“You have some special communication to make?” the President went on, still mistrustfully.
Ivan looked down, waited a few seconds and, raising his head, answered, almost stammering:
“No … I haven’t. I have nothing particular.”
They began asking him questions. He answered, as it were, reluctantly, with extreme brevity, with a sort of disgust which grew more and more marked, though he answered rationally. To many questions he answered that he did not know. He knew nothing of his father’s money relations with Dmitri. “I wasn’t interested in the subject,” he added. Threats to murder his father he had heard from the prisoner. Of the money in the envelope he had heard from Smerdyakov.
“The same thing over and over again,” he interrupted suddenly, with a look of weariness. “I have nothing particular to tell the court.”
“I see you are unwell and understand your feelings,” the President began.
He turned to the prosecutor and the counsel for the defense to invite them to examine the witness, if necessary, when Ivan suddenly asked in an exhausted voice:
“Let me go, your excellency, I feel very ill.”
And with these words, without waiting for permission, he turned to walk out of the court. But after taking four steps he stood still, as though he had reached a decision, smiled slowly, and went back.
“I am like the peasant girl, your excellency … you know. How does it go? ‘I’ll stand up if I like, and I won’t if I don’t.’ They were trying to put on her sarafan to take her to church to be married, and she said, ‘I’ll stand up if I like, and I won’t if I don’t.’ … It’s in some book about the peasantry.”