Page 1163 - the-brothers-karamazov

she pointed to Mitya. ‘It was he killed his father, you will see
that directly. He wrote to me how he would kill his father!
But the other one is ill, he is ill, he is delirious!’ she kept cry-
ing out, beside herself.
The court usher took the document she held out to the
President, and she, dropping into her chair, hiding her face
in her hands, began convulsively and noiselessly sobbing,
shaking all over, and stifling every sound for fear she should
be ejected from the court. The document she had handed up
was that letter Mitya had written at the Metropolis tavern,
which Ivan had spoken of as a ‘mathematical proof.’ Alas!
its mathematical conclusiveness was recognised, and had it
not been for that letter, Mitya might have escaped his doom
or, at least, that doom would have been less terrible. It was, I
repeat, difficult to notice every detail. What followed is still
confused to my mind. The President must, I suppose, have
at once passed on the document to the judges, the jury, and
the lawyers on both sides. I only remember how they be-
gan examining the witness. On being gently asked by the
President whether she had recovered sufficiently, Katerina
Ivanovna exclaimed impetuously:
‘I am ready, I am ready! I am quite equal to answering
you,’ she added, evidently still afraid that she would some-
how be prevented from giving evidence. She was asked to
explain in detail what this letter was and under what cir-
cumstances she received it.
‘I received it the day before the crime was committed,
but he wrote it the day before that, at the tavern — that is,
two days before he committed the crime. Look, it is writ-

11 The Brothers Karamazov