shop, and that official, and at the tavern, too, before, people had heard him say so! They are all, all against him, all crying out against him.”
“Yes, there’s a fearful accumulation of evidence,” Alyosha observed grimly.
“And Grigory—Grigory Vassilyevitch—sticks to his story that the door was open, persists that he saw it—there’s no shaking him. I went and talked to him myself. He’s rude about it, too.”
“Yes, that’s perhaps the strongest evidence against him,” said Alyosha.
“And as for Mitya’s being mad, he certainly seems like it now,” Grushenka began with a peculiarly anxious and mysterious air.
“Do you know, Alyosha, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about it for a long time. I go to him every day and simply wonder at him. Tell me, now, what do you suppose he’s always talking about? He talks and talks and I can make nothing of it. I fancied he was talking of something intellectual that I couldn’t understand in my foolishness.
Only he suddenly began talking to me about a babe—that is, about some child. ‘Why is the babe poor?’ he said. ‘It’s for that babe I am going to Siberia now. I am not a murderer, but I must go to Siberia!’
What that meant, what babe, I couldn’t tell for the life of me. Only I cried when he said it, because he said it so nicely. He cried himself, and I cried, too. He suddenly kissed me and made the sign of the cross over me. What did it mean, Alyosha, tell me? What is this babe?”
“It must be Rakitin, who’s been going to see him lately,” smiled Alyosha, “though … that’s not Rakitin’s doing. I didn’t see Mitya yesterday. I’ll see him today.”
“No, it’s not Rakitin; it’s his brother Ivan Fyodorovitch upsetting him. It’s