trivial details, we should understand one another in a minute. I’m at those details again. I’m at your disposal, gentlemen, but I declare that we must have mutual confidence, you in me and I in you, or there’ll be no end to it. I speak in your interests. To business, gentlemen, to business, and don’t rummage in my soul; don’t tease me with trifles, but only ask me about facts and what matters, and I will satisfy you at once. And damn the details!”

So spoke Mitya. The interrogation began again.

IV

The Second Ordeal

“You don’t know how you encourage us, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, by your readiness to answer,” said Nikolay Parfenovitch, with an animated air, and obvious satisfaction beaming in his very prominent, shortsighted, light gray eyes, from which he had removed his spectacles a moment before. “And you have made a very just remark