note of fury in his voice:
“Write down at once … at once … ‘that I snatched up the pestle to go and kill my father … Fyodor Pavlovitch … by hitting him on the head with it!’ Well, now are you satisfied, gentlemen? Are your minds relieved?” he said, glaring defiantly at the lawyers.
“We quite understand that you made that statement just now through exasperation with us and the questions we put to you, which you consider trivial, though they are, in fact, essential,” the prosecutor remarked dryly in reply.
“Well, upon my word, gentlemen! Yes, I took the pestle. … What does one pick things up for at such moments? I don’t know what for. I snatched it up and ran—that’s all. For to me, gentlemen, passons , or I declare I won’t tell you any more.”
He sat with his elbows on the table and his head in his hand. He sat sideways to them and gazed at the wall, struggling against a feeling of nausea. He had, in fact, an awful inclination to get up and declare that he wouldn’t say another word, “not if you hang me for it.”
“You see, gentlemen,” he said at last, with difficulty controlling himself, “you see. I listen to you and am haunted by a dream. … It’s a dream I have sometimes, you know. … I often dream it—it’s always the same … that someone is hunting me, someone I’m awfully afraid of … that he’s hunting me in the dark, in the night … tracking me, and I hide somewhere from him, behind a door or cupboard, hide in a degrading way, and the worst of it is, he always knows where I am, but he pretends