Having looked around one more time, he had already put his hand into his pocket when he suddenly noticed, up next to the outside wall, between the gate and the trough, where the whole space was a little more than two feet wide, a big, unhewn stone weighing perhaps fifty pounds, leaning right against the stone street-wall. The street, the sidewalk, were just beyond this wall; one could hear passers-by, always numerous there, shuttling back and forth; yet he could not be seen from outside the gate, but only if someone were to come in from the street, which, however, might very well happen, and therefore he had to hurry.

He bent down, gripped the top of the stone firmly with both hands, gathered all his strength, and rolled it over. The stone had made a shallow depression; he at once began throwing all the contents of his pockets into it. The purse ended up on top, and there was still some room in the depression. Then he took hold of the stone again, and with one heave rolled it back onto its former side, so that it ended up exactly in its former place, only it seemed perhaps a little, just a tiny bit, higher. But he raked up some dirt and tamped it around the edges with his foot. Nothing could be noticed.

He went out and headed for the square. Again, as that morning in the office, a strong, almost unbearable joy possessed him for a moment. “The traces are covered! And who, who would think of looking under that stone? It may have been lying there since the house was built, and may go on lying there as long again. And even if they find it, who will think of me? It's finished! No evidence!” And he laughed. Yes, he remembered afterwards that he laughed a rapid, nervous, inaudible, drawn-out laugh, and went on laughing all the while he was crossing the square. But when he turned down ------ Boulevard, where he had met that girl two days before, his laughter suddenly went away. Other thoughts started creeping into his head. He also suddenly fancied that it was terribly loathsome now for him to pass that bench where he had sat and pondered then, after the girl left, and that it would also be terribly difficult for him to meet that moustached officer again, the one to whom he had given the twenty kopecks: “Devil take him!”

He walked on, looking distractedly and spitefully about him. All his thoughts were now circling around some one main point, and he himself felt that it was indeed the main point, and that now, precisely now, he was left face-to-face with this main point—even for the first time after those two months.

“Ah, devil take it all!” he thought suddenly, in a fit of inexhaustible spite. “So, if it's begun, it's begun—to hell with her, and with the new life! Lord, how stupid it is! ... And all the lying and groveling I produced today! How repulsively I fawned and flirted today with that nasty Ilya Petrovich! All, but that's nonsense, too! I spit on them, and on everyone, and on my own fawning and flirting! That's not it! Not it at all! . . .”

Suddenly he stopped. A new, totally unexpected, and extremely simple question all at once bewildered and bitterly astonished him:

“If indeed this whole thing was done consciously and not foolheadedly, if you indeed had a definite and firm objective, then how is it that so far you have not even looked into the purse and do not know what you've actually gained, or for what you accepted all these torments and started out on such a mean, nasty, vile business? Weren't you going to throw it into the water just now, this purse, along with all the other things which you also haven't seen yet?...How is that?”

Yes, it was true; it was all true. However, he had even known it before, and it was by no means a new question for him; and when the decision had been made that night to throw it all into the water, it had been made without any hesitation or objection, but in such a way as if it had to be so, as if it even could not be otherwise...Yes, he knew all that, and he remembered it all; it had been just about decided yesterday, at the very moment when he was sitting over the trunk, pulling the cases out of it...Yes, it was true!

“It's because I'm very sick,” he finally decided glumly. “I've tormented and tortured myself, without knowing myself what I'm doing...And yesterday, and the day before yesterday, and all this time I've been torturing myself...I'll get well and...stop torturing myself...And what if I never get well? Lord! I'm so tired of it all! . . .” He walked on without stopping. He longed terribly for some distraction, but he did not know what to do or what to undertake. One new, insurmountable sensation was gaining possession of him almost minute by minute: it was a certain boundless, almost physical loathing for everything he met or saw around him, an obstinate, spiteful, hate-filled loathing. All the people he met were repulsive to him—their faces, their walk, their movements were repulsive. If anyone had spoken to him, he would probably just have spat at him, bitten him . . .

When he walked out to the embankment of the Little Neva, on Vasilievsky Island, near the bridge, he suddenly stopped. “Here's where he lives, in that house,” he thought. “Well, well, I seem to have brought myself to Razumikhin! The same story all over again...It's very curious, however: did I mean to come, or did I simply walk and end up here? Makes no difference; I said...two days ago...that I'd go and see him the day after that; well, so I'll go! As if I couldn't go now . . .”

He went up to Razumikhin's on the fifth floor.

He was at home, in his closet, busy writing at the moment, and opened the door himself. They had not seen each other for about four months. Razumikhin stood there in a dressing gown worn to tatters, with shoes on his bare feet, disheveled, unshaved, and unwashed. His face showed surprise.

“What's with you?” he cried, looking his entering friend over from head to foot; then he paused and whistled.

“It's that bad, is it? You've even outdone me, brother,” he added, looking at Raskolnikov's rags. “Sit down, you must be tired!” And when he collapsed onto the oilcloth Turkish sofa, which was even worse than his own, Razumikhin suddenly noticed that his guest was ill.

“But you're seriously ill, do you know that?” He began feeling his pulse; Raskolnikov pulled his hand back.

“Don't,” he said. “I've come...the thing is, I have no lessons...I wanted...however, I don't need any lessons...”

“You know what? You're raving!” observed Razumikhin, who was watching him closely.

“No, I'm not raving.” Raskolnikov got up from the sofa. It had not occurred to him as he was going upstairs to Razumikhin's that he would therefore have to come face-to-face with him. But now, in an instant, he realized from his earlier experience that he was least of all disposed at that moment to come face-to-face with anyone in the whole world, whoever it might be. All his bile rose up in him. He nearly choked with anger at himself as soon as he crossed Razumikhin's threshold.

“Good-bye!” he said suddenly, and went to the door.

“But wait, wait, you crank!”

“Don't! . . .” the latter repeated, pulling his hand back again.

“And why the devil did you come, then! Are you cracked or something? I'm...almost hurt. I won't let you go like that.”

“Well, listen: I came to you because aside from you I don't know anyone who would help...to start...because you're kinder than the rest of them—smarter, that is—and you're able to talk about things...But now I see that I need nothing, do you hear, absolutely nothing...no favors, no concern from anyone...I myself...alone...And enough! Let me be, all of you!”

“But wait a minute, you chimney sweep! This is completely crazy! You can do as you like for all I care. You see, I don't have any lessons either, and to hell with it, but there's a bookseller in the flea market named Cherubimov, and he's a sort of lesson in himself. I wouldn't exchange him now for five merchants' lessons. He does a bit of publishing, brings out little books on natural science—and how they sell! The titles alone are priceless! Now, you've always maintained that I'm stupid: by God, brother, there are some that are stupider! And lately he's also hooked on to the trend; he doesn't know beans about it, but, well, naturally I encourage him. Now, here we have two sheets and a bit more of German text—the stupidest sort of charlatanism, in my opinion; in short, it examines whether woman is or is not a human being. Well, and naturally it solemnly establishes that she is a human being. Cherubimov is preparing it in line with the woman question; I'm doing the translating; he'll stretch these two and a half sheets to six, we'll concoct a nice, frilly title half a page long, and peddle it for fifty kopecks. It'll do! I'll get six roubles a sheet for the translation, making it fifteen roubles in all, and I took six roubles in advance. That done, we'll start translating something about whales; then we've marked out some of the dullest gossip from the second part of the Confessions for translation—somebody told Cherubimov that Rousseau is supposedly a Radishchev in his own way.^[45] Naturally, I don't contradict—devil take him! So, do you want to translate the second sheet of Is Woman a Human Being?^[46] If you do, take the text right now, take some pens and paper—it's all supplied—and take three roubles, because I took the advance for the whole translation, first and second sheets, so three roubles would be exactly your share. When you finish the sheet, you'll get another three roubles. And one more thing, please don't regard this as some sort of favor on my part. On the contrary, the moment you walked in, I already saw how you were going to be of use to me. First of all, my spelling is poor, and second, my German just goes kaput sometimes, so that I have to make things up on my own instead, my only consolation being that it comes out even better. But who knows, maybe it comes out worse instead of better...Are you going to take it or not?”