Mitya spoke much and quickly, nervously and effusively, as though he positively took his listeners to be his best friends.
“So, for the present, we will write that you absolutely deny the charge brought against you,” said Nikolay Parfenovitch, impressively, and bending down to the secretary he dictated to him in an undertone what to write.
“Write it down? You want to write that down? Well, write it; I consent, I give my full consent, gentlemen, only … do you see? … Stay, stay, write this. Of disorderly conduct I am guilty, of violence on a poor old man I am guilty. And there is something else at the bottom of my heart, of which I am guilty, too—but that you need not write down” (he turned suddenly to the secretary); “that’s my personal life, gentlemen, that doesn’t concern you, the bottom of my heart, that’s to say. … But of the murder of my old father I’m not guilty. That’s a wild idea. It’s quite a wild idea! … I will prove you that and you’ll be convinced directly. … You will laugh, gentlemen. You’ll laugh yourselves at your suspicion! …”
“Be calm, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” said the investigating lawyer evidently trying to allay Mitya’s excitement by his own composure. “Before we go on with our inquiry, I should like, if you will consent to answer, to hear you confirm the statement that you disliked your father, Fyodor Pavlovitch, that you were involved in continual disputes with him. Here at least, a quarter of an hour ago, you exclaimed that you wanted to kill him: ‘I didn’t kill him,’ you said, ‘but I wanted to kill him.’ ”
“Did I exclaim that? Ach, that may be so, gentlemen! Yes, unhappily, I did want to kill him … many times I wanted to … unhappily, unhappily!”