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was in debt to the other, with their crazy Karamazov way
of muddling things so that no one could make head or tail
of it?’ He attributed the tragic crime to the habits that had
become ingrained by ages of serfdom and the distressed
condition of Russia, due to the lack of appropriate institu-
tions. He was, in fact, allowed some latitude of speech. This
was the first occasion on which Rakitin showed what he
could do, and attracted notice. The prosecutor knew that
the witness was preparing a magazine article on the case,
and afterwards in his speech, as we shall see later, quot-
ed some ideas from the article, showing that he had seen
it already. The picture drawn by the witness was a gloomy
and sinister one, and greatly strengthened the case for the
prosecution. Altogether, Rakatin’s discourse fascinated the
public by its independence and the extraordinary nobil-
ity of its ideas. There were even two or three outbreaks of
applause when he spoke of serfdom and the distressed con-
dition of Russia.
But Rakitin, in his youthful ardour, made a slight blunder,
of which the counsel for the defence at once adroitly took
advantage. Answering certain questions about Grushenka
and carried away by the loftiness of his own sentiments and
his success, of which he was, of course, conscious, he went
so far as to speak somewhat contemptuously of Agrafena
Alexandrovna as ‘the kept mistress of Samsonov.’ He would
have given a good deal to take back his words afterwards,
for Fetyukovitch caught him out over it at once. And it was
all because Rakitin had not reckoned on the lawyer having
been able to become so intimately acquainted with every

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