“But what you have just said,” Nikolai Parfenovich was looking at him in surprise, “that is, that until the very last hour you still thought of going to Miss Verkhovtsev to ask for this sum ... I assure you that this evidence is very important for us, Dmitri Fyodorovich, this whole story, that is ... and especially important for you, especially for you.”

“Have mercy, gentlemen,” Mitya clasped his hands, “at least leave that out, for shame! I have, so to speak, torn my soul asunder before you, and you take advantage of it and go rummaging with your fingers in both halves of the torn spot ... Oh, God!”

He covered his face with his hands in despair.

“Do not upset yourself, Dmitri Fyodorovich,” the prosecutor concluded, “everything that has been written down here will be read over to you afterwards, and whatever you disagree with will be changed as you say, but now I shall repeat one little question for the third time: is it possible that indeed no one, really no one at all, heard from you about this money you sewed into the amulet? I must say I find that almost impossible to imagine.”

“No one, no one, I told you, or else you’ve understood nothing! Leave me alone!”

“As you wish, sir, the matter will have to be clarified, but there is still time enough for that, yet meanwhile consider: we have perhaps dozens of testimonies that precisely you yourself were spreading and even shouted everywhere about the three thousand you had spent, three thousand and not fifteen hundred, and now, too, with the appearance of yesterday’s money, you also let many people understand that once again you had brought three thousand with you...”

“Not dozens, you’ve got hundreds of testimonies, two hundred testimonies, two hundred people heard it, a thousand heard it!” Mitya exclaimed.

“Well, so you see, sir, everyone says it. Does the word everyone mean anything?”

“It means nothing, I lied, and everyone started lying after me.”

“And what need did you have to ‘lie,’ as you put it?”

“Devil knows. Maybe in order to boast ... well ... about squandering so much money ... Or maybe in order to forget about the money I had sewn up ... yes, that’s exactly why ... ah, the devil ... how many times must you ask me? So I lied, and that’s it, I lied once and then I didn’t want to correct it. Why does a man lie sometimes?”

“That is very difficult to say, Dmitri Fyodorovich, why a man lies,” the prosecutor said imposingly. “Tell me, however: this amulet, as you call it, that you wore on your neck—was it big?”

“No, not big.”

“What size was it, for instance?” “Fold a hundred-rouble bill in half—that’s the size for you.”

“Hadn’t you better show us the scraps of it? You must have them somewhere.”

“Ah, the devil ... what foolishness ... I don’t know where they are.”

“I beg your pardon, but where and when did you take it off your neck? According to your own testimony, you did not stop at home.”

“When I left Fenya and was going to Perkhotin’s, on the way I tore the money off my neck and took it out.”

“In the dark?”

“Should I have had a candle? I did it with my fingers in a second.”

“Without scissors, in the street?”

“In the square, I think. And why scissors? It was a wom-out rag, it tore at once.”

“What did you do with it then?”

“I dropped it right there.”

“Where, exactly?”

“In the square, in the square somewhere. Devil knows where in the square! What do you need that for?”

“It is extremely important, Dmitri Fyodorovich: material evidence in your favor, why can’t you understand that? And who helped you to sew it up a month ago?”

“No one did. I sewed it myself.”

“You know how to sew?”

“A soldier has to know how to sew. It didn’t take any special skill.”

“And where did you get the material, the rag, that is, into which you sewed it?”

“Are you joking?”

“By no means, Dmitri Fyodorovich. This is no time for joking.”

“I don’t remember where I got the rag, I got it somewhere.”

“I should think one would remember that.”

“By God, I don’t remember, maybe I tore some piece of my linen.”

“That is very interesting: the piece might be found tomorrow in your lodgings, perhaps a shirt with a bit torn off of it. What sort of rag was it, cotton or linen?”

“Devil knows what it was. Wait... I think I didn’t tear it off anything. It was calico ... I think I sewed it up in my landlady’s bonnet.”

“Your landlady’s bonnet?”

“Yes, I filched it from her.”

“What’s that? Filched?” “You see, I remember I did once filch a bonnet for a rag, or maybe to wipe a pen. I took it without asking, because it wasn’t good for anything, I had the scraps lying about, and then this fifteen hundred, so I went and sewed it ... I think I sewed it precisely in those rags. Worthless old calico, washed a thousand times.”

“And you remember that firmly now?” “I don’t know how firmly. I think it was a bonnet. But to hell with it!”

“In that case your landlady might at least remember finding it missing? “

“Not at all, she never missed it. It was an old rag, I tell you, an old rag, not worth a kopeck.”

“And the needle, where did you get the needle and thread?”

“I quit, I won’t go on! Enough!” Mitya finally got angry.

“Then, too, it’s strange that you should forget so completely just where you dropped this ... amulet in the square.”

“So, order them to sweep the square tomorrow, maybe you’ll find it,” Mitya smirked. “Enough, gentlemen, enough,” he finished in a weary voice. “I see very well that you don’t believe me! Not a word, not a bit! It’s my fault, not yours, I shouldn’t have stuck my neck out. Why, why did I defile myself by confessing my secret! And you think it’s funny, I can see by your eyes. You drove me to it, prosecutor! Sing your hymn, if you can ... Damn you, tormentors!”

He bent his head and covered his face with his hands. The prosecutor and the district attorney were silent. After a moment, he raised his head and looked at them somehow vacantly. His face expressed an already complete, already irreversible despair, and he, somehow gently, fell silent, sat, and seemed hardly aware of himself. Meanwhile they had to finish their business: it was urgent that they move on to the interrogation of the witnesses. It was already eight o’clock in the morning. The candles had long been extinguished. Mikhail Makarovich and Kalganov, who kept coming in and out of the room during the interrogation, now both went out. The prosecutor and the district attorney also looked extremely tired. The morning brought bad weather, the sky was all overcast and it was pouring rain. Mitya gazed vacantly at the windows.

“May I look out?” he suddenly asked Nikolai Parfenovich.

“Oh, as much as you like,” the latter replied.

Mitya rose and went over to the window. Rain was lashing the small greenish windowpanes. Just under the window a muddy road could be seen, and further off, in the rainy dimness, rows of black, poor, unsightly cottages, which seemed to have turned even blacker and poorer in the rain. Mitya remembered “golden-haired Phoebus” and how he had wanted to shoot himself at his first ray. “It might be better on a morning like this,” he grinned, and, suddenly, with a downward wave of his hand, turned to his “tormentors.”

“Gentlemen!” he exclaimed, “I’m lost, I can see that. But she? Tell me about her, I beg you, can it be that she, too, will be lost with me? She’s innocent, she was out of her mind when she shouted last night about being ‘guilty of everything.’ She is guilty of nothing, nothing! All this night, sitting with you, I’ve been grieving ... Won’t you, can’t you tell me what you’re going to do with her now?”

“You can be decidedly reassured in that regard, Dmitri Fyodorovich,” the prosecutor replied at once, and with obvious haste. “So far we have no significant motives for troubling in any way the person in whom you are so interested. It will turn out the same, I hope, as the case develops further ... On the contrary, for our part we shall do everything possible in that sense. Be completely reassured.”