Page 822 - the-brothers-karamazov

after his injuries, but before that, as soon as he went into the
garden from the lodge.’
‘But it’s false, it’s false! It can’t be so! He’s slandering me
from spite.... He couldn’t have seen it... I didn’t come from
the door,’ gasped Mitya.
The prosecutor turned to Nikolay Parfenovitch and said
to him impressively:
‘Confront him with it.’
‘Do you recognise this object?’
Nikolay Parfenovitch laid upon the table a large and
thick official envelope, on which three seals still remained
intact. The envelope was empty, and slit open at one end.
Mitya stared at it with open eyes.
‘It... it must be that envelope of my father’s, the envelope
that contained the three thousand roubles... and if there’s
inscribed on it, allow me, ‘For my little chicken’... yes —
three thousand!’ he shouted, ‘do you see, three thousand,
do you see?’
‘Of course, we see. But we didn’t find the money in it. It
was empty, and lying on the floor by the bed, behind the
screen.’
For some seconds Mitya stood as though thunderstruck.
‘Gentlemen, it’s Smerdyakov!’ he shouted suddenly, at the
top of his voice. ‘It’s he who’s murdered him! He’s robbed
him! No one else knew where the old man hid the envelope.
It’s Smerdyakov, that’s clear, now!’
‘But you, too, knew of the envelope and that it was under
the pillow.’
‘I never knew it. I’ve never seen it. This is the first time

1