The Brothers Karamazovyou were absent from the town, and just when you left and
when you came back — all those facts.’
‘You should have asked me like that from the beginning,’
cried Mitya, laughing aloud, ‘and, if you like, we won’t be-
gin from yesterday, but from the morning of the day before;
then you’ll understand how, why, and where I went. I went
the day before yesterday, gentlemen, to a merchant of the
town, called Samsonov, to borrow three thousand roubles
from him on safe security. It was a pressing matter, gentle-
men, it was a sudden necessity.’
‘Allow me to interrupt you,’ the prosecutor put in politely.
‘Why were you in such pressing need for just that sum, three
thousand?’
‘Oh, gentlemen, you needn’t go into details, how, when
and why, and why just so much money, and not so much,
and all that rigmarole. Why, it’ll run to three volumes, and
then you’ll want an epilogue!’ Mitya said all this with the
good-natured but impatient familiarity of a man who is
anxious to tell the whole truth and is full of the best inten-
tions.
‘Gentlemen!’ — he corrected himself hurriedly — ‘don’t
be vexed with me for my restiveness, I beg you again. Believe
me once more, I feel the greatest respect for you and un-
derstand the true position of affairs. Don’t think I’m drunk.
I’m quite sober now. And, besides, being drunk would be no
hindrance. It’s with me, you know, like the saying: ‘When
he is sober, he is a fool; when he is drunk, he is a wise man.’
Ha ha! But I see, gentlemen, it’s not the proper thing to
make jokes to you, till we’ve had our explanation, I mean.