me and have
accused that other. But, gentlemen of the jury, why may I not draw the
very opposite conclusion? There are two persons--the prisoner and
Smerdyakov. Why can I not say that you accuse my client, simply because
you have no one else to accuse? And you have no one else only because you
have determined to exclude Smerdyakov from all suspicion.

"It's true, indeed, Smerdyakov is accused only by the prisoner, his two
brothers, and Madame Svyetlov. But there are others who accuse him: there
are vague rumors of a question, of a suspicion, an obscure report, a
feeling of expectation. Finally, we have the evidence of a combination of
facts very suggestive, though, I admit, inconclusive. In the first place
we have precisely on the day of the catastrophe that fit, for the
genuineness of which the prosecutor, for some reason, has felt obliged to
make a careful defense. Then Smerdyakov's sudden suicide on the eve of the
trial. Then the equally startling evidence given in court to-day by the
elder of the prisoner's brothers, who had believed in his guilt, but has
to-day produced a bundle of notes and proclaimed Smerdyakov as the
murderer. Oh, I fully share the court's and the prosecutor's conviction
that Ivan Karamazov is suffering from brain fever, that his statement may
really be a desperate effort, planned in delirium, to save his brother by
throwing the guilt on the dead man. But again Smerdyakov's name is
pronounced, again there is a suggestion of mystery. There is something
unexplained, incomplete. And perhaps it may one day be explained. But we
won't go into that now. Of that later.

"The court has resolved to go on with the trial, but, meantime, I might
make a few remarks about the character-sketch of Smerdyakov drawn with
subtlety and talent by the prosecutor. But while I admire his talent I
cannot agree with him. I have visited Smerdyakov, I have seen him and
talked to him, and he made a very different impression on me. He was weak
in health, it is true; but in character, in spirit, he was by no means the
weak man the prosecutor has made him out to be. I found in him no trace of
the timidity on which the prosecutor so insisted. There was no simplicity
about him, either. I found in him, on the contrary, an extreme
mistrustfulness concealed under a mask of _naivete_, and an intelligence
of considerable range. The prosecutor was too simple in taking him for
weak-minded. He made a very definite impression on me: I lef