“I understand, I understood and appreciated it, and I appreciate still more your present kindness to me, which is unprecedented, worthy of the noblest souls. We are three noble men come together here, and let everything with us be on the footing of mutual trust between educated and worldly men, bound by nobility and honor. In any case, allow me to look upon you as my best friends in this moment of my life, in this moment when my honor is humiliated! That’s no offense to you, is it, gentlemen?”

“On the contrary, you’ve expressed it all quite beautifully, Dmitri Fyodorovich,” Nikolai Parfenovich gravely and approvingly agreed.

“And away with little details, gentlemen, with all these pettifogging details,” Mitya delightedly exclaimed, “otherwise the devil knows what will come of it, isn’t that so?”

“I will follow your sensible advice completely,” the prosecutor suddenly mixed in, addressing Mitya. “However, I still do not withdraw my question. It is all too essentially necessary for us to know why precisely you needed such an amount—that is, precisely three thousand.” “Why I needed it? Well, for this and that ... well, to repay a debt.”

“To whom, precisely?”

“That I positively refuse to tell you, gentlemen! You see, it’s not that I cannot tell you, or don’t dare, or am afraid, because it’s all a paltry matter and perfectly trifling, no, but I won’t tell you on principle: it’s my private life, and I will not allow you to invade my private life. That is my principle. Your question is irrelevant to the case, and whatever is irrelevant to the case is my private life! I wanted to repay a debt, a debt of honor, but to whom I won’t say.”

“Allow us to write that down,” said the prosecutor.

“As you wish. Write down this: that I just won’t say. Write, gentlemen, that I would even consider it dishonorable to say. You’ve got lots of time for writing, haven’t you?”

“Allow me, dear sir, to caution you and remind you once more, in case you are still unaware of it,” the prosecutor said with particular and rather stern impressiveness, “that you have every right not to answer the questions that are put to you now, and we, on the contrary, have no right to extort answers from you, if you decline to answer for one reason or another. That is a matter of your personal consideration. On the other hand, in such a situation, it is our business to point out to you and explain the full extent of the harm you will be doing yourself by refusing to give this or that evidence. At which point I ask you to continue.”

“Gentlemen, I’m not angry ... I ... ,” Mitya started mumbling, somewhat taken aback by this reprimand, “you see, gentlemen, this Samsonov to whom I went then ...”

We shall not, of course, reproduce his detailed account of what is already known to the reader. The narrator was impatient to tell everything in the smallest particulars, and at the same time to get through it quickly. But his evidence was being written down as he gave it, and he therefore had necessarily to be stopped. Dmitri Fyodorovich objected but submitted, was angry, but so far good-naturedly. True, from time to time he cried out, “Gentlemen, this would exasperate the Lord God himself!” or “Gentlemen, do you know you’re irritating me for nothing?” but despite his exclamations, he still preserved his friendly and expansive mood. Thus he told them how Samsonov had “hoodwinked” him two days before. (He now realized fully that he had been hoodwinked then.) The sale of the watch for six roubles in order to get money for the road, which was still completely unknown to the district attorney and the prosecutor, at once aroused their greatest interest, and, to Mitya’s boundless indignation, they found it necessary to record this fact in detail, seeing in it a second confirmation of the circumstance that even a day before he had been almost without a kopeck. Little by little Mitya was becoming gloomy. Then, having described his trip to Lyagavy, the night spent in the fume-poisoned hut, and so on, he brought his story as far as his return to town, where he began on his own, without being specially asked, to describe in detail his jealous torments over Grushenka. He was listened to silently and attentively; they particularly went into the circumstance of his having long ago set up his lookout for Grushenka going to Fyodor Pavlovich in Maria Kondratievna’s backyard, and of Smerdyakov’s bringing him information: this was much noticed and written down. Of his jealousy he spoke ardently and extensively, and though inwardly ashamed at displaying his most intimate feelings, so to speak, “for general disgrace,” he obviously tried to overcome his shame for the sake of being truthful. The indifferent sternness of the district attorney’s and, especially, the prosecutor’s eyes, which they kept fixed on him during his account, disconcerted him in the end rather strongly: “This boy, Nikolai Parfenovich, with whom I exchanged some silly remarks about women only a few days ago, and this sickly prosecutor are not worthy of my telling them this,” flashed sadly through his mind. “Oh, shame! Be patient, humble, hold thy peace,’”^[273] he concluded his thoughts with this line of verse, but still collected himself again in order to go on. Having come to the part about Madame Khokhlakov, he even brightened up again, and was even about to tell a certain recent anecdote, unrelated to the case, concerning the good lady, but the district attorney stopped him and politely suggested that they pass on “to more essential things.” Finally, having described his despair and told them of that moment when, as he walked out of Madame Khokhlakov’s, he had even had the thought of “quickly putting a knife into someone, just to get the three thousand,” he was stopped again, and it was recorded that “he wanted to put a knife into someone.” Mitya let them write it down without protest. Finally he came to the point in the story when he suddenly found out that Grushenka had deceived him and left Samsonov’s just after he brought her there, though she had told him she would stay until midnight. “If I didn’t kill this Fenya right then, gentlemen, it was only because I had no time,” suddenly escaped him at this place in the story. And this, too, was carefully written down. Mitya waited gloomily and was beginning to tell how he ran to his; father’s garden, when the district attorney suddenly stopped him, and, opening his large briefcase, which lay beside him on the sofa, took out of it a brass pestle.

“Are you familiar with this object?” he showed it to Mitya.

“Ah, yes!” Mitya grinned gloomily, “indeed I am! Let me see it ... Or don’t, devil take it!” “You forgot to mention it,” the district attorney observed.

“Ah, the devil! I wouldn’t hide it from you, we certainly couldn’t get along without it, don’t you agree? It just escaped my memory.”

“Be so good, then, as to tell us in detail how you came to arm yourself with it.”

“I’ll be so good, if you wish, gentlemen.”

And Mitya told how he took the pestle and ran.

“But what purpose did you have in mind in arming yourself with such an implement?”

“What purpose? No purpose! I just grabbed it and ran.”

“But why, if there was no purpose?”

Mitya was seething with vexation. He looked fixedly at the “boy” and grinned gloomily and maliciously. The thing was that he felt more and more ashamed at having just told “such people” the story of his jealousy, so sincerely and with such effusion.

“I spit on the pestle,” suddenly escaped him.

“Even so, sir.”

“So I grabbed it to keep off the dogs. Or because it was dark ... Or just in case.”

“And have you always been in the habit of taking some weapon with you when going out at night, since you are so afraid of the dark?”

“Agh, the devil, pah! Gentlemen, it’s literally impossible to talk to you!” Mitya cried out in the utmost annoyance, and turning to the clerk, all red with anger, with a sort of frenzied note in his voice, quickly said to him: