Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 11 court, as he had in fact done, as that was where the judges,
on whom his fate depended, were sitting. So that it was just
by looking straight before him that he showed his perfectly
normal state of mind at the present. The young doctor con-
cluded his ‘modest’ testimony with some heat.
‘Bravo, doctor!’ cried Mitya, from his seat, ‘just so!’
Mitya, of course, was checked, but the young doctor’s
opinion had a decisive influence on the judges and on the
public, and, as appeared afterwards, everyone agreed with
him. But Doctor Herzenstube, when called as a witness, was
quite unexpectedly of use to Mitya. As an old resident in
the town, who had known the Karamazov family for years,
he furnished some facts of great value for the prosecution,
and suddenly, as though recalling something, he added:
‘But the poor young man might have had a very differ-
ent life, for he had a good heart both in childhood and after
childhood, that I know. But the Russian proverb says, ‘If
a man has one head, it’s good, but if another clever man
comes to visit him, it would be better still, for then there
will be two heads and not only one.‘
‘One head is good, but two are better,’ the prosecutor
put in impatiently. He knew the old man’s habit of talking
slowly and deliberately, regardless of the impression he was
making and of the delay he was causing, and highly prizing
his flat, dull and always gleefully complacent German wit.
The old man was fond of making jokes.
‘Oh, yes, that’s what I say,’ he went on stubbornly. ‘One
head is good, but two are much better, but he did not meet
another head with wits, and his wits went. Where did they