why he must be tried, and so on. Yet it made a great impression on me. The clerk read it loudly and distinctly. The whole tragedy was suddenly unfolded before us, concentrated, in bold relief, in a fatal and pitiless light. I remember how, immediately after it had been read, the President asked Mitya in a loud impressive voice:
“Prisoner, do you plead guilty?”
Mitya suddenly rose from his seat.
“I plead guilty to drunkenness and dissipation,” he exclaimed, again in a startling, almost frenzied, voice, “to idleness and debauchery. I meant to become an honest man for good, just at the moment when I was struck down by fate. But I am not guilty of the death of that old man, my enemy and my father. No, no, I am not guilty of robbing him! I could not be. Dmitri Karamazov is a scoundrel, but not a thief.”
He sat down again, visibly trembling all over. The President again briefly,