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