basque! Tap with your heels, be a graceful child!
‘Du hast Diamanten und Perlen
‘What next? That’s the thing to sing.
‘Du hast die schonsten Augen Madchen, was willst du
mehr?
‘What an idea! Was willst du mehr? What things the fool
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invents! Ah, yes!
‘In the heat of midday in the vale of Dagestan.
‘Ah, how I loved it! I loved that song to distraction, Po-
lenka! Your father, you know, used to sing it when we were
engaged…. Oh those days! Oh that’s the thing for us to sing!
How does it go? I’ve forgotten. Remind me! How was it?’
She was violently excited and tried to sit up. At last, in
a horribly hoarse, broken voice, she began, shrieking and
gasping at every word, with a look of growing terror.
‘In the heat of midday! … in the vale! … of Dagestan! …
With lead in my breast! …’
‘Your excellency!’ she wailed suddenly with a heart-rend-
ing scream and a flood of tears, ‘protect the orphans! You
have been their father’s guest … one may say aristocratic….’
She started, regaining consciousness, and gazed at all with
a sort of terror, but at once recognised Sonia.
‘Sonia, Sonia!’ she articulated softly and caressingly, as
though surprised to find her there. ‘Sonia darling, are you
here, too?’
They lifted her up again.
‘Enough! It’s over! Farewell, poor thing! I am done for! I
am broken!’ she cried with vindictive despair, and her head
fell heavily back on the pillow.
She sank into unconsciousness again, but this time it did
not last long. Her pale, yellow, wasted face dropped back,
her mouth fell open, her leg moved convulsively, she gave a
deep, deep sigh and died.
Sonia fell upon her, flung her arms about her, and re-
mained motionless with her head pressed to the dead
Crime and Punishment
10
woman’s wasted bosom. Polenka threw herself at her moth-
er’s feet, kissing them and weeping violently. Though Kolya
and Lida did not understand what had happened, they had
a feeling that it was something terrible; they put their hands
on each other’s little shoulders, stared straight at one an-
other and both at once opened their mouths and began
screaming. They were both still in their fancy dress; one in
a turban, the other in the cap with the ostrich feather.
And how did ‘the certificate of merit’ come to be on the
bed beside Katerina Ivanovna? It lay there by the pillow;
Raskolnikov saw it.
He walked away to the window. Lebeziatnikov skipped
up to him.
‘She is dead,’ he said.
‘Rodion Romanovitch, I must have two words with you,’
said Svidrigaïlov, coming up to them.
Lebeziatnikov at once made room for him and delicately
withdrew. Svidrigaïlov drew Raskolnikov further away.
‘I will undertake all the arrangements, the funeral and
that. You know it’s a question of money and, as I told you,
I have plenty to spare. I will put those two little ones and
Polenka into some good orphan asylum, and I will settle
fifteen hundred roubles to be paid to each on coming of
age, so that Sofya Semyonovna need have no anxiety about
them. And I will pull her out of the mud too, for she is a
good girl, isn’t she? So tell Avdotya Romanovna that that is
how I am spending her ten thousand.’
‘What is your motive for such benevolence?’ asked Ras-
kolnikov.
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‘Ah! you sceptical person!’ laughed Svidrigaïlov. ‘I told
you I had no need of that money. Won’t you admit that it’s
simply done from humanity? She wasn’t ‘a louse,’ you know’
(he pointed to the corner where the dead woman lay), ‘was
she, like some old pawnbroker woman? Come, you’ll agree,
is Luzhin to go on living, and doing wicked things or is
she to die? And if I didn’t help them, Polenka would go the
same way.’
He said this with an air of a sort of gay winking slyness,
keeping his eyes fixed on Raskolnikov, who turned white
and cold, hearing his own phrases, spoken to Sonia. He
quickly stepped back and looked wildly at Svidrigaïlov.
‘How do you know?’ he whispered, hardly able to
breathe.
‘Why, I lodge here at Madame Resslich’s, the other side
of the wall. Here is Kapernaumov, and there lives Madame
Resslich, an old and devoted friend of mine. I am a neigh-
bour.’
‘You?’
‘Yes,’ continued Svidrigaïlov, shaking with laughter. ‘I
assure you on my honour, dear Rodion Romanovitch, that
you have interested me enormously. I told you we should
become friends, I foretold it. Well, here we have. And you
will see what an accommodating person I am. You’ll see
that you can get on with me!’
Crime and Punishment
1
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