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blow Dmitri Fyodorovitch gave him on the head, he was suf-
fering from aberration: he went and committed the murder.
As for his saying he didn’t, he very likely doesn’t remember.
Only, you know, it’ll be better, ever so much better, if Dmitri
Fyodorovitch murdered him. And that’s how it must have
been, though I say it was Grigory. It certainly was Dmitri
Fyodorovitch, and that’s better, ever so much better! Oh!
not better that a son should have killed his father, I don’t de-
fend that. Children ought to honour their parents, and yet
it would be better if it were he, as you’d have nothing to cry
over then, for he did it when he was unconscious or rather
when he was conscious, but did not know what he was do-
ing. Let them acquit him — that’s so humane, and would
show what a blessing reformed law courts are. I knew noth-
ing about it, but they say they have been so a long time. And
when I heard it yesterday, I was so struck by it that I wanted
to send for you at once. And if he is acquitted, make him
come straight from the law courts to dinner with me, and
I’ll have a party of friends, and we’ll drink to the reformed
law courts. I don’t believe he’d be dangerous; besides, I’ll
invite a great many friends, so that he could always be led
out if he did anything. And then he might be made a justice
of the peace or something in another town, for those who
have been in trouble themselves make the best judges. And,
besides, who isn’t suffering from aberration nowadays? —
you, I, all of us, are in a state of aberration, and there are
ever so many examples of it: a man sits singing a song, sud-
denly something annoys him, he takes a pistol and shoots
the first person he comes across, and no one blames him for

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