“The lackey, Smerdyakov, who murdered his master and hanged himself last night.”
She was, of course, at once asked what ground she had for such a definite accusation; but it appeared that she, too, had no grounds for it.
“Dmitri Fyodorovitch told me so himself; you can believe him. The woman who came between us has ruined him; she is the cause of it all, let me tell you,” Grushenka added. She seemed to be quivering with hatred, and there was a vindictive note in her voice.
She was again asked to whom she was referring.
“The young lady, Katerina Ivanovna there. She sent for me, offered me chocolate, tried to fascinate me. There’s not much true shame about her, I can tell you that. …”
At this point the President checked her sternly, begging her to moderate her language. But the jealous woman’s heart was burning, and she did not care what she did.
“When the prisoner was arrested at Mokroe,” the prosecutor asked, “everyone saw and heard you run out of the next room and cry out: ‘It’s all my fault. We’ll go to Siberia together!’ So you already believed him to have murdered his father?”
“I don’t remember what I felt at the time,” answered Grushenka. “Everyone was crying out that he had killed his father, and I felt that it was my fault, that it was on my account he had murdered him. But when he said he wasn’t guilty, I believed him at once, and I believe him now and always shall believe him. He is not the man to tell a lie.”
Fetyukovitch began his cross-examination. I remember that among other things he asked about Rakitin and the twenty-five roubles “you paid him for bringing Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov to see you.”