had not been so moved before during the whole
interrogation.

"And what has he told you, gentlemen--Smerdyakov, I mean?" he added
suddenly, after a pause. "May I ask that question?"

"You may ask any question," the prosecutor replied with frigid severity,
"any question relating to the facts of the case, and we are, I repeat,
bound to answer every inquiry you make. We found the servant Smerdyakov,
concerning whom you inquire, lying unconscious in his bed, in an epileptic
fit of extreme severity, that had recurred, possibly, ten times. The
doctor who was with us told us, after seeing him, that he may possibly not
outlive the night."

"Well, if that's so, the devil must have killed him," broke suddenly from
Mitya, as though until that moment he had been asking himself: "Was it
Smerdyakov or not?"

"We will come back to this later," Nikolay Parfenovitch decided. "Now,
wouldn't you like to continue your statement?"

Mitya asked for a rest. His request was courteously granted. After
resting, he went on with his story. But he was evidently depressed. He was
exhausted, mortified and morally shaken. To make things worse the
prosecutor exasperated him, as though intentionally, by vexatious
interruptions about "trifling points." Scarcely had Mitya described how,
sitting on the wall, he had struck Grigory on the head with the pestle,
while the old man had hold of his left leg, and how he had then jumped
down to look at him, when the prosecutor stopped him to ask him to
describe exactly how he was sitting on the wall. Mitya was surprised.

"Oh, I was sitting like this, astride, one leg on one side of the wall and
one on the other."

"And the pestle?"

"The pestle was in my hand."

"Not in your pocket? Do you remember that precisely? Was it a violent blow
you gave him?"

"It must have been a violent one. But why do you ask?"

"Would you mind sitting on the chair just as you sat on the wall then and
showing us just how you moved your arm, and in what direction?"

"You're making fun of me, aren't you?" asked Mitya, looking haughtily at
the speaker; but the latter did not flinch.

Mitya turned abruptly, sat astride on his chair, and swung his arm.

"This was how I struck him! That's how I knocked him down! What more do
you want?"

"Thank you. May I trouble you now to explain why you jumped down, with
what object, and what you had in view?"

"Oh, hang it!... I jumped down to look at the man I'd hurt ... I don't
know