put to confusion and crushed by the very details in which real life is so rich and which these unhappy and involuntary storytellers neglect as insignificant trifles. Oh, they have no thought to spare for such details, their minds are concentrated on their grand invention as a whole, and fancy anyone daring to pull them up for a trifle! But that’s how they are caught. The prisoner was asked the question, ‘Where did you get the stuff for your little bag and who made it for you?’ ‘I made it myself.’ ‘And where did you get the linen?’ The prisoner was positively offended, he thought it almost insulting to ask him such a trivial question, and would you believe it, his resentment was genuine! But they are all like that. ‘I tore it off my shirt. «Then we shall find that shirt among your linen to-morrow, with a piece torn off.’ And only fancy, gentlemen of the jury, if we really had found that torn shirt (and how could we have failed to find it in his chest of drawers or trunk?) that would have been a fact, a mater-ial fact in support of his statement! But he was incapable of that reflection. ‘I don’t remember, it may not have been off my shirt, I sewed it up in one of my landlady’s caps.’ ‘What sort of a cap?’ ‘It was an old cotton rag of hers lying about.’ ‘And do you remember that clearly?’ ‘No, I don’t.’ And he was angry, very angry, and yet imagine not remembering it! At the most terrible moments of man’s life, for instance when he is being led to execution, he re-members just such trifles. He will forget anything but some green roof that has flashed past him on the road, or a jackdaw on a cross- that he will remember. He concealed the making of that little bag from his household, he must have remembered his humiliating fear that someone might come in and find him needle in hand, how at the slightest sound he slipped behind the screen (there is a screen in his lodgings).
«But, gentlemen of the jury, why do I tell you all this, all these details, trifles?» cried Ippolit Kirillovitch suddenly. «Just because the prisoner still persists in these absurdities to this moment. He has not explained anything since that fatal night two months ago, he has not added one actual illuminating fact to his former fantastic statements; all those are trivialities. ‘You must believe it on my honour.’ Oh, we are glad to believe it, we are eager to believe it, even if only on his word of honour! Are we jackals thirsting for human blood? Show us a single fact in the prisoner’s favour and we shall rejoice; but let it be a substantial, real fact, and not a conclusion drawn from the prisoner’s expression by his own brother, or that when he beat himself on the breast he must have meant to point to the little bag, in the darkness, too. We shall rejoice at the new fact, we shall be the first to repudiate our charge, we shall

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hasten to repudiate it. But now justice cries out and we persist, we cannot repudiate anything.» Ippolit Kirillovitch passed to his final peroration. He looked as though he was in a fever,
he spoke of the blood that cried for vengeance, the blood of the father murdered by his son, with the base motive of robbery! He pointed to the tragic and glaring consistency of the facts.
«And whatever you may hear from the talented and celebrated counsel for the defence,» Ippolit Kirillovitch could not resist adding, «whatever eloquent and touching appeals may be made to your sensibilities, remember that at this moment you are in a temple of justice. Remember that you are the champions of our justice, the champions of our holy Russia, of her principles, her family, everything that she holds sacred! Yes, you represent Russia here at this moment, and your verdict will be heard not in this hall only but will re-echo throughout the whole of Russia, and all Russia will hear you, as her champions and her judges, and she will be encouraged or disheartened by your verdict. Do not disappoint Russia and her expectations. Our fatal troika dashes on in her headlong flight perhaps to destruction and in all Russia for long past men have stretched out imploring hands and called a halt to its furious reckless course. And if other nations stand aside from that troika that may be, not from respect, as the poet would fain believe, but simply from horror. From horror, perhaps from disgust. And well it is that they stand aside, but maybe they will cease one day to do so and will form a firm wall confronting the hurrying apparition and will check the frenzied rush of our lawlessness, for the sake of their own safety, enlightenment and civilisation. Already we have heard voices of alarm from Europe, they already begin to sound. Do not tempt them! Do not heap up their growing hatred by a sentence justifying the murder of a father by his son I Though Ippolit Kirillovitch was genuinely moved, he wound up his speech with this rhetorical appeal- and the effect produced by him was ex-traordinary. When he had finished his speech, he went out hurriedly and, as I have mentioned before, almost fainted in the adjoining room. There was no applause in the court, but serious persons were pleased. The ladies were not so well satisfied, though even they were pleased with his eloquence, especially as they had no apprehensions as to the upshot of the trial and had full trust in Fetyukovitch. «He will speak at last and of course carry all before him.»
Everyone looked at Mitya; he sat silent through the whole of the prosecutor’s speech, clenching his teeth, with his hands clasped, and his head bowed. Only from time to time he raised his head and listened, especially when Grushenka was spoken of. When the prosecutor mentioned Rakitin’s opinion of her, a smile of contempt and anger passed over his face and he murmured rather audibly, «The Bernards!»
When Ippolit Kirillovitch described how he had questioned and tortured him at Mokroe, Mitya raised his head and listened with intense curiosity. At one point he seemed about to jump up and cry out, but controlled himself and only shrugged his shoulders disdainfully.

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People talked afterwards of the end of the speech, of the prosecutor’s feat in examining the prisoner at Mokroe, and jeered at Ippolit Kirillovitch. «The man could not resist boasting of his cleverness,»
they said.
The court was adjourned, but only for a short interval, a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes at most. There was a hum of conversation and exclamations in the audience. I re-member some of them.
«A weighty speech,» a gentleman in one group observed gravely. «He brought in too much psychology,» said another voice.
«But it was all true, the absolute truth!» «Yes, he is first rate at it.»
«He summed it all up.»
«Yes, he summed us up, too,» chimed in another voice, «Do you remember, at the begin-ning of his speech, making out we were all like Fyodor Pavlovitch?»
«And at the end, too. But that was all rot.» «And obscure too.»
«He was a little too much carried away.» «It’s unjust, it’s unjust.»
«No, it was smartly done, anyway. He’s had long to wait, but he’s had his say, ha ha!» «What will the counsel for the defence say?»
In another group I heard:
«He had no business to make a thrust at the Petersburg man like that; ‘appealing to your sensibilities’- do you remember?»
«Yes, that was awkward of him.» «He was in too great a hurry.» «He is a nervous man.»
«We laugh, but what must the prisoner be feeling?» «Yes, what must it be for Mitya?»
In a third group:
«What lady is that, the fat one, with the lorgnette, sitting at the end?» «She is a general’s wife, divorced, I know her.»
«That’s why she has the lorgnette.» «She is not good for much.»
«Oh no, she is a piquante little woman.»
«Two places beyond her there is a little fair woman, she is prettier.» «They caught him smartly at Mokroe, didn’t they, eh?»
«Oh, it was smart enough. We’ve heard it before, how often he has told the story at people’s houses!

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«And he couldn’t resist doing it now. That’s vanity.» «He is a man with a grievance, he he!»
«Yes, and quick to take offence. And there was too much rhetoric, such long sentences.» «Yes, he tries to alarm us, he kept trying to alarm us. Do you remember about the troika? Something about ‘They have Hamlets, but we have, so far, only Karamazovs!’ That was
cleverly said!»
«That was to propitiate the liberals. He is afraid of them.» «Yes, and he is afraid of the lawyer, too.»
«Yes, what will Fetyukovitch say?»
«Whatever he says, he won’t get round our peasants.» «Don’t you think so?»
A fourth group:
«What he said about the troika was good, that piece about the other nations.» «And that was true what he said about other nations not standing it.»
«What do you mean?»
«Why, in the English Parliment a Member got up last week and speaking about the Ni-hilists asked the Ministry whether it was not high time to intervene, to educate this barbarous people. Ippolit was thinking of him, I know he was.