What’s the use of the counsel? I told him all about it. He’s a soft, city‐bred rogue—a Bernard! But he doesn’t believe me—not a bit of it. Only imagine, he believes I did it. I see it. In that case, why have you come to defend me? Hang them all! They’ve got a doctor down, too, want to prove I’m mad. I won’t have that! Katerina Ivanovna wants to do her ‘duty’ to the end, whatever the strain! The cat! Hard‐hearted creature! She knows that I said of her at Mokroe that she was a woman of ‘great wrath.’ They repeated it. Yes, the facts against me have grown numerous as the sands of the sea. Grigory sticks to his point. Grigory’s honest, but a fool. Many people are honest because they are fools: that’s Rakitin’s idea. Grigory’s my enemy. And there are some people who are better as foes than friends. I mean Katerina Ivanovna. I am afraid, oh, I am afraid she will tell how she bowed to the ground after that four thousand. She’ll pay it back to the last farthing. I don’t want her sacrifice; they’ll put me to shame at the trial. I wonder how I can stand it. Go to her, Alyosha, ask her not to speak of that in the court, can’t you? But damn it all, it doesn’t matter! I shall get through somehow. I don’t pity her. It’s her own doing. She deserves what she gets. I shall have my own story to tell, Alexey. Only ... only Grusha, Grusha! Good Lord! Why should she have such suffering to bear? God preserve you, my dear boy, from ever asking forgiveness for a fault from a woman you love. From one you love especially, however greatly you may have been in fault. For a woman—devil only knows what to make of a woman! I know something about them, anyway. But try acknowledging you are in fault to a woman. Say, ‘I am sorry, forgive me,’ and a shower of reproaches will follow! Nothing will make her forgive you simply and directly, she’ll humble you to the dust, bring forward things that have never happened, recall everything, forget nothing, add something of her own, and only then forgive you. And even the best, the best of them do it. She’ll scrape up all the scrapings and load them on your head. They are ready to flay you alive, I tell you, every one of them, all these angels without whom we cannot live! I tell you plainly and openly, dear boy, every decent man ought to be under some woman’s thumb. That’s my conviction—not conviction, but feeling. A man ought to be magnanimous, and it’s no disgrace to a man! No disgrace to a hero, not even a Cæsar! But don’t ever beg her pardon all the same for anything. Remember that rule given you by your brother Mitya, who’s come to ruin through women. No, I’d better make it up to Grusha somehow, without begging pardon. I worship her, Alexey, worship her. Only she doesn’t see it. No, she still thinks I don’t love her enough. And she tortures me, tortures me with her love. The past was nothing! In the past it was only those infernal curves of hers that tortured me, but now I’ve taken all her soul into my soul and through her I’ve become a man myself. Will they marry us? If they don’t, I shall die of jealousy. I imagine something every day.... What did she say to you about me? Then she is not angry at my being jealous? She is a regular woman! ‘I’ve a fierce heart myself!’ Ah, I love such fierce hearts, though I can’t bear any one’s being jealous of me. I can’t endure it. We shall fight. But I shall love her, I shall love her infinitely. Will they marry us? Do they let convicts marry? That’s the question. And without her I can’t exist.... So there’s a secret, she says, a secret? We have got up a plot against her, and Katya is mixed up in it, she thinks. No, my good Grushenka, that’s not it. You are very wide of the mark, in your foolish feminine way. Alyosha, darling, well, here goes! I’ll tell you our secret! I will tell you all our secret. I meant to tell you later, for how could I decide on anything without you? You are everything to me. Though I say that Ivan is superior to us, you are my angel. It’s your decision will decide it. Perhaps it’s you that is superior and not Ivan. You see, it’s a question of conscience, question of the higher conscience—the secret is so important that I can’t settle it myself, and I’ve put it off till I could speak to you. But anyway it’s too early to decide now, for we must wait for the verdict. As soon as the verdict is given, you shall decide my fate. Don’t decide it now. I’ll tell you now. You listen, but don’t decide. Stand and keep quiet. I won’t tell you everything. I’ll only tell you the idea, without details, and you keep quiet. Not a question, not a movement. You agree? But, goodness, what shall I do with your eyes? I’m afraid your eyes will tell me your decision, even if you don’t speak. Oo! I’m afraid! Alyosha, listen! Ivan suggests my escaping. I won’t tell you the details: it’s all been thought out: it can all be arranged. Hush, don’t decide. I should go to America with Grusha. You know I can’t live without Grusha! What if they won’t let her follow me to Siberia? Do they let convicts get married? Ivan thinks not. And without Grusha what should I do there underground with a hammer? I should only smash my skull with the hammer! But, on the other hand, my conscience? I should have run away from suffering. A sign has come, I reject the sign. I have a way of salvation and I turn my back on it. Ivan says that in America, ‘with the good‐will,’ I can be of more use than underground. But what becomes of our hymn from underground? What’s America? America is vanity again! And there’s a lot of swindling in America, too, I expect. I should have run away from crucifixion! I tell you, you know, Alexey, because you are the only person who can understand this. There’s no one else. It’s folly, madness to others, all I’ve told you of the hymn. They’ll say I’m out of my mind or a fool. I am not out of my mind and I am not a fool. Ivan understands about the hymn, too. He understands, only he doesn’t answer—he doesn’t speak. He doesn’t believe in the hymn. Don’t speak, don’t speak. I see how you look! You have already decided. Don’t decide, spare me! I can’t live without Grusha. Wait till after the trial! They don’t let convicts marry, do they? His, his, and he is very keen on it. He didn’t come to see me at first, then he suddenly came a week ago and he began about it straight away. He is awfully keen on it. He doesn’t ask me, but orders me to escape. He doesn’t doubt of my obeying him, though I showed him all my heart as I have to you, and told him about the hymn, too. He told me he’d arrange it; he’s found out about everything. But of that later. He’s simply set on it. It’s all a matter of money: he’ll pay ten thousand for escape and give me twenty thousand for America. And he says we can arrange a magnificent escape for ten thousand. To tell no one, and especially not you; on no account to tell you. He is afraid, no doubt, that you’ll stand before me as my conscience. Don’t tell him I told you. Don’t tell him, for anything. You are right, it’s impossible to decide anything before the trial is over. After the trial you’ll decide of yourself. Then you’ll find that new man in yourself and he will decide. A new man, or a Bernard who’ll decide à la Bernard, for I believe I’m a contemptible Bernard myself. But, brother, have you no hope then of being acquitted? Alyosha, darling, it’s time you were going. There’s the superintendent shouting in the yard. He’ll be here directly. We are late; it’s irregular. Embrace me quickly. Kiss me! Sign me with the cross, darling, for the cross I have to bear to‐morrow. Ivan, suggests my escaping; but, of course, he believes I did it. Have you asked him whether he believes it? No, I haven’t. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I hadn’t the courage. But I saw it from his eyes. Well, good‐by! Stand facing me! That’s right! Alyosha, tell me the whole truth, as you would before God. Do you believe I did it? Do you, do you in yourself, believe it? The whole truth, don’t lie! The whole truth, the whole, don’t lie!


I’ve never for one instant believed that you were the murderer!


Thank you! Now you have given me new life. Would you believe it, till this moment I’ve been afraid to ask you, you, even you. Well, go! You’ve given me strength for to‐morrow. God bless you! Come, go along! Love Ivan!


Ah, it’s only you. Well, good‐by! You are going to her? I don’t advise you to; she’s upset and you’ll upset her more.


No, no! Alexey Fyodorovitch, have you come from him?


Yes, I have been with him.


Has he sent me any message? Come up, Alyosha, and you, Ivan Fyodorovitch, you must come back, you must. Do you hear?


She was listening. Excuse my keeping my greatcoat on. I won’t sit down. I won’t stay more than a minute.


Sit down, Alexey Fyodorovitch,


Only one thing, that you would spare yourself and say nothing at the trial of what ... passed between you ... at the time of your first acquaintance ... in that town.


Ah! that I bowed down to the ground for that money! Why, is he afraid for me or for himself? He asks me to spare—whom? Him or myself? Tell me, Alexey Fyodorovitch!


Both yourself and him,


I am glad to hear it. You don’t know me yet, Alexey Fyodorovitch. And I don’t know myself yet. Perhaps you’ll want to trample me under foot after my examination to‐morrow.


You will give your evidence honorably,


Women are often dishonorable. Only an hour ago I was thinking I felt afraid to touch that monster ... as though he were a reptile ... but no, he is still a human being to me! But did he do it? Is he the murderer? I’ve been to see Smerdyakov.... It was you, you who persuaded me that he murdered his father. It’s only you I believed!


Well, that’s enough, anyway. I am going. I’ll come to‐morrow.


Follow him! Overtake him! Don’t leave him alone for a minute! He’s mad! Don’t you know that he’s mad? He is in a fever, nervous fever. The doctor told me so. Go, run after him....


What do you want? She told you to catch me up, because I’m mad. I know it all by heart,


She is mistaken, of course; but she is right that you are ill. I was looking at your face just now. You look very ill, Ivan.


And do you know, Alexey Fyodorovitch, how people do go out of their mind?


No, I don’t. I suppose there are all kinds of insanity.


And can one observe that one’s going mad oneself?


I imagine one can’t see oneself clearly in such circumstances,


If you want to talk to me, please change the subject,


Oh, while I think of it, I have a letter for you,


Ah, from that little demon! She’s not sixteen yet, I believe, and already offering herself. How do you mean, offering herself?


How can you, Ivan, how can you? She is a child; you are insulting a child! She is ill; she is very ill, too. She is on the verge of insanity, too, perhaps.... I had hoped to hear something from you ... that would save her.


You’ll hear nothing from me. If she is a child I am not her nurse. Be quiet, Alexey. Don’t go on about her. I am not even thinking about it. She will be praying all night now to the Mother of God to show her how to act to‐morrow at the trial. You ... you mean Katerina Ivanovna? Yes. Whether she’s to save Mitya or ruin him. She’ll pray for light from above. She can’t make up her mind for herself, you see. She has not had time to decide yet. She takes me for her nurse, too. She wants me to sing lullabies to her.


Katerina Ivanovna loves you, brother,


Perhaps; but I am not very keen on her.


She is suffering. Why do you ... sometimes say things to her that give her hope? I know that you’ve given her hope. Forgive me for speaking to you like this,


I can’t behave to her as I ought—break off altogether and tell her so straight out. I must wait till sentence is passed on the murderer. If I break off with her now, she will avenge herself on me by ruining that scoundrel to‐morrow at the trial, for she hates him and knows she hates him. It’s all a lie—lie upon lie! As long as I don’t break off with her, she goes on hoping, and she won’t ruin that monster, knowing how I want to get him out of trouble. If only that damned verdict would come!


But how can she ruin Mitya? What evidence can she give that would ruin Mitya?


You don’t know that yet. She’s got a document in her hands, in Mitya’s own writing, that proves conclusively that he did murder Fyodor Pavlovitch.


That’s impossible!


Why is it impossible? I’ve read it myself.


There can’t be such a document! There can’t be, because he’s not the murderer. It’s not he murdered father, not he!


Who is the murderer then, according to you?


You know who,


Who? You mean the myth about that crazy idiot, the epileptic, Smerdyakov?


Who? Who?


I only know one thing, it wasn’t you killed father.


‘Not you’! What do you mean by ‘not you’?


It was not you killed father, not you!


I know I didn’t. Are you raving?


No, Ivan. You’ve told yourself several times that you are the murderer.


When did I say so? I was in Moscow.... When have I said so?


You’ve said so to yourself many times, when you’ve been alone during these two dreadful months. You have accused yourself and have confessed to yourself that you are the murderer and no one else. But you didn’t do it: you are mistaken: you are not the murderer. Do you hear? It was not you! God has sent me to tell you so.


You’ve been in my room! You’ve been there at night, when he came.... Confess ... have you seen him, have you seen him?


Whom do you mean—Mitya?


Not him, damn the monster! Do you know that he visits me? How did you find out? Speak!


Who is he! I don’t know whom you are talking about,


Yes, you do know ... or how could you—? It’s impossible that you don’t know.


Brother. I have said this to you, because you’ll believe my word, I know that. I tell you once and for all, it’s not you. You hear, once for all! God has put it into my heart to say this to you, even though it may make you hate me from this hour.


Alexey Fyodorovitch. I can’t endure prophets and epileptics—messengers from God especially—and you know that only too well. I break off all relations with you from this moment and probably for ever. I beg you to leave me at this turning. It’s the way to your lodgings, too. You’d better be particularly careful not to come to me to‐day! Do you hear?


Brother, if anything happens to you to‐day, turn to me before any one!


The money was mine, it was my money. Even if I had stolen it, I should have had the right. the devil that opened it. everything was lawful,


Can you talk to me? I won’t tire you much.


Certainly I can. Has your honor been back long?


I only arrived to‐day.... To see the mess you are in here. Why do you sigh? You knew of it all along,


How could I help knowing? It was clear beforehand. But how could I tell it would turn out like that?


What would turn out? Don’t prevaricate! You’ve foretold you’d have a fit; on the way down to the cellar, you know. You mentioned the very spot.


Have you said so at the examination yet?


No, I haven’t yet, but I certainly shall. You must explain a great deal to me, my man; and let me tell you, I am not going to let you play with me!


Why should I play with you, when I put my whole trust in you, as in God Almighty?


In the first place. I know that epileptic fits can’t be told beforehand. I’ve inquired; don’t try and take me in. You can’t foretell the day and the hour. How was it you told me the day and the hour beforehand, and about the cellar, too? How could you tell that you would fall down the cellar stairs in a fit, if you didn’t sham a fit on purpose?


I had to go to the cellar anyway, several times a day, indeed. I fell from the garret just in the same way a year ago. It’s quite true you can’t tell the day and hour of a fit beforehand, but you can always have a presentiment of it.


But you did foretell the day and the hour!


In regard to my epilepsy, sir, you had much better inquire of the doctors here. You can ask them whether it was a real fit or a sham; it’s no use my saying any more about it.


And the cellar? How could you know beforehand of the cellar?


You don’t seem able to get over that cellar! As I was going down to the cellar, I was in terrible dread and doubt. What frightened me most was losing you and being left without defense in all the world. So I went down into the cellar thinking, ‘Here, it’ll come on directly, it’ll strike me down directly, shall I fall?’ And it was through this fear that I suddenly felt the spasm that always comes ... and so I went flying. All that and all my previous conversation with you at the gate the evening before, when I told you how frightened I was and spoke of the cellar, I told all that to Doctor Herzenstube and Nikolay Parfenovitch, the investigating lawyer, and it’s all been written down in the protocol. And the doctor here, Mr. Varvinsky, maintained to all of them that it was just the thought of it brought it on, the apprehension that I might fall. It was just then that the fit seized me. And so they’ve written it down, that it’s just how it must have happened, simply from my fear.


Then you have said all that in your evidence?


What have I to be afraid of? Let them write down the whole truth,


And have you told them every word of our conversation at the gate?


No, not to say every word.


And did you tell them that you can sham fits, as you boasted then?


No, I didn’t tell them that either.


Tell me now, why did you send me then to Tchermashnya?


I was afraid you’d go away to Moscow; Tchermashnya is nearer, anyway.


You are lying; you suggested my going away yourself; you told me to get out of the way of trouble.


That was simply out of affection and my sincere devotion to you, foreseeing trouble in the house, to spare you. Only I wanted to spare myself even more. That’s why I told you to get out of harm’s way, that you might understand that there would be trouble in the house, and would remain at home to protect your father.


You might have said it more directly, you blockhead!


How could I have said it more directly then? It was simply my fear that made me speak, and you might have been angry, too. I might well have been apprehensive that Dmitri Fyodorovitch would make a scene and carry away that money, for he considered it as good as his own; but who could tell that it would end in a murder like this? I thought that he would only carry off the three thousand that lay under the master’s mattress in the envelope, and you see, he’s murdered him. How could you guess it either, sir?


But if you say yourself that it couldn’t be guessed, how could I have guessed and stayed at home? You contradict yourself!


You might have guessed from my sending you to Tchermashnya and not to Moscow.


How could I guess it from that?


You might have guessed from the fact of my asking you not to go to Moscow, but to Tchermashnya, that I wanted to have you nearer, for Moscow’s a long way off, and Dmitri Fyodorovitch, knowing you are not far off, would not be so bold. And if anything had happened, you might have come to protect me, too, for I warned you of Grigory Vassilyevitch’s illness, and that I was afraid of having a fit. And when I explained those knocks to you, by means of which one could go in to the deceased, and that Dmitri Fyodorovitch knew them all through me, I thought that you would guess yourself that he would be sure to do something, and so wouldn’t go to Tchermashnya even, but would stay.


He talks very coherently, though he does mumble; what’s the derangement of his faculties that Herzenstube talked of? You are cunning with me, damn you!


But I thought at the time that you quite guessed,


If I’d guessed, I should have stayed,


Why, I thought that it was because you guessed, that you went away in such a hurry, only to get out of trouble, only to run away and save yourself in your fright.


You think that every one is as great a coward as yourself?


Forgive me, I thought you were like me.


Of course, I ought to have guessed, and I did guess there was some mischief brewing on your part ... only you are lying, you are lying again. It’s always worth while speaking to a clever man? So you were glad I went away, since you praised me?


If I was pleased, it was simply because you agreed not to go to Moscow, but to Tchermashnya. For it was nearer, anyway. Only when I said these words to you, it was not by way of praise, but of reproach. You didn’t understand it.


What reproach?


Why, that foreseeing such a calamity you deserted your own father, and would not protect us, for I might have been taken up any time for stealing that three thousand.


Damn you! Stay, did you tell the prosecutor and the investigating lawyer about those knocks?


I told them everything just as it was.


If I thought of anything then, it was solely of some wickedness on your part. Dmitri might kill him, but that he would steal—I did not believe that then.... But I was prepared for any wickedness from you. You told me yourself you could sham a fit. What did you say that for?


It was just through my simplicity, and I never have shammed a fit on purpose in my life. And I only said so then to boast to you. It was just foolishness. I liked you so much then, and was open‐hearted with you.


My brother directly accuses you of the murder and theft.


What else is left for him to do? And who will believe him with all the proofs against him? Grigory Vassilyevitch saw the door open. What can he say after that? But never mind him! He is trembling to save himself. And look here again. He wants to throw it on me and make out that it is the work of my hands—I’ve heard that already. But as to my being clever at shamming a fit: should I have told you beforehand that I could sham one, if I really had had such a design against your father? If I had been planning such a murder could I have been such a fool as to give such evidence against myself beforehand? And to his son, too! Upon my word! Is that likely? As if that could be, such a thing has never happened. No one hears this talk of ours now, except Providence itself, and if you were to tell of it to the prosecutor and Nikolay Parfenovitch you might defend me completely by doing so, for who would be likely to be such a criminal, if he is so open‐hearted beforehand? Any one can see that.


Well. I don’t suspect you at all, and I think it’s absurd, indeed, to suspect you. On the contrary, I am grateful to you for setting my mind at rest. Now I am going, but I’ll come again. Meanwhile, good‐by. Get well. Is there anything you want?


I am very thankful for everything. Marfa Ignatyevna does not forget me, and provides me anything I want, according to her kindness. Good people visit me every day.


Good‐by. But I shan’t say anything of your being able to sham a fit, and I don’t advise you to, either,


I quite understand. And if you don’t speak of that, I shall say nothing of that conversation of ours at the gate.


Do you remember when Dmitri burst in after dinner and beat father, and afterwards I told you in the yard that I reserved ‘the right to desire’?... Tell me, did you think then that I desired father’s death or not?


I did think so,


It was so, too; it was not a matter of guessing. But didn’t you fancy then that what I wished was just that ‘one reptile should devour another’; that is, just that Dmitri should kill father, and as soon as possible ... and that I myself was even prepared to help to bring that about? Speak! I want above everything to know what you thought then. I want the truth, the truth!


Forgive me, I did think that, too, at the time,


Thanks,


It’s hot here. Listen, my good fellow; what was that you babbled, as I was leaving the hospital, that if I said nothing about your faculty of shamming fits, you wouldn’t tell the investigating lawyer all our conversation at the gate? What do you mean by all? What could you mean by it? Were you threatening me? Have I entered into some sort of compact with you? Do you suppose I am afraid of you?


You want to have everything above‐board; very well, you shall have it. This is what I meant then, and this is why I said that, that you, knowing beforehand of this murder of your own parent, left him to his fate, and that people mightn’t after that conclude any evil about your feelings and perhaps of something else, too—that’s what I promised not to tell the authorities.


How? What? Are you out of your mind? Do you suppose I knew of the murder? What do you mean by ‘something else, too’? Speak, scoundrel!


The ‘something else’ I meant was that you probably, too, were very desirous of your parent’s death.


It’s a shame, sir, to strike a sick man. That’s enough! Leave off. Don’t put me out of all patience. So you thought then, you scoundrel, that together with Dmitri I meant to kill my father?


I didn’t know what thoughts were in your mind then, and so I stopped you then at the gate to sound you on that very point.


To sound what, what?


Why, that very circumstance, whether you wanted your father to be murdered or not.


It was you murdered him?


You know of yourself, for a fact, that it wasn’t I murdered him. And I should have thought that there was no need for a sensible man to speak of it again.


But why, why had you such a suspicion about me at the time?


As you know already, it was simply from fear. For I was in such a position, shaking with fear, that I suspected every one. I resolved to sound you, too, for I thought if you wanted the same as your brother, then the business was as good as settled and I should be crushed like a fly, too.


Look here, you didn’t say that a fortnight ago.


I meant the same when I talked to you in the hospital, only I thought you’d understand without wasting words, and that being such a sensible man you wouldn’t care to talk of it openly.


What next! Come answer, answer, I insist: what was it ... what could I have done to put such a degrading suspicion into your mean soul?


As for the murder, you couldn’t have done that and didn’t want to, but as for wanting some one else to do it, that was just what you did want.


And how coolly, how coolly he speaks! But why should I have wanted it; what grounds had I for wanting it?


What grounds had you? What about the inheritance? Why, after your parent’s death there was at least forty thousand to come to each of you, and very likely more, but if Fyodor Pavlovitch got married then to that lady, Agrafena Alexandrovna, she would have had all his capital made over to her directly after the wedding, for she’s plenty of sense, so that your parent would not have left you two roubles between the three of you. And were they far from a wedding, either? Not a hair’s‐breadth: that lady had only to lift her little finger and he would have run after her to church, with his tongue out.


Very good. You see, I haven’t jumped up, I haven’t knocked you down, I haven’t killed you. Speak on. So, according to you, I had fixed on Dmitri to do it; I was reckoning on him?


How could you help reckoning on him? If he killed him, then he would lose all the rights of a nobleman, his rank and property, and would go off to exile; so his share of the inheritance would come to you and your brother Alexey Fyodorovitch in equal parts; so you’d each have not forty, but sixty thousand each. There’s not a doubt you did reckon on Dmitri Fyodorovitch.


What I put up with from you! Listen, scoundrel, if I had reckoned on any one then, it would have been on you, not on Dmitri, and I swear I did expect some wickedness from you ... at the time.... I remember my impression!


I thought, too, for a minute, at the time, that you were reckoning on me as well. So that it was just by that more than anything you showed me what was in your mind. For if you had a foreboding about me and yet went away, you as good as said to me, ‘You can murder my parent, I won’t hinder you!’


You scoundrel! So that’s how you understood it!


It was all that going to Tchermashnya. Why! You were meaning to go to Moscow and refused all your father’s entreaties to go to Tchermashnya—and simply at a foolish word from me you consented at once! What reason had you to consent to Tchermashnya? Since you went to Tchermashnya with no reason, simply at my word, it shows that you must have expected something from me.


No, I swear I didn’t!


You didn’t? Then you ought, as your father’s son, to have had me taken to the lock‐up and thrashed at once for my words then ... or at least, to have given me a punch in the face on the spot, but you were not a bit angry, if you please, and at once in a friendly way acted on my foolish word and went away, which was utterly absurd, for you ought to have stayed to save your parent’s life. How could I help drawing my conclusions?


Yes, I am sorry I didn’t punch you in the face. I couldn’t have taken you to the lock‐up just then. Who would have believed me and what charge could I bring against you? But the punch in the face ... oh, I’m sorry I didn’t think of it. Though blows are forbidden, I should have pounded your ugly face to a jelly.


In the ordinary occasions of life, in the ordinary occasions of life, blows on the face are forbidden nowadays by law, and people have given them up, but in exceptional occasions of life people still fly to blows, not only among us but all over the world, be it even the fullest Republic of France, just as in the time of Adam and Eve, and they never will leave off, but you, even in an exceptional case, did not dare.


What are you learning French words for?


Why shouldn’t I learn them so as to improve my education, supposing that I may myself chance to go some day to those happy parts of Europe?


Listen, monster. I am not afraid of your accusations; you can say what you like about me, and if I don’t beat you to death, it’s simply because I suspect you of that crime and I’ll drag you to justice. I’ll unmask you.


To my thinking, you’d better keep quiet, for what can you accuse me of, considering my absolute innocence? and who would believe you? Only if you begin, I shall tell everything, too, for I must defend myself.


Do you think I am afraid of you now?


If the court doesn’t believe all I’ve said to you just now, the public will, and you will be ashamed.


That’s as much as to say, ‘It’s always worth while speaking to a sensible man,’ eh?


You hit the mark, indeed. And you’d better be sensible.


It’s not that he’s laid up, but he seems not himself, and he even told us to take the tea away; he wouldn’t have any.


Why, does he make a row?


Oh, dear, no, quite the contrary, he’s very quiet. Only please don’t talk to him too long,


Why, you really are ill? I won’t keep you long, I won’t even take off my coat. Where can one sit down? Why do you look at me without speaking? I’ve only come with one question, and I swear I won’t go without an answer. Has the young lady, Katerina Ivanovna, been with you?


Nothing.


What do you mean by ‘nothing’?


Yes, she has. It’s no matter to you. Let me alone.


No, I won’t let you alone. Tell me, when was she here?


Why, I’d quite forgotten about her. You seem very ill yourself, your face is sunken; you don’t look like yourself,


Never mind my health, tell me what I ask you.


But why are your eyes so yellow? The whites are quite yellow. Are you so worried?


Listen; I’ve told you I won’t go away without an answer!


Why do you keep pestering me? Why do you torment me?


Damn it! I’ve nothing to do with you. Just answer my question and I’ll go away.


I’ve no answer to give you,


You may be sure I’ll make you answer!


Why are you so uneasy? Is this because the trial begins to‐ morrow? Nothing will happen to you; can’t you believe that at last? Go home, go to bed and sleep in peace, don’t be afraid of anything.


I don’t understand you.... What have I to be afraid of to‐morrow?


You don’t understand? It’s a strange thing a sensible man should care to play such a farce! I tell you, you’ve nothing to be afraid of. I won’t say anything about you; there’s no proof against you. I say, how your hands are trembling! Why are your fingers moving like that? Go home, you did not murder him.


I know it was not I,


Do you?


Tell me everything, you viper! Tell me everything!


Well, it was you who murdered him, if that’s it,


You mean my going away. What you talked about last time?


You stood before me last time and understood it all, and you understand it now.


All I understand is that you are mad.


Aren’t you tired of it? Here we are face to face; what’s the use of going on keeping up a farce to each other? Are you still trying to throw it all on me, to my face? You murdered him; you are the real murderer, I was only your instrument, your faithful servant, and it was following your words I did it.


Did it? Why, did you murder him?


You don’t mean to say you really did not know?


Do you know, I am afraid that you are a dream, a phantom sitting before me,


There’s no phantom here, but only us two and one other. No doubt he is here, that third, between us.


Who is he? Who is here? What third person?


That third is God Himself—Providence. He is the third beside us now. Only don’t look for Him, you won’t find Him.


It’s a lie that you killed him! You are mad, or teasing me again!


Wait a minute,


Here,


What is it?


Kindly look at it. Your hands keep twitching. They are all here, all the three thousand roubles; you need not count them. Take them,


You frightened me ... with your stocking,


Can you really not have known till now?


No, I did not know. I kept thinking of Dmitri. Brother, brother! Ach! Listen. Did you kill him alone? With my brother’s help or without?


It was only with you, with your help, I killed him, and Dmitri Fyodorovitch is quite innocent.


All right, all right. Talk about me later. Why do I keep on trembling? I can’t speak properly.


You were bold enough then. You said ‘everything was lawful,’ and how frightened you are now. Won’t you have some lemonade? I’ll ask for some at once. It’s very refreshing. Only I must hide this first.


I won’t have any lemonade. Talk of me later. Sit down and tell me how you did it. Tell me all about it.


You’d better take off your greatcoat, or you’ll be too hot.


Speak, please, speak.


How it was done? It was done in a most natural way, following your very words.


Of my words later. Only tell me in detail how you did it. Everything, as it happened. Don’t forget anything. The details, above everything, the details, I beg you.


You’d gone away, then I fell into the cellar.


In a fit or in a sham one?


A sham one, naturally. I shammed it all. I went quietly down the steps to the very bottom and lay down quietly, and as I lay down I gave a scream, and struggled, till they carried me out.


Stay! And were you shamming all along, afterwards, and in the hospital?


No, not at all. Next day, in the morning, before they took me to the hospital, I had a real attack and a more violent one than I’ve had for years. For two days I was quite unconscious.


All right, all right. Go on.


They laid me on the bed. I knew I’d be the other side of the partition, for whenever I was ill, Marfa Ignatyevna used to put me there, near them. She’s always been very kind to me, from my birth up. At night I moaned, but quietly. I kept expecting Dmitri Fyodorovitch to come.


Expecting him? To come to you?


Not to me. I expected him to come into the house, for I’d no doubt that he’d come that night, for being without me and getting no news, he’d be sure to come and climb over the fence, as he used to, and do something.


And if he hadn’t come?


Then nothing would have happened. I should never have brought myself to it without him.


All right, all right ... speak more intelligibly, don’t hurry; above all, don’t leave anything out!


I expected him to kill Fyodor Pavlovitch. I thought that was certain, for I had prepared him for it ... during the last few days.... He knew about the knocks, that was the chief thing. With his suspiciousness and the fury which had been growing in him all those days, he was bound to get into the house by means of those taps. That was inevitable, so I was expecting him.


Stay, if he had killed him, he would have taken the money and carried it away; you must have considered that. What would you have got by it afterwards? I don’t see.


But he would never have found the money. That was only what I told him, that the money was under the mattress. But that wasn’t true. It had been lying in a box. And afterwards I suggested to Fyodor Pavlovitch, as I was the only person he trusted, to hide the envelope with the notes in the corner behind the ikons, for no one would have guessed that place, especially if they came in a hurry. So that’s where the envelope lay, in the corner behind the ikons. It would have been absurd to keep it under the mattress; the box, anyway, could be locked. But all believe it was under the mattress. A stupid thing to believe. So if Dmitri Fyodorovitch had committed the murder, finding nothing, he would either have run away in a hurry, afraid of every sound, as always happens with murderers, or he would have been arrested. So I could always have clambered up to the ikons and have taken away the money next morning or even that night, and it would have all been put down to Dmitri Fyodorovitch. I could reckon upon that.


But what if he did not kill him, but only knocked him down?


If he did not kill him, of course, I would not have ventured to take the money, and nothing would have happened. But I calculated that he would beat him senseless, and I should have time to take it then, and then I’d make out to Fyodor Pavlovitch that it was no one but Dmitri Fyodorovitch who had taken the money after beating him.


Stop ... I am getting mixed. Then it was Dmitri after all who killed him; you only took the money?


No, he didn’t kill him. Well, I might as well have told you now that he was the murderer.... But I don’t want to lie to you now, because ... because if you really haven’t understood till now, as I see for myself, and are not pretending, so as to throw your guilt on me to my very face, you are still responsible for it all, since you knew of the murder and charged me to do it, and went away knowing all about it. And so I want to prove to your face this evening that you are the only real murderer in the whole affair, and I am not the real murderer, though I did kill him. You are the rightful murderer.


Why, why, am I a murderer? Oh, God! You still mean that Tchermashnya? Stay, tell me, why did you want my consent, if you really took Tchermashnya for consent? How will you explain that now?


Assured of your consent, I should have known that you wouldn’t have made an outcry over those three thousand being lost, even if I’d been suspected, instead of Dmitri Fyodorovitch, or as his accomplice; on the contrary, you would have protected me from others.... And when you got your inheritance you would have rewarded me when you were able, all the rest of your life. For you’d have received your inheritance through me, seeing that if he had married Agrafena Alexandrovna, you wouldn’t have had a farthing.


Ah! Then you intended to worry me all my life afterwards. And what if I hadn’t gone away then, but had informed against you?


What could you have informed? That I persuaded you to go to Tchermashnya? That’s all nonsense. Besides, after our conversation you would either have gone away or have stayed. If you had stayed, nothing would have happened. I should have known that you didn’t want it done, and should have attempted nothing. As you went away, it meant you assured me that you wouldn’t dare to inform against me at the trial, and that you’d overlook my having the three thousand. And, indeed, you couldn’t have prosecuted me afterwards, because then I should have told it all in the court; that is, not that I had stolen the money or killed him—I shouldn’t have said that—but that you’d put me up to the theft and the murder, though I didn’t consent to it. That’s why I needed your consent, so that you couldn’t have cornered me afterwards, for what proof could you have had? I could always have cornered you, revealing your eagerness for your father’s death, and I tell you the public would have believed it all, and you would have been ashamed for the rest of your life.


Was I then so eager, was I?


To be sure you were, and by your consent you silently sanctioned my doing it.


Go on. Tell me what happened that night.


What more is there to tell! I lay there and I thought I heard the master shout. And before that Grigory Vassilyevitch had suddenly got up and came out, and he suddenly gave a scream, and then all was silence and darkness. I lay there waiting, my heart beating; I couldn’t bear it. I got up at last, went out. I saw the window open on the left into the garden, and I stepped to the left to listen whether he was sitting there alive, and I heard the master moving about, sighing, so I knew he was alive. ‘Ech!’ I thought. I went to the window and shouted to the master, ‘It’s I.’ And he shouted to me, ‘He’s been, he’s been; he’s run away.’ He meant Dmitri Fyodorovitch had been. ‘He’s killed Grigory!’ ‘Where?’ I whispered. ‘There, in the corner,’ he pointed. He was whispering, too. ‘Wait a bit,’ I said. I went to the corner of the garden to look, and there I came upon Grigory Vassilyevitch lying by the wall, covered with blood, senseless. So it’s true that Dmitri Fyodorovitch has been here, was the thought that came into my head, and I determined on the spot to make an end of it, as Grigory Vassilyevitch, even if he were alive, would see nothing of it, as he lay there senseless. The only risk was that Marfa Ignatyevna might wake up. I felt that at the moment, but the longing to get it done came over me, till I could scarcely breathe. I went back to the window to the master and said, ‘She’s here, she’s come; Agrafena Alexandrovna has come, wants to be let in.’ And he started like a baby. ‘Where is she?’ he fairly gasped, but couldn’t believe it. ‘She’s standing there,’ said I. ‘Open.’ He looked out of the window at me, half believing and half distrustful, but afraid to open. ‘Why, he is afraid of me now,’ I thought. And it was funny. I bethought me to knock on the window‐frame those taps we’d agreed upon as a signal that Grushenka had come, in his presence, before his eyes. He didn’t seem to believe my word, but as soon as he heard the taps, he ran at once to open the door. He opened it. I would have gone in, but he stood in the way to prevent me passing. ‘Where is she? Where is she?’ He looked at me, all of a tremble. ‘Well,’ thought I, ‘if he’s so frightened of me as all that, it’s a bad look out!’ And my legs went weak with fright that he wouldn’t let me in or would call out, or Marfa Ignatyevna would run up, or something else might happen. I don’t remember now, but I must have stood pale, facing him. I whispered to him, ‘Why, she’s there, there, under the window; how is it you don’t see her?’ I said. ‘Bring her then, bring her.’ ‘She’s afraid,’ said I; ‘she was frightened at the noise, she’s hidden in the bushes; go and call to her yourself from the study.’ He ran to the window, put the candle in the window. ‘Grushenka,’ he cried, ‘Grushenka, are you here?’ Though he cried that, he didn’t want to lean out of the window, he didn’t want to move away from me, for he was panic‐stricken; he was so frightened he didn’t dare to turn his back on me. ‘Why, here she is,’ said I. I went up to the window and leaned right out of it. ‘Here she is; she’s in the bush, laughing at you, don’t you see her?’ He suddenly believed it; he was all of a shake—he was awfully crazy about her—and he leaned right out of the window. I snatched up that iron paper‐weight from his table; do you remember, weighing about three pounds? I swung it and hit him on the top of the skull with the corner of it. He didn’t even cry out. He only sank down suddenly, and I hit him again and a third time. And the third time I knew I’d broken his skull. He suddenly rolled on his back, face upwards, covered with blood. I looked round. There was no blood on me, not a spot. I wiped the paper‐weight, put it back, went up to the ikons, took the money out of the envelope, and flung the envelope on the floor and the pink ribbon beside it. I went out into the garden all of a tremble, straight to the apple‐tree with a hollow in it—you know that hollow. I’d marked it long before and put a rag and a piece of paper ready in it. I wrapped all the notes in the rag and stuffed it deep down in the hole. And there it stayed for over a fortnight. I took it out later, when I came out of the hospital. I went back to my bed, lay down and thought, ‘If Grigory Vassilyevitch has been killed outright it may be a bad job for me, but if he is not killed and recovers, it will be first‐rate, for then he’ll bear witness that Dmitri Fyodorovitch has been here, and so he must have killed him and taken the money.’ Then I began groaning with suspense and impatience, so as to wake Marfa Ignatyevna as soon as possible. At last she got up and she rushed to me, but when she saw Grigory Vassilyevitch was not there, she ran out, and I heard her scream in the garden. And that set it all going and set my mind at rest. Ech! It’s I. He’s been, he’s been; he’s run away. He’s killed Grigory! Where?


There, in the corner,


Wait a bit,


So it’s true that Dmitri Fyodorovitch has been here,


She’s here, she’s come; Agrafena Alexandrovna has come, wants to be let in. Where is she?


She’s standing there,


Open. Why, he is afraid of me now,


Where is she? Where is she?


if he’s so frightened of me as all that, it’s a bad look out!


Why, she’s there, there, under the window; how is it you don’t see her?


Bring her then, bring her.


She’s afraid,


she was frightened at the noise, she’s hidden in the bushes; go and call to her yourself from the study.


Grushenka. Grushenka, are you here? Why, here she is. Here she is; she’s in the bush, laughing at you, don’t you see her?


If Grigory Vassilyevitch has been killed outright it may be a bad job for me, but if he is not killed and recovers, it will be first‐rate, for then he’ll bear witness that Dmitri Fyodorovitch has been here, and so he must have killed him and taken the money.


Stay. What about the door? If he only opened the door to you, how could Grigory have seen it open before? For Grigory saw it before you went.


As for that door and Grigory Vassilyevitch’s having seen it open, that’s only his fancy. He is not a man, I assure you, but an obstinate mule. He didn’t see it, but fancied he had seen it, and there’s no shaking him. It’s just our luck he took that notion into his head, for they can’t fail to convict Dmitri Fyodorovitch after that.


Listen ... Listen. There are a lot of questions I want to ask you, but I forget them ... I keep forgetting and getting mixed up. Yes. Tell me this at least, why did you open the envelope and leave it there on the floor? Why didn’t you simply carry off the envelope?... When you were telling me, I thought you spoke about it as though it were the right thing to do ... but why, I can’t understand....


I did that for a good reason. For if a man had known all about it, as I did for instance, if he’d seen those notes before, and perhaps had put them in that envelope himself, and had seen the envelope sealed up and addressed, with his own eyes, if such a man had done the murder, what should have made him tear open the envelope afterwards, especially in such desperate haste, since he’d know for certain the notes must be in the envelope? No, if the robber had been some one like me, he’d simply have put the envelope straight in his pocket and got away with it as fast as he could. But it’d be quite different with Dmitri Fyodorovitch. He only knew about the envelope by hearsay; he had never seen it, and if he’d found it, for instance, under the mattress, he’d have torn it open as quickly as possible to make sure the notes were in it. And he’d have thrown the envelope down, without having time to think that it would be evidence against him. Because he was not an habitual thief and had never directly stolen anything before, for he is a gentleman born, and if he did bring himself to steal, it would not be regular stealing, but simply taking what was his own, for he’d told the whole town he meant to before, and had even bragged aloud before every one that he’d go and take his property from Fyodor Pavlovitch. I didn’t say that openly to the prosecutor when I was being examined, but quite the contrary, I brought him to it by a hint, as though I didn’t see it myself, and as though he’d thought of it himself and I hadn’t prompted him; so that Mr. Prosecutor’s mouth positively watered at my suggestion.


But can you possibly have thought of all that on the spot?


Mercy on us! Could any one think of it all in such a desperate hurry? It was all thought out beforehand.


Well ... well, it was the devil helped you! No, you are not a fool, you are far cleverer than I thought.... Listen, you miserable, contemptible creature! Don’t you understand that if I haven’t killed you, it’s simply because I am keeping you to answer to‐morrow at the trial. God sees, perhaps I, too, was guilty; perhaps I really had a secret desire for my father’s ... death, but I swear I was not as guilty as you think, and perhaps I didn’t urge you on at all. No, no, I didn’t urge you on! But no matter, I will give evidence against myself to‐morrow at the trial. I’m determined to! I shall tell everything, everything. But we’ll make our appearance together. And whatever you may say against me at the trial, whatever evidence you give, I’ll face it; I am not afraid of you. I’ll confirm it all myself! But you must confess, too! You must, you must; we’ll go together. That’s how it shall be!


You are ill, I see; you are quite ill. Your eyes are yellow,


We’ll go together. And if you won’t go, no matter, I’ll go alone.


There’ll be nothing of the sort, and you won’t go,


You don’t understand me,


You’ll be too much ashamed, if you confess it all. And, what’s more, it will be no use at all, for I shall say straight out that I never said anything of the sort to you, and that you are either ill (and it looks like it, too), or that you’re so sorry for your brother that you are sacrificing yourself to save him and have invented it all against me, for you’ve always thought no more of me than if I’d been a fly. And who will believe you, and what single proof have you got?


Listen, you showed me those notes just now to convince me.


Take that money away with you,


Of course, I shall take it. But why do you give it to me, if you committed the murder for the sake of it?


I don’t want it. I did have an idea of beginning a new life with that money in Moscow or, better still, abroad. I did dream of it, chiefly because ‘all things are lawful.’ That was quite right what you taught me, for you talked a lot to me about that. For if there’s no everlasting God, there’s no such thing as virtue, and there’s no need of it. You were right there. So that’s how I looked at it.


Did you come to that of yourself?


With your guidance.


And now, I suppose, you believe in God, since you are giving back the money?


No, I don’t believe,


Then why are you giving it back?


Leave off ... that’s enough! You used to say yourself that everything was lawful, so now why are you so upset, too? You even want to go and give evidence against yourself.... Only there’ll be nothing of the sort! You won’t go to give evidence,


You’ll see,


It isn’t possible. You are very clever. You are fond of money, I know that. You like to be respected, too, for you’re very proud; you are far too fond of female charms, too, and you mind most of all about living in undisturbed comfort, without having to depend on any one—that’s what you care most about. You won’t want to spoil your life for ever by taking such a disgrace on yourself. You are like Fyodor Pavlovitch, you are more like him than any of his children; you’ve the same soul as he had.


You are not a fool. You are serious now!


It was your pride made you think I was a fool. Take the money.


I shall show them at the court to‐morrow,


Nobody will believe you, as you’ve plenty of money of your own; you may simply have taken it out of your cash‐box and brought it to the court.


I repeat, the only reason I haven’t killed you is that I need you for to‐morrow, remember that, don’t forget it!


Well. Well, kill me. Kill me now. You won’t dare do that even! You won’t dare to do anything, you, who used to be so bold!


Till to‐morrow,


Stay a moment.... Show me those notes again. Well, you can go. Ivan Fyodorovitch!


What do you want?


Good‐by!


Till to‐morrow! It’s something physical, and now it will not be changed,


If I had not taken my decision so firmly for to‐morrow. I should not have stayed a whole hour to look after the peasant, but should have passed by, without caring about his being frozen. I am quite capable of watching myself, by the way, although they have decided that I am going out of my mind! Everything together to‐morrow!


Hallucinations are quite likely in your condition, though it would be better to verify them ... you must take steps at once, without a moment’s delay, or things will go badly with you.


I am walking about, so I am strong enough, if I drop, it’ll be different then, any one may nurse me who likes,


I say, excuse me, I only mention it to remind you. You went to Smerdyakov’s to find out about Katerina Ivanovna, but you came away without finding out anything about her, you probably forgot—


Ah, yes. Yes, I’d forgotten ... but it doesn’t matter now, never mind, till to‐morrow, and you. I should have remembered that myself in a minute, for that was just what was tormenting me! Why do you interfere, as if I should believe that you prompted me, and that I didn’t remember it of myself?


Don’t believe it then, what’s the good of believing against your will? Besides, proofs are no help to believing, especially material proofs. Thomas believed, not because he saw Christ risen, but because he wanted to believe, before he saw. Look at the spiritualists, for instance.... I am very fond of them ... only fancy, they imagine that they are serving the cause of religion, because the devils show them their horns from the other world. That, they say, is a material proof, so to speak, of the existence of another world. The other world and material proofs, what next! And if you come to that, does proving there’s a devil prove that there’s a God? I want to join an idealist society, I’ll lead the opposition in it, I’ll say I am a realist, but not a materialist, he he!


Listen. I seem to be delirious.... I am delirious, in fact, talk any nonsense you like, I don’t care! You won’t drive me to fury, as you did last time. But I feel somehow ashamed.... I want to walk about the room.... I sometimes don’t see you and don’t even hear your voice as I did last time, but I always guess what you are prating, for it’s I, I myself speaking, not you. Only I don’t know whether I was dreaming last time or whether I really saw you. I’ll wet a towel and put it on my head and perhaps you’ll vanish into air.


I am so glad you treat me so familiarly,


Fool, do you suppose I should stand on ceremony with you? I am in good spirits now, though I’ve a pain in my forehead ... and in the top of my head ... only please don’t talk philosophy, as you did last time. If you can’t take yourself off, talk of something amusing. Talk gossip, you are a poor relation, you ought to talk gossip. What a nightmare to have! But I am not afraid of you. I’ll get the better of you. I won’t be taken to a mad‐house!


C’est charmant, poor relation. Yes, I am in my natural shape. For what am I on earth but a poor relation? By the way, I am listening to you and am rather surprised to find you are actually beginning to take me for something real, not simply your fancy, as you persisted in declaring last time—


Never for one minute have I taken you for reality. You are a lie, you are my illness, you are a phantom. It’s only that I don’t know how to destroy you and I see I must suffer for a time. You are my hallucination. You are the incarnation of myself, but only of one side of me ... of my thoughts and feelings, but only the nastiest and stupidest of them. From that point of view you might be of interest to me, if only I had time to waste on you—


Excuse me, excuse me, I’ll catch you. When you flew out at Alyosha under the lamp‐post this evening and shouted to him, ‘You learnt it from him! How do you know that he visits me?’ you were thinking of me then. So for one brief moment you did believe that I really exist,


Yes, that was a moment of weakness ... but I couldn’t believe in you. I don’t know whether I was asleep or awake last time. Perhaps I was only dreaming then and didn’t see you really at all—


And why were you so surly with Alyosha just now? He is a dear; I’ve treated him badly over Father Zossima.


Don’t talk of Alyosha! How dare you, you flunkey!


You scold me, but you laugh—that’s a good sign. But you are ever so much more polite than you were last time and I know why: that great resolution of yours—


Don’t speak of my resolution,


I understand, I understand, c’est noble, c’est charmant, you are going to defend your brother and to sacrifice yourself ... C’est chevaleresque.


Hold your tongue, I’ll kick you!


I shan’t be altogether sorry, for then my object will be attained. If you kick me, you must believe in my reality, for people don’t kick ghosts. Joking apart, it doesn’t matter to me, scold if you like, though it’s better to be a trifle more polite even to me. ‘Fool, flunkey!’ what words!


Scolding you, I scold myself, you are myself, myself, only with a different face. You just say what I am thinking ... and are incapable of saying anything new!


If I am like you in my way of thinking, it’s all to my credit,


You choose out only my worst thoughts, and what’s more, the stupid ones. You are stupid and vulgar. You are awfully stupid. No, I can’t put up with you! What am I to do, what am I to do?


My dear friend, above all things I want to behave like a gentleman and to be recognized as such. I am poor, but ... I won’t say very honest, but ... it’s an axiom generally accepted in society that I am a fallen angel. I certainly can’t conceive how I can ever have been an angel. If I ever was, it must have been so long ago that there’s no harm in forgetting it. Now I only prize the reputation of being a gentlemanly person and live as I can, trying to make myself agreeable. I love men genuinely, I’ve been greatly calumniated! Here when I stay with you from time to time, my life gains a kind of reality and that’s what I like most of all. You see, like you, I suffer from the fantastic and so I love the realism of earth. Here, with you, everything is circumscribed, here all is formulated and geometrical, while we have nothing but indeterminate equations! I wander about here dreaming. I like dreaming. Besides, on earth I become superstitious. Please don’t laugh, that’s just what I like, to become superstitious. I adopt all your habits here: I’ve grown fond of going to the public baths, would you believe it? and I go and steam myself with merchants and priests. What I dream of is becoming incarnate once for all and irrevocably in the form of some merchant’s wife weighing eighteen stone, and of believing all she believes. My ideal is to go to church and offer a candle in simple‐hearted faith, upon my word it is. Then there would be an end to my sufferings. I like being doctored too; in the spring there was an outbreak of smallpox and I went and was vaccinated in a foundling hospital—if only you knew how I enjoyed myself that day. I subscribed ten roubles in the cause of the Slavs!... But you are not listening. Do you know, you are not at all well this evening? I know you went yesterday to that doctor ... well, what about your health? What did the doctor say?


Fool!


But you are clever, anyway. You are scolding again? I didn’t ask out of sympathy. You needn’t answer. Now rheumatism has come in again—


You keep saying the same thing; but I had such an attack of rheumatism last year that I remember it to this day.


The devil have rheumatism!


Why not, if I sometimes put on fleshly form? I put on fleshly form and I take the consequences. Satan sum et nihil humanum a me alienum puto.


What, what, Satan sum et nihil humanum ... that’s not bad for the devil!


I am glad I’ve pleased you at last.


But you didn’t get that from me. That never entered my head, that’s strange.


C’est du nouveau, n’est‐ce pas? This time I’ll act honestly and explain to you. Listen, in dreams and especially in nightmares, from indigestion or anything, a man sees sometimes such artistic visions, such complex and real actuality, such events, even a whole world of events, woven into such a plot, with such unexpected details from the most exalted matters to the last button on a cuff, as I swear Leo Tolstoy has never invented. Yet such dreams are sometimes seen not by writers, but by the most ordinary people, officials, journalists, priests.... The subject is a complete enigma. A statesman confessed to me, indeed, that all his best ideas came to him when he was asleep. Well, that’s how it is now, though I am your hallucination, yet just as in a nightmare, I say original things which had not entered your head before. So I don’t repeat your ideas, yet I am only your nightmare, nothing more.


You are lying, your aim is to convince me you exist apart and are not my nightmare, and now you are asserting you are a dream.


My dear fellow, I’ve adopted a special method to‐day, I’ll explain it to you afterwards. Stay, where did I break off? Oh, yes! I caught cold then, only not here but yonder.


Where is yonder? Tell me, will you be here long? Can’t you go away?


Your nerves are out of order. You are angry with me even for being able to catch cold, though it happened in a most natural way. I was hurrying then to a diplomatic soirée at the house of a lady of high rank in Petersburg, who was aiming at influence in the Ministry. Well, an evening suit, white tie, gloves, though I was God knows where and had to fly through space to reach your earth.... Of course, it took only an instant, but you know a ray of light from the sun takes full eight minutes, and fancy in an evening suit and open waistcoat. Spirits don’t freeze, but when one’s in fleshly form, well ... in brief, I didn’t think, and set off, and you know in those ethereal spaces, in the water that is above the firmament, there’s such a frost ... at least one can’t call it frost, you can fancy, 150 degrees below zero! You know the game the village girls play—they invite the unwary to lick an ax in thirty degrees of frost, the tongue instantly freezes to it and the dupe tears the skin off, so it bleeds. But that’s only in 30 degrees, in 150 degrees I imagine it would be enough to put your finger on the ax and it would be the end of it ... if only there could be an ax there.


And can there be an ax there?


An ax?


Yes, what would become of an ax there?


What would become of an ax in space? Quelle idée! If it were to fall to any distance, it would begin, I think, flying round the earth without knowing why, like a satellite. The astronomers would calculate the rising and the setting of the ax, Gatzuk would put it in his calendar, that’s all.


You are stupid, awfully stupid. Fib more cleverly or I won’t listen. You want to get the better of me by realism, to convince me that you exist, but I don’t want to believe you exist! I won’t believe it!


But I am not fibbing, it’s all the truth; the truth is unhappily hardly ever amusing. I see you persist in expecting something big of me, and perhaps something fine. That’s a great pity, for I only give what I can—


Don’t talk philosophy, you ass!


Philosophy, indeed, when all my right side is numb and I am moaning and groaning. I’ve tried all the medical faculty: they can diagnose beautifully, they have the whole of your disease at their finger‐tips, but they’ve no idea how to cure you. There was an enthusiastic little student here, ‘You may die,’ said he, ‘but you’ll know perfectly what disease you are dying of!’ And then what a way they have sending people to specialists! ‘We only diagnose,’ they say, ‘but go to such‐and‐such a specialist, he’ll cure you.’ The old doctor who used to cure all sorts of disease has completely disappeared, I assure you, now there are only specialists and they all advertise in the newspapers. If anything is wrong with your nose, they send you to Paris: there, they say, is a European specialist who cures noses. If you go to Paris, he’ll look at your nose; I can only cure your right nostril, he’ll tell you, for I don’t cure the left nostril, that’s not my speciality, but go to Vienna, there there’s a specialist who will cure your left nostril. What are you to do? I fell back on popular remedies, a German doctor advised me to rub myself with honey and salt in the bath‐house. Solely to get an extra bath I went, smeared myself all over and it did me no good at all. In despair I wrote to Count Mattei in Milan. He sent me a book and some drops, bless him, and, only fancy, Hoff’s malt extract cured me! I bought it by accident, drank a bottle and a half of it, and I was ready to dance, it took it away completely. I made up my mind to write to the papers to thank him, I was prompted by a feeling of gratitude, and only fancy, it led to no end of a bother: not a single paper would take my letter. ‘It would be very reactionary,’ they said, ‘no one will believe it. Le diable n’existe point. You’d better remain anonymous,’ they advised me. What use is a letter of thanks if it’s anonymous? I laughed with the men at the newspaper office; ‘It’s reactionary to believe in God in our days,’ I said, ‘but I am the devil, so I may be believed in.’ ‘We quite understand that,’ they said. ‘Who doesn’t believe in the devil? Yet it won’t do, it might injure our reputation. As a joke, if you like.’ But I thought as a joke it wouldn’t be very witty. So it wasn’t printed. And do you know, I have felt sore about it to this day. My best feelings, gratitude, for instance, are literally denied me simply from my social position.


Philosophical reflections again?


God preserve me from it, but one can’t help complaining sometimes. I am a slandered man. You upbraid me every moment with being stupid. One can see you are young. My dear fellow, intelligence isn’t the only thing! I have naturally a kind and merry heart. ‘I also write vaudevilles of all sorts.’ You seem to take me for Hlestakov grown old, but my fate is a far more serious one. Before time was, by some decree which I could never make out, I was pre‐destined ‘to deny’ and yet I am genuinely good‐hearted and not at all inclined to negation. ‘No, you must go and deny, without denial there’s no criticism and what would a journal be without a column of criticism?’ Without criticism it would be nothing but one ‘hosannah.’ But nothing but hosannah is not enough for life, the hosannah must be tried in the crucible of doubt and so on, in the same style. But I don’t meddle in that, I didn’t create it, I am not answerable for it. Well, they’ve chosen their scapegoat, they’ve made me write the column of criticism and so life was made possible. We understand that comedy; I, for instance, simply ask for annihilation. No, live, I am told, for there’d be nothing without you. If everything in the universe were sensible, nothing would happen. There would be no events without you, and there must be events. So against the grain I serve to produce events and do what’s irrational because I am commanded to. For all their indisputable intelligence, men take this farce as something serious, and that is their tragedy. They suffer, of course ... but then they live, they live a real life, not a fantastic one, for suffering is life. Without suffering what would be the pleasure of it? It would be transformed into an endless church service; it would be holy, but tedious. But what about me? I suffer, but still, I don’t live. I am x in an indeterminate equation. I am a sort of phantom in life who has lost all beginning and end, and who has even forgotten his own name. You are laughing— no, you are not laughing, you are angry again. You are for ever angry, all you care about is intelligence, but I repeat again that I would give away all this super‐stellar life, all the ranks and honors, simply to be transformed into the soul of a merchant’s wife weighing eighteen stone and set candles at God’s shrine.


Then even you don’t believe in God?


What can I say?—that is, if you are in earnest—


Is there a God or not?


Ah, then you are in earnest! My dear fellow, upon my word I don’t know. There! I’ve said it now!


You don’t know, but you see God? No, you are not some one apart, you are myself, you are I and nothing more! You are rubbish, you are my fancy!


Well, if you like, I have the same philosophy as you, that would be true. Je pense, donc je suis, I know that for a fact; all the rest, all these worlds, God and even Satan—all that is not proved, to my mind. Does all that exist of itself, or is it only an emanation of myself, a logical development of my ego which alone has existed for ever: but I make haste to stop, for I believe you will be jumping up to beat me directly.


You’d better tell me some anecdote!


There is an anecdote precisely on our subject, or rather a legend, not an anecdote. You reproach me with unbelief, you see, yet you don’t believe. But, my dear fellow, I am not the only one like that. We are all in a muddle over there now and all through your science. Once there used to be atoms, five senses, four elements, and then everything hung together somehow. There were atoms in the ancient world even, but since we’ve learned that you’ve discovered the chemical molecule and protoplasm and the devil knows what, we had to lower our crest. There’s a regular muddle, and, above all, superstition, scandal; there’s as much scandal among us as among you, you know; a little more in fact, and spying, indeed, for we have our secret police department where private information is received. Well, this wild legend belongs to our middle ages—not yours, but ours—and no one believes it even among us, except the old ladies of eighteen stone, not your old ladies I mean, but ours. We’ve everything you have, I am revealing one of our secrets out of friendship for you; though it’s forbidden. This legend is about Paradise. There was, they say, here on earth a thinker and philosopher. He rejected everything, ‘laws, conscience, faith,’ and, above all, the future life. He died; he expected to go straight to darkness and death and he found a future life before him. He was astounded and indignant. ‘This is against my principles!’ he said. And he was punished for that ... that is, you must excuse me, I am just repeating what I heard myself, it’s only a legend ... he was sentenced to walk a quadrillion kilometers in the dark (we’ve adopted the metric system, you know) and when he has finished that quadrillion, the gates of heaven would be opened to him and he’ll be forgiven—


And what tortures have you in the other world besides the quadrillion kilometers?


What tortures? Ah, don’t ask. In old days we had all sorts, but now they have taken chiefly to moral punishments—‘the stings of conscience’ and all that nonsense. We got that, too, from you, from the softening of your manners. And who’s the better for it? Only those who have got no conscience, for how can they be tortured by conscience when they have none? But decent people who have conscience and a sense of honor suffer for it. Reforms, when the ground has not been prepared for them, especially if they are institutions copied from abroad, do nothing but mischief! The ancient fire was better. Well, this man, who was condemned to the quadrillion kilometers, stood still, looked round and lay down across the road. ‘I won’t go, I refuse on principle!’ Take the soul of an enlightened Russian atheist and mix it with the soul of the prophet Jonah, who sulked for three days and nights in the belly of the whale, and you get the character of that thinker who lay across the road.


What did he lie on there?


Well, I suppose there was something to lie on. You are not laughing?


Bravo!


That’s the point, that he isn’t. He lay there almost a thousand years and then he got up and went on.


What an ass!


Much more than that. I haven’t got a pencil and paper or I could work it out. But he got there long ago, and that’s where the story begins.


What, he got there? But how did he get the billion years to do it?


Why, you keep thinking of our present earth! But our present earth may have been repeated a billion times. Why, it’s become extinct, been frozen; cracked, broken to bits, disintegrated into its elements, again ‘the water above the firmament,’ then again a comet, again a sun, again from the sun it becomes earth—and the same sequence may have been repeated endlessly and exactly the same to every detail, most unseemly and insufferably tedious—


Well, well, what happened when he arrived?


Why, the moment the gates of Paradise were open and he walked in, before he had been there two seconds, by his watch (though to my thinking his watch must have long dissolved into its elements on the way), he cried out that those two seconds were worth walking not a quadrillion kilometers but a quadrillion of quadrillions, raised to the quadrillionth power! In fact, he sang ‘hosannah’ and overdid it so, that some persons there of lofty ideas wouldn’t shake hands with him at first—he’d become too rapidly reactionary, they said. The Russian temperament. I repeat, it’s a legend. I give it for what it’s worth. So that’s the sort of ideas we have on such subjects even now.


I’ve caught you! That anecdote about the quadrillion years, I made up myself! I was seventeen then, I was at the high school. I made up that anecdote and told it to a schoolfellow called Korovkin, it was at Moscow.... The anecdote is so characteristic that I couldn’t have taken it from anywhere. I thought I’d forgotten it ... but I’ve unconsciously recalled it—I recalled it myself—it was not you telling it! Thousands of things are unconsciously remembered like that even when people are being taken to execution ... it’s come back to me in a dream. You are that dream! You are a dream, not a living creature!


From the vehemence with which you deny my existence, I am convinced that you believe in me.


Not in the slightest! I haven’t a hundredth part of a grain of faith in you!


But you have the thousandth of a grain. Homeopathic doses perhaps are the strongest. Confess that you have faith even to the ten‐thousandth of a grain.


Not for one minute,


Aha! There’s an admission! But I am good‐natured. I’ll come to your assistance again. Listen, it was I caught you, not you me. I told you your anecdote you’d forgotten, on purpose, so as to destroy your faith in me completely.


You are lying. The object of your visit is to convince me of your existence!


Just so. But hesitation, suspense, conflict between belief and disbelief—is sometimes such torture to a conscientious man, such as you are, that it’s better to hang oneself at once. Knowing that you are inclined to believe in me, I administered some disbelief by telling you that anecdote. I lead you to belief and disbelief by turns, and I have my motive in it. It’s the new method. As soon as you disbelieve in me completely, you’ll begin assuring me to my face that I am not a dream but a reality. I know you. Then I shall have attained my object, which is an honorable one. I shall sow in you only a tiny grain of faith and it will grow into an oak‐tree—and such an oak‐tree that, sitting on it, you will long to enter the ranks of ‘the hermits in the wilderness and the saintly women,’ for that is what you are secretly longing for. You’ll dine on locusts, you’ll wander into the wilderness to save your soul!


Then it’s for the salvation of my soul you are working, is it, you scoundrel?


One must do a good work sometimes. How ill‐humored you are!


Fool! did you ever tempt those holy men who ate locusts and prayed seventeen years in the wilderness till they were overgrown with moss?


My dear fellow, I’ve done nothing else. One forgets the whole world and all the worlds, and sticks to one such saint, because he is a very precious diamond. One such soul, you know, is sometimes worth a whole constellation. We have our system of reckoning, you know. The conquest is priceless! And some of them, on my word, are not inferior to you in culture, though you won’t believe it. They can contemplate such depths of belief and disbelief at the same moment that sometimes it really seems that they are within a hair’s‐breadth of being ‘turned upside down,’ as the actor Gorbunov says.


Well, did you get your nose pulled?


My dear fellow, observed the visitor sententiously, it’s better to get off with your nose pulled than without a nose at all. As an afflicted marquis observed not long ago (he must have been treated by a specialist) in confession to his spiritual father—a Jesuit. I was present, it was simply charming. ‘Give me back my nose!’ he said, and he beat his breast. ‘My son,’ said the priest evasively, ‘all things are accomplished in accordance with the inscrutable decrees of Providence, and what seems a misfortune sometimes leads to extraordinary, though unapparent, benefits. If stern destiny has deprived you of your nose, it’s to your advantage that no one can ever pull you by your nose.’ ‘Holy father, that’s no comfort,’ cried the despairing marquis. ‘I’d be delighted to have my nose pulled every day of my life, if it were only in its proper place.’ ‘My son,’ sighs the priest, ‘you can’t expect every blessing at once. This is murmuring against Providence, who even in this has not forgotten you, for if you repine as you repined just now, declaring you’d be glad to have your nose pulled for the rest of your life, your desire has already been fulfilled indirectly, for when you lost your nose, you were led by the nose.’


Fool, how stupid!


My dear friend, I only wanted to amuse you. But I swear that’s the genuine Jesuit casuistry and I swear that it all happened word for word as I’ve told you. It happened lately and gave me a great deal of trouble. The unhappy young man shot himself that very night when he got home. I was by his side till the very last moment. Those Jesuit confessionals are really my most delightful diversion at melancholy moments. Here’s another incident that happened only the other day. A little blonde Norman girl of twenty—a buxom, unsophisticated beauty that would make your mouth water—comes to an old priest. She bends down and whispers her sin into the grating. ‘Why, my daughter, have you fallen again already?’ cries the priest. ‘O Sancta Maria, what do I hear! Not the same man this time, how long is this going on? Aren’t you ashamed!’ ‘Ah, mon père,’ answers the sinner with tears of penitence, ‘ça lui fait tant de plaisir, et à moi si peu de peine!’ Fancy, such an answer! I drew back. It was the cry of nature, better than innocence itself, if you like. I absolved her sin on the spot and was turning to go, but I was forced to turn back. I heard the priest at the grating making an appointment with her for the evening—though he was an old man hard as flint, he fell in an instant! It was nature, the truth of nature asserted its rights! What, you are turning up your nose again? Angry again? I don’t know how to please you—


Leave me alone, you are beating on my brain like a haunting nightmare,


I repeat, moderate your expectations, don’t demand of me ‘everything great and noble’ and you’ll see how well we shall get on,


You are really angry with me for not having appeared to you in a red glow, with thunder and lightning, with scorched wings, but have shown myself in such a modest form. You are wounded, in the first place, in your esthetic feelings, and, secondly, in your pride. How could such a vulgar devil visit such a great man as you! Yes, there is that romantic strain in you, that was so derided by Byelinsky. I can’t help it, young man, as I got ready to come to you I did think as a joke of appearing in the figure of a retired general who had served in the Caucasus, with a star of the Lion and the Sun on my coat. But I was positively afraid of doing it, for you’d have thrashed me for daring to pin the Lion and the Sun on my coat, instead of, at least, the Polar Star or the Sirius. And you keep on saying I am stupid, but, mercy on us! I make no claim to be equal to you in intelligence. Mephistopheles declared to Faust that he desired evil, but did only good. Well, he can say what he likes, it’s quite the opposite with me. I am perhaps the one man in all creation who loves the truth and genuinely desires good. I was there when the Word, Who died on the Cross, rose up into heaven bearing on His bosom the soul of the penitent thief. I heard the glad shrieks of the cherubim singing and shouting hosannah and the thunderous rapture of the seraphim which shook heaven and all creation, and I swear to you by all that’s sacred, I longed to join the choir and shout hosannah with them all. The word had almost escaped me, had almost broken from my lips ... you know how susceptible and esthetically impressionable I am. But common sense—oh, a most unhappy trait in my character—kept me in due bounds and I let the moment pass! For what would have happened, I reflected, what would have happened after my hosannah? Everything on earth would have been extinguished at once and no events could have occurred. And so, solely from a sense of duty and my social position, I was forced to suppress the good moment and to stick to my nasty task. Somebody takes all the credit of what’s good for Himself, and nothing but nastiness is left for me. But I don’t envy the honor of a life of idle imposture, I am not ambitious. Why am I, of all creatures in the world, doomed to be cursed by all decent people and even to be kicked, for if I put on mortal form I am bound to take such consequences sometimes? I know, of course, there’s a secret in it, but they won’t tell me the secret for anything, for then perhaps, seeing the meaning of it, I might bawl hosannah, and the indispensable minus would disappear at once, and good sense would reign supreme throughout the whole world. And that, of course, would mean the end of everything, even of magazines and newspapers, for who would take them in? I know that at the end of all things I shall be reconciled. I, too, shall walk my quadrillion and learn the secret. But till that happens I am sulking and fulfill my destiny though it’s against the grain—that is, to ruin thousands for the sake of saving one. How many souls have had to be ruined and how many honorable reputations destroyed for the sake of that one righteous man, Job, over whom they made such a fool of me in old days! Yes, till the secret is revealed, there are two sorts of truths for me—one, their truth, yonder, which I know nothing about so far, and the other my own. And there’s no knowing which will turn out the better.... Are you asleep? I might well be. All my stupid ideas—outgrown, thrashed out long ago, and flung aside like a dead carcass—you present to me as something new!


There’s no pleasing you! And I thought I should fascinate you by my literary style. That hosannah in the skies really wasn’t bad, was it? And then that ironical tone à la Heine, eh?


No, I was never such a flunkey! How then could my soul beget a flunkey like you?


My dear fellow, I know a most charming and attractive young Russian gentleman, a young thinker and a great lover of literature and art, the author of a promising poem entitled The Grand Inquisitor. I was only thinking of him!


I forbid you to speak of The Grand Inquisitor,


And the Geological Cataclysm. Do you remember? That was a poem, now!


Hold your tongue, or I’ll kill you!


You’ll kill me? No, excuse me, I will speak. I came to treat myself to that pleasure. Oh, I love the dreams of my ardent young friends, quivering with eagerness for life! ‘There are new men,’ you decided last spring, when you were meaning to come here, ‘they propose to destroy everything and begin with cannibalism. Stupid fellows! they didn’t ask my advice! I maintain that nothing need be destroyed, that we only need to destroy the idea of God in man, that’s how we have to set to work. It’s that, that we must begin with. Oh, blind race of men who have no understanding! As soon as men have all of them denied God—and I believe that period, analogous with geological periods, will come to pass—the old conception of the universe will fall of itself without cannibalism, and, what’s more, the old morality, and everything will begin anew. Men will unite to take from life all it can give, but only for joy and happiness in the present world. Man will be lifted up with a spirit of divine Titanic pride and the man‐ god will appear. From hour to hour extending his conquest of nature infinitely by his will and his science, man will feel such lofty joy from hour to hour in doing it that it will make up for all his old dreams of the joys of heaven. Every one will know that he is mortal and will accept death proudly and serenely like a god. His pride will teach him that it’s useless for him to repine at life’s being a moment, and he will love his brother without need of reward. Love will be sufficient only for a moment of life, but the very consciousness of its momentariness will intensify its fire, which now is dissipated in dreams of eternal love beyond the grave’... and so on and so on in the same style. Charming!


The question now is, my young thinker reflected, is it possible that such a period will ever come? If it does, everything is determined and humanity is settled for ever. But as, owing to man’s inveterate stupidity, this cannot come about for at least a thousand years, every one who recognizes the truth even now may legitimately order his life as he pleases, on the new principles. In that sense, ‘all things are lawful’ for him. What’s more, even if this period never comes to pass, since there is anyway no God and no immortality, the new man may well become the man‐god, even if he is the only one in the whole world, and promoted to his new position, he may lightheartedly overstep all the barriers of the old morality of the old slave‐man, if necessary. There is no law for God. Where God stands, the place is holy. Where I stand will be at once the foremost place ... ‘all things are lawful’ and that’s the end of it! That’s all very charming; but if you want to swindle why do you want a moral sanction for doing it? But that’s our modern Russian all over. He can’t bring himself to swindle without a moral sanction. He is so in love with truth—


Ah, mais c’est bête enfin,


He remembers Luther’s inkstand! He takes me for a dream and throws glasses at a dream! It’s like a woman! I suspected you were only pretending to stop up your ears.


Do you hear? You’d better open,


it’s your brother Alyosha with the most interesting and surprising news, I’ll be bound!


Be silent, deceiver, I knew it was Alyosha, I felt he was coming, and of course he has not come for nothing; of course he brings ‘news,’


Open, open to him. There’s a snowstorm and he is your brother. Monsieur sait‐il le temps qu’il fait? C’est à ne pas mettre un chien dehors.


It was not a dream! No, I swear it was not a dream, it all happened just now! Alyosha, I told you not to come. In two words, what do you want? In two words, do you hear?


An hour ago Smerdyakov hanged himself,


Brother, you must be terribly ill. You look and don’t seem to understand what I tell you. It’s a good thing you came. I knew he had hanged himself.


From whom?


I don’t know. But I knew. Did I know? Yes, he told me. He told me so just now.


Who is he?


He’s slipped away. He was afraid of you, of a dove like you. You are a ‘pure cherub.’ Dmitri calls you a cherub. Cherub!... the thunderous rapture of the seraphim. What are seraphim? Perhaps a whole constellation. But perhaps that constellation is only a chemical molecule. There’s a constellation of the Lion and the Sun. Don’t you know it?


Brother, sit down. For goodness’ sake, sit down on the sofa! You are delirious; put your head on the pillow, that’s right. Would you like a wet towel on your head? Perhaps it will do you good.


Give me the towel: it’s here on the chair. I just threw it down there.


It’s not here. Don’t worry yourself. I know where it is—here,


Stay an hour ago I took that new towel from there and wetted it. I wrapped it round my head and threw it down here ... How is it it’s dry? There was no other.


You put that towel on your head?


Yes, and walked up and down the room an hour ago ... Why have the candles burnt down so? What’s the time?


Nearly twelve.


No, no, no! It was not a dream. He was here; he was sitting here, on that sofa. When you knocked at the window, I threw a glass at him ... this one. Wait a minute. I was asleep last time, but this dream was not a dream. It has happened before. I have dreams now, Alyosha ... yet they are not dreams, but reality. I walk about, talk and see ... though I am asleep. But he was sitting here, on that sofa there.... He is frightfully stupid, Alyosha, frightfully stupid.


Who is stupid? Of whom are you talking, brother?


The devil! He’s taken to visiting me. He’s been here twice, almost three times. He taunted me with being angry at his being a simple devil and not Satan, with scorched wings, in thunder and lightning. But he is not Satan: that’s a lie. He is an impostor. He is simply a devil—a paltry, trivial devil. He goes to the baths. If you undressed him, you’d be sure to find he had a tail, long and smooth like a Danish dog’s, a yard long, dun color.... Alyosha, you are cold. You’ve been in the snow. Would you like some tea? What? Is it cold? Shall I tell her to bring some? C’est à ne pas mettre un chien dehors.... What were you telling me just now about Lise? I like Lise. I said something nasty about her. It was a lie. I like her ... I am afraid for Katya to‐morrow. I am more afraid of her than of anything. On account of the future. She will cast me off to‐morrow and trample me under foot. She thinks that I am ruining Mitya from jealousy on her account! Yes, she thinks that! But it’s not so. To‐morrow the cross, but not the gallows. No, I shan’t hang myself. Do you know, I can never commit suicide, Alyosha. Is it because I am base? I am not a coward. Is it from love of life? How did I know that Smerdyakov had hanged himself? Yes, it was he told me so.


And you are quite convinced that there has been some one here?


Yes, on that sofa in the corner. You would have driven him away. You did drive him away: he disappeared when you arrived. I love your face, Alyosha. Did you know that I loved your face? And he is myself, Alyosha. All that’s base in me, all that’s mean and contemptible. Yes, I am a romantic. He guessed it ... though it’s a libel. He is frightfully stupid; but it’s to his advantage. He has cunning, animal cunning—he knew how to infuriate me. He kept taunting me with believing in him, and that was how he made me listen to him. He fooled me like a boy. He told me a great deal that was true about myself, though. I should never have owned it to myself. Do you know, Alyosha. I should be awfully glad to think that it was he and not I.


He has worn you out,


He’s been teasing me. And you know he does it so cleverly, so cleverly. ‘Conscience! What is conscience? I make it up for myself. Why am I tormented by it? From habit. From the universal habit of mankind for the seven thousand years. So let us give it up, and we shall be gods.’ It was he said that, it was he said that!


And not you, not you? Never mind him, anyway; have done with him and forget him. And let him take with him all that you curse now, and never come back!


Yes, but he is spiteful. He laughed at me. He was impudent, Alyosha. But he was unfair to me, unfair to me about lots of things. He told lies about me to my face. ‘Oh, you are going to perform an act of heroic virtue: to confess you murdered your father, that the valet murdered him at your instigation.’


Brother, restrain yourself. It was not you murdered him. It’s not true!


That’s what he says, he, and he knows it. ‘You are going to perform an act of heroic virtue, and you don’t believe in virtue; that’s what tortures you and makes you angry, that’s why you are so vindictive.’ He said that to me about me and he knows what he says.


It’s you say that, not he, and you say it because you are ill and delirious, tormenting yourself.


No, he knows what he says. ‘You are going from pride,’ he says. ‘You’ll stand up and say it was I killed him, and why do you writhe with horror? You are lying! I despise your opinion, I despise your horror!’ He said that about me. ‘And do you know you are longing for their praise—“he is a criminal, a murderer, but what a generous soul; he wanted to save his brother and he confessed.” ’ That’s a lie, Alyosha! I don’t want the low rabble to praise me, I swear I don’t! That’s a lie! That’s why I threw the glass at him and it broke against his ugly face.


Brother, calm yourself, stop!


Yes, he knows how to torment one. He’s cruel. I had an inkling from the first what he came for. ‘Granting that you go through pride, still you had a hope that Smerdyakov might be convicted and sent to Siberia, and Mitya would be acquitted, while you would only be punished with moral condemnation’ (‘Do you hear?’ he laughed then)—‘and some people will praise you. But now Smerdyakov’s dead, he has hanged himself, and who’ll believe you alone? But yet you are going, you are going, you’ll go all the same, you’ve decided to go. What are you going for now?’ That’s awful, Alyosha. I can’t endure such questions. Who dare ask me such questions?


Brother, how could he have told you of Smerdyakov’s death before I came, when no one knew of it and there was no time for any one to know of it?


He told me. It was all he did talk about, if you come to that. ‘And it would be all right if you believed in virtue,’ he said. ‘No matter if they disbelieve you, you are going for the sake of principle. But you are a little pig like Fyodor Pavlovitch, and what do you want with virtue? Why do you want to go meddling if your sacrifice is of no use to any one? Because you don’t know yourself why you go! Oh, you’d give a great deal to know yourself why you go! And can you have made up your mind? You’ve not made up your mind. You’ll sit all night deliberating whether to go or not. But you will go; you know you’ll go. You know that whichever way you decide, the decision does not depend on you. You’ll go because you won’t dare not to go. Why won’t you dare? You must guess that for yourself. That’s a riddle for you!’ He got up and went away. You came and he went. He called me a coward, Alyosha! Le mot de l’énigme is that I am a coward. ‘It is not for such eagles to soar above the earth.’ It was he added that—he! And Smerdyakov said the same. He must be killed! Katya despises me. I’ve seen that for a month past. Even Lise will begin to despise me! ‘You are going in order to be praised.’ That’s a brutal lie! And you despise me too, Alyosha. Now I am going to hate you again! And I hate the monster, too! I hate the monster! I don’t want to save the monster. Let him rot in Siberia! He’s begun singing a hymn! Oh, to‐morrow I’ll go, stand before them, and spit in their faces! I seem to be sleeping awake.... I walk, I speak, I see, but I am asleep.


Yes, yes, if Smerdyakov is dead, no one will believe Ivan’s evidence; but he will go and give it. God will conquer! He will either rise up in the light of truth, or ... he’ll perish in hate, revenging on himself and on every one his having served the cause he does not believe in,


Can such a delicate, complex and psychological case be submitted for decision to petty officials and even peasants? What can an official, still more a peasant, understand in such an affair?


what men like that could possibly make of such a case?


He was a dog and died like a dog! I won’t again, I won’t. It escaped me. I won’t do it again.


Prisoner, do you plead guilty?


I plead guilty to drunkenness and dissipation, to idleness and debauchery. I meant to become an honest man for good, just at the moment when I was struck down by fate. But I am not guilty of the death of that old man, my enemy and my father. No, no, I am not guilty of robbing him! I could not be. Dmitri Karamazov is a scoundrel, but not a thief.


He is guilty, but he will be acquitted, from motives of humanity, in accordance with the new ideas, the new sentiments that had come into fashion,


hadn’t brought up his children as he should. He’d have been devoured by lice when he was little, if it hadn’t been for me. It wasn’t fair either of the father to wrong his son over his mother’s property, which was by right his. unfair, to have paid him several thousand roubles more.


Have you ever seen it, you, who were for so many years in close attendance on your master?


till everybody was talking about it.


Now, with your permission I’ll ask you a question. Of what was that balsam, or, rather, decoction, made, which, as we learn from the preliminary inquiry, you used on that evening to rub your lumbago, in the hope of curing it?


There was saffron in it.


Nothing but saffron? Don’t you remember any other ingredient?


There was milfoil in it, too.


And pepper perhaps?


Yes, there was pepper, too.


Etcetera. And all dissolved in vodka?


In spirit.


You see, in spirit. After rubbing your back, I believe, you drank what was left in the bottle with a certain pious prayer, only known to your wife?


I did.


Did you drink much? Roughly speaking, a wine‐glass or two?


It might have been a tumbler‐full.


A tumbler‐full, even. Perhaps a tumbler and a half? A glass and a half of neat spirit—is not at all bad, don’t you think? You might see the gates of heaven open, not only the door into the garden? Do you know for a fact, whether you were awake or not when you saw the open door?


I was on my legs.


That’s not a proof that you were awake. Could you have answered at that moment, if any one had asked you a question—for instance, what year it is?


I don’t know.


And what year is it, Anno Domini, do you know? But perhaps you can tell me how many fingers you have on your hands?


I am a servant. If my betters think fit to make game of me, it is my duty to suffer it.


Except about the door, all he has said is true,


For combing the lice off me, I thank him; for forgiving my blows, I thank him. The old man has been honest all his life and as faithful to my father as seven hundred poodles.


Prisoner, be careful in your language,


I am not a poodle,


All right, it’s I am a poodle myself. If it’s an insult, I take it to myself and I beg his pardon. I was a beast and cruel to him. I was cruel to Æsop too.


What Æsop?


Oh, Pierrot ... my father, Fyodor Pavlovitch.


You are injuring yourself in the opinion of your judges.


Who could tell which of them was to blame, and which was in debt to the other, with their crazy Karamazov way of muddling things so that no one could make head or tail of it?