11 The Brothers Karamazov
Chapter 7
An Historical Survey
‘T
HE medical experts have striven to convince us that
the prisoner is out of his mind and, in fact, a maniac. I
maintain that he is in his right mind, and that if he had not
been, he would have behaved more cleverly. As for his be-
ing a maniac, that I would agree with, but only in one point,
that is, his fixed idea about the three thousand. Yet I think
one might find a much simpler cause than his tendency to
insanity. For my part I agree thoroughly with the young
doctor who maintained that the prisoner’s mental faculties
have always been normal, and that he has only been irrita-
ble and exasperated. The object of the prisoner’s continual
and violent anger was not the sum itself; there was a special
motive at the bottom of it. That motive is jealousy!’
Here Ippolit Kirillovitch described at length the prison-
er’s fatal passion for Grushenka. He began from the moment
when the prisoner went to the ‘young person’s’ lodgings ‘to
beat her’ — ‘I use his own expression,’ the prosecutor ex-
plained — ‘but instead of beating her, he remained there,
at her feet. That was the beginning of the passion. At the
same time the prisoner’s father was captivated by the same