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last words. He was almost on the point of turning back, but
it was only a passing impulse, and muttering, ‘Nonsense!’
he went out of the hospital.
His chief feeling was one of relief at the fact that it was
not Smerdyakov, but Mitya, who had committed the murder,
though he might have been expected to feel the opposite. He
did not want to analyse the reason for this feeling, and even
felt a positive repugnance at prying into his sensations. He
felt as though he wanted to make haste to forget something.
In the following days he became convinced of Mitya’s guilt,
as he got to know all the weight of evidence against him.
There was evidence of people of no importance, Fenya and
her mother, for instance, but the effect of it was almost over-
powering. As to Perhotin, the people at the tavern, and at
Plotnikov’s shop, as well as the witnesses at Mokroe, their
evidence seemed conclusive. It was the details that were so
damning. The secret of the knocks impressed the lawyers
almost as much as Grigory’s evidence as to the open door.
Grigory’s wife, Marfa, in answer to Ivan’s questions, de-
clared that Smerdyakov had been lying all night the other
side of the partition wall, ‘He was not three paces from our
bed,’ and that although she was a sound sleeper she waked
several times and heard him moaning, ‘He was moaning
the whole time, moaning continually.’
Talking to Herzenstube, and giving it as his opinion that
Smerdyakov was not mad, but only rather weak, Ivan only
evoked from the old man a subtle smile.
‘Do you know how he spends his time now?’ he asked;
‘learning lists of French words by heart. He has an exercise-

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