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Crime and Punishment
By Fyodor Dostoevsky
Crime and Punishment
Translator’s Preface
A
few words about Dostoevsky himself may help the Eng-
lish reader to understand his work.
Dostoevsky was the son of a doctor. His parents were
very hard- working and deeply religious people, but so poor
that they lived with their five children in only two rooms.
The father and mother spent their evenings in reading aloud
to their children, generally from books of a serious charac-
ter.
Though always sickly and delicate Dostoevsky came out
third in the final examination of the Petersburg school of
Engineering. There he had already begun his first work,
‘Poor Folk.’
This story was published by the poet Nekrassov in his
review and was received with acclamations. The shy, un-
known youth found himself instantly something of a
celebrity. A brilliant and successful career seemed to open
before him, but those hopes were soon dashed. In 1849 he
was arrested.
Though neither by temperament nor conviction a revolu-
tionist, Dostoevsky was one of a little group of young men
who met together to read Fourier and Proudhon. He was ac-
cused of ‘taking part in conversations against the censorship,
of reading a letter from Byelinsky to Gogol, and of knowing
of the intention to set up a printing press.’ Under Nicholas I.
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(that ‘stern and just man,’ as Maurice Baring calls him) this
was enough, and he was condemned to death. After eight
months’ imprisonment he was with twenty-one others tak-
en out to the Semyonovsky Square to be shot. Writing to his
brother Mihail, Dostoevsky says: ‘They snapped words over
our heads, and they made us put on the white shirts worn by
persons condemned to death. Thereupon we were bound in
threes to stakes, to suffer execution. Being the third in the
row, I concluded I had only a few minutes of life before me.
I thought of you and your dear ones and I contrived to kiss
Plestcheiev and Dourov, who were next to me, and to bid
them farewell. Suddenly the troops beat a tattoo, we were
unbound, brought back upon the scaffold, and informed
that his Majesty had spared us our lives.’ The sentence was
commuted to hard labour.
One of the prisoners, Grigoryev, went mad as soon as he
was untied, and never regained his sanity.
The intense suffering of this experience left a lasting
stamp on Dostoevsky’s mind. Though his religious temper
led him in the end to accept every suffering with resignation
and to regard it as a blessing in his own case, he constantly
recurs to the subject in his writings. He describes the awful
agony of the condemned man and insists on the cruelty of
inflicting such torture. Then followed four years of penal
servitude, spent in the company of common criminals in
Siberia, where he began the ‘Dead House,’ and some years
of service in a disciplinary battalion.
He had shown signs of some obscure nervous disease be-
fore his arrest and this now developed into violent attacks of
Crime and Punishment
epilepsy, from which he suffered for the rest of his life. The
fits occurred three or four times a year and were more fre-
quent in periods of great strain. In 1859 he was allowed to
return to Russia. He started a journal— ‘Vremya,’ which was
forbidden by the Censorship through a misunderstanding.
In 1864 he lost his first wife and his brother Mihail. He was
in terrible poverty, yet he took upon himself the payment
of his brother’s debts. He started another journal—‘The Ep-
och,’ which within a few months was also prohibited. He
was weighed down by debt, his brother’s family was depen-
dent on him, he was forced to write at heart-breaking speed,
and is said never to have corrected his work. The later years
of his life were much softened by the tenderness and devo-
tion of his second wife.
In June 1880 he made his famous speech at the unveil-
ing of the monument to Pushkin in Moscow and he was
received with extraordinary demonstrations of love and
honour.
A few months later Dostoevsky died. He was followed to
the grave by a vast multitude of mourners, who ‘gave the
hapless man the funeral of a king.’ He is still probably the
most widely read writer in Russia.
In the words of a Russian critic, who seeks to explain the
feeling inspired by Dostoevsky: ‘He was one of ourselves, a
man of our blood and our bone, but one who has suffered
and has seen so much more deeply than we have his insight
impresses us as wisdom … that wisdom of the heart which
we seek that we may learn from it how to live. All his other
gifts came to him from nature, this he won for himself and
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through it he became great.’
Crime and Punishment
Part I
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Chapter I
O
n an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young
man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S.
Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards
K. bridge.
He had successfully avoided meeting his landlady on the
staircase. His garret was under the roof of a high, five-sto-
ried house and was more like a cupboard than a room. The
landlady who provided him with garret, dinners, and at-
tendance, lived on the floor below, and every time he went
out he was obliged to pass her kitchen, the door of which
invariably stood open. And each time he passed, the young
man had a sick, frightened feeling, which made him scowl
and feel ashamed. He was hopelessly in debt to his landlady,
and was afraid of meeting her.
This was not because he was cowardly and abject, quite
the contrary; but for some time past he had been in an over-
strained irritable condition, verging on hypochondria. He
had become so completely absorbed in himself, and iso-
lated from his fellows that he dreaded meeting, not only
his landlady, but anyone at all. He was crushed by poverty,
but the anxieties of his position had of late ceased to weigh
upon him. He had given up attending to matters of practi-
cal importance; he had lost all desire to do so. Nothing that
any landlady could do had a real terror for him. But to be
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stopped on the stairs, to be forced to listen to her trivial, ir-
relevant gossip, to pestering demands for payment, threats
and complaints, and to rack his brains for excuses, to pre-
varicate, to lie—no, rather than that, he would creep down
the stairs like a cat and slip out unseen.
This evening, however, on coming out into the street, he
became acutely aware of his fears.
‘I want to attempt a thing like that and am frightened
by these trifles,’ he thought, with an odd smile. ‘Hm … yes,
all is in a man’s hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice,
that’s an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is
men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new
word is what they fear most…. But I am talking too much.
It’s because I chatter that I do nothing. Or perhaps it is that
I chatter because I do nothing. I’ve learned to chatter this
last month, lying for days together in my den thinking …
of Jack the Giant-killer. Why am I going there now? Am I
capable of that? Is that serious? It is not serious at all. It’s
simply a fantasy to amuse myself; a plaything! Yes, maybe
it is a plaything.’
The heat in the street was terrible: and the airlessness, the
bustle and the plaster, scaffolding, bricks, and dust all about
him, and that special Petersburg stench, so familiar to all
who are unable to get out of town in summer—all worked
painfully upon the young man’s already overwrought
nerves. The insufferable stench from the pot- houses, which
are particularly numerous in that part of the town, and the
drunken men whom he met continually, although it was a
working day, completed the revolting misery of the picture.
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An expression of the profoundest disgust gleamed for a mo-
ment in the young man’s refined face. He was, by the way,
exceptionally handsome, above the average in height, slim,
well-built, with beautiful dark eyes and dark brown hair.
Soon he sank into deep thought, or more accurately speak-
ing into a complete blankness of mind; he walked along not
observing what was about him and not caring to observe it.
From time to time, he would mutter something, from the
habit of talking to himself, to which he had just confessed.
At these moments he would become conscious that his ideas
were sometimes in a tangle and that he was very weak; for
two days he had scarcely tasted food.
He was so badly dressed that even a man accustomed to
shabbiness would have been ashamed to be seen in the street
in such rags. In that quarter of the town, however, scarce-
ly any shortcoming in dress would have created surprise.
Owing to the proximity of the Hay Market, the number of
establishments of bad character, the preponderance of the
trading and working class population crowded in these
streets and alleys in the heart of Petersburg, types so vari-
ous were to be seen in the streets that no figure, however
queer, would have caused surprise. But there was such accu-
mulated bitterness and contempt in the young man’s heart,
that, in spite of all the fastidiousness of youth, he minded
his rags least of all in the street. It was a different matter
when he met with acquaintances or with former fellow stu-
dents, whom, indeed, he disliked meeting at any time. And
yet when a drunken man who, for some unknown reason,
was being taken somewhere in a huge waggon dragged by a
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10
heavy dray horse, suddenly shouted at him as he drove past:
‘Hey there, German hatter’ bawling at the top of his voice
and pointing at him—the young man stopped suddenly
and clutched tremulously at his hat. It was a tall round hat
from Zimmerman’s, but completely worn out, rusty with
age, all torn and bespattered, brimless and bent on one side
in a most unseemly fashion. Not shame, however, but quite
another feeling akin to terror had overtaken him.
‘I knew it,’ he muttered in confusion, ‘I thought so! That’s
the worst of all! Why, a stupid thing like this, the most trivial
detail might spoil the whole plan. Yes, my hat is too notice-
able…. It looks absurd and that makes it noticeable…. With
my rags I ought to wear a cap, any sort of old pancake, but
not this grotesque thing. Nobody wears such a hat, it would
be noticed a mile off, it would be remembered…. What mat-
ters is that people would remember it, and that would give
them a clue. For this business one should be as little con-
spicuous as possible…. Trifles, trifles are what matter! Why,
it’s just such trifles that always ruin everything….’
He had not far to go; he knew indeed how many steps
it was from the gate of his lodging house: exactly seven
hundred and thirty. He had counted them once when he
had been lost in dreams. At the time he had put no faith
in those dreams and was only tantalising himself by their
hideous but daring recklessness. Now, a month later, he had
begun to look upon them differently, and, in spite of the
monologues in which he jeered at his own impotence and
indecision, he had involuntarily come to regard this ‘hid-
eous’ dream as an exploit to be attempted, although he still
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did not realise this himself. He was positively going now for
a ‘rehearsal’ of his project, and at every step his excitement
grew more and more violent.
With a sinking heart and a nervous tremor, he went up
to a huge house which on one side looked on to the canal,
and on the other into the street. This house was let out in
tiny tenements and was inhabited by working people of all
kinds—tailors, locksmiths, cooks, Germans of sorts, girls
picking up a living as best they could, petty clerks, etc. There
was a continual coming and going through the two gates
and in the two courtyards of the house. Three or four door-
keepers were employed on the building. The young man
was very glad to meet none of them, and at once slipped un-
noticed through the door on the right, and up the staircase.
It was a back staircase, dark and narrow, but he was familiar
with it already, and knew his way, and he liked all these sur-
roundings: in such darkness even the most inquisitive eyes
were not to be dreaded.
‘If I am so scared now, what would it be if it somehow
came to pass that I were really going to do it?’ he could not
help asking himself as he reached the fourth storey. There
his progress was barred by some porters who were engaged
in moving furniture out of a flat. He knew that the flat had
been occupied by a German clerk in the civil service, and
his family. This German was moving out then, and so the
fourth floor on this staircase would be untenanted except by
the old woman. ‘That’s a good thing anyway,’ he thought to
himself, as he rang the bell of the old woman’s flat. The bell
gave a faint tinkle as though it were made of tin and not of
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1
copper. The little flats in such houses always have bells that
ring like that. He had forgotten the note of that bell, and
now its peculiar tinkle seemed to remind him of something
and to bring it clearly before him…. He started, his nerves
were terribly overstrained by now. In a little while, the door
was opened a tiny crack: the old woman eyed her visitor
with evident distrust through the crack, and nothing could
be seen but her little eyes, glittering in the darkness. But,
seeing a number of people on the landing, she grew bolder,
and opened the door wide. The young man stepped into the
dark entry, which was partitioned off from the tiny kitch-
en. The old woman stood facing him in silence and looking
inquiringly at him. She was a diminutive, withered up old
woman of sixty, with sharp malignant eyes and a sharp lit-
tle nose. Her colourless, somewhat grizzled hair was thickly
smeared with oil, and she wore no kerchief over it. Round
her thin long neck, which looked like a hen’s leg, was knot-
ted some sort of flannel rag, and, in spite of the heat, there
hung flapping on her shoulders, a mangy fur cape, yellow
with age. The old woman coughed and groaned at every in-
stant. The young man must have looked at her with a rather
peculiar expression, for a gleam of mistrust came into her
eyes again.
‘Raskolnikov, a student, I came here a month ago,’ the
young man made haste to mutter, with a half bow, remem-
bering that he ought to be more polite.
‘I remember, my good sir, I remember quite well your
coming here,’ the old woman said distinctly, still keeping
her inquiring eyes on his face.
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‘And here … I am again on the same errand,’ Raskol-
nikov continued, a little disconcerted and surprised at
the old woman’s mistrust. ‘Perhaps she is always like that
though, only I did not notice it the other time,’ he thought
with an uneasy feeling.
The old woman paused, as though hesitating; then
stepped on one side, and pointing to the door of the room,
she said, letting her visitor pass in front of her:
‘Step in, my good sir.’
The little room into which the young man walked, with
yellow paper on the walls, geraniums and muslin curtains
in the windows, was brightly lighted up at that moment by
the setting sun.
‘So the sun will shine like this then too!’ flashed as it were
by chance through Raskolnikov’s mind, and with a rapid
glance he scanned everything in the room, trying as far as
possible to notice and remember its arrangement. But there
was nothing special in the room. The furniture, all very old
and of yellow wood, consisted of a sofa with a huge bent
wooden back, an oval table in front of the sofa, a dressing-
table with a looking-glass fixed on it between the windows,
chairs along the walls and two or three half-penny prints in
yellow frames, representing German damsels with birds in
their hands—that was all. In the corner a light was burning
before a small ikon. Everything was very clean; the floor and
the furniture were brightly polished; everything shone.
‘Lizaveta’s work,’ thought the young man. There was not
a speck of dust to be seen in the whole flat.
‘It’s in the houses of spiteful old widows that one finds
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1
such cleanliness,’ Raskolnikov thought again, and he stole
a curious glance at the cotton curtain over the door leading
into another tiny room, in which stood the old woman’s bed
and chest of drawers and into which he had never looked
before. These two rooms made up the whole flat.
‘What do you want?’ the old woman said severely, com-
ing into the room and, as before, standing in front of him so
as to look him straight in the face.
‘I’ve brought something to pawn here,’ and he drew out
of his pocket an old-fashioned flat silver watch, on the back
of which was engraved a globe; the chain was of steel.
‘But the time is up for your last pledge. The month was up
the day before yesterday.’
‘I will bring you the interest for another month; wait a
little.’
‘But that’s for me to do as I please, my good sir, to wait or
to sell your pledge at once.’
‘How much will you give me for the watch, Alyona Iva-
novna?’
‘You come with such trifles, my good sir, it’s scarcely
worth anything. I gave you two roubles last time for your
ring and one could buy it quite new at a jeweler’s for a rou-
ble and a half.’
‘Give me four roubles for it, I shall redeem it, it was my
father’s. I shall be getting some money soon.’
‘A rouble and a half, and interest in advance, if you like!’
‘A rouble and a half!’ cried the young man.
‘Please yourself’—and the old woman handed him back
the watch. The young man took it, and was so angry that he
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was on the point of going away; but checked himself at once,
remembering that there was nowhere else he could go, and
that he had had another object also in coming.
‘Hand it over,’ he said roughly.
The old woman fumbled in her pocket for her keys, and
disappeared behind the curtain into the other room. The
young man, left standing alone in the middle of the room,
listened inquisitively, thinking. He could hear her unlock-
ing the chest of drawers.
‘It must be the top drawer,’ he reflected. ‘So she carries
the keys in a pocket on the right. All in one bunch on a steel
ring…. And there’s one key there, three times as big as all
the others, with deep notches; that can’t be the key of the
chest of drawers … then there must be some other chest or
strong-box … that’s worth knowing. Strong-boxes always
have keys like that … but how degrading it all is.’
The old woman came back.
‘Here, sir: as we say ten copecks the rouble a month, so
I must take fifteen copecks from a rouble and a half for the
month in advance. But for the two roubles I lent you before,
you owe me now twenty copecks on the same reckoning
in advance. That makes thirty-five copecks altogether. So
I must give you a rouble and fifteen copecks for the watch.
Here it is.’
‘What! only a rouble and fifteen copecks now!’
‘Just so.’
The young man did not dispute it and took the money.
He looked at the old woman, and was in no hurry to get
away, as though there was still something he wanted to say
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1
or to do, but he did not himself quite know what.
‘I may be bringing you something else in a day or two,
Alyona Ivanovna —a valuable thing—silver—a cigarette-
box, as soon as I get it back from a friend …’ he broke off in
confusion.
‘Well, we will talk about it then, sir.’
‘Good-bye—are you always at home alone, your sister is
not here with you?’ He asked her as casually as possible as
he went out into the passage.
‘What business is she of yours, my good sir?’
‘Oh, nothing particular, I simply asked. You are too
quick…. Good-day, Alyona Ivanovna.’
Raskolnikov went out in complete confusion. This con-
fusion became more and more intense. As he went down the
stairs, he even stopped short, two or three times, as though
suddenly struck by some thought. When he was in the street
he cried out, ‘Oh, God, how loathsome it all is! and can I,
can I possibly…. No, it’s nonsense, it’s rubbish!’ he added
resolutely. ‘And how could such an atrocious thing come
into my head? What filthy things my heart is capable of. Yes,
filthy above all, disgusting, loathsome, loathsome!—and for
a whole month I’ve been….’ But no words, no exclamations,
could express his agitation. The feeling of intense repulsion,
which had begun to oppress and torture his heart while he
was on his way to the old woman, had by now reached such
a pitch and had taken such a definite form that he did not
know what to do with himself to escape from his wretched-
ness. He walked along the pavement like a drunken man,
regardless of the passers-by, and jostling against them, and
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only came to his senses when he was in the next street. Look-
ing round, he noticed that he was standing close to a tavern
which was entered by steps leading from the pavement to
the basement. At that instant two drunken men came out
at the door, and abusing and supporting one another, they
mounted the steps. Without stopping to think, Raskolnikov
went down the steps at once. Till that moment he had never
been into a tavern, but now he felt giddy and was tormented
by a burning thirst. He longed for a drink of cold beer, and
attributed his sudden weakness to the want of food. He sat
down at a sticky little table in a dark and dirty corner; or-
dered some beer, and eagerly drank off the first glassful. At
once he felt easier; and his thoughts became clear.
‘All that’s nonsense,’ he said hopefully, ‘and there is noth-
ing in it all to worry about! It’s simply physical derangement.
Just a glass of beer, a piece of dry bread—and in one mo-
ment the brain is stronger, the mind is clearer and the will
is firm! Phew, how utterly petty it all is!’
But in spite of this scornful reflection, he was by now
looking cheerful as though he were suddenly set free from
a terrible burden: and he gazed round in a friendly way at
the people in the room. But even at that moment he had a
dim foreboding that this happier frame of mind was also
not normal.
There were few people at the time in the tavern. Besides
the two drunken men he had met on the steps, a group con-
sisting of about five men and a girl with a concertina had
gone out at the same time. Their departure left the room
quiet and rather empty. The persons still in the tavern were
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1
a man who appeared to be an artisan, drunk, but not ex-
tremely so, sitting before a pot of beer, and his companion,
a huge, stout man with a grey beard, in a short full-skirted
coat. He was very drunk: and had dropped asleep on the
bench; every now and then, he began as though in his sleep,
cracking his fingers, with his arms wide apart and the up-
per part of his body bounding about on the bench, while he
hummed some meaningless refrain, trying to recall some
such lines as these:
‘His wife a year he fondly loved His wife a—a year he—
fondly loved.’
Or suddenly waking up again:
‘Walking along the crowded row He met the one he used
to know.’
But no one shared his enjoyment: his silent compan-
ion looked with positive hostility and mistrust at all these
manifestations. There was another man in the room who
looked somewhat like a retired government clerk. He was
sitting apart, now and then sipping from his pot and look-
ing round at the company. He, too, appeared to be in some
agitation.
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Chapter II
R
askolnikov was not used to crowds, and, as we said be-
fore, he avoided society of every sort, more especially
of late. But now all at once he felt a desire to be with other
people. Something new seemed to be taking place within
him, and with it he felt a sort of thirst for company. He was
so weary after a whole month of concentrated wretchedness
and gloomy excitement that he longed to rest, if only for a
moment, in some other world, whatever it might be; and, in
spite of the filthiness of the surroundings, he was glad now
to stay in the tavern.
The master of the establishment was in another room, but
he frequently came down some steps into the main room,
his jaunty, tarred boots with red turn-over tops coming
into view each time before the rest of his person. He wore
a full coat and a horribly greasy black satin waistcoat, with
no cravat, and his whole face seemed smeared with oil like
an iron lock. At the counter stood a boy of about fourteen,
and there was another boy somewhat younger who handed
whatever was wanted. On the counter lay some sliced cu-
cumber, some pieces of dried black bread, and some fish,
chopped up small, all smelling very bad. It was insufferably
close, and so heavy with the fumes of spirits that five min-
utes in such an atmosphere might well make a man drunk.
There are chance meetings with strangers that interest
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0
us from the first moment, before a word is spoken. Such
was the impression made on Raskolnikov by the person sit-
ting a little distance from him, who looked like a retired
clerk. The young man often recalled this impression af-
terwards, and even ascribed it to presentiment. He looked
repeatedly at the clerk, partly no doubt because the latter
was staring persistently at him, obviously anxious to enter
into conversation. At the other persons in the room, includ-
ing the tavern- keeper, the clerk looked as though he were
used to their company, and weary of it, showing a shade of
condescending contempt for them as persons of station and
culture inferior to his own, with whom it would be useless
for him to converse. He was a man over fifty, bald and griz-
zled, of medium height, and stoutly built. His face, bloated
from continual drinking, was of a yellow, even greenish,
tinge, with swollen eyelids out of which keen reddish eyes
gleamed like little chinks. But there was something very
strange in him; there was a light in his eyes as though of
intense feeling—perhaps there were even thought and intel-
ligence, but at the same time there was a gleam of something
like madness. He was wearing an old and hopelessly ragged
black dress coat, with all its buttons missing except one,
and that one he had buttoned, evidently clinging to this
last trace of respectability. A crumpled shirt front, covered
with spots and stains, protruded from his canvas waistcoat.
Like a clerk, he wore no beard, nor moustache, but had been
so long unshaven that his chin looked like a stiff greyish
brush. And there was something respectable and like an of-
ficial about his manner too. But he was restless; he ruffled
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up his hair and from time to time let his head drop into his
hands dejectedly resting his ragged elbows on the stained
and sticky table. At last he looked straight at Raskolnikov,
and said loudly and resolutely:
‘May I venture, honoured sir, to engage you in polite con-
versation? Forasmuch as, though your exterior would not
command respect, my experience admonishes me that you
are a man of education and not accustomed to drinking. I
have always respected education when in conjunction with
genuine sentiments, and I am besides a titular counsellor in
rank. Marmeladov—such is my name; titular counsellor. I
make bold to inquire—have you been in the service?’
‘No, I am studying,’ answered the young man, some-
what surprised at the grandiloquent style of the speaker
and also at being so directly addressed. In spite of the mo-
mentary desire he had just been feeling for company of any
sort, on being actually spoken to he felt immediately his
habitual irritable and uneasy aversion for any stranger who
approached or attempted to approach him.
‘A student then, or formerly a student,’ cried the clerk.
‘Just what I thought! I’m a man of experience, immense ex-
perience, sir,’ and he tapped his forehead with his fingers
in self-approval. ‘You’ve been a student or have attended
some learned institution! … But allow me….’ He got up,
staggered, took up his jug and glass, and sat down beside
the young man, facing him a little sideways. He was drunk,
but spoke fluently and boldly, only occasionally losing the
thread of his sentences and drawling his words. He pounced
upon Raskolnikov as greedily as though he too had not spo-
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ken to a soul for a month.
‘Honoured sir,’ he began almost with solemnity, ‘poverty
is not a vice, that’s a true saying. Yet I know too that drunk-
enness is not a virtue, and that that’s even truer. But beggary,
honoured sir, beggary is a vice. In poverty you may still re-
tain your innate nobility of soul, but in beggary—never—no
one. For beggary a man is not chased out of human society
with a stick, he is swept out with a broom, so as to make it
as humiliating as possible; and quite right, too, forasmuch
as in beggary I am ready to be the first to humiliate myself.
Hence the pot-house! Honoured sir, a month ago Mr. Le-
beziatnikov gave my wife a beating, and my wife is a very
different matter from me! Do you understand? Allow me to
ask you another question out of simple curiosity: have you
ever spent a night on a hay barge, on the Neva?’
‘No, I have not happened to,’ answered Raskolnikov.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I’ve just come from one and it’s the fifth night I’ve
slept so….’ He filled his glass, emptied it and paused. Bits of
hay were in fact clinging to his clothes and sticking to his
hair. It seemed quite probable that he had not undressed or
washed for the last five days. His hands, particularly, were
filthy. They were fat and red, with black nails.
His conversation seemed to excite a general though lan-
guid interest. The boys at the counter fell to sniggering. The
innkeeper came down from the upper room, apparently on
purpose to listen to the ‘funny fellow’ and sat down at a
little distance, yawning lazily, but with dignity. Evidently
Marmeladov was a familiar figure here, and he had most
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likely acquired his weakness for high-flown speeches from
the habit of frequently entering into conversation with
strangers of all sorts in the tavern. This habit develops into
a necessity in some drunkards, and especially in those who
are looked after sharply and kept in order at home. Hence
in the company of other drinkers they try to justify them-
selves and even if possible obtain consideration.
‘Funny fellow!’ pronounced the innkeeper. ‘And why
don’t you work, why aren’t you at your duty, if you are in
the service?’
‘Why am I not at my duty, honoured sir,’ Marmeladov
went on, addressing himself exclusively to Raskolnikov, as
though it had been he who put that question to him. ‘Why
am I not at my duty? Does not my heart ache to think what
a useless worm I am? A month ago when Mr. Lebeziatnikov
beat my wife with his own hands, and I lay drunk, didn’t I
suffer? Excuse me, young man, has it ever happened to you
… hm … well, to petition hopelessly for a loan?’
‘Yes, it has. But what do you mean by hopelessly?’
‘Hopelessly in the fullest sense, when you know before-
hand that you will get nothing by it. You know, for instance,
beforehand with positive certainty that this man, this most
reputable and exemplary citizen, will on no consideration
give you money; and indeed I ask you why should he? For
he knows of course that I shan’t pay it back. From compas-
sion? But Mr. Lebeziatnikov who keeps up with modern
ideas explained the other day that compassion is forbidden
nowadays by science itself, and that that’s what is done now
in England, where there is political economy. Why, I ask
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you, should he give it to me? And yet though I know before-
hand that he won’t, I set off to him and …’
‘Why do you go?’ put in Raskolnikov.
‘Well, when one has no one, nowhere else one can go!
For every man must have somewhere to go. Since there are
times when one absolutely must go somewhere! When my
own daughter first went out with a yellow ticket, then I had
to go … (for my daughter has a yellow passport),’ he add-
ed in parenthesis, looking with a certain uneasiness at the
young man. ‘No matter, sir, no matter!’ he went on hurried-
ly and with apparent composure when both the boys at the
counter guffawed and even the innkeeper smiled—‘No mat-
ter, I am not confounded by the wagging of their heads; for
everyone knows everything about it already, and all that is
secret is made open. And I accept it all, not with contempt,
but with humility. So be it! So be it! ‘Behold the man!’ Ex-
cuse me, young man, can you…. No, to put it more strongly
and more distinctly; not can you but dare you, looking upon
me, assert that I am not a pig?’
The young man did not answer a word.
‘Well,’ the orator began again stolidly and with even in-
creased dignity, after waiting for the laughter in the room
to subside. ‘Well, so be it, I am a pig, but she is a lady! I
have the semblance of a beast, but Katerina Ivanovna, my
spouse, is a person of education and an officer’s daughter.
Granted, granted, I am a scoundrel, but she is a woman of
a noble heart, full of sentiments, refined by education. And
yet … oh, if only she felt for me! Honoured sir, honoured sir,
you know every man ought to have at least one place where
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people feel for him! But Katerina Ivanovna, though she is
magnanimous, she is unjust…. And yet, although I realise
that when she pulls my hair she only does it out of pity—for
I repeat without being ashamed, she pulls my hair, young
man,’ he declared with redoubled dignity, hearing the snig-
gering again—‘but, my God, if she would but once…. But
no, no! It’s all in vain and it’s no use talking! No use talk-
ing! For more than once, my wish did come true and more
than once she has felt for me but … such is my fate and I am
a beast by nature!’
‘Rather!’ assented the innkeeper yawning. Marmeladov
struck his fist resolutely on the table.
‘Such is my fate! Do you know, sir, do you know, I have
sold her very stockings for drink? Not her shoes—that
would be more or less in the order of things, but her stock-
ings, her stockings I have sold for drink! Her mohair shawl
I sold for drink, a present to her long ago, her own property,
not mine; and we live in a cold room and she caught cold
this winter and has begun coughing and spitting blood too.
We have three little children and Katerina Ivanovna is at
work from morning till night; she is scrubbing and cleaning
and washing the children, for she’s been used to cleanliness
from a child. But her chest is weak and she has a tendency
to consumption and I feel it! Do you suppose I don’t feel it?
And the more I drink the more I feel it. That’s why I drink
too. I try to find sympathy and feeling in drink…. I drink so
that I may suffer twice as much!’ And as though in despair
he laid his head down on the table.
‘Young man,’ he went on, raising his head again, ‘in your
Crime and Punishment
face I seem to read some trouble of mind. When you came
in I read it, and that was why I addressed you at once. For
in unfolding to you the story of my life, I do not wish to
make myself a laughing-stock before these idle listeners,
who indeed know all about it already, but I am looking for a
man of feeling and education. Know then that my wife was
educated in a high-class school for the daughters of noble-
men, and on leaving she danced the shawl dance before the
governor and other personages for which she was presented
with a gold medal and a certificate of merit. The medal …
well, the medal of course was sold—long ago, hm … but the
certificate of merit is in her trunk still and not long ago she
showed it to our landlady. And although she is most con-
tinually on bad terms with the landlady, yet she wanted to
tell someone or other of her past honours and of the happy
days that are gone. I don’t condemn her for it, I don’t blame
her, for the one thing left her is recollection of the past, and
all the rest is dust and ashes. Yes, yes, she is a lady of spirit,
proud and determined. She scrubs the floors herself and has
nothing but black bread to eat, but won’t allow herself to be
treated with disrespect. That’s why she would not overlook
Mr. Lebeziatnikov’s rudeness to her, and so when he gave
her a beating for it, she took to her bed more from the hurt
to her feelings than from the blows. She was a widow when I
married her, with three children, one smaller than the other.
She married her first husband, an infantry officer, for love,
and ran away with him from her father’s house. She was
exceedingly fond of her husband; but he gave way to cards,
got into trouble and with that he died. He used to beat her
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at the end: and although she paid him back, of which I have
authentic documentary evidence, to this day she speaks of
him with tears and she throws him up to me; and I am glad,
I am glad that, though only in imagination, she should think
of herself as having once been happy…. And she was left at
his death with three children in a wild and remote district
where I happened to be at the time; and she was left in such
hopeless poverty that, although I have seen many ups and
downs of all sort, I don’t feel equal to describing it even. Her
relations had all thrown her off. And she was proud, too,
excessively proud…. And then, honoured sir, and then, I,
being at the time a widower, with a daughter of fourteen
left me by my first wife, offered her my hand, for I could not
bear the sight of such suffering. You can judge the extremity
of her calamities, that she, a woman of education and cul-
ture and distinguished family, should have consented to be
my wife. But she did! Weeping and sobbing and wringing
her hands, she married me! For she had nowhere to turn!
Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means
when you have absolutely nowhere to turn? No, that you
don’t understand yet…. And for a whole year, I performed
my duties conscientiously and faithfully, and did not touch
this’ (he tapped the jug with his finger), ‘for I have feelings.
But even so, I could not please her; and then I lost my place
too, and that through no fault of mine but through changes
in the office; and then I did touch it! … It will be a year and
a half ago soon since we found ourselves at last after many
wanderings and numerous calamities in this magnificent
capital, adorned with innumerable monuments. Here I ob-
Crime and Punishment
tained a situation…. I obtained it and I lost it again. Do you
understand? This time it was through my own fault I lost
it: for my weakness had come out…. We have now part of
a room at Amalia Fyodorovna Lippevechsel’s; and what we
live upon and what we pay our rent with, I could not say.
There are a lot of people living there besides ourselves. Dirt
and disorder, a perfect Bedlam … hm … yes … And mean-
while my daughter by my first wife has grown up; and what
my daughter has had to put up with from her step-mother
whilst she was growing up, I won’t speak of. For, though
Katerina Ivanovna is full of generous feelings, she is a spir-
ited lady, irritable and short—tempered…. Yes. But it’s no
use going over that! Sonia, as you may well fancy, has had
no education. I did make an effort four years ago to give her
a course of geography and universal history, but as I was
not very well up in those subjects myself and we had no
suitable books, and what books we had … hm, anyway we
have not even those now, so all our instruction came to an
end. We stopped at Cyrus of Persia. Since she has attained
years of maturity, she has read other books of romantic ten-
dency and of late she had read with great interest a book
she got through Mr. Lebeziatnikov, Lewes’ Physiology—do
you know it?—and even recounted extracts from it to us:
and that’s the whole of her education. And now may I ven-
ture to address you, honoured sir, on my own account with
a private question. Do you suppose that a respectable poor
girl can earn much by honest work? Not fifteen farthings a
day can she earn, if she is respectable and has no special tal-
ent and that without putting her work down for an instant!
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And what’s more, Ivan Ivanitch Klopstock the civil counsel-
lor—have you heard of him?—has not to this day paid her
for the half-dozen linen shirts she made him and drove her
roughly away, stamping and reviling her, on the pretext that
the shirt collars were not made like the pattern and were
put in askew. And there are the little ones hungry…. And
Katerina Ivanovna walking up and down and wringing her
hands, her cheeks flushed red, as they always are in that dis-
ease: ‘Here you live with us,’ says she, ‘you eat and drink and
are kept warm and you do nothing to help.’ And much she
gets to eat and drink when there is not a crust for the little
ones for three days! I was lying at the time … well, what of
it! I was lying drunk and I heard my Sonia speaking (she
is a gentle creature with a soft little voice … fair hair and
such a pale, thin little face). She said: ‘Katerina Ivanovna,
am I really to do a thing like that?’ And Darya Frantsov-
na, a woman of evil character and very well known to the
police, had two or three times tried to get at her through
the landlady. ‘And why not?’ said Katerina Ivanovna with
a jeer, ‘you are something mighty precious to be so careful
of!’ But don’t blame her, don’t blame her, honoured sir, don’t
blame her! She was not herself when she spoke, but driven
to distraction by her illness and the crying of the hungry
children; and it was said more to wound her than anything
else…. For that’s Katerina Ivanovna’s character, and when
children cry, even from hunger, she falls to beating them
at once. At six o’clock I saw Sonia get up, put on her ker-
chief and her cape, and go out of the room and about nine
o’clock she came back. She walked straight up to Katerina
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0
Ivanovna and she laid thirty roubles on the table before her
in silence. She did not utter a word, she did not even look at
her, she simply picked up our big green drap de dames shawl
(we have a shawl, made of drap de dames), put it over her
head and face and lay down on the bed with her face to the
wall; only her little shoulders and her body kept shudder-
ing…. And I went on lying there, just as before…. And then
I saw, young man, I saw Katerina Ivanovna, in the same si-
lence go up to Sonia’s little bed; she was on her knees all the
evening kissing Sonia’s feet, and would not get up, and then
they both fell asleep in each other’s arms … together, to-
gether … yes … and I … lay drunk.’
Marmeladov stopped short, as though his voice had
failed him. Then he hurriedly filled his glass, drank, and
cleared his throat.
‘Since then, sir,’ he went on after a brief pause—‘Since
then, owing to an unfortunate occurrence and through in-
formation given by evil- intentioned persons—in all which
Darya Frantsovna took a leading part on the pretext that
she had been treated with want of respect—since then my
daughter Sofya Semyonovna has been forced to take a yel-
low ticket, and owing to that she is unable to go on living
with us. For our landlady, Amalia Fyodorovna would not
hear of it (though she had backed up Darya Frantsovna be-
fore) and Mr. Lebeziatnikov too … hm…. All the trouble
between him and Katerina Ivanovna was on Sonia’s ac-
count. At first he was for making up to Sonia himself and
then all of a sudden he stood on his dignity: ‘how,’ said he,
‘can a highly educated man like me live in the same rooms
1
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with a girl like that?’ And Katerina Ivanovna would not let
it pass, she stood up for her … and so that’s how it hap-
pened. And Sonia comes to us now, mostly after dark; she
comforts Katerina Ivanovna and gives her all she can….
She has a room at the Kapernaumovs’ the tailors, she lodges
with them; Kapernaumov is a lame man with a cleft palate
and all of his numerous family have cleft palates too. And
his wife, too, has a cleft palate. They all live in one room,
but Sonia has her own, partitioned off…. Hm … yes … very
poor people and all with cleft palates … yes. Then I got up
in the morning, and put on my rags, lifted up my hands to
heaven and set off to his excellency Ivan Afanasyvitch. His
excellency Ivan Afanasyvitch, do you know him? No? Well,
then, it’s a man of God you don’t know. He is wax … wax
before the face of the Lord; even as wax melteth! … His eyes
were dim when he heard my story. ‘Marmeladov, once al-
ready you have deceived my expectations … I’ll take you
once more on my own responsibility’—that’s what he said,
‘remember,’ he said, ‘and now you can go.’ I kissed the dust
at his feet—in thought only, for in reality he would not have
allowed me to do it, being a statesman and a man of modern
political and enlightened ideas. I returned home, and when
I announced that I’d been taken back into the service and
should receive a salary, heavens, what a to-do there was …!’
Marmeladov stopped again in violent excitement. At
that moment a whole party of revellers already drunk came
in from the street, and the sounds of a hired concertina and
the cracked piping voice of a child of seven singing ‘The
Hamlet’ were heard in the entry. The room was filled with
Crime and Punishment
noise. The tavern-keeper and the boys were busy with the
new-comers. Marmeladov paying no attention to the new
arrivals continued his story. He appeared by now to be ex-
tremely weak, but as he became more and more drunk, he
became more and more talkative. The recollection of his re-
cent success in getting the situation seemed to revive him,
and was positively reflected in a sort of radiance on his face.
Raskolnikov listened attentively.
‘That was five weeks ago, sir. Yes…. As soon as Kateri-
na Ivanovna and Sonia heard of it, mercy on us, it was as
though I stepped into the kingdom of Heaven. It used to
be: you can lie like a beast, nothing but abuse. Now they
were walking on tiptoe, hushing the children. ‘Semyon Za-
harovitch is tired with his work at the office, he is resting,
shh!’ They made me coffee before I went to work and boiled
cream for me! They began to get real cream for me, do you
hear that? And how they managed to get together the mon-
ey for a decent outfit— eleven roubles, fifty copecks, I can’t
guess. Boots, cotton shirt- fronts—most magnificent, a uni-
form, they got up all in splendid style, for eleven roubles and
a half. The first morning I came back from the office I found
Katerina Ivanovna had cooked two courses for dinner—
soup and salt meat with horse radish—which we had never
dreamed of till then. She had not any dresses … none at all,
but she got herself up as though she were going on a visit;
and not that she’d anything to do it with, she smartened her-
self up with nothing at all, she’d done her hair nicely, put on
a clean collar of some sort, cuffs, and there she was, quite a
different person, she was younger and better looking. Sonia,
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my little darling, had only helped with money ‘for the time,’
she said, ‘it won’t do for me to come and see you too often.
After dark maybe when no one can see.’ Do you hear, do
you hear? I lay down for a nap after dinner and what do you
think: though Katerina Ivanovna had quarrelled to the last
degree with our landlady Amalia Fyodorovna only a week
before, she could not resist then asking her in to coffee. For
two hours they were sitting, whispering together. ‘Semyon
Zaharovitch is in the service again, now, and receiving a
salary,’ says she, ‘and he went himself to his excellency and
his excellency himself came out to him, made all the others
wait and led Semyon Zaharovitch by the hand before every-
body into his study.’ Do you hear, do you hear? ‘To be sure,’
says he, ‘Semyon Zaharovitch, remembering your past ser-
vices,’ says he, ‘and in spite of your propensity to that foolish
weakness, since you promise now and since moreover we’ve
got on badly without you,’ (do you hear, do you hear;) ‘and
so,’ says he, ‘I rely now on your word as a gentleman.’ And
all that, let me tell you, she has simply made up for herself,
and not simply out of wantonness, for the sake of bragging;
no, she believes it all herself, she amuses herself with her
own fancies, upon my word she does! And I don’t blame her
for it, no, I don’t blame her! … Six days ago when I brought
her my first earnings in full—twenty-three roubles forty co-
pecks altogether—she called me her poppet: ‘poppet,’ said
she, ‘my little poppet.’ And when we were by ourselves, you
understand? You would not think me a beauty, you would
not think much of me as a husband, would you? … Well,
she pinched my cheek, ‘my little poppet,’ said she.’
Crime and Punishment
Marmeladov broke off, tried to smile, but suddenly his
chin began to twitch. He controlled himself however. The
tavern, the degraded appearance of the man, the five nights
in the hay barge, and the pot of spirits, and yet this poignant
love for his wife and children bewildered his listener. Ras-
kolnikov listened intently but with a sick sensation. He felt
vexed that he had come here.
‘Honoured sir, honoured sir,’ cried Marmeladov recov-
ering himself— ‘Oh, sir, perhaps all this seems a laughing
matter to you, as it does to others, and perhaps I am only
worrying you with the stupidity of all the trivial details of
my home life, but it is not a laughing matter to me. For I can
feel it all…. And the whole of that heavenly day of my life
and the whole of that evening I passed in fleeting dreams
of how I would arrange it all, and how I would dress all the
children, and how I should give her rest, and how I should
rescue my own daughter from dishonour and restore her to
the bosom of her family…. And a great deal more…. Quite
excusable, sir. Well, then, sir’ (Marmeladov suddenly gave
a sort of start, raised his head and gazed intently at his lis-
tener) ‘well, on the very next day after all those dreams, that
is to say, exactly five days ago, in the evening, by a cunning
trick, like a thief in the night, I stole from Katerina Ivanov-
na the key of her box, took out what was left of my earnings,
how much it was I have forgotten, and now look at me, all
of you! It’s the fifth day since I left home, and they are look-
ing for me there and it’s the end of my employment, and
my uniform is lying in a tavern on the Egyptian bridge. I
exchanged it for the garments I have on … and it’s the end
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of everything!’
Marmeladov struck his forehead with his fist, clenched
his teeth, closed his eyes and leaned heavily with his elbow
on the table. But a minute later his face suddenly changed
and with a certain assumed slyness and affectation of bra-
vado, he glanced at Raskolnikov, laughed and said:
‘This morning I went to see Sonia, I went to ask her for a
pick-me-up! He-he-he!’
‘You don’t say she gave it to you?’ cried one of the new-
comers; he shouted the words and went off into a guffaw.
‘This very quart was bought with her money,’ Marmeladov
declared, addressing himself exclusively to Raskolnikov.
‘Thirty copecks she gave me with her own hands, her last,
all she had, as I saw…. She said nothing, she only looked at
me without a word…. Not on earth, but up yonder … they
grieve over men, they weep, but they don’t blame them,
they don’t blame them! But it hurts more, it hurts more
when they don’t blame! Thirty copecks yes! And maybe
she needs them now, eh? What do you think, my dear sir?
For now she’s got to keep up her appearance. It costs mon-
ey, that smartness, that special smartness, you know? Do
you understand? And there’s pomatum, too, you see, she
must have things; petticoats, starched ones, shoes, too, real
jaunty ones to show off her foot when she has to step over
a puddle. Do you understand, sir, do you understand what
all that smartness means? And here I, her own father, here
I took thirty copecks of that money for a drink! And I am
drinking it! And I have already drunk it! Come, who will
have pity on a man like me, eh? Are you sorry for me, sir, or
Crime and Punishment
not? Tell me, sir, are you sorry or not? He-he-he!’
He would have filled his glass, but there was no drink left.
The pot was empty.
‘What are you to be pitied for?’ shouted the tavern-keeper
who was again near them.
Shouts of laughter and even oaths followed. The laughter
and the oaths came from those who were listening and also
from those who had heard nothing but were simply looking
at the figure of the discharged government clerk.
‘To be pitied! Why am I to be pitied?’ Marmeladov sud-
denly declaimed, standing up with his arm outstretched, as
though he had been only waiting for that question.
‘Why am I to be pitied, you say? Yes! there’s nothing to
pity me for! I ought to be crucified, crucified on a cross, not
pitied! Crucify me, oh judge, crucify me but pity me! And
then I will go of myself to be crucified, for it’s not merry-
making I seek but tears and tribulation! … Do you suppose,
you that sell, that this pint of yours has been sweet to me? It
was tribulation I sought at the bottom of it, tears and tribu-
lation, and have found it, and I have tasted it; but He will
pity us Who has had pity on all men, Who has understood
all men and all things, He is the One, He too is the judge.
He will come in that day and He will ask: ‘Where is the
daughter who gave herself for her cross, consumptive step-
mother and for the little children of another? Where is the
daughter who had pity upon the filthy drunkard, her earth-
ly father, undismayed by his beastliness?’ And He will say,
‘Come to me! I have already forgiven thee once…. I have
forgiven thee once…. Thy sins which are many are forgiv-
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en thee for thou hast loved much….’ And he will forgive
my Sonia, He will forgive, I know it … I felt it in my heart
when I was with her just now! And He will judge and will
forgive all, the good and the evil, the wise and the meek….
And when He has done with all of them, then He will sum-
mon us. ‘You too come forth,’ He will say, ‘Come forth ye
drunkards, come forth, ye weak ones, come forth, ye chil-
dren of shame!’ And we shall all come forth, without shame
and shall stand before him. And He will say unto us, ‘Ye are
swine, made in the Image of the Beast and with his mark;
but come ye also!’ And the wise ones and those of under-
standing will say, ‘Oh Lord, why dost Thou receive these
men?’ And He will say, ‘This is why I receive them, oh ye
wise, this is why I receive them, oh ye of understanding,
that not one of them believed himself to be worthy of this.’
And He will hold out His hands to us and we shall fall down
before him … and we shall weep … and we shall under-
stand all things! Then we shall understand all! … and all
will understand, Katerina Ivanovna even … she will under-
stand…. Lord, Thy kingdom come!’ And he sank down on
the bench exhausted, and helpless, looking at no one, ap-
parently oblivious of his surroundings and plunged in deep
thought. His words had created a certain impression; there
was a moment of silence; but soon laughter and oaths were
heard again.
‘That’s his notion!’
‘Talked himself silly!’
‘A fine clerk he is!’
And so on, and so on.
Crime and Punishment
‘Let us go, sir,’ said Marmeladov all at once, raising his
head and addressing Raskolnikov—‘come along with me …
Kozel’s house, looking into the yard. I’m going to Katerina
Ivanovna—time I did.’
Raskolnikov had for some time been wanting to go and
he had meant to help him. Marmeladov was much unsteadi-
er on his legs than in his speech and leaned heavily on the
young man. They had two or three hundred paces to go. The
drunken man was more and more overcome by dismay and
confusion as they drew nearer the house.
‘It’s not Katerina Ivanovna I am afraid of now,’ he mut-
tered in agitation—‘and that she will begin pulling my hair.
What does my hair matter! Bother my hair! That’s what
I say! Indeed it will be better if she does begin pulling it,
that’s not what I am afraid of … it’s her eyes I am afraid of
… yes, her eyes … the red on her cheeks, too, frightens me
… and her breathing too…. Have you noticed how people in
that disease breathe … when they are excited? I am fright-
ened of the children’s crying, too…. For if Sonia has not
taken them food … I don’t know what’s happened! I don’t
know! But blows I am not afraid of…. Know, sir, that such
blows are not a pain to me, but even an enjoyment. In fact I
can’t get on without it…. It’s better so. Let her strike me, it
relieves her heart … it’s better so … There is the house. The
house of Kozel, the cabinet-maker … a German, well-to-do.
Lead the way!’
They went in from the yard and up to the fourth storey.
The staircase got darker and darker as they went up. It was
nearly eleven o’clock and although in summer in Peters-
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burg there is no real night, yet it was quite dark at the top
of the stairs.
A grimy little door at the very top of the stairs stood ajar.
A very poor-looking room about ten paces long was light-
ed up by a candle-end; the whole of it was visible from the
entrance. It was all in disorder, littered up with rags of all
sorts, especially children’s garments. Across the furthest
corner was stretched a ragged sheet. Behind it probably was
the bed. There was nothing in the room except two chairs
and a sofa covered with American leather, full of holes, be-
fore which stood an old deal kitchen-table, unpainted and
uncovered. At the edge of the table stood a smoldering
tallow-candle in an iron candlestick. It appeared that the
family had a room to themselves, not part of a room, but
their room was practically a passage. The door leading to
the other rooms, or rather cupboards, into which Amalia
Lippevechsel’s flat was divided stood half open, and there
was shouting, uproar and laughter within. People seemed to
be playing cards and drinking tea there. Words of the most
unceremonious kind flew out from time to time.
Raskolnikov recognised Katerina Ivanovna at once. She
was a rather tall, slim and graceful woman, terribly emaci-
ated, with magnificent dark brown hair and with a hectic
flush in her cheeks. She was pacing up and down in her little
room, pressing her hands against her chest; her lips were
parched and her breathing came in nervous broken gasps.
Her eyes glittered as in fever and looked about with a harsh
immovable stare. And that consumptive and excited face
with the last flickering light of the candle-end playing upon
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it made a sickening impression. She seemed to Raskolnikov
about thirty years old and was certainly a strange wife for
Marmeladov…. She had not heard them and did not notice
them coming in. She seemed to be lost in thought, hear-
ing and seeing nothing. The room was close, but she had
not opened the window; a stench rose from the staircase,
but the door on to the stairs was not closed. From the inner
rooms clouds of tobacco smoke floated in, she kept cough-
ing, but did not close the door. The youngest child, a girl of
six, was asleep, sitting curled up on the floor with her head
on the sofa. A boy a year older stood crying and shaking in
the corner, probably he had just had a beating. Beside him
stood a girl of nine years old, tall and thin, wearing a thin
and ragged chemise with an ancient cashmere pelisse flung
over her bare shoulders, long outgrown and barely reach-
ing her knees. Her arm, as thin as a stick, was round her
brother’s neck. She was trying to comfort him, whispering
something to him, and doing all she could to keep him from
whimpering again. At the same time her large dark eyes,
which looked larger still from the thinness of her frightened
face, were watching her mother with alarm. Marmeladov
did not enter the door, but dropped on his knees in the very
doorway, pushing Raskolnikov in front of him. The woman
seeing a stranger stopped indifferently facing him, coming
to herself for a moment and apparently wondering what he
had come for. But evidently she decided that he was going
into the next room, as he had to pass through hers to get
there. Taking no further notice of him, she walked towards
the outer door to close it and uttered a sudden scream on
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seeing her husband on his knees in the doorway.
‘Ah!’ she cried out in a frenzy, ‘he has come back! The
criminal! the monster! … And where is the money? What’s
in your pocket, show me! And your clothes are all different!
Where are your clothes? Where is the money! Speak!’
And she fell to searching him. Marmeladov submissively
and obediently held up both arms to facilitate the search.
Not a farthing was there.
‘Where is the money?’ she cried—‘Mercy on us, can he
have drunk it all? There were twelve silver roubles left in the
chest!’ and in a fury she seized him by the hair and dragged
him into the room. Marmeladov seconded her efforts by
meekly crawling along on his knees.
‘And this is a consolation to me! This does not hurt me,
but is a positive con-so-la-tion, ho-nou-red sir,’ he called
out, shaken to and fro by his hair and even once striking
the ground with his forehead. The child asleep on the floor
woke up, and began to cry. The boy in the corner losing all
control began trembling and screaming and rushed to his
sister in violent terror, almost in a fit. The eldest girl was
shaking like a leaf.
‘He’s drunk it! he’s drunk it all,’ the poor woman
screamed in despair —‘and his clothes are gone! And they
are hungry, hungry!’—and wringing her hands she point-
ed to the children. ‘Oh, accursed life! And you, are you not
ashamed?’—she pounced all at once upon Raskolnikov—
‘from the tavern! Have you been drinking with him? You
have been drinking with him, too! Go away!’
The young man was hastening away without uttering a
Crime and Punishment
word. The inner door was thrown wide open and inquisitive
faces were peering in at it. Coarse laughing faces with pipes
and cigarettes and heads wearing caps thrust themselves in
at the doorway. Further in could be seen figures in dress-
ing gowns flung open, in costumes of unseemly scantiness,
some of them with cards in their hands. They were particu-
larly diverted, when Marmeladov, dragged about by his hair,
shouted that it was a consolation to him. They even began
to come into the room; at last a sinister shrill outcry was
heard: this came from Amalia Lippevechsel herself push-
ing her way amongst them and trying to restore order after
her own fashion and for the hundredth time to frighten the
poor woman by ordering her with coarse abuse to clear out
of the room next day. As he went out, Raskolnikov had time
to put his hand into his pocket, to snatch up the coppers he
had received in exchange for his rouble in the tavern and
to lay them unnoticed on the window. Afterwards on the
stairs, he changed his mind and would have gone back.
‘What a stupid thing I’ve done,’ he thought to himself,
‘they have Sonia and I want it myself.’ But reflecting that
it would be impossible to take it back now and that in any
case he would not have taken it, he dismissed it with a wave
of his hand and went back to his lodging. ‘Sonia wants po-
matum too,’ he said as he walked along the street, and he
laughed malignantly—‘such smartness costs money…. Hm!
And maybe Sonia herself will be bankrupt to-day, for there
is always a risk, hunting big game … digging for gold …
then they would all be without a crust to-morrow except
for my money. Hurrah for Sonia! What a mine they’ve dug
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there! And they’re making the most of it! Yes, they are mak-
ing the most of it! They’ve wept over it and grown used to it.
Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!’
He sank into thought.
‘And what if I am wrong,’ he cried suddenly after a mo-
ment’s thought. ‘What if man is not really a scoundrel, man
in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind—then all the
rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no
barriers and it’s all as it should be.’
Crime and Punishment
Chapter III
H
e waked up late next day after a broken sleep. But his
sleep had not refreshed him; he waked up bilious, ir-
ritable, ill-tempered, and looked with hatred at his room.
It was a tiny cupboard of a room about six paces in length.
It had a poverty-stricken appearance with its dusty yellow
paper peeling off the walls, and it was so low-pitched that
a man of more than average height was ill at ease in it and
felt every moment that he would knock his head against the
ceiling. The furniture was in keeping with the room: there
were three old chairs, rather rickety; a painted table in the
corner on which lay a few manuscripts and books; the dust
that lay thick upon them showed that they had been long
untouched. A big clumsy sofa occupied almost the whole
of one wall and half the floor space of the room; it was once
covered with chintz, but was now in rags and served Ras-
kolnikov as a bed. Often he went to sleep on it, as he was,
without undressing, without sheets, wrapped in his old
student’s overcoat, with his head on one little pillow, under
which he heaped up all the linen he had, clean and dirty, by
way of a bolster. A little table stood in front of the sofa.
It would have been difficult to sink to a lower ebb of
disorder, but to Raskolnikov in his present state of mind
this was positively agreeable. He had got completely away
from everyone, like a tortoise in its shell, and even the sight
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of a servant girl who had to wait upon him and looked
sometimes into his room made him writhe with nervous
irritation. He was in the condition that overtakes some
monomaniacs entirely concentrated upon one thing. His
landlady had for the last fortnight given up sending him
in meals, and he had not yet thought of expostulating with
her, though he went without his dinner. Nastasya, the cook
and only servant, was rather pleased at the lodger’s mood
and had entirely given up sweeping and doing his room,
only once a week or so she would stray into his room with a
broom. She waked him up that day.
‘Get up, why are you asleep?’ she called to him. ‘It’s past
nine, I have brought you some tea; will you have a cup? I
should think you’re fairly starving?’
Raskolnikov opened his eyes, started and recognised
Nastasya.
‘From the landlady, eh?’ he asked, slowly and with a sick-
ly face sitting up on the sofa.
‘From the landlady, indeed!’
She set before him her own cracked teapot full of weak
and stale tea and laid two yellow lumps of sugar by the side
of it.
‘Here, Nastasya, take it please,’ he said, fumbling in his
pocket (for he had slept in his clothes) and taking out a
handful of coppers—‘run and buy me a loaf. And get me a
little sausage, the cheapest, at the pork-butcher’s.’
‘The loaf I’ll fetch you this very minute, but wouldn’t you
rather have some cabbage soup instead of sausage? It’s capi-
tal soup, yesterday’s. I saved it for you yesterday, but you
Crime and Punishment
came in late. It’s fine soup.’
When the soup had been brought, and he had begun
upon it, Nastasya sat down beside him on the sofa and be-
gan chatting. She was a country peasant-woman and a very
talkative one.
‘Praskovya Pavlovna means to complain to the police
about you,’ she said.
He scowled.
‘To the police? What does she want?’
‘You don’t pay her money and you won’t turn out of the
room. That’s what she wants, to be sure.’
‘The devil, that’s the last straw,’ he muttered, grinding his
teeth, ‘no, that would not suit me … just now. She is a fool,’
he added aloud. ‘I’ll go and talk to her to-day.’
‘Fool she is and no mistake, just as I am. But why, if you
are so clever, do you lie here like a sack and have nothing to
show for it? One time you used to go out, you say, to teach
children. But why is it you do nothing now?’
‘I am doing …’ Raskolnikov began sullenly and reluc-
tantly.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Work …’
‘What sort of work?’
‘I am thinking,’ he answered seriously after a pause.
Nastasya was overcome with a fit of laughter. She was giv-
en to laughter and when anything amused her, she laughed
inaudibly, quivering and shaking all over till she felt ill.
‘And have you made much money by your thinking?’ she
managed to articulate at last.
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‘One can’t go out to give lessons without boots. And I’m
sick of it.’
‘Don’t quarrel with your bread and butter.’
‘They pay so little for lessons. What’s the use of a few cop-
pers?’ he answered, reluctantly, as though replying to his
own thought.
‘And you want to get a fortune all at once?’
He looked at her strangely.
‘Yes, I want a fortune,’ he answered firmly, after a brief
pause.
‘Don’t be in such a hurry, you quite frighten me! Shall I
get you the loaf or not?’
‘As you please.’
‘Ah, I forgot! A letter came for you yesterday when you
were out.’
‘A letter? for me! from whom?’
‘I can’t say. I gave three copecks of my own to the post-
man for it. Will you pay me back?’
‘Then bring it to me, for God’s sake, bring it,’ cried Ras-
kolnikov greatly excited—‘good God!’
A minute later the letter was brought him. That was it:
from his mother, from the province of R——. He turned
pale when he took it. It was a long while since he had re-
ceived a letter, but another feeling also suddenly stabbed his
heart.
‘Nastasya, leave me alone, for goodness’ sake; here are
your three copecks, but for goodness’ sake, make haste and
go!’
The letter was quivering in his hand; he did not want
Crime and Punishment
to open it in her presence; he wanted to be left alone with
this letter. When Nastasya had gone out, he lifted it quickly
to his lips and kissed it; then he gazed intently at the ad-
dress, the small, sloping handwriting, so dear and familiar,
of the mother who had once taught him to read and write.
He delayed; he seemed almost afraid of something. At last
he opened it; it was a thick heavy letter, weighing over two
ounces, two large sheets of note paper were covered with
very small handwriting.
‘My dear Rodya,’ wrote his mother—‘it’s two months
since I last had a talk with you by letter which has distressed
me and even kept me awake at night, thinking. But I am
sure you will not blame me for my inevitable silence. You
know how I love you; you are all we have to look to, Dounia
and I, you are our all, our one hope, our one stay. What a
grief it was to me when I heard that you had given up the
university some months ago, for want of means to keep
yourself and that you had lost your lessons and your other
work! How could I help you out of my hundred and twenty
roubles a year pension? The fifteen roubles I sent you four
months ago I borrowed, as you know, on security of my
pension, from Vassily Ivanovitch Vahrushin a merchant of
this town. He is a kind-hearted man and was a friend of
your father’s too. But having given him the right to receive
the pension, I had to wait till the debt was paid off and that
is only just done, so that I’ve been unable to send you any-
thing all this time. But now, thank God, I believe I shall be
able to send you something more and in fact we may con-
gratulate ourselves on our good fortune now, of which I
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hasten to inform you. In the first place, would you have
guessed, dear Rodya, that your sister has been living with
me for the last six weeks and we shall not be separated in
the future. Thank God, her sufferings are over, but I will tell
you everything in order, so that you may know just how ev-
erything has happened and all that we have hitherto
concealed from you. When you wrote to me two months
ago that you had heard that Dounia had a great deal to put
up with in the Svidrigraïlovs’ house, when you wrote that
and asked me to tell you all about it—what could I write in
answer to you? If I had written the whole truth to you, I
dare say you would have thrown up everything and have
come to us, even if you had to walk all the way, for I know
your character and your feelings, and you would not let
your sister be insulted. I was in despair myself, but what
could I do? And, besides, I did not know the whole truth
myself then. What made it all so difficult was that Dounia
received a hundred roubles in advance when she took the
place as governess in their family, on condition of part of
her salary being deducted every month, and so it was im-
possible to throw up the situation without repaying the
debt. This sum (now I can explain it all to you, my precious
Rodya) she took chiefly in order to send you sixty roubles,
which you needed so terribly then and which you received
from us last year. We deceived you then, writing that this
money came from Dounia’s savings, but that was not so,
and now I tell you all about it, because, thank God, things
have suddenly changed for the better, and that you may
know how Dounia loves you and what a heart she has. At
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first indeed Mr. Svidrigaïlov treated her very rudely and
used to make disrespectful and jeering remarks at table….
But I don’t want to go into all those painful details, so as not
to worry you for nothing when it is now all over. In short, in
spite of the kind and generous behaviour of Marfa Petrovna,
Mr. Svidrigaïlov’s wife, and all the rest of the household,
Dounia had a very hard time, especially when Mr. Svidriga-
ïlov, relapsing into his old regimental habits, was under the
influence of Bacchus. And how do you think it was all ex-
plained later on? Would you believe that the crazy fellow
had conceived a passion for Dounia from the beginning,
but had concealed it under a show of rudeness and con-
tempt. Possibly he was ashamed and horrified himself at his
own flighty hopes, considering his years and his being the
father of a family; and that made him angry with Dounia.
And possibly, too, he hoped by his rude and sneering behav-
iour to hide the truth from others. But at last he lost all
control and had the face to make Dounia an open and
shameful proposal, promising her all sorts of inducements
and offering, besides, to throw up everything and take her
to another estate of his, or even abroad. You can imagine all
she went through! To leave her situation at once was impos-
sible not only on account of the money debt, but also to
spare the feelings of Marfa Petrovna, whose suspicions
would have been aroused: and then Dounia would have
been the cause of a rupture in the family. And it would have
meant a terrible scandal for Dounia too; that would have
been inevitable. There were various other reasons owing to
which Dounia could not hope to escape from that awful
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house for another six weeks. You know Dounia, of course;
you know how clever she is and what a strong will she has.
Dounia can endure a great deal and even in the most diffi-
cult cases she has the fortitude to maintain her firmness.
She did not even write to me about everything for fear of
upsetting me, although we were constantly in communica-
tion. It all ended very unexpectedly. Marfa Petrovna
accidentally overheard her husband imploring Dounia in
the garden, and, putting quite a wrong interpretation on
the position, threw the blame upon her, believing her to be
the cause of it all. An awful scene took place between them
on the spot in the garden; Marfa Petrovna went so far as to
strike Dounia, refused to hear anything and was shouting
at her for a whole hour and then gave orders that Dounia
should be packed off at once to me in a plain peasant’s cart,
into which they flung all her things, her linen and her
clothes, all pell-mell, without folding it up and packing it.
And a heavy shower of rain came on, too, and Dounia, in-
sulted and put to shame, had to drive with a peasant in an
open cart all the seventeen versts into town. Only think
now what answer could I have sent to the letter I received
from you two months ago and what could I have written? I
was in despair; I dared not write to you the truth because
you would have been very unhappy, mortified and indig-
nant, and yet what could you do? You could only perhaps
ruin yourself, and, besides, Dounia would not allow it; and
fill up my letter with trifles when my heart was so full of
sorrow, I could not. For a whole month the town was full of
gossip about this scandal, and it came to such a pass that
Crime and Punishment
Dounia and I dared not even go to church on account of the
contemptuous looks, whispers, and even remarks made
aloud about us. All our acquaintances avoided us, nobody
even bowed to us in the street, and I learnt that some shop-
men and clerks were intending to insult us in a shameful
way, smearing the gates of our house with pitch, so that the
landlord began to tell us we must leave. All this was set go-
ing by Marfa Petrovna who managed to slander Dounia
and throw dirt at her in every family. She knows everyone
in the neighbourhood, and that month she was continually
coming into the town, and as she is rather talkative and
fond of gossiping about her family affairs and particularly
of complaining to all and each of her husband—which is
not at all right —so in a short time she had spread her story
not only in the town, but over the whole surrounding dis-
trict. It made me ill, but Dounia bore it better than I did,
and if only you could have seen how she endured it all and
tried to comfort me and cheer me up! She is an angel! But by
God’s mercy, our sufferings were cut short: Mr. Svidrigaïlov
returned to his senses and repented and, probably feeling
sorry for Dounia, he laid before Marfa Petrovna a complete
and unmistakable proof of Dounia’s innocence, in the form
of a letter Dounia had been forced to write and give to him,
before Marfa Petrovna came upon them in the garden. This
letter, which remained in Mr. Svidrigaïlov’s hands after her
departure, she had written to refuse personal explanations
and secret interviews, for which he was entreating her. In
that letter she reproached him with great heat and indigna-
tion for the baseness of his behaviour in regard to Marfa
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Petrovna, reminding him that he was the father and head of
a family and telling him how infamous it was of him to tor-
ment and make unhappy a defenceless girl, unhappy enough
already. Indeed, dear Rodya, the letter was so nobly and
touchingly written that I sobbed when I read it and to this
day I cannot read it without tears. Moreover, the evidence
of the servants, too, cleared Dounia’s reputation; they had
seen and known a great deal more than Mr. Svidrigaïlov
had himself supposed —as indeed is always the case with
servants. Marfa Petrovna was completely taken aback, and
‘again crushed’ as she said herself to us, but she was com-
pletely convinced of Dounia’s innocence. The very next day,
being Sunday, she went straight to the Cathedral, knelt
down and prayed with tears to Our Lady to give her strength
to bear this new trial and to do her duty. Then she came
straight from the Cathedral to us, told us the whole story,
wept bitterly and, fully penitent, she embraced Dounia and
besought her to forgive her. The same morning without any
delay, she went round to all the houses in the town and ev-
erywhere, shedding tears, she asserted in the most flattering
terms Dounia’s innocence and the nobility of her feelings
and her behavior. What was more, she showed and read to
everyone the letter in Dounia’s own handwriting to Mr.
Svidrigaïlov and even allowed them to take copies of it—
which I must say I think was superfluous. In this way she
was busy for several days in driving about the whole town,
because some people had taken offence through precedence
having been given to others. And therefore they had to take
turns, so that in every house she was expected before she ar-
Crime and Punishment
rived, and everyone knew that on such and such a day
Marfa Petrovna would be reading the letter in such and
such a place and people assembled for every reading of it,
even many who had heard it several times already both in
their own houses and in other people’s. In my opinion a
great deal, a very great deal of all this was unnecessary; but
that’s Marfa Petrovna’s character. Anyway she succeeded in
completely re-establishing Dounia’s reputation and the
whole ignominy of this affair rested as an indelible disgrace
upon her husband, as the only person to blame, so that I re-
ally began to feel sorry for him; it was really treating the
crazy fellow too harshly. Dounia was at once asked to give
lessons in several families, but she refused. All of a sudden
everyone began to treat her with marked respect and all
this did much to bring about the event by which, one may
say, our whole fortunes are now transformed. You must
know, dear Rodya, that Dounia has a suitor and that she has
already consented to marry him. I hasten to tell you all
about the matter, and though it has been arranged without
asking your consent, I think you will not be aggrieved with
me or with your sister on that account, for you will see that
we could not wait and put off our decision till we heard
from you. And you could not have judged all the facts with-
out being on the spot. This was how it happened. He is
already of the rank of a counsellor, Pyotr Petrovitch Luzhin,
and is distantly related to Marfa Petrovna, who has been
very active in bringing the match about. It began with his
expressing through her his desire to make our acquain-
tance. He was properly received, drank coffee with us and
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the very next day he sent us a letter in which he very courte-
ously made an offer and begged for a speedy and decided
answer. He is a very busy man and is in a great hurry to get
to Petersburg, so that every moment is precious to him. At
first, of course, we were greatly surprised, as it had all hap-
pened so quickly and unexpectedly. We thought and talked
it over the whole day. He is a well-to-do man, to be depend-
ed upon, he has two posts in the government and has already
made his fortune. It is true that he is forty-five years old, but
he is of a fairly prepossessing appearance and might still be
thought attractive by women, and he is altogether a very re-
spectable and presentable man, only he seems a little morose
and somewhat conceited. But possibly that may only be the
impression he makes at first sight. And beware, dear Rodya,
when he comes to Petersburg, as he shortly will do, beware
of judging him too hastily and severely, as your way is, if
there is anything you do not like in him at first sight. I give
you this warning, although I feel sure that he will make a
favourable impression upon you. Moreover, in order to un-
derstand any man one must be deliberate and careful to
avoid forming prejudices and mistaken ideas, which are
very difficult to correct and get over afterwards. And Pyotr
Petrovitch, judging by many indications, is a thoroughly es-
timable man. At his first visit, indeed, he told us that he was
a practical man, but still he shares, as he expressed it, many
of the convictions ‘of our most rising generation’ and he is
an opponent of all prejudices. He said a good deal more, for
he seems a little conceited and likes to be listened to, but
this is scarcely a vice. I, of course, understood very little of
Crime and Punishment
it, but Dounia explained to me that, though he is not a man
of great education, he is clever and seems to be good-na-
tured. You know your sister’s character, Rodya. She is a
resolute, sensible, patient and generous girl, but she has a
passionate heart, as I know very well. Of course, there is no
great love either on his side, or on hers, but Dounia is a clev-
er girl and has the heart of an angel, and will make it her
duty to make her husband happy who on his side will make
her happiness his care. Of that we have no good reason to
doubt, though it must be admitted the matter has been ar-
ranged in great haste. Besides he is a man of great prudence
and he will see, to be sure, of himself, that his own happi-
ness will be the more secure, the happier Dounia is with
him. And as for some defects of character, for some habits
and even certain differences of opinion —which indeed are
inevitable even in the happiest marriages— Dounia has
said that, as regards all that, she relies on herself, that there
is nothing to be uneasy about, and that she is ready to put
up with a great deal, if only their future relationship can be
an honourable and straightforward one. He struck me, for
instance, at first, as rather abrupt, but that may well come
from his being an outspoken man, and that is no doubt how
it is. For instance, at his second visit, after he had received
Dounia’s consent, in the course of conversation, he declared
that before making Dounia’s acquaintance, he had made up
his mind to marry a girl of good reputation, without dowry
and, above all, one who had experienced poverty, because,
as he explained, a man ought not to be indebted to his wife,
but that it is better for a wife to look upon her husband as
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her benefactor. I must add that he expressed it more nicely
and politely than I have done, for I have forgotten his actual
phrases and only remember the meaning. And, besides, it
was obviously not said of design, but slipped out in the heat
of conversation, so that he tried afterwards to correct him-
self and smooth it over, but all the same it did strike me as
somewhat rude, and I said so afterwards to Dounia. But
Dounia was vexed, and answered that ‘words are not deeds,’
and that, of course, is perfectly true. Dounia did not sleep
all night before she made up her mind, and, thinking that I
was asleep, she got out of bed and was walking up and down
the room all night; at last she knelt down before the ikon
and prayed long and fervently and in the morning she told
me that she had decided.
‘I have mentioned already that Pyotr Petrovitch is just
setting off for Petersburg, where he has a great deal of busi-
ness, and he wants to open a legal bureau. He has been
occupied for many years in conducting civil and commer-
cial litigation, and only the other day he won an important
case. He has to be in Petersburg because he has an impor-
tant case before the Senate. So, Rodya dear, he may be of the
greatest use to you, in every way indeed, and Dounia and I
have agreed that from this very day you could definitely en-
ter upon your career and might consider that your future is
marked out and assured for you. Oh, if only this comes to
pass! This would be such a benefit that we could only look
upon it as a providential blessing. Dounia is dreaming of
nothing else. We have even ventured already to drop a few
words on the subject to Pyotr Petrovitch. He was cautious in
Crime and Punishment
his answer, and said that, of course, as he could not get on
without a secretary, it would be better to be paying a salary
to a relation than to a stranger, if only the former were fitted
for the duties (as though there could be doubt of your being
fitted!) but then he expressed doubts whether your studies
at the university would leave you time for work at his office.
The matter dropped for the time, but Dounia is thinking of
nothing else now. She has been in a sort of fever for the last
few days, and has already made a regular plan for your be-
coming in the end an associate and even a partner in Pyotr
Petrovitch’s business, which might well be, seeing that you
are a student of law. I am in complete agreement with her,
Rodya, and share all her plans and hopes, and think there
is every probability of realising them. And in spite of Pyotr
Petrovitch’s evasiveness, very natural at present (since he
does not know you), Dounia is firmly persuaded that she
will gain everything by her good influence over her future
husband; this she is reckoning upon. Of course we are care-
ful not to talk of any of these more remote plans to Pyotr
Petrovitch, especially of your becoming his partner. He is a
practical man and might take this very coldly, it might all
seem to him simply a day-dream. Nor has either Dounia or
I breathed a word to him of the great hopes we have of his
helping us to pay for your university studies; we have not
spoken of it in the first place, because it will come to pass of
itself, later on, and he will no doubt without wasting words
offer to do it of himself, (as though he could refuse Dounia
that) the more readily since you may by your own efforts be-
come his right hand in the office, and receive this assistance
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not as a charity, but as a salary earned by your own work.
Dounia wants to arrange it all like this and I quite agree
with her. And we have not spoken of our plans for another
reason, that is, because I particularly wanted you to feel on
an equal footing when you first meet him. When Dounia
spoke to him with enthusiasm about you, he answered that
one could never judge of a man without seeing him close,
for oneself, and that he looked forward to forming his own
opinion when he makes your acquaintance. Do you know,
my precious Rodya, I think that perhaps for some reasons
(nothing to do with Pyotr Petrovitch though, simply for my
own personal, perhaps old- womanish, fancies) I should do
better to go on living by myself, apart, than with them, af-
ter the wedding. I am convinced that he will be generous
and delicate enough to invite me and to urge me to remain
with my daughter for the future, and if he has said nothing
about it hitherto, it is simply because it has been taken for
granted; but I shall refuse. I have noticed more than once
in my life that husbands don’t quite get on with their moth-
ers-in- law, and I don’t want to be the least bit in anyone’s
way, and for my own sake, too, would rather be quite inde-
pendent, so long as I have a crust of bread of my own, and
such children as you and Dounia. If possible, I would set-
tle somewhere near you, for the most joyful piece of news,
dear Rodya, I have kept for the end of my letter: know then,
my dear boy, that we may, perhaps, be all together in a very
short time and may embrace one another again after a sep-
aration of almost three years! It is settled for certain that
Dounia and I are to set off for Petersburg, exactly when I
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0
don’t know, but very, very soon, possibly in a week. It all
depends on Pyotr Petrovitch who will let us know when he
has had time to look round him in Petersburg. To suit his
own arrangements he is anxious to have the ceremony as
soon as possible, even before the fast of Our Lady, if it could
be managed, or if that is too soon to be ready, immediate-
ly after. Oh, with what happiness I shall press you to my
heart! Dounia is all excitement at the joyful thought of see-
ing you, she said one day in joke that she would be ready to
marry Pyotr Petrovitch for that alone. She is an angel! She
is not writing anything to you now, and has only told me
to write that she has so much, so much to tell you that she
is not going to take up her pen now, for a few lines would
tell you nothing, and it would only mean upsetting herself;
she bids me send you her love and innumerable kisses. But
although we shall be meeting so soon, perhaps I shall send
you as much money as I can in a day or two. Now that ev-
eryone has heard that Dounia is to marry Pyotr Petrovitch,
my credit has suddenly improved and I know that Afanasy
Ivanovitch will trust me now even to seventy-five roubles
on the security of my pension, so that perhaps I shall be able
to send you twenty-five or even thirty roubles. I would send
you more, but I am uneasy about our travelling expenses;
for though Pyotr Petrovitch has been so kind as to under-
take part of the expenses of the journey, that is to say, he
has taken upon himself the conveyance of our bags and big
trunk (which will be conveyed through some acquaintanc-
es of his), we must reckon upon some expense on our arrival
in Petersburg, where we can’t be left without a halfpenny,
1
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at least for the first few days. But we have calculated it all,
Dounia and I, to the last penny, and we see that the journey
will not cost very much. It is only ninety versts from us to
the railway and we have come to an agreement with a driver
we know, so as to be in readiness; and from there Dounia
and I can travel quite comfortably third class. So that I may
very likely be able to send to you not twenty-five, but thir-
ty roubles. But enough; I have covered two sheets already
and there is no space left for more; our whole history, but
so many events have happened! And now, my precious Ro-
dya, I embrace you and send you a mother’s blessing till we
meet. Love Dounia your sister, Rodya; love her as she loves
you and understand that she loves you beyond everything,
more than herself. She is an angel and you, Rodya, you are
everything to us—our one hope, our one consolation. If
only you are happy, we shall be happy. Do you still say your
prayers, Rodya, and believe in the mercy of our Creator and
our Redeemer? I am afraid in my heart that you may have
been visited by the new spirit of infidelity that is abroad to-
day; If it is so, I pray for you. Remember, dear boy, how in
your childhood, when your father was living, you used to
lisp your prayers at my knee, and how happy we all were in
those days. Good-bye, till we meet then— I embrace you
warmly, warmly, with many kisses.
‘Yours till death,
‘PULCHERIA RASKOLNIKOV.’
Almost from the first, while he read the letter, Raskol-
nikov’s face was wet with tears; but when he finished it, his
face was pale and distorted and a bitter, wrathful and ma-
Crime and Punishment
lignant smile was on his lips. He laid his head down on his
threadbare dirty pillow and pondered, pondered a long
time. His heart was beating violently, and his brain was in a
turmoil. At last he felt cramped and stifled in the little yel-
low room that was like a cupboard or a box. His eyes and
his mind craved for space. He took up his hat and went out,
this time without dread of meeting anyone; he had forgot-
ten his dread. He turned in the direction of the Vassilyevsky
Ostrov, walking along Vassilyevsky Prospect, as though
hastening on some business, but he walked, as his habit
was, without noticing his way, muttering and even speak-
ing aloud to himself, to the astonishment of the passers-by.
Many of them took him to be drunk.
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Chapter IV
H
is mother’s letter had been a torture to him, but as re-
gards the chief fact in it, he had felt not one moment’s
hesitation, even whilst he was reading the letter. The es-
sential question was settled, and irrevocably settled, in his
mind: ‘Never such a marriage while I am alive and Mr. Lu-
zhin be damned!’ ‘The thing is perfectly clear,’ he muttered
to himself, with a malignant smile anticipating the triumph
of his decision. ‘No, mother, no, Dounia, you won’t deceive
me! and then they apologise for not asking my advice and
for taking the decision without me! I dare say! They imagine
it is arranged now and can’t be broken off; but we will see
whether it can or not! A magnificent excuse: ‘Pyotr Petro-
vitch is such a busy man that even his wedding has to be in
post-haste, almost by express.’ No, Dounia, I see it all and
I know what you want to say to me; and I know too what
you were thinking about, when you walked up and down
all night, and what your prayers were like before the Holy
Mother of Kazan who stands in mother’s bedroom. Bitter is
the ascent to Golgotha…. Hm … so it is finally settled; you
have determined to marry a sensible business man, Avdotya
Romanovna, one who has a fortune (has already made his
fortune, that is so much more solid and impressive) a man
who holds two government posts and who shares the ideas
of our most rising generation, as mother writes, and who
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