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In poverty you may still retain your innate nobility of soul, but in beggary — never — no one.
And the more I drink the more I feel it. That’s why I drink too. I try to find sympathy and feeling in drink... I drink so that I may suffer twice as much!”
As he went out, Raskolnikov had time to put his hand into his pocket, to snatch up the coppers he had received in exchange for his rouble in the tavern and to lay them unnoticed on the window.
And they’re making the most of it! Yes, they are making the most of it! They’ve wept over it and grown used to it. Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!” He sank into thought. “And what if I am wrong,” he cried suddenly after a moment’s thought. “What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind — then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers and it’s all as it should be.”
But why, if you are so clever, do you lie here like a sack and have nothing to show for it? One time you used to go out, you say, to teach children. But why is it you do nothing now?” “I am doing...” Raskolnikov began sullenly and reluctantly. “What are you doing?” “Work...” “What sort of work?” “I am thinking,” he answered seriously after a pause.
“Well, listen then. On the other side, fresh young lives thrown away for want of help and by thousands, on every side! A hundred thousand good deeds could be done and helped, on that old woman’s money which will be buried in a monastery! Hundreds, thousands perhaps, might be set on the right path; dozens of families saved from destitution, from ruin, from vice, from the Lock hospitals — and all with her money. Kill her, take her money and with the help of it devote oneself to the service of humanity and the good of all. What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of
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He had not a minute more to lose. He pulled the axe quite out, swung it with both arms, scarcely conscious of himself, and almost without effort, almost mechanically, brought the blunt side down on her head. He seemed not to use his own strength in this. But as soon as he had once brought the axe down, his strength returned to him.
The axe fell with the sharp edge just on the skull and split at one blow all the top of the head. She fell heavily at once.
The “axe” fell. Raskolnikov had nothing to do with it.
if he could have understood how many obstacles and, perhaps, crimes he had still to overcome or to commit, to get out of that place and to make his way home, it is very possible that he would have flung up everything, and would have gone to give himself up, and not from fear, but from simple horror and loathing of what he had done.
He walked on without resting. He had a terrible longing for some distraction, but he did not know what to do, what to attempt.
“Is there no blood?” “What blood?” “Why, the old woman and her sister were murdered here. There was a perfect pool there.”
“I’ve done with fancies, imaginary terrors and phantoms! Life is real! haven’t I lived just now? My life has not yet died with that old woman! The Kingdom of Heaven to her — and now enough, madam, leave me in peace! Now for the reign of reason and light... and of will, and of strength... and now we will see! We will try our strength!”
“Maybe I found a treasure somewhere and you know nothing of it? So that’s why I was liberal yesterday... Mr. Zametov knows I’ve found a treasure! Excuse us, please, for disturbing you for half an hour with such trivialities,”
It’s like he wants to be caught
Ordinary men have to live in submission, have no right to transgress the law, because, don’t you see, they are ordinary. But extraordinary men have a right to commit any crime and to transgress the law in any way, just because they are extraordinary.
“and your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing. Isn’t that fearful? Isn’t it fearful that you are living in this filth which you loathe so, and at the same time you know yourself (you’ve only to open your eyes) that you are not helping anyone by it, not saving anyone from anything?
“I must be a great friend of his... since I know,” Raskolnikov went on, still gazing into her face, as though he could not turn his eyes away. “He... did not mean to kill that Lizaveta... he... killed her accidentally... He meant to kill the old woman when she was alone and he went there... and then Lizaveta came in... he killed her too.”
“How could you, you, a man like you... How could you bring yourself to it?... What does it mean?” “Oh, well — to plunder. Leave off, Sonia,”
“It was like this: I asked myself one day this question — what if Napoleon, for instance, had happened to be in my place, and if he had not had Toulon nor Egypt nor the passage of Mont Blanc to begin his career with, but instead of all those picturesque and monumental things, there had simply been some ridiculous old hag, a pawnbroker, who had to be murdered too to get money
“I divined then, Sonia,” he went on eagerly, “that power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up. There is only one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare! Then for the first time in my life an idea took shape in my mind which no one had ever thought of before me, no one! I saw clear as daylight how strange it is that not a single person living in this mad world has had the daring to go straight for it all and send it flying to the devil! I... I wanted to have the daring... and I killed her. I only wanted to have the daring, Sonia! That was the whole cause of
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I wanted to find out something else; it was something else led me on. I wanted to find out then and quickly whether I was a louse like everybody else or a man. Whether I can step over barriers or not, whether I dare stoop to pick up or not, whether I am a trembling creature or whether I have the right...”
The lawyers and the judges were very much struck, among other things, by the fact that he had hidden the trinkets and the purse under a stone, without making use of them, and that, what was more, he did not now remember what the trinkets were like, or even how many there were. The fact that he had never opened the purse and did not even know how much was in it seemed incredible.
But they immediately drew the deduction that the crime could only have been committed through temporary mental derangement, through homicidal mania, without object or the pursuit of gain.
And in the end the criminal was, in consideration of extenuating circumstances, condemned to penal servitude in the second class for a term of eight years only.
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, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended.
