Lizaveta with an axe and robbed them.’
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Ilya Petrovitch opened his mouth. People ran up on all
sides.
Raskolnikov repeated his statement.
Crime and Punishment
Epilogue
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I
S
iberia. On the banks of a broad solitary river stands a
town, one of the administrative centres of Russia; in the
town there is a fortress, in the fortress there is a prison. In
the prison the second-class convict Rodion Raskolnikov
has been confined for nine months. Almost a year and a
half has passed since his crime.
There had been little difficulty about his trial. The crimi-
nal adhered exactly, firmly, and clearly to his statement. He
did not confuse nor misrepresent the facts, nor soften them
in his own interest, nor omit the smallest detail. He ex-
plained every incident of the murder, the secret of the pledge
(the piece of wood with a strip of metal) which was found
in the murdered woman’s hand. He described minutely how
he had taken her keys, what they were like, as well as the
chest and its contents; he explained the mystery of Lizave-
ta’s murder; described how Koch and, after him, the student
knocked, and repeated all they had said to one another;
how he afterwards had run downstairs and heard Niko-
lay and Dmitri shouting; how he had hidden in the empty
flat and afterwards gone home. He ended by indicating the
stone in the yard off the Voznesensky Prospect under which
the purse and the trinkets were found. The whole thing, in
fact, was perfectly clear. The lawyers and the judges were
very much struck, among other things, by the fact that he
Crime and Punishment
had hidden the trinkets and the purse under a stone, with-
out making use of them, and that, what was more, he did
not now remember what the trinkets were like, or even how
many there were. The fact that he had never opened the
purse and did not even know how much was in it seemed
incredible. There turned out to be in the purse three hun-
dred and seventeen roubles and sixty copecks. From being
so long under the stone, some of the most valuable notes
lying uppermost had suffered from the damp. They were a
long while trying to discover why the accused man should
tell a lie about this, when about everything else he had made
a truthful and straightforward confession. Finally some
of the lawyers more versed in psychology admitted that it
was possible he had really not looked into the purse, and so
didn’t know what was in it when he hid it under the stone.
But they immediately drew the deduction that the crime
could only have been committed through temporary men-
tal derangement, through homicidal mania, without object
or the pursuit of gain. This fell in with the most recent fash-
ionable theory of temporary insanity, so often applied in
our days in criminal cases. Moreover Raskolnikov’s hypo-
chondriacal condition was proved by many witnesses, by
Dr. Zossimov, his former fellow students, his landlady and
her servant. All this pointed strongly to the conclusion that
Raskolnikov was not quite like an ordinary murderer and
robber, but that there was another element in the case.
To the intense annoyance of those who maintained this
opinion, the criminal scarcely attempted to defend himself.
To the decisive question as to what motive impelled him
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to the murder and the robbery, he answered very clearly
with the coarsest frankness that the cause was his miser-
able position, his poverty and helplessness, and his desire
to provide for his first steps in life by the help of the three
thousand roubles he had reckoned on finding. He had been
led to the murder through his shallow and cowardly nature,
exasperated moreover by privation and failure. To the ques-
tion what led him to confess, he answered that it was his
heartfelt repentance. All this was almost coarse….
The sentence however was more merciful than could have
been expected, perhaps partly because the criminal had not
tried to justify himself, but had rather shown a desire to
exaggerate his guilt. All the strange and peculiar circum-
stances of the crime were taken into consideration. There
could be no doubt of the abnormal and poverty-stricken
condition of the criminal at the time. The fact that he had
made no use of what he had stolen was put down partly to
the effect of remorse, partly to his abnormal mental con-
dition at the time of the crime. Incidentally the murder of
Lizaveta served indeed to confirm the last hypothesis: a man
commits two murders and forgets that the door is open! Fi-
nally, the confession, at the very moment when the case was
hopelessly muddled by the false evidence given by Nikolay
through melancholy and fanaticism, and when, moreover,
there were no proofs against the real criminal, no suspi-
cions even (Porfiry Petrovitch fully kept his word) —all
this did much to soften the sentence. Other circumstances,
too, in the prisoner’s favour came out quite unexpectedly.
Razumihin somehow discovered and proved that while
Crime and Punishment
Raskolnikov was at the university he had helped a poor
consumptive fellow student and had spent his last penny
on supporting him for six months, and when this student
died, leaving a decrepit old father whom he had maintained
almost from his thirteenth year, Raskolnikov had got the
old man into a hospital and paid for his funeral when he
died. Raskolnikov’s landlady bore witness, too, that when
they had lived in another house at Five Corners, Raskol-
nikov had rescued two little children from a house on fire
and was burnt in doing so. This was investigated and fairly
well confirmed by many witnesses. These facts made an im-
pression in his favour.
And in the end the criminal was, in consideration of ex-
tenuating circumstances, condemned to penal servitude in
the second class for a term of eight years only.
At the very beginning of the trial Raskolnikov’s moth-
er fell ill. Dounia and Razumihin found it possible to get
her out of Petersburg during the trial. Razumihin chose a
town on the railway not far from Petersburg, so as to be
able to follow every step of the trial and at the same time
to see Avdotya Romanovna as often as possible. Pulcheria
Alexandrovna’s illness was a strange nervous one and was
accompanied by a partial derangement of her intellect.
When Dounia returned from her last interview with her
brother, she had found her mother already ill, in feverish
delirium. That evening Razumihin and she agreed what
answers they must make to her mother’s questions about
Raskolnikov and made up a complete story for her mother’s
benefit of his having to go away to a distant part of Russia
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on a business commission, which would bring him in the
end money and reputation.
But they were struck by the fact that Pulcheria Alexan-
drovna never asked them anything on the subject, neither
then nor thereafter. On the contrary, she had her own ver-
sion of her son’s sudden departure; she told them with tears
how he had come to say good-bye to her, hinting that she
alone knew many mysterious and important facts, and that
Rodya had many very powerful enemies, so that it was nec-
essary for him to be in hiding. As for his future career, she
had no doubt that it would be brilliant when certain sinister
influences could be removed. She assured Razumihin that
her son would be one day a great statesman, that his article
and brilliant literary talent proved it. This article she was
continually reading, she even read it aloud, almost took it to
bed with her, but scarcely asked where Rodya was, though
the subject was obviously avoided by the others, which
might have been enough to awaken her suspicions.
They began to be frightened at last at Pulcheria Alexan-
drovna’s strange silence on certain subjects. She did not, for
instance, complain of getting no letters from him, though
in previous years she had only lived on the hope of letters
from her beloved Rodya. This was the cause of great uneasi-
ness to Dounia; the idea occurred to her that her mother
suspected that there was something terrible in her son’s fate
and was afraid to ask, for fear of hearing something still
more awful. In any case, Dounia saw clearly that her mother
was not in full possession of her faculties.
It happened once or twice, however, that Pulcheria Al-
Crime and Punishment
0
exandrovna gave such a turn to the conversation that it was
impossible to answer her without mentioning where Rodya
was, and on receiving unsatisfactory and suspicious an-
swers she became at once gloomy and silent, and this mood
lasted for a long time. Dounia saw at last that it was hard
to deceive her and came to the conclusion that it was bet-
ter to be absolutely silent on certain points; but it became
more and more evident that the poor mother suspected
something terrible. Dounia remembered her brother’s tell-
ing her that her mother had overheard her talking in her
sleep on the night after her interview with Svidrigaïlov and
before the fatal day of the confession: had not she made out
something from that? Sometimes days and even weeks of
gloomy silence and tears would be succeeded by a period
of hysterical animation, and the invalid would begin to talk
almost incessantly of her son, of her hopes of his future….
Her fancies were sometimes very strange. They humoured
her, pretended to agree with her (she saw perhaps that they
were pretending), but she still went on talking.
Five months after Raskolnikov’s confession, he was sen-
tenced. Razumihin and Sonia saw him in prison as often
as it was possible. At last the moment of separation came.
Dounia swore to her brother that the separation should not
be for ever, Razumihin did the same. Razumihin, in his
youthful ardour, had firmly resolved to lay the foundations
at least of a secure livelihood during the next three or four
years, and saving up a certain sum, to emigrate to Siberia, a
country rich in every natural resource and in need of work-
ers, active men and capital. There they would settle in the
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town where Rodya was and all together would begin a new
life. They all wept at parting.
Raskolnikov had been very dreamy for a few days before.
He asked a great deal about his mother and was constantly
anxious about her. He worried so much about her that it
alarmed Dounia. When he heard about his mother’s illness
he became very gloomy. With Sonia he was particularly re-
served all the time. With the help of the money left to her by
Svidrigaïlov, Sonia had long ago made her preparations to
follow the party of convicts in which he was despatched to
Siberia. Not a word passed between Raskolnikov and her on
the subject, but both knew it would be so. At the final leave-
taking he smiled strangely at his sister’s and Razumihin’s
fervent anticipations of their happy future together when
he should come out of prison. He predicted that their moth-
er’s illness would soon have a fatal ending. Sonia and he at
last set off.
Two months later Dounia was married to Razumihin. It
was a quiet and sorrowful wedding; Porfiry Petrovitch and
Zossimov were invited however. During all this period Ra-
zumihin wore an air of resolute determination. Dounia put
implicit faith in his carrying out his plans and indeed she
could not but believe in him. He displayed a rare strength
of will. Among other things he began attending university
lectures again in order to take his degree. They were contin-
ually making plans for the future; both counted on settling
in Siberia within five years at least. Till then they rested
their hopes on Sonia.
Pulcheria Alexandrovna was delighted to give her bless-
Crime and Punishment
ing to Dounia’s marriage with Razumihin; but after the
marriage she became even more melancholy and anxious.
To give her pleasure Razumihin told her how Raskolnikov
had looked after the poor student and his decrepit father
and how a year ago he had been burnt and injured in rescu-
ing two little children from a fire. These two pieces of news
excited Pulcheria Alexandrovna’s disordered imagination
almost to ecstasy. She was continually talking about them,
even entering into conversation with strangers in the street,
though Dounia always accompanied her. In public convey-
ances and shops, wherever she could capture a listener, she
would begin the discourse about her son, his article, how he
had helped the student, how he had been burnt at the fire,
and so on! Dounia did not know how to restrain her. Apart
from the danger of her morbid excitement, there was the
risk of someone’s recalling Raskolnikov’s name and speak-
ing of the recent trial. Pulcheria Alexandrovna found out
the address of the mother of the two children her son had
saved and insisted on going to see her.
At last her restlessness reached an extreme point. She
would sometimes begin to cry suddenly and was often ill
and feverishly delirious. One morning she declared that by
her reckoning Rodya ought soon to be home, that she re-
membered when he said good-bye to her he said that they
must expect him back in nine months. She began to prepare
for his coming, began to do up her room for him, to clean
the furniture, to wash and put up new hangings and so on.
Dounia was anxious, but said nothing and helped her to
arrange the room. After a fatiguing day spent in continual
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fancies, in joyful day-dreams and tears, Pulcheria Alexan-
drovna was taken ill in the night and by morning she was
feverish and delirious. It was brain fever. She died within a
fortnight. In her delirium she dropped words which showed
that she knew a great deal more about her son’s terrible fate
than they had supposed.
For a long time Raskolnikov did not know of his moth-
er’s death, though a regular correspondence had been
maintained from the time he reached Siberia. It was carried
on by means of Sonia, who wrote every month to the Ra-
zumihins and received an answer with unfailing regularity.
At first they found Sonia’s letters dry and unsatisfactory, but
later on they came to the conclusion that the letters could
not be better, for from these letters they received a complete
picture of their unfortunate brother’s life. Sonia’s letters
were full of the most matter-of-fact detail, the simplest and
clearest description of all Raskolnikov’s surroundings as a
convict. There was no word of her own hopes, no conjec-
ture as to the future, no description of her feelings. Instead
of any attempt to interpret his state of mind and inner life,
she gave the simple facts—that is, his own words, an exact
account of his health, what he asked for at their interviews,
what commission he gave her and so on. All these facts she
gave with extraordinary minuteness. The picture of their
unhappy brother stood out at last with great clearness and
precision. There could be no mistake, because nothing was
given but facts.
But Dounia and her husband could get little comfort out
of the news, especially at first. Sonia wrote that he was con-
Crime and Punishment
stantly sullen and not ready to talk, that he scarcely seemed
interested in the news she gave him from their letters, that
he sometimes asked after his mother and that when, see-
ing that he had guessed the truth, she told him at last of her
death, she was surprised to find that he did not seem great-
ly affected by it, not externally at any rate. She told them
that, although he seemed so wrapped up in himself and,
as it were, shut himself off from everyone—he took a very
direct and simple view of his new life; that he understood
his position, expected nothing better for the time, had no
ill-founded hopes (as is so common in his position) and
scarcely seemed surprised at anything in his surroundings,
so unlike anything he had known before. She wrote that
his health was satisfactory; he did his work without shirk-
ing or seeking to do more; he was almost indifferent about
food, but except on Sundays and holidays the food was so
bad that at last he had been glad to accept some money from
her, Sonia, to have his own tea every day. He begged her
not to trouble about anything else, declaring that all this
fuss about him only annoyed him. Sonia wrote further that
in prison he shared the same room with the rest, that she
had not seen the inside of their barracks, but concluded that
they were crowded, miserable and unhealthy; that he slept
on a plank bed with a rug under him and was unwilling to
make any other arrangement. But that he lived so poorly
and roughly, not from any plan or design, but simply from
inattention and indifference.
Sonia wrote simply that he had at first shown no inter-
est in her visits, had almost been vexed with her indeed for
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coming, unwilling to talk and rude to her. But that in the
end these visits had become a habit and almost a necessity
for him, so that he was positively distressed when she was
ill for some days and could not visit him. She used to see
him on holidays at the prison gates or in the guard-room,
to which he was brought for a few minutes to see her. On
working days she would go to see him at work either at the
workshops or at the brick kilns, or at the sheds on the banks
of the Irtish.
About herself, Sonia wrote that she had succeeded in
making some acquaintances in the town, that she did sew-
ing, and, as there was scarcely a dressmaker in the town,
she was looked upon as an indispensable person in many
houses. But she did not mention that the authorities were,
through her, interested in Raskolnikov; that his task was
lightened and so on.
At last the news came (Dounia had indeed noticed signs
of alarm and uneasiness in the preceding letters) that he
held aloof from everyone, that his fellow prisoners did not
like him, that he kept silent for days at a time and was be-
coming very pale. In the last letter Sonia wrote that he had
been taken very seriously ill and was in the convict ward of
the hospital.
Crime and Punishment
II
H
e was ill a long time. But it was not the horrors of pris-
on life, not the hard labour, the bad food, the shaven
head, or the patched clothes that crushed him. What did he
care for all those trials and hardships! he was even glad of
the hard work. Physically exhausted, he could at least reck-
on on a few hours of quiet sleep. And what was the food to
him—the thin cabbage soup with beetles floating in it? In
the past as a student he had often not had even that. His
clothes were warm and suited to his manner of life. He did
not even feel the fetters. Was he ashamed of his shaven head
and parti-coloured coat? Before whom? Before Sonia? Sonia
was afraid of him, how could he be ashamed before her? And
yet he was ashamed even before Sonia, whom he tortured
because of it with his contemptuous rough manner. But it
was not his shaven head and his fetters he was ashamed of:
his pride had been stung to the quick. It was wounded pride
that made him ill. Oh, how happy he would have been if
he could have blamed himself! He could have borne any-
thing then, even shame and disgrace. But he judged himself
severely, and his exasperated conscience found no par-
ticularly terrible fault in his past, except a simple blunder
which might happen to anyone. He was ashamed just be-
cause he, Raskolnikov, had so hopelessly, stupidly come to
grief through some decree of blind fate, and must humble
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himself and submit to ‘the idiocy’ of a sentence, if he were
anyhow to be at peace.
Vague and objectless anxiety in the present, and in the
future a continual sacrifice leading to nothing—that was all
that lay before him. And what comfort was it to him that at
the end of eight years he would only be thirty-two and able
to begin a new life! What had he to live for? What had he to
look forward to? Why should he strive? To live in order to
exist? Why, he had been ready a thousand times before to
give up existence for the sake of an idea, for a hope, even for
a fancy. Mere existence had always been too little for him;
he had always wanted more. Perhaps it was just because of
the strength of his desires that he had thought himself a
man to whom more was permissible than to others.
And if only fate would have sent him repentance—burn-
ing repentance that would have torn his heart and robbed
him of sleep, that repentance, the awful agony of which
brings visions of hanging or drowning! Oh, he would have
been glad of it! Tears and agonies would at least have been
life. But he did not repent of his crime.
At least he might have found relief in raging at his stu-
pidity, as he had raged at the grotesque blunders that had
brought him to prison. But now in prison, in freedom he
thought over and criticised all his actions again and by no
means found them so blundering and so grotesque as they
had seemed at the fatal time.
‘In what way,’ he asked himself, ‘was my theory stupider
than others that have swarmed and clashed from the begin-
ning of the world? One has only to look at the thing quite
Crime and Punishment
independently, broadly, and uninfluenced by commonplace
ideas, and my idea will by no means seem so … strange.
Oh, sceptics and halfpenny philosophers, why do you halt
half-way!’
‘Why does my action strike them as so horrible?’ he said
to himself. ‘Is it because it was a crime? What is meant by
crime? My conscience is at rest. Of course, it was a legal
crime, of course, the letter of the law was broken and blood
was shed. Well, punish me for the letter of the law … and
that’s enough. Of course, in that case many of the benefac-
tors of mankind who snatched power for themselves instead
of inheriting it ought to have been punished at their first
steps. But those men succeeded and so they were right and I
didn’t, and so I had no right to have taken that step.’
It was only in that that he recognised his criminality,
only in the fact that he had been unsuccessful and had con-
fessed it.
He suffered too from the question: why had he not killed
himself? Why had he stood looking at the river and pre-
ferred to confess? Was the desire to live so strong and was
it so hard to overcome it? Had not Svidrigaïlov overcome it,
although he was afraid of death?
In misery he asked himself this question, and could not
understand that, at the very time he had been standing
looking into the river, he had perhaps been dimly conscious
of the fundamental falsity in himself and his convictions.
He didn’t understand that that consciousness might be the
promise of a future crisis, of a new view of life and of his
future resurrection.
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He preferred to attribute it to the dead weight of instinct
which he could not step over, again through weakness and
meanness. He looked at his fellow prisoners and was amazed
to see how they all loved life and prized it. It seemed to him
that they loved and valued life more in prison than in free-
dom. What terrible agonies and privations some of them,
the tramps for instance, had endured! Could they care so
much for a ray of sunshine, for the primeval forest, the cold
spring hidden away in some unseen spot, which the tramp
had marked three years before, and longed to see again, as
he might to see his sweetheart, dreaming of the green grass
round it and the bird singing in the bush? As he went on he
saw still more inexplicable examples.
In prison, of course, there was a great deal he did not
see and did not want to see; he lived as it were with down-
cast eyes. It was loathsome and unbearable for him to look.
But in the end there was much that surprised him and he
began, as it were involuntarily, to notice much that he had
not suspected before. What surprised him most of all was
the terrible impossible gulf that lay between him and all the
rest. They seemed to be a different species, and he looked
at them and they at him with distrust and hostility. He felt
and knew the reasons of his isolation, but he would never
have admitted till then that those reasons were so deep and
strong. There were some Polish exiles, political prisoners,
among them. They simply looked down upon all the rest as
ignorant churls; but Raskolnikov could not look upon them
like that. He saw that these ignorant men were in many re-
spects far wiser than the Poles. There were some Russians
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0
who were just as contemptuous, a former officer and two
seminarists. Raskolnikov saw their mistake as clearly. He
was disliked and avoided by everyone; they even began to
hate him at last—why, he could not tell. Men who had been
far more guilty despised and laughed at his crime.
‘You’re a gentleman,’ they used to say. ‘You shouldn’t hack
about with an axe; that’s not a gentleman’s work.’
The second week in Lent, his turn came to take the sacra-
ment with his gang. He went to church and prayed with the
others. A quarrel broke out one day, he did not know how.
All fell on him at once in a fury.
‘You’re an infidel! You don’t believe in God,’ they shouted.
‘You ought to be killed.’
He had never talked to them about God nor his belief,
but they wanted to kill him as an infidel. He said nothing.
One of the prisoners rushed at him in a perfect frenzy. Ras-
kolnikov awaited him calmly and silently; his eyebrows did
not quiver, his face did not flinch. The guard succeeded in
intervening between him and his assailant, or there would
have been bloodshed.
There was another question he could not decide: why
were they all so fond of Sonia? She did not try to win their
favour; she rarely met them, sometimes only she came to
see him at work for a moment. And yet everybody knew
her, they knew that she had come out to follow him knew
how and where she lived. She never gave them money, did
them no particular services. Only once at Christmas she
sent them all presents of pies and rolls. But by degrees clos-
er relations sprang up between them and Sonia. She would
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write and post letters for them to their relations. Relations
of the prisoners who visited the town, at their instructions,
left with Sonia presents and money for them. Their wives
and sweethearts knew her and used to visit her. And when
she visited Raskolnikov at work, or met a party of the pris-
oners on the road, they all took off their hats to her. ‘Little
mother Sofya Semyonovna, you are our dear, good little
mother,’ coarse branded criminals said to that frail little
creature. She would smile and bow to them and everyone
was delighted when she smiled. They even admired her gait
and turned round to watch her walking; they admired her
too for being so little, and, in fact, did not know what to ad-
mire her most for. They even came to her for help in their
illnesses.
He was in the hospital from the middle of Lent till af-
ter Easter. When he was better, he remembered the dreams
he had had while he was feverish and delirious. He dreamt
that the whole world was condemned to a terrible new
strange plague that had come to Europe from the depths
of Asia. All were to be destroyed except a very few chosen.
Some new sorts of microbes were attacking the bodies of
men, but these microbes were endowed with intelligence
and will. Men attacked by them became at once mad and
furious. But never had men considered themselves so in-
tellectual and so completely in possession of the truth as
these sufferers, never had they considered their decisions,
their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions so in-
fallible. Whole villages, whole towns and peoples went mad
from the infection. All were excited and did not understand
Crime and Punishment
one another. Each thought that he alone had the truth and
was wretched looking at the others, beat himself on the
breast, wept, and wrung his hands. They did not know how
to judge and could not agree what to consider evil and what
good; they did not know whom to blame, whom to justi-
fy. Men killed each other in a sort of senseless spite. They
gathered together in armies against one another, but even
on the march the armies would begin attacking each oth-
er, the ranks would be broken and the soldiers would fall
on each other, stabbing and cutting, biting and devouring
each other. The alarm bell was ringing all day long in the
towns; men rushed together, but why they were summoned
and who was summoning them no one knew. The most or-
dinary trades were abandoned, because everyone proposed
his own ideas, his own improvements, and they could not
agree. The land too was abandoned. Men met in groups,
agreed on something, swore to keep together, but at once
began on something quite different from what they had
proposed. They accused one another, fought and killed each
other. There were conflagrations and famine. All men and
all things were involved in destruction. The plague spread
and moved further and further. Only a few men could be
saved in the whole world. They were a pure chosen people,
destined to found a new race and a new life, to renew and
purify the earth, but no one had seen these men, no one had
heard their words and their voices.
Raskolnikov was worried that this senseless dream
haunted his memory so miserably, the impression of this
feverish delirium persisted so long. The second week after
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Easter had come. There were warm bright spring days; in
the prison ward the grating windows under which the sen-
tinel paced were opened. Sonia had only been able to visit
him twice during his illness; each time she had to obtain
permission, and it was difficult. But she often used to come
to the hospital yard, especially in the evening, sometimes
only to stand a minute and look up at the windows of the
ward.
One evening, when he was almost well again, Raskol-
nikov fell asleep. On waking up he chanced to go to the
window, and at once saw Sonia in the distance at the hospi-
tal gate. She seemed to be waiting for someone. Something
stabbed him to the heart at that minute. He shuddered and
moved away from the window. Next day Sonia did not come,
nor the day after; he noticed that he was expecting her un-
easily. At last he was discharged. On reaching the prison he
learnt from the convicts that Sofya Semyonovna was lying
ill at home and was unable to go out.
He was very uneasy and sent to inquire after her; he soon
learnt that her illness was not dangerous. Hearing that he
was anxious about her, Sonia sent him a pencilled note, tell-
ing him that she was much better, that she had a slight cold
and that she would soon, very soon come and see him at his
work. His heart throbbed painfully as he read it.
Again it was a warm bright day. Early in the morning,
at six o’clock, he went off to work on the river bank, where
they used to pound alabaster and where there was a kiln
for baking it in a shed. There were only three of them sent.
One of the convicts went with the guard to the fortress to
Crime and Punishment
fetch a tool; the other began getting the wood ready and
laying it in the kiln. Raskolnikov came out of the shed on
to the river bank, sat down on a heap of logs by the shed
and began gazing at the wide deserted river. From the high
bank a broad landscape opened before him, the sound of
singing floated faintly audible from the other bank. In the
vast steppe, bathed in sunshine, he could just see, like black
specks, the nomads’ tents. There there was freedom, there
other men were living, utterly unlike those here; there time
itself seemed to stand still, as though the age of Abraham
and his flocks had not passed. Raskolnikov sat gazing, his
thoughts passed into day-dreams, into contemplation; he
thought of nothing, but a vague restlessness excited and
troubled him. Suddenly he found Sonia beside him; she
had come up noiselessly and sat down at his side. It was
still quite early; the morning chill was still keen. She wore
her poor old burnous and the green shawl; her face still
showed signs of illness, it was thinner and paler. She gave
him a joyful smile of welcome, but held out her hand with
her usual timidity. She was always timid of holding out
her hand to him and sometimes did not offer it at all, as
though afraid he would repel it. He always took her hand
as though with repugnance, always seemed vexed to meet
her and was sometimes obstinately silent throughout her
visit. Sometimes she trembled before him and went away
deeply grieved. But now their hands did not part. He stole
a rapid glance at her and dropped his eyes on the ground
without speaking. They were alone, no one had seen them.
The guard had turned away for the time.
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How it happened he did not know. But all at once some-
thing seemed to seize him and fling him at her feet. He wept
and threw his arms round her knees. For the first instant
she was terribly frightened and she turned pale. She jumped
up and looked at him trembling. But at the same moment
she understood, and a light of infinite happiness came into
her eyes. She knew and had no doubt that he loved her be-
yond everything and that at last the moment had come….
They wanted to speak, but could not; tears stood in their
eyes. They were both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces
were bright with the dawn of a new future, of a full res-
urrection into a new life. They were renewed by love; the
heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the
other.
They resolved to wait and be patient. They had another
seven years to wait, and what terrible suffering and what
infinite happiness before them! But he had risen again and
he knew it and felt it in all his being, while she—she only
lived in his life.
On the evening of the same day, when the barracks were
locked, Raskolnikov lay on his plank bed and thought of
her. He had even fancied that day that all the convicts who
had been his enemies looked at him differently; he had
even entered into talk with them and they answered him
in a friendly way. He remembered that now, and thought
it was bound to be so. Wasn’t everything now bound to be
changed?
He thought of her. He remembered how continually he
had tormented her and wounded her heart. He remembered
Crime and Punishment
her pale and thin little face. But these recollections scarcely
troubled him now; he knew with what infinite love he would
now repay all her sufferings. And what were all, all the ago-
nies of the past! Everything, even his crime, his sentence
and imprisonment, seemed to him now in the first rush of
feeling an external, strange fact with which he had no con-
cern. But he could not think for long together of anything
that evening, and he could not have analysed anything con-
sciously; he was simply feeling. Life had stepped into the
place of theory and something quite different would work
itself out in his mind.
Under his pillow lay the New Testament. He took it up
mechanically. The book belonged to Sonia; it was the one
from which she had read the raising of Lazarus to him. At
first he was afraid that she would worry him about religion,
would talk about the gospel and pester him with books. But
to his great surprise she had not once approached the sub-
ject and had not even offered him the Testament. He had
asked her for it himself not long before his illness and she
brought him the book without a word. Till now he had not
opened it.
He did not open it now, but one thought passed through
his mind: ‘Can her convictions not be mine now? Her feel-
ings, her aspirations at least….’
She too had been greatly agitated that day, and at night
she was taken ill again. But she was so happy—and so un-
expectedly happy—that she was almost frightened of her
happiness. Seven years, only seven years! At the beginning
of their happiness at some moments they were both ready
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to look on those seven years as though they were seven days.
He did not know that the new life would not be given him
for nothing, that he would have to pay dearly for it, that it
would cost him great striving, great suffering.
But that is the beginning of a new story—the story of the
gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regen-
eration, of his passing from one world into another, of his
initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the sub-
ject of a new story, but our present story is ended.
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