The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (reading an ebook TXT) 📗

Chapter 9

The Galloping Troika. The End of the Prosecutor’s Speech

 

IPPOLIT KIRILLOVITCH had chosen the historial method of

exposition, beloved by all nervous orators, who find in its limitation

a check on their own eager rhetoric. At this moment in his speech he

went off into a dissertation on Grushenka’s “first lover,” and brought

forward several interesting thoughts on this theme.

 

“Karamazov, who had been frantically jealous of everyone,

collapsed, so to speak, and effaced himself at once before this

first lover. What makes it all the more strange is that he seems to

have hardly thought of this formidable rival. But he had looked upon

him as a remote danger, and Karamazov always lives in the present.

Possibly he regarded him as a fiction. But his wounded heart grasped

instantly that the woman had been concealing this new rival and

deceiving him, because he was anything but a fiction to her, because

he was the one hope of her life. Grasping this instantly, he

resigned himself.

 

“Gentlemen of the jury, I cannot help dwelling on this

unexpected trait in the prisoner’s character. He suddenly evinces an

irresistible desire for justice, a respect for woman and a recognition

of her right to love. And all this at the very moment when he had

stained his hands with his father’s blood for her sake! It is true

that the blood he had shed was already crying out for vengeance,

for, after having ruined his soul and his life in this world, he was

forced to ask himself at that same instant what he was and what he

could be now to her, to that being, dearer to him than his own soul,

in comparison with that former lover who had returned penitent, with

new love, to the woman he had once betrayed, with honourable offers,

with the promise of a reformed and happy life. And he, luckless man,

what could he give her now, what could he offer her?

 

“Karamazov felt all this, knew that all ways were barred to him by

his crime and that he was a criminal under sentence, and not a man

with life before him! This thought crushed him. And so he instantly

flew to one frantic plan, which, to a man of Karamazov’s character,

must have appeared the one inevitable way out of his terrible

position. That way out was suicide. He ran for the pistols he had left

in pledge with his friend Perhotin and on the way, as he ran, he

pulled out of his pocket the money, for the sake of which he had

stained his hands with his father’s gore. Oh, now he needed money more

than ever. Karamazov would die, Karamazov would shoot himself and it

should be remembered! To be sure, he was a poet and had burnt the

candle at both ends all his life. ‘To her, to her! and there, oh,

there I will give a feast to the whole world, such as never was

before, that will be remembered and talked of long after! In the midst

of shouts of wild merriment, reckless gypsy songs and dances I shall

raise the glass and drink to the woman I adore and her new-found

happiness! And then, on the spot, at her feet, I shall dash out my

brains before her and punish myself! She will remember Mitya Karamazov

sometimes, she will see how Mitya loved her, she will feel for Mitya!’

 

“Here we see in excess a love of effect, a romantic despair and

sentimentality, and the wild recklessness of the Karamazovs. Yes,

but there is something else, gentlemen of the jury, something that

cries out in the soul, throbs incessantly in the mind, and poisons the

heart unto death-that something is conscience, gentlemen of the jury,

its judgment, its terrible torments! The pistol will settle

everything, the pistol is the only way out! But beyond-I don’t know

whether Karamazov wondered at that moment ‘What lies beyond,’

whether Karamazov could, like Hamlet, wonder ‘What lies beyond.’ No,

gentlemen of the jury, they have their Hamlets, but we still have

our Karamazovs!”

 

Here Ippolit Kirillovitch drew a minute picture of Mitya’s

preparations, the scene at Perhotin’s, at the shop, with the

drivers. He quoted numerous words and actions, confirmed by witnesses,

and the picture made a terrible impression on the audience. The

guilt of this harassed and desperate man stood out clear and

convincing, when the facts were brought together.

 

“What need had he of precaution? Two or three times he almost

confessed, hinted at it, all but spoke out.” (Then followed the

evidence given by witnesses.) “He even cried out to the peasant who

drove him, ‘Do you know, you are driving a murderer!’ But it was

impossible for him to speak out, he had to get to Mokroe and there

to finish his romance. But what was awaiting the luckless man?

Almost from the first minute at Mokroe he saw that his invincible

rival was perhaps by no means so invincible, that the toast to their

new-found happiness was not desired and would not be acceptable. But

you know the facts, gentlemen of the jury, from the preliminary

inquiry. Karamazov’s triumph over his rival was complete and his

soul passed into quite a new phase, perhaps the most terrible phase

through which his soul has passed or will pass.

 

“One may say with certainty, gentlemen of the jury,” the

prosecutor continued, “that outraged nature and the criminal heart

bring their own vengeance more completely than any earthly justice.

What’s more, justice and punishment on earth positively alleviate

the punishment of nature and are, indeed, essential to the soul of the

criminal at such moments, as its salvation from despair. For I

cannot imagine the horror and moral suffering of Karamazov when he

learnt that she loved him, that for his sake she had rejected her

first lover, that she was summoning him, Mitya, to a new life, that

she was promising him happiness-and when? When everything was over

for him and nothing was possible!

 

“By the way, I will note in parenthesis a point of importance

for the light it throws on the prisoner’s position at the moment. This

woman, this love of his, had been till the last moment, till the

very instant of his arrest, a being unattainable, passionately desired

by him but unattainable. Yet why did he not shoot himself then, why

did he relinquish his design and even forget where his pistol was?

It was just that passionate desire for love and the hope of satisfying

it that restrained him. Throughout their revels he kept close to his

adored mistress, who was at the banquet with him and was more charming

and fascinating to him than ever-he did not leave her side, abasing

himself in his homage before her.

 

“His passion might well, for a moment, stifle not only the fear of

arrest, but even the torments of conscience. For a moment, oh, only

for a moment! I can picture the state of mind of the criminal

hopelessly enslaved by these influences-first, the influence of

drink, of noise and excitement, of the thud of the dance and the

scream of the song, and of her, flushed with wine, singing and dancing

and laughing to him! Secondly, the hope in the background that the

fatal end might still be far off, that not till next morning, at

least, they would come and take him. So he had a few hours and

that’s much, very much! In a few hours one can think of many things. I

imagine that he felt something like what criminals feel when they

are being taken to the scaffold. They have another long, long street

to pass down and at walking pace, past thousands of people. Then there

will be a turning into another street and only at the end of that

street the dread place of execution! I fancy that at the beginning

of the journey the condemned man, sitting on his shameful cart, must

feel that he has infinite life still before him. The houses recede,

the cart moves on-oh, that’s nothing, it’s still far to the turning

into the second street and he still looks boldly to right and to

left at those thousands of callously curious people with their eyes

fixed on him, and he still fancies that he is just such a man as they.

But now the turning comes to the next street. Oh, that’s nothing,

nothing, there’s still a whole street before him, and however many

houses have been passed, he will still think there are many left.

And so to the very end, to the very scaffold.

 

“This I imagine is how it was with Karamazov then. ‘They’ve not

had time yet,’ he must have thought, ‘I