Page 1243 - the-brothers-karamazov

it must have been he. ‘It has all been done as he wrote,’ cries
the prosecutor.
‘But in the first place, it’s the letter of a drunken man
and written in great irritation; secondly, he writes of the
envelope from what he has heard from Smerdyakov again,
for he has not seen the envelope himself; and thirdly, he
wrote it indeed, but how can you prove that he did it? Did
the prisoner take the envelope from under the pillow, did
he find the money, did that money exist indeed? And was
it to get money that the prisoner ran off, if you remember?
He ran off post-haste not to steal, but to find out where she
was, the woman who had crushed him. He was not running
to carry out a programme, to carry out what he had writ-
ten, that is, not for an act of premeditated robbery, but he
ran suddenly, spontaneously, in a jealous fury. Yes! I shall
be told, but when he got there and murdered him he seized
the money, too. But did he murder him after all? The charge
of robbery I repudiate with indignation. A man cannot be
accused of robbery, if it’s impossible to state accurately what
he has stolen; that’s an axiom. But did he murder him with-
out robbery, did he murder him at all? Is that proved? Isn’t
that, too, a romance?’

1 The Brothers Karamazov