Ivan sat scowling, leaning convulsively with both fists on his knees.

“Yes, it’s a pity I didn’t slap you in the mug,” he grinned bitterly. “I couldn’t have dragged you to the police then—who would have believed me, and what did I have to show them? But as for your mug ... ach, it’s a pity it didn’t occur to me; though beating is forbidden, I’d have made hash out of your ugly snout.”

Smerdyakov looked at him almost with delight.

“In the ordinary occasions of life,” he spoke in that complacently doctrinaire tone in which he used to argue about religion with Grigory Vasilievich and tease him while they were standing at Fyodor Pavlovich’s table, “in the ordinary occasions of life, mug-slapping is indeed forbidden by law nowadays, and everyone has stopped such beatings, sir, but in distinctive cases of life, not only among us but all over the world, be it even the most complete French republic, beatings do go on all the same, as in the time of Adam and Eve, sir, and there will be no stop to it, sir, but even then, in a distinctive case, you did not dare, sir.”

“What are you doing studying French vocables? “ Ivan nodded towards the notebook on the table. “And why shouldn’t I be studying them, sir, so as to further my education thereby, supposing that some day I myself may chance to be in those happy parts of Europe.”

“Listen, monster,” Ivan’s eyes started flashing, and he was shaking all over, “I am not afraid of your accusations, give whatever evidence you like against me, and if I haven’t beaten you to death right now, it is only because I suspect you of this crime, and I shall have you in court. I shall unmask you yet!”

“And in my opinion you’d better keep silent, sir. Because what can you tell about me, in view of my complete innocence, and who will believe you? And if you begin, then I, too, will tell everything, sir, for how could I not defend myself?”

“Do you think I’m afraid of you now?”

“Maybe in court they won’t believe all the words I was just telling you, sir, but among the public they will believe, sir, and you will be ashamed, sir.”

“So once again: ‘It’s always interesting to talk with an intelligent man’— eh?” Ivan snarled.

“Right on the mark, if I may say so, sir. So be intelligent, sir.”

Ivan Fyodorovich stood up all trembling with indignation, put his coat on, and no longer replying to Smerdyakov, not even looking at him, quickly left the cottage. The fresh evening air refreshed him. The moon was shining brightly in the sky. A terrible nightmare of thoughts and feelings seethed in his soul. “Go and denounce Smerdyakov right now? But denounce him for what: he’s innocent all the same. On the contrary, he will accuse me. Why, indeed, did I go to Chermashnya then? Why? Why?” Ivan Fyodorovich kept asking.”Yes, of course, I was expecting something, he’s right ... “And again for the hundredth time he recalled how, on that last night at his father’s, he had eavesdropped from the stairs, but this time he recalled it with such suffering that he even stopped in his tracks as if pierced through: “Yes, that is what I expected, it’s true! I wanted the murder, I precisely wanted it! Did I want the murder, did I ... ? I must kill Smerdyakov...! If I don’t dare kill Smerdyakov now, life is not worth living...!” Without going home, Ivan Fyodorovich then went straight to Katerina Ivanovna and frightened her by his appearance: he seemed insane. He told her the whole of his conversation with Smerdyakov, down to the last little detail. He could not be calmed, no matter how she talked to him; he kept pacing the room and spoke abruptly, strangely. Finally he sat down, put his elbows on the table, rested his head in both hands, and uttered a strange aphorism:

“If it was not Dmitri but Smerdyakov who killed father, then, of course, I am solidary with him, because I put him up to it. Whether I did put him up to it—I don’t know yet. But if it was he who killed him, and not Dmitri, then, of course, I am a murderer, too.” Hearing this, Katerina Ivanovna silently rose from her seat, went to her desk, opened a box standing on it, took out a piece of paper, and placed it before Ivan. This piece of paper was the same document of which Ivan Fyodorovich later told Alyosha, calling it “a mathematical proof” that brother Dmitri had killed their father. It was a letter to Katerina Ivanovna, written by Mitya in a drunken state the same evening he had met Alyosha in the fields on his way back to the monastery, after the scene in Katerina Ivanovna’s house when Grushenka had insulted her. Then, having parted with Alyosha, Mitya rushed to Grushenka; it is not known whether he saw her or not, but towards nightfall he turned up at the “Metropolis” tavern, where he got properly drunk. Once drunk, he called for pen and paper, and penned an important document against himself. It was a frenzied, verbose, and incoherent letter— precisely “drunk.” It was the same as when a drunken man comes home and begins telling his wife or someone in the house, with remarkable ardor, how he has just been insulted; what a scoundrel his insulter is; what a fine man, on the contrary, he himself is; and how he is going to show that scoundrel—and it is all so long, long, incoherent, and agitated, with pounding of fists on the table, with drunken tears. The paper they gave him for the letter in the tavern was a dirty scrap of some ordinary writing paper, of poor quality, on the back of which some bill had been written. Apparently there was not space enough for drunken verbosity, and Mitya not only filled all the margins with writing, but even wrote the last lines across the rest of the letter. The content of the letter was as follows:

Fatal Katya! Tomorrow I will get money and give you back your three thousand, and farewell, woman of great wrath, but farewell, too, my love! Let us end it! Tomorrow I’ll try to get it from all people, and if I don’t get it from people, I give you my word of honor, I will go to my father and smash his head in and take it from under his pillow, if only Ivan goes away. I may go to hard labor, but I will give you back the three thousand. And—farewell to you. I bow to you, to the ground, for I am a scoundrel before you. Forgive me. No, better not forgive, it will be easier for me and for you! Better hard labor than your love, for I love another, and you’ve found out too much

. about her today to be able to forgive. I will kill my thief. I will go away from you all, to the East, so as not to know anyone. From her as well, for you are not my only tormentor, but she is, too. Farewell!

P.S. I am writing a curse, yet I adore you! I hear it in my heart. One string

is left, and it sings. Better to tear my heart asunder! I will kill myself, but that dog first. I’ll tear the three thousand from him and throw it to you. Though I’m a scoundrel before you, I am not a thief! Wait for the three thousand. Under the dog’s mattress, with a pink ribbon. I am not a thief, but I will kill

my thief. Katya, don’t look contemptuous: Dmitri is not a thief, he is a murderer! He’s killed his father and ruined himself in order to stand up and not have to endure your pride. And not to love you. P.P.S. I kiss your feet, farewell!

P.P.P.S. Katya, pray to God they give me the money. Then there won’t be blood on me, but otherwise—blood there will be! Kill me!

Your slave and enemy, D. Karamazov.

When Ivan finished reading the “document,” he stood up, convinced. So his brother was the murderer, and not Smerdyakov. Not Smerdyakov, and therefore not he, Ivan. This letter suddenly assumed a mathematical significance in his eyes. There could be no further doubt for him now of Mitya’s guilt. Incidentally, the suspicion never occurred to Ivan that Mitya might have done the murder together with Smerdyakov; besides, it did not fit the facts. Ivan was set completely at ease. The next morning he recalled Smerdyakov and his jeers merely with contempt. A few days later he was even surprised that he could have been so painfully offended by his suspicions. He resolved to despise him and forget him. And so a month passed. He no longer made any inquiries about Smerdyakov, but a couple of times he heard in passing that he was very ill and not in his right mind. “He’ll end in madness,” the young doctor, Varvinsky, once said of him, and Ivan remembered it. During the last week of that month, Ivan himself began to feel very bad. He had already gone to consult the doctor from Moscow, invited by Katerina Ivanovna, who arrived just before the trial. And precisely at the same time his relations with Katerina Ivanovna intensified to the utmost. The two were some sort of enemies in love with each other. Katerina Ivanovna’s reversions to Mitya, momentary but strong, now drove Ivan to perfect rage. It is strange that until the very last scene at Katerina Ivanovna’s, which we have already described, when Alyosha came to her from seeing Mitya, he, Ivan, had never once heard any doubts of Mitya’s guilt from her during that whole month, despite all her “reversions” to him, which he hated so much. It was also remarkable that, though he felt he hated Mitya more and more every day, he understood at the same time that he hated him not because of Katya’s “reversions” to him, but precisely because he had killed their father! He himself felt it and was fully aware of it. Nevertheless, some ten days before the trial, he went to Mitya and offered him a plan of escape—a plan apparently already conceived long ago. Here, apart from the main reason prompting him to take such a step, the cause also lay in a certain unhealing scratch left on his heart by one little remark of Smerdyakov’s, that it was supposedly in his, Ivan’s, interest that his brother be convicted, because then the amount of the inheritance for himself and Alyosha would go up from forty to sixty thousand. He decided to sacrifice thirty thousand from his own portion to arrange for Mitya’s escape. Coming back from seeing him then, he felt terribly sad and confused: he suddenly began to feel that he wanted this escape not only so as to sacrifice the thirty thousand to it, and thus heal the scratch, but also for some other reason. “Is it because in my soul I’m just as much a murderer?” he asked himself. Something remote, but burning, stung his soul. Above all, his pride suffered greatly all that month, but of that later ... When, after his conversation with Alyosha, he stood with his hand on the bell of his apartment and suddenly decided to go to Smerdyakov, Ivan Fyodorovich was obeying some peculiar indignation that suddenly boiled up in his breast. He suddenly recalled how Katerina Ivanovna had just exclaimed to him in Alyosha’s presence: “It was you, you alone, who convinced me that he” (that is, Mitya) “is the murderer!” Recalling it, Ivan was dumbfounded: never in his life had he assured her that Mitya was the murderer, on the contrary, he had actually suspected himself before her when he came to her from Smerdyakov. On the contrary, it was she, she who had then laid the “document” before him and proved his brother’s guilt! And suddenly it was she who exclaimed: “I myself went to see Smerdyakov!” Went when? Ivan knew nothing of it. So she was not so sure of Mitya’s guilt! And what could Smerdyakov have told her? What, what precisely did he tell her? Terrible wrath began burning in his heart. He did not understand how he could have missed those words of hers half an hour ago and not shouted right then. He let go of the bell and set out for Smerdyakov. “This time maybe I’ll kill him,” he thought on the way.