landlord in the balcony, looking for him in the dark, and noticed at once a change in Trifon Borissovitch’s face and voice. So neither Mitya nor anyone else knew that he was being watched. The box with the pistols had been carried off by Trifon Borissovitch and put in a suitable place. Only after four o’clock, almost at sunrise, all the officials, the police captain, the prosecutor, the investigating lawyer, drove up in two carriages, each drawn by three horses. The doctor remained at Fyodor Pavlovitch’s to make a postmortem next day on the body. But he was particularly interested in the condition of the servant, Smerdyakov.
“Such violent and protracted epileptic fits, recurring continually for twenty-four hours, are rarely to be met with, and are of interest to science,” he declared enthusiastically to his companions, and as they left they laughingly congratulated him on his find. The prosecutor and the investigating lawyer distinctly remembered the doctor’s saying that Smerdyakov could not outlive the night.
After these long, but I think necessary explanations, we will return to that moment of our tale at which we broke off.
III
The Sufferings of a Soul, the First Ordeal
And so Mitya sat looking wildly at the people round him, not understanding what was said to him. Suddenly he got up, flung up his hands, and shouted aloud:
“I’m not guilty! I’m not guilty of that blood! I’m not guilty of my father’s blood. … I meant to kill him. But I’m not guilty. Not I.”
But he had hardly said this, before Grushenka rushed from behind the curtain and flung herself at the police captain’s feet.