure to scratch his eyes out tomorrow over Mitenka.”

“Is she here?”

“Here, hah! If she were here, she’d have scratched his eyes out right here. She’s at home with a toothache. Heh, heh, heh!”

“Heh,heh,heh!”

In a third group:

“It looks like Mitenka will be acquitted after all.”

“Tomorrow, for all I know, he’ll smash up the whole ‘Metropolis,’ he’ll goon a ten-day binge.”

“Ah, the devil you say!”

“The devil? Yes, the devil’s in it all right, where else would he be if not here?”

“Eloquence aside, gentlemen, people can’t be allowed to go breaking their fathers’ heads with steelyards. Otherwise where will we end up?”

“The chariot, the chariot, remember that?”

“Yes, he made a chariot out of a dung cart.”

“And tomorrow a dung cart out of a chariot, ‘in good measure, all in good measure.’”

“Folks are clever nowadays. Do we have any truth in Russia, gentlemen, or is there none at all?”

But the bell rang. The jury deliberated for exactly an hour, not more, not less. A deep silence reigned as soon as the public resumed their seats. I remember how the jury filed into the courtroom. At last! I omit giving the questions point by point, besides I’ve forgotten them. I remember only the answer to the firstand chief question of the presiding judge—that is, “Did he commit murder for the purpose of robbery, and with premeditation?” (I do not remember the text.) Everything became still. The foreman of the jury— namely, one of the officials, the youngest of them all—pronounced loudly and clearly, in the dead silence of the courtroom:

“Yes, guilty!”

And then it was the same on each point: guilty, yes, guilty, and that without the least extenuation! This really no one had expected, almost everyone was certain at least of extenuation. The dead silence of the courtroom remained unbroken, everyone seemed literally turned to stone—both those who longed for conviction and those who longed for acquittal. But this lasted only for the first moments. Then a terrible chaos broke loose. Many among the male public turned out to be very pleased. Some even rubbed their hands with unconcealed joy. The displeased ones seemed crushed; they shrugged, whispered, as if still unable to comprehend it. But, my God, what came over our ladies! I thought they might start a riot! At first they seemed not to believe their ears. Then, suddenly, exclamations were heard all over the courtroom: “What’s that? What on earth is that?” They jumped up from their seats. They must have thought it could all be redone and reversed on the spot. At that moment Mitya suddenly rose and cried in a sort of rending voice, stretching his arms out before him:

“I swear by God and by his terrible judgment, I am not guilty of my father’s blood! Katya, I forgive you! Brothers, friends, have pity on the other woman!”

He did not finish and broke into sobs heard all over the courtroom, in a voice, terrible, no longer his own, but somehow new, unexpected, which suddenly came to him from God knows where. In the gallery above, from the furthest corner, came a woman’s piercing cry: it was Grushenka. She had begged someone earlier and had been let back into the courtroom before the attorneys began their debate. Mitya was taken away. The sentencing was put off until the next day. The whole courtroom rose in turmoil, but I did not stay and listen. I remember only a few exclamations from the porch on the way out.

“He’ll get a twenty-year taste of the mines.”

“Not less.”

“Yes, sir, our peasants stood up for themselves.”

“And finished off our Mitenka.”

End of the Fourth and Last Part

EPILOGUE

Chapter 1: Plans to Save Mitya

On the fifth day after Mitya’s trial, very early in the morning, before nine o’clock, Alyosha came to see Katerina Ivanovna, to make final arrangements in a certain business important for them both, and with an errand to her besides. She sat and talked with him in the same room where she had once received Grushenka; nearby, in the next room, lay Ivan Fyodorovich, in fever and unconscious. Immediately after the scene in court, Katerina Ivanovna had ordered the sick and unconscious Ivan Fyodorovich moved to her house, scorning any future and inevitable talk of society and its condemnation. One of the two relatives who lived with her left for Moscow just after the scene in court, the other remained. But even if both had left, Katerina Ivanovna would not have altered her decision and would have stayed to look after the sick man and sit by him day and night. He was treated by Varvinsky and Herzenstube; the Moscow doctor had gone back to Moscow, refusing to predict his opinion concerning the possible outcome of the illness. Though the remaining doctors encouraged Katerina Ivanovna and Alyosha, it was apparent that they were still unable to give any firm hope. Alyosha visited his sick brother twice a day. But this time he came on special, most troublesome business, and sensed how difficult it would be to begin talking about it, and yet he was in a hurry: he had other pressing business that same morning in a different place and had to rush. They had already been talking for about a quarter of an hour. Katerina Ivanovna was pale, very tired, and at the same time in a state of extreme, morbid agitation: she sensed why, among other things, Alyosha had come to her now.

“Don’t worry about his decision,” she told Alyosha with firm insistence. “One way or another, he will still come to this way out: he must escape! That unfortunate man, that hero of honor and conscience—not him, not Dmitri Fyodorovich, but the one lying behind this door, who sacrificed himself for his brother,” Katya added with flashing eyes, “told me the whole plan of escape long ago. You know, he has already made contacts ... I’ve already told you something ... You see, it will probably take place at the third halt, when the party of convicts is taken to Siberia. Oh, it’s still a long way off. Ivan Fyodorovich has been to see the head man at the third halting-place. But it’s not known yet who will head the party, and it’s impossible to find out beforehand. Tomorrow, perhaps, I’ll show you the whole plan in detail; Ivan Fyodorovich left it with me the night before the trial, in case something ... It was that same time, remember, when you found us quarreling that evening: he was just going downstairs, and when I saw you, I made him come back—remember? Do you know what we were quarreling about?”