CHAPTER V

<h2><a id="link2HCH0031"/>
  CHAPTER V
</h2>
<p>
  Lebeziatnikov looked perturbed.
</p>
<p>
  “I’ve come to you, Sofya Semyonovna,” he began. “Excuse me... I thought I
  should find you,” he said, addressing Raskolnikov suddenly, “that is, I
  didn’t mean anything... of that sort... But I just thought... Katerina
  Ivanovna has gone out of her mind,” he blurted out suddenly, turning from
  Raskolnikov to Sonia.
</p>
<p>
  Sonia screamed.
</p>
<p>
  “At least it seems so. But... we don’t know what to do, you see! She came
  back—she seems to have been turned out somewhere, perhaps beaten....
  So it seems at least,... She had run to your father’s former chief, she
  didn’t find him at home: he was dining at some other general’s.... Only
  fancy, she rushed off there, to the other general’s, and, imagine, she was
  so persistent that she managed to get the chief to see her, had him
  fetched out from dinner, it seems. You can imagine what happened. She was
  turned out, of course; but, according to her own story, she abused him and
  threw something at him. One may well believe it.... How it is she wasn’t
  taken up, I can’t understand! Now she is telling everyone, including
  Amalia Ivanovna; but it’s difficult to understand her, she is screaming
  and flinging herself about.... Oh yes, she shouts that since everyone has
  abandoned her, she will take the children and go into the street with a
  barrel-organ, and the children will sing and dance, and she too, and
  collect money, and will go every day under the general’s window... ‘to let
  everyone see well-born children, whose father was an official, begging in
  the street.’ She keeps beating the children and they are all crying. She
  is teaching Lida to sing ‘My Village,’ the boy to dance, Polenka the same.
  She is tearing up all the clothes, and making them little caps like
  actors; she means to carry a tin basin and make it tinkle, instead of
  music.... She won’t listen to anything.... Imagine the state of things!
  It’s beyond anything!”
 </p>
<p>
  Lebeziatnikov would have gone on, but Sonia, who had heard him almost
  breathless, snatched up her cloak and hat, and ran out of the room,
  putting on her things as she went. Raskolnikov followed her and
  Lebeziatnikov came after him.
</p>
<p>
  “She has certainly gone mad!” he said to Raskolnikov, as they went out
  into the street. “I didn’t want to frighten Sofya Semyonovna, so I said
  ‘it seemed like it,’ but there isn’t a doubt of it. They say that in
  consumption the tubercles sometimes occur in the brain; it’s a pity I know
  nothing of medicine. I did try to persuade her, but she wouldn’t listen.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Did you talk to her about the tubercles?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Not precisely of the tubercles. Besides, she wouldn’t have understood!
  But what I say is, that if you convince a person logically that he has
  nothing to cry about, he’ll stop crying. That’s clear. Is it your
  conviction that he won’t?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Life would be too easy if it were so,” answered Raskolnikov.
</p>
<p>
  “Excuse me, excuse me; of course it would be rather difficult for Katerina
  Ivanovna to understand, but do you know that in Paris they have been
  conducting serious experiments as to the possibility of curing the insane,
  simply by logical argument? One professor there, a scientific man of
  standing, lately dead, believed in the possibility of such treatment. His
  idea was that there’s nothing really wrong with the physical organism of
  the insane, and that insanity is, so to say, a logical mistake, an error
  of judgment, an incorrect view of things. He gradually showed the madman
  his error and, would you believe it, they say he was successful? But as he
  made use of douches too, how far success was due to that treatment remains
  uncertain.... So it seems at least.”
 </p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov had long ceased to listen. Reaching the house where he lived,
  he nodded to Lebeziatnikov and went in at the gate. Lebeziatnikov woke up
  with a start, looked about him and hurried on.
</p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov went into his little room and stood still in the middle of it.
  Why had he come back here? He looked at the yellow and tattered paper, at
  the dust, at his sofa.... From the yard came a loud continuous knocking;
  someone seemed to be hammering... He went to the window, rose on tiptoe
  and looked out into the yard for a long time with an air of absorbed
  attention. But the yard was empty and he could not see who was hammering.
  In the house on the left he saw some open windows; on the window-sills
  were pots of sickly-looking geraniums. Linen was hung out of the
  windows... He knew it all by heart. He turned away and sat down on the
  sofa.
</p>
<p>
  Never, never had he felt himself so fearfully alone!
</p>
<p>
  Yes, he felt once more that he would perhaps come to hate Sonia, now that
  he had made her more miserable.
</p>
<p>
  “Why had he gone to her to beg for her tears? What need had he to poison
  her life? Oh, the meanness of it!”
 </p>
<p>
  “I will remain alone,” he said resolutely, “and she shall not come to the
  prison!”
 </p>
<p>
  Five minutes later he raised his head with a strange smile. That was a
  strange thought.
</p>
<p>
  “Perhaps it really would be better in Siberia,” he thought suddenly.
</p>
<p>
  He could not have said how long he sat there with vague thoughts surging
  through his mind. All at once the door opened and Dounia came in. At first
  she stood still and looked at him from the doorway, just as he had done at
  Sonia; then she came in and sat down in the same place as yesterday, on
  the chair facing him. He looked silently and almost vacantly at her.
</p>
<p>
  “Don’t be angry, brother; I’ve only come for one minute,” said Dounia.
</p>
<p>
  Her face looked thoughtful but not stern. Her eyes were bright and soft.
  He saw that she too had come to him with love.
</p>
<p>
  “Brother, now I know all, <i>all</i>. Dmitri Prokofitch has explained and
  told me everything. They are worrying and persecuting you through a stupid
  and contemptible suspicion.... Dmitri Prokofitch told me that there is no
  danger, and that you are wrong in looking upon it with such horror. I
  don’t think so, and I fully understand how indignant you must be, and that
  that indignation may have a permanent effect on you. That’s what I am
  afraid of. As for your cutting yourself off from us, I don’t judge you, I
  don’t venture to judge you, and forgive me for having blamed you for it. I
  feel that I too, if I had so great a trouble, should keep away from
  everyone. I shall tell mother nothing <i>of this</i>, but I shall talk
  about you continually and shall tell her from you that you will come very
  soon. Don’t worry about her; <i>I</i> will set her mind at rest; but don’t
  you try her too much—come once at least; remember that she is your
  mother. And now I have come simply to say” (Dounia began to get up) “that
  if you should need me or should need... all my life or anything... call
  me, and I’ll come. Good-bye!”
 </p>
<p>
  She turned abruptly and went towards the door.
</p>
<p>
  “Dounia!” Raskolnikov stopped her and went towards her. “That Razumihin,
  Dmitri Prokofitch, is a very good fellow.”
 </p>
<p>
  Dounia flushed slightly.
</p>
<p>
  “Well?” she asked, waiting a moment.
</p>
<p>
  “He is competent, hardworking, honest and capable of real love....
  Good-bye, Dounia.”
 </p>
<p>
  Dounia flushed crimson, then suddenly she took alarm.
</p>
<p>
  “But what does it mean, brother? Are we really parting for ever that
  you... give me such a parting message?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Never mind.... Good-bye.”
 </p>
<p>
  He turned away, and walked to the window. She stood a moment, looked at
  him uneasily, and went out troubled.
</p>
<p>
  No, he was not cold to her. There was an instant (the very last one) when
  he had longed to take her in his arms and <i>say good-bye</i> to her, and
  even <i>to tell</i> her, but he had not dared even to touch her hand.
</p>
<p>
  “Afterwards she may shudder when she remembers that I embraced her, and
  will feel that I stole her kiss.”
 </p>
<p>
  “And would <i>she</i> stand that test?” he went on a few minutes later to
  himself. “No, she wouldn’t; girls like that can’t stand things! They never
  do.”
 </p>
<p>
  And he thought of Sonia.
</p>
<p>
  There was a breath of fresh air from the window. The daylight was fading.
  He took up his cap and went out.
</p>
<p>
  He could not, of course, and would not consider how ill he was. But all
  this continual anxiety and agony of mind could not but affect him. And if
  he were not lying in high fever it was perhaps just because this continual
  inner strain helped to keep him on his legs and in possession of his
  faculties. But this artificial excitement could not last long.
</p>
<p>
  He wandered aimlessly. The sun was setting. A special form of misery had
  begun to oppress him of late. There was nothing poignant, nothing acute
  about it; but there was a feeling of permanence, of eternity about it; it
  brought a foretaste of hopeless years of this cold leaden misery, a
  foretaste of an eternity “on a square yard of space.” Towards evening this
  sensation usually began to weigh on him more heavily.
</p>
<p>
  “With this idiotic, purely physical weakness, depending on the sunset or
  something, one can’t help doing something stupid! You’ll go to Dounia, as
  well as to Sonia,” he muttered bitterly.
</p>
<p>
  He heard his name called. He looked round. Lebeziatnikov rushed up to him.
</p>
<p>
  “Only fancy, I’ve been to your room looking for you. Only fancy, she’s
  carried out her plan, and taken away the children. Sofya Semyonovna and I
  have had a job to find them. She is rapping on a frying-pan and making the
  children dance. The children are crying. They keep stopping at the
  cross-roads and in front of shops; there’s a crowd of fools running after
  them. Come along!”
 </p>
<p>
  “And Sonia?” Raskolnikov asked anxiously, hurrying after Lebeziatnikov.
</p>
<p>
  “Simply frantic. That is, it’s not Sofya Semyonovna’s frantic, but
  Katerina Ivanovna, though Sofya Semyonova’s frantic too. But Katerina
  Ivanovna is absolutely frantic. I tell you she is quite mad. They’ll be
  taken to the police. You can fancy what an effect that will have.... They
  are on the canal bank, near the bridge now, not far from Sofya
  Semyonovna’s, quite close.”
 </p>
<p>
  On the canal bank near the bridge and not two houses away from the one
  where Sonia lodged, there was a crowd of people, consisting principally of
  gutter children. The hoarse broken voice of Katerina Ivanovna could be
  heard from the bridge, and it certainly was a strange spectacle likely to
  attract a street crowd. Katerina Ivanovna in her old dress with the green
  shawl, wearing a torn straw hat, crushed in a hideous way on one side, was
  really frantic. She was exhausted and breathless. Her wasted consumptive
  face looked more suffering than ever, and indeed out of doors in the
  sunshine a consumptive always looks worse than at home. But her excitement
  did not flag, and every moment her irritation grew more intense. She
  rushed at the children, shouted at them, coaxed them, told them before the
  crowd how to dance and what to sing, began explaining to them why it was
  necessary, and driven to desperation by their not understanding, beat
  them.... Then she would make a rush at the crowd; if she noticed any
  decently dressed person stopping to look, she immediately appealed to him
  to see what these children “from a genteel, one may say aristocratic,
  house” had been brought to. If she heard laughter or jeering in the crowd,
  she would rush at once at the scoffers and begin squabbling with them.
  Some people laughed, others shook their heads, but everyone felt curious
  at the sight of the madwoman with the frightened children. The frying-pan
  of which Lebeziatnikov had spoken was not there, at least Raskolnikov did
  not see it. But instead of rapping on the pan, Katerina Ivanovna began
  clapping her wasted hands, when she made Lida and Kolya dance and Polenka
  sing. She too joined in the singing, but broke down at the second note
  with a fearful cough, which made her curse in despair and even shed tears.
  What made her most furious was the weeping and terror of Kolya and Lida.
  Some effort had been made to dress the children up as street singers are
  dressed. The boy had on a turban made of something red and white to look
  like a Turk. There had been no costume for Lida; she simply had a red
  knitted cap, or rather a night cap that had belonged to Marmeladov,
  decorated with a broken piece of white ostrich feather, which had been
  Katerina Ivanovna’s grandmother’s and had been preserved as a family
  possession. Polenka was in her everyday dress; she looked in timid
  perplexity at her mother, and kept at her side, hiding her tears. She
  dimly realised her mother’s condition, and looked uneasily about her. She
  was terribly frightened of the street and the crowd. Sonia followed
  Katerina Ivanovna, weeping and beseeching her to return home, but Katerina
  Ivanovna was not to be persuaded.
</p>
<p>
  “Leave off, Sonia, leave off,” she shouted, speaking fast, panting and
  coughing. “You don’t know what you ask; you are like a child! I’ve told
  you before that I am not coming back to that drunken German. Let everyone,
  let all Petersburg see the children begging in the streets, though their
  father was an honourable man who served all his life in truth and
  fidelity, and one may say died in the service.” (Katerina Ivanovna had by
  now invented this fantastic story and thoroughly believed it.) “Let that
  wretch of a general see it! And you are silly, Sonia: what have we to eat?
  Tell me that. We have worried you enough, I won’t go on so! Ah, Rodion
  Romanovitch, is that you?” she cried, seeing Raskolnikov and rushing up to
  him. “Explain to this silly girl, please, that nothing better could be
  done! Even organ-grinders earn their living, and everyone will see at once
  that we are different, that we are an honourable and bereaved family
  reduced to beggary. And that general will lose his post, you’ll see! We
  shall perform under his windows every day, and if the Tsar drives by, I’ll
  fall on my knees, put the children before me, show them to him, and say
  ‘Defend us father.’ He is the father of the fatherless, he is merciful,
  he’ll protect us, you’ll see, and that wretch of a general.... Lida, <i>tenez
  vous droite</i>! Kolya, you’ll dance again. Why are you whimpering?
  Whimpering again! What are you afraid of, stupid? Goodness, what am I to
  do with them, Rodion Romanovitch? If you only knew how stupid they are!
  What’s one to do with such children?”
 </p>
<p>
  And she, almost crying herself—which did not stop her uninterrupted,
  rapid flow of talk—pointed to the crying children. Raskolnikov tried
  to persuade her to go home, and even said, hoping to work on her vanity,
  that it was unseemly for her to be wandering about the streets like an
  organ-grinder, as she was intending to become the principal of a
  boarding-school.
</p>
<p>
  “A boarding-school, ha-ha-ha! A castle in the air,” cried Katerina
  Ivanovna, her laugh ending in a cough. “No, Rodion Romanovitch, that dream
  is over! All have forsaken us!... And that general.... You know, Rodion
  Romanovitch, I threw an inkpot at him—it happened to be standing in
  the waiting-room by the paper where you sign your name. I wrote my name,
  threw it at him and ran away. Oh, the scoundrels, the scoundrels! But
  enough of them, now I’ll provide for the children myself, I won’t bow down
  to anybody! She has had to bear enough for us!” she pointed to Sonia.
  “Polenka, how much have you got? Show me! What, only two farthings! Oh,
  the mean wretches! They give us nothing, only run after us, putting their
  tongues out. There, what is that blockhead laughing at?” (She pointed to a
  man in the crowd.) “It’s all because Kolya here is so stupid; I have such
  a bother with him. What do you want, Polenka? Tell me in French, <i>parlez-moi
  français</i>. Why, I’ve taught you, you know some phrases. Else how are
  you to show that you are of good family, well brought-up children, and not
  at all like other organ-grinders? We aren’t going to have a Punch and Judy
  show in the street, but to sing a genteel song.... Ah, yes,... What are we
  to sing? You keep putting me out, but we... you see, we are standing here,
  Rodion Romanovitch, to find something to sing and get money, something
  Kolya can dance to.... For, as you can fancy, our performance is all
  impromptu.... We must talk it over and rehearse it all thoroughly, and
  then we shall go to Nevsky, where there are far more people of good
  society, and we shall be noticed at once. Lida knows ‘My Village’ only,
  nothing but ‘My Village,’ and everyone sings that. We must sing something
  far more genteel.... Well, have you thought of anything, Polenka? If only
  you’d help your mother! My memory’s quite gone, or I should have thought
  of something. We really can’t sing ‘An Hussar.’ Ah, let us sing in French,
  ‘Cinq sous,’ I have taught it you, I have taught it you. And as it is in
  French, people will see at once that you are children of good family, and
  that will be much more touching.... You might sing ‘Marlborough s’en
  va-t-en guerre,’ for that’s quite a child’s song and is sung as a lullaby
  in all the aristocratic houses.
</p>
<p>
  “<i>Marlborough s’en va-t-en guerre Ne sait quand reviendra</i>...” she
  began singing. “But no, better sing ‘Cinq sous.’ Now, Kolya, your hands on
  your hips, make haste, and you, Lida, keep turning the other way, and
  Polenka and I will sing and clap our hands!
</p>
<p>
  “<i>Cinq sous, cinq sous Pour monter notre menage</i>.”
 </p>
<p>
  (Cough-cough-cough!) “Set your dress straight, Polenka, it’s slipped down
  on your shoulders,” she observed, panting from coughing. “Now it’s
  particularly necessary to behave nicely and genteelly, that all may see
  that you are well-born children. I said at the time that the bodice should
  be cut longer, and made of two widths. It was your fault, Sonia, with your
  advice to make it shorter, and now you see the child is quite deformed by
  it.... Why, you’re all crying again! What’s the matter, stupids? Come,
  Kolya, begin. Make haste, make haste! Oh, what an unbearable child!
</p>
<p>
  “Cinq sous, cinq sous.
</p>
<p>
  “A policeman again! What do you want?”
 </p>
<p>
  A policeman was indeed forcing his way through the crowd. But at that
  moment a gentleman in civilian uniform and an overcoat—a
  solid-looking official of about fifty with a decoration on his neck (which
  delighted Katerina Ivanovna and had its effect on the policeman)—approached
  and without a word handed her a green three-rouble note. His face wore a
  look of genuine sympathy. Katerina Ivanovna took it and gave him a polite,
  even ceremonious, bow.
</p>
<p>
  “I thank you, honoured sir,” she began loftily. “The causes that have
  induced us (take the money, Polenka: you see there are generous and
  honourable people who are ready to help a poor gentlewoman in distress).
  You see, honoured sir, these orphans of good family—I might even say
  of aristocratic connections—and that wretch of a general sat eating
  grouse... and stamped at my disturbing him. ‘Your excellency,’ I said,
  ‘protect the orphans, for you knew my late husband, Semyon Zaharovitch,
  and on the very day of his death the basest of scoundrels slandered his
  only daughter.’... That policeman again! Protect me,” she cried to the
  official. “Why is that policeman edging up to me? We have only just run
  away from one of them. What do you want, fool?”
 </p>
<p>
  “It’s forbidden in the streets. You mustn’t make a disturbance.”
 </p>
<p>
  “It’s you’re making a disturbance. It’s just the same as if I were
  grinding an organ. What business is it of yours?”
 </p>
<p>
  “You have to get a licence for an organ, and you haven’t got one, and in
  that way you collect a crowd. Where do you lodge?”
 </p>
<p>
  “What, a license?” wailed Katerina Ivanovna. “I buried my husband to-day.
  What need of a license?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Calm yourself, madam, calm yourself,” began the official. “Come along; I
  will escort you.... This is no place for you in the crowd. You are ill.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Honoured sir, honoured sir, you don’t know,” screamed Katerina Ivanovna.
  “We are going to the Nevsky.... Sonia, Sonia! Where is she? She is crying
  too! What’s the matter with you all? Kolya, Lida, where are you going?”
   she cried suddenly in alarm. “Oh, silly children! Kolya, Lida, where are
  they off to?...”
 </p>
<p>
  Kolya and Lida, scared out of their wits by the crowd, and their mother’s
  mad pranks, suddenly seized each other by the hand, and ran off at the
  sight of the policeman who wanted to take them away somewhere. Weeping and
  wailing, poor Katerina Ivanovna ran after them. She was a piteous and
  unseemly spectacle, as she ran, weeping and panting for breath. Sonia and
  Polenka rushed after them.
</p>
<p>
  “Bring them back, bring them back, Sonia! Oh stupid, ungrateful
  children!... Polenka! catch them.... It’s for your sakes I...”
 </p>
<p>
  She stumbled as she ran and fell down.
</p>
<p>
  “She’s cut herself, she’s bleeding! Oh, dear!” cried Sonia, bending over
  her.
</p>
<p>
  All ran up and crowded around. Raskolnikov and Lebeziatnikov were the
  first at her side, the official too hastened up, and behind him the
  policeman who muttered, “Bother!” with a gesture of impatience, feeling
  that the job was going to be a troublesome one.
</p>
<p>
  “Pass on! Pass on!” he said to the crowd that pressed forward.
</p>
<p>
  “She’s dying,” someone shouted.
</p>
<p>
  “She’s gone out of her mind,” said another.
</p>
<p>
  “Lord have mercy upon us,” said a woman, crossing herself. “Have they
  caught the little girl and the boy? They’re being brought back, the elder
  one’s got them.... Ah, the naughty imps!”
 </p>
<p>
  When they examined Katerina Ivanovna carefully, they saw that she had not
  cut herself against a stone, as Sonia thought, but that the blood that
  stained the pavement red was from her chest.
</p>
<p>
  “I’ve seen that before,” muttered the official to Raskolnikov and
  Lebeziatnikov; “that’s consumption; the blood flows and chokes the
  patient. I saw the same thing with a relative of my own not long ago...
  nearly a pint of blood, all in a minute.... What’s to be done though? She
  is dying.”
 </p>
<p>
  “This way, this way, to my room!” Sonia implored. “I live here!... See,
  that house, the second from here.... Come to me, make haste,” she turned
  from one to the other. “Send for the doctor! Oh, dear!”
 </p>
<p>
  Thanks to the official’s efforts, this plan was adopted, the policeman
  even helping to carry Katerina Ivanovna. She was carried to Sonia’s room,
  almost unconscious, and laid on the bed. The blood was still flowing, but
  she seemed to be coming to herself. Raskolnikov, Lebeziatnikov, and the
  official accompanied Sonia into the room and were followed by the
  policeman, who first drove back the crowd which followed to the very door.
  Polenka came in holding Kolya and Lida, who were trembling and weeping.
  Several persons came in too from the Kapernaumovs’ room; the landlord, a
  lame one-eyed man of strange appearance with whiskers and hair that stood
  up like a brush, his wife, a woman with an everlastingly scared
  expression, and several open-mouthed children with wonder-struck faces.
  Among these, Svidrigaïlov suddenly made his appearance. Raskolnikov looked
  at him with surprise, not understanding where he had come from and not
  having noticed him in the crowd. A doctor and priest wore spoken of. The
  official whispered to Raskolnikov that he thought it was too late now for
  the doctor, but he ordered him to be sent for. Kapernaumov ran himself.
</p>
<p>
  Meanwhile Katerina Ivanovna had regained her breath. The bleeding ceased
  for a time. She looked with sick but intent and penetrating eyes at Sonia,
  who stood pale and trembling, wiping the sweat from her brow with a
  handkerchief. At last she asked to be raised. They sat her up on the bed,
  supporting her on both sides.
</p>
<p>
  “Where are the children?” she said in a faint voice. “You’ve brought them,
  Polenka? Oh the sillies! Why did you run away.... Och!”
 </p>
<p>
  Once more her parched lips were covered with blood. She moved her eyes,
  looking about her.
</p>
<p>
  “So that’s how you live, Sonia! Never once have I been in your room.”
 </p>
<p>
  She looked at her with a face of suffering.
</p>
<p>
  “We have been your ruin, Sonia. Polenka, Lida, Kolya, come here! Well,
  here they are, Sonia, take them all! I hand them over to you, I’ve had
  enough! The ball is over.” (Cough!) “Lay me down, let me die in peace.”
 </p>
<p>
  They laid her back on the pillow.
</p>
<p>
  “What, the priest? I don’t want him. You haven’t got a rouble to spare. I
  have no sins. God must forgive me without that. He knows how I have
  suffered.... And if He won’t forgive me, I don’t care!”
 </p>
<p>
  She sank more and more into uneasy delirium. At times she shuddered,
  turned her eyes from side to side, recognised everyone for a minute, but
  at once sank into delirium again. Her breathing was hoarse and difficult,
  there was a sort of rattle in her throat.
</p>
<p>
  “I said to him, your excellency,” she ejaculated, gasping after each word.
  “That Amalia Ludwigovna, ah! Lida, Kolya, hands on your hips, make haste!
  <i>Glissez, glissez! pas de basque!</i> Tap with your heels, be a graceful
  child!
</p>
<p>
  “<i>Du hast Diamanten und Perlen</i>
</p>
<p>
  “What next? That’s the thing to sing.
</p>
<p>
  “<i>Du hast die schönsten Augen Mädchen, was willst du mehr?</i>
</p>
<p>
  “What an idea! <i>Was willst du mehr?</i> What things the fool invents!
  Ah, yes!
</p>
<p>
  “In the heat of midday in the vale of Dagestan.
</p>
<p>
  “Ah, how I loved it! I loved that song to distraction, Polenka! Your
  father, you know, used to sing it when we were engaged.... Oh those days!
  Oh that’s the thing for us to sing! How does it go? I’ve forgotten. Remind
  me! How was it?”
 </p>
<p>
  She was violently excited and tried to sit up. At last, in a horribly
  hoarse, broken voice, she began, shrieking and gasping at every word, with
  a look of growing terror.
</p>
<p>
  “In the heat of midday!... in the vale!... of Dagestan!... With lead in my
  breast!...”
 </p>
<p>
  “Your excellency!” she wailed suddenly with a heart-rending scream and a
  flood of tears, “protect the orphans! You have been their father’s
  guest... one may say aristocratic....” She started, regaining
  consciousness, and gazed at all with a sort of terror, but at once
  recognised Sonia.
</p>
<p>
  “Sonia, Sonia!” she articulated softly and caressingly, as though
  surprised to find her there. “Sonia darling, are you here, too?”
 </p>
<p>
  They lifted her up again.
</p>
<p>
  “Enough! It’s over! Farewell, poor thing! I am done for! I am broken!” she
  cried with vindictive despair, and her head fell heavily back on the
  pillow.
</p>
<p>
  She sank into unconsciousness again, but this time it did not last long.
  Her pale, yellow, wasted face dropped back, her mouth fell open, her leg
  moved convulsively, she gave a deep, deep sigh and died.
</p>
<p>
  Sonia fell upon her, flung her arms about her, and remained motionless
  with her head pressed to the dead woman’s wasted bosom. Polenka threw
  herself at her mother’s feet, kissing them and weeping violently. Though
  Kolya and Lida did not understand what had happened, they had a feeling
  that it was something terrible; they put their hands on each other’s
  little shoulders, stared straight at one another and both at once opened
  their mouths and began screaming. They were both still in their fancy
  dress; one in a turban, the other in the cap with the ostrich feather.
</p>
<p>
  And how did “the certificate of merit” come to be on the bed beside
  Katerina Ivanovna? It lay there by the pillow; Raskolnikov saw it.
</p>
<p>
  He walked away to the window. Lebeziatnikov skipped up to him.
</p>
<p>
  “She is dead,” he said.
</p>
<p>
  “Rodion Romanovitch, I must have two words with you,” said Svidrigaïlov,
  coming up to them.
</p>
<p>
  Lebeziatnikov at once made room for him and delicately withdrew.
  Svidrigaïlov drew Raskolnikov further away.
</p>
<p>
  “I will undertake all the arrangements, the funeral and that. You know
  it’s a question of money and, as I told you, I have plenty to spare. I
  will put those two little ones and Polenka into some good orphan asylum,
  and I will settle fifteen hundred roubles to be paid to each on coming of
  age, so that Sofya Semyonovna need have no anxiety about them. And I will
  pull her out of the mud too, for she is a good girl, isn’t she? So tell
  Avdotya Romanovna that that is how I am spending her ten thousand.”
 </p>
<p>
  “What is your motive for such benevolence?” asked Raskolnikov.
</p>
<p>
  “Ah! you sceptical person!” laughed Svidrigaïlov. “I told you I had no
  need of that money. Won’t you admit that it’s simply done from humanity?
  She wasn’t ‘a louse,’ you know” (he pointed to the corner where the dead
  woman lay), “was she, like some old pawnbroker woman? Come, you’ll agree,
  is Luzhin to go on living, and doing wicked things or is she to die? And
  if I didn’t help them, Polenka would go the same way.”
 </p>
<p>
  He said this with an air of a sort of gay winking slyness, keeping his
  eyes fixed on Raskolnikov, who turned white and cold, hearing his own
  phrases, spoken to Sonia. He quickly stepped back and looked wildly at
  Svidrigaïlov.
</p>
<p>
  “How do you know?” he whispered, hardly able to breathe.
</p>
<p>
  “Why, I lodge here at Madame Resslich’s, the other side of the wall. Here
  is Kapernaumov, and there lives Madame Resslich, an old and devoted friend
  of mine. I am a neighbour.”
 </p>
<p>
  “You?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Yes,” continued Svidrigaïlov, shaking with laughter. “I assure you on my
  honour, dear Rodion Romanovitch, that you have interested me enormously. I
  told you we should become friends, I foretold it. Well, here we have. And
  you will see what an accommodating person I am. You’ll see that you can
  get on with me!”
 </p>