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stract, as was perhaps fitting, indeed.
The court was packed and overflowing long before the
judges made their appearance. Our court is the best hall
in the town — spacious, lofty, and good for sound. On the
right of the judges, who were on a raised platform, a table
and two rows of chairs had been put ready for the jury. On
the left was the place for the prisoner and the counsel for
the defence. In the middle of the court, near the judges,
was a table with the ‘material proofs.’ On it lay Fyodor Pav-
lovitch’s white silk dressing-gown, stained with blood; the
fatal brass pestle with which the supposed murder had been
committed; Mitya’s shirt, with a blood-stained sleeve; his
coat, stained with blood in patches over the pocket in which
he had put his handkerchief; the handkerchief itself, stiff
with blood and by now quite yellow; the pistol loaded by
Mitya at Perhotin’s with a view to suicide, and taken from
him on the sly at Mokroe by Trifon Borrissovitch; the en-
velope in which the three thousand roubles had been put
ready for Grushenka, the narrow pink ribbon with which it
had been tied, and many other articles I don’t remember. In
the body of the hall, at some distance, came the seats for the
public. But in front of the balustrade a few chairs had been
placed for witnesses who remained in the court after giving
their evidence.
At ten o’clock the three judges arrived — the President,
one honorary justice of the peace, and one other. The pros-
ecutor, of course, entered immediately after. The President
was a short, stout, thick-set man of fifty, with a dyspeptic
complexion, dark hair turning grey and cut short, and a