and my heart began to beat, and I couldn’t make up my mind whether to make an outcry or not. One voice seemed to be telling me, ‘speak,’ and the other ‘no, don’t speak.’ And no sooner had the second voice said that than I cried out, and fainted. Of course, there was a fuss. I got up suddenly and said to Rakitin, ‘it’s painful for me to say it, but I don’t wish to see you in my house again.’ So I turned him out. Ah! Alexey Fyodorovitch, I know myself I did wrong. I was putting it on. I wasn’t angry with him at all really; but I suddenly fancied—that was what did it—that it would be such a fine scene.…And yet, believe me, it was quite natural for I really shed tears and cried for several days afterwards, and then suddenly, one afternoon, I forgot all about it, So it’s a fortnight since he’s been here, and I kept wondering whether he would come again. I wondered even yesterday, then suddenly last night came this Gossip. I read it and gasped. Who could have written it? He must have written it. He went home, sat down, wrote it on the spot, sent it, and they put it in. It was a fortnight ago, you see. But, Alyosha it’s awful how I keep talking and don’t say what I want to say. Ah! the words come of themselves!”

“It’s very important for me to be in time to see my brother to-day,” Alyosha faltered.

“To be sure, to be sure! You bring it all back to me. Listen, what is an aberration?”

“What aberration?” asked Alyosha, wondering.

“In the legal sense. An aberration in which everything is pardonable. Whatever you do, you will be acquitted at once.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll tell you. This Katya…Ah! she is a charming, charming creature, only I never can make out who it is she is in love with. She was with me some time ago and I couldn’t get anything out of her. Especially as she won’t talk to me except on the surface now. She is always talking about my health and nothing else, and she takes up such a tone with me, too I simply said to myself, ‘Well, so be it. I don’t care’…, Oh, yes. I was talking of aberration. This doctor has come. You know a doctor has come? Of course you know it—the one who discovers madmen. You wrote for him. No, it wasn’t you, but Katya. It’s all Katya’s doing. Well, you see, a man may be sitting perfectly same and suddenly have an aberration. He may be conscious and know what he is doing and yet be in a state of aberration. And there’s no doubt that Dmitri Fyodorovitch was suffering from aberration. They found out about aberration as soon as the law courts were reformed. It’s all the good effect of the reformed law courts The doctor has been here and questioned me about that evening, about the gold-mines. ‘How did he seem then?’ he asked me. He must have been in a state of aberration. He came in shouting, ‘Money, money, three thousand! Give me three thousand!’ and then went away and immediately did the murder. ‘I don’t want to murder him,’ he said, and he suddenly went and murdered him. That’s why they’ll acquit him, because he struggled against it and yet he murdered him.”

“But he didn’t murder him,’ Alyosha interrupted rather sharply. He felt more and more sick with anxiety and impatience.

“Yes, I know it was that old man Grigory murdered him.”

“Grigory?” cried Alyosha.

“Yes, yes; it was Grigory. He lay as Dmitri Fyodorovitch struck him down, and then got up, saw the door open, went in and killed Fyodor Pavlovitch.”

“But why, why?”

“Suffering from aberration. When he recovered from the blow Dmitri Fyodorovitch gave him on the head, he was suffering from aberration: he went and committed the murder. As for his saying he didn’t he very likely doesn’t remember. Only, you know, it’ll be better, ever so much better, if Dmitri Fyodorovitch murdered