I. The Fatal Day

On the day after the events I have described, at ten o’clock in the morning, the session of our district court opened and the trial of Dmitri Karamazov began.

I will say beforehand, and say it insistently: I am far from considering myself able to convey everything that took place at the trial, and not only in proper fullness but even in proper order. It keeps seeming to me that if one were to remember everything and explain everything as it should be explained, it would take a whole book, and a very large one at that. And so let no one complain of me for conveying only what struck me personally and what I particularly remembered. I may have taken what was secondary for what was most important, and even left out altogether the sharpest and most necessary features… But then, I see that it is better not to apologize. I will do it as best I can, and the readers will understand for themselves that I did it only as best I could.

And first of all, before we enter the courtroom, I will mention what particularly surprised me that day. However, it surprised not only me but, as it turned out afterward, everyone. Namely: everyone knew that this case had aroused the interest of a great many people, that everyone was burning with impatience for the trial to begin, that in our society people had been talking, conjecturing, exclaiming, dreaming for two whole months. Everyone knew too that the case had become known all over Russia, but still no one imagined that it had shaken each and every one to such a burning, such an irritable degree, and not only here among us but everywhere, as became evident at the trial itself that day. By that day visitors had come to us not only from our provincial capital but from several other cities of Russia, and finally from Moscow and Petersburg. Lawyers came, even several distinguished persons came, and ladies as well. All the tickets had been snatched up. For especially honored and distinguished visitors of the male sex, quite extraordinary places had even been set aside behind the table at which the court sat: a whole row of armchairs appeared there, occupied by various personages, something never before permitted among us. There turned out to be particularly many ladies—our own and visitors, not less, I think, than half of the whole public. Of lawyers alone, who had come from everywhere, there turned out to be so many that no one even knew where to put them, since all the tickets had long since been given out, begged for, and pleaded for. I saw myself how at the end of the hall, behind the platform, a special enclosure had been put up temporarily and hastily, into which all these lawyers who had come were admitted, and they even counted themselves lucky that they could at least stand there, because the chairs, to gain room, had been carried right out of this enclosure, and the whole crowd that had gathered there stood through the entire “case” in a dense, close-packed mass, shoulder to shoulder. Some of the ladies, especially among the visitors, appeared in the gallery of the hall extremely dressed up, but the majority of the ladies had even forgotten about clothes. On their faces one could read a hysterical, greedy, almost morbid curiosity. One of the most characteristic peculiarities of this whole society gathered in the hall, and one that must be noted, consisted in this, that, as was later confirmed by many observations, almost all the ladies, at least the overwhelming majority of them, were for Mitya and for his acquittal. Perhaps mainly because a notion of him had formed as a conqueror of women’s hearts. It was known that two women, rivals, would appear. One of them, that is, Katerina Ivanovna, interested everyone particularly; an extraordinary number of unusual things were told about her, astonishing anecdotes were told about her passion for Mitya, despite even his crime. Her pride was especially mentioned (she had paid calls on almost no one in our town), and her “aristocratic connections.” It was said that she intended to petition the government to allow her to accompany the criminal to penal servitude and to marry him somewhere underground in the mines. With no less excitement they awaited the appearance at the trial of Grushenka as well, as Katerina Ivanovna’s rival. With tormenting curiosity they awaited the meeting before the court of the two rivals—the proud aristocratic girl and the “hetaera”; Grushenka, however, was better known to our ladies than Katerina Ivanovna. Our ladies had seen her, “the ruin of Fyodor Pavlovich and his unfortunate son,” even before, and all of them, almost to a woman, wondered how father and son could have fallen so much in love with such a “most ordinary Russian tradeswoman, not even good-looking at all.” In a word, there was a great deal of talk. I know positively that in our town itself there were even several serious family quarrels over Mitya. Many ladies quarreled hotly with their spouses over differences of view on this whole terrible case, and naturally, after that, all the husbands of these ladies arrived in the courtroom not only ill-disposed toward the defendant but even embittered against him. And in general it could positively be said that, in contrast to the ladies, the whole male element was set against the defendant. Stern, frowning faces were to be seen, others even quite spiteful, and in great numbers. It is true, too, that Mitya had managed to insult many of them personally during his stay among us. Of course, some of the visitors were almost even cheerful and quite indifferent to Mitya’s fate as such, but still, again, not to the case under consideration; all were absorbed in its outcome, and the majority of the men decidedly wanted the criminal punished, except perhaps the lawyers, to whom what mattered was not the moral side of the case but only, so to speak, its contemporary legal side. Everyone was excited by the arrival of the famous Fetyukovich. His talent was known everywhere, and this was not the first time he had appeared in the provinces to defend celebrated criminal cases. And after his defense such cases always became famous all over Russia and long remembered. Several anecdotes were going around about our prosecutor too, and about the presiding judge. It was said that our prosecutor trembled at the prospect of meeting Fetyukovich, that they were old enemies from Petersburg, from the very beginning of their careers, that our touchy Ippolit Kirillovich, who had always considered himself wronged by someone ever since Petersburg, because his talents had not been properly appreciated, had revived in spirit over the Karamazov case and even dreamed of reviving his faded career by means of it, but that Fetyukovich alone frightened him. But as to the trembling before Fetyukovich, the judgments were not quite fair. Our prosecutor was not one of those characters who lose heart before danger, but, on the contrary, one of those whose vanity grows and takes wing precisely as the danger grows. In general it must be remarked that our prosecutor was too hot-tempered and morbidly sensitive. Into some cases he would put his whole soul and conduct them as if his whole fate and all his fortune depended on their outcome. In the legal world they laughed at this somewhat, for it was precisely by this quality of his that our prosecutor had even earned a certain renown, if far from universal, still much greater than one might have supposed in view of his modest position in our court. They laughed especially at his passion for psychology. In my opinion, they were all mistaken: our prosecutor, as a man and a character, seems to me to have been much more serious than many thought of him. But this sickly man simply never knew how to establish himself, from his very first steps at the beginning of his career, and then all his life long.

As for the presiding judge of our court, all that can be said of him is that he was an educated, humane man, with a practical knowledge of his business and of the most modern ideas. He was rather vain, but did not care very much about his career. The chief aim of his life consisted in being a progressive man. Besides, he had connections and a fortune. He took the Karamazov case rather to heart, as it turned out afterward, but only in a general sense. What interested him was the phenomenon, its classification, the view of it as a product of our social foundations, as characteristic of the Russian element, and so on, and so on. Toward the personal character of the case, its tragedy, and likewise toward the persons of those taking part, beginning with the defendant, he was rather indifferent and abstract, as, however, perhaps was proper.

Long before the court appeared, the hall was already packed to bursting. Our courtroom is the best hall in town, spacious, lofty, resonant. To the right of the members of the court, who were seated on a sort of raised platform, a table and two rows of armchairs had been prepared for the jurors. On the left was the place of the defendant and his counsel. In the middle of the hall, near the court’s place, stood a table with the “material evidence.” On it lay Fyodor Pavlovich’s bloodstained white silk dressing gown, the fatal brass pestle with which the presumed murder had been committed, Mitya’s shirt with its sleeve stained with blood, his frock coat all covered with bloodstains at the back where the pocket was, into which he had stuffed his handkerchief, all wet with blood, that time, the handkerchief itself, all stiffened with blood and now gone quite yellow, the pistol loaded by Mitya at Perkhotin’s for his suicide and quietly taken away from him in Mokroye by Trifon Borisovich, the envelope with the inscription in which the three thousand had been prepared for Grushenka, and the thin little pink ribbon with which it had been tied, and many other objects that I do not even remember. At some distance further on, toward the back of the hall, began the places for the public, but before the balustrade stood several armchairs for those witnesses who, having already given their testimony, would be left in the hall. At ten o’clock the court appeared, consisting of the presiding judge, one associate judge, and one honorary justice of the peace. Of course, the prosecutor appeared at once as well. The presiding judge was a thickset, stocky man, below average height, with a hemorrhoidal face, about fifty years old, with dark, graying hair cut short, and wearing a red ribbon—I no longer remember of what order. The prosecutor, on the other hand, seemed to me, and not only to me but to everyone, somehow very pale, his face almost green, as if for some reason he had suddenly grown thin in one night, perhaps, because I had seen him only the day before yesterday still quite himself. The presiding judge began by asking the bailiff whether all the jurors were present?… I see, however, that I cannot go on like this any longer, if only because there was much I did not hear, other things I failed to grasp, still others I forgot to remember, and above all because, as I have already said above, if I were to recall everything that was said and that happened, I would literally have neither the time nor the space. I know only that not very many jurors were challenged by either side, that is, by the defense counsel and the prosecutor. But I remember the makeup of the twelve jurors: four of our officials, two merchants, and six peasants and tradesmen of our town. In our society, I remember, long before the trial, people had asked with some surprise, especially the ladies: “Can it be that such a subtle, complicated, and psychological case is going to be handed over for its fateful decision to some petty officials and, finally, to peasants, and what will some such official understand of it, let alone a peasant?” And indeed, all four of the officials who were on the jury were small men, of low rank, gray-haired—only one of them was somewhat younger—little known in our society, vegetating on small salaries, with, no doubt, old wives who could not be shown anywhere, and each with a heap of children, perhaps even barefoot ones, at most diverting their leisure somewhere over a little game of cards and, of course, never having read a single book. The two merchants, though they had a sedate look, were somehow strangely silent and motionless; one of them shaved his beard and was dressed in the German fashion; the other, with a little gray beard, had some sort of medal on a red ribbon around his neck. Of the tradesmen and peasants there is nothing to say. Our Skotoprigonyevsk tradesmen are almost the same as peasants, they even plow. Two of them were also in German dress, and perhaps for that very reason looked dirtier and less presentable than the other four. So that the thought really could arise, as it arose in me, for example, as soon as I had looked them over: “What can such men grasp in such a case?” Nevertheless their faces made a strangely imposing and almost menacing impression; they were stern and frowning.

At last the presiding judge announced the hearing of the case of the murder of the retired titular councilor Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov—I do not remember exactly how he put it then. The bailiff was ordered to bring in the defendant, and now Mitya appeared. Everything went quiet in the hall, you could have heard a fly. I do not know about the others, but Mitya’s appearance made a most unpleasant impression on me. Above all, he arrived got up as a terrible dandy, in a brand-new frock coat. I learned afterward that he had ordered the frock coat for this day on purpose, in Moscow, from his former tailor, who had kept his measurements. He was wearing brand-new black kid gloves and smart linen. He walked in with his long, yard-long strides, looking straight ahead of him to the point of immobility, and sat down in his place with the most fearless air. And then, right away, the defense counsel appeared as well, the famous Fetyukovich, and a sort of suppressed hum, as it were, swept through the hall. He was a tall, lean man, with long, thin legs, with extremely long, pale, thin fingers, a clean-shaven face, modestly combed, rather short hair, and thin lips that now and then curled in what was either a sneer or a smile. To look at, he was about forty. His face would even have been pleasant, had it not been for his eyes, small and inexpressive in themselves, but set unusually close together, so that only the one thin bone of his long, thin nose separated them. In a word, this physiognomy had something sharply birdlike about it, which was striking. He was in a tailcoat and white tie. I remember the presiding judge’s first questioning of Mitya, that is, about his name, his station, and so on. Mitya answered abruptly, but somehow unexpectedly loudly, so that the presiding judge even gave his head a shake and looked at him almost in surprise. Then the list was read of the persons summoned to the examination of the evidence, that is, of the witnesses and experts. The list was long; four of the witnesses had not appeared: Miusov, who was by this time already in Paris, but whose testimony was on file from the preliminary investigation; Mrs. Khokhlakova and the landowner Maximov, because of illness; and Smerdyakov, because of his sudden death, of which a certificate from the police was presented. The news of Smerdyakov caused a strong stir and whispering in the hall. Of course, many in the public had not yet heard of this sudden episode of suicide at all. But what was especially striking was Mitya’s sudden outburst: no sooner had the report on Smerdyakov been made than he suddenly exclaimed from his place, for the whole hall to hear:

“A dog’s death for a dog!”

I remember how his counsel rushed to him and how the presiding judge addressed him with a threat to take strict measures if such an outburst as this were repeated once more. Mitya, abruptly and nodding his head, but as though not repenting at all, repeated several times in an undertone to his counsel:

“I won’t, I won’t! It slipped out! I won’t anymore!”

And of course this short little episode did not serve him well in the opinion of the jury and the public. A character was declaring itself and recommending itself. It was under this impression that the indictment was read by the clerk of the court.

It was rather brief, but thorough. It set out only the chief reasons why so-and-so had been charged, why he had to be committed for trial, and so on. Nevertheless it made a strong impression on me. The clerk read it clearly, resonantly, distinctly. This whole tragedy seemed to appear again before everyone, in relief, concentrated, lit by a fateful, merciless light. I remember how right after the reading the presiding judge asked Mitya loudly and impressively:

“Defendant, do you plead guilty?” Mitya suddenly rose from his seat:

“I plead guilty to drunkenness and debauchery,” he exclaimed in a voice that was again somehow unexpected, almost frenzied, “to idleness and dissipation. I wanted to become an honest man forever, precisely at the second when fate cut me down! But of the death of the old man, my enemy and my father—not guilty! And of robbing him—no, no, not guilty, and I cannot be guilty: Dmitri Karamazov is a scoundrel, but not a thief!”

Having shouted this, he sat down in his place, visibly trembling all over. The presiding judge again addressed him with a brief but edifying admonition to answer only the questions and not to go off into irrelevant and frenzied exclamations. Then he ordered the examination of the evidence to begin. All the witnesses were brought in to take the oath. Here I saw them all at once. The defendant’s brothers, however, were permitted to testify without taking the oath. After an exhortation by the priest and by the presiding judge, the witnesses were led out and seated, as far as possible, apart from one another. Then they began to be called one at a time.