“What next! Come answer, answer, I insist: what was it … what could I have done to put such a degrading suspicion into your mean soul?”

“As for the murder, you couldn’t have done that and didn’t want to, but as for wanting some one else to do it, that was just what you did want.”

“And how coolly, how coolly he speaks! But why should I have wanted it, what grounds had I for wanting it?”

“What grounds had you? What about the inheritance?” said Smerdyakov sarcastically, and as it were vindictively. “Why, after your parent’s death there was at least forty thousand to come to each of you, and very likely more, but if Fyodor Pavlovitch got married then to that lady, Agrafena Alexandrovna, she would have had all his capital made over to her directly after the wedding, for she’s plenty of sense, so that your parent would not have left you two roubles between the three of you. And were they far from a wedding, either? Not a hair’s-breadth: that lady had only to lift her little finger and he would have run after her to church, with his tongue out.”

Ivan restrained himself with painful effort.

“Very good,” he commented at last, “you see, I haven’t jumped up, I haven’t knocked you down, I haven’t killed you. Speak on. So, according to you, I had fixed on Dmitri to do it, I was reckoning on him?”

“How could you help reckoning on him? If he killed him, then he would lose all the rights of a nobleman, his rank and property, and would go off to exile, so his share of the inheritance would come to you and your brother Alexey Fyodorovitch, in equal parts, so you’d each have not forty, but sixty thousand each. There’s not a doubt you did reckon on, Dmitri Fyodorovitch.”

“What I put up with from you! Listen, scoundrel, if I had reckoned on any one then, it would have been on you, not on Dmitri, and I swear I did expect some wickedness from you…at the time…I remember my impression!”

“I thought, too, for a minute, at the time, that you were reckoning on me as well,” said Smerdyakov, with a sarcastic grin. “So that it was just by that more than anything you showed me what was in your mind. For if you had a foreboding about me and yet went away, you as good as said to me, ‘You can murder my parent, I won’t hinder you!”

“You scoundrel! So that’s how you understood it!”

“It was all that going to Tchermashnya. Why! You were meaning to go to Moscow and refused all your father’s entreaties to go to Tchermashnya—and simply at a foolish word from me you consented at once! What reason had you to consent to Tchermashnya? Since you went to Tchermashnya with no reason, simply at my word, it shows that you must have expected something from me.”

“No, I swear I didn’t!” shouted Ivan, grinding his teeth.

“You didn’t? Then you ought, as your father’s son, to have had me taken to the lock-up and thrashed at once for my words then…or at least, to have given me a punch in the face on the spot, but you were not a bit angry, if you please, and at once in a friendly way acted on my foolish word and went away, which was utterly absurd, for you ought to have stayed to save your parent’s life. How could I help drawing my conclusions?”

Ivan sat scowling, both his fists convulsively pressed on his knees.

“Yes, I am sorry I didn’t punch you in the face,” he said with a bitter smile. “I couldn’t have taken you to the lock-up just then. Who would have believed me and what charge could I bring against you? But the