Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 1half of the sum could nowhere be discovered, shows that
that money was not the same, and had never been in any
envelope. By strict calculation of time it was proved at the
preliminary inquiry that the prisoner ran straight from
those women servants to Perhotin’s without going home,
and that he had been nowhere. So he had been all the time
in company and therefore could not have divided the three
thousand in half and hidden half in the town. It’s just this
consideration that has led the prosecutor to assume that
the money is hidden in some crevice at Mokroe. Why not
in the dungeons of the castle of Udolpho, gentlemen? Isn’t
this supposition really too fantastic and too romantic? And
observe, if that supposition breaks down, the whole charge
of robbery is scattered to the winds, for in that case what
could have become of the other fifteen hundred roubles? By
what miracle could they have disappeared, since it’s proved
the prisoner went nowhere else? And we are ready to ruin a
man’s life with such tales!
‘I shall be told that he could not explain where he got the
fifteen hundred that he had. and everyone knew that he was
without money before that night. Who knew it, pray? The
prisoner has made a clear and unflinching statement of the
source of that money, and if you will have it so, gentlemen
of the jury, nothing can be more probable than that state-
ment, and more consistent with the temper and spirit of the
prisoner. The prosecutor is charmed with his own romance.
A man of weak will, who had brought himself to take the
three thousand so insultingly offered by his betrothed,
could not, we are told, have set aside half and sewn it up, but