X. Речь защитника. Палка о двух концах

The whole courtroom fastened its eyes upon him.

He began with the utmost directness, plainly and with conviction, yet without the least trace of conceit.

Not the slightest bid for eloquence, for pathetic notes, for little words that ring with feeling.

This was a man who had begun to speak within an intimate circle of sympathetic listeners.

His voice was a fine one, loud and engaging, and even in that very voice there seemed already to be audible something sincere and guileless.

But everyone understood at once that the orator might suddenly rise to the truly pathetic — and "strike hearts with a power unknown".

He spoke, perhaps, less correctly than Ippolit Kirillovitch, but without long phrases, and even more precisely.

One thing alone had not pleased the ladies: he kept somehow arching his back, especially at the start of his speech — not exactly bowing, but as if straining and flying toward his listeners, and bending precisely as though by one half of his long back, as if a sort of hinge had been fitted into the middle of that long, thin spine, so that it could fold nearly at a right angle.

At the beginning of his speech he spoke in a somehow scattered way, as if without system, snatching up facts at random — yet in the end the whole came together.

His speech might be divided into two halves: the first half was criticism, a refutation of the charge, at times malicious and sarcastic.

But in the second half of the speech he seemed all at once to change both his tone and even his method, and in a single stroke rose to the pathetic — and the courtroom, as if it had been waiting for just this, all quivered with delight.

He went straight to the matter and began by saying that, although his field of work was in Petersburg, it was not the first time he had travelled to the towns of Russia to defend the accused — but only such accused as he was either convinced were innocent, or whose innocence he sensed beforehand.

"The very same thing has happened to me in the present case," he explained. "From the earliest newspaper reports alone something already flashed before me that struck me extraordinarily in the prisoner's favour.

In a word, what first of all engaged my interest was a certain juridical fact — one that, though often recurring in court practice, has never, it seems to me, appeared in such completeness and with such characteristic peculiarities as in the present case.

I ought really to formulate this fact only in the finale of my speech, when I bring my address to a close, yet I will state my thought even at the very beginning, for I have the weakness of going straight to the point, without hoarding my effects and economizing my impressions.

This may be imprudent on my part, but at least it is sincere.

This thought of mine, my formula, is as follows: an overwhelming aggregate of facts against the prisoner, and at the same time not a single fact that withstands criticism if it is examined singly, in itself!

Following the matter further by hearsay and by the papers, I grew more and more confirmed in my thought, and suddenly I received from the prisoner's relatives an invitation to defend him.

I hastened here at once, and here I became finally and conclusively convinced.

It was in order to shatter this terrible aggregate of facts, and to expose the unproven and fantastic nature of each accusing fact taken separately, that I undertook to defend this case."

So the counsel for the defence began, and suddenly he proclaimed:

"Gentlemen of the jury, I am a fresh man here.

All my impressions came upon me free of prejudice.

The prisoner, turbulent in character and unbridled, had not offended me beforehand, as he had offended, perhaps, a hundred persons in this town, which is why many are prejudiced against him in advance.

Of course, I too admit that the moral feeling of local society has been aroused with justice: the prisoner is turbulent and unrestrained.

Nonetheless he was received in local society — even in the family of the highly talented prosecutor he was made much of.

(Nota bene. At these words two or three laughs ran through the audience — quickly suppressed, but noticed by all.

We all knew that the prosecutor admitted Mitya to his house against his own will, solely because his wife — the prosecutor's lady, a person in the highest degree virtuous and respectable, yet fanciful and self-willed, and fond in certain cases, chiefly in trifles, of opposing her husband — found him for some reason interesting.

Mitya, however, visited their house rather seldom.)

Nevertheless, I shall venture to suppose," the counsel went on, "that even in a mind as independent and a character as just as my opponent's, a certain mistaken prejudice against my unhappy client may have formed.

Oh, that is so natural: the unfortunate man has done all too much to be regarded even with prejudice.

An offended moral feeling — and, still more, an offended aesthetic one — can at times be implacable.

Of course, in that highly talented speech for the prosecution we all heard a rigorous analysis of the prisoner's character and conduct, a stern critical attitude toward the case, and, above all, such psychological depths were displayed in explaining the heart of the matter to us that no penetration into those depths could possibly have occurred had there been even the slightest deliberately and maliciously prejudiced attitude toward the person of the prisoner.

But then there are things that are even worse, even more ruinous in such cases, than the most malicious and premeditated attitude toward the matter.

Namely, if we are seized, for instance, by a certain, so to speak, artistic play, the need for artistic creation — so to speak, the composing of a novel — especially given the wealth of psychological gifts with which God has endowed our faculties.

Even in Petersburg, even while only preparing to come here, I had been forewarned — and indeed I knew it without any forewarning — that I should meet here, as my opponent, a profound and most subtle psychologist, who has long since earned by this very quality a particular and singular renown in our still-young juridical world.

But psychology, gentlemen, though a profound thing, is all the same like a stick with two ends (a laugh from the audience).

Oh, you will of course forgive me my trivial comparison; I am no great master at speaking too eloquently.

But here, then, is an example — I take the first that comes to hand from the prosecutor's speech.

The prisoner, at night, in the garden, climbs over the fence as he flees, and with a brass pestle strikes down the servant who has clutched at his leg.

Then at once he jumps back down into the garden and busies himself over the fallen man for a full five minutes, trying to make out whether he has killed him or not.

And yet the prosecutor will on no account believe in the truth of the prisoner's testimony — that he jumped down to old Grigory out of pity.

"No," says he, "how can there be such tenderness at such a moment; this is unnatural, and he jumped down precisely in order to make sure whether the sole witness to his crime was alive or killed, and so by this very act he bore witness that he had committed that crime, since he could have had no other motive, impulse, or feeling for jumping into the garden."

There is psychology for you; but let us take that very same psychology and apply it to the case, only from the other end, and it will come out no less plausible.

The murderer jumps down out of caution, to make sure whether the witness is alive or not — and yet at that very moment he has just left, in the study of the father he had murdered, by the prosecutor's own testimony, a colossal piece of evidence against himself, in the form of a torn-open packet on which was written that three thousand had lain inside it.

"For had he carried off this packet with him, then no one in the whole world would have known that the packet had existed at all, with money inside it, and that, consequently, the money had been robbed by the prisoner."

These are the prosecutor's own words.

So, you see, in the one thing his caution failed him — the man lost his head, took fright, and ran off, leaving the evidence on the floor; yet some two minutes later, when he has struck and killed another man, the most heartless and calculating feeling of caution at once presents itself for our service.

But let it be, let it be so: this, they say, is the very subtlety of psychology — that under such circumstances I am at one moment bloodthirsty and keen-sighted as a Caucasian eagle, and the next blind and timid as a wretched mole.

But if I am so bloodthirsty and so cruelly calculating that, having killed, I jumped down only to see whether the witness was still alive to testify against me or not, then why, it would seem, should I fuss over this new victim of mine for a full five minutes, and risk acquiring, perhaps, fresh witnesses besides?

Why moisten my handkerchief, wiping the blood from the fallen man's head, so that this very handkerchief should afterward serve as evidence against me?

No — if we are so calculating and hard-hearted, then would it not have been better, having jumped down, simply to stun the fallen servant with that same pestle once and again over the head, so as to kill him outright and, by rooting out the witness, lift every care from our heart?

And finally, I jump down to verify whether the witness against me is alive or not, and there on the path I leave behind another witness — namely this very pestle, which I had snatched from two women, both of whom can always afterward recognize this pestle as theirs and testify that it was from them I snatched it.