Page 1122 - the-brothers-karamazov

he said. Of the deceased Smerdyakov he observed, crossing
himself, that he was a lad of ability, but stupid and afflicted,
and, worse still, an infidel, and that it was Fyodor Pavlov-
itch and his elder son who had taught him to be so. But he
defended Smerdyakov’s honesty almost with warmth, and
related how Smerdyakov had once found the master’s mon-
ey in the yard, and, instead of concealing it, had taken it to
his master, who had rewarded him with a ‘gold piece’ for
it, and trusted him implicitly from that time forward. He
maintained obstinately that the door into the garden had
been open. But he was asked so many questions that I can’t
recall them all.
At last the counsel for the defence began to cross-ex-
amine him, and the first question he asked was about the
envelope in which Fyodor Pavlovitch was supposed to have
put three thousand roubles for ‘a certain person.’ ‘Have you
ever seen it, you, who were for so many years in close atten-
dance on your master?’ Grigory answered that he had not
seen it and had never heard of the money from anyone ‘till
everybody was talking about it.’ This question about the en-
velope Fetyukovitch put to everyone who could conceivably
have known of it, as persistently as the prosecutor asked his
question about Dmitri’s inheritance, and got the same an-
swer from all, that no one had seen the envelope, though
many had heard of it. From the beginning everyone noticed
Fetyukovitch’s persistence on this subject.
‘Now, with your permission I’ll ask you a question,’ Fe-
tyukovitch said, suddenly and unexpectedly. ‘Of what was
that balsam, or, rather, decoction, made, which, as we learn

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