The Brothers Karamazov‘You mean, ‘steal it’? Speak out plainly now. Yes, I consid-
er that I practically stole it, but, if you prefer, I ‘appropriated
it.’ I consider I stole it. And last night I stole it finally.’
‘Last night? But you said that it’s a month since you... ob-
tained it?..’
‘Yes. But not from my father. Not from my father, don’t
be uneasy. I didn’t steal it from my father, but from her. Let
me tell you without interrupting. It’s hard to do, you know.
You see, a month ago, I was sent for by Katerina Ivanovna,
formerly my betrothed. Do you know her?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I know you know her. She’s a noble creature, noblest of
the noble. But she has hated me ever so long, oh, ever so
long... and hated me with good reason, good reason!’
‘Katerina Ivanovna!’ Nikolay Parfenovitch exclaimed
with wonder. The prosecutor, too, stared.
‘Oh, don’t take her name in vain! I’m a scoundrel to bring
her into it. Yes, I’ve seen that she hated me... a long while....
From the very first, even that evening at my lodging... but
enough, enough. You’re unworthy even to know of that. No
need of that at all.... I need only tell you that she sent for
me a month ago, gave me three thousand roubles to send
off to her sister and another relation in Moscow (as though
she couldn’t have sent it off herself!) and I... it was just at
that fatal moment in my life when I... well, in fact, when
I’d just come to love another, her, she’s sitting down below
now, Grushenka. I carried her off here to Mokroe then, and
wasted here in two days half that damned three thousand,
but the other half I kept on me. Well, I’ve kept that other