Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com As for the sum spent yesterday he asserted that Dmitri
Fyodorovitch had told him, as soon as he arrived, that he
had brought three thousand with him.
‘Come now, is that so, Trifon Borissovitch?’ replied
Mitya. ‘Surely I didn’t declare so positively that I’d brought
three thousand?’
‘You did say so, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. You said it before
Andrey. Andrey himself is still here. Send for him. And in
the hall, when you were treating the chorus, you shouted
straight out that you would leave your sixth thousand here
— that is, with what you spent before, we must understand.
Stepan and Semyon heard it, and Pyotr Fomitch Kalganov,
too, was standing beside you at the time. Maybe he’d re-
member it..’
The evidence as to the ‘sixth’ thousand made an extraor-
dinary impression on the two lawyers. They were delighted
with this new mode of reckoning; three and three made
six, three thousand then and three now made six, that was
clear.
They questioned all the peasants suggested by Trifon
Borissovitch, Stepan and Semyon, the driver Andrey, and
Kalganov. The peasants and the driver unhesitatingly con-
firmed Trifon Borissovitch’s evidence. They noted down,
with particular care, Andrey’s account of the conversation
he had had with Mitya on the road: ‘Where,’ says he, ‘am I,
Dmitri Fyodorovitch, going, to heaven or to hell, and shall I
be forgiven in the next world or not?’’ The psychological Ip-
polit Kirillovitch heard this with a subtle smile, and ended
by recommending that these remarks as to where Dmitri