became suddenly intensely interested in his big rings, one with an amethyst, and another with a transparent bright yellow stone, of great brilliance. And long afterwards he remembered with wonder how those rings had riveted his attention through all those terrible hours of interrogation, so that he was utterly unable to tear himself away from them and dismiss them, as things that had nothing to do with his position. On Mitya’s left side, in the place where Maximov had been sitting at the beginning of the evening, the prosecutor was now seated, and on Mitya’s right hand, where Grushenka had been, was a rosy-cheeked young man in a sort of shabby hunting-jacket, with ink and paper before him. This was the secretary of the investigating lawyer, who had brought him with him. The police captain was now standing by the window at the other end of the room, beside Kalganov, who was sitting there.
“Drink some water,” said the investigating lawyer softly, for the tenth time.
“I have drunk it, gentlemen, I have … but … come, gentlemen, crush me, punish me, decide my fate!” cried Mitya, staring with terribly fixed wide-open eyes at the investigating lawyer.
“So you positively declare that you are not guilty of the death of your father, Fyodor Pavlovitch?” asked the investigating lawyer, softly but insistently.
“I am not guilty. I am guilty of the blood of another old man but not of my father’s. And I weep for it! I killed, I killed the old man and knocked him down. … But it’s hard to have to answer for that murder with another, a terrible murder of which I am not guilty. … It’s a terrible accusation, gentlemen, a knockdown blow. But who has killed my father, who has killed him? Who can have killed him if I didn’t? It’s marvelous, extraordinary, impossible.”