0 The Brothers Karamazovand resolutely suppressed. The prosecutor positively seized
hold of him.
‘This is absolutely irregular, Mihail Makarovitch!’ he
cried. ‘You are positively hindering the inquiry.... You’re ru-
ining the case.’ he almost gasped.
‘Follow the regular course! Follow the regular course!’
cried Nikolay Parfenovitch, fearfully excited too, ‘other-
wise it’s absolutely impossible!..’
‘Judge us together!’ Grushenka cried frantically, still
kneeling. ‘Punish us together. I will go with him now, if it’s
to death!’
‘Grusha, my life, my blood, my holy one!’ Mitya fell on
his knees beside her and held her tight in his arms. ‘Don’t
believe her,’ he cried, ‘she’s not guilty of anything, of any
blood, of anything!’
He remembered afterwards that he was forcibly dragged
away from her by several men, and that she was led out, and
that when he recovered himself he was sitting at the table.
Beside him and behind him stood the men with metal plates.
Facing him on the other side of the table sat Nikolay Parfe-
novitch, the investigating lawyer. He kept persuading him
to drink a little water out of a glass that stood on the table.
‘That will refresh you, that will calm you. Be calm, don’t
be frightened,’ he added, extremely politely. Mitya (he
remembered it afterwards) became suddenly intensely in-
terested in his big rings, one with an amethyst, and another
with a transparent bright yellow stone, of great brilliance.
And long afterwards he remembered with wonder how
those rings had riveted his attention through all those ter-