第304章

"I got them from Smerdyakov, from the murderer, yesterday....Iwas with him just before he hanged himself.It was he, not my brother, killed our father.He murdered him and I incited him to do it...Who doesn't desire his father's death?""Are you in your right mind?" broke involuntarily from the President.

"I should think I am in my right mind...in the same nasty mind as all of you...as all these...ugly faces." He turned suddenly to the audience."My father has been murdered and they pretend they are horrified," he snarled, with furious contempt."They keep up the sham with one another.Liars! They all desire the death of their fathers.One reptile devours another....If there hadn't been a murder, they'd have been angry and gone home ill-humoured.It's a spectacle they want! Panem et circenses.* Though I am one to talk!

Have you any water? Give me a drink for Christ's sake!" He suddenly clutched his head.

* Bread and circuses.

The usher at once approached him.Alyosha jumped up and cried, "He is ill.Don't believe him: he has brain fever." Katerina Ivanovna rose impulsively from her seat and, rigid with horror, gazed at Ivan.Mitya stood up and greedily looked at his brother and listened to him with a wild, strange smile.

"Don't disturb yourselves.I am not mad, I am only a murderer,"Ivan began again."You can't expect eloquence from a murderer," he added suddenly for some reason and laughed a queer laugh.

The prosecutor bent over to the President in obvious dismay.The two other judges communicated in agitated whispers.Fetyukovitch pricked up his ears as he listened: the hall was hushed in expectation.The President seemed suddenly to recollect himself.

"Witness, your words are incomprehensible and impossible here.

Calm yourself, if you can, and tell your story...if you really have something to tell.How can you confirm your statement...if indeed you are not delirious?""That's just it.I have no proof.That cur Smerdyakov won't send you proofs from the other world...in an envelope.You think of nothing but envelopes- one is enough.I've no witnesses...except one, perhaps," he smiled thoughtfully.

"Who is your witness?"

"He has a tail, your excellency, and that would be irregular! Le diable n'existe point! Don't pay attention: he is a paltry, pitiful devil," he added suddenly.He ceased laughing and spoke as it were, confidentially."He is here somewhere, no doubt- under that table with the material evidence on it, perhaps.Where should he sit if not there? You see, listen to me.I told him I don't want to keep quiet, and he talked about the geological cataclysm...idiocy! Come, release the monster...he's been singing a hymn.That's because his heart is light! It's like a drunken man in the street bawling how 'Vanka went to Petersburg,' and I would give a quadrillion quadrillions for two seconds of joy.You don't know me! Oh, how stupid all this business is! Come, take me instead of him! I didn't come for nothing....Why, why is everything so stupid?..."And he began slowly, and as it were reflectively, looking round him again.But the court was all excitement by now.Alyosha rushed towards him, but the court usher had already seized Ivan by the arm.

"What are you about?" he cried, staring into the man's face, and suddenly seizing him by the shoulders, he flung him violently to the floor.But the police were on the spot and he was seized.He screamed furiously.And all the time he was being removed, he yelled and screamed something incoherent.

The whole court was thrown into confusion.I don't remember everything as it happened.I was excited myself and could not follow.I only know that afterwards, when everything was quiet again and everyone understood what had happened, the court usher came in for a reprimand, though he very reasonably explained that the witness had been quite well, that the doctor had seen him an hour ago, when he had a slight attack of giddiness, but that, until he had come into the court, he had talked quite consecutively, so that nothing could have been foreseen- that he had, in fact, insisted on giving evidence.

But before everyone had completely regained their composure and recovered from this scene, it was followed by another.Katerina Ivanovna had an attack of hysterics.She sobbed, shrieking loudly, but refused to leave the court, struggled, and besought them not to remove her.Suddenly she cried to the President:

"There is more evidence I must give at once...at once! Here is a document, a letter...take it, read it quickly, quickly! It's a letter from that monster...that man there, there!" she pointed to Mitya."It was he killed his father, you will see that directly.He wrote to me how he would kill his father! But the other one is ill, he is ill, he is delirious!" she kept crying out, beside herself.

The court usher took the document she held out to the President, and she, dropping into her chair, hiding her face in her hands, began convulsively and noiselessly sobbing, shaking all over, and stifling every sound for fear she should be ejected from the court.

The document she had handed up was that letter Mitya had written at the Metropolis tavern, which Ivan had spoken of as a "mathematical proof." Alas! its mathematical conclusiveness was recognised, and had it not been for that letter, Mitya might have escaped his doom or, at least, that doom would have been less terrible.It was, I repeat, difficult to notice every detail.What followed is still confused to my mind.The President must, I suppose, have at once passed on the document to the judges, the jury, and the lawyers on both sides.Ionly remember how they began examining the witness.On being gently asked by the President whether she had recovered sufficiently, Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed impetuously: