to have the daring … and I killed her. I only wanted to have
the daring, Sonia! That was the whole cause of it!’
‘Oh hush, hush,’ cried Sonia, clasping her hands. ‘You
turned away from God and God has smitten you, has given
you over to the devil!’
‘Then Sonia, when I used to lie there in the dark and all
this became clear to me, was it a temptation of the devil,
eh?’
‘Hush, don’t laugh, blasphemer! You don’t understand,
you don’t understand! Oh God! He won’t understand!’
‘Hush, Sonia! I am not laughing. I know myself that it
was the devil leading me. Hush, Sonia, hush!’ he repeat-
ed with gloomy insistence. ‘I know it all, I have thought it
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all over and over and whispered it all over to myself, lying
there in the dark…. I’ve argued it all over with myself, every
point of it, and I know it all, all! And how sick, how sick I
was then of going over it all! I have kept wanting to forget
it and make a new beginning, Sonia, and leave off think-
ing. And you don’t suppose that I went into it headlong like
a fool? I went into it like a wise man, and that was just my
destruction. And you mustn’t suppose that I didn’t know,
for instance, that if I began to question myself whether I
had the right to gain power—I certainly hadn’t the right—
or that if I asked myself whether a human being is a louse
it proved that it wasn’t so for me, though it might be for
a man who would go straight to his goal without asking
questions…. If I worried myself all those days, wondering
whether Napoleon would have done it or not, I felt clearly of
course that I wasn’t Napoleon. I had to endure all the agony
of that battle of ideas, Sonia, and I longed to throw it off: I
wanted to murder without casuistry, to murder for my own
sake, for myself alone! I didn’t want to lie about it even to
myself. It wasn’t to help my mother I did the murder—that’s
nonsense —I didn’t do the murder to gain wealth and power
and to become a benefactor of mankind. Nonsense! I sim-
ply did it; I did the murder for myself, for myself alone, and
whether I became a benefactor to others, or spent my life
like a spider catching men in my web and sucking the life
out of men, I couldn’t have cared at that moment…. And it
was not the money I wanted, Sonia, when I did it. It was not
so much the money I wanted, but something else…. I know
it all now…. Understand me! Perhaps I should never have
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committed a murder again. I wanted to find out something
else; it was something else led me on. I wanted to find out
then and quickly whether I was a louse like everybody else
or a man. Whether I can step over barriers or not, whether I
dare stoop to pick up or not, whether I am a trembling crea-
ture or whether I have the right …’
‘To kill? Have the right to kill?’ Sonia clasped her hands.
‘Ach, Sonia!’ he cried irritably and seemed about to make
some retort, but was contemptuously silent. ‘Don’t interrupt
me, Sonia. I want to prove one thing only, that the devil led
me on then and he has shown me since that I had not the
right to take that path, because I am just such a louse as
all the rest. He was mocking me and here I’ve come to you
now! Welcome your guest! If I were not a louse, should I
have come to you? Listen: when I went then to the old wom-
an’s I only went to try…. You may be sure of that!’
‘And you murdered her!’
‘But how did I murder her? Is that how men do murders?
Do men go to commit a murder as I went then? I will tell
you some day how I went! Did I murder the old woman? I
murdered myself, not her! I crushed myself once for all, for
ever…. But it was the devil that killed that old woman, not
I. Enough, enough, Sonia, enough! Let me be!’ he cried in a
sudden spasm of agony, ‘let me be!’
He leaned his elbows on his knees and squeezed his head
in his hands as in a vise.
‘What suffering!’ A wail of anguish broke from Sonia.
‘Well, what am I to do now?’ he asked, suddenly raising
his head and looking at her with a face hideously distorted
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by despair.
‘What are you to do?’ she cried, jumping up, and her eyes
that had been full of tears suddenly began to shine. ‘Stand
up!’ (She seized him by the shoulder, he got up, looking at
her almost bewildered.) ‘Go at once, this very minute, stand
at the cross-roads, bow down, first kiss the earth which you
have defiled and then bow down to all the world and say to
all men aloud, ‘I am a murderer!’ Then God will send you
life again. Will you go, will you go?’ she asked him, trem-
bling all over, snatching his two hands, squeezing them
tight in hers and gazing at him with eyes full of fire.
He was amazed at her sudden ecstasy.
‘You mean Siberia, Sonia? I must give myself up?’ he
asked gloomily.
‘Suffer and expiate your sin by it, that’s what you must
do.’
‘No! I am not going to them, Sonia!’
‘But how will you go on living? What will you live for?’
cried Sonia, ‘how is it possible now? Why, how can you talk
to your mother? (Oh, what will become of them now?) But
what am I saying? You have abandoned your mother and
your sister already. He has abandoned them already! Oh,
God!’ she cried, ‘why, he knows it all himself. How, how can
he live by himself! What will become of you now?’
‘Don’t be a child, Sonia,’ he said softly. ‘What wrong
have I done them? Why should I go to them? What should
I say to them? That’s only a phantom…. They destroy men
by millions themselves and look on it as a virtue. They are
knaves and scoundrels, Sonia! I am not going to them. And
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0
what should I say to them—that I murdered her, but did
not dare to take the money and hid it under a stone?’ he
added with a bitter smile. ‘Why, they would laugh at me,
and would call me a fool for not getting it. A coward and a
fool! They wouldn’t understand and they don’t deserve to
understand. Why should I go to them? I won’t. Don’t be a
child, Sonia….’
‘It will be too much for you to bear, too much!’ she re-
peated, holding out her hands in despairing supplication.
‘Perhaps I’ve been unfair to myself,’ he observed gloom-
ily, pondering, ‘perhaps after all I am a man and not a louse
and I’ve been in too great a hurry to condemn myself. I’ll
make another fight for it.’
A haughty smile appeared on his lips.
‘What a burden to bear! And your whole life, your whole
life!’
‘I shall get used to it,’ he said grimly and thoughtfully.
‘Listen,’ he began a minute later, ‘stop crying, it’s time to talk
of the facts: I’ve come to tell you that the police are after me,
on my track….’
‘Ach!’ Sonia cried in terror.
‘Well, why do you cry out? You want me to go to Sibe-
ria and now you are frightened? But let me tell you: I shall
not give myself up. I shall make a struggle for it and they
won’t do anything to me. They’ve no real evidence. Yester-
day I was in great danger and believed I was lost; but to-day
things are going better. All the facts they know can be ex-
plained two ways, that’s to say I can turn their accusations
to my credit, do you understand? And I shall, for I’ve learnt
1
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my lesson. But they will certainly arrest me. If it had not
been for something that happened, they would have done so
to-day for certain; perhaps even now they will arrest me to-
day…. But that’s no matter, Sonia; they’ll let me out again …
for there isn’t any real proof against me, and there won’t be,
I give you my word for it. And they can’t convict a man on
what they have against me. Enough…. I only tell you that
you may know…. I will try to manage somehow to put it to
my mother and sister so that they won’t be frightened…. My
sister’s future is secure, however, now, I believe … and my
mother’s must be too…. Well, that’s all. Be careful, though.
Will you come and see me in prison when I am there?’
‘Oh, I will, I will.’
They sat side by side, both mournful and dejected, as
though they had been cast up by the tempest alone on some
deserted shore. He looked at Sonia and felt how great was
her love for him, and strange to say he felt it suddenly bur-
densome and painful to be so loved. Yes, it was a strange
and awful sensation! On his way to see Sonia he had felt that
all his hopes rested on her; he expected to be rid of at least
part of his suffering, and now, when all her heart turned
towards him, he suddenly felt that he was immeasurably
unhappier than before.
‘Sonia,’ he said, ‘you’d better not come and see me when
I am in prison.’
Sonia did not answer, she was crying. Several minutes
passed.
‘Have you a cross on you?’ she asked, as though suddenly
thinking of it.
Crime and Punishment
He did not at first understand the question.
‘No, of course not. Here, take this one, of cypress wood.
I have another, a copper one that belonged to Lizaveta. I
changed with Lizaveta: she gave me her cross and I gave her
my little ikon. I will wear Lizaveta’s now and give you this.
Take it … it’s mine! It’s mine, you know,’ she begged him.
‘We will go to suffer together, and together we will bear our
cross!’
‘Give it me,’ said Raskolnikov.
He did not want to hurt her feelings. But immediately he
drew back the hand he held out for the cross.
‘Not now, Sonia. Better later,’ he added to comfort her.
‘Yes, yes, better,’ she repeated with conviction, ‘when you
go to meet your suffering, then put it on. You will come to
me, I’ll put it on you, we will pray and go together.’
At that moment someone knocked three times at the
door.
‘Sofya Semyonovna, may I come in?’ they heard in a very
familiar and polite voice.
Sonia rushed to the door in a fright. The flaxen head of
Mr. Lebeziatnikov appeared at the door.
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Chapter V
L
ebeziatnikov looked perturbed.
‘I’ve come to you, Sofya Semyonovna,’ he began. ‘Ex-
cuse me … I thought I should find you,’ he said, addressing
Raskolnikov suddenly, ‘that is, I didn’t mean anything … of
that sort … But I just thought … Katerina Ivanovna has
gone out of her mind,’ he blurted out suddenly, turning
from Raskolnikov to Sonia.
Sonia screamed.
‘At least it seems so. But … we don’t know what to do,
you see! She came back—she seems to have been turned out
somewhere, perhaps beaten…. So it seems at least, … She
had run to your father’s former chief, she didn’t find him at
home: he was dining at some other general’s…. Only fancy,
she rushed off there, to the other general’s, and, imagine, she
was so persistent that she managed to get the chief to see her,
had him fetched out from dinner, it seems. You can imagine
what happened. She was turned out, of course; but, accord-
ing to her own story, she abused him and threw something
at him. One may well believe it…. How it is she wasn’t taken
up, I can’t understand! Now she is telling everyone, includ-
ing Amalia Ivanovna; but it’s difficult to understand her,
she is screaming and flinging herself about…. Oh yes, she
shouts that since everyone has abandoned her, she will take
the children and go into the street with a barrel-organ, and
Crime and Punishment
the children will sing and dance, and she too, and collect
money, and will go every day under the general’s window
… ‘to let everyone see well-born children, whose father was
an official, begging in the street.’ She keeps beating the chil-
dren and they are all crying. She is teaching Lida to sing ‘My
Village,’ the boy to dance, Polenka the same. She is tearing
up all the clothes, and making them little caps like actors;
she means to carry a tin basin and make it tinkle, instead of
music…. She won’t listen to anything…. Imagine the state
of things! It’s beyond anything!’
Lebeziatnikov would have gone on, but Sonia, who had
heard him almost breathless, snatched up her cloak and
hat, and ran out of the room, putting on her things as she
went. Raskolnikov followed her and Lebeziatnikov came af-
ter him.
‘She has certainly gone mad!’ he said to Raskolnikov, as
they went out into the street. ‘I didn’t want to frighten So-
fya Semyonovna, so I said ‘it seemed like it,’ but there isn’t
a doubt of it. They say that in consumption the tubercles
sometimes occur in the brain; it’s a pity I know nothing of
medicine. I did try to persuade her, but she wouldn’t listen.’
‘Did you talk to her about the tubercles?’
‘Not precisely of the tubercles. Besides, she wouldn’t have
understood! But what I say is, that if you convince a person
logically that he has nothing to cry about, he’ll stop crying.
That’s clear. Is it your conviction that he won’t?’
‘Life would be too easy if it were so,’ answered Raskol-
nikov.
‘Excuse me, excuse me; of course it would be rather dif-
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ficult for Katerina Ivanovna to understand, but do you
know that in Paris they have been conducting serious ex-
periments as to the possibility of curing the insane, simply
by logical argument? One professor there, a scientific man
of standing, lately dead, believed in the possibility of such
treatment. His idea was that there’s nothing really wrong
with the physical organism of the insane, and that insan-
ity is, so to say, a logical mistake, an error of judgment, an
incorrect view of things. He gradually showed the madman
his error and, would you believe it, they say he was success-
ful? But as he made use of douches too, how far success was
due to that treatment remains uncertain…. So it seems at
least.’
Raskolnikov had long ceased to listen. Reaching the
house where he lived, he nodded to Lebeziatnikov and went
in at the gate. Lebeziatnikov woke up with a start, looked
about him and hurried on.
Raskolnikov went into his little room and stood still in
the middle of it. Why had he come back here? He looked
at the yellow and tattered paper, at the dust, at his sofa….
From the yard came a loud continuous knocking; someone
seemed to be hammering … He went to the window, rose
on tiptoe and looked out into the yard for a long time with
an air of absorbed attention. But the yard was empty and
he could not see who was hammering. In the house on the
left he saw some open windows; on the window-sills were
pots of sickly-looking geraniums. Linen was hung out of
the windows … He knew it all by heart. He turned away
and sat down on the sofa.
Crime and Punishment
Never, never had he felt himself so fearfully alone!
Yes, he felt once more that he would perhaps come to
hate Sonia, now that he had made her more miserable.
‘Why had he gone to her to beg for her tears? What need
had he to poison her life? Oh, the meanness of it!’
‘I will remain alone,’ he said resolutely, ‘and she shall not
come to the prison!’
Five minutes later he raised his head with a strange smile.
That was a strange thought.
‘Perhaps it really would be better in Siberia,’ he thought
suddenly.
He could not have said how long he sat there with vague
thoughts surging through his mind. All at once the door
opened and Dounia came in. At first she stood still and
looked at him from the doorway, just as he had done at So-
nia; then she came in and sat down in the same place as
yesterday, on the chair facing him. He looked silently and
almost vacantly at her.
‘Don’t be angry, brother; I’ve only come for one minute,’
said Dounia.
Her face looked thoughtful but not stern. Her eyes were
bright and soft. He saw that she too had come to him with
love.
‘Brother, now I know all, all. Dmitri Prokofitch has ex-
plained and told me everything. They are worrying and
persecuting you through a stupid and contemptible suspi-
cion…. Dmitri Prokofitch told me that there is no danger,
and that you are wrong in looking upon it with such horror.
I don’t think so, and I fully understand how indignant you
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must be, and that that indignation may have a permanent
effect on you. That’s what I am afraid of. As for your cutting
yourself off from us, I don’t judge you, I don’t venture to
judge you, and forgive me for having blamed you for it. I feel
that I too, if I had so great a trouble, should keep away from
everyone. I shall tell mother nothing of this but I shall talk
about you continually and shall tell her from you that you
will come very soon. Don’t worry about her; I will set her
mind at rest; but don’t you try her too much—come once
at least; remember that she is your mother. And now I have
come simply to say’ (Dounia began to get up) ‘that if you
should need me or should need … all my life or anything …
call me, and I’ll come. Good-bye!’
She turned abruptly and went towards the door.
‘Dounia!’ Raskolnikov stopped her and went towards her.
‘That Razumihin, Dmitri Prokofitch, is a very good fellow.’
Dounia flushed slightly.
‘Well?’ she asked, waiting a moment.
‘He is competent, hardworking, honest and capable of
real love…. Good-bye, Dounia.’
Dounia flushed crimson, then suddenly she took alarm.
‘But what does it mean, brother? Are we really parting for
ever that you … give me such a parting message?’
‘Never mind…. Good-bye.’
He turned away, and walked to the window. She stood a
moment, looked at him uneasily, and went out troubled.
No, he was not cold to her. There was an instant (the very
last one) when he had longed to take her in his arms and say
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