0 The Brothers Karamazov
degrade myself by confessing my secret to you? it’s a joke to
you. I see that from your eyes. You led me on to it, prosecu-
tor! Sing a hymn of triumph if you can.... Damn you, you
torturers!’
He bent his head, and hid his face in his hands. The
lawyers were silent. A minute later he raised his head and
looked at them almost vacantly. His face now expressed
complete, hopeless despair, and he sat mute and passive
as though hardly conscious of what was happening. In the
meantime they had to finish what they were about. They
had immediately to begin examining the witnesses. It was
by now eight o’clock in the morning. The lights had been
extinguished long ago. Mihail Makarovitch and Kalganov,
who had been continually in and out of the room all the
while the interrogation had been going on, had now both
gone out again. The lawyers, too, looked very tired. It was
a wretched morning, the whole sky was overcast, and the
rain streamed down in bucketfuls. Mitya gazed blankly out
of window.
‘May I look out of window?’ he asked Nikolay Parfeno-
vitch, suddenly.
‘Oh, as much as you like,’ the latter replied.
Mitya got up and went to the window.... The rain lashed
against its little greenish panes. He could see the muddy
road just below the house, and farther away, in the rain and
mist, a row of poor, black, dismal huts, looking even blacker
and poorer in the rain. Mitya thought of ‘Phoebus the gold-
en-haired, and how he had meant to shoot himself at his
first ray. ‘Perhaps it would be even better on a morning like