Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 1 1erina Ivanovna, where can I find the means to go off with
Grushenka?’ If he behaved wildly, drank, and made distur-
bances in the taverns in the course of that month, it was
perhaps because he was wretched and strained beyond his
powers of endurance. These two questions became so acute
that they drove him at last to despair. He sent his younger
brother to beg for the last time for the three thousand rou-
bles, but without waiting for a reply, burst in himself and
ended by beating the old man in the presence of witnesses.
After that he had no prospect of getting it from anyone; his
father would not give it him after that beating.
‘The same evening he struck himself on the breast, just
on the upper part of the breast where the little bag was, and
swore to his brother that he had the means of not being a
scoundrel, but that still he would remain a scoundrel, for he
foresaw that he would not use that means, that he wouldn’t
have the character, that he wouldn’t have the will-power to
do it. Why, why does the prosecutor refuse to believe the
evidence of Alexey Karamazov, given so genuinely and sin-
cerely, so spontaneously and convincingly? And why, on
the contrary, does he force me to believe in money hidden
in a crevice, in the dungeons of the castle of Udolpho?
‘The same evening, after his talk with his brother, the
prisoner wrote that fatal letter, and that letter is the chief,
the most stupendous proof of the prisoner having commit-
ted robbery! ‘I shall beg from everyone, and if I don’t get it I
shall murder my father and shall take the envelope with the
pink ribbon on it from under his mattress as soon as Ivan
has gone.’ A full programme of the murder, we are told, so