1 The Brothers Karamazov
fact to Smerdyakov beforehand. And if there is the barest
possibility of such an explanation, how can the prisoner be
so positively accused of having committed murder for the
sake of robbery, and of having actually carried out that rob-
bery? This is encroaching on the domain of romance. If it is
maintained that something has been stolen, the thing must
be produced, or at least its existence must be proved beyond
doubt. Yet no one had ever seen these notes.
‘Not long ago in Petersburg a young man of eighteen,
hardly more than a boy, who carried on a small business as
a costermonger, went in broad daylight into a moneychang-
er’s shop with an axe, and with extraordinary, typical
audacity killed the master of the shop and carried off fifteen
hundred roubles. Five hours later he was arrested, and, ex-
cept fifteen roubles he had already managed to spend, the
whole sum was found on him. Moreover, the shopman, on
his return to the shop after the murder, informed the police
not only of the exact sum stolen, but even of the notes and
gold coins of which that sum was made up, and those very
notes and coins were found on the criminal. This was fol-
lowed by a full and genuine confession on the part of the
murderer. That’s what I call evidence, gentlemen of the jury!
In that case I know, I see, I touch the money, and cannot
deny its existence. Is it the same in the present case? And
yet it is a question of life and death.
‘Yes, I shall be told, but he was carousing that night,
squandering money; he was shown to have had fifteen hun-
dred roubles- where did he get the money? But the very fact
that only fifteen hundred could be found, and the other