“Yes, we shall write it down,” Nikolai Parfenovich muttered.

“You shouldn’t be writing it down—about the ‘disgrace,’ I mean. I only gave you that evidence out of the goodness of my soul, but I didn’t have to do it, I gave it to you as a gift, so to speak, but you pick up every stitch. Well, write, write whatever you want,” he concluded contemptuously and with distaste. “I’m not afraid of you, and ... I’m proud before you.”

“And would you tell us what sort of disgrace it might be? “ muttered Nikolai Parfenovich.

The prosecutor winced terribly.

“No, no, c’est fini, don’t bother. There’s no need dirtying myself. I’ve already dirtied myself enough on you. You’re not worthy, you or anyone else ... Enough, gentlemen, drop it.”

This was said all too resolutely. Nikolai Parfenovich stopped insisting, but he saw at once from the glance of Ippolit Kirillovich that he had not yet lost hope.

“Could you not at least state how much money was in your hands when you came with it to Mr. Perkhotin’s—that is, exactly how many roubles?”

“I cannot state that either.” “I believe you made some statement to Mr. Perkhotin about three thousand that you supposedly got from Madame Khokhlakov?”

“Maybe I did. Enough, gentlemen, I won’t tell you how much.”

“In that case, will you kindly describe how you came here and all that you did when you came?”

“Oh, ask the local people about that. Or, no, maybe I will tell you.”

He told them, but we shall not give his story here. It was dry, brief. He did not speak at all about the raptures of his love. He did tell, however, how the resolve to shoot himself abandoned him “in the face of new facts.” He told it without giving motives, without going into details. And this time the investigators did not bother him much: it was clear that for them the main point now lay elsewhere.

“We shall check all that, we shall come back to everything when we question the witnesses, which will be done, of course, in your presence,” Nikolai Parfenovich concluded the interrogation. “And now allow me to make a request of you, that you lay out here on the table all the things you have in your possession, especially all the money you now have.”

“Money, gentlemen? By all means, I understand the need for it. I’m even surprised you didn’t ask sooner. True, I wasn’t going anywhere, I’m sitting in plain sight of everyone. Well, here it is, my money, here, count it, take it, that’s all, I think.”

He took everything out of his pockets, even the change; he pulled two twenty-kopeck pieces from the side pocket of his waistcoat. They counted the money, which came to eight hundred and thirty-six roubles and forty kopecks.

“And that’s all?” asked the district attorney.

“All.”

“You were so good as to tell us, giving your evidence just now, that you spent three hundred roubles at Plotnikov’s shop, gave ten to Perkhotin, twenty to the coachman, lost two hundred in a card game here, so then ...”

Nikolai Parfenovich totaled it all up. Mitya willingly helped. They remembered every kopeck and added it to the reckoning. Nikolai Parfenovich made a quick calculation.

“It follows that you originally had about fifteen hundred roubles, if we include this eight hundred.”

“It follows,” Mitya snapped.

“Why, then, does everyone claim there was much more?”

“Let them claim it.”

“But you also claimed it yourself.”

“I also claimed it.” “We shall still check it against the evidence of other persons who have not yet been questioned; don’t worry about your money, it will be kept in a proper place and will be at your disposal at the end of ... of what is now beginning ... if it proves, or rather if we prove, so to speak, that you have an undisputed right to it. Well, sir, and now...”

Nikolai Parfenovich suddenly got up and firmly announced to Mitya that he was “obliged and duty-bound” to conduct a most thorough and minute examination “of your clothes and everything else...”

“As you wish, gentlemen, I’ll turn all my pockets out, if you like.”

And indeed he began turning his pockets out.

“It will even be necessary for you to take off your clothes.”

“What? Undress? Pah, the devil! You can search me like this, isn’t that possible?”

“Utterly impossible, Dmitri Fyodorovich. You must take your clothes off.”

“As you will,” Mitya gloomily submitted, “only, please, not here—behind the curtains. Who will do the examining?”

“Behind the curtains, of course,” Nikolai Parfenovich inclined his head in a token of consent. His little face even wore an expression of unusual importance.

Chapter 6: The Prosecutor Catches Mitya

There began something quite unexpected and astonishing for Mitya. He could not at all have supposed, even a moment before, that anyone could treat him, Mitya Karamazov, like that! Above all there was something humiliating in it, and something “haughty and contemptuous towards him” on their part. To take off his coat would be nothing, but they asked him to undress further. And they did not merely ask, but, in fact, they ordered; he understood it perfectly. Out of pride and contempt he submitted completely, without a word. Along with Nikolai Parfenovich, the prosecutor also went behind the curtains, and there were several peasants as well, “for strength, of course,” thought Mitya, “and maybe for something else.”

“What, must I take my shirt off, too?” he asked sharply, but Nikolai Parfenovich did not answer: together with the prosecutor, he was absorbed in examining the coat, the trousers, the waistcoat, and the cap, and one could see that they were both very interested in examining them. “They don’t stand on any ceremony,” flashed through Mitya’s mind, “they don’t even observe the necessary politeness.”

“I’m asking you for the second time: must I take my shirt off or not?” he said even more sharply and irritably.

“Don’t worry, we’ll let you know,” Nikolai Parfenovich replied somehow even overbearingly. At least it seemed so to Mitya.

Meanwhile between the district attorney and the prosecutor a solicitous debate was going on in half whispers. Huge spots of blood, dry, stiff, and not softened very much yet, were found on the coat, especially on the left flap at the back. Also on the trousers. Furthermore, Nikolai Parfenovich, with his own hands, in the presence of witnesses, felt along the collar, cuffs, and all the seams of the coat and trousers with his fingers, evidently looking for something—money, of course. Above all, they did not conceal from Mitya the suspicion that he could and would have sewn money into his clothes. “As if they really were dealing with a thief, not an officer,” Mitya growled to himself. And they were telling each other their thoughts in his presence, with a frankness that verged on strangeness. For example, the clerk, who also ended up behind the curtains, fussing about and assisting, drew Nikolai Parfenovich’s attention to the cap, which was also felt over: “Do you remember Gridenko the scrivener, sir,” he remarked, “who came in the summer to pick up the wages for the whole office, and announced when he got back that he had lost the money while drunk—and where did they find it? In this same piping, in his cap, sir—the hundred-rouble bills were rolled up and sewn into the piping.” The fact about Gridenko was remembered very well by both the district attorney and the prosecutor, and therefore Mitya’s cap, too, was set aside, and it was decided that all of that would have to be seriously reexamined later, and all the clothes as well.

“I beg your pardon,” Nikolai Parfenovich suddenly cried, noticing the tucked-under right cuff of Mitya’s right shirt sleeve, all stained with blood, “I beg your pardon, sir—is that blood?”

“Blood,” snapped Mitya.

“That is, whose blood, sir ... and why is it tucked under?”