Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 110 from being favourably disposed to the prisoner, should en-
ter the court bitterly prejudiced against him. In fact, one
may say pretty certainly that the masculine, as distin-
guished from the feminine, part of the audience was biased
against the prisoner. There were numbers of severe, frown-
ing, even vindictive faces. Mitya, indeed, had managed to
offend many people during his stay in the town. Some of
the visitors were, of course, in excellent spirits and quite
unconcerned as to the fate of Mitya personally. But all were
interested in the trial, and the majority of the men were
certainly hoping for the conviction of the criminal, except
perhaps the lawyers, who were more interested in the legal
than in the moral aspect of the case.
Everybody was excited at the presence of the celebrated
lawyer, Fetyukovitch. His talent was well known, and this
was not the first time he had defended notorious criminal
cases in the provinces. And if he defended them, such cas-
es became celebrated and long remembered all over Russia.
There were stories, too, about our prosecutor and about the
President of the Court. It was said that Ippolit Kirillovitch
was in a tremor at meeting Fetyukovitch, and that they
had been enemies from the beginning of their careers in
Petersburg, that though our sensitive prosecutor, who al-
ways considered that he had been aggrieved by someone
in Petersburg because his talents had not been properly
appreciated, was keenly excited over the Karamazov case,
and was even dreaming of rebuilding his flagging fortunes
by means of it, Fetyukovitch, they said, was his one anxi-
ety. But these rumours were not quite just. Our prosecutor