he had taken the final decision, he must have felt
apprehensive that he had talked too much about his design beforehand, and
that this might lead to his arrest and prosecution afterwards. But there
was nothing for it; he could not take his words back, but his luck had
served him before, it would serve him again. He believed in his star, you
know! I must confess, too, that he did a great deal to avoid the fatal
catastrophe. 'To-morrow I shall try and borrow the money from every one,'
as he writes in his peculiar language, 'and if they won't give it to me,
there will be bloodshed.' "
Here Ippolit Kirillovitch passed to a detailed description of all Mitya's
efforts to borrow the money. He described his visit to Samsonov, his
journey to Lyagavy. "Harassed, jeered at, hungry, after selling his watch
to pay for the journey (though he tells us he had fifteen hundred roubles
on him--a likely story), tortured by jealousy at having left the object of
his affections in the town, suspecting that she would go to Fyodor
Pavlovitch in his absence, he returned at last to the town, to find, to
his joy, that she had not been near his father. He accompanied her himself
to her protector. (Strange to say, he doesn't seem to have been jealous of
Samsonov, which is psychologically interesting.) Then he hastens back to
his ambush in the back gardens, and there learns that Smerdyakov is in a
fit, that the other servant is ill--the coast is clear and he knows the
'signals'--what a temptation! Still he resists it; he goes off to a lady
who has for some time been residing in the town, and who is highly
esteemed among us, Madame Hohlakov. That lady, who had long watched his
career with compassion, gave him the most judicious advice, to give up his
dissipated life, his unseemly love-affair, the waste of his youth and
vigor in pot-house debauchery, and to set off to Siberia to the
gold-mines: 'that would be an outlet for your turbulent energies, your
romantic character, your thirst for adventure.' "
After describing the result of this conversation and the moment when the
prisoner learnt that Grushenka had not remained at Samsonov's, the sudden
frenzy of the luckless man worn out with jealousy and nervous exhaustion,
at the thought that she had deceived him and was now with his father,
Ippolit Kirillovitch concluded by dwelling upon the fatal influence of
chance. "Had the maid told him that her mistress was at Mokroe with her
former lover, nothing w
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