“Take this down right now ... right now ... ‘that I grabbed the pestle in order to run and kill my father, Fyodor Pavlovich ... by hitting him on the head’! Well, are you content now, gentlemen? Does that ease your hearts?” he said, staring defiantly at the prosecutor and the district attorney.

“We realize only too well that you have given such evidence just now because you are annoyed with us and vexed by the questions we put to you, which you regard as petty, and which in essence are quite essential,” the prosecutor answered him drily.

“But for pity’s sake, gentlemen! So I took the pestle ... So, what does one pick things up for in such cases? I don’t know. I snatched it and ran. That’s all. Shame on you, gentlemen—passons, or I swear I won’t say anything more!”

He leaned his elbow on the table and propped his head in his hand. He was sitting sideways to them, looking at the wall, and trying to overcome the bad feeling inside him. In fact, he really had a terrible urge to stand up and declare that he was not going to say another word, “even if you should take me out and hang me.” “You see, gentlemen,” he suddenly spoke, overcoming himself with difficulty, “you see. I’m listening to you and imagining ... You see, sometimes I dream a dream in my sleep ... one particular dream, and I often dream it, it keeps repeating itself, that someone is chasing me, someone I’m terribly afraid of is chasing me in the darkness, at night, looking for me, and I’m hiding from him somewhere behind a door or a wardrobe, hiding in a humiliating way, and moreover he knows perfectly well where I’m hiding, but he seems to pretend not to know where I am on purpose, in order to torment me longer, in order to revel in my fear ... That’s what you are doing now! It’s just the same!”

“Is that the sort of dreams you have?” the prosecutor inquired.

“Yes, I have such dreams ... Why, do you want to write it down?” Mitya grinned crookedly.

“No, sir, I do not want to write it down, but still you do have curious dreams.”

“This time it’s not a dream! Realism, gentlemen, the realism of actual life! I’m the wolf, you’re the hunters—so hunt the wolf down.”

“You shouldn’t make such comparisons ... ,” Nikolai Parfenovich began very gently.

“Why shouldn’t I, gentlemen, why shouldn’t I!” Mitya boiled up again, though he had apparently unburdened his soul with this outburst of sudden anger and was growing kinder again with every word. “You may disbelieve a criminal or a prisoner in the dock whom you’re tormenting with your questions, but to disbelieve the noblest man, gentlemen, the noblest impulses of the soul (I cry it boldly!)—no! that you cannot do ... you even have no right to ... but—

. . . heart, hold thy peace, Be patient, humble, hold thy peace!

Well, shall I go on?” he broke off gloomily.

“Of course, if you’d be so good,” replied Nikolai Parfenovich.

Chapter 5: The Third Torment

Though Mitya began speaking sternly, he apparently was trying all the more not to forget or skip over the least detail in his account. He told how he had jumped over the fence into his father’s garden, how he went up to the window, and, finally, everything that took place under the window. Clearly, precisely, as though hammering it out, he spoke of the feelings that had troubled him during those moments in the garden, when he had wanted so terribly to know whether Grushenka was with his father or not. But, strangely, this time both the prosecutor and the district attorney somehow listened with terrible reserve, looked at him drily, asked far fewer questions. Mitya could gather nothing from their faces. “They’re angry and offended,” he thought, “well, devil take them!” When he told how he finally made up his mind to give his father the signal that Grushenka had come, so that he would open the window, the prosecutor and the district attorney paid no attention to the word “signal,” as if they had no idea at all of the word’s significance here; Mitya even noticed it. When he finally came to the moment when, seeing his father leaning out of the window, hatred boiled up in him and he snatched the pestle from his pocket, he suddenly stopped as if on purpose. He sat and looked at the wall, knowing they both had their eyes glued to him.

“Well, sir,” said the district attorney, “so you snatched out the weapon and ... and what then?”

“Then? Oh, then I killed him ... smashed him on the head and split his skull. That’s your version, is it!” he suddenly flashed his eyes. All the wrath that had almost died out in him suddenly rose up in his soul with extraordinary force.

“Ours,” Nikolai Parfenovich repeated, “well, and what is yours?”

Mitya lowered his eyes and was silent for a long time.

“My version, gentlemen, my version is this,” he began softly. “Whether it was someone’s tears, or God heard my mother’s prayers, or a bright spirit kissed me at that moment, I don’t know—but the devil was overcome. I dashed away from the window and ran to the fence. . . Father got frightened. He caught sight of me then for the first time, cried out, and jumped back from the window—I remember that very well. And I ran through the garden to the fence ... it was here that Grigory caught up with me, when I was already sitting on the fence ...”

At this point he finally raised his eyes to his listeners. They seemed to be looking at him with completely untroubled attention. A sort of twinge of indignation went through Mitya’s soul.

“But I see right now you’re laughing at me, gentlemen!” he suddenly interrupted.

“Why would you draw such a conclusion?” Nikolai Parfenovich remarked.

“You don’t believe a word of it, that’s why! I quite understand that I’ve come to the main point: the old man is now lying there with his head smashed in, and I—having tragically described how I wanted to kill him and how I already snatched out the pestle—I suddenly run away from the window ... A poem! In verse! Take the good man’s word for it! Ha, ha! You are scoffers, gentlemen!”

And he swung his whole body around on the chair so hard that the chair creaked.

“And did you notice,” the prosecutor began suddenly, as if paying no attention to Mitya’s excitement, “did you notice, when you ran away from the window, whether the door to the garden, at the other end of the house, was open or not?”

“No, it was not open.”

“It was not?”

“On the contrary, it was shut. Who could have opened it? Bah, the door— wait!” he suddenly seemed to collect himself and all but jumped up. “Did you find the door open?”

“Open.”

“But who could have opened it, if you didn’t open it yourselves?” Mitya was suddenly terribly surprised.

“The door was open, and your father’s murderer undoubtedly went in through that door and, having committed the murder, went out through the same door,” the prosecutor spoke slowly and distinctly, as though hammering out each word. “It is perfectly clear to us. The murder obviously took place , in the room, and not through the window, which is positively clear from the investigation carried out, from the position of the body, and everything else. There can be no doubt of that circumstance.”

Mitya was terribly astounded.

“But that’s impossible, gentlemen!” he cried out, completely at a loss. “I ... I didn’t go in . . .I tell you positively, with exactness, that the door was shut all the while I was in the garden and when I ran out of the garden. I just stood outside the window and saw him in the window, and that’s all, that’s all ... I remember it down to the last moment. And even if I didn’t remember, I know it anyway, because the signals were known only to me and Smerdyakov, and to him, the dead man, and without the signals he wouldn’t have opened the door to anyone in the world.”