Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 111 his counsel, with no show of regret:
‘I won’t again, I won’t. It escaped me. I won’t do it again.’
And, of course, this brief episode did him no good with
the jury or the public. His character was displayed, and it
spoke for itself. It was under the influence of this incident
that the opening statement was read. It was rather short, but
circumstantial. It only stated the chief reasons why he had
been arrested, why he must be tried, and so on. Yet it made
a great impression on me. The clerk read it loudly and dis-
tinctly. The whole tragedy was suddenly unfolded before
us, concentrated, in bold relief, in a fatal and pitiless light.
I remember how, immediately after it had been read, the
President asked Mitya in a loud impressive voice:
‘Prisoner, do you plead guilty?’
Mitya suddenly rose from his seat.
‘I plead guilty to drunkenness and dissipation,’ he ex-
claimed, again in a startling, almost frenzied, voice, ‘to
idleness and debauchery. I meant to become an honest man
for good, just at the moment when I was struck down by
fate. But I am not guilty of the death of that old man, my
enemy and my father. No, no, I am not guilty of robbing
him! I could not be. Dmitri Karamazov is a scoundrel, but
not a thief.’
He sat down again, visibly trembling all over. The Pres-
ident again briefly, but impressively, admonished him to
answer only what was asked, and not to go off into irrel-
evant exclamations. Then he ordered the case to proceed.
All the witnesses were led up to take the oath. Then I saw
them all together. The brothers of the prisoner were, how-