The Galloping Troika. The End Of The Prosecutor’s Speech.
Ippolit Kirillovitch had chosen the historical method of exposition,
beloved by all nervous orators, who find in its limitation a check on
their own eager rhetoric. At this moment in his speech he went off into
a dissertation on Grushenka’s “first lover,” and brought forward
several interesting thoughts on this theme.
“Karamazov, who had been frantically jealous of every one, collapsed,
so to speak, and effaced himself at once before this first lover. What
makes it all the more strange is that he seems to have hardly thought
of this formidable rival. But he had looked upon him as a remote
danger, and Karamazov always lives in the present. Possibly he regarded
him as a fiction. But his wounded heart grasped instantly that the
woman had been concealing this new rival and deceiving him, because he
was anything but a fiction to her, because he was the one hope of her
life. Grasping this instantly, he resigned himself.
“Gentlemen of the jury, I cannot help dwelling on this unexpected trait
in the prisoner’s character. He suddenly evinces an irresistible desire
for justice, a respect for woman and a recognition of her right to
love. And all this at the very moment when he had stained his hands
with his father’s blood for her sake! It is true that the blood he had
shed was already crying out for vengeance, for, after having ruined his
soul and his life in this world, he was forced to ask himself at that
same instant what he was and what he could be now to her, to that
being, dearer to him than his own soul, in comparison with that former
lover who had returned penitent, with new love, to the woman he had
once betrayed, with honorable offers, with the promise of a reformed
and happy life. And he, luckless man, what could he give her now, what
could he offer her?
“Karamazov felt all this, knew that all ways were barred to him by his
crime and that he was a criminal under sentence, and not a man with
life before him! This thought crushed him. And so he instantly flew to
one frantic plan, which, to a man of Karamazov’s character, must have
appeared the one inevitable way out of his terrible position. That way
out was suicide. He ran for the pistols he had left in pledge with his
friend Perhotin and on the way, as he ran, he pulled out of his pocket
the money, for the sake of which he had stained his hands with his
father’s gore. Oh, now he needed money more than ever. Karamazov would
die, Karamazov would shoot himself and it should be remembered! To be
sure, he was a poet and had burnt the candle at both ends all his life.
‘To her, to her! and there, oh, there I will give a feast to the whole
world, such as never was before, that will be remembered and talked of
long after! In the midst of shouts of wild merriment, reckless gypsy
songs and dances I shall raise the glass and drink to the woman I adore
and her new-found happiness! And then, on the spot, at her feet, I
shall dash out my brains before her and punish myself! She will
remember Mitya Karamazov sometimes, she will see how Mitya loved her,
she will feel for Mitya!’
“Here we see in excess a love of effect, a romantic despair and
sentimentality, and the wild recklessness of the Karamazovs. Yes, but
there is something else, gentlemen of the jury, something that cries
out in the soul, throbs incessantly in the mind, and poisons the heart
unto death—that _something_ is conscience, gentlemen of the jury, its
judgment, its terrible torments! The pistol will settle everything, the
pistol is the only way out! But _beyond_—I don’t know whether Karamazov
wondered at that moment ‘What lies beyond,’ and whether Karamazov
could, like Hamlet, wonder ‘What lies beyond.’ No, gentlemen of the
jury, they have their Hamlets, but we still have our Karamazovs!”
Here Ippolit Kirillovitch drew a minute picture of Mitya’s
preparations, the scene at Perhotin’s, at the shop, with the drivers.
He quoted numerous words and actions, confirmed by witnesses, and the
picture made a terrible impression on the audience. The guilt of this
harassed and desperate man stood out clear and convincing, when the
facts were brought together.
“What need had he of precaution? Two or three times he almost
confessed, hinted at it, all but spoke out.” (Then followed the
evidence given by witnesses.) “He even cried out to the peasant who
drove him, ‘Do you know, you are driving a murderer!’ But it was
impossible for him to speak out, he had to get to Mokroe and there to
finish his romance. But what was awaiting the luckless man? Almost from
the first minute at Mokroe he saw that his invincible rival was perhaps
by no means so invincible, that the toast to their new-found happiness
was not desired and would not be acceptable. But you know the facts,
gentlemen of the jury, from the preliminary inquiry. Karamazov’s
triumph over his rival was complete and his soul passed into quite a
new phase, perhaps the most terrible phase through which his soul has
passed or will pass.
“One may say with certainty, gentlemen of the jury,” the prosecutor
continued, “that outraged nature and the criminal heart bring their own
vengeance more completely than any earthly justice. What’s more,
justice and punishment on earth positively alleviate the punishment of
nature and are, indeed, essential to the soul of the criminal at such
moments, as its salvation from despair. For I cannot imagine the horror
and moral suffering of Karamazov when he learnt that she loved him,
that for his sake she had rejected her first lover, that she was
summoning him, Mitya, to a new life, that she was promising him
happiness—and when? When everything was over for him and nothing was
possible!
“By the way, I will note in parenthesis a point of importance for the
light it throws on the prisoner’s position at the moment. This woman,
this love of his, had been till the last moment, till the very instant
of his arrest, a being unattainable, passionately desired by him but
unattainable. Yet why did he not shoot himself then, why did he
relinquish his design and even forget where his pistol was? It was just
that passionate desire for love and the hope of satisfying it that
restrained him. Throughout their revels he kept close to his adored
mistress, who was at the banquet with him and was more charming and
fascinating to him than ever—he did not leave her side, abasing himself
in his homage before her.
“His passion might well, for a moment, stifle not only the fear of
arrest, but even the torments of conscience. For a moment, oh, only for
a moment! I can picture the state of mind of the criminal hopelessly
enslaved by these influences—first, the influence of drink, of noise
and excitement, of the thud of the dance and the scream of the song,
and of her, flushed with wine, singing and dancing and laughing to him!
Secondly, the hope in the background that the fatal end might still be
far off, that not till next morning, at least, they would come and take
him. So he had a few hours and that’s much, very much! In a few hours
one can think of many things. I imagine that he felt something like
what criminals feel when they are being taken to the scaffold. They
have another long, long street to pass down and at walking pace, past
thousands of people. Then there will be a turning into another street
and only at the end of that street the dread place of execution! I
fancy that at the beginning of the journey the condemned man, sitting
on his shameful cart, must feel that he has infinite life still before
him. The houses recede, the cart moves on—oh, that’s nothing, it’s
still far to the turning into the second street and he still looks
boldly to right and to left at those thousands of callously curious
people with their eyes fixed on him, and he still fancies that he is
just such a man as they. But now the turning comes to the next street.
Oh, that’s nothing, nothing, there’s still a whole street before him,
and however many houses have been passed, he will still think there are
many left. And so to the very end, to the very scaffold.
“This I imagine is how it was with Karamazov then. ‘They’ve not had
time yet,’ he must have thought, ‘I may still find some way out, oh,
there’s still time to make some plan of defense, and now, now—she is so
fascinating!’
“His soul was full of confusion and dread, but he managed, however, to
put aside half his money and hide it somewhere—I cannot otherwise
explain the disappearance of quite half of the three thousand he had
just taken from his father’s pillow. He had been in Mokroe more than
once before, he had caroused there for two days together already, he
knew the old big house with all its passages and outbuildings. I
imagine that part of the money was hidden in that house, not long
before the arrest, in some crevice, under some floor, in some corner,
under the roof. With what object? I shall be asked. Why, the
catastrophe may take place at once, of course; he hadn’t yet considered
how to meet it, he hadn’t the time, his head was throbbing and his
heart was with _her_, but money—money was indispensable in any case!
With money a man is always a man. Perhaps such foresight at such a
moment may strike you as unnatural? But he assures us himself that a
month before, at a critical and exciting moment, he had halved his
money and sewn it up in a little bag. And though that was not true, as
we shall prove directly, it shows the idea was a familiar one to
Karamazov, he had contemplated it. What’s more, when he declared at the
inquiry that he had put fifteen hundred roubles in a bag (which never
existed) he may have invented that little bag on the inspiration of the
moment, because he had two hours before divided his money and hidden
half of it at Mokroe till morning, in case of emergency, simply not to
have it on himself. Two extremes, gentlemen of the jury, remember that
Karamazov can contemplate two extremes and both at once.
“We have looked in the house, but we haven’t found the money. It may
still be there or it may have disappeared next day and be in the
prisoner’s hands now. In any case he was at her side, on his knees
before her, she was lying on the bed, he had his hands stretched out to
her and he had so entirely forgotten everything that he did not even
hear the men coming to arrest him. He hadn’t time to prepare any line
of defense in his mind. He was caught unawares and confronted with his
judges, the arbiters of his destiny.
“Gentlemen of the jury, there are moments in the execution of our
duties when it is terrible for us to face a man, terrible on his
account, too! The moments of contemplating that animal fear, when the
criminal sees that all is lost, but still struggles, still means to
struggle, the moments when every instinct of self-preservation rises up
in him at once and he looks at you with questioning and suffering eyes,
studies you, your face, your thoughts, uncertain on which side you will
strike, and his distracted mind frames thousands of plans in an
instant, but he is still afraid to speak, afraid of giving himself
away! This purgatory of the spirit, this animal thirst for
self-preservation, these humiliating moments of the human soul, are
awful, and sometimes arouse horror and compassion for the criminal even
in the lawyer. And this was what we all witnessed then.
“At first he was thunderstruck and in his terror dropped some very
compromising phrases. ‘Blood! I’ve deserved it!’ But he quickly
restrained himself. He had not prepared what he was to say, what answer
he was to make, he had nothing but a bare denial ready. ‘I am not
guilty of my father’s death.’ That was his fence for the moment and
behind it he hoped to throw up a barricade of some sort. His first
compromising exclamations he hastened to explain by declaring that he
was responsible for the death of the servant Grigory only. ‘Of that
bloodshed I am guilty, but who has killed my father, gentlemen, who has
killed him? Who can have killed him, _if not I_?’ Do you hear, he asked
us that, us, who had come to ask him that question! Do you hear that
phrase uttered with such premature haste—‘if not I’—the animal cunning,
the naïveté, the Karamazov impatience of it? ‘I didn’t kill him and you
mustn’t think I did! I wanted to kill him, gentlemen, I wanted to kill
him,’ he hastens to admit (he was in a hurry, in a terrible hurry),
‘but still I am not guilty, it is not I murdered him.’ He concedes to
us that he wanted to murder him, as though to say, you can see for
yourselves how truthful I am, so you’ll believe all the sooner that I
didn’t murder him. Oh, in such cases the criminal is often amazingly
shallow and credulous.
“At that point one of the lawyers asked him, as it were incidentally,
the most simple question, ‘Wasn’t it Smerdyakov killed him?’ Then, as
we expected, he was horribly angry at our having anticipated him and
caught him unawares, before he had time to pave the way to choose and
snatch the moment when it would be most natural to bring in
Smerdyakov’s name. He rushed at once to the other extreme, as he always
does, and began to assure us that Smerdyakov could not have killed him,
was not capable of it. But don’t believe him, that was only his
cunning; he didn’t really give up the idea of Smerdyakov; on the
contrary, he meant to bring him forward again; for, indeed, he had no
one else to bring forward, but he would do that later, because for the
moment that line was spoiled for him. He would bring him forward
perhaps next day, or even a few days later, choosing an opportunity to
cry out to us, ‘You know I was more skeptical about Smerdyakov than
you, you remember that yourselves, but now I am convinced. He killed
him, he must have done!’ And for the present he falls back upon a
gloomy and irritable denial. Impatience and anger prompted him,
however, to the most inept and incredible explanation of how he looked
into his father’s window and how he respectfully withdrew. The worst of
it was that he was unaware of the position of affairs, of the evidence
given by Grigory.
“We proceeded to search him. The search angered, but encouraged him,
the whole three thousand had not been found on him, only half of it.
And no doubt only at that moment of angry silence, the fiction of the
little bag first occurred to him. No doubt he was conscious himself of
the improbability of the story and strove painfully to make it sound
more likely, to weave it into a romance that would sound plausible. In
such cases the first duty, the chief task of the investigating lawyers,
is to prevent the criminal being prepared, to pounce upon him
unexpectedly so that he may blurt out his cherished ideas in all their
simplicity, improbability and inconsistency. The criminal can only be
made to speak by the sudden and apparently incidental communication of
some new fact, of some circumstance of great importance in the case, of
which he had no previous idea and could not have foreseen. We had such
a fact in readiness—that was Grigory’s evidence about the open door
through which the prisoner had run out. He had completely forgotten
about that door and had not even suspected that Grigory could have seen
it.
“The effect of it was amazing. He leapt up and shouted to us, ‘Then
Smerdyakov murdered him, it was Smerdyakov!’ and so betrayed the basis
of the defense he was keeping back, and betrayed it in its most
improbable shape, for Smerdyakov could only have committed the murder
after he had knocked Grigory down and run away. When we told him that
Grigory saw the door was open before he fell down, and had heard
Smerdyakov behind the screen as he came out of his bedroom—Karamazov
was positively crushed. My esteemed and witty colleague, Nikolay
Parfenovitch, told me afterwards that he was almost moved to tears at
the sight of him. And to improve matters, the prisoner hastened to tell
us about the much-talked-of little bag—so be it, you shall hear this
romance!
“Gentlemen of the jury, I have told you already why I consider this
romance not only an absurdity, but the most improbable invention that
could have been brought forward in the circumstances. If one tried for
a bet to invent the most unlikely story, one could hardly find anything
more incredible. The worst of such stories is that the triumphant
romancers can always be put to confusion and crushed by the very
details in which real life is so rich and which these unhappy and
involuntary story-tellers 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 any one 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
material 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 remembers 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 some one 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
honor.’ Oh, we are glad to believe it, we are eager to believe it, even
if only on his word of honor! Are we jackals thirsting for human blood?
Show us a single fact in the prisoner’s favor 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 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 defense,” 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 reëcho 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 civilization. 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!”
Though Ippolit Kirillovitch was genuinely moved, he wound up his speech
with this rhetorical appeal—and the effect produced by him was
extraordinary. 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.”
Every one 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. 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 remember 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 beginning 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 defense 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!”
“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 offense. 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 Parliament a Member got up last week and speaking
about the Nihilists 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. He was talking about that last week.”
“Not an easy job.”
“Not an easy job? Why not?”
“Why, we’d shut up Kronstadt and not let them have any corn. Where
would they get it?”
“In America. They get it from America now.”
“Nonsense!”
But the bell rang, all rushed to their places. Fetyukovitch mounted the
tribune.