10 The Brothers Karamazov‘You still mean that Tchermashnya? Stay, tell me, why did
you want my consent, if you really took Tchermashnya for
consent? How will you explain that now?’
‘Assured of your consent, I should have known that you
wouldn’t have made an outcry over those three thousand
being lost, even if I’d been suspected, instead of Dmitri
Fyodorovitch, or as his accomplice; on the contrary, you
would have protected me from others.... And when you got
your inheritance you would have rewarded me when you
were able, all the rest of your life. For you’d have received
your inheritance through me, seeing that if he had married
Agrafena Alexandrovna, you wouldn’t have had a farthing.’
‘Ah! Then you intended to worry me all my life after-
wards,’ snarled Ivan. ‘And what if I hadn’t gone away then,
but had informed against you?’
‘What could you have informed? That I persuaded you
to go to Tcherinashnya? That’s all nonsense. Besides, after
our conversation you would either have gone away or have
stayed. If you had stayed, nothing would have happened. I
should have known that you didn’t want it done, and should
have attempted nothing. As you went away, it meant you
assured me that you wouldn’t dare to inform against me
at the trial, and that you’d overlook my having the three
thousand. And, indeed, you couldn’t have prosecuted me
afterwards, because then I should have told it all in the
court; that is, not that I had stolen the money or killed him
— I shouldn’t have said that — but that you’d put me up
to the theft and the murder, though I didn’t consent to it.
That’s why I needed your consent, so that you couldn’t have