Page 1248 - the-brothers-karamazov

on. But again I ask, Mr. Prosecutor, have you not invented
a new personality? Is the prisoner so coarse and heartless
as to be able to think at that moment of love and of dodg-
es to escape punishment, if his hands were really stained
with his father’s blood? No, no, no! As soon as it was made
plain to him that she loved him and called him to her side,
promising him new happiness, oh! then, I protest he must
have felt the impulse to suicide doubled, trebled, and must
have killed himself, if he had his father’s murder on his
conscience. Oh, no! he would not have forgotten where his
pistols lay! I know the prisoner: the savage, stony heartless-
ness ascribed to him by the prosecutor is inconsistent with
his character. He would have killed himself, that’s certain.
He did not kill himself just because ‘his mother’s prayers
had saved him,’ and he was innocent of his father’s blood.
He was troubled, he was grieving that night at Mokroe only
about old Grigory and praying to God that the old man
would recover, that his blow had not been fatal, and that he
would not have to suffer for it. Why not accept such an in-
terpretation of the facts? What trustworthy proof have we
that the prisoner is lying?
‘But we shall be told at once again, ‘There is his father’s
corpse! If he ran away without murdering him, who did
murder him?’ Here, I repeat, you have the whole logic of the
prosecution. Who murdered him, if not he? There’s no one
to put in his place.
‘Gentlemen of the jury, is that really so? Is it positively,
actually true that there is no one else at all? We’ve heard the
prosecutor count on his fingers all the persons who were in

1