No, I can never forget those moments. She began telling her story.
She told everything, the whole episode that Mitya had told Alyosha, and her bowing to the ground, and her reason. She told about her father and her going to Mitya, and did not in one word, in a single hint, suggest that Mitya had himself, through her sister, proposed they should «send him Katerina Ivanovna» to fetch the money. She generously concealed that and was not ashamed to make it appear as though she had of her own impulse run to the young officer, relying on something… to beg him for the money. It was something tre-mendous! I turned cold and trembled as I listened. The court was hushed, trying to catch each word. It was something unexampled. Even from such a self-willed and contemptuously proud girl as she was, such an extremely frank avowal, such sacrifice, such self-immolation, seemed incredible. And for what, for whom? To save the man who had deceived and insulted her and to help, in however small a degree, in saving him, by creating a strong impression in his favour. And, indeed, the figure of the young officer who, with a respectful bow to the innocent girl, handed her his last four thousand roubles- all he had in the world- was thrown into a very sympathetic and attractive light, but…
I had a painful misgiving at heart! I felt that calumny might come of it later (and it did, in fact, it did). It was repeated all over the town afterwards with spiteful laughter that was perhaps not quite complete- that is, in the statement that the officer had let the young lady depart «with nothing but a respectful bow.» It was hinted that something was here omitted.
«And even if nothing had been omitted, if this were the whole story,» the most highly respected of our ladies maintained, «even then it’s very doubtful whether it was creditable for a young girl to behave in that way, even for the sake of saving her father.»
And can Katerina Ivanovna, with her intelligence, her morbid sensitiveness, have failed to understand that people would talk like that? She must have understood it, yet she made up her mind to tell everything. Of course, all these nasty little suspicions as to the truth of her story only arose afterwards and at the first moment all were deeply impressed by it. As
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for the judges and the lawyers, they listened in reverent, almost shamefaced silence to Katerina Ivanovna. The prosecutor did not venture upon even one question on the subject. Fety-ukovitch made a low bow to her. Oh, he was almost triumphant! Much ground had been gained. For a man to give his last four thousand on a generous impulse and then for the same man to murder his father for the sake of robbing him of three thousand- the idea seemed too incongruous. Fetyukovitch felt that now the charge of theft, at least, was as good as disproved. «The case» was thrown into quite a different light. There was a wave of sympathy for Mitya. As for him…. I was told that once or twice, while Katerina Ivanovna was giving her evidence, he jumped up from his seat, sank back again, and hid his face in his hands. But when she had finished, he suddenly cried in a sobbing voice:
«Katya, why have you ruined me?» and his sobs were audible all over the court. But he instantly restrained himself, and cried again:
«Now I am condemned!»
Then he sat rigid in his place, with his teeth clenched and his arms across his chest. Katerina Ivanovna remained in the court and sat down in her place. She was pale and sat with her eyes cast down. Those who were sitting near her declared that for a long time she shivered all over as though in a fever. Grushenka was called.
I am approaching the sudden catastrophe which was perhaps the final cause of Mitya’s ruin. For I am convinced, so is everyone- all the lawyers said the same afterwards- that if the episode had not occurred, the prisoner would at least have been recommended to mercy. But of that later. A few words first about Grushenka.
She, too, was dressed entirely in black, with her magnificent black shawl on her shoulders. She walked to the witness-box with her smooth, noiseless tread, with the slightly swaying gait common in women of full figure. She looked steadily at the President, turning her eyes neither to the right nor to the left. To my thinking she looked very handsome at that moment, and not at all pale, as the ladies alleged afterwards. They declared, too, that she had a con-centrated and spiteful expression. I believe that she was simply irritated and painfully con-scious of the contemptuous and inquisitive eyes of our scandal-loving public. She was proud and could not stand contempt. She was one of those people who flare up, angry and eager to retaliate, at the mere suggestion of contempt. There was an element of timidity, too, of course, and inward shame at her own timidity, so it was not strange that her tone kept changing. At one moment it was angry, contemptuous and rough, and at another there was a sincere note of self-condemnation. Sometimes she spoke as though she were taking a desperate plunge; as though she felt, «I don’t care what happens, I’ll say it….» Apropos of her acquaintance with Fyodor Pavlovitch, she remarked curtly, «That’s all nonsense, and was it my fault that he would pester me?» But a minute later she added, «It was all my fault. I was laughing at them both- at the old man and at him, too- and I brought both of them to this. It was all on account of me it happened.»
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Samsonov’s name came up somehow. «That’s nobody’s business,» she snapped at once, with a sort of insolent defiance. «He was my benefactor; he took me when I hadn’t a shoe to my foot, when my family had turned me out.» The President reminded her, though very politely, that she must answer the questions directly, without going off into irrelevant details. Grushenka crimsoned and her eyes flashed.
The envelope with the notes in it she had not seen, but had only heard from «that wicked wretch» that Fyodor Pavlovitch had an envelope with notes for three thousand in it. «But that was all foolishness.
I was only laughing. I wouldn’t have gone to him for anything.»
«To whom are you referring as ‘that wicked wretch’?» inquired the prosecutor.
«The lackey, Smerdyakov, who murdered his master and hanged himself last night.» She was, of course, at once asked what ground she had for such a definite accusation;
but it appeared that she, too, had no grounds for it.
«Dmitri Fyodorovitch told me so himself; you can believe him.
The woman who came between us has ruined him; she is the cause of it all, let me tell you,» Grushenka added. She seemed to be quivering with hatred, and there was a vindictive note in her voice.
She was again asked to whom she was referring.
«The young lady, Katerina Ivanovna there. She sent for me, offered me chocolate, tried to fascinate me. There’s not much true shame about her, I can tell you that…»
At this point the President checked her sternly, begging her to moderate her language. But the jealous woman’s heart was burning, and she did not care what she did.
«When the prisoner was arrested at Mokroe,» the prosecutor asked, «everyone saw and heard you run out of the next room and cry out: ‘It’s all my fault. We’ll go to Siberia together!’ So you already believed him to have murdered his father?»
«I don’t remember what I felt at the time,» answered Grushenka.
«Everyone was crying out that he had killed his father, and I felt that it was my fault, that it was on my account he had murdered him.
But when he said he wasn’t guilty, I believed him at once, and I believe him now and always shall believe him. He is not the man to tell a lie.»
Fetyukovitch began his cross-examination. I remember that among other things he asked about Rakitin and the twenty-five roubles «you paid him for bringing Alexey Fyo-dorovitch Karamazov to see you.»
«There was nothing strange about his taking the money,» sneered Grushenka, with angry contempt. «He was always coming to me for money:
he used to get thirty roubles a month at least out of me, chiefly for luxuries: he had enough to keep him without my help.»
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«What led you to be so liberal to Mr. Rakitin?» Fetyukovitch asked, in spite of an uneasy movement on the part of the President.
«Why, he is my cousin. His mother was my mother’s sister. But he’s always besought me not to tell anyone here of it, he is so dreadfully ashamed of me.»
This fact was a complete surprise to everyone; no one in
