"Before we go on with our inquiry, I should like, if you will consent to answer, to hear you confirm the statement that you disliked your father, Fyodor Pavlovitch, that you were involved in continual disputes with him.Here at least, a quarter of an hour ago, you exclaimed that you wanted to kill him: 'I didn't kill him,' you said,'but I wanted to kill him.'""Did I exclaim that? Ach, that may be so, gentlemen! Yes, unhappily, I did want to kill him...many times I wanted to...
unhappily, unhappily!"
"You wanted to.Would you consent to explain what motives precisely led you to such a sentiment of hatred for your parent?""What is there to explain, gentlemen?" Mitya shrugged his shoulders sullenly, looking down."I have never concealed my feelings.
All the town knows about it- everyone knows in the tavern.Only lately I declared them in Father Zossima's cell.And the very same day, in the evening I beat my father.I nearly killed him, and I swore I'd come again and kill him, before witnesses....Oh, a thousand witnesses! I've been shouting it aloud for the last month, anyone can tell you that!...The fact stares you in the face, it speaks for itself, it cries aloud, but feelings, gentlemen, feelings are another matter.You see, gentlemen"- Mitya frowned- "it seemed to me that about feelings you've no right to question me.I know that you are bound by your office, I quite understand that, but that's my affair, my private, intimate affair, yet...since I haven't concealed my feelings in the past...in the tavern, for instance, I've talked to everyone, so...so I won't make a secret of it now.You see, I understand, gentlemen, that there are terrible facts against me in this business.I told everyone that I'd kill him, and now, all of a sudden, he's been killed.So it must have been me! Ha ha! I can make allowances for you, gentlemen, I can quite make allowances.I'm struck all of a heap myself, for who can have murdered him, if not I?
That's what it comes to, isn't it? If not I, who can it be, who?
Gentlemen, I want to know, I insist on knowing!" he exclaimed suddenly."Where was he murdered? How was he murdered? How, and with what? Tell me," he asked quickly, looking at the two lawyers.
"We found him in his study, lying on his back on the floor, with his head battered in," said the prosecutor.
"That's horrible!" Mitya shuddered and, putting his elbows on the table, hid his face in his right hand.
"We will continue," interposed Nikolay Parfenovitch."So what was it that impelled you to this sentiment of hatred? You have asserted in public, I believe, that it was based upon jealousy?""Well, yes, jealousy.not only jealousy.""Disputes about money?"
"Yes, about money, too."
"There was a dispute about three thousand roubles, I think, which you claimed as part of your inheritance?""Three thousand! More, more," cried Mitya hotly; "more than six thousand, more than ten, perhaps.I told everyone so, shouted it at them.But I made up my mind to let it go at three thousand.I was desperately in need of that three thousand...so the bundle of notes for three thousand that I knew he kept under his pillow, ready for Grushenka, I considered as simply stolen from me.Yes, gentlemen, Ilooked upon it as mine, as my own property..."The prosecutor looked significantly at the investigating lawyer, and had time to wink at him on the sly.
"We will return to that subject later," said the lawyer promptly."You will allow us to note that point and write it down;that you looked upon that money as your own property?""Write it down, by all means.I know that's another fact that tells against me, but I'm not afraid of facts and I tell them against myself.Do you hear? Do you know, gentlemen, you take me for a different sort of man from what I am," he added, suddenly gloomy and dejected."You have to deal with a man of honour, a man of the highest honour; above all don't lose sight of it- a man who's done a lot of nasty things, but has always been, and still is, honourable at bottom, in his inner being.I don't know how to express it.That's just what's made me wretched all my life, that I yearned to be honourable, that I was, so to say, a martyr to a sense of honour, seeking for it with a lantern, with the lantern of Diogenes, and yet all my life I've been doing filthy things like all of us, gentlemen...that is like me alone.That was a mistake, like me alone, me alone!...Gentlemen, my head aches..." His brows contracted with pain."You see, gentlemen, I couldn't bear the look of him, there was something in him ignoble, impudent, trampling on everything sacred, something sneering and irreverent, loathsome, loathsome.But now that he's dead, I feel differently.""How do you mean?"
"I don't feel differently, but I wish I hadn't hated him so.""You feel penitent?"
"No, not penitent, don't write that.I'm not much good myself; I'm not very beautiful, so I had no right to consider him repulsive.
That's what I mean.Write that down, if you like."Saying this Mitya became very mournful.He had grown more and more gloomy as the inquiry continued.
