“But where did you get it?”

“From around my neck, gentlemen, I got it from around my neck, from this very neck of mine ... It was here on my neck, sewn up in a rag and hanging on my neck; for a long time, a month already, I was carrying it on my neck with shame and disgrace!”

“But who did you ... appropriate it from?”

“Were you about to say ‘steal’? Let’s not mince words now. Yes, I consider it the same as if I’d stolen it—’appropriated,’ indeed, if you wish, but in my view I stole it. And last evening I stole it altogether.”

“Last evening? But you just said it was a month ago that you ... obtained it!”

“Yes, but not from my father, not from my father, don’t worry, I stole it not from my father, but from her. Let me speak and don’t interrupt. It’s hard. You see: a month ago, Katerina Ivanovna Verkhovtsev, my former fiancée, sent for me ... Do you know her?”

“Of course, sir, good heavens!”

“I know you know her. The noblest soul, the noblest of the noble, but who has hated me for a long time, oh, a long, long time ... and rightly so, rightly so!”

“Katerina Ivanovna?” the district attorney asked in surprise. The prosecutor also stared terribly.

“Oh, do not utter her name in vain! I’m a scoundrel to bring her into it. Yes, I saw that she hated me ... long ago ... from the very first, from that time in my rooms, already then ... But enough, enough, you’re even unworthy to know of that, there’s no need at all ... All you need to know is that she sent for me a month ago, handed me three thousand to send to her sister and some other relative in Moscow (as if she couldn’t have sent it herself! ), and I ... it was precisely at that fatal moment of my life when I ... well, in a word, when I had just fallen in love with the other one, her, the present one, she’s sitting downstairs now, Grushenka ... I carried her off here, to Mokroye, and in two days here I squandered half of that cursed three thousand, that is, fifteen hundred, and the other half I kept on me. Well, so the fifteen hundred that I kept, I wore here on my neck, in place of an amulet, and yesterday I got it out and squandered it. The eight hundred roubles left are now in your hands, Nikolai Parfenovich, that’s what’s left of yesterday’s fifteen hundred.”

“I beg your pardon, but how can that be, when you squandered three thousand here a month ago, not fifteen hundred, and everyone knows it?”

“Who knows it? Who counted? Did I let anyone count it?”

“Good heavens, but you yourself told everyone that you squandered exactly three thousand then.”

“True, I said it. I said it to the whole town, and the whole town said it, and everyone thought so, and here in Mokroye everyone thought the same, that it was three thousand. Yet I only squandered fifteen hundred, not three thousand, and the other fifteen hundred I sewed into an amulet; that’s how it was, gentlemen, and that’s where yesterday’s money came from...”

“It’s almost miraculous ... ,” murmured Nikolai Parfenovich.

“Allow me to ask,” the prosecutor spoke finally, “if there is someone at least whom you informed of this circumstance ... that is, that you kept this fifteen hundred with you then, a month ago?”

“I told no one.”

“That’s strange. No one at all, can it really be?”

“No one at all. Nobody and no one.”

“But why such reticence? What moved you to make such a secret of it? Let me explain myself more precisely: you have finally told us your secret, so ‘disgraceful,’ as you say, though as a matter of fact—I mean, of course, only relatively speaking— this action—namely, that is, the appropriation of another person’s three thousand roubles, and, no doubt, only temporarily—this action, in my opinion at least, is simply a highly thoughtless action, but not so disgraceful, considering, moreover, your character ... Well, let us say it is even a highly discreditable action, I agree, but still discreditable is not disgraceful ... What I’m driving at, in fact, is that during this month many people have already guessed about Miss Verkhovtsev’s three thousand, which you have spent, even without your confession—I have heard this legend myself ... Mikhail Makarovich, for instance, has also heard it. So that, ultimately, it is almost not a legend anymore, but the gossip of the whole town. Moreover, there are signs that you yourself, if I am not mistaken, confessed it to someone or other—namely, that is, that this money came from Miss Verkhovtsev ... And therefore I am all the more surprised that until now, that is, until this very present moment, you have attached such extraordinary secrecy to this fifteen hundred, which, as you say, you set aside, even connecting this secret of yours with some kind of horror ... It is incredible that such a secret should cost you such torment in confessing it ... for you were just shouting that penal servitude would be better than confessing it...”

The prosecutor fell silent. He was flushed. He did not conceal his vexation, almost spite, and poured out all he had stored up, not even caring about the beauty of his style, that is, confusedly and almost incoherently.

“The disgrace lay not in the fifteen hundred, but in my separating that fifteen hundred from the three thousand,” Mitya spoke firmly.

“But what,” the prosecutor smiled irritably, “what precisely is disgraceful about your having chosen to set aside half of the three thousand that you had already discreditably, or, if you wish, disgracefully taken? That you appropriated the three thousand is the main thing, not how you disposed of it. Incidentally, why exactly did you dispose of it that way, I mean, set aside that half? What for, with what purpose in mind—can you explain that to us?”

“Oh, but gentlemen, it is in that purpose that the whole force lies!” Mitya exclaimed. “I set it aside out of baseness—that is, out of calculation, because calculation in this case is baseness ... And this baseness went on for a whole month!”

“Incomprehensible.”

“You surprise me. But, anyway, let me explain further; perhaps it really is incomprehensible. Try to follow me. You see, I appropriate three thousand, entrusted to my honor, I go on a spree with it, I squander it all, the next morning I go to her and say: ‘Katya, I’m sorry, I squandered your three thousand’— well, is that nice? No, it’s not nice, it’s dishonest, cowardly, I’m a beast, a man with no more self-restraint than a beast, right, am I right? But still not a thief! Not an outright thief, not outright, you’ll agree! I squandered it, but I did not steal it! Now a second, even more favorable case—follow me, or I may get confused again—I’m somehow giddy—so, the second case: I go on a spree and spend only fifteen hundred out of the three thousand—half, in other words. The next day I go to her and bring her the other half: ‘Katya, take this half back from me, a villain and a thoughtless scoundrel, because I’ve already squandered one half, therefore I’ll also squander the other, so put me out of harm’s way! ‘ Well, what am I in that case? Whatever you like, a beast, a scoundrel, but not a thief, not finally a thief, because if I were a thief, I’d have appropriated the other half as well and certainly not have brought it back. She would see at once that if he’s brought her the one half, he’ll also bring her the rest, the part he squandered, he’ll spend his life looking for it, he’ll work, but he will find it and give it back. Thus, a scoundrel, but not a thief, not a thief, anything you like, but not a thief!”

“There is some difference, I grant you,” the prosecutor smiled coldly. “But still it’s strange that you see it as such a fatal difference.”

“Yes, I see it as a fatal difference! Any man can be, and perhaps is, a scoundrel, but not any man can be a thief, only an arch-scoundrel can be that. Well, I’m not very good at these subtleties ... But still, a thief is more of a scoundrel than a scoundrel, that is my conviction. Listen: I carry the money on me for a whole month, even tomorrow I can decide to give it back, and then I’m not a scoundrel, but I can’t decide, that’s the thing, though I keep deciding every day, though I push myself every day: ‘Decide, you scoundrel, decide,’ and yet I can’t decide for a whole month, that’s the thing! Is that nice? What do you think, is it nice?”