PART IV

<h2><a id="link2H_PART4"/>
  PART IV
</h2>

<h2><a id="link2HCH0021"/>
  CHAPTER I
</h2>
<p>
  “Can this be still a dream?” Raskolnikov thought once more.
</p>
<p>
  He looked carefully and suspiciously at the unexpected visitor.
</p>
<p>
  “Svidrigaïlov! What nonsense! It can’t be!” he said at last aloud in
  bewilderment.
</p>
<p>
  His visitor did not seem at all surprised at this exclamation.
</p>
<p>
  “I’ve come to you for two reasons. In the first place, I wanted to make
  your personal acquaintance, as I have already heard a great deal about you
  that is interesting and flattering; secondly, I cherish the hope that you
  may not refuse to assist me in a matter directly concerning the welfare of
  your sister, Avdotya Romanovna. For without your support she might not let
  me come near her now, for she is prejudiced against me, but with your
  assistance I reckon on...”
 </p>
<p>
  “You reckon wrongly,” interrupted Raskolnikov.
</p>
<p>
  “They only arrived yesterday, may I ask you?”
 </p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov made no reply.
</p>
<p>
  “It was yesterday, I know. I only arrived myself the day before. Well, let
  me tell you this, Rodion Romanovitch, I don’t consider it necessary to
  justify myself, but kindly tell me what was there particularly criminal on
  my part in all this business, speaking without prejudice, with common
  sense?”
 </p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov continued to look at him in silence.
</p>
<p>
  “That in my own house I persecuted a defenceless girl and ‘insulted her
  with my infamous proposals’—is that it? (I am anticipating you.) But
  you’ve only to assume that I, too, am a man <i>et nihil humanum</i>... in
  a word, that I am capable of being attracted and falling in love (which
  does not depend on our will), then everything can be explained in the most
  natural manner. The question is, am I a monster, or am I myself a victim?
  And what if I am a victim? In proposing to the object of my passion to
  elope with me to America or Switzerland, I may have cherished the deepest
  respect for her and may have thought that I was promoting our mutual
  happiness! Reason is the slave of passion, you know; why, probably, I was
  doing more harm to myself than anyone!”
 </p>
<p>
  “But that’s not the point,” Raskolnikov interrupted with disgust. “It’s
  simply that whether you are right or wrong, we dislike you. We don’t want
  to have anything to do with you. We show you the door. Go out!”
 </p>
<p>
  Svidrigaïlov broke into a sudden laugh.
</p>
<p>
  “But you’re... but there’s no getting round you,” he said, laughing in the
  frankest way. “I hoped to get round you, but you took up the right line at
  once!”
 </p>
<p>
  “But you are trying to get round me still!”
 </p>
<p>
  “What of it? What of it?” cried Svidrigaïlov, laughing openly. “But this
  is what the French call <i>bonne guerre</i>, and the most innocent form of
  deception!... But still you have interrupted me; one way or another, I
  repeat again: there would never have been any unpleasantness except for
  what happened in the garden. Marfa Petrovna...”
 </p>
<p>
  “You have got rid of Marfa Petrovna, too, so they say?” Raskolnikov
  interrupted rudely.
</p>
<p>
  “Oh, you’ve heard that, too, then? You’d be sure to, though.... But as for
  your question, I really don’t know what to say, though my own conscience
  is quite at rest on that score. Don’t suppose that I am in any
  apprehension about it. All was regular and in order; the medical inquiry
  diagnosed apoplexy due to bathing immediately after a heavy dinner and a
  bottle of wine, and indeed it could have proved nothing else. But I’ll
  tell you what I have been thinking to myself of late, on my way here in
  the train, especially: didn’t I contribute to all that... calamity,
  morally, in a way, by irritation or something of the sort. But I came to
  the conclusion that that, too, was quite out of the question.”
 </p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov laughed.
</p>
<p>
  “I wonder you trouble yourself about it!”
 </p>
<p>
  “But what are you laughing at? Only consider, I struck her just twice with
  a switch—there were no marks even... don’t regard me as a cynic,
  please; I am perfectly aware how atrocious it was of me and all that; but
  I know for certain, too, that Marfa Petrovna was very likely pleased at
  my, so to say, warmth. The story of your sister had been wrung out to the
  last drop; for the last three days Marfa Petrovna had been forced to sit
  at home; she had nothing to show herself with in the town. Besides, she
  had bored them so with that letter (you heard about her reading the
  letter). And all of a sudden those two switches fell from heaven! Her
  first act was to order the carriage to be got out.... Not to speak of the
  fact that there are cases when women are very, very glad to be insulted in
  spite of all their show of indignation. There are instances of it with
  everyone; human beings in general, indeed, greatly love to be insulted,
  have you noticed that? But it’s particularly so with women. One might even
  say it’s their only amusement.”
 </p>
<p>
  At one time Raskolnikov thought of getting up and walking out and so
  finishing the interview. But some curiosity and even a sort of prudence
  made him linger for a moment.
</p>
<p>
  “You are fond of fighting?” he asked carelessly.
</p>
<p>
  “No, not very,” Svidrigaïlov answered, calmly. “And Marfa Petrovna and I
  scarcely ever fought. We lived very harmoniously, and she was always
  pleased with me. I only used the whip twice in all our seven years (not
  counting a third occasion of a very ambiguous character). The first time,
  two months after our marriage, immediately after we arrived in the
  country, and the last time was that of which we are speaking. Did you
  suppose I was such a monster, such a reactionary, such a slave driver? Ha,
  ha! By the way, do you remember, Rodion Romanovitch, how a few years ago,
  in those days of beneficent publicity, a nobleman, I’ve forgotten his
  name, was put to shame everywhere, in all the papers, for having thrashed
  a German woman in the railway train. You remember? It was in those days,
  that very year I believe, the ‘disgraceful action of the <i>Age</i>’ took
  place (you know, ‘The Egyptian Nights,’ that public reading, you remember?
  The dark eyes, you know! Ah, the golden days of our youth, where are
  they?). Well, as for the gentleman who thrashed the German, I feel no
  sympathy with him, because after all what need is there for sympathy? But
  I must say that there are sometimes such provoking ‘Germans’ that I don’t
  believe there is a progressive who could quite answer for himself. No one
  looked at the subject from that point of view then, but that’s the truly
  humane point of view, I assure you.”
 </p>
<p>
  After saying this, Svidrigaïlov broke into a sudden laugh again.
  Raskolnikov saw clearly that this was a man with a firm purpose in his
  mind and able to keep it to himself.
</p>
<p>
  “I expect you’ve not talked to anyone for some days?” he asked.
</p>
<p>
  “Scarcely anyone. I suppose you are wondering at my being such an
  adaptable man?”
 </p>
<p>
  “No, I am only wondering at your being too adaptable a man.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Because I am not offended at the rudeness of your questions? Is that it?
  But why take offence? As you asked, so I answered,” he replied, with a
  surprising expression of simplicity. “You know, there’s hardly anything I
  take interest in,” he went on, as it were dreamily, “especially now, I’ve
  nothing to do.... You are quite at liberty to imagine though that I am
  making up to you with a motive, particularly as I told you I want to see
  your sister about something. But I’ll confess frankly, I am very much
  bored. The last three days especially, so I am delighted to see you....
  Don’t be angry, Rodion Romanovitch, but you seem to be somehow awfully
  strange yourself. Say what you like, there’s something wrong with you, and
  now, too... not this very minute, I mean, but now, generally.... Well,
  well, I won’t, I won’t, don’t scowl! I am not such a bear, you know, as
  you think.”
 </p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov looked gloomily at him.
</p>
<p>
  “You are not a bear, perhaps, at all,” he said. “I fancy indeed that you
  are a man of very good breeding, or at least know how on occasion to
  behave like one.”
 </p>
<p>
  “I am not particularly interested in anyone’s opinion,” Svidrigaïlov
  answered, dryly and even with a shade of haughtiness, “and therefore why
  not be vulgar at times when vulgarity is such a convenient cloak for our
  climate... and especially if one has a natural propensity that way,” he
  added, laughing again.
</p>
<p>
  “But I’ve heard you have many friends here. You are, as they say, ‘not
  without connections.’ What can you want with me, then, unless you’ve some
  special object?”
 </p>
<p>
  “That’s true that I have friends here,” Svidrigaïlov admitted, not
  replying to the chief point. “I’ve met some already. I’ve been lounging
  about for the last three days, and I’ve seen them, or they’ve seen me.
  That’s a matter of course. I am well dressed and reckoned not a poor man;
  the emancipation of the serfs hasn’t affected me; my property consists
  chiefly of forests and water meadows. The revenue has not fallen off;
  but... I am not going to see them, I was sick of them long ago. I’ve been
  here three days and have called on no one.... What a town it is! How has
  it come into existence among us, tell me that? A town of officials and
  students of all sorts. Yes, there’s a great deal I didn’t notice when I
  was here eight years ago, kicking up my heels.... My only hope now is in
  anatomy, by Jove, it is!”
 </p>
<p>
  “Anatomy?”
 </p>
<p>
  “But as for these clubs, Dussauts, parades, or progress, indeed, maybe—well,
  all that can go on without me,” he went on, again without noticing the
  question. “Besides, who wants to be a card-sharper?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Why, have you been a card-sharper then?”
 </p>
<p>
  “How could I help being? There was a regular set of us, men of the best
  society, eight years ago; we had a fine time. And all men of breeding, you
  know, poets, men of property. And indeed as a rule in our Russian society
  the best manners are found among those who’ve been thrashed, have you
  noticed that? I’ve deteriorated in the country. But I did get into prison
  for debt, through a low Greek who came from Nezhin. Then Marfa Petrovna
  turned up; she bargained with him and bought me off for thirty thousand
  silver pieces (I owed seventy thousand). We were united in lawful wedlock
  and she bore me off into the country like a treasure. You know she was
  five years older than I. She was very fond of me. For seven years I never
  left the country. And, take note, that all my life she held a document
  over me, the IOU for thirty thousand roubles, so if I were to elect to be
  restive about anything I should be trapped at once! And she would have
  done it! Women find nothing incompatible in that.”
 </p>
<p>
  “If it hadn’t been for that, would you have given her the slip?”
 </p>
<p>
  “I don’t know what to say. It was scarcely the document restrained me. I
  didn’t want to go anywhere else. Marfa Petrovna herself invited me to go
  abroad, seeing I was bored, but I’ve been abroad before, and always felt
  sick there. For no reason, but the sunrise, the bay of Naples, the sea—you
  look at them and it makes you sad. What’s most revolting is that one is
  really sad! No, it’s better at home. Here at least one blames others for
  everything and excuses oneself. I should have gone perhaps on an
  expedition to the North Pole, because <i>j’ai le vin mauvais</i> and hate
  drinking, and there’s nothing left but wine. I have tried it. But, I say,
  I’ve been told Berg is going up in a great balloon next Sunday from the
  Yusupov Garden and will take up passengers at a fee. Is it true?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Why, would you go up?”
 </p>
<p>
  “I... No, oh, no,” muttered Svidrigaïlov really seeming to be deep in
  thought.
</p>
<p>
  “What does he mean? Is he in earnest?” Raskolnikov wondered.
</p>
<p>
  “No, the document didn’t restrain me,” Svidrigaïlov went on, meditatively.
  “It was my own doing, not leaving the country, and nearly a year ago Marfa
  Petrovna gave me back the document on my name-day and made me a present of
  a considerable sum of money, too. She had a fortune, you know. ‘You see
  how I trust you, Arkady Ivanovitch’—that was actually her
  expression. You don’t believe she used it? But do you know I managed the
  estate quite decently, they know me in the neighbourhood. I ordered books,
  too. Marfa Petrovna at first approved, but afterwards she was afraid of my
  over-studying.”
 </p>
<p>
  “You seem to be missing Marfa Petrovna very much?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Missing her? Perhaps. Really, perhaps I am. And, by the way, do you
  believe in ghosts?”
 </p>
<p>
  “What ghosts?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Why, ordinary ghosts.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Do you believe in them?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Perhaps not, <i>pour vous plaire</i>.... I wouldn’t say no exactly.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Do you see them, then?”
 </p>
<p>
  Svidrigaïlov looked at him rather oddly.
</p>
<p>
  “Marfa Petrovna is pleased to visit me,” he said, twisting his mouth into
  a strange smile.
</p>
<p>
  “How do you mean ‘she is pleased to visit you’?”
 </p>
<p>
  “She has been three times. I saw her first on the very day of the funeral,
  an hour after she was buried. It was the day before I left to come here.
  The second time was the day before yesterday, at daybreak, on the journey
  at the station of Malaya Vishera, and the third time was two hours ago in
  the room where I am staying. I was alone.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Were you awake?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Quite awake. I was wide awake every time. She comes, speaks to me for a
  minute and goes out at the door—always at the door. I can almost
  hear her.”
 </p>
<p>
  “What made me think that something of the sort must be happening to you?”
   Raskolnikov said suddenly.
</p>
<p>
  At the same moment he was surprised at having said it. He was much
  excited.
</p>
<p>
  “What! Did you think so?” Svidrigaïlov asked in astonishment. “Did you
  really? Didn’t I say that there was something in common between us, eh?”
 </p>
<p>
  “You never said so!” Raskolnikov cried sharply and with heat.
</p>
<p>
  “Didn’t I?”
 </p>
<p>
  “No!”
 </p>
<p>
  “I thought I did. When I came in and saw you lying with your eyes shut,
  pretending, I said to myself at once, ‘Here’s the man.’”
 </p>
<p>
  “What do you mean by ‘the man?’ What are you talking about?” cried
  Raskolnikov.
</p>
<p>
  “What do I mean? I really don’t know....” Svidrigaïlov muttered
  ingenuously, as though he, too, were puzzled.
</p>
<p>
  For a minute they were silent. They stared in each other’s faces.
</p>
<p>
  “That’s all nonsense!” Raskolnikov shouted with vexation. “What does she
  say when she comes to you?”
 </p>
<p>
  “She! Would you believe it, she talks of the silliest trifles and—man
  is a strange creature—it makes me angry. The first time she came in
  (I was tired you know: the funeral service, the funeral ceremony, the
  lunch afterwards. At last I was left alone in my study. I lighted a cigar
  and began to think), she came in at the door. ‘You’ve been so busy to-day,
  Arkady Ivanovitch, you have forgotten to wind the dining-room clock,’ she
  said. All those seven years I’ve wound that clock every week, and if I
  forgot it she would always remind me. The next day I set off on my way
  here. I got out at the station at daybreak; I’d been asleep, tired out,
  with my eyes half open, I was drinking some coffee. I looked up and there
  was suddenly Marfa Petrovna sitting beside me with a pack of cards in her
  hands. ‘Shall I tell your fortune for the journey, Arkady Ivanovitch?’ She
  was a great hand at telling fortunes. I shall never forgive myself for not
  asking her to. I ran away in a fright, and, besides, the bell rang. I was
  sitting to-day, feeling very heavy after a miserable dinner from a
  cookshop; I was sitting smoking, all of a sudden Marfa Petrovna again. She
  came in very smart in a new green silk dress with a long train. ‘Good day,
  Arkady Ivanovitch! How do you like my dress? Aniska can’t make like this.’
  (Aniska was a dressmaker in the country, one of our former serf girls who
  had been trained in Moscow, a pretty wench.) She stood turning round
  before me. I looked at the dress, and then I looked carefully, very
  carefully, at her face. ‘I wonder you trouble to come to me about such
  trifles, Marfa Petrovna.’ ‘Good gracious, you won’t let one disturb you
  about anything!’ To tease her I said, ‘I want to get married, Marfa
  Petrovna.’ ‘That’s just like you, Arkady Ivanovitch; it does you very
  little credit to come looking for a bride when you’ve hardly buried your
  wife. And if you could make a good choice, at least, but I know it won’t
  be for your happiness or hers, you will only be a laughing-stock to all
  good people.’ Then she went out and her train seemed to rustle. Isn’t it
  nonsense, eh?”
 </p>
<p>
  “But perhaps you are telling lies?” Raskolnikov put in.
</p>
<p>
  “I rarely lie,” answered Svidrigaïlov thoughtfully, apparently not
  noticing the rudeness of the question.
</p>
<p>
  “And in the past, have you ever seen ghosts before?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Y-yes, I have seen them, but only once in my life, six years ago. I had a
  serf, Filka; just after his burial I called out forgetting ‘Filka, my
  pipe!’ He came in and went to the cupboard where my pipes were. I sat
  still and thought ‘he is doing it out of revenge,’ because we had a
  violent quarrel just before his death. ‘How dare you come in with a hole
  in your elbow?’ I said. ‘Go away, you scamp!’ He turned and went out, and
  never came again. I didn’t tell Marfa Petrovna at the time. I wanted to
  have a service sung for him, but I was ashamed.”
 </p>
<p>
  “You should go to a doctor.”
 </p>
<p>
  “I know I am not well, without your telling me, though I don’t know what’s
  wrong; I believe I am five times as strong as you are. I didn’t ask you
  whether you believe that ghosts are seen, but whether you believe that
  they exist.”
 </p>
<p>
  “No, I won’t believe it!” Raskolnikov cried, with positive anger.
</p>
<p>
  “What do people generally say?” muttered Svidrigaïlov, as though speaking
  to himself, looking aside and bowing his head. “They say, ‘You are ill, so
  what appears to you is only unreal fantasy.’ But that’s not strictly
  logical. I agree that ghosts only appear to the sick, but that only proves
  that they are unable to appear except to the sick, not that they don’t
  exist.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Nothing of the sort,” Raskolnikov insisted irritably.
</p>
<p>
  “No? You don’t think so?” Svidrigaïlov went on, looking at him
  deliberately. “But what do you say to this argument (help me with it):
  ghosts are, as it were, shreds and fragments of other worlds, the
  beginning of them. A man in health has, of course, no reason to see them,
  because he is above all a man of this earth and is bound for the sake of
  completeness and order to live only in this life. But as soon as one is
  ill, as soon as the normal earthly order of the organism is broken, one
  begins to realise the possibility of another world; and the more seriously
  ill one is, the closer becomes one’s contact with that other world, so
  that as soon as the man dies he steps straight into that world. I thought
  of that long ago. If you believe in a future life, you could believe in
  that, too.”
 </p>
<p>
  “I don’t believe in a future life,” said Raskolnikov.
</p>
<p>
  Svidrigaïlov sat lost in thought.
</p>
<p>
  “And what if there are only spiders there, or something of that sort,” he
  said suddenly.
</p>
<p>
  “He is a madman,” thought Raskolnikov.
</p>
<p>
  “We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something
  vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, what if it’s one
  little room, like a bath house in the country, black and grimy and spiders
  in every corner, and that’s all eternity is? I sometimes fancy it like
  that.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Can it be you can imagine nothing juster and more comforting than that?”
   Raskolnikov cried, with a feeling of anguish.
</p>
<p>
  “Juster? And how can we tell, perhaps that is just, and do you know it’s
  what I would certainly have made it,” answered Svidrigaïlov, with a vague
  smile.
</p>
<p>
  This horrible answer sent a cold chill through Raskolnikov. Svidrigaïlov
  raised his head, looked at him, and suddenly began laughing.
</p>
<p>
  “Only think,” he cried, “half an hour ago we had never seen each other, we
  regarded each other as enemies; there is a matter unsettled between us;
  we’ve thrown it aside, and away we’ve gone into the abstract! Wasn’t I
  right in saying that we were birds of a feather?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Kindly allow me,” Raskolnikov went on irritably, “to ask you to explain
  why you have honoured me with your visit... and... and I am in a hurry, I
  have no time to waste. I want to go out.”
 </p>
<p>
  “By all means, by all means. Your sister, Avdotya Romanovna, is going to
  be married to Mr. Luzhin, Pyotr Petrovitch?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Can you refrain from any question about my sister and from mentioning her
  name? I can’t understand how you dare utter her name in my presence, if
  you really are Svidrigaïlov.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Why, but I’ve come here to speak about her; how can I avoid mentioning
  her?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Very good, speak, but make haste.”
 </p>
<p>
  “I am sure that you must have formed your own opinion of this Mr. Luzhin,
  who is a connection of mine through my wife, if you have only seen him for
  half an hour, or heard any facts about him. He is no match for Avdotya
  Romanovna. I believe Avdotya Romanovna is sacrificing herself generously
  and imprudently for the sake of... for the sake of her family. I fancied
  from all I had heard of you that you would be very glad if the match could
  be broken off without the sacrifice of worldly advantages. Now I know you
  personally, I am convinced of it.”
 </p>
<p>
  “All this is very naïve... excuse me, I should have said impudent on your
  part,” said Raskolnikov.
</p>
<p>
  “You mean to say that I am seeking my own ends. Don’t be uneasy, Rodion
  Romanovitch, if I were working for my own advantage, I would not have
  spoken out so directly. I am not quite a fool. I will confess something
  psychologically curious about that: just now, defending my love for
  Avdotya Romanovna, I said I was myself the victim. Well, let me tell you
  that I’ve no feeling of love now, not the slightest, so that I wonder
  myself indeed, for I really did feel something...”
 </p>
<p>
  “Through idleness and depravity,” Raskolnikov put in.
</p>
<p>
  “I certainly am idle and depraved, but your sister has such qualities that
  even I could not help being impressed by them. But that’s all nonsense, as
  I see myself now.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Have you seen that long?”
 </p>
<p>
  “I began to be aware of it before, but was only perfectly sure of it the
  day before yesterday, almost at the moment I arrived in Petersburg. I
  still fancied in Moscow, though, that I was coming to try to get Avdotya
  Romanovna’s hand and to cut out Mr. Luzhin.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Excuse me for interrupting you; kindly be brief, and come to the object
  of your visit. I am in a hurry, I want to go out...”
 </p>
<p>
  “With the greatest pleasure. On arriving here and determining on a
  certain... journey, I should like to make some necessary preliminary
  arrangements. I left my children with an aunt; they are well provided for;
  and they have no need of me personally. And a nice father I should make,
  too! I have taken nothing but what Marfa Petrovna gave me a year ago.
  That’s enough for me. Excuse me, I am just coming to the point. Before the
  journey which may come off, I want to settle Mr. Luzhin, too. It’s not
  that I detest him so much, but it was through him I quarrelled with Marfa
  Petrovna when I learned that she had dished up this marriage. I want now
  to see Avdotya Romanovna through your mediation, and if you like in your
  presence, to explain to her that in the first place she will never gain
  anything but harm from Mr. Luzhin. Then, begging her pardon for all past
  unpleasantness, to make her a present of ten thousand roubles and so
  assist the rupture with Mr. Luzhin, a rupture to which I believe she is
  herself not disinclined, if she could see the way to it.”
 </p>
<p>
  “You are certainly mad,” cried Raskolnikov not so much angered as
  astonished. “How dare you talk like that!”
 </p>
<p>
  “I knew you would scream at me; but in the first place, though I am not
  rich, this ten thousand roubles is perfectly free; I have absolutely no
  need for it. If Avdotya Romanovna does not accept it, I shall waste it in
  some more foolish way. That’s the first thing. Secondly, my conscience is
  perfectly easy; I make the offer with no ulterior motive. You may not
  believe it, but in the end Avdotya Romanovna and you will know. The point
  is, that I did actually cause your sister, whom I greatly respect, some
  trouble and unpleasantness, and so, sincerely regretting it, I want—not
  to compensate, not to repay her for the unpleasantness, but simply to do
  something to her advantage, to show that I am not, after all, privileged
  to do nothing but harm. If there were a millionth fraction of
  self-interest in my offer, I should not have made it so openly; and I
  should not have offered her ten thousand only, when five weeks ago I
  offered her more, Besides, I may, perhaps, very soon marry a young lady,
  and that alone ought to prevent suspicion of any design on Avdotya
  Romanovna. In conclusion, let me say that in marrying Mr. Luzhin, she is
  taking money just the same, only from another man. Don’t be angry, Rodion
  Romanovitch, think it over coolly and quietly.”
 </p>
<p>
  Svidrigaïlov himself was exceedingly cool and quiet as he was saying this.
</p>
<p>
  “I beg you to say no more,” said Raskolnikov. “In any case this is
  unpardonable impertinence.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Not in the least. Then a man may do nothing but harm to his neighbour in
  this world, and is prevented from doing the tiniest bit of good by trivial
  conventional formalities. That’s absurd. If I died, for instance, and left
  that sum to your sister in my will, surely she wouldn’t refuse it?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Very likely she would.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Oh, no, indeed. However, if you refuse it, so be it, though ten thousand
  roubles is a capital thing to have on occasion. In any case I beg you to
  repeat what I have said to Avdotya Romanovna.”
 </p>
<p>
  “No, I won’t.”
 </p>
<p>
  “In that case, Rodion Romanovitch, I shall be obliged to try and see her
  myself and worry her by doing so.”
 </p>
<p>
  “And if I do tell her, will you not try to see her?”
 </p>
<p>
  “I don’t know really what to say. I should like very much to see her once
  more.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Don’t hope for it.”
 </p>
<p>
  “I’m sorry. But you don’t know me. Perhaps we may become better friends.”
 </p>
<p>
  “You think we may become friends?”
 </p>
<p>
  “And why not?” Svidrigaïlov said, smiling. He stood up and took his hat.
  “I didn’t quite intend to disturb you and I came here without reckoning on
  it... though I was very much struck by your face this morning.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Where did you see me this morning?” Raskolnikov asked uneasily.
</p>
<p>
  “I saw you by chance.... I kept fancying there is something about you like
  me.... But don’t be uneasy. I am not intrusive; I used to get on all right
  with card-sharpers, and I never bored Prince Svirbey, a great personage
  who is a distant relation of mine, and I could write about Raphael’s <i>Madonna</i>
  in Madam Prilukov’s album, and I never left Marfa Petrovna’s side for
  seven years, and I used to stay the night at Viazemsky’s house in the Hay
  Market in the old days, and I may go up in a balloon with Berg, perhaps.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Oh, all right. Are you starting soon on your travels, may I ask?”
 </p>
<p>
  “What travels?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Why, on that ‘journey’; you spoke of it yourself.”
 </p>
<p>
  “A journey? Oh, yes. I did speak of a journey. Well, that’s a wide
  subject.... if only you knew what you are asking,” he added, and gave a
  sudden, loud, short laugh. “Perhaps I’ll get married instead of the
  journey. They’re making a match for me.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Here?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Yes.”
 </p>
<p>
  “How have you had time for that?”
 </p>
<p>
  “But I am very anxious to see Avdotya Romanovna once. I earnestly beg it.
  Well, good-bye for the present. Oh, yes. I have forgotten something. Tell
  your sister, Rodion Romanovitch, that Marfa Petrovna remembered her in her
  will and left her three thousand roubles. That’s absolutely certain. Marfa
  Petrovna arranged it a week before her death, and it was done in my
  presence. Avdotya Romanovna will be able to receive the money in two or
  three weeks.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Are you telling the truth?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Yes, tell her. Well, your servant. I am staying very near you.”
 </p>
<p>
  As he went out, Svidrigaïlov ran up against Razumihin in the doorway.
</p>