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the evidence against Smerdyakov produced by these three
persons. who are all deeply concerned in the prisoner’s fate.
And yet the theory of Smerdyakov’s guilt has been noised
about, has been and is still maintained. Is it credible? Is it
conceivable?’
Here Ippolit Kirillovitch thought it necessary to describe
the personality of Smerdyakov, ‘who had cut short his life in
a fit of insanity.’ He depicted him as a man of weak intellect,
with a smattering of education, who had been thrown off his
balance by philosophical ideas above his level and certain
modern theories of duty, which he learnt in practice from
the reckless life of his master, who was also perhaps his fa-
ther — Fyodor Pavlovitch; and, theoretically, from various
strange philosophical conversations with his master’s elder
son, Ivan Fyodorovitch, who readily indulged in this diver-
sion, probably feeling dull or wishing to amuse himself at
the valet’s expense. ‘He spoke to me himself of his spiri-
tual condition during the last few days at his father’s house,’
Ippolit Kirillovitch explained; ‘but others too have borne
witness to it- the prisoner himself, his brother, and the ser-
vant Grigory — that is, all who knew him well.
‘Moreover, Smerdyakov, whose health was shaken by his
attacks of epilepsy, had not the courage of a chicken. ‘He fell
at my feet and kissed them,’ the prisoner himself has told
us, before he realised how damaging such a statement was
to himself. ‘He is an epileptic chicken,’ he declared about
him in his characteristic language. And the prisoner chose
him for his confidant (we have his own word for it) and he
frightened him into consenting at last to act as a spy for

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