forgets an army in Egypt, wastes half a million men in the
Moscow expedition and gets off with a jest at Vilna. And al-
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tars are set up to him after his death, and so all is permitted.
No, such people, it seems, are not of flesh but of bronze!’
One sudden irrelevant idea almost made him laugh. Na-
poleon, the pyramids, Waterloo, and a wretched skinny old
woman, a pawnbroker with a red trunk under her bed—it’s
a nice hash for Porfiry Petrovitch to digest! How can they
digest it! It’s too inartistic. ‘A Napoleon creep under an old
woman’s bed! Ugh, how loathsome!’
At moments he felt he was raving. He sank into a state of
feverish excitement. ‘The old woman is of no consequence,’
he thought, hotly and incoherently. ‘The old woman was a
mistake perhaps, but she is not what matters! The old wom-
an was only an illness…. I was in a hurry to overstep…. I
didn’t kill a human being, but a principle! I killed the prin-
ciple, but I didn’t overstep, I stopped on this side…. I was
only capable of killing. And it seems I wasn’t even capable
of that … Principle? Why was that fool Razumihin abus-
ing the socialists? They are industrious, commercial people;
‘the happiness of all’ is their case. No, life is only given to
me once and I shall never have it again; I don’t want to wait
for ‘the happiness of all.’ I want to live myself, or else better
not live at all. I simply couldn’t pass by my mother starving,
keeping my rouble in my pocket while I waited for the ‘hap-
piness of all.’ I am putting my little brick into the happiness
of all and so my heart is at peace. Ha-ha! Why have you let
me slip? I only live once, I too want…. Ech, I am an æsthetic
louse and nothing more,’ he added suddenly, laughing like a
madman. ‘Yes, I am certainly a louse,’ he went on, clutching
at the idea, gloating over it and playing with it with vindic-
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0
tive pleasure. ‘In the first place, because I can reason that I
am one, and secondly, because for a month past I have been
troubling benevolent Providence, calling it to witness that
not for my own fleshly lusts did I undertake it, but with a
grand and noble object— ha-ha! Thirdly, because I aimed
at carrying it out as justly as possible, weighing, measuring
and calculating. Of all the lice I picked out the most useless
one and proposed to take from her only as much as I needed
for the first step, no more nor less (so the rest would have
gone to a monastery, according to her will, ha-ha!). And
what shows that I am utterly a louse,’ he added, grinding his
teeth, ‘is that I am perhaps viler and more loathsome than
the louse I killed, and I felt beforehand that I should tell my-
self so after killing her. Can anything be compared with the
horror of that? The vulgarity! The abjectness! I understand
the ‘prophet’ with his sabre, on his steed: Allah commands
and ‘trembling’ creation must obey! The ‘prophet’ is right,
he is right when he sets a battery across the street and blows
up the innocent and the guilty without deigning to explain!
It’s for you to obey, trembling creation, and not to have de-
sires for that’s not for you! … I shall never, never forgive the
old woman!’
His hair was soaked with sweat, his quivering lips were
parched, his eyes were fixed on the ceiling.
‘Mother, sister—how I loved them! Why do I hate them
now? Yes, I hate them, I feel a physical hatred for them, I
can’t bear them near me…. I went up to my mother and
kissed her, I remember…. To embrace her and think if she
only knew … shall I tell her then? That’s just what I might
1
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do…. She must be the same as I am,’ he added, straining
himself to think, as it were struggling with delirium. ‘Ah,
how I hate the old woman now! I feel I should kill her again
if she came to life! Poor Lizaveta! Why did she come in?
… It’s strange though, why is it I scarcely ever think of her,
as though I hadn’t killed her? Lizaveta! Sonia! Poor gentle
things, with gentle eyes…. Dear women! Why don’t they
weep? Why don’t they moan? They give up everything …
their eyes are soft and gentle…. Sonia, Sonia! Gentle So-
nia!’
He lost consciousness; it seemed strange to him that
he didn’t remember how he got into the street. It was late
evening. The twilight had fallen and the full moon was
shining more and more brightly; but there was a peculiar
breathlessness in the air. There were crowds of people in
the street; workmen and business people were making their
way home; other people had come out for a walk; there was
a smell of mortar, dust and stagnant water. Raskolnikov
walked along, mournful and anxious; he was distinctly
aware of having come out with a purpose, of having to do
something in a hurry, but what it was he had forgotten. Sud-
denly he stood still and saw a man standing on the other
side of the street, beckoning to him. He crossed over to him,
but at once the man turned and walked away with his head
hanging, as though he had made no sign to him. ‘Stay, did
he really beckon?’ Raskolnikov wondered, but he tried to
overtake him. When he was within ten paces he recognised
him and was frightened; it was the same man with stooping
shoulders in the long coat. Raskolnikov followed him at a
Crime and Punishment
distance; his heart was beating; they went down a turning;
the man still did not look round. ‘Does he know I am fol-
lowing him?’ thought Raskolnikov. The man went into the
gateway of a big house. Raskolnikov hastened to the gate
and looked in to see whether he would look round and sign
to him. In the court-yard the man did turn round and again
seemed to beckon him. Raskolnikov at once followed him
into the yard, but the man was gone. He must have gone
up the first staircase. Raskolnikov rushed after him. He
heard slow measured steps two flights above. The staircase
seemed strangely familiar. He reached the window on the
first floor; the moon shone through the panes with a melan-
choly and mysterious light; then he reached the second floor.
Bah! this is the flat where the painters were at work … but
how was it he did not recognise it at once? The steps of the
man above had died away. ‘So he must have stopped or hid-
den somewhere.’ He reached the third storey, should he go
on? There was a stillness that was dreadful…. But he went
on. The sound of his own footsteps scared and frightened
him. How dark it was! The man must be hiding in some cor-
ner here. Ah! the flat was standing wide open, he hesitated
and went in. It was very dark and empty in the passage, as
though everything had been removed; he crept on tiptoe
into the parlour which was flooded with moonlight. Every-
thing there was as before, the chairs, the looking-glass, the
yellow sofa and the pictures in the frames. A huge, round,
copper-red moon looked in at the windows. ‘It’s the moon
that makes it so still, weaving some mystery,’ thought Ras-
kolnikov. He stood and waited, waited a long while, and the
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more silent the moonlight, the more violently his heart beat,
till it was painful. And still the same hush. Suddenly he
heard a momentary sharp crack like the snapping of a splin-
ter and all was still again. A fly flew up suddenly and struck
the window pane with a plaintive buzz. At that moment he
noticed in the corner between the window and the little
cupboard something like a cloak hanging on the wall. ‘Why
is that cloak here?’ he thought, ‘it wasn’t there before….’ He
went up to it quietly and felt that there was someone hiding
behind it. He cautiously moved the cloak and saw, sitting on
a chair in the corner, the old woman bent double so that he
couldn’t see her face; but it was she. He stood over her. ‘She
is afraid,’ he thought. He stealthily took the axe from the
noose and struck her one blow, then another on the skull.
But strange to say she did not stir, as though she were made
of wood. He was frightened, bent down nearer and tried to
look at her; but she, too, bent her head lower. He bent right
down to the ground and peeped up into her face from be-
low, he peeped and turned cold with horror: the old woman
was sitting and laughing, shaking with noiseless laughter,
doing her utmost that he should not hear it. Suddenly he
fancied that the door from the bedroom was opened a little
and that there was laughter and whispering within. He was
overcome with frenzy and he began hitting the old woman
on the head with all his force, but at every blow of the axe
the laughter and whispering from the bedroom grew louder
and the old woman was simply shaking with mirth. He was
rushing away, but the passage was full of people, the doors
of the flats stood open and on the landing, on the stairs
Crime and Punishment
and everywhere below there were people, rows of heads,
all looking, but huddled together in silence and expecta-
tion. Something gripped his heart, his legs were rooted to
the spot, they would not move…. He tried to scream and
woke up.
He drew a deep breath—but his dream seemed strangely
to persist: his door was flung open and a man whom he had
never seen stood in the doorway watching him intently.
Raskolnikov had hardly opened his eyes and he instantly
closed them again. He lay on his back without stirring.
‘Is it still a dream?’ he wondered and again raised his
eyelids hardly perceptibly; the stranger was standing in the
same place, still watching him.
He stepped cautiously into the room, carefully closing
the door after him, went up to the table, paused a moment,
still keeping his eyes on Raskolnikov, and noiselessly seated
himself on the chair by the sofa; he put his hat on the floor
beside him and leaned his hands on his cane and his chin
on his hands. It was evident that he was prepared to wait
indefinitely. As far as Raskolnikov could make out from his
stolen glances, he was a man no longer young, stout, with a
full, fair, almost whitish beard.
Ten minutes passed. It was still light, but beginning to
get dusk. There was complete stillness in the room. Not a
sound came from the stairs. Only a big fly buzzed and flut-
tered against the window pane. It was unbearable at last.
Raskolnikov suddenly got up and sat on the sofa.
‘Come, tell me what you want.’
‘I knew you were not asleep, but only pretending,’ the
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stranger answered oddly, laughing calmly. ‘Arkady Ivano-
vitch Svidrigaïlov, allow me to introduce myself….’
Crime and Punishment
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