thing only⁠—where was she ? He wanted to find out at once where she was, so he ran to her lodging and learnt an unexpected and astounding piece of news⁠—she had gone off to Mokroe to meet her first lover.”

IX

The Galloping Troika. The End of the Prosecutor’s Speech

Ippolit Kirillovitch had chosen the historical method of exposition, beloved by all nervous orators, who find in its limitation a check on their own eager rhetoric. At this moment in his speech he went off into a dissertation on Grushenka’s “first lover,” and brought forward several interesting thoughts on this theme.

“Karamazov, who had been frantically jealous of everyone, collapsed, so to speak, and effaced himself at once before this first lover. What makes it all the more strange is that he seems to have hardly thought of this formidable rival. But he had looked upon him as a remote danger, and Karamazov always lives in the present. Possibly he regarded