“Thank you. But tell me this: how do you distinguish those extraordinary
people from the ordinary ones? Are there signs at their birth? I feel
there ought to be more exactitude, more external definition. Excuse the
natural anxiety of a practical law-abiding citizen, but couldn’t they
adopt a special uniform, for instance, couldn’t they wear something, be
branded in some way? For you know if confusion arises and a member of
one category imagines that he belongs to the other, begins to ‘eliminate
obstacles’ as you so happily expressed it, then...”

“Oh, that very often happens! That remark is wittier than the other.”

“Thank you.”

“No reason to; but take note that the mistake can only arise in
the first category, that is among the ordinary people (as I perhaps
unfortunately called them). In spite of their predisposition to
obedience very many of them, through a playfulness of nature, sometimes
vouchsafed even to the cow, like to imagine themselves advanced people,
‘destroyers,’ and to push themselves into the ‘new movement,’ and
this quite sincerely. Meanwhile the really new people are very often
unobserved by them, or even despised as reactionaries of grovelling
tendencies. But I don’t think there is any considerable danger here,
and you really need not be uneasy for they never go very far. Of course,
they might have a thrashing sometimes for letting their fancy run away
with them and to teach them their place, but no more; in fact, even
this isn’t necessary as they castigate themselves, for they are very
conscientious: some perform this service for one another and others
chastise themselves with their own hands.... They will impose various
public acts of penitence upon themselves with a beautiful and edifying
effect; in fact you’ve nothing to be uneasy about.... It’s a law of
nature.”

“Well, you have certainly set my mind more at rest on that score; but
there’s another thing worries me. Tell me, please, are there many people
who have the right to kill others, these extraordinary people? I am
ready to bow down to them, of course, but you must admit it’s alarming
if there are a great many of them, eh?”

“Oh, you needn’t worry about that either,” Raskolnikov went on in the
same tone. “People with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for
saying something new, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily
so in fact. One thing only is clear, that the appearance of all these
grades and sub-divisions of men must follow with unfailing regularity
some law of nature. That law, of course, is unknown at present, but I am
convinced that it exists, and one day may become known. The vast mass of
mankind is mere material, and only exists in order by some great effort,
by some mysterious process, by means of some crossing of races and
stocks, to bring into the world at last perhaps one man out of a
thousand with a spark of independence. One in ten thousand perhaps--I
speak roughly, approximately--is born with some independence, and with
still greater independence one in a hundred thousand. The man of genius
is one of millions, and the great geniuses, the crown of humanity,
appear on earth perhaps one in many thousand millions. In fact I have
not peeped into the retort in which all this takes place. But there
certainly is and must be a definite law, it cannot be a matter of
chance.”

“Why, are you both joking?” Razumihin cried at last. “There you sit,
making fun of one another. Are you serious, Rodya?”

Raskolnikov raised his pale and almost mournful face and made no reply.
And the unconcealed, persistent, nervous, and discourteous sarcasm of
Porfiry seemed strange to Razumihin beside that quiet and mournful face.

“Well, brother, if you are really serious... You are right, of course,
in saying that it’s not new, that it’s like what we’ve read and heard a
thousand times already; but what is really original in all this, and is
exclusively your own, to my horror, is that you sanction bloodshed
in the name of conscience, and, excuse my saying so, with such
fanaticism.... That, I take it, is the point of your article. But that
sanction of bloodshed by conscience is to my mind... more terrible
than the official, legal sanction of bloodshed....”

“You are quite right, it is more terrible,” Porfiry agreed.

“Yes, you must have exaggerated! There is some mistake, I shall read it.
You can’t think that! I shall read it.”

“All that is not in the article, there’s only a hint of it,” said
Raskolnikov.

“Yes, yes.” Porfiry couldn’t sit still. “Your attitude to crime is
pretty clear to me now, but... excuse me for my impertinence (I am
really ashamed to be worrying you like this), you see, you’ve removed
my anxiety as to the two grades getting mixed, but... there are various
practical possibilities that make me uneasy! What if some man or youth
imagines that he is a Lycurgus or Mahomet--a future one of course--and
suppose he begins to remove all obstacles.... He has some great
enterprise before him and needs money for it... and tries to get it...
do you see?”

Zametov gave a sudden guffaw in his corner. Raskolnikov did not even
raise his eyes to him.

“I must admit,” he went on calmly, “that such cases certainly must
arise. The vain and foolish are particularly apt to fall into that
snare; young people especially.”

“Yes, you see. Well then?”

“What then?” Raskolnikov smiled in reply; “that’s not my fault. So it is
and so it always will be. He said just now (he nodded at Razumihin)
that I sanction bloodshed. Society is too well protected by prisons,
banishment, criminal investigators, penal servitude. There’s no need to
be uneasy. You have but to catch the thief.”

“And what if we do catch him?”

“Then he gets what he deserves.”

“You are certainly logical. But what of his conscience?”

“Why do you care about that?”

“Simply from humanity.”

“If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be his
punishment--as well as the prison.”

“But the real geniuses,” asked Razumihin frowning, “those who have
the right to murder? Oughtn’t they to suffer at all even for the blood
they’ve shed?”

“Why the word ought? It’s not a matter of permission or prohibition.
He will suffer if he is sorry for his victim. Pain and suffering are
always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The
really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth,” he added
dreamily, not in the tone of the conversation.

He raised his eyes, looked earnestly at them all, smiled, and took his
cap. He was too quiet by comparison with his manner at his entrance, and
he felt this. Everyone got up.

“Well, you may abuse me, be angry with me if you like,” Porfiry
Petrovitch began again, “but I can’t resist. Allow me one little
question (I know I am troubling you). There is just one little notion I
want to express, simply that I may not forget it.”

“Very good, tell me your little notion,” Raskolnikov stood waiting, pale
and grave before him.

“Well, you see... I really don’t know how to express it properly....
It’s a playful, psychological idea.... When you were writing your
article, surely you couldn’t have helped, he-he! fancying yourself...
just a little, an ‘extraordinary’ man, uttering a new word in your
sense.... That’s so, isn’t it?”

“Quite possibly,” Raskolnikov answered contemptuously.

Razumihin made a movement.

“And, if so, could you bring yourself in case of worldly difficulties
and hardship or for some service to humanity--to overstep obstacles?...
For instance, to rob and murder?”

And again he winked with his left eye, and laughed noiselessly just as
before.

“If I did I certainly should not tell you,” Raskolnikov answered with
defiant and haughty contempt.

“No, I was only interested on account of your article, from a literary
point of view...”

“Foo! how obvious and insolent that is!” Raskolnikov thought with
repulsion.

“Allow me to observe,” he answered dryly, “that I don’t consider myself
a Mahomet or a Napoleon, nor any personage of that kind, and not being
one of them I cannot tell you how I should act.”

“Oh, come, don’t we all think ourselves Napoleons now in Russia?”
Porfiry Petrovitch said with alarming familiarity.

Something peculiar betrayed itself in the very intonation of his voice.

“Perhaps it was one of these future Napoleons who did for Alyona
Ivanovna last week?” Zametov blurted out from the corner.

Raskolnikov did not speak, but looked firmly and intently at Porfiry.
Razumihin was scowling gloomily. He seemed before this to be noticing
something. He looked angrily around. There was a minute of gloomy
silence. Raskolnikov turned to go.

“Are you going already?” Porfiry said amiably, holding out his hand with
excessive politeness. “Very, very glad of your acquaintance. As for your
request, have no uneasiness, write just as I told you, or, better still,
come to me there yourself in a day or two... to-morrow, indeed. I shall
be there at eleven o’clock for certain. We’ll arrange it all; we’ll have
a talk. As one of the last to be there, you might perhaps be able to
tell us something,” he added with a most good-natured expression.

“You want to cross-examine me officially in due form?” Raskolnikov asked
sharply.

“Oh, why? That’s not necessary for the present. You misunderstand me.
I lose no opportunity, you see, and... I’ve talked with all who had
pledges.... I obtained evidence from some of them, and you are the
last.... Yes, by the way,” he cried, seemingly suddenly delighted, “I
just remember, what was I thinking of?” he turned to Razumihin, “you
were talking my ears off about that Nikolay... of course, I know, I know
very well,” he turned to Raskolnikov, “that the fellow is innocent, but
what is one to do? We had to trouble Dmitri too.... This is the point,
this is all: when you went up the stairs it was past seven, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” answered Raskolnikov, with an unpleasant sensation at the very
moment he spoke that he need not have said it.

“Then when you went upstairs between seven and eight, didn’t you see in
a flat that stood open on a second storey, do you remember? two workmen
or at least one of them? They were painting there, didn’t you notice
them? It’s very, very important for them.”

“Painters? No, I didn’t see them,” Raskolnikov answered slowly, as
though ransacking his memory, while at the same instant he was racking
every nerve, almost swooning with anxiety to conjecture as quickly as
possible where the trap lay and not to overlook anything. “No, I didn’t
see them, and I don’t think I noticed a flat like that open.... But on
the fourth storey” (he had mastered the trap now and was triumphant)
“I remember now that someone was moving out of the flat opposite Alyona
Ivanovna’s.... I remember... I remember it clearly. Some porters
were carrying out a sofa and they squeezed me against the wall. But
painters... no, I don’t remember that there were any painters, and I
don’t think that there was a flat open anywhere, no, there wasn’t.”

“What do you mean?” Razumihin shouted suddenly, as though he had
reflected and realised. “Why, it was on the day of the murder the
painters were at work, and he was there three days before? What are you
asking?”

“Foo! I have muddled it!” Porfiry slapped himself on the forehead.
“Deuce take it! This business is turning my brain!” he addressed
Raskolnikov somewhat apologetically. “It would be such a great thing for
us to find out whether anyone had seen them between seven and eight at
the flat, so I fancied you could perhaps have told us something.... I
quite muddled it.”

“Then you should be more careful,” Razumihin observed grimly.

The last words were uttered in the passage. Porfiry Petrovitch saw them
to the door with excessive politeness.

They went out into the street gloomy and sullen, and for some steps they
did not say a word. Raskolnikov drew a deep breath.

CHAPTER VI

“I don’t believe it, I can’t believe it!” repeated Razumihin, trying in
perplexity to refute Raskolnikov’s arguments.

They were by now approaching Bakaleyev’s lodgings, where Pulcheria
Alexandrovna and Dounia had been expecting them a long while. Razumihin
kept stopping on the way in the heat of discussion, confused and excited
by the very fact that they were for the first time speaking openly about
it.

“Don’t believe it, then!” answered Raskolnikov, with a cold, careless
smile. “You were noticing nothing as usual, but I was weighing every
word.”

“You are suspicious. That is why you weighed their words... h’m...
certainly, I agree, Porfiry’s tone was rather strange, and still
more that wretch Zametov!... You are right, there was something about
him--but why? Why?”

“He has changed his mind since last night.”

“Quite the contrary! If they had that brainless idea, they would do
their utmost to hide it, and conceal their cards, so as to catch you
afterwards.... But it was all impudent and careless.”

“If they had had facts--I mean, real facts--or at least grounds for
suspicion, then they would certainly have tried to hide their game,
in the hope of getting more (they would have made a search long ago
besides). But they have no facts, not one. It is all mirage--all
ambiguous. Simply a floating idea. So they try to throw me out by
impudence. And perhaps, he was irritated at having no facts, and blurted
it out in his vexation--or perhaps he has some plan... he seems an
intelligent man. Perhaps he wanted to frighten me by pretending to
know. They have a psychology of their own, brother. But it is loathsome
explaining it all. Stop!”