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I

Thus he lay for a very long time. It happened that he would seem to wake up, and in these moments he noticed that it was already long past nightfall, but it never occurred to him to get up. Finally he noticed that it was already bright daylight. He lay on the sofa on his back, still stupefied from his recent oblivion. Terrible, desperate shrieks from the street reached him sharply, which, however, he listened to every night under his window at three o'clock. It was these that woke him now. "Ah! So the drunkards are already coming out of the taverns," he thought, "three o'clock"—and suddenly he jumped up, as if someone had torn him from the sofa. "What! Already three o'clock!" He sat on the sofa—and then remembered everything! Suddenly, in one instant he remembered everything!

In the first moment he thought he would go mad. A terrible cold seized him; but the cold was also from the fever, which had begun in him long ago in his sleep. Now suddenly such a chill struck him that his teeth nearly jumped out and everything in him began to shake. He opened the door and began to listen: everyone in the house was fast asleep. With astonishment he examined himself and everything around him in the room and could not understand: how was it that yesterday, upon entering, he had not locked the door with the hook and thrown himself on the sofa, not only without undressing, but even with his hat on: it had rolled off and lay right there on the floor, near the pillow. "If someone had come in, what would they have thought? That I'm drunk, but..." He rushed to the window. There was enough light, and he hastily began to examine himself, all of himself, from head to toe, all his clothes: were there no traces? But it was impossible to do it this way: trembling from the chill, he began to take everything off and examine it all around again. He turned over everything, down to the last thread and scrap, and, not trusting himself, repeated the examination three times. But there seemed to be nothing, no traces at all; only on the spot where the trousers had frayed at the bottom and hung in fringes, thick traces of dried blood remained on these fringes. He grabbed a large folding knife and cut off the fringe. There seemed to be nothing else. Suddenly he remembered that the purse and the things which he had pulled out of the old woman's trunk were all still lying in his pockets until now! He had not thought until now to take them out and hide them! He did not even remember them now, when examining his clothes! What was this? In an instant he rushed to take them out and throw them on the table. Having taken out everything, even turning out his pockets to make sure nothing remained, he carried the whole pile into the corner. There, in the very corner, at the bottom, in one place the wallpaper had torn away from the wall: immediately he began to stuff everything into this hole, under the paper: "it went in! Everything out of sight and the purse too!"—he thought joyfully, rising and staring dully into the corner, at the hole that bulged out even more. Suddenly he shuddered all over with horror: "My God," he whispered in despair, "what is wrong with me? Is this hidden? Is this how one hides things?"

True, he had not counted on the things; he thought there would be only money, and so he had not prepared a place beforehand—"but now, now what am I glad about?" he thought. "Is this how one hides things? Truly reason has left me!" In exhaustion he sat on the sofa, and immediately an unbearable chill shook him again. Mechanically he pulled toward himself his old student winter coat lying nearby on a chair, warm but already in tatters, covered himself with it, and sleep and delirium seized him again at once. He lost consciousness.

Not more than five minutes later he jumped up again and immediately, in a frenzy, rushed again to his clothes. "How could I fall asleep again when nothing has been done! That's it, that's it: I still haven't removed the loop from under my arm! I forgot, forgot about such a thing! Such evidence!" He tore off the loop and hastily began to tear it into pieces, stuffing them under the pillow into the linen. "Pieces of torn canvas will in no case arouse suspicion; it seems so, it seems so!"—he repeated, standing in the middle of the room, and with painfully strained attention began again to look around, on the floor and everywhere, to see if he had forgotten anything else. The conviction that everything, even memory, even simple reasoning was leaving him, began to torture him unbearably. "What, is it really beginning, is the punishment really coming? There, there, that's it!" Indeed, the scraps of fringe which he had cut from his trousers were lying right there on the floor, in the middle of the room, for the first person to see! "But what is wrong with me!" he cried again like one lost.

Then a strange thought came into his head: that perhaps all his clothes were in blood, that perhaps there were many stains, but that he simply did not see them, did not notice them, because his reasoning had weakened, shattered... his mind was darkened... Suddenly he remembered that there was blood on the purse too. "Bah! So, consequently, there must also be blood in the pocket, because I shoved the still wet purse into my pocket then!" In an instant he turned out the pocket, and—sure enough—there were traces, stains on the lining of the pocket! "So I haven't completely lost my reason yet, so there is still reasoning and memory, since I caught it myself and figured it out!"—he thought with triumph, breathing deeply and joyfully with his whole chest—"it's simply feverish weakness, delirium for a minute"—and he tore out the whole lining from the left pocket of the trousers. At that moment a ray of sunlight illuminated his left boot: on the sock, which was sticking out of the boot, signs seemed to appear. He threw off the boot: "indeed signs! The whole tip of the sock is soaked with blood"; he must have carelessly stepped into that puddle then... "But what to do with this now? Where to put this sock, fringe, pocket?"

He gathered it all up in his hand and stood in the middle of the room. "Into the stove? But they'll search the stove first of all. Burn it? But what to burn it with? I don't even have matches. No, better to go out somewhere and throw it all away. Yes! Better to throw it away!"—he repeated, sitting down on the sofa again—"and right now, this very minute, without delay!..." But instead his head again inclined onto the pillow; again the unbearable chill froze him; again he pulled the overcoat over himself. And for a long time, several hours, he kept imagining in fits and starts that "I should go right now, without putting it off, go somewhere and throw everything away, to get it out of sight, quickly, quickly!" He stirred from the sofa several times, tried to get up, but could no longer do so. Finally a loud knock at the door woke him completely.

"Open up, are you alive or dead? Always sleeping!" Nastasya shouted, pounding on the door with her fist—"whole days long, like a dog, sleeping! A dog is what he is! Open up, will you. It's eleven o'clock."

"Maybe he's not home!"—a man's voice said.

"Bah! That's the janitor's voice... What does he want?"

He jumped up and sat on the sofa. His heart was pounding so hard it actually hurt.

"Then who locked it with the hook?"—Nastasya objected—"look at that, started locking it! Are they going to steal him or what? Open up, you blockhead, wake up!"

"What do they want? Why the janitor? Everything is known. Resist or open? To hell with it..."

He half rose, leaned forward and took off the hook.

His whole room was of such a size that one could take off the hook without getting up from the bed.

Sure enough: the janitor and Nastasya were standing there.

Nastasya somehow strangely looked him over. He looked at the janitor with a defiant and desperate air. The janitor silently held out to him a gray paper, folded in two and sealed with bottle sealing wax.

"A summons, from the office," he said, handing over the paper.

"What office?..."

"To the police, means they're calling you, to the office. Everyone knows what office."

"To the police!... Why?..."

"How should I know. They're asking for you, so go." He looked at him attentively, looked around and turned to leave.

"You've fallen completely ill?"—Nastasya remarked, not taking her eyes off him. The janitor also turned his head for a moment. "Been in a fever since yesterday," she added.

He did not answer and held the paper in his hands without unsealing it.

"Well don't get up," Nastasya continued, taking pity and seeing that he was lowering his legs from the sofa. "You're sick, so don't go: it won't burn. What's that in your hands?"

He looked: in his right hand he had the cut-off pieces of fringe, the sock, and scraps of the torn-out pocket. He had slept with them like that. Later, thinking about this, he remembered that even half-waking in fever, he had clutched all this tightly in his hand and fallen asleep again like that.

"Look what rags he's collected and sleeps with them, just like with treasure..." And Nastasya burst into her sickly-nervous laughter. Instantly he shoved everything under the overcoat and stared at her fixedly. Though he could hardly reason completely sensibly at that moment, he felt that one would not be treated this way when they come to arrest him. "But... the police?"

"Would you like some tea? Want some? I'll bring it; there's some left..."

"No... I'll go: I'll go right now," he muttered, getting to his feet.

"You won't even make it down the stairs."

"I'll go..."

"As you like."

She left after the janitor. He immediately rushed to the light to examine the sock and fringe: "There are stains, but not very noticeable; everything has gotten dirty, worn, and already faded. If one doesn't know beforehand—one won't notice anything. So Nastasya couldn't have noticed anything from a distance, thank God!" Then with trembling he unsealed the summons and began to read; he read for a long time and finally understood. It was an ordinary summons from the district to appear today, at half past nine, at the office of the district police superintendent.

"But when has this ever happened? I have no business of my own with the police! And why precisely today?"—he thought in agonizing perplexity—"Lord, let it be over quickly!" He was about to fall on his knees to pray, but even laughed at himself—not at the prayer, but at himself. He hastily began to dress. "If I perish, I perish, it's all the same! Put on the sock!"—it suddenly occurred to him—"it will get even more worn in the dust, and the traces will disappear." But as soon as he put it on, he immediately pulled it off with disgust and horror. He pulled it off, but, realizing that he had no other, took it and put it on again—and laughed again. "It's all conventional, all relative, all just forms," he thought fleetingly, with just one corner of his mind, while his whole body trembled—"after all, I did put it on! After all, I ended up putting it on!" The laughter, however, immediately gave way to despair. "No, it's beyond my strength..."—he thought. His legs were trembling. "From fear," he muttered to himself. His head was spinning and aching from fever. "This is a trick! They want to lure me with a trick and suddenly catch me in everything," he continued to himself, going out onto the staircase. "The bad thing is that I'm almost delirious... I might blurt out some stupidity..."

On the staircase he remembered that he was leaving all the things like that, in the wallpaper hole—"and here, perhaps, they'll deliberately search while I'm out," he remembered and stopped. But such despair and such, if one can say so, cynicism of ruin suddenly possessed him that he waved his hand and went on.

"If only it were over quickly!..."

On the street again the heat was unbearable; if only there had been a drop of rain all these days. Again dust, brick and lime, again the stench from the shops and taverns, again the drunkards every minute, Finnish peddlers and half-broken-down cabs. The sun flashed brightly into his eyes, so that it hurt to look and his head spun completely—the usual sensation of a feverish person suddenly going out into the street on a bright sunny day.

Coming to the turn into yesterday's street, he looked into it with agonizing anxiety, at that house... and immediately looked away.

"If they ask, perhaps I'll even tell," he thought, approaching the office.

The office was about a quarter of a verst from him. It had just moved to new quarters, in a new building, on the fourth floor. At the old quarters he had been once in passing, but very long ago. Entering under the gate, he saw on the right a staircase down which a peasant with a book in his hands was coming: "a janitor, then; so the office is here," and he began to climb up at random. He did not want to ask anyone about anything.

"I'll go in, fall on my knees and tell everything..." he thought, entering the fourth floor.

The staircase was narrow, steep and all in slops. All the kitchens of all the apartments on all four floors opened onto this staircase and stood open almost all day. Therefore there was terrible stuffiness. Up and down went janitors with books under their arms, messengers and various people of both sexes—visitors. The door to the office itself was also wide open. He went in and stopped in the anteroom. Some peasants were standing there waiting. Here too it was extremely stuffy and, in addition, nauseating with the smell of fresh paint on rancid linseed oil from newly painted rooms beating into one's nose. Having waited a little, he decided to move still further forward, into the next room. All the rooms were tiny and low. A terrible impatience pulled him further and further. No one noticed him. In the second room some clerks sat writing, dressed perhaps only a little better than he, altogether some strange-looking people. He turned to one of them.

"What do you want?"

He showed the summons from the office.

"You're a student?"—the man asked, glancing at the summons.

"Yes, a former student."

The clerk looked him over, however without any curiosity. He was some particularly disheveled person with a fixed idea in his gaze.

"You won't find out anything from this one, because it's all the same to him," thought Raskolnikov.

"Go there, to the chief clerk," said the clerk and pointed forward with his finger, showing the very last room.

He entered this room (the fourth in order), cramped and packed full with the public—people dressed somewhat more decently than in those rooms. Among the visitors were two ladies. One in mourning, poorly dressed, sat at a table opposite the chief clerk and was writing something under his dictation. The other lady, very stout and purplish-red, with spots, a conspicuous woman, and somehow very magnificently dressed, with a brooch on her bosom the size of a saucer, stood to one side and was waiting for something. Raskolnikov shoved his summons to the chief clerk. He glanced at it briefly, said: "wait" and continued to occupy himself with the mourning lady.

He breathed more freely. "Surely not that!" Little by little he began to take courage, he admonished himself with all his strength to take courage and recover himself.

"Some foolishness, some most trivial carelessness, and I can give myself away completely! Hm... it's a pity there's no air here," he added—"stuffy... My head is spinning even more... and my mind too..."

He felt a terrible disorder in his whole being. He was afraid himself of not being able to control himself. He tried to latch onto something and think about something, something completely extraneous, but this did not succeed at all. The chief clerk, however, interested him greatly: he kept wanting to guess something from his face, to figure him out. He was a very young man, about twenty-two, with a swarthy and mobile physiognomy that seemed older than its years, dressed fashionably and foppishly, with his hair parted at the back of his head, combed and pomaded, with many rings and signets on his white fingers cleaned with a brush, and gold chains on his waistcoat. He even said a word or two in French to a foreigner who was there, and very satisfactorily.

"Luiza Ivanovna, you should sit down," he said in passing to the magnificently dressed purplish-red lady, who kept standing as if not daring to sit down herself, though a chair was right nearby.

"Ich danke," she said and quietly, with a silken rustle, lowered herself onto the chair. Her light blue dress with white lace trim, like an air balloon, spread around the chair and occupied nearly half the room. There was a smell of perfume. But the lady evidently felt timid about occupying half the room and smelling so strongly of perfume, though she smiled both timidly and impudently at the same time, but with obvious anxiety.

The mourning lady finally finished and began to get up. Suddenly, with some noise, very dashingly and somehow peculiarly swaying his shoulders with each step, an officer entered, threw his cap with a cockade on the table and sat down in an armchair. The magnificent lady positively jumped from her place upon seeing him, and with some special rapture began to curtsy; but the officer paid not the slightest attention to her, and she no longer dared to sit down in his presence. This was a lieutenant, the assistant to the district police superintendent, with horizontally protruding reddish mustaches on both sides and with extremely fine facial features, expressing nothing special, however, except a certain impudence. He looked askance and partly with indignation at Raskolnikov: his costume was too wretched, and, despite all his humiliation, his bearing was still not in keeping with his costume; Raskolnikov, through carelessness, looked at him too directly and too long, so that he even took offense.

"What do you want?"—he shouted, probably surprised that such a ragamuffin did not think to efface himself before his thunderous gaze.

"I was summoned... by a summons..." Raskolnikov answered somehow.

"This is about the recovery of money from them, from the student," the chief clerk hastily interrupted, tearing himself away from his papers. "Here, sir!" and he tossed Raskolnikov a notebook, pointing out a place in it—"read!"

"Money? What money?"—thought Raskolnikov—"but... so it's definitely not that!" And he trembled with joy. He suddenly felt terribly, inexpressibly light. Everything flew from his shoulders.

"And at what hour were you told to come, my good sir?"—shouted the lieutenant, increasingly offended by who knows what—"you're told to come at nine, and now it's already past twelve!"

"I was brought it only a quarter of an hour ago," Raskolnikov answered loudly and over his shoulder, also suddenly and unexpectedly to himself getting angry and even finding some pleasure in it. "And it's enough that I came sick with fever."

"Don't you dare shout!"

"I'm not shouting, I'm speaking quite calmly, but it's you who are shouting at me; and I'm a student and I won't allow shouting at me."

The assistant flared up so much that at first he could not utter anything at all, and only some spray flew from his lips. He jumped up from his seat.

"Be si-i-i-lent! You're in an official place. Don't be i-i-insolent, sir!"

"And you're in an official place," cried Raskolnikov—"and besides shouting, you're smoking a cigarette, so you're disrespecting all of us." Having said this, Raskolnikov felt inexpressible delight.

The chief clerk looked at them with a smile. The hot-tempered lieutenant was visibly puzzled.

"That's not your business, sir!"—he finally shouted somehow unnaturally loudly—"but you just kindly give the response that is required of you. Show him, Alexander Grigoryevich. There are complaints against you! You don't pay your debts! Look what a fine falcon has flown in!"

But Raskolnikov was no longer listening and eagerly seized the paper, seeking the answer as quickly as possible. He read it once, twice, and did not understand.

"What is this?"—he asked the chief clerk.

"This is money being demanded from you on a promissory note, a recovery. You must either pay with all the costs, penalties and so forth, or give a written response when you can pay, and at the same time an obligation not to leave the capital until payment and not to sell or conceal your property. And the creditor is free to sell your property, and to proceed with you according to law."

"But I... don't owe anyone anything!"

"That's not our business. But here has come to us for recovery an overdue and legally protested promissory note for one hundred fifteen rubles, issued by you to the widow, collegiate assessor's wife Zarnitsyna, nine months ago, and passed from the widow Zarnitsyna by payment to the court councillor Chebarov, and therefore we invite you to respond."

"But she's my landlady!"

"So what if she's your landlady?"

The chief clerk looked at him with a condescending smile of pity, and at the same time with some triumph, as at a novice who is just beginning to come under fire: "What, they say, how are you feeling now?" But what, what did he care now about a promissory note, about a recovery! Was it worth any anxiety now, in turn, any attention even! He stood, read, listened, answered, even asked questions himself, but all mechanically. The triumph of self-preservation, salvation from the crushing danger—that was what filled his whole being at this moment, without foresight, without analysis, without future conjectures and solutions, without doubts and without questions. This was a moment of complete, immediate, purely animal joy. But at this very moment something like thunder and lightning occurred in the office. The lieutenant, still completely shaken by the disrespect, still all aflame and, evidently, wishing to support his injured pride, threw all his thunderbolts at the unfortunate "magnificent lady," who had been looking at him ever since he entered with a supremely stupid smile.

"And you, such-and-such and so-and-so,"—he suddenly shouted at the top of his voice (the mourning lady had already left)—"what happened at your place last night? Eh? Again shame and debauchery for the whole street. Again fighting and drunkenness. Do you dream of the madhouse! I've already told you, I've already warned you ten times that I won't let it go the eleventh time! And you again, again, you such-and-such so-and-so!"

The paper even fell from Raskolnikov's hands, and he stared wildly at the magnificent lady who was being so unceremoniously dealt with; but soon, however, he understood what it was about, and immediately this whole story even began to please him very much. He listened with pleasure, so much so that he wanted to laugh, laugh, laugh... All his nerves were jumping.

"Ilya Petrovich!"—the chief clerk began anxiously, but stopped to wait for the right moment, because the boiling lieutenant could not be restrained except by the arms, which he knew from his own experience.

As for the magnificent lady, at first she trembled from the thunder and lightning; but strange to say: the more numerous and stronger the curses became, the more amiable her appearance became, the more charming became her smile, directed at the terrible lieutenant. She minced in place and curtsied incessantly, impatiently waiting until she would finally be allowed to put in her word, and she waited.

"There was no noise and no fighting at my place, mister captain," she suddenly rattled off, as if scattering peas, with a strong German accent, though speaking Russian fluently—"and no, no scandal, but they came drunk, and I'll tell everything, mister captain, and I'm not to blame... I have a respectable house, mister captain, and respectable treatment, mister captain, and I always, always never wanted any scandal myself. But they came completely drunk and then again asked for three bottles, and then one lifted his legs and began to play the piano with his foot, and this is very not good in a respectable house, and he ganz broke the piano, and this is completely, completely no manners at all, and I said so. And he took a bottle and began to push everyone from behind with the bottle. And then I quickly called the janitor and Karl came, and he took Karl and hit him in the eye, and Henriette also hit in the eye, and me he hit on the cheek five times. And this is so indelicate in a respectable house, mister captain, and I screamed. And he opened the window onto the canal and stood in the window squealing like a little pig; and this is a shame. And how can one squeal in the window onto the street, like a little pig; and this is a shame. Phooey-phooey-phooey! And Karl pulled him from behind by the frock coat from the window and then, it's true, mister captain, he tore sein rock. And then he screamed that man must pay him fifteen silver rubles fine. And I myself, mister captain, paid him five silver rubles for sein rock. And this is not a respectable guest, mister captain, and he made all kinds of scandals! I will, he says, publish a big satire about you, because I can write about you in all the newspapers everything."

"So he's a writer?"

"Yes, mister captain, and what kind of respectable guest is this, mister captain, when in a respectable house..."

"All right, all right, all right! Enough! I've told you, I've told you, I've told you, haven't I..."

"Ilya Petrovich!"—the chief clerk again said significantly. The lieutenant quickly glanced at him; the chief clerk slightly nodded his head.

"...So here's my last word to you, most esteemed Luiza Ivanovna, and it's for the last time," continued the lieutenant. "If even one more time there occurs a scandal in your respectable house, I'll put you yourself in the clink, as they say in high style. Do you hear? So a writer, an author, took five silver rubles for his coat-tail in a 'respectable house'? Look at them, these writers!"—and he cast a contemptuous glance at Raskolnikov. "The day before yesterday in a tavern there was also a story: had dinner and doesn't want to pay; 'I'll,' he says, 'describe you in satire for this.' On a steamboat too, last week, another one called the family of a state councillor, his wife and daughter, the vilest words. And the day before yesterday they threw one out of a confectioner's. That's what they're like, these authors, writers, students, town criers... phooey! Now you go! I'll come by to see you myself... then watch out! Do you hear?"

Luiza Ivanovna began to curtsy hastily in all directions with hurried amiability and, curtsying, backed her way to the door; but in the doorway she backed into a distinguished officer with an open, fresh face and magnificent thick blond side-whiskers. This was Nikodim Fomich himself, the district police superintendent. Luiza Ivanovna hastily curtsied nearly to the floor and with quick little steps, bouncing, flew out of the office.

"Again thunder, again thunder and lightning, whirlwind, hurricane!"—Nikodim Fomich addressed Ilya Petrovich amiably and amicably—"again you've upset your heart, again you've boiled over! I heard it from the staircase."

"Well what!"—said Ilya Petrovich with noble nonchalance (and not even "what" but something like: "We-e-ll wha-a-t!"), crossing to another table with some papers and picturesquely jerking his shoulders with each step, where there's a step, there's a shoulder—"here, sir, if you please: the gentleman author, that is student, former that is, doesn't pay his debts, has issued notes, won't vacate the apartment, continuous complaints are made against him, and he was pleased to take offense that I lit a cigarette in their presence! He himself b-b-behaves badly, and here, sir, if you please to look at him: here he is in his most attractive form now, sir!"

"Poverty is no vice, my friend, but you know! Known fact, gunpowder, couldn't bear an offense. You probably offended him somehow, and he couldn't restrain himself," continued Nikodim Fomich, turning amiably to Raskolnikov—"but that was wrong of you: the mo-o-ost no-o-o-ble person, I tell you, but gunpowder, gunpowder! Flared up, boiled over, burned out—and nothing! And the result is only a heart of gold! In the regiment they nicknamed him: 'Lieutenant Gunpowder'..."

"And what a r-r-regiment it was!"—exclaimed Ilya Petrovich, quite pleased at being so pleasantly tickled, but still sulking.

Raskolnikov suddenly wanted to say something extraordinarily pleasant to all of them.

"Excuse me, captain," he began quite casually, suddenly addressing Nikodim Fomich—"put yourself in my position... I'm ready even to ask their pardon if I have been remiss in any way on my part. I'm a poor and sick student, crushed" (he said it like that: "crushed") "by poverty. I'm a former student, because now I cannot support myself, but I'll receive money... I have a mother and sister in — province. They'll send it to me, and I'll... pay. My landlady is a good woman, but she was so angry that I lost my lessons and haven't paid for the fourth month, that she doesn't even send me dinner... And I don't understand at all what this note is! Now she's demanding from me on this promissory note, so what will I pay her, you judge for yourselves!..."

"But this is not our business..."—the chief clerk remarked again.

"Allow me, allow me, I completely agree with you, but allow me also to explain," Raskolnikov picked up again, addressing not the chief clerk but entirely Nikodim Fomich, while trying with all his might to address Ilya Petrovich as well, though the latter stubbornly pretended to be rummaging in papers and contemptuously paying him no attention—"allow me also for my part to explain, that I have been living with her for about three years now, since my arrival from the provinces and formerly... formerly... well, why shouldn't I in turn admit, from the very beginning I gave a promise that I would marry her daughter, a verbal promise, completely free... This was a girl... though I even liked her... though I was not in love... in a word, youth, that is I want to say that my landlady gave me a lot of credit then and I led a somewhat such life... I was very frivolous..."

"Such intimate details are not required of you at all, my good sir, and there's no time," Ilya Petrovich rudely and triumphantly interrupted, but Raskolnikov fervently stopped him, though it suddenly became extremely difficult for him to speak.

"But allow me, allow me to tell everything... how it was and... in turn... though this is unnecessary, I agree with you, to tell—but a year ago this girl died of typhus, and I remained a tenant, as I was, and when my landlady moved to her present apartment, she told me... and told me in a friendly way... that she had complete confidence in me and everything... but wouldn't I like to give her this promissory note for one hundred fifteen rubles, all that she counted as my debt. Allow me, sir: she specifically said that as soon as I give her this paper, she will give me credit again as much as I want and that never, never, in turn—these were her own words—will she use this paper, until I pay it myself... And now, when I've lost my lessons and have nothing to eat, she brings it for recovery... What can I say now?"

"All these sentimental details, my good sir, don't concern us," Ilya Petrovich rudely cut him off—"you must give a response and an obligation, and as for whether you were pleased to be in love and all these tragic places, that's completely none of our business."

"Well you're... harsh..."—muttered Nikodim Fomich, seating himself at the table and also beginning to sign papers. He felt somehow ashamed.

"Write then," the chief clerk said to Raskolnikov.

"What to write?"—he asked somehow particularly rudely.

"I'll dictate to you."

It seemed to Raskolnikov that the chief clerk had become more careless and contemptuous with him after his confession, but, strange to say—he suddenly became himself completely indifferent to anyone's opinion, and this change occurred somehow in one instant, in one minute. If he had wanted to think a little, he would, of course, have been surprised that he could talk to them like that a minute ago, and even thrust his feelings on them! And where did these feelings come from? On the contrary, now, if the room had suddenly filled not with police officers but with his closest friends, even then, it seems, he would not have found a single human word for them, his heart had suddenly become so empty. A gloomy sensation of agonizing, infinite solitude and estrangement suddenly consciously declared itself to his soul. It was not the baseness of his heartfelt outpourings before Ilya Petrovich, not the baseness and the lieutenant's triumph over him that had suddenly so turned his heart. Oh, what did he care now about his own baseness, about all these ambitions, lieutenants, German women, recoveries, offices and so on and so forth! If he had been sentenced even to be burned at that moment, he would not have stirred, would hardly even have listened to the sentence attentively. Something was happening to him completely unfamiliar to him, new, sudden and never experienced before. Not that he understood, but he clearly sensed, with all the force of sensation, that he could no longer address these people, in the district police office, not only with sentimental expansiveness, as just now, but even with anything at all, and if they had all been his own brothers and sisters, and not district police lieutenants, then even then he would have had no reason to address them and even in no case of life; he had never until this minute experienced such a strange and terrible sensation. And what was most agonizing—it was more a sensation than consciousness, than understanding; an immediate sensation, the most agonizing sensation of all the sensations he had experienced in his life up to now.

The chief clerk began to dictate to him the form of the usual response in such a case, that is: cannot pay, promise then and there (sometime), will not leave the city, will neither sell nor donate property, and so on.

"But you can't write, the pen is falling from your hands," the chief clerk remarked, looking at Raskolnikov with curiosity. "Are you ill?"

"Yes... my head is spinning... go on!"

"That's all; sign."

The chief clerk took the paper and occupied himself with others.

Raskolnikov gave back the pen, but instead of getting up and leaving, he put both elbows on the table and pressed his head with his hands. It was as if a nail were being driven into his crown. A strange thought suddenly came to him: to get up now, go up to Nikodim Fomich and tell him everything about yesterday, everything down to the last detail, then go together with them to the apartment and show them the things, in the corner, in the hole. The impulse was so strong that he already rose from his place to carry it out. "Shouldn't I think about it for at least a minute?" flashed through his head. "No, better without thinking, and off my shoulders!" But suddenly he stopped as if rooted: Nikodim Fomich was speaking heatedly with Ilya Petrovich, and words reached him:

"It can't be, they'll both be released! First of all, everything contradicts; judge for yourself: why would they call the janitor if it was their doing? To inform on themselves? Or for cunning? No, that would be too cunning! And finally, student Pestryakov was seen at the very gates by both janitors and a tradesman's wife at the very moment when he was entering: he was walking with three friends and separated from them at the very gates and asked about the apartments from the janitors, still with his friends. Now, would such a one ask about apartments if he was going with such an intention? As for Koch, so he, before going to the old woman's, sat downstairs at the silversmith's for half an hour and left for the old woman's upstairs at exactly a quarter to eight. Now consider..."

"But excuse me, how did such a contradiction come out: they themselves assert that they knocked and the door was locked, and three minutes later, when they came with the janitor, it turns out that the door is unlocked?"

"That's the whole point: the murderer definitely sat there and locked himself with the bolt; and they definitely would have caught him there if Koch hadn't been stupid and gone off himself for the janitor. And he precisely in this interval managed to go down the stairs and slip past them somehow. Koch crosses himself with both hands: 'If I'd stayed there, he says, he would have jumped out and killed me with the axe.' He wants to serve a Russian thanksgiving service, heh-heh!..."

"And no one saw the murderer?"

"How could they see him? The building is Noah's ark," remarked the chief clerk, listening from his place.

"The case is clear, the case is clear!"—Nikodim Fomich repeated heatedly.

"No, the case is very unclear," Ilya Petrovich insisted.

Raskolnikov picked up his hat and went toward the door, but he did not reach the door...

When he came to, he saw that he was sitting in a chair, that someone was supporting him on the right, that on the left stood another person with a yellow glass filled with yellow water, and that Nikodim Fomich was standing before him and looking at him intently; he got up from the chair.

"What is it, are you ill?"—Nikodim Fomich asked rather sharply.

"Even when he was signing, he could barely hold the pen," remarked the chief clerk, seating himself in his place and taking up papers again.

"And how long have you been ill?"—shouted Ilya Petrovich from his place, also sorting through papers. He, of course, had also examined the sick man when he was in the faint, but immediately moved away when he came to.

"Since yesterday..."—Raskolnikov muttered in reply.

"And did you go out yesterday?"

"I did."

"While ill?"

"While ill."

"At what hour?"

"At eight o'clock in the evening."

"And where, may I ask?"

"Down the street."

"Short and clear."

Raskolnikov answered sharply, abruptly, pale as a handkerchief and not lowering his black inflamed eyes before the gaze of Ilya Petrovich.

"He can barely stand on his feet, and you..."—Nikodim Fomich remarked.

"No-o ma-a-tter!"—Ilya Petrovich said somehow particularly. Nikodim Fomich was about to add something, but, having glanced at the chief clerk, who was also looking at him very intently, he fell silent. Everyone suddenly fell silent. It was strange.

"Well, sir, very good, sir," concluded Ilya Petrovich—"we're not detaining you."

Raskolnikov went out. He could still hear, after his exit, how an animated conversation began, in which Nikodim Fomich's questioning voice stood out most clearly... On the street he came to completely.

"A search, a search, right now a search!"—he repeated to himself, hurrying to get home—"the scoundrels! they suspect!" His former fear again seized him entirely, from head to foot.