Ippolit Kirillovitch begins trembling, with cold sweat on his forehead, hot and cold by turns. He regards this speech as the masterpiece of his whole life, his swan song. He will die, nine months later, of rapid consumption. He believes Mitya guilty, and he quivers for the security of society. But what is there to wonder at, what is there so peculiarly horrifying in it for us? We are so accustomed to such crimes that such dark deeds have ceased to horrify us. Without that we should never have heard of the horrors of unbridled violence and moral degradation which the press makes known. He tells the jury Russia has grown accustomed to horror, cites press reports of fashionable murderers, Oh, troika, birdlike troika, who invented thee? He compares Russia to a swift troika galloping to an unknown goal, and the hall applauds. Even hostile ladies admit the impression; he almost faints when he finishes this movement.
He sketches the Karamazov house as a drop of Russia. Fyodor is cynical individualism and apres moi le deluge; Ivan, through Smerdyakov, taught that everything is lawful; Alyosha does not share his elder brother's gloomy theory. He has sought to cling to the ideas of the people. Mitya embodies the broad Russian nature, Schiller and tavern brawls, the greatest heights and the greatest depths. The prosecutor retells Katya's four thousand as a test Mitya failed, quoting Rakitin on degradation paired with generosity.
He attacks the fifteen-hundred bag story as psychologically impossible for a Karamazov: a man who took three thousand in shame would peel off roubles at the first tavern temptation, not carry honour in his breast for a month while jealous of his father. Mitya's own formula, scoundrel not thief, becomes proof of self-deception in Ippolit's hands.
She intentionally offered him three thousand roubles, and let him understand that she was offering him money to deceive her. Will you take it or not? And the little bag will not hold. Why should he have taken back precisely half, fifteen hundred, and not fourteen hundred? He would have unpicked the bag and taken out a hundred roubles.
Coming Up in Chapter 86
Ippolit rejects the experts. He says Mitya is in his right mind, and that if he had not been, he would have behaved more cleverly. The motive is not the three thousand. It is jealousy. He describes the passion for Grushenka. Mitya went to beat her and stayed at her feet, and the father was captivated by the same young person.
