He would put his whole soul into some case and work at it as though his whole fate and his whole fortune depended on its result.
This was the subject of some ridicule in the legal world, for just by this characteristic our prosecutor had gained a wider notoriety than could have been expected from his modest position.
People laughed particularly at his passion for psychology.
In my opinion, they were wrong, and our prosecutor was, I believe, a character of greater depth than was generally supposed.
But with his delicate health he had failed to make his mark at the outset of his career and had never made up for it later.
As for the President of our Court, I can only say that he was a humane and cultured man, who had a practical knowledge of his work and progressive views.
He was rather ambitious, but did not concern himself greatly about his future career.
The great aim of his life was to be a man of advanced ideas.
He was, too, a man of connections and property.
He felt, as we learnt afterwards, rather strongly about the Karamazov case, but from a social, not from a personal standpoint.
He was interested in it as a social phenomenon, in its classification and its character as a product of our social conditions, as typical of the national character, and so on, and so on.
His attitude to the personal aspect of the case, to its tragic significance and the persons involved in it, including the prisoner, was rather indifferent and abstract, as was perhaps fitting, indeed.
The court was packed and overflowing long before the judges made their appearance.
Our court is the best hall in the town- spacious, lofty, and good for sound.
On the right of the judges, who were on a raised platform, a table and two rows of chairs had been put ready for the jury.
On the left was the place for the prisoner and the counsel for the defence.
In the middle of the court, near the judges, was a table with the "material proofs."
On it lay Fyodor Pavlovitch's white silk dressing-gown, stained with blood; the fatal brass pestle with which the supposed murder had been committed; Mitya's shirt, with a blood-stained sleeve; his coat, stained with blood in patches over the pocket in which he had put his handkerchief; the handkerchief itself, stiff with blood and by now quite yellow; the pistol loaded by Mitya at Perhotin's with a view to suicide, and taken from him on the sly at Mokroe by Trifon Borrissovitch; the envelope in which the three thousand roubles had been put ready for Grushenka, the narrow pink ribbon with which it had been tied, and many other articles I don't remember.
In the body of the hall, at some distance, came the seats for the public. But in front of the balustrade a few chairs had been placed for witnesses who remained in the court after giving their evidence.
At ten o'clock the three judges arrived- the President, one honorary justice of the peace, and one other.
The prosecutor, of course, entered immediately after.
The President was a short, stout, thick-set man of fifty, with a dyspeptic complexion, dark hair turning grey and cut short, and a red ribbon, of what Order I don't remember.
The prosecutor struck me and the others, too, as looking particularly pale, almost green. His face seemed to have grown suddenly thinner, perhaps in a single night, for I had seen him looking as usual only two days before.
The President began with asking the court whether all the jury were present.
But I see I can't go on like this, partly because some things I did not hear, others I did not notice, and others I have forgotten, but most of all because, as I have said before, I have literally no time or space to mention everything that was said and done. I only know that neither side objected to very many of the jurymen.
I remember the twelve jurymen- four were petty officials of the town, two were merchants, and six peasants and artisans of the town.
I remember, long before the trial, questions were continually asked with some surprise, especially by ladies:
"Can such a delicate, complex and psychological case be submitted for decision to petty officials and even peasants?" and "What can an official, still more a peasant, understand in such an affair?" All the four officials in the jury were, in fact, men of no consequence and of low rank. Except one who was rather younger, they were grey-headed men, little known in society, who had vegetated on a pitiful salary, and who probably had elderly, unpresentable wives and crowds of children, perhaps even without shoes and stockings. At most, they spent their leisure over cards and, of course, had never read a single book.
The two merchants looked respectable, but were strangely silent and stolid. One of them was close-shaven, and was dressed in European style; the other had a small, grey beard, and wore a red ribbon with some sort of a medal upon it on his neck.
There is no need to speak of the artisans and the peasants.
The artisans of Skotoprigonyevsk are almost peasants, and even work on the land.
Two of them also wore European dress, and, perhaps for that reason, were dirtier and more uninviting-looking than the others.
So that one might well wonder, as I did as soon as I had looked at them, "what men like that could possibly make of such a case?" Yet their faces made a strangely imposing, almost menacing, impression; they were stern and frowning.
At last the President opened the case of the murder of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov. I don't quite remember how he described him.
The court usher was told to bring in the prisoner, and Mitya made his appearance.
There was a hush through the court. One could have heard a fly.
I don't know how it was with others, but Mitya made a most unfavourable impression on me.
He looked an awful dandy in a brand-new frock-coat.
I heard afterwards that he had ordered it in Moscow expressly for the occasion from his own tailor, who had his measure.
He wore immaculate black kid gloves and exquisite linen.
He walked in with his yard-long strides, looking stiffly straight in front of him, and sat down in his place with a most unperturbed air.
At the same moment the counsel for defence, the celebrated Fetyukovitch, entered, and a sort of subdued hum passed through the court.
He was a tall, spare man, with long thin legs, with extremely long, thin, pale fingers, clean-shaven face, demurely brushed, rather short hair, and thin lips that were at times curved into something between a sneer and a smile.
He looked about forty.
His face would have been pleasant, if it had not been for his eyes, which, in themselves small and inexpressive, were set remarkably close together, with only the thin, long nose as a dividing line between them.
In fact, there was something strikingly birdlike about his face.
He was in evening dress and white tie.
I remember the President's first questions to Mitya, about his name, his calling, and so on.
Mitya answered sharply, and his voice was so unexpectedly loud that it made the President start and look at the prisoner with surprise.
Then followed a list of persons who were to take part in the proceedings- that is, of the witnesses and experts.