“Come, you see,” the prosecutor went on with dignity, “and you can judge for yourself, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. On the one hand we have the evidence of the open door from which you ran out, a fact which overwhelms you and us. On the other side your incomprehensible, persistent, and, so to speak, obdurate silence with regard to the source from which you obtained the money which was so suddenly seen in your hands, when only three hours earlier, on your own showing, you pledged your pistols for the sake of ten roubles! In view of all these facts, judge for yourself. What are we to believe, and what can we depend upon? And don’t accuse us of being ‘frigid, cynical, scoffing people,’ who are incapable of believing in the generous impulses of your heart. … Try to enter into our position …”
Mitya was indescribably agitated. He turned pale.
“Very well!” he exclaimed suddenly. “I will tell you my secret. I’ll tell you where I got the money! … I’ll reveal my shame, that I may not have to blame myself or you hereafter.”
“And believe me, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” put in Nikolay Parfenovitch, in a voice of almost pathetic delight, “that every sincere and complete confession on your part at this moment may, later on, have an immense influence in your favor, and may, indeed, moreover—”
But the prosecutor gave him a slight shove under the table, and he checked himself in time. Mitya, it is true, had not heard him.
VII
Mitya’s Great Secret. Received with Hisses
“Gentlemen,” he began, still in the same agitation, “I want to make a full confession: that money was my own .” The lawyers’ faces lengthened. That was not at all what they expected.