The Brothers Karamazov

 0 The Brothers Karamazov

Oh, yes. I was talking of aberration. This doctor has come.
You know a doctor has come? Of course, you know it — the
one who discovers madmen. You wrote for him. No, it
wasn’t you, but Katya. It’s all Katya’s doing. Well, you see,
a man may be sitting perfectly sane and suddenly have an
aberration. He may be conscious and know what he is do-
ing and yet be in a state of aberration. And there’s no doubt
that Dmitri Fyodorovitch was suffering from aberration.
They found out about aberration as soon as the law courts
were reformed. It’s all the good effect of the reformed law
courts. The doctor has been here and questioned me about
that evening, about the gold mines. ‘How did he seem then?’
he asked me. He must have been in a state of aberration. He
came in shouting, ‘Money, money, three thousand! Give me
three thousand!’ and then went away and immediately did
the murder. ‘I don’t want to murder him,’ he said, and he
suddenly went and murdered him. That’s why they’ll acquit
him, because he struggled against it and yet he murdered
him.’
‘But he didn’t murder him,’ Alyosha interrupted rather
sharply. He felt more and more sick with anxiety and im-
patience.
‘Yes, I know it was that old man Grigory murdered him.’
‘Grigory?’ cried Alyosha.
‘Yes, yes; it was Grigory. He lay as Dmitri Fyodorovitch
struck him down, and then got up, saw the door open, went
in and killed Fyodor Pavlovitch.’
‘But why, why?’
‘Suffering from aberration. When he recovered from the