CHAPTER III

<h2><a id="link2HCH0017"/>
  CHAPTER III
</h2>
<p>
  “He is well, quite well!” Zossimov cried cheerfully as they entered.
</p>
<p>
  He had come in ten minutes earlier and was sitting in the same place as
  before, on the sofa. Raskolnikov was sitting in the opposite corner, fully
  dressed and carefully washed and combed, as he had not been for some time
  past. The room was immediately crowded, yet Nastasya managed to follow the
  visitors in and stayed to listen.
</p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov really was almost well, as compared with his condition the day
  before, but he was still pale, listless, and sombre. He looked like a
  wounded man or one who has undergone some terrible physical suffering. His
  brows were knitted, his lips compressed, his eyes feverish. He spoke
  little and reluctantly, as though performing a duty, and there was a
  restlessness in his movements.
</p>
<p>
  He only wanted a sling on his arm or a bandage on his finger to complete
  the impression of a man with a painful abscess or a broken arm. The pale,
  sombre face lighted up for a moment when his mother and sister entered,
  but this only gave it a look of more intense suffering, in place of its
  listless dejection. The light soon died away, but the look of suffering
  remained, and Zossimov, watching and studying his patient with all the
  zest of a young doctor beginning to practise, noticed in him no joy at the
  arrival of his mother and sister, but a sort of bitter, hidden
  determination to bear another hour or two of inevitable torture. He saw
  later that almost every word of the following conversation seemed to touch
  on some sore place and irritate it. But at the same time he marvelled at
  the power of controlling himself and hiding his feelings in a patient who
  the previous day had, like a monomaniac, fallen into a frenzy at the
  slightest word.
</p>
<p>
  “Yes, I see myself now that I am almost well,” said Raskolnikov, giving
  his mother and sister a kiss of welcome which made Pulcheria Alexandrovna
  radiant at once. “And I don’t say this <i>as I did yesterday</i>,” he
  said, addressing Razumihin, with a friendly pressure of his hand.
</p>
<p>
  “Yes, indeed, I am quite surprised at him to-day,” began Zossimov, much
  delighted at the ladies’ entrance, for he had not succeeded in keeping up
  a conversation with his patient for ten minutes. “In another three or four
  days, if he goes on like this, he will be just as before, that is, as he
  was a month ago, or two... or perhaps even three. This has been coming on
  for a long while.... eh? Confess, now, that it has been perhaps your own
  fault?” he added, with a tentative smile, as though still afraid of
  irritating him.
</p>
<p>
  “It is very possible,” answered Raskolnikov coldly.
</p>
<p>
  “I should say, too,” continued Zossimov with zest, “that your complete
  recovery depends solely on yourself. Now that one can talk to you, I
  should like to impress upon you that it is essential to avoid the
  elementary, so to speak, fundamental causes tending to produce your morbid
  condition: in that case you will be cured, if not, it will go from bad to
  worse. These fundamental causes I don’t know, but they must be known to
  you. You are an intelligent man, and must have observed yourself, of
  course. I fancy the first stage of your derangement coincides with your
  leaving the university. You must not be left without occupation, and so,
  work and a definite aim set before you might, I fancy, be very
  beneficial.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Yes, yes; you are perfectly right.... I will make haste and return to the
  university: and then everything will go smoothly....”
 </p>
<p>
  Zossimov, who had begun his sage advice partly to make an effect before
  the ladies, was certainly somewhat mystified, when, glancing at his
  patient, he observed unmistakable mockery on his face. This lasted an
  instant, however. Pulcheria Alexandrovna began at once thanking Zossimov,
  especially for his visit to their lodging the previous night.
</p>
<p>
  “What! he saw you last night?” Raskolnikov asked, as though startled.
  “Then you have not slept either after your journey.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Ach, Rodya, that was only till two o’clock. Dounia and I never go to bed
  before two at home.”
 </p>
<p>
  “I don’t know how to thank him either,” Raskolnikov went on, suddenly
  frowning and looking down. “Setting aside the question of payment—forgive
  me for referring to it (he turned to Zossimov)—I really don’t know
  what I have done to deserve such special attention from you! I simply
  don’t understand it... and... and... it weighs upon me, indeed, because I
  don’t understand it. I tell you so candidly.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Don’t be irritated.” Zossimov forced himself to laugh. “Assume that you
  are my first patient—well—we fellows just beginning to
  practise love our first patients as if they were our children, and some
  almost fall in love with them. And, of course, I am not rich in patients.”
 </p>
<p>
  “I say nothing about him,” added Raskolnikov, pointing to Razumihin,
  “though he has had nothing from me either but insult and trouble.”
 </p>
<p>
  “What nonsense he is talking! Why, you are in a sentimental mood to-day,
  are you?” shouted Razumihin.
</p>
<p>
  If he had had more penetration he would have seen that there was no trace
  of sentimentality in him, but something indeed quite the opposite. But
  Avdotya Romanovna noticed it. She was intently and uneasily watching her
  brother.
</p>
<p>
  “As for you, mother, I don’t dare to speak,” he went on, as though
  repeating a lesson learned by heart. “It is only to-day that I have been
  able to realise a little how distressed you must have been here yesterday,
  waiting for me to come back.”
 </p>
<p>
  When he had said this, he suddenly held out his hand to his sister,
  smiling without a word. But in this smile there was a flash of real
  unfeigned feeling. Dounia caught it at once, and warmly pressed his hand,
  overjoyed and thankful. It was the first time he had addressed her since
  their dispute the previous day. The mother’s face lighted up with ecstatic
  happiness at the sight of this conclusive unspoken reconciliation. “Yes,
  that is what I love him for,” Razumihin, exaggerating it all, muttered to
  himself, with a vigorous turn in his chair. “He has these movements.”
 </p>
<p>
  “And how well he does it all,” the mother was thinking to herself. “What
  generous impulses he has, and how simply, how delicately he put an end to
  all the misunderstanding with his sister—simply by holding out his
  hand at the right minute and looking at her like that.... And what fine
  eyes he has, and how fine his whole face is!... He is even better looking
  than Dounia.... But, good heavens, what a suit—how terribly he’s
  dressed!... Vasya, the messenger boy in Afanasy Ivanitch’s shop, is better
  dressed! I could rush at him and hug him... weep over him—but I am
  afraid.... Oh, dear, he’s so strange! He’s talking kindly, but I’m afraid!
  Why, what am I afraid of?...”
 </p>
<p>
  “Oh, Rodya, you wouldn’t believe,” she began suddenly, in haste to answer
  his words to her, “how unhappy Dounia and I were yesterday! Now that it’s
  all over and done with and we are quite happy again—I can tell you.
  Fancy, we ran here almost straight from the train to embrace you and that
  woman—ah, here she is! Good morning, Nastasya!... She told us at
  once that you were lying in a high fever and had just run away from the
  doctor in delirium, and they were looking for you in the streets. You
  can’t imagine how we felt! I couldn’t help thinking of the tragic end of
  Lieutenant Potanchikov, a friend of your father’s—you can’t remember
  him, Rodya—who ran out in the same way in a high fever and fell into
  the well in the court-yard and they couldn’t pull him out till next day.
  Of course, we exaggerated things. We were on the point of rushing to find
  Pyotr Petrovitch to ask him to help.... Because we were alone, utterly
  alone,” she said plaintively and stopped short, suddenly, recollecting it
  was still somewhat dangerous to speak of Pyotr Petrovitch, although “we
  are quite happy again.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Yes, yes.... Of course it’s very annoying....” Raskolnikov muttered in
  reply, but with such a preoccupied and inattentive air that Dounia gazed
  at him in perplexity.
</p>
<p>
  “What else was it I wanted to say?” He went on trying to recollect. “Oh,
  yes; mother, and you too, Dounia, please don’t think that I didn’t mean to
  come and see you to-day and was waiting for you to come first.”
 </p>
<p>
  “What are you saying, Rodya?” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna. She, too, was
  surprised.
</p>
<p>
  “Is he answering us as a duty?” Dounia wondered. “Is he being reconciled
  and asking forgiveness as though he were performing a rite or repeating a
  lesson?”
 </p>
<p>
  “I’ve only just waked up, and wanted to go to you, but was delayed owing
  to my clothes; I forgot yesterday to ask her... Nastasya... to wash out
  the blood... I’ve only just dressed.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Blood! What blood?” Pulcheria Alexandrovna asked in alarm.
</p>
<p>
  “Oh, nothing—don’t be uneasy. It was when I was wandering about
  yesterday, rather delirious, I chanced upon a man who had been run over...
  a clerk...”
 </p>
<p>
  “Delirious? But you remember everything!” Razumihin interrupted.
</p>
<p>
  “That’s true,” Raskolnikov answered with special carefulness. “I remember
  everything even to the slightest detail, and yet—why I did that and
  went there and said that, I can’t clearly explain now.”
 </p>
<p>
  “A familiar phenomenon,” interposed Zossimov, “actions are sometimes
  performed in a masterly and most cunning way, while the direction of the
  actions is deranged and dependent on various morbid impressions—it’s
  like a dream.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Perhaps it’s a good thing really that he should think me almost a
  madman,” thought Raskolnikov.
</p>
<p>
  “Why, people in perfect health act in the same way too,” observed Dounia,
  looking uneasily at Zossimov.
</p>
<p>
  “There is some truth in your observation,” the latter replied. “In that
  sense we are certainly all not infrequently like madmen, but with the
  slight difference that the deranged are somewhat madder, for we must draw
  a line. A normal man, it is true, hardly exists. Among dozens—perhaps
  hundreds of thousands—hardly one is to be met with.”
 </p>
<p>
  At the word “madman,” carelessly dropped by Zossimov in his chatter on his
  favourite subject, everyone frowned.
</p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov sat seeming not to pay attention, plunged in thought with a
  strange smile on his pale lips. He was still meditating on something.
</p>
<p>
  “Well, what about the man who was run over? I interrupted you!” Razumihin
  cried hastily.
</p>
<p>
  “What?” Raskolnikov seemed to wake up. “Oh... I got spattered with blood
  helping to carry him to his lodging. By the way, mamma, I did an
  unpardonable thing yesterday. I was literally out of my mind. I gave away
  all the money you sent me... to his wife for the funeral. She’s a widow
  now, in consumption, a poor creature... three little children, starving...
  nothing in the house... there’s a daughter, too... perhaps you’d have
  given it yourself if you’d seen them. But I had no right to do it I admit,
  especially as I knew how you needed the money yourself. To help others one
  must have the right to do it, or else <i>Crevez, chiens, si vous n’êtes
  pas contents</i>.” He laughed, “That’s right, isn’t it, Dounia?”
 </p>
<p>
  “No, it’s not,” answered Dounia firmly.
</p>
<p>
  “Bah! you, too, have ideals,” he muttered, looking at her almost with
  hatred, and smiling sarcastically. “I ought to have considered that....
  Well, that’s praiseworthy, and it’s better for you... and if you reach a
  line you won’t overstep, you will be unhappy... and if you overstep it,
  maybe you will be still unhappier.... But all that’s nonsense,” he added
  irritably, vexed at being carried away. “I only meant to say that I beg
  your forgiveness, mother,” he concluded, shortly and abruptly.
</p>
<p>
  “That’s enough, Rodya, I am sure that everything you do is very good,”
   said his mother, delighted.
</p>
<p>
  “Don’t be too sure,” he answered, twisting his mouth into a smile.
</p>
<p>
  A silence followed. There was a certain constraint in all this
  conversation, and in the silence, and in the reconciliation, and in the
  forgiveness, and all were feeling it.
</p>
<p>
  “It is as though they were afraid of me,” Raskolnikov was thinking to
  himself, looking askance at his mother and sister. Pulcheria Alexandrovna
  was indeed growing more timid the longer she kept silent.
</p>
<p>
  “Yet in their absence I seemed to love them so much,” flashed through his
  mind.
</p>
<p>
  “Do you know, Rodya, Marfa Petrovna is dead,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna
  suddenly blurted out.
</p>
<p>
  “What Marfa Petrovna?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Oh, mercy on us—Marfa Petrovna Svidrigaïlov. I wrote you so much
  about her.”
 </p>
<p>
  “A-a-h! Yes, I remember.... So she’s dead! Oh, really?” he roused himself
  suddenly, as if waking up. “What did she die of?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Only imagine, quite suddenly,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna answered hurriedly,
  encouraged by his curiosity. “On the very day I was sending you that
  letter! Would you believe it, that awful man seems to have been the cause
  of her death. They say he beat her dreadfully.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Why, were they on such bad terms?” he asked, addressing his sister.
</p>
<p>
  “Not at all. Quite the contrary indeed. With her, he was always very
  patient, considerate even. In fact, all those seven years of their married
  life he gave way to her, too much so indeed, in many cases. All of a
  sudden he seems to have lost patience.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Then he could not have been so awful if he controlled himself for seven
  years? You seem to be defending him, Dounia?”
 </p>
<p>
  “No, no, he’s an awful man! I can imagine nothing more awful!” Dounia
  answered, almost with a shudder, knitting her brows, and sinking into
  thought.
</p>
<p>
  “That had happened in the morning,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna went on
  hurriedly. “And directly afterwards she ordered the horses to be harnessed
  to drive to the town immediately after dinner. She always used to drive to
  the town in such cases. She ate a very good dinner, I am told....”
 </p>
<p>
  “After the beating?”
 </p>
<p>
  “That was always her... habit; and immediately after dinner, so as not to
  be late in starting, she went to the bath-house.... You see, she was
  undergoing some treatment with baths. They have a cold spring there, and
  she used to bathe in it regularly every day, and no sooner had she got
  into the water when she suddenly had a stroke!”
 </p>
<p>
  “I should think so,” said Zossimov.
</p>
<p>
  “And did he beat her badly?”
 </p>
<p>
  “What does that matter!” put in Dounia.
</p>
<p>
  “H’m! But I don’t know why you want to tell us such gossip, mother,” said
  Raskolnikov irritably, as it were in spite of himself.
</p>
<p>
  “Ah, my dear, I don’t know what to talk about,” broke from Pulcheria
  Alexandrovna.
</p>
<p>
  “Why, are you all afraid of me?” he asked, with a constrained smile.
</p>
<p>
  “That’s certainly true,” said Dounia, looking directly and sternly at her
  brother. “Mother was crossing herself with terror as she came up the
  stairs.”
 </p>
<p>
  His face worked, as though in convulsion.
</p>
<p>
  “Ach, what are you saying, Dounia! Don’t be angry, please, Rodya.... Why
  did you say that, Dounia?” Pulcheria Alexandrovna began, overwhelmed—“You
  see, coming here, I was dreaming all the way, in the train, how we should
  meet, how we should talk over everything together.... And I was so happy,
  I did not notice the journey! But what am I saying? I am happy now.... You
  should not, Dounia.... I am happy now—simply in seeing you,
  Rodya....”
 </p>
<p>
  “Hush, mother,” he muttered in confusion, not looking at her, but pressing
  her hand. “We shall have time to speak freely of everything!”
 </p>
<p>
  As he said this, he was suddenly overwhelmed with confusion and turned
  pale. Again that awful sensation he had known of late passed with deadly
  chill over his soul. Again it became suddenly plain and perceptible to him
  that he had just told a fearful lie—that he would never now be able
  to speak freely of everything—that he would never again be able to
  <i>speak</i> of anything to anyone. The anguish of this thought was such
  that for a moment he almost forgot himself. He got up from his seat, and
  not looking at anyone walked towards the door.
</p>
<p>
  “What are you about?” cried Razumihin, clutching him by the arm.
</p>
<p>
  He sat down again, and began looking about him, in silence. They were all
  looking at him in perplexity.
</p>
<p>
  “But what are you all so dull for?” he shouted, suddenly and quite
  unexpectedly. “Do say something! What’s the use of sitting like this?
  Come, do speak. Let us talk.... We meet together and sit in silence....
  Come, anything!”
 </p>
<p>
  “Thank God; I was afraid the same thing as yesterday was beginning again,”
   said Pulcheria Alexandrovna, crossing herself.
</p>
<p>
  “What is the matter, Rodya?” asked Avdotya Romanovna, distrustfully.
</p>
<p>
  “Oh, nothing! I remembered something,” he answered, and suddenly laughed.
</p>
<p>
  “Well, if you remembered something; that’s all right!... I was beginning
  to think...” muttered Zossimov, getting up from the sofa. “It is time for
  me to be off. I will look in again perhaps... if I can...” He made his
  bows, and went out.
</p>
<p>
  “What an excellent man!” observed Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
</p>
<p>
  “Yes, excellent, splendid, well-educated, intelligent,” Raskolnikov began,
  suddenly speaking with surprising rapidity, and a liveliness he had not
  shown till then. “I can’t remember where I met him before my illness.... I
  believe I have met him somewhere——... And this is a good man,
  too,” he nodded at Razumihin. “Do you like him, Dounia?” he asked her; and
  suddenly, for some unknown reason, laughed.
</p>
<p>
  “Very much,” answered Dounia.
</p>
<p>
  “Foo!—what a pig you are!” Razumihin protested, blushing in terrible
  confusion, and he got up from his chair. Pulcheria Alexandrovna smiled
  faintly, but Raskolnikov laughed aloud.
</p>
<p>
  “Where are you off to?”
 </p>
<p>
  “I must go.”
 </p>
<p>
  “You need not at all. Stay. Zossimov has gone, so you must. Don’t go.
  What’s the time? Is it twelve o’clock? What a pretty watch you have got,
  Dounia. But why are you all silent again? I do all the talking.”
 </p>
<p>
  “It was a present from Marfa Petrovna,” answered Dounia.
</p>
<p>
  “And a very expensive one!” added Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
</p>
<p>
  “A-ah! What a big one! Hardly like a lady’s.”
 </p>
<p>
  “I like that sort,” said Dounia.
</p>
<p>
  “So it is not a present from her <i>fiancé</i>,” thought Razumihin, and
  was unreasonably delighted.
</p>
<p>
  “I thought it was Luzhin’s present,” observed Raskolnikov.
</p>
<p>
  “No, he has not made Dounia any presents yet.”
 </p>
<p>
  “A-ah! And do you remember, mother, I was in love and wanted to get
  married?” he said suddenly, looking at his mother, who was disconcerted by
  the sudden change of subject and the way he spoke of it.
</p>
<p>
  “Oh, yes, my dear.”
 </p>
<p>
  Pulcheria Alexandrovna exchanged glances with Dounia and Razumihin.
</p>
<p>
  “H’m, yes. What shall I tell you? I don’t remember much indeed. She was
  such a sickly girl,” he went on, growing dreamy and looking down again.
  “Quite an invalid. She was fond of giving alms to the poor, and was always
  dreaming of a nunnery, and once she burst into tears when she began
  talking to me about it. Yes, yes, I remember. I remember very well. She
  was an ugly little thing. I really don’t know what drew me to her then—I
  think it was because she was always ill. If she had been lame or
  hunchback, I believe I should have liked her better still,” he smiled
  dreamily. “Yes, it was a sort of spring delirium.”
 </p>
<p>
  “No, it was not only spring delirium,” said Dounia, with warm feeling.
</p>
<p>
  He fixed a strained intent look on his sister, but did not hear or did not
  understand her words. Then, completely lost in thought, he got up, went up
  to his mother, kissed her, went back to his place and sat down.
</p>
<p>
  “You love her even now?” said Pulcheria Alexandrovna, touched.
</p>
<p>
  “Her? Now? Oh, yes.... You ask about her? No... that’s all now, as it
  were, in another world... and so long ago. And indeed everything happening
  here seems somehow far away.” He looked attentively at them. “You, now...
  I seem to be looking at you from a thousand miles away... but, goodness
  knows why we are talking of that! And what’s the use of asking about it?”
   he added with annoyance, and biting his nails, fell into dreamy silence
  again.
</p>
<p>
  “What a wretched lodging you have, Rodya! It’s like a tomb,” said
  Pulcheria Alexandrovna, suddenly breaking the oppressive silence. “I am
  sure it’s quite half through your lodging you have become so melancholy.”
 </p>
<p>
  “My lodging,” he answered, listlessly. “Yes, the lodging had a great deal
  to do with it.... I thought that, too.... If only you knew, though, what a
  strange thing you said just now, mother,” he said, laughing strangely.
</p>
<p>
  A little more, and their companionship, this mother and this sister, with
  him after three years’ absence, this intimate tone of conversation, in
  face of the utter impossibility of really speaking about anything, would
  have been beyond his power of endurance. But there was one urgent matter
  which must be settled one way or the other that day—so he had
  decided when he woke. Now he was glad to remember it, as a means of
  escape.
</p>
<p>
  “Listen, Dounia,” he began, gravely and drily, “of course I beg your
  pardon for yesterday, but I consider it my duty to tell you again that I
  do not withdraw from my chief point. It is me or Luzhin. If I am a
  scoundrel, you must not be. One is enough. If you marry Luzhin, I cease at
  once to look on you as a sister.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Rodya, Rodya! It is the same as yesterday again,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna
  cried, mournfully. “And why do you call yourself a scoundrel? I can’t bear
  it. You said the same yesterday.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Brother,” Dounia answered firmly and with the same dryness. “In all this
  there is a mistake on your part. I thought it over at night, and found out
  the mistake. It is all because you seem to fancy I am sacrificing myself
  to someone and for someone. That is not the case at all. I am simply
  marrying for my own sake, because things are hard for me. Though, of
  course, I shall be glad if I succeed in being useful to my family. But
  that is not the chief motive for my decision....”
 </p>
<p>
  “She is lying,” he thought to himself, biting his nails vindictively.
  “Proud creature! She won’t admit she wants to do it out of charity! Too
  haughty! Oh, base characters! They even love as though they hate.... Oh,
  how I... hate them all!”
 </p>
<p>
  “In fact,” continued Dounia, “I am marrying Pyotr Petrovitch because of
  two evils I choose the less. I intend to do honestly all he expects of me,
  so I am not deceiving him.... Why did you smile just now?” She, too,
  flushed, and there was a gleam of anger in her eyes.
</p>
<p>
  “All?” he asked, with a malignant grin.
</p>
<p>
  “Within certain limits. Both the manner and form of Pyotr Petrovitch’s
  courtship showed me at once what he wanted. He may, of course, think too
  well of himself, but I hope he esteems me, too.... Why are you laughing
  again?”
 </p>
<p>
  “And why are you blushing again? You are lying, sister. You are
  intentionally lying, simply from feminine obstinacy, simply to hold your
  own against me.... You cannot respect Luzhin. I have seen him and talked
  with him. So you are selling yourself for money, and so in any case you
  are acting basely, and I am glad at least that you can blush for it.”
 </p>
<p>
  “It is not true. I am not lying,” cried Dounia, losing her composure. “I
  would not marry him if I were not convinced that he esteems me and thinks
  highly of me. I would not marry him if I were not firmly convinced that I
  can respect him. Fortunately, I can have convincing proof of it this very
  day... and such a marriage is not a vileness, as you say! And even if you
  were right, if I really had determined on a vile action, is it not
  merciless on your part to speak to me like that? Why do you demand of me a
  heroism that perhaps you have not either? It is despotism; it is tyranny.
  If I ruin anyone, it is only myself.... I am not committing a murder. Why
  do you look at me like that? Why are you so pale? Rodya, darling, what’s
  the matter?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Good heavens! You have made him faint,” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
</p>
<p>
  “No, no, nonsense! It’s nothing. A little giddiness—not fainting.
  You have fainting on the brain. H’m, yes, what was I saying? Oh, yes. In
  what way will you get convincing proof to-day that you can respect him,
  and that he... esteems you, as you said. I think you said to-day?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Mother, show Rodya Pyotr Petrovitch’s letter,” said Dounia.
</p>
<p>
  With trembling hands, Pulcheria Alexandrovna gave him the letter. He took
  it with great interest, but, before opening it, he suddenly looked with a
  sort of wonder at Dounia.
</p>
<p>
  “It is strange,” he said, slowly, as though struck by a new idea. “What am
  I making such a fuss for? What is it all about? Marry whom you like!”
 </p>
<p>
  He said this as though to himself, but said it aloud, and looked for some
  time at his sister, as though puzzled. He opened the letter at last, still
  with the same look of strange wonder on his face. Then, slowly and
  attentively, he began reading, and read it through twice. Pulcheria
  Alexandrovna showed marked anxiety, and all indeed expected something
  particular.
</p>
<p>
  “What surprises me,” he began, after a short pause, handing the letter to
  his mother, but not addressing anyone in particular, “is that he is a
  business man, a lawyer, and his conversation is pretentious indeed, and
  yet he writes such an uneducated letter.”
 </p>
<p>
  They all started. They had expected something quite different.
</p>
<p>
  “But they all write like that, you know,” Razumihin observed, abruptly.
</p>
<p>
  “Have you read it?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Yes.”
 </p>
<p>
  “We showed him, Rodya. We... consulted him just now,” Pulcheria
  Alexandrovna began, embarrassed.
</p>
<p>
  “That’s just the jargon of the courts,” Razumihin put in. “Legal documents
  are written like that to this day.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Legal? Yes, it’s just legal—business language—not so very
  uneducated, and not quite educated—business language!”
 </p>
<p>
  “Pyotr Petrovitch makes no secret of the fact that he had a cheap
  education, he is proud indeed of having made his own way,” Avdotya
  Romanovna observed, somewhat offended by her brother’s tone.
</p>
<p>
  “Well, if he’s proud of it, he has reason, I don’t deny it. You seem to be
  offended, sister, at my making only such a frivolous criticism on the
  letter, and to think that I speak of such trifling matters on purpose to
  annoy you. It is quite the contrary, an observation apropos of the style
  occurred to me that is by no means irrelevant as things stand. There is
  one expression, ‘blame yourselves’ put in very significantly and plainly,
  and there is besides a threat that he will go away at once if I am
  present. That threat to go away is equivalent to a threat to abandon you
  both if you are disobedient, and to abandon you now after summoning you to
  Petersburg. Well, what do you think? Can one resent such an expression
  from Luzhin, as we should if he (he pointed to Razumihin) had written it,
  or Zossimov, or one of us?”
 </p>
<p>
  “N-no,” answered Dounia, with more animation. “I saw clearly that it was
  too naïvely expressed, and that perhaps he simply has no skill in
  writing... that is a true criticism, brother. I did not expect, indeed...”
 </p>
<p>
  “It is expressed in legal style, and sounds coarser than perhaps he
  intended. But I must disillusion you a little. There is one expression in
  the letter, one slander about me, and rather a contemptible one. I gave
  the money last night to the widow, a woman in consumption, crushed with
  trouble, and not ‘on the pretext of the funeral,’ but simply to pay for
  the funeral, and not to the daughter—a young woman, as he writes, of
  notorious behaviour (whom I saw last night for the first time in my life)—but
  to the widow. In all this I see a too hasty desire to slander me and to
  raise dissension between us. It is expressed again in legal jargon, that
  is to say, with a too obvious display of the aim, and with a very naïve
  eagerness. He is a man of intelligence, but to act sensibly, intelligence
  is not enough. It all shows the man and... I don’t think he has a great
  esteem for you. I tell you this simply to warn you, because I sincerely
  wish for your good...”
 </p>
<p>
  Dounia did not reply. Her resolution had been taken. She was only awaiting
  the evening.
</p>
<p>
  “Then what is your decision, Rodya?” asked Pulcheria Alexandrovna, who was
  more uneasy than ever at the sudden, new businesslike tone of his talk.
</p>
<p>
  “What decision?”
 </p>
<p>
  “You see Pyotr Petrovitch writes that you are not to be with us this
  evening, and that he will go away if you come. So will you... come?”
 </p>
<p>
  “That, of course, is not for me to decide, but for you first, if you are
  not offended by such a request; and secondly, by Dounia, if she, too, is
  not offended. I will do what you think best,” he added, drily.
</p>
<p>
  “Dounia has already decided, and I fully agree with her,” Pulcheria
  Alexandrovna hastened to declare.
</p>
<p>
  “I decided to ask you, Rodya, to urge you not to fail to be with us at
  this interview,” said Dounia. “Will you come?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Yes.”
 </p>
<p>
  “I will ask you, too, to be with us at eight o’clock,” she said,
  addressing Razumihin. “Mother, I am inviting him, too.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Quite right, Dounia. Well, since you have decided,” added Pulcheria
  Alexandrovna, “so be it. I shall feel easier myself. I do not like
  concealment and deception. Better let us have the whole truth.... Pyotr
  Petrovitch may be angry or not, now!”
 </p>