ittle taken aback, and the President intervened,
reminding him that he must ask more relevant questions. Fetyukovitch bowed
with dignity and said that he had no more questions to ask of the witness.
The public and the jury, of course, were left with a grain of doubt in
their minds as to the evidence of a man who might, while undergoing a
certain cure, have seen "the gates of heaven," and who did not even know
what year he was living in. But before Grigory left the box another
episode occurred. The President, turning to the prisoner, asked him
whether he had any comment to make on the evidence of the last witness.

"Except about the door, all he has said is true," cried Mitya, in a loud
voice. "For combing the lice off me, I thank him; for forgiving my blows,
I thank him. The old man has been honest all his life and as faithful to
my father as seven hundred poodles."

"Prisoner, be careful in your language," the President admonished him.

"I am not a poodle," Grigory muttered.

"All right, it's I am a poodle myself," cried Mitya. "If it's an insult, I
take it to myself and I beg his pardon. I was a beast and cruel to him. I
was cruel to AEsop too."

"What AEsop?" the President asked sternly again.

"Oh, Pierrot ... my father, Fyodor Pavlovitch."

The President again and again warned Mitya impressively and very sternly
to be more careful in his language.

"You are injuring yourself in the opinion of your judges."

The counsel for the defense was equally clever in dealing with the
evidence of Rakitin. I may remark that Rakitin was one of the leading
witnesses and one to whom the prosecutor attached great significance. It
appeared that he knew everything; his knowledge was amazing, he had been
everywhere, seen everything, talked to everybody, knew every detail of the
biography of Fyodor Pavlovitch and all the Karamazovs. Of the envelope, it
is true, he had only heard from Mitya himself. But he described minutely
Mitya's exploits in the "Metropolis," all his compromising doings and
sayings, and told the story of Captain Snegiryov's "wisp of tow." But even
Rakitin could say nothing positive about Mitya's inheritance, and confined
himself to contemptuous generalities.

"Who could tell which of them was to blame, and which was in debt to the
other, with their crazy Karamazov way of muddling things so that no one
could make head or tail of it?" He attributed the tragic crime to the
habits that had become ingrained by a