st be noted that our prosecutor was in general too hasty and morbidly
impressionable. He would put his whole soul into some case and work at it
as though his whole fate and his whole fortune depended on its result.
This was the subject of some ridicule in the legal world, for just by this
characteristic our prosecutor had gained a wider notoriety than could have
been expected from his modest position. People laughed particularly at his
passion for psychology. In my opinion, they were wrong, and our prosecutor
was, I believe, a character of greater depth than was generally supposed.
But with his delicate health he had failed to make his mark at the outset
of his career and had never made up for it later.

As for the President of our Court, I can only say that he was a humane and
cultured man, who had a practical knowledge of his work and progressive
views. He was rather ambitious, but did not concern himself greatly about
his future career. The great aim of his life was to be a man of advanced
ideas. He was, too, a man of connections and property. He felt, as we
learnt afterwards, rather strongly about the Karamazov case, but from a
social, not from a personal standpoint. He was interested in it as a
social phenomenon, in its classification and its character as a product of
our social conditions, as typical of the national character, and so on,
and so on. His attitude to the personal aspect of the case, to its tragic
significance and the persons involved in it, including the prisoner, was
rather indifferent and abstract, as was perhaps fitting, indeed.

The court was packed and overflowing long before the judges made their
appearance. Our court is the best hall in the town--spacious, lofty, and
good for sound. On the right of the judges, who were on a raised platform,
a table and two rows of chairs had been put ready for the jury. On the
left was the place for the prisoner and the counsel for the defense. In
the middle of the court, near the judges, was a table with the "material
proofs." On it lay Fyodor Pavlovitch's white silk dressing-gown, stained
with blood; the fatal brass pestle with which the supposed murder had been
committed; Mitya's shirt, with a blood-stained sleeve; his coat, stained
with blood in patches over the pocket in which he had put his
handkerchief; the handkerchief itself, stiff with blood and by now quite
yellow; the pistol loaded by Mitya at Perhotin's with a view to suicide,
and taken from him on