Day 63
Book 12/ Chapter 5
“… and all because of the monster, all to save the monster!”
Ivan testifies:
“A murdered father, and they pretend to be frightened… Liars! Everyone wants his father dead. Viper devours viper… If there were no parricide, they’d all get angry and go home in a foul temper… Circuses! ‘Bread and circuses!’ And me, I’m a good one!. .. Calm yourselves. I’m not mad. I’m simply a murderer! One really cannot expect eloquence from a murderer… Well, set the monster free … he’s begun his hymn ...Oh, how stupid this all is! Well, take me instead of him! I must have come for some reason… Why, why is everything in the world so stupid!”
Katerina insists on testifying again, provoked—as she was before, in private, to show Ivan Mitya’s drunken letter—so now to show the letter to the court.
She finally described with extraordinary clarity, which often shines through briefly in moments of such an overwrought condition, how for those two whole months Ivan Fyodorovich had been driving himself nearly out of his mind over saving “the monster and murderer,” his brother.
And this time her testimony does seem to ruin Mitya.
It was the same impetuous Katya who had once rushed to a young libertine in order to save her father; the very same Katya who, proud and chaste, had just sacrificed herself and her maiden’s honor before the whole public by telling of “Mitya’s noble conduct,” in order to soften at least somewhat the fate in store for him. So now, in just the same way, she again sacrificed herself, this time for another man, and perhaps only now, only that minute, did she feel and realize fully how dear this other man was to her!