There were two guests, in a room somewhat larger than his own. One of them, coatless, with extremely curly hair and a red, inflamed face, was standing in the pose of an orator, legs apart to keep his balance, and, beating his breast with his fist, in a voice full of pathos, was reproaching the other with being a beggar and even having no rank, claiming that he had dragged him from the mud and could throw him out whenever he wanted, and that only the finger of God sees it all. The reproached friend sat on a chair looking like someone who has a great desire to sneeze but cannot manage to do it. From time to time he glanced at the orator with dull and bovine eyes, but evidently had no idea what it was all about, and most likely had not even heard any of it. On the table, where a candle was burning down, stood an almost empty carafe of vodka, wineglasses, bread, tumblers, pickles, and the dishes from a long-since-finished tea. Having examined this picture attentively, Svidrigailov left the crack with indifference and again sat down on the bed.

The ragamuffin, who came back with the tea and veal, could not refrain from asking once more: “Will anything else be required?” and having again heard a negative reply, withdrew for good. Svidrigailov fell upon the tea to warm himself, and drank a whole glassful, but could not eat even a single bite for total loss of appetite. He was apparently beginning to have a fever. He took off his coat and jacket, wrapped himself in a blanket, and lay on the bed. This was annoying: “It would be better to be well at such a moment,” he thought, and grinned. The room was stuffy, the candlelight was dim, the noise of the wind came from outside, a mouse was scratching somewhere in a corner, and the whole room seemed to smell of mice and something leathery. He lay as if dreaming: one thought gave way to another. It seemed he would have liked very much to catch hold of at least something particular in his imagination. “It's outside the window, must be some garden,” he thought, “trees rustling; how I dislike the rustling of trees at night, in a storm, in the darkness—a nasty feeling!” And he remembered that as he was passing by the Petrovsky Park earlier he had even thought of it with loathing. Here he incidentally remembered the ------kov Bridge as well, and the Little Neva, and again he seemed to feel cold, as he had then when he was standing over the water. “Never in my life have I liked water, not even in landscapes,” he thought again, and again suddenly grinned at a certain strange thought: “Well, it seems it ought to be all the same now, with regard to all this aesthetics and comfort, but it's precisely now that I've become particular, the way an animal makes sure to choose a place for itself... on a similar occasion. I ought precisely to have turned in at the Petrovsky Park earlier! It must have seemed dark and cold, heh, heh! One all but requires pleasant sensations! ... By the way, why don't I put out the candle?” (He blew it out.) “The neighbors have gone to bed,” he thought, seeing no light from the crack. “Well, Marfa Petrovna, why don't you come now, if you like? It's dark, and the place is suitable, and the moment is an original one. But it's precisely now that you won't come . . .”

Suddenly, for some reason, he remembered how earlier, an hour before carrying out his designs on Dunechka, he had recommended that Raskolnikov entrust her to Razumikhin's protection. “In fact, perhaps I said it more to egg myself on, as Raskolnikov guessed. What a rogue this Raskolnikov is, however! He's taken a lot on himself. Might become a big rogue in time, when the nonsense gets out of him, but now he wants too much to live! On that point these people are scoundrels. Well, devil take him, he can do what he likes, it's nothing to me.”

He still could not fall asleep. Little by little today's image of Dunechka began to emerge before him, and a sudden trembling ran down his body. “No, that has to be dropped now,” he thought, coming to himself, “I have to think of something else. How strange and funny: I've never had a great hatred for anyone, never even wished especially to revenge myself on anyone—it's a bad sign, a bad sign! I didn't like arguing either, and never got into a temper—also a bad sign! And look at all I promised her today—pah, the devil! And she might really have ground me up somehow . . .” He again fell silent and clenched his teeth: again Dunechka's image appeared before him exactly as she had been when, after firing the first time, terribly frightened, she lowered the revolver and looked at him numbly, so that he could have seized her twice over, and she would not have raised a hand to defend herself if he had not reminded her. He remembered it was just as if he had felt sorry for her at that moment, as if his heart had been wrung...”Eh, devil take it! These thoughts again! It all has to be dropped, dropped! . . .”

He was beginning to doze off; the feverish trembling was going away; suddenly something seemed to run over his arm and leg under the blanket. He jumped: “Pah, the devil, a mouse no less!” he thought. “It's the veal I left on the table . . .” He was terribly reluctant to uncover himself, get out of bed, freeze; but suddenly something again scurried unpleasantly over his leg; he tore the blanket off and lighted the candle. Trembling with feverish chill, he bent down to examine the bed—there was nothing; he shook the blanket and suddenly a mouse jumped out on the sheet. He rushed to catch it; but the mouse, refusing to get off the bed, flashed zigzagging in all directions, slipped from under his fingers, ran across his hand, and suddenly darted under the pillow; he threw the pillow aside, but instantly felt something jump onto his chest, scurry over his body, and down his back under his shirt. He shuddered nervously, and woke up. The room was dark, he was lying in bed wrapped up in the blanket as before, the wind was howling outside the window. “What nastiness!” he thought vexedly.

He got up and sat on the edge of the bed, his back to the window. “Better not to sleep at all,” he decided. From the window, however, there came a cold, damp draft; without getting up, he pulled the blanket over him and wrapped himself in it. He did not light the candle. He was not thinking of anything, and did not want to think; but reveries rose one after another, fragments of thoughts with no beginning, no end, no connection. As if he were falling into a half slumber. Perhaps it was the cold, or the darkness, or the dampness, or the wind howling outside the window and swaying the trees, that called up in him some stubborn, fantastic inclination and desire—but he began to picture flowers. He imagined a lovely landscape; a bright, warm, almost hot day, a feast-day, the day of the Trinity.^[152] A rich, luxurious country cottage in the English style, all sunk in fragrant flowerbeds, with rows surrounding the entire house; the porch, entwined with climbing plants, filled with banks of roses; a bright, cool stairway, laid with sumptuous carpet, adorned with rare flowers in Chinese jars. He noticed especially the bouquets of white and tender narcissus, in jars of water on the windowsills, bending on long, bright green, fleshy stems, with their heavy, sweet scent. He was even reluctant to leave them; but he went up the stairs and entered a large, high-ceilinged room, and here again, at the windows, by the doors opening to the terrace, on the terrace itself, everywhere there were flowers. The floors were strewn with freshly cut, fragrant grass, the windows were open, fresh, light, cool air penetrated the room, birds chirped outside the windows, and in the middle of the room, on tables covered with white satin cloths, stood a coffin. The coffin was lined with white gros de Naples silk and abundantly trimmed with white ruche. Garlands of flowers twined it on all sides. All in flowers, a girl was lying in it, in a white lace dress, her hands, as if carved from marble, folded and pressed to her breast. But her loose hair, hair of a light blond color, was wet; it was twined with a wreath of roses. The stern and already stiff profile of her face also seemed carved from marble, but the smile on her pale lips was full of some unchildlike, boundless grief and great complaint. Svidrigailov knew the girl: no icons, no lighted candles stood by the coffin, no prayers were heard. The girl was a suicide—by drowning.^[153] She was only fourteen, but hers was already a broken heart, and it destroyed itself, insulted by an offense that had horrified and astonished this young child's consciousness, that had covered her angelically pure soul with undeserved shame, and torn from her a last cry of despair, not heeded but insolently defiled in the black night, in the darkness, in the cold, in the damp thaw, while the wind was howling . . .