Page 1264 - the-brothers-karamazov

as he had threatened. Even persons of high position, old
men with stars on their breasts, sitting on specially reserved
seats behind the judges, applauded the orator and waved
their handkerchiefs. So that when the noise died down, the
President confined himself to repeating his stern threat to
clear the court, and Fetyukovitch, excited and triumphant,
continued his speech.)
‘Gentlemen of the jury, you remember that awful night of
which so much has been said to-day, when the son got over
the fence and stood face to face with the enemy and perse-
cutor who had begotten him. I insist most emphatically it
was not for money he ran to his father’s house: the charge of
robbery is an absurdity, as I proved before. And it was not to
murder him he broke into the house, oh, no! If he had had
that design he would, at least, have taken the precaution of
arming himself beforehand. The brass pestle he caught up
instinctively without knowing why he did it. Granted that
he deceived his father by tapping at the window, granted
that he made his way in — I’ve said already that I do not
for a moment believe that legend, but let it be so, let us sup-
pose it for a moment. Gentlemen, I swear to you by all that’s
holy, if it had not been his father, but an ordinary enemy,
he would, after running through the rooms and satisfying
himself that the woman was not there, have made off, post-
haste, without doing any harm to his rival. He would have
struck him, pushed him away perhaps, nothing more, for
he had no thought and no time to spare for that. What he
wanted to know was where she was. But his father, his fa-
ther! The mere sight of the father who had hated him from

1