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Chapter 7

Mitya’s Great Secret

Received with Hisses

‘G

ENTLEMEN,’ he began, still in the same agitation, ‘I

want to make a full confession: that money was my

own.’

The lawyer’s faces lengthened. That was not at all what

they expected.

‘How do you mean?’ faltered Nikolay Parfenovitch, ‘when

at five o’clock on the same day, from your own confession-.’

‘Damn five o’clock on the same day and my own confes-

sion! That’s nothing to do with it now! That money was my

own, my own, that is, stolen by me...not mine, I mean, but

stolen by me, and it was fifteen hundred roubles, and I had

it on me all the time, all the time..’

‘But where did you get it?’

‘I took it off my neck, gentlemen, off this very neck... it

was here, round my neck, sewn up in a rag, and I’d had it

round my neck a long time, it’s a month since I put it round

my neck... to my shame and disgrace!’

‘And from whom did you... appropriate it?’