The lights had been extinguished long ago.
Mihail Makarovitch and Kalganov, who had been continually in and out of the room all the while the interrogation had been going on, had now both gone out again.
The lawyers, too, looked very tired.
It was a wretched morning, the whole sky was overcast, and the rain streamed down in bucketfuls.
Mitya gazed blankly out of window.
"May I look out of window?" he asked Nikolay Parfenovitch, suddenly.
"Oh, as much as you like," the latter replied.
Mitya got up and went to the window....
The rain lashed against its little greenish panes.
He could see the muddy road just below the house, and farther away, in the rain and mist, a row of poor, black, dismal huts, looking even blacker and poorer in the rain.
Mitya thought of "Phoebus the golden-haired, and how he had meant to shoot himself at his first ray.
"Perhaps it would be even better on a morning like this," he thought with a smile, and suddenly, flinging his hand downwards, he turned to his "torturers."
"Gentlemen," he cried, "I see that I am lost!
But she?
Tell me about her, I beseech you. Surely she need not be ruined with me?
She's innocent, you know, she was out of her mind when she cried last night 'It's all my fault!'
She's done nothing, nothing!
I've been grieving over her all night as I sat with you.... Can't you, won't you tell me what you are going to do with her now?"
"You can set your mind quite at rest on that score, Dmitri Fyodorovitch," the prosecutor answered at once, with evident alacrity. "We have, so far, no grounds for interfering with the lady in whom you are so interested.
I trust that it may be the same in the later development of the case.... On the contrary, we'll do everything that lies in our power in that matter.
Set your mind completely at rest."
"Gentlemen, I thank you. I knew that you were honest, straightforward people in spite of everything.
You've taken a load off my heart.... Well, what are we to do now?
I'm ready."
"Well, we ought to make haste.
We must pass to examining the witnesses without delay.
That must be done in your presence and therefore-"
"Shouldn't we have some tea first?" interposed Nikolay Parfenovitch, "I think we've deserved it!"
They decided that if tea were ready downstairs (Mihail Makarovitch had, no doubt, gone down to get some) they would have a glass and then "go on and on," putting off their proper breakfast until a more favourable opportunity.
Tea really was ready below, and was soon brought up.
Mitya at first refused the glass that Nikolay Parfenovitch politely offered him, but afterwards he asked for it himself and drank it greedily.
He looked surprisingly exhausted.
It might have been supposed from his Herculean strength that one night of carousing, even accompanied by the most violent emotions, could have had little effect on him.
But he felt that he could hardly hold his head up, and from time to time all the objects about him seemed heaving and dancing before his eyes.
"A little more and I shall begin raving," he said to himself.
Chapter 8.
The Evidences of the Witnesses.
The Babe
THE examination of the witnesses began.
But we will not continue our story in such detail as before.
And so we will not dwell on how Nikolay Parfenovitch impressed on every witness called that he must give his evidence in accordance with truth and conscience, and that he would afterwards have to repeat his evidence on oath, how every witness was called upon to sign the protocol of his evidence, and so on.
We will only note that the point principally insisted upon in the examination was the question of the three thousand roubles; that is, was the sum spent here, at Mokroe, by Mitya on the first occasion, a month before, three thousand or fifteen hundred? And again had he spent three thousand or fifteen hundred yesterday?
Alas, all the evidence given by everyone turned out to be against Mitya. There was not one in his favour, and some witnesses introduced new, almost crushing facts, in contradiction of his, Mitya's, story.
The first witness examined was Trifon Borissovitch.
He was not in the least abashed as he stood before the lawyers. He had, on the contrary, an air of stern and severe indignation with the accused, which gave him an appearance of truthfulness and personal dignity.
He spoke little, and with reserve, waited to be questioned, answered precisely and deliberately.
Firmly and unhesitatingly he bore witness that the sum spent a month before could not have been less than three thousand, that all the peasants about here would testify that they had heard the sum of three thousand mentioned by Dmitri Fyodorovitch himself.
"What a lot of money he flung away on the Gypsy girls alone!
He wasted a thousand, I daresay, on them alone."
"I don't believe I gave them five hundred," was Mitya's gloomy comment on this. "It's a pity I didn't count the money at the time, but I was drunk..."