“No, those men are not made so. The real Master to whom all is
permitted storms Toulon, makes a massacre in Paris, forgets an army in
Egypt, wastes half a million men in the Moscow expedition and gets off
with a jest at Vilna. And altars are set up to him after his death, and
so all is permitted. No, such people, it seems, are not of flesh but
of bronze!”

One sudden irrelevant idea almost made him laugh. Napoleon, the
pyramids, Waterloo, and a wretched skinny old woman, a pawnbroker with
a red trunk under her bed--it’s a nice hash for Porfiry Petrovitch to
digest! How can they digest it! It’s too inartistic. “A Napoleon creep
under an old woman’s bed! Ugh, how loathsome!”

At moments he felt he was raving. He sank into a state of feverish
excitement. “The old woman is of no consequence,” he thought, hotly and
incoherently. “The old woman was a mistake perhaps, but she is not
what matters! The old woman was only an illness.... I was in a hurry to
overstep.... I didn’t kill a human being, but a principle! I killed the
principle, but I didn’t overstep, I stopped on this side.... I was
only capable of killing. And it seems I wasn’t even capable of that...
Principle? Why was that fool Razumihin abusing the socialists? They are
industrious, commercial people; ‘the happiness of all’ is their case.
No, life is only given to me once and I shall never have it again; I
don’t want to wait for ‘the happiness of all.’ I want to live myself,
or else better not live at all. I simply couldn’t pass by my mother
starving, keeping my rouble in my pocket while I waited for the
‘happiness of all.’ I am putting my little brick into the happiness of
all and so my heart is at peace. Ha-ha! Why have you let me slip? I only
live once, I too want.... Ech, I am an æsthetic louse and nothing
more,” he added suddenly, laughing like a madman. “Yes, I am certainly a
louse,” he went on, clutching at the idea, gloating over it and playing
with it with vindictive pleasure. “In the first place, because I can
reason that I am one, and secondly, because for a month past I have been
troubling benevolent Providence, calling it to witness that not for
my own fleshly lusts did I undertake it, but with a grand and noble
object--ha-ha! Thirdly, because I aimed at carrying it out as justly as
possible, weighing, measuring and calculating. Of all the lice I picked
out the most useless one and proposed to take from her only as much as I
needed for the first step, no more nor less (so the rest would have gone
to a monastery, according to her will, ha-ha!). And what shows that I
am utterly a louse,” he added, grinding his teeth, “is that I am
perhaps viler and more loathsome than the louse I killed, and I felt
beforehand that I should tell myself so after killing her. Can
anything be compared with the horror of that? The vulgarity! The
abjectness! I understand the ‘prophet’ with his sabre, on his steed:
Allah commands and ‘trembling’ creation must obey! The ‘prophet’ is
right, he is right when he sets a battery across the street and blows up
the innocent and the guilty without deigning to explain! It’s for you to
obey, trembling creation, and not to have desires, for that’s not for
you!... I shall never, never forgive the old woman!”

His hair was soaked with sweat, his quivering lips were parched, his
eyes were fixed on the ceiling.

“Mother, sister--how I loved them! Why do I hate them now? Yes, I hate
them, I feel a physical hatred for them, I can’t bear them near me....
I went up to my mother and kissed her, I remember.... To embrace her
and think if she only knew... shall I tell her then? That’s just what
I might do.... She must be the same as I am,” he added, straining
himself to think, as it were struggling with delirium. “Ah, how I hate
the old woman now! I feel I should kill her again if she came to life!
Poor Lizaveta! Why did she come in?... It’s strange though, why is it
I scarcely ever think of her, as though I hadn’t killed her? Lizaveta!
Sonia! Poor gentle things, with gentle eyes.... Dear women! Why don’t
they weep? Why don’t they moan? They give up everything... their eyes
are soft and gentle.... Sonia, Sonia! Gentle Sonia!”

He lost consciousness; it seemed strange to him that he didn’t remember
how he got into the street. It was late evening. The twilight had fallen
and the full moon was shining more and more brightly; but there was a
peculiar breathlessness in the air. There were crowds of people in the
street; workmen and business people were making their way home; other
people had come out for a walk; there was a smell of mortar, dust and
stagnant water. Raskolnikov walked along, mournful and anxious; he was
distinctly aware of having come out with a purpose, of having to do
something in a hurry, but what it was he had forgotten. Suddenly he
stood still and saw a man standing on the other side of the street,
beckoning to him. He crossed over to him, but at once the man turned and
walked away with his head hanging, as though he had made no sign to
him. “Stay, did he really beckon?” Raskolnikov wondered, but he tried
to overtake him. When he was within ten paces he recognised him and
was frightened; it was the same man with stooping shoulders in the long
coat. Raskolnikov followed him at a distance; his heart was beating;
they went down a turning; the man still did not look round. “Does he
know I am following him?” thought Raskolnikov. The man went into the
gateway of a big house. Raskolnikov hastened to the gate and looked in
to see whether he would look round and sign to him. In the court-yard
the man did turn round and again seemed to beckon him. Raskolnikov at
once followed him into the yard, but the man was gone. He must have
gone up the first staircase. Raskolnikov rushed after him. He heard
slow measured steps two flights above. The staircase seemed strangely
familiar. He reached the window on the first floor; the moon shone
through the panes with a melancholy and mysterious light; then he
reached the second floor. Bah! this is the flat where the painters were
at work... but how was it he did not recognise it at once? The steps
of the man above had died away. “So he must have stopped or hidden
somewhere.” He reached the third storey, should he go on? There was a
stillness that was dreadful.... But he went on. The sound of his own
footsteps scared and frightened him. How dark it was! The man must be
hiding in some corner here. Ah! the flat was standing wide open, he
hesitated and went in. It was very dark and empty in the passage, as
though everything had been removed; he crept on tiptoe into the parlour
which was flooded with moonlight. Everything there was as before, the
chairs, the looking-glass, the yellow sofa and the pictures in the
frames. A huge, round, copper-red moon looked in at the windows.
“It’s the moon that makes it so still, weaving some mystery,” thought
Raskolnikov. He stood and waited, waited a long while, and the more
silent the moonlight, the more violently his heart beat, till it was
painful. And still the same hush. Suddenly he heard a momentary sharp
crack like the snapping of a splinter and all was still again. A fly
flew up suddenly and struck the window pane with a plaintive buzz. At
that moment he noticed in the corner between the window and the little
cupboard something like a cloak hanging on the wall. “Why is that cloak
here?” he thought, “it wasn’t there before....” He went up to it quietly
and felt that there was someone hiding behind it. He cautiously moved
the cloak and saw, sitting on a chair in the corner, the old woman bent
double so that he couldn’t see her face; but it was she. He stood over
her. “She is afraid,” he thought. He stealthily took the axe from the
noose and struck her one blow, then another on the skull. But strange
to say she did not stir, as though she were made of wood. He was
frightened, bent down nearer and tried to look at her; but she, too,
bent her head lower. He bent right down to the ground and peeped up
into her face from below, he peeped and turned cold with horror: the old
woman was sitting and laughing, shaking with noiseless laughter, doing
her utmost that he should not hear it. Suddenly he fancied that the door
from the bedroom was opened a little and that there was laughter and
whispering within. He was overcome with frenzy and he began hitting the
old woman on the head with all his force, but at every blow of the axe
the laughter and whispering from the bedroom grew louder and the old
woman was simply shaking with mirth. He was rushing away, but the
passage was full of people, the doors of the flats stood open and on the
landing, on the stairs and everywhere below there were people, rows of
heads, all looking, but huddled together in silence and expectation.
Something gripped his heart, his legs were rooted to the spot, they
would not move.... He tried to scream and woke up.

He drew a deep breath--but his dream seemed strangely to persist:
his door was flung open and a man whom he had never seen stood in the
doorway watching him intently.

Raskolnikov had hardly opened his eyes and he instantly closed them
again. He lay on his back without stirring.

“Is it still a dream?” he wondered and again raised his eyelids hardly
perceptibly; the stranger was standing in the same place, still watching
him.

He stepped cautiously into the room, carefully closing the door after
him, went up to the table, paused a moment, still keeping his eyes on
Raskolnikov, and noiselessly seated himself on the chair by the sofa; he
put his hat on the floor beside him and leaned his hands on his cane
and his chin on his hands. It was evident that he was prepared to wait
indefinitely. As far as Raskolnikov could make out from his stolen
glances, he was a man no longer young, stout, with a full, fair, almost
whitish beard.

Ten minutes passed. It was still light, but beginning to get dusk. There
was complete stillness in the room. Not a sound came from the stairs.
Only a big fly buzzed and fluttered against the window pane. It was
unbearable at last. Raskolnikov suddenly got up and sat on the sofa.

“Come, tell me what you want.”

“I knew you were not asleep, but only pretending,” the stranger answered
oddly, laughing calmly. “Arkady Ivanovitch Svidrigaïlov, allow me to
introduce myself....”