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themselves, if they fall from heaven for him, if they need not
be paid for. He dislikes paying for anything, but is very fond
of receiving, and that’s so with him in everything. Oh, give
him every possible good in life (he couldn’t be content with
less), and put no obstacle in his way, and he will show that
he, too, can be noble. He is not greedy, no, but he must have
money, a great deal of money, and you will see how gener-
ously, with what scorn of filthy lucre, he will fling it all away
in the reckless dissipation of one night. But if he has not
money, he will show what he is ready to do to get it when he
is in great need of it. But all this later, let us take events in
their chronological order.
‘First, we have before us a poor abandoned child, run-
ning about the back-yard ‘without boots on his feet,’ as our
worthy and esteemed fellow citizen, of foreign origin, alas!
expressed it just now. I repeat it again, I yield to no one the
defence of the criminal. I am here to accuse him, but to de-
fend him also. Yes, I, too, am human; I, too, can weigh the
influence of home and childhood on the character. But the
boy grows up and becomes an officer; for a duel and other
reckless conduct he is exiled to one of the remote frontier
towns of Russia. There he led a wild life as an officer. And,
of course, he needed money, money before all things, and
so after prolonged disputes he came to a settlement with his
father, and the last six thousand was sent him. A letter is in
existence in which he practically gives up his claim to the
rest and settles his conflict with his father over the inheri-
tance on the payment of this six thousand.
‘Then came his meeting with a young girl of lofty char-

11 0 The Brothers Karamazov