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felt that he hated Mitya more and more every day, he realised that it was not on account of Katyas returns that he hated him, but just because he was the murderer of his father. He was conscious of this and fully recognised it to himself. Nevertheless, he went to see Mitya ten days before the trial and proposed to him a plan of escapea plan he had obviously thought over a long time. He was partly impelled to do this by a sore place still left in his heart from a phrase of Smerdyakov, that it was to his, Ivans, advantage that his brother should be convicted, as that would increase his inheritance and Alyoshas from forty to sixty thousand roubles. He determined to sacrifice thirty thousand on arranging Mityas escape. On his return from seeing him, he was very mournful and dispirited, he suddenly began to feel that he was anxious for Mityas escape, not only to heal that sore place by sacrificing thirty thousand, but for another reason. Is it because I am as much a murderer at heart? he asked himself. Something very deep down seemed burning and rankling in his soul. His pride above all suffered cruelly all that month. But of that later. When, after his conversation with Alyosha, Ivan suddenly decided with his hand on the bell of his lodging to go to Smerdyakov, he obeyed a sudden and peculiar impulse of indignation. He suddenly remembered how Katerina Ivanovna had only just cried out to him in Alyoshas presence: It was you, you, persuaded me of his (that is, Mityas) guilt! Ivan was thunder-struck when he recalled it. He had never once tried to persuade her that Mitya was the murderer, on the contrary, he had suspected himself in her presence, that time when he came back from Smerdyakov. It was she, she, who had produced that document and proved his brothers guilt. And now she suddenly exclaimed: Ive been at Smerdyakovs myself! When had she been there? Ivan had know nothing of it. So she was not at all so sure of Mityas guilt! And what could Smerdyakov have told her? What, what, had he said to her? His heart burned with violent anger. He could not understand how he could, half an hour before, have let those words pass and not have cried out at the moment. He let go of the bell and rushed off to Smerdyakov. I shall kill him perhaps this time, he thought on the way. |
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