10 The Brothers Karamazovwhat could I have done to put such a degrading suspicion
into your mean soul?’
‘As for the murder, you couldn’t have done that and didn’t
want to, but as for wanting someone else to do it, that was
just what you did want.’
‘And how coolly, how coolly he speakst But why should I
have wanted it; what grounds had I for wanting it?’
‘What grounds had you? What about the inheritance?’
said Smerdyakov sarcastically, and, as it were, vindictively.
‘Why, after your parent’s death there was at least forty thou-
sand to come to each of you, and very likely more, but if
Fyodor Pavlovitch got married then to that lady, Agrafena
Alexandrovna, she would have had all his capital made over
to her directly after the wedding, for she’s plenty of sense,
so that your parent would not have left you two roubles be-
tween the three of you. And were they far from a wedding,
either? Not a hair’s-breadth: that lady had only to lift her
little finger and he would have run after her to church, with
his tongue out.’
Ivan restrained himself with painful effort.
‘Very good,’ he commented at last. ‘You see, I haven’t
jumped up, I haven’t knocked you down, I haven’t killed
you. Speak on. So, according to you, I had fixed on Dmitri
to do it; I was reckoning on him?’
‘How could you help reckoning on him? If he killed him,
then he would lose all the rights of a nobleman, his rank
and property, and would go off to exile; so his share of the
inheritance would come to you and your brother Alexey Fy-
odorovitch in equal parts; so you’d each have not forty, but