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

been feigning at all, the fit

may have happened quite naturally, but it may have passed off quite

naturally, and the sick man may have recovered, not completely

perhaps, but still regaining consciousness, as happens with

epileptics.

 

“The prosecutor asks at what moment could Smerdyakov have

committed the murder. But it is very easy to point out that moment. He

might have waked up from deep sleep (for he was only asleep-an

epileptic fit is always followed by a deep sleep) at that moment

when the old Grigory shouted at the top of his voice ‘Parricide!’ That

shout in the dark and stillness may have waked Smerdyakov whose

sleep may have been less sound at the moment: he might naturally

have waked up an hour before.

 

“Getting out of bed, he goes almost unconsciously and with no

definite motive towards the sound to see what’s the matter. His head

is still clouded with his attack, his faculties are half asleep;

but, once in the garden, he walks to the lighted windows and he

hears terrible news from his master, who would be, of course, glad

to see him. His mind sets to work at once. He hears all the details

from his frightened master, and gradually in his disordered brain

there shapes itself an idea-terrible, but seductive and

irresistibly logical. To kill the old man, take the three thousand,

and throw all the blame on to his young master. A terrible lust of

money, of booty, might seize upon him as he realised his security from

detection. Oh! these sudden and irresistible impulses come so often

when there is a favourable opportunity, and especially with

murderers who have had no idea of committing a murder beforehand.

And Smerdyakov may have gone in and carried out his plan. With what

weapon? Why, with any stone picked up in the garden. But what for,

with what object? Why, the three thousand which means a career for

him. Oh, I am not contradicting myself-the money may have existed.

And perhaps Smerdyakov alone knew where to find it, where his master

kept it. And the covering of the money-the torn envelope on the

floor?

 

“Just now, when the prosecutor was explaining his subtle theory

that only an inexperienced thief like Karamazov would have left the

envelope on the floor, and not one like Smerdyakov, who would have

avoided leaving a piece of evidence against himself, I thought as I

listened that I was hearing something very familiar, and, would you

believe it, I have heard that very argument, that very conjecture,

of how Karamazov would have behaved, precisely two days before, from

Smerdyakov himself. What’s more, it struck me at the time. I fancied

that there was an artificial simplicity about him; that he was in a

hurry to suggest this idea to me that I might fancy it was my own.

He insinuated it, as it were. Did he not insinuate the same idea at

the inquiry and suggest it to the talented prosecutor?

 

“I shall be asked, ‘What about the old woman, Grigory’s wife?

She heard the sick man moaning close by, all night.’ Yes, she heard

it, but that evidence is extremely unreliable. I knew a lady who

complained bitterly that she had been kept awake all night by a dog in

the yard. Yet the poor beast, it appeared, had only yelped once or

twice in the night. And that’s natural. If anyone is asleep and

hears a groan he wakes up, annoyed at being waked, but instantly falls

asleep again. Two hours later, again a groan, he wakes up and falls

asleep again; and the same thing again two hours later-three times

altogether in the night. Next morning the sleeper wakes up and

complains that someone has been groaning all night and keeping him

awake. And it is bound to seem so to him: the intervals of two hours

of sleep he does not remember, he only remembers the moments of

waking, so he feels he has been waked up all night.

 

“But why, why, asks the prosecutor, did not Smerdyakov confess

in his last letter? Why did his conscience prompt him to one step

and not to both? But, excuse me, conscience implies penitence, and the

suicide may not have felt penitence, but only despair. Despair and

penitence are two very different things. Despair may be vindictive and

irreconcilable, and the suicide, laying his hands on himself, may well

have felt redoubled hatred for those whom he had envied all his life.

 

“Gentlemen of the jury, beware of a miscarriage of justice! What

is there unlikely in all I have put before you just now? Find the

error in my reasoning; find the impossibility, the absurdity. And if

there is but a shade of possibility, but a shade of probability in

my propositions, do not condemn him. And is there only a shade? I

swear by all that is sacred, I fully believe in the explanation of the

murder I have just put forward. What troubles me and makes me

indignant is that of all the mass of facts heaped up by the

prosecution against the prisoner, there is not a single one certain

and irrefutable. And yet the unhappy man is to be ruined by the

accumulation of these facts. Yes, the accumulated effect is awful: the

blood, the blood dripping from his fingers, the bloodstained shirt,

the dark night resounding with the shout ‘Parricide!’ and the old

man falling with a broken head. And then the mass of phrases,

statements, gestures, shouts! Oh! this has so much influence, it can

so bias the mind; but, gentlemen of the jury, can it bias your

minds? Remember, you have been given absolute power to bind and to

loose, but the greater the power, the more terrible its

responsibility.

 

“I do not draw back one iota from what I have said just now, but

suppose for one moment I agreed with the prosecution that my

luckless client had stained his hands with his father’s blood. This is

only hypothesis, I repeat; I never for one instant doubt of his

innocence. But, so be it, I assume that my client is guilty of

parricide. Even so, hear what I have to say. I have it in my heart

to say something more to you, for I feel that there must be a great

conflict in your hearts and minds…. Forgive my referring to your

hearts and minds, gentlemen of the jury, but I want to be truthful and

sincere to the end. Let us all be sincere!”

 

At this point the speech was interrupted by rather loud

applause. The last words, indeed, were pronounced with a note of

such sincerity that everyone felt that he really might have

something to say, and that what he was about to say would be of the

greatest consequence. But the President, hearing the applause, in a

loud voice threatened to clear the court if such an incident were

repeated. Every sound was hushed and Fetyukovitch began in a voice

full of feeling quite unlike the tone he had used hitherto.