een 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.

Chapter 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.

"How do you mean?" faltered Nikolay Parfenovitch, "when at five o'clock on
the same day, from your own confession--"

"Damn five o'clock on the same day and my own confession! That's nothing
to do with it now! That money was my own, my own, that is, stolen by me
... not mine, I mean, but stolen by me, and it was fifteen hundred
roubles, and I had it on me all the time, all the time ..."

"But where did you get it?"

"I took it off my neck, gentlemen, off this very neck ... it was here,
round my neck, sewn up in a rag, and I'd had it round my neck a long time,
it's a month since I put it round my neck ... to my shame and disgrace!"

"And from whom did you ... appropriate it?"

"You mean, 'steal it'? Speak out plainly now. Yes, I consider that I
practically stole it, but, if you prefer, I 'appropriated it.' I consider
I stole it. And last night I stole it finally."

"Last night? But you said that it's a month since you ... obtained it?..."

"Yes. But not from my father. Not from my father, don't be uneasy. I
didn't steal it from my father, but from her. Let me tell you without
interrupting. It's hard to do, you know. You see, a month ago, I was sent
for