EPILOGUE

<h2><a id="link2H_EPIL"/>
  EPILOGUE
</h2>
<h3 id="pgepubid00050">
  I
</h3>
<p>
  Siberia. On the banks of a broad solitary river stands a town, one of the
  administrative centres of Russia; in the town there is a fortress, in the
  fortress there is a prison. In the prison the second-class convict Rodion
  Raskolnikov has been confined for nine months. Almost a year and a half
  has passed since his crime.
</p>
<p>
  There had been little difficulty about his trial. The criminal adhered
  exactly, firmly, and clearly to his statement. He did not confuse nor
  misrepresent the facts, nor soften them in his own interest, nor omit the
  smallest detail. He explained every incident of the murder, the secret of
  <i>the pledge</i> (the piece of wood with a strip of metal) which was
  found in the murdered woman’s hand. He described minutely how he had taken
  her keys, what they were like, as well as the chest and its contents; he
  explained the mystery of Lizaveta’s murder; described how Koch and, after
  him, the student knocked, and repeated all they had said to one another;
  how he afterwards had run downstairs and heard Nikolay and Dmitri
  shouting; how he had hidden in the empty flat and afterwards gone home. He
  ended by indicating the stone in the yard off the Voznesensky Prospect
  under which the purse and the trinkets were found. The whole thing, in
  fact, was perfectly clear. The lawyers and the judges were very much
  struck, among other things, by the fact that he had hidden the trinkets
  and the purse under a stone, without making use of them, and that, what
  was more, he did not now remember what the trinkets were like, or even how
  many there were. The fact that he had never opened the purse and did not
  even know how much was in it seemed incredible. There turned out to be in
  the purse three hundred and seventeen roubles and sixty copecks. From
  being so long under the stone, some of the most valuable notes lying
  uppermost had suffered from the damp. They were a long while trying to
  discover why the accused man should tell a lie about this, when about
  everything else he had made a truthful and straightforward confession.
  Finally some of the lawyers more versed in psychology admitted that it was
  possible he had really not looked into the purse, and so didn’t know what
  was in it when he hid it under the stone. But they immediately drew the
  deduction that the crime could only have been committed through temporary
  mental derangement, through homicidal mania, without object or the pursuit
  of gain. This fell in with the most recent fashionable theory of temporary
  insanity, so often applied in our days in criminal cases. Moreover
  Raskolnikov’s hypochondriacal condition was proved by many witnesses, by
  Dr. Zossimov, his former fellow students, his landlady and her servant.
  All this pointed strongly to the conclusion that Raskolnikov was not quite
  like an ordinary murderer and robber, but that there was another element
  in the case.
</p>
<p>
  To the intense annoyance of those who maintained this opinion, the
  criminal scarcely attempted to defend himself. To the decisive question as
  to what motive impelled him to the murder and the robbery, he answered
  very clearly with the coarsest frankness that the cause was his miserable
  position, his poverty and helplessness, and his desire to provide for his
  first steps in life by the help of the three thousand roubles he had
  reckoned on finding. He had been led to the murder through his shallow and
  cowardly nature, exasperated moreover by privation and failure. To the
  question what led him to confess, he answered that it was his heartfelt
  repentance. All this was almost coarse....
</p>
<p>
  The sentence however was more merciful than could have been expected,
  perhaps partly because the criminal had not tried to justify himself, but
  had rather shown a desire to exaggerate his guilt. All the strange and
  peculiar circumstances of the crime were taken into consideration. There
  could be no doubt of the abnormal and poverty-stricken condition of the
  criminal at the time. The fact that he had made no use of what he had
  stolen was put down partly to the effect of remorse, partly to his
  abnormal mental condition at the time of the crime. Incidentally the
  murder of Lizaveta served indeed to confirm the last hypothesis: a man
  commits two murders and forgets that the door is open! Finally, the
  confession, at the very moment when the case was hopelessly muddled by the
  false evidence given by Nikolay through melancholy and fanaticism, and
  when, moreover, there were no proofs against the real criminal, no
  suspicions even (Porfiry Petrovitch fully kept his word)—all this
  did much to soften the sentence. Other circumstances, too, in the
  prisoner’s favour came out quite unexpectedly. Razumihin somehow
  discovered and proved that while Raskolnikov was at the university he had
  helped a poor consumptive fellow student and had spent his last penny on
  supporting him for six months, and when this student died, leaving a
  decrepit old father whom he had maintained almost from his thirteenth
  year, Raskolnikov had got the old man into a hospital and paid for his
  funeral when he died. Raskolnikov’s landlady bore witness, too, that when
  they had lived in another house at Five Corners, Raskolnikov had rescued
  two little children from a house on fire and was burnt in doing so. This
  was investigated and fairly well confirmed by many witnesses. These facts
  made an impression in his favour.
</p>
<p>
  And in the end the criminal was, in consideration of extenuating
  circumstances, condemned to penal servitude in the second class for a term
  of eight years only.
</p>
<p>
  At the very beginning of the trial Raskolnikov’s mother fell ill. Dounia
  and Razumihin found it possible to get her out of Petersburg during the
  trial. Razumihin chose a town on the railway not far from Petersburg, so
  as to be able to follow every step of the trial and at the same time to
  see Avdotya Romanovna as often as possible. Pulcheria Alexandrovna’s
  illness was a strange nervous one and was accompanied by a partial
  derangement of her intellect.
</p>
<p>
  When Dounia returned from her last interview with her brother, she had
  found her mother already ill, in feverish delirium. That evening Razumihin
  and she agreed what answers they must make to her mother’s questions about
  Raskolnikov and made up a complete story for her mother’s benefit of his
  having to go away to a distant part of Russia on a business commission,
  which would bring him in the end money and reputation.
</p>
<p>
  But they were struck by the fact that Pulcheria Alexandrovna never asked
  them anything on the subject, neither then nor thereafter. On the
  contrary, she had her own version of her son’s sudden departure; she told
  them with tears how he had come to say good-bye to her, hinting that she
  alone knew many mysterious and important facts, and that Rodya had many
  very powerful enemies, so that it was necessary for him to be in hiding.
  As for his future career, she had no doubt that it would be brilliant when
  certain sinister influences could be removed. She assured Razumihin that
  her son would be one day a great statesman, that his article and brilliant
  literary talent proved it. This article she was continually reading, she
  even read it aloud, almost took it to bed with her, but scarcely asked
  where Rodya was, though the subject was obviously avoided by the others,
  which might have been enough to awaken her suspicions.
</p>
<p>
  They began to be frightened at last at Pulcheria Alexandrovna’s strange
  silence on certain subjects. She did not, for instance, complain of
  getting no letters from him, though in previous years she had only lived
  on the hope of letters from her beloved Rodya. This was the cause of great
  uneasiness to Dounia; the idea occurred to her that her mother suspected
  that there was something terrible in her son’s fate and was afraid to ask,
  for fear of hearing something still more awful. In any case, Dounia saw
  clearly that her mother was not in full possession of her faculties.
</p>
<p>
  It happened once or twice, however, that Pulcheria Alexandrovna gave such
  a turn to the conversation that it was impossible to answer her without
  mentioning where Rodya was, and on receiving unsatisfactory and suspicious
  answers she became at once gloomy and silent, and this mood lasted for a
  long time. Dounia saw at last that it was hard to deceive her and came to
  the conclusion that it was better to be absolutely silent on certain
  points; but it became more and more evident that the poor mother suspected
  something terrible. Dounia remembered her brother’s telling her that her
  mother had overheard her talking in her sleep on the night after her
  interview with Svidrigaïlov and before the fatal day of the confession:
  had not she made out something from that? Sometimes days and even weeks of
  gloomy silence and tears would be succeeded by a period of hysterical
  animation, and the invalid would begin to talk almost incessantly of her
  son, of her hopes of his future.... Her fancies were sometimes very
  strange. They humoured her, pretended to agree with her (she saw perhaps
  that they were pretending), but she still went on talking.
</p>
<p>
  Five months after Raskolnikov’s confession, he was sentenced. Razumihin
  and Sonia saw him in prison as often as it was possible. At last the
  moment of separation came. Dounia swore to her brother that the separation
  should not be for ever, Razumihin did the same. Razumihin, in his youthful
  ardour, had firmly resolved to lay the foundations at least of a secure
  livelihood during the next three or four years, and saving up a certain
  sum, to emigrate to Siberia, a country rich in every natural resource and
  in need of workers, active men and capital. There they would settle in the
  town where Rodya was and all together would begin a new life. They all
  wept at parting.
</p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov had been very dreamy for a few days before. He asked a great
  deal about his mother and was constantly anxious about her. He worried so
  much about her that it alarmed Dounia. When he heard about his mother’s
  illness he became very gloomy. With Sonia he was particularly reserved all
  the time. With the help of the money left to her by Svidrigaïlov, Sonia
  had long ago made her preparations to follow the party of convicts in
  which he was despatched to Siberia. Not a word passed between Raskolnikov
  and her on the subject, but both knew it would be so. At the final
  leave-taking he smiled strangely at his sister’s and Razumihin’s fervent
  anticipations of their happy future together when he should come out of
  prison. He predicted that their mother’s illness would soon have a fatal
  ending. Sonia and he at last set off.
</p>
<p>
  Two months later Dounia was married to Razumihin. It was a quiet and
  sorrowful wedding; Porfiry Petrovitch and Zossimov were invited however.
  During all this period Razumihin wore an air of resolute determination.
  Dounia put implicit faith in his carrying out his plans and indeed she
  could not but believe in him. He displayed a rare strength of will. Among
  other things he began attending university lectures again in order to take
  his degree. They were continually making plans for the future; both
  counted on settling in Siberia within five years at least. Till then they
  rested their hopes on Sonia.
</p>
<p>
  Pulcheria Alexandrovna was delighted to give her blessing to Dounia’s
  marriage with Razumihin; but after the marriage she became even more
  melancholy and anxious. To give her pleasure Razumihin told her how
  Raskolnikov had looked after the poor student and his decrepit father and
  how a year ago he had been burnt and injured in rescuing two little
  children from a fire. These two pieces of news excited Pulcheria
  Alexandrovna’s disordered imagination almost to ecstasy. She was
  continually talking about them, even entering into conversation with
  strangers in the street, though Dounia always accompanied her. In public
  conveyances and shops, wherever she could capture a listener, she would
  begin the discourse about her son, his article, how he had helped the
  student, how he had been burnt at the fire, and so on! Dounia did not know
  how to restrain her. Apart from the danger of her morbid excitement, there
  was the risk of someone’s recalling Raskolnikov’s name and speaking of the
  recent trial. Pulcheria Alexandrovna found out the address of the mother
  of the two children her son had saved and insisted on going to see her.
</p>
<p>
  At last her restlessness reached an extreme point. She would sometimes
  begin to cry suddenly and was often ill and feverishly delirious. One
  morning she declared that by her reckoning Rodya ought soon to be home,
  that she remembered when he said good-bye to her he said that they must
  expect him back in nine months. She began to prepare for his coming, began
  to do up her room for him, to clean the furniture, to wash and put up new
  hangings and so on. Dounia was anxious, but said nothing and helped her to
  arrange the room. After a fatiguing day spent in continual fancies, in
  joyful day-dreams and tears, Pulcheria Alexandrovna was taken ill in the
  night and by morning she was feverish and delirious. It was brain fever.
  She died within a fortnight. In her delirium she dropped words which
  showed that she knew a great deal more about her son’s terrible fate than
  they had supposed.
</p>
<p>
  For a long time Raskolnikov did not know of his mother’s death, though a
  regular correspondence had been maintained from the time he reached
  Siberia. It was carried on by means of Sonia, who wrote every month to the
  Razumihins and received an answer with unfailing regularity. At first they
  found Sonia’s letters dry and unsatisfactory, but later on they came to
  the conclusion that the letters could not be better, for from these
  letters they received a complete picture of their unfortunate brother’s
  life. Sonia’s letters were full of the most matter-of-fact detail, the
  simplest and clearest description of all Raskolnikov’s surroundings as a
  convict. There was no word of her own hopes, no conjecture as to the
  future, no description of her feelings. Instead of any attempt to
  interpret his state of mind and inner life, she gave the simple facts—that
  is, his own words, an exact account of his health, what he asked for at
  their interviews, what commission he gave her and so on. All these facts
  she gave with extraordinary minuteness. The picture of their unhappy
  brother stood out at last with great clearness and precision. There could
  be no mistake, because nothing was given but facts.
</p>
<p>
  But Dounia and her husband could get little comfort out of the news,
  especially at first. Sonia wrote that he was constantly sullen and not
  ready to talk, that he scarcely seemed interested in the news she gave him
  from their letters, that he sometimes asked after his mother and that
  when, seeing that he had guessed the truth, she told him at last of her
  death, she was surprised to find that he did not seem greatly affected by
  it, not externally at any rate. She told them that, although he seemed so
  wrapped up in himself and, as it were, shut himself off from everyone—he
  took a very direct and simple view of his new life; that he understood his
  position, expected nothing better for the time, had no ill-founded hopes
  (as is so common in his position) and scarcely seemed surprised at
  anything in his surroundings, so unlike anything he had known before. She
  wrote that his health was satisfactory; he did his work without shirking
  or seeking to do more; he was almost indifferent about food, but except on
  Sundays and holidays the food was so bad that at last he had been glad to
  accept some money from her, Sonia, to have his own tea every day. He
  begged her not to trouble about anything else, declaring that all this
  fuss about him only annoyed him. Sonia wrote further that in prison he
  shared the same room with the rest, that she had not seen the inside of
  their barracks, but concluded that they were crowded, miserable and
  unhealthy; that he slept on a plank bed with a rug under him and was
  unwilling to make any other arrangement. But that he lived so poorly and
  roughly, not from any plan or design, but simply from inattention and
  indifference.
</p>
<p>
  Sonia wrote simply that he had at first shown no interest in her visits,
  had almost been vexed with her indeed for coming, unwilling to talk and
  rude to her. But that in the end these visits had become a habit and
  almost a necessity for him, so that he was positively distressed when she
  was ill for some days and could not visit him. She used to see him on
  holidays at the prison gates or in the guard-room, to which he was brought
  for a few minutes to see her. On working days she would go to see him at
  work either at the workshops or at the brick kilns, or at the sheds on the
  banks of the Irtish.
</p>
<p>
  About herself, Sonia wrote that she had succeeded in making some
  acquaintances in the town, that she did sewing, and, as there was scarcely
  a dressmaker in the town, she was looked upon as an indispensable person
  in many houses. But she did not mention that the authorities were, through
  her, interested in Raskolnikov; that his task was lightened and so on.
</p>
<p>
  At last the news came (Dounia had indeed noticed signs of alarm and
  uneasiness in the preceding letters) that he held aloof from everyone,
  that his fellow prisoners did not like him, that he kept silent for days
  at a time and was becoming very pale. In the last letter Sonia wrote that
  he had been taken very seriously ill and was in the convict ward of the
  hospital.
</p>
<h3 id="pgepubid00051">
  II
</h3>
<p>
  He was ill a long time. But it was not the horrors of prison life, not the
  hard labour, the bad food, the shaven head, or the patched clothes that
  crushed him. What did he care for all those trials and hardships! he was
  even glad of the hard work. Physically exhausted, he could at least reckon
  on a few hours of quiet sleep. And what was the food to him—the thin
  cabbage soup with beetles floating in it? In the past as a student he had
  often not had even that. His clothes were warm and suited to his manner of
  life. He did not even feel the fetters. Was he ashamed of his shaven head
  and parti-coloured coat? Before whom? Before Sonia? Sonia was afraid of
  him, how could he be ashamed before her? And yet he was ashamed even
  before Sonia, whom he tortured because of it with his contemptuous rough
  manner. But it was not his shaven head and his fetters he was ashamed of:
  his pride had been stung to the quick. It was wounded pride that made him
  ill. Oh, how happy he would have been if he could have blamed himself! He
  could have borne anything then, even shame and disgrace. But he judged
  himself severely, and his exasperated conscience found no particularly
  terrible fault in his past, except a simple <i>blunder</i> which might
  happen to anyone. He was ashamed just because he, Raskolnikov, had so
  hopelessly, stupidly come to grief through some decree of blind fate, and
  must humble himself and submit to “the idiocy” of a sentence, if he were
  anyhow to be at peace.
</p>
<p>
  Vague and objectless anxiety in the present, and in the future a continual
  sacrifice leading to nothing—that was all that lay before him. And
  what comfort was it to him that at the end of eight years he would only be
  thirty-two and able to begin a new life! What had he to live for? What had
  he to look forward to? Why should he strive? To live in order to exist?
  Why, he had been ready a thousand times before to give up existence for
  the sake of an idea, for a hope, even for a fancy. Mere existence had
  always been too little for him; he had always wanted more. Perhaps it was
  just because of the strength of his desires that he had thought himself a
  man to whom more was permissible than to others.
</p>
<p>
  And if only fate would have sent him repentance—burning repentance
  that would have torn his heart and robbed him of sleep, that repentance,
  the awful agony of which brings visions of hanging or drowning! Oh, he
  would have been glad of it! Tears and agonies would at least have been
  life. But he did not repent of his crime.
</p>
<p>
  At least he might have found relief in raging at his stupidity, as he had
  raged at the grotesque blunders that had brought him to prison. But now in
  prison, <i>in freedom</i>, he thought over and criticised all his actions
  again and by no means found them so blundering and so grotesque as they
  had seemed at the fatal time.
</p>
<p>
  “In what way,” he asked himself, “was my theory stupider than others that
  have swarmed and clashed from the beginning of the world? One has only to
  look at the thing quite independently, broadly, and uninfluenced by
  commonplace ideas, and my idea will by no means seem so... strange. Oh,
  sceptics and halfpenny philosophers, why do you halt half-way!
</p>
<p>
  “Why does my action strike them as so horrible?” he said to himself. “Is
  it because it was a crime? What is meant by crime? My conscience is at
  rest. Of course, it was a legal crime, of course, the letter of the law
  was broken and blood was shed. Well, punish me for the letter of the
  law... and that’s enough. Of course, in that case many of the benefactors
  of mankind who snatched power for themselves instead of inheriting it
  ought to have been punished at their first steps. But those men succeeded
  and so <i>they were right</i>, and I didn’t, and so I had no right to have
  taken that step.”
 </p>
<p>
  It was only in that that he recognised his criminality, only in the fact
  that he had been unsuccessful and had confessed it.
</p>
<p>
  He suffered too from the question: why had he not killed himself? Why had
  he stood looking at the river and preferred to confess? Was the desire to
  live so strong and was it so hard to overcome it? Had not Svidrigaïlov
  overcome it, although he was afraid of death?
</p>
<p>
  In misery he asked himself this question, and could not understand that,
  at the very time he had been standing looking into the river, he had
  perhaps been dimly conscious of the fundamental falsity in himself and his
  convictions. He didn’t understand that that consciousness might be the
  promise of a future crisis, of a new view of life and of his future
  resurrection.
</p>
<p>
  He preferred to attribute it to the dead weight of instinct which he could
  not step over, again through weakness and meanness. He looked at his
  fellow prisoners and was amazed to see how they all loved life and prized
  it. It seemed to him that they loved and valued life more in prison than
  in freedom. What terrible agonies and privations some of them, the tramps
  for instance, had endured! Could they care so much for a ray of sunshine,
  for the primeval forest, the cold spring hidden away in some unseen spot,
  which the tramp had marked three years before, and longed to see again, as
  he might to see his sweetheart, dreaming of the green grass round it and
  the bird singing in the bush? As he went on he saw still more inexplicable
  examples.
</p>
<p>
  In prison, of course, there was a great deal he did not see and did not
  want to see; he lived as it were with downcast eyes. It was loathsome and
  unbearable for him to look. But in the end there was much that surprised
  him and he began, as it were involuntarily, to notice much that he had not
  suspected before. What surprised him most of all was the terrible
  impossible gulf that lay between him and all the rest. They seemed to be a
  different species, and he looked at them and they at him with distrust and
  hostility. He felt and knew the reasons of his isolation, but he would
  never have admitted till then that those reasons were so deep and strong.
  There were some Polish exiles, political prisoners, among them. They
  simply looked down upon all the rest as ignorant churls; but Raskolnikov
  could not look upon them like that. He saw that these ignorant men were in
  many respects far wiser than the Poles. There were some Russians who were
  just as contemptuous, a former officer and two seminarists. Raskolnikov
  saw their mistake as clearly. He was disliked and avoided by everyone;
  they even began to hate him at last—why, he could not tell. Men who
  had been far more guilty despised and laughed at his crime.
</p>
<p>
  “You’re a gentleman,” they used to say. “You shouldn’t hack about with an
  axe; that’s not a gentleman’s work.”
 </p>
<p>
  The second week in Lent, his turn came to take the sacrament with his
  gang. He went to church and prayed with the others. A quarrel broke out
  one day, he did not know how. All fell on him at once in a fury.
</p>
<p>
  “You’re an infidel! You don’t believe in God,” they shouted. “You ought to
  be killed.”
 </p>
<p>
  He had never talked to them about God nor his belief, but they wanted to
  kill him as an infidel. He said nothing. One of the prisoners rushed at
  him in a perfect frenzy. Raskolnikov awaited him calmly and silently; his
  eyebrows did not quiver, his face did not flinch. The guard succeeded in
  intervening between him and his assailant, or there would have been
  bloodshed.
</p>
<p>
  There was another question he could not decide: why were they all so fond
  of Sonia? She did not try to win their favour; she rarely met them,
  sometimes only she came to see him at work for a moment. And yet everybody
  knew her, they knew that she had come out to follow <i>him</i>, knew how
  and where she lived. She never gave them money, did them no particular
  services. Only once at Christmas she sent them all presents of pies and
  rolls. But by degrees closer relations sprang up between them and Sonia.
  She would write and post letters for them to their relations. Relations of
  the prisoners who visited the town, at their instructions, left with Sonia
  presents and money for them. Their wives and sweethearts knew her and used
  to visit her. And when she visited Raskolnikov at work, or met a party of
  the prisoners on the road, they all took off their hats to her. “Little
  mother Sofya Semyonovna, you are our dear, good little mother,” coarse
  branded criminals said to that frail little creature. She would smile and
  bow to them and everyone was delighted when she smiled. They even admired
  her gait and turned round to watch her walking; they admired her too for
  being so little, and, in fact, did not know what to admire her most for.
  They even came to her for help in their illnesses.
</p>
<p>
  He was in the hospital from the middle of Lent till after Easter. When he
  was better, he remembered the dreams he had had while he was feverish and
  delirious. He dreamt that the whole world was condemned to a terrible new
  strange plague that had come to Europe from the depths of Asia. All were
  to be destroyed except a very few chosen. Some new sorts of microbes were
  attacking the bodies of men, but these microbes were endowed with
  intelligence and will. Men attacked by them became at once mad and
  furious. But never had men considered themselves so intellectual and so
  completely in possession of the truth as these sufferers, never had they
  considered their decisions, their scientific conclusions, their moral
  convictions so infallible. Whole villages, whole towns and peoples went
  mad from the infection. All were excited and did not understand one
  another. Each thought that he alone had the truth and was wretched looking
  at the others, beat himself on the breast, wept, and wrung his hands. They
  did not know how to judge and could not agree what to consider evil and
  what good; they did not know whom to blame, whom to justify. Men killed
  each other in a sort of senseless spite. They gathered together in armies
  against one another, but even on the march the armies would begin
  attacking each other, the ranks would be broken and the soldiers would
  fall on each other, stabbing and cutting, biting and devouring each other.
  The alarm bell was ringing all day long in the towns; men rushed together,
  but why they were summoned and who was summoning them no one knew. The
  most ordinary trades were abandoned, because everyone proposed his own
  ideas, his own improvements, and they could not agree. The land too was
  abandoned. Men met in groups, agreed on something, swore to keep together,
  but at once began on something quite different from what they had
  proposed. They accused one another, fought and killed each other. There
  were conflagrations and famine. All men and all things were involved in
  destruction. The plague spread and moved further and further. Only a few
  men could be saved in the whole world. They were a pure chosen people,
  destined to found a new race and a new life, to renew and purify the
  earth, but no one had seen these men, no one had heard their words and
  their voices.
</p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov was worried that this senseless dream haunted his memory so
  miserably, the impression of this feverish delirium persisted so long. The
  second week after Easter had come. There were warm bright spring days; in
  the prison ward the grating windows under which the sentinel paced were
  opened. Sonia had only been able to visit him twice during his illness;
  each time she had to obtain permission, and it was difficult. But she
  often used to come to the hospital yard, especially in the evening,
  sometimes only to stand a minute and look up at the windows of the ward.
</p>
<p>
  One evening, when he was almost well again, Raskolnikov fell asleep. On
  waking up he chanced to go to the window, and at once saw Sonia in the
  distance at the hospital gate. She seemed to be waiting for someone.
  Something stabbed him to the heart at that minute. He shuddered and moved
  away from the window. Next day Sonia did not come, nor the day after; he
  noticed that he was expecting her uneasily. At last he was discharged. On
  reaching the prison he learnt from the convicts that Sofya Semyonovna was
  lying ill at home and was unable to go out.
</p>
<p>
  He was very uneasy and sent to inquire after her; he soon learnt that her
  illness was not dangerous. Hearing that he was anxious about her, Sonia
  sent him a pencilled note, telling him that she was much better, that she
  had a slight cold and that she would soon, very soon come and see him at
  his work. His heart throbbed painfully as he read it.
</p>
<p>
  Again it was a warm bright day. Early in the morning, at six o’clock, he
  went off to work on the river bank, where they used to pound alabaster and
  where there was a kiln for baking it in a shed. There were only three of
  them sent. One of the convicts went with the guard to the fortress to
  fetch a tool; the other began getting the wood ready and laying it in the
  kiln. Raskolnikov came out of the shed on to the river bank, sat down on a
  heap of logs by the shed and began gazing at the wide deserted river. From
  the high bank a broad landscape opened before him, the sound of singing
  floated faintly audible from the other bank. In the vast steppe, bathed in
  sunshine, he could just see, like black specks, the nomads’ tents. There
  there was freedom, there other men were living, utterly unlike those here;
  there time itself seemed to stand still, as though the age of Abraham and
  his flocks had not passed. Raskolnikov sat gazing, his thoughts passed
  into day-dreams, into contemplation; he thought of nothing, but a vague
  restlessness excited and troubled him. Suddenly he found Sonia beside him;
  she had come up noiselessly and sat down at his side. It was still quite
  early; the morning chill was still keen. She wore her poor old burnous and
  the green shawl; her face still showed signs of illness, it was thinner
  and paler. She gave him a joyful smile of welcome, but held out her hand
  with her usual timidity. She was always timid of holding out her hand to
  him and sometimes did not offer it at all, as though afraid he would repel
  it. He always took her hand as though with repugnance, always seemed vexed
  to meet her and was sometimes obstinately silent throughout her visit.
  Sometimes she trembled before him and went away deeply grieved. But now
  their hands did not part. He stole a rapid glance at her and dropped his
  eyes on the ground without speaking. They were alone, no one had seen
  them. The guard had turned away for the time.
</p>
<p>
  How it happened he did not know. But all at once something seemed to seize
  him and fling him at her feet. He wept and threw his arms round her knees.
  For the first instant she was terribly frightened and she turned pale. She
  jumped up and looked at him trembling. But at the same moment she
  understood, and a light of infinite happiness came into her eyes. She knew
  and had no doubt that he loved her beyond everything and that at last the
  moment had come....
</p>
<p>
  They wanted to speak, but could not; tears stood in their eyes. They were
  both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces were bright with the dawn of
  a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life. They were renewed by
  love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the
  other.
</p>
<p>
  They resolved to wait and be patient. They had another seven years to
  wait, and what terrible suffering and what infinite happiness before them!
  But he had risen again and he knew it and felt it in all his being, while
  she—she only lived in his life.
</p>
<p>
  On the evening of the same day, when the barracks were locked, Raskolnikov
  lay on his plank bed and thought of her. He had even fancied that day that
  all the convicts who had been his enemies looked at him differently; he
  had even entered into talk with them and they answered him in a friendly
  way. He remembered that now, and thought it was bound to be so. Wasn’t
  everything now bound to be changed?
</p>
<p>
  He thought of her. He remembered how continually he had tormented her and
  wounded her heart. He remembered her pale and thin little face. But these
  recollections scarcely troubled him now; he knew with what infinite love
  he would now repay all her sufferings. And what were all, <i>all</i> the
  agonies of the past! Everything, even his crime, his sentence and
  imprisonment, seemed to him now in the first rush of feeling an external,
  strange fact with which he had no concern. But he could not think for long
  together of anything that evening, and he could not have analysed anything
  consciously; he was simply feeling. Life had stepped into the place of
  theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind.
</p>
<p>
  Under his pillow lay the New Testament. He took it up mechanically. The
  book belonged to Sonia; it was the one from which she had read the raising
  of Lazarus to him. At first he was afraid that she would worry him about
  religion, would talk about the gospel and pester him with books. But to
  his great surprise she had not once approached the subject and had not
  even offered him the Testament. He had asked her for it himself not long
  before his illness and she brought him the book without a word. Till now
  he had not opened it.
</p>
<p>
  He did not open it now, but one thought passed through his mind: “Can her
  convictions not be mine now? Her feelings, her aspirations at least....”
 </p>
<p>
  She too had been greatly agitated that day, and at night she was taken ill
  again. But she was so happy—and so unexpectedly happy—that she
  was almost frightened of her happiness. Seven years, <i>only</i> seven
  years! At the beginning of their happiness at some moments they were both
  ready to look on those seven years as though they were seven days. He did
  not know that the new life would not be given him for nothing, that he
  would have to pay dearly for it, that it would cost him great striving,
  great suffering.
</p>
<p>
  But that is the beginning of a new story—the story of the gradual
  renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing
  from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life.
  That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended.
</p>