11 The Brothers Karamazov
yet I took your money. Despise me as a scoundrel, despise
me, all of you! I’ve deserved it!’
‘Prisoner,’ cried the President, ‘another word and I will
order you to be removed.’
‘That money was a torment to him,’ Katya went on with
impulsive haste. ‘He wanted to repay it me. He wanted to,
that’s true; but he needed money for that creature, too. So
he murdered his father, but he didn’t repay me, and went off
with her to that village where he was arrested. There, again,
he squandered the money he had stolen after the murder of
his father. And a day before the murder he wrote me this
letter. He was drunk when he wrote it. I saw it at once, at the
time. He wrote it from spite, and feeling certain, positively
certain, that I should never show it to anyone, even if he did
kill him, or else he wouldn’t have written it. For he knew I
shouldn’t want to revenge myself and ruin him! But read
it, read it attentively — more attentively, please — and you
will see that he had described it all in his letter, all before-
hand, how he would kill his father and where his money was
kept. Look, please, don’t overlook that, there’s one phrase
there, ‘I shall kill him as soon as Ivan has gone away.’ he
thought it all out beforehand how he would kill him,’ Kat-
erina Ivanovna pointed out to the court with venomous and
malignant triumph. Oh! it was clear she had studied every
line of that letter and detected every meaning underlining
it. ‘If he hadn’t been drunk, he wouldn’t have written to me;
but, look, everything is written there beforehand, just as he
committed the murder after. A complete programme of it!’
she exclaimed frantically.