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Read books online Ā» Fiction Ā» The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (best e book reader for android txt) šŸ“–

Book online Ā«The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (best e book reader for android txt) šŸ“–Ā». Author Fyodor Dostoyevsky



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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.

 

ā€œThe 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 ā€˜Parricide!ā€™ 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.

 

ā€œGetting out of bed, he goes almost unconsciously and with no

definite motive towards the sound to see whatā€™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?

 

ā€œJust 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. Whatā€™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?

 

ā€œI shall be asked, ā€˜What about the old woman, Grigoryā€™s wife?

She heard the sick man moaning close by, all night.ā€™ 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 thatā€™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.

 

ā€œBut 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.

 

ā€œGentlemen 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 ā€˜Parricide!ā€™ 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.

 

ā€œI 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 fatherā€™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 mindsā€¦. 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!ā€

 

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.

Chapter 13

A Corrupter of Thought

 

ā€œITā€™S not only the accumulation of facts that threatens my

client with ruin, gentlemen of the jury,ā€ he began, ā€œwhat is really

damning for my client is one fact-the dead body of his father. Had it

been an ordinary case of murder you would have rejected the charge

in view of the triviality, the incompleteness, and the fantastic

character of the evidence, if you examine each part of it

separately; or, at least, you would have hesitated to ruin a manā€™s

life simply from the prejudice against him which he has, alas! only

too well deserved. But itā€™s not an ordinary case of murder, itā€™s a

case of parricide. That impresses menā€™s minds, and to such a degree

that the very triviality and incompleteness of the evidence becomes

less trivial and less incomplete even to an unprejudiced mind. How can

such a prisoner be acquitted? What if he committed the murder and gets

off unpunished? That is what everyone, almost involuntarily,

instinctively, feels at heart.

 

ā€œYes, itā€™s a fearful thing to shed a fatherā€™s blood-the father

who has begotten me, loved me, not spared his life for me, grieved

over my illnesses from childhood up, troubled all his life for my

happiness, and has lived in my joys, in my successes. To murder such a

father-thatā€™s inconceivable. Gentlemen of the jury, what is a father-a real father? What is the meaning of that great word? What is the

great idea in that name? We have just indicated in part what a true

father is and what he ought to be. In the case in which we are now

so deeply occupied and over which our hearts are aching-in the

present case, the father, Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, did not

correspond to that conception of a father to which we have just

referred. Thatā€™s the misfortune. And indeed some fathers are a

misfortune. Let us examine this misfortune rather more closely: we

must shrink from nothing, gentlemen of the jury, considering the

importance of the decision you have to make. Itā€™s our particular

duty not to shrink from any idea, like children or frightened women,

as the talented prosecutor happily expresses it.

 

ā€œBut in the course of his heated speech my esteemed opponent

(and he was my opponent before I opened my lips) exclaimed several

times, ā€˜Oh, I will not yield the defence of the prisoner to the lawyer

who has come down from Petersburg. I accuse, but I defend also!ā€™ He

exclaimed that several times, but forgot to mention that if this

terrible prisoner was for twenty-three years so grateful for a mere

pound of nuts given him by the only man who had been kind to him, as a

child in his fatherā€™s house, might not such a man well have remembered

for twenty-three years how he ran in his fatherā€™s backyard, without

boots on his feet and with his little trousers hanging by one buttonā€™-

to use the expression of the kindhearted doctor, Herzenstube?

 

ā€œOh, gentlemen of the jury, why need we look more closely at

this misfortune, why repeat what we all know already? What did my

client meet with when he arrived here, at his fatherā€™s house, and

why depict my client as a heartless egoist and monster? He is

uncontrolled, he is wild and unruly-we are trying him now for that-but who is responsible for his life? Who is responsible for his having

received such an unseemly bringing up, in spite of his excellent

disposition and his grateful and sensitive heart? Did anyone train him

to be reasonable? Was he enlightened by study? Did anyone love him

ever so little in his childhood? My client was left to the care of

Providence like a beast of the field. He thirsted perhaps to see his

father after long years of separation. A thousand times perhaps he

may, recalling his childhood, have driven away the loathsome

phantoms that haunted his childish dreams and with all his heart he

may have longed to embrace and to forgive his father! And what awaited

him? He was met by cynical taunts, suspicions and wrangling about

money. He heard nothing but revolting talk and vicious precepts

uttered daily over the brandy, and at last he saw his father

seducing his mistress from him with his own money. Oh, gentlemen of

the jury, that was cruel and revolting! And that old man was always

complaining of the disrespect and cruelty of his son. He slandered him

in society, injured him, calumniated him, bought up his unpaid debts

to get him thrown into prison.

 

ā€œGentlemen of the jury, people like my client, who are fierce,

unruly, and uncontrolled on the surface, are sometimes, most

frequently indeed, exceedingly tender-hearted, only they donā€™t express

it. Donā€™t laugh,

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