Crime and Punishment

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Hush, Sonia! I am not laughing. I know myself that it was the devil leading me.

I want to prove one thing only, that the devil led me on then and he has shown me since that I had not the right to take that path, because I am just such a louse as all the rest. He was mocking me and here I’ve come to you now!

I murdered myself, not her! I crushed myself once for all, for ever. . . . But it was the devil that killed that old woman,

He looked at Sonia and felt how great was her love for him, and strange to say he felt it suddenly burdensome and painful to be so loved.

she begged him. “We will go to suffer together, and together we will bear our cross!”

It seemed strange to him that there was no trace of repugnance, no trace of disgust, no tremor in her hand. It was the furthest limit of self-abnegation, at least so he interpreted it.

he had agreed in his heart he could not go on living alone with such a thing on his mind!

The last moment had come, the last drops had to be drained! So a man will sometimes go through half an hour of mortal terror with a brigand, yet when the knife is at his throat at last, he feels no fear.

From a hundred rabbits you can’t make a horse, a hundred suspicions don’t make a proof,

“A great deal of what lies before me?” “Of life. What sort of prophet are you, do you know much about it? Seek and ye shall find. This may be God’s means for bringing you to Him. And it’s not for ever, the bondage.

“Why don’t you say at once ‘it’s a miracle’?” “Because it may be only chance.” “Oh, that’s the way with all you folk,” laughed Svidrigaïlov. “You won’t admit it, even if you do inwardly believe it a miracle! Here you say that it may be only chance.

do you know to what a point of insanity a woman can sometimes love?

But to judge some people impartially we must renounce certain preconceived opinions and our habitual attitude to the ordinary people about us.

And if once a girl’s heart is moved to pity, it’s more dangerous than anything. She is bound to want to ‘save him,’ to bring him to his senses, and lift him up and draw him to nobler aims, and restore him to new life and usefulness—well, we all know how far such dreams can go. I saw at once that the bird was flying into the cage of herself. And I too made ready.

finally resorted to the most powerful weapon in the subjection of the female heart, a weapon which never fails one. It’s the well-known resource—flattery. Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the truth and nothing easier than flattery.

A theory of a sort, the same one by which I for instance consider that a single misdeed is permissible if the principal aim is right, a solitary wrongdoing and hundreds of good deeds!

“What, to-day?” she cried, as though losing him for ever. “I can’t stay, I must go now. . . .” “And can’t I come with you?” “No, but kneel down and pray to God for me. Your prayer perhaps will reach Him.”

“What is awaiting you there? Some post or career for you?” “What God sends . . . only pray for me.”

And from those eyes alone he saw at once that she knew.

haven’t faith, but I have just been weeping in mother’s arms; I haven’t faith, but I have just asked her to pray for me. I don’t know how it is, Dounia, I don’t understand it.”

Look into it more carefully and understand it! I too wanted to do good to men and would have done hundreds, thousands of good deeds to make up for that one piece of stupidity, not stupidity even, simply clumsiness, for the idea was by no means so stupid as it seems now that it has failed. . . . (Everything seems stupid when it fails.)

“But why are they so fond of me if I don’t deserve it? Oh, if only I were alone and no one loved me and I too had never loved anyone! Nothing of all this would have happened.

Would not twenty years of continual bondage crush him utterly? Water wears out a stone. And why, why should he live after that?

She gave a cry of joy, but looking carefully into his face she turned pale. “Yes,” said Raskolnikov, smiling. “I have come for your cross, Sonia.

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.

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.

Only a few men could be saved in the whole world. They were a pure chosen people,

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.

They were renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other.

But these recollections scarcely troubled him now; he knew with what infinite love he would now repay all her sufferings.

Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind.

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. 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,